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Latest Blogs
Sea Otter 2025 Trends & Highlights
Molly and Peter discuss what they saw, what they liked and what they didn't like at the Sea Otter the Cycling Event 2025. The conversation includes the first round of the Lifetime Series and trends in bikes, gear and racing. This Episode is Brought to You By:...
Is Aspirational Clutter Slowing Down Your Training?
Whether we're talking about physical or mental aspirational clutter, you might be making your training harder—or at least, much more crowded—if you're not occasionally clearing out the gear or the goals that you've set for some idealized future version of yourself....
What to Do When You Can’t Follow Your Training Plan or Do Your Planned Workout
Modifying workouts is tricky business—so much so that a question around it comes up almost monthly on the podcast. Should you skip, swap, shift, substitute or shorten your workout? Or forget about the workout altogether and just do something? We chatted about this on...
Training
Who Do You Want to Be at the End of the Season?
We just had the incredible Erin Ayala of Skadi Sport Psychology on the podcast to chat about a range of topics including Self-Talk, process vs. performance, and of course, GOAL SETTING. My favorite moment? When she gave this prompt: Fast-forward to the end of your...
5 Ways to Improve Your Race at Paris to Ancaster
Ontario's Perennial spring classic, Paris to Ancaster, always has excitement extremely high in Ontario and beyond as one of the biggest early season gravel races around. The demands of the race are tricky: It has a few highly technical bits, some potential for serious...
Training Together – Or Apart: Athletic Couple Survival Tips
Over the years, we've gotten a lot of listener questions around training with your significant other, or people who've asked how we train together. Like so many things in life, the answer tends to boil down to 'it depends.' For some couples, training together is their...
Racing
So You Signed Up for a Bike Race… Now What?
If you recently signed up for a bike race, whether it’s your first gravel grinder, a local mountain bike series, a new-to-you enduro or a MTB stage race, you may be feeling a little panicked. The race is a few months away, so what the heck are you supposed to do? You...
Choosing Your Values – And Applying Them to Training + Racing
As we head into the new year and goal setting season, we’ve been reflecting a lot on our values, and then using that lens to figure out our race schedule and work/life goals for this coming year. One of our favorite podcast guests, Dr. Josie Perry, shared a few...
Category Upgrades & Should You Keep Racing as You Get Older?
In this episode of the Consummate Athlete Podcast, we tackle two important questions for masters cyclists about racing, category upgrades, and the evolution of athletic goals as we get older. Coach Peter Glassford and Author Molly Hurford dive into the nuances of...
Cross-Training
Short Strength + Stretch Routine – Video
Since we were talking marginal gains on the podcast this week and mentioned my morning routine (still going strong after 9 years… longer than our marriage!), I wanted to make a new video walking you through a 10-minute version. You may need to modify it at first,...
Year-Round Intensity + Starting Strength in 60’s
Today Molly and Peter discuss a listener question about doing intensity and races year-round. They look at an interesting study about a person in their 60s starting to strength train and the benefits in muscle mass and strength they saw into their 70s! They also...
Shaking Things Up in Your Training Routine… Without Breaking It
I'm an incredibly routine person. If you've been reading this blog or listening to the podcast for a while now, you probably know that. I have a strict yoga/core morning routine, we eat the exact same breakfast most days, my workday and training are pretty routinized...
Mindset
How Athletes Can Motivate With Healthy Self-Talk
What do you say to yourself when you run? For most of us, we aren't the nicest when the going gets tough. I realized this a couple years go after we talked to Rebecca Rusch on the Consummate Athlete Podcast and she dropped this knowledge bomb about self-talk that as a...
How to Handle Plummeting Motivation to Train
Motivation isn't all you need to succeed at work or in sport, but damn, does it make things a lot easier. Confession time here: I've been suffering a serious bout of low motivation / ennui / the blahs the past couple of days. Sure, I'm getting things done—workouts,...
A Survival Guide for Couples for When You Both Work From Home
It's Valentine's Day, so I figured I would tackle a topic that's both romantic and practical: what to do when you and your partner both work from home. I wrote this originally back in 2018 when our lives were much more on the road—in fact, I intro'ed it by saying,...
Nutrition
The Lazy Baker’s Guide to Easy Sourdough Bread – Video + Recipe
I got into baking sourdough in earnest two years ago when we got home from my 100-miler because, well, I was hungry and had a couple weeks off. And what I realized after a lot of trial and error was that most recipes were far too complicated (even the ones that...
The BS of Athlete Food Diaries – And What to Think About Instead
Thanks to social media, it's not just the top level athletes who are sharing their 'food diaries' or 'what I eat in a day' posts. Now, everyone is sharing them. And while some of them are impressively calorie-laden and actually fuel the work the athletes are doing,...
Organizing Your In-Ride Food and Hydration—Kitchen Cleanout
If you're anything like us, you probably have a random drawer or two or three that houses your in-run or in-ride food and hydration mix. Maybe it's scattered throughout your kitchen and garage and dresser with all your other cycling gear. Because being able to eat and...
Lifestyle
2025 Update from BikePacking.ca
Our friend and bikepacking offianoto, Matt Kadey has shared his annual Bike Packing update. This contains links and events that are super helpful to know as you plan your 2025 off-road adventures. Matt Kadey's 2025 Bikepacking Update: It’s time for the annual Ontario...
A Survival Guide for Couples for When You Both Work From Home
It's Valentine's Day, so I figured I would tackle a topic that's both romantic and practical: what to do when you and your partner both work from home. I wrote this originally back in 2018 when our lives were much more on the road—in fact, I intro'ed it by saying,...
How Overfilled is Your Life? Why We Love the Cup Metaphor
If you are a regular here at ConsummateAthlete.com, you know we love referencing Greg Lehman's 'cup' metaphor for stress and injury. Simply put, it's the idea that as humans we have a certain capacity for stressors (the cup) and that if too many stressors are poured...
Women Specific
Molly’s 10 Pieces of Outdoor Gear That Have Lasted 10+ Years
There are some pieces of gear that are great for a couple of seasons... and then, there are pieces of cycling kit, running apparel and outdoor gear that have stood up to over 10+ years of hard, hard use. We wanted to pay homage to a few of the pieces that we've used...
Our Best Athletic Gear Organization Tools
Here at Consummate Athlete HQ, one of our major tenets of the Consummate Athlete lifestyle is to be able to ride, run, hike, climb, camp, whatever at a moment's notice. That means having our gear organized and easy to access. Not only does it make packing for trips a...
Red-S and Women’s Performance – Traci Carson
Traci Carson PhD. is a researcher, scientist, professor and (still sometimes) athlete. She is passionate about helping active women fuel their bodies and optimize their menstrual cycles for health, performance, and fertility. This episode is brought to you by 3 Month...
Gear
An Easy Way to Improve Your Sleep Quality
We've been on the road the last couple months, which means we're not in our normal sleep setup. Whether in the van or in an AirBNB or at a friend's place, there's no guarantee for cool, dark and quiet wherever we're sleeping. I didn't bring our little bedside white...
Do You Need a Sunday Reset as an Athlete?
I love a Sunday Reset in general, as someone who works for herself and as someone who—by nature of working for herself from home—tends to have a few household things pile up over the course of the workweek. But I’m also realizing that a Sunday Reset is also an...
Last Minute Gifts for Athletes in Your Life
So it’s almost time for the gift exchange and you completely lost track of time and forgot to get a gift for the cyclist/runner/athlete in your life. It happens. First of all, DO NOT PANIC… or panic shop. In fact, if you don’t see anything on this gift guide you want...
Videos
Build Confidence on MTB Jumps – Video
If you find you are nervous about getting airborne on your bike or have the desire to learn to jump than this post and video is for you! You can learn how to jump your bike! Peter has made a series of mountain bike skills videos with Canadian Cycling Magazine, and...
Climb and Descend Switchbacks on your Mountain Bike
2 Videos thanks to Canadian Cycling Magazine for capturing these thoughts and drills. Descending Switchbacks CLIMBING SWITCHBACKS
Setting Up a Charging Station for Athletes
One of my favorite things to talk about is, obviously, keeping your gear organized as an athlete. And the number one time-waster we hear about from coaching clients and people who follow along with the podcast is Stuff Not Being Charged. And it happens! With so many...
