end of season review

End-of-Season Review: Are You Asking the Right Questions?

As  many athletes wrap up their competitive seasons, there’s a tremendous opportunity to comb through the year’s achievements and shortcomings. It’s an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. Each fall I set aside time for comprehensive season reviews with my athletes. This guided reflection process creates an historical reference, and it’s a key tool for really …

masters cyclist dean pierson

Fast, Fit, and Winning at 59: Meet Masters Cyclist Dean Pierson

  By Jim Rutberg, CTS Pro Coach, co-author of “The Time-Crunched Cyclist”, “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning”, and “Ride Inside“ Dean Pierson knows the value of a strong foundation. His company, Culver and Pierson, builds top-quality homes throughout the Delmarva Peninsula (includes Delaware and some of Maryland and Virginia), and Dean applies the same attention to detail to …

utmb hug

Do You Have These Valuable Traits for Ultramarathon Performance?

  By Jason Koop, Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning For years I have wanted a fantasy football-style league for trail and ultrarunning (come on, you know you want one too). It would be fun, good for the sport, akin to the annual iRunFar Western States prediction contest that draws international acclaim and fun banter all …

failure into opportunity

Turning Failure Into Opportunity, with Sports Psychologist and Coach Neal Palles

  By Jim Rutberg with CTS Ultrarunning Coach Neal Palles CTS Coach Neal Palles is living proof that more knowledge doesn’t always improve sporting performance. In addition to coaching for CTS, Neal is a mental performance consultant and licensed psychotherapist and has earned a UESCA Coaching Certification for Ultrarunning. And yet, as an athlete he …

The Best Cycling Workout to Boost Late-Summer Speed

  By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Chief Endurance Officer Being a strong athlete and being a fast athlete are not necessarily the same thing. There are a lot of athletes who have great endurance and can maintain a hard and steady pace hour after hour. This is especially true late in the summer when athletes …

summer cycling training errors

Have You Made These Summer Cycling Training Errors?

  Chris Carmichael CTS Founder and Chief Endurance Officer Summertime is fun time! Strong rides in the warm summer sun are your reward for months of training. But it’s not uncommon for athletes to make a series of summertime training mistakes that either cut short their fun or limit their peak performance. To finish the …

Debunking ‘3 Weeks On, 1 Week Off’ Training Cycles

Open any training program from any running publication and you will inevitably see the following training structure: 3 weeks ‘on’; 1 week ‘off’. In normal training nomenclature this means you train hard for three weeks, take one week easy, and then repeat that cycle. Did you ever stop to think why this 3:1 structure emerged …

stay in your lane, strava

What Strava Got Wrong

  By Chris Carmichael, CTS Founder and Chief Endurance Officer Last weekend, I received an email from Strava with the subject line: “You don’t need to hire a coach.” I’ve been a Strava member from the beginning. I think it’s a great app for tracking activities, creating personal and interpersonal challenges, and connecting with other …

ryne anderson

Design Your Ultramarathon Training with Three Simple Questions 

  By Ryne Anderson, CTS Ultrarunning Senior Coach Training for an ultramarathon takes months and in some cases years of diligent and focused preparation. Most athletes are attracted to endurance sports because they have a love for the process. In the grand scheme of things, the race itself is minor in comparison to the hours, …