5 Things You Must Change When Racing in Wind or Heat

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. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast and we apologize for a bit of delay in getting this latest episode out, but we're back and there's been a lot happening for us to talk about. So today we're going to deep dive into, into understanding race conditions, race strategy and planning and understanding your specific race and your own form to make sure you get your lead up to the race day correct and the day itself as correct as possible. As always, this episode is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant Australia, for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant Dad. Welcome back to another episode, starting with our normal first segment. It's been a while. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jord. And I'm not going to say I'm looking forward to this episode, but I am. Well, just to say that gratitude is an important thing is an understatement. And I've just traveled up to Northern Australia from Southern Australia for the weekend for our grandson's first birthday party, which is we're only up here for three days, which is fantastic. And I'm just so grateful. Liam, my son, my oldest son, lives in, in his building, an apartment building, and one of his friendly neighbors who happens to be away for the weekend, has generously given us their apartment. And I just find that amazing. And we're extremely grateful for to be able to stay at someone's apartment without having to go through the whole rig roll of, you know, finding some accommodation and paying a lot of money. And yet here we are in the same building and can see the grandkids, you know, they can just walk from apartment to apartment and. Yeah, so extremely grateful for the generosity of some people who don't want anything in return, even though we're saying we'll pay and. Yeah, I'm just. It's amazing how generous some people are.

That's a great one. My gratitude is I got to see one of my best mates of a long time get married on last Friday. And it was a really special occasion. It was a really special experience. Is been part of our friendship group for 18 years now. Plus there's a few of us that are really close and it was really nice for a couple of us mates to stand up there with him and watch him get married. And yeah, I just think sometimes weddings can be a bit repetitive potentially. But to be there with someone so close to you is really special. And it was a fantastic night.

Yeah. It's hard if you get to go to a lot of weddings at your age where a lot of your mates are getting married and some of them are really close, aren't they? Mates and you're in the wedding makes a huge difference to just being. Going to a wedding once every month. Boy, it's a very special day for the people getting married. But if you're not a part of it, sometimes it's. You're very grateful for being invited. But, you know, it is another wedding and another wedding and another wedding.

Yeah, yeah. And that. I don't want that to sound really bad. I, I find every wedding special. I just think I found this one particularly special. Just being so close to it and being involved. And also a bigger gratitude from both of us. We had an athlete unfortunately get hit by a kangaroo, which is just such a unique experience in Australia. But kangaroos are lethal. They. They. If a car hits a kangaroo, it completely messes up the car. Most cars get written off if they hit a kangaroo. And so we had a. Cyclists get hit by a kangaroo over the weekend and is in quite a bad condition. And thankfully he's okay with no long term spinal damage. But he will be in a neck brace for a few months and has a fair bit of recovery ahead of him. A decent journey. So we just wanted to show our gratitude that he's alive and we're sending all our best wishes to Chris out there. We know that the whole Tribalo community and any athlete can empathize with his position. So, yeah, grateful that he is okay, all things considered. Relatively okay, I should say. And yes, and our best wishes to Chris. That does really make you grateful for every crush that you don't have. Really.

Yeah. And ironically, the amazing thing to me is one of our other Trivala athletes, literally three weeks ago, also hit a kangaroo, Lindsay. And you know, you just. It's not a common thing to be getting hit by a kangaroo. And it started me thinking and I was talking to another one of Chris's mates, Nick, and he was saying that he got hit by a kangaroo a couple of years ago. And I know that Stevie Mac got hit by a deer when he was in Scotland. So, you know, it is bad enough looking out for cars when you're on the road, but the wildlife can be just as dangerous and there's not a lot you can do about it because a Lot of the time they're just coming out of, coming out of nowhere and you can't actually see it coming to. To be ready for it. So. Yeah, really? Yeah, I agree and really wishes go out to Chris and for a speedy recovery. And look, it just brings me to a point that I want to actually talk about was last Thursday, Chris did an FTP test at the velodrome. And that was the highest speed he'd ever done, the highest power he'd ever done. And literally three days later, he's in a hospital on his back with some fractured in his vertebrae. And you just don't know what's going to happen next. And you need to think about that on your life journey because try to make the most of every opportunity you have because we just don't know what's around the corner. And this is a freak accident. I know. But he's gone from being over the moon with his form and performances to all of a sudden now a long journey back to trying to get to that point again. So you just never know what's going to happen next. And it really makes you really think a lot about. Each day is special and you need to try to do your best each day to make it a worthwhile day so you can go to sleep knowing that you've done your best each day and wake up tomorrow and have another crack. Yeah.

And, you know, each week, basically we put out an Instagram post with our results from the weekend. It's our favorite post to do each week because anytime you get the chance to put all your training into practice and get to the start line on race day and pin a number on and give it a crack is a day that we should be thankful for. And it's an exciting day. And we just, we applaud everyone that gets to the start line because a lot of the time getting to the start line is half the battle. And then once you're there, this is what we want to talk about today is the second half is. Okay, how do you execute on race day? So we want to talk about some of the pro races that have been happening in cycling, athletics, triathlon. And then we're going to jump into some reviews of some races that have been happening here and some really specific conditions and race conditions and climate conditions that you've got to pay attention to when you think about your own race. If you've got a race coming up this year, you've really got to pay attention to some of these things and they can make or break your event, which is what's happened the last couple of weeks. So starting with cycling, I mean, we've had Strouda Bianchi, we've had Paris Nice, we've had Tuitta Adriatica, we've had Milan San Remo. So exciting that cycling racing is back on the calendar. Anything stand out from you from these races? We've had some incredible performances, but from a coaching perspective, anything stand out from you?

Yeah, they're all a bit different, these races actually. And Strade, Bianca started the season off and that is an absolute bang. Yeah, it is really taking off. And I actually loved watching the women's race that was, you know, a two up sprint and you were asking me questions about, oh, why was Borghini just sitting on the front for so long? And, and what was the tactic there? And lot of Kopecki, I always have trouble with her name. You know, she just got a free ride and just, just attacked, attacked Borghini on the famous narrow climb before you get into the, the finishing square. And it was almost like the writing was on the wa. It was a quite an interesting tactic. And you know, contrasting to the men's race where the POG just left the group with 80k to go. And it just blows your mind that someone can do that to, you know, that's, that's the highest level of cyclists in the world, yet some guy can ride off the front for 80k time trial. It was, it was just an amazing, amazing day for both women and men.

Yeah, it really was. What was your answer there to Borgheni? Because they were sharing the workload, but Morgani was on the front a lot of the time and when you're towing the world champion, I was kind of saying, surely you look at the world champion and going, you're the world champ. They're 30 seconds behind us. You do the work here if you want to stay away and win your second Stratovian, your 78th race. But she just kind of led her into the last climb and then like you said, the riding was on the wall. Kopecki was always just going to go around her and sprint past her. So what, what do you do there? What's, what should be Borghini's mindset?

Well, a couple of things I thought, well, because we don't know enough about the tactics from the team and, and the chase pack, the chase pack weren't that far behind. They were far enough that they could have cat and mouse a little bit. But, but you know, there's a couple of things you have to think about. Did Borgheni think that she was never going to win and she wanted to make sure she was on the podium and not, not have to fight it, fight out the podium with the rest of the girls. That's one thing. Are we sure that Lottie Kopecki was fresh enough to out sprinter? And so we don't really know that, but her form tells us that that's more than likely going to happen. And Borgheni might have thought that, you know, if I, if I make this hard enough, she can't attack me on the hill like she normally does. She can't if I'm, if I'm really putting the pressure on because there's a lot of the sections are quite undulating and if you keep putting the pressure on, if someone's, you know, yourself, if, if you're actually starting to struggle towards the end of a race and, you know, if someone's putting pressure on you all the time, you know, you're only one more heel or one more attack away from potentially being dropped. So. So, yeah, I suppose she might have been testing her out and trying to make the pace as hard as possible. These are just strategies that I think that she would be employing. But we don't know the tactic of what the team. We're telling her in her ear, you know. So, yeah, I don't really have the answer to that. These are only the scenarios I think could be in her mind.

Yeah, you do have to be pretty confident in your ability to put someone under enough pressure that they're struggling to hold your wheel, I guess, even in those undulations. Otherwise, if someone's pretty similar to ability to you, they're just gonna be able to hang on, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it seems that would be a, a really dumb tactic to just, just stay on the front and.

Yeah.

And give someone a, you know, it's. We know that on the flat it's a 30% advantage to sit on someone's wheel. It's not the same on a climb. You don't get the same advantage. It's, you know, depending on the length of the climb and their gradient, but it can drop down to 10%.

So they were swapping turns. I mean, can you, can you in that position, can you roll over just a bit harder after they've done their turn just to put them under pressure or.

But then you're having pressure. Absolutely. You would. If you're trying to put pressure on someone, that would be a tactic that you should be doing in a bike race if you think that the only way you can win is to not go to the finish line to have a sprint. Then you need to be employing something. If it's a two up race when your time's on the front, you need to be absolutely. I've done this many times myself, get on the front and ride as hard as I can and not look after the person who's sitting on your wheel after they've done their turn and then swing off and then let them because they've just been working quite hard to hold your wheel. So doing that four or five times and then they're going to get their turn again and then you come back on the front and you absolutely hammer again. Not try and break away, but ride as hard as you can. And that is the tactic to try to get that person. And it's happened to me where someone said, I can't do any more turns, look, I won't sprint against you at the finish. And you've just gone, yes, it's worked.

And little did they know you were on your limit as well. But you were just bluffing them a little bit.

Absolutely. And I think I remember you telling me one of the races you did as a fun run when the guy was putting so much pressure on you towards the end of an 8k race where you were just hanging on and you know if this guy surged anymore, you were going to have to drop off. That was in your mind and you tell that story.

Yeah, well, we were just neck and neck in the last few K and he kept surging and it was really painful and I just kept saying I, I wasn't confident he, I was going to be able to hold him to the finish because he kept surging and we just kept getting quicker and quicker and with Catergo I was thinking, I've got, I've got 100 meters left in me. I got, I just, I kept saying get, get another 50 meters and I was getting to the point where I was going, just go another 10 seconds, just go another two seconds. And I literally was less than five seconds away from dropping because he was just putting too much pressure on. We were running side by side and then he just blew up and stopped and he tapped me on the shoulder and said well done and blew up behind me. And I thought that's hilarious because I was two seconds away from doing the same thing because I thought he was putting me under pressure and we were both on our limits and as soon as he said that, suddenly I found more energy to get to the line and only beat him. By about five seconds or so. But it's. You just never know what the other person's thinking. I was kind of saying that to myself, like, just keep going 10 more meters at a. I don't know if he can hold this. If he can, then he's got me. Fair enough.

But it's the mind game, isn't it? And all of a sudden your mind has gone from, I don't know if I can hang on to switching. Like, you're still tired, you're still the same fatigue, yet now your mind's saying, this guy's given up, so now I can win. So your mind switches to, I'm tired, but I can keep going at the pace that I couldn't keep going to 10 seconds earlier. It's just ridiculous how, how your brain is telling you a different story. Yeah, so. So, yeah, you've got to come up with tactics that, that are going to put pressure on the person, even though it's. You know, I've always said to a lot of bike riders, when the best time is to attack is when the whole field is basically puffing as, as loudly as possible, when everybody's just done a massive effort. That's the time to attack. When everybody's on their limit. And you're on your limit too, but you are doing the biggest bluff out. But if you attack when, when everybody's on their limit, people will go. Mentally, they'll go, whoa, how strong's that guy? But that guy who's attacking is also as tired as the rest of the bunch. But he's just mind game.

Yeah.

You know, putting. Putting a false sense of authority and superiority into the rest of the field by attacking there. And, and, you know, more than likely everybody will look at each other and go, I'm not chasing that. That. I, I don't have the energy to do that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow someone else. And before you know it, that person who's done that attack has 50 meters up the road and the whole field sit up and go across the road.

Yeah.

And you've ended up bluffing your way to a break just by attacking when everybody else can't respond.

Yeah.

And that's another tactic that works really well. So in races like this, there's so many scenarios. Are you the sprinter person, so you don't want to do that? You want it to come to a sprint, or are you the person who can't sprint or doesn't believe you can beat this person in a sprint? You've got to come up with some other scenario. And, and, you know, the, the first classic Spring Classic race of the season with Estrada Biancha was two completely different events with the male and female, with one being a time trial breakaway and the other one being a sprint finish to the line. So. And, you know, there's scenarios that, you know, we don't often get to talk about in our podcast because, you know, we're not talking about breaking down race race strategies, but that's just, you know, an amazing way that the POG did that to that bunch. And I, and I, I watched the Pigcock's interview and, and he was just shaking his head saying, you know, we had guys who were really good trying to roll turns, and we just weren't making any indentation on what, what he was doing ahead. So, you know, and his answer was what the. Twice he said, what the.

Yeah, that's why we love cycling, because the tactics just make it so fun. But switching sports to athletics and the indoor world champs were on, which is really fun to watch and honestly wasn't the deepest fields there. Not everyone opts to do the indoor stuff. But just shout out to Aussie Jezhal with another Australian record in the 3k indoor, she got fourth, and she just wasn't. Wasn't far off the front pack at all. But another OZ record that she's ticking off and she's just probably Australia's best middle distance athlete, even though our field is getting deeper and deeper. But a lot of the hype right now is around world champ Josh Kerr and the infamous matchup that is coming up in another month or so at the Prefontaine Classic against the Jakob Ingrid. And they've been talking a lot of trash to each other in the media, which is building a lot of hype and can't wait to see them racing in the mile there. But that's kind of all the athletic news.

But yeah, just, just on that, Joel, before we, before we, we do move on, I just wanted a cup. You know, we talked cycling tactics there just on Josh Kerr and the trash talk that he's been giving in Gabrison is that Inger Britzen can't win championship races and that he only wins Diamond League where there's a pacesetter. And, and it's an interesting stat that of the last 16 Diamond League races that Ingebritzen's run, he's won them all. He hasn't lost in 16 diamond league. That's. That's incredible. And Josh Kerr has been in a lot of those Races.

Yeah.

And he's never beaten him in any of those. But Josh Kerr's beating him in the one that he says counts, which I tend to agree. You know, world championships or Olympics are the key, the key events for every athlete. And the, you know, the Diamond League, we're not belittling that at all. That is, that is an unbelievable, important circuit. No different to, you know, the Tour de France is the, the penultimate stage race. But Strade Bianchi Tour event. But Strade Bianchi is. This is a, you know, a one off day race, one day race classic. And so I'm, I'm absolutely kind of agreeing with Josh Kerr. Even though I love Inger Britzen, I want, I want Inga Britson to learn how to win championship races better than he has been. And you know, that's a bit unfair because he has won Olympic games gold medals and world championships.

Yes, exactly. He's the Olympic gold medals 1500. He's a two time world champ 5000. So he can win those races. But the ones he really wanted were the two world champ 1500s. And you just happened to lose two years in a row.

That's right. So, so I'm, yeah, I'm really interested in how the tactics go because Josh Kerr does a good job at that. He, he does really run well in those events.

Yeah, yeah. And the last thing to kind of touch on was the first PT100 race was in Miami, which is super exciting. 20 the best athletes, definitely. The female has Basically the best 20 athletes in the race and the, the male is a little bit more split up between the athletes that opting not to do the PT100 and doing more Ironman. But that was a great first event. And kind of one thing that stood out to me was just the poor execution from Alistair Brownlee on the run. And it was just obvious to everyone and we're glad that the goat, Jan Frieden, I called it out very early in the run and said, can someone tell him to relax and slow down. He just came out of the gates blistering like it was an Olympic distance triathlon and completely blew up. And it's just interesting to see a top level athlete of his caliber, you know, one of the best triathletes of all time. You know, certainly in the conversation, definitely top 10 of all time to still make that mistake.

Well, Jord, the topic that we've talked about is getting your form, current form and your ability not confused. You know, your ambition and ability is something I talk about all the time. You know, don't get those two things confused. What you want to do and what your current form is is what you need to get really clear. And you know, he is by far one of the most successful athletes that's ever done triathlon, there's no question about that. And, and his aggressive style of racing has been unbelievable to watch. And especially when the drafting races came, you know, he would not hesitate to go to the front of any of those 40k draft legal races. And, and right on the, on the front or right off the front from the bunch and, and then just run flat out for 10k and win. And he did that time and time again. So, so what, what is he doing now? What's, what's his mistake? He's doing. Is he thinking that he's in that pace that he starts off in that, that run that he did at the first race? Is that something that he thinks he can sustain for the whole of that 18k? That's the question I'll be asking because otherwise he's making a huge error and by the results he had, he can't sustain it. And if you looked at what he did last season in exactly the same events, he would get into a great position, get off the bike and run and then fade in the run. Every event that he was in, he did the same thing. So previously, the last 10 years, he's been able to hold that pace right through the finish of his runs and ride aggressively and run as aggressively as he wanted. Now he's a little bit older, he's still racing the same way, but not getting the result. You know, what we're trying to get the age grouper to do is to think about what your current ability is, what your form is, what your running pace is. And if he looked at his splits, you know, his first half and his second half would be literally 30 or 40 seconds slower per kilometer. And so he needs to actually reassess. You know, funny for us to give advice to an Olympic and world champion, but it's obvious from even Jan Frodeno saying that's unsustainable. The pace you're running at from your previous last six races, you haven't actually run that pace. So why are you continuing to try and do that? And that's the message and lesson we can use from Alistair Brownlee's performance as an age grouper. If a pro can't do it, why would we as age groupers try to do that? And so it's equally important or more important for us to have an enjoyable day he's racing for prize money, so he's going to risk a lot more. Whereas as an age grouper, we're racing for an enjoyable experience. We're actually performing to the best of our ability and trying to equal or surpass what we've done in the past. And by being that reckless, and that's what I'm calling it, I think it's a reckless way to race by trying to run the first half of your. Or trying to run any pace that's way above your level so that all you end up doing is fading and repeating that result is going to get the same outcome every single time. A disappointing one. And in the end you'd be going, why am I doing this sport? It's not enjoyable. I hate getting to run the last 5k where I'm barely running and to see Alistair, you know, pull his zip down and he's got stomach pain and he's, you know, I don't know what's going on, but is it the pace that's causing him to feel like that or is it. Has he got something actually wrong with him to have to make him slow down? We don't know the answers to that, but all we do know is the pace he starts with. He can't sustain and he's fading.

Yeah. And yeah, on this topic of understanding your own form, the person who I thought exemplified this was, was Lucy Charles. Because if you know anything about her and if you know anything, anything about triathlon, you know that she's the ultimate competitor and does not like losing. She turns up to races and she wants to win no matter what time of the year it is, no matter what race it is, she wants to win. And she was a bit of a shock upset where India Lee beat her, but I loved her response where she was satisfied with the performance. Obviously she would like to win, but she knows it's the first race of the season, she knows it's a long season ahead and it's going to be really interesting for all these athletes to manage their form over six of these PT100 races, basically six half Ironmans. And you've got to understand where you're at in the season. And I just thought she, her reaction to her result, I was really impressed with her knowing where her form is at and her knowing what condition she's in and being able to say, okay, I'm happy with this performance. Based on that, I'm not totally satisfied because I love winning, but happy with that performance. I really like that side of it.

Yeah. And Go one step further, Jord. You know, when she got past, did she try and up the pace? Maybe for five or ten seconds? She probably had a crack at that, but she understood that that's not her level right now. And so she wasn't willing to go with. With that pace. That's being set as the standard to. To actually try to protect her position in the field.

And.

And if she had gone too hard, she could have ended up fighting, almost do what Alistair's done and not finish where she does. And I think that's really clever racing.

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. So that brings us to kind of the topic and discussion we want to have for age group is about understanding race strategy and tactics. And there's this phenomenon that is so prevalent in our own coaching and our own athletes, and it's the cognitive bias of recency bias. So as humans, we have all these cognitive biases that can really limit our way of thinking. And there's. There's so many that you need to pay attention to, you need to be aware of that can really. They're used in marketing and sales all the time against us, where there's comparison, where products will put three items at different price points, a low price point and an exaggerated high price point, and then a medium price point that seems really cheap in comparison to the high one. And then that's the actual reason they don't put the high price point there, because this is like a known study. But they don't put the high price point there because they want people to actually buy that. They put it there so that the medium one seems cheap in comparison because they want more people buying the medium one. And it really works. And one of the biases that we notice a lot in our athletes is recency bias. So recency bias is defined as the tendency to place too much emphasis on experiences that are freshest in your memory, even if they're not the most relevant or reliable. So we tend to just remember. If you ask someone, what was your favorite? Someone asked me this recently. They said, who's your favorite band you've ever seen? And it was really hard not to think of all the bands I've just seen in the last year or two, you know, because they're the freshest. My freshest in my memory. And the example you can use in the recency bias is, you know, would you. Do you want to go for a long ocean swim after watching the Jaws movie? You know, probably not. Even though the actual risk of getting attacked by a shark hasn't changed. And it's actually quite small. After you watch that movie, you're going to be more hesitant to swim in the ocean. And so we notice it in our athletes with understanding form and understandability and understanding numbers. And one thing we really, really push athletes on is don't get caught up on recency bias. When you're testing and measuring yourself, you have to always keep the bigger picture of where you've come from to start with. So often we have athletes where they are right now 100 watts ahead of where they started with us two years ago. You know, they are just miles ahead. Three years ago they were riding 33ks an hour. Now they're riding 40ks an hour for their TTS, for their half Ironmans. And often an athlete might either get a marginal improvement in a test or they might remain the same, or they might even slightly go down because they're really trying to get the most out of themselves at the top end and they'll be inconsolable about it. And you just have to keep reminding them that, look how far you've come from to start with. And secondly, this applies to actual race strategy. And go, okay, you need realistic views of where you're at and what you can do and understanding your own form and not let any recency bias of maybe in your memory. Two months ago you were in certain form, but things have happened since then that have changed your form. And so you're potentially really disappointed about the form you're coming into a race with. And you try and go with the old form because that's what's fresh in your memory instead of just being objective about where you are right now. So it's a really big thing that we find and it's a really big thing that we want to clean up with all athlete mindsets.

Oh, there's so much in that sentence that you've finished with there. You must have perspective and getting that example you've used as, you know, find out where you were, find out what you've done in between and then apply that to what you can do today. And that doesn't go in just testing or racing. That's everyday training. You know, you've got to, you know, what did you do on the weekend and it's Tuesday that could affect your Tuesday session. What did you do last week in terms of just, let's just talk about training. So I was sick last week and, and I now feel better. I now feel. I'm not, I'm not saying I was sick. I'm giving you an example the athlete says, I was sick last week. Now I'm feeling back to 100%. So I was sick for five days and I was back to 100% by Monday. But Saturday and Sunday I was still 80, 90. And then Monday I feel 100%. Can I just resume the program? And do you know the hard. If it's a, for example, a swim session with some high intensity, it's a VO2 swim set. Can I expect to just go and do that session and swim the numbers that I've been swimming for the last two or three weeks? Well, the answer is always yes and no. Normally we wouldn't actually give you a high intensity effort to start with after you've been sick. So there's no need to actually test that because we know that you probably won't be able to reach the numbers, the pace that you've been swimming. Or as a bike rider, if the session's a high intensity bike session, there's less likely chance that you can actually do, say you were doing two 10 minute efforts at threshold. There's, it's more unlikely that you would actually achieve that goal because you're still not quite right yet. And your heart rate would probably be too high for the effort because the heart rate still doesn't come down two or three days after you actually feel like you're back to normal. And I've had that experience many times, I feel quite healthy, I feel quite normal and I go on a training ride and my heart rate's still 10 beats higher than it normally is for this zone 2 pace I'm doing. And I'm saying what's that about? And it's really, the body's just not ready for anything that resembled what you were doing before that illness. And so that's an example of you have to actually understand your form for the training session. And that seems very obvious, but it's not. People don't they actually go to that next training session and the expectation is that I'll just resume at the level that I was pre the sickness or, and we could. It doesn't have to be sickness, it can be, you know, you've been injured so you haven't been able to train with intensity for three weeks. And then you would expect that you would resume at the running pace if you've been had a running injury that you could expect to resume if you're doing a 5 by 1k interval session and you were running them at 4:10 pace and you would just expect to after that three weeks of not doing Any intervals that you could go back to the 410k pace, well, that's an unreal expectation. That's something that if you think that's going to happen, you are delusional at best. And I think you need to really understand what we're talking about where getting your ambition and your ability correct, getting those things aligned and understanding that where your current form is at any given time in the timeline of a 12 month period. If you can really get good at that, get good at understanding where your current form is, you will have so many better training sessions which will lead to so many better race experiences. The minute you get those two confused, then you will stop progressing in training because you're training and failing or you're not training hard enough, that's a failure as well. So if you train too hard and fail the session instead of doing, say that the task was 6 by 1ks and you ran the first three way too hard against the form you're currently at and you only can do three. So guess what? You've ended up doing half the session. And so therefore your training fitness curve doesn't progress the way we want. It stagnates because you're not finishing sessions. And so therefore that'll have a flow on effect to your race day. And so people who have had injury or illness and still want to compete the way they think they can in a race situation or in a training situation. You know, I have long discussions with people about this topic so many times where I'm having to say to them, I think it's best that you don't train to that session today. I think it's best that you don't actually do that race. And I know we had an athlete over the weekend who actually had to stop from himself from doing the race. He had gastro for four days in a row, hadn't eaten, felt great, good enough, he reckons to do the event. It was an Olympic distance triathlon and I just said my advice is that you don't do it. You won't have the outcome you want. You actually haven't got enough fuel in your body because you haven't eaten for four days. You won't compete at the level that you think you can from what your expectation is. And you'll be disappointed. You'll be more disappointed than you are missing the event. There will be other events and I ironically he found another race next week, which is what he's going to do. And that's an example of understanding again what the current situation is. That you're in and making good decisions about what should I do in training and what should I do in racing. And if you really get those things aligned, you'll start to build this period of weeks, days. It starts with weeks, months, then one year, two year, three years where your consistency is unbelievable. And that's why you end up being the athlete you are after two or three years in this system.

Yeah, spot on. So I want to use some specific race examples here because we had some really wild race conditions that are highlighting exactly what we're talking about. I want to come back to ambition versus Ability after these race examples. But as you would know if you're a podcast listener, one of the biggest races here in Oz that we talk about a lot is the Three Peaks Challenge, which is a 235 kilometer event cycling event where you ride up three major peaks, three major hill climbs. And it's such a tough event to execute because it's 4 to 5,000 meters of climbing, which I don't know how to convert that to feet, but it's a lot of climbing. Three major hills. There's one, two really long hills, I think up to an over an hour and then one at the start. There's one 20 to 30 minute climbing depending on your ability. And we've spoken about this race a lot and it's, we speak about it a lot because it's such a great example of an endurance event where execution is so tough and you have to be so disciplined to execute it right, to have a good day. And it's so easy to get wrong. And you just see countless athletes every year get the execution wrong and have a really horrible experience. But this year there was a huge spanner in the works because it was a heat wave in Victoria and the temperatures soared up to an over 40 degrees Celsius. And the day was just carnage because of it. It is a tough enough event, let alone how hard it was in this heat. And you were very concerned as a coach and you're always concerned about the welfare of your athletes, about the day going ahead because you thought it was outright dangerous doing that kind of endurance event in that kind of heat. And so suddenly all these athletes had to adjust their race plan based on this. And you kind of felt that a lot of athletes weren't taking the change in race conditions seriously enough. Not specifically athletes, but just athletes in general seriously enough. And you were employing everyone to really understand how much the conditions had to change your race plan and your attitude to the race.

Yeah. And I Think you ought to be careful. I think a lot of athletes hadn't really just considered it that they would have to adjust their expectation. And I think that's if you don't know something, you don't know it. And I think we've got to be careful not to be too critical of those people because they just didn't understand that it can have that much of an effect on you. And, and at the end of the day, you have to experience it once before you realize, far out. I'm quite shocked at how my body could not handle the conditions.

Definitely not being critical because it wasn't individual athletes. There was 700 athletes that started the race that didn't finish 700 DNS and that would be due to the conditions. So that's how much it affected everyone. But talk to me about the changing attitude. What was your instruction to our athletes about, you know, race times and performance?

Yeah, and let's be fair here, all the athletes that were preparing for this event I was super proud of. They had done a great job and there wasn't any of them who, I have to say to them, you need to, regardless of the conditions, you need to adjust your expectations because you aren't fit enough to do the event the way you want to do it. And the level of planning that they went into pre race, they had all done their pre race plan. And just to explain the course, it's got three climbs as you said. It's got one that's about anything from 25 minutes. The fastest guys did 19, fastest guide in 19, but the slowest rider probably 45. So it's about that time. We're talking in time, not so much in distance. And the other two climbs were anything from, you know, just over an hour to three hours for both of the other climbs. So. So the total day could be anything from six hours. Oh, sorry, seven hours to, to 14 hours. Just like an Ironman is for triathlon. So we're actually trying to get people to really have their race strategies based around what power they're going to ride on these climbs. So three things. What power they're going to ride on the climbs. That's the crucial thing to getting them around the course properly. What are they going to do in between the climbs? So that's actually a really important aspect of this event. Using the, the bunches. There's, you know, is a huge amount of people do the event. So there's thousands of riders in between the climbs who end up forming bunches. And this is a unique event because they actually have riders on every hour. So if you think you can finish in 9 hours or 10 hours or 11 hours or 12 hours, they have riders, specific riders that they put in charge. And if you just want to follow those riders in that nine hour, you will get delivered to the finish line in nine hours. All you've got to do is stay with that, with that, with that nine hour rider. Just like in marathon running where you've got three hour pacer, three hour 30 pacer, four hour pacer, it's no different. And so it's a really good thing to have those people on the course. And so you can try to, you know, try to work out where you think you can finish according to your current ability. Is it nine hours, is it 10 hours? And you know, you would understand knowing that, you know, what power can I ride on the climbs? Is one aspect of it. But the second aspect is what happens during the climb in between the climbs where there's long stretches of an hour or an hour and a half periods in between the climbs where you're, you're actually trying to conserve energy for the next climb because the event is really who can climb the best being four and a half thousand meters of, of climbing. That's kind of what the event's about. And what you do in between the climbs is really relevant to your overall outcome. And if you ride too hard in the in between bits, that will affect your actual climbing ability further down the day. Because the race finishes up the back of Falls Creek Climb, which is one of the hardest climbs you'll ever do. It starts off at 16 to 18% when it turns that first initial corner and basically it's, you know, for the general population, it's another two hours from there of all uphill to the finish. So that's it, that's how the, the actual event finishes. And if you're, if you've already blown up by that time, that is going to be the worst two, three or four hours of your life. And there were so many people walking long stretches of time before they were having to be put into a sag wagon or into an ambulance in that, in that situation that occurred. So I'm giving you this scenario so you understand if the temperature is now thrown in as a consideration, the event's already hard enough. It's already got the hardest climbs and the longest day on a bike that you can think of. And there's all these challenges with that and having to understand how to measure your effort on the climbs and the in between. But to add to it the conditions on the day and these are the extreme heat conditions that doesn't happen that very often in March in, in Victoria, we don't expect to get many 40 degree days, 35 to 40 degree days in March. So the expectation is that's going to be so use hard to train for that. But that's what we were dealt with. And you know, my advice to all of our riders was, you know, respect the conditions and adjust your a, adjust your race strategies and making sure that you now include heart rate as one of your key metrics to we normally would be using heart rate as something we would really look at now and then to make sure it's in control and basing our hill climbing on really what the power numbers we've got in front of us from our training and just replicating those on the day, whatever you've been doing in your training, hill climb practices, you just replicate that, transfer it across to this race day. And that's been so successful over the years that I've been coaching people for the last 10 years on this event and we've had so many good outcomes where people have smashed their PBS on every other occasion except for this year where the majority of people, as I said before, the race won't reach their expected times. They would have to add more time onto it. And if you don't, you will be disappointed. And so I'm telling people, our athletes before the event, you know, whatever time you thought you could do, you might have to add 15 or 20 or 30 minutes to, or in some cases an hour, depending on how your body responds to the temperature and how well you actually give your nutrition plan and your hydration plan a tweak. And I think they're the key things. Heart rate, nutrition, hydration, expectations of what power you can ride on the day. And that's a lot really, isn't it? It's just not one thing that changes. So if you can ride 200 watts and your normal practice heart rate is 150 beats per minute, all of a sudden on that day, 200 watts, guess what the heart rate was 171. So what's your option here? You know that if you continue to ride at a heart rate of 171 beats per minute, that the lactate in your body will increase, you'll burn more fuel, you'll use your nutrition quicker and you'll go into the red zone very quickly and you therefore will start to ride slower throughout the day. So if you don't react to that and do something about it very quickly early on in the day. That's the scenario that you're going to be faced with. And that's actually what happened to the majority of those 700 people. And I can guarantee you there would have been another 700 who crept their way to the finish line disappointed because they basically thought they were never going to finish. But they, through sheer willpower and guts and determination, got to the finish line. And so if you don't actually adjust anything, that's going to be the outcome. And it was. And I think the message we're trying to say here, we want to talk about this is, what do you do?

And it's a really hard one because as an athlete, you been Preparing this for 6 months, 9 months, 12 months. And most athletes have a time goal in their head, and it's a hard one to have a time goal for. But it's just the nature of the event is people have these barriers. They go, I want to go under nine hours, I want to go under 10 hours, I want to go under 11 hours. Or they want to do a PB and for you to turn around two days before the event and say, you're going to have to get rid of the time goal. I'm sorry, I know that we've been working towards that. But the event is different now. It's a different event that you're lining up for. And as you said, you might end up an hour slower because of the conditions. And that's not because of your lack of preparation. And you really have said that about travel. Athletes especially, they prepared as well as they could, but the conditions just won't allow you to ride the time as well as you can. And so that's a really hard one for the ego to go. How do I adjust that in the last few days to change those expectations? And suddenly you have to. Instead of aiming for a time, it's about survival. Can you get through the day as efficiently as possible and not blow up and not let the conditions get the better of you? And that's a hard pill to swallow to go. That's the new goal.

Yep. And I think having to say to someone, you need to be more conservative, that's not what they want to hear. They want to hear, I want to stay with the numbers that we've trained to, and I should be fine. And, you know, I actually had a couple of calls where we'd gone through the race strategy, and then on Saturday, when I found out the temperature had gone up more, I rang Everybody back and said, look, I'm actually now more worried than I was before. And I, I think for your own health and safety, you need to really, you know, be more conservative in everything you're going to do. And, and, you know, look after your hydration better. Make sure that, you know, you're getting as much fluid into you as possible. You know, your carb, your carb. Nutrition doesn't change. You know, you're not trying to add more carbs or less carbs. You're trying to do what you've been doing in training. You're trying to replicate what you've been doing in training, because that works. It is harder to consume your carbs. On a day that's hot, you just don't feel like eating. And that is exactly the same. On a day that's freezing cold, you feel less like eating because you're numb, you're frozen, you're shivering. You can't even reach into your pocket. You've got so many. You got gloves on. I mean, talking of two extremes here. So, you know, so you've got to respect both cold and heat. And, and it's, you know, the nutrition is one thing, but the hydration is the other thing, and they're not the same. You know, the fuel for you to, to get from A to B from, you know, for 10 or 11 hours is, is as much important as the hydration. You know, you need water and you need electrolytes, magnesium, you know, potassium salt. You need everything to get you to the finish. But, but you've got to do that in a, in a method that's, that's not over or under what you're used to. And when the temperature goes up, you actually have to take a little bit more fluid in than you would normally do. Just like when the temperature is really cold, you often don't need as much fluid. So getting that right is, is really difficult and, and proved to be on the day. And, and, you know, I've made that mistake myself. And I'm not sitting here saying I haven't. I've made some horrible blues. And you can remember the day that I actually fainted on the bike on a hot day and, you know, just got myself up and started walking without my bike. And that's a, that's an example of extreme effect of the heat on a body. And, you know, that's what I was scared of. I was scared of people going way too deep.

Yeah, we, I mean, we had the cold experience and in Flanders, didn't we, where we did the Gran Fondo there. And it was, it was just a freezing day and it was sleeting rain and it was 160km of just coldness. And you know, how do you feel that day because your hands are locked on the handlebars and when you're so cold, you don't really want to move. You're just kind of locked in. And I remember there was probably a 30k stretch where it was the worst conditions of the day. It was just the rain and wind was howling and there was a bunch of us just kind of rolling turns, just in dead silence. No one said a word, I think for 30 kilometers straight. And in those moments you just kind of are getting through and you want to hang onto the handlebars and you really have to force yourself to. You don't want to let go and you don't want to reach back with your thin arm hands and try and think about opening a gel, but you've just got to because you'll bonk later for it. And you're right. It is really hard to get right. And the hardest part, I think, is that your nutrition or your nutrition strategy shouldn't change too much, but your hydration strategy might change and that's hard because you haven't had a chance to practice it because you haven't been in these conditions where you could practice it. So you've got to understand principles of hydration and you just can't go extreme one way or the other. When it's cold, you can't go to extreme, no hydration. And when it's hot, you can't over consume because that's going to be a recipe for disaster as well. So it's this fine line of trying to get it right and trying to adjust to the conditions, but not over or under doing it.

Yep. And I think Jordan related back to the topic. You know, there was a couple of examples of, of one particular writer, just the best form ever. I've never seen him so fit and you know, just the conditions prevented him from, from getting the outcome he wanted. And, and there's no shame in that. There's, you know, it's just, just, just a tweaking of here or there. Can, can have a poor outcome or can have a really good outcome and, and you know, the planning and the preparation and, and all of that training could not fault, but didn't get the outcome on the day. And a couple of other riders who, who went super conservative and ended up just nailing it, just, you know, and they'd all Prepared similarly, but just being a little bit less aggressive in their nutrition, in their power, and really looking at heart rate a bit more and then hydrating, you know, fractionally more, not overdoing it and just getting it right. And it's just a hard one to do. And that's where the topic we're talking about is. You know, your form can be great at any given point, but there's other things you have to take into consideration that will affect your performance. And that's a key.

And that example you gave where this athlete is. Has executed as well as they can, the conditions that just time wasn't aligned with the goal. That is a huge success of a day because they got through the best of their ability. And that should be. It should be the same feeling of elation. And just because the time doesn't say it, you know, it should be you, you were so well prepared that you were able to execute the day and get through despite the conditions. And it's hard to adjust your expectations to that. And that's all it is, a change in expectations. But if you can do that, you feel so much more rewarded for the effort. So I want to move on from that and talk about a different triathlon. We had the Mooloolaba try last weekend as well, where we had five athletes compete and very interesting conditions at that race as well. And we had four who had done it before the year prior, actually, and some and all four of those athletes that had done it the year prior had huge PBS. The smallest PB was I think 10 minutes and the rest were 14, 17 and 18 minutes. And we do have to put a caveat that everyone seemed to swim three minutes faster because the swim was shorter. And so everyone just averaged three minutes quicker on the swim. And so approximately, if we take that off the PBS, we had 7, 11, 14 and 15 minute PBS for the exact same race. But this was super impressive for us and we're really proud of these Tribalo athletes because the conditions weren't favorable for a PB and there was a huge tailwind out on the bike leg and a huge block headwind back. And you can easily get that wrong. And it's really hard if you don't execute that right. There's no way you're doing a PB on that course, even if you're coming in with good form.

Yeah. The first thing I want to say is imagine getting an 18 or subtract 3 minutes, a 15 minute PB in an Olympic distance event. I mean, we're not talking half Ironman or Iron man, we're talking an Olympic and you know, it's monstrous. That is just incredible. And sure, the athletes are better prepared, their planning and preparation is spot on, that's key to it. But actually the execution, there's so many factors, isn't it, that comes into it. It's just not one thing that's actually allowed you to become a better athlete, a 15 minute or a 7 minute better athlete in one year. It's just not one thing that's happened. It's been accumulation of many things that you've done very well. And, and the key, the key that you're bringing up here, one point is because it was such a strong tailwind out and a headwind back, there were so many people loving riding with the tailwind and it was, you know, 15 minutes in a tailwind riding for some people, you know, 10K's an hour faster than they've ever ridden in their life before. And then when they hit the turnaround, they're pretty much riding 10Ks an hour slower than they're, they're possibly going to ride. And for those people who rode too hard with the tailwind at the, at the top or way above their power range, compared to the trivalo athlete who I implored to ride in their range in the tailwind, and then when they turn, they can actually then ride at the top of their range into the headwind because you want to spend less time in the slowest part of the course. That's what gives your average speed a faster overall time. So if you can cut that out to be a shorter period by riding faster or not faster, riding harder or higher in the range that you're setting your power, then you will have a better result. But on top of that, you're not actually riding outside your zones, you're actually staying in your zones. And so what's the value of that? Well, obviously you're going to ride with a comfort factor that you can control rather than riding so hard with the tailwind that you are actually in the red zone by the time you turn around. And then you can't hardly pedal into the headwind because you're so gassed from riding so fast because it was so much fun. And therefore you're just going to progressively be in that red zone for the next 15 minutes, which is going to burn fuel, increase heart rate, increase lactate, and then when you get off the bike, it's like you've already done an effort before, you actually try to run. You want to get off the bike and run as comfortably as you can. And by staying in your planned zones, you're then going. And the key thing that a lot of the athletes did, sure they swam three minutes quicker than they did previously, but they had huge improvements on the bike. But the biggest improvement was for the majority of them was 4, 5 minutes, 6 minute improvements on a 10k run, which shows them that by riding in your zones, when it counts, in a tailwind, don't ride at the top of the range, ride at the middle or below. And when it comes to the headwind, headwind, pardon me, ride middle or above your power zone so that you actually can run properly. And you know, every one of them to a T was saying it was just the most fun they've ever had. They passed half the field into the headwind on the bike and they just ran through the field. You know, obviously they got off and ran their proper pacing right from the start. And the people who just blown their ride, majority of them got off and ran fast and then faded in the run. And so that they repeated the same scenario from the bike in the running section of the event. And then they, the trivelo athletes just had this euphoria of running the same pace yet passing thousands. And that's what understanding your form and your current ability to give yourself the right planning and preparation in your race strategy and then executing it will give you that outcome.

Yeah, because the thing you said was you have to be disciplined because people are going to be flying past you in the tailwind because it's going to be so fun for them. And then you're at risk of this huge double mistake that you're talking about. Is that going too hard on the way out, you're going to go into the red zone and blow up in the headwind, the way back. That's the first mistake. And then it's going to be even worse in the run because you've already blown up this. There's no chance of you recovering for the run. And so to not do that so that stay disciplined, start passing people again in the headwind because you've stayed controlled and you're feeling good in the race. And then to get off and run really well is just a massive benefit. So, yeah, this whole combination of topics here, we're talking about race conditions and understanding that and knowing how to adjust your race plan based on that and then knowing your ambition versus ability. So what do you want to do versus what can you actually do? And that's what we want to finish off with here is just to get confidence in what you can do on race day. You need to do specific race ready sessions to give you that confidence, to show you, okay, I've done these sessions and these have proven to me what I can do in race day. Because when you get to race day we can predict so accurately over and over again almost a minute or two. As long as the conditions are what we expect, the actual time of what people can do. And as coaches we almost never tell people here's the time we're expecting because we always go off process, we always go off what watts to put out, what pace to put out. But it ends up being okay if you do that, the conditions are relatively favorable, then here's the general time. But my point is going into the race with a specific race plan of I know I can ride these numbers, I know I can swim this pace and I know I can run this pace because I've done the specific race ready sessions that are going to give me that. And I think that's the last point you want to finish off with is these need to be a part of your program to give you that confidence in your ability and then you can really set your ambition accurately based off that.

So let's be very clear here and I want to make this as the final thing. Confidence people always assume is a good thing and it is. You can understand that. If I just did, for example, if I did one of the sessions we give our athletes is 60 minute time trial to see exactly what they can do power wise and average speed for that event. And if you've done that session and your numbers are perfect, your pace is exactly what you want it to be. You have enormous confidence in now putting that into your race plan to discuss that with your coach. And that will be your strategy going into the race based on that session plus many other race ready sessions that we do. If you do the session and you don't get the number you want and the average speed you want, you should be now confident that you have to adjust that number to where you just did on that session. That still gives me confidence. So that's, that's confidence from a bad outcome and there's confidence from a good outcome. But I now have confidence that that's where I'm at and that's where my current form is. That's where my current ability is. Not what I wanted it to be. I was hoping for 250 watts and it 40ks an hour. In fact it ended up being 238 watts at 39ks an hour. Unfortunately that's where I'm at. But I'm now super confident if I take that race plan into the race, I'll still have a great day and I'll get the number that I need and the outcome that I want because I've actually got my ability on the day correct according to my training strategies. And I think, I think that's a key thing. You know, you just must do these sessions so that you have it clear in your mind. And if you're keep saying I'm not going to, I'm not going to worry about that session, that was just a one off, it could well be a one off, but it's highly unlikely. If that's your, you know, last thing you're doing, you should actually adjust your expectation to what it was higher or lower. And that is the confidence I'm talking about. I'm now confident what my race strategy is based on my numbers, not based on what my ambition is.

I want to finish with a story. College athlete Nico Young just broke the NCAA college 10,000 meter record. And he's been a great athlete for all his college career so far. But people have been wondering what is his ability, how high can he go? And he's been doing a lot of good work. But they released a video four to six weeks ago where they were going, okay, where is his ability at the moment? Where is he actually standing? And he's. His coach really laid out the video. It was awesome to watch. He said, this is a real race tester session, we want to see how good can he be. And this was an all out session. He said we don't do these much. But his instructions to Nico were, this is where you test yourself and you know, let's see what you've got. And the session was incredible. What he was running was just out of this world. And he had some pacers helping him in the session and they couldn't keep up for all the reps. And he did the entire session. There was a mix of mile reps and 800 reps. I think there was even maybe a 2 mile rep in there. I don't quote me on that. But he did that session and finished and him and the coach were both going, whoa, you know, we are in good form. And you know, come four weeks later he turns up and breaks the college record for 10,000 meters. And the coach in the interview after he just said that was a confident athlete running, that's what that was. You know, he knew his ability and he knew what he could do. And that's the power of these kind of sessions, is when you've done a lot of preparation, you get to that point where it's time to test. You can test yourself. And whatever the result is, that proves to you, okay, here's what I can do in a race environment on race day. And you can almost say that you should be able to go a little bit more than what you can do in training on race day, because the race conditions just bring it out of you.

Yeah. What a great example of someone going in with huge confidence as this is the number or the pace that they can sustain for their a race. But I just want to reiterate, that's a great example of someone who's really in form. And don't forget what I said before, whatever you do in that session, that's the numbers you take into your next race. And of course, you would expect that you would do or try to just get another smidge above that, because it's a race and you just don't want to replicate what you've done before. That's what we strive for. But your goal is to use that as your basis, then see if you can add something to it. And that's the fun part of preparation and planning. And then you going out and performing.

That's a great way to finish. It's been a pretty packed topic. We're very glad to be back. We're back on our regular schedule, so thank you very much, as always, for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode, which will be a case study. Cheers.

I.