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Hybrid athlete and coach Alec Blenis is back for his SIXTH appearance on Coach Em Up! Alec breaks down his pursuit of a sub-2:30 marathon while holding serious muscle, training alongside Paris Olympian Yaseen Abdalla, and surviving sodium bicarbonate's most brutal side effects.
Alec Blenis is a hybrid athlete who has been chasing the sub-2:30 marathon while maintaining elite-level strength. In this episode he lays out exactly how he got there: doubling weekly running volume to 75 miles, outsourcing his programming to coach John Davis to kill decision fatigue, and training on treadmills next to a guy who ran a 2:11 in Paris. The interference effect is real, but Alec explains how adaptation eventually brought strength back online. He also speaks on his unorthodox fueling, drinking a liter of OJ a day and over 400 grams of sugar total to maintain his training.
From there, things get weird in the best way. Tim and Alec break down backyard ultramarathon psychology through Mark Dowdle's 5-day performance in Germany, dissect trainer Joel Seedman's Instagram content connecting 90-degree squats to theology, and then unload a stacked Q&A covering high-carb marathon fueling strategy, unilateral vs bilateral training, hybrid athlete training split design, HRV usefulness for athletes, endurance training for heavy runners, treadmill stiffness vs road running, and whether mental toughness drills are actually overrated.
If you are running a marathon while lifting heavy, training concurrently, or just trying to understand the interference effect without losing your mind, this episode has you covered.
Produced by
Q6 Media
https://q6.media
Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Introduciton
00:01:41 - Alec's Running Background and Sub-2:30 Marathon Goal
00:07:04 - Marathon Benchmarks, Coaching Value, and the Interference Effect
00:12:48 - Training with Yaseen Abdalla and Mitch Ammons
00:18:23 - High-Carb Fueling: OJ, Sugar, and Surviving Austin Heat
00:27:18 - Backyard Ultras and Mark Dowdle's Psychological Warfare
00:35:36 - Joel Seedman's Eccentric Isometrics and Theological Squats
00:46:14 - Tim's Best and Worst Qualities
00:50:06 - Unilateral vs Bilateral Training
00:52:11 - Session Flow vs Exercise Ordering
00:53:30 - Building Muscle Under High Endurance Fatigue
00:55:04 - Smartwatch Metrics and HRV Skepticism
00:59:01 - Structuring a Hybrid Training Split
01:00:45 - Sodium Bicarbonate Side Effects
01:06:33 - Weekly OJ Totals and Apex Australia Plans
01:09:16 - Single High-Volume Run vs Spreading Weekly Mileage
01:10:06 - Endurance Training for Heavy Athletes
01:15:02 - Heat Acclimatization and Overrated Mental Toughness Drills
01:20:07 - Treadmill Stiffness vs Road Running
#HybridAthlete #ConcurrentTraining #AlecBlenis #CoachEmUpPodcast #MarathonTraining #InterferenceEffect #RunningAndLifting #EnduranceTraining #Podcast #StrengthAndConditioning
