3 Essential Bike Workouts For Triathletes/Cyclists

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo 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. Welcome to today's episode. We are in a pretty good mood today because it's the first day of spring, the sun is out, and we've got an exciting topic to talk about. But before we get into the topic, just a reminder, if you haven't, you can join our free Facebook community at. The link for that is in the in our bio or in the description of this podcast episode. And also if you enjoy our podcast, please remember to leave us a comment and a review. It really does help us and get the word out of our podcast and information to other athletes like you who benefit from it. So today's topic we are exploring the best training sessions on the bike to make you a well rounded Ryder. And last week we spoke about what we believe to be the best value running session. And today we're going to really go into detail about what type of sessions could help you specifically become a better athlete. And every athlete is slightly different, so some sessions might be really beneficial to you that you hadn't thought of yet. But before we get to the topic, as always, we want to start with our gratitude segment, reminding you to find something that you are grateful for in your week, especially in these lockdown times. So dad, what are you grateful for today?

That's a great question. And really I've been just on the sideline before I get into my gratitude. It's, it's so. It's also a gratitude, I suppose I've got two really, which I shouldn't do, but I'm just grateful that there's no rules on gratitude. 7 We're actually the feedback I'm getting from the podcasts. I'm really grateful to be able to help people and it's really great that people comment and say how much value they're getting out of our free coaching tips. And I just love that it's for us to be able to help anybody on their journey. There's a lot of people out there struggling with knowing what to do and how to train and how to plan and if we can help someone improve 1%, we've done our job and that's the value of podcast. It's a free coaching, almost free coaching call. And I think I'm just wrapped that people are getting value out of it. So I'M very grateful for that. But I was going to say I hate winter and I'll do anything but spend a winter in Melbourne. And unfortunately, in the last two years, that's been prevented. And I can't wait for spring. And as soon as I see the buds on the trees, I know spring's coming and winter's finishing. So, of course, the first day of spring today, which by the time this podcast comes out, it'll be next week, but the day is 24 degrees, blue sky, and that's fantastic. I'm just so grateful to be alive and experiencing some sun on my back and knowing that the next three or four or five months are going to be better weather, and it just puts a smile on your face.

I could not agree more. And on your first point about getting good feedback from the listeners, I mean, the podcast originally started just for our travel athletes, but then we ended up putting it on a public forum and we just can't believe how big it's gotten and how big our audience has gotten. And we keep getting comments from different corners of the world. And in fact, we've been getting some people from around the world joining Trivalo as Trivalo coach athletes now. And we've now got athletes in China, Hong Kong, the uk, Costa Rica, Brazil. The. The most unique one was. I can't remember the awesome. There's like central. It's like an island in Central America. I apologize to our new athlete who's from there, but I can't remember the country name, but it is really exciting. So I agree with you on both those gratitudes. And for me, I was actually thinking the other day, we don't want to spend too long on gratitudes in the podcast was just something we like to do at the start to remind you to be grateful for something. And for myself, I was thinking, geez, when it's crap weather and when you're suffering a bit of lockdown fatigue, it's the hardest time to be grateful. But it's the most important time to find things to be grateful for. And mine is a simple one. This week on Friday night, my housemates and I were sitting around and saw a parcel at our doorstep. And I went and got it, and it was from mum. And Mrs. Donnelly had sent me in my house a box of cookies. And it's actually those little acts of kindness that are really nice. And I really am grateful for people that do things like that. And there must have been a hole in the box because all the cookies were gone on Sunday night. Yeah, it Brought us a lot of joy over the weekend. So that's, that's my gratitude for this week.

Can I add to that? When I see her making cookies or hedgehog, I yell at stop making. I don't want to eat it. I love eating it, but I don't want to eat it because I know it's not good for me.

Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly my housemates reaction because it's not the first time she's done something like that. And they all say no and then start stuffing their faces and say why she do this? You know? Anyway, so next, next segment for their podcast is what has caught your attention? And dad, you're in a new bike that's caught your attention.

Yeah, interesting. And there's a point I want to get across to everybody out there. If you're used to riding the one bike and then you change bikes, no matter how good a job you try to do to set it up the same as the old bike, it isn't the same. And you need a little bit of adjusting time. So that's the first thing, that's the first thing that caught my attention. The second thing is obviously we bang on about power and how important it is to train to and to race to and to get the value out of each training session by actually training at the right power number. And I do a session on Tuesday with this new bike and I'd totally forgotten that I had a different power meter on the bike and the session was, you know, whatever the session is, it's one minute efforts and I've got a starting point that I use for a signpost and a finishing point, I use a tree. And I know that it's one minute. I've been doing this session for over 12 years, so I know how I'm going. Depending on how long it takes me. It's supposed to be one minute. If I'm going crap, it'll take me one minute four, one minute five. And I know that, I know I'm not informed and I just suck it up and whatever the power is, the power is. But when I'm really interested in getting fitter and getting into shape and almost getting to the race ready phase, I should be getting there in 58, 57, 56 seconds. And I know that's good feedback. And of course the power will reflect that because It'll be, for example, 3, 90 watts if it's a minute 5 and 410 if it's 58 seconds. So they're the numbers I know from 12 years of doing it anyway, on Tuesday, I just totally forgotten that I was on a different bike. And I got halfway up the hill in the one minute. I'm going far out. My power sucks today. I'm not going anywhere near where I should be. My Watts were at 380 or 390. And I got to the corner, I looked out the time where the post was for the finish, and it was 54 seconds. And that's the time that I would do if I'm in great form. And it was just a reminder that you really need to pay attention to things like changing bikes, changing power meters. Because if I didn't know that the finish line was there and just gone by the power, I'd be saying, geez, I suck today. But in fact, it was the complete opposite. I am flying today and the power is reading low on this power meter compared to the old bike. And then for the rest of the session, my mind was at ease, that I could be. I think it was nearly, it was really nearly 12 to 15 watts lower than my other bike. And that can happen between power meters. And by knowing where the minute finish was, that gave me that instant feedback of, right, my new number for today is somewhere around 400 instead of being 410 or 4 15. And sure enough, every effort I did for the next nine, I was getting there in between 54 and 56 seconds. And it was 400 watts. And I was totally satisfied, happy with the session. Had I not had that information feedback, I would have finished the session going far out, 10 watts lower than I've been before. That's a crap session. But do you see what I'm saying here? You have to know all the information to analyze whether you're doing it well or not. And it's just such an important point, I think that that caught my attention. I thought, this needs to be told.

It absolutely makes sense. And it's just a reminder, isn't it, that we. Power is our biggest training tool. You know, it is what we just thrive off to use, but it is not the goal. You know, the goal is to get from point A to point B faster. And power is just our tool to do that. But you can easily forget that. And we do have a lot of athletes that forget that sometimes. And it's so important to not fall to the trap of focusing on more power as the goal. And remember that, yeah, getting to A to B is always faster, is always, always the higher goal.

What you've just said is 100% accurate. We do need to know our power, but as long as it's reading consistent. And then it can be a useful tool. The minute it's not consistent, then it becomes actually a negative. And the mindset can change by you getting poor information back because it could be 5% out. So there's so much about that that, that's important to know. But, but in any. Anything we do, we are really trying to get from A to B as fast as possible. And whatever, whatever method we use, you know, that's the tools we have at our disposal. And power just happens to be one. You know, aerodynamics, the type of bike you've got, there's so many things that we talk about, but our goal is to get from A to B as fast as possible.

So.

So speed in the quickest time. They're our goals.

Yeah. And what you're saying is you really need to pay attention to as many facets of your data and your training and your performance as possible. Because if one fails, like power, you need to know the others so you can really get an accurate measure of how you're doing. Yep. What caught my attention is I wanted to touch on the Paralympics. Obviously, it's another two weeks of epic sport on epic news. It's great to watch it all. It's not good for product be once again just like the Olympics. It's a lot of. A lot of time being distracted. But for me, my favorite events in the Paralympics are the guided events. The category is usually T T something and I love watching the runners because I just think it takes such on the track. It takes such discipline and trust in a training partner to you and you're putting your Olympic performance in the hands of each other, you know, and they have to be so well trained, so in sync, so aligned in how they run to be really in sync and push each other along. But more specifically, the. The power triathlon on the weekend really gave me goosebumps. The teamwork they had with the guide was so special. And for me, I just thought watching a lot of them cross the line, it was so emotional. And for the middle winners, it was doubly as emotional because you imagine the feeling as a solo athlete if you win a medal and how satisfying that is. And sometimes triathlon or cycling can feel a bit like an individual sport and we know it's not. But you spend so many hours training on your own. But really it takes a team for any athlete to complete triathlon or cycling event, you know, the age grouper, it takes their family or their partner or their friends around them or their people. Closest to them to help get them there. It takes teamwork, it takes a lot of effort. It takes a great relationship and teamwork between the coach and the athlete. Um, and so for on the weekend to see these athletes be able to share these moments together across the line, I just thought that was so special because when they, when they met all, they were able to just hug each other straight away and know the amount of hours that they put in side by side. Um, yeah, I just absolutely loved watching that. And yeah, it reminded me of the atmosphere at, you know, triathlon events where doesn't matter what time you finish the 70.3 in, for example, when, if you're a four hour age group or if you're a six and a half hour age grouper, when you cross the line, you've got your family there and they give you a big hug and they're just as stoked. No matter what time you did, it was just, it's just a really cool reminder of how nice sport is. And all these moments combined I just really enjoyed. So that caught my attention.

Yeah, it's a really good one, Jordan. I just take my hat off to those, you know, the assisted running events. Far out. I would be scared that the guy that I'm helping is better than me and I'm holding him back on a particular day and I wasn't informed. Yeah, but boy, you have to be well matched, don't you? Yeah. And trust, trust in, you know, I'm passing. We're now passing someone. We need to move slightly out.

Yeah.

Now we need to cut back into the inside lane.

Yes.

You have to be talking the whole time, communicating about where you are on the track and how the times are going and, and you know, are you feeling okay? You just think about how much is involved in, you know, when you're on your limit, how hard it is to talk. Um, and you know, he's supposed to give feedback back.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

It's an incredible. Yeah, it's really good one.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, moving into today's topic, let's get into the meat of the episode. And I want to start off, dad, by asking you what is your favorite bike session and why?

Great question. And I'm really excited about this topic because there's so much to it and it seems like it's a really basic answer, but I just love racing my bike. I just love racing. And it's not a training session. Um, I love training, but I train to race. Um, and I'm not going to be racing to train the Other way around. So the favorite thing I love doing is racing my bike. Um, or just riding my bike. Um, so as I said to you before, it's like you asking me which of my four children do I like the most? I love riding my bike. Whether it's racing, training or whatever. I love all of my children equally. But really the question is, that's such.

A coach's answer, by the way.

Now look, I favor you, Jordan, over all of the others. I don't think the others will be very happy about that answer.

I don't think they listen to the podcast. Anyway.

Anyway, we digress there. But yeah, look, as a training session, if I put my, my triathlon head on, I know, I know what session is going to give me more an idea of how I'm going to race. So I would pick the sub threshold session. But then if you ask me what's going to give me more value, then I'd pick another session. So yeah, it depends on how you ask the question and what the purpose is. So I've got lots of answers to that. It's not very helpful at the moment, but we can dig into it a bit and get an understanding of what I mean by that.

So let's dig into the specificity of the sub threshold session. So you picked that because if you've got your triathletes hat on, you find that more specific. So what is so specific about the sub threshold session and why would you choose that as your first option?

Well, the answer is to do with what's your event and the particular event as a triathlete that I love is the 70.3 half Ironman. Uh, yeah, I love the Ironman, love the Olympic distance as well. But, but I, I think what event suited me better was a Half Ironman. Um, even though I was able to win an Ironman, but, but that, you know, the Half Ironman, you can race it as compared to an Ironman where you really, you're battling the day as well. Um, and you're not racing as much. It's more about patience and, and steady state. Whereas the Half Ironman still got that race factor in it. Which comes back to the original question, you know what, what do you love doing? I love racing. So the sub threshold session is ironically almost like a race training session. It's, it's the range. Sub threshold is a range that is exactly what you would be doing in a Half Ironman bike race. So that's why I love that session because it's so relatable to, to racing um, if I, if I can nail that sub threshold session in my training, you know, block, I know almost, you know, before I jump on my bike on race day, what the exact number I'm going to ride to today. What you know, I'm going to ride at 259 watts today because of, because I've trained it for, you know, the last 16 weeks going into this event. I have such a dialed in number that I'm capable of riding and if things go well I can push it a little bit higher. But, but it's so race specific. So that is the race session that I think is the most valuable to, to an Ironman half ironman racer.

And it applies across all distances though, doesn't it? Because you can do sub threshold regardless of the distance, it's just going to be a different percentage of sub threshold, right?

Yes. And, and for the time you do it for. So you know, we know that I'm specifically talking about triathlon here where it's a 90, you know, the half ironman is a 90k time trial. That's a big time trial to race over. And you know, you can still use sub threshold training for a 20k time trial or a 10k time trial or a 30k time trial because it's training just under your threshold where you can repeat that effort. It's not as specific for 90k but it is still an incredibly, incredibly valuable training session for you to hold threshold on race day. Even though you're not holding threshold in this session, you're holding sub threshold and that's a little bit confusing for people to hear. But what, why are we using sub threshold rather than doing threshold? Because you can't repeat threshold, you know, every single week. You know, it's not possible. You will get stale and tired and run down, whereas sub threshold is not going to be as taxing on the body and therefore it's a repeatable session and it's just under threshold. So it's almost, almost actually getting the same value without the need to recover afterwards. For you know, if you're, if you're trying to do threshold time trialing every Sunday, you will slowly get worse rather than get better because it's just too fatiguing. And guess what? Monday session, Tuesday session, Wednesday session, eventually after six to eight weeks will get worse and worse as well because you're pushing yourself too much at threshold repeatedly. And there are other sessions we do during the week that also have threshold in it. So as we've said many times, don't repeat the same session in a week's training block or an eight day training block or a nine day training block, Whatever you're using, you know, you want to have variety. So. So, you know, if you're going to do a Thursday night where you're doing threshold intervals, then you do a Sunday time trial where you're doing threshold race, and then you're just repeating the same session. So. So, you know, the sub threshold is one of those ones that's. It really is fits beautifully into the program. And guess what? It is the most heighted session that we have in our program and there's a whole lot of reasons for it. A, it's at the, it's at the end of the week, which is intentional.

Yeah.

B, it is so demanding on your legs. It's constant, you know, and whether you're holding 2 by 20s or 2 by 40s or whatever the session is, you know, the variety that we have, it is so taxing on your legs. And it's not a, it's not such a cardio session. You know, you're sitting, you know, your heart rate's sitting well down from threshold, but, but it is relentless. Pressure you in between tempo and threshold. That is the sweet spot, is if you can get good at that sweet spot riding, you will be a better cyclist full stop. Whether you want to be time trial, a hill climber, criterium rider, whatever. And no one who's a good, you know, all around general cyclist thinks that. They just think I need to be doing threshold riding over threshold riding, um, and they just completely ignore sub threshold. And it is one of the key sessions that as a cyclist you should be doing in your program regularly and you should change your mindset. What's going to help me the most, give me my most bang for my buck. And it's this session. And once I have that mindset, I know it's hard, but boy, if no one else is doing it, what an advantage am I having over everybody else? Who's going to line up? If we get to a position where we have to. In a bike race where we have to ride at threshold because I've broken away and I'm solo. How many times have we seen the Welter or the Giro or the Tour where guys have broken away and they're not riding threshold, what are they riding in their breakaway sub threshold? Say they've broken away for 70k. They can't ride threshold for 70k, so they have to go to the sweet spot, which is, you know, pressure on the pedals and whether it's a 10k breakaway or a 70k breakaway. So it's an interesting session that people love to hate, but you've got to turn it around and just love it because you know it's going to make you a better rider.

I couldn't relate to that anymore because it is just the most uncomfortable session of the week for me. But I also know that as you're saying, it is one of the most beneficials for being race specific. And I was actually trying to explain to a friend, I just happened to be telling them what session I did that day, and I was trying to explain what sub threshold meant. And I said, oh, I was so hard. And they were kind of asking, why is it hard? You know, it was a really super tough session and I was struggling to find the words to articulate why it's hard because it's not. You're not out of breath, you know, your heart rate's not up, you're not gasping for air, your legs aren't burning like they are in a VO2 session. So it's like, well, what's hard about it? And you go, I don't know. It's just. You just. It's uncomfortable. You just sitting in.

Relentless, isn't it? Relentless is the word.

It's uncomfortable. And just for an extended period of time. And it's. It's like someone's stabbing you in the foot with something just like. And just holding it there. I mean, even stabbing is probably. Yeah, too, too, too aggressive for what it is. It's not that bad, but it is just so uncomfortable. And I do want to clarify, you know, I said before that it can apply to any distance, but we have to be really careful with our language because sub threat, like you said, sub threshold doesn't apply to any distance. You know, once you get to 40k or below, potentially, you're writing 40k in less than an hour. So you're actually riding above threshold of what you can hold for an hour. If you can complete 40k in 55 minutes, for example, and not everyone can, but. And when you're getting to 20k or 10k, you know, you're. You were riding above your 100% threshold number. But just overall, we're kind of talking about the sub threshold session. You generally, it's below that, what you can hold for an hour, so you're not accumulating more lactic acid than you can get rid of, and therefore you can hold that period for longer. Hence in a 70.3. So a 90k time trial or an Ironman bike. You're holding that sustained number for hours at a time. And that is why exactly what you said, we, we give this session much closer to races. When we get into that race ready phase. Um, that's what, that's when we really prescribe it to, to get people in that zone ready to race. Right?

Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly what I was going to say as well. And that's when it comes into the race ready phase. And, and it is a good one to, to build fitness, but it's a good one to actually hone in on your. You know, we talked earlier about, you know, getting from A to B as fast as possible. You know, understanding what your, what your power number is at sub threshold and what the average speed is related to that. And that's a really intriguing thing. And you know, you can almost predict your finishing time. If you know, you can average 40Ks an hour at 300 watts for 90K, you'll know that that's a 2 hour 1290K that, you know, it's almost handing you the result. So you, you need to, you need to understand what that relates to in terms of, of, of effort. And I think that's, that's an invaluable tool.

Yeah, absolutely. And like the point you made in at the start of the podcast is, you know, you need to know what power and speed you can hold so that when it comes to race day, you are looking at all the information and, and um, judging how your performance is going based on all that information. Not just power. Cause your power could be off for the day for some reason, but you still could be riding 41ks an hour. I'd be riding better.

That's, that's exactly right.

Uh, so putting your cycling hat on, what kind of session do you go to when you think, all right, what's, what's the best cycling session for me? I know you said that sub threshold is important whether you're a triathlete or cyclist, but. Yeah, just sticking your cycling hat on for a second.

Yeah. And once again, I've got to keep saying that there isn't one session that is going to give you the, the outcome of improvement, but that there is a session that will actually make you a better cyclist. And again, this is a session that I have to change my mindset because it is so hard and sub threshold is different. Hard. This is actually the most taxing I'm. My lactate levels are through the roof. I can almost feel like concrete spreading through my bones every time I get to the, you know, the 52nd mark of this session. So whether you're doing zone six or whether you're doing VO2, that session is going to make you a better cyclist. But it is the most painful session to do. And then you need to do a block of it. You can't just do it as a one off. It's like dipping your toe in the water. You actually need to immerse yourself in the cold water to do it for a long period of time, not too long, but long enough to get value out of it. And we're talking, you know, a block of eight weeks or something like that, where it's repeatable and that is going to enable you to improve your FTP, which is the goal. So if you're a 200 watt rider and you do this block and you end up as a 215 watt rider, you're going to be so much more able to, to do the things you want to do in your bunch ride because you're actually 15 watts better rider. You're able to time trial better, you to a hill climb better. You know, you can go up the hill faster because you're pushing more watts. It is the one thing that's going to improve your FTP. And that session is the one that is the most painful to do, but it is the one. I know that it's going to make me a better rider. And you can't do it all year round again. It has to be specifically put into the program when it's most needed. And that's the beauty of understanding when to do certain things in the program. But that is the one that, that hurts me the most. But, but I know that I'm going to be such a better writer when that block finishes and I'm excited about that. So I look forward to the session, even though it's a warped way of approaching things. Great. VO2, he repeats. Here I go. You know, what's my numbers? What did I do last week? How quick can I get to that one minute point in the, in my circuit? And, and you know, how comfortable did it feel this week compared to week one? And now I'm in week eight.

Better.

Numbers than I was in week one. And the VO2 second part of that session is exactly the same. You know, where am I at? What's my numbers? Did it feel as exhausting from week eight to week one? And you know, of course it still feels hard, but you know, you look down, you find it might be riding five or six watts higher than you were in week one, so the feeling probably feels exactly the same pain, but you are actually getting the overload value of it and you're able to cope better already. Your heart rate might be the same for, for higher watts. And they're all really exciting things that I look at when I finish the session and go and analyze it. And you and I have talked about this session many times. You know, how well did you go? What were your numbers today? Were you able to sit still on the bike and just let your legs do all the work? You know, not bounce your upper body around as you're trying to, you know, ride a 60 RPM? You know, all these things are so important that you. You just become better at riding. And it. It is the one for a cyclist that, again, they all avoid. They would much rather go and do a fun bunch ride than go and do a solo VO2 session with strength in it. And, yep, keep avoiding it because that'll make us all a better cyclist. And when, come race day, it'll be something we've got up our sleeve that, you know, if you're in a race that's got, you know, four or five hills that are, you know, 30 seconds long or a minute long or a minute and a half long, and, you know, geez, everybody's smashing it up the hill and doing 400 plus watts. And I look down and I go, well, I can do nine of these at 400 plus watts for over a minute. It gives me incredible confidence and, and I know that I can recover straight away and do it again. And in the race, it's only got three of them. Um, so as a confidence thing, you know, you start to get an idea of what you're capable of doing from training and implement it into a race. And, and the scenario of sometimes you see these events come along, you see that it's got a couple of hills that are 30 seconds and you already know from what your data is what you can do and recover and do it again. And I say to guys, how'd you go on the hill? I knew I could do that because I'd done it nine times in training and I could cope with it. It's got so many good positives about it, but everybody avoids it.

It's like you had a camera on me for my session yesterday because on the 8th and 9th rep, I was very much like an extravagant Italian cyclist, just throwing my shoulders everywhere and bouncing up and down. You know how they completely exaggerate when they're at the top of the Hill. That was absolutely me yesterday. But yeah, we had a conversation yesterday because it was the last time you were doing it in your block and you said thank God this block is over. You know, you've been doing it for eight weeks now and as much as you do look forward to it, um, you glad that you don't have to do it all year and it's just get through that block, you know, change your mindset to. This is going to be a tough session. But yeah, this is really going to hurt. But as you said, it's going to be the most beneficial and that's what makes it worth it.

Definitely.

Uh, I want to touch on cause those two things combined really paint a re a good picture of already how to become a well rounded cyclist. You know, you need to have those over sessions, those VO2 max sessions to improve your FTP and then you can use the sub threshold style session to improve your ability to race pace depending on what race you're in. And I want to talk about your ability to just hold threshold in general, which both those things help. But you know, you're serious. Threshold. And the best example of this that we know and we see is our man wow Van Art. He's just such a gun, well rounded rider and it's no coincidence that his strengths make him. It's like a positive cycle, you know, it's a positive feedback loop. You know, his strengths make him better at everything which increases strengths which make him better at everything. And that's why he can climb, you know. Is it Vaughn 2 that he won at the Tour? I can't remember which climb he the stage he won. Yeah, he's won the, won the time trial. He's an absolute freak sprinter and he's a one day classic specialist. He's got that strength and he's the perfect example of a well rounded rider because he has all these tools in his arsenal.

Oh, it's so spot on. And you know he should be called wow Van Aert, shouldn't he? But our man Woot, we love him because he's Belgian and, and look what he did in the Tour. Winning Champs Elysees as a sprinter was incredible. Winning Vontu as a climber and winning the time trial, I mean that sums up what we're trying to get across. And we're talking about everyday cyclists here who have got jobs and got families and you know, can't train like, like our man Woot can. But if you can keep these things that we're talking about in your program, you know, the Ability to hold threshold is key. And whether you want to win a criterium, whether you want to win a road race, or whether you want to win a hill climb, whether you want to win a time trial, if you don't have the ability to hold threshold for, at some, for some period of time, then you're going to be limiting the weaponry that you have in your arsenal. And you know, I've coached many people who are incredibly gifted in their tactics and their fitness is awful. And you know, I've said to him many times, come and do the program and build your fitness and you will be unstoppable. Because if you can match the fitness that you've got with your incredibly, incredibly good tactics, no one can beat you. And you need to work on your threshold because you just can't repeat efforts. And you're an easy person to beat no matter what your tactics are, because all I have to do is do repeated efforts. And I know that I've got you because you can't recover because of your poor fitness and your refusal to do threshold writing. And that's what threshold writing does. It allows you to recover. Not only can you hold threshold, but you can recover quickly when you've got good threshold ability. And, and you know, we know that in all the, the, the main Tours, the Giro Tour and the welter and any of the other stage races, you know, the GC contenders, you can't be a GC rider in a team if you can't time trial. And how does that, you know, there's only one time trial in the whole event. How does that, what do I mean by that? Well, every time you go up a hill, you're actually time trialing at threshold. Whether it's at a hill that goes for 5k or last night's welter stage went for 20k. Some hills go for 2k. You know, some hills are punchy like in the spring classics. You know, the age best on the age has got, you know, incredible hill and so is Flesh Reload's got a finishing hill, Mer de Hoy, you know, there's just so many different hills where you have to approach it with a knowledge of your threshold. And if you haven't practiced that threshold riding, you are going to be found out on those race days. And so every course, every, whether it's Tours or it's your local club race, has a variety of distances of hills, of flat, of wind. And you need to be arming yourself with all of these abilities to be able to ride against the elements and against your opposition. And the better you train all these different aspects, the more in control of the race you're going to be. Whether you're riding D grade at your local club race or whether you're riding a grade, it doesn't matter. You're riding against people of similar ability and as you improve, then all of a sudden you're dictating the race. Now because you have the ability to sprint, you have the ability to ride threshold up a hill, you have the ability to jump across from the break to the, from the bunch to the brake. You have all these ability things that, that, that other riders, they can only hang in the bunch and wait for the sprint. That's all they can do because they haven't practiced anything else. They just, they're just sitting in hiding. They haven't got the fitness and they want to have a sprint at the end and that's okay, that's absolutely fine. But you will forever be in that grade and never improve. And you could win 50 out of 50 races doing that. But if someone comes along in your grade who's got something else, you're going to be found out straight away. And you know, the tactics are still important. But, but, but being a well rounded cyclist and improving such to the extent that Wood Van Art is the top of the tree and you know, we're all trying to strive to that, to that level, to be a good climber, to be a good sprinter, to be a good, you know, one day classic rider, to be a good time trialist. So, you know, that's our goal and that's what everybody should be striving to make themselves a better cyclist. And that's, that's what this podcast is about, just giving tips that people are desperate to hear that how can I get better? How can I beat my bunch? How can I be the strongest in the bunch? At the moment, I'm just hanging on. These are things that you should be using in training. And then gradually, over periods of weeks, months and years, you will go from the back of the bunch. And I've got that many examples of people who join our particular bunch, right, which doesn't happen very often these days in the last two years with COVID but guys have started just hanging on and then now they're at the front of the bunch putting the hurt on everybody. And it brings a smile to my face, it kills me. But, but, but it's terrific to see them work their way through the bunch and they get such confidence and you know, and they know that they've done the work. They know they've got variety in their training. They know they've got sessions that no one else is doing that are improving their FTP, improving their ability to hold threshold riding at sweet spot, you know, doing the endurance ride. But, but we started off this podcast by trying to identify which is going to be, you know, the one session. And, and the, and the general answer is there isn't one thing that's ever going to be the difference. If I just gave you the one session and you just wrote easy for the rest of the week, you would improve still, but it would be such a slow rate compared to adding recovery tempo, endurance, sub threshold over, under, you know, every single other thing that we do in the program. So, you know, you just can't add one thing and expect it to be the answer. It's got to be a combination of things. But there are specific sessions that will improve you and get more bang for your buck and give a greater rate of improvement. And it will probably happen quicker.

And we talk about that with cyclists in general, especially with the wowbound art example. I'm going to keep calling him wellbound art forever, but this applies so directly to triathlete as well. Because triathletes, you know, you just ride the one pace in the race, but that, it doesn't mean you train that way to perform better in the race. You need to train the way we're talking about it, be a better, all well rounded rider and then that will help you get really specific when it comes to your race. And this is the last point I wanted to touch on is that we really do pride ourselves at tribalo about being good at time trials. Um, but that's because we pride ourselves on being good, well rounded riders and we train people to be good, well rounded riders. And I want you to just talk on that concept a little bit more because it's something that you do really deliberately and it allows athletes to have a wider choice of what they want to go for. Basically. I think, I mean, you use the word riders can do whatever they want because they're, they're in such good shape to step into any category of race.

It just opens your options up. Up George. It's incredible. Um, you know, become a better time trialist and you are going to be a better cyclist. And I could stop the sentence there and, and people go away and practice time trialing, that, that would be the end of it. But, but the question is why? What is it doing? Um, and just what you said before, you know, in triathlons you know, we're trying to ride at steady state pace the whole way. Um, remember in a triathlon if the general course might have hills and it might have wind, so there is periods in a triathlon even where you're having to ride at a different power could be the top of the range that you set and it could be the bottom of the lane range for a downhill or you know, a tailwind. So you know, it is very rare that we actually are on a dead flat course with no wind and at the end of the day we're still having to manage power at different variations in the one race. Even, Even as a 90k time trial, you know, there is no course, well, Busselton probably is as close to a flat pancake, but you've got corners, turns, u turns where you're having to get out of the corner and get your bike speed back up. So you're burning a match by riding high power there. So, so you know, it's not like you're just riding across the nullarbor and holding 260 watts for 2 hours 15 with no change in wind or, or, or, or gradient. So, so that's variation in time trialing power is really important. But the actual time trial training and whether you want to call it time trial training or threshold writing, it's more accurate to talk about threshold writing and you know, and various percentages of threshold writing. So, so when you're doing a tempo session, it's 75% of your threshold. I'm wanting you to ride at 75% of your threshold. That's threshold writing at 75%. When you're doing a 20 minute time trial, I want you to ride at your hundred percent threshold. So when you're doing a sub threshold, I want you to ride at 90% of your threshold. So all these sessions we're trying to get your body used to riding at different percentages of threshold so that you know, you are used to holding steady state. And that is the thing that's going to be the biggest weapon that you can use. You do the other sessions of course, that, that have high power, high intensity over unders. You know, there's so many other examples of what we've talked about but, but you know, the almost the foundation session is threshold riding at various intensities. And that is the last thing most cyclists go to when they say, right, I'm going to get fit for, I don't know, Three Peaks or Amy's, I just need to ride the bunch, I need to go and do hard, fast training. That'll really bring me up and it will, it will help you. But if you don't lay the foundation, it's like building a house without, you know, concrete in the stumps, you know, or laying a good slab with reinforcement in it. If you don't do that, no matter how hard you ride in those fast bunch rides, you will stay the same at some point. Whereas if you lay a fast, a good foundation of threshold writing where you can hold steady state, you know, at different percentages, you have got so many more avenues of, of improvement from that base that you've established in your training. And avoiding that, that's. It's the no fun thing. And that's why people go to the bunch ride, because now that's boring. I don't want to do threshold writing. A, you're not very good at it, so you avoid it. B, it's boring, but C, it's the best thing you should be doing. And they go from the wrong point of view, they go to the fun stuff first. And that's where they get found out. Three months later, in the middle of six months, summer, spring, summer season. And they're basically going backwards after three months because they've forgotten to do the threshold writing. And we do it all year round. It's something that we don't leave out of our program. We will do some type of threshold writing at 100% for the whole year. So your body is all the time getting used to riding at its limit and then we throw in the variations and being able to hold 40 minutes at 90% is, is practicing threshold writing. And you know, doing four by five minutes at 105% is practicing threshold writing. You know, doing one minute efforts. You know, it's, it's not actually 100%.

Threshold, but that's the key distinction, isn't it? Because. Yes, because threshold is technically 100%, but. Yeah, I know what you say.

Yeah, Yep. So writing one minute at 130 to 140% is practicing writing that at that threshold percentage. And I think if you can get anything out of what we're saying today, switch your mindset from. You still have time for the bunch, right in the program for the fun stuff. Yeah, the fun stuff. And that's still there, but it can't be every session. And that's the point I'm trying to make. If you want it, you, if you want to just have fun and not improve, yes, do that. But if you are actually listening to this to get some way of getting to be a better bike rider. Then listen to what we're saying here. Practice your threshold riding first and still include the fun stuff once a week, but don't do one without the other. And watch your form grow, watch your FTP grow, watch your confidence grow. And of course, it doesn't happen in six weeks. Every, every season, every winter, every year, you just become such a better writer than you were, you know, three months ago, six months ago, a year ago. And you're just putting layer upon layer of threshold riding on top of. And you just become such a, you know, a well rounded athlete that when you decide you want to do a nine hour Three Peaks event, you can do it. When you decide you want to do 140k undulating Amy's one day classic race, you can do it. When you want to do a 60 minute crit race, you can do it. Um, you, you can be the woot. Um, you know, you can be the time trial, the hill climber or the sprinter because you've got this ability to ride threshold. And there's no coincidence. Like I said before, the best riders in the world are the GC riders.

And guess what?

They are very good at riding threshold.

Yeah. Riding time trials. And it reminds me of an article you sent me in the last week sometime about running coach that we really like. And he was talking about how to be a good 5k runner. And in the article he says 5,5 case an interesting distance because you need to have a really good aerobic base to be able to handle the distance of 5k, but you also need to have a really good threshold because it's really as close to your threshold as possible, or maybe slightly over, but you need to have good speed as well because the back end of the 5k, you want to be able to push fast, push your times harder than way above your threshold to really finish off the 5K. And it's just this big mix of things that you need to be good at and just reminded me of cycling so much. Yeah, Principle just kind of applies universally where the more you're good at all these things, just the more layers you have, like you said, and the more you can just be a weapon across various events because of it.

Yeah, the cyclist who's the one trick pony who just has the sprint or can only just ride threshold, he's not going to win a lot of races. Um, you know, just being able to ride threshold, that doesn't help anything. Um, you, you've got to have practiced your high threshold riding your sprinting. If you're if your goal is to be a better road racer or criterium rider. So understand that just doing threshold is not, you know, you've got to have like we're saying, a mixed bag of ability to do all of it. And relying on just tactics or relying on just my sprint or relying on just my threshold, that's going to limit you to how successful you're going to be. So I mean the topic was what's the best session? Well, you know, I've given some good examples of what sessions are really going to help. But at the end of the day my summary was always going to be I want all of my children to do very well, all four of them. And I want all these sessions to.

Be in your program. And I'll finish off by saying today would have been the perfect day to do what is my favorite type of cycling session. And that is our Wednesday hill ride up in the hills when it's just a glorious spring or summer's day and you go ride for a few hours out in the hills with no cars around. I just cannot believe how fun that kind of ride is and how rewarding it is. And we know that the value in he was training we spoke at with regards to running last week but would have loved to have done that session today. But alas lockdown doesn't allow it. But I want to finish on that point and say that's just another one, another tool you can have as part of your tool belt to help you become a better well rounded rider. On that note, we'll finish there. Another good episode. Thank you very much for listening as always. We'll see you next time. You. Want I can give you back keep on.