Run Your Race Podcast
When I first listened to David Goggins' book in 2019, I was hooked. If he could run 100 miles without training, I thought I could do it with training! It unlocked something in me, leading to my journey into ultramarathons. Since then, I've completed multiple 100- and 200-mile races, something I once thought impossible. This podcast aims to give you that same mindset shift. Each week, we interview elite endurance athletes to inspire you to believe more is possible and push yourself to the next level.
Run Your Race Podcast
#016: 4 Things That Helped Me Run 30 Half Marathons In 30 Days
After completing 30 half marathons in 30 days for my Make America Healthy Again Challenge, I'm sharing the four critical factors that have sustained me through one-fifth of my journey toward breaking a Guinness World Record.
• Overcoming initial doubts by praying for strength rather than continual confirmation
• Finding witnesses through social media ads and simply asking people for help
• Sleep is the #1 recovery tool—aiming for 8-9 hours nightly with supplements and optimized bedroom conditions
• Nutrition requires higher carb intake than expected—60-100g carbs per hour during runs
• Proper fueling includes pre-run oatmeal, timed gels during runs, and immediate post-run recovery mix
• Accountability through social media and witnesses creates motivation and responsibility
• Saying no to travel, late nights, and social events creates space for consistent training
• "Saying no to the good allows you to say yes to the best"
If you want to follow my journey more closely, DM me on Instagram @Pierceshowe for details on how to get involved with the Make America Healthy Again Challenge.
What is up everyone? Welcome back to the Run your Race podcast. I'm your host, pierre Hsiao, and today I will be talking about four things that helped me run 30 half marathons in 30 days. Well, if you've been following along, you know, but if you haven't, I am doing this challenge called the Make America Healthy Again Challenge, where I'll be running a half marathon every single day for over 150 days straight, and the whole purpose of that is to break a Guinness World Record and to make America healthy again, and so I'll be documenting the highs, the lows, the in-betweens on this podcast, on my Instagram, youtube and things like that. And I usually don't record podcasts right now, but I wanted to keep it real with you and I wanted to record one right now because I am not doing so hot, I am fatigued, I'm tired, I'm needing to recover even more and we're 30 days in, we're one fifth the way in, praise God. But I wanted to hop on here and just share the real, honest truth and how I'm going to continue to adjust and adapt, and it's been amazing to see how my body has been adapting when I've given it the right amount of sleep, given it the right amount of nutrition and a bunch of other factors, but when you get in a flow, when you get in a rhythm of doing something so similar, the same every single day, it's easy to forget the details, it's easy to let the small things fall through, and so I wanted to make this to share with you where I'm at, share with you the things that have helped me get this far, while also give you that encouragement. Get this far will also give you that encouragement, and I really want to share a quick story that will inspire you, and then I'll get into the four things that have helped me run a half marathon for over 30 days straight. So I wanted to do this challenge to help inspire people to live healthier lives and make America healthy again, and I planned it out. I partnered with Lifetime and some other brands and we got all set up to do it.
Speaker 1:And then, a couple days before I started, on Monday, on Thursday, the Thursday before man, it just felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. It felt like how am I possibly going to be able to do this? How am I possibly going to be able to get this done? To run this race? To get this done, to run this race. One of the biggest things that I was considering is how am I possibly going to get two eyewitnesses every single day to come and watch me? How am I possibly going to be able to do that? People have lives. That's a tough ask. For two hours every single day to be able to get people. And it's been crazy. Because it's so crazy because that was the thing that held me back the most, that was the thing that worried me the most and that has been probably the biggest blessing in this entire thing when I finally and I'll share with you now how I got over that feeling of the weight on my shoulders but when I finally got over that and pressed forward, god started to give me ideas, things started to come together and that has been one of the biggest blessings of this challenge. So let me share with you real quick how I was able to get over that, and I was able to do it through the advice of some good friends.
Speaker 1:I have this friend named Frank Ortega. I called up Frank Ortega when I was just down on myself, doubting myself, all these things, and I called him up and I said man, like I'm like questioning, I'm wondering, should I really do this Like? Is God really wanting me to do this challenge Because my main sponsor dropped out? I don't know how I'm going to get witnesses this, that and the other Just making up a ton of excuses. And so I talked to Frank and he just let me kind of dump on him what was on my heart. And then he said, pierce, there was a distinct time in my life where my prayers started to change. He said, instead of asking God for another confirmation, another sign, he said I started asking God for strength. I started asking God for the strength to be able to complete what he had already asked me to do. And that hit me. And he told me to read this short little book. And then he just encouraged me, prayed for me, and it was really powerful and I share that to say too.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the things that you want to do, that, the audacious goals that you have for yourself, god's already confirmed it. Sometimes God has already told you hey, let's do this, I got your back. But then when opposition hits, when we get discouraged, when we doubt if we could even do it, we need to not pray for another sign. We don't need to pray for another sign, we need to pray for the strength to be able to keep moving forward. And thankfully, god met me where I was at. I prayed for the strength. He gave me the strength. He gave me the strength, he gave me the provision and he showed me the next step forward. He showed me the way that I needed to go. He gave me this idea of launching an ad in my area to get people involved, to get people into this. And so, anyway, I launched this ad.
Speaker 1:I have a friend who showed me how, and I geo-targeted the Lifetime Dallas location and it was amazing. I ended up getting like over 50 responses people wanting to come out, wanting to crew for me in any way, be my witness, whatnot and it was amazing. And then God showed me how I have held back so much from asking people for help. I haven't asked people for help. I've had such a hard time doing that. I just don't like to. But God really broke me free from that. He broke me free from thinking, oh, I'm a burden if I ask for help, I shouldn't ask for help, all these things. And he got me out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 1:So I started asking people. I started telling people every single place that I went hey, I'm doing this challenge, hey, I'm doing this challenge, I need two eyewitnesses. Would you come? Would you come? Would you come? And a lot of people said yes. Some people were like, nah, I don't want to run for two hours. I said you don't have to run, you can just walk or you can just sit there. Some people said yes, some people said no. But I just kept moving forward and boom, now my witnesses are blocked out two weeks in advance. It's insane, but it wouldn't have happened if I let that crush me and I kept praying for more and more and more signs instead of asking for the strength to be able to continue on Crazy. And so I don't know where you're at in your goals. I don't know what you've set out to do, I don't know if you're facing doubt, but chances are you are, and so I'd encourage you to pray for strength. Pray for strength to help you keep moving forward. Okay, so that's quick story.
Speaker 1:Now I want to get into the four things that have helped me run 30 half marathons in 30 days. Okay, number one is sleep. A lot of people think, oh, what are the recovery modalities? You use the hyperbaric chamber, the red light, the all this, the all that Sleep. Sleep is your number one friend. Sleep is so powerful, it's a game changer. So much happens when we sleep that we don't even realize Okay. So sleep is number one. I before was getting seven to eight hours. Now I'm getting eight to nine hours. Typically it's mostly eight, but I need to get it up to nine. Even Eight has gotten me this far, but some nights at seven, some nights at six. I need to get consistently nine to be able to be at my best. But it's been mind blowing to watch my recovery on my whoop and see the difference in how I feel based on the sleep that I get.
Speaker 1:So sleep, number one, you've got to get sleep. As an athlete, you've got to get eight to nine hours. It's easy to think, oh, I need to work or I need to get this done, that done, and then you sacrifice sleep at that expense. But it comes back and bites you in the butt in your productivity the other days. So sleep so big, so big. What helps me with my sleep is I take this supplement called Dream from R3. I take some magnesium. I like to do an Epsom salt bath and then I keep my room cold and dark as possible. I've considered getting an eye mask that's something I've been looking into and also doing the nose tape. So that's one big thing. Okay, so that's sleep. You need to be sleeping. You can get by maybe one night on six hours, but it's gonna bite you in the butt, it's gonna lead you to getting injured. To bite you in the butt, it's going to lead you to getting injured, fatigued or may get you sick. Okay, so that's number one.
Speaker 1:Number two is nutrition. So I hired a nutritionist leading up to this challenge to help me dial in my daily eating, dial in what I was doing, to be able to help me so that I could fuel my body right for this challenge. And one of the things I realized was I was not eating near enough carbs per day for the needs that I had. So that was a big one. And then, two, I was eating probably more protein than I needed. Okay, so not enough carbs, more protein than I needed, and just volume of eating. I wasn't eating enough. Before, during and after my runs, I realized that I could go from eating 60 grams of carbs per hour to even 100 grams of carbs per hour and feel so much better, recover so much better and all of those things. So if you're an athlete and you only have 40 grams of carbs per hour while you're running, you should definitely try out upping that fueling. It's going to help with how you perform during the run. It's also going to help with how you recover after the run.
Speaker 1:So those are some big things when it comes to nutrition and eating before my runs. I would fast before some runs sometimes because I get up and go, but I knew for this challenge I couldn't run it fasted, I couldn't just get up and do it. So I started having oatmeal every single day, oatmeal and granola before my runs, and that has made a huge difference. So let me take you through my typical day of eating what that looks like. So I wake up around five, around six, I have two packets of purely Elizabeth oatmeal with some of their granola, and then I get to the gym. I use a gel called date fix Really good. If you know me, you know I love dates and so I get the date fix.
Speaker 1:I get six gels and I go through one about every 20 minutes on the treadmill. The first one I have is within about five minutes of the start, because typically between the time I ate the oatmeal, and the time I start is like two hours or so, and so by that time I've gotten a little bit hungry again. So I'm eating 60 grams of carbs, so 240 calories per hour. On the treadmill. If I was trying to PR a half marathon, I may have a little bit more. Like I told you earlier, I did 80 to a hundred grams of carbs per hour when I was doing marathons and in the fast marathon.
Speaker 1:So anyway, I do that after the run I refuel as soon as possible, so I have a recovery mix that I grab. That's right there, super easy, super to use, super easy to use, and that way I kickstart the recovery process. I have that immediately, and then what I do from there is I go home. Well, first I do some stretching, upload my evidence, then I go home and I'll make breakfast. First I do some stretching, upload my evidence, then I go home and I'll make breakfast. My breakfast consists of four eggs, rice, kiwi, apple juice and some guacamole. That's typically it, and a couple hours later I'll have like a perfect bar. A couple hours later I may have a thing of granola with yogurt, and then for dinner I'll have some sweet potatoes, some ground beef, maybe some Dijon mustard on it, a veggie, and then I may have some cereal as a late night snack or some fruit soup. So that's pretty much it on my day of eating. Depends on how I'm feeling. I might eat a little bit more, especially on run clubs days where I'm eating or I'm running a little bit extra. You can tell, usually I'm a pretty good speaker and I don't stumble on my words, but you can tell I am feeling it from this challenge because I'm stumbling on my words, messing things up and all of that. So I apologize, but that's just really how it how it be like right now. So anyway, that's my nutrition.
Speaker 1:The third thing that's helped me run a half marathon every single day for over 30 days, or for 30 days right now, is accountability, accountability. And so one thing by me doing this, by posting on social media, by me asking the witnesses to come out, I'm telling literally every single person I know about this challenge and so if I didn't show up to the gym one day, I would have people calling me wondering where I was at, calling me asking if I was okay. And so accountability it's very important, I think, to share with people your goals, because if you're slipping, if you're backtracking, if they don't see you progressing, they're going to help you out. They're going to help you out and they're going to call you out and I like to say call you up, call you up into your destiny, call you up into all that God has for you. And so accountability is so huge. Self-accountability is huge, for sure, but I like to make it as easy as I can on myself right, and so I tell everyone. And then boom, I don't wanna let them down, I don't wanna not be a man of my word, and so that is huge. When you're going after any big goal is accountability. It's helped me a ton.
Speaker 1:Now, the fourth thing is very simple, but it was so powerful for me and it's made me realize so many things, and that's saying no, saying no, is the fourth thing. That's helped me run a half marathon for 30 days straight. So, by my nature, I travel a good bit to different races with clients and athletes. I have to pace them, crew them, whatnot, and so I'm on the go, I'm on the move and traveling is great, but it takes your time and it's crazy. Being in Dallas for the past month straight no travel I've realized wow, I have so much more time when I don't travel. I don't spend time in airports, I don't spend time trying to figure out food, because I've got my routine, I've got my grocery store run, I've got all these different things lined up in a system, in a process, so it takes me less energy to do. Also, I say no to late nights.
Speaker 1:I've had to say no to a lot of friends, a lot of opportunities and things like that, and some people may be like, man, that sucks, that's not worth it, but for me it is, because these are my goals and saying no to the good allows you to say yes to the best. Let me say that again Saying no to the good allows you to say yes to the best. So that's why. Number four, the fourth thing that's helped me run a half marathon 30 days in a row is saying no. So you got to say no.
Speaker 1:If you want to add time for something, you have to take away something else. So let me recap the things for you. Number one was sleep. You have to sleep if you want to perform at your best mentally and physically. Number two is nutrition. I had to start eating more carbs, had to start fueling more before and during my runs. Accountability is number three, and then four was saying no, awesome guys. I am so grateful for you listening to the show. Thank you so much for all of your support and I want to inspire you. Go out and run your race. Go out and get the miles in and together let's help make America healthy again. If you want to follow along more closely with the challenge, dm me on Instagram and I'll get you details. My Instagram is at Pierce Hsiao and I will see you guys in the next episode.