Today we’d like to introduce you to Zach Bitter.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I got interested in running in middle school but didn’t take it too seriously until end of high school early college years. In college, I began getting interested in why we would be doing certain workouts and began to recognize that of all the workouts, the long run was my favorite. After college, when I no longer had a team-centered approach to my running, I began exploring longer distance races, which ultimately led me to ultramarathon. After getting through my first season of ultramarathon racing in 2011 and my first full year of ultramarathon training and racing in 2012, I began taking what I learned from running and as a full-time teacher to begin coaching others. As my racing career began to develop, so did my coaching business and I had the opportunity to start training and racing as a professional athlete in 2015. I have spent that time traveling around the world, living in a variety of places, including California, Arizona, and now Texas, and building my coaching business and launching my podcast, Human Performance Outliers. Over the past decade-plus, I have been fortunate enough to break both World and American Records, win National Championships, participate on Team USA’s 100km World Championship team, and coach/consult over 1000 other runners, and record nearly 300 podcasts.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been a fun and rewarding road for sure, but definitely not smooth. I would describe it as slow. I wasn’t pegged as a future professional runner through high school and college. I was certainly behind my college teammates in regards to how much training I had done in high school. I would consider myself a moderately successful collegiate runner for a top-ranked DIII school, University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. When I found ultramarathon races, it was still running, but there are some interesting differences that I believe make me able to compete better as the distances get longer. In 2013, I competed in an event called, The Desert Solstice Track Invitational, where I broke the than 100 Mile American Record and 12-Hour World Record. My plan was to chase the 100 Mile World Record and break it the following year. As fate would have it, it took me nearly six years to finally get that goal accomplished. I learned the hard way in 2015, being ahead of World Record pace through 80 miles before slipping off pace and missing it. It was difficult to think that I missed an opportunity, but ultimately it made me curious in how I could get back to that spot and do it right. I was able to do that in 2019, running some of my fastest miles on the day in the final 20 miles in route to the then 100 Mile and 12-Hour World Records.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have always been curious, so once I was able to work for myself, I leaned into things I was interested in and learned how to monetize them. These include; training and racing as a professional athlete, coaching runners of all abilities and distances, and hosting a podcast. I specialize in 100 mile distance races, often peaking for 2-3 of them per year. Perhaps it is my background as a teacher, but I really enjoy working with people in running programming. It has taught me a lot about individual needs when it comes to the sport of running. Learning what works and when for individuals is one of my favorite parts of what I do. Podcasting has been a passion of mine since I started ultramarathon. Most of my career, I would go on podcasts as a guest. I loved this longer forum platform, and have been fortunate to be a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience twice, Lex Fridman Podcast, Nick Bare Performance, Mark Bell Power Project and many more. Hosting my own podcast came later, but it is equal as rewarding as I have learned more about how to take the host seat over the past few years. Something that sets me apart a bit is my nutritional approach. Most endurance athletes target as many carbs as they can. Personally, at the longer distances, like 100 miles, I have found better results with a lower carb approach. I have spent a lot of time fine-tuning it. When I first started this approach over ten years ago, it felt like I was one of the only ones doing it. Since it has been fun to work with other runners with this approach to find success in their own health and fitness. It isn’t for everyone, but it has been a worthwhile option for some folks that I work with when the standard approach isn’t bringing them the results they are looking for.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Ultramarathon running has been growing fast over the past decade. It looks to be something that is going to continue to grow. Groups I would have never imagined would be interested in ultramarathon are coming into the sport to challenge themselves, including power and strength athletes at times. It is cool to see. I expect it to keep growing. The pandemic made running grow in general, so there is also a bigger group of people who learned over that time period that it is something they like to do. I suspect this will just increase the growth we saw pre-pandemic.
Pricing:
- Personalized Plans: $100 / 4-weeks
- Premade Plans (12-24 weeks): $15-$130
- Consultations: 30-min ($55) / 60-min ($100)
- Email Collaboration: $40 / 4-weeks
Contact Info:
- Email: zbittercoaching@gmail.com
- Website: https://zachbitter.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zachbitter/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zbitterendurance
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/zbitter
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/HumanPerformanceOutliersPodcast
