Molveno 2022

Molveno World Championships. Lessons learned.

The 2022 World Championship race in Molveno, Italy, was one of those experiences that stays with you, not because everything went perfectly, but because of what it taught me about preparation, balance, and the fine line between peak fitness and burnout.

Looking back, there were a lot of things that went right in the months leading up to the race. The biggest one was consistency. Day after day, week after week, the work just got done. Nothing flashy, just a steady accumulation of quality training. That consistency built a level of fitness I was proud of, and it showed. The foundation was there.

Another big positive was how I handled the logistics. Nutrition was dialed in throughout the build, and I made the decision to travel to Europe weeks in advance. That gave me time to settle into the environment, adjust to the time zone, and train on the terrain around Molveno. By race week, nothing felt rushed. From a preparation standpoint, those decisions were absolutely the right ones.

But the biggest lesson from Molveno came from what went wrong.

In the final stretch of training, I leaned too heavily into high-end intensity, particularly VO₂ max sessions. On paper it looked like I was sharpening fitness. In reality, I was overworking the system that was already strong from months of consistent training. Instead of arriving fresh and sharp, I arrived tired.

And it showed.

For the first time in my career, I felt genuinely burnt out. Not just physically, but mentally. I remember moments leading up to the race where all I wanted was to step away from the structure and pressure just hang out with friends and feel normal for a while. When that feeling creeps in, it’s a sign that something in the preparation has gone too far.

The frustrating part is that it’s completely preventable.

Molveno shifted how I think about intensity. Big VO₂ sessions absolutely have their place, they can raise the ceiling and bring athletes to another level. But now I see them as something to sprinkle in lightly rather than build entire blocks around.

These days, most of my key work lives at longer tempo efforts, sitting around 2.5–3.5 mmol/L lactate. That’s the intensity where you can accumulate a huge amount of productive work without digging a hole that’s hard to climb out of. It’s sustainable, repeatable, and it keeps the body moving toward peak form rather than away from it.

The irony of Molveno is that the fitness was there. The consistency, the travel preparation, the nutrition, it all set the stage for a great race. But endurance performance often comes down to small margins, and in this case the margin was freshness.

Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs in endurance sport come from the races that don’t go as planned. Molveno was one of those moments for me. It reminded me that the goal of training isn’t just to build fitness, it’s to arrive on the start line ready to use it.