70.3 Half Ironman Winner’s Race Analysis [CASE STUDY]

If you rest on your laurel saying that you know, I just won and that's good enough, you should be gleaning your data to find out where you can actually get another 30 seconds or another minute or in some cases another 10 minutes, depending on what level you are as an athlete. And it is so important that we don't forget that because you know, if you're not improving, you're standing still. And that's the thing we don't want to have happen.

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Welcome back to another case study episode where we break down one of our athletes results. Improvement PB or just story to help you train smarter and race faster. Today's case study is our athlete, Roland. Roland is a 24 year old med student and he just won the Melbourne 70.3 half Ironman. So today we're going through how he won the race, what training he did in the lead up, and we're going to critique his performance a little as to where he could have improved. And you might say, come on guys, he won the freaking race. Does it really need critiquing? And our answer is yes, you can always find improvement. And it turns out he left quite a few gains on the table from his execution, which, which we're really excited to discuss. And look, we just want to point out that as always, we're not just about first places, but to win a half Ironman race out of the entire thing, you know, a couple of thousand people racing is an unbelievable achievement and it deserves to be celebrated. And it's also worth mentioning that he placed ninth among the pros and that is an incredible effort because he's going without the advantages of being in there, packing the swim, being able to draft a little bit legally, quotation marks, or just being in the, in the bike pack. So to come ninth overall, including the pros, and then to win as an age group by the entire race, really exciting performance. So dad, we're really excited to dissect this one.

Yeah, and as you mentioned, the, the analysis, you can still find things that you will improve on because if you're not improving and you're standing still, guess what? There's another Trivalo athlete who happened to come second in the race who's just waiting in the wings to, to get his revenge outdo what you've just done. So if, if you rest on your laurel saying that, you know, I just won and that's good enough, you should be gleaning your data to find out where you can actually get another 30 seconds or another minute or in some cases another 10 minutes, depending on what level you are as an athlete. And, and it is so important that we, we don't forget that because you know, if, if you're not, if you're not improving, you're standing still and that's, that's the thing we don't want to have happen.

So, a little bit more about Roland's background. He came to us as a very good athlete already. He's got a really strong background as a rower, which just shows he has a great engine to work with and he was already putting out great performances. From a fresh running 10k perspective from a power output on the bike. Already a good swimmer, but for his own lifestyle he has to fit his training around. A lot of his shift work as a doctor and med student and he's only been in the sport around 18 months or so, really properly, really giving it a good crack. And so it's really exciting to see how quick his development has been and we want to start with his improvement and we want to talk about his numbers straight away and look at a few things because unlike a lot of the other case studies we do, where especially for the mid pack age grouper or anyone further back in the pack that's not at the front like Roland is, you can tend to see some really awesome improvement numbers and some really wild improvement numbers. You know, we've got athletes improving 30, 50, 70 watts, you know, potentially over six months or 12 months. And that's really exciting to see. But when you're at the top end, finding any sort of wattage improvement is really tough. And if you look at his run improvement, if you look at his bike improvement, just as the numbers as they are, they don't look as impressive on paper, but it's a story behind them which is actually really impressive, which we want to talk about because you know, if we look at his 20 minute FTP improvement straight away, for example, his first test with us, he did about 416 watts I think for 20 minutes. And, and then just before my one half Ironman, he did 438. So look, that's 22 watt improvement. That's not a small improvement, that's pretty massive. But compared to a lot of other people, you know, you think after 18 months it doesn't feel like it's that big, but for him it's not about his 20 minute performance. You know, he's not trying to be a good 20 minute bike rider. He's trying to be a good half ironman athlete or ironman athlete. And it's, it's about his ability to perform as close as possible to that FTP number for two hours and that's what he's pretty improved on over this period. So as I said, these numbers don't look that drastic, but we really want to break down the story behind them. And another point to mention straight away, dad, is that these are massive numbers. You're in the 400 watts that can really shock a lot of people.

Yeah. And for those listening, don't be too alarmed because Roland is a big unit as we say. I think he's in the old Imperial, he's about 6 foot 7, something like that. So watts per kilo is more impressive to those who understand power. You've still got to be pushing pretty good watts to push 438 watts for 20 minutes. So don't, don't disregard that. But, but as a, as a bigger guy and obviously the correlation is if, you know, if you, Jordan, were riding 350 watts and you were riding 44Ks an hour and Roland was riding 438 and riding 440 44Ks an hour, then you know your, your 350 is equivalent to his 438. So it doesn't really matter. It's, it's, it's what you can do in terms of your weight behind what the power is. But, but as you said in the intro, you know how he's, how he's getting those two hour rides close as possible to you know, 90% of his FTP or 92% or you know, some of the people who are at the elite, very elite, you know, world champions are riding fractionally above that. And, and that's the goal is in training to try and get your, your 90 kilometer power number in a half Ironman, as close to 90% as possible of your FTP. And, and he's done a really good job of improving that from, from where he first started. Sure he had good 20 minute power and that came through from his rowing background where he's just got a really good powerful engine. But can you sustain that? That's our next, next goal.

Yeah, one of the biggest things he had to improve over this period is execution. And there's a funny story where in one of his FTP Tests he actually, he did it on the Thursday, so his execution was actually so poor on the Thursday that you said that test is unusable. It's not a true reflection of your fitness and your form and your ability. So you made him redo it on the Friday. And that just shows how important this is for so many reasons, to get this kind of testing right and to get accurate data. But it just shows that someone can be riding really strong and even look good. But if they're not executing right, it's going to really show on race day. And if it can't do it in 20 minutes then it's going to show up more over a two hour time trial in a 90 kilometer 70.3.

And ironically we did the test the next day, which you would think would be too close and not enough recovery to allow you to get a really good performance. And I tried to imply to him that it was not a poor power number because of his fitness had gone in any way, shape or form down. It was all about his execution, nothing else. If he had executed differently, he would have got a different result. And just to prove it, I'm going to make you do it the next day with no recovery. And he nailed the execution the next day and, and was back to where he should have been. I can't remember the exact details, but it was about 15 or 20 watts higher than what he did the previous day because he executed properly and not got ahead of himself and you know, put out watts in the first five minutes that were unsustainable.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let's go through some of his numbers from his actual races. So his first race when he very early on when he started with US Western Sydney, 70.3, he rode 2 hours 15 for the bike leg 90 kilometers and that was 39.7 kilometers an hour. And that was 337 watts. And that is a pretty flat course. A few turns, it's a pretty crap road. These are all factors that you have to consider when you're considering the time. What kind of course was it? And then he has continued to improve on that since then. He rode 207 at Geelong, 70.3 and then at Melbourne in the recent race he rode 204 for an average speed of 43.5 kilometers per hour. But very interestingly, a wattage of 348. So once again the wattage has only increased by 11 watts. But his efficiency on the bike, his position, his execution of how to ride a course better all adds up to a massive increase of almost 4 kilometers per hour. That's a 2:15 bike down to 2:04. And I don't care how much better the course is when they're both relatively flat, improving 11 minutes over the bike level is a massive improvement. And it must be noted that he still messed up the execution a little bit and he still didn't negative split his bike leg. He went out a little bit too hard for the two halves. He was aiming to average about 350. He went out in 360 in the first half of the bike leg and then came home in 336. So he really faded a little bit. So there's some gains on the table right there. But that is a massive improvement.

Yeah, it's a good summary and shows you how well he had prepared. And in the, in the lead up training sessions, that's where he learned how to, how to get that execution right. And, and ironically on race day that would probably be the area where he would be most disappointed with. And again we keep saying, yep, he won the race, but he would look back and go, wow, imagine if I hadn't done that with the execution. And so he's still got a lot to learn about how to execute. And you know, he still ran a PB by a freaking long way on his half marathon in that day. So you know, he faded in the second half of the bike. And to still be able to run a PB after that execution, imagine how much time he's going to save if he actually measures his execution right on the bike and won't have that, that fatigue feeling that he had in the second half of the bike when he goes into the run. So it's kind of exciting to see that not only did, you know, his performance enable him to be the fastest on the day, but there is still room for improvement.

Yeah, it's awesome. And let's look at his half marathon times again, his 10 kilometer times. We test 10 kilometer regularly, same as the 20 minute FTP. We do 5 and kilometer 10k time trials all the time. His 10k fresh has not come down that much. I think it's come down maybe a minute and a half or something like that since he started well again, it's great PB to be at the top end, you know, running mid-30s for 10k and still wipe off a minute and a half or so. But it's again, it's more about his half marathon performance at the end of a 70.3 and at that Western Sydney, that first one again, he averaged 353 pace. We talk in pace here because it's easier to get a grasp than just the time. But he's ran 3:53 pace at Western Sydney and then Melbourne. The race has gone. He averaged 342 pace. So again that's 11 seconds per km quicker over the course of a half marathon, which is why it was such a strong pb. So once again it's just showing that it's not necessarily about the 20 minute test or the 10k time trials that you just look for for data improvement. Although that's great. It's how you actually perform in the race and execute. And so I think we want to bleeding to next. What were the keys to such a good performance on race day? What helped him execute so well and get this such a good result?

Yeah, I think the preparation work is where we have to really delve into a bit here. And we have talked about on this podcast about race ready training and, and before you can get to the race ready training, you actually have to have a really good foundation base. And, and he did a lot of that grunt work at the back of the hills where he lives in, in local Victoria here in Berwick is where he lives. And he's not that far from the Dandenong Ranges. So he did spend a lot of time getting some endurance into his legs and some strength. And then once we got through that initial phase, he actually due to his placement was up, I think up near Echuca, which is a pancake flat. And the, the negative aspect of that was far outweighed by the fact that he had no suburban traffic lights in any of his training sessions where he was able to go out on country roads and have no interruptions for those race ready Saturday or Sunday training sessions that he was doing where he could actually ride, you know, 4 by 30 minutes or 3 by 40 minutes or 60K or a 75K or a 90K time trial with not having the pressure off the pedals for one second, except for if you want to do a U turn and, and that was a huge difference to the training he'd have to be doing around the local suburbs of, of the city where he lives, which is Melbourne, where there's just not that available road space to, to ride for 30 minutes in a row without being interrupted by a traffic light or a roundabout or, or, or pedestrians or something. So, so it is worth spending the time if you're out there listening and you live in an area where there aren't decent roads to train on in terms of keeping the, the pressure on the pedals. Get in your car and drive half an hour to find a place where you can. We've got another example of another guy who just did busso on the weekend. He did that. He drove an hour and a half from where he lives in the city here up to a Lake Ilden where he was doing all his training sessions there. And his bike stuff improved incredibly. The same reason is because he was able to ride uninterrupted. That's what I'm trying to get across, the uninterrupted training. So we're digging into why he's, he's performed so well. Well, it's those race ready sessions where he was just day in, day out, I mean week in, week out on those specific sessions knowing that he could hold 380, 360, 340, whatever the number is, he could hold that. And then we were doing some specific runs off the bike in training where we were trying to see what he could run because we knew in the previous races he could run a 353 or 355 per km pace. But in order to be competitive he had to run under 350. So in those training days the goal was to try and run 340something and, and you know, that's how detailed you can go with your own. If you're looking at yourself and you're a fourth 420 runner per km, 4 minute 20 in, in a half ironman and you want to improve or you need to train some days at 4:15 off the bike after you've done some of Those, you know, 60k time trials or 75k time trials or whatever the session you've got, you know, see what you can do in those training sessions that replicate what's going to happen on race day and including the nutrition, how's your body responding to that. So I've really said a lot of things there that are very specifically detailed for those out there who are listening that that is just information about giving our, you know, our best kept secrets out there because we want to see people get the best out of themselves. We want to see people improve. And if you do things sessions like this, you have a clear understanding of what your capabilities are from training and, and you know, you want to on race day try to do that the same and fractionally improve every time. But the expectation isn't that you go 30% better or 40% better or 10% better. The expectation is that you want to try and replicate that. Sure, you've Got race wheels and race equipment and you've had some tapering to allow you to be, you know, less fatigued. So the expectation is that you can match it in training and just beat it slightly. And that's, that's actually more the point about execution is knowing where your current ability is on race day and not getting ahead of yourself and, and that will make a huge difference in the outcome, especially when you, when you're trying to nail the run paces that you, you hopefully can achieve.

Yeah, the summary is just so good there. It's, it's really practicing that race specific stuff. And it was not just doing really good race specific sessions on the bike. It was how did you get off the bike and run? And you know, you really built up to some 10 kilometer, 16 kilometer, 12 kilometer runs off the bike after those big monster time trials. You know, really running at that race pace or above and being able to practice that and execute, that just gave him confidence to be able to run that well on race day. So in terms of the race day itself, that was leading up to race day. But in terms of race day itself, let's talk about some more advanced data about where he could have found some more time. So we mentioned the bike, we mentioned that his goal was to average about 350. There was obviously a range there and he still managed a huge PB while executing a little bit poorly. And we've spoken about the fact that his first half and second half, the disparity was too big. You know, he went out too hard and therefore, you know, that gap between the first half being 360 and the second half being 336, you don't want to see that. That just shows that you are fading. But we really dive into how much time did you spend in certain ranges. And we really, train picks really can give good data on this. But we looked at how much time he spent above 350 watts and 360 watts. It turns out he spent 22 minutes above 378 watts. And why I said 378. That's just where the range is set on training peaks. It's an approximate. And he spent eight minutes above 390. And that is just too much time. That's minutes, you know, approximately too much time. Way above the range that he wants to ride out on that day. Can you. So can you explain to us the consequence of that and what that data tells us?

If you do ride 30 minutes above the average power that you're wanting to do for the whole 90k and in this case it was 350. So he spent 30 minutes above. And the number you've picked is 378. If you can do that and not spend any time below 3:15 or 3:20, then you will have a good outcome. But if you spend, and in his case I think he spent 20 or 30 minutes below 3:15. So therefore he's actually hurting himself in a lot of ways, not only in terms of fatiguing, but he's burning nutrition differently and he's riding above the capacity should be. And the telltale sign is if you're riding 20 minutes below 3:20 or 3:15, you've ridden too hard. And a lot of the, a lot of the periods on that course, which means more time spent slug riding slower is going to give you an overall average speed that's down on what you should be doing. And to be fair, this was a PB on the bike in terms of average speed and, and, and that's the key thing. So we're being really particular here and being, we're delving in really deeply to find out where we can find the extra. So we, our advice is cut out the 8 minutes above 390 Roland and cut out the 20 minutes below 3:15 and you'll actually get another 2 or 3 minutes faster on, on the day and you won't be as tired and you'll actually run better. So, you know, that's how detailed you want to go in to find out where did you spend the time in the zones. And to be fair, when we looked at his zones from when he very first started, they look completely different now. He has really improved that, but it's still got more room for improvement. And you know, that's what pros should be doing to get that extra, you know, two or three minutes that they're trying to, if they're coming eighth or ninth and they want to be in the top three, that's what they need to be doing. If you're an age grouper and you're trying to ride five or 10 minutes quicker, you know, check out how much time you spend in zone five and six on, on that day and check out how much time you spend in zone one and two. Get rid of those two. And, and you know, this example we're showing you of a guy who wins the race is still can do more improvement. And that's what we want to concentrate on in, in the next time he races that he want to be so strict on himself that, you know, the course description really does have a Big influence. If this is a course that's got 8 or 900 meters of elevation, then we're talking a different scenario. But this course doesn't have that. This course has, you know, a few hills here and there. They're rolling hills. So there's no need to be 30 or 40 or 50 watts above what you're trying to average for the whole rock for the whole ride. Pardon me. And, and that's going to hurt you. And, and I keep saying the same thing. It doesn't look like it hurt him because he won the race, but if there was someone out there better than him on that race day, you would be, you'll be thinking differently. Imagine if there were two people who beat Roland on this day. We would be saying, this is how you could have beaten those guys. If you had not done that high power and not had to recover so much because you'd ridden so hard in the higher end. And now you have to ride easier to recover from that high end. And that's what we're talking about. And you can do this as a, as a mid packer or a beginner, you can do this. Find out and just go into your training peaks graph. It's all there for you. You just got to actually do that preparation and that'll give you the answers that you're looking for and then you can do something about it.

Yeah, as you said, it's really, it's really so many factors can influence whether you go above or below the range. You know, any U turns or sharp corners accelerating out, you might, you know, go a little bit above the wattage to try and get your speed back up. But the big mistake we do see a lot of athletes make is they go way over. You know, they're pushing 500, 550 watts, you know, smashing themselves out of the corners to try and get that up. And that's just unnecessary. And you want to spend as minimal time as possible doing that and you don't want to burn yourself coming out of that because that will just hurt you on the run. But clearly spending 22 minutes above 378 is far too much time, and that includes more than corners and it's too high above for the rolling hill that were on this course. So, yeah, very particular stuff there to critique. But when someone's at the top end like that, they're looking for these, all these minute gains. But when we move on to the run, it was almost a flawless run. He incredibly ran the first half and the second half to the second, the Same. So it was a. We. We would call that a great win. We call that basically a negative split. If it's an equal split like that, where we're fine with that, and if an athlete is within 10 seconds or 20 seconds of their first half, then we're totally fine with that. Obviously, we like to aim for a negative split, but to run it to the second was quite incred. And he executed almost as perfectly as he could. Given the fact that he didn't ride that well, he actually gave himself more fatigue than was necessary. So it was a really exceptional run. Pb off the bike.

Yeah. And I want to add one more little stat. He had second place 90 seconds behind him off the bike, and it happened to be Tom, who's a Triavello athlete as well, chasing him down. And Tom, historically is a faster runner than Roland, and Roland knows that from all the previous races they've done. So not only did he pace it beautifully with that pressure, the expectation in my mind would be, I need to get as much lead as I can so that Tom almost gets deflated when he sees me at the turn of the first 5k. That would be a tactic I would think about using. But to Rollin's credit, he maintained a pace that he thought that he could execute for the entire run and didn't worry. And I know he's not going to agree with this, but he. He didn't worry about trying to change that because he had someone chasing, chasing him down. So it's super impressive to see someone have a mindset that's not going to be dictated by the rest of the field and stick to his guns and. And stay on track with the pace that he. He really wanted to select for, for the entire run. So, yeah, super impressive.

That's a great way to finish. It was a really detailed episode about Roland's performance and his improvement. And yeah, we've really dissected a lot there, but it's a really great example of. It's really awesome to look at the winner and to look at someone at the very top end and still see how they can find more improvements. We can't wait to see how he keeps going with this because there is more to improve on. So thanks for listening to another case study episode and we'll see you next week for our normal Get Fast podcast episode.