How To Transform Your Running with a Simple, Yet Powerful Digital Training Tool: Tim Surface

To this day, many athletes and coaches use some combo of spreadsheets, emails, calendars, and even paper to plan and record their training. There is a better and more simple way, thanks to the technology of companies like Final Surge. CEO TIm Surface joins Coach Claire to explain more. In this episode, you learn: why to log your runs to track progress how planning your running schedule digitally can save you time how to work with a coach on a digital platform how technology has advanced to make planning your training and/or working with a coach easier, cheaper, and more effective Once you decide that you really like running and want to work to get better at it, the first step is tracking your progress. The simplest way to do that is to wear a basic watch and write down how far and how fast you ran on a piece of paper. This is how runners have been doing it for perhaps hundreds of years. Now with technology like GPS watches and the apps that go along with it, we can track dozens of data points about our runs and share every detail with the internet. The next step beyond simply logging our runs, is coming up with a plan that will help us achieve our running goals. We can come up with something ourselves, we can follow a premade plan from a book or online, or we can work with a coach to truly maximize our progress. Many athletes and coaches today still use some combo of emails, spreadsheets, and even paper schedules to work together. While that can work, it's cumbersome and time consuming. Fortunately, there is technology out there that can make this process work so much better for both athletes and coaches. Today, we talk about one of the companies out there that is creating the platforms that make training better. It's called Final Surge and its CEO is Tim Surface. As a disclaimer, Final Surge is not sponsoring the show and in fact, they really do no formal marketing at all. Its success has been entirely word of mouth. It's free for athletes to use and it can be a great way to take your training to the next level, even if you are not working with a coach. Tim explains the details. A little background on Tim, he was a runner growing up and in college and holds a 2:24 marathon PR. He unexpectedly fell in love with web development and technology in college and began with a few startups before eventually coming up with Final Surge with his business partner. Once the new platform was ready, he cold called some of the best coaches in the country to try to convince them to give Final Surge a try. He got his first big win when legendary coach (and former Run to the Top guest Jeff Galloway came on board. Today, Final Surge is home for teams like the Northern Arizona Elite, The New York Road Runners, The Atlanta Track Club and more. At its core, it's a communication avenue for coaches and athletes, teams and individuals, all with the goal of being better runners with less hassle. CONNECT, COMMENT, & COMMUNITY: Follow RunnersConnect on Instagram Join the Elite Treatment where you get first dibs on everything RTTT each month! Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community RunnersConnect Facebook page GET EXPERT COACHING AT RUNNERSCONNECT! This week's show brought to you by: Perform from the Amino Company Perform immediately gives you energy and focus to help reinvigorate your runs. Even better, Perform helps reduce fatigue, and increases muscle protein synthesis (so you recover faster from both the run and your strength training). The research on amino acids and performance enhancements is well-documented, with hundreds of studies demonstrating their effectiveness. You can even use Perform during your long runs and workouts (and of course your race) to increase focus and performance during the run itself. If you're interested in giving Perform a try, we've got a special offer for you where you can save 30% and get a free gift by using the code RC30. Just head to aminoco.com/rttt and use the code RC30 at checkout to save 30% and get a free gift.