5 Workouts To Help Delay Fatigue For Longer

Manipulating the time as you progress is also using the same session, just manipulating the rest recovery from 1 to 1 to 1 to 2 to 1 to 3. And that is, you know, again for the experienced athlete. But this is a brilliant session to really go way beyond most people's race pace.

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 Trivelo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. As an athlete, you turn up to every race hoping you've done enough training to perform well. You'll think back to your preparation and you'll wonder if your training program has you in good form. Will you perform at your best? Will you feel good, and will you be able to push the top of your limits and hopefully more? This is the ultimate goal of every athlete. How do I get fitter so that I can go faster for longer and delay that fatigue? Because there's nothing better than turning up to a race fresh, tapered in form. And when you start that race and you start at your goal pace, it feels comfortable. You get through the first half of the race feeling strong, confident, and then you're ready to give it your all in the second half and execute a pb. That is the dream for an athlete. But how do we get into that form? What specific training can we do to delay that fatigue for longer? We talk about a lot of general workouts in these episodes, but today we're going to give five specific session examples that you can use in your training week to delay fatigue for longer. Dad, welcome to the episode. Let's start with our normal segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jord. Looking forward to this episode where we're talking about really valuable stuff to help people perform on race day. And it only comes by doing the right training sessions. As we're going to explain, my gratitude is very basic. Again, for those of you who are boring. With my progressive journey of recovery from.

Injury been two weeks since the last update, so it should be okay.

I'm actually grateful for progress, so it sounds a funny one, but since we talked two weeks ago, I've progressed enormously from 20 minutes on the bike at 60 watts and now I can do an hour at 150 to 200 watts, which is getting around up to that 60, 70% of my old FTP. And that's pretty exciting. It's pretty boring for most people who'll be sitting there riding 30 to 40 to 50 to 60 minutes, just basically pedaling at zone two or less. So I'm really grateful for progress because if you don't look back then, you don't get perspective of where you actually are now. And if I just told a story that my training this week's all, you know, between 30 minutes and an hour at 150 watts, people go, well, that's pretty boring. But if you knew that two weeks ago I was barely able to do 20 minutes at 60 watts, then, then that's actually a completely different scenario. And there's. There's absolute progress there. And that's important for others, you know, in their journey, even not through injury and not through recovery, is to think about where they started their program and where they are now, whether it's a year later or three years later, what things they were able to do at the beginning and where they've come to now. So I think that's a, That's a really good lesson for me, is to understand that, you know, progress, no matter how small, is. Is a good thing.

Yeah. And I wasn't going to bring this up, but I actually think it's a really good example because we were. We were talking off air genuinely about, about your progress and, and how much you should be pushing. And we're discussing whether you should be. You, you're very keen to just keep pushing that WhatsApp. And a lot of us around you are saying, don't, you know, you're going too fast, you're progressing too fast. And so then we're all having. Making you consult with your surgeon to make sure that it's okay. And it's just, I think it is a good example of you talk about the motivated athlete is the worst one to coach, but, you know, you're just itching to, to push higher and higher. And we're having to really apply the principles that we tell everyone else and when coming back from sickness or injury. And, you know, if you take six weeks off a sickness, our general principle, and this is very general, cannot be applied in all circumstances. It should take six weeks to get back to full intensity. So we were discussing, okay, well, if you're going to be, you know, riding and you want to push Watts a little bit, what's the maximum that you're going to allow yourself to go to? And at the moment that's 180, 200 watts, which your old FTP is 60%, but your current FTP, it could be 80 or 90%. So we're going, all right. Is that too much? And we're asking these questions, so, yeah, it's a good discussion.

What are you grateful for, Jord?

I am grateful. This applies to probably any Commonwealth country that plays cricket more compared to any other country that doesn't play cricket. But I'm currently in England. The first Test the Ashes was on where Australia played England in the cricket, and we just beat them on the last day in absolute glorious fashion. And the way the last day was going, Australia wasn't. Didn't look like they were going to win. And as the day unfolded, it's the chance of us winning kept coming more and more, and then we got over the line and I was just so happy. And I've got to say, there's a fair bit of rivalry between Australia and England in cricket and it was made so much worse over here by having to endure the English commentators. I couldn't believe the bias and I don't believe that the Australian competitors are as biased in Australia when England come over, but it was. It was grinding my gears so much. So it was so satisfying to beat them in that first Test. I'm very grateful for it.

Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it? For those of you who aren't part of the Commonwealth, understanding cricket is bizarre to, you know, to have a competition that goes for five days in itself just seems absolutely ridiculous. And then possibly have a draw at the end of it. And. And, you know, the. The good thing is England have come up with a new type of aggressive style of playing, playing cricket, which is what we all love to watch. And they'll get a lot of spectators back to cricket, back to Test cricket. They'll revive Test cricket again. I think it's a great thing. I think they're disrespecting the Australians a little bit because Australians are the world champions at the moment in Test cricket. And one of the stats that I bring up, and I really love evaluating cricket as much as I do evaluating any sport, is England declared in their first innings, which I think is quite disrespectful to the world champions. And if you declare, you must be that confident that you should win the game. If any, any captain declares in a Test match of cricket, they should win the game. Anyway, England declared and they lost the Test match, which not too many captains have had had the privilege of doing that. So, yeah, it's an interesting one, for sure.

Yeah. And I did say our Commonwealth countries. I'm not 100% certain that every country that plays cricket is a Commonwealth country. But it's just majority of the ones that do are. So don't fact check me on that. Moving on to what has caught your attention. Something I wanted to bring up which has caught my attention is using the Training Peaks fitness score. So if you use Training Peaks, which is such a great application to track all your training and your data, it gives you a total little fitness score, form score and fatigue score throughout your week. And I've had a really funny experience because I'm doing a full running program and so no swimming or cycling at the moment. And I honestly feel like I'm running the house down and I'm feeling super fatigued because I haven't done a full running block in a long time. But training peaks just completely overvalues volume, um, compared to intensity. Um, and so when I look at my fitness score and form score, it says that I'm fresh as a daisy and that my fitness is going down, whereas I'm exhausted from these running sessions and I feel like my fitness is going through the roof. So there's a complete mismatch there between what the data is saying and it's, and I think it's just a really important point to note is that we can get caught up in these. And if you try and let that dictate how you think your form is purely, then I'd be in a bad spot right now. But I know my numbers and I know that I'm running really well. So it's, it's really interesting to look at.

I would agree. And look, there's just not Training Peaks. Most of the apps are quite inaccurate. And look, my Garmin, after my first 20 minute ride, told me to have three days rest. So, you know, and a lot of, a lot of sessions it's telling me to have three days off. And you know, most of the time I could be in a recovery week and it's still telling me to have, you know, 72 hours or three days off from training. Um, and, you know, I just know my body that well. It, it just not true that I should be resting. And you know, all the apps are the same and I don't think Training Peaks is any different. Like my aura ring, which, you know, I'm wearing all the time, is constantly telling me when I go to race that I should have a rest day, you know, and, and I know that basically the aura ring is picking up my anxiety from the anticipation of the event. So, so you've got to interpret the data and look at and how, and understand how you're Feeling and see if there's a correlation. If there isn't, you know, don't be dictated to by it. And I've had the example of people we coach where they're saying to me, you know, my app tells me that I'm out of form and fatigue and I'm really, you know, getting downhearted about it. And that's an area where I think it's wrong. It's, it's actually dictating how you think. You know, first and foremost, you should not look at your apps to tell you when you wake up how you're feeling. You should ask yourself, how am I feeling this morning? Did I have a good sleep? Am I feeling fresh when I get out of bed and walk around and go to the toilet and et cetera? What do I feel like? What do my legs feel like? Ask yourself those questions, give you, give yourself a score out of 10 and then compare what the app says once you open it and you'll be amazed. You know, okay, the app says I'm fatigued and I should have a rest day. All right, so I'll go into that fatigue feeling because that's what the app told me. And then don't underestimate how influential it is into your brain.

Yeah, I have another specific example in a training session where with the Garmin. This is so funny. Sometimes the Garmin struggles to pick up GPS in certain locations. So if you're ever running in a forest or under heavy tree cover, and I was doing some VO2 intervals and I started off and I was supposed to be running quite quick and I went out pretty good pace, actually went out quite hard. I really want to set a good pace. And I looked down and I was supposed to be running around 3 minute K pace. And it was, it said 3:30, 3:40. And I just thought, I am, I'm flying here, I'm going so much faster than that. And I thought it must be the GBS thing, but so you kind of tell yourself, right, don't worry about the pace, just run. But you're so used to checking your pace in training sessions cause you're trying to keep it, you know, good and on track. And it was so off putting to not have the pace there and have to try and run and to look down and see three through 30, 3:40, when my heart rate is skyrocketing pretty quickly, it's so off putting and you really have to mentally work and go, all right, just forget about the watch for a second. And sure enough, I came out into a Clearing and came out in the open and I was running sub three minutes, which is what I thought. I'm glad that what I thought I was running was accurate to what the watch finally said. But those first few minutes when you, it's almost panic mode and you almost have to really work hard to, to not let that affect you. So it's very easy to look at these scores and let them dictate how you're feeling. And you've really got to understand exactly what you just, you know, focus on yourself first, try and get a caliber yourself and then see if the data matches that.

A good little test is if you're doing something without GPS where you actually just are looking at, let's just use power. So you're indoors and you might be doing five by five minute efforts. My advice is to do the first one to try and ride the power in the range that you've been set. Say it's 200 to 210 watts. And then the second one, cover the screen up and try and ride those 200 to 210 watts by feel and then uncover it for the next one, then cover it up for the next one and uncover it and cover it up. And then after you've done the workout, check what the numbers were when you were covering the screen up because you're trying to ride the same feel. And if you can stay in those zones, you've got your feel and the real data really closely correlating. And that's the sign of a really in tune athlete. If you look at those, those two sections of one with covered and one with exposed data and they're really off, then you need to do more thinking about how does it feel to ride 200 watts or how does it feel to run 3 minute k pace or how does it feel to run 5 minute k pace so that if something happens with your technology, you can still perform according to how you're supposed to be to the feel. So, so the data is brilliant. But they, you know, I've got so many runners, tell me Jord, when they go into bridges or certain sections of the road they know they run on, well, the data is telling them they're running a minute slower than they are. And what's wrong with that? Well, if you look down it says you're supposed to be running 3 minute K pace and you look down it says 3:30 you'll run faster. So therefore you're actually going to destroy the session by running in the wrong zones. So that's the problem with it. So you know, it is a technology is brilliant when it works.

Yeah. And one more advanced level to exactly what you're saying if you're going to do that cover up trick is look to see not just if you average the 200 watts, but how you averaged it. Because when the screen's covered you might ride 220 for the first part and then get a little fatigued to ride 180 and that's also not a very good thing. And so you know, because same thing in a race if you're trying to average 300 watts, if you spend the first half race at 320, second half of 280, yes, you've averaged 300 but how you got there was disastrous and you could end up blowing yourself up more. So that's just one extra one. What's caught your attention is more to do with, with heart rate this week.

Yeah. Well, going almost the complete opposite way, not using any technology, using your good old ticker and the heart. The heart is an amazing instrument and I've never been more in awe of it. In the, in the last two weeks of my recovery training for those of you who listen to the podcast, over the years I've talked and banged on about this one session recovery session that I've been doing for years on the rollers on a Monday where it's my recovery day And I do 100 watts, 100 rpm and it equates to 100 beats per minute. That's, that's a go to session and I know that if I'm fatigued, my heart rate for those 100 will be 105 or 110. If I'm really fresh and inform my heart rate for the 100 will be 90 or 95. And I that to me on a rest days, oh, I'm getting in some form here so that's quite exciting. But for me on the this return to training from injury, my 100 watts, my 100 rpm is equal to 130 beats per minute currently. And so my heart is telling me that my body is still under stress and it's lost fitness. It is extremely lost its fitness. And so this is great for in any training session you can really work out what is going on whether you're too fatigued and conversely if you're too fatigued it's hard to get your heart rate up in a sub threshold or a threshold or a VO2 2 set. So heart rate can go the other way where you're trying your hardest but you just can't get your heart rate to go up because you're too tired. But as a fatigue measuring tool and a stress measurement, because obviously my fitness has dropped because I've done nothing for six weeks. So the heart is a muscle. And like a bicep, if you don't exercise the bicep, it will start to waste away and not continue to hold its muscle mass and, and even grow. And you know, as the heart grows, it can pump out more blood per beat, which is what stroke volume is, the amount of blood you can pump out per beat. So therefore, the bigger the heart, the bigger the amount of blood that pumps out. So the less times it has to beat for the given exercise, so as it, as it diminishes in size, it has to work harder. So it has to pump more regularly to get the same amount of blood around the, the body. So therefore your heart rate goes up. So it's a great measurement of where you're at in any particular time in your fitness level. And the other value I've found is my resting heart rate. It's phenomenally high at the moment. I'm normally between 40 to 50 beats per minute on average, overnight, according to my oura ring. And my lowest number will be about 45. And currently it's 63. And that tells me another stress level that what a great underutilized tool that we have in our body that we could be using so much better. And for those of you who get coached by Trivelo, know that we ask you to take your resting heart rate every Monday morning. And some people choose to, some people don't. But I wished everybody did because it's a great monitor for you to say far out. My resting heart rate is way higher than normal. Maybe I'm going to be sick or coming down with something, or maybe I'm too stressed or too fatigued. So I need to think about the training this week. So, yeah, that's what's caught my attention.

And some people would argue that taking it on a Monday is too infrequent. There's too many valuables that could impact on a Monday. But I do like your theory that if it's every Monday, you're generally doing the same routine each week. And so if something is out of whack, it might show up on that Monday. And once again, if it's a little bit different, you can't draw, you know, really solid conclusions, but it can, can make you ask questions, which is the whole purpose of it. And, and your whole strength here is that you know your own heart rate data very well, so you can calibrate very easily resting heart rate. In these sessions, you know what's happening, whereas if you've got no knowledge, then it's really hard to make any judgment on what your heart rate's actually doing. So, moving on to the topic of today, five workouts that will help delay fatigue longer. We're talking about five specific workouts that you can do that will help you increase your fitness and delay that fatigue on race day, which is the ultimate. We picked five specific ones. We want to give you the actual specifics of how the workout should go. And we should just say from the start that basically every workout, anytime you're doing a session with a main set, you've got to do a solid warmup. And a solid warmup is going to be 10 to 15 minutes of aerobic work to start with. Whether it's running, riding, swimming, you're going to be doing 10 to 15 minutes of slow, easy work, slowly building up that pace. And the goal there is to, it just seems obvious, but get your body warm and it's, it's incredible how important this is. But also the secondary goal is if you do a proper warm up with the whole total time, including some ramp work, some potential 30 second efforts, it might take you 25 to 30 minutes. This is not only designed to get you warm for the actual session so that you can perform the required intensity of the session. The warm up and cooldown also serve as aerobic fitness benefit. So if you've got time, and this is ideal, in an ideal week, you are adding potentially an extra 30 to 45 minutes or more, up to an hour of aerobic work around your main set, which is giving you that fitness benefit on top of the actual main set. So I just want to start off by making that point that every, every main session should have at least this kind of 10, we say 10 to 15 minutes. It could be longer if you really wanted. You know, a lot of the pro runners do a full 15 to 20 minute warmup because they have time, right? But you know, we find this, this kind of time frame ideal to get your body warm without going too long. Then you want to do some sort of ramp work so that last five minutes or some extra one minute efforts, slowly ramping up your pace or power on the bike. And then you want to put in some 30 second effort. So three times 30 seconds again building up that intensity, that power or that pace with 60 to 90 seconds rest in between so that you, you're recovering well, but then you're really doing some solid efforts. And that last 30 second effort should be above and beyond the intensity that you need for the main set. So that's just a standard warm up protocol. Anything you want to add there, dad?

No, you've, you've hit the nail on the head with, with everything and, and the two key things are to be ready for the activity. And look, I've, I've got onto a, I've, I've booked a Zwift race as an example and it was in half an hour's time and before I knew it, I had five minutes to get read race and I had no time to warm up. And the first 10 or 15 minutes in the, in the actual race, I was absolutely terrible. And I almost was spending the first 15 minutes warming up, except that I was at my threshold from the start. I felt awful compared to when I'm totally ready to do the session because I've done at least, you know, 10 minutes or 15 or 30. And anytime we have an athlete do a race, we give them it's up to 28, 30 minute warmup. And people say, well, you're doing your race in the warm up, you know, because you, you're almost doing some race specific stuff in your warm up. Well, if your body's used to that over a period, it will, it will be, you know, screaming out for you to do that so that you can actually, if you're a 5k runner, hit the first hundred meters at the right pace. If you're 800 meter runner, hit the first 200 meters at the right pace. If you don't do a warm up, you're gonna, your legs are gonna be screaming at you saying this is too hard in the race, which is not ideal. And definitely adding volume to your training sessions is the key because if we just did a 30 minute hard training session, you're really missing out on the extra. We know that aerobic fitness is directly related to duration. So the longer you can get out there training within reason, the quicker your aerobic fitness will grow.

Yep, spot on. So the first workout we want to talk about, one of the best workouts you can do is Quite simply a VO2 max intensity workout. So when we say VO2 max, we don't mean max intensity. It's, it's a specific range that we're referring to and it's, it's well above your threshold. And, and VO2 max intensity basically is an intensity that you can spend anywhere from 30 seconds up to potentially five minutes, but when you're in this intensity, you really can't go more than five minutes. And the main set that we want to talk about is an ideal range that we really, we really love and works well for running and cycling. And that's a six by three minute set. So take us through this, dad.

Yeah. And as you just mentioned, there's so many variations of a VO2 workout. And you know, you can start at 108% of your threshold and go all the way up to zone 6, which is anywhere around 140 to 150% before you go into the anaerobic zone 6 stage. So we're trying to stay in that range somewhere. And obviously the longer the efforts, as you mentioned, it can be up to five minutes. There's no way you're going to be running or riding at 140% of your threshold if you're doing five minutes. So the shorter the session, the more likely you're going to be able to, to get to that, that 130, 140, 150% of your threshold. So the one we've picked today is, is the three minuter. And if you can ride 120 to 125% of your FTP for three minutes, you're doing pretty well. And so we've got a preface that what we're talking about is the everyday athlete who has some sort of experience and is not a beginner. And those who've got more experience can handle these sessions way more easily than someone who's just a year or two into a program as compared to someone who's a week or two into a program. So we're trying to give advice, but we have to be careful because there's many variations in ability of the listener here. So don't think that if you're a new person, you could knock out six by three minutes at 125%. That's probably not possible. So it's really, you've got to be very careful here.

Yeah. And the structure remains the same, the principle remains the same. You can still aim for six by three minutes, although even then we often get beginners to start with four or five by three minutes just to get used to it. But the intensity will just be lower. So instead of aiming for 120 or 125%, they're aiming for 105 to 110%.

And that way you're still going to get the benefit. And as you progress, and we must preface that all these sessions, they are based about progression. So you could do the 6 by 3 session for 16 weeks if you wanted to, and each one of them would be different. How? Well, you might do the first one at 108%, six by three, and then by the end of 16 weeks you could be able to do six by three at 125%. And that would be an expectation. I'm not saying to do it for 16 weeks. I'm saying the progress would be from 110 to 125%. So doing the same session repeatedly with a different goal, different aim, different power or pace as a runner should be your goal and not to progress every single session. That's also important. So the VO2 sessions are probably the most taxing sessions that you can do. So this is the one you have to be most careful with about going too hard too soon in a program because you could actually fatigue yourself so much that you can't actually do the rest of your program. And so we're very particular about the zones we give people and making sure that if you feel great because you've warmed up beautifully and you're really loving the session, that, oh, maybe I can go to 125% right away, when we've specifically said for you, you need to stay below 115%. And I'm all the time looking at numbers of athletes that have actually gone way above and they think they've done a great job, but in actual fact they've really ruined what's going to happen the next two or three days.

And if the percentages confuse you or you don't know your percentage zones that well, obviously the way we do it is we test first. So we can, we would give you all that. But if you don't know all that and you want to go out and try this session, then it's 6 by 3 minutes or 5 by 3 minutes at the pace that you can hold to get through the session evenly. So if you're trying to attempt this session and you do your first three minute effort at 250 watts, but then the last one you can barely hound to 200, then you went too hard and you didn't do the session properly, regardless of whether you know your percentages or not. And so the aim for you would be what? What can I aim for? Power wise or pace wise is running that I could get through all these in relatively similar time. And the way it works is it's equal recovery. So it's six by three minutes and you get three minutes recovery in between. That's what really makes it a VO2 workout. You're really getting solid recovery here to really make sure that you can do your best effort with each rep in every single three minute effort. And then the way you can manipulate this is you can lessen the recovery. And we do that for more experienced athletes. You know, you can take it 6 by 3 minute efforts with 2 minute recovery or 90 seconds half, but that plays the intensity a little bit. But that's the general consensus of an example VO2 max workout.

Yeah, and as you just mentioned, manipulating the time as you progress is also using the same session, just manipulating the rest recovery from 1 to 1 to 1 to 2 to 1 to 3. And that is again for the experienced athlete. But this is a brilliant session to really go way beyond most people's race pace. So when it comes to race day, if you've done a lot of VO2 stuff, you will actually find the race pace really quite comfortable. And not only in that aspect, but the other value of this type of training is it's going to grow your threshold. The more VO2 training you can do when you come to ride threshold work, you know, there's scientific data telling us day in, day out that we're reading that says do VO2 work to improve your threshold.

That takes us to session number two. And this is one that we love and it's, it's doing a race pace specific session. So talk us through the purpose and goal of this.

It's a little bit confusing for some people because it's very specific to your actual race. So if you're a triathlete, for example, and doing Ironman, this race pace session would look different to a triathlete doing Olympic distance. So let's take a run, for example. We're talking about a marathon compared to a 10k event. So it is specific to your distance. So your race pace you would be practicing in this training session for an Olympic distance 10k runner would be running. If you're a 5, a 50 minute 10k runner, you would be trying to run, you know, 10 by 5 minutes, a 50 minute total at 5 minute k pace with some rest periods in between. If you're a marathon runner and your marathon pace is going to be 6 minute K pace, you would be doing this at, you know, 6 by 10 minutes, at 6 minute K pace with 2 or 3 minutes recovery. That's an example of getting exactly what your race pace expectation is on race day and putting it into a training session. And is the goal here would to be extend the time, if you can start with shorter intervals, say 10 minutes, and then work your way up to 20 to 30 to 40 minutes at a time, multiples of 4, 5, 6. They're the things that are going to put you in good stead when it comes to race day. Because guess what, specificity is all about training, specifically to the pace or power that you're going to do on race day. And that's the session you need to include in one of your weekly programs.

Yeah, it's really about giving you confidence and doing that by just practicing what you're going to do in the race. And obviously you don't. If you're training for a half marathon, we can't get you running, you know, an hour and a half at race pace every single week because you just basically, you know, doing almost a half marathon every single week. Heat race pace, that's not what the session is. Instead it's, it's broken down into segments that are more manageable and at the start of your program and when you do this session the first time, it might be really short. You might just be doing 3 by 10 minute efforts at that race pace. Um, but then as the program progresses, you know, you're really building up to. And again in a half marathon example, it might become three by 15, three by 20 and then four by 20, you know, and you, and then the session's quite a massive race paced session. But then you're doing an hour twenties worth of running at your race pace and then you get really confident and comfortable in doing that. So when you come to race day, you're really used to it. And again, it's, it's just that overall goal of, of being able to achieve what you want on race day.

Yeah, I just think it's one of the, one of the sessions that should be very specific to the last section of your training program. It's not something you would do early in the program. If you were doing a 25 to 30 week marathon training program, you wouldn't be doing race specific stuff in the first 20 weeks. You would leave that to the last six to eight weeks where you are actually getting your body used to adapting to the pace you're going to run on race day.

The third key session that you can do and one that we is always a go to for us. And if you listen to the podcast, I hope you can guess what this one's going to be. Whether it's cycling or running, it's the hill repeats. So take us through how you would structure the main set of hill repeats. Again, once you've done your warm up protocol, you're ready for the intensity of a hard session, you're ready to do the main set. We just want to emphasize that while the time of these hill repeats might be similar to VO2 max session time, the intensity is a little bit different. And can you explain why?

Yeah. And also Jordan, your level of experience. So, so we're not trying to do VO2 elite style hill repeats. And what do I mean by that? We're not trying to run these heels flat out. We're actually trying to build strength and endurance without running fast, flat road intervals. If we're a runner and if we're a bike rider, we're trying to grow strength in our legs by doing some hills that are, that are going to be anywhere between. If you're a bike rider, we can do them as a VO2 set. But this is not the one we're talking about. We're talking about building strength. So you'll be doing it under threshold. So anywhere between 75% to 100% of your threshold as a bike rider, as a runner, you'll be trying to make sure that it's around that 5 to 10k pace. So you shouldn't get to the top of each two minute hill completely spent and thinking you can't do another. You should be able to actually do four, five, six, seven or eight of those repeats and still be able to recover quickly enough to do the same pace the next time.

I want to clarify something really quickly here because you said 5 to 10k pace, but we don't actually mean the actual 5 to 10k pace. The really key instruction we give athletes is the feels like pace. And that's a little bit confusing for some people. But you know, you're 5K pace might be, you know, 4 minute, which is really tough to run up on a hill. You know, that's tough enough on flat. So we're not saying try and run 4 minute K pace up, up the hill. We're trying to say get the same feeling of intensity up the hill. But that might mean because the hill has a gradient, you might actually be running 4:35 or 5:30 pace. If you're, if your 5k pace was 4 minute k pace.

Yeah, yep. And that's a really good example. And I can't stress that enough because I get people just basically sprinting up the hill because they're trying to run 4 minute K pace, you know, because that's their, that's their flat 5k pace is 4 minutes. So it sounds obvious, but we have to explain that fact that you're just trying to run where you're really feeling the lactate in your legs from the heel. It's a strength session. It's not one that we're trying to make into a VO2 session or a threshold session. We're trying to build it as a strength session so it should be repeatable. And, and that's, that's the thing. And you could do this up to, you know, 8 to 10 reps if you wanted to. And if you were trying to do this as a VO2, you would barely make, you know, six because you're doing basically two minutes up the hill and it might take you two and a half to three minutes to get back, back down the hill. And then if you have to run that flat out again, you know, eight to 10 of these would be only probably the elite marathon runners of the world could do that. And the rest of the, the mere mortals would be struggling to get up to eight. And again, you'd have to progress this from four reps, you know, in the first block, just do four for three weeks. Or if you're, you know, very experienced, you could do 4, 5 and 6 repeatedly over a three week period.

Yeah, spot on. Structurally, you definitely start at, you know, four by two minutes with jog back down or ride back down, recovery and then progress up to potentially 8, 8 by 2. And very, very few athletes are doing above 8 up to 10. Anything else on that session?

Yeah, just, just before he goes, one of the things I like to get the athletes to do is to pick a starting point, a tree, a signpost, a fence, a bit of paint on the road, do your own paint on the road. I'm not really pushing for that one, but. And then a finishing point. So do your first couple of two minute hill repeats as a runner and start at the same point and then finish at the same point and then make note of where you're finishing point is. And therefore from that point on for the next 10 years, if you run that same hill, you will know where your fitness level is. You will see. Six years ago I could do this in 152 and I've had an injury, I've been ill, I haven't done much running. Now that same start and finish point, it takes me 2 minutes and 10 seconds. And you know, my goal is get to get back to two minutes. And so one of the mistakes people make is they keep running the two minute hill, not finishing at the Same point as they get fitter, they're now running. So the hill was 1.3 km long for two minutes, which is. That's probably wrong. So the hill was 300 meters for two minutes. And instead of finishing at the 300 meter mark because they're fitter, they're finishing at 350 meters and 4, 400 meters now. So we don't want that. We want to keep it at the same distance so that therefore you can get a really good feedback of your progression. And that's a really good thing to do.

Yeah. And there is an argument to run purely two time in these, in these sets so that you're always getting the same volume of running in. So it's four by two minutes. So it's at least eight minutes of work every time. But for practicality sake, we definitely love in this example going for distance because it really is a good marker and it's great, it's just great mentally for you. We find that benefit worth it. Whereas our other sessions where we strictly do time and we don't worry about distribute distance, for example, an easy run. Because depending on how you're feeling and how fatigued you are from the training week, you know your easy run if it was set at 8K, but that day you're really fatigued and you're running 6:30 pace, you know it's a longer run than, than you probably planned because you're going to be out there for longer. So that's the example where we go for strictly time instead of distance. The next session, this is a really specific endurance session is the endurance with intensity session. And there's a few ways to go about this. So we're going to give you a few examples. But when you get, when you can fit this session into a training week, it is unbelievably valuable to just skyrocket that volume fitness as well as that ability to handle fatigue.

Yeah. And have to make it right from the outset that these are the best sessions. We're not talking about, this is what you should do every week. The sessions we've described already, the first three, we're not saying this should be in your program every week. These are, we're picking the best sessions that you should use occasionally to get yourself into the best form. And so the endurance with intensity is not something you should be doing every week. There should be periods of other sessions because we are a big believer in zone two and endurance with intensity is far from zone two. It has got a lot of zone two in it that's what endurance is. But there are sections where you can have unpredictable intensity intentionally so that you are getting endurance with intensity. And this might take you years to build from a two hour endurance ride up to a three or a four hour endurance ride with intensity. So you have to progress very, very slowly with this and give yourself the time that it deserves because it is a very fatiguing session and many athletes we've coached have rung me and their wife's complaining because they've done their morning Saturday session and came home and lay on the couch from lunchtime till 6pm without being able to move because they are so fatigued from this so called Zone 2 Endurance Ride. But they forgot to tell everybody that it had intensity tacked on with it. But Even the Zone 2 endurance ride is fatiguing in itself without intensity. So yeah, we want to break the endurance ride down and have a warm up main set and a warm down. And this is important for whether it's with intensity or not. But the endurance ride with intensity still has that you're preparing yourself with. It could be a 10 minute warm up up to an hour, depending on how long your, your endurance ride is going to go for for the day. If you're doing a four or five hour ride, my warmup for endurance could possibly be an hour and my cooldown could be another hour and then the main set could have three hours where it's got variations in intensity. And just because we use the word intensity, we're not talking about high intensity, we're talking about intensity that could be 75% intensity up to 130% intensity at various times during that session. So we're really keen to throw in almost the whole mix. It's everything here. We've got tempo, we've got sub threshold, we've got VO2, we've got over under, we've got actually got threshold. And there's other things, such as if you're a bike rider, there's skills of rolling turns in here where you're learning an actual bike skill to hold the wheel and not surge, and to not come over the wheel too quickly and not come over the wheel too slowly. There's so many things you can learn in this session, but the endurance with intensity is one of those really specific sessions where we either use hills, we use each other as competition, or we go to a race. And a race might only go for 40 or 50k. But if you warmed up for an hour before and cooled down for an hour, therefore you've got a three Hour ride that's got intensity in it. That's another example of endurance with intensity. So there's many ways to skin this cat. And I think this is one of the best design sessions that we do that really builds our aerobic fitness and helps with race, race specific stuff as well as a sideliner.

There's many ways to go about it. And the Traveller example I think is a really good one. You know, you set out a few specific loops around Melbourne where you can hit the same goal in a few different ways. And you know, there's a loop where it's about an hour to get down to the peninsula, to get to the back hills of the peninsula. And then there's a bit of a figure eight circuit which is about a 20 minute loop, you know, it's two by 10 minute loops and once everyone hits there, they know that it's absolutely on and it's just basically a race for 20 minutes in the middle of an endurance ride, you know, and it's really fun and everyone's different abilities, everyone goes as hard as they can, everyone's racing each other and there's bursts up the hill and then recovery downhill and then the after that the ride, you know, cruises for 10 or 15 minutes and then it hits another flat section and then it's, it's fast rolling turns and it's over under style training. And so within the space of two hours, you've had two totally different styles of intensity and your body just has to get used to doing a max 20 minute effort around this figure 8 circuit, recovering for 10 minutes and then getting back into a roll. And that training for the body is just so valuable. And that's just one example. And there's other loops that you have where it's shorter efforts. You know, there's a, there's a five minute hill and then a rest and then a two minute burst and then another rest and then it's rolling turns again. So this is outdoors how you can start to find your own kind of bunch ride or bunch loop where you can go out with some mates and really attack each other and have some fun on this. But doesn't have to be in a bunch, right? You know, it can be. You just go into the hills and doing fartlek style riding where once you've warmed up and you get into the hills, every time you hit a climb, whether it's two minutes or 10 minutes, you attack it, you know, and you attack it at a rate that you can get up the climb relatively evenly. And then you Use the flat sections to keep the pressure on the pedals and use the downhill sections to, to more roll and recover a little bit. And if you do that for an hour, hour and a half or two hours around the hills, that is endurance with intensity. That is going to get you so strong and, and so fit.

Yeah, great summary. And look, if you happen to be in a, a place where getting outside is impossible, going indoors, there's so many options you can do there as well. You know, Zwift as a platform has, has races. And one particular one that works out to be for the Melbourne time zone, it works out to be 7am on a Saturday morning and that's 100k race, or it's 101km race and, and that has, you know, 200, 200 or 300 riders in it of all various abilities. And you can ride with any bunch you like in that, in that particular race because it splits up in the first, literally five minutes and then it has sections where there's hard bits and then it's back to zone two. So it's got intensity, you know, sprinkled throughout the whole event. And then it's really pressure on the pedals the whole way. And then the last 5, 10 km, it really ramps up to a massive sprint at the end like a true bike race would be. And believe me, if you, if you did that, and we actually did it during COVID for, I think we did 12 weeks in a row, that was one of the best training endurance rides with intensity that we did. And some of our numbers, for all the people we were coaching, their numbers were going through the roof. There were other good training sessions that were helping to contribute to that improvement. But this was one of the key sessions. So whether you're indoor or outdoor, you can actually make this session one of the best key sessions. But it's not one that you would do. You know, we were using it at Covid because we were, we were making our endurance ride really interesting. And then there were some weeks in, in that 12 weeks where I said to everybody, you're not allowed to race that if we're doing the same tbr. It was called the Big Ring tbr. If you're doing that same ride on Saturday, this Saturday, we're doing it without intensity. So when everybody takes off at the start, you just go back three or four groups and sit with some groups that are going to do zone two. That suits you. So we didn't do that every week. And that's something that I want to stress to everybody. This is not something that you would do week after week for 10 or 12 weeks in a row. You would. You would do two or three weeks of it, then have an easy week, and then possibly you've got a race in between.

I will say this type of session is so valuable that if you can handle it, you know, having a part of your training block is just awesome. And we've gone back to it every winter since COVID because it's such a good endurance ride. And like you said, we're not doing it every week, but we're definitely including it in there. And it's really, it's just this goal of teaching your body to get used to being able to do high bursts and recovering and then that just, you know, really trains your body well to be able to handle loads of fatigue. The final session we want to talk about, and you've mentioned zone two a lot and how important zone two is. We really want to get specific and we just stick for triathletes. If you're just going to do one sport or the other, like cycling or running on their own, then this is the same. But we want to talk about, in this example, maybe a zone two brick. And if you can fit this session in to your training program, you get really getting a consistent, good volume Zone two brick workout in is really important. So what do you mean by good volume? Building up to being able to handle a 90 minute zone two ride into a 30 to 40 minute zone two run off the bike. And if you can get this in and learn and teach your body to do this frequently, it's unbelievable for your fitness.

Yeah. And it's not one of those ones where you would start with 90, 40. You would probably start with, you know, maybe 45 minute zone two pressure on the pedals and then get off and run 15 minutes. And again, we're talking about such extreme ability to our audience. Some people are able to handle 90 minutes and 40 minutes right from the get go. And then there's the extreme end of the other scale where people are going to struggle with 40 minutes and 15 minutes. So you really need to find out where you are in your program, where you are in terms of how close you are to your race. This is a session that's really useful all season, whether you're getting near a race or whether you're just starting at the beginning of your program because it builds your aerobic fitness. And during taper period you still need to keep and maintain aerobic fitness and it doesn't hurt your fatigue as much as the hard sessions do. So it is repeatable. And that's why zone two work is so valuable, because you can get a lot of work into your body without fatiguing it so much that you need to actually take rest days. But as a triathlete, to be able to practice running off the bike where you're not fatiguing yourself and you're not trying to run race pace, you're not trying to ride race pace, but you're actually trying to get the feeling it is a, it is the go to session. And you know, we wouldn't want to be doing this again regularly if it was, say you were trying to do two hour zone two ride and an hour and a half zone two run. That that would be more like the race specific stuff that you would be doing for an Ironman closer to the event. And of course that would be, you know, maybe five or six hours at zone two riding and then, you know, up to two hours of zone two running because that's specific to, to an Ironman event. So you want to make sure that you're, you're thinking about what the event you're doing is and therefore you make this the appropriate distance and time spent doing it.

And we want to be clear here, this session is not, we're not, we're not saying this is the endurance session. They're two different things. The example you gave there is an endurance example of building that up. This is more like a way you try to fit this in in a midweek or something. But to do that, you know, a midweek session where you can get 14, 15, like you said, as an example to start with, building up to potentially an hour and a half to two hours, which is hard to fit in midweek, granted. But yeah, definitely possible. And it's something that you could either try and do in the morning or after work if it gets to that volume, or you could even split it up and do your ride in the morning and you run at night or something like that if it's a zone two day. But the principles that we always talk about of frequency first, then volume, then intensity really apply to this type of session. So first you've got to get used to just fitting in a zone two session like this into your week at some point and get used to the frequency. And again, when I was saying do it every week where it fits in the program, that's fine. But if you're going to want to build this up, you've got to get used to doing it regularly and Then once you get used to doing it regularly and you, you've started at 40 minutes of zone two riding into a 15 minute run off the bike, then you increase the volume so then you start to aim for an hour of riding into 20 minutes off the bike and then it's an hour and 15 of riding into 30 minutes of, of the bike. Up to that, you know, we started with the gold standard of eventually getting to would probably be, you know, 90 minutes of riding into 30 to 40 minutes of running there. That's really good solid fitness if you can do that. And then once you do that, it's about getting the intensity right. So let's say that your zone two power ranges, you know, 180 to 200, you know, to start with, don't even worry about getting close to 200, sit at 180, you know, and make sure that your body is not getting fatigued from these sessions. It's not impacting the rest of the week. You know, these zone two sessions are just there for fitness that you don't want them to be fatiguing you so much that it's impacting the rest of your training sessions throughout the week. And same thing with running, if your zone 2 pace is 6 to 6:30 pace, don't worry about pushing the upper limits. But once you've got the frequency down, once your volume is being built up, then you can start to find your, find yourself in that zone in that range and start to push a little bit and making sure that if you then go up towards 200 watts for the zone 2 riding, you're doing it, but still not affecting the rest of your week. And that's a really encouraging feeling to have as you get more, as you get fitter and you get used to this, you're doing the same. Are you doing higher intensities for the same heart rate, for the same recovery, for the same feeling? And that's what the beauty about this kind of session is.

Yeah. And the heart rate which we spoke about in what's caught our attention early on in the podcast is a really good measure here. You already know you're improving because it feels, the feeling of 180 watts feels hard early on, and then 200 watts after six or ten weeks of doing it feels the same as 180. And your heart rate would probably be the same at 200 watts after 10 weeks as it would be at 180 at the start. And that's an, that's an actual data point that would tell you that the feeling you're getting is actually true. And it's a great thing to use heart rate on this because, you know, the other thing in zone two is the less drift you have. And what do we mean by drift? As you get into a session, time wise, the heart rate just gradually creeps up and the fitter you are, the more aerobic fitness you have. You'll have a heart rate that will flatline. And that's the goal. If you can ride 180 watts and your heart rate stays at 120 beats for the whole 60 minutes, you're in good shape. So that would be an indicator for me that you're ready to go to 190 watts or 200 watts. And that's a good way to work out when it's time to start to push the upper end of that zone too. And then the heart rate will respond similarly. And once you get six months into that session, you are able to be doing that heart rate where it will stay flatline again at 200 watts, 420 beats and you already know it feels fantastic because you're coping 20 watts higher and your heart rate's telling you that it's not, it's not going into the red zone. So they're good measurements without using lactate clips on your ear or, you know, it's just really useful data that's staring there to be used.

I'll tell you what, it's a really good feeling to be able to handle the volume of these sessions, to be able to increase the intensity of these sessions and to be able to, you know, go right at the top of your zone too, without a heart rate drift, without feeling too fatigued, without feeling the session the next day and just knowing that's just a sign of super fitness and you, you really do start to feel good compared to, you know, at the start doing these sessions. And there is heart rate drift, you actually can't handle that much volume. And if you push the intensity, you know, it's quite a fine line. If you accidentally cross that line of going too much to the top of your zone too, it affects your potential VO2 max session or your session the next day. So that's five key sessions to really help you with your training program. And if you can get these in there somewhere, they're going to really help you with your ability to handle fatigue. Is there anything you want to finish off with, dad?

Yeah, look, it's great to give advice and helpful sessions to everybody out there. We know we are helping people because they tell us when we see interact with people at races and how grateful they are for us to giving free information away. It's actually important that you understand when to do these sessions and how often to do them. And that's where, I suppose the right structure program would help you with that. So don't think for one minute we're saying this should be your Monday to Friday or Monday to Sunday program, please. So, you know, these are great sessions, but in the right order, and knowing when to do them and knowing what to do after them and before them is going to give you the right outcome to get the value out of these sessions. They're great sessions, but they need to be treated with really good respect.

That's a great way to finish. Thanks again for listening to another episode, and we'll see you on the next one. It.