The Infirmary | Fixing Broken Endurance Athletes

I see the following situation far too often: an athlete who is completely reliant on their devices, doesn’t practice their fueling, and cannot change a flat tire. This kind of reliance is deeply fragile: it doesn’t take much to break it on race day. In this show, I walk through the three most important skills to an endurance athlete’s success, and there are far more qualitative measures than quantitative. We cover pacing, fueling, and equipment proficiency, ending with practical directions to improve at all three.

This episode is a live recording from Campfire's annual Bend Triathlon Training Camp, where co-coach and longtime collaborator David Tilbury-Davis sat down with campers for an open Q&A. David has coached over 30 years and worked with some of the most recognized names in the sport — Lionel Sanders, Ashley Gentle, Cody Beals, Sky Munch, Kaisa Sali, and many others — but what runs through every answer in this conversation is a conviction that coaching, at its core, is about human connection and behavioral engineering, not data dashboards.
Links:
Campfire Endurance 2027 Bend Training Camp: https://www.campfireendurance.com/training-camps
Fuelin app: fuelin.com
Trimapper: trimapper.com
David Tilbury-Davis Coaching: https://www.tilburydavis.com/
Campfire Endurance coaching: campfireendurance.com

Simon Marshall trained the brains of endurance athletes for a living, and in this conversation he makes the case that the mental side of sport is the part most of us skip — right up until it costs us a race. Recorded during the pandemic and shared again in Simon's memory, the episode digs into what actually decides how race day goes: why everyone walks to the start line a little terrified, why your brain treats one bad comment like Velcro and ten good ones like Teflon, and why "just find your passion" is mostly a myth. Simon, who wrote The Brave Athlete with his wife, five-time world champion Lesley Paterson, also hands over tools you can use this week — the alter-ego trick, microdosing dopamine, and the quiet skill of embracing the suck. It's funny, honest, and a little subversive, which is to say it sounds just like Simon. Come for the start-line nerves, stay for the reminder that getting fitter and getting to know yourself are supposed to be the same project — the whole point of sitting around the Campfire.
Links to drop in (mentioned on-air)
The Brave Athlete: Calm the Fck Down and Rise to the Occasion* — Simon Marshall & Lesley Paterson
The Passion Paradox — Brad Stulberg
Paula Reed, adventure psychologist (the "fun scale" and the 150-item adventure list)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Swim improvement is slow, frustrating, and worth every minute — and this episode is proof of that. Chris walks you through Alex W.’s amazing 2:35 to 1:52/100 threshold pace improvement in today’s episode: what wasn’t working, what Chris prescribed, and how Alex took the reins and put in the hard work. We track her development step by step: the front quadrant breakdown that was costing her propulsion, the drift toward her breathing side that threatened her open water navigation, the elbow angle problem that was limiting her pull power — and the specific drills that addressed each one. Along the way, Chris explains why triathlon is an energy cascade, what deliberate practice actually requires, and why more yardage without technique work has a ceiling that most swimmers hit much sooner than they expect. If your swim has been stuck at the same pace for longer than you'd like to admit, this is the episode to listen to twice.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Book a swim analysis with Chris: campfireendurance.com/swim-analysis
Swim Smooth (methodology and drill references): swimsmooth.com
Campfire Endurance coaching (spots opening July 2026): campfireendurance.com or email chris@campfireendurance.com