Why You’re Training More… But Getting Worse

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 beyond theory and into real-world execution.

We dive into how to take your weekly training volume and turn it into a plan that works with your life, not against it. Because the difference between progress and burnout isn’t how hard you train—it’s how you sequence, recover, and manage fatigue over time.

You’ll learn why many athletes feel like they’re getting slower despite training more, how poor workout sequencing sabotages performance, and why recovery is one of the most overlooked performance tools.

We also discuss:

•  How to properly sequence workouts across the week 
•  Why fatigue is necessary—but must be managed 
•  The biggest mistake athletes make with easy days 
•  How to balance intensity, volume, and recovery 
•  Why generic training plans (and even AI) fall short without personalization 

If you’ve ever felt stuck, constantly tired, or unsure why your training isn’t working—this episode will change how you approach your entire week.

Key Takeaways:

• Fatigue is required for adaptation—but unmanaged fatigue leads to breakdown 
•  Workouts cannot be evaluated in isolation—they must be viewed within the full week 
•  The goal is not to do more—it’s to sequence better
•  Easy days are just as important as hard days—and most athletes get them wrong 
•  Poor recovery habits lead to the illusion of lost fitness 
•  Consistency—not intensity—is what drives long-term performance 
•  Training plans must adapt to your real-life schedule, not just ideal conditions 
•  There is more than one way to achieve a training goal—but not all methods carry the same risk 
•  Generic plans (and AI-generated plans) lack the ability to integrate life demands and individual nuance 
•  Strategic recovery (not just rest days) is a critical part of performance

Timestamps:

 00:00 Why structuring your training week matters
 00:36 The art of workout sequencing
 01:31 Why AI training plans fall short
 02:28 Managing volume, stress, and fatigue
 04:18 Building your training week
 10:13 Individualizing training and recovery
 30:04 The big picture: fatigue vs performance
 32:18 Why fatigue hides your fitness
 36:25 The 80/20 method and intensity balance
 43:02 Customizing training cycles beyond 7 days
 75:01 Recovery, consistency, and long-term success
 80:04 Wrap-up and next steps 

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome everyone to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Justin. I'm here with Coach Katie. And today is episode 85. And this is part three of our series on creating a training plan. And so this episode, what we're going to discuss is we've brought together the pieces of we've laid the foundation, we framed the house in terms of establishing the overall weekly volume that we want to hit over the duration of our training plan. Now we're going to take that weekly training volume and we're going to split it up across the days of the week and talk about how we sequence workouts. What's the what are we trying to keep in mind as we build workouts for specific adaptation? And then how do we sequence them in a way that is executable while at the same time managing training stress and fatigue and aiding recovery so that we can keep progressing and not overload ourselves. So there's a little bit of an art to the creation of a training plan, even though a lot of it is science-driven, and you can even go on Chat GPT these days and have it create a training plan. But there's one thing that these AI platforms are missing, and it's the incorporation of your daily life into your training plan and how that weaves into your daily workouts. What's the best way to sequence these in order to have it match up with the demands of your life throughout the week? Because not everybody's week is the same, week in and week out. So the week changes. So the training plan has to adjust so that you can execute the plan and you're not trying to just say, okay, this is just one more thing that I have to get done. There is a certain degree of that, but we want to minimize that because we want to enjoy the process of getting to race day. And it's not just, you know, hey, this isn't just, you know, we're we're building fitness, fill fitness, fitness, and just keep progressing. We want to try and enjoy this uh to a certain extent, even though some of it's hard. Uh so that's one of the things that these kind of AI platforms just are missing. They're missing the human touch uh and that input that we as coaches put into the training plan and work with our athletes one-on-one. It's more than just numbers and you know, getting this done, and you know, what's the training stress score for for this episode for this workout that you did? And, you know, how what's the next training stress score? There's there's more to it than that. And so we wanted to bring this piece in to talk about how we as coaches look at training volume, how we want to distribute that in a way that is responsible and respective of the athlete's life and uh not to overload the athlete, but again, manage that stress and fatigue. It's so important and crucial so that you uh develop the adaptation that you want and you get to race day feeling healthy and prepared rather than strung out and basically holding on to dear life, uh, and you're just not going to enjoy your race day. Uh so again, this is episode 85, it is part three of our series. So let's get right into the thick of it. Uh so Katie, do you want to talk about do you have anything that you'd like to uh to bring up at the at the start of the episode? You want to get us started?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

When I'm sitting down, like to create a training plan for an athlete. I mean, we've already talked about the volume piece, but I'm when I'm looking at the week, I'm trying to kind of think about my process with it. I think you brought up an interesting point. I mean, I use training peaks as well. I know you do. And one of the things I ask my athletes to do is to put in like availability in there. You know, so if they have days that maybe they can only or they're limited to like maybe doing a run or they can't do a lifting or something, or they have something they have to take the day completely off. Like, you know, I I really encourage that because, like you said, there's things that come up. And so, you know, usually in the course of the week when I'm trying to plan the training plan, the first thing I'm looking at is just, you know, what's going on with my athlete when I'm putting in my own training plan, the same thing. I'm kind of looking at my schedule for the week and I'm trying to piece together, you know, the days and first kind of looking at what my availability is and what days I have a little more time and how I'm going to fit things in. And so I think that's kind of the first piece for me is just kind of okay, if I'm working with someone, are they are their days that need off, or are they days that they're limited in time and hopefully they're updating me a little bit somehow, either with availability or like an email with what's going on. That's kind of what I request of them, you know, or sometimes they just have a similar schedule all the time. And I kind of know like these days are they can do this type of workout and their long runs are Saturday or Sunday or something. And so I'm kind of structuring the wait week then based off of that information. But that's like one of the first things I look at. And like you said, ChatGPT doesn't do that for you. I mean, I don't think that it's not sophisticated enough for you to put in your weekly schedule or even like what you've got going on and be able to like tailor, tailor things to that. So that's usually where I start. And then I'm and then when I'm looking at the week, I'm thinking of the kind of the key workouts that I want to, the key components that I kind of want to include in the week and for runners at least. And it gets, I think, a little bit more complicated, maybe for triathletes. So you can weigh in. But I usually like to include one like long run, or I suppose for like a triathlete, maybe that would be like a long bike ride or a brick session. But I like to include for my runners or marathon runners, especially, like it's gonna have a long run of some sort in there. Um, the duration of the long run will be dependent on where they're at with their training. If it's in the beginning, obviously it won't be as long, but as they get towards the marathon, it might be as much as 20 miles. Um, so that's the one component, and I'm trying to fit that in usually on a weekend. And then I'm trying to get at least one or ideally two quality workouts in the week. So that could be intervals, it could be like tempo, threshold, some sort of something where they're gonna be picking up the pace a little bit, and maybe those are like the two more challenging days. And then I'm trying to, in between that, include recovery days, rest days, you know, or easy days to kind of fill in the rest to either get them to the volume they need to be at, or I'm also thinking about strength training and how that's gonna fit in. So it's kind of like a little puzzle, almost like you're trying to look at the days, look at the availability, and you're trying to get those key workouts in and then kind of filling in the rest. Um, anyway, that's how I usually, you know, just overview of kind of how I'm how I'm going about that. But I don't know, I'd be curious if you have a similar system or if it's different.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah, so let me follow up, let me follow up a question for you. Yeah. Um you you mentioned the strength training, which is which is excellent because that is exactly where I wanted to go. Um when when you build your plan, either it's your personal plan or the plan for an athlete that you're working with, um, do you what do you start with? Do you start with, okay, I'm gonna build the run plan first, and then I go in and insert the strength workouts that will support that run plan, or do you start with the strength stuff and then you pepper in the runs around the strength training? How does it work?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

So I do the running first. Like I put because that's the most important thing, you know, for most people is there, is it what they're doing for running? And then I'm thinking about the strength. I think strength training is important, but I think it can be a little bit tricky because you know, I don't want to do a strength training maybe the day before a really hard session or like a really long run because it fatigues my muscles. And sometimes I'll do it just because maybe that's the purpose almost. Sometimes I want to go into a run, like maybe a tempo run where I'm gonna be pushing the pace, but it's not something that the I'm gonna feel the fatigue, but it's not something that's gonna the strength training won't completely wreck my workout. Like I might do it strategically, but I've even done it where I've strength trained before a harder workout in the intention of being tired. But most of the time the goal is to go into each of those key sessions as fresh as possible, which you know can be hard when you're training in a lot of mileage or training for a marathon. The way I try to do it if I can is you know, either schedule it on the same day as a quality workout because you're already you're already kind of pushing it. Like I found I can still do strength training. I try to push the timing, like as I try not to back them one after another. I try to like do the run in the morning and then do the strength training later in the day. So there's some recovery there. Or if I have an athlete with like two recovery days after a hard session, like I might put the strength training on the second, second day, like the day after the hard training session. So they have one full day of recovery before the next hard session. Um, so I'm kind of thinking about it like that, but I always put in the runs first and then and then the strength training because that's kind of like the supportive secondary thing that comes in second. And then obviously, like I'm not as worried about arm days. Like I'll do arm strength beef, I guess for like swimming, maybe you would have to worry about that for running. If your arms are a little tired, I don't know. It might make a little difference, but it's not gonna like unless you're extremely fatigued or sore from your workout, I don't think it makes a big difference. So yeah, that's kind of how I think about it. I think it's just yeah, if anyone's ever done strength training, and sometimes I get this wrong and I still overdo the strength training, then I'm sore for like two or three days after, and I still then it, you know, it still gets me, but I try to be as strategic. I don't know, is that how you do it? Do you kind of think about it that way?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I I start with I start with the aerobic stuff first. Um I mean, I do have I do have some athletes that are just single sport. Um, and so it sometimes feel like they're a little bit easier uh to build the training plans for because there's there's not so many moving parts. Um but triathlon can be really, really there has to be a lot of thought that goes into uh how we create that and what what we pair together and what we sequence uh behind each other. So it it's a little bit more time consuming, uh a little bit more thought-provoking, and you know, you have to be purposeful when you kind of go through those that plan creation. But one of the things that I've been toying with the idea of is if I have an athlete who really can't stack on the volume of their particular sport. So let's let's just use me for an example. Um, I cannot really carry on a whole lot of run volume because my body just breaks down and I just I cannot seem to absorb it. So one of the things that I'm toying with is the idea is uh if since I can't carry a whole lot of run fatigue, if I can increase the fatigue in the weight room, it might I'm I'm kind of curious on how the body responds to that as I go into the runs really fatigued from the strength training, and whether that's really going to prepare me for race day in order to manage that fatigue during the race. Because I don't think that the body really understands and really differentiates fatigue, just like it doesn't differentiate stress. You know, all it knows is that it's under stress. Fatigue just knows that the body is tired. It doesn't, I don't, I don't, I'm not quite sure if it knows the source of why it's tired. Right. So if I really go in and do a hard leg session on one day, and then knowing that DOMS takes a while for it to kind of show up, and it really kind of shows up not the day after, but that second day, if I kind of go in with maybe a tempo workout on that second day, I'm going in fatigued uh on whether that's helpful for me. But then it kind of starts to make me question it's like, okay, well, if I'm really going into it fatigued from the weight room, what does that do for my ability to hold good form? Am I really kind of exposing risk uh in that way? So again, I think this is a I think this is a good illustration on the stuff that we have to consider and keep in mind. It's like, okay, well, I'm fatigued from the weight room, but it does have a direct impact on my ability to hold form and and run well.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Um like I I said I've done that before where I'll do like heavy deadlift, like a deadlifts, back squats, go out and do a run. I'm not usually trying to do like a quality run. It's usually just more of like a aerobic, easy or moderate run. And so I think if because I think that's where you could get in trouble, maybe is if because it, you know, I think you do have to be a little bit more aware of form, maybe when you're doing that, just kind of like be self-aware of things that are starting to break down. And I think if you were to try to go into that and then do like speed work, I I would think maybe that would take an athlete who had a lot of comf like comfort, you know, I don't know, or just like a lot of experience with that, because that's I think where the form could really deteriorate. And, you know, when you are doing when you increase your speed, that's generally when the risk for injury goes up. So I think that you could maybe be on to something. I mean, I literally will do I will do the strength and then literally go right out, like maybe have a little bit of something to eat and then go right into a run. And it is fatiguing for sure. Like my legs are like kind of jelly, jello-ish. But um, I find that helpful because it is almost like you're kind of feeling like it would feel in the later parts of like a half marathon or a marathon when your legs are kind of feeling a little bit like, you know, uh wobbly or something. Um, but you just have to be careful. I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't do that all the time, but if you incorporated that like once a week, it could be a way to, you know, just kind of get used to that sort of fatigue. Yeah. I don't know. It might be something I would consider, but I think it would I don't know if I would do that for someone who is just starting into running or into strathon. I would maybe do that with more of an advanced runner who, you know, is more able to check in with their body and make sure they perform, you know, kind of being like, okay, am I am I starting to bend over a little bit weird or is I am I limping? You know, kind of those things we can check in. But I don't know. I think that I think this is where it's it's fun because you can kind of utilize different strategies. And that's where I think, again, something like Chat GPT maybe wouldn't have the sophistication to be able to even think about like put where to put the strength training um so that you're not fatigued, and or like maybe even think to to to do a session like that where you pre-fatigue, you know, and there's like definitely things like that that I think could be beneficial that, you know, maybe as coaches, those are things we're maybe thinking of more of how we're gonna adjust the stimuli, you know, tinker a little bit with when is it appropriate to do back to back hard days. You know, that's something we don't do very often, but there may be a a a point where you do for certain people like double lactate sort of day or like a double th double, I mean threshold day is what I meant. And or like back to back hard days in a very strategic, thought out manner, you know, to maybe help them um almost like in a special, I've heard it sort of stated as like a special block of training where maybe there's a particular week where you're doing something like that to help them be able to manage fatigue a little bit when it keeps the going, gets tough. So there's certain things like that that I mean, this is advanced stuff, but I think that's where um something like Chat GPT wouldn't get it right because it's just kind of giving like a blanket program, probably based off whatever they're it's finding on the internet. I don't know how it even generates.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah, you have to you have to be really purposeful on the prompts that you come up with for it. I've been toying with it. Yeah, I've been toying with it. Um, not from my athlete training plan, but from my own personal ones. Uh I've been kind of just playing with the prompts and say, you know, hey, I want you to create for me this eight-week training plan. These are and I fed it my injury history, I fed it, you know, how many runs I wanted to do, uh, my my weekly training volume. So it's I I sent in, I sent it in like a spreadsheet of like eight rows, and it just had the total minutes for each, for each week. And I said, this is my training volume for each week. This is my injury history, this is the stuff that I'm dealing with. Build me a training plan that that fits these parameters. But if you don't know what questions to ask, then that's where chat fe that's why that's where these AI-based platforms really fall apart. Um so you really have to have that understanding and that experience from the stuff that we talked about in the first two episodes on on what to consider and you know, outside before we even start talking about workouts, um, in order to really get the output that you want from these AI-based platforms. So I I think it it can be it can be smart enough, but it's only as smart as the information that you provided.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

That makes sense. I'm finding it. So you'd really have to be able to put in a lot of information to get it. Because if you're just like make me a training pen plan for a 5k in six weeks and it's just very general, it's probably just like pulling a general plan for you. It's not gonna even attempt to make it individuals. I think there's probably could be benefit to that. But again, I mean, I'm just even thinking like I don't know when you're putting that in there, how it's even thinking about volume, like week two, is you'd have to almost be so specific because you know, as a coach, we're like thinking of the volume, like my volume is going up. I have three weeks in a row. Last week it was like 65 miles. This week will be like 66 or 67, and then 70, and then it's a down week. You know, I have kind of like then a cutback week a little bit. It doesn't cut back maybe to like 50 miles, and then I kind of build it up again, and it and it just it just helps me. Um, I have I really you know, you're you're building a fatigue, and then it kind of is nice to have that little bit of a re reprieve so you can be, you know, okay, I can sort of see some of that fitness and then start working again, and it just gives the body a break. But I don't know, I'm trying to think. I guess I've never used ChatGPT, so I'd wonder if it would be able to even think of it like that, or if it's just kind of creating you a plan or something.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

I think I think some of the stuff that I've seen come from it is that they do have like some some reprieve. So I think there is some rollback um that it would throw in there, but uh I I don't know whether it's very consistent or not, but it's very important about it or how it's the main reason that I started playing with it is because I just wanted different workout ideas. Because I mean there comes a point where us as where we as coaches we keep recycling the same workouts over and over and over again, and which is not there's nothing wrong with that because uh that's a great way to do it because then you have you have a time series of the same workouts so you can measure progress. If you keep always doing new workouts, it's hard to kind of build a gauge as to where you are in your fitness adaptation if you keep changing things and there's no real true like benchmark to see you know how you've progressed. And so, but there came there comes a time where I just want some new ideas, right? You know, it's some some stuff that's just getting stale. It's like, you know, I want to see some different run workouts, some different bike workouts that it that it spits out, and I was like, oh, I I never would have come up with that workout. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna put that in my plan. Let's just execute it and see how it feels, uh, whether I like it, whether you know, if if I'm getting the results that I that I think that I want out of it, and whether I know that any of my athletes would benefit from it, then I add it to the library of stuff that I can pull from. But um, I was just doing it just to broaden my horizons and see and see what else we can get.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Um, sometimes I guess I'll I will I have Googled like good, you know, good 5K workout, you know, like just for that reason. Like I want some ideas for like the 5K workouts because I was for a while really focused on 5K training. So I was like, yeah, let's I just wanted to see what was on there and what ideas. So I have kind of done, I haven't like had it create a training plan. It's more just like searching for ideas, and that's kind of why I like to every once in a while like purchase different training books. Like I I think I mentioned in one of my um furrow to grandma's episodes, the marathon excellence for everyone was one that I had recently got. And he has a lot of different workouts in there for the marathon, and he he sets it based off of different um volume goals. So there's like different training plans in there for different volume goals, and I'm not following the training plan. I mean, I'm doing a lot of my own stuff that I need, but I I I took some ideas from the workouts in there because I liked the philosophy. I liked some of the things that he was he had obviously put a lot of work into that book. So um I was like, okay, I'm gonna pull from this a little bit, try some different workouts that I haven't tried or reincorporate workouts that um I've maybe done before, but he had had in there. And I'm like, oh, that's I remembered like that's a great workout. I'm gonna do that one. Yeah, anyway, that's I think that yeah, there's different ways the ways to get workout ideas. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

The one thing that I will not do is I won't allow ChatGPT to tell me the sequencing of the workout. Right. And so that's that's why I wanted to bring this piece in. And when we start talking about AI-based platforms, I think it's a good valid source to find new ideas and new workout structures. But n there's more to it. I think that there's more from the coaching perspective, it's like, okay, now that I've got these different ideas and maybe workouts that I never really thought about, I'm still going to rely on my experience, my wisdom, and my training to know how to know how to put these together. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

For where the person's at and their training and and where um what they're training for. Like I was looking specifically for 5K training uh workouts, but like I I might have done that kind of in the very initial phase, maybe back in early March or late February when I was still just sort of working on some speed before I got into my marathon training. But now things are progressing where I'm not doing as much of that like 5K that sort of higher end speed. So I won't, I wouldn't say like, oh, I'm gonna do a 5K, you know, workout two weeks out from my marathon. So that's like, you know, I think knowing the workouts that are appropriate for the time, you know, for for where the athlete is in their training and what they're training for is also important. So kind of thinking about those workouts are gonna help them get to their goal. Um, because there are so many workouts you can do, but knowing like the what that workout like is supposed to be doing like from a physiological standpoint, and then no maybe you do have an athlete that needs to work on speed. And so, but maybe they're maybe they're also not needing to work on speed, they need to work on like lactate threshold, or maybe they would benefit from endurance, they just really lack in like endurance, and you need to just put in more of those like longer, grindier sessions, you know. So it's um kind of knowing the person. And I think that's where also I kind of wonder where ChatGPT or something, or even yeah, like Rana or some of those programs that are more like based off of I think AI. Like maybe if you put in there my weakness is speed, or I, you know, would they be able to kind of even tailor the actual workouts to be able to work on your weaknesses or what you really need to be working on? And I think as a coach, that's something that you get from the athletes as as you are working with them and or asking them those questions when you first meet is oh, it sounds like you really have great endurance, but I think you would really benefit from working on more speed and kind of getting some of that higher end speed, then you'll be able to get faster, you know, at that half marathon eventually. But we want to work on this for a little while.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

I've fed it what I'm what I want to work on. So I had it create a cycling training plan. So I said, uh, like the first one that I did, I said, I want you to build a plan that will uh focus on speed. And so it was really kind of like a lot of threshold stuff, a lot of high cadence driven work. Uh and then the next block, I said, Well, now I want to work on muscular endurance, and so it it changed the shift.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

But you one of the things that I'd like to know that that's what you want to work on, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yes, exactly. And the one thing that I wanted to bring up is that there's more than one way to uh focus on these things that we want to improve on. So I can almost guarantee that an athlete would go out to ChatGPT and say, I want to work on speed. And I can almost say that fairly certain that they're going to have, you know, track Tuesday kind of workouts in there where they're doing you know intervals. But let's say that you're you're in your upper 50s, and you know, the question is is like, okay, is that a reasonable workout to give you? Because there's a cost to that workout and your ability to recover from that workout, or if you even have the foundations that are necessary in order to execute that workout properly. There's more than one way to build speed, and it's doesn't have to always come from track sessions.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

And I was having this conversation with another athlete, and they said, you know, hey, I'm I'm working on getting faster, and so I'm doing these, you know, 400s and 200s, and I was just like, but why are why are you doing these? And they couldn't really say it's like, well, this is just what was in the training plan. So I was like, well, somebody at your age and your ability to recover and adapt, you'd almost be better off with doing fartlick style workouts with some strides at the end of your run to work on that that higher cadence, that turnover rate of your feet. A lot easier to recover from. You now don't have to take several days off. You have now minimized your risk because of the run form that you're going to execute on that track is going to be very different than the run form that you're going to hold during your race, and whether you have the foundation to hold that uh even during the track workout. And what's what's going to be the fatigue level and what's the risk, uh, the risk portfolio associated with that workout? Is it appropriate for you? Uh it may not be, but there's another way for us to approach it that would offset some of that risk, and you still get the same benefits. Uh, it may not be, you know, one-to-one in terms of like your adaptation, because you know, just doing strides is not going to be a perfect substitute for doing, you know, interval-based workouts, but it is appropriate for particular athletes with a particular um scenario that they're under and different body types and different different abilities and where they are in their journey.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Well, I mean, I think the like the the like you mentioned, the fart lick style workouts, literally like a fart lick, like it's like from this pole to that pole. I'm gonna try to, you know, bring the speed up a little bit. And then I'm like So um, but maybe you're not like you know, and I also think when you're doing the track workouts, I don't necessarily have a problem with someone doing track workouts. I just think they need to have it's not like maybe they don't need to go like all out for everything.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Which is what they do.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Well that yeah, that's the the problem is like this the pacing needs to be a discussion. Like you don't need to to do it like you're doing an all-out 200 and trying to do that as fast as possible. That's not the goal, because yeah, that's gonna fatigue you real fast, and and that's what maybe will lead to injury. It's like, okay, yeah, you can go out and do 10 or whatever, maybe six to ten four hundreds, but let's let's talk about what your goal for those four hundreds would be. Like we want it to be speedy, they're not supposed to be all out, you know, and I think that's where people kind of get into trouble. And I mean, is a race going to be on a track? I love doing track sessions, but I've kind of moved away from doing a lot of track work recently because, first of all, I just don't have access to a track as easily as I used to. Um, and my my baby my marathon isn't even on a track. I'm not doing any track races right now. So um a lot of my workouts are just like on the bike path or like a hilly terrain. And yes, that slows down my pace a little bit, but it's more like realistic to what I'm gonna be doing. It's not um on a track. So I, you know, I just think also like it necessary. I think people think they've got to do track Tuesday. The track itself, I think it's hard not to try to go all out. I think pacing can be an issue and also you're going around that curve. And I think, you know, I think there's like an injury, you know, from having to go around the curve and if that you're always going the same direction, I think there is a risk there too. So just kind of also I think you don't have to do track workouts, you know, unless you absolutely love them and just love being on the track all the time and can easily get to a track. So yeah, I agree. I absolutely agree with you. Uh it it's there's other ways you can do it and maybe safer ways and a little bit more fun, you know, to be out on the on a road or something doing it where you're seeing other things and you're not just going around in circles could be a little bit more interesting anyway, you know?

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Yeah, so I I think that this this discussion that we're having is illustrating the the one foundation concept that I really wanted to make sure that we that we bring out is that when when you're looking at your week, you have to think in terms of what are the costs associated with this particular workout. Look at just a single workout and what is that going to cost me and what am I going to get a return as off of a return from that workout? Because you you can't look at workouts in a siloed like blinders on uh viewpoint. You have to look at it in terms of big picture because unless you're only going to do that one workout and you don't have and you're not going to do any other workouts uh on the days to come, then yeah, maybe you can look at it in terms of I'm just look focusing on this one workout. But we know that consistency is what builds adaptation and performance over time. So we have to think about in terms of what am I doing today, what did I do yesterday, and what am I doing tomorrow? That's that's how you look at your weekly distribution of training volume because fatigue accumulates over the week. It's it's a cumulative process, which is why we put in things like uh taper taper periods before a race. We put in things like rollback weeks. It's that management of fatigue because it accumulates. What I find is that many athletes will come to me and said, I've been running or I've been training for this long, and I'm getting slower, and I'm getting slower, and my legs feel heavy. And really, what this is what what is going on is that they're not losing fitness, they're just not managing their fatigue.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Yeah, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

So fatigue is fatigue is not a bad thing. It's what you want, it's what we're striving for because fatigue is what brings about adaptation. And we start to see our fitness gains when we shed the fatigue. So fatigue masks fitness. So we shed the fatigue in order to get a true representation of what our fitness is at that particular time. Where athletes start to fall apart is when they don't manage that fatigue. So it's the the unmanaged fatigue is what leads to this breakdown. And then they start to say, Well, I'm I'm now losing fitness, I'm getting slower, I don't understand this. And their first thought is, Oh, I need to do more. I need to do more because I'm I'm not I'm not making progress. So now I need to do more track works, I need to do more speed works, I need to put in more sessions, and all that does is it just snowballs and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and then they either get burned out or they get hurt.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Right. And I think along with that, um, kind of one major thing that I see with people is taking your recovery and your easy days easy. Like it seems like a simple thing, but it's not. People do not do not do this, and that's what if they have a training plan that's incorporating hard workouts and recovery days, like what's the point of running hard on your recovery day if that means you're going into your next workout feeling fatigued, and then you're not gonna that's what's happening most of the time. Sometimes it's just that they're doing too many hard workouts back to back. But part of it is that they have a plan that has recovery days and easy days set in there. Um, you know, easy running days, or what I when I say recovery, it could be like a day off, or it could just be like a literal like recovery run or recovery bike or what recovery swim or whatever that recovery day entails. But they're they are too worried about, you know, how their data's gonna look on Strava. Or, you know, that's probably the biggest problem I'm seeing now is nobody wants to look slow on Strava. So they're they're trying to be like a hero every day and they're out there trying to hit a certain pace. And I can't say like I feel like I've been guilty of that in the past. That's probably what got me into trouble for the California International Marathon years ago when I did that. Um, just not taking my easy days seriously and trying to be a hero every day. I'm out there. And at the time I didn't have Strava, so I don't even know. I don't think so. I just think I just wanted to, I just thought I was better or that I I didn't need recovery days. And that was like a my biggest regret, my biggest mistake that I've made is, and that could stem from college days when it seemed like there was like the mentality was just run and until you're injured, or like whoever's left standing at the end of the season gets to go on to you know, nationals or whatever. That's just my experience with that, you know, coach in in college. So I had this mentality still stuck with me that you know, easy days are for people who who you know can't, I don't know, who aren't strong enough, the weak, you know. And so don't don't fall into that trap. That's what that's what's happening. You just accumulate fatigue day to day. You're never recovering adequately, then you when you go into those quality sessions, you're just um unable to complete the session and you're getting slower and slower. You know, you need to pay pay attention to that. And if that means you're, you know, for me, some days when I'm on a recovery run after like a really hard workout, I'm just kind of going along real slow and easy, and I'm literally just taking it nice and easy and it's comfortable and my heart rate's, you know, relatively low, and I'm just basically moving. You know, it's not moving fast, and that's perfectly that's exactly where I want to be. I don't care what it looks like on Strava because when I do my workouts, if I've done that correctly, they are gonna be quality and I'm gonna feel good. I mean, I'm not always gonna feel great because I'm marathon training, but I'm at least gonna be able to hit the session most of the time and feel pretty good about it and be able to hit my paces. So I think that's probably the biggest mistake I see is just either stacking on too many hard training days, either back to back, or trying to fit like three hard days or four hard days, or three hard days in the long run in, or some trying to get more in there, thinking more is better, or just not um taking the easy days and the recovery days seriously. So that's my two cents on that piece.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Uh yeah, I agree with you 100%. And that's I think that's where the popularity of training methodologies like the 8020 method, where they really kind of like stepped in to try and introduce this concept of, you know, hey, this is not a a warrior mentality, you know, you're not going to go out and throw down, you know, 100% effort every single time. And I I will tell you that that I've fallen victim to this kind of mindset as well, where I know that I've put in just like if I say it's a zone two run and I put it in my training plan, and if I'm executing that workout at a pace that is slower where I think that my zone two should be, then I start uh my mind starts to snowball a little bit. And I'm like, oh man, this is I'm not running as fast as I usually am. Uh, and the effort level, am I losing fitness? Am I, you know, am I stacking on too much fatigue? And then my initial thought is, well, I need to go faster. And so I pick up the intensity and then I sabotage I sabotage my easy days that way. In this training block that I'm going through now, I'm being very purposeful with it. And even though I know like what my zone two range is, uh, for what I'm now calling my easy days, I'm trying to learn to be comfortable going at the low end of that zone two and being okay with being in zone one. There's nothing wrong with zone one, it's not a regression. And I'm telling you this because I'm having to learn this myself, you know. So I'm preaching to the choir here as well. So this is this is a method, this is something that I'm having to learn even after being in the sport for this long and you know, having all the certifications and everything else. So I still get it wrong. And so I'm trying to tell myself, look, it's okay to be in zone one, and it's okay to be at the very low end of zone two. If I say I have a zone two run, I don't have to automatically go to the max of that zone two, I don't have to aim for the mid-range of zone two just so that I feel like I'm not regressing or that I'm at least maintaining and making progress. I'm not regressing, you know, so it's something that I think a lot of people struggle with, and I'm I'm owning, I'm owning the struggle as well. Now, the reason that I want to bring this up is that this the methods like 8020, I think are they're popular methods, but I don't want people to think that it's like a law, you know, it's not like the law of gravity, you know, where we have to like 80% must represent our zone two training in order to make progress. It's it's a method, and I don't want to call it a sales pitch because there's a little bit of science behind it, but if you go back and you read like how this method was developed in the first place, uh I think it would give you a little bit more insight. But I I can say that I don't follow an 80-20 method, and a lot of my athletes don't follow 80-20 methods. Do we have easy days in there? Absolutely. Do we have hard days in there? Yeah. Do we have moderate, like tempo stuff? Uh yes. There is an appropriateness for all these zones. If you come back and you say, well, you know, you're in the gray zone, so we need to stay out of zone three. Well, the reason that they call it this is because people were staying in this zone for every single run. So they were always accumulated, they were not managing their fatigue. And so when they were asked to go into zone four and do some threshold stuff, they couldn't because they had so much they had too much fatigue that was stacked on because they were going, they were going too hard too often. And so this fear of this gray zone or this zone three is ridiculous because there is aerobic adaptation that takes place in zone three. It's called the tempo zone for a reason. And runners have tempo workouts in there. Cyclists, we have tempo workouts, we swim at tempo efforts. There is adaptation that we want from that zone. Do we want every single workout to be there because you feel like you have to be there so that you don't feel like you're regressing? That's the issue that the 8020 tried to resolve. It was forcing them to go a little bit easier so that they were on both sides of the extremes and the spectrum rather than kind of staying in the middle and sabotaging it all.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Yeah, I think you're right. You have to listen to your body too. Like if you're like taking it easy and then you're like, oh, this is too easy. I shouldn't be going so slow, and you're trying to push yourself and you're feeling like that's hard. You know, that's that's how it usually feels for me. If I'm on a recut, like an easy day after hard workout and I'm trying to pick up the pace, it's I'm struggling a little bit, you know, like listen to your body. If you if you're doing it right, I mean you shouldn't be totally, totally wiped out the next day and unable to move. But if you're doing your more challenging days correctly, you should feel pretty tired the next day. It it it maybe won't feel actually super easy generally when you start out. You know, you'll probably have a you know a little bit of soreness. You're you even going into zone two might be a little bit of a struggle. You know, listen to your body. That's you that you know, that means it's perfectly okay to just kind of go real slow and easy. You're still moving. In fact, getting that blood flow and getting your heart rate up just a little bit will help aid your recovery. I learned a very hard lesson with trying always being in the gray zone, always going hard and hardly ever taking it easy. I mean, I've I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure it triggered my Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune disease. Like you push your body too hard and you never like recover. First of all, your brace is gonna go terribly. I'm just gonna promise you that. Yeah. Um, like it did with me. It was one of my worst marathon. And secondly, it could put you in a place I'm very lucky that I was able to come back from that and able to continue training. But now I have to be very careful. So it's definitely been a learning lesson. But you don't want to push your body to a point that it you you cause some sort of outcome that's not so great because you've had all these stressors and you're not listening. The like you said, the 80-20, that's I think, yeah, I don't always agree that that's exactly what someone's running should look like, but I think it's helped to help people understand that they need to to be a little more in that zone too, and they need to take it easy more. So um the other thing I wanted to mention too, just kind of thinking about this whole concept of a week, is that your training plan doesn't have to be exactly like the cycle doesn't have to be seven days. You know, it could be like you have an eight or 10 day cycle. I mean, like, because maybe as a master's athlete, so I think I'm thinking of like, you know, I have a friend I run with who's like 63 and he just can't do the same amount of volume, and it takes him more time to recover in between his workouts. So he's still trying, he has these ambitious goals, but it's like somebody like that may benefit from having a couple recovery days in between. So maybe having you know a plan that is like eight days. I know that makes it hard because you know, not all of us can do our long run on a Tuesday or whatever, but that might be something to consider too is it doesn't always have to be seven days, you know, you can have you give yourself maybe a little more time to train for that marathon and and and have your your weekly weekly cycle be more like an eight-day cycle instead of exactly seven days and then allowing a little bit more recovery in between yeah I would I would if I was gonna do that I would maybe like have somebody do like 20 week you know it wouldn't work as well for like 12 weeks out from a marathon so giving yourself a little bit more leeway but that's also possible you don't have to do um exactly seven days so just something I also want to point out especially works well I think I think more for like masters runners who just unfortunately as we need age we do need a little bit more recovery. I don't have a lot of masters runners I've worked with and at this point I'm still doing okay with my seven day training cycle so I haven't had to to do something like this but I'm curious if you've ever implemented anything like that Justin where you've kind of I I know that I've talked with with older athletes about that.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Um I've personally never worked with an athlete and we've we've never like implemented this but I have talked with several older athletes that were that would come to me and it's like you know I'm really kind of struggling recovering from sessions and I don't know how to adapt. And so I would always bring up this idea it's like okay well who says that you have to have a seven day plan it doesn't have to go from Monday to Sunday. So I I do sell those sell them on this idea it's like do a 10 day a 10 day cycle where you're doing your long run or your long your long sessions whether whatever your sport is that set that long session is every 10 days rather than every seven days. And it does allow especially for triathletes because we have to we're carrying so much volume especially long course athletes that it's really hard to get the number of sessions that we want or that we feel like we need in the span of seven days because we have three sports that we're trying to to master. Now we're talking about okay now I have to throw in uh strength training. So now there's four there's four disciplines that we're trying to incorporate into a training plan and that's in seven days and we all uh are not professionals so we do have other demands of on our time. So unless you have the ability to do like three training sessions a day I don't I don't come across many athletes that that have that freedom to to be able to do that. And so building that 10 day plan allows us to have these extra sessions and spread them out over a longer period of time to allow for a little bit more uh recovery. I have thought about doing it in my own training plan actually because you know the way that my body responds to running volume uh it really I have a hard time recovering from it. So I've thought about maybe I should toy around with the idea of doing a 10 day training plan just for my run. Still stick with seven days seven day plan for my swim and my bike but spread my run volume over 10 days rather than seven days and kind of see what happens. But it would be a total experiment and I'm kind of a mad scientist when it comes to my training plan before I implement it into somebody else's how I feel about it.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Maybe I'd want to try it on myself doing that.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

I want to know I want to know the nuances before I try and sell it to somebody is like hey this works.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Yeah I would I think my biggest heart the hardest thing for me would be the long run falling in weird days because um I think for most people who work you know like a job like no one's gonna get up at three to do their three hour 20 miler on a Tuesday, you know, so you'd have to have some flexibility in your schedule to really make that work. I mean I could maybe do it but um in general like I have someone that runs with me on Sundays. So having like a training partner to run with me is that's a big thing is having people to run with sometimes and that might be something too that like I have an athlete who there's like a Tuesday night workout thing they do in Fort Collins and she likes to go to those. So I you know if I check out the workout and make make sure it's appropriate but if it's like yeah well you'll need to add some things on or I want you to do this but she'll do that. And that's because I I know that sometimes we run a little bit faster around other people it's nice to have that social piece. So that's another thing ChatGPT wouldn't be able to you know like if there's a specific social run or something that someone wants to do. And I think that's common for people to have their long run be with like other people. So it that would make it hard to maybe implement that. But if you had the flexibility to do that personally the way I manage it is I will do like last week was my long run and then I'll this week it isn't as long and then I do a long like a 20 mile or I could have those alternate weeks where it's really long and then it cut but it cuts back a little bit um you know I had to then I would maybe consider that. But for now, yeah I I mean maybe someday I will try that as I get a little older. It's a little easier if your long run's only 10 miles um versus 20, you know so it could work maybe well for a triathlete who's I don't know, I mean maybe not an Iron Man, but somebody just trying to, you know, maybe their longest run is like eight or 10 that could be a good way to do it. Yeah I I think it's it's definitely something I would be worth if I had an athlete that I thought needed a little more recovery be definitely something I would explore um maybe kind of implement um as long as it kind of worked for their schedule. The other thing I was thinking of I mean I was kind of thinking in terms of running like something I'm doing right now is implementing cross-training days. I mean pretty much for triathlon there's like always you have the three sports so you're not gonna add another like elliptical I mean unless you're like you know injured from running and maybe you're doing some elliptical type of work to like be able to have that similar stimulus most triathles are not adding in more so this is kind of more specific to running but I know some people might be like when do we add the cross training like if I'm gonna do um an elliptical workout like when would I do that? And I don't know I I'll tell you what I think and then I want to hear what you have to say. But for me, because that's a lot less um pounding you know you or you're on the elliptical machine it's a lot easier on your body I I usually don't do them on my hard days in addition to but I usually do um I've been trying to implement like a couple elliptical sessions a week of 20 to 30 minutes so nothing like profound but it's just a little bit of extra volume. I try to keep my heart rate in you know high zone two maybe low like zone three so it's not easy. But I found that I can add on that stimulus um after like maybe an easier run. And because it's not so hard on my body and my muscles, I can actually do it a little bit harder. I'm not doing like really hard zone four or anything, but I'm just getting my heart rate up a little bit. I've actually found that that hasn't really detracted much from my, you know, my I maybe adds a little bit of fatigue because it's still an exercise that I'm doing. I'm still adding on but by doing it on my easier days, um maybe not the day right before a hard workout I've been trying to kind of be strategic about how I add that in I've actually finding that so far it's been um manageable um but I'm just curious if you have a run if you have a runner that's like I want to add some elliptical just to get extra volume without you know with so I don't add to the injury risk by increasing run volume what would you what would you do for that person in terms of the cross training piece? Whether it's elliptical or swimming or I don't know anything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

I I have one athlete who is a a single sport athlete uh so she's a runner. Um I've I've been trying to get her to to do the elliptical um she she lives in an area where she's she's got like a a a neighborhood gym but the elliptical's been broken for what seems to be forever now. And so they they fail to fix the elliptical but it's it's the one thing that I want I've been wanting to put into her plan because uh when I s try when we try to start stacking on volume she's got she's got some uh some leg issues that we with that we have to continue to manage and you know it it's a great alternative and it's something that I personally have in my own plan. So uh I'll speak in terms of how I implement it in mine since I really don't have uh an athlete that I'm actively using that method with um so I do put them on days where I have short uh short runs and the reason that I do that is because I spend the effort to go to the gym um because I I don't I don't typically run outside a whole lot because of the demands that it the stress that it does put on my body so I do enjoy the treadmill um I'm very purposeful with the treadmill and I know how to use it I'm just not going getting on there and just setting it and forgetting it. So I do I do that and because some of my runs tend to be a little bit short and I want to make the the effort to get to the gym worth it then if I have a 20 minute run then I'll go straight from the treadmill onto the elliptical and do 40 minutes on the elliptical so that way I get a full 60 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

I do it right back to back. At the gym.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

Yeah so I will do that. I am purposeful with the elliptical workout so it's not just I don't just get on there and you know you know just pedal effectively so mine minor structured workouts to where I'm changing the stride uh of the workout so I'll do them in intervals so it's like either five minutes and I'll do a forward stride and then five minutes I reverse the stride and go backwards I find that it just engages different muscles. So it it really starts to put more emphasis on on quads and glutes and then when you change that stroke it brings in the hamstrings and glutes and whether the elevation on the on the elliptical if you have one of those that changes then that will change muscle engagement as well. But I I do I like that because A it's entertaining you know because I can you know it's like oh well I only have five minutes to do this and then I change focus and I'm doing something else uh and so it it keeps me a little bit more entertained and B I get the better the better muscular engagement and it's more well rounded um but it does uh limit the impact so you have what you have metabolic stress right which is like your aerobic the aerobic stress that you put onto your body the body doesn't differentiate between like stress stress sources but there are different types of stress that will generate a different kind of response and so you know you have the mechanical stress which is what we experience when we're running and cycling and all that kind of stuff it's it's the demands on that particular muscle whether it's an impact based uh sport or non-impact based sport those those are still mechanical stress and then you have the metabolic stress is you know the aerobic the aerobic stress that you're putting on so it's the stress on your heart and your lungs you know that that type of of stress and so managing all of those uh in order to keep us moving forward does take some some focus and some purposeful intent behind it. And so it using these cross-training sessions is a great way to relieve some of the mechanical stress while still allowing the body to take on more metabolic stress. And so that's the way that I view it um they they are useful tools I don't have just days where I'm on the elliptical it's usually as as a supplement to whatever my primary purpose is for that day. And that's especially true if I'm actively training for something. Now if this is like the off season and you know I may throw on an elliptical session during the off season have it follow a weight session. And so I'll go in and I'll do a strength session and then I'll come out and jump on the elliptical for you know 30 to 40 minutes just to get my heart rate up a little bit because your heart rate doesn't really rise during during strength training as much as it does during an aerobic session. So it's just a different kind of stress that I want to introduce um and it's and it's entertaining and it's it doesn't really take away from my focus because I don't really have a whole lot of focus during the offseason unless I'm like building strength or whatever. And so it's just a nice change of pace to where I'm not always running.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

I'm not always like in the winter or something like that. But I yeah I think for me it is it's just supplementary. For me it's just a it's just um a way to add some volume without um because I found in my last marathon training cycle that once I kind of got to a certain volume I was starting it was it was getting harder to add more volume of just running like the mechanical stress was getting too much. I'm like okay what happens if I sort of add in you know some of the metabolic piece or the aerobic side and without all that mechanical stress on the body. So so far it's going well. But yeah I I I do think that's always it's always like adding you know you have the core plan and then kind of how you're adding in um can always be kind of where people tend to have questions or run into trouble. But um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

So let's talk let's talk about like the sequencing of of our workouts. And so this is kind of like the meat and potatoes of of this episode. You've already you you've mentioned before uh earlier in the episode where we talked about you'll lay the foundation uh for the plan and your foundation is if you're working with a runner, you lay the run workouts and then you add stuff to that whether those be strength sessions or or or whatever the cross training those are stuff that you're adding into it after you've already uh built the training plan the core focus of the plan. So let's take this another step forward and say okay now we're about to build the run plan for that week what do you focus on first second third how how do you build that run plan and I'll talk about how I build the triathlon plan.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

For the run plan, yeah like I said usually there is a day a specific day someone might do like a long run. So that's kind of the first thing I'm you know maybe putting in there and I might have like on their general like overview of their whole plan because I sometimes will put in almost like a backbone sort of situation where I'm thinking okay I'm trying to get them up to a certain like long run distance for their marathon. So I might actually put um almost like just an overview in the training peaks. It's just a backbone there's not any detail to it just kind of here's where I'd want these long runs to go and this kind of how I want them to progress. But anyways it might always be Sunday so then okay that you know that's generally going to be this day. Then Monday, you know, because of the stress of a long run, usually Monday will be a recovery day of some sort. So either it's a day completely off depending on the athlete or a very literally that's a recovery workout really easy not super long kind of shorter in duration and then I might not actually put anything else on that day. It's just going to be like an easy run or maybe a day off or maybe that would be a day for like an elliptical session all by itself or something. But um and then depending on the athlete if they need sometimes for my marathoners who are doing like a really long workout on Sunday like a long run or even a um like a 20 miler or even a long run incorporating actual like some speed or race pace stuff I might also have Tuesday be an easier day. Just might not be like a recovery day. I would call that more an easy day with strides easy day with hill sprints but that might be the day you know it would either be a workout if the long run wasn't super taxing or it will be another easy day but just longer with maybe some strides or hill sprints or some sort of piece in there that um isn't super taxing. They're just getting their legs turned over and then maybe they're so the the workout will either be Wednesday Tuesday or Wednesday. Sometimes you know there might be a double sometimes if I'm doing having them do like a double workout where they have to do two runs or something I might put that on the hard day too. So the hard day and then an easy run in the evening. So that then then that Thursday would be an you know an e maybe an easy run um or a recovery and then Friday usually would be some so it might depend on how recoverable somebody is but then Friday might be another workout of some sort and then Saturday would be like a recovery or easy and then Sunday would be their long run. So that's generally how I'm thinking about it. So I'd be putting their um strength would you know depending on how many days they have in between strength would be either like Wednesday along with the hard workout or um either Tuesday or Wednesday depending on when their hard workout would be the leg strength and then I might do like the arm strength on Thursday. If they have another like strength session like hard strength leg strength I might also do that another one on Friday with their other workout but that's generally how I mean there might be a few instances where I would maybe do strength on a like a Monday along with like a recovery day but it really depends on how long they went. Because I if I do a really long like 20 miler it's very hard for me to feel fantastic for strength session on Monday. But when I'm just training for like half marathon or doing shorter stuff I can most definitely you know I could maybe even do a strength session after a long run. But as soon as the long run gets longer than like 12 or 13 miles, it's not it's not a good idea, I think. I think it's too much mechanical load and too much stress on the body to do those long runs that are longer than that and strength train all in one day. So that's generally you know how I would progress the week. And again it depends like when I put those workouts in and how the workout is and what how many days after I want the recovery to be um you know the the Sunday long run might dictate that as well. So yeah it's pretty straightforward and then like the cross training might be like Monday Thursday.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:46

It'd be pretty simple for the run I think for the most part yeah well I I think for the for the triathlon I I do something that's pretty similar. I think uh I work my way down the intensity pole uh for it so what I typically will do is I'll start with wherever their long sessions are going to be so if I have a long bike long run and a long swim that that goes in first. And so I put those on whatever days that that I need them or the athlete needs them to go on because you know ultimately it's down to to their schedule on whether they can do that. Normally you know for me the best thing would be to have a long run on Saturday and a long ride on Sunday. So that way I'm ensuring that my long ride on Saturday doesn't affect my ability to have a quality long run with good form because I'm going into it fatigued from the long bike the day before but the way that my schedule is set up I don't have availability during the day to do a long ride on Sunday so it has to be on Saturday. And so my long runs uh when I have them in the plan they're on Sundays um most most athletes will tell you that that's that's the way that they like it because they feel like then they they have this mindset it's like okay well I want to learn what it's like to run with fatigue legs so I want to run on Sundays and I want to do my long ride on on Saturdays so that I'm going into the run tired which I I'm kind of I have mixed I have mixed feelings about it. Normally I'd say well why? Because what does it mean you don't need to know what it's going to be like to run on tired legs because as we progress through the training plan you're going to be tired. So you know a lot of your runs are going to feel like you're running on fatigued legs. So whether you ride you run on Sunday after you ride on Saturday so that you feel like you're you're getting some kind of special adaptation uh some neuromuscular adaptation because you know you're learning how to run on tired legs you're going to have you're going to learn how to run on tired legs eventually in the training plan with every single run that you do because you're going to be tired because we're accumulating fatigue that's that's the whole point of it. But because these long sessions do tend to be kind of demanding uh in terms of just duration themselves so I wanted to make sure that those are my quality sessions those go in first and then I overlay then I go into okay what's like their moderate their moderate runs their moderate rides moderate you know whatever kind of you know a moderate swim whether that's going to be some intensity inter intervals in the pool or some strength stuff in the pool uh those go in next and so I have to put them on those days that that I feel are are best uh normally I'll put hard stuff kind of like on a Wednesday or Thursday um those tend to be kind of like the little harder the higher intensity sessions because then I have Friday as a little bit of a recovery day before you load into long stuff for the weekend and you've now had a few days after the weekend and by the time Wednesday Wednesday and Thursday hits, you should be recovered from the long stuff that you did the previous weekend. So you can that's where you can throw in your intensity, is like right around Wednesday or Thursday. Mondays tend to be a little bit of an easier day. I will throw in some upper body strength training on a Wednesday. I mean on a on a Monday, just because the demands to the legs uh were too much over Saturday and Sunday. And so Monday, your but your upper body should be relatively fine, come relatively fine compared to your lower body. So I may throw in like an upper body, like a push-pull kind of method on Mondays, and or and then throw in if you ran on Sunday, I may not have you doing a run on Monday. I may have you doing upper body strength and then an easy spin on the bike in the evening. Um but it is common to have you know two workouts a day. You have a morning session and an evening session. I tend to want athletes to do the aerobic stuff in the morning and then do the strength stuff in the evening. I feel like that gives that's the best sequencing. Um but I I do not ever do upper body strength paired with a swim uh on the same day. I don't do that. Um I do not do uh lower body strength days on days where I have an uh a quality run or a quality bike session, which means it's gonna have some intensity in those in those sessions. If I do a leg day, it's going to be followed by like an easy, easy run, like zone one, zone two kind of stuff, or an easy like flush of the legs, uh spin on the bike trainer where you can control the intensity. Because I find that especially with an easy spin on the bike, it will flush those legs out. So whatever kind of stress that you induced in the morn, if you did like your legs in the morning, uh a morning leg session, then in the evening you kind of come in and flush, flush the stress out and kind of loosen those muscles up a little bit, and then you kind of go to bed and it helps it helps aid recovery while you sleep. That's just been what I found to be most beneficial.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

Um if you take it easy.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:12

And yeah, so what I will do is I will pair swims and runs together on this on the same day, uh, generally not in the same session. So we'll pick, you know, whether you want to run in the morning or swim in the morning. Choice is up to you. I typically like to to do my my swims in the morning just for motivation reasons, but we'll pair swims and swims and runs together, lower body strength training and swims together. Uh I will do I will have uh runs and bikes on the same day, just not in the same session, and they're never both quality. So if I say I'm going to do a like a tempo effort run uh in the morning, then I'll make the evening bike session a little bit on the easier side. You know, some maybe some some zone two intervals, uh, you know, do like nine by ones or something like that, where it's nine minutes of of steady, consistent pedaling, zone two power with a cadence between like 80 and 90 RPMs, and then a minute off, and then you roll right back into it. I find that that's kind of beneficial, but they're never both quality because it's just too much stress uh within the same 24 hours. So, really, when you're planning your week out, you want to think in terms of like 48 hour blocks. You know, what have I done in the span of 48 hours? Because if you go in and you do an evening session and you roll right around the next morning and do another session, which is common, you have to take into account that your body may not be recovered while you slept fully. So if you say, Well, if I did a leg session in the evening, maybe I want to do an easier aerobic session in the morning because maybe my legs might be a little bit on the sensitive side, uh, depending on how hard you went in the weight room. Those are those are the ways that I think of in terms of sequencing the workouts and how to stack them, stack them together. Um I'm trying to think on anything else that that I that I consider. I I think that that's that's kind of the ball part. I think that gives a rough idea. Again, everybody everybody is different.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:22

It's kind of just a general you know, we're just throwing out kind of general, generally how we think of it, but obviously it is gonna be sort of taking into account like injury risk and things like that when we're planning this out and you know, whether the person's just starting out or they're more advanced. And that those are all things obviously we're kind of considering. So it does get a little probably more nuanced than that for each individual person. Um, I think for triathlete, I think the risk with triathlon, because you have the three sports, is managing the fatigue. And you know, I think it becomes a little bit more tricky to do that because you have the three disciplines. So it does become almost like an art to try to try to get those all of the training in in such a way that they're improving in all three sports and not overdoing it and over-training, which is I think fairly common in triathlon, if I'm not mistaken. So I think you I think you reviewed that pretty well and how your thought process is.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:20

I will I will say, and I'll I'll probably say something that's going to to irritate some people, and so that's why I'm going to say it. And it's the role of the brick session. And it I don't know what it is about triathletes and their fascination with with brick training. Um, but uh there is a time and place for it within the training plan, and it's not something that always has to be there. Um does brick training build adaptation differently than if you just ran and biked? No, it doesn't. It's more neuromuscular than it is uh metabolic. Um training brick training does not build additional aerobic capacity. It's it's a neuromuscular thing that you're working on. So it's really a pacing thing that you're trying to understand and and have the brain engaging muscles in a different way quickly. Um that's that's the purpose of of the brick session. Does it make you fitter? Absolutely not. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Um, and so earlier on in the training plan, what I'll do is just for scheduling purposes, I'll have like for me personally, today I had a and it's Saturday, so I had a long bike today and I had a run on the schedule. And I do it because I I I have four runs during the week. And so this is this is a day that I have to I have to do a run in order to get my volume. But I didn't do a brick. So what I did was I ran first and then biked. So what it is is I'm trying to off I'm trying to manage the fatigue that I generate from doing a hard session like that, where you're doing two disciplines within a single session. So I want to ensure that I can run with good form. And so I do that first before I get fatigued from the bike. That is common for the fur like during the build phase of a training plan. Now, as we get closer to race day, I'll switch those. And that's when I'll start to throw in brick sessions. This when we start to get into the race-specific adaptations that we're trying to generate, is when I'll switch that and say, now I'm going to bike first and then I'm going to run. I'm going to practice those transitions and really kind of get this down. Yes, I still, I still practice this after being in the sport for you know over 10 years. I'm still trying to to to work on that. And it's something that we should all do. I do understand, you know, I get a better understanding on how long it takes for me to get my run legs under me after coming off of the bike. And that takes time, and which is why I'm not doing I'm not doing brick sessions only like you know, three weeks before race day. So if I have a uh a 16-week training plan, then I may start like around uh week like nine or 10. And that's when I'll make that switch and then start throwing in the brick sessions. That gives me a few solid, solid weeks with some high volume bikes and very short runs. These are not like I'm going in and I'm doing uh a four or a three-hour bike ride and then I'm gonna go run for an hour. That's that's not that's not the point of it. That stacks on way too much fatigue. Uh it defeats the purpose of the brick session, and they're harder to recover from because now you have to do your long run the next day.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:38

So you did have something where you talked about the roll of the brick workout, and I was trying to look back.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:44

But there was an earlier episode way too much. It's like single single digits, I think something. But I can't find it off the brick, I think. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:55

Maybe we can keep throw it in the notes or something, but it's in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:59

I guess the only thing that I do want to bring in, and this will just be really, really quick, is we we've talked about how to structure um the training part of it. What I do want to bring in is how to purposefully incorporate recovery within the training plan as well. So, you know, we do schedule workouts, and you know, your Mondays I'm doing this and Tuesday I'm doing that. But one of the things that I found to be really, really helpful is to schedule recovery sessions in there. And these are not like, you know, a recovery run. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is a purposeful recovery, self-care kind of session where it's like, okay, I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna do uh an infrared sauna for 20 minutes, or I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna do some cold therapy, I'm gonna or do some compression therapy in the in the Normotech system, or we're doing some stretching and rolling. What I do is I actually will schedule those as actual workouts within training peaks and create a little block. It's like 40 minutes of of this particular recovery. What I found is that when I didn't do that, I wasn't as disciplined uh of doing doing the small things that I needed to do in order to stay consistent. So if there's one thing that I can that I try and and preach to others, okay, we have to do the small things well. Because if we can't do the small things well, we can't, we're definitely not going to be able to do the big stuff. So the recovery, the purposeful, structured recovery that we have to do, that's the small stuff. And so throwing those in there and accounting for and making them making them work out so that you're accountable to do them. Now you can move those around. That's not like, oh, this is Wednesday, so I have to do, I have to roll and stretch on Wednesday. That's not the case. I don't I don't want people to think that, okay, you have to do that. But I want it in there so that you visually see it. And so then you're like, okay, I can't do this today, but I can do it tomorrow, and you can move it over. But I don't I don't want like all these recovery sessions to then all get moved to Sunday because now you you've missed it all week because you couldn't do them and now you're doing like six hours of of recovery stuff on Sundays. But yeah, I find that that that is a helpful tool if you find that you're struggling to do like some some rolling and just be purposeful with it, create a workout and have it in there and be accountable for it and set your watch and record it and so that it syncs up to training peaks or whatever platform you're using, and you see the little green symbol that's that you did it. It's very satisfying.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:29

Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:30

So let's let's wrap this thing up. So this has been uh episode 85 of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, where we've talked about structuring your week uh in terms of creating a training plan. Uh so let's roll out with some some housekeeping. Uh, we want to thank you guys. If you have enjoyed the content that we've been putting out lately and you find this stuff to be particularly helpful, I would ask that you please consider leaving a comment and a review on whatever platform that you're consuming uh your content from. If you know that there's somebody in your life who would maybe benefit from particular from a particular topic that we've talked about, send send them a link, share it with them, kind of introduce them to the podcast. Uh maybe it'll help answer some questions that they've got and uh we can grow this community out a little bit more because we do not monetize this podcast, so we do not have ads and sponsors. So the one thing that does help grow uh the the podcast is sharing content with those that you think it would help. Leaving comments and reviews will increase the exposure of the podcast. So yeah, if you're willing, we would really appreciate uh you doing that. It only takes just a couple minutes just to click on five stars and say great content. You know, if that's if that's the extent of your comment, that's perfect. It helps. Uh every little bit helps. So thank you so much for that. Also, we have the closed Facebook group called the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast Group. This is a source where we're throwing out some extra content. Uh, we want to grow this community uh as a way to interact with each other. Uh listeners can interact with us. We can get uh eventually get to the point where we're taking QA sessions uh or some some extra content uh to help round out the podcast. So if you would like to participate, just go out to uh go out to Facebook, search for the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast group. You'll just answer one simple question and it'll let you right on in. And uh we thank you for for joining and being a member of that society. So thank you so much and community. Uh we are active coaches, and so we are taking athletes onto our rosters. And so if you have found yourself in a situation where you would like to talk about coaching, uh, it could be where you just don't have the experience or understanding on how to sequence workouts, what kind of workouts should you be doing, what should you not be doing, uh, and you want to turn that over to somebody else, or if you're just super busy and you just don't want to mess with it, uh, we hope that you will consider us uh as some coaches that you want to talk to, because do your due diligence when it comes to searching for a coach, talk to several of them to try and find one that fits uh your personality, fits your lifestyle, you agree with their philosophy. That is really, really important. So we hope that you would consider us to be on your list. If you want to reach out to Coach Katie, you can go to Fuels at number two run.com. She does run training as well as dietetic training or planning for for all sports. I do single sport and multi-sport training plans and one-on-one coaching. So you can go to tabula rasseracing.com for me, Coach Justin. Uh I'd be more than happy to set up a conversation with you and see how we can help you progress forward in your journey. So again, thank you guys so much for joining us. This has been episode 85 of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. We hope that you've enjoyed this episode, and we'll see you all again next time. Thank you, guys. That wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience, humility, and resilience. Lessons that carry far beyond the workout. Progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts, it comes from consistency, discipline, and doing the work when it's not glamorous. Wherever you are on your endurance journey, keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day. If today's episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey. Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another. We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie. Until then, visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey.buzzsprout.com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. Have questions or comments about the podcast? Feel free to send us an email at the endurance athlete journey at gmail.com. For all things coaching, visit Coach Katie at fuel the number two run.com and Coach Justin at Taboularassa Racing.com. Again, thank you for listening to the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, and remember to find joy in the journey.