Endeavorun – 80/20 Endurance

At a recent Endeavorun retreat in San Diego, Jake Tuber and I made a list of key traits of effective coaches. This was not an arbitrary exercise. Jake and I are in the early stages of collaborating on a book about coaching, and we’re trying to nail down our shared beliefs and convictions about the craft. The effort spilled over from one day to the next, and it was on day two, in the middle of a conversation about empathy, that I blurted out, “Curiosity!”

The notion that curiosity is a key trait of effective coaches is hardly original. In his book Applying Educational Psychology in Coaching Athletes, Jeffrey Huber writes, “Great coaches are curious seekers of information and are resourceful at discovering answers to questions, finding solutions to problems, and creating novel responses to puzzling situations. . . Curiosity motivates coaches to ask the question Why? And look for ways to improve their coaching effectiveness.”

Curiosity is also infectious, according to executive coach Natalie Jobity, benefiting not only the curious coach but also the curious coach’s athletes. “With curiosity,” she explains in a post written for on the International Coaching Federation blog. “there is exploring, uncovering, exposing, digging, considering, or reflecting. These lead to shifted mindsets, creative perspectives, new understanding and learning, which is at the heart of effective coaching. . . With a culture of curiosity comes a culture of trust, openness, and collaboration. These are the foundations of creativity, and why many savvy leaders today try to adopt a coach approach in their conversations and interactions with their teams and colleagues.”

These statements make me feel good about myself because I am intellectually curious, and always have been. But the point of this article is not to convince you that I am a great coach because I’m curious. Instead I would like to show you the value of a curious mindset for athletes with a couple of recent personal examples.

The first involves Paula, a runner I coach. There are lots of fear-driven people in the world, and for a long time Paula was one of them, to the detriment of her training and racing. Fear of failure all but guarantees failure. Fear of uncertainty breeds uncertainty. And fear in general is just plain unpleasant, ruining the athletic experience. Unnecessarily, I might add, as there are plenty of examples of athletes who experience no more fear than is useful, and who benefit thereby.

I’m no psychologist, but I genuinely believe everything I wrote in the preceding paragraph, and as Paula’s coach I was willing to work as hard as I could for as long as necessary to help her overcome her fearfulness—and more importantly, so was she. Recently, that work has begun to pay off. When fear recedes, something has to take its place, and for Paula that something has been curiosity.

Paula had a rough 2022, delaying her preparations for an important half marathon this spring. Lately, her training has been going well, but she’s uncertain whether she has enough time to get as fit as she needs to be to perform as well as she wants to perform. In the past, this situation would have pressed all of Paula’s buttons, filling her with fear and apprehension. Now she’s simply curious, eager to discover how much progress she can make between now and race day. Whereas in the past Paula believed that she had no choice but to be afraid in such circumstances, she’s come to recognize that another way is possible, and although I share her uncertainty concerning what is possible in her upcoming half marathon, I am certain she will perform better and enjoy the journey more than she would have done had she not discovered the power of a curious mindset.

The reason I push athletes like Paula toward a curious mindset is that I myself have benefited greatly from having one. In the depths of my struggle with long covid, curiosity saved me from despair. One night early in the ordeal I sent my brother Josh a text message that read, “I feel so bad it’s interesting.” That about sums it up. I liken the experience to traveling to an exotic foreign country that you don’t like and will never willingly return to but that nevertheless holds your attention and that you probably won’t regret having gone to. Being fascinated by what was happening to my body didn’t make me feel any less miserable, but it alloyed my misery with a sustaining desire to keep going and see what happened next.

The same mindset is now helping me navigate my way through what I hesitate to call a comeback to running. Having more or less given up hope of ever returning to the sport when I couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs without resting halfway up, I feel immense gratitude for the little bit of every-other-day hobbling I’ve managed to survive thus far, yet I have no clue where the process will lead. If I lacked a curious mindset, such uncertainty might provoke anxiety, but I feel none—not because I don’t care where it leads but because my curiosity gives me a different perspective on the uncertain future, which, although it might not be good, is certain to be interesting.

I’ve always thought of curiosity as one of those things that you either have or don’t. It’s related to the Big Five personality trait of openness, after all, which like other personality traits is largely fixed after youth. But Paula is living proof that an athlete who struggles to access her curiosity for a time can change. In the aforementioned blog post, Natalie Jobity shares tips on nurturing curiosity in coaching clients that I plan to use with future Paula’s. If you could stand to be a bit more curious, check them out and apply them to yourself.

The first adult sports camp I participated in was a Multisport School of Champions event hosted in San Diego by Triathlete publisher John Duke and eight-time Ironman world champion Paula Newby-Fraser way back in 1996. Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to take part in many more triathlon and running camps, and I remember each experience both vividly and fondly.

I’m hardly unique in this respect. No one ever regrets attending an endurance training camp. There’s a dreamlike quality about these athletic idylls, all-too-brief escapes from everyday reality centered on a passion shared equally by all partakers. That’s why I decided to get involved in the camp-hosting business myself. Do you want your 2022 to include an experience you will treasure for the rest of your days? Click here to learn more about the three 80/20 Endurance/Endeavorun camps we’ve lined up for next year.

If you need more persuading, read on. What follows is a “lost chapter” of my book Running the Dream: One Summer Living, Training, and Racing with a Team of World-Class Runners Half My Age. It describes events in my life on August 19, 2017, two days earlier I’d strained a hip abductor tendon during a workout with the Northern Arizona Elite professional running team in Flagstaff, Arizona. In the wake of this calamity, team member Stephanie Bruce invited me to participate in the adult running camp that she and her husband, Ben, were hosting that weekend, as a way to take my mind off my injury. Enjoy!

Cast of Characters

Nataki = My wife

Coach Ben = NAZ Elite coach Ben Rosario

AJ = AJ Gregg, strength coach and PT for NAZ Elite

Wes Gregg = AJ’s brother and colleague

Kellyn = NAZ Elite member Kellyn Taylor

50 Days to Chicago

I went for another long walk with Nataki this morning, my injured groin grabbing warningly a few times as we went.

“The Chicago Marathon is fifty days away and I can’t even walk without pain,” I pouted.

Nataki laughed, which wasn’t the reaction I expected or wanted. But her attention was not on me but on our dog, Queenie, who’d lunged at a bird.

When we got back to the house I emailed Coach Ben to request that we meet as soon as possible after his return from Malaysia to discuss the way forward in my training. I killed the next hour like the injured fake pro runner I was, sandwiching a round of rehab exercises between contrast-therapy treatments, and then drove to Hypo2 for yet another appointment with AJ.

“How was dinner?” he asked as he led us into his office.

Nataki and I raved about the previous evening’s meal at the Cottage: artisan greens salad with beets and fennel root, cold smoked salmon tartine, venison for Nataki, and flank steak for me. AJ was very pleased.

“So, what’s the report?” he asked, abruptly shifting the topic of conversation to my groin.

I told him about my less-than-encouraging my walk, realizing as I spoke that I sounded like a teenager confessing to a joyride in daddy’s Lexus.

“Well, then, you’re not running tomorrow,” AJ said flatly.

Swallowing the urge to protest, I dutifully ran the cold laser on my reddened inner thigh for 10 minutes. When this was done, AJ put me back on the treatment table and repeated the same tests he’d used to diagnose the injury two days ago. I bent my left leg sharply and swung it out to the side like a dog watering a fire hydrant. AJ then applied gentle hand pressure to the knee, his eyebrows raised inquisitively. I shook my head, so he applied a little more pressure. I shook my head again and AJ pressed down even harder.

“Huh,” he said. “Your range of motion is back to 100 percent.”

I pounced.

“What harm can it do me to run for a few minutes tomorrow, really slow,

just to see how it feels?” I asked.

“None, as long as you stop right away if there’s pain above a three out of ten. You might even find that running loosens it up a bit. But to be straight with you, I’ll be happy if you’re running again in eight days.”

In the afternoon, I returned to Hypo2 with Nataki for a classroom session with attendees of Steph and Ben’s running camp. The topic du jour was mental toughness.

“What I love about running is that it’s the only part of life where you get to choose how much you suffer,” Steph told the gathering. “And the more you are willing to suffer, the greater the reward.”

Ben Bruce chimed in from the wings: “It’s kind of a messed-up sport.”

“It is messed up,” Steph agreed soberly. A camper named Amanda raised her hand and asked Steph what she tells herself during difficult moments in a race.

“Well, I’m a huge Rocky fan,” Steph confessed, lightly blushing. “I think maybe it’s because Sylvester Stallone reminds me of my father. Anyway, I usually think of lines from Rocky movies. For example, in Rocky IV there’s the part where Rocky draws blood from Ivan Drago and his trainer tells him, ‘See? He’s a man just like you!’”

At four o’clock, we shuffled over to the strength and conditioning room for a group strength workout led by Wes Gregg. Ben explained that the exercises Wes was about to teach us would all be bodyweight movements we could do at home without equipment, or using household items for resistance.

“At home, I use my kids for some of this stuff,” he said. “I just have to decide if I want to lift the three-year-old or the two-year-old.” Pausing momentarily, he grinned with a sudden thought. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I did like Hercules and the bull and kept using them as weights as they got older? Imagine when Hudson is 18 and I’m like, ‘Come here, son. Daddy’s going to pick you up,’ and he’s like, ‘This is kind of weird.’”

I laughed like a man desperate for a laugh, much louder than anyone else in the room.

In the evening we gathered again, this time at Kellyn’s house, which sits alone at the end of a dirt road. I found my fellow campers in the backyard eating pizza and drinking beer and wine. After sunset we drifted over to an area where camp chairs had been arranged around a bonfire. Steph invited everyone to write down their A, B, and C goals on a notecard and then share them with the group.

When my turn came, I told my fellow campers I was training for the Chicago Marathon and that my C goal was to run my fastest marathon since my fastest marathon nine years ago, my B goal was to beat that nine-year-old personal best, and my A goal was to do something that made other runners believe they could achieve their own A goals. Next up was Donna, a 42-year-old Californian who started running just two years ago and has already completed six marathons. “I just love running so much,” she told me at the welcome dinner two nights back, “and I feel pressure to get as fast as I can before I’m too old.”

“I want to move to Flagstaff,” she said now. Everyone laughed. “No, I’m serious!” she protested.

One of the last to speak was Mary, who’d come all the way from eastern Canada despite being injured like me and unable to run. The instant she opened her mouth, her eyes filled and a soblike sound escaped her.

“I just want to run,” she said, “to be healthy. I’ve lost my passion and I want it back.”

I waited for the group’s attention to move on, then rose and walked over to where Mary was seated, crouching before her.

“It sounds like you’re feeling pretty hopeless,” I said. “I’ve been there before.”

“Can we take a little walk?” Mary asked.

“Sure, of course,” I said.

Mary stood and led me into the darkness away from the fire. When she was satisfied we were fully out of earshot, she opened up.

“I just turned 50,” she said, emotion overtaking her a second time. “I love Spanish culture and dance. I speak the language. That was my passion for a long time—Spanish dancing. But then I got away from it. That was okay, though, because I still had running. I’ve run most of my life. I love it. I’ve been pretty successful at it.”

“It’s a part of your identity,” I threw in.

“Right. But now I don’t even have that. I’m stuck in an endless cycle. I get injured. The winters are pretty brutal where I live, and by the time spring comes I’m way behind in my fitness. I spend the whole summer just catching up. Then I get hurt again. I’m getting older. I don’t have kids. I work from home, making competitive dance costumes. When I can’t run, things get pretty dark. I almost didn’t even come here. I thought, ‘What’s the point?’”

“I get it,” I said. “I haven’t been able to run for three days and I’m going nuts. Earlier today I was driving through town and I saw people out running and I thought—”

“—you don’t know how lucky you are,” Mary finished.

“Exactly,” I said. You know, I’m always a little annoyed when people give me advice based on the idea that whatever has been true for their lives will inevitably be true for mine as well. But I think it can’t hurt for you to know that there have been times when I was certain—absolutely convinced—that I would never be able to run another competitive marathon, or even jog ten miles without pain. And now here I am at 46, running almost as well as I ever have—until Wednesday, at least,” I laughed. There’s hope for you.”

“I know,” Mary said. “Thanks.”

I asked her if I could give her a hug, if only for my sake, and she said I could.

“Are you glad you came, though?” I said as I held her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I am.”

We returned to the circle, where Steph had the campers write down their greatest fear, share it with the group if they were comfortable doing so, and toss into the bonfire.

***

Ready to experience some camp magic of your own? Click here.

There’s a lot going on at 80/20 Endurance—so much, in fact, that you might be having trouble keeping up with all of it. Never fear! Within eight minutes (unless you’re a slow reader), you will be fully caught up on the major happenings here. Ready . . . Go!

A New Book

Earlier this year, we created our own publishing imprint, 80/20 Publishing. Fast forward a few months, and our very first title is about to be released! Written by Matt Fitzgerald (that’s me!), the book is called On Pace: Discover How to Run Every Race at Your Real Limit. As the title suggests, it’s about pacing, the quintessential running skill, which is even more important than most runners realize, and which most runners need a lot of help with. Through his trademark mix of science and storytelling, Matt will convince you of the importance of pacing and guide you toward pacing mastery.

On Pace also includes complete training plans for the 5K, 10K, half marathon, and marathon distances that develop pacing skill while also getting you race-ready. Online versions of these plans are available for individual purchase.

A New Adaptive Training App

We’ve been teasing this one for a while, and at long last it’s here. Not to be confused with the book just described, PACE (which stands for Personal Adaptive Coaching Experience) is a smartphone app developed by TrainingPeaks that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized, adaptive training plans for runners. Among the five coaches that TrainingPeaks chose to launch with is our own Matt Fitzgerald. If you like the run plans Matt built for 80/20 Endurance, you will find the PACE training experience comfortably familiar, except with full customization and adaptation, so your plan evolves with your needs. Learn more here.

A New Director of Training

And then there were four. On November 1, Leyla Porteous joined 80/20 Endurance as our director of training. A native of Australia, Leyla now lives in North Carolina with her husband and 12-year-old son. Having swum competitively in her youth, she discovered triathlon in 2012. For the last several years, Leyla has coached fellow triathletes through Flow Multisport. As our director of training, Leyla will be involved in managing, improving, and expanding all of our training products and services. She’s only been on the job for two weeks, yet her impact has already been felt. As an 80/20 athlete, you will begin to benefit from Leyla’s addition to the team very soon.

New Swim Plans

We all know swimming is different from other endurance sports. Whereas cycling and running are all about fitness, swimming is mostly about technique. In recognition of this fact, we’ve partnered with swim coach Dan Daly to develop a set of technique-focused swim training plans to accelerate improvements in swim performance. Each plan will include dryland (strength training, mobility work) and pool workouts, and will build on the improvements you’ve made by completing earlier plans in the sequence. High-quality videos will guide you through every exercise and drill. Look for Dan’s plans to drop early in the New Year!

A New Charitable Foundation

In October, we launched a new charitable foundation, the 80/20 Endurance Foundation, whose flagship initiative, the Coaches of Color Initiative, aims to improve diversity in endurance sports by awarding apprenticeship grants to aspiring coaches of color. The first grant recipient will be announced on December 1^st, and the apprenticeship will last the entire 2022 calendar year. Throughout this period, the grant recipient will receive a monthly stipend of $1,000, as well as one-on-one mentoring from successful endurance coaches, free certification as an 80/20 Endurance coach, and hand-son experience coaching experience on the 80/20 Endurance platform.

Donations are always welcome. To make a contribution, apply for an apprenticeship grant, or just learn more about COCI, visit 8020foundation.org.

A New Online Learning Event

What are you planning to do on Saturday, January 15, 2020? Unless you already have that date blacked out for space tourism, we suggest you spend it with us at The Endurance Event, an incredible online learning experience for athletes, coaches, and other hungry minds. Hosted by 80/20 Endurance and Accel Events, The Endurance Event is sponsored by InsideTracker and TrainingPeaks and features a stellar lineup of speakers that includes two-time world champion triathlete Siri Lindley and renowned exercise physiologists Stephen Seiler and Samuele Marcora.

The Endurance Event is the perfect way to start the coming race season. Fill your brain with cutting-edge information on training, diet and nutrition, mental fitness, and tech, and come away fired up to make 2022 your best year yet! Tickets to the first part of the half-day event are free, and the cost of attending the full event is way less than that of a new pair of running shoes.

We’re proud to bring this unparalleled learning experience to the worldwide endurance community. Help us make it a success so we can do it again every year! For complete information about The Endurance Event and to register, click here.

New In-Person Training Camps

Would you like to meet and spend time with some of your fellow 80/20 Endurance athletes? Or would you rather travel to a stunning endurance destination and immerse yourself in a pro-style training experience? Or would you prefer to learn from some of the leading minds in endurance training, nutrition, and psychology, including Matt Fitzgerald and Dr. Cory Nyamora? With 80/20 Endurance in-person run and triathlon camps, you don’t have to choose! We’ve partnered with Endeavorun to create a series of unique camp experiences that truly offer something for every athlete. Check out our lineup for the 2022 season:

Austin Winter Running Retreat

February 17-21

Kickstart the 2022 season with our five-day running retreat in beautiful Austin, Texas. Highlights will include group workouts, meals, and hangouts; a personal injury evaluation from physical therapist Asher Henry; one-on-one “office hours” with Matt Fitzgerald, Bertrand Newson, and other great coaches; and the opportunity to run the Austin Marathon with Hanna Hunstad (or try to beat her, or just cheer her on, or run the half marathon or 5K!).

Learn More

San Diego Spring Triathlon Retreat and Clinic

February 27-March 6

The sport of triathlon was born in San Diego, and for good reason. There’s simply no better place to swim, bike, run, and chill with your fellow triathletes than “America’s Finest City.” This two-part camp features a mix of epic training experiences and teaching sessions. Come for the first half of the week if you’re mainly interested in training or for the full week if you want it all. Highlights include an open-water swim clinic with Hanna Hunstad, bike threshold testing on Fiesta Island, and mental skills training with sports psychologist Cory Nyamora.

Learn More

Martha’s Vineyard Morning Run and Triathlon Camp

July 25-29

Would you rather enjoy a summer vacation with your family on Martha’s Vineyard or go there to train with fellow athletes and be coached by Matt Fitzgerald, sports dietitian Lydia Nader, and Endeavorun founder Jake Tuber? This special five-day camp for runners and triathletes allows you to do both! You’ll spend each morning working out with other campers and learning from our expert staff and the rest of the day enjoying family time in the summer paradise of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Learn More

New Cycling Plans

We are pleased to announce that a full selection of 80/20 Endurance training plans for cyclists is now available. There are 64 plans in all, covering three separate disciplines (Gran Fondo, gravel racing, and time trials), short and long distances, and two intensity metrics (heart rate and power). Designed by Coach Matt, the plans feature not only the 80/20 intensity balance you know and love but also recent innovations in workout design and periodization, as well as unique coaching tips in each and every workout. And like our training plans for runners, triathletes, and obstacle racers, these come in four levels, covering the full spectrums of experience and ability.

We think our new 80/20 cycling plans are terrific, but don’t take our word for it. You can sample any plan you choose for free, and if you’re an 80/20 Endurance subscriber, of course, you have access to all of them. And if you’re not a cyclist, you should become one just so can experience these plans.

A New Coaching Certification

Many 80/20 athletes are also coaches, or aspire to become coaches. And many of these athletes have let us know they want us to offer a proprietary 80/20 Endurance coaching certification. If you’re among these athletes, you’ll be happy to know that an 80/20 Endurance coach certification program is on the way. Our best guess at this moment is that it will be available on or around March 1, 2022. Elements of the program will be an official study guide written by Coach Matt, an online course, and a two-part exam (multiple choice and practical). We’re also exploring the possibility of offering in-person certification events. Stay tuned!

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 and team building into the experience. It resulted in deeper levels of self-reflection than occur at most other camps, such that many of us came away with a better understanding of where we are in our athletic journey, where we want to go, and what’s holding us back.

Jake’s thinking in this area is heavily influenced by Jack Mezirow, a giant in his field who designed the doctoral program Jake’s undertaking and who developed a model of adult learning known as transformative learning theory. In one of the many papers Jake has shared with me since becoming my unofficial tutor, Mezirow defines transformative learning as a “critical dimension of learning in adulthood that enables us to recognize and reassess the structure of assumptions and expectations which frame our thinking, feeling and acting.” In plain language, if you’ve ever found yourself saying something along the lines of, “I used to believe X, but then I experienced Y, and now I believe Z,” then you’ve experienced transformative learning.

Jake believes that endurance coaches should operate as guides to transformative learning, and I’m persuaded he’s right. Another paper he shared with me is a PhD thesis written by Timothy Gillum of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who tracked the learning experiences of four runners as they trained for and completed a marathon. Gillum found that “the participants’ learning included more than accomplishing their pre-determined goals. The participants challenged at least one of their existing paradigms that included how they viewed themselves as runners, spouses, friends, and parents. This challenge was triggered with a disorienting event and subsequent self-reflection and conscious choice to accept the learning.”

Amby Burfoot said it well: “As we run, we become.” Or at least we have opportunities to become. The role of the coach is to help athletes recognize emerging opportunities to challenge and revise their assumptions about who they are and how things are. More broadly, the coach bears the responsibility of coaxing athletes toward seeing their athletic growth as intertwined with personal growth. Competitive athletes in particular may tend to think of the pursuit of personal growth through sport as an alternative to chasing competitive ambitions, but in fact they go hand in hand. Athletes develop most athletically when they consciously use sport to become better versions of themselves.

Admittedly, a person can have only so many epiphanies. Yet I believe that training as learning operates at a more quotidian level as well. There’s a sense in which every single workout an athlete does can be seen as a learning session. From this perspective, an athlete doesn’t train for a successful Ironman finish or a sub-three-hour marathon but rather learns how to finish an Ironman or run a sub-three-hour marathon. Simply stated, the process we normally describe as physiological adaptation can be recast as somatic learning. The changes the body undergoes in response to training are its way of learning how to do more effectively what you’re asking it to do.

More than a matter of semantics, this redefinition of training has important practical implications. First, it ties together everything an athletes does toward the end of achieving their competitive goals into a cohesive whole. Training is only one of several elements of race preparation. Others include diet, recovery, injury prevention, and mental training. From a training-as-learning perspective, all of these elements—including training itself—are paths of learning, similar to the different classes a student might take toward earning her medical degree. An athlete who embraces this perspective is likely to invest greater effort in each of them because they are all equally part of the same mission.

Another important difference between the traditional view of training and the training-as-learning perspective is that training is outcome-focused, learning process-focused. When training is merely training, then in a very real sense it has served no purpose if the athlete falls short of his goal on race day. But when training is learning, then mastery is the goal and the athlete is achieving his goal continuously as long as he is learning, hence moving toward mastery. It’s all about winning the process, an orientation that is proven to yield greater improvement and better outcomes.

I’m happy to have a whole new area of knowledge opening up to me at age fifty, and eager to see how it moves me closer to mastery in my coaching work. I hope you’re among the athletes who benefits from these intellectual adventures in the months and years to come.

Leon Fleisher died recently. Man, what a life! Born in San Francisco in 1928 to Jewish immigrants, he started playing the piano at age four, and by nine he was proficient enough to become a student of renowned teacher Artur Schnabel. At 16, Fleisher made his Carnegie Hall debut, and by his mid-20s he was widely considered one of the greatest pianists in the world, if not the very best.

Then, at 36, Fleisher mysteriously lost the use of his right hand. That would be a lot for anyone to deal with, but for him it was cruelly devastating. Yet Fleisher persevered through the affliction with admirable resilience and adaptability. Predictably, he shifted some of his energies into teaching and conducting, but he also continued to play the piano, albeit one-handed. In interviews he often suggested that losing the use of his right hand expanded his creativity and forced him to think more deeply about music, saying in one interview, “Limitations are the food of the creator” (a line he attributed to the great German writer Johann von Goethe, though I’ve found no evidence he actually said it).

My refamiliarization with Fleisher’s story was timely. The day he died, I took part in a “Fireside Chat” on Zoom that was hosted by the online running club Endeavorun and featured elite miler Kyle Merber as guest speaker. Among the things Kyle talked about was how he’s adapted his training and overall approach to running in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He told us he’s been experimenting with higher mileage, and the results have been so positive that he fully intends to continue running more than he used to even after things get back to normal. Kyle also said that training with less structure has given him the freedom to force things less than he used to do when he trained with teammates under a coach’s eye every day—for example, easing into hard intervals on the track rather than pushing to keep up with whoever had the best legs on a given day—and he hopes to be able to carry this adjustment forward as well.

In this analogy, the pandemic is the equivalent of Fleisher’s paralysis and Kyle’s training innovations are the equivalent of Fleisher’s becoming a brilliant left-handed pianist and learning to think more deeply about music. And Fleisher is hardly alone in his Fleisher-like response to the Coronavirus crisis. In fact, pretty much every elite endurance athlete and coach resilient and intelligent enough to meet the challenge has done so in similar fashion.

Take Ben Rosario, for example, my friend and coach of Hoka NAZ Elite. Ben has come up with a couple specific ways of adjusting to life without racing opportunities that he intends to continue using with his runners even after the races return. The one I find most interesting has to do with the fact that, for NAZ Elite, being stuck in place has mean being stuck at 7,000 feet of altitude, where it’s tough to do race simulation-type workouts because runners can’t run as fast up there. To make the best of the situation, Ben tested out what he calls “squeeze-down intervals,” where instead of trying to hold a steady, aggressive pace throughout an interval, runners start on the slow side and accelerate in increments. For example, instead of running a 1500-meter interval at 4:15 pace from start to finish, the male runners on the team might run the first 400 meters in 75 seconds, the next in 70, the next in 65, and the final 300 in 45 seconds. Ben tells me that these tests have gone well—so well that he plans to keep squeeze-down intervals in the mix, in part because they happen to do a good job of simulating championship-style racing and in part because they have him feeling less compelled to get out of Flagstaff for certain training stimuli.

When I discussed these matters the other day with my friend Mike, he mentioned the story of the London Underground strike of 2014. Highly disruptive to the millions of Londoners who relied on the tube for their daily commute and other routine activities, the strike turned out to be a blessing in disguise in the sense that it impelled many to find alternative ways to get around town that they ultimately deemed preferable, hence retained after the strike ended. In an academic paper on the phenomenon titled “The Benefits of Forced Experimentation,” a team of economists concluded that “individuals seem to under-experiment during normal times, as a result of which constraints can be welfare-improving.”

In other words, it is human nature to get comfortable with existing routines, even in high-stakes forums like elite running, where the potential competitive benefits of successful experimentation are great. Disruptive events like the current pandemic have a way of forcing the experimentation athletes are reticent to self-initiate. This reality puts us in the odd position of hoping for disruptive events—which, let’s be honest, tend to be more cloud than silver lining—to strike us every now and again.

Or does it? First off, I should note that not all athletes and coaches are equally able to turn crises into opportunities. Nor are all athletes and coaches who are able to turn crises into opportunities equally dependent on external events to trigger innovation. With the right mindset, it’s possible to seek out disruption by self-imposing constraints or placing oneself in an environment or circumstances that will all but necessitate adaptation. One random example is relocating to Kenya for a training stint, something that many pro runners and even some recreational runners have done with great success, a success that comes not despite but because of its necessitation of running on bad roads at high altitude, adopting a very limited (but very healthy) diet, doing without your $1,000 compression boots and a whole lot else, and adjusting to the Kenyan training approach.

If you were to actually do this (as I myself have done), I can guarantee you’d return home a changed runner and eagerly incorporate some of your “Kenyan ways” into your regular routine. And there are a million other ways to force experimentation as an athlete, any of which may yield an improved routine, and all of which will render you better prepared to make the best of the next unchosen disruption.

By the way, Leon Fleisher gradually regained the use of his right hand in the 1990s and died as he’d (virtually) been born: a two-handed pianist.

In 1997, when I was a struggling young poet (don’t laugh) in San Francisco, I wrote a letter to Dave Eggers, who was then merely a local literary celebrity whose reputation rested on his work as founder and editor of MIGHT magazine and not yet the international literary star he became three years later with the publication of his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. In the letter, I pitched Dave on the idea of including a poetry page in future issues of MIGHT and commissioning me to serve as the magazine’s poetry editor.

To my mild surprise, Dave wrote back and said he was open to the idea. This led to a phone call, during which we developed the idea further. MIGHT folded soon afterward, though, and that was the end of that.

Later, when Dave was an international literary star, I read an interview in which he explained that he had a policy of always trying to say “yes” when somebody asked something of him. It was part of his personal code of ethics to help out and lift up others when he could, a principle that was based on a karmic sort of belief that spreading the wealth did not diminish but rather increased his own (metaphorical) wealth. In other words, Dave has what’s known as an abundance mindset, and it explains why he said “yes” when I pitched my stupid poetry idea to him.

Dave’s words resonated with me because I, too, try to say “yes” to everything. For me, it seems only right, because (as the story I just shared demonstrates) I ask other people for things all the time. And so it was that, when a runner named Jake Tuber contacted me in the summer of 2017 to ask if I would be willing to coach him pro bono in support of a fundraising challenge, I said, “No.”

Just kidding. Actually, I said, “Not right now,” because at the time I had my hands full with my own project, which entailed living the life of a professional runner with the Northern Arizona Elite team in Flagstaff. I asked Jake to circle back with me in October, when I was home again in California, and he did so, and I coached him for the next several months.

During this period and beyond, Jake and I talked a lot about my “fake pro runner” experience, as I like to call it. He was enamored of the whole idea, and wondered if there might be a way to enable other amateur runners to experience something like it—some sort of next-level running camp. I told Jake I would gladly involve myself in anything he cooked up, and then he sort of disappeared for a while.

Turns out he did so for a very good reason: because he was busy cooking! The result of all that hard behind-the-scenes groundwork is Endeavorun, the world’s first start-to-finish, comprehensive running program that enables everyday runners to experience a professional-style training season like I did with NAZ Elite in 2017. Endeavorun 2020 kicks off next July with a five-day, four-night retreat in Eugene, Oregon (a.k.a. Tracktown USA). There you will meet, run with, and learn from me and other top experts, including current top professional runners and a sports dietitian.

But that’s just the beginning. During the camp you will sit down with me or another coach for a one-on-one consultation to review the custom training plan we’ve built for you. Tailored to your schedule, goals, and abilities and delivered through a free account on TrainingPeaks, this plan will culminate with the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas event (with 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon race options) in November, where Endeavorun athletes will reconvene for a VIP experience that includes race entry, hotel stay, sponsor perks, and an after-race party.

And that’s not all. Between the camp in Eugene and the race in Las Vegas, the Endeavorun experience will continue online through live virtual coaching, accountability partner check-ins, virtual team workouts, massive discounts from premiere partners (just like the pros get), and more. There’s nothing else like it out there, and I encourage every runner who has fantasized about what it would be like to go all the way with their running to take advantage of this unique opportunity.

I’m pleased to be able to offer a VIP early-bird discount to members of the 80/20 Endurance community. Just use this link to visit the Endeavorun website and learn more about the program, then enter coupon code 8020ENDURANCE to get 15% off the cost of registration and a free pair of running shoes of your choice, which will be waiting for you at our Kickoff Retreat. We’re capping registration at 120 runners, so act soon to avoid missing out on your chance to train like a pro in 2020!

Newsletter

Get Started

Connect

Quick Links