#10: Triathlon Season: Doing It Right

All right. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Trivelo Coaching podcast, Trivelo Coaching, where we specialize in helping triathletes and cyclists improve themselves in their chosen sport and make sure they enjoy themselves as well as usual. I am joined by the founder of Trivelo Coaching, Gerard Donnelly. Dad, welcome.

Thanks, Jordan. Great to talk about a topic that I am really keen on now.

This is the first podcast where we're actually talking exclusively triathlons. We help triathlons and cyclists and runners as well. But we haven't done a podcast just on triathlons yet. But triathlon, there's a lot to talk about and we thought we'd speak about it today because our athletes are probably looking at the next three to six months on their calendar and starting to figure out what races they're doing, how to plan their training, and how to plan kind of the next phase of their goals. So a lot to talk about today.

Yeah, that's true, Jordan. There's so many facets to triathlon. It can be a sprint event, it can be a middle distance endurance event, or it can be an epic endurance event. So in the sport of triathlon, there's so many variations and I suppose you could say that about marathon running as compared to 100 meter sprinting in running or in cycling criterion racing to Tour de France. But the specific discipline of triathlon really varies. And of course you don't have the amount of events available that you do as a runner or as a cyclist. So triathlons, you have to, of course you have to plan in every Sport your next six months to 12 months. But triathlon, if you've got one, a race for the year, it is really important that you get that right. Otherwise you'll end up a very disappointed year and a very disappointed athlete.

So what do you mean by a race? Because that probably applies to mostly an Ironman over.

Yeah, so if we decided to be an Olympic distance athlete, which is a 1500 meter, 40 kilometer bike, 10 kilometer run, or even a sprint, where it could be 500 meters, 25 kilometers run compared to an Ironman, which is nearly 4k 180k marathon, so you can do a lot of sprint and Olympic distances each month, it's not really possible to do a lot of Ironman over a period of a year. Two at either end is probably a maximum you could do. There are people doing more, of course. There's people doing Iron Man 50 in a row, which is quite ridiculous in my opinion. But certainly the a race scenario for Ironman is completely different to the A race scenario for a sprint or an Olympic. You get lots of opportunities to practice your events in Olympic and sprint triathlon. But in Ironman you don't. You use the other disciplines to practice for the Ironman. But that's why the A race scenario is so much more important in triathlon than it is in cycling or athletics where you have a fun run or a race almost weekly. And if you muck up, you've got always next week. So in Ironman, if you muck up, it's another year or six months between events.

So you still can have an A race. If you're doing a sprint or Olympic, it's just the build up ones might not matter as much the same as you can have a lot of B races in cycling that build up to an A race which is.

Yeah, the same concept applies for sure as in other disciplines. You use them in a way that where you're not tapering as much and you're not as fresh for the race and you don't have the expectation of a pb. You're just trying to practice the pre race scenario the day before. You might have a few easier sessions leading up to a B race or a C race. But certainly the feeling when you arrive to an A race would be completely different when you're tapered. But the value of practicing the anxiety and the nervousness before any event is so worthwhile doing for B and C races no matter what sport you're doing.

So let's talk about. Because most of our athletes are building up to a half ironman, Some have a longer term goal of full ironman in the future. But most are really preparing for a good half at some point in the next few months. So how do we start looking at that? How do we start preparing for that end goal? And then how many races do we want to start looking at in between?

Yeah, working backwards from your A race is. Is the best way to start. How many weeks do I have available? And if the race is 16 weeks away or 20 weeks away or 26 weeks away, obviously the more time you give yourself, the better the outcome is going to be. You'll be going to be more prepared. A shorter turnaround doesn't give yourself much of an opportunity to actually execute the best race of your life. What's an ideal time for a half iron Man? I'm a real believer. It's got to be over 16 weeks. 25 weeks is ideal if you're already pretty fit.

If you already had a big winter of Training?

Yeah. The fitter the athlete, the more experienced the athlete. Really good question. The less time you need. If we're talking beginners, the longer you need. 25 weeks is perfect for a first up Half Ironman. If they haven't done anything beforehand, they're doing a Half Ironman first. I would not even be recommending that. I'd always recommend doing sprint, then an Olympic, then a Half Ironman. And if you get the bug, the Ironman is next on your calendar. So yeah, it varies from athlete to athlete and from experienced athletes to novices. So it is a very. You can't just say this is what you should be doing across the board. It does vary depending on your level of experience.

Let's look at the actual Australian season coming up. What have we got coming up over the next few months? Over summer, towards the end of summer.

Yeah, look, the calendar is certainly diminishing a little bit. We've got Western Sydney coming up. We've got Noosa this week coming up. So before Christmas we used to have Shepparton. Yarrawonga was on last week. There's some other races in the Sunshine coast and in Queensland that are able to function throughout the winter. But for the southern states of Australia, with the water temperature being so bad, it's quite impossible to do a full triathlon with 12 degrees temperatures in the water. Some of the athletes competed last week in Tasmania in an event. So there's lots happening, lots of smaller races happening pre Christmas. We have Busselton, Half Ironman and Ironman. As I said, Western Sydney, Noosa, we've had Sunshine coast already. And Lake Taupo in New Zealand is also a 70.3 before Christmas. So we've got a few opportunities for people in the southern hemisphere to compete post Christmas.

Is what's.

Yeah, well, there's some races that have disappeared again. Geelong 70.3 is probably the first. If we're talking half Ironman, then Port Mac, Half Ironman and Western Australia have a Half Ironman the same day as Port Mac, which is a little bit of not a good idea. I don't think you should be spreading them out considering we don't have a lot of races. And then you've got Cairns 70.3. But there are some Asian races that are very close to Australia that you could do. Philippines, Malaysia, China, Japan. And New Zealand has another race in March as well. So there's. There is a few races that you could work towards. And that would be. The next question obviously would be what race should you pick? And we've Discussed that a lot in cycling, you know, are you a hill climber or are you a criterion rider? Well, in triathlon, are you, are you an endurance athlete or are you a short sprint triathlon athlete? And it's okay to do an endurance event if you're not suited to it. Just understand that you won't get the best outcome. So you should probably make sure that you're looking at events that suit you better. If you're a short, fast, fast, twitch, fibre type of athlete, the sprints and the Olympic distance should be your goal. There's more variety and more opportunities for those races.

So do you think someone should pick a race based on just the distance or the type of course as well? Or do you think if you are going to do an endurance half Ironman or Ironman, don't worry about the course, you should just train to adapt to the course.

There's positives and negatives for both. If the outcome is to do well, then you should definitely target an event that's going to suit your capabilities. If you're a light guy, an undulating course is going to help you on the bike. If you don't do well in the heat, a cooler climate race is going to make you perform better. You know, you wouldn't be rushing off to Kona to do 70.3 there, which is in the hottest parts in the world to race an event in. That's why they went there, to make it as uncomfortable as possible. You would go to New Zealand where the temperature would be much more favorable in. If heat is a problem to your participation, do you really think someone should.

Stick to sprints or Olympic based on the fact that they're better at it? Like what if they have a goal of.

No, definitely not. If people have a goal for endurance, it's always intriguing to me to see people line up for their 10th Ironman, their 20th Ironman. That's an incredible feat. And look, my opinion on that is if you're just existing in the event, you know, doing one or two of those is okay. That's just my opinion. Doing 10 of those where you're pretty much walking the whole marathon. I think it's a great achievement. You can keep doing it all the time, but you might be better off, you know, actually participating as a competitor rather than just participating to finish in some shorter events.

So that's what you mean by existing is, you know, being able to complete it at a run.

Yeah, yeah. And it's always better, you know, to do the event as it's meant to Be done, which is to swim properly, to ride properly and to run properly. It's not a swim, ride, walk. We all end up walking at some stage in our lives, but we're trying not to. I know there are people whose sole intention is just to complete it and they'll walk the whole thing and that's absolutely fine. But I wouldn't see any value in doing that eight, ten times. But it. But again, that's just my version of what triathlon was. The initial idea of what triathlon was to really extend the body as a runner, because, as you know, it started off as a swimmer, a rider and a runner saying that they were fitter than each other. So we're not talking about a walker.

And yeah, like you said, there's nothing wrong with wanting to do it, to complete it once. Everyone has different goals. But I guess if your goal is to improve as an athlete and enjoy the sport more, you're most likely going to enjoy it more if you can complete it.

Well, yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, that's pretty controversial, really, what I'm saying. And I don't shy away from that. That's just my competitiveness. You know, if I had to complete an event because I was injured or had heat stroke or and I had to walk the whole thing, then I would do it if it meant completing. But if I knew that was going to happen another time, I would think twice about entering and finishing if I was in that situation. To repeat the same thing twice.

Definitely. I think we will talk about that later in terms of listening to your body and in terms of preparing for the season when you should commit to a race. Because managing your body throughout the season is pretty tough.

Yeah, for sure.

Preparing for races, doing all of the B races, when to commit and when to pull out. But just thinking about, for our athletes who are competing in these halves or any distance coming up over the next three months, what do you start talking to them about in terms of the training load, how many races to do, the gap between the races and your B races and your A race?

Yeah, that's certainly really important to make sure that you do have a good enough recovery time if you're trying to slot some events in. And we will probably talk about this a bit more, but what other things in terms of triathlon should you be doing if there aren't enough triathlon races available to you in between now and your main race? Well, of course there's fun runs that you can do. There's, you know, half marathon races everywhere. 10k races everywhere, 5k races, you know, park runs are on every Saturday. So you've got opportunities to test yourself in a competitive situation as an individual runner. There's lots of time trials and cycling criterions and road races that you can put yourself in as well. There are open water swims everywhere. So that would be things that I would be recommending the athletes to vividly pursue and make sure that they do do at least a half marathon, at least an open water swim and some sort of time trial. Whether it's an organised time trial or one that they're doing against themselves, against the clock, but as well as doing maybe an Olympic distance event in the lead up.

Yeah. So is that just one or one sprint?

One Olympic. No, look, I would really like to see if we were doing a half ironman, you know, if, if it was available to do an Olympic in four weeks and then the following four weeks do another Olympic and then if you could eight weeks out to do a half ironman at the training session before your main. So you've actually completed it.

Yeah. And what would you do that just at a cruisy pace or.

Yeah, as a training, as a training session. And, and that's, that's also a little bit controversial because it's not cheap to enter these events. So you can do that yourself in a training group. And that's kind of what I'm meaning. So you still have to prepare properly. You want to execute, swim, ride and run according to your swim pace, power on the bike and run pace. But it does become very expensive if you're trying to use a main 70.3 as a practice race. The good thing is you've got all these volunteers helping you throughout the day, getting around.

Okay, so what's an example of someone who we're trying to take through now for the next few months? What's the example of the advice you're giving them in terms of the planning and specifically how are you approaching it?

Well, the main thing is to establish when they first come to us what level they're at and what are their aspirations and goals. And once we find out what their aims are and objectives, then we can base the program around are they an elite competitor who's trying to get a podium, Are they a mid range age grouper who's really just trying to improve on their previous, or is it the first time they've ever done it and they want to complete it? So establishing that goal is quite key to the program we give. We also test them across swim, bike and run to make sure that we understand what pace they can swim at, ride at and run at during their training sessions. We have an expectation that once we establish those paces that they will be able to implement them into their race strategy. And the pace that they train at in week one is certainly not going to be the pace they're going to race at in week 16. That will have improved over that period. So they have great understanding of what they were at, what level they were at, and whether they improve 5% or 10% over that period. At least they've got an understanding of what their new numbers are to train and race at.

So especially with the idea of testing constantly or racing constantly, how often should you do both? Because you need new numbers consistently. So like you just said, you're getting new numbers to train at. What's the time frame on how often you should do them?

Yeah. Another good example of how important it is to understand how well you're traveling in your program and also doing race or testing is to practice the actual race scenario. My opinion is the more races you can do, the less testing you have to do. So, so if you're fronting up for a race every four weeks, you don't have to test privately. You can just use the test results from the race. So we want to test roughly four to six weeks so that if we have gained a lot of improvement, we're not staying at the same paces and wattage and swim pace that we were six or four weeks ago. Otherwise we don't get the progressive overload that we're after. So it's really important that we either race or, or we test every four to six weeks.

Now this concept of training to pace or to power would be very new or relatively new for a lot of athletes. They either might have heard that you should train to power but don't understand how it works, or understand how it works and still choose not to use power or pace or just have been told to train to heart rate.

So yep, perceived exertion is the main thing that people have been using for days, decades. Power is a relatively new thing, even though it's been around since the early 2000s. But not a lot of the non elite athletes have an understanding or know how to use power to their advantage. You know, it is a piece of data that you can use to help you and prevent you from having a disastrous day, going too hard, too soon. Obviously when you taper, you are fresh, you've got rid of all the fatigue and you feel good at the beginning of the swim. You feel good at the beginning of the ride, and you feel even better at the beginning of the run because you've gone through a taper period compared to the fatigue you've been carrying throughout the training program. So if you went by feel, I feel good at the moment. So I'm going to run to this pace or ride to this pace or swim to this pace without getting feedback about how fast or slow that is compared to what you're used to doing. You could sabotage your race there and then in the first five minutes of your run off the bike, in your first 10 minutes on the bike riding. So perceived exertion is great for the experienced person, but I can guarantee you there aren't too many experienced people who can actually understand that I am running too fast and I won't be able to sustain this by the time I get to the end, or I'm riding way above my wattage. And that's what we're trying to do at the beginning of all the legs of the triathlon. Not so much in the swim because you can't see what's happening, but definitely with the bike and run. We're using the data to prevent us from, you know, blowing our race going out too hard. And once people understand that's a real critical value of understanding your data, then you will end up getting a much better result than you would have ever had had you not got that information in front of you.

And you've seen a lot of people train to persist or race to pursue exertion and completely destroy the race.

Yeah, the common statement I get when I discuss how the race panned out, I felt so good. And of course you felt good. We've just discussed that because you're fresh. So, you know, that is one of the worst things I hear, you know, week in, week out after a race. Yeah, but I felt so good, so I thought I'd be fine with that, that wattage. But, you know, one thing the wattage does do is it doesn't tell you false information. You know, whatever number you're riding at, that's your number. And you should be writing to the number you've tested to, not one that you hope you can write on the day. That is a recipe for disaster. So, you know, during an A race, we want to do a pb, so we want to be on the fine line between where our trained number is. I'm talking about the bike. And we want to be a little bit over that if we can, so that we can still run properly. Most people can ride way faster in a triathlon than they do in the race. The reason they don't is so that they can run properly. It is a triathlon, not a swim and a ride with a fading walk. So you've got to be patient in this event and make sure you stick by your numbers so that you can actually finish the event and run strongly.

So I want to say the numbers, because it is something that we, we absolutely do without a question at Tribolo, is that you cannot be coached by us if you don't have a power meter on the bike. And all of our running and riding is to a number, whether it's power, number or pace. But there are a lot of people that resist that and that don't believe in its value and still exactly like we just said, want to ride or run to perceived exertion. How do you convince someone that it's the best thing to do, to train to that, because it can just feel too complicated, too hard, and feel a bit robotic. And you just want to. You don't want to worry about numbers.

For a start, most people contact us because they're not happy with their result. So they're already saying, the way I've been racing and training, I want to do better. And they may have been doing it for five years, they may have been doing it for five minutes, they may be a beginner. But if they've been doing it for a long time and they're asking for help, that's an easy thing to convince them of. Because if you keep doing it the same way and getting the same result, then that's the definition of insanity.

You're not improving.

You're not improving. So that's why they're reaching out. So normally they would embrace the specific tactics that we're going to give them because they're going to commit to doing the program properly and therefore determine how well they go. If they do, if they do everything we ask and they don't improve, then they can say, fair enough, made no difference to my result. But I guarantee that would be a really low percentage of people. And there may be extenuating circumstances, such as the power meter may not have functioned properly on the day the watch didn't work, so they couldn't actually execute the pace they wanted to, or they were sick beforehand, or they had periods of illness or injury. So there are things that can determine a different result. But if you actually stuck by the power and the pace in the bike and the run that you trained and raced to all season, I Guarantee you will get a similar result that you expect. And it's not a guess. When you stand on the start line at the start of a race, I wonder how I'm going to go today. The people we coach know how they're going to go today because they've got a plan, they know what their pace is on the bike. They know what their pace is when they are running and you know they're going to execute according to that. Of course things change during the day. It might get really windy, it might get really hot, it might get wet. You have to adapt your plan. But as long as you've got a basic plan and not a hope I do. Well today then the outcome is, you know, got a higher percentage of succeeding than the other outcome.

Yeah. So something interesting you said before was.

The.

Yes, you can ride faster than what you do in this race. You know you can ride faster but you shouldn't because you're going to tire yourself out too much for the run. So how, because all your training is going to be on the bike. You're going to do bike specific sessions and get a number based on those sessions and you go on to do an FTP test or something sort of race that gives you a bike number. How do you differentiate between your bike number and training and what you should do on race?

That's really good point to make because once you understand the percentages that you can race to. So we do an FTP test which, you know, for those who don't really understand what power is your best performance over an hour is the number that we get for 100%. So rather than doing an hour's test, we do a 20 minute test and take 95% of it. And that number is the number that you should be able to do for an hour. So an Olympic distance might be 40k. An elite rider would ride around one hour. So he would want to ride at 100% of his FTP. For an age grouper in an Olympic event, you would try to ride between 90 and 95% of your FTP. So knowing your FTP and knowing that in Olympic distance, 90 to 95% is your window. The top age groupers can ride between 95 and 100 and knowing that information instantly, you can work out what power to ride to and what your time's going to be. Pretty much if you're riding a half ironman, the elite guys can ride between 90 and 95% of their FTP. The beginner age groupers are between 75 and 80% of their FTP and the mid range athlete would be 80 to 85 and the top age grouper would be 85 to 90. So knowing that data from all of my research that I've been doing for all these years, since 1981 when I first started, without any of that information, now I know they're the percentages that people can do to their FTP on the bike so that, you know, in an Ironman, the percentage has dropped back again. The elite guys are around 78 to 82% of their FTP. Top age groupers are 75 to 78. You know, the beginners are 65 to 70. The mid group is a 70 to 75% of their FTP.

Yeah.

So that's an incredible amount of information that not the average person would know.

Yeah.

And yeah.

What about when you get off the bike and you're on a run? You obviously can't run at your best 10k pace because you're stuffed from two other legs.

That's right. And that's, that's a good point which we will touch on later is how much running off the bike are you doing? Yeah. But to answer that question, if we did a 10k time trial and we ran, let's just pick a number, 40 minutes, 4 minute K pace, could you expect to do that in a triathlon, Olympic distance? The closer you can get to that, the more chance you have of winning the race. That is a fact. So if you're two minutes off that, that's not bad. If you're looking to be three to four or five minutes, then you've got a bit of work to do on your running because you aren't running as well as you can fresh. So we use those similar things that we do as an FTP percentage. The minutes over your fresh time is a reflection of how well you're coping as a runner. So a half ironman. If you're doing 4 minute K pace, that's whatever it is, 124. If you're able to run a 126, you're doing, you're doing a great job. If you're running 136, you're a long way away from where you should be. It shows that you have poor endurance as a runner. The further you're away from your fresh run.

Fresh pb.

Yeah. The more you have to actually do in your running.

Yep. So that's exactly what we wanted to talk about in this podcast. All these factors that you need to be considering when thinking about your racing season and thinking about your preparation for your A race. Because when I hear you planning this with the athletes, there are so many things to consider that, like you said, most people wouldn't have thought of before or haven't ever been taught all the things we've spoken about already, which is thinking about what's your best discipline and what is going to be an A race, thinking about all the B races you want to do in lead up, thinking about the testing you need to do, and starting figuring out at the start what your level is at the moment. But a lot of the other things that we kind of need to start touching on is exactly what you just said. How much running are you doing off the bike? But even broader than that. How much time should you be spending on each discipline?

Yep. And if you break the event into three, the percentage of time for swimming, riding, and running, that is a good place to start. So the swim might be, let's just take the half Ironman, 1900 meters. It can be, for the elite guys, 22 minutes to 40 minutes for the worst. So as a percentage, that's up to 40 minutes. So then we get onto the bike. The best riders can only ride around two hours, and then it goes to three hours to four hours. So, you know, 40 minutes on the swim, four hours on the bike, then the run can range from, you know, a one, ten, seventy minutes to a two and a half. So straight away, you don't have to be Einstein to work out that the percentage of time spent in the swimming is the least. So we want to be fit in the pool. We want to be absolutely confident that we can get the distance. But the gains in the bike and run, as compared to if we trained harder in the swim, we could improve maybe a minute in our swim, maybe two, possibly four, if we were a real novice swimmer, if we spent that, if we added two or three sessions to our swim week, if we added two or three sessions to our run instead of the swimming, we could possibly get 10, 15, 20 minutes back. If we did that on the bike, we could get maybe 30 minutes if we were really at the beginner end. So obviously, you spend more time where you can gain the most time.

Is that a mistake? You see often people swimming too much.

My swimming is really bad. I need to swim more. And I'm saying, well, that's great. You do need to get your swimming better, but not at the detriment of your ride and run, because that's where the gains are. You want to focus on the areas where you can get the most Significant gains.

Because most people's weakness is swimming. Majority of people's, yeah.

And that's why it's such a great event, because you have to be a real all rounding sportsman. I mean, there are a lot of good bike riders, a lot of good runners who can't swim a stroke. But now the elite guys are, you know, they're just below the elite level swimmers. Just below, you know, some of them are actually elite bike riders and unbelievably good runners. I mean, Kona was on a few weeks ago and you know, a 2:42 marathon won it, which, you know, of course the world records under two hours now, but. But that is, you know, a pretty damn good time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting because you'd think that the logic would be, well, I should work on the discipline I'm weakest in, which if it was swimming, you'd spend the most time on that, which is not what you really should be doing.

Yep. And look, that's just my philosophy and my theory and I'm happy to be contradicted on that. But in my experience, I came from a swimming background, but I was not an elite swimmer. So I definitely was able to swim, you know, near the front, but had, you know, I was not a bike rider at all, but that became my strength and the swim became irrelevant. As long as I came within a certain time of the pack. In an endurance event, the ride was so long that it just diminished the differentiation between the leaders and the swimmer.

But even if it's a shorter event, you're not going to be able. The logic's still the same. You're not going to be able to gain that much from the swim. Even if there's guys that are way quicker than you over a short distance. Yes. They can't get that much time when you're on the swim.

Yeah. So to answer the first question, how much time should you spend swim, bike and running? My theory, if you had enough time to do a decent program, and there are people who want to do triathlons who haven't got that much time, so we've got to give them a few less sessions. But two swims is ample and people will be going, oh, shock, horror. But the aim is to be fit in the water. If you improve your times, that's a bonus and that's the way I look at it. So the ride, four rides is going to get the result you want. If you do more, it's probably not going to be much more benefit. The run is where you can actually make the most gains. And I'm a big advocate for five runs and people will be going, that is ridiculous. Most programs have 3, 3 and 3. But most triathlons, the results are determined by how well you run off the bike, not by how well you run, but how well you run off the bike. So two of the runs are very easy, but it's just practicing off the bike. As we'll talk about.

Well, I know that's your pet hate is people love to do elite running sessions and they love to even. I know groups is a contentious topic as well. We'll talk about that in a second. But people love to do really good running sessions and that's all they do, is really fast running sessions. When they're fresh and they get to a triathlon, they can never perform well and ask why.

Yeah, it's a great point. And they're astounded as, oh, you know, I can run this pace, you know, day in, day out in my training. But did you ride before you were doing that session? Because the event is not a fresh run. The event is running after swimming and riding. So you need to practice running after riding a lot. In our program, we run once fresh and the other four runs are all off the bike. And the feeling and the perception and feedback that I get from people who've completed their event in a really successful manner is, it felt so good running off the bike. That's the best I've ever felt because my body was so adapted to that is the feeling. Feeling I have from training. I'm replicating my training in the race. And if you don't the feeling you get off the bike when you've not done any runs off the bike is horrendous and you feel like you've never run before, it's that different.

And on that note, I mean, talking about group, group sessions, I know that. Yeah, I say it's contentious because you want to enjoy the sport and part of that is being able to train with people. But you have another sleep pet hate. And people taking in the easy route too often and doing too many squad swim sessions, too many squad running sessions, which is impacting their performance on race day.

Yeah, for sure. And look, socialising is a real integral part of triathlon. That's why we do it. One of the reasons why we do it. That's why we do it. And I don't want to take that away from people. But if you took a squad group, I'm a bigger. I swam squad a lot. When you go into a swimming pool and watch squads train. They maybe have 10 in a lane and the guy at the front is breaking the water and the next nine guys are getting a draft. So they're going to get times that are inflated. When they get out into the open water and got no one in front of them, their times are going to be slower. So they've got this inflated opinion of their swimming ability based on the pool. So my recommendation is, sure, do the squad, but continually test yourself outdoor or in a pool by yourself over a period of four weeks to see if your times are improving. And if they're not, I would recommend doing some sessions by yourself so that you're getting used to swimming with breaking the water yourself. And that's reasonably controversial because everybody thinks you should be in a squad and if you're at the front of the squad, you're getting the best session ever. So I have concrete evidence of people I coach who don't join squads who improve their swim times every four weeks. I have evidence of people who are training the house down in swim squads whose times, when we test them stay the same or go backwards and similar with running.

Right. People can run fresh with elite running groups.

Yep.

But again, it's just training them in that environment, it's not training them to run solo.

Yep. The advantages aren't as great when you're running in a group situation. And I would, if you could run in a group once a week where you're being pushed to get the outcome that we're trying to achieve in our program, I think that would be a great thing. Get the socializing and you're getting pushed, but if you're not getting the outcome of the session that we're trying to achieve, then you're better off staying away from the groups.

And we have this with just our cyclists as well, because there's value in groups in being pushed and there's value in the social aspect in that you will enjoy it more. But we tell our cyclists, you can't just ride the bunch all week.

Yeah, one group run, one group bunch ride, and even one squad swim. That would be my recommendation across the board. If you do three or four bunch rides, you're repeating the same session. If you do three or four runs with a squad, it's impossible to ride beforehand because the squad might be 6 o' clock on a Wednesday night. And how are you going to do that from work? So the advantage of doing the run by yourself is you can train when you want on the bike, get off and then run.

Yeah, awesome. So what else do we need to think about when we're kind of planning, planning all this out? We've really ticked off a lot.

So what sort of sessions are we looking at in the pool, on the bike and running? That's the specifics that most people want to know. And without giving away too much of our program, you need to have a variety. You need to have, you know, let's just take for example, the bike. You know, we've established that we've got a 100% FTP number. We need to do some sessions that are well over the FTP number, we need to do some sessions that are at FTP and we need to do some sessions at our race pace so that when we get to the race, we've experienced lots of training over threshold and we've experienced the race pace that we're going to implement. I'm a big believer in replicating what's going to happen on race day in training, not every session. That's why I'm saying variety is what we're after. You need endurance as well on the bike. So we've got endurance, we've got over threshold, we've got threshold and we've got sub threshold, which is race pace, and that's that variety.

But not going hard every single time is probably key to the runs off the bike because you can't just be smashing yourself off the bike each time.

Yep. So how does that work with the runs off the bike? We've described four of our sessions on the bike in general terms, not specifically telling people what to do and how long for. And that's the next thing that people want to know is, okay, I'm doing threshold ride, how long do I do it for? And probably that's where you need to contact your coach and get the specifics of what you should be doing. But what do you do and when do you do the runs? So the theory I have, and it's worked quite well is whenever you're doing a high intensity bike session, you need to do an easier run session. So if we did say, for example, two mid week high intensity sessions on the bike, those two runs off the bike should be nice and comfortable, nice and relaxed, slower than your race pace. So if you did one run during the seven days where you're running fresh and not off the bike, that's the day where you want to run fast, where you want to be in your group, where you want to be pushed, have some competition. So that's three runs already. Two are very easy off the bike. And they're very short. They're not long at all. We're talking 20 to 30 minutes at the most. The fresh run can be up to an hour, depending on what level you're at and your event. The other two runs, they're generally on the weekend because we have more time. One of them is the endurance run, and that is also off the bike. But the off the bike endurance run, the bike section, is very short and it's at race pace. It's at your sub threshold race pace. The other day is a very short run. And it's similar to the threshold, the runs off the bike where the intensity is high. The endurance ride has a very short run off the bike, but that can be changed once every four weeks so that you get the experience of having an endurance ride with an endurance run. So you get the feeling of what it's going to be like on race day. So how do you make the five runs up? That's how you make the five runs up. Two are quite short and most people go, well, that doesn't even count as a run. Believe me, running for 20 minutes at any time is a run. And running off the bike, it's getting you used to the feeling. That's the main point.

That's pretty comprehensive coverage of not the exact specifics, but the overall gist of how to best prepare yourself for all three disciplines.

Yeah. And look, as I said, this is a program for someone who's, you know, really committed to actually achieving their goal. It's not someone who says, I wouldn't mind doing half ironman. Give us a look at a program, see if I can do that. If you can consistently do and execute that program week in, week out, from day one to the finishing day, you will be a completely different athlete. And that's the beauty of seeing people who have done a lot of races and stayed the same to now having a proper program where they can see they've improved because we're testing or racing all the time. They can see their power numbers go up. They can see their average pace. We have countless examples of data of guys improving 5 minutes over their 10k in 12 weeks. 40 watts over 8 weeks of massive improvements of training on the bike. You know, the gains in the pool aren't as significant as we talked about before, but we still had people swimming on their own. Swimming a 29, 1500, and then swimming at 25.

Yeah.

That's incredible.

Yeah, yeah. One of the last main topics, just in terms of the overall mental and physical preparation of a racing program is the managing yourself, managing yourself physically and mentally. And that's probably. That's one of the biggest topics because it's probably the one that most people run into. The biggest challenges with is injury, getting sick, managing your fatigue levels, not over training. All these factors.

Yeah. And the biggest thing I find from most triathletes is that they run too fast all the time and there's no need for it. The big problem with it is you risk injury so much more by doing so many hard sessions, and you will actually create massive amounts of fatigue. So the sections or the sessions that don't require you to hold your body up, swimming and riding, running, you're actually doing an activity and holding yourself up against gravity. So the fatigue levels from doing that are massive. So the running has to be the one where you have to really take notice of how you're feeling. And that's why we encourage people not to run fast. You know, four out of the five sessions. So one session a week running hard is ample. It'll stop you from getting injured, it'll stop you from getting over trained fatigue levels through the roof, getting sick.

So what are the factors you should be looking out for to Resting heart.

Rate is a really good. And we measure it every week in our training program. We ask each athlete to test themselves Monday morning what their resting heart rate is from the week. And if you can see a noticeable increase in your resting heart rate, that would be an alarm bell. And if you wanted to do that every day, then you would have a much better understanding of how you're coping.

And sometimes the alarm bell can just be because of something that happened over the weekend. The resting heart rate might be high just because they had a really stressful Sunday or something. You got to be aware of all that.

As you know, the problem with using heart rate as a piece of data is it's affected by many things. Stress, heat, your health, sleep, anything. Sleep and food and nutrition. So it is one good way to monitor. But the way you're performing in your results, in your sessions, the results you're getting in your training sessions is another indicator. If you can't hit the numbers, then that's a first sign for me. Hang on a minute. What's wrong? Why aren't you. You can hit these numbers. They're your numbers. So you've tested these numbers, so you should be able to train to them. And if you can't, that's an indicator to me that something's not right. And we need to reassess where we're up to.

So another big reason why having the numbers is so important, because with perceived exertion, you probably wouldn't know that you were getting so tired until it was too late.

Yeah, yeah, it's such a good point. And with perceived exertion, you don't know how hard you're going anyway. From the first effort to the last effort, you think you're going hard, but as soon as you measure that against a power meter, then you realize, I thought I was going hard, but my last three efforts were 15 watts lower than my first, which it felt it was just as hard.

It's like I am. I just thought of this then. It's like a track athlete, you know, doing 400 reps without a watch. If you weren't timing each 400, you wouldn't know how you're going. You'd just be running the 400. And.

Well, that's how we were training on the bike for years, and now we've got this data and. And I always wonder why people won't embrace it. It's such an advantage to have it, to not make as many mistakes. But. Yeah. So monitoring your health, monitoring the process, the progress. The process and your health are really so crucial to making the start line. Let's face it, making the start line is. Is an achievement in itself without getting injured, sick or.

Yeah.

Or whatever.

Yeah. So as a coach, you're constantly monitoring to try and get your athlete to the start line in the best position possible and with a plan. So, yeah, it's watching for injury. It's. I mean. Yeah. What's everything that you're doing?

Yeah, look, we always talk about planning, preparing and performing. That's our motto. And, you know, for. From the start of this discussion, we've been talking about what are your goals? What do you want to achieve at the end of the race? And we work backwards from that date and then we start the planning process, then it's up to you to start performing week in, week out. And of course, consistency is one of the major things that we're trying to achieve here. The more consistent you are, the better the outcome is going to be. There is no. The correlation is massive. Consistency equals improvement performance. So we go through the planning and performing stage, the preparation. Sorry. And then, you know, race day becomes perform, and you have an expectation, because you have a plan, that you will perform according to your plan unless something disastrous happens. Bike mechanics. Or you injure yourself on the run or.

The point is you're as prepared as you can be.

That's Right. And you have a, you have an actual structure idea of what you're going to achieve on the day and have a really good idea within 10 minutes of what time you're going to finish in.

Good. So for anyone listening, if you're rocking up to races and you're not totally confident in your planning, you're not totally confident in your preparation and you actually don't know how you're going to perform, then everything we've spoken about for the last 45 minutes to an hour is what you need to start considering to probably get your training program and racing program.

Imagine the anxiety between you and I. If you're prepared, have a plan, have trained properly, have everything in place and I'm just winging it. I'm standing on that beach ready for my swim. Oh, God, I hope this goes well. And you're standing there going, bring it on. I'm ready for this. I know exactly what I'm going to do. The difference between the mindset of the two people, the anxiety I would feel about, I am really petrified of what's going to happen. The unknown. Humans fear the unknown the most. When you have a really good understanding of the outcome, your confidence level goes through the roof. And you act like you're confident because you are, you know what you're about to do. Execution becomes so much more easy.

Yeah. Yeah, perfect. Well, we might leave it there. I mean, there is a lot to talk about with triathlons. There is a lot more topics. We can delve right into more detail and then we can do a whole podcast on power and triathlons, you know, on race day, preparation, all these topics and we will do that in the future. That's not for today. We just wanted to talk about, for any athletes who got some races coming up over the next few months, how to plan, prepare and perform. Is there anything else you want to talk about or say?

No. Look, and triathlon's been my main love as an athlete and, you know, I'm really enthusiastic about seeing people take the start line in a triathlon. It is a very difficult thing to do and not to be taken lightly. And so the people who put a number on, I'm pretty impressed and it's great to see the numbers growing in the sport and it's got a long way to go. There are majority of people who have no information about how to get from training to the race day. And hopefully we can help people assist in and understanding to give them some idea about not making some fatal mistakes in terms of getting to race day the best shape they can possibly be.

Perfect. Well, that's it for us today. Look out for more future podcasts on both triathlons and cycling. If you want to contact us, you can go to tribalocoaching.com otherwise you can go to our Facebook page or Instagram Tribalo Coaching and message us on there. If you have any questions or want us to discuss anything specific or, or want some help planning, preparing and performing, that's it today. Thank you very much for listening. We'll see you next time.