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The MicroCast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Microcosm Coaching
The Microcosm Coaching Podcast helps endurance athletes—whether you're a road runner, trail runner, or training for your first marathon or 00-miler—get more out of their training with evidence-based advice, effort-based coaching, and expert mindset support. Hosted by professional coaches and athletes, each episode explores practical strategies for race prep, running recovery, mental performance, and sustainable training. If you want to build fitness, avoid burnout, and find more joy in running, you're in the right place.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 4 days ago1h 1m
Ability vs. Ambition, Repeating Races, and Why You Might Gain Weight While Training
Zoë's article on Ability vs. AmbitionYDS Episode on "Racing Weight"There's always a gap between where you are as an athlete and where you want to be. Zoë wrote about it for UltraSignup , "Closing the Gap Between Ability and Ambition", and this week TJ reads it back to her, days before she lines up at Run Rabbit Run 100 for the third time. They dig into Ira Glass's idea of "the gap," why admitting you want to be great feels so vulnerable, what "spiritual durability" actually means in a training context, and why the most successful athletes usually aren't the most talented — they're the ones willing to sit in that discomfort long enough to close it.From there: why repeat a race you've already done well twice, why you technically can't (same course, different athlete, different river), how Zoë structures a year around two big hundreds using a rule of thirds, and how she's managing the comparison trap and her mental diet heading into a deeper field than she's ever raced.Then a listener question that comes up constantly: "I'm training more than ever and I've gained weight instead of losing it. Is that normal?" Yes — and here's what the scale is actually measuring: glycogen and the water it binds, inflammation from tissue repair, blood volume, food in transit. Plus what the research really says about body weight and injury risk, and when weight change is worth a conversation with a doctor.
- 1 weeks ago1h 4m
How Much Volume Do You Actually Need? Minimum Dose, Optimal Dose, Frequency, and Distribution
How many miles a week do you need to run to get better? It's the question coaches hear most, and the annoying answer is: enough to create an adaptation, not so much that you can't absorb it. The body doesn't experience a mileage total. A mile on a 14er and a mile on a track are completely different stresses, which is why time at effort is a better way to think about volume than distance.TJ and Zoë break volume into four levers. How much: the difference between the minimum effective dose, the optimal dose, and the maximum recoverable dose, and why most runners should be asking about the middle one. How often: what 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 days a week actually get you, and why frequency is the most overlooked tool for newer runners. How long: why 15 + 5 is not a 20-mile long run, and why the cost of a run doesn't rise in a straight line. And where: easy/hard distribution, the weekend-warrior trap, and why back-to-back long runs are a tool rather than an organizing principle. It all starts from the same place — the week you can actually repeat, found in your TrainingPeaks history, not the week you're proudest of.First, TJ has an answer for what happened at Leadville. Then: a listener question about Nordic skiing all winter and protecting running fitness for a spring 50K, and Hot or Not on mocktails, aid station hydration mixes, and Tiger Balm.Questions for a future episode: microcosmcoaching@gmail.comCoaching and community: https://microcosm-coaching.com
- 3 weeks ago1h 3m
A Leadville Win and a Leadville DNF: What Both Taught Us About Training
Leadville 100 week gave Microcosm both ends of the sport in a single day: coach TJ David's athlete McKendree Hickory won the women's race in her 100-mile debut, and TJ himself dropped at the Winfield turnaround after nearly fifty miles of not being able to breathe.Zoë and TJ take both apart honestly. On the win: what five months of coaching actually changed, why TJ inferred McKendree was naturally durable from four years of training history, and how identifying two points of friction — pacing discipline and a reluctance to lean into discomfort late in races — mattered more than overhauling everything. She raced her dress rehearsals under fatigue, ran a conservative early pace by design, and degraded only 8.25 percent over a hundred miles at altitude, where ten to fifteen is considered excellent.On the DNF: the difference between confidence and self-efficacy, why protecting mental bandwidth during race week is a training variable, and what it's like when a heart rate that should read 114 reads 140 at mile ten. TJ walks through the internal argument, the broken poles on Hope Pass, the decision at Winfield, and how he's processing a race he trained two years for.Plus a listener question up front: can you build a Boston qualifier on a treadmill, and what has to happen outside anyway.Questions for a future episode: microcosmcoaching@gmail.comCoaching and community: https://microcosm-coaching.com
- Aug 19, 202657 min
Is Training Making You Slower?
Your easy pace is slower than it was two months ago. Workouts feel harder. You're doing more volume than you've ever done — so shouldn't you be getting faster?A listener wrote in with exactly that question, and it turned into a full episode. Coach TJ and Zoë unpack why feeling slower in a big block is usually the block working, not the block failing — and how to tell the difference when it isn't.The core idea: fitness and performance are not the same thing. Fitness is the physiological capacity you've built. Performance is how much of it you can access on a given day. Every training stimulus produces both a fitness response (slow, cumulative, quiet) and a fatigue response (fast, temporary, extremely loud). Fatigue is louder than fitness — you don't wake up feeling your mitochondrial density, but you absolutely feel Tuesday's workout on top of Sunday's long run.IN THIS EPISODE- Why aerobic base and durability are the two slowest adaptations in endurance sport — and why that means you can't train for just one race- The real sources of training fatigue: glycogen depletion, peripheral muscle fatigue, neuromuscular fatigue, connective tissue loading, and central/autonomic nervous system stress- Why comparing today's run to the same route two years ago on Strava is apples to oranges- Goodhart's Law in training: the moment easy pace becomes the metric you optimize, it stops being a useful proxy for fitness- Progress signals that actually mean something: same pace at lower RPE, same RPE over more vert, better output late in long runs, tolerating back-to-back long runs, and — the most underrated one — recovering faster from the same load- Can training make you less fit? The honest answer, plus why "worse at a 5K while training for a 100" isn't the same as losing fitness- Normal acute fatigue vs. functional overreaching vs. non-functional overreaching vs. actual overtraining syndrome — and why most athletes who think they're overtrained are under-recovered- The red-flag list: elevated easy RPE for days-to-weeks, repeated failure at previously manageable workouts, recovery that doesn't produce a rebound, sleep disruption, mood and motivation changes, recurrent illness, injury creep, menstrual cycle disruption- What TJ's biggest-ever build actually looked like: 15-hour weeks, multiple 100-mile weeks, four (sometimes five) long runs a week, and running slower than he ever hasALSO IN THIS EPISODE — HOT OR NOT- The Leadville 100: no qualifiers to enter, aggressive early cutoffs, and where the competitive incentives are drifting- Changing shoes mid-race (a caveated yes)- Sitting down at aid stations (a hard no, and the physiology behind it)- Listening to podcasts while racing (one yes, one very firm no)BETTER QUESTIONS THAN "AM I GETTING FASTER?"Am I tolerating more training? Am I recovering from it? Am I generally healthy and adequately fueled? Does performance return when fatigue comes down?Don't confuse a temporary inability to express fitness with the absence of it.- Zoë's UltraSignup article on Goodhart's Law: https://trailhead.ultrasignup.com/science-outdoors/data-for-runners/GET IN TOUCHQuestions for a future episode: microcosmcoaching@gmail.comCoaching and community: https://microcosm-coaching.com
- Aug 12, 202658 min
Downhill Running Science: Eccentric Loading, the Repeat Bout Effect & Descending Technique
Email us your listener questions or hot or nots at microcosmcoaching@gmail.com.Check us out online at microcosm-coaching.comDownhill running is a technical skill, not a fitness problem, and this week Zoë Rom and TJ David break down the science of eccentric loading, the repeat bout effect, and how to descend faster without trashing your quads. They go inside the muscle to explain what actually happens to your sarcomeres on a long descent, why delayed onset muscle soreness peaks a day or two later instead of immediately, and why force output can stay down for up to a week even after the soreness clears. From there it's the practical stuff: how braking multiplies eccentric load, why sitting back is the single most common descending error, how to train your eyes on technical terrain, why fear itself makes descending harder, and where strength work genuinely helps versus where it can't replace actual practice. Plus Hot or Not on blood donation for endurance athletes, the red blood cell and iron math every runner should understand before donating, and how to time it around a race build, and random race pacers. In the listener question, a runner training for their second 50 miler on seven hours a week asks whether elite ultra training is fundamentally different from everyone else's. Short answer: same recipe, different dose. The episode opens with training through summer heat, racing amid wildfire uncertainty, and why holding your goal race lightly is a useful gut check.
- Aug 5, 202659 min
Recovery Is the Ceiling: The 5 Things Blocking Your Recovery (Plus Soft Rock, Hot or Not, and Debriefing Your First 100)
Recovery is the ceiling on your training — not your mileage, not your workout schedule. Zoë Rom and TJ David break down the five places recovery falls apart for endurance athletes: not sleeping enough, chronic underfueling, easy days that drift into the gray zone, treating life stress like it doesn't count as training stress, and never taking a real down week. They walk through the physiology of why fitness is actually built between sessions — mitochondrial development, angiogenesis, muscle repair, glycogen refill — and why every one of those processes needs three non-negotiables: raw materials, a calm nervous system, and time. Plus an honest take on recovery gimmicks, including compression boots, massage guns, and cold plunges that may blunt the very adaptations you trained for.Also in this episode: Zoë's report from Soft Rock, the four-day Hardrock loop, and why non-race adventures belong on your calendar; a Hot or Not round on Nike's Aeroflow cooling apparel, homeopathic remedies for Achilles tendinopathy, and wicket drills for trail runners; and a listener question from Foothills member Michael on how to debrief a first 100-miler — starting with feel, then heart rate decoupling and first-half/second-half slowdown.Pick the one you're worst at. Set one committed action for the next five days.Coaching inquiries: microcosmcoaching@gmail.comJoin Foothills ($10/month): microcosmcoaching.com — code FOOTHILLS10
- Jul 15, 202654 min
Race-Specific Training: Are You Actually Training for YOUR Race? Plus: the best running belts, pre-race strength training, and make-up miles
ou've built the fitness. Now what? This week we're digging into training specificity: how to shape your training around the actual demands of your goal race, whether that's a road marathon, a 50K, or a 100-miler like Leadville or Hardrock. Specificity is the sexy stuff athletes love to obsess over, but it's also where we see the most expensive mistakes. We break down what race-specific training actually means, when it belongs in your training calendar, and the traps that cost athletes their races.What we cover:Specificity is earned. Why general fitness is the raw material and specificity is just the sculpting, and why "couch to 50K" plans set athletes up to failThe training funnel. Wide and general in base season, narrow and race-specific 8 to 12 weeks out, with fine-tuning inside the final two to three weeksDuration and time on feet. Why training for the hours you'll be out there matters more than the miles on the race page (100 miles can mean 14 hours or 30)Vert, terrain, and eccentric loading. Why per-mile elevation ratio beats a weekly vert number, how to read a course profile (three 1,000-foot climbs is not one 3,000-foot climb), and training downhill resilience with the repeat bout effectFueling and gut training. The most underrated specificity of all: why you need to practice your race-day fueling for a minimum of 12 weeksThe number one trap: sacrificing fitness on the altar of specificity, from course-obsessed weekend commutes to heat suits on the treadmill in JanuaryPlus:Listener question: "I missed my long run, so I added the miles to next week and dug myself into a hole." Why makeup miles don't exist, why the body knows stress rather than miles, and how to actually rearrange a training week when life blows up your scheduleHot or Not: running belts, handhelds, gas station candy as ultra fuel, and strength training during the taperWe're off for a two-week summer break and back in August.Questions for a future episode? Email us at microcosmcoaching@gmail.com or find us at microcosm-coaching.com.
- Jul 8, 202656 min
What Fitness Actually Is: The 5 Systems Every Runner Trains (Plus Running in Wildfire Smoke)
What is fitness, really? VO2 max, lactate threshold, running economy, durability, and neuromuscular power — in this episode we break down the five distinct systems hiding inside that one word, how each one develops, which respond fastest to training, and which age best. If you've ever chased a watch number and wondered why your race results didn't follow, this framework explains why "getting fitter" is actually five separate questions — and how periodizing your training over years brings them together on race day.We also answer a timely listener question about running in wildfire smoke: what PM2.5 actually does to your lungs, how to use AQI (and its limits), CDC guardrails for exercising outside, when to move to the treadmill, and how to set your line in the sand before race day — including what to do if smoke rolls in mid-race.Plus Hot or Not: gravel running, Garmin's heat acclimation metric, photochromic lenses, and whether bells or eye patches actually deter mountain lions (spoiler: your voice works better).Send us your Hot or Nots and listener questions: microcosmcoaching@gmail.comCurious about coaching? Join the Foothills tier — $10/month for twice-monthly Ask-A-Coach calls and our Slack community of 200+ athletes. Use code FOOTHILLS10 at microcosm-coaching.com
About The MicroCast
The Microcosm Coaching Podcast helps endurance athletes—whether you're a road runner, trail runner, or training for your first marathon or 00-miler—get more out of their training with evidence-based advice, effort-based coaching, and expert mindset support. Hosted by professional coaches and athletes, each episode explores practical strategies for race prep, running recovery, mental performance, and sustainable training. If you want to build fitness, avoid burnout, and find more joy in running, you're in the right place.
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