the summer slump: why race season isn't over yet
By August, the novelty has worn off. The early-season excitement that had you setting alarms for 5 a.m. swims and counting down to your goal race has been replaced by something quieter and more stubborn: heat, fatigue, and a training log that suddenly feels like a chore instead of a calling. If you’re feeling flat right now, you’re not imagining it, and you’re not alone.
This is the summer slump, and it hits nearly every endurance athlete at some point in the season. The good news is that it doesn’t mean your fitness is gone or your race is in jeopardy. It means you’re human, you’re deep in a training block, and the conditions are working against you. Read about how to get through it without losing the season here.
on my own leadville experience
Coach Julie:
I’ll be honest — I was scared going into Leadville. Mountain biking isn’t my sport. I’ve spent nearly two decades on a triathlon bike and a road bike, comfortable with the rhythms of swim-bike-run, comfortable with pavement and predictability. Signing up for a 100-mile mountain bike race at altitude, on terrain I didn’t fully understand, was a different kind of nervous than I’m used to. It wasn’t race-day nerves. It was the deeper kind — the fear of being a beginner again, in public, at an age and a career stage where I’m usually the one with the answers.
I spent three and a half weeks living and training at altitude before the race, moving between 6,000 and 9,500 feet, trying to give my body every advantage I could control. I rode sections of the Columbine climb up above 11,000 feet, and I remember standing at that elevation thinking: this is a completely different kind of hard than anything I’ve trained for. Descending, in particular, humbled me. It’s not about fitness up there — it’s about technical skill and nerve, and I quickly learned that mine needed work.
I started in the white corral and had a great day out there — I finished in 8:35, and I am thrilled. I missed the cutoff for the big belt buckle, and a few years ago that might have felt like failure. This year, it felt like data, and honestly, it didn’t take anything away from how good the day was. Descending is clearly still my weak spot, and now I know exactly what to work on.
What I keep coming back to is this: taking on something new, something you’re not naturally good at, is uncomfortable in a way that specific training plans don’t prepare you for. There’s no amount of FTP intervals that fixes the vulnerability of being a rookie. But that discomfort is also exactly why I did it. I loved the race — the community, the mountains, the honesty of a course that doesn’t care how many Ironmans you’ve finished. I’ve already decided I’m going back in 2027 for the full course, Powerline included. I want to get better at the thing that scared me, not avoid it.
I wrote a much longer, more detailed account of the whole experience — training, race day, the good and the humbling — over on my Substack. If you want the full story, you can read it here.
allow me to introduce: the conversational threshold
Coach Alison:
With summer temps still in full swing, this seems as good a time as any to remind you about – or introduce you to – the “conversational threshold.” The conversational threshold is the upper limit of the effort level where you can exercise and still hold a conversation with your (real or imagined) training partner. If you are exercising well below the conversational threshold (zone 1), you can easily hold a conversation in robust, complete sentences. If you are exercising just below the conversational threshold (zone 2), you can hold a conversation using well-timed 8-10 word sentences.
What does the conversational threshold have to do with summer temps? Well, when the temperature increases, your heart rate zones stay the same – but the power or pace that aligns with those zones will change. And it’s tough to know exactly how much your power or pace will shift at different temperatures, which often leads to overshooting that zone 2 effort level – especially on the run. The conversational threshold, though, is always the same. So when you feel like you can’t trust the data from your watch to get you to zone 2, trust the conversational threshold – it’s always reliable.