Microcosm Coaching Team Call 03/17/2023:

This episode is all about planning for your first ultra, but veterans, don’t stop listening. There are tons of important takeaways that can be applied to athletes at all stages of the process. Our call starts with a focus on pacing, and then moves from topics around fueling, hiking, and working through low moments that will inevitably pop up on race day. In addition, we talk about practical and important parts of the race experience like using aid stations, drop bags, changing shoes, and studying the race map and profile. We finish the call with a brief on making it all about fun. Afterall, fun is the fuel that perpetuates the process forward over years, and truly allows us to find out what we’re really capable of as athletes.

If you’re a long time listener of this podcast, please do us a favor and rate and review us on your preferred listening platform. This helps us continue to build our community and get more interesting and important conversations out there.

As usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 03/03/2023

This episode is all about beginner runners, but if you aren’t a beginner, don’t stop listening. There are tons of important takeaways that can be applied to athletes at all stages of the process. We start the call by talking about easy runs based on feel versus heart rate, and from there evolve the call to touch on developing habits and routines, incorporating strength training and nutrition focus, as well as developing timelines toward big dream goals.

As usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support

in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact

us at [email protected]

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 02/24/2023  

We all have a really special guest this week, he’s written a new book called The Big Thing Effect: How to Transform Your Life Forever.  

This book will grab you and inspire you. It will help you unlock parts of you you didn’t know were there, both personally and athletically. Zoë and I have both really enjoyed this book, and I was really intrigued by how so many of the concepts are really applicable to athletes specifically. I think there’s a lot to unpack from listening to our discussion that can uplift us all!  

Today's guest is author, success coach and expert speaker - Jeff Patterson.  

You can follow Jeff on IG @officialjeffpatterson 

And check out his new book here: http://aspensuccesscoaching.com/

As usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]  

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 02/10/2023:

Today’s call is all exploring the concept of building confidence through a running lens. In this call, we define confidence as our belief in our ability to accomplish something. From here, we identify two types of confidence, extrinsic and intrinsic confidence, and discuss how to build intrinsic confidence through training and specific tools. Many of these tools were mentioned in last week’s mental performance toolset call, so please refer back to that call for tips on developing affirmations, visualization and mental imagery, as well as others. Throughout this call we mention that confidence is a growable skill, it’s not something that just exists or we’re born with. If you don't feel confident in a particular part of your running journey, use that as an opportunity to grow your confidence through the techniques and practices mentioned here.

Think about implementing one new technique into preparation for a workout or long-run, and one new technique into the workout or long-run itself at a time. Develop a sense for what you feel works well for you and what doesn’t through practice and experimentation with the goal of showing up for your next big event feeling more prepared and confident to go the distance.

I hope you enjoy this episode and as usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 01/27/2023

Today’s call is all about developing your mental performance toolset! We hope that by providing these techniques you’ll be able to build out your mental performance toolsets so you can better deal with adversity in training and racing. For more on visualization, see the link to our blog post on visualization 101 in our call notes.

Like anything, these techniques are best practiced overtime. Think about implementing one new technique into preparation for a workout or long-run, and one new technique into the workout or long-run itself at a time. Develop a sense for what you feel works well for you and what doesn’t through practice and experimentation, with the goal of showing up for your next big event with a few new tools that you know work well in practice.

I hope you enjoy this episode and as usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]

VISUALIZATION: https://www.microcosm-coaching.com/microblog/how-visualization-can-lead-to-training-and-racing-breakthroughs/

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 01/20/2023

The “Never Enough” mentality and approach to work, life, relationships, and financial status is an ever present part of today’s culture. It shows up everywhere, and for athletes this same mentality crosses over to training and goal setting- and has far reaching impacts on our mental health and overall contentment in an athletic life.

On today's call, we define what this mentality is and discuss several ways in which we see it manifest in ourselves and in the athletes we coach. We’re doing this in an attempt to help athlete’s become more aware of this mentality, so you all can better avoid the pitfalls in living in this mindset, and in the process develop a stronger relationship with yourselves while feeling more contentment in an athletic life.

As the call develops, we try to offer practical methods and solutions for working through the never enough mentality in training and in goal setting. We also lean on Licensed Clinical Social Worker and mental health expert Sarah Strong to offer us mindfulness tips and active solutions to help us grow our awareness and perspectives around this subject. The goal here is to help our athletes get to a place where they make better decisions in training and goal setting. Ultimately, so many of these takeaways can be applied right back into life too, so make sure you stick around to listen to this part of the call, because ultimately the most important relationship you have is the one with yourself. No achievement will ever feel like it’s enough if your self-worth isn’t intact.

I hope you enjoy this episode and as usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 01/13/2023

As many athletes on our team continue to get their race schedules ready for 2023, we wanted to start this year's calls off with the question, How does an athlete know when it’s time to step up to the next distance and what would an ideal timeline to get there look like? We love this topic because it encompasses so many of our coaching principles, like developing and knowing your why, developing self-awareness, and the compounding consistency principle.

From here, we talk briefly about xtraining before going into another in depth discussion around balance. We ask, does balance exist? Is it a worthy thing for athletes to strive for? How can we plan for training blocks that don’t go to plan? In answering questions like this, our team seems to always come back to our favorite James Clear quote, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your habits.”

I hope you enjoy this episode and as usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 12/16/2022:

This week's call is split into two sections, the first encompasses a really interesting, and ongoing discussion with athlete, coach and chaplain Chris Morgan about purpose. During this part of the call, we attempt to shed a little light on whether or not there is a purpose problem in trail running, if you need purpose to sustain the process and if the process itself is enough of a purpose to keep athletes running and working toward their goals for years. In the second half of our call we talk about our thoughts on having multiple A races in a season, choosing races and doing adventures that don’t fit our skill sets, and how to approach leveling up to more difficult adventures.

I hope you enjoy this episode and as usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 12/09/2022:  

On this week's call, we go into a deep dive on the menstrual cycle and birth control and their impacts on training. We discuss how athletes who menstruate can work with their bodies and take a practical approach to training. From here, the conversation shifts to talking about the impacts of low level activity on training and how athletes should view things like dog walks and human-powered commuting in the context of their training.    

I hope you enjoy this episode and as usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]

Microcosm Coaching Team Call 12/02/2022:

On this week's call, you will hear from coaches Sarah Strong and Kylee Van Horn on their takeaways from the 2022 season. What went well, what they’d like to improve on in 2023 and what process oriented goals will help guide them. From here, we’ll transition into a conversation about planning for 2023 and offer some tips for winter running!

I hope you enjoy this episode and as usual, if you have any feedback, a question for a future call or are looking for support in your running journey, please visit us on the web at microcosm-coaching.com or contact us at [email protected]