Every Mistake You’ll Make Training For An Ironman

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. It's Ironman World Championship week. The men are taking on Kona, and so it's time to revisit the Ironman. We recently did one of our most popular episodes ever, which was a case study on every mistake you can make training for a 70.3 half Ironman. And so now we're back with an episode specifically for the Ironman. And as always, while we'll be focusing on the specific requirements of an Ironman, a lot of these principles do translate to any endurance event. But first, we've got our normal opening segments, starting with gratitude. So, dad, welcome to another episode. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, George. My gratitude is basically around Kona, and I think there's a lot of events around the world that are. That really people aspire to and, and for. For the majority of people who have come into triathlon as a sport, I think they would have been almost sucked into it by the footage they've seen over the 20 years of the history of Ironman and how it's. It's made people champions and made. Made people crawl across the line from. From the best, Very, very best to. To people's absolute capitulations. And, and it's got that mystique. It's, it's, you know, it's a. It's a tiny little village, if anybody's ever been to Kona, and it just explodes for this. This period of. Of race. And I'm grateful that event still exists. And for a while there, it was looking like it might have to move altogether. And I just think it's got this mystique from, you know, I think it was back in the low 1980s where it first started. It actually started in Hawaii, not in Kona, in Honolulu. It started, but they moved it to Kona. And this event has this thing that people want to aspire to, whether you're a pro or an age grouper. You just want to say that, yeah, I've been to Kona. I've done the world Champs at Kona. And we'll talk about this a little bit in this podcast. But. But, you know, don't expect to do the same time as you've done in Kona that you've done in your Ironman, getting to qualify for Kona because it is a different beast. And that's the thing about Kona. It's, you know, it's had some of the pros, you know, on their knees and there's been some great victories, some, you know, some unbelievable competition amongst, you know, back in the early days with Mark Allen and Dave Scott and Scott Molina and Scott Tinley and, and you know, everything between then and Jan Frodeno and some of the, you know, the best triathletes in that whole 40 year period have had some unbelievable experiences at that race. And it is the epitome of triathlon, in my opinion. That's just my opinion. But I love the fact that it still holds. You know, we've got so many races available now. We've got the T100 series, we've got challenge events, we've got so many races going on all over the world. But this is the holy grail. This is the one that people really want to be a part of. And you know, you can talk to guys who've been there and only done it once and they still have memories of yeah, I've done that race and boy, that you know, that showed me what suffering and what I should have been doing in training and it really exposed me. And there's all these commentaries you get from people's experience. I love hearing about people who've been to the event and I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to go there and do it twice and, and I'll, I'll always remember those experiences, you know, and, and it's something that I'm really satisfied that I've been able to do and, and I'm sure that's, that's what people if, if they're in this sport that would be that, you know, even though they might not want to say that out loud if you can get to qualify for that event. And look, it's not taking away from, from every second year now we're going to go to Nice in, in France. That's still a world championships, but it just doesn't have the same mystique. It may in 20 or 30 years n as important, but I don't know, there's something about Kona that I'm still grateful it's still there.

I totally agree. And yeah, we're really excited this week because anytime we have any Tribalo athletes competing there, it's exciting. We have three athletes racing Kona which stoked about and I know you'll be glued to the computer tracking every second of their race as well as watching the Pros and I know there's a lot of commentary around the fact that swap to Nice every second year with. With men and women swapping between who gets Kona each year. But I actually like that. I think it adds to the prestige. And yeah, like you said, nice is still a World Championships event. And then I think it'll be, it'll end up being kind of cool where you'll say, I was Ironman champion. It's like, which one were you the Kona champion or were you the Nice champion? You know, where the kind of. Were you kind of the hills Ironman champion or you're the heat champion? I, I like the difference in both. So I'm not. As opposed to the change and I understand why they did it and my gratitude. I'm actually grateful for how many people have told me lately that they actually love the gratitude section of the podcast. We've had a lot of good comments about it and I think sometimes I've doubted it in why we keep it in the podcast. It's very non related to triathlon, but we keep going with it because we believe it's a really important aspect of the balanced athlete and a balanced life, a balanced viewpoint on life. And that's really important to us. And so sometimes I've gone, are people really interested in this? But I think we get a lot of good feedback from it and we get a lot of people saying that they've incorporated it into their training and their life and it really has helped them and that was our goal. So on top of that, I watched a really nice video this week in line with the Ironman, the Norwegians put out a really emotional video, which I absolutely loved, where Gustav Iden and Christian Bloemenfeld are returning. And Gustav Iden, after his victory in 2022 at Kona, he's had a really, really rough few years where he's basically, he took time away from the sport, his mother died, he was dealing with a lot of injury. He was really not in a good place. And in this video he just, he said, I feel a lot of weird pressure. This is my first competitive race basically in two years. He's raced for sure, but not on a big stage. And he talks about this is a big stage. He qualified for the event, but he hasn't been against really strong field. And he said he feels a little bit of pressure, but he just said, I'm just really excited to be back. I'm just really happy that I'm here, that I'm racing and I'm really grateful that I get to do this for a living. I get to move my body, I've got my body back. I'm getting to do the thing I love. I get to train. And it was just really nice to hear. It was such a nice reminder and good perspective from someone who's been through a lot the last couple of years. And he really focused on that, and I thought that was a great attitude for him to come into this race with and he could perform horribly because he's had a really rough run or he could surprise everyone and this attitude might really help him. So I'm really excited that he's just back racing and no matter how he goes, I'm really excited to watch him and maybe he could surprise us.

I think it's an interesting one. George, just on that gratitude thing, I totally agree with you. And I've been amazed how many people come back at me with, hey, I'm really grateful for whatever I'm talking to them about. And they're saying, I love that aspect of what you guys do. But then on the, on the Gustav Eaton side of it, just on a different, completely different point, like as a professional who's won this race, this would be very hard for him to come and have an expectation that he might finish 30th in the event. And, you know, I think if you put yourself in his shoes, why would you want to do that? Um, you know, that that's, you know, I know a lot of athletes that we coach will refuse to, to race until they're 100% and they're, and they're convinced that they're going to get a great performance. And I think that's, that's okay. I'm, I'm, I'm fine with that. And not racing when they don't think they're prepared enough. I'm, I'm okay with that as well, but I think that you need to put yourself out there, even though the result might not be where you want it to be, but it's a great practice for him to, to race at the level he's at right now. And I'll be really interested to executes at his current form level. And if he does go too hard and get carried away, and that's what the message we, we try to sell a lot in, in this podcast is, no matter, no matter what you want to do, you can only race as good as you are on the day and, and how well you're prepared. And so it'll be interesting to see how Gustav actually executes on the day. And if his competitiveness forces him to blow himself up by riding too hard and then absolutely having nothing left to run with, or if he just stays in his lane and, and, and does his own thing on the bike and stays to his power range and then runs properly, he could actually run through the field if guys at Kona, it's renowned for guys riding over the top, riding to stay with the bunch and stay with the pack and then getting off and can't run at all. So, so Kona is a race where if you actually do stick to your guns and your plan, you will have a better result than, than being gung ho and, and pushing the pushing and forcing the issue. This is a race about patience. Kona is the big one where it matters the most. And if you get that execution wrong, you'll pay a huge penalty in the run. You will be. You know, Lionel said so many times he's walked six times out of seven or five out of six. Whatever it is, he got it right once and the rest of the time he's just made the huge mistakes and ended up walking. No matter, no matter what you say, that's actually what happened. Whatever the reason, that's what's happened. And if it can happen to a pro, you know, I've followed this sport for so long to see that many guys that I knew over, over raced this race and ended up walking and they didn't deserve that. It's just that they got carried away.

So we'll keep talking about Kona, but we, we do want to talk about just the Ironman itself and, and every mistake you'll make preparing for an Ironman. And, and on that note, I, I, while we get into these topics, I want to talk about Lionel Sanders a little bit. And you just mentioned him. And, and we're really lucky because he got to, he got to Kona a month ago, which is exceptional planning from him. He said, I want to be fully heat adapted. I' early and not getting there one week early or two weeks early and getting there a month early. And he's really opened himself up and they've been doing a daily vlog which has been unreal to get an insight into what he's doing every single day to prepare. And the downside for him of this is that he opens himself up to critics of exactly what he's doing because he's revealing almost everything which good on him. It's great for the sport, great for the viewer, but it allows armchair critics like us to really analyze what he's doing and potentially question some things. But we've seen him make some interesting decisions in this period, and the biggest one, which we talk about a lot, is his whole shtick. At the start of the season. His goal for himself was, I need to stop jumping around and doing what everyone else says. I know what works. I've got enough experience, I need to stay in my lane, do what I know works and get to Kona with what I know works. He lands in Kona, the Norwegians turn up, he starts doing their training sessions, he's out on his own race ready sessions. And you and I couldn't believe it. I really feel bad being a critic. I just feel like an idiot being a critic because I can't do what he does. But it's easy for us to sit here and say, what are you doing? But he had a race ready session, you know, a hundred, a massive ride and then a massive run after he starts to run his 20k or 25k run where he's supposed to practice his own race pace. Gustav and Christian come past him and he jumps on the back of them, runs at their pace, completely blows up and ruins his race ready session. And this is nine days out from the race. It's his last, most important session. We see a lot of athletes do that themselves, but for a pro to do that, I was just shaking my head going, you did exactly what you promised you wouldn't do at the start of the season. And it was really interesting to see and watch. And I know you have a lot of thoughts on this, and I only say this because you and I love Lionel. We just absolutely. We're his biggest supporters. We've watched him for so many years because he's always been putting his videos out and we have just wanted him to win every single year. And we've said over and over again, can Lionel just finally make it happen? And just as a fan of him, it's been hard to watch him do this and make these same mistakes.

Yeah, I don't really think I can add much to it, Jord. And I hate being critical. It's just observations. And I want the listeners to understand that we're coming from a point of view where we're trying to learn lessons. And so we're trying to coach our listeners from mistakes that you and I have made. We've made all those mistakes already. And to see a pro do it, you know, I just hope it doesn't come back and bite him. Because as you said, we actually are a fan of his. But, you know, I listened to him say, I just got to. I know what I have to do. This is my. This is the way I need to do it. And I need to stick with my plan and stop jumping around. And. And the minute someone else comes along, he does exactly the opposite. And that, to me is. I understand it to a point. Because to be at that level, you have to be competitive. You have to really want to get the best out of yourself. And your normal brain that thinks logically is going, no, that's a bad idea. Let's not do that. Let's not do that at all. Let's not go there. But your competitive brain goes, right, there's a guy, I need to follow him, he's a winner. I need to join him, whatever he's doing. But then you've got to think, no, logically, what is my brain telling me what I should be doing? And that's the fight that's going on. And even that happens in a race. And if you can't do it in training, how are you going to be that disciplined and controlled on race day? So when someone goes flying past you on race day, your choice is stay in my zones or follow that guy. And I've done that actually at Kona, followed a guy who ended up not running. So I've learned that mistake, and I would never do that again. If the opportunity is there, that it's not going to actually make me go out of my range for more than four or five minutes and then I can sit in and get a legal draft, then that's different. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about someone who's clearly riding 10% faster than you are, and you join into that, to that pace. You've never done that before. And what do you think is going to happen when you go to run? You're going to walk. That's the only outcome that can happen. And so I kind of feel frustrated that I've watched that because I really believed that he was thinking differently and thinking really cleverly. But we're all humans and every decision we make, guess what, it has a consequence. And we're going to find out. And I hope that that doesn't have a huge consequence on. And I really hope he has a great day.

It could be a blessing in disguise. He could be so mad at himself for making that mistake in training, and that's what he needed, to not do it on race day. If he learns from that, hopefully he won't do it on race day. Or the opposite can happen. What you're saying is what you practice in training, you will end up doing on race day. So it'll be interesting to see either way. And one of the top comments on his YouTube channel was from someone just like us, armchair critic, saying, lionel, please stop doing this. Can you please figure it out for the race? And someone replied saying, why would you be telling a pro who's been doing this for 10 years what to do? And someone else replied, saying, well, because he makes the same mistake every year. I think everyone can see that. And he's pointing this out to him that he's making the same mistake. And I actually, a pro online, and I won't name who, just not to add to it, was talking about the aura and energy around Kona once all the pros start rocking up. And the Norwegians are a bit cheeky themselves and they. They post photos on Strava Online. I don't know if you saw this, but there was some funny photos going around of, of Christian in an absurd aero position where his arms are a meter in front of him on, on the bike. And everyone's. And the pro, this pro saying, everyone's panicking, like, is this the new Norwegian aero position or is he taking a piss? And he said, and some pros are going to see this and change their position a week out from the race, you know, and he, he kind of dissed Lionel Sanders and coughed and said, lionel's going to do this. I thought, oh, that's a big call to call someone out like that and go. And that's obviously his reputation. And. And for me, I go, he might see that. I think he'd definitely see that. If a fellow pro has made that kind of viral video, that could light a fire up him in a good way for the race. And he's so competitive that he could come out swinging and that could be the fire that gets him through the race, or it could be his undoing where he. He gets too competitive, like you said, and doesn't seem stick to his race plan. So it'll be very interesting.

It's almost like a lesson that the Norwegians are doing without knowing that they're saying to Lionel, hey, whatever we do, you'll copy. And Lionel hopefully could say, guess what? I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to copy anything you do. I'm going to go the complete other way and do my own race. And if I was in his shoes, I wouldn't be worried about first, second or third. My goal if I was him, was to execute so that he can run. And as I said before, this is a race where people blow up in the pro categories and in the age groupers because they haven't allowed for the Kona experience. And if you ride above yourself, you will walk at this race. So if Lionel actually thinks like that and just executes and then he may end up 8th or 7th. But guess what? He's run the whole way and he's actually finished the race properly and given himself a chance. And sure, next time you can go, all right, I can ride higher power and I probably should have. But first and foremost, you need to be able to actually complete the event the way you want to before you move on. That would be my advice to him, if I was coaching him, would be saying, you know, you're doing everything really well, you're preparing well, you get out here early, you're getting heat acclimatized, you're doing the right sessions. You made a couple of muck ups with following the Norwegians. But you know, your job today is to get through this run running properly like you deserve to, because you are a good runner and, and let's see you run properly and, and then see what happens to the people around you. And I guarantee if he, if he takes that advice, he would be passing people as he's going through the marathon. And you'll get a lot of encouragement and self confidence as you start passing people. You forget about how tired you are all of a sudden because your adrenaline is just going through the roof and you're going, well, this is freaking fun passing these people. Who can I get next? And all of a sudden your mindset's completely changed. And that's how I would be approaching it from his point of view when he's had so many failures. And to go there and do the same thing again, that's the definition of insanity. Repeating the same mistake and expecting a different result. That is not what I would be. I'd be using that sentence to him and saying, mate, you have to do something different.

Yeah. So let's chat about the Ironman. And it is its own beast. You say this all the time. It's just this race where everything is exaggerated. You think of any triathlon, the Half ironman, it's the same thing, but it's totally exaggerated. And it's comforting to know that like we just spoke about, even the pros get it wrong. And so, you know, as age groupers, if we get it wrong, we're all human, even the pros make mistakes. No one's perfect. So the very first point that you wanted to make with the Ironman is talking about the relentlessness of it and what that actually means when you think about your training for swimming, biking and running. So you can explain this concept of just understanding how relentless the ironman is.

Yep. So on the day, you don't get many opportunities to have a break, have a rest, there's no time out. It's somewhere between 8 hours and 16 hours of continuous movement. You can stop if you want, but that's your choice. But the idea is that you prepare yourself so that you're going to be moving from the start to the finish. So if you only swim in the pool and you only do intervals, and every time you do 10 by 120 by 150 or 4 by 200, you are stopping and letting yourself recover. And the principle of intervals is for exactly that, so that you can swim at a higher intensity. But in an Ironman, you're actually swimming for 4K. 3.8 to be exact. And, and you're not stopping in that. So you need to practice that relentlessness of 3.8 ks of swimming. So you need to have that experience of swimming 3K in one go, swimming 2K in one go, swimming 1K in one go, and, and maybe having 3 by 1K or 4 by 1K as your, as your buildup swim or two 1500s plus a 500. So you're only getting three stops and you're reducing it from the 20 stops when you do 20 by 50 meters or you're getting all those stops. So we're trying to teach the body to not get used to resting. Because guess what happens when you rest? You recover. Your heart rate drops and the fatigue level doesn't continue to grow. But as you swim or ride or run continuously without stopping, you are slowly adding more fatigue every. Every minute or step or bike pedal you take, you are continuing to add more fatigue the minute you stop at the end of the pool, stop at a traffic light, stop for a drink as a runner instead of running with the drink and being organized in your training so you can go past your car and grab a drink and carry it and then put it down again and then run past it again without stopping. Practice these things. The relentlessness of the ironman needs to be practiced in training. So at all times. At some point, we don't want every session to be like this. But the key sessions, you need to have experience where you don't allow your body to rest and recover. You want your body to experience the fatigue buildup that a 3.8k swim or 180k rider or a marathon. And we're not going to train doing a marathon in our Ironman training, we're going to train for time. So at all times we're trying to replicate that, not recovering in those sessions. So we're getting used to our body getting that fatigue buildup. And the minute you rest, your heart rate drops. And the fuel load that you need when you do something without rest is different to when you do it with lots of intermittent stops. You recover, you don't burn as much fuel, you keep your heart rate down, your lactate stays down and you don't need as much fuel. So. So I think that's a mistake that people do make, that they don't actually replicate some of that, that continuous training. And you know, over the years, 50, 60 years training has evolved so much that we know so much about what, how the body reacts to certain things. But I think the basic concept of trying to replicate that continuousness of training is something that we've kind of put to the corner and it's not, not that important.

I love that first point because it's such a minute detail which you're explaining can make all the difference. Because like you said, on race day, that's the experience you're going to have. And I think a lot of your points in this episode are going to be about the fact that you need to replicate so much about what's going to happen on race day because it's its own beast. And the next point is not just replicating that relentlessness, but replicating the feelings you're going to have. You need to do that in training.

Yeah. And again, it's the same principle. If you're going to run at 5 minute K pace, if you haven't practiced that off the bike, how do you expect to do it on race day? And so we're wanting to know what it feels like to run 5 minute K pace after 4 hours on the bike. We want to know what it feels like to ride at 200 watts after swimming 2 or 3k. You know, we've got to have all these examples of what it feels like and we don't want to have experiences that we haven't had in training. And therefore the body goes into shock wondering what the hell you're trying to do to it on that day. So all the time we talk a lot in our strategies to our trivalo athletes about the metrics we Use and how are you feeling? Is one of the things that I'm just ramming down their throats. Yeah, sure. You're looking at your heart rate, you're doing your cadence, your power, your running pace. You know, they're the key things that we want as a guide. That's our street map, that's our Google map to get to from point A to point B. They're the things we need to be looking at. But without actually asking yourself, am I coping? How am I feeling? That's the thing that you need to be practicing equally as much as looking at the metrics.

Yeah. It's as simple as you don't want anything to be a shock on race day. And I think that's, that's the goal of what you're trying to achieve in training is to make sure nothing's a shock on race day. And so one of the next points is you. You always talk about making sure that the athlete understands that in an Ironman, the consequences of making a mistake are much bigger and potentially much more dire. Yeah.

And if you just got to stop and think about if you did, if you did a mistake in a 5k fun run, you have to suffer for maybe a kilometer, which might be four or five minutes. If you make a mistake similar to that in a Ironman, you could end up walking six hours to do the 42K. Instead of maybe you're a four hour runner or a 3:30 runner or even a three hour runner, you could still end up walking five or six hours. So you're going to be out there nearly double or an extra two hours where you can't do anything about it. You know, your goal is to finish and you know, some people would walk off the course but, but the consequences of that mistake are just exponentially worse. It is, it is the worst experience to be out there for that long where you're just doing the walk of death. And, and, and that's what I'm trying to get people to, to stop doing is, is making really silly mistakes early that caused them to be, to be walking for so long. And we could rattle off 20 things that could cause you to do that. And you know, it's all basically around one topic, your execution around how you're feeling using the metrics. So if we use that sentence over and over in our head, you know, execution around how I'm feeling, using the metrics to guide me, that will get you where you want to go. And if you just follow that simple process, you will actually have the result you want.

And so we speak about this a bit and we want to keep ramming home this message as much as possible because we have this big reputation of being so metrics and data vision, data driven. And it's what we love about our own training because things are measurable and it's what a lot of athletes love because there's real accountability to the data. But once it's race day, we still find that we can easily get caught over focusing on metrics in the data and not paying enough attention to our feelings. And yeah, you just made that point. But I really want to explore this just a little bit more detail so that everyone understands that for us on race day we are really, really giving a lot of weight to how we're feeling. You know, in training, where we're really sticking to, of course we're focusing on how we're feeling as well, but we're using the metrics to learn how to how our body's performing. But on race day it's, it's a lot more weight on how we're feeling.

I talk to our athletes in their training sessions when they're doing specific race ready stuff. I'm saying to them, go as close to the tipping point as you possibly can in training and get used to what that feeling feels like. And then on race day, you'll remember, oh, geez, I'm getting close to where I could make a catastrophic mistake, which could cause me, no matter how prepared I am, no matter how fit I am, to actually not run the way I want to. And you don't get the consequence really badly on the bike. You can get through the bike. Even though you might suffer for the last 30k or 40k, the bike's still moving. But as a runner, you're in charge. There's no freewheeling. As a runner, when you stop pedaling on a bike, you still move. You know, it's going to take a bit to slow you down. All you have to do is contribute a little bit and you can still ride 15Ks an hour or 10 miles an hour. But as a runner, if you don't actually take one step after another, you're not going to progress. So the consequences of, of not listening to your feelings and getting that execution badly wrong will be catastrophic for you when you come to run. And we've seen, you know, so many examples of, of people, you know, could actually add just in a marathon, for example, if they get that wrong. We've talked about that the last podcast. You know, some people ran perfect even Splits. Some people ran negative splits and only a couple people we know. But we know the majority of the race ran a shocking positive split where they, their first half was, you know, literally 10 or 15 minutes quicker than their second half. And that's the majority of the field. And people think that's a flippant sentence to say. But, you know, every time I go into the race results and I look at the first half, second half, and that's available to you. You know, you just randomly pick numbers and you'll see everywhere you look, there's up to half an hour slower in the second half. And if you, if we dig deep further, instead of doing second half, first half, and did quarter, we would find that last quarter would be even worse.

So how often do you see someone have a fantastic ride or quite a good ride, but then in the Ironman, completely capitulate on the run, indicating that even though they rode well, it was probably still too hard because they weren't able to run off the bike.

And Kona, as the example we're talking about, is one of those. One that's almost a standalone event. And you could get away with doing that on a lot of other courses where you ride really well and end up running within a legitimate expectation of what you're capable of running. But if you make a mistake on the bike where you're overriding at Kona, it is just, it's, it's suicide. You, you have to allow for the conditions and that whatever you've done in any other Ironman around the world, I don't know what percentage I would add to it. But, you know, your end, your end time would be possibly 10 or 15 minutes slower than even if you had the perfect race. You know, the pros are struggling to match their, their PB times at Kona compared to what they can do at any other race around the world. So why as age groupers would we expect to do the same time as what we've done at any other Iron Manor race? So if you go into Kona thinking that you're going to match your other times, that's your first mistake, because you will actually cause yourself to. Well, I've done it in other races. And that's what we talk about as podcast encourages of age group athletes. We talk about using your previous data. That's something we ask you to do, and now we're asking you to use that data, but add some time to it. And if you don't, I think that's a mistake. And that's how important it is to be more patient there. And if I dug deep into the bike ride, when you get back from Hawaii High, where you've got 60k of headwinds and you know, just think about that in the last, from, from 120k to the finish, you're riding into a headwind. You know, if, if you haven't got anything left for that section of the course, that's going to be a horrible experience. And so you've got to factor that in and, and on the way out you've got this tailwind that's, that's really fun and you're flying and, and it's not that strong early in the morning. But when you go up to Harvey and do the turnaround and come back down that hill and get to the Kawaiha turn, the wind is picked up by probably 10 or 15 kilometers from when it was on the way out. So you're getting ripped off because on the way out the wind's not that strong and on the way back it's nearly double. And that's going to find you out. So things like that you have to account for. And if you get that wrong, you know, every time you make a mistake like that, it's going to have a flow on effect to whatever's happening next and just happens to be. You have to run a marathon in that heat out in the lava fields.

So my next question is often we get asked from athletes, do you think I could do an Ironman? Do you think I could train for an Ironman? Do you think my life situation allows it? And that's a, if you've listened to the podcast before, you know that's one of your biggest requirements is to really go through their life. And you ask them, is your family on board? Does your work allow it? Do you have the time? But mostly, do you understand how much time you need to commit? So when an athlete asks us, can I train for an Ironman? We're saying to them, do you understand how much training it's going to take towards the back end of the Ironman, how much volume it is on weekends? So can you take us through that thought process and what people need to understand about the massive amount of volume and consequences of that volume?

Yeah, and it's a really good topic in relation to what we're talking about here. You know, the mistakes you'll make is if you enter into an Ironman training plan and you haven't got all your ducks in line and that that means asking the people who you care about the Most is it okay that I'm going to spend this time training? That's, that's the first thing. You have to have everybody on your side. If you've got someone rowing against you in your inner circle, then that'll be one of the really big probably negatives that'll, that'll cause you to, to a, not fulfill your training requirements and then have a pretty ordinary day. So you have to understand that, that it's going to take so much time away from family and you know, you're going to be having a lot of fatigue during the day for your everyday work. You're going to have to be socially a little bit less available. You're going to be tired and wanting to go to bed earlier. You need to get up early. If you're trying to fit it in with your say you start work at 7 and finish at 5. You know, they're questions I'm asking everybody who's applying to say can I, can I, do you think I can do an Ironman? Well the answer is I think anybody can do an Ironman as long as they're well prepared and planned. But that's what I'm asking them, you know, do you have the facilities and the capabilities of the people around you and your lifestyle to allow you to actually fulfill the requirements to get you to complete the race the way you want to? And if there's any doubt about that, then the Ironman's not for you because it will have, you know, the fact that you don't prepare well and you have a very average race. You will be so angry at yourself about, you know, the people you've affected along that journey who are not happy anyway that you're spending, you know, four hours on a Saturday and then another three or four hours on a Sunday out training, you know, early in the program. And then by the time you get to the middle of the program that four hours turns into six and then towards the end of the program it turns into, you know, six hours plus an hour and a half run. So you're doing seven, eight or eight hours on a Saturday. You know, you've got to have a lot of people around you that, that are willing to sacrifice. And if you've got a family who's looking after the kids. These are all questions that I care about, you know, are you still going to be married during this, this process, you know, or is your wife or your, or your husband going to give up on you because, because you're just spending so much time doing this selfish, this Selfish sport training. And, and you know, you have to be selfish to do this sport. And that's not a negative, that's a positive. You have to be single minded and be so well planned and prepared so that you get the result that you want. And the result might be, I just want to finish, I want to finish running down that straight. And you have to know that everything and everything you do and everybody around you is okay with that. And if you've got doubts about that, then I would be saying, no, you shouldn't be doing this event. You should, you should try and do something that's less time consuming, such as an Olympic or sprint or even a half ironman. Because the difference is not during the, not during the weekly training that's, that's reasonably similar to a certain extent between half ironman and an ironman. But it's the weekend where, you know, the time is just pretty much double and that's the hard part for partners to cope with that. You're, you know, you're away at the crack of dawn, you don't get back till after lunch. And then guess what, there's the lawns, there's maintenance, there's. And you know, you're on the couch and someone's not very happy about you being on the couch. You know, you're basically useless for the whole day. So, so they're the things that, you know that I'm, I'm really asking those questions and people need to think about that before they, they put themselves in this position because the consequences are pretty dire, I reckon.

I love when I ask you this question because you're always very cutthroat about it, but I think you do that from a place of care and it's really necessary just, just so ever you've got all the information in front of you and you're not making a naive decision or an ignorant decision about what it takes.

I'm trying to make it real. I'm trying to give them a real look, a glimpse of a little bit of a clip of a movie of, of the scenarios that, you know, everybody who's had a hard day's training, they just want to lie on the couch and recover. And, and you know, your husband who's been watching you train, he might not want to do that. He might want to, you know, do something together. And they're all factors that, that if, if you get anybody in your corner that's not on, on board with it, then it's going to be a battle.

So we touched on the marathon Pacing before. But I do want to ask, you know, what is your expectation? You talked about time expectation as well, the Ironman time expectation itself. You really have to be careful about what you can expect because it's such a long day. So can you talk generally about. About even use Kona as the example of, you know, how much you might expect it to blow out, but just from your Half Ironman to Ironman time. Yeah. Touch on what your time expectations could be because it's not just a little bit further, it's double the event. So you can't expect to keep up the same pace on the bike and running in your Half Ironman as you do Ironman, even though they're both lower intensity endurance events.

Well, we know roughly as a swimmer that you know, your pace will be, you know, possibly 10 seconds slower for 3.8 as compared to 1.9. But that's such a general statement because we've got people who don't and we've got people who are worse. And on the bike we've got the same scenario. We've got all this data that tells us what the average extra time is. And you know, we know that many Half Ironman cycling times are around 75 to 90% of their FTP. But as an Ironman, we know that 75% is the upper range for an age grouper and it's more likely to be 60 to 75%. So we've got all that data, but again, that's just general. And we know as a marathon runner, from a half Ironman to an Ironman, you know, you could possibly add 10 or 15 minutes on top of what you're doubling. So your Half Ironman double and add 10 or 15 minutes. And again, it's very general because some people can run faster than that and some people will take 30 minutes more. It all depends on how well prepared you are. If, if you've done the running training and you've got that great endurance that we talk about, that those endurance sessions, those long runs and you've got that endurance on the bike with the long rides, then you're more than likely to be in that general average range or better rather than the general average or worse. And so there's a lot of factors that come in to what the expectation of the time difference between Half Ironman to Ironman, just like as a marathon runner, a standalone marathon runner, than doing a marathon in an Ironman, you know, oh, I should be able to say my PB for the Ironman is 3 hours. Sorry for a marathon is 3 hours. Does that mean I can run 305 in an Ironman marathon? Well, no way. You know, in an Ironman you've actually ridden 180k. You've been out there for probably five to six hours and you've swam 3.8k. So the expectation that you would be only slightly worse off when you've come from your best marathon pace to your best Ironman marathon pace again is asking for trouble. If I take lots of the examples that we've had from, we know that their marathon pace could be three hours and then their marathon pace in Ironman would more likely be 330 to 340. You could almost add 30 to 40 minutes, but there's always exceptions to that rule. Some people could take an hour extra, some people could take 20 minutes extra. But over the across the board of the data we have, it's somewhere around that, that 30 to 40 minutes extra. And that's quite a shock to people when you know they are, you know, a 258runner and you know, the expectation is that they'll be lucky to run 320 for a marathon in, in the middle of an Ironman. And you know, that's where we have to do those race ready sessions where you need to try and run your Ironman pace that you hope to do for, you know, two or three sessions in your 15 week period where you're trying to do some race ready sessions every couple of weeks where you're riding 120, 140, 160, 180k and then trying to run 10, 15, 20, 25k and you're trying to find out what you can cope with. And they're the days where you actually get your answers. And sure, we're not trying to run a marathon in our training days. We're not trying to, you know, do 180 plus a marathon in a training day. That's not our goal, although the Norwegians have done that. But you know, we're trying to find out that, you know, to, you know, we know already that you can't do the same pace, but the, the goal for everybody is to get as close to your PB as possible. And understanding that's the first thing that's important.

And look, you spoke a lot about the range you could be in and how some people are above or below that. And we would say that we have quite accurate predictions of what we think athletes can do if they're well trained and well prepared. And so for that example of doubling your half marathon time and adding for us, we know that a well trained athlete with enough preparation will end up between 14 and 22 minutes at the lower end or high end of their half marathon time and doubling it. That just happens, happens majority of the time. But if you're not well trained then that, that kind of equation goes out the window. And so we have a lot of that data for these events and it's just important, like you said, to understand where you could potentially fall. So final few points to really go through when thinking about the Ironman, some, some big ones still, I think we do talk a lot about the biking and running execution on this podcast. But for the Ironman, you really stress factoring in the fatigue of swimming and how different that is to any swimming you've done before.

Yeah. And because you know you're out there for 3.8k and if you haven't, you know, done a lot of long endurance swimming, you're going to be found out. You can get away with it for 1500, for 1900, for, you know, you're still going to be feeling pretty tired at the 1600 meter mark of a 1900. But you just think about it, you know, you get to 2,500 meters or 3K, you've literally got another 800 or another 1200 to go. So if you haven't factored in that fatigue from the swim and it will affect your bike. So the flow on effect from the fatigue of swimming has to be factored into your bike and run expectations. And that's where I think a lot of people dismiss it. Because in an Olympic distance or a half ironman or a sprint, it's, it's just not that fatiguing because it's so short compared to the rest of the day. Whereas when you start to get towards 4K, that's a very, you know, calorie burning, tiring form of exercise that, that you have to take account of. And, and you know, when you're out there for that long, your heart rate's, you know, burning through a lot of fuel and, and if you don't factor that in as well, you know, you're not starting the ride with a full tank of petrol, you've already been out there training or racing. Sorry for somewhere between the Pros are doing 48 minutes and you know, some of the slower end of the age group is doing an hour 50, so you have consumed a lot of fuel and if you've only trained on the bike with fresh legs and you haven't done some sort of swim sessions, before it, you're not going to know how much fuel you've used and that has to be factored in as well. So yeah, I think a lot of people don't factor in the fatigue of swimming in an Ironman and that's the big event where it needs to be part of your estimation of how you're going to go.

And the energy burn you're talking about becomes so vital because you're potentially going like you said, an hour to an hour 50 without fuel. That's a long time to be out there without fuel. We would never recommend that ever in a training session or race. And so then it becomes a really, really important issue to be fueling properly as fast as you can as soon as you get out of the swim to T1 and on the bike. But you've got to look after your gut and gut training is a, once again, it's an exaggerated thing. In the Ironman you can train your gut for a two hour race for a half ironman, but you've got to be able to train your gut for a 10 plus hour event. And you can't figure that out a few weeks out from an Ironman. You really got to take your gut training seriously. It's almost like another discipline of getting the Ironman right.

Yeah. And, and particularly if you're living in different, different climate and if we just use Kona as an example, you know, training in, in the southern hemisphere in the middle of winter, June, July, August, where you don't, you don't burn through as much calories because the temperature is really low. And if you're training in the northern hemisphere for a race like Kona, you're used to the heat, your heat acclimatized. So therefore your, your, your gut is used to consuming the fuel in the similar temperature that you're going to experience on race day. And the problem is when you're not in those similar temperatures, you expect to use the same amount of fuel that you've been training with. And that's what we ask people to do. Take notes on what you've been using and all those race ready sessions that you're doing. But you have to factor in is my heart rate higher on a hotter day or all of my data is it based on cool days? So the gut will respond differently in temperatures that are different. And on hotter days it is way more expected that your stomach will revolt against a lot of things because it's just not coping. Because remember the main function of our body is to keep our temperature of our body down. And so a lot of the energy is going to cooling, going to the skin and trying to cool, trying to sweat to keep the body cool. And it's not really wanting to concentrate on digestion and what's happening anywhere else around the body. And if you keep exercising and pushing your legs and your muscles of your legs and the body's overheating, the first thing it'll do is cramp you. And that's an example of the body looking after itself. And so it doesn't want to be compromised. It doesn't want to be having the, you know, the legs still working hard, the heart rate still working high and trying to digest food. And the gut will be have a revolution as well. Just like your legs do with cramp. You'll get this gut pain that stops absorbing the fuel that you're putting in. All of a sudden you're just bloating yourself because there's no absorption taking place because the body is trying to cool itself down. That's its number one priority. Because if you overheat, you know, you, you know you potentially are going to collapse and die if you go too far. So, so we've got to be so careful about understanding what the fuel we need, how our gut responds to it and what the temperatures are. And so, so they're the things that I really think that people don't quite get right. And it's hard one, if you're in the wrong temperature zone to actually practice. Sure, you can go indoors, put heaters on and wear a lot of clothes and see what happens in those circumstances. And you should be doing that now and then. But you know, it is very difficult when you change from one one climate to another.

Yep, for sure. A little pet peeve of yours specifically with the Ironman, preparation and training is, is short, changing yourself and cutting your long session short. So can you explain why you just believe that's a huge mistake and why it's an issue?

And one of the things we talk about is progressive overload. And the concept of progressive overload is starting from a point, point A and, and working towards your race day and you could do it the other way. What do I need to do to prepare for race day? Work backwards. So I need to. If my longest ride when I first start the program happens to be two hours, I am going to progress this athlete so that by the time they get to their Ironman they are capable of riding five hours, 30 if that's their time, or six hours. But we can't just go from two hour rides to three and a half to five, we have to progress on a slower trajectory. And if you are asked to do 2 hours the first week, 2 hours 15 or 2 hours 30 the second week, 2 hours 45, etc, etc, if you do an hour 50 the first week and then your next expectation is 2 hours 30, that's an extra 10 or 15 minutes jump that we're not wanting you to do. The body won't cope with too many big jumps at a greater percentage of time. We want to do it incrementally in a really controlled way. So shortchanging yourself early in the program could have a big flow on effect because you're jumping from, you know, if we end up doing 120k and you only, you only do 109 or 105 and our next ride is 160, well, you're going from 105, 109k to 160. That's just too big a jump for your body to cope with. And sure you'll be able to do it on the day, but that's not actually the point. The point is what is it going to do to you the next day and the next day? Because you've just overloaded the system too fast. And so by shortchanging yourself does a disservice to your progressive overload. And so you've got to start from wherever your long session is, your longest run or your longest ride, and progress gradually. And by doing less every week, you're not going to get to the end point with having done the right amount of training.

And really the question becomes when you get to race week, you want to be able to answer the question with what was your longest session in the training block? And you want to say you did multiple 180k rides, you did multiple really long endurance runs. That will give you the adequate training you need to run the marathon and enough long runs off the bike as well. But you don't want to say that whenever you got prescribed a 6 hour ride or 180k ride, you only did 150 or 160k. Because when the numbers get blown out that much, it can become our human tendency to go, oh, what's it matter if it's 160 or 180? What's it matter if I dropped off the last 20k or 25k? It matters because you won't. It'll come to a shocker to your body on the race day and you won't be prepared for it and your body won't be prepared for it. And I think it's a really point you hammer home a lot is that people think it's okay to shorten shells. Sells these little K's here and there. But it's a really big issue in an Ironman.

And of course, you're not used to the extra 40 minutes on the bike and the fuel that that would burn. And so when you go to run, you've got the wrong notes, you've got the wrong data because you've undersold yourself. The actual numbers that you're supposed to be working your nutrition based around. And then you will be having carried way more fatigue because you're out there for longer. Your heart rate will probably increase its creep. You'll burn more lactate, burn more fuel, sorry. And your lactate will rise. And therefore when you get to run, you're going to be running with a different level of fatigue than what you should be.

Last point we want to touch on is neglecting heat training. And you might think, oh, that's not appropriate unless it's at Kona. But most Ironmans are scheduled in good weather for that location. So they're probably going to be scheduled around spring or summer for their race. And so most climates are going to be at least warm and potentially really hot. And the heat factor, again, when you're doing double the distance of everything can be the undoing of you. And it's just like you said at the start, with small mistakes, we can rattle off a lot of. A lot of mistakes can ruin your race and can make you spend an extra few hours out there. Execution was one gut training, all these things we're talking about. And then the heat training, you could probably get away with it in a half Ironman and not blow out too much. But in an Ironman, if you're not heat adapted, it could absolutely undo you for the Ironman and keep you out there for even more time. Which is a disaster because it's so hot.

And we know from so many experiments we've done on ourselves and from a lot of the data we've got back, athletes who haven't acclimatized their power numbers and heart rate to the conditions will expect to ride the same power and then be shocked. Their heart rate's 10 or 15 beats higher. And the detrimental effect that that'll have is that you're overheating straight away. So you could end up having gut problems just for that reason. And then you could end up not running well for that reason of overheating because You've not adjusted your power according to what your heart rate response is. And this is one of the key times where heart rate is one of those metrics. In the hotter races, heart rate comes into its play because that is telling you it's like a thermostat of your body temperature and you don't want it to overheat. And so the heart rate is the first thing it's going to tell you, hey, starting to overheat here. If you don't slow down, I'm going to force you to stop. And so we really need to take notice of that. So when you go to a hot climate and you haven't had the opportunity to train properly for it, you have to understand the heart rate is the thing that you would be comparing against the power that you're running and the pace you're running at, the power you're riding and the pace you're running.

It's been surprising, to be honest, to see how late some of the pros have got into Kona. And some pros I definitely know don't live in warm climates and haven't been in warm climates. And they're getting there quite late. That honestly shocked me. Giving themselves kind of a week and a half to prepare. That would be okay if they came from a warm climate, but I definitely know some specific pros hadn't come from warm climates, so I was very surprised to see that. And you had your own experience from year one versus year two at Kona, where you made a drastic change.

Yeah, and I agree. I think I see people flying in really late for this event. And there's pros and cons. Cons for sure. But if you are coming from the Southern hemisphere trying to go to this particular event, and I know we're talking generally about Iron man in across the world here, but it's a great example to use Kona because the temperature and the humidity is so harsh there. And if you came from the Southern hemisphere too late, you're going to have a lot of trouble acclimatizing. And if you don't respect the numbers and the heart rate, then you're going to blow up. It's just the only outcome. And if you don't listen to that advice, you're going to be one of those people who's walking because you haven't actually adjusted to the temperature. And my example was the first year I went there, I knew it was going to be hot. Everybody told me it's going to be hot. There wasn't a thing I could do about it. At that time we were training through June, July, August, where it was 2 degrees and sideways sleeting rain. It was shocking. And when we got there we were pale and unacclimatized and we managed to get through it. But the good thing we knew was that we had to lower and adjust our expectations down. So the next year I decided that somehow we had to go to a warm climate to train during the winter. So we moved our little family, your older brother Liam and my wife Andy and myself moved to Queensland, which is a much more temperate climate during June, July, August. Sure it's not the Sunshine state, it's not 30, 32 degrees and 100% humidity, but it was in the mid-20s and it was so much better than being in Melbourne where it was just dire. And we managed to find an accommodation for six weeks with a friend who, who gave us his house. It was unbelievable. And we, we trained there and what a difference it was going there the next year. And look, there's a whole lot of other things that factor into it because you've been there once before, you understand what to do, you've learned a lot of lessons. But that heat acclimatization was intricate in getting a better result and, and I certainly felt that that was something that I went out of my way to find a way to acclimatized properly. Not everybody can do that. It's not possible. But that's just an example of, of really making sure you're ticking all the boxes. And I'm talking about, you know, the pros more than, than the age grouper here. But that's just an example of, of what you can do to make sure you're well prepared.

That was your decision as a pro. And you know, I was observing the pros and their decisions. As an age group, it's totally different. You might only be able to get there the week of and, and unfortunately that's, that's what you can do. But then there are other options now. You know, there's, there's a lot of more stuff coming out about heat training and, and people are really training in hot environments at the home and if they're on the trainer, you know, making the environment hot and getting through it that way and, and finding some sort of alternatives to not just be completely blind to the heat adaptations and I think so one last bonus point on this is understanding the gear required for the Ironman because when you're out there for 10 plus hours, it's so important that you have the right gear. And that comes from a heat perspective. You know, not having gear that you're going to overheat in as well as just understanding that everything is going to work and you're not going to get relentless chafe or something because being doing a race for 5 hours compared to 10 plus hours is very different. And yeah, I guess you have some, you, you're always asking athletes about whether they're going to choose an aero helmet or not.

Yeah. And look, the, the actual tri suit that you're wearing, you've got to make sure, as you said, that it, it really is comfortable over a long day of 10 hours or 12 or 14 or 16 hours. And, and if it's not, you need to get something that's not, not going to be annoying you. And you need to have trained with it. You just don't use it on race day. You need to have practiced with that suit in some of your long days. And we really encourage people to, on their long training, race ready days to set themselves up as if they were doing the race and therefore they've got no surprises on race day. Look, the aero helmet is great. I'm a big advocate for it and I think it's, it's one of the best things you can possibly have as well as a fast suit. Good, good bike fit, great race wheels, great bike, they all help. But on a day in Kona when you're out there for probably six hours or five, 30 or five hours, anything in between there, I just don't think the aero helmet is, is worth the risk because you could be cooking under that helmet where there's no airflow and I think that could be absolutely detrimental to the rest of your race. And, and I would be willing to just ride with a normal helmet where I've got airflow on my head to keep my head cool. We lose, we lose and we gain heat from the extremities, which is our hands, feet and, and head. And if you can keep those things cool on the hot days, and if you can keep those things warm on the cold days, then your body will keep its, its level of appropriate temperature throughout that day without overheating or getting too cold. So I would forego the aero helmet and I know that's pretty controversial because everybody wants to get the best possible outcomes. If you're well acclimatized to wearing it in the sun and your body can cope with it, fantastic. But I don't think that that's the case in Kona. That would be the exception.

This is quite controversial and it's an interesting discussion point and there's merit to both sides of the argument. And that's your advice from your experience as a coach to say no aero helmet. And yeah, I know the feeling. When I'm in Indonesia at the moment and with the humid temperatures, even just wearing a cap is cooking my head. It is incredible how just a hat in an intense session or an endurance run cooks ahead. And so yeah, the aero helmet in those conditions can, you're very hot under there. So it's important to think about.

George, I don't think people sometimes they, they, if they have a bad race at Kona for use this example again, and they don't understand why they didn't run very well. And we can say, oh, you overrode your body temperature, got up, you know too much, you got your nutrition wrong. There's a whole lot of reasons you could, you could come up with that, that caused you to walk. But not many people say I shouldn't have wore the aero helmet. And no one's really kind of admitting that. Geez, if I had ridden a non aero helmet where I've got airflow on my head and I've got heat being lost through my head, which is what the purpose of dissipating heat is, I reckon the outcome for a lot of the athletes that we've coached. I've said to him, oh, you know, the helmet you wore wasn't, you know, it wasn't doing you any favors. And it's very dismissive people to say, no, that's got nothing to do with it. I was fine, I felt fine. But I, I disagree. I think, I don't think it's been given enough recognition.

Yeah, it may be a small thing and it's hard to narrow it down to one thing, but you cannot underestimate that heat impact. And you've got to ask the questions about all these things. And that's what training is for as well. So any final notes on the Ironman, Any final things you want people to remember in terms of their preparation and race day?

Definitely. You just have to be patient. That is the key to the Ironman. And be boringly steady. Eddie, Just try to stay in your lane. Try to not be below the power number, Try to not be above the power number. Try to be in that range that you know that you've trained so well in. The more time you're underneath that zone, the slower you'll ride, the more time you're above it, the more matches you'll burn. And it's it's, you know, the swim's the same. You've just got to try and swim as efficiently as you can Fuel when you get out of the water, just take your time during transition. One, get on the bike and make sure that your execution starts conservative and then gets to the point where you can hold the power that you want to and be super conservative. Then T2, the same. Just relax, get yourself sorted, make sure you're feeling all the things that you wanted to feel like you have in training and then start conservatively in the run and then find your pace that you can hold and stay with it. If you do that all day, the result will be fine. If you try to get ahead of yourself, oh God, I'm feeling good. Maybe I can push up to the top of the range really early. They're all mistakes that you've heard us talk about so often. You've just got to stop doing that on race day. As we said, that's the definition of insanity is repeating the same mistake every event you do. And we don't want to do that. We want to do things differently so that we give ourselves the best opportunity to get the result that we're after and patience and staying in your, in your power, power numbers and your running pace and, and having a super conservative race plan that'll allow you to do that. And as I've said many times, not many people say to me at the end, oh, I could have gone harder in an Iron Man. That just does not happen. You know, you're so happy to see the finish line, so, so don't think you can do something remarkably different on race day. Replicate what you do in training and you'll have a good day. And as long as you understand where your level is and you've got a race plan that's based around your current level, then you've got to be happy with whatever you do on the day because that's, that's, that's where you arrived at. What's, that's the, the fitness level you arrived at is what you're going to do on the day. And the only thing that could spoil that is if you don't actually go out and do the one thing, the one job you've got, and that's to execute your race plan.

That's a perfect way to finish. And our final note for the Ironman, and our final rule for the Ironman is if you know someone that's doing an Ironman, share this podcast episode with them. We would really appreciate that. If you think you found it valuable. If you think someone else who's doing an ironman will find it valuable, make sure you share this episode with them. And a reminder that if you would like to get coached towards an ironman, if you want help with an ironman, you can go to trivelocoaching.com and apply for our coaching there. We do coach internationally. We've had a lot of people ask that recently. Yeah, we absolutely coach anyone in in Australia and around the world and we have coached people on every time zone now basically around the world and there's absolutely no problem. So if you're an international athlete who's thought that we only coach people in Australia, you can absolutely apply. And one thing about applying for our coaching is that we have our eight week guarantee which is if you don't improve your FTP in the first eight weeks then the coaching is free. That's how sure we are that we can help you improve. So go to travelercoaching.com to apply to get some some coaching from us. That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you in the next one.