Someday, 20-30 years from now, the next generation of endurance sport athletes, and non-athletes for that matter, will ask the million-dollar question: “What did you do during the COVID-19 Pandemic?”

The fall races have concluded and the ramp up for the next season has not yet begun. Athletes are enjoying their time off, catching up with friends and family, and perhaps enjoying the relaxed lifestyle a little bit too much. But once the new year comes, it’s time to get back on the horse and resume a structured training program. Unfortunately, for many of our athletes, this resumption coincides with less hospitable outdoor training conditions. Gone are the long, warm days, replaced by the short, cold, icy days. As a result, much of off-season training is done indoors. On the run, that means time on the treadmill. Many athletes dread the treadmill runs, so how do you keep your athletes motivated and best utilize the time indoors?

As a triathlete, a cyclist, a runner trying to achieve your goals, you are most likely very driven. Your competitive spirit is brimming over the top and that motivates you to train. Add in your job/career and your family and it’s clear how busy your life is. Add in the context of a culture that glorifies busyness and has made exhaustion a status symbol. Burnout and even resentment toward your sport of choice is a very real possibility. As someone who has been in endurance sports as an athlete and a coach for many years I have seen countless athletes come and go.

Perhaps you remember an opinion article written a few years ago in the New York Times titled “How The ‘Shalane Flanagan Effect’ Works.” Written by Lindsay Crouse, the story celebrated Flanagan’s 2017 NYC Marathon victory. It highlighted her ability to lead teammates within her squad for the betterment and enlightenment of herself and others, while embracing the message that success doesn’t necessarily mean that others need to lose for us to win. Our gain doesn’t have to be another’s pain; that “power in numbers” always trumps one’s own lonely rise to the top. This article sparked a wave of female empowerment of “women empowering women” and the infamous “%*K Yeah” moment of female success.

This past February I did a 3/20 test on the bike. For those non-QT2 folks reading this, that’s our version of an FTP test. In other words, ride really hard and see what kind of average power and heart rate you can produce.

We’ve all done it. We all fall into the trap. The summer months have arrived, and it takes every ounce of our being to not take to the open road, and launch into every workout full-blast, determined to sweat our hearts out in the summer sunshine. We do this willingly, visioning our dreams of completion, achievement, personal bests, and all the other race day feels. We want our friends on Strava, Garmin, and all forms of social media to see how fast we went. How strong we are. How far we went, how far we’ve come, how far we’ll go. But is it too much? Is it too hard? Will you reach that goal?

Running the Vermont 100 this summer? Or ANY hilly race for that matter? Read on to learn how to make the uphills (and more importantly downhills) your friends.

The concept of a massive over-distance day is nothing new to endurance athletes and something many do during their overload block of training for their key race (Ironman, ultra-marathon run or ultra-distance bike race like The Dirty Kanza 200). Personally, as an athlete and as a coach I am a big fan of this for multiple reasons I’ll explain here. There’s both an equal part physical training stimulus and a mental fitness stimulus. If one has never done an extreme endurance activity it’s kind of its own rite of passage if you will – the endurance athlete’s rite of passage.

Training for a race of any distance is a big commitment – you’re excited and ALL in. As weekly mileage starts to creep up, so should your focus on recovery strategies. These choices are nearly 100% within your control. The best athletes execute these techniques as consistently as workouts to improve personal performance, month to month and year over year. Recovery is just as critical as training.

Coach Tim Snow started out writing a blog post called The Butterfly Affect, which ended up turning into something much more complex, and lengthy. It turned into something that could not really be most effectively shared in a blog-type setting. But, we wanted to make sure that it was made available to you in the typical way that you access our written content. To that end, please see, below, three different links, all of which will allow you to access the writing, in three different forms.