Peak Stride Coaching

01/25/2026

If the cold and snowy weather has you chained to a treadmill you can escape the boredom by incorporating some fun games to break up the monotony and reduce injury by changing pace and incline. Breaking runs into intentional segments makes the run mentally easier, physically smoother, and far more productive.

1. The Dice Roll Workout - A choose your own adventure treadmill session.

Setup Assign each number on a die: 1 = +1% incline for 2 min
2 = +0.5 mph for 1 min
3 = 1 min fast / 1 min easy
4 = 3 min steady tempo
5 = 2 min hill @ 5%
6 = 90 sec progression (increase speed every 30 sec)

How it works: Roll the die every 3–4 minutes. Follow whatever it tells you.

Why it’s fun - Zero monotony. Turns the treadmill into a game.

2. The Card Deck Run - A full deck becomes your workout generator.

Setup Assign each suit a category:

Hearts = Speed (30–60 sec faster)
Clubs = Incline (1–2% bump for 2 min)
Diamonds = Steady effort (3 min)
Spades = Recovery jog (2 min)
How it works
Shuffle the deck.
Draw a card every 2–3 minutes.
Face cards = slightly harder version of the category.
Aces = 1 minute strong push.

Why it’s fun - You never know what’s coming next.

3. The Rhythm Switch-Up Run - A music driven workout that keeps your brain engaged.

How it works:
Build a playlist with alternating slow and fast songs.
Run easy during slow songs.
Pick up to a steady tempo or light progression during fast songs.
Why it’s fun - The music dictates the effort, not the treadmill. Great for days when motivation is low.

4. The “Every Time This Happens…” Run

Structure - Pick 3–5 triggers that force a change.
Examples:
Every time someone walks into the gym → +0.5 mph
Every time your show switches scenes → 1 minute incline
Every time your watch buzzes → 20 second pickup
Every time you drink water → 1 minute steady pace

Why it’s fun It turns the environment into part of the workout.

5. The “Commercial Break” Run - Great for runners who like watching shows while running.

How it works
Run easy during the show.
When a commercial hits (or every 5 minutes on streaming), bump speed +0.5–1.0 mph for the duration.
Return to easy pace when the show resumes.
Why it’s fun - The show becomes the interval timer. Time passes shockingly fast.

Enjoy!

11/02/2025

November often signifies the conclusion of the racing season and runners start to prepare for next year’s races. Entering the base phase of a training cycle is laying the foundation for a successful season ahead. It’s a time to build aerobic capacity, reinforce good habits, and reestablish consistency without the pressure of peak performance. Just as important, though, is taking an honest look at the shortcomings of the previous racing season—whether it was pacing errors, lack of strength, poor leg speed, or mental fatigue. By acknowledging those gaps now, you can tailor your base work to address them directly, turning past weaknesses into future strengths. This phase isn’t just about mileage—it’s about intention. Don’t simply recycle that same ole base plan, hoping for a different result.

As always, reach out if you have any questions or need some help creating a base plan specifically designed for you.

Coach Mike

09/03/2025

Are you stuck in training Zone 2? Obsessed with your smartwatch’s heart rate monitor to dial in your training zones? I recently came across a great article by Dr. David Lipman—exercise scientist and host of The Norwegian Method podcast—that dives deep into the nuances of Zone 2 training and questions the reliability of using wearables to guide zone training.

In my own training and coaching, I focus less on rigid zones and more on perceived effort. I aim to touch all training zones throughout a cycle to achieve the desired outcomes. That said, I’ll admit—I’m hooked on my Garmin data. But I try not to get lost in the metrics and miss the bigger picture.

As the old saying goes: “You can't see the forest for the trees.” Sometimes, we get so caught up in the numbers that we miss what really matters—how we feel, and how we are progressing towards our goals.

Here’s the link to the article.

A Dissection of "Zone 2" Training for Health and Performance

07/20/2025

Fitness Influencer Survival Guide

I recently came across a brilliant "fitness survival guide" by coach and author Steve Magnus that cuts through the noise of influencer jargon to reveal what truly matters for endurance athletes. From VO₂ max and Zone 2 training to HIIT, SIT, and Tabata sprints, Magnus translates complex fitness lingo into a refreshingly practical framework.

His message? Forget the hype and keep it simple:
Training = “Mostly Easy. Some moderate. Occasionally hard and out of breath. A bit of fast and smooth. Vary it all up. And very rarely...Go see God. Do that for months and years, and you'll be fine.”

06/25/2025

With the recent heat and more to come, it’s the perfect time to talk about hydration. Marci has some pro tips to share. I also included a link to Coach Greg McMillan’s guide for running in the heat. It some basic info and includes some details on using the “talk-test” as an effective way to measure your performance and gives insights on over hydrating. Yes, you can over hydrate. 😊

This afternoon I was out battling the heat for a regular training run and I decided to compose this post for Coach Mike. Mike recently posted about fueling for races and performance and that had me reflect about how to prepare for summer training sessions. As we gear up for our next big race or a particularly hot training session, let's talk about the importance of staying hydrated and fueling our bodies with electrolytes ahead of time. 💧✨
Why Hydration Matters: Proper hydration is crucial for maintaining peak performance. Dehydration can lead to fatigue, cramps, and even heat-related illnesses. According to experts starting a race well-hydrated can make a significant difference in your endurance and overall performance.
The Role of Electrolytes: Electrolytes, such as sodium, potassium, and magnesium, are essential for muscle function and fluid balance. They help prevent cramps and keep our energy levels stable. Once fatigue and cramps start, it is an up-hill battle to avoid further and too late to start consuming electrolytes.
My Strategy: To ensure I am fully prepared, I increase my water intake during the week leading up to the race. Additionally, I add about 20 oz of an electrolyte drink, like Gatorade, each day for the three days prior to the event. We cannot control the weather, but we can control how we train physically, pre-fuel and hydrate prior to the event. I could be woefully undertrained, but I can be well fueled! 💪

Learn to train and race in the heat with this comprehensive guide. Learn how to identify heat illness and adjust your training and racing when it's hot outside.

06/02/2025

Racing Season Considerations

For triathletes, the racing season is just beginning, while many runners have wrapped up their spring events and are shifting focus to late summer and fall goals. As you plan your next race, two key elements deserve your attention: the structure of your training plan and your fueling and hydration strategy for longer races.
Training Plans

Most training plans are structured around the seven-day week, assigning specific days for easy runs, hard efforts, and long runs. However, this rigid framework can lead to insufficient recovery, making you feel fatigued or sore for key workouts. Olympian and coach Diego Estrada emphasizes that your body doesn’t recognize the days of the week—it only knows when it’s tired.

A flexible alternative is the 2:1 cycle: two easy days followed by one hard day, repeated. In this approach, your long run—considered a hard day—doesn’t always fall on the weekend. If your schedule allows, experimenting with this pattern may reduce injury risk and help you feel sharper on intense training days.

Fueling & Hydration
Fueling and hydration requirements are highly individual, so rather than rigid guidelines, the focus should be on practice. Your gut needs training just as much as your legs. Race day should have zero surprises—everything from your pre-race breakfast to fueling timing and hydration intake must be rehearsed.

Under-fueling and dehydration can wreck performance, but over-fueling and excessive hydration can also cause GI distress and discomfort. To fine-tune your strategy:

Fueling: If you plan to use race-course fuel, incorporate it into training. While practice is key, you don’t need to fuel for every long run. During your training also consider days where you use no/slow fuel runs, which have specific physiological benefits. Coach Greg McMillan's approach details when to rely on gels versus alternative strategies. https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/no-fuel-slow-fuel-long-runs/

Hydration: Determine your sweat rate with a simple fluid-loss test—weigh yourself before and after runs in race-like conditions. Once you know your fluid loss, practice replacement strategies. Use this calculator to determine how much fluid you need.
https://runningversity.com/sweat-rate-calculator/?srsltid=AfmBOophMmQweM-iwNHRU6qJgxeXys9O2fACX4zzYB-k1njqMn4HRA0m

Again………………practice, practice practice.

Follow this guide to doing a sweat rate test and then use this simple sweat rate calculator to understand how much you should be drinking in training and races.

05/04/2025

Strides – your secret weapon to running faster

Do you want to run faster? I’m pretty sure most of you would say yes. One simple, big bang, low stress, and actually fun addition to your workout routine is called strides. What are strides? Strides are short, fast bursts of running that help improve speed, efficiency, and neuromuscular coordination. I’m sure your saying, I don’t have time for one more thing. No worries. Strides can fit into the time or distance of your planned run.

Benefits of Strides
Improved Running Economy – Strides help refine your form, making your movement more efficient.

Enhanced Speed & Power – Strides target fast-twitch muscle fibers, essential for sprinting and speed bursts. The more you train these fibers, the better your ability to accelerate and maintain a quick pace.

Fatigue Resistance – During a long run or race, the prolonged exertion fatigues our slow-twitch fibers. When this happens, the body will try to call in the backup quarterback, your fast twitch fibers. While slow-twitch fibers are dominant in endurance events, fast-twitch fibers play a critical role in maintaining efficiency when slow-twitch fibers start to tire. If you don’t train your brain and nervous system to use the fast twitch fibers they won’t be there when you need them.

Better Neuromuscular Coordination – They train your brain and muscles to work together for smoother, more powerful strides. By developing neuromuscular coordination, fast-twitch fibers absorb some workload, reducing strain on fatigued slow-twitch fibers and lowering injury risk.

How to do strides

Start at a Jog – Begin at an easy pace, then gradually accelerate.
Build Speed – Over 20–30 seconds, increase to 80–90% of max effort (think 5K or even mile pace), focusing on relaxation and good form.

Stay Smooth & Controlled – Keep your stride fluid, drive your arms naturally, and stay light on your feet.

Decelerate Gradually – After peak speed, ease back to a stop instead of suddenly stopping.

Repeat 6-8 times – Do the next stride when you are fully recovered.

How to Incorporate Strides into Weekly Workouts

Post-Easy Runs – After an easy run, focusing on relaxed, fast running. They can prepare your legs for a faster session the next day.

Hill Strides – Doing strides uphill builds strength and improves turnover and is a very running specific strength workout. You don’t want the hills to be to be steep. 1-2% grade is fine.

Mid-Run Strides – Adding strides during long runs can break up monotony and keep your legs fresh.

I included some links below about strides. You’ll notice that they may reference a different duration, quantity, or effort. That’s OK. There is not a perfect stride workout. That’s the beauty of it! Don’t fuss over them. Just do them 2 or more times per week and have fun running fast. The one thing all three links have in common, strides work!
https://geeksonfeet.com/run/strides/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ghqbV-VexCM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uAqIRNImbg

03/30/2025

Sweat the Small Things

We’re often told not to sweat the “small things.” But what if focusing on the little details could be the key to unlocking our next level of success?

In training, we might chase the latest workout or diet trend, push weekly mileage to the brink of injury, or make other big efforts to improve. But if those strategies aren’t delivering the results we want, maybe it’s time for a different approach. What if shifting our mindset to focus on the small things could make all the difference?
I recently came across a devotional by BYU coach and two-time Olympian Ed Eyestone, which shares a true story about how sweating the small things can lead to big results. I’ve linked the full devotional below—check out the section titled “Sweating the Small Things” about halfway down the page. The rest of the devotional has some great insights as well.

Two-time Olympic marathoner Ed Eyestone tells of his most cherished shortcoming, of how to sweat the small stuff, and of our divine mentor.

03/02/2025

Unlocking Your Potential: The Journey of Running Improvement

As a runner, the path to achieving your best performance is a journey filled with opportunities for growth and adaptation. Early in training, new runners often experience significant performance gains simply by maintaining a consistent running routine. No elaborate workouts are necessary; just getting out and running regularly can do wonders. This consistency allows the body to adapt to the stresses of training and proper recovery, enhancing running economy.

However, there comes a time when these initial gains plateau, and both new and experienced runners may find their race and training times stagnating. This is a signal that the current training regimen has exhausted its benefits, and it's time to introduce new stimuli. For beginners, incorporating strides, fartlek sessions, and longer runs can reignite progress. Similarly, seasoned runners can benefit from varying their training distances and intensities, such as a marathon runner focusing on 10K training for leg speed or a 5K runner stepping up to half marathon training for stamina.

Incorporating these new training stimuli requires careful attention to the stress-rest cycle. Both new and experienced runners must heed the rule of "too's" – avoiding too much, too soon – to ensure continuous improvement while preventing injury. Remember, the key to unlocking your full potential lies in the balance of stress and recovery, paving the way for remarkable achievements in your running journey.

Feel free to reach out with questions or comments as you embark on this exciting journey of growth and improvement.

01/20/2025

Variation is the key to surviving consecutive days of running on the treadmill during the polar vortex. Here are a few tips for treadmill running:
1. Overland running has a lot of variability with each foot strike. The treadmill does not. Avoid overuse injuries by adjusting the elevation and/or pace. You don’t need to go crazy. A little bit of incline like 0.5% to 1.5% is plenty. Do more if your workout calls for it. But don’t “set it, and forget it”. Frequently adjust the elevation up and down, even back to zero, to minimize the risk of an overuse injury. The same goes for pace. Increase and/or decrease the pace a click or two. You can do this by a time or distance of your choosing. Do you need to adjust both elevation and pace? No. Either will be enough to change your foot strike, but doing both can provide a little more mental stimulation to avoid boredom.
2. Don’t worry about using incline to account for wind resistance that we encounter while running outside. I believe that adjusting the incline up and down for foot strike variability is more important. However, if you’re a bit of a purist, you can use the following generally accepted guidelines. If you run 8:30 minutes per mile or slower, you don’t need to account for wind resistance. 8:29 to 7:00 pace, target and average of a 0.5% incline. 6:59 and faster, target an average of 1% incline.
3. Long runs on the treadmill can be extremely boring. Change up the long run by incorporating some pace surges. After a warmup, during each ten-minute segment of the run, throw in a pace surge. The surge can last anywhere from 30 seconds to 7 minutes. Your choice, but shorter the segment length, the faster you run. Give yourself time to recover after each surge by returning back to your target pace, then repeat the surge and rest cycle again and again until the workout is done. I personally like 7 minutes at my target pace with a 3-minute surge. This is challenging and really breaks up the monotony of the run. All of the surges don't have to be the same duration. Feel free to mix it up.
4. Doing speed intervals and longer threshold workouts on the treadmill can be a great way to challenge yourself in a controlled environment. Try working at the high end, or slightly faster than your target paces to get the legs moving a little faster than you normally would on land. This can prepare you for faster running when you get back outside.
5. Watch a replay of the latest big race. This is a great wat to inspire and motivate you for your next race or event. Don’t be surprised if you feel the need to go a little faster during the workout.
6. You may get little hotter while running on the treadmill versus outside. If you’re at home, reduce the temperature in the room where the treadmill is and use a fan to help cool you off.

Reach out if you have any questions and let me know if this helped you survive the “Dreadmill” during this deep freeze.

01/12/2025

Are you looking to crush a 10K this spring? Or do you need a fitness check as you prepare for that spring half marathon or 25K? Legendary coach Greg McMillan has a great workout that you can perform to predict your 10K time.

The workout is simple. 9-12 days out from your 10K, run three, two-mile repeats at goal pace with a 5-minute recovery jog between the repeats. If you can run your goal pace for the two-mile intervals, you can do it in a race! Sounds simple, right? Well, not so fast. Without the race day adrenaline, this will be harder than you think! If you are doing this as a fitness check for your half marathon or 25K, do this workout at 10K effort, 20-30 seconds faster than half marathon goal pace, around 6 weeks before your race.

If you are going to incorporate this workout into your 10K plan, Coach Greg recommends that you do a series of workouts before you attempt this. Your half marathon training plan should have you ready to use it as a fitness check.

Below is the series of recommended workouts from Coach Greg to add to your 10K plan before the 3 x 2-mile workout. Do your normal warmup and cool down for each workout.

Give it a try and let us know how your race went. As always, reach out to Peak Stride for a personalized training plan for any of your race distances.

Week #1: 6 x 1 mile at 10K goal pace with 3-minute jog between repeats

Week #2: 10-12 x 400m
Run the 400m repeats at 5K race pace; 200m jog between

Week #3: 2 mile + 4 x 1 mile (2 mile and 1 mile repeats at 10K goal pace) 5-minute jog between 2 mile repeats, 3-minute jog between 1 mile repeats

Week #4: 3 mile Tempo Run (pace is 15-20 seconds per mile slower than 10K goal pace) Or run a 5K race. One simple prediction method is to double your 5K race time and add 1 minute to get your 10K time.

Week #5: 2 x 2 mile + 2 x 1 mile
5-minute jog between mile repeats, 3-minute jog between 1 mile repeats

Week #6: 20-24 x 200m
Run the 200m repeats at 5K race pace; 200m jog between

Week #7: 3 x 2 mile
Run the 2-mile repeats at goal 10K race pace; 5 minutes jog between

11/03/2024

We tested the two new Edge Gel flavors, Chocolate and Mocha + Caffeine. Wow! The flavors of these gels are spot on. If you’ve been waiting for UCAN to get into the chocolate and caffeine game, you need to try them. Their consistency is a little thicker than the other gels in the Edge family, but they still go down nice and easy. Like all of the UCAN gels, these are sugar free, so no sugar crashes. We did a fun experiment with the chocolate by mixing some with the Strawberry-Banana Edge. Tastes just like a chocolate covered strawberry! We even used some as a topping on banana bread LOL.

Give UCAN a try. Use the link below to get 15% off your order.
https://ucan.co/?ref=MikeR

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https://ucan.co/products/ucan-ambassador-sample-pack/?ref=MikeR
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Choose from a variety of best-selling products with this exclusive sample offer! Use your referral code to get the pack for FREE and pay just $9.95 for shipping. Choose from one of the following Sample Pack options: Edge Sample Pack: 4 energy gels, 1 of each of our 4 flavors Hydrate Sample Pack: 12....