In this super fun episode, we're celebrating a whole bunch of big milestones including: Jim's return to riding six weeks after his crash and surgery, Katie officially earning her title of "PhD Coach Katie," and most importantly, six months and 35 episodes of our podcast! To mark the occasion, we're returning to a format we used in episode five of the podcast and reflecting on the big lessons we've learned in the last six months of training, coaching, and podcasting. This was one of the most fun episodes we've recorded, so come for the wisdom and stay for the laughs about what constitutes a recovery week. Check it out!
Intro - celebration episode!
Jim back on the bike
Katie graduated from Stanford PhD program
And most importantly - 6 months of the pod + 35 episodes!
Coaching and Training Insights
Katie:
Keeping humor and joy in training and racing:
Gigi’s pre race call “I’m tired of this Grandpa!!”
“When you get this feeling, eat a snickers! You’re not you when you’re hungry”
Taylor Knibb reflections on T100: “I was reading Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being on the plane to San Francisco. In his “Area of Thought” on Play, he writes, “We embrace both the seriousness of the commitment and the playfulness of being completely free in the making. Take [it] seriously without going about it in a serious way” (354). I kept thinking about this idea all week.”
Jim: Have always loved the phrase, “you can be serious without being a serious person”
Dialing in your watch and bike computer settings before the night before the race; practice them well in advance:
i.e. use triathlon mode in race sims; be aware of what the data screens are and change them as necessary
Jim:
Two formulas:
Training + Fueling = Performance
Training + Fueling + Performance = Racing
Performance is also experience. The main point is we need to do a lot of training, fueling and experience in the sport before we really understand how to race.
Training is physical, mental and relational
Relational is concerning the way in which two or more people or things are connected.
Relational: Location, your peer group, your support network.
You can have the physical and mental capacity to train but it really helps to have a low friction training universe. A good example of this is the Dartmouth Tri Club where there is an entire practice schedule and programming easily accessible every day and lots of peers to practice with. Then we people graduate, they have the same physical and mental skills to train but the relational part is no longer there and it can then be a struggle to find the same motivation to train.
Which is another way to say, we endorse Master swims, group rides and runs because they provide a relational part of your training program.
Main Content:
We did a “Lessons from 2023” episode early on in the podcast; now, we are hitting the 6-month mark of starting the podcast and the 6-month mark of 2024. Our goal is to share some bigger lessons we have learned from training, coaching, and podcasting in 2024.
Katie training lessons:
Back on my strength training soap box
What was different:
Progressive overload
Recovery/deload weeks
Fitness testing and benchmarking over time
What I felt:
Bigger breakthroughs in running especially, and same or better bike+swim with less volume than last year
Plan for the rest of the year:
A more dedicated strength building season in the late fall
Jim: You can never be too strong.
Fear of flying too close to the sun / Icarus moment
Minor crises averted with serious recovery
Thoughts on how to avoid:
If you feel like you’re having a training breakthrough, take a step back. You will eventually soar higher than you thought
Don’t mess around with recovery weeks
Example of me messing around last year with Strava reminders
Sleep and fuel are SO important
Jim: Always leave one interval, or bullet, in the chamber. Never do something today that will jeopardize tomorrow.
Swimming 2x per week -- “minimum effective dose”
One tech swim + one swim workout
Made possible by good strength training and other years where I have majorly prioritized swim. Need to earn this!
An example of me tapping into what I like and maintaining joy and balance; also being strategic about the demands of my race
Jim: great approach for experienced athletes. Emphasize the need to earn this. If you are a beginner triathlete and swimming is new, your 3X per week investment in pool time is worth it for a few years.
Changing up coaching
Drivers: we have a lot of overlap and our main joint focus right now is building the business; I have learned a ton from Jim and was interested in learning more and continuing to build our experiences
How do I do programming? I make my own plan, work with a strength trainer/ run coach + physical therapist in person who oversees plan and helps me manage overall load; use much of the framework and principles that Jim and I have used over the years
Works well as Jim and I can focus on the business and podcast while still of course collaborating on building out our strategy and workout library
Bigger point: mentorship is a journey! At a certain point the student becomes trained like the master, and then it’s exciting to branch out and see what else we can (both) learn
Jim: A coach's ultimate job is to train their athletes so they are not necessary. You want your athletes to be able to make their own decisions in the short and long term. One of my goals with athletes is when they leave The Endurance Drive structured training, they have the principles and tools to train themselves and even others.
Jim training lessons:
ZO / Z1 is legit
With this leg injury, I’m doing lots of Z0 / Z1 work to build back into fitness. While it may seem like this isn’t real training, it accumulates quickly and starts to make a significant impact over even just a few weeks.
Examples of Z0/Z1 you can do in your life:
Light, social bike or run with your family and/or dog.
Brisk walking, again even better with family and friends.
Regular walking throughout the day and especially after meals to help regulate insulin.
Snorkel only swimming, all technique focus
Big bike -> Big Fitness
Not particularly a new insight this year but coming back from injury and watching my new triathletes, I’m reminded that big bike volume, time in the saddle really forms the foundation for fitness.
If you want to achieve Big Fitness, there’s no better place to start and build a foundation like bike volume especially at Z1/Z2 watts. Ride your bike a lot!
More focus on mental health
For many years I was primarily managing my mental health through physical activity and in many ways that is still the case. Physical activity can be a great way to manage my surface stress and refresh the body and mind. However, this year I wanted to make a deeper change in thought patterns, behaviors and world views. With the help of a professional, I’ve started to work on unlocking and revealing my deeper inside. Instead of managing stress and mental health acutely through workouts, therapy has been a better tool for long term, sustainable change. It’s not always fun to dig deep but it’s been well worth the effort.
And I’ve seen a number of athletes take this same journey this year and am amazed by their growth, insights and enthusiastic mental energy. We are breaking through both physically and mentally!
Katie coaching lessons:
Identifying coaching values / participated in the Coaches Collective
My values: empathy, communication, attention to detail, enthusiasm
Values alignment = better mental health, life harmony, etc.
Mismatch between your values and what you are doing = messy
Have encouraged my athletes to identify their own values as athletes too → align athlete values and training approach (Joy? Community? Competitive spirit? etc.)
Managing athlete load
20 athletes this year; this is my max while also working full time something else to be able to provide a person first. Could probably go up to 40 if I were full time, but at a certain point you will inevitably lose what makes TED coaching so special
Gratitude for what coaching gives you
Can be a pretty close relationship
Exposure to people’s deep vulnerabilities, insecurities; their lives; seen athletes go through grief, trauma, heartbreak, loss, illness, injury, so much more. This is a huge privilege
Comes back to values alignment: communication, empathy
We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: fueling 70-90 g carbs per hour is MAGIC!
So fun to see athletes absolutely crushing it by prioritizing fueling
Jim coaching lessons:
Mental side of training is HUGE
In parallel with my own personal mental training journey, I’ve become fascinated with sports mental training. In the past, it’s been about building out the training library, Zwift workouts, collecting as much data and knowledge from mentors as possible. This is an integral and necessary step in becoming a coach. Part of coaching is loving the data, why a workout is effective and how to apply those workouts across a wide spectrum of athletes. But it’s one part of the equation!
This year, I’ve spent more time understanding the mental side of training more. Have just started this journey and feel like just starting scratching the surface.
Always searching for the minimum effective dose
Every athlete is super busy with work, family and community. Time is precious and limited. As a coach, I try to find what is the minimum we have to do in order to get a stimulus that is appropriate for their training and race goals. Less is more!
Greatest variety of athletes this year
This year I’ve had more athletes of more varieties than any other year. This is both challenging and exciting. It means having to really dig into everyone’s plan to meet them where they are and to be very flexible on a weekly basis.
A plug for The Endurance Drive: Our coaching staff is extremely knowledgeable, agile and adaptable. We are not locked into one plan, one approach. Because we have A LOT of experience with all levels of athletes, training and race distances, we have the desire and ability to work very individually.
Play is super important
Related to relational: This year, more than any other year, I’ve been encouraging athletes to join groups to train together. Those workouts may not be a perfect fit for a Zone 2 model but the community and joy aspects of working hard with other people outweighs any zone considerations.
The Endurance Drive Live
We have a twice monthly Zoom call with all coaches and athletes. This is a great opportunity to learn from other coaches and athletes. It’s informative to hear a variety of training and racing tactics and strategies. There is literally a brain trust of coaching and racing knowledge on these calls. If you are not being trained by The Endurance Drive, you should!
Katie podcasting lessons:
On vulnerability
Vulnerability is really powerful; inspires other people to be vulnerable; and can be scary but feels good too. “Sharing your story” can be as helpful for the person sharing as much as it is there to help other people
Being in the ‘public eye’
Surprises me when people I haven’t seen in a while say they feel like they are caught up on my life when I am not caught up on theirs -- hard to conceptualize how many people have my voice in their car or on their run in a given week even if we can see the raw numbers!
I would say I sometimes pay more attention to how I appear on Strava, Instagram etc.
Inevitable (self-inflicted) pressures to be perfect; to be authentic; to be palatable; etc.
But I always go back to the idea that authenticity is a good place to start, and we all need to decide what level of transparency we feel comfortable with; I also like to think that our podcast is not all about my own life and that people don’t really care!
The COMMUNITY!
Feel very attached to our listeners and so grateful that people actually think we have something useful to say and want to listen.
Makes my day when people reach out to say they love the podcast or when athletes mention principles/tips/tricks that we have just called out in passung.
Shout out to the 20 people that usually listen to new episodes that drop before 6am on a given Thursday!!
Jim podcasting lessons:
Many of the same as Katie’s insights:
It’s a little scary to be in the public eye, knowing literally millions of people can access your thoughts, perceptions, values, actions and knowledge.
Podcasting is a great way to organize your thoughts on a daily and weekly basis. I write something down nearly every day that pertains to coaching, lessons learned and new knowledge or insights. It’s way easier than a blog post and has a lot more reach and therefore effectiveness to spread our training principles, strategies and tactics. I am a much better coach having to organize my thoughts on a daily basis.
Podcasting has been a great way to spread the word about our coaching collective. Many new athletes come to us now having listened and are familiar with our training philosophy and are coming to us because it resonates with them.
Grateful for everyone who listens, provides feedback and encourages us. It feels like we, The Endurance Drive community, are on this journey together. Thank you!
Listener questions:
Hi I have a question about what the difference is between logging your power over a swim/bike/run workout versus logging heart rate? Why do some people use one over the other? Is it beneficial to use both, and how do you usually do that for each sport (swim/bike/run)? What do you prefer? Can a garmin watch do this?
Swim - primarily focus on technique, then pace and superior open water navigation skills.
Bike - mostly power if you have a powermeter. If not, HR works, too. And you should use power and HR in conjunction.
Run - mostly HR and pace based. We don’t use running power (but maybe we’ll change our minds in the future!)
What are those fancy cooling headbands that pros are wearing during races and should I wear them?
The pros are working on the last .01% gains. Almost all age groupers need to focus on the fundamentals, the big rocks and getting to the 99%.
Always focus on maximal gains: consistent training, good recovery, nutrition and be immune to triathlon marketing.
What is your process as a coach?? How do you make a plan and take into account all of the individual details of a person’s life to best support their training?
Katie: Relevant because a group of my athletes who are friends recently remarked that all of their plans are different even though they are training for the same race, and they were curious how I keep track of all of those individual variables.
- Jim: Coaching is art and science. As coaches we have dozens of tactics and strategies, and hundreds of workouts, to get people fit. But each individual has a unique capacity, skill set, background, physiology, race goal(s), etc. Holding all these variables, we ground in our training principles and use all of our acquired knowledge, tactics and strategies to craft an individual training plan.
Plans are like a Mozart composition: Changes can be made to the melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, or orchestration but the theme of the song, or in our case training principles, remains central.
Gear pick of the week: