Congratulations to Keith Munion and Joan McGue!

Keith raced the Flint Hills 80 mile gravel bike race this past weekend. This Kansas race was a preparation race for the famous Unbound 200 miler that Keith is racing in May. On a rainy, muddy day (see photos), Keith finished the 80 miler in an impressive time of 4:55.

Joan McGue raced the Cherry Blossom 5K in Washington DC with 6,000 others! She raced with her daughter for the first time and finished in a time of 36:54. This was fast enough for 9th of 33 in her AG! Way to go Joan!

When we periodize our training as endurance athletes, knowing what intensity we are working at is critical to making sure we are doing the right type of training at the right time in relation to our big races or objectives. Keeping intensity low builds our aerobic capacity and fat burning capacity. Exercising at a medium intensity builds our connective tissue strength and muscular endurance. Working hard at lactate threshold or above improves our lactate tolerance and speed. So, how do we know how hard we are working?

For many decades and even today, we have used rating of perceived exertion as a way to measure intensity. We basically defined the efforts as easy, medium, hard, etc. This is how athletes for the better part of the 20^th century trained. It works well, especially for an experienced athlete who has plenty of experience exercising at all levels on the intensity spectrum. For most of us, though, when we use perceived exertion as our primary way to measure our intensity, we end up gravitating towards a medium effort in all workouts. A medium effort feels productive. We sweat, we feel like we worked somewhat hard. We didn’t kill ourselves but we didn’t just jog either. The problem is that we never go slow enough to fully develop our aerobic efficiencies and fat burning capacity and we never go hard enough to improve our ability to push lactate. The end result is that we stay fit and healthy but our race performances are always the same – we plateau.

Using a heart rate monitor allows us to have something more empirical than perceived exertion so that we can keep our easy workouts easy and when it’s time to go hard we go really hard and avoid having every workout gravitate towards that medium effort. Heart rate based training has been the gold standard since the early 1990s and still is today. We’ll discuss specific monitors and what training zones are in a future post.

Endurance training is all about slowly getting the body ready to tackle an event or objective that is going to challenge our ability to endure. This may be a marathon, an Ironman triathlon, or an outdoor adventure objective like climbing a mountain. We usually think of the training as being purely physical. We focus on building our miles, adding intensity, and peaking/tapering prior to the big day. However, our training also goes beyond the physical benefits. Endurance training also prepares the mind.

When we take on hard training, we are training our bodies for the rigors it will face on race day. We also train out mind to be able to endure hardships that we are likely to face as well. We get used to pushing when we are low on glycogen. We get used to the stiffness and soreness that comes with hours on a bike or under a heavy pack. One opportunity to train our mind that many of us neglect is training in bad weather.

If the weather forecast call for cold weather or rain, many of us skip the workout or move indoors. This is a missed opportunity. It can easily be cold or rainy on race day. If that is the first time you are using your super cool tri-bike in the rain, then you might be a bit psyched out for the race. If you had taken the opportunity to ride in the rain during training, you would learn how the bike handles in bad weather and have more confidence in handling adverse weather conditions in the race. You would also learn how to dress properly for the conditions and be able to apply that knowledge in making your race day clothing choices. You would also get used to the feeling of cold hands or cold feet and gain confidence that you can handle some discomfort. While others may be fretting rain at the start of the race you can embrace it.

So, get out there and embrace the weather. Each training session you can do in bad weather will make your mind and body stronger and leave you more prepared with whatever the weather throws at you when the big day comes!

As we move into 2026, now is a good time to review the importance of low intensity base training. Aerobic efforts at lev 1-2 on a scale of 5 are critical to setting your season up for success. Let’s go over the key points.

Lev 1-2 or zone 1-2 effort is highly aerobic, meaning that we are generating our energy with the use of oxygen. This effort feels sustainable and fairly easy. You should be able to hold a steady conversation if you wanted to. From a heart rate point of view, it is an effort that is about 65-90% of your lactate threshold heart rate. Examples of lev 1-2 workouts include a long swim, bike or run or a long hike.

The adaptations that occur when doing this type of training include, improved fat burning capacity, improved heart stroke volume, improved vascularity (more capillaries to deliver oxygen to working muscles), and improved mitochondrial density (more cells where energy is produced). In general, you increase your ability to use fat as a fuel and you improve your overall cardiovascular system when you train at lev 1-2 effort. Your ability to perform at higher intensity efforts is determined by how much time you spend training at these lower intensity efforts. They are the base of your training progression. The larger the base, the higher you can push your peak fitness later on. The old saying in endurance sport is “if you want to go faster, you have to learn to train slower”. This saying is still true.

So, despite articles that claim shortcuts or offer diverse and exciting workouts, good old aerobic movement is still the most important training you can do. It sets everything else up. There are no shortcuts. Be patient as you build your aerobic base and know that the work you are doing now will set you up for success later on. Endurance sports are sports of deferred pleasure!

Melissa Samuelson raced the Christensen Trail 14 mile Run last weekend. The race took place in Mountain View park in Phoenix. After a full season of triathlon racing, including the 70.3 World Championships in Spain, Melissa took on her first trail race and finished in 2:28. This was good enough for 2nd in her AG and 6th overall female! Way to go Melissa!