EBR Friday Focus

by ENDURANCE BIKE AND RUN

"Practical insights for sustainable progress"

Hello ,,

The Triple Crown Approach | Strategic Event Selection For Sustainable Performance

As Quinda Verheul prepares for her ambitious Triple Crown challenges (Tour Divide, Arizona Trail 750, and Colorado Trail), it's worth considering how this focused approach might benefit your own season.

The summer calendar is filling with tempting events, and the excitement is palpable. Yet this abundance creates a paradox— you might find yourself either overcommitted to events that leave you perpetually fatigued, or paralyzed by options and missing valuable experiences.

What if adopting your own personal "Triple Crown" approach could strategically build your capacity rather than drain it?

3 Insights About Moving Beyond Quick Fixes

I.

Selecting three 'crown' events creates natural periodization that aligns with human adaptation patterns. Rather than treating all events with equal importance, this approach creates distinct training and recovery phases with clear purpose. Each crown event becomes an anchor point around which you can structure proper build and recovery periods, maximizing physiological adaptation while minimizing the fatigue of constant race preparation and potential inadequate recovery.

II.

The constant participation in events, removes clarity between training, performance and recovery. This often leads to accumulating fatigue and a state of mediocrity in both training and your events. With a Triple Crown approach, you deliberately allocate your resources to your most meaningful events, preserving energy and focus.

III.

When you establish a clear hierarchy of events (A, B, and C priority), you create permission to approach each event differently. Your crown events receive full preparation and recovery periods, while B events become specific training opportunities, and C events transform into pure enjoyment or skill practice. This classification eliminates the guilt and confusion that often accompany event participation decisions.

2 Questions For You

I.

Looking at your current summer calendar, which three events would you select as your personal "Triple Crown" if you had to choose? What makes these events meaningful enough to receive your primary focus and resources?

II.

How might your approach to other events change if you viewed them through the lens of supporting your crown events? Would changing how you approach these secondary events make your whole season more enjoyable, consistent and successful?

1 Real-World Example

During over 40 years in endurance sport, I haven't come across many people who could consistently peak for their main goals. One of them was one of my closest friends at university and we are still in touch. He was clearly talented but he consistently performed at his best in his goal events.

This isn't really a Triple Crown but it is a strong example of the principle of race prioritisation we discuss earlier and also the theme of many of our recent media posts on Instagram and YouTube. During the year, his goal was cross country and the main events came in February and March.

His strategy was surprisingly simple. He started training at the start of the Autumn, in September and enjoyed racing every weekend.

Because he raced nearly every weekend he didn't taper for races, they just formed hard sessions in his weekly routine. He did the same thing every week and with the races forming relaxed intensity, often specific to cross country performance, they complemented his weekly interval sessions and endurance runs.

His endurance runs were incredibly slow for someone of his ability - often 7 min/mile (4:20/km) or slower compared to his race pace of under 5 min/mile (3:05/km) and he did one simple interval session of 4 or 5 x 3 to 4 minutes around the Lake in a nearby park, with a couple of minutes recovery. Very old school..... around 10 hours running per week.

With this routine, the accumulated training effect and the natural increase in speed of both intervals and races created a natural training progression. The fixed routine supported his lifestyle and provided adequate recovery and the weekends broke up the monotony of the week, whilst meeting social needs.

For the big events he just backed off for two weeks and naturally hit a peak. He got better every year, eventually getting on the podium in the Scottish Cross Country Championships.

We can learn a lot from this approach and it is something I often draw on when I get caught up in adding too much complexity to what is essentially a simple process of progressive overload and recovery within a sustainable structure.

We are still in touch and meet up now and again for a chat and a bike ride.

Book a free consultation with us to develop a personalized approach that works with your physiology rather than against it. Just like with David, our masters cyclist described above, the insights from our discussions could transform your approach to training and performance. Just click this link or the button below to arrange a time that is convenient for you.

Book a consultation to explore how we can help you develop sustainable training patterns that work for your life.

Keep moving forward,

John and Clare

The EBR Newsletter delivers evidence-based endurance insights every Friday. If you know someone who might benefit from our systematic approach to endurance challenges, please forward this email.