Zeal Endurance Coaching

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Tim Symchych

🍀 [Wishing him luck as he races the Sasquatch Duro Big Gravel Race this weekend!]

📍Location: Castle Rock, CO

🧢Day job: Supply Chain Management

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Gravel Cycling

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): I feel joy when I ride a bike and I have to get out of my comfort zone all the time

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18 months): Learn & gain experience (this is my first season) and start to be competitive in my age group

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5 years): 3 hours or less at Mad Gravel (50 miler) or similar course

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: I love to cook and I try to keep a garden

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you’ve had to date: Most recently it was competing in a gravel race. I have not done competitive sports since high school and did reasonably well. I have gotten to know myself more deeply through the process of training and racing.

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Erica Garrett

🍀 [Wishing her luck as she races the Mt. Hood 50M Trail race this weekend!]

📍Location: Englewood, CO

🧢Day job: Solution Engineer at Salesforce

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Ultrarunning

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): I love being able to access remote places on foot that most people will never see!

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18months): Finish this season strong and then take a little bit of a break [from ultras]. I keep telling myself I want to focus on something shorter/faster next year (maybe a road marathon or 3?), but I won’t commit to that until after I’ve had enough space from this training cycle to forget how long it takes to train for an ultra!

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5years): Stay healthy, run on some beautiful trails, and maybe pick up a marathon PR along the way. Figure out how to sync racing calendars so that I can run a race with my sister, who has become a runner in the past few years!

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: Baking, reading, and spending time outside

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you’ve had to date: Watching my kids become outdoors/sports loving humans! I did a fun track meet last year and they had a free kids race that my daughter did (100m). She had the biggest smile on her face the whole time and afterwards said “Mommy, that was the most fun running day ever”. My heart grew three sizes :)

It’s and the pups are stoked (sort of…🙃) about all the hardware we brought home from the Multisport National Championships! 🏆

Congrats to all of the athletes who raced this week - we had such a fun time sharing the course with you. We are especially grateful to all of the volunteers and staff for USA Triathlon who made the whole event possible. Thank you thank you thank you for dedicating so much of your time to help make this sport incredible 🙏🤩🔥

🏅

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Allison Burzio-Aagaard

🍀 [Wishing her luck as she races Ironman 70.3 Boulder tomorrow!]

📍Location: Evergreen, CO

🧢Day job: Teacher/Coach/Mom

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Long-course Triathlon, Running

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): Sport always provides me with perspectives on life and good challenges to go after. I will never complain if I can be outside in nature doing the sports I love.

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18months): Finish Boulder 70.3 and another 70.3 later in the year. Run a couple 5k’s with my daughter and throw in a few trail races in there too!

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5years): Continue to improve in the swim and bike, while hopefully being able to qualify for Worlds. Continue to share sports with my daughters!

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: I write music and play the guitar and piano. Anything outside with the family!

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you’ve had to date: I think it has been the birth of my two daughters, Tobin and Riley. They have changed my life in so many wonderful ways! And now that they are getting older, we get to share things like running, cycling and play sports together!

Still riding the high from with this crew. Excited for more dirt adventures on two wheels with great company 🔥🙌🏻

I’m not the type of coach who focuses on podium finishes with athletes…but this was pretty freakin’ cool. To have an [30-39] age-group podium sweep with these ladies — in their FIRST ever gravel race (!) — was pretty epic. We are already looking forward to the next one 🔥

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Rachel Pifer

🍀 [Wishing her luck as she races Ironman 70.3 St. George this weekend!]

📍Location: Boulder, CO

🧢Day job: Medical Assistant (but starting nursing school in August!)

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Triathlon

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): I love the opportunity for growth and challenge that this sport provides; even as I enter my fifth competitive season in triathlon, I am still finding new ways to grow and push myself, both as an athlete and person. Additionally, the community that I have found through triathlon has been amazing.

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18months): Make the most out of this race season and have as much fun as possible, while continuing to push and challenge myself outside of my comfort zone. We’ve had a great build up towards my first race (St. George), so hoping to carry that momentum through the rest of the season.

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5years): Continue to focus more on long course triathlon with the hopes of competing in and performing well at a full-distance Ironman; potentially dip my toes into the world of trail running/racing.

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: Skiing, climbing, and trail running

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you’ve had to date: Racing 70.3 Worlds in Finland last year. It was my first World Championship experience; I had an amazing time traveling to a part of the world I had never been to before and racing on a beautiful course amongst the world’s top triathletes. The best part was having my entire family there to spectate and cheer me on. They have been so encouraging and supportive of me throughout my triathlon career and life in general, so any races they are able to attend are extra special.

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Sara Lee

🍀 [Wishing her luck as she races the Big Sur Marathon this weekend!]

📍Location: Littleton, CO

🧢Day job: Stay at home mom

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Running

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): It allows me to clear my mind and appreciate every breath I take.

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18months): Hit the trails and get ready for the Golden Leaf Half in Aspen.

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5years): Keep running, get stronger, and maybe race further.

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: Being a cheerleader for my kids on the field and off! Skiing and painting.

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you’ve had to date: I ran the Leadville Heavy Half last June in a blizzard. Not only was it the longest run I’d ever done but the climb up the pass in the snow and mud challenged every part of me. I loved every minute! That race made me realize I might be able to accomplish another goal, a marathon. Training for my Big Sur has pushed my limits and helped me to realize I can still reach out and do hard things.

Boston # 5 🦄
Marathon # 14 🏃

This race has destroyed me in 4 out of 4 attempts. I’ve messed up the pacing, nutrition, training, and/or hydration every time, and payed for it.

Yet, I love this event so much.

This place, and the way the city comes alive to support the marathoners, is really special. The chills I get on the starting line, surrounded by almost 30,000 other runners, is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I’m grateful to be here, and especially to race with four of my athletes who have worked so hard for this day.

Nothing about my lead into this race has been perfect. Run training has been sporadically situated around a heavy workload and winter sports trips (hey, priorities 🤷🏼). Emotional stress has been high. Motivation has been low. Discipline has kept me somewhere in the middle. The body has mostly kept up, but I am not 100% — rarely am I. I could tell you that I’ve accounted for every detail to train for and race this event, and that I’ve visualized running the perfect race for months. But I haven’t. My mind has been focused on taking care of those around me, as it often is, and I lean into that when I’m struggling to process my own emotions.

This will be my first marathon where I can’t call my Gram afterwards, so she can tell me how crazy I am for running twenty six miles. I still haven’t processed her death and I know this will haunt me when I’m on the course tomorrow. Maybe it will help me find a new sense of meaning in all of this, because I’ve only felt lost in it. I’m planning to use the difficulty as a means to learn more about myself and where I want to go from here.

I can promise this: whatever the outcome, it will be everything I had to give.

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Andrew Kumler

🍀 [Wishing him luck as he races the Boston Marathon this weekend!]

📍Location: Lafayette, CO

🧢Day job: Atmospheric Scientist in renewable energy

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Running and Cycling

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): The endorphin rush, feeling fit, the ability to push myself mentally and physically while out in nature.

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18months): Perform well at the Boston Marathon, and start exploring the realms of gravel (bike) and trail (running) racing.

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5years): Stay fit and healthy while continuing to perform at a high level.

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: Video games! It’s a great way to stay connected to friends that live far away. And of course traveling and finding the best pastries/espresso with Christina

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you’ve had to date: I’ll never forget the first time I ran Boston and the screaming fans on the last stretch of Boylston Street. It was deafening! That definitely helped me across the finish line!

💡Any activity that involves high force output (e.g. hard pedaling, sprinting, or jumping) necessitates the recruitment of more muscle fibers than a lower force activity (e.g. easy pedaling or running). The more powerful, fast-twitch fibers need some priming/warming up before they can be recruited and fire quickly. This is often reflected in the power output of an athlete executing a high-intensity workout. Power is the product of force (dependent on the number and type of motor fibers recruited) multiplied by the velocity (the speed with which those fibers can contract).

📈You can see in the above example that the power output for each of the 30-second intervals (in pink) trends slightly better as the workout progresses (especially after the first three), even though the athlete’s effort stays the same (heart rate response in red is basically identical throughout). These sprints are in a heavy-gear from a seated position, which requires generating a lot of torque on the pedals. They demand maximum recruitment of the powerful, fast-twitch fibers, particularly from the large muscle groups (quads and glutes) of the lower body. The last 30” interval (highlighted) was the athletes best average power output of the entire set.

🧩I generally start athletes with shorter versions of this high-torque work to develop their top end and teach the body how to recruit these types of fibers, which are not the dominant type in endurance athletes. As their muscle recruitment and pedaling efficiency improves, we can extend these to what you see here for a more experienced athlete, in which case we are working on training the fatigue-resistance and recoverability of these fibers.

⭐️When an athlete executes the workout as well as shown here, I know we are ready to use this type of session as a primer (tension-builder) leading into a hard session the next day or even the week of a race to make sure they are firing on all cylinders.

We absolutely love what we do, and sharing it with a community of athletes is our greatest passion. We invest in your long-term growth and development as an athlete and human 🔥💛

We love seeing athletes’ ZEAL, or passionate enthusiasm, for what they do. Our hope is that we can give each athlete the skills and confidence to do what they love for a very long time. 🔥

🎢 All too often we see athletes on this roller coaster of highs and lows in their training when it’s centered around one or more races on the calendar. These athletes “ramp up” to the race and often come crashing down into an oblivion of an off-season after their last race of the year, exhausted and lacking motivation to maintain consistency when there isn’t a target in front of them.

💡Our priority is to make sure that athletes can find a sustainable approach to training that avoids having these periods of inconsistency. We want athletes to be in love with THE PROCESS, and not just the outcome of races. We teach that these singular instances on the calendar can be a source of external motivation, but what really drives us are the feelings we get from the day-to-day efforts and the growth we get from the challenging moments in training and racing.

🔥We are playing the long game of health and longevity, so that you can do what you love for as long as possible.

🔥I am beyond excited to welcome Dana to the team. She has been a huge part of the Zeal family these past few years on the nutrition side, but I’ve come to realize that her passion and dedication to her work deserves a bigger role. She wholeheartedly invests in her athletes and that’s one of the fundamental values of our coaching philosophy.

She will be looking to take on a few athletes starting January 1st, so if you have an interest in working with Dana, let’s chat! 🤘

✋Many amateur athletes take a complete break from their primary sport or a longer period of unstructured training during their off-season. While this can provide a great physical and mental reset after a long season of training and racing, it can also lead to a stagnation of progress from year-to-year when the period of detraining extends too long.

💡We can avoid losing important adaptations by having a general direction to the training, even when keeping less structure in the day-to-day workouts.

⛷️I’m a big proponent of cross-training/switching sports in the off-season, particularly when those sports involve different movement patterns than your primary sport. It’s still very possible to keep touch with the fitness you’ve built in the previous season, and even to make progress(!), during this time, all while enjoying your favorite off-season sports.

A coach can help keep your training moving in a positive direction. 🚀

Be curious as to what’s right around the corner…you’ll have no regrets if you exhaust every opportunity to succeed, as opposed to leaving some doors unopened.

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Jessie Ciulla

🍀 [Wishing her luck as she races the Boulderthon 13.1 tomorrow!]

📍Location: Boulder, CO

🧢Day job: Energy Regulation

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Trail and Road Running

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): It’s always a way to find adventure both at home and when I’m in a new place, it gives me space to center myself, and it’s always a rewarding challenge.

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18months): Staying healthy by incorporating all the important things that happen outside the run to keep the run feeling good (like hydration, food, strength, stretching, and taking care of myself).

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5years): Do another ultra! And feel great doing it.

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: Cooking, skiing, backpacking, reading.

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you've had to date: When I finished my first ultramarathon in 2020 I loved knowing my body and mind were able to accomplish that. I loved spending the day on a trail, working hard, pushing myself, and seeing friends out there.

📢 Our inner critic can be load, especially when we most need it to be quiet. This is often the internal demise of athletes who bail on themselves during a race or hard workout. Your inner critic may be loud, but you can make your inner advocate louder…it takes some deliberate practice [in training] to strengthen that voice though!

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Melissa Dentch

[Wishing her luck as she races the Chicago 13.1 this weekend] 🍀

📍Location: Denver, CO

🧢Day job: Senior Strategic Leader at EAB Global

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Road Running

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): Running has been a constant in my life since high school, and something I always come back to. Through running I've learned so much about myself and met so many incredible people.

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18months): To stay healthy and consistent in my training.

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5years): Also to stay healthy, and to finally hit a sub-2 half.

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: Hiking, reading, cooking, rock climbing, and agility with my pup!

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you've had to date: There are so many! All of the Ragnars I've run are a true highlight and encapsulate what I love about running - the community, pushing myself, and finding joy in the absurdity.

🔥Athlete Spotlight: Genny Johnson

📍Location: Longmont, CO

🧢Day job: Owner and Play Therapist

🏃‍♀️Current Sport(s): Triathlon, but I can be talked into trying most things

🧩Reasons you love your sport(s): Growing up playing soccer and rowing crew I had never tried any endurance sport. It has been fun and relatively addicting to see how my body can do things I never thought possible. Just 10 months ago I struggled to run 2 miles and hadn’t been a pool since I was 8!

🎯Short-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 6-18months): Curious to test out different distances for triathlons and see what fits and give trail running a go.

🏆Long-Term Aspiration(s) in your sport (within the next 3-5years): Dare I say I would like to podium in a race?!

🎨Name one or more hobbies that you enjoy outside of your sport: While working and training are high on my values list, I have three wild dogs who I love to spend time with. I do a lot of projects around our house, very DIY. I also went back to school for a PhD in child and adolescent therapy.

⭐️Coolest or most rewarding experience you've had to date: My most recent cool experience was going on safari in South Africa. I'm a bit of a nerd about animals and was in awe of the size and presence of the animals and being immersed in a culture and with a people who lead very different lives from me. There was so much to learn and take in.

🧩This study compared two different interval workout designs to determine if there were differences in time to exhaustion, cardiorespiratory parameters, or rating of perceived exertion in well-trained male runners.

🔴🟢One design involved passive recovery (nonexercise) between intervals, and the other involved active recovery (running at 80% of velocity at the second ventilatory threshold/lactate threshold). I like that this study was done outdoors for a more sport-specific context, rather than on a treadmill in a lab. One of the limitations of the study would be the small sample size (n = 8), but it was the first design to look at this particular training problem in very well-trained athletes.

🔍Passive recovery between intervals allowed for a 19.3% greater time to exhaustion & more intervals completed than active recovery. The active recovery sessions produced a greater chronotropic stress/higher recovery HR. Both sessions had similar athlete RPE, oxygen consumption, and blood lactate levels.

💡This suggests that passive recovery can be a more effective strategy when the goal is to perform the greatest workload at a given sport-specific intensity (e.g. race pace work) and active recovery can be useful when the goal is to stress/load the aerobic system for metabolic conditioning.

📝The prescription matters. A smart coach knows the purpose of the session and can write the correct prescription to achieve the desired training effect. 👊

Varela-Sanz, A., Sánchez-Otero, T., Tuimil, J., Boullosa, D., Iglesias-Soler, E. (2023). Influence of Recovery Mode on the Maximum Number of Intervals Until Exhaustion During an Aerobic Interval Training Session. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 37(9), e510-e520. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000004463

🤢Gastrointestinal (GI) Distress in the endurance athlete population is all too common. Some proposed reasons for this include (Papantoniou et al., 2023):

🩸Reduced Blood Flow to the GI Tract
During exercise, blood flow to the GI tract can be reduced up to 80% (aka ischemia) in order to direct blood to the working muscles and support the increase in cardiac output. This can result in temporary hypoxia and depletion of nutrients in the GI organs. After exercise, blood flow is restored but with the risk of reperfusion injury (when blood flow overwhelms a previously ischemia tissue) which can damage the gut lining, increase permeability (aka leaky gut), and lead to inflammation and risk of infection. Training in extreme conditions, such as excessive heat, seems to reduce blood flow even further, increasing the risk of gastric distress.

🩹Mechanical Trauma
Mechanical trauma related to impact is another mechanism that can cause GI issues; this impact is greater in running compared with other activities, such as cycling, where the body remains in a more stable position.

💊NSAIDs
NSAIDs are frequently used by athletes, mostly as pain relieving medication, or even for pain prevention before a sports event. However, their use has been associated with a 3-fold higher risk for developing adverse GI events compared to non-users. This is based on the drug's mechanism of action, which ultimately inhibits the production of prostaglandins, important hormone-like substances that protect the intestinal lining. These drugs make the gut more vulnerable to gastric acid, which can lead to ulcerations, increased permeability/leaky gut, & trauma.

💡 Athletes can try the following to mitigate/prevent these issues:
1️⃣ Reduce the intensity of exercise
2️⃣ Avoid NSAIDS before training and racing
3️⃣ Stay hydrated & avoid highly concentrated drinks
4️⃣ Take acid-reducing medication (not yet studied in athletes)
5️⃣ Train the gut to handle specific intensities

☑️ Reference: Papantoniou, K., Michailides, C., Bali, M., Papantoniou, P., & Thomopoulos, K. (2023). Gastrointestinal bleeding in athletes. Annals of gastroenterology, 36(3), 267–274. https://doi.org/10.20524/aog.2023.0788

…and you have to put yourself in the arena to get there 👊

Failure is a tough topic for athletes - truthfully no one *wants* to fail at achieving a goal, and it’s easy for that missed attempt to become a blemish on one’s identity; for some, it may even leave a deeper wound, impacting one’s confidence, self-esteem, and desire to try again. 😞

I’d love to change the narrative around failure. This starts with detaching your identity from anticipated outcomes and seeing failure objectively. When you detach from the outcome (finite) and instead focus on the process (infinite), a single win or loss carries far less weight. Seeing failure objectively means you can analyze what when well and what could have gone better, without berating yourself over it.

The way you perceive failure will dictate whether your next steps are productive or unproductive. Failure can be seen as a learning opportunity — a signal that we still have work to do…and what a gift that is to still have room to grow. 🎁

So maybe failure is just an opportunity for growth in disguise! 🥸

Let’s change the semantics and start normalizing failure. 👊

If you want to be successful AND have longevity/repeatability with that success, you need to have strong systems in place for support.

This can include systems of:

1️⃣People: Your emotional support network 🥰

2️⃣Professionals/Mentors: Those with the intellectual real-estate to keep you on the right track, physically and mentally 🧠

3️⃣Healthy mental models: To support problem-solving and resiliency when challenges and obstacles appear 👊

It takes time and deliberate practice to improve your systems, especially when you have to unlearn some of your old internal systems in order to replace them with newer, more productive ones. If you’re interested in this topic, I’d highly recommend reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. He outlines the steps you can take to set up these systems and make them stick. 📖

Stop identifying with numbers. You are a human after all, not a computer. You are more than your current or past FTP, rank on the Strava leaderboard, run pace, heart rate variability, weekly mileage, readiness score, placement in your age group, VO2 max, or yardage completed in the pool.

Data and metrics are pieces of the puzzle 🧩…just snapshots in time 📸…but they don’t give you the whole story, and they certainly don’t define you. Remember this, and don’t be afraid to turn off your technology if it’s threatening to take away your joy in the sport. Protect that at all costs. 🤺