11 Hacks To Stay Strong On Race Day

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo coaching, Jared Donnelly. So the big race has finally come and you want to perform at your best and you want every little advantage that's going to help you feel good and stay strong. Because when you're halfway into the race and everything is starting to really hurt, every minor detail can either help or hinder your performance. Suddenly everything seems to be a little bit exaggerated. You know, every minor bump, every minor roadblock can really be exaggerated in a good or bad way. So in today's episode, we're discussing 11 hacks to stay strong on race day and give you the best chance at a good performance. And with Ironman Cairns coming up next week, this is a very topical episode. So firstly, dad, welcome to the episode. We've got a lot of hacks to get through to start us off. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jord. That's an easy one. Today we've just found out that Victoria is going back into another seven day lockdown and I'm grateful for the freedom I had up until that point and that sounds a bit weird, but it's only when you get perspective of going back into lockdown and you understand what other people around the world have had to endure. So, yeah, we had a really good period and that's the gratefulness I've got great gratitude.

Really good one to start. Mine's an easy one as well, especially it's kind of COVID related. Even though we're a little bit sick of talking about this and we try and vow never to talk about it on the podcast because the rest of the world is sick of talking about it. But after last year, I made a conscious effort this year to try and catch up with more friends for dinner. Frequently I said that you can easily get caught up in the business of the week and weeks can just fly by. And so on weeknights I try and schedule in to have dinner with friends, either just at home, quite simply, or go out for dinner. And I'm really grateful for that. This year it's been really nice to. It kind of slows down your week. You know, you have dinner, you're present, hopefully you put your phones away and just catch up with someone. And it really slows down the weeknight. It means the weeknights don't just fly by. And so I'VE been really grateful for that so far this year.

Fantastic.

Moving on to our next segment and that is what is caught your attention. And again this is a little bit lockdown related for you, but what's caught your attention?

Well, the very first thing that happened in the last couple of days was when people in Victoria knew that the possibility that they were going to be locked down and it's literally eight days, 10 days out from Ironman Cairns, which some people have been training for up to a year for or six months or whatever the period. It's not like you've been doing something for four or five weeks. You've, you've put your whole, you know, year on hold almost for, for an event like an endurance event, like an Ironman. And, and what's caugh is the way that the guys we coach have reacted and not dropped their bundle. They're really almost well trained in the thought process of well, this is what's happened. What can I do? Can I sit here and complain or will I do something about it? And each and every one of them have already reacted, changed their flights. Some people have had to ask for time off from school as teachers, time off from work, which wouldn't be easy and normally you would go to the event the week of the event and we're, we're, you know, we're 10 days up to 14 days out from the event and they've managed to get themselves at up to Cairns already. And you know, we're doing this podcast, you know, on a, on a Thursday that's, that's, you know, still 10 days away from the race and the guys have changed everything about what they had to do and I just think that's incredible. That's, that's caught my attention is how quickly they responded and, and, and got on with it. It's, it's a really good sign for their race.

Yeah, it's really good. It's, it's an interesting decision to make because there is risk involved. You don't know what the states are going to do with, you know, closing borders, etc. Yeah, you might, you might have to get up there and isolate or get a test or worst case scenario quarantine. So I guess it shows depending on how important the race is to you, if you really, you know, you've been working as hard as possible for this, you've paid for everything to get there and you want to make sure it happens. You're in this mindset of I'll do anything to get there. I'm not going to complain about it, obviously, if people can't do that and that's fine as well, you know, you just have to make that decision yourself and it is a pretty tough decision to make.

Yeah. And look, certainly I got asked what should I be doing? And I can't answer that question. For individuals, ideally, you would try to give yourself the best opportunity. That's the answer. And if it means you have to do a hard question and ask your boss for time off or extend your accommodation and pay more, these are the decisions you have to make. But if it means waiting until your actual flight, which might have been Thursday week, and then there's no flights leaving Melbourne, then you've, you know, you've got no decision, then you have no choice. So you're giving yourself choices. You'd rather have control of your destiny than. Than have put it in other people's hands. Yeah.

Either way, it's very tough and there's a lot of empathy for any Victorian athletes who wanted to get to Cairns. Hopefully you can either get there and if not, it's just another roadblock in. In the journey of the racing season. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. Moving on from that, what's caught my attention is we spoke a few weeks ago at the start of the Giro Tour of Italy about how this race always proves the true test of respecting the whole event and respecting the distance and time of an event and understanding that you might be feeling good in week one. But it's a three week race. So we saw that finally the absolute superstar in Egan Bernal cracked on last night's stage. He looked unbeatable for the first 17 stages and then on the 17th stage he cracked. And we said this, that even the guys that are winning still can crack and lose 10 minutes in the last week and we've seen that time and time again. And so it's even to see, even funnier to see it play out in the pros every single year. He did well. He managed his day. He didn't lose the lead. He only lost a minute or a minute and a half, which was a good result for him. But we'll see over the next few stages towards the end of the Tour, whether he's too fatigued or whether he can hold out and he has measured his effort properly.

It's such a really interesting point, isn't it, at the professional level, which is, you know, we're all, you know, amateurs and everyday cyclists or triathletes who are just love what we're doing and we absolutely love watching the pros Whether you're a triathlete pro or a bike riding pro, you love seeing people go about their business and watching how they perform and how they manage their efforts. And you know, we predicted this right from the start that even though someone seemingly is head and shoulders above the rest of the field and let's face it, he has been and I'm intrigued to see that two days ago in the rain, where it was an unbelievably horrible day and he ended up attacking the bunch with, on the last climb and he ended up gaining time on his fellow competitors and everybody's sort of applauding that and I'm, I am as well. It's a, it's incredible show of, of the level that he's at. And he even had time to take his rain jacket off so that he could take a photo of him with a pink jersey on his back.

That did catch my attention as well. That was, I thought, you know, in a grand tour you're every second. But maybe, maybe he was forced to do it sponsorship wise for the race or something. Maybe he would have got a fine if he didn't show the pink jersey.

But anyway, yeah, but you know, my coaching mind was going, I don't know if he should have done that and taken time and everybody, because this is a three week event and you have to measure your effort over three weeks. And did yesterday's little hiccup, was that a result of Tuesdays going and attacking the bunch and, and was that necessary? And you could argue both ways, but only time's going to tell here. And I'm intrigued hopefully that his attacking of the bunch when let's face it, the yellow jersey or the pink jersey, all he has to do is defend his time and get to the last day in front. That's all he has to do. He doesn't have to show his hand yet he has shown his hand and he's just way better than everybody else. But all of a sudden, two days later, he's not as invincible as he was. And is that because of what he did on Tuesday? That's what I'm in. I'm so keen to see is he going to falter again between now the final day because there's so much, there's 600ks to go. There's a, you know, some of the most epic climbs to come. And my, my thought process is this isn't over by a long way.

Yeah, definitely. And even not even just looking at Bernal, but looking at the top 10, you know, they've Fluctuated so drastically. Guys that were in the top three quite safely two days ago are suddenly now six minutes behind. And Yates, who was second and then propelled to fifth and then had a really good day yesterday or last night for us, is now suddenly three minutes clear in third. So, you know, this top 10 is always fluctuating so much.

I just loved. And what caught my attention on your topic of. What caught your attention on the same theme was Yates told the bike. Bike exchange guys to go to the front and chase down the pack so that, so that Yates had a chance of winning the stage and getting time on his. His competitors. That's a, that's a confident show of strength, in my opinion. And what I love the way Ma White works with his, with his riders, and I just thought that was a really good move and that could have backfired massive. Those guys, you know, those three guys, Cam Meyer and the other guys sitting on the front working their bums off for Yates to have a failure. But, but, you know, he came through and got time back and what a great decision. You know, big risk, big reward. Yeah. But that's probably what we're going to talk about a little bit in, in the today's Top back podcast, which is exciting.

Yeah, absolutely. So, moving into the topic of today's podcast, 11 Hacks to Stay strong in a race. We're just going to get through these. I mean, when we were talking about the hacks to stay strong in a race, we probably could have listed 50, but we picked 11 that we thought could be really helpful to you as the listener. So, number one, it's very obvious, but it has to be said, it could be the theme of our whole podcast and our whole show and your whole coaching philosophy, and that's. Don't go out too hard.

Yeah. And people are probably sick of me hearing it, and it's very boring, very boring coaching advice, but it is the most critical piece of information out of anything that I could tell anybody on race day is, you know, disregard your pace in the, in the water, your power on the bike and your pace as a runner. Disregard that at your peril. And, and you, you must totally be up to date with what you're doing at all stages of the race. So. So going out too hard might feel good, but it's going. You're going to pay for it at some point in the race, whether it's, you know, I can use myself as an example in Hawaii back in 1988, you know, in the dinosaur years, and, and, you know, feeling good with 3k to go on the run and, and then it all fall apart with you know, literally 2K to go where you've got full body cramp and, and you know, and so obviously I didn't measure my effort well. You know it's, it's a, an eight and a bit hour day and, and here I fell short by eight minutes. You know it's, it's like we talked about with banal. It's a three week race, you know and Ironman's a 8, 9, 10, 11, 14 hour day and, and you just cannot go too hard at any point in, in the whole day. You, and you do that at your peril.

Yeah, absolutely. And if anyone that's ever had full body cramps, I've had them once and it is not enjoyable to say the least. I mean think of just a hamstring cramp or a quad cramp and then multiplied by your whole body. Point number two, respect the event. Similar to our theme of what we.

Just said it is and, and ah, there's so much in endurance that you need to respect and that's why I love the sport because you know, you still have to respect 100 meter runner, you still have to respect 50 meter swimmer because, because they have to train for that, you know, for that one, one event and if they make slightest mistake they're going to pay for it then you know, as a hundred meter runner you get the start wrong, your race is over, you can't. But as an endurance event you've got time to cover your mistakes to a degree and if you go too hard you're pretty much doomed. So that's sort of the first thing we talked about but the second one we're on now is definitely respecting the nature of the event. I suppose that the distance is the main thing that I always say. If you don't understand what time you're going to be out there for and you don't measure your effort against that time and that's what respecting the event is. You know, the temperature of the day, the difficulty of the terrain. You know obviously most people are competing against themselves and they want to want to improve against themselves. But we do have a small section of our group that are trying to podium in an age group or pros who are trying to win and we have a cross section of three types of people and you've got people who are new and just want to complete. So you know, you've got to respect the event. And, and I have done the same thing. I've. I have done, you know, I can't remember how many triathlons. It's over 250 triathlons of, you know, that many Ironmans and half Ironmans and, and long course events and Olympics that, you know. And there gets a point where you think, oh, I've got this. And the longer I'm in my career, the more I didn't respect the event until it bit me so badly that I just went, oh, what, what just happened to me? I had a huge failure in, in one of my races and, and it was such a shock to me because I've forgotten about respecting everything about the requirements of the day. I've done this before, you know, and you often hear in, in work and life where I use the example of guys falling off ladders who've been working off ladders for 40 years or been working off scaffold and they have an accident because they've, they've not respected it. You know, it's like the minute you take your eyes off the road, you could possibly have a crash and you. So you have to concentrate every second of the, every minute of the time you're driving. And when you're on a ladder you have to be the same. Just because you've been up a ladder for 50 years doing the same thing doesn't mean you're not going to have an accident. It's the same with, with your event. You've got to understand that just because you've done it before, over and over, that you're just, you know, you should be able to just go through everything that you've done before and tick it off. But if you don't think about it and consciously live the moment of the event, that you are going to pay big time.

It's advice for not only the beginner who's doing the event for the first time and you know, making sure they respect the event that they're about to do. But it's also advice like you're saying to the veteran who might have done it so many times that they risk being complacent and complacency is the enemy of success. And yeah, you see that play out all the time. Happens in sports teams when they have a good run and they're a little bit confident and then they get a little bit of a shock, you know, it might have happened to Melbourne last weekend in the AFL where they've gone on a run of 110 and then they come up against the bottom team in Adelaide and they're a little bit complacent. And then bam. The one of the bottom teams shocks them and gets an upset win.

You see it happen all the time. And that's why we've often laughed amongst our group that to bet on the team that's least likely to win because the team that's, that's unbeatable will lose to that team. Which doesn't make any sense.

It's funny how it always happens.

Yeah, yeah. So, so look, you know, there's so much in, involved in that, you know. And look, the people who are more experienced, they're the ones I'm really talking about, the beginners, the new, the first timers, they've got such fear that they respect the event. And that's the thing. The person who's done it for a long time has lost the fear factor because, because their confidence is skyrocketing because they've, they know that that's not going to be the thing that's going to cause them to falter, you know, the event. So that's the thing I'm telling you is if you don't respect it and you know, if you're under prepared as a newbie, that's just, that's, that's a classic mistake. But normally that doesn't happen. It's more normally the person who's done a lot of it that just gets too complacent, as you said.

Yeah, and my last point on this is that you don't just talk about this when you're thinking about an Ironman or a ultra endurance event. You know, you are talking about respecting any event you're doing, whether that's 100 meter sprint or a sprint distance triathlon or Olympic distance triathlon. Just because they're not as long as a half ironman or Ironman, you still have to respect them. And you would say for a sprint, for example, respecting the event comes into play where you actually have to do a more proper warmup and get your body fully ready to go at an intense pace. Whereas you don't have to do that for a nine member. That's just an example of where respecting the event means different things with different distances.

Yeah, there's a bit of a flow on from that as well, Jord. Respecting the event as 100 meter sprinter. The event is just not the hundred meters, it's that 45 minutes prior so that you don't end up halfway down the track with a torn hamstring. So you are actually prepared physically for, you know, it's 100 meters, all that burst. So that's part of respecting the event. And of course, you know, the endurance stuff because it's done at such low intensity, the injury risk is less. But there's so many other things that can, you know, you can have a horrible day if you haven't respected the swim or the bike and then you get to the run, you end up having to walk. It is not enjoyable. It is such a disappointment to actually know that you've blown it. Not because of anything but stupidity on your behalf of not, you know, respecting what was ahead of you and not focusing on things that were important.

Yeah, absolutely. Hack number three, understand that you are swimming in a washing machine and it is absolute chaos. And so that is what's going to happen. What is the hack there?

Yeah, being okay with that. That's my advice. Don't go into this event thinking that that's not going to happen. And if you do, you're going to be in for a rude shock. And look, it used to be so much worse when all events started as a mass start. And you know, to say that it's easier now is an understatement. Just, you know, to be at Kona with 1500-2000 people starting altogether, you know, that is incredibly intimidating. And now you've got a rolling start which is such a, you know, a more sensible way of, of competing. But you know, if, if you're in a division that starts late, an age group that starts late. And, and I know, I experienced this myself at Shepparton where the aqua bike section was the last category to go. And obviously you've got everybody in the whole field in front of you in the swim. So you've just got a mash of 800 people that you can see with arms and heads and, and you're forever running into the back of people, over the top of people. And the, the swim course at Shepparton had out and back. So all of a sudden I'm having head ons with people who are off course who are coming back. So the hack is be okay and not get overawed by the chaos that is about to happen in the swim leg. And how can you, what is the advice? The advice is be prepared in your training for this to happen on race day. So you know, practice swimming in open water and practice swimming with other people who are going to bump into you and deliberately do it and see how it affects your stroke. And yeah, so I think just being okay and understanding that that's, it's almost like the previous point is respecting what's going to happen and not be shocked that I didn't expect this. This is way more challenging than I ever thought. Well, well, that's, that's what I want you to think about. That's the hack.

It's funny that the first three hacks, you know, most people would think that we're going to give some sort of, sort of, some sort of tip that might be, you know, a physical thing that you can do on race day that will help you go faster. You know, do this with your bike and it'll make you go faster. Whereas the first three are mindset related. And so much of the race, this is all about your mindset. And this is another one. Our saying is be comfortable being uncomfortable because you're going to be uncomfortable in the swim leg. It's going to happen because it's just mayhem. And so you've got to make sure that you're comfortable with that uncomfortableness.

And look, staying strong is the topic. And what are we talking about physically? Yes, of course we're talking about staying strong physically, but how do you stay strong physically if you haven't thought through the process? And, and that is what we're really talking about, what things you should be absolutely concentrating on from start to finish. And that is really the message of this podcast, is what are the key things you should be thinking about for you to stay strong? Yeah, and. Sorry.

Oh, yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, that's spot on. I was going to touch on a bonus hack, but in the, in the swim leg. But you can go.

No, no, I'm happy if you did. To go right ahead with that.

Well, I was going to say the bonus hack that you had in the swim leg recently, and this is not an endorsement because not a paid endorsement, it is absolutely a product endorsement, but we don't get any benefit out of this. But you just found the form goggles. The new form goggles were a game changer in the swim leg. When everything's chaos, to be able to see your time and pace and distance in the swim leg was a game changer.

Yeah. And if someone was looking for an advantage, as you just said, you know, we had to pay for the goggles. We didn't get them for free and I don't need to endorse them, but for me, it was the first time I'd been in a swim for 30 years and I had a little bit of anxiety, I'll absolutely admit that, and wasn't sure about how I was going to go. But having in the screen in my Eyes to know that I was swimming at the pace that I was happy with, even though I'd had to swim over the top of 10 people and I'd run into some other people and I'd had to do breaststroke to get around some other people. And there was so many things that I was thinking, boy, am I swimming slow here. But that kept showing me, without me doing anything, that I was on target with the pace that I wanted to swim. And I had, you know, 1200 to go. Now I have 600 to go. Now I have 400 to go. That was really reassuring that I could relax. And I'm nearly, I've nearly got this now and I'm nearly at the end. Of course I can see the end coming up. But during the event it was me, it enabled me to concentrate on the next 200 meters. Okay, you're swimming at this pace, let's just see what you can hold for the next 200 meters. And that just calmed me down and it enabled me to concentrate on things I can control. And we say that a lot. And that's an example of using an advantage to help me focus on the things that I can control. And what could I control? I couldn't control people around me or the fact that people were smashing me in the head or swimming the wrong direction, having head ons. I couldn't control any of that. But I could actually see that my pace was this and I had this distance to go and, and I could think about, I need to actually swim a little bit more concentrated now because my pace is dropping. So it made me rethink about my stroke and, and the direction I was swimming. So. So that was really helpful.

Yeah. Hack number four is quite simply, don't panic in transition, relax in transition. And depending on the distance, the transition becomes more important. But regardless of the distance, you still need to relax.

Yeah, it's a really good point. You raise. And some events, the transition from getting out of the water to the bike compound is enormous and uphill. And you're spending three or four minutes commuting from the water to the bike compound and getting on your bike and then getting to the start of the get on point of your bike ride and then get the off point to rack your bike and then get your shoes and get out of transition. There's quite a lot of time. And you know, some events it's up to 10 minutes out of your endurance event and you know, if you stop and think about that, people go, oh, I can, I can save if I go flat out. I can at least save a minute on that. And that's true, you can, but what is the cost of that? I just don't think there's value in that. I think you need to be focused on being relaxed. The process from water to bike, you know, and. And I definitely had that process when I was at Shepparton written down. One of my things. I'm thinking, when I get out of the water, I don't want to have my swim goggles and my cap in my hand trying to get the wetsuit undone. I want to have a free hand. So I was going to put my goggles on the top of my head, leave the cap on, and have two free hands to grab the wetsuit strap to undo it. And then I had two good hands to pull it down. And then I would take my goggles and my cap off so that when I got to transition, I could put that down and continue with the derobing of the wetsuit. So things like that in transition will make you more calmer and relaxed. And my goal was not to run hard from the exit of the swim to the bike rack. Why? Because I wanted to keep my heart rate down. I didn't want to start the bike leg with a high heart rate, and I've said that many times in many coaching podcasts. So, you know, it's easy to get sucked in because all of your family are there, everybody's cheering, everybody's watching you, and literally, I was dawdling, and people were flying past me, and that's okay, but. But I got to transition. I calmly did the next step, which was helmet and turn the garment on, and calmly made my way to the start of the bike ride. And looking at my heart rate, it was still really low, and I'd achieve what I wanted. But I Suppose I lost 45 seconds at the most. But I guarantee you, I probably made 10 minutes up by having a heart rate lower than the majority of people who sprinted past me.

Yeah, and you spot on about, you know, the energy cost of high heart rate and stress. It's not worth it when you can, you know, you might be a few seconds slower or maybe up to 30 seconds or a minute in endurance, but if you're totally relaxed, you're putting your body in a good position.

And look, we've got to. We've got to make a little bit of a proviso here. We're talking about the age grouper, and we're talking about probably the first timer. We're not talking about the guy who knows that, you know, two minutes in transition could be the difference between winning and losing his age group or the professional who could lose the race. We're not talking about that. We're talking about guys whose goal is to do a pb. And if you. If you're continually entering races and if you do your transition the same, you're comparing apples with apples. So that's not going to change. You need to change your swim improvement, bike improvement and your run improvement. The transition is important and as I said, it can be up to 10 minutes. But. But at the end of the day, you make more gains where it counts.

As another caveat, you're not saying dawdle, you still move quickly.

Yeah, absolutely. But I must say that I was dawdling when I jumped off the bike with a broken pelvis, so people were looking at me a bit strange. I was actually walking because I couldn't run. So that would be the only reason why you wouldn't be moving faster.

Yeah. Hack number five, another mindset. One, be prepared for anything.

Yeah. And people don't put this into their race strategy. Race plan. Because you could come out of the water and grab your bike and your rear tyres flat and, you know, that has happened that many times. People can't say, oh, that'll never happen. I guarantee that's happened hundreds of times. People over inflating their bikes or the sun, you know, got really hot for the. The inflated rate that they had in their tire, pressure of their bike or just a dodgy tyre or whatever. The reason, you have to be prepared and understand the process you're going to go through to move forward from this point on. And that's just one example. Going around the corner and crashing, that's another example.

Getting a puncture on the course.

Getting a puncture on the course. Dropping your nutrition, losing your bottles. Yeah. There's just. I've had people go the wrong way out of transition, just getting flustered. So having your mind that if this scenario happens and think about it, don't ignore it, my advice is run through. This sounds very negative from a. From a psychological point of view. Run through the things that possibly could go wrong and what I. What are the outcomes you're going to try to achieve? Think about that before it happens and then when it happens, you just go into that mode and oh, yeah, I'm out in the course. I've got the equipment I need in my tire bag. I've got to do this process. Undo the wheel, put the bike down, then take the tyre off, get the levers out, etc, go through the process, you know, and, and practice that beforehand. So, so be prepared for anything. That is my advice. Your. You know, one example, it was so cold at the Hastings Triathlon, I got out of the water, I could not feel my feet and I've, I used to wear orthotics in my shoes and I just quickly rode the bike, obviously. Ran out of the swim, jumped on the bike, no problem. Didn't have any socks on. So I just put cycling shoes on, got off the bike, feet still numb after a 60k bike ride, freezing cold still. And put my running shoes on and didn't realize that I'd moved my orthotics forwards in the running shoe. I couldn't feel my feet and started running and all of a sudden there was blood coming through my shoes. After it was a 20, 20k run and about 10k I was looking down, I could see blood and it was really painful. Once my feet started to thaw out and, and I stopped and took my, my shoe off and I had a blister under my, my shoe that was that big. And what am I going to do about that? You know, I hadn't even, I had never thought of, of, of that could be an issue. And of course adjusted the orthotic, put my foot back into that position and just had to run with the damage.

Kind of done there.

That's right. But, but I, you know, I had to think about it there. What am I going to do? I can barely run. But okay, I've just got to run through the pain. So. And just be aware that things like that can happen.

Yeah.

And don't panic and, and think through the process calmly. That is the advice.

Our next hack is a bit of a big one. A few things to discuss in this. But it's about the bike leg and our overarching thing and you know, from whenever we've talked about a race plan is follow your data, follow your numbers. You said it at the start of the race. Respect event. The event. And don't follow your numbers at your peril. But there is another point you want to make on this and that is follow the numbers. Use all your knowledge that you have gained from training with your numbers and hopefully you've got a clear race plan to stick to. But also it's. It's the flip side of the coin is it's time to race, isn't it?

Yeah. And it sounds a bit contrary to what I've been telling everybody for all of these podcasts and I don't really mention this very often, but unless you're doing it for the first time, then you have nothing to compare yourself with. So the newbie, his goal is obviously to finish and do it as well as he can, and that's normal for everybody. You haven't done it before, so how can you beat your previous best? Because it doesn't exist. But for the person who's doing their second or 20th event, your goal is to be better than you were before. And anybody who says that's not their goal is, is, I don't know, dreaming. Because what would be the reason that you just want to clock up another painful day in an endurance event? You want to actually, you're testing yourself against yourself. And of course, there's the, the age groupers are trying to win, there's the professionals are trying to win, but I'm talking about the everyday person who's really put in the time to prepare and improve themselves. And, and I want you to have all the information about your race plan, about your numbers, about all the data, all the things we've banged on about in every podcast we've ever done, which is talking about, you know, getting knowledge about how to execute your performance. But there's the one thing that we don't ever talk about, and that is to race it. And, you know, it just sounds like the opposite advice. What do you mean, when do I race it? Well, that's. That's the answer to the question, the question to the answer. There are points where, you know, if this test, take an iron man, you don't, you know, say you're trying to do 300 watts for the whole day. You don't do the next five minutes, I'll do 350 because I want to race. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying there is a point where at the 50k mark, where you still need to be boringly patient and follow the data, and at the hundred K, the same, you need to be doing your nutrition, following your data, working out exactly what you should be doing. But at some point at the 130, 140, 150, if you want to beat what you did previously, you need to just slightly up the effort. And that's where the racing part comes in. And as you know, with risk comes reward, but also comes pain and suffering and a bad outcome. So how much are you willing to risk and at what stage of the, of the day should you risk that? And that's the advice I'm giving here, is obviously the closer you get to the finish and the finish is the run leg, then the risks can be, can be greater in the swim if you're going to go flat out, that's miles away from the completion of the day. So the risks quite high. But because it's a three sport event, you can do them as individuals, you know, risk something towards the end of the swim. Is that going to be an advantage? Not really. It's not. You know, you could, you could gain 30 seconds and spike your heart rate. Is that, is that worth risking? I don't think so. In the bike, you know, I've got this bike leg at 150k. I could really smash the last 30k. Is that worth doing? I might get four minutes faster probably, if, if I think that I can run the perfect running race, but if I get off the bike and run poorly, well, that risk wasn't worth it. So I want you to risk running the, the event as a race when you've got control of it, it. So yes, I want you to race it against yourself and you've got to work out yourself when you've got control of it so you can start. And look, if we used Kipchoge's world marathon example of running 41km with 1km splits of 250 and then running the last kilometer of his 42.2 at 2.49, that is a person showing utmost patience, yet still racing.

So he ended up running 243 or something because he just, he just, he let it go and he went for it.

Yeah. And, and you know, what I'm saying is you need to be as patient as you could ever possibly be in an endurance event. And, and therefore, once you have got control of the race like the example of Kipchoge, then you are free to.

Race, especially on the bike leg, which is the point of this hack, is to follow your data. But it's time to race. And what you're talking about here is you've done all this work, you've put in all this time, you've done all this training for this day. So now it's time to test yourself. Now it's time to see what you're made of. You're not holding back anymore in training. You stick to the numbers, you stick to the range. You want to make sure that you can train well on one day, but also be able to back it up the next day and get through your training weeks. But there's nothing, nothing else after this. It's time to give it your all.

Yeah. And look, for those watching the video, I'm holding up my Garmin. That is that my information. That's my bible and that's my reference. That's all it is. I'm going to refer to it to stop me from, as we said earlier, going too hard early, staying in the range, riding the right power. But at some point, I'm a competitor and I want to beat myself from the previous event. So therefore I'm here to race. But using all of the information in training as our reference and we refer to it to help us make better decisions. But at the end of the day, we are here to race against ourselves. And that's, that's the key thing that I want to get the message of. Don't forget to race.

Just to make it crystal clear, what you said before about, you know, if your race plan is 300 watts for the, for the whole event, you know, you're potentially aiming to push yourself and ride 301 or 302, you know, that's what we're talking about in an Ironman, for example. You're not ever saying, yeah, like you said, it's time to race. I'm going to go 350 watts here, I'm going to put in a surge because Jared said to race and I'm going to ride 450 watts up this hill. You know, it's not. That's not the racing we're talking about.

Yeah, but look, you know, at the end of the day, the result we're trying to get is say your bike leg was. Let's use the Ironman. You were a 5:34 rider and you rode the whole event at the top of your range that you thought you could do, which you knew will give you a 5:30. You're four minutes ahead. And as long as you can hold that for the run and maybe run a bit better, you could end up five minutes ahead or six minutes ahead. That's what we're talking about. Riding at one or two watts above for the whole 180k could mean the difference of five minutes. And that's how to race.

Yeah. And that leads us to our next point, which you use this term when you're describing that hack. So hack number seven is you have to be boringly. It's what you call boringly patient or boring consistency. And it's a triathlon. So, you know, with all everything we just said about the bike leg, you know, you want to test yourself. The run outcome will be determined by the setup of the first two legs.

Yeah. So without doubt, the consistency is key, and we call consistency king in our trivalo group. But, but at the end of the day, that is the key to endurance event. It's not how fast you can go at any given point, it's how consistent you can be all day. And so patiently consistent, patient, boringly patient, whatever words you want to use, that is the mantra. And obviously racing it at the end, which is what we just talked about. But without that setup, you can't race the run. And you will be fading in the run if you haven't patiently set your event up. And I just want to get that message across. In order to perform well in the run, you have to set your race up. And that is by being patient and being boring and staying to the, to the data. Because it is a three event race. And if you were just doing a swim leg, just doing a running leg, or just doing a bike leg as an individual sport, then you would pick the pace up on the bike, you would pick the pace up on the swim, and you would pick the pace up in a run at the end. But we don't want to do that in a triathlon. We want to maintain the same pace, maintain on the swim, maintain the same power on the bike and fractionally just go over it. And then on the run is the, that's like when you're on the green as a golfer, you know, getting to the green, can you put the ball in the hole as efficiently as possible? That's, you know, drive for show and putt for dough. It's like running is the same. You know, the running is the result of the setup that you've done for the previous seven hours or eight hours. And if you, if you make a muck up of that and you haven't been patient, then there's no outcome except for catastrophe with the run.

Yep, perfect summary of that exact point. Uh, hack number eight. And this is a very obvious one, but again, it has to be said, um, and that is nutrition, because as you know, nutrition will make or break you. So it's a very simple one to get right if you've done the preparation properly. But the nutrition on the race day will absolutely make or break you.

Yep. And I suppose my, my key thing is when I talk about nutrition with everybody, not one fits solution fits everybody. So everybody has got a different adaptation rate, different requirements, different body size, composition. So there is no one kind of training thing that you can do to yourself. So everybody has different requirements. And so you need to know those requirements before race day. So that would be the key, important thing about nutrition. Understanding in your practice what is going to be effective on race day and remembering that you're going to probably be competing at a little bit higher level than you would in training on those endurance days. You would have done enough training at a higher level in other sessions. But as a racer on race day, you could possibly be burning more fuel than you have practiced in your training days. So you need to understand that that is a possibility. So I think that's probably the first thing that I want to get across. And the second thing is don't ever do something on race day that you haven't practiced in training. And the only exception is if you have actually no nutrition left. And for some reason, whether you've dropped the bottle or you can't find your special needs bag or some bad thing that's happened to you, you have to use the nutrition that's supplied by the course and you've never used it before. That would be the only reason that I would say, fair enough. Because you don't know how your body's going to react to something that you haven't tried before. So that is a really key point to make to everybody. And that is the reason why we practice our nutrition in training, so that come race day, we know exactly how we're going to react. And by taking something that we've never had before and we've still got our own nutrition on board, that's a really bad, bad mistake. Yeah.

And with nutrition, the goal is just to stay strong. And that's what these hacks are about, staying strong throughout the race. And if you stick to your nutrition plan, then you'll keep yourself strong. But just remember that even the pros forget to take their nutrition in the race because you're concentrating so hard on what's happening. You might be fully prepared with nutrition, but you just make the mistake of forgetting, you know, so you just have to put things in place to remind you to take it at this time. You know, what is your plan of I'm going to take this at 30K, this at 60K. And so, you know, a lot of people can use on their bike little notes, you know, in a bike race, in a Gran Fondo, you might have the sections of the race and you can put a little asterisk or something to remind you to take food at that point, because it is easy in the moment to forget to actually take your food and fulfill or execute your nutrition plan.

You can also do a simple thing, George, like Set your Garmin alarm to go off every 15 minutes. And I'm a believer of time rather than distance, because you could be with a tailwind and you get to a point so much quicker, and you could be consuming too much too quickly. So time is a better, better measure. So every 15 minutes, your gamma might buzz and, you know, oh, time to drink, time to eat, or whatever. So they're really helpful little, little things to use on race day.

Hack number nine, do not, under any circumstance, follow someone else's plan.

Yep. And for those who've listened to a lot of the podcasts, I did talk about this way back in a few years ago, and. And it is, if you know someone in an event and they're somehow ahead of you or catching you, and that's not happened before, and you are too competitive or too proud to let that person go, that could be the end of your day. And it did happen to me in an event where someone who never got near me on a bike ride and possibly could catch me on the run, caught me on the bike ride and passed me, and I abandoned my whole race plan and stuck near them, only to run the worst I'd ever run in my life. And. And I followed someone else's race plan. And how did I know that, you know, that person was right or wrong in his plan? It turned out that person wasn't running at all. He was just doing a swimming bike. And I'd followed the plan of someone who wasn't doing the same event as I was. And you know, what a stupid decision I made there. You know, you have a plan. The majority of the rest of the field don't. They're just going by feel, so they should be actually following you rather than the other way around. So don't get sucked in to people that you may know that are doing something different on race day. It could be adrenaline, it could be that something's not working on their power. You just don't know what's going on with them. So this is not the time to follow someone else's plan.

Especially that's. Don't follow someone that you know. In that case, don't ever follow someone that you don't know because you just have no idea about their ability, what they're doing, what they're planning is anything.

Yeah. And you know, me mentioning following someone that you do know would make a little bit of sense, but it makes less sense if you. If you follow someone that you actually don't know, you don't know anything about their preparation or their ability. So don't be a sheep and follow someone else. That's. That's one of the best advices we could give.

Yeah. Hack number 10 is pay attention to your core body temperature. It's really important, especially in the longer races or races in warmer climates, not to overheat.

Yeah. I think it's one of the few times I'm a really big fan of heart rate and getting feedback from the heart rate data, especially if you're in a. Let's just take Cairns for example, which is coming up. A lot of the local Queenslanders would be totally temperature adapted to the conditions. And a lot of the people coming from Tasmania or Victoria or South Australia would not have the same practice in training in those humidity and heat conditions in the last sort of four or five weeks. So heart rate's a really good indicator of how your body's coping with the stress. And at the end of the day, you need to take note of that. And if you allow your heart rate to go into the red zone, even though you might not be actually riding hard or running hard, it's just the temperature that's causing your body to overheat, which will spike your heart rate. You need to be listening and watching that and you need to pull back when you start to see your heart rate, which normally should be. You should be racing in Ironman. For your own particular. I'm just using example. Mine might be 145 is the number I don't want to go over, but on a day where I'm in a hot climate, I could see 155. I have to slow down, otherwise I'm not going to complete the event. I'm going to actually, you know, go slowly, progressively worse.

Yeah. And it's, it's quite a simple one and it's a little bit hard to, you know, measure that accurately or scientifically, so to say. But it's something to really pay attention to.

Yeah. And look at understanding what your normal heart rate is against in an endurance training session. This is so easy to monitor. You know, what have I been averaging as a say? I've been doing three by one hour. If it's, you know, what is my average heart rate for that hour? The first hour is always lower than the third hour. And a sign of good fitness is if you can have your heart rate the same for all three hours. But, you know, as your body temperature rises and your fatigue level rises and your need for fuel rises, the heart rate goes up. So you would have a good idea of what is a good functioning heart rate that you can sustain all day in training. So when you come to race day, look back at what the heart rate average, you know, where did you get your max? What, you know, what time of the ride were you getting a max? Obviously we're trying to not think about hills here, which if you're on a flat course, if you start to see your heart rate spiking, you know, it's, you need to pull back straight away and you have to have another race plan there if the temperature's creating this problem. And you know, some races have been held in 40 degree temperature and you cannot expect to do the same times in that event that you have done before because the temperature will prevent that and only the people who've been training in 40 degrees for three or four months will be able to cope with that. So don't have expectations of the same time or trying to, you know, you can only compare with the day's conditions from other events. So as we said earlier, when you're trying to do a PB in an event, these are things you have to take into consideration. You know, the conditions on the day, was it freezing cold, was it boiling hot, was blowing a gale. So definitely the body temperature and using heart rate are really useful tools in an endurance event. As you progress through the event, they're not much good at the start of the swim, bike and run because there's the lag periods and we've talked about that a lot in the podcast. But once you're into your journey, it is something to monitor.

Yeah. And lastly, to finish off, our last hack of the day is hack number 11. To stay strong, you have to muster up every single thing that you've got. You have to draw on everything you have because this is your race.

Yeah, it's good that this is the last point because we are really, I suppose a lot of the theme is mental toughness and drawing on every single thing that you've ever done in your training up until this point is going to help you on race day. And examples. I've, you know, if I'm starting to feel like, oh, this is getting, this is getting pretty hard, you know, at the 170k of the bike and can't wait to get off this bike. And I'll start to think about, well, I did six rides that were longer than this and they were on hotter days than this and, and I'd had a hard training week, I am fresh, this is my day. These are the things that you should be thinking about. And mentally strong. That is how you allow your brain to control the outcome and draw on those experiences of hard training days and sacrifices you made. And then in the run at the 20k mark, you've still got 22ks to go and you're thinking, oh, my God, I am really battling here. But believe me, most other people are battling as well. You're not on your own. Think like that. Am I the only one having trouble today? No. This is an endurance event where most people being pushed to their limit and if they're not, they're not racing. So the person who can stay in the moment and not think too far ahead, and that's the strategy you should be thinking about, you know, in the middle of the bike section. Oh, boy, I've got 90k to go. Why would you possibly be thinking about that except for to measure your effort? That would be the reason. But other than that, it shouldn't be. I can't wait for this to finish. That's the wrong thing to be thinking about. You should be concentrating on, what's my cadence, what's the course conditions? Am I on uphill or a downhill? What's the head wind doing or the tailwind? How's my pedaling action? And if you keep thinking like that, before you know it, the bike section's over. Then as the run comes, it's going to get tough. There's going to be shocking periods during the run where you're just thinking, oh, my God, this is. This is way more harder than I ever thought. Stop thinking about those things and thinking about what pace was I running the last K in? Was that too hard? Do I need to ease up? Is my heart rate rising? Do I need to pull back? When's the last time I had a drink? Don't think about how far to go. Think about what you're doing in the moment. Every step you're taking. Is my. Is my form good? Have I had enough cooling on my head? You know, these are the things that everybody should be concentrating on in the moment things rather than at the end. Just, you know, if you start thinking like that, it's going to be a long, dreary day.

That's such a good point. Because from a mindset perspective, all those questions that you're listing, not only are they firstly ways to perform better, because if you're asking yourself those questions constantly, we've spoken about how that's going to improve your performance, because you're going to be constantly focusing on your numbers and your plan and you're going to execute a good performance overall. But secondly, they are doing exactly what you just said. They're keeping you in the moment. And most of our perceived pain comes from thinking too far ahead. You know, obviously it's painful in the moment, but it's doubly as painful when you're feeling the pain in the moment and thinking about the pain in the future, you know, so what you're saying about staying in the moment is it might not make it hurt much less in the moment, but at least it takes away some of that pain thinking about the next 90k or the fact that there's 10k to go on the run. So you might as well do that to yourself. Give yourself that advantage by having that mental concentration to stay in the moment, and that will help the rest of your performance.

Yeah. And we've given a lot of examples over the podcast about going through way beyond where you've ever gone before. And we're not advocating people to abandon their health, but. But this is the time you've trained for. So I don't want to say wuss out, and that's not what it's about. But be true to yourself and all the things you've sacrificed at work for this is the time to stand up and be ready, like we talked about in the swim at the start, be ready for the washing machine effect, be ready for the pain. And how am I going to deal with it? Am I ready for this challenge? And that's what I throw back to you, is, you know, you're listening to this podcast because you're searching for any advantage that you can get on race day. And I'm giving you the most effective thing that I've ever used in my own performances, and that is, am I up for this challenge? And if you can answer that question, shit, yeah, I'm up for this challenge, then you'll have a great day.

Yeah. To summarize that, I'd say that the most effective thing you can do for your performance once you get to race day, given you've done all the physical preparation, is use your mind. You know, your mind is your best asset at that point. And like you just said, you are going to experience pain. You are. There's no doubt it's going to be uncomfortable. You wouldn't be racing properly or pushing your body to its limit if you didn't feel extremely uncomfortable on the day. And so it's how you deal with that that's important. And when you're in that moment, you have to ask yourself, you know, what am I going to do here? What kind of effort am I going to put in that at the end of the race, once I finished, am I going to be proud of how I pushed through at that point of what I did, or am I going to be disappointed in myself? And that's a little bit extreme, but that's the questions you got to ask yourself.

But it's so easy to live with yourself, Jordan, in the next hour, the next four hours, the next day, and you look back and you go, I'm pretty proud of that. I could not have done any better. And you know, in your own mind, whether you've stood up to the challenge or whether you've faulted a little bit, and if you're transparent with yourself and no one else is judging you, it's just yourself. And I certainly am most disappointed with the times that I didn't stand up and accept the challenge and I wished out and that stuck with me and made me so much determined for the next time that I was never going to do that again. And look, I'm probably talking extreme competitiveness here, but as I say, people are listening for some advantage. And I can give you that will. That's worth 10%. You know, if you've got the strongest mind on the day, you can beat anybody. You can beat your own, your own self from the previous event because you're so much tougher.

My last, my last point on this is I've been watching the bike exchange highlights. Each day they do a little five minute highlight of the Duros and they've been following Simon Yates's journey very closely because he's obviously coming third. And at the end of each day, they get him on the bus after the stage, say how you're feeling. And there are some days when he is absolutely exhausted, but he keeps saying, every single day he shrugs his shoulders and says, up did my best. And that's all I can ask for. And no matter what the result was, he's happy with himself because he's done his best. And some days the results really good. Some days the results. He's lost three minutes, but he still shrugs his shoulders and says, I did my best. Because he knows he's giving everything. And so if on race day you give your best and it's not a PB or you're having a shocking day, but you still push through and you gave your best, that's unbelievable as well.

Yeah. And look, I'm not saying wuss out. Yeah. I've got to clarify that. And I don't want it to come across the wrong way. I'm absolutely saying if, you know, if you've mentally toughed out to a point where you can barely move or you can't, you can't ask for any more, that is your best effort on the day. But you know yourself what's not your best effort. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's a great way to finish off. It was an absolutely packed podcast. 11 hacks to stay strong. Hopefully these hacks can help you stay strong on race day. If you've got a race coming up. If you're racing Iron Man Cans, a big good luck to you from us at Trivello. We hope these tips can help you, and other than that, we'll see you in the next episode. Sam.