THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST

Website: ⁠bicarb.shop 

Riley Witt doesn't think you need talent to break four minutes in the mile—he just thinks you need to want it bad enough to spend $35.

The Northwest Missouri State senior came on to break down the philosophy behind that take, and what followed was one of the more honest conversations about athletic ambition, economic reality, and the compounding edge of doing everything right. 

Witt grew up in a class of 36 students in Osage, Iowa, ran a 4:40 mile his freshman year of high school, and genuinely believed that was fast. 

He didn't have the training partners, the competition, or the context to know otherwise. What he had was an Exercise Science background, an obsessive attention to marginal gains, and a willingness to do things differently.

That's where Bicarb comes in. Witt launched Bicarb 3.0 out of necessity (he wanted a sodium bicarbonate product that actually worked without the GI catastrophe), and built it into a business from his dorm room after going from a 4:11 mile to a 4:03 in two weeks on his first homebrew version.

He walks Dominic through the science of how bicarbonate buffers hydrogen ions at the cellular level, why the longer distances are starting to adopt it, and what his proprietary kinetic gradient matrix technology does differently than anything else on the market.

Underneath all of it is a runner who just ran 1:48 at the MIAA Outdoor Championships, holds a 4.0 GPA, and has one box left to check: a Division II national title. He's currently ranked second in the country in the 800m. 

The clock is ticking.

Tap into the Riley Witt Special.

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S H O W  N O T E S  

-The Run Down By The Running Effect (our new newsletter!): https://tinyurl.com/mr36s9rs

-Our Website: https://therunningeffect.run  

-THE PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClLcLIDAqmJBTHeyWJx_wFQ

-My Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/therunningeffect/?hl=en⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

-Take our podcast survey: https://tinyurl.com/3ua62ffz

 Instagram: @riwitt03 

Website: bicarb.shop

Mark Dowdle ran 306.6 miles in 73 hours, drove 20 hours home, picked up a puppy, and was back umpiring youth baseball the next week. 

That's either the most unhinged post-race recovery plan in endurance sports history, or it's the most honest thing anyone's said about who he actually is.

This is the conversation Dominic was saving for after the race—and it delivered on the hype. Mark walks through the G1M Ultra from the inside: the moment on the first night at 2 or 3 a.m. where he made the irreversible decision not to quit; the loop where he noticed Kim and Harvey were off their timing and knew what was coming; and the final miles walking with Kendall as both men quietly sensed the race was ending. 

The 13-second lap finish wasn't a dramatic sprint—it was two men who'd been through three days of mud and rain and dark deciding, together, to keep going one more time.

What makes this conversation different from a typical winner's debrief is what Mark keeps returning to: the idea that who you are at a youth baseball game is exactly who you are at mile 290. His sister-in-law Lily's voice was in his earbuds pulling him through the low loops.

The internal battle between wanting the race to end and wanting to see how far two people can actually go together. And the realization, standing upright after 73 hours, that he didn't have to perform for anyone.

He also quietly drops that he's now officially a BPN athlete. The chapter he'd title What It Looks Like to Walk in Faith is just getting started.

Tap into the Mark Dowdle Special.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider following us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and giving us a five-star review! 

S H O W  N O T E S  

-The Run Down By The Running Effect (our new newsletter!): https://tinyurl.com/mr36s9rs

-Our Website: https://therunningeffect.run  

-THE PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClLcLIDAqmJBTHeyWJx_wFQ

-My Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/therunningeffect/?hl=en⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

-Take our podcast survey: https://tinyurl.com/3ua62ffz

Instagram: @mark.dowdle

Luke Hopkins doesn't separate who he is from what he does—and that almost broke him.

When a stress fracture pulled him off the training schedule he'd built his identity around, Hopkins had to face a question most high achievers never stop long enough to ask: what's left when the sport is gone? 

In this episode, the guys dive into the psychology of performance: the difference between being intentional and being consumed; why the hardest workers are often the most emotionally repressed; and what therapy, faith, and a neuroscience degree have taught him about the person underneath the athlete.

Hopkins traces his relentless work ethic back to a single moment at age 12, when a family accident forced him to decide what kind of person he was going to be. That decision made him exceptional. It also cost him things he's still learning to name. 

He talks honestly about tying worth to output, the fragility of building an identity on strangers' approval, and why his brands not dropping him during the injury was one of the most clarifying moments of his career.

The conversation covers hybrid training, what four-plus hours of daily training actually feels like, and the neuroscience behind why your brain is the limiting factor in any race—not your legs.

But the episode's real weight is in the quieter moments: pride, fear, and what Hopkins would tell his 12-year-old self if he had the chance.

Tap into the Luke Hopkins Special.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider following us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and giving us a five-star review! I would also appreciate it if you share it with your friend who you think will benefit from it. If this episode blesses you, please share it with a friend!

If this episode blesses you, please share it with a friend!

S H O W   N O T E S  

-The Run Down By The Running Effect (our new newsletter!): https://tinyurl.com/mr36s9rs

-Our Website: https://therunningeffect.run  

-THE PODCAST ON YOUTUBE:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClLcLIDAqmJBTHeyWJx_wFQ

-My Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/therunningeffect/?hl=en⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

-Take our podcast survey: https://tinyurl.com/3ua62ffz

INSTAGRAM: @lukehoplife 

Youtube: @lukehoplife 

Tiktok: @lukehoplife

Alan Webb still has the record. Twenty-four years later, nobody's touched it. 

The American high school mile record (3:53.43, set at the 2001 Prefontaine Classic) has outlasted every shoe revolution, every bicarb protocol, and every perfectly concocted running shoe PR storm. In this conversation, Webb sits down with Dominic to talk about why that mark still stands, what it actually felt like to run it, and what the sport's fastest generation of teenagers is still missing.

Webb is disarmingly honest about his own race. 

Going into Pre that day, he wasn't chasing Ryun's record—he was chasing a decimal-second PR over 3:59. He was, in his words, playing with house money. The result was a 55-flat last lap with gas still in the tank, a closing kick he nearly stumbled into because he didn't realize how far ahead of his goal he was. That psychological accident, he argues, is exactly what most high school milers can't replicate on command.

The conversation moves from race mechanics to coaching philosophy to the weight room sins of his own career—including a period where Webb, by his own admission, went full Arnold Schwarzenegger while training for the mile. He's candid about what he got wrong, what Coach Raczko got right, and how much of that South Lakes framework he's carried directly into his program at Ave Maria University.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, Webb lands on the thing that seems to have kept him in the sport long after the records and the contracts and the Nike deals: running, he says, teaches virtue. 
That's not nothing.

Tap into the Alan Webb Special.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider following us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and giving us a five-star review! 

S H O W  N O T E S  

-The Run Down By The Running Effect (our new newsletter!): https://tinyurl.com/mr36s9rs

-Our Website: https://therunningeffect.run  

-THE PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClLcLIDAqmJBTHeyWJx_wFQ

-My Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/therunningeffect/?hl=en⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

-Take our podcast survey: https://tinyurl.com/3ua62ffz

Instagram: @alanwebb1

He ran 63 miles on a broken stomach, launched a product the same week, and called it a good weekend.

Zach Pogrob is back—and this time, the conversation goes deeper than any race result. 

A month before the BPN G1M Ultra, he posted a photo at 220 pounds and admitted he had no business toeing the line. He showed up anyway, ran until his GI system shut down at mile 50, kept going on fumes, and walked away with a finish that looked like a DNF: but felt, to him, like proof. 

That's the through-line of this entire episode: what it means to show up when the conditions aren't right, whether you'reentering a backyard ultra or building a startup with three people and no marketing budget.

Zach breaks down the obsession economy behind ShareAura, a running app already hitting all-time weekly users with zero paid acquisition, and he demos the new Aura Run Cam live: a camera-first tracker designed to make sharing your run as easy as taking a photo. 

He also gets into what running 10 miles before sunrise every morning can do to a life that's lost its direction, what it actually takes to compete with Strava, why the running industry suffers from fixed-mindset thinking, and why the best companies (like the best athletes) are almost always built by outsiders.

Zach Pogrob is here and he’s not holding back.

Tap into the Zach Pogrob Special.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider following us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and giving us a five-star review! I would also appreciate it if you share it with your friend who you think will benefit from it. If this episode blesses you, please share it with a friend!

If this episode blesses you, please share it with a friend!

S H O W   N O T E S  

-The Run Down By The Running Effect (our new newsletter!): https://tinyurl.com/mr36s9rs

-Our Website: https://therunningeffect.run  

-THE PODCAST ON YOUTUBE:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClLcLIDAqmJBTHeyWJx_wFQ

-My Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/therunningeffect/?hl=en⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

-Take our podcast survey: https://tinyurl.com/3ua62ffz

INSTAGRAM: @zachpogrob 

X: @zachpogrob 

Website: zach.blog 

Youtube: @zach_pogrob