Fastest Ways To Improve As An Intermediate Triathlete (Ultimate Checklist)

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, Jarred Donnelly. Welcome to the second episode in this two part series on how to progress as a triathlete. In episode one, we covered everything beginner athletes need to know about how to improve in the most efficient way possible. And, and in this episode we're talking to intermediate athletes and above. So if you didn't listen to the first episode, go back and make sure you do to ensure you have all the bases covered. But if you're a beginner athlete, this second episode is well worth listening to so you can have a goal of where to get to. In the episode, we'll be covering the best equipment upgrades and not necessarily the most expensive, the things that count the most on race day, how to get the most out of every minute of training, how to be your own data analysis expert without knowing anything about technology, and much more. But first, it's at this point of each episode where I would normally welcome dad in and start with our gratitude. But I'm going to start this one off today because it's a bit of a tough one to get through. As you all know, we're really big on vulnerability and gratitude on this podcast and we believe it's really important for the mental health of an athlete to embrace vulnerability and gratitude. And so, while we don't share everything about our personal lives on this podcast today, we do have some sad news to share. Last week, the Donnelly family lost our grandma, Cecilia Donnelly. And dad, this is your mum and my gran. And so today, in our gratitude, we just want to take this moment to show our gratitude for her life and the legacy that she left our family immigrating from Scotland back in 1957 and everything that's happened since then for us to now have this wonderful life in Australia. And dad, she was there. She flew to Kona for you in 1987 to watch you compete in your first Hawaiian Ironman World Champs. Her and Papa were the biggest supporters of your triathlon career and it's been a tough week for us. But on reflection of her life, we have so much to be thankful for.

Great introduction, Jordan. And it's times like this where you actually don't know what to say. And I think that's almost ironic. Fluent and flowing with information normally. But yeah, you know, it's, it's a Sad time when someone who means so much to you passes away and their life's over and it's in your face and it's raw and yeah, just the way things happen, you just don't expect the situation you find yourself in, you know that, you know, it's inevitable at some point, you know, your parents are going to pass away. It's just sometimes you're just not ready for it. And in this particular case, you know, my mum's getting old. She's, she's, you know, she's had a fantastic life and, and things are starting to deteriorate, but she's still been, you know, resilient and she's been like that her whole life. And the other things that I kind of want to say here is, you know, it was a great celebration. By the time we got over the sadness and the, and the emotion and the crying between all the brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces and, and it was great. The whole family came together and.

She.

Would have loved that because family was everything to my dad and my mum and I think she would have been quite proud of everybody really getting on board with getting together. And we had some great laughs about things that she'd done over her life. And she lived by herself. She was 91. She lived by herself up until she passed away last weekend. And yeah, she's extremely determined human being. No matter how much we tried to get her to come and live with us or share herself around with all five children that she had, she was just absolutely stubborn to the end to say, no, I want to live at home, I want to have my own independence. And that's the kind of person she was. You know, she was tough and, you know, said it how it was and, and yeah, the reflection we had at the actual funeral service was, was my younger brother Stephen did the eulogy and he, he told a story of, of her whole life growing up in a really tough environment in the inner suburbs of Glasgow and, and dad making this decision to leave, to go to Australia on a, on a boat, a six week journey to Australia where, you know, you just don't know what's going to happen there. You go into a foreign country. Her whole family was absolutely against her leaving. No one even knew what Australia was or where it was. And they thought that my dad was crazy, but to his credit, he knew there was a better life somewhere and it wasn't in Glasgow. He was determined not to have his family grow up in a situation where they weren't probably going to get the opportunities that they could in a place like Australia. And. And, you know, we're so pleased that he did do that. Not that living up in Glasgow is. People had great lives there, but that was not what he wanted for his family. And, yeah, so, yeah, it was great to go through all that journey and, you know, coming to Australia and going to a country town which was 100k from Melbourne, not knowing one single person and meeting neighbors and. And neighbors couldn't understand a word they were saying because their Scottish accent's so broad. And, yeah, just dad getting a job and then Mum just being so homesick and wanting to go home, but, you know, convincing her brothers and sisters one by one to come out to Australia. And, you know, majority of her family migrated to Australia, so she got away. That's how determined she was to influence her family to come and have a better life. And all of them are extremely grateful they did move. And again, not that there's anything wrong with living and growing up in Glasgow, but there's just so much more opportunity for. For work and stuff in Australia at that particular time. So. So, yeah, yeah, just want to thank everybody who's sent some gratitude wishes. It's been overwhelming, actually. And yeah, it's love. It's great being in a community, isn't it, when you've got people surround surrounding you who are, yeah, just sending you well wishes. And yeah, I really appreciate. And I've got through this without getting too emotional, so I'm pretty happy to get through it. I think I've put Mum's life in context in my own mind now, and I think that's something you have to go through. She had a great existence and her time had come and she had no regrets. She saw all of her grandchildren grow up, and then her great grandchildren are all under four years of age, so. But at least she saw the start of their life. And so there's lots to be proud of and positive and. And, yeah, she will never be forgotten. But, yeah, it's. It's a timely reminder of making the most of every opportunity, I suppose, you know, if I can reflect it back on. This podcast is about getting the most out of yourself and being a better version of yourself. And it's only when you go to a, you know, a funeral where you get that perspective of far out, that's the end of that person's life and are they happy with it? And, you know, you've got. You've got opportunities. Everybody who's listening to this podcast has got opportunities to make changes in Their lives. And it doesn't have to be massive, big changes. You can just do small little changes that'll give you a better perspective and outcome and goal setting for each day. You know, what I want to achieve today, and I think that's what I was thinking about during the funeral is, you know, how final it is as a funeral. But, you know, here we are sitting at the funeral. We've all got. Some of us have got 30 years left, some of us have got 60 years left on this planet. What can we do with that? What impact can we have ourselves on that? So, yeah, they're the things I want to. I want to sort of get across. And we're always trying to give lessons and if you can give a lesson when someone close to you has passed away, I don't know if that's possible, but that's. That's where I'm at.

Really. Well said. And yeah, we don't wonder where we get our determination or stubbornness from at all. It's definitely been passed down. So, on that note, let's get into the main topic of the episode and exactly what we want to talk about here and how to improve yourself as an athlete. And moving on from episode one, once you've established some solid foundations and you're doing all the basics and fundamentals right, how do you get the most out of yourself? It is a little bit funny to switch from that topic straight into the topic of the episode. That was a funny, funny, mental switch in my head. But that's what we're here for. So thank you to the audience for allowing us to share that and to share our vulnerabilities and parts of our personal life, as dad said, has been overwhelming. The outreach of support. And yeah, we really appreciate it and that's what this community's for. So on that note, yeah, we'll get into it. So, dad, we want to talk about what some of the factors that will help athletes improve the most, depending on what level they're at. And the first thing we want to talk about is we want to start with equipment again, because we went through last week or last episode, some of the basic necessities for equipment of what we think is really important. And some of those answers might have surprised people because they're probably a little bit more advanced than beginners would expect, but we just see that as the fastest way to improve, even at a beginner level. And so once you've got those basics six, what's the next level? You know, what are some of the. They're not must haves, but they're very nice to haves. And look, you can make a list that you could easily spend five, ten, fifteen grand plus on in terms of equipment. So we're not asking everyone to go out and get all of these things, but we're going to talk about some of the really beneficial pieces of equipment you could get and why we think they're unbelievable for your performance. And then you can decide where, where to spend your money on that. You know, it doesn't mean you have to spend more, but there's a lot of ways to gain free speed in triathlon. So the first one we want to talk about, and you should really think about this at a beginner level, although again, it's not absolutely necessary and it's the bike fit. So where does the bike fit fit between beginners versus intermediate athletes?

And our topic is the fastest ways to improve if you take the time right at the beginning. And I'm not talking about a beginner athlete, I'm talking about someone who's intermediate or advanced here and hasn't had a bike fit. And you know, just like everything in life, there's really good bike fits and there's average bike fits and there's probably not so good bike fits. So you need to do a little bit of preparation and trying to ask around wherever you are living in the world, find out from people who have been satisfied as a triathlete. And this is probably not as important as a cyclist, but I've got to be careful how I word that. Bike fits are important for all riders. But as a triathlete, if you're thinking about riding 180k in the one position, in a time trial position where you're just basically sitting and not moving, you need to make sure your bike fit is allowing you to be comfortable and then push the power that you should be able to push if you're comfortable. The aerodynamics of the bike fit are super important, but that's actually not what we're talking about here. We're talking about making sure that as a triathlete who's possibly going to be spending anywhere between our best at athletes as age groupers are doing 440 and our slowest athletes, age groupers, are doing 650. Some of them are doing seven hours. And so you need to understand that you have to be comfortable and that you're not getting numbness in parts of your body that's going to prevent you from pushing power. So having a bike fit that's allowing you to spend all that time down in the time trial position in the aero position where you don't have to keep sitting up after five or 10 minutes because it's super uncomfortable. But boy, the bike fitter has given me this huge aerodynamic position and geez, I'm fast over 10 or 15 minutes. But that's actually not crucial for Ironman or for half Ironman. You need to be sure fast in a good arrow position. But if you can't hold the arrow position then you're going to be sitting up and losing speed every time you do that. So it's better to be giving up a little bit of the arrow to be more comfortable so that you can actually push the power you want to. And I know it's not all about the power number it is about the aero and being in a great fast slippery position. But if you can't hold it and you have to keep sitting up because it's uncomfortable, then it's the wrong fit for you. So that is kind of the first part of the bike fit that I think everybody needs to take note of.

Yeah. And then once you get your bike fit, your bike fitter can help you with this or you can start to look at your own aero upgrades of okay, once you're in a good position, where else can you get that aero benefit in terms of equipment? And that starts with things like the TT helmet. You know, what's the best helmet option for you? What bars do you chuck on bar technology has come a long way. Right now we see some of the most insane alien looking like bars in professional cycling about what's possible. Your suit. Have you got the best material for an aero suit which we know makes a lot of difference, disc wheels, all these things that start adding onto the bike to get the most out of those aerodynamic benefits and it doesn't just stay with the bike. What are we going to say on that?

Yeah, look, look. The funniest aero position bars. I mean some of the helmets that the time trial is in the tour, the visma Lisa bike guys and I think EF education guys are just wearing some of the most craziest bike helmets.

Which I think they're banning as of next year. I think they're bringing in rules to say right this is getting out of hand.

Yep, yep. So these are the lengths that people are going to and they wouldn't be going to this length if they hadn't measured this in a, you know, in a testing. You know, we've lots of the elite triathletes all Going to wind tunnels and getting tested. And there is huge benefits by doing that and being, you know, getting the best equipment. The TT bar position, the helmet, the skin suit, the disc wheel, the aero front wheel, they're all key things. And actually getting your body to be in a, in a position you can hold for a long period of time. So that takes a bit of practice as well. So you can have all of the right equipment but still sitting poorly on the bike. And you know, the bike fitter can fit you with the seat height, the crank length, the distance between your seat and your TT bars, all that can be fitted well. But if you don't actually get down arrow yourself, you know, you could, you could in a wind tunnel. You know, I've done three wind tunnel tests myself and a lot of it came down to my body position being a huge impact compared to all the other things that they were testing such as the skin suit, arm warmers, boot covers, the TT bars, the aero helmet. But if I didn't sit well, all those things I was getting more drag. So getting your body used to, in that uncomfortable position that you have your head in, that takes practice and they're things that you need to be doing and they will improve over 180k. You could get 10 minutes back and that could be the difference at the pointy end. And this is where we're talking intermediate to advanced age groupers. That could be the difference between you getting selection for Kona or on a podium or in the top 10 or top 20. So these things, you know, this is the questions we're being asked. What things could I be doing? Well, these are the things you should be doing and getting your head around. That is what you should be actually trying to achieve if you're serious about sport. Again, we don't want you spending thousands of dollars equipment when you could probably improve your training prospects a lot better rather than equipment. But we are talking equipment here so you know, we'll talk about training down the track because that is the biggest component that's going to give you free speed is to be fitter. But, but certainly in the equipment side, the bike fit with the equipment you're using is, is paramount to improvement.

Yep, spot on. And we see it so much in training where athletes will ride the same power in training but then go to go to race day with their full race set up and for the same power get massive, massive speed gains based on just their full race setup, race suit, aero toe covers, etc And Lionel Sanders came out with a bit of a Bombshell last week when he went to the wind tunnel and broadcasted all his results and he went in. He's been asking this question for a long time and I think it's pretty hilarious and valid question. He went in with completely unshaven legs and arms because he said, I want to know if it makes a difference, can we do this properly? So they tested him under control, full shave, unshaven legs and arms, and then he completely shaved. And the results were way more astounding than any of them were anticipating. Huge arrow gains. So controls the person of one. Yeah, we don't know exactly how much that can impact, but it was bloody hilarious to see. And if anyone ever asks you why you shave your legs, then you can just send them that video of Lionel Sanders. But that covers kind of the bike in terms of running and swimming. Two really, really easy gains in speed that are relatively inexpensive compared to something like two or $3,000 disc wheel set or race wheelset is for running carbon shoes. If you haven't upgraded to carbon shoes yet, basically every brand now has their own version of a carbon racing shoe. It's not just Nike anymore that dominates that market. It's Nokia Asics. It's every single brand basically has one. So no matter what brand you prefer, you can get carbon shoes, which is almost guaranteed free speed depending on the shoe and the person. Yep.

And I totally agree. And the carbon shoes for sure need to be trained in. And that doesn't mean you go and do every training session in your carbon shoes. You just need to make sure that come race day, it's not something you've only done once or twice running in carbon shoes because you know it's giving you a little bit of extra propulsion. It could be a difference and change in your running gait that could actually injure you in the race. So, so you need to be actually training some of the sessions in your carbon shoes so that your body's used to it. And you know, when we talked about the aero improvement on the bike, one of the things I didn't get to say was we, we get guys to test outside in our non aero wheels, skin suit, helmet, everything, and then we get them to test with all their gear on and they are, you know, nearly a kilometer an hour faster with just changes in equipment. So the same thing's going to happen with the carbon shoes. You know, if you're running times that are in normal shoes, you're going to find that you're going to be able to run slightly faster with the carbon Shoes, you know, that's not even in dispute. That's actually, you know, that's actually happening out there.

Yes, spot on. And then the other one, the other big winner for swimming is form goggles. And again, these aren't necessities, but we are just of the belief that swimming without form goggles and they have the absolute monopoly on the market right now is like, you know, running without a watch back in the 70s or 80s, you know, once, you know, technology got good enough that you can get life, life pacing on your Watch in the 2000s. It's the exact same with swimming. You know, to have life pacing in front of you while you swing in the water is just an absolute game changer. And I believe that in five, 10 years it'd be pretty historic to, to not be swimming with goggles like that. It's just an app. Yeah, an absolute game changer. And it's, it's really became more and more popular each year. We first spoke about it probably three or four or five years ago and a lot of people rolled their eyes at it, but we knew straight away, and we said it on the podcast, I think 250 episodes ago, that form goggles are a game changer for swimming and execution. So, yeah, that is definitely a big one.

Yeah. And look, I don't normally like to promote businesses, but they're the only ones doing it. And look, I'm hopeful that just like bike computers, there'll be 17 brands doing it so that everybody has a choice. But at the moment, we'd love to have form goggles as, as our sponsor on the podcast because we're, we're promoting them. And the reason we are is because you get data, feedback and it's, and it's not just knowing what actual speed you're swimming at, it's knowing how far you've got to go in in an open water swimming race. That, that anxiety of, you know, I've already swam 700 out of the 1900, or I've already swam, you know, 2300 out of the 3.8. You know, that's really great data for anxiety and, and getting you to relax and be calm and you can work out that, you know, I've got 15 more minutes of swimming or, you know, and, and then how's my pace? You know, if you don't have that data, you, you know, you can relax knowing that, you know, I'm, I'm swimming around 145 and that's what I was aiming for, or I'm swimming 150 but you know, it's not hurting me, I feel good. These are the really good things that you can, you can actually get information fed back to you so that you get to experience a swim where you've got less anxiety. And let's face it, everybody who does a 3.8k swim has some anxiety about that distance or the 1900 meter swim and then the people around you and all of a sudden you're forgetting about your stroke, you're forgetting about your actual swimming form and you're not concentrating on things you should be. Whereas if you've got feedback telling you that, yeah, it's okay, I'm swimming, I've swam this far, I'm at this average pace. These are really good things to, to reduce anxiety. And that's I think, an underrated aspect of, of the swim swim week.

Spot on. And one bonus little piece of equipment that we would, I think is really good option to have there is to buy yourself a really good pair of, of rollers. So you know, the, the trainer where you aren't actually locked in, you have to pedal really evenly and keep your balance and they can be pretty risky in terms of falling off at home. But boy, that is the fastest way to teach yourself to pedal properly, pedal efficiently and pedal evenly. And if you can jump on your easy rides on them, then even build up to doing sessions on them, which is very difficult, very high skill level. Again, it's another trainer to buy. But yeah, really incredible for your performance on the bike.

Yeah, I can't agree more. Jord and the rollers have helped me become a much better pedaler. And at the end of the day you're wanting to try to, to maximize your pedal pedaling efficiency. And, and we talk about pressure on the pedals a lot. Well, if you're not pedaling smoothly, it's hard to get pressure on the pedals properly. Yeah, if you're just someone who's pushing down all the time and not pulling up, you know that, that pedaling efficiency can't happen on the rollers because if you do that on the rollers, you actually bounce off the rollers. So, so it really forces you to pedal smoothly. And again, it's another, another expense that we, you know, we don't say to people, you need this, it's not a compulsory thing. But if you really want to concentrate on, on improving, it's a great, great training tool for you to, to actually become a better bike rider.

I do think I have pretty reasonable efficiency and evenness in pedaling and I Do think it's. I would put it down to learning to pedal on rollers when I was 16, you know, and definitely came off a couple of times. But we had a little section in the house where you could. We put it in between almost two walls that were only a meter apart. And so when you came off, you could kind of hold yourself against the wall and you wouldn't come off too bad. But it definitely came off a fair amount of times on that. When you just lose a second of concentration, you definitely can easily come off them. But yeah, far out. It just teaches you very quickly how unevenly you're pedaling and then how to fix that. And to get into those habits early is really good.

Look, I've got to say, Jord, I actually fell off badly early on and I stupidly had a coffee table. It had a glass pointed end near where I was setting up on the roller. So, you know, word of advice, move everything away because I fell off. I was just trying to change the music on the TT bike in the TT position. I fell off the other way and landed straight on my ribs and broke my ribs. And I was on the ground trying to text Andy, my wife, to help me. But yeah, they are, you know, if they're not taken seriously, they are very dangerous thing to be doing.

Yeah. And look, I'll be honest, when you start on them, you. You'll be. There's no part of you that even think thinks you could possibly change the music. So you must have been pretty comfortable on them at that point to think you're changing music. Well, it takes a lot of concentration moving into some of the next things. And the first one we want to talk about is, okay, once you've got the fundamentals of training right, so, you know, training frequency, volume and intensity, which we spoke about in the last episode, we want to talk about training zone intensity. So. So we're making sure you're actually training really accurately to the zones prescribed in the session. And that means that when it's a zone two session, you know, how do you know that you can stay in those zones in intensity and how do you know that's accurate? And that comes from testing. And, and look, the only most advanced way to make sure you're training the absolute correct zones is to go to get, you know, VO2 max lactate testing, you know, measured in a lab that's going to give you your exact heart rate thresholds, your power thresholds or your pace thresholds to tell you what zones you're in and when and so that's the most efficient way, but you can also do it from field testing and slightly less efficient way and use all the data available that's on training peaks in terms of your own field testing, in terms of generic equations out there, and then applying it to your own RPE to figure out, you know, a reasonably accurate gauge of your kind of range of those zones. And then the more you stay in the right zone for your VO2 max reps, you know, and then your, your tempo reps, your sub threshold reps, your race ready reps, your zone two reps, that's going to be the fastest way to make sure you improve that every session. You're actually hitting the goal of what's prescribed.

Yeah, and we definitely want the previous podcast, the beginner Triathlete, to be doing exactly the same thing. So it's nothing new here, but the emphasis here is more on being really accountable to those zones, whereas as the beginner athlete, we're really trying to do a lot of other things as well at the same time. So there's information overload happening where you're trying to learn how to pedal properly, what's your cadence? And, and you know, and then we're sort of saying, oh, you know, your cadence is too high, too low, or your, your power is a little bit out or a little bit low, and it's, it's, you know, half the session in the five minute effort is, you know, 10 or 15 watts above it and then the other two or three minutes in that five minutes is, you know, 20 watts below. And you know that we're gradually teaching the athlete to, to get in those zones, whereas as a, as a intermediate or an elite age grouper, that should be given already, and now we're really trying to make sure that you are so across your numbers. So if we're giving you those maybe 4 by 30 minute race ready sessions or 5 by 5 minute threshold sessions that you are testing yourself all the time, depending on your freshness and your fatigue of the appropriate week of training that you're in and you're trying to find out what, where am I in those zones, Am I comfortable at the top of the range? Am I able to do that quite comfortably or easily? So should I be retesting myself because it's too easy, making sure that all this information, you're not wasting any sessions because you've got accurate training from the testing and you've been practicing in all those individual midweek sessions that might be three by eight minutes or four by 10 minutes. Or four by 30 minutes sessions where you're, you're really understanding for 30 minutes times four, can I hold 75% or 80% or 85%? And you get all that data. And so every time you do that session again, you're trying to replicate those numbers and what does it feel like? And learning the RPE from what does that power feel like? And then the next step is what does, you know, 85% of my power give me an average speed. And they're things that we want to talk about in the next sort of topic. But, but getting the zones right to start with and finding out where, where your tipping point is is going to be the key to, to actually getting you to, to improve as a triathlete and as a time trials, as a cyclist as well. You could, you could say the same for a marathon runner. It's just finding where, where your, where your current form is and where it was eight weeks ago. And, and that's a really good thing to look back on and, and see you've improved 6 or 7%. And then where do you think it's going to go if you're four weeks out from your race or you're 14 weeks out? You know, these are the things that is keeping you motivated. And people, this is a point that I want to get across. People say, oh, you know, it's hard to get motivated for these sessions. I just can't disagree more. There's so much going on that I should be looking at to make sure that I'm getting the best out of this week. You know, what are the numbers I did in the last three or four weeks in these sessions? Am I able to match that or am I too tired from training and do I need a recovery week? You know, understanding your current form and knowing where you've been is the thing that's going to keep, keep you in. You know, there's nothing better than finishing a session where last week you did, you know, three by ten minute efforts at 270 watts and this week you're able to do it at 274, 275, 277. You get off going far out. I'm so wrapped with that. It's almost like a release of dopamine just on you knowing what you did last week compared to what you did this week. They're the things that you should be motivated for. What can I do today? If you know that before you start you're not actually feeling that good, well, what can I do? Not feeling that good can I match 270 watts as the example I just used. Or do I have to ride at 265 and you can get off that bike going, I felt crap. But I was still able to do within 5 watts of what I did last week, even though I felt terrible and last week I felt fantastic. So I'm really happy with that. So you're getting all this information and that's the motivation that you should be thinking about on your journey each week, each session whilst you're heading towards your race.

Yep. I couldn't. Yeah, I love that summary and I think the key word that you use or phrase there was find your tipping point. And I think that's probably the, the difference between a beginner program and intermediate is a beginner that you're just trying to get fit enough for potentially the race. It's, you know, you're at that level where you're just trying to, you know, really build yourself up to be able to get through a race or get through it comfortably. And it can be hard to step up to this level of, you know, in a race ready phase, really doing some big race ready sessions if you give yourself enough time. Any beginner can do this for sure. But we always talk about how often people are surprised at the level of volume and intensity we do for an athlete leading into the race. You know, they, they do half marathons two weeks out from, from a 70.3, you know, they do 32 kilometer, you know, kind of race ready time trials and ready for a marathon, they do 90 kilometer time trials and that can be, yeah, surprising for a lot of people. But we are trying to find that tipping point of, of what's the max they can hold and get that data. And that's the really advanced level of, of what you're trying to do in training. And so leading on from that we start to look at data analysis and the topic of how do you become an expert at your own data? And it can seem complicated from an external point of view, but really when you break it down, there's a few key things that we're looking for. And to start with, it's, we're trying to figure out what's the most efficient way to get you from A to B faster. How much can we improve? Your average speed is what we're after. But that's the output, that's the result at the end. So what's the input that we focus on to get there?

Yeah, and certainly I have a lot of conversations with athletes who have just done a race Ready session. I have to talk about specific stuff here because that's going to be more relevant to the people listening when they're getting to their lining up for their A race. And the conversation is, you know, they know what they did last week and maybe we did three by one hour and they could hold 180 watts. And this week it felt different to hold 180 watts. I felt better. I didn't want to push it too much, but 180 felt so much easier this week. And I got my nutrition right. I felt like I wasn't fading like I was last week. And then next week I think I'm going to try and, you know, see if I can do 183, 185. And they're conversations that I love having with athletes who are informed. And then, you know, the data analysis is, they're already doing that and they're understanding. So come race day, you know, when they do their race plan, they've already got this information from all those sessions they've done and it's just a transfer that training stuff into the race plan. And, and I'm saying, you know, right from the outset, you know, how do we get, how do we get that, that average speed that you're after? And you know, guys have got a power number that they want to ride to. They want to, they want to then see how fast they can go and what the time is for their 90k or for their 180k. And you know, I never kind of push that because I'm, I'm really not about, you know, I want to do, you know, four hours 55. I'm more about how am I going to do four hours 55. What things should I be looking at to allow me to do that time? And a lot of the athletes we're coaching are so focused on the time rather than, you know, how do you get it, how do you get that average speed or that time? And as you said, it's it. That's the result. And now we're trying to find out what, you know, what power equals that average speed. So if you want to average 40Ks an hour in an Ironman or 36 or 30Ks an hour, and as an intermediate, that's the range we're talking about, you know, 35Ks an hour to 42. As a elite advanced age grouper, how do you know, how do I find out what my power number is for that speed? And that's where the training comes in and that's why it's Important to do those race ready sessions where you're not just doing a 30 minute effort in one direction, you're doing 15 minutes out and 15 minutes back. Why? Because you're going to experience headwind or tailwind or undulations and if you just do it in one direction you're not going to get the evenness of that session. Whatever you do out, you do back and therefore at the end of that out and back, you've got average power, normalized power, average speed, and straight away you could tell me that 180 watts, the example we're using so far, equals 35ks an hour and therefore you can then transfer what does 35ks an hour equal in a 90k time trial or 180k time trial in a race and straight away then you've got your output time. So all of that information is really great. But if you don't do those sessions where you're doing it out and back, then you're not getting the average speed. And the average speed is determining basically the result that we're trying to do. So knowing what power equals speed is key. And if for some reason your power meter isn't functioning correctly on the day and this has happened many times, it just happened on the weekend at the Cairns Half Ironman and, and athletes have their bikes in the rack while the swims on, the temperature of the day goes from 14 degrees to 24 degrees while your bike's sitting there. The power meter has, you know, it's a metal piece of equipment so it's going to expand so it could be out 5%. So if you're on top of 180 watts equals 35ks an hour and you're out on the course in the first five or ten minutes and you're finding it excruciatingly hard to do 180 watts, you, you have to straight away look at what, what speed am I doing? And you know, unless you're in a block headwind or going up a hill, if you're on a flat section of road where, where there is an opportunity to do out and back in the race and many races have that, you can find out does 180 watts equal 35ks an hour? Because that's what it does in training and if you find that you're doing, you know, 180 watts and it's equal to 37 or 38Ks an hour, that's what you should be looking at to say hang on a minute, no wonder it feels hard. My power Meter is reading low, so the average speed is giving you that information. The RPE is alarming you because your legs are screaming at you, saying, this is really hard to do 180 yet you've trained at 180 watts for months and it hasn't been like that. So the RPE is an alarm bell to force you to find out what your average speed is against the power you're doing. And I know that you might have to re listen to that, but I know it's a lot of information. But if you're not feeling that good, you should be feeling great. Your legs are tapered, you've had a really easy build to the last two weeks, so you shouldn't have legs that are really finding it hard to push that power. So it's an alarm bell straight away. And that's what the data analysis is thinking on your feet in race day. It's going to save your race because if you keep riding at that power, you're going to blow up and you're going to actually have the worst run you can possibly have. So you need to really concentrate on why my legs feeling like this or the opposite could be happening. This feels so easy. 180. 180 watts feels so easy, it's not even hurting me. My heart rate's really low. Go and look at your average speed. And if your average speed for 180 is 33 instead of 36, then you know that the power meter's reading too low. So it's the opposite. You've got to, you've got to push up to make the power meter read 195 watts to get 36Ks an hour. So they're things that you should be thinking about when you're actually training. You need to understand. That's why we're getting your A, to be in the training zones B, to practice the data in those sessions and find out where your numbers are, find out what your average speed is, what does it feel like in rpe, and then you've got all this information come race day. Is my heart rate threshold at 75% for 180 watts or is it 80%? You should know that heart rate number that you've been training in. And the only problem with heart rate is if you've been training in Melbourne, you go to Cairns. And for those of you who don't know geographically, Melbourne is a cooler climate in Cairns has got huge humidity with high temperatures. So you could have a heart rate in Melbourne, 480 watts. That is literally 20 watts above in Cairns for the same power output. So that, that could be a problem. So that's why RPE and power and speed are better for races that are in extreme climate conditions. But if you're on a race day where it's normal to where you've been training, then heart rate's really good. It can, it can be really helpful.

It's a brilliant four things to focus on to say, okay, what's my average speed here? That's kind of the result that's going to happen. Okay, and how did I get that average speed? That's the power output. And then what's my heart rate doing in relation to what I know I can do in training? And then what's my rpe? And if you keep asking that over and over, you're going to execute properly and get a good result. And on the power note, it's, you know, looking at is your average power what you were aiming for? But then it's how did you get that average power? Because if you were aiming for 180, that's, that's your goal. Average power for the event for 90 kilometers. Did you average that by riding between 170 and 190 for the course, or did you average that by averaging between 140 and 220 for the course? So if you average 180 by jumping between 140 watts and 220 watts, it's going to be a different kind of average speed to when you're just staying in that range and you're going to run differently. So it's not just about the power output, but it's about how did you get that power? What was your power distribution? And so that's just that next level of analysis that people can get to an advice and say, oh, I stuck to my range perfectly. But when we look at the data closely, we go, well, you wrote really unevenly. And that was just a slower array and a harder way to write.

Yeah, it's one of those sticking points for me that I get kind of wound up about. Someone will say to me, but I wrote 180. Like we talked. And then when we look at the power distribution or we look at the time spent in power zones, you know, you got 180, that's one thing tick. But, but you spent 55 minutes out of your three hours at 205 to 220. You spent 40 minutes at 0 watts to 112. You know, there's 90 minutes out of your three hours where you were completely out of the zone. And why does that matter? You still end up with 180 watts, which is the goal. Well, it does matter because you're spending a whole lot of time burning matches. Because if you're riding outside your zone too high, you're actually increasing your heart rate, burning fuel quicker, increasing your lactate, and that's going to have a contributing flow on for the rest of your ride. And there'll be periods where you have to actually stop pedaling or ride way lower than you want to out of the range, and that's going to end up giving you a slower average speed. So riding too hard, which means you have to ride too soft, gives you a slower average speed than riding in the ranges. And we've done plenty of examples of showing that to be a factor. So disregarding that component of staying in the range, getting the average power right in the range, and not saying, Yes, I did 180 watts, but I spent 30% in zone one, 30% in zone two, 30% in zone three, they're the things that are going to make you slower, not faster. You know, you want to have all of your. I'm talking about Ironman 480k there. And for 90k, you would have, you know, zero time for any race, whether it's 180k or 20k, zero time in zone one. And people just go, how's that possible? Well, when I say zero, I mean less than five minutes. In some of the courses you have a lot of turns, so that would accumulate every time you turn, every 10 seconds that you lose turning. That could accumulate up to five minutes if there's 30 or 40 turns. But if you're on a straight course, we've only got one turn out and one turn back. You know, it should be less than three minutes in zone one, you know, zero power to 90 power. So all of the time you spend, if you're spending 30% in zone one and 20% in zone four, it's just going to be a slower way to ride. And we have so many riders. And on the weekend, race analysis from Cairns, you know, a lot of our guys were saying it was infuriating for guys to fly past them up the hills. They were burning huge matches. They were just absolutely hammering it every time they came to a hill. And when they got to the top of the hill, they basically stopped pedaling. And our guys were just evenly riding up the hill, keeping the pressure on the pedals over the crest of the hill and then keeping the pressure on the pedals evenly on the downhill, catching those guys, passing them and putting time into them. And then the next hill and those guys have come screaming past again. And this goes on for five, six hills. But eventually over 180k, those guys disappear because they've burnt so many matches. They're exhausted themselves by riding too hard on the sections where they should be in control and riding in the zones. And you know, they get off and they can't run. And the question is why? Why can I do my pace as a runner in training if I'm running 10k off the bike or 15k off the bike, or 20k off the bike yet come race day, I can't do it. It's because you're riding, you know, burning matches, style of riding, above the zones, below the zones, over under, that will burn matches to prevent you from running properly. And that's the next level we're talking about here. That's what the intermediate and advanced athletes should be thinking about. And we have so many examples, I think of Michael Linderbach who raced at Taupo in New Zealand, just nailed his zone, stayed in the zones, had nothing in zone. For his 180k, he rode 4 hours, 45 minutes and you know, 40ks an hour plus for, for that race at Tao Pound. It's not a fast course. Nothing in zone one and nothing in zone four. Everything in the right zone just stayed in his ranges. And you know, that's an example of someone who's really understanding the concept and get gone off and run a 305 marathon, 3 hour, 5 marathon, 3 or 4 marathon. And you know, was, was just ecstatic, you know, because he, he executed properly and, and the opposite will happen if you do the opposite of what I'm talking about.

If you can do that on a course like Tao Pol, any kind of hilly course, undulating course, then you really get this and you're, you're doing it properly because it's the hardest one to do and to have that really, that power distribution that's majority in the right zone. And so this really leads into the next topic and it's, it's kind of a crossover, but it's execution. We talk about execution so much and we'll continue to beat the drum that it's underrated. But obviously there's the, you know, how evenly can you execute, you know, how can you not go out too hard early, avoid blowing up. We speak about negative splitting a lot, or in the case of power, positive splitting. You want the second half to be higher power in the first half. But we also just want to think about. One thing I like to think about is if you had live lactate testing in the race, what would your lactate data look like? And in that example, you just use, you know, for a lot of people that are gassing it up the hill, their lactate levels are just skyrocketing for those periods. And then they're having to try and recover for the next period, which is what's gassing them. And we talk about Jakob Inkerbritzen a lot in athletics, but he basically trains this way and it's important to think about in terms of training. And then that applies to racing. But he trains this way where he just refuses to let his lactate go above that uncomfortable level. He really just sits right on the limit and trains that way. And then obviously there's this section where he pushes over. That's VO2 max training, but that's how he races. And he just won the 1500 meter world champs over the weekend. And he went once again, Euro champs. Euro champs, sorry, not world champs. Thank you. Yeah, Euro champs. He went to the back of the pack in the first 150 meters straight away. He does this every single time. And sometimes it's a diamond league, sometimes it's in a championship race. But majority of the time he spends the first 300 meters not pushing his lactate too much, not doing a 24 second, 25 second first 200, and putting his body under immediate pressure because he knows how important that is. And he takes the first 400, 500, 600 meters to get himself to the front. He's the quickest runner. He's going to get to the front at some point, he's going to pass everyone. But everyone puts themselves under pressure straight away. He doesn't. And if you looked at his live lactate data, it would be very controlled. And then he just holds it there right to the end until he really kicks in a piece. 52 or 54 second, last 400, which he manages to do at the end of a 1500 or a 5 can. It's because of his execution. And so for yourself you want to think about in training, can I practice this? Can I practice even execution? Can I practice in my first rep not pushing? If my goal for the 5 minute rep or the 3 minute rep is 250 watts, not pushing 320 watts for the first 30 seconds and then settling back in every rep, executing evenly and getting stronger as the session goes. And this is the more advanced stuff you can start to do in training. To get the most out of race day. And one other thing is, can you make your first kilometer of the run your slowest K? You know, this is just what we say over and over again to our athletes. It's crazy how impossible this seems and how often it is not. It should absolutely be the slowest to start with just as you build into the run. And that's just a golden rule we have. And if you look at your data and you don't see it as the first K, then you haven't executed it as well as you possibly could, in our opinion.

Yeah, there's so much you can hone in on execution as a swimmer, as a bike rider and as a runner. And it's trying to limit that buildup of lactate. That's actually the principal thing. And so we're trying not to spike power, we're trying not to spike heart rate. And how do we prevent ourselves from doing that? It's just going above our threshold levels. And if you don't actually know what your threshold levels are and just going by feeling, you're going to be caught out, you're going to be sadly disappointed about your outcome. Because unless you are unbelievably in tune with your body and even people who are, they'd be shocked at. I feel like I'm riding or running at 5 minute K pace and I uncover my watch and it says I'm running 440. But it didn't feel like that. And I get that response to me all the time. I just didn't feel like five minutes. Felt like, you know, felt like it was 5:20 and you're actually running 440 pace. And so these are things you really have to practice in training. What does that feel like? What, what does 200 watts on a bike rider feel like? What does 5 minute k pace? What does 4 minute k pace? These are all things that, that are key to, to understanding on race day. You know, what is going on with the body and getting these things right is going to give you the best opportunity to race well. And the example you gave of Inga Britzen is brilliant.

One other thing I noticed at the Euro Champs, which is really interesting, was in the female 800 races in the heats because it was a championship style racing and they were racing for places to qualify for the final. It was a lot more conservative in the first 200 than what you see often in Diamond League where they're trying to run really fast times. And I was noticing that majority of the field were running season Bests or pbs. And a lot would get, were dipping under two minutes in these heats and semifinals. They were running really brilliant last, last laps and last 200 meters. A lot of them had incredible strength in the last 200 to come home flying. And they've got this speed, they've got this talent, but a lot of them, I feel like across all, all distances, whether it's 800 through to 5 or 10k, are burning themselves early and unable to kick as strong as they would like or as the talent they have because they're, they're really under pressure. And to see, you know, in diamond leagues, you often see the strongest ones, the, the Keely Hodgkinsons who can run 155, 154, when it's a, when it's a blistering first lap and they go through in 55, you know, she can hold on for 60 seconds and run at 155, but the majority of the rest of the field can't. They're not strong enough, you know, and so a lot of them end up blowing up and running 159 to 203 or whatever. This is big generalizations, but we do notice these patterns across and yeah, I just noticed that Euros, the Euro champs, that, yeah, when the pace is slow at the start, suddenly eight or nine athletes were running under two minutes and finishing really strong. And there's other factors there that they're, they're starting to peak for the Olympics and they're starting to come into really good form for a championship event. But yeah, you definitely do notice that a lot of the fields right there at the end, because they go through in 56, 57 instead, and then they can actually hold on to a 60 rather than a 62 or 63 second last lap.

I think it's a great point you made. And you know, I don't care what people say, executing well across the whole distance is what you're trying to do. And that is a classic example of athletes who are actually in a championship race being, you know, the motivation is I have to qualify for the final, so I've got to give my best effort. So that's huge motivation, but I'm not going to blow it by going out too hard. And in a lot of those diamond leagues because I got a pacemaker, the pacemaker setting a challenge for the best runner. And people forget that there's, you know, possibly 12 or 15 runners in, in the 1500 meter or the 5K or the 800, but they've set, set the pace for one runner or two runners who can run that pace and the rest of the field are trying to keep up and, and they're blowing up and they never improve. In these Diamond League races where there's a pacemaker, I'm talking about the mid to back of the pack runners. Sarah, who did a huge PB by 6, 7 seconds, she did not try to run with the pacemaker. She sat back and ran her own pace and came through the field and ended up with a massive pb. And that's another example of, you know, if she had done the opposite and tried to run with the pacemaker, you know, she would keep running the same times. And I think, you know, as a triathlete, and you're going to be out there for, for, you know, anything from two hours to 15 hours, depending on what event you're in. You can't afford to be doing the event with lactate building. You want to have it as minimal as possible. And that's why world champions and Olympic champions like Inger Briggson refuse to run at a pace that's going to cause that to happen. You know, and he's not doing it to be smart to run at the back of the field. It looks like he is, but he's actually doing it to keep his lactate levels in check.

So the next question we ask, okay, so if executing the right pace is so important, do you know how to pick the right range or pace to swim right or run to? And this stems from all the training that we've spoken about. But it's always an interesting question. Race week, when we say to an athlete, you know, what do you think? What's your plan? And some athletes will come back with a plan that's bang on, you know, based on good data and being able to analyze their own data. And some athletes will give us a range and we'll say, well, this is a problem because you cannot swim in this range, you cannot ride in this range, or you cannot run in this range. Where are you getting this from? And if we're not having that conversation, they would have gone into the race with a completely skewed number. You don't know where they got it from or why they came to that conclusion. And often that's a conversation. But if you go in with the wrong plan and you've picked a number that's probably not possible for you based on some sort of mistake in your own analysis, then that's a big problem for race day. So that's a really, really important part to get right.

Yeah, you definitely want to have a strategy and it's okay to have an ambitious one, but if you've not done any of that in any training session, then that, that can be undoing being too ambitious. And you know, this is what I want to do. That's a question that you and I get a lot. That's not a question, it's a statement that you and I get a lot in the race ready planning stage is this is what I want to do. And we have to come back to them saying, show me where you've done that in training. And they say, no, no, I haven't done any training, but this is what I want to do. And so it's almost a rhetorical question. Well, you can't do it on race day because you haven't done it in training. So don't think that remarkably you're going to improve 10% on race day. I mean, that would be a brilliant thing to happen because you tape it and you've trained well, but you wanting to replicate what your best performances are in training and then try to add a little percentage on race day. So it's a really important question that that execution has to have a good plan strategy. It's hard to execute with a poor plan and, and if we didn't have those conversations, then the outcome result is going to be the same. A poor result.

Last couple of points to finish off with. You mentioned, you know, training specifically in the position that you're going to be in for the majority of time in the race. That's a really key one. Can you actually sustain that position on race day and have you trained it for a long period of time? And that's why these, these, these long time trials, these. Doing a 90k time trial is really important. Doing a half marathon in your race shoes is important to know that your feet can actually handle it. One other aspect of that is thinking about the elevation of the day on the bike and run. You know, can you actually have you trained the amount of elevation for race day? Because if you don't do it in practice on the bike, you're going to have a much tougher time trying to hold the same average power and you'll get off the bike and you won't be able to run. So that'll be a big shock to you. So just something really big we wanted to point out there, and the last kind of couple of points are how do you avoid as many mistakes as possible in training? So how do you avoid doing the things that are Basically going to interrupt your consistency and the base foundations. And that can be training too hard in one session at the cost of the rest of the week. That can be trying to train through sickness or injury, which we get a lot from athletes. And, you know, we, you know, they'll call us and say, I didn't feel good on the weekend, but I still did my four hours. And then they get, they end up sick on Monday or Tuesday. And it's, it's little mistakes like that that can just cost you a week of training. That it's super frustrating, you know, deciding one day to do a session with some friends and go a fair way over what you plan to do. And maybe you were supposed to do a shorter jog and you ended up adding 5 or 6ks on the job because you were running with friends, you know, that's really risky for yourself. And if you end up injured from that, again, it's super frustrating. And so just doing anything out of the ordinary, that's going to be a potential mistake. That's this fine line of, you don't want to be a robot to training, but if you're going to make decisions that change the training, how do you eliminate the risk of mistakes that could cost you? And that's a really advanced kind of level of training thought to give you the best chance of continuing to improve at the best rate.

And I think it's a really good point and having a good relationship with your coach, where the coach will look at the session you've just done and ask the question, what was that about? Because it was nothing to do with what we'd planned. And the answer might be, I hope you don't mind. I just wanted to do that with some friends today. It was longer and harder than we wanted to. And our answer will be, oh, that's okay, that's not too bad a deal. But we have to change tomorrow and we have to change the next day. And if we don't do that, then it becomes a big deal because if we just resume the program and it's no different to being sick or injured, training too hard or being sick or injured, you have to adjust the program so that, you know, being sick for three days, you need to do some easy sort of training for three days, being injured, you just don't resume the power that you're riding at or the running pace or the swimming that you've been doing. You've got to, you know, adjust your form down, otherwise you'll fail every session. If you've been out for a period of time. So. So these are really key things you can easily make mistakes on. And you and I have done them all. We've done all those things. And so I apologize for my voice. I actually have Covid at the moment, so I've not trained for eight or nine days. And it's killing me, not training. It's not killing me, Covid, but it's killing me to be not training. And I've just got to take my own advice and let the virus do its thing, and eventually I'll be able to do some easier training where I'm just riding zone two. And that's the best way to approach it. And you have to suck it up a bit. But you're not going to lose all your fitness. You've got years and years of good fitness in the bank. So just lean on that and know that a couple of weeks down the track, you'll be back in great form.

The last point to make is that we believe that unbiased, the fastest way to improve is to get objective analysis and data. And no one can know your own plan more objectively than a coach. And so also often we see athletes and we do this ourselves. Dad. This is why we coach each other, because we can kind of flounder in our own subjective point of view of what our training is doing. And then suddenly, when you have just an objective voice of reason, it just gives you complete clarity on what you need to do. And so that's a really, really fast way to improve. And if you want to coach, you can. You enjoy our coaching process. You can go to trivelocoaching.com and apply to get coached there and we'll have a conversation. So that's it for this episode. Another big one. We hope you really enjoyed it. We hope you enjoyed both episodes in this series and we hope you can take a lot from it, from your own training. Apart from that, we'll see you in the next episode. Thanks, as always for listening and we just wanted to finish this particular episode back where we started with the gratitude, with a little bit of a tribute to our gran, your mum, Cecilia and Donnelly. This is our touching tribute to reflect on her life. Cheers.

Hold your hand up high and don't be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm.

There's.

A golden sky and the sweet silver sound of love. Walk on through the wind Walk on through the rain for your dreams be time I'm blown. Woke up, woke up with hope.

In.

Your heart and you never. You alone, You never. Alone.