+80w FTP During Med School with Cam Seamons - Successful Athletes Podcast 31

Successful Athletes Podcast
#1

Cameron Seamons raised his FTP by 80 watts with TrainerRoad while training for the Triple Bypass Century and ultra-distance running events, all while being a busy medical school student!

Tune in to find out how @Seamonster manages a 50-hour work week and uses low-volume training for long-distance cycling and running in episode 31 of the Successful Athletes Podcast.

Enjoy!

Cameron's Episode

Topics Covered in This Episode

  • How Cameron fits in his training as a third-year med student
  • How Cameron maintains a healthy relationship with training
  • How Cameron manages failed workouts
  • Cameron’s tips for fueling early morning workouts
  • How Cameron trained to raise his FTP 80 watts
  • What challenges Cameron faced during the Triple Bypass Century
  • How Cameron uses TrainerRoad to help with ultra-distance running

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4 Likes
#2
#3

Any chance of getting a different demographic on the podcast? No offense to any of your guests, but young guys juggling training with their medical or engineering degree, as well as middle aged men juggling training with their young family and stressful jobs in medicine or engineering should by banned from the podcast.

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#4

Thank you for posting this. I must admit, this feedback hurts :broken_heart: because we have been working at improving in this regard, but if our efforts aren’t showing through, we need to reexamine.

Speaking on behalf of our team and myself, we hope this podcast can contribute to making this sport more inclusive while inspiring and leading other people to success in whichever form they seek. While we can learn from everybody’s stories, we feel it’s important that we amplify underrepresented voices in this process as it will give all of us listeners a needed variety of perspective.

We’ve made an intentional effort to seek out more stories from underrepresented groups of how they have used TrainerRoad to achieve success, and while we have been making progress. 4/8 of the last episodes have been with women (an unfortunate minority group in the sport of cycling), and we hope we can increase this momentum and be a platform for a much larger variety of voices – we have endless room for improvement in this regard.

I’m going to take this feedback and come up with ways we can be more inviting and encouraging to underrepresented athletes to share their stories with us. Thank you!

I’m not sure I understand the intent with this sentence. Is it that we have had too many guests that fit that criteria, or is it that we, out of pure principle, should not provide a platform for people that meet these criteria to share their success?

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#5

Busy people with busy lives. There’s always something to take away from it and a parallel to our own life. Thanks Jonathon for the podcasts and keep em’ coming

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#7

cycling feels elitist as it is. and then there’s a podcast: Here’s another example of a future rich white guy being better than you!

im happy for him, he’s awesome and doing great. proud of him. thanks for being a doctor.

and clearly this IS the target demo. but I dont know, it just elicits an eyeroll and a skip over here. I’m overly sensitive but I can’t be alone.

im certainly going to get flamed for this, but whatever.

#8

Im bummed you feel that way, I know for me it was cool to hear a perspective that training helped Cam feel sharp in his responsibilities off the bike, and was a good affirmation to me to hear that you can still make gains when you feel like you’re constantly rebounding from missed workouts.

I feel like some athletes with a big platform project that there’s never a shortage of motivation and time for training, so I personally appreciate that Jonathan gives athletes space to share their experience that doesn’t fit that narrative, and that encourages more athletes to be kind to themselves when training is tough.
Super stoked to hear about your process, Cam!

5 Likes
#9

I’ve listened to every episode and IMHO they’ve done a pretty good job getting a number of different types of guests. The majority of guests have been male, but I would venture to guess the majority of people who use TrainerRoad and the majority of people who submit their stories are this demographic. If you want specific types of athletes to be interviewed by them why not encourage those athletes to submit their stories? That is how last weeks guest ended up on the show

Banned? Why? So you not think there is anything listeners can learn from these individuals even if they have different life circumstances?

3 Likes
#10

No matter who they interview someone is going to complain. It’s just like with the AACC podcast. They go through a phase where they talk a lot about triathlon and the mountain bikers complain. If they talk about mountain biking then crit racers complain. They talk about tandem bikes and then people without friends complain. Etc, etc. ultimately some episodes will connect with some users and others won’t. I’m in a very different demographic than Lydia Gould, but still though she had an interesting story and some interesting things to say. If something that doesn’t connect with you or someone who follows a different path than you elicits an eye roll than maybe you have some personal issues to that you need to work out

5 Likes
#11

I honestly enjoyed listen to this episode with Cam. As a grad student working part time, I had to take my foot off the gas, especially after crashing and ending up with a concussion this year. Honestly, being a student, especially post-undergraduate studies, is extremely stressful, and it can be really hard to keep with training. It’s not uncommon for participation levels on the collegiate level to drop when people enter grad school. Being a grad student in endurance sports like triathlon or cycling can feel alienating and lonely, which can cause people to drop endurance sports entirely. In my personal experience, I’ve felt that training became more stressful rather than a stress-reliever several times in just a year and a half.

I have many friends and teammates who have gone through med school and many of them struggle to even find the time to just exercise a couple of hours a weeks, let alone follow a structured plan. On top of that, people don’t realize that doctor’s don’t earn much during residency and have to deal with massive student loans ($120k+) for over a decade while making low-pay (relative to other post-grad studies). I commend Cam for sharing his story and experiences with all of us. It inspired me and gave me ideas of how to balance my own training and recovery as a grad student.

The most important takeaway from this entire series is that we all have our trials and challenges that we go through on a daily basis. If you are able to glean just one lesson from another person’s story of success and growth, and apply it to your own experiences, the podcast is doing its job and it’s fantastic! Even if you don’t learn anything, it’s still cool to hear how other people succeed in their endeavors. And if you didn’t connect with the story, that’s cool, too, but don’t bash the podcast or the interviewees for not providing content to connect with every person, every single time.

5 Likes
#12

@Jonathan I think you and the team have actually been doing quite well in exploring different demographics with the Successful Athletes podcast. The simple act of getting some female voices on is huge in this predominantly white, cishetero, male sport – so kudos for those efforts. This specific episode resonated with me as I’m trying to figure out how exactly to balance training with moving across the country and starting graduate school in a few months; perhaps I fit the target demographic for this episode.

In any case, while it’s cool to hear stories of how the big stars made it to the peak of their sport and how they stay there, I think hearing other success stories is so much more motivating and relatable. I can only spend so much time listening to high-level athletes talk about how they balance their training when they have an entire team (PT, coach, nutritionist, etc) behind them – things most of us amateurs do not and may never have.

Like Jon, I, too, am a bit confused as to the meaning and intentions of @Berggeiss’s post. Which demographics would you like to hear more of? A constructive suggestion of an overlooked athlete or someone from an underrepresented group would be a better move than to ban busy people from the podast.

7 Likes
#13

Thank you TR for bringing on guest that face everyday challenges and yet prevail. IMHO most of your listeners are common cyclist that just want to get better. I’m 60 years old and am riding at speeds I did in my 40’s thanks to TR podcast and software. My results will never be remarkable, yet I find great value in all the education you bring us with every show .

6 Likes
#14

I think he’s asking you guys to create a third podcast: The Unsuccessful Athletes Podcast.

Joking aside, it’s no coincidence that those who are successful on the bike are often successful in their careers as well.

I see his point though. Fancy job titles and degrees don’t necessarily define success. Wasn’t Justin Rossi a firefighter before he got into real estate brokerage? I’d consider him as someone who’s done well for himself, both on and off the bike.

It would be particularly interesting to hear some stories from athletes with very physical jobs, like construction, and see how they’ve managed to juggle that with their training and recovery.

3 Likes
#15

Sorry, wasn’t my intention to hurt. I know you guys put a lot of effort into both of the podcasts and it’s extremely commendable the way you so openly engage with your audience.

As a 44 year old that’s grown up around endurance athletes, the aforementioned demographic basically covers 99.9% of the people that have been participating in cycling and triathlon. As a middle aged guy with two engineering degrees, a wife, two kids, a stressful job, I include myself in this demographic. In the world of endurance sports, we’re truly unremarkable. I had understood that the pod would cover athletes from different demographics, overcoming different challenges. Getting up at 4am for 2 hours swim squad before heading off to lectures/into the office was just par for the course.

As I mentioned, it wasn’t my intention to offend. You guys are doing a great job

2 Likes
#16

You may have already listened to it, but Successful Athletes episode #7 is the story of someone who works construction while balancing training.

3 Likes
#17

Great episode @Jonathan. As a pre-med getting ready for the MCAT, hearing Cam’s story and realizing you can still maintain a high level of fitness while studying medicine is motivating. Best of luck Cam!

4 Likes
#18

Good luck, be confident in your practice tests. Back when I took it, AAMC practice tests predicted my score down to the subsection

1 Like
#19

Glad that some of you were able to gleam something from the conversation. Also, after reading through some of the comments on here I want to clarify that I didn’t think that I would actually get invited onto the podcast, but just at least wanted to submit my story because I’m sure there are plenty of younger students like myself trying to fit it all in, and thought I could share some of the things I have learned if given the opportunity.

I also agree that more diversity is a great goal, and I believe that the guys at trainerroad really are making a very deliberate and conscious effort to try to include people from different backgrounds and walks of life. In my opinion, the more people out there promoting cycling and training on their bikes, the better it is for all of us in bringing awareness to the sport.

10 Likes
#20

I’m all new to TR… but Really enjoying the podcasts, thank you :pray:

3 Likes
#21

@Berggeiss, check out all the back episodes of Successful Athletes. They truly do have a ton of different stories from people of different backgrounds, different cycling disciplines, etc. I may be biased on this since I was featured last episode :wink: But I am one of those guests who had never done an endurance sport prior to cycling, in fact the only sport I had done was gymnastics lessons that I quit by age 14. Until I started cycling in my late 20s, I barely worked out. But the beauty of TR is that it gave me, a very NEW athlete, the ability to do advanced structured training that I never would have been able to figure out on my own or without the help of an expensive coach.
Anyway, kudos to Jonathan and the team for the pod! every episode has something you can take away, IMHO.

9 Likes
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