Scott Johnston | Coaching Tom Evans & Ruth Croft to UTMB Victories
The Freetrail Podcast with Dylan Bowman
Dylan Bowman
4.8 • 866 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2025
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scott Johnston is the Founder of Evoke Endurance, a coaching company serving trail runners, skiers, climbers, alpinists, and beyond. Scott is also the coach of both Tom Evans and Ruth Croft, the 2025 UTMB champions. In this conversation, we explore Scott's coaching background, the importance of fatigue resistance, local fatigue vs. global fatigue, his relationship with Tom & Ruth, and reflections from their victories.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Background
09:00 Understanding Fatigue Resistance
14:49 Muscular Endurance and Its Importance
18:02 Practical Applications of Training Techniques
20:55 Utilizing Treadmills & Poles for Enhanced Training
40:06 Understanding the Unique Talents of Tom and Ruth
42:28 Daily Communication and Coaching Dynamics
46:15 Enhancing Coach-Athlete Communication
48:39 The Importance of Team Collaboration
51:15 Training Adjustments for Ruth's Aggressive Strategy
53:03 Tom's Increased Training Load
55:28 Race Management and Observations
57:22 Emotional Highs of Coaching Success
01:00:04 Muscular Endurance and Race Execution
01:02:43 Curiosity and Continuous Learning in Coaching
01:06:33 Admiring Influential Figures in Sports Science
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Freetrail Links: Website | Freetrail Pro | Patreon | Instagram | YouTube | Freetrail Experts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the free trial podcast. Of course, I'm your loving host, Dylan Bowman, |
| 0:16.8 | here today with Scott Johnston, the founder of Evoke Endurance and the coach to WTNB champions |
| 0:24.1 | Tom Evans and Ruth Croft. Of course, one of the big stories emerging from UTMB was that |
| 0:30.0 | Tom and Ruth have built amazing teams around them with highly competent people to help them |
| 0:35.9 | accomplish this dream. It's part of a trend in the sport of the best athletes seeking knowledge and assistance from |
| 0:43.3 | increasingly advanced and novel areas. |
| 0:46.3 | Part of their shared team, of course, is today's guest coach Scott Johnston. |
| 0:51.3 | Scott, I have to say, is just a lovely guy. He clearly loves the process and complex |
| 0:56.7 | nature of training. And he's now somewhat reluctantly in the spotlight after UTMB. It was so |
| 1:03.3 | fun to chat with him here on the show. Some topics we discuss. Scott's coaching background. We talk |
| 1:08.9 | about how working with alpinists and cross-country skiers |
| 1:12.8 | has influenced his work with trail runners. We define fatigue resistance, something Scott has become |
| 1:19.0 | known for. We talk about the difference between global fatigue and local fatigue, something I found |
| 1:24.6 | to be really illuminating. We talk about the importance of the coach |
| 1:28.3 | athlete communication dynamic and how he interacted with Tom and Ruth specifically. We talk |
| 1:34.0 | about what sets Tom and Ruth apart as people and as athletes. We talk about the race itself, |
| 1:39.6 | including Scott's experience, watching things unfold and a whole lot more. It's funny. I rarely do |
| 1:46.6 | these types of episodes that go deep on training theory. I usually leave that to much more |
| 1:52.2 | qualified outlets like the SWAT podcast and others. But this was so fun. And I'm really |
| 1:58.1 | grateful to Scott for coming on the show. In the show notes, I linked to |
| 2:01.2 | the book that Scott co-wrote with Steve House and Killian Jornett training for the uphill athlete. |
| 2:06.5 | It's a great book that has influenced a lot of the sports top coaches and athletes. Before we get to |
... |
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