Are Age Group Triathletes Racing Too Much?

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo 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, Gerard Donnelly. 2024 saw a meteoric rise in prize money up for grabs for pro triathletes. This created one of the busiest race calendar seasons we've ever seen. And because of this, we witnessed wildly different results of how the athletes have been able to handle this kind of season. So, as an age grouper, what's your race limit? How many Ironmans should you do a year and how many half Ironmans? How many Olympic distance triathlons and how many sprint triathlons? How do you avoid burnout but not be so bored because you're not racing enough and just training all the time? We're answering all these questions in today's podcast episode. So, dad, welcome back to another episode. For everyone that's new here, we like to start every episode with a quick gratitude.

We.

We believe that the mental health of the athlete is just as important as the physical health. So, dad, what are you grateful for this week?

That's a great point, Jordan. We often say that the gratitude can be as basic as you're happy for a nice day, as long as you're thinking about what are you grateful for when you wake up each day. And so it's always intriguing. There's so many things that I could think of that I could put in this gratitude section. And for me, I. I am really pleased with having a group of people in our little community, in our little trivelo coaching community that are. And I know that through our interview process, we do select the people that we think we can help, but when we do get those people on board, we are so grateful to have them because they actually care for others as well. So that's what the gratitude's about. It's not thinking about yourself so much. It's thinking about, you know, what can you do to help others have a more relaxed and enjoyable day. And so that's what I'm sort of trying to pick on here is at the race on the weekend, which it's always great to go and watch races. There was a Melbourne 70.3 just happened to be a local race for where we live, or you don't live where I live. Sorry. And I'm grateful for the. The fact that we could have a little community together and meet together, and at the end, everybody hangs around and says hello and meets new people they've never met before. And that's all part of it, getting to be around like minded people. And I'm grateful for that opportunity. Every time you go to a race, you might have another trivalo person in that race. You may not, but it's always good to share the experience and I'm grateful for that. But the person that I want to be grateful for today is that person who cares about others and is really observant about what's going on around them and not be self absorbed because we are as humans, that's what we do. We want to make sure that we are. And I'm drumming that into people at races and so are you as a coach. You're drumming that into it just to be in your zone, concentrate on your own thing, be in your little bubble. But you've also got to, you know, look outside that when you're not in the competitive side of the day. And this is an example I want to give to sort of highlight that, you know, when I wanted to set the tent up for the race area, I had several people, Dave Ross and et cetera, ringing me to say, do you need help setting up the tent? You know, that's people who are really just reaching out. And then at the end of the day we had people who were very tired from competing and who wanted to just get home. And coming up to me saying, I had half a dozen people say, are you okay with packing up? And I just love that. I'm so grateful for people caring and I don't expect people to come up every week and do that. But you know, just they're thinking outside of the box and they're caring about other people and what's happening around them. And we had another example of this would be Michael came down, he's not in the race, he lives locally and he lives a fair way away from where the event is. It's literally a 50 minute to an hour's drive. And so he's trying to come down, found a car park which is near impossible, dressed fully in trivalo with a cap and T shirt and comes running over and says, hey, how you going? How's everybody going? And I said, oh, you got someone to follow? He goes, yeah, I'm here to follow the Trivalo people and cheer them on. I just so grateful for people like that in our community. And I think that's, you know, that's the sort of thing that you should be thinking about with this gratitude.

Yeah, for sure. It's one of the best parts about the triathlon community is the camaraderie and the atmosphere you feel at events and everyone contributes to that. So mine is actually quite similar. It's in, in terms of community, it's. We just hit 10,000 followers on Instagram and so my gratitude is just one, a big thanks for your support and we love that so many people are resonating with the content and what we're putting out there and how we're helping. So we're just about to do actually a 10,000 follower giveaway, big giveaway on Instagram. So go and follow us Tribalo coaching on Instagram and you'll be able to see your chance to win a big prize for that. So moving on, before we get into the actual episode, just a quick shout out and a big welcome to the newest members of the Travelo coaching family. These athletes have all jumped on board with us in the last month in hopes of improving their results. So a big welcome to Mark from Seattle, Luke from Victoria, Rihanna from Virginia, David from Portland, Oregon, which is actually our fourth US Athlete of the Month, which is exciting. Francisco from Portugal, Sam from Melbourne, Mark from Geelong and Axel from Sydney. We can't wait to help you all improve on your journey. And so if you're like, if you'd like to join these athletes and guarantee your own improvement, you can go to our website tribalocoaching.com and apply to be coached there. And as a reminder, as you just heard, we do coach athletes from anywhere in the world. So, dad, let's get into it. Starting with the T100 final was held over the weekend in Dubai, marking the end of a big T100 season. Combined with the Ironman racing calendar, what did you make of the final battle between Ash Gentle and Taylor Nib?

Yeah, both races, the male and female, was an epic battle, wasn't it? And I know the time zone wasn't that brilliant for us, but it was kind of like a Saturday night, Friday night, Sunday night. Sorry, Saturday night and Sunday night races for the time zone where we are for the race in Dubai. And I knew the race was going to finish around 1 or 12:30am in the morning, but I just couldn't stop watching it. It was such an epic battle and you just didn't know what was going to happen. It looked like if everything should go to plan that Ash Gentle would catch Taylor Nib and it would be a sprint to the finish. And that was such an exciting race to watch and how it panned out from the Swim to the Bike to the Run was one of the all time best races and it was appropriate to be the final race. And you know, there was still a lot of people in the race. It wasn't like Taylor Knibb had it all her own to battle all the way to the finish. And to her credit, she hung tough and deserved the title of World Champion. I couldn't have been more impressed with her calmness and an ability to hold firm when she was absolutely being challenged by one of the best runners in triathlon in as Gentle. So congrats to everybody who really made that an epic race. And it was a fantastic series, to be honest, and a real breath of fresh air to have some more options available to triathletes all over the world, both age groupers now and for pros.

Yeah, yeah. And we want to talk about this because we want to talk about the, how you select races in your season and for the pro athletes. And, and this really does apply to age groupers because you've got, you know, potentially one to two max, a race that you should be picking per year. And we want to dissect that a little bit. But then how do you pick practice races and how many can you fit in? And a lot of athletes were really challenged this year because it was a whole new racing calendar and there was no prerequisite, you know, they've never had this many races available to them. The reason it was so big for them was because there's so much prize money up for grabs. So suddenly they had to do at least five, five races for T100 or at least five races for Ironman, or they could do both if they really wanted to try and get the most amount of prize money. So there's suddenly just so many races available to them, which for their profession they're trying to do even though they might have won a race. Goal. And so for the context, I should have said this earlier, but if you didn't see the T100 final, basically it came down to if Taylor Knibb won the race, she would become, quote, unquote, world champion. I'll get to that in a second. But if Ash Gentle won and Talonib came third or lower, then Ash Gentle was going to become World Champion. So it was really, there's these, these fun kind of games or race within the race about, you know, where each athlete has to come and that really does play a bit of a challenge on your mindset going into the race. And we do want to talk about that race plan. But yeah, from that perspective, with a lot of pressure on this final race one, it's a bit. It's a bit funny that, you know, T100 now call them the world champion. I mean, they're the world champion of the T100 races, but are they really the world champion? But then if you look at another perspective, you know, Ironman is just a business itself. It's just a company itself. So why do they get to claim the world champion? You know, they've. They've historically had it from Kona, so there's that, that historical element there. But if another company comes along, do they get to, you know, call themselves world champion for their own series as well? So that's, that's pretty interesting. But regardless, we were discussing the race strategies of Nib and Gentle and yeah, Taylor was really strong on the bike as she always is. Ash Gentle was ahead. Um, but then everyone knows that Ashintal has just an absolute elite run and could potentially mow her down. And then, yeah, as you said, she came out at a blistering pace in the run and she was catching Taylor Nib. I can't remember what it was like seven seconds per km or 15, whatever. I can't remember exactly how much it was per kilometer she was catching her, but she was due on pace to catch her with less than a K to go and ended up. Ended up hitting the wall and blowing up a bit and just couldn't sustain the pace. And therefore Taylor was able to run to the victory. And we were talking about that specific race strategy and a lot of the commentary was, well, she had to do that to give herself any chance of succeeding and becoming world Champion. She had to race that way. That's what everyone was saying. And you were saying, that is not a given. That can't be the rhetoric and that shouldn't be the conclusion that everyone comes to. That might have been the only way. But you have to look at all the data before you can say that. And you can't just say watching the race, well, she has to do this. So can you explain your mindset behind this? And this is quite controversial because everyone is saying, well, she had to do that and you're saying, no, she didn't. So explain your thought process behind that.

Yeah, and it's just my opinion and I'm in no way. I have to always clarify whatever I'm going to say. I'm not here to criticize anybody's actions. I'm here to give coaching advice. And so what I'm going to say is Had Ash Gentle ran a different race strategy, would that have been just as effective or played out the same way? And I think the reason why people are saying, well, she had to run like that was the only way she was going to bridge that gap. I think it was two and a half minutes. And so she was, you know, she was, when I was watching it, the gap was coming down between 10 and 15 seconds per K. So with 6K to go, if she, I think she was maybe 60 seconds behind, 62 seconds behind. And so she was on track to catch her within the last K. And, you know, I don't know what Ash Gentle's race pace, run plan was, so that makes it very difficult to give exact advice. But we tried to look at her previous run paces to give us some context in what she can do and whether the pace that she was running at was sustainable. Because even though people were saying she had no choice, she had to go for it. Well, that's true, but if you know that the pace you're going to run at is unsustainable, why would you have that strategy? There's money and prize money to come second or to come third and she ended up not coming second and not winning at all. She ended up coming third. So that would have to be a consideration as a full time professional, that your decision making has to be based around your income. So, you know, as an age grouper, this is not the case, so it's a lot more straightforward. So as an age grouper, I would never be saying to an athlete that if you want to get first on the podium in your age group, you should be running above a pace that you think is unsustainable. You'll have a go anyway. That's just a ridiculous strategy in my opinion. And the outcome's not going to be anything, but you're not going to be able to do it and you're going to actually slow down. Exactly what happened to Ash and she actually had to walk for three or four seconds and then go again. So she was in quite a bit of distress. But there are a lot of reasons for that. She ran the wrong pace for that day. It could have been the right pace for any other race, but she was in Dubai where the temperature was unbelievably extreme. So that's a factor you have to consider. If I'm going to make up 2 minutes 30 from the end of the bike to the finish of the run, are the conditions going to allow me to run this pace and have I done it before these are all the considerations that she would have to take into account. And it's hard to do that on the fly when you're getting off the bike and you've got to make these decisions and someone tells you you've got to make up this amount of time per kilometer. And so I take my hat off to her for having a go at that. But if she's running above her level, there isn't only one outcome. And you can't miraculously run so far above your level that you haven't done before. And we know there are exceptions that could happen. You know, that could happen one in 100 times. You could come out with an unbelievable breakthrough performance that's way above your level. And we've seen that happen many times, but not a lot. It's. As a percentage, it's really low. It's a really low strategy. So you've got to consider so many things like the temperature of the day, your previous history, what's at stake. Are you protecting your prize money? Are you better off coming second or having a cracking blowing up and potentially coming third, fourth or fifth? And to her credit, she really hung tough and ended up getting passed by only one girl. So there's a lot of factors that you have to consider before you just flippantly say she had no choice, she had to run like that if she wanted to win. And I say, well, I disagree. There's so many other factors you would have to think about, and that's hard to do in the middle of a race. It really is. But to Ash's credit, and I really want to pump her up about this, she swam the best. She swam all of those races. She was with the front pack, and she rarely been with the front pack throughout the whole of the T1 series. So that was such a great effort. And you could really tell she hung on the back of that front pack. I think she did a great job. Her swimming has set her up for a chance to actually beat, you know, who is undoubtedly one of the best athletes at that distance in the world. Of course she's world champion, so she must be. But for her to swim like that, that was really incredible. And then she was really strong on the bike. I looked through a lot of the other races she did in the T100 series, and Taylor Knipp had beaten her by between six and 14 minutes on most of the other bike courses around the other events. And here she was on the front of the. Of the chasing group, chasing the best cyclist in triathlon in that distance. You know, obviously there's other athletes who are injured who weren't there, but on the day, the best cyclist on the day at that event and she only lost two and a half minutes and, and she was on the front most of the time driving that pack. And so she actually was riding probably at her best level and so she swam at her best level, she's ridden at her best level and now she's having to do this extraordinary run which could be at her level or more on one of the hottest races in temperature wise in the world. And so was that the best strategy and was that the only outcome that was going to happen? So if she went for it, she was either going to fail badly or just miss out or come way down the field. So tough decisions for her to make. But I think as a spectacle it was brilliant to watch. But I don't think that was the only option.

Yeah, and really want to clarify that in no way this is a criticism on Ash. We're just talking about the discussion among the triathlon community that, that it was just a given and it seems that it was black and white that she had to run that way. And you're just challenging that and saying, well that's not true. We need to look at all the data and unfortunately, you know, you and I wanted to try and really look through the data and we just don't have access to it all to be able to know, you know, how much what part of the decisions could have been a little bit different. And we did look at all her run paces, but they're a little bit, just not quite accurate. You know, Singapore, she ran through average 351 pace, London was 340, Ibiza was 325. But we don't know if that's an anomaly because sometimes the courses can be, you know, 17.5 kilometers instead of 18 or 18.4 kilometers instead of 18. And that actually makes a fair bit of difference at the pace when you're at that top level, whether she was at 325, but she's actually at 3.32. Anyway, that was a blistering run, 345 pace. In San Fran and Dubai she finished with 3.46. So that finishing pace wasn't necessarily out of range of what she could do. But to get there and to finish there, we know that she slowed down a lot in those last couple of K. Maybe she was running sub 3:30 pace for the first 15K and then she averaged 4:15 pace for the last 3K, which gave her a 346. You know, how she got there. So unfortunately, we don't know all the data. We don't know her bike data and how hard she actually had to ride to stay within that distance of Taylor Nib. Now, we don't know if she really overrode there to, to get that. Um, so the point is, you can't come to the conclusion that that was the only strategy when we don't have all the data. And so you're not saying that that was the wrong strategy. You know, that might have been the only way that she wanted to win and she was happy to sacrifice second. She might have gone to the race saying, I don't care about third or second. I want to try and win. So there's just a whole bunch of unknowns that we don't know as spectators that you just wanted to point out.

Yeah, especially I know a lot of the apps that we use, they don't take into consideration the exact distance of the actual event. And we've had like, just for example, Melbourne was 21.3km this year and last year it was 20.5. So in the same event, two years apart, it had different distance and the course was slightly different. So what the app does is it takes 21.1 and divides your time and gives you the average pace. But in fact, they're only dividing it by the actual pace of the distance that what it should be, which is 21.1 for the half marathon or in this case in the T118 kilometers. And you and I have looked at most of the races and none of them were exactly 18 kilometers. So those average paces that we've looked at as a data, we don't know anything about the accuracy of those paces. So they could be, as you said, taking against a 17.4k or 18.2 and coming up with a different strategy. So. And we do know that on the tally we're seeing, when I was watching, you know, what pace she was running from the start to the finish. And a lot of the time, you know, when you've been running in training, your GPS is not that accurate when you go under a tunnel or, or when you're doing a U turn and this run went through, went underneath some overpass bridges, so the GPS wasn't working. But, you know, the average pace is on the screen the whole time and it is reasonably accurate, but it's not exactly. So we don't know whether that was. She started at a really hot pace and she just progressively got slower. But so did the whole field. They, they all do the same thing. They start at a pace that they don't sustain. And that's one of the things we, we are critical of not only professionals, but we're more critical of professionals because the excuse is always that I have to race, I have to race this race. Well, you know, there's so many examples even at Kona where we saw people who didn't do that and who ran within themselves ended up running through the field. And it's, it's exemplified more in a marathon than it is in a half marathon or an 18k or a 10k. You can get away with it more so, so all these examples we're using is trying to give the reasoning why we're making these points. And it's nothing coming from anything about criticizing. It's all about trying to help the age group understand that a lot of the time running too fast or riding too fast or swimming too fast early in your race is only going to have one consequence and that is to go slower. So if you can really nail the execution, you're going to have a better opportunity of getting the outcome you want. That's the basis of our discussion today is to get that thought process into the age grouper who's watching the pros. Just because the pros do it doesn't mean that they're doing it right. I mean they are supposed to be a professional, is someone who really understands how to race and how to train. But they also make mistakes. It's okay that most of them will admit that. So you know, at the end of the day we just don't. If the pros training regime meant that they jumped off a cliff into a, into a water that was 50 meters below as part of the training session, just because they do that, you don't do that, you know, you don't follow them like sheep. You pick the good things that they're doing and you question the things that you don't think are right. So I'm just trying to get people to think open mindedly about their own race and their own strategies and what the mistakes they've made and learn from other people as much as learning from yourself. And I think this is a really good debate to have.

Yeah, look, we're a little bit sidetracked from the main topic which is selecting your race season and picking how many races to do. But we just found this final to be a really good example of a lesson that we can learn. And one last point I want to make on it. Even though we are a bit sidetracked is that talent Nib just came out and said that she had a really clear discussion with her coach. And the coach's instructions for the race plan were to not race the race and stick to your pacing strategy no matter what is happening around you. That's really, really clear direction. And, and with all the hype around the points and placings and what people need to come, she easily could have gotten distracted by what Ashcenter was doing, how far behind she was on the bike, which was the whole thing about Kona. Everyone was racing the race and focused on the time gaps on the bike and how much time I needed in the run, whereas Taylor Knibb just went in with this clear instruction of I'm just racing my race. And that would be tough to do when it's getting deep into the run. Ash Gentle's catching her, you know, at a blistering pace. She could panic and overrun herself and end up blowing up, which Ash Gentle might have been hoping for. But she stuck to her strategy. And even though Ash was getting closer and closer, that elastic bandit eventually Pops snapped and talented got the win. So look, last, last point I want to make is we just had one of our own athletes, roland, win a 70.3 here in Australia, a really big race here as an AP100 actually. Sorry, yeah, sorry. T100 race. Yeah, it's own T100 Ace. Spot on. And you had a similar discussion to him before the race. So can you explain kind of that thought process a little bit why you had that discussion and what he needed to do differently compared to his previous races?

Yeah, and look, I really brought the example up of what he'd been doing in previous races and he'd been under our discussion. And it's never a dictatorship. We always talk about together about what our strategy is and that's the best way, I think, to make sure the athlete's on board with what he thinks and the coach agrees or disagrees and they have a discussion about it. But just bringing up what he's done in the past few races where it hasn't worked out that well, where he's raced the race a bit too much under my guidance as well, telling him to have a little bit of a crack and see what happens, then some of the races weren't actually a races and that's the time to do that. But it didn't end up well for him in any of those events. And when I say didn't end up well, he actually came second instead of first. So it's probably a harsh judgment. And obviously another Trivalo athlete beat him into first. So they actually got first and second in the last couple of races they've been in. So it's really important that we learn from our experiences and the idea that we try a different strategy where we just stick to our guns and stay in our lane. Here's your numbers and it's not an A race for us and just see how it goes and see if it pans out any better. And you know, after the race it was fantastic discussion. He's saying, so happy we had that discussion. It took the pressure off me. I just had to stay in my range. And he was actually a little bit annoyed that he didn't do it as well as he wanted to. And I'm saying to him, hang on a minute, Roland, you've just won the race. Let's not be too critical here. You know, you've done a great job in changing your mindset and executing better. And I think that was one of the key things that Taylor Knibbs coach has ironically done. And I'm sure it's from looking at what happened at Kona. You can learn a lot from that. And if pros are going to continue not to take that advice, then they're going to keep making the same mistakes.

So, yeah, a great story, great anecdote, which is why I wanted to bring it up. But getting back on track, we've spoken this year a lot about the ability of athletes to hold form and do multiple races. And we see it in cycling races as well, how athletes try and pick their calendar. And we did mention this year that the triathlon could probably learn a lot from the cycling world because they really, really carefully select their races. They're doing it now for the whole of 2025. You know, they're really clear about what they're aiming for and what they realistically can achieve. And they have a lot of data on what they can and can't recover for. So athletes are really selecting their A races next year and their warm up races. So for triathletes, there'll be a lot to have learned from this year. And we're going to discuss a lot of specific examples. But one of the biggest ones was the story of Lucy Charles Barkley this year and she recently did a big video where a former world champion, you know, wanting to back up her titles. Her main goal for the last six years has been Kona. She came second four times, won it on her fifth attempt and she Did a big video where she said she's really struggled this season with the amount of races on the calendar and she has had an injury riddled couple of years which puts more pressure on yourself. And she just said in the video, usually I have one clear goal throughout the year and no matter what I'm doing, it's all geared around that one clear goal and that is Kona. But she, you know, with the opportunity this year with Ironman and T100, she felt super spread thin with all the events happening and they just felt like big interruptions in the end. And she ended up having to pull out of the world Champs in Nice and that was really disappointing for her to not back up her world title. And I think it's a really clear indicator of how much this does impact, especially age groupers with such a busy schedule that you can't just do everything around racing and a reminder that we love the sport so much. But sometimes we do expect too much from ourselves. Sometimes we expect more from ourselves than the pros. You know, age groups expect to be able to go to every race pb, every race, improve every testing cycle. You know, we do testing cycles at Trivella every six weeks. And athletes sometimes can expect to improve every single time infinitely and just never have a poor period to never have a form slump or you know, to be quote unquote on all year round. And we just want to say from the start that it's just not possible. And we see a lot of athletes getting really down about not having a linear progression and just not constantly going up. But the pros have shown this year that that is just not going to happen. It's not realistic. And if it's not realistic for them when it's their profession, it's definitely not realistic for us. So I really want to start with that message and get your opinion on, yeah, I guess your expectations for a season and how well you think you can do at multiple races.

Yeah, we have this come up almost all the time and it's not. Occasionally we have this question come up and we have a lot of cross event questions about when I'm interviewing people and asking them what their goal races are for the next 12 months. And some people will say I want to do an epic Gran Fondo cycling race and then I want to do a 70.3 not long after that and then they want to do something else and then something else and then I want to run a marathon. And so across the year they've got, you know, about six or seven events that in their eyes, I'm first of all asking them which is your A race and which is your B race and which is your C race. And so therefore, I'm already filtering down and they're trying to get them to think differently about. Because they're going to say to me, no, I want to do well in every single race. I really want to do well. And, and I'm, I'm so reluctant, I'm so reluctant to, to go on, on board with that, because I know in my mind that you'll be. If you want to do, and I can use some examples. If you wanted to do a gran fondo that had a lot of climbing in it, for a cycling event, a pure cycling event, whether it's a gravel ride or a cycling race, you need to do specific training that's going to help you in those hills. And if you're aiming to do a 70.3 after that. And this is not just a one off, this has happened, you know, more than a dozen times with athletes that we coach who are changing.

Happens every season here.

Yes, changing sports, which we're on board with. But you can't expect to be in the form of your life as a climbing cyclist and then be a triathlete who's doing a 70.3 in the form of your life for that. Because in order to train properly for the climbing, you have to forego something in the triathlon. And to be good at the triathlon, you have to forego something that's involved with the climbing preparation. So you're going to compromise somewhere. So that's the, that's the issue. Having the compromise is going to filter down your performance. And so it, it won't be poor. And we're not saying that it will be average at both. And if you're okay with that, then we're okay with that as well. But we have to point that out.

And can I just mention there before you continue, is that triathlon itself is already a compromise. You're already compromising on all three disciplines because you're training for three sports at once. So just by nature, you're not as good a swimmer, a cyclist or a runner as you could be, because you're having to compromise on all three. And the pros have done something miraculous where they're now getting their, you know, their disciplines inside races up to the level of, of almost what they could do fresh. And that's not true for the marathon. You know, they can all run blisteringly faster marathons than what they produced At Kona for sure. But that's, that's proved that it is already a compromise. So if you're trying to think of doing triathlons and then compromising it with a totally different sport, like a gravel race for Grandpa Fondo or a marathon, isolated, you are training for separate things altogether. So that's a really, really important consideration.

And that's just one example. And that's changing sports. So that's the first example I want to talk about. And so I'm okay. So are you, Jord. And we are at Trivalo, okay with that. As long as you've got realistic expectations about the outcome, and that's fine. But if you don't have the realistic expectations you expect to do really well in both, then you've got your head in the sand. That's something we want to change. So the next point is doing too many of the one sport. And so you might have a season where, you know, as the, as you've just seen in the T100 as the example, there were seven events you could do. And so they took your best five events. So that's seven half Ironmans in the space of 10 to 12 months. You know, that's a lot to be at that high level and a long time to be at that level. It's not like they had three in January, February and March and then had a break and then they had three in, you know, August, September, October, November. It was pretty much consistent the whole way through the year. You had to be up for these events. And you know, for a professional who's doing this full time, that was a hard task for most of them to be. So you had so many different variations in, in performances from athletes who, who are really high level athletes. You know, Ash General had some standout races where she won, then she had some races where she won race where she was really at her lowest level and was really questioning everything. But it had to do with holding your form for 12 months. And I don't think anybody was really giving that the consideration that it deserved. And so if that, if the actual pros are struggling with this, why would the age group think that they could handle this to hold form? You know, most age groupers would be just doing the season of their wherever they live in the Northern hemisphere or the Southern hemisphere. So during the summer season for the Northern hemisphere, we're talking races from March through to October maybe. And there are some races in the warmer parts of the Northern hemisphere even in November and December. Florida's in December. So you know, so it's a pretty long season. And for the southern hemisphere it's really, you know, the first couple of races are in, you know, September all the way through till May and June. There's even still another race in June in Cairns. So it is quite a long season and you can't hold form the whole way through the season. You need to select your A race and that'll stop you from having a mediocre year to having, I've just done my A race and I've achieved everything. And then all those other events that you were leading up to that event, they got the right level of attention as a B race or a C race and you don't highlight them as the goal. If you achieve your goal at the main event that you've been preparing for, then you forget about the results that were not the way you wanted them, even though you knew they were B or C races. But in our mind as human beings, every time we race, we want it to be our best performance. But as you know, and I use the example of the pro cyclists when they're coming to the Tour de France, you know, they do all these pre race events. There's, you know, right from the spring classics all the way to some of the lead up races like the Dauphine, you know, all these pre stage races, the Paris, Nice Tour, they're all getting them the Tour de Swiss, they're just getting themselves ready for the, the big event. And they don't win all of these races. They do some days where they're doing well, but it's all preparation for the main race. And so their form is building. And so you have to think that way as well. You, you can't. If you're doing a race in, in March or in May or in April, you can't expect to be in the form of your life in December and January. You need to be building your form. And if, and if you've already at the peak of your form in January, you don't have anywhere to go but hold it or drop it. And so you can't do that. And that's what we're trying to, that's what the topic is. Are you entering too many events for your chosen sport? That's not allowing you to get that one result that you're after. And let's face, we are out there trying to be a better version of ourselves than the last race that we did. And I'm not talking about B races or C races. I'm talking about, you're going From A to A to A races over a period of three or four years. And when you look back you will not mention many of the B and C races. You'll just say that a race I did in 2021, I did 5 hours 13 for the 70.3 and here I am in 2024, I've done 4 hours 35. And you can see that you've improved along that journey because you've spread yourself out across these, across these racing seasons and that's what we, that's how you should be viewing it. And of course now we have a lot of people who can travel into internationally during doing some, you know, the World Championships are in New Zealand in, in three or four weeks time at Lake Taupo. So obviously the Northern hemisphere athletes have, have had to extend their season from, from basically March all the way through to December for this World Championships. Whereas the, the people in the Southern hemisphere that you know, they've had a whole winter and they're, they're only starting their season in December. So, so you've got, you've got all these different scenarios happening where, depending on where you live and how many races you've put in front of yourself. So it's a really tricky thing to work out, but that's the way I want you to think about it as an age grouper that you can't be good all year round. You actually have to select when you're going to have a period where you're okay with being the form you're in and you're just trying to maintain that form and build on the weaknesses and then start to develop into that race ready phase where you're getting to be at the top of your game for that particular year.

Yeah, look, it's honestly one of the most complex parts of our coaching discussions that we need to have because it really involves some nuance about what you're going to select and it really does have a big impact on the trainings around the, the decisions around your training, decisions around your programming and, and how you're going to try and get and hold form leading into these races. So I want to ask some specific questions about some of the, the things we talk about. And, and yeah, I can't reiterate enough that, that these are the probably the most nuanced conversations we have because we really have to explore with the athlete a whole range of factors of okay, what do you want to achieve? What's realistic? How much time do we have between races? What's really important to you? What's going to bring you the most enjoyment, which is a really big one. That's a conversation we're always navigating, is okay, you want to do these things. Our advice is this doesn't quite work, but the athlete says, but I really want to do this. It's really important to me. And so we're trying to find a compromise, but not so much of a compromise that their performance is impacted. And it falls on us as the coach to really inform the athlete of what to expect. If they either try and overdo races or if they try and put races too close together, they're just going to have a poor outcome, which, which they say is okay leading into it, but then once it happens, it's actually a bit of a different story. So I want to dissect all that a little bit. But start by asking, let's talk about your major A races. You know, what's the goal in a season? How many A races do you think you can realistically aim for in a season?

Yeah, look, there's such a wide variety of sports we could talk about. You know, are you a sprint triathlete, Are you an ironman triathlete? And everything in between. Are you a 5k runner? Are you a marathon runner? And so the answer is going to be different for all of those athletes. Are you a track runner? Are you just a cycling time trialist or are you a stage racer or are you just a criterion specialist or do you like just riding courses that have hills? So all of those decisions are based around one of the reasons or the expectations that those events have around recovery. So a lot has to do with how much impact, how much stress, how much training stress is loaded on your body from those events and what is involved in the preparation. For example, if you're training for an ironman and you are a 14 or 15 hour athlete compared to 8 or 9 hour athlete, that's probably going to have, you know, in terms of duration, a lot more fatigue on you than a person who's out there for less time. The person out there for less time may be able to do that event with less duration, but their intensity may be a lot higher than the person who is out there for longer. So you've got a couple of factors there. How can you quickly recover from that from your next event and should you be trying to quickly recover from that? And so, you know, we don't hesitate in the world to say, well you can't do back to back marathons. You know, you need to give yourself as a runner you need to give yourself at least four weeks recovery and then probably not do another marathon within the next eight weeks. You know, that would be a 12 week or three month period where, and even then you're probably still carrying some load. But as triathletes, I just, I don't understand why we don't have the same mentality. It's, it's like it's okay to just do a lot of 70.3 age group athletes are around the five hour mark. And so to do, you know, three or four 70.3s, one a month, which is what a lot of the suggestions are that we get from people. I really want to do these races. They're all local, they're all ones that I want to be involved in. I've done them before, but I'm saying, well, which one's more important? They're saying, oh, I want to do well in all of them. Well, a, how are you going to recover from the first to the second to the third to the fourth? And that's an extreme example. But a lot of people do have three in the space of three or four months and that's nearly as bad, but not quite so. The recovery is the thing that's going to determine whether that's feasible or not. So, you know, is the distance or the duration of the event taken into consideration? You bet it is. And if you don't take that into consideration, then you're going to set yourself up for a failure for the next race. And so when you're doing sprints or Olympic, it's such a different discussion because you know, you're only out there for one hour to three hours compared to a 70.3 where it's possibly, you know, four hours or a little bit under if you're, if you're an elite to six hours. So straight away you need more time to recover before your next event. And so in that recovery time, you're actually doing very little training that's going to contribute to improving yourself. It's all about trying to get recovery from the load and the stress that you've been putting yourself under. So then your next race might be in four weeks time or eight weeks time. And then you've only got this small window to be a better athlete than you were after the end of that event. So you're going to go into the next event with the same strategy and the same numbers and you may end up with the same result because you haven't had any time to absorb the load recovery and then build some more fitness before the next event. And that's one of the things that people don't think about either is making sure that they're a better athlete than they were from the last race. And if you're okay with being the same athlete across the whole season, fine, there's no discussion. But I guarantee there's not many people out there thinking like that. Most people are thinking, I just did this event in 5, 13, now I want to do it in 5 or 4:59. And you haven't given yourself ample time to recover and ample time to improve your fitness level to another level.

Yeah, it's really. I mean you gave the example of the extreme end, which might be like four races in three months or four months. But one of the most common ones we see is yeah, 270.3 is within six to eight weeks. And people forget that you don't actually get eight weeks of training in between the races. You have two weeks of recovery from the 70.3. You have one week of taper at the week of the next race. Normally a week and a half or more where the week before you're doing some final testing and race ready stuff. So there's four weeks out of the eight that are gone. So that leaves you with four weekends or four weeks plus weekends to do any training or endurance work. And so you're just not going to give yourself much time at all with four weeks of training to improve in that time span. So it's a really, really big consideration. So that really talks about the thinking behind your major A races. But, but let's talk about the minor races as well because they have such an impact on your big races. And we see that people have a 70.3 goal and Ironman goal, but they end up doing every second weekend a sprint triathlon or Olympic triathlon or a cycling race. It's very popular here. We have time trials and criteriums every week and weekend that you could do and we absolutely love doing them and we encourage a lot of our triathletes to do them as training and race practice. But we do have some athletes that, you know, one specific athlete just loves racing so much. He wants to race Tuesday night, Thursday night, Saturday and Sunday, you know, and you're saying to every single week for summer you're saying to him, well where are you actually getting any fitness improvement? Where are you training? So when thinking about the minor races, how do you make sure you're not overdoing it there either?

Another great point to discuss, it's can you over race and do you need these B races, C races? Why wouldn't you just be better off training from the end of your season to the main A race? Well, we have said many times on our podcast that to improve your performance, you need to have very similar training that's going to happen on race day. So that's why these B and C races are absolutely vital. And in no way are we saying you shouldn't be doing this, but they need to get the attention they deserve, which is a C race. So you wouldn't really be, you know, tapering much more than a day or two to do this and then recovering. They shouldn't be that stressful that you need to take another week to recover. You know, as long as it's two or three days after and one day before then. These are great events to really get you used to the level and the competition that you expect to get on race day. And, you know, exposing your body to the level of stress that's going to happen on race day in a training session, you can't get any better training than that. And so you can train as much as you like. But if you don't get race scenarios in your training, then you're only going to have that experience on the big A race day. And therefore you're missing out on all these little practice sessions that you could iron out some of the little things that, you know, the mistakes you might possibly make on the big day. And you could do a lot of those things in the smaller days and where you're experimenting with what power you could do if I try and swim on someone else's feet rather than swimming by myself or running at a pace that's a little bit too close to my limit or starting slower. All these examples where you should be experimenting in these events still with the mindset that you're trying to do your best performance, but your best performance at that current form that you're at and not wasting time in tapering and having to recover. I'm saying not wasting time. It's important to taper and recover. But if you do too many of these events, it is becoming a time waster and you can't get to train and lift your levels and become a better athlete than you were before. If you use the example of the person who just races all summer season and just recovers in between every race, let's face it, if you did three or four races as a cyclist every week, you know, you'll be lucky you'd be that exhausted after Each of those races, if you're racing properly, you need a day to recover or two days to recover. So all you're doing is three races with every other session as a recovery session. Where's the mainstay of your program, which is the endurance ride? And surely people would say, well, I'll just do add extra to my race day as warm up and I'll add extra to the cool down. And that's true, you can do that, but there's still the fact that you're exhausted and you're not getting anything but recovery. We need Zone two as our endurance mainstay. It's hard to do that when you've done such a hard taxing race. So there's a lot of things and reasons why we wouldn't want to have anything but a good period of racing and training that's suitable to our program for the A race. And we really want to emphasize that. We're encouraging people to pick races to help them be better at their A race. And as long as you understand that what we're talking about with B and C races, then you'll be fine. But if you think that every race you do in the season is an A race, you don't understand the consequences properly and that's where you'll be found out.

So to summarise, it's picking one to two, maybe A races per year, but they must have enough time in between them that you can recover properly and then train so that you can improve between races. Make sure that you are doing B and C races because they're your chance to test and improve, but they're not chances to give you best performance ever and as we said, hold form all year and be in peak shape. They're chances to experiment, the chances to practice execution, the chances to see what you where your numbers are at, but don't do so little that you're not getting any practice in. And the main point there as well is that you need to train. You need to train with a variety of sessions, you need to do VO2 max sessions, you need to do Zone 2 stuff for your endurance. You need to be doing endurance riding. So if you're doing so many races that you're. That you're sacrificing those sessions, that's going to be a problem. So the last question I wanted to finish with was commonly in these conversations, you will end up at a bit of a standstill with the athlete where. And it's like you said at the start, it's not a dictatorship. This is always a conversation and we're willing to do what the athlete wants. But the athlete says, well, this, this race is really important to me. I just want to go here. I know what you're saying. I'm not going to be informed. It's in contrast to the goals of my A race. It's probably not the best idea. This happens a lot when we have these conversations and they say, I just don't, I don't care how well I do. I just want to go and race this. It's important to me to race and we. How do you navigate that discussion? I'll make a point in a second, but I want to know how. Yeah, how do you navigate that discussion?

It's very straightforward for me. My job is to point out everything that can happen as a result of that. So consequences is one of the things you hear me say all the time. Yes, you can decide to do that. And even you growing up as a little kid, you know, and rather than telling you off for doing things that I thought were wrong, you know, I'd be saying to you now, did you understand when you did that this is the consequence now of that decision you made? And that decision you made to jump off the roof and you've broken your ankle. Now you understand that that wasn't such a smart decision. So they're the things that you should be thinking about. Yes, I want to do this race and all my mates are going to be there. I know it doesn't help me with my A race if I can point out to them how much it's not going to contribute to them in being a better athlete on their A race and they're still adamant that they want to do it. Then I can't do any more than that. I've got to make sure they're clear and understand the exact reasons that you've already gone through where you end up having to recover too long, you lose training time and you arrive at your a race 5 or 10% less an athlete than you would have had you not done that race. So as long as you're okay with that, then there's not a lot we can do about it. We've given you the advice, you choose to do this and that's all we can say.

And the last one is it's just mentally really hard to turn up to a race and not compete. You know, just it's not like turning up to a training session where you can just kind of cruise through the environment. Just it's environment. Sometimes it's Stronger than willpower. And it takes a lot of willpower to be in that race environment with all the energy that happens on race day with, with everything that's going on to hold yourself back and, and just go easy or just treat it as a training session that, that really happens. Once you've, as you say, pinned a number on, you're in a race, race conditions very rarely does it pan out that way. And so you just got to think about the consequences of if you're in that environment, what's going to happen and then, and so often athletes will say, I'll just take it easy because we've got our a race in two weeks. And that's an extreme example, but various reasons why it's not a good idea to do a certain race. And then what plays out is the exact opposite. And so yeah, we always seem to finish these conversations with as the coaches not trying to be Debbie Downers and ruin the fun. And the enjoyment is a really big part of the questioning and the discussion and the process. But, but you want to get it right and get the balance right and that's what we're aiming for.

Yeah. At the end of the day, we want the athlete to be doing what they want whenever they want. And the reason they've engaged us to help them along that journey is because we're giving them a common sense perspective about their decision making. And as long as they're okay with that and they understand the consequences, then everybody's happy. And I've got examples of guys who are doing the examples I said earlier where they're doing a big gran fondo and then they're doing a half iron man not far afterwards and they're okay with that. And there's never a complaint from them. They've done the event that they wanted and they were, you know, doing their best in both events and they know that it wasn't probably what they could have if they'd just solely concentrated on one of them. But you know, they're happy with that, they're not complaining. And, and it's the people who do those decisions who are not happy at the end and are complaining about their performance. They're the ones that we're, that we're trying to get this message across to that as long as you, as long as you understand that it will be an average effort in both events that are too close to each other or contradicting each other, as long as you're okay with that, then there's no issue.

Yeah. One example I wanted to Mention to finish off the conversation was we saw a very interesting interview with Sam long after the T100, where he had a really, really disappointing performance by his own standards. He had an absolute flying start to the season. He was coming out of the swim well off the back, as he normally does, and he was motoring on the bike and running into second place three times in a row, I think, and just loving life. And they went to interview him after the T100 series. If you didn't see it, it's a tough watch because he was barely keeping it together when he first got given the mic. You know, he was trembling and he couldn't even look up. He was so down on the race. And within 30 seconds of being interviewed, he burst into tears. And the pressure was so much. The disappointment was so much. And that is just a great example of how long a it's been and how tough it's been to try and maintain form and how. How hard it is, how bitter a pill it is to swallow to turn up to a race not in your best form and race like that. And it's just so. It was just. He was just mentally defeated, and that's really tough. And that's.

That's.

That's a hard thing to go through. And. And that's an example of. Of not a good feeling you want when you're turning up to a race.

A lot of reasons around why that happened, and, you know, we're just. We're just looking from the outside. You know, it's part of a series. It's. It's part of the contract. You want to be in the prize money, you think things might turn around. Even though I saw at least four interviews before the race started where, you know, the interviewer was saying, you know, you ready for this race? How you feeling? And he's just saying, oh, it's a long season. Oh, I'm tired. And already his mindset was, you know, I'm hoping for a miracle here. Let's see what happens. But, you know, the reality is he couldn't hold form. And it's not. It's not his fault. It's just the structure of the program that he'd set himself so. In fact, probably people would say, well, that is his fault. That's his decision to do that. But it's the way the program is worked out for that actual. The race organization, that's how they've spread the race out. So, you know, on the topic that we've started with, you know, how do you select your races? And. And are you entering too many? That's a question that's going to be hugely debated now after one year of having T1 hundreds and Ironman and the Olympics and world championship races and sprint and, you know, team races. There's so many races for the pros now. And there's also that opportunity for age groupers now that T100 is open to age groupers. You've got a whole flood of calendar events now that are opened up to athletes. And this is a great position to be in, but it's actually going to make. You have to make better decisions. And so this is what this podcast is really trying to get across today is make sure you ask yourself the question, am I entering too many races? And you could go the other way. Am I not entering enough? But, you know, from a pro point of view, I would have to say that most people thought, this is Christmas, I can race 10, 15 times a year and look at the earning opportunities that I have. And that's all true. But sometimes you end up with mediocre performances along the way because you're just not training well enough to improve from race to race. And all that's going to happen is your performances generally go down. It would be interesting to see if we picked out a series sample size of 20 of the female and 20 of the male athletes who, who did well at the start of the season, who did well in the middle of the season, who did well at the end, did anybody do well in all those three sections? And there will be some people who did do that, and there'll be others who perform shocking in the middle and strong at the end and strong at the start, or, you know, very average in the, at the start and got better in the middle and performed brilliantly at the end. So it's the matter of how you actually enter the year and how many races you do that's going to determine where your form is. Because as, as we've said many times, it's very hard to hold form for a long period of time. So it's a great debate to have and I hope we've answered that question well in this episode. And it is really one that's very specific to you and what your expectations are. And as long as you understand the consequences of your decision making, what the events you go into, then you'll be happy with the outcome.

Some final examples I wanted to bring up was fourth place at Kona Ironman. Leon Chevalier had a pretty disappointing result himself and he, he just said blatantly, didn't have the legs, he said. Really wanted to have a good result at Dubai but you know, three weeks or four weeks after or five weeks after Kona Iron man he said I still didn't have the legs. And, and that's the difference between trying to, you know, train for an A race goal of iron man and five weeks later dropped down to a 70.3. Competing with guys like Martin Van Real who are so specialized for this, for this race in this distance, in this event. Yeah, you just can't expect to be at that very top end of the range. And World champion Patrick Lange himself notoriously had the Ironman as his A race goal and really pushed for that and that was his focus and he got rewarded. And the other interesting one is the Norwegians and Christian Blumenfeld who they were making a lot of noise about the ability to be Ironman world Champion, which they were Olympic gold medalist to Ironman world champion. Back to Olympic gold, which he didn't even come close. Back to Ironman world champion which again, he didn't even come close. And that was. That last one was due to a lot of factors. You know, had he not, had he not had nutritional issues or overridden on the bike, it might have been a different story. But alas, he didn't and he, yeah, jumping up and down between these distances, they were very confident they were going to be able to do it and they didn't actually come close. They went from Olympic to Ironman which was a great stretch but just couldn't come back down and back up. So pretty interesting examples and it'll be great to see in a few weeks time who turns up at the 70.3 World Champs and is able to perform at their best level because there's a lot of Kona Ironman athletes who are racing the 70.3 world champs. They'll have had two months off and there's a lot of people that have just been gearing up for that race all year. So it'll be very, very cool to see who turns up and who performs well and I can't wait for it. Any last points from you before we wrap it up?

No. It's been a very interesting year in the world of triathlon and I'm so excited because now athletes have to really be a bit more decisive in their decision making around what events they're going to do as a pro and I think it's a lot harder now for the age groupers because there's so many races you can go to and I think if you really take the advice that we're trying to give is think carefully about what you want to do well in and when, and give yourself ample time to prepare properly, then you'll probably end up with the outcome that you want. So that's the message we're trying to get across, I think.

Great way to finish the podcast. It's a very nuanced topic, which is why it creates such complex conversations with our athletes, but we love it. It's a really fun way to go about a season and really plan it out carefully. And that's what we're all about here at Travello. Plan, prepare, perform. So thank you very much for listening to another episode, and we'll see you on the next one.