38 Years of Triathlon Training Lessons in 67 Minutes

It was 48 years ago, almost to the day or month, that Dad, you became Australian Ironman champion in Foster in 1988. And since then, you've spent 4 decades coaching many triathletes, cyclists, runners, all while having a very extensive masters and amateur cycling career yourself, collecting somewhere around 25 to 30 Australian titles over 2 decades, 2 decades of a master's career. It was a big patch of raising us kids in the middle of there. And so we used to do many episodes or I would just grill you about what are the things that actually make a difference to the age group athlete, and what have you seen over the journey. I really love seeing, you know, what's, what's evolved and what's changed in the coaching journey, and what should we really be paying attention to. And today's age, this is important for this episode, we have the most information available but also the widest spread of opinions about what you should be doing. You should be doing the Norwegian method, you need to be doing insanely high volume, you need to be doing polarized training, pyramidal training, double threshold training, or just zone 2 training, etc., etc., etc. And so it's amazing the information we have access to, but I want to try and cut through the noise this episode and go back to the fundamentals of what actually helps an age grouper, an amateur athlete, improve. We're going to discuss the best of some of the modern athletes and their training, uh, the Norwegians, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the sub-2-hour marathoners Sebastian Salwey and Jomif Kipchoge, which we haven't spoken about in the podcast yet. So a great packed episode coming up. Dad, welcome to the episode.

Thanks, Gerard. And it's— oh, it just doesn't feel like 40 years since I was doing that. But it's just the old adage, isn't it? If you really like doing something, time goes past really quickly because you're enjoying it. The minute you hate a task, it becomes a real task, doesn't it? And you can't wait for it to finish, and you're questioning yourself. And so I think looking back, it's just been an unbelievably great journey. Journey with lots of highs and lots of lows, um, and everything in between. And, um, yeah, really, it's really good, uh, episode to start to look at, uh, maybe how things have changed since then and, uh, have we learned a lot from there. And yeah, I'm really excited about this episode.

I want to dive into it. Uh, we haven't done a coaching style podcast in a while. We've had some great interviews the last month with some great athletes. Uh, they really— just the way the schedule went, they really dominated our podcast feed. But, uh, jumping straight into the coaching questions, what's an old school method that you have learned to let go of over the journey, something that you used to train with but you don't think is so relevant anymore?

I've got, I've got a second answer to this, but the main one is probably we, we did too much, uh, long slow training, uh, winter style, summer style, seasonal training. And we know now that, that That was absolutely necessary. We still need that, but not as much, I think. And I think that would be an old-school, um, uh, trait that I would, I would not hang on to as much. Uh, I, I think, um, long, slow distance training is, is really impactful in your, uh, growth as an athlete over a period of a journey of a career, you know. But, you know, you can still get better improvements. Now we know from all the science lab testing that's been going on over the years to get you know, get a better outcome and improve an athlete faster and get them to their target goals quicker if you adjusted differently. And I think that would be probably the main thing that I would be saying. Look, it's just not one way. Just go and do winter training where you're just doing easy, slow rides, you know, and easy little jog runs just to keep your fitness going. That's true to a certain degree, but you're kinda getting left behind if you just go with that for, Look, it depends where you live, doesn't it? If you live in Europe and if you live in the United Kingdom, that is a— or any of the Scandinavian countries where snow is a really big factor where you could be snowed in for 6 months of the year. And whereas some parts of Europe a little bit further south, you've got none of that. You've got 15, 20 degrees Celsius through winter in Spain and beautiful places really south. And the same thing happens in Australia. You've got really cold temperatures in the southern part of Australia and much warmer temperatures in the northern part of Australia. So you've got all these opportunities where you can train all year round. It was more a winter thing where you really can't train outside. So you might as well just do some easy training just to keep— not let your fitness drop. That was the goal, not let your fitness drop. I think that's probably a mistake. You don't wanna just settle for, "I'm not gonna let my fitness drop by doing some maintenance." You wanna actually continue to add to your improvement and you really you could possibly be leaving 3 months or some cases 4 months of gains by adopting this long slow training. So that would be my first answer.

Yeah, the seasonal difference, it makes sense. But I think you've spoken to me about that it plays into your mindset. It's just kind of you feel like winter's off, off-season, you know, and then— but then you— we now see it as a chance to— just all year round you've got a chance to improve and you need breaks. And you need some recovery periods, and you do need some off-season, but it can come in different forms throughout the year.

And it—

and I guess, yeah, the difference between it just being a full season of winter is known as off and base season, um, it's just a more inefficient way to look at it. That blank— what was your second answer for that?

Yeah, it's a bit— it's a bit out there, but I, I think actual the social media that, that wasn't available, uh, to us back then was a really good thing. So you've, you've asked me what, what thing we should let go of. I think if I was going back, I say the fact that you're not seeing what a lot of other people are doing enables you to concentrate on your own business and, and not getting swayed by, oh God, this guy's doing that, I need to do that. And all of a sudden you turn the next— you scroll the next swipe on, you know, on the Instagram page, and oh no, he's doing this. And so all of a sudden you get in this, you know, confused state where, you know, just you've got a plan let's just stay in your lane and let's just, you know, follow the sequence of things that you've got planned. And don't keep grabbing other people's, what you think are gonna make your plan a little bit better. Just stick with the basics and you can learn to adapt what suits you, not what suits that athlete who's— that professional who's succeeding. We wanna actually learn why they're succeeding, that's absolutely true. But we don't wanna just copy because you're a different physiology than I am. And, and we could just keep doing that 100 times. No two people are the same unless they're twins, and even then they might be slightly different. So everybody needs different stimulus. So to grab someone else's program and say it worked for them and now I'm going to do it for me— so I think social media is, you know, that's one of the negative things that's happened, um, from the old school of training where you really didn't get much information back except for when you went to do a race and you went, whoa, 'How come you've improved so much? Because, you know, we didn't know until we raced you.' And then you would hear verbally, 'I've done this, this, and this.' And then people would go, 'Oh, maybe I'm going to do that for the next 6 weeks.' So, so it did happen, but not, not as instant, I think.

Um, yeah, yeah. And we know that the Norwegian guys, Christian, they're, they're sort of pot stirrers, and they're, and they're, they're getting cheeky because they're so confident in their abilities, and they're, they're posting, uh they're posting kind of false sessions and bluffs about what they're doing to try and psych everyone out. It's absolutely fantastic. The inverse of the question, you know, what's an old-school method that you think is still highly relevant today that should be respected?

Yeah, I think it seems like I'm saying the opposite, but doing long endurance aerobic training, because we are in an endurance sport and we do cover anything from, you know, 800s— you've done 800s— all the way up to marathons. We've done crit racing, short time trials, all the way up to Peaks, which is 240K Gran Fondo rides with 4,000 meters of climbing. And we've done triathlon from sprint all the way through to Ironman. So endurance is a kind of a general term, but in terms of— we are really endurance athletes. And we do a variety of times and distances, but the one common factor that remains that we should keep a hold of is that we need to do the endurance ride and run and swim, all the time. We need that as a— the basis of our program. And that— that can vary in duration and intensity throughout the 12 months of a year. And we shouldn't be categorized into years or weeks or months. But the one thing that you— as an endurance athlete is it's an endurance sport. You— you need to replicate what you're gonna do in your event in your training. So If you neglect that, you will possibly be missing out big time on some huge gains.

Hmm. Yeah, it kind of just stands the test of time, doesn't it? And when you look at a training week, you always say that is still to this day probably the most valuable training session of the week. And the people that do it consistently, uh, absolutely reap the rewards that, you know, everything else is almost supplementary to making sure if you have the endurance swim, ride, or run as your backbone, you're going to have a great platform to train off.

Yeah, and look, if I used your brother as an example, Liam has very limited time. He's got 2 children, another, another one on the way in 4 weeks' time. So he rides pretty much 3 times a week, and he rides for an hour. And the minute he goes past an hour and a half, if I go and visit him and we go for a long ride, he's such a better rider than I am, but the minute we go longer, he really struggles because he has no endurance, no, no durability, yet he's a better rider than I am and I can't keep up with him in a 30-40 minute high-intensity training session. And I use my own example, the riding, because I've been doing this for so many years, I did probably a decade where on a Saturday, I would religiously do between 120 to 180 km depending on what part of the year I was in. 180 km would be very rare. But the majority of the time, it would be 4 hours to 5, somewhere around there. So it would vary depending on the course we were on, whether it was hilly. Hilly, you're gonna do less kilometers, but the time is still the same, 4 to 5 hours. And the midweek stuff was always pretty similar, but the weekend stuff was the backbone of— as I was getting older, I was still able to match it with a lot of other younger riders because I was not doing the midweek stuff religiously, but I was religiously religiously doing the endurance stuff. Not missing, just did not miss. And in the last probably 3 years, for various reasons, I haven't been able to do that. My performances are so much lower than they were during that last decade. I look at another example we've had on the podcast, Joe Spano, who has— who is now a world champion time trialist over, you know, 25, 30-minute time trial. He regularly still does exactly what I'm saying. He does between 140 and 200k most Saturdays.— and he's in his 60s and he's able to keep up with guys in his bunch that are anything from 20 upwards, 20 years of old age upwards. He is matching it with them and he's in his 60s. He has kept the endurance ride as the most important ride of his week, of his month, of his year. And that's a great example of someone who really is still at the top of his game. And, uh, I, I use that, and there's— we've got many more examples of people who are regularly doing those 4 or 5-hour rides even though their event might be, uh, 1 or 2 hours. I always think about the swimmers, you know, swimmers who are training for Olympics at 50 meters, uh, breaststroke, freestyle, uh, backstroke, or hundreds or 200s. They're doing 5K in the morning, 5K in the afternoon. They're doing 10K a day for 50-meter events. So for someone to have the argument that, oh, you don't need to do long stuff if you're doing shorter events, It just doesn't ring true. And again, we're not just trying to copy what the elite are doing, but there's so much anecdotal evidence to tell us that this is one of the key things that enables you to be a better athlete.

I still disagree with the— with modern swimming doing that. I'm more like the Cam McAvoy approach when he just said, stuff it, I'm not doing those. I'm not doing 30K a week when I'm a 50-meter swimmer. He said, I'm just gonna swim way less, but the principle remains. He doesn't just do 200-meter sessions. He still does a lot of volume. He's just not doing the, the 25 to 30K that everyone's doing. And we're seeing a lot, a lot of finally some cross-referencing among cycling, running, and swimming of, of, of learning from each other. And the running one is, is big. You know, Sebastian Soler and Yermak Dzheltya have had reportedly the highest carb intake per hour that we've seen from marathon runners, finally matching the kind of numbers you see that's been in cycling for a decade. You know, it's amazing how sports are so slow to, to keep up. Jimmy Reardon came on our podcast and said that. He said, coming from the cycling world, pro running world, he's going, wow, the professionalism is literally a decade behind, uh, which, which is really fascinating. One I wanted to ask you about was, I remember reading, um, The 4-Minute Mile as a 12-year-old, uh, one of my favorite books, um, just the inspiring story of the 4-minute barrier being broken. And the legendary coach Percy Serety was obsessed with the Sand Dune Hill Repeats, and, and, uh, I would say that that was 60 years ago, yet hill repeats are still just some of the most valuable sessions you can do when done right. And variations of them, you know, now even distance runners are doing 10 to 30 second sprinted hill repeats as long as well as, you know, up to 2 minute kind of stuff. You've got to be really careful with when you introduce them, but, but I think, yeah, what would you say about the hill repeats being still a staple of, of a running program?

I think, I think in the '60s and '70s, and that's kind of when I was, you know, 10 to 15. And, you know, as you know, your grandfather, my dad, was, was coaching me as a, as a runner. And we were doing a lot of fartlek, a lot of hill repeats, a lot of intervals on the track, uh, as 9, 10, 11, 12, 13-year-olds. And so I was introduced to this really early, and, and it was all brand new information. We'd never had this information about, uh, most runners prior to that, and I'm generalizing would just go running. And all of a sudden, people cottoned on to that, you know, if you do intervals with a break, you can actually run at a higher level for the training session. And the people who are doing that started to improve quicker than the people who are just doing, you know, 60, 70K of the same type of running. You know, some days they'd run a little bit harder, some days they'd run a little bit easier. So there was some variety in it. But the hill repeats and the strength you're getting and the cardiovascular benefits, the heart and lungs getting stretched rather than just steady-state running was phenomenal change in athletics. And then it went, you know, across swimming and bike riding, doing intervals as a swimmer, doing intervals as a bike rider, and particularly doing it as a runner and doing hill repeats in the sand. And for those who don't know who Percy Serety is, he was an Australian old-timer athletics coach who took a group of runners down to the sand dunes down at a place called Portsea. And Herb Elliott was one of his proteges. And, and Herbert went on to become the fastest 1500-meter runner in the 1960 Tokyo Olympic Games and won by— if you look at that footage, he won by 10 meters, and that's unheard of in a 1500-meter. Um, but this guy was so strong.

Let your 5KBA go.

Yes, that's right. Um, but, but, you know, the standard of training that he was doing was so brutal. It was like Darwin theory, the survival of the fittest. And if you— if you could—

Don't break down.

That's right. And so there are problems with this. You know, and we know now that, you know, I'm talking— we're gonna talk about this later, but you've gotta understand your own body and what its capacity is, and you've gotta build up to these brutal sessions. And so I think, you know, hill repeats have still got their place in programs, and they should be. They should be really important in, in the programs. But, you know, Percy Serety was doing these hill repeats till these guys were dropping. It was 35-40 degree temperatures in the sand, which was boiling hot, up these steep hills. There's some archive footage, it's, it's almost laughable how hard these guys were training. And training till they drop was not actually just a throwaway line, that, that was actually what was happening. And, and boy, did you know, the guys who survived this were they fantastic. And we had another version of that in cycling with Charlie Sutton, another Australian cycling coach who, who the period of cycling at the Olympics on the track, he was the probably one of the most brutal coaches going around. But boy, did he have some success. But he had some people who dropped off as a part of that and who really, you know, got quite depressed about, you know, not being able to get onto the Olympic stage because they just couldn't handle the training. But boy, did that hard work pay off. And you'd say, well, you know, if we train harder, we're going to better. But, you know, that's not necessarily true either. But, but certainly there has to be some, some reckoning where you are actually have to having to be physically testing yourself at some stage during your program rather than just cruising through the sessions.

Over the last couple of months, we've had the pleasure of interviewing some great athletes and finding out the real insights into their, their training and racing. And, and there's been some really standout interviews, some of our favorites ever, including what's probably going to be the greatest triathlete of all time, Christian Blumenfeldt. Um, Aussie's— one of Aussie's brightest and youngest up-and-coming stars, Claudia Hollingsworth. Those interviews are so worth listening to. But we want to discuss some things from some— from those episodes that in a bit more detail now that we've heard it straight from their mouth and what we think about them. And I guess, what was your overall view of a lot of the interviews? And, um, and just again, it comes back to this message of the noise that you hear from everyone and you kind of think, oh, they're doing this, maybe I should do that, you know. And it's funny how often we interview an athlete, and then we'll get a message from one of our athletes that week saying, hey, do you think we should be doing this or that?

Yeah, well, look, just like, uh, when Percy Serety was successful with John Landy, guess what everybody started doing? Hill repeats in the sand. And so, so as human beings, we have a tendency to be a little bit like sheep where we just find someone who's successful and we try to recreate that into ourselves.

So if you're a good strategy That's a—

if you're gonna— yeah. And look, you want to learn from the best, and you want to associate with the best, and you want to put yourself in a situation where you are being pushed against someone who's better than you. You don't want to be the, the big fish in a small pool. You want to be the small fish in the biggest pool, and you will learn quicker that way. And, and so I think that one of the things I, I thought when, when, you know, we had— yeah, as you said, many good interviews with a variety of people, from athletes to triathletes. And I you know, they were all saying very similar things. They, they had identified what works well for themselves, and they were going all in on that. And, you know, I think, uh, Grace Thicc was kind of, you know, almost admiring, uh, Christian's ability to do 2400s, but she said, that just doesn't work for me, I just break down. And, and I think identifying that there's a really a standard level of some sessions Does it fit me? I think that would be— that would be the thing that I would want our listeners to really think about. Yeah, it's great to hear what they're doing, but— and it's great for— great for that athlete to be able to tell everybody. It's really good that they're being so open, I must— I must say. That's— that's, you know, we're learning so much by hearing what they're doing. But I think we're going too far 'cause we're trying to copy them instead of saying, well, is that appropriate for me with— I might have 8 hours of training a week and, you know, Christian's training 30 hours a week and resting without a job in between. So people hear me say this a lot, but, but that is an impact, you know. You— and if your body breaks down the minute you run faster than you should, well, why would you continue to try to doing intervals? And I think Grace made that, that point really clearly. But, but KB said also that I don't think people— that people can, um, specifically hear things that, that they like, they want to hear, and the things that they don't want to hear, they don't hear it as well. And one of the, one of the things was he said, I've been doing this since I was 16 or 17. And it's nearly 12, 14 years of me doing this. So if you wanted to start doing this now and you've just started this sport, you can't. And you have to understand that. You have to work up to this. You know, the old analogy of the phys ed teacher gets the brand new, you know, new year 7 class into his PE class and he starts getting them, who can do the most push-ups? Who can do the most chin-ups? Who can run the furthest in the shuttle run? And everybody's going flat out competitive against each other. The next 3 days, everybody's got sore ribs from the push-ups, their arms are nearly dropping off. It's just too much for their body and they have these great DOMS that could last a week. And, you know, that's what we're trying to avoid with this podcast is giving you information and then telling you this just doesn't mean that this is what you should do. Getting these pros to tell us what they're doing, we're not doing that so that you copy it. We're doing it so that, you know, you get an idea of what it takes to be at that level, and then you've got to work out where you are in the world of, uh, below that level and what's appropriate to you.

I will say, I get it. When I watch a YouTube video of Christian pounding out 400s, uh, I want to go to the track straight away. So it just, it just does something to you. You just get motivated. And, but you've got to try and channel that motivation into something more appropriate for you because I, I've run track my whole life and I still go back to the track semi-regularly. But if it's been a while, and by a while I mean like 3 months or 6 months I get pretty nervous, and I, I definitely don't do a big volume session first back. Even when I go back and do a lower volume session, I instantly get sore, and it takes me a few days to adapt. And I've been doing it for 2 decades, you know, for 20— over 20 years of track running. My body's very used to it, and I'm still very careful. And so if you've never run on the track, probably don't need to start. That would be the safest bet. But if you want to build up to it, you have to do it very, very slowly. I do want to comment on, um, did you ever comment on the track there, or—

No, I totally agree with you, Jordan. Look, that, that's the one thing you have to ask yourself, you know, are you susceptible to injury? In the first place. And, and if, if you are, then the track is probably the last place you should be running.

I did want to, um, just kind of summarize KB's training and what my take-home message was, uh, because I was really trying to find out— I, I have— I love this, this burning question I have is, is finding this line between, you know, an example, you're doing a really staple running session, 6x1 kilometers. Should you be running them as fast as you can with more rest, you know, a real VO2 style session? It's of, you know, for Christian it would be 2 minutes 45 per kilometer with 3 minutes break, or do you run it more like an endurance session testing your recovery where you're back off the pace and just have a 1-minute recovery, or, and manipulate it however you want. And what I got from him, the take-home message is, is he's doing, he's just running as hard as he can, and he wants to train as hard as he can in the parameters of the session all the time. And so when it's time to train hard, he's going, he's doing everything possible to get the most out of that session. So He's loading up on caffeine. I think this is a really, um, this is a really buzz thing that like came out of this period. Christian's kind of revealed on many podcasts including ours how much caffeine he takes. That shocked me when he used caffeine. Daily caffeine intake was just insane, um, especially on the hard days. He's in the super shoes, he's caffeined up to the gills, um, and he's getting the most out of himself for that session. The specifics around recovery and stuff don't matter as much. He's just trying to get the absolute max and run at his best and perform at his best. And that was a summary That was really telling to me, you know, but I had to be reminded quickly that, okay, that's great for him, but once again, he is such a seasoned, trained athlete, he can handle that. It is the total opposite for age groupers. You don't want to be pushing yourself that hard, especially in running, but even on the bike. This is why we have our ranges. We actually don't want our athletes to go way over and bury themselves because you'll just put yourself in a hole. You know, one, one super big session, and we call them hero sessions, but you can it can happen even just in a well-structured session. You can overdo it, and then your next few days are messed up, and it ruins the whole week. It's just, for a lot of us, the consistency of the week is the goal. So it's just that, for me, that disparity was really, really clear talking to him about how he can just go as hard as he can and recover in between. And, and that is just not appropriate for 99% of the world.

Yeah, and he, he did still talk about the consistency being the key to it, layering sessions on sessions, week on, month on, year on. And he's been the classic example of that. And, you know, without having really broken down at all, um, which, you know, he's had a few things here and there, mainly gut issues more than anything, and mechanical issues have prevented him from being more successful. But yeah, but, but yeah, it just highlights the fact that if you, if you just layer the sessions where you don't actually go so hard that you upset that consistency layering goal. I think that's what he was trying to say is, look, I can go as hard as I can, but you shouldn't copy me because I've been doing this for so long and I can keep being consistent. And so if, if you're going to try to do something that's extremely hard, and we've often said that, you know, on the easier days, you should not be trying to push yourself too much. If it says zone 2 ride, don't, don't be flippantly going into zone 3 for 25 minutes out of the the hour and a half ride. Stay in Zone 2 so that when you can do the hard session, you can be at the top of the range if you want to. And, you know, we'd say that's our basic principle is train easier to train harder. And don't train evenly the whole time. Consistency is different to training the same. Consistency is meaning you're turning up every day. Your frequency of training, that's what consistency is. You know, the 3 things that the pillars we talk about, the frequency of training, the duration, how long it is, and the intensity. And so if you get the frequency right, you, you're not missing for 6 months of the, of the year where you're just layering session upon session, and then you can really train hard in the ranges that you have been set so that you don't start getting sick or injured from fatigue, or overuse. And, and that's what builds a better athlete over a long time in the sport. And I think that's what everybody wants, longevity in their own life. But as an athlete, You wanna be in this sport. If you're entering this sport as a 22-year-old now, you know, you think you want everything to happen right now, but you know, when you're 28, you look back that you've had 6 years of this sort of training. So don't be so quick to try and get to the end goal. You know, be willing to stay disciplined and trust the process of if I do this well, don't get injured and don't get sick and don't get fatigued just do everything that I should be layering it and just learn the lessons that Christian is trying to tell us. Um, uh, and I think that would be a better outcome for the listeners.

His Norwegian compatriot, uh, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, probably our most referenced athlete on this podcast behind Wout van Aert and, and other Norwegian— other Norwegians. But he just did a great podcast. He doesn't do many extensive interviews, really in-depth interviews. And so he did one recently, and as soon as I saw it come out, I jumped straight on it because so amazing to hear his insight on stuff. I love— I do love hearing him talk. And he's got a little bit of cheek like Christian, where he's so confident in his own ability now he likes to be a bit funny in interviews. But he called his training style, uh, double threshold fever. And he says he's kind of going back to what you said at the start, the off-season, on-season, the really clear distinctions between winter and summer. And he's in a unique position himself because he made the point that that doesn't happen now because the whole year is scheduled differently. A lot of people are racing all year round. But Jakob was just kind of saying, in my winter, I am just head down between October, the end of the season, and September through to March, to the start of the off-season, through April. I'll just head down for 6 months giving myself threshold fever. And what does that mean? It means he's— he dialed it down to, I'm just training as hard as I can where, where I have nothing outside of my sessions. I am feet up on the couch. I can't do anything else outside of that. If I can function outside of that, I'm not training hard enough. That, that is just so to the extreme. But not hard as in high intensity, hard but maximizing volume. And so that's the double threshold thing where on his double threshold days he's training as hard as he can in the morning but not tipping over where he couldn't do the session in the afternoon. He needs to find that line where he's at the maximum point but he can still do the session with the same quality in the afternoon. He's backing that up 3 times a week. His program has been, uh, very public for a while. It's double sessions Tuesday, Thursday, and he'll repeat conveniently on the Saturday, long run, etc. But every day he's maximizing his volume times intensity ratio to make sure he can back up. But for me, that— it was funny because, you know, a lot of us have taken the lessons of what he's done with the double threshold and understood the principle that, oh well, if you back off a bit, you can fit more volume. That is valuable to age groupers as well. Um, he's just taking it to the extreme where he's going, I don't want to be doing anything else outside of my week apart from head down getting this volume in. And that's, that's why he's the freak that he is and he's able to run like. And so for us, once again, we can take the principle and apply a little bit to the training, but we've all got a life and to work, and we can't have our feet up the rest of the time just recovering from training.

There's a few things to unpack in that, uh, whole conversation. And one is, like we talked about earlier, you know, uh, long slow training in winter. He's just flipped it, you know, train, train with as much intensity as I can and what my body can cope with. So that's a huge turnaround, even though he's still using the winter-summer thing. And that's really, athletics is quite different. You do have cross-country as an option, and I know that he did do that a fair bit in his previous 10 or so years as a developing athlete. And I think, I think, you know, doing some of that stuff gives motivation and gives you perspective. You know, it's always good to have a race here or there, but I, you know, I love the fact that he's really keen to keep the intensity going during that, during that winter period. And I think I think that's the message that I was trying to say earlier is, you know, the endurance is important. You're saying get as much endurance into his body during that winter period as possible. You know, he's a 1500, 800— sorry, 1500, 5K track runner, and, you know, you would think, oh, you don't need endurance. But he's, he's running an amazing amount of kilometers each week at a very high intensity. And guess what that builds? It builds your, in your durability as an athlete. And, and, you know, that ability to endure, um, is— can't be underestimated. And that's one of the messages we're trying to get across here.

Touching on Grace, what you said before, you know, the clear standout message and take-home message from her interview was how little she runs for how much— how much of a quality runner she is. And she just— she gets all her intensity from the bike, which we just loved, uh, and, and runs to what she— her body can handle. But for a while there, that was 40 kilometers a week. You know, that is just so, so low for a pro triathlete. And now it's built back up to 60, 2+ Ks a week, but it's all very, very easy running. The key part is that her longest runs were still in marathon range for her. So because she's a 2:45 marathon or a 2:50 at the end of a 9-man, her long runs were still 2 to 2 and a half hours. And that's, that's her getting the volume required for her and what she needs. And the age grouper, if you're a 4-hour runner, it's a little bit of a different question. But yeah, no intervals. But the part I wanted to touch on was she said off air beforehand, she said, oh, I think I'll get my TrainingPeaks up for this conversation because is often in these interviews you just forget what you're doing. And that's something that people need to realize, is the athletes can get it wrong on these podcasts. They're giving us a snapshot of, of what they think, but a, the last week of their program might just be an anomaly. It might be a little bit wrong because they just got their data wrong. It happened with Claudia on the episode as well. She, she kind of got her weeks mixed up and she laughed at that as well. Um, it might be a snapshot of their best week but not their week consistently. Um, we all do that as humans, you know. We kind of say, here's what I think I'm doing weekly, but if you look at the training peaks, that's actually not happening at all. You know, that happened 1 week out of 10. Um, yes, so the pros are different. They're probably going to be a lot more consistent. But my point is, you know, Grace is laughing, saying sometimes I just get it totally wrong. And then I think after the episode, why did I say that? That's not what I do. So you've got to take that with a grain of salt as well.

Yeah, so selective, uh, training, you know, you're always going to highlight— yeah, you highlight your best weeks. And, you know, and, and that's so true. But Yeah. Look, I think we've got, you know, so many examples over the journey where, for triathletes who are worried about getting injured, it's no better commentary to hear from one of the pros who has really understood that intervals don't suit her and she'll break down. So she can still get her intensity from the bike. And I think Natalie was the same. She was is, you know, Natalie Van Kovenen was absolutely adamant that she's training the house down on the bike and getting all of her hard sessions and long sessions, and she's just building the durability of her running rather than— and yet Christian was different. He wants to really pound those intervals, you know. So every athlete's got a different way, and that's the message I'm, I'm really trying for you and I to get across, is you hear something that, that works— the, the Percy Serety, John Landy, Herb Elliott, all those examples, you know, the modern day. You've gotta find what works for you and then try to maximize, and don't go— don't go copying stuff that will bring you down. You know, get the stuff that's gonna allow you to be better and dismiss the stuff that you know will— and we're primarily worried about injury. Injury is the bane of every athlete. And, you know, you're going through it yourself right now with a little a back injury. And, you know, it's, it's not a running injury. It's just your back's got sore from whatever. We don't actually know why, but, but, you know, it's just ruined the last 2 weeks of your program. And, and it can happen to anybody. And you're really quite, um, uh, detailed in your way that you, you know, go about continuing to do your strength and conditioning and, and warming up properly. And, you know, you do a really good job of, uh, of getting prepared for sessions, and yet it can still happen.

Yeah, yeah. And, and I really like that from Claudia Hollingsworth interview. Uh, she, she described how she's built her training, and it's really been a slow increase of volume as her body has developed and allowed her to. And it's taken her a few years in the on system to get to 90-kilometer weeks, uh, which, you know, that was a slow buildup to get there as she was coming out of high school. And then now, after a few years in the on system, she's at 115, 120 kilometers. But she just did what her body was allowing her to. And I think that was really smart by her whole team to, to let that happen. And, and that was the first part. It's just, it's another example. But what I loved also is that we got to interview her before the opening rounds of the Diamond League, which she raced a couple of weeks later. And the whole podcast, we were raving about her form over summer. She, she peaked perfectly for the All-Australia Champs, got her national title, second in the 800, beat world champion Georgia Hunter-Bell at the Maury Plant meet, you know, really in form. And then opening races of the Diamond League, her— and she wasn't the only one— Jess Hull really not performing, um, quite up to that peak form. Let's give them credit, they are fast racers. The opening races at Donnelly were fast, so they were still in that range but not up to their standard. Um, and that was great to see, just another example of, you know, they're not going to be peaking every single race. It's not— they peaked well for the Oz Champs, a few weeks later there's just a little bit of a downtrend. And I'm sure they'll be back as, as the year ramps up again, especially for Commonwealth Games.

It's really hard, and I, I I kind of think that I say this a lot. You know, you can't be in peak form for 52 weeks of the year, yet people might hear that, you know, you can really only manage 4 to 6 weeks and you can do that probably twice a year, maybe 3 times, depending on what sport you're in. If you're in Ironman, that's quite different to 1500s. You know, they're quite contrasting examples. So you wanna be super careful about, you know, when do you want to be the best you can be in that year? And I think Cloudy did a great job during the Aussie titles, and, and Jess Hull, and all, you know, Abby Caldwell. There's so many good runners. And, uh, and then all of a sudden, at the first Diamond League, because that was quite a, you know, probably 4 or 5 weeks later, was it, Gerard? 6 weeks?

Yeah, about that.

Yeah, you know, how the hell are they— they've built a good 4 weeks of form, um, um, from, from that, from that period. Um, and now it's like 12 weeks if you add the 6-week, um, uh, period into the Nationals for Australia and then into the Diamond League. That's 12 weeks. Like, I would be astounded if you— if Claudia was running well. I honestly would be. Um, and same with Jess, you know, and both of them not performing that well yet. Um, uh, who was— who actually won the last Diamond League?

It was Abby.

Yeah. And She's just flying. And maybe she was just coming into form at, you know, in, in the Nationals, and, and maybe she may not last the whole year. It'd be interesting to watch whether she can hold— she is absolutely running the house down. It's so good to see if one Aussie's not there, there's 4 others that could be there. So, um, and I think that's the fascinating thing about, uh, peaking and form and holding it. And we as amateurs think that we can do— we can perform PBs all the time. And, and I, I got— I do get a little bit frustrated sometimes, and I think the same way sometimes. I think, what am I expecting myself to do? You know, you just can't keep performing month in, month out. There's got to be some periods where you're recovering from a big event, and then you're trying to build back up again. So there has to be this kind of wave of you trying to make the wave wave like a staircase rather than just a flat wave. You're trying to improve year on year out, but, but you can't expect to hold the form all the time. And, um, you know, that is a lesson that everybody needs to hear. You, you need to— that's why we say watch your A race. Let's really make sure that we try to get our best form then. And say that's Kona this year in October, or Busso in December. I'm just picking out random random events, you know, the form you have in July compared to October should be much different. You know, you shouldn't be at your peak form in July, 'cause how the hell are you gonna hold it all the way till October? And so for an event in December, you should be really coming into good form, you know, October, November, the last 8 to 10 weeks. And so if you don't think like that, then you're going to be disappointed regularly And that's what I kind of say— I almost say to people, "Oh, you're making— you're destroying your own mind by having expectations that you would be able to perform at your best the whole time you're doing a training session." You'll have periods where you don't even feel good in a period where you are in good form, but you don't feel good on a particular day. So you need to adjust your expectations for that training session. And to hear Christian say, "I'm going flat out in every session," it's not really helpful for me as a coach. Because, because that's him. And, and for most athletes, you know, if I've trained really hard for a period, I get on the bike and I'm warming up and I'm thinking, how am I going to do this high-intensity session? My legs are feeling like lead. And all of a sudden, the blood starts to flow, and I'd start doing a little bit of a ramp and a little bit, a little bit more intensity, and all of a sudden, I'm not too bad. But if I'm not feeling any of that, I shouldn't do the high-intensity session. And that's kind of every time you do think about what you're going to do next in your training, you should be asking yourself, how do I currently feel against what I'm supposed to be doing?

This is a bit of a sidebar. We didn't plan on talking about this as much, but, but one of my observations a lot recently, thinking about that Christian example, um, let's be really specific with what he said to us on the podcast. He said, I'm in the 6-week block and I'm trying to get myself in the best race form. And so these sessions, I'm, I'm running hard. I'm trying to get myself with the ability to run 3-minute Ks at the 70.3. And he went out and did it. He ran 3— 106, 107 twice in a row, won Ironman Texas. But then he said to us, but after that, I'm having some recovery and I'm having a snuff period. I'm having 2 weeks off and then I'll start my build again for the Ironman. So he's not in that hard, hard mode all the time. That was a very selected period. So that's, that's really important. And then the other part you just mentioned was, hey, kudos to him being able to do that and back up. But you're feeling yourself, Dad. Sometimes you get on the bike and your, your legs are like lead. And I would say that if a lot of age groupers think they're doing polarized training, really high intensity and really slow, easy intensity, but they're not. My observation is they're doing this is this own mix, accidental mix of training where they're doing really high intensity and a lot of moderate work in between because the easy isn't easy enough. And so athletes are just exhausted. And so they're getting to hard sessions and struggling. They're tired all week. Um, the, the easiest example that we always reference is Kajelcha and Sowai just ran 1:59 for the marathon. Like, they, they are running the marathon at 2:48 kilometer pace, um, for the entire 42 kilometers. They're easy jogs with their Kenyan mates, a 5:30 to 6-minute pace. And we see a ton of athletes, you know, running their, their marathon at 5-minute pace or their the half mile at a 5-minute pace, and their easy jogs at 5:15 pace, 5:30 pace. That is, that is majority of athletes I see, to be honest. That's not a minority. And so, yeah, on that point, if you really want to make sure that you're polarizing your training, if you're wanting to train hard, the other stuff has to be easier and a lot easier. Look at that disparity from, from the best, uh, two runners in the world.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. And, you know, the example for cyclists is, you know, a lot of the pro riders are out there doing zone 2 and they're where sometimes the amateur riders might come across a group of pro riders like the Visma team all out training. The Visma team might be on it one day and really flying past, and you see this on social media with the speed they're going up some of the hills. Then other days, they'll be just riding zone 2, and the amateur riders would be boasting how they can keep up with these World Tour riders. But the intention of the World Tour rider is to not go out of zone 2. If some guy wants to ride harder up the hill and pass the World Tour group of training guys, the World Tour guys aren't going to chase this amateur. They're just so disciplined. But as amateurs, if someone passes us on the road, we just go and chase them. And you know, it's just, uh, it happens all the time. And I'm forever yelling if I'm in my group, what are you doing? Let him go. Yeah, today's session is to stay in zone 2 so that tomorrow you can ride as hard as you want, but not mediocre today and then mediocre tomorrow. That's what your point is.

Yeah. And I would say that this is where we've talked about in the podcast, zone 2 is really misinterpreted because zone 2 is actually kind of hard to, to hold for hours on end. So it's more like athletes need to get in their head, it should be more like zone 1. And then you get into this whole conversation around recovery being useless. But the point is easy enough that it's not costing you anything And the last point on that I want to make is the metabolic and physiological cost of riding is a lot less than running. And so that's why the pace is so important. Riding, you can sort of get away with pressure on pedals, zone 2 for longer, great fitness benefit, not so much consequence. But running, doing that repeatedly is just really going to exhaust you. So, um, on that, on that note of, of the Christian example and picking your periods to go hard and not, uh, bringing it back to Jess Howell's performances. I've seen she's had a pretty poor start to the Diamond League by her standards, but I think it's totally okay. I've seen a lot of criticism and commentary around her opening races, people criticizing her for running from the front, just fading, you know, no race tactics. Um, but I think what she's doing is, is, you know, I totally disagree with that because I think she's doing exactly what she should right now. She's treating them as training sessions, and she's— she wants a fast race, and she's going out there and running as hard as she can and seeing and training herself to hold on longer. At this point of the season, that's where she needs to be at. It's not championship racing. Of course she'd want to perform better. Of course she would like to not be fading the last 150 meters. She's running 7 seconds slower than her PB, you know, but she's running that way for a reason. And, and that's just brilliant thinking. I think you want to think, where am I at in my season and how should I be approaching my sessions based on that, you know, I think that is something that age groupers could take, is, um, certain times of the year there's times to really go for it, there's times to just, just hit the goals and that's enough and you don't need to be overdoing it. There's times to try different tactics. Now's the time when you can have a go at certain ranges and see if they apply. And then there's certain times when that's not what you're trying to do, you need to hit the requirements of this session.

Yeah, it's pretty gutsy to go into an actual elite Diamond League race using it as a training session and you're doing it for the purpose that you want yourself. And it could be so easy just to sit at the back and sit in and just try and have a big sprint at the end, but that may necessarily not be the goal of this, of the, of the race. And, you know, we always push racing as the best form of training. It's undoubtedly what, what our main philosophy is built around, because the more racing you do, the more practice you get at executing what's going to happen on the real day. So a lot of BC Cup races are really good for athletes to be really ready and prepared when it comes to the main race that they're training for. And, you know, I just think, you know, it's pretty gutsy to use this, this on the high— the, you know, the most watched, uh, level of athletics— to, to be okay with that. And, you know, she just doesn't— she's just not fazed by it. I think it's fantastic.

You never know what's going to happen. The, the same Diamond League, uh, the 3000 meters was just off its head with how record was. Andreas Almgren, one of the best, um, best middle distance runners in the world at the moment, a Swedish long distance runner. He just ran a national record, 7:26, in the race. And what he said afterwards was, he said, I'm not sure what form I'm in, so I really wanted to see what this race would bring. And he said, I actually came in with no expectations. I just wanted to use it as a training session and get a really good hit out. And he's run a national record. So for me, that was, again, the mindset, the mindset you go into these, these races with, um, and, and just trying to test yourself and see where your form is at is, is really important. You know, it's really important to get that right and understand why you're going into this and what you need out of this. That's going to help you, um, get through your seasons really, really productively.

Yeah, the why— if you can answer the why for, for your training session, for, um, why do I need sleep, you know, anytime you're in a race, what's my purpose, why am I doing this race, and once you identify the reasons, then you you're— then it's really easy to get the outcome right. And sometimes you just wanna be in a race just so that you can actually, you know, if I use a bike race for— as an example, sit in as much as you possibly can and then try to win the race. That's my goal, to try to get a result, try to— try to expend the least amount of energy and get a result. Other times, I might say, no, I need a training session here, so I'm gonna do as much work as possible and not worry about the end result. I'll still sprint to try and win in, but I'm going to do as much work as I can. And they're two completely different scenarios for the one thing, which is a bike race. And you can do that in running. You can do it in any sport you, you think about. You, you've got a choice of how you deal with the actual session, whether it's a training session or a race. And getting the why am I doing this particular session the way I'm doing it is really gonna be important to your progress as an athlete.

Right, I want to read out something you've said, uh, which is that, you know, people are quick to dismiss the fundamentals and, and look for the new trending thing. But specifically, you say people keep asking you about the 1% before doing consistent training. So talk to me about that mindset among, among us amateurs.

I love, I love it when people ask me about this because it means they're really, uh, really involved in their own, uh, improvement. So that's a big tick. Big tick. I, I feel like I'm training well. What's something that I can do extra that's gonna give me an edge to my previous performances? So that's a big tick. So people are asking me about that, then it must mean that they're doing a lot of things right. But then when I dig in to the program that they're doing, I would say, look, we were trying to do 3 rides this week and 3 runs and 2 swims if you're a triathlete, you actually didn't do the whole week the way we planned it. And if I look over your last 4 weeks, there's lots of bits here and there that the training sessions that we've scheduled, you actually haven't done them. And there've been legitimate reasons. So I would say your first goal is to not worry about the 1%. Let's worry about getting 99% of your program right first. Then we can talk about fast wheels, you know, better aero helmet, or, you know, you know, helium in your tires or better nutrition. You know, there's a lot of good things that we can add to it. You know, better paying more for skin suits. A lot of it's to do with cost and if— can you afford it? But I really wanna hone in on the age grouper. Do the basic stuff really consistently well and then give yourself a treat. And think about doing some 1%ers. And there's, you know, some of that stuff is just common sense. Eating really well, making sure you're not over-consuming and under-consuming, making sure you're getting enough sleep. There's a whole— we could go through 15 different 1%ers that you should be doing anyway that are part of your program. And they're not 1%ers, they're part of your program, by the way. That's what you should be doing. You don't put them on their own. You know, you should be trying to eat well and sleep well. They're two things that are non-negotiable as far as I'm concerned, and doing the program as it's written unless there's a valid reason.

It's the myth of the search for the perfect program, you know, and we get caught up in that as coaches as well. Like, we're just constantly searching for what's, you know, what's still, what are we learning? What are we, what are we changing? What are we, what are we changing our mind on? But it's just, it's the classic cliché, and the best program is the one that the athlete sticks to. And, and is able to stick to and works for them, for their body, for their life, their environment, that they respond to. They respond well to physically and mentally, you know. That's, that's the key.

Yeah, I, I just think you've hit it on the head. You know, we all think that there is a perfect program out there, but if I said to you, Gerard, here's your marathon program for your next marathon, here's 20 weeks, um, I guarantee you that at the end of the first week we would be changing what's in the second week based on what you did on the first week. And we could actually in the middle of the first week find that you're not coping, and then we would change some more sessions. And that's the value, obviously, of having a coach who's, you know, who's in tune with how you're coping. And so the perfect program, I think, is the one that really adjusts to how the athlete's feeling. And, and that's the one thing in the metrics that we talk about, and we're renowned for being attention to detail in, in power and running pace and and, and all those things that are super important, but we are also asking our athletes more than those other stats, how are you coping today with, with this session? How— and we want our athletes to tell us that, oh, I really struggled, or that was easy, or something in between. And so then you can proceed with what you're expecting to do next. And a lot of people also ask me, well, you know, why don't you just open up all the, all the weeks of programs? Well, I don't want you to get an idea of what you should be doing and then get disillusioned because you can't actually do what I— what your program should be. So we wait till Sunday afternoon till you've finished your whole week, and then we'll either release what's— what we've planned, or we would really adjust stuff up— up or down and make sure that this is appropriate for the level of fatigue that this athlete is feeling. And so, and I think, you know, that is the perfect program, the one that is flexible to your feel feel.

Yeah, it brings up such a fun point for us because someone commented to me on, on our Instagram page and said, um, uh, I know I listen to your podcast, I know how much you guys love data, and I love that we've got that reputation of being the data, the data people. We really like looking at numbers, um, but we always say on this podcast that we never want to look at numbers more than overriding your body's signals. And an example of what you're just talking about is is you're doing the program that's set, uh, and everything says you're doing it well. You're hitting the sessions, you're hitting the ranges, your HRV says you're good, your sleep score says you're good, but your body's screaming, I am, I am so tired here, I am not, I'm not feeling good, but everything says I'm feeling good, I should just continue on. And that is where wisdom needs to come in and not override your own body signals and say, okay, well, everything looks green and ticks, but you're telling us a different story. Your story actually is more important here.

Yeah, and you know, that is the value of having a coach who's actually in tune with what's happening every day. You really need to be asking yourself on a daily basis, how do I feel today when I wake up? And everybody's got a watch, it's got HRV, it's got resting heart rate. They're really good metrics, and we use them. But we don't look at them until we ask ourselves, how do I feel this morning? And walking around, you know, geez, I'm feeling really good. My legs feel great. Or I am struggling to walk up and down the stairs. My legs feel really average today. And so at the end of the day, I would then look at what is my HRV or what is my resting heart rate? And if it agrees with me, then I would do something to change what's going to happen for the rest of the day. But sometimes your feelings is ahead of HRV. So your HRV could tell you that you're actually going okay, and your resting heart rate— we know the reason we take resting heart rate regularly is because if you're averaging 46 beats per minute and all of a sudden it's registering 56, there's something happening internally that's not right. So you may have already felt that, and that's the beauty of asking yourself, how do I feel? And so You know, don't just use one metric. You use the feel factor and listen to those signals that, you know, that are telling you there's something not quite right. And the reason it's telling you that is because that's actually what's happening. There isn't something quite right. Just like if I'm starting a race and I'm supposed to ride 200 watts and I get on the bike and I cannot ride 200 watts. There's something— I've been doing this for races race after race, and I'm just using this as an example. And I— all of a sudden, I can't do it. Well, I'm not just gonna put my head in the sand and keep trying to do 200 watts. I'm gonna listen, drop the power back. It could be my power meter's overreading. Could be that I'm exhausted from training sessions. I didn't understand, that my body was really coping— not coping well. And so we really wanna make sure that how we feel is playing a major role in our decision-making.

Yeah, it's often the other way around, isn't it? You know, depending on how in tune you are with your body, but often the HRV or the higher resting heart rate or the higher heart rate in training precedes the feeling. Sometimes it can be the other way, and that's why it's important to trust yourself. And, and yes, you know, often you'll get into a session, you go, geez, my heart rate's high today, and that could have just been from an acute bad night's sleep the night before, increased stress that day. So many factors that contribute to that. Or you just find two days later you get sick and you go, Wow, wow, my body was already starting to fight off something. Um, I read a— I read a study just on the, uh, the Sleep Score stuff that was just, just important to know in terms of this understanding your body signals or not, and how much our psychological, um, mindset impacts our performance and motivation and everything else. It was quite simple. They just got people to read their sleep scores in the morning, and they tracked their cognitive function that and they told people that they had a poor sleep score, and those people performed worse cognitively that day. And the— and but they told people— the trick was they told people that didn't actually have a bad sleep score that they did have a bad sleep score, and they performed worse that day even though their sleep score was fine. And so just knowing that and hearing that, that is the little bit of the danger of, of tracking these things so much and looking at, looking at it, uh, first thing in the morning. You could ruin your whole day without even realizing it, and you, you might not be strong enough mentally to override that. And that's why you made that point, check in with yourself first. How am I going? How am I feeling? Okay, now what's the data saying?

The order is super important. And without that study you've just told, we— I've had that from people saying to me, my HRV's, you know, plummeted, what should I do today? And I say, oh, how do you feel? No, I feel okay. And I'm saying, well, let's get on with the day. You know, it could be anything that's caused that. So you've got to use it as a valuable tool but not let it override your whole world.

On the fourth thing, and we wanted to just finish off with a bit of discussion around— like we want to do a live coaching around the marathon journey because we love bringing people into one of our journeys about what we're doing. But you mentioned the back injury before and I'm at an interesting crossroads because I've got 6 weeks to— supposed to be the A-Race marathon. I've had a back injury for the last 2 weeks. It's kept me out. The volume of running is slowly improving. It will be down to the wire come Gold Coast whether I feel A, up for the distance, and B, up for the intensity. I can't rush the process. Just got to take the weekly load as it comes and what my body can handle. What's the decision-making around and how we work through this? Um, do you do the race? You know, do you, do you pull out? Like, what Yeah, what do we do here?

And it's interesting when it happens to you yourself individually, Gerard, because you know the protocol that we use and you've still got this desire to compete and you want to be in the race. You've trained a long time for it. And so even though you know that going into the event you're going to be compromised, you haven't prepared the way you want, but yet you still want to do it. And, and, and that's the— that's where a good coach comes in. And, you know, as long— I'm, I'm giving you many options. A, go and do the race, and then that comes with a but. You know, go do the race, but don't expect to be competing at your very best marathon. You know, I don't see how you can possibly run in the 2:30s for this marathon. 2 hours 30 is your PB, in the 2 hours 30 mark, 2 hours 39, 2 hours 39:30 or something. So it doesn't really matter. Just the, the point is you're not in that form. So are you okay with running 2:45 or 2:50? That would be, that would be the discussion you would have. And if the athlete says to me, no, no, no, I want to, I want to do a PB, and so there you've got to, you've got to push back and say, well, you know, let's just get your current ability and your ambition aligned. And we say that a lot. And your form now compared to what it was 6 weeks ago is not the same. You've lost a lot of fitness. You haven't been doing, ironically, the long run. All your runs are, you know, building from 5 walk-run to 5 minutes to 20 to 30. So you're miles away from, you know, what you should be doing, which is a 2-hour-30 run with the, you know, finishing fast progressive finish. And so, so, you know, if you have that discussion with the athlete, logic should prevail. Of it. Get their mindset around, if you still wanna do the race, great. We can get other outcomes that are just as good. It could be a, it could be a training run for you. So it comes away from an A race to a B or a C, and you wanna still do the event as long as your mental approach is that I'm not gonna succeed in the time I want, and you're okay with that. I'm all— I'm on board. I'm definitely on board with that. The main option for me would be Why would you go and do that race unless the athlete can tell me a very good valid reason just like, I wanna use it as a training run for my next race. I've already got my next race. This would be a great training run. I'm going there and I can do a little bit of a holiday. I'm catching up with family. They're great reasons to, to go and do that. But then I would point out running a marathon is not just a training run. It is a marathon and you're gonna be out there running reasonably hard and this will take recovery. Are you okay with that and does your next event get interfered with by you doing this race. So, so there's another reason we talk about why are we, why are we continuing to push to do this race. And, and then the third option is, you know, as a coach, I don't think you should do this race. Um, um, you should just leave it and move on and live to fight another day. And the athlete could still push back on that. And if they, you know, absolutely want to do the race, then there's nothing more I can say. I've given them all the reasons as to why I think that, you know, you can do this choice. But, but the bottom line is the minute you haven't prepared the way that, you know, we want you to, you have to understand the result will be compromised. You can still execute beautifully with the form that you have and get the result that's 15 minutes slower. You still— you've still done the best you can on the day. So that's, that's a positive. But, you know, marathon's a bit different to a half marathon or a 10K run where, where you can, you know, absolutely recover straight away and get on with your training. But yeah, I think that's— is there anything else you would add to, to your own discussion on this? Because you're going to be faced with it in literally 4 weeks' time.

Yeah, and the irony is that, you know, you spoke about what would our protocol be, and the reason I'm in this position was because I didn't follow our protocol and I was sick, uh, but I was really pushing for a half marathon. And it was a B race, but I really wanted to do it. I was in good form and I really wanted to, to see how I would run as part of this marathon prep. And I pushed the week after sickness too fast and too hard and too early. We don't know exactly what caused the injury, but just some sort of accumulation of coming back too quickly, too much intensity. And then my body just, just said no, you've done this wrong, and this back injury popped up. But, um, but that was us, you know. If I was coaching an athlete in my own program, I wouldn't have let myself do the sessions I did coming straight back from sickness. But I was pushing to try and to the half marathon. And that's consequence, I bet. I knew I was doing it. I knew, geez, I'm flirting with the line here, and I crossed it. And so that was against protocol. And so now the reminder is, okay, well, I'm not doing that for the marathon. I'm just going to get to the week out and make a decision then and see what position I'm in. But it's different to— it's not a half marathon where you can just turn up, race, recover, exactly like you said. It's a marathon. And the same question comes up with any athlete thinking about an Ironman. It's not just something you do to go through the motions, you know. It's a marathon or an Ironman, you're spending so long out there. Is that worth it just for a training session? And this was, I was asking you this, you know, how valuable is, is doing a 2:45 or 2:47, um, if I, if I have the durability to do that, is that worth it to get the extra race in the legs? Um, or would you rather just, just scrap it and, and get on with training and, and recoup for another race down the line? You know, I actually don't know the answer. To how I feel about that right now.

Yeah, in my mind, I've done many races where I haven't been at my best and I haven't had the mindset of changing my expectations, and that's a bad reason to do the race. If you've got the right mindset around what's the purpose— an Ironman and a marathon are quite— they're, you know, ones in your case, 2 hours 40 or 50 and 9 hours. They're quite different comparisons to make, uh, you know. Doing a 9-hour Ironman when you're, when you're not, not ready for it is a really dangerous thing to do. But if it's just, just that you're going to be slower and there's no going to be adverse health problem, I would be more than happy for people to, to still do the Ironman just so that they can say they've completed it. But, but if your mindset is based on a time, then, and you're not willing to budge on that, then I would be saying you shouldn't be doing the race because you're not going to achieve that time you want. And I've done that myself, gone into a race with expectations based on what I want and what I was capable of were miles apart, and I was bitterly disappointed. But it was ridiculous, my mindset. Why would I think that I could perform after one race I had pneumonia, and I, you know, 4 days later I'm lining up for a 3-stage tour, and, you know, just not because I trained so well, I'd put all this work into the last 6 months of training, I was as fit as I'd ever been. I've— my, my idea was I'll be fine. Well, I wasn't. I was terrible. And, and that was a hard lesson, which I don't want our athletes that we look after to experience. I'd rather— I've made that mistake, now I'm going to prevent you from making the same mistake.

We never want— we encourage athletes, don't shy away from the racing, you know, don't shy away from testing yourself because because we don't care what form you're at. That's the whole purpose. Um, but that is true for like a B and a C race. When you turn up to an A race, you are really hoping and you're in the mindset of a PB. And so it is really difficult to step on the start line for what should be your A race and lower your expectations. That's a really hard thing to do with an athlete. And lots of athletes try to trick us and think that they're being sneaky by, by, yes, I agree. But we know that they're, they're saying, yes, I agree. Okay, you let me do the race. I'm gonna go for the PB anyway. You know, like they say yes on the surface, they think we don't know this, but then we watch their race plan and they went out at their goal PB pace instead of the pace agreed for to back off and get a training session out of it. And so if you're going to do that, then you just— you're lying to yourself, and that's not the purpose either.

So it is—

it's a— it's, yeah, two sides of a tough coin where you go, okay, am I really okay with standing on the start line for a race I was really excited for? It sucks standing on the start line knowing you're not going to be able to give your best performance. It's a really hard thing to do when everyone's around you, everyone's motivated. It's just, yeah, as a human, it's a hard thing to do. And so if you're not going to be able to be okay with that, if you're not going to be able to hold back, if you're going to go out and potentially blow yourself up and do some damage because you're trying to overrun your ability, then that's not the okay choice to make. But if you really could do that, then, then maybe. What do you think?

Yeah, look, setting yourself up for failure is not something I'm encouraging any athlete to do, and— and that example you gave is just the classic example of people agreeing with you that, you know, your form is not where it is and then just basically dismissing the fact that you're telling them they have to have lowered expectations and they just ignore it. What I kind of get a little bit frustrated with, I suppose, is when they've done the race and then they're saying, "Oh, I don't know. I don't know what happened and, you know, I don't know why." felt so bad. And, you know, you just look at the data, and it's like exactly what you said. They went out at their ambitious form of what they were hoping for originally and didn't allow for anything. You know, it's just— it's like not allowing for altitude or not allowing for heat. You know, they exist. If you're try— racing in an altitude race or a race that's got extreme heat, if you don't adjust your expectations, you're just gonna set yourself up for failure. So that's what I'm trying to avoid is setting athletes up for failure is not what we're in the business for. It's it's setting you up for a great experience. And, and that's why that, that, that term that we use, ability, ambition— get them right and you won't have any, any really poor performances. Um, the person who can get their head around what is my current form, what's my race strategy to it to, to maximize, uh, my potential in this, in this event, and you'll have a good day. And if you get that wrong, you're setting yourself up for failure before you start the event. You've already got the information wrong, and that's, that's where I think a lot of the athletes make the mistake in not compensating or adjusting the expectations according to— you've got to ask yourself, what was the build-up like? And as I said before, there's no perfect build-up, but did you do it as well as you possibly could with very few hiccups? Then your expectation should be that what your current form is, you should be able to do that. But if there's anything happen along the way, you have to change. And being able to adapt is a really good trait of a great athlete.

Yeah, totally agree. To finish off, Dad, we want to do a segment we haven't done in a long time. That's the gratitude segment. We love to say what we're grateful for, just to remind us to stay grounded in this whole journey of training and racing. So, so it's been a long time between gratitudes, but what are you grateful for?

Well, there's a new athlete who joined and he'd only been on the program for a couple of weeks and he actually went into his first race in 20 years. And he had a long hiatus away from the sport and super enthusiastic. He actually won his age group in the race, which was mind-blowing really. But he ended up getting really sick. Week after this event. Um, and, uh, the minute he started our program, every time in the post-activities comment section in TrainingPeaks, he says how he goes in the session and what he's grateful for on the day. And I just love that. And even then, after that race, when he was really having a hard time for the next 10 days, he was saying some gratitude stuff that I wish I could remember a lot of them, but they were they made me stop in my tracks. And this guy had gone from the highest of high, winning his age group, to being in hospital in emergency. And, and he was still finding a way to be grateful for the good things that were happening in his life. So I'm grateful for our gratitude because it's having an impact. It had an impact on me reading his gratitude, and I just want to shout out to him. And, uh, and he's back training normally again. He's got another race, he's back on the horse, got another race in 2 weeks. Um, but yeah, that was, that was extremely gratifying to see someone who's really taken that on board, and I loved it.

A meta-gratitude, you would call it, gratitude of gratitude. My, uh, my gratitude is earlier this year we launched our new Clubhouse, which is our online community. Uh, we have it, we had a membership site, but we really wanted to ramp up the community spirit of Tribello, especially as we're getting more and more athletes from overseas join. And, and it has gone so well. We're, we're just, I'm just having so much fun and loving the the camaraderie that's been built in there and the comments and the opinions and the advice sharing. I'm just really enjoying it. So I'm feeling really grateful for, for the fun and some of the banter that, that's been, been had in there. Some old friends in there, um, paying out on each other a little bit. Some, some great wisdom, some great advice. It's, uh, it's really good. So that's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening. As always, we hope you enjoyed the, uh, back to our coaching one. We've got some really good guests coming up in future episodes. In the next couple of weeks, we've got Brenton Forward back on the podcast from Effortless Swimming, the best swimming coach in the world. We know everyone loves hearing his specific tips and how much he can help you, as well as a really exciting athlete coming on next week, Dr. Matthew Marquardt, one of the best minds in triathlon who really analyzes his training from a very logical perspective. And so we can't wait to have him come on. He recently did a really, um, interesting post about his anti-cramping strategy because he was suffering so bad from cramps, which we saw a lot on a lot of the big races. Um, and for him, it actually came down to cutting his carb load down before racing uh, which is a really interesting hypothesis and theory that he tested. So we're going to dive into all that plus much more from him next week. So as always, thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.