Fix These Marathon & Ironman Mistakes

Welcome back to Another Case study. This is an absolutely terrific story today. We're really stoked to be back with these case study episodes because we love them. And this is a story of Lucas who called us up and came to us after having a bit of a traumatic experience last year where two major things went wrong. He was aiming for a marathon, he was aiming for a sub 4 hour marathon and he ended up dnfing. He ended up hitting the absolute wall at the 30 32k mark with full body cramp, a big blow up and a really disappointing experience. And secondly, he was aiming for a half marathon as well and just was following a program online and got injured in the build up. And so he kind of came to us honestly a little bit hesitant about whether the running program could help because he just didn't have confidence in his ability to train towards a marathon. I didn't have confidence in his body either to get through his half marathon and marathon. He really just wanted to get the good experience, but he really didn't want to get injured. And so this is a really great case study because it's not just about the marathon, it's not just about running. The lessons here are about a fueling properly for your race no matter what distance and how fit you are, how important fueling is and getting that right and especially in anything over two hours race execution and strategy of a marathon or an ironman. And this applies to any single race and how important that is. Training and racing in heat and humidity. He lives in the northern states of Australia where humidity is insanely high and very tough conditions to train in. Training on a shift worker schedule. So he is a firefighter and in Australia they work on an eight day cycle and it's four days on, four days off and four days on are two day shifts, then two night shifts, then four days off. It really messes with you, that kind of eight day schedule. And then it really becomes hard to fit training in because on the two night shifts it's becomes difficult to fit in the training the next day because you're often just sleeping to try and recover. And then your morning is a bit thrown off. Then the day after that second night shift you're often very groggy. And then his four days off isn't actually four days off. He has a second job where he's working all day outside again in the heat. And so managing that schedule is really quite tough. And honestly it's just a lesson in how do you get to the start line totally confident in your prep and not guessing whether you're going to make it or not, which is the experience you wanted to avoid a second time around. So, dad, it was an interesting phone call you received. You know, kind of a little bit hesitant about, can I do this?

Yeah. And as we say, a lot, isn't it getting to the start line just sounds so easy. Oh, yeah, I'll enter that race and I'll do that event. And, you know, A, he did get to the start line and had a shocking experience, and the second time, he didn't even get to the start line. So that in itself is difficult. And, you know, every listener out there has had that same experience. They've targeted a race, and for some reason, whether it's, you know, physical or injury or sickness or whatever the reason, you just don't quite get there. And that's. It's really frustrating. And then all the things that you've explained to the listeners out there about what are the goalposts move or all the time the goal posts seem to move. You think you're traveling along with all these expectations of training, and all of a sudden something happens with your job or with not getting a good night's sleep. And there's all these variations that you have to account for in that preparation. So a lot has to go right, A, to get to the start line and B, to stay consistent. And this is another example of know he tried his best on his own without any help to prepare as best as he could. And obviously he's looking up information and listening to various podcasts around the world and trying to get the right. The right strategies about how to go about it. But at the end of the day, you know, this is a great lesson in having someone on that journey with you who can actually guide you in the really key aspects of the preparation, not only the training sessions, but your race plan, and then talking through that strategy so that you don't make any mistakes with the pacing and also understanding in your training sessions that you're practicing the fueling so that when it comes race day, you just replicate what you've done in those conditions for those distances at that intensity.

So this actually isn't a running program case study. This is actually a triathlon training program because he said that the goal is he wants to do his first triathlon this year. He wants to do a sprint, tick off a sprint first and then get to an Olympic and do that really well. So he wanted to do triathlon training, but he had two really clear goals and that he wanted to run A good half marathon. And he wanted to complete the marathon and get over this bogey and finish it and break four hours. And so it was really a. He wanted to run well and use triathlon training as cross training and then back into the year, prepare for an Olympic triathlon. And so at the start, everything was brand new. Didn't have a power meter, didn't know how to train properly on the bike. Had never done any swim training before. Completely brand new at swimming. Obviously had some running experience. That was a great starting point. But yeah, the entire start of the journey was filled with lots of beginner questions because everything was new. You do have to go through every single step with an athlete and teach them how to structure a swimming training program and what to focus on in the pool and how to set up the bike on an indoor trainer and how to ride indoor versus outdoor in terms of training sessions and how to actually train to power, that's the most important part. And when you've never done that before, it's a whole new learning curve. And it's doing all that and trying to learn all that on top of getting started and then building the running on top of it. For anyone that's overwhelmed by that starting process, how do you approach that?

Yeah, and I think it's all very well to say, you know, I can learn to train to power, but the intricacies, if you dig, dig deep, there's, it's such a throwaway line. I've got a power meter. I'm going to train to power. Well, do you really understand what that, that actually means? You know, I've had so many conversations over the years when I say to an athlete, you know, when we are trying to learn how to execute on race day, if you haven't practiced that in your sessions, and that's how you learn to train to power is practicing the execution, whether you're doing, you know, I keep using the same examples all the time, which, the easy, straightforward thing is, you know, if you do 5 by 5 minute efforts at threshold, if your range is 200 to 220 and, and you can't stay in that range for those five minutes, for those five efforts, then you're, you've got a power meter and you're training with power, but you're not training to power. You've actually got the equipment, but you're actually not implementing it the way it's meant to be. So you've got to understand what you do, how much pressure you impart on the pedals to stay in that range. And the minute you're riding at 195 or at 225, you're now outside the range and you're in control of how much pressure you apply to the pedals. And if you find that you can't manage the 200 watt range and you're spending the whole time at 195 or 190, there's something wrong with your testing. So all those things, that's the intricacies of training to power. And if you're not practicing execution in those sessions and that execution, by that I mean staying in the range and over those five efforts, if you do the first one at 200 and the next one at 199, then you do the next 195, then you do the next one at 225, then you do the next one@ 215, you're all over the shop. You're not executing with consistency. We want to start at a number we think we can do the whole five efforts at. And if we can do that, that's the first week. And then you look back and go, okay, I managed that at all. All of them are at 200, the bottom of the range. And then the next week you try to ride at 202 or 204 and you get confidence from what you've done last week. And if last week was all you could manage and you can only manage the same this week, that, that's fine as well. But that's what executing is, learning to manage the effort across the 5 minute efforts. So when it comes to writing a 40k time trial or running a marathon, or running a half marathon, you understand how to measure your effort from start to finish. And obviously you feel fresh at the start of any training session compared to what you feel in the middle of the training session compared to what you feel at the end. And the same in a race, you're fresh at the start because you tapered and you know there's no load or fatigue being built up or heat. And so these are things that you need to practice in training. And this is the key thing that, that straight away we try to implement into our athletes. You know, as long as, as long as you're executing straight away, that's, that's the goal. So that when it comes to race day, it becomes automatic.

And the beauty is once you start to learn how to execute on the bike like that, it's, it carries over to the other disciplines, it carries over to swimming and running, and you start learning how that applies universally you know, and it's what you learn on the bike is really dials in what you can do running wise. And that was really important for him, to be honest. So it was an interesting mix of a triathlon program, but heavier on the running because of the half marathon and marathon goals. And there was a really good and interesting conversation around what's your A race? Because he said to us, you know, you guys talk a lot about your A race. And I feel like I've got three different races this year. What? And you know, they're all kind of different distances and two are running and one's triathlon. How do I set this season up? And that was a really important conversation to have because you need to understand what the goal of the training block is. If we're prescribing the training, we need to figure out how we're working towards it. And so we really made it clear that, okay, the first main goal is the half marathon, that's the first one on the calendar. Then the second main goal is the marathon and then the triathlons at the back end of the year. So the way the races are laid out in the calendar year shows us how we can kind of prescribe the training. And that, that led us to say, okay, we're going to continuously build our triathlon training and build that base up. But as we get closer to the half marathon, then the race ready sessions start to kind of take over and become a priority for that half marathon. And if we need, which doesn't happen often, if we need to sacrifice a high intensity bike or a swim, that will happen to include the race ready or really key running sessions. And then we went back to triathlon training again. And then as it got close to the marathon and each week as well, it was really important to include a key marathon session to make sure in the background you're doing the work that's required for marathon 12 weeks out because you can't just start that work six weeks out. And then as you get close to the marathon, the marathon kind of style training takes over. And then now he's a couple months out from the triathlon, he's finished the marathon. Now I can really use that fitness, that insane fitness he's gained from the marathon and running to really focus, focus on the bike and swimming. So that's kind of how the year lays out. And it's, it's interesting for people to think about because it is a fine line between knowing how that works but then not aiming for too many goals at once.

It's a tough one, isn't it? And we get a lot of athletes who've got, they just love, they just love competing and they want to enter as many races as they can and we're okay with that. But a lot of the time if you, if you spread yourself across too many events, you're going to be average at all of them. You'll do well on an average level. And that's why we try to head towards A races and B races and C races because, you know, you want to have a really breakout experience in one of those events rather than. And look, that's my view, but there's lots of athletes out there who don't care about having the breakout experience. They're just happy to be in all these events. And that's okay. We'll deal with that. And you've got to understand though, as an athlete that you're not going to be as good a runner as you possibly could have because you're doing a lot more other sessions that are taking away from that specific running improvement. You're still getting sessions that are contributing to your overall fitness, no doubt about it, and in some cases in a really positive way. Because you know you can't run every day. If you're a person who's just new to running, your body won't cope with a load. So you should be doing some cross training anyway before you can get your body to cope with the load. So throwing in some bike sessions and some swims is really good in between the important running sessions. And as we've known, when people are injured as a runner, if we give them high intensity bike sessions, they don't lose much as runners because they're still doing the hard, cardiovascular, high intensity session. It might not be impacting their running legs, but it's certainly helping their cardiovascular breathing, blood flow, cardiac output, all those things are still flying around the body and enabling them to continue to improve their fitness. So it's really good to know that they all help each other in some way. But you need to be specific to get the better result if that's what you're after. But if you're okay with generally improving across a lot of different events, that's okay too. But you have to understand you won't be the best version of yourself for that event.

I reckon one of the points you loved about this whole journey was you just said it's remarkable to see his improvement when it's in the half marathon. Marathon when it's not a purely running program. You know, we Did a case study a couple of months ago of a guy who got a 15 minute PB and he was also trying to break four hours in event identical a year later. And that was a purely running program, but which is great. And you can expect good improvement when you're doing that. But you just love the fact that exactly what you're saying, you can get this running improvement. Not on a running program, on a triathlon program. And you actually went on a podcast last year, you were a guest on another podcast. That's one of my favorite things. You said you got asked what could. It was a running podcast and you got asked what could runners learn from triathletes. And you said that you still think that athletes are really underestimating how much cycling can help running and how much running can help cycling. And so for runners, cross training on the bike could be such a beneficial thing that you think runners aren't tapping into because they're doing so many Ks in their legs. The bane of runners existence is they're constantly flirting with the injury line. And we just see it so much where, look, you have to do the K's and the legs to make sure that you are capable of running the distance. But, and yes, the efficiency is different. You know, like you just said then, doing the high intensity session on the bike might not give you the running legs, but it's going to give you the fitness and vice versa. And that pattern is just so valuable for age groupers.

Yeah, and we've just got too many examples of, of where that's, that's been so true and, and it's only forced on you when you've got an injury. Whereas we're trying to say that, you know, it can be of value to you if, mix it into your program as you know, especially if you're, if you've got in your mind that down the track you wanted to be a triathlete, but you're really keen to improve your running and bike riding. It's still good to do one swim each week so that, you know, if you do end up wanting to be a swimmer, you've already got some sort of feel for swimming. And also it gets you off your legs. But still, how many people are huffing and puffing when they're swimming? You know, it is a cardiovascular stimulus because we're so inefficient as swimmers that, you know, our technique causes us to just be, you know, swimming at our limit cardiovascular wise because we just can't cope. So they all complement each other and you Know, as I said, there's just too many examples to say that it's not.

So the next big challenge was how do you fit a training program into an eight day cycle? Because you know, most people get their endurance in on weekends because that's when you have the most time. But you know, in an eight day cycle, where do you have the time with your two nights and your two days and your four other days where you're working, how do you have the time to fit an endurance session in anywhere there especially he's got a wife and two young kids. Yeah, it's where can you fit that volume in? And so that's a really key question. And you look at during the week or where's the best gap? You know, for example, in an eight day cycle, you know, from the last day shift to the next night shift, that's where the biggest gap is. It's you can go to bed that night and wake up and you've got a full day before. Again, he's working, but you've got a full day technically before night shift. And a lot of people that do these eight day cycles will have that day off. And that's a great day for endurance. But each week you're looking at, okay, where does that endurance fit in? Where do you have time to fit in the high intensity sessions? Where can you fit some easy sessions in and what works best with how tired you are? Because you have very different levels of fatigue based on sleep patterns throughout the whole week. It's definitely not new. We have a lot of people on this similar cycle, but everyone is slightly different in how they approach that eight days.

Yeah, you're so right. You took the words out of my mouth. We just have so many athletes who it's not a normal day to day program. And that's where the value of having someone to discuss that with as a coach does and is really flexible to be able to move things because the sleep patterns are the main thing. Got Roland, who's an emergency doctor at a hospital and you know, he could be working five straight nights and then the next week he's working five straight days. And so, you know, how is he getting enough sleep and enough time to train properly? And we just can't throw the normal training. We've got to allow for that sleep. And as we know, sleep's all about recovery and if you don't get enough of it, how are you going to perform the next day and then go to work, you know, at a, at a highly technical job as an ed doctor so, you know, it's really important that you get that right. And I think that's a battle for people to do on their own. And we've had such good experience with, you know, successful athletes who've got all these really mixed work schedules. And that's the beauty of making sure that you get the right session in that program each week with the right appropriate recovery that allows not only for physical recovery from the session but, but from your sleep. And I think that's hard to do by yourself.

Oh yeah, and props to him throughout the program. There were some days where I kind of thought, I don't know if he's going to be able to handle this based on what's happening with work and just his schedule. And he wouldn't miss a session. How grueling it was, how exhausted he was. He really pushed through and did really well. So I was super impressed with that for his whole program. But let's get to the fun stuff which everyone always wants to know. What were the results? So the bike, his 20 minute wattage from 20 minute FTP test went from 175 watts to 250 so far. And that's only got even more to go as he gets more of his cycling legs. That's a 75 watt improvement since January. So that's eight months worth. Yep.

Don't gloss over that, Jordan. That's, that's just incredible. It's just monstrous. You know, and obviously his base was low and we have to make that clear to everybody who's listening. You know, if you start low you've got more room to move but that's a long way to move in such a short space of time. When you're not spec aiming to improve your FTP, you're doing it as a supplement to your running program.

Yeah, and I would say that's a testament to he really. Most of endurance sessions were done on the trainer indoors. In fact, I'd say 90% of them. Just the way it worked out with his schedule, he rarely could get out on the road. It was either he had to be home with family or he was on the trainer at work. But I tell you what, those endurance sessions indoors are grueling and he loved every second of it can be so painful for people to sit there on the trainer and do constantly and a half, two, two and a half, three hours up to on the trainer that would be giving him huge, it did give him huge fitness in the legs cycling wise. Plus the high intensity session of the bike and the Improved fitness. But you're going to say something there.

Yeah, look, the pressure on the pedals in an indoor trainer is the key. And yeah, we talked about that during COVID where we had that, you know, that example of, for those who haven't heard that before, you know, 12 weeks we weren't allowed outside during COVID We had a 5k radius. It was the middle of winter. So all of our athletes who we coached who were in that situation in the places where they were living, everybody went inside, everybody was doing structured training indoors and came out with unbelievable improvement. And we know Matt Hayman won Paris Roubaix with a six week indoor training program. You know, there's, there's a lot to be said about training indoors if you can mentally cope with, with, you know, I love riding my bike outside, so do you. That's the passion we have for it. But if I know that training indoors is going to actually improve me, I'll forego some sessions outdoor and make sure that I'm doing proper sessions that I know are going to help.

And I wish, I kind of wish we recorded this after tomorrow because I can't wait. He's due for an FTP test and I can't wait to see what he, what he does because that 250 watts was actually inside one of our Zwift races. So a lot of people have heard that we do these swift races over winter on Thursday nights and he did his best 20 minutes inside one of the races. It's a 35 minute race. So if he can do that, 250 watts is the best 20 minutes inside a 35 minute race. I can't wait to see what he does for 20 minutes and swimming. This is actually a really important one, is that for him it was really important just to get used to the distances of swimming and just get comfortable in the water. And he did do a sprint triathlon actually on the way in this, which is really important for his confidence and preparation. But I will say that his swimming has not improved. Oh, sorry, that's not true. It improved from the very first test, but then since then it has not improved. In fact, it went backwards a little bit and he, he called one day and, and he was a bit down, disappointed because he'd had obviously really good testing week after testing week and we're really deep into a half marathon block, you know, really preparing for a half marathon. And I said that if you look at the last six week block between, between this test and last test, you've done four swims and it's just worked out that way for various reasons. We would ideally do more swims because we're trying to still do this train triathlon program, but for various reasons in the scheduling, it just worked out that over these eight day cycles you've ended up with only four swims. You cannot improve with that. That is just not going to happen. And so when testing week comes, athletes put a lot of pressure on themselves to improve in everything. It's just this mental expectation, which is a great mindset to have, but you do have to look at the training done previously and just go realistically. It would have been actually really weird if you improved because you've literally done four swims. And so, yeah, that was a really important point and it just wasn't the priority.

Yeah. And it's so important to make that point again, where expectation of performance is based on what your current form is. And we say that a lot, but I don't know if people understand what that actually means. You have to come in with an expectation or have I done the work? And if you haven't done much work in that discipline, then the expectation has to change, it has to be lower. And if you've been sick and you haven't been out a ride and you come to be retested, you can't match what you did the previous test because you haven't trained between the previous test and now. And you know, people would say, what's the point of testing again? Well, the point of testing again is you may be lower than you were before. So we need to train to that new level of fitness you have. So understanding the form you have at any given point really helps your execution. And so, you know, execution just sounds like a throwaway word all the time. You know, how did you execute? Well, you have to think about everything around what's happening in your world. And I think the execution part of it is way more important than the actual result. If you look after the execution part, the result will be what you deserve. And you know, trying to match your previous swim pace will only do one thing. It will make you swim slower because your expectation is that you shouldn't have decreased in your performance. You should be able to swim at the previous 140 per hundred pace and therefore you're going to actually blow up. And it's same as a bike rider who could do 200 watts, you know, for the previous test, but hasn't trained much, starts at 205 or 202 and ends up at 190 and says, you know, what happened? Well, it's purely your execution. You need to start more conservative as a runner. Did the same thing. I could do 40 minutes for my 10k but I haven't done any running for two or three weeks because I've been injured and I start out at 4 minute K pace instead of starting at 4:10 or 4:15. And giving yourself a chance because that's where your current form is and that's part of understanding where your form is and then implementing it into your execution strategy.

Moving on to the run. And this was pretty much the focus of the program. So there's some, some great bits of data here. And first 5k at the very start of the program In January was 4:33 pace. And I will say again, it was probably a little bit conservative. He probably had a little bit more in him, but you just don't know with 5K. And we don't want athletes going max out at the very start. So he probably could have squeezed a little bit. But regardless, we compare that to did a 10k time trial 10 days out from the marathon as you've last kind of tester to see where you, your threshold pace is really at. And he ran that at 4:12 pace. So double the distance, you know, 4:33 pace for the first 5K, 412 pace for that 10K. And I'm just going to keep going through the results. Just, just butt in whenever you have a point you want to make.

The point with that is it's incredible to run 430 for 5k and then run 412 for 10. Incredible.

His previous half marathon PB was 146 I believe, or 147. Then after 14 weeks in the program, he did a half marathon training session. One of our infamous progressive half marathons where people still get shocked that we get people to do a half marathon in training a couple of weeks out from the race. And he did a 1:44. And that session is where we describe it as athletes are going at 95 to 98% of their race pace. It's really just practicing the race execution without it being a max effort. And he's done a pb. And that was also a really funny conversation because on one hand it was a really great result. It was a PB half mount in training which was just exceptional from the start of the program. And we think about the goals of the program. That's awesome. So you don't want to take that away from the athlete. But it was really, really poorly executed in a sense that it did not follow the Trivella method, went out way too fast. And he got lucky that he was so fit and he'd done the training, he'd done all the work and the training that he was able to hold onto the pace that he set at the start. I kind of said if you were any other athlete or you weren't as fit as you've gotten, you would have capitulated massively. And it was. Your first 5k was way too fast. I think the first 5k was essentially somewhere around or just faster than what his potential 5K PB was at the time. But the fitness was just there. So that was a really funny conversation. You can't be mad at an athlete, but also at the same time, you got to learn that.

But if you're not pointing that out, Jordan, he would just repeat that. And, you know, you only have to look at the Olympics for people doing exactly that. People at the top of their level actually not understanding how to execute. You know, what's the heats of the 800? What's the heats of the 1500? Watch any of the swimming. You know, swimmers going down in 22 seconds and coming back in 24 and a half, you know, what is that about? I can't understand that. You know, runners in an 800 going through in 57, 58 and finishing in 202, you know, which means they're running 57, 63, you know, 65, something like that. It's just. It's just, you know, you can't let even know that it's an improvement. You've got to analyze it as you. As you're explaining, you know, great, you did a pb, but the way you did it, if you keep doing that, that won't work eventually, you know, and as you're going to tell us in a minute, that's actually one of the bigger changes.

Yeah. Well, two weeks later, the actual half marathon race was on, and it was just phenomenal. It was 1:34, so 10 minutes quicker than that training session. It was absolutely. Well, it was the top of the range and above. You know, we set the range, and his peak range was probably about 136. And then he just felt so good in that last 5k. He just absolutely blitzed it, and he ended up averaging a 429 pace, which was faster than his original 5k at the very start of the program. He's done that for a half marathon, so that's exceptional fitness.

Why he could run so strong in the last 5k. Was because he was so conservative early. And that sets it up. And that's what we're trying to explain to people and that's why we're going in such detail about this is just one run, one athlete. But we're trying to make lessons from this one case study so that you can apply it to yourselves and, and not continue to make these mistakes.

And he actually ran a 10k PB inside that half marathon, I believe. And then that took us to, you know, back to some triathlon training and then leading to the marathon prep and. And as always, the key sessions for the marathon prep that you have to do if you're Ironman training or anything, is you have to do these longer runs at that race pace and build up to that and do a lot of the base training. But he ended up doing three race pace runs at 25K, 30K and 32K. You know, they're really long runs. And I will say that his Last one, the 32K, which by that time we were starting to get a real good feel for what his race pace would be and we were setting that pace. And before that session he kind of, he sent a text and said, this is. This seems really quick, logically. He said, I understand why the pace is there, but I actually don't know if I can do it. We said, all the data says that you can. You know, you should be able to run this pace for the Maris. That's what we're doing in training. And it ended up being inside that 32 kilometer session. He did a 141 half marrow. So that's his second fastest half Marrow marathon of all time. And that's just a training run. And that just shows the progression of fitness. We're training to your form, we're training to your fitness. We're not training to where you were in January at the start of the program. And that was a huge confidence booster. Going to the marathon, knowing I've just done 32km at this race pace, I've done my second fastest half marathon ever inside this long run. That is just a training session. That's really confidence boosting.

Yeah. And especially if you've already run 11k and then your second half, you end up running 141 for your half marathon. You know, in training, you know, that should be the key confidence booster to confirm everything that the coach is trying to, you know, get across. And if you don't believe that, then you just got to look at the data and, you know, that's the important.

Part so the marathon day comes, and no matter what work you've done, the nerves are there because it's a marathon. It is the, it's the Olympic event. You know, it's, it is the Mecca of a challenge. And you and I had a great conversation because even though he's done all this work, even though all the data's there, even though he's feeling as fit as possible, he's still kind of scared of that traumatic experience he had last year. And that's, that's still weighing on his mind. Where he started the marathon, he got 32km in and had a horrific experience with literally full body cramp, like his body was shutting down. Dnf. Just really not a good feeling mentally and physically. And he's kind of saying, I'm worried about that. I, you know, he's starting to question his ability, whether he can do it. You know, all these nerves before getting to the start line. And you and I had a great conversation where we, we looked at all the data in detail, and we do this all the time. And, and we just have a theory about what someone can hold, and then we just have evidence to, to back that up. And we just have absolutely no doubt that given if everything goes according to plan, there is no reason this athlete can't run like this.

Trusting the process is a tough one. When you, you're lacking in confidence and your previous experience is, is not good. When you've DNF'd that, that is scarring. You just lose confidence. And, and especially in training, when you don't go 42k, you only go part of the way, you still have that doubt in your mind, which is fair enough, I think, because you don't remember all the great training. You only remember the one bad day that you had, and that's ingrained in, you know, so now when we get to the end, you know, the thing you'll remember for his next time he does his marathon is, you know, how well he did. But, but the thing that we've got to try and convince each athlete and each athlete has to understand, trust the process. We're not going to tell you times that you aren't capable of doing. You know, we're not going to discuss that. You, I think you can do this. We're not ever going to say I think you can do this. We're going to say based on your testing, your range is this. And if you can execute according to all of the things we've gone through, this is the outcome you're going to do. And again, we're taking the onus away from the finish time. We're making the onus on the execution and that will take care of the finish time. And if you, if you have the strategy of these are the testing numbers you can do, this is the strategy you should base it on. Because you've run a 134, you know, half marathon. That equates to you being able to do, you know, 450 to 455 to 5 minute K pace to end up getting a 3:20 marathon or 325. That's your range based on all the information we have. And you've done these seven things to prove that that's right. And you know, the athlete has to listen to that and, and start to change his mindset as to, well, if the coach believes that this is the strategy I should be doing, you know, you can be even more conservative than the coach and be on the lower end of the pace. And you know, that was probably the toughest part was that conversation that you had beforehand convincing him that he needed to trust the process. And the numbers don't lie. And we're not making these things up just to give you a false sense of hope. That would be the worst thing as a coach to do, tell you you can do something faster and you end up not doing that. That's, that's asking for trouble. As a coach, you would never do that. You would, if anything, downplay their result. So, so, you know, I think, I think, you know, that's the beauty of the lump. The numbers just don't lie.

Yeah. And it's for him specifically, it's such a funny contrast because his original goal was break four hours. And you and I just had this great conversation where we looked through all the data and we're saying he's a 320 to 325 runner. There's just no doubt. And to then go and say that.

To him where he tried to run four hours, we reckon he couldn't do it because it'd be way too slow and he'd end up injuring himself from jogging because it's just so far away what he's training, what he's training has been around, you know, and you'd have.

To run half hour extra than he needs to, which is you don't want to be out there an extra half hour. But that's a really interesting point because often athletes, you know, coming to race day, the doubt creeps in. And this is where it's so valuable having A coach. But so often you find this right where the panic sets in and they go, can I do this? They're asking for affirmation, can I do this? Compared to, I want to go out hard, I want to go out at this pace, it actually becomes the opposite. And they go, I'm actually lacking confidence in my ability to do this. And.

Jordan was. When we had Billy do the great Ocean Road Marathon, which is, you know, he ran a 411 and I said to him, you can run a 350 on this, on this particular day, after the training program we gave him, and he just said, I'll be happy to break four hours. And I said, no. If you execute like this with the training you've done and you, you know, you were able to use him as an example to say, this is a huge jump, it's 21 minute jump. And for, for, for your athlete, it's, it's, it's, you know, he didn't finish the race, so probably he's got 40 minutes improvement in him.

Yeah. And that's a, that's a huge mental adjustment to make. And he actually asked, he said, are you guys coming up with that? Like, is that conservative? Is that aggressive? Like what is almost saying, what game are you trying to play here? How are you trying to get my mindset? And we're saying there's no game. This is, we're not trying to, we're not trying to do aggressive or conservative. We just think this is exactly where you're at. And it was funny. After the half marathon and a few more endurance runs, he did ask me, he said, I know you're not going to give me an answer, but what do you think I can run for the marathon at this point? Because feeling pretty good. And I didn't want to say in my head, I was like, you definitely sub 3:30. But I said, you know, look, there's no doubt, there's no doubt you well below four hours, you're going to absolutely smash that time. But I'm not going to give you a number until we find out the week before the race, because we'll find out what form you're in then and, and that'll tell us exactly what you can do. You know, 12 weeks out, we could probably guess where approximately you'll be at, but a week out, we know exactly what you're going to do. And so yeah, I think just for that, for the person that, you know, he was kind of saying, I'm still, I know I've done these runs, but what if I get to, you know, 32K and I can't run this pace or, you know, I can't run the pace that you set, you know that that fear is there. So how do you respond to that? How do you answer that?

Yeah, again, you've just got to. And I think that's why we make the athlete do the homework, because we ask them to go back through their program, their training and, and come up with times that they've done for 5k, for 10k, for half marathon, for 30, 2k, for 30. And it's just hitting them every time they open up a page. This is the pace I'm running. And for them to think that, you know, in his case he's talking, you know, nearly 20 per. 20 seconds per kilometer slower, that, you know, he wants to be that conservative. And, and it's just, it's just the evidence is just overwhelming. And that is the thing that you've got to, I think, put in front of the athlete because he's done the research and you, you obviously have the information and it's just an easy, you know, if the, if the coach is confident and you see the data, then, then you've just. Your only job is to execute and, and trust the process. And sure, it could be, it could go badly, but, but there's no indication that that's going to happen. And, and as I said to you earlier on, when we're talking about Lucas's overall strategy, the only way that that could go badly is if he does something wrong. And that would be not to execute the plan that we've given him. Start too hard or not look after his nutrition and hydration on the day. They're the only reasons why. I think that's actually what the final thing you said to him was. The only way this can't work is if you execute poorly by going too hard and not looking after your nutrition and your hydration. If you don't do that, doesn't matter how fit you are, you're going to have a failure.

Spot on. And he did those things right. And he finished with a 324. Exactly. And he was laughing, just saying, yeah, you said, I can't believe you guys got the exact pace exactly to the five seconds. And we're kind of saying it's not a surprise, you know, it's. It's like it's exactly what you can expect from, from the training. And it was a really interesting marathon as well, because again, it was in north Australia, so insanely hot and humid. Really, really tough conditions to race in, but he had that. That training experience. And it's really important that he trained in those conditions and trained his nutrition and hydration to get in those conditions, to have the belief he wasn't going to shut down. But when you've done 32km at race pace in training, you know, your body can handle it. He already knew he wasn't going to have the same experience where the body was going to shut down again. And this race had only 90 people in it. So it was a very different experience of a marathon than a lot of people would be used to. You know, it was actually basically a solo time trial the whole time. You know, it's not. You don't get that adrenaline or feeling of a lot of people around you. Unfortunately, he was coming home so strong, but he didn't get that feeling of overtaking, you know, hundreds of people because there was no one around. But he did actually catch one person slowly over time, which was really encouraging. And it was. It was like a rabbit in front that he just kept holding the same pace and kept mowing this person down. But when the goal was to one finish and two break, four hours, he absolutely blew those out of the park. And I think one go.

Just gonna say, you know, the. The way you described your phone call with him where he was just kept saying, I can't believe, you know, I felt so good the whole way. I felt so good the whole way. And then I got to a point where I thought, oh, maybe I way, way faster than I am. And then he got ahead of himself in the middle of that event and started to get some twinges of cramp. And then he went, oh, no, I can't do that. I've got to stay with the plan, because it could still go wrong at 36 or 38 or 40k. I've had that happen to myself many times when you think you've got it by the throat, and then all of a sudden it's got you by the throat because you've just gone just ahead of what you should be doing and outside your range. And, you know, we want to really finish strong in a marathon, but it's not the event that you can pick up the pace. You know, it's hanging on to your pace is what you're trying to do. And he actually did pick up the pace and ran impressively. But the story you told about the guy who was running behind him, that actually exemplifies to me about athletes not understanding execution.

So he said that last year when he DNF'd, his goal was four hours, which is I think 5:40 pace. And he said him and his mate were running together and they, they did the first half marathon in 5:20 pace, which is immediately horrific execution. And he's, he's aware of that now. He wasn't aware of it at the time. And then of course you get to 32 kilometer, completely hit a wall, just nutrition wise, hydration wise, body wise, everything. Um, so this year he wasn't going to make the same mistake. And he had a guy sitting on him from the 10k mark onwards till about the halfway mark. And he ended up saying to the guy, because there's not many around, he said, oh, what are you aiming for? And they're on 3 hours 25 pace. The guy says, I just want to break 4 hours. And Luke has almost laughed going, oh, I was you last year. He said, I'm mid marathon and I don't want to coach this guy, but this guy's about to have the exact same experience as me. So he said that he told him delicately, just, just pay attention to how you're feeling. And he said, he didn't tell him what to do. He said, Look, I'm running 325 pace, so if you want to keep up with that, all good. But just see how you're feeling. Just letting him know that inadvertently you're running way too quick if you try to run four hours. And of course the guy absolutely blew up and didn't see him again after the 25 or 30k mark. But yeah, really hilarious. It's the same experience for someone else.

Yeah. And, and it's unfortunate that you have to experience it. And, and that's one of the reasons why Lucas reached out was because he didn't want to do that again and he needed help and, and take. Taking ownership of that. You know, if you've got an issue, the first thing you've got to do is ask for help and you'll have a different experience. And you know, he couldn't be more grateful for the whole journey that he was on. He loved, you know, the training and he's only started the journey and yet he's having so much success. He's done PBS in 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon. You can't get a better start. And he's only been on the program.

For a small time and yeah, to finish off. I just want to commend his attitude. It was actually the most impressive part where he said to me afterwards, he said, I'm surprised at how much my vote, my motivation has stayed. It's just. He said this is probably only one time I didn't feel like training after a bad night shift or something. But that was really impressive to me. And I think he missed one session due to his child being quite sick and in hospital. And then even in that period he had to do his endurance runs, which was over three hours of running. And he got up early and when his kid was in hospital, he got up early and did the hour and a half before visiting hours were open and then went and spent the whole day in hospital with his kid and then once visiting was closed in the afternoon, went and did the second hour and a half. And that's how he made the adjustment and made it work to get the volume in. And that was just super impressive. And he was constantly sending photos of him on night shift, on the job, on the bike, on the trainer, getting his two and a half hour indoor session in and grinding it out and sometimes just staring at the wall with all the distraction. Never complained once about the volume. Even training in such tough, tough conditions, never complained about the sessions asking for more all the time. I laughed this week, kind of said, I'd love to give the one hour FTP a crack, you know, give that, that shows his mindset. He wants a challenge, he wants to push himself as hard as he can. So yeah, the results he's gotten are due to his just commitment to the program. Yeah.

And we, we don't want people to be, you know, so robotic that they're not asking questions about, you know, we want people to give us feedback on how they're feeling at any given point in time so that we can adjust the program appropriately. But you know, we love the attitudes of I want to succeed and being a better version of what I am, just tell me how to do it and I will be on board with it. But it is a two way thing. You still have to have the athlete understanding how he's feeling so that you can actually give them the right sessions. Otherwise you might as well just get an online generic program. And you know, that's what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to get the athlete to understand how they're coping at any day or any week. And so we can adjust the program appropriately. Up, stay the same, or down if they're actually struggling. And I think, you know, the way that you're able to coach him because you understood his work. He's, he's, he had two jobs, he's got, you know, to try and train in amongst that, you know, you're all the time being on the conservative side. You know, you're not running him to the ground. And with an athlete so motivated, I always say the motivate, motivated athlete's the hardest athlete because they'll just do whatever you tell them and they won't want to give you feedback about, oh, I don't think I'm struggling a little bit here. I don't know if I can do that. They'll never say that because they know that if they say that, you're going to respond with, well, let's just pull the intensity back a bit here. And the motivated athlete just wants to train as hard as possible, as many times as possible and that's not necessarily the best way to get the outcome. So we admire the motivated athlete, but it's still a two way process. Feelings and data.

Yeah, absolutely. Bit of a long one today, but it's great to be back with another case study. We hope you enjoyed this story and it really does apply universally to triathlon and any part of endurance. All these lessons are really important. So thank you very much for listening and we'll see you back on the next episode.

Sam.