7 Insane Lessons From The Paris Olympics (So Far)

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. We are so excited to talk everything Olympics today because, honestly, we try to think of potentially a different topic, but we just can't stop talking about the Olympics and everything that it brings. And every single day, there's new stories, there's new triumphs, there's new challenges, there's new lows. We get to hear insights from the athletes about what their training prep included, what their mindset is, how they're performing under pressure. We're seeing athletes succeed and fail and make mistakes and learn from mistakes and win races. It's unbelievable. So today we're talking about seven brutal lessons that we've seen from the Olympics so far. So, dad, we're just going to launch straight into it. And of course, we have to start every single podcast with our normal segment with are you grateful for? So let's go away like that.

Yeah, look, I don't want to dwell on this, but I'm just so grateful for the messages and the emails and the texts and the support that I've been given over the last month has been overwhelming. It's almost humbling. I've had some emotional periods where some of the messages have actually made me cry, to be fair. It's just been. People have been incredibly generous with their kind words, and I just want to thank everybody for the support I've got. So, yeah, so I really appreciate it.

I second that. It's been overwhelming support and we really appreciate the relationship we've developed with you as a listener where people feel comfortable to message us at any time and reach out. And sometimes it's hard for us to always show up for the podcast and talk about everything that's happening. But I think there's been a lot of trust built both ways with the listener and the messages we've received. And we absolutely love talking about this stuff and bring as many valuable lessons as possible and even the simple ones where someone just. We get a constant message every week saying, hey, just use your tips from the last few podcasts for this race and went really well. So I just wanted to say thank you. That, to us, is just so good. And then I'm the same. I had goosebumps reading some messages that we received. So we really enjoy this experience with you as a listener. And we want to keep doing it for as long as possible because we absolutely love it. So yeah, let's jump into the Olympics. There's so much to talk about and we're just going to jump into. And I think the audience could guess what we're going to talk about and it is that 1500 meter race which has been building up for years. You've heard us talk about Jakob Ingebritzen for years now is our kind of favorite child. But that didn't mean we necessarily wanted to see him win outright. We absolutely loved the Kurt Ingrid rivalry that's been building up. We've loved all the athletes that were in the mix. I was watching. It's been a really fun experience for me watching the Olympics with friends because they're kind of asking at each race read of each event, they're saying what's the go here? Who's, who's good, who's not. I'm kind of pointing out stuff and I said for the final last night, I said there's genuinely six people who I really think could win the gold if the race went their way. Obviously Ingrid and Kerr should come first and second because, you know, that's. But if the race plans out a certain way, there's genuinely six people that could win. And then the whole all 12 people are unbelievable. So far out. This race, race has been building up. It's been the talk of athletics and did it deliver. It was one of the greatest races we've ever seen.

Poor. There's so much to unpack here. And look, Jordan, you won't remember, but athletics has some, some great rivalries over, over the Olympic generation. And I can still remember so excited to see Sebastian Co and, and Ovette lining up two athletes from the one country who were, you know, world record Olympic champions in their sport. And, and one was good at the 801 was a little bit better at the 1500. And, and it, it was just one of the, you know, the two races, the 800 and 1500, these guys both did and, and you know, waiting to see what was going to happen. And you know, I think the world champion won the wrong race and the other world champion won the other race. So they swapped. One was Olympic champion in the 800 and he became world champion in the 1500 and the other, it was just like that. It was like who was going to win and they were just leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the field. So it was always a two man race and it was, you know, and they lifted athletics so much to a new level and, and so much so that an unknown. Cram, Steve Cram, I think his name was, came along. And all of a sudden these two guys are looking at each other classic, like Kerr and Inger Britzen and Cram came over and beat both of them. And yeah, it was kind of reminded me of that period. And I know I probably got a lot of the details, not that accurate, but that's my memory because it was in the 80s, I think, and it was just. It was. It really got my. My competitive urges, like watching that. I just wanted to go out and train and. And, you know, when you see a race like this and you see, you know, you would bet your house that either Kerr or Inger Britzen or maybe Negus, because they're the ones who have got the form on the board and the experience and, and, you know, I think Kerr had only beaten Inger Britzen once in 15 races. They raced against each other twice.

Twice.

Twice it was a world championship, you know, one that counted. And so there's so much trash talk being talking in the media, not so much by those guys, but. But the build up was more from the media, I suppose they were saying some certain things about, you know, we'll see and you know, let. Let the race, you know, let the race show who's the best. And. And you know, lo and behold, you've got, you know, Cole coming from. From nowhere and, and, you know, upstaging both of them. And. And you know, it was. It was it. And there's a lot to unpack about it, and I want to give my spin on it, but it was brilliant.

To watch and I will correct that a little bit. I think it seems like they. And I made this point in a video where they kind of played off like they're not rivals and that they like each other, but the little comments that they keep saying keep really showing differently and the actions that they do show differently and the comments they say have kept escalating and I think people haven't realized that they've actually said some pretty nasty things to each other. They said outright, but because it's been a slow build over the years. But in the last year, I think Ingridson said things like, Kerr's just the next guy to come along and try and he won't be the last. And Kerr has said himself that Jakob is arrogant and is attention seeking and thinks too much of himself, and he's just. And he's just a pacemaker. So they. They really have exchanged blows up to the Olympic up to this Olympics, it's been pretty clear that they really don't like each other. And. And that's a classic tale, is there. Everyone's looking at them and they're looking at each other. And. And I think the metaphor of Cole not just winning, Cole Hawkeye, not just winning, but winning up the inside when they're looking at each other on the outside was just absolutely hilarious. So the gun goes off. Cannot wait to see who's going to go to the front. Because in a final, who possibly takes the front? It's crazy. Every single time who's going to lead? And then, sure enough, Jakob in the first 150 meters does what he doesn't normally do. He ran the first 150 and 200 faster than he normally ever runs his first 200. I think that was mistake number one. He normally takes the first 150 to 300 to get to the front. And he did this a little bit different. We saw at the back end how much that hurt him. But he went to the front and just said, I'm going to set a world record pace and if they can hang on because I'm the quickest here for that speed, I've got the best pb. If they can hang on for world record pace, then so be it. He went through in 51.8, the first 400, bang on world record pace. And then you weren't happy with how the rest of the race unfolded after that.

Yeah, you've said a lot of very good things that make it such an intriguing race. And tactics comes into it. And look, Inka Britzen tried to make it a time trial and I think that was a good tactic because that's kind of how he's won so many races. But he tried to make it a time trial from the very first 10 meters. He went to the front and he ran three full laps plus three quarters. And he's not done that in any of his events. He's always, as you said, either run the first three or 400 meters where he hasn't actually lactated, hardly at all. He's literally 15 meters behind the front guy. And it's been so much of a joke that he's been 5 meters off the back sometimes in the first 2 or 300 meters. And so the other guys are all running a pace that they think they can sustain. And he's actually taking it easy. And so he's actually implemented a strategy and a tactic that he's not done in hardly any event that he's ever done in a championship level or a Golden League. Diamond League.

Sorry, he's overcorrected.

Hey, yeah, and I think, I think he's trying to time trial for the full event instead of doing his normal tactic of yeah, go to the front. But imagine, imagine the pace that he could do if he jogged. I don't mean jog, ran, ran a very controlled first three or 400 meters and then threw in two and three quarter laps at 54 instead of running three and three quarter laps at 56. And the guys can hang on at that pace. It's the Olympics. They're not going to let him go. They're going to hang on. And he didn't dull their kick. All he did was be a pacemaker for the other guys to come over the top of him. That's all he did. It was like he was a paid pacemaker. And that's the disappointing thing for me is he tried something different in a really important event. I think he didn't trust his process, the thing that had got him so many victories. And you might say that he thought that he was going to lose if he did that, did it that way. But I think if he had been more devastating in those two laps that he was going to run, you know, go past them and just run them off their legs. But he's not running them off the legs at the same pace that they can hold because he's basically running, you know, the full event at a pace that's way less. Even though it's still world record pace. He normally is running way faster than world record pace in the last two laps than he is over the whole, the whole event. I know that's a lot to take in, but it's just a real fine line between getting it right and getting it wrong. And to be fair, his response after the race was brilliant. And we will talk about that. But you have to wear the consequences of your decision making on the day and you know, he's put it out there using this tactic and that was the end up result that it didn't work out.

I think you're spot on. And his response on Instagram was very classy because he's been very arrogant in the lead up. He just said the best guy on the day will win and I'm the best guy. And then he said afterwards, he said I wasn't the best guy today. He said outright I wasn't good enough. I tactically got that race wrong. And the other three guys were the best guys in the day today. And I thought that was really mature of him, just given all the beef and everything. But he made a really important point. He said the race was 100 meters too long for the tactics that I ran. And he's not saying that I should have won. That's absolutely not what he's saying. He's not giving an excuse. He's just saying exactly what your point is here. That he ran that pace and he could only sustain at 1400 meters. He couldn't sustain it for 1500, which is why him going away from his strategy in that first 200, 300 and the first lap in 54, like lightning pace and the first 800 in 151.8 was too fast. And yeah, it's a funny mindset because the world champs would have been in his head where he didn't go hard enough and he was out kicked twice. He didn't set the pace hard enough. It's an Olympic final and he's going, if I want to win gold, I have to do something I've never done before, which Cole Hocker did. He's, he's run a 3 second PB and Olympic record to win gold. He's run the perfect race, which had to be perfect to win gold. But he's overcorrected, I think, and just summarizing exactly what you're saying.

And the word is overcorrection for sure. And, and look, he was basically a pacemaker. So he put it in the hands of the other guys. If you're good enough to come over the top of me, then you deserve to win. And that's the tactic he imposed on the race. And you just forget that at those championship levels people are going to do extraordinary things. And you're setting yourself up for failure. If you think you can run the legs off of the best athletes in the world. I think that's something that he may get a different perspective and you learn some lessons from it for sure.

Hard to watch because three weeks ago he ran 3, 326.7, you know, the fastest time in the world in, in decades. And so he's just kind of, you can see it, he said, well, I can run this pace and I'm gonna do it. And no one's that way.

George, he ran that 326 with an easier first 300.

Exactly.

That's that, you know, he's next. Yeah, his next two and a half laps were way faster than he did in that race yesterday.

To see him run a 328.3 you know, a second and a half slower than his PB is just so frustrating and he will just be devastated by that. And three championship races he's lost now in a row. Two world champs in the Olympics. That is just infuriating. He's got the 5k coming up today and I do believe that he's, he's 5K is a stronger event than his 1500. He's just got, he's just got such good strength in the 5K. But there are some absolutely elite runners in there, again, that are purely focused on the 5K. It's hard to back up three 1500s and then run a 5K. So he's done it before at championship events, but very, very interesting before.

He definitely has done it before. And he's so angry last time that he's not going to lose that 5k, but his confidence will be a little bit shattered, I think. Yeah, but you know, it's happened to him again. This is the third time.

Oh, God.

So, you know, maybe he will come out and just blow them away with the right tactics. So there's a lot to learn for, for us everyday athletes about getting the tactics right. And you know, even at that elite level where this is the best guy in the world and it, it says a lot about no one is guaranteed a victory. And if you think that that's the case, in any event, you're doing, oh, I can't, I can't beat. I'm against in Gabrits and how am I going to beat him? Well, if you went in with that tactic, you never going to beat him. But you have to believe. And you know, Carl Hooker was. The belief was there, you know, and he, he almost didn't actually win the race because Inger Britzen blocked him on the, on the inside. And then, and then he got another chance to have another go at him 50 meters from the finish. And, and you know, anything tactically he did well was. That was a poor decision to be on the inside because he just, he risked not being able to get through. If Inger Briton hadn't moved, he was not going to get through. So, you know, lots of things can happen.

Yeah. And in terms of the top three, I think NUS just, he's always second or third. He's just always there. That was the prediction. And it, and, and he ran an unbelievable last 200, got overtaken by Cole at the 200 to go mark. And that was kind of the check that just put him back a little bit. But brilliant by Cole Kerr ran His perfect race. He did exactly what he needed to do. He was watching Inger Bridgson, he was strong enough to come over him. That was the gold medal. That was his gold medal plan. He just didn't plan for the fact that Hawker would be stronger in the last 200. And he again, he put a very classy message out there on Instagram and he said, if I'm going to make a silver medal in that kind of race with that kind of performance from Cole Hawker, that was so perfect, he said, I can live with that. And that just makes me hungry for more. So super disappointed for him.

Yeah, it is disappointing. And I think as, as age groupers, we've got to learn those lessons about the post analysis that these guys are. And I know some of it might be they're putting up a brave front, but they have to think like this otherwise they would never do another race. Because the fear factor of losing, you can't have all your eggs in just one race for your whole career. There's another race. And so you know you've done your best on that day and that's what the age grouper needs to hear. You do your best on the day. You execute well or bad, doesn't matter. You've just done as well as you can and you learn from it and you, you try to do better next time and you know, don't be defined by one race. And if, if the Olympic level athletes aren't being defined by one race, then why would an age group think like that? That's, it's, you've got to stop thinking like that. And there's always going to be another day.

And for them to say that when it's an Olympic race, it comes around once every four years that they've put the last four years of work into to get a gold medal. Especially Kerr, he just wanted that more than anything. If he's able to say that, then we can definitely say it.

But also, Jord, think about the fact that Inger Britzen and Kerr may not be at the next Olympics. They may be past their time. That could have been their only chance to ever be a 1500 meter Olympic champion. So not only are we saying there's always another race, but there might not be another Olympic race for these guys. There'll be not, there'll be more world titles for them, there'll be more, you know, Diamond League races, there'll be more races for them to be in. But that's, that's the measure of a guy who can admit that there were better guys on the day and I didn't get it quite right or, or I. I actually gave my best and I did everything right and I was still not good enough then. Then you've got to accept that. And I would say there's very few people who did everything right and weren't good enough. But. But that does happen. I don't think Kerr made many mistakes. I think he would be the only athlete in that race who didn't really make a mistake yet. There were other people better than him. So he's just got to shake his head and go, well, these guys are too good for me on the day. Whereas Inger Britzen really made some mistakes in, in that event.

Um, yeah, if you'd have been nitpicky, you could really. And you maybe have to be in an Olympic final, you would say that Kerr probably tried just too hard to go round. And Gibritson on that bend with 150 to go, he could have just held his shoulder there, just held slightly inside and just waited till the hundred. That might have been enough to get him an inch, inch more because he kind of went and then had to back off and go again. But yeah, he had done that before in the World Champs where he went around him on the bend. And that worked previously. So nitpicking. But I really want to talk about Cole Hawker. Um, I rewatched the race six or seven times already, kind of watching each athlete and what they did. And he ran as almost perfect race as you could. He was in the first lap, he was sixth or seventh back. And he was literally. That put him 8, 9, 10 meters behind Nico Bridgson. So a much more controlled first lap. And every lap he was just slowly moving up position. He was just maintaining a really, really good pace. And he made a few really key moves, especially with 250, 300 meters to go, where he saw what was happening and when he needed to, it was as decisive as he could get. And it was, now's the time to go. And firstly, I want to talk about his prep. What has Cole Hawker been doing in his Olympic prep? He's been doing something quite different to the rest of the guys. He's been doing cross country races, he's been doing 5 kilometer races on the track, he's been doing 10k races on the track. Absolutely wild. That is not what 1500 meter runners do. And he has always had an elite kick. Since his college days. He's had the most insane kick. It's just, it's just Wild how fast he can run the last 200. And now he's built the strength to stay with these guys at the whole race and then kick home like that. Just, you know, to see him do that prep and do something a little bit different and then it payoff like this in the Olympic final, win gold is just brilliant.

I love that observation and it's so spot on and it's what we profess in our, in our philosophy. Get strong as an athlete and so that you know, when you're asking to dig deep, you've got the strength and the mindset that you know you've done the work. And the guys who are fading at the end, they're not strong enough from the training, preparation, the endurance, that, that longer stuff, that longer endurance stuff, you know, that's, that's gone. Look, it's really helped Inger Britzen a lot because he's a great 5k runner and that means he can run the 1500 really well because he doesn't fade. And today he faded because he just ran his, ran himself into the ground. He lactated too much. So, so that was, you know, that's a great example of someone who's identified that. Yeah, I've got a great kick. I can't use it because I'm too tired by the time I get to the finish of these elite races. And he's good in his, you know, in his local area he's winning all these races. But when he gets to the, the world level, then, you know, you've got to have that strength to be able to use the kick and still be close enough. You know, if you timed a lot of the finishing when he's come fifth, sixth, seventh, he's come from eighth position down into fifth and he's running the hundred, the last, the last hundred meters of that race faster than anybody else in the race. But, but he's too far back because he can't keep up. And that's what he's fixed. He's now keeping up and he's just doing the same thing he's been doing all these years as a 1500 meter run, except now he's at the front of the field and it ends up giving him the victory.

Yeah, no, you're spot on at, at every level that he's performed at. At college he was, the kick was, you know, he was able to win college races and then once he got to the US Level, you know, he out kicked Negus at the US Champs to win that, which was a really, really strong performance. So, yeah, like you said, his kick has been at that world class level the whole time, and he's shown that. But yeah, to, to go from a 3, I don't know if it was 329 or 330pb down to a 327.3 or 5, whatever the Olympic record was. He just ran last night. Yeah, that's. That shows a difference in strength. And, and he. What he said afterwards was, he said, I. The pace was so quick, it was scary. He really was afraid to go with them. And that, that shows what Inger Prison was doing. The field was strung out, you know, with, with 500 to go. To see the field strung out like that. The top six were a meter apart from each other. Inger Pritzen was putting the pedal down. You know, he could not have been running harder. And Cole was saying it was scary to go with them. You know, your body was saying no, because it's just so quick. But he was saying to himself, this is the Olympic final. You know, this is the time to absolutely do it and go. And he was saying to yourself, you will regret this if you don't go with him. You have to go with him. You have to go with them. And then with 250 to go, same thing is, you know, your whole body is saying, this is too quick. I'm going to blow up. And he's saying, I just have to go with him. And then to have that run at the end, I just thought, unbelievable.

Yep, we've probably spent too much time on that one.

But I do want to make one last, one last point, which is I did a video kind of saying what the current ingredients and rivalry was and who to watch for. And in the video, I said, don't forget Cole Hawker. He's got the best kick in the world. And that could be the difference in the final. And someone commented, smartass, saying Cole Hawker is not in the mix. Don't kid yourself. Oh, no, don't worry. I let them know about it. So did many other people. So if you want to see that, it's on our Instagram. I did repost that. But look, the reason we bring that up. Go on.

No, you were dead right. Look, that's one of the messages we're trying to get across as a coaching tip. We're talking about this so that it's fun to talk about it. There's no doubt about it. But we're trying to give coaching tips along the way, and that's clearly one of them, is everybody's a Chance, everybody's a possibility of winning. If you just believe in it and execute the way that's going to be at your strengths, that's how you're going to get the result you want.

Well, this is actually point number one of what we want to talk about. It all ties in together is every single person, no matter what race you turn up to, you need to be able to adjust your race plan at any time. We're seeing this time and time again in the Olympics where athletes come in with a pretty known strategy and if they commit to that strategy, no matter what, it often doesn't turn out very well because races change a lot. And this is a 1500 we're talking about, let alone a 100 kilometer race where you're. Or 110 kilometer race where you're riding for 90 kilometers, running for 21 and swimming for 2. It's so many more things can go wrong and so many more things can pop up, which is where you need to be in the mindset that you have to be able to adjust your race plan at any time. We've seen some athletes not do that, which is really disappointing. We've seen some athletes do that and not hesitate in the moment like Wholehocker and come out with a really, really good result because of it.

Yeah, there's no doubt. And we've got so many examples of what we want to say in this particular point is to. You have to be able to adjust and be flexible. And you know, you can't just have plan A. We need to have scenario possibilities. And, and you know, we're so adamant about people executing well. But in events where, for example, the Olympic triathlon, Olympic distance triathlon, you know, it's a completely different event to a 70.3 or an Ironman where it's a time trial where you're on your own. Was the Olympic distance race is bunch right. Where there's drafting. And so, you know, there's different tactics in that. There's different skill sets. There's, there's your ability to ride in bunches, your ability to corner, accelerate out of corners and ride a road bike. You know, these guys are all triathletes who have grown up possibly on time trial bikes. And you know, that's your ability to adjust to the situation you're in. And so some people don't do that so well. Some people are great at time trialling and they'll never be good at Olympic distance races because they just don't have the skill set for the, the bike section of that event, the swim and the run are still time trials. That hasn't changed. But the bike is the difference. And that's a good example of why some people are quite good at that, and some people will never be good at that because they just don't have the skill set.

Yeah, it's really every single event we've kind of spoken about so far. We spoke about the triathlon last week. This lesson kind of comes up about knowing the requirements of the race and what possibilities there are. And if we look at the. Okay. I mean, we spoke about Wild last week, but we do want to touch on it again because we've seen continuous rhetoric that, you know, it was a really gutsy run by him, which it was, and that he gave it all. He put it all out there, which he did. He left it all on the line, which he did. But there's still the rhetoric that it was a smart race to try and beat Yi that early. And we just can't get over the fact that we really don't want to be critical of a silver medalist at the Olympics. You know, he's doing things that are unbelievable. He's a 1335 K runner. The why he's been able to train his running to get to that level fresh is unbelievable. He left no stone unturned to be able to be a better runner than Yi. But there's no doubt that him running 2.43pace for the first 5k led to him blowing up and averaging a 303 pace for the second 5k. And we just want to reiterate that we talk about this example so often that for athletes that do a 70.3. If you're having trying to average 200 watts and you ride 230 for the first half and 170 for the second half, yes, you've averaged 200 at the end. But you will suffer in that last part and the way Wild suffered in that last one K, where he had a piano on his back, was an exact representation of what we're talking about. Him and Yi average the same time for the race. He was 2 seconds slower. They both averaged 253 or whatever it was, or 255 per K. But you saw the different ways they got there and how painful that was for Wilde at the end. And yeah, we. Again, we don't want to harp on that too much, but we really believe that that is the difference.

Yeah. And look, that we're not.

It's.

It's coaching tactics. It's not criticism. We're trying to get coaching tactics out of it. And we've talked about Ingrid in the same way. His, his tactic was what was wrong, not, not him as a person. And. Yeah, and so we're trying to, we're trying to establish that, you know, there's, there's better ways to get the same result. And, and we've highly criticized Ingabritzen's result tactics. And so we're doing the same. You know, learn a lesson of if you don't, if you are happy with the fact that you gave it all and you still don't understand that if you had done another method, you might have got a different result, then you're not learning anything, I don't think. And that's the main point. Yes, we agree with all that. You did give it all. You tried your best, you are an incredible athlete. No question about any of that. But there's a better way. And if you had have been slightly less gung ho in that middle section, when you were challenged by Yi at the finish, he couldn't respond because he had lactated so much that, you know, all he could do is try to get to the finish line ahead of third, who was coming fast as well. And so, you know, if you're, if you're just going way outside your zone, then you can't respond. You know, no different to watching Poga attack Remco on a climb. If Remco tries to go with Pogaar, he's going to lose five minutes. But if he stays within his limitations and tries to go just a bit outside of it, he's going to limit his losses more. This is the examples I'm giving so that when you are challenged at the end, you've still got something you can actually fight for. But when you're lactated, like, you can't respond, you're. You're dead in the water. You're sitting duck. And that's the consequences of your tactic. But if you don't actually know that that's what's happened, then that's a problem.

That is point two of the lessons that we've really seen is that how important controlling your pace and your lactate levels and your energy levels are. And again, we look at what the Olympians are doing, they're in a different scenario. They're trying to win a medal, and so they're kind of having to go out of their comfort zone a little bit, and they should be training for this where they have to have surgeries, they have to practice running at this level. And then having surges if necessary. But as age groupers, we don't have to do that. We just get to ride our range or run our range or swim our range the whole time. But you can see how important it is, even for the Olympians, even though this is part of race tactics, every time they do something that's slightly faster than their potential, so often it leads to a blow up. And we saw it in the 5k with Sergei versus Kip Yagon. They had. If you didn't see it, they're two of the fastest women ever. They've both got the two fastest times ever in the 5K. Came together with two laps to go, Sigai tried to basically run Kipjegon off the track. They ended up almost hip and shouldering each other and almost falling. That incident cost Sagai a podium. After that, she couldn't recover. And when you're on your absolute limit in a race and you have, you try and hip and shoulder someone, especially that the weight that they're at, I actually don't know what Sigai's weight is. I imagine it's around 50 kilos or less. Like super, super light, lean athlete, hip and shotting someone in the middle of a 5k is a disaster for you. And actually we saw it a few times in the final. Brian Coleman in the 1500 got knocked and got tripped a little bit. And then bang, that's his race done. He got spat out the back so quickly. Kijeltra in the 10k also got knocked with 2 laps to go. And he was someone that was surging up and back, surging to the front, coming back, surging up to the front, coming back. He didn't have the kick in the last 200 meters, 300 meters. And so they were really surprising but clear examples to me that when you're on your limit, it's so important for you to stay in that range. It's set. If you dip under, you risk. Think about this for a half marathon. If you just have a few K's between 10 and 12 or 13, where you dip under your kilometer pace for five or 10 seconds because you're feeling a little bit good in that section, you can blow up at the end and that becomes really apparent.

Yes. And for the listeners listening, when you say dip under, it means run faster or go above your level. And you're not talking about going under your level or easing up, you're talking about the opposite. So flirting with your lactate levels, even these interruptions to your stride pattern, you're Running at such a high intensity or you're competing, it doesn't have to be running, you're riding or swimming. You can't afford to have these little surges unless you've principally trained like that, unless that's your fast twitch tybus makeup, genetic makeup that you are able to cope with that. And there are lots of athletes out there who can do that and that's the best way for them to actually attack the field and not make it a time trial. So we've got lots of examples over the, over the century of people who are good at that. You know, cyclists who can, who can attack the field and do 10 second surges and 20 second surges on a climb where everybody's on their limit, get a gap of 20 meters and then just go back to their threshold and keep doing that all day and killing the person who can't actually do that, who's just a pure threshold rider. And so you need a lot of these weapons in your arsenal so that you can adjust to something that's being thrown at you. And so getting knocked or getting checked is an example of how a fine line you are on to blow up because you hyperventilate without even doing it, because you're holding your breath, because someone's bumped you and you've got out of your rhythm. I don't know if people understand that you lose that rhythm of normal breathing and adrenaline rush because you've been knocked or actually affects your, your everything physiologically about your ability to perform what you were so smoothly doing a minute ago or a second ago to now have to adjust to, to this. And mentally it's, it's shocking. You know, you've ever seen people who've fallen in the middle of the middle of an event, they get up and, and they charge back to the back of the pack and you know, and they're done. They try their best, but you know, that big surge, that running, you know, 10 seconds faster for that 200 meters to catch up than they would have done before, they just build the lactic up so much that they actually can't get on with it. You know, the famous example of an Olympic park, I think it was with Ron Clark back in the 60s stopping to help Landy. You know, my memory of that is ingrained that, you know, and going back to go on to win the race was incredible. And that doesn't happen very often. That's an example of the opposite happening and that's a rarity. But yeah, you're on a fine line, finely Tuned athletes, unless you're well trained at that, you're going to blow yourself up. And that can happen with your execution as well. If you just go past the limit too soon then you might as well not have a tactic at all because you're not giving yourself a chance to perform the way you can. And that's I think the disappointing for a lot of athletes. They're dumbfounded at the end of an event where they've gone what just happened, you know, I don't understand why I couldn't finish off that event. And it could be because you haven't prepared well. That could be a reason. But more than not at that level you have prepared well. It's just that your tactics, you got carried away with running too fast or riding too hard or swimming too fast too early in the, in the event that's above your level and you haven't trained that way. So why would you expect to be able to perform at the end when you are lactating so bad? It's like there is, you know, we talk about the piano on your back. It's just like carrying an extra 50 kilo and you can't function. And that's the point we're trying to get here is it's such a fine line. If you get that wrong, you will not be able to perform the way you want to.

It's just awesome to see these examples in real time. And Claudia Hollingsworth, 19 year old Australian who just had a such a wonderful Olympic experience. She's domestically been so strong in the 800 in Australia. She is beating all our experienced girls in the 800. She's such a talent coming through, ran at absolutely terrific heat as well as she could. She was 158 low, very close to her PB, made it to the semis and then unfortunately she was in Keely Hodgkinson's heat who is just far and away better athlete than 98% of the girls in that field. And that whole field got carried away in the semifinal with running Keely's pace. Keely just went out. She's a 154 runner. She's running 154 to 156 pace, you know, and none of those girls can run that pace and, and even though, and Claudia will learn from this and she's young and she did say that she regretted her decisions tactically but they're used to trying to fight for fourth or fifth or sixth position, but fourth or fifth or sixth in that semifinal when Keely was out front was a 20, 26 second first 250, a blistering pace in that first 250 where if you're, if you're going for position, you're running one or two seconds under what you should be. And it's so easy not to realize that because the whole pack's doing the same pace. But it was just another example of what we're talking about, where they're running at an athlete's pace. It's far better than them. And she didn't look like the same runner in that last point 50 of that semi final. Same thing, because the start was just far too fast. And yeah, there's a whole lot of things at play there. The adrenaline of Olympic final, the fact you've already run a heat, you've already got some fatigue in your legs, but that was clear as day to me.

Well, you don't have to be talking about Olympics, Jordan. You can just be talking about a park run on a Saturday morning. And, you know, you lined up and you were able to run 3:15 pace for 5k. And 700 of the other runners can run something between 3:15 and 7 minute k pace or 8 minute k pace and everything in between. Yet in the first 3400 meters, the majority of the field are all running 315 pace and then they progressively slow down for the rest of the 5k run. That's the mentality that we're trying to stop and it happens at the Olympic level and it's happening every weekend in a parkrun. But if people just understand that concept, even a commentator like Gerard Whateley was pleading for athletes to not blow themselves up in the first 200 of a 400 metre and not blow up in the first bend of a 200 in a 200 meter. You know, for a commentator to actually pick up on it, for me it was like far out. If he can see that that's a bad tactic, you know, why aren't the athletes understanding this?

I just googled Sir Guy's weight, by the way, and she's bang on 50 kilos. And you know, talking about a park run example, if you've ever run a park run time trial where you were trying to run as flat out as you can and you know how tired you are at 3 to 4, 4k where you are on your limit and every step is the max lactic you can handle, if someone came in and tried to bump you there, how much would that throw you off? So that is just an interesting example of what we're talking about here that you really want to do everything in your power to stay in your range and stay at your pace and not do anything to go over or under that to throw yourself off. And it kind of leads into the next point about staying healthy. And for someone that's super lean like Segai and a lot of these athletes, they are on their limit weight wise. This is just one example example of that means they're at high risk of being sick. And this is something that when you're coming into race day and you're 10 days out, you need to start thinking about all these things and start checking off all these things about. There's all the things we talk about in other episodes of getting your equipment right and dialing in your sleep and nutrition and thinking about what work looks like leading up to race day. But nothing is guaranteed for race day. And getting to the line healthy is such a battle, even for Olympians. We're seeing so many Olympians get Covid and have to pull out of their event that they've worked so hard for. We're seeing Olympians get sick, which is just so unfortunate. And you want to do everything in your power to stay healthy. Paul Linden hall tore her calf 10 days out from the event. You know, you come in with such good preparation and then something happens where you get a muscle injury. And so it just reminds us of, you know, you really want to do everything in your power. Things are uncontrollable for sure. Just to start really thinking about that last period, just make the right decisions to get to the start line because that is sometimes stops people from actually getting, getting to do the race that they want.

Yeah, and it's a tough one, isn't it, because you don't intentionally get sick and you don't intentionally get injured. But we're just trying to make the point that you need to have that as your mindset is, look, I'm getting closer to the event that I've been training for. I could give myself the example. I've been training for the world titles at Townsville for almost, I think, 16 months now. And, you know, who is to know that two weeks ago, it's only four weeks away, three weeks away now, that someone was going to say, you're not going to do that event, you know, and that you're just going, well, that's not going to happen. I'll be fine. And there are examples of, well, you can't do that event and. And you have to actually refocus yourself on something else. And and so that's hard in an Olympic period where it's four years in between events, you know, to have that happen to you is the worst scenario that you could possibly have. And we know that Covid was going right through the village at the Olympics and a lot of the swimmers couldn't compete. I can't remember the 1500 metre swimmer for Australia, Pallister, I think it was, couldn't do the 1500 and, you know, she was, you know, really in great form. And. But that's. That's really unfortunate. And it's. It's. A lot of the times it's just out of your control. You can do things to prevent that from happening, such as wearing masks and staying away from crowded situations, where we know from COVID that that's how easily things get spread. But if you've got a child that's at childcare, good luck with that because your child's going to go to daycare and come back with whatever's going around. And, you know, you just can't avoid it sometimes. So it's easy for us to sit here and say, you know, getting to the line's hard and you got to try and stay healthy, but you can still do a lot of things that will contribute to helping that. And you mentioned, you rattled them off basically. Trying to sleep as much as you can, getting the most amount of sleep possible, is going to be the one thing that's going to allow you to recover and make sure that you're not sitting on the fence between overdoing it and underdoing it. Recovery is everything. And sleep is one of the main ways that we can get our body to heal while we're sleeping. And we know that from science that good things happen when we're asleep. And if you're not asleep for very long, it's hard for good things to happen. So you need to factor that in. And, you know, our immune system is being stretched. We are training right at point of tipping over that sickness or injury. So we've got to be really in tune with our body and understanding. I don't feel so good today, so don't do the session. Even though it says, my coach says this is what I should be doing. You know, have a conversation or if you're getting coached by yourself, take the conservative line. You know, getting to the line under train slightly is still better than being on your knees at the start line. That's my impression.

Yeah. And look, this episode is just full of us being couch critics almost and putting out 2 cents to everything. But it's part of the fun of the Olympics is to look at things and for us, look at what can we learn from this, what are they doing, what are the top athletes in the world doing and what are we noticing and what can we learn from it, and what are we noticing that compared to our own athletes? And that's really the fun part. And the next point is along the same line, is prioritizing your own preparation and what you need to do for race day. Now, one of the themes of the Olympics has been it's kind of Team USA against the rest of the world. There's a lot of back and forth between everyone hating on Team USA and Team USA going, well, we're going to stick together and we want to be the best. And it's quite funny to watch, but One thing that U.S. athletes got a bit of flack for was, quote unquote, kind of sooking about the Olympic Village standards and then leaving the Olympic Village and checking into their own hotels and really agree with this mindset and it's personal preference, for sure. But they've decided that for them to have their best prep possible, even though the Olympic Village is a great experience, they want to go put themselves in the best position to perform well, and that's getting good rest and good sleep in a proper hotel with proper food. They weren't happy with the standards for an elite athlete at the Village, and I actually commend that decision.

Yeah, you want to have everything. We just spent five minutes talking about that. We want to have everything in your preparation to be positive and look the social side and the experience of being an Olympian and being in the village would be something that you want to take, you know, remember for the rest of your life. But you probably would remember if you succeeded in your event more than the experience of being in the Village. If you look back on, you know, I've asked Julian Payna, who's an Olympian, you know, he loved that. But, you know, concentrating on the event was first and foremost his priority. And after your event, you can the Olympic Village, but making sure that you're doing everything in your power to enable you to perform the way you want to. And if that means, you know, going to a hotel so you can get a bit of sleep and staying away from the noise, then that's what you should be doing. And I have no issues with that. And, you know, people are trying to do their best preparation and if that's part of it, that's what they should be doing.

One quick point I want to talk about and I say quick because I don't know all the details. I'm really trying to find out more specific details because there's not as much information about it on the swimmers training schedules. But this theme that's coming up is more people are conning onto. Something we've been asking the question of for a while now is that is swimming training culture outdated and swimming volume outdated? And Cody Simpson came out in an interview and just said that, you know, this expectation that Olympic swimmers swim 10, 12, 14K a week no matter what their event is, a lot of them are getting sick of it and they're looking for more balance in their life. And I think it was Cam McAvoy who won the gold medal in the 50 meters, went from basically almost retiring from the sport because he was doing so much volume and it was killing him to realizing that maybe that's not the only way for a 50 meter swimmer, which is equivalent to 100 meter dat sprint in the athletics. He didn't need to swim 14k a week. He could swim, he could get away with swimming 1 or 2 to 4k a week and do shorter sharp stuff and do other stuff outside the pool to get a better result. It's like a 100 meter sprinter doing 100 kilometer running weeks like a middle distance runner, they're all doing the same volume. It doesn't really make sense. So that's been really nice to see. And the fact that that's getting more attention, I really do love that.

Yeah, 14k a week. They're doing 14k a day. So you know, they're doing more than I've, you know, I used to run. They're swimming twice a day and look, his event is 50 meters and you know, it's, I get it, you need to be strong as an endurance swimmer so that you can swim fast. And we, we push that as cyclists and runners. We want, we want you to do endurance training. Your aerobic fitness is key. But he's just the f, he's now the fastest. He's won the Olympic Games, 50 meters sprint, he's the fastest swimmer in the world. And he used a conventional method, an unconventional method that was so much different to what the average swimmer who, who he's competing against. And look, it was only, you know, millimeter difference between first, second, third and fourth fifths. But, but, but he's the one who won. So he's done it by doing a completely different style of training which I think is, you know, super impressive and I love it. When people try something and break new ground and you know, it's no different to the Norwegian method or, you know, it's great because people are breaking boundaries with different methods and one size doesn't fit all. We know that and I love that.

Yeah, sorry, I was just spitballing random numbers there. But to clarify here, the top swimmers are doing 3 to 5k a day and so that ends up being 25, 30, 35k a week. And he's saying doesn't need to be that much. He can do 2 to 3k a day and end up being 10 to 12, 14k a week. So yeah, do you want to clarify? I was just throwing random numbers out there. But to finish off, let's talk about the mindset. These are the last kind of key two lessons we want to talk about, which is just we believe some of the most important things you can learn from watching these Olympians. And really half the battle is your mindset around training and race day. And it's the biggest thing that stops athletes training consistently apart from injury or sickness. And that's going through periods of non motivation or losing sight of the goal or losing sight of the journey of why you're doing it and then how you actually show up on race day and deal with race day nerves and anxiety. And it's one of our most popular topics when we talk about it. It's one of the most frequent things we talk to athletes about is often beforehand we're trying to calm race nerves and give them confidence in their ability. So talk me through what you've seen and we both have a couple of observations from the mindset. When we get to watch these just elite human beings turn up to the most high pressure environment possible that they've been working four years for. And it all comes down to this two minute race, or this five minute race or this next section.

I don't even understand the pressure that they must be feeling at this level at the Olympics or the World championships or whatever your event is the top event for your actual sport because the Olympics is probably the worst, because most of the world and look, a lot of people don't have anything to do with the Olympics, but they're not sports minded people, so that's fair enough. But we're talking about most sports loving people around the world are watching. So there is a big audience watching you perform. So just put yourself in the shoes of an athlete or a swimmer or whatever sport you're playing. You are just being, you know, analyzed to the nth degree. Your Facial reactions, your comments, your body language and the expectation. We talk about that a lot, expectation of an athlete. And, you know, we've talked over the journey about the expectation on Ash Barty to win this, you know, to win the Australian Open in her home country was massive. And the way she dealt with it, using a psychiatrist or psychology, getting help to understand that you have to just concentrate on your performance and not the weight of expectation of others. This is what we're talking about, is trying to separate that and making sure that you're thinking about the things that are going to contribute to your performance rather than the things that are going to prevent you from performing and thinking about that. Possibly 2 billion people are watching me right now. I don't think would be contributing to my performance so detrimental. I would just be, you know, totally thinking about the wrong thing and being in the moment. I talk about that a lot to our athletes is thinking about each race or event that you're doing. Whatever your sport, whether you're running a marathon or whether you're doing a triathlon or whether you're in a bike race or a time trial, is being in the moment and concentrating on the things that are happening in that moment that's actually going to give you a better outcome. And if, you know, if you're doing drifting off and not concentrating on things that are going to help you, then of course you're going to lose time and perform poorly. I love giving examples of what I'm trying to say to make it more understandable for people who are listening. And look, this is a very different event, is the women's canoeing kayaking. And we happen to have one of the best performing women in the world. And she's one, I don't know, 15 world titles. And she won the C1 in Tokyo. And I want to use her example of mindset that the pressure she would have been on with the camera on her in Tokyo, she was the last athlete. It is a time trial. It's an individual time trial down a river with all these turns and poles that you've got to navigate your way around. And it's who's the fastest without making any mistakes, who doesn't touch a pole? And you get penalties for touching poles. So you've got to navigate yourself upstream, downstream, across this. Across this rapid river that's flowing. And it's a time trial. So she's sitting there as the favorite number one on her jersey. All the other athletes have done their time. She knows the time, and so she has to perform and beat that time. And she goes down and she does it. She wins the gold medal. Four years later, she comes back, and here she is again. But she's not number one this time. In the K1, she started seventh, so all the other athletes were ahead of her who were going to compete after her run. So she goes down and sets a time with same pressure, but not the pressure of other people's time. She just has a go at setting the fastest time. And now every competitor after her has got the pressure of Jess's time to battle in their mind, you know, here's the standard, now I have to beat that. And this is the measure of mindset, I think, because they're all equally talented paddlers, all of them. They're the best eight paddlers in the world. And here they are now they've got a time that's set, that's really fast, and it's putting pressure on them. One by one, they all crumble. And not one of the next six paddlers beat her time. And I find that that's an example of how Jess stood up four years ago in Tokyo with the pressure of trying to beat the fastest time. And now she's set a time, and these other athletes are now in her position that she was last year, and not one of them could actually match her time. Which to me says a lot about their mindset of, you know, I'm being harsh when I say they crumbled, they didn't achieve the. The victory, and they had world champions in there who'd won, you know, titles. And then when she came to do her defend her title in the C1, she. She actually was second last, and there was the world champion behind her. And she again sets the fastest time, and there's only one paddler to go behind her. It's the world champion. And you would think that she knows the time that she has to do. And she's got all this pressure on her now of, well, am I good enough to do this or am I not? And she's not. She can't rise to the occasion. And I think there's a lot to be learned about that example of a person's ability based on, you know, what the expectation of what they're supposed to do next. And if most of those athletes had not thought about Jess's time, and I'm not privy to what they were thinking by, imagine they were being affected by the standard that she'd set, and they're not concentrating on, you know, I need to paddle this way for this this gait and I need to do this action, this skill a little bit better and concentrating on being in the moment and then whatever the result is, I've got to wear that. And probably that's what they did do. But, you know, but it's certainly an example to me of. And even her sister, who's lucky to make the Olympics, was grateful to be in the Olympics. She qualified. She ended up winning the other. There's only three gold medals up for grabs and both Foxgirls won all three. And I think the gene of mindset is definitely in the Foxgirls genealogy because she, she won the gold medal and she wasn't even nearly the favorite. She was probably ranked eighth. So I don't even know where her ranking was, but she was, she, in her own words, said she was lucky to be, to be selected for the Olympics. And here she was. She actually had to beat her sister in the event that she won. And that was the third event that Jess didn't win, but Naomi won that event. So that's a great example of time trialing and understanding how to use your mindset to think about the things that are important to get the outcome you want.

Shout out to those sisters who are currently 15th on the medal tally by themselves, which is pretty incredible. Look, I really want to talk about Keely Hodgkinson's 800 journey and race. It was just another example of this where her mindset had to be everything. She had the talent, no doubt, but she's had the talent last few years. And she was silver at Tokyo, silver at the World Champs two years in a row. And she did a great interview this year prior to the Olympics where they asked her about her psychology and sports psychology mindset around that. And she used to palm it off. And she's only young. She used to palm it off and say that she didn't need it. But she quickly realized how much those second places were affecting her and that she needed a sports psychologist to help. Just work, help her work through that. And basically she had the mindset that she is willing to lose and she is able to deal with it, but also she's going to go for that gold medal like nothing else matters. Absolutely everything. And you have to hold both those beliefs true at the same time. There can only be one winner in every race. And for yourself, you're either going to get your result, you want your PB or your time and execute right, or you're not. But you have to be prepared for both of those outcomes. You can't just be prepared for one, because if it doesn't go so well, how are you going to handle that? And I think so good to see Keely execute so strong, so perfectly. She ran under control. She did what Jakob didn't do first. 800. She went through a lot slower than she normally does. High 57, she can go through in 56 and still hang on. She was at the front of the race, but she controlled the tempo. So she was willing to let everyone sit behind her. But she's not time trialling and pacemaking. That meant in the 200 go, she still had the kick and she had the strongest kick to make sure no one could come around her. And it was still 156time. It was absolutely brilliant. But she's basically run two even splits. You know, high 57s have given her a 156. Just unbelievable execution. And she was nervous as hell on the start line. And in that interview, they asked her, what are you thinking on the start line? And she said, I'm so nervous that I'm just saying to myself, it'll be over in two minutes. You know, just, it'll be over in two minutes. And you could see in that final, she wanted it so bad. She was nervous, but she'd done all the work mentally and physically, and the relief when she crossed the line was huge. But it does, it does bring that point back that you. You have to be prepared for things not to go well. And, and that's a really important part of the whole mindset of this process, I believe.

And I. I think the lesson that one of the positive lessons we learned from Josh Kerr not winning and from Jakob and Gabritsen not winning was they were prepared to lose. And they were. Whether this is rhetoric from them, but they were congratulating the winners and, you know, they put it on the line and they weren't good enough. And they, they openly said the best. The best athlete on the day won. And I think, you know, whether that's a story they've been told to say or not, but I'm hoping it's not. But I think that's the only way you can deal with this. And if you, if it's life or death, I just don't think it's enjoyable. And I can't imagine all of Great Britain expected Keely to win. She hardly lost a race in the whole lead up. So had she lost, it would have been a shock to everybody. And I think that's hard on an athlete to have that weight of expectation on you. And it takes a special athlete to be able to cut the noise out. And I think as age groupers, if we say too much to our friends and family, we have that expectation of that on us. So sometimes you want to have people in your corner rather than having expectation be on the journey with you to not set yourself up for failure by saying, this is what I think I can do, and therefore, everybody's going to be disappointed when you don't actually achieve that. I'm always a believer of keeping a lot of that to myself and maybe just to your close friend or your coach, where this is what my goals are and not blurting that out to the world and setting yourself up for failure and having to explain why you didn't do what you said you were going to do. I think there's a lot in that. And don't put pressure on yourself by doing that. As age groupers, it has to be fun. And if you do a pb, that's what matters. If you improve and you actually do the performance you wanted to do on the day, that's more important than a goal, target time, or a position. They're all things that help and you're happy if they happen and they contribute to the enjoyment factor. But that's not what defines you. What defines you should be the journey of you organizing yourself to get to the start line and then to have a good day and enjoy the process. And I think that's more important. Important. We're really honing in on Olympians here at the highest level, and that's their life. And, you know, it's different to what, but we're trying to give examples of even those people making mistakes. And so it's okay for you to make mistakes as well and learn from it. That's. That's actually what the purpose of this particular podcast that we. That we run every week for, you know, 250 episodes. We're trying to learn lessons from our own experience and from elite performers experience to pass on to you so that you don't actually do the same mistakes. You shortcut all those mistakes and have a better experience. We want you to enjoy your sport and have a great experience and so that, you know, it's a fun thing to do in your. In your life, apart from working hard at your job and looking after your family or looking after yourself if you're single.

Look, I think that's such an amazing point because as an age grouper, you're going to get friends and family who really want the best for you to ask you, oh, how are you going to go? What are you aiming for? And you get to dictate and set the expectation and that's really important to get on top of. And you actually have to think about what answer you want to give because it's quite important, like you said, because it can mess you with your own head. If you give an answer that's going to put pressure on yourself. And it's really important that you don't say because your friends and family don't know, they don't know anything about triathlon or racing or they're just going to go off what you tell them. So if you do something risky by saying, I want to break five hours for the half ironman, we know that time's not a good thing to go off because anything can happen that day. And then if you finish the race, you might have a great race, but your friends and family go, oh, sorry, you didn't break five hours because the wind was crazy that day or the course was just messed up, you know, Whereas if you can say to them, you know, here's what I've trained at, in training, my goal is to run at 5 minute pace to 5:15. If I'm really feeling good, I'm hoping I can run 5 minute pace. And if my plan B is that if I'm struggling and I'm not going so well, I can fall back on 5:15. And then that gives them a good indication of at the end, they'll say, because they have no idea how you went, they'll say, what pace did you run? And you'll be able to say 5 12. And they'll be like, oh, that's great. That was in the range you were asking for. So it's just these little things that can actually help set up your own mindset for success. I believe, and I really want to reiterate that end point you made, that this is the biggest insight that I have in this period is that we're not Olympians and we shouldn't try to be. And, and I always love watching the Tour de France, the highest level racing possible, Diamond League Olympics. It's unbelievable inspiration and it's really cool because you watch these athletes and how much they give to their event and you ask yourself, what if I applied myself just that little bit more? What if I took something from them and went a bit harder? And the saying is, leave no stone unturned. What if I turned over a few more stones and what if I committed just that a little bit more you ask yourself those questions, how could I be more like an Olympian? But you have to remember that they dedicate their lives to this moment and this period. And we're age groupers, so we can take inspiration from them, but we don't have to have the same expectations as them. And we can aim for more balance. And more importantly, we're a little bit more lucky that we get to enjoy the journey. Our results don't come to a one performance in four years, but like you said, if Josh Kerr, his post specifically said that he did everything he could to win that gold medal. He said, I got silver, but the journey was worth the gold. And for him to be able to say that as Olympian, he gave everything to the gold medal. Couldn't get it. But he still enjoyed the journey and the lead up and everything that brought with it. He loved the rivalry, he loved the beef that was there. For him to say that for me was just awesome. And so that's a really, really important mindset I wanted to finish off with.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more and probably said enough on that. And I really love this episode because, yeah, it's just so many less to be learned from it. And, and at the end of the day, just, just remember, you know, for some young people, they'll be inspired by what they see and they end up becoming an Olympian. And that's the, you know, that's what, that's what it's about, people setting standards for other people to be inspired by. And, you know, who's to say that someone out there listening, you know, isn't inspired by what they see on telly? And, and they're the next Olympians. Which is, which is what, what, you know, what we love about sport is the challenge, and people are up for it. And, and, you know, as long as it's. It's relative to what your balance in life is, is around, then, you know, go for whatever you want. And this, as I said to many athletes, you know, can I. If they've asked me, can I, can I? Do you think I can achieve this? And I say there's no ceiling on any, any person in any sport. You put the ceiling on yourself. And, and if you're willing to do the work, then you would be super surprised how far you can go.

Thanks, as always, for listening to another episode that was really fun. We're really happy to be back and bringing you consistent episodes. Dad. Hopefully no more blood clots will stop us. And we really enjoyed it, so we hope you enjoyed it and we thank you for your support. And we'll see you on the next one.

Sam.