We’ve all got one, but what does it actually mean, and does the number your smart watch gives you actually matter? 

This week on The Shakeout Podcast we're setting out to understand the science of VO2 Max, a metric that seems to be everywhere in the saturated world of endurance training advice. 

From its correlation to performance to its proven effects on longevity, VO2 Max might be one of the most all encompassing indicators of fitness available. But is a higher number always better? And if more is better how do we go about raising ours?

Joining the show to lend his expertise is Dr. Mick Leahy, professor of cardiovascular exercise physiology at The University of British Columbia. As an expert on all things aerobic, Mick walks us through the science behind VO2 Max, shedding light on what the term actually means, what the hype around VO2 Max is all about, and how runners can use the metric to improve their performance on race day. 

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

Mick's Google Scholar

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If you wanted to know which athlete was at the top of Canadian trail running, a safe bet, at least in the most literal sense, would be Alex Ricard. 

The Squamish based athlete has established a reputation as the best vertical runner in the country, clocking off wins and KOMs on some of Canada’s most iconic climb trails and mixing it up with the very best in the world at past editions of the world mountain and trail running championships. More recently, he’s adding distance to vert and finding success in over longer race distances, claiming another Canadian national championship title over the 50km distance at this summer’s Quebec Mega Trail.

With a long history in the sport that includes early success on the track and cross country course, Alex joins the show this week to talk about his journey in the world of trail racing, life in the trail-running hot spot of Squamish, and what makes him so fast when the terrain gets steep.

Follow Alex @Alex._Ric

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Jadyn Keeler will be the first to admit that the further the race distance, the happier she is. 

That love for going long was on full display last weekend in Edmonton at the Canadian Half Marathon Championships, where even a measurement error that added nearly 700m to the stated race distance couldn’t dampen her professional, and half marathon, debut. In just her second-ever road race, Keeler ran away from an historically deep women’s elite field to claim her first national title.

With the win, the 23 year old out of Barrie Ontario punched her ticket to next Month’s World Road running Championships, where she’ll look to keep the good times going against a world class field in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

Fresh off a move to Flagstaff Arizona to join the adidas Golden Peaks Track Club and kick off her pro career, Jadyn joins the show to recap her breakout half debut, set the tone for next month’s World Championships, and share what she’s most looking forward to as she takes on the world of professional road racing.

Follow Jadyn @jadynkeeler

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Push past the finish line with nutrition that fuels you. CanPrev is proudly Canadian and has been delivering supportive natural health supplements for over two decades. Whether you’re training for your next goal race or looking to maximize performance when the gun goes off, make CanPrev's top-quality products part of your well rounded nutrition plan. Discover more at canprev.ca

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Based on running accomplishments alone, Stephanie Case’s career is nothing short of remarkable, boasting a raft of ultra victories and podiums across some of the globe’s most iconic and challenging courses in a career that spans the better part of two decades. 

Yet while her accomplishments in the sport are enough to astound, it is her work on the sport of running that has made the most lasting impact. 

Through a career as a lawyer in some of the most war-ravaged and crisis-stricken regions on the planet, Stephanie has experienced first-hand how much of a privilege the simple act of running freely can be, especially for women living through conflict and under repressive regimes. While training for her own lofty goals in the sport she has also worked towards creating opportunities for other women and girls to pursue big dreams and experience a more equitable sporting landscape through her organization Free to Run. 

This week on The Shakeout Podcast, Stephanie joins the show to preview her return to the iconic UTMB festival and the TDS 100 miler, how the race factors in to her preparations for an assault on the Antarctic 100–mile speed record later this fall, and why going where no woman has gone before at the bottom of the world is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to forging a trail for all runners.

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

Learn how you can support a more equitable sporting landscape for women and girls at freetorun.org

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Follow Stephanie @theultrarunnergirl 

The Canadian half marathon championships take place this Sunday, August 16th in Edmonton and for Canadian marathon record holder Natasha Wodak 13 miles and a stellar women's elite field stand between her and a 13th national championship title.

After a convincing win on the Edmonton course in 2025, Wodak returns looking to defend her title against a field loaded with talent, including last year's runner-up Florence Caron and half marathon debutants the likes of Jadyn Keeler and Gracelyn Larkin. The race serves as a critical step in the selection process for the 2026 World Athletics Road Running Championships, September 19-20 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

This week on The Shakeout Podcast, Wodak joins the show to talk about her signature grittiness in competition, how she continues to adapt and adjust her training to compete with the best in the country year-on-year, and how her own work as a coach has shaped how she approaches race day.

Follow Natasha @tashawodak

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 [This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports]

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Kumsa Yuya spent years believing that his chronic fatigue and frequent illnesses were simply the cost of training hard for his marathon goals. Based on conventional wisdom, it seemed to Kumsa that he was doing everything right: prioritizing recovery, eating nutritious food, and paying special attention to his nutrition around key workouts and long runs. 

Still, bouts of sickness and fatigue that resigned him to bed persisted, and even many medical professionals were at a loss as to how a seemingly healthy, active man in his prime could keep succumbing to the symptoms Kumsa experienced.

It was only after beginning to work with a sports dietitian that Kumsa realized his body was in a chronic state of low energy availability, despite his thoughtful attempts at fueling and nutrition. He would come to understand it as a case of Relative Energy Deficiency in sport, or REDs and began a year long journey back to health.  Now, he joins the show to share his experience and help others spot the signs of a condition that’s all too common in endurance sport, but frequently misunderstood.

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 [This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports]

For someone who has yet to reach his 27th birthday, Thomas Nobbs has already spent a lifetime in the world of competitive running. Since joining his first track club at age seven, the Vancouver native quickly found his stride, falling in love with the work harder/run faster equation that distance running offered. He also found his stride on the track and went on to assert himself as one of the country's top youth athletes, with a pair of national youth championship golds in the 3,000m and 2,000m steeplechase.

But for someone who loved to work hard, the risks associated with a high-output approach began to grow, and Nobbs spent much of his late high school and early university careers sidelined with injuries, including multiple stress fractures.

Nevertheless, the passion for running never faded, and after wrapping up a university career at UBC in 2022, Nobbs began exploring the world of longer distances on the road, a journey that eventually, and inevitably, took him to the marathon.

Since debuting three years ago, the 26-year-old has steadily improved his time over 42.2 km, most recently with a breakout performance in March in Rockland State Park, NY, where he won the McKirdy Micro Marathon in 2:09:24. It was a three-minute personal best and made him the fourth fastest marathoner in Canadian history.

After years climbing his way back through injury, the former youth champion finds himself once again among the best in the nation, and will make his Abbott World Marathon Major debut in October in Chicago, entering that field as the top-ranked Canadian.

This week on The Shakeout Podcast, Tom joins the show to recap his breakout race, the big-mileage training that got him there, and what he's learned from the highs and lows of 20 years immersed in the world of competitive running.

Follow Thomas @nobbs.not.knobs

Cover Photo: Max Collier

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 [This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports] Shop now at Altitude Sports and enjoy up to 20% off your first order with the promo code "SHAKEOUT2026" Click here to order 👉 https://bit.ly/altitude-shakeout2026

For most of the past 40 years, the Canadian record in the women’s 100m remained stagnant, hovering right under the 11 second barrier and moving just 0.04 over the span of nearly 4 decades. But that all changed earlier this month when Ajax, ON Sadé McCreath stormed to a massive lifetime best of 10.86 at the Edmonton International Track Classic, taking nearly a full 10th of a second off of the previous national record and becoming the first woman in Canadian history to dip under 10.90 seconds. 

And while the record-setting run marks a new era in Canadian sprinting, McCreath’s own journey to Canadian record holder parallels the trajectory of the record itself. Far from an overnight success story, McCreath’s breakthrough is rather the result of a decade-plus of relentless work. From nearly walking away from the sport altogether earlier this year to breaking new ground as the fastest Canadian in history, Sadé joins the show to take us inside her journey to national record holder, and how she’s embracing this new chapter in her career with an eye on finding out just how fast she can go. 

Follow Sadé @onlymissmac

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

 [This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports]

For many athletes, especially in the world of endurance sport, the exhaustion that follows a hard effort is part of the reward for the training it took to make it happen. But when the mountaintop feeling of a new personal best fades away and the fatigue still lingers, it might be a sign of something deeper lurking beneath the surface. 

What if that fatigue you’re battling during a heavy training block is more than simply the product of hard work? What if the impacts of an activity-filled lifestyle might actually be contributing to long term health risks? These are the questions that have often gone unheard or overlooked by athletes at all ability levels, but are crucial to making sure that sport remains a healthy part of any athlete's life. 

While there’s no simple catchall answer to the above questions, a recurring theme that has drawn the ongoing attention of leading sports scientists, dieticians, and doctors is the impact of low iron levels. Yet for all iron’s importance to our overall health–and sport performance–it remains largely misunderstood by many athletes.

That’s why a group of Canada’s leading sport-science minds have spent the last three years compiling the research for a landmark consensus on the role of iron in sport. This week on The Shakeout Podcast we’re joined be Kelly Anne Erdman, a registered sport dietitian, Olympian, and co-author of “Canada's Best Practice Guidelines for Iron Optimization in Athletes”. Kelly Anne joins us to discuss the critical importance of maintaining healthy iron levels for general wellbeing, how to spot and treat the signs and symptoms of iron deficiency, and how making iron a priority could be the path to feeling–and performing–at your best.

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

Find out more about Kelly Anne's work with Canadian Olympian teams and athletes at all abilities at https://healthandperformancenutritioninc.com/about/ or contact Kelly Anne: [email protected]

Push past the finish line with nutrition that fuels you. CanPrev is proudly Canadian and has been delivering supportive natural health supplements for over two decades. Whether you’re training for your next goal race or looking to maximize performance when the gun goes off, make CanPrev's top-quality products part of your well rounded nutrition plan. Discover more at canprev.ca

A few months ago, Madelyn Eybergen joined this show as Canada's university cross-country champion. Today, she's back as a world champion, but not in running. Instead, she conquered one of the fastest-growing sports in endurance: hybrid racing.

If there were ever a competition to crown the world’s most well rounded endurance athlete, Eybergen would be able to make a strong case. She's no stranger to reinvention after trading the high jump for the track and quickly becoming one of Canada's brightest young distance running stars. Now, she's taken on a challenge even further removed, the fast growing world of hybrid racing. Late last month at the HYROX Global Championships in Stockholm she was crowned World Champion in the Professional 20-24 division, with a new national record setting time of 57:37 to boot. 

What makes the accomplishment even more impressive is the fact that it comes fresh off the heels of a personal-best setting track season, including a new 15:30 5000m PB set just one week prior to the HYROX global championships.  This week, Madelyn joins The Shakeout Podcast to recap her historic world title and answer once and for all the question runners everywhere are starting to ask: Could Hyrox be the future of endurance training?

Subscribe to The Shakeout Podcastfeed on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts.

[This collaboration is part of an advertising campaign led by the Podpass agency for Altitude Sports]

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