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2 APRIL 2026

Chris’ note: it’s race season! We had several athletes hit the North American triathlon opener at Oceanside 70.3 last weekend, and the beginning of race season is always a good chance to remind yourself that a great performance is a balancing act of objective and subjective metrics. Today we dig into the “Plan” section of the upcoming book to help you build your race day mastery. AND, if you are a quantified-self person, check out this post about which metrics would be good to know thoroughly at the end of Q1.

You’ve heard of "The Quantified Self." Heart rate, watts, TSS, IF, EF, macros, micros, blood lactate, HRV — the whole beautiful, anxious spreadsheet of modern endurance training. Athletes I coach are drawn to it. They want their workouts to hit prescribed numbers exactly, as if coloring inside the lines guarantees a masterpiece, but of course we know that copies, however faithful, don’t have the “aliveness” of the original. That mystery can be maddening, but it’s actually the animating force behind your performance. Great races come from the marriage of objective and subjective, not in spite of the subjective. Think of objective as the trees, and subjective as the forest—you cannot have one without the other, and getting overly focused on either can lead to performances that feel…incomplete.

Getting It Mostly Wrong for a Long Time

Swimming is my go-to analogy here, because the stroke is genuinely complex. The breath can’t inhibit rotation. The feet need to stay connected but not sink. The catch has to happen in the right sequence. All of it has to organize itself simultaneously — and arriving at that coordination takes years of iteration, not months of perfection.

The athletes I coach who struggle most with technique are often the ones who want to fix everything at once. They’re putting the catch before the breath. Getting it mostly wrong — and a little right — for a long time is what eventually gets you all the way right.

The same principle scales up to full training seasons. A workout isn’t a dress rehearsal for race day. It’s one block in a pyramid you won’t see completed until you’re standing on the start line. Judging that workout — or yourself — against the athlete you’ll be in nine months is a guaranteed recipe for frustration.

The long run today is not your event. The race is still months away. Act accordingly.

The Numbers Aren’t the Enemy

None of this means throw out your power meter, ignore your pace data, or train by vibes alone. The tools are real. They’re useful. I use them every day with the athletes I coach. The key is keeping them in their proper place: as support structures, not tyrants.

Two examples I think about often:

Sebastian Kienle won the 2014 Ironman World Championship with one of the fastest bike splits in the field — without a power meter. He’d tried one, found it made him chase numbers instead of race intelligently, and set it aside. Many other elite athletes can put aside tools when they stop serving their goals, and you can too. Whether you have the control and finesse of a Kienle is a different matter entirely, and I don’t want this subheading to inspire a bunch of you away from using power meters—they are incredible tools, but it’s important to remember that the dog should wag the tail and not the other way ‘round.

Kienle had internalized the data deeply enough to race without the crutch of seeing it in real time. He has mastered The Qualified Self.

Try This Once

On a mid-week ride a few years back, I had three 25-minute Ironman-pace intervals to hit. I made the first two in the mid-260 watts. On the third, I decided to ignore my computer entirely.

It was harder than I expected. The urge to check in — for affirmation, for reassurance — was almost physical. But I kept my head up, let the Portland landscape roll past, and found a rhythm that felt right. My brain settled into that meditative groove endurance athletes know and love.

When I coasted to a stop light at the end of the interval, the computer auto-paused. Its little chime rang out.

23:02. 264 watts average.

The number was there when I needed it. It just didn’t need to be there every second I was earning it.

What “The Qualified Self” Actually Means

Quantified means measured. Qualified means nuanced — having conditions and context attached.

Abandoning measurement isn’t the goal. Being a little less certain that the numbers tell the whole story is. Stay curious about what you feel, not just what you read. Be willing to get it mostly wrong for a long time.

The athlete who can do that — who can trust the process even when the numbers aren’t perfect — is the one who arrives at race day with something the spreadsheet can’t capture: confidence earned through faith in the work.

Want to learn how to do this? I've had 1-2 spots open up on my 2026 roster, so if you want to have an amazing season AND learn about yourself, then get in touch.

As always, thanks for reading.

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