Are “Junk” Miles Worth It?

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. Big episode today. We've got lots to discuss, as always with the world of sports. The sports we love, cycling, triathlon and athletics, just to name a few. But more importantly, the topic of today, we're looking at the question, are junk miles worth it? We all as athletes want to get that extra edge. And if athletes have any time, we often see them sneaking in some extra kilometers on the bike or running some extra kilometers when they can, or even swimming some extra kilometers. But are those extra k's actually doing anything or are they just junk miles that aren't serving any purpose? We'll look at that question later in the episode. But first, dad, our normal starting segment. What are you grateful for?

Pretty easy one for those lucky enough to be in Melbourne over the autumn. I haven't been able to say lucky enough to be in Melbourne for a long time. In summer and autumn we've had some of the best triathlon conditions and for that matter, road running, racing, cycling. The weather has just been incredibly good for enjoying your sport in some really easy conditions. So I'm really grateful for the fact that I know there's been other horrible, horrible conditions in other states with floods and but we've just been so fortunate to have the best conditions and it just makes, it makes for a much more enjoyable day experience all around when you're just not freezing cold or getting blown around by the wind. And so yeah, my gratitude's basically thank God for some. Look, over the years I've never seen weather continuously turn up every time we race that's perfect like this. It's, it's unheard of good gratitude.

And like you said, when you see the horrific floods in the northern eastern coast of some of the states of Australia, then it makes us grateful for what we have down here. My gratitude is I went and saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child yesterday, the big play. It's in Melbourne. It's been running for a couple of years and before COVID hit I was planning on buying tickets and then Covid hit and haven't been able to go for a couple years and then finally was able to get in and actually stops the show this Sunday and a couple of months ago tried to get tickets and I went and saw it yesterday and I was one of the fifth last shows to be able to actually get to see it. And big Harry Potter fans. So very grateful that I actually got to sneak that in. It's a six hour show which was really quite impressive and I did wonder what their endurance or nutrition strategies were for the entire play.

It just shows you how much of an impact Harry Potter had in your childhood that you as a mature adult would really want to spend six hours doing that. So it's an incredible story, isn't it, that's been stood the test of time.

It's incredible. You go there and there's adults wearing the Harry Potter gear and they make references to the books and those kind of things and everyone has the same reaction because everyone's so invested in the Harry Potter world. It's great. It's funny. I actually put a photo of it on Instagram as well and the responses I got were people I didn't expect to be Harry Potter fans. So that's good. Moving on to our next segment. What has caught our attention around the world of the sports that we love. And there's a few dimension here. So we're gonna get through some of the news that we've been paying attention to. And we had a chat on Sunday because it was Melbourne Half Ironman about how every time you see a 70 point when you're actually there at the event, it just reminds you how brutal an event it is. And Half Ironman is nothing to shirk at. And I think they need to change the name. I think everyone needs to stop calling it a Half Ironman and call it a 70.3 event or a 4 to 6 hour endurance event or something like that. Because you need to be reminded that it's. When you say the term Half Ironman implies that it's not as hard and everyone shirk it off. Like I'm doing a Half Ironman doesn't sound that impressive. But it is a brutal endurance event. And the pain that you see in the runners in that last 10km after suffering all day and because you can, you know, if you're well trained, push a little bit harder in the event. It's just so much more grueling by the time you get to the back end. So we were just reminded of that on Sunday.

The intensity of a Half Ironman is almost at a level of Olympic distance now. People can actually race it. Whereas the objective of an Ironman was to survive and get to the finish because that's. It's just the epic endurance triathlon event. And you know, I think you're Right. I think it, the half ironman almost gets belittled wrongly. It is an epic endurance race and for the people who are new to it or beginners, it's emotional to finish it. You know, you've achieved an incredibly. Some people are out there for seven or eight hours and you know, some of the pros in the Ironman, that's their time as well. So it's a huge commitment. And you know, some of the guys who we interviewed afterwards, you know, who did four hours or 420, you know, that night they were barely able to walk up and down stairs. You know, you hear that about a lot of marathon runners who've done marathons. And you know, the next two days the doms are incredible. They can barely function properly. Well, you know, the half ironman or 70.3 is, is that because you've got the intensity. You don't have that in the Ironman. You have the endurance factor but in this you've got endurance. Plus you're really pushing yourself right to the, on the, on the edge of. I'm not saying you're not doing that in the Ironman either. Yeah, but, but it's, it's a higher intensity. So you are really pushing your limits. Right, right to. You know, you can still walk in a half Ironman marathon. Just as easily you can walk in a, in a marathon. So I think yeah, definitely it needs the respect that I don't know if people give it when they enter it. Oh, it's just a half iron man. And I say that just word every time. I'm just doing the half iron man. No, you're not.

Yeah, exactly.

You're doing a full on 70.3 endurance event that will have you crippled for about two or three days depending on your level of fitness.

Yeah.

So yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah. And the announcer did a good job actually who stands there at the finish line and they read out everyone's names as they're coming across the line. And he interviewed one of our athletes and he said how does it feel to just finish 70.3 miles of racing? And I said that's exactly what it is. You know, he's really building it up. He's not saying how did it finish to finish half an iron man.

Yeah.

And we also spoke about the fact that yeah, it makes me just think about nine man and go, this is extreme. You know, just the concept of an Ironman is just absurd. And we spoke to a few people who were doing the relay on the day because they have a lot of relay teams now doing, competing in the half Ironmans, which is awesome. And often there's people who are coming in who aren't actually triathletes. You know, it's a swimmer swimming as part of the relay team or a bike rider or a runner. And one of the runners was saying to me, jeez, this is a brutal event. And they're kind of going, so how far is an actual Ironman? And then explaining it to them and they're just going far out. When you see it in person, the iron man just seems so extreme. That's because it is. It is just ridiculously extreme.

And a lot of, you know, the bike riders were saying, oh, imagine having to run after what I just did on the bike. I can hardly walk, push myself that far. And these guys have to front up for a half marathon.

Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Imagine doing 180 kilometer ride and then a marathon. Yeah, it's just absurd to me.

Look, as we've said many times on the podcast, it's so easy to sit down there having coffee or having a beer or whatever you're doing and say, I think I might do the next Ironman. And the rest of the table goes, yeah, that's a good idea, let's do that. But no one's really clearly thought that through and what that entails. And, and it's easy to talk about I'm going to do it, but it's so much harder to actually get to the line and then finish.

Moving on to the world of athletics, the world indoor champs were on and we had a few Aussies competing, which was just awesome to see. And I want to speak about Katrina Bissette who we spoke about a month ago on the podcast. She ended up making the final. And your point to her was that she's a strong runner at the front, but how did she go in championship races? Because she's learned to run fast times by leading from the front. But in championship tactics, how does she go? And she actually did really well. She came fifth at the Worlds, which is just unbelievable. To be fifth fastest 800 meter indoor runner, indoor runner in the world. Exactly right. And watching that final race, you know, going out hard was actually really great for her because indoor so tight, it's only six lanes wide. You've got to be strong in position. And because she has so much power and she's able to run such quick 200 and that's what she does at the start of each race, she was able to out muscle every girl and get herself into a Good position early compared to. If you're a slow starter, you just get spat straight out the back of indoors. And yeah, I mean she was actually in a really good place. She was in third with 100 meters to go and looking really strong and then some girls just, just came over her and she was that close to a podium position but a really good run.

Yeah, and indoor running is really all about positioning as well as talent, of course. But, but if you're too far back, it's really hard to come around people in an indoor track.

Exactly.

It' a 400 meter indoor track. It's 250.

200, yeah.

So, so you really, you know, it's, it banked for those who don't know, it's got a bank on the two. It's like a velo almost. And your positioning can make or break. You can be the best runner and be at the back and you can't get to the finish line in front because it's, it's too difficult to get around people.

Yep. We had two Aussies come fifth and 1 7th. And this is at the world stage again. I just want to reiterate which, which is unreal to see such strong track runners for Australian athletics. I just wanted to make the point that Australian athletics seems like it's continuing to be on the way up. You know, Peter Ball coming fourth at Tokyo Olympics, many good stories and Channel 7 are actually coming the Australian athletic champs, which I think next week or sometime in the next few weeks, which is another big step as well. They're covering the whole thing. So having athletics on prime TV is a really cool step.

Rejuvenation of athletics is something that Australia needs and because, you know, I'm a big athletics fan and you know, back in the day when we had so many talented world class runners, you know, Olympic park was full when I've still seen photos of when you know, Ron Clark, John Landy, Herb Elliott, you know, you could not. It was standing room only at Olympic park and people were looking through the fence because it was the capacity, you know, you're lucky to get 400 people. But now because we've had a little bit of success at Tokyo, you know, it reminds me of Ash Barty. A friend of mine's a really good, got a good tennis coaching business and the resurgence of girls to take up tennis after Ash Barty. There's no coincidence. And I remember in 2011 when Cadell won the Tour de France, the uptake of bike riding, whether they were recreational or, you know, it's really not a coincidence. And I think it would be really great if we could just push ahead and encourage more people just to compete in athletics and because, you know, it is a. It's a fantastic sport.

Yeah. Anyone that listens to this podcast knows how much we love it and how much we're pushing for it to keep gaining its momentum and popularity.

One of the things, Jordan, you know, the PB Mates and call them whatever you like, that's what you're trying to do. And have got various names where you can go along and try and improve your time over 5k or 1500 or a mile or an 800. And they're the things that are really becoming popular. And because it's a specific one night, one event, you're only there to warm up, do your event and go home. You're not there for. The problem with athletics is you're there for six hours and there's every other sport going on. Shot put, discus, high jump, triple jump, long jump, you know, middle distance run, sprinters, hurdles. So there's such a variety of events. You know, I think this, this is more attractive to people for time. People don't want to be spending five or six hours at a. An athletic meet. They'd rather. Let's just have, you know, shot put this. This week.

Yeah, yeah.

And let's just have, you know, something else next week, high jump or, or have two, two or three field events where it's just specifically for that, you know, I think, I think that's a better model.

Yeah. That's even what the Diamond League is becoming. You know, it's. It's a one week, it's a 3K, one week, it's a tank, a 5K. One week's 10K. And the same with the field events. One week it's a long jump, one week it's a triple jump. So, yeah, it's right down that path. The spring Classics continue to roll on and there's been some good races. Anything you want to mention?

I can't remember where we're up to because obviously everybody knows we record these podcasts, you know, at various times and they come out at various times, so.

Well, the weekend was Milan San Remo.

Yes. And. And the, you know, Paris Nice has finished in the tour of the Torino, Adriatica is finished. And now the tour of Catalonia is starting, I think. And yeah, so there's been unbelievable racing and Milan San Remo never fails to. To excite me. And I know it's 290k, so you can pretty much Watch from the Poggio depressor to the finish and you'll, you'll get the gist of what's happening. But it is always, always good for me. And I know you like doing this too is watching what's happening. Who's in the break, how did it establish at the start who's game enough to be in the break? Because it's a no win. Yeah, you're not, you're not going to do anything if you're in the break. And there was a, one of the taller guys in the break, it was a break of 7. I think the lotto guys with about 40, 50k to go had full leg cramp and couldn't pedal. I don't know if you saw that. And I was thinking when he got on the brake, far out he's driving this break and all the other guys seemed like they were, you know, letting him do most of the driving. I was thinking, geez, this guy's fit, I wonder how long he can keep this up for. And here, here he is on the side of the road, the guys have left him and he's got a ductor quad hamstring, calf foot. And he was in agony. He was just in agony. So, so it's a great race to watch from that point of view. And what are the tactics of the teams when they get organized and who are they backing? Because you, when you see teams really going all out to get to the front, because when you turn up the podrio, you need to be at the front if you're, if you're 50th, you're pretty much done for the day. So you know, there's only so many people can get to the front. So you get a good idea of who's in form according to which teams actually trying to get to the front of the race and pushing other teams out of the way. And so it's always intriguing to me who's in the form. And there was a whole lot of people pulling out of Milan San Remo for Covid illness related issues. And so it looked like a weaker field, but when you actually narrowed it down, it wasn't, it wasn't a weaker field, there was just five less good guys in there. So it was a great opportunity for someone to sneak a victory in one of the, you know, the classic five monuments. And he favors the brave. He who dares wins. All those sayings. And a guy broke away on a downhill again for the second year in a row and stayed away, which I said, this can't Happen again. And it did. He was using all the road. I don't know if you saw. Yeah, he nearly crashed five times, but he stayed away. And the hesitation of the bunch. Who has got Van der Poel, Van Aert Matthews.

He was willing to crash to win, basically.

Yes. And that was. I just was so wrapped for him that he stayed away. I was a bit annoyed that the guys are willing to lose rather than let someone else win. Because that's actually what you're saying.

Yeah.

If I'm not gonna be willing in the last 3k to roll a turn, I'm willing not to win. I'm sacrificing not to winning. So I don't give someone else a chance to winning. And if you're, if you're fit enough, you should. But obviously I'm not being. I'm not saying sit on the front for the 3K to bridge the gap. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying, you know, show your, your balls almost by doing a turn for 10 seconds and then flicking your elbow. And that's exactly what Woot Van Art did. And I sort of rewound this a few times. And the guys behind swung up when he swung off. And I was really, I was really annoyed. And then I went, I hope none of you guys win.

Exactly.

And I cheered for the, for the breakaway.

Yep.

Yeah.

And because the, the underlying belief there is that if I do a turn, I can't win because I'm not going to be strong enough in the sprint.

Is that right? Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say just then. You are not backing yourself, your ability. If I do a 10 second turn, I've just sacrificed my race. Well, you should back yourself and, and show the other guys oh, he's willing to do it. Maybe I'll do a 2 second, 3 second, just roll over. Give everybody a chance.

They're all so fit. Surely they have the leg strength to be able to do a turn and recover enough to be able to sprint after. You know, it's not.

It is 293k, don't forget that.

But it's not. But they're all in the same position. You know, it's not like it's the last 5k where they're all. Someone's doing 30 seconds more each turn than everyone else.

That's a great point. And look, to be fair, the other guys possibly were on their limit, Jordan. And they couldn't. And Van Aert was the only one who could. And he's. He's mucked it up for himself rather than relying on the others. So. So generally, if they can't do it, it's not, it's not totally all tactics. It's because they actually can't do it.

Yeah, I would love to know when it is tactics and when it's not and be able to see that or just hear that.

Well, you certainly know when it's not. When it is tactics, when the guy.

Actually wins Y Sprint you. And a notable mention to Michael Matthews.

Yeah, it's funny how we talked about this in the previous podcast about him training seemingly, you know, with some better people and proofs in a pudding. He, he could have won my land San Remo. He was right there. He came fourth. That was an outstanding performance. And I thought tactically he should have followed Van Aert and done a turn, but he could have been on his knees, we don't know. But sure enough, he comes out and wins the next race he's in, which he hasn't won a race for a long time. So whatever he's been doing with the POG is certainly paying dividends. And then he let out Groves the next day for a double victory for Green Edge two days in a row. So fantastic. Well done.

Hopefully just training is what they've been doing. Let's move on to the main topic of today. Are junk miles worth it? And what do we mean by junk miles? We mean getting in low level and we're going to say zone 1km in the legs here because I want to make that distinct difference. So there's basically a three zone type model or a five zone type model you can talk about. The three zone type is up to the first basically threshold and then up to the next second. Zone 2 up to the next threshold is basically FTP and then above that is tier VO2 max. The 5 zone threshold is zone 1 and 2 is easy. Zone 3 and 4 starts to get into tempo threshold sweet spot. And then zone 5 and 6 is VO2 max and above. We have to say that because there is a clear difference between doing. Let's say we're using the 56 zone model, doing zone 1 miles and zone 2 miles. Or if we're using the 3 zone model, doing the low end of zone 1 or the high end of zone mine up to that first threshold. So yeah, there's a few factors to think about here. And with all these topics we have our own thoughts. We like to look at studies to see what they're saying. There's always different opinions out there. And the first thing I want to start with is that we want to dispel the myth that more is not always better.

Yeah, that sentence needs to be listened to. And have a think about that because just because you're out there doing 800km a week compared to someone who's doing 400, does that automatically guarantee you're going to be better? No, it definitely doesn't. It depends. That word again, it depends on what is involved in those 800 km. If you happen to be in a, you know, two week tour, those 800 kilometres are unbelievably valuable for the next six weeks of training. And if those are in just a touring holiday, they're going to be fun. That's about it. There will be, you know, there will be periods where you can't possibly be riding in zone one the whole time. So you must enter zone two and three at some stage during those junk miles. So there will be some aerobic improvement for sure and some conditioning and just getting used to sitting on the bike for that long. So, so there's never no gain. But if you're tight on time, this is not the area where you should be training.

Exactly.

And I think that's the main simplified point that we want to get across right at the beginning of this discussion.

So if two athletes are training the key sessions equally, then outside of that it becomes a case of what should you be doing? And we'll come back to this fundamental principle of more isn't always better. Again, this whole episode, because like you said, it depends on the situation. So if you look at two people training equally on a similar program based on the key sessions, obviously to their own ability, what they do outside of that could have a positive or negative impact on their training program. Depending on their experience, where they're up to in their training program or the normal factors we think about.

And also don't forget that if you feel better because you've gone and exercised, whether it's actually proven that it helps you, it's worth doing. So the placebo effect is certainly something that I think is underrated, where if you think it's doing you good, then do it. There's so many conflicting articles on whether zone one training is actually beneficial or not. What do we mean by zone one? We mean where you're not actually gaining any fitness.

There's not enough stimulus to gain any fitness.

That's right. So you really just. And I, I encourage it because it works for me and I've experimented with, with myself a lot over the journey Where I've done rest recovery compared to active recovery prior to intensity, intensity days and overwhelming. I perform better after riding rather than resting after moving doing something. And I've got examples of other riders who need to do a mini hit session prior to their a race. And you know, that's kind of weird, but that's proven accidentally by, by you know, I wasn't going to do this race and so I trained normally and all of a sudden I got a position and I was unable to get into the race, but I hadn't tapered and they performed incredibly well. And you know, we've got examples of that.

Yeah, exactly right. And that would, I would guess come from 50 years worth of high volume training, which is what you're used to, especially coming from the 80s, which was a super high volume, as high volume as you can get. You just kind of continue that trend, which is why you're used to it. I would probably argue that that is a placebo for you because from all the studies I looked at on performance benefit of doing an active recovery session to not the day before was minimal. There wasn't anything really conclusive saying if you do an active recovery session you will perform better the next day in a high intensity sess. But like you just said that when you're looking at studies and papers and you're looking at things theoretically, it doesn't have as much value to the real world application and you always have to take it back to that. And when you just say I might feel much better by doing this and you just know that from experience, even if it is 100% a placebo, then that's okay.

What's the point of doing. What are we, you know, it could be a few reasons. Why am I doing that session where I know that I'm not improving my fitness? So that's the argument that gets thrown back. Why am I doing that? Again, you're telling me I'm not improving my fitness. So can you please explain to me why I'm doing it? So we know that this is scientifically got evidence and backing behind it that any movement creates blood flow and blood flow carries oxygen. Oxygen repairs damaged muscles. So there's a reason why we would want to move. Whether it's going for a walk, whether it's going for an easy jog, whether it's just swimming nice and gently in the pool or the ocean, or just spinning the bike at 50, 60 watts, 100 watts, whatever, just movement so that you're getting blood flow. So that's not trying to do anything but recover. That's kind of what you're trying to do. Then the other thing is before my big event or my hard session, I want to feel good the next day. So that's the other reason we're doing it. So none of those reasons I'm improving my fitness, none of them are.

Yeah, there's a really key point there because what you're talking about again is feeling better. But this is a really key point to what one of the studies pointed out was that your body has enough time between sessions to get rid of the lactate on its own accord. It doesn't need movement. That's why the actual performance isn't affected. But the way you feel is affected. You know that, that movement does actually, you know, I'm going to put in quotation marks here if anyone's just listening to the audio, but make you feel better. So exactly what you're saying, that blood flow of oxygen to the muscles is so helpful in that feeling and, but even if you felt sore the next day, you could still perform to your capacity is what the study was saying.

It's no different to if you feel very average crap and you've got a hard intensity session and you get on the bike and you've got doms for some reason or, or you just got sore, tired legs and you think in no way I can do this high intensity session. But I'm always saying, come on, just warm up, just have a feel and the warm up. This is not going well then. Okay, let's just put a bit of pressure on the pedals here. And our warm up involves some period of easy riding and building the power slowly and then doing a bit of a ramp and some little efforts and then you're ready for the main set. And you know, the first effort of the main set sucks a bit but all of a sudden you feel okay. So I think it's wrong to think that that's not useful. Had I not done that, I'm feeling that way the whole through the session and you know, set 3, 4, 5 and 6 doesn't improve. And that's my, that's my evidence and that's all. That's kind of, I'm basing my whole reason for me. And if it doesn't work that way for people, I, I listen and say, right, just have a, just have a rest. Have you have your day as a rest day.

Take it back to being a human as well. And you know, if you're deciding whether to ride or not on a Monday or go for an easy run mentally. What's, you know, what are you enjoying? Are you going to be a robot that says, oh, this study says it's not good enough. So I'm not going to move today. I'm not going to go for a run or a walk. It's like we're, we're supposed to move. We're better off being fit and healthy and getting out and the endorphins you get from a run or a ride, it's just so worth it in that regard.

Took the words out of my mouth. You enjoy what you're doing, so don't stop yourself from enjoying what you're doing. You know, there'll be, out of the 300 odd days that you train each year, there'll be, I don't know, 17 of them that'll be near perfect weather. And if one of those days is you're supposed to be resting. I'm not resting, I'm outside and I'm just rolling along with the breeze in my, my, my hair and sun on my back and, and you know, yahooing because it's just a glorious day. You know, you experienced that on Monday with just a, a beautiful 25 degree day with no wind and didn't have to ride hard. Just, just roll the legs over and you just love life.

Yeah, yeah. And I actually had a guy ride past me and just go. Because I was riding very, I don't know, have to justify that. Someone rode past me, which is perfectly okay.

And she was 85 when she.

Because you always call it the grandparents. Yeah, exactly right. But he rode past me and said, what a fucking unbelievable day. And I was just ticking along at zone one going, yeah, that's great. But yeah, just to clarify, for this purpose of this episode as we're talking, we talk in the five zone model. So when we say zone one, it is really, really low intensity. And zone two is still before that first threshold point, but zone two is still easy. But to clarify, we would say Zone 2 mileage. Any extra Zone 2 stuff you can get in is giving you some sort of fitness gain.

It's gold. I just can't emphasize how valuable riding there is. And if you're going to use that 90, 10 or 80, 20 model polarized, you need to be spending a hell of a lot of time in zone two. So, you know, the scary part is creeping into zone three. You've got to be pretty strict. And so you've got to select your courses a little bit so that you're, you're not actually mixing, mixing the session. Because, you know, if you want to perform on the days where it really counts, then creeping into the other zones is a no, no. And you're just trying to, you know, control the day sort of thing. And you could do it for as long as you like. And you know, I'm often saying to people, if you want to do extra, you know, keep the main set even on your hard days, the same don't change the time, whether it's 15 minutes or 20 of the main set, but change the warm up and the cool down to be instead of five minutes because you're under stress, because you've only got, you know, 45 minutes to do the session. Now you've got two hours. Great. Do an hour's zone two at the start, do your main set 18 or 20 minutes properly, then go back to the cool down zone two and spend another half hour in zone two. You just watch your fitness, go through the roof doing that. That's the area that if you've got time, that you can make big inroads into your aerobic fitness gains and you'll fast track your program, which seems really odd, doesn't it? By training really easy. I'm fast tracking my program, not by training extra in the main set. And I want to make that clear. I'm not asking you to do any extra. You need to stay between that. Whatever your coach is doing, 15 to 30 minutes, that's the area. You don't change that, but you add more zone two everywhere you can.

Let's talk about then, based on that, the overall goal of the training week and thinking about training volume as a whole whole. Because based on what you're saying, we've given some sort of reasons why you could do zone one stuff, even if it's termed junk mileage. And there's also reasons why you shouldn't because the studies show it's not giving you massive fitness gain. And we will talk more about that. But you just established that Zone 2 is the goal type of training. So people hearing that just go, all right, I'm doing as much Zone 2 training as possible. But that is not the correct thing to do straight away. You know, the goal of a training program is one, progressive overload and two, you need to go to your level. So you can't just start adding in hours and hours of zone two training because the rest of your week will be affected.

Undoubtedly the adaptation, that's the key. The load you're putting on your body, it can't go from zero to hero. We've said that many times. The podcast told me that I can do as many zone 2km as I want. Yes, I did say that. But you have to actually progress from adding 10 minutes warm up, 10 minutes cool down, not going straight to 45 warm up, 45 cool down because you will be exhausted in two days time. And that's when you're meant to be riding your high intensity session. Or if that is your high intensity session, you'll take a long time to recover from that. So that's the key thing, letting your body adapt to the load and not, not getting a load ahead of yourself, which will sabotage your whole program.

It could be deceiving as well because zone two is easy. It feels easy at the time. You might do a Zone 2 session on a Monday, whether it's an extra swim, ride or run. And then you do your hard training Tuesday. Then you do zone two again Wednesday, hard Thursday, zone two again Friday, but you're not used to this. And then after the first week you're a little bit tired, but you're not too bad. But then by the end of week two, there is no way you're going to be able to train properly because you've just done way too much for what you're used to. If you're going from nothing to that.

Well, I'm assuming people think that I just meant two days later. One day you'll be tired later. Jared said I might be tired. I'm not feeling tired at all. But what you just said is the big picture. What effect does it have in two weeks time, three weeks time and you've forgotten about what you did, Started too hard, too much volume, not too hard, too much volume at that. So it might take three or four weeks before you're in a hole. But you don't actually know why, but it's because you, you built the load too quickly. And you know, that is so important that you understand that you can only go as quick as your body can cope. And you know, even when I've had a full on season and I'm going into a little bit of a, an off season, if you want to call it that. And then I start doing maybe my Wednesday rides, you know, used to be able to do, you know, before my, whilst I was in the season I came, I could comfortably knock out three to four hours on a Wednesday at zone two and carry on the day and function really well and not be exhausted, have that break of three or four weeks of not doing those Wednesday rides. And if I went straight back to three to three and a half hours. I'd be lying down, I'd be exhausted. I can't cope with the load. And that's an example of someone who's actually been doing it for a long time. So. So, you know, I know that's what happens. And so I'm very careful on, when I return to that program that I set myself, that I am really careful with that, that it's maybe a two hour and the intensity is quite down. And I build into that over six to eight weeks. And by, you know, week 15 or week 20, I'm at three and a half hours, you know, at the top of zone two, pushing it hard. So, yeah, they're great examples of. That's not what we're saying. It's just, you know, open slather zone too, as much as you like. Yeah. But when you get to a point you can cope with it and you just keep adding. So you just keep putting money in the bank, you put fitness in into your body, it will cope with any load. And all of a sudden you could be riding 30 hours a week. Is there any point to that? If you didn't have a job and you want to really become a really good bike rider, you know, obviously more is going to be better, but it's not often more is better.

Yep. It's not every time anyway. Um, so the summary of that is that, yeah, the goal of the training week is to progressively overload either your volume or intensity. Um, you just have to make sure that an increase in volume doesn't impact your ability to hit the intensity of sessions of the week.

So the two things you've mentioned, volume and intensity, that's what our goal is. But you watch if you increase the volume or the intensity or both, guess what? The third factor that goes together is consistency. That just drops away because you're exhausted and you need a day off, or now I need two days off and all of a sudden you've dropped the key thing. Without consistency, those other two things are useless. Doesn't matter what program you're on, if you can't maintain the program consistently day in, day out, unless you're sick or injured. But don't worry about the volume and intensity. If you're only training twice a week instead of of four times a week, you really have to actually train hard because you're missing so much.

Absolutely. And for people that ask a question and they say, okay, so you're establishing that zone one junk miles aren't giving you a Fitness benefit. But there's other benefits. Zone two is the golden ones. The high intensity sessions are the biggest bang for your buck. Why don't we just do more of those? And it just has to be said that there's a maximum amount of those you could do per week and that is just clear evidence shows that that any more than two, up to three max, and I don't know many people that do three hard high intensity interval sessions in a week is any more than that. It's just not, not beneficial and it just leads highly to risk of overtraining and inconsistent.

So yeah, so you will be able to do it for sure. Four sessions of high intensity, but eventually you'll be fatigue level. The load will be so great on you that you'll have to miss some sessions because you physically are too tired. But down the track, if you've been doing this for six months, you could say, well, I'm fit enough to do that and cope and I'm not getting tired. Well, that may be the case, but it's still going to create that potential issue of overtraining because there's no evidence to tell us that training hard every single time is going to get the best outcome. There's plenty of evidence to say that that's a bad idea, but there's no evidence to say that it's actually worked for a lot of people. So we want to make sure that our high intensity is used properly and not overused so that when we get to our A race we are in peak form. And as we've talked about many times, you can only hold form for so long, so you can't sustain that for a six month period. It's more compact than that. So getting the right intensity at the right time is the key, but overdoing it can actually cause the opposite effect, which is poor performance, overtrained, lethargy, fatigue and possibly sickness and maybe injury.

Now the last point we want to make in this is just because, and this has to be really clear just because there is no, and I'm going to say VO2 max benefit to zone one junk mile training. That doesn't mean there's no benefit benefit to your race performance because that type of training still can help you with efficiency, economy, bike handling skills if you're.

A bike rider, stroke if you're a swimmer, form when you're running. Yep, exactly, yep, yeah, all of the above.

And, and I think that just has to be said especially for someone considering a half ironman or especially an ironman, you know, volume is just so important. So if you, if you aren't fit enough to get Zone two more Zone two kilometers in, you have to resort to zone one. And that's still going to be beneficial for you, even if it's not increasing your VO2 max.

I just love training anyway. And I know that I love the easy days more than I love the hard days. I'm all up for the hard days. I'm motivated because I know they're going to help me be a better bike rider. But I love the sport so much, I want to ride every day anyway. It's like I've wasted the day if I haven't actually. And you know, and everybody else who's listened to these podcasts know that my junk day, as we're calling it today, is 100 watts. When I've got an FTP of 280, people would laugh. 100 watt recovery day was probably for someone with 150 FTP, but here I am riding at 100 watts and 100 heart rate. So it does a lot more things for me than what someone looking in would be going, why are you doing that? Well, because I like it. I like doing it and I know that it doesn't do a hell of a lot for me physiologically, but mentally it shapes my week, makes me feel good about myself. So don't feel bad about doing that.

And the term do your easy days easy applies to Zone two training we spoke about before that that can't creep into Zone three. But then it also applies the same.

Thing to don't drop into Zone one.

Well, yes, but these active days are just as important. You know, you know that if you did these active days as Zone two, you wouldn't be recovered enough. You know that you could probably only handle these 100 watt rides, even though again, it's not giving that, that top end FTP improvement, but it's you're getting the goal of riding your bike, seeing 100 watts, feeling better, rolling your legs over. And this game we always speak about on here, you know, the 100 watt game, you're saying, this is where I'm practicing my pedaling technique. How, how close can I sit to 100 watts? And we know that for triathletes, the ability to sit within your range come race day is one of the biggest performance factors for how well you can run off the bike and how well you can finish the race.

It's a great topic you've brought up there because it's just reminded me of the pre race plans that I was discussing with a lot of the triathletes before Geelong and Melbourne and Shepparton that there have been the last three 70.3s in the last four weeks, which is a whole nother topic. To have only three 70.3s and put them in a four week block is madness. But anyway, that's what we were dealt. But you know, I was getting asked, how do I pedal better in the. How do I hold my power in the zones? You know, you're asking me, Jarrod, to stay in zone three and four during this race if it's a 70.3. You're asking me to hold the power between 150 and 170 watts and I'm creeping into 190 and I'm creeping to 120 or 80 and I'm saying get out of those other zones, get out of zone one and two. I don't want to see any time in zone one and two. And I'm showing people graphs of 15 minutes in zone one where you should have 30 seconds going around the turn. If you have four turns, that's two minutes maximum in zone one and they've got 25 minutes in zone two. Why are you spending so much time time outside of your zone? Because you're not pedaling properly on the hard bits. You're pedaling way too hard, so you're getting gassed. And then you need to recover. And how do you need to recover? You have to drop your power out of the zone you're supposed to be riding in. And so these recovery days we talk about the granny pedaling days. They're the days you practice pressure on the pedals at a low cadence, a low wattage. And if you can hold, say you pick 120 watts as your, as your power number for the easy day, you want to practice pulling up and pushing down between 115 watts and 125 watts. That's one of the key outcomes of this session, that can I hold the power and not see anything under 115 when I look at the session afterwards? How much time do I spend under 115 if I don't include the warm up or the, or the cool down? And that should be your goal. And practice keeping the pressure on the pedals consistently. How much time do I spend over 125? None. Great. I have absolutely nailed this. And then you can transfer that thought process and that execution because you've done it so many times week in, week out, whether it's a recovery session Whether it's a zone two session or whether it's a threshold session session, you are practicing getting out of the wrong zones and staying in the right zones. So come race day, the correlation and I've shown this to many of our trivalo athletes, the guys who can ride a 2:02 for 90k and the guys who can ride a 3 hours for 90k. The graphs look completely different. And if I didn't show you the winning time, the finishing time of those two graphs and I showed you the two graphs, tell me which rider went fast, you'd pick the one with more time in zone 6, 7, 5. And doesn't matter about 1 and 2, they've got plenty in there as well. They've got even spaced graph across the whole every one of the six zones. Whereas the guy with the other zone, he's got nothing in zone one and two, nothing in zone six and seven. He's got everything in zone three and four, depending on the event or distance or his ability to ride in zone 4, 5 or 6. And the graph looks completely different. And that is a game changer. That's what you're trying to do in these, as we call them, Mickey Mouse bullshit recovery rides. Practice it there. Practice keeping pressure on the pedals. How do you do that? You pull up and push down, pull up and push down the whole time. That's what you're trying to achieve. So when you come to want to ride, you know, not at 115 to 125 on race day, my goal might be 200 to 220. I'm not dropping under 200 for any reason. I'm not going over 220 for any reason. Except if it's, you know, a really steep hill, I might add another 5 or 10 watts. But if it means I drop into zone 2, I've ridden the hill too hard. And you will ride faster on race day. And we have proven was 100% the people who improved that, that all got faster times from one year at the same event. And you know, we're picking Geelong to Geelong to Geelong, faster rides, Melbourne to Melbourne to Melbourne, not Geelong and Melbourne. They're completely different rides. But people are improving because they're spending more time understanding how to pedal properly, keep pressure on the pedals.

And there's almost no one that couldn't benefit from this. And that's why this can be such a valuable thing to do. And it's also why, why you do these sessions, these active recovery sessions and we'll stop calling them Junk miles. I mean, that's the, the gold question out there is it's, it's a golden term. Junk miles. It's real popular term. But like you said before, we don't like calling it that.

We should be calling it the most valuable pedaling technique action you can possibly do.

Yeah, exactly. But you do that on the rollers for the reason of, I mean, you've got your power balance sitting there as well to make sure your left and right's even. And just being on the rollers keeps you as even as possible and teaches you, you to pedal properly.

But it also stimulates my core because I'm having to balance where I'm sitting on the, the kicker. I'm just being balanced. So I'm, you know, all these little percent of things, you know, they're what's keeping me tuned.

And this is the last point, exactly what you just said then that I wanted to bring up about this topic. And that's if you don't want to do this session, if you choose not to and say, okay, knowing all this, where else could I put my time? And that goes straight into, okay, maybe I do a strength session instead. Or maybe I, I do form practice. You know, I just go to the pool and just do swim drills and really slow swim drills. Trying to work on my form or work on my gait as a runner.

Yep. And stretching. Go and get a massage during that time instead of training. There's so many alternative things that you can do rather than just sitting. And I'm, I'm not training today, you know, going for a walk with the dog.

Yeah, exactly right. And the last one is potentially meal prepping your nutrition for the week. That's a big one that people often fall behind in. And it's like, okay, if I don't, I'm not going to do it. Easy zone one ride for an hour. Maybe I'll get my food organized for the weekend. So I have, you know, good lunches to eat each day or good meals prep. So I'm not eating something I don't want to be eating.

Yeah, it's probably more valuable to, you know, get your nutrition plan, go to the shop, get it all sorted for the week, and that's just as good as it doing a recovery ride because a, you're walking around and you know you're doing something that's actually going to contribute to your functionality of the week being much more improved.

It's a good discussion, plenty to think about. And again, this is for people that are looking for those that have that extra time are looking for something extra. And for a lot of athletes, a lot of age groupers, that's not the case. You know, they can't, they can't fit these extra time in. And that's fine. You know, you've got the key sessions to do, and you got to nail them 100%.

And at the end of the day, you can only do what the time available you have, and you have to be very much prioritizing. These are things that, if you have the time to do, that you would want to include, and don't be lazy about it. These are the things you should be doing. But if time is poor, you concentrate on doing the sessions that are going to be more valuable to your improvement.

That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you next time. Them.