5 Key Habits of The Best Performing Triathletes

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, Jared Donnelly. Dad, I want to start this episode by talking about something really interesting that happened last week. We have an athlete as part of the Trivelo family that you started coaching him back in 1987. 1988, around that era. And basically you've been doing this thing a long time. And this was evident when we discovered some old handwritten training programs that you had written for this athlete and others in that period. And this athlete is Banger Harvey. He still proudly rocks the Trivelo kit and racewear at the Trivela races and still races at a very good level at his age group level. And it was just pretty fascinating for us when we were talking about the fact that um, you know, we, we think about all the, the modern day data and training programs and here we have like old scriptures, handwritten notes of, of sessions and intervals and you, you kind of had a notebook where you, you drawn out with a ruler the calendar week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And on each day written the, the swim splits and the, the cycling paces and, and goals of the session. And, and there was no data to look at. So it's just, it was really interesting to see how you'd written this out back then. And it was, it was a funny reality for Check for us for how long you've been doing this.

Yeah. And how difficult it was to actually monitor and analyze progress. So that was one of the more difficult things, obviously not having a. Computers weren't invented in that period, so there's no such thing as a laptop. We didn't have a mobile phone. So the only form of communication was to write out the training program on a bit of paper and then put it in a letter and send it to the athlete. And that sounds pretty amazing, but that's actually what we did. And if we wanted to speak, we would call each other after hours at home just using landline because nobody had mobile phones then. And so you couldn't email the program because you could just mail the program, which is a similar thing. But there's a little bit of a lag time between an email that gets sent in one second and a letter. So it gets sent. And in those days it could have taken three or four days to get to the right address.

So.

Yeah. And the descriptions of what to Do I know that banger put this on Facebook a while back. He actually took a photo of one of, he kept one of my week's training programs and yeah, trying to be descriptive about what we wanted to do in his bike session and his ride session and his swim session. You know, a lot of it was based on, on effort and heart rate and, and checking speeds on the bike. So if you were doing a loop on a certain circuit, we had, we did have, there was a circuit called, it was around the football stadium here called, it was called VFL park in the, in the old days. And we would do laps around that and you know, that was a pretty constant circuit where it was about 2k around and we could, we could measure how your form was going by how quick you could do those laps. So we were using all these forms of methods of analysis that we're trying to work our way to understand if we were getting improvement. But yeah, it was, it was a kind of a bit of a reality check to, to understand how easy it is now to, to really find out about where you are at at any given point. And I always laugh at people when they kind of scoff at too much testing. You know, it's, you know, it's, it's. If we had testing back in those days where we could actually see progress, you know, it would be some of the, you give them a Nobel Prize because it's like, oh, far out. We can actually work out where you are this week. Whereas we had to wait for races to sort of to find out, you know, where you were against the rest of the field. And that's perspective, isn't it? If you go train with a bunch that on a Saturday, you know, you might be top of the bunch and you know someone or you end up not riding so well on that day, you're not finishing the bunch strong, you get perspective there and then that, that you're not going so well or if you're normally getting dropped by the bun and all of a sudden you can now keep up with a bunch that are all similar consistency in their levels. That's perspective of geez, I'm improving without even, even any data. You know, you're getting this feedback from non structured data. It's more, you know, the group of people that you, you're used to racing against that you see at a park run. You know, so these are the things that, that we used to do when we had not a lot of information and it was great. And I had as a, you know, I was only 30 yet 31 or 32. And I just had this passion for helping others, and there was no finance in it. In it for me. It was, it was, you know, these guys needed help. And I remember had two other guys who are just as keen. They were a lot older than Banger, but Bangers, you know, he's, he's still in the top three in his age group and he's been doing this a long time. And he's, he really learned how to train properly back then. And obviously our training has evolved and improved our methods, our understanding of exercise physiology, understanding of what works for athletes and what doesn't, and treating each individual athlete as an individual, rather than throwing just one program at everybody. We've learned all of that since, you know, 1980, which is literally 44, 45 years ago when I first started helping some athletes. And, you know, I remember getting taken out to dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in Melbourne by two of the guys who wanted to thank me for coaching them. And, you know, because we didn't have any payment system, so they just took us to really expensive restaurant, which was, you know, and I suppose that's kind of a good introduction for what we want to talk about today. And gratitude is one of those things where I just love helping people, and that's kind of built into me is if I see someone struggling with their program and they're not improving, I just want to help them. And I can't help it because you get quite upset that I'm helping people outside of. Outside of the range. And I suppose this is what we do with this podcast. It's a great way for you and I to get messages across for people who can't actually be on the program.

Yeah, that's spot on. And I do laugh at the notion of you write a program and potentially mail it to the athlete, which we would be horrified now if that was the case, because we have the ability to, and we're grateful for the ability on training peaks for an athlete to wake up in the morning. And something happened and we changed the session. And you said program by letter for the next month. And we couldn't even imagine having a month's program advance with. What about all the changes that you need for the program? Yeah, I guess the point is you've been doing this a long time. 35, 37 plus years, and you've seen a lot in this sport. And so, yeah, in today's episode, we're going to explore what makes a difference in habits with the highest performing athletes. That you've seen over your time. But as always, we'll go through our normal segments of the podcast and that we start with our gratitude. So what are you grateful for this week?

Well, I do say this occasionally. I just love the gratitude section that you and I discussed four years ago to have as part of our podcast. And I just think that passing it forward, and that's kind of what gratitude is, is if you're trying to be a, a reasonable person, a reasonable human in, in this world whilst you're here, and if you can show great gratitude for, for people who are helping you, I think that's, that's a win. And so on the weekend we had, you know, we have lots of races every weekend and there's some races that are particularly important, there's some races that are special. And I think I got a real sense of athlete gratitude back towards us and I think that's my gratitude this week is I'm grateful for the athletes showing gratitude back towards us as a training group. The Trivalo family is a very small little family in the scheme of the world, but certainly we have really, I think, instilled in our athletes the sense that, you know, it's not all about me, it's about what can we do to help others. And, and I'd love the gratitude coming back from our athletes who performed so well. We just did a podcast on one of the events, the Peaks event, and, and you know, some of the messaging that I got back about our coaches had me in tears, really. The athletes were just so grateful to be associated with Trivalo and, and just couldn't thank me enough for allowing them to join our program. And the results they were getting would not happen without the understanding of what our coaches have in relation to what the requirements are for each athlete. And, and they were literally on the leaving voice messages that were pretty emotional. I sent some of them to you and yeah, it really, it really makes you feel really happy and makes it makes it worthwhile doing a job like this because you're just getting so much satisfaction back and that's not what you're doing it for, but it is occasionally answer, I'm grateful or occasionally it does come back and I love it. It's great.

Yeah. My gratitude is also actually for our Tribalo coaches. And it's funny, when we do the Gratitudes, we both ride our separately and then come together in the episode and do it. And for our coaches, you know, we have a, for Trivelo, we have a high standard of coaching and and we just say to our coaches, you know, we can teach you our system and our programming and of course all that stuff is, is very important to get right. But the one thing that you have to have that we can't teach is the same level of care for our athletes that we have. And, and yeah, we just had some great feedback over the last week after some. And the feedback was what you're saying. The messaging is all the same across the board. And so I'm so grateful for our coaches for the job that they do and looking after all of our athletes. We really appreciate it. So again, if you'd like to show your own gratitude for the show, you can help our ranking by subscribing wherever you listen to your podcast and leave a five star review and a huge thank you to everyone who did. So after the last episode, we did see your ratings, we do see them and we really appreciate you. So thank you for taking the time to do that. Now, before we get into the episode, just a quick shout out and welcome to the newest members of the traveller coaching family. These athletes have all jumped on board with the hopes of improving their results. And the athletes are Sam from Victoria, Sam Ford, Daniel Lewis, also from Victoria, Lee Rasty, who's been part of the Travelo family a long time but has fully come on board as a one on one personalized athlete, Vincent Potonier, and I apologize for my French pronunciation of that. From Switzerland, Vincent Jackson Chapman. Over in Western Australia, Isabella Casey from Melbourne and Matt Ryan from New South Wales. 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, you can go to our website, travelocoaching.com as a reminder, we coach athletes from all over the country and all around the world. Now a quick time for our mailbag. We do like to just answer random questions that we get asked anywhere we get asked them because we just find these questions do help with some quick tips that triathletes out there might be struggling with. And just a reminder, we don't know your entire situation, your training history, so we're going to give very generalized advice based on these questions. But this one came from Kieran and he said, hey Travello, been listening to your most recent podcast and you constantly mentioned the need to run off the bike. I'm glad you're listening, Kieran. Being someone who struggles to keep my heart rate down, post, swim and onto the bike, which is most people, is this something that should be practiced in training Big fans of what you do and would love to sign up with you one day. Thanks, Kieran. Your quick thoughts on this, dad?

Yeah, we would in our programming put swim bike, if it was practical logistically and for most people who have a job 9 to 5 to go to the pool at maybe 5am and then get on the bike at 6:30, quarter to 7 wouldn't give them enough time to get to work. So that is the only reason why we don't schedule swim bike sessions. But if we had the time to do it, we would mainly because you have to travel. It's different doing a bike run. You can actually have the bike in your house and you don't have to travel 20 minutes to the pool or 15 minutes or 30 minutes there and back. So there's an hour travel or 40 minutes travel, you're just eliminating that. So it's not an exercise physiology reason why we don't programming a lot. But you know, if you had that facility on a weekend, that's and you're really struggling with controlling your heart rate, it is a good thing to do to go for a swim and then jump on the bike. And we would encourage that. But logistically, because not many people have access to a pool like they have access to an indoor trainer. And possibly when they get off their trainer, they could just go out the door and run 15 minutes around their local housing area or they could just jump straight off the indoor trainer, straight onto, if they're lucky enough, indoor treadmill. And there is no commute time for those. That's why it's time efficient. So, you know, in actual theory. Yes, it's a great question. We should be doing that. We should be getting used to the feeling of what it feels like to swim and then jump, jumping out of the, the pool or the water or whatever it is and jumping on the bike. And that brings me to a good point, Jord, that in a race situation when your heart rate is elevated from, it's not really from the swim. If you looked at most people's swim, their heart rate should be reasonably controlled if they've executed well. The heart rate comes from the exit from the water to the bike. That feeling of anxiety, I've got to get to my bike quick, I've got to transition quick, I've got to run fast. In our notes, in our training and our advice to our athletes for race day is not to do that, is to be calm but efficient. You don't want people sprinting from the water. And I see this every race, people are literally sprinting. And so they are burning a huge match. We talk about executing on the bike and run, but what about executing your transition properly? And so that's where the heart rate's spiking. So you need to be more calmer and give up 10 or 15 seconds or 20 seconds in an Ironman. It's nothing if you just cruise from the water to your bike rack and stay calm and keep your heart rate down and just be efficiently quick getting your gear off, the wetsuit off, getting your goggles and cap off. And half of it should be done as you're running from the water to the bike rack. So you should have your wetsuit at your hips. You should have your goggles and your cap in your hand. So when you get to transition, you actually all you've got to do is pull the wetsuit down from your hips down. And then just try not to panic, try to keep yourself calm and grab your helmet, grab your nutrition and then grab your bike and not sprint with your bike to the bike mount, you should be just relaxed. And I've got thousands of people sprinting past me. I know that's because I can't run very fast, but I'm also just trying to maintain a relaxed feeling. And then I stand on that mount when I'm watching races and I see athletes sprinting out of their seat in the first two or three minutes. That's a reason why your heart rate's high as well, because you've just done this panic from the minute you left the swimming to getting on the bike. And look, the only people who should think like that are the people who are trying to win the race. But even those people, I would advise them not to do that. You're in an endurance event. We've talked about not spiking your heart rate throughout the whole day. That's the thing you're trying to prevent. Every time you burn a match, you're spiking your heart rate, which is going to burn the fuel quicker, which is going to bring more fatigue to you. So you can't run or ride better. So let yourself settle in for the first two or three minutes. Do the complete opposite. Don't sprint. When you get on the bike out of transition, give yourself two or three minutes to build your legs from horizontal in the water to now using your legs on the bike. It's a big shock from exercising with your upper body and then jumping on the bike. So I think the question is a really good one. So it's a bit three part, though. You've got to try to keep your heart rate down the whole time. That's the main thing. So practicing that is, yes, something we would advise if you had that availability.

Logistically, we do get a lot of, especially beginner triathletes who haven't raced as much to do mock sprints or mock Olympic where we get them to go practice the distance in the water, then ride, then run. And even then though, we find that such a struggle because often you're riding at first light in the morning, by the time you get out of the swim, and let's say you park your car somewhere and have your bike in the car and then go do the ride leg, you might be running into traffic straight away because it's already, you know, later in the day. And we often start our rides early to avoid as much traffic as possible. And so a ride run is, is more ideal. But time wise, you know, if you chuck a swim in there beforehand, you end up riding into traffic, which is not ideal. It's just one part of the logistic problem. So it's definitely possible and you can find workarounds and if you can figure out a way to, to make it work, then it's definitely, as you said, dad, is definitely a good thing to do, but it's just not always feasible. So that's it from that question. And look, we know many of you out there balance training with a heavy workload, often with physically demand training jobs. And that's why a balanced training program is key. And then, and getting a program that you can continue to do for life is important. And when you're on the job, we know you also want a tool for life. And today's episode sponsor is Klein Tools. Klein Tools are the answer whether you're on site or at home. Client Tools has been creating tools that last over 167 years. That's right. For over 167 years, client tools has been refining the craft of creating tools for professionals. 120 years before the sport of triathlon existed and you started coaching dad. So fast forward to today. There's a reason why Client Tools has been the most respected brand among professionals for generations. Get a tool that lasts for life. Go for Klein. It's now available in store and online near you. You can use a specific link in our description to access their online Amazon store. And on that note, let's get into the five key habits of the best performing triathletes. Now, we're not going to use the C word because that's a given. Okay? And the C word is consistency. We promise we're not going to say that in the five key habits because that is just an absolute given of the best performing triathletes. It's probably the number one trait. We can move straight past that. We're going to go straight into why our motto is our motto and the first key habit is the planning part of the process. Explain why we start with planning and why that is one of the most important habits of a high performing athlete.

Boy, there's so much detail that you should be going into when you're beginning to plan your year. And everybody has the ability to adapt that plan to whatever's happening in their world, socially, with their family and with their work. And that's how the plan should be structured. What races, what events, what fitness, what level, what's my goal? What am I trying to achieve in the next three years, five years, even, you know, 10 year plan? What am I trying to achieve here? And work yourself backwards from, from wherever you want to start. And make sure in that plan that you are including things like having fun and social things that are going to happen like a trip somewhere or some functions or some birthdays. You need to put everything into that plan. And if you don't, you're going to find yourself with periods where you've planned to do some big block of training and it turns out that you actually don't have the access to a bike or a pool. And that's why you have to take into consideration and sit down with a calendar and work out what are the races I want to do, where's my A race, what are my B races and C races? Where are my holidays? What's work looking like in January through to December? I just really think that that phase gets overlooked a lot. And I really want to make it clear to everybody that if you don't sit down and do this with a calendar and select events that are going to fit in with your lifestyle and that comes to the next point, which is picking events that suit you, not just ones that you have been at the pub with your mates saying I'm going to do that next Ironman. And everybody agrees. Don't be that person, don't be that sheep. You need to pick an event that suits you and your family and your lifestyle. And don't pick an Ironman if you haven't done the preparation. Don't pick a half Ironman if your longest ride is an hour. Don't pick something that's going to be in the next three months. If you haven't got the preparation right. So the planning is all about picking the right races that suit you. And if you're not an endurance athlete, but that's what you want to be, that's okay, but that's part of the planning. Give yourself enough time and start your program straight away. Don't say, oh, the race isn't for another year. I can relax with not getting a program till six months out. That is so bad an idea you need. Imagine it when you stand on the beach 12 months and you think, oh, far out. I've just learned so much in the last six months on this program. Imagine if I'd been on the program for 12 months instead of, of waiting six months. You know, that's the sort of thing that you need to think about is getting to learn as quickly as you can the things that are going to make that big day that you've, you've, you know, you joined the program for to be as successful as you want. And you know, all those case studies that we show you, the one simple thing a lot of those athletes are doing is they're starting with a really good plan. And we do that in the interview. We sort of say, you know, what do you want to do? Why do you want to be a part of this program? What's your plan in your mind for the long term? Are you just doing a one off event in 12 weeks? And we're not really interested in that type of athlete. We want someone who's going to be in this to learn about their own improvement and understand how their body works. And that's all part of the planning. And once we test you, we can see what type of an athlete you are and where the weaknesses are. You know, do you need more zone 2 work? Have you not got enough endurance in your body for an endurance athlete? You know, do you need some more bike sessions? Compared to you're a really good runner or a swimmer or are you a bad swimmer? We need to really hone in on your technique or have you not done much running? Therefore, we don't give you a lot of high intensity running. We just get your body used to the load at the running take. So this is all part of the planning and working out who you are and what you need and fitting that. I don't want to say that people shouldn't be doing endurance events if they're not, you know, their predisposition isn't for that. I think anybody can do anything as long as you give yourself enough time. And that's where the planning part comes into it. And sure we get people who leave the planning and that happens in life, doesn't it? People plan poorly but they still want to, you know, rock up for an event and you can't stop that. But we're trying to spread the word that you know, be forward thinking and you'll have a so much better outcome.

Yeah. One simple example is the conversation that we have with athletes will go something like what's your a race goal? Okay, let's say it's this 70.3 in 18 weeks time. What's your longest run at the moment? Probably about 50 minutes to an hour. Okay, so between now and 18 or 20 weeks time, do we have enough time there to build up your long run from one hour to the 2ish or plus hours that you need for 70.3? And how much is your total weekly running volume? Right now it's 10-25km a week. Do we have enough time to safely build that to a sustainable level where you can get the frequency and volume you need in plus your long run? And if the answer is yes, then that's what forward planning is all about. With we've, we've got a good plan in place. Yes, this is achievable. But if you came to us and wanted to do an Ironman or a marathon, but you only had 18 weeks and your longest run was was 50 minutes or you're only running 15k a week, then we start going, geez, if we're going to, you know, increase the volume by 10% each week, we're really pushing it to get you to the three hour required runs that you need. You're only going to get there about in the last month or six weeks out from the race. We need to be there 12 weeks out so then you can start really doing some specific marathon prep work. So we actually need a little bit more time. So that's just an example of how the conversations go with really specific planning and thinking. And it ends up being once an athlete does their a race or we're looking to plan the next year, it ends up being a half hour conversation where they go away and they look at some races in the calendar and they come back to us and they go, I'm thinking this, this and this. And they need some objective point of view to go, whoa, you've just picked three 70.3s within 10 weeks without realizing it. Or a 70.3 at a marathon and at a sprint distance or within 10 weeks they're all they're three to very different sports. That's actually not going to work. And so that planning part of the process is just so important to get right. And you hear Olympians talk about this all the time, is that they. They plan out their full season, which races they're aiming for, which C races, B races all the way leading up to peak for their A race for the entire year. It's so meticulously planned out, and I think it's. If you're going to be spending the time doing the training, we focus a lot on the training, but you need to have this planned out far in advance so you know what's coming up.

Yeah, and there's some great examples on the World Tour level with the cyclists, you know, all of the key general classification riders, GC riders, are selecting what events and what tours they're going to do, whether they do the Weltra, the Giro, or the Tour de France. And I'm sure other World Tour riders are looking at what the best guys are doing and maybe selecting races that are avoiding the best riders. And if, you know, Poguchar is going to do. And he could do all three Tours and probably win them, but a lot of the riders would be going, well, he's doing the Tour and he's doing the welter. Maybe I'll try the Giro. And they're things that you should take into consideration. And that's not avoiding, but that's good planning because you want to give yourself the best opportunity to do well, and you don't have to compete against the best athletes all the time. There's, you know, there's. There's other. Other ways of enjoying the sport by. By going to events where you have an opportunity to do a lot better. And that's not to say that you shouldn't go into events where you've got no chance of winning. That's not what I'm saying. When you go to an event, everybody's got equal chance of winning. And. And then I look at, you know, I. I did, actually. It's funny. You've just. Cam Wirth's program was put up the other day, and I looked at it, and. And I just started laughing.

It's a cool thing that the pro triathletes have been doing because of the T100 series and the Ironman series. A lot of them are releasing their calendars, are going, here's what I'm aiming for. Here's my races. And, yeah, Cam Wurf came out, and he's entered every single Ironman race. On the calendar.

And I reckon, Jord, I was about to say before we talked about Cam and I love Cam. He is one of my all time favorite athletes. I absolutely love his versatility and his ability to be a pro tour rider and a triathlete professional. I think that's brilliant. But I was about to say, you know, if you've been on a campaign with us to your first a race and it was a 10 month campaign and then the next year you could plan differently because you're already been on the program for a year, you would be able to cope with tighter races with less time in between because you've got this bank of fitness in your body that allows you to do this. And we always say a lot where athletes are saying this back to me now, it's so good. Jared. I'm in my second and third year and I am stepping up my level and I'm doing the same program, same consistency and yet I am still improving and I'm taking leaps in the second and third year compared to where I got really good improvement in the first eight to 12 weeks and then I started to get less improvement, but now I'm jumping again and that's that. Two to three years of fitness in your bank. And I was about to say with Cam Wirth that that's years of training. His body can cope with that. Maybe. But if any other athlete tried to do that, I would be saying, no way, that's too much. That's way too many races. But there are exceptions to every rule. And the example I'm giving you is guys we've had for six or seven years can do back to back races because their body can cope with the strength, the strain and the, and the stress of the event and recover quickly because they've got this fantastic base where they've been doing this for a long time.

Yeah. And it's a great example to really point out that some people are outliers and Cam Wurf is an outlier. And we don't know if he's going to handle that race load. That, that is pretty extreme. Especially when we saw last year how many athletes felt over trained by the end of the year with a, with a seven or eight race calendar, not a 13 or 15.

And remember how well Cam raced at Ironman George? So that, that's, you know, he did handle it well and put that point in. He was one of the few people he was flying it at Kona. Yeah, that was outstanding. And he raced a lot.

Yeah. Well, I was going to say that, you know, the Tour riders, the. The cycling Tour riders, the Tour de France, they're allies in themselves. Because you ask anyone to ride 21 days in a row at a TSS of over 200, you know, max racing every single day is like its own day stage race. It's because the. The stakes are so high for a stage win. It's a. There's no easy days there. And you give that. If you wrote that as a program for anyone, it would be absolute insanity. Yet their bodies can cope with it, and they suffer afterwards, for sure, and they suffer through it. But their bodies do adapt, and so there are some allies that do adapt to that. But we have got a little bit off track with the planning process. But they're the extreme ends of it. And that's what can work for you.

Absolutely. Look, I just think planning, it just gets overlooked so much, and it's kind of. If you. If you have the wrong plan, it's like building a house with the wrong plan. There will be problems down the track. And that's why you got to get this right at the start.

Yeah. And that takes us to the next most important habit to get right. And that's the preparation. That's actually the work, that is the training. Now, that seems obvious, but when we talk about planning and then preparing, you have a bit of a different take on this. Of course, you've got to do the session, you've got to do the work. But what does preparation mean to you, and why is this such an important habit to get right?

Well, I think everybody thinks about training in a different way, in a different light. And if you try to be like we're pushing so much on our podcast for the last four years, is not to be extreme in anything, in any behavior. The less extreme you are with over training and the less extreme you are with under training, and that will come through on race day as well. If you're racing really high power and then low power, that's actually a good analogy of life. You need not to do that to get the success you want. So training, the preparation part of training is basically you just turning up each day and making sure that you're ticking off the sessions and you're not doing these hero sessions that are going to cause you to actually sabotage your own program. Because every time you train outside of the ranges, it has an effect, it has a consequence. And the consequence could be that the next day you can't train, or the next day after that you're still struggling, and you can't the next, you know, two days later, it could be a high intensity session that you're meant to be doing, but you can't hit the numbers and it's because you're way above the numbers two days prior. So the preparation part is the training, but it's actually you taking responsibility, responsibility for every day and, and just staying super disciplined. And it sounds boring, but, but as you, you and I have interviewed a lot of professionals over the journey of this last four years. We, we and the one thing they say to us, you know, you and I say, oh, what do you think you can put this down to? Why, why is your form so great at the moment? And they would say too, oh, there's nothing really outstanding. I've just done the work. I've just, I've just stayed in my lane and done the work and I've had no interruptions. And I saw the interview with Inka Britzen 2 weeks ago when he just broke the, the world indoor mile record. And the interviewer was saying to him, what have you done differently, Jacob, compared to other years? Why are you all of a sudden in great form? And his answer was, you know, it was, it was almost like to me, it was like I knew what he was going to say. He's going, I've just had no interruptions. I've had the best training block ever coming into this season. Normally I have some. At the end of the last season I had some little niggles that were preventing me from training consistently. And I've had the best lead up into this winter racing season because the winter, the winter indoor track season is huge in Europe. So they have the summer track season and they have this, they have a little break in between, between summer and winter through the autumn where they're back out training and doing their volume. And he just had no interruptions through that period. He was training the house down and he was loving the fact that he didn't miss any sessions. And he said, I've never been in this form for a long time because I've always had interruptions to my training. And that is part of the preparation is you staying on the training track, not being injured and not having to take three, four days off here or two weeks off there and you get sick or being prepared properly to get the right sleep, eat the right nutrition, do the training only in the ranges that set. And you will, you will continue to slowly improve. And then when you come to your, your race, like Zinger Britzen as an example, you know, he doesn't know he didn't know where his form was, to be fair. He said that in the interview. And he said, I just felt great and I was able to. I was able to train well. And the reason is because I just prepared so well during the last eight weeks. It's the best preparation I've done for a long time. And so don't forget our theory of doing this for eight or ten years. Each year you've got this fitness bank that when it's uninterrupted, you can step up to the level that you want to. And I think that's part of the preparation sentence, is it's great to have the right training program, and that's so important. But if you don't actually turn up each day and do that program, the program's almost useless.

Yeah, we talk about the sessions themselves, which need to get done and done with quality. And you subtly mentioned before not overdoing it or underdoing it. That's not what the program's about. The program's there. Do the program in the set ranges, because when you overdo it, that's when you put yourself into a hole. And if you underdo it, you're just doing yourself a little bit of a disservice, you know, doing the actual training, but then taking responsibility for every part of that preparation around the training. And we talk about a lot of little factors in this, but that's. That's planning the week ahead, looking at all your sessions and going, where do I fit this in? What time is best for me to do this? What course am I going to do this on? What's the weather looking like? Am I going to be indoor or outdoor? The night before your session, if you have to get up at the crack of dawn, do you have everything laid out? Do you have all your equipment out? So it's very easy for you to get up in the morning and get it done. Do you have contingencies where if something goes wrong and you can still get the session done? Are you organized enough to just make sure that you're. You're always charging your bike regularly and you're charging your power meters and you're charging your lights and you've got your nutrition organized like you said, and you've got all your fuel there, so you're not going to bonk on an endurance ride because you forgot your fuel or something? You know, there's all these little things that you have to stay organized. An athlete to make sure that you're as prepared as possible. And those little habits really do add up to getting the result you need come race day because you've been practicing this preparation every single day and every single week in your training.

Yeah. And you know, making sure like for sometimes the, I use a, an old alarm clock that's plugged into the wall with power and I could just put my alarm on my phone. But if the power goes out during the night, which happens a lot these days, I would sleep in if I'm meant to be up at five to go and meet my, my venue starting time at 6:00am so you know, I make sure that I've got two, two things happening, you know, the phone alarm and the clock. The clock alarm is going to buzz next to my, my ear when, when it's, you know, time to get up. So that's part of the preparation, preparing for the training session. The training session is really important how, how well you perform that. But, but if you're not thinking about being organized and that's part of the discipline too, how much sleep do I need for the next three or four days? I'm making this mistake myself. Going to bed too late is going to put you under pressure for the training session and that's poor preparation because your fatigue levels are too high to execute and you end up digging yourself a little mini hole. So the preparation part part is equally as important as actually the performing part. So the planning, getting that right and then preparing for the training session. We skim over a lot of it. Let's dig in. Do you know what you're doing tomorrow morning? What session is it? Am I doing 5 minute bike efforts on a hill? Am I doing threshold? Am I doing zone two? Am I doing recovery? What are my ranges that I'm supposed to be riding at? What's my cadence? I'm supposed to be. Have you looked at any of that data the night before? Or you're just going to wake up and open it up and go lucky dip or what is it today? That's really poor preparation and, and you know, not knowing your own numbers. What, what is your range to be riding at if something goes wrong with the technology and you can, you're just stuck with the power meter on your, on your bike computer. If you know what your ranges are, that shouldn't even be a problem to you. You should be able to say, look, I'm doing these five minute efforts. My range is 200 to 215. As long as I'm in that range and my cadence is 60 to 75. There's my session in my head and that's part of you knowing and preparing for what's coming up. You know, I'm going to do two minute hill repeats. I am in a place where there is no hill. I am in a, you know, there is just not a hill anywhere. So I'm better off jumping into a gym and grabbing a treadmill and putting it on an incline than going training outside. That's what I'm talking about with preparation. Think about the logistics of can you do the session. And you talked about course selection. That's what preparation is, understanding where you are in the world. And you could be moving from place to place. We have so many athletes who travel on a Monday, they could be in one state or one country. On the Friday, they could be in another country. And I've got this guy, Jeff, who is the ultimate in preparation. I love the way he does it. He travels between Australia, England and America. And he does that pretty much over a period of a month. He would be in all three of those countries every month. And he's just so organized. He can tell me where he is, what time his flights are and what he can do that day. And he travels with a bike everywhere. He travels with his own bike and his own trainer. That's how organized this guy is. He has never missed a session. And he is the most traveled athlete that I coach. He has never missed sessions and it would be an illness or. And I know his son had a skiing accident. That would be a reason why he would be missing a session. I just think he epitomizes what it takes to be prepared for a training program.

So we call it the three P's for a reason. And that's why these things are the most important habits for athletes. And so first one is plan. Second one is prepare, and the last one is perform. And actually for today, we have the five key habits. We have four Ps and we want to give you an extra one. But the third one is perform. And so plan, prepare, perform is our motto. And so we're talking, we've talked about it so far in terms of a bit of a macro scale. Plan your whole training year. Do the training and perform on race day. But plan, prepare, perform applies for the whole training week. Plan your week ahead. Prepare everything you need for the week and perform throughout the whole week. And it applies to each individual training session. Plan this specific training session. What you said about the numbers, prepare for the training session, execute those numbers, perform and execute properly. And so performance is all about that word, execute. And all the training in the world doesn't matter if you get to race day and you don't execute the race plan, you don't execute to what you should. And we honestly, we just say all the time that it's, it's still an underrated part. It's. Everyone does the training. They do so much work and preparation and they train for six months or 12 months for a half Ironman or Ironman, and then don't take the performance and the, the execution, the race plan seriously enough and don't get the result they deserve because they haven't done that and they, they don't concentrate on their execution. And we spoke about that with three peaks. Um, and you've just thrown essentially six and six to 12 months worth of work a little bit out the window because you didn't realize that the training on its own isn't enough. That's not going to get you a result result on race day. It's the execution of your ability that gets you the result on race day.

We talk a lot about making sure that you have done all those things well. You, you have practiced in your training sessions what power and what ranges you should be at, what, what pace you should be running at and what swim pace you should be swimming at. We talk about that. That's what the practice days are. Our training sessions are practice days. And we bring it back the other way. We say everything that happens on race day, we want to practice in training. So if you ride a smart trainer on race day in a triathlon, then we would get you to train on a smart trainer using the power meter from a smart trainer. But it doesn't happen that way. We ride an actual bike in the race outside. And so that's, we're adamant that you shouldn't be doing anything different that's going to happen on race day. So why would you do all this planning and preparation and then come to race day and throw everything that you've done in your training out the window and not follow the planning and the preparation part? And so race day is your chance to go out and just execute everything you've done in training and to have this expectation that people have the performance side of it. Oh well, I will perform way better than I have in my training. That's just not true. That hardly ever there are outliers who can do massive pbs. We're not denying that and we're not saying that's not a, we hope that's what happens. But the majority of time in an endurance sport, you're trying to Emulate where your current form is and hopefully it's more than what it was six months ago. So that should be an improvement in itself that you've done a PB from six months ago, but your form and your most recent training sessions, that's where you should be executing and, and hopefully you've executed so well that by the end of the, if you're in a triathlon, you can come home really strong in the run and really get another pb. And if you're in a marathon, you, you can take more risks at the 36k mark rather than just existing to the 42k mark, you can actually run faster. Or if you're at a bike race where you're in a time trial, you can actually lift the power from what your ranges should be at the end when you can just empty the tank. They're things we're talking about in terms of execution, but the performance should be replicating what you've done in training on race day and hoping for maybe a percent improvement. And people just have the wrong idea about oh, it's race day. Everything I've been doing in training, that doesn't matter, that's just training. Now I'm going to be 15% better than I was in training. And that's a huge mistake. There are outliers that can prove that wrong, but in general we're talking about that just doesn't and wouldn't happen.

Yeah, guess what? Execution is a habit. It's literally a habit. It's something that you practice. If you don't practice as a habit, it's not going to happen on race day. And we talk all the time to our athletes about when you're doing a one minute effort and it tells you to ride at 105% of your FTP. You really want to practice riding 105% of your FTP for one one minute. And then when you've got a five minute effort at 95% or 98%, you want to practice that. Because if you don't do it in the one minute effort, you can't do it for five minutes. If you can't do it for five Minutes, you're not going to do it in your 10 minute or 20 minute threshold efforts. If you can't do it in that, you're not going to do it in your your one hour sub threshold efforts. And then if you can't do that, you can't get to race day and arrive for two and a half hours at your or three hours at your goal Power, because you haven't practiced all the way through in training. So we really, really try and remind athletes of that because you look at any sport and, and Steph Curry, the greatest shooter in NBA history, makes 300 to 500 shots per day in practice, sinks 300 to 500 shots and doesn't leave the court until he does. And so that's why he can, in the highest stakes match of an NBA finals or a gold medal match in the Olympics, he can just get the ball and throw it up in a split second and know it's going in because he's just practiced that execution over and over. If you're going to practice that, you can't just expect to go on the court and get it in. Any athlete that we see what we see the result, what we see them doing on the world stage at the highest level in the Olympic final or the World cup final or anything, we see the result of what they've practiced every single day in training. We don't see the result of them practicing a little bit, but then just fluking it on race day when they get it in, that is years and years of practice, execution, what they're finally going to show the world.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And you can relate that to repetition, running sessions, strength efforts on the bike, you know, 400 meter swim efforts, you know, just repeating the same thing over and over again. So when it comes to race day, all you're doing is you've already got your plan and you're well prepared. You've just got to go out there and perform or in other words, execute. And we just can't stress that they don't go single handedly or all of those three things intertwine with each other. And if you, if you leave one of those out, you're going to be, you know, you're going to not get the result that you want. And that's kind of the message. And look, it sounds like we're really banging on about this, but it is so true that get one of those things wrong. And if you use that analogy of the triangle where you know, if you don't get the planning and the, you do the performing and the, and the preparation really well, but you've actually got the wrong event, then it's a really poor outcome. Or if you plan an event and you don't do any of the preparation but you know, and you find you can't perform properly every time you do it, if all three things aren't right, then something's gonna you know, make it a catastrophe in the end.

So that's plan, prepare for form. That is our tribal loan model motto. And the extra P that we put in that is post race analysis. And we speak about this a bit, but, but you've got to review the race because otherwise you're not going to get any feedback about how you actually went. But it's not just the race that you review. It should be every single training session and every training block that you review and review yourself in your testing weeks. And when you do that constant post race or session or test analysis, you're actually getting feedback as to what went right, what went wrong and what you need to focus on for the next block. If you're not doing that, if you're just doing the performance and not analyzing it, you're not getting any feedback and you're not going to make any changes that are actually going to get you better.

And normally after your event, it's a really good opportunity for you. When it's really in your mind within the first 24 hours after your event, you get a clear understanding in your own mind of where you are strong and where you are weak. And you should be taking notes about that. I felt today that my run let me down. I just didn't seem to be strong enough in the back end. And then you would have a discussion, maybe we need some more longer periods of hill repeats. Maybe I hadn't done enough hill repeats in my running. Maybe I hadn't done those long runs in enough hills, which is two different sessions hill repeats compared to the endurance run with hills. Maybe I just hadn't done enough running and you would have to look at all these things. That's what the post race analysis is for. If you felt like, you know, your riding and we looked at the data and you spent too much time outside the ranges, you know, we'd have to go into the race and see was the race course really undulating that caused that or was there packs in the race. We'd have to find out all these reasons so we can actually look at do we need to practice this staying in the ranges more. And that's what we concentrate on our next block of training. So the post race analysis is a really great thing to do because it gives you feedback instantly about your performance and also gives you feedback about how well you prepared yourself. And if you feel like you lacked some preparation because of the way you perform, then you need to talk about that and you need to change something in the next block of training and that's the beauty of it. What are the things you did well? I actually swam well this time. Great. Let's keep the constant there. Let's just do what we've been doing there. I don't think I ran so well. Let's have a little look at that. Let's change it up a bit. We want to not just keep doing the same training program if it's not working the way we want it to. I had the example on the weekend, even though Joe Spano we have talked about on the podcast before, he won his age group at Peaks by five or six minutes. And most people would be pretty satisfied with that. But Joe and I had a bit of a discussion about how well we think we prepared for Peaks and what are the sessions. And he was sort of saying, well, I trust the process and I know we've been working together for seven or eight years and I just know that you care about where I'm at in every part of the, of the, of the period of training that we're in. And I, I am really on board with whatever we're doing. And I was almost before the race questioning whether I'd done enough long hills for this event. And then after I'd had a discussion with him for five minutes about what we'd done in October, November, December, where we'd done, you know, lot of big hill training sessions. That was our period to be prepared for a big race in, in December and the next race, which was going to be in March. And so we needed to shift from that long endurance hill stuff to more intensity with endurance from the next period, which is the January, February period, the next eight weeks. And in that time we had a training camp for, for January and we had a training camp for November. So, so when I explained that to him, he was really clear that, oh yeah, I felt like we hadn't done a lot of hills, but, but in actual fact, we had done a lot of hills, but it was just the way we'd done it. And that's, that's good for athletes to ask those questions. And, you know, halfway through the race, he's sort of almost answering his question going, I feel fantastic. You know, I'm not even questioning because he was, you know, like every athlete, you question everything before a race. You are so worried about how prepared you are. You know, you just, that's one of the things that you, that we want to appease in our actual athletes that we coach. That's why we have that pre race meeting and to settle their nerves and Be honest with the preparation they've done and then we're going to be honest with their race plan based on the preparation and that takes away a lot of anxiety. And if you've trained the house down, you should be so confident. But if you've trained 75%, then you have to have a race strategy that's based around that. If you've trained 50%, then you have to be super more conservative. And you can't just be gung ho, you've got to. And that's what, that's what the good athletes and I'm not talking about the elite, I'm talking about we've got guys like Dane Ruff in our program who's been doing it for two or three years now. The last race he flew past me on the bike and when he first joined us I was probably 6Ks an hour faster than him him. And in that time he has improved that much. It was like a shock because not many people in races pass me. But to see a fellow Trivalo athlete fly past me, I was more excited about what he was doing than concentrating on my event. It was fantastic. And I just thought, wow, this works when people. He's super consistent with everything he does. And he's our best performing athlete and most improved athlete over a long period of time. And each, each race, each six months, each year, he just continues to improve and he's just getting faster and faster. He's getting older, but he's getting faster. And that's a great example of we're not talking about elite, we're talking about people who get the plan, prepare, perform post race analysis, get all that stuff right, turn up each day, just do what has to happen, stay consistent and tick off the numbers, stay in their ranges and do things in training and execute on race day. They're the ones who are getting the results, they're the ones who are outperforming the people who should perform better. And you just stay in your lane and you watch how well you'll each day, week, month, year, just be a better athlete.

It's so rewarding to get the post race analysis done when you do do well, but it's just as important when you don't do well. But most importantly, it's an accurate post race analysis. That's where a coach can really. Because sometimes you can finish a race and you can kind of throw everything out and go, the whole training was crap, the preparation was crap and we've all been there and I need to drastically change something. There's a pro athlete, we know that does this every single time. And I won't mention his name, but. But you don't. You just. Sometimes you have to make minute changes. And that's all it is. So the last thing we want to touch on, the last point and habit of highly successful athletes is it's actually my favorite quote. And it's the thing about remarkable people is that they do quite unremarkable things repeatedly, day in and day out. And that's what we're talking about before with. When we ask an athlete after a great race, what was the difference? And they say, well, I just trained consistent for three years. I just didn't get sick. I just didn't get injured. And the compounding effect is true for anything in life, but it's so true for training. It's no hero sessions. It's just day after day, week after week, year after year. If you can just get that compounding effect and just not miss, that will add up to a remarkably higher result and better result than doing anything crazy or remarkable or trying to do a hero session or trying to do something crazy different. That's not what it takes. It just takes unremarkable, sometimes boring training sessions over and over to get a remarkable result for yourself.

Yeah. And look, I just had a funny conversation during the week with. And, you know, I'm not sure how to put this, but the athlete was commenting on that, the session. They didn't feel like they were outside on the road, and they really enjoyed the session because they were going from a point down to a point. And the scenery was a really good part of the world. The water was beside them. They felt like they were on a destination ride. And I was just shocked. It really shocked my world. When I'm doing these structured training sessions for a race, I wouldn't even know what scenery is. I have no idea. I know roughly where I am in terms of streets and areas. All I'm looking at is, is this a rise? Should I change gears here? Am I a little bit too high in the power? Should I just adjust my pressure here? How's my heart rate? What's my cadence doing? How's my average speed? And I wouldn't have a clue where I am on the road. I know basically where I am. I'm getting to the end of this section or this segment, but it's just a different way of thinking. And people have said to me over the journey, it's so boring doing those long, long rides. I'm just not bored at all. I am so focused on exactly what should be happening and it goes so quickly because I'm actually in the session. I think you've got the wrong approach. Let's take the Steph Curry example. If you're just staying after the training session to hone your three fro.

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Tongue twister, three throw level, free throw level, you're really trying to really concentrate. And if you're missing 15 and 20 and you're just sort of bouncing the ball around and throwing it up and it misses, you're not actually doing it properly. And by thinking about, I have to start again, if I miss, that's going to take a different mindset, that, okay, I have to do 100 in a row, but if I get to 60 and I miss one, I have to start again. That's going to put a whole new concept of thought process. And that's the way I'm kind of running or riding or swimming is I'm in the moment all the time. So I think that concept of just doing the basics can be boring. Yes. But, boy, is the outcome great, because you are concentrating on being in the moment and that's what you should be doing on race day. So, you know, get. Get your venue right and look, it might be a beautiful place in the world to ride, but that's not the session today. There may be another session where you're just riding Zone one, Zone two, where you can actually take in the beautiful scenery and, and smell the roses sort of thing that's important to do. I'm not saying. But I'm saying when you're in a session that's got structure for a purpose, you should be only focusing on. I'm going to avoid these cars that are on the road with me and the pedestrians, but I've got to concentrate on my pedaling technique, my power that I'm riding, where are the undulations? Where should I be putting pressure down? And they're the things that I think that's that fifth thing that, you know, training properly and not just going through the motions.

Yeah, that's a really good point. It's a great way to finish, I think. Even on a zone two ride, you know, I have people ask me all the time, what do you think about for 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours on the bike? How do you. What are you thinking about the whole time? And I say, to be honest, a lot of the time, not much. My thought process is, what's my power? What's my cadence? What's the gradient? What's the Next part of the road, because the road is changing. It's 1%, then down 2%, then up 3%. And what gear am I in? Flicking the gears constantly. We speak about how we flick the gears hundreds and hundreds of times per session and per long ride based on the ever changing gradient and terrain you're on. And that's not true for every session. Some sessions you're riding with a friend and you're chatting away and you know, not even focused on your gear or your pressure on the pedals and, or sometimes you are in a really relaxed ride where you are looking around like you said and smelling the roses and not worrying about it. But most of the time you're practicing with purpose. And even on a three hour to four hour zone two ride where seemingly, quote unquote, nothing is supposed to happen, you're just constantly concentrating on that pressure on the pedals. And that's the difference between training well and shooting those free throws with a purpose or just shooting them not caring if they actually go in or not.

Yeah, I can't agree more. And look, I know it sounds serious and it is serious that what you're doing, you know, you've entered a serious event, a marathon or an epic bike ride like Three Peaks or an Ironman or a 70.3. You've just gotta, you've gotta, when you are out there, you know, you've got to act like you're a professional and do the thing properly and then have fun afterwards, have fun before, but you know, when you're in the moment, concentrate. And that's part of the discipline of success.

Great way to finish this episode. We hope you've enjoyed it as always. We'll see you on the next one. Thank you.

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