The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

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Campfire Endurance Coaching

31 episodes

1 week ago

In this candid conversation with former Campfire athlete Annie Solonika, we dive into what really matters in the coach-athlete relationship from both perspectives. Annie shares how a strong coach-athlete relationship requires clear communication and expectations from the start. As both a successful triathlete and business owner of Full Circle Stretching, Annie offers unique insights on balancing triathlon training with work and family life, showing how proper coaching can help busy athletes maintain consistency. We explore the differences between self-coaching and working with a coach, discussing how training structure and accountability contribute to athletic development. Annie explains that effective coaching isn't just about training plans, but about creating a supportive community that keeps athletes motivated through challenging periods. The conversation highlights how listening to your body becomes an essential skill for endurance athletes, with proper coach feedback helping athletes distinguish between normal fatigue and warning signs. For coaches, this interview provides valuable perspective on what athletes truly value in a coaching relationship, while athletes will gain insights on how to communicate their needs effectively. Whether you're considering hiring a coach or looking to improve your existing coaching relationship, this discussion offers practical wisdom for triathlon training consistency and finding balance between athletic goals and life commitments.

All content for The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes is the property of Campfire Endurance Coaching and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Episodes (20/31)

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 31: Why Your Zone 2 Training Feels Painfully Slow (And That's Actually Good)

3 weeks ago

31 minutes 4 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 30: The Complete Guide to Your First 70.3 Triathlon with Author Brittany Vermeer

1 month ago

53 minutes 35 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 29: REPOST | The Norwegian Method with Author Brad Culp

1 month ago

57 minutes 41 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 28: Training Durability | What Sticks Around and What Disappears First

2 months ago

1 hour 7 minutes 55 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 27: F-ing Fast Past Forty: Pro Josh Monda Keeps Getting Faster

2 months ago

56 minutes 6 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 26: How to Choose the Triathlon Coach that Fits YOUR Goals

3 months ago

35 minutes 15 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 25: Elite Swimmer to Pro Triathlete, Lauren Brandon's 15-Year Triathlon Career

3 months ago

1 hour 6 minutes 17 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 24: How to Heat Train Effectively for Endurance Sports

3 months ago

40 minutes 46 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 23: How Mental Skills Transform Athletic Performance with Sports Psychologist Brian Baxter

4 months ago

1 hour 51 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 22: Ironman Unveils New World Championship Qualification System

4 months ago

26 minutes

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 21: What Holds Swimmers Back from Improving

4 months ago

41 minutes 27 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 20: Self-Coached vs. Coached: Finding Balance in Triathlon with Business Owner and Mom Annie Solonika

6 months ago

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 19: Professional Triathlete Ben Hoffman, or “Trying to Control More Doesn't Lead to More Control”

6 months ago

1 hour 2 minutes 25 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 18: How Neglecting Your Swim Hurts Your Overall Triathlon Performance

I have heard it a million times: a triathlete tells me “I swam and swam but it never changed my time, so I just stopped swimming.” I really feel for this athlete, since they are clearly frustrated, but there’s a better way to train for triathlon. In this show we walk through: What goes into effective endurance training in the first place How neglecting your swim hurts your overall triathlon performance How you should actually train to improve your swim performances Swim Smooth Coaches Directory for Video Swim Analysis: https://www.swimsmooth.com/find-a-coach RSVP for Chris’ lecture about what holds swimmers back: https://bendtriathlonclub.com/event-coaching

7 months ago

30 minutes 25 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 17: How to Pace a Hilly Race or Run

One of the hardest skills for any endurance athlete to master is pacing, and when you’re running a hilly event or participating in a bike race with a lot of elevation changes, pacing gets more difficult. In this episode, Chris walks through the pitfalls athletes often fall into, the biggest of which is the “fly and die” approach where the athlete hopes to “bank” time by running harder or faster early in the race, hoping that when they inevitably slow down (because they went harder than they trained to run) that the time they banked will still keep them within their goal. Sadly the endurance gods know what you are up to and will exact a cost in return…plus interest. In less nerdy terms this is called “blowing up.” Chris offers advice on how to avoid this ignominious fate and provides an example from the Portland Shamrock Run, where one of his athletes paced the race to perfection. You can see that athlete’s workout file below.

8 months ago

24 minutes 21 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 16: What is Progressive Overload and How Can You Actually Use It?

“Progressive Overload” is a topic that gets tossed around a lot in endurance circles, but, just as with other topics like “FTP” or “core strength” or “recovery,” progressive overload is more nuanced and complex than it first appears. At it’s most basic application, progressive overload is “the steady and systematic increase in training load in order to continually force an athlete’s body to adapt and develop in the ways we want it to develop,” but how we apply that concept can get hairy pretty quickly. In this episode, Chris defines the term, walks through different methods of measuring training load, explains the mechanism for getting your body to “adapt and develop,” and then offers practical suggestions of how to incorporate progressive overload into your own training or coaching of others. He rounds out the show with different subjective markers you can track in order to discover if your training is working or not, and when you should assess that training. If you want to use Chris’ totally bonkers Session RPE training load calculator, you can find that here: https://tinyurl.com/bdekecsr

8 months ago

8 minutes 32 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 15: The Norwegian Method with Author Brad Culp

Chris sits down with Brad Culp, author of the 2024 Book The Norwegian Method: The Culture, Science, and Humans Behind the Groundbreaking Approach to Elite Endurance Performance. After some book-nerd talk about the structure Brad and his publisher chose for the book (the first few chapters provide a brisk but necessary and engrossing history of Scandinavia’s Viking culture and boatbuilding technology), Culp explains what he sees as encompassing “The Norwegian Method.” He talks about Kristian Blummenfelt, Gustav Iten, Olav Aleksander Bu, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, and the other less well-known forebears of The Norwegian Method. Culp recounts what he saw while reporting on and then writing about some of the greatest endurance athletes of our moment, and talks about how amateur endurance athletes can incorporate some of these training strategies without hurting themselves.

9 months ago

56 minutes 59 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 14: Basic Training | How Noob Gains Happen (and then Stop Happening)

Remember what it was like when you had just set out upon your endurance journey? At first everything felt incredibly hard, but after a short amount of consistent training things started to feel easier. Those, our friends, were your “Noob Gains,” or the improvements that happened in the first months (or years) of this new habit. Today on The Infirmary we explain how and why Noob Gains happen and offer some guidance for those who are in this very fun and satisfying period of training. We also talk about ways to avoid the pitfalls of this leg on the path to faster, happier, and healthier athletics. We close the episode with a warning around the ways unscrupulous companies try to take advantage of you while you’re living your Noob Gains life. If you’re already an experienced athlete, please think about passing this episode along to someone who has just begun, since doing so might save them from injury, burnout, or worse.

9 months ago

42 minutes 28 seconds

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 13: How To Approach Getting Faster, Part One, w/Phil Batterson, Ph.D.

Chris sits down with Phil Batterson, Ph.D., host of the CriticalO2 podcast and physiologist for Moxy Monitor. They have a discussion about the oft-discussed “Art and Science of Coaching,” focusing on what coaches can learn from physiologists and vice versa. It’s a fascinating conversation that ranges from debunking long-observed tenets of the coaching world (FTP = 95% of 20-minute power, for one, and why 2mmol/l and 4mmol/l aren’t gospel) to best practices for improving your ability to make decisions in your training.

10 months ago

1 hour 40 minutes

The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

Episode 12: How to Build an Annual Training Plan that Actually Works

In this episode we talk about the importance of annual training plans for athletes and coaches, focusing on the need for clear goals and structured training blocks. We break down the types of goals you should use in your annual plans—outcome, performance, and process—and explain how to effectively build and manage a plan based on those goals. We give you three different examples of annual plans and offer hints and tips about how to use them to best effect: your performance and your happiness. We also answer a great listener question about the significance of accountability in coaching, contrasting it with feelings of shame that can arise from missed workouts or unmet expectations.

10 months ago

45 minutes