7: Running the Distance with Evan Williams

Folk Stories

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7y ago 1:23:15

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Evan Williams is a man of many miles and talents. He has degrees in both physics and biomechanical engineering and for his day job, Evan works as a design engineer at MSR (Mounstain Safety Research), a firm which designs and manufactures high performance gear for the outdoors.

The outdoors is also where you'll most likely find Evan, though good luck pinning him down as he dashes past you at five minute mile pace. When it comes to racing, Evan is just shy of elite, which means he's about as fast as you can be without doing running as a full time job. His PR (personal record) for a marathon is 2:28:15 (~5:40min/mile for 26 miles).

We cover a lot of ground in today's talk. We go over all things running including training, meal plans, race day rituals, and racing strategies. We will talk about equipment, different sorts of footwear, why Evan runs in crocs and differences between a midfoot and a heel strike. We also talk about depression, experiences with it and how running has helped.

The topic of mental health, especially depression, is something that is very near and dear to me because of both personal experiences and seeing people close to me go through it. Unfortunately, there's still a lot of stigma attached to this topic and it's not something that is easy to talk about publicly. Therefore I really appreciate Evan's openness to talk to me about it and hope that this might be helpful to those out there that are going through similar experiences.

As always, thanks for listening and if you want to leave feedback or nominate folks to the show, please send emails to feedback(at)folkstories.org. If you want to follow the show and get access to extended interviews and updates on guests, you can subscribe to my mailing list here

Notes

training and racing routines
why middle school is the worst
swimming, ultimate and the return to running
injury prevention when training
race training, nutrition, rituals and strategy
running shoes
heel strike vs midfoot strike
running in crocs
running through depression
running under 2:40 and making it to 30
what's next

Links

These shownotes are also available at http://folkstories.org/7

21 episodes