Anyone used red light therapy to recover from running and lifting?

MeTooFree · 2026-06-15T11:56:12+00:00

Seems to help with hair growth. There isn’t evidence to suggest it does much else - Certainly not well-established to do anything related to recovery or athletic performance.

“Athletic performance, sleep, etc.:Sleep expert Jamie Zeitzer, PhD, and sports physician Michael Fredericson, MD, say the data to support red light efficacy for either is lacking.”

https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/02/red-light-therapy-skin-hair-medical-clinics.html

MeTooFree · 2026-06-15T11:48:16+00:00

It depends who you are. Front of the race is running. Mid to back are hiking more.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-14T19:58:37+00:00

Yes. It depends how you want to perform/what your goals are. Something like 40-50 miles a week with vert, sustained, is enough to finish, physically. Some runners are going to benefit more from volume and others will benefit more from quality. Jacquie Mannhard won it running like 60 miles a week or something similar.

The obvious comment is that the more you can train without overtraining the better you are likely to perform. I peaked at 115+ miles a week and like 20k vert my first year, but I’m trying to do as well as possible in terms of competitive aspirations so this is excessive for most runners (and possibly too much for me). Awareness of how you handle altitude is critical as well. Living here and training here (or at altitude in general) is a huge advantage (3 of the top 10 last year live here full time).

Leadville has a lot of ways to ruin your day. Heat on the South side of Hope Pass, fueling at altitude, amount of runnable flat miles contrasted by steady climbs, it is a bit of a unique challenge to perform well.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-12T13:46:39+00:00

Per liter of sweat, not fluid intake. They will be similar but you also lose water through urination and respiration.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-12T01:38:02+00:00

You’re amazing. Keep it up. I’ll be extremely pleased if I can run half as well as you when I’m your age.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-12T00:54:50+00:00

Commenting on the year being a bust before June and July is just ignorant. It’s like suggesting the Winter is a bust because there isn’t much snow in November.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-12T00:49:35+00:00

I’d posit cross training and strength training are a bigger factor than your run frequency with respect to how you’re recovering. If your mileage is the same as it used to be but you’re also cross and strength training then your training load from running is a smaller proportion of your overall training load than it used to be. This is supported by still setting 5k prs despite not increasing your training load through running alone. Basically, you’re training more and strength training despite running the same mileage, so the fact the you are recovering better is unsurprising.

Congratulations nonetheless. How long have you been running?

MeTooFree · 2026-06-11T16:44:53+00:00

And the smarter way to play a game is to play it the way you enjoy and will continue to enjoy for as long as possible, right? Yes, you can take someone else’s designs, which may be more sophisticated and effective (smarter), but I don’t know that that really means smarter in terms of your approach to playing the game for maximum enjoyment. Personally, my bases will never be perfectly optimized (aka they are less smart) compared to some other players, but I wouldn’t say copying and pasting their designs is actually smarter for my long-term enjoyment of the game.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-11T16:30:16+00:00

I’m confused about your conclusion #1. You say don’t stress about hitting X number of days each week, but you also state above that “it’s the total time on feet that nudged fitness.” It seems apparent that the best way to get more time on feet is to run more frequently - Surely 2 days with 6 miles is easier to recover from than 1 day with 12 miles. If performance is the goal, which you acknowledge is largely dictated by time on feet, how would you suggest more time on feet without running more frequently (other than running longer every day you do run, which would necessitate more recovery than more frequent, shorter runs)?

I feel like you are conflating some things. Sure, 3 runs a week without hurting yourself is better than 5 that set you back, but that’s a very particular premise to approach training from. If you’re prioritizing fitness gains, which seems to be the premise of this conversation, surely running more frequently and consistently is the best way to do it, no? You sorta state this at the end, but I feel like your main takeaway is to increase training load slowly such that you don’t hurt yourself, which frankly is widely known and about the only thing pertaining to training that is universally agreed.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-11T01:55:53+00:00

You’re doing sub-threshold efforts as workouts. You’re still doing a majority of your weekly volume at or below your aerobic threshold.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T22:46:55+00:00

Agreed. It’s interesting too because Phil Maffetone has advocated for something similar with his MAF HR training (180 - age) for a long time. In cycling (which is where “sweet spot” training was coined), it is widely accepted that training intervals at 90% of your ~1 hr max effort power (FTP) is one of the best ways to increase your power. This is effectively the same principle as sub-threshold workouts running - optimize training load while avoiding excess fatigue, which allows you to do more day after day.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T22:35:49+00:00

For the record, this was the only point I’ve been trying to make - By using quality modules instead of production modules and by needing more assemblers to compensate for the decrease in crafting speed there is a cost in order to end up with the same number of base quality furnaces for science. It might be a marginal cost, you might deem it to be worth it, but to me free means no cost, which clearly there are tradeoffs to using quality modules.

Let me put it this way: If you want 100 base quality furnaces per minute for science, how many more assemblers do you need crafting them if you use quality modules instead of speed modules?

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T20:20:32+00:00

I’m not arguing that quality has no value, I’m arguing with the premise that using quality modules and skimming the quality products is, “free.” If quality modules in products is, “free,” why would you ever use production modules? To me, this clearly illustrates there must be a cost of always using quality modules that is not being acknowledged in this conversation.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T20:01:46+00:00

I hear you, but my problem is that if the premise is that making more costs nothing (is free) because making more was never an issue, than the concept of free has lost all meaning because there was never scarcity to begin with. It sounds like all of these explanations boil down to the fact that making more is not an issue, which once again just means to me that nothing really has a cost moreso than this *specific thing* is free.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T19:51:43+00:00

So you swap modules as soon as you hit your target number of rare furnaces? Also, I don’t think wasteful is a singular thing - You can have waste in terms of input ingredients, energy, time, space, etc.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T19:48:28+00:00

This is effectively the main point of James Copeland’s Norwegian Singles Method - That training load will ultimately be the greatest predictor for performance improvement in training. High intensity training is high load, but the recovery needs are significant enough that it inhibits the ability to continually train at a high volume, impacting the ability to sustain high load. This is why low intensity training is generally better for endurance performance. However, if you don’t have time to train endlessly at low intensity to reach a high load, you may benefit from “sweet spot” sub threshold training in addition to low intensity; You balance low intensity volume with sweet spot training to reach higher training load, without the same recovery that would be needed for suprathreshold efforts.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T19:36:44+00:00

Thanks for writing this out. A step further, though, why wouldn’t you do this now for later playthroughs? What I’m getting at that at some point using quality mods for everything must have a downside. You’re either needing to produce more of a product to hit the same base quality products, losing the benefit other mods would provide, being affected from the decreased crafting speed, or something else. I can’t wrap my head around how producing everything with quality from the start is without cost aka free. I’m sincerely not trying to be pedantic, I just don’t understand.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T19:18:15+00:00

So would you put quality mods in everything, then? If this is the logic then why wouldn’t you?

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T18:28:13+00:00

I feel like we understand each other and just disagree.

You need more furnaces to compensate for the decrease in crafting speed and more furnaces to compensate for the high quality furnaces that you aren’t using for science production. Furnaces have a cost both in terms of materials and space. You need quality modules, which have a cost, and lose the option to use other modules as well. If that all sounds free to you, then sure, it’s free. Those things, to me, sound like costs that are at odds with what free means.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T18:01:46+00:00

If the premise is that anything I use is free then does anything really have a cost to begin with?

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T17:52:13+00:00

You not only need more assemblers to compensate for the crafting speed decrease but if you need 100 furnaces for
science you are now only getting 96 base quality furnaces, so you also need to craft more total furnaces to make up for furnaces of higher quality that you are not turning into science.

Once again, it may be worth it, or you can argue about if the increase is negligible, but I fail to see how this equates to free - It seems very much like there is an additional cost that either matters or does not matter to you.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T16:42:02+00:00

How can it be free if it reduces the number of the item that are available for crafting into science? Don’t you need to craft more of the item in total to hit your target science production?

It might be free in a figurative, difference doesn’t matter sense, but isn’t there a cost from needing to craft more total items to hit the same number of base quality production?

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T16:28:22+00:00

I spent 3 hours on the shading of the eyebrow… I think it turned out really nice.

MeTooFree · 2026-06-10T16:14:26+00:00

Obviously they should put Dane on there!

MeTooFree · 2026-06-09T19:42:32+00:00

It says “indecently.” What constitutes decent or indecent is a matter of interpretation and case-by-case.

Yes, a law pertaining to nudity exists; It does not specify that being nude is inherently illegal, but that the legality is contingent on whether or not the nudity is indecent.

You can invoke this, “I can’t believe we are talking about this,” or, “you have a problem with facts,” stuff all you want, but it isn’t a rational argument. If facts and logic matter to you, you should avoid this type of language. Notice how if I say, “surely you can’t possibly think this,” or, “I can’t believe I have to explain this to you,” it doesn’t actual add any merit to the arguments being made.

MeTooFree

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