Episode 80: Mental Prep, Fueling the Work, and Self-Belief at the Flying Pig Marathon

In this week’s episode, we’re recapping Elena’s speedy race and “effort PR” at the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati. We talk through why Elena chose to race a road marathon as part of her build for UTMB, her flexible approach to setting A/B/C goals, how she managed internal and external pressure, why feeling bad during the taper doesn’t mean you’re going to have a bad race, the mental prep she did to get ready for race day, how she designed and executed her race plan on a challenging course, why body weight has so much less to do with performance than we might think, what it was like to coach her husband Will (who also crushed it!) for this race, and why self-belief was the number one factor that led to her incredible performance. Katie and Elena also cover some fun insights on when and how to choose a big vs. small race, why the ability to “say yes” to anything physically is one of the greatest benefits of endurance training, how we think about integrating chat GPT into our training and coaching strategies (or not), and female athlete body pressures. This is a super rich episode full of insights for any athlete — check it out! View extended show notes for this episode here.To share feedback or ask questions to be featured on a future episode, please use ⁠this form⁠ or email: [email protected].