Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#539 Training the Mind While the Body Heals
91 Plays14 days ago
In this episode of the Grit2Greatness Endurance Podcast, we dive into one of the toughest challenges endurance athletes face: the mental game of injury. When training is limited and timelines are uncertain, fear, frustration, and identity struggles can take over. Using real coaching examples, we break down practical mental skills to help athletes stay engaged, grounded, and purpose‑driven while their body heals. We also share Grit2Greatness announcements, an Ask A Coach segment, and wrap up with a fun Buy, Sell, or Hold discussion.
Show Sponsor: Vespa Power
Optimizing your fat metabolism for higher performance and faster recovery.
Less sugar. Higher performance. Faster recovery.
Home of Vespa Power Products | Optimizing Your Fat Metabolism
Use discount code: g2gvespa15
Link: https://vespapower.com/coupon/g2gvespa15/
Grit2Greatness Endurance Coaching — your path to smarter training and better results.
Website: Grit2Greatness Endurance Coaching
Facebook: @grit2greatnessendurance
Instagram: @grit2greatness_endurance
Grit2Greatness Ambassador Application:
https://forms.gle/mQjPbyzjAmmBhM6m9
Become a Grit2Greatness Team Member:
Getting Started with Grit2Greatness - Google Forms
Subscribe to the podcast:
Grit2Greatness Endurance - Podcast - Apple Podcasts
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Episode 539
00:00:20
Rich
Welcome to episode 539 of the Grit to Greatness Endurance Podcast. We're your hosts, coaches, Rich Soares and Lauren Brown, and we are on a mission to help endurance athletes train smarter, race stronger, and build the grit it takes to achieve greatness.
00:00:36
Lauren Brown
In this episode,
Facing Mental Challenges of Athletic Injuries
00:00:37
Lauren Brown
we're tackling one of the hardest challenges endurance athletes face, the mental side of injury. When your body puts limits on what you can do your mind often fills the gap with fear, frustration, doubt, and even a loss of identity.
00:00:54
Lauren Brown
We'll walk through world examples from athletes we coach, anonymized as athlete A, B, C, and d to explore how injuries disrupt training Force goal changes, challenge confidence, and test patience.
Athlete Shoutouts and Upcoming Competitions
00:01:08
Lauren Brown
Most importantly, we'll show you how to stay mentally engaged, emotionally grounded, and purpose-driven while your body heals.
00:01:17
Rich
Yeah, this is going to be a great episode, you know, and listen, you know, it's, it's not a matter of if this is always a matter of when, at any given time, you know, you know, you're going to probably know a triathlete who is dealing with, uh, with an injury. If you're not dealing one with one yourself, one of the beauties of being in a triathlete is that you have some other sports to pivot to. And we'll talk a little bit about that, as a, as we break this
Introducing Velocity Training Program
00:01:40
Rich
down with you. But before we get into that, we have a couple of announcements and I'm excited to start out with,
00:01:46
Rich
Our athlete shout outs for Grit to Greatness. Our team members, we've got Caroline Young Henry, who is going to be racing the Colorado Half Marathon in Fort Collins. It's a beautiful downhill marathon through the Poudre River Canyon.
00:02:02
Rich
Uh, and then we've got, and this is not a, this is not a triathlon thing, but Alice Kostrich, uh, good luck on your dance competition. She's a very competitive dancer. Uh, she does ballroom and country and you name it. she's amazing. Good luck. this, uh, this next week down in Colorado Springs with that.
00:02:24
Lauren Brown
I love that we get to celebrate Alice and her dancing because I know her training has looked a little bit different, but I love hearing about her doing her dance and getting her dancing shoes on. So good luck to both you ladies.
00:02:37
Lauren Brown
For our next announcement, Velocity, we are going to be supporting Colorado's Ride.
Exploring Colorado's Ride
00:02:46
Lauren Brown
So we're excited to announce the launch of Velocity for Colorado's Ride, which is a custom training program powered by Grit to Greatness Coaching and built specifically for athletes who part the program.
00:02:57
Lauren Brown
preparing for Colorado's ride. Velocity delivers structured coach design training that removes the guesswork and helps you train smarter, stay consistent, and arrive on ride day confident and prepared.
00:03:12
Lauren Brown
Whether this is your first Colorado's ride or you're training to perform at a higher level, Velocity meets you where you are and guides you forward. You can learn more and get started at the Colorado's Ride Velocity page. And let's make this your strongest ride yet.
00:03:32
Rich
I'm really excited about this for a couple of reasons. One, the ride director for Colorado's Ride is one of my very close friends, Bill Plok, who was also the co-host of the 303 Endurance and Mile High Endurance podcast predecessors to this.
00:03:48
Rich
And he's just got an amazing ride. It's a week-long ride. Every day it's just beautiful, you know mountain climbing and mountain rides. in one of the most beautiful parts of Colorado.
00:03:59
Rich
And we are going to take each one of those rides. We're going taking segments of the actual GPS course and riding the course. So you'll get to experience exactly what you're going to feel.
00:04:11
Rich
And we're going to really work on skills around power and cadence that are really make it successful for you.
00:04:15
Lauren Brown
Yeah.
00:04:16
Rich
So we're excited about this opportunity and thanks Bill and hope to have you on the podcast next week as a guest to you know, talk about the the launch. So, let's say a little bit of a public public open letter to Bill on the pod here.
00:04:33
Rich
All right.
Case Studies on Injury Impact
00:04:33
Rich
So, let's dive into our main topic here. Listen, you know, we said beginning here, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when you're going to you're going to experience injury. you know, this is a sport with a lot of repetitive sagittal plane, back and forth motion, Eventually something's going to give. We're were goingnna talk through, to give you a couple of, four quick case studies of actual real examples of, you know, things that you might experience or you, you know, you know you're going to know somebody who experiences these.
00:05:05
Rich
So here are the four examples. We've got athlete A, just got over a meniscus surgery, focused to remove running entirely. you know And this is one of those things where you know it struggle you struggle to watch your fitness decline despite you're doing everything right, right? That you had no to say in this matter. You just got you got a a meniscus tear.
00:05:27
Rich
you know And in the surgery and the PT, you're doing all this and you're just not sure if you're going to really bounce back. you know, it's going to test your patients. It's going to test your fear of re-injury, right? Cause you can go out there, try to run on that thing. You don't have the confidence yet.
00:05:41
Rich
Uh, you're going to have to redefine your progress in terms of healing and not in pace.
Mental Skills for Injury Management
00:05:46
Rich
Uh, athlete B,
00:05:47
Rich
learning how to come back from something like a traumatic brain injury, whether it's stroke or whatever, or concussion, It could really surprise you at the length of time it might take for your brain to support the healing process.
00:06:01
Rich
You're going to probably experience you know you know a little bit of an imbalance in your ambition. You're going to feel a little bit of, boy, will I ever get this back? and it's going to probably feel like, you know, you, you know, this is going to be a long road.
00:06:18
Rich
Patience, uh, patience is going to give you your most progress. we're gonna talk more about that in a little bit. And the next is, you know, a lot of people, and i I included have experienced lower back lumbar pain mine through a through a a pinch disc, if you will, pinched nerve on on a disc.
00:06:36
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm.
00:06:39
Rich
But it could also just be any kind of sciatic pain, you know some kind of lower back lumbar pain. And in this case, you know this particular athlete really can't run, really can't even stand for long periods of time.
00:06:51
Rich
Now, you know What this particular athlete is able to do though is able to swim and bike pretty pain-free. So that would give this athlete quite a bit of you know some options at least that don't limit across the board.
00:06:58
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm.
00:07:05
Rich
Very similarly, kind of on and on another end of the spectrum, you know maybe you're experiencing shoulder pain that might be preventing you from swimming, could even be preventing you from biking.
00:07:17
Rich
but in this case, this particular athlete can bike and run, but, uh, feels kind of incomplete as an, as a triathlete right now. And in an area where swimming probably isn't his particular strength, you know, wouldn't be one of his described strengths.
00:07:32
Rich
So that gives you some my anxiety, probably going
Redefining Success During Recovery
00:07:34
Rich
into race season. If you know, you're feeling like you're behind the curve a little bit in your swim form, swim fitness, and now you've got a limiter.
00:07:43
Rich
So those are just some examples. You know, we could probably be here all day listing all the different kinds of things that can happen from ankle injuries to knee injuries to hip injuries to back injuries to shoulder injuries to, you know, every part of the body is in in motion here.
00:07:54
Lauren Brown
Every part of the body.
00:07:58
Rich
So that is going to be our starting off point as I turn over to Coach Lauren to introduce us into our first set of skills, mental skills.
00:08:07
Lauren Brown
Yes. And before we jumped on coach, Rich and I were talking about that. It's like, We're hearing so much about people having setbacks and whether it's that people are just more vocal about it. So I know that this is going to resonate with a lot of our listeners and hopefully some of these things help you on your journey to healing and with our first takeaway, as far as the mental skills for injured athletes goes, it is to separate healing from fitness, right? So you have to think about that as two separate things. So when you're injured, one of the most painful mistakes that athletes make is judging healing by their fitness.
00:08:51
Lauren Brown
healing doesn't feel productive. It does not. it It can feel frustrating. It could feel like you're not doing anything, right? There's, you're not looking at your pace. You're not looking at your Watts or you're definitely not trying to set a PR, but that doesn't mean that nothing is happening.
00:09:08
Lauren Brown
Your body is doing incredibly hard, invisible work. And it's one of those things that you have to just, we say this in training, right? We say it with perfectly healthy athletes that you have to just trust the process.
00:09:23
Lauren Brown
And when it comes to healing, you have to trust the process, right? Right now your job isn't to get fit, it's to create the conditions for healing. And that means patience, compliance, and trust.
00:09:38
Lauren Brown
Fitness comes back faster and when healing is done well. And healing comes back slowly, fitness comes back slowly when you rush the healing process.
00:09:50
Lauren Brown
Hope. Keep this in mind, right? Hope lives in this truth. You are not falling behind. You're laying the foundation for the next version of you.
00:10:00
Lauren Brown
And I kind of think about this real quick, just as like, you know, sometimes like I say, I say zone two work is like the unsexy work for a lot of people. They don't understand it. They don't want to do it. But You're never going to get as fit as you can possibly be if all you do is go hard, go hard, go hard, and you don't embrace zone two. And if you don't fully embrace healing, you're going to come back half healed, and then you might end up setting yourself up for an even worse injury coming back not fully healed.
00:10:29
Rich
Yeah. I love this message of you can't build fitness on a, on a weak health foundation. Right. And, and, and you can, and if you, if you were to watch yourself, if you were to like watch your HRV, right.
00:10:37
Lauren Brown
Yep.
00:10:44
Rich
As you, if you're coming back from an injury, And, you know, if if you're pushing yourself, your HRV, know, might be dropping and and, and you're always, always on the, on this borderline of being overtrained or, you know, actually deepening your injury because you just haven't bounced back yet.
00:11:02
Lauren Brown
Yeah.
00:11:07
Rich
So making sure that you've got that adequate time and really, honestly, yeah just like you said, take it really slow until you've got that full foundation of, of health.
00:11:17
Rich
All right, I'm going to go to our second mental skill here, which is redefine, you know and you control you know what this means, right? So you can redefine what winning the day means.
00:11:30
Rich
Injury forces a hard reset on what success looks like. If you're using your old standards of mileage, intensity, and volume, right? pace or power, you'll feel like you're losing every day. So you've got to put that aside. You've got to redefine what the win is. Today's win might just be doing your rehab exercises. It might just be, so you know, stopping early. It might be choosing to rest because your HRV is borderline low when everything else, you know, is telling you, i really want to do this.
00:12:01
Rich
That's really what counts is making those smart decisions that will help you make the most progress. Athletes who come back strong, learn this skill. Success is context dependent.
00:12:13
Rich
What winning looks like today gonna be different than what it looked like before, right? The goal, the goalpost might have moved, but that's not failure. It's just, it's just adapting.
00:12:25
Lauren Brown
that is That's such like a healthy perspective and being able to pivot And again, i always say, this is like, whether you're dealing with injury or just dealing with any sort of setback with life changes, schedule changes, you have to always be realistic with where you're at and what you define as a win. So I think that's important in a lot of different contexts when it comes to training and life.
Protecting Athletic Identity
00:12:51
Lauren Brown
All right, the next one, this one's very real. Expect emotional swings. All right, so one of the most confusing parts of injury is feeling grateful and devastated at the same time. I'm going to really quickly plug, I think this is from the Mel Robbins book, The Let Them Theory, where she talks about how like two things can simultaneously be true, where you can In the book, she' she's referencing more like relationships. Like you can love somebody, but hate what they're doing. But it's the same thing. Like you can
00:13:24
Lauren Brown
you can feel ungrateful about something and also be grateful. Like, so it's two things you have to remember that two things can simultaneously be true. So you might think I should be happy. I can train at all.
00:13:37
Lauren Brown
I actually did a post about this when I was dealing with my knee bothering me and I was on the treadmill and I was thinking, all I was thinking was like, oh my God, this, this sucks. Like how, how am I even getting fit right now? I'm walking on an incline. And then I started to shift my thinking and I was like, I'm thankful I can walk.
00:13:53
Lauren Brown
i'm thankful i have a treadmill i'm thankful that i'm able to recover and i was like oh my gosh you have to shift that thinking because you can still train but then you have to remember that it's also okay to feel angry sad or scared that doesn't mean you're ungrateful it means you are human we are all humans having a human experience So injury creates that emotional whiplash, good days followed by hard ones, hope followed by doubt.
00:14:23
Lauren Brown
You have to expect that. You have to normalize it. And you really have to do your best to not judge yourself for it. The goal isn't... emotional stability. I don't know. That might be impossible, right? It's it's emotional honesty. i love that. I love that emotional honesty that when you allow the feelings, they can pass faster and they carry less power.
00:14:50
Lauren Brown
I love that one.
00:14:52
Rich
Totally. And you know and courage it courage is facing those emotions, right? Not avoiding those emotions.
00:15:03
Rich
And i love what you said about being being grateful, because honestly, that is probably the thing that gives you the greatest context, that you know gratitude.
00:15:13
Lauren Brown
mm-hmm
00:15:13
Rich
And if you think about it, There some people who don't ever have the opportunity to do this. So you having to you you having to scale it back, it could might still be moonshot for somebody who can't do this at all.
00:15:28
Rich
you know sure. To that end, uh, listen, you know, old metrics could be, you know, uh, could, could be a weapon. Uh, you know, you might emotional weapon, you, they, they, it might hurt to look at your pace, your power and your, you know, your FTP and, you know, your volume. Those were all useful when you were on, on the path. Now you're, now you've got an injury, you've got new numbers that you need to be paying attention and they are not those. So this, you know, this is you know,
00:15:59
Rich
This is where going to track things like, okay, how about consistency? How about i just did this one thing every day.
00:16:03
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm.
00:16:07
Rich
It wasn't everything that I wanted to do, but I did it every day. I was consistent about it. It might be just you know your PT exercises. Maybe you can't run, but you can do the PT. So you could measure out of the seven days, what percent of them did I do that?
00:16:26
Rich
Compliance, how how compliant was I with the prescribed PT? Did I do every set? Did I do it the way that my PT told me to do? Did I do the PT at all?
00:16:38
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm.
00:16:40
Rich
How many days in a row can you demonstrate patience or how can you measure or celebrate your patience as you go through this process? What rewards can you give yourself for being patient? you know you know you know Maybe you buy yourself that one, you know that pair of shoes that you can't wait to get into you know when you get back to full recovery and that's an incentive for you.
00:17:05
Rich
you know How do you measure the quality of your recovery? art you know This a great one, measuring your HRV on a consistent basis and having a goal around that.
00:17:13
Lauren Brown
Yeah.
00:17:16
Rich
Change the metrics. The old metrics might not be appropriate given where you're at. And then know know what the finish line looks like when you're ready to reframe and and update the metrics again when you're you're back to being healthy.
00:17:31
Lauren Brown
And it's one of those things where it makes me think of when you do a reassessment of your FTP or your 5k time trial and you can have those numbers drop at any given week where things are off and it's just it's just a number and I say this all the time the time is going to pass anyway so it's like stay like you said stay consistent track the things that matter at that point in your life really important And then moving on number five is to protect your identity.
00:18:06
Lauren Brown
Identity is huge. And I i definitely, i did not have any major injury, right? I was just dealing with some things going on with my knees, but because I couldn't run, i was depressed. I mean i was crying. i felt like I was so, so upset. And one of my friends was like, i think you're just feeling like you've lost a part of your identity. And I was like,
00:18:27
Lauren Brown
maybe that is right because now I feel like it's just a big part of my life just felt like it was taken from me. So many athletes don't just do their sport, right? You feel like you are your sport.
00:18:41
Lauren Brown
An injury can feel like it strips away part of who you are. And that is a really bad feeling. So I just want to say that it's like, feeling that way, recognize it, that that is not, it's not fun. It doesn't feel good, but you have to also then have the perspective that your identity isn't your weekly volume or your race calendar,
00:19:03
Lauren Brown
It's your values, your discipline, your resilience, curiosity, commitment, all of things these things come into play with who you are as a person.
00:19:14
Lauren Brown
and yes, we are all athletes, but we're people with a lot more going on. So you're still an athlete when you're injured. Because athletes adapt, right? Protecting your identity means staying connected to the process, even when the process looks different. And like we said, your process right now might be measuring your HRV, be doing your PT exercises, showing up and giving yourself grace.
00:19:38
Lauren Brown
So this chapter, it doesn't erase who you are. It reveals the depth of it.
00:19:45
Rich
Yeah,
Setting Realistic Recovery Goals
00:19:45
Rich
I love that. And, you know, it really is only natural that, you know, you will start to really identify, you know, and and create an identity around what you do most often, right?
00:19:55
Rich
Just natural.
00:19:55
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm.
00:19:57
Rich
But like you just said, it Coach Lauren, it's, you really have to, you know, change that, reframe it as, you know, now how do you handle, you know, your identity now is What are the best decisions you can make for yourself? right And sometimes that might mean, you know you've got to shorten your goal horizon. you know i I know a lot of athletes who, when this happens,
00:20:26
Rich
They now see the plan that they made earlier in the year or late last year now slipping away. They had that goal of being ready for this championship or this Ironman or whatever.
00:20:39
Rich
And the recovery time is just not going to line up with you know the the training time required for that race.
00:20:46
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:20:46
Rich
Long-term goals can feel crushed during an injury. Thinking about the whole season or next year often creates anxiety and will overwhelm you. So shrink the timeframe. Instead of you know thinking, will I ever get back, ask ask, what does this week require? Instead of, when can I race?
00:21:06
Rich
what helps me heal today, shorten the timeframe, make the goals in shorter horizons that, that seem more realistic, that will be building blocks to the future. It might be that kind of, you know, really the, the healing is the lead domino in, in getting back to full recovery. So athletes who recover best don't look that far ahead. They stack small controllable wins.
00:21:31
Lauren Brown
Yes. And you need to control the controllables. That's like what's in your sphere of influence and what's in your sphere of control. Think about what is in your control.
00:21:44
Lauren Brown
And it is Absolutely true. That injury makes you feel like you've lost a lot of control, but you haven't lost all of your
Focusing on Controllable Recovery Factors
00:21:53
Lauren Brown
control. You can still control your sleep.
00:21:56
Lauren Brown
Hey, listen, if you're not able to train as much, you better you better be controlling your sleep because if you don't know, there's a book that Coach Rich has that takes a couple hundred pages to tell you that the best way to recover and your best tool is your sleep. So you can control your sleep.
00:22:13
Lauren Brown
You can control your nutrition. You can control consistently showing up for your rehab. You can control your mindset. Like that is the most powerful thing, right? How you speak to yourself, whether you compare or you stay present.
00:22:29
Lauren Brown
So when athletes feel helpless, it's usually because they're focusing on what they can't do. and I'm going to say, these are i training always parallels life. This is going to be for any other type of situation, right?
00:22:42
Lauren Brown
You should not be focusing on what you can't do. You need to shift your energy to what you can do exceptionally well right now. And that is, and i knew it I knew the book was coming out.
00:22:54
Lauren Brown
There it is.
00:22:59
Lauren Brown
Share it. Let's see.
00:23:00
Rich
I don't mean to, I didn't mean to distract you because you were going to close this like a champ, but you know, I just figured as long as we're talking about healing and we're talking and we're talking about the mental game of injury, you know, this is actually a pretty good resource.
00:23:04
Lauren Brown
I know.
00:23:08
Lauren Brown
It's relevant.
00:23:14
Rich
This is a good to go by Christy Ashwandan. i And it's what the athlete in all of us can learn from the strange science of recovery.
00:23:25
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm.
00:23:25
Rich
And it really does, you know, unpack, you know, about a gazillion different, you know, types of recovery methods, which might be a nice layer too. And and maybe just a nice book to read as you are recovering.
00:23:37
Lauren Brown
Yes.
00:23:38
Rich
So.
00:23:38
Lauren Brown
And, and take control of your sleep. And I'll close that out with just pointing out that hope is when you realize that you still have agency, even in limitation.
Building Mental Resilience in Athletes
00:23:54
Rich
Tip number eight or mental tip number eight, don't rush testing. Testing during injury recovery often answers the wrong question. It doesn't ask, am I healing? It asks, am I as fit as I used to be? And that's not fair, right? failed test can damage confidence far more than it helps in your training and planning.
00:24:14
Rich
There's strength in waiting. There's wisdom in rebuilding quietly. Trust this. You don't need proof right now. you just need progress and progress doesn't always show up in a test.
00:24:26
Lauren Brown
Amen to that. Tip number nine, stay connected to the process. So one of the biggest dangers during injury is disengagement. So mentally checking out because training doesn't feel real.
00:24:43
Lauren Brown
and you absolutely need to still show up and even if like we said before if that means showing up and doing mobility work or doing your pt like you want to stay in the habit of what you've been doing right so don't break the habit where all of a sudden you're going to have to re-establish that when you are feeling healed Modified training still matters, right? It preserves the routine. it it reinforces your identity. And I really, i have to reemphasize that whole concept of the identity that we feel as athletes, because if you want to stay connected to that, you need to stay consistent with some sort of routine that makes you feel like you are taking control of your health and whatever that version of training looks like for you right now.
00:25:32
Lauren Brown
So Definitely remember it showing up even in a reduced way. It builds confidence that you haven't lost yourself. Hope lives in consistency, not intensity.
00:25:44
Rich
Yeah, love that. And have some confidence and trust that the fitness that you you had going into this injury, it's pretty durable. Athletes often fear that fitness disappears overnight. It does not.
00:25:58
Rich
The truth is, fitness is actually more durable than you think, especially aerobic fitness. Yeah, some of the sharpness fades, you know, you know some of the you know peak fitness.
00:26:09
Rich
But the endurance aspect, that really takes, you know you you you you you have a lifetime of endurance you know that you've built up. You're not going to lose all of that very fast.
00:26:20
Rich
But the deep work you've done, like you're going to be good. When your body is ready, fitness will return a lot faster than it will if your body isn't ready. So especially if you protected your mind during the recovery, you're going to have a much better bounce back, much faster bounce back.
00:26:39
Rich
This isn't the end of your story. It's just a pause and pauses don't erase progress.
00:26:44
Lauren Brown
Exactly. And like you mentioned earlier, we're triathletes. If one goes, we still got two more ways to train and that fitness will carry over. So key takeaway, you guys, injuries don't just test your body. They test your identity, patience, and trust.
00:27:04
Lauren Brown
So the athletes who come back strongest aren't the ones who rush the process. but the ones who learn how to train their mind while their body heals.
00:27:15
Rich
Love that. Hey, that was awesome. i Folks, I hope that you know if you know you're experiencing injury or you know someone that is, hope that this resonated and thanks for going through that with us.
00:27:27
Rich
Now, the moment you've all been waiting for, the fun segment.
Hosts' Personal Preferences
00:27:31
Rich
Now, before we get into tonight's fun segment, I'm going to give a quick shout out to some some contributions to our glazed and confused discussion from last week. If you were paying attention, we had a great interview that was under the theme, take the donut, which is all about a grabbing opportunity. But we had a fun segment and tried to like pin down what each individual person's sort of donut type is. And Coach Lauren is a plain glaze. and all I all always opt for the good old plain glaze donut, but pink with sprinkles is my favorite looking donut.
00:28:18
Rich
Obviously, laugh out loud. Awesome. So is that like you know like the pink the the pink frosting on the top?
00:28:25
Lauren Brown
Pink frosting and sprinkles. I love how that one looks, but if I was just going to it get a donut, I just, i I like a plain glazed donut.
00:28:35
Lauren Brown
I'm boring like that.
00:28:37
Rich
Hey, that's okay.
00:28:39
Lauren Brown
Yeah.
00:28:39
Rich
You know, sometimes, you know, you know, the yeah the plane is yeah actually, i like the plane, you know, that's like the old Krispy Kreme, right? That, you know, who doesn't like that?
00:28:48
Lauren Brown
Yeah. It's just like a good old faithful.
Endurance Gear and Trends Evaluation
00:28:53
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm.
00:28:53
Rich
Well, yep. Good old faithful. like that. Coach KO weighed in with a Boston cream. She says, I have to say that a good Boston cream is the way to go.
00:29:04
Rich
Donut creamy filled with complexity and delicious chocolate on top. So she's a creamy with chocolate on top kind of gal. And then we've got Emory Bolio. Belay, is it?
00:29:16
Rich
i don't know how to
00:29:17
Lauren Brown
Lou? blueu
00:29:18
Rich
Emory, am so sorry I'm mispronouncing your name, but this does seem appropriate given that it does look like a sort of a French last name. Glazed old fashioned versus original glazed, dense cake and sugar definitely worth the empty calories.
00:29:36
Rich
Thank you, Emory. That's awesome.
00:29:38
Lauren Brown
So much fun. All right. And I'm excited for the fun segment because even though I'm going kicking it off, I have not looked ahead, so I don't know what's coming. The fun segment prepared by Coach April, buy, sell or hold.
00:29:55
Lauren Brown
is the theme. So today we are opening up the training floor because here is what we have realized after years in this sport. The endurance world is a market. It has trends, it has bubbles, it has products that promise the moon and deliver shin splints.
00:30:12
Lauren Brown
And every single one of us is a portfolio manager, whether we admit it or not. So today's segment is simple. I'm going to call out a piece of gear, a fueling strategy, or a training trend, and we are going to rate it. Buy, sell, or hold.
00:30:30
Lauren Brown
No mid-range, no it depends. Pick a side. All right. You ready for it?
00:30:37
Rich
I love it. Let's go round one.
00:30:40
Lauren Brown
All right. So... Four hot takes about the endurance market itself before we get into specific assets. So buckle up. Hot take one. The endurance gear market is the only market in the world where expensive and where we're expensive and it makes you slower is a viable product strategy.
00:31:03
Lauren Brown
The $80 hydration vest that doesn't fit the carbon water bottle. We have a collectively we have collectively funded all of it. Hot take two. If a product has the word elite, pro, or race day in the name, you will buy it at least once in your life.
00:31:20
Lauren Brown
This is just, oh wait, are we supposed to be answering these or no?
00:31:26
Rich
I, you know, I'm not quite sure.
00:31:30
Lauren Brown
We are supposed to. Hot take one. Buy, sell, or hold. The endurance gear market is the only market in the world where expensive and it makes you faster is a viable product category.
00:31:41
Lauren Brown
The $80,000, which invest that doesn't fit the carbon water bottle.
00:31:42
Rich
Gotcha.
00:31:47
Lauren Brown
We have collectively funded all of it.
00:31:51
Rich
Got it This is a sell for me.
00:31:53
Lauren Brown
That is yes. Same for me.
00:31:57
Rich
Yep. Okay, good. All right. I'm following in now. Here we got we got this.
00:32:00
Lauren Brown
Okay. Yeah. I think I'm fine. Okay. Hot take two. If a product has the word elite pro or race day in the name, you will buy it at least once in your life.
00:32:12
Lauren Brown
That is just statistics. The marketing team knew they knew.
00:32:17
Rich
It's a buy. 100%. hundred percent
00:32:19
Lauren Brown
yeah
00:32:22
Lauren Brown
a product has the word elite pro or race day in the name, you will buy it at least once in your life. I'm going to say hold.
00:32:31
Rich
Okay. See, I've got to say bye because I but have both the Saucony Endorphin Pros and the Saucony Endorphin Elites just in case.
00:32:42
Rich
So...
00:32:42
Lauren Brown
Okay. All right. There you go. So you definitely, you have to be true to, true true to who you are, Rich. All right. Hot take three. The number of recovery products you own is inversely proportional to the amount of recovery you actually do. The athlete with three foam rollers, two massage guns, and a Theragun is also the one sleeping six hours a night.
00:33:01
Lauren Brown
We see you. I am you. Oh,
00:33:08
Lauren Brown
oh man. where did Where do you fall, Rich?
00:33:13
Rich
I'm probably on the whole because like I, you know, I mean, I have my share of foam rollers and, you know, but I didn't go like, I don't like go and spend a ton of money on it because, you know, there's sleep, you know.
00:33:27
Lauren Brown
You know, it's sleep. I'm going to say, i mean, I'm probably bi just because I do have a lot of things and I'm reactive.
00:33:38
Lauren Brown
So so i should be more proactive. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have been in the situation I was in this year because it was a lot of needing to dial back into my recovery routine.
00:33:49
Lauren Brown
Boo-la-ah.
00:33:53
Rich
All right. I like the opening bell. Now now now we're on a roll. You want to take round two?
00:34:00
Lauren Brown
You take round two. Yeah.
00:34:02
Rich
All right. And I think I got the easy one here because now we're on the training floor. We've got six assets, buy, sell, or hold. We're going to really quick. Here we go. Number one, carbon plate super shoes.
00:34:14
Lauren Brown
Bye.
00:34:15
Rich
Bye. Number two, coal plunges.
00:34:18
Lauren Brown
I mean, that's, I can't say bye or hold. I'm going to hold because I should do them more.
00:34:25
Lauren Brown
Yeah.
00:34:31
Rich
I can't wait to go see her house one of these days.
00:34:33
Lauren Brown
Oh, thanks.
00:34:34
Rich
Number three, run streaks, buy, sell, or hold.
00:34:38
Lauren Brown
Sell.
00:34:39
Rich
Sell. Zone two training, buy, I agree.
00:34:42
Lauren Brown
Bye. Mm-hmm.
00:34:45
Rich
I gotta go slow to go fast. Airport compression socks.
00:34:49
Lauren Brown
Out of all the times I've flown, I have never used or bought them, so I'll say sell.
00:34:55
Rich
Okay, I'm going to go hold. You know, I'm not consistent with them, but they you i I have found that they help, especially for long trips.
00:35:03
Lauren Brown
The longest flight I've ever had has been like six to seven hours. so that's probably also part of it.
00:35:08
Rich
Still, that's not a nothing burger.
00:35:10
Lauren Brown
Yeah.
00:35:12
Rich
All right, buy, sell, or hold. The mid-race gas station Coke.
00:35:18
Lauren Brown
I'm going going to say hold. I'm not opposed to it, but I've never, I've never done it.
00:35:24
Rich
I'm going to sell that baby. No, I couldn't do that. there I couldn't do it. You know, they got this stupid thing here in Colorado, in Denver called it the Taco Bell 50K.
00:35:35
Lauren Brown
They were talking about that the other day. I heard it I don't know radio or on a podcast. I was like, we know about this.
00:35:35
Rich
And you've got to like go
00:35:43
Rich
Freaking crazy. Yeah. No, I don't think I could do this. Now I will on a long bike ride. Like if I'm out on a long ride, i will hit the gas station for a gas station burrito, you know little bean and cheese burrito, you know, with microwave and yeah.
00:35:50
Lauren Brown
Yeah.
00:35:54
Lauren Brown
Ooh. Wow. Risky. Yeah.
00:36:01
Rich
Amazing.
00:36:04
Lauren Brown
That was fun. All right. All right, G2G fam. The trading floor is yours. We want to know your highest conviction buy, your loudest sell, and the trend you are quietly holding through the volatility.
00:36:22
Lauren Brown
Drop your portfolio. In our Instagram comments, tag at G2G Endurance and the boldest take gets read on next week's show. Remember, the market can stay irrational longer than your hamstrings can stay healthy. Train hard, eat well, and for the love of all that is holy, do not buy another hydration vest.
00:36:44
Lauren Brown
You have enough hydration vests.
00:36:48
Rich
How many hydration best do you have?
00:36:50
Lauren Brown
Zero, I have run bottles.
00:36:55
Rich
I have like, I seriously like have like four at least and and at least three or four
00:36:58
Lauren Brown
of Yeah.
Product Endorsement for Vespa Power
00:37:02
Rich
run bottles too.
00:37:03
Rich
I, why, like how many can I possibly have?
00:37:04
Lauren Brown
Oh.
00:37:07
Rich
Like, yeah, anyway.
00:37:08
Lauren Brown
Well, I look around, I'm like, if I see good marketing, but I always look around, i'm like I'm like a marketer's like favorite person because I'm like, ooh, I like the design on that. That label looks cool. That name is pretty cool. And I'm like, no, Lauren, no. but
00:37:21
Rich
Man. Hey, I'll tell you one thing that I would buy and that is Vespa. I would buy some Vespa because honestly, this is this stuff.
00:37:30
Lauren Brown
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:37:34
Rich
Vespa Power Endurance helps you tap into steady, clean energy so that you can stay strong, focused, and in the zone, whether you're racing or training longer. It's not fuel. It's a metabolic catalyst. It's in this pouch. It's a very kind of like, you know, watery substance. It's bit, it's a, a good mouthful.
00:37:54
Rich
And if I just taking that about 25 minutes before your race or very hard effort, It really shifts your body into a, bigger fat burning mode and you can really feel the difference.
00:38:07
Rich
also helps your recovery.
00:38:09
Rich
Less Sugar, Higher Performance, Faster Recovery, the home of Vespa products is a link right here in the show notes. It's gonna give you 15% off of any order. And the code is G2GVESPA15. Again, that will all be in the show notes.
00:38:26
Rich
Thanks for spending time with us today to unpack the mental side of recovery on the Grit Greatness Endurance podcast. If you enjoyed this and learned something or had a little fun,
00:38:38
Rich
please follow us and leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts and YouTube. It helps us reach more athletes like you. Hey, stay gritty, train smart, and keep chasing greatness.
00:38:50
Rich
We will catch you next week.