Hello!

I feel like every time I write one of these I’m speaking about how long it’s been since my last email. I’ll be honest, I have about 4-5 emails that I’ve written over the past month but haven’t hit send. I don’t know about you, but my inbox is full of a bunch of AI generated emails and it becomes somewhat discouraging when thinking about sitting in your inbox next with all of that noise.

Since my last email a lot has gone by:

• I finished Cocodona 250! It was amazing. I was a bit nervous/excited going into this race which is a feeling I haven’t felt in some time. (let me know if you would like to see my Cocodona race report because I have that email written out 😀)

• Coming off the back of Cocodona, I was selected out of the lottery for 2027! I’m really excited about going back. In addition, we already have 8 Mindset Endurance athletes signed up for one of the other Cocodona week races. Many will be racing their first 100 miler or first ultra!

So let’s dive into the content. Earlier this week I was listening to a financial advisor podcast and, as I was digesting the information, I realized that this advice parallels the advice I give to my athletes.

At the end of the day, our training and racing is based on energy expenditure. How you budget your inputs and outputs will determine your return on investment. Taken from the podcast advice, here are lessons you can use when you compare managing money to managing training

1. Pay Yourself First

In money terms, cover your own savings before paying every other bill. For some, this is counterintuitive because we often pay down all our debt first, then what is left over goes into savings. But according to this advisor (and I agree), if you don’t pay yourself first, you’ll always be left with the leftovers.

In athletic terms, this means taking care of your training before the rest of the day eats away your time. I’m a firm believer that the most consistent and successful athletes are the ones who train in the morning. They may have days where they train other times, but it’s deliberate and it’s scheduled. They don’t wait for the opportunity to present itself, because the majority of the time it doesn’t.

This one matters most for triathletes, since you’re not protecting one workout, you’re protecting three. Wait for “whenever there’s time” to swim, and the swim never happens. How many of you put off swimming, but have an easier time getting to the bike and running? The swim needs a pool, a cap, and a window before work, with zero flexibility once that window closes. Paying yourself first means the swim goes on the calendar like a meeting you can’t move, and the rest of the day gets built around it, not the other way around.

2. Don’t Compare Your Chapter 1 to Someone Else’s Chapter 20

Someone else’s results came from a completely different set of chapters you never saw. Financially, this means don’t make financial decisions based on what other people have done. Some people have been financially savvy or made other decisions earlier in life, so the choices they make are not going to be the same as yours.

In training terms, the guy casually running hundred-mile weeks and signing up for his fifteenth hundred-miler didn’t start there. He started in his own chapter 1, same as you, and spent years building the tendons, the gut tolerance, the night-running nerves, and the recovery habits that make his chapter 20 look easy from the outside. Comparing your first 50K training block to his current build doesn’t tell you anything useful about your own readiness. It just makes you feel behind in a race that was never against him. Work with the chapter you’re actually in, and let his chapter 20 be proof of what’s possible later, not a measuring stick for right now.

3. Live Under Your Means

Don’t spend more than you can afford, and don’t train more than you can recover from. An occasional big day is fine, the same way an occasional splurge won’t sink your finances. The problem is the athlete who treats every weekend like a credit limit increase, stacking a 30-mile Saturday on a 20-mile Sunday on a vert-heavy Wednesday, week after week, because the fitness gains from the last big block felt so good. That’s not training, that’s overspending with extra steps.

The bill comes due as being under recovered, a stretch of workouts that should feel easy but don’t, an injury, or most commonly, plateauing in your fitness. Living under your means in ultra training means leaving a little fitness on the table most weeks, on purpose, so you have something left to spend when it actually counts.

4. Build An Emergency Fund

A financial cushion exists for the unexpected car repair, the broken water heater, the things you didn’t see coming. Your training week needs the same kind of cushion.

Triathlon schedules are already tight, three disciplines and strength work stacked on top of a job and a family, so when every hour is already accounted for, there’s no room left for what life throws at you. The work trip that eats your long ride. The kid who gets sick the night before your key run. Without a buffer, those moments don’t just cost you a session, they cost you your whole week, because you have nowhere to absorb the hit. Build flexibility into the plan on purpose, so a bad Tuesday doesn’t turn into a bad month.

5. Minimize High-Interest Debt

High-interest debt costs you more the longer it sits unpaid, and the same is true for a workout you can’t recover from. A 3-hour long run with way too much climbing, done before you’re actually ready for it, can feel like a great training day at the moment. But if it costs you 4 to 5 days of dead legs, disrupted sleep, and sessions you have to skip or water down, that’s not a training day, it’s a loan. You’re still paying interest on it a week later, in the form of every easy run that doesn’t feel easy and every quality session you can’t actually hit quality on.

The goal isn’t to avoid hard efforts, it’s to make sure the hard efforts you take on are ones you can actually pay back quickly. You should view the longer or harder effort workout as a loan on your energy system. Make sure you understand the terms and conditions. This means recognizing what it will mean for adjusting your future training for recovery.

6. Build a Positive Net Worth Trajectory

Over time, income should rise and debt should fall. That’s the whole point of a financial plan, net worth trending in the right direction. Your training should be doing the same thing season over season.

Is your FTP actually higher than it was a year ago? Is your easy pace getting faster at the same heart rate? Is your swim pace dropping per hundred without you white-knuckling every set? If the answer is no, but you’re still logging the same fifteen hours a week, you haven’t built fitness, you’ve built a routine.

Training to train feels productive because you’re tired and busy, but tired and busy isn’t the same as improving. Check the trend line, not just the hours.

In conclusion, I really like how this advisor summed up building wealth:

• “Building wealth isn’t an income problem, it’s a habit problem”. If your habits are eating out or frequent social gatherings (or triathlon $$$ 🙂) then you’re likely going to have less to save. Common sense for training. If your habits don’t support planning, consistency, and self-awareness then you’re going to be a burnt out or underperforming athlete.
• “Start where you are, with what you have” – Don’t try to be the next Elon Musk. Start with the resources you have available to you. Don’t try to be the next Jim Walmsley or Kristian Blummenfelt. You’re not a pro (and never will be). Be aware of where you’re starting before you plan on where you want to get to.
• “Small investments compound over time” – the most repeated phrase in endurance sport: Consistency. Just keep putting in the daily work and you will see your transformation compound over time!

So that’s it for this week! I would recommend everyone take a moment to go through a training audit just like you would for your finances. Where are your outputs exceeding your inputs? And if you need an advisor, Mindset Endurance is here to help!

Happy Training!

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