Endurance Sport Just Went Nuclear

Welcome back to another episode of the Get Fast Podcast. Today we are reacting to the insane last month we've had of cycling races, triathlon races, world athletics races, and we're going to start off with a huge bang. The Tour of Flanders was on overnight, our favorite race of the year, so we're going to spend a lot of time dissecting that and is it possible to beat Pogačar. So we're going to dive straight into that, but before that, who are we? Well, the Get Fast Podcast is brought to you by TriVelo Coaching, which is us. On my left is former Australian Ironman champion Gerard Donnelly. He's won the Australian Ironman, as just said, but probably countless other races, including 16 to 18 or 20 Australian Masters titles. And I am Jordan Donnelly. So Dad, welcome to the episode.

Thanks, George. I'm riding my— wearing my Ride Like a Belgian t-shirt because it's the biggest race in Europe for the Spring Classics, which is the Tour of Flanders. Just happened to be completed last night. So that's one of the many things you want to talk about. Super exciting period. Everybody's coming through the northern winter into finally spring racing. A lot of indoor races been going on on the track, but, but certainly the Spring Classics on the bike. And the season's kind of just finishing in the southern hemisphere for triathlon and really starting to heat up in the northern hemisphere for the summer of triathlon. So this is kind of the most exciting period of the year in sport. I think it starts now and Yeah, super excited to see, uh, see how we dissect each of the events that are going on. Hopefully we can get through them all.

If you're watching on video, uh, it's a bit of an ad hoc setup. We're in a hotel room. We're currently on a little family holiday together, which is exciting for us because I live overseas now, and so we only get to do these holidays once or twice a year maybe anymore. So we're in a bit of an ad hoc setup, uh, in a little video studio. But we, we had the Tour of Flanders last night where we watched it as a family. We're all cycling fans and we all got to watch together. And with the time zone, actually, it wasn't too bad to watch it here. So we'll probably dive straight into that and, and get into the Tour of Flanders, which is just such an epic day. It's such a historic day for Belgium and the country and the cycling world. And feels like, for us, it feels like Christmas Day getting to watch, uh, watch this race, which is one of the ones we look forward to most on the calendar. And it lived up to expectation because that was an incredible race. I'll say straight off the bat, you know, I'm already seeing commentary of people saying things like, uh, you know, it's boring, Pogačar, it's a foregone conclusion, he's gonna win it, um, you know, he's just too good, makes the race boring. And I just could not disagree with that more. It was just so exciting. UAE blew up in the men's race. We'll touch on the women's as well, but in the men's race, UAE with Pog blew the race up at 100K to go, which was what no one was expecting. And then from there, it was basically the 5 best riders in the world, 3 world champions out of the 5, going man for man against each other. And it took everything from Pogačar to win. He did not win that easy. He— it took his best effort to be 30 seconds ahead of Van Der Poel, 50 seconds ahead of Remco. Yes, he's winning all these races and it takes an absolute art, but he spoke about afterwards, you know, they say, oh, you're going to win all 5 this year, and he's going, hang on, winning one race is hard enough, winning a monument is hard enough. He goes like, I know I'm doing it, but it's not, it's not easy.

Yeah, you've covered a lot there. And, uh, that event is kind of like, if you think in America it's the Super Bowl, for America it's the grand final. In Australia, for Australian Rules Football, it's the— we have the Melbourne Cup, which is a horse racing event. It's the event that stops the nation. Well, the Tour of Flanders is the event that stops the nation. And we've experienced it, and I've been there for probably 6 of the last 10 Tour of Flanders, and you've been for 3 maybe. And we've actually ridden the Tour of Flanders, uh, Gran Fondo, which is a fun thing to do. And so you get to ride the Quarremont, the Paterberg, and the Koppenberg, and, uh, and all the other climbs and all the other cobbles that make up this massive event. There's left turns, right turns, uphills, downhills, side wind, crosswind. One of the years we did it, it was the worst riding conditions I can ever remember. Never been so cold on a bike. Is that day. And, and, you know, put that on top of the, you know, the hardest climbs you can possibly do. And in those muddy, wet conditions, a lot of the riders can't ride the Paterberg and the Koppenberg because it's so slippery. And, uh, so it was great they had good conditions this year, so it was really a fair race. So, um, so yeah, thinking that Cobb, uh, that Pong does this easy is really not giving the value of the race. And some, some people said it was actually boring, but I just could not see that. I thought it was one of the classic races of all time to have almost 5 guys time trialing against each other around this course, around this course, which, um, you know, when, when Remco Evenepoel was 6 seconds behind, uh, Mathieu van der Poel and, um, Pogačar on that, that left turn downhill onto the flat and I thought he, he'd bridge the gap, and he couldn't bridge 6 seconds. And he'd already been riding on his own for 30 minutes. And sounds easy, but Pog turned around, saw him coming, and then put another dig in. And this is all the tactics that a lot of people might not see happening. Um, Pog definitely didn't want Evenepoel there. But, you know, you and I have talked about this over the last couple of years. The way to beat him is not the way they're doing. And it sounds like we're the armchair experts, but they've all tried their way, and he they keep coming up short. And so they need to really get together. And the example I would use is if Mathieu van der Poel was riding with Pogacar and they were swapping off turns, that's the first thing I would stop doing is swapping off turns. And if van der Poel does that, gives himself 10% more or even 15% more freshness, he might have— he lost the, the last climb of Paterberg by 6 seconds and Sorry, yeah, the Quarremont on the very last lap.

Yeah, yeah, by 6 seconds.

Yep. So the Quarremont, and, and that could have been the difference of him rolling turns or not. And, uh, that was the difference between them, them time trialing solo against each other. And, and he needs to go into protection mode. And, you know, it's Pog's race to lose, and he's, he's the, he's the favorite. So Van Der Poel doesn't actually have to do a turn if he doesn't want to, but he's such an elite cyclist that he, he understands the etiquette of cycling, that it's a good thing to, to contribute. And you should take those things into consideration if you're an up-and-coming athlete, cyclist. But there's no rule that says you have to do that. And if you're going to continue to come second, I'm going to say the etiquette can go out the window, and I'm going to protect myself as long as possible so that I have a chance of actually taking myself to the finish line and then making it 50-50. But if I'm contributing and helping Pog, I'm no more than domestique when he's going to ride away from me on the toughest part of the course. So, so that would be my advice as his coach, would be to say you need to stop doing that. And so does Wout, and not that Wout was rolling turns with him. And Evenepoel also, you know, he needed to actually do something different, which we could also talk about. But each, each rider has to do something different And it may be that those, you know, we had Mads Pedersen, we had Wout, we had, um, Mathieu van der Poel, we had Remco Evenepoel. Those 4 riders are probably, you know, the best 4 riders going around with the king of riding, Pogačar, at the moment, who's seemingly unbeatable, but he's not. If those 4 guys ganged up on him and the teams sort of worked together, yes, you know, I would think there'd be a— it's going to be a different scenario here. And And that's super important that, uh, that, you know, we're just sitting here giving a commentary. Yeah, we don't know all the ins and outs of, uh, the director sportif's instructions and what their plans are, but all I can say is they've tried now in the last 18 monuments. I think, I think you said before that there was 3 world champs in that group of 5. There's actually 4. Yes, uh, Wout's the only one who hasn't actually won a world title. Well, what a caliber of of riders.

I just forgot Matt had won it.

But yes, it was a long time ago, it was 2019. So, um, but the stats don't matter. It's just, it's just that they are the best riders. And it's incredible, the whole field could not keep up with those guys, which is what you'd expect. But you'd think that over the journey there would be more winners. But since 2020, I think Jasper, uh, Casper Asgreen is the only one who's won besides Pog and Mathieu van der Poel since 2020. So the last 6 years they've won 5, and, and now they're both on 3 wins each, which is pretty phenomenal. Um, yeah, so it's an exciting race where, you know, it has got different winners. And, and it used to be a race where there was some good sprinters who could do short, sharp climbs, but now it's a race open to everybody. And I think, uh, watching the interviews before the race, a lot of the cyclists really believe this is one of their favorite races, um, on the calendar. Um, and there's so many other good races, it's a very hard thing to say.

It's such an epic— it's just epic. It is so long, you know, and, and they start the, the 3 laps of the cobbles with wherever it is, 150, 170K to go, 160K to go, and they've already got so much fatigue in their legs. And then it's just the hardest 150, 160K they'll do all year, you know, and they are just absolutely exhausted. It is— it's called a monument for the— for a reason. And I said at the start, UAE lit it up and it went so much earlier than everyone anticipated. And all, all the guys at the end said, well, we didn't expect them to blow it up that quick. And then the race was on and it was, it was still, it made it so exciting. And so on that, on that note, you said before about, um, you know, how to beat Pogačar. We kind of want to focus on that a little bit for this race because, because look, we can talk about Pogačar's dominance. He's, he's basically unbeatable at the moment. He's, he's rarely lost a race in the last 3 years. He, his dominance is just unprecedented. Again, he's not winning them easy. So Milan-San Remo was a photo finish, you know, he's just, but he's just doing what it takes to win every time. He's got that, he's just got that winner's edge. But we kind of want to focus on the for and against of how to beat him. We said this a year ago when he was just riding away from everyone and he did it again in Strade Bianche this year. He just rode away with ages to go and Tom Pitcock said at the time, he said when he's like that with a team as strong as UAE, they're untouchable, which there's an element of that that's true. But we said a year ago, the rest of the peloton needs to work together if they want to beat him, and they need to just basically decide, if we don't want him to win, we have to work with each other, and, and just acknowledge one of us will have to try and will have to be the lucky one to get away and work together. But I can understand why they wouldn't want to do that necessarily, and they want to go the mono e mono, but, but they keep doing that, and he just plays into his hands. And so Taking it back a step, once the break got away and it was that strong, that strong front group of 25 or 30 guys, once UAE had really just, just lit up the pace, uh, straight away all guys are rolling turns. POG did a turn, Vanderpoel did a turn, Remco did a turn. The only team that didn't was Bismarck, which I was loving to see. Even at that position, those guys, I just think, knowing how strong POG is, knowing that he's the absolute favorite save every single percentage. You know, you've got your teammates there, let them pull the turns. I just, I just did not like seeing Van Der Poel and Remco pull through straight away there. They were trying to do the right thing and get— keep the pace going, make sure the break was caught, make sure they stuck away from everyone behind. But Wout said afterwards, he said, we saw no need to do a turn there. And that's, that's smart. And for a guy who was coming in like Wout, off— he's on a comeback still, he's still trying to find his legs. He knew that every second for himself mattered. And we can talk about that later, but that was, that was the first precedent of me thinking, hmm, how well they're going to work here. Are those 3 guys plus Mads, you know, the 4 guys versus Pogačar, are they going to save every second possible? How smart are they going to ride? And I think there was just little moments throughout the rest of the race where they probably didn't save themselves enough, where you need everything to go right to beat Pogačar.

Undoubtedly, I think the tactic of contributing to a role with a guy who's going to ride away from me, I'm not going to contribute. That's more mindset is. And so the UAE tactics are brilliant. They are making this race as hard as possible for every team. They are just, you know, your brother Liam is sitting beside me going, look at that guy on the front for UAE, he's sprinting and there's still 140K to go. He's on the front out of his seat sprinting to make it as hard as he possibly can, and he's just going to peel off. And so they are saying POG will outbeat anybody when they've got no teammates. So that's their tactic. Get rid of all the other team's teammates and let it be Pog against Van Der Poel against Remco against Wout, and he'll beat them every time. And he's proving that true. So, so that's their tactic. Well, what are the other teams doing to counteract that? And exactly what you said, they shouldn't be— once they've got isolated from their teams, they should be quite happy not to roll a turn. And Pog is by himself, and if you, if you don't roll a turn, all the bunches are going to come back. And then you're gonna get your teammates back. That's what the other teams need to actually do— slow down, not roll turns. And what's Pog gonna do then? Is he— and if he rides off because he gets angry that no one's rolling turns, great, leave him out there. And then the guys all get together— Mats, Wout, Remco, Van Der Poel, and whoever you've got as a teammate. And yeah, I think Red Bull, Bora-Hansgrohe had two other riders, Visma had one. Um, and so there's a couple other teammates in there. Leave him out there, let him hang out there. You know, talking about Amstel Gold coming up, this is exactly what they should be doing. Let him attack, let him get a break, let him go solo, and then everybody work together. Um, and I, I think it's not a normal thing. This is not a normal period in cycling. Yeah, you know, Eddy Merckx has kind of got 18 of these wins and Pog's got 13 or something. Um, so he's quite a few behind, but he could win 3 or 4 each year, and he's already got to the, to the world record. But, but they had to find a way to beat Merckx all the time, and now they're having to find a way to beat him. And if they don't actually try something different, he's going to continue to win every race. So we're coming from a perspective of it's not normal what we're saying, yeah, but you have to do something different. And, and let's face it, people don't like change, and this is not the way I ride, so I'm not doing that. Well, if you keep riding the same way you're riding now, you're going to come up short because he's actually just— he's a winner. And not that Van Der Poel isn't, he's a world champion. No, Mads Pedersen's a world champion. Well, it's won his fair amount of races, and Remco's an Olympic and world champion. So they're all winners, but he has the edge on them. So, so when, when they're isolated by themselves, they're just not able to beat him. But if they actually let him be isolated and they get dropped or seemingly let him go, that would be the next tactic. And he would think, oh, then you're not able to follow, whereas it's actually them saying, let him go. And we would do that in a Cobb race. If some guys up the road is too good for us, we'd let that— if he wants to attack, great, we'll all stay back and conserve and work together. And then normally you'd beat that person.

Yeah, it's a hugely risky move, and we understand why they don't do it. And I want to talk about why they've said they don't do it. Because you, you're not actually teammates, so you're relying on everyone to pull through. And then one person just pulls through soft, and then suddenly you're not working together, and then suddenly Pogacar— well, like, time trial mode is just 5 minutes ahead.

That's how a single person always beats 8 or 9 chasers, because if the minute someone doesn't pull a turn, then everybody else goes, no, if you don't pull, I'm not pulling. And, and then all of a sudden, that person who's up the road is riding constant, and he— at the 10-second hesitation 16 times is 160 seconds of hesitation while the guy off the road isn't hesitating.

Yes.

And that's why he gets a gap every single time.

We're just asking the question, Van Der Poel was willing to work with Tadej, why isn't he willing to work for Remco instead? You know, it should be Remco and Van Der Poel versus Pog rather than Pog and Van Der Poel versus Remco.

That's tough for Van Der Poel to drop back or get, get dropped and then—

I'm not saying get dropped, just don't help Tadej as much as he did.

Yeah. Yeah, and he probably wouldn't have got dropped if he had helped him less anyway. He would have been able to stay with him, which is what we're saying.

Yeah, yeah. So look, they asked, they asked the riders point-blank afterwards, how are you going to beat Pogačar? Because you can't beat him. They asked all of them this question, would you think about working together? And they all had very interesting answers to it and, and responses which are valid, but we still ask the same question. And Van Der Poel said, look, I wasn't pulling through hard, I was just doing my little bit of a share. Um, I wanted to stay away from Remco, I wasn't pulling through like a madman. And he said, and I like to keep my legs a little bit active in these races because I don't want to go to sleep and then we hit these climbs really hard. I think they're all really valid reasons.

Well, I just pull you up on that one. Yeah, if he stays behind him the whole time, when they get to the Quarremont or the Cobdenberg and the Patterberg, he's going to have some active legs. He's going to be tested to the max. Rest your legs in between, don't do a turn. Pog will be— his brain will be going, what am I supposed to do now? The guy's not actually going to do a turn. We're going to look at each other. And that's what you need. You need him to be At the moment, all you're doing is working for him as a domestique.

Yeah.

Um, and I just, I think it's hard for riders to, to know the way they've always grown up riding and racing is that's the etiquette thing to do. But I think they need to change their mindset on it. Totally.

Yeah. Well, looking at the stats, so pulled up, and this is not verified, but I'm pretty confident it's accurate based on the site I was using. And it said that between that stretch of Van Der Poel and Pogačar getting away with 32 kilometers to go to the Pyramide, which is 18k to go when Pogačar broke away again. It was he pulled 64% of the time and Van Der Poel pulled 36% of the time. So Pogačar was doing longer turns and more time in front. That's basically two-thirds on the front with Van Der Poel coming through. And by Van Der Poel's reports, he said, uh, I wasn't pulling through as hard either. So his turns are shorter and less. But comes to the same point, why were you pulling through at all? Um, he answered some of those questions. You only lost to him by 6 seconds on the Qairamont when he broke away from you. If you just pulled 20% instead of 34% or 15% or none, would you have had enough legs to stay with him? Maybe he still explodes away from you because he's that good, um, but you have more legs to get back to him on the flat.

Uh, you've got to go into conservation mode when you're riding with that guy who's so good on those climbs.

Yes.

And you can see Remco is actually catching back up, back up to those two. He's the world an Olympic time trial champion, so you'd imagine that he could. But yes, he was catching two guys swapping turns. Remco was catching. As soon as they got to a hill, they rode away again. So Remco's strength was on the time trial, on the thing, on top of the gear, on the smooth, beautiful Belgian roads. As soon as they got to the cobbles, Remco wasn't as comfortable and he started to lose time. So, you know, they're, they're things that, you know, if, if Matt, if Mats Pedersen and Wout and, and, uh, Remco had got together, imagine they could have saved a lot more energy. And, and look, I would be saying to Gerard, just don't do a turn and just create confusion in Pog's brain. And, and, you know, try something different. You can't keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. That's the definition of insanity right there, is, oh, this is what I— this is the way. And people will be yelling at their, their, uh, the recording of this saying, you guys, you know, well, you have to try something different. Yeah, you can't just keep, keep doing the same tactic and come up short.

Yeah.

And, and there's been race after race— we talked about this 18 months ago. I'd love to go and get the— yeah, where we started saying, these guys have to do something different because he's going to win a lot more races. And it's proved— it was 18 months ago. I don't know how many races he's won since we said that. And they're still running the same tactics.

Yeah, and look, it's different than a Grand Tour. In a Grand Tour, I honestly think he's unbeatable unless you're Vingegaard or a generational talent that's going to come through. But when it's a 50-minute climb and it's just who has the better threshold power, Pogačar is probably going to win no matter what the tactics are. He's probably just going to win, you know. But these one-day classics are your chance to beat him. Like, how does it unfold, you know? If, if Van der Poel just sits on and Pogačar has to pull the whole time, he's burning a lot of energy. So it's not just Van der Poel being fresher, it's Pogačar being more tired and less explosive on the climbs. I saw which means Van Der Poel more likely has a chance to stick to him. Remco struggled with the explosiveness, that's what he said, and so he was struggling, but in the in-between he was catching back up. But if there's two of them there, Pogačar has to ride away from them. Every time he rides away, they can work together to get him back on the flats. Pogačar's burning more energy. It's just, it's just a different tactic to wear him down.

But there's so many variations that can happen.

Yeah, but the one thing is they should try just not to do a turn and And they should try not to just be one-on-one against him because he's gonna, he's gonna beat them every time.

Yeah, especially if there's climbs. Look, I think Roubaix, if we talk about that quickly, that's the next race. Roubaix doesn't really have the climbs, but it has the sectors which are— you're actually a Grand Fondo Roubaix winner, um, and, and you know how hard it is on those sectors. And some of them are quite long, some are quite short, but there's no hills. So it really suits Van der Poel, Wout, Mats and not probably so much Pog, but he's still talented. You know, he crashed last year, and who knows what— I would love to have seen what would happen at the end when Van Der Poel and him were up the road. But Wout had a puncture, so, so there's so many things that can happen. But this next week would be an example of— I don't think Pog's got the same advantage when there's no climbs on the, on the cobbles, whereas Roubaix's, you know, cobbles are very hard, but they're, they're no hills. So, so, you know, the tactics for, for what we're talking about are for more for Hero of Flanders.

Look, we were talking about how to be pog.

Strade Bianca, Tour of Flanders, any of those, you know, courses that are really got a lot of climbing, whereas Roubaix is completely different.

Yeah.

Um, and look, when, you know, the Ardennes Classics, you know, uh, Fleche Wallonne, uh, Amstel Gold, um, uh, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, they're all hilly. And so Pog wins those because they will try to go into the red zone and ride within all the signs, and they should stay back, stay in their zones.

Yes.

And work together. Um, and, and yeah, look, I would just love to see if they stop pulling, what would Pog's reaction be? He would be, he would be going, well, now what do I do? On the, on the radio going, they're not working, what do I do?

Yeah. And he sort of said that in an interview after, and I thought that was a little bit opposite to Van der Poel. He sort of said, yeah, I was, I was pretty thankful Vanderpoel was pulling. And he was kind of saying, I'm not exactly sure, I didn't know exactly what to do. Remco was 6 seconds behind us. He's kind of going, how hard do I go to keep— he was like, I don't want him back, I don't want to push it too hard to like gas myself. I really think if Vanderpoel didn't come through, I think he was going, geez, I'm so very thankful Vanderpoel doesn't want him back either. And I do want to touch on Remco's effort there. That was unbelievable. That was one of my favorite things to watch of the day, just to see him gutsing it out. Because once it pops you're done, you know.

And he's—

the mental strength and toughness.

That's just 2 against 1.

No, and the time trial ability he had, just to hover it between 5 and 15 seconds for 30 kilometers.

And to be fair, Wout and Mats did the same thing, just further back, like there's 30 seconds. It blew out to 40 or 45, then to a minute. But, but they were all riding. There was 3 guys riding individually.

Yeah.

And 2 at the front. And those 3 guys were matching the 2 at the front, which to me It was all from the hill. If I had been able to stay with them on the hill, they were fine on the flats, which is what's exciting about Roubaix next week.

Yeah, exactly. That's going to be— yeah, that's going to be very, very interesting to see. But I, I just, I just love the, the 5 separate kind of races happening with 5 separate people, and, and just, they, they, they bury themselves to keep going. And I thought Remco's effort was, was monumental. He's his debut as well. And, and so his, his response to the question afterwards, he just said, I don't have the explosiveness like those guys, and I'm really good in between. That's why he was able to one against two, he was able to almost get his way back. It was so cruel that he got within 20 meters or whatever, and then Pog just kind of did another effort. But, uh, yeah, he said, I did the best I could. That was why the gap went on the Quarremont on the second lap. But he held his pace, and his pace was enough at the end to kind of come back to them. Uh, so he's missing that explosiveness. But, but that was his response to the, why don't you work together? He said, oh, we don't, we don't ride the same, you know. I ride more consistent, and then in between the time trialing he's got Vanderpool on the back, they're more explosive than me. So he said, we can't— we won't be cohesive because we don't ride the same, which is again a fair point. Plus they're not teammates. But, uh, we just keep coming back to the same thing. It's playing into Pogačar's hands the way it's going, you know. And he's just going to— you, by you helping him and by you making it isolated, you're just letting him go, yes, I can explode away from you because I'm the best rider here.

Yep. It's almost hard for— as a, as an elite world champion to say there's someone better than you and you're not going to be willing to go one-on-one. That's actually what you're— that's what we are saying. We're saying that, okay, it seems like he's too good, let's try something else. Let's, let's let him be isolated and let's all work, work as a group together. And, and these next— the Ardennes Classics are great. Fleche Wallonne and Liège and Amstel, not Roubaix, but, but those three hills, if they— like, I remember, um, even the Muur you know, some guys suit that hill, some guys don't. It's a real struggle for guys. And you know, if you, if you really let someone go up the road on those hills and you stay in your not lactating, you can actually really ride well in between. But if you red zone, you lose the ability to ride.

It's, it's, yeah, it's so hard because you just, you'd have to race the race in front of you. And we can't tell 4 out of 5 world champions ask about, like you said, how to ride better, because they're, they're unbelievable. But, but the red zone thing, you can see it playing out in real time on these climbs. They're Poggies putting them all in the red zone because they, they can't match his 7 watts per kilo up the whole climb. So they're all red zone and they lose heaps of time in the last few hundred meters. And so would they be better off just staying to their numbers? And he might gap them by 50 meters at the start because his power, but they might only be 25 by the end, but they haven't gone as deep into the red zone and therefore they can come back.

I would go further, Gerard. Do exactly what you just said. Stay in your numbers. Let him go up the road. When you get to the top of the hill, he's got 200 meters on you. Leave him. Just stay, stay together. And that, that should be your tactic. Then no one's going to do that because, because it's not the team thing. It's not historically what you do.

So it's too risky. I just— I—

it's a basic club thing that you— they should be doing at the world level.

Yeah, I just, I just think it's one of the few ways we can think of to beat him, but it— I just, I can't, I can't see it working because someone will stop.

I'll stop being so reckless, sporty myself, and just say, listen, let's just try it. Let's just, let's just let him go up the road and let him sit out there.

The other element of this is the racing element, because every time they race, they don't know what's going to happen. And your point before about, you know, you're a world champion, you have to turn up thinking you can beat Pol. If you don't think that, you've probably lost the race anyway. And We're talking about Tashawn Athletics later, but Georgia Hunter-Bell said this. She just won her first world championship at the 1500, and she said one big change she made in the last couple of years building to this moment was she said, I had to start believing that I could win every race I entered, every Diamond League. I was coming up against the Kenyans, Ethiopians, who historically are just unbeatable. She said, as a— when I was going to race with that mindset, I'd lost already, you know. And when I started believing, no, I'm here, I'm in the top 12 girls here, I can win these races. And it wouldn't always pan out, but she started winning more races, and then that gave her more belief. And so she just won the World Champs because she said, no, I deserve to win this more than anyone here. And it's kind of that same mindset, because if you think about the data, you know, they've done— every year now they're doing a record on the Quarremont. And so on lap 2, Poggi's big explosive attack, they've done a 2:49, which is the record on the Quarremont. And so there's that racing element that you can only go that hard when you're following the guys, or when a race is on the line. You can't ride to data in that split second because you'll just be too far back because he's riding a record. So you've just got to go with him or not, you know. And Van Der Poel said that after, he said, look, tactic this, tactic that, he's just stronger on the day, you know, and there's just nothing I can do no matter my tactics.

Which, well, that's right, there's nothing you can do with the way they're riding. But, you know, you think about the Quarremont time, the Strava, Strava time, Quarremont, you know, 5 or 6 years ago it was 4 minutes and now it's 259, 249. So, you know, it's a different caliber of rider now. It's a different event than what it used to be. So, so you really need to, you know, take that into consideration. That's even more reason why, why would you try to match that if that's not your capacities? And Remco is saying exactly that.

Remco is almost riding smarter, but, um, but not by choice, but it's, but it's helping him.

But it is. If he actually had one or two riders with him, then that would mean You know, that, that's what I'm trying to say. The point is they have to, they have to try something different, and, and Pog will win all 3 Ardennes Classics if they don't.

Yes, yeah, exactly right. And look, we're out, Mads, they just said the same thing. They said they rode as well as they could that day, which is true, both coming back from injury and illness, uh, and they both just said they wanted more. They're obviously hopeful for more every time they go to the start line, but they didn't have any more legs. That was the max their legs could give them, and and chapeau to them for the way they rode and how— look, you know, the very first point we said was it was not a boring race. And despite Poggi's dominance, you know, all 5 of them are within a 90-second window or whatever, you know. And he is that good. But— and, and 90 seconds, from one angle, you know, glass half empty, you might say is a really long way, it's domination. But in the other, a glass half full, you're going, geez, there's these 5 of the most exciting riders we've ever seen all within this narrow window. Like, it's very close.

I've never watched something Yeah, I first went there in 2016 for my very first Flanders, uh, experience, and I've never seen 5 guys separated by a minute and a half riding, riding individually. Yeah, I've just never seen it. It was like epic, you know. Oh, it was, it was brilliant to watch. It was one of my favorite races that I've watched. Yes, for anything could happen, you know. One of them could get crammed with 5K to go. Yeah, we think of them as machines, you know. Have their nutrition been done right? You know, have they measured their effort right? We talk about executing, uh, as, as, you know, TriValour athletes. And, and, you know, at this elite level, as it's early in the season, um, some people aren't quite there. But it's just, you know, you've seen how Wout's come from nowhere almost, and he unfortunately lost, uh, Dwars Vlaanderen 2 days earlier, which is a whole other event. And he's lost that twice now, 2 years in a row. I think he's come second 3 times in the last few years. And, you know, to have Garner come past him with 15 meters to go was, it was cruel. It was very cruel. But, but yeah, his form is coming along. And, uh, I've talked to a few of our athletes about it. You know, racing brings your form up. As a coaching tip, you want to train as well as you can, be structured, and be really adamant about getting some periods of good training into your body over months. The big thing that you need is race preparation by doing other races. And we've said that many times on this, this is our 320th episode, but a lot of the best marathon runners, you know, they get to their race because they've done a couple of other races really well. The guys who are doing, you know, the Tour de France or the Giro, if they go and do all these other 4 or 5 stage, day stage races to get their form up, they're not necessarily winning all these races, but it's come to the main race that they've got an opportunity to win. So So yeah, that's one thing I think people should really understand is you can over-race, definitely. But you know, this— the season these guys do, you see with the races they've got lined up, you know, it's— they're racing twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, or Wednesdays and Saturdays, or Wednesdays and Sundays. It's, it's absolutely fantastic. They can, they can back up, but they don't train in between. They just recover. And they're the world-leading athletes. And so a lot of our age groupers, probably if they're doing a lot of races, probably training too hard in between. So you need to have your preparation period, get yourself fit, almost like, uh, Christian Blumenfeld told us 2 episodes ago. It was a big period of training knowing that he's going to have these 5 races in 8 weeks, and, and he had a shocking first race. He's had 2 victories, 2 unbelievable victories, just by getting the preparation right.

Yep. There's some fun stats in that. We've spoken about this a lot, but it's our favorite race of the year, which is why we like to recap it. But just on that note, you know, uh, it was 2:49 at the Quarremont second last lap, and the last lap was 3:03, so he was 14 seconds slower. And Van Der Poel was 2:49 and then 3:09, so 20 seconds slower. And then the Paterberg, the very last climb, Pog was saying he was on his limit. He was, he was really on his last legs, and he did 59 seconds or 58 seconds second last lap, then 1:02 last lap, so a 4-second difference. And Van Der Poel blew up a bit, he was 10 seconds back on the last lap. But for me, that just shows that, yeah, he's— he is human, he's not a complete robot like you said. He's on his limit, he's fading. It took everything he had on that second lap to get away from them, and then— and the last lap, uh, and he was fading. And so a bit of pacing strategy could potentially come into it, which is, yeah, interesting data to me.

Yep, I stand by our beliefs and, uh, and If I was coaching, this is what I'd be doing. Yeah.

A lot of time on that. We've got a lot of races we want to get through. You just touched on triathlon, which we'll get to a second, but I want to mention that the Women's Tour of Flanders, Demi Vollering got her maiden win with a more typical race to what we're used to seeing. And it was on after the men's, which is hard to watch. I definitely fell asleep and woke up to the last 2 kilometers because obviously it was getting late here. But, um, but looking back on the race, it was, you know, this is how you expect most Flanders to go. It's very brutally tough. And then they start testing each other on the second last lap. And then the last lap, last climb is kind of where the attacks have gone most of the years, men's and women's. And the men's, it just blew up at 100K to go. But, uh, the women's side, there was still a big group there with, um, with Demi Vollering not actually looking that good, uh, coming into the climb, but then, uh, or on the previous climbs. But then she started to show us her cards a little bit leading in those famous roads into the climb when everyone's getting a bit edgy. Then she just rode away from them in a really strong attacking style. And that's where you have to go if you do want to win it. And do a gutsy ride solo to the end and got her maiden win, which has eluded her for all her Classics career so far. So her first Tour of Flanders win, which, yeah, it was just a great reward for someone who's won a lot of races but couldn't win this one.

Yeah, she has won a lot of races and you've got to be brave, don't you? And if you're willing to put it out there, you can reap the rewards. It was a big risk because there's the Kuaramont and the Paderberg still to go. And then you've got a time trial solo. So, you know, you've got to really have a good understanding of how the rest of the peloton's feeling, if that's the right thing to do, because it's early. Um, Pog doesn't seem to worry about it, but, but, you know, that is the time to do it, the Quarremont. Uh, that really can separate because once you get over that last rise on the Quarremont and it turns left, it's quickly downhill while the other people are still going uphill. So 6 seconds looks like 300 meters when you turn that corner.

Mentally defeating.

And then you've got the next quick hill, I'm saying short one on the main road, and you've got that momentum and you've got a big gap and it's quite demoralizing for the— but then you've got the Paderberg, which is a real test and it's quite steep. And if you haven't got the legs there, you can actually get caught there. So, uh, so she was super strong and, um, there's, you know, some really talented riders in that race and they're the same. They, they They respect this race. The women absolutely love and want to be winners of this race. And, and I think, uh, Lotte Kopecky's won it 3 times. Um, so it's been, you know, a bit of a dominant period for the last 4 or 5 years by one Belgian, which we're very happy with. But, uh, but yeah, it's good to see, um, good to see someone else have a crack and, uh, and really be able to sail away to a victory. It's the best way to win these monuments is riding solo to to the finish line.

And this— the spring racing so far on the women's side has been unbelievable. And it started with Strade Bianche, where it was one of the best finishes we've seen. Because with a lot of the criticism on the men's race with Poggi just winning everything, it's the total opposite in the women's, where, where it's a really even playing field and there's nobody a favorite.

Anybody could have won that Strade Bianche.

8 girls, yes, coming into the last kilometer, that famous, famous hill climb. Yeah, yeah, there was 8 of them. But that's happening a lot, you know, and no clear favorite is winning. And And, and it's also been watching it, and in that last 8 it blew up, but then there was still 6 at halfway and then 4 left in the last 3. Then it was a sprint finish with Elise Chappie taking over Cassian Iwadoma, the Tour de France champion. But I just love that, that every race is, is much more of a coin flip rather than a foregone conclusion with Poggi. But both have their strengths and weaknesses, and it's been a great season to watch so far.

Yeah, I can't wait to see what, you know, Bring on Roubaix. That's, uh, that's the next race.

Yeah, so you touched on triathlon there, and, and yeah, the— we're just loving watching the, the, the season, the way that the Ironman Pro Series and the T100 is, is unfolding. And now it's in the third season of points, and people are starting to figure out how to structure their seasons. And the Norwegians are coming through with their theory, and Kristian spoke on our podcast about this huge Ironman offseason, and then you come and race to get your race fitness back, and and if he's breaking up the season in those blocks, then a bit of a rest and then another Ironman build, uh, but he's coming to that first race knowing he's not in the best form. Um, and Kat Matthews has had a similar, um, kind of training approach where she just wanted to hit a bunch of races hard early, um, get some points. Yeah, so Ironman New Zealand, it's safe because everyone's going nuts about Kristin's racing schedule, which he's doing the same, you know. Ironman New Zealand, Geelong 70.3, and then Ironman Texas coming up just to get bulk points. And she, she's a bit like Poggy in terms of the domination. She just looks unbeatable and in every race she turns up to. So be really interesting to see once she lines up against Taylor Neave and even Lucy Charles, um, and see that battle go down. But, uh, yeah, just interesting the way the season, uh, seasons are playing out and everyone's different strategy of, of when they race and how they perform and the points they get dictate actually races later in the year, which I really love. Rather than doing these races robotically, you know, Kristian's kind of saying if I get the results I want maybe I don't have to do those races, um, down the line. And Trevor Foley said that he didn't expect to win Ironman New Zealand, and once he did, he went, oh, I can, I can actually back off my year a little bit now, which is, uh, really cool to, to see. And, and geez, the racing over the last month has been spectacular from a triathlon standpoint. It's comparative to cycling tactics.

Yeah, look, there's a lot to, um, dissect in their selections because, uh, the main goals for most athletes is an Olympics or a World Championship. So, so they're also trying to compete for a career. You just can't go and do Olympics and world championships because Olympics only happen every 4 years. What are you supposed to do with, with your, with your prize money and your living capacity in between? So you actually have to do these other races, A, to qualify, B, to earn a living. Um, but the, you know, the, the be-all and end-all for most athletes is to be an Olympic champion or be a world champion. And so that's what Christian's really basing his whole year on. And you need to earn a living at the same time. So he's trying to do the, the races that he's a chance on winning and getting prize money and winning the overall Pro Series, which is also really good funding, and get himself totally focused for the one race, which is Kona. And so he's doing all these races to get prize money, to, to win the Pro Series overall to get qualified for Kona and prepare him for Kona. So there's a lot going on in what you're actually selecting when you do a year. And, you know, as a pro, they have to be really thinking clearly about what races to select, who's in it, and am I a chance to qualify in that race? And if not, select something else. So they're the things I should be considering. You know, they're not all Christian Blumenfelds. There's 45 pros in that race who are all trying to get to Kona, all trying to make a living. Um, and you need to be very smart about what races you go to. And, and it's not trying to avoid competition, but I think you only want to be really pushing yourself against the best at the Olympics or the world titles. And every other race you should be strategically selecting so it gives yourself the best opportunity to be, A, in those races, and B, to earn a living at the same time. And as you said, Trevor Foley, you know, winning New Zealand, which is unexpected when Christian's in the race, he's not expecting to beat him, but you never know what's going to happen. And who would have known, Christian could have actually been in great form. It probably was, but he just had a technical issue with his bike for a start, and he was sick. But that could have been from the way he rode. And, you know, you know, we knew he was sick beforehand. It was sick beforehand, but it also wouldn't have helped because, you know, when you're trying to change gears, you have to change gears here all the time.

Okay.

Um, so for those who are not watching the video, you're changing gears at the front extensions of the handlebars, and when you've got no right-hand handlebar, you have to change gears down at your brake lever. So you're forever not changing gears enough because you're lazy. It's like the old style of riding when the gear shifters used to be on the downtube. Um, you would just stay in the same gear and ride a too big a gear because it— because it's un-aero to keep moving your arm backwards and forwards. So, but yeah, look, the season is, is really going to be one of the better seasons, right? I actually can't wait for Kona and the the world titles at Nice for the 70.3. I think they've actually got it right now. They've got the best course for Nice. Yeah, the 70.3. Yeah. And Kona is the, the home of Ironman Triathlon World Championships. And, and put that into an Olympic year, boy, it's going to be such a fun year. Can you win the Olympics?

Yeah, 70.3 and the Ironman in the one year, especially because there's so many athletes crossing that border between, uh, Olympiacos and 70.3. But But Christian kind of answered on our podcast recently, he just said, look, they did the jump back and forth too many times, I'm not doing it again. And yeah, if you really want to be the absolute best, you probably can't do both. I mean, Hayden Wild and Alex Yee both potentially showing that.

Yeah, but they're exceptions, Jordan. Look, for the age groupers listening out there, you really should be staying in your lane. And I've got plenty of examples of people who shouldn't be doing an event, but they want to do it. Because it's a challenge and that's, that's different. But if you're wanting to do PBs, if you pick something that's in your, in your, you know, it's a flat course, you're a tall heavy guy or girl, you know, you shouldn't be picking courses that are really hilly. You know, pick courses that go to your strengths so that you're, you're, you know, enabling yourself to use your, your strength and power from your height and weight rather than— and lightweight guys should avoid, uh, the flat fast courses and go to the courses that are hilly where, you know. So, so there's a lot to be thinking about as a pro and as an age grouper as well, to think about your season, um, as a whole. And it's not just one race, you know, um, you're trying to build your, your, your years, just like they're talking about their career as a pro. Christian's been doing this since he was 14, and now he's— how was he now, 20? 8th, I think he said. Um, I have to check that, but, but yeah, uh, definitely, you know, he's got how many more years? Could be 8, could be 6, but you're, you're all the time trying to fine-tune, uh, your improvement of 32. So, so yeah, it's, uh, it's a, it's a period where, you know, you're only going to be a pro or, or, um, at the top of your career as an athlete for a short period of time. So you've got to make the most of it and try to really plan your schedule and your races according to what suits you, what's in your lane.

We spoke about it a little bit with Tom and Roland last week on the podcast about how, I mean, those boys keep improving. And Roland's just run it just by 1:59:59 or something, which is unbelievable. And 4 years ago, he would have been dominating 70.3 fields, yet now 3 guys are 3 minutes faster than him. It just keeps lifting. But I'm loving, you know, as an example, Grace Thek coming through from Australia. She's just been consistently improving in the background for years now, and her performances this month are the standout performances for me because, because Ironman on the female side is, is dominated by Kat Matthews, Taylor Neard, Lucy Charles. And, uh, in both those examples, so Oceanside 70.3, Geelong 70.3, Kat Matthews dominated Geelong, Taylor Neard dominated Oceanside, um, and looked unbeatable at the front. And in the background Grace Thirk was running them down and running really fast. She's not the only good runner. There's her, there's Tamara Jewett, um, and, and Solberg Lovseth, Ironman World Champion, and was also running down Taylor Neave at Oceanside. And so that was really exciting to see that, hey, they're not untouchable either, you know. They have a— they have these amazing gaps off the bike because they're so strong on the bike. Um, for me, that was really exciting to see that, that those results are getting closer and closer to being mixed up as well.

And I think that's the thing I'm trying to get across is you know, it doesn't happen in 6 months of training for your, your year as a triathlete. This is like Christian told us that he had a 10-year, uh, training program for the Olympics. And, you know, look at the way Grace is coming through. She's really now a really classy runner. That's what she wasn't before, but in, in races in triathlon, she's probably, you know, a stronger bike rider than she ever was, which means she can ride run better now. So, so you need to develop this over years, and it— if you just stay at it, it's going to come through if you stay consistent with it. And the other things a lot of age groupers aren't prepared to do is, oh, I'm, you know, I'm never going to be a good runner. Yeah, but if you don't actually believe that you can and start training the way you should be and ride the bike better, um, you, you won't be a good runner at the end of the day.

It's something that I took from the podcast with Christian, but I am taking from a lot of pros and the way they talk. They, they talk in, in terms of bigger time periods, and they— because they have to, but it's also a smarter way to train. They look at their whole year in advance, they look at their next career, they look at their whole career in advance, look at the next 18 months at a time, 24 months at a time. And it sounds a little bit excessive for the age grouper, but that would actually really help a lot of people. Because when you think in these short-term windows, the next race only, what, what's happening this month, you get so caught up in, am I improving this month? Have I got my peak power this month? Am I running my best 5K time? That's my— is my FTP as high as it's ever been this month? And we all— we get— we get caught in this rat race of just short-term improvement all the time. And we'd be better off just, just taking a step back and thinking longer term. And, and you'd wake up in 2 years being— going, I'm as fit as I've ever been, you know.

A lot of the athletes who are disappointed through injury or illness, that this is their one and only race of their whole career, and I just want them to change that mindset and get perspective that it's not—

it's—

you're going to have another 40 races probably in the next 10 years. And it's not— sure, you've trained really well and you've invested a lot of money in and time, you've booked accommodation and airfares. If you're not ready for these events, you shouldn't be entering them. And so the big picture all the time is this one event isn't the be-all and end-all. And, you know, see Christian's attitude in New Zealand, like, he had this massive pathetic result in his— in trails. At the end of the day, he was not even worried about that. It annoyed him. That's about as far as I could say. At the end of the day, I saw footage of him on the side of the road clapping and high-fiving the marathon runners in New Zealand who are out there doing their 4:30, 5-hour runs. He was still out there. He could have been in his hotel room going, life sucks and woe is me. That's not his attitude. And I'll live to fight another day. I love his attitude. And that's— and if that's the best for the world, the world's leading pro, then we all need to have a little bit of a look at that and say that, you know, we're in the sport to enjoy it and we're not defined by one race. And get that out of your mindset. And, you know, we've had a lot of races over the summer at the moment, uh, in Australia. They're all almost coming to an end for the summer, but we still have races in the northern part of Australia. We have Western Sydney coming up and, uh, Cairns and then Sunshine Coast, then Port Macquarie. There's still 4 big races from now till October, and then Busso at the end of the year. So there's quite a big period during our winter where we still have massive races. So there's lots more events you can go to that you can, you know, rectify what you're— if you did Geelong or T100 in the Gold Coast, you know, that's not that's not your whole year, you know. You might have done well at them, but you've still got an opportunity to do, uh, to do well building your career over these next, uh, you know, 18 months.

Yeah, the, the opening races so far, which a lot of the top pros have targeted, have just been an unbelievable start. Um, the amount of depth in the fields has been so fun to watch. Uh, it was, yeah, New Zealand, Geelong, Dallas 70.3, and then Texas coming up. It's, it's an unbelievable nation. Sorry, Oceanside as well. And it's, it's just going to be a great year of racing. We can't— it just keeps getting better and better, to be honest. And I've loved watching it. I've loved seeing how everyone's going about it. Christian's, you know, Christian's main two lessons that we've touched on a few times are that race consistently to get yourself in form, um, and, and, you know, and, and train train like you're going to race, and that means progressing through. You know, you touched on that in our podcast, which was so— we were so happy with. But he said, don't be blowing yourself up in the first few reps and then fading. He's like, you want to start more conservative and build into the session and come home really strong. And he said on our podcast, I'm trying to get my speed back. I'm running 2400s at 67 to 69 seconds, so that, you know, that's sub-3-minute pace, so that 3:07 pace on race day Geelong feels comfortable. And he predicted it perfectly. And he said, I felt really good, I started at that pace, I started fractionally slower, and then I was running 63s by the end. And that's exactly what happened on race day. He ran his, his half marathon at Geelong and then at Oceanside, backing it up, a 66 and a 67 minute, where he slowed down last minute both times to high-five everyone. Boy, that is some of the best running I've ever seen.

You know, it's just, it's another level.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's something special. So I can't wait for the rest of the year.

Yeah, and it's not just one or two guys running that, there's there's quite a few guys who could actually run that pace now. Um, you know, Jelle Geens and, um, you know, Kasper and Hayden Wild and, you know, Schomburg. The depth of runners who could run under 1:10 and close to 1:05, 1:06, um, is, you know, that's what you have to be doing. And before, you could win a 70.3 with a 1:10, 1:11, 1:12. Uh, now you'd be lucky to be in the top 10 if you run like that. So I um, so it's really fantastic to see. Um, but it's really good for the age groupers to hear someone like, uh, Christian talk about just staying consistent with the training and trust the process. And, and then, you know, thinking about your race sessions, uh, race, race-ready sessions, I should say, and your normal training sessions that you're, you're trying to measure your effort just like you would in a race. We tell a lot of the new athletes who join us, replicate what's going to happen on race day in training. And when, when you get to race day, it's just automatic. You're actually not trying to do something you've never done before. So we have a lot of race-ready sessions in our program. And not only that, we have a lot of high-intensity sessions where we're asking you just to do, for example, 10, 30 on, 30 off at high VO2 recovery, high VO2. Do that 3 sets. Don't do the first set at the highest range, and then when you get to the third set, you can't do 10 of them, you can only do 4, and they're all below the range. That's actually losing the value of, of the VO2 session. You're actually only spending 12 minutes of VO2 instead of 20. You've only done 50% of the session. So you're better off starting more conservative, whether it's a training session, whether it's a race or a testing session. I'm so sick of saying this to people, just do that and get the consistency of the sessions going. Consistency doesn't mean just turning up every day. It means turning up and doing the value of the session, which is it's got 3 sets of 10. Don't do 2, don't do 1 unless your time's short. Yeah, that's a different scenario. Yeah, but the reason you're not doing 3 sets of 10 is because you've gone too hard early and you've blown up and you actually can't ride the rest of the session. That's losing consistency. Um, so it just doesn't mean each day turning up means each day turning up and doing the value of position.

Yeah, we're talking about cycling racing, which is so tactical, plus it's just got these titans racing against each other. Uh, we speak about triathlon racing, which is really racing now among these pros. And Christian just did a bit of a mic drop before Geelong 70.3 on our podcast, and I said, do you race your numbers? Do you race smart? Do you race the race? And he just said, I'm there to break the other guys or be broken. I just loved when he said that. And we don't necessarily agree with it, but he did it. That week. He backed up his talk and, and, and he broke them and he won. And so you do have to race the race a bit.

But I think, put it in perspective, Jordan, you are breaking other people, but it's still in actually in your ranges. So, so it's not actually going out of your ranges. We've seen Hayden Wilde go out of his ranges and lose the Olympic title. We've seen Hayden Wilde go out of his ranges and lose the World Championships in New Zealand. We've seen him do it at Geelong a little bit where he rode way above and set a course record and probably ran too fast at the start. And that's not a criticism, we're just giving you exactly the facts of what's happened. Running outside of your ranges or riding outside of your ranges has consequences. And but Christian wasn't— there were numbers he could do. So, so it sounds like he's, you know, that, that sentence he said, but he's really, you know, clarifying it in his own mind. As long as everyone might range this.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, he said it took longer at Oceanside to catch those guys than he thought, but he didn't panic. He didn't go faster. He just stayed in his ranges and trusted that he worked out that if I run this pace, I'm going to catch them. I don't have to catch them straight away. Yeah, yeah. So there's a difference there.

Yeah, for sure. I'm just loving the tactic coming into triathlon because it, it used to be just, uh, just do your time trial, stay in your range robotically, and nothing else. Now there's a lot more tactics coming into it, which is great. And I love triathlon because it can just shift at any moment. Someone can look in total control, but then 2K to go, completely crumble, you know, because it's such an endurance event. So That's the difference between cycling and triathlon. And then switching to running, the running pacing and strategy is totally different again. And we always speak about generally just the fastest runner wins, but that said, there's still a different set of tactics. And mainly we don't want to focus on the tactics the next, for this next chat. We kind of want to just talk about the insanity of the results coming through. And I think it is a result of different types of training methods and advancement in training understanding and sports science and and a lot has happened in the last month, which has just been just as exciting to watch.

But I will say, we're going to talk about this, but in events where it's more of a time trial rather than a tactical race— and, you know, triathlon is supposed to be, as an age grouper, a time trial, whereas as a pro it's got both components, tactics and— but in age grouping there is tactics if you happen to get with a group where you're all legally riding properly. So that is a little bit of tactics, but it's a really minor part of it. And so it was running, you know, if you're running a 10K, you know, fun run or a 5K park run, you shouldn't be worried about what everybody else is doing. That's actually the worst thing you can be doing. So I'm talking about time trialing here. So time trialing, you need to be disciplined just like you are in the training sessions where we start conservative and finish strong. So there's no difference in training as in racing. Like I said before, replicate what's going to happen on race day in your training sessions and replicate what's going to happen on training sessions in race day. So So as an age grouper coming to a 5K or a 10K, um, fun run, everybody else around you is probably going to run too hard and fade. And we know that some of the best times in the world at the elite level are when they start conservative and finish strong. And so you should be doing the same thing in, in the time trial scenario races where you're running in a race You shouldn't be trying to go with the pack if, if that pace is above you. You should be letting them go and then coming through the field, and you actually have a better experience, probably get a better result, and it'll be more fun at the end of the day. So, so what we see the pros do a lot of time, going man on man as elite 1500-meter runners or 800-meter runners or 5,000-meter runners on the track or marathon runners, doesn't matter. You can't go outside of your range. You want to race with them, but you've got to, you've got to work out where your level is. And there will be a point where you can go above your level. That's what we were saying, staying your level all the way to the finish. At some point you need to push. The risk is less. Where the risk is earlier, it's high if you start to do that too soon. So, so My point is that you, no matter whether you're an age grouper or an elite runner, there is a lot of evidence to tell us that if you start above your level, it will end poorly. And, and that's what we're trying to prevent here. And give the examples of, so, you know, Josh Kerr is a really good one because he's going for the mile record, and I wanted to talk to you about that.

Yeah, yeah, there's coming off the back of, uh, another world championship win because he at the Tokyo Outdoor World Champs last year, his calf and pulled out. And been world champ the year before, uh, then the Indoor World Champs, which, which was just on, uh, it was an amazing event for many reasons which I won't touch on. But, um, but yeah, Josh Kerr, uh, beat the Olympic champion Cole Hawker in the 3000. He just looked unbelievable, to be honest. He looked like his speed was almost unmatched.

He led from the front And Kyle Unger, Olympic champion, um, has got the best kick.

Yes.

Yeah, in world athletics for 1500, 800.

Yep, yep. Josh Kerr has come out and said that he wants to break the world record for the mile, just took for 30 years, 3:42, um, 222 seconds they're calling it. And I think that's pretty ambitious because his current PB is 3:44.5, I think. So not only is he— I just have to wipe off 2.5 seconds, which is monstrous in athletics. Monstrous. Uh, he has to run a 3:26 or 3:27, uh, 1500, which is borderline his PB, borderline world record 1500, to run the mile world record.

So, so for him to run 3:42 for the mile when his PB is 3:44.5 and his PB for the 1500 is 3:27, which is what he has to run to run 3:42 and hang on for another 100 meters, I'm not sure whether that's possible. And I, I think it could cause him to actually blow up and end up running a 3:46. So that's a worry, and that's, that's about the pacing. And you get that wrong, um, and we've seen Ingebrigtsen so many times start with a jog and come home strong. And he doesn't do that just because he feels like it, he does it because that's the tactic. He knows always, yeah. Um, and you see Hocker do that a lot as well, and Nagus, they don't they don't charge off to the lead. You know, a lot of age groupers, you know, in track races or fun runs or half marathons, they're all charging off way above their level. And so even at— well, I want to talk about Josh Kerr because I think if you're going to try and break your, your best 1 mile by 2.5 seconds, you've got to be super— I think you should be running 326 for the 1500 before you'd be able to run 342. That's, that's my theory. It needs to be running faster than— what do you do, 327 and a half? Yeah, so I think he needs another second in his 1500, which, you know, so he's asking— we're asking knock off 2.5 seconds for his PB. So I just, I think it— unless you've got the form, I think you're going to end up with a poor result.

Yeah, I mean kudos for him to go for going for it. He came out and said, look, athletics is really exciting now, there's a running boom, I want to add to the excitement, I want to do a huge project, I want to get some, some noise about it, which, which is awesome. That's, that's what they did with Faith Kipyegon last year, trying to be the first woman to break 4 minutes. They went for it, they were way off as, as a lot of people predicted, but, but it was such a fun event to, to watch. And, and she still went world record, which I'm all for, for those events. I just think it's, it's pretty ambitious. Um, but what I love about these events and what I love about the World Champs that was just on is that you get this inside access to what are they actually doing in training, because they do these events and then you find out after how they train for that. And they all— they tell you on social media and the interviews what they're actually doing. So you get to find out what was their lead-up. And there was so many cool, um, nuggets coming out of the World Champs and Josh Kerr's training. And surprisingly, he— to get the form he's in right now, he says he's worked out his ideal training week, uh, and it's very, very surprising. It's very limited training for how fit and how fast he is. He does single session days, so no double days like a lot of runners do, no double threshold days or anything, just a 6-day training split. Uh, so Sunday long run, Tuesday tempo or threshold training, and then Friday track session. So for me, that was the most surprising part, that he's that fast in the track. He's unbelievably fast, and he has one track session a week. Um, and more specifically, he has Saturday completely off to recover from Friday, and then he does his long run fresh on the Sunday. I thought that was really interesting and cool and, and something different to think about. Obviously, age groupers can't do this because we all have to train on weekends, and so that's your only time to do endurance. But your endurance run would feel a lot more fresh if you had the day off the day before.

But remember, he's training for 8:15 3 or mile, 3, 5K. So it's completely different to the endurance sports that we're talking about. So, so yeah, there's a huge difference, I think.

And, uh, he's still running 18-mile, which is 28K long runs.

So he's, he's got a lot more quality in his, in his 3 sessions. His long run is faster, his track session is race pace, and his other tempo. But all the rest of it's just building his aerobic fitness. Um, and, you know, building that load so he doesn't get injured. Like, he already had that calf injury, so, you know, it's probably what he's doing, a lot more gym, a lot more strength and conditioning, functional training. So, so yeah, so he's not really a marathon runner, so he's not a half marathon runner. That was like, it could, he could be a very good one. Yeah, but he wants to be a veteran, but at the moment that suits that style. And like, when you were training for 800, we weren't getting you to do massive 25K, 20 K long runs. It was very specific for that event. And so I think that's, that's a point when you're giving his example of his training. I think it's easy for people to hear that and just say, oh, that's what I should be doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's, yeah, that's definitely not what I'm saying. I was just very intrigued by his breakdown and, yeah, and how simple it is.

I think it's appropriate.

Yeah, yeah, how simple it is. I mean, his long run is still 28K, so it's, it's not something that's short, and it's got a bit of effort in it. Uh, but yeah, I was surprised at the simplicity of it when I, I just love that lesson that especially, I see it a lot in the running industry that especially with Strava and social media, everyone is just going to more is better. And you've got to get— you're doing 100K weeks, you're not a runner. You know, if you're training for a marathon, you need bulk Ks. And it's just so not true. And, and he's just proving that. He's, he's attempting a 3:42, the fastest mile ever, off much more limited kilometers.

Look, there's, there's so many examples of people who think that if they just throw more volume to their program and run 200K, 250K, $250,000, even $300,000 weeks, which there are people doing it and they're not getting the results. They're, you know, just because you've got more time doesn't mean you have to keep running more. You know, we don't say train smarter, race faster for just for, you know, an eye-catching sentence. It's actually what we believe.

Yes.

Is, you know, if you've got more time, we say athletes ask us, how much time do I need for your program? We say, how much time have you got? And that's a better question. If you've got 18 hours, we're not going to train you harder for 18 hours. We're just going to add some more duration. The 3 things we talk about— intensity, duration, and frequency— not going to up the intensity, that stays the same. Just the duration of your session would be longer if you can do 18 hours compared to 10. If you only got 10 hours, you just do less of the warm-up and cool-down, keep the main set the same. So, so, you know, you're really all the time just because you've got more time to train as a pro or as a person who doesn't work, um, it doesn't mean you're going to be a better athlete. It will help if you've got more ability to spend time running, riding, or swimming. It will help, but it's not necessarily a high correlation between, you know, 300K running weeks or 600K riding weeks to be the better athlete. You could ride or run or swim yourself into the ground.

Okay, shout out to COROS who have just adopted the, uh, their slogan and logo. They've gone with Train Smarter, Run Faster, and which, you know, we don't own that. We don't own the Train Smarter, Run Faster. I'm sure someone said it before us, but we have been saying it exclusively on this podcast for 6 or 7 years. So just want to note that one. And, and you know, of course you can, you can have the train.

I never heard it before I said it, George, so it's not something I got from somewhere else, but I would give that kudos if I did. So it's something I thought about is, why don't we, why don't we train smarter here? And that way we'll race faster. And then I was like, oh, that's dead.

Yeah, no, I remember you, you, me, and Lynn sat down physically and said, what should we come up with? We really braced on it. So we're proud of that one, and it is taking off worldwide. Um, look, I just want to finish off with some, some notable, um, points from, uh, from, uh, continue on Josh Kerr. He, his gym days, and this question we get a lot of, should you gym on your hard days or should you gym on your off days? And it's, it's got a majority answer, I think, but there's some nuances to it. And so for his 6-day split, he does his gym on his Tuesday hard day with his tempo threshold, Wednesday, so one of these days, and then Friday on the track day. So 2 out of 3 of those are the hard days. So following that principle of keep your hard days hard and keep your easy days easy, which we agree with, but it's not as black and white as most people think. And there is, there is certain contexts where you would do the opposite or, or mix it up. And so what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, look, I've been a big believer on, uh, if you're going to do a lot of leg weights, you would really not want to use your recovery easy slash day to do that because you're actually adding more load on the days where you're meant to be recovering. So that would be my first point to any athlete that we coach. If you are on a 7-day cycle, not a lot of, you know, there's so many variations of cycles that people use. Some people use 12-day, 14-day, 21-day. So you're just doing hard, easy, hard, easy alternating. But if you're doing a standard 7, you've got reasonably solid Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Sunday where you're doing some endurance. So there's 5 days where you kind of got a big load. You need a couple of days where you're actually not contributing to that load. If you started to do a lot of leg work on the days where you're trying to recover. Let's think, that ends up being 7 days of fatiguing. Yes. So that would be my first piece of advice to people. Use Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Saturday, Sunday. There's 5 days available, available, and you don't have to— you, you have to allow for some adaptation. You can't just say you're really good at the gym and you're lifting really good weights and you've, you've quite solid, the minute you introduce swimming, riding, and running to your program, you will struggle to swim, ride, and run because you added, you added some more load to your whole program. And same with, we, we have people who just swim, ride, and run. Yeah. And we add the, the load from the gym. Yeah. There's, they're riding and running suffers because their legs are so fatigued from, and that's why you need to start really light in the gym. If you're not used to it. And so just progress like you would if you were just a novice runner or a novice rider. You know, if the longest run you've done is 12K, you wouldn't start a running program with your first run at 24K. You would start it at 13 and then go to 14. In the gym, you wouldn't start doing bench press at 200 kilos if you'd only bench press 60, you know, just because you want to get strong. You would start at 65 and 70. So progressing yourself in no matter what sport you're doing, progressive overload is the best way to manage the load. And so we're really keen on people doing strength and conditioning, but they have to introduce it to their main sport. You know, as a track runner or a swimmer or a triathlete or a bike rider, you know, you're not getting— the race isn't how much weight you can lift in a bike race. That weight that you're lifting contributes to the strength you have at the back end of that race to allow you to ride the power. But it's not actually part of the race, it's part of your preparation. So, you know, we don't want to give it the same kudos time that a bike rider would give to his bike riding. Still an important part of the program. I remember training with Cadel on one of the days, I was saying, how much time are you spending on the gym? And I was quite impressed with the amount of time he was spending in the gym off the bike. And so one, he was World Time Trial Champion, Tour de France winner, World Road Race Champion. Um, and you know, because he did all these, these things in conjunction with his main sport.

Yeah, yeah, this— couldn't add much more to that. But just don't fall trap for that there's only one way to fit your gym into the program. Like, your weeks will look a bit different, depends on your experience in the gym. If you're starting as beginner, there's probably a bit more flexibility for you for it to be on certain days. If you're quite experienced and you're lifting heavy and it's, it's bit of a load, it's probably more appropriate to do it on your harder days and, and, and double that. But then some people, as they're getting used to hard sessions, I know some days there's just no way I could double up and do some of the hard sessions if I'm on my legs doing 8x1K or something. And that's a specific type of session that not every runner is doing. But if I'm doing 8x1K almost as hard as I can, I'm not getting in the gym that afternoon. You know, there's just no way. Um, and there could be an argument that maybe you don't have to train that hard in your running session and back that off a little bit, and then you could go to the gym, but it's, it's just not as black and white. So it's an interesting point, and, and I liked hearing that Josh Kerr was doubling down on his hard days and then one, one of his easy days as well had the gym session.

Yep, couldn't agree more. And, uh, it needs to be part of your program, that's, that's a given. And that's, you know, it's just how you fit it in and you have to be flexible with it.

Look, there's a whole bunch I'd love to touch on. The athletics world has been super exciting. It's probably not appropriate to get through all in this podcast. I do want to touch on one lesson from George Hunter-Bell, which I spoke on before, who just won her maiden world champ. I'll get to that in a second. But some of the stuff that's happened— Keely Hodgkinson's won her first world championship indoor in the 800. Mark my words, she'll break the 800-meter world record, which was done by most likely a doping cheat, um, 40 years ago or 30 years ago. And so that's going to be really exciting.

She won that solo. Yes, she didn't even have a pacemaker.

Yeah, yeah, she's— she's— her power and speed is unbelievable. So that's exciting to watch. The 800 indoors was won by the 17-year-old Cooper Lockenhouse, which he's just— again, there's all these prodigies coming through. Uh, Kyle Robinson went under 27 minutes for the first time as an Aussie 10K. Jess Howell gets another 2 World Champs medals, making her probably one of the most decorated Aussie runners ever. Um, silver in 1500 and bronze in the 3K. Jake— Jacob Kipleno just went— broke the half marathon world record around 57:20. Like, the running thing's happening right now, and a little bit standard.

You just rattled off 57 minutes That's ridiculous.

Yeah, it's, it's honestly insane that he's running the London Marathon.

Can't wait, 2 weeks' time.

Yes, it's gonna be awesome. And Spencer won, uh, bronze by doing a Stephen Bradbury at the, um, 1500-meter world champs where he— they all drift out to lane 2 and 3, which keeps happening in athletics. Won the Olympic gold and he ran in the pole down the inside with 30 meters to go. He was nowhere. He was, it was or maybe 6, I'm not sure. And then they just kind of drifted out. You just kind of snuck through the lane line. Um, Cam Myers ran on home soil the fastest 1500 ever by an Aussie, 3:30.45. We forget he's just 19 as well. It's, it's interesting to see how they will all develop because 3 years ago on the podcast we were raving about Streamix Wayne, you know, he was running the greatest times ever by an Aussie. He was running low 7:30s for 3K and he, he ran a 7 7:55 or something 2 weeks ago. And we always talk about these runs, like he was on this unbelievable run about interruption, and then he's been— had a very interrupted couple years since then, and the form's taken away from it. Yeah, it'll be interesting for Cam Myers to see how he develops. Can he be— can you stay patient? Um, but finishing off, I'll finish off with the lesson from Georgia Hunter-Bell. Uh, I just love this, and this is such a kudos to the age grouper and a listener. And this is Christian Blumenfeldt spoke about on our podcast that he's so impressed with age groupers' ability to train and race, you know, like we do with full-time jobs. And she was working full-time as a lawyer while trying to be a world-class runner, and she just said, what am I doing? I, I'm exhausted from trying to train. She trains with Katie Hutchinson. I'm training with a world-class training group and I'm working full-time as a lawyer. And she said, I'm just going to stop this for, for now and put a pause on my career, which is a hard choice, and just focus on running. And she said, the second I did that, I was— all my training efforts started actually paying off because I wasn't so exhausted. I was actually recovering from sessions. I was recovering from training. My performances went through the roof, and suddenly all the work I'd been doing was actually paying off. And it's just so interesting. It just shows the importance of recovery, that she didn't do any more work once she, once she quit her job. She, she just said she just— the training just started to pay off properly, which I think is a huge lesson for, for us in the age group.

Yeah, look, we, we're so motivated, um, in our own journeys to try to get maximized the time we have available. And we don't probably give enough kudos to the importance of recovery and sleep. And, and if you're exhausted, not to try and push through the session. And that's a classic example of someone who's, you know, working full-time, training her backside off and really not progressing. And the minute she stopped working and had more time to recover and look what she's doing, it's incredible. That's just one example. And so it's super important that, you know, you don't keep pushing through when you know that the opportunity there is to actually make it worse.

That was a huge monster episode catching up on all the racing from around the world. We love discussing it. We love looking at our 3 favorite sports: cycling, triathlon, and running. More to come on future episodes. Thank you for joining us as always, and we'll see you in the next one.