Why You’re Not Getting Faster on the Bike—and What Triathletes Should Do Instead

You’re putting in the bike miles, completing the workouts, and watching the numbers—but the fitness still is not showing up when it matters.

The problem may not be effort. It may be that your training is developing the wrong qualities or measuring progress in ways that do not translate to race day. In this episode, Coach Justin explains how triathletes can build sustainable bike performance through purposeful progression, greater durability, better execution, and stronger real-world cycling skills.

What You’ll Learn

• Why repeating similar rides eventually stops producing meaningful improvement
• How speed and FTP can mislead you about your actual race-day fitness
• Why cycling frequency, durability, and pacing matter more than simply riding harder
• How outdoor skills, position, strength, fueling, and pedal efficiency turn fitness into performance

Timestamps

00:00 Why triathletes struggle to improve on the bike
03:35 The factors that drive cycling progress
08:00 Why every ride should not look the same
12:00 Using progressive overload in bike training
28:00 Why average speed is a misleading metric
38:15 FTP versus sustainable race-day power
41:20 The problem with making every ride hard
46:45 Why triathletes may need to ride more often
1:00:45 Why indoor fitness does not fully transfer outdoors
1:05:30 Position, strength training, and functional bike power
1:11:35 Fueling the bike to support the run
1:14:25 Pedal efficiency and bike-handling fundamentals

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome everyone to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Justin, and today is episode 105 of the podcast with an episode dedicated to cycling. So as a triathlon coach, I have a lot of conversations with athletes, and one of the questions that I get quite a bit, or ones that I see a lot, is I'm riding consistently, but I'm not seeing progress in my cycling. And how do I get faster? How do I get better? What are some what are the tips and tricks in order to improve my cycling? So I wanted to compile a list of things that I see that are commonly done by athletes where I think that there could be some improvement in their approach, or they may be focusing on the wrong things. So I wanted to come today with this episode to give you some food for thought and how to think about your cycling training. And I do want to make this understood from the very start. This episode is going to be geared towards how to think of cycling as a triathlete, not as a single sport athlete. And I think the reason that I want to make this clear is that sometimes the advice that you would get from a cyclist on how to improve your cycling may be different and maybe not optimal to improve your cycling as part of a triathlon. So the bike portion is by far the biggest portion of any race that you're going to be doing in the sport of triathlon. It's the biggest proportion of it. However, our approach and how we execute our cycling is going to be very different than how a cyclist would execute that same effort. And the reason is because a cyclist doesn't have to worry about having anything in reserve to run later. So their approach, even their fundamentals, can be different in terms of what I would deem to be the fundamentals that would be necessary for a triathlete to improve in their cycling as a piece of the triathlon puzzle that we're trying to put together. I wanted to make sure that this idea is clear and the perspective that I'm speaking from is understood that I'm more interested in how to get a triathlete to improve their cycling rather than seeing the improvement of a single sport athlete. If that's of interest, maybe drop a note or drop a comment, and I will gladly put together an episode that is geared towards how to improve cycling as a single sport athlete. But for this episode, this is where I'm going to be coming from. This is going to be my perspective is how to improve cycling as a triathletete. So let's get into the meat of the conversation. And I think some of the combination, I want I want to see how I can figure out how to say this. Cycling improvement is multifaceted, just like any other aspect of the sport of triathlon. So if you think about how do I improve my running, there's going to be many things that make up the improvement of your run fitness as a triathlete. The same goes for cycling. So there's many things that we have to consider, things like consistency. How often and how and how frequently are you riding? The concept of progressive overload. What is the intensity, progression, and mixture of your workouts? Are you training at specific intensities? Do you know what even those intensities should be given the race that you're training for or the phase of your annual training plan that you're in? So there may be different focuses and approaches to your cycling based on where you are within the year. In the winter, you may have a different focus because you're not actively training for a race. But when it comes time for spring, that's when all the races are starting to kick off, and that's where you start getting into the meat of your training plans. So your intensity mixture may change how you are able to incorporate frequency and consistency of cycling within the overall training plan because you're trying to juggle the other components as well, swimming and running. And how effectively can the athlete recover from training sessions? I think recovery from cycling sessions tends to be a little bit easier or less nuanced than recovery from, let's say, run training. And that's from the sheer fact that cycling is a non-impact sport, unlike running, which does require a different kind of recovery protocol, trying to be durable and consistent within that aspect of your training. However, that does not mean that your cycling training is not demanding and is not a stressor on your body because it is indeed a stressor. So how are you able to effectively recover from either intense sessions, long sessions, so that you are able to have a quality next quality session the very next day? You know the next thing that I see, and this is a big thing that I see, is just a lack of skill and fundamentals when it comes to the bike. That's one piece that I would that I will say probably would yield just improvement in itself if you just kind of learn how to either to be more efficient or how to engage muscles that should be engaging but may not be effectively engaged. So you're having to draw on muscles that shouldn't be used as much as they are, because it's going to affect your ability to run off the bike. So efficient muscle engagement, position on the bike, equipment to me, just really that's really at the bottom of the list of things. And I think it tends to float to the top more often than it's really warranted. The whole conversation of, oh, I want to do a triathlon. What are some TT bikes? And these are time trial bikes. That's what TT stands for. What are some time trial bikes that I should be looking at or that don't quote unquote break the bank kind of thing? I see that phrase a lot. And honestly, I don't feel that it warrants a whole lot of conversation because there's so much more that they can focus on that will yield greater dividends than just buying more and more gear that may not even yield the most benefit given its potential because you lack the fundamentals to even reap the benefits of the gear that you're buying. I will talk a little bit about gear if there's time, because I just honestly don't think it warrants a whole lot of attention. So let's jump right on in to the very first thing that I hear from athletes, and these are in no particular order, but this is just as I was writing these out, this was the first one that I came up with. The first one is every ride looks the same. So I think that this is something that I see commonly in runners as well. They go out and they run every single run at the same intensity, the same pace, same routes, and then they start to wonder it's like, okay, why am I not improving? Because there's no variability within the training plan. So there's no real stressor that will force the body to adapt. A lot of athletes that I talk with just don't incorporate a progressive overload. So I'll say that these two topics kind of tie in together, so they're adjacent little puzzle pieces of the triathlon puzzle that we're trying to put together. And it's that it's all done by with the same effort level, and so the reason that I find that to be a limiter in their progression as a triathlon cyclist is because they see the benefits early on when they start in the sport simply because they're effectively coming off of the couch. So any kind of exposure to that particular discipline or that sport is going to yield some improvement. So what I typically label these as is like these are the newbie benefits, the newbie performance gains. And we see this in runners as well. And I've had this conversation with athletes where they're just like, oh, and I made the statement that unless you're running more often than you're not, you're really limited on your progress or start to see performance gains. And the same holds true to cycling. However, there's that caveat that I want to put on it is that if you're going from zero rides to three rides a week, you're going to see improvement. Okay. But there comes a point where you have now exhausted those benefits, and so the only way that you're going to see performance gains is if you inject some kind of stimulus within your plant. Now, whether that means that we're going to change duration, change intensity, change frequency, there's all kinds of things that you can change and just do things a little bit differently that will shock the body into realizing that it has to adapt. And if every ride that you do looks the same and is executed the same, the body will grow initially, but then it settles in and is like, oh, okay, this is what's being expected. So I'm only going to provide what's needed in order to get through the time under stress that I will face. And so when you start to see that, then athletes say, Why am I not improving? I'm still riding and I'm still doing stuff. But they've become accustomed to seeing growth simply because they were new. And the lack of this implementation of a progressive overload is really what is needed in order to spur an increase in performance once you have exhausted the newbie benefits, the newbie gains. Now you can think of a progressive overload in multiple ways. And the same can be said for things like strength building and things like that. So that's a very valid approach for building strength, is you can either change the number of reps that you're doing or the amount of weight that you're doing. And so a progressive overload is that one of those things changes as you get deeper and deeper into the session. So the same can be said for cycling. Now we can change either the total amount of time that we spend on the bike, i.e., we're going to increase duration. That's reasonable. The second one is we can change the intensity mixture. So we go from what's effectively all zone two rides, that's fairly comfortable. And now we're starting to add some volatility to these rides and inject some structured intervals within. But those are a little bit challenging to do to for a new cyclist who is effectively just riding outside all the time. They really have to say, I can't find routes that allows me to do structured intervals. And I think that's a valid, that's a valid excuse to a certain extent, because they're so focused on performance metrics and output from their rides. So they're using things like average speed or cadence as as a way to measure their performance. And there are many things, many factors that will influence those metrics, which makes it hard to see if you are progressing or not. And I will say that sometimes when you're in a training plan, you're not going to see performance gains because fatigue masks fitness. It's not until race day where that's where you want to observe your fitness. I don't want to necessarily observe fitness and performance throughout the training plan because I'm stacking on fatigue. I'm stacking on stress, and that stuff is going to wear the body down and it tries to protect itself. You're not going to be able to fully recover from session to session. So you go into additional sessions with more and more fatigue. It's how we manage that accumulation, and then how do we shed that accumulation at the end of the training plan before we go to the starting line? So one of the things that I do with athletes, and I do this in my own training plan as well, is that I do encourage indoor training. Now, there is a time and place for indoors. However, not all of your training should take place inside. You are missing valuable skills that you're going to need on race day if you are not right doing some of your rides outside. However, having some portion of your training plan done indoors does allow you to execute structured work and allows you to really measure gains in performance just by looking at the metrics themselves and say, okay, I did the same workout last week. How did I perform this week? Next, and then you start to accumulate more and more. With the understanding that, okay, if I'm not seeing like huge jumps in my quote-unquote performance metrics, then it's understood that maybe I'm not seeing this because I'm getting more and more fatigued. But so I I want to throw in a few other metrics that maybe you can use and use the aggregation of these several metrics to put some of them in context. Now, average speed, if you're doing indoor training and average speed and you're on a smart trainer and you're hooked up to some online platform like like Zwift or Ruvet or the training training peaks virtual environment, average speed, I would take that with a grain of salt. I don't put much stock in that. I don't even track miles or anything like that for online environments. A it just does not translate to the real world. What you're left with is going to be heart rate. You're left with power. If you have a if you have a smart trainer that has a built-in power meter, that is that is a valuable training tool that you can use to judge performance and effort. The problem that I do see a lot is that athletes will get these indoor trainers that have built-in power meters, but they don't have a power meter that's actually on their bike. So when they come off of the trainer and they go ride outside, they're not getting the same feedback level. So it's really hard to judge really what my power is if you're riding outside then and you don't have that number that's showing you, okay, where am I? Because riding by effort can be biased as well, because you have outside factors like wind, terrain, whether you're riding in a group and you're able to draft, or you're out there all by yourself and you're left to the elements. Sometimes what feels like a super hard effort may not translate into higher power, or definitely does not translate into higher speed. So if you're relying on just a single metric as a way to judge your performance and your growth, then I think you're missing the big picture and you're missing a whole bunch of other components that can put that number in context. So what I do highly encourage you to do is at least put in some kind of structured interval, even if you don't have a trainer, and do some of your rides outside like that. Even if it's just saying I want a total of 24 minutes out of a two-hour bike ride where I'm gonna have a higher effort level. And then you pick when you start that interval. If you come up and you're just like, oh, I know that there is a fairly flat stretch of road that's coming up, so I'm going to start my interval there, and you just keep track of it. Okay, I just spent five minutes of the 24 minutes that I need in that harder effort. Now I'm gonna wait, and maybe you find a hilly section. You're just like, okay, this is gonna be a great time to work on some functional strength. It's gonna be a different method, but it's still effort is effort. I can now accumulate five minutes of rolling hills and put forth that higher effort level. Now you've just made uh you've just taken care of 10 minutes out of the 24 minutes that that you need to account for throughout the whole workout. What I do recommend that you would do is try and save those efforts for either the middle of your ride or towards the end. I think that is where you will reap the biggest reward, and it will help you judge pacing, which is going to be necessary on race day, so that we're not going to go out the first 24 minutes, and now that's all our higher effort. Now you're left, okay. What's left? You still have the rest of your bike portion to get through, and now you've gone out too hot and you've now sabotaged the bike. Not only have you sabotaged the bike, but now you've actually sabotaged the run as well because you didn't understand the idea of pacing and you just went out too hot. We see that with running with the run portion as well. So using this approach to vary intensity and change that intensity throughout your training plan. So let's say that the first two weeks, you may do something like let's do four by five-minute intervals of a controlled hard effort. And we're gonna do those for the first two weeks. Then in the second week, we will keep the duration of the interval constant, but I may add another interval or add another two intervals to it. And then you do that for a week or two, and then the following week, you may decrease the number of intervals, but you're going to increase the duration of the interval. And then the following week after that, we're going to keep those constant, but maybe we decrease the duration of the recovery so we don't allow the heart rate to drop as low. And so we maintain a higher sustained heart rate. So this is what I'm talking about in terms of a progressive overload, and there is a thoughtful approach to it. You can't just go into your bike training and just say, okay, I just need to accumulate either miles and minutes and expect to see performance gains over the long term. So there has to be some kind of intentional and purposeful approach to it in order to reap those benefits once you've exhausted the newbie benefits that you saw at the very start. So I do want to encourage you to at least vary the intensity, think start thinking about structure, and not just like going out and just riding all the time with without any kind of forethought on how you're going to approach it. Likewise, I don't want every single workout to be a hard effort. That that's the same thing as if you were to uh approach every single run at as race pick. Efforts. It's not, it doesn't work that way. So there has to be some kind of variability and finding these various zones that you want to be in order to force the body to think about what it's being asked for. One of the things that I see that I talk about with some athletes in the past is that they've come to me and they've said, I once I get through my run warm-up and I start to run, my heart rate jumps, jumps up to a level and it kind of just stays there and it doesn't go down. And the reason that happens is because the body learns what is what it thinks it's being asked for, and it overreacts. So the body realizes once you're once you start running, it's as oh, we're running. Okay. Based on my previous experience when we do this activity, this is what's needed. And so I'm going to, once you even start to pick up the effort a little bit after your warm-up, it thinks that, okay, it's go time now. I need to provide all this blood volume, all this oxygen to the working muscles, and so it just floods it, and that's why your heart rate spikes up and doesn't really change. But if you learn to run at different effort levels and change up the runs, so do some easy runs and then do some interval runs, and you're forcing the body to think and really adapt to the demands at the time and not be so preemptive. The same goes for the bike as well. You don't see as high of a heart rate on the bike. So if you're doing bike training and you're comparing your heart rate on the bike compared to what you see in the run, you're going to see a lower heart rate on the bike. And I think that stems from the fact that it's just a non-impact sport. And I think that the impact does lead to some kind of influence into heart rate. So, but I don't have any science to back that up. That's just my gut feeling after doing this for so long. But that's what I would encourage you to do is to start thinking about how to implement structure. And I think that will be a decent stimulus to the body to get it to start to think a little bit more and not be so preemptive and really learn how certain efforts feel. Because sometimes riding by feel can be challenging as a racing strategy. I think that it's a better racing strategy for the run portion of a triathlon simply because it's the last thing that you're that you have to do before you cross the finish line. So I think there's a little bit more grace in running by feel than there is cycling by feel. And my reasoning behind that is just one reason. And it's because you're coming out of the swim, your adrenaline is pumping, and the excitement of the day, and you you jump on the bike, and now, hey, you're probably glad to even be out of the water if you're like most triathletes, and you're happy to have survived the swim, and now you're getting to do something that's quote unquote easier, and your legs are feeling great because you've used mostly just your upper body for the swim portion, and so you really haven't used the legs all that much yet, and so you just take off. And I think what that does is it will sabotage your run because you're feeling great, and so you're executing that strategy based on that feeling, but it's not going to feel great for very long. So that's why I am a lot more purposeful with my race execution when it comes to the bike, because I know that I have to save something for the run, and I can't rely on how things feel in the moment in order to judge what kind of effort level I should be executing. So, really, if you don't have a power meter and you want to you can just race by heart rate, and you say, okay, well, this is what this is where I want my heart rate to be, and you just adjust the effort level to keep it within that range. That's a valid and reasonable approach to use. I will say that sometimes using just heart rate as a barometer for fitness gains or performance gains can be biased because there are many factors that do influence your heart rate day to day, and the volatility of that heart rate, the variability of the beats your HRV can change from day to day. It's a fairly stable metric, but there are things that that can influence that. And you have things like dehydration, you have things like environment, like heat, humidity, just those two things alone will influence your heart rate greatly. And so if you're not heat acclimated, then you you're definitely gonna have to learn how to race at an effort level that is consistent with an elevated heart rate because it's going to feel harder. So I wanna I want to move on from this because I don't want to I don't want to spend so much time on this and just metrics and things, but the point that I'm trying to make is let's start to inject some thought. Let's think about how we can grow our bike training over time within a training cycle and not just do every ride that's basically the same, done at the same effort level, because that will definitely stymie your growth as a cyclist on the bike as part of the sport of triathlon. The next one, I will say the next one, the next question that, or the next statement that I get a lot from athletes is that they're basically chasing speed. They're only using one metric as a barometer for their performance, where speed can be, as I've said before, it can be affected by wind, terrain, traffic, either on a race course by navigating around other racers, or you're riding out on a training ride and there are cars present, whether it's a Sunday morning ride where you have the church traffic or it's a or Sunday ride, then a Saturday later in the afternoon where people are out running errands and things, there's just additional traffic on the road that you're gonna have to manage. And even if you go to multi-use trails as weather starts to improve and you get more families that are going to go out there on the trail, you're gonna have to learn how to navigate those, and that will influence your speed and what you're able to hold as you navigate all these things that are outside of your control. Road surface, whether you have nice smooth roads or you're riding on chip seal or you're riding in areas where there's a lot of freeze and then thaw where you now potholes that you have to navigate and just cracks in the road, it makes it challenging to just rely on speed. Drafting, if you're out there all by yourself, you have no one to draft off of. Now, all of a sudden, let's say that you drop into a pace line and now you're able to ride with less effort and actually maintain a higher speed, does that mean that you're more fit? No, it doesn't. It just means that it's a different environment that you've put yourself in, so you're able to capitalize on that draft area and actually ride at a lower effort. But I'm not saying that, okay, now that you were able to go faster or your heart rate actually didn't climb as high because you were drafting doesn't mean that you're more fit. Equipment and bike position, are you able to maintain an aero position if that's what you're if that's what you're able to do? If you have a bike that has either clip on arrow bars, you're riding in a time trial bike, and you have that ability to stay in that aerosition. How long are you able to hold that position? Once you come out of that that aerodynamic flow and you come up onto the hoods, it's like riding with a parachute, you'll see a big drop in your speed. So the ability to hold that more aerodynamic position will result in higher speeds, but does that necessarily mean that you are more fit? I think that there is an increased level of fitness that is required to hold that position effectively and efficiently, but I wouldn't say that you're now a stronger cyclist because of it. Let's think about what we can do then to judge performance without relying on speed. I think that there's a whole bunch of other things that that you can use. Like I said before, if you have power, I use power almost exclusively. I will take my power numbers as my primary metric, and then I will then overlay the other metrics onto it to provide context to what the power numbers are telling me. So if I look at my my my power curve from a ride, and then I can then overlay my heart rate on it, or I can overlay elevation and provide some kind of insight as to why maybe I saw numbers rise and some numbers fall, the correlation between average power and normalized power. So that is something that I do want to just to speak briefly about. If you're using a power meter and you really don't understand what's the difference between average power and normalized power, I want you to think of it in terms of average power is directly correlated to your speed. So typically, what we'll see is higher average power is you'll see an increase in speed. A drop in average power, you'll see a decrease in speed. However, normalized power is going to take into account surges. So there's times where you have to pedal harder or pedal faster, and then there are times where you can coast a little bit and slow the cadence down. Normalized power then takes all those and takes into account all those, the volatility in the power series. So think of it in terms of it's the physiological demands on the body based on how you rode that ride. For street riding, for road cyclists, a efficient ride would be one where the ratio of those two numbers equals close to one. So the ratio of normalized power to average power means that the physiological demands on the body yielded the same effort level that you got out of it. However, when you start to see normalized power greater than average power, that ratio gets greater than one. So it means that you put more demand on the body than the output that you got from it. And so what that's called is it's called the variability index. So it's the VI. So if you're looking at training peaks and you're looking at some of the metrics, I believe that there's a VI calculation that's there for cycling workouts. But that's a good way to determine your consistency and efficiency of a particular training session. Now, once you come off the road, then I don't use that particular metric because of the nature of the ride itself. I do some of my training on a gravel bike where I go out and hit the trails, but that style of riding is very different than the style of road riding. So I don't use the VI ratio or the VI index as a as a barometer for performance because it's not accurate. But I will look at what was my normalized power, what was my average power over the session, but I don't use the ratio of them. Heart rate is another factor that you can use for a given power segment or a particular range of speed. So what I will sometimes do is I will look at for the time, like a particular interval where I did a zone two interval, what was my heart rate during that interval? And I'll look to see future intervals of that same power target. What was my cardiac drift as a result? So cardiac drift is just going to be the eventual elevation in your heart rate as you get deeper and deeper into a workout, which is an indication of your accumulating fatigue. So the body's having to work harder, harder for the same level of effort. That's I'll say that that can be a good metric if you don't, if you don't have power to use. And sometimes I don't give very much credence to heart rate. I know that there are athletes out there that train exclusively by heart rate. It's fine if that works for you. But if you're racing by heart rate, you have to train by heart rate. So if you race by if you train by power, you should race by power. So don't train by power and then race by heart rate. That's it's it's they're not directly correlated. So you're not going to get this one-for-one trade-off. And it's okay, I know that my heart rate is this for zone two efforts, so that's what I'm going to chase on race day, and that's going to be my target because there are going to be external factors that you're not going to be able to control that's going to influence your heart rate. Your ability to sustain a particular effort. You can look at reducing cardiac drift, which is a way of proving that your endurance is improving. Faster recovery between efforts, so you can track what your max heart rate was relative to what the average heart rate is for a recovery interval, and then try and get that heart rate to drop quickly during that same during the recovery session. That's going to be an indication of improved fitness. If you can get your heart rate to drop quicker and recover faster, looking at what your power is during the last half or the last third of a ride compared to what it was in the first half, if you can ride consistently like that, like I said, that that variability index is going to be closer to one, so there's going to be very little drift there. And then just the fact that you're able to run off of the bike. If you are in that phase of your training plan where you have now implemented bricks in into your training sessions, and you're finding it easier to run off the bike, that doesn't necessarily mean that your run fitness is improving. It actually is an indication that your bike fitness is improving and the bike isn't taking as much out of you, and so you're able to run stronger off of the bike. So improved ability to run off of the bike is an indication that your bike fitness is improving. The next thing that I would see is when I talk to athletes, is this fascination with FTP. FTP, if you don't know, is what's called the functional threshold power. And it is the effort, the max effort that you can sustain for a 60-minute interval. And there's several different kinds of tests that you can do to determine what your FTP is. Now, the reason that it's important is because the FTP is used to establish your power ranges, so your power zones. So it's going to determine what your zone two, three, four, and five power zones are. So what I find is that athletes are more interested in increasing that number than they are increasing their durability. Now, I've had this conversation with one of my athletes before, where he came to me and said, I want to improve my FTP. I understand. I understand the reason behind that, and I think it's justified to a certain extent. However, what I find to be more valuable is not necessarily increasing the FTP, but how long can you hold that effort? So if your FTP is 300 watts, let's say, and but during race day, your average power may be 200. Okay, what does it matter if your FTP is 300 if on race day you can only sustain an effort that yields 200 watts? And let's just say that you start that ride, that that bike segment at 250, but by the end you're at 200. What that tells me is that you don't understand pacing and that you're not very durable. So you can't hold that effort as long. So what I would rather do is spend the time building that muscular endurance so that you can hold a higher proportion of that max FTP for longer. Not necessarily increasing the absolute number of your FTP, but how long can I hold on to that? I think that is a much more valuable approach to judging improvement in bike fitness and performance than saying I increased my FTP from 250 to 260 over the span of three months. That's great, but if you still can't hold it, it doesn't matter, honestly. Let's go with this next reason that that I come across is that they've they make every ride hard. I think this kind of ties into those first two that we talked about earlier, where every ride was the same, there was no progressive overload. This is one of those extreme situations and scenarios where they just go all out almost like every single session. So they've now they come to the end of the training session. Now they've compromised tomorrow's workouts because they didn't understand that not every ride needs to be a zone for effort. The same is said for runs. I have this conversation so much that we you can't run hard all the time. And I think that I think people are starting to understand that not every run should be she should be hard and should be these all-out efforts or even threshold efforts. And I think that is because they start to understand or they're they hear so much about the 80-20 rule where 80% of their training should be this easy kind of conversational effort. And I think that they've realized that for the run, but it hasn't translated over to the bike yet. But the same principle applies. I think that you get a little bit more grace in following that that 80-20 mix on the bike because of the fact that it's non-impact. But really, I think the biggest pitfall of using this approach is that it just reinforces bad execution. Because when it comes to race day, if all of your ra if all of your bike training sessions have been hard sessions where you go out hard, you're going to do that on race day. You're that's just where your body is feeling because you're you've you're tapered, you're feeling great, your legs are feeling great, and you're going to take off. You're going to want to race hard. And you've reinforced that habit throughout training. So you haven't learned how to implement those different efforts and to practice patience and discipline on the bike. I want you to really start thinking about again how to structure your workouts in such a way that reinforces this progressive nature. I do this in my runs and I do this on my bike sessions as well, as an athlete myself. Where I'll do progressive intervals. So I'll say I'm going to do five by five minute tempo efforts on the bike. So that's a zone three effort. And so I'll execute that first one at try and hit that as the in the low end of that zone three range. So it's going to be a spread. You're going to have an upper bounds and a lower bounds for that range. And then I try and just get to get a higher power number for each successive interval. So that's great practice for race day. And I know that you guys do this on your in your run training as well. So think of the same approach on the bike. It doesn't have to always be that way, but it's nice to eventually every so often throw in some of these structures to where it's like, okay, I'm going to I'm going to try and learn some patience and learn some discipline so that I don't go out too fast and too hard and sabotage the back half of my ride and sabotage my run. So I want to practice that now. You don't even necessarily have to do that on the trainer. So do that as part of your long rides. Let's say, for instance, one of the methods that I use in my own training is that I actually will implement a warm-up. Even though I'm already warmed up because I'm coming out of the water and I'm getting on my bike, on race day, I'll say, I want to keep the first five to five minutes as just like a zone two effort. And I may not even get into arrow position until after that five minutes is there. A, it gives myself time to acclimate to a different position, a different effort level, a different energy system. And those first few minutes of a bike portion of a triathlon are probably the most chaotic. You've come to the mountain and everybody's looking down and they're trying to clip in. Some people are just doing flying mounts and everything else and pushing buttons and trying to grab water bottles and things. So it's not really the time for you to be distracted. And so I do purposefully practice that during my long rides where I'll say, you know what, I'm actually going to just be purposeful with my warm-up. I may say, I'm going to make this the first 10 to 15 minutes as a warm-up for my long ride before I even get down into arrow position and just try and hold that so that I'm practicing it. So if you if you don't, if you don't do it in training, there's no way that you can expect to do it on race day. So I think that's the one line that would summarize that this particular segment is that if you don't practice it during training, you can't expect to execute it on race day. This is another one that I really like. This next one is you're not riding enough or not frequently enough. And I think this ties into another thing that I see athletes doing is they're afraid to over-train on the bike. They're not afraid to over-train on the run by any means, but they are reluctant to overtrain on the bike. In fact, what I encourage athletes to do is do the complete opposite of what they want to do. And what they want to do is they want to run more and bike just enough. What I want to do is I want to bike more and run just enough. That's my approach. When I was when I trained for Iron Man Florida 70.3, my long rides started at three hours, which is what I expected my race time to be. And I grew it from there. So by the end of the training plan, I was actually riding four to four and a half hours for a 70.3. So I was putting in close to somewhere between 80 to 90 miles for my long rides in the peak of my training plan. And somebody asked me, they're just like, why would you bike for that long? And I said, because I want the deepest bike fitness that I can possibly get. Because what that does is it allows me to run effectively off the bike because I get off the bike feeling fresh, not as fatigued, not as worn out, and it sets me up for a good run. The bike training is easier to recover from, in my opinion, than the run training is. And so I want to go longer on the bike. I want to go longer in the pool as well, in the swim. So if I can dig as much deep fitness as I can with those two disciplines, then it improves my run. It's not a way to become a better runner, but it sets me up in a better position to run well. But if I train in such a way that just allows me to survive the swim and just get off the bike, and I didn't train more or l more than the time that I expect to be on the bike for race day, then I can't expect to feel fantastic coming off of the bike. But mentally, if you can tell yourself, look, if my bike, if I expect to ride three hours on race day for my bike, and I'm used to riding four to four and a half, and I know how I feel after that, then three should be easy. And I think that is a way to mentally prepare yourself and mentally justify the abil the focus of your bike training to really over-train the bike as a way to set you set yourself up for the run. I'm a big proponent of double bike weekends, actually. If we can move the long run to a weekday, let's say like Wednesday or Thursday, then it's common for me to have the long ride on Saturday, depending on what race you're training for, long is going to be relative. Then I'll throw in a ride that is close to, let's say, like anywhere between 50% to 75% of what my long ride was. I'll throw that on Sunday as well. And for me, one thing that I like to do is I'll get on my road bike for the long ride on Saturday and then jump on the gravel bike the next day. It's just a way to change the position, change the muscle engagement, and keep the training plan interesting. And I think adding the gravel bike to my training plan actually improved my road cycling tremendously. I know it improved my strength, it improved my bike handling skills, and those things are paying dividends on my on race day for the bike portion. Over the past two years now that I've implemented this approach to where I'm purposefully overtraining on the bike. I've done, let's say, three, four, five races since then over that time frame. Out of those five races, no, six races, I've been on the podium four times, and I've had the fastest bike split of the division in each of those podiums. So the bike approach that I'm using is working. Is my run as strong as others? No, it's not, but I've I'm willing to make that sacrifice to see the growth on the bike where I think it matters most for the way that I execute a race. And I've seen it to where now I'm actually riding faster, holding a higher proportion of my FTP for longer periods of time, and I'm coming off the bike feeling fresh. So all of those different things are telling me that I'm improving on the bike. I don't need a whole bunch of numbers to tell me that I'm improving. I'm seeing other things that is evidence that the training plan is successful and it's working. So don't be afraid to go long on the bike. Don't be afraid to over-train on the bike. I would, like I said, I would much prefer you over-train on the bike and under-train on the run than the other way around. Let's leave it at that. No, let's I didn't get to the frequently part. I just talked about increasing duration, but frequency matters. Riding more often, not necessarily just riding longer. I'm glad I paused myself there. Rather than just trying to say, hey, you should just ride longer and longer, because that's not necessarily going to yield better performance. I think it builds endurance and performance, better performance is a byproduct of better endurance, but it's not necessary. It's not, you're not going to always see it. So what I like to do is I like to ride frequently. So I have a very purposeful structure to the week when it comes to my bike workouts. I divide my total bike volume just like I do my run volume. So I have long bikes, I have moderate bike work workouts, and I have short bike workouts. The way that I divide those up is going to depend on how many times I'm riding throughout the week. In this training block, I'm riding four days a week, or I have four four four bike sessions a week, and I've used that for the last two races that I've done this year. Each of those races I've been on the podium and I've taken second place in the division and come out of each of those races with the fastest bike split in the group. Again, it works, and I will I'll tell you how I divide that up. So right now, with only four bike workouts in the week, I'll say that my long bike is about 45% of my total weekly volume, and then I say about 35% is my moderate ride, and then the other two is the balance, and I just split that up, and that's how I approach my training volume. For a 70.3, the last one that I did, I biked five times a week and used a similar approach, except I had one long ride, two moderate rides, and the short rides. So that that gets me to, yeah, five. I had to do the math real quick. So, you know, I think this is still reinforcing the mindset and the approach that I have to be thoughtful about my bike training. I can't just say, hey, 45 minutes and three rides a week, and that's what I'm gonna do, and expect to see consistent increases in performance, whether that be increases in endurance or strength or fitness in terms of speed, heart rate, power, whatever, however, you want to quantify that, you have to be creative. And I think that's what makes this sport fun, is because there's many ways to get to a certain destination. So if somebody tells you that this is the way that you have to do it, that's a major red flag. I completely discount anybody who says this is the approach, because we can take many different approaches to get to the same result. It just depends on the athlete. And I think that this is where I would describe that as if there are coaches that say this is the approach, what they're doing is they're coaching a training plan. They're not coaching an athlete. And that is one of the things that I said that I would not do when I became a coach, is that I'm not interested in coaching a training plan. Do I have training plans that have been successful? Yes, I do. I have athletes that have been successful with those plans, yes, I do. But I fully understand and am aware that if I give one training plan to two different athletes, I can get two different results. And what may be optimal for one athlete is not going to be optimal for the other. So I have to coach the athlete and not just give them a plan that has been quote unquote proven to show results, because I don't believe in that. And the whole idea is oh, the data-driven training plans and things, I think that's a nice buzzword, but to me, the whole data-driven science-backed training plans is a way for people to get away from coaching the athlete, and they're just going to make their money on volume. They're the Walmarts of endurance coaches, they're selling training plans, and they're not really focused on getting the maximum amount of performance from that particular athlete where they are in their journey. A lot of times, what I'll see then is you just get athletes that just get hurt because they're not ready for that level of training plan, or you find athletes that underperform because it wasn't enough for them. So, what I suggest that you do is find the number of rides that fit your lifestyle. I'm not going to tell you that riding five days a week is the golden number, because it may not be for you. And it may not be for the race that you're training for either. But I will say my opinion remains the same as it does for run training. Is that if you're not riding more than you're riding, you can't expect to see consistent performance gains. So that means that you should be riding four times a week. Three rides a week, I think, is good maintenance. You will see some level of improvement depending on how you structure those three workouts, but you'll get to the point where you just run out of workouts in order to vary the intensity mixtures to generate different stimuli for the body. You only have three workouts to deal with and to be creative with. The more workouts that you have, the more opportunities you have to structure things in such a way that generate different stimulus. So I think that this is important. If I could ride six days a week or seven days a week, I would. I love the bike. I find it completely fascinating. It doesn't fit my lifestyle to where I would be able to ride that much. But I think I could go a couple months with riding every day. I would really enjoy it. But it just doesn't fit into my lifestyle, and I have to find an approach that fits. So that's what I encourage you to do is to ride as often as you possibly can, given the constraints that you have on you for your time and other aspects of your life, and allow you to still put significant focus on the other two disciplines for the sport. Can you ride six days a week? Sure. But that also means that okay, how many times can you swim and run if you're riding that much? And how much can your body recover from it? So it's a balancing act. I'm not gonna I can't say that, hey, this is the number of times that you should be riding. So if that's what you're looking for, it's just not gonna, it's not gonna come. So sorry. So let's look at the next one. I think that this is something that I've seen a lot, and it's the indoor fitness is not transferring fully to outdoors. And I think the advent of the smart trainer and the creation of these what's effectively just a video game now, the avatars and stuff that you're just you're staring at a screen while you're executing your workout, I think that this has hindered a lot of growth in cycling skill. Sometimes I feel it's been a necessary evil because of the aggression that we face outside on the roads has forced many people to go indoors. I will say that's been the case for me as well. I probably ride more indoors now at the age of 49 than I did 10 years ago simply because I've had so many close calls on the road that it's no longer no longer is enjoyable, and I have to be really choosy on the routes that I take because of my past experiences. I definitely want to have some component of the training plan to be done indoors because it allows me to implement structure and it's a little bit easier to plan logistically, but you cannot do all of your training indoors and expect to perform well on race day because you do not race on Zwift. You do not race on the trainer. There is there are skills that you have to develop. That skills of how to ride in wind, how to handle your nutrition while your bike is moving, because if you're set up in your little pain cave and you get the table set up next to you, you don't have to worry about I'm reaching down for the bottle and I don't have to look where it is that I'm going because you're not going anywhere. But as soon as you come on race day, you're moving forward, and others are moving forward either at a same speed, slower speed, faster speed. There's a lot that's going on, and you've got the rolling friction from the bike, so there's things that you have to look out for on the road, cracks and potholes and rocks and everything else, debris on the road, you don't get that exposure on the trainer. Just because you are able to perform indoors doesn't necessarily mean that performance is going to transfer outside. What I actually find for myself is that I'm actually able to hold a higher power outdoors than I am indoors. And I think it's the way that I have my trainer set up that makes my indoor workouts harder than it would actually be outdoors, where I have all these other factors to play to concern myself with. But I do a lot of my training still outside so that I do get the experience in the wind and how to stay small. And I practice staying in arrow so that I can reap those benefits for longer. Because if you can't stay in the position, you can't hold the position, it doesn't matter how expensive your bike is or how high your FTP is, if you can't hold that position, you're riding with a parachute strapped to your back. Those are things that you can practice indoors so that you can do outside, but there's no substitute for riding outside. Learning how to take corners or learning how to descend without just sitting there riding your brakes. Those are things that you don't learn on a trainer's, and they have to be practiced and learned and perfected outdoors. So I think that the next one, the next thing that I wrote down here is my your position is costing you speed. And I think I've talked about this. I don't want to spend very much time on it. One of the things that I see in races is people that are riding these really nice time trial bikes, but they're spending all their time out of arrow position. It really kind of defeats the purpose of even having that bike if you can't hold that position. So that's something that you have to focus on during your training. And even if it's one of your short workouts through the week, is there's no performance metrics. My goal of this workout is to stay in arrow position throughout the entire duration of the workout. That's a reasonable, that's a reasonable workout. And I think it's a valuable thing to practice. And taking your eyes off of performance metrics and things like that, and working on those soft skills, I think, reap major benefits when it comes to race day. Um and I think I think the next thing that that I would say that would tie to this is there's no strength work being done off the bike. I can honestly say that my performance on the bike. Like improved greatly when I increased my focus in the weight room. I'm not saying that lifting weights is going to make you a better cyclist because in itself it doesn't. But I don't think that you can become the a really good cyclist without focused work in the weight room. I will say that the approach that I've used in the weight room has helped my climbing abilities, has helped my muscular endurance, my just my sheer strength and power on the bike to handle hills and to stay in an arrow position for as long as I can because I've focused on improving the strength in my back and my neck muscles. You can't simply focus all of your training on the aerobic side and expect to see consistent and persistent performance gains because there has to be a well-rounded approach to your training. You have to have the strength that's there. Now I will I'll say that some coaches are going to come back and say, what does it matter? We can do strength training on the bike, we can do big gear work. Yes, I think that is valid and I think it's reasonable. So I did an experiment in my last training block where I removed my leg, my leg-focused workouts, I my leg days in the gym, I removed those at the halfway point of my of a 16-week 70.3 training plan because I was getting enough fatigue in the legs from the volume that I was putting on the bike and the run, so I didn't need more stress. So I removed it. And I had a lot of big gear and strength work, low cadence work on the bike during that second half, that eight-week block. When I went back into the weight room, I could not lift close to the weight that I was lifting when I stopped. So the strength that you gain on the bike, I think, is a different kind of strength. It's not the same. Do I think that there is a place for functional strength training on the bike? Most definitely. I always have one functional strength workout on the bike each week. So I always have a big gear session within my weekly training plan. I think it's just it's good time, it's well time spent. And one of the things that I've struggled with in the past is just high cadence work. I don't like hiding cadence work. I don't like just sitting there just spinning it. And so let's say I have a zone four interval workout that I want to do. There's more than one way to get into zone four in terms of your power range. You can either go big gear, so you max out that chain ring in the back, and you get that cadence to about anywhere between 50 to 60, and you just grind it out. That will get you into zone four. However, you can also lighten the gears so you can get into an easier gear and increase that cadence up to 80, 90 RPM, and you can still get into zone four. It's a different strategy and a different approach, but it gets you to the same point. So keep this in mind when it comes to how you want to execute your workouts and whether you want a strength focus or you want a speed focus for the session, and that will change how you want to execute it. But the strength work that you do in the gym is so incredibly valuable. If you're new to it, I would stick with uh two-legged movements. So you're talking about just regular squats, whether you're talking belt squats or front or back squats, hack squats, pendulum squats, things like that. You can do leg presses, two-legged leg extensions, which are going to be quad focused. Still want to focus on your glutes as well, so you can do hip thrusts, you can do prone or seated leg curls to build hamstring strength. You can do calf supersets where toes out, toes in, toes straight, and work on calf strength. That is a good place to start. If you're not new to the weight room, then I would suggest that you start to progress towards single leg movement. So single leg presses, single leg extensions, single leg calf raises, calf presses, reverse calf presses, where you're working on the front of the shin area of your leg, which is going to vastly improve and help your running as well. So that progression from moving to simple movements to more complex movements, I think, yields major benefits. And I've seen I've seen it in there in the output of my own training plan and how my focus and performance in the weight room has bled over to my performance on the bike and it's resulted in podiums. So I will say that it is a valid approach and is showing showing proof that it works. Uh I'll say the next one I want to wrap this up pretty quick now. I don't want to get too much into fueling because Coach Katie isn't here. She's the other co-host of this podcast, and that's really her area of expertise. But I will give a little bit of insight on fueling. Use the time on the bike to fuel not just for what you're expending on the bike, but what you're going to expend on the run. So use that time that you spend on the bike to maybe overfuel a little bit because you can't consume the same amount of carbs and calories while running just because of the sheer impact and the jostling of the digestive system and everything else that's going on. A, you're going you're also going to feel cooler on the bike than you will on the run. So sometimes it's a little bit easier to underfuel and under-drink because you're not sweating as much because as you're riding through the air, the wind that's blowing is drying the sweat. So you're not really, you don't see the evidence of your effort in terms of sweat volume. So it's it can be a little bit misleading on how much you're losing. So I suggest that you fuel on a time schedule and not by by need or desire. I don't want you to drink just when you're thirsty. I have found that drinking on skin and fueling on schedules have yielded better results, but use that time wisely. Use that time to combat a palate, what I call palate fatigue. You can get away from just all the gels and goos and things, and maybe it's a time to maybe take in some solid food that has a different texture and is maybe not as sweet, and maybe do some savory kind of stuff, like little candy bar, like little payday candy bars or whatever. That just changes things up a little bit. Because the body doesn't have to work as hard to digest because it's not bouncing around like it is when it's running. So use that time wisely on the bike and practice it during your training. Practice on every single long ride. I would, whatever carb target you want to hit, that is what you should be working towards from day one of your training plan. So from your very first long ride, you can say, okay, I want to take in 60 carbs, 60 carbs an hour or 70 carbs an hour, but right now I'm at 40, then use this time, start at 40, and then the following week go to 45 and then 50, and then work your way up. So use the time on the bike to train the gut because it's easier to do it there than it is throughout running. And so really try and stockpile as much as you possibly can because it will pay dividends. The last one that I think that I'm going to talk about is just poor fundamentals. This is something that I've just recently implemented into my training plan for my races, and it's just little simple drills that I've thrown into the warm-up, I think have improved my efficiency and my pedal stroke. The one drill that I really are the single-leg drills. And for instance, I'll have a 10-minute warm-up of for a normal bike session. So let's say this is one of my short or moderate bike workouts that I'll do on the trainer. And I say, okay, I'm going to have a 10-minute warm-up, but I'll cut that in half and say, okay, five minutes I'm going to spend in zone one, just kind of just loosening the legs up. And then I'll do and I'll go into some single leg drills. So I'll do 30 seconds with the right leg, 30 seconds with the left leg, and then a minute with both legs. And then I'll repeat that three times or so. What it's really doing is it's it's showing you the complete pedal stroke. And I'm not going to say that this is something that you have to strive for towards race day because it takes a lot of strength and a lot of discipline to improve that pedaling efficiency, but it does give you an awareness on where you have dead spots within your pedal stroke. And I think it's also helped me with things like turnarounds and in on bike courses because sometimes bike courses and races will be kind of out and backs, or you'll have to do U-turns and things. And single leg drills have actually improved my skill in executing a U-turn or going to the mount line and being comfortable pedal away in one foot because I don't want to sit there and try and clip in with one foot and then just be looking down, trying to clip in and feel around for the second one. As if you're a neutral athlete, I can guarantee that you're looking down at the pedals while you're moving forward trying to clip in. More experienced ones, they can feel their way into the pedal. But for newer athletes, they don't. And that's why this mount line is such a dangerous and risky part for every race that I've ever raced in or spectated in. The ability to do a couple pedal strokes with just one foot clipped in will give you at least some forward momentum and give you some separation from other people that are trying to get started. And that's when you can feel a little bit more comfortable trying to clip in. But just having that awareness on what it feels like and finding out, hey, am I pausing at the top so I'm not really lifting forward and lifting over the edge, over that shelf, and really carrying into the down part of the pedal stroke. So there's no press down and there's no lift. I think most cyclists just they get half of the pedal stroke. It's just the pushdown. So the left leg pushes down, and that's effectively lifting the right leg without purposefully lifting it up. So it's just a series of push down rather than push and lift and over the top. That's where the efficiency of that pedal stroke comes from. And you can actually increase your power by having a more efficient pedal stroke. So if you learn how to capitalize on the back half of that pedal stroke, you'll see an increase in your power. So if you're interested in increasing FTP, work on start incorporating some single leg drills and improve that pedal efficiency. Being able to just navigate around things and reading, reading the road. And this is what's really hindered from such a broad acceptance of trainers and the more accessibility and things like that, where the athletes don't know how to hold a line. They can't ride straight to save their life. And so they're all over the place. And they they can't hold that. And so now you introduce any kind of wind, and Lord have mercy, it's insane on how unstable they are on the bike. And you're trying to safely navigate these people, and it's challenging. And so just working on these basic fundamentals. If that means that you just have to go and buy ten little small orange cones off of Amazon and go to a parking lot after a business is closed, or like early in the morning before they open, and set up a little cone, a little obstacle course for you to work on bike handling skills. I think that it is a valuable thing to do. Even if it's before your long ride. If you want to go and you're just pedal around the parking lot and say, I'm gonna ride these parking spaces, so it's like I'm gonna go out and then practice a U-turn and come back and just work on how to corner, what legs should be down, what legs should be up when I take a corner so that I'm not having to slow down so much in order to take the corner and then fight so hard to get that forward momentum. How can I go into that corner and out of it and maintain a higher proportion of my forward momentum and speed and effort so that I'm not having to be so surgy in in my bike handling on race day? So I think that this is this has been a good overall coverage of the topic. I hope that this has given you a little bit more insight on how to improve your bike fitness, improve your focus on the bike segment of a triathlon, and how to become a better cyclist from a triathlon perspective. I do thank you guys for the time that you have spent, if you've dialed in, and thank you so much for the support you continue to show the podcast. Like I said, this has been episode 105. And if you have found this episode to be helpful, if you've learned something, I hope that you will consider leaving a comment or leaving a review. It's one of the things that really helps the podcast because we do not monetize it, we do not have sponsors and ads. I'm not trying to sell you supplements and hemp mattresses and drink mixes and everything else. That that's not my intent here. My intent is just to share information with you guys to help you along in your journey. And I wanted to do that, or both Katie and I wanted to do that unhindered and not connected to anybody else. So those comments and reviews is what helps the podcast the most. If you know that there's somebody else who may be helped by this episode and you want to share it, please share it with anybody that you think it would help. That really does help broaden the reach and the exposure of the podcast, and you'll help them along in their journey as well. So we also have the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast Group. It's a closed group on Facebook. We started it on day one to grow a community. It gives you direct access to other listeners, to us, the podcast hosts, both Katie and I are in there. And I do want to become a little bit more active in asking questions for people and trying to find maybe some additional topics that other people want to hear about and that you find to be valuable that we may not have necessarily covered, or a topic that we have covered, but just talk about it from a different perspective. But this is an area of that we think is valuable, and we hope that you will consider joining. All you have to do is you just search for the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast group and answer one simple question and agree to the group rules, and it lets you right on in and we'll grow this community. Well, thank you for that consideration. I've already talked about reviews, so those are helpful. Both Katie and I are coaches and we're active. Coaches bringing on athletes onto our rosters. So if you're interested in multi-sport or single sport training plan, one-on-one coaching, I hope that you will consider me as a coach. If you're just tired of researching, trying to find what workouts you should be doing, how you should be structuring your volume, or you're going towards a race that you've never done before, or you're doing a race and you want to maybe try something different. I hope that you will consider reaching out to me. You can go to taboularasoracing.com and check that out. You can reach out to me directly from there. All of my contact information is there, along with all kinds of other additional content that I've put together. There's articles, there's the blog articles, there's document documentaries, Triton 101 series, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's out there on that website. So just go and check that out and take advantage of it. Again, so if you would like to reach out to me, you can go to taboolarassa racing.com and you can send me an email or a direct message. I'm on all the socials, uh, so Facebook, Instagram as well. So you can reach out to me there. So again, thank you guys so much for joining me. This has been episode 105 of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. And I've been your host, Coach Justin, and I'm head coach and owner of Taboola Rasta Racing, and I will talk to you guys again next time. Happy training, everyone. Bye-bye. 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 CoachKatie at fuel the number two run.com and Coach Justin at tabooleromsterracing.com. Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. And remember to find Julie in the journey.