4 Training Sessions You Should Be Doing (And 4 You Shouldn’t)

This podcast is brought to you by Tribello 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 Tribello Coaching, Jared Donnelly. One of the most common questions we get is what sessions should I really be prioritizing? What's actually the most important? So today's episode goal is simple. We're going to give you four training sessions you simply must be including in your training program each week and four common sessions that we really think you should avoid. As always, if you like these episodes, the best thing you can do for us is to subscribe to us on whatever channel you listen to the podcast, whether It's Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever. The best thing you can do is subscribe. Dad, let's start with our normal starting segment. What are you grateful for this week?

It's a funny gratitude. It's hard work doing this, but it was so much fun having your oldest brother, Liam and Lani, who live in Queensland, go away for a wedding in Tasmania. For those international athletes, that's like going from one side of the country to another. But they needed the two grandchildren looked after for four or five days, which we gladly accepted. And it was so much fun watching them interact and go have their meals and have their sleeps and trying to get them to bed and waking up at all sorts of times. And it, it just reminded me of the good times it was when we had your, you four kids growing up and it was, you know, we've got a, we've got a house that will facilitate them to have, you know, take over the house and, and lucky enough to have a backyard pool. It was boiling hot weather and it was so good to have the kids there. And yeah, you know, they were missing their mum and dad especially, you know, Eden's four and Banks is not even two yet, so he would, you know, when things didn't go his way, be saying, mummy, Mummy, Mummy. And it was hard to console him a bit of the time. But, but Andy, my wife does such a great job and they absolutely love, they call her Moo and I get called Papa. But it's, it's great when the kids really like being with you and it is such a enjoyable experience even though it's full on. We were exhausted, basically happy to hand them back, but we had such fun and I'm so grateful for the opportunity and I'm sure that Liam and Lani had an incredible time. I did say to them Was it a weird experience not having? Because when you have children, you know, that's 24 hours a day. You are in charge of those kids 24 hours a day. And that's for your whole life when you have children. And to have a break for four or five days is. It's like you miss your children. But it's so good for you to have a break both physically and mentally from sleep and from like a reset. It's like taking a recovery period from your training program. So I think they were grateful as well, but we were grateful for the opportunity. So it was really good fun.

It was one of those, you really got one of those iconic family photos where when I look back at photographs of us at 4 years old with our grandparents and I just think I have no memory of that, you know, but it's such an iconic photo at the grandparents house and you really cherish that in there. You don't remember. And you got the same photo with the grandkids with you and mum. And they won't remember it now, but they'll look back in 20 years and go, wow, that's. We were at papa's house when we were kids. Yes, it was, it's just iconic. I love it. My gratitude is I got to do a gran fondo here in Indonesia over the weekend. And if you know Indonesian roads and I've spoken about on the podcast this week, it's not the most conducive to cycling the roads completely unkept and there's, there's the most amount of potholes you've ever seen. So you're really concentrating majority of the ride. Try not to hit potholes the whole time. Combine that with, with the traffic which if you've ever driven in Southeast Asia, you know that the traffic with the scooters is, I call it organized chaos. And I, people go, are you crazy to ride in Indonesia? And I'll be honest, I feel safer with the traffic than I do in Australia because everyone treats you like another scooter and so everyone gives you space and they're kind of, you know, they're kind of excited to see you on a, on a bike, to be honest, because it's so out of the blue, there's just not. You barely see another cyclist and so they, they ride past and give you a thumbs up and the trucks come past you and they're. Instead of honking at you like in Australia where they're trying to kill you, they're hanging out the window trying to clap you and give you thumbs Up. But regardless, the cycling is quite crazy, but got to do this Gran Fondo where one, it was a really epic course through the mountains of, of Barley, which is just phenomenal riding. But two, the roads were shut. And so for probably the only time of the year, you get to ride these spectacular roads and mountains with a police escort and motorcar escort and shut roads, which was just phenomenal. And as for the race itself, it was, it was a experience. It was, it went, you know, as disastrously wrong as it can get, which we might talk about. But I'm actually really grateful for the race itself.

Yeah. And yeah, it was epic. What a, what an event. And you did actually do a similar thing in China with the Trivalo group, and it was probably very similar experience. And you know, you get treated like royalty and you're one of the seated riders and the unknown thing for you was, you know, is there anybody who is absolute gun and you've been training, not specifically for this event, but just training for bike riding in general and concentrating on a bit of running as well. So, yeah, it's always a little bit of anxiety going into races like this, but, you know, the listeners don't know that you were ridiculously sick for the six or seven days before the event. So it's good that you actually got to the start line, to be honest. And yeah, what a great experience you've had.

Again, I think it's one of those ones where it's a good learning because we say it to athletes all the time. And then when you're the athlete in the experience, you know, you just want to race. And then when you're sick, you're saying to me every day during the week, what, what's the situation like? Are you going to race or not? And every day I'm going, no, no, I'm good, I'm, I'm coming. Do it. And, and to be honest, we did a bit of a FTP test on a Thursday leading in and rode really well. And numbers were all good and heart rate was all good and felt fine, but realistically woke up in the, on the morning and had some pretty clear signs that it wasn't still good, but you put that out of your mind. Cause you're in, you're in race mode. And, and yeah, the race was good for the first couple of hours and, and then body completely, completely capitulated. And.

Yeah, just to be fair, to be fair, you, you were at the front of the race and, and you still finished in the top 10, which is amazing. When you're, you say capitulated, you actually did finish off amazingly. And, and look, when you don't have good feelings because you were unable to eat for about four or five days and so, you know, that's like sabotaging yourself even though it's, it's, you know, it's not what you wanted to happen have happened. But nutrition plays a such a key role in an event such as this in Bali, where the temperature and the humidity is through the roof. And if your body's at its lowest levels of electrolytes and hydration levels, there's only one outcome that's really going to happen here. You can't consume enough fuel between when you felt better to the race to actually match your fitness level. So you're up against it there. But you did a great job. And it's another example of mindset over the physicality of what's happening to your body. You can still push yourself and you've somehow managed, you know, I know you said you got off the bike a few times and, and tried to, you know, get going again, but, but yeah, it's a really a good example of you can still get an end result if you just find a way around, you know, cramping and all sorts of the body. So, yeah, big hats off to you. Well done.

Appreciate it. It was the coolest part about it was it felt like a, you know, a Grand Tour stage because it was too 17k climbs inside the Grand Fondo, which is just monstrous, really fun and, and people have asked me since, you know, how'd you go and, and what was nutrition like in that heat and, you know, having 80 plus grams of carbs per hour plus enough fluid, you know, a liter and a half of biddens plus a liter and a half of electrolytes and still not being enough body, still full cramping. It's one of those ones where I said to you, we were riding against the volcano and I felt like throwing my bike in the volcano mid race once my legs were full, cramping. But it was a bit of crawling home. But I think I was saying to you, it's a reason that we really do say to athletes, don't be careful about turning up to a race when you're underdone and just saying, I just want to get through it, I just want to use it as a training session. Because when you're in a race environment, it's not a training session, it's a race. And you just get really pissed off and frustrated when you can't perform to the level you want. And so you really got to think carefully about signing up for a race because once you pin a number on it's not the training session things out the window. And so it's just a good reminder to be careful of that and don't set yourself up for failure and disappointment by doing that. That's why we say that message really seriously.

Yeah. Another good example. I know this is just a gratitude section, we shouldn't be actually spending too much time here. But you know, the consequences of the doms, you know, the pain that you're feeling post race from pushing yourself way beyond the level is something that we need to consider as well as part of the decision making.

Yeah, that's, that's such a good point. I haven't been able to train for two days straight because my legs have felt so broken down because they were so depleted. Um, and riding through cramps is not ideal and I. This doesn't happen off cycling. You know, it might happen off, off a long endurance run or a marathon or something, but get this soreness from, from cycling. And so to push your body further than it needs to be. When you're underdone this, like you said, it's always these are the consequences and it's frustrating to go into this week and just not be able to train because leaks just need full recovery. So we might talk about that a little bit more later in the episode. But that's the gratitude section again. If you'd like to show your own gratitude for the show, you can really help our ranking by subscribing like we said before or leave a five star rating. It really is the best thing you can do to help us if you enjoy the show. So before we get to the episode, just a normal quick shout out to and welcome to the newest members of the Triveller coaching family. These athletes have all jumped on board with the hopes of improving their results in training and racing. The new athletes are James Drew, Alex Colbert, Cooper Black, all from Australia. We also love when a couple decides to join us. So big welcome to Bec Sudoltz and Chris Henry from WA Australia and Adam Polk. We can't wait to help you all improve on your journey. And if you'd like to join these athletes and guarantee your own improvement, we have a money back guarantee. You can go to our website travellercoaching.com we've had some problems with our website at the moment so it is just functional right now. We are really trying to change it as fast as possible. Website design is not our specialty. Coaching is our specialty. But as a reminder, as you just heard, we do coach athletes internationally from anywhere around the world. So if you want to sign up, go to tribalocoaching.com now, before the topic, it's time for our quick mailbag as a precursor to all our mailbag questions. We don't know your entire situation. We just give very generalized advice based on some questions that we get. Yeah, people reach out mostly by Instagram and send their questions in, but feel free to reach us by our website or on social media. And today's question comes from Don and he says, great info, guys. Can you please recommend any types of indoor trainers to look at aimed at performing specific training sessions? I can see that it might be perfect for estimating FTP as well as completing focus training sessions. And I assume you can use the power meter on your bike. Now, we want to give a really specific answer to this question and a little bit of a rant. We're not going to recommend a specific trainer. You know, there's a wide range of smart trainers down to just very basic standard trainers. We really don't like the focus on smart trainers at the moment and the focus on trying to get the right trainer for specific training sessions. This is nothing against Dom's question, it's a great question because you don't know what trainer to buy. But we really want to make the point that the trainer does not matter. Smart trainers are great because they provide good resistance, equal resistance. They provide smart technology where you can, it's a bit gamified. Where you can look at a screen, it feels like you're riding on a course. It feels a lot more realistic than an old school just standard trainer, which often is not as good. But always remember the trainer is just a tool to get the training session done. The training session is most important. So, Dad, I know you get a little bit frustrated with how much smart trainers and trainer technology actually ends up impacting people's sessions and stops them from just getting a session done.

Yeah, and don't think that we're saying don't have a smart trainer. That's not what we're saying. What I'm saying is don't let the smart trainer dominate the session so much that you actually can't do the session. You know, the outside road or the velodrome or wherever you choose to ride is the trainer. That's, that's, you know, think of the trainer as that. So when you're indoor, you know, you can't ride around Your lounge room, you need to have a piece of equipment that allows you to pedal properly. And we've got that. It's. It's fantastic. You need to do your own research. And there's plenty of guys on YouTube, like GP Lama, Shane Miller or DC Rainmaker, they've got all the answers. They've spent hours going through all the technology. You need to find out how the things function and get that right so that you can come to train. Come to the venue to train. Your venue indoor is the trainer, your venue, outdoor is the road or the Palodrome or the crit circuit or wherever you choose to train. That's just your avenue so you can actually do the session. And that's what we're trying to get you to focus on. We don't want anybody to be just so inhibited by doing a training session because the technology is holding them back. That's actually the worst case scenario. And there's so many things that are good about the indoor trainer, such as when the weather is absolutely crap or when you want to focus on some certain things about, you know, staying in the zones and pedaling properly. There's so many good things about the indoor trainer. And, you know, it's no different estimating your FTP on a trainer that is outdoor. They're both just tools to enable you to train properly. So the question is valid and good, but we don't want the focus to be on the equipment. We want that to work properly and as it should and not be a limiter in you actually getting to get the goal of the session.

Yeah, it's just we really get frustrated alongside our athletes when we. When the trainer is just stopping them from doing the session and it gets to a VO2 session on the Tuesday and they just can't do it because of some inhibitor. So the best trainer is the one that you can get to work and the one that's gonna fit with your bike and, and work seamlessly. And look, at the end of the day, so often we just turn Zwift off and we just say, just ride the trainer. Look at your Garmin on your. On your bike and just get the session done that way. Cause. Cause Zwift is creating all sorts of problems where it's holding you at a certain wattage, you can't get the cadence you want. It's trying to force you at a certain power for some sort of reason, some sort of issue with the Bluetooth connection or Ant or something is just stopping you being able to ride properly. And so into the day. We just want to be able to get the session done. So yeah, we're not trying to be negative on trainers. We absolutely love them because they allow us to do a lot when they work. But we just want to encourage people to not let the smart technology get in the way of getting the program done.

Yep, couldn't agree more.

A quick one for those who tuned in last week to Mitch's case study, which is our 14 week Ironman program and the potential disaster we almost had. If you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to that last week. It's an epic story of how Mitch completed his first ironman of a 14 week program from us, which we don't normally allow. But we did say in the episode that he was just going to do a testing week last week and that we recorded the episode probably a couple of days too early because we really wanted to see where he'd come from from the start of the program to those tests. And so he did those tests last week and we just want to talk about some of those improvements and you can re listen to the episode to hear more detail. But he did a 10k run and his first run with us back in September last year he averaged 413 pace for the 10k and just last week he did 354 pace. So he's wiped off 20 seconds per km over 10k, which is just magnificent. His FTP test, he cracked 40 km an hour for the first time. His 20 minute number went from 296 watts to 313 watts, 38ks an hour to 40ks an hour, which is just an awesome milestone to get over. And he swim 1k swim went down from 17:13 to 17 minutes for 1k. So he almost broke that 17 minute mark at 1:42 pace. Just basically took an extra second off per 100, which as you know, in swimming feels like a lot. So that we just wanted to quickly give a shout out to Mitch for that and an awesome testing week.

Yeah. And I just wanted to actually add. We're going to talk about this in the, in the actual episode, Mitch did basso Ironman, which is in December, and I finally forced him because he was so motivated, if you remember in the podcast, to take a recovery period after the busso Iron Man. He was probably not happy about that, but, but here we are, late January, start of February and not only has he done PBS across all three events, he's as fresh and as fit as he's ever been. And that's, that's the Value of having some easy training sessions in the recovery period to allow your body to absorb the load. And we're going to talk about that.

So four training sessions you should be doing and four you shouldn't. And the premise of this topic is that when you think about these sessions, we're about to tell you, do you A, understand what they are, but B, understand the goal of them and how to execute them properly? So that's a really key distinction. We might just say the sessions. You might have heard these sessions before, but do you really understand the goal of them and how to execute them properly? So the first question we asked at the start of this episode was, what should I prioritize? And you end up saying to people, here's the sessions you need to prioritize throughout the week. If you're going to pick any, these are the ones you need to prioritize. And what are they?

Yeah, if someone says to me, look, I've only got limited time, and we do talk about this a bit, but whether you've got limited time or not, the priority should be that you progress your endurance. Ride and run. That is the really key session to everybody's program. If you're not doing, look, we're in an endurance sport. So I say to people, a lot of the time, replicate the race requirements in your training. And if you're doing an Olympic distance, that might take you two hours or three hours, and that's the range of athletes that do that. If you're doing a half Ironman, that could be somewhere between three hours, 50 and seven hours, you need to replicate the duration of those events in training. And that doesn't mean you go and run a marathon in your training session. And we're not saying that, but you need to actually find out, you know, what's your longest ride and run you've done, and then start to progress that that's replicating the requirements of your event. And if it's a marathon, you need to replicate some really long runs. If you're doing a half marathon, the same thing, or a 10K, if that's your goal race, then you need to prioritize making sure that your endurance run is at least, you know, being replicated. And marathon's not a good example for that. But we don't want to replicate a marathon in a training session, but we would replicate the time rather than the distance. So if you can build this huge aerobic engine as an endurance athlete, that would be the number one thing I would prioritize, is making sure that I'M growing my endurance ride and run and swim. And so if I've got access to open water, swimming, a lake or an ocean, I would really want to be doing some longer swims where I'm not getting a rest at the end of the pool. So building that aerobic capacity that you can endure, you can endure pedaling for a long time, you can endure running for a long time, you can swim without having to be gassed and have to stop. So that would be one of the key things that I would say to people, what, four training sessions? If I had to be narrow, there's 50 training sessions I'd be telling you should do. But, but yeah, definitely the endurance ride, run, swim is, is something that should be number one.

And we've said that a lot. But I want to now re repaint it in a different light and, and ask a few questions to make sure that. Because everyone goes, oh yeah, yeah, I know, I know I should be doing endurance. And people often come to us and say I've got pretty good base endurance. And then we get to see their training history and you know, we ask a really specific question. How many endurance swims, rides and runs have you done? Let's just say the last 12 weeks. Take the last 12 weeks because you should have had 12 of each, you know, every single weekend. The endurance swims, if it's, if it's an Ironman, you know, working up to 3 +k of continuous swimming or 3 by 1k in the open water, something like that, the ride, you know, if you're training for Half Ironman, Multiple rides above 100k or multiple 3 to 4 hour rides depending on your speed and runs. For Half Ironman, you know, multiple runs at one hour and a half to two hours for the fast runners and then two to two and a half hours multiple times. And obviously the marathon and Ironman examples are a little bit different, but you gave those examples. But count yourself, look back over your last 12 weeks, really specifically, did you do 12 endurance rides? Did you do 12 endurance runs? You know, that's the cornerstone of a good program. And then were they long enough? That's the next question. Then the next question is to go even deeper. How much elevation did you get on each ride? You, you know, we really push in the base period, get massive elevation. Are you, as every single endurance ride, 500 meters of elevation, just some slight undulations or are you getting 2000 meters of elevation and great strength in the leg? Same with running, is it 150 meters of elevation, just kind of up and down a little bit or are you getting 300 to 400 meters plus of elevation and have you built up to that? And dad, you like to even go a step further and you, you actually look at the endurance ride and, and they've, they've done the time, they've, they've got good elevation in there. But the next questions are how much pressure was there on the pedals? Was it an Actual Zone 2 Continuous Endurance Ride or was it, you know, a billion stops in there with, with a bad course and, and potentially two half an hour coffee stops breaking up the endurance where it's not truly an endurance ride or run.

Yeah, and, and that's, that's going into the, the devil of the detail, isn't it? You know, sure, the person's ticked the box. I was out there for four hours and then if you really look at how long they were riding for, it says they were riding for 3 hours 20, but they had 40 minutes of stops across that 4 hours and you know, great, they've ticked the box. They've actually been on their saddle. As a, as a rider, that's a good start. But the goal is to eliminate that. And you know, if I look at a profile and I open it up and I see a 15 or 20 minute stop, unless it's a puncture or a mechanical, I would be questioning that they've got the value out of that session. And that's why the endurance ride is just not enough to say go for endurance ride and endurance run. If you're out there running for the same amount of time, two hours, but you actually only run for an hour 40, and you've been stopped at a traffic light every half a kilometer. What is the problem with that, coach? I'm still out there for two hours. I'm still riding for four hours. Well, the problem is in a race event, you don't stop and have a coffee in the middle of an event. And most people are training for an event that doesn't have a coffee stop in it or a running race that has a coffee stop in it or a set of traffic lights every so often. So you're not replicating the requirements of the race. And that's what we're trying to do here. Get your body ready to endure the endurance race. And so by stopping all the time, you are getting recovery. So your heart rate might be, if you've been riding for 15 minutes at zone two, pressure on the pedals, then all of a sudden you have to stop For a minute 30, your heart rate might have been at 145 at LT1 where it's supposed to be in a zone 2 ride. Next thing you know it's dropped 25 beats. So instantly you're getting this recovery. So you're not replicating what's going to happen in the, in the, in the race situation. So that's why it's important that you do get the elevation where you're getting stronger. You do spend the time where you're not resting, stopping, starting, stopping, starting the whole time and that you do make it consistent. So the frequency, the duration and the intensity are three things that you must think about during this endurance ride. And the more times you stop, the less value that session is. It's still valuable. We're not disputing that, that you're out there for enough time, but why be out there for four hours and not get the best value from that four hours? I don't want to waste a second in my training and you know there'll be times where people want to stop it. I would get really quite knocky if I'm in a group and people are continually wanting to stop for drinks and they're not prepared enough to bring their appropriate nutrition with them. You know, we've been out for an hour and a half. I need to stop for a drink and I need to do this. That's okay if they want to do that, but that's not the ride I want to do. So, you know, we can't be too strict to do this every single time. There's times where you want to have fun and, and go on those endurance rides where it's an easy endurance ride where you, you're just out there just rolling the legs over, that's the time to go and stop for coffee halfway through it. But if you're in a 12 or 14 week build to a, an Ironman or a half Ironman, that's not the time to do it post race. That's the time to go and have fun with, with your mates and stop and start and chat and do whatever you like. But when we're in, we're talking about the sessions that are going to be used by you for an actual race event.

The next session we want to talk about is zone two running off the bike. And specifically how to make this a key part of the session you should be including each week is making sure you're doing it with a high frequency. So how high amount of times per week 1 zone 2 run off the bike isn't good enough. Trying to do like a, just a zone one run off the bike, like super easy, is a good start, but we still want to build up to getting to that consistent zone 2 actual pace running and not doing too hard either. There's a time and a place to do that, and we'll explain that in a second. But frequent zone two running off the bike is such a key part of program that we think a lot of people are still undervaluing.

Yeah, we've got to be careful, Jord, because if your work situation means that you start at 7am, that is pretty tough to do. Ride, run off the bike before work. And so we understand that, and so we're all the time trying to give the perfect program here on the podcast. But we do understand that to get up at 5am to do an hour 20 ride and then run for 20 or 30 minutes could cause a lot more problems in it. And then, then value, because the fatigue you get from getting up at 4:30, unless you're really strict and go to bed at, you know, 9 o', clock, you're going to be struggling with fatigue from lack of sleep and recovery. So, so ideally we want to have, you know, you know, two runs off the bike where we're actually getting, remember, remember our goal, replicate the requirements of the race. And it doesn't say in a race that you can have six hours off in between the ride in the morning and a run in the afternoon. But if that's the only options you have, we're all for that. That's what you should be doing. You should be splitting your day up. And, you know, we know Ingebritsen has double threshold days in the morning and in the afternoon, and most of the time he's running twice a day. So we know that it's got incredible value. But, you know, he's not doing a triathlon, he's doing a running event. And in the triathlon, part of it is to run off the bike. And we've got examples of runners who are, you know, 34, 35 minute, 10K runners who can't run faster than 39 in a triathlon, principally because they haven't actually done any training off the bike. They've just done all their training fresh. And so the difference you experience, if you just keep tapping away at these zone two runs off the bike, whether it's 15 or 20 or 30 minutes, after doing that for a few months, you will just find it so much easier to do that type of running come race day. And even in training, it'll Feel like your heart rate will drop because your body's so used to it. And it'll feel like a normal experience, like a fresh run, because you've been doing it so often. Imagine doing that for two or three years in a row where you're just so used to getting off the bike and running. And if you can only do it once a week on the weekends, because that's the only time you've got to do it, then that's what you should be doing. You should be making sure that you do one session each week as a minimum. And if you can do more than that, it's an absolute bonus. And that would be going a long way to making you the runner you want to be off the bike. Because that's the goal, isn't it? Getting as close to your fresh running pace in a triathlon as possible.

Yeah. I want to really reiterate this phenomenon that our athletes experience because so often it can feel a little bit obsolete to just do 15 minutes off the bike or 20 or 30 and not do an intense run off the bike or a race based run off the bike. And so athletes kind of quite often early on say, is this really valuable? I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere with this. I don't feel like I can improve my fitness with this. And then after a certain amount of months or extended period of time, something suddenly clicks and the Zone 2 running feels so good off the bike. And they find that their heart rate is responding so well, they're kind of, they're running off the bike as if they were running fresh. They've just done a VO2 session on the bike. They get off and run. And early on in the program it was a bit of a slog. It didn't really feel like they were getting anywhere and now they're jogging out the door. Like they haven't just done a VO2 session and their heart rate is completely normal. And that's the response we're looking for with the body. The next one we want to talk about is one that we just feel like does get skimmed over a lot and that is open water endurance sessions. And so, you know, our principles on this podcast and with our athletes is that we really believe that you really should stick to the ratio of training that's equivalent to race day. And that's 50% of your time on the race is going to be spent on the bike, 35% approximately is going to be spent on the run and 15% is on the swim. So we kind of Equate our training accordingly like that. But that means that every swim session you do is vital. And just because we don't focus on the swim as much in terms of frequency of training, it doesn't mean we skim over it entirely. And these open water swim sessions are vital in that. I think we just see a lot of athletes get a little bit complacent with the pool, forget that the race is in open water, get to two or three weeks out in the race and go, holy crap, I haven't swam in open water, whether it's a beach or a lake or something in months. And they try and get two final kind of swims in the open water before the race. And it can be too late. If it's tough conditions out there, it can really catch you off guard.

Yeah, the open water swimming is vital, but just on that first point you made, you know, the, the ratio of time swimming, if we're going to give such small amount of time to swimming, you cannot afford to miss them.

Yeah.

If you're, if you're riding 50% of your training as a bike rider, if you miss one or two here or there, you're still riding quite a bit. But if you miss a swim session over a period of four weeks, if you've done 50%, that means you've actually done two swimsuits over, you know, over the period. So that's not good enough. You, you need to make sure that your swimming is not missed. If you're going to do the minimum amount, it has to be, it has to be ticked off. And of course, there could be reasons why the pool shuts early. There's no lanes available, there's too many people in the lane, there's so many issues with it. But you need to move the day. If you can't get the value out of it that day, you do it on another day. And that's what you need to think about is being flexible, but also the open water swimming. You know, how many times have I said this in this podcast already? We have to replicate what's going to happen on race day. We don't swim in a pool. There are some triathlons, believe it or not, in a pool, but not many. So the majority of endurance races that we do in the open water, and whether you're in a lake or whether you're in a river or whether you're in the ocean, you need to be getting out there during summer, and it's impossible to do that in winter in the majority of venues around the world unless you live right on the equator where it is okay to swim all year out because the water temperature is allowing that. But, but if you don't and you have, you know, normal winters and summers, you only have this small window of opportunity over summer to get open water practice and you need to be doing something about it. And we've talked about, I drive 50 minutes to get away from the mountains where I live to do some specific sessions on the time trial bike where there's no hills. I'm trying to ride on the flat where I'm, I'm generating my own power. I'll drive 50 minutes, do the session, drive home. You should be thinking the same if you've got the time to do it on the weekend, drive to where there's an open water venue, whether it's a lake or a river or the ocean, and make sure that you're getting practice that because the conditions that, you know, there was a race here on the weekend probably in the top five worst conditions I've ever seen. And you know, if you're just not used to open water swimming, you know, we, I saw a huge percentage of people not make the swim and I was quite worried about people's safety and I was actually in the swim as well and it was, you know, I've done two to 300 races in my career and that's right in the top five worst conditions I've ever swam in. And there were people hanging onto the lifeguards skis and you know, saying that they, you know, they're not going to be able to finish and the wind was blowing people off the shore. So. So yeah, you've got to get used to the conditions and I'm not saying train in those conditions, but if, at least if you're in the open water, you're a little bit more relaxed with that and that, that style of training is a must. And if you, if you only turn up on race day for say you do four races in a season and you've actually done four endurance swims and they were in the race, you're not going to perform as well as your head. If you've done 16 open water swims, you know, it's just obvious. But I know logistically it's hard, I get that. But you need to try to think outside the square. This is the sport you've selected. So, you know, if you're doing BMX or something like that, you have to go the BMX track. That's what you have to do. If you're Doing gymnastics, sure, you can do it in your lounge room or in your backyard, but it's not the same as doing it in a proper gym hall where you've got a sprung floor and a mat. And you know, you, you make the effort to drive to those venues. And same with the swimming pool. So same with the ocean.

Spot on. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's really crucial point and something you really need to think about including into your training program as frequently as possible. The last one for the training session you want in your training program. You have to do this regularly in your program before race day in a specific phase of your program. And that is training at race pace intensity. And quite simply, the principle is you can't expect to race at your race pace intensity without training at it. So go through each discipline. What does that mean for the run?

Yeah, at some point you need to be able to run in training at the pace that you expect to do on race day. And so whether that's on the weekend endurance ride or during the week, it would be better if you could do it the same day as your race ready bike session. But it doesn't have to necessarily be that day. So we're trying to predict based on good data what your ranges are that you can run out on race day for your half ironman or for your marathon as an ironman or your 10k as an Olympic distance. So we want to predict that. So we want to have some sessions that are going to replicate that pace. We're not saying you have to run 10k for Olympic distance on your training session at race pace. That's not what we're saying. We're saying it should be some time at race pace. So the Olympic distance example would be, you know, the race is 10k, so you would try to do 4k off the bike, 5k, 6k, something like that, as a half marathon in a 70.38k to 12k to 14k. They're really good examples of running at that pace. As a marathon runner, you're going to be running, you know, 42K in the race. You would try to get a few sessions where you're running between 20 and 30k off the bike at marathon race pace. And then other sessions you can do that don't have to be off the bike, but are just as good, not quite as good, but they're just as good. Would be midweek where you just run at marathon pace or you run a half marathon pace as a, as an aerobic run midweek. If you can't have the time to do that double session on the weekend.

Yeah. And you kind of combined running and cycling together there. Cycling is the same principle. You need to be cycling for extended periods, specifically at your race pace, power in. In kind of race based conditions and, and getting data for what speed that would cat to. So you kind of, you're getting an idea for what it's going to feel like and what you should expect when it comes to the actual race. And now we use the word extended periods. And it's funny that we did this specific podcast after the Kona Ironman where we, where we did our own assessment of Lionel Sanders training program because he graciously gave everyone a 30 day access to his last 30 days leading into the Ironman. And one of the things we were critical of was how little Harry didn't spend enough time at Ironman race pace for his bike leg. He spent equivalent to what half Ironman time should be four by 30 minutes, about two hours. And your main point was as his coach, you would have been saying you need to be spending four hours at Ironman race pace, not two hours at quite high intensity of what he was doing. Now that episode ended up being one of our most downloaded audio and ended up getting a decent amount of views on YouTube. And we're not saying that Lionel Sanders saw the video, but in a recent video, this just made me laugh. He gets on camera and he goes, I realized he said this word for word. I realized that it's silly of me to spend just 4 by 30 minutes at race pace for my Ironman and I need to spend four hours at race pace in Ironman. So I don't know if someone told him or he came to that conclusion on his own coincidentally. I'd like to think maybe he saw our podcast. I don't believe that's actually true, but I just laughed at word for word. It was your coaching advice that you gave a month ago on YouTube. But the point is you need to spend extended time at race pace in cycling.

Yeah. And people ask what does that look like? And let's just quickly break it down. We want to do intervals like Lionel had been doing, but we need to do them for longer. Like if he's done 6 by 20 or 6 by 30 or 6 by 10 efforts at, you know, at his race pace or just at the top, top end of his race pace. They're great sessions. We're not criticizing that that's a great session, but it's not race specific. That what you're talking about. We are talking about training at race pace that's specific to the intensity and the duration. Okay, so he's just concentrating on the intensity, not the duration. So the example would be, you know, you need to be doing something like four by one hour where you're getting a couple of minutes rest in between each hour. So you end up with four hours or, or 140 straight. 140k straight or 160k straight. You have to have done in that last 10 weeks some time where you've run 180, 160, 140 or you've done lots of intervals at four by one hour or, or two by two hours or a three hour plus a one hour afterwards. I'm talking four hours because that's the duration of his race. And for any other athletes who are five hour or six hour athletes, they need to be doing similar things but for longer. And, and that's the mistake that the majority of the age group is make. They're doing all these rides where there's pressure off the pedals and they're not getting that constant feeling of what's going to happen on race day. And so doing, doing intervals is great, but you need a mixture of intervals and straight time trialing and that's going to be a little bit of a game changer for people if they haven't heard that before. And we're giving away one of the biggest secrets is, you know, you need a combination of both. It's great to do race ready training, but most people think it's just intervals. We, we make our athletes do time trials and I know they've got apprehension about it but boy, once I've done it in training, come race day, they're totally used to it and it's, it's really easy and it's not easy, it's really easy for their mind to cope with the job ahead.

Yeah, and when we look at the swimming example, it's the exact same principle. You need to get practice at the race pace intensity that you want to try and swim at and get the feel for it in the open water in race pace conditions and experiencing a range of conditions and not just calm conditions, but experience what it's like with a bit of chop or a bit of wind in, in your wetsuit, you know, and that's another aspect that people could often miss is they haven't worn, they haven't worn their wetsuit since their last race. They might go to put it on a race stand. It's got a hole in it. You know. So continuous practice at race pace with the wetsuit, which most people find they can swim a bit faster with the wetsuit, but getting that exact same replicated experience. So that's the kind of key sessions we wanted to touch on. And there is one really specific session that we haven't mentioned, but we want to keep that for the end. And I want to tell you what we think at the end is the actual best training session you can possibly do in your training. So that's the four key sessions that you should absolutely be including into your program. There is a really specific session that we haven't mentioned that we believe is actually the best training session you can possibly do. And that's a really big thing to say, but it is the best training session you can include in your program. But we're going to split this episode into two parts. And so part two will be the four sessions that you shouldn't be doing and really, really common sessions that we see that you shouldn't be doing inside your training program. And in that episode, we will give you this bonus best training session you can possibly do. So that'll come in part two. Thanks, as always, for listening. And like we said, if you want to sign up for coaching, you can go to tribellacoaching.com and sign up there. Thanks, as always, for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.

I can keep on, Keep on.