You cannot draw a picture of your cat. That's the reason you cannot train properly. Application is the hardest part of training. How do we measure training when we cannot use emulsification of the soul as the benchmark that we've put another drop in the drum? We learn to avoid fatigue at all costs, and we learn how much some people seem to love to be tired.

Don't stay hard. Training isn't supposed to be a cage match with a polar bear. It's practice with proficiency leading to improvement in what we can do with ease. The best way to train is to feel easy everyday. Easy doesn't mean slow or fast. Easy means with ease. We just have to cut bait on the romanticism to get there. It's hard to stay easy.

This is the audiobook sample for The Blood and the Rain Chapter 3 - The System Defends itself. The Blood and the Rain will be released as an ebook and paperback in July 2025. The Audiobook is scheduled to be released by the end of the summer. Enjoy.

July 2025, Black Cats Run Founder and Host, Tristan Black-Ingersoll will be releasing his book The Blood and the Rain.

This is the audiobook preface to The Blood and the Rain.

It introduces the core argument of the book: that endurance performance isn’t limited by physiology alone, but by the brain’s regulation of effort, fatigue, and threat. The book builds on ideas explored in Black Cats Run, challenging modern training paradigms and offering a new framework for how athletes improve. It also introduces the Multi Scalar Endurance Model (MSEM) which argues for a more nuanced and pedagogical approach to training. It builds on many of the ideas of the podcast, but it introduces completely new material.

The book will be release for Kindle, paperback, and later this summer as an audiobook.

Paperback will be on sale for $29.99. But if you contact us directly via our Instragram page @Blackcatsrun you can get a signed copy for $17.99.

Enjoy.

The case is afoot! Is it possible that the explanations we have for fatigue are not only limited but that they hide a greater truth? Performance competes with fatigue, they are, at the boundaries of performance, where we find failure and exhaustion, antithetics. Maybe, if we can find the trial, we can unearth something unexpected? The brain is our number one suspect. Tag along.

In high school Doug Ingersoll won the Massachusetts vs Connecticut Interstate Cross Country Championship. Fun Fact, the previous year's winner was Alberto Salazar. He then ran cross-country and track for four years at Bowdoin College in Brunswick Maine where he set school records in the 4x800m, 1500m, 1 mile, 3000m, 2 mile, and 3 mile. This is his story.

What do we do when nothing is doing what we want? We discuss three core issues of perspective that create the fog of war that's holding us back from seeing the results we hope to gain from all our time and effort. What limits us from seeing what's right in front of our nose?

If only we weren't as horribly weak and mentally deficient as we are. The neighbor's lawn is so much better than our own. If we just dig that little bit deeper and then a whole scale transformation will occur. Or maybe it won't. What makes it so tough for people to just train easy? Break on through.

Consensus is not proof of what can, or cannot be done. How can we determine the scale of improvement possible from training? Why does training lead to the adaptations that we see? How can we apply an understanding of why training can sometimes have a significant impact on fitness and sometimes no impact at all? Are the strategies most commonly used the most effective? Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

The three core questions for endurance sport training: how intense should my training be; how much volume of training should I do; how frequently should I train? We consider answers to these questions.