The Cadence Blog

Elite athletes extract maximum value from AI coaches by asking five advanced categories of questions: predictive performance modeling, injury prevention prot...

The conventional wisdom that objective metrics—power, pace, heart rate—should drive training decisions is incomplete. Extensive peer-reviewed research demons...

Garmin VO2Max estimates use algorithms based on age, weight, and race times—approximations with 10-15% error margins, not actual lab measurements. Training L...

Periodized training divides your preparation into distinct phases—Base, Build, Peak, and Taper—that progressively increase intensity while managing fatigue and injury risk. Rather than following generic 16-week templates, effective plans adapt to your individual fitness level, training experience, and race-specific demands. This personalization is what separates athletes who improve from those who plateau.

Static training plans fail because they assume consistent athlete adaptation across 16 weeks. In reality, your fitness evolves, life stress fluctuates, and recovery capacity changes week to week. By week 8, rigid templates either undertraim you (if you're adapting faster) or overstrain you (if you're recovering slower). Adaptive plans regenerate weekly to match your actual performance—the difference between training that improves and training that exhausts.

You've learned about periodization, intensity distribution, VO2Max training, lactate threshold work, recovery weeks, long runs—all the science that separates amateurs from high-performing endurance athletes.

This conversation happens in coaching constantly:

Every weekend in the endurance sports community, something happens:

Every professional endurance athlete has this week on their calendar: the recovery week.

Of all the training zones you might target, one matters more than the others for race performance.

There's a number that matters more to your running performance than almost anything else.

Every summer, something happens to recreational athletes: they stop improving.

You ran 20 miles this week. Proud of that volume, right?

Elite runners will tell you this: the biggest difference between amateurs and professionals isn't talent. It's how they distribute training intensity.

You wake up at 5:30 AM three times a week. You hit your target distances. You follow the plan religiously. But six months in, your race pace hasn't improved. Your energy is gone. And you're wondering if you're just not talented enough.