Jun 17, 2026 · 57 min · 10 segments
Durability is the word every endurance runner has latched onto — but what actually is it, and how do you build it? Zoë and TJ break down durability for marathon and ultra runners: the difference…
And this was the first like real test weekend of like, OK, because, you know, I think there was a moment where when I had to dial my training all the way down to zero, I was kind of like, man, am I going to be able to get in the mountains this summer? Like.
soft tissue injuries are really tough and then with something like the achilles it's always like well what is the actual underlying thing here and for me my suspicion was that it was more related to my ankle mobility and i mean specific like my biomechanics in that foot and so there's always this concern of like well i hope and i'm working on addressing that like am i addressing it in a way that it's going to come back is there something else that i haven't identified and targeted that I need to.
And I think always like when you're building back from injury, just trying to not overthink it and be too in your body in a way that's not healthy or productive and tell yourself a story of like the shoe's going to drop, it's going to go back.
Like, you know, the reason I got in this situation is because I did maybe a run or two where I probably should have just rested or biked that day.
But in order to build back from soft, like from a tendon injury, you do have to dynamically load it.
So it's always this delicate dance of like, do a little bit, rest a little bit more, do a little bit.
And like have pretty much every long run I've done in this past month has been like extremely nerve wracking of like, is my body going to be able to tolerate this, which is really fascinating.
No, and you're already dealing with a lot of uncertainty around the recovery process, which is tough to manage psychologically.
i think a lot of listeners who have been through injuries can you know relate to that and i wonder what you know what things are you doing that help you manage some of that uncertainty because like you said like you're getting out there and you ran your first three hour run in like a month or something on Sunday.
And if at two and a half hours in, you had to start walking back, that's what you would have had to have done.
And you know, some amount of, you have to have some amount of acceptance around those constraints, right? Totally.
It was just a couple of weeks ago that I was trying to do a 30 minute run and I couldn't complete it because I was in so much pain and was getting the sign from my body of like, do not keep running through this.
And so It's always tough in my brain, even though, you know, things have been progressing and I'm working with the PT to, you know, strengthen and to help me like set those benchmarks for like, this is OK, this isn't OK. There's always that part of my brain that's going to be like that will go back to that place of where I couldn't run, you know, even three miles.
Not that not that long ago, which is tough because I'm used to being able to run 100 miles.
And this was the first like real test weekend of like, OK, because, you know, I think there was a moment where when I had to dial my training all the way down to zero, I was kind of like, man, am I going to be able to get in the mountains this summer? Like.
soft tissue injuries are really tough and then with something like the achilles it's always like well what is the actual underlying thing here and for me my suspicion was that it was more related to my ankle mobility and i mean specific like my biomechanics in that foot and so there's always this concern of like well i hope and i'm working on addressing that like am i addressing it in a way that it's going to come back is there something else that i haven't identified and targeted that I need to.
And I think always like when you're building back from injury, just trying to not overthink it and be too in your body in a way that's not healthy or productive and tell yourself a story of like the shoe's going to drop, it's going to go back.
Like, you know, the reason I got in this situation is because I did maybe a run or two where I probably should have just rested or biked that day.
But in order to build back from soft, like from a tendon injury, you do have to dynamically load it.
So it's always this delicate dance of like, do a little bit, rest a little bit more, do a little bit.
And like have pretty much every long run I've done in this past month has been like extremely nerve wracking of like, is my body going to be able to tolerate this, which is really fascinating.
No, and you're already dealing with a lot of uncertainty around the recovery process, which is tough to manage psychologically.
i think a lot of listeners who have been through injuries can you know relate to that and i wonder what you know what things are you doing that help you manage some of that uncertainty because like you said like you're getting out there and you ran your first three hour run in like a month or something on Sunday.
And if at two and a half hours in, you had to start walking back, that's what you would have had to have done.
And you know, some amount of, you have to have some amount of acceptance around those constraints, right? Totally.
It was just a couple of weeks ago that I was trying to do a 30 minute run and I couldn't complete it because I was in so much pain and was getting the sign from my body of like, do not keep running through this.
And so It's always tough in my brain, even though, you know, things have been progressing and I'm working with the PT to, you know, strengthen and to help me like set those benchmarks for like, this is OK, this isn't OK. There's always that part of my brain that's going to be like that will go back to that place of where I couldn't run, you know, even three miles.
Not that not that long ago, which is tough because I'm used to being able to run 100 miles.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
