7 Must-Do Training Rules for 2022

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. Happy New Year and welcome to 2022. We are back this year with the Get Fast podcast and we've got another big year ahead. After a good holiday period and break with every new year naturally comes with a lot of resolutions and goals. And today we're going to take you through the seven must do training rules for 2022. And often it's less about the resolutions or outcomes themselves and more about what actions do you need to take or change this year. So, dad, welcome to the episode and welcome to the new year.

Thanks, Jord. January is my favorite month of the year. Not because it's just my birthday, but. But I certainly love January. I love the warm weather in Melbourne. We wait a whole year to get to January. The days are longer, the sun's out, got the wind in your face and the sun on your back. Can't be any happier than that.

It's unbelievable. I mean, we've had some great weather. Touch wood, big touch wood on that. The last couple of weeks. It's been a great start to the summer here in Australia in the Southern hemisphere. Shout out to everyone in the Northern hemisphere who has to go back to training in the cold at the moment. But I say touch wood because they were predicting a really stormy summer again. So hopefully the weather keeps going like this. Starting off the year, let's go straight into our gratitude. What is your first gratitude for the.

New year on the same theme? I love January because it's holiday time in the Southern hemisphere. Obviously everywhere in the world, Christmas has its break period. But for some people it's literally two days, Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. But for the majority of people who live in the Southern hemisphere, it is absolutely holiday time. And I'm grateful for the opportunity for all of my family to get back together and reunite from wherever they've come from, all over the place, whether they've been in COVID lockdown or whether they've been interstate. We all got together, get together and spend some time together. So I'm really grateful to for the opportunity to catch up with everybody. You're all growing up and going your own separate ways and it's really good to get everybody back around that holiday period.

I was one of the tens of thousands of people in Melbourne that got Covid over the break and it wasn't fun, I'll say that much. Everyone reacts differently and it was actually a tough few days there. But my gratitude is that I had the vaccine. I think had I not had it, it would have been a lot scarier. You don't really know what the outcome's going to, and everyone's reacting differently to various strains or whatever. I think some people, I think the majority are finding that if you had the Omicron strain, then most people are better off. That and the Delta strain seems to be a bit worse. I don't know which one I had. They don't actually tell you, but me and my friends were saying that we had a pretty rough few days where we had a really high fever, et cetera, and we were saying, geez, this is what we're like with the vaccine. Imagine without. And that's not to be political or anything. Some people get the vaccine and had Covid and they're fine, so well done to them. But for me personally, I'm grateful for vaccines and that I had it. And when I got Covid, I actually felt pretty safe. Someone asked me, are you scared of COVID And I said, not really, because I'm vaccinated, so that should give me the best protection. But it really ran rampant through Melbourne over the last couple of weeks. Just insane case numbers throughout the whole east coast of Australia. And we're seeing plenty of people get it. And so once again, we're in a different situation where it's. It's a different world we live in. Last year it was, can we minimize it to as little cases as possible? Now it's just kind of. Everyone seems to be getting it. It's how do you manage it and expect that you're going to get it and how do you manage it? Which we'll touch on in this topic. What's caught your attention to start the new year?

I suppose, on that same theme, guys getting sick with COVID and. And people not starting the year off the way they wanted it to have happen, and having to readjust your goals that you were so keen on 10 days ago, that's what's caught my attention. And I think inevitably everybody's going to be touched by Covid at some point. And it's the timing, I think that that is really what you want to have happen. And we've got no control over that either. So we've got very little control over the whole last two years. But, for example, the nationals titles for cycling in Australia on This coming week, it's the biggest week in Australian cycling. We've got the national road race and the national individual time trial for the elite. And there's some fantastic Australians come home for these national titles. It's also the national titles for the masters category for, you know, everybody who's just an everyday cyclist, male and female and, and you know, there's the one, the one part of the year where you get to race alongside the elite guys. You're not in the same race but you're on the same course doing the same event. So that's what's caught my attention is the preparation plans that people have had. Going to something like a big event like this and all of a sudden getting to the line seems to be difficult because we have one of the events during the week is the clubs, teams time trial, four man team and you are racing in age categories and we've entered five trivalo teams and every single one of those teams has got one or two people who've just got Covid. I had someone this morning, the race is in two days time. I've had someone this morning contact me saying I'm sorry, I've just got Covid today. So getting to the start line seems to be just as hard as the preparation and the race.

This is a theme just in general, not, not to do with COVID I mean for, for anyone, but specifically age groupers, getting to the start line is half the battle. Getting to the start line healthy and inform, it really needs to be a big focus. And we always say this in our programs, in our videos, in our membership site, is that your big goal is to train consistently, but it's also to make sure you just get to the start line because that seems to be a big hurdle for a lot of people.

I got it a heap of examples talking to one of their triathletes in Hong Kong, Mark, and I think this is his eighth event that's been canceled on him. The event hasn't been canceled, but he can't actually get to it because of the rules around Covid about how long do you have to be in quarantine for post and pre and access to different countries. And to be to be preparing for eight different events and have them all canceled is pretty big thing to happen. Now one of their cyclists has had four years in a row where something's gone wrong come January where he's been aiming for an event that's, you know, his event for the year and what for some reason it just hasn't worked. You yourself have entered. This is your fifth triathlon you've entered and various reasons, couple been canceled. Yeah, got an injury on one, another injury on another, Covid on this one. So, so there's another example of you at 5 attempts at try and get to the start line, but you can't. And it's not through any fault of your own, it's not through any fault of anybody's. It's just the way things happen. And you've just got to, you know, pick up your bat and ball and go on again and get prepared for the next stage. And that's a hard pill to swallow, I think. You're preparing so well for an event and all of a sudden it's taken away from you. There are that many examples of this happening all over the world. So you can't feel sorry for yourself anymore. You've just got to get on with it, start again. Not start where you finished, have to start slowly and build again. And they're the key things that people must remember. Look, I was in good form two weeks ago. We don't start where you finished off. You've got to start slowly. And the example I use with you is your first ride was zone one recovery. Your second session was an easy jog, your third session was zone two. And you know you're in great form before this happened two weeks ago, but we didn't start you with intensity. You know, the next session is going to be 75 to 80% and the next session after that's going to progressively get harder, but only if you feel like it. So there are no rules here. But that's what's caught my attention is what happens to people when they can't get to a start line. Matthew van der Poel, back injury, all of a sudden in great form now he doesn't even know where he's going to be riding in the next eight weeks or not. That'll have a huge effect on his season, his Tour de France, everything, the team, you know, then you have to, you have to cop that. It's part of, it's part of what you do as an athlete. It's not always going to be smooth sailing. There's going to be bumps along the way. So it's a long winded what's caught my attention. But I think it needs to be really pointed out that very few people have a year on year on year on year on where nothing goes wrong. And you know, that's, that's the measure of how motivated and how determined you are as to how you respond to things that go wrong. It's all very well been, you know, downwind sailor, a fast running forward who doesn't want to go into defense. You know, they're the only examples of, you know, you've got to test yourself on when things don't go so well.

And I was actually thinking about this because one of our really good athletes, probably our best triathlete, we have races basically in the elite category, has had an unbelievable six to nine months of training, incredibly consistent, no injuries. And I was thinking about them last week, this is ironic thinking just they've put together such a good training block and they don't miss a session. Just week after week of really good training volume.

And his three week holiday training program has been incredible.

Yeah. And this person's a physio as well, so they take care of themselves and so they've massively reduced the risk of injury. Haven't been sick, anything. I thought, geez, that's a, that's a good run. And then they got hit by a car on the weekend and yesterday. Yeah. And I just thought, geez, it took that to stop their halt of their training progress. But it just reminded me that those things can happen. You can be as incredibly consistent as possible. You can do everything right and then someone else's fault, someone can hit you and that can take it away. And luckily he's fine and he should still race this weekend, which is really good to walk away from a crash. But yeah, that was a reminder to me that sometimes there's things you can control and our advice is always that you got to be aware of this, that getting to the start line is a battle. So do everything you can to make sure you don't make a mistake yourself. That stops you from getting to the start line, overdoing things, getting yourself sick. But other times it's completely out of control and that can just happen. And for my experience over the last three months, you know, coming into trial season and entering all these races and each one fail, each one fail. And each time we've had a good conversation and it's exactly what you've said, just, all right, the decision's been made, can't do this one, move on to the next. And that's actually been really helpful to just make the decision and move on. No point dwelling on it or like you said before, pick up your bat and ball and go again. That's been the most helpful advice for me. What's caught my attention is over the holiday period we've had A few athletes talk to us about inevitably falling off in quotation marks. The wagon a little bit. With a really busy December or really busy holiday period with other things in life, we've had a few questions of people asking what they should do about it if training didn't go to plan. And we spoke about this before the new year, where most people overdo it. But inevitably, sometimes life just gets in the way. Family holidays, and then they feel like they've fallen off the wagon a little bit. They're asking, do I redo that block of training? Do I just let it go? What if I've lost too much fitness? People are worried that they've undone a lot of hard work leading into that period. So what's the mindset there coming out of this period if it didn't go as well as you wanted?

How ironic. We were so worried about people overdoing it. And that was what our podcast pre Christmas was all about. Don't overdo it. And yet we've got a percentage. And it's not a big percentage, but we do have a percentage of people who actually went the other way and did very little. Sure.

A lot of people out there that aren't on a structured program are more like this, where because they didn't have the structure, it fell away a little bit.

Yeah.

Whereas if you had structure, it's a lot easier to stick to it.

Yeah. I'd love to see the percentages of people who did too much, didn't do enough, and did exactly the right amount.

Did you eat? Did you think you had a majority percentage overdo it like you predicted?

No, we were right in the middle there. People followed the program. I've had only a few outliers who I've just shaken my head going far out. That's exactly what we told them not to do. And I don't think I've had anybody who can really say that they've underdone. So I've been really satisfied people obviously taking notice of the advice and really, you know, taking it seriously. And I don't mean so serious that you don't, you know, spend time with your mates, training, but actually understanding when to spend time with your mates was. Was the advice we were trying to give. But post now, looking back, we knew that this would happen. There would be a percentage in three camps. Underdone, perfect and too much. So what is my advice? You cannot catch up. It's just not something you're back in your routine of work normally. So when are you going to catch up? But let's be realistic. You can do extra on weekends to rebuild your fitness in zone one and two. That would be my advice. The endurance session is the one where you can build your fitness back up if you feel like you've lost it. If you haven't actually trained much at all, you really need to retest. Yeah. Because if it's, if it's been two or three weeks or four weeks where you've done very little training, you won't be at the same FTP as when you finished November, start of December. You could have lost 10% in that four weeks. If you, I'm talking extremes. So there's a few things you need to do. You need to either retest, you need to not jump straight in. You treat it like you've been sick. You start progressing with zone one, zone two, zone three, whether it's swim, bike, run, you just build yourself up like you've been sick or injured. You don't just resume the program. Start with a test and start building based on your new lower number. If that's what it is. If you test and it's the same, very good. That's an excellent outcome. The reasons for that would probably because you may have a great base, that you've been doing this a long time. The, the people who've only been doing it a short time, they'll find the drop off is quicker.

That's a really good point. So I was going to ask, what about your mindset coming back? If you really feel like you've let yourself down, how do you cope with that mentally? You're just going to start your program back, but you're panicking a little bit because you feel like you've lost a lot of fitness. Testing is a perfect way to gauge, well, how much have you actually lost?

Yes, draw a line in the sand. And I've had to do it to myself regularly. And trying to train at a number that I'm incapable of achieving is going to be far worse for you each day. When you're going to do your high intensity session and you're failing the session because you're not fit enough at that number. So I'm realistic, I've done that. Now I don't want to do that anymore. I want to train at the number that I'm capable of achieving and what a different outcome I have. I know that I'm possibly 15 watts lower, but that's okay. I'm achieving the result in the training session and I know that if I keep doing this week, in week out, month in, month out, block after block, I will get back to where the number I want to, but I can't start with that number.

Yeah, spot on. On that note, let's get into the seven must do training rules for 2022. And if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, then I would challenge you to guess what the first one is going to be because it's as cliche as we can get for ourselves. But that just has to be said every sing. And the number one rule is I'm not going to use the G word, but that's what it is. But I'm going to say have a target and have something to work towards, AKA the G word is a goal. But it just has to be set to start with, you know, you have to have something that you're working towards. And, you know, if you think about the compass we talk about, you know, the North Star, you always have to. Whenever you're making a decision or you've, you're deciding what kind of training program to do, you need to be able to go back to your North Star and your goal and base your decisions around that.

Yeah. Just remember that each day, each week, each month, each year, you're on a continuous journey and you're in it for the long haul. We use that a lot. But you've got to have a destination point and it could be four destinations along that journey. Now I've reached destination A, I reset, go again, destination B. But if you're just driving around the countryside with no nowhere or any idea of where you're actually wanting to go, then it will have an effect not only mentally, on what's the point each day of getting up. If I start work at 7:30 and I have to get up at 5 to do that session, my motivation might not be really high if I can't look forward. See, I want to be on that start line. What start line? I haven't even got one. You know, I want to have something that I can actually look forward to to get me to get training properly. And you don't have to have a race, it can be, you know, I want to improve my FTP by 10 watts in six months time. You know, got a guy who's, you know, started with this over two years ago and you know, he had a lofty goal of 300 watts as his FTP. And when he started he was a long way from 300 watts. I'm thinking low two hundreds. So we're talking about 80 watt improvement. And before Christmas, he achieved it in two years. That to me was thinking about the big picture, setting a goal that's, you know, people say, can I do that? And I said to him, there's no ceiling. We said that many times you can aspire to whatever you want. It might take you five years to get there. You know, depending on a whole lot of things, what age you are, how much you've been cycling in your career or doing triathlons in your career, or doing running races. There's so many things that will contribute to how long it's going to take you. But don't put limits on yourself. Aspire to have something that's going to really challenge you. And at the time I was sort of saying, yeah, this is possible, but don't expect it to happen in six months. This is not going to happen. You know, since then I've had two or three conversations with other people who are talking about goals of FTP. If you're not selecting a race, an FTP goal or 10k PB or a 1500 meter swim PB, these are all really good things that you can just use as stepping stones to maybe an event that's in a year's time or six months time. So setting goals is, is really paramount to giving you the direction of your journey so that you can actually end up at a destination and final, finalize that destination by executing on the day and then resting up, restarting and setting your next, your next trip, your next overseas trip, which you know, which is what's your next target that you're going to achieve and the follow on from that.

And rule number two is what kind of athlete do you want to be? Because goals are great and the end destination is a great thing to look towards, but it's about the process of what you need to actually do to achieve that goal and get to that destination. So this is basically specificity of training, but when you've got that end goal in mind, you need to ask yourself, okay, well what kind of athlete do I need to be to get that goal? What kind of training do I need to do to get that goal? If you want to be a hill climber, then your training needs to be geared towards that. If you want to be a 70.3 athlete, which we know is becoming increasingly popular, your training needs to be specific around that event and you need to do the kind of things that a 70.3 athlete needs to do. Compared to if you want to just do Olympic distance triathlons or if you want to do ironman but really getting specific about the type of athlete that you need to be will help in your decision making with what kind of training you need to be doing. And throughout the year, if you're ever getting a bit lost or off course, you can come back to this.

Yeah, and also we have events that suit people better. You know, we've had many podcasts on really heavy weighted athletes wanting to do events such as Peaks, which is, you know, 4,000 meters worth of climbing over 10 plus hours. And clearly that doesn't suit someone who's 100 kilograms. It's not to say you can't do it, but we're talking about picking specific events that suit you and then training specifically for that event. And I've used the example of Sean, who wanted to do the Ball Ball Classic. And Sean was 104 kilo and got himself to 84 kilo and trained in the hills for two years to achieve that goal and finish in the top 10 and rode incredibly well. But, you know, he trained specifically for that event and did things with himself such as losing weight, such as, you know, making sure that he's riding the hills twice a week, doing the high intensity sessions, doing the recovery. Right, doing all the 1 percenters. Right. So that he became a hill climbing phenomenon and was challenging all the best climbers in our local group. Yet when he first started, he was getting dropped every single time he went up uphill. So there are examples of, yes, you need to select events that suit you better, but there's an example of someone that didn't suit him at all but changed, was willing to change everything about himself to make that goal probability and then training specifically for that goal. So there's no use you saying, you know, I want to be the best hill climbers that I can possibly be myself and just doing crit races and, and staying on. The example is in Melbourne, staying on the flatlands, which is the beach road circuit, where it's beautiful next to the ocean and, and you know, you're in bunches where you're hardly pressing the pedals. Whereas, you know, if you, if you want to specifically be a hill climber, you need to be nowhere near beach road. You need to be in the hills on one or two sessions per week and using the beach road circuit for your recovery. So the specific training is so important for the outcome of what you're selecting, and it's important to select something that is achievable for yourself. And the example we'd use is if, if you're wanting to do a triathlon, yet you have four children and you've got a job that's flat out. You're going to find it hard to be a triathlete. You know, it's not going to be something that you can fit in trying to do three different sports when your life is crazy hectic. You know, you've got to be realistic in what you can do in the day.

And that is merged with our rule number three, which is being realistic with your lifestyle. So you know, you talk about setting goals specific to you and what you can achieve, but you need to also be realistic with where you're at in your life right now. And you just really wanted to make this point for 2022 because you do see a lot of people who are working 60, 70 hour weeks and want to do an ironman and you're just saying you have to understand where you're at in your life and be realistic with that and accept that maybe this goal isn't the right time for you.

Yeah, prioritizing something that fits around your lifestyle. And I'm not talking about you as an individual. If you're a single person and you don't have any commitments other than looking after yourself, well, that's probably okay. The job might be 60, 70 hours, which might prevent you from training for an ironman. But if you've only got six or seven hours a week that you can allocate to train for an ironman, I would question whether that's the right event for you. There are so many other events that you could do that take less time to prepare, such as a 70.3 or an Olympic or a sprint. You're still doing a triathlon, you're still going through the process of training towards an event. But you've got to be realistic and understand, you know, it's okay, say plan, prepare and perform. But if you're actually not planning based around realistic lifestyle that you actually have, you're going to have so many failures along the way, it's not fun. Opening training peaks when you didn't do yesterday's sessions because you worked all day and you got home at 9pm and you're meant to do high intensity session. You got up at 7 and you're exhausted. It's demoralizing that you missed that session. No matter how motivated you are. If you're exhausted from working and I'm talking about a single person, imagine if you've got a family that you've come home to and you walk in the door and you've been working all day and then all of a sudden you're going to say, I'm going for an hour and a half training session. The popular popularity contest is not going to be won there. So, you know, I'm trying to say out loud that I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but you have to understand that there's consequences from your decisions. So select something that's still going to give you enjoyment, still going to give you fun, still going to give you motivation, still going to give you the endorphins of satisfaction, of achievement. But don't put pressure on yourself, that's going to cause other things to derail such as your family. And you know, I'm really passionate about this because I've seen so many people over the 40 years I've been involved in, in sport where the single minded, determined athlete has actually lost his marriage or lost his job, you know, or ends up depressed. You know, you've got to have the balance, so, so you've got to understand where you're at in your life, what stage you are and select events that will fit in with your lifestyle. And we, we interview people saying, join our coaching group, tell me about your job, tell me about your family, tell me about your goals. And the three form a triangle. And in that triangle, if one of those sides of the triangle family work and your passion, if one of those things isn't going well, then one of those sides collapses and the whole triangle ends up flat. So in order to keep the triangle as a triangle, you need to keep everything in check and keep a balance. And that's not, that's easy to say, it's not easy to do. And I'm a big advocate for selecting things that are achievable not only for you, but for the people who you care for the most.

The phrases I've heard you use in regards to this are training expectations and performance expectations. Because these factors, these other factors that will influence your ability to train and your lifestyle will impact your expectations of yourself, of what you can achieve in training. And if you're misguided in that, and if you're not realistic with where you're at, then you're going to be expecting yourself to train to a capacity that you can't actually achieve. And then a result of that is that you don't perform to the expectation that you have in your head. And I've heard you often say that you're going to be disappointed on race day. You say to athletes you're not being realistic with where you are right now. And that's going to lead you to train poorly and not train properly for the event. And therefore you're not going to get the performance you're looking for yet in the athlete's head they've got this goal of how they're going to perform on race day and there's a mismatch there and it's not adding up.

Yeah, it's interesting if I can hear the athlete say I'm okay, Jared, with the fact that I wanted to do 10 hours for the Ironman or I wanted to do 9:30 for Peaks or I wanted to run 320 for the marathon. But I know that the training that I've done isn't going to allow me to achieve those goals. I need to pick another goal that's a bit more realistic. I'm absolutely okay with that. But the person who says no, I still want to do 3:20 or I still want to break nine hours for peaks or I still want to go under 10 hours, I'm not okay with that. That's just head in the sand. Single minded, refusing to understand where you're at. Ambition and ability, getting them confused. Your ability is determined by where you are in a certain point of your training load. You may be a very talented athlete, but if you haven't trained, your ability is less than it should be. So your ambition of that goal will be, you'll be very disappointed post race day. Inconsolable probably. And will be standing there going, I don't know what happened. Instead of listening to the advice and maybe not selecting that event or selecting better realistic goals for the event. And if you're still wanting to do the event and you've trained 50% of the time, you need to reassess your goal of the actual outcome on race day. And that's the point that I'm getting people to almost. I'm getting frustrated with it, but I'm frustrated when they get to the end of the race and they're disappointed. It's like why are you disappointed when it was clear that you were never going to achieve those goals and we had that discussion, yet you're still disappointed.

Moving on to the next rule. This is one that you just want to get across to athletes in general and anyone thinking about a new event and wanting to start a program and that's give yourself more time because everyone wants to do a 12 week program or something to a 70.3 and they're just missing some crucial periods of training.

Yeah, the New Year's resolution or the coffee shop talk this event in three months time. Let's do that. And it's great, I love it. But what have you been doing up until this point? Have you had a really good base period where you're really fit? And remember, 12 weeks isn't that much of a, a period to prepare for a big event. And I suppose if we looked at a sprint race as a triathlon or a criterium race or some sort of short time trial, that would be absolutely fine. But not when we're talking endurance. If you wanted to do it's January now and if you wanted to do peaks in March, which is a big, a big race in Victoria in Australia which is 240 odd K and 4000 meters of climbing and it's, you know, the best guys do seven, just over seven hours and the slowest guys are doing 15 hours. So it's a big day. On the bike with 4,000 meters of elevation is unbelievably hard riding. But if you wanted to do that in the next 12 weeks, that is, you know, right now, in January, mid January, it's too late yet I still have people who want to enter those events and that's okay if you've got a really good base under you. But, but picking an event that's too close is going to also cause you to be disappointed with the outcome. Give yourself more time. Don't pick an event. I've got guys who are picking Busso 2022. Unbelievably good planning. They're picking that, you know, in December, in 2021 when I'm asking them what are your goals for next year? And you know, some people said a race in June, some people said a race in September, some people said a race in December as their a race. Fantastic. 6 months, 9 months, 12 months for endurance type events such as Ironman or 70.3. But picking a race in 12 weeks time, if you don't have a background in endurance is going to be a massive disappointment on race day and you'll be exhausted. You'll probably get through it if you may be walking for a majority of it, but you're not giving yourself a chance to perform almost with dignity. And how do you perform without dignity? I reckon walking in a triathlon is performing without dignity and I've done it myself so it's not something I ever want to revisit. But certainly you need to give yourself more time to prepare properly. And it does depend on who you are as an athlete and what fitness level you have and what Your base that you have behind you before you can make endurance course selection choices.

A caveat for that is just on the walking thing is a lot of tri athletes get into it and they walk in the triathlon because they're not fit enough to run. And you're not saying it's a bad thing that you're a beginner. You're saying that just because everyone is walking doesn't mean it's normal. And if you do enough training, even if you're a beginner, you can get through the run without having to walk. You know, you can get yourself fit enough. And that's just a really important point to make, is that you're not trying to bash anyone for walking.

No, not at all. Yeah, no, look, unfortunately, I feel because people are under prepared, the triathlon event is becoming a swim, bike and run walk. And I don't like that. I want people to be better prepared so that they can actually do the event as it's supposed to be. Which is, you know, even if this is your very first Ironman and we've had, you know, so many newbie guys come and join us and invariably because they are not executing their race plan is causing them to walk, not their fitness, you know, their preparation has been perfect, but actually on the day their execution caused them to walk by going too hard. So that's a different scenario. But even in your first event as a, as a novice triathlete, if you run to your race plan and execute your day, you should be able to, if you've trained well, you will be able to run the whole way. And that's why it's, you know, losing the dignity as a walker is because you actually done made a mistake along the way. Whether it's selected the race too soon or poor execution.

Yep. Our next must do training rule for the year is, is to set challenges for yourself. And this is in the context of training challenges. And we talk about, you know, what kind of athlete do you aim to be this year? What of kind of athlete do you want to be? And so what kind of challenges can you set for yourself to become that kind of athlete? And we talk about being as consistent as possible, you know, challenging yourself to how consistent can I be this year? But you could break it down even further. You know, what do I need to do in the next quarter to get towards my goals? You know, let's say that over the next quarter you have 12 long runs to do, 12 weeks worth of long runs or 12 long endurance rides to do. How many of the 12. Can you actually get done? Can you get all 12 done? Is that unrealistic? Can you get 11 or 10 because things come up or maybe you've got a couple of races on. So the maximum amount you can do is nine long rides out of the 12. So you need to say to yourself, with every week that you miss, every single long ride becomes really important. So can I make sure I get my nine long endurance rides in over the next quarter and then after that recess for the quarter after that? Sometimes if you aim for a full year and you don't achieve it, that's where resolutions go. Australian and people fail at them. But setting yourself challenges of what can I actually do to make myself the best athlete in the next block?

Yeah, it's a, it seems one that not many people think about that much. They're just really concentrating on the big goal, which is what we've been telling people to do. But to get to the big goal, you actually have to, you know, the old analogy, you have to crawl and then, you know, walk and then run. You know, you've got to go through phases. So having small stepping stones along your journey towards your big A race, they're little things that you're talking about. You know, what was I doing in, if I was doing as a cyclist, 5 minute reps, 5 by 5 minute reps, and I knew that I could hold 260 watts and, you know, by the end of the, you know, week nine, can I do those five by five at 265, you know, on a velodrome, riding at 36Ks an hour, now I can do it 37Ks an hour. They're little challenges that you should be thinking about, not just going through the process of, oh, here's my intensity session, let's just get it done. Thinking about, you know, and I, the example I would use on myself is as a swimmer who's had 20 years out of the pool and just starting swimming with your brother Matt. And you know, we started off by just trying to do a swimming session where we could get through a K or 1200 or 1500 and sort of doing intervals, but really concentrating on just trying to build our fitness and not trying to push ourselves. And Our times were 150s per hundred and, and, and then starting to concentrate on, right, let's do four 1/ hundreds and see if we can do them under 150 with 30 seconds off. And that was, I think, eight weeks ago. And now we're at 8 1/ hundreds under 130 with 30 seconds. And it's not because we're just improving or we are improving, but we're thinking about each session as a little challenge. What, what are we doing with our skills as a swimmer? We're doing drills to improve. So we're thinking about the sessions and making the sessions better each time, making the sessions valuable because we're trying to implement the drills and the skills that we've learned which is making us swim faster. And obviously we are improving our fitness along the journey. But the fitness isn't the reason why we're swimming faster. It's because we're actually looking at each session with a goal in each session and trying to achieve it and pushing each other because we're swimming together in separate lanes, side by side. And that's just an example of people who are both very unfit. Both of us haven't swam for a long time. Matt's 32. He hasn't swam since he was 22. So he's been out of the water for 10 years. And you know, he could swim under one minute for a flat out 100 meter. So he's no slouch as a swimmer. He did squad swimming and I'm using this example to show you that how far back he is now. He's barely able to swim 100 meters four times at 150, yet he was a 58, 57 minute, 100 meter racer. So you have to start somewhere and having these little challenges along the way is examples of what I'm trying to say. Take notice of what you're doing in each session. Don't just go through the motions. What did I do last week? What should I try and do? Can I match it this week or do I have to stay the same? So they're little examples of stepping stones is what we're really trying to promote for 20, 22. Don't just pick a goal and then just fill in. In between the. In between is the journey that's important. And having many challenges to keep you on track, keep your mind focused as to how you're progressing. I get bewildered when someone asks me, how do you think I'm going to? I just find that an unbelievably odd question. What you don't know how you're going and why don't you know how you're going? Aren't you taking any notice of what your numbers are? I should have someone say to me, did you think I did well with those five by five? Because last week I did 260 and then I did 262 and 263. That's a conversation I love having. The person's invested in their own improvement because they know exactly what they're doing. So to have a question come out at me, how do you think I'm going? It might be, you know, generally I want your opinion and I'm happy with that to answer that. But I'm asking you, how do you think you're going first? And give me reasons why you think you're the same bad or better training.

Rule number six for the year. And this is definitely specific to this year and we spoke about it at the start and that's coming back to training for from COVID And yeah, we spoke about it earlier in the podcast. But it seems inevitable that majority of people around the world are going to get Covid at some point, which previously millions of people are getting it, but now it just seems like especially in Australia, majority are going to get it. It's just running rampant. So what do you do once you get it and how do you come back to training? You need to be patient. What kind of expectations can you have? And you might have to rethink your races as we talked about.

Yeah, I'll be brief because we have already touched on it, but you just can't resume as if you're okay. You've got to resume as if you've been injured or as if you've had pneumonia or the flu or. And Covid is, it's a virus. So you must start really easy in progress. And now already I feel like I'm an expert in bringing people back from COVID because I've had, I think eight or nine people with COVID already, you know, starting eight weeks ago, six, four, two people in the middle of it now. People just got it today. So, you know, I'm saying, look it, everybody's different. But it could be seven days of no training whatsoever. So just relax, rest, sleep, take as much fluid as you can, take the pressure off. I can't train. Be okay with that and just try to do everything you can to recover by getting as much sleep as you can and not thinking about how my fitness is dropping, that is detrimental to your improvement. Ride out the period of when you're sick and then when you feel like you want to train, that's a good sign. Then start with a zone one ride where if you're a runner, you just go for a walk. You know, a walk for 15 minutes. If you're a swimmer, go and do an easy 15 minute swim. If you're a triathlete, start with a ride and then zone one ride, zone, run, run, zone one run. And then as each day goes by and it could take seven days before you actually do a high intensity session. So from when you get Covid it could be 14 days until you're ready for a high intensity session. That seems to be the general rule. And once you do your first high intensity session, I'm thinking from the experience I've had with a few athletes already, they were struggling with their heart rate, with their breathing, but once they got that first high intensity session out, it seemed to be okay after that. But everybody's going to be different. So that's my advice. If there is an event coming up, you just have to cancel it. And that might be hard to swallow, but there is always going to be another event and just reset and start. From that point onwards.

A big disclaimer here is obviously this is not medical advice, this is just general advice that we found is working for us at the moment. But you need to seek a medical professional in this context and we just have to have that said. And it's in our descriptors in the description as well that we are not medical experts. So don't take our medical advice from us. But I mean from our personal conversations, it's a really hard one when to cancel another race, you know, and your advice to me was slightly different. You didn't just can the race straight away, you said you can, you have the option of taking it day by day and sometimes you do just need to can it so that mentally it's just the decisions made. But because I personally have been feeling okay since recovering, we are taking it literally day by day because there's a race in three days, you know, and yep, most likely you know the outcome.

But yeah, and look, in your situation you're trying to line up for a teams race, which is a four man team and if you were just racing by yourself, it wouldn't affect the others. But for you to go into a team race, it's like, do I go to the grand final injured knowing that I could break down in the middle of the grand final, let my teammates down? You're better off in a team situation not starting because you don't actually hold the others up. If you're doing it as an individual, then you're only affecting yourself so at least you can be satisfied that you gave it a crack. But you know, knowing how sick you get and then trying to ride with intensity, like I said before, you're not Going to be able to ride with intensity. So it's, you know, common sense doesn't prevail here, but you need someone to tell you the common sense is you can't do that.

Our last rule, training rule for 2022, and this is just a little bit of a follow on from one of our previous points. The rule is don't be afraid to test yourself and get outside your comfort zone. And that is slightly contrary to what we're saying about be realistic with yourself and pick something that's suited to you. So you need to be able to do both.

Yeah, the highly motivated athletes, the one that I'm scared of a lot of the times because they're always doing this, they're always picking stuff that's way above their level. And you know, normally that's going to set yourself up for failure, but I'm all for it. If people are determined and motivated and they can prove that they're going to do the work, then absolutely go for it. And just the same as it is in a race where you're willing to risk, fortune favors the brave as someone famous, says Julian Painter. And you want to be that person who's right on the edge and you still gotta execute. You know, you can't just go for it from the start. You know, you're picking something, it's out of your comfort zone. If you manage the day, you should be able to achieve anything you want if, if you've got the training and the planning and the preparation behind you. But yeah, pick stuff. That's. It almost sounds like what we're saying earlier is don't do that. But I want you to challenge yourself. But there has to be a realistic challenge that you know that you can train for properly and it's not going to cause your marriage to break down. But yes, I am absolutely on board with people who are wanting to really push themselves to see where they can get to. But again, my disclaimer is, remember, everything needs to be balanced.

And you talk about if you do this in this period, you have to be willing to suffer and be in pain and have results that aren't very nice to have or to look at in this period. You know, you've got to be willing to lose for a bit in order to win at the end.

If I remember, there may be events along that journey that are stepping stones that we've talked about and you're, you're going to be, say you, you have a 30 week program or a 50 week program, you've got this big race in, you know, a year and a half's time and there's all these races along the way and your pride as a competitor, you want to do well in every race. But you will be in form of a 10 week athlete in a 50 week program and in the second race you'll be in the form of an 18 week athlete, not in peak form at 50 weeks. I'm just using that example. Even at 30 weeks you won't be in the form that you'll be at 50 weeks. So you have to understand that you, you won't be in the same form that is going to be on your A race. So you have to suck that up a bit and wear the fact that you know there might be people who are peaking for that race. You're against who you would normally beat, who are possibly beating you. So these are things that you have to accept and understand that the big picture is more important and these are stepping stones along the journey and you have to hold steady with that. You have to be patient and know that my big picture is here. And I've got examples of people who really want to improve their time trialing and it could take two years to get to where they are and they've got to put themselves out. And what do I mean by that? Put yourself in situations where you're going to be challenged and get your backside beaten and learn and watch and you know, get motivated to train properly. Even though you are training properly, but you're still not at the level you want to be. So it could take a lot of these races before you start to become the athlete you want to be. And don't shy away from these races even though you know, you still want to, for example, win a race, but you're now not in the form that you, you're in training mode, you're not in taper mode. So the possibility of you actually performing well is, is not good. It's okay. You've got, you've got to be okay with that. So all of these races that you accumulate along the journey will be fantastic for you on the day when it counts because you've got all this experience behind you of, of racing with adversity. And adversity means you're actually not tapering or you're tired or you're fatigued or you've been training hard and the race isn't that important. It's just a training execution race where you're learning how to execute under fatigue. So when it comes to the day where you are actually at your a race, you have the freshness to be able to really perform with no things holding you back. So I think know that is one of the good things about really challenging yourself.

And let's just call this a bonus rule for the episode. We said seven rules but this is number eight. And you just touched on it then and that's thinking big picture. And the rule is be in it for the long game. And again, you've touched on this throughout the episode, but just to tie it all up and finish things off, you're really passionate about people playing the long game and being in it for the long term and you'll get a better reward when you do that.

Yeah, look, I'm okay with people wanting to, you know, Prepare for a 12 week, it's not, it's not my cup of tea. 12 week training program and that's it. They do that and they never train again. I, it needs to be a lifestyle decision if, if you're wanting to, to get the best out of yourself. It's not going to happen in 12 weeks. That's. I cannot make it clearer than that. You need to have, you know, a two year plan where, you know, this is where I want to aspire to be and, and what's it going to take for me to get to that? And I've got people who've been with me for five years, for three years, and it's taken them that long to be the triathlete or the time trialist or the road racer or the hill climber or the marathon runner that they want to be. I've got very few examples of people that happened under six months. I've got thousands of examples of it happening three years on. So, so I can't, I can't be more plainer. It just doesn't happen unless you've got an incredibly successful period before this 12 week block that you're doing. So the thing is, don't expect things in short periods of time. It will take time. If you do things well, that's a.

Great way to finish. Thank you very much for joining us again for the podcast in 2022. We can't wait to bring you a whole nother year of podcast episodes and also awesome guests. We've got some great things lined up this year that we're really pumped about. Most importantly, we get a lot of people wanting to work with us, but we do have limited one on one coaching spots. And so this year we've got a lot more things in the works that we're going to be releasing how you can get access to our programs, access to our coaching, our coaching advice, our private membership areas, all those kinds of things we've got in the works to release you, to give you access to traveler coaching. So we're very pumped to bring you that this year. But thanks very much for listening again and joining us back the new year. And that's it from us. And we'll see you next episode.