7 Lessons From A 70.3

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined, as always, by your host, former Australian Ironman champion, Jared Donnelly. And I am Jordan Donnelly. Every race brings with it a bunch of great learnings and lessons. Whether you performed well or you performed not so well, there's always something to learn. And after the Geelong 70.3 last week, we've decided to break down the seven crucial lessons we learned from the race. But before that, our new segment. What are you grateful for? We'll start with you, dad. What are you grateful for?

It's a really easy one, Jord, and a lot of you would have already listened to one of our very first podcasts, probably in the first five, I think we ever did. A few years ago now, it was one of the athletes that we coach, Julian Painter. And for those who don't know who Julian is, He was a 5000 meter Olympian at Atlanta Olympics in 1996. So he's an outstanding runner and he's changed sports now that he's in his 50s, to riding. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to have known Julian Painter. He epitomizes everything about being a professional. And Even as a 50 year old, he still does the same things that he did to get him to the top of his sport at the Olympics. And let's face it, the Olympics is the pinnacle of every sportsman's dream, either the World Championships or the Olympics. There's no bigger event. And watching the way he prepares, the way he plans, the way he performs, he does everything, he ticks all the boxes. I've never come across an athlete like it, and it's no wonder that he was an Olympian. But he still exemplifies those traits now as an everyday masters rider. And it's been a privilege to be able to coach him. He just won three national titles in the time trial teams, time trial and road race. You know, he's a leader. He sets the benchmark for others to follow and we can learn lots from these people. And I'm so grateful to know him. And as with most times, when you prepare for an event and go to the event and finish it, it's always good to reflect. And I had the opportunity to go out for dinner with Julian and his partner and my wife, Andy, and your mum last night, and Julian actually presented me with a picture frame that had a picture of him running in the 5,000 meter at Atlanta, at the Atlanta Olympics. And with his number pinned underneath with a mess with a message of gratefulness on the back. And it, it really teared me up. It was, and it's doing it now because it, it just, it was one of those things that, you know, these, the, the number is special to him because you only get a front number and a back number. And he's put that in a, in a beautiful presentation and given it to me for his gratitude for me being his coach and that, that meant a lot to me and I was, yeah, I was really emotionally grateful for that whole journey. And last night was, was fantastic to, yeah, to be, to be part of, of his journey. And that's the reward as a coach that I look forward to with every athlete I coach where, you know, and I always say I treat everybody like my own children. And it is so rewarding to see people not just succeed. That's, that's really rewarding. But the process and the journey that they've been on with you, the reflection on going back to, you know, eight months worth of really difficult training sessions and, and that's what makes it worthwhile. So it's a long winded gratefulness, but one that I think really sets the standard.

It's an amazing gratitude. I'm looking at the frame right now and it is pretty special. And yeah, to see the number that he wore at the Olympics is pretty phenomenal. And so if come out with a bang with the gratitude, they don't always have to be that big, but it is definitely something worthy of being grateful for. My one's a little bit simpler. I am just grateful for the last bit of warm weather that is sticking around. It's nothing like an Olympic athlete, but it hasn't been the best summer weather wise for Melbournians. It hasn't been extremely warm, so at the moment just soaking up every good day possible. And you caught me yesterday and just said I had to go outside and go for a ride because it was such a good day. So, yeah, that's my gratitude is just to be grateful for the warm weather.

Awesome.

To our normal segment, what's caught your attention? What's been catching your attention lately?

Well, definitely I watched a documentary.

A.

Couple of weeks ago and it was on Dustin Martin. And I must say, for those of you who are not football supporters, and we were really big football supporters when our team was winning, but we're not so good now when our team's not so good. So I'm not a real fan of Richmond or Dustin Martin, but I am a fan of him now watching that documentary and be worthwhile. Nick Rewald interviewed him and what I heard from Dustin Martin was not what I picture him as. And I said to you, and I think I said to your brother, there's something different about Richmond. There's something different about the way Dustin Martin is now as a human being. When he was younger, of course, he was young and reasonably immature, like all young footballers are, and they're caught up in the team environment and the boys club sort of thing and, you know, looking from afar, you think, oh, you know, good footballer, but what else? But. But listening to that interview, there was a lot else to be likable. He has been given a lot of help from other people who are really good influencers in terms of the mind mindset. And it's a really underrated area that we feel is it deserves more attention. And I just think what they're doing at Richmond Football Club is a great lesson, a great leader of how to get people on the same page and be process driven rather than results driven. And the motivation comes from ticking the boxes each day. And it reflects in triathlon or cycling or running. It doesn't matter what sport. You need to be process driven and enjoy that process so that when you get the right outcome, you look back and go, oh, I made it. It's almost like a shock when you get to the result and what was their result? Three premierships in four years. And they're all on board, they're all on the same page, they're all planning together, they're all performing together, they're all preparing together. It's no different to what you would be doing as a triathlete, aiming for your next event, your next half ironman or Ironman, a cyclist, going for the big A race. You've just got to have this part of your preparation, equally as important as the physical side of your preparation. You've got to understand that it is a process. There are going to be highs and lows along that journey and the person who can remain vigilant and consistent is going to get the best outcome. So process driven for the outcome.

And you'd think that in a game like ASL football, being process driven is going to be the least effective because there's just so many factors. There's 22 players on a team, you're playing 18 other teams in the comp. It's. It's a team competition, it's not you versus the event. And really 17 teams are losers throughout the year. Only one team is a winner. And that's the team that wins the grand final. And so it's so much about the result. And so how can, you know, process driven be so good in such a team environment? And the fact that it works for them, they're so process driven that the result takes care of itself and they win three premierships in four years. And I hate, like you said, giving Richmond any props, but the fact is that's what they've done. And yeah, that that process driven is, seems to be the key to it. And the fact is that if they can do that, then in an individual sport like triathlon or cycling time trial or even in cycling races, you can be process driven as well and have more chance of a successful result.

You have to be on board with the plan, don't you? Everybody has to be on board in a team environment and if a few aren't, they either get left behind or get discarded. You can't carry passengers in a team event. As an individual sport, you have to be committed, but you also have to have your family members on board. So it's similar, you know, everybody has to be on the same page. If you've got someone working against you who's jealous that you're training so much or, or you're not giving them enough attention or your work suffering, it won't work. It has to be all together for the process to get to the end result.

That's a good one. What's caught my attention is I've been reading up on a few studies recently about performance, legal performance enhancers, things that can help your performance and looking at the value of placebos versus the detriment of superstitions. So looking a lot of things at a lot of studies that show when taken as a double blind control test, certain supplements or performance enhancers, again, those are all legal studies, had no benefit. But outside of the test, anecdotally had hundreds of anecdotes of people swearing that they helped their performance. And so if it helps you, if you think it helps you and you're in a better mindset for it, then maybe it's worth doing. There's lots of people that have little things that they do for their performance. They eat something or they have a certain carb drink or have certain gels or certain supplements that they believe is helping their performance. And I think there is huge value in that and it's quite underrated. Even if it actually doesn't scientifically or the science doesn't actually prove it. If you think it's helping your mindset then you might perform better because of it. But there is a fine line there between when you start doing things as a superstition and it becomes detrimental to performance because you don't think you can perform well without them, you know, and suddenly if you don't have that supplement available, or then you're already telling yourself you're not going to perform as well without that thing when it didn't even work in the first place.

Interesting conundrum, isn't it, really? And it's a really good point. Looking back on things that I definitely felt was no basis for doing this, but I knew that it got me in, in the zone and so that's what I did. And, and I maintained that win, lose or draw, if you're playing a team sport, if there's an individual performing well or performing poorly, that was my, you know, my go to method of preparing or executing as well. So. So I think if you think that it's helping you, then you should continue to do it.

One of the most interesting studies I looked at was that cold water therapy has actually a lot less evidence than everyone thought, you know, and to the point where it's actually, there's actually no much difference in terms of recovery yet. I will, I'll, to the day I die, say that I feel so much better tracking my legs in cold water and if that's as big as placebo as it is, then so be it, but I'll keep doing it because I feel a lot better for it. So that was a clear example to me.

Yep. And look, the horses in the salt water, and obviously footballers go to the saltwater and if you went to cold water and it wasn't salty, is there a difference? Just going to a lake where there's no salt as compared to going the ocean where it's full of salt? And, you know, there's conjecture about that and just, is it the cold water or is it the salt? You know, we don't actually know, but, you know, certainly dipping your legs in makes them feel better yourself. There's no evidence that suggests that it's a good thing or not. It's the same with compression boots. You know, there is no evidence to say that that is right or wrong.

Well, the study I read was actually looking at that. It was looking at cold water and compression and there was more evidence for compression than cold water. So that's why it was pretty interesting.

Yeah, well, I do have the compression boots and I've looked at all the studies and it comes out 50 50, but I'm still wearing the compression boots.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So that's what, that's what's caught my attention because I think it's interesting to think about it. You look at Rafael Nadal, he has the most superstitions out of a tennis player. He has to put his bottles in an exact spot when he's before each point in between games. And I think that to him becomes a bit of a detriment because it can take away from his focus on the processes that matter. Because putting his drink ball the right way doesn't. And you could argue that it does put him in the right frame of.

Mind, but puts him in the zone.

Yeah, but it seems a little bit.

He wouldn't walk. You were a ball kid, so you saw a lot of the superstitions from the tennis players and a lot of them wouldn't walk on the white lines to and from their seat. Yeah, but you walk all over the white line in the rally.

Well, the funniest one I saw was because there's two ball kids at each baseline and it's play. Ask for balls to serve from whichever one has whichever one they're walking towards or something. And then players would have this ridiculous superstition where they'd only take it from one side. One ball kid, they pick a ball kid and they'd only take balls from them. And so the rest of the ball kids all had to get the balls to that one ball kid. And while it was a hassle for the ball kids, it was just ridiculous because they would get angry and agitated when the ball kids weren't up to scratch, you know, if they weren't getting the balls there fast enough. And then you're letting your performance be affected by these six kids, these six 13 or 14 year old kids on the court. That is just an absolutely ridiculous superstition. That is 100% taking away from performance. And there were multiple players that did that and I would just look at them and go, you, you're in a grand slam and you're getting agitated at these kids. And obviously it's performance related. They're more agitated themselves. But to be putting an external superstition thinking, I'm going to play better if I'm getting the ball from one side is a pure example of what we're talking about here. That's the detriment.

The other example was if they just served an ace, they want that ball back. Yeah. So they're not going to hit any other ball. How many balls are on the quarter at a time? Six. So they'll just. I want that ball back.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, moving on to today's topic, seven lessons from a 70.3 race. So the first one we'll go through is that we believe not enough people have listened to our podcast by looking at. By looking at. Analyzing Geelong. And we were actually lucky. We had a few people come up to us, which is happens at races where people say, I listen to your podcast and one guy came up and said, oh, yeah, I don't have much experience, but I listen to every single one of your podcasts. And his time was phenomenal. He was. He was not far off the kind of pro and elite category. And he said, right back to footy season. Now, we both loved that. It was great. Yeah.

Definitely. Clearly our words have gone on deaf ears or people did actually hear it. But, yeah, like we've said in many of the podcasts, it seemed to me like 95% of the field don't have a plan. And that's kind of one of the things that's pretty important.

Yeah, I mean, one thing that we said in summary was that you could tell by watching through body language who was in control of the event and who was at the mercy of the event. And that's quite clear when you're getting to the end of the block and the end of the run, you know, if you haven't performed to your numbers, to your plan, so to say, then you're going to be at the mercy of the event and you're going to be just getting through and suffering through, whereas those in control will have. And it shows in that body language, they're in control right through to the very end of the run.

Yeah, it was so obvious, wasn't it? And we stood there for, you know, nearly three hours watching all of the runners and we were waiting for, you know, our particular trivalo runners to come through. And, and you could see, because people run past you four or five times, so you can see the changes in their body language and, and even their mindset. We had a couple of examples of things going wrong. And I'll use one example, I won't use any names, but one person's bike wouldn't change gears and that can be incredibly infuriating. So stuck in the one gear the whole way for 90Ks, that might be okay in a flat course, but this course had headwind and hills and, and you're in the wrong gear going up a hill, you know, it's going to blow your legs to pieces. So to his credit, he Was very angry throughout the whole bike ride. But he got off and changed gear. You could change gears manually. Had to get off, stop, and push the button manually on the rear derailleur.

Which is worth it in some sections.

Yeah. But anyway, come to the run, you know, has he got in a mechanical with the run? No, he hasn't, but he's still carrying the baggage from the mechanical. The mindset of woe is me, which is a fair enough reaction. This is crap, but it's not affecting your run. You've got control of your run. You've got back in control of your event. So get your mind off what just happened and concentrate on executing the run as well as you can so you get something positive out of it. And he did that beautifully. He was still angry, and he gave me the body language, and I said, yeah, but you're running now. Yeah. And bang, ran beautifully.

Yeah, that's what we want to hear. And I mean, this. This first point is by no means a criticism of anyone. We never, ever criticize anyone that puts on a number and takes on the event. The point of these lessons is what can you do to have a more enjoyable experience next time?

Yeah. And you've done all this effort and spent all this time and paid all this money to do something you really love, why not do it with an enjoyable aspect to it rather than being a painful experience? And even though it's painful, you've still signed up for the next event already since Sunday. So I just think there's a better way to experience the event. And. And that's sort of what we're trying to get across.

Absolutely. Lesson number two, people are still not riding the bike how it should be ridden.

And look, normally I would be an armchair judge in this, but I happen to be in the race on the bike, and I was astounded at the way people were riding. It was. It was a little bit disappointing, actually. And even in our own little group, there was still poor executions of. Of the bike leg. And it might sound critical, and it's easy for me because I've written 220 different time trials in triathlon and time trials, so I should be across and. And know what I'm doing. But, you know, there are a lot of people in that event who have done 15 or 20 half Ironmans, so they should actually be across it as well. And to have so many people ride so hard so early, when I know what I'm doing and I know the numbers I'm riding at and the speed I'm riding at. And I'm thinking, boy, there's some really good cyclists in this event. I was always going, whoa, standards pretty damn good. I'm not really passing many people. And to put the scene right, the race had a tailwind generally all the way out to the first turnaround, which is, you know, roughly 25k out and 25k back was really a headwind. So the hardest part of the course was on the way back, and you're doing that twice, so you get the headwind twice on the way back. And there was a little. A bit of a rise on the way out, but the majority of the time, you're absolutely flying. There were people averaging 45 to 50 on the way out and. And smoking it. And when we turned around, they all basically fell apart into the headwind. And I started passing people with ease. And I'm thinking, no, they're not good bike riders. They have just ruined their race in the first 25k. They've ridden way too hard and progressively, you know, they got slower and slower till literally some of them are riding, for example, 1 hour 30 on the way out for the first half and 1 hour 45 for the second half. And I can tell you my second half was faster than my first half, which is, you know, lucky it did do that. Not lucky. That was my plan. But imagine if I'm sitting here saying, I actually didn't do what I tell everybody to do. Yeah, so. So I really was disappointed in the way that I see people still executing and clearly are not listening to our podcast.

Yeah. Point number three. Lesson number three. And this is one thing that stood out to me clearly, and that is your power range for the day. So what was your minimum and maximum power? And this is a bit of a unique one because we talk a lot about what is your average power that you're aiming for. What is the range that you want to ride between for most of the day? You know, you want to be sitting between 250 and 270 watts, but you don't often think about, well, what were your max efforts for the day? And I think this is a really good point. You brought it up to me because your personal range was, correct me if I'm wrong, 250 to 270. Exactly. Exactly. Yep. I think that's why I said that as a first example. And your maximum one minute effort was 2, 295. So just outside that range. And if you know when you're using power, you know that you're constantly up and down that is a strength of yours that you train a lot is to just hold a power number and not you can sit on 260 and only go to 265. Whereas most of us ride 2602-902402-90300. Jumping around a lot, you know, but you can compare your 1 minute range to athletes who, you know, you've looked at data and you've seen that their range that was supposed to be riding to is lower than yours, but their best one minute was way higher. 400 to 450 watts.

Yeah, one example was the range one rider had was two, I think it was 210 to 230. And they ended up riding 220, I think, which they were in within the range. So first glimpse is, oh, they rode okay, they were in the range. But then you go to the peak power, peak 10 seconds. And I went through six or seven examples to see what was happening and compared it to myself. I'm not saying that mine's perfect, but, but I, out of the six people, I mean, I think I was eighth fastest on the day or something at 2:13, but I picked out a 220, a 215, a 220, a 230, a 240 and a 250 rider. And I had the lowest peak power for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds and a minute out of all of those other riders. And that shouldn't be the way it is. I should have the highest peak power because you're ridden the fastest and these people are riding slower and lower power than me. Yet they had higher peak power for, you know, 10 seconds up to one minute. It did change two minutes, but they were still higher than me. And we're using the example of the two, 210 to 230. So here's one minute. His 10 second was 498 watts. My high 10 seconds was 330. So he was 160 watts higher than me for 10 seconds. What, what's so significant about that? If you keep doing that out of every turn and let's face it, Geelong had, I think 15 turns by the time you finish that event. If you keep gassing it for 10 seconds, you are burning 10 matches and it's going to affect your run, it's going to affect the rest of your ride. And you know, every time he's going out of a corner or turning around, he's, he's pushing 160 watts higher than me, yet he's a 40 watt lower rider than me. So it's a ridiculous comparison to see the differences. So then I looked at 30 seconds and I looked at one minute and my one minute was 295, which is literally 35 watts higher than the average that I ended up at, which was 260. And his one minute was I think 390. And his range was 210 to 230. So 210, 220 was his average. So that's 170 watts difference. Mine was 35 watts difference.

You're spending a full minute one hundred and seventy watts higher than your range.

No wonder you can't run evenly and have strength at the end because you keep gassing yourself. It's a 90 kilometer time trial. It's not the best one minute. Who cares about that? And then I looked at 5 minute, 10 minute, 20 minute. And then I looked at where on the course they did those. And a lot of the peak power was downwind with the tailwind. And my best 30 minutes was my last 30 minutes into the headwind. And that enabled me to have a negative split. A faster time, higher power. I averaged 260. My last 30 minutes I averaged 278 because coming home strong I, I felt I had lots of energy left to execute on the way out. I averaged 250 something in the first half. So you know where it counts. The bike's going slowest. Bump up the power. Yep. Outside the range is okay as long as you can manage that. I'm not, I don't recommend that. But your range is there for a reason. But you know, in my case I was doing just the bike leg. I wasn't running. So it was okay for me to, to max out at in the last 30k because I knew I was in control of my power. But yeah, the peak power comparison was an unbelievable shock to me to see riders significantly averaging lower power than me, but smashing me in the peak power under five minutes.

I was shocked when you said to Me your highest 10 seconds was 3:30 because it's so easy just on a little rise out of a turn, just for a quick 10 seconds, just to push 350, 380 watts. And so for you to have that level of control, to just never go above that and just never ruin your legs, allows you to sustain such a good effort for 90 kilometers.

Yeah, and you just want to eliminate the spikes. And you know, we're probably giving away all of our secrets we give to our one on one coaches. But the more spikes you have, the more times you're gassing Yourself, which means you're burning matches, which means you're going to fatigue quicker. You're using glycogen too quickly. You know, you want to have a slow burn by spiking all the time with this high power. You know, that's just proved that you don't need to do it.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting watching everyone come past. I was standing at the top of the first hill and I could see that knowing your time was very much at the top. Upper end of times, one of the upper end of times for the day, you were very controlled coming up that hill. You saw a lot of people. It's exciting. That's the most crowd sprinting up that hill. They probably would have been pushing 500, 600 watts up that section. Out of the saddle, really out of control. And that's the kind of burst that's going to really hurt four and a half hours into the race.

Yeah, look, because we do that hill twice, but out of transition up that hill, I think I got passed by five or six people and I probably beat them by 25 minutes on the day and that's how significant it is. What are they doing? Why are they doing that? And the second lap, exactly the same people out of the seat. I saw them.

Yeah.

And I'm just looking at my number. I'm not going above this 295. And it was about a, about a 50 second climb. I'm not going into the three hundreds here.

Yeah. So that leads us to lesson number four, which is you touched on this at the start and it's a continuation of what we're talking about right now. But it's clear that, yeah, people still don't have a plan for the race if you're doing.

Yep. Even if it's a bad plan, it's still better than no plan. And what does it do? It makes you think about what you're going to do throughout the day. So that's what we want. We just don't want people to randomly line up at the swim and just be sheep and just jump in and follow what everybody else is doing around them. You know, if you, if you're clever enough to have form goggles and you can see, you know, the pace you're swimming at, then you can control. Oh, I'm supposed to be doing 150 per 100 and the goggles are telling you that you're doing 120. Well, that's, that's not helpful, you know. So Your plan is 150. Ease up. Your plan's working straight away. Within 30 seconds, you've already saved yourself a heart rate through the max and and actually helps you for the rest of the day. The same with, you know, the plan. What is my plan for the bike? What is we talked about the range. You know, we have a range upper and a lower range. Based on your testing, what is your range? And if you look down at your Garmin and you see you're outside the range, well, the next question is, is that okay, where am I on the course? Am I into a headwind or uphill? Well, that might be okay. Am I in a tailwind and I'm outside the top end of the range? That's not okay already your plans worked. This is my range. You've set that up as a plan and it stops you from blowing up. This is the reason for the plan. You get off the bike, what's my range to run at? It might be 5:10 pace to 5:25 and you're looking down, feeling great. 4:30s on the watch for your first K. Well, the plan will stop you from doing that. You've still got to actually execute and slow down. But you know, the majority of people who run their first K fastest for the day is up there around 90%. And the guys who actually execute a plan with their run, where they run the same pace pretty much from start to finish, are the ones who are more successful.

And the question you have to ask is, how did you finish off the race? What was your last 30, 40 minutes like or hour like? Were you, were you in control or like we said at the start, we were at the mercy of the race. And so lesson five was, did you have a plan or not? Because if you had a plan, you would be finish finishing off the race in a better position. And lesson, Sorry, that was lesson number four. Lesson number five is, have you done enough preparation? Have you done enough endurance preparation? Because if you have, it will help you at the back end of the race. And if you're really fading at the end, then maybe you should ask, did I do enough endurance?

And that does relate to the plan. Joe, before we we go to that point, which is have you done the preparation? So your plan is only as good as your preparation, remember? And it's based on your preparation, not your ambition. It's based on your ability of what you've actually been training at and testing at and what your ambition is, what you want to do that might not correlate to what your ability is. So if you go outside the plan, then you know if you haven't done the preparation, you will fade anyway. And you might have a good plan that says that, you know, I think I can do this. But unless it's based on sound facts, you will fade and the plan will be wrong, which is not helpful either. So the preparation, the endurance run, and the endurance ride, they're going to be found out in a half Ironman. If you haven't done that key, and we've talked about this in many of the podcasts, you know Steve Montaguetti. What did he tell us? What was your key training session, Steve? Oh, without doubt the endurance run. You know why he does a marathon? Well, in this event, you're potentially between four and seven hours out there. If you're an elite, you're at the 4. If you're mid packer, you're 5. If you're a beginner or a newbie, you could be at six and a half, seven. So if you haven't done the work, the endurance work, you're going to fade anyway. No matter how good your plan is, no matter how good your preparation is, you have to have done that type of endurance work. So that's what really stood out to me, was people starting with the wrong pace based on poor preparation. It's a disaster waiting to happen. Yep.

Because a really good question you ask is, okay, how many endurance rides and endurance runs did you do? Did you do one to three endurance rides around the preparation? Just thinking that will be enough. Did you do half a dozen or did you do it every weekend for the last 12 weeks leading into the race? 16 weeks.

And look, I just, I don't like using myself as an example, but I happen to be in this event and prior to the event, I had done four 90k time trials race conditions. So I was practice, practice, practice, practice race conditions. So, so I was prepared and knew exactly what my numbers were. And, and I'd done one of them on the course.

Yeah.

So. And you know, of course the wind conditions were slightly different, but, but that's a whole new coaching aspect of how to ride power in, in the wind. But the, the main point of knowing that is that just up before the race I got ill and, and I was wondering about my preparation. Should I actually plan differently? Because for 10 days I basically rode the bike once or twice due to.

Probably five days out, you didn't even know if you were going to race.

That's right. So then you have to actually adjust things and not knowing whether it's going to affect you. So you have to make minor Adjustments. Even though you've done good preparation, these are the key things that you need to think about on race day.

Spot on. Lesson number six, equipment problems. This is one that can sometimes be out of control, but you still want to be able to do everything in your power to control your equipment.

Yeah. And we did talk about in one of the previous podcasts, getting your equipment right before race day and, you know, a couple of messages or my handlebars started to come loose. Well, that just ruins you. Your whole mindset is, I can't sit in the right position. I'm forever holding the bar up, it's flopping, I don't have the tool to fix it. Well, how did it get there in the first place? Is it just a loose screw or, you know, it can be unlucky, but did it get checked by the bike shop? Did the bike shop make a mistake? So there's a hundred things can happen. You know, I know that one of our guys got a puncture. You know, the question is, were they new tyres? But you still get punctures with new tyres. But. But maybe the tyres were a little bit old and. But we don't, you know, you're still going to get a puncture. If you get a puncture, you get a puncture.

Yeah.

Your gear's not. Not changing. You know, they're examples of things, Things going wrong. Getting a penalty box, you know, spending five minutes wasting your time in a. You know, these are the things that can go wrong. It's not an equipment thing, but it can really sabotage your mindset, like we talked about early.

Yeah.

So. So you try to eliminate and get all these things right beforehand and sometimes you're a bit. A little bit unlucky. And, you know, I definitely was. That was the one thing that I was worried about was when I'm in a team situation, if I was right, doing it by myself, it would be less of stress to me. But because I had a swimmer and a runner relying on me, I was paranoid about getting a puncture. And, you know, I had really good new tires on. But still, I. Oh, it could happen. It could happen. And that, you know, we ended up winning the. Winning the team's event. But it could have been, you know, puncture could have cost us.

Yeah. And that's why you've just got to do everything in your control to make sure that you've done everything in your power if something unlucky happens, and so be it. But we also saw a lot of dream bottles coming off of the course.

We did yeah. And people just dropping it out of their hands or it coming out of their drink bottle holders. And. And you know, some courses are really rough. There were a couple little speed humps outside, out of the, going out of the park. There were three in a row and you crossed them four times. And you know, and there were some really bumpy bits in the park. So the potential for your drink bottle to come out could derail your race because you've lost your nutrition. So that has a massive effect as bad as a puncture.

And one of our athletes, I thought this was really smart, lost their drink bottle early and actually stopped riding, turned around and got it because they decided that the value of their nutrition was too much to lose. They were willing to lose a minute half on the bike because otherwise the whole race could be derailed.

They could lose 15 minutes in the run because they didn't have the nutrition or half an hour in the run. That's how bad it can be. Great decision to go back and look. Some drink bottle holders are just not up to it. So you need to spend the money and getting a tight fitting one and then you've got the fine line of I can't get the bottle out, it's so tight. So you know, you just got to make sure your equipment you're happy with.

That's why practicing the course is important. If you've ridden those bumps before, you'd know whether you.

Exactly. Yeah. Where the bottles stay in or stay out.

Yeah.

Nothing changes. You know, the road's still the same.

And that leads us to lesson seven, which is again, knowing the course.

Yes. I was astounded to hear people talking about or asking others, is there many hills in this course? Where's the turnaround again? I was just shaking my head, standing there, listening, thinking, what? You haven't driven over this course. You don't know it.

Yeah.

And that could be totally out of your control. You might have arrived, but we have to register on the Saturday.

Yeah.

So you've got all Saturday. Your flight might have come in from an interstate and you could only get there for the last check in, which is 4pm You've still got time to drive the course. It's only one lap. Because it's one lap times two. There's no excuse for not knowing the course. And how could you possibly have a bike plan based around power for high power for harder bits, low power for easier bits when you don't know where they are? How many turns are there? Is it going to affect your normalized power compared to your average power. And it will massively. Because you're turning so often the pressure's off the pedals, which means your average power is dropping, but your normalized will stay high. So I was just flabbergasted that people didn't know the course and the running course. I didn't realize there were so many hills. Well, what, you hadn't actually ridden your bike over the running course. It was literally only 5k from one end to the other. So that's just basic preparation. And it was really disappointing to hear people come to an event who do all this effort. Yet a basic part of it is they're happy to forego.

Yeah.

Which is going to end up in a poor result.

Yeah. And I laugh because you use the word disappointing like you're talking to one of your children or you're a teacher. Really disappointed in this student. And it's because you're saying it from a place of love and care that you want people to have a better experience. And I think that we both definitely, we might have sounded critical this podcast, but all of it was designed to help people get better.

Constructive criticism and post race criticism. You learn. I've said this to many of our athletes. You will learn more from failure than you will from success. And you need to analyze post race exactly how you performed and be brutally honest with yourself and ask some other people. I did this. Is that good, bad or indifferent? And you know what it is? You know, if I started off and ran 5 minute K pace and finished at 6:30, you don't need to ask anybody if that's good or bad. You know, why did that happen?

Yeah.

They're the things you need to post race do so you don't do that same mistake again. And the things we're talking about here, you know, we're highlighting them so that even the people we don't coach are going to get an advantage from listening to this so that they don't do this in the next race. Oh, that's what I was doing wrong. I've just heard that. That's new to me and that's fair enough. You don't have all the answers as a triathlete and that's why you're listening to this podcast, so that you can get some more information. And, and what we're giving you is going to really help you next time around and you won't make those mistakes again. And if you do, that's the definition of insanity.

I think it's part of both our personalities as well, is that after, especially in a sporting capacity, I don't really want to get told right it. Well, I want to get told what I need to improve on and I've always been that way in any team sport I've played. I would hate it. It's obviously nice when the coach says you're doing well, but I want the, I want to get off and the coach tell me, you need to fix this, this, this, this. Because I want to know how to get better. And so that's all this is. You know, it's every race you should be asking, okay, that was great. How do I get better?

It's hugely motivational to me, actually. I get more motivation out of performing badly. I'm just going, that is not going to happen again. Why did I fade there? Did I stuff up my nutrition? So go back to practicing nutrition in, in your training and you know, with, when you've got intensity, practice your nutrition. You know, did I run the first bit too hard? Clearly I thought that I could manage that, but I can't. So I have to rethink that. I might need to extend my endurance training. Maybe I miss too many. You know, you just gotta really self reflect and as brutal as it is, you know, and it's disappointing for yourself and for if someone's helping you, but without that you actually don't learn.

Yep. To finish off with, I just wanted to touch on some positives of the day just to almost balance out a little bit. I personally just love the triathlon atmosphere. It is such an electric event. There's just so much support, so much good energy. Obviously the athletes, they lose energy as the race goes on, but I loved standing there watching the runners and the people that came past that were smiling, they'd see someone in the crowd, they'd know and they'd really get up and about. Our tribal athletes gave us feedback and said that every time they came past it was a real good spurt again. And I just, I just love the atmosphere and I love seeing the amount of people having a crack, you know, really, you can see people have done preparation, people have been training hard. It means a lot to them and I just love to see people challenging themselves and like you always say, putting a number on and it's so rewarding to cross the finish line when you challenge yourself like that.

You're spot on with everything you just said then. And, and no matter how the day went, it is an unbelievably emotional time. That last 100 meters onto the carpet and you see the finish line and whether it's joyous happiness or thank God, I'm finishing, regardless of the outcome, it is a special event. Putting yourself to the test. And really, you know, I think people underestimate how brutally hard, you know, anything from Olympic distance upwards. I mean, the Ironman is the ultimate. Obviously, you know, plenty of people can finish them, but, you know, they quickly forget. It's almost like when I talk to my wife about childbirth, you know, the. How excruciatingly hard childbirth is. But you go back and we had four children, so. So you'll forget things that are. That are really bad in your. In your thoughts. But. But yeah, you know, it is a day where you are being challenged, you are being pushed to your limits, and. And it's really great watching people really keeping control of themselves and focusing and still enjoying it, and a lot of people happy waving and stuff. Even though I think that you'd be better off keeping all your energies from waving. But, yeah, you need to have the right mindset and enjoy the day. That's one of the things I say, good luck and enjoy it. And if you're not enjoying it, then you might think about another sport, because this. This is one of those sports that's gonna really find you out and expose all your weaknesses. And it's all in front of everybody. To see.

It'S raw.

It is raw. And one of the people who was with you and I, our swimmer in the team, and she was saying, oh, if you're going well through the crowd, it's great, but if you're really struggling, it's like going through purgatory. It's like, oh, this is not good with all these people watching me performing, not at my best. And. But that's, you know, that's why we congratulate everybody for putting themselves on the line and. And putting themselves out there to be. To be ridiculed or to be praised. It's. It's what it's about. And as long as you enjoy the process, then you'll line up again for the next one with some more ammunition to perform better.

And last thing to finish off on the last podcast, you. You did mention that you'd be better off saving your energy and. And not waving too enthusiastically at the crowd. And I can confirm that you gave us a wave twice on the bike, so he'd. Some of your own advice there.

Well, I can tell you, I summarize it, that over 90 kilometers, those two waves were going to be okay. But if I had kept doing that and seeing you 17 different times on the course, then it would have been a problem. Yeah, that's my excuse.

Good way to finish off. That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening. See you next time.