Human Endurance

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.

Follow us
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

What separates an age-grouper who keeps improving from one who plateaus? It often isn't the next training method or the latest gadget. It's how they think about their training as a whole.
In this episode, we sit down with Mikael Eriksson, founder of Scientific Triathlon and host of That Triathlon Show. With nearly nine years of full-time coaching experience and an engineering background, Mikael takes a systematic, pragmatic approach to triathlon training that has helped athletes go from beginners to professional level.
We talk about how to profile athletes by their physiological strengths, why specificity is overrated for long-course racing, and the three metrics every coach should master: external load, internal load, and RPE.
Mikael also shares his philosophy on hard work in an era obsessed with recovery optimization: "You can become a pretty good athlete with very bad recovery if you're putting in the work. You cannot fully optimize your recovery and become a good athlete if you're not putting in the work."
If you're a competitive age-grouper looking for the right levers to pull, or a coach refining how you work with experienced athletes, this conversation offers a grounded, practical framework rather than a list of hacks.
Connect with Mikael on:
Instagram
Youtube
Linkedin
https://scientifictriathlon.com/
Connect with Bruna & Fabi:
@justbrunathings
@endurance_fabi
https://jornadaendurance.com/
https://www.humanendurancepodcast.com/