Endurance Mastery by MarathonGuide: Credible Sources

The Tarahumara, Japan’s “Marathon Monks”, and the Strange Ancestors of Ultrarunning

Matt Fitzgerald — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 14:30:42 GMT

When Simple Becomes Extraordinary

Matt Fitzgerald — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:02:11 GMT

Enjoy this free excerpt from Robert F. Schuler’s new book, When Simple Becomes Extraordinary: A 60-year-old diabetic man’s journey from 28 years of sedentary living to ultramarathon finisher

100 Foods to Eat Before You Die

Matt Fitzgerald — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 14:02:12 GMT

Guidelines for Balancing Training Intensities

Endurance Mastery by MG — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 14:02:40 GMT

The world’s best endurance athletes do not perform exactly 80 percent of their training at low intensity and 20 percent at moderate to high intensity. Nevertheless, the 80/20 rule serves as a useful starting point for discussing how endurance coaches should manage intensity balance in their athletes’ training. By qualifying this rule with the necessary …

How to Handle Your Ego

Endurance Mastery by MG — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 14:02:20 GMT

The ego is a sly little fox. She hangs out in corners, behind trees, in the way back of an SUV, waiting for a moment when you feel wounded and small. The fox pounces when you’re scrolling Instagram and see a friend celebrating her marathon PR. She whispers, “Your PR was fifteen minutes faster, wasn’t it?”

The fox pounces when you walk into a Starbucks on…

"Fat Boy" by Tom Fitzgerald

Endurance Mastery by MG — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 14:30:39 GMT

In May of 1964, my weight ballooned to 242 lbs. from about 215 lbs. Most of my clothes no longer fit and my dough-like “handle bars” had become more and more enflamed with purplish stretch marks—all the result of far too much pizza (extra cheese), far-far too many Red Cap ales, and far-far-far too little exercise. That I was grossly (grotesquely?) out-o…

Running Is a Radical Act

Endurance Mastery by MG — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:30:27 GMT

Running is a radical act. The person you are at the end of a run is different to the person that took that first step. First and foremost, taking the time to turn up for your body and mind is an act of self-care, but as you run, you learn things about yourself, the people you’re running with, and the places you’re travelling through. The unique ways in …

Prioritize Decisiveness

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 14:02:26 GMT

Run Fast – Stay in Control

The Long Brown Path — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 14:30:51 GMT

The whole purpose of running is to go fast; otherwise, you’d walk. Or sit.

The question is - how fast?

Because there’s a “right speed” for every exercise, whether you’re racing a 5K or trying to do an ultramarathon. The right speed also depends on your intentions. Are you merely trying to fit some cardio into a time-pinched exercise routine? Going out to …

When Effort Stops Protecting You

Marc Dupont — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 14:02:35 GMT

Before I start, I’d like to define the limits of what I’m trying to do here. This is not an argument about training zones, nor a comprehensive psychology of endurance. It’s only one of several narrow slices of a much larger story: how eﬀort, speed, and competence can quietly become ways of protecting ourselves from being reached - emotionally, relationa…

Why do endurance athletes keep showing up?

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 14:30:30 GMT

Why can’t we call it quits when the feat looks impossible?

I say “can’t” because it feels as if it isn’t a choice.

Our will to keep going drives us beyond what “normal” people deem sane.

I am a first-year graduate student in the clinical psychology program at Ball State University, currently minoring in sport and exercise psychology. I am also dealing with…

“You Don’t Have What It Takes. You Find What It Takes”

Matt Fitzgerald — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:02:45 GMT

About one in four Americans is a caregiver to someone with disabilities or chronic conditions. This means one in four runners is a caregiver. Inspired by Matt Fitgerald’s recent appearance on the podcast, Excellence, Actually, It’s Never All Bad: How to Suffer, I had a conversation with Matt on caregiving and running.

JLT: Matt, you’ve been on this careg…

Interpersonal Skills for Athletes and Families by Caelev Stephan

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:30:20 GMT

The better you communicate as an athlete, the better you will perform. Learn the how and why in this week’s guest post.

This presentation was created for athletes, former athletes, and the families who have grown alongside them. It offers a chance to slow down from the pace and pressure of sport and understand how years of structure, intensity, and expec…

Fueling the Mind and Body by Jenita Prasad

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 14:30:48 GMT

This presentation highlights how nutrition directly influences both mental health and physical endurance, integrating sports psychology with evidence-based nutritional neuroscience. Drawing on research about blood glucose stability, neurotransmitter synthesis, inflammation, hydration, micronutrients, and the gut–brain axis, the talk explains how dietary…

From Unfit at 35 to the Ironman World Championships

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 14:32:10 GMT

Enjoy this excerpt from The Business of Endurance by Charlie Redding, who hosts a popular podcast of the same name.

Kilian Jornet on Adaptability and Intensity

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 14:30:27 GMT

Enjoy this excerpt from Floris Gierman’s new book:

Running Breakthroughs: Transform Your Running and Life: Proven Lessons from World-Class Athletes, Experts, and Recreational Runners

Adaptability and Intensity

“If you do one very hard session, the body will be stressed and then return
to normal. However, if you repeat that hard session after a few days, and
…

An Excerpt from 50 Ways to F*ck Up a Marathon! By Alen Yen

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:30:22 GMT

50 Ways to F*ck Up a Marathon! offers an easy-to-digest buffet of handy checklists, TL:DRs, fueling calcs, personal narratives, cited research, unsubstantiated lore, and cheap memes.

Here’s a smorgasbord from our menu:

From the Introduction

For most of us amateurs, managing the hundreds of moving parts that culminate in a four- to eight-hour endurance trial has a significant impact on performance. I’d argue that the chaos and destruction of personal racing failures come as much from the running as the mismanagement of little things during training and on race days.

That’s where this book comes in. What follows is the hard-earned wisdom and race-day lore that usually take dozens of marathons to figure out. You won’t find tips on biomechanics or canned training plans here — but you will find advice to help you pick the right races, choose plans that fit your life, train smarter, and head off the stupid shit that can ruin a race.

Be The Signal

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 14:31:13 GMT

I picked up the book and glanced at the cover. Thought I recognized the signature handlebar moustache. The wild look in the eyes. The grimace. That’s got to be Steve Prefontaine, I thought, the 1970s runner remembered for his quip -- “to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” Bold words coming from a young man – was this merely trash talk to psych out the competition? Before one contest, Pre explained, “the only good race pace is a suicide pace.” Then added, “today looks like a good day to die.”

Commit to Mastery

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 14:30:44 GMT

ANY TIME YOU ARE LEARNING A NEW SKILL, THERE ARE STAGES to its acquisition. Bringing awareness to this process helps an individual to progress toward mastery.

There is a popularized learning model known loosely as the Model of Conscious Competence. Purportedly, it first appeared as a concept in the early 1960s, and for decades it was taught in a variety of settings to assist in understanding how people learn skills and advance toward mastery. There are different nuances, but it is generally taught as four stages. In the early days of my career, while working with colleagues on the development and evolution of new approaches to mental skills training for athletes, we utilized this concept but created what we felt was a crucial interim step in the process that helped us describe what we were experiencing in observing athlete and team skill development.

The Gift of Not Knowing

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 23:00:53 GMT

This summer I worked at a climbing gym’s youth camp with kids between the ages of three and twelve. The gym states that their “youth programs teach kids skills like resilience, problem-solving, camaraderie, and calculated risk taking—all while tapping into their love of adventure.” The camp had kids of all abilities but 98 percent of them were fearless,…