The Endurance Drive Podcast

In this week’s episode, Katie and Elena sit down with coach, elite runner, physical therapist, and friend of the pod Hanna Prunty. Hanna shares some exciting news—that she and Coach Kevin are expecting their first child in June!—and dives deep into the journey she followed in order to optimize her hormonal health for pregnancy. Hanna shares powerful reflections on why more isn’t always better, how...

Welcome to the new season, athletes! We are back in full swing with training and coaching, so Jim and Katie sat down for an extended insights episode all about what we are learning from our athletes (and from ourselves!) in the first couple weeks of the new year. We cover: good and bad data, going high vs. low in Z2, workout ordering, logistics of a training week, intentions and resolutions, “gent...

We’ve spent a lot of hours sharing ‘the key principles that guide our approach to endurance training and coaching’ on this podcast, but we’ve never sat down and distilled all of those principles into a single one-stop-shop episode that covers our coaching philosophy. In this episode, we’re doing just that: talking through ten of the biggest and most important principles that shape how we think abo...

We're kicking off the new year with an episode all about goals and intentions for 2025! Katie and Elena reached out to our community for inspiration about what's motivating them this year and came back with a ton of physical and mental goals that span endurance, self-improvement, and everything in between. We also did a deep dive on coaching and training insights related to "how to solve for the r...

We’re closing out 2024 with a recap of some of our biggest lessons learned and some coaching and training innovations we’re looking forward to in 2025. We cover the importance of mindset, why belief is crucial for performance, how goal mapping has helped us and our athletes, why comparison is the thief of joy, how to modify under high stress, the role of everyday nutrition vs. sports nutrition, tr...

We’re in that awkward time between Thanksgiving and Christmas where life feels like equal parts joyful, dark, and downright weird, so Jim, Katie, and Elena sat down to chat through what’s been going on for us in coaching, training, and life in recent weeks. The result was a rich episode filled with our collective thoughts on topics that range from mechanical durability to fighting disconnection to...

In this week's episode, we are joined by Tim Richmond, the Head Race Director of Max Performance, to learn a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes at a triathlon race. Tim shares how he became a race director and grew his successful family-run triathlon business, how he handles gear and equipment, how he manages and organizes volunteers, how he responds to unforeseen circumstances on rac...

We are going full “woo woo spirituality” in this episode to talk about how endurance sports can operate as a spiritual practice. We specifically chat through why we are interested in the intersection between endurance sports and spirituality, how we define and conceptualize spirituality, spirituality at its best and worst, endurance as a vehicle for constant self-reflection, the pursuit of feeling...

The start of the season is right around the corner, so this week we’re putting together an extended list of things that you can do to be ready to hit the ground running (and swimming and biking) once it all begins. We cover mindset and mental prep, balancing your nervous system, organizing your life logistics, hitting the gym, getting back into Zone 2 aerobic training, addressing recurring injurie...

In this week’s episode, Katie and Elena welcome Brittni Nicolodi (previously Gorman) to the podcast to chat all things wellness and performance for athletes. Brittni is an Ayurvedic Medicine Practitioner and a mountain athlete who combines her love for endurance adventuring with her passion for preventative wellness. She explains what Ayurveda is, her journey to becoming an Ayurvedic Practitioner,...

In this week’s episode, Jim, Katie, and Elena drill into why trail running will make you faster and stronger in all endurance and fitness domains, even if trail running isn’t your primary sport. We cover who should trail run, why trail running is such a secret weapon, how to get started (logistically, physically, and mentally), what data or metrics are most useful to pay attention to in trail runn...

In this week’s episode, Elena and Katie welcome Megan Chacosky to the show. Megan is a performance dietitian and chef extraordinaire who has built a career blending her expertise in sports nutrition with her love of cooking and her passion for supporting athletes as humans. Megan served as a Performance Chef and Sports Dietician for the US Olympic and Paralympic committee before moving to Vermont...

October means two things: it's pumpkin spice latte season and it's Ironman World Championships season! In this week's episode, Coach Katie and Coach Kevin—both 2X Ironman World Championships qualifiers—break down their respective journeys to the Kona ticket. We cover the training, budget, lifestyle, logistics, and mindsets that helped them achieve their goals, and we also offer tips for athletes w...

In this week’s episode, we crowdsourced yet again and asked our community to share their thoughts on self-belief. As always, we are so impressed by the wisdom, vulnerability, and insights of our listeners. Thank you all! Katie and Elena summarize the findings and dive deeper into how self-belief helps our performance, how it translates into life, how we build it, how we lose it, and the tools our...

We are celebrating 50 episodes of The Endurance Drive Podcast this week with our first ever AMA (ask me anything) episode. We are so grateful to our listener community for tuning in every week and sending in such awesome questions. Check this episode out to hear our thoughts on how our approach to training has changed over time, what advice we wish we could tell ourselves at the beginning of our a...

This week, we’re diving into the process of how to set goals for your next season of training and racing. We start with identifying your purpose, which is ultimately the fuel that powers the engine of any endurance journey. We then drill into choosing different levels of outcome goals, identifying the process goals that it will take to achieve your outcome goals, mapping out goal achievement strat...

In this week’s episode, Katie and Elena welcome Catherine Rocchi, a competitive gravel cyclist, backcountry skier, climber, trail runner, triathlete, all-around adventurer, and longtime friend to the podcast. Catherine shares about how she developed from a runner in the suburbs of New York to an Alaskan multi-sport adventurer; how optimizing her training for joy, social connection, and unstructure...

A lot of our athletes have had their eyes on signing up for races next season, so in this episode we're deep diving on the most important things to think about when planning your race calendar. Highlights include: an honest evaluation of your skills and experience level, calendar mapping of your life commitments, finding your why, race logistics, cost considerations, and more. We also answer s...

Fresh off a summer in Paris with Team USA, Mac Morse joins Katie and Elena this week to share her perspectives and wisdom gained from a career working in athlete development with the best of the best. We cover Mac’s own career as an elite athlete, her entrepreneurial path to creating The Sideline Perspective—a platform for injured and retired athletes to find support and community—and her current...

In this week's episode, we are bringing it back to basics with Intervals 101. We cover what intervals are (and what they are not), why do intervals, when to start doing intervals, how to determine what intervals are appropriate for you, basic considerations and mistakes with intervals, and examples of a basic interval progression in our programming. We also cover lots of fun coaching and train...

In this week's episode, Katie and Elena chat about a bunch of different topics that have featured in both of our lives in recent months, including highs and lows in training, health struggles as an athlete, and the idea of going "all in" on something you love. We specifically dig into Elena's decision to start and DNF the Lavaredo Ultra Trail in the Italian Dolomites, important i...

In this week’s party episode, we are welcoming all four coaches (Jim, Katie, Kevin, and Elena) onto the podcast for the first time ever to share their tips and tricks for how to crush a fall marathon or half marathon coming off a summer triathlon season. We hear about why marathoning is so hard on the body, how to structure a marathon or half marathon training week, favorite workouts for marathon...

The main topic of this week's episode is why the off-season may actually be the most important season of all. We discuss what chronic stress does to our bodies, how to shift our training focus from fitness to wellness, the magic of Zone 1, three levels of recovery and their varied time horizons, what happens if you don't respect the off-season, and a whole lot more. We also share additiona...

In our second ~emergency podcast episode~ of 2024, Elena catches up with Katie about the Sea to Summit Triathlon, where Katie came back from a 20+ minute deficit after taking a wrong turn on the bike course to run down five women on the Tuckerman Ravine Trail and finish first on top of Mt. Washington with a run course record. We chat through her uncertain road to the starting line, racing under pr...

In this week’s episode, we go over key takeaways from the 25th iteration of Ironman Lake Placid, where Katie was on course all day as a spectator and coach rather than a racer and where a dozen brave Endurance Drive athletes toed the line. Sub-topics include: creating a performance bubble, avoiding high LSS on the day before the race, chaotic swims, fueling and hydration insights, digging deep whe...