#4: The Tour Begins and Why Do We Test So Damn Much?

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Tribalo Coaching podcast, Tribalo Coaching, where we specialize in all things cycling and triathlon coaching. This is the podcast where I get to interview the Australian 1988 Ironman champion, the Commonwealth Games representative, the Australian Duathlon champion, and three times Australian Masters champion, who also happens to be my dad, Jared Donnelly. Jared, dad, welcome.

Thanks, Jordan. Great to be here again.

And you've enjoyed the last week up in the Sunshine coast in the north of Australia, North Queensland.

Yeah, we're very privileged, Jordan, to have another training camp up at Sunshine coast in Queensland. The weather in Melbourne has been horrible and so happy not to be there.

And I know you've personally loved actually training consistently because I know you've had some rough patches and you've been good to ride for seven days straight now.

Yeah, I had five days off the bike and then seven days straight. So you can turn it around just as quickly as you can lose it. As most of the guys I coach understand, it's about consistency and sometimes even myself can get lost in everyday life activities. And it's really good to have a bit of perspective and know that, you know, if you got something coming up just to chip away with the sessions you've got under your belt, not to lose hope. And yeah, you will eventually get there, get your consistency back. And I really enjoyed not killing myself too much, but getting some really good endurance training in at this, this stage of the season.

Perfect. So it's exciting times right now for cycling because the Tour de France has just started. We're two stages in and tonight is going to be the big time trial teams time trial stage, which is exciting. What are your thoughts so far on the Tour?

Yeah, great start to the Tour, wasn't it? I just love Sagan winning Jord. He's possibly my favorite cyclist of all time. He's so good for cycling, he's so good for the sport. What a personality, such a character. And he just doesn't seem to ever get phased. And you know, his skill. We talked about this morning when we were watching the, the, the, the last 2K, I think I was saying the yellow jersey was right on his wheel and they came into that corner and I don't know, six guys went down and I don't know how Sagan didn't, but once again he escapes the crash and then wins the stage. It's just incredible. What an athlete.

Yeah. So awesome to see him just slip out of that crash and go on to win. You just knew in that last group he had it the whole time.

He did, yeah. He was in control. Totally.

And it's been so interesting to see how switched on you have to be at the very start of the race. We saw in stage one, some of the big guys lose a minute straight away. And then in stage two, there was just. There was three or four crashes still in the last 5k, 10k, which just means you've got to stay switched on and concentrate.

Yeah. And a little bit surprising. Jord, Stage one, we're having a chat about why didn't the rest of the teams drop back? The riders in those teams dropped back to support Froome, to support Port. I was surprised. Van Avermaet and TJ Van Garden, both of them stayed up. I can understand one of them, just because of. It's important for car position. Wherever you finish in the bunch determines your car position for the next day, which is really important, especially when the time trials coming up. So I can understand one of them, but Rich is their main man. Why would both of them stay up?

And Matthew Keenan, who was commentating, made a similar point, saying that when those crashes happened in stage one and those main GC riders were gapped, there was only at the front of the race, it was just. Who was it from Quick Step, Gilbert was setting the pace and it was just him controlling the race at the front to make sure that Quick Step were in a good position for the finish. He wasn't trying to get away from the second group, he was just controlling the pace. And Keenan was basically saying, well, really, it's the three teams of Froome, Richie Porte and Mitchelton Scott with Yates. Really, it's just a time trial of them against Gilbert and they should win every time. That's what we were saying, that there should be 24 riders on the front of that second group. Team Trauma trailing back to the group. But there wasn't.

No. It was really surprising to me. And look, this event will be certainly changed tonight when the team's time trial is on. And if anybody watched the Dauphine, the Dauphine sometimes has similar stages that are going to be replicated in the Tour. And they did this in the time trial. The team's time trial, which is on tonight, they had exactly the same distance in the dauphine, which is 35 or 36K. And in the Dauphine, Team sky ripped the rest of the teams apart by winning that team's time trial. BMC and Mitchelton Scott got second and third, I think, in the Dauphine, but they, they were, I think, 90 seconds behind and if that happens tonight, then it's going to be really difficult for the other teams to make that, that gap back up. And I, I think of Nibali and his team, I'm not sure where they're going to finish in this team's time trial. And as we were discussing, it really is selection for the teams for the Tour de France was based around this team's time trial. Of course, the GC riders are awesome time trialers anyway and hill climbers, but the rest of the riders, and that's why Caleb Ewan wasn't selected with Middleton Scott, because they had put all their eggs in, in one basket with Yates and, and you know, they needed every rider to be performing in the team's time trial. Unfortunately, Caleb's not at the standard of some of the other Mitchelton Scott riders are in the team's time trial. Great sprinter, but yeah, it's, it's a bit of a change because, you know, Green Edge, Orica, Green Edge traditionally have tried to cover a lot of the event. Win the sprints, win the green jersey, win the king of the mountain, win stages and now it's their turn to be GC contenders and they've really changed their philosophy, I think. And I think Matt White's done a really good job with the group that he's got assembled and the team he selected for the Tour this year.

So BMC are actually predicted to win over sky, which I thought was pretty interesting. I mean, what's your prediction for tonight?

Yeah, I mean, Rowan Dennis, what a phenomenal time trialer. But don't forget, you know, Dumalan for, for Sunweb, you know, he's got Michael Matthews in there who's a great time trialer as well. So yeah, you've got so many teams with so many good. Sky have got, you know, such great depth in their time trialing squad as well. So, you know, unfortunately Durbridge crashed today and that might affect him a little bit tonight. Hopefully it doesn't. He, he didn't actually injure himself, but he landed on his knees at. What were they doing, 50 or 60 k's an hour. Yeah. So he didn't seem like he was too badly injured. But you know, crashings, it also, you know, affects everything about your body when you crash. You, if you have a wound, then the body starts trying to heal the wound which takes away from, you know, the body trying to function in a, in a bike race where it's trying to stay healthy. So don't underestimate how crashes really affect you.

Yeah. And it's quite uncomfortable to watch. I mean, actually reading Cadell's book, he talks about that and how much it takes out of you for the rest of the tour. But when we saw Durbridge crash, he one, he nearly got hit again when he was jumping off the side of the road. But he was sitting there and he was breathing heavily and he looked a bit white almost. And he's just. I think he was thankful and he put his hands up and said, I'm okay. But he was really taking a few seconds to catch his breath and just say, yeah, thank f I'm okay.

Yeah. And look, don't forget at the national titles at Ballarat, he came, he was leading, leading the race on the front, came around that corner and broke his collarbone in the gutter. So that's only January, you know, and they, you know, if the crashes happen a lot and people don't think the pressure pros crash much, but, you know.

We saw how many happened in the last two days.

That's right.

Man, when they're going 60 plus K's an hour, it's pretty scary. Yeah.

And look, Simon Garrons has had his own fair share of crashes over the years. And yeah, look, even going back to Kadowi, I don't know how many times he broke his collarbone, would have been five or six times before he got a free run and eventually won the tour, obviously. But so many of the guys, actually, their seasons are derailed by the slightest improvement. Know mistake by another rider or your own mistake to, to put you out for six months. And they're phenomenally tough, but they come back, you know, really, really quickly. But it must, must take some nerve to be at the front of the bunch. And Andy, my wife was asking me, you know, what's the big deal about this 3k to go? And. And, you know, once she understood that if every rider gets to 3k to go, so. And they get the same time as the rest of the bunch, no matter how far back they finish, so if they crash, it doesn't matter. And the main reason the authorities, officials did that was to separate the GC riders from the sprinters. So with 3k to go, unless the GC rider wants to get some time gaps in a sprint, they really don't need to be anywhere near the sprinters to give them a free crack at it.

Yeah, exactly. Right. So for us, we'll be watching the Aussies obviously, closely tonight in Richie Port and obviously the Aussie team in Michelin Scott. But I Think we'll also be barracking pretty hard for our, our Go to team which is Giant Sunweb.

That's right.

Who we saw and we got a first hand experience when we went to Belgium.

That's exactly right. They the only team to take a photo with the Trivelo coaching. No other team stopped to take a photo. That was pretty special at the Tour of Flanders and that was a really.

Special experience for us. Getting to talk to the director and he told us the tactics going into the Tour of Flanders which we'll, we will speak about more and more detail because there's a lot from that.

Yeah.

In a lot of the podcasts we do. But yeah, we would definitely be rooting for the. For somewhere.

Yeah. And look, don't forget, somewhere have Michael Matthews in their team. So I mean we, we're going for the Australian. You know, BMC have two Australians in Rowan Dennis and Richie Port. And funnily enough, the Mitchells and Scott don't have that many Australians in it. I mean Adam Yates being a pom, we're right behind him. But yeah, so you know, there's a sprinkling of Aussies throughout the teams and certainly Cavendish has got his old lead out man. Mark Renshaw has been doing it seemingly forever and he's still there doing it.

But I just don't think I could stand it if England won the World cup and Yates won the Tour.

Well, England aren't going to win the World Cup.

Well, one last point I actually wanted to mention from the tour. We were watching stage one and the guys that went on the break, the very first break, as soon as the flag went down in stage one and we just went, oh, that is, that is gutsy. Because there's 200k to go of stage one of a three week race and we talk a lot about managing, managing your preparation and managing a race and whether it's a two hour race or a four hour race or a three week race. That must be tough to go out that hard that early and then manage the next three weeks.

How funny Jordan, was it that one of the three guys did it stage one last year? So that was two years in a row he got in the break in stage one. I really would like to find out what happened in the next 20 stages for that bloke, whether he finished or not.

I might actually put that down to research. We can talk about it in the next podcast.

But he got his name up in lights and that's kind of one of the other things that the teams need to do. They need to get their team colors on the camera for the sponsors. But as we say, you, you know, it's a race so you got to have a grow, got to have a crack, gotta have a go. You never know what could happen. The bunch might stuff it up somehow and end up fighting for a, you know, a Tour de France stage win, which is going to be anybody's career highlight for sure.

And we did say that the goals are different. You know, their goal is to get through a three week race. Their goal is to make the most of it. So they might, they, they're probably happy to sacrifice a day and go all out and suffer for the next week if it gives them a chance to, to win. Win a stage.

Yeah. And look, the Quick Step guy was on the front this morning, I don't forget his name, but oh my goodness, how long was he on the front for? And he was basically one against the three breakaway riders for, I don't know, hundreds of kilometers. And no one else was helping, no one else is contributing. And it was funny because the sky team came up at one stage and said, would you mind moving across the road a little bit so we can get a bit more of a sit? And I don't think they got a very favorable reply from the Quick Step boys.

Hilarious.

That's pretty funny.

So we're looking, we're looking forward to tonight's team time trial, but that's enough Tour talk. We're going to get into today's topic, which is quite simply, we're going to talk all about testing and the importance of testing and testing yourself continuously in control conditions or as controlled conditions as you can get. And why that's so important and why it's such a vital part of a training program and it's a vital part of the trivelo coaching program is that we get our guys to be tested every four weeks.

Yeah, yeah. Look, people often complain to me sometimes why we test so much. And the simple answer is if you're not evaluating your progress, then you're kind of training blind. You just need to get feedback. You need to get constant information about how you're traveling. And you can get that in so many different ways. And the testing is one way. Racing is a classic way of finding out exactly where you've, where you sit in the bunch in a race, bunch of riders of your peers, whether you're an A grade or D grade or whether you're a bunch rider on Saturday. You know, riding with your bunch is the sort of a Real leveler to find out where you're up to. So the testing is a really crucial part. And the number one fundamental reason why we test is so that at the end of the day we can track your progress. And if things aren't going well with the testing that we do, then we need to change something. And that's so important and people forget that. That's one of the main reasons why we're testing is to make sure we do trust what we're doing is good and improvements are happening because that's the program we've set. But if for some reason someone's not performing with improvement, then, you know, we can't do the same repeated mistake. We have to actually change something up. And everybody is different. So everybody reacts differently to the program. And that's kind of one of the things, as a good coach, you identify. So the testing is super important.

So why do you put more value on testing? Because you make sure the athletes. It almost takes a full week. It's not a full week of training, but you take at least three days to freshen them up. Take two recovery days and then do the test. Why do you put so much value on that over a race?

Well, I kind of do and don't. The main reason the testing week's so good, if we had a race that week, it would be just as good. I would be happy to put a race in replace of the testing, but we don't get to race all that often and at the right time of our training block. As you know, most of our training block involves two to three weeks, depending on your age. Younger guys can last three to four weeks. Older guys can last two weeks. Middle aged guys can last three weeks of a seriously hard training block. And then they need to recover. So it's a great opportunity at the end of your recovery phase to have a little test. So it fits in well with our training block. But if you happen to have a race in the middle of that, it's even better. We don't need to wait three weeks, four weeks. I mean, you could do testing each week if you wanted to. And in fact, in some of the training sessions you're doing, you are testing yourself anyway. I know for sure. On the Saturday bunch ride, you know, depending on what circuit we're doing a particular time, if it's a one figure eight lap circuit that we're doing, there's like 11 hill climbs there, all between 30 seconds and two minutes. And you know, everybody's really, really hammering against each other. And if you Find that you're dropping off, that's kind of an indicator to you that something's not quite right. I'm not going so well today. So Forms are a really good tester in some of your bunch rides as well.

So on that note, I mean we do a couple of different tests. The main one we use is the FTP test. Why have you chosen that as the main one that you really like the athletes doing?

Yeah, well, the Functional Threshold Power test and we've spoken about it a lot over the years, so a lot of this is not new to any of the people our viewing audience that are listening. But you know, the original Functional Threshold Power test was over one hour. So you would put yourself against the clock for an hour and you would find out what your power number is after an hour. That's really hard. You need, it's almost race like you need to have tapered for it and you need to recover after it. So the reason we don't do the hour is because it takes too much of our training. So they've come up with and lots of guys have experimented and there are so many different versions. The 20 minute power test is the one that we use at Trivala coaching the majority of the time. I've actually just been trying the ramp test in the last month or so. But the 20 minute power test is a ripper because it's got two really good valuable components to it. One, you are actually doing a training session at Threshold. So that's perfect because that's one training session we need to do. And the second one is we actually get to find out where we're at with our number. And if you're hopefully higher than the previous test that you did, that's really good feedback. If you're not higher, then we need to actually look at what's going on. Did you miss some sessions? Was there some particular things that you didn't achieve during the last block? So it's a really good opportunity for us to re evaluate what we just did and to see if you didn't miss anything, you were consistent, then what else is going wrong? You may be sick, it may be a technical thing where your power number is wrong and it's not even your fault. So.

And you do talk about the importance of calibrating your power every session.

Yeah, yeah. There's so many things and variations and variances that can affect. So. So yeah, the 20 minute power test is the one that we rely mostly on. And as you, you know, we, we do coach a lot of Time trialers, we coach a lot of triathletes, we coach a lot of cyclists or time trial as a cyclist, obviously, but, but you know, you could have a time trial bike with a different power meter outside on a velodrome, indoor on your ergo, you can have your road bike outside on a hill climb, you can have it indoor on your ergo. So there's so many different aspects to what bike are you riding, what position are you in, are you on a climb, are you on a velodrome, are you on an indoor ergo. So not all those tests are going to get the same result. So it is almost a coach's nightmare with someone presents who possibly wants to be a GC type rider, where they want to be a time trialist, they want to be a hill climber, they want to be a crit rider, road racer, sprinter. So you actually need to have the power test number, the FTP test number for your indoor trainer, for your outdoor session and for your hill climbing and then throw in changing bikes, which is going from a road bike for those three tests to a time trial bike for those three tests. So technically you could have six different FTP numbers.

How many riders do you have that would want to achieve all that? Because most riders are pretty single focused on a goal compared to.

Yep. And look Australia wide, you know, if you're a cyclist going for the national championships, the champion of champion jersey gets given out to the best criterium rider, the best time trialer and the best road racer. So that's a GC three days of racing. So it's a mini tour over three days. So and you know, it's a point, it's not a timed thing, it's a points. So you're getting, you know, the one point for the victory, etc. And the person with the least points is the winner. Obviously you know, it could be a countback, so you need to be across all three versions. So yeah, we do have a percentage. But you're right, it's, it's not common that we have someone who wants to be, you know, a hill climber and a time trialist.

If they did what, how do you test for that? Because you can't do three, four, five or six different tests every four weeks.

No, but some of the sessions that we do, for example, if the guy was actually going to do some strength work in the hills, we might throw him on one of the segments on his Sunday ride where just have a, let's have a five minute squirt on this one. See what you can do or have a 20 minute on this hill, see what you can do. And the rest of the time you might be riding 70, 80%, 90%, you know, maybe on a velodrome set where we're doing some threshold stuff that's, that's close enough anyway, you might get a race in between there somewhere as well on your time trial bike, which is what we've just had on the weekend. So all those weekend results I'm using, you know, it's not classified as an FTP test, but it's actually given me data. So. Yeah, so you're getting lots of feedback on sessions that don't have the heading FTP test.

So I want to take it back a bit because you've had this obsession of testing for a long time and it takes a bit to convince your athletes that they need to be doing this every four weeks because it is a big mental effort. So where's this testing background come from you? And why are you so convinced that it's the right thing, that you can convince all the athletes to do it as well?

Yeah, I suppose it comes back to what we said just before Jordan is I don't want to progress with a program that's not working. So if, if I'm continually testing myself and I'm progressing, then mentally I'm just in such a good place. And you know what it's like if, if your power meter number is not working for a technical. Technology. Technology. Reason. Technological reason, that's a better word. It actually can mess with your head. There's something wrong with me. I'm, I'm, I'm losing form. Well, no, it's actually the power meter didn't calibrate properly and it's giving you the wrong number. So it can actually do your head in. If, if there's something actually out of your control. It's. That's not really true, but it's giving you the wrong data. So. So I'm obsessed with making sure that we're progressing and I want to make sure the training that we're doing is appropriate for the athlete. So. So I think I use the analogy if you're injured and, yeah, you're not sure whether, say, it's a calf or a hamstring and you're not sure whether the thing's ready to go or not, and you're forever doing little tests yourself to see whether might need another day. Or I've walked a little bit quick here. Or I can still feel it. If you can still feel it. Then maybe I need another couple of days. And rather than saying, the doctor said give it three or four weeks, just do the massage, the stretching, don't test it because every time you do a little test you aggravate it. But it's just human nature that you want to test to see how you're going all the time because you want to get back quicker. So it's the same with testing how you're going with this. And we don't want to keep testing too often because it has the inverse result of not training enough and just testing all the time, which is kind of interfering with the progress of the consistent training program that we're trying to establish.

So you really want to save the testing for the testing week and then the rest of the time you're focusing on training properly.

Yeah, but you're getting all these little glimpses along the way, especially if you're riding with the bunches. But look, normally say you're doing the high intensity session and you're really struggling on it, then that's a good indicator to you that something I might be too tired, I didn't go to bed until too late last night, I haven't got the right nutrition. So all these little tests along the way are quite good. The main thing is to have the set period for the tests, get them done and get the good feedback, which is it doesn't happen all the time that you get the good feedback, but majority of the time it will.

So I do want to talk about that psychology part in a second. But why aren't the numbers just from a training session enough? Why can't you just, if you know your FTP, why can't you just, just do your training sessions and do your six efforts or your 30 second efforts or your five minute strength efforts and just get your data from that. Why do you actually have to do a test?

Yeah, because in a, in a training session, that's what it is. It's a training session. So when you go to your main a race, you're not doing repeated efforts at training pace, you're going to be expected to race at your highest level you can possibly do. So if we're not testing at that level, then when we come to race day, we're not used to it for a start. But the main reason is so that we can train properly to the numbers. So we do the test for finding out how well we can do in a race, but also to train to. So there are two good reasons why the testing is important. Because without those numbers what numbers are we using to train to, you know, go back to my days when there was no, you know, there's no telephone, so there's no mobile phone available. So how are we going to have a power meter with, you know, computers didn't exist. So, so the data we were getting was just how did I perform from just self analysis of, you know, I got first, I must have done all right, I came tenth, I didn't do so well. Whereas if you had data in those days you could actually have a look and say, well what areas did I need the assistance in? So yeah, it's, it's, we've got the stuff there to use so you know, we would have been much better athletes back then and wouldn't have made so many mistakes had we had more data.

Because we know that psychologically we can lie to ourselves. And again, I want to get to that in a point but I still just, I want to clarify this because this is something that confuses me is why, because you're not, you're going to do a 20 minute FTP test but you're not always going to do a 20 minute race. It might be a 20 minute time trial, it might be a, a half hour time trial or two hour crit race. So it's still not specific to the race.

Yep. So let's just take time trialing and that. You know, for cyclists a time trial is one event but time trialing is what triathletes do anyway. It's a whether they're doing 180k, 90k, 40k, 20k DU athletes are the same, you know, 20k time trial. So we know that if we were doing a one hour time trial then we would take 100% of that FTP number. So we're doing a 20 minute time trial. So we're taking 95% of that because we're not doing a full hour. So we can't use that number for 20 minutes. But that's a number that's called critical power. 20 minute is critical power for 20 minutes only. The FTP number we've converted by using 95% to get our 100%. So if we do a full, full on, well normally an hour, most people might get to a 40k, so they know they can do 40ks an hour for an hour. But that's their, that's their FTP for that hour. So you can get an hour and a half number if the time trial goes that long and in an Ironman it can be four and a half hours. So you need to be able to convert your FTP number into the critical power of 5 hours, 5 minutes, 30 seconds, 30 minutes, every single variance that your race might. And you determine that by if, if it's 95% for 20 minutes out of an hour. If you're doing 30 minutes, it's obviously 97.5% and if you're doing five minutes, it's, you know, I haven't got the calculator, it's 107%, 110%, 120%, whatever. So you're using that data as a basis for events that could be shorter or longer. Is that answering what you're.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

So we really, we really. The critical power is, you know, is as important as your FTP number because, you know, I'm forever doing just out my local rides at home where I live in the Dandenongs, I've got five different climbs and they've all got names and they've all got, for me, they've got times associated with them. So the Barren and Beef climb is a five minute climb. The Perons Creek Road is a, you know, eight to nine minute climb. The wall is a 16 minute climb. The one in 20 could be a 15 to 16 minute climb. And the tourist road is a 20 minute climb. And so I'm forever testing myself at particular times in my training on those climbs for those particular distances and time. So it's, you know, it's a great way if you can. No areas that you're training, you know, you've got no interruptions, is really important because a lot of the cities we live in have got traffic lights. So that's going to absolutely destroy any testing you're going to do. It's got to be continuous riding. The minute you stop, your heart rate goes down, you recover. It doesn't matter if it's 10 seconds or 30 or 5, it changes the event that you're training for. So it's really crucial. I'm banging on to people about don't do this, you know, with a possibility of being stopped. You know, you need to be able to ride continuously for this. That's why the indoor trainer is perfect, because you never get stopped at a traffic light inside.

And that's a good point. And getting that true data is so important. And that's why we do say, you have said that psychologically, this testing, consistently proper testing, is so vital because you do get the true data. It's easy for us to tell stories about how we're training. If we Have a couple of sessions where we don't feel as good and feel as in quotation marks. I mean we don't. How you feel is so subjective and we know that it can be so off. So getting the true data no matter how we're feeling really shows us where we're at compared to. We say I'm just riding crap at the moment.

Yeah, yeah, it's so true. And there's so many examples that I can give you over the years when I'm preparing for an A race and yeah, really important one once in a year event which is your A race. Some people can manage two or three in a year which is pretty unusual. But it depends on the length of it. Obviously if you're talking Iron man, that's, that's not something you would mess around with doing too many of. But if you're talking a three stage tour, you might possibly do two or three of them a season. But you might, you know, Melbourne's Victoria's got the Tour of Bright which has been a one of those ones. It's a hill hill mountain climbing general classification tour and that's one of the focuses. A lot of the guys, you know, other guys from interstate come and do that event as well. The Aussie titles is another sort of. There are events where you want to aim your whole season around and it's no different to this season as well. We've got the similar thing happening. We've got the world titles with a group of guys in Italy this year and at the end of August then we've got the Aussie titles in Victoria, in Gippsland at the middle of October. So we've got things that we're working towards. So I'm forever making sure that all the testing we're doing with the groups of those athletes that are working towards those races that they're on track, I don't want them performing magnificently right now. I want them performing the week of that event. So form is another thing. And the mental side of form, as we've talked about many times, it can be damaging. If you aren't performing well from the testing, then all of a sudden you start doubting yourself and it could be just simply something that's, you know, that's just an off week or you know, you're not feeling well. So a lot of these things can have an effect.

So it can go both ways, right? I mean you can feel like you're not going very well, which I would imagine is most of the time that's, that's the case where you don't feel like you're going well and you do a test and the test shows that you're doing fine, or you think you're doing fine and you do a test and it shows the opposite. Which probably doesn't happen that much.

No, it doesn't. But sometimes when you're tinkering with testing, just like with the injury, you shouldn't be testing the injury and you go and do a little bit of a squirt on one of your favorite climbs or and you don't actually get the result that you thought you should. Well, it's probably because you're in the middle of a three week block and you're not actually fresh to do that and you shouldn't be testing yourself, you should be just sticking to the numbers. And obviously when you get freshened up and do the test and get the result you want, then actually psychologically in your mindset is, oh, great, that's what I needed. I've had two or three weeks where I'm not sure and now I've tested and you've just basically not convinced yourself, but actually you've settled your mind, your mind's at peace that you are actually on track and things are progressing in the right direction.

So would you say it's true that the data doesn't lie?

Absolutely. And there's so many examples of that where I've done the same thing. I've thought, well, I need to ride this time trial at 305 watts, which might be 8 watts above what I'm used to. But I want to step up in this race. That's what I want to do. I want to step up and I think that's what I need to do to win. And so I know that I can't sustain that. And it might be a 30 minute time trial and my best 308 watts I've done for 15 minutes, not 30. Well, that's ambition and ability getting confused. Sure. I want to improve and that's what we try to do every time we race better our previous. So if we just did exactly what we did previously, then we're not really improving anyway, are we? So we want to actually set a target that's better than before, but not too high. So the data doesn't lie. If you set something that's out of reach, then it's going to be out of reach because the data doesn't lie. Exactly what you just said. So you want to have small incremental increases and you might have a blinder one day where all the stars are aligned and you actually do have a breakthrough session race, sorry, not a session where you actually perform way above what you've ever done before. And I think I don't like really giving examples where I've experienced, but this one probably hits home where at the national titles road race in Ballarat was in a breakaway. It was on the, on the national course where you do the hill climb, then you come down the hill exactly where the pros race every year in January and that's where the masters title was. And came down to the last straight and there was only four, four riders left. And I was looking around and I thought, I'm not sure if I'm the quickest here and it's going to take a Hercularian sprint from me to win this race. So I thought, well, I've tried everything else. I tried to get away on the climb, they managed to hang on to me. I don't have any cards left, I just have to win this sprint. So there's two things happening here. I have to produce the biggest power number that I've ever had, had to do and mentally I'm not going to lose, I'm not going to lose this race. That was my mindset and come to the sprint and that was the biggest power output that I've ever recorded from that day before and after. Never done it again. For me, going over 1000 watts for my height and weight is quite high and I average around. Some of my best sprints I've ever done is 850, 890 to do 1050 something watts. For that day I got the win. I had massive cramp in my stomach from the tension of I'm not going to lose this race. My mindset was I didn't care what happened. I was just going to give everything and those two things alone, that's what got me the result. So the data doesn't lie, but definitely you can do something out of the ordinary if you're mentally tough enough and you know that the number you have to produce is going to be something that's better than anybody else, which is so spot on.

You can't become robotic and just look at the numbers and think that's my limit. Because that's the, that's the whole beauty of sport and racing and pushing the limits and pushing the boundaries and you actually, the whole point of testing every four weeks is showing that you are actually getting better so your numbers can improve. And if you were in a Tour de France and you did that people might look at that and call you a drug cheat. Because that's what's happened to Froome is that his highest power output has happened in two stages. And I've always asked, well, couldn't that be because of the adrenaline? Couldn't that be because it's the biggest race of his life and he's putting in that mental effort and maybe he is on drugs. But the point is you can improve your numbers when mentally you really want to go there.

Yeah. And you've got to, sometimes you've got to look at, you know, are the numbers actually hindering me? And that's another really good thing to look at. And I'm a big believer in racing. I love racing, but I love racing. It's almost like you've got an encyclopedia with you of all the data that you've ever known. And once you have that knowledge, you will use the data correctly. If you say to yourself, oh, my heart rate is. My son say, my max is 180 and I'm looking down and I'm seeing 184, 185, I've never been there before. Oh, I can't do this. So I switch off. That's really wrong to use data that way. And maybe you're using the power number which is, you know, 120, 130% above what you should be able to hold for a climb that might be half an hour long and you're just going to say, well no, I can't physically do this, I know that. Well at the end of the day that's true. But you must be able to use the data for a positive, not for a negative. And if you say, well I can't do it because the data says so, then I don't agree with that. And you've got to understand that's my philosophy. It's not. The data is the be all and end all. It's like a check. What can I do? Oh yeah, I'll check that. Yeah, I can do that. But that shouldn't be the determining factor in your decision making in racing, especially bike racing, when, unless it's a time trial, bike racing is so unpredictable. You know, someone and because there's drafting in bike races, someone can be as fresh as a daisy because they've been hiding for the whole day and they're just a sit on sprinter and they can produce power that's, you know, out of this world at the end of the ride and you know, you're probably the strongest rider in the race, but you've, you know, executed it poorly. So no matter what data you've got, the race is the race. And at the end of the day, if you put a number on, you've got to be prepared to race as well as you can. But if you're smart, use the data as your knowledge base.

And when. So when we think of all that and think of using the balance and think of the data as the truth, it takes guts because it's human nature to try and avoid the truth. You'd rather, and this is, everyone would do this. You'd rather sit there and maybe come up with it. Excuse or justification. When things get really hard, it'd be easy for you to, at the end of that race, just go, look, I don't think. I don't think I can produce that power. But the data gives you the truth. The data tells you exactly where you're at. When you face that, then all the cards are in your hand and you'd rather that to be able to win than to go off a feeling or go off something that isn't the entire truth. It's just a story. Yeah.

And look, everybody's probably been in that position. This is getting really hard now. Some guy's really putting us to the sword. Geez, how good is this guy? It may be 15 minutes into the race. This guy might be good for 20 minutes. So you've got to think about that as well. You know, guys who start off brilliantly, not necessarily the smartest guys, and the guys who are there at the end, it's almost like they're all dressed up with nowhere to go sort of thing. They love the idea of being at the front at some stage. And it's the only time they're at the front is at the start when they're putting everybody to the sword. And then they're the ones getting dropped off the back, not really using their data to the best of their knowledge. So you can have so many examples of people using it incorrectly.

So what do you do if a test doesn't go well and it doesn't go to plan? You're building up to this, a race, and you want to hold form and you haven't tested well.

That's great. It's great. Negatively and positively. The negative is to. That's not going well. But the good thing is, imagine if you didn't test and you got to the race and all your cards were in this one race and you hadn't even tested yourself along the way. You're Going to find out pretty disappointingly on race day that it's not going to happen. Whereas if you're testing along the way and it's not going so well, it's a great opportunity. The positive side is to reevaluate, reassess. What are we doing that we need to change? What are we, what are we doing wrong? Why aren't you performing? Why isn't your form going up? You know, coaches are only coaches. They're not, you know, they haven't got a crystal ball where they can see the future. It's trial and error. And every single athlete is not the same. Every single athlete has got a different way of adapting to the sessions that they're given. So it's a great opportunity to keep tinkering and fine tuning so that we do get it right by race day. And there could be things like, you know, you are, you've been training too hard for too long and you are exhausted. You might need to, you know, really have a think about not actually entering the race because you form so bad. And the data will tell us that. So you can decide in your own mind before you get to the race. The coach has told you, look, your form and you know yourself, the form isn't there. Is it worth doing it or save it for another day? So there's so many positive things that you can find out from the testing. So the testing has so many avenues of assessment in it. That's just not the number that you get out of it. And as you said before, psychologically the testing has really high, powerful positive influences, as we just talked about it can have negative ones, but you can use them to your benefit by changing tack and not doing the same thing and getting to the A race and predictably performing poorly, which, you know, I've done myself.

So that, I mean, when you talk about improvement and you talk about the ability to increase your numbers and push your limits, that's really what you're doing every four weeks. And I've heard you say this a lot, where the goal is progression. So really the test, your testing results should progress every time and then that allows you to, to train to higher numbers.

Yes. And that's a really important point that we're talking about. If you didn't test and you kept training to the same numbers you started with in week one and now you're in week 12, according to our system, you've tested four times every three weeks. If you didn't test and you got to week 12, you've been training at the same power number for 12 weeks. How far do you think you would have improved when you haven't actually raised the FTP number in your training? The difference would be quite phenomenal, I think. So every three weeks we get an opportunity to go into TrainingPeaks, raise the FTP number from 300 to 310 or 306 or whatever the number is that you've improved. And the next three weeks you train to 306 rather than 300. Then you test again three weeks later, four weeks later, and your number's gone to 312. And then four weeks later it goes to 316. So if you've trained the last three weeks at 300 and 16, if you did the whole 12 weeks at 300, obviously the increase in improvement would be slower. You'd still improve because you're training consistently, but you're not getting the overload that testing enables us to achieve. And that's a really great point. You've raised that. Like I said before, testing has so many aspects to it, and this is another one that if you don't test, you're going to train to the same number for too long and you end up just stagnating again.

And the only reason I brought it up is because I've heard you say it over and over again that overload is the cornerstone of a training program to improve. And so if you can't, if you don't know how to overload, what numbers to go to, then we. It's not going to be effective. Right.

And this made me think while you were just saying that if you overload too quick, let's use the weightlifting example. If you go from 100 kilo bench press and you're progressing 20 kilo each week, and then you get ahead of yourself and you bring your ego with you to the, to the gym rather than leaving at the door. Like I always say, there are a.

Lot of egos in the gym anyway, but.

And then you go, so you're going 20, 40, 60, 80 kilo up each week and you go, oh, stuff it. I'm going 250 kilo and you fail. Well, what was the point of that? You've just gone too far with the testing. You've got to progress properly and not get ahead of yourself. So pushing numbers or pushing weight that you're incapable of doing, you have to wait till you get there before you push those numbers. And that is the other thing that we haven't talked much about is patience and trusting the program. So having patience to progress slowly and a lot of people come to me with really small time frames which is quite frustrating. I've got this event in six weeks. Can you get me better saying I can improve you in six weeks but I can't get you to where you want to be in six weeks. You really need to give yourself time and me the coach time to get you to a progressive overload program that's going to benefit you in six months time or a year's time. So yeah, patience is really, really important and trusting the program. So without the testing the program really can be very ineffective and you can have a really great overload training program that's got consistency but if you're not measuring it with testing you could actually be going down the wrong path. Yeah.

So I think to summarise, I mean there are a lot of key points to it but really if you're not testing, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

Yeah, you're heading for a disaster. I think it could work but it might not work. And who wants to go into the next race with that mindset? I think I did alright in training but not quite sure it's have a real good look today and I just, I would not enjoy, I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing that One of the good things that I've, you know, use the triathlon example and the Ironman which I could, I can say to our athletes pretty much these are your numbers. If you follow this number, this is the speed you do generally. We've already tested this two weeks ago. You know, 300 watts gives you 35Ks an hour. If you can do 300 watts for the five hours then you will end up with a five hour 12 bike ride. Well how good would that be knowing before you start? If you did this number you're going to end up with this time. And if you want to push those numbers higher to your detriment, if you want to push 320 watts you might end up with a 5:30 and you might do, you know, I was on 450 pace for the first two hours. Well that's not using your numbers correctly. And the same with the run, you know, if you, if you're basically running, you know, 10:30 seconds too quick or you can run to the schedule, you know that if I run to this schedule I'm going to do a 3:30 marathon. So you've already worked out your bike time and your run time and you're going to swim within three or four minutes anyway, depending on the length of the course and how accurate it is. You can pretty much go into an ironman knowing the result, how relaxed would you be? It would be such a great feeling. And obviously they're the base times that you've got and then it's up to you to race. But you race just fractionally over your numbers when it's time to not at the beginning of each leg. So cycling is the same time trial is probably the only time when you can actually race to the numbers. Whereas in road races, hill climbs, you've got to go with the race and then worry about your numbers after.

I know that's one of your pet hates as well is when people say to you oh I did so well in 30k out of my, out of my marathon. You know, I did so well for two hours of, out of my three hour race. You're going, it's not a two hour race, it's a three hour race. You got to know your numbers.

That's so true. I distinctly remember one athlete which I'm not going to name, he did the melbourne Ironman and he won. I think he was the fastest age group bike time and he rode awesome and you know, take my hat off to him and he ran the slowest walk he's ever seen. But gee, didn't he do well. Everybody said didn't he ride well? I said yeah he did. But it's a triathlon not a bike race and anybody in the triathlon could have ridden as better than they did but they were going to run afterwards. So it defeats the purpose that the event is a three event race, not a bike race with a walk after it. So you know that that's a classic example of you know, someone just ridiculously executing well over.

Yeah. So I guess the last point I really wanted to bring up when we spoke about this was you said that you, you're a really big advocate of testing and you really push it. But you also say that FTP tests, ramp tests, they're not enough. They for the overall goal of hitting your A race you've got to have your B and C races.

That's so true Jordan. Everybody I coach has, they have to fill out a form that says what's your goal? Your number one goal for the season or for, you know, for your ultimate goal, whatever you want to achieve. And then we have another section that says your short term goals which is list. And then we have a calendar list as many of your B and C races that you think you'd like to do. And I'm all for it. The more times you can pin a number on if your goal is to do well in a race and your goal could be to do well in just general fitness terms. So it's good to test yourself in race like conditions. But if your goal is for racing then you need to be doing races that are going to give you feedback. There are some good bunches going around where it's just like a race. But there's nothing like pinning a number on to change everything. And once you pin a number on that is so different to testing. Testing you're trying your best mentally unless you've got a coach standing beside you. I think when I think about it, if someone's doing an FTP test, they know the coach is going to look at it. So it's the same thing as having the coach there and they know what they did previously. So they're two things in their mind when they start this next test. What did I do previously? That's the number I have to beat and then the coach is going to see it. So that is like testing is close to racing because you're being accountable to your previous number and your coach. But in a, in a race situation where you put a number on, the whole world sees you. You're putting yourself out there. Once you put your, you know, once you put your foot over the saddle or you put your foot on the line or whatever the saying is, you're just putting yourself out there and that's, you know, that's going to be the true measure of actually how you're going against the people you're going to race against in your a race.

And like you said, there's no point doing a bunch of FTP tests for 12 weeks or 24 weeks before your goal and never getting out on the road and experiencing a race. I mean you could if it was whether it's time trial or a road race, if you haven't been out there before, then you're not going to race very well no matter how good you have to.

Yeah, and especially for road racing. But geez, I'm the strongest rider, Jordan. I've got the best FTP. But you came fifth. You know, guys raced better than you with worse FTPs. So you know, the FTP can be, you know, what's the value of that? But it's, it's good to train with. That's what we're trying to, you know, it's good to have so many reasons we've talked about and when we think.

About with the Tour riders I mean, we had a good experience in Belgium with Stan the man and what he said to you about his training program, you were baffled at first. Then you thought, I guess it kind of makes sense.

Yeah, well, it's a great example. He was riding with Quick Step and he changed teams to F du jour, I think, or one of the other teams anyway. And we just quizzing him about his training and it was in the middle of the classics, so he, I think.

How do you say his last name? I can stand.

No, I'm not going there.

He's a seven foot giant. It's always on the front of the peloton.

But that's right. Ag2r. Ag deserve is the French. Ag2r is who he rides for now. And now I've remembered Dash's, Dash's mate. And he. Because he was doing, you know, the classic races, sometimes Saturday, sometimes Sunday, sometimes Wednesday. And you know, I remember Sagan doing Saturday. He came second in a 200 stage, 200k stage classic. And the next day he went out and won. I was just astounded that he could do two races as a pro, got second and first in both of them. But it was, that was. And he was aiming that year to win Tour of Flanders and he wanted to win Paris Roubaix. This was years ago and he was just trying to find form. And they were almost B racers for him, yet they were pro tour racers. And Stan was saying during the week, all I'm doing is riding with you guys. Which is like riding with grandma and grandpa.

You found that so funny.

Yeah, he was just peddling along, talking away. And what training are you doing? No, I'm just racing. I'm doing enough races. I don't need to train during this period. And you've got, you know, one of your good buddies from school, Jordan Williams, who's, you know, represented Australia at the Olympics and you know, he did the used to be Commonwealth Games. Commonwealth Games. Used to be. Not the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, sorry. And he did the Golden League, which is now the Diamond League. And you know, they hardly train in between races and these are testing periods. What's my form like? Just get into this form, 1500 and race and put a number on, see how I'm going. And you get instant feedback. And that is a form of testing. So, you know, it is an intricate part of elite athletes makeup that they are continually testing themselves or the coaches are testing them for themselves. And without that and the mindset of being positive from positive testing is such a great thing to go into your A race with really good thoughts, really good form, because you've proved it to yourself and you're almost bulletproof. It's going to take a lot of beating for a person who goes in really aware of what his capabilities are compared to the person who hasn't tested, has trained his backside off, gets to the A race and is sitting there going, I'm not really sure how I'm going to go.

Yeah.

Yet he sees all the other guys around him have all raced. They've all been winning and losing and tinkering and improving from when we started this podcast. What's the value of testing? I hope that we really have honed in on. There's so many reasons why it's important.

And that's why I wanted to finish on that point, because I just remembered that example from Stan the Man. But we can spend, and this happens to you when you talk to athletes all the time is we can spend 40 minutes talking about the value of testing and then people might hear that and go, I need a test. And they just focus on testing. And it's, it's always a case of everything. It's not. It's never going to be one thing. It's never going to be. You just have to race. And that's going to keep you informed. Because Stan himself has periods where he trains really hard.

Yes.

But it's a mix of everything. And so you can't listen to this podcast and go, right? Testing is the only thing that matters. It's a matter of everything.

Yeah. And look, and I suppose that's a problem with podcast because we pick a particular topic and we hone in on that. And it is one of the many things. It's like saying to you, George, you'll be a better bike rider if you just do high intensity sessions. And that's what the guy said on the podcast. Okay, so I'll just go and do high intensity sessions. But the podcast was trying to talk about how the value of high intensity sessions are in your well balanced program. And some people only hear what they want to hear. Some people hear half of what they're trying to hear. So the idea that it's one cog in many and testing is only that it's one cog in many. If you're not doing your endurance session, your high intensity session, your recovery session, then no amount of testing is going to do anything for you.

That's a really good note to finish on. So thank you for listening and joining us on another episode. Thank you for all the Valuable information, dad, as always, I get get a lot out of it. And we get a lot of positive feedback. A lot of people have been commenting that they've been getting a lot out of it and we want to hear more from you. Obviously, we want you to rate us on any of the podcast apps, give us a positive review. It definitely helps us. But we want to know your questions as well. And we know that you have questions because we've had a few people asking us how do I ask questions? And we've had a lot of people commenting on the podcast. So we actually want to hear your questions to send them in. If you're on the anchor app, you can actually click a button and record a question and send it in, or you can type it in. If you can't figure out how to do that, then you can send me an email@jordanrivellocoaching.com that's j o r d a nrivellocoaching so trivelo is just 1v1 l t r I v e l o coaching.com au if you want to remain anonymous, that's fine. I can just read your question out. Or if you want to say who you are and for your question to be read out, we want to read it out on the podcast and we do want to hear from you and hear what you actually want to know and what you want to ask the head of Trivelo coaching.

Excellent, Jordan. I'm really keen because there's so many people who actually are saying to me, oh, I really want to contribute to the podcast, but I'm not sure how to go about it. So it should be very straightforward and we're really keen to answer some questions when we can talk all we like about stuff that we think is important, but really want to hear what you want to to hear explained. And I'm more than happy to spend time explaining any aspect of your coaching because it will be valuable to other people as well because I'm sure they've got the same question, but they don't want to sound like they're dumb and they should know that. Well, no, not everybody knows anything. So if you go through each day trying to learn something new, then you've achieved something, I think.

Yeah, there definitely are no stupid questions. I'm asking every question I can on here because. Because if you don't know, you don't know and there's no way you could have known that beforehand. So ask any question you want and we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you very much for joining us.

Awesome.