A Leadville Win and a Leadville DNF: What Both Taught Us About Training

Leadville 100 week gave Microcosm both ends of the sport in a single day: coach TJ David's athlete McKendree Hickory won the women's race in her 100-mile debut, and TJ himself dropped at the Winfield turnaround after nearly fifty miles of not being able to breathe. Zoë and TJ take both apart honestly. On the win: what five months of coaching actually changed, why TJ inferred McKendree was naturally durable from four years of training history, and how identifying two points of friction — pacing discipline and a reluctance to lean into discomfort late in races — mattered more than overhauling everything. She raced her dress rehearsals under fatigue, ran a conservative early pace by design, and degraded only 8.25 percent over a hundred miles at altitude, where ten to fifteen is considered excellent. On the DNF: the difference between confidence and self-efficacy, why protecting mental bandwidth during race week is a training variable, and what it's like when a heart rate that should read 114 reads 140 at mile ten. TJ walks through the internal argument, the broken poles on Hope Pass, the decision at Winfield, and how he's processing a race he trained two years for. Plus a listener question up front: can you build a Boston qualifier on a treadmill, and what has to happen outside anyway. Questions for a future episode: microcosmcoaching@gmail.com Coaching and community: https://microcosm-coaching.com