Gravel is the Newish Ironman

Six reasons why you are set up for gravel success from a triathlon background

by Chris Bagg

Your author, in a previous life and his current life

Every few years, there’s a new “marathon.” In the 1980s, that new marathon was...the marathon. The running craze had seized the United States and the world beyond. Regular citizens were running for fun and fitness, U.S. athletes challenged for the Boston Marathon win, and joggers everywhere thought maybe I could do that. In the late 1990s Ironman became the new marathon, fueled by Mark Allen, Dave Scott, and Outside Magazine. By the 2010s the focus shifted again, to ultra-running, SwimRun, or cyclocross. Often many multisport athletes returned to triathlon, sensibly finding that three sports kept them motivated, engaged, and generally fit for anything. In the 2020s, gravel is the new Ironman, and if you have a long distance triathlon habit in your background, there’s a good chance you’ll find gravel crunching under your 40c tires before you know it. 

Uniquely Suited

70.3 and Ironman-distance triathletes are uniquely suited to gravel racing. First of all, though, what’s gravel in the first place? Well, they’re bike races, sort of. Unlike traditional bike racing, with its categories, unwritten rules, and gnostic behavior, gravel racing sets few barriers against entry. Races tend to start all at once rather than in categorized waves, and all are welcome: world tour riders and grandmas alike. Gravel races often challenge their participants through a combination of length and terrain on a combination of surfaces, including pavement, dirt, trail, and (of course) gravel. The atmosphere at gravel events is much more grassroots triathlon than downtown criterium, so you’ll probably feel at home. Here are six reasons why you, triathletes, are going to crush this style of racing.

You’re used to riding alone

Remember all those Saturday mornings when your bike racing friend invited you to come on “this epic group ride?” As a rules-following triathlete, you probably demurred, saying something like “My coach wants me to get in some long, steady aerobic intervals.” Group rides are fun, for sure, but they mimic bike races, with their stochastic, punchy periods separated by stretches of spinning and chatting. Maybe you watched, forlornly, as a pack of cyclists rode past while you toiled along, dutifully performing intervals 30-45 minutes in length. Well, those years of riding alone now makes you the strong one in a gravel race. Gravel events (whether you are racing or just participating) hinge on strength rather than tactical savvy, since it matters less what kind of draft you’re getting and more on if you can ride up this muddy hill or not. Bike racers, who are good at punching and attacking, may not have the same kind of sustain that you have. Also of benefit is the mental strength you have from spending long hours alone with your thoughts. You will spend much of your gravel event riding alone, and the ability to do so without losing your patience will set you up for success when facing several hours of solo riding to the finish line.

You’re (probably) Metabolically Efficient

As someone smarter than we have said, “metabolic efficiency is just getting fit.” Metabolic efficiency is having a moment right now, and a group of people have tried to cut corners to get their faster, often from the “high fat, low carb” approach. For sure, this can help, but it’s the final approach, not the first approach. Want to become more efficient at mobilizing and oxidizing (using) fats instead of carbohydrates? Pedal more, and pedal more at lower intensities and lower cadences. Oh, does that sound like 70.3 and Ironman base training? Why yes it does.

You Understand aid stations

Gravel events utilize a refueling system that is much more triathlon than bike race. Cyclists have always preferred Feed Zones, where teammates or assistants or parents wait for the field and desperately try to hand bottles and food up to participants moving past well over twenty miles an hour. Chaos usually reigns, with dropped water bottles exploding under the wheels like grenades.Triathletes, although many do grab bottles at aid stations during their events, often take the stations slower, and many stop to refill their pockets and reservoirs. You’ll find the same familiar system at most gravel events, with helpers and workers handing up bottles to passing riders but also welcoming those that get off their bikes with cookies, PB&J sandwiches, and many other goodies. The races are long enough that stopping at aid stations very rarely affects your time or result too much, so use them. They are part of the attraction and very often part of the fun.

you’re strong as opposed to “fast”

The amazing thing about long-distance professional triathletes is that they are really good for very long periods of time. Even if you’re not a professional, you’re likely the same: you may not be able to win a town-line sprint, your local 5k, or the 200y Free at a Masters meet, but you just never stop going. That’s strength, and you’ve got it in spades. Maybe it’s the endless big gear sessions your coach gives you, or the years of four-to-six hour rides on Saturday, but you’re a strong athlete. Gravel racing, with the lower speeds on high-friction surfaces, suits you perfectly. You don’t need a big turn of speed—you just need room to let that diesel rumble.

You’re used to long days

Cyclists can adjust to this time frame through their training, certainly, but most are used to races that last one to five hours, usually. Many gravel races will see you out on course for time frames favoring the preparation and event duration that is suited to the triathlete. Ride from sunrise to sundown? For most triathletes, that’s just a day well spent.

You just like new things

Triathletes tend to be curious, always looking for that next new thing that may help them become better endurance athletes. Some time these things are…slightly misguided, but something that isn’t misguided is trying a new, challenging activity in a new space. Being good at gravel racing (or bike racing, or cross-country skiing, or rowing) requires jumping in and taking part, and due to your background at tackling two or three new sports all at once, you won’t be fazed by that challenge. So. Find yourself a gravel bike, learn about tubeless tires, and go express your triathlon fitness in a new sport!

Opening Your Season

FOUR Reminders to Rule Them All When Returning to Racing

by Campfire Co-founders Molly Balfe and Chris Bagg

Back in action at early season races in Montague, California

Flowers bloom, the sunlight stretches past six pm, and cyclists pull their bikes off the trainer to head outside, maybe not wearing every piece of clothing they own. This change of the season in North America portends one thing: RACE season is nearly here! Last year’s end of season enthusiasm is FINALLY coming due. If your dreaming and planning in December led you to sign up for a spring race, you may notice that early season racing comes with some considerations that races in June, July, and August don’t require. We’re here with a few recommendations so you can ensure your first race of the year goes smoothly.

Expectations lead to frustrations

We understand why athletes build expectations going into any event. Expectations arise due to the hard work you have been putting in, and it stands to reason that if you have had strong training on the way into your race, you might think that the equation is simple: effort in, result out.

Sadly, any endurance event is more of a black box than that. The equation isn’t simple, and myriad aspects of the race (both positive and negative) can dramatically alter your experience and your results. Even worse, racing from a place of expectation makes every single piece of data that doesn’t line up with your expectations feel like catastrophe. Maybe you stumbled during the beach start and lost the group that you expected to swim with. If you can’t set aside that thought process, you might spend the rest of the swim seething about “what could have been,” which means you’ve been taken out of the race, mentally. You’re now thinking about the past and how it is going to affect the future, instead of focusing on the “see the ball, hit the ball” mentality that leads to great performances.

Let’s keep going with the scenario above. What if you lost the swim group and then pouted about it during the swim, bike, and run, finishing with a result below what your training suggested. But then you look at the times of the athletes in that front swim group and realized you had no chance of swimming with them on your best day.

You were telling yourself one story all day, you let it affect your performance, and the story was…a myth. This is all an expansion of “it’s not over until the lady sings,” but sometimes it’s necessary to go beyond rank idiom.

So when you get to the race during race week, sit down, write your expectations on a piece of paper, and then burn them. Simple and symbolic, so keep checking in with yourself throughout race week to make sure you aren’t letting those expectations creep back into your brain.

Check that Gear

Much of our race specific gear has been gathering dust in our garages, sports bins, and closets for months. Race morning is not the time to find that your wetsuit has a giant tear or your bike tire has been worn down by your trainer. Tune up your bike and give your race gear a workout even if it isn’t new to you. Don’t try to coast on the memory of everything being fine: winter and disuse can be hard on your stuff. Taking your gear out and testing it early will allow you to fix or replace anything that needs attention. As an added bonus, giving yourself a few dress rehearsals will prevent that sleepless pre-travel night where you try to remember where the heck you put your kit (or worse, discovering it is still at the bottom of the backpack you took to your last race, unwashed and riddled with mold!).

It may be warmer where you are racing than where you are training! Kudos to this athlete and her gallon of water.

Prepare for the Conditions

The realities of winter training can complicate the first race of the season. Many of us spend the winter training indoors or layering up for pre-dawn chilly runs. While we undoubtedly score points for hardiness, the cold weather puts us at a unique disadvantage for what seem to be ever-more balmy spring races. If your first race of the season has the potential to be hot and humid, we highly encourage you to do some heat training. Heat and humidity can impair performance by up to 7% in temperatures above 85 degrees, so this can be a critical part of your race preparation. Here are a few tips for how you can be ready for a hot day of racing:

• BEFORE: Integrate a heat acclimation protocol into your training starting about six weeks before your goal race. This will prepare your body for hot conditions by increasing plasma volume, sweat rate, and comfort in hot weather. Getting a late start? It is still probably worth it—these adaptations take time to be truly robust, but you’ll start to see a benefit after as little as five consecutive days of heat exposure. But be careful—dehydration and fatigue will from heat training can override the benefit of exposure.

• DURING: Incorporate some strategies for internal and external cooling to keep your core temperature as low as possible on race day. If you know you’re going to have a hot water swim, stay as cool as possible before the race begins. Out on the course, chew on ice as you run through the aid station, grab a cold towel for your shoulders, and above all STAY HYDRATED. Combining these strategies may help lower your core temperature, but there is also an effect on performance when athletes’ perception of comfort is increased. Don’t underestimate how important your brain is!

• AFTER: We know, you’re finished with the race and ready to sit in the sun and cheer on your fellow athletes with a dehydrating beverage in your hand. Before you end up in the beer tent, make sure you get to work on replacing the fluid you lost on the race course. This will aid your recovery and help get your body temperature back down. Cooling your body after the race is especially critical if you are racing on back-to-back days (we’re looking at you, stage racers).

Remember, it’s a long season out there—you may not feel great now, but your early season races are the base of this year’s Performance Pyramid.

Maintain Perspective

The reality is that most of us thrive in situations where we know what to expect and how to prepare. Event day can be frenetic and anxiety-provoking on a good day, and those emotions can be compounded if there has been a long period of time since you last raced. Expect to forget something or to have something go wrong. Remember that something going wrong isn’t a reflection on you as athlete! Both bad and good things happen, and perfect races are rare at any point in the season. Use the challenges that our sport presents to practice your race mentality: remaining focused on what is within your control. We hope that athletes’ participation in this sport is part of a lifestyle that includes training and racing throughout the year, building a reservoir of expertise to draw upon. Learn what you can from each race and then shift your focus to the next one. And, if nothing else, remember to take your kit out of your backpack. 

Looking to make sure this race season is your best yet? Contact us for information about working with one of our expert coaches!

Faster, Happier, and Healthier in 2024: Setting Goals with Your Coach

by Molly Balfe, Campfire Head Coach and Co-founder

“So, what's your big race this year?” Have you fielded this question yet? It’s already late January, so your race calendar should be taking form, making it the perfect time to focus on goal-setting for the season. Your coaches know that you are looking to see improvements year upon year, but it is crucial to have a conversation about what you are specifically hoping to accomplish, and how you’ll know you have achieved those goals. Goal-setting is a perennial topic for anybody, regardless of whether they are endurance athletes or not. If you’re a podcast fan, the excellent Huberman Lab podcast recently covered suggestions for effective goal setting, and we have some thoughts of our own. Here are a few tips to help you work with your coach to make 2024 your best year yet:

Get Specific

Be clear with yourself and your coach about what you want to achieve. Improving your swim is a commendable goal, but what are the specific indicators that will help you measure that improvement? Are you hoping to drop time off your threshold pace? Swim under an hour for your Ironman? Complete a sprint distance race without stopping? The more specifically you define your desired outcome, the better your coach can help you get there. Also, make your goals “moderately lofty.” That can sound vague, but the goal should be realistic but still challenging. Is your 70.3 swim time usually around 36-37 minutes? Aim for swimming 33-34 minutes this year, or about a 10% improvement. If you aim to swim sub-30 this year, that might be too lofty. If you aim to only swim 30” faster, then you might “achieve” your goal due to factors out of your control, like a salt-water swim, a short course, or a current. So don’t aim too high, but don’t aim too low, either.

Is swim form a goal for you this year? Then practice excellent form, even when you’re joking around

Think Short and Long Term

Remember the bigger picture when you decide what you want to accomplish this year, ensuring your short-term goals are compatible with your overarching goals for yourself as an athlete. How does this season move you towards being the athlete (and person!) you want to be? If you are hoping to one day get to Kona, stand on a podium at Pacific Crest, or compete in an ITU race, your coach needs to know that. Even if that is not this year’s goal, every step you take should move you in that direction. What are the small to medium-sized accomplishments that you can achieve this year that would help Future You reach that bigger goal? Pro Tip - don’t neglect the psychological aspects of the sport. If you feel you are consistently falling short of your potential, take a good look at your mental game and consider if working on that should be part of your annual planning. 

Second, whey you are thinking long term, try and only set one or two big goals per year. Goal Distraction (the sibling of Goal Envy, covered below) can be just as debilitating. Think about this idea long and hard, since it will be step two of our exercise below. It can be easy to start dreaming of all the things you want to accomplish, and how you’ll paint a rainbow of accomplishment this year composed of many different colors. We know what actually happens when you play with too many colors: you get brown. No shade on brown, but…brown. Be ruthless in your long-term goal setting. Take an axe to the things that aren’t ABSOLUTELY MUST ACCOMPLISH. There will be time to attempt most things, we promise, but if you try and do everything you’ll often get nothing.

Resist Goal Envy

There is always someone whose goal seems bigger, badder, or more audacious. Example: that athlete who is trying to win the race you’re merely hoping you can complete. Stay away from this type of comparison. We spend large portions of our time, energy, and income training and racing in this sport. Your goal may not land you on the cover of a magazine, but it may add quality years to your life or quality moments to your year. Take your goals seriously, train hard, and be grateful for the times when you feel strong. Also, remember that your goal is bigger, badder, and more audacious than someone else’s. Cheer on your fellow athletes. Go fast. Have fun. Be nice.

Goal Setting In Practice

Start by keeping score

Knowing your goals for long term, monthly, weekly, and daily keeps you moving ahead effectively

(if you click on the image above, you’ll be able to download a copy of this goals sheet!)

Now that we’ve got some of the big picture stuff out of the way, let’s set some goals! Download the worksheet above (big thanks to Brian Baxter at AMPlify Sports Psychology for this resource) and grab a pen. Remembering point number two above (only 1-2 moderately lofty goals per year!) set a big picture goal that really fires your imagination. Write down those long term goals and make sure that you include an expiration date—WHEN will you achieve this by? Maybe you’d like to qualify for Kona by 2027. Write that down and set a date when that will happen, maybe in the early spring of 2026, two years from now. TWO YEARS?! You might be saying. Yup. We said long term!

Next, set three monthly goals that will move you in the direction of your long term goal(s). It’s January 10th, so let’s focus on February. What can you accomplish in February that will move you towards qualifying for Kona by 2026? We’d guess that you probably need to ride a bunch and swim a bunch. Maybe you need to commit to a strength-training routine. Maybe you just need to start getting out the door to run. Set three moderately lofty goals to accomplish next month, like ride 800 miles, swim 15 hours, hit the gym twice a week, or simply run sixteen times in 28 days.

You’re probably getting the picture, now. Next up you will set goals for next week. If you’re trying to ride 800 miles in February, well, then you’ll have to ride 200 miles next week. What does that look like? How many rides do you need? How long are each of them? Which ones will be outside and which will be inside? Get those scripted and start planning now.

Next, what needs to change in your habitual behavior so you can achieve next week’s goals? Maybe you need to wake up a little earlier to get on the bike sooner. Maybe you need to go to sleep at 9pm. Maybe you need to alter your diet so your body can handle the uptick in training. Write those habits down, and if you’re a podcast listener, head back over to Mr. Huberman for this post on habits.

Finally, commit to THIS particular habit every week. Maybe you do this goal-setting every Friday afternoon, or roll it into your Sunday planning for the week ahead. But keep doing it. “Wait a second,” we hear you saying. “I’m gonna write down this big picture goal every week for the next two years?” Yes, that’s correct. We want you to write it down so many times your brain thinks it’s a foregone conclusion. Affirmations work, but you gotta work at at affirmations.

For the Love of Aquabike

by Cam Wynhof

The world of Endurance sports can take a major toll on your body. There are things that are in our control, such as training schedules, nutrition plans, sleep habits and, of course, partnering with a coach. Injuries, often outside our control, of course can set us back in our goals and aspirations. Sometimes those injuries set us back a week or two, or, in my case recent experience, it can change your whole racing identity. This year I faced a tough challenge, which gave me unexpected new goals and a love for the (wait for it), yes, aquabike.

The Injury

My plan for 2022 was to fully embrace and race the 70.3 distance. I raced four 70.3 events including that distance’s world championships. During all my training, I was experiencing some nagging hip pain that would not go away, despite my regular visits to the chiropractor, use of recovery tools, and regular stretching. I finally accepted (halfway through a cyclocross race, no less) that riding the bike shouldn’t be this painful and I needed to figure out what was going on. I was diagnosed with moderate to severe arthritis in my left hip, and my doctor recommended a total left hip replacement. At 35, this felt like a total shock, but since the pain was impacting my joy of endurance sports and my daily function, I made the call to have the surgery in March of 2023. But I still wanted to race….

Sometimes injury feels this bleak

phase one: acceptance and exploration

When you’re an athlete, being told that you can’t run for a year can be a bit of a mind, um, screw. I kept thinking, “there has to be something I can do to fix this! There have to be some races that I can do this year.” In reality, I needed to make focusing on my recovery my number one priority. I shifted my mindset, and my training goals went from running cadences and distances to: listening to my body, listening to my physical therapist, and eating properly to fuel my recovery.

What does recovery look like post hip surgery? To be honest, the first two weeks were rough for me! I was extremely sore but all I wanted to do was move and walk. I discovered the reality of atrophy because I wasn’t moving the way I was used to. I needed to build strength and mobility in my hip and things started to progress week by week.

Itching to get back to moving in some sort of way that brought me joy, I set my sights on the PDX Olympic Aquabike with Why Racing Events in June of 2023. Since the aquabike event consists of the swimming and bike portion of a triathlon, my team of doctors cleared me to train in May. First on my training team was calling up my coach at Campfire Endurance. He helped me map out how to adjust my training to complement my recovery and safely participate in things I love.

I want to reiterate how important communication is with your coach. Telling your coach how your body is feeling and how you are adapting to the workouts is very important. This is how you and they make appropriate changes to your plan if necessary. What’s the first step to getting back in shape? Aerobic and strength conditioning is key. I needed to build my swim and bike endurance back up while also maintaining my hip strengthening exercises. This is where RPE, rate of perceived exertion, is most important. I hadn’t been swimming or biking for two months and my training needed to reflect how I was feeling and what my body could push towards. I had to consciously make a mental decision as well to not think about where my fitness used to be, but what I was now working towards. Take your training day by day and don’t forget, consistency is key for all training.

Back at it!

Phase two: return to racing

First, Aquabike is uniquely great! I was excited to get back to racing, and trying something new felt monumental. I showed up to the PDX Aquabike with a spirit of curiosity, asking myself, “Ok, where is my body at?” In a regular triathlon we worry about swim and bike pacing because we need to save energy for that final push of a strong run. But there’s no run in an aquabike! You can push yourself on the bike without the run pacing hanging over you. With proper hydration and electrolytes, you can ride hard and surprise yourself with the results. As soon as I finished, I knew that I loved aquabike and that my racing for the year was just getting started. Staying consistent with the training and effort led me to set a course record for the aquabike at PDX triathlon, which was a nice little bonus. If you are a first time athlete or new to the sport and intimidated by the full swim/bike/run, give aquabike a try, since you might love it!

Phase three: appreciation, or “Bodies are cool”

The human body is an amazing machine. With my team of doctors and coaches, I was able to come up with an appropriate recovery plan and was able to move past this obstacle. What this whole process has taught me is that there are only so many things in our control. While you can do workouts for injury prevention (clamshells are your friend!) you still need listen to your body. If something doesn’t feel right or you suspect you have an injury, get it checked out so you can keep doing the things you love. Never give up on yourself because you can do amazing things. When facing these mental and physical challenges during this process, I often returned this quote:

“Such is the life of an adventurer” – My 6yr old daughter Amelia

Fuelin | A Review

by Molly Balfe

About a year ago three of my athletes suddenly asked me about using the Fuelin app for daily nutrition guidance. I hadn’t heard of it, so I decided to sign up for a few months so I could see what it was about and what type of guidance it was giving people. As a coach, I wanted to be aware of the information that my athletes were consuming so I could make my own recommendations about how to use (or not use) it.

Learning how to navigate the app was a bit of a learning curve, but I was able to figure it out relatively quickly. To ensure that daily recommendations are correct, you have to assign your workout start time and identify a training zone in your training software (the app can sync with TrainingPeaks, Today’s Plan, and Final Surge). Instructions on how to get started are available in their video library and in a pdf that is emailed to you when you sign up. The interface was pretty straightforward – days and meals are color coded to indicate low, medium, and high carb needs. There are goals for protein, fat, and carbohydrates for each meal and your plan is structured around your workouts. You enter your meals into MyFitnessPal and the app breaks them down into macros that you can track throughout the day. To support the app, there is an extensive video library and opportunities to connect with the broader Fuelin community. You can be self-directed or pay extra for 1:1 support from one of their nutritionists.

I went into this experiment feeling pretty confident about my diet. As a coach, I’m familiar with recommended guidelines, and I figured I was probably pretty close to those. I eat lots of whole grains, plenty of fruits and vegetables, and a good amount of lean protein. I decided to start out by tracking my regular meals to see how they stacked up against the app’s recommendations. I learned a lot and was surprised and somewhat horrified by what I discovered.

A nod to your author’s Irish dancing heritage

• I am an unstoppable fat-eating machine. My regular diet sometimes topped out at THREE TIMES the recommended amount of fat. My healthy lunch salad featured half an avocado, some olives, a bunch of little mozzarella balls, a handful of nuts, and a drizzle of olive oil. Most of those are healthy fats, so I welcomed them all in the name of satiation and shiny hair.

• Eggs are bullshit. I’ve been relying on eggs as an easy and inexpensive source of lean protein for a long time. An egg has around 6 grams of protein, so to meet the recommended 30g I was often targeting for breakfast I’d have to eat more eggs than I can possibly stomach. Thankfully, the addition of turkey sausages made things a lot easier.

• I’m hugely misinformed about carbohydrates. I blame the Adkins diet that was popular when I was in my 20s and living in New York. What I thought was a higher carb option, like a sandwich, often didn’t even meet the CHO requirements for a low carb meal.

• Alcohol is not a carb. I was astonished when I tracked a glass of wine I had with friends and saw it did nothing at all to my macro count. After some quick internet sleuthing, I found the reason why: alcohol is dietarily useless in small doses and can even be classified as a toxin in larger doses. It also messes with your sleep, so factor that in as well.

Overall, I was way over my recommended fat intake, and way under my protein and carbohydrate goals. As I let all that sink in, I started to realize how poorly I had been setting myself up for recovery and achievement. I know those missing nutrients are essential for turning training into strength and speed, and I was mortified by how off I was in my assessment of my own diet.

I started making some changes and almost immediately felt an increase in energy and an improvement in my body’s recovery time. I had blamed a busy life for my afternoon workouts always feeling sluggish, but WOW does proper fueling ever make a difference. I started getting better about post-workout recovery and was shocked by how much better I felt throughout the day.

I did run into a few concerns as I continued using the app. The main issue I have with platforms like these centers around an athlete’s tendency to become fixated on optimization and performance. I think this can be a valuable tool, but a lot of people may find they need to step away from the specifics once they’ve made some bigger changes overall (in my case, fewer mozzarella balls and so many more grains and protein sources). Also, while fasting wasn’t explicitly endorsed, it was certainly supported. Fasting may be effective for weight loss, but it can be catastrophic for training, especially if you have a higher chronic training load. It is also a slippery slope to unhealthy and dangerous restriction.

Finally, there was some unclear guidance about training nutrition. It was stated that the calories and fluids that you take in during a training session do not need to be tracked, but some workouts stipulated that you should only drink water. I found that somewhat murky, and I am an advocate for using every training session as an opportunity to work on your gut tolerance, so I moved some carbohydrates from the meal before the session to my bike bottles. I like to keep sport nutrition simple and I think that approach works well for most athletes.

My experience with the app was pretty positive. It helped me tune up my own diet and it has prompted me to ask more questions of athletes who tell me their nutrition is dialed. I was truly surprised by the amount of misinformation that was at play in my meal choices. I know better, but apparently decades of carb-phobic propaganda (and maybe a natural inclination towards cheese and ice cream) made a strong impact. I’m glad I identified those issues, and that I was able to make some relatively easy changes. That said, I’m pretty sure my lunch salad would still ring some fat alarms, but I really like avocados and shiny hair.

ANNOUNCING TEAM CAMPFIRE

Excellence through community

Campfire Endurance Coaching was co-founded by two friends who believe that endurance sports (and, crucially, training for those sports) can alter your life in myriad and positive ways. Running, cycling, swimming, rowing, skiing, and many other sports draw athletes of all types because there is something in the activity that fires those athletes’ imaginations: they see themselves wearing the kit, completing the event, improving at a new endeavor, overcoming the challenge, or enjoying (and, possibly, triumphing in) the competition.

What those athletes don’t sense, at the outset, is that some part of them hungers for adversity, since that is primarily what endurance sports offer. Team and ball sports usually prioritize a clash of manual skills alongside physical demands—it’s the rare person who can walk out on a tennis court having never seen a racket and simply play. Endurance sports, while there is certainly a skill component, primarily require the athlete to, well, endure. It’s right there in the name. Can you train your body to last longer? Having achieved that goal, can you last longer at a slightly faster pace?

Non-endurance athletes often look at us confusedly. They know that running a marathon, participating in a bike race, or finishing a triathlon requires substantial discomfort, having run up a flight of stairs or tried to catch a departing bus. One can almost hear them thinking Why would you do that for hours, if you don’t have a ball to kick or hit or throw or score with? We believe that there’s something in endurance people that love the work of changing their physiologies, and then seeing what those changed bodies can do in the shared experience of an event.

Endurance training takes time. It takes a lot of effort, and that effort is usually seen only by the person doing the work or by their immediate family. Endurance sports can be a lonely endeavor, a fact borne out by the titles of books and stories about this type of sport: “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” “Once a Runner,” “The Amateurs,” and so on. Some athletes enjoy that solo time, but we think that, after a while, everybody loves someone to overcome adversity alongside, someone with whom you can share your effort. Maybe that person pushes you while you push them back, but really the benefit derives from being seen for your work.

It’s in that spirit that we’re announcing Team Campfire. At Campfire we have coached hundreds of athletes to great results over the years, but our greatest results are the athletes who see that participating and improving in endurance sports leads to a happier, faster, and healthier life. By launching the team, we’re expanding our ability to help other athletes share that happier, faster, and healthier existence, and we plan to do it through plenty of community connection.

As a member of the team, you’ll have many different ways to achieve excellence through community. Every team member gets:

• Access to our online winter Endurance Spin series, 16 sessions spread out over four months between November and the end of February

• Participation in our Discord and Facebook groups, where you can set up workouts with other team members, ask questions of the Campfire coaches during our monthly Ask Us Anything sessions OR via different channels dedicated to inquisitive athletes

• Access to our yearly Campfire kit sales so you can wear the kit during races and training sessions

• Team discounts with our sponsors

• Discounts on Campfire clinics, camps, and custom plans

• Free annual consultation with a Campfire Coach

• Inclusion in team parties and events

Additionally, athletes at the Explorer ($199/year) and Scout ($399/year) get a Campfire Brand Swag Bundle of a custom technical trucker, swim cap, water bottle, and holographic sticker.

Athletes at the Scout level get included access to all our pre-built training plans, allowing those athletes to build their own training year of different plans. Many of those options have “completer” and “competer” options. Those plans include:

• Sprint Completer

• Sprint Competer

• Olympic Completer

• Olympic Competer

• 70.3 Completer

• 70.3 Competer

• 140.6 Completer

• Beginner Half Marathon

• Intermediate Marathon

• Gravel Experienced (50-200 miles event)

• Cross is Coming

• Multisport Base (6-8 hours/week)

• Multisport Base (10-12 hours/week)

• 10k Open Water Swim

• Cycling Base

• Running Base

Finally, we of course plan to continue to offer our “Ranger” level, which is one-to-one coaching. One-to-one coaching is what we do best and will always prioritize, as we believe it is the best way for athletes to achieve their goals in the most efficient way possible. Through robust and regular communication (phone/Zoom, text/email, and the TrainingPeaks comment feature), dynamic and individualized training programs, and decades of coaching experience, our one-to-one athletes know that they are making no compromises in their pursuit of a faster, happier, healthier life.

The team launches on September 7th, 2023. If you already get our newsletter, you’ll be notified upon launch. Can’t miss this opportunity? Sign up for our newsletter below and you’ll have first crack at this amazing new endurance home. Join us around the campfire.

How Camp?

Clay Trails run workout at the QT2 Pro Camp

Ed. Note—this post was originally posted back in 2017, but provides solid guidance about how to approach a training camp OR design your own. Interested in coming to a camp? Our 2023 Bend Spring Training Camp is almost full (only three spots remain!), so if you want to accelerate your summer training, sign up today!

I'm sitting on a plane from Orlando to Denver, where I'll grab a flight to Tucson later today. The QT2 Systems Pro Camp just finished up yesterday, and I'm traveling camp-to-camp, getting ready to run a Tucson Dream Camp with eight lucky and motivated athletes. As one camp ends and another one hurtles towards opening, I thought a brief of review of how camps work for an athlete would be in order.

I've been attending big professional spring training camps for five or six years, now—at least half of my racing career. They've become an essential part of my preparation for each season. Camps have also surged in popularity for age groupers, as coaches and athletes have realized their benefits. Camps provide a ton of benefits, such as (but not limited to!):

• Time spent with someone looking at your swim/bike/run form and being able to make adjustments to it (preferably, this person is your coach, but it doesn't have to be)

• A monastery-like environment, where you can focus only on training, eating to support that training, recovering, and learning

• A burst of enthusiasm for your sport, as you brush up against people you haven't trained with, some of whom are faster than you (motivation) and some of whom you can outpace (satisfaction/confidence)

• A big dose of stimulus (training) that, given time and recovery, provides a transformation of your athletic abilities

Well, that's great, Chris, you're saying. That all sounds wonderful, but how about some more guidance? How should these be set up? That's a very sound question. Camps should push you beyond your current abilities (in any or all of the areas of endurance, speed, or technique) without putting you in so deep a hole that you are A) injured or B) burnt out. Figuring out where that line is, though, can be quite challenging. Many triathletes—type A personalities that love making lists, tracking data, and "knowing" stuff—want to know exactly where that line is. Unfortunately, I can't give you the complete answer. If the answer were in a dark room, I would love to be able to throw a giant switch and turn on the lights, a theatrical pop and electrical buzz accompanying the illumination. I can, perhaps, give you a flashlight with which to explore.

Over the course of the 17 days at QT2 Camp (February 17th through March 5th) I:

• Swam 69,942 yards/28,800y per week (about 1600y short of what was planned for me)

• Rode 785 miles/323 miles per week (managed not to miss any riding)

• Ran 85.33 miles/35 miles per week (about 30-35 miles short of what was planned for me)

Just so you don't think I'm getting all humble-braggy (or, come to think of it, actual braggy), I'm putting these numbers up there for a reason. Towards the end of camp (the Thursday of last week) my right calf twinged and flared while running up a small hill. It's one of those come-and-go injuries that recedes for about a month, and seemingly returns out of nowhere. I know better than that, especially given my past year's struggle with the various muscles and nerves of my lower body, and I'd ascribe the injury's reappearance as part negligence on my behalf, and part training stress beyond what I've been used to. Over the six weeks coming into camp, I've averaged:

• 17500 yards per week in the pool

• 156 miles per week on the bike

• 23.7 miles per week of running

Those probably seem like relatively modest numbers, but those six weeks were the beginnings of my real training for the year, and include the various zeros that afflict problems with averaging data in the first place. But you can see some general forms taking shape. Camp basically meant multiplying my swim volume by 1.65, doubling my cycling, and should have seen a similar doubling in my run volume (if I'd completed all the prescribed runs, I would have ended up at 120 miles of running over 17 days, or 48 miles per week). I'd say that camp revealed the fact that my swimming and cycling durability is good right now, but my running durability still needs work. 

Gosh, you're saying now. He just keeps talking about himself! When is this going to get pertinent to me? I get it, you're absolutely correct. Here's how I would think about this data, taking into account the fact that every athlete is different and can absorb different kinds of training loads.

• During a camp or period of higher training load, you can probably absorb up to 1.5 the volume you've put in on your two stronger sports over the previous 12 weeks, although cycling can maybe get closer to a 2x figure. This is such a vague estimate that I'm hesitant to even write it, but the additional rest and recovery and focus that camps provide allow you to get away with this.

• Your weaker sport, or whichever sport has some injury history in it, should only experience a 1.25 multiple during camps or periods of higher training.

• Swimming is the safest sport to add volume, as long as your shoulders are healthy

• Cycling is the next safest sport to add volume, as long as you've had a bike fit or a fit update within the last year

• Running is the sport most likely to damage you all the time, so be cautious with it.

So, if you're showing up to a camp this week (hint, hint) or have one in the near future, do a little number crunching and come to camp armed with some data for the coaches running camp. It's their job to watch you and get a sense of how you're doing and to pull on the reins a bit, if necessary, but why not make their jobs easier? If you let them know what you've been up to over the past six weeks, they can even better tailor camp to your needs. Remember that camp is not a race, not a competitive event; the person who "wins" camp often ends up injured not too far down the road. Camp is supposed to push you and you alone up to the "stimulus edge," where we're getting maximum benefit without injury. If you get caught up in trying to "tick the box" of every session, you're not training by your needs, you're training by someone's guess as to what your body can handle. As with any coaching relationship, it's up to you and your coach together to locate that stimulus edge, so why not give them a hand?

John B.'s Kona 2022 Plan

We have something a little different for you today. We’ve put together a short case study on how one of our athletes prepared for Kona in 2022, after a sub-par trip there pre-pandemic. We’ll also share with you the training hours necessary to put in a sub-10 performance on the Big Island, and talk a little bit about how we coach athletes to these performances. Mostly, though, we’ll let the pictures do the talking today.

John had a solid career in triathlon already when he came to us, but he wanted more. He wanted to have a strong, consistent performance at Kona.

This is THE question of coaching. What needs to be altered with an athlete’s training? Asking questions is what every coach should be excellent at, and if your coach ISN’T asking you questions, then you should have some questions for THEM.

Another classic concept. Again, make sure your coach looks for these aspects of your game.

We figured out what we would do in each discipline, and then set about making those changes.

Most of our work on both the swim and bike was about improving fatigue resistance rather than adding speed. At this distance, fatigue resistance trumps speed ANY day.

We raised the amount of time John spent on the bike in the 11 months before Kona, and he finished up around 300 hours of riding during those months.

On the run John DID need some speed, so we added some pure speed work to his program along with the fatigue resistance we focused on in the other discipline.

John shaved almost an hour off his Kona time, getting down to a very quick 9:38 at Kona 2022.

So what were John’s numbers for the 11 months leading into Kona?

Swim: 143 hours
Bike: 297 hours
Run: 154 hours
Strength: 44 hours
Total Hours = 638 over 11 months, or 14.5 hours/week.

What would we do differently next time? John has a busy full-time job and he recently got engaged, so he doesn’t have a ton of extra time in his calendar. We didn’t make a huge improvement in his swim time, so we would focus even more on trying to nudge his swim cadence up from 59-60 into the low-to-mid 60s and then spending time there so the higher turnover becomes his normal level of oxygen consumption and, therefore, a sustainable effort.

Thanksgiving 10k Swim 2022

Every year we end up running a 10k swim around this time of year, swimming’s version of a turkey trot, but in this case it’s much more like a turkey marathon. Swimming 10,000 yards or 10k (10,0000y ≠ 10k, and yes, I’ll die on that hill) will take you anywhere between 2.5 and 4 hours, so it’s definitely a commitment. Earning your turkey? This is more like earning a yearly trip to Popeye’s (honestly, that’s what one part of the Campfire ownership does with their 10,000y swim). Without further ado, here is this year’s set. This was written with fairly strong swimmers in mind who usually use a 1:35/100m or 1:25/100y base send-off. Those swimmers should use the LEFT sendoffs, and other swimmers should use the RIGHT sendoffs. This set was written for a short course yards pool. If you swim meters, we’d suggest adding at least 10” per 100 to the send-offs.

Warmup
400 easy, every 4th non-free RIMO (reverse IM order, if you’re into that sort of thing)
300 pull
6x50 ↓1-3, 4-6 on :50/:60
(1000)
+++++++++++++++++
Main Set One
11x75 as follows
2 on 1:15/1:20
2 on 1:10/1:15
2 on 1:15/1:20
2 on 1:05/1:10
2 on 1:15/1:20
1 on 1:00/1:05
50 easy

11x100 as follows
2 on 1:30/1:40
2 on 1:25/1:35
2 on 1:30/1:40
2 on 1:20/1:30
2 on 1:30/1:40
1 on 1:15/1:25
50 easy

11x125 as follows:
2 on 1:55/2:05
2 on 1:50/2:00
2 on 1:55/2:05
2 on 1:45/1:55
2 on 1:55/2:05
1 on 1:40/1:50
100 easy
(4400)

Main Set Two
4x175
— odds 2:30/2:45
— evens 2:20/2:35
3x200
— odds 2:50/3:10
— evens 2:40/3:00
500 pull moderate, regroup
4x100
— odds 1:25/1:35
— evens 1:20/1:30
2x150
— odds 2:15/2:30
— evens 2:05/2:20
4x50
— odds :45/:50
— evens :40/:45
100 on 1:15/1:25
200 pull easy
(7400)

Main Set Three
4 rounds, send-off base is the same each round but distance changes

Round #1
300 on 4:30/5:00
200 on 2:50/3:10
100 on 1:20/1:30
50 on :60/:65

Round #2

50 on :45/:50
300 on 4:15/4:45
200 on 2:40/3:00
100 on 1:55/2:05

Round #3

100 on 1:30/1:40
50 on :45/:50
300 on 4:00/4:30
200 on 3:40/4:00

Round #4

200 on 3:00/3:20
100 on 1:25/1:35
50 on :40/:45
300 CD

Building a Gravel Racer from a Triathlon Chassis

Your author, en route

by Campfire Co-Founder Molly Balfe

The leaves are turning, the air is colder, and triathletes’ hearts are turning to…mud. Whether you’ve gotten yourself a gravel bike or rigged your road bike with some thicker, grippier tires, chances are pretty good that you have gotten off the road over the past few seasons. Gravel racing is a great way to maintain focus and fitness throughout the year, since the season extends beyond when triathletes will typically race. However, the challenges and skills required for riding on gravel are different from what we practice on our time trial bikes. As always, a little preparation goes a long way. Check out our three big tips for making the switch from a strong triathlon season to an epic gravel season. You decide if you want to make the switch back.

Hit the Gym

One of the true joys of gravel is that, as a surface, it is pretty poorly defined. What is considered a road by one rider may be little more than a trail to another, and terrain can vary from groomed dirt to sand pits to several inches of slick mud. In order to respond to the challenges you’ll encounter in a race or ride, it is crucial you spend some time getting strong. We recommend that you focus on strengthening:

1. Lower Body. Seems obvious, right? You’re riding a bike. But give us a minute. Gravel riding requires a lot of low cadence riding, as you mangle your bike through vague moon dust or primordial ooze. If you haven’t been doing your squats, lunges, deadlifts, and hip thrusts, you’re likely to run out of muscular oomph at some point of your event. And guess what? It’s November, which is a perfect time to start learning how to lift.

2. Upper Body. Maybe less obvious, but while you’re doing that aforementioned mangling, your bike will be moving around underneath you a lot. You know what manages that movement? Your trunk and torso and arms. If you want to be able to lift your arms to give your race sherpa a post-event hug, it’s time to start getting familiar with the push-up position. Some triceps work and a pull-up or two won’t hurt, either.

3. Core. You probably saw this coming. No endurance how-to is complete without a call to core stability. The Campfire Head Coaches like to say “You sure can shoot a cannon out of a canoe…as long as you’re fine with destroying the canoe,” and we hope the figurative language isn’t lost on you. Gravel races are long, like, Ironman long in some cases, and having a powerful core will allow you do pedal effectively for longer. We love the dying bug as our go to core movement, since it keeps your low-back stable and can be progressed easily.

Lift now or regret it later!

Technical and Handling Skills

It should come as no surprise that gravel racing will require more technical skills than spending hours in aero on smooth pavement. The specific skills that you need will be dictated by the type of terrain in your race/region, but our biggest recommendation here is to get out and practice. Being able to stay calm and relaxed is possibly the most important skill to develop, and that comes with experience. Before your big race, make sure you get out and ride on local gravel roads so you can identify what conditions you’re not so great at navigating. When you know what they are, ride them often. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. If you hit a sandy or silty section, don’t try to muscle through it or hit the brakes. Shift into an easier gear and spin through anything loose and shifting. The bike will yaw around like a drunkard, but that’s fine—let it do its drunken wobble and just keep pedaling.

2. Assume water is much deeper than it looks. This goes for puddles as well as rivers/crossings. Bend a rim in a water-filled hole and you’ll never forget this one. The takeaway? If you can’t see the bottom, ride around it or just get off your bike for a few meters and walk.

3. Navigate with your body, not your handlebars. Learn how leaning the bike makes it curve, and that pointing your chest and head where you want to go is better than turning the bars, which often results in too much turning.

Go Tubeless

If you haven’t made the switch to tubeless tires yet, now is the time. The inherent unevenness of off (paved) road cycling means that your chances of hitting something and blowing a tube are pretty high. With tubeless tires on your whip, you’re unlikely to get flats of any kind. Tubeless removes the major vector for flat tires in cycling: the pinch flat, where the inner tube gets pinched between the tire and rim after hitting a big bump. When this happens in a tubeless context, the sealant in the tire rescues the rider from larger obstacles that would normally pierce a clincher tire and the tube within. If the puncture is significant enough, you may hear a short hiss and see a jet of sealant escape your tire (or feel a short spray on your calves, causing you to scan the sky for clouds on a perfectly sunny day). The sealant magically seals most holes (if you destroy your sidewall, there’s not much we can do for you), allowing you to continue your ride in peace. Tubeless tires offer such maintenance-free riding, in fact, that you may soon forget that they do require some upkeep, primarily by making sure fresh sealant flows inside the tire. Sealant dries out over time, so replacing it every month or so is a good idea. If you DO flat and the sealant doesn’t save you, you can simply install a tube the way you normally would out on the road, but this is a fairly rare occurrence in the world of gravel cycling. In a future article (our 201 article) we’ll talk about fixing your tubeless set-up on the fly, but that’s for a different day.

HAVE FUN

So that’s it for now! Get strong, practice practice practice, and install some tubeless tires on your conveyance. Triathletes make great gravel riders—you only have to get out there and try something new.

How to Do Different and Challenging Things Next Season

Co-founder Molly Balfe’s Haute Route Davos Experience

Ed. Note—What do you want to do next year? It’s that time of year when athletes begin to think about the events they’d like to focus on, and we at Campfire Endurance Coaching heartily believe in finding new ways to put your hard earned endurance to use. Maybe you’re a dyed-in-the-Lycra triathlete, and maybe you’d like to try SwimRun, or some skate skiing, or something entirely different. Co-founder Molly Balfe got out of her comfort zone and participated in the Haute Route Davos last month, and she returns with this report. Be like Molly and realize that the exchange rate on endurance is quite high between sports.

I was feeling strong on the first big climb of Stage One at Haute Route Davos. The weather was cool and sunny and the peaks of the Swiss Alps were just barely streaked with snow. I had already been climbing for what felt like an eternity, but I could see a sign in the distance that I was pretty certain would let me know that there was just 1k left. As I drew closer, that sign made it clear that this event was going to be different from anything I had done before: 10k to the summit. I put my head down and nervously patted my jersey pockets, crossing my fingers that I’d packed enough gummy worms for the physical and emotional toll of what I had decided to take on. 

Several months beforehand, I saw a post in the Ironman Certified Coaches Facebook Group looking for people who would be interested in completing a Haute Route event. Ironman had recently acquired the series, and they were looking for volunteers to gain experience that could be shared with interested athletes. After throwing my name in the hat, I was contacted by someone at Ironman asking me why they should pick me. I honestly responded that I am not particularly gifted at cycling, but I work really hard at improving. At that time, I was putting in a lot of work on the bike in the hopes of qualifying for Kona at Ironman Canada, so I know exactly how hard it can be to make those gains. I was thrilled when they told me to pick an event, and I chose the three-day ride in Davos.

My excitement turned pretty quickly to apprehension as the trip grew closer. I ended up having a great race in Canada, but I missed a KQ by three spots that were absolutely given up on the bike. I looked at the elevation profiles for the three Haute Route stages and started to wrap my head around the fact that I had never done anywhere close to this much climbing, and I’m just not that good at climbing in the first place. I started to worry about missing cutoffs and wondered if the lack of momentum on grades over 12% would cause me to just topple over on my bike. Would someone come get me if I couldn’t get to the top? Or would I have to lie in the road like an overturned cockroach and mourn all the squats I’d failed to do? 

It turned out I didn’t need to worry about any of that. The event was spectacular, although I was right that it was very hard. Over three days, I climbed nearly 20,000 ft in just over 165 miles in the three stages. I learned some important lessons, which I’ll impart here now in case this is something on  your bucket list. 

• Be prepared to ride in a pack. As triathletes, we often train alone or with a few friends, so the 50-60 minute neutral start at the beginning of Stages One and Two may come as a real surprise. I was lucky enough to ride with a cycling group in Brooklyn early in my athletic career, so I am comfortable being very close to other riders, at least until someone slams on their brakes without warning and nearly causes a pile up. Do yourself and your fellow athletes a favor and jump into a few group rides so you know some of the basics and can do your part to keep everyone safe.

• Be realistic about your ability. The single most important decision I made for my race was to switch to a larger climbing gear on the bike I rented from France Bike Rentals (terrific bikes – rent a bike from them and leave yours at home). I originally intended to ride with a 28 as my biggest cog. That’s what my TT bike has, and it is totally sufficient for any of my local climbs. I mentioned this to my coach, who told me to switch to a 32 immediately. I have absolutely no doubt that this conversation was the difference between a successful event and a DNF. I ended up renting a bike with a 28 in Slovenia a few weeks beforehand and it was made abundantly clear that climbing in the Alps is unlike any climbing I have experienced thus far. The easier gear better suited my athletic profile. While I am undoubtedly a strength-limited athlete, I had raced an Ironman a month earlier and had buckets of aerobic fitness. Choosing a setup that complemented my training instead of my ego allowed me to spin up hills and pass people who were mashing their pedals while they Paper-boyed across the perfect Swiss asphalt. 

• Don’t neglect your fueling. You can get away with recovery beer and donuts in a one day event, but multi-day racing requires you to eat and drink consistently throughout your ride and to be diligent about your recovery after you finish. Aim for 60-90g of carbohydrates and at least a bottle of fluid (heavy sweaters are going to need a lot more) per hour. The aid stations at Haute Route events are terrific – you can expect to find potatoes, cured meat, cheese, soup, and pizza in addition to the usual sport foods (bars, gels, sports drink). You don’t have to run off the bike, so go ahead and try something new! Maybe not as much of the cheese as you’d like (I can tell you from experience), but you’ll learn what works for you.

• Don’t skip the massage. My body was sore in ways that I’d never expected thanks to copious amounts of climbing, shivering, and clutching my brakes as I careened down the twisty descents that inevitably followed the summits. I put myself in the hands of the massage therapists after each stage, and in 15 minutes they had me tuned up enough to expect to be able to ride again tomorrow. I’m pretty sure my body only made it through the weekend because of the Swiss woman who dug her thumbs into my calves at the end of Stage Two.

• Find friends. These events allow you to get pretty close to what riding in the mountain stages of major cycling races might be like. As a solo rider, the biggest difference I felt was the lack of a team to work with, both for the race advantage and for marveling at the fact that the road seriously just never stops going up. Eventually, I was lucky enough to find a few folks who were kind, hilarious, and excellent drafts. Nothing will make the endless climb go by faster, but you’ll enjoy schlepping up that hill a lot more if you have someone to joke with. If I get the chance to do a Haute Route event again, I will do everything I can to try to talk a bunch of friends into going with me.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from my weekend in Davos, but I ended up having a fantastic time. I challenged myself, got a lot braver, and rode my bike through some unbelievable scenery. If you are on the fence about signing up for one of these events, I highly recommend you do it. I have no doubt that I came back from Switzerland a stronger cyclist, but also one who is more dedicated to doing her squats.

Your author, PUMPED

2022 Ironman World Championships Men's Race Day Gallery

Gustav Iten, who has seemed like the champion-elect for seasons, delivered on his promise

On a slightly cooler, grayer day than the women had on Thursday, Gustav Iten claimed his first Ironman World Championship in a record-setting time of 7:40:24. It was a remarkable, Kona-grows-up kind of day, with the top ten finishers all arriving to the line in under eight hours. Sam Laidlow, who made a brave attack late in the bike, held on to second place, edging the cannibalistic Kristian Blummenfelt by about a minute. We were back out on course, cheering for Campfire athletes, and snapped the following gallery.

Dragon and Wonder Woman

Iten, Blummenfelt, and Neumann early

Kristian Blummenfelt en route to 3rd

Joe Skipper quietly ran to 5th place

Max Neumann had a breakthrough 4th

Rudy Von Berg on debut

Andi Dreitz finished 30th

Ben Hoffman

Colin Chartier in 35th on debut

Matt Hanson

Lionel Sanders

Tim O'Donnell, top American in 13th

Jesper Svensson

Leon Chevalier in 7th

2022 Ironman World Championships Women's Race Day Gallery

Champion Chelsea Sodaro

On a typically hot day in Kailua-Kona, American Chelsea Sodaro quietly moved through the women’s field, coming out of the water with the 8th fastest swim, 4th fastest bike split, and the fastest run of the day to defeat one of the strongest field of competitors ever assembled for the Ironman World Championships. Sodaro became the first United States-born champion since Karen Smyers to take the Kona crown.

Champion Chelsea Sodaro

Lucy Charles-Barclay

Lucy Charles-Barclay

Daniela Ryf on her way to 8th place

Fenella Langridge at her first Kona

Fenella Langridge

Haley Chura

Heather Jackson

Heather Jackson

Susie Cheetham

Skye Moench

Sarah Crowley

Ruth Astle

Laura Siddall

Sara Svensk

Lisa Norden

Lauren Brandon

Laura Phillip

Jodee Robertson

Jen Annett

Five Ironman World Championships Kona Race Day Pitfalls

Don’t be like Cole Trickle

Since it appears that Days of Thunder is NOT on most triathlete’s watch list (a fact that, honestly, is just driving one half of the Campfire ownership crazy), we can still learn from the above meme. There is a scene during the classic (yes, classic) 1990 film when Cole Trickle, Tom Cruise’s character, strikes a bargain with his coach/director about how to drive effectively on race day. Trickle’s approach leads to destroyed tires and a bad finish. His director’s approach (the tires at right) lead to a much better performance. As the Campfire coaches are putting the final touches on the race plans we write for every athlete, we figured it would be helpful to publish the five pitfalls we are warning athletes against as they make their final preparations today for races on Thursday and Saturday.

1. Expending Too Much in the Water

Every triathlon is an energy cascade, where the goal is to have as small a step down in energy reserves (mental, caloric/metabolic, endurance, speed) from discipline to discipline. Kona is a hype engine of epic proportions, which leads to tightly wound athletes on race morning thinking they are going to do something special on race day. Say it with us: doing something special at Kona simply means doing what you have already done elsewhere. If you do that, you are going to have an AMAZING day. The swim caliber at Kona is high, with a much larger percentage of the field able to swim around 60 minutes. That means the pack is much bigger, which means it is much easier to tuck in and draft. Embrace the group, find some feet, look at the fishes and the coral, and just cruise along. It will be over before you know it, and if you get out saying “that was refreshing!” you have nailed it.

2-4. Falling Into the Three Bike Pitfalls

There are really THREE pitfalls on the bike, each of which we will detail below, but really, they are variations on a theme from our lessons from Cole Trickle (was that REALLY the name the Days of Thunder writers came up with?!): DON’T GO TOO HARD! Ok, what is too hard, though? We were pleasantly surprised by this post from the folks at Precision Fuel and Hydration, who talked to GOAT Jan Frodeno and learned that he rode about 15-20% easier at Kona than he would at races that aren’t as hot and humid. If that doesn’t help change your approach to the bike at Kona, we don’t know what will. But if most athletes can have good Ironman performances riding between 70-80% of FTP (that’s rough, don’t @ us), then you would want to be even below that at Kona. So that means that your average power at Kona might be in the 60-70% range of FTP, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility. It is a hot, windy, lumpy course, folks, and there are three spots that can really leave you out of gas if you too go too hard:

1. First Hour: so this isn’t really a place as much as it is a mindset. It’s easy to get sucked into thinking that “making a group” is important in this race. It isn’t. Many of the professionals who focus on making the front group end up paying for it later. Think back on the number of times you have watched this race: there is always a big group on the way out to Hawi, but once the athletes start coming down…it’s as if someone has taken the group and shaken it. Those athletes who didn’t have the physical ability to ride with that group for four hours? They often end up struggling on the run, and you will too if you ride aggressively early! If you ride too hard too soon you will churn through your glycogen stores and raise your core temperature too soon, both of which will have you walking later.

2. The Climb to Hawi: the climb to Hawi is very often a tailwind climb, which can seem nice at first, like you’re getting a little push, but it’s easy to forget that without a headwind you’re going to lose a lot of evaporative cooling. As we mentioned above, keeping your core temperature in check is a crucial part of racing well in the heat, so if you ride too hard on the way up to Hawi, enjoying that tailwind, you may find yourself paying the price later on…

3. The Bowl at Kawaihae: not long after turning at Hawi, you’ll find yourself back at the base of the climb, near the port at Kawaihae. What seemed innocuous an hour ago will be an oven, now, in this depression between the Queen K and the Hawi climb. You have to climb out of this completely exposed oven, with sunlight reflecting off the lava rock around you, and you’re tired at this point. If you push too much, here, you will probably run out of gas later on.

5. Running too hard along ali’i

Sensing a theme? Yeah. Ali’i Drive, which provides the only shade on the course, is also lined with spectators. You’re right next to the ocean, so you get a little relief from the heat. You’re also off the bike, which is a respite. A lot of athletes get excited, forgetting that a marathon in these conditions is tough even without six or seven hours of continuous exercise first, and they run this part too fast, paying the price later on when you’re in the horrible exposure of the Queen K and the Energy Lab. The section along Ali’i should be about rhythm, not pace or power. Heart rate should probably be about 8-10 beats above what you averaged on the bike, and RPE (the most important metric of your whole day!) shouldn’t be much more than a 5-6/10, or moderate to moderately-hard. If you keep control of things NOW, you’ll be able to keep running LATER, instead of walking the way that you’ll see a lot of athletes doing, having pushed it too much early on the run.

So those are the big five, as seen by the coaches at Campfire. We hope this short post serves as a nice reminder as you’re getting ready to race this week, but the biggest things are to enjoy yourself, stay hydrated, and remember that Kona is the reward, not the sundae. Race well!

Your Ironman World Championships Reprieve

Five Kona “Can’t Misses” That DON’T Involve Racing or Training

by Jay Prasuhn

Say "Kona" enough times, and your brain begins to assume that there’s ever only one thing going on there in October. The Ironman. Underwear runs. Expos. Triathlon things. 

Or is there? We have to step back and remember this is a sleepy but thriving town when it’s not overrun with athletes from around the world. Certainly, the athlete spouses, friends and family among us want to know that the island doesn’t stop for Ironman. They want to know what else is there to do here other than cheer on their athlete? We’ve culled five aspects of the island that are simply not triathlon things, but island things. Good food, drink, experiences, and history that speak to the vibrant place many inhabit for a week but so often forget to experience.

Da Poke Shack, where the Campfire co-founders eat…a significant percentage of their meals

The Poke Shack, 76-6246 Ali'i Drive, Kailua-Kona, HI 96740 Dapokeshack.com

Da Poke Shack used to be a bit of a secret, but that’s been blown out of the water. So forget Kona Inn or (lol) Bubba Gump—the secret is now yours: this is hands-down the best place to get poke in town, that uniquely Hawaiian lunch or dinner. Situated along Ali'i Drive and butted up against Kona Bali Kai Condos, it’s as advertised: a little shack where you can procure poke. Whether you’re grabbing lunch or an early dinner, bank on a little line to get the freshest poke on the island. With 14 different varieties of poke (and for the uninitiated, poke is sushi grade tuna or salmon, in a bath of spices, sesame seed, shoyu, ponzu or teriyaki sauce for a cacophony of sweet, bitter, sour, or spicy wrapped around that fresh fish). Add some sticky rice, some fresh seaweed salad and maybe furikake, and it’s an unforgettable plate lunch (or dinner).

How fresh? Last year, I was lucky enough to hoist a fresh tuna that was coming in off the truck, getting set to be fileted and diced for the next batch of seafood goodness. Go in, get a killer plate lunch, maybe run into local surf legends like Shane Dorian or Makua Rothman that hang in the tiny shack when they’re not out at Banyans getting shacked.

Captain James Cook Monument

In 1778, British sea captain James Cook became the first person from the western world to set sight on the shores of the Hawaiian Islands. A year after he found the islands of O’ahu and Kauaii, he set sail for the shores of the Big Island. After anchoring in Kealakekua Bay, he was by the local Hawaiians, who thought he was Lono, the god of fertility. A week later, the Hawaiians learned he wasn’t a god and after a fight with several of Cook’s fellow sailors, killed Cook. In 1874, a white obelisk was erected in Cook’s honor in Kealakekua Bay. 

All that history aside, the bay hosts placid waters, making it one of the most popular snorkeling spots to find a rainbow of colorful fish, coral and urchins. A hike to this historic location (it’s over two miles in and two miles out), but if you bring a lunch, a towel, some sunglasses and some sunscreen, it’s a day well spent. From Kona, take Highway 11 for 15 miles south before turning right onto Napoopoo Road (Highway 160), which takes you to Kealakekua Bay. 

Cliff jumping at End of the World

End of the World

Out beyond the famed “Pit” along the old run course is a road with a lava rock walkway along the shoreline. You’ll be shocked by the waves crashing against the rocks, with water exploding into the air. Just 100 yards beyond that is a spot called “End of the World” where after the race, many athletes (as well as friends and family) will hurl themselves (or more accurately, simply “jump”) off a 30-foot cliff into the cool Pacific. It’s a short hiking trail, but leave your flip-flops back at the condo; it’s pretty rocky with lava, so be sure to wear close-toed shoes in and out of there. 

There are stories of folks being injured jumping, or trying to scramble from the surging surf back up the lava cliff rocks, so jump at your own risk. But the water is plenty deep, and scrambling back up the cliff from your jump is pretty easy….unless a bit of water surge bangs you up against the rocks.

Touring the coffee plantations on the side of the volcano is worth it for ANY visitor

Kona Coffee Plantation Tours

While Kona town is, well, a town, it doesn’t take long to drive up the slopes of the island to find that things get a bit more temperate and tropical. With that, the soil gets good. So good, that it’s one of the best places in the world for coffee to grow…Gaining Kona the repute as some of the finest coffee beans world over. As we’ve found, 100 percent Kona coffee makes one of the best holiday gifts for friends to take home after the race.

While there are a lot of middling “Kona Coffee” spots in town, be aware that some of these are only 10 percent Kona coffee. Seeking out the 100 percent coffee can be done, and the best way is to take an excursion up the hill to visit a working coffee plantation and tasting room.

Many of the plantations live along a band just above Kona Town. We’ve been to Holualoa Kona Coffee Company (konalea.com) and can vouch for an authentic self-guided tour that takes you from bean to the roasted final product. There are several others that are a short jaunt from town, from Greenwell Farms to Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation. Tip: when choosing whole bean versus ground coffee, get whole bean; you get all the taste in the bean oils, making for a stronger, more flavorful cup.

Old Kona Airport Beach is a short trip but a LONG way away from the madding crowd of triathletes

Old Kona Airport Beach

Let’s say you’re just not into the whole Ironman thing. You’d love to get away from it all and just enjoy some quiet. Luckily, there’s a spot close to town where you can: the Old Airport. Just past the Kona Pool, you’ll find this long, broken pavement airstrip, with folks parked to the left. All along its length, there are rocky shorelines with a few little breaks of white sand. With no triathletes, no traffic and no noise, it’s the perfect place to bring a folding chair, a floppy hat, some sunscreen and a good book to just relax and listen to the waves lap against the shore. 

Well, that’s it! Five short things for you to do that AREN’T training and racing and hearing triathletes talk about training and racing. Want to go farther afield? Here are five more trips worth your time:

1. Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park

2. Cinnamon Rolls at Island Lava Java

3. Day trip to Hilo

4. Mana Road (gravel bike necessary, but WORTH it)

5. Spam Ramen (don’t knock it until you try it)

Preserving the Candle

Signs of and strategies for late-season fatigue

Aw, buddy…

At this point in the year, athletes sometimes have performances in races or in training that leave them scratching their heads. Fatigue is an important factor in those odd performances, as athletes have usually been building fitness for almost a year, and by this point fatigue is high as well. Managing that fatigue is the key to good performances in the final few months of the northern hemisphere schedule, which is also when championship races are held. Coaches need to know how and when to either rest an athlete, keep moving forward as they have been, or (in a few rare cases) lift or shift the training load.

Fatigue is an Important Metric

It’s really important to track your fatigue, but it’s difficult because so many factors go into how tired you feel: training, work, relationships, family, diet, sleep. Every athlete committed to improving performance (an important distinction! Not every athlete hungers to improve all the time!) needs to carry some fatigue, since it’s a sign of progressive overload, the holy grail of endurance training. The key is figuring out just how much fatigue, since too much is bad (injury, burnout, poor performance), as is too little (stagnation, plateau, poor performance). Many athletes will have polarized reactions to fatigue, so keep asking yourself or the athletes you coach what their impulses are when they are tired. Two very normal “types” are:

• The “Security blanket” athlete or the athlete who says “I need to feel very tired all the time, otherwise I don’t think things are going well!” This athlete keeps pushing, no matter how bad they feel. This athlete will need to build faith in the fact that fitness is durable despite resting.

• The “Recovery junkie” athlete or the athlete who says “I need to be perfectly rested for every workout (not possible, leads to stagnating fitness, performance plateaus). This athlete pulls the emergency brake at any sign of fatigue and shys away from pushing themselves. This athlete needs to see that they can do hard workouts on top of other hard workouts, and that some fatigue is important to development.

Signs of Fatigue

Fatigue can manifest in different ways, sometimes even within the same athlete! As a coach or an athlete, look for these flashing lights that it might be time for a rest:

• The athlete suddenly cannot perform as they did just a few weeks (or days!) ago

• While analyzing your workout files, you notice that heart rate is elevated or depressed for a given power or pace

• You experience sensations in training you’re not used to: shakiness, chills, fever-like symptoms, burning legs on easy/shallow climbs, clunkiness while running or swimming, deep sighs or odd breathing patterns

• Motivation is low, or you find yourself saying or thinking I don’t really care about this workout

• Sleep, mood, diet, or stress suddenly change: over/undersleeping, mood swings or mood intensity, hungry all the time or never hungry, everything seems like a stressor

These are only a few of them, but as your athletes move into August/September/October it might be a good idea to check in with them about how they’re feeling (well, you should be doing that all the time, coaches, but maybe put a little more emphasis on it at this point in the year). After programming workouts, your main job as a coach is to manage fatigue, so make sure you have these questions built into your athlete meetings. If you are self-coached, journaling can be a helpful way to check in on fatigue, or giving yourself a snap score every day on a scale of 1-10, where 1 means you’d really rather stay in bed and 10 means you could probably throw that football over those mountains. Notice that we aren’t suggesting one of the many recovery devices presently flooding the market. If those are useful to you, continue using them, but we’ve never seen anything more powerful than the question “How are you feeling?”

Yup. We get it.

How to Deal, and What to Say to Yourself (or Your Athlete)

We’ll cover the athlete who avoids fatigue completely in the next section, but if you’ve discovered you or your athlete is suffering from fatigue, here is what to do and what to say. First of all, scrub the workouts from the next two or three days. We can actually hear you type A types clicking away from this post, but don’t! In the words of someone pithier than us, “Fatigue is the ultimate watt-block.” That statement is aimed at cyclists, but the principle is the same for all endurance athletes. If you are tired enough that your workouts are suffering, you will not get anything out of them. And even worse, if you feel the compulsion to train even though you know you are tired, you might have a problem with exercise addiction. That’s kinda heavy, but it really happens in these sports. If that is the case for you, we really urge you to talk to a mental health professional, since it’s probably beyond your coach’s scope of care.

But if you can take two or three days off, please do so. And do so in the spirit of exploration. You won’t lose all of your fitness, we promise you. Physiological changes take a long time to occur, both as you add fitness and detrain, and a few days of complete rest won’t return you to couch and donut days. If you find yourself saying to your coach “Can’t I just swim?” or “Can’t I just go for an easy ride?” you may want to check in with yourself to figure out what is doing the wagging: the tail or the dog. If you’re a coach, just ask your athlete to give it an honest try and you’ll evaluate how they feel when they return to training. If you’re an athlete, ask yourself if you have gone through this exact thought process in the past, and if you are willing to try something new this time. For both coaches and athletes, here are some tools to help quiet the demons, since skipping planned workouts can be anathema for goal-oriented endurance athletes:

• Out of the 500-700 workouts you will do this year, how important could 5-7 of them actually be?

• You (self-coached athletes) or your coach do not write perfect plans. You both wish you do, but it’s just not possible. Think of these sessions you are missing as moments of overenthusiasm from you or your coach during the planning session, and they shouldn’t have been here in the first place, if either of you had had a crystal ball.

• Training while tired or sick will eventually lead to worse problems: injury, chronic fatigue, or burnout. You picked up this sport because you liked it, not because of the shiny things it can offer you.

Making Friends with Fatige

On the other side of the coin from the athlete digging themselves into a crater at this point of the year we see the athlete who hasn’t yet accepted the fact that ANY fatigue is a good thing. We won’t spend too much time here, but these athletes probably still have at least one or two races remaining on the calendar, and probably want something different than what they’ve gotten this year. For these athletes, walking them through the following process of developing endurance performance can be helpful:

• Training induces fatigue, as your body struggles to keep up with the new load

• Progressively adding more fatigue (but not too much!) signals to your body that it needs to adapt to handle this new normal 

• You should be getting more and more tired over the course of a training block or mesocycle, and a few workouts that don’t go well are totally OK

• Once you’ve hit a moderately-high level of fatigue (usually after a period weeks, not days or months) it’s time to rest

• Resting after you’ve built up significant fatigue is when your body has time to recover and adapt

• If you’re repeating a pattern of one workout - rest - one workout - rest your development will take much longer than it needs to take

Probably the best way to sum this up is to rip off Michael Pollan’s maxim for healthy eating: “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.” In our case the message would be “Train consistently, mostly easy to moderate, not too much.” Note that in both sayings, there is a real lack of absolutist language, no “only,” “ever,” or “always.” 

Conclusion

To wrap up, we’re going to give you something else, other than just the summary of this article. We owe Tim Cusick, lead developer at WKO5, the main idea here, which we are going to extend slightly to our own purposes. Cusick uses a term he calls “Self-selected Training” for those moments when an athlete is feeling good. The idea here is that we should be making room for athletes to bring their own experience and intuition into their training, but we should also give them guardrails to keep them safe. Cusick’s maxims are the first two, and ours is the third.

• In the early part of the training year (first trimester), if you’re feeling good you should extend the interval. I.e. make it longer, not harder

• In the middle part of the training year (second trimester), if you’re feeling good you can make the interval harder (i.e. more intense)

• In the third part of the training year (third trimester), if you’re feeling good, consider leaving the interval just as it is. Save that bullet for your big race instead, and carry around the confidence that you could have done more, but you were a mature athlete and kept an eye on your fatigue

We hope that this has been a helpful post, and will keep a few of you from maybe driving yourself into a too-deep hole. Managing fitness is always difficult, but this point of the year, when form and fatigue balance on a narrow fulcrum, you should be asking yourself every day “what is the appropriate response to this feeling I’m having right now?”

What is Blood Flow Restriction (BFR)?

More Importantly, How Does it Work and in What Contexts?

by Campfire Coach Accelerator Adam Goulet, DC, MS, CCSP, CSCS

Only BFR with a trained supervisor!

“What would have become of Hercules… if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar – and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules. And even if he had, what good would it have done him? What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?” – Epictetus

One beautiful aspect of endurance sports is that one can continue improving at them for years. The question always remains, though: how? How do you continue to improve physically and psychologically? How can you always nudge the needle onward? Maybe you’re already consistent in your training, and you tackle every day as a chance to improve upon the day before. If you’re already doing the hard work of staying consistent, then the place to look is the changes you can make in your offseason.

If we are tackling endurance full-throttle during our season, then the offseason is not “off.” Your time away from in-season training is a time to improve the aspects of our performance that we cannot address within the race season. This is a great time to work on nutrition, cross-training, and strength training. The latter is an often overlooked piece of the endurance puzzle, and I’ll try today to provide some ideas that address strength in general. Specifically I’ll examine how best to implement blood flow restriction (BFR) training into the endurance paradigm. That raises an immediate question: what the heck is BFR?

BFR is a subset of strength training that uses a tourniquet to physically restrict the blood flow into a limb. Why in the world would you want to do that? To answer that question we need to address the place of strength training in an endurance program more broadly. Strength training can be an integral part of year-to-year improvement and, due to the increased stress on the body both neurologically and muscularly, it is most often programmed in the offseason. There are two major reasons why strength training can improve performance. The first and more obvious reason is that strength training can increase the size of your muscles, and bigger muscles generally result in increased muscular strength. As this relates to endurance performance the stronger your muscles become the more powerfully they can press on a crank or push off the ground. Increasing muscular strength is akin to being able to go faster. However, due to some pretty interesting physiology, this is a hard task to achieve while also doing endurance training. Building muscle mass is incredibly resource-intensive for your body and unless specifically supported with the correct stimulus, nutrition and recovery it is something your body does not generally like to do. The second primary reason strength training can be beneficial for athletes is that it improves neuromuscular integration between the nervous system and the muscles. By challenging the body's ability to integrate the nervous system with the muscles (done through intensive loading) we can increase the force produced by muscles, increase  core strength and stability, and improve dynamic coordination between multiple body regions (arms and legs). While an endurance athlete due to aerobic stimulus is unlikely to receive the benefits of increased muscle mass, what we can achieve with  intensive strength training is improved core stability and coordination resulting in increased power output, and faster times come race season. 

How does BFR fit into this picture? By reducing the blood flow to the working muscles, BFR will cause your muscles to have to work anaerobically, which increases the rate at which the muscles fatigue. As your muscles fatigue doing a movement, let’s say a knee extension, your body has to recruit more and more of the muscle to make the movement happen. That is to say, when you do a normal knee extension your body will use the least amount of muscle possible to achieve that movement; as you fatigue you recruit more muscle fibers to achieve the same movement. By employing BFR you can “skip” some of the unfatigued part and get straight to the moment in which you have to recruit new muscle fibers

Some of your movements will be bodyweight only—less load!

Along with the increased muscle fiber recruitment and higher rate of fatigue, your nervous system has a harder and harder time telling your muscles to contract. This difficulty means that as you go through a BFR session you will need to produce a higher nerve stimulus to produce the same effect (the lifting of the weight). In the end, because BFR recruits larger numbers of muscle fibers/motor units, and makes your nervous system work hard (increased demand on your neural drive), your muscles become stronger. 

Additionally, the anaerobic process inside the muscle that happens during a BFR session produces metabolic changes that increase the rate of muscle growth and recovery. Here’s the beauty thought BFR is very low load. Because you are reducing the blood flow to the muscles and performing an exercise over several minutes (7-15 minutes typically) the amount of load or weight you can lift needs to be very low, in fact for some cases even body weight may be too much load and assistive exercises may be appropriate. The takeaway? BFR can result in increased strength with very low loads during strength training. 

Wait, you heard me say blood flow restriction, isn’t that dangerous? It absolutely can be. BFR should only be done under the supervision of a professional. There are many different systems out there for BFR, and, simply put, if you can buy it on Amazon, it’s probably a bad idea. A safe and effective BFR protocol should use a wide pneumatic tourniquet (like a blood pressure cuff); it should have some sort of monitoring system that both can inflate and deflate the tourniquet as you move to maintain a constant PSI within the tourniquet; finally, an effective and safe BFR system will measure a personal tourniquet pressure (PTP) for you, which typically is 60-80% of what a blood pressure cuff might use to take your blood pressure. If you find yourself being offered a BFR system or workout that does not meet these criteria, but rather uses elastic cuffs or a hand pump to inflate a tourniquet, then run: those systems do not have reproducible results and can be unsafe. One more time for the people in the back! Don’t use BFR without professional supervision.

Now that we have cleared that hurdle, let’s talk about the amazing advantages to BFR. First, endurance athletes are time crunched by nature. BFR training, due to the fact that it reduces blood flow to the muscles and asks you to perform an exercise over several minutes (seven to fifteen, usually), uses much lower loads than you normally would in a traditional gym session. In some cases even body weight is too much and assistive exercises may be appropriate. Due to those lower loads and increased metabolic fatigue, you actually decrease the strain placed on your body. The magic is that you can improve strength at lower load. The number one reason we get hurt while strength training is that we use weights, bands, and cables at too high a load. BFR reduces that load dramatically and can therefore reduce injury risk. Because the loads we are using for a given exercise are lower with BFR (someone who can squat 300 pounds, for example, may only squat 30 during BFR), the exercise is less likely to create soreness. 

Here, however, is the biggest benefit: BFR is hard, really hard, but because of that difficulty this type of training exposes motor imbalances and functional deficits. This exposure means that if you have a compensation pattern that only bothers you when you’re fatigued (like your knees drop in towards each other at the end of a long run) you will see that happen in a BFR session. BFR, therefore, gives us a golden opportunity to address compensations which we may never see in a normal strength training session. Along those lines, one of the most common dysfunctions we all have is coordinating breathing with lower body movements. BFR is hard, like an anaerobic sprint. This fact means it will make you breathe hard and provide us an opportunity to fix our core, breathing, and movement patterns. This type of repair is extraordinarily hard to do in normal circumstances. Can you imagine your coach asking you to run for two hours simply to address the form deficits that arise with fatigue? BFR also has the potential benefit of consolidating and preserving strength gains through the competition season  with as little as two fifteen-minute sessions a week. 

Finally, from a psychological standpoint BFR provides us with a chance to go hard and dig deeper than we thought we could without wrecking our bodies. There is benefit in finding a new level of effort and going harder than you thought you could, but in a race or workout that high level effort could take a week or more to recover from. The low loads of BFR mean you can exercise the power of your mind fully and repeatedly without having to worry about how long it takes to recover. BFR is innately an anaerobic stimulus and should be considered as such. While BFR can have some aerobic benefits including increased mitochondrial mass, it should be made very clear that as with all workouts, dose and recovery are key to getting an optimal response. The longest BFR protocols typically do not exceed 15 min, and within that time frame a maximum of 30 reps at a time is standard; the intent of BFR is to get the most bang for your buck, with this in mind a BFR session asks you to give maximal effort, while keeping loads very low. This is to say that there is no benefit to trying exercises that are aerobic in nature with BFR, the resulting stimulus would be null, and aerobic work is generally a misappropriation of BFR training. It is plausible that you could use BFR with a certified professional on a stationary bike or treadmill, however the exercises performed in those cases are not aerobic. BFR, when used appropriately can be an amazing adjunct to training, and with supervision increases in muscle strength, nervous system integration, and dynamic coordination can all be achieved with very little negative effects of muscle soreness. However, as with many training modalities inappropriate programming and use of BFR can be detrimental to performance and at worst dangerous. 

Setting Up Your Devices for Endurance Success

One of the BEST uses of your smart devices

Put your bike computers and smartwatches to work for you…not the other way around

I remember one of the hardest workouts I’ve ever done: a set of 1600s and 800s on a flat, unshaded bike path along the shore of a Floridian lake, the air heavy with humidity. Our coaches had sorted us into groups and given us times to hit for each interval, and we set off, packs of five or six leaving from our arbitrary start line (a chalk line drawn in the shadow of a huge myrtle tree, the last respite from the sun we’d have until completing a mile or a half-mile) and either running down and back for the mile repeats or just down for the half-mile repeats. The workout was going well. I felt focused on my effort internally, my outward focus gathering in the lake, the heat, and the athletes around me. One of those athletes, annoyingly, raised her smartwatch to her face roughly every six strides, searching for confirmation that she was executing the interval to perfection.

I tried to ignore it, but a call-and-response kept cycling through my head “Gosh, do you really need to check your watch again? Chris, chill, do YOUR workout, don’t worry about it…my god, AGAIN?!” I began to worry that the obsessive lifting of the watch would have a long-term effect on the muscles of her left arm and shoulder. I didn’t say anything, because she was not an athlete with whom I work, but I couldn’t help but notice that this particular athlete approached most of the workouts at camp in the same way: trying so hard to make each interval perfect that she never seemed to notice anything else going on around her. Even though we were training outside, in the company of other athletes we liked and respected, she may as well have been doing her workouts on a treadmill, in Watopia, running past the virtual ghosts of other Zwifters, an avatar of alone-together behavior.

Modern training devices have done quite a bit for us as athletes. These days we carry powerful mini-computers on our wrists or bike stems, smaller versions of the supercomputer phones we also carry with us on workouts, in their own turn the shrunken siblings of the massive devices that hulk out on our office desks or living room credenzas. But the devices can promote a whole host of unhelpful behaviors for endurance athletes (just as phones pose risks to those of us who use them all the time). Today we’re going to work through some of the best practices for smartwatch and bike computer use. We believe that by using our devices to contextualize our efforts, rather than allowing them to drive or lead our workouts, we can become faster, happier, and healthier athletes, the Campfire goal.

Workout data contextualizes but doesn’t direct

Whoa, hold the phone, what the hell does THAT particular idea mean? Bottom line up front, it means that your workout data should be secondary to how your body feels and what your perception of effort is. We have all experienced heading out for a hard workout, like 5x1600m at the track, or 3x20’ @ FTP, only to realize that—even though our bodies feel the correct level of effort—our output (speed, power, pace) is not meeting the goal that day. On those days, have you had more success by gritting your teeth and trying to force the workout to perfection, or have you listened to what your body is saying and work more in the spirit of the effort, rather than the prescribed effort? I’m sure a few of you will try to convince us of the “no pain, no gain” route, but what we’ve found is that letting the numbers dictate success or failure, rather than listening to your body to tell you how hard you can go today, is a smoother path forward, less littered with injury and burnout. On the other hand, simply telling you to go out there and train by feel is irresponsible, too. Doing that is like handing a kid a violin and saying “What, you can’t just play that?” A large amount of practice needs to happen before you can hear accurately what your body is telling you, and your devices, if you set them up correctly and employ some best practices, can get you to that point of “just playing” faster.

How devices can help you get better through contextualizing effort

Many athletes have heard or seen the four stages of competence, which move from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, making stops at conscious incompetence and conscious competence along the way. When many of us start out in sport, we’re doing the sport simply because we like it and it’s fun. Maybe we have some natural aptitude, maybe we’re the Swedish Chef on skates, but at this stage we may not even WANT to get better. We make mistakes but we don’t care, because ignorance can be bliss. Usually, if an athlete does want to get better, a device at this stage can help us see the error, pointed out by a helpful coach or mentor: “Hey, see this section of your ride? This, right here, is why you didn’t run well—you were riding way too hard. It’s OK, don’t beat yourself up about it, you didn’t know! You’ll know to avoid that mistake in the future.” Now, armed with that information, our athlete spends a few weeks training, exploring their efforts and listening to how their body responds. Maybe they discover that at 200 watts their breathing gets too labored, and that when their breathing was that labored in the race their coach told them it was too much. Or maybe they use heart rate, and know now that efforts over 160 beats per minute (BPM) will leave them walking before the end of the run. The athlete goes to their next race and…gets it wrong again, but this time they return to their coach and say “Man, I could see I was over the effort again, but I felt so good! I didn’t think it would leave me walking again!” They saw their mistakes but made them anyway at this stage, the conscious incompetence phase. Next, having learned that their actions have real consequences for their body and their desired goals, the athlete sticks to the plan exactly, watching the watts, pace, or heart rate like a hawk during races and workouts, and results are…better but not great. What’s happening? This athlete, at the conscious competence phase, is hitting their prescribed numbers, but still something isn’t quite right. They come back to the coach with a quizzical expression on their face.

ATHLETE: “Well, I did stick to my numbers, and the race went better than I thought, but…I just felt as if there was more to give.”
COACH: “Ah, great! First of all, congratulations on the race! Can you describe to me the physical sensations of riding at the wattage that led to a successful run?”
ATHLETE: “Suuuurrrrre…maybe. OK, well, my breathing: it was deep but it wasn’t gasping.
COACH: “Great. What else?”
ATHLETE: “My legs felt the effort, but I really felt like I was on top of the pedals—that was that feeling of having more to give, you know? Like I could have really stomped on them.
COACH: “But you know what happens when you do that, remember?”
ATHLETE: “Yeah.”
COACH: “OK, so you felt the effort, but you felt as if you could do more. Was there any pain, or strain, or burning? How uncomfortable was it?”
ATHLETE: “It was uncomfortable but manageable.”
COACH: “GREAT! Love that. OK, anything else?”
ATHLETE: “I felt in control.”
COACH: “Awesome. OK. Here’s what we do. Now when you go out for a workout, you know those are the rough sensations you should feel at that wattage: deep breathing but not gasping, on top of the pedals, more to give, uncomfortable but manageable. When you feel those sensations, you know you’re in your ‘racey’ area. The next time we do race pace intervals, I want you to aim for those sensations, and use your bike computer as a backstop. The numbers you see certainly shouldn’t be perfect, but if they are within 5% on either side of what we’re aiming for, that’s more than good enough.”

Finally, when the athlete attains the unconscious competence phase, they simply head out onto the bike course and let their experience and feelings guide them. Athletes at this stage often don’t even need to look at their bike computers, checking the race or workout afterward to cross-check their work and make sure they’re in the range. And guess what? As the athlete gains fitness and ability, they’ll see their numbers going up at the same effort? Is this a problem? NO! THIS IS THE THING WE ARE AIMING AT THROUGH TRAINING! HIGHER OUTPUTS (SPEED/POWER/PACE) AT THE SAME EFFORT (HR/RPE).

Page One, Racing or Training

Everything you need, nothing you don’t. Realtime watts (yes, they bounce around), average watts for the workout/race, average HR, time, present BPM, distance, and present RPM. That’s IT.

Interval Workout Page

Lap time (duh), average watts for lap, cadence, realtime watts, average HR for lap, realtime HR, and last lap watts (so you can see what direction you are trending in).

Run Page One

Simple. Run distance, time, current pace, and current HR. You use this page to eyeball how things are going.

Run Workout Page

Lap distance, lap time, average pace for lap (since that’s one of our outputs we’re after), and average HR for lap.

The Racing Page

Yup. No pace here. Just present HR and lap HR. In a race, when you’re hitting lap every mile or kilometer, you should see your HR climbing slightly through the race, so this is the GOD page.

Device setup for achieving unconscious competence

1. TURN OFF AUTO LAP. You hear that, all of my athletes? Please, please, please, for my sake and the sake of the coaches you will work with after you fire me, TURN OFF AUTO LAP for your training. You can turn it back on FOR THE RUN ONLY during races, but other than that please turn it off. Your coaches want to be able to quickly see the intervals you did in your session. If you have intervals, your button-pushing looks like this: START, LAP at the beginning and end of each interval, STOP. That’s it! Same thing on the bike.

2. WEAR A HEART RATE STRAP. Oh please, wear a HR strap. The optical HR just isn’t there yet, and straps are almost a half-century old by now. They work. Find one that fits and doesn’t chafe (you just have to try several, I’m sorry, that’s it) and wear it IN EVERY SINGLE WORKOUT that’s not in the pool. Yes, you read that right. EVERY. SINGLE. WORKOUT.

3. YOUR GPS DEVICE IS INACCURATE ON THE TRACK. Yup, you read that right. Your $600 watch is mostly useless on the track, due to the fact that satellites don’t like decreasing radius turns. But why, why, why are you thinking about using GPS pace on the track? You literally have a digital watch on your wrist and tracks are pretty much universally 400m in distance. If your coach wanted average pace efforts on the road, they’d send you, well, out on the road. On the track we want the time (which you can get by hitting lap at the beginning and end of each interval), the distance you know because of basic math, and the average HR of the interval. CAVEAT: yes, some devices now have a “track mode” which does a little better with getting distances right, but…why? We really don’t get this one. Run your interval distances, hit lap at the beginning and end of each of them, and…that’s it. Nothing else to set up, trouble-shoot, or futz with while literally running almost as fast as you can. You don’t want your attention divided on track days. Devices are cool, yeah, but know what’s cooler? Nailing your track workouts. Strava doesn’t care, but your physiology sure does.

4. Page One, Bike: your global data screen on the bike, and the one you’ll use while racing. Real time watts (if you don’t have a power meter, real time HR goes here), average watts and HR to make sure you’re not over- or undercooking your effort, time (since race brain is a real thing) real time HR, distance, and cadence.

5. Page Two, Bike (Interval Sessions): lap time (it’s generally helpful to know this if you’re doing timed intervals, we think), lap wattage and HR, real time watts and HR, cadence, and last lap watts, so you can see how you did when you’re not slavering all over the screen.

6. Page One, Run: your global data screen on the run. Workout distance and time, average pace, and present HR. Everything you need to eyeball how you’re doing.

7. Page Two, Run (Interval Sessions): lap distance, lap time, average pace for lap, and average HR for lap. It can be nice to have real-time pace here to keep you from overcooking the pace in order to bring the average pace into line, but you’ll quickly learn how to do this by feel.

8. Page Three, Run (Racing): the GOD page. Simply real time HR, and lap HR. When you race, you can turn auto-lap back on, and you’ll be able to see your average HR for each lap and your real time HR. Since virtually 100% of the best endurance performances in the world (go look it up) come from a negative split EFFORT (not pace), this is all you need to look at during a race to have your best day. Looking at pace on race day will generate a quick trip to the struggle bus, since it is literally out of your control. The only thing you are in control of? Attitude and effort. Attitude can be covered in another piece, but HR is a great reflection of your effort. If you need proof, think of the last time you tried to run up a hill at the same pace you were just running on the flat. Pace may have stayed the same, but effort would have gone way up. Since we’re mostly managing effort in races, and we aren’t in control of the course and the conditions, we just don’t need to track pace. It will likely work against you, actually, and keep you away from unconscious competence.

9. Set up alerts. Just like the one at the top of this piece, setting alerts that remind you to drink or eat are really helpful, since it outsources something many athletes forget to do on race day.

10. Don’t bring your watches to the pool. This one deserves its own post, but really, stop it. You can all count to sixty, which is the longest interval a coach will probably prescribe you (that’s a 1500, and you can also hear the heads of all non-Americans exploding because they swim in normal-sized 50m pools, which is just 30 lengths instead of 60). Stop luxuriating in your claims that you can’t count to eight or twelve or sixteen. The watch in the pool is CLASSIC dissociative thinking, in which the athlete basically removes themselves from the situation and lets the watch do the work, a lot like our athlete at the top of the story. By counting your laps, you will be focusing on your effort and how your body feels; you will be associating with the workout, which is a powerful move in achieving flow state. Counting your laps is like counting breaths in meditation, or counting steps in a difficult run—the small amount of background thinking actually crowds out distracting thoughts, and this very often leads to flow states, in which athletes have great, unconscious (there’s that word again), performances.

So that’s it! Devices are fun, and sexy, but really they should exist primarily to record data and to contextualize your effort, so you know in your body what 200 watts feels like, or 7:30/mile on a flat road, or 160 BPM while running up a hill. Don’t get stuck inside your watch during races and training, like all of those tourists who spend their vacations behind their phones, taking pictures, and missing life for the recording of it.

Sharpening instead of Tapering

A good sharpening period leaves you feeling, well, sharp!

Suggestions for nailing your competition period

By Chris Boudreaux

“Taper time!  Time to put the legs up and relax till race day!”
“The hay is in the barn!”
“Last long run done! Time to chill…#tapertime”

How often do you see (or say) something along those lines in the last few weeks before a big race, like an Ironman or a marathon?  Pretty much all the time, especially if you’re on Twitter and follow a bunch of other distance athletes.  And it’s not that they are completely wrong.  Of course, if you’ve been doing a big training block leading into a major event, you will reduce the training load.  And there will be a focus on rest and recovery and making sure you’re 100% on race day.  But there’s a key word here many of us miss: FOCUS. 

There are a ton of articles and opinions on an ideal taper leading into events, but managing workload is an intensely personal aspect of training. Over the years we’ve seen tons of different ways to approach a race as far as the degree of workout reduction, specific workouts, specific rest days, that have all worked for the athletes and coaches that deploy them. But learning what works for YOU is something you and your coach need to figure out together. We’re not saying that there isn’t good, bad, and great ways to taper, but we think the mental focus during that time is the most important.

When you think of a “taper," we think of downtime, less work, more rest…basically a little off-season.  But what happens when you take your off-season break?  You don’t lose a ton of fitness over a few weeks, but try to go run a great track workout in the middle of November or December a month after your last race…Not fun, right?  There’s some physical sluggishness, but it’s overwhelmingly mental.  Your body and your mind are just not ready to work like that.  You’ve told your body that it’s resting, and guess what? That’s exactly what it wants to do.  So when we do the same thing in the last two to three weeks before our most important race of the year, why are we surprised when we feel flat and sluggish and “off” on race day?

There should be SOME of this during your sharpening period, but not ALL of your sharpening period

It’s not that exact of a science to be already to go for a 8-17 hour event.  You just don’t need to be that perfect.  You need sharpness, but not as much physical sharpness as if you were running the 100 meters (or even the 5-10k).  You need to be healthy, engaged, and be ready to work.  Think “sharpening” instead “tapering.” This may take some time. as the triathlon world, in particular, seems to be obsessed with the term taper (it makes several of us think of candles, though, or those long thingimajigs one uses to light hard-to-reach candles).

When you think about sharpening over the last few weeks, we’d urge you to think about sharpening your focus: more attention to detail, more time spent preparing for the event, more preparation of your mind.  While that increased mental focus includes reducing your training, it doesn’t include less preparation or attention to detail than what you’ve done over the previous eight-to-twelve week block just completed.  You should get dressed the same, warmup the same, eat properly, everything you’d do for that huge ride or run a few weeks back. Total focus and concentration on the task at hand. Sharp. Focused. Ready to give 100%. So even your 20 minute run w/30 second pickups has the same level of focus and attention that the 2 hour run with Ironman intervals did.

When you sharpen, everything you do over those last few days or weeks prepares your mind and body for the upcoming event.  When you feel like you’re resting and relaxing for 2 weeks, then asking your mind and body to be “on” for a huge event, that’s a recipe for disaster. Use your sharpening period to get you fully prepared, and then “taper” when it’s time for your off-season, the real time to relax and check out.

Five Non-Workout Activities to Help You Sharpen Into a Race

1. Write out your race-day nutrition and talk with your coach about it, being ready for adjustments to be made.

2. Move the course maps onto your bike computer or wrist-based GPS device—visualize yourself having a great event on those very roads.

3. Practice your race day nutrition in EVERY workout, even if it’s just a 25-minute run or 60-minute bike. 25 minutes is enough time for 2-3 energy chews, and in 60 minutes on your bike you should get through at least a bottle of sports drink. Does your body “need it?” No, but training your gut and your mind are crucial for good performances.

4. Put your training sessions at the rough time of day you’ll do them in the race and examine how your body feels.

5. Do 5-10 minutes of visualizing the race you want to have every. single. day. If you meditate, this is a great use of your daily meditation period. If you’re not meditating…then start. It can really help endurance athletes.

Getting Accountable

A simple process to figuring out what’s holding back your performance

Open up Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook the day after a race, and you’ll see dozens of “race reports” that feature some kind of excuse:

“TWO flats on the bike torpedoed my Kona chances!”

“Not the day I was hoping for, due to choppy water and high wind on the bike.”

“Would have done better but I’ve had some injuries recently that held me back.”“GI issues forced me to slow down.”

If you’re stuck with us this far (only 78 words) then maybe you’re already running through your social media recaps, wondering if you have participated in any of the above behavior. Maybe you’re worried, but don’t be! We have good news for you:

Nobody cares.

Yes, that’s right. Nobody cares how well or how poorly you did. Your friends and acquaintances just want you to feel good about your performance and your effort, and you shouldn’t worry about what your enemies think, because…they’re your enemies. Not only do they not care about how you did, they certainly don’t want to read about it. What does your “audience” want to hear, presumably? They want to imagine themselves in your shoes, doing hard things and overcoming adversity. They want to hear that you’re happy. The reality of these excuse-laden posts? They’re focused on making only one person feel better. We think you know who that person is.

It’s you.

What if we told you there’s not only a better way to deal with the disappointment of a race gone wrong, but there’s also a way to help you avoid “bad luck” in the future. You’ll notice we put bad luck in quotes—that means we really don’t believe it is bad luck, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. By ruthlessly examining your own role in aspects of your race that didn’t go according to plan, you can make yourself a stronger, more confident, more reliable racer at your next event. You ready? It won’t be easy or comfortable, but it will be useful. Get ready for something we call…Accountability. 

Can we get this guy some salt? Please? He seems incapable of helping himself.

A Useful Compass

The world today offers us opportunities for and examples of unaccountable behavior. Ever made an excuse about a race day performance like the ones above? Ever skip a session you promised your coach you would complete? Ever cheat on your taxes? Ever fail to return a library book? These all are moments when you chose not to be accountable to your commitments. Now, we can already hear what you’re saying “It would be impossible to keep 100% of the commitments we make in life,” and you’re absolutely right. There will be small failures of accountability throughout your life, and largely that’s totally OK. But when we’re talking about something that’s important to you, something you want to do well, then remaining focused on accountability can help you see the areas where you are letting yourself down. Committing to accountability, and examining the moments in which you drop the ball, can improve your performance and increase the satisfaction you feel around racing and training. Having a regular accountability process provides a useful compass, letting you know whether it’s YOU driving the bus…or some other, less helpful aspect of your personality…

Articulate the Commitment

OK, you ready? Let’s begin. We’re gonna take this kinda easy to begin, in order to keep things a little light for your first time through. We’d like you to think of a commitment you made recently and didn’t keep. It could be small, but make sure you clearly articulate what the commitment was. We’re going to use a semi-fictional example in this case for you to follow, an athlete named Dean who recently completed Coeur d’Alene 70.3, suffering some bad quad cramps late on the bike and throughout the run. Dean finished, but didn’t have the race he had hoped for. In chatting with Dean after the race, there was one particular commitment we focused upon: the fluid he consumed on the bike. Dean’s coach had prescribed six bottles of sports drink, estimating he would complete the bike in just under three hours. Coeur d’Alene was hot this year, making hydration particularly important for athlete performance. Dean got in a little under four bottles, or only two-thirds of what he’d agreed upon with his coach. So in this example, the commitment was to consume six bottles, and Dean consumed four. We would ask him to name the commitment (say it out loud or write it down) and then ask “Did you keep that commitment?” Although it can seem like we’re shaming Dean, the goal here is to get the athlete to say out loud that they didn’t keep the commitment, so they know for certain what happened.

So you had a bad day?

What was More Important and what were the Consequences?

Now that the athlete knows they didn’t keep a commitment, we ask three questions:

1. What did you CHOOSE to make more important? This question can get a little squirrely. We can assume that Dean didn’t WANT to get horrible quad cramps, so he may say something like “I just forgot to drink.” We say NO to that kind of tossing up of hands. EVERYTHING is a choice, especially when you are participating in an event that you CHOSE to participate in! So in this case, maybe Dean chose to make focusing on eating more important, or staying in his aero position, or maybe he chose to make not drinking more important than his commitment. The goal here is to communicate to the athlete that they made a choice—something didn’t just happen to them. Your athletes will protest, here, saying something like “I didn’t choose to get a flat tire,” but maybe they chose to not replace their tires in the weeks before the race, or maybe they didn’t replace the sealant in their tubeless set up. The message here is that the athlete is the only one responsible on race day, sadly.

2. What were the consequences to you? In Dean’s case, it’s obvious: cramps and impaired performance.

3. What were the consequences to others? This is important, but again your athletes might say “nah, no one.” Push them to think about this. Your coach, who worked hard on your training and your race plan? Your family, maybe, if you end up in medical and they don’t know where you are? Think hard about this—nothing encourages accountability like realizing you’ve messed with someone else’s experience.

What is the Belief that Drove the Behavior?

Now we really get down to it. The truth is is that every behavior we take in life (writing a blog, watching the Tour de France, going to dinner with a friend, to grab three examples) expresses a belief we have about ourselves or the world. In the three examples above those beliefs might be A) We believe that writing this blog may help other athletes improve their performances and enjoyment of the sport, B) watching the Tour is enjoyable, it only comes around once a year, and it’s important to me as a person to experience that enjoyment and the inclusion in a society that also enjoys the Tour, and C) that having dinner with a friend will be good for our relationship. There are beliefs that power our less than helpful behaviors, too. So what might have powered Dean’s behavior of not sticking to the plan he agreed to with his coach? The following are guesses and projections:

1. I didn’t believe it would actually affect me (“I felt fine at the time!”)

2. My racing is not important enough for me to worry about stuff like that (“I’m not a pro…I’m not trying to get to Worlds…this is all just for fun”)

3. I don’t believe I need anything other than water (“sports drinks are too processed!”)

Who Else Speaks Like That?

Once we’ve got a belief, we ask the athlete to say how they would describe somebody else (not them!) who held the same belief. We’d say, “OK, what words would you use to describe someone who thought that hot temperatures wouldn’t affect their performance?” After a little coaching, the athlete might say “Well, that person clearly thinks they are different, or special, or better than the other athletes around them.” Or “That athlete should value their racing and training more.” Finally, the third belief might be something like “The normal rules of physiology don’t apply to me.” The idea, here, is for the athlete to see that their belief is the thing that is powering their unaccountable behavior. Most athletes aren’t willing to face this, and they look for something else to blame the difficulty on. But you’re not “most athletes,” right? You’ve stuck around for 1500 words at this point! So we know you’re brave, so you can handle the next step.

What’s the Shadow?

Before we get into this part, we are NOT therapists. The concept of shadow is a Jungian creation, and you can find this information out there in the world, but we are not doctors and we don’t even play them on T.V. This is all for informational purposes only. OK, wild side step aside, now we want you to name that belief that is powering the behavior we don’t want. We call it a shadow because usually it’s behind you—we’re using the power of accountability to bring the shadow into the light, where we can examine it. We’re gonna ask our athlete to name the shadow, and the best way to do is to ask “What judgments would you have about someone other than you who held the belief that’s powering that behavior?” Here are some answers, given our three examples above:

1. Conceited/Proud/Special shadow (“The rules don’t apply to me”)

2. Unworthy/ashamed/not-good-enough shadow (“My pursuits don’t matter”)

3. Arrogant/Better-Than shadow (“Experts can’t be trusted”)

Maybe you should have packed better?

CONCLUSION

OK, the goal here is NOT to leave the athlete feeling conceited, or worthless, or arrogant. The goal here is to see that they have something normal that is driving their behavior in ways that actually doesn’t help them much. But how do we fix it? We’re not going to change a lifetime of belief with one process—the goal here is exposing the shadow. But we CAN help the athlete prove to him or herself that they CAN make commitments and stick to them. The last thing we do is ask the athlete “OK, now that you see this, what is a SMALL commitment you can make that you can follow through with so you can show yourself that you can stick to commitments?” The athlete can’t just re-voice the commitment they missed, since that commitment still stands. We always suggest something simple, like saying you’ll send your mom flowers next Wednesday for no good reason. As coach, make sure your athlete knows you will check in on them to see if they kept that commitment, too. Ideally they did, and they can start feeling as if they can make and keep commitments. If they didn’t? Well, you simply run the script all over again!

Once an athlete realizes that everything is a choice of theirs, and that only they are responsible for what happens to them on race day, we have found that athletes tend to own their performances, take better care of their equipment, and prepare as much as possible. In closing, here is a list of excuses we’ve heard and how that athlete could have taken responsibility and prepared better.

Excuse	The Accountable Answer
“My stomach shut down”	Practice your nutrition in EVERY workout
“The water was too choppy—I do better in flat water.”	GO PRACTICE IN THE OPEN WATER, and work on lifting your stroke rate
“It was too hot and I melted.”	Adjust your pace, and acclimate ahead of time
“I lost my nutrition.”	Don’t rely on “special” nutrition—train your gut to accept anything
“I got a flat tire.”	Keep your equipment in excellent working order, and practice changing flats
“Another rider crashed me out.”	It takes two to crash—how did you contribute to this situation and how will you stay out of that situation in the future?
“My aerobars/saddle slipped—stupid bolts!”	Torque your bolts before any race
“I fell apart in the final half of the run.”	Examine your pacing, Broheim.
“My race nutrition soured the night before the race.”	What? No it didn’t.
“Another athlete knocked off my goggles/swam over me/got in my way.”	Practice swimming in groups.

Want to hear this process in action? Click below and listen along!