The Endurance Athlete Journey

Send us Fan Mail You are tired of following a structured training plan, but you are also afraid that if you back off, you will lose fitness and have to start over. That is the tension a lot of endurance athletes face after a big race, during the off-season, around holidays, or between major goals. You may not need a highly specific training plan all year long, but that does not mean you need to re...

Send us Fan Mail Training consistently but suddenly feeling slower? Your normal pace is harder to hold, your heart rate is higher, and every workout seems to take more out of you. That does not necessarily mean you are losing fitness. Heat can mask the fitness you have built while adding stress your body must learn to manage. In this episode, Coach Justin and Coach Katie explain how heat acclimati...

Send us Fan Mail Feeling more fatigued than usual? Struggling through workouts that used to feel easy? If your training isn't matching your effort, low iron could be the missing piece. In this solo episode, sports dietitian Katie takes a deep dive into one of the most common—and often overlooked—nutrition concerns in endurance sports: iron deficiency. Drawing from both the latest evidence and...

Send us Fan Mail You’re putting in the bike miles, completing the workouts, and watching the numbers—but the fitness still is not showing up when it matters. The problem may not be effort. It may be that your training is developing the wrong qualities or measuring progress in ways that do not translate to race day. In this episode, Coach Justin explains how triathletes can build sustainable bike p...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Katie shares a candid recap of Grandma's Marathon and reflect on one of the most challenging races of my running career. After beginning training with hopes of running a personal best, an unexpected bout of Influenza B just eight weeks before race day changed the trajectory of her marathon build. Despite working hard to regain fitness, lingering doubts follow...

Send us Fan Mail You can complete every workout, push hard, and finish exhausted—and still miss the purpose of the training. Hard work is necessary, but difficulty alone does not make a workout effective. In this episode, Coach Justin explains the difference between training hard and training well, why fatigue must be managed rather than feared, and how to judge each session by the role it plays i...

Send us Fan Mail In this final Road to Grandma’s Marathon episode before race day, Katie shares a candid look at the last few weeks of training, tapering, travel, and preparation leading into one of the most anticipated races of her season. From testing a bargain pair of carbon-plated racing shoes and completing key marathon workouts, to navigating travel across Colorado, New York, Vermont, and ev...

Send us Fan Mail Carb Loading for Endurance Athletes: What Actually Works? Is carb loading really necessary before a marathon, Ironman, or long endurance event? How many carbs do you actually need, and will carb loading make you feel heavy, bloated, or gain weight? In this episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast , Board Certified Sports Dietitian and endurance athlete Katie takes a deep d...

Send us Fan Mail For Episode 100, Coach Justin and Coach Katie are tackling one of the biggest reasons endurance athletes fall apart on race day: fueling that was never practiced like training. You may think your stomach is the reason your fueling fails. But for many endurance athletes, the real issue is simpler: the gut was never trained to handle the fuel being asked of it on race day. In this e...

Send us Fan Mail Miles can make a training plan feel clear. But they can also make it easy to chase a number without understanding the actual cost of the work. In this episode, Coach Justin and Coach Katie break down the difference between training by minutes and training by miles — and why the better choice depends on your experience, your goals, your sport, and the stress your body is already ca...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the goal you can’t stop thinking about is the one you’re afraid to pursue? Whether it’s your first race, moving up in distance, returning from injury, or taking another shot at something that didn’t go well the first time, many endurance athletes find themselves stuck in the space between wanting something and actually committing to it. In this solo episode, Coac...

Send us Fan Mail If you train seriously long enough, eventually you hit the point where your body stops feeling “good.” Your legs feel dead. Recovery slows down. Workouts that normally feel manageable suddenly feel heavy. And then the mental spiral starts: Am I adapting… or breaking down? In this episode, Coaches Justin and Katie break down the difference between normal training soreness, accumula...

Send us Fan Mail In this solo episode of The Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast , Katie shares an honest update on her road to Grandma’s Marathon and takes listeners inside the reality of marathon training after a setback from illness. After battling the flu and losing valuable training time, Katie discusses the challenges of rebuilding fitness, navigating difficult workouts, and balancing confiden...

Send us Fan Mail Being a strong runner does not guarantee a strong Ironman marathon. In a standalone marathon, you start fresh. In a full Ironman, the marathon begins after a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, hours of fatigue, fueling decisions, pacing mistakes, and muscular damage that have already shaped what your run can become. In this episode, Coach Justin and Coach Katie compare standalone marat...

Send us Fan Mail In this solo episode of The Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast , Katie takes a deep dive into the fascinating evolution of endurance fueling and how high-carb strategies are reshaping modern performance. From the early days of marathon racing in the late 1800s—when athletes fueled with steak, eggs, whiskey, and even avoided water—to today’s precision fueling strategies of 80–120 gr...

Send us Fan Mail If you are fit enough to finish the race, but not durable enough to keep training, eventually the cycle catches up with you. You build fitness, make progress, start to believe things are working — and then something breaks down. Injury, inconsistency, burnout, lost motivation, or another restart from square one. In this episode, we break down the difference between fitness and dur...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Road to Grandma’s Marathon series, sports dietitian, coach, and endurance athlete Katie shares an honest update on her marathon build after being sidelined by illness for nearly two weeks. From elevated heart rates and lingering fatigue to rebuilding confidence after difficult workouts, Katie opens up about the physical and mental challenges of returning to...

Send us Fan Mail You missed training. You got sick. Something flared up. Life got in the way. Now the plan you imagined is not the plan you are actually living — and the question becomes: is your race still salvageable, or did the setback change everything? In this episode, Coach Justin and Coach Katie talk through how endurance athletes should adjust after illness, injury, missed workouts, or dis...

Send us Fan Mail If swimming feels harder than it should, this episode is for you. Coach Justin breaks down the most common swim questions triathletes struggle with — from feeling exhausted after 100 yards to panicking in open water, sinking legs, breathing problems, and why so many athletes stop improving despite spending more time in the pool. This episode is not about swimming more mindlessly....

Send us Fan Mail Podcast Summary – Navigating Setbacks in Marathon Training In this episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast , Katie shares a real and raw update on her road to Grandma’s Marathon—one that didn’t go as planned. After coming off a strong stretch of training, including a standout 16-mile tempo run, Katie was hit with a major setback: Influenza B . What started as mild fatigue...

Send us Fan Mail Most runners are asking the same questions—but they’re often chasing the wrong answers. In this episode, Coach Justin and Coach Katie break down 6 of the most common running questions they hear from athletes—covering frequency, pacing, injuries, nutrition, speed, and endurance. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re doing enough… doing too much… or just doing it wrong—this episode...

Send us Fan Mail You trained for the race. You put in the hours. So why didn’t your performance reflect your fitness? In this episode, we break down the real reason so many endurance athletes underperform on race day—and it’s not because they’re not fit enough. From pacing mistakes and poor fueling decisions to hydration errors and lack of race-day awareness, small execution errors can quietly bui...

Send us Fan Mail You trained. You showed up. You crossed the finish line. Now what? For a lot of athletes, the end of a race doesn’t feel the way they expected. There’s pride, excitement… and sometimes an unexpected sense of emptiness. The structure is gone. The goal is gone. And the question becomes: what comes next? In this episode of Triathlon 101 , Coach Justin walks through what actually happ...

Send us Fan Mail Most athletes think the key to improvement is simple: train more, push harder, and stack on more workouts. But what if that’s exactly what’s holding you back? In this episode of The Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast , we break down how to actually structure your training week so that your workouts build fitness—not fatigue. This is Part 3 of our training plan series, where we move...

Send us Fan Mail In this solo episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast , Katie shares an honest and detailed update from her marathon training block as she prepares for Grandma’s Marathon. She walks through recent weeks of training, including challenging speed sessions, long-run workouts, strength work, and the reality of balancing fatigue, life, and consistency. From navigating tough work...