4 Training Sessions To Get You Race Ready

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jarred Donnelly. There are four very important training sessions you can and should be doing in your race ready phase to be as fit as possible on race day. And today we're going to tell you exactly what they are and how to do them. But before we do that, we have an exciting announcement. We are looking for a new coach to join us here at Triballo. If you're a coach out there and you'd like to join the Tribalo family and help coach our athletes to train smarter and race faster, go to the link in the description and check out the job description and apply. There's more details about the specifics of the role there. At its core, we're looking for someone that shares our passion for our athletes improvement and enjoyment on their journey. Two very important things for us. So if you think you align with Trivelo's principles and philosophies, we'd love to hear from you. Dad, welcome into another episode. Anything you'd like to add just there about having a new coach join us?

I'm super excited. And as a business we, we really take pride in care factor of all of our athletes and want the best for all of our athletes and I treat every athlete like my actually own son or daughter and that's the kind of coach we're after. And, and yeah, if you don't have that care factor, don't apply. And yeah, that would be the main thing. I really want to stress for anybody out there who thinks they've got what it takes to be a good coach and that's probably the best thing you could have. The best attribute would be to how much do you really care about your athletes.

Perfect. Moving on to our first segment of the episode, gratitude. Can you tell us, dad, what are you grateful for this week?

I love seeing athletes achieve goals and at races when you go to them, you have variation of people coming across you to say hello. And obviously we've mentioned many times how they're grateful for the podcast. And at a race after the event, it's been so many times I've had people come up to me and make a point and saying, hey, thank you so much for the podcast. But not only that, thank you for all the tips you've given me and I was able to put those strategies into my race preparation into my race plan and to my execution. And I wouldn't have had the day I had had it not been from what I heard on the podcast.

And.

And I'm so grateful that we have the opportunity to give advice and to give help to people to make them a better athlete. And I seriously think that I'm seeing much better execution over the last two or three years than I had four or five years ago. I think people are getting the message and there's still a lot of people who still have poor executions and I still have issues myself with execution and. And it's a hard thing to do. We're not sitting here saying we're perfect. We're just trying to make sure that people understand how to get the most out of themselves on race day. And execution is part of that. So it's planning and preparing and all aspects of the race, but it is a hard and difficult thing to practice and to put into practice on race day. So, yeah, really grateful for that.

Yeah. Awesome. And mine follows a similar path for the weekend. I think for us specifically at Trivelo, we had a record number of athletes racing across different races all over the globe. I think we had 42 athletes across different events and 26 or so here in Victoria. So just so great to see. It just makes us super proud to see that many athletes rocking the Tribala colours in races across the weekend and. And having a blast and having a ball, and we just absolutely love it. And on that note, dad, we want to talk about, or we do talk about, the unwritten rules for athletes a lot here on the podcast and we've been mentioning the little nod or wave you need to give other athletes when you pass them. And I'm sad to report, my ride today, I gave about half a dozen waves and only received about half in return. And sometimes it's funny, they might not see the wave and sometimes they look at you and stare at you as you go past, but don't give the wave, which is pretty funny. They obviously don't listen to the podcast.

Well, Jord, you know, sometimes they're in the zone and they're doing and they're concentrating on what they're supposed to be in their training session and they haven't got time. And I must say, did you give many high fives in your. In your race on Sunday in your half marathon?

No, absolutely not. We were talking about this before we hit record and the race on Sunday was packed with the kids on the water stations and they were so enthusiastic. I Just love their enthusiasm at every station. There's one particular station that was a group of school kids. It was just part of the school program for them to be there. And they. They were just having a ball and they were so keen to give a high five. And I was just so. I was just on my limit so bad I could not spare an inch of effort to lean over and give him a high five. I felt very selfish.

There you go. You can't be criticizing people who might, you know, you're on a zone two ride today. There could have been people on their limit who just, you know, and you didn't look close enough. Sometimes a little finger going up off the handlebars.

Yes.

That's all it takes. Or a little nod.

Yeah. Well, I mean, what's another unwritten rule for athletes? I mean, if you think about race day one, is you probably should give the kids at the water station a high five. But what's another one that we were kind of talking about and we saw a little bit of. And this is a little bit of a negative, but we want to kind of put a spin on it and turn it into a lesson. But we had an example of one of our top athletes. It was right at the front of the race. And this is more of an effect for people at the front of the race who are competing for those spots. Had someone pretty blatantly drafting off them in the bike leg. And I saw it firsthand, and it wasn't Even, you know, 12 meters to 10 meters or 12 to 8 meters. It was kind of 3 or 4 meters off their wheel, just. And our athlete kind of turned around a couple of times and said, get back. You know, what are you doing? And it's really disappointing to see because it's. It is cheating. And. And we. It's somehow. Sometimes it's unavoidable out in the course, and when there's huge packs coming, you just can't find your own air. And if that's the case, then it's unavoidable. Then enjoy the draft. You know, you're going to. There's nothing you can do about it. But when you're in that position where you have the choice to draft or not, and you choose to draft, then that's a little bit distasteful.

Yeah. And this particular example you were talking about was there's just two. Two or three riders, and the second rider was just within a couple of bike lengths for a long time, lots of kilometers. It wasn't like it was a five minute Experience. It was. And that's different to a pack. Packs are very difficult for every athlete to. Once they're in the packets, it's hard to separate like the pros do, because you could have 20 people who would, you know, at various levels of ability. So, you know, we just got to be careful that we're not really trying to criticize people for that if it's, if it's a situation where you're stuck, but this is a different situation where somebody is actually blatantly sitting on someone who is much faster than them and getting an unfair advantage, which is creating a different result in the race. So, yeah, so, you know, I'm, I'm really, my message to people is if you do that continuously, you're, you're actually not becoming a better athlete because if you have to ride in a race and we had one of our athletes or two of our athletes do the Gundiwindi, the hell of the West Hundred Kilometer Triathlon up in Queensland, on the border there at Gundiwindi. And there was not a lot of athletes in the race. So there's lots of periods where you're riding on your own, you've got no one else in the race around you, you've got, you know, a kilometer up the road where is the next athlete and, you know, might be 50 meters behind someone else. If you've been riding in a bunch every single race, you're not used to riding how the race is supposed to be ridden, which is as a time trial, an individual time trial without outside assistance. And so if you're continually trying to do that every race, when it comes to the, a race where you have no one around you, you're going to ride possibly 5 or 10 minutes slower over 90k. And so you're forever going to be saying, I didn't ride very well in that race, but you probably rode very well. It's just that you're comparing yourself when you ride with a group and they can't be compared because when you're with a group, you're going to naturally get an easier ride and you get probably going to ride faster and then you're probably going to run better because you haven't ridden at the intensity that you should have. And so it's actually going to give you a false sense of achievement because when you have to ride and run without any assistance, you're probably not going to actually end up with the same time or time that's anywhere near what you've done when you've had outside assistance so in the long run, it's going to be detrimental to your whole racing career, really. If you start to have that attitude that I'm trying to get an unfair advantage every time I do a triathlon. If more people actually thought like that and tried to ride the thing as an individual and then tried to run as an individual, then you would actually be true to yourself and understand that that's a real result as compared to something that's got some outside assistance.

Yeah, that's a great point and one we just felt like was worth mentioning.

Because.

It really comes down to you and your own improvement, and you actually reap the rewards in the long term by doing that, rather than, you know, taking the. The somewhat softer option all the time. So, look, that's that. That's that unwritten rule. Our unwritten rule on the podcast is if you like the podcast, if you get any value out of it, because we do it for free, the best thing you can do to help us is to share the podcast on your social media. Tell the people in your network that you enjoy listening to us, no matter how small your network is. This is the biggest and best way you can help us, and we appreciate it. So thank you. Now, onto our next segment. What has caught your attention? And for us, dad, our favorite race of the year is coming up on Sunday. We can't not talk about it. The Tour of Flanders is on this weekend. Just. I. I'm just so excited for this. I was looking at some previews today and I had butterflies in my stomach. It got me more excited than any of the sport back here in Australia. And, yeah, just can't wait to watch the race. Can't wait to SAP on and watch it. And, yeah, for us, I mean, any predictions for the race? There's, you know, can the Belgians kung fu with the goods? Lottie Kopecki, can she be the first female to win three in a row? She's won two in a row so far. And can wout finally, finally win his home race. Every year that he doesn't win, the pressure builds.

I can't believe it's a year since we were there. What an experience we had last year. And for the other five times we've been to the spring classics and every time we're not there. So this is the second time in seven years we haven't been there. I really feel like we. We've missed out and we should be there, but you can't go every year. And, yeah, it's great. You know, it's one of the all time best races. I can't wait for Tour of Flanders. It's one of my favorite races in the whole calendar. This is the one that I love the most. And ironically, a lot of the riders rate it as their favorite race as well. And you know, in the men's race certainly, I think there's three aspiring winners and the world champion Matthew van der Poel is in great form, but Mats Pedersen, you know, from Trek, I think is, is in the form of his career and I think it would be a well deserved victory if he could. But my favorite is wout. I cannot go past Wout. I want wout to win. I was extremely disappointed if he doesn't. But, but you know, it's a, it's a race where the best man wins and tactics comes into it. Absolutely. But when they go up the Quaromont, you know, three times and they go up the Koppenberg the last time, it's whoever can get up that hill. And looking at Gent Wevelgem, Matt's Petterson absolutely gave it to, to Matthew Vanderpoel on that climb. And, and after the race, Vanderpoel said he did everything he could just to hold Petterson's wheel, which is unusual from a guy who does that to everybody else. So tells me Matt's Pedersen is in great form and he could be the likely winner if he plays his cards right and he's got a good team to help him, which is so important in this race. You have to have, you have to have a good team around you and, and yeah, you know, the, the, the Visma guys have had a few injury issues and I don't think Wout's got the team, but that could be, you know, it could be a saving grace. He doesn't have to use the team and just does. He does his own thing. So yeah, lots of scenarios can play out and I'm really looking forward to it.

Yeah, for sure. And it's a situation where, which is probably, probably well deserved. But both world champions are favorites to win. So Kopecki is favorite to win and go three in a row and Vanderpoel is favorite to win and he's. I think his record is over the last four years. He's gone first, second, first second. So he's got a pretty good record of the last four years. And from the women's side to Aussie hopes. I mean, we spoke about seeing Grace Brown back in Oz over summer and her training preparation and she just did a monster attack at Wobble game last week where she just rode off the front of the peloton, which she does a lot actually, and was riding solo in the last K. I thought she was going to ride solo to victory, but she got caught by the peloton. But she could be a sticky chance to do pretty well in this kind of race. She's got great strength and she can climb.

Yeah, it'd be really good to see an Aussie girl throw down the gauntlet and have a crack because she is a good time trialer. So. And you know, at the end of this stage, if you can get up those last climbs which you talked about in the male race, it's exactly the same scenario. You've got that last hill, the Koppenberg, and then you've got that time trial to the finish into Oudenard and you have to be at a time trial if you've broken away, otherwise the bunch will gobble you up and it'll end up being a sprint finish and then, you know, it's anybody, it's a lottery then. So.

Yep, yep. And the last thing we want to talk about, and this kind of leads us into the, the key training sessions we want to touch on today for, you know, your race ready phase is we want to, we want to speak about this race ready phase. And we just had a lot of athletes, you know, come into the last six weeks preparation for their race and we had a huge 70.3 over the weekend here. So what did you notice among our athletes with preparation into this 70.3? And we get a wide variety of athletes coming in all the time. You know, athletes are coming in underdone for various reasons. They might have been injured and had a lot of interruptions. They might have had interruptions for just very natural reasons like work and life and family. People are coming in sick and so then have to really adjust their expectations for the race day or not race at all. Yeah, people have had different levels of preparation because they, they signed up late or they've had a lot of preparation and they're really informed and they're feeling really good. So what were your thoughts kind of coming into this from the wide range of kind of situations we see athletes in?

Yeah, that in itself is the actual sentence. Everybody has a different preparation and some are perfect, some are very imperfect. And the point we're trying to make is you have to understand which camp you're in and if you're in that camp where you've, you've decided late to do the event, you haven't had Enough training time, you've come in sick, you've had an injury where you haven't been able to run, you actually get your race plan wrong beforehand. These are all things that you need to accept and adjust. And if you don't, you'll actually have a worse day. And I'm principally talking about injury, sickness, not enough time to train. And if you don't adjust your program, your race plan and just use the same one you've been using for every race. And if your numbers are similar, that's, that's probably okay, but not, not really, and they shouldn't be. But, but you need to actually, and ironically I had this discussion with you because you were at a sore throat on the Monday and you were quite sick all week and it was touch and go on Monday whether you'd actually do the, the half marathon in the team's race. And the competitiveness of you is going to be the same in anybody else that's entered into the race. Your competitive nature was, no, no, I'll be okay. And I'm saying to you, no, you won't. You'll actually, you know, you want to run 3:30 pace, you might have to reconsider that. You might have to run335,340, and you have to, you have to suck that up a bit. And you are adamant that, no, no, no, I should be good, I should be all right. And I'm saying, no, we need to actually think seriously about how you start this race. And we were going backwards and forwards. And it was funny because that's the advice you give as a coach, yet I'm giving you that advice as a coach to athlete, but you're not actually kind of taking it on board. So it's a great example of how the competitiveness of ourselves don't really allow us to be real and true to ourselves. And that's what we're trying to get across here. If you come into this level of preparation, regardless if it's your fault or not, that's not what we're talking about. It's nothing to do with that. We're talking about accepting that, that you can't possibly run the race plan that you want.

Yeah, and it was, it was funny our conversation because we were very self aware of the kind of conversation we were having and, and the irony in it. And I said, I said to you, I, yeah, I, I know what this sounds like. And I gave you the classic line, you know, it's, but I'm different. You know, every athlete says that, but it was an interesting discussion because my point to you was that, you know, with the re. One of the core reasons we give that advice to athletes is because we want to avoid having a really horrific experience on race day. And then as coaches, it's our job to manage the, the athlete's expectations because if they think that they can perform the same way and they don't, you know, and it can reflect poorly on the coach and you don't, you don't want to be blamed for that as a coach either. And so it's, it really is a matter of managing that expectation, but also making sure the athlete doesn't have a poor experience and really doesn't enjoy the day. That's really what you're trying to avoid. But my, one of my points to you, and this is a different tactic to attach approach to take is I'm aware of the consequences of going for it anyway. I'm aware that I've been sick and my body might not cope with it. And if I blow up, I'm okay with that result. And I think that's a situation where if you can believe the athlete that when they say that, they do mean it and they're not going to turn around at the end after the event and go, I'm really pissed off. I blew up. Because you go, what did you expect? We had this conversation, you know, but if, if you can believe the athlete and the athlete does know that, okay, I prepare to take that risk because I said to you, I'd rather, I'd rather do that and blow up than run slower and just get an okay result, you know, given the sickness. And you disagreed still. But that's kind of the angle that you, sometimes you can, you can have that conversation.

And I think, you know, okay, if you, if you, I said if, if you do take that tack, you know, you will blow up because you're not 100%. And I don't need, I don't need you to tell me that, that I'm different and I should be okay. I'm, I'm telling you straight out that I do know better. And, and you're not, not any different to anybody who's had sickness. You, when you don't have a feeling of 100%, to have the expectation that you can compete at 100% is almost like the definition of insanity. It's, you know, you can't expect that when your body's not up for it and you know, looking at the way you actually ran, which was a credit to you you did execute really well. You faded at the end because that was the tactic you took, which is to still stay with the aggressive plan that you had. But it, you know, it came to bear that you couldn't cope with that pace because you weren't actually that well. And you'll never say that to anybody as an excuse but, but I'm saying that's actually a fact that, that the reason why you were fighting was not because you weren't fit enough or you executed poorly. It was because you weren't in the, into the race, not 100%. And, and you know that's, that's what you knew was going to happen if you did that. So you know, you had to be happy with that. And, and all the athletes we coach as understanding the consequences, I'm happy for them to do whatever they want as a race plan and as a race strategy. But it's remiss of us not to actually point out that this is the consequences that possibly will happen and more likely will happen if you don't adjust your expectation. And the last thing we want to see our athletes is have this, it's almost like a fear of failure or, or that disappointment about the performance, it can actually affect your well being. And if you don't have the correct expectation about the outcome, that doesn't sit well. And I want to make sure, just like I want people to be real in their race plan, in their race strategies, based on actual events and sessions that they've done, I want them to have that expectation about their result so that, so there's no shock, you know, at the end that oh, what just happened, you know, we don't have to say to them, well your, your expectation and your actual ability didn't align. And if that's the situation, you're going to be sadly disappointed every race you go in until you get your, your ability and your expectation aligned. And, and if, you know, I'm saying to a lot of athletes in our pre race preparation discussion, if you perform the best you can and the result is not what you want, you've got to be happy with that because you've done everything you can during the race at the level that you're able to do on the day. And just because you didn't achieve the time or the placing, if you're going to be judging yourself by that every time, you're going to be sadly disappointed the majority of the time because it's more about the performance and how you are able to navigate your race plan according to the fitness level you had on that day, that's more important than the actual time or the placing you get. And I think that helps people cope better. And we had some great examples of a couple of first timers who did a half ironman. That's a big event, big anxiety. You're really worried about everything. Have I prepared well? Is my race plan right? Have I got my race plan right? That was a lot of the questions we were getting asked when we were having those discussions before the event. And, you know, there were lots of people who weren't getting their race plans right. But, you know, I love the attitude of, you know, one athlete, just every time she went past, she just had a great smile on her face and, you know, how you going? Yes, I've got this, you know, and she was absolutely loving it. And she had the right approach. And at the end, it was almost euphoric for her. She achieved a. Something that she thought she wasn't capable of doing. And it's a big event. If you're out there for four hours or if you're out there for six and a half, it's a big commitment to prepare for. It's not an event that's over in an hour. You know, you've got to be well prepared to get through this. And I love that attitude of someone doing that and knowing they're in control of themselves the whole way. And there are lots of people who are doing that walk of death or that run of death where head down and you can see it's absolute agony. And, you know, she wasn't at the front of the. Of the event. She was, you know, just running in her. In her lane sort of thing with her race plan and her pace and her power and on the bike. And she was in staying into those levels and she was having a really good outcome. And at the end, she achieved everything she wanted and she couldn't have been happier. And that's actually what we're trying to get people at the end, to have that good experience for all the things we talk about in the podcast is that's the fun part at the end is when you cross the line, it's emotional for you because you've put so much into this in terms of time and hours and money and invested your whole mental focus on can I achieve, can I challenge myself in this endurance event and can I come through that challenge? And that's the. That's the part that makes you want to come back and then do something a little bit better once you've Done it once.

That's what I love about it as well is, you know, it's really a race against the course and the event and unless you're competing for the age group wins or the podium or the top places, you're really battling against your own PBS and your own performance execution. And I love at the end when all the post race chats are having, everyone's asking, how did you go? And everyone's kind of sharing their battle against the course and their battle against the headwind and their battle against that, that last hill, you know, running into the last K. And I love that because it's, that's what the sport's about and I still laugh. Exactly. You just said before it's not about the place, it's about your time and your execution against your race plan and your, your preparation and anyone outside triathlon, whenever you know, I finish a race, anyone that not is not involved in this industry at all, they, it's such a well meaning question, but they're. One of the first questions is they'll say where'd you come? It's just such a ridiculous, it's just so irrelev. Anyone that's in this sport, I don't know, 612th, whatever. Like it's, it's just not, that's not what the sport's about. But that is because I don't know what else to ask. They should be asking, you know, how did you go compared to your expectations or how did you perform or how did you execute? And so I always laugh at that. But when you're in the community, you know that that's not the case and that's the camaraderie I love. So on that note, I'd like to say congratulations to you again for yet another Australian age group title, probably your 712th to add to the cabinet. But in the Aquabike took out another one that was the, it was the Aquabike Australian champs at the event. And so that has guaranteed you a spot at the World Aqua Bike Champs at the end of the year, right?

Yeah. Thanks George. I appreciate your, your shout out. Yeah, don't get too uncomfortable. No, it's great, great.

No, it was a great day for everyone. We had a lot of good performances and yeah, as much as PBS and good execution, we did have people on the podium, which we love to see as well. And we, it would be remiss not to say that we are super proud to have first and second place overall in the whole race outside of the pros. So not in the pro category we had Tom and Roland come first and second again, which is just phenomenal. Yeah, just unbelievable racing from them and they were toe to toe with each other and really pushing each other. And yeah, we're not, and we do say a lot, it's not about the podiums but we're not going to say that it's not cool to see them coming first and second. We're not going to downplay their, their results. It's really epic to see and super proud.

That was a great race too. And for anybody who just loves competition, you know, two athletes who finish 17 seconds apart, 3 hours 52 is, you know, is right up there with the pros, pros timing. We would have put them in the, in the 10th and 11th place and they actually rode by themselves. Whereas the pros get that opportunity to ride as a group, which is as we've said many times in the, you know, it is an easier way to compete and that's, that's why the times are a lot faster. Obviously they're better athletes than the majority of age groupers but, but certainly to see them race over that longer time and have 17 seconds difference at the end and that's two races in a row where it's been under one minute where they've. Now they swap positions. Tom won this time and Roland won last time and they're great friends and, and they were pushing each other and ironically the only time they were near each other was in the last kil kilometer when Tom came back from a 2 1/2 minute deficit all race and finally caught Roland in the last case. So they raced individually, independently the whole way. They were separated by over two minutes for the majority of the ride and, and it ended up coming down to a 17 second gap and what a race it was. And yeah, shout out to those guys and look the shout out to the other Aussie title winners. You mentioned me, but. And we had four altogether and we had people qualifying for the worlds at, at New Zealand at the end of the year at the 70.3 world titles. So yeah, you know, fantastic performance for those people who are getting those accolades and, and a real big shout out to anybody else who actually performed the way they wanted to on the day. And that's what's what it's all about. And of course we love shouting out to people who are winning races. But, but yeah, it's more important to shout out to everybody who's doing, doing what they did on the day.

On that note, let's move into some Specifics for the race ready phase and what really makes a good preparation and how an athlete can come into race day going. What you said before, they've had almost the perfect prep. There's four key training sessions you can do and we want to go through each one and make sure you're including these in this final phase. And the first is that in the last final period, you must do a fresh time trial of your event. And now this can apply to not just triathlon, but this can apply to cycling. An individual time trial, a potential road race where you need to know your, your FTP or a stage race, a marathon, a half marathon. But you need to do a fresh time trial to see what your body's capable of. You know, to see what it's capable of fresh. And in a triathlon sense, you need to do a fresh swim time trial, a fresh bike time trial and a fresh run time trial. And what I mean by fresh is you have to taper for each one. You can do them one day after the other, but don't do them on the same day. You know, at least we have that day's freshness. But talk us through that and the importance of that.

Yeah, and this has got a lot of valuable positive reasons why we do it. One is to find out actually where your current form is. And you want to do this fresh time trial not six weeks out from the race. So the timing of this fresh time trial is important as well as doing the time trial. So we want to do that as close to the race, but enough time that you can actually recover from it. And if you're doing an ironman, we wouldn't ask you to do a fresh 180k time trial and a fresh marathon. That's not what we're saying here. We, we have a formula in trivalo where we get you to do something around a 20 or 60 minute effort for all, all the legs in the, in the event. And then we've got a formula which we can project that from all of our data that we've collected over all of the years we've been coaching athletes that will predict something close to what you can do on your actual race day. And funnily enough, we are within minutes for most athletes of their total time for the total of the event. And we're pretty bang on for their power numbers and for their race pace in most of their swim and running legs. But it's because we do these time trials, that's the reason why we get our race plan so well. So that's one of the main key reasons. The other one, it gives you a feeling of what it's like to do something as an actual comparison race. Whether it's a 60 minute run or a 60 minute ride or a 45 minute swim or whatever it is, you get the feel of what it's like to just do that as a one effort. And that's what we're trying to get you to feel what it's like to race at a level of intensity because we're trying to do this at our threshold and we take a percentage of that. And as well as that, it's a great training session. So the actual value of the training session can't be underestimated. It's you putting yourself in a time trial situation where guess what, you have to execute properly. And if you get the execution wrong in a practice session, how are you going to expect to do it well on race day? So it gives you a practice at executing the, the effort you're going to do over 60 minutes. And if you're training for a half, half Ironman 90 kilometer time trial, that one hour effort you do, or it's a 20 minute effort that you do, is a little mini practice of you've got the intensity you want to ride at 20 minutes, can you do it from start to finish and hold that, hold that power. And as a, as a 5k runner or 10k runner, can you hold that pace you've selected as a swimmer? Can you hold the pace per 100? These are all the key things about why you have to do this session. These are the positive reasons. And then you go into your race plan knowing that you can use this as a backup to justify the reason why your race plan looks the way it does. And that is the key reason why we're doing this actual fresh time trial.

Some specific notes on that. If you're going to do the swim time trial, it's really important for triathlon that you, you do it in the open water or a lake or something similar. You know, really make sure in that last phase you go do it in a, in a. The conditions they're going to replicate race day. And don't do that last time trial on the pool. That's, that's a really key point and very similar. If you're training for a marathon or a half marathon or a 5K and you're going to do it to do a fresh time trial before it. If it's a half marathon, you might not do it. You might do a 10k time trial to help predict your time. But you know, try and pick a course that's probably similar or even on the course that you're going to do for that half marathon or marathon, really trying to replicate the conditions, but you're doing it fresh, which is giving you a really good confidence boost of what you can achieve on race day. And that brings us to point two.

Which is, sorry, George, just to butt in just before we leave that one. The bike session also needs to be outdoor. And I've got situations where people are coming from snow conditions and they're flying to a race that's, you know, in really good, good weather and they've had no opportunity to ride outdoor to test themselves. And so indoor training is fantastic, but it's not replic what's going to happen on race day because we've got to deal with the elements such as the temperature of the day outside, the wind and the gradient or the terrain. And so they're three things that's hard to replicate on an indoor training session. And so you can actually do that, but the only thing you can't replicate is the wind. Indoor, you can replicate gradient on an indoor trainer because you can select a course on any of the apps that have undulations. You can actually select on full gas where some of the courses are. You can actually do the actual course. You can make the room the same temperature as what the temperature is expected on the day. So these are things that actually you can do on the indoor trainer, but we want you to try to do it outdoor. And the exception would be if it's snowing or ice and it's dangerous outside that you can't do the bike session outdoors.

Perfect. Moving to point two. And outside of the fresh time trial, you must do a race pace or multiple race pace specific sessions based on your event. And that is actually compared to the first time trial where it's shorter than the event that actually is at the full distance or very close to the full distance. And we are talking about that right up to Ironman. You know, you need to be doing practice bike sessions at your race pace up to 160-180km. And you definitely do get the athletes sometimes to ride that 180 kilometers. And, and you can explain, I mean, explain how do you get these rides without. Without burning out.

Yeah, and it's got to be with enough time to recover. And so if you decide that your athlete needs to do 180k time trial, there'd have to be a good reason for that. And There are many good reasons that I can think of that I would be asking any of our athletes to do that. But you must give them enough time to recover for race day. You can't be doing this in the last two or three weeks. This has to be six weeks out if you're going to do 180K. And it gives them so much confidence that A, they can do the distance, B, it gives them an idea of what their power was and what their expected time is against that power. And you can replicate it on the course. And that's why we, you know, we use that recon as that example. But doing race specific training can normally mean that we would do intervals at race pace that would add up to the total of that duration of your event. So if you think you're going to be a 6 hour 180k bike rider, we would try to do some sessions that have race pace specific power in it on the bike that would, that would, maybe you're doing, you know, four by one hour with a warm up and a cool down that adds up to six hours. And you know, four of those hours you're doing a specific race pace in the time trial position. So it's not necessarily doing the whole 180k, but doing, you know, building up from wherever your, your start line, your baseline is. If your longest ride is 100k, you're going to have to do that well out, you know, 16, 20 weeks out and try to get that up to 220 to 140, 160, so that by the time you get to six weeks out, you have done close to the time that you expect to do on race day as a bike rider. And the same with the swim, you need to build your time in the water and get as many swims as you can in the lake or the ocean, as well as your pool sessions in the swimming pool. So as a runner, we're not going to expect you to run. You know, if you're going to do 4 hours 30 on Ironman Day, you know, that's an expectation which is quite different to the bike and the swim because it is just not helpful and it's too fatiguing. It's not helpful because it's too fatiguing and you can't recover quick enough to continue your training program if you're going to do multiple runs that are four and a half hours. So, so, you know, we do a lot of split runs where we do morning run and afternoon run to try and get that feeling of, you know, Maybe you did two hour run in the morning and, and build up to a half an hour run in the afternoon or 45 or an hour so that you're getting close to three hours, to three and a half to four hours. By splitting it up. That's a safer way to do it as a runner. And that would be, you know, how we would do the race specific stuff as a runner. That second run is going to give you the feeling of what it's like from 30k to 42k in the actual Ironman Marathon.

And what about race space specific intensity for preparing for the marathon? How much volume do you try and get for that?

For the marathon? You're absolutely trying to do one of the runs at race pace and that would be the second part of that split run we were talking about. So you would try to do one or two runs where you're trying to run between 20 and 32k where you're trying to run progressive fast runs at your expected marathon race pace. And that's a lot slower than you would do Those half marathons, 25Ks and 30Ks if you're actually trying to, trying to run a PB at for those distances. So it's a slower pace and it's, it's aimed straight at you trying to replicate what's going to happen on race day. The more times you can replicate your, your pace that you think you can run in training, the easier the body will be and your brain will be to slot into that pace. When it comes to race day and the second run on those split runs, that's the, that's the key one because that's what it feels like at 30k. If you've selected, you're going to run 5 or 6 minute k pace to give you a 4 hour 10. You know, can you do that 6 minute k pace in your second run after you've run 2 and a half hours in the morning, can you do that in the afternoon? That's going to tell you whether it's possible on race day or not. Plus the other time trial stuff that we've talked about in Key point one, they're the things that are going to set up your actual race plan based on our formula.

Yeah. And I guess the last part of that that you really wanted to mention is doing for triathlon specifically doing run off the bike race pace efforts and simulating that race pace after a race pace bike session. You know that that can't be forgotten because you can do all these fresh runs at race pace or fresh Time trials. But ultimately you're going to get to the end of the triathlon after swimming and biking and you need to be able to run at the race pace after doing that.

Yeah. And we're not again asking you to run long, we're just asking you to make sure you're running. After a six hour, five hour ride you have to slot into that practice of Ironman pace. And the same with some of your 70.3 athletes where we're doing race specific 70.3 training and then we get off and get them to run their 70.3 race pace for 8, 10, 12, 14K. And that goes a long way to giving you super confidence when you come to race day. You've done it in training and so as an Ironman you're trying to do that as well. You're trying to get that feel of what it's like to run for 40 to 60 minutes, sometimes up to 90 minutes. After you've done a six hour day, it becomes a big Saturday and you can't do too many of those. But you get a real glimpse of after 90 minutes, well, geez, I thought that five or six minute K pace was going to be a walk in the park, but at that hour hour 10, hour 15, hour 20, it feels like I'm running four minute 30 pace. It's that hard. And that's the thing you've got to get in your brain is, you know, I feel good when I get off the bike in this on, on race day, you know, and 6 minute K pace feels like I could do that easily. And that's probably true up to 30k. But what happens when you get to 30k? Still another hour and a half to run at that pace or at an hour to run at that pace at 6 minute k pace for the last 10k, you know, an hour 12 at 12k, from 30k to 42k, still another 12k. And you've got to try and hold that 6 minute k pace there, which was a completely different scenari. And there's so much happening throughout the day that's going to try and stop you from doing that. And this is where these legitimate training sessions, specific race training sessions, get your body used to it and give you confidence that you can do it on race day.

Awesome. The next key session, this is just as important as doing the actual sessions themselves, but it's how you complete the sessions and it, and it's really important that you test your full race setup in these race pace sessions. So explain to us how to do that properly and how to make sure that you do it in a way that guarantees you're not going to get a shock on race day.

Yeah. If you're riding your bike, for example, and it's got its training wheels on, you've got a helmet that's going to be different. You're not racing on your race suit and you're not spending much time in the TT position and you don't have your, you know, your proper race shoes on, you know, and you've got a mindset that's not race, race setup. You know, those, those particular race specific sessions where we might be doing a time trial, they're the days to get the full race kit, the aero wheels. Whatever you're going to do on race day on the bike, you need to practice that. And our athletes would do that five or six times because we want to actually guarantee that the power we do and the speed we do, the average speed. So the average power we're going to ride on race day in these race specific training sessions, we want to know that that speed is accurate against that power. So if you've got a slower bike set up in those training sessions and you do 200 watts and it equals 30Ks an hour, and then on race day, 200 watts equals 32Ks an hour because you're, you've got the go fast equipment, that's going to create confusion because you've got a race strategy based on this particular power equals this particular speed. So that's really one of the key things. The second thing is we want to actually understand how much nutrition we're going to burn at that intensity. And that is important that we're practicing in that race specific training session. Not only the equipment, but our hydration levels and our nutrition numbers. And we don't want to have any surprises on race day. And we should go into race day knowing that the intensity we rode in that specific race ready session is what's going to happen on race day. So our nutrition should be burning the same amount and at same rate as it does on race day. And the only difference would be that the temperature might be different on race day to day your race ready practice session. And we have no control over that. We can't select the day that's going to be equivalent to race day. We just have to hope that we've trained in enough different scenario temperatures that are going to simulate. And of course that is extremely difficult. If you live in Norway and you're going to Kona, you know, you've Had a, you know, basically no temperatures that match that. So, you know, you can do things about that. You can train indoors at, you know, and, and make sure the temperature settings in the house are where you're training are similar to that. So they're examples of where you need to get this race equipment and nutrition and hydration is part of your equipment in my opinion.

Funnily enough, I feel like we see more cases of over consumption than bonking. And everyone's so afraid of bonking and it's horrific because it just stops you in your tracks. Whereas the over fueling people feel like it's not as much of an issue, but it is just as debilitating. Trust us, it is just as debilitating. And people have these really grand plans of what they're going to do on race day. You know, it's going to be three bottles of this, three gels of this, three bars here, extra water here or whatever. But they haven't actually tested that amount of volume in a race specific session because they've never done, you know that, that full length session for one or they just, they've just never gone to that length of how much nutrition and hydration they're going to take in. And so it is actually the first time on race day that they've definitely had two bottles and two gels. But suddenly on race day they're going for three bottles and four gels just because it feels like the race needs a bit more. And that's actually incorrect. You should be practicing exactly what you're going to have. So there are no surprises because even an extra 40 or 80 or 120 grams in one hour too much could completely bloat you and debilitate your performance.

Upsetting your stomach. And having experience where you're having to go to the toilet in the middle of a race is just really not comfortable. And having that uncomfortable stomach that it's taking your mind away from what you should be concentrating on. And we always say if you practice the race conditions in training, take that straight into your race and the only adjustment you would make is if it's cooler or hotter than when you've done that race specific training session that you're actually practicing what your setup is for all your equipment and for your nutrition and hydration. The only difference adjustment you would make is if you're being sick or injured or if the temperature changes. They would be the adjustments, but otherwise you should be taking in all the strategies you've done in that training race specific session into race day.

And the last thing is your full race shoes. So if you're going to race in carbon plated shoes and you don't train in them, which is very common, make sure you've done the distance or the equivalent distance at least maybe once or twice in the carbon shoes. And again, that's, that's hard to do because we do want to savor the kilometers in those shoes. They've only got limited kilometers on them, so you can't afford to do 6 30k runs in them if you're practicing for the marathon, but at least enough to know that you're not going to get horrific blisters or something that's going to stop you and potentially pull you out of the race at 30k because you haven't worn the shoes properly and you actually can't go further than that.

No. Spot on. And I think that really if you don't get the message that you need to be practicing in your doing race specific sessions and practicing in the race equipment and nutrition and hydration, then I don't think you've got the message.

The last key point is course recon, understanding the course. And again, this could be a mental thing or this could be a specific session. But why is this such an important point that we put it in our top four points to get your race ready?

You just can't underestimate how valuable course knowledge is for the way you're going to execute. If you're getting surprises on the bike course, I didn't know that hill was there. I didn't know how long that hill was. Far out. That hill went for 30 minutes. I didn't realize there was a hill like that. So I was not prepared and didn't understand what power I should be riding at based on the length of that hill. I just didn't understand that that was on the course. You know, I didn't realize the course had 17 turns, which is going to affect my normalized and my average power because there's so many periods where I'm not pedaling, so that's going to drop my power every time I go around a corner. I'm not pedaling, so my power number drops. And so all of these nuances about the course, you don't want any surprises. And just like the feeling of in control of your power numbers and your race strategy, the actual, the course that you're riding, you, you want to know everything about it. Where the hills are, where the hard parts are, where the wind is predicted to be. What is the wind on the day and what's the prevailing wind for that region and making decisions about what power to ride. And we talk about that in all of our podcasts. When the bike's going slower, you need to be mid to top range. When the bike's going fast, you need to be mid to bottom range. So if you don't know where the fast parts of the course are because you haven't reconed it in training, then you're making decisions on the run. And that's not a good way to do anything in life, making things up in split second. The more prepared and planned you are, the better the outcome is going to be every time in every aspect of life. And it's no different to being an athlete where you know, if you've got in your mind this could happen in preparation for the event, then more than likely when those scenarios happen, you can respond the way that you should. For example, I've never changed a tire. If I get a puncture, how am I going to fix that on the course? Am I going to have to DNF in an Ironman that I've trained six months for just because I can't change my tyre? So they're things that you need to be prepared for on race day. Go practice changing a tyre if that's what your, you know that your limitation is. So you want to make sure that you know where the hills are, know where the corners are, know where the fast parts are, know where the wind sections are coming from and then you can make better decisions about how to execute your well planned out race plan and studying the course. There's so many ways you can do this. You can do this either going to the course and doing it, but if you live, as I said in, in Sweden and you're going to Hawaii, it's pretty hard to go and do a recon of the course. So you, you could use the, the Ironman or the actual race organizers maps that they make available that have, generally have everything you need to know about the inclines, the gradient changes for the whole course. And you can have a course profile. Course profile is the word I was looking for. Thank you. And you can go into great detail and you've done this and I've done this myself. Both of us have done this where we've gone into Google Maps and just click the arrow and followed the course and seen where the hills are and you know, no, actually you can see real live view of whether the road turns or goes up or goes down and you know, they're really good things. You can do if you can't get to the course and then if you get there early enough, you can actually hire a car and drive the course. And a lot of the courses are out and back twice. A lot of the courses are out and back three times. So if it is that scenario, you can do one lap and you've got the thing covered. If it's a half, half Ironman, it's a 90K and it's two laps of 45. Just drive one lap, you know, the day before. If you get there two or three days, you could drive to a point and then ride a little bit of it, ride 20 or 30k. So it's not going to interfere with your. With your taper. So. So these are things you can do, but. But generally, you know, you've got the opportunity to do it yourself. Go physically there, study the course, use Google Maps, drive it the day before, but make sure you know what exactly you're in for on race day.

That's a great way to finish. I couldn't have summarised that any better. There is so many ways to study the course and do a course recon. It doesn't have to actually be a physical recon. Obviously, the best way to do it is to do the recon itself physically. And the least effective way is just to study the map. But any kind of study is worth it. And then there are multiple options closer to race day to get it right. So that's a great way to finish. Four key sessions to get you really truly prepared for race day and give you the best possible chance of performing well. So we hope you've enjoyed this episode. Thanks as always, for listening and if you'd like to get Coach from us, if you'd like, our guarantee that you will improve your performance, you will improve your FTP in the first eight weeks with us, or money back guarantee. You can go to trivelocoaching.com and apply to get Coach from us there. Thanks. Thanks as always for listening and we'll see you on the next one.