Lifetime Training Hours and Long-Term Aerobic Development: How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Triathlon | Carson Christen

That Triathlon Show

Mikael Eriksson

Health, Swimming, Endurancesports, Run, Cycling, Health & Fitness, Fitness, Ironman, Swim, Bike, Sports, Running, Sportscience, Triathlon

4.9 • 596 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2026

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Triathlon is a sport that rewards a big aerobic base, built over multiple years (if not decades) of training. But even though we all know this, it’s often hard in practice to prioritise this kind of long-term aerobic development, and we make tradeoffs that might lead to short-term gains, but might not help us achieve our full potential in the long-term. Coach Carson Christen joins me today to discuss this topic in detail. By the end of this episode you should have a better idea of what you can do today, this month, and this year, to maximise your long-term development as a triathlete.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to That Traflon Show, the podcast presented by Scientific Traathlon and hosted by me, Michael
0:13.3	Erikson.
0:14.3	Today I'm joined by Carson Christian, who longtime listeners will remember from his appearance
0:18.8	on the show way back in July 2018. So it's
0:22.7	been almost eight years. Carson is a triathlon coach. He's the owner of Tordon multi-sport.
0:29.0	And he's also the head coach of the NCAA women's triathlon program at Concordia University,
0:35.4	Wisconsin. Carson has a master's degree in exercise physiology, and he's been coaching endurance athletes full-time
0:42.4	for over 13 years.
0:44.7	I think it might be 14, but you can correct me on that.
0:47.9	Working with athletes across the full spectrum from age groupers to professionals and his
0:52.3	own athletic backgrounds, fans collegiate swimming,
0:54.7	professional cycling at domestic level in the US, and racing as a professional triathlete himself.
1:01.5	Today we're going to talk about something that we're both excited about, I think, which is
1:06.6	the role of long-term aerobic development in reaching the true performance potential as an
1:12.1	endurance athlete that each of us have within us. So I'm excited for that. I hope you are, Carson.
1:17.7	How are you doing? Yeah, here we go. Great. Yeah, thanks for having me back on, man. Eight years.
1:22.9	That's a long time. And a far stretch from back in the day living in Germany, now back home here in the USA.
1:30.9	So yeah, very happy to be here.
1:33.0	Yeah.
1:33.2	How long have you been back in the US?
1:35.6	It's been four years now.
1:37.5	Yeah, right.
	...

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