Episode 51: Three Endurance Skills that Lead to Mastery
I see the following situation far too often: an athlete who is completely reliant on their devices, doesn’t practice their fueling, and cannot change a flat tire. This kind of reliance is deeply fragile: it doesn’t take much to break it on race day. In this show, I walk through the three most important skills to an endurance athlete’s success, and there are far more qualitative measures than quantitative. We cover pacing, fueling, and equipment proficiency, ending with practical directions to improve at all three.
Episode 17: How to Pace a Hilly Race or Run
One of the hardest skills for any endurance athlete to master is pacing, and when you’re running a hilly event or participating in a bike race with a lot of elevation changes, pacing gets more difficult.
In this episode, Chris walks through the pitfalls athletes often fall into, the biggest of which is the “fly and die” approach where the athlete hopes to “bank” time by running harder or faster early in the race, hoping that when they inevitably slow down (because they went harder than they trained to run) that the time they banked will still keep them within their goal.
Sadly the endurance gods know what you are up to and will exact a cost in return…plus interest. In less nerdy terms this is called “blowing up.” Chris offers advice on how to avoid this ignominious fate and provides an example from the Portland Shamrock Run, where one of his athletes paced the race to perfection. You can see that athlete’s workout file below.