11-min Half Mara PB and 34 Watt FTP Gain [CASE STUDY]

This week's athlete case study is a triathlete of ours, Beth. Beth has improved across basically every area of every discipline of the triathlon in just four months of training with us. And since starting some good structure, we're going to go through some epic improvements including a 30 watt FTP improvement on the bike, a half marathon PB of 11 minutes. She just ran her fastest 5 kilometer ever at the back end of an Olympic distance triathlon. But it's not just about the training, it's about your confidence in the execution which we want to touch on as well. So dad, as always, we want to start with where was the athlete when they came to us and what was ability like?

Yeah, Beth was interesting. She was not confident in her ability as a triathlete, as a bike rider, a swimmer and a runner, not confident enough to engage a coach. That's how she felt. She wanted to put that off until she felt she was a better athlete. And it was great that she reached out. Actually her boyfriend reached out first and we, we started coaching him and she saw what he was getting in his program and she immediately wanted to join. So, so yeah, it's, it's a really good story of someone who didn't believe they were a good enough athlete to get some coaching. And once she got some structure into her program, then her progress was, you.

Know, straight away, yeah, let's clear that misconception up straight away because that we do get that a lot where people either say, yeah, we don't feel like we're at a good enough level for your coaching or any coaching, that is just absolutely not true. And in fact, the earlier you can get some coaching and some structure, the less time you'll waste, you know, because someone that was self training like Beth and her partner was, you know, they're probably just making too many mistakes and you're not getting the most out of yourself. And when you get the right structure and guidance and coaching, you immediately start improving. And you know, from April this year, 2023 to August, it's just been a phenomenal journey. And so yeah, I guess let's just go straight into where is she now? Four months of training take us through.

That point you made realizing when she would see what was doing in his training and, and I think it was an aha moment for her to say, oh, is that as straightforward as it is? It wasn't complicated, it was really simple program to follow. And straight away she had a purpose and a goal for every single session rather than waking up saying what am I going to do today, I feel like doing this and had no real rhyme or reason as to what training session she was going to do on any particular day she was training, there's no doubt about that. But it had no formality about it to get, you know, the best intensity or the best recovery or the best measure of where she was at. And one of the other things she's done very well is communicate how she's feeling. And there's been many days and weeks where we've adjusted her program because she just hasn't been able to feel well enough to do the intensity that I've asked her to do. And that's really been a difference as well, her getting to know her body a bit better as to whether she can actually do the sessions for that week or that day and be okay with adjusting down. And then we've also talked about be okay with going to the top of the range if you're feeling good and not going way beyond that range. And and of course knowing what her ranges were. And that's something she actually really didn't have any idea about either. Never ridden to power and not really raced as a runner to to pacing properly. And really quickly she learned how to execute in training in the ranges we set and how to how to run in the zones that we asked her to. And then a couple of fun events such as park runs and some sea race triathlons where they were able to go and practice their execution. And not only 5k park runs but 10k races and half marathons where we deliberately put her into in the middle of her training block so that she could experience execution. And I've got to say, she is really the A grade student in really learning quickly how to measure her effort in training and transfer that across to her races. And she's done a great job, in fact so great a job that she shocked herself and gets so much confidence out of these events because she's going wow, I can do that. Whereas the pre race discussion plan we have is I'm telling her what I think she can do and she's saying I'm not sure I can do that. And as we'll explain later on in this little video, the times that she's been able to do, she hasn't believed it before the race and after the race she has a completely different mindset about wow, I can do those times and what more can I do next time?

Yeah, that's absolutely really important point that we want to touch on. I mean we'll just quickly Go through some of her results more specifically and on the bike. An FTP improvement of 159 to 193 watts, that's 34 watt improvement in four months. And anyone that starts a structured training program from no structure can expect improvement, but not always that dramatic. And that is a progression we see from a lot of athletes going on to good structure. But I guess that's the lesson is once you get it, you will see that improvement.

Yeah, and as you said, it's not an expectation, but you will improve because you actually understand how to ride the sessions in the correct zones and your body will get used to reflecting on the power coming back at you. Whereas when you're riding to feel, you're not sure you are riding as hard as you can, but you're not sure whether it's actually hard enough or too hard. So I think that exact training, just by simply getting a power meter onto your bike and you, you don't have to be an elite athlete to have a power meter. You can be a beginner and learn how to use the power meter properly, which is what we spent the first couple of weeks doing. Just saying, here's your number. We test you on this number, train to this number. And she got the hang of it within three training sessions. And for someone who hasn't come from using that information, she just adjusted to that immediately.

Yeah. In the run leg, her goal was to break two hours for the half marathon and she had a PB of 2 hours 11 minutes. And just recently she ran 2 hours and 30 seconds. So while she, she didn't quite break the two hours this time around, it's been a very short period for her to wipe off a whopping 11 minutes of the half marathon, which is just awesome to see. And no doubt she'll break two hours very soon in the future. And one other point I wanted to make was that she just ran a 10k time of 52 minutes at the back end of a Olympic distance triathlon. And at the very start in April when she started coaching, she did a fresh 5 kilometer park run time trial and she ran 5:21 pace. And then on the weekend, the back half, her second half of five cases at the end of an Olympic distance triathlon, she's ran 520 pace. So she's run the same pace. What she could do fresh four months ago at the back end of triathlon. I think that's absolutely outstanding.

Yeah. And another stat that if the listeners want to hear, put it into a race perspective. Her last Olympic distance, which was four or five weeks ago, she ran 5:30 pace off the bike. And this weekend, and she actually won her age group this weekend. And I think that's one of the first times she's been on the podium. She ran 5:20 pace, so 523 pace. Sorry. So she actually improved 10 or 11 seconds per kilometer in the space of four weeks. And her 211 PB half marathon, she got that down to 206 and then in training and then 204 and then she, she got it down to just over two hours. So that progression happened over that period and each time she, she did a PB improvement on that half marathon and any of the other training sessions, it was just like, oh, I can do this now. And her confidence that she was getting every time she set a new mark, she got really good perspective and good confidence around her newfound running ability. And that's the thing that having feedback and analysis from your events and having the race plan discussion, you get to really have a clear understanding of what your numbers are in terms of power, in terms of running pace. And therefore once you've done these things, you actually just get this new inner self belief. And even though we talked about in the last triathlon you can do these times, that inner belief still wasn't there before the race. And then after the race, her text messages were far out. I should trust the process. I've done it again. I'm passing so many people at the back end of the race. My second half is stronger than my first half and I should really just trust, trust everything that we should have, you know, that we did plan. I should trust that more and it will get the outcome that I want and even more. And I think I could run harder next time. So all these things are coming back, you know, after the event when you have such a really good race plan and strategy and you execute it.

Yeah. And I do want to touch on the swimming because it's a really important point for us is that in these podcasts we're not trying to exaggerate any results. These are all factual, recorded data. We record the data of every single test, every single race that our athletes do. And so we want to highlight any good or bad result. And the swimming, the time trials have stayed the same. That's a really important point to make. We want to touch on what we think of that because we don't want to put pressure on athletes to have to improve every single test because that just can't happen infinitely. You know, eventually Principal dimension returns will happen. But it's interesting, at the start of a program, her swimming hasn't progressed. And from our perspective, we've spoken about this before, that is because we do not put a major focus on swimming, especially early on. So for us it's kind of expected that the athlete either might stay the same or slightly improved just because they've got a bit more struct. So I will say she did, in all the time trials, she's remained the same time, she did do a wetsuit tt where she improved, but that would be expected in a wetsuit and also in an actual race, she wrote she swam faster, which is wetsuit to wetsuits. That's also a good outcome. But we're not trying to shirk that fact. But we will say we, we expect that to happen because we're just not putting the same emphasis on the swim training and putting the same time into it. Because earlier in the program we do really want to focus on the run and bike execution improvement.

Yeah, and I make that very clear at the start of the program. We want to maintain your swimming fitness so that you can actually execute the bike and run not as fatigued. So you still need to train in the pool. We want you to concentrate on your fitness in the pool swimming sessions and we want you to concentrate on your technique. And because we're only doing a minimum of two sessions per week, the expectation is that that won't, that won't allow you to improve vastly. But we know that an athlete like Beth has got so much potential to improve on the bike. And as a runner, if we spent the same time in the pool, we might get another 30 seconds or 45 second improvement or even a minute. But if we really concentrated more on the bike and the run, we might get as we've seen, an 11 minute improvement over half marathon and possibly a 20 minute improvement over 90k on a 90k time trial. Well, so, you know, they're the things that we focus on because we find that that's going to be getting you bigger bang for your buck.

And so we always want to say, what did we change? What do we actually do? And the exciting thing about this is this was probably a very standard go to style of training and structure for us because it's very easy for this type of athlete who hasn't had this structure before for us to come in and go, well, here's our go to stuff that we kind of know works. And it really comes down to that, that structure, that consistency. And we will give Everyone the secret sauce, because everyone always says, what did you actually do specifically? We'll answer that in a second to finish off this episode. But that thing, was there anything else you want to mention on that? Because you really harp on that, that the athlete has to have the confidence in their ability to not just do the training, but then execute it on race day.

Yeah, and, and look, their first discussions were, I don't know if I'm good enough for the, for the training you, you are going to give me. And I'm trying to reiterate back to her that we're going to train you at your level. And if you come to us with a level of 110 watts as your FTP and you're a 7 minute per kilometer runner, then that's where we start. That's. So we test you at the start so that we can find out where your level is and you train to those numbers. And then once you realize that, it was like, oh, unreal. These are my training numbers and as long as I train to these numbers, I will start to improve. And that's exactly how we did it. So the particular sessions we did hit us with something.

What are some go tos? What do we look at in kind of a standard training structure?

Well, let's run across the swimming. So in the two swim sessions, we mix it up to a VO2 style swim session where there's lots of short hard efforts trying to really get the cardio system working where you're huffing and puffing. And the other session is more relatable to the event where we're trying to do some endurance swimming. So sections where you're doing maybe a 400 or 600 or 800 and those two sessions are really going to get you fit to be able to do the ride and run the way you want to. So that's the goal achieved there. And you may improve on the bike. We want to concentrate on three sessions. We want to concentrate on getting VO two sessions in. What does that mean? That means training at an intensity that's well above your threshold that you're going to race at. And so we're doing a combination of those sessions where 60 seconds on, 30 seconds off, 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off. So that's going to really push you to the maximum power number that you can achieve. And she did those sessions no problem. I say no problem. They were hard, but she got the range as she was meant to. And the other high intensity session was training at around that threshold and trying to at the start get her strength up. So we did some threshold training with low cadence. And so that really started to get her stronger on the bike. And then the third session on the bike, which is the key one, was the endurance. And we grew that endurance session from an hour to an hour and a half to two hours. And then now she can ride three hours over that period. So she's got confidence in her ability to stay out there longer and not fatigue. And then we concentrated on getting her nutrition to be involved in that endurance session. So that was two, two aspects of triathlon that we concentrated on. And the run was being as consistent as possible and not trying to injure her. So no intensity on the run, but doing regular runs off the bike and doing some aerobic training. And then the key one was her long endurance run, which we grew from 60 minutes up to, you know, two hours. So it was very basic structure, but it had progression in it and it started her level and her level continued to grow. So we adjusted by testing her. And each time we tested we readjusted her new numbers. And so therefore she continued to train at the level she was at.

Isn't it incredible that with no intense running sessions, just with that strength, that endurance, that heel work, the strength on the bike that translates so well, you know, you can have an 11 minute improvement in the half marathon. That is just awesome. And we'll read out a quote that she said after her latest race where she said she's just so happy with how much she's approved. She even surprised herself with how fast she ran or actually read it verbatim. So how she said it, I felt so good, especially in the back half, so good catching people and getting on hills. I'm surprised how fast the run was considering the hills. And I think that's just a good indication of the result. And you know, in terms of reward application, you mentioned it before, but she won her age group on the weekend, the 19 to 29 year old age group. And that's just a nice cherry on top to cap, to cap off all this improvement.

Yeah, and I think, you know, not being a person who's a podium experienced person, it's so much fun for her to actually improve at that rate. And these are, these are not insignificant races, but you know, you can only race who's in the event and if you happen to be good enough, then that's great. And the point you made before.

At.

The start of most people's programs, we have to look at the athlete as a runner in particular and see what their Experience is if they come to us and they're very experienced runner, we will have some intensity in their running program because their body is used to it. If someone comes to us and they're someone like Beth, who's not done a lot of races and not been a prolific runner and done a lot of kilometers, we don't need to start with any intensity. And look at the results we got with no running intensity whatsoever. We've improved incredibly in all of her running times with no intervals and all we've done is build her strength and both of those have come from the right and some of her running training. But there's no hard running sessions, no track sessions, nothing like that. We've stayed away from that so that she can absorb the load in her training from the other sessions she's doing and it stopped her from being injured. And even then she still started to get tight with her body and we had to re assess, you know, at the 12 or 13 week mark where she'd eliminated a lot of her stretching out of her program because she's so busy training. But we have to reintroduce that so that she's doing that as consistency as she is training.

That's a great way to finish. It's a really good case study, really good example of an athlete sticking some good structure in just a four month period and what can happen. And I'm sure we'll be doing another episode on her partner Ben as well. So congratulations, Beth. Some great results so far. We can wait to see how it continues. Thanks for listening to another case study and we'll see you on the next episode.