Marathon Training, Running Community & Consistency | Feat. Drew Martig of Happy Running Podcast

Drew Martig (00:01)
Hello and welcome back to the Happy Running Podcast. My name's Drew. I'm here with Chris, who ⁓ we just met recently. We're actually, we have the same employer. We both work at Tanium and we met recently through just some running talks. So how's it going, Chris?

Chris Detzel (00:19)
How about you? Appreciate you having me on.

Drew Martig (00:21)
Good, yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's been a while, so this will be a little bit of kickstart back to my podcasting and YouTube. So I appreciate it. Yeah, so Chris, you and I met. Obviously there was a little bit of like a smaller running community at Taneum. I thought that was awesome. Any company I go to, I've been like leaning in heavily into the running stuff and trying to find other runners and endurance athletes. So I'm so glad we were able to connect.

Chris Detzel (00:51)
Yeah, I was pretty impressed whenever you reached out. I don't know if it's about the podcast or how you saw my podcast or whatever, maybe it on LinkedIn or whatever. But I looked you up because you reached out to me said, hey, let's do a podcast. I was like, all right. So looked you out and I was like, holy cow, Drew's really fast. I saw you in 228 at some point. And I was like, yeah, I would love to talk to you. But anyways, I was very impressed with your running background.

Drew Martig (01:21)
Thank you, thank you, Chris. Unfortunately, that was a little while ago. I've been dealing with some injuries, so we'll get back out there soon enough. but you ⁓ tell me about ⁓ your running journey and a little bit how you got into the running community and about DFW Running Talk.

Chris Detzel (01:27)
That happens. That happens.

Yeah, so I started running probably, well, I started running in high school. I did cross country, did a lot of things there like for three years or so. And then I got out of running for, I mean, like 15 years. I'm at it 15, 20 years. I started gaining like a lot of weight in my thirties. And I was going through this divorce and I have have a twin brother. And my twin brother goes, Chris, this is how I said it. So just, just,

But he goes, you're really gaining some weight, and you need to do something about it. And he goes, divorces are a really bad thing. And you can really just go outside and run, go do some things. You need to lose some weight, OK? He said some blunter things. I was like, all right, all right. And so I did. And so I think I was 37. I'm now 51.

I've been running ever since but I started off with kind of a you know a mile you know and I thought you know I was 25 30 pounds overweight I mean it's not huge but it's not you know nothing and so when I started running or I gave myself I said why don't I just walk run you know like for a week for at least a week I'm gonna walk run a mile and on Friday like I'll do a Monday through Thursday and on Friday I want to just jog the whole mile you know

And I did that for a couple of weeks. And then the next week I was like, all right, how about a mile and a half? And, I didn't know. I really knew nothing about running really. mean, what I knew in high school was, was long gone, you know, and, and they told me what to run. um, and, know, uh, then my brother, I've got another brother, Josh, he, he's actually, uh, he was in the air force and he, he came home and he was like, Hey man, I'm going to run a 10 K. And this was like,

only three weeks into my running, was like, oh, no way. But he talked me into it. And I beat him, funny enough, within about a month or so, you know, after just talking. So they kind of got me on the journey of running. my brother, Buddy, he's the twin brother, decided he's like, he got me to come to Dallas. So I lived in a place called Little Elm, Texas, which is about 45 minutes away from Dallas. At that time, it's 45 minutes, maybe it's a little

They've built some roads and things. So I would drive all the way out to a place called White Rock Lake and start running with a group. ⁓ And that's kind of where I got really addicted-ish to running because of the community. ⁓ It's called Dallas Running Club. And that's kind of where I started. It's a mango deeper, but that's really... I started training for marathons and things like that. ⁓

Drew Martig (04:31)
Now that's kind of the beauty of the sport where you can jump in at any time. I live in Flagstaff and one of the coolest things about being a runner in Flagstaff is you're surrounded by other runners. Also one of the not coolest things is that I started running when I was 27 and most of these people have run their entire lives and it's like a huge part, they've formed their identity around it.

Chris Detzel (04:46)
That's right.

Drew Martig (04:59)
So you can kind of feel like an insider and an outsider at the same time. ⁓ it's the nice, also the nice thing about running is you can, like you said, you can kind of jump into any group and join people going out for a run as long as you're within two minutes of their ⁓ easy pace. It's relatively comfortable to run with folks.

Chris Detzel (05:21)
I think that, I think you're right. So within Dallas footwork, there's this huge running communities. There's probably 60 running groups that I can count and, and, and it's exploded over the last several years. And yeah, I Flagstaff is very heavily into running and more so, you know, that's kind of where you find some of your elite athletes. mean, truly elite. You're Dallas, you know, our elite athletes are running and they've got potential, but like two twenties, two twenty ones.

and things like that for marathons. they're not, I mean, they're fast, but they're not flagstaff fast. Does that make sense? ⁓ and because I mean, people there are running mid, two's, you know? So, ⁓ but, but you are seeing it explode over the last several years and you can almost go anywhere where it's Facebook or, you know, ⁓ Instagram is kind of where this younger people go and find a community of runners. And I find that it,

When you start running a lot, you don't want to run a 20-miler by yourself or 10-miler, 15-miler, whatever those long miles are. It's really nice to have somebody to run with, or if you're speed workouts and things like that, it's just a lot easier to do it with the community. so, you know, over time... No, go ahead, sorry.

Drew Martig (06:39)
I completely agree, but one of my biggest challenges is finding people to run with. People like you and I, have pretty strict schedule during the day. You don't even need a group, just a few people that you can call where you might have similar lifestyles and you can coincide for one or two runs a week is huge and it helps you.

I mean, some of the highest mileage I've hit is not even close to what a lot of high mileage runners run. But being able to get out with some friends a couple of times during the week, it just makes it so much less of like a solo grind and you're just kind of dying slowly by yourself. It's just so nice to have some camaraderie or like even if you can really cut for a workout even better, because people drag you along to things that you didn't think you could do. the community part is so...

Chris Detzel (07:09)
Yeah, exactly.

Drew Martig (07:34)
It's so huge and that's one of my bigger goals now is ⁓ trying to lean into communities like you have, is really cool.

Chris Detzel (07:42)
Yeah, and think that it's kind of what I kind of go into the podcast here in a minute. one of the things that I think is the hard part about communities is that there's so many runners and different things. And I'll bring this around, I promise. But we have this group called ⁓ Completely Slothed, and they're the fastest group in all of DFW. When I say they're running 230s, 220s, things like that. And so they're

And they have a guy, name is Matt Campbell. He kind of runs that group. And he puts out training plans for these guys. They run together. They go to races together. They come up with these cool little ⁓ singlets, right? And then this is completely slothed on it. And they dominate the races, whether it's 5Ks or half marathons, whatever, right? It's kind of cool to see because they'll just kind of come in as a group and just dominate. And then there's other running groups for different

types of people like, you know, myself, you know, there's there's running groups for like half marathoners or marathoners and things like that. And then just groups that just get together and say, we're running the lake. I'm doing 13. What are you doing today? And all that kind of stuff. And what I learned was, was that, you know, in the very beginning, I was kind of put into a group. And so those are only people I talked to from a running standpoint, right? Was the people in my group. I didn't talk to anybody really out the people that were slower than me or the people that were faster than me or

Whatever, I would never have conversations with them. I was like, years ago, I thought, well, why don't I start a community that it's on Facebook, you know, has 11,000 people from DFW only mostly DFW people in it that are running in the community, you know, and I was like, that kind of started it. And then I was like, you know, I'm not really having conversations. How do I start having conversations with really fast people, the people that are that really care and love running and

they're getting into the 110 and 120 and 100-miler weeks during their runs and things like that. And how are they doing it? Why are they doing it? Why are they so obsessed with it? I mean, I'm running 40 to 50 miles a week, and that's nothing compared to what they're doing. Why are you doing it? And then the other piece was I really wanted to start. I wanted to create content that

That was for that DFW running group. And so, um, so I thought, you know, I've done podcasts for years and I thought, why not start a running podcast within Dallas Fort Worth? Cause nobody is doing it. Nobody is talking about DFW runners at all. Ever. mean, 98 % of my people that I talked to on my podcast are actually, um, never been on a podcast, even, you know, no matter how fast they are. So that was another, and then the other pieces, it pushes me to go out there and talk to.

⁓ other runners, it pushes me to show up at different events, show up at, you know, pushes me to just go run as well. You know, so it's accountability. It's a lot of different things. So.

Drew Martig (10:45)
Yeah, the accountability is great. I will say one of my favorite quotes is that comparison is the thief of joy. I try and remind myself of that all the time, it's so, especially in our world, it's so easy, because there's always the next thing. And I think ⁓ just the mentality of a runner tends to be structured, disciplined, ⁓ focused, goal-focused and oriented, which means every time you hit that goal, you expect, you're like, okay.

Chris Detzel (10:51)
Yeah, exactly.

Drew Martig (11:12)
this is gonna feel awesome, if I could just do this one thing and then you do the thing and you just go, well shit, okay, well what's next? And there's always, yeah, there's always someone ahead of you unless you're ⁓ blessed with global runner status. There's always someone ahead of you, right?

Chris Detzel (11:33)
think you're right. It's funny because we do compare ourselves to others. And I think that, you know, to some degree, ⁓ you know, we got to push ourselves to be better. So I think that's fine. But at the same time, it's like, you know, I hear people say, ⁓ you know, I'm not as fast as you or, ⁓ you know, I can't do as many miles as you or marathon is too much or those kinds of things. And the reality is that it is a lot and we as runners, you know, especially somebody like you, I mean,

Drew Martig (11:55)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Detzel (12:02)
⁓ It's probably at one point you've been pretty hardcore, you know, and so to compare yourself to somebody else is just ridiculous. Like I'm not I would never compare myself to you, Drew, because I know how fast you go. But I can learn something from you. And I can learn that, you know, like, I'm making this up. But I know this guy that's probably just about as quick as you. And one of the things he was telling me was, I learned something this day during the podcast, Chris, you know, I do these I do two two days sometimes, you know, and so

you know, what it does is allow me to, if I did a 20 miler on a Saturday, I can get two 10s in. So start 10 miles in the morning and then 10 miles in the afternoon. And he goes, it allows me to recover from that first 10 miles and maybe eat a little bit, you know, things like that. And then go back out and maybe do the 10 miler with some speed work or, you know, different things like that. You know, and my thought was, why the hell would somebody do two days? I thought it was just, you know, but no, it was for a good reason.

Right, so I learned I'm not doing two days. I do two days a little. But that's over the summer. I do a 5k at night, maybe some hills in the morning or something. But that's it. Not like you get or I don't know if you've done. Have you done two days before?

Drew Martig (13:10)
I, so I started, yes, I do do PM runs usually, if I'm above about 80 miles, or usually above 70, it makes sense with my schedule. But it all just depends. There are people who run 120 miles on singles, you know? It just, it just depends. Maybe not 120, probably. There are people who run 100 miles plus on singles. And then you hit a point where you just.

Chris Detzel (13:15)
Okay.

That's a lot.

Drew Martig (13:39)
kind of have to. I also know ⁓ some friends of mine are starting to triples, you know, but they're running 130 plus, which, and then there's people like Kim Levens who, ⁓ Kim Levens is famous for running like 160 mile weeks and he'll run triples like most days of the week. it's all, ⁓ he's, ⁓ I don't know if he's the fastest, my friend,

Chris Detzel (13:59)
Do you not have a job besides running or what?

Drew Martig (14:07)
Rory, I think he grabbed the half marathon record for Canada. I don't know if he got the Canadian marathon record, but ⁓ Cam Levens has held the marathon record. I have to look up what it was, 205 and change. ⁓ But it's like my point with all this is I just like, I started with a 330 marathon and like one of the reasons I started YouTube and podcasts is because I,

Chris Detzel (14:15)
Really?

Okay.

Drew Martig (14:37)
talk to people all the time, friends, coworkers, family, and they ask me all these questions. And the only reason I feel confident in answering them is because I went through the exact same things, because I started running when I was like 27 and started with a 5K. think my first 5K was like 22 minutes or something. But I almost passed out. I like blacked out kind of as I crossing the line.

Chris Detzel (14:58)
Very good.

My keys are tough,

Drew Martig (15:06)
It's yeah, and but it's like we're all just building and and so like I just started running double threshold last summer sadly before I got injured and And it's something like once you realize it's just everything seems slightly out of reach until you Introduce yourself to it. You expose yourself to it. Try it Realize it's within reach bring it in and then like that goal thing. It's that next goal is always there and

It's always, in my opinion, usually it's attainable until everyone's got their plateau and we'll figure out what that is. usually plateaus are dictated by life circumstances, injuries, your job, ⁓ and less on your physiology, in my experience.

Chris Detzel (15:55)
So quickly, like not to turn this around, but I'm curious about your injury, what you did and what happened.

Drew Martig (16:03)
⁓ I, to kind of make a long story shorter, I had ⁓ an injury that I was managing that was, I was training through the summer and osteitis pubis, which is like in your pelvis, you have some bones down like your sit bone area. Those get irritated from some tight, you know, tight musculature and stuff in that area. And it causes inflammation, this joint in your pelvis. So I had that.

and was managing it, things were going well. Eventually, that whole structure was stressed enough where it seems like it tore a hernia in my abdomen there. And so I had to get that repaired. So quick, quick a halt to my training.

Chris Detzel (16:49)
Are you better now?

Are you better now or?

Drew Martig (16:52)
⁓ I'm starting to feel better and it's been about six months and I'm hoping to run Chicago. Yeah, I'm running, it's, you you've been through injuries, I'm sure. getting back from when you're at a certain place in Chicago this last fall, I was building up to it. I wanted to beat my PB and I felt like I was in good shape to do that. And I was like eight weeks away from the marathon when I got hurt. So.

Chris Detzel (16:59)
That's a long time.

Okay.

Drew Martig (17:22)
I was feeling really confident and then now to go literally to zero and start over again, it's a little rough, I think it's doable.

Chris Detzel (17:32)
Yeah, look, I think that one you at least have the it's not like you're in a sense you're starting over, but your body kind of knows how that is right like your body can kind of recover from from, you know, like, it's not like you're starting from scratch. So you have some ideas of what to do where to go. I mean, you're a coach. So I think six month injury is a long time. So that's got to be pretty tough. What'd you do like to

kind of in between from now till before, you know, was there specific things that you just kind of keep your mind active and your body active? I'm curious.

Drew Martig (18:07)
⁓

I'm fortunate that I mentioned that thing about your identity. I've seen a lot of runners where their running is their identity. think that's, it puts you in a tough spot when that world comes crumbling down and all of a sudden that is your world. ⁓ I have a family, we're homesteaders, I've got work. ⁓ I have other hobbies. Unfortunately I acquire hobbies like.

Chris Detzel (18:13)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Drew Martig (18:35)
at a ridiculous rate too, so that's a problem. Yeah. But, ⁓ you know, ⁓ to your previous comment, a friend of mine told me recently, he's a very accomplished person, he said, if you look at injuries, like coming back from an injury, like you're a sculptor, and you previously have, you've sculpted, you know exactly where you're going, right? You know the roadmap to sculpt where you wanna go.

Chris Detzel (18:35)
Me too.

Drew Martig (19:04)
So it's just a matter of chiseling away at it. That sculpture is in there. You just have to knock away all the little bits and pieces that it's covered up by. So hopefully, you know, anyone going through injury, it's in there. You know how to get there. And you just got to be persistent and consistent with it.

Chris Detzel (19:23)
Yeah, I think that, you know, to me, that's part of the journey. Good or bad, know, it's nobody wants to get injured. But, you know, if you've run long enough, you're get injured. Probably, you know, my wife ran literally for 20 years. She's on her 13th Boston in a row. I we love it. But, you know, she was injured, like, for the first time in 20 years, about a year and a half ago, you know, and so you can imagine, you know, a lot of her identity in some ways was kind of put into running.

At least people kind of saw her as a runner. I luckily she started some weightlifting classes and things like that. But I mean, it's a tough thing when you do, like you said, you put some of your identity into that and then you kind of let it go a little bit. And then she's kind of re-identified herself a little bit, right? know, say, yeah, I like to run, but look, I'm also a weightlifter. also, you know what I mean? Like, it's just not just kind of one thing because running might or might not last forever. You who knows? ⁓

So yeah, I I like that. I love that.

Drew Martig (20:23)
And

well, with the community component, I feel like there's positives and negatives where if you built a community around running, that community is there to support you. You've got injuries happen, things pop up, other people can give you advice, there's coaches in the group probably. But then also, it's pretty depressing when you're like, you go on Instagram or whatever, all your friends are running and you're not, right?

Chris Detzel (20:44)
Yeah, it's not as easy.

Yeah, you know, the only thing I would recommend that that's a hard thing to be and you go there and they're all running but you know, it is it's okay to still show up, you know, like, especially if your community is having like breakfast after a run, you know, on a Saturday, we go to this place called taco joint. So we start there, go to the lake and then come back and some people afterwards have tacos. So you know, you can say how much you kind of see everybody off, maybe you go home for

30 for an hour or so come back and have some tacos or something, you know, so you're still kind of doing it's hard. I'm not saying it's not. But, you know, you got to push yourself to kind of still be in that community so that you can talk to folks and things, you know, so. But yeah.

Drew Martig (21:32)
I like that for the same reason. I like not getting out of the mentality of training. like one of the things that helps motivate me, cause I'm a very type A, I try to be disciplined, running taught me discipline really, ⁓ is having that structure. like I treated my rehab and my recovery just like I did my training. It's like, this is my training for the day. If I don't do these things,

Every day there's something that I need to do in order to get back to where I want to go. And it's put me in a spot where even though I've had really, I've been in three doctors offices in the last week or so. And the reason for that is I've had pain, I've had some setbacks, but it's put me in a spot where I'm actually starting to recover and feel better. And when I turn that corner, I feel confident, like I have a little bit of fitness from cross training.

I like all my structures. I've made so much progress in like strengthening a lot of things where they were debilitatingly weak just like three months ago. ⁓ And I think if people take that mentality of just staying on it, staying on top, you don't have to lose your identity. ⁓ It's still there, but you can kind of like roadmap it and it gives you something to work toward.

Chris Detzel (22:52)
What, what was your, what's your cross training? What do you do for that?

Drew Martig (22:58)
Fun thing, so ⁓ I think you have a YouTube as well. One of my favorite YouTubers, Ben Is Running, ⁓ shout out Ben Felton, total stud, met him briefly in Berlin, probably along with a million other people he won't remember. But love his channel, ⁓ he got gifted by Zwift, ⁓ this Zwift Ride Bike, it's an indoor trainer. And for someone like me who, I have a risk aversion problem, so.

I don't really want to go riding my bike on highways because I don't want to get hit and die. ⁓ so having that like indoor trainer, ⁓ I saw him make huge gains in his fitness and I was like, there's, there's always been this desire for me to get more of an aerobic boost in my training without the stress of running. And so I've recently introduced that and, ⁓ and I love it. So highly recommend.

Chris Detzel (23:33)
Same.

Drew Martig (23:55)
indoor training or riding to anyone.

Chris Detzel (23:59)
I love it. mean, I think. don't do enough of it. The cross training is, I think, going to be key for any runner, especially for running.

Drew Martig (24:00)
Yeah.

You said

you run 40, 50 miles a week. Do you anything on the side?

Chris Detzel (24:10)
I was doing Orange Theory for the longest time and then recently I got out of it. And so I got to figure out some weight stuff because I'm not doing anything or least some core stuff, things like that. But running is pretty much it. It's not recommended, but I do think runners in general just have a problem with doing it. The reality is that you're running a lot. 40 miles isn't

Drew Martig (24:27)
Hey, well, it's a good thing to do. mean...

Chris Detzel (24:40)
Nothing, you know, but it's also, you know, I've got work full time, I got a kid, you know, all these things. you know, I just get tired. And so I've got to push myself to be able to cross train. Not giving good excuses. None of them are really good because the other day, if I'm running too much, you know, I started getting problems with, you know, my growing or my ankle or I don't know, something starts to hurt. You know, it's because I'm not doing cross training. That's really it.

Drew Martig (25:05)
Or you could run

less. That's what my PT tells me. go, how do I get my hip to be less tight? He's like, well, you run a lot, so stop running so much.

Chris Detzel (25:09)
Yeah, well.

Run less.

Well, I think that from a non-runner, that's the solution. But the reality is people that like to run like us, and especially the amount of miles that you are getting, just do some cross-training. And for the most part, if you do it right, core stuff and you're doing some cycling type stuff, indoor stuff, I think that's the key. mean, maybe. But none of us are perfect. ⁓ It's tough.

Drew Martig (25:45)
It's the beauty of like doing what you do with ⁓ building a podcast community and getting information out to people like I I I learn new things every day by being surrounded by people who are better than me and It's like this huge imposter syndrome like on steroids always if I ever go to a race and I do like kind of well compared to the average person it's like I I'm just always feeling like what you were talking about where there's

Chris Detzel (25:58)
yeah.

Drew Martig (26:12)
there's always someone else ahead. ⁓ But the beauty of having...

Chris Detzel (26:17)
There's always somebody faster, always.

Drew Martig (26:19)
Always, but the beauty of the podcast and ⁓ information online is the accessibility to getting better and science and recovery and how to train well and consistently. It's so much more accessible than it used to be. And you and I have the privilege of sharing that with people, which I think is the best.

Chris Detzel (26:43)
Not into I think, you know, I learned from a ton of people just from having the podcast, I love hearing the stories, you know, and a lot of these stories seem to be somewhat similar, but you know, in their own kind of different ways. But you know, people in general, the way people start is, you know, if you're really fast, some of these people started in college, but just in general, a lot of us started, you know, in our early 30s or whatever mid 30s, and we're overweight, and had to figure out a way to

to just get fitter, you know? And I think that was kind of the key at the end of the day for me and a lot of people, you know? And so, and yeah, trying to get this good.

Drew Martig (27:21)
Were

you, would you consider yourself skinny fat at any point in your life? You don't look like someone who was fully overweight. I feel like I was skinny fat and it's like flies under the radar with most people because they go, you look like a normal dude. You know, what's wrong? You're fine. But.

Chris Detzel (27:28)
Yeah, yeah, like...

So I got a belly

like my belly when I was from 30 to about 37. So about six or seven years, it just kind of, you could tell like I was getting a belly, you know, that was it. But it was kind of one of those men, men get the big bellies in general, you know, so you could call it skinny fat, but I was getting pretty belly fat. Whatever. So

Drew Martig (27:52)
Yeah, me too, yeah.

I hear

that, yeah.

Chris Detzel (28:07)
It was getting obvious. I mean, my brother said something to me, go, dude, he's pretty harsh. Anyways, he even told me, man, you're getting away. Like, F off, dude, you know, like, but he keeps me honest, I guess, you know, my wife always says I look good. But, you know, that's my wife. She's just being sometimes. Yeah.

Drew Martig (28:28)
God bless her. Yeah. That's cool.

Well, yeah, I mean, so like the community component, I'm very, ⁓ I don't know if envious is the right word. ⁓ I really admire people like you ⁓ who are able to build community around stuff. And ⁓ it's one of the things I'm trying to get better at through my coaching. It's happened organically just through the years, but I want to just keep building that. So can you tell me a little bit more about

how that community has grown over time and what that's taken from your perspective.

Chris Detzel (29:04)
Do you mean just like the Facebook community or do you mean just the podcast kind of stuff or all kind of the overall thing? Is that what you mean?

Drew Martig (29:10)
I think all of the

above, you did, I'm intrigued by, you said you have like 11,000 runners in a Facebook community, so that's pretty cool. That's amazing.

Chris Detzel (29:19)
So by the way, I built communities for a living. At titanium, that's what I do is I build our online community and different programs that allow people to, that allow us to scale it. And so when you look at the running community with Facebook, for example, I opened that up a long time ago. So it's probably at least 10 years old. And so it's slowly but surely grown. First it grew up to a community of just my neighbors.

I just wanted to run with my neighbors because I didn't have anybody to run with. And so I opened up a closed community on Facebook and put them in there. And so we would meet like different days. And then I moved to Dallas, which was about 45 minutes away. And then I was like, well, I don't need that community anymore. I don't really run with them. So why don't I just open it to the public and see what happens. slowly but surely, you know, I'd post in there and then I would add some friends in there and then.

then I would start going to running kind of groups and ⁓ kind of get to know the running community a little bit more. And then I just put them in. I don't know if you still do that now, but I would just throw them in there, you know, like I'd pay invite, invite, invite, you know, and they don't automatically be in the group. So but then it started to grow without me even trying but I would post different things in there about running and kind of, you know, then I started having more of a strategic view around it. And I said, you know what, be really cool.

start talking to people that I don't normally talk to in the running community and see if I can get them in there and start talking and things like that. Never that particular community is all digital still to this day is digital. ⁓ We don't meet up or anything else. Although that's another community I am an admin of that I am part of. But to finish this off is that continues to grow and I continue to cultivate the reason I started the podcast. And I think I mentioned this before was a few reasons. One is

I need content for that community because I mean, you get tired of just posting, you know, ⁓ hey, how's your run or how many miles you get this week or what is your next race or whatever, right? You people will post and that's one way to do it. But I thought, how about get some meaty content for these people so that they can know about runners and know about DFW running people ⁓ that are doing some cool things. And so that was one. And so then I could create quick hits. I can create

long video, can create audio, whatever I wanted, like, you know, even kind of just these, I've got a sub stack now newsletter that has almost 1300 subscribers to that community, or to the DFW running time. And then ⁓ so I started the podcast for that reason, and mostly on the podcast. ⁓ The story, not always, but some of stories are around people running, you know,

that wind Dallas marathon, which is a big marathon here in Dallas of 30,000 people or they win cow town marathon, which is Fort Worth marathon. So some of our fast runners, but also some of our young and upcoming runners doing amazing things running 222 marathons or 223 marathons or whatever the first marathon and this guy runs a 221, you know, like, holy cow, who doesn't want to hear about that? know, let's go, you know, or this one woman that that I just interviewed.

know, she's been injured for a long time, but she was really fast that I didn't know about nobody seems to know about. But you know, she was a 230 marathoner here in Fort Worth, Texas. And her name is ⁓ it's unique. ⁓ I'll tell you in a minute once I remember. ⁓ Yeah, definitely. I mean, and she's been on interviews publicly, I'll have to go find it because damn, what is her name?

Drew Martig (32:45)
What's her name?

Sorry to put you on the spot. I just figured she's worth a shout out.

Chris Detzel (33:05)
So anyways, she was injured for a while and she'd never run a 50k but Cow Town just recently happened in late February, early March and she decided, hey, there's a 50k I'm gonna run that. I think I might have a chance to win it. And she won it, know. Mikkel Montgomery is her name. but anyways, so her story was awesome. You know, like this really fast woman that I'd never even knew about and I know most of the fast people, you know, and so.

I get to hear her story, her podcast will come out next week. I don't know when you're gonna put this out, but the point is, it'll be out a week after this particular podcast that you and I have. But so I get to hear a lot of stories and people that I would know. And you know, the way I do it is I see them either on Instagram or Facebook, and I send them a direct message. I say, hey, you know, I have this local podcast, you know, I've interviewed almost 90 people over the last year and a half.

would love to talk to you. And you know, you're doing some really cool things. And most people will say yes, if they see your message. If they don't see it, then you know, they just ignore it. That's good. You know, nine, nine out 10 people say yes, maybe even more, you know, because nobody is interviewing these people. And they want to tell their story. They want to talk about running. This woman doesn't hang out with other runners. She's not even in the community. She met one person like

a few days before I even gave her did her interview and she's like, I love my husband doesn't run my, you know, and I'm like, this woman is doing amazing things, dude. She's been running for a long time. She's run 232 233 marathons, you know, it's crazy. So

Drew Martig (34:38)
it's funny.

If there's one thing

you can rely on runners for, it's talking about running. It's like that meme of there's the guy standing at a urinal way over here and it's totally open. Then a guy bypasses all the open urinals, stands next to him and goes, hey, you want to talk about my marathon?

Chris Detzel (34:52)
Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah,

exactly. We always want exactly we want to talk about how we did in that marathon, you know, and, but I like to kind of get that journey to kind of get to know that person. always tell people, let's pretend like you and I are running together. And I'm going to ask you a lot of questions. ⁓ And so, you know, let's let's do this. And so I'll kind of get their history and things like that. It's funny, one time I was at a run with with with this group, and this new woman shows up.

I want to make sure she has somebody to run with. Look, my wife was there and everything else, but you know, she didn't know that. But so I'm running with her and I started asking these questions and it was question after question. say, hey, before I ask you another question, I apologize. I just ask a lot of questions. I'm married. ⁓ My wife's here running, you know, I do this podcast thing. you're the guy who does this podcast. I was like, yeah. So I'm just used to asking a bunch of questions. So don't think I'm trying to hit on you or anything like that, because I'm not.

Drew Martig (35:57)
It's funny, that's actually something I know very well because ⁓ it's funny, to people who run casually, the times that I run probably seem like they're really, really fast. ⁓ In the world that I live in, they're not. At least for men, they're not super fast. So in Flagstaff, most men are way faster than me where I can't work out with them. But I have this thing where I'm trying to find more workout partners and

So, small pool of people who run the times that I run in the men's world, but then in the women's world, I line up really well with women, but I'm also, I've been married for 10 years and I can't just go ask women to hang out, you know? So, I kinda go through, sometimes like some coaches will reach out and like, it makes sense to work out so I can find some workout partners that way. But it's funny, yeah, it's.

You want to be involved in the community. You have good intentions, but it's like sometimes if you can't line up with men, you know, it doesn't work out. ⁓

Chris Detzel (37:00)
No, it's

always tough, man. mean, like, there's this one group I'm part of, it's called White Rock Running Co-op. And I'm one of the admins there just means I can help organize things and whatnot. And, a lot of times on Saturday, we'll have 20 or 30 people there, right? And like, we'll have one woman there. Like, what is this like a sausage fest or something, you know, like, what's going on?

Drew Martig (37:25)
Or the thing with, ⁓ this is below our generation is past this, you and I, I would assume your age and mine. ⁓ But I think like with a lot of younger people who are starting running, which is amazing that running has taken this huge surge in popularity. It's awesome, it's awesome for people like you and I. ⁓ But I've heard that running groups turn into like dating and kind of like dating groups. Yeah, it's funny, so I haven't experienced that.

Chris Detzel (37:39)
100%.

Especially in the young. Yeah. And I and

I have an opinion about that, because I think that, you know, these, I've seen a lot of these young groups get together. And yeah, and I hear they're a big dating kind of fest. But you know what, if that's how you're meeting somebody, and it's out and about doing some stuff, I like it, you know, where else are you going to meet some people, you know, you know, to date, you know, I met my wife, not trying to hit on her, but during running.

Drew Martig (38:13)
Absolutely.

Chris Detzel (38:20)
And so, you know, we knew each other for about a year. And then finally, I asked her out, you know, it wasn't like, I was looking for anybody. I was just looking to get in shape and lose some weight. You know, that's really all I cared about. But, you know, here we are, we met, I asked her to go on a run with me and ⁓ close to San Antonio. It was this trail run that neither one of us was really good. She never did a trail run. And I think I did one one before and it was like a

I don't know if it's a 30k. Yeah, I think it was like 18 miles, whatever it was, whatever 18 mile it was. It was hard as hell. Oh, it was hard as hell, dude. And I luckily it was two loops and I stopped the first loop and she finished and you know, someone asked her I was like, fuck this man. I can't I'm not doing this other loop this sucks. You know, so

Drew Martig (38:51)
It's a long way on trails.

Women

in the ultra and trail world really blow my mind. Women are just such studs in that world. For some reason, they can almost outperform men in a lot of cases. The classic Courtney DeWalter case. ⁓ But yeah, it's amazing how women have something where once you get to that ultra endurance realm, it's like it totally like that. ⁓

I don't know, curve, the performance differences between men and women, they almost like flatten out, which is amazing.

Chris Detzel (39:40)
It kind of Yeah, it kind of does. And, you know, I decided for me that I don't do marathons anymore. So it's probably been a little over 10 years since I've done a marathon. And I did three or four of them. And I've done some 50 K's, I've done several halves. And, you know, I've done some of these adventure runs. But like one time, my wife and I did this 120 miles in six days. It was in Colorado. And it was, you know, we'd be in a tent at night, like they would carry our tents and things in different places.

but 120 miles and 20,000 feet of gain, but it was so cool doing that kind of stuff. there, I mean, there was this one, so we did 25 miles a couple of days in a row, and then there's this one, it's 13 miles, it was in Leadville, and it was just straight up this fucking mountain. like, just, took us an hour just to go up one mile, you know? And I consider myself pretty fit, you know? And,

An hour to go up a mile is ridiculous, you know, so but it was fun. mean, so but I don't do marathons anymore because too much training for me and I just don't want to go that fast for that long. You know, I just just don't.

Drew Martig (40:52)
In your Dallas Fort Worth group, ⁓ what do you think the most common distance is for that community and does it kind of track with like broader trends?

Chris Detzel (41:02)
I would say it depends on the group you're in. So the groups that I'm in, generally, they do marathons, you know, and so, you know, my 10 mile thing, I'll be going to run the 10 mile, 10 mile loop or something, and they're doing 17 or something like that. But there are groups out there that there's this one group called Dallas Running Club, and they have anything from a 5k to 10k to half marathon to marathon. And so if you're training for something specific,

know, that's group that you pay for. It's like 70 bucks a year. So it's not even that much. Or, you know, for a first five or six months of training. And so they put you in different groups, you know. ⁓ And these other groups, I mean, lot of them are marathon groups, the younger groups don't seem to be so hardcore, you know, there's one African American group called run it up. And, you know, during the week, they just do two or three miles, you know, and they have literally 300 people that show up for every run.

And then on Saturdays, they'll have these longer runs, you know, for some people, some people are in it. I get to interview some of these guys as well. And, you know, so yeah, I mean, the trends are it depends. You can find a group here in Dallas, Fort Worth, and run whatever distance you want to run. If you're trained for a marathon, you could fit right in to train for a half marathon, you fit right in. Same thing with the five and 10k. You know, it just that's I'm telling you, man, it sounds like where you're at.

Drew Martig (42:22)
Trust me.

Chris Detzel (42:27)
There's not a bunch of groups, just a bunch of fast people.

Drew Martig (42:30)
Yeah,

that's kind of the trade off, know, like ⁓ it's an amazing place to run and ⁓ there are some groups, you know, with varying ⁓ like levels of running, but a lot of it is focused on elite running, which I don't fit into an elite group. So I'm training by myself mostly.

Chris Detzel (42:51)
It's crazy that you run

in 228 and you don't ⁓ fit into that group because they're running 210s and 215s. And so it's a lot faster than what you're doing, right? So it's crazy.

Drew Martig (43:01)
Yeah, for

most, yeah, I mean, for anyone who doesn't know, like most men, sub-elite, I guess, you could be considered sub-elite at my level, but it's ⁓ not quite. I think 225 to down to two, I would have said 216 a few years ago, but now I'd say like 214 is probably considered sub-elite and then sub 214 probably would be considered elite. That's just my guess.

Chris Detzel (43:25)
Yeah, I

agree. I agree. We have potential, right? You know, but going from that 228 to, you know, 214 215, that's something that's not safe. Can't do it, but it's a big jump. You know,

Drew Martig (43:37)
Yeah,

it's a big jump. yeah, but living, you know, one of the things about community that you know very well is surround yourself with people who better than you and ⁓ they'll drag you along and see if you can hang on. Sometimes you get injured. That's part of the game.

Chris Detzel (43:48)
100%.

this one lady, she goes, you know, Chris, I run with the slots. And she runs her time is 247. She goes, I run with these guys. And you know, they're running 230s, you know, marathons. So a little bit faster than what she's running. She's I just tagged behind them, you know, like I'll run with them, or at least run their workout. But if they're doing track, you know, she's I'm not running with them. But you know, I'm running behind them or, you know, for doing a long run, I'm

I can run with them depending on the time. But if they're doing speed work, you know, during the long run, then you know, I'm lagging behind, you know, but it helps me get better. You know, so, you know, that's her philosophy. And she even said this on one of the podcasts, because put yourself exactly what you said, put yourself with people that are better than you. And you're just going to get better, you know, surround yourself with better athletes better, you know, if you really want to get better, or at least, know, similar kind of goals, you know, so

Drew Martig (44:54)
Yeah, well,

and yeah, one thing that I've learned too is that part of part of the if you have people working out there, there is a community and there's people are faster than you. Don't be shy to they're running like, I don't know, threshold. Maybe they'll run miles or two mile reps. If you're on a track. I've done this with some friends that I have a friend I'm going to have on a podcast. He just ran a 64 minute half marathon. He does some like

threshold mile reps or two mile reps. He's running maybe 68 to 72. If I'm doing a lot of 400s, I can jump in every other lap and I can almost like pace him through those. So there's a bunch of stuff where you can kind of get creative with your workouts, line up with people who you wouldn't otherwise line up with. like you said, like see if you jump in, someone's a little bit fast and you jump into their workout and see how long you can hang on. And then there's no

There's no shame in getting dropped. ⁓ Happens to everyone. Happens to me all the time.

Chris Detzel (45:58)
Yeah, I agree. you know, don't look, just just push yourself a little bit and you know, by getting into that awkward situation where runners might be better than you, but you know, try just that's how you're to get better. think

Drew Martig (46:14)
Absolutely. Yeah. Is there, so we're talking about like people in the elite realm within your community. Is there anyone who, let's say they're one of those 220 to 235 marathon guys, do they like play a role of rallying the troops, getting people stoked, know, leading workouts? Is that something that you see people doing?

Chris Detzel (46:39)
Yeah, as a matter of fact, this guy Matt Campbell, he's kind of the leader of that group, the sloths. And I say leader, he's also a coach. And so he kind of puts the workouts together for this group and he might send it to him directly or they'll run it together. And so he kind of realized that troops. One of the things he said, and he's right now he's about a 232, 233 marathoner, but he's never really put.

Drew Martig (47:04)
That's great.

Chris Detzel (47:06)
put his best effort forward yet. I mean, he's put his best effort, but it's never gone as good as I think it could go for him. But he goes, Chris, if I can get under a 230, I can get I mean, he's an excellent runner. He's an excellent guy. You know, and, you know, he's like, if I can get under a 230, I can get these these guys will do it. All it does, all it will take is me breaking it. And but

When he said that, three or four other people have now broken it within the DFW community, which several years ago we've had people do it. But as of a recent thing, you've now just started seeing some people break that 230. And some of them do run with him and things like that. ⁓ But his point is, if I can do it, if I can be the first or somebody can be the first, we'll all start doing it. Because he has all these guys and these men and women, there's just two women that...

run about this one woman, her name is Mimi Smith, she runs about a 232 231 marathon, this other woman, Jennifer Pope, she runs about a 233 234. There's this other guy, Aaron, he runs, he just ran a 233 234, I think, this other guy, Eric Bredl, he was saying he ran CIM and just did these really cool times. So they're right there on the edge of that breaking the 230 mark, you know, and so he kind of rallies them up, he

He does things around the community. He'll get a section of the lake. We have this 10-mile loop around the lake. ⁓ And so he'll bring the group together and bring other community ⁓ running groups together and say, hey, let's have a section of the lake and clean it for two hours, go out there, clean it, that kind of stuff. so he's doing a lot of that stuff and bringing some track workout races that aren't official, but go to different tracks. in the summer, we're going to do some races there.

you know, that kind of stuff. So he seems to be really cool and good at kind of doing those kinds of things and bringing not just the extremely fast when I say extremely fast for for me, it is 230s. But also, you know, all the way from 330s and below or whoever, whoever wants to come, he doesn't care. But usually, you know, he'll kind of ask local groups that he knows, you know, so

Drew Martig (49:23)
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, for anyone who doesn't know, the low 230s times for women is extremely fast. ⁓ The women's Olympic trials, you need to run ⁓ within a 236 time or faster. So you break a 237. ⁓ That's to run in the Olympic trials for the marathon. I think it's like a 72 for the half for women. So that's super fast. That's really cool to have people like that in your community.

Even if they're guiding people or not through training and through mistakes, it's like just having them there totally uplevels the quality of your engagements in the community and everyone's smarter, everyone's getting better. I think that's very cool.

Chris Detzel (50:08)
Yeah, and I think that that's why they do it. One is they don't have anybody else to run with. So when you get to that level, it gets a little bit harder. Kind of like you said is you're in between. It's hard to find somebody or group that aren't that elite. For us, know, finding that group of that 230s, maybe high 220s is not you're kind of on your own island. And so, you know, these people could live, you know, 15, 20, 30 minutes apart from each other, but they're still at times trying to meet

or be called the sloths and they meet at different races or, you know, maybe on a Saturday where they can all meet, you know, but doing some of the similar workouts and they're building really nice communities on it. Look, they talk, like I've had them all on my podcast and they talk about it and it's, it is pretty cool what they've created. And so that's what I look at. I mean, I can give you a thousand other community things that aren't the sloths that are doing some really cool things. And a lot of it is people just didn't want to run alone. So they started these communities to run at their speed.

to find other people running at their speed and they joined. So that's really all it is. You do these long runs, you're running a marathon where there's four hours, 430, whatever, 330, you gotta find somebody that can run with you.

Drew Martig (51:24)
And like regardless of someone's abilities, like if I'm talking to people who want to run faster, I always, huge believer of just staying resilient, healthy, consistent, persistent, not like playing long game. So having people around you, it helps with all of those things and it's amazing. ⁓ I wish there was...

Chris Detzel (51:44)
Thank

Drew Martig (51:51)
like a group that I could run with here, at the same, like realistically jobs like you and I have ⁓ are pretty demanding on your time. I have two kids, we're having another one soon. You know, we've got, thank you. We've got like tons of stuff going on in the weekends. Like for me getting up early, busting out my training is probably the best way to stay consistent.

Chris Detzel (52:02)
Wow, congrats.

Yeah. Yeah. And you you have this podcast. So, you know, that is probably one way you can really dive into the community. And you know, at some point, maybe you can join some of the runs that some of these guys are doing so that you get some of these women on the podcast, you know, that this way you don't feel bad about asking them to run with you. That's what I would do is if there's only women on the, you know, at my speed, what you're doing,

I would just say, you know what, I'll just get them on the podcast. We'll have these conversations. Like, who do you run with? okay. Because they're easy to find, you know, they're probably on Instagram or they've ran some race or whatever, you can go find their names. That's what I do sometimes is if I see somebody that won a race, like, who was that? Just go send them a message, you know?

Drew Martig (53:02)
Yeah,

I love that. that's in breaking like breaking out of your shell is tough for even people like me. Like I talk a lot. I like talking. Most people who know me know that. But there's something about like putting yourself out there online that's that's challenging because there's potential credit. You open yourself to potential criticism. You might look stupid. You're going to say something stupid at some point and people are going to listen and give you a YouTube comment. But I feel like the the benefits

to the broader community. right now I haven't done that much activity on my YouTube in a while. I've been depressed since being injured. But like, the vast majority, I have about a thousand subscribers right now, the vast majority of feedback I get, 99 % is like overwhelmingly positive. And it also supports my coaching and just reinforcing, giving more content to people that I do coach.

Chris Detzel (53:43)
It happens.

Drew Martig (54:02)
⁓ I actually really like it. At this point it's just a matter of finding the time. I'm sure for you it's the same deal.

Chris Detzel (54:10)
Consistency is the key for any kind of things like this. you're right, the time is always the big opportunity. I mean, you've got three young kids. And so that's going to keep you busy.

Drew Martig (54:24)
Yeah, yeah,

yeah, but it makes us better too.

Chris Detzel (54:28)
100%, 100%.

Drew Martig (54:30)
Tell me about your running. So ⁓ you got any races on the calendar? What are you focused on? What's challenging?

Chris Detzel (54:37)
Yeah.

So I do I have it's funny because my big race goal is going to be in September. I'm running the Rebel race in Utah called Cottonwood. So it's a downhill half marathon. I've run it twice already. So my time is best time there is 126.01. That's my PR. So it's a downhill PR, you know, I to make sure I clarify that.

But, uh, you know, that's, want to try to hit 125 or under if possible. And, you know, 51, I think that would be pretty good, you know? Um, and I do have a couple of races coming up. So, uh, next week I'm running a half marathon. It's in McKinney, Texas. It's called historic McKinney half. And it's the inaugural race that BMW Dallas marathon is hosting and putting on for the first time. So BMW Dallas marathon is just a marathon in December.

that has 30,000 people there and things like that. This they're hoping to have 4,000. And you know, my goal is maybe 140 ish, you know, to just run a little fast. But I don't want to kill myself because it's pretty hilly. And then I'm going to go to Oklahoma City and run their half in late April. And so I'm pretty excited about that. Just because I've not been there. A big part of our community is going it's called White Rock running co-op. So seven or eight of those guys are going so it'd be kind of fun to

beat one or two of those guys, hopefully, you know, got a guy in mind, I'm gonna, his name is Nick, I'm gonna try to beat him. And then from a training standpoint, you know, what I did was I've been doing this for a long time. And last year, when I, when I started the podcast in 2024, October 2024, my goal was to run more miles to try to hit kind of that 40 to 50 mark, because I knew I was gonna do more half marathons, I'm not doing

And so I was only hitting 20 to 25 miles, say only, you but for me, if you want to get really good, you get around the miles. mean, you know, one of the marathoners told me one time, Chris, there's no secret to it. goes, you have to run more miles. He goes, all the other stuff is just, ⁓ running the merit, the miles is the key at end of the day. Your body has to get used to all those miles. The more miles you run, the better. And he was, yes, you can tweak.

kind of miles, maybe do some speed work, maybe do some hill work, all those things. But really, the key is just the miles because you don't see these elite athletes running less than 110 miles in general. And if they do, they're an anomaly, right? You know, and so point is, it's like I boosted up my miles in October last year, that was also to help motivate me to do the do the podcast was to keep me running, you know, and to keep me focused. And so

push up my miles and all last year, I started meeting more people, I started going out more, hanging out with people pushing myself even when I didn't want to get up early to just hang out with the community and run with community. Like I found this guy, his name is Jose. And he's big, he's a Latino guy, but he brings in a lot of Latinos within the Dallas area. And he runs with them. And so he speaks English, but a of those guys don't. And so I run with them sometimes on a Sunday or

all Sundays now because January of last year I found he asked me to come running with them and I've been running with him every Sunday we'll go to 10 miles at a 930 pace 10 and it's 10.4 miles every time like I don't do any more I don't do any less you know so that's so that's my slow kind of really good run and I ran a lot of slower miles last year but but it helped my body a lot and so I ran my fastest half marathon ever ⁓

you know, in that September, right at the 126. And I give it up. Look, I did some speed work over the summer, you know, like five K's kind of on Wednesday nights and things like that, you know, added to to that. But so the the secret is that there is no secret. It's obviously have to do the work and you have to do the miles to get better. And so that's what I wanted to do. And I'm doing the same this year. This year's January and February, you know, my mind's all messed up a little bit because it takes time off or whatever, you know, I'm slightly injured.

I'm getting back into it. You know, I've run two weeks, 40 weeks or 40 miles, you know, and so I'll run a little less this week because I got a race coming up, you know, but then I'll get it back up. So training is good. You know, getting back in the race kind of focus, you know, trying to lose about six, seven pounds to get by September to really get in that race shape that I was last year. So you know, have a plan for the downhill half marathon to hit the 125 or under.

And we'll see. I don't know if that answers, but I said a lot of words there.

Drew Martig (59:28)
Awesome. That's

great. Quad blaster of a race, I'm sure.

Chris Detzel (59:32)
Yeah, yeah, it is. For three or four days, I won't be able to walk that well. So I have to go downstairs to at home. So.

Drew Martig (59:38)
That's awesome.

Yeah, it's

⁓ funny, like most people will, I guess most casual runners will listen to a podcast, see a YouTube video and it's like threshold training is the secret to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm guilty of this too, like on YouTube, you have to be able to find topics that people are searching for or finding interesting and they're relevant to their training. But then, ⁓

What I like to do is just really think through a lot of those things that might be kind of buzzy or clickbaity. And you can take those and actually give people some really, ⁓ I guess really well thought out ⁓ perspectives and things that they're not getting from your average ⁓ mainstream YouTube influencer or whatever. Not to say like a lot, there are a ton of running influencers that do.

amazing work getting information. One of my favorites, Steve Magnus, huge shout out to Steve Magnus. Anyone who wants to understand the science of running, training, physiology, I think he has some sort of a degree in exercise physiology and training. But not focusing on all of those like buzzy smaller topics that people think, oh, this is gonna unlock.

my potential, this is going to be the answer to all of my problems. Running more, being consistent, ⁓ focusing on being resilient, so like finding your weaknesses, leaning into those. That's ⁓ one thing that I always encourage people to do and I try and do because I coach myself. And just finding, it's this weaving path of where's a weakness? Kind of lean into that, improve. Okay, now I sense some weakness over here, but

having a coach can help you add some structure to that as well. So, I don't know, just some random thoughts of like, I hear people say those things all the time. ⁓ And I think getting back to what you said, consistency, running more and ⁓ running often ⁓ are huge.

Chris Detzel (1:01:35)
100%.

Yeah, look, I'm not saying you shouldn't do threshold workouts or any kind of speed or hills. I think those are all important, you but I think the key though is, you know, especially for beginner runners, you just need to do the miles, you know, like you just need to get out there and run some slow miles and be consistent at it. You know, you don't have to, you know, when I first started running, I thought the fast, ⁓ every day I try to beat my, you know, time from yesterday, you know, like I did a 10K.

46 now you're 45. Next day 44. Dang it, didn't do it. know, it's one way to get injured.

Drew Martig (1:02:29)
Yeah. and well, also like at the beginning of a running journey, any beginners out there, you, your increases in your training or your, your, your gains in your fitness are going to be super steep at the beginning. It's like that side of the bell curve and you, you hit it and you get addicted and you feel amazing. And then all of a sudden it gets, starts getting hard. And the thing that people do is they'll kind of like,

They'll level out at that point because it requires so much more work to get those incremental gains, but it can happen. I think ⁓ staying consistent is the key. You just have to keep doing it and.

Chris Detzel (1:03:11)
sure it happens all the time is there's always kind of a lull. I've seen a marathon runners or whoever you know, like they'll get they'll do a few marathons and they get down to I'm just making this up like 330 for example. And you know, for a while they're they're stuck at 330. But if they keep pushing and maybe they tweak their diet or maybe they tweak your diet is always a big opportunity to tweak, you know, but or tweak you know, a certain

thing, you know, or get a running coach, because a coach can really help you kind of dial in some of those things and see some of the things that you might be missing. But you know, and all of a sudden, you know, I've seen him get to 320 or 315 or even go down to three, you know, because they kind of unlock something that they just didn't, you know, think about. But the key to all of that is still consistency, you know, no matter what. But, you know, once you kind of get to that lull of like, oh, man, I don't know how to get better. You know, you get to do something a little different.

You know, that could be finding a coach or tweaking a few things here and there. Doing the same thing is probably not going to get you, you know, different results, you know, if you're stuck at that thing. But yeah, I agree.

Drew Martig (1:04:19)
Yeah.

And treat it like mentorship. Find someone who ⁓ has been where you want to be and see if they'll mentor you. know, I mean, in running it's called coaching, but in business it's called mentorship. And ⁓ that's something I've done in my career that's been super beneficial to me. And it's something that I've done in my running where I've had coaches for periods of time. And ⁓ over the last, gosh, it's probably been like three years, I hit a point where I'm like, Hey, I

My schedule is so challenging and I have all these like personal things that are hard to work around with a coach. I'm just going to be flexible. I'm going to do my own thing. ⁓ And it's been super beneficial, but I'm probably going to hit a point. I feel like I'm kind of hitting a point where I have mentors in running and people who I go to for advice. But if I want to like hit

I really want to hit an Olympic trials qualifier, which is much harder now. If you've seen the men's times that they updated for this cycle. in order for me to do that, have to, so previously you had to go under 218. Now you have to go under 216 for the men. which is, you have to run faster than about 511 per mile. I believe I I'm probably wrong on that. Someone can look it up and I'll, they'll leave it in the comments.

Chris Detzel (1:05:25)
Wait, what's the time? Maybe I didn't. What's the time?

I think I did.

Drew Martig (1:05:43)
But it's ridiculously fast. But you hit a point, everyone hits their point where, hey, maybe you need some flexibility and you wanna do your own thing, do it, you're probably gonna hit a plateau and then you're gonna need a coach. ⁓ lean into it, right?

Chris Detzel (1:05:58)
Yeah, I mean,

yeah, I mean, I think that's how you're to get better. You I mean, you got to do something a little different than what you've always done. So let's be good.

Drew Martig (1:06:10)
Yeah, yeah, thanks Chris for the time. I appreciate it.

Chris Detzel (1:06:13)
Yeah, of course.

Drew Martig (1:06:14)
Yeah, all right. Well, ⁓ yeah, anyone, if you don't know Chris's social media or you live in the Fort, Dallas, Fort Worth area, Chris, you want to plug your community or anything else?

Chris Detzel (1:06:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, so ⁓ I have a podcast called DFWRunningTalk.com. ⁓ Just go there and you can see all of the places that you can go with Spotify, Apple. We have a newsletter on Substack and Instagram and everything else. Look, these runners, you can learn something from runners from all over in DFW as well. We talk about some hardcore things about running. I don't know that it's just for DFW, but we do talk

to a lot of the DFW runners. So yeah, we're on all of the social channels, YouTube, et cetera. Just Google DFW running talk. That's it.

Drew Martig (1:07:04)
Awesome, yeah, and you said you interview people who have run elite times, and so anyone who wants running insight, like we said, find someone who's better than you, listen to them, take little bits, and apply it to your training. So it's awesome, thanks Chris. All right, yep, thank you, bye.

Chris Detzel (1:07:21)
Thanks, Drew. Take care.

Thanks.