If you want to learn how to use my endurance back story to help you train smarter, then you should listen to this episode of DLake Creates.
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Download the transcription pdf here
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This was a fun episode cross release from my first podcast CBD Radio. It’s based on the how and why I got into endurance sports and in particular running and the benefits I reaped from it. All stemming from my curiosity around running faster with the least amount of energy.
CBD Radio was my first podcast. This was a fun one as I was able to just talk about some of the shit that I’m passionate about without knowing that the future would have me focusing a podcast around all of that.
What You Will Learn
- My history into endurance training and a fear of running cross country in short shorts
- Intermittent fasting and low carb cycling around running and removal of the hazy cloud in my brain
- My obsession with consistent long and sustainable gains
- and more!
Episode Quotes
- “Cross country runners wear short shorts… you don’t want to be wearing short shorts”
- “You have to slow down to speed up.”
- “I run for improved brain function. Performance and body gains are an added bonus”
- “If you’ve never operated at 100% brain function, 70% will feel normal”
Episode Links
- Suggested episode to listen to next: Race Week Nutrition
- Phil Maffetone’s MAF Method
- How I will run 1% faster over 10 years
- CBD Radio – Cool Black Dudes Podcast
- Using fasted training to improve running and endurance sports fitness
- Sensory Diet and Brain Audit
- Getting Healthy, staying fit and using data to create habits that last a lifetime
- Podcast Concept, Production and Marketing BY POD PASTE
Original Music Used Here
- DLake Creates – Master Of Some
- DLake Creates – Performance Anxiety
- DLake Creates – Gregorian Glitch (Ad Break Music)
- DLake Creates – Cool Black Dudes
Sponsor – DLake Coaching
This episode is brought to you by DLake Coaching. If you are struggling to perform better as you get older, hit up our one on one coaching service. Whether you’re 16 or 60, we are all aging. Setting goals, forming habits, and organizing your life aren’t easy. Let us help you!
Sponsor – Three Thing Thursday
Like what you’re hearing? Want to train and live consistently to do dope shit with your health and fitness? Sign up for our newsletter “Three Thing Thursday”. We’ll put three perfectly created and curated things in your inbox. This will be regular motivation ranging from tips, tricks, tools, tactics, and skills. And…. they all revolve around being a better human in endurance sport and wellness.
Sign up now to receive my quick guide on how to get healthy, stay fit and use data to create habits that last a lifetime! Go here to be inspired and motivated on the regular!
Transcription
Chris Franklin: Switching gears. Daren Lake also CBD, founder, a CVD. Co-founder I want to talk about endurance cause that’s something you do on the daily, something you’re passionate about. Triathlons, biking, running, swimming. Tell me about it, tell me about your whole career and what athletics means to you.
Daren Lake: Cool. Cool. All right. That’s a multi-part question. I’ll try to, I’ll try to try it again. I got, I have a maximum mind, that’s trying to live a minimal life. So there’s always a paradox of amazing shit happening.
I got into triathlon because I got into endurance training because I liked the meditative state that it brought me.
I liked the flow that came out of. Out of running. So I found that out early on. I actually found out back when I played basketball, when I was in middle school and high school, I loved going out and doing 300 shots in an hour and I loved it. You just get in that zone. And the first 50 shots would be hard and then you’d be like, Oh shit, I’m at two 75 now.
Damn. So I would run for conditioning. Didn’t know what I was doing, but I was running and I like going for three mile runs and. Was like, Oh, cool. I saw gains. I like seeing gains. Yeah. I like seeing incremental gains through consistent training and work and planning.
So he hit college, ended up playing back well for a year, quit. On some weird d3 scholarships still kept the scholarship by quitting basketball. And I was like, fuck it. I’m gonna run track. Cause I ran track for three weeks in high school. But I didn’t like how short the shorts were. So then I got a bit more confidence and that’s due to Kary
Real talk
He said that shit, he goes, Joe, cross country, guys wear short shorts. You don’t want to be wearing those short shorts. And I was like, I want to run cross country and not even run across country, but it’s cool. I ain’t blaming you.
Kary: Man. I shouldn’t be limiting beliefs here.
Daren Lake: It’s all good. So ended up running track and owned, wearing the skin suit and the tight stuff.
And I remember I started out the first year of doing the 102 hundred. Obviously my build does not cater towards running the 102 hundred as was linebacker build. As I found out I didn’t have that raw power and strength. So I ended up going with, to the 400 and then accidentally jumped into the 800.
Because I was doing 600 workouts with all the a hundred, 200 guys and I was demolishing them.
Chris Franklin: You’re throwing out numbers. I don’t know if everybody knows.
Daren Lake: There we go. I like this. This is why Chris is a podcast host for lost in Portland. I’m a hundred meter and 200 meter dash, a hundred meter Usain bolt.
He just ended his career, but yeah a hundred meter, 200 meter, 200 for a 400 meter, 800 meter. So that’s 400 meters, one lap at a track. So I did 600 workouts and I have much more like speed endurance than all the hundred guys did. So the mid distance coach who did the 800 and 1500 was like in the end, the sprint coach was like, yo, nah, man, you’re going up next race.
You’re going up, dude. Like I’m not running an 800, that’s two laps. That’s two laps too long. That’s crazy. So I actually did all right, like I’m I struggled, but then it was like my third race. And I remember I took out five people on the last, like 200 meters. And everyone was like, yo D you’re an 800 runner.
And I was like, Oh shit, I meant this is crazy. Like I’ve been running the wrong race for the last three, four years. So then we started going on a long run. So I started running with the 5k. Yeah, 10 K guys, sorry. That’s five kilometers. Everyone has a 5k race. And it started running with the distance guys and I started loving the slow.
We call them LSDs long, slow distance runs. And I was like, this is dope. And maybe it’s because my brain is just everywhere, but I love just zoning out. I love going on runs by myself with the guys, whatever it was. So obviously graduated college. University. And I just was like, I like I’m active, dude. I have a lot of energy.
I might as well keep in shape. So I just ran then about right before I moved to Australia in 2012, I decided to do a duathlon, which is run bike run. Cause I wasn’t a swimmer really loved the training for it really loved the race. So down in Australia, I was like, I’m going to do a triathlon because there’s water everywhere.
So that’s how I got all into it.
In that whole process. I got obsessed with trying to figure out a way to get faster while putting in the same amount of input. So getting faster, I’ll put while getting doing the same on input. So I was like, how do I become a more efficient and economical machine?
So then I started researching high-fat diets, low heart rate training. And then it’s just was like the rabbit hole started going crazy. So I found Phil Maffetone, who is the one of the first people to push the high fat diet, low heart rate. It’s called the Moffitt to a method and it’s basically it’s he his branding model is You get faster, you have to go slower and it’s to slow down if you need to slow down to speed up.
And I was like, damn, I like this. This is on some like Buddhist type Daron type shit. So some. What’s the star Wars I’m fucking up right now. What’s the year. Yeah. Yeah. It’s some like Judah, yeah. It’s a jet. I shit. Yeah, there we go. I’m losing words today. So I was like, all right I’m going to do some totally different training and no one else everyone’s going to fast.
I’m going to go slow so that I did that for a few years, saw some crazy gains. In a lot of different areas got faster while going slower. And I was like, this shit works. So then I was like, cool. I did an Ironman triathlon last year, which yeah. Is just for people that don’t know, it’s swimming 2.5 miles, 3.8 kilometers.
It’s biking 112 miles, 180 kilometers and it is running a marathon. So 42 Ks, 26.2 miles. And that’s all in one day. And it took me 10 hours and 45 minutes to do it. So I was it was pretty good time and I was like, all right, cool. So I kinda was like one and done I’m I’m not an Ironman every single day type.
Do it. Sorry. Every single year type I to do it. So I was like, all right, what else can I do? And I said, now I’m going to approach it from a totally different standpoint. And I’m going to attempt to. Put the least amount of input and again, and get that. So the minimal effective dose is my whole new thing now.
And I started experimenting with diets now, or sorry, more eating patterns. I don’t diets are, I think the word diet is bullshit. Diet is what you do. You, what you eat is your diet. Like people don’t follow following this dumb phone that day. It’s no, just it’s what you eat. So I’ve done a combination of ketosis, which is high fat, like 90% fat content.
Chris Franklin: Where do you get most of your fats from?
Daren Lake: Wherever I’m trying to stay away from saturated fats due to some cholesterol issues I’ve had with a blood test that I did. I’m trying to figure out whether it’s genetic or not. So I’m just gonna stay away from animal fats for a second. So olive oil, if I ate nuts, I’m allergic to nuts.
It would be almonds, coconut oil, eggs
Kary: Avocados?
Daren Lake: fish. Which also provides protein. Mostly fats. So I’ve fucked around with some ketosis for a second. It was cool. I went to the deep state of ketosis that I wanted to, but then I was like, all right, let me try intermittent fasting. Just to backup… I also experimented with the slow-carb diet, which is it’s similar to the low carbs. So the high fat, low carb diet, but you can eat like beans and there’s a cheat day involved. It’s very Tim Ferriss came up with this low carb diet. It’s just a play on the Mediterranean diet, which is a play on the paleo, which is a play on the Atkins.
Like it’s all like iterations of themselves. So then I’ve been hearing about intermittent fasting. I’ve been hearing about it from a lot of people. I respect a lot of people in reading, Mark Sisson, obviously tim ferriss Dr. Rhonda, Patrick, all these random people and talking about fast and my really good friend, Dimitri.
And I was like, let me try this shit. I was like, I’m going to intermittent fasting. It’s a many ways to do it. You can do 16 hours. So the one of the most common ways is 16 hours fasting, not eating eight hours eating. And in those eight hours, you’re consuming the same amount of calories you normally would during the day.
So I normally consume around 3000 calories depending on how active I am. So anywhere from 2,500, 3000. So I’m going to consume those same calories within eight, eight hour span. And then those 16 hours, basically few hours before I go to sleep. So let’s say 6:00 PM until 10:00 AM, because I wake up pretty early.
I go to sleep early. That’s when I do that. And that’s intermittent fasting right there. Very interesting shit. And how this all ties together in, in my branding is there’s a lot of myths and a lot of bullshit that we’ve been fed, especially with the sugar industry. And I’m like, how do I break.
How do I break out of the matrix? I guess there’s so much, there’s so much pseudo science and there’s so much, Oh, if you eat low fat, you’ll be healthy. So eat all these yogurts and all these fat-free things, but they just add sugar into them. I realized that sugar while doing all these new carb, all these no carb diets, I did a 10, 10 day zero carbs test.
All these things I realized sugar was affecting. My brain. So then through all this, I said, Oh shit, I have improved brain function. I have more clarity just in my normal life when I don’t eat carbs. And I don’t definitely don’t need sugar. I’ve always been sensitive to sugar. So I was like, Holy shit. I feel better off in my brain.
It is more healthy. I stay the same and I eat whatever the, whatever I want. I eat the hunger. I don’t count calories at all. And it all starts making sense. So intermittent fasting is actually like this challenge. For me, cause I used to always feel like I had to eat every two or three hours. And then I realized the intermittent fasting, your body starts adapting.
And I don’t actually need as much food because I’m not eating as much carbs. So I’m not going to go in the science of that. You can Google that anywhere. I might talk about that in another podcast or another blog post personally. But I do this for improve brain function. I do this to feel better every day.
I don’t do this to lose weight. I don’t actually don’t do this to get faster. Those are like other benefits, which are cool. I’ll take those like I’ll take looking better and feeling feeling faster and feeling lighter and getting better at my sports and whatnot, but just having the clarity every day, like this, the way I feel when I don’t eat carbs is how I feel when I meditate is how I feel when I get in the flow, after going for a run, like I feel.
Good. It’s amazing. And I don’t know if you guys have experimented with high fat, low carb diets, you might not be as sensitive to carbs as I am, but Holy shit. And I feel like everyone’s operating at a 70% level. Like everyone’s brains are cloudy, everyone’s got 30% cloud over them and they’ve never experienced.
A hundred percent clarity. And if you’ve never experienced it, I was like clarity operating a 70% is normal. And then you take that cap off. It’s Oh shit. And I’ve been operating my whole life in this like up and down energy levels. My energy is consistent as fuck during the day. Like I do not, I can get six hours of sleep, which I really do.
I need six hours of sleep and I’m cruising through lunch. Everyone gets that lunch, Lowell they’re in an office building, whatever you eat that big bread sandwich, whatever. And you feel tired after lunch, you got to drink coffee to get yourself up. Fuck that no bullshit. I am the pure living breathing example that you eat high fat, low carb, or you eat better carbs or less carbs or whatever whatever it does, height you choose.
You can see monumental and holistic gains. I love the
whole, I love endurance because when you endure through a 10 mile run, if somebody cuts you off in the freeway, Whatever the fuck ever. Like I’m not even worried about that. I’ve been through shit like you’re just, you just ended up being a more chill person, like regardless.
And then you add like this high fat high function fats have been getting the wrong. The wrong. Everyone thought that
makes you fat. And I’m not going to go into the history of that because there was a whole marketing employed in the seventies, which was very similar to the marijuana CBD industry.
It’s bullshit and fat one. It’s like electric cars could have beaten out gasoline power cars in the thirties when the model T came out. Ford’s marketing was better than the electric cars. So he won. So now we have fucking the highest carbon levels ever because of some marketing shit that happened almost a hundred years ago that the same thing happened with fat.
And it’s absolutely, it’s hilarious. It’s sad. It frustrates me. It’s like fat does not make you fat. No sugar makes you fat carbs make you fat. Just going back on one of the questions you asked me earlier.
Kary Youman: so let’s just say you were just getting into triathlons or to your first iron man, knowing what you know now. If someone’s looking to get into running their first Ironman or triathlon, knowing what you know now, are there any suggestions or just anything that you would do differently moving forward, can you maybe give us a consolidated version of that?
Daren Lake: would say to start slow, like everyone wants to do. I’m a weird one. I’m always like brick by brick. And I always look at something and I go, I can do it. If someone around me has done it, it’s if another man, especially someone that I know, someone that I’ve trained with, someone that I’ve been with, I know that they’re just they’re the same ability as me.
My track coach started doing iron mans or he’s done an iron man. So I ran with my track coach. I’ve ridden my bike with my track coach and he got back into iron man. He was a professional triathlete and he got back into it and that’s what motivated me to do it. And I was like, Aw, man, it would be really cool one day to do an iron man.
And I said, I got did my first triathlon. And I said, I’m going to do a sprint. So there’s four different triathlon standard triathlons. There’s sprint triathlon, which is about an hour and a half. There’s an Olympic distance, which is about two to three hours. There’s a half Ironman, which is anywhere from four to six, depending on ability.
And there’s a full Ironman, which is 10 to 12, 14 hours. So I said, I’m going to do a sprint one year. I’m gonna focus on that next year. I’m gonna focus on. Olympic distance. Next year, I’m focused on half Ironman next year. I’m focused on full Ironman and I broke it down and I gave myself time to, to build up and actually did it over that four years.
And a lot of shit happened. Life happened as all happened to us relationships, do what they were supposed to do and not do and et cetera, et cetera. But I would say start out slow. I’d say start out slow within Dorrance events, unless you’re doing anything shorter sorry, anything.
Let me rephrase that. If you’re doing anything longer than a 5k, like you’re doing a lot of sprint stuff a few minutes though, focus on slow, like slow does actually make it faster. And all the pros do this. That’s one of the biggest and hardest things for amateurs too, to understand is that you have to slow it, slow down to speed up and slowing down does so many things.
You don’t have to kill yourself every day. I see so many people running hard, every single word, because like I have to feel, I have to feel that burn that actually is really bad. A lot of them. Bad things happen. Cortisol is released. Yeah. It’s so bad inflammation. And if you slow down and you save yourself a race day, you save yourself for hard sessions that actually is much more beneficial.
So you have to restrain exercise restraint, no pun intended. With all of that, that, that was, I would say that’s the biggest thing. And also just eat less carbs. If you have a big plateful of meat, veggies, and rice, the rice should be like 20%. The rice should be 20%. The veggies should be like 50% of the meat should be whatever the other numbers.
30%. Yeah. That’s the biggest thing is just you don’t have to be fully no carbs. You don’t have to do intermittent fast. You don’t have to fast for seven days. You don’t have to do all these crazy diet fads or whatever the things I’m doing. I’m more of an extreme outlier. You don’t have to do that.
Just slow down and your watch your diet, they, the diet almost is more important than the training. Yeah. If you’re training to do a marathon, You need to run the marathon at some point before you run the marathon. So I’m not going to say you can’t not run, you’re going to do well. But that would be the biggest thing is I would tell myself and everyone else just slow the fuck down.
Like you were saying slow down now. This becomes this is a beautiful. I guess motif for lack of a better word throughout this podcast is to slow down and yourself and you’re a CBD man. And playing golf. You have to slow down for golf. You become more aware.
You become more mindful when you slow down.
Chris Franklin: Let’s bring it all together. Like in this interview right here, or this conversation right here, we broke down the functions of the modeling industry and paradigms that exist in that. We broke down the CBD marijuana, cannabis industry.
We’re breaking down fats and how that works for your body. CBD when Kary first brought it up to me. And I was in may and Kary is now admitted to me that he didn’t know what the CBD meant in regards to marijuana. I was like, Oh shit, cool. Black dudes CBD. CBD is the healing agent that is in marijuana.
The anti-inflammatory. The thing that will better us. And now I look at cool black dudes and I look at the way that this could better us through the knowledge we’ve gained. We can put that out. To people who may not have access to the things that we’ve seen the perspectives that we’ve had and we can inject CBD into all of society.
So it doesn’t matter. White, black, Asian Hispanic, all of it can be healed by CBD. And I’m so hyped on this charge right here, like us coming together and us. Building more people together, healing more people together. There’s all these toxins in society. And I feel like through communication, we can just talk it out and we can learn more and we could build together.
And I’m just so hyped that we’ve got this started. Yeah, man.
Daren Lake: It’s just the beginning, man.
