Emperor Fitness - Running a sub-4hr Marathon (Ouroboros)

Journals - Major Programs
#1

I’ll be running Emperor Fitness while stacking with wealth subs (Nouveau Rich + LE custom) to prepare for running a marathon.

The marathon is the first week of May, so I have exactly 4 months to train.

I’m open to stacks, but I’ll likely do EF ST1 and ST2, 2 months each, and race while running ST2.

I’ve never ran a marathon before, never ran a half marathon, never even ran a 10K formally, but I’ve done a lot of sports.

Where I’m starting from

Goals: I’m the type of person that loves a big hairy goal that’s just outside the realm of possibility, ever so slightly, and is actually meaningful. I had the goal of scaling an agency to 100K/mo and it motivated me every day for 3 years. And I got pretty damn close to that goal. Then I had a goal to hit 30K sales months, and I got extremely close as well. The goal of running a sub4hr marathon is to have a massive goal to work towards and train like I have to hit it - whether or not I run a sub4 or not is irrelevant. It’s the mindset leading up to it.

Weight and age: 28 years old, and I’ve gained about 10 lbs over the last year and a half. I actually LIKE that - I’ve always been a little skinny - now I’m 5’10 and 160lbs, the extra bit of fluff looks nicer on me. But it just shows that my body will slowly get fat if I don’t do something more proactive.

Muscle Mindset: I haven’t cared about putting on muscle since high school. But in high school, I got SERIOUSLY into bodybuilding in high school and put on a tremendous amount of muscle, but you wouldn’t ever guess that, because went from looking like an anorexic twig to just mildly above-average, which for me, is a big enough transformation. Now I just care about health and performance, but I’ll still post progress pics and do spend a bit of time working out for muscle gain, it’s just not a lot.

Career & Habits: this’ll be an amazing area of development from the marathon and training. I know that I perform extremely well at work when I exercise and run/walk lots. More broadly, in order to succeed at a marathon, you have to dial in your nutrition, frequency, recovery, sleep, even your mindset. You have to wake up and get your runs in before work, ideally I’ll even be meditating to keep myself calm and apply meditation techniques in moments of painful running. I desperately want one of the results from running this marathon to be a disciplined life where I’m sleeping, eating, exercising, and doing all my health habits like clockwork, every day.

Meditation: I actually view running as meditation. Not in the stupid way people say it. But I’ve been learning about vipassana meditation and a lot of the techniques they use to handle pain and boredom while meditating can also be used to handle pain and boredom and a desire to slow down while running. I’ve successfully tried this out. Along this note, running is an excellent opportunity for me to practice viewing things with my peripheral vision which helps me heal from a concussion.

Running Pace: I tested myself on a 5K, and the time that I got was 5:22/km, or 27mins for the 5K.

7 Likes
Adventures of Ouroboros: Wealth Development
#2

Current physique in case it changes later

IMG_2631
IMG_26311920×2560 282 KB

IMG_2628
IMG_26281920×2560 192 KB

h

4 Likes
#3

Bad habits I’m speaking out of existence and tracking progress on

#1: Sleeping in. this one is the big one I’ve always struggled with, but my plan is to wake up 1 hour before work and get a 30 min run in every morning, so, that bad habit will need to leave, pronto. One excuse I tell myself is “waking up at 6am will wake up and disturb my fiancée” even though she literally encourages me to wake up early and says she’ll be fine.

#2: Caffeine Consumption - not that it’s bad… but I’m overdoing it. I’m not taking breaks from caffeine. I’m drinking 3-5 cups a day just to feel the effect, and at that quantity, I’m feeling the effect of the overdose :joy: I really need to regain my caffeine sensitivity, and then use it sparingly. Running in the morning will wake me up and help with that.

#3: Gluten and Sugar are the culprits in my diet that I know I have a better life when I cut.

5 Likes
#4

You choose well, EF st2 is probably the best sub for running with Spartan as a second.
Have you tried Yerba mate instead of coffee?

In terms of putting muscle on, I have the same body composition as you and by that I mean I am an ectomorph, slim figure, hard to put on some muscle, etc.
What works for me is Nucleus overload.
Or exercise part of the body of your choice as many times as possible throughout the week.
I got the best results when I was not going with heavyweight, because of the possibility of injuries which I do not like.

I rather go with let’s say middle heavyweight and 15-25 reps with 3-4 sets per one body part. Not going to absolute failure but in the end targeted muscle feels fatigued. Rests between sets are in a range from 30 sec to 1 minute and 30 seconds. Depends on how you feel and how heavy exercise is, etc. But the universal time would be 1 minute.

So you can choose 5-7 body parts and do it every training session. Then with every meal try to eat some protein.

Something similar started @RagnarLothbrok, he is about the same body structure as I correctly understood. And I think he is quite satisfied with his results so far.

I can also tell you what exercises are best for any body part, it took me quite some time to figure it out, because even for any body part there are tons of exercises but some of them are better than others. But it of course does not mean, that what works for me would also work in the same way for you.

1 Like
#5

Yes im doing full body heavy/stretch/pump with 6-7 exercises each workout and i already gained 2kg of muscle

And for your marathon EF2 is very good as it as a heavy focus of endurance, i would suggest considering Spartan instead, something more important in marathon than endurance is mental toughness and to keep running even when it hurts + Spartan is very good for everything, endurance, muscle endurance, fat burning and muscle building

So i think Spartan would be an even better choice, of course i can’t day for sure because i never ran EF

5 Likes
#6

I second Spartan for the mental toughness alone. I plan to run it this coming April.

Edit: And maybe watch some Goggins motivation videos to hype yourself up whenever you feel like quitting.

Edit 2: Or invest in a custom with the Inexhaustible Module.

#7

First loop of Emp Fit today. 3 mins.

Ran it solo. Will run it with my NR/LE custom in the future.

Marathon is a priority only so long as it enhances work not detracts from it, so, if needed I may run a 1-1 rest/listen schedule, with NR every listening day, but EF only every second listening day.

1 Like
#8

This week’s training

Thursday: 5k run @ 5:22/km - hard pace.

Friday: A 2K morning run, easy. A 2K walk, easy. Then a 7K walk/run at a mostly easy pace.

Saturday: 6K super easy runs

Sunday: 1K walk, 4K bushwhacking, then 5K road run at a 6:44/km pace. This was my “long run”

Weekly mileage: 30k

Little Lessons:

  • go slow, go easy, build up mileage safely.
  • zone 2 cardio is the aerobic zone where you can maintain the pace indefinitely, this is where we want to log large mileage.
  • endurance is built in zone 2, or in interval training, or with a high heart rate under heavy load. One cool way of training endurance is to take a heavy kettlebell (mine is 70lb), do 10-20 KB swings until HR is high, and then walk until you can talk, and do those intervals 10 times. Trains muscles and heart.
  • world record marathon holder’s #1 tip is to ENJOY running - very in line with how it feels to try and meditate while running
2 Likes
#9

I wish you luck and success in your training. My weight loss will focus on Zone 2 as well.

1 Like
#10

Early ST1 impression is that it’s easy and more natural for me to take a nap or rest when
I’m tired, for sure. On the flip side, I couldn’t sleep last night, mind was racing.

That’s my favorite kind of recon. I already have sleep issues pre EF1. It didn’t cause them. It would’ve happened anyways. But EF gives me the extra awareness on health habits, so I was watching it and have learned from it as if it happened for the first time even though it’s happened for the thousandth time.

This podcast released today.

Obviously it talks about mental toughness, which was why Spartan was recommended to me. The release of this episode was great timing.

The “actionable bit” I’m taking away is from a neuroscience tidbit from Huberman, actually. Willpower has a region of the brain associated with it. That region is increased in size when we do things we don’t want to do, and it decreases when we do things we want to do.

So if you hate running so you go for runs anyways, your willpower will grow. But if you start to enjoy the running, and then keep running, the willpower part of your brain starts shrinking again.

So what was my interpretation of that? Simple. Don’t ever do what my brain wants to do. The fact that I want McDonald’s is reason enough to not have it - saying no is the reward. Wanting to end a run is reason to keep going. Not wanting to cold plunge IS the reason to do it, etc etc.

3 Likes
#11

Ran my first 10K

6:03/km pace, 1hr1min59s total.

Literally didn’t even plan a 10k. My goal was to just keep on turning until I was lost, and then run home. Turned out perfect.

And also I won’t be posting every run. Just the major milestones.

2 Likes
#12

Andrew Huberman with David Goggins?! Holy crap I have been waiting for that collab for ages lol. Can’t wait to dive deep into that episode tomorrow.

I agree with this, especially for skinny guys, it’s crucial to focus on compound exercises with high volume. There’s a lot of conflicting research on muscle building, but this is something I’ve consistently observed with clients and experienced myself.

Nice to see how much thought you put into your schedule :wink: Looks like LE with NR is doing it’s job tremendously.

1 Like
Adventures of Ouroboros: Wealth Development
#13

Goal is to just run every day, even if only a little bit! My knee hurts today so I’ll just walk.

Woke up at 6 today, didn’t get out of bed and shower right away, but I definitely was up and prepared for work for a 7am sales call. The goal was to run, not just get ready for work, but I’ll be honest I was shocked at the fact it was still dark. I’ll get another shot at it tomorrow.

EF1 results from my fiancee, she DID get up at 6am and go for a 40 min run. It’s the first 5K she’s ever done by herself.

Sleep Habits

Because I had to sleep early, I naturally was “forced” to plan my next work day with pen and paper, find my top 3 priorities, etc., instead of stay up late and work.

Just an example of how working on my health/fitness is benefiting my career.

Overall, EF1 feels like it’s adding a lot of structure to my life, which is basically exactly what I wanted off of QL. With QL, i noticed it was my habits that were my bottleneck, not my brainpower itself, and while I want to work QL’s objectives, I find that if I were to do that now, I’d just be adding more brainpower onto my chess habit haha

1 Like
Adventures of Ouroboros: Wealth Development
#14

Goals of this were to

  • focus on waking up earlier and happier - which has ABSOLUTELY been happening this week.
  • to exercise consistently which I’ve been doing
  • to improve nutrition which has been happening all unconsciously

and one change I’m noticing from EF1 specifically is that I think about my running form a lot more when I’m running, I’m consciously shifting more upright and am sort of able to intuitively learn better running gait just through trial and error - I don’t feel like I need anyone to teach me this.

1 Like
#15

Lots of snow this week, and went to an osteopath to look at my knee, so I took things a little toooo easy. Went for a good run today and then a 3 hour sumo class so that’s a lot of good conditioning today.

Watching my form improve over time is amazing

1 Like
#16

Use some magnesium.

2 Likes
#17

Good to know, thank you! I am probably deficient

1 Like
#18

You could also include Boron.

3 Likes
#19

I second boron, helped my knees and back a lot

#20

I went and bought perfectly fitted running shoes for me, spent a good chunk of money, and within 30 minutes of running my feet were blistered worse than anything I’ve experienced before. Was pretty frustrating. I got a shoe that I could exchange if they didn’t fit right, but I wore them outside, so I don’t know if I can exchange it.

Since then, I’ve got a VR machine and am putting LOADS of time into cardio through VR Table Tennis and VR Boxing (Eleven Table Tennis /// Thrill Of The Fight)

Gonna switch to EF2 soon but once I make my “long term development” custom I think EF1 will have a permanent spot in that stack.

1 Like