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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this super fun episode, we're celebrating a whole bunch of big milestones including: Jim's return to riding six weeks after his crash and surgery, Katie officially earning her title of "PhD Coach Katie," and most importantly, six months and 35 episodes of our podcast! To mark the occasion, we're returning to a format we used in episode five of t…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the last episode of our five-episode series that covers the perspectives and experiences that we crowdsourced from our community about the rewards and challenges that female athletes face. Here, we're pulling out themes related to how it makes us feel: strong, capable, and badass, but also unwelcome, unworthy, or unrelatable, depending on t…

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

In the fourth installment of our special series, Female Athlete Stories, we’re tackling the forces we’re up against. Highlights of this super rich episode include: another deep dive on body image, the objectification of the female athlete body, safety as female athletes, femininity and athletics, the myth of balance for women in sport, navigating t…

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

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

When we started the podcast, we made a list of who we wanted to interview. Our guest today was Jim’s number one pick: Greg Mueller, AKA the best coach you’ve never heard of. Greg runs a pro triathlete squad via his TEAM INNOVATIVE ENDURANCE business and coaches age group athletes. Greg’s pro squad includes Colleen Quigley, Grace Norman, Allysa Seel…

This is the second episode in our special new series, Female Athlete Stories. Katie and Elena dive into many elements of female physiology that our form submitters cited as the biggest challenges of being a female athlete: periods, PMS, contraception choices, pregnancy, and menopause. We also do a deep dive on eating disorders, REDs, and body image…

This week, we're bringing in one of our favorite experts to talk all things recovery, strength training, injury prevention, and injury rehabilitation. Neil MacKenzie is a PT, DPT, and OCS based at Cioffredi & Associates Physical Therapy here in the Upper Valley. Neil has been an Endurance Drive athlete for two years (and is a 2x Ironman finisher!),…

This episode is the introduction to a (minimum!) 5-episode series inspired by National Girls and Women in Sport Day. This series aims to blend the stories of dozens of female athletes in our network with our own perspectives and experiences. Here, we preview each of the key topic areas in our series (The Female Body, Community in Sport, The Forces …

In this episode, we do a deep dive on what we consider to be the endurance athlete’s most valuable trait: durability. Sub-topics include: what durability means in an endurance sport context, how to build physical and mental durability, why optimizing for leanness instead of durability is a recipe for disaster, what happens if you don’t have durabil…

As coaches, we get tons of questions about nutrition for performance and health. In this episode, we’ve brought in an incredible expert to share her expertise in the domain of fueling for endurance athletes! Dr. Cate Ward holds a PhD in Metabolic Biology, is a Registered Dietitian, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford studying human n…

Today we're covering our favorite topic to discuss in real life—why we love coaching! We tell the stories of our respective journeys into becoming coaches, The Endurance Drive's coaching philosophy, what we love about coaching, why you should get a coach, and our favorite stories from coaching and being coached. Stick around to the end for listener…