Examples of Genius Racing IQ & Master Coaching Advice That Helped Our Coach Win!

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. One of my favorite parts of recording this podcast and actually how the podcast was formed was I decided to just start interviewing dad to try and gain an insight and share his knowledge and wisdom about training and racing. And. And we call him the super coach for a reason, because he has this superpower to just have an insanely, insanely high racing IQ that 99 times out of 100 is the right answer. And I was talking to my brothers about this and one of them made a great point saying he's been training and racing at the highest level possible since he was a national champion at under tens athletics. So today was one of those days on the podcast where we ended up just having a really honest and raw conversation that I absolutely love because basically we sat down to record this episode and we had a totally different topic in mind. But we started talking about some specific race tactics after a race here in Oz last weekend and we ended up having a super powerful conversation that went on for an hour. And this is dad in his prime coaching element. And although it's specifically about a bike race, the mindset and tactics here are just so relevant for all athletes, triathletes and runners included. And I've been listening to him for 30 years and still love that I can hear new information. And so I hope that you enjoy this episode as much as I did. And please ignore sometimes when we reference what the topic of the day was supposed to be. We kept meaning to get to it and it never happened. We'll be recording that episode again this week. But with that welcome back to another episode here, we're going to cut straight into our normal starting segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. Looking forward to this segment, this podcast. Again, my gratitude is a little bit long winded, but I'll try to keep it short. But I kind of keep saying over and over that I'm really grateful to have a job in a position where I can, especially in the last couple of months, I reckon the last few weeks specifically, where there's been some really big races occurring for a lot of the athletes that we're coaching, whether it's runners doing a marathon, cyclists doing the Tour de Bright, which we're going to talk about, triathletes doing Ironman and half ironman in the last month and et cetera, et cetera. And my gratitude is not that I'm able to be a coach of these people. That's really important. That's really important. But the fun part about coaching is seeing athletes actually train and prepare like they should be and really understanding and trusting the process and being on board with it and really giving 100% to the trust factor. That's what I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for. The athletes are really on a journey with me, and together we're nutting out how we can enable them to perform their best on the day that counts so much to them. They're putting so much time into. Into this. This sport, whatever it. Be a cyclist or triathlete or a marathon runner or a mountain biker. And for them to actually get the outcome they want on race day, I'm really. I'm really grateful for. For that opportunity. And, and then at the end of that. That particular event that they're. They're targeting for that season, it's so rewarding. And this is what I'm really grateful for, is for them to contact me. And, and, you know, it's quite emotional sometimes where, you know, I just can't believe I achieved the things that I never thought I could. And. And it's all to do with, you know, the journey that you and I are on together. And. And I really want to share this. This excitement with you. And that's the bit that I'm really grateful for. I'm grateful to be around these people who are motivated and they're inspiring others as well. When we talk about them on our podcast, it's inspiring. When you hear stories, these aren't fictitious stories. These are real stories of real people achieving their, you know, their ultimate goals in a season. And that's the part that I actually really am grateful for. And not the fact that people are contacting me saying, you know, thanks for the journey, but the fact that they actually want to do that. And, and they feel like without the two of us, whether it's, you know, been three months, six months, or three years, it takes. It takes a team to get. And. And I'm just part of that team. And it takes their family and their friends and their supporters and their parents and, you know, their. Their wives or husbands who are just supporting them. It's a huge team effort to get where you want to be. And for those who you think it's all about an individual effort, you're mistaken. And you actually need to step back after you've done your season a event and really think about how you got there and the people who contributed to getting you there. And I'm not talking about me as a coach. I'm talking about the other people in your little circle. So, yeah, just don't forget to, to. To do that. But I'm grateful for the. The amount of thanks I get for getting people to where they want to be.

It's a great one and it seems really relevant because we've just. I feel like every week on the podcast we're going, oh, there was another race this weekend and there's another event this weekend and we had a whole bunch of athletes competing. And it is a really rewarding part of the process, especially when there's a lack of races over winter where you don't see so many athletes competing. And Pat is especially the case because there was an Ironman on the weekend and I feel like an Ironman is always one of those more emotional ones. Not that any other race has any less meaning. A half Ironman or a bike race or a running 5k or 10k, but there is something quite prestigious about the Iron man still, even though it seems like when you're in this industry and world, you know, people are doing it every weekend, I think I will always remember something clearly. You said to me, when someone does it, it's incredibly special. Even if it's their fifth one or the eighth one is incredibly special. And that always stood out. That, you know, just. It's just such a brutal event and just because it's more common doesn't take away from that fact. And when you're in that and you're in the fourth hour of your marathon after 8 or 10 hours or 12 hours in the day so far, you're definitely well aware of how much it is and it was fun. We were actually watching the end of the Ironman Western Australia on the tv just looking for some tribalo athletes. And you do really get a sense of how hard the effort is when you're watching all these athletes crawl across the finish line. People are just getting around the corner and then they lift their hands up to celebrate to their friends and family and then fall down the ground and cramp because they've been in one motion the whole time. So, yeah, that's a really good gratitude. Mine is a little bit about a similar topic of racing, and that is I jumped on the TT bike for the first time in a long time and a lot of months this week, and I was a bit apprehensive about it and jumped into a individual time trial on Tuesday night, which is a pretty hectic thing to do. First right up, actually the day before, I jumped on for 20 minutes just to make sure I remembered how to ride the thing. When it's, it's, when you haven't ridden it for a while, it's totally different. Um, and my gratitude is I forgot how fun they are. I forgot how good it is to ride the TT bike. And as I said, I was a bit apprehensive because it's kind of frustrating and it can be a little bit humbling to jump on the bike, any bike again, but specifically a time trial bike in that pretty exposed position and then know that you're not informed, know that you haven't got the muscle specificity for it and have to ride around and punish yourself. And it's really uncomfortable because you're not fit for it. But it was outweighed by how much fun it was to go fast on the TT bike. And when you get your full race set up on there and we're lucky enough to have the disc wheels on there on the giant Trinity. And yeah, when you're, this course has a bit of a descent and when you come over the crest and then you hit the descent hard and you're going 55, 60Ks an hour right in the touch position, it feels pretty good. So really grateful for that experience. It's, it's good to be back.

It's a good one. And it is a bit humbling, isn't it, when you've been at a level before and you haven't been on the thing for eight months and the expectation is I'll just be able to ride where I left off and this is such a specific position and no amount of road riding on a road bike is going to, you know, enable you to ride to your potential until you've had, you know you'll be better off for that race. But you know, if you did that race two or three weeks time, you'd probably be 5% better just because you've, you've been on the bike a few times.

And we speak a lot about knowing the course. This was a really fun course because it's five laps of the same course and we only got one lap warmup on the course. And so when, when you're on the TT bike, you're using that one lap to really try and figure out the corners and where you can go. And it took me to the fifth lap to figure it out and I finally hit the corners really perfectly. And was really put not off the gas as much as the first four laps because the first lap you kind of really hesitating. The second lap you do a little bit more. Third lap you do a little bit more. And it's just another example of knowing the course and how important a course recon is. Because I wasted 4/5 of the actual ride trying to figure out the corners and losing time. And I know a few other athletes felt the same thing. So before we get into the main topic, a topic we really wanted to touch on and talk about, which you mentioned, which was super exciting for us, was we had a stage race here last weekend and we think it's one of the best races in Australia because it's a stage race and stage race cycling is so fun. And it's basically three stages up in the Alpine region of Victoria. Really unbelievable, beautiful riding. And it's a road race in the morning, the Saturday morning, then an individual time trial Saturday afternoon and then a mountain stage on the Sunday morning. And it's a classic general classification stage race. So your total time is taken from all the stages with an overall GC jersey awarded, plus sprint jerseys and KOM jerseys as well. And we just want to talk about how that unfolded because for us it was super fun. We had a few riders in it who ended up competing for the win in their categories. And it was like being the director sportifs in the car, in the team car, in the Tour de France because the tactics were unfolding. We couldn't watch it live, obviously. But after each stage you're reassessing what unfolded, the tactics the athletes were using, what's the strategy for the next stage. And then we had some pretty interesting positions lining up for the final stage that we really need to discuss the tactics. So I want to go through it because it was really exciting.

Yeah. And this is quite an old and prestigious event that's been going, I think it started in the 90s, 1990s, so it has been going quite a long time. And the structure of the the event has pretty much stayed the same. It's had variations. We've had different mountain stop, mountain top finishes. We've finished at Mount Hotham and this particular time now we're finishing at the top of Mount Buffalo. And in this bright region you've got three fantastic mountains that are all within pretty much 20 kilometers of each other to 30 kilometers. You've got falls Creek, which is one of the really good ski resorts for the Alpine region in Victoria. And you've got Mount Hotham which is another ski resort, and you've got Mount Buffalo, which is a little bit less elevation than the other two. But this, this is what you've got. Three, three mountains in such a close proximity to the town of Bright. And it has become the mecca of training camps and obviously the Tour of Bright race in itself. So over the last 30 years, almost I've had something to do with this race, whether I've been in it or whether I've been supporting it or coaching people to it. And, you know, I think the numbers this year were probably the best I've seen in a long time. And it's really great to see people putting them. And it's a great weekend away anyway, and there's an opportunity to ride as teams or you can ride as an individual. There's the National Road Series, which is the elite cyclists of, of Australia. That's one of the races in their calendar. And there's also open age group B grade, C grade, and there's Master's category, A grade, B grade, C grade, and plus 55 for male and female. So there are, there are lots of categories that people can compete in, which is, I think, the attraction where people can actually find their level and, you know, compete against people who are similar ability. So, so setting the scene for this, this particular stage race is, it's, it's. It's a really tough opening stage of around 93k, and it finishes on a. On a hilltop, which is a hill called Tawonga Tawanga Gap. And that is about, I don't know, the NRS guys did it in about 18 or 19 minutes flat out. And the rest of the field from the NRS all the way down to the Masters lowest category, they're doing somewhere around 20 to 30 minutes for that climb at the end of 92K. So it's a tough little finish. And the NRS riders ride an extra bit. They ride halfway up Falls Creek and then turn around, come back down. So their ride is actually longer than the other races. But, but that's the, that's the scene for stage one. And, and that really sets up the whole Tour, to be honest.

Yeah, no, you're right. And it's awesome to see. The biggest name of the race was Luke Plapp. You know, really gun Australian cyclist, rides professionally for ineos, and he was really pumping up the race on social media, just saying how much he loves it. And he's home for the summer, getting ready for the National Road Series here in a month's time where he's going to defend his National Champions jersey. But to see someone of his caliber, you know, an INEOS rider who's that good riding this race and really pumping it up shows sort of the quality and it was really exciting to watch.

And I just want to tell you, Richie Port's done this race as well. Jordan?

Yeah, yeah, he's prime as well.

There's been some good riders who've done the Tour of Bright and gone on to be great riders.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And speaking of great riders that have done it, I think it was almost the 10 year anniversary where you had many cracks at this race and I think it was, it was almost half a dozen or plus years you went in a row and just couldn't conquer it. And shows how tough it is to win a stage race because you've got to do well in all three races. And if you drop somewhere, if something happens, you have a crash, you're mechanical, you have a bad stage, which can easily happen, you make some mistakes. And we know in cycling and any race in a triathlon, some tactical errors can really cost you. And so to go through all three stages and execute well and be smart tactically to win is really tough. And it took you a while, but I think it was nine or 10 years ago to this year that you finally took the title of Tour of Brighton. So it was awesome to see that happen kind of 10 years ago. And then this year you were really on the sidelines as a coach and that's right, isn't it? Your first one was.

Yeah. And you don't need to bring up that in the past, but, but certainly having a tourer bright general classification jersey is something that I take a lot of pride in. And the guys who have actually won that Tour, I'm sure they would all feel the same. Luke Platt, I know he's ridden many prestigious races around the world, but it was interesting to hear him say that this is really special to him and he loves this region and there are many, many guys who have won their GC in their categories for this. And obviously there's stage wins and that's just the next level below the gc. Lots of guys have won the, you know, a stage win in the time trial or the, or the Stage 1 or the Buffalo mountaintop finish, that's pretty prestigious. And there's also the KOM jerseys and the sprint jerseys. So there's lots of things for people to aspire to win and they actually have an impact on the race when there's a sprint PR coming up. And you don't know whether some of the riders who are going for GC are actually bluffing when they're going with the sprinters and do they want to get a gap after the sprint's done. Just like you see at the Tour de France or the Giro or the welter. You're getting all these things happening in the middle of the race that could form a different perspective of what happens in the race. So it's, it's quite exciting. The riders have to actually think a lot about how their tactics are going to play out. If they're actually going for just the sprint or they're going for just the time trial or, or stage one, that suits them better than the hill, top finish or the whole general classification is what they're going for. So. So yeah, it's. You have to be training according to what you think your strengths are. And that's the bit that I love the most about this. Yeah.

So I want to start with Nick's performance in stage one. So he's our cycling coach. We've spoken about him a lot on this podcast for various reasons, but one of the key ones was that we have mentioned parts of his training program that we've adapted over the years and specifically this year. And he came right into form into this race. This actually wasn't his A race. This was a bit of a B race. National was coming up as more of an A race. But he's. That doesn't mean he wasn't giving it his out absolute 100. He came here to do as good a performance as possible and he made the breakaway in stage one and then got to the final climb and it was pretty incredible looking at his power. And this just shows what form can do, what tapering can do, and what the right kind of training structure can do with, you know, he's had such a good period of block of training this year and consistency with so many things combined into the kind of the pot of training. All these 1 percenters that he's included and done really well in terms of strength training, nutrition, diet. His watts per kilo has gone up. You know, he's really leaned up but kept his power increasing, which is just double benefit. And he flew up this climb and we're just chatting today and he figured out that he did an all time PB watts per kilo for 20 minutes up the last climb to take the win on stage one. And that was better watts per kilo than he's ever done for a fresh 20 minutes. So that's a pretty incredible performance for stage one of the tour.

Yeah, you've got to be happy with that if you're an athlete, isn't it? And that's after 90k. And in that 90k, in a breakaway, in that 90k, he was actually in the break of four.

You're rolling turns hard, you're burning matches.

Yeah. Four riders. And there is another climb halfway through this particular stage. It goes for about eight to 10 minutes, depending on your level. And you know that that's not something to be dismissed either, because that's going to take a little bit of the edge off what you're going to do on the last climb. And of course, when you're in the breakaway, it's every man for themselves for that last climb. And. And if you've burnt too many matches along the way, then you're going to suffer when it really counts the most. And. And you know, if you're in a small group in a way, it's really hard to hide because, you know, you can't do the. The wrong thing and not contribute and then. And then you know, smash everybody at the finish. That's actually not the thing to do in a breakaway. You know, you want everybody to contribute equally and, and so the strongest rider will actually win on that climb. And that's exactly what happened. He ended up winning by a minute 23, I think, and the main peloton were five minutes behind him. And that set up his whole tour. And there were some great riders in the peloton who probably didn't know too much about who Nick was, which was pretty fortunate, and, and almost didn't rate him, maybe, and that was a little bit of a mistake by them, and I'm not sure if that's the scenario, but to let. To let four or five guys go up the road, and there were some other good riders in that, in that breakaway group, and this is a team event as well, so two of the teams were represented in the break, so that also contributes to those team members back in the Pelo, either backing the guy in the break to win the stage or to keep the break within close proximity in case one of their guys falters so that one of the guys in the main bunch can actually take over. But to let them go by five minutes, I think they underestimated how good Nick climbed. And if they had got to the bottom of the climb and Nick had been so tired that he rode probably two or three minutes slower than he did, then they would have only been two minutes down and that would have been a different scenario for the rest of the race. So it was really great move by Nick to get in the break in the first place and then ride so well at the finish to, you know, to, to ride within himself but really push. Once he knew that he, you know, time was everything to get as many seconds on, on the main peloton who were his rivals for the rest of the Tour, the time trial and the hill climb. And boy, did he make the most of that. It was, it was a really outstanding performance on stage one.

And I have to mention that move to get in the break, it was really high IQ intelligence of cycling because he looked around and saw a few guys go and realized that two of the main teams each had a rider in that break. And he went, well, they're happy with that. And if I don't jump in this, I'm going to miss the break. And so in a split second, he made that jump. And if he hadn't made it that time, he probably would have missed it. He bridged across, which is a really hard thing to do solo. But if he hadn't done that, there was probably stage one over, because as you said, that that Atlasic brand broke, peloton eased up, and we don't know exactly what they did, but they ended up four to five minutes behind. And that was the move. You know, you don't do that, you don't win. And so the keyword used there was ride within himself still, which is pretty incredible that he got a PB but still had to try and just hold something back, because a few hours later, you're, you're signing up for an individual time trial. And this was great for us because we've spoken a lot about how much we back ourselves as tribal athletes. Individual time trial. And that came out. Out of the five categories of Masters A, B, C, Master 55 plus, we won two of the five categories in the individual time trial. And so that was a great afternoon for us as well.

Yeah. And in one of the categories, we had five riders, and we in the time trial got first, second and third in that actual race. And that's, that's kudos to those guys. And they were all racing each other in that, in that division. And I think there was 10 seconds between all three, 10 seconds between first and second, and same between second and third. So that was pretty, pretty special to see. And who. The order of who was going to win that was intriguing because it was a little bit of a mixed order compared to what I thought was going to happen. And that was also an exciting race where at the end of the time trial we had three Trivalo riders leading the general classification going into the last stage. In the Masters A category we had Nick, and in the Master C category we had Chris Benton. And the Masters 55, we had Alan Adams leading by eight seconds and, and Joe Spano, who'd won the previous Tour twice in a row, was trying to go for three in a row, which the backstory to that is generally Joe is one of the best tour stage riders going around, having won two in a row. He's trying to do his third. And he won't tell anybody this, but three weeks out before that event, he actually crashed in one of the races at Sandown, the race we were talking about earlier, and had a really bad swollen knee and some really, really poor skin off his elbow, knee, hip and, and shoulder and, and couldn't really train for the next two weeks properly. And that really affected his preparation. Then on the day on stage one, his, his gearing stopped working and he only had one gear for the climb on Tawonga. And that's pretty incredible that he actually only lost a minute 50 on stage one with, with his bike malfunctioning and so much so that he couldn't use it. The next day his wife drove from Geelong back to Melbourne which is about an hour and a half drive, then got his other spare bike and, and drove that bike to Bright, which is a four hour drive so that he could actually race the next day. And real kudos to talk about people supporting you. Joe's wife, Mel, what a story that is. And, and Joe ended up riding okay and ended up getting fourth on, on the Tour, but disappointed that he didn't win. But, but so many things can happen in this race that if you're not on 100%, you, you risk the someone else knocking you off. And, and there are things that are really out of Joe's control. And I'm going on about this a little bit longer than probably I should, but I want to make the point that it doesn't always go well. And, and I was super impressed with Joe's ability to maintain calmness and not complain and you know, rant and rave and get upset and no one would know that those things were happening, you know, because Joe was just calm and even and not using those as excuses. And that to me is a measure of, you know, a great human being.

Yeah, spot on. Yeah, couldn't agree with that anymore. And it's just the toughness of this race. And that's why it shows how hard it is to win one, let alone two in a row. Because everything has to go pretty well and you have to be pretty on you yourself. And luck has to be on your side a little bit as well. And so we finished stage two of the individual time trial with Nick in the lead. But he's leading cut into a little bit. He was actually. The fatigue had caught up with him a little bit from stage one. He didn't execute as well as he wanted. Maybe that, yeah, that fatigue from the morning was still there. We know he probably on a fresh day would perform better, but that's part of the stage race. And so he went into the final stage on the Sunday with I think a third, 42nd lead or a 37 second lead. Chris was in the lead as he said. And then Al had a seven second lead. And I think we had first, third and fourth in that category with. So after the boys won first, second and third in the gc, we had first, third and fourth, which is a very Jumbo Visma style kind of position to be in, you know, with multiple team leaders, Sepkus Jonas and Rock Mitchell all could potentially be winning. So you go into the final stage thinking what's going to happen here? And Saturday night it was, it was pretty hilarious with the amount of phone calls happening. And it's a little bit different here because we, as much as we're a team, these guys are riding individually. And so rather than it being, you know, a grand tour where there's one dedicated rider where Jumbo Visma is trying to, you know, really make sure someone wins, you're trying to give each guy the best, best chance to win. So you're having individual conversations telling these guys openly what they should be doing, what their best tactic is, but making sure that none of them are riding in a way that is going to just play into the hands of anyone else and you know, they can use the fact that they're teammates to their advantage a little bit. And that's, that's the advantage of having teammates in there. So it was really exciting to kind of have those conversations. You know, I was going to bed that night with a seven second lead. That's pretty nerve wracking going into the, the final mountain stage going, I've got to hold this seven seconds. And same as Nick, he's got 40 seconds. And the thing with Nick was he. We were supposed to have four riders in that race with Nick. We ended up with just him for various reasons. And with no teammates around, he's in a very vulnerable position where all the other teams can attack the crap out of him and he's got to try and defend it all by himself. And no man is strong enough to defend every single attack. So then you go, okay, well, how do I play this out? How do I actually go through this final stage and look for the good attacks, try and cover everything I can, but not get burnt out by trying to cover everything myself and just let them absolutely overrun me. So interesting Saturday night, going to the final stage Sunday, and it's all down to this stage.

Yeah. And look, just with the time trial for Nick having been in the break all day, you are going to have burnt more matches than those guys who are sitting in the peloton. And, you know, some of the guys in the peloton might have been having to work at the front to keep the gap down between the breakaway and the bunch, but I'm sure there would be protected riders in that peloton who barely saw the wind, whereas the four or five riders in the breakaway had a way harder day. So for Nick to only lose 20 or 30 seconds from his best on his time trial was quite a good, I suppose the word is, when you're defending or limiting your losses, that is, that is actually what we're trying to, what we're trying to do here. And that was the tactic we talked about, you know, the time trial, you know, don't blow yourself up and lose a minute 30 here. Just, just ride within yourself as well as you can and try to limit your losses so that you may only lose 30 or 40 seconds rather than a minute and a half to two minutes, which is going to change, change the race scenario. And going into stage three, instead of having a 40, 50 second lead, you're actually behind. So, so it was really important that he didn't actually go too hard on the time trial, but, you know, ride hard enough so he doesn't lose too much time. So, you know, the, the instruction is, you know, ride the best time trial you possibly can, knowing you've had, you know, 100 and something kilometers into your legs from the morning compared to the rest of the bunch who have been sitting in the peloton. And, and, and that showed a little bit because he did perform probably 20 to 30 seconds below what we expected. So going into the last stage, you know, the discussion has to be, you can't cover every single attack. It's not possible. You need to identify the people who you think the teams are riding for and just stick like glue to those guys. You need to defend rather than go on the counter. If you're a Poguchar or a vinegard, sure, go on the, go on the, the attack, but the fact is you're outnumbered and, you know, you don't have any team guys to, to go with every attack to cover for you. So. So he's really up against it. And I take my hat off to him. He's very calm, very collected about the way he was going to ride. And I said to him, you know, one of the things you can do is the key guys that you're worried about, whenever they make a move, you are attached to their bike, basically. And when they turn around to see what happens, they just see your ugly face smiling back at them. And if they keep doing that, then eventually you'll overcome and they will stop doing the attacks and their attacks will become weaker and weaker. So, you know, if you've got good form, this is a time to really show that you are, you know, rock solid in and not going to be letting these guys hurt you in any way. And I think he did a really good job of that. And in the end, he still was in the front pack at the finish. I think there was a guy up the road who was not a threat to his gc and, and you know, it was interesting coming to the finish line. All he had to do was get across the line and he won the Tour. And I was saying to him, oh, well, you're tempted to have a crack at winning the third stage because he's won stage one. You've won the Tour. He actually won the Kom and he won the sprinters jersey along the way. Was that last stage something you were thinking about? And he said, to be honest, I was just so grateful that I, I was winning the GC that, you know, this last stage didn't mean anything to me, really.

Yeah, incredible effort to stick to those attacks like glue. And they did throw everything at him. And he said that they wrote some really smart, those other teams and they knew that they had his number and they were putting guys on the front that were willing to sacrifice themselves and, and really put the pressure on and try and make Nick crack because they've got, they've got, they can afford, they've got a few team members to really ride hard and put Nick under pressure, to have to follow knowing that they don't have to, you know, last right to the end. They're sacrificing themselves for the teammate. And so they, yeah, Credit to those other teams. They, they rode really smart, they did everything they could and Nicholas just happened to be on really good form for the day and was able to hold it and to take their overall GC win as well as every single jersey was a really good achievement. And then moving across to the the other side where we had first, third and fourth, you know, what was your advice to Al going into that night where he's got a seven second lead and that was a very smart race for himself. He's very, very tactically savvy so he knows what to do. But yeah, how has his mindset going at the last stage? And yeah, what was that conversation like?

Yeah, I, I love coaching Al. He's the most experienced racer that we have on our roster and he's been doing this 20 or 30 years. So it's fantastic to have to come. You know, I don't have to say much to him. It's, you know, he knows actually what he has to do. He'd set it up very well on stage one. I think he only lost 40 odd seconds. I think he came in second on stage one and the guy who was winning stage one, albeit L1 stage two time trial and put returned the favor and put 40 or 50 seconds back into the guy who's leading. So he had an eight second or seven second lead going into stage three and obviously you have to defend that eight seconds. And the guy who's winning the race is Al and he doesn't have to do anything but follow the moves from everybody else. And that sounds simple, doesn't it? Just follow the wheels from everybody. But, but you know, obviously the guy who's trying to win his second place is going to have to throw something at Elk and he could leave it to the last 2k and attack him then, or he could do it in the first 2k or he could do it halfway up the climb. And for those who don't know this climb, this climb is about 49 minutes for the elite and around 58 to an hour for the, the other grades that are in the race. So everything in between that I'm talking about the winning times for all the divisions and so you know you're going to be at threshold for around 50 minutes at your threshold after you've done two stages the previous day. So you know you are going to be severely tested if someone's got good legs. And you know, the fact that our lost stage one to the guy who was only eight seconds behind him, that guy would have some confidence that he Might have Al's measure on the climb. And there were times on the climb, Al told me that if the guy had done one more attack, I think the string would have been broken and Al would have been done. But he knew that his tour was on the line and all he had to do, all he had to do, I say so easily, was to hold that wheel and stick to that wheel like glue. And, and he did an incredible job. And, and every time that guy attacked and there were lots of attacks coming from everybody. Al was just cool and calm and. And, you know, did his best to hold the wheel and ended up coming to the finish line with the guy. And he was so focused on just staying on that wheel, he didn't even think about the stage win as well. Similar to Nick, it was just like, I've just got to make sure that I finished next to this guy so that the seven seconds stays intact. And, and yeah, the, the great time trial that he had that, that one in the tour, the great tactics that he had that got him the stage position in stage one and his ability to know what the role he had was just to hold that guy's wheel. And there could have been other tribalo athletes. Joe and Dave could have also caused problems for Al as well, had they had the legs to do what they. What they. The opportunity was for them to attack. And, you know, they were quite a long way down from Al and the other guy, Michael.

It was a minute or.

Yeah, minute 50 or minute 40.

Yeah.

So Al could afford to let them go to a point and, but. But knowing that the other guy, Michael, wanted to win the tour, that. That he would have to chase our other two trivalo guys. So. So Al was in quite a good position. He just had to follow all day.

We have gone on about this a while, but it's. We think it's really valuable. Plus it's really fun for us to talk about because it's our athletes. But it's really valuable to understand the mindset and especially that mental toughness coming to the last stage one. How do you, you know, calm yourself and handle those nerves the night before? You know, what do you do tactically? The more you can just be confident in your tactics, the calm you can be, and the more you can just play it as it comes. And then that mental toughness on the last stage, which I want to talk about one of our travel athletes advice they gave to l. But before we get there, I asked you a question and you had a really different answer to me about tactics. Which really shocked me. And it was, you know, because Dave and Joe, like you said, they're a little bit down. I mean, at 20 and a minute 40, whatever it was, should they be just attacking the second place and then I can just follow the second guy and should they potentially can get on the podium or see what happens, you know, what's best for them? And you kind of said the absolute opposite. You said that's big. No, no. Can you explain why that was?

Well, there's a couple of ways to look at it. If you're going to ride as a team, then you would have those guys on the front for you, dictating the pace and making sure the pace was high enough so that the, the contender, Michael, who was trying to beat Al, would have trouble attacking. And that's a classic jumbo visma ineos sky method of racing.

But we're not domestics riding.

That's right.

As much as it's a team, it's. It's still.

So we've got to. We've got to. That's irrelevant. So we've got to move on from that. And, and so my tactic to, to. To Dave and to Joe was, well, Michael, what. Michael has to attack the race if he wants to. If he wants to win the race, he has to attack. And so therefore your job is to follow his attacks regardless of what Al does. Both of those guys need to make up a minute 30 or 40. So follow the hard attacks from the guy who's trying to win the race and then let him do most of the work and keep him on the front. If he's trying to ride Al off his wheel or attack Al all the time, then don't help him do that. Let him do all the work so that he's getting tired, he's sitting on the front of the bunch, and then you may have the opportunity when he starts to get tired halfway up the climb where there's still 30 minutes to go or 20 minutes to go, you can put a minute into someone who's actually gone too far, too deep, and that's your opportunity to get your time back. And if Al's good enough, he can follow you and still defend the race. And we could end up getting first, second and third. But as it turned out, both Joe and Dave didn't quite have the legs. They. They followed that plan. But when the time came to. To actually try and attack the guy who was attacking Al, they didn't quite have the legs. So. So that was the best tactic for him. And it Turned out that was the best tactic because, because had they done what they, what the normal person would do is a minute 30 down, I just have to ride as hard as I can. And that would have made it so easy for that other guy contending against Al to follow our guys and then attack everybody because he's got a free sit the whole way. So there's too many scenarios here to just do the obvious. And that's why that was the outcome we suggested.

Now it was super interesting. And one of our traveller guys, his advice to Al, which I just absolutely loved, and there's a time and place for this and this is one of our toughest nuts in Trivelo. And he just said to him, you hang onto his wheel and you don't let go. And if you're not seeing black spots, you're not riding hard enough. And I, I took that into our races this week. I thought when it's time to race and you really want to race properly, you kind of want to have that, that killer instinct and that mindset and, and if it means that much to you, then push yourself that far. And that got me hyped up, you know, thinking about that and just going, well, if he really wants this, you got, you know, who's willing to go further. And you gave that example where he said, far out. If there was one more attack, I think it would have popped. And so often that's the case when you're, when you're in a race, you're in a, in a time trial, you're in the run league of the triathlon, you know, you're just, you're, when it's really hurting potentially, you're running next to someone and you're both racing each other, both of you are hurting because if someone's not getting away, then they're hurting just as much as you and you're both fighting to maintain that pace. And it's always just a fun mental game to be like, who can hold out the longest, you know, who's willing to keep going.

Yeah. And it comes down to mentally who's going to give up first and, and physiologically you're both at your limit. And what determines the difference? Well, normally it's just going to be who wants it more, what does it mean to the person. And you know, if you're willing to, to have black spots and pass out, then you're probably going to be that person who's going to. And I've seen many examples of people I coach who I'm, I look back in awe as to how deep they've gone to actually achieve that goal. And this is why I'm trying to go in such detail about, about what's happening in the race so that you can understand what each, each rider is facing when they're in this event. And, and you know, we talk a lot in triathlon about execution, and we talk a lot about that in marathon running. But in cycling, execution is key as well as those other two sports. But the tactics are far more important, almost 50, 50 to your, to your execution and your ability. Your actual. Because there's a lot of times where the best rider doesn't actually win in a, in a bike race, whereas generally in a running race, the best runner will win. And generally in a triathlon, unless you do something really poor with your nutrition or, or your execution's bad, the best triathlete will win generally. And that's the point I'm making here, is if you understand the nuances about how difficult it is to win a bike race, that's why we get super excited, because it's not that easy to do. And you could, as a triathlete, you can actually determine your performances by improvement from race to race. As a cyclist, you go and do a whole season of races and you come 15th, 20th, 30th, 45th, 16th, and you may be a way better bike rider than you were at the start of the season, but if you're doing it by position, you will probably give the sport away because you can't always win and you don't get a feeling of, am I improving? But, you know, when you start doing some races, you know that now I can keep up with the front guys, but I just didn't get the sprint right. Or there's some reason why he didn't get a better placing, but there's no real feedback about PBS because, you know, there's just no, no reference point in a, in a cycling race criterium, or. It's a position that's more important than your performance almost.

Yeah. It's such an interesting point. And I thought about that this week with us talking to one of our athletes about time trialing. And I just said the thing I love about. They were asking me about running background versus cycling background. And I said, the thing I love about cycling is that you, you just have to be so much more mentally switched on than, than running. And that's, that's such a generalization to say, and you should always be concentrating when you're running as well. But with cycling, it's almost like every single. We're about to talk about this for the kind of cycling fundamentals we want to touch on. But every pedal stroke is very important and you're pushing power through the, through every single pedal stroke and you're trying to make sure that every single thing you're doing is efficient. And every single part of your race, whether it's a stage race, whether it's a three stage bike race, a road race or a time trial and triathlon, every single 10 meters there's something different. Is this a flat section? Has it gone slightly up? Where's my cadence? Because it's slightly increased. It's gone slightly down here where there's a corner coming up. What's my last revolution going into the corner going to be like, am I keeping my speed up as fast as I can? Right into that corner. And I just love it for that reason because there's so much to focus on and so much to concentrate on and you're just always constantly learning because you go to a new course and you've got to figure out every inch of that course. And if you really want to get the most out of yourself, think about. I always use this example of a 90 kilometer bike time trial course. There is so much room for improvement and gains which I really love. So shout to finish off on this. And we spent a lot of time talking about this but did you have a note on that time trial topic?

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And knowledge of the course. We've mentioned a lot in our podcast over the 200 or so podcasts we've done but one of the guys came from WA and it never been on the courses at Bright and I made him drive the course two days before and like when he was in the race, you know, he couldn't really remember how far there was to go on the Tooonga stage. On stage one such a disadvantage. And it wasn't everybody who was in that event had probably ridden that too on the climb, you know, I've, I've been up at 30 times and so know it intimately and, and for someone who's never been on the climb before, you know, he was really trying to limit his losses a lot in terms of not pushing too hard and all of a sudden you're losing seconds against, against the rest of the field because you're not sure how far to go.

And you want to blow yourself up.

Yeah, there's all these things and had he ridden it another, you know, next time he comes to this race he will be completely different athlete. So, you know, it is really important understanding a lot about the course.

Yeah, yeah. And look, shout out to Alan. Near coming. Yeah, it's. We really, really were proud of those performances. And Al especially you talk about his tactical brilliance. He turned up to the local crit race last night, four days after winning the Tour abroad. I was shocked to see him. I said, what are you doing here? He's supposed to have the week off after, after winning that race and just talk about his tactics. We were comparing power numbers after the race. I said, what did you. Average and normalized. And his normalized wattage was 60 watts lower than mine. And I know there's a bit of a weight difference, a bit heavier than him, so, um, that would make up for some of it. But that shows how much he's hiding compared to me and how much less work he's doing compared to me. For the hour race, you know, he's a lot fresher, which means he's got more opportunity to, to do attacks or stay in a break. And that, that's really good riding. I think if you, the lower you can get in a crit race of your average wattage, you know, probably the smarter you've ridden and a lot of us kind of think the opposite. I want to ride as high power as possible. That's just not the case.

Yeah. And of course that, those, those numbers will be different if you're on a break as compared to staying in the bunch. So, you know, it's not always a good guide. You know, you could. Yes, but yeah, the point is, you know, you're trying your best to get to the, to the finish, whether you're in a break or whether you're sprinting for the finish with the least amount of energy expended. And when, when you need to draw on that power, that's when you want to have it in spades and not have burnt 10 matches when it really counts. And you can't actually go with the right, the right move that's going up the road. And these are things that, you know, bike racing nuances are so critical.

Yeah, for sure. And to finish off, I just want to give a real big shout out to Nick for that win. I think for us, we've spoken pretty openly about Nick's training and performances a fair few times throughout this podcast and given an insight into what he's been doing. And he's been in the trivelo system now for three years and we do talk about this kind of magical three year mark where you can a Lot of athletes get to here and they just cross this threshold where they start to just ride almost invincible. And I know you were super proud of the performance and for you is probably one of the all time performances we've seen from an athlete because especially considering his specific dedication, I think we both agree that there's an absolute gold standard of training and he's probably one of the best, most disciplined trainers you've ever seen. And we've had an Olympian training with us, you know, who was probably the most dedicated and, and you said he's up there or even better than that. So it's pretty good. Hey.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And everything you said is 100% right. And you know, sometimes you get what you deserve, sometimes you don't, but generally you will get what you deserve. And if you put all the preparation into it, you know. And look, take Joe for example. In this particular tour, he had prepared beautifully up until three weeks out and then, you know, it's almost a catastrophe for him with the outcome. But you know, that three year period of being, you know, training a certain way. When I look at Al, Al's been with us a lot less time, but he's got 30 or 40 years of really good training in his body. And so he's reaping the benefits right now from, from, you know, being on this, on this program for less time. But you know, to win a stage tour is something that alone, you know, never forget. It's, it's, you know, he's, he's just been at the nationals, he got second in the road race, he got second in the time trial. Sorry, the, the criterium, which is a bit hard to swallow, isn't it? Getting two seconds and then he comes out, you know, two months later and, and not only does he win the time trial, he wins the Tour and gets second on stage, Stage one and gets second on stage three. So he's had a damn good tour. And, and like Nick, so well deserved. And we probably didn't spend much time on Al, but that was one of the most superior tactical races that I've seen. Nick, Nick did a great job, but Al, actually, to have to defend eight seconds is not that easy. And, and I really take my hat off to him. Yeah, look, I totally agree, Jord. Everything you've said about Nick, when he first came to us, he was a good bike rider and make no mistake about that. He had, he was an endurance beast, actually. And most of his training was in zone two and, and I think the Thing that we identified straight away was that he needed to do a lot more intensity in his training. He was, he felt like he was already doing that in his training. He was riding relatively hard a lot of the time, but he was doing that every day. And so, so those long, hard rides that weren't actually high intensity, but they were hard work, long rides, you know how fatiguing it is when you do two, three hours. You are very tired, even though you haven't ridden, you know, 4 or 500 watt efforts, or if you've just spent a lot of the day at 280 or 300 watts and it's really fatiguing, really tiring. But if you keep doing that day in, day out, we, you know, we hear a lot of people bang on about how great Zone two is and you know that you will be a great rider if you spend most of your time, 80% of your time in zone two. Well, Nick was doing that, but he wasn't spending the 20% of his time at, you know, 120, 130% of his. Of his FTP because he was so exhausted from all of that. That Zone two stuff, that wasn't really Zone two, it was more like Zone three and, and riding too hard in those Zone two rides. And so he had, he had the capacity and the ability to be a great bike rider four years ago, but he was just doing too much of the same and not enough of less hard riding in Zone two and more hard riding in the bits that count. And as soon as we, as soon as we got that, that fatigue level down from all of those long endurance rides and he was fresh enough to ride really hard when it counted, his numbers started to progressively grow week by week, month by month. And, and, you know, and giving him that recovery week after, like the staircase effect that we talk about, where you train solid for two or three weeks and then, and then give yourself recovery and test yourself again so then you can go again for the next hard bit and then plateau out so you can recover. And, you know, all of a sudden Nick's, Nick's numbers are, you know, three years later. He's never ridden higher peak power numbers for 30 seconds, almost five seconds, all the way through to 90 kilometers. And he hasn't, in fact, trained any harder. He's just trained smarter with doing less harder, longer stuff and making it easier in Zone two, and then being able to ride really hard when it counts in VO2 and Threshold. And, and that's the, that's the thing that Nick's Taken on board. And boy, did he do that to the letter. He didn't deviate. He trusted the pro, the process and had confidence in the program. And everything that we did together as a coach and an athlete was a discussion about how you're coping with this. And I don't think you should do this hard session today because you still haven't recovered from what we're doing before. So it wasn't just throw the program and you have to do these, these sessions. It was manipulating it so that he was getting, you know, the recovery he needed. And he just took to it like duck to water. It was just brilliant the way he really understood how to get the feelings from his own mindset and body, how the fatigue was going and he would convey that. And so we would continually adjust the program according to making sure that he was able to do the sessions well enough to get the value and the improvement that we were after. And that's what. I'm sorry, that makes it so pleasing as a coach to see someone who actually follows that mindset and that trust in what we're trying to achieve together. And when it comes off, it's absolutely incredible feeling for both athlete and coach.

Yeah. And you mentioned a really good point that you said. It doesn't have to take three years to get at this point. We just say that if someone is with us for three years, they really start to hit this incredible, incredible improvement. But we said we had the exact same conversation almost a year ago with Nick. He was hitting peak power numbers. He was riding in the form of his life. He was doing all these things really well. It's just, he's been able to just continue this improvement, which is really hard to do. And if you looked at a graph of his, if he's fitness, for example, and it almost looks exactly like a staircase over the last three or four years. But it has to be said that it wasn't an exact staircase. It was more like a graph that goes up, up, up, and then down a little bit, and then up, up, up, then down a little bit. And then there was some big lull periods where he had a bit of time off or a break and it was really down for a bit. But the general trend, if you drew a straight line, was a linear progression upwards. And that's a really important point to notice that it wasn't a linear progression all the time. It wasn't up every week or up every month for three years straight. It was really improving for 12 weeks and then potentially being too fatigued and needing a little bit of a break or needing a little bit of a rest or having some purposeful or conscious time off or actually program time off or programmed down periods. And there was definitely some unprogrammed periods where it was like, I'm just not motivated right now and I need to just back off the training a little bit. And if you just, if you could see a visual image of that graph, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. Where it's. Overall, the trend is upwards, but if you break it down to the minute, weeks, days and months, it definitely wasn't the case. But that is the beauty of consistency. And it's not just the training. It's that discipline is carried across to all the extra work outside that he does the exact same standard for. So for gym training, heat training, nutrition, all these things. And we're not just doing this to pump Nick's tires up, because Nick and I have a very healthy rivalry where it pains me to pump him up this much. But it is a really good example of other athletes out there for what the absolute gold standard is and what you can achieve when you do this.

Yeah. And it's motivating to hear a story like that. And you immediately want to know, what, what did he do? How did he do that? And, and that's, that's the good part. But, but there are periods, and it has to be said that there were down periods where, you know, it's not all up the whole time. And I think you've made that, that really clear in your, your previous example of, you know, the staircase where he had, you know, he had a whole lot of time where things weren't going that well. So, you know, you have to take stock of that. And, and you can't be up for 12 months. You can't even the elite pros have time off. And so structuring that into a program where, you know, you've got to identify where your key key months are wanting, where you want to be at your best for those key months. And, and for, in Australia, you know, the Tour of Bright and the Nationals in January, so the Tour Bright's in December, the Nationals are in January, the Elite Nationals and the Masters Nationals are in September. So there's, there's a key period where you want to be up. And then there are other events after that, like the Melbourne to Warrnambool in February or the Grafton in April. There are other key races that you could be doing or you could be doing some really big gravel races that Nick's done. I'm giving you an example of what his calendar could look like. And before you know it, you're just continually training the whole time for the next six weeks for the next event. And that's not something that we advise. And that's what we were doing earlier as well. We were making mistakes like that, similar to, to what I've just explained there. You can't. You can't have eight A races. You have to. Have to make sure that you're progressing your fitness and your peak power at a. At a level that's sustainable, and you need to recover from that period. Like, as soon as the nationals are over in January, Nick needs to take, you know, a week or two where he's got some downtime. And that's what I'm trying to get the message across to everybody. It sounds like this big picture of if you just keep training, you'll get progression and you don't take any downtime. That's actually not the case. You actually have to strategize your year as well as you can, so you're at your peak when you want it most.

That's a great way to finish. And, yeah, this has been a big episode talking about this exact topic, but there's been so much in this that we, we think is just so important and so valuable for you to hear, and we're not. We really want to emphasize the point that we're not saying that you have to be the perfect athlete because it's so hard to do that and it's so hard to train so disciplined and so perfectly all the time, and things come up that get in the way. And that's not the message we're trying to send. It's really a message of understanding the power of a whole. A whole bunch of the fundamental principles here. So consistency is one of them. And above all else, we talk about so many things in this podcast, so many different topics, about how you can improve, where you can find improvement, all the one percentage you can do. Understanding power, understanding efficiency, understanding VO2 max understanding lactate testing. We can just go down a million rabbit holes. And we do because we love it. But at the end of the day, the person who is just more consistent will beat anyone that's focusing on that other stuff any day of the week. They'll beat them if they're just more consistent. Even if they're doing a worse program, if they're more consistent, they'll probably beat them. And that's a really fundamental principle to know. And it can get overwhelming with the amount of advice out there. You can hear so many different conflicting things from coaches, from friends, from people in the sport, from a new report suggests in quotation marks, a new YouTube video pumps out of people saying, I train this way. And then everyone jumps on that trend. It can get overwhelming, it can get confusing sometimes. And so we're trying to spread this message and share this fact that when it comes down to simple, consistent, hard training with a good structure, we'll win most of the time. And if you can just go back to that and it does get less overwhelming and you can find more enjoyment.

In that as well, I couldn't agree more. And it's kind of our philosophy a bit. But turning up each day is bloody hard. And if you can just keep turning up each day and the sessions are there, just do the sessions. Don't be like a person with a spotlight, like a rabbit. Spotlight's on you. And see someone do something over there and follow them. Do that. Do those four hill climbs with them and then see someone else doing some threshold riding over there. Oh, I should do some of that. And then, oh, I saw someone do VO2. Oh, and then I saw someone do zone two work for a whole month. Oh, maybe I'll do that. Just turn up each day with the structure that the program has got. You tick those boxes and stay in those zones that the program's asking you to do, because it should be well worked out if you've got some really good people helping you and working backwards from your main race. If you just do the basics each day and don't complicate it, turn up each day and hit the targets. By the time you get to your A race, you're in a way better position than the person who's just jumping from, you know, headlight to headlight, where someone seems like they're doing something better and it's like the fear of missing out all the time, but they're doing that. Why don't we do that? Well, that might suit them. Let's just follow our structure for this particular campaign and if we find that it didn't work that well, then we can reassess it. And that's really key here is don't forget, just keep turning up. And that's what consistency is. Every day you wake up, there's another training session, whether it's a recovery day or a high intensity day. Do what the session's asking and don't do any more or any less.

Most people, and this is kind of harsh thing to Say, but I say most people, most of us, and I really include myself in that because I get caught up in this a lot because I love researching the latest training, I love researching what the Norwegians are doing. I wanted to try it, but I have to remind myself all the time, just make sure you're training properly. You know, just make sure that you're getting the volume in of high intensity that you need. You're getting the consistency, consistency of zone 2 training. Getting that endurance riding consistently. Because we talk about it all the time. Look back at the last 24 weeks of your program, the last six months, because what you do six months ago or three months ago really starts to pay dividends at this point. Now, how many endurance rides did you tick off? Did you tick off 24 out of 24? Did you tick off 24 endurance runs? Out of 24? There was potentially two high intensity sessions a week. Did you tick off 48 out of 48? The closer you can get to those numbers, you better you're going to be. And that's almost as simple as it needs to be. But the other factor is you spoke about the coach athlete relationship. A lot of people might say, I want to jump on Nick's program, but this has been a lot of, quote, I'm going to use this word really carefully. Experimenting. Experimenting can sound really bad. It was a very, very, very well thought out and purposeful hypothesis kind of training program. And we know, we know we have a really sound understanding of what could work and we have some really strong hypothesis. And we spoke to a few experts that we know and got their opinion on what we were thinking to kind of mutilate this program a bit. But, you know, understand that this is a really top level cyclist who is willing to try and take that on and try those out. And a lot of age groupers wouldn't be willing to do that. And that's fair enough. You just kind of want to know what works and stick to a program that's worked well before. But what we are now seeing with a lot of the professionals out there is they're showing a lot of their training. A lot of them are still experimenting as well. You know, they're going to the world Champs at Kona or the world Champs at Nice and they've just done a pretty experimental program in the last 12 weeks. And Lucy Charles was another example recently where she did a video saying that she normally trains on Erg Mode. This is so funny because we talk about this so much, but she normally trains on Erg Mode on the trainer. And in this block, she, more of her training than normal, was on the trainer leading into Kona for various reasons, and she decided not to use Erg mode for this block for various reasons. I won't go into massive detail, but my point is that in her last six weeks before she won the World Champs, she did something she probably hadn't tried before, and it actually helped her and enabled her. And she puts, you know, a key part of her training block was this, this massive block she did indoors in a controlled environment, down to her win and down to her ability to execute solo on race day. And for me, that was just an awesome example where the world champ is revolutionizing their own training, is paving a new path for themselves and trying something new. But we're seeing all these athletes, Lionel Sanders try the Norwegian method for 12 months, hated it, didn't agree with what they said, and then switched back to a new method. So, yeah, there's a lot in everything I just said, but you're getting the point I'm trying to make of this whole concept of trying to simplify it and it's okay to experiment, but at the same time, in the back of your mind, know the fundamental principles.

Yeah, I, I wouldn't be apologizing for any, any coach or athlete that is trying something different. And that's how we learn. All of the best athletes, Ingepritson and, and the other Norwegians and over the, over the years, you know, the Ron Clarks of the world and Herb Elliot's, you know, they had a coach, people called a crazy guy, Percy Serity, who, who had them running sand dunes and, and Herb Elliott went on to win the 19601500 meters at Tokyo by 10 meters. And he was just so far above everybody else. There are examples of, of taking risks and you call it experimenting, but it's actually a belief and a trust in a process that you think is going to get the best outcome. And that's actually how all of the modern training methods evolve, is because people have gone out on a risk. If everybody trained the same way for the last 60 years, do you think we'd have records being broken? They wouldn't be. So all of these coaches, they're confident, they're backing themselves. They've got some scientific evidence and data that tells them if we do this, well, this is going to be the outcome. And majority of the time, that's actually what's been happening. And you could talk about it in soccer tactics with trying a different method of playing a game of Soccer with holding, possession or being a pressing team. These are tactics that could backfire in your face. And just like the sessions that we provided Nick with, sure, it could have gone horribly, horribly wrong, but we had confidence in our research that it hadn't been done this way before for him. But if we trusted the process, it would get the outcome we wanted. And fortunately for everybody, that's what happened. But there could be examples of it not working for some people, and therefore you have to try something different again. And there are thousands of examples of people going through different processes. But what I'm trying to say is don't be jumping from one to another without actually going all the way through to the final and then getting some, some information back. There's no point in, in following a process and then doing a version of it and then at the end of it saying, well, that didn't work. Well, it didn't work probably because you did a version of it instead of doing the session and the process properly.

And don't get it twisted here, we're not saying that you can, especially as coaches, we're not saying that we can just throw an experimental program at you and then if it doesn't work, throw our hands up and say, oh, look, we're trying something that's absolutely not what we're about. Our principles of testing regularly are there for a reason, because we want feedback about whether something's working or not, and we're not afraid to hide or shy away from that feedback. So if you test yourself after six weeks, after we've tried it, the program doesn't work. We're not going to sit there and say, oh, it was just an experiment. We need to really dissect, why didn't it work? What was different? What were the factors here? What could we change for the next block? We don't just accept the result as it is. We really dive into that. And that's, that's a really important point. So the athlete can trust that even if a result doesn't go your way, which doesn't happen too often, but it can happen for sure. You can trust that that's not going to stay like that and you're going to change something for the next block. And I think that's really important. And also from our perspective, we're so confident in the process that we do have a personal guarantee when someone starts coaching with us that you will improve your FTP in the first eight weeks. If not the money, it's money back guarantee. So the coaching's on us. So that is our personal promise. That shows how confident we are in the process. But it has to be said that these things can happen. So I think we'll finish there. Is there any, any last point you wanted to make?

No, I was going to say something there, but I definitely agree with everything you just said at the end there. And, and at the end of the day, you will get what you deserve. And I think that is if you, if you turn up each day, you are going to be a better. A better chance of getting the goal that you set yourself. And so if you fundamentally focus on. My job is to turn up each day and execute as well as I possibly can. And I don't mean turn up and train hard each day. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying turn up and do the program the way it's written each day. Then that's as simple as it has to be. Don't make it harder than that. And I think that would be my takeaway from, I think, what the guys have done. Well, in this particular example, we're using one stage race where they've all prepared pretty damn well, I must say, and, and they've, you know, they've achieved the results that most of them wanted.

Yeah, I, yeah, I agree. It's a, it's been a fascinating topic. I mean, we were supposed to talk about a pretty different topic in this episode, but I really have enjoyed this conversation. I love the path that's gone down. We've had a pretty honest conversation about training, racing and consistency and mindset. And I kind of judge the value of these episodes on, on how much I learn, and I definitely learned a lot because I've heard, I've heard almost as much as I can from, I feel like, from you over the journey of my lifetime about training and racing and coaching. And still on the weekend, I learned some pretty drastically new lessons. You know, going through this process for the Tour of Rock, which was really exciting. So I think that was really valuable.

I did want to say one more thing, was to be fair and, you know, you know, this is what's happened with me coaching all four of my children that, that I was experimenting on myself in all of my career, and I was experimenting with you guys in what, what I thought was the best for you guys. And, and some of the stuff I tried on myself didn't work. And then some of the stuff I tried worked incredibly well. So all the training sessions that I give to our athletes, I've made you do or I've done myself and, and we've had, you know, poor outcomes that we just scrap that, that style of training and, and we've had really good outcomes where we've got, oh, let's just, let's make this a little bit fine tinkering with this a bit more and make it, make it more manageable for all the athletes. But we certainly, that's one point I wanted to make is we, we do experiment a lot on ourselves before we're, we're putting it out there, which is, you know, it's almost like we're in the lab and then once we find the, the solution to, to our problems and we, we certainly with confidence go out and, and drive the athletes to, to get, get on board with it.

I will set the record straight. There was no, there was no serious lab experimenting on us as children. It was just a bit, some different variations of VO2 max training and, and different track sessions. And I won't go down this hole. But I was randomly thinking about the type of high school training we did and I was knowing what we know now. You know, 15 years ago it was quite inefficient training when I, when I look back on it and yeah, a whole nother rabbit hole of things. But that was actually an interesting discussion point I was thinking about. So that's enough of this episode. It's been a monster one of talking tactics. Just a reminder, we have our current Giant giveaway happening. Giant. Our sponsors have put away an ultimate package that you can win. You just need to go to our Instagram, find the Giant giveaway post and tag two endurance buddies in there to win. For your chance to win two set of Cadex wheels. And these Cadex wheels can be any set you want. They can be wheels for your time trial bikes. They can be front quad spoke and back rear full disc wheel. They can be road racing carbon Cadex wheels. If you win the prize, you get to choose any set of Cadex wheels you want. Plus a Tribalo tri suit, plus a $300 Science and Sport SIS nutrition pack, plus some other little goodies, hats, socks, drink bottles as well. So if you want your chance to win that the competition will close next week, go to our Instagram page, tag 2Endurance Buddies in the comment and make sure you are following Trivelo and Giant Australia on Instagram. All the instructions are there for you to enter. Gain an extra entry. If you follow the instructions in the post, you'll see how to gain the extra entry for your chance to win. At the moment we've got about. We just released the post yesterday. We've got about 500 entries. So it's. At the moment, it's a pretty good chance to win a brand new set of Cadex wheels valued at approximately $6,000. So make sure you go do that on our Instagram page. Thanks, as always, for listening to another episode and we'll see you in the next one.