The Endurance Drive Podcast

Thanks to our awesome listeners, we were able to build out an entire episode worth of content requested by our community! We skip a single big topic in favor of a medium-dive on a bunch of really awesome ones: a six-step emotional regulation strategy to use when workouts feel rough; how to distinguish between training fatigue and "deeper" fatigue; more examples of mental work in practice...

In this week's episode, we asked our community to tell us about their best and worst race days—what happened, what factors led to success or failure, and what lessons they learned. We then mixed in a bunch of our good and bad race day stories to come up with an episode that's full of actionable information about how you can approach racing, as well as a lot of laughs as we dig back through...

This week's episode covers a lot of fun topics! First up is a recap of lessons and insights from the Cohasset Triathlon, Katie's first race of 2024. We then cover more insights from Jim related to active recovery principles, swim technique, dual-sided power meters, and bike fitting. Our main content is a deep dive on some of our favorite workouts for Ironman and 70.3 in the Endurance Drive...

In this week's episode, Katie and Elena sit down for an hour of wisdom from the woman who does it all: triathlete, mom, career woman, and community champion Laura Fay. Topics include: how Laura has found and built communities in sport throughout her life as an athlete; how she built a career in executive coaching and what principles make effective leaders and athletes; how to balance career, b...

In this super fun episode, we're celebrating a whole bunch of big milestones including: Jim's return to riding six weeks after his crash and surgery, Katie officially earning her title of "PhD Coach Katie," and most importantly, six months and 35 episodes of our podcast! To mark the occasion, we're returning to a format we used in episode five of the podcast and reflecting on...

In this week's episode, Coach Jim sits down with Coach Katie and Coach Kevin to cover everything you need to know about our Beast of the East: Ironman Lake Placid. Katie and Kevin have both qualified for the Ironman World Championships not once, but twice, at Ironman Lake Placid. We chat about the history of Lake Placid and why it's such a special race; the nitty gritty details of the swim...

In this week's episode, we asked our community about the intersection of mental health and endurance sports. We were blown away by the vulnerability and powerful insights that people shared! We dive into how endurance sports helps optimize or manage mental health, how endurance sports can get in the way of mental well-being, and the tools that members of our community have used to help take ca...

In this week's episode, we had fun coming up with a long list of mistakes that we have either made ourselves or seen as coaches at some point in our endurance journeys. We hope that by sharing those mistakes with you, you can skip ahead to following the best practices for optimizing your performance and well-being as an athlete. Topics include: zone training, fueling and recovery, gear, skills...

In this week's episode, we welcome a very special guest to the podcast: Susan Dunklee, a 3x Olympian and 2x World Championship Silver Medalist in the sport of biathlon. Susan currently directs the biathlon program at Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Vermont, and she shares her wisdom on a ton of topics including: life as a professional athlete, mindfulness in sport, balance, sense of place, traini...

On our 30th (!) podcast episode, we're continuing on our theme of best practices for race week by covering everything you need to know to crush your Ironman or Half Ironman / 70.3 race day! We go over pre-race breakfast, how to execute a proper warm-up, and our best tips and tricks for approaching the swim, T1, the bike, T2, and the run. This episode also features an interview with Coach Jim a...

In this super special ~emergency~ podcast episode, Katie sits down with Elena less than 48 hours post-race to talk about her recent victory in the Canyons 100 Mile Race, the American Major for ultra-running presented by UTMB. This was Elena's first 100-mile race, and she talks us through how she got into trail running, how 100-mile ultras and the UTMB circuit work, how she prepared for this ra...

Race season is finally here! In this episode, we cover everything you should be thinking about in the 1-2 weeks leading up to your goal race. Sub-topics include: bike prep and maintenance, race week sleep and fueling protocols, final workouts, tapering, mental preparation, what to do at the race site, and a whole lot more. We also spend time on some coaching and training insights related to carb i...

In this week's episode, Katie and Elena sit down with a longtime friend of The Endurance Drive, Justine Pomerance, to talk about her journey as an athlete and—most recently—her experience racing the Boston Marathon just five months after becoming a new mom. Justine is a certified badass and her perspective on balance, adventure, and longevity in sport has something for all of our listeners. We...

In this week's episode, we dive deep with a master in the sport psychology space. Dr. Justin Ross is a licensed clinical psychologist and a certified cycling and running coach who specializes in health, wellness, and human performance. He shares his expertise on a ton of topics that will help you unlock the next level of performance in training and racing, including activating mindfulness as a...

This week’s episode features one of our favorite people in the Endurance Drive community: our social media and gear guru, Colleen Geaumont. Katie and Elena chat with Colleen about the common themes that have marked her journey through sport and life as a high school swimmer, a nationally ranked beauty queen (Miss Maine World), a competitive triathlete, and a powerlifter. We talk about team dynamic...

In this super special episode, we asked the amazing members of our community what they are most afraid of when it comes to endurance training and racing. They delivered with thoughtful, insightful responses that helped us come up with a ton of content for our longest episode yet! Topics include: fears related to training and conditioning; mental or psychological fears like falling short of goals o...

This week’s episode is a special one for us. We got to interview an everyday hero, Elena’s high school cross country coach and chemistry teacher, Susan “Coach” Savage. A self-declared Title IX baby, Coach Savage grew up running with the boys before her talent finally convinced the Pittsburgh City Schools to start a girls track program. She went on to run on scholarship for West Virginia University...

This episode is all about one of the terms we use the most as coaches: Life Stress Score (LSS). Like Training Stress Score (TSS), we think of LSS as a way to quantify the mental and emotional toll brought on by life being hard, and our goal as coaches is to help you manage training and performance through periods of high LSS. We cover what LSS is, how to track it, why to track it, how to manage it...

This week's episode is one of our all-time favorites. We're joined by Gina des Cognets, Senior Director of Organizational Development at Strava, a life and leadership coach, and one of our most valued athletes at the Endurance Drive. Gina joins Katie and Elena to share her wisdom and practical strategies for success when it comes to valuing excellence, non-linear career paths, "mid-li...

As athletes and coaches, we have SO much data at our disposal. It can help you out or drive you crazy. Our goal today is to break down what data is useful and what data you should ignore. We cover: heart rate data (zone training, resting HR, HRV), data in TrainingPeaks (TSS, CTL, ATL, TSB), "stuff that Garmin says" (performance condition, training status, recovery time, heat/altitude acc...

This is the last episode of our five-episode series that covers the perspectives and experiences that we crowdsourced from our community about the rewards and challenges that female athletes face. Here, we're pulling out themes related to how it makes us feel: strong, capable, and badass, but also unwelcome, unworthy, or unrelatable, depending on the context. We talk about how being a female e...

In this week's episode, we welcome our very own Coach Kevin Prunty onto the podcast to talk about his introduction into sport, the role competitive lacrosse and a career-ending concussion played in shaping his trajectory as an endurance athlete, the importance of family and support networks, his experience qualifying for Kona at his first Ironman in Lake Placid, his launch of KPI Training and...

In the fourth installment of our special series, Female Athlete Stories, we’re tackling the forces we’re up against. Highlights of this super rich episode include: another deep dive on body image, the objectification of the female athlete body, safety as female athletes, femininity and athletics, the myth of balance for women in sport, navigating the medical system and health challenges as a femal...

This week's episode is all about what you should be thinking about (and what life will look like) if you decide to sign up for a big endurance challenge like an Ironman. We highlight four key things to ask yourself before you bite the bullet, cover the top practical items you will need to support your endurance journey, and outline the progression of training for big events like these. We also...

This is the third episode in our special new series, Female Athlete Stories. We start with a recap of Elena's outstanding win at the Black Canyon 60K last weekend, highlighting insights and strategies that transcend sports and ability levels across the board. We then cover some of the key differences our listeners have noted between male and female athlete communities, stories of female athlet...