We’re joined by Houshang Amiri, a UCI Elite Coach and Trevor Connor’s coach at the Canadian National Center, to address questions about both building endurance and top end work.

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The author of The Athlete’s Gut talks with us about digestive issues like bloating, cramps, pain and inflammation - all of which can derail the best event preparation plans. 

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We got so much great information from Dr Stephen Seiler when we interviewed him for episode 200, we wanted to make sure we shared it all with our listeners. In this episode, Dr. Seiler tells about breathing, beer and heart rate.

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Dr Inigo San Millan, the coach of Tadej Pogačar, discusses the physiology of recovery, biomarkers of training and why we don’t want to be in a constant catabolic state. 

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Chris Case is leaving Fast Talk! For his final episode, we gather some of his close cycling friends to discuss Chris and his epic rides, his parting wisdom, and what has made him a special part of Fast Talk.

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We asked for your questions on our 200th anniversary episode and we got so many of them that we decided to dedicate another episode to answer them. Here are your questions answered! 

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When looking at the history of endurance sports coaching, there's no better guide than coach Joe Friel. Quite simply, Joe Friel is the most trusted endurance sports coach in the world. He has trained endurance athletes since 1980 in triathlon, duathlon, road cycling, and mountain biking. Joe has trained national champions, world championship contenders, and Olympic athletes. And he has coached scores of amateur athletes of all ability levels. 

Friel’s philosophy and methodology for training athletes was developed over more than 40 years. They are based on his strong interest in sport science research and his experience training hundreds of athletes with a wide range of abilities. 

Friel is cofounder of TrainingPeaks and the best-selling author of many books. These include The Triathlete’s Training Bible, The Cyclist’s Training Bible, Fast After 50, Going Long, Your Best Triathlon, The Power Meter Handbook, and Your First Triathlon. His cycling and triathlon coaching platform, Joe Friel Training, is among the most successful and respected in endurance sports. 

We are privileged to have him on the show today to discuss the craft of coaching. And by that I mean both his personal views on what it takes to become an effective coach, as well as his new body of work entitled The Craft of Coaching, which is a multimedia guide to becoming a better, more successful, and happier coach. Drawing from his 40-year career, Joe shares the lessons he learned about athlete performance, the athlete-coach relationship, mastering the business side—and how to make coaching more rewarding. 

Joining Joe on today’s episode are a group of coaches who have also had their impact on coaching as we now know it. This includes Dr. Andy Pruitt, the creator of the BG Fit system; Frank Overton, owner of FasCat Coaching; Chris Carmichael, the founder of Carmichael Training Systems; and Kristin Legan, who has been both a coach and a professional cyclist.  

Let's dive into the history of coaching!

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Multiple-time Polka Dot Jersey Holder, Toms Skujins, discusses lactate testing, CGMs, ketone strips, and taking his own blood on the side of the road.

If you’re a listener of this show, you understand that nothing can replace hard work if you want to be at your strongest. But that doesn’t stop many of us from keeping an eye on the newest gadgets and tools with the hopes that one or two of them will give us that little bit more; that slight edge that pushes us over the top.  

 What might surprise you is that is something that we share with even the highest-level professionals. And while many of us imagine a battery of physiologist and coaches precisely tuning there every decision, that’s often not the case. Many pros get their information from the same places as us and just like us, they’re often found stopped on the side of the road struggling with their newest gadget.

That has been the case with today’s guest, a jersey leader at the Tour de France. Toms Skujins is a Latvian rider on the World Tour team Trek-Segafredo. He has worn the Polka Dot Jersey at the Tour de France and won multiple National Championships and one-day races.  

Today Toms talks with us about the many tools he’s experimented with over the years including continuous glucose monitors, ketone strips, the CORE Body Temperature Monitor, Oura rings, the Leomo accelerometer, and even conducting lactate tests on himself. Some have given him that extra edge, while others have left him bleeding on the side of the road – literally.

So, let’s dive into a few of these training aids and let’s make you fast!

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200!

For our milestone 200the episode, we address one big question: What does the future hold? And we attempt to answer that question by looking at several aspects of what’s to come: from the future of sports medicine to the future of bike racing to the future of exercise physiology research.

We first address the future of sports medicine. After 40 years of watching and, more importantly, influencing where endurance sports have gone, there could be no better guest than Dr. Andy Pruitt to help us predict where we will go next. What does the future of sports medicine hold? Will the development of products make us all better, healthier endurance athletes? How will bike fit change?

Kristen Legan is, in many ways, representative of modern cycling: she doesn’t just race, she doesn’t just coach. She doesn’t just do road or gravel or bikepacking events. In fact, she started as a triathlete, then evolved into a ‘cross racer, and now she does a bit of everything, from ultra-events to MTB marathon races. And more and more cyclists are doing this same thing. Kristen helps us answer the question: What does the future of bike racing hold?

Never at a loss for a well-reasoned remark about anything to do with training or cycling or physiology, Rob Pickels helps us put a point on our discussion of the future of endurance training. What is the future of things that didn’t exist five years ago—things like wearables (Whoop, Super Sapiens, etc.), virtual racing, and training?

Finally, we couldn’t call it a special episode without Dr. Stephen Seiler. He first appeared nearly 150 episodes ago and he’s been with us, if not on podcasts, then in spirit ever since. The Jay Z of physiology, the godfather of polarized training, Mr. 4x8 himself, Dr. Stephen Seiler addresses the question: What does the future of endurance physiology research look like?

From the very beginning, this show has been driven by the audience—we aim to serve you by exploring the topics you want to know more about, and by answering your thoughtful questions. This episode continues that legacy: We gathered your best questions, and chose a few to answer on some of the most popular themes we’ve discussed in the past: polarized vs. sweet spot training; muscle soreness; weight; and nutrition.

Believe it or not, we also include some bloopers in this special 200th episode. You wouldn’t believe the dirt that various cameras and microphones have collected on us over the years. Don’t judge!

Finally, Trevor and Chris offer their take-home on the last 200 episodes—the most important thing each has learned from the journey that is Fast Talk.

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Many of our listeners, in fact, most of the staff here at Fast Talk Labs, could be considered “time-crunched athletes”—people with only 6-8 hours to train each week. We’re athletes who, because of commitments like parenting and work, must try and find ways to fit training in around life, rather than the other way around.

And if you’ve heard that term before—the time-crunched athlete—it’s because of our guest today, who literally wrote the book on it. But before you jump to the conclusion that the prescription in the book is high-intensity intervals all the time, think again. That isn’t the case, and today we explore the specifics of the method, as well as the science that informs this training approach. We also discuss its limitations, and whether, as we are so often asked, if it can play nicely with the polarized approach.

Our featured guest today is, of course, Chris Carmichael, author, coach, and the founder and CEO of Carmichael Training Systems, or CTS, which now boasts 50 professional endurance coaches who have worked with more than 25,000 amateur and professional athletes since 2000. Chris was a member of the 1984 Olympic Team and the iconic 7-Eleven Pro Cycling Team, and is a bestselling author of more than 10 books on training and nutrition. He was also coach to the U.S. Olympic Cycling team in 1992 and 1996.

We're also joined by a host of other experienced coaches, including Menachem Brodie, Jared Berg, Julie Young, and Neal Henderson.

It’s time to explore training with limited time. Let's make you fast!

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