Endurance Unlimited

In this episode, Gordo Byrn explains the importance of base training, which he defines as "the ability to move for the duration of your goal event." Highlighting that athletes should focus on building general capacity before moving on to specific capacity training. He believes that many endurance athletes make the mistake of focusing too much on specific capacity training and not enough on general...

David Babbitt is an American ultrarunner living in Nepal and racing some of the most difficult multi-stage races on the planet. He's doing this at age 75. With the help of his long-time coach, Land Heintzberger, the duo have focused on core training basics to keep David in races and finishing faster than many younger competitors. Babbitt completed the seven-day Manaslu Mountain Trail Race, which c...

Listen in as Amanda Brooks and Dirk talk pre-hab, fueling as an aging runner, perimenopause and menopause and how she prescribes intensity even to those 60 and 70+ runners. Amanda Brooks is a running coach and author who has helped many runners achieve their goals. She is a perpetual blogger and author of several books, including "Run to the Finish: The Everyday Runner's Guide," and has contribute...

Originally from South Africa, founder, CEO and head coach Natasha van der Merwe has built a unique coaching business in Austin, Texas.  NVDM Coaching has seen explosive growth over the last two years, and while catering to athletes of all abilities, many have gone on to win age groups or podium spots in a number of Ironman races. Van der Merwe and her coaching staff have also developed a special k...

Dr. Iñigo San Millán is a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, performing clinical and research work in cellular metabolism, especially in diabetes, cardiometabolic disease and cancer. He has been testing and coaching world-class endurance athletes for over 25 years. He is also the Head of Performance for the professional cycling team UAE, where he is the personal coach of t...

Though coming to the sport later than most, John Gaston is the current U.S. National Ski Mountaineering champion and has won multiple prestigious U.S. events, including the Audi Power of Four 10 times. He is arguably the country's best ski mountaineering, or skimo racer, and competes on the world stage in the winter.  During the summer, Gaston mountain bikes the trails near his home in Aspen to ma...

David Warden and Matt Fitzgerald are the founders of 80/20 Endurance, one of the pioneers of endurance training plans. 80/20 sold its first plan within the TrainingPeaks Marketplace in 2005. Their plans have helped hundreds of thousands of athletes of all experience and ability levels achieve their goals. David Warden is an internationally recognized coach and author with clients including world c...

Sonya Looney is pushing the traditional notions of training for professional mountain bike racing during and after pregnancy while reinforcing patience and resilience in her clients as a health coach.  Despite her results as a pro, she describes herself as a normal person who has accomplished extraordinary things through hard work, self-belief, determination and willingness to fail. Dirk sits down...

Craig Alexander, or "Crowie" as many call know him, has formulated an approach to triathlon training through many years as a professional and now as a coach. He talks with Dirk Friel about his approach to hitting peak fitness while balancing a restorative taper for the best performance racing long course triathlon. Crowie and Dirk consider the schedule changes to the Ironman World Championships in...

Steve House sees the convergence of technical climbing and mountaineering as "New Alpinism." And the athleticism required to be an all-around alpinist demands a training regimen as diverse as the skills of the blended climbing disciplines used. His coaching company, Uphill Athlete, grew from his work helping lead other alpinists, mountaineers and athletes based on personal learnings and fundamenta...

Despite establishing a career in the financial domain after college, Amy Charity took a big gamble, trading boardrooms for race courses. She is now a former professional cyclist and member of a World Championship time trial team for the United States, and author of "The Wrong Side of Comfortable." Her new career is co-founder and owner of the SBT GRVL gravel event that has become one of the marque...

Dr. Ross is a clinical psychologist in Denver, Colo. specializing in athlete mental health and performance. He helps address issues such as anxiety, depression, disordered eating and insomnia while aiming to develop high-performance sports psychology skills within any field of play.  Dr. Ross authored the Introduction to Sports Psychology for Endurance Coaches course through TrainingPeaks Universi...

Ultramarathon running is a complex sport. Jason Koop's updated book, "Training Essentials for Ultrarunning," dives into the complexity to help answer many of the questions that ultrarunners and other competitors face as endurance athletes. The book is filled with evidence-based methodologies that may be useful for athletes in other endurance sports beyond ultrarunning. Koop is a leading authority...

Joy and Brian McCulloch are the husband and wife team behind the southern California-based Big Wheel Coaching. Joy was a high school P.E. teacher and professional mountain biker. Her vision behind Big Wheel Coaching was to bring P.E. to adults by providing structure, feedback and accountability to athletes. Brian joined the business in 2016 and has over 15 years of professional road, mountain bike...

Recognized as one of the world’s leading sports nutrition experts, Asker Jeukendrup is the author of several books on sports nutrition and over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles on exercise and sports nutrition. He started a consulting business, mysportsscience.com, where he advises teams and organizations. Jeukendrup is currently head of nutrition for the Dutch Olympic Committee, Jumbo-Visma pro...

Dr. Andy Pruitt, whose professional legacy includes the pioneering of 3-D bike fits, three patents for the development of Specialized Body Geometry shoes and saddles, all of which are designed to help optimize performance and comfort based on individual anatomy.  Dr. Pruitt has spent his entire career helping thousands of riders from Tour de France contenders to local racers achieve their own bran...

Gwen Jorgensen won the triathlon gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympic games after a pair of ITU World Triathlon Series championships in 2014 and 2015. She has since retired from professional triathlon and is focused on marathon running. She will be inducted into the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame in August of 2022.  After contracting COVID-19 recently, she and elite athlete coach Bobby McGee reset her g...

Ryan Hall left the pro running circuit in 2016. The U.S. half marathon record-holder and unofficial American marathon record-holder has a new passion these days — bodybuilding. From running a sub-2:05 Boston Marathon in 2011 to putting on 40 pounds of muscle, Hall found a new fulfilling way of expressing himself after his body told him his competitive long-distance running days were over. The two-...

Peter Stetina was an accomplished World Tour road cyclist before embracing gravel racing in 2019. He quickly established himself as one of the best in the sport, winning Utah’s Crusher in the Tushar, the 2021 Belgian Waffle Ride San Diego and the inaugural Leadboat, which is the combination of two arduous endurance races for a total of 250 miles over two days.  In 2020, he set the course record on...

Ski mountaineering, or Skimo, has been gaining traction among winter sports athletes for years. With the recent announcement that the sport will be included in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Skimo will soon be elevated to a worldwide stage.  Grace Staberg, 19, is an accomplished ultramarathon runner and a hopeful to represent the United States in the inaugural Skimo event at the Olympics. Grac...

Chris Hauth intimately knows the interworking of a master's athlete. He knows the family and social obligations, recognizes the desire to remain competitive but also owns the fact the motivation shifts dramatically as athletes age. The glamor of big podium racing fades thus requiring athletes to seek out a deeper ‘why.’ Listen as he and Dirk explore the meaning of working out and ‘working in,’ mea...

The National Triathlon Team of Norway has a fascinating story. Head Coach Arild Tveiten started with just a small handful of athletes interested in the sport. With the right investment of time (8 years!), dedication and a heavy focus on sport science (forget 80/20 training, they are using 90/10!), athlete Kristian Blummenfelt was able to bring home his first gold in triathlon from Tokyo.  Discover...

In this episode of the CoachCast, Dirk dives in with Will O'Connor to explore everything related to running power. Listen as they compare the value of running versus riding with power, discuss the best use-case scenarios for run power, as well as examine what it can teach us that GPS data and heart rate can’t.  They even touch on the (literal) power contained in a new pair of Nikes and exactly wha...

If you identify with the mountain bike crew and or with the data nerd clan, this episode is for you. Matt Miller, mountain bike scientist and founder of BrakeAce sat down with Dirk to explore all ways of improving speed and fitness. They start out by discussing how, despite Matt's determination to challenge the idea that FTP rules all, his testing has only certified that it remains steadfast as th...

It's not every day that Dirk gets to interview his father and TrainingPeaks' Co-Founder, Joe Friel. Listen as Dirk and Joe discuss what it takes to stay competetive as Masters athletes (spoiler alert: incorporating high-intensity training, increasing protein intake and maximizing sleep are all super helpful!)