Finding a New Excitement for Endurance Sports
Written by Maggie Benhart - GE Athlete and 4th Place AG Finisher at 70.3 Michigan in 2024
My athletic history growing up is very short: I did my first triathlon in 2008, with my mom and a group of family friends, on a borrowed bike that didn’t shift gears, as I found out mid-race. Frustrated and crying in T2, my mom refused to let me bail on the run, despite my insistence that “this was stupid”. I finished the race, got my medal, and came back two years later with the same group to redeem myself on the course.
Given I wasn’t a swimmer or cyclist, it was pretty easy to leave the sport for a while and fill time with other activities. I started rowing in college and thought that would be my “forever” sport. I got very competitive, very fast, chasing the national team and my coaches’ approval. But as most athletes have learned after training long enough, if you never build a base of fitness first, it’s entirely unsustainable. I was injured before our first season ended and spent more time doing PT in the training room than in classrooms. I made it two and a half years before I was told by the UR Rowing ortho to never get in a boat again; I’d already done too much irreparable damage. It took ten years, a handful of surgeries, and years of PT to come back to competitive sports again and to look at finding a team that would provide more longevity and less injuries.
After moving back to Chicago in 2021, I joined a run group, training for my first marathon and first 70.3 relay in 2022. I naively thought I had learned enough to tackle endurance training myself and dedicating my entire summer to nights on the track and Saturday long runs. Five days before the relay, and a month out from the Chicago Marathon, I found myself injured, yet again, and spent my fall on crutches instead of racing. I wish I could say I enjoyed watching my friends run the marathon and qualify for Boston, but it was more devastating than anything else. The upside was this really lit a fire to be smarter in my training because I was out of patience to keep rehabbing due to my own stubbornness.
Enter Grit Endurance and Coach Brian Vogelsinger! After taking a year off of running competitively, ignoring all PR’s, and now signed up for my first 70.3, I reached out to Grit Endurance, to see about the options for individual coaching. When Coach Jim asked if I wanted to go forward with it, I said “for my own safety, I think I have to”. Jim might have thought I was exaggerating, but my history would say otherwise. Jim connected me with Brian, and I joined the team in April with two goals: (i) make it to the start line of Michigan 70.3 uninjured, and (ii) (ambitiously) finish in 6 hours (note this original goal for later). The only coaching I had ever known was “more is better” and “smaller is faster”, so the idea of giving up complete control of my own schedule and simply trusting someone else to figure out how to not break me was a challenge unto its own.
I think it took about 15 miles of my first GE group ride for Brian to note that I was afraid of my aero bars and never touched the bottles on my bike. Off to a good start! I spent the first month as a coached athlete cursing my watch every time it beeped that my heart rate was too high (zone 2 is no fun) and complaining that my harder efforts in the pool didn’t actually make me swim faster (apparently higher RPE does not equal faster splits when your form is bad).
While I think my endless questions and unnecessary commentary on Training Peaks workouts were annoying, Brian responded to everything, provided whatever insight I asked for, and kept me from overtraining, despite my best efforts. One by one, I checked races off my calendar, with progressively stronger performances. I had to accept that tapers were a good thing, sodium is really, really important, and you don’t have to kill yourself training to see results.
Not obsessing over my training for once, I hadn’t even pieced together what a realistic goal for my first 70.3 was until about a month out. I was still on the “just make it there healthy” mindset when Brian casually suggested I drop an hour off my original goal time (from 6 hours down to 5). I have never been, and am still not, the most confident in my racing. But having a coach that’s been fully supportive and seen the work firsthand, from watching me tip over on my bike, to trading pulls in a crazy headwind on a final training ride, I had a little hope that I could put together a race I was proud of.
True to his word, Brian got me to the 70.3, healthy, in one piece, and well-trained enough to be excited, rather than scared heading into race weekend. I am incredibly happy with the results of the actual race, but it’s everything else that went into getting there that keeps me motivated to stay in this crazy sport and do it all over again. Finding a coach that truly worked with me (and wasn’t worried about what my results said about them), I have finally started to shift the poor habits that have hindered my training for nearly half my life. I have found so much more happiness in training this season, trusting the process that’d I’d make it to the start line, and not getting so buried in training that it wasn’t fun. I found time for triathlon and a social life, and really tried not to sacrifice important relationships amidst the chaos.
There are marginal gains to be made in speed and efficiency, but my excitement to race next year revolves much more around participating in team events, cheering on teammates at their own races, the random conversation that comes from hours long training rides, and continuing to be a smarter athlete. I spent a lot of time being told I should try to reach the coveted “elite” athlete status, thinking I would finally be happy and confident when I got there. But what I’ve realized now is that you can’t chase the expectations of other people, and you can’t let your satisfaction be contingent on anyone but yourself. This sport takes a lot of time and dedication, but the people and community that come with it are truly unmatched, no more so than at Grit Endurance!
On September 15th, Maggie surpassed her goal at 70.3 Michigan, finishing in 4:59:51!