The MicroCast

Ready for your next ultra distance? Maybe. In this episode, we tackle the question of when to move up from the 50K to the 50 mile, 100K, 100 mile, and beyond, and why the "ladder" framing might be steering you wrong. Distance alone doesn't say much about what a race demands. A mountainous 50K can ask more of you than a runnable 50 miler, so we talk about how to size up a race by duration, terrain, and your own capacity.We start with a listener question: should you practice run-walking during ultra training, especially on tired legs in high-volume weeks? We explain why power hiking is a race skill, why fixed run-walk ratios work well in training but poorly in races, and why extra walking can be stress without much stimulus.From there, we cover how to identify your real weaknesses. That means separating a bad day from a pattern, finding root causes instead of symptoms, and deciding which limiters to address first. Spoiler: it's often fueling and hydration. We share practical approaches for improving speed, climbing, descending, durability, and your gut. We finish with the signs you're ready to move up, what does and doesn't change in training as races get longer, the special demands of 200 milers, and when it's better to wait.Plus, meet Microcosm coach Kylee Van Horn: nearly 20 years of coaching across road, track, and trail, a registered dietitian's lens on fueling, and a hot take about why you can't cross-train your way to a 100 miler.In this episode:Kylee Van Horn coach spotlightListener question: should you practice run-walking?Power hiking vs. walking, and why fixed ratios fail on race day"Stress, not stimulus": the hidden cost of extra walking volumeWhy the ultra distance "ladder" is a mythHow to find your weaknesses and root causesPrioritizing limiters: low-hanging fruit firstTraining for speed, climbing, descending, durability, and GI toleranceSigns you're ready to move up in distanceWhy 50K and 100 mile training look more similar than you thinkWhat makes 200 milers differentWhen not to move up, and the six-year testWant to work with Kylee or another Microcosm coach? We have roster spots available. Email [email protected] or visit microcosm-coaching.com.If you liked this episode, subscribe, follow, and leave us a review. We read all four of them.

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.

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: [email protected] and community: https://microcosm-coaching.com

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: [email protected] and community: https://microcosm-coaching.com

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: [email protected] and community: https://microcosm-coaching.com