He saw them online. They looked like a real challenge and exciting adventure.

He was fit, ambitious, and interested.

But trail running was completely new to him.

Guys running through the woods for hours.

Headlamps. Mud. Elevation. Aid stations with pancakes and quesadillas.

He signed up for his first 50k and asked the question I get from every first timer:

“How do I train for this?”

The Mistake Most Fit Guys Make

Two kids under three. His wife at home with them full time.

Every dollar of family income ran through him.

So his weekday protocol was non-negotiable:

• show up at work

• be present at home

• keep up with simple training sessions that keep him consistent

Saturday morning was his window. He had an hour. Maybe 90 minutes.

The question wasn’t how to build a 20-mile long run into his schedule.

It was how to use what he had.

The First Step Nobody Talks About

Big Mike knew there were trails near him. He just didn’t know what was out there or how to use them.

The paths and flat gravel trails in his neighborhood were familiar, but he knew he needed more to prep for his 50k.

So we pulled up AllTrails on a call together.

We zoomed in on his town, clicked on trailheads, dove into the routes, elevation, and how they could help him train.

His first assignment was simple: Go out there for an hour and see what it’s like.

• Run the flats

• Run the descents

• Hike every incline

Don’t worry about pace or miles. Just get a feel for what trail effort actually feels like.

And have fun.

That first run was more exploration than training.

Different footing than the road running he was used to. Different breathing with the elevation change. Different mental engagement than steady state running.

He came back from it with a new tool in his training tool kit.

That’s the whole first step.

Not a training plan. Not a long run. Just go find the trails near you and spend some time out there.

What Happens When You Skip This Part

Another athlete came to me wanting to run a marathon on a short timeline. Three months.

He’d been training on his own for two months already. But he was focused on “the gap.”

Where he thought he should be, with no perspective on where his training had been.

He started cramming and ramped straight to 30 miles a week trying to make up time.

Right away, his achilles flared. 30 mile weeks were followed up with zero mile weeks.

His plan fell apart.

When we connected, he still wanted to run the marathon. And I told him we’d figure it out.

Because the reality is, for a busy dad trying to do hard things, a race doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth doing.

Sometimes it’s ok to do things ugly. Sometimes you just need the finish line.

And this athlete got it.

He walked the last six miles. But he finished.

When we got through recovery and started building again, this time in prep of his first 70.3, I capped him at 11 miles a week.

This wasn’t an arbitrary number. It was his average over the past 12 weeks (even though there was only 1 week he actually ran it. He was constantly spiking above it and crashing below it).

He begged for 30.

I held him at 11 for four weeks. And I told him this would be his most consistent 4 weeks in the past 3 months.

He did it. Then we bumped to 20. A few weeks close to 25 before his first 70.3.

He ran steady pace the entire run. Crossed the finish line without breaking down.

The difference between his marathon and his 70.3 wasn’t fitness. It was patience.

Consistency and staying healthy beats hero sessions and hero weeks. Every time.

What Big Mike’s Training Actually Looked Like

Here’s his 13 weeks leading into his 50k.

Average: 4 hours and 22 minutes per week across swim, bike, run, and strength.

Most weeks 3 to 5 hours. Almost every week less than planned. No zero weeks.

And he finished the 50k.

The Only Long Run Number That Matters - Until It Doesn’t

The last post mentioned how the key metric to target for long runs in 50k and 50M prep is completing a session that lasts 40% of the expected time it’ll take you to complete the race.

But Big Mike never did a long run longer than two hours in prep for his 50k.

For most first timers I’d want them closer to 40% of their expected race time on their feet.

But Big Mike had something most first-time ultra runners don’t: race day experience.

He’d been through long race efforts before. He had done 70.3s.

His body knew what it felt like to keep moving for six hours. His training didn’t need to replicate that — it needed to build trail-specific skill and keep him healthy to the start line.

Know which situation you’re in before you set your ceiling.

4 Trail Workouts To Build Real Ultra Skills and Fitness.

Read more

If you’re new here, start with The 5-Hour Athlete: An Introduction

I’ve coached hundreds of athletes across endurance finish lines.

Lawyers. Blue collar workers. Founders. Corporate 9-to-5ers. Parents of young kids with no margin to spare.

The question I get more than any other isn’t about training zones or race nutrition or what shoes to buy.

It’s this:

Can I actually do this given my life?

The answer is always the same.

Yes. But not the way you think.

I set out do a 70.3.

Broke my ankle playing ice hockey 8 weeks into training. Surgery. Recovery.

Then COVID hit and every Ironman I signed up for kept getting cancelled. Three deferrals in a row.

I never thought about running ultras until I realized they were these tiny events deep in the woods that were still happening through all of it.

I found one 90 minutes from me happening in a few weeks. I signed up on the spot.

That photo above is me running it.

My first endurance finish line wasn’t an Ironman. It was a 50k I found during a pandemic because it was the only race still going.

The Lie Most Training Plans Tell

Open any ultra training plan and you’ll find the same thing.

• 20-mile long runs

• 50+ mile weeks

• Back-to-back long days on the weekend

Week one calls for more miles than the average guy has run in the last month.

I picked up a training book last year that said you should run 9 hours per week for 8 weeks to prep for an ultra.

“Oh, that’s weird,” I thought.

I’ve run 100 milers, 100ks, countless 50 milers and 50ks.

I’ve never done that once in training.

Most busy dads look at those plans and quietly close the tab. I do too.

The guy with a career he’s trying to advance, and a family he’s trying to support isn’t going to start training like a pro athlete just because a book tells him to.

There's a better way to do this.

And it starts with stopping looking at what the plan says you need — and starting with what you actually have.

A Call From A Lawyer

Matt Dalton called me in November 2023.

Father of three kids under four. Lawyer. Former college basketball player who fell away from fitness in his 20s.

Building a career, starting a family, drinking, gaining weight through all of it.

Here’s what he told me when we first spoke:

“I’ve made some progress on myself and want to do a 70.3 — but I have no clue how and don’t know if I can really do it.”

He wasn’t paralyzed by self-doubt. He believed he could do it. He just had no idea where to start, or what the process looked like.

My first response was simple.

The fact that we’re on this call means you can.

Here’s where we’ll start.

The Mistake Every Aspiring Endurance Athlete Makes.

Matt did what every guy in his position does.

He looked at the gap.

He was running once or twice a week. Maybe 5 miles total.

A 70.3 is a 13.1 mile run. After a 56 mile bike. After a 1.2 mile swim.

The 50k he’d been dreaming of doing for years is 31 miles.

Those training plans that called for 20-mile long runs, 40-mile weeks, back-to-back long days?

They made sense.

But they would never fit in his life.

This is the thing that keeps more people from the start line than anything else.

Not fitness. Not time. Not family.

It’s the belief that you have to somehow get from where you are to some mythical level of readiness before you can even begin.

You don’t.

Flip The Direction.

The entire 5-Hour Athlete philosophy is about looking the other way.

Instead of looking forward at the gap, look backward and get real with where you’re at - and what real progress would look like.

Matt’s first week of training was 3 short runs and a ride.

That’s it. No swim. No brick. No heroics.

If you’re running once or twice a week for 20 to 30 minutes, you’re at five to seven miles a week. You don’t need to worry about 20-mile long runs. You need to run three times a week for 30 minutes.

Ten miles a week. That’s the next step. Just that.

Once you can do that consistently — and once you understand a few basic endurance pacing principles that let one of those sessions go a little longer — you have a foundation.

And from a foundation, bigger efforts stop being hero sessions you’re praying to survive.

They become the next logical step in a process already in motion.

What Actually Happened.

Here’s Matt Dalton’s weekly run mileage over the last two years.

Average: 9.50 miles per week.

• 70.3 in May 2024

• First 50k in November 2024

• Second 50k in March 2025

• First 50 miler in September 2025

Four finish lines. Less than ten miles a week.

Here’s what he looked like with one mile to go in his 70.3.

Not surviving. Not digging deep. Just steady.

A guy with a good plan executing it. He paced the whole thing well, looked good, had fun.

It wasn’t a heroic performance where he found something he didn’t know he had.

It was just a well-executed race.

A few weeks later Matt walked into a courtroom.

The opposing lawyer was 300 pounds.

Matt’s first thought was:

I’m going to dominate this guy.

He won the case.

That’s not a story about running. That’s a story about who you become when you stop looking at the gap and start crossing finish lines.

“I Don’t Think I’m Running Enough”

I hear this every time I talk about “lower” volume training.

And I get it. The math feels wrong. A 50k is 31 miles. Ten miles a week sounds like you’re nowhere close.

But here’s what that objection misses entirely.

The athletes who fall apart in ultras never fall apart because they didn’t run enough miles.

They fall apart because they went out too fast, didn’t fuel, and had no plan when things got hard.

Another athlete came to me after finishing a 50 miler on 20 hours of training a week.

At mile 30 of his race he was fighting a time cutoff at an aid station, barely past halfway.

He’d made a wrong turn somewhere on the course.

His heart rate had been elevated for two hours despite not moving fast. He was covered in salt stains, running on force and discomfort, no plan left in the tank.

He finished. Barely.

When we started working together, we lowered the bar and raised the execution.

Instead of building up to 7 hour long runs, we did 3 hour runs better.

• better fueling

• more intentional pacing

• practicing trail skills and technique

He ran his first 100 miler this past year and called it a life-changing experience.

Volume is not as important as execution.

Start Here. This Week.

Read more

He was on a hilly campus near his office. No long stretches of flat ground.

So he skipped the intervals and checked down to an easy run.

Then the next week, he was traveling for work. Easy run again.

The following week? He was low on sleep and feeling fatigued. Another easy run.

Six months later — Same pace. Same fitness. Same runner.

I asked him about it. He wasn’t making a bad decision. He was following principles that are true in endurance:

The hill gave him an out. The philosophy made it feel like the right call.

Until it becomes the problem.

That’s the thing about speed work and beginners.

Easy runs are flexible — any road, any mood, any day of the week.

Speed work, somewhere along the way, becomes fragile.

It apparently needs the right surface, the right day, the right conditions.

A hill is enough to cancel it. Being in a place where you don’t know the roads. Feeling less than 100%.

Life doesn’t even have to try that hard to give you an out.

And every time it does — most beginners take it.

The pattern that builds isn’t just I run easy a lot.

It’s speed work is the thing I’ll do when everything lines up.

Which means it almost never happens.

Enough Of All The Zone 2

I tweeted this out last month. It seemed to resonate.

What The Data Shows

I had an athlete start with me in August 2023. His very first run:

• 10:50/mile average pace

• 157 average heart rate

• 162 cadence

One of his most recent runs:

• 8:11/mile

• 148 heart rate

• 178 cadence

His Zone 2 pace is almost 3 mins/mile faster, his heart rate is down ~10 beats, his cadence is up a ton.

He’s not just more fit. He is much more efficient.

Running is easier on his body.

And the mechanism was simple: consistent speed work, included from the start.

He didn’t build a mileage base first and then earn the speed work.

He did the speed work AND the easy stuff - and the efficiency came with it all.

This athlete rides bikes too, and he’s lived this same lesson there.

Here’s what he posted in our training group this week:

“I’ve been loving 100 rpm lately.

Force per revolution is lower and it makes a high Z2/low Z3 effort feel amazing and smooth.

If I see 80-85 anywhere it’s a sign I’m burning leg muscle when I could be using my aerobic engine instead.”

I have another athlete at an earlier stage of the same journey.

He did a 3 hour ride recently and was cooked afterward.

I pulled his data: average cadence 62 rpm

Grinding every pedal stroke, working his muscles when he should be working his engine.

His recovery ride two days later was prescribed at 90+ cadence. He averaged 74. I asked why.

I bounce around too much at 90.

That’s not a reason to avoid it. That’s a diagnosis of the problem.

The bouncing is the inefficiency.

Running Is Less Flexible To Develop

On the bike you can isolate the skill.

Spin at 100 rpm with low resistance. Practice the faster turnover without the hard effort.

Running doesn’t give you that separation.

After coaching 300+ fathers and beginner endurance athletes, I’ve seen that faster turnover only comes from faster running.

You can’t practice better mechanics without discovering it in hard effort - and drilling it down with consistent speed work.

What does this mean for the athlete example I shared in the beginning?

Every easy run you default to is a session where the skill doesn’t get touched.

The pattern doesn’t get challenged. The ceiling doesn’t move.

What To Do About Conditions

I lived in Philadelphia when I started endurance training.

A tiny neighborhood called Fishtown.

Narrow streets. Cracked sidewalks. Cars, busses, people walking dogs.

I had an interval workout on the schedule and rolled out to run one of my usual routes.

The 10 minute warm up was no problem.

But as soon as I hit the first set, I was thrust into a panic.

Dodging dog walkers. Jumping on and off curbs. Into the street when there was room, out of it when a car came.

Sharp corners at speed, thrusting my hips to the side trying not to crash into trash cans, leaping over someone sleeping on the sidewalk.

The workout got done — technically — but it wasn’t what it was supposed to be.

Next time I had that session, I headed to the greenway along the Delaware River.

Dead flat. No intersections. Tons of visibility. Room to run hard without thinking about anything else.

Same workout. Completely different result.

Conditions matter enough to solve for — not enough to cancel over.

There are real things that make speed work hard to execute well:

• traffic lights cutting across your stride

• too many turns on city curbs

• a quarter-mile stretch where you’re constantly stopping and reversing

These are legitimate problems worth solving.

But solving them means finding the greenway, a straight road, or a place with low traffic — not defaulting to the easy run.

My athlete’s hilly campus had a flat stretch somewhere.

The traveling athlete has a park in an unfamiliar city if he spends two minutes looking.

The Tuesday speed session that got bumped to Wednesday still runs on Wednesday.

The obstacle is real. The question is whether you tried to solve it.

The Permission Moment

Two of my athletes right now — both carrying a little extra weight, both in the five-hour-per-week range — told me this week they think they need to build their mileage first before adding speed work.

The instinct makes sense: earn the hard stuff, start slow, don’t skip steps.

But here’s where they are:

• 12+ minute miles

• Cadence around 150

• Ten miles per week at most

At that volume, more easy miles doesn’t build a base. It cements an inefficient movement habit that will never feel good.

They’re not running slow because they’re unfit.

They’re running slow because they haven’t learned to turn their legs over.

And no amount of easy ten-mile weeks is going to fix that.

I See This In The Swim Too

It’s the same mistake as the beginner triathlete who thinks they need to swim 1.2 miles in 70.3 prep before they do short sets and speed work.

The short sets are exactly what teach you mechanics, pacing, and what good form feels like.

That’s what eventually lets you cover the distance with less effort.

Not grinding away slow and sloppy.

Volume doesn’t unlock mechanics. Mechanics unlock volume.

Beginners have the progression backwards.

Read more

He never made it to the start line.

He chalked it up to running injuries. I asked what his run training looked like.

20 to 25 miles a week.

“How long had you been running consistently before you ramped up?”

“Oh, well I’d been dealing with some injuries the past few years, so I was really just getting back into it.”

There it was.

He hadn’t trained toward his race.

He trained toward what he thought a 70.3 athlete should be doing.

No reference to where he was coming from. No account for his injury history. Just a plan he found online and the ambition to go for it.

The result?

Did Not Start.

That’s how most solo athletes train.

They sign up for the race, look up what they “should” be doing, and start chasing benchmarks that have no connection to their current fitness, history, or ability.

The race distance matters. But where you’re coming from matters more.

After coaching 300+ dads to endurance finish lines, I’ve found there are a few benchmarks to pay attention to when you begin training.

These are ability assessments across swim, bike, run.

And they give you a clear picture of where you’re at — and what you should focus on.

This tells you exactly how to improve.

One tool you need before you start: a GPS watch.

I use the Coros Pace 3 — at $199, it’s the best value smart watch I’ve found. And the battery life is insane.

It tracks everything you need.

Garmins work too. Clean data will help you learn and improve.

1. Run

Three questions:

1. Can you run for 60 minutes at an easy pace — or does running for an hour feel exhausting regardless of effort?

You can run for 60 mins easy?

Good. Work through the next two questions.

Not yet?

Follow the tips below AND do all your training runs as a 9/1 run/walk pattern for the next 4-8 weeks.

Running comfortably for 60 minutes is the first run benchmark to strive for.

2. What is your running cadence?

Most beginners are running at 158–162 steps per minute. The target is 170 or above.

Your watch will already have this data.

I ran my first three Ironmans at a cadence of 162. Every single one, I fell apart late in the run.

Hips throbbing, no power left in my stride. I thought it was just what Ironman felt like. I thought I needed more long runs in training.

It wasn’t. I was running with the brakes on.

I got a run gait analysis and learned the real problem:

• not enough knee drive

• landing too straight-legged

• too much vertical oscillation (bouncing up and down instead of moving forward)

When I fixed those things, my cadence jumped to 172.

My marathon time dropped 15 minutes.

3. What is your current 5k PR?

Here’s a challenge for you: Go run a 5k this week and find out where you are right now.

Don’t rely on a time from a Turkey Trot 4 years ago - or just a random guess.

Take the challenge. This single number will set your running pace zones more accurately than any formula.

Pro tip: start conservative and aim to hold steady pace throughout. Most people start too hot and fade.

BONUS: Click here to access the Run Pace Zone Calculator.

Make a copy and input your 5k time to get your simple 6 Zone pace profile.

2. Bike

For the beginner endurance athlete, their initial training needs on the bike come down to one question:

Do you have a bike setup you can use consistently?

Gym bike, Peloton, Zwift, riding outside — it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that it’s repeatable. One to two rides per week is all you need to start building a base.

If you can clip in, even better.

Learning to ride in cleats early will accelerate your mechanics faster than anything else.

We will get to bike drills, power profiles, intervals, and how to unlock speed.

But for now, all you need is the ability to ride week over week.

3. Swim

When I started training for my first triathlon I just swam straight sets.

Every workout was one long continuous effort.

I assumed swimming was like running. You just go for a run. So you just go for a swim.

I had no idea swim workouts could be broken into sets.

Someone saw my workouts online and suggested I try breaking them up instead of swimming straight through.

That one insight changed everything.

Breaking up my workouts improved my comfort in the water, my breathing, how I understood pacing, how I started to notice my own form.

Now I see the same assumption in almost every beginner swimmer I coach.

They show up thinking continuous swimming is the path to improvement.

It isn’t. It’s usually just long and lazy.

Here is your initial swim challenge:

Go swim 200 yards as fast as you can sustain. Your watch will show your pace per 100 yards. Write it down.

Under 1:45 — you’re moving well through the water. You’re comfortable and with the right training you can get very fast.

Start here: 8 x 100 at 10 seconds above your test pace on 10 seconds rest.

1:45 to 2:15 — you’re functional but probably not comfortable. This is the group that always thinks they just need to swim longer. You don’t. Shorter sets, drills, and pace work will unlock your ability in the water.

Start here: 4 x 50 as 25 catch-up/25 swim. Then 4 x 50 descending pace. Then 4 x 50 fast with paddles. All on 15 seconds rest.

Slower than 2:15 — you’re likely doing most things wrong. Not moving water efficiently, gasping for air, over-rotating. Get video of yourself in the water and send it to me.

Start here: 4 x 50 fist-to-swim by 25. Then 4 x 50 as 25 catch-up/25 swim. Then 4 x 25 with fins.

4. Recovery

Pull up your watch data. Get two numbers:

1. Sleep

What’s your average hours per night over the past 6 months?

Most guys aren’t looking at this.

Once you have your average, work backwards to clarify your sleep routine.

This is going to open up freedom in your schedule.

If you average 7 hours and 15 minutes, that’s your target.

Getting up at 5am will not be difficult if you’re in bed by 10.

But if you let bedtime drift towards 11 - or even midnight?

Waking up at 5 will feel impossible.

2. Resting heart rate

A few years ago, I coached a powerlifter to his first Ironman.

He came into training strong, 270 pounds, built for moving huge weight.

After just 3 months of endurance training, his resting heart rate dropped 10+ beats.

He felt better every day than he had in years.

If you are in need of improving your general health, this will be a motivating number to follow.

The second reason I track resting heart rate is I’ve found it to be the best early warning sign of getting sick.

If I see my RHR rise 3-5 beats, that is a sign my body is run down and I need rest.

One day of rest caught early saves me from pushing harder, getting sick, and needing three days to fully recovery.

Don’t worry about “optimizing” recovery. Just become aware of these two metrics.

Where do you stand?

The area with the biggest gap is where you start. Now you know what that is.

What you do with these numbers is what the rest of this book is about.

Your First Workouts

Read more

Start with The Full 5-Hour Athlete Roadmap to see where this publication will take you.

Andrew has been one of my athletes for years.

He always comes back to this line:

“If it takes you 30 minutes to get out the door, you’re never going to make it in endurance.”

It was a one off comment on a team call three years ago.

But it stuck.

The session you’re most likely to skip isn’t the one that’s too hard.

It’s the one where you can’t find your HR strap, your watch is dead, your bottles are still dirty from Saturday, and you have no clean socks.

And by the time you’ve sorted it all out - the window is gone.

That’s what this post is about.

The real problem isn’t time.

I was recently talking to an athlete who’d been struggling with consistency.

Busy season of work. 3 kids. His wife was traveling.

He wasn’t training at all.

On our call, he said something that surprised me:

“I know I have the time. Saying I don’t would just be an excuse.”

He was stuck in a painful no man’s land.

Not under self-deception that he can’t make it work.

But also not making it work.

When I dug in, the pattern was clear.

He’d go to bed with a vague idea of training in the morning. But he’d wake up with more clarity on whatever business problem needed solving.

And a vague training plan is no match for a concrete work problem.

So he’d default to his computer. Every time.

The intention was there. The decision wasn’t.

The three levers.

Read more

Readers, athletes, friends, family.

They’re usually looking for tactics. But what they’re really after is confidence.

Confidence that they’re on the right path and focusing on the right things - in pursuit of a big goal.

Over time I’ve seen the simplest tip become a major launching pad for someone’s endurance journey. Something that sticks with them forever - that they eventually pass on to help someone else.

As The 5 Hour Athlete takes shape, it feels right to bring these questions here. So more people can be exposed to key insights, gain confidence, and keep moving toward something big.

Welcome to the first edition of Ask The Coach.

This week I've chosen five questions and included two pieces of content I shared recently that seemed to resonate.

Let's get into it.

Subscribe now

#1: I can swim, but I can’t freestyle for more than a few minutes without dying. I can side stroke for a long time, but it’s super slow. My first 70.3 is next weekend. How should I be thinking about the swim?

It’s totally ok to pause and come up for air, regroup, etc.

But the mistake I see most often… the one guys regret… is making a rash decision to quit the race when they’re hanging on to a kayak.

Do side/back/breaststroke. Pause as many times as you need. Go back to freestyle once you get your composure back.

Doing something hard. Getting uncomfortable. Calming down and getting back to work.

This is the whole point of endurance.

#2: I have a powerlifting background and just started Ironman training. Swim and run feel manageable. But 20 minutes into any bike ride my legs are completely cooked. Should I just power through or am I riding too hard?

I’ve seen guys who can squat 600+ lbs struggle to ride at power numbers that sit inside my recovery zone (and I’m not even sure I can squat 300 lbs).

The reason is simple: technique

I guarantee you’re applying excessive heavy force at some parts of the pedal stroke, then losing tension and connection at others. That herky jerky power output is what you want to smooth out. There’s a ton of wasted energy in there.

The bike is all about rhythm. You want even tension on the chain at all times.

It’s not a “push” with your quads. It’s not a “pull” with your hamstrings. It’s everything working together and feeling smooth through the entire pedal stroke.

Two things will help you:

1. Do some cadence sets. 5 mins 65 rpm / 5 mins 75 / 5 mins 85 / 5 mins 95. Then start back at the bottom. 2 sets of that with a warm up and cool down. Just riding easy the whole time at the same watts through the rpm changes.

2. Check out these one leg drills

#3: I’m running my first 50k in 7 weeks. I've been battling depression and missed several long runs as a result. I managed 30k last weekend (3.5 hours) but my ankles were shot by the end. I can’t imagine running another 20k on top of that. Am I too undertrained to finish?

If you’ve already done 3.5 hours, consider doing a weekend with back to back 2 hour days as opposed to going 4+ hours in a single session.

If you can make 2 hours repeatable, you’ll build more durability (and stay healthier) than crushing yourself with 4+ hour runs.

For a first time 50k, your biggest advantage for race day is showing up to the start line healthy.

#4: I keep seeing coaches and runners online talk about hill workouts but I’ve never actually done them. What’s the right way to run hills?

Hills are one of the first high intensity workouts I give beginner runners.

They’re a good high intensity workout, they train good form, and they build run strength.

Here’s a simple structure to follow:

• 10 min easy jog warm up

• 5 x 30 second hill repeats with 2 min recovery

• 10 min easy jog cool down

The 2 minute recovery can be a combo of walking and jogging back down the hill.

It helps to have a flat section of road leading into the hill so you can finish your recovery on the flat and loop back before rolling right into the next rep.

#5: I’m 8 weeks into training for my first marathon. The race is 6 months away. I’m currently running 25 miles a week with a long run at 10 miles. Training feels good but I keep wondering if I’m behind. Should I be doing more?

Here’s a reframe I present to athletes whenever they ask about doing more.

“More” is relative to what you’ve done. Not what you think you need to do.

Look back at your training over the past 3 months and compare where you’re at today.

If your volume is up by at least 5-10 miles per week (and you’re staying healthy), you’re in a good spot.

If your mileage hasn’t moved in 3 months, it’s time to bump up.

Don't get so caught up looking ahead at what you think you need to do next that you forget to keep track of what you’ve done.

Straight Shots

Two things I shared this week.

On X:

Every beginner runner gets told the same thing.

“Do more zone 2. Build your base. Slow down to get faster.”

And eventually that’s true.

But if you’re running 10 to 15 miles a week and doing all of it easy, zone 2 isn’t your problem.

You’re not running enough for it to matter that much.

The lowest hanging fruit for most beginners isn’t aerobic fitness.

It’s movement efficiency.

Half the reason you’re slow is sloppy mechanics.

And more slow running just reinforces the sloppiness.

Speed work fixes this.

Intentional, structured fast running that forces your body to coordinate better and run like a runner.

The 80/20 rule is true.

But it was built for athletes doing 10+ hours a week.

At 3 to 5 hours a week, 80% Zone 2 is a lot of slow miles that won’t teach you much.

Try 60/40 instead.

More easy runs - yes.

But lean in to the speed work.

Run fast. Rest. Repeat.

Endurance progress isn’t just fitness.

It’s skill.

Zone 2 is a volume game.

And most beginners are chasing volume gains on little time.

Build the skill instead.

On Substack Notes:

The 20 minute run between work and dad duty matters.

Respect it. Count it. Show up for it.

But if you’re an endurance athlete chasing something bigger than fitness, you can’t survive on scraps forever.

The short stuff keeps you glued together.

It won’t make you feel unstoppable.

That feeling comes from the long stuff.

The 10 mile run. The 3 hour ride.

The trail run where you’re lost in the mountains and have to find your way back.

You don’t need all of them at once.

Different seasons of life call for different tactics.

But after coaching 300+ dads in endurance, here’s what I know:

The guys who feel truly alive in this sport find a way to do the big efforts.

They rarely go two weeks in a row without one.

And when the weekend fills up with family, they move up it to Friday - not back.

Your body can survive on short sessions.

Your mindset needs the long ones.

Have a question? Drop it in the comments.

It might show up in the next issue.

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Skip Tuesday. Plan for Wednesday. Work goes crazy. Wednesday is skipped.

Tell themselves Saturday will be a big one.

Saturday comes. Kids have a game. Family plans appeared from nowhere. The big run doesn’t happen.

Sunday is church, groceries, and by the time a free window opens up, you’re exhausted — or you default to clearing the pileup of work emails before Monday.

Meanwhile the guy doing 3 miles on Tuesday, a 35-minute ride Thursday, and not snoozing the alarm on Saturday just put in three weeks of consistent training while you were waiting for the perfect window.

This is the core mistake.

New here? Start with The Full Roadmap to see where this publication is going.

The long run isn’t the engine. It’s the reward.

You earn the long run by showing up Tuesday and Thursday.

Without that frequency, Saturday’s 90 minutes isn’t training — it’s damage control.

Your body spends the first 45 minutes remembering how to run and the last 45 breaking down.

Frequency is the prerequisite. The long run is what frequency earns you.

The math most athletes get wrong.

One 12-mile run per week feels like serious training.

Three 4-mile runs per week feels like not enough.

Same total volume. Completely different stimulus.

The athlete doing three short runs is building the habit, adapting to frequency, getting form reps, and sending consistent signals to their aerobic system.

The athlete doing one long run is doing an event every weekend, breaking down by mile 6, going dark for six days, and spending the rest of the week thinking he needs to run longer.

My two-year-old’s survival swim plan.

When my son turned two, my wife and I put him into survival swim lessons.

My assumption was that he’d be spending a lot of time in the pool.

But his program looked very different.

His lessons were just 10 minutes long. Three times per week.

I asked the swim instructor to explain the philosophy and she laid it out simply:

“When kids are in the water longer than 10 minutes, they default to and ingrain bad habits.

Their practice becomes sloppy. And pretty soon, they dread getting in the water.

When the lessons are just 10 minutes, the lessons are higher quality — we do it more frequently so the skills get practiced more often.

And the kids end up enjoying it much more.”

The same is true for beginner endurance athletes.

Running and running long are two separate skills.

For the average dad who was competitive athletically as a kid but hasn’t followed structured training in years, the lowest hanging fruit in endurance is getting better at the movements and leaving the session feeling solid — not going further with sloppy form and limping into the kitchen.

An athlete example.

Read more

I didn’t know what to expect when I launched this. But the response has been clear:

Ambitious parents don’t want to be told it’s not possible without 20 hour training weeks.

A few comments that stood out from the early feedback:

“This is such a good framework. Love it.”

“I realized I’ve been doing a version of this for years. But I never knew it positioned me to do real endurance races.”

“This is awesome. I’m just coming out of the newborn phase for #2 and looking to get my head above water. Couple of races on the horizon and this is encouraging stuff.”

The guy in the newborn phase isn’t behind. He’s not too tired. He’s not too busy.

He just needs a system built for the life he’s actually living.

Here’s what this publication actually is

The 5-Hour Athlete is a living book — being written in real time, one post per week.

A complete distillation of everything I’ve learned coaching 300+ dads to finish lines over the last several years.

The frameworks. The tactics. The principles I've tested with real athletes - people with full lives and real goals who did things that shocked them.

Every post is a chapter. Every chapter builds on the last.

Each week you’ll walk away with something you can implement in your training right away.

By the time this is complete you’ll have a full training system. Not a collection of tips.

A coherent start-to-finish approach to endurance sport that fits inside a real life.

Where we are right now

We’re in the first section: Get Calibrated.

This section gets you oriented with:

• the weekly structure

• how hard to push (and when to hold back)

• the habits that make everything else possible

Most athletes skip this and wonder why they’re stuck.

This is where we start.

Chapters in this section

1. The 5-Hour Athlete: An Introduction (Published)

2. The 5-Workout Week (Published)

3. The 8:30/Mile Strava Guy (Published)

4. Stop Saving It For The Weekend (March 24)

5. Make It Easy to Start (March 31)

6. Take This Test Before You Train Another Mile (April 7)

7. Stop Defaulting to Easy (April 14)

8. The 5-Mile Test That Teaches You to Race (April 21)

9. Permission To Go Hard (April 28)

Where we’re going

Once Get Calibrated is complete, we’ll dive into chapters covering every element of endurance sport.

Run: days per week, intro form and cadence cues, speed workouts, and how to scale your long run on limited time.

Bike: technique, power, the long ride, and how to train effectively whether you’re on a road bike, TT, indoor trainer, Peloton, or gym bike.

Swim: building from zero, getting comfortable in the water, sessions under 30 minutes, and how to break through the 2:00/100 pace plateau.

Strength: harmonizing gym work with endurance training, how to keep your upper body strong, and looking good with your shirt off.

Fueling: what to eat for daily meals and how to fuel workouts so you stay high energy in training, as a parent, and at work.

Race Execution: pacing, transitions, fuel strategy, gear, and how to operate at aid stations.

The Long Game: how to stay consistent through changing seasons of life and maintain an athletic identity that lasts beyond just one race.

How to use this publication

Start at the beginning and read in order. Each post builds on the last.

Paid subscribers get every chapter as it’s published — the full archive, the complete system as it grows.

Subscribe now

Free subscribers get the first two posts plus this one. Paid posts unlock the coaching content that goes deeper.

The book is being written every Tuesday.

I’m glad you’re here for it. This is going to be something special.

— Ryan

You know this guy.

Maybe you are this guy.

He runs 2-3 days a week. He’s done races for a few years.

But he hasn’t gotten any faster…

His easy runs aren’t easy. His hard runs aren’t hard.

Everything lands in the same gray zone - uncomfortable enough to feel like work, not hard enough to actually force adaptation.

This is the 8:30/mile Strava Guy.

The effort that feels like training but isn’t producing results.

The 8:30/mile Strava Guy isn’t lazy. He’s just been optimizing for the wrong thing:

What other people think about your pace.

A Question From One Of My Athletes

A few months ago, an athlete sent this into our training group:

“My running form feels way better when I’m running faster — like 30-45 seconds faster than my casual Z2 pace.

I’ve tried replicating it at the slower pace but it’s just not the same.

Should I just send it on all my runs until the faster pace becomes easier?”

Read more

He’s the one with the clearest system.

Most training plans fail here.

Not because the workouts are wrong, but because the structure doesn’t account for kids getting sick, high pressure work sprints, and family life.

This leaves guys feeling behind and unclear where to pick back up when plans change.

This post fixes that.

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• 5 workouts

• 30 to 60 minutes each

• Clear guardrails that keep you on track

• Enough flexibility to survive a real week - and feel progress daily

Here’s exactly how it works.

Pick Your Track

The Endurance Builder: Run, bike, strength. Race goals on the horizon. Build fitness that compounds over years.

The Triathlete: Swim, bike, run, strength. 70.3 and beyond. Train smarter, race faster, recover better.

The Lifelong Athlete: Run, strength, outdoor movement. No race bibs required. Show up fully for yourself, your family, and your work.

Pick one. Your training framework is below.

The Guardrails That Make It Work

The frameworks tell you what to do. These rules tell you how to use them.

#1: Select from a menu of workout options.

Every exercise type has three choices designed to help you develop across speed, strength, and endurance.

Select one intentionally. Go into each session with a plan.

#2: 20 minutes minimum counts.

A short session on a day that’s flipped upside down is worth more than a perfect one done tomorrow.

Never let perfection be the enemy of just showing up and giving your best.

Focus on not putting up zeroes.

#3: No two days off in a row.

One rest day is recovery. Two in a row is letting training become optional.

Keep the thread alive.

#4: Prove the week before you scale it.

Complete four consecutive weeks at the same structure before you add anything.

The goal is not to do huge weeks that risk burn out or injury.

The goal is to build a durable foundation that you can scale upon.

The Endurance Builder

The Triathlete

The Lifelong Athlete

Before You Start: Two Decisions That Will Make or Break Week 1

#1: Choose your rest day before the week begins.

Don’t plan to train every day and then call a missed session rest.

That’s not recovery. That’s drift and excuses.

Pick your rest day intentionally based on your life.

Some guys like Sunday for church and family. Others choose Monday if it’s their heaviest work day.

The day doesn’t matter. The decision does.

#2: Front-load the sessions that have the most resistance.

Every athlete has one session they avoid.

The pool. The weight room. The speed run.

Whatever yours is - put it in the first half of the week.

When you get the hard thing done early, you’re playing with a lead by Wednesday. Then the back half takes care of itself.

Your Next Step

Pick your track. Print it out or log it in your notebook. Do week one.

That’s it.

Next post: most early stage athletes are training at the wrong intensity without knowing it.

Too hard on easy days. Too easy on hard days.

Always somewhere in the middle, leaning into resistance, working hard enough to feel tired, never hard enough to get faster.

I call this the 8:30/mile Strava Guy. And it stalls all progress.

That post is for paid subscribers.

Subscribe to The 5-Hour Athlete →

— Ryan

They’re the ones who figured out how to keep showing up - through the job, the kids, the chaos - without letting any of it fall apart.

Most training programs don’t teach that.

This one does.

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I spent seven years in the gym and went from discovering discipline to just trying to stay in shape while corporate life slowly broke me.

I’d tell myself I was going to train after work, then skip it for happy hour.

Wake up hungover on weekends and mail in workouts.

I was stuck swinging between 10 and 20 pounds overweight, and my confidence kept eroding.

I needed a change. Not a better gym program. A different life.

Endurance sport gave me that.

But not because I quit everything and went all-in on Day 1.

It was because training gave me a framework for how to show up.

It compounded.

One finish line led to another.

Ultras. 70.3s. Six Ironmans. The World Championship.

Adventures I couldn’t have imagined from behind a desk.

This became my reality doing less than most others in the sport who’ve accomplished the same things.

I’ve averaged ten hours of training per week for the last five years. But what I’ve learned from coaching is that you don’t need that.

Five hours is enough to do things that will shock you.

I’ve coached hundreds of athletes across endurance finish lines.

Powerlifters doing their first Ironman. Blue collar workers. Corporate 9-to-5ers.

Founders and executives. Lawyers. Parents of young kids with no margin to spare.

I’ve raced alongside athletes, coached live at races, run ultras side by side with people who didn’t think they belonged there, and hosted training camps where I’ve watched ordinary people reach mountaintops - and keep going.

The methods that work aren’t complicated. They’re just rarely taught together in one place.

Until now.

The proof is in one athlete.

In Brandon’s own words:

“Early on I tried all the wrong things to deal with the stress of life.

Drinking every day, hiding from my problems rather than facing them head on.

When I finally decided this was not the way, I had to climb out of the hole I dug for myself.

It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.”

Today Brandon has completed an Ironman, fast 70.3s, and ultras up to 100K - on 6.5 hours of training per week.

Four kids. Running his family business. Never missed a season.

Then last fall everything changed. New W-2 job. Two-hour daily commute.

We rebuilt his entire framework around what he actually had space for: four 30-minute windows mid-week, a 100 push-up streak on weekdays, one longer weekend effort.

Last month he ran a 50-mile ultra.

The system didn’t break when life got hard. It adapted.

Who this is for.

This publication is for fathers and ambitious professionals who want to chase real athletic goals without compromising work, family, or the people counting on them.

You don’t need to be gifted. You don’t need a perfect schedule. You need a system built around the life you actually have.

If that’s you, you’re in the right place.

Pick your track.

The Lifelong Athlete: Run, strength, outdoor movement. No race bibs required. Show up fully for yourself, your family, and your work.

The Endurance Builder: Run, bike, strength. Race goals on the horizon. Build fitness that compounds over years.

The Triathlete: Swim, bike, run, strength. 70.3 and beyond. Train smarter, race faster, recover better.

Whichever track you’re on, you’ll find what you need here.

The debate that settled it.

A while back I posted this. It still gets shared all the time:

I followed up with a sample week:

Then someone asked: “Can you do an Ironman one next? I’ve done five 70.3s but just can’t get the math right in my head to make a 140.6 work.”

That’s coming too.

But not everyone agreed.

Another coach called the 5-hour approach “silly.”

Nearly 50 years of endurance training and 30 years of coaching behind that opinion. I respect it.

But one of my own athletes, Keith, replied before I could:

“A good coach will meet athletes where they are.

The 30-40 something crowd usually has a plate full of stuff in their life more important than endurance sports.

Make it reachable. Make it sustainable. Make it fun.”

Then another one of my athletes, jumped in. Former Penn State offensive lineman.

He’d just turned 30, averaged under 5 hours a week, and completed two 70.3s.

The skeptic pushed back:

“Define successful. Finishing isn’t the definition of success. It’s table stakes.”

So I defined it:

Success for the people I work with looks like:

• Setting a long term goal and not quitting along the way

• Improving how quickly they get back on the horse

• Learning to ask for help when they’re struggling — not lone wolfing it

• Being OK doing things imperfectly and dropping the all-or-nothing mindset

• Inserting themselves in a community aligned with their vision for life — when everyone around them is seeking comfort

These are the real challenges for the everyday guy.

And to do all of it with young kids, a wife, a demanding job.

5 hours a week is plenty to win like this.

I added one more thing:

Five hours isn’t the ceiling. It’s where you start.

The ceiling is wherever you decide to go from there.

What you’ll find here.

My writing at covers a spectrum of topics ranging from training, business, parenting, life design, and experiential updates.

What you’ll find here is more tactical, organized, and training specific.

Every post in this publication is built around one question a 5-hour athlete actually asks — and answers it with:

• a workout

• a training principle

• or a tool you can apply immediately

You’ll get actionable systems that work inside a real life.

The goal isn’t peak performance at any cost. It’s sustainable progress that makes every other part of your life better — not worse.

That’s what The 5-Hour Athlete is built for.

Thank you for being here and joining me on this journey.

— Ryan Dreyer Founder, Tribal Training. 6x Ironman. World Championship finisher.

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