80/20 Endurance Blog
How Intermittent Fasting Can Make You Leaner, Less Fit, and Slower
Have you ever tried intermittent fasting, or considered trying it, as a way to improve your endurance performance? Then you’ll be interested in a new study that just came out of UC Davis. Led by nutritionist Ashley Tovar, it aimed to determine the effects of a 16/8 “time-restrictive feeding” (i.e., intermittent fasting) program on body […]
What If There Is No Finish Line?
How helpful are athletic coping skills really in helping us deal with life adversity? One year ago today—on October 6, 2020—I had a bad run. It was the type of run I would have really enjoyed had I been on my game: 6 x 1,000 meters at one-mile race pace on a minute’s rest. I […]
Relationship Counseling for Athletes and Their Devices
In any relationship, disagreements are bound to occur. These moments of friction are not limited to differences of opinion, such as whether dogs are better than cats or vice versa, but may also include discrepancies in how reality is perceived. Perhaps you and your spouse disagree on whether aliens walk among us in human disguise, […]
Training as Learning
I’ve been learning about learning lately. My teacher is Jake Tuber, who, when he’s not organizing and hosting Endeavorun athlete camps, is studying toward a doctoral degree in adult learning and leadership at Columbia University. At the recent Endeavorun camp in Boulder, I was impressed by the way Jake incorporated his knowledge of adult learning […]
What Does It Mean to Be an Injury-Prone Runner?
I’ve always considered myself an injury-prone runner. I used to half-jokingly say that I had suffered more running-related injuries than any runner my age in the history of running, and it wouldn’t shock me if this turned out to be true. Between the ages of 28 and 48 I picked up no fewer than four […]
A Fresh Look at Block Periodization
Many moons ago, I wrote a post for this blog that bore the title, “The Human Body Is Not a Smartphone.” In it I argued that endurance training methods cannot advance indefinitely in the way that technologies such as smartphones can. “Once the best ways to train and fuel the human body for distance racing […]
What Chronic Illness Has Taught Me About Weight Management
I don’t look sick. To the contrary, I look like I could run a marathon, or so I’m told. In fact, though, the last time I tried to run I couldn’t get out of bed the next day. This isn’t a figure of speech—I could not get out of bed the next day. And it […]
Please, Don’t Beat Yesterday
I ran 20 miles the day before my first marathon. At 17, I didn’t know any better. Whether by choice or chance I had no running mentor, no athletic background, and this was long before the internet. I reasoned (correctly) that the best method to prepare for a marathon was to work backwards from 26.2 […]
When the Question Is Cycling Cadence, the Answer Is Nobody Knows
Every once in a while an athlete asks me why cadence is never prescribed in the cycling workouts included in our 80/20 triathlon plans. I fear that I will soon hear this question more often than once in a while, as I’m currently building a full selection of 80/20 plans for various types of cycling […]
Screw Loose, Sh*t Together: A Theory of Athletic Greatness
I have a theory about athletic greatness, or more specifically, about what it takes to achieve greatness as an athlete. It’s quite simple. There are two mental traits that I see again and again in athletes of the highest caliber. One is a drive toward greatness that has the untamable ferocity of a full-blown disorder. […]