The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 52: How to Achieve a Breakthrough Performance with Mark McCabe

Mark McCabe wrote triathlon into his social calendar in 2020, stayed stuck at a 5:45 for four years, and then decided to find out what would happen if he actually gave the sport what it was asking for. Two and a half yea

Episode 51: Three Endurance Skills that Lead to Mastery

I see the following situation far too often: an athlete who is completely reliant on their devices, doesn’t practice their fueling, and cannot change a flat tire. This kind of reliance is deeply fragile: it doesn’t take

Episode 50 Live from Bend Camp: David Tilbury-Davis on the Mindset and Habits Behind Long-Term Athletic Success

This episode is a live recording from Campfire's annual Bend Triathlon Training Camp, where co-coach and longtime collaborator David Tilbury-Davis sat down with campers for an open Q&A. David has coached over 30 years an

Episode 49: How to Face Your Fear w/Sports Psychologist Simon Marshall

Simon Marshall trained the brains of endurance athletes for a living, and in this conversation he makes the case that the mental side of sport is the part most of us skip — right up until it costs us a race. Recorded dur

Episode 48: Deliberate Practice in the Pool Leads to a TEN-MINUTE Olympic-distance Improvement

Swim improvement is slow, frustrating, and worth every minute — and this episode is proof of that. Chris walks you through Alex W.’s amazing 2:35 to 1:52/100 threshold pace improvement in today’s episode: what wasn’t wor

Episode 47: Justin Daerr on Intrinsic Motivation, Longevity vs. Performance, and Staying in the Game

Episode 46: Fixing the Brick—Four Studies on Running Off the Bike

The difference between a well-trained bike-to-run transition and a poorly trained one is up to 10% of your run performance — and most athletes have no idea why it happens or what to do about it. In this episode, we look

Episode 45: Durability and Fatigue Resistance with Coaching Legend Joe Friel

Joe Friel — author of the Triathlete's Training Bible, co-founder of TrainingPeaks, and one of the most influential coaches in endurance sport — joins Chris Bagg for a conversation centered on durability: what it is, how

Episode 44: Triathlon Only Has Two Zones

One of the issues with the established training zone systems out there is that, very often, there are more zones than we need, particularly for multisport training and racing. When zones were first established, most of t

Episode 43: The Science of Sweat | How to Actually Fuel and Hydrate for Endurance with Tash Cooper-Smith

Sports scientist and triathlete Tash Cooper-Smith from Precision Fuel & Hydration joins The Infirmary to demystify one of endurance sport's most confusing topics: fueling and hydration. Tash breaks down sweat testing, so

Episode 42: Stress + Rest = Growth: A Guided Breathwork Session for Mental Toughness

Most athletes swing between two bad options when things get hard: they back off because something in their brain, body, or heart says “too much,” or they panic, push too hard, and blow up. In this episode of The Infirmar

Episode 41: “‘Metabolic Efficiency’ is Just a Fancy Term for Getting Fit w/Elite Endurance Coach Ryan Bolton

Ryan Bolton is an Olympian, competing at the first Olympic Triathlon in 2000, and he is also a long course champ, winning Ironman Lake Placid in 2002. He coaches America’s top-ranked short-course triathlete, John Reed, a

Episode 40: “Where Is My Mind? Flow State, Focus, and Interval Meditation”

Coaches and athletes talk about the semi-mythical “flow state” a lot, but there is precious little information about how to achieve flow state. Those same coaches and athletes seem to leave it up to chance, but as you al

Episode 39: “10-Minute Guided Interval Meditation”

The companion piece to Episode 40, this is is a guided meditation that will help you discover what your brain and body wants to do during a difficult interval or during a race. Practice this meditation to improve your ab

Episode 38: From a Ten-Year Break to 9:03 at Roth: Ultraman World Champion Gordo Byrn

Endurance coaching legend Gordo Byrn joins us to discuss his return to racing after a 10-year break. The 2002 Ultraman World Champion and author of From Lemon to Legend breaks down his training philosophy that led to a 9

Episode 37: Coaching The “Emotional” Athlete

For well over the first half of my professional career, I was labeled an “emotional athlete.” That label seemed to mean, well, something else . In this case that “something else” appears to have been “undisciplined,” if

Episode 36: “The Bonfire of Success,” with World Class Coach David Tilbury Davis

David Tilbury-Davis coaches or has coached triathlon household names such as Ashleigh Gentile, Lionel Sanders, Skye Moench, Corinne Abraham, Cody Beals, and Matt Hanson, and he’s been doing so for three decades. In this

Episode 35: Overtrained or Just Under-recovered? The Difference That Could Save Next Season

Overtraining syndrome is rare, serious, and can end your endurance career if you're not careful. In this episode, we break down the differences between functional overreaching (proper training), non-functional overreachi

Episode 34: Cody Beals’ “Pathological Inability to Rest” and Resulting Burnout

Canadian pro triathlete Cody Beals opens up about thoroughly burning out, wondering if his triathlon career was over after Ironman Chattanooga, and what happened when he took his first real break in over 25 years of scho

Episode 33: Why RPE Matters Just As Much As Power: Kolie Moore from Empirical Cycling on Training Smarter

What if the most sophisticated training tool you have isn't your power meter, but your ability to feel the difference between sustainable and unsustainable effort? Kolie Moore launched Empirical Cycling in 2015 after not