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About Endurance Specific

20 YEARS OF COACHING.
A LIFETIME OF ENDURANCE.

Endurance Specific is the product of two decades spent racing, coaching, experimenting, learning and helping athletes discover what they're capable of.

Founded as TriSpecific in 2006

Where It Began

IT STARTED WITH A SPRINT TRIATHLON.

In 2002, endurance sport wasn't part of some grand plan.

Kristian was coming to the end of a career as a professional snowboarder, injured and frustrated after years of back-to-back winters. Charlotte was bored with going to the gym and decided she wanted to run a marathon.

The problem, according to Charlotte, was that all the running groups she found seemed to be full of “old people.”

Some early-days Googling kept turning up triathlon instead.

We found a local sprint series. Kristian immediately thought, we should do the whole series. Charlotte thought perhaps doing one would be sensible.

We joined a triathlon club to learn what we were doing. The slight problem was that the group we'd found wasn't really training for sprint triathlons. They were training for half and full Ironman.

So we got swept along.

We sold a pile of snowboard gear to afford bikes and equipment and started training in the summer of 2002. Six months later we were standing on the start line of the Canberra Half Ironman — back when you had to qualify at a half to earn a place at Ironman Australia.

Charlotte had a great race.

Kristian cramped, suffered and finished declaring he was never doing another one of these things again.

Then we discovered we'd both qualified for Ironman Australia.

Funny how quickly plans can change.

The early years, social and very quickly much bigger than the sprint triathlon we'd first imagined.

Whiteboard showing Kristian's prediction for Charlotte — What Kristian believed Charlotte could do

Whiteboard showing Charlotte's actual result — What Charlotte actually did

The Whiteboard

SOMETIMES SOMEONE ELSE BELIEVES FIRST.

Our first Ironman changed the trajectory again.

Charlotte had spent months getting destroyed in training by more experienced athletes. Then race day arrived and she beat almost all of them.

She qualified for the Ironman World Championship in Kona.

There was one complication: Kona was the week before our wedding.

Our families thought going was ridiculous. Our triathlon friends thought not going was ridiculous.

We went.

Charlotte finished one place off the age-group podium. We came home, got married, and a few months later she was preparing for Ironman Australia again.

That's when Kristian got out a whiteboard and wrote down what he believed Charlotte could do.

She thought he was nuts.

But she went to work. She trained. Got stronger. Got faster. And perhaps somewhere along the way started believing a little more herself.

Race day: 9:55:58. Twenty-eight seconds from the prediction.

It wasn't magic and it wasn't simply positive thinking. The belief established what might be possible. The work gave her the opportunity to make it real.

2006

TRISPECIFIC IS BORN.

By then, endurance sport had changed the direction of our lives.

Kristian had been working toward becoming a builder. But seeing where that career might lead — including how little his boss saw his own kids — made him question whether that was the life he wanted.

Fitness and coaching kept pulling harder.

He took a substantial pay cut to work for a triathlon coach in Sydney. He ran group sessions, wrote training programs, studied, coached athletes and spent countless hours conducting lactate testing in a small performance lab inside a bike shop.

Then, while Charlotte was on a flight to Boulder for a training camp, the phone rang.

The coaching job no longer existed.

Mid-20s. Wife flying overseas. Career gone.

Except something interesting happened. The athletes Kristian had actually been coaching started contacting him.

Are you still going to coach?

Many wanted to stay. A few conversations followed. A lot of names got scribbled down. Kristian figured out how to build a website.

And in 2006, TriSpecific was born with around 30 athletes almost overnight.

We didn't know then where it would lead. We just knew we wanted to coach.

Kristian and Charlotte in TriSpecific clothing at Ironman Western Australia in 2006

Ironman Western Australia, 2006 — TriSpecific was now very real.

Learning From Both Sides

TWO VERY DIFFERENT ATHLETE JOURNEYS.

We weren't only coaching performance. We were living it.

Charlotte's progression was remarkable. From starting triathlon at 29, she qualified for Kona at her first Ironman, became a professional athlete, won Ironman and 70.3 races, recorded a 9:00:50 Ironman and eventually finished 11th professional woman at the Ironman World Championship.

Kristian took a different road.

His first Ironman took 11 hours and 27 minutes. The years that followed involved plenty of mistakes, incremental improvements, missed qualifications and lessons in what it really means to be patient.

Eventually came Ironman Western Australia.

We both knew we were fit.

Charlotte was racing to win.

Kristian had spent countless training runs visualising the finish clock showing 8:50-something.

Charlotte won her first Ironman in 9:00:50.

Kristian crossed the line in 8:57.

A roll-down finally gave him the Kona place he'd spent years chasing.

Different journeys. Same lesson.

Do the work. Be patient. Keep learning. Then be ready to execute.

Charlotte Paul and Kristian Manietta after Ironman Western Australia

Kona, 2010

FIVE ATHLETES. THREE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP PODIUMS. ONE HELL OF A DAY.

Five TriSpecific athletes lined up at the Ironman World Championship that year. All five had their own reasons for being there and their own definition of a successful day.

Belinda Harper

Overall amateur women's World Champion · 9:44:19

Mark Jansen

3rd M35–39 · 9:05:58

Teresa Rider

2nd F50–54 · 10:51:24

TriSpecific athletes and coaches after the Kona awards

Pete McLean high-fiving Kristian in Kona

Kristian running beside Belinda Harper on Ali'i Drive in flip-flops

Pete McLean was living a long-held dream simply by racing on the Big Island. Scott Jones ran a Kona personal best.

Mark passed for third beneath the finishing arch with roughly 100 metres remaining. Belinda became the overall amateur women's World Champion. Teresa ran herself into second in her age group.

Teresa's result had another layer.

Eight years earlier, when we knew virtually nothing about triathlon and were looking for people to help us get started, Teresa was one of the first people we were introduced to.

Now we were standing together in Kona — this time as athlete and coach — celebrating a World Championship podium.

But perhaps the photograph that says the most about the day isn't from the awards.

As Belinda ran down Ali'i Drive on her way toward the amateur title, Kristian was alongside the course in flip-flops, running and yelling to anyone who would listen that the lead amateur female was coming through.

Belinda later described him as going “a wee bit crazy.”

Fair assessment.

We've coached athletes onto World Championship podiums. We've also run beside them in flip-flops screaming our heads off.

The results matter. So does giving a damn about the person producing them.

January 2020

FROM TRISPECIFIC TO ENDURANCE SPECIFIC.

TriSpecific had grown far beyond the two people who started it — and eventually beyond the name itself.

We started TriSpecific in 2006 with a pretty obvious focus: triathlon.

Over the years, our athletes changed. We changed too.

Ironman expanded into trail and ultra running, off-road racing, cycling and multi-day adventures. In 2014 we moved our family from Australia to the mountains of British Columbia, and the way we thought about endurance sport became broader than preparing people for a single type of race.

By 2020, TriSpecific simply didn't describe us anymore.

So we became Endurance Specific — a name that better represented what we'd already become.

The name changed. The fundamentals didn't: understand the athlete, understand their life, and prepare them for what they want to go and do with it.

More Than A Tagline

THE EVENT
IS LIFE.

The words started taking shape on a ski-touring day in Rogers Pass with our friend and athlete Dale Tiessen.

Dale was wrestling with the demands of corporate life and asking bigger questions about what all the work was for. Somewhere on the skin track, the conversation turned into something Kristian had been circling for years.

Races matter. Performance matters. Goals matter.

But they're not the event.

Being fit gives us the capacity to do more with our lives — to head into the mountains, take an unexpected opportunity, race when we want to race, adventure with friends and family, and keep doing those things as the decades roll by.

The race gives us a target. The event is life.

The Thread Was Already There

THE SPORT KEPT GETTING BIGGER THAN RACING.

Long before we had words for the philosophy, endurance sport had already started opening doors beyond start lines and finish chutes.

An unsupported multi-day mountain-bike journey through South Africa. Ten days crossing the Dolomites. A last Ironman followed a week later by a fractured ankle — then a phone call from an old friend asking if Kristian wanted to climb Mt Rainier.

Those experiences changed the question from “what race are you training for?” to something much more interesting:

“What do you want to be capable of saying yes to?”

Adventure

Cent Cols

Roughly 2,000 kilometres over ten days through the Dolomites. A reminder that endurance could be about moving through a landscape, not just racing through it.

Opportunity

Mt Rainier

A friend called not long after an ankle fracture and asked if Kristian wanted to climb Rainier. The answer was still yes.

Origin

Rogers Pass

A skin track, a friend in transition and a conversation about what fitness, work and life were actually for. The philosophy finally had a name.

Windows of Opportunity

YOU DON'T ALWAYS NEED AN EVENT.

Curiosity made the cat.

Races are great. They give us dates, distances and something concrete to prepare for.

But some of our most memorable challenges never had an entry form.

Sometimes it's a few days bikepacking with a friend because that's a better way to catch up. Sometimes it's taking a famous challenge and changing it because the original version doesn't fit the time you have. Sometimes it's looking at a local route and wondering what would happen if you rode it — and then ran it.

That's the idea behind Windows of Opportunity.

You don't always need twelve months of preparation or a plane ticket. Sometimes you need enough fitness to say yes, a little creativity and the curiosity to ask:

What could we do with the window we've got?

Charlotte holding the 4 x 2 x 24 challenge schedule

Adapt The Challenge

4 × 2 × 24

Inspired by the 4×4×48 challenge, but forty-eight hours wasn't the window we had. So we changed the rules: four miles every two hours for twenty-four hours. Same curiosity. Different life circumstances.

Use The Catch-Up

Go Somewhere Together

Kristian and photographer friend Matt Clark wanted to catch up. Instead of finding a table for dinner, they loaded bikes and disappeared for a few days. Fitness changes what “catching up” can look like.

Kristian running during the Double Lord of the Squirrels challenge

Create The Local Challenge

Double LOTS

Lord of the Squirrels is one of Whistler's iconic mountain routes. The question became simple: what if we rode it, then ran it? No medal. No official event. Just a good question worth answering.

Make The Hill The Event

Everesting

Bike it. Run it. Repeat the same climb until the accumulated vertical reaches the height of Everest. The location can be ordinary. The experience doesn't have to be.

Kristian and Charlotte working at Run Comfy Numb

Race Directors Too

SOMETIMES YOU CREATE THE EVENT.

Kristian spent years working Ironman events — from site operations and course roles through to leading the run course and working with swim safety.

Then in 2018, a trail race he'd entered in Whistler was cancelled during race week.

A group of us ran it anyway.

Not long afterwards, we took over the event and rebuilt it as Run Comfy Numb.

Whistler X Tri followed through the local triathlon community.

After moving to Pemberton and discovering there wasn't a trail race in our new hometown, we created one there too — now The Pemby Pounder.

Today, alongside coaching, we produce three endurance events in the Sea to Sky.

Because apparently coaching and training weren't keeping us busy enough.

The Coaches

TWO COACHES. TWO DIFFERENT PATHS.

Kristian Manietta

Kristian has spent most of his life fascinated by performance.

Before endurance sport, that meant pursuing snowboarding professionally. Then came triathlon, an 11:27 first Ironman, years of experimentation and eventually an 8:57 finish and an age-group Ironman win.

But the part that stuck wasn't simply racing. It was figuring out why.

Why does one athlete respond while another doesn't? What actually limits performance? What matters and what is simply noise? And how do physiology, strength, recovery, nutrition and psychology fit together when the athlete also has a career, family and life?

Kristian has coached since 2006, working with athletes from first-time finishers through to World Championship winners.

And yes, he still gets far too excited when an athlete does something great.

Charlotte Paul

Charlotte came to endurance sport at 29 looking for something more interesting than going to the gym.

What followed was a journey she couldn't have predicted: Kona at her first Ironman, professional racing, Ironman and 70.3 wins and competing against the best endurance athletes in the world.

That experience taught her plenty about elite performance.

Life afterwards taught her just as much.

Becoming a parent, moving countries, stepping away from professional racing and finding new ways to challenge herself changed what being an athlete meant.

Her coaching today is about helping people make endurance sport improve their lives — because ultimately, we're athletes for life.

This Is Our Life Too

BUSY. UNPREDICTABLE. STILL MOVING.

Twenty years after that first sprint-triathlon idea, endurance sport is still woven through almost everything we do.

We coach. We train. We produce three endurance events. We travel. We support each other's goals. We spend a significant amount of family life following Mack's path in downhill mountain biking.

Our life isn't perfectly organised around training. Far from it.

Sometimes training is a planned session. Sometimes it's a ride squeezed in while Mack is practising. Sometimes one of us is racing while the other is cheering. Sometimes being “fit for life” means carrying water into a remote aid station.

You don't need a life built around training. You need training that helps build the life you want to live.

Kristian talking with Mack at a downhill mountain bike race

Kristian addressing runners at Run Comfy Numb

Charlotte supporting Kristian during Bigfoot

Kristian and Charlotte fitting in a ride during Mack's race trip

Kristian, Charlotte and Mack together during a race trip

Kristian carrying water into a remote race aid station

Mack on the national championship podium

READY TO SEE WHAT
YOU'RE CAPABLE OF?

You don't need World Championship ambitions. You just need something that matters enough to you to pursue — and the willingness to consistently do the work.

Apply for Coaching Train for Performance. Build for Life.

20 YEARS OF COACHING.A LIFETIME OF ENDURANCE.