Precision Performance with Raya and Will Usher

Foreign.

I'm charlie redding.

And I'm claire fudge and this is the tribeathlon podcast.

You know, high speed skis going everywhere over safety nets, trees, you know, you name it, helicopters.

But like the guys who are like the 120s, the 130s, 140s, they're dropping 20 seconds on 100, which is mind blowing.

That was Raya and Will Usher and this episode is Precision Performance. Having been a former Canadian international Alpine ski racer race Raya Usher understands the intensities, pressures and psychological demands that are placed on athletes no matter what level they're competing at. Will Usher, her husband is a full time coach and has been coaching triathlon for 21 years now and has guided over 200 athletes to GB age group success with numerous top 10s, podiums and champions across the whole range of ITU, World European Ironman and Challenge Family races. Along the way together they've built precision coaching to become one of the UK's top triathlon coaching businesses. So I wanted to chat to them about how they're using AI to improve their coaching proposition. What Raya has brought from the world of international skiing into multisport and how they're using a pool school to improve their athletes swim times. So I know you are going to really love this interview with Raya and Will Usher. How would you like to grow your business whilst working less and enjoying your work life more? Well that's how we help people at the Trusted team. We do that through workshops which happen in person and online. We do that through regular online learning that you can just do from your desk at lunchtime and and we do it through in person events that make fun tax deductible things like golf days, dinners, wine tasting, all of that fun stuff. They help you build stronger relationships and enjoy work more. So if you want to know how we can help you grow your business and improve your work life balance, go to thetrusted team to find out when our next free taster event or free webinar is so that you can find out how we can can help you grow your business and get your work life balance back. That's thetrusted Dot team. Come join us at one of our events.

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So will Raya.

Welcome to the Tribe Athlon podcast. Really looking forward to chatting to you today and talking all things triathlon and all things tech. Because I know there's always a tech theme behind you guys. But before we do, before we dive into the, the, the details of that, I just always love to know the story behind how you got to where you are. So let's start with you, Raya. Ladies first. Um, how did you find your way into the world of triathlon now? And I know that it was a, was via a skiing route. So tell us a bit about your story and your background.

Yeah, so triathlon was my second sport, like my sort of second lease at life. I am Canadian, as you can tell by the accent. So I grew up in Canada. And you have two options when you grow up in Canada. You either become an ice hockey player or a downhill ski racer. So my brother went ice hockey, I went skiing, I skied for, I sort of toured the world. Skied for Canada for six years, nearly two Olympic cycles. And just before the Olympics in 1998 in Nagano as. No, in 2002, sorry, I, in Salt Lake City, I had a really big crash and it was career ending. You know, high speed skis going everywhere, over safety nets, trees, you know, you name it. Helicopters.

How fast are we talking? My daughter had a crash in February, half term on skis at about 40 miles an hour. That seemed really bad to me. How bad was yours?

How far? I was airborne when the crash started, so we're not entirely sure. But, but the last speed gum just before the, the jump was about 110 kilometers an hour, which is 17 miles, something like that. Yeah, yeah. So speedy. I think you slow down a little bit in air and then obviously the impact slows you down, but you hit the trees. But then you hit the trees. So, so it was, it was impact at speed. And the other thing that makes accidents complicated with skiing is that we're wearing like very slippery like speed suits. So there's just nowhere, just nothing stops you. So I moved to England after the ski accident because I needed to move back with my parents who were living in England at the time to help care for me. Um, and through a series of years of, you know, I went to uni here, loved being in England, traveled the world for work, had the most amazing time. But I, my rehab didn't go great so I kind of left sport. I had chronic back pains, was really struggling because I was traveling a lot. So I was on a plane constantly and someone finally said you just need to get in a pool and start rehabbing and actually get your body moving again. Because I was working in finance and doing almost no sport. So yeah, fast forward to trying a bit of swimming. Found it kind of boring. Sorry to the swimmers out there and to my husband. So then added cycling and you know, it snowballs with that. And then decided I wanted to do an Ironman because that sounded super exciting on the anniversary, like 17th anniversary. I was just in between my 15th and 20th anniversary of breaking my back from that ski accident. So someone recommended that I use Will to be coached to get to the Ironman because he was really well known at the time for tech but also for his rehabbing because of the work that he does with John Allen our team physiological and the rest they say is history. I mean Will coached me with John to this to Ironman Mexico. I'd only been in the sport for like a year and a half. Absolutely was obsessed with it after that and then basically went on like a triathlon racing rampage for the next three or four years. And before Will just told me to basically quit my job in the city and become a triathlon coach.

Awesome.

Which is good words to hear. I would imagine quit in the city and do anything relating to triathlon is. That's definitely a move up the chain.

Yeah, totally. And far less stressful.

Awesome. And. And just to kind of pick up on that. So how has your injury impacted your ability to do triathlon? Particularly long course stuff.

Mainly the chronic pain. You mean impact in a negatively way or a positive? Yeah. So the. My body is pretty much back to normal. The only issue is the chronic back pain that I get.

And it's.

Imagine this like my, my surgeon always likes to say, Ray, you're in perfect health, you're in great shape. Except for when we look at a CT scan of your spine that looks like an 80 year old man. So it's just how much damage my spine got and what that does to my. Now my left leg which has really bad sciatica and it's worse in the cold weather and that sort of thing. High impact and volume running makes it flare up. Although Will is absolutely convinced it's just because I really hate running. So I use an excuse at least.

90%.

But generally I have tried Most of the time to use it as a challenge because I'm reminded of how close my skiing accident was to being like a life ending accident. And so even though I'm in pain, it's like a pain that you almost enjoy enduring because it reminds you how lucky you are.

Yeah.

So it's a blessing and a curse when it comes to my racing.

I think brilliant and yeah, I think maybe so. Just before we come on to Will, the last question that prompts is mentally, how does that crash help you in a, in a endurance race?

I don't know if it's the crash that helps me mentally. It's the attitude that I had after the crash that I think has helped and that I always say it's largely, I think, thanks to my dad because post accident I was in a pretty bad way mentally, I think it's fair to say, you know, I was struggling with the concept of whether I was going to be able to walk again. You're. I was a teenager. I was only just about to turn 20. So there's all these like, well, what are you going to do with your life? And it wasn't until the sports psychologist that was dealing with my discharge and my dad had a chat and the psychologist basically said, if she doesn't buck up her ideas, I'm not going to discharge from hospital. And it was my dad kind of walking into that hospital room and kind of slapping me in the face, figuratively speaking, um, and telling me to just live. He was like. Because, you know, I was like, well, what am I going to do with my life? You know, my life is over. And he was like, you're gonna live. And it was that sort of. It's like simple, like almost being told off, but also like my dad being like, almost looking at me as if I was stupid.

Like, I think it closed. It closed the chapter.

Yeah, it did.

You know, you're yearning after something that was gone.

Yeah, right, Definitely.

You need to start again and you were going to live and you can have a perfectly great life, but that is gone. Close the door and move on.

Yeah, yeah.

And that rehab from that moment is where I think my mental strength comes from when it comes to triathlon. But also that, you know, being so thankful. Like, I almost enjoy hurting that much because I never thought I would hurt like that again. So there is this sort of sadistic side of me.

I beg to differ. The expletives that come out of you during an orange and the toys being thrown around the room figuratively would counter arguments any of them.

So on that note, Will, how did you find your way into triathlon and then also coaching within triathlon?

Yeah, so I was a swimmer, national swimmer and runner growing up. I was a sprinter but we used to do some, some crazy volume back in the day. It's like 50,000 meters even though you're doing 50, 50 flyers my thing. And yeah, so I, I, I've been a swimming runner through my sort of school years I guess. We got to university and my main swim rival, who I had no idea and I just bumped into him at Freshers fair and he's like oh hi, what are you doing here? I'm like what? I mean I've moved to nothing to get away from him, you know. And I was like, he's like oh yeah, I really fancy a triathlon. Yeah, I'll do you on the run buddy. So I was like yeah, game one, we'll do, we'll do the booster triathlon. And, and he didn't enjoy the run but I was hooked. I really love the variety. I think I'd, I'd lost my, my coach in the back end of my swimming years like 16 through 18. I ended up self coaching, actually coaching my team as well because it was one of the senior swimmers and that's where the coaching journey actually started. But in the same, actually maybe a little bit before then. But the, the issue was I was disjointed and I lost some of the love for swimming because you do need somebody when you're swimming that much. You need somebody to do that side of things for you. You just turn up, that's the set. Great, let's do it. But yeah, so I loved it at university I could swim and run. I assumed that my leg strength from the running would apply to the bike. I was woefully mistaken and I actually my first ever race was southern which is just north of Nottingham. It was a race supported by tfn. It was run by One Step Beyond Promotions with Ian and it still remains an awesome, I think I still run it now but little pool swim, 400 meter pool swim, 20k bike, 18 in fact and then a 5k run. Great. And the trouble is with pool based triathlon, they basically they seed you on the swim time, right? Because they have nothing else to seed you on. So I put in what for me then was a relatively slow time. I put like a 4:40 or something for my 400 time. Not really understanding that that would be very fast for a triathlon tonight. And the result was I found myself in the last heat next to Mark Redwood who's the co owner of TFN at the time I was like there's not many people left anyway, whatever. Some my swim got out and then just proceeded to get absolutely rinsed on the bike and was last on the course because you know, everyone else is miles ahead of me at this point. And by the time I came to the run it was lovely jaunt out in the countryside solo pretty much. But yeah, I then learned and put in slower times. But yeah, I really loved it. I then I was always destined at university to go to the army as an army bursa which means they were paying some of my tuition fees. And so I went to Sandurst immediately after university actually in between there and I went to my first world's age group back in 2002. Really old but yeah, that was. And that was a phenomenal experience and I at that point I was just like, well I want to continue doing this and. But then I was destined for the army so went to Sundust and I raced with the army team, did various races with my soldiers and so on. I never got back to going to some of the age group world stuff at that time because world has a way of changing your life. And whilst I was at Sanders, you know, Talik won the Iraq War Mark two started literally in my first London Sanders tell it one kicked off and we just saw the big headline and there's a power in full respirator charging through the desert in his. In his gear. We're just like this is going to change the path of our careers quite significantly, you know. And sure enough it did. You know, all my generation have spent their whole time either in Iraq or Afghanistan and you know, now future theaters. But every year something happened. I was very lucky. I was went to the Royal Military Police. But then I specially specialized in close protection within the military police in particular. Well we did. It's called black op closed protection which is. Is entertaining in so much as, you know, it conjures up ideas of secrets, secrecy and you know, covert. But I mean you're as covert frankly as a white man is in the Middle East. I can grow a beard and get tan, but that's where it ends. But you know, we call ourselves discreet. It's probably a better description anyway, so we did that specializing that I still doing a bit of try continually. You need to be fit for that sort of specialist role anyway, then got back into it in Germany, still in the military and then it was, it came time for me to leave I had an opportunity to join the City and these are opportunities that don't just come around. So I decided to make that jump. I then proceeded to get it like wildly fat whilst in the. In the City and intensely.

Yeah, that is an affliction that comes to most when we end up in the City.

And Well, I think one of the problems was as well, I joined at a particularly Good Time, 2007. I think we'll all remember the City was a wonderful place to be at that time and so that didn't enormously help. And then I just looked at myself one day in a photo and yeah, need to sort this out again. And I've been, I've been coaching through the military, I've been coaching continually on an amateur basis. But I just went, you know what, why don't I try and do something I'm passionate about and professionalize it. If I can establish a business in a recessive period, then if I get out the other end and I've survived, then I'm probably going to be in quite a good place. Yeah.

So is it in 2008 ish that you set up Precision Race team?

Well, I actually set it up initially is just will I training always with a view is always try it on focus. Um, and then I set up another team in 2010 which is called One Triathlon RDS Regional Development Squad. And what that was was actually as an advertising piece we got the contract work for London Triathlon in London and we were providing all the coaching and training programs for that we already wanted was an advertising piece, one of the athletes wearing the kit rocking around and advertising the company. So and, and that continued. We then lost that contract because Virgin Active took over London Triathlon and weirdly they didn't want people coaching with outside companies. And yeah, moved forward and then we, I mean we had, we had a great period. I think we still hold the record for the number of age group athletes from one team at a world champs. And that was London. You had a four year plan for London and it's all very structured, it's all very military around the team, like a company, by which I mean the military company. But I was like, you know, you had to go to do these races, these qualifiers to get to these worlds, given the experience, because I knew that London would be an exceptionally hard race to get into and it was great. We had a fantastic reputation and we had around 65 athletes on the edge on the cusp of qualifying and 20 qualified and the other 45 missed out to their teammates. So you know, which was actually, it was great. And the team atmosphere was staggeringly good. Like for whatever reason they decided to do the sprint distance race in high part that year the wrong way around or on the other side of the road. And so to recce that even though we were living there was hard to do, but 45 athletes, such was the camaraderie that we would get up at 2 o' clock in the morning and the guys that weren't racing marshaled the course for us on the wrong side of the. On the road so that we could safely hit the bends at speed on the wrong side of the road. Right, awesome.

So this defeats the 5:00am Club by a long stretch, doesn't it?

Yeah, some. By some margin we have definitely.

So given that you've come from a forces background, what do you think you've taped? What lessons have you taken from your time in the forces and applied to.

The triathlon coaching world being really bossy?

Well, I think, I think a lot of it is you, you used to sacrificing for each other military. So you used to going that beyond that extra mile for staying late, going up early, you know, all these things for your, for your troops or for your athletes. So it didn't feel like a big switch around in that instance, you know. And it also really helped to be organized. We've got a thing in the military called admin instruction which basically lays out everything in case for whatever reason you were no longer there and someone could pick up that plan and run with it. But what it meant was is that in that build up into London 2013 and then going beyond that, being able to create those structures that I know work or for events or for training camps or work whatever it was. I had a structure in place that, that worked and I had the sufficient work ethic, you know, and habits to, to give my time for people. And actually that's one thing that people never, never realize. You see a lot of aspiring young pros looking at, oh yeah, you know, I'll be a coach to supplement my income. But actually the more you coach, the less you train really. Because you're giving time at a particular time of day when you should be training to your athletes, which is ultimately is actually depends on your makeup. But if you really want to be a coach, you should find more satisfaction in that ultimately than in doing things for yourself.

Yeah, yeah. And you guys, I know, I know from speaking to both of you that you've, you've always adopted tech early. Now I think I'm Right. In saying you were one of the first people to adopt Zwift, you know, now that now this feels like the most common trait, you know, everyone has done. But being, being one of the users of Zwift, why, why did you adopt it so early and why did you then ditch it to use and what have you used next in its place?

Yeah. So, I mean, it's quite simple really. Anybody who trained in the 90s and early naughties will have trained on a dumb trainer staring at a breeze block. All right? And it is dull. Wow. I mean, it's so bad. Like even, even on a mag train, like the first 10 minutes in the warmup, like you ask them what their RP is, it's like nine, definitely a nine. And because it's just, it's just difficult controlling the boredom. And of course there weren't even any metrics in terms of the power you're putting out or, you know, literally be going, oh, yeah, I'm in the fifth gear. Great. You know, I mean, I remember one comical moment where we'd set up as a uni team. We'd managed to get use of the storeroom in the, at the sports hall to do a morning, early morning turbo. And we had to bring, I remember bringing down, you remember the old speakers, like with the MIDI systems and stuff and so bringing that down as a student and wiring it up, getting this thing pumping, you know, very early, like 7am for a student. But yeah, for whatever reason, we'd forgotten, some people would have forgotten to do the locking bolts on the, on the mag trainers. And yeah, at one point in the session, particularly vigorous part of the set, three of the bites came loose and that. But we got ourselves into a circle because we just thought we'd talk to each other and look at each other. Of course, then this thing imploded like some sort of anime car. So, yeah, so when something like Zift comes along, you're like, yes, finally. Because there is only so much Netflix that you can watch, right. Particularly when you're doing middle long distance work, which at that time, you know, I was. And I've done, I think I've done a five and a half, six hour walk bike fairly recently before we've just got them done in Flanders, you know, the sports team. And you know, I'd run out, I'd run out of Netflix, I'd run out of prime, certainly anything that was going to interest me. And this, this was here. And I was like, I remember, I think, wasn't it, who was initially Sort of supporting it. And I just thought this is the answer, this is the future. Because you know, it's gamifying. It really suits me. I love speed distance time. That's basically what I do doing in Ironman. I do speed distance time calculations continually. Rare thinks I'm insane.

I don't know how he calculates it.

Like the whole race all the time. It's brilliant. But you know something that's giving me feedback, that's giving me data and then it would feedback to the trainer. It was like wow, this is phenomenal.

And then also it got so many of our athletes on power like super quick because it gave them a trainer to invest in but also seeing their power in real time which was more. Which was affordable because at the time, it was just before the power meters like on your bike were getting affordable are today.

You know, the big thing was the big big switch I think was wahoo. And the kicker because like before then, you know, realistically you, you had SRM at two and a half grand. We had a power tap at 1200 but you had to have two wheels basically on the training wheel. So really it was 2500 I think I'm when Gar, the first Garmin Vectors came up. But that was obviously revolutionary. But the point is power was coming into the marketplace at a cheaper price than two and a half grand. And previously when I've been coaching I never pushed people into power because it's just so expensive. Whereas now if somebody says you know, should I get a power meter or should I go on a training camp, it's like 100% you get a power meter because it's affordable. It's about the same money and you're going to get used to that all year round, all year round, right?

And you're going to get better coaching as a result of what you can, you can get. So now that, so if I'm still a embraced in Zwift, but I'm not massively bothered by the gamification. What, what have you left Zwift for? And, and why.

So yeah, you're kind of in the completed it mate scenario. You know, that's kind of where I was at the beginning of 2020. I was in 25,000K. You know, the, the, the extra colored socks or whatever it was wasn't doing it for us. I'll hit level 50. I know they've gone up now. I was like I don't care, you.

Know, and, but also the gamification was for gamification sake, right? It was just like, more xp, more xp, more xp. So no one was really. People were then stopping doing their quality sessions that we'd set for them, going, oh, I did a group ride on Zwift that was three hours because I really wanted to get double XPs for this week. It's like, yeah, but that's not helping your training. We set you up an hour zone four session.

I think the other issues though was, was more person was that Zwift obviously had to grow really fast during lockdown. Right. And just before that, I don't think they'd put enough investment into the coding. I've done a phenomenal job there. But it was just reaching that point where it was accelerating a hell of a rate. And there were issues, consistent issues, like, you know, when it had the, the keep together function on, like riding my dad. My dad's 81, he does a couple hundred K a week still. Um, and. But you know, we'd be on the keep together function and it wouldn't like he'd be. Say he was behind me by 30 seconds, but he was in front of me or something. I was like, this can't be right. And we'd been running these really great things during lockdown in particular, like these, these 100k time trials, but team time trials, basically the WTRL stuff. Right, but before that became an organized thing. Yeah, it was amazing. Like, you know, we'd all. So we had up to 80 riders from the team doing it only at one point. And we'd have teams of six riders. I'd work out the handicap and we'd ride it as a handicapped race. All on team Chat, again on discord and stuff. Brilliant. Now, nothing new, of course, everyone else doing it now, but I then began to question. I said, well, look, if this is happening in a meetup where we can't keep together and the. The code is out, if that says that person is two minutes, two seconds behind me, are they right? Because it stands to reason I'm not a coder. But I was like, logically that has to be the same from a meetup to a race, because what is a race but a meetup, right? Just with a different name. So I then started doing a bit of research and it turns out that the way Zwift manages the system is that it kind of keeps you in this blob. If you're in this blob, then you are broadly together and it doesn't really care. Like you can actually stop riding on Zwift for a good few seconds and you stay in the blog in your area. Right. And I think there's a, there's a cycle like Zwift Bloopers or something. But anyway, it became apparent that actually if you had 10 riders and 10 different screens, you'd have 10 different views.

Yeah, yeah, we've noticed this with, when we were racing as a group. And it's, it's really the only way you could stay together was by all having the same watts per kilo and ignoring what's on the screen.

Exactly.

And so that became, you know, it raises serious questions because what they're having is people who are finishing sixth on screen were actually first, you know, and so who's drafting who as well when it comes to sort of pro racing and all this thing. And I was just getting frustrated. Like when you're getting up early in the morning at 5am to do a turbo as a group and the meetup, it just doesn't work. You're just like, right, I'm done, I'm done with this. There must be something else. And of course there was. And that thing in that initial instance was rgt, which is still only really just out of beta phase, but we're showing some really promising metrics. The physics behind it were phenomenal. Instead of change checking your position every like 15 seconds, it does it every 0.2 of a second. But interestingly as well, it translates or transmits your position to every single ride and every single rider back to you. Which initially was a problem because the amount of bandwidth that requires is significant and processing power. But they, they got better and better. And yeah, there was some teething problems. But the thing that was really fascinating for me with that was the fact that we could organize our own races without any red tape. So we even got we towards the end of our time was if we got offered our own race, but there was just nothing new that could be done. You know, everyone knows where you go around the flat, 10, 10K flat loop, where they're going to attack, because this is only one little lift, you know what I mean? It's just, come on, it's the same every time and it's just a threshold session. It's not really, if you look at the power profile, completely irrelevant. If you were to put that onto the real world, you know, there's no slowing down because why would you. Because you can go 70 mile an hour around a turn without killing yourself. But RGC had some physics involved where, you know, you could power around at 500 watts around a turn, but the brakes would come on. Right. So you. You can do that, but it also give you a bad line off the turn because, of course, in real life you did that, you'd go straight off the other end of the mountain or whatever. Right. You're encouraged. And the power profiles match very closely to what you'd see in real life. But the very cool thing was, on top of that, they had a thing called Magic Roads. And Magic Roads meant you could build a course up to 100k or 4 hours of server time.

Oh, sorry, sorry.

And yeah, you could do that out to sort of far as 100k, which was. Was phenomenal. But it meant we could genuinely put a course together for athletes, right, who are going and racing wherever they're racing. You weren't at the. Weren't beholden to Ruby or Full Gas or whoever that decided to go and film, you know, and the route was never. There's always a traffic on and everything. I thought it looked a bit weird as well, some sort of caricature knocking about on a. On a. In, you know, in real life road. So that was really useful and we used it to incredible effect because you could overlay a structured workout on that and if you did that, then effectively it's a race plan. So you could actually train people specifically to race plan and make estimations based on wind. And we're using Best Bike Split and my wind socks and all these different apps to work out the sort of power that should be required for different sections, of course, and then overlaying it. And of course, we could even say, right, we're going to do this course and this is where I want you to feed. And you pop up on a message within the structure workout saying you feel you should have quarter of your bottle gone by now. Or this is the aid station coming up. Make sure you swap bottles. And so you're really rehearsing. And, you know, we had some amazing results. One of our guys, he did the Helvellyn Triathlon, which is. It's pretty lumpy.

Joe Skipper just after that and he said, two days after he said, my legs have never hurt so much.

It's basically awful. But I had one. The guy that was doing it, I had him doing hill repeats on Kirsten Pass, because I could.

On rgc.

On rgc, yeah. And then I had him raced the whole loop a couple times with the ver. With the. With the plan in place. But amazingly, I can't take all the credit for this because all the tech can't take all the credit because it doesn't take into account the weather, which happened to be a good day, unusual, and also the road surface. However, I had him race three weeks out at race watts and on the day he was 12 seconds different to the computer generated version again. I had another instance with one of my ladies who ended up coming European and world champion with joathlon and triathlon at the short course. And there was this hill and you know what some of the, the chat groups can be like with age group triathlon, right. People just winding themselves up and then spiraling uncontrollably and worrying about stuff.

Maybe I shouldn't take my TT bike because the hill's gonna be so bad like you gonna do it, but you.

Know, so there's this hill, it has a section of 300 meters 18% and the next section hill was like 3, 4% but also another 300 meters. So what I said, what's going to happen is everyone's going to overwatch that first section and they're going to go, oh thank God for that when they get to the shallow section and basically recover and you know, try not to curl up in a ball. And so I said to Nick is we trained on it. We trained again on rgt, we trained on that, on the hill reps. So this is your target wattage. We do it to target what and to feel just in case the watts fell or the power meter fails and then you're going to attack that second half of the hill. And sure enough, she did. And every lap she pulled out 45 seconds minute every lap. It was a three lap race and she won the bike by three minutes. You know, and so it's just an amazing application because even in if you were to go and recce it prior to an event, you can never do it in anger in the same way. Yeah, cars and there's, you know.

Yeah, it's a totally different experience, isn't it? I think that's brilliant. It's a brilliant example of how you can use tech to race better rather than essentially just gamifying it to get.

Through it and coach better.

Yeah, well, absolutely. I think that that's, that's really highlighted with. So you guys are the, the UK coaches that have been first really to adopt Tridot. We even see it on the shirts now. Um, obviously we've talked about Try not on the podcast a few times. Mark originally introduced to it by Mark Allen, Michele Jones. But tell me, tell me why you guys have embraced Tridot so much.

Okay, this is one of my favorite chats.

We'll see you on the other side, Charlie.

Yeah, in no more than two.

The big thing for me is TSS the which is for those that don't train. Stress score. It is the cornerstone or keystone of every major endurance training app out there. You know, originated with Andrew Coggan, designed it for cycling specifically. Was only really ever designed for 60 minutes of cycling. But yeah, the problem with it is it has multiple failures. As an example, and this is just one of many, it makes an assumption that your last 10 minutes for 60 minute cycle swim or whatever it is are the same stress levels the first 10 minutes, which of course is rubbish. You've got 50 minutes of load in there already. It can't. It fails to take into account different intensities. As an example, if you were to ride at 125% of FTP, which people. If you start calculating that against your own FTP, you start crying and you write that for 20 minutes, which is an impossibility by the way, you would explode, I expect. Or that actually happened. But it would only give you a TSS score of 52, which is madness. Whereas I think on trial it would be like 480 and it'd be listed as an impossible session. So there's multiple examples. But also CSS doesn't take into account, I mean, how many people have done a swim session where TSS of one and like you're crawling out the pool, cramping in every conceivable muscle group and going what? How's that happen? Because it just doesn't work. And there's no be no real development or development to. To make it work. Right. But the other thing it doesn't take into account is in particular an individual, their personal profile. So it doesn't take into account the age, their gender, their genetic. Their sport history. Right. Sports reason enormously important. You know, I gave an example. I was at little club champs meet last year and I thought I'd do some quick bit of SNC because no time to really swim. So I thought I'll just do some strength conditioning, sharpen myself up for some sprints in. Great. My push phase was abysmal. Right. I mean it was, it was so bad I shifted by an embarrassingly small amount, but my full phase increased by like 175% which is. Is not possible. Right. But what I was doing is reopening those neural pathways because I'm next summer. I spent my entire life pulling. So that movement, no problem. In terms of sport history, that's super relevant. Right. You know If I'm a next swimmer. So guess what? I can pick up my swim pretty quickly and I can also handle quite a lot of load pretty quickly. But for a pure cyclist, that would not be the case. So it takes those sort of things into account, which is phenomenal. And in all, there's about 25 different metrics that what TriDoc call NTS, normalized training stress versus TSS. So why try it on? Going back to that question, because TSS doesn't work. And TSS is the keystone of training peaks of today's plan of Strava, of any swift, you know, RGC as well, right. System it is, it's there and it doesn't work. So when we had nothing else, when the nothing else has been developed, that's what we had. And what you use, then you use a coach's experience, which is an educated guess, right? You know, to be, to be brutal. And the more coaching experience you have, the more education you have, the better it gets. However, there is a limit to that and it's still a guess because you know that the metric you're working with doesn't really work. So but now we have NTS and we know it works. So then it begs the question, why would you use anything else? Right? Because to use anything else would be disingenuous and be, you know, effectively denying your athlete a proper metric and risking injuring them. Right. Or risking not giving them a good building to erase because you were fingering the air time.

So essentially what you're saying is because the metrics are way more accurate, the training plan will be way more specific to the athlete, which means that you're likely to either get the best out of them, but without, with, with less risk of injury.

Well, and the thing is, is yes, basically, and, but the, the, the stats and stats, this stats, I mean like there's been some companies that been and failed but I mean they came out and said we're AI and you know, we're, we're results based and it's stat based and data based, etc. Etc. They only had 100 downloads. I mean how, how much data are you going to get from 100 people really? You know, what we're talking about is nearly a couple hundred thousand people over nearly a 20 year period. Right? And this is serious amounts of data. So you know, when, when you put it in that, that perspective, what we can say is, and we know from looking at that data is that people are training less, they're 2.9 times less likely to get injured. And they are going faster, the metrics show. Or the day. Sorry. The data shows us this. It's like, let me get this right. If you're self coached, but with a cookie cutter, a downloadable plan, you're likely to improve over 70.3 and around about six minutes. Just over six minutes. I forget the seconds, but let's call it six minutes. If you have a coach, you're likely to improve by around about 12 minutes. I think it's 12 minutes, 24 seconds on average. We tried it on its own. People improving 28 minutes over 70.3. Right. Then with a coach turbocharges that because it really dials it into that person's life.

Yeah.

And so when you're looking at that and you're saying, well, how can I sit in front of a client and go, you're going to train less, I'd be more efficient, you less, much less likely to get injured and you're going.

To get a huge pb if I.

Don'T start training them on it, then I'm not doing them, I'm doing them a disservice.

Yeah. You know, where do I, where, where do I sign up basically? And I mean one of the things that I, I find amazing is with the best one in the world, you know, any coach only has exposure to a certain number of athletes. You know, you've got of coaching athletes, but they're still, we're talking, you know, maybe a thousand. Whereas like you say.

Correct.

There is so like hundreds of thousands of athletes data within that. And one of the. I had a conversation with Jeff Burr about this and one of the things that we talked about was how, you know, when Tesla first started introducing Autopilot, you know, there was one, there was one guy that was trying to get Autopilot to take it round the, hit the corner on the way home from work. And it, for about the first five times it failed and then the sixth time it got around the corner. And it got around the corner there every time thereafter. But it wasn't his Tesla that learned that. Every Tesla in the world now knew how to take that corner.

Exactly.

And that's the amazing thing about it is the data taken from one source can suddenly apply to the whole coaching platform content.

Exactly. And it's not just that, that application, it's the fact that the application becomes very unbiased to every single training methodology that we've ever known. Right. You know, even though Will and I have always been really confident in our ability to program, in our coaching technique and the Methodologies that we've used, they've always been biased to the other previous coaches we've worked with, to the qualifications that we've done to and that it makes our ability relatively narrow minded no matter how many thousands of athletes you've worked with. Because even Will's 25 years experience and my near decade experience cannot nearly equate to the amount of data that Tridot has been able to gather.

Yeah, and remove that bias is super important. You know, it means that you're not dealing with fashionable training, right? You know, so somebody writes an article about something somewhere and they have influence and then suddenly oh, that's the only way you can train, right? What this does, it ignores that it only follows the data. We can't stress that enough. If it's in there, it's because it works, not because it, you know, Alistair Brownlee's coach did this, you know, therefore it's relevant for everyone. It's not relevant for you.

We are not.

The best female or Alistair's equivalent female because female, she's got a different genetic background and she's got a different athletic background. So you know, whilst there may well be larger elements that will be relevant because she's an elite athlete and whatever, ultimately they are different people. So you know, you have to follow what genetically works and statistically works. And this, this is the point about, try to, not only do they have the data of all these hundreds of thousands of people though couple of decades, they, they all can also upload your genome, right? And that can take from there your propensity to injure your, your ability to recover but take on high end work and then it will manipulate the program accordingly. And look, you can turn it off, right, because sometimes that gives you an answer you don't really want and like.

Maybe it was the right answer.

Yeah, exactly.

Maybe somebody really loves doing long endurance work but actually they need to improve their, their engine and do some harder intervals. Well, you know, that's what they should be doing. But if they won't do it, it's better that they just do stuff they enjoy. They won't get the results that they would like potentially, but they'll still enjoy doing it. And actually they'll get a better result as a result of that. Well, how many times can I use the word result there? But anyway, yeah, so yeah, I think.

I think that, that, yeah, that makes complete sense. I suppose a question for you Raya, because I know in the way that you guys work, I think you're the sort of the, the more I don't know how we can't remember how you described the more cuddly, the more sort of totally fair. I'm not sure that cuddly is the right word, actually. Apologies, but the more kind of counseling type coach. So I suppose the cynic, the cynic out there would say, if AI is building the program, why do I need a coach on top of that? So, Raya, what would you say to that?

I think it's really easy. I think any. Here's the thing. Any coach who has done a qualification can write a program. Any coach, right? It's logic. And you get taught how to do it. And the more experience you have, perhaps the better your programming becomes. But at the end of the day, a computer that has so much more data can write it better, especially over the long term because of what it can analyze. Real coaching isn't about writing a plan. It's about the emotional intelligence that you have after you've written that plan. Right? It's talking to your athletes and understanding the tone of the text message that they've sent you or the voice note that they've sent you, which is unusual, or the comments that they've wrote in the post activity box. That's when coaching starts. It's the emotional intelligence that sits above your ability to program. Now, I'm not saying that I was a bad programmer. I rated my programming, but I definitely don't think that. Well, I think we should put our egos aside to kind of say, the program can do it better, the system can do it better. But what the system can't do is support, be the champion, read between the lines and communicate and be able to stay like here when someone's had a really crap day and say, listen, you know what? I just want you to drop the run today. And they're like, no, but I've got an ironman. I can't do it. It's like, no. Today is a day for resting and having that ability to call your athlete and just say, listen, I'm having a look at the data. I think we're getting tired now it's time for me to do my job. And that's what a coach does.

Yeah.

Doesn't program. They don't program.

I think, you know, where I describe it is that tridot. I mean, using this tagline optimizes your training. Brilliant. The AI doesn't care about anything else. What it wants is for you to be your best athlete possible. Right? And you know, in people's lives, they, they have their priority of Their personal family, you know, relationship, etc. Then they have work, then they have their training as a general rule. Right. But try not wants training to be at the top because it's optimizing your training, you know, you know, bugging the family train. But actually, you know, those two things are the most important people, things, people. And whilst training may sometimes surpass work because you really hate your job or you're coming up to like a major race, but that can't happen for very long because the work underpins the security of that the, the person and their family and everything else. So what do we. Right, and what do we do as a, as a coach? We make the training optimal with the support of tridot for that individual. Right. And that's where we bring in that human element, you know, and it's absolutely vital. You know, actually Tridot is the only AI platform that's recognizing that. They recognize that the only way the support sport will survive on a macro level is with coaches and race organizers. Because without those two people supporting and helping and nurturing, then people just don't stay in the sport and the sport never develops, never receives the funding and you. Slippery slope.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I agree. And tell me a little bit about. I benefited from coming to the first try pool school in the UK and we took, I haven't worked out the percentage actually, but I think across the group we took 12% off our 100 meter time over the course of that to you know, one more one afternoon and one morning session. But tell me a little bit about what you thought made of pool school when you first witnessed it and now that we brought it to the UK.

Well, I guess I was. So I'm 42, right. And there's context to that is that basically I decided that I haven't been training very much the last couple of years, just been mostly coaching and focusing on that. But I was like, you know what? I'd quite like to go under a minute again before it's too late for, for 100 meter free stuff, ton of free stuff. Right. And how to be an underminute for many years, at least 10, maybe 15, a long time I've been training for triathlon, you know, whatever. So anyway, I was like, that's where I was at the beginning or end of last year after a club champs thing that we'd had in like September dollar came along and Jeff started talking to us about pool score and he said oh yeah, we're having really great results even with the pro athletes and stuff.

I Was like whatever a little bit.

Skeptical because like, you know, I was very aware as well that my sprint stroke was different to my endurance stroke. Right. Anyway, went along to Texas full of a little bit of hope, but mostly skeptical. And anyway we did the eight hours, did all the tuition and then did this 100 meters and it was on a digital clock as off push start and I started on the zero. I looked up and it was 58 and I stopped and it's like wow.

Yeah.

Okay. I really wasn't expecting it.

And what do you think you're given your speed at the time, what was your speed going into that before that?

So I was doing like a 64 second that time. So I took six seconds off. Wow. Which, which is huge. Really more thing. I, I, I have no business going sub minute based on the amount of training that I haven't done. And also being 15, 10, 15 years older. Right. I shouldn't be doing it. There's no, no, I shouldn't just go rock up on a course a weekend and then just do it. But it did and you know, so that was, that was me. But like the guys who are like the 120s, the 130s, 140s, they're dropping 20 seconds on 100 which is, is mind blowing. It's also quite scary if you've been training for ages. Not technique but you know, it was staggering. And this is not something that's anomaly. Everybody improved I think on our course. Yeah, I think it was 12.2.8 or something like that. Percent improvement. One lady didn't improve. You know, all open but she'd had long Covid and actually eight hours swimming long Covid. We absolutely wasted it.

But even her, she walked away saying it was the best course she'd ever been on. And the fact that she'd had long Covid and now she could swim confidently and calmly after not being able to be in the pool for so many months. She was like she was over the moon.

Which was amazing thing as well is that the metrics is not just the time. Right. She was 20, 22% more efficient in her stroke count for the basically the same speed. Right. So there was, was that as well. So it's been, it's been phenomenally powerful for the swimmers. We really see it. Some of the guys in squads are quite annoyed because like some of the guys that went on it who are behind are now switching faster.

Yeah.

One of the things that I loved about it the most, I mean it was a really good experience. The most swim training I've ever had and, and the fact that it was almost coach to every athlete was fantastic. But the thing that I've loved about it, you know, and the fact that I knock five seconds off my 100 meter time, which I was really happy with. But what and particularly is actually I'd done that having been ill and not swam much for the, for the weeks from that time too. So that was really just probably a bigger gain actually than that. But one of the thing I've loved most about it is since then, every time I'm on my warm up or my drills or like doing Outlaw Half at the weekend, I'm thinking I know exactly what I need to be thinking about with regards to my technique and where I need to focus it and that like I've always had bits of drills to think about and focus on but never one like one whole thing. And that was really, really powerful for me and I, you know, recommended to a good few people because I thought it was really impressive. Now one of the, one of the traditions of the the Tribathlon podcast is get the previous guest, Ian Hamilton, organizer of the Outlaw Half to the Outlaw series, to ask a question. And so Ian's question, which I'm going to get again, ladies first. We'll get right to answer this question first. What is the one thing that you would do if you weren't afraid at all.

That would definitely be skydiving? I have never done it before. I've never done it before and I love the idea of it, but I have an incredibly bad fear of the feeling of falling. Like it is my major fear and there is absolutely no way I would then put myself through that of the actual sensation of falling because I would quite likely have a heart attack and die well these.

So that's easy for Ray's upcoming significant birthday next year. Are we still the next one after? Yeah, well, given the kids have given us some time to build up to it but that we're organizing a lovely tandem skydive.

Oh it's so cool. But the feeler of falling. So I did my first guide over Lake Taupo which I now need to go back to to do an iron man there at some point. Yeah, the funny the difference between a skydive and a bungee jump is with a bungee jump you scream and then you bounce. Whereas the skydive you scream and then you run out of external air. So then you have to breathe in at some point. It's amazing. So that's really cool. Well, with no fear what would you do?

I think, I think it would be big surf.

Oh, wow, that's a great one.

Wow.

Like, I just find it mind blowing. Last year there's a German dude rode the biggest wave, like 100 foot wave or something. I, you know, I just. It's difficult to even portrayal or explain to people how big that is and how like the chance of death is so high if you get it wrong, you know.

So, yeah, you know, I know that you guys spend a bit of time in Cornwall when you get, when you catch a relatively small wave and get.

It right and get the, you know.

The washing machine treatment, it's horrible. But yeah, those huge waves, I mean. Yeah, you're done.

Yeah. But at the same time it's totally awe inspiring.

Oh, it'd be amazing. Very amazing. There's actually, have you seen the Big Wave surfer series on I think Amazon Prime?

Yeah, yeah, that is.

Oh, they're just absolute lunatics.

I think the boards weigh like 70 kilos in themselves. They have to be towed onto the wave for the Jet Ski.

Yeah. But there's one guy that does it on a skim board. So they have to. Yeah, he does it on the skimboard and so they actually have to take him right onto the wave on the Jet Ski. So he's like, like a wakeboarder and then he goes and he's doing all of these three 60s and are absolutely bonkers.

We saw a story yesterday. Insane thing is basically this surfer going down a pipeline, Right. But there's another surf behind him who's videoing it, is filming it. So he's also in the pipe. I mean, the skill of the photographer.

Yeah, that is just awesome. Excellent.

What would you be yours, Charlie?

Oh, I don't know. I think like the first answer that comes to mind is climb Everest. Because I remember watching the film Everest and about the first hour and 20 minutes of it, I was like, go do this. I've got climb Everest. Then the whole storm thing kicks off and then they're nearly dead. And then by the end of it I'm like, yeah, maybe I'm not so keen after all.

But you'll have to come with us. We don't have a choice. Our eight year old, the first time we ever climbed a mountain with him, we did Penny Fan in Wales. We got off the mountain and we were like, I wonder if this was too much. We said, so Thomas, what did you think? Was that, Was that a lot?

He was six, wasn't he?

Oh, he was six at the time. So what did you think he was like, well, and Will and I look each other. Oh, no, we've pushed him too far. Anyway, I think next time we should try Everest.

Well, I might have to. The stepping stone is Kilimanjaro. I've said with the family, definitely Everest. After that, it would be when you see Killian jaw that. Making it like a fun run out of it, it just. Yeah, it's depressing, isn't it? But, yeah, that would be really cool. And another, another tradition on the tribe bathroom podcast is always have to ask everyone for a book recommendation. It doesn't have to be a book. It could be a podcast or a documentary or something. But do you find yourself recommending a particular book, one that you found particularly influential or particularly helpful?

I guess a lot. We read so much on our screens. Right. And the. For me, I think actually when it comes to books, also a lot of the research papers, all that stuff, it's all online. Right. It's actually quite nice to pick up a physical book, but when I do that, it won't be a technical one because you spend your life doing that and you're confronted with it on social media and so on. The series I really enjoyed is Cormorant Strike murder mystery series by Robert Garbraith, which is actually. What's her name?

J.K. rowling.

J.K. rowling.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I, I really, I really enjoy that. I think, you know, it's that sort of escapism. It's totally away from day to day and I think that's actually important, irrelevant of whatever industry. And it's nice to do something that is unassociated and you know, you have to concentrate. So you don't have social media, you don't have anything distracting you. So I think that's really useful.

It is. It is a good series. And there's a nice little link to Cornwall as well in there, obviously.

Yeah, exactly. He loves it so much.

And Raya, what would your. What would your book recommendation?

Well, I recently. So I coach a para athlete called Chris Arthur and he is. I won't tell you how old he is, but he is a triathlete of age and he is a para athlete and him and his wife got in a really serious accident whilst they lived in Texas where both of them lost their legs because they're both bike riders. And actually in the last couple years him and his wife have wrote a book about the story of what he does. And he's currently the para, like British para champ for his age group. I'M sorry for Para, it's for his classification, which is amazing. And to do that at his current age is just awe inspiring. And his book with him and his wife is epic. It's called Highway 35 by Chris and Denise Arthi. You can get it on Amazon prime and it's absolutely brilliant. And if you ever feel like your triathlon journey has come unstuck, I highly recommend reading that to show what other triathletes have been through and how inspiring they are.

Yeah.

Dealing with adversary adversity. It's brilliant.

Brilliant. And that is not a book I've heard of before, so that is awesome. Thank you very much. And one last question. Given that this podcast has had a definite focus towards tech, when we look to the future, where do you see the next like you clearly embraced, tried out early. As far as the UK is concerned, you got into Zwift super early. Where do you see the next exciting things coming from the tech side of our sport or anything else?

Yeah, I mean this is, this is Trident related. But one of the things that Trial does, which we didn't mention actually is this thing called Environex, right. What this does, it normalizes the environment to wherever you are and that be the altitude, the humidity, the temperature, the oxygen quality, et cetera, et cetera. So quite a lot of data. But what it means is that you can normalize somebody training on their trainer, on the Turbo in the garage to somebody on top of Kilimanjaro, right. And you could then work out the differences between them and normalize that data. So what predicted Fitness, which is the parent company to, to try to have created is the ability for people to race over a set distance wherever they are in the world, remote racing. And it for it to be genuinely comparable. Right. So this change, you know, this is none of this, you know, knocking about on, on Zwift during COVID doing these random, what they call it, Iron man set out this, this endurance. Well, it was just fraught with this show. I mean, you know, it's like you could just left somebody on the treadmill to leave the treadmill running and oh, look, I'm running at 16K now, you know, are you? But this has that capacity and it could even look at different equipment and it grades equipment based on its accuracy and everything else that some real, some real legs and you can see some sort of worldwide series being created as a result. Pretty interesting.

Yeah. Awesome. Raya.

I also feel like there is going to. We have, I feel, reached a plateau in the development of wearable tech. So watches are just getting better in terms of watch and the shape and the size that it is. Same with bike computers. But of late there's been a lot of things that are visual enhancements. So like goggles that tell you your speed and things like that. I am very interested to see where the wearable tech movement goes. Is there going to be stuff that will start to be implanted so you can see it like. I highly suspect that is not massively far away because they've sort of plateaued with what you can do with watch.

Well, they do it on Mission Impossible. Right. So.

Yeah, exactly. So obviously it's around the corner.

It's the best place to go for your tech. Their future tech predictions, isn't it? Is the is super sapiens is almost that sort of thing anyway.

It's, you know, super satins. You've got the implant, it's not massively painful or anything to put on. You hardly feel it. And then you wear it for like three weeks and then you've got three weeks of data for your blood sugar levels and your glycogen and. And that's. So it's. That's why I think there is, it is coming.

I mean I saw another. A couple of firms are doing exactly the same thing now as well. So of course is that market that data expands then you know, the technology gets better. Competition reads that right.

And how much more data that is going to be to input into things like artificial intelligence. So you know, you've got to. You link super sapiens to your tridot, for example, and then not only are you getting your residual stress and your normalized training score and your XP scores for your week and your training, but you're also going to be getting your nutrition needs and that sort of thing. So I think there's a huge integration piece that's going to be coming with your nutrition transition practice tech wearables, slash, not injectables. What's the word I'm looking for?

Stabbables.

Stabbables.

You're right.

Actually there is. I mean that was the whole point about the AI, wasn't it? In that there is so much data now, you know, whether it's from an aura ring, whether it's from super sapiens, whether it's from, you know, all these different gadgets. And actually no human being is ever going to take that data and make use of it. So you've got to have AI approaching it, but with it you can be way smarter.

Yeah, I mean the example I give is like well, I've coached a lot of athletes over the years, but never have I compared what a 52 year old woman in the desert can do against a 22 year old on Mont Blanc. Right. Because. And then applied their genetics on top of that. I haven't done that because I wouldn't know where to start with it really. Yeah, but the, you know, the AI can do that. There's 11, 000 calculations done per session. Like we talk about variation, you know, I, one of the problems that some coaches have is like, and myself to start with, I've got 5,000 structured workouts on, on training piece. You know, there's a lot of work.

How do you give that up?

Gone into building those things. Right. But there's, as an example, there's 50,000 swim sessions with 2 million variations on Tridot. And what's fascinating is that we're seeing this chat about AI everywhere. You can't open your news app without seeing something about AI and is it taking jobs and this and that and the other. And the best quote I've seen is coming out of Silicon Valley. And I think this applies, it applies to the whole range of things that I was talking in general terms, but he said AI won't take your job, but somebody who's worked out how to use it will. And that is where we're at. And you know, it is here. It doesn't matter whether people say oh, want to turn off or not.

It's here.

It's been in the background for years, but we're now getting to the point where individuals and small businesses and so on can leverage it and utilize it to good effect. And dance hasn't been done before, but it's out, you know, the genie's out the bottle. Yeah.

And I think you're right. It won't take everyone's job, but one person will be able to do 10 people's jobs using AI. You know, I've heard it with coding, for example, you know, one good coder will replace 10 coders having the support with AI and that'll be the same. You know, the businesses that embrace AI will grow quicker than ever. And businesses that resist it and don't embrace it probably won't even exist by the end of this decade. In some sectors is going to be.

I think five years time will be a very different landscape.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

The amount of times where we've, you know, we've gotten to the point where everyone was on Zwift and we were like, you know, we were at the Forefront of this when it started. Now we need to find the next thing. Now we need to find the next thing because there are so many coaching companies out there, and a good coach is a good coach. Right? So you need to find a USP to make you not only a good coach, but at the forefront of the coaching industry. Industry, you know, and that's been one of our big strengths is going, you know what, people are going to be resistant to change. They're going to be like, why would I do that? No, I don't like this. I don't like that. But it's worth it for us because we keep evolving and we become better at what we do. And some athletes don't like it, so they'll leave. But then you get a whole sweep of athletes that come in. They're like, this is amazing. I love that you're doing this.

You know, the thing is, you just got to be, you know, this is where being professional coach and your due diligence comes in. It has to work.

Yes.

There's AI inverted commas out there, which. Well, a telephone answering service is AI. It is not chat, GPT or GPT4. Right. But it is AI. And you do have to be careful because AI is the buzzword of the moment already. Probably sick of it, hearing it in the news everywhere. But, you know, you got to be careful. And look at how is this platform working? Where is it drawing the data from? And if it's drawing the data from something like an old metric such as TSS or purely rpe, then it's no different really to how it was before. So you're not advancing yourself and you're not leveraging AI. You know, there is better out there. So, you know, from a coach perspective, you know, it's not just about doing the next newest, best thing and actually find us quite the opposite. What tridot is in some respects, because it has the data to back itself up. But, yeah, so it's making sure you're leveraging the right things and seeing jobs and the. The examples we're getting with elastics now is staggering. One guy, he's. He was capable comfortably of running a128,127 off a bike in a temperate climate. But he's racing in Vietnam and they had a heat wave at 45 degrees and 95% humidity. Imagine that.

No, thank you.

But as a coach, you're like, well, yes, we know that this is going to have a significant impact, but.

But how? By how much?

By how much? And onto this individual specifically and you know, there I said it's going to be around about 34 minutes, right. And it got his cumulative 70.3 time accurate from predicted to actual by 20 seconds.

Wow.

Right?

That is really impressive, isn't it? It is really impressive. And, and it is, it's just embracing the, the next, the next best thing. And so, yeah, this has been brilliant, guys. I'm going to wrap this episode up because I think we could sit here and talk about tried out or, you know, you're preaching to the choir here. But it's been really, really good. There's some great tips there and I think is a, is a good understanding of what, what's going on in the world of tech. So thank you so much and I hope you as a team have a great season.

Thanks, you too, Charlie.

Cheers.

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So, Claire, what did you make of.

The interview with Will and Raya?

It was really good and I'm sorry, I'm, I'm sorry I missed the, the episode actually, because it was, there was lots of questions I probably, probably would have asked and I know obviously from, from your perspective, you love a good bit of data. So it was, it was perfect from, it was really interesting. You know, actually when they were talking about things like Zwift, for example, and the kind of racing on Zwift and as they kind of then talked about really where the TSS score was many, many years ago. And this is what science is. You know, we, we have these equations that are many, many years old that science moves, things move and, you know, their explanation of it was really good. Well, actually, we've now got all of this data and we're able to now make newer equations to predict things. So why are we not using it? So that was, you know, the first major Point, I guess from their explanation of it, that was. Really made me think about why are we using older data to predict or tell us what we should be feeling?

Yeah, I think it's, I think it was really interesting. Obviously it's right up my street in terms of using AI and, and analyzing that data. But I think it's, I think it's, it kind of highlights the difference in coaching style. You know, do you want the computer building the program and the coach giving the emotional intelligence piece, or is it, is it. Are you paying your coach to build the program? And if so, Annie, do as good a job given the sheer quantity of data that's out there. So what did you make of that sort combination of, you know, using AI to deliver the program and focusing on the, on the eq, the emotional intelligence.

I really like that. And I think, you know, this is what we started to talk about, haven't we, in terms of how, how do we as human beings work with AI? And I think that's a really good example of it, is that actually if they can build something with all the data that they have, then you need to be really experienced and a really good coach at interpreting that data. So I think that's where we're going to start to see the difference is coaches that are using data, can they use the data really well and coach you from it? Because that's the really important part of it. You know, as I always say, and it's not that I dislike data, I'm slightly different driven from you, I guess, in that perspective. But if we're going to collect something, then know what you're doing with it, interpret it and then. And feed that back to the client athlete, whoever it might be, to do something with that data. And I. And they explained that really, really well. But actually the feedback then from the athlete, as in the human aspect of it, is where they've got to put those two things together. And I think it was Raya that's kind of talked a little bit more about that really humanistic kind of part of it. And that's really where the coaching is.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.

I can't remember, obviously. So we recorded this, that episode two or three weeks ago. And so correct me quickly if we, if I mentioned this at the time. I kind of liken it to the Tesla going, Tesla autopilot analogy. Did I mention that in the episode?

You did, yeah. But, but it was, but that's, but that's, you know, that's a perfect example of it, isn't it. That you're kind of learning from it the whole time. Yes, I think is.

But then everyone learns from it. So, like, it's not like. Yeah, so that's the point, you know. You know, if you're a coach and you're coaching, let's say, you know, over your life, coaching lifetime, let's say you're coaching 500 or 1,000 athletes, that's, you know, that's quite a lot of people to learn from.

But learning from a hundred thousand athletes.

And being able to apply those lessons and as soon as something is worked out that it can be applied to every one of those athletes is, I think it's really, really powerful.

I think there is an element of this, as there always is, that there's theory and equations and the AI side of things, but at the end of the day, we're human, so we don't always follow that pattern. So I guess that is where I would see not a problem, but where you could be trying to train somebody with that program that's meant to be perfect for them, that actually isn't. And I guess that's where the coaching aspect and the feedback the athlete needs to be really good to the coaches. Yeah, as well. But I think ultimately the platform.

Yeah, yeah, I've used it a lot.

And I'm really, really, really liking it now. It took me a little while to get my head around at the start. You know, obviously when you start anything new, it takes a bit, it's a bit of a learning curve, but I really like it. And what's, what's interesting is now being part of that coaching community that's using Try Dot time and again, I'm seeing people saying, in the kind of WhatsApp group for, for precision coaching. You know, I was a bit skeptical.

About Tridol at the start, but boy.

Is it, you know, boy, am I loving it now. And I think there's, you know, there's like that. I can't remember the name of the athlete, but he just put a post in today going 23 minute PB. And he said, you know, totally sold on try not now. And I just think it's, I think it's really interesting.

I think it's, it's definitely a slightly.

Different approach to the training program to what I was using before. Not loads different, but yeah, I do have a lot of faith in it. I think it's, I think it's really brilliant. And I love the way I can say, look, I'm going to dial up this week. I'm Going to dial down that week gonna, you know, in terms of what's going on in your life. So, yeah, I think it's. I think it's really, really powerful. I also, I also thought it was interesting listening to Raya and her, her scheme background. I didn't know really anything about that before I started doing the, the digging for that. And I think it's. I mean, obviously she had a, A very nasty crash, but there's. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting.

I think it was. It's really interesting just to hear about, you know, new kind of perspectives on things and also how, I guess how. Not the old way of doing it because it's not necessarily that, that's incorrect, but there's. There's a new way of doing it and maybe that it's worth trying things, isn't it? And if people are looking for something different or something new, I think. But I guess my. The one biggest takeaway from it is you've got to have an experienced coach that knows what they're doing to be able to use that, as in use the data effectively. That's my feeling is that. And that's a very personal opinion. But I think you would need skilled coaches that have experience of working with athletes and knowing how to interpret that and change that from a human level.

But I actually think, you know, I think that's the same with.

I actually think try simplifies that because.

Tridot is doing the data bit for the coach. Obviously they can override that and uptick it down to, you know, well, you wouldn't really uptick it, I don't think. But I think that has to happen anyway if they're building the training program or not. But I think ultimately what's brilliant about tridot is it can look at the data, it can see where you're at. It can see, you know, I've now got my genome sequencing back. Plug that in. It's told me that, you know, what my recovery rates are and it's now applying that to my training program, which I think is, you know, I mean, that's a level of detail I've never seen before.

And has it changed very much?

Has my.

Has my recovery profile changed when you've.

Got that genome sequencing, has it changed very much what you're doing with training?

No.

And that, and that's interesting because I expected to have a high recovery rate because like my previous coach, Will Clark.

That is said, oh, you know, I.

You have a high recovery rate, Charlie. You always seem to recover really quickly. So Obviously I was like, yeah, must do. Yeah, perhaps I'm right. But interestingly, I have a very moderate.

You know, it's normal kind of mid.

Mid, mid territory in terms of recovery. There was one. I'd have to look up the results.

Again, but there was one.

I think there's three measures and there was one where I was above average. In the other two, I was pretty much average. So, so I, I haven't noticed it change particularly.

But if there's a perception in terms of you because, because you are a driven person, I wonder if there's a perception of. I'm recovering because I'm used to not feeling, I'm not gonna say 100%, but you know what I mean? In terms of when you're driven and getting stuff done, I wonder if then you feel like you've recovered. Does that, does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

And I also think there's a psychology around, you know, maybe I was recovering quicker because I was being told I've got a faster than, yeah, average recovery rate. So perhaps there's a bit of placebo effect in there. But, you know, no, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, it's definitely helping me. I, I feel like I'm training better as a result of it. And I mean. And I got a 90 second PB on a 5K recently. So like, I mean now I've, I.

Have to give that with a pinch of salt.

I've never really done 5Ks, you know, to really try and do a time much, so it's not really ever full part of my training historically.

So it's actually your first 5k. But.

Yeah, well, that's not quite true.

But it was a pb. But of course it was your first one.

It's not true. And I'd actually, the one I'd done before was when I started using Tridot, which was only kind of like two months before.

Yeah.

But I was coming out of an injury at that point, albeit I was still pretty, I was still fit. But you know, looking back at all of the, you know, times I have.

Tried to do a PB or, you.

Know, do a 5K that was a 92nd PB.

Yeah.

Which is.

And I think that is partly because I was being made to push harder because I was doing it for a specific reason. So I, I don't think it's giving me a 92nd PB, just purely on the training. I definitely don't think that. But I do think, I do think that the Training is more in tune with what I need.

I think that's good. It's really so really, you know, really interesting and yeah, I would be excited to, to have a look at it as well.

But ultimately, in two weeks time with, with Iron Man, Victoria Gastiz, we'll find out whether it's working or not, won't we?

Yeah, we will indeed. But you're also a human, Charlie. That other side to this is.

Yes.

You know, human. Yeah.

Yes, exactly.

Absolutely. But it just really interesting and really good to hear from. It was really, it was really interesting to hear their, you know, from their experience and now using this. I think it was a really good way for us to kind of, and hopefully for listeners to be able to hear about a new platform and kind of, I guess a new way of training athletes as well.

And I genuinely think it's the, the way that the, the whole sector will go. I think it'll be, you know, you either got to embrace it as a coach or you're going to get left behind.

I think so. Yeah.

You know, in the same way that, you know, Netflix 8 blockbuster for breakfast in the end because they didn't, they didn't embrace the, the new technologies. So.

Right, let's wind that up.

But another great episode. I really enjoyed that one and glad you did too. So good luck with your training and.

Yours and the race.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And your, and your race if you decide to race. And, and in the meantime, for everyone.

Else, keep on training.

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