A high VO₂max can be a sign that you are inefficient, not that you are fit.

That is one of several ideas Marco Altini takes apart in this episode.

Marco is co-founder of HRV4Training, an endurance coach, an advisor at Oura, and a guest lecturer at VU Amsterdam.

He holds a PhD in data science and master's degrees in computer science engineering and human movement sciences. He is also Bruna's coach and an advisor to augo.

We start with why he prescribes almost everything by perceived effort and almost never gives a pace or a heart rate. He explains how he brings along athletes who cannot yet read their own effort, and what he actually looks at when he analyses training data, which turns out to be far less often than most people assume.

Then we get into the lab. Marco tests for running economy and substrate oxidation at race intensity, and explains why VO₂max is one of the least actionable numbers in endurance sport, using his own results as the example.

We also cover what changes between a road marathon and a trail marathon, whether you can train for trails without trails, why fueling past ten hours becomes a calorie problem rather than a carbohydrate problem, and where AI genuinely helps a coach.

That last part gets specific. Marco describes using augo to pull up a fueling conversation from months earlier instead of scrolling through workout comments and WhatsApp, and explains why he sees the tool as removing administrative friction rather than replacing coaching judgement.

About augo

augo is an intelligent platform for endurance sports coaching. It combines coach and athlete communication, workout data from Garmin, Strava, Coros, Wahoo, Polar and Zwift, and post-session athlete feedback in a single platform, so coaches can ask a question and get an answer with full athlete context. augo surfaces which athletes need attention today, tracks wellbeing trends over time, and remembers every note, conversation and session feedback.

augo is built to support coaches, not replace them.

Learn more at: www.augotraining.comMore from Marco: marcoaltini.substack.com

Two runners can look at the same race stats, the same distance, the same elevation gain, and finish hours apart. Ido Dassa has spent a decade learning why.

In this Expert Series episode we talk with Ido, a pro ultra-trail runner and CEO of RacePace. He is the Israeli 100 km champion and national record holder, a member of the national trail team, and a The North Face athlete. He has raced backyard ultras, 200K on the road, vertical Ks and technical mountain 100Ks. He also started running at 18, as a smoker who had never played a sport.

We cover what separates trail running from road running, and why importing road pacing into the mountains is how most first trail races fall apart. Ido explains what to look for in a course profile before race day, how he decides when to walk and when to run uphill, the three common hand positions on climbs and what each one actually does, and why technical descents deserve more caution than most runners give them.

We also get into fueling. Ido pushes back on the carbohydrate numbers circulating online, explains why gut training deserves sessions of its own, and describes the 100K where cold, altitude and wet hands stacked up until he pulled out at halfway.

For coaches, his closing point is short: learn the demands of the race first, then build the plan around them.

🔗 IDO & RacePace

• ⁠https://www.instagram.com/ido_dassa/
• ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/find_racepace/⁠⁠⁠

• ⁠https://www.findracepace.com

👋 HOSTS

Human Endurance is hosted by Bruna and Fabi, coaches, athletes, and co-founders of augo.

• Bruna: ⁠https://instagram.com/justbrunathings⁠
• Fabi: ⁠https://instagram.com/endurance_fabi⁠

To support this podcast, head over to augo and create an account:⁠ ⁠

• ⁠https://www.augotraining.com⁠
• ⁠https://instagram.com/augo.training⁠

Pain shows up late. By the time you feel it, the process has usually been running for months.

In this Expert Series episode we sit down with Martin Kumm, a sports chiropractor who has spent the past five years with WorldTour cycling team EF Education-EasyPost, alongside years working in ice hockey and track and field. He is a lifelong athlete himself, from national level basketball to triathlon to cycling.

We go through the questions athletes ask us over and over. Does a warm up actually prevent injury, and how long should it be? Should you stretch, or are you someone who should not? Is a cool down worth the time? How much strength training do you really need, and what happens to it during a three week race? Are magnesium and creatine worth the money? And now that the research has shifted, is the cold plunge still doing anything for you?

Martin also explains why he can tell whether a professional cyclist played other sports as a child just by asking them to stand on one foot, and why plantar fasciitis you feel in your heel often starts in your toes.

If you coach, his closing answer may change how you plan your season. Stop trying to prevent injuries and start building a robust athlete.

🔗 MARTIN

• https://www.instagram.com/martinkumm_cycling/

• https://cycling.clinic/ride-ready/

👋 HOSTS

Human Endurance is hosted by Bruna and Fabi, coaches, athletes, and co-founders of augo.

• Bruna: https://instagram.com/justbrunathings
• Fabi: https://instagram.com/endurance_fabi

To support this podcast, head over to augo and create an account:

• https://www.augotraining.com
  
• 
  https://instagram.com/augo.training

Bevan McKinnon has coached triathletes for over 20 years, hosts one of the sport's longest-running podcasts, and won his age group at Kona in 2016.

We talk with him about what changed in his coaching when he stopped starting with the workout. Bevan makes the case that the objective data most of us build our training around tells us very little on its own. A flat CTL can hide an athlete who is genuinely getting fitter. A completed session guarantees nothing. "The brain is auditing the body at every single second in time," he says, and his argument is that we have largely stopped listening to it.

He shares how he opens the conversations most coaches avoid, why he asked a physiologist to write an Ironman race plan with no numbers in it, what heat preparation actually costs an athlete, and his one-word answer to the question of what age groupers can learn from professionals.

We also get into fuelling, recovery capacity, and why he now describes himself as a health coach rather than a triathlon coach.

--

Bevan is the founder of Fitter Coaching and hosts Fitter Radio: https://www.fitter.co.nz/bevanmckinnon

Follow him on Instagram: @fitter.co.nz

Follow Fabi on Instagram: ⁠@endurance_fabi

Follow Bruna on Instagram: @justbrunathings

Follow augo on Instagram: ⁠@augo.training

Learn more about augo: www.augotraining.com

In this Guest Series episode, we sit down with Ronja, a 23-year-old from the canton of Lucerne who came back to Switzerland in 2024 after a football scholarship in the US and started running almost by accident, mostly to clear her head.

Within a year she had won her debut marathon (SwissCityMarathon Lucerne, 2:43:38) off a longest training run of just 26K, and later run 2:38:48 for second at the Zürich Marathon, a U23 Swiss record.

We get into:

• How she actually used ChatGPT to build and adjust her training, and where AI coaching started to get risky
• Her move from self-coaching to a human coach, and then toward more science-based, data-driven training
• Why race fueling is the biggest piece of untapped potential in her running
• The mental side: kinesiology, racing through pain, and running with a smile as a performance tool
• Her road toward the World University Games and an Olympic goal for 2028 or 2032

It's a story about starting late, progressing fast, and the reminder that consistency, rest, and joy matter more than any single heroic session. Whether you coach or race yourself, there's plenty here on the promise and the limits of training with AI.

------

Follow Ronja: @ronja_hofstetter

Follow Bruna: ⁠@justbrunathings

Follow Fabi: ⁠@endurance_fabi

To support this podcast, check out augo. Use code HUMANENDURACE to get 1 month for free.

What changes when you stop chasing the number and start running on feel?

Amanda Martin spent eight years chasing the US Olympic Trials marathon standard. This spring she taped over her watch at the Eugene Marathon, ran the entire race blind to her pace, and crossed the line in 2h34, an eight-minute personal best and comfortably under the qualifying time.

Amanda is a marathoner and a neuro rehab physical therapist in Salt Lake City, and a former Emory teammate of Bruna.

She walks us through the breakthrough and what actually made it possible: cutting her weekly mileage, protecting one big quality session a week, running her easy days genuinely easy, and rebuilding her relationship with fueling after years of under-eating and RED-S.

We get into the mental side too, from positive self-talk to her rule for knowing a goal is worth holding onto: "If you can't go a day without thinking about it, it's probably something you can achieve."

If you're working toward something big around a full and demanding life, Amanda's story is full of honest, practical takeaways on training, fueling, blood work, and making the sport work with your life instead of against it.

Follow us

• Amanda
• Bruna
• Fabi

About the hosts

Bruna & Fabi are the co-founders of augo, a next generation coaching software bringing AI to empower endurance coaches, not replace. They also coach runners and triathletes of all levels at Jornada Endurance.

What does it actually take to line up at your first trail ultra and not just survive it, but do it right?

In this Expert Series episode, we sit down with Ash Daniels, Level 3 Athletics Australia accredited coach, AUTRA endorsed coach, and Australian national 100km team manager, to get into everything road runners need to know before making the jump to trails.

Ash starts where most coaches don't: with his own disastrous first attempt at Ultra-Trail Australia, carrying enough kit to survive the weekend and arriving at a checkpoint six hours late.

From that experience came a 5-hour PB the following year, a decade-long coaching career, and a very clear philosophy on what actually matters in trail and ultra preparation.

In this episode we cover training specificity for trail (and why your marathon prep won't save you), the vert-per-10K metric Ash uses with all his athletes, why he ditched heart rate zones in favor of running power and RPE, what social media consistently gets wrong about electrolytes and high-carb fueling, and a nuanced, honest conversation about where AI fits (and doesn't fit) in coaching.

Whether you're eyeing your first 50K or just trail-curious, this one is packed with practical, no-nonsense insight.

--

Find Ash at journey2ultra.com.au or on Instagram @journey2ultracoaching

Follow Bruna: @justbrunathings

Follow Fabi: @endurance_fabi

Learn more about the podcast: www.humanendurancepodcast.com

In this episode, we sit down with Pascal Rüeger, the Swiss ultra runner who ran 100km in 6:18:27 earlier this year, beating a record held since 1985 by almost 9 minutes and winning the race by over 30 minutes.

Pascal only started running competitively in 2018, in his late thirties. Today he holds the Swiss national records at 100km, 6 hours (91.6km), and 12 hours (161.2km), plus the M45 world record for 100km. He is self-coached, science-based, and trains twice a day, every day.

We talk through his race-day execution in Italy, his pacing strategy at 3:40/km, and how he uses heart rate zones to manage a sub-7-hour 100km.

Pascal also walks us through his weekly training (160-200km, with "Crazy Thursdays" of double 50K sessions), his low-carb daily diet paired with carb-targeted race fueling, and the entrepreneurial mindset that lets him fail repeatedly and come back stronger.

For anyone curious about ultra running, late-starter performance, or what consistency at the limit actually looks like, this conversation delivers.

--

Follow Pascal: @swissultrarunner

Follow Bruna: @justbrunathings

Follow Fabi: @endurance_fabi

Bruna & Fabi are the co-founders of augo: www.augotraining.com

Bruna & Fabi coach runners & triathletes: www.jornadaendurance.com

More about Human Endurance: www.humanendurancepodcast.com

What separates an age-grouper who keeps improving from one who plateaus? It often isn't the next training method or the latest gadget. It's how they think about their training as a whole.

In this episode, we sit down with Mikael Eriksson, founder of Scientific Triathlon and host of That Triathlon Show. With nearly nine years of full-time coaching experience and an engineering background, Mikael takes a systematic, pragmatic approach to triathlon training that has helped athletes go from beginners to professional level.

We talk about how to profile athletes by their physiological strengths, why specificity is overrated for long-course racing, and the three metrics every coach should master: external load, internal load, and RPE.

Mikael also shares his philosophy on hard work in an era obsessed with recovery optimization: "You can become a pretty good athlete with very bad recovery if you're putting in the work. You cannot fully optimize your recovery and become a good athlete if you're not putting in the work."

If you're a competitive age-grouper looking for the right levers to pull, or a coach refining how you work with experienced athletes, this conversation offers a grounded, practical framework rather than a list of hacks.

Connect with Mikael on:

• Instagram
• Youtube
• Linkedin
• https://scientifictriathlon.com/

Connect with Bruna & Fabi:

• @justbrunathings
• @endurance_fabi
• https://jornadaendurance.com/
• https://www.humanendurancepodcast.com/

What happens when you stop thinking of yourself as "just a runner" or "just a cyclist" and start training like a complete athlete?

Peter Glassford and Molly Hurford from The Consummate Athlete join us to break down why cross-training might be the most underrated tool in endurance sports.

Peter is a Registered Kinesiologist and endurance coach with 20+ years of experience, and Molly is an ultra runner, author, and founder of Strong Girl Publishing.

Together, they've spent a decade helping busy athletes build sustainable performance through their 4 Cs framework: Cross-training, Consistency, Confidence, and Community.

In this episode, we get into practical strategies for fitting training around a busy life, why strength training matters more than most endurance athletes think, the real problem with ERG mode on the trainer, how to start cross-training without risking injury, and Molly's journey from crying in the shower after her first Ironman to setting the course record at her first 100-miler.

Whether you're a coach looking for fresh programming ideas or an athlete stuck in a single-sport rut, this one is packed with actionable takeaways.

Connect with Molly & Peter:

• https://consummateathlete.com/
• https://stronggirlpublishing.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/peterglassford/
• https://www.instagram.com/mollyjhurford/

Connect with Bruna & Fabi:

• https://www.instagram.com/endurance_fabi
• ⁠https://www.instagram.com/justbrunathings
• https://jornadaendurance.com/
• https://augotraining.com/

Join augo's launch event on March 26th in Zurich

• https://luma.com/8l4kbup7