The Overlooked Wins: A Walk Through Training Peaks

Introductory note:

Hi, Coach Sarah here. A few notes about today’s podcast. If you have always wanted to see what Coach MK tends to look at in Training Peaks for clients she has coached one-on-one, we highly recommend you watch this episode as a webinar, and it is available in that format on our YouTube channel (I've embedded it below in this post). You’ll likely find the visuals helpful, especially if you specifically want to learn to speak TrainingPeaks. If you would just like to listen to a thoughtful conversation about finding training-related wins in unexpected places, on your commute or on your run, our AMAZING editor has cleaned up the audio and put it in podcast form for your listening pleasure, and it’s coming right up.

Before you listen, I just want to say one thing. Coach MK and I rarely mention pace numbers in this conversation, and that’s intentional, but Training Peaks does generate a lot of other numbers that tell us things about where I am, fitness-wise, and we do talk about those. Now, I don’t really care who thinks I’m slow AF, but I definitely don’t want to invite comparison between my numbers and those of the athletes we coach. If you have a hard time hearing about my numbers without feeling like they are somehow setting a bar for you, I feel you, and I understand. My hope, however, is that you might come away from this session with tools for how to identify wins of your own that you didn’t know were there.

Coach Sarah got Ros a bike for her birthday and...it was not good. BUT EVERYONE LEARNED A VALUABLE LESSON.

Speaking of biking, Coach Sarah started biking her daughter to school this summer to spend a little less time sitting in traffic, and she had absolutely no notion of how much extra work she was doing on top of marathon training...nor did she really appreciate how beautifully her body adapted to that work (her coach, however, misses nothing).

Similarly, Coach Sarah recently ran one last EAT (Enhanced Anaerobic Threshold, a workout we discussed in a previous episode - downloadable PDFs available!) to close out her marathon cycle, and she and Coach MK take a detailed look at what the results say about the fitness she has built over the past eight weeks in preparation for her fall marathon.

Speaking of marathons, Coach MK is less than two months away from running the New York City marathon, and her second coaching call with Coach Tia is available for viewing, as well. Tia assures MK that things are on track and looking good, and affirms that the main goals for this cycle are to stay healthy and build volume. There may be a little bit of fast running here and there for variety’s sake, but the most important work will be the buildup of time on feet at easy effort. That’s really all MK needs (and she is READY).

Both coaches are preparing for their fall marathons with EXCITEMENT and curiosity. They each need a little help in identifying their own wins, but of course they’d be the first to say that that’s exactly what a coach is for. #coachedandloved