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1 MAY 2026

Chris' note—sometimes I find myself repeating the same ideas to my athletes, and when I notice that those ideas become longer posts such as the one that showed up on our Substack page yesterday (you should subscribe for free if you haven't already). This counter-intuitive error, that going hard more often than easy will make you fast, is a pervasive one in our sport, and I understand why: it seems that in order to go fast you have to train fast, but, weirdly, nothing could be further from the truth. So I wrote a children's book about it.

The Kite

A Child is wandering in the windy scrublands near their home, and they come upon a tall, unclimbable fir tree, the bottom fifty feet of the trunk branch-free. Fluttering above the tree, its string caught in the green canopy, is a beautiful kite that entrances the Child. I want that kite, they say to themselves, quietly. But the tree, they can already see, can’t be climbed, and they don’t have the resources for climbing equipment or crampons. Nor does his family own a saw that could handle the diameter of the trunk. This part of the world, though, is rocky; plenty of stones lie around that, if stacked together, just might be able to get the Child far up enough on the trunk to grasp a branch and climb the rest of the distance to where the kite string is tangled in the canopy. The kite shows no sign of crashing to the ground—this land is almost perpetually windy, and the Child knows that they would be in for a long, possibly totally fruitless wait for the kite to descend on its own.

The Tippy Tower

The Child sets about finding the most brick-shaped rocks they can find. They begin to drag the stones to the base of the tree and, spending their energy rapidly, begin to stack the stones one on top of the other. Soon, they fashion a column about ten feet high, but they have to select smaller and smaller stones just to get up to that height.

To make things more difficult, the stones are irregular, and although they can stand atop the ten-foot column, they can see that a fifty-foot tower with the materials on hand will be impossible. They know the story of Sisyphus, because this is a hard-working country, and they can see, plainly, that if they pursue this angle of attack they will suffer disappointment after disappointment, as they work too hard to build a tower too short to accomplish their goal. They go home, despondent and exhausted...[read more]​

Get Your Hydration Perfect

May 23rd is our next testing day here in Bend! This time we are focusing on sodium content testing, and there are only four spots available.

You train hard. You hydrate. You still crash.

Sweating isn't one-size-fits-all. Two athletes can lose the same fluid but have completely different sodium levels. If you're not replacing the right amount, your body doesn't care how many miles you logged this winter.

A Precision Hydration Sweat Test fixes that. No workout required. Walk away with your exact sodium loss rate and a personalized hydration plan built around it.

Marathon, triathlon, bike race, ski day, epic SUP. Whatever you're training for, this test is worth an hour of your time.

​May 23rd from 9 am-2 pm at Juniper Swim and Fitness. Four spots only. ​

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Presented by Campfire Endurance Coaching

Today's newsletter is presented by Campfire Endurance Coaching.

We help endurance athletes improve their results (get FASTER), find more joy in the process of getting faster (get HAPPIER), and achieve lifelong wellbeing through sport (get HEALTHIER).

Our company has two major services:

• ​One-to-One Coaching: fully customizable, high-touch coaching built for your life and your goals. Our coaches carry a maximum of 15 athletes so you know you and your goals are always a prioity.
• ​Training Camps and Clinics: immersive multi-day and single-day events aimed at getting you the most improvement in the shortest amount of time.

If any of those sound like something you would like to take advantage of, you should consider booking a 45-minute FREE coaching and training consultation with us​