Human Endurance

Bevan McKinnon has coached triathletes for over 20 years, hosts one of the sport's longest-running podcasts, and won his age group at Kona in 2016.

We talk with him about what changed in his coaching when he stopped starting with the workout. Bevan makes the case that the objective data most of us build our training around tells us very little on its own. A flat CTL can hide an athlete who is genuinely getting fitter. A completed session guarantees nothing. "The brain is auditing the body at every single second in time," he says, and his argument is that we have largely stopped listening to it.

He shares how he opens the conversations most coaches avoid, why he asked a physiologist to write an Ironman race plan with no numbers in it, what heat preparation actually costs an athlete, and his one-word answer to the question of what age groupers can learn from professionals.

We also get into fuelling, recovery capacity, and why he now describes himself as a health coach rather than a triathlon coach.
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Bevan is the founder of Fitter Coaching and hosts Fitter Radio: https://www.fitter.co.nz/bevanmckinnon
Follow him on Instagram: @fitter.co.nz
Follow Fabi on Instagram: ⁠@endurance_fabi
Follow Bruna on Instagram: @justbrunathings
Follow augo on Instagram: ⁠@augo.training
Learn more about augo: www.augotraining.com

In this Guest Series episode, we sit down with Ronja, a 23-year-old from the canton of Lucerne who came back to Switzerland in 2024 after a football scholarship in the US and started running almost by accident, mostly to clear her head.

Within a year she had won her debut marathon (SwissCityMarathon Lucerne, 2:43:38) off a longest training run of just 26K, and later run 2:38:48 for second at the Zürich Marathon, a U23 Swiss record.

We get into:
How she actually used ChatGPT to build and adjust her training, and where AI coaching started to get risky
Her move from self-coaching to a human coach, and then toward more science-based, data-driven training
Why race fueling is the biggest piece of untapped potential in her running
The mental side: kinesiology, racing through pain, and running with a smile as a performance tool
Her road toward the World University Games and an Olympic goal for 2028 or 2032
It's a story about starting late, progressing fast, and the reminder that consistency, rest, and joy matter more than any single heroic session. Whether you coach or race yourself, there's plenty here on the promise and the limits of training with AI.
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Follow Ronja: @ronja_hofstetter
Follow Bruna: ⁠@justbrunathings
Follow Fabi: ⁠@endurance_fabi
To support this podcast, check out augo. Use code HUMANENDURACE to get 1 month for free.

What changes when you stop chasing the number and start running on feel?
Amanda Martin spent eight years chasing the US Olympic Trials marathon standard. This spring she taped over her watch at the Eugene Marathon, ran the entire race blind to her pace, and crossed the line in 2h34, an eight-minute personal best and comfortably under the qualifying time.
Amanda is a marathoner and a neuro rehab physical therapist in Salt Lake City, and a former Emory teammate of Bruna.
She walks us through the breakthrough and what actually made it possible: cutting her weekly mileage, protecting one big quality session a week, running her easy days genuinely easy, and rebuilding her relationship with fueling after years of under-eating and RED-S.
We get into the mental side too, from positive self-talk to her rule for knowing a goal is worth holding onto: "If you can't go a day without thinking about it, it's probably something you can achieve."
If you're working toward something big around a full and demanding life, Amanda's story is full of honest, practical takeaways on training, fueling, blood work, and making the sport work with your life instead of against it.

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Amanda
Bruna
Fabi
About the hosts
Bruna & Fabi are the co-founders of augo, a next generation coaching software bringing AI to empower endurance coaches, not replace. They also coach runners and triathletes of all levels at Jornada Endurance.

What does it actually take to line up at your first trail ultra and not just survive it, but do it right?
In this Expert Series episode, we sit down with Ash Daniels, Level 3 Athletics Australia accredited coach, AUTRA endorsed coach, and Australian national 100km team manager, to get into everything road runners need to know before making the jump to trails.
Ash starts where most coaches don't: with his own disastrous first attempt at Ultra-Trail Australia, carrying enough kit to survive the weekend and arriving at a checkpoint six hours late.
From that experience came a 5-hour PB the following year, a decade-long coaching career, and a very clear philosophy on what actually matters in trail and ultra preparation.
In this episode we cover training specificity for trail (and why your marathon prep won't save you), the vert-per-10K metric Ash uses with all his athletes, why he ditched heart rate zones in favor of running power and RPE, what social media consistently gets wrong about electrolytes and high-carb fueling, and a nuanced, honest conversation about where AI fits (and doesn't fit) in coaching.
Whether you're eyeing your first 50K or just trail-curious, this one is packed with practical, no-nonsense insight.
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Find Ash at journey2ultra.com.au or on Instagram @journey2ultracoaching
Follow Bruna: @justbrunathings
Follow Fabi: @endurance_fabi
Learn more about the podcast: www.humanendurancepodcast.com

In this episode, we sit down with Pascal Rüeger, the Swiss ultra runner who ran 100km in 6:18:27 earlier this year, beating a record held since 1985 by almost 9 minutes and winning the race by over 30 minutes.
Pascal only started running competitively in 2018, in his late thirties. Today he holds the Swiss national records at 100km, 6 hours (91.6km), and 12 hours (161.2km), plus the M45 world record for 100km. He is self-coached, science-based, and trains twice a day, every day.
We talk through his race-day execution in Italy, his pacing strategy at 3:40/km, and how he uses heart rate zones to manage a sub-7-hour 100km.

Pascal also walks us through his weekly training (160-200km, with "Crazy Thursdays" of double 50K sessions), his low-carb daily diet paired with carb-targeted race fueling, and the entrepreneurial mindset that lets him fail repeatedly and come back stronger.
For anyone curious about ultra running, late-starter performance, or what consistency at the limit actually looks like, this conversation delivers.

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Follow Pascal: @swissultrarunner
Follow Bruna: @justbrunathings
Follow Fabi: @endurance_fabi
Bruna & Fabi are the co-founders of augo: www.augotraining.com
Bruna & Fabi coach runners & triathletes: www.jornadaendurance.com
More about Human Endurance: www.humanendurancepodcast.com