Triathlon organisation and coaching with Mark Shaw

Foreign.

Athlon podcast, finding out how ordinary people do extraordinary things.

Get faster, get better and then increase our distances.

That was Mark Shaw and this is triathlon organization and coaching on the Tribeathlon podcast. As the organizer of both the Dam Buster and the Vitruvian, which are two of my local triathlons, two of my first ever Olympic triathlon and my first ever half Ironman. My first exposure to Mark was looking up at him as he did the race briefing from the balcony of the cafe and bellowing out instructions of what we should and what we shouldn't do. But it was so it was brilliant to find out a little bit more about the organization of an event like the Dambasto or like the Vitruvian, which was iconic triathlons on the calendar, but also to get a better understanding of what his coaching academy, Les Stables out in France, does for people and how that works, and also a bit more about his story and the career that he had before he got into the organization of events. So I really enjoyed it. There's a lot of great advice there, particularly with regards to running the so I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did and get as much out of it as I did. This episode is brought to you by Lucky Saint. Alcohol Free Beer. Now, I drink a lot of alcohol free beer. I discovered it originally after a 142 mile ride through the Welsh mountains on a really hot day and it's just such a refreshing drink to have after a long ride, but you don't generally want alcohol at that point. So over the years I've tried most of the alcohol free beers I can find and my absolute favourite is Lucky Saint. The branding looks brilliant. The bottle looks fantastic when it's poured into a glass, it looks fantastic and it actually tastes amazing too. As good as most alcoholic beers I found. It's a brilliant product and I absolutely love it. If I'm going to drink alcohol free beer, that is the one I go to. It's just a really high quality product and if you're coming back from a long ride or a long run, you want a refreshing drink, but you don't necessarily want alcohol because it's going to go straight to your head. And equally, if you're going out on a long ride or a long run in the morning, you don't want alcohol so that you wake up with a fuzzy head. So it's just a brilliant solution for those people that take their health seriously and their training seriously. So I genuinely love Lucky Saint. You can find that more at LuckySaint co. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and if you hang on to the end of this podcast, I'll even have a discount code for you. So that's LuckySaint co. Just give it a try. This podcast is also brought to you by the Tribeathlon app. The best place to find your next event. Whether you're interested in cycling, running, swimming, triathlons, duathlons, obstacle based races, whether it's on the road or on the gravel, you can find, search for and track down the best events for you to compete in. And not only that, you can find the ones where you know people that are entering as well. So you, you can have the most fun experience entering those events because you know other people that are attending. So go to trimathlon.com to find out more and download the app.

So, welcome to the Triathlon podcast. Thank you for joining me. You know, as I said when we were just chatting, you know, my kind of first introduction to you was you standing on the balcony at Rutland Water over there, over the cafe with a tannoy. I was petrified. I was about to do my first Olympic triathlon and you're kind of rolling out these jokes and I thought this is an interesting guy. But I mean, I took the Dambuster and the Vitruvian for granted because they were on my doorstep. But the more people I've spoken to over the years, the more I've realized they're actually incredibly highly respected events. So I wanted to get you on a because it sounds like you're really interesting chap and I want to know more about your history, but I want to know more about the events organization side of it as well and what you do in France. So it's really brilliant that you can join us. And to kick things off, do you want to tell me a little bit about your backstory? How did you get into all of this? You know, what was your, you know, what were you doing? I know you were more of a cyclist, weren't you? So tell me a bit about that. And then how did that lead on to events and coaching and all that sort of stuff?

Yeah, it's a strange kind of backstory if I'm honest. As a kid, my background came from soccer and boxing, so nothing to do with triathlon whatsoever. And 21 years old, I was running a gym in London on the outskirts of Twickenham with a guy called Bill Black who ironically later on went to be the coach for the GB triathlon team. When we went to Australia, Bill Black was the coach for Spencer Smith, who was three times world champion, four times, including juniors at an elite level. So Bill was a very important part of my life. I was running this gym with Bill and had no interest in swimming, cycling or running, other than for football and boxing, although I wasn't boxing at that time. And a guy came in and started training and he was a former professional cyclist. His name was Mick Bennett. And Mick and I are still very close to this very day. And he'd been a professional cyclist. He had been forced to retire through a car accident and was at that time putting on cycle races. So I started training. He became my training partner. We just hit it off. We got, you know, we had a lot of interest in sport and he kept trying to convince me to come and watch some of the cycle races that he was putting on, which he was doing for Channel 4 at the time. And I was like, no, I don't want to do cycling. You ride about on your bike. You do what? I didn't get it. And then eventually he convinced me to and I went down to Cardiff to go and watch the Sydney Centre race and it went through Cardiff Castle, riding on the cobbles. And I saw this incredibly hard, aggressive sport of people fighting round corners to get there first and riding across cobbles. And I just fell in love with that sport straight away. I just thought, this is incredible, you know, I mean, I was gobsmacked. I'd never seen anything like it. I had. I thought of people almost riding bikes with a basket on the front. I had never anything at this level. I was just in awe of it. So I carried on. I started working with Mick on these races. He called me and he said, you know, you can help me out on these races, et cetera. So I started doing that and I got into cycle racing myself, started doing some racing and all the rest of it. And then very shortly after I decided, you know, what if I'm going to coach at a good level. I'd been coaching a various range of different. He brought me in a lot of professional cyclists to start coaching. Already been coaching some rugby players at the top level because we were overlooking the harlequin's rugby ground in the gym. And I just thought, you know, what if I'm going to do this any better, I need to go back to university and get a degree. So I went back to university and did a sports science degree because I thought, if I'm going to be a coach, I want to be a coach at the elite level. That's how I kind of felt about it at that time, went back to university. All through that time I carried on with working on the races whenever I could get away to go to work on the races. So got more and more heavily involved with a company called Sport for Television at the time. And they then were putting on the Nissan Classic, which is the Tour of Ireland, the Kellogg's Tour of Britain as it was, and a lot of city centre racing. Finished my degree, decided I was going to escape and go and ride my bike for a year in Australia, which is what I did. You know, I was never going to make, I was never going to make the elite level, I wasn't going to make, never going to make a living out of it. But it was a great excuse to travel around Australia and just ride your bike and have fun. Finished that, eventually came back to the uk, was offered the job of running all the city centre racing for them in the UK. So that was, that was 15 races a year at that stage for Channel 4. Actually went to the ITV network, then Independent Network was working on that. And that's my progression into cycle racing. Eventually the recession came in. We brought in the Tour de France, which are coming to Portsmouth and Brighton. Literally after that, cycling just disappeared in Britain. Almost professional cycling almost disappeared overnight. Sponsorships were the first thing to disappear when the recession hit. And so I went into, went across and went into Sheffield and started being responsible for running all the events in Sheffield, which was boxing, international athletics, international school and so on and so forth. So my background was really professional running, professional events, you know, professional sporting events, but of all different kinds, hockey, everything. After a few years I decided that I'd had enough living in hotel rooms because the nature of that industry is you spend most of your time away from home and decided to go and start lecturing. So went and lectured. Not ironically, I wasn't lecturing primarily in sport at all. I was lecturing in international business, marketing, economics, European business was primarily one of the other ones, etc. So went into that for 10 years. And while I was in it, as is often the case, your life gets changed by a woman that comes into your life. And I met Sybil and she, she was a swimmer and she wanted to take up triathlon. And again, I really wasn't over in awe of triathlon. It was something that I knew something about, but it wasn't something. And I went to my first triathlon to watch her race. I couldn't even swim a length at that stage. And I'm not exaggerating I couldn't swim a length. I'd even faked it to get into university to, you know, I got a big rower to drag me the last 10 metres of a 50 meter, of a 25 meter swim, you know what I mean? Just came across the sport in that respect and I just thought, wow, this is great. I loved it. I just thought it was great. I suppose, if I'm totally honest, it was very, very different to cycle racing. Cycle racing was a very aggressive hard, a hard means. If you went along and someone gave you some advice, you probably wouldn't take it because you'd think, well, what do they want? And I came into triathlon, people were very generous and open. It was a different culture. People were helpful. And it doesn't always, and I will say it didn't always happen in cycle racing. For those from a background like myself of that era of cycle racing, it was a hard sport. It wasn't, it wasn't welcoming. You know, I remember the first time going out on a bike ride with some guys even when I was in my early 20s, my seat post being grabbed by one of the guys as I took the corner wrong and being shaken behind me saying, don't you ever do that again. Do you know what I mean? Whoa, big wake up. And which I thought was just. And the people were just so nice and so welcoming. So eventually I, due to a challenge set by Sibs, I decided that I would actually start racing, which for me meant a year of me learning to swim. And I literally swam pretty much every day. Sibs was a very good swimmer, so she was coaching me. But I also went to Archie Brew, Robin Brew, for those that remember Robin and Archie. Archie was actually the Olympic coach. I spent a week with Archie towards the end of trying to develop it so that I learn how to do it. And I also, in that year of learning, also qualified as a swim coach. Because I thought if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna understand how to do it myself, I also need to understand how other people coach it. So that's kind of who I am. I'm one of those people, I want to, if I do something, I really want to know about it. And then ironically, I got into triathlon because. Got into organizing triathlon events because it was historically my background running events. I actually went down and saw quite a lot of events and thought, you know what, these aren't very well run. Because in those days they weren't, you know, they were very big beginners. And I'd gone to see various races and thought I could do a better job than that. And I know that sounds arrogant, but professional cycle racing was very professional. Triathlon was very amateur. So that's not a criticism, it's just the way certain sports develop over a period of time. And so I then got involved. There was a guy called Mick English who was head of the. Who'd become head of the bta, British Triathlon Association. And he had been running the national relays with Ian Hamilton, Ian, who now organizes the outlaw triathlon. And Mick had had to. Had to resign from running the events because it was seen as a conflict of interest. And I said to. And Ian, at that time was going to give up the relays. They were very small. I think they only had 50 teams or something like that. And I said to him, we were at the same club, Total Fitness Nottingham, And I said to him, you know what? I can make these bigger and make them work. And if we get together, you understand the sport triathlon much better. I understand how events better between us, we can make the relays a much bigger event, which is what happened. We went and within a couple of years it had gone from 50 teams to 200 teams. We televised it because at that time I thought that was where I would take it into television and all the rest of it. So we televised it as well. And then it just developed and I brought more events to the table. I put the Dam Buster on, I launched. I suppose one of my skills was to find venues that worked, which is what I'd done in cycle racing. So that was the next stage. So I developed the Columba park race. We did the Nottingham Triathlon, which ran alongside the relays, and I brought in the Dam Buster and the Vitruvian. So they were just other events that kind of just developed. So, yeah, I'd been dragged into it kicking and screaming. It wasn't a smooth route in. Bit of a long explanation, but that's kind of how it goes. You know, you meet different people and they change your direction in life.

But I think that that's the kind of message I'm repeatedly getting, I think, to liken it to my day job. Nobody really, certainly when I joined the financial services industry, nobody sort of went to university and said, I want to join the financial services industry. They sort of fell into it by mistake. And triathlon seems to be the same thing. I think that's slightly different now because it's getting, you know, it's a lot more popular. So I got a lot more coverage. Obviously the Brownlee Brothers and things like that have really, you know, and London 2012 have really changed things. But, you know, I think that the people sort of a bit older tended to not, you know, they fell into it later on almost, you know, in the absence of wanting to play football or do something else, you know, it does seem that sort of sport. But, you know, perhaps that's why there is such a friendly crowd in there. I don't know. But so. And just to bring us up to today. So obviously the Dambuster, when was the first Dambuster or Vitruvian, which was the.

First Dambuster was 2002. First Vitruvian was 2003.

Yeah, brilliant. So they've been going a long time and obviously they continue. But you also now have a. You live in France, don't you? And you've got lestables. How do I say?

The stables. Yeah, whatever. It's a bit of frond. Glazed, as it were.

What do you tell me about that?

Well, to be honest, I mean, Sibs and I both just decided, well, probably more me than Sibs. I just wanted a change of lifestyle. I'd got to 40 years old and I said every so often, I kind of changed my view on what I want to do with my life and where I want to go. And I just said. I actually, at that time said I wanted to move back to Australia and thought that that might be the option. Sibs, being very close to her family, said, too far, but, you know, we'll look at somewhere else. I said, okay, let's just move to France. We both love France. So the idea was to come and set a training camp out. And we spent three years looking up around the Pyrenees to try and find somewhere that would work. Because at that time, if I'm honest, we didn't know whether it would be a triathlon training camp or a cycling training camp. We didn't know what kind of venue we would set up because there actually really weren't triathlon training camps in existence at that stage. There were a few people that went to Lanzarote for a specific training camp or something like that, but there wasn't a venue that was purely triathlon. So we set it up as potentially both. We just found a place out, having spent three years searching there. We found a place in the door. Door in which we just fell in love. I came and saw it and just fell in love with it straight away. And Sims was just like, bowled over when she saw it. She flew out the next day and I. The joke, the in Joke is that she phoned me up after I'd seen it and she says, have you, have you seen it? I said, I've done better than that. I've bought it. And I mean, obviously it was going to take sibs to say, yeah. But sibs then flew out the next day to come and look at it. And we just loved the venue. You know, I think it was just one of those things where it wasn't here, it was nowhere kind of thing. But it was completely derelict. I mean, it had one. It's a huge old 18th century stables. Then it had one electric light socket, one tap, you know, and that was pretty much it. So we had to start from scratch. We bought a shell and it took us then, took us three years to actually get to the first stage of being able to have done the renovations to be able to get our first client. It was a ridiculous project. It still is a ridiculous project. It will never be finished in our life because it's such a huge undertaking, but it's a wonderful place to be.

And when did that open then?

Oh, now you're talking 2,000. I'm going to say 2,000. Been open 10, 11 years now, something like that. So, yeah.

I want to explore more about before we come back to the event. What does coming to a triathlon training camp look like? I mean, this is the only one I've ever seen. When I was doing my Dry Land swim workout this morning, because obviously I can't get anywhere near a pool, I was wearing, putting on my Vitruvian T.

Shirt and I was your wetsuit for a minute there.

That's a level too far. I put on my Dambuster. It was a Dambuster or Vitruvian T shirt, I can't remember. But it got Lestables on the back. I don't know what that, what it would be like. So people come for a week. Do they come for a month? And what does it look like?

A real. You know, it's interesting. Training camps can be very, very different depending on who you go with. Our training camps are. We're not boot camp. I think that's one of the things. There are training camps that are boot camps. In other words, you go there to really work on getting your fitness up. I'm not a great lover of that, personally. I think it works to a degree, but I think what we focus on is actually the technical side of things. So, for example, you get a lot of swim technical coaching. You won't necessarily swim more than you would do in A normal training week, that's not its purpose. And the same with the bike. We spend a lot of time talking about technique, cadence, gear selection. As we're riding with people and with the running, we focus on running technique. And the reason we do that is, I think it's interesting, people see it in swimming, they get the fact that technique really matters. They don't necessarily get it in biking and running. And we do see even with some of the very good athletes that come out here, that their technique has got some huge errors or some huge flaws in it and it's hard to change your technique. But actually within a week we can make massive changes which can see massive improvements without you even getting fitter. In all three disciplines, it is a very important thing that people buy into it and get it because not everybody, you know, a lot of people like to do what they do and they don't necessarily want to change it. And that goes across the board. You know, that's from people who are complete novices who are probably more open to it. So even some very, very top athletes who we've had out here who still have some technique issues and sadly, sometimes those technique issues can lead to long term injuries and so on and so forth. So I think to me it should always be technique, technique, technique, technique, technique. The fitness can come later. And when people understand what they should be doing when they leave us, they can continue to progress. So whilst they can train hard out here, and they do train hard out here, and most people probably do more than they would do normally at home, that isn't its purpose. Its purpose is to develop their understanding of what they should be doing so that when they go away they've practiced it. And a lot of it is about life, certainly in swimming is muscle memory. It's actually not only understanding what you should be doing, but training your body to actually perform in a particular movement, which is the most effective way of propelling you through the water.

I think swimming is the one. You know, you're right, we all have this. You know, when I first got into triathlons, the first thing I did was go up to inspire to try, you know, Mary Hardwick, who you, I'm sure you know very well and so, right, teach me how to, how to swim properly. But with running and cycling it's, I can put on a pair of trainers, I can jump on a bike, you know, what else can there be other than just work harder?

My most hated term that I hear in sport is natural. I detest the fact that people say, oh, He's a natural this or she's a natural that. It's nonsense, you know, I mean, even to the point that in other sports we hear people say, he's a natural footballer. What a load. If he's a natural footballer, wait till he's 18 and give him a football and see how he gets on. There's nothing natural about it. And the issue that we've got in things like running, people say, oh, it's natural, it's not natural. And actually, as a coach, you can see it's not natural. We have some really interesting situations. Very often when we're doing. The first thing a good coach, to my mind always does is actually just looks at what you do without telling you anything so that they can work out what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. And usually you can see things. For me on running, I can tell most of the time if someone's military, if they play football or rugby, if they're hockey players. I can see I had a really strange one and I won't mention her name, but she comes out regularly to us and for the life of me, her running technique, her arms swung just to one side and I couldn't get it. They. They always flapped to the right hand side as she ran. And I just. This made no sense to me. I'd never come across it before. And I just. And I went through all things. Well, you know, let's work. If you've got a shoulder injury, if you've got a back injury, let's work out why your arms are always flapping to the right hand side and your right hand seems to be so significantly much higher than your left. There's definitely something wrong there. And it took us quite a while. Then I said to her, you know, there must be some reason. Is there any sports that you do? She said, I used to play lacrosse at a very high level. And if you looked at how her hands moved, her hands moved in the positions that a lacrosse stick would move. And she was oblivious to this. But obviously what it is, it unbalanced her, so she was rocking. And there's a whole load of back issues potentially that you're going to get from it or, you know, and it's really interesting to see those things in an athlete who doesn't realize they're doing them.

You know, I would imagine that it's funny, I'm just reading Rise of the Ultra Runners, I think it's called by AD Harahan Finn. That's really difficult to say. And he was talking, he mentioned a kind of growing movement around. I think it's called anatomy Emotion. And it's kind of looking at people that are suffering from injuries and taking it right back to their being. You know, what sport were you doing when you were young? And also what injuries have you had over your life? And saying, okay, how is that, you know, the fact that you don't, you know, your head is down when you run actually be to do with the fact that you had verruca's on your feet when you were a kid and you couldn't run on your forefeet for a period of time and you've, you just kind of locked in a muscle memory. It's just a fascinating subject, but it's apparently getting, you know, quite a lot of.

The amount of times that the athletes don't recognise how important their eyes are in terms of running, their inability to hold a horizontal plane when they're fat, where their eyes go, where your eyes go, your head goes. It's really simple. If you look down at the ground, your head drops. If your head drops, before you know it, your shoulders drop and eventually you get to that ironman shuffle towards the end, you're always spent in half looking at the ground. And all of those have massive impact on stride length. So the ability to keep people upright. And there used to be things like, I mean, I heard, you know, many years ago there was something called the pose method, which I know Tim Don got heavily into and I've had good conversations with Tim about that, which is this kind of lean forward, tilt forward kind of approach. And I was just saying to him, and I said, you know, I mean, he doesn't do it anymore and he gave it up after a while. But to me it was fundamentally wrong. It was wrong because it was wrong in terms of physics. I think it's a very interesting thing. I did a sports science degree when sports science was a new subject. And I've got to be honest, I would have said that we did science, but then they went, oh yeah, and go and relate that to sport. That was the progression of sports science at that period of time. It wasn't. Now we've got young sports scientists and we have a number of them out here who know tons of details about lactate testing. But if you ask them about the makeup of blood, they probably wouldn't know it because it's not perceived as kind of sports science. I know it sounds crazy, but. So I think sometimes having a much more generic view of it in terms of physics Biomechanics and so on and so forth. Leverage is one of the most obvious things. Leverage doesn't change. Leverage has a major factor in determining things like swim, you know, swimming, running and biking. Those are very simple things. And the science is there. The science is on those things unquestionable. So if you look at levers that are not working to their full potential, then, then you've got an issue. And running is one of those things we still see, I would say probably 80 to 90% of the popular people that come out here the first time have huge running issues, you know, and we, you know, it's interesting even there's a whole industry that's been set up for people who are heel strikers, you know, big, nice cushion shoes. And you know what the solution for that is? To stop being a heel striker and learn to run properly, not wear big shoes with a big compression. It's not the solution. The solution is to change your running style and run properly. There isn't a good, there isn't a world class hill striker, the world. And there's a reason for that because it's like putting a brake on every time you step down, you know.

So that brings me on to a subject I wasn't expecting to talk about, but the whole barefoot running concept, where do you stand on that?

I agree in principle with the idea that your body would develop what I disagree. We've got tarmac, so the idea that you could, you know, we can't transfer it to a modern day environment. You know, I think, and I remember when they bought out those kind of what they called monkey shoes or whatever they called where people were running on tarmac and those kind of things, totally inappropriate as far as I'm concerned, because your body isn't designed to run a marathon on tarmac. Unfortunately, we have to adapt to the modern day changes. But for anyone who's run along a beach, yeah, barefoot's great. Anyone who's run along softer surfaces, yeah, barefoot would be good. It would also develop your arches. So that's not something I specialize in. It's not something I advocate particularly because I don't think it really, really relates to the sport as we see it now. But I do think the danger of people trying to find products to solve a problem, which is actually really a biomechanical problem, which doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

I think the more I've read on it, and I think I would agree with you, the more I've read on it, I think the actual technique of barefoot running is absolutely the right way to run in forefoot running. But actually switching to barefoot or, you know, these uber thin shoes seems like in today's world a recipe for injury.

Yeah.

So you kind of want your correct shoes, but you want the correct technique as well, as opposed to just seeing it as a. I mean, I know when I read Bourne's Run, I was like right off to bevo barefoot to try and buy and I mean, and fair play to them. They said, look, have you just read Born to Run? You know, I must have stood out a mile. And they said, yeah. I said yes. And they said, well, actually the best thing you can do is go away and learn to do the technique before you think about buying a pair of shoes to run in, because you'll just do yourself more harm than good. But it is interesting.

Sorry, I was going to say I think it's a very interesting. For me, it's a very interesting thing is that there is sometimes a misinterpretation, not only by athletes but also by coaches about what they should be doing to improve themselves. One of the things I believe there is a. There is a running technique you should use. Okay. Now whether you're biomechanically capable of doing that is another question. It may be your body isn't quite designed, but ultimately you do want a high knee lift because that gives you stride length. And if you imagine that your stride length increases by an inch for every stride, that's a bloody long way when you've run 1500 meters of how many thousand paces? So those kind of things. And we don't, we don't often practice that. We don't. We have many people do this kind of shuffling run, keeping their feet close to the ground, which I think is fundamentally wrong. One of the. In jokes I often had people, people have said to me before when they come out here is. But I've been told that I should try and save energy when I'm running. And I've always said, well, if you, if you really want to save energy, I can do that for you straight away. And they said, oh great, what should I do? I said, go over there and lie down. You'll be great at saving energy, but you actually going to be a really shit runner at the end of the day. Running is about expending energy and we want to run fast. That's ultimately what we're trying to do. We're trying to run fast. How long we can sustain it for is a matter of fitness, but it doesn't mean we change our running Style. We still try to run fast. That's what we're supposed to be doing. So I think there's this kind of misinterpretation. I think very often that people are just trying to. Almost just trying to get through it. I. I have issues with that. I think what we ought to do, get faster, get better, and then increase our distances. I think there's a real danger of people saying, I want to be an ironman or I want to run a marathon, when they're perhaps just not ready for it. You know, it's a cultural thing, isn't it? You know, I want to be a marathon runner. I want to aspire that. But there's a danger of actually not really learning to. To do your best, but just to get through it. And for some people, if that's what works for them, that's okay. But I like to see people perform well, you know, even just technically well, I think there's nothing more wonderful than watching someone do sport well. It looks incredible, and you can see it every time. You know, you watch the Tour de France, you can see the riders who ride beautifully, who descend beautifully, you climb beautifully. In swimming, it's just so elegant to watch him running. The guys out the front look incredible. The guys and girls leading those races look incredible. There's a reason, because they're technically good. And when you see someone, it looks horrible, doesn't it? You know, oh, God, that must hurt. You know, and there's nothing nicer than to see an athlete, to my mind, make that transition. You know, when we get someone out here, it's quite exciting. It's not exciting for us. It's exciting for them. Sometimes you get an athlete who just goes, I got it, I got it. You know, you just. In 25 meters of a swim, something like that. It's a bit like hitting the perfect shot on a golf course. Once in a while, you do it and you go, wow. And then all you've got to do is really work hard to replicate that. And it's not easy. But there is a wonderful feeling about feeling good when you're running or biking or swimming.

Fantastic. And what does a typical day in Lestables look like?

Is it.

Are you swimming, cycling and running every day? You cycling out through the Dordogne or what's a day look like?

We normally do two sessions a day. It will normally be. There's normally a swim technique work in the afternoon, but in the morning, we'll either do, excuse me, a run or a bike. So we split people up into groups. One of the great things is we've got a lot of supporters out here, a lot of people who live locally who help us in terms of guiding the ride. So pretty much we split into two or three groups and we go out according to their fitness as well as their bike handling skills. It's always an interesting thing because sometimes you get people incredibly, incredibly fit with bike bad barrack handling skills. And then you get other people who are incredibly good bike angling skills but are not fit. So you get these kind of cross sections. So splitting them up into groups is what you do. And then we'll, for example, take you out for a bike ride. We'll be talking through. Teaching people how to ride in a group is also a very interesting thing because obviously a lot of people do a lot of training on their own. We worked very much to a high cadence thing, which is what the pro riders do. I kind of always say to everyone when they get here, we drill you in exactly the same way as we would do a pre season ride for the professional riders. We teach you how to ride in a group, we teach you how to communicate, we teach you what you can and what you can't do, so no one has to grab your saddle and shake you from side to side when you take. And you know what, it's really interesting because a lot of those people then take it back to their clubs and start teaching people etiquette. Etiquette is so important. You can't afford, ultimately you can't afford to have crashes on your bike. You know, if you're riding. The pros are a prime example of that. Pros, when they ride as a team in training, remembering they're doing it every day, they have really rigid rules that they stick to about how they'll ride, how they'll overtake, how they'll communicate. They don't just ride amongst each other and cruise up through the middle to have a little chat, because the risk associated with that racing is different. You know, racing you can clash, it happens. But in training, those things, they couldn't afford to do that because they'd never get to a race. So we teach those techniques. And it's very interesting because a lot of the guys and girls that leave us often then say, we've gone back to our club and we've now taught them how to do this correctly, how to communicate why we only overtaken it. Why are we talking that way? You know, why we make sure the calls go down the line. It's very interesting because a peloton in the pro circle, you know, people think of it as being a kind of quiet, leisurely. God, it's noisy, you know, in among. Because people are communicating with each all the time. And they're just their ability to lay their hands off the brakes. I mean, brakes cause more crashes than anything else in cycle racing, and they do in triathlon, you know, like, people weren't allowed brakes. They'd ride better.

You won't let them into transition unless they prove that the brakes are working.

Well, it's interesting. It's that advanced thinking, isn't it? I mean, I often say, I don't know if you've ever stood there at the exit of T1 where they come out onto the bike. The amount of people that are in the big chain ring who then wobble down the road. And to me, that's the most obvious thing. You know, you're trying to get people to understand. No, look, even Bradley Wiggins starts his time trial in the small chain ring. Put it in a small chain, build up your speed where you've got a good cadence and go away. But it sounds silly, but those are the kind of things that people don't always teach. You know, Sibs actually spends a whole morning coaching mount and dismount out here, and there's a few bruised bodies the next day, you know, but it's good because you practice it and you get good at it. You know.

I suppose that transition stuff is the bit that nobody practices, do they? Because they go out and they do their cycling and they might do the odd brick session, but they don't practice a transition. They just, you know, then you kind of look like a complete idiot in the middle of T1 when you're trying to get your wetsuit off and you realize you've got your goggles in your hand and you can't get your. You know, it's just stupid things like that.

Yeah. And if you practice it enough times, it just. Again, it just becomes so routine that you get it right. I mean, you know, these guys practice. I mean, it's interesting. Bill. Bill, who I talked about, who was Spencer Smith's coach, Bill Black, and went on to be the Olympic coach. I remember him many years ago, years ago, showing me the distinction between what at that time was, what was the Australian dismount and what was the British dismount, and the Australian dismount was simply bringing your inside leg through so that you gained one extra step. Now, that sounds ridiculous because everyone does that pretty much now, but at that time, it was innovative. And the reason it happened is because there was a lot of races on the continent that were super sprint races, real short ones, tiny ones, where literally a step could have been the difference between you winning that race and not winning that race. Bill was a very, you know, people don't hear very much of Bill now, but he was very. He was one of the leading coaches, very insightful in just understanding the terrain, understanding all those other elements, watching what other people would do. He's a very interesting guy. We're lucky because out here we get to meet up with some fantastic coaches and some fantastic athletes who give you more insight. You know, Matt Bottrill comes out every year for two weeks, sometimes for three weeks. He's a brilliant coach. Incredible. I mean, he's obviously now looking after Tim Domino, Susie Cheek and Tim's been out here, Susie's been out here. So you're picking up. You're always learning new things from these people, something new that they're thinking about something. Because every little difference, every little change is what makes a difference. To see how incredibly Tim Don's biking has changed after Matt Bottrill got hold of him. Matt is an incredible man. Matt's been looking after this Lotto Soudal team. When they broke the hour record, Matt Bottrill was one of the main people working behind that. Again, it's a tiny thing. It's where your thumbs are on your bike when you're time trialing. It's where your body, what your body position is.

It's those marginal gains that Dave Brailsford talks about, isn't it?

Absolutely. We're probably best not talking about every single marginal gain that sky perhaps. No, it is, it is marginal gains, but it always has been. It always has been. And it's getting. Those marginal gains are getting harder and harder to find because the development, the science has grown so much incredibly in the last few years.

I'm really intrigued about these triathlon camps. Do people tend to come out with their families and they kind of. One of them does it and the family just kind of chill by the pool. Or is it like a group of cyclists that will come out together or a bit of both.

Every week is completely different for us. We might have a whole group who come out and come together because they're a club or just because they're a group of friends who train together. Or we might have various different clubs all coming out at the same time. We only have a maximum of 20 people. They might book apartments or even in many situations we have individuals that are coming out, just say, I want to do a week out with you, or a couple of weeks with you. And they share apartments with other athletes. So there's a whole cross section. Sometimes we have families coming out where only a couple of them are actually going to train and the rest of them have got, you know, just on holiday and just having a break. And that works as well because, I mean, one of the reasons we set this up like we did is because on the training camps that I'd gone on before, as much as I enjoyed them, I always used to refer to them as equivalent to the East European block training camp. You know, you go in there, you share a bunk room with six other people coughing, farting and sneezing all night. You ate pasta day, you know, morning. And as much as you love the training camps, we wanted to give something which was a bit more luxurious, and that's very much where we went. So the facilities, I mean, not only is it a beautiful area, but the apartments and the venue itself is stunning. So. And we get something like 80% rebook. So we've had people now coming out. We had some people that have come out nearly every year, some groups that come out nearly every year.

Well, it sounds very compelling. I'm gonna have to get myself out there at some point.

We'll get you out. We'll get you out. I'll convince you to write an article on it and then we're sorted.

Fantastic. That sounds like a good deal.

And.

And so coming back to the dam bustling of Vitruvi. I mean, I'm always amazed how often people know about these events. You know, firstly, I found it really. One of the reasons I wanted to create Tribathlon is I find it really difficult to find all the different events. You know, when I got into cycling, I'd be sort of speaking to people, trying to find stuff out, what events, you know, they would be like, oh, yeah, you want to do the Rutland Sportage. But I couldn't find it on any website. And then, you know, you'd find that like 500 cyclists were going past your front door and you're like, what are they part of.

How do I know?

Not know about this? Yeah, the triathlon world seemed to be the same. And, you know, some were on the British Triathlon website, but some aren't. And it just kind of. I found it really interesting. That was difficult to find, which is how this was kind of born out. But with the Dam Buster, you know, I was reading Louise Minchin's book not Long ago. And she obviously qualified for Team GB at the Dam Buster interview. Mitch Phillips yesterday. And as soon as I mentioned Rutland Aute he was like, oh yeah, that's the Vitruvian, isn't it? I've never done it but I've heard it's a great race. And so, you know, come tell me about how that has evolved over the 18 years they've been running now.

Well, I think again, if I'm honest, it comes back to the. In the early stages we were determined to put on a quality, top end, quality race with all the facilities that you needed. Making sure, I mean we barrier up to 300 meters of, you know, fencing and so on and so forth. Those details are very important to me. I would be ashamed to put in insufficient infrastructure. And don't get me wrong, there are places for events where there's just a bit of string going into the finishing straight and if you can. Look, we need events of all prices, you know, and because it's what people, you know, some people want a big event, some people want a big race. I've always said that we focused on the racing. The quality of what is provided for the athletes is absolutely vital and always will be. So you're not going to get a marching band or the rest of it because if you put on a marching band I'm going to have to pay for it. So you're going to have to pay for, for it. And that's. So we've, we tried to keep our prices. For example, The Dambuster is 100. Sorry, the Dambuster is 60. 60 odd quid. The Vitruvian is the half. Ironman distance is 130. So our prices have always been kept low. We've had to keep it within those constraints because that's what we believe is the right thing to do. Now I understand that some of the bigger races have very, very different things. Ironman now you can Pay, you know, 500, $600 to go and do an iron man.

Pounds.

Pounds, yes. Sorry, yeah, pounds. Dollars. Euros. I'm kind of in pretty well.

It's not cheap as an Ironman.

No. But let's take a look. I have no issue with people, if people want to do that. I think there are certain events, you know, London triathlon is a, is a fantastic event as a race. I'm not sure how great it is as a race because of the nature of. If you put that many people into a one place to race, it's going to be much harder. There's going to Be someone on a Boris bike that you're going to have to try and get around. You know, there is still a place for that, that serves a purpose. But I've always thought, you know, one of the things you'll probably know is that, for example, the Dambuster and the Vitruvian on many, many occasions have been the national championship or a world or European qualifier. And that's been a very important thing to us. We worked closely with the federation because we wanted to make sure that the standard was good enough for the athletes to be happy with, that there isn't issues with drafting, that we're not putting a multiple lap Olympic distance race on, because if you do, you should only have a very small field. You know, that's the. One of the difficulties I think we often face is if you ever go to the World Championships or European Championships, where they have some multiple situations, it's impossible for athletes not to draft. It's just impossible because that many people on a course.

It's one of the criticisms of some of the Ironman tracks as well, isn't it, that, you know, you'll hear somebody saying, oh, well, I got so and so time in Barcelona and, you know, some of the seasoned triathletes that I train with will say, well, it doesn't really count because it was Barcelona and it was, you know, everyone knows that's.

A drafting track, right? Yeah. I mean, those are the kind of issues that come up. And you see, you know, I don't want to put to all that individual events because for me, you know, it's not appropriate for me as an organizer to be saying, I don't like that race, but there are certain races which I look at and I go, that's all, you know, I mean, you know, there's a. There's a whole load of safety issues as well. You know, I mean, I think. I think for me, turning right on a course across oncoming traffic is something that just is horrendous. And I wouldn't ever want to race anything that would. That would have me doing that, because the risks are such. And I would never put in a race like that because the risks associated with it, as far as I'm concerned, are too great. I think those are the factors. It's difficult because in the UK we're in an incredibly densely populated country and traffic circulation is always going to be a problem, you know, and all events, unless they've got closed roads, have that issue. But, yeah, I think that's the difference. One of the reasons we got a good reputation A. We were in a very early, you know, like I say, we're talking 19 years ago. The Dam Buster came to the fore and being honest, there weren't many races around at that stage. So for example, I think when I put the Vitruvian on, which was a, you know, is a high iron man distance, there were only five or six half ironman races in the country. Now there's something like 35, 40.

Does that make it more difficult to fill them?

Oh, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. If I'm honest, there's been such a. Over the last few years there's been such an increase in the number of events that the market has cannibalized itself. There was room for more events but I mean at one time we used to fill the Vitruvian in 24 hours. A thousand places, bang, gone. I think those days for most of us have gone organizers. There might be some, you know, Roth may be able to do that or some, some other races, but very few. And the reason is, is there's just so many races out there. I don't know many races that fill very quickly and in fact I don't think there's many races that completely fill anymore in the uk. And there is a difficulty that because as people cannibalize, as the market becomes cannibalized, they got, they, they just destroy their own market from my economic, with my economics head on. You know, there were organizers that I know that had used to have 10 races and now they have 20. And then they wonder why they've only got half as many people at each of their races. It's not complicated to work it out but the difficulty is the competition has made that almost necessary and we've got a lot being this, right? I mean you only have to look at the number of increased number of Ironman races, corporate races, the outlaw, et cetera that have just. There's more and more. It's as simple as that. And for the smaller organizers like myself, it's very, very hard to compete marketing wise and promotionally with organisers that have many, many more races to spread their promotional cost across or who've got huge backing because they're corporately owned. That's incredibly difficult for us to compete with. And eventually, if I'm totally honest, the smaller races won't really exist except perhaps in club form. I think in time the big corporations will take over and buy out or just destroy the smaller races. Unfortunately that is a reality of that's what happens in open free market and there's nothing we can do about that. That's just a reality. We find it harder year on year.

Well, hopefully an app like tribathlon will be able. I mean, part of the purpose of it is to bring people's awareness to the events that are going on around them so they can sign up whether they're listed on a big website or not. And actually, you know, I think that part of this was, you know, I'm sure I would have got into this more quickly if I'd known that people I cycled with would also doing that triathlon. You know, I get the first triathlon I did was in Nottingham. I don't know if it's the same one that you set up, but it was the one on the university campus, only a sprint triathlon, it was in the pool. But I went there on my own. I didn't know a soul there. And yeah, my first ever triathlon got the course wrong and ended up running a whole chunk I didn't need to do. But you know.

Someone of mine, I'm just saying.

No lonely thing, you know. And even actually my second I think was the same and actually my third was the Dambuster. And then I did know I kind of bumped into a couple of people I knew while I was there, but I didn't know that I was going to know anybody. So, yeah, I mean, I think that bringing an awareness of the events is a key challenge because I think is I liken it to. You know, when I got into cycling, I was struggling to find these events and you know, you kind of, once you cycle for a year you get through door number one and then after another year you get through door number two and then you start triathlons. It's like you're, you're back at the start again and now I've got to find the doors again.

No, I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, there's a community there, but. But actually access to that information isn't always readily available and it can sometimes feel like it's a closed door for people.

Literally three years into doing triathlons, I found out about a month ago there's an Oakum Triathlon group. That's where my office is based. That's my nearest town and I didn't even know it existed.

It's crazy. No, it's a wonderful community when you get into it. But I think like all communities, it's a community and everyone kind of is doing their own thing and assumes that anyone who knows knows about them. But it's. You're absolutely right. There's always that issue.

And I'm still finding events pop. You know, somebody will mention it. Have you booked for so and so? It's like, I don't even know what that is. Why have I only just found out about this six years in?

But it's an interesting thing for us because, for example, for many years I had people, you know, going back to the Danbuster, I had people saying to me, oh, you know, people locally said, oh, I didn't know anything about this event. And I often used to say to them, do you do triathlon? And they say, no. And I'd say, well, that's the reason you don't know about it, because I can't afford to advertise to the whole world about this being on. So you end up promoting to the people who know about it.

Well, absolutely. And of course you would. But equally, if a cyclist lived near Rutland water, they may go, do you know what? Actually, I'll have a double of that. I'll do, you know, a bit of running. I can swim, so I'll have a go.

Absolutely.

And so was it. Were you based in Rutland or did you just find Rutland as a good venue for triathlon?

Yeah, no, I lived in Nottingham, so I wasn't in Rutland at all. I looked at some various different venues, basically, which is how I came across Columba park, which is how I come across Rutland water. And if I found a venue that worked, I planned it all out, I approached the council, I approached the venue and just went from there, really. So I think, again, it's one of those things where there are lots of venues that people think will work, but actually, when you go out there, you start to see the logistical problems of actually putting on an event in that venue. And to me, Rutland Water really worked well. That's interesting, because since we started the Dam Buster, a new road has been built, which took us up to Oakham, which changed the route after something like four years. Then a new set of traffic lights was put in, or two sets of traffic lights put in, which we had to negotiate the use of being able to turn them on. So even when you put those things on, things can change dramatically. You know, suddenly. Suddenly someone builds a housing estate on the edge of something, it can change it overnight.

But I think it's such a. Such a, you know, having now done a few triathlons, clearly I'm biased because I live on its doorstep, but it's such a great Venue for. I mean, you know, the swim is. Is perfect. You know, it's great conditions, the cycling is interesting, it's a really lovely route, but it's also, you know, it's. It's cycling on lovely hills, but it's also fast and decent roads and then the run is just fantastic. Other than the fact that you can, particularly on the Vitruvian, you can see all the people that are ahead of you and you kind of. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what your mental state is at the time.

You're right, the venue is just brilliant. I mean, the venue work as a position. It works brilliantly. We've also had incredible support from the police and from the highways over the years. You know, there's always going to be difficulties because you're always facing a number of local residents who are going to complain that they don't like it or whatever else. But I think the advantage is that we've been doing it for 19 years now, so we're talking to the police and the highways on a personal level. They know that what we do is safe, you know, and it's funny because those relationships are so important. People, again, people don't. Don't realise how important those relationships, and it takes years to build up those relationships because that trust has to be there. You know, the last thing that police want is more traffic, road, traffic accidents, because you haven't put in a security system or had enough marshals out there or various other bits and things.

Well, I think it's been an absolute pleasure to race in them, so I hope they continue for a very long time. And are you still doing triathlons yourself?

No, I've not raced for years, if I'm honest. People assume that as a coach you're incredibly fit. You're not. You're spending majority of your time standing around watching someone training. I still ride. I love nothing better than to get out riding. My knees are completely shot for running. So is my back. I am one of those little old men who gets off his bike and continues to walk in exactly the same aero position as he did when. So, no, I spend more time on the bike than anything else.

What was your pinnacle? What was your favourite race that you did?

The one that sticks in my mind, if I'm honest, is always going to be the first Ironman that came into the uk, which was Lamberis. Sibs and I have both been chronically ill. We both suffered from Epstein Barr, which had led to chronic fatigue syndrome, which is another One of the reasons why we decided that we were going to change our lives as well, it was kind of overworking over training, doing all the things that happen. Sibs had previously won the National Championship, she'd been National Champion, and then she'd come back from the World Championships, which had been Montreal, where we kind of expected her to meddle at the World Championships. And she just collapsed, as it were, towards the end of it. And we knew she wasn't well. We didn't know quite well. And that went to. Within a couple of weeks. Getting back to the UK after that, not even being able to get up the stairs to go to bed, carry her up to go to bed. And it's quite a frightening situation when you. When your partner's in that kind of situation.

What question did you say that was? I didn't catch it.

Epstein Barr. Ironic is the same thing that Mark Cavendish has went down with. It can lead to a number of things. A lot of people it leads to. I forgot what is what the students tend to get. But, you know, basically just fatigue is the. The biggest issue with it. But it can affect some people chronically and some people can get over it quite quickly. For us, it stayed with us. We were still diagnosed a year and a half to two years later. And that's kind of. That's what moved us into coaching, because we were. We were at TFN at the time and we weren't. What we couldn't do is train seriously. Our bodies just couldn't take it. You know, you train for half an hour and then you. You have to be in bed for two, three hours to try and recover. It's quite a frightening situation to be in. Eventually, when we both got the all clear, it's a virus, so it stays in your body. I mean, that's the reality of it. So I know a lot of athletes that have suffered from this. And we decided when it came out, if the Land Berris wasn't called a 70.3 but half Ironman, then we set that as our target to come back and train. And ironically, I say we said that we would train, but it was finding the time because I was still working incredibly hard on other things. Sibs was back in training, but we also had to be very cautious of it. And in the end, by the time I did Lambarus, it was the only. The fifth ride on my bike I'd done that year. But I said I was going to do it. And so it was a big stepping point for, you know, you had to feel like you wanted to. I'd been running, but I kind of had to back off on the bike quite a bit. And to go and do that and finish that one was just a sense of, okay, I'm kind of back on the road to recovery. So for me, and I will say it was one of the most incredibly, there was a guy called Simon Blackburn who put it together. It was a brilliantly organized race. And to this day, I think he was a very committed triathlete who really wanted it to work. And I don't think it worked, if I'm honest, financially, for that event of my understanding that it was a financial disaster. What a brilliant race it was. And so for me, that was a personal thing to do that. But it was also the stepping stone bit. So for me, that probably my most interesting. My most interesting race for me.

Fantastic. And as a coach, is there a book or any books or any other resources that you find yourself recommending regularly? Any books that really made a significant impact on your journey?

There is one running book. Julian Goethe, the Art of Running. Julian's going to thank me for this. He is actually a mate. He's been out here before. I think he's one of those people who hits the nail on the head. Julian was one of the top British middle distance runners at the time. Unfortunately, he was there when Britain had their best middle distance runners. But he was a brilliant, brilliant runner. But when I say a brilliant. Actually, I'm gonna. I'm gonna clarify that. One of the things I like about Julian is that now in his. As he's got older, he said the thing that most coaches say and most athletes say once they come out of it, which is, I wish I knew then what I know now. And he puts that into his book so. Well, the fact of the. You don't know it all when you're an athlete. And sometimes you need to keep learning and keep learning and keep learning. And if you're lucky, you may have learnt enough to not make the mistakes while you're still racing. The difficulty is that experience often comes so late that you've gone past your best. I think coaches are so important. I mean, trainers and coaches and I distinct. I do the distinction between the two. A coach is someone who looks at the technical side of things. A trainer is someone who writes a program. Both of them are vitally important. And to get those right, you need to work on both sides of it. I think too often people work on the training and not on the coaching. I understand that, but you can't coach Someone from a distance. And actually I think sometimes it's even hard to train someone from a distance. We don't write programs for anybody. And the reason being if I can't see them on a pretty much day to day basis, I would find that very difficult to do that. There's a lot of number crunching and all the rest of it, you know, the people who like Matt Bottri, who spend a lot of time really doing the number crunching on people are the people who are able to identify what works for you. And it is about what works for you. It's not about what works for everybody. There is not in training, there is definitely not a fit one fit for everybody. It just doesn't work that way. Your body is going to respond differently to mine. These are the things that are very, very interesting. And so that close relationship with a trainer or close and close relationship with a couple coach are really, really important. Gone are the days, fortunately where people wrote programs, had 200 people on their books and sent them all out pretty much the same program. And it did used to be like that.

You still buy your cookie cutter type training programs on training peaks and things like that.

And they serve a purpose, they do serve a purpose because you've got something to work to. But of course if you're going to really, really perform at your highest, you know, having some structure is always better than having no structure. Having somebody with a degree of objectivity is always better. But the truth is there's a reason why again, the top, the top athletes have a coach who only has a handful of people because you've got to watch every single thing that they're doing. Interesting. You know, we have some, we've had some great youngsters out here. You know, Lawrence Fanucci went and raced the Olympics for Jordan in Brazil. We had Matteo Lukina, who's a Croatian, was a Croatian national champion. He missed out on an Olympic base and came and spent a whole season with us out here helping us in coaching and guiding. And he had gone down with Epstein Barr. It's interesting. He'd gone down with Epstein Barr the same as we had previously, which is one of the reasons he was coming back slowly and didn't, you know, didn't quite make it. And he'd been with us for about four or five weeks and I'd been doing some run technique with him and some running sessions with him and he was doing sets of four hundreds and I knew what his times would be and he was coming through and he was doing four hundreds and he was at 60, 64, 65, 64, 65. And I, he looked and. And I said to him, I remember turning around and looking at him. I said, what time did you hit? He said, 66, 67. I said, you look shit. Go home, go back to bed. And he said to me, but I've got another six to do. And I said, not today you haven't. You know, if you're looking that bad, if your times are that bad, there's a reason your body is telling you that this isn't your day today, and you need to actually back off. Because he wasn't mentally weak. His body just was not good at that moment. But sometimes it takes the objectivity of a coach to tell you, no, you need to go to bed, you need to get some sleep. And having been through that, I was quite comfortable telling him that. But he was very uncomfortable to begin with, wanting to do it because he kind of just got a. You know, how many times do we hear triathletes go, yeah, I didn't do anything today. I just went for a swimming. That was recovery day, 4,000 meters, but just went for a swim. I think having a coach, if you really want to be good, having one that looks at you, watches, sees everything you do, understands your personal life, understands you had a shit day with your partner or your kid was sick all night, all those things, you know, they're important in your life. In fact, they take over.

Well, I think, you know, it's a great point to finish on in that there's this whole work, life, family, training, balance that is such a challenge. You talked about how difficult it was for you to train at certain points in your life, and it is. And I think actually you're right. You know, you set this target of, I'm going to do all of these different things, but then life gets in the way. And it is. It is really difficult. And actually having a coach, rather than the cookie cutter approach, a coach that says, well, yeah, okay, fine, this is life. You can't train as much as we thought we could at this point, but we can adapt it later on to kind of counteract that, I think is really powerful. And also I think the point you touch on in terms of, I'm a big believer that I'm not a massive one for digging into the stats on my own training. I much prefer to try and work on feel than stats, you know, and some days you aren't feeling it and you're thinking, do I just push myself anyway to hit the numbers? And then I ruin myself for the rest of the week or. Or do I just go, do you know what? I'm not feeling it today. So we'll take, you know, accept a slower pace and go harder another time, it seems.

And you say that there's a. There is a great book on Graham Obrey, you know, the. Our record holder. Graham was an incredible, incredible cyclist and he worked always to just whatever he felt good about or bad about. And many a time you would hear that he would get up, get on his bike, ride two kilometres, ride back and go to bed. And other athletes couldn't get their head around it. This is the man who broke the hour record. This is. Is one of the best track sites the world has ever seen.

Can you remember what the name of the book is?

I think it's called the Flying Scotsman. Yeah. Graham Avery, Wonderful, wonderful, intelligent. Just incredibly. Another one of, and I hope you wouldn't take me wrong in saying this, another one of the world's misfits. Prove that there's nothing wrong with being a misfit, that you can be different and still get it right. You know, I think we're all misfits, really. I like the idea of misfits. I like the idea of people who fight against the norm and be a bit different. Winning. We have, again, we have a saying here, winning isn't normal. Yeah. By definition, if you win, you're not normal. That's great, that's fine.

If you've got to be.

If you want to be in the top 5%, you got to be willing to do what 95% of people aren't willing to do. Haven't you? So, yeah, absolutely brilliant. It's been really great to chat to you, Mark. A huge thank you for putting on two brilliant events in my part of the world and for all of the great advice you've given so long. May it continue. Thank you very much.

Foreign.

Mark's just got a wealth of experience in the world of triathlon in particular, whether that be organization of events, whether that be competing or whether that be coaching. So there was so much good advice there and it was brilliant to chat to Mark.

If you want to find out more.

About Mark, then you can. And the Dam Buster and the Vitruvian, you can go to pacesetter events.com and if you want to find out more about his triathlon coaching camp, les Stables, that's le s-stables.com so les-stables.com for more details on that. I hope you got as much value out of that. As I did. Don't forget to share your photos with hashtag tribeathlon. This podcast was brought to you by Lucky Saint Alcohol Free Beer. You can find out more at luckysaint.co. it is my absolute favourite alcohol free beer. I said if you held on I'd give you a discount code. That discount code is LuckyTry20. So Lucky spelt as you'd expect. Try spelled T r I and then 20 go to LuckySaint co. Use the discount code LuckyTry20 and you'll get a lovely 20% off your order. I hope you enjoy your alcohol free hangover. Free Beer. Don't forget to download the Tribathlon app for more amazing podcasts, but also to help you train, compete, and to build your tribe.