Dealing With Nerves, Anxiety & Pressure Before Your Race

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. This week we had the Australian Masters National Road Series take place. National titles on the line for the individual time trial, the teams time trial, the crit race and the road race. And for a lot of our athletes at Trivelo, this is their biggest race of the year. This is their A race, the one that they've been training for. And for some select athletes, the goal of winning gold and wearing the coveted Australian Champions jersey is possible. And it's what they're aiming for. And leading into your A race like this, naturally there's a bit of pressure on the line, there's a bit of pressure around the race, often accompanied with nerves and anxiety. So how do you deal with this? What should you be thinking about before your race? I've had the privilege of listening to you, dad, have hundreds of conversations with athletes in race week and it was the same this week. And focusing on the right things and getting yourself in the right frame of mind can be the difference between a performance that you're proud of and feeling disappointed in yourself on race day. So today I'm going to be asking you, dad, what are the most important things that you want to talk to an athlete about in race week in leading into a big race. So dad, welcome to the episode. I'm sure everyone can't wait to hear the kind of words of wisdom you say to an athlete in race week. But to start with, what are you grateful for?

It's a very fascinating topic that we've selected and it's one that I really, I'm going to enjoy talking about. Look, going on just this week I really noticed my gratitude around surrounding yourself with like minded people and the camaraderie. And I really noticed it because we had, for those who don't know, at the nationals, Masters titles, which is at the same time as the elite road race and the elite time trial, which Rohan Dennis has already won in scintillating form, which is fantastic for his, his new team at Jumbo Visma. So Luke Durbridge was second, so he turned the table from last year. But my gratitude is around the group of people that we had and we had originally five teams for the teams time trial, four man teams, five fours, 20 people, plus the individual time trialers from Trivalo all competing and Some guys are doing the crit and some guys are doing the, the Masters Road Race. But it just really hit home to me how important it is to feel like you belong to a group. And it brought a great amount of pleasure to me to just be up there, all the guys warming up around the tent and the buzz of getting into the zone. It's probably what we're going to talk about later on, but how people go about their business and how everybody's encouraging each other. When you go off to start your time trial, everybody's yelling out good luck. And, and I think, I think it can't be underestimated how much of, how much of a part of the actual whole process of you training and planning and competing that the people you do it with, how important it is and that you surround yourself with people you enjoy. And, and I think there was great examples of that in just the week that we've had up at Ballarat, which is, you know, it's a special week. It's a combination of a lot of training for all the guys, as you said. And I just think that group, that group feeling, you feel like you've got your whole group behind you and, and you go there kind of, you know, you leave the warm up area and go to the start line thinking, here I am, I'm going to war. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm going to put it all on the line. Everything that I've trained for is right now. It's important. Can I do the effort and the outcome that I want, can I, can I execute the way I want? Now I think I'm gratitude, I'm grateful for having that group around all the other riders in our, in our little group. And this is just not for cycling. When we go to the triathlon events, you know, it's the same thing. You see fellow tri velo athlete in their kit and you know, you kind of thumbs up and you know, go for it and you feel like you belong to each other and even though you might not even know the person, you know, you want to, you want to say go, you know, so I'm really grateful for that.

Absolutely. On a similar theme because it's the same for me. I just love the, the warm up and the, as one of our athletes put it, the calm before the storm when everyone's at their cars, we've got the traveler tent up and everyone's on the trainer warming up in race mode, headphones on, it's so awesome to see. But my gratitude is actually for your coaching for the group. And I just love seeing over the days of how the races unfold, as I said in the intro, hearing your conversations, but specifically on the team's time trial day, how you're at the same time preparing for your own race, but each team's coming up to you and kind of saying, what are the last minute tactics? And you'll have a five minute conversation with each team and it's really fun for the team to have. It's almost like you're part of a footy team or something and you've got the coach and giving you the tactics and everyone's just hanging on every word you're saying. So I really enjoyed seeing that. That's my gratitude. What has caught your attention and it's obviously along the same sort of theme.

Yeah, well, this was an easy one because normally we do something that's happened in the world, but this is happening in the world. The COVID issue. And we had entered five teams into the national masters team time trial. It's a 32 kilometer event with four man teams. Obviously the fastest team is a winner, but it's also based around your age category. So we have four categories or five categories. We have athletes adding up to 90 years of age, 120, 180, 150 and open. And we had trained as a group for probably 16 to 18 weeks for this event as a team's time trial. So there's a fair bit going on the line for it. And within the last 24 hours we had four riders come down with COVID.

All spread across different teams. Yeah.

And before that we'd already had four riders have covered either the week before, two weeks before over a various period of time. And what caught my attention was no matter what the situation, you can still find a way around it. No matter what the roadblock is, you can still find a way to stop and think clearly, how am I going to resolve this? And because I've got four guys pulling out and potentially we'll have, instead of four riders in a team, we have three riders in team. One team had two riders. So, you know, it's obvious now I have to delete one team, do some shuffling, move people around and make sure that's okay with Cycling Australia and put the paperwork in. And it's, it's last minute stuff, you know, the stuff you don't want. Right.

People have trained with different people.

You've all trained together in your group and all of a sudden I'm putting you with another group and I don't know how they r really, you know, because it's, it's a team stone trialing is a big trust thing because you're sitting in time trial position in an echelon with no hands on the brakes. So you are trusting everybody in front of you to be smooth and not to do something out of the ordinary to bring you all down. And sure, on the day lots of things happened, good, bad, indifferent. But we managed to manipulate teams and add people, subtract people, people stepped up, people put their hand up and said I'll step aside for the team. And I found that just unbelievably team oriented thinking. And, and then that person who stepped aside because someone else pulled out six hours later got back in the team and performed really well. And I just love that. And, and that's what caught my attention is that no matter what the situation is, you can still end up getting to the start line and just making the best of your opportunities. I did say that in a text to a lot of the groups. I said, look, lots just happened in the last 12 hours. Teams have been reshuffled, but for those whose team hasn't, hasn't been reshuffled, understand how privileged you are and make the most of this opportunity because you know, look at what's happening with our other teams and you know, we ended up still winning two races, got second and another and fourth and the other out of the four teams. And at the national level that's, you know, through adversity we still succeeded. And I don't mean the winning thing, I mean we succeeded in getting the people on the line.

Absolutely. What caught my attention was that though with a lot of people that had Covid and people pulled out and there was even a few of us that had Covid in the few weeks prior and there was four people that line up on the start line that had had it in the last two to three weeks. And what caught my attention was the difference in response. And it really just highlighted how the response is individual to everyone because the people that had had it really had had no training leading up and you'd had a couple of hard sessions, weren't sure how you were going to go. You could have gotten out there and just absolutely suffered or you could have been fine. And three people coped okay. And then one person really felt the effects of COVID and just could not perform to their normal numbers. And for me that just highlighted that that's going to happen to a lot of people this year. And you have to expect that your response is going to be individual and you might pull up okay, and you might not. And as we said in the podcast last week, you just have to accept that fact.

Yeah, it's a really good point, and I don't want to go on about it, but, you know, you have to understand we've said this many times in podcasts, your feelings are important, data is crucial. But depending on how you feel on the day, you know your form could be good. But if you don't feel good on the day because of you've got Covid a week ago, then you actually have to perform based on how you feel and, and not ignore it.

So getting into the topic of today, what are the key points that you are talking to athletes about in race week? Because you'll, you'll call them up, you'll have a conversation, and you are basically working through a bit of a mental checklist about what they need to do. And we want to really dive into some of the key mindset things that you've done in your professional career as well as your coaching career. And what helps people get over the line and get to the start line feeling as best prepared as they can. And the number one which we have to talk about is you always start with the actual race plan with the athlete and making sure that that's accurate.

Yeah, we can't ignore this. And even though we don't want to talk about this because we've talked about it a lot, you actually have to come to the table with the right plan. So using the house analogy, building a house, you can't just start building the house without actually doing a lot of previous work about how is, what bits are we adjusting, what are we doing, what, how's the frame going? So coming to the race with the actual correct plan, if you don't have that, everything we're going to talk about from this point on is absolutely useless. Because if you come with a plan that's too easy or too hard, then no matter how we talk about the psychology of preparing, if you've got the wrong plan, the outcome is going to be not to your liking. The house isn't going to be built the way you want it to be. So I got to get make that really clear. Even though I don't want to talk about it, you actually have to have the right numbers based on accurate testing. So if you go into the race without that, you're risking everything we're talking about on this podcast.

Yeah, that's spot on because we teach our Athletes how to come up with a plan. And it still happens a lot that they come to you with an inaccurate plan. And you ask the question, how did you get these numbers? And that is a key question to when you're coming up with your plan is, okay, where am I getting these numbers from? And as you said, it needs to come from recent and accurate testing as well as much infield data as you can have from actual race data. But once you've got that, then you start talking about, this is the juicy stuff we want to get into. You say, okay, here's the plan. We've spoken through all the numbers. You know what you need to do now. Your job is to execute the plan.

Yep. So that's just such a general sentence, isn't it? Now, George, you have to go and execute, execute the plan. Does that mean, let's just take for example, a bike rider and you know, we can use a runner or we can use a triathlete, it doesn't matter, I'll just use a bike rider. If I'm saying that your power number is between 200 and 210, at what parts of the ride are you doing? 2002-052102-15190. And this is the part that we're talking about breaking down the race course stage by stage, step by step, so that you're clear in your mind. And you should know every corner, every left, right corner, every uphill, every downhill. You should know where the wind is on the day, you should know the temperature. So these are all things that are going to make you make better decisions about how to execute the plan that you've got. So the general plan is I'm going to try and average between 200 and 210 watts. That's my range. And if I was a marathon runner and I'm trying to break, I'm trying to run 2 minutes 48, 2 hours 48 for the marathon. I'm picking that number because I know it's 4 minute K pace off the top of my head from 40 years of running. So. So is there going to be an uphill, is there going to be a headwind section? And can I run 4 minute k pace in the uphill? Can I run it in the hipwind? So these are the details I'm talking about with the athlete. Have you thought through the course that you're riding, running, swimming or triathleting on and do you know where you're going to go hard and where you're going to go easy? And where I'm not saying easy when you're going to have lower power, middle power or higher power or below the range or above the range. Have you thought through this? So, so to use the example this week, conversations I had was the time trial course was very technical at Ballarat. It had, you know, in one one lap it had I think eight turns and it had a two minute hill that was 12 to 14% in a time trial, which is quite weird. Then it had a section that was unbelievably fast, 50 to 55k an hour tailwind and turn around, you had the headwind. Then you had a, you know, a really technical downhill with lots of turns and, and then a really hard section at the end of two minutes from the last turn to the finish line. Two minutes to make or break. You can actually catch 10 seconds in those last two minutes if you've executed the previous 24 minutes well. So I'm going through this with the athletes from start of the race, out off the ramp, first right hand corner. What power you at here? You know, how are you measuring your effort? You know, what should you be doing on this particular part of the course?

You're basically asking an athlete to break down every sector and visualize and know what they're going to do.

And there's a whole lot of reasons and a lot of it's because it makes you understand I just don't have to go out and ride as hard as I can. I am actually going to be in my zone thinking about only this. Where am I on the course? Is it uphill? Is it downhill? Is it tailwind? Is it headwind? Is it a corner? These are the things I want you to think about. How's my pedaling technique? Am I pedaling? Am I in the right position on the TT bars? I'm not sitting too far forward. All the things that you want to be concentrating on and for some people say, oh, you know, I just lost my train of thought, I was daydreaming. I just find that really hard to believe. If you are in the zone, in your bubble and, and doesn't matter who's around you, who's coming the other way, you shouldn't even see them. You should be just looking at the road ahead to make sure you're not hitting a pothole where you are in the middle of the road, are you in the gutter? Are you on the smooth part of the road? Remember, most roads have the smooth part with your wheels of your car in the middle. It's rough on the two outsides, it's rough, but there's a driven section where that is a little bit smoother on the bitumen. You should be on those two lines. These are things you should be thinking about when you're coming around a left turn. You should not be in the right hand side on a left turn. You need to do the shortest, shortest goal line. So these are the things I'm running through with the athletes to get them to think about everything about the race. So go through that video in your mind. Where am I in the course? What am I doing? What are my numbers? What's my cadence? How should my heart rate be? And they're breaking it down already and they're getting sections. And as you know, we've gone and done reconnaissance on this Ballarat course and this is in hindsight now, and everybody knows where the Premiership quarter is. We've broken this course into four sections. The start, the bit out with the tailwind, the bit with the headwind coming back in the finish. And I call the Premiership quarter. It was a six to eight minute section of. Into the headwind, slightly uphill. This is the bit where you'll make the most gains. So. So there's a lot of detail I'm going into. So the athlete. It's just not a pep talk.

Yeah.

It's a talk with, you know, okay, we've got your plan. You've got your general plan of what your power is going to be for the whole ride. But in that ride with a course like this, you might spend 10 seconds at your actually average power, but at the end of the day, you'll end up with that average power because you've got sections where you're at 120% of your FTP. And you have sections on the downhill where you're at 5% of your FTP because you're not even pedaling. So. But the average for the ride is what you'll end up with. And the average is not important at any stage of that whole race until the end. So you need to know the sections.

The sectors, because we talk about range a bit and when you say Your range is 200 to 210, it could sound like you're saying, be only in that no matter what the heel is or the downhill or tail or headwind. And that's not the case.

Yeah, but as a triathlete, we want to do that more than as a time trialist because we have to run. And so you want to minimize over the 210 and you want to minimize under the 200. But as a time trialist, the reason you want to minimize it is because you're gassing yourself, you're putting yourself under pressure, you're increasing your heart rate, your cardio's going towards the red zone and you can't afford to burn all these matches when you want to run. But as a time trialist, there's really important times that you need to be on this 14% hill, you needed to be 120, you needed say, say your average is 200. You needed to be at 260, which is way above. But to be at 280, that's gone too far. And so the discussion is about, where am I? What should I be doing? And it's easy if you've gone and done a recon on that course because you actually know what your number is. And we can just look at the numbers on the screen and say, well, how did you feel at the rest of the course when you'd gone too hard? And I did that to myself in one of the practice sessions. I rode the start harder than I wanted to and I was hopeless on the Premiership quarter, the bit coming into the headwind and I did think 40 seconds slower than I did on race day because I adjusted my power and I did. Executed way better, did a PB on the course. So you gotta be happy with that and learn from your lessons. So that's what I'm going into detail about. And so, you know, it's, it becomes a pep talk after that. But this is setting up the actual understanding of what the execution plan, the plan is there. Now I'm going to execute it with that much detail. And that sounds very over the top.

I was going to ask, what if it's over? What if an athlete finds it overwhelming? You know, it's in a 90k course. What if you go through this and athletes going, I can't think of, you know, I'm struggling with this.

Yeah. Well, the key concepts are, and we've talked about this in so many podcasts, the key concepts are in. And we. You keep using time trialling on a bike, but this could be running as well. The key concepts are, where are you on the course? Is it uphill, downhill or flat? That's the first thing. Second thing is, what's the wind doing? There's only two things you have to worry about. Sure, there might be 45 corners, but if you understand that you're not to gash yourself out of a corner, you're not to go flat out with the tailwind. You're not to try and hold high power on downhill. The hard parts are when you need to be riding higher power into the headwind, uphill. So keep it basic, keep it simple. Where am I on the course for the undulations? Up, down or flat? And what are the conditions? If you can keep those two things in your mind, you know there's a race coming up this weekend, there's races coming up every weekend. But I want you to be thinking about that. Where am I in the course? Am I, am I in a headwind? And the 2 xu course coming up this week or, you know, most of the two XU courses are on reasonably flat courses. There are a couple with some undulations, but this particular one, the St. Kilda race, is pancake flat. So you really don't have to worry about where am I on the course. You only have to worry about what's the wind doing. So it's already become simpler. Sure I stay arrow into the corner, come out of the corner and don't accelerate. That's 150% of over my FTP. Stay calm and accelerate and build your speed back up and get back in the zone. So knowing to keep it simple and over a 90k or 180k or a 40k or a 20k time trial in a triathlon, you just keep breaking down the course. Where is the headwind? It could be 40km of headwind and it could be 40km of tailwind and 10km of left and right. So a great question, but just keep simplifying it. So it was an 18k time trial that I was just using as the example before. So I could go into more detail about lefts and rights and ups and downs. Because it's only a 26 minute event on a bike. You know, if you use an 800 meter run and we use this example a lot because it shows you it's a two minute race. You know, you've got a 400 meter track, you've got a headwind, you've got a tailwind and you've got top and bottom as a crosswind and it could be crosswind the whole time. So you, you actually have to keep in mind where you are in any sport, where you are on the course and what the conditions are. So it doesn't really change because you change sports. It's the same thing. Even as a runner you need to be tucking in into a headwind. You will save 10%. As a bike rider you'll save 30%. But in a time trial. You can't tuck in in a time trial bike riding race, it's illegal. So. And same in a triathlon. You're not meant to be drafting unless you're in a draft legal race. So you need to be understanding what your power is in a headwind, what it should be, what your running pace should be in the headwind, what your running pace should be uphill, what running pace should be downhill. They will change. So if you think that you're going to do the same pace, uphill, downhill, flat, headwind, tailwind, you haven't understood anything we've Talked about in 103 episodes. So this is the detail we're going to go into.

I just think that is absolutely brilliant thinking and it does really simplify it and make it easy for you. Even if you didn't actually look at the course, if you had those rules in your head, you would still be doing okay. And that brings us to the next point. So you've got the plan, you've spoken exactly how you should execute it. You've gotten the athlete to visualize and remember to concentrate through the entire race about where are they on the course and what should they do? And now it's time to think mentally about the race. And this is where a bit of pressure can come in. This is where a bit of nerves and anxiety can come in, which is natural for everyone. But you know, what do you think about pressure and what do you think about nerves? And how do you start having a conversation with an athlete about that?

I love it. If someone says they're nervous, that means they care. If someone's flippant and it's just another race, I almost lose interest in talking to them. So if someone tells me they're nervous and they're excited at the same time, I just think that's fantastic. That's something to work with. And the question's always going to be, what's making you nervous? Why are you nervous? And after the initial conversation about do you have a race plan? And then secondly, let's go through executing it, the next sentence I hear from them is, I feel so much more relaxed already. And that's the way to negotiate. The nervousness is all the time go back to the facts. The facts are, this is how I'm going to execute. And instantly you have confidence because you understand what your job is. The majority of time in life that we get nervous is because we're unsure about what's going to happen next. And the minute you become clear in your mind what's going to happen next. The anxiety disappears. And it doesn't matter whether it's an actual sporting event or whether it's a job interview or whether you're abseiling down. You are so fearful of. I've never experienced this before, so I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I don't know how I'm going to feel. So I'm getting so, you know, amped up about it. So take that away and just keep thinking about how am I executing this. I've gone through the race. Just keep running through the race plan. And I like to do this early on in the piece so that you have the whole next period. And I say that clearly. Okay, you got your plan, we visualized it. We've understood where we need to be riding harder and easier or where we need to be running harder and easier, you know, in a triathlon, what things we need to concentrate on. We've got all that. We've done that conversation now. Don't think about that anymore till race day. Go about your day. Fill your day with stuff that's important. Get on with your work, you know, get involved in the family stuff, do whatever, but you've got that tucked away in the bank. Don't waste any more time. And, you know, you waste energy with anxiety and nervousness. It's good to have, because, as I said, it means you care. But now you've got all the information, why keep going on about it in your mind? Just let it go. And then when you decide, possibly the night before, that's the time. And I don't mean over the top. Staying awake all night thinking about it. Go to sleep knowing that I've got my plan and as long as I execute, I'll have a really good outcome. And the outcome doesn't have to be victory. I call victory a PB beating. Six of your mates have been canning you for the last two years about how they'll flog you again and being up for the challenge. So, yeah, great to have nerves and it shows you care and there's ways to just dissipate them.

Yeah, because I guess the key point is what of what you're saying is that nerves are good, they serve a purpose. It shows you care and it gets you into a state of, you know, you're ready for, like you said earlier at the start of the podcast, you're ready for war. You know, you're not going to go into a war battle completely flaccid and without any energy. You want that Energy to really spark you up. You want adrenaline on race day, but it's just when it becomes overwhelming is when we don't want it. You know, that's a problem when the nerves are getting in the way so much that it's actually detracting from your week, it's detracting from your performance. And that's what we want to avoid. So we want to, yeah, look at some more tactics we can do. And that you go through with athletes to dissipate that. And the first is having an early plan means that you don't have to worry about it. And then I find that when. When we do that, and then I've got the plan early. And then you do think about it the night before. It's much, much less stressful when you don't actually stay awake as long because it's the second time going through it. And by the time you do that, you think, I've thought about this before, I'm fine, you know, and that immediately dissipates that straight away.

It's like revision for a test, isn't it? You've studied really hard. Then the night before the test, you just read over your notes, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. And it all comes back to you. That's my plan. And you're just revisiting something that's already in place.

One thing that I find is that once you've got the plan, and you're exactly right, once you've got it, it does take away a lot of that uncertainty about what's going to happen. And so the anxiety seems to dissipate there because of that. But then it's replaced with, oh, wow, now that I know what's going to happen and it's going to hurt. That's. There's a bit of nerves around that, but that's a bit more fun because that's the situation where there's pressure there and you've got to embrace it. You got to go, okay, well, this is the challenge. Am I up for it? I know exactly what I need to do, and am I going to make the choice to do it, or am I going to make the choice to let it overcome me?

I was just thinking while you were talking about that, because there's a couple of session training sessions that I do that are over the top hard, and those VO2 sets that we do sometimes those two minutes, and I'm getting to the sixth effort and I've got 20 seconds to go of the two minutes or 30 seconds to go, and I am Done. And I just think this is the last 30 seconds of the race. It could mean you win by four seconds or it could mean you lose by four seconds. If you can pull something out here in the training session, that's what I'm thinking. So on race day, this particular event had two minutes from the last corner to the finish. And that's the thing I was drumming into the guys. You've done six by two minutes at whatever wattage you can do, see if you can match it at the end of this race and get an extra five seconds, which could be the difference. And I want to tell a story. One of our guys in the. In the masters one category lost the race by 0.14, 0.14, 0.14 over 26 minutes 37. They both had 26 minutes, 37.4 and 0.45. That's. That's the difference between a nose.

Yeah.

You know, and we just don't want to put ourselves in that position where we look after the race knowing that We've lost by 0.14. It's. It's not something that you'll sit comfortably with you for a very. You know, it'll really haunt you. So what could I have done better?

And we also had another athlete lose by six seconds to try. So Traveller got the one two, and it was six seconds between them. So.

Yep, yep. So it works both ways. And. And you. You're relieved that you're on the good, good side of it and you're disappointed and you're on the bad side of it. And it, it tells me a couple of things. It tells me that. That a lot of the athletes who, who are winning and losing by 6 seconds, 4 seconds, 10 seconds, 8 seconds, if you do lots of little things well, those four seconds turn the other way if you've lost by four, or if you've won by four, you might have done things very well. And I use the example all the time. I say to people, if you can imagine that every corner you come to, you get round at half a second quicker than you normally do because you're more aggressive or you've got a better line or you've practiced it better, or you're more in tune to what's coming up, even one second into and out of a corner, because it's normally from the time you slow down to the time you accelerate could be 5 or 10 seconds. And if you can improve half a second. And this course had 7 or 8 turns, 9 turns, 9 times 1 second is 9 seconds. If you've lost by 0.14, you've now won by 8 seconds. If you can corner better, they're just examples of little things staying tucked longer when you're on the fast section of the course. Not sitting up into a corner or to a U turn, but staying aero, but not pedaling. But you've stopped pedaling because you want your bike to slow down, but you don't slow down that quick. So stay aero. Little things like that, there's another second gain. So you can gain things here, there and everywhere, and they're the things that you should be trying to think about. And you're not going to know that outcome till the end when you see the times. And then you're going to go, oh, why didn't I stay a little bit better on that corner? Or those seven corners? So they're just examples.

Yeah. So thinking about, you know, what tactics can we do to just help remove the pressure? Because when you do start to think about every second again, it can get overwhelming going. You put stress on yourself to gain every second. And that's not the aim, it's what tactics work for you to just help think, get in the right mindset leading up to the race. And I want to tell a story, actually. I was talking to an athlete who just did the half marathon at the Melbourne Marathon Festival a month ago, and it was her debut half marathon, and she was sick to her stomach about the race in the lead up. And she was. She talked about how she was actually incredibly dramatic. In her own words, she said where she would. One week she said, I'm not racing. I can't do it. And the next week she said, oh, I'm gonna do it. And the week after said, no, I'm pulling out. I'm not doing it. I can't do this. She wasn't feeling good in training. She felt like she was underprepared and ended up doing the race and in a blistering debut ran 1:16. Um, which is just an unbelievable time. Um, and afterwards she said, the big lesson I learned was that I had done the work and I should have trusted the preparation. Um, even though I wasn't. I didn't feel like I was training that well. Even though the numbers I was hitting in training were exceptional. Um, I had done six months of, of unreal training leading up to that. I just needed to trust that. And you talk about that all the time. You know, look back on your preparation and, and trust that. And that can help remove that, that, those nerves.

Yeah. It's a really great example you've given. It's really summarized what the next phase of my conversation is, is going back over your journey. And all my athletes hear me talk about there's two things happening here. There's the journey and there's a destination. And the destination is fantastic to get to when you get to the finish. But how much fun was the journey? And I'm talking about the journey leading into the race and I'm also talking about the journey from when you start the time trial, if we're using the time trial example, to the finish of the race. So the result will be how well you've executed that journey and it's also in the preparation journey. So. So you need to go back and you need to look, and this is something you should do in the last week or the day before is go back and have a look at all the hard sessions. You did have a look at all the high intensity sessions. You did have a look at all the endurance sessions. You did look at some numbers specifically, you know, what is my best five by five. What is my best three by ten. You know, what numbers can I put out? And that instantly gives you confidence when you look at your race plan. Far out. You know, I've been able to do 5 by 5 at 215 watts, yet my race plan says I only have to do between 200 and 210. How much confidence do you get? I've done that in training. Yeah, I've done 25 by 5. I've done 25 minutes at. At 2:15. So instantly you start to think pretty chuffed about yourself. What am I so worried about? I've already done these numbers. These are numbers that I've done in training and on the race day. You would expect that you would step up because you're fresher in training. You've got a load under you, you've got fatigue. So you should be inspired by looking back at what the journey's been like in your preparation and that story you told. You've got to trust that if you've ticked all the boxes in training, that's a key thing, and get to race day. We've said this stand at the start line going, I'm wrapped with what I've done. All now I've got to do is execute. If you actually look back and you find that you've done 50%, that would create some nerves for me and I would have to readjust my goals for race day. It's okay. You actually have to go into the race with the level of fitness and the preparation that you have. And that's why the race plan is key. Don't go into the race with a race plan that's I want to do this, I hope to do this. Go into the race plan of what can I do? And I think you know there's nothing wrong with going into a race where you're under prepared. There is nothing wrong with that. But you just have to understand that you won't get the outcome, you won't be at the destination you want to be. But you have to accept that and not be disappointed with yourself when that happens. And that's almost being full hearty because I don't know what happened. Well, you do know you didn't prepare properly.

So it's at this point of the conversation that I want to read out some things that I hear you saying often because they're some of my favorite things that at this point this is the real pep talk of the conversation. You've gone through a lot of the tactics and got the athlete to think about their preparation and trust the process that they've gone through. And now it's leading up to race day. You say focus on the things that are relevant. Don't spend any energy on things that aren't relevant. You say block out the noise, be in the bubble. And I want you to talk about the bubble. Don't focus on the outcome that will take care of itself. Be process driven. Just do what you need to do. There are a lot of things I hear you say frequently. Yeah.

And look, when I start getting to the end of the conversation with people and especially in an Ironman preparation because you know if you're doing not to belittle other events where it's a 26 minute event or a 2 minute event but an Ironman has has 10 hours or more attached to it. So it seems to me that there's more writing on it. But there isn't. That's just my perception. There's more riding on a breaking two minutes in an 800 than there is probably doing a 10 hour 30 or a 10 hour 20 Ironman. But it's the perception of what you're thinking about. But regardless of that, I'm really trying to get the person to start thinking about. The only thing that you have control over is your actions. And if you look around and get distracted you are taking away from the control you have of what you are doing. And so the minute you start doing that, you're on a downward spiral. In my Opinion. You need to stay in the bubble. You need to almost, you know, if anybody's watched the Seinfeld, you know, the bubble boy, you need to be in a bubble where every, every outside influence is being bounced off you. You don't hear it, you don't see it. You're not in. Influenced by someone looking spectacular. Their legs look fit. You know, their bike looks like it's got a, you know, an engine on it. You know, you see someone whizzing past in the warmup, just don't. Don't get overwhelmed by what you see. It means you're thinking about the wrong things. You need to just concentrate on everything that you can control. And you can only control your warmup. You can only control your fluid intake. You can only control what your race plan is. You can only control how you're going to execute it. The minute you step outside of those thoughts, then you're thinking about stuff that's irrelevant and is not going to contribute to the right outcome. So that is very hard to do. And it takes a lot of races. At the start of my career, I was overwhelmed by looking at other people. And the minute I stopped worrying about others and concentrated on myself, all of a sudden I started to improve. It's almost like you're starstruck. You're just overwhelmed by how fit and good everybody else looks. And. And you've already gone through the process of looking back at your history of your training, and you're pretty happy with it. And all of a sudden you get almost. I don't know what the word is, but you change your thought process from being happy and going through the whole preparation phase to getting there on race day. Being overwhelmed.

Very easy to get overwhelmed, especially at these triathlon events. You get there and there's so much energy and there's people that are experienced making a lot of noise. And yeah, it's very easy just to. There's big crowds and to look around and yet look at a fit person or look at someone with the best bike you've ever seen, with the best disc setup or. And to compare yourself and. But you don't. You have no idea what that person is. That person might have the best bike, but they've never ridden it, you know, and they just. For some reason, they have it. You know, you can't. You just can't even worry about what situation they're in because you don't know.

Yeah, the bottom line is just focus on yourself. And I don't mean go into a bubble and hide away I mean, enjoy the fact that you can say or do whatever you like around me. It's not going to affect me. And I'm smiling, I'm happy, I'm in a happy place because I've got everything set. I'm in my little bubble, and I can't wait for the race to start. And I think one of the things I say at the start is, it's race week, all the talk's done, it's time to do. And. And you know, that doesn't mean you lose your mind and start off, you know, like that. The hair and the turtle, tortoise. You know, you've. You've got to keep the focus of where am I? In the. In the journey of this. Of this race to my destination. And I suppose that's where we're going to talk about the mature athlete and the immature athlete.

Yeah, that is. This is the final part of the conversation and you always ask this question, and I love it. So. So what is the. What is the question you ask about this? To the athlete?

Yeah. What. Who do you want to be at the end of this? At the end of this day? Do you want to be the guy who goes, geez, that was a stupid execution? You know, that's the immature person. Do you want to be the mature athlete who's got control, who acts like he's done 30 of these events and maybe he's first and you can still be that athlete if it is your first? Or do you want to be the immature athlete who takes no responsibility, no care for your actions? And that's the difference. So one is someone who's got patience. That's the mature athlete. He knows his plan, he's going to stick to it. He may adjust it up and down depending on how he feels. That's the mature athlete. The immature athlete disregards every single thing that we've just gone through, no matter how much I've talked to him or her till I'm blue in the face about have patience, it's a long day, stay with your plan. And he doesn't or she doesn't. And they tell me afterwards the sentence that I would. This should be eliminated from the English language.

You never want to hear it.

But Jared, I felt so good, and that just grates on me so much because of course you felt good. You've tapered for this big race. You're the freshest you've ever been. You have no fatigue. You're the fittest you've ever been. So you're going to feel Like Superman. But at some stage during this journey, the kryptonite's taking over and you're not feeling so good for the same effort. And that's when the mature athlete's gonna go. I'm so happy I was patient and stuck to my plan early because now I can actually execute and start to go past people, you know, start to ride past people in the second half, start to run past people after 5k in a marathon who have just blown it, who have just been the immature athlete who've had no patience. It is an endurance event and I don't care whether you do an Olympic or you're doing an Ironman or whether you're doing a 26 minute time trial. Anything over one minute goes from anaerobic to aerobic. So it's endurance. So the minute you have to use oxygen rather than just using ATP power, you are actually in an endurance event. So you need to measure your effort. It's not a pure 100 meter sprint where it's all out from start to finish, 10 second, 12 second, 15 second effort. It is either 2 hours, 1 hour, 4 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours. So the mature athlete understands that the patient athlete will actually get the best result. But the pace earlier was too high for what I thought. But I needed to go with it. Well, why did you need to go with it? That's not your plan. You're not sitting in your bubble, you're being influenced by others around you. And don't forget, I've told the story of how I did do that to myself. And the reason why I'm telling people now is because I've made that mistake and I don't want you to make that mistake. You know, I was the immature athlete, but I only did it once and it was such a lesson on the biggest stage and I never made that mistake again. And now I could be accusing myself of being too patient, too conservative, and there's a fine line, but I'd still rather come home strong than be creeping. You'll still have a smile on your face when you're passing people. Whereas if you're walking, we always refer to if you're walking but it's not enjoyable. And you're not going to be happy with anything about the day if you end up in that position. So which athlete do you want to be? Do you want to be the immature one or do you want to be the mature one? And I'm not talking about the amount of times you've raced, I'm talking about how you're going to execute the race and you can be the most mature athlete on your very first day, very first event, very first Ironman, very first half Iron Man. You can race it like a veteran if you are prepared to be patient and responsible. And you are responsible for your own actions. No one else is. No one forced you to go harder at the start. No one did. You decided. I say to everybody at the end, you're in charge of your own destiny now. There's nothing more I can tell you. You either decide to take the advice on board and execute accordingly or you ignore it and go by the seat of your pants. And that could have a good outcome, but I can guarantee it'll be in the 1%. 99% of the time it'll have a poor outcome.

And everyone thinks they can be in the 1%, but not everyone can. That's why it's the 1%.

So it sounds pretty obvious that you need to be patient, but I'm sure it's. The odds are 90% aren't. And, and I think it's, I think it's a shame that if you've done all this work, all this preparation, all this time, all this energy and you, you just become an impatient, immature athlete who ruins his day, her day.

This is actually my favorite part of the conversation because this is the end. You're asking the final question. And then when you get to this point, when you've gone through the plan, when you've got and you go through how you're going to execute it and that calms your nerves and then you think about what you need to do on race day and then you ask the question, do you want to be the mature athlete or not? And then as an athlete, you know what you need to do and you say, yes, I'm going to be mature, I'm going to be patient. You feel really calm. And I know this happens with all your athletes when you talk to them, by the end of the conversation you've just got a wave of calmness over you and that's the best position to be in because then I think the final thing you do is give them a bit of, a bit of a rev up about when it's time to go. You go, you know, because they're in a good headspace to hear that. Because if you say that at the start, you're still all over the shop. You're a bit erratic in your mindset, you're a bit erratic at the plan, you're not patient, you're thinking about going out guns blazing from the start. So you need to have this whole process and go through this whole mental process to remind yourself of how disciplined you need to be and how patient you need to be. And once you've got all that and you are feeling calm and collected, that's what you talk about with the Premiership quarter. When you get to the third quarter of the race, when you've been patient and now you've got a quarter to go and you're in a good position because you haven't blown yourself up, now it's time to race and now it's time to go as hard as you possibly can and give it absolutely everything you've got. And that's a really great place to hear that from. Because you're in such a good mindset.

Yep. And it can mean different things for different sports. And as a triathlete, you can only really do that in the run, the.

Last quarter of the run.

And I'm not talking about increasing the pace, I'm talking about holding the pace. That's actually, you've got to understand how fatigued you are and to increase the pace. In the last half of marathon and Ironman, I think maybe Jan Frodeno can do that. But everybody else, the goal is to hold your pace that you've set. And because everybody else has slowed down to possibly one to two minutes and some people five minutes slower than their initial pace, it feels like you are running faster, but you, in fact, you're running the same pace. It's just that everybody else around you slowed down. So that euphoric feeling you have is, I am smashing this. This is incredible. I cannot get the smile off my face. I don't want the finish to come. I'm loving this. Even though you do want the finish to come, you can't wait. But. But if you've executed everything, you will know that it's go time and you grow more legs and you have people say, wow, way to go. Who are walking, who are still encouraging you, which is what I love about triathlon. And people will respect people who are actually executing brilliantly because they know, they wish, they want to be that person. And to get the kudos from people who are walking is quite inspiring. And. And you want to be that person. You want to be the person getting the kudos because you have been the mature guy or girl. And at the end of the day, that's what this event is about. Who can measure their effort from start to finish and get the best outcome. And that's Ironman. That's triathlon. As a cyclist in a time trial, there are certain sections, but this is also true in a triathlon. There are certain sections throughout the day where you need to be. In the Premiership quarter, it might not be the end. It might be sections of the day where you need to be doing a little bit more effort and then a little bit less. And that's the. That's the person who understands the basic principles which we said before are where are you on the course and what are. What are the conditions, the weather conditions or temperature. So when you know that throughout the whole day, then you can actually execute properly so that you're getting the most out of yourself all day because you want to be at the top of your game in every section. So if we are on a downhill, the top of your game is no pedaling. That's the top of your game. And why are you pedaling flat out downhill? That's an immature response. You know when you know that there's no gain in that when, when the hill, the road goes uphill. I need to be at the top of my power for this section. Am I in a headwind? So these are the times where you need to be in your Premiership quarter. And your Premiership quarter doesn't have to be the third quarter. It can be any part of the day. But there are certain times in the event where you need to be, it's time to race. And as a single sport, that is so much more obvious than in a triathlon, because in a swim in the bike can't really do that. And the culmination of being mature and patient will be in the run. That's where you get the bonus. That's the bonus time when you're saying.

Go time in 70.3, for example. So you get to the run, you're doing a half marathon. It's basically not until the 15k mark, which is where everyone might start walking some people a lot earlier. But that's where instead of saying, go time, lift your pace, you're saying, this is the hardest part and you've got to dig in and hold your pace.

Yep. So you've got to have run your first half of the half marathon, the first 10.5K, you've got to have run that with patience and within yourself and at the slower end of what you think you could hold for the whole 21.1. If we're talking about a half marathon in a 70.3. So when you get to 10 to 12 to 14, it's going to start, say we pick 5 minute k pace. 5 minute k pace is going to start feeling like 4:30, but you're still running 5 minute k pace. But it feels so much harder than it did in the first 4K. 6K that we're asking you to do is to not increase your pace. You know, if you can increase it by two seconds from the first half to the second half, that's technically a negative split. But in my view, holding the same pace and running first couple of K slower will enable you to be actually faster in the second half by just the data. But it might only be 10 seconds or 20 seconds, which is absolutely fine by me. It's a negative split. You've achieved the outcome. Run the same pace from start to finish is the goal. Except for the first 2k which should be your slowest. I always say 1k, but I'm keen now to push it 2 or 3 because people don't even, don't even do 500 meters as their slowest. So you will reap the benefits of your strategy if you actually act like a mature athlete. And we don't, as you said, mean increasing the pace and it's go time doesn't mean, it means basically holding firm, you know, and, and the question will be asked afterwards, why couldn't I do that? And you know, in training that's where all the endurance stuff is. The, you know, the high intensity training and, and the long rides where you're starting to fade and the nutrition could play a part. These are the times where you've got to look back and dig deep and go, I've done this, I've, I've, I've got all the right ingredients here. I've just got a, mentally now get my mind to overcome the physical pain that's happening and this is the time where it's really go time. Can I get my brain to block out all the negativity, all the messages that again being sent to it about it's okay, slow down, it's okay. Why am I getting sent that message? Because there's physical pain being sent to my brain because it's hard. But you need to be prepared for that and embrace that period as that's my go to, that's my premiership time, I need to now respond. And you will have such a great feeling at the finish when you look back and go far out. I rose to the occasion. I stood up when I was being challenged by myself. And you will have going forward from that point on when you overcome the demons, then from that point on you will be a much better athlete, a much tougher athlete. You can be challenged way more than you've ever been challenged before. And. And you only have to go through that a few times before you get confidence in. Bring it on. It's like the Truman show when he's out on the boat and the storm comes up and he all of a sudden goes. He's fearing for his life. I'm going to drown. This is. This is the worst. And he just goes, is that all you got? You know, it's inspiring. There's a message in that, you know, under any adversity, you can survive, you can succeed, and it's whether you're willing to put yourself through that. And that is a difference between the average athlete and the one who does a pb.

And when you do that, it is the greatest sense of euphoria. And I think that is the key lesson here, and why you spend so much time going through having this kind of conversation is because you want the athlete to have that experience of euphoria that you get from a great performance. And some people will shy away from that or shirk that and say, well, I'm not too worried about the performance. And you try and challenge them and say, no, I know that you want to improve. That's why you're doing this. You wouldn't be doing it otherwise. And to get that, here's everything you need to go through. And it's. It's unbelievable. It's. It's invaluable information.

Yeah, look, just using the week that's gone by, you know, a couple of guys won national titles, and they had to work hard at certain parts of that in that race to achieve. To win by 4 seconds or to win by 10 seconds or to win doesn't matter. And there were other guys who didn't win, who did pbs, who improved out of sight. I had the same joy. It was an embrace afterwards that was, you know, emotional. Not because they won the race, they didn't. One guy came ninth, but he improved incredibly. His execution was spot on. The joy I had from the embrace with him was. Was just as good as I had from the two guys who won, who won national titles. And it's almost expected of those guys. And for this guy to improve so much and. And one of our other guys who, you know, who didn't win, you know, the disappointment. But he worked his ass off in the race when he got challenged and he pushed and he didn't get the outcome. So there's all these different scenarios That'll play out. And you need to learn from the victory, from the loss, from the improvement, from the staying the same. And all the things we're talking about in this podcast about preparing yourself for the race. There will be days where it all works and it will be euphoric and there will be days where it doesn't. That doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean that you should give up. For me, it drives a dagger into my heart to say that I'm not going to let this happen ever again. And I'm going to, I'm going to do the next best things that I can do to make sure that I improve from what I did today. You know, I'll be disappointed and I'll try not to show it, but I will be inwardly absolutely spitting chips from a poor performance. And it's happened many times, but, you know, you have to be gracious in, in victory. And you know when you, when you, when you don't win, you have to absolutely have to go and congratulate the person who's, who's beaten you or, and I think that's really important that you learn lessons from, from good and bad experiences. But, but you know, you can get everything spot on and still, still not get the outcome you want. And that's okay. You live to fight another day. But if you do all the things we've talked about in this, in this podcast, I, I would be really surprised if, if you didn't actually get the outcome you wanted. And, and I think that's the key thing. It is going to be physically challenging, but you have to be prepared mentally for those challenges to overcome. And the feeling you get when you overcome it, not only during, when you're doing it, you just get a spine tingling for me. And then when I finish, I look back and go, that is the most enjoyable thing I've done. And that's why I do this sport because, because I got challenged all the time. You're getting challenged physically all the time. But if you can overcome the physical challenge with us, the toughest mental preparation that you can possibly have, which is what we've talked about, thinking about being in the bubble, thinking about concentrating on the important things, cutting out all the external stuff, knowing your preparations, fine, knowing your plans, fine. But concentrating on what do I need to do mentally to stay strong. And you will absolutely love the feeling.

When you finish, that is a great place to finish. As I said, it's invaluable, absolute gold information. And I would, I know that anyone listening will absolutely take so much from this. That's why I wanted to do the podcast, and it's such valuable information that, luckily, our athletes get to have that conversation with you. But if you've got a race coming up anytime in the next one to three months, I hope you go back and listen to this episode and go through this checklist, because it'll get you in the best mindset. And you have a natural, incredible ability, dad, to be able to give people that calmness they need for the race. And. And, yeah, get in this. In this state, like you're saying, to perform exceptionally well mentally, which. And overcome those physical barriers. So we hope you've enjoyed this episode. I absolutely loved it. That's it for this one, and we'll see you next time. Keep on. If you want.