Jim Miller on Coaching Champions: The Art & Science of Elite Cycling Success — Season 7 Ep 15

Host Dirk Friel sits down with Jim Miller, Chief of Sports Performance at @USACyclingOrg and the most decorated cycling coach in U.S. history. They dive deep into Jim’s unparalleled coaching journey—from collegiate racing days in Colorado to guiding athletes like Keegan Swenson and Kristin Armstrong to Olympic and World Championship podiums.

Jim shares insights on the delicate balance of science and art in coaching, the critical importance of an authentic athlete-coach connection, and how personal drive and learning from failure have fueled both his career and the athletes he coaches.

Whether you’re an aspiring athlete, a coach searching for inspiration, or someone fascinated by the human side of high performance, this episode delivers candid stories, practical takeaways, and the kind of wisdom that only comes from decades at the top of the sport.

#trainingpeaks #cycling

08:41 Early Coaching Challenges & Growth
10:31 Finding the Right Coach
13:19 Coach-Athlete Goals and Balance
18:11 Post-Championship Challenges
22:06 Navigating Egos in Coaching
28:21 Weekly Race Prep Protocol
32:43 First Climb Defines MTB Race
34:29 Keegan’s Fitness Structure Analysis
36:45 Finding Limits to Win
41:56 Heat Adaptation for Racing
47:37 HRV Patterns and Bad Days
50:57 Always Something to Prove

Somebody asked me about coaching, what calls about coaching, for me, if if I can connect with them through communication, super easy and it feels like a very natural conversation, then I’m interested. If it’s a forced conversation where I have to ask a lot of questions or I have to sort of prod and poke a little bit, it doesn’t feel easy, then I generally say no all the time. Clearly, it’s both. Right? It’s clearly both. You you you can’t you can’t ignore the size because it’s fact. You can’t ignore the art because that’s emotion, that’s personality, that’s people. And then you have to have both. I mean, you’ve had, you’ve had coaches that have no personality, no emotion, and you’re just like, wow, what a drag. Connection. Yeah. And then you have the coach that you don’t know why, but you would literally run through a wall for that guy and you’re like, or, or woman convince you that you can do it. You’re gonna, you’re gonna give it a go. You’re listening to endurance unlimited, a training peaks podcast for athletes and coaches, no matter what you’re training for Dial in those workouts with deep insights and cutting edge science from the most prominent voices in the endurance and hybrid sports world. My next guest is a long time friend and old teammate of mine, Jim Miller. Jim is the chief of sports performance at USA Cycling. He has had an unparalleled coaching career unlike any other American cycling coach. He has coached athletes in six different Olympic games, resulting in numerous Olympic medals, which makes him the most decorated cycling coach in US history. In addition, Jim’s athletes have won 10 world championships and achieved 15 world championship podiums, including this year’s UCI World Marathon mountain bike champion Keegan Swenson. He was recognized by the USOC as coach of the year and awarded the order of ECOS three times. I hope you enjoy this episode where I try to get at the essence of what makes a one of a kind coach. Jim, Jim Miller, it’s been a long time. We go back a long ways. You are in Santiago, Chile actually joining this podcast. And why are you in the Southern Hemisphere? We are in Santiago, Chile. It’s at the Denver, Colorado of South America. Oh, okay. I should visit. Alright. It it’s very nice. Nice city. Big mountains in the background. You could easily mistake it. Wow. We are we are here for the, track world championships. Nice. How many track world championships have you been to? I don’t even know. I couldn’t even tell you. I think my total world championship count is somewhere in the seventies or eighties. I mean, you travel I mean, the thing is you travel a lot more than the athletes do because you gotta cover mountain bike, road, track, para, Olympic, like, everything in between. It’s just in insane to think about how your brain is, like, shifting modes all the time from All the time. Literally, from mountain bike to gravel to track to world hour record to anything on two wheels. Yeah. We do from, basically, the July till the November, 10 back to back world championships. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have the Olympic years and that changes things up and four year cycles, eight year cycles. I mean, you’re thinking in eight, ten year cycles. You have to. Yep. Well, you know, if we go back twenty five years, you and I were at Colorado State University together, and we were racing and teammates and trying to make a go of it as athletes, and we made it a certain way up that ladder, but not all the way to the highest levels. And so somewhere along the way, we both decided to take up coaching. And I’d love to dig into that seed and, like, what got you motivated? Why did you pursue coaching? And there weren’t pursue coaching? And there weren’t very many cycling coaches back then. So bring us back to, those early years and what got you, down this pathway, this career path. Yeah. It’s pretty crazy if you think about it. Right? I mean Yeah. We’re we’re two guys riding side by side for ten years in Collins, Colorado trying to figure out how how to train ourself for cycling at the end of the day. Like, there were outside of your dad, there was nobody to go and talk to and ask questions about. Yeah. I think at the time, the national team, Chris Carmichael, would publish a annual training plan that you could I remember your experience. Yeah. Yeah. Eddie Bee’s book. Follow it, and, like, that was about it. I remember as I really got into bike racing, I wanted to be good. I’d asked a lot of questions, asked people a lot of questions like, how should we train for this? And it was really like so basic. Even at even at 19 years old, I’m like this can’t be this can’t be simply how you train for cycling. So I started studying physiology just because I wanted to train myself. I was like, I wanna be faster. I wanna be better. I need to understand how this works. And so I just started studying physiology in in University College, Colorado State, just to train myself. And then lo and behold, the first guy I met when I moved to Fort Collins at a stoplight was Chris Baldwin. He was, like, 18 years old. Yeah. And he just moved there. We rode together the next day, and then he I think he started riding with me every day for almost ten years. And somewhere in that first year, he’s like, how do you decide what we’re gonna do every day? And I’m like, I’m basically making it up. I’m I’m trying to learn, physiology for myself, but and apply it to my training and see if it works. And Yeah. He was like, would you write my training? Because clearly, I don’t need the same thing you need. And I’m like, yeah. Probably. But not if you’re gonna go bad and get terrible results and say that I screwed you up. Mhmm. Which which is really the genesis of my entire coaching career was was that conversation. Wow. Wow. I mean, you had connections to Dean Gulich as well. I mean, that was really Yes. Yeah. Dean was my college roommate. I lived with Dean for four years. That’s insane. I mean, head of Red Bull high performance, like, the highest level. Like, the two of you are roommates. Yeah. That’s crazy. Yeah. And our our, first adviser was, Dave Martin. Dave Martin is is the big guy at AIS for twenty five years. Worked for the 76 jerseys. And that’s Wyoming. That’s why that was University of Wyoming. Yeah. Love it too. Ryan Bolden is the high one of the high performance coaches at triathlon was part part of that. Yep. My dad coached him to the first, Triathlon Olympics, your Sydney two thousand. Yeah. Yeah. That is cool. Well, you know what? I looked up, your user ID and Ryan Bolton’s, and you guys are obviously first 20 on, on TrainingPeaks. So we’re definitely doing some really cool reflections right now with our twenty five year anniversary this year. So, yeah, it goes way back to, you were actually starting to create your own app at the same at the same time. Right? I did. Yeah. I was I was trying to trying to make a living. Right? Coaching riders and racing bikes. At the time, you have to go back to the nineties where it was like FileMaker Pro is the best thing you had. I was what we model training peaks off of? Writing all my training in Microsoft Word, which was a calendar template. I would print it and send it via mail. Yeah. And then later send it via fax. That was, like, high-tech. And at the time, I think we actually went down the same road at the same time, but two different paths. You were you were completely thinking operating system and and coaches need a platform to operate on. And I was thinking, this is all marketing. We’ll just copy whatever you do. And and I remember having this conversation, and you’re like, well, we’ll get to be a point where you can’t keep up. And I’m like, I’ll just be one year behind maximum, and we’ll just help you everything you do until we can’t. Well, you could do that today if you want. You know? You could. Yeah. Yeah. And then I I think quickly, though, my zest to keep up with the technology was less than my desire to be a good coach. And Well, I mean, I remember early years with CTS. It was the same kind of conversations. You know, they have their own and, you know, I just felt at some point you can’t do both. So I really kinda might put my head nose the grindstone and just kinda went after technology side, but always loving the coaching side that would that’s what started it all. That’s what drove us to to continue to help the coaching, you know, career path for so many folks. So it’s been amazing. As a young coach, what do you think you were lacking? Maybe, obviously, the science wasn’t all there, but what else as a coach were you lacking as a in those early years? Experience for sure. I think one thing that really helped me become a good coach was in the early years, I coached a ton of people and and probably made a ton of mistakes and probably had a ton of people go really bad, really slow. But you learn from them. And Yeah. The the amount of failures I had clearly helped in the experience category, and you just stop making the same mistakes. Right? And you get better and better and better. Yeah. So for me early on, it was it was most definitely experience and but there wasn’t a there wasn’t, like, a template. Right? There was nobody coaching your dad. Chris Carmichael was. I was. I don’t know many other people. What about the human side of things? You know, like, connecting with athlete. You know, I I wanted to ask this later on, but, you know, it’s it’s that art versus science. But the soft side versus the science and connecting with the athlete, how how much importance do you put into that or not, or is it all science? No. I put a lot into it, actually. When somebody asked me about coaching, what calls about coaching, for me, if if I can connect with them through communication super easy and it feels like a very natural conversation, then I’m interested. If it’s a forced conversation where I have to ask a lot of questions or I have to sort of prod and poke a little bit, it doesn’t feel easy, then I generally say no all the time. I think for an athlete, even when athletes ask me what they should look for a coach, I’m always the communication first. If you if their name pops up on your your iPhone and you dread that, that’s the wrong coach, even if they’re an awesome coach. If their name pops up and you answer in one ring, that’s the coach you want. Yeah. Yeah. That connection, and I guess there’s obviously trust. That’s a huge part. You know, it’s like you gotta stand up for your word. If you say you’re gonna get back to them tomorrow as a coach, like, you can’t nigg on that. I mean, it’s that trust is almost everything too. Right? Yep. Yep. And you have to earn that. Right? Respect, trust, all of that you have to earn, through your actions, not just through what you say. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I I wanna keep diving into more of your underlying methodology and and kinda how you progressed as a as a coach, but somewhat through the lens of one of your star athletes, Keegan Swenson. He just had a rough week last week whereby he was leading the lifetime Grand Prix going into the final big sugar event. He had obviously, being a world champion, he he won the mountain bike marathon world championships this year, won Leadville, but he it kinda ended a little bit on a sour note. It went from fourth sorry. First to fourth on the final, event because Big Sugar was more or less made of Little Sugar because they cut it in half as it ended up being a two hour race, and he had a field sprint at the end. But, yeah, going going through kind of, like, how you work with Keegan, he has lofty goals. But how do you guys go about setting annual goals? You know? I mean, one year, he does gravel worlds. Another year, he does mountain bike worlds. How does this evolve during the off season? Does he just come to you and say, coach, this is these this is it. These are my goals. And you’re like, yeah. Okay. Or are you working together with him? Yeah. It’s it’s I mean, generally, he’s setting the goals what he wants to accomplish. At some point after an off season, we’ll talk and and say what he wanna accomplish. There’s there’s some things like lifetime. That’s that’s his bread and butter. That’s where he makes his his money. That’s his contract. That’s what he’s paid to do. That’s so that’s just a given. And then there’s always the other projects. What do you wanna do that that’s exciting or fun? Like, what what challenges out there that do you wanna conquer? And he primarily says them, so he tells me what he wants to do. And I think in a lot of cases, athletes are telling the coach what they wanna do, but I also think it’s important for the coach to also have goals for their athletes and what they want out of their athletes and see what they want to get from the relationship as well. It’s just not a one-sided, I work for you, and you tell me what we do, and and I work hard towards it. There’s there’s obviously things that I want as well. And and if I’m not feeling fulfilled in that journey, I will also walk away. So you have this skeleton, if you will, the lifetime Grand Prix. You kind of and then you back into projects from there. Yeah. So what decides one year going after gravel world champion jersey and another going after mountain bike world champion jersey? Yeah. Profile, generally. He’s also raised a road world championship. Just forgot about Australia just a couple years ago. Yeah. Absolutely baller ride. I think he’s in the first Chase group. 260 k and Yeah. Was he was the first or second American there. I mean, nobody’s well, I guess, Vanderpool, Tom Pitcock are the next closest to being a chameleon like that. So, yeah, what drives those those project just calendar or what? Yeah. Calendar and, course profile. So, obviously, he’s not going to Zuyl or Belgium to race a world championship. Right. But if the if the profile fits, it suits his skill set, then the timing works, then, then he’ll try. He did he did also did, mountain bike marathon worlds in Elba, Italy, probably five or six years ago, and came from, like, 78 star position to to lead group, flat it, fixed it, and came back to, like, fifth or something. It was absolutely insane ride. Nobody in the world would ever know it happened because it was fifth, and you don’t pay attention to that. Yeah. Mhmm. But we kind of circled that as in our minds of, like, we gotta go back and conquer this. Yeah. Put this one away. So this year, we lined up where where Mountain Bike Worlds was on a super famous mountain bike marathon route. Tons of information on it. Massive climbing. I mean, it was something like 15,000 feet. And it was hike a bike. Yeah. I mean Like like a 30% hike a bike. So, like, legit hike a bike. And and, like, fifteen minutes of it, not just a up and over. This is like you’re you’re doing it. Yeah. But it it lined up. So it’s it’s out of altitude. It does it suits the skill sets perfectly. It’s coming off Leadville, which is altitude. So all of the preparation was basically, like, look, go to Leadville, smash, recover, and then just a, like, a week and a half of training and two weeks training in your in in marathon worlds. So it all lined up really well. So, yeah, we we put it on there, decided to go forward, and worked out. Well, obviously, Kate Courtney too. I mean, you’re not I don’t believe you’re still working with her, but you have in the past. She won Leadville, set the course record this year on what you might argue as a slow year. So Mhmm. The women can go faster. We’re gonna see more records fall. But she won worlds as well off of Leadville. I mean, it just was a perfect alignment of the stars between the lifetime and and the marathon worlds for those two. Yep. It it was really good. And it also helped that cross country worlds were that same week. You had short track Thursday, so they raced on Saturday or Sunday. I don’t remember what it was. And then you had short track on Thursday, and you had cross country on Sunday. So you didn’t get a lot of the cross country guys or or women Right. Racing. Jumping. So you had a you had a true marathon field, and, that certainly helped. But I do think that the preparation they did for Leadville and then the rolling into Switzerland was was probably about as perfect as it could be. Yeah. How do you change up the training based on the next race? I mean, you have Shawarmigan thrown in there. Right? You know, how do you actually prioritize certain, training sessions based on the next race, or do you sometimes just have to ignore the next race and we’re training for a bigger objective? Yeah. I think lifetime is actually pretty easy because it’s so spaced out. You can literally train for a race rest. Mhmm. Start again and train for the in the next cycle to the next race. Alright. The demand’s next. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not like World Cup mountain bike racing where you may have four weeks in a row of World Cups, and you’re just getting this vicious race, rest cycle, and just fitness just knows bombs. Yeah. Do the thirty days. So I I think lifetime’s pretty easy to train for and prep prep for. Something like Schwammagen came immediately after marathon worlds, and you could have almost predicted that that would be not a great race for him. Not not because he wasn’t capable or not because he, wasn’t interested, but you come off of winning a world championship and it’s just like this huge high and it’s hard to get up again. Even though you want to, you won’t show up and do it, but it’s it’s just really hard. And that’s a different profile. I mean, that’s that was a field sprint. Right? Pretty I mean Yep. 10 guys or something kinda like, Big Sugar was. Yep. Yep. And I think, truthfully, the other day, he just he just jumped early and got caught. Mhmm. Went a little too far out. People are getting better at at reading these finishes. I I think the lifetime guys are getting better at reading these finishes. Couple years ago, you could jump or king and jump and absolutely just catch these guys out, which he did because he won it twice doing that. And Yeah. And now this time, I think they’re on a little bit quicker, tighter. It didn’t work out, so then it gets really not a great place, which is bad points. So retrospect that day, he probably should’ve raised for points and not the win, but with him, it just he never raised for points. We just raced to win. Yeah, man. What do you say? Winners or greeners? Is that what it was? Winners or greeners. How about starting with a new athlete? What do you look for in an athlete that you particularly would like to work with? You know, what are characteristics you you that line up with you? Yeah. It it’s hard. Like, I work with a lot only, like, really high end athletes. Right? Everybody that comes to me is they have the big VO twos. They have the big motors. But I take I take that grid, that elite group, and I I basically break them into three categories. One, they wanna win. Two, they like to win. And three, they need to win. And there’s a lot of wanna wins and like to wins. And there’s very few people that need to win. That’s a totally different mindset. That’s this is the person who’s not asking you about balance. They’re not talking to you about holidays. They’re not they’re not working around life schedules. They they integrate their life into their work, and they need to win. They literally need to win. To make a good person, I don’t know. Not not always. Well, they sacrifice along the way. Yeah. And I think it also I would actually reframe that. These are the people who also don’t look at what they’re giving up. They look at everything as what they’re gaining. Right? Like, I’m not giving up my holiday. I’m gaining an extra five days of training because you’re not doing it. Yeah. So that’s and, generally, that’s what I look for. Sometimes they’re a little rough. They they have really high standards for themselves, and I generally push everybody around them to have the same standards and be as driven as they are. Yeah. But I typically am. I mean but there there’s a big difference. And then the like to wins and need to wins, I mean, they work really hard. They’re super talented. Yeah. And they’re going to win some bike races. It’s just not the same as the need to wins. Yeah. So the need to win, the want to win, sometimes ego can come along with that. Mhmm. Do you sometimes have to break down the ego because they’re seeing one pathway to success and you see an opposite pathway and something you need to rebuild and kinda break down that ego and get back to basics? I think they all have egos. Yeah. Right? So it’s just how you work with that ego. I don’t I don’t really purposely ever break down an ego or or try to detrain something out of somebody. I just I will generally try to work with it. There are times where I think you have to really frame conversations. Mhmm. I think that’s one of the tougher things of coaching is is actually telling somebody what they need to hear versus Right. What they wanna hear or what you know is going to make them happy. Right. Sometimes you just gotta tell them how it is, and it is what it is. They’ll they’ll be angry. They’ll be pissed. Yeah. But if you don’t say it, then they don’t know, and your job as a coach is to actually do that. Well, and sometimes in the team environment, you know, that sacrifice, you have to sacrifice for the team leader. And you were the team leader yesterday. You may not be the team leader tomorrow. Mhmm. So breaking that down and it it is a job, you know, for good or bad at a certain level. It it kinda does become a job, especially at the team level where it’s like, I know I’m not gonna finish today or I’m gonna be fifteen minutes behind, but I gotta do this something for the team. So that shows some true character Mhmm. Right there. Yeah. And yeah. And, you know, it’s one thing when when you know you’re paid as a don’t mistake or you’re you know you’re paid as lead out or paid as a roller to just weld things together. Yeah. Generally, those guys don’t they they totally understand their role and they totally understand how they’re making their living, and it’s not a problem. It’s when you have two GC leaders or three GC leaders and Yeah. They all will win the same day. That that’s There’s a deal. And you see that all the time even at the very top of of teams that are dysfunctional because they can’t get past that. Yeah. Three team leaders. Yeah. How about the role of testing? I mean, you could relate it to Keegan or anybody or just in general. How do you think about testing? How important is it within the yearly planning or or spot checks along the way and different types of testing? Mhmm. It’s a big one. Because anything you test or do should should be an actual item afterwards. Right? So there’s no point in testing if you’re not gonna create an action out of it. Uh-huh. I don’t actually do a ton of testing with really experienced athletes, but we do a ton of testing with development athletes and Okay. And repeated testing and repeated testing, so you could show progress, you can see progress or not in some cases. But it also helps you understand what what event they might be best in or or where where you might at least in my world, where I might direct them rather than what their chosen path is. Right. Elite athletes, like, I don’t mind lab testing, especially if they like doing it. But, primarily, it’s setting zones. Right? That’s that’s ultimately what you do with it. Are you doing even with elites, like, could you have just field testing? Like, today’s a test day. Let’s go out and test in the not in the lab, but outside. What might some of those look like? I do I always do a twelve second, five minute, and twenty minute. And it’s it’s pretty basic, but you’re gonna get The same way you go. Peak you’re gonna get a peak power, you’re gonna get a VO two max power, and you’re gonna get a threshold. Mhmm. And those those are the items that I need, for for riding. Think yeah. When I think about Kristen Armstrong and all her Olympics where she was successful and she’s time trialist, I know you replicated, like, Olympic race courses in her backyard. Were there test days on those Olympic recon courses in Idaho? We probably did some test days. I don’t I don’t think we did, like I I I guess we probably did. We probably did some full blown dress rehearsals as well. Okay. Probably the one of the smart things we did was actually talk the local club into doing a Thursday night TT series that they ran for fifteen years, and they weren’t doing that before. So same course, same out of that course, and we would we had fifteen years of data on this, and we knew she was going really well or really bad. And you could do, like, full dress rehearsal on it. So bring the trainer out, do the warm up, do the cooling, do the do your your, beta alanines, your your caffeines, all that stuff. Right? Use the Ray Skin suit, and go rip it and see how it goes. And, like, we would know in Ray Skin suits what she should do. We’d know in training skin suits what she should do. So we’d always know if she was on or off. Yeah. And then they actually did mhmm. What was that? They did they did a great they that time trial series actually turned into, like, this entire town was time traveling. Will Barber’s from there. Mateo Jorgen’s from there. Everybody was going out time traveling in. And the local bike shop, Georgia’s was literally like a used time trial bike dealer. So that you could it was like a car dealership. You could trade in your model, get a new one. Somebody new coming in would buy the old car and start racing that and oh, that was incredible. And they were killing. That’s sweet. I actually did a time trial in Idaho nationals, junior nationals. It was, like, 1984 or something. I was, like, 14 years old and yeah. It was good good memories doing time trials back in Idaho a long time ago. Going back to dress rehearsal, is that with every single athlete, we think about race morning. Are you talking about dress rehearsal the night before the race, the day before the race? How far ahead of the race are you actually getting into rehearse rehearsal mode, and how detailed does that rehearsal get to replicate race day? Yeah. I think I think that’s one of the first things I’d start doing with riders is getting the entire week protocol together. So what what what do we do this week for race days? What what does it look like? And it goes back to even the weekend before Monday. So you know on Monday what rested should feel like. You know on Tuesday what opening up should feel like. You know on Wednesday what what more work feels like or less work feels like. So you you can literally tell me, like, I feel like tomorrow I need less work. Or I feel like tomorrow I need to do more work because I’m not I didn’t feel opened up today. So I’m all about the protocols. As many t’s you can cross and i’s you can dot with that, I do. I don’t wanna guess about I don’t wanna guess about anything. Just like we know exactly what we’re doing. There’s no walk in saying how much how much, super scratch should I put in here? Because, like, we know we know exactly how much super scratch we’re gonna put in, and there’s no conversation about it. Warm up, same thing. Warm up yeah. Warm up protocols, they never change unless unless somebody says, hey. I don’t feel like that’s working for me. I wanna try this or I wanna do this. But once we get a protocol that somebody says that works for me, then that’s that’s the protocol. We don’t deviate. Yeah. Now you and you’re working those rehearsals in around sea level type priority races? Pretty much everywhere. If you’re racing this week, we know what your week’s gonna look like. And and I I wouldn’t say it’s it’s a cut and paste from, like, the last race you did or the previous race, but it’s pretty damn close. Yeah. So what about for What about for someone that doesn’t race that often? I still think it would be very beneficial to to know what you’re doing that week so you’re not guessing or you’re not. Yeah. You’re not getting insecure in the race. In your race preparation, you’re deciding you need to do more, you need to do less, or or even those things you’re just like, okay. This is this is what I do this week. And I know if I’m gonna be good or bad. But you have to you have to do it. You have to experiment. You have to I think it’s really important to track it and know what you did last time and and make notes immediately. Did this work or did this not work? Yeah. And and yeah. Did this work? Did this not work? And here are the changes I wanna make next time. So when you go to those notes, it’s it’s crystal clear what you wanna do. Okay. So the role of the coach with that within that rehearsal week, where do we how do you approach athletes around the, I guess, the the tactical side of the race, different race scenarios. How would you approach an athlete and work through the strategy for the race? Mhmm. And when when might that happen? What does it look like? It’ll happen. I think I let it happen relatively organically until it’s time to talk about it. So if if they wanna bring it up and, like, hey. What are you thinking about this week? Then I will I’ll say what I think about the week. If I don’t hear anything about the week and we get closer to the weekend, then I’ll say, hey. What are you thinking about this weekend? Mhmm. And and then get into it. But always always talk to actors. Yeah. I’ve heard you talk about, like, if it’s a, you know, maybe a four lap race or a five lap race, you you have a goal for the very first lap. It it’s not just wait till we’re 80% done and then figure it out from there. Walk me through that. Yeah. I’ll give you a great example. This year, mountain bike world championships for cross country. Had a had a start on the street, left hand turn, maybe three hundred three hundred meters past the start, went uphill, and then funneled into a single track. Within the first three minutes of this race, the first 15 positions were set at the finish. Wow. So literally, and and for me, this was just watching junior girls race and then watching the junior boys. Watching the u twenty three women go and you’re you get to a point where you’re like, okay. This is really consistent on how these flow. And I will always I will always watch start laps first first laps of all the categories and make note of the first 10 that came through and then what where were they at to finish. So we went to, you know, after the first day of racing, team meeting that night, and I’m like, look. This is super simple. You guys have to do whatever you can to get as far forward as you can by the top of the first climb. That’s that’s the end of the race effectively. Yeah. Other than you’ve got another hour and fifteen minutes of of being pinned. Hanging on. And you can you can separate out those positions at that point. But if you don’t get up there, the race is already gone. It’s it’s past you. Right. So, yeah, I break it down as far as far as you can, tactically. Primarily because, you know, how it is when you’re racing, you you you lack some oxygen in your brain and sometimes you’re not thinking clearly and you just need to react. And you’re like, my plan a was this, my plan b was this, my plan c was this. I missed a, so I gotta go to b, and I don’t have time to think about it. I just need to make the switch and go. That that reminds me of f one. You hear the the radio, you know, talking back to the pit, and they’re like, still plan a, plan a, or plan b, plan b. Like, nobody knows exactly what that is, but, you actually have a, b, c Yeah. Plans. Yep. Absolutely. Lay them out. So and some days, like, look, you’re not gonna win every day. Right? Everybody knows that. Some days, you just have to race for the best result you can get. And if that’s tenth, that’s that’s the best you can do that day, and and you have to make that shift quickly and say, okay. Well, shit. I wanted to win today, but given the circumstances, whatever situation I found myself in, I’m gonna have to race for the best result I can get. Yeah. Yeah. So stepping back to Keegan, I mean, for my eyes, he races a lot compared to, you know, what I can imagine myself doing. Right? But, is does he have much fluctuation within his fitness? Like, are you actually thinking about peaks and valleys within the season, or is he on, like, this plateau and his 90% is just better than 98% of the field. You know, what does that structure look like for his season in particular, and is it does his fitness actually go up and down through the season? Like, we think about building and taper and all this stuff and a race, b, c, but it seems like every race is an a race for him. Yeah. Well, I think the lifetime series lets you go up and down pretty easily. K. Because you have so much time in between races. It may look like a super high level all the time, but it’s not always his top level. So it it definitely goes up and down. He’s good at not showing when he’s not awesome and and racing accordingly, But he’s also really good at showing when he is awesome and and racing accordingly. Are you giving him options within the the training week or on a on on days? Like, he can override and say, today is not the day. Hey, coach. I didn’t do today. I decided to do x y z. Like, how refined is that day to day and and options that he has? Yeah. Anybody a coach does, you know, the ability to change a day anytime they want. Okay. It’s not happening, they tell me. Just say it’s not happening. And that’s perfectly fine. That’s the the sort of nature of the beast. I’ll I’ll write training. He’ll look at training. If he, if he sees something he doesn’t like or doesn’t love, he’ll say something about it. But for the most part, he’s he’s really pretty compliant. Like, you write it, I do it. If I get tired, I’ll tell you. Are you having to educate some athletes in terms of, like, they push when they shouldn’t have? All of them do. That’s why they got to where they got. And it’s not bad. Right? I mean, I think there’s this this notion, like, if if an athlete overcooks it, that it’s a bad thing. It’s it’s poor coaching. The truth is if you’re gonna win these really big big titles, you have to know where the line is. And if you don’t go over the line, you don’t know exactly where the line is. I don’t purposely ever push anybody over the line, but if you’re pushing and you’re both hard charging towards a goal, occasionally, you’d you’d just overcook and go go too close to the sun. Yeah. Keegan this year got just smashed it. Cape epic. And Mhmm. Yeah. And we both thought going in, he was gonna be really good, and he turned out to be really bad, terrible. But it was just we pushed too hard, too early and and overcooked it and he got to pay the price for it. Like, as a coach, you’re like, oh, man, that 100% sucks. You feel terrible. But, I think if you’re if you’re pushing, it’s just gonna happen. It’s gonna happen one time or another for somebody. Yeah. What about the subjective versus objective, like, data coming through? You know, are you do you look at HRV, his feelings, his motivation, you know, his stress level? How much does that play a part in terms of decision making? I think a ton. I look at data all the time. Sort of my workflow at the end of the day is is training comes in. I’ll open up my phone or or if my it’s open on my laptop. I’ll just take a quick peek at it. Generally speaking, it should look like what you wrote. Right? If you if you wrote three by 10, it should look like three by 10 and and you’re you’re gonna guess one eighty three and you see that? Great. No problem. If you see something if I see something that isn’t exactly the way it should look, I’ll send a text and say, hey, how’d it go today? Or what’d you think? So for me, what how they reply is actually super important for me. You can look at you can take all the data, and all the data will say it was good. It was a good workout. Maybe not a plus, but call it an a or a minus or b plus. Press on, press forward. Just keep working. But if they say, I don’t know. I just didn’t feel strong today. And I’m like, okay. We we gonna push through this workout. Are we gonna push through this week? Or do we just throw a rest day in there and then proceed with the rest of the week? Or do we need to really intervene and and take a day off and take two or three or four rest days, and then and then continue? So really how they reply to me or respond to me is is as important as what I see for objective data. Yeah. So, I mean, are they putting in comments in Turning Peaks or you don’t always have to text them every day? All the above. Some people are great about comments in Turning Peaks. Some just shoot a text. Yeah. It’s it’s any and always necessary. Yeah. I guess, stepping back and looking at your career path, you know, how how has coaching changed? You know, we started out talking about twenty five years ago, how there was little knowledge and very few to learn from. What do you think were some of the the biggest evolutionary changes along the way that twenty five years of coaching? Man, I mean, think about when we were riding power taps and they were prototype power taps, and we were like, why is your power so high and mine so low? It’s like, well, you’re I weigh thirty more pounds, Drew McCann. You weigh thirty more pounds. Or why are our kilojoules so so different on the same ride? We just did the same three hour ride. Our kilojoules but at the time, we didn’t know. We’re like, I have no idea what what’s happening. But now it seems like so. It’s such it’s common sense. Right? You’re like, oh, of course. You’re bigger than I. Wearables have been a huge thing. Right? You can collect just a massive amount of data. Yeah. I mean, in cycling, short enough one, it probably collects the very most data of almost all sports. Yeah. You you can literally choose what markers you wanna look at are are meaningful to you, and you’re ignoring another 25 that also contribute to that. Are important to you? What have what have you learned over the years that are important or you’re investigating that might be important? Yeah. What do I look at daily? I I do look at CTL, ATL, TSP. I do look at, HRV. I do look at load. I do listen to what they say. I’ll look at How how about core body type? Any training interventions or, you know, heat acclimatization? Heat heat, you always have to intervene. Alright? Heat heat’s a big thing. I think that’s table stakes now. Everybody’s managing heat, but it wasn’t the case even. What do you mean by managing heat? Doing heat adaptation prior to racing, doing doing cooling during or pre racing. Anytime you race in a hot hot environment, you you have to come fully adapted to it. You can’t just show up and bring it anymore. But I remember 2016, Conan came to Doha and had done no heat training. We’d spent weeks doing heat training and then he’s like, I didn’t do any. But he came ten days early, rode outside every day in 110 degrees. That’s heat adaptation. It’s just a nasty one. It’s nasty way to do it. But by race day, he was he was fully adapted. But it just goes to show you that that, like, ten years ago, not everybody was doing this. Yeah. It was it was relatively novel to put a lot of effort into it. But now you think of it like altitude. Like, you wouldn’t you wouldn’t consider not doing heat. Yeah. So are you you you know, we’ve seen are you seeing benefits of doing heat adaptation, acclimatization before going to altitude, leaving altitude, helping it maintain benefits? How does that relate with altitude training? Yep. So, really, the only thing I don’t do is heat and altitude at the same time. That’s that’s stressful. It’s too much load. And and then you throw your training on there, which you’re trying to manage also, and it’s it just creates too much fatigue. And they don’t really go well they don’t play well together. So if I’m doing altitude, then I don’t do heat. If if we’re doing heat, then then I time the altitude afterwards. And once you once you do heat and if you do some some maintenance phases to it, you can actually maintain all the adaptations for a long time. You don’t have to Oh. Just constantly be in the heat to maintain it. It it’s pretty, it’s pretty easy thing to train and maintain. Yeah. Is it a type of thing where you do active heat, training to get the adaptations and then you can switch over to passive to maintain? Or how do you how do those play with each other, active versus passive? That is really sort of coach depending on what they like to do. I’ve I use both. I actually I think I prefer passive, Just because the sauna Sauna, like, any particular Yep. Yep. Protocol around a sauna? Yeah. Also use hot tubs. Also use bath tubs. We’ve used bath tubs before. That’s what you got. Yeah. Small heaters and small bathrooms. Hotel bathrooms with a with a really good portable heater gets shower on gets really hot. Yeah. So it’s just you just have to be a little bit creative about it, but it all works. My sauna protocol is is seven days. I start at twelve minutes. Add two minutes every day. But it’s the end of the ride. Come in the end of the ride. Last hour, you stop drinking, get dehydrated. Go in the sauna each day, you have two minutes, come out, then you rehydrate like normal. And then after that, it’s a it’s a simple, maintenance phase of every third day. Go back to the sauna with the same same duration that you finished out, which is, like, around twenty four minutes or something. And it’s it just doesn’t seem terrible. If you’ve done if you’ve done the heat training on the bike where you put the suits on, you put the Yeah. All the clothes on, I mean, that is actually particularly miserable. Yeah. And I I do think, like, the load of that is is really hard. Yeah. So when you go into the sauna protocol, are you accounting for that within the training volume itself? I mean, backing off somehow to allow this extra stress and then you can ramp it back up over time? Yep. So during the first week of the heat the heat adaptation, I will try to take away as much training as I can. Okay. So a rest week where you’re doing recovery rides is great. You get towards during that rest week and you’re adding volume to the to the week, it’s it’s really easy. It doesn’t create a ton of fatigue. If you’re if you’re trying to do intervals, hard rise during that is is is actually gets really hard. So I try to time it end of the rest week, early first part of a training week. Yeah. Or or is there a particular structure for each week where you know or the athlete is always gonna know there’s two key workouts, two breakthrough workouts, or is every week just dramatically different? Like, you know, what what might we expect from a calendar that, you know, from Jim Miller? Yeah. I don’t do a lot of same weeks, and it still goes back to when we race bikes. Right? I if I had to do a five by 10 every single week, it would have drove me nuts. Like, I needed some variety. So I ride a lot of variety, and I ride I’ll re I’ll create new training workouts all the time just because I know that somebody’s getting bored of the Right. The 10 reps of thirty thirty followed by ten minutes rest. Right? That stuff gets so madonnaise. So Yeah. So I will always I’m always writing new workouts just just simply for variety and change it up and and keep the stimuli fresh. And, it’s even like, for me, I get tired of posting the same training workouts. I’m like, oh my god. Here we go again. Yeah. You mentioned HRV. How how is that a trend you’re looking at? Are you making decisions day to day based on what’s coming in? Yeah. So I guess how I really look at HRV is is more what’s happened in their HRV when they go bad all the time? Is it consistent? Does it is it consistently a bad drop or a or a big decline? Or is it just tailed off? Or did they not get the the high HRV numbers anymore? What what’s what’s going on with that individual when they start to have bad days? Some people, it’s like they wake up and HR through HRV is through the floor and you’re like, okay. That’s you’re gonna have a bad day. Mhmm. Others, it can go through the floor and they they’re just perfectly fine on the workout. So it’s it’s an individual level of, like, some folks’ HRV actually plays into your decision making more than others. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So just I’m just trying to pay attention when they’re gonna go bad. That’s, like, my job, right, to push them as far as you can push them and and try to know when they’re gonna go bad so that you don’t do it. Yeah. And whatever that is, whatever those markers are that is consistent for that athlete, then they’re generally consistent all the time. You just gotta pay attention to them. Yeah. So if you’re doing some block training, three hard days in a row or something, for a certain number of your athletes, you would expect lower HRV to to follow that block. Yep. Any other kind of lifestyle things that you see affect it? I mean, sleeping at altitude versus sea level? Yep. All of that. Home stress. I think one thing that one thing that’s really hard that that you can’t really measure is just what’s happening to somebody off the bike. What’s going on? Right. Right? Girlfriend breaks up with them. Buy a house, sell a house, get divorced. All all these things happen, and and maybe for the most part, they’re a little bit stoked about it. They don’t tell you or or it’s not a big deal. It’s fine. I’m dealing with it. But then they’re not riding well, and you’re like, there’s no way they’re not riding well. So you might uncover something through it. Some Given that Those are always hard things. That’s, I think, why you have to have conversations all the time. Yeah. That’s also why I think there’s a lot more unknowns than knowns. Mhmm. Right? And I I I believe that, like, AI is here to stay. AI is here to help us. It’s gonna help the coach, but not replace the coach because there’s that human connection and all the unknowns that it’ll never know? I mean, is that your sense of where it might be going? Yeah. No. There’s not an AI that’s gonna talk you into running through a wall. Yeah. Right. Right. It’s just not. A good coach can. Yeah. But but AI is not going to. AI is going to be very much, a tool for a coach, and the coaches are gonna fill figure out how to use the tool for their for their benefit. How how does this work for me? Yep. Yep. What keeps you motivated as a coach? Yeah. This is a weird one. It’s it’s weird in the sense that, I always feel like I have something to prove. Mhmm. So The underdog. You talk talk about being the underdog. Yeah. You you might look at me and be like, oh, he’s, you know, his resume is huge. His Paul Mar’s huge. How many world titles? How many Olympic medals? I literally am like I still have so much I have to prove something to somebody all the time. Mhmm. And nobody’s asking me to. It’s just how I’d I guess I’m wired and think about it all the time, but I always feel like I have something to prove. And the other thing is, like, I have this this and I know sports psychologists have a field day with this, but I’m a general failure. Like, I do not like to fail, and I will work relentlessly to not fail because I do not like it. Mhmm. And that I any number of sports psychologists be like, that’s the wrong way to approach things, but I’m like, it’s been very successful for me. And at the end of the day, like, that’s what that’s what makes me go. What does that process look like after the failure? So I’m pretty good at failing. It happens. Like, whatever. I can let things go like a light switch. Like, okay. We screwed up. It didn’t work. Learn from it. Take from it the learnings. If there’s nothing to take from it other than you just failed, then that’s also fine. Just tomorrow, we move on. Yeah. So when you say you failed, you’re saying through the eyes of your athlete, them not making the podium, you failed. Yeah. So And that’s not always huge. Right? I mean, you can you can you can have somebody perfectly prepared and they don’t accomplish the goal, but to me that feels like we failed. And it’s never they failed or never I failed. It’s like we we failed at this. We had a goal. We didn’t get there. Yeah. Why? And okay. At the end of the day, nobody died, so let’s let’s move on. So yeah. So a large part of your process is moving on, but trying to learn from that and then go on to the next goal. Yeah. Nice. Love it. Well, Keegan was fourth, so you got another goal. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, man. Lastly, any more thoughts on art versus science? I mean, we kinda kinda, like, talked all around it, but, you know, how much is it art versus science? I think I both clearly, it’s both. Right? It’s clearly both. You you you can’t you can’t ignore the science because it’s fact. You can’t ignore the art because that’s emotion, that’s personality, that’s people, And then you have to have both. So, I mean, you you’ve had you’ve had coaches that have no personality, no emotion, and you’re just like, wow. What a drag. Correction. Yeah. And and then you have the coach that you don’t know why, but you would literally run through a wall for that guy. And you’re like, or poor woman. If they convince you that you can do it, you’re gonna you’re gonna give it a go. Yeah. I love watching some of the NFL or college coaches in the locker rooms, you know, those post game, you know, Deion Sanders, you know, moments. And it’s like, holy cow. Yeah. That got me going, you know? And Yep. That is, that is definitely art. And you you might do 10% more. Yep. Exactly. And I love football coach speeches, and they’re they’re very football coaching. Right? They’re yelling and screaming and motivating. I’m not that personality. I would love to have that personality, but I’m not. But I think in my own way, I’m I think most people would say that I’m pretty motivating. I can I can talk you into doing a lot? I can convince you that you can do things. I think you’re good at analyzing and teeing up to somebody something they didn’t know was a possibility, but you have the proof in your back pocket that aligns and shows this is a possibility, but they may not have thought about that. There that’s the running through a wall, you know, and that you’re teeing up to them. And it’s like, no. This is a possibility. You you gain 2% a year for the next whatever four or five years. You can get to this hole, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So so I think that’s that you know, you have this athletes have the short term, you know, view, and you just naturally have to have this longer term view that, you know, a little bit at a time, we can get there. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That that could be it too. But I certainly know that for most, I I I think I’m motivating in a in a different fashion than a football coach, but but equally motivating. Yeah. Awesome, Jim. Thanks for sharing, all your, words of wisdom, and, it’s been awesome. And, like I said, you’re a top 10 user ID on, train speeds there. So thanks for being along with our ride and hopefully another twenty five more years. So looking forward to it. Thanks, Jim. Alright. Thanks, Dirk. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to Endurance Unlimited. Be sure to like, subscribe, and follow us on your platform of choice to never miss new episodes. Also, be sure to leave a five star rating to let your coach and the algorithm know you’re ready to dial in your training. Find more resources to help you take on your next challenge at trainingpeaks.com or find us on social media at training peaks. Got questions? Leave a comment or send an email to [email protected]. Good luck in whatever you’re training for, and trust the process to reach your potential.