Blogs | Shanna Leonardi

Will this be on the test?

Training for a triathlon takes a lot of time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie preparing for your first sprint or on your sixth season training for yet another 70.3. It takes months of sacrifice and dedication to get you across the finish line.

When you finish a race, the last thing you want to feel is doubt. Doubt that you trained hard enough, doubt that you didn’t compete to your fullest potential, doubt that your pace could’ve been better, your cadence on the bike smoother, transitions faster. Getting to the end of the season only to discover that you’re no better than when you first started is an athlete’s nightmare.

Train smarter, not harder.

Yes, putting in the hours is great, but none of them matter unless you use those hours to actually improve your performance. However, if you don’t find a way to measure their effectiveness, how do you really know? Enter fitness testing.

In order to use your time efficiently, you need to know your heart rate and train in the appropriate zones. Heart rate testing identifies your strengths and weaknesses and allows you to build a program that helps you train effectively and measures your progress over time. It ensures that your program is working for you and helping you improve steadily throughout the entire season.

Just go fast, right?

Most competitive athletes know how to go all out. The problem we have is knowing how to hold back. It seems counterintuitive to slow down or even take a day off, but to go as hard as our coaches need us to on the hard days (days that help you increase your limits and get better), they need us to go easy on our easy days. And when they say easy, they mean EASY.

This constant need for speed makes testing our heart rate and learning our zones extremely important. Once you set your zones and know what they feel like, you can rely on RPE or the rate of perceived exertion. Throughout the season, our coaches will assist us in learning how to listen to our bodies by comparing our heart rate testing to our RPE, which will help us find success on race day. RPE is the best tool to help you get the most out of your training – no matter how slow or fast you think

you’re going.

Z1 – Easy Effort

At this pace, you can move comfortably and with good form for a very, very long time. Whether you choose to run outside or on the treadmill, keep it slow and steady, using a heart rate monitor if needed to make sure you’re staying in the proper range. You’ll no doubt fight that little voice in your head that says, “come on, this pace is for armatures!” but don’t you dare up the pace. Taking it easy will help you get faster down the line. Just try to relax and enjoy the journey because pushing yourself to the brink will come later.

Z2 Endurance Effort

A good measure of Z2 is whether or not you can have an entire conversation while moving. You can keep this steady pace for several hours, but it’s not incredibly slow like Z1. An endurance lover’s dream, Z2 helps you feel more efficient over time, as you will sustain a faster effort while using less energy as you improve. Keep in mind that this takes time! It’s crucial that you be honest with yourself, as many athletes start too hard, end up in Z3, and burn out too quickly. Again, think long-term goals, not redlining it to the finish.

Z3 Moderate Effort

Now we’re in tricky territory. Your effort here gets more challenging, and your conversation is limited to quick, simple responses - think answering questions, not initiating them. You can sustain Z3 for 20-60 minutes, and you feel like you’re getting a good workout. This feeling of productivity makes it a popular default pace with athletes, meaning you feel like if you’re not in Z3, you’re not really working. Our coaches will stress over and over again the dangers of this zone because if you hang out here too much when they ask you to take it to Z4 or Z5, you won’t have any gas left in the tank to do it. Fatigue sets in quickly, and you can lose your form and motivation to make it safely to the finish line.

Z4 Hard Effort

Luckily, our coaches won’t ask for this effort much of the time because it’s tough. Most athletes at our level can only sustain this effort between 5-30 minutes. During this time, your breathing will be labored, lactic acid builds, and you will feel discomfort. Reserved for extremely short distances, this pace requires proper pacing and great attention to form as injuries tend to happen here, especially in the face of fatigue.

Z5 Max Effort

Max effort says it all. While endurance athletes don’t hit this pace very often, and usually only for a minute or less, this all-out effort is an important training tool during the season. As always, proper form is essential, but you’ll likely feel extremely uncomfortable at this pace, and your mind will try to convince you to quit before your body needs to. This mind-over-matter effort takes as much mental strength as physical strength, but it will make your heart and your body stronger and faster in the end.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll take you through the three tests you’ll need to complete to find your target heart rate zones in each discipline. You’ll likely feel nervous and maybe a little intimidated, but that’s just a sign of how important this process is to you! Remember, this is just a starting point, a baseline to help show you how much you’re improving over the season, and proof of how much your hard work and sacrifice pay off.

All of our coaches want to help us become stronger, 5-zone athletes. Athletes that get the most out of our bodies on race day. And when you look back on these numbers at the end of the season, you’ll feel nothing but confidence, knowing that you trained smart, gave it your all, and totally kicked ass.

Just Keep Swimming!

Unless you have a strong swimming background, the swim portion of triathlon probably scares you. The endurance needed will rival any of your runs and the strength of any of your weight training sessions. People say that you can't win a race with the swim, but you can definitely wear yourself out and compromise your ability to ride and run with efficiency.

In his book Pacing, Kevin Thompson finds that a 750-meter swim can decrease a triathlete's efficiency on the bike by 17.5 percent. And that's for a swimmer strong enough to maintain form and pace. If you fail to rotate or follow through in your stroke or kick when you're tired, you can bet that this percentage increases drastically.

No matter how much you might want to skip practice or think that you can wing it on the swim and just run really fast to make up for it, you can't. My biggest problem with swimming, besides the fact that I'm just not great at it (yet!), is that I find it boring AF. Not only do I have to drag myself to the pool every single time, I also have to convince myself to do the entire workout while I'm there and not bail halfway through. Swimming is incredibly technical and mentally challenging, and because I'm a newbie, I have to keep myself completely focused to maintain my speed and form otherwise I'm just playing in the

water and wasting my time.

The good news is I've discovered a few things to make swimming a little more enjoyable over the last year. I may not love to swim (yet!), but with these aids, I've learned to at least not hate it, which is huge!

And more importantly, they've also helped me improve.

Get a Coach

I cannot recommend finding a Masters's Swim program enough. TriLaVie's Swim Velocity is structured specifically for triathletes, so you'll get maximum benefits for race day with this team. Wendy, one of our amazing coaches, has seemingly endless amounts of patience in helping us improve our form and time while answering every question you can imagine. She's also kind of a badass who's completed the Catalina Channel swim and has her sights set on the English Channel next, which means she can help you with your ocean swim, too.

I've tried to swim alone countless times, but it's just not the same. You don't have the structured workouts, you don't have anyone holding you accountable, and, more importantly, you don't have the competition or the camaraderie of the other athletes pushing you to be your best. Getting out of your comfort zone is how you improve, and this program does that in the best way. Skeptical? Just try it for a month, and you'll undoubtedly see improvements.

Bring some toys

Everyone loves toys, and swimmers are no exception. Not only will they help you focus on a specific body part, perfect your form and identify weaknesses, they also make your workout more fun. Struggling with your kick? Grab a kick board to isolate the legs or fins to practice your speed. Need to work on your stroke? A pull buoy and paddles are the answer to building that upper body strength. Lack body awareness or struggle to maintain

that taut form? A snorkel and ankle strap will work wonders for you.

Have a plan

Sure, you could go to the pool and swim lap after lap for an hour, but that gets incredibly boring, and it makes it diﬃcult to see your progress. A good set should be challenging and help you track your progress over time. Say you perform 4 x 50 with 10-second rest. Maybe you need more rest, so work up to that 10 seconds. Perhaps you notice that you can't maintain your speed for the entire set, and your times range from :54 to 1:08. Now you know you need to work on endurance and pacing. Use these sets to push yourself in manageable chunks and to identify where you can build strength.

Be patient

Few people can jump into the pool and take oﬀ like Michael Phelps. Swimming is incredibly technical, so it will take hours upon hours of work, and you will likely get frustrated way before you perfect your stroke and move up to the fast lane. That doesn't mean it's not worth it. The benefits of this exercise can help you stay fit for the rest of your life. It's one of the few sports that is low impact enough that you can practice it forever. Instead of getting frustrated, try focusing on one thing at a time and take note of all of your accomplishments along the way. Make it a whole week without missing a practice?Awesome! Swim your first 200 without stopping? Woohoo! Get through a 100 in under a minute? You're a rock star! All of the little accomplishments lead to big ones, so celebrate every single one of them and keep working.

Be consistent

As annoying as it is to hear it, the only way to get better is to do your time in the pool. It takes three practices a week to simply maintain your current skill level. If you're looking to improve form and speed, you should aim for five days a week. If there was a way to improve using just your will, trust me, I would have found it by now. So, beg or barter with yourself if you have to. Just get it done.

All Elite Wrestling finds victory with MediaSilo

For every All Elite Wrestling (AEW) event, nearly a million enthusiastic fans from 6 different continents tune in and wait for their favorite wrestler to appear. The AEW graphics team creates 100s of assets each week that need to be distributed within the arena and to their partners worldwide before the show starts. There is zero time for errors, especially from their software. This is the high-stakes world of All Elite Wrestling, and they rely on MediaSilo to keep their workflow running smoothly and their extremely passionate fans satisfied.

Since 2019, AEW has built a loyal fanbase of over 41 million viewers worldwide by providing the most spectacular wrestling matches and entertainment anywhere. Their fans don’t just expect to stay informed on the latest news – they demand it.

With partners and fans relying on them for information, efficiency is critical, and software malfunction is not an option. Dealing with system-wide shutdowns caused by file sharing across borders could lead to delays and undeliverable assets. With incredibly tight deadlines, stalled delivery times would be unacceptable and quickly lead to frustration amongst the team and partners. With their fans’ near-insatiable appetite for content, the risk of losing engagement isn’t an option. They need a platform that can handle their international workload.

Adding another layer of complexity is the sheer number of assets the AEW team needs. Creating digital and social assets for multiple shows in multiple countries every week means keeping track of hundreds of unique file types and sizes, as well as the latest revisions. Collision assets are a different size than Dynamite assets; some international partners require unique dimensions and in-arena LED assets to consider as well. And the lack of detailed tagging made the process confusing and time-consuming. AEW sends hundreds of assets a week to twenty different partners, and they had no way of knowing if the files they sent were ever opened or viewed, leading to duplicated efforts of resending graphics that had gone overlooked or links lost in emails.

After researching multiple video collaboration platforms, a colleague showed them her MediaSilo workspace. They liked how straightforward our platform appeared and reached out for a free 14-day trial. From the price point, functionality, download capabilities and, most importantly, our reliability and customer support, they were sold.

“Since we switched to MediaSilo, we haven’t had a single issue of any person saying that this link is not working, or I can’t download this file.”

We collaborated to simplify their workflow and gave them a single solution to manage and distribute their finished assets – one that always offers global coverage and consistency to everyone. Manually keeping track of delivered assets and links was also a thing of the past. Folders are created where the graphics team drops assets tagged by talent. Each file is tagged so that it’s easy for anyone to recognize the wrestler, where the match takes place and where it needs to be delivered. Unique links are sent to partners where MediaSilo’s Insights feature provides searchable analytics that track when, where and for how long any asset is viewed. Meaning AEW knows when it’s been opened and downloaded, reducing duplicative efforts.

Most importantly, they never have to worry about broken links or getting locked out of their system. “Since we switched to MediaSilo, we haven’t had a single issue of any person saying that this link is not working or I can’t download this file,” says one AEW employee. “We’ve even used MediaSilo on the fly to get assets from our production facility to the truck outside and into the arena, saving valuable time on event days.”

AEW has worked hard to test the limits of MediaSilo but has found nothing but success with this partnership. “We use this tool every week,” one AEW employee says, “and it’s been very reliable.”

They needed a powerful media management and distribution tool to stand up to their fast-paced international workflow. MediaSilo helps reduce excessive time and stress, allowing them to focus on what really matters – delivering quality content that keeps their fans engaged.

A Thanksgiving Message from Brad Turner, CEO, EditShare

As we approach Thanksgiving in the U.S., I’d like to take a moment to step outside the usual hustle of product releases, trade shows, and roadmaps and reflect on what truly matters.

Even though many of our teammates, customers, and partners around the world may not observe this holiday, I believe the spirit of gratitude is universal. So, I wanted to share a few thoughts and offer my sincere thanks to all who are part of the EditShare journey.

Giving thanks across borders

I’m thankful to our customers working in broadcasting, post-production houses, streaming services, sports organizations, education, and beyond. Your challenges, feedback, and trust push us to innovate. You test our limits, call us when things don’t work, and share your workflows with us. From early pilots to mission-critical deployments, you let us be part of your work, and that is a privilege.

To our channel partners and resellers, many of whom operate in far corners of the globe, thank you for being our local face, for connecting with customers in their markets, and for championing EditShare’s capabilities. Your commitment, especially in times of technical or logistical complexity, makes what we do possible.

And above all, to the EditShare team. Across engineering, support, sales, marketing, operations, and more, I sincerely appreciate your perseverance, creativity, and care.

You show up every day, often without much fanfare, to keep systems stable, solve unexpected bugs, and deliver capabilities that delight (or surprise) our users. It’s your work behind the scenes that gives our customers the confidence to rely on us. All of this hard work has led to a great year for sales despite the industry headwinds.

A few things I’m thankful for

I’m thankful for the resilience of every team member who has navigated tight timelines, remote work, late nights, and travel.
I’m thankful for customers who say, “Here’s how we really work,” and set us on the right path.
I’m thankful for channel partners who bridge cultures, time zones, regulatory challenges, and local sales complexity.
I’m thankful for the moments of serendipity, when a customer’s suggestion becomes a product feature, when a minor bug fix saves a client’s deadline, and when a partner brings us into a new customer we’ve been wanting to meet.

Looking ahead, with gratitude

As we head into the year’s end and plan for 2026, I want us to carry this spirit of gratitude forward. We’ll continue to push for smarter workflows, better collaboration across distributed teams, and innovations that reduce friction rather than add more features for their own sake.

From all of us at EditShare, thank you. May your upcoming holiday season (whether it’s Thanksgiving or simply time with family) bring rest, reflection, and renewed purpose.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Brad Turner
CEO, EditShare