If you’ve ever felt that deep, nagging ache in the back of your heel, the one that’s stiff and sore for the first few steps out of bed and then warms up once you get going, you’ve met tendinopathy. And if your instinct was to stop, rest it, and wait for it to heal, I understand why. It’s also the single most common mistake I see athletes make.
I have worked through tendinopathy myself and completely resting it, will do NOTHING to heal a tendon. Careful and progressive loading is what the tendon actually needs to rebuild. Here’s why, and how to think about it.
Rest Feels Right. It Also Doesn’t Work.
A muscle strain and a cranky tendon are different problems. When you rest a tendon completely, it doesn’t come back stronger. It gets less capable. The tendon loses the very capacity you need to run pain-free, so when you return to training, the same loads that irritated it before now land on a weaker structure. You feel better for two weeks off, then you’re right back where you started within days of running again. Sound familiar?
Tendons are living tissue that adapts to the demands you place on them. Take the demand away entirely and they detune. The fix for an under-capacity tendon isn’t less load. It’s the right load, applied in the right order.
How Load Actually Repairs a Tendon
Tendons respond to mechanical loading by remodeling. When you load a tendon in a controlled, progressive way, you stimulate the cells inside it to reorganize and build, gradually increasing the tendon’s stiffness and its ability to store and return energy. Over weeks and months, that’s what raises your pain threshold and your performance ceiling at the same time.
The keyword is progressive. You’re not trying to blast the tendon or push through sharp pain. You’re giving it a reason to adapt, then a slightly bigger reason, then a bigger one, staying just ahead of where it is without overwhelming it. Think of it the way you’d build mileage: you don’t jump from 20 to 50 miles a week, and you don’t fix a tendon by going from zero to plyometrics.
The Loading Ladder
Rehab research generally moves a tendon through stages, from least demanding to most. You climb the ladder as pain and capacity allow.
Rung one: isometrics. These are holds. You contract the muscle and load the tendon without any movement at the joint, like rising onto your toes and holding, or pushing against something that doesn’t move. This is the smart on-ramp when a tendon is irritable, because you can load it meaningfully without the stretch-and-shorten cycle that tends to aggravate it early on. You get to start building capacity right away instead of waiting.
Rung two: heavy slow resistance. Once you tolerate holds, you progress to slow, heavy, full-range strength work, calf raises through their full range with real load, moving slowly up and down. This is where a lot of the meaningful tendon remodeling happens, and the evidence base here is strong.
Rung three: energy storage and release. The final rungs reintroduce speed and spring, hops, bounding, and eventually the running-specific loads your sport demands. This is where the tendon relearns to act like the spring it’s supposed to be. You don’t get here first. You earn it.
A Straight Answer About Isometrics
Isometrics got popular a few years ago on the back of a widely shared finding: a 2015 study of athletes with patellar (knee) tendon pain found that isometric holds produced a large, immediate drop in pain.1 That’s a real result, and it’s why you’ll hear coaches talk about isometrics as a pain-relief tool you can use even in-season.
But here’s the honest part, and it matters because so many of you are dealing with the Achilles specifically. When researchers tested that same immediate pain-relief effect in people with mid-portion Achilles tendinopathy, they didn’t find it. In a trial of 91 patients, isometric calf holds produced no meaningful immediate pain relief compared to other approaches, or even to rest.2 The dramatic painkiller effect that made isometrics famous shows up more reliably in the patellar tendon than in the Achilles.
So don’t do your isometric holds expecting the ache to vanish on the spot. That’s not why they’re on the ladder. They’re there because they let you start loading a grumpy tendon safely and begin rebuilding capacity from day one. The pain relief, when it comes, comes from the weeks of progressive loading that follow, not from a magic hold.
That distinction is the whole point of doing this honestly. Isometrics are the on-ramp, not the destination.
Let the Tendon Tell You Where You Are
The reason I don’t hand athletes a rigid day-by-day tendon protocol is that tendons don’t read calendars. They respond to load, and the tendon itself gives you the feedback you need if you’re paying attention. Two rules I coach:
Use a pain scale, and stay in the acceptable range. Some discomfort during loading is okay for a tendon; sharp or climbing pain is not. A common guideline is to keep pain at a low, tolerable level during and right after the work, not pushing into the range where you’re wincing.
Judge by the next morning. The real test isn’t how it feels during the exercise, it’s how the tendon responds over the next 24 hours. If it’s calmer or the same the next morning, the load was appropriate. If it’s noticeably more irritated and stiff, you asked for too much, and you scale back the next session. That morning check-in is your traffic light: green to progress, yellow to hold steady, red to back off.
This is exactly how I’m managing my own Achilles. I’ve been using an AlterG anti-gravity treadmill to control the load precisely, dialing body weight up as the tendon earns it, and reading that next-morning response to decide each day’s dose rather than forcing a predetermined plan. Progressive, responsive, patient. That’s the game.
The Bottom Line
Your sore tendon isn’t asking you to stop. It’s asking you to load it intelligently: start with holds to get on the ramp, build through heavy slow strength, and earn your way back to speed, all while letting the tendon’s day-to-day response set your pace.
Rest might quiet the pain for a week. Load is what rebuilds the tendon. Respect the difference, climb the ladder in order, and you come back not just healed, but harder to break next time.
Dealing with a nagging Achilles or a cranky tendon and not sure how to load it? That’s exactly the kind of thing our coaching is built for. Reach out and let’s build you a plan that fits where your tendon actually is.
This article is educational and reflects current research on tendon rehabilitation; it isn’t a substitute for individualized assessment. If you have persistent or worsening tendon pain, get evaluated by a physical therapist or sports medicine professional.
Let me tell you about the worst I’ve ever felt before the best race of my life.
The morning of my IRONMAN win, I felt like a blob. My body felt swollen, puffy, heavy. Arms and legs like jello. If you’d asked me in that moment how I felt physically, “ready to win” is not the phrase I would have reached for. I felt soft and strange and not at all like a finely tuned machine about to go the distance.
But here’s the thing: I wasn’t worried. Because I’d felt exactly that way before, on the morning of a previous PR race. That swollen, jello-like feeling wasn’t a malfunction. For my body, it was a signature. It was what “ready” actually felt like for me, dressed up in a costume that looked a lot like “falling apart.”
That’s the whole game, and the science backs it up.
Everyone Feels It. That’s Not the Variable.
We tend to assume the athletes who perform best on the big day are the ones who feel the calmest. Steady hands, quiet mind, ice in the veins. It’s a nice story. It’s also wrong.
Researchers Graham Jones, Austin Swain, and Sheldon Hanton studied 97 elite and 114 non-elite competitive swimmers in the period before an important race, measuring both the intensity of their anxiety and how they interpreted it.1 The finding that matters for you: there was no meaningful difference in the intensity of cognitive and somatic anxiety between the two groups. The elites felt just as nervous. Their hearts pounded just as hard. Their thoughts raced just as much.
What separated them was direction: whether they read those signals as facilitative (helping them) or debilitative (hurting them). The elite swimmers interpreted their nerves as a sign their body was getting ready. The non-elites interpreted the same sensations as a threat, evidence that something was wrong.1
Same symptoms. Opposite conclusions. And in the non-elite group, the swimmers who read their anxiety as debilitating actually carried higher anxiety intensity, the fear feeding on itself.1 The elites didn’t have that problem, because they weren’t fighting the feeling in the first place.
So when I stood there feeling like a swollen blob, the elite move wasn’t to panic about it. It was to recognize the signal: Oh. This again. This is what my body does when it’s about to go fast.
Why “Just Relax” Doesn’t Work
Every nervous athlete has been told to calm down. Most have said it to themselves. The problem is that trying to suppress a feeling usually hands it more power. You end up monitoring the very sensation you’re trying to escape, checking in on it again and again, which keeps it front and center.
This is why the goal was never to make the blob feeling disappear. I couldn’t have if I’d tried, and the effort would have just made me more aware of how strange I felt. The feeling was coming along on the ride no matter what. My only real choice was what to make of it.
Your Interpretation Changes Your Actual Physiology
Here’s where it goes beyond mindset and into your bloodstream.
Jeremy Jamieson and colleagues at Harvard ran a study where participants facing a stressful task were taught to reframe their arousal as functional and helpful rather than harmful. Compared to controls, the people who reappraised their arousal showed measurably more adaptive cardiovascular responses: more efficient cardiac output and lower vascular resistance, meaning their blood vessels stayed more open.2
The physiology splits two ways. A challenge response is marked by increased cardiac efficiency and vasodilation, your vessels opening up so more blood and oxygen move where they’re needed. A threat response activates the same arousal system but constricts the vasculature and reduces cardiac efficiency, the body bracing for damage rather than reaching for performance.2
Read that again, because it’s remarkable: the racing heart can be the same, but whether your vessels open or clamp down depends in part on whether you’ve decided this feeling is help or harm. Your brain is essentially placing a bet on how it needs to prepare, and your interpretation tilts the odds.
That swollen, full feeling I had on IRONMAN morning? That’s a body flooded and primed. I just happened to have learned, through a previous PR, to read it as readiness instead of dread.
How to Build This Before Your Next Start Line
The elite swimmers weren’t born reading their nerves correctly, and Jamieson’s subjects learned the reframe in a single session. This is trainable. Here’s how I coach it.
Learn your own signature. Your “ready” might not look like calm. For me it was the blob feeling. For you it might be a sour stomach, cold hands, the urge to pee every five minutes, a brain that won’t shut up. Start logging how you feel before your best workouts and races. Over time you’ll spot the pattern, and what once felt like a warning sign becomes familiar territory.
Practice in training, not just on race day. Every hard interval, every tempo that makes you want to quit, every session where doubt creeps in is a rep at reading discomfort correctly. Don’t wait for your goal race to attempt the reframe for the first time under the most pressure.
Name the signal honestly. When the nerves hit, tell yourself the true thing: this is my body getting ready for the demands it’s about to face. You’re not lying. The physiology genuinely is preparation. You’re just refusing the fearful reading.
Take it along for the ride. You don’t have to love the feeling. You just have to stop treating it as the enemy you must defeat before you’re allowed to perform. The stress isn’t going anywhere. Let it ride shotgun.
The Bottom Line
On the biggest morning of my racing life, I felt like a blob. Swollen, soft, jello-limbed. And I won.
Not because I conquered the feeling, but because I’d learned to read it. The nerves, the strangeness, the keyed-up body, none of it was the problem. The only question that ever mattered was what I decided it meant.
You’re going to feel it too. The pounding heart, the doubt, the body doing something weird. So is the athlete next to you. The difference on the day won’t be who feels calmest. It’ll be who looks at all that energy and thinks: good. I’m ready.
Footnotes
Jamieson, J. P., Nock, M. K., & Mendes, W. B. (2012). Mind over matter: Reappraising arousal improves cardiovascular and cognitive responses to stress. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(3), 417–422. ↩ ↩2
Jones, G., Swain, A. B. J., & Hanton, S. (1994). Intensity and interpretation of anxiety symptoms in elite and non-elite sports performers. Personality and Individual Differences, 17(5), 657–663. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Both ice baths and saunas have made a huge comeback in endurance sports circles. Every athlete seems to have an opinion. Social media is full of people dunking in frozen tubs and sitting in 200-degree rooms like it’s the latest performance hack.
Here’s where I land after 32 years of coaching: both tools have real value. Neither one replaces sleep, nutrition, and smart training. And knowing when to use each one matters a lot.
What an Ice Bath Actually Does
Cold water immersion, usually 50 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 15 minutes, triggers a series of physiological responses.
Blood vessels constrict. That reduces blood flow to the muscles and limits the inflammatory response to the workout. Your core temperature drops. When you get out, there’s a rebound effect as blood rushes back in, which helps flush metabolic waste products from the tissue.
The result is reduced immediate soreness and faster perceived recovery. You feel better sooner.
The tradeoff is that some of the inflammation you’re suppressing is actually part of the training adaptation process. That soreness isn’t just discomfort. It’s your body signaling that repair and growth are happening. Research has raised real questions about whether frequent cold water immersion reduces long-term training gains by blunting that adaptation signal.
What a Sauna Actually Does
Heat exposure works differently. A sauna session, typically 15 to 20 minutes at 170 to 200 degrees, triggers a number of responses that are genuinely useful for endurance athletes.
Plasma volume increases over time with consistent sauna use, which means more blood volume available to deliver oxygen during exercise. Heat shock proteins are produced, which help repair and protect cells. Growth hormone spikes. Heart rate increases similarly to light aerobic exercise. Consistent sauna use has been shown in research to improve cardiovascular fitness markers.
The recovery benefits are more about parasympathetic nervous system activation. Your body relaxes. Tension releases. Sleep quality often improves with evening sauna use.
When to Use Ice: Prioritize Recovery Over Adaptation
Ice baths are most useful when you have back-to-back hard training days or when you’re in a race block and need to recover as fast as possible between sessions. If you have a hard workout on Friday and a long run on Saturday, cold immersion Friday evening helps blunt soreness so you can execute Saturday’s session.
During peak training blocks, when you’re racing frequently, or when you’re managing a minor soft tissue issue, ice exposure makes sense as a recovery accelerator.
Where I’d steer athletes away from cold water immersion is in the base-building phase when you’re trying to accumulate adaptation. If the whole point of this training cycle is to build fitness, suppressing the inflammatory response repeatedly might work against you. Let the adaptation happen. Earn it.
When to Use Sauna: Build, Recover, and Regulate
Sauna is a better fit as a regular recovery tool across the full training year. It doesn’t blunt adaptation the way cold immersion might. The cardiovascular and hormonal benefits of consistent heat exposure stack up over time. And the parasympathetic activation helps athletes who carry a lot of stress physically and mentally.
Post-workout sauna use, 15 to 20 minutes after easy or moderate sessions, is well-tolerated for most athletes. After very intense sessions, give yourself an hour before getting in.
Evening sauna sessions before bed can genuinely improve sleep quality, which is the single most important recovery tool any athlete has. If sauna helps you sleep better and recover better, the benefits compound quickly.
Hydration is non-negotiable with regular sauna use. You will sweat significantly. Replenish accordingly.
Can You Do Both?
Yes, and the contrast therapy approach, alternating between heat and cold, has a long track record in athlete recovery rooms. The key principle is usually to end on cold if your goal is recovery and end on heat if your goal is relaxation and sleep prep.
If you’re going to combine them, keep it simple. Start with 10 to 15 minutes of heat. Follow with 3 to 5 minutes of cold. Repeat two to three cycles. This drives a strong vascular pumping effect that many athletes find very effective for next-day soreness.
The Bottom Line
Ice bath: best for acute recovery, back-to-back hard days, and race periods when you need to feel good fast. Use with some restraint during base-building phases.
Sauna: best as a consistent long-term tool. Real cardiovascular and recovery benefits that compound over weeks and months. Great for stress management and sleep quality.
Both are tools. Neither replaces the fundamentals. Sleep, nutrition, smart training load management, and consistency are doing the heavy lifting. Ice and sauna support the process. They don’t replace it.
Want a complete recovery plan built into your training program? Let’s talk. iamwithoutlimits.com/coaching
Do the work.
Tom Clifford CEO, Without Limits Endurance USATF Level 2 Coach | USA Triathlon Coach
Summer running in the South is no joke. Humidity that feels like a wet blanket. Temps pushing 90 before 8am. Asphalt that radiates heat back up at you like an oven. If you try to run your normal pace in those conditions, your body will let you know about it fast.
The good news is that heat training doesn’t have to wreck you. It just requires a different approach.
Your Body Is Working Harder Than You Think
Here’s the thing most runners miss. When it’s hot, your heart rate climbs even when you’re running slowly. Your cardiovascular system is now doing two jobs at the same time. It has to deliver oxygen to your working muscles AND pump blood to the skin surface so your body can cool itself through sweat.
That’s a real extra load. Your heart doesn’t care that you’re only doing an easy 6-miler. If it’s 88 degrees and 80% humidity, your HR is going to be elevated above where it would be on a cool morning. That’s physiology, not weakness.
Fighting it is a mistake. Working with it is the smart play.
Pace Adjustment: The 10-Second Rule
A simple rule I use with athletes: for every 5 degrees above 60°F, slow your easy pace by about 10 seconds per mile. That sounds conservative. It is. And it’s right.
If you normally run easy runs at a 9:00/mile pace, you should expect to run 9:30 to 9:50 on a 90-degree morning just to stay in the same aerobic zone. Your effort level stays the same. Your pace drops. That’s not regression. That’s smart training.
Trying to hit your normal pace numbers in extreme heat means you’re working at a higher intensity than you planned, burning more glycogen, spending more recovery time, and raising your injury risk. None of that is worth it.
Run by effort. Let the numbers be what they are.
Heart Rate Zones in the Heat
If you train with a heart rate monitor, heat running gives you a real chance to use it well. Your target zones don’t change just because it’s summer. What changes is how much work it takes to stay in them.
For easy aerobic runs, you want to stay in Zone 2. In hot conditions, that means slowing down more than your brain wants you to. Most athletes resist this. They feel like they’re barely running. But they’re getting the same aerobic benefit they would in cooler conditions. The adaptation is happening even if the pace doesn’t look impressive on Strava.
If your HR is creeping into Zone 3 and 4 on what was supposed to be an easy run, slow down. Walk if you need to. This isn’t failure. It’s the right call.
Hydration Changes the Equation
You can’t outrun dehydration in the heat. Even mild dehydration of 2% body weight raises your heart rate and tanks performance. By the time you feel thirsty, you’re already behind.
Pre-hydrate before you head out. Don’t skip sodium. Electrolytes matter more in summer than any other time of year. And if you’re going longer than 45 minutes in serious heat, you need to be taking in fluids during the run.
Consider the timing of your runs too. Early morning or after sunset is not just more comfortable. It’s physiologically smarter. Midday summer running in the Carolinas is genuinely risky if you’re not experienced and prepared.
Acclimatization Is Real
Here’s the upside. Your body adapts to heat training over 10 to 14 days of consistent exposure. Plasma volume increases. You start sweating earlier and more efficiently. Your HR response to the same workload drops. You actually get better at running in heat.
But that adaptation doesn’t happen if you skip every hot run or stay on the treadmill all summer. You have to earn it.
The athletes I coach who stay consistent through the Carolina summers come out the other side with real fitness. When fall race season arrives and temperatures drop, those athletes feel like they have another gear. That gear was built in the heat.
The Bottom Line
Run slower. Monitor your HR. Hydrate aggressively. Stop trying to hit your winter pace splits in August.
Summer running is an investment. Do it right and you’ll race well when it counts. Do it wrong and you’ll spend September recovering instead of performing.
If you want help dialing in your summer training plan, we’d love to work with you. Reach out at iamwithoutlimits.com/coaching.
Do the work.
Tom Clifford CEO, Without Limits Endurance USATF Level 2 Coach | USA Triathlon Coach
By Tom Clifford | Without Limits
Let’s start with something you probably didn’t expect to read on a coaching website: I used AI to help write this blog post.
I know. Stay with me.
Because here’s the thing, AI is genuinely useful. It can research, organize, draft, and produce content faster than any human. I’m not here to tell you technology is bad. I coach athletes for a living. I know that tools matter.
But there’s a difference between a tool and a coach. And right now, a lot of runners and triathletes are confusing the two, and paying for it on race day.
The App Told Me to Run 8 Miles. So I Did.
Your AI training plan doesn’t know that your left knee has been talking to you for three weeks. It doesn’t know you had a terrible night’s sleep because your kid was sick. It doesn’t know the humidity hit 90% this morning and your “easy 8 miles” just became a survival march.
It just said 8 miles. So you ran 8 miles. And now your knee is angry.
I’ve been running for 32 years. I’ve seen this pattern hundreds of times. The athlete who follows the plan perfectly, and breaks down because the plan didn’t know them.
An algorithm can build a plan. It cannot read your face when you show up to group training at 5:30am looking like you haven’t slept in three days. I can. And I will absolutely modify your morning around that, because I know the difference between an athlete who needs to be pushed and an athlete who needs to be managed.
That’s not something a language model learns from your heart rate data.
What 32 Years in the Sport Gives You
I ran my first race in 1993. I’ve trained through heat, snow, woke up at 5am in 2 degree temps, hurricanes, injuries, bad seasons, great seasons, and one memorable 50K.
In those 32 years, I’ve learned things that don’t exist in any database. I know what a runner looks like when they’re about to hit a wall three miles before they think they will. I know when an athlete says “I feel fine” and means it, versus when they say “I feel fine” and are lying to themselves. I know which athletes train great alone but fall apart in race environments — and how to fix that.
You cannot compress 32 years of real experience into a training plan prompt. You can’t ask ChatGPT “what does a runner look like six weeks before they quit?” and get an answer that’s worth anything.
Experience isn’t data. It’s pattern recognition built from being there, in person, in conditions, in the real world — over and over and over again.
The Group Is the Secret Weapon
Here’s what no app is giving you: the energy of 30-60 people showing up at 5:30am.
When you train alone with a plan on your phone, motivation is entirely on you. Some days that works. Most days, if we’re being honest, it doesn’t. You negotiate with yourself. You shorten the run. You skip the tempo intervals.
In a group, something different happens. The person next to you is going. So you go. The pace picks up. You find something you didn’t know you had. You finish a workout you would have quit at mile 2 if you were alone on a treadmill.
That dynamic is not replicated by any app, any algorithm, or any AI. It is a human thing. It requires human beings in the same space, at the same time, suffering and succeeding together.
Motivation delivered through a push notification is not motivation. Motivation is your training partner refusing to let you slow down with 400 meters left.
I’ve watched athletes nail every workout in their training plan and then fall completely apart in a real race environment. You want to know why?
Because they trained in a controlled environment and expected race day to be controlled.
It isn’t.
Race day is humidity and headwinds and a porta-potty line that cost you four minutes and a nutrition strategy that stopped working at mile 9. Race day is the athlete who goes out too fast in the first mile and blows up by mile 6, because no one ever taught them what controlled effort actually feels like in a crowded race start.
When I coach athletes onsite, I teach them to train in the real world, in real conditions, with real obstacles, with real people around them. We run the hills that hurt. We do brick workouts in heat when it would be easier to reschedule. We practice start-line strategy because the start line is where bad decisions are made most often.
A training plan tells you what to do. A coach teaches you how.
The Collaboration Nobody Talks About
Here’s the part that gets left out of every “AI vs. human” conversation:
The best coaching relationships are collaborations.
When I build a plan for an athlete, I’m not handing down commandments. I’m starting a conversation. How did that feel? What’s your body telling you? What happened at work this week? Are we being realistic about this timeline?
That back-and-forth, the athlete’s honest self-reporting, my experience interpreting it, and the ongoing adjustment of the plan, that is where results come from. Not from the plan itself. From the process of building it together, in real time, with a human being who gives a damn whether you make it to the finish line.
So Where Does AI Fit?
I’ll be straight with you: I use AI tools to make my coaching better. I use them to organize, to research, to communicate faster with athletes, to help produce content like this. Technology makes me more efficient.
But efficiency is not coaching. Efficiency is infrastructure.
The coaching is me, on the track at 5:30am, watching how you’re moving, adjusting your effort, pushing you past what you thought was your limit, and celebrating with you when you cross a finish line you weren’t sure you could reach.
Thirty-two years of that. No app included.
The Bottom Line
Use the apps. Track your data. Listen to the podcasts. Read the blogs. I’m not against any of it.
But if you’re serious about your running or triathlon, if you have a real goal and a real timeline and you actually want to get there, hire a coach. A real one. One who’s been where you are, has seen what you’re going through, and will be standing there at the track when the plan says easy day but your body says otherwise.
Success in endurance sports doesn’t come from the perfect algorithm. It comes from collaboration between an athlete who shows up and a coach who knows what to do with them when they do.
The work is still the work.
Do the work.
— Tom
Tom Clifford is the CEO of Without Limits Endurance and a USATF Level 2 and USA Triathlon certified coach with 32 years of running experience. He coaches runners and triathletes of all levels across the Carolinas — in person, in groups, in the real world.
Ready to stop training alone? Learn more about coaching programs at Without Limits.
The 4-Week Rule: What to Do Right Now If You’re Racing This Spring
By Tom Clifford | Without Limits
Four weeks out. That’s where a lot of athletes either lock in, or start to panic.
I’ve been coaching runners and triathletes for years, and I can tell you: the athletes who race well in May aren’t the ones who train the hardest in April. They’re the ones who train the smartest in April.
Here’s what I tell my athletes when we’re a month out from a goal race.
Stop Adding. Start Sharpening.
The biggest mistake I see this time of year is athletes trying to cram in more volume. They look at their training log, see a gap, and decide to fill it with extra miles, extra intervals, extra time in the pool.
Don’t do it.
Your fitness is already built. The work you put in over January, February, and March is in your legs right now. Adding a big training block 4 weeks out doesn’t add fitness — it adds fatigue. And you’ll carry that into race day.
What you should be doing is sharpening what you already have. Shorter, faster, cleaner efforts. Your workouts should feel sharp. If they feel heavy and labored, that’s a signal — not a green light to push harder.
Race-Specific Work Only
Four weeks out, every key workout should simulate what race day is going to demand.
If you’re running a half marathon, your long runs should include miles at goal race pace. Not full race effort — controlled, sustainable, confident.
If you’re racing a half iron-distance triathlon, your brick workouts matter right now more than anything. Get off the bike and run. Teach your legs how that transition feels. Do it repeatedly. Your body needs to know what it feels like to shift gears.
I always say: workouts are supposed to be in workout mode, not race mode. But at 4 weeks out, you want your workouts to feel like a taste of what’s coming.
Recovery Is Training
This is the part most athletes skip over — or feel guilty about.
Your easy days need to be easy. Zone 2, conversational pace, nothing heroic. The purpose of easy days is to let your body absorb the work you’ve done. If you’re grinding through your easy days, you’re not recovering. You’re just accumulating more fatigue.
Sleep. Eat well. Hydrate like it’s your job. These aren’t soft suggestions — they’re performance variables. The athletes I’ve coached who sleep 7-8 hours and eat consistently race better than the ones who train more but sleep less.
Mental Preparation Counts
Four weeks out, the mental side of racing starts to matter. And I don’t mean visualization routines or elaborate rituals. I mean knowing your plan.
Know your race pace. Know your nutrition strategy. Know what you’re going to do when things get hard in mile 10 — because they will get hard. Plan for it now so you don’t have to figure it out on race day.
The athletes who struggle in races are usually the ones who didn’t have a plan and started making decisions with tired legs. The athletes who thrive are the ones who ran their race, not someone else’s.
The Taper Is Not the Enemy
About 10 days out, you’re going to feel flat. Sluggish. Like your fitness disappeared overnight.
It didn’t.
That’s your body consolidating everything you’ve built. The legs that feel heavy on Tuesday before a race-week workout are the same legs that feel sharp and ready on Saturday morning at the start line. Trust it.
I’ve seen more athletes mess up a good training cycle by panicking during the taper than I can count. They start adding runs back in. They decide to “test their fitness” one more time. Don’t do it. Respect the process.
Get Your Gear Sorted Now
Four weeks out is also the time to audit your kit. Not race week. Now.
- Are your shoes still good? If you’re 400+ miles in, it might be time.
- Have you tested your nutrition plan in training? Race day is not the day to try something new.
- If you’re racing triathlon, have you ridden your race wheels? Swum in your wetsuit this season?
Logistics issues on race morning — a flat, a broken buckle, a wetsuit that doesn’t fit — are all things you can solve in the next four weeks. You can’t solve them at 5am in transition.
The Bottom Line
Four weeks is enough time to sharpen everything you’ve built. It’s not enough time to build something from scratch — and that’s okay.
If you’ve been putting in the work, trust it. If you feel like you haven’t done enough, the answer isn’t more panic miles. The answer is focused, specific preparation from here to race day.
Do the work. Then race.
Tom Clifford is the CEO of Without Limits and a USATF Level 2 and USA Triathlon certified coach based in Wilmington, NC. He coaches runners and triathletes from beginner to Olympic Trials Qualifiers and Ironman Finishers. Ready to stop guessing and start training with a plan built around your race? Get in touch here.
Why Running in the Wilmington Heat Feels So Hard (And Why It’s Actually a Good Thing)
By Coach Tom Clifford
Every summer, I get the same questions from runners:
“Why do I feel so slow?”
“Why is every run a grind?”
“Am I losing fitness?”
Trust me, you’re not alone. We’re deep into the Wilmington summer heat and humidity, and it’s brutal. Every mile feels harder than it should. You’re sweating buckets before you even hit mile one, and the paces you were running in May feel completely out of reach.
Here’s what you need to know: this is normal.
Heat + Humidity = Slower Paces, Higher Effort
When the dew point climbs above 65–70, your body struggles to cool itself. Heart rate goes up. Perceived effort skyrockets. Your system is working overtime just to keep from overheating.
Humidity traps heat around your body, like running in a warm, wet blanket. In fact, humidity affects performance in a similar way to altitude. It limits oxygen availability, slows your system down, and makes every stride feel like you’re carrying a weighted vest.
So no, your fitness didn’t vanish overnight. The conditions changed. And how you respond depends a lot on your body type and how well you manage heat.
Summer Training Is the Dirty Work That Pays Off Later
Running in this weather is tough, but it’s building you up. You’re training your body to become more efficient. You’re developing mental toughness, sharpening your cardiovascular engine, and showing up when it’s uncomfortable.
You might not see the gains now, but they’re coming.
Come October, when the air cools and the humidity breaks, your body will feel 10 pounds lighter. Your legs will come alive. You’ll run the same routes you’re struggling with now and hit splits that feel smooth again. That’s not magic, that’s the result of grinding through summer.
Stay Consistent. Trust the Process.
Don’t chase splits. Train by effort. Hydrate like it’s your job. Take your easy days easy and your hard days smart.
When you have a good run, write it down. When you have a tough one — check the basics: Did you sleep enough? Hydrate? Fuel properly? Overtrain the day before? Learn from it.
You’re not falling behind just because you feel off, but you will fall behind if you let the heat beat you mentally. Don’t give in. Keep showing up and doing your best in these conditions.
This Is Where the Growth Happens
Every year we forget how tough summer running gets, and every year it humbles us. We’ll always keep adjusting workouts to give you a better shot at success, but some days we still have to grind it out.
Living in your comfort zone won’t get you very far. Progress happens outside of it. That’s why not everyone sticks with this sport.
But you’re not everyone. You’re out there in the thick of it.
Keep showing up. Fall fitness is earned in the summer sweat.
Most runners have experienced it. That feeling, deep down in the gut, that signals bad news if you are midrun or ridrace. It means you must slow down or stop and
(hopefully) find a bush, a tree, or a porta john and take care of business or risk the unfortunate and embarrassing mess of not making it!
If you are one of the lucky runners who has never experienced this, read no further. This article is a summary of the possible causes of runner’s diarrhea and how you can
prevent it while running.
1. Eating a high fiber or high fat diet, especially in the 1-2 days prior to a big run or race can contribute to having a larger load of **** and the need to eliminate said load.
Prevention here involves eating low fiber carbohydrate foods for at least 1 day prior to your event paired with lean protein and generally avoiding fibrous veggies, beans, and salads. An
example might be meals of chicken or fish served with white rice or white pasta or white potatoes and/or white or sourdough bread. Low fiber and low fat breakfast items such as instant oatmeal, plain bagel, banana, and a favorite sports drink are recommended 2-3 hours prior to race start, to allow time for full elimination.
2. Lack of hydration and electrolytes in the days leading up to your race or during a run can lead to gut distress.
Prevention: Losing 4% of body weight in sweat during a run or race increases your risk of bowel movements while running. Drink about ½ of your body weight each day in fluid ounces to maintain hydration. Try drinking a diluted carbohydrate drink with electrolytes before, during, & after running to maintain electrolyte balance and optimal performance.
3. Eating or drinking foods or products containing lactose, fructose, or agave syrup for certain individuals will increase likelihood of gut issues while running.
Prevention: Many runners have some degree of Lactose intolerance and dairy products can cause increased gas, bloating and bowel movements in those individuals. Women have a harder time digesting and processing fructose than men and this can lead to more gut issues with any sports drinks and energy gummies/gels that are high in fructose!! i. Try to use drinks and chews or gels that do not contain fructose: Skratch, Huma, Tailwind, Clif, UCan are some brands to try
4. Lack of regular eating habits and a strong routine around nutrition for training
Prevention: Our bodies like to create and maintain a state of balance… changing routines can have a HUGE impact on how we feel and perform. Avoid introducing new foods and or
drinks on or near race day. Start introducing any new fluid replenishers, gels, bars, race breakfast, etc. weeks or even months prior to race day and during training days to get your
body used to them. Plan and practice eating and drinking for your race day routine around a similar time you would for race day so your body is more likely to be optimally prepared.
Keep a journal of foods you try and your bowel movements so you know what works best.
5. Relying on bowel prep and anti-diarrhea medications can be risky.
Prevention: Using drugs such as chemical laxatives, enemas, bowel preps, and colonic irrigations to purge their intestines can cause altered electrolyte levels and have side effects such as nausea and cramping. Avoid taking ibuprofen before a race as it can aggravate GI bleeding and potentially cause leaky gut which could interfere with fluid balance and cause dehydration, as well as potentially interfere with recovery. INSTEAD… try eating a few mint TUMS roughly 20 minutes before higher intensity workouts and long runs. This can help slow down GI issues. ALSO…consider taking a prebiotic/probiotic product each morning oftaper week to help improve gut integrity which can help when the gut is stressed due to increased body heat and lower oxygen levels in circulation during exercise.
6. Lack of food intake and nutrition/hydration in the days leading up to the race
Prevention: DON’T STOP EATING!!! The last thing you want to do is stop eating during the build up to your event and long training runs – your body needs that fuel! It can take anywhere from 24-72 hours for food to travel through our digestive system (and this tends to be faster with runners) so continuing to consume food throughout training and up until ~ 3 hours before the race will help maintain the natural cycle of food absorption and digestion. If worried about bowel movements during long runs or race day, start keeping a journal of foods you consume and how your body reacts to them (positive or negative) so you know what you want to eat during training and pre-race.
Have you noticed feeling fatigue, tired or heavy legs during running, difficulty completing workouts, or not recovering well before the next session?
You may have low iron stores (as measured by low serum ferritin). In fact, many athletes experience some form of nutrition related fatigue that is related to one of the following:
- Under fueling in general, not eating enough energy (calories) to support training.
- Not taking in enough carbohydrate during the time just before, during or after training.
- Eating inadequate iron to support the demands of running and suffering from lower production of hemoglobin and red blood cells – that carry oxygen to working muscles.
Low levels of hemoglobin in the blood, or low levels of the iron storage protein ferritin, can have a profoundly negative impact on your ability to have successful workouts and races.
Low ferritin levels can cause poor performance, even when hemoglobin levels are normal.
Research with high school cross country runners has shown about 3% of boys and 40% of girls were iron deficient at the beginning of the season and even higher numbers were seen by the end of the season.
There are 3 primary sons for why female runners are at greater risk for iron deficiency:
- dietary intake of iron tends to be very poor.
- menstrual cycles cause a substantial loss of blood. This increases the body’s demand for iron.
- running training itself causes an additional loss of iron – this happens primarily through gastrointestinal blood loss.
Distance runners can suffer from impaired performance even at iron levels at the low end of the “normal” reference range. (12 – 200 ng/ml for women; 12 – 500 ng/ml for men)
Athletes with ferritin levels at the low end of “normal” for the general population were found by researchers to exhibit many of the same symptoms as athletes with clinically low iron (<12 ng/mL).
Runners should aim for ferritin levels above 40 ng/mL to avoid fatigue and impaired performance from iron deficiency.
The best and easiest way to fix iron deficiency is the most obvious one: increase the iron sources you consume. This can involve increasing your dietary intake, taking an iron supplement, or, preferably, both.
Meat, especially red meat is rich in heme-iron, the form of iron that is readily absorbed and least impacted by factors that impair the absorption of non-heme iron (found in grains, beans, and vegetables). In fact, eating varied meals that contain both heme- and non-heme iron improves absorption of the plant-based sources. Meat, poultry and fish all share this ability to improve absorption of non-heme iron foods.
There is a significant benefit of iron supplementation in iron deficient athletes, both when it comes to increasing serum ferritin levels and to increasing aerobic performance.
Runners Essentials Daily Vitamin Formula by Without Limits is designed to support the endurance athlete’s needs for key nutrients including iron. The form – Ferrous Fumarate is less likely to cause GI problems (constipation), and the dosage – 22 mg (or 122% of Daily Value) is intended to prevent diminishing iron stores. It is recommended that you take the 2 capsules with a Vitamin C rich juice to increase absorption, apart from meals, antiacids, tea, or Calcium supplements which can inhibit iron availability for absorption, or at bedtime for better GI tolerance.
By Diana Davis RDN LDN
It’s that time of year again – hot, humid, muggy! We know it’s what we get every summer in the South, but we still want/need to train to maintain fitness or get ready for our Fall races. The most important detail of your run or bike plans over summer is hydration.
Why: Better hydration (specifically using a sports electrolyte drink) promotes better cooling of the body, better endurance, less muscle damage, less cortisol release, faster recovery and a better workout the next time you go out.
What to drink: This is a very individual choice. If your run or ride is 1 hour or less, water is an appropriate choice. For all runs/rides that are over 60 minutes, I recommend a sports drink – the one that tastes so good that you want to drink it! Your sports drink choice should contain carbohydrates from dextrose, sucrose, and/or maltodextrin and relatively less fructose. Sweat contains the electrolytes sodium, chloride, potassium, and magnesium so your electrolyte replacement drink should ideally contain all of these.
How much to drink: The most accurate way to determine this is to calculate your sweat rate, but if you have not done this, a good rule of thumb is to drink 16-32 ounces of your favorite sports drink for each hour of running.
When to drink: Pre-hydrate well the day before and day of training or racing. Once you are ready to head out, drink early and often, taking sips before you start and continue to take sips while you run or ride. This means that you need to carry or wear your preferred sports drink and have replenishments stashed along your route or circle back to your house, car or other source to refill.
#diana.davis.rd
