Why Your Fitness Isn’t Leading to Better Race Results

If you are fit enough to finish the race, but not durable enough to keep training, eventually the cycle catches up with you.

You build fitness, make progress, start to believe things are working — and then something breaks down. Injury, inconsistency, burnout, lost motivation, or another restart from square one.

In this episode, we break down the difference between fitness and durability, why chasing performance too aggressively can keep athletes stuck, and what it actually takes to build a foundation that supports repeatable progress.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why fitness and durability are not the same thing
• How the “rebuild cycle” keeps endurance athletes from long-term progress
• Why more intensity is often the wrong solution
• How strength, frequency, recovery, and patience create sustainable performance

Timestamps:

00:00 — Introduction to fitness vs durability
01:29 — Why run frequency sparked this conversation
04:39 — The limits of three-day-a-week training
08:43 — Why early performance gains do not last forever
16:03 — Fitness for completion vs durability for performance
21:00 — The rebuild cycle and why athletes get stuck
27:51 — Why cookie-cutter plans do not work for everyone
33:16 — Fitness is capacity; durability is replicability
43:28 — How to start building durability
52:30 — Adding frequency without overloading the body
1:04:54 — The danger of validating every workout
1:12:47 — Playing the long game in endurance training

If this episode helped you understand why your training keeps breaking down, share it with another runner, triathlete, or endurance athlete who may need to hear it.

You can also join The Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast Group on Facebook to continue the conversation and connect with other endurance athletes working through the same challenges.

If you are tired of guessing your way through training, Coach Justin and Coach Katie are both active coaches accepting athletes.

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Join us as we dive into the world of endurance sports, exploring everything from nutrition to training and how these elements shape your everyday life, both on and off the race course. Hosted by Coach Justin, certified run and triathlon coach and owner of Tabula Rasta Racing, along with Coach Katie, a registered dietitian specializing in sports nutrition and owner of Fuel to Run. We're here to share insights and real-world advice to help you thrive on your journey. Here at the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast is where your journey begins.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

This is Coach Katie. This is episode 93. I am intro in this episode because we had a little bit of technical difficulties, and some of the episode intro that we originally recorded got cut off. So welcome. And I wanted to dive right in. This episode is going to be on the topic of fitness versus durability. So this is episode 93, and we're going to dive right in.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

This is a particular topic that I have seen a lot of discussion on recently. We posted a reel on our Instagram feed uh probably about a couple weeks ago now, and it went absolutely viral. It it shot up. It was one of our highest performing uh reels to date. And there was a lot of commentary that was going on on this idea of run frequency. Um, you know, where the reel was about if you're running three days a week or less, you're really kind of either you're maintaining you're just the status quo kind of run. If you wanted to see actual improvement, whether that means in performance or durability, you really have to run more than you're not running. So at least a minimum of four days. There was a lot of conversation that was going on. It's like, okay, well, yeah, you can make performance gains running three days a week. But the idea that was behind this reel was it's not just gains in performance. You know, can I get faster or can I run longer? Sure. That those are still possibilities depending on where you are in your journey. If you're just coming off the couch and you're gonna run three days a week, sure, you're going to see gains in both endurance and performance. But the real question becomes the run frequency is going to impact your ability to be durable, to build what we call durability. And the reason that we want durability is because we have seen with working through athletes in our own endurance journey that durability is what allows us to be consistent. And performance comes from consistency. Now, when I say performance, I'm talking about sustained performance, not that, oh, I could go out and I could run, you know, a four-minute mile, and then once you achieve that, you stop and you're never able to replicate it. What we want is we want sustained performance over time, and that comes from being consistent. And the ability to become consistent comes from your ability to be durable, to build this durability, a sound uh foundation in which you can overlay performance on top of. Because if you try to overlay performance on a cracked foundation, what you're going to get is you're going to get increased risk uh of injury and setbacks and this constant rebuild cycle, which I've talked about before, where you're starting to ramp up and then all of a sudden you get a setback. And so now you got to start over again. And this cycle will perpetuate itself until you find a way to become durable. And that is many times that is outside of the training plan. So we wanted to come to you this week with a more in-depth conversation on what does it mean to be fit and to have fitness versus what does it mean to be durable? So uh this is like I said, this is episode 93, so we're gonna jump right on in. So, Katie, you want to go ahead and uh let's let share some of your thoughts on on starting this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah, I think like going back to that commentary about frequency, uh you know, I I do agree that like somebody brand new to running can probably get maybe more fit or improve or have progress with just three days a week of running. Like I think sometimes with these reels or just a general, like there's a lot more nuance to things. It's not always like this is the rule for every single person. But I I agree, I think like beyond um maybe just the initial improvement, like I was sort of saying it off air, like there's only so much in those three days that you can like once you kind of get to a point in your fitness or in your journey, there's only so much you can kind of add on to three days of running. Like you could maybe have one day be like a longer run and you gradually progress that, but maybe one day or the other days are kind of some sort of workout, maybe, but at some point you have only so much you can do within those days. Um, and so many things you can kind of tweak before you sort of run out of run out of runway, I guess. And so it almost becomes a natural progression to be have to add an additional day or two. And that's I think where the durability comes in, because I do think some some of that, you know, you can do a long run and a couple hard workouts, but I think it's the little things like some of the easier runs in between that, you know, the the strength training we'll talk about, but those those little things that kind of you do in between the add, you know, the added things that aren't necessarily like another workout that help you to become a little bit more durable. And then the durability in turn will help you be able to continue progressing. Because, like you said, if you're just doing working on just becoming more fit, um, I think the risk of injury is is higher, or you're just it's not it, you're just not able to kind of continue to progress. So that's kind of my my thoughts on that. I think a lot of people want to believe that three days a week or two days a week is enough to continue to make progress because they want sort of the easy way out. Like, oh, it's that's easy, you know. It's nice to be able to only do three days and actually feel like you're going to make some kind of progress. But I'm here to tell you that over some point in time, you're just not going to be able to continue to progress with just three days a week. I've been running for 30 years. Like I've trained a lot of people, I've worked with a lot of runners, like you just aren't. And I'm sorry, there's no easy way out, easy way to get, like we've talked about before. There's maybe a ways to kind of emo like temporarily improve fitness. But when it comes to like the long run and and make and making progress year over year and improving year over year, or you know, month over month, like you're just gonna run out of the ability to do that with just three days. And so there's yeah, it takes it takes work. Can't there's no easy, like this is the formula for the easy way. And I think unfortunately, people want that. So they're gonna like probably argue, oh, we can do this in two or three days, and I'm here to tell you um of lots of experience because those are probably newer runners or people who aren't maybe as experienced in running that are saying that, um, it's just not gonna be possible to continue to get better year over year. You should you prove to me that you can do that, and I'll maybe like look at that. But um, you know, just to be kind of real with people, it's just yeah, there's no easy, easy way to only run three days a week and and get better and or you know, you're just not gonna be able to get more durable and then over time you're just you're gonna your progress is gonna slow. So that's kind of where I think my thoughts go. Um, I don't know if you have any other like thoughts on that frequency piece particular. I mean, we can kind of move on from there too, but yeah, your thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah, I do. Uh I I see this a lot when I'm working with with new athletes. And let's say that I'm working with someone who is going to run their first 10K and they're kind of coming off of the couch. So really, there's no uh there's no benchmark that we have to evaluate performance. Performance is just going to be evaluated based on did you meet or exceed or fall short of the expectations that you had when you went in to the race. So let's say that you run your first 10K and you get it in, you know, whatever time it is, then you say, Oh, that was really, really good. Uh, I'm going to continue the same training plan, the same intensity mixture and everything else. And you go and run your second 10K, it is very possible to see a big jump in performance, a big decline in your race time. And so you start to think that these types of gains are linear, that if you just continue to use the same method, that you're always going to see these big jumps in performance. But there comes a time, like you said, where you've now exhausted what I call the the newbie performance gains, where you're not going to see that kind of marginal change in race over race. And so it's going to take more and more focused effort in the training in order to generate smaller and smaller performance gains. If that were the case, then we would see Olympians making still these huge gains, but they train for years to just shave off seconds of their run times. And so that proves to you that this is not a linear process. So in order to be able to stack on either more intensity or more volume, you have to become more durable. And what I find with these athletes is that they seem to think that, oh, I'm just going to continue to run at the same frequency. But if I want to get faster, now I'm going to throw on a track Tuesday and all this kind of stuff. And then what they're doing is they load up the intensity, thinking that that's going to make them faster and lead to higher performance gains, but they don't have the durability and the muscles and the tendons and joints and everything else to sustain that kind of impact. And what happens is they get hurt like during their training plan. They're just like, oh, well, you know, now I either uh I can't run any more days because when I ran this number of days, I got hurt. Well, it's not a fact that you it's not the factors that I can only run these number of days. How long and what intensity mixture were those runs? If we can distribute that load over more runs, then chances are the body has a chance to absorb that impact and that stress. So can you run three days a week at high volume and high intensity and not get hurt? I I I I don't know. Genetics plays a really big factor in in that kind of ability for the body to absorb it. But in my experience, no. In my experience too, it's like then volume over.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Like, are you just gonna continue to load each of those days to get better? Like as you start to realize that your progress is now tapering off and plateauing, like how are you, you know, even if you can handle that genetically, I just think there's, you know, there's a limitation to it um at some point to how much you can kind of load those three days to actually like improve. Um, you know, I feel like if you're just and this is where I think it's the difference, you have to kind of think about your goal too, the difference between maybe just wanting to maintain fitness um because you're just uh you don't really care about your performance, but you just want to be generally a healthy, fit person. Because Justin, you sort of brought up this example too of like the sort of typical weekend warrior, the person doing like a lot on like Saturday, Sunday, and then maybe not very much during the week. That also isn't gonna get you very far because you can only load up the weekend so much. And um, you know, then you have all these five days where maybe you're not doing much and then your body's kind of like you're just it's just not kind of enough of a stimulus. It's a lot of stimulus all at once, and then several days of nothing or very little like running or something like that. But that's fine. I mean, if somebody likes to be able to, maybe they have a really busy week and they just want to be able to get out there on the weekend and do some cool stuff and they want to sort of maintain their fitness, um, and that they just enjoy that and they're not really looking to progress or get faster, maybe that works for them. But if they're if someone's sort of arguing that they can do that and and continue to like progress and I don't know, be able to do a race or something, I just don't think we may and actually have a have some sort of outcome that, you know, improvement. I just don't think that's possible. So I think the discussion then also is like, well, what is your goal? Is if you just want to main, you know, be kind of a fit person and maintain fitness and be able to kind of do a bunch of stuff, like maybe you lift in between or you run and you do other things and you just kind of want to be generally fit, like, or generally kind of just be able to jump into anything and do it, you know, maybe just jump into a race and be able to complete it. Like that's one goal, and that I think you can do off of maybe two to three days a week. Um, but is your goal to like, I don't know, especially I think of the duration of the race probably also matters a little bit. Like I'm thinking like a mile race or something. I don't, you might be able to do like a three days a week and train and be able to do a fast mile. It might depend on what you're doing in between. But as the race gets longer, like a marathon, there's no way, I mean, yes, for your very first marathon, if you're training and you're just completing a marathon, you can do that maybe off of three days a week. You might be able to complete it. But at some point, like you just cannot get better in that particular race type of race without adding in more days or volume or um, and then spreading it out a little bit throughout the week because then you do run into the issue of injury because you're loading each day so much. You you know, you can only add so much volume to each individual day. So you kind of have to add more days to kind of spread out the load a little bit. So I also think it depends a little bit too, but you know, on the the race, the particular goal someone has, uh, you know, those those types of factors. But I think in general, for most people who are trying to progress in a faster time or they have a goal where they just, yeah, they want to you most people, most people who train are training for like a time goal, unless it's maybe like an ultra marathon or something where it's a little bit less of depending on the type of ultra marathon, you know, like that's more about completing the distance and and the all of the factors that come into that. But for most, you know, triathlons road races, people are trying to get faster, right? Like most of us are trying to out hit a time goal or a PR or PB or whatever we want to call it. So I think in that instance, yeah, durability matters a lot. And also like it's hard to build durability and and kind of get progress and get better with only two or three days a week of running.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

So I want to make I want to make this statement and see what you see what you think about it. I think this is this is a great illustration of the difference between fitness and durability. Because if we go into a race with just the the expectation or the goal of completing a race, really what uh that says to me is that we are just looking to gain enough fitness to complete it within whatever time constraints are present. I mean, there are cutoffs for for races and things like that. So all that we're interested in is we're looking for completion within a uh a max time. To me, that is more of okay, let's build fitness in order to meet this goal. Now, you come to me and you say, I want to finish this race in this time with this type of performance expectation that is sometime below the cutoff. I want to run this at a particular pace, I want to be able to run this uh in its entirety without any kind of walking intervals, I want to uh you know swim this course with this kind of pace, or I want to hold this kind of sustained power during a bike segment. To me, that is where we start talking about performance-related issues. And you can only get performance-related issues if you have the durability to uh to absorb and sustain the training to get the performance. With that, without that, you you can't see the performance, you can't realize it. Or it's more it's going to be more of a a luck of the day, which has to be kind of like because I feel like when people have um more when they're not durable, they're gonna have tend to have more setbacks.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Or I mean generally fitness and and progress is never it like we said it already, it's not linear, but it's not it's kind of up and down and up and down, it kind of looks more maybe like this instead of but people are gonna have a lot more like ups and downs, and you know, like at the to get to where they want to go, it's gonna, you know, where somebody else who is a little more durable maybe would have an occasional sort of setback, but because they're consistently training, even in between, and we'll talk about this a little bit, but even between between their training plans for the race, they're still like consistently putting in work, they're just gonna be able to kind of get there, even with the ups and downs. It may look a little bit like this, but they'll get there faster. Whereas somebody who has less durability, maybe like they kind of make some gains and then they like go back almost to square one and then they gotta, you know, and it's never just taking them forever to kind of get where they then they'll never really realize maybe what they're what they're truly capable of or what what they would have been truly able to do because they can never kind of get get there.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

You know, like they just can never, yeah, they're always rebuilding.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

They're always yeah, they're whether it's a setback, like a an injury, or it's something like, oh, I've completed my training plan and now I'm gonna take three weeks, three months, or whatever it is, like three weeks, three months, whatever, completely off for very minimum. And then or they're like, I see this a lot where people they do like their fall race and then they're like, okay, I'm gonna do a spring marathon. But in between, like the training plan, when the fall race ends, and then then the next training plan begins, there's like very little training actually happening and they're losing a ton of fitness in this time and then and you know, durability, but they're losing a lot of what they built, and then they literally are starting from almost square one, you know, back the beginning and building up again. Whereas if they had, and we'll we'll talk about this a little bit, but it's like, well, if they'd had the consistency in between, even if they weren't doing a whole lot of intensity or following in a progressive training plan, but they were just consistently running during that time and maybe doing little things here and there to maintain some fitness, sure, they would have maybe lost a little bit of what they had, but it wouldn't have been as much. And then when they started the next training plan, they would have been ahead, you know, ahead of somebody else who maybe taken that time off. So I think that's yeah, and I I think that's something you mentioned. So I don't know if you want to kind of follow up on that with some more thoughts too.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

But I think I I want to I want to dial in this this idea of performance that I'm that I've been talking about. Great and the difference between fitness and performance, and a prerequisite to performance is durability and consistency. Um now when I say performance, I mean sustained performance, not one-off performance. So it's not that we finished the race and we performed at a certain level, and you're just like, okay, great, I got that. Well, my question to you then becomes well, then what are your expectations for the next one? Uh do you expect to now start from square zero and you completely disregard the performance that you had before? Or do you expect to become better, whether that means faster or stronger than you were in the one that you just completed? Well, in order to build on that experience, that's where this durability comes into play. But if you're just talking about one-off performance here and there, then yeah, then there's really no difference between fitness and durability because the performance is it's uh it's like I said, it's a one-off thing. So it's it's not this building process where we're we're building off of the previous one. So and your diagram that that you alluded to, you know, if you look at it in terms of a line graph, a person with durability is going to have an upward trend in that line over time. The it's not linear and it's not smooth, like you said. So it goes up and down. Yeah. And sometimes there's a reversion, so it goes back a little bit and then goes forward up. But over time, in general, there's an upward slope or an upward trajectory of this performance. Now, somebody who has low durability, and whatever the reason for that is, um the trend that you see is a lot less pronounced. Um, it may be actually just a flat line where they're just almost maintaining, but there's so much volatility in that big ups and big downs and these huge swings. And what I found is that just leads to frustration and burnout. And eventually the person is just not going to enjoy that process because they're going to constantly feel like, oh, I'm always starting from starting over. I always have to go back. I can never build on what I've already gained and built. And there's this that whole rebuild cycle, and it's really, really frustrating, and it just leaves most of the time. You just you just quit and you just find something else to do.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

I think you're kind of referring to somebody that's um like another example, like just there's one example of people who kind of do the training plan and then maybe lose motivation. And then there's the other example of the people who really want to continue to train, but kind of they they understand what we're saying, but they for for some reason are just more susceptible to like injury, or they're um maybe there's just something they're not quite getting right in their training, the way they're thinking about the training plan, or it's not necessarily their fault, but they're keep kind of having these like more significant setbacks, you know, where they maybe they maybe somebody does actually want to be durable or or not make progress over time, but they just keep getting this nagging injury or something like that that's kind of bringing them down and forcing them to take time off and start from square one. And I think that's really where the burnout probably happens for a a lot of people because injury is so prevalent in endurance sports. Um, and I think that's kind of where maybe, you know, having that discussion of we'll we'll kind of talk about like how how to think about durability and building it and where people kind of get it wrong a little bit. But I think that's probably more the case is and maybe also why people kind of um I think a lot of people like the argument is uh like you've kind of alluded to this, uh if I run more than three days a week, I'll get inju injured because maybe in the past they have followed a training plan that was five or six days a week or something, or they've that that's their experience is having done these training plans that maybe they found online or they they've just been following and it's um that because they don't have the durability, they they following the the training plan and um and it's and they're getting injured. And so they're then for their perception is I can only if I run any more than three or four days a week, I'm going to get injured. And then maybe somebody's coming out with us with that sort of um, I don't know, argument. And I think that's could be, you know, potentially valid, but I think it's probably because there's something within the training that the way that they've um gone about the training plans in the past, uh, with like this consistently, yeah, like progressive overload, which does, yes, technically that is sort of the way to build training plans, but for somebody who's very susceptible to injury, they that person may have to kind of go about things a little bit differently. And sometimes following those standard training plans isn't just gonna work for them because they might have to be a little bit more patient with how they're building and getting in the consistency. They might not, you know, whereas a more genetically gifted person are there's people who are just able to tolerate a little bit more and build volume quicker, and they just tend to be able to absorb that better and not get injured. And and unfortunately, there are both types of people. So some people might be like, hey, I'm just durable, you know, from the get-go. I was always able to do it. And then there are people that are just more susceptible to injury. So I think there's a difference between those two types, as somebody who's maybe just genetically able or just because of their biomechanics or whatever is going on with them, they're able to handle more. They're able to kind of do those types of training plans and have good progress over time. And so I think it gets frustrating for those other individuals that are just more susceptible to setbacks and injury because they're seeing that, you know, somebody else is progressing and they're on a, you know, a standard training plan. And they're like, why can't I do that? So I think there's I think that's kind of also where some of that pushback comes in. Like, oh, if I do run more than this amount, I get injured. I think it's just more likely the way people are going about the training, is not the frequency so much as maybe the way that they're setting up their training plan and their expectations that they have to be able to have similar results to maybe somebody else who just happens to be more durable, maybe because they do have meta genetics or better biomechanics, or someone like me, I think just been running I've been running for so long. I might have more durability naturally, but I've also been running for a long time and um I've built it over time. So if somebody's looking at what I'm doing and thinking, oh, I need to set my training plan up like that, like somebody who maybe doesn't have the durability will probably get injured more frequently, you know, or or have more issues. So I think that that's you know something I want to mention as well, kind of bring into the discussion.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Yeah, absolutely agree because if if and we are a good example of that, because if I tried to follow your training plan, there's no way that I would be able to sustain that kind of volume. I don't have the durability that you have. So uh if I if I were to see you know your performance and follow whatever plan that you are, does the plan work? Yeah, it works for you and your characteristics and your durability, but it it's not plug and play. So it's not like I can just go in and say, okay, that worked for her. I'm going to use that plan. You know, I'd be hurt in just a matter of a couple weeks. I just don't, I don't have that ability, even though I consider both of us to be fit and but I don't have the same level of durability in that particular sport that that you do. So that I think that's one of those these things where you find these training plans online and they're just kind of template cookie-cutter plans. And you know, yeah, does it work for you know a certain segment of the population? Yeah. And that's why these coaches are using these plans and they're trying to sell these plans. It's like, oh, I've had big success with all these athletes, but that is a fairly small segment of the population that can actually sustain that type of approach. It doesn't work for everybody, which is why I don't I don't really support that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Yeah, it takes a skilled person to be able to take a like somebody who's uh has a lot of experience in running, for instance, or just training to be able to take a cookie, kind of a cookie cutter plan that's online and be able to like tailor it to the themselves and know themselves well enough to be like, well, you know, I know once I get past this volume, I can't really um maintain that. So I'm only gonna do uh this or or I need to take a cutback week more often where I kind of have a D-load week, or you know, just knowing that or knowing when when you're start starting to see that maybe that training plan is too much and being able to kind of like make an adjustment that takes a lot of experience. A lot of people don't have that, and they they they're like, I've gotta follow this plan, you know, they have a plan and they're like, I've got to follow it to the T because a lot of us are also like perfectionists a little bit, or we will we have something we're set out to do, we don't want to fail at it. So I think that also kind of gets in our way a little bit. Um, and also like mentioning that training plan, I think like most training plans, there is like that progressive overlet. So like the the training progresses either in um intensity or volume, kind of somehow week over week. And then there is usually some training plans do have some delo weeks, or they have like a taper week or two before the race. And um, but I also think if you're if you're more injury prone, um I'm not sure I'm trying to think of like how you would still be able to utilize a plan like that, but I think like you're gonna you're lead into it, you're just gonna have to be like I wouldn't choose a plan if you have, let's say, a marathon in the fall, like you probably actually want to start thinking about how you're gonna like lead into that marathon like now. Like it let's say you have Chicago, like you need to be doing a plan of some sort that starts like some sort of very um small progression, you know, it might be like foundational, foundational, like, but also like the progression may be slower, like that 10% rule may not really work for you. So it's probably best, honestly, if you're starting that training plan now, May. Because then you have May, May, June, July, August, September. That gives you like five months to slowly build um and you know, maybe yeah, have some really easy runs, foundations before you, you know, maybe build your volume up before you add any intensity and like kind of being really careful with it versus I think sometimes people they're like, my race, it's not till October. They kind of kick the can down a little bit. Maybe they're still running a little bit, but you know, you kind of for something like that sort of type of race, you really do need to like be thinking about it much, much more in advance. And really, like for a fall marathon, you should be starting now, honestly. So I think it's also just the way kind of people approach it, because there are a lot of like 12, even I've seen eight-week training plans or 12 weeks, or but I would caution sort of against that too, because I think those types of training plans tend to be a little bit more aggressive. And for somebody who is a little bit more susceptible to setbacks or doesn't seem to have the durability, um, or even just like another suggestion might be is to actually focus a bit more on have almost like a real focus of durability instead of like designing up for something, but just giving your time like, okay, I'm gonna really focus on becoming more durable for a while. That doesn't mean you don't do races, but maybe you're just understanding that the races you're maybe not gonna have the time, your your time may not get that much improved, but you're actually just focusing on a period of time where you work on your durability and then kind of go into, you know, another race to see if if that helps, you know. So actually, like this is a focus. And and we'll talk a little bit how to do that, but that's another anyways, two a couple more thoughts. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

So I I think if we had to come up with a pretty pretty solid definitional difference between what fitness and durability is, we could say that fitness is your your cardiovascular metabolic or structural uh muscular endurance, that capacity, so it's going to be how fast you can run or how far that you can run. Durability is replicability. How often can I replicate that performance over time? I think that that is a pretty solid way to look at the difference between when we talk about fitness versus durability is okay, it's not on how fast and how far I can run, it's how often can I repeat that performance over time. That's what durability is.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Um, so uh we'll progress this. So we've talked a little bit about maybe improper training plans, and this is where athletes start to really get kind of make these mistakes within within their process. Um I would completely agree with you that I I think that there is this tendency to just jump from training plan to training plan. And really what I find to be the most important aspect is that time between training plans. You know, it's it's definitely something that I've been toying with myself this year, um, based on my experience that I had last year with with Florida and just the memorable experience that I had, despite the training actually going really, really well. I found that, you know, I had an expectation or a goal that I wanted to do another full Iron Man by the time I turned 50. Well, I turned 49 this year, and I don't I don't see an Iron Man uh in the next 12 months because I've quickly realized that I s I still don't have the durability that I need or want in order to perform based on my expectations. Could I could I survive one? Yeah, but I don't want to just survive, I want to perform. Um it's too big of a deal to just say, oh, I survived it and I I finished. That's that's not what I want for myself. So this year I had to kind of take a step back and say, uh, I'm not going to do another 70.3 this year, even though I really, really want to. My ego says, Well, you did you did a 70.3 last year, you survived it, you're getting back, so let's keep let's keep pushing forward, let's continue to push, push, push. But I know that there's going to come a time where I just push too much, and it takes me over the over the edge. And I I don't I I have to find a way to break this rebuild cycle. And the reason that I came up with this this idea of this rebuild, this, this perpetual uh ramp up injury, PT recovery, start back over again. And it's because I've lived it. I've lived it over the past several years of every time I try and rebuild my run, I get to the point where I'm really happy with it, and then something happens, and then I have to take a step back again. And it's really just frustrating because I know that I'm capable to do this. So I really had to take a step back and take off my athlete hat and put on my coaching hat and say, if I were this person's coach, what would I tell them? And I'm talking to myself here, what would I tell myself if I were the coach? Because I am. And what I had to tell myself is like, look, you don't have the durability to do this based on the expectations that you have for yourself and the performance that you want from this process. Could you survive it? Yes, but it's not meeting your expectations, and you know, it's suffering. So, what are we going to do about it? Well, what we're doing about it is we're now sacrificing the now in order to have a chance to go after it in the future. And that is a hard, hard pill to swallow uh as an endurance athlete. You know, that means that really this year I have to find a way to sustain a minimum of four runs a week and do that in order to build that durability to go into the next training cycle, not hoping that I can maintain four runs a week, but knowing that I can. That's a that it's really, really hard to do because I'm an A-type personality and I want to see progression and I want to see growth. And sometimes it's hard to take a step back and say, I'm just not getting what it is that I want out of this. I'm not giving up, but I need to delay this process and find a way to lay a better foundation so that I can build on top of it. Because right now I don't have I don't have that. And what we find is that these athletes will go from training plan to training plan, and once they finish one, it's like they're they're done. And they just kind of they start either doing stuff that they want to do and stuff that they sacrificed, which I completely understand. And I encourage my athletes to do that as well. You know, once we finish a big race, let's let's kind of deload a little bit. I know there's stuff that you wanted to do that we didn't have the time in the training plan to do, so let's spend the next two to three weeks doing that kind of stuff, but we're going to stay active. But we have to put a limit on it because we have to start laying the foundation again for the next cycle so that we're not starting this training plan actually further behind than where we were when we finished the last one. We really want to try and maintain where we left off to go into the next one so that you can build on what you accumulated before.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to like maintain volume. No, you're you're you're decreasing the volume to a point where you you're kind of in maintenance mode, right? So for me as an example, if my back's volume is like for a marathon is like 70 miles a week, I'm I might be uh cutting back to like 30 or 40 a week during my maintenance phase, but I also like there's other things I'm also doing to maintain durability, which we'll talk about, which is like at that point I might be decreasing my volume of running, but I'm doing more strength training or other activities like some sort of cross-training or something to kind of maybe work on uh weakness, which or build back up strength, which I lose during, you know, so certain things like that, there's like a different focus. But my focus does, I think, you know, I've never really thought about this in this way, but my focus during that time in between is just to maintain or build on my durability so that I get to the next, you know, start of my next training, you know, cycle for the next race or whatever I'm doing kind of already fairly durable. I I I could build on it again. And I may not at this point in my time, I may not be going much past that particular volume. I'm not maybe always building on that, you know, 70 miles a week and going above and beyond that. But there's other things I'm doing, you know, to get faster. Um and also maybe even in that in-between time, I'm working on speed or certain things that are just gonna like be making my durability or just general um foundational things that I'm doing. But um, yeah, I'm not like, well, I've done with my training. Now I'm gonna just take the next three months almost completely off because I have all these other things I need to do. Like it's always a part of my life, the training, but I have less, like far more time to do stuff. I just have to keep up, you know, you have to kind of think about it that way. But yeah, I agree with you. It's it's I don't know, sometimes I think it's that, or sometimes I think like I mentioned before, it's people truly getting injured and having to start from square one. And then when they're ready to, when they're not their injuries no longer, they then pick a new training plan, right?

unknown 41:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

And they haven't thought about what you're thinking about of like, um, I actually want to do this and finish it, but not just finish it, but I want to be able to do this and like do it well. Um, I think especially if someone's injury prone, the last thing I would recommend somebody do is just like pick up a another training plan once their injury goes away and just start all over again with a new training plan. It's almost like a recipe for repeating the same, you know what I mean? Like instead do exact kind of what you're thinking of of like, okay, what do I need to actually do to sort of build this this durability so that when I do start a training plan again, um I can actually complete the training plan, you know, I can actually not get injured, I can do the whole training plan, or maybe they're maybe thinking about being smarter about the training plan, but they're they're able to actually like do it, complete it. Um, versus I think that's the other thing is like that injury cycle, I think happens a lot because somebody just takes takes the time off to to heal an injury and then they're jumping right back into another training plan that they haven't actually thought out, well, why did I get the injury in the first place? You know, and it's probably is something to do with, you know, there's probably who knows. I mean, it's every injury is different and what the cause of it is, but sometimes it could be just that lack of um durability uh that they have that they could probably work on. So that's my other thought too, is yeah, yeah. So um, what do you think? Like, I think we talked a lot about you know, that background of like what's durability versus fitness. I'm curious, like we sort of alluded to it, but the building of the durability, like I don't know, where what if you have an athlete that comes to you and they're like, I want to really work on my durability. I want to be a better, I want to have a better foundation so that I can build from there. Like, how would you sort of go about like creating something or working with that person to help them?

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Yeah, so I I think that the first step that I would go through with that athlete is I would have to start from the the strength side of it. So do some kind of evaluation on their mobility and and muscular endurance and strength. Uh to me that's the foundation that we have to have in order to overlay the aerobic component on it in in order to be uh consistent. So what I would typically do is give the person a very minimal uh plan aerobic plan so let's say if I'm let's just for simplification let's just say I'm dealing I'm training a runner um because it's it's easier to talk about than training a triathlete because there's too many moving parts but let's just say I'm working with a runner and uh I would say let's just say that this runner comes to me and says you know hey I I'm running I'm already running like two to three times a week uh and I want to work on durability so that I can run four to five times a week. What do I do? Well what I would the way that I would approach it is I would still keep their same run volume right now. I wouldn't change a thing when it comes to that. So if they're running three days a week we keep those three days a week I may evaluate uh how they've been running those three days a week uh if they're overloading those three days and they're running too much in a single session that's where I would start uh and reset and say you know this is why you can't run for five days a week is because you're running too much three days a week. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut this back uh let's say 75 to to 75% of what it is that you're doing. So we're gonna remove 25% of your of your total run volume from the plan right now. And then use that either either replace that 25% with a little bit of cross training or something so that you can still get a little bit of an elevated heart rate but remove the impact. But then a lot the bigger part of the training plan is going to be the strength side. And I'm not just gonna have them just go in and just say okay we're doing push push days we're doing pull days and we're doing some some legs. So when I mean by push days these are things where it's like we're talking about you know chest and and triceps pull days are going to be back and biceps so you know and then the legs what I what I may do is I would probably focus on areas that I know are going to be weaker that are relevant to the sport that they are interested in doing. I think that there is a gener a benefit to just general overall fitness and strength. Yes I think that that is a a valuable piece. I think that that comes more into play in those periods between training plans than it does actually within a structure training plan for a particular event. If we're just gonna work on just building overall strength that's when we reserve uh the time for that but if we're in a in an active plan where we're training for a particular event I'm going to focus on those strength movements that are pertinent to their sport. So a lot of the time that I'm gonna have them focus on is building their glutes and their calves. Those tend to be the two weakest parts uh that a typical runner who would come to me and it's like I'm I'm struggling that's where we see the most weakness. So you know it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to spend a whole lot of time in the weight room but we will do uh some strength because I'm not going to require them to to join a gym if if they don't have that kind of access but there are things that we can do outside of the gym that will still uh replicate it. It doesn't necessarily it's not a perfect substitute but I think that there are some reasonable gains that we can make using that approach. So we're talking about uh glute bridges hip thrusts um some some banded uh like banded clams and things like that that will improve the engagement of the glutes and hips uh because really what we find is that if if I have somebody coming to me saying my rim my knees really hurt well a lot of the time it's not a structural problem with the knee unless they come to me is like hey I have a torn meniscus that's why my knee hurts. Okay, well yes then you have a problem with the knee. But if they're running and they say my knees hurt then really my first place that I go to is I want to see you run and I want to look at the way that the glutes are engaging while they run while they run. And most of the time what I find is that there's an asymmetry in glute engagement. So one glute doesn't fire like the other one does which is why you have this imbalance in your gait and which why you know maybe one knee hurts but the other one doesn't that's the reason why it's something that's further up the chain and it presents somewhere else what I also find is that uh people who run a lot on the treadmill and I'm susceptible to this as well because I absolutely love the treadmill and then they have a race that they want to do that's not on a treadmill it's going to be outside on the road when they start to say well I need to get off the treadmill and I need to run the road because my race is on the road and then they come to me as like man my ankles are absolutely killing me. I can't figure this out and what's going on is the treadmills are flat but when you run on the road no road is flat the way that they they design roads is that they're cambered in order for for drainage so that water doesn't pool up on the road. But what it may be just a very very slight angle that you may not even perceive it but there is some angle there. So every time that foot makes contact with the ground it's making it an angle so it's not flat. And so when you lack that strength in in your in your ankles that repetitive motion is what causes the stress and that's what's going to cause things like Achilles tendonitis. It's gonna cause things like posterior tibial tendonitis and anterior tibial tendonitis any kind of uh structural weakness in that ankle and so we're gonna do things like banded angle mob ankle mobility so we put a band around the feet and we and we push our feet outward and then we move the band and then we do them inward. We'll do dorsiflexion and uh reverse like calf press in order to strengthen the shins. So we work on a lot of ankle mobility and ankle strength and then glute glute strength. Those are the two things that I would recommend most runners to focus on on a consistent basis even while they're running. They just have to be cautious cautious about the intensity in which they do train those muscles if they are in like a peak phase of their training plan. So if their volume is really really high or they've got a lot of intensity because they've now entered into the race specificity phase of a training plan, then you might need to cut back on the intensity in which you train those muscles in the weight room but during the build phase absolutely you can still continue to work on that strength. You have to be again you have to be careful on where it is that you place them within training plans. You don't want to put them you know the day before a long run or the day before you know a quality session or on the same day of a quality session. You know if you want to do lower body work then you can do it on a day where you have a nice easy recovery run. And I would do the run first rather than uh doing the weights first. So if I have an athlete that comes to me and says you know hey I want to work on durability that's how we approach it. We will most likely decrease the run volume replace it with maybe a little bit of cross training and really focus on that strength. And as we start to build then I will slowly introduce more volume on on the run side. And what I would do is rather than make those run sessions longer, I would introduce that fourth day before I would increase the duration of the workouts themselves. So I may keep the volume constant in terms of minutes or miles, but increase the frequency. But that's going to mean that when I add that fourth day I have to decrease the duration or miles of the existing three days that we had let's say that we had uh we were running three days a week and we had a total of 15 miles that we ran for a week. So that means that each run was a five mile run. In order to introduce that fourth day I don't want to now just add another five mile run because that's going to overload the body. Now I've increased weekly volume too much. What I will do is rather than have them run five miles for those three sessions, I would drop it down to let's say three miles per session and then use that volume that I cut out and that's how I would add that fourth day. And once we establish that fourth day we then cover that for actually a few weeks uh if if we're not short on time, um I know that that tends to be kind of a limiter you know if we're coming in to to a particular race and we just don't have a whole lot of time uh to do that what would be beneficial is like let's keep this here for four weeks because it takes the body anywhere between six to eight weeks to build adaptation to volume for it to completely absorb it and be able to increase uh effectively so these training plans where they're increasing week over week it's not realistic to think that you can do that in in perpetuity because just because you ran, you know, eight you ran 15 miles one week doesn't mean that you can run 18 miles the next week. Doesn't mean that your body is ready for that. Even though that increase in volume the body can sustain can absorb a certain part of it a fraction of that and you can do that for a short amount of time you can't do it for very long. So allow the body the time to really absorb it really build that adaptation and turn it into foundation once you turn into foundation they say okay now we're going to start increasing the volume of the individual workouts and we may distribute that volume differently you know rather than making all the runs the same we'll start to then work on the mix and make one one run like your long run and then have a couple short runs and then a moderate run. So we just break up the distribution that way. So that's how I would approach uh that scenario.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:37

That's kind of a long explanation sorry.

SPEAKER_00 54:40

I mean I get what you're saying though it's kind of the it makes sense like the that kind of cautious um building in one thing at a time almost like you're kind of maybe starting with like the strength piece and kind of once you have that established you're like okay we're just gonna do the whatever you were doing but we're kind of being careful about the volume, maybe decreasing that a little bit, adding in the strength first, getting that established and then maybe working on figuring out how to add an additional you know day into the running but you know not adding in more volume with that day. But then once that frequency is increased, then increasing the volume. So it's like one sort of variable at a time cautiously it's not like I think a lot of tendency for people is to add a lot of variables in at once like both strike the engine you know um frequency and you know this thing other thing or and we sort of talked about this um off uh when we were before we started was um I don't know I also think it's within like let's say you you're trying to work towards four days a week of running like within that there each day is going to have maybe like a slightly different purpose there may be like one slightly longer run, maybe one um sort of fart like or some sort of speed play of some sort speed interval of some sort maybe one um maybe an easier day or two or another day where you're there's like a tempo or something kind of like of that nature um eventually adding in again and that's intensity. So like you kind of have to like then be careful once you kind of get to a volume you want then maybe you're thinking about intensity um because that is another variable. But I think what people tend to do is be like well I have four days um that I can run a week and they seem to think like more intensity is better. This is another mistake I see people making. And I think even in that sort of plan that you're describing like I would have to really caution an athlete to be like hey these days like the purpose of the day needs to be the purpose of the day. Like the lot right the longer run needs to be easy. We're not going intense on all of these days because I think there is this especially if there are there's still three days that they're not running maybe so they do have some so maybe those particular days eventually there is a little bit more intensity in some of those days than an a plan that maybe has five or six days of running in it. But at the same time we don't we don't need to go hard every day and I do think that's another mistake people make is kind of like oh adding in a lot of intensity each day to try to get their fitness better. And unfortunately that is a lot of stress on the body it's like I was mentioning this like I think part of it is just I don't know where that comes from because the other flip side you still have this like 8020 sort of mentality you know there's it's like either or all intensity or no intensity it seems like nobody seems to be able to get this quite right sometimes. I think like I was I'm online sometimes when I'm on the treadmiller or whatever watching like YouTube videos and it's always like I was just describing like Clayton Young I was watching his sort of build up to Boston but all they're showing on on these videos is like are his like track workouts, you know, his hard intense days like they're they're showing what's interesting, right? Like they're not gonna generally probably just show him like I mean some of the what some of the clips were just from like him running or whatever. But most of it was like taken on the hard workouts when the coach is there and they're doing like some sort of interval or something really intense. And I think the perception I think somebody might have Wanachi that if they didn't know that the nuance of running like Clayton's not doing those workouts every day. Like he's brought a lot of probably easy running in between all of this. That's how he's getting 120 miles a week there's no way he's doing those workouts every day but that's what we're seeing. And so I think people sort of then perceive like oh I've got to be doing this like crazy like inst our Instagram worthy or Strava worthy workouts every day. You know, I go out and I train um and that's definitely a recipe I think for disaster and you're not really building durability kind of goes back to that you know well sure you might be able to get fit but you're gonna end up you know burning out or something. So I think that's also the thing to remember is that again it's it's not a comparison trap. Sometimes what we see online and what other people are doing isn't the whole picture of what they're doing. Like it's just a little snapshot, a very small 10 minute video snapshot of their their training which isn't they're going to only show the interesting bits. Sometimes the slow, easy running and just being out there um and kind of that's kind of also where you build I think some of that durability because the the it's the harder faster running that puts you at more risk of injury generally so like you do have to kind of put in some of those like just general easy running to get to get more durable also like that's a piece of it. So I think that's something I just want to add I mean I also think um when I'm working with someone if someone's coming to me and they're sort of saying like I don't feel like I'm durable enough or they have an injury history I'm also sort of going to be asking about yeah like the how intense are their workouts, but also like how is there fueling? Obviously as a dietitian that's like a big piece of it a lot of people come to me actually because they want to sort of combine the fueling aspect with the training and you obviously have a unique ability to sort of look at both of those things. And um sometimes it is truly like other stuff going on that's kind of getting in the way of their durability like they're not sleeping well and obviously then they're not recovering and that's putting them more susceptible or they're under eating. I see this a surprising amount of time especially more so I would say with like female athletes kind of like this under fueling piece um which is unfortunate but it happens and that may be what's impacting them. So I also think kind of looking at the training but outside of the training as well would be one thing I would want to add to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:05

So yeah that's yeah I think that I think that the social media thing is is valid. I I think that that is a big piece of that puzzle. And I mean I I admit that I've that I've done that myself you know if I watch clips of triathletes and they're just they're dripping wet and they're like on the bike and they're on the trainer and they're pushing you know hundreds and hundreds of watts and it's just like is that something that I should be doing? And I I I find myself asking myself that and it's like nah I mean there there's a time and place for that am I there? Maybe maybe not I I don't know but it's not something that I need to be consistently doing on on a regular basis. There's a time and place for it and you know there's a there has to be a purpose behind it. Another thing that I think is a big driver and the reason I think this is because I find myself uh going here is they go into each workout with some kind of minimum uh minimum performance metric already in mind and let's say that it's like some some like if it's a runner they have a a goal race pace that they want to hit and they have been building up in order to maintain that race pace for some small fraction of time and that's how that's how we build that adaptability. And then they go into every single run trying to match their best performance that they've gotten so far in training and they immediately try and validate that race pace goal by trying to sustain that pace in training. And what they're doing is they're increasing the duration in which they're holding that pace. But one what I find is that if they are faced with a situation where they have to decrease their pace because this is either going to be an easy run or we've stacked on too much fatigue so we got to take a roll back what happens is that they now perceive that this decrease in speed or pace is some indication that they are regressing and not progressing. So they they go into every single workout with some minimum pace in mind and that if they don't hit that then their training plan isn't any good or they're losing fitness or not progressing quickly or or they're getting weaker they're getting slower where in fact not all runs should be done at the same pace. And it's something that I've had to to reinforce in my own mind as well I mean I'm I'm preaching to the choir here. So when you know even during my warmups I've had to tell myself look it's okay to be in zone one for your warm up because the way that I would approach my warm-up is I would immediately go into zone two even though I know better because I would perceive that as like oh well I don't need to run in zone one because I'm stronger than that. In my own mind I'm stronger than that and that if I have to go into zone one then I'm now not making progress like I should be or that I want to be so I immediately jumped in jump into zone two which is too high for a warm-up. And so then I now sabotaged the quality segments of my run because I didn't do what I was supposed to do in the warm up.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:33

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:34

And so I find that this is one of the things that a lot of athletes are doing is this perception of regression and progression and really breaking their reliance on some kind of performance metric to evaluate where they are right now to tell them if they're on the right trajectory on where they want to be in the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

Right. Yeah I mean that's a yeah I think that's interesting because I think people do like maybe they're not actually following a training plan like they should if they're doing that because it's usually most training plans will have some sort of goal for the warm-up and then each segment, you know, like I want you to run faster than race pace or I want this one to be slower than, you know, and if they're like well no I'm just gonna do whatever, you know, then they're obviously not following a plan that's thought out. The other thing you know kind of going along that I do I do see myself kind of susceptible to this because I'm usually pretty good about like warming up and following the the the prescription of the the day or whatever but because I have made the mistake in the past of like taking my easy runs too fast because I wanted to be a hero. But I do think like I do have to blame Strava here. I got to point out Strava a little bit. I know you're not really on Strava. So it's like a social media thing for a lot of runners, cyclists use it. But I have a tendency sometimes is you you know you bring up the warm up like I want my I want my like especially my workout days I could care less about my easy days honestly I really just don't care. But for some reason, like on my workout days, I want it to look fast, you know? And so I do sometimes have a tendency when I'm warming up to be like, oh, this pace is too slow. My average is going to be slower, you know, and it won't look like I'm like going, you know, I won't look impressive or something. And I have that happens to me too sometimes. And I have to like, I have to like remind myself that that's not my goal is to impress people on Strava. Like who, you know, that's not that shouldn't be like my goal. Because if that's my goal, I can do that, but I'm not going to be able to like then maybe also have the goal of having a good marathon. Because, you know, I feel like maybe that's somebody's sole goal is to just be impressive on Strava, but yeah, you know, that's probably gonna be counterproductive to whatever race goal you have. So I do think it's easy, you know, because I have, I think that sometimes happens to me. And I'm been running for a long time and I kind of had have had some um things that have happened to me that, you know, learning experiences along the way that makes me feel like I've kind of got that down a little better, and I still am susceptible to those things. So I think it's really hard and I I um to not to fall into that, you know, trap. Um, but I really encourage you to, yeah, not not do that. I don't know, like it's hard, but like to to take the easy run easy, to to do the workout, to not be like, oh, I have to kind of see where I'm at, like how where I'm at compared to my goal race pace, and then um, you know, go out too hard because you're trying to see if you can maintain some sort of race pace for longer or something. Cause you know, the the that will come. We'll have those workouts where you're going to do those types of that type of thing, but you know, that shouldn't be like happening frequently. Um anyway, so I agree. I think it's just things to think about is I think today's day and age there's with social media, with things like Strava, it is so hard because we constantly have this comparison trap of what other people are doing. And then I mean, and even then it's like, you know, the volume thing. I feel like I I hear a lot of runners doing high volume and it and I do sometimes think, oh, maybe I need to run more. And it's like, oh no, no, like I just need to stay in my focus and in my goal and what I know I can do. Because if I try to do more, I might get injured. And that's, you know, but it's so hard. I think, and I just want to point that out. That I think, like you said, Justin, and for myself too, I do sometimes fall. I don't I think I catch myself usually, but I I'm I'm still susceptible to some of those comparison traps. We're dealing with more um, yeah, just more inputs, right? Whereas before we would either, you know, years ago or even before really social media took off, we didn't have all these things to compare ourselves to. And now it's everywhere. So it's it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:57

And yeah, it's like it's like every workout is now become a race validating workout.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:02

Well, not only for yourself, but for like everyone to show to everyone else out there that you're so it's like you're capable of what you're yeah, trained to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:10

Yeah. I'll I'll go into it and it's just like if I if I look at my pace and then I'll evaluate how I feel at that pace, and it's just like then I start to question, it's like, man, this is this is hard to maintain. How am I gonna do this on race day? And now this starts that ball rolling, and it's just like, oh well, well, now I'm behind and I maybe my my goals are out of reach, so I have to prove to myself that this is a realistic goal, and so now every single workout that I'm doing is now a validation of the re uh realistic nature of my expectations for for race day. And what that does is it just it sabotages race day because now you're trying to have seven race days in a week, right? Where it it defeats it. And so what it does is it it will build fitness, it will build fitness, absolutely, but at what cost does it build that fitness? So what you're doing is you're building fitness at the cost of durability because it's only sustainable for so long, and then eventually the body just says, Look, I've had it, I can't keep this up. You don't have the foundation to sustain these efforts. So you either fix it or I'm gonna fix it for you, and we're usually not smart enough to fix it before our body fixes it for us, forces us to stop, which is now so it's causing it's at the cost of durability.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:36

It's a game of patience, I think. Like it absolutely is. It's being um, and that's why I really, really want people to think about it in terms of you know, there are again kind of going back to the original like shortcut sort of situation of like there are really no shortcuts to get there. Like you can't really do sustainably three days a week and somehow, you know, uh one like a PR, you know, marathon, maybe. Like I it depends again where you're starting, but you can't like there there is um you have to put in work and the work has to be very th thoughtful. You know, it's going to involve easy days and some harder days and and divarying paces and probably a lot of easy running, because you can't just do hard running every day, like we just said, um, in patience of like how you're building the the each variable w at one at a time, and sometimes having to hold steady somewhere for a few weeks before you put in another variable. It's just a matter of patience, and that's why I really encourage people to embrace, especially newer runners, to kind of think of this more as like a whole process and it takes time. You know, it's not there are no shortcuts, so it's going to take time and to really enjoy that part of it of like um enjoy each little piece of it and and how and how it's building slowly over time. Otherwise, if you're kind of tr if you're impatient and you want to kind of get to the end faster, and um, I guarantee you you're going most likely, unless you're extremely lucky in your ability to be durable, like you have a lot of good genetic factors there, most likely you're going to just be knocked down to square one again. And then you're, you know, so you're gonna have that continue, make some progress, hit back go backwards. Going and it does involve a lot of uh patience and and sort of in and kind of embracing that and in enjoying that, I think is probably the best way to go forward because um otherwise I think you're going to probably burn out and be disappointed.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:46

The way I kind of an analogy that I use to to illustrate this is let's say that you were you're interested in your goal is to get a promotion at work. Well, are you going to get this promotion by having a meets expectation on your evaluation? The meets expectation is like running three days a week. You're doing the bare minimum. You're there when the office opens, and you're there when everybody goes home. So you you work your eight hours, you don't do anything extra, uh, and you're just there to just do the job. Chance your chances of of getting that promotion, i.e., your your PR in your race, very, very minimal. Now, what are your chances of getting this promotion if you say, well, I'm gonna do the bare minimum all the time, but then I'm gonna dedicate a whole month of of you know we're doing all nighters and I'm going to to do all this extra work, but it I can only do that for for a month. That's where you get this this panic training, and you know, we're going to swing way over here to the side, but it's not sustainable, and your bosses are gonna see that that's not going to be a sustainable, a sustainable thing. So that's going from like the three days a week to the seven days a week of running, thinking that that'll get you there, but you can't sustain it. So the thing is that just finding a way to consistently perform and get to that point where you're exceeding somebody's expectations, then your chances of promotion increase. The same can be said for for endurance sports, you know, the the playing the long game. This is a process that you have to build over time. There's going to have to be several evaluations where you kind of meet to exceeds your expectations. That's that's the way that I view this. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:36

Yeah, that's a good analogy, I think, to kind of find finish this out on. Yeah, it's like you bare minimum, you know, the bare minimum versus like going an unsustainable direction. It's kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:47

You'll still get paid, but you won't get the promotion. So yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:52

But if you do too much and you burn yourself out and you know, after a month you're having to take two weeks off because you're sick, or I don't know. You know, that's not gonna be your your bosses aren't really gonna like um view that as super positive either. So it's kind of yeah, I like that analogy. It's it's it puts it in perspective a little bit of um what it kind of takes. Um yeah. And I I mean I feel like we can make a lot of money if we just had some sort of uh the quick fix. Like we just tell people this is how you do it. You run three days a week, and these are the things you do, and you're gonna be able to get your PR and you're never gonna get injured. Yeah, but we uh I mean, I would be we would be lying to people if we would be selling snake oil, basically, if we were to say that, because there's no way to do that. But I just I mean that's kind of what people want to hear sometimes. At least not the way it works. Yeah. Well, anyway, I think we gotta cover that good. I don't know if you have any last minute thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:50

I don't I think we've we've uh I think we've covered all the topics that I think that we needed to in order to illustrate this difference between fitness and durability and things to focus on and what tends to be a waste, uh a waste of time. So I want to thank you guys for joining us for episode 93 of the Inturance Athlete Journey podcast, where we talked about the difference between uh fitness and durability. We want to thank you guys for joining us. If you found this episode to be helpful to you, uh, we hope that you will consider leaving a review and a comment. Those are greatly appreciated. If you know somebody else that that you know that you think this particular topic would would be of service to them and would help them in their journey, I hope that you will you're comfortable enough to share this episode with them. And uh, you know, we want to uh extend the reach of this podcast. And we know from day one, we decided to not monetize it so we don't have any sponsors or any ads or anything like that to uh so your comments and reviews and sharing episodes is how this podcast grows. And so I I hope that you will uh feel comfortable enough to leave a comment and a review or share an episode with someone. Uh, those are greatly appreciated. Um, we also have the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast group. It's a private group on Facebook where we're growing out of community. We do push out some additional content to this group, but we really wanted to create this community from day one, from the very first episode that we had, where we wanted to uh have access to our listeners because we felt that it was important that they have access to us as well, so that we can all grow and learn from each other. Uh, I want to know about topics that you find to be important that maybe we have not covered, or if you have a different perspective on something that we've talked about, share that within the group. Uh, see what see what we can learn from each other because you may have a completely valid uh thought or an opinion that maybe I haven't considered or that Katie hasn't considered, and will lead to further discussion. Those are greatly appreciated. And, you know, I think it will extend their learning experience. So we hope that you will just go out and search for the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast group on Facebook. You'll answer one simple question, agree to the group rules, and it lets you right on in. And so we want to thank you guys for that. Uh, we are active coaches, so we are bringing on athletes onto our rosters. Uh, if you are interested in coaching, uh, you may be just super busy and you're tired of trying to figure out what you're going to do every week, or you have a new goal in mind, but you don't know how to approach it. Uh, please reach out to us. We would love to talk to you. Uh, do your due diligence in coaches because it's important to find one that fits uh your lifestyle, fits your perspective, that you agree with their philosophy, and that you can buy into their method. Those are really, really important. But we hope that you will at least consider talking to us uh when you talk to others as well. So you can go to fuel the number two run dot com for Coach Kitty. She does dietetics and run training. You can go to tabularasseracing.com. I do multi-sport and single sport training plans. And we would love to talk to you on how we can possibly help you along in your journey. So again, thank you guys for joining us uh with episode 93 of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. I've been your host, Coach Justin, along with Coach Katie, and we will talk to you guys again next time. That wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience, humility, and resilience. Lessons that carry far beyond the workout. Progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts, it comes from consistency, discipline, and doing the work when it's not glamorous. Wherever you are on your endurance journey, keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day. If today's episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey. Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another. We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie. Until then, visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey.buzzsprout.com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Have questions or comments about the podcast? Feel free to send us an email at the endurance athlete journey at gmail.com. For all things coaching, visit Coach Katie at fuel the number two run dot com and coach Justin at taboolarasta racing.com. Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, and remember to find joy in the journey.