Hear Gerard Coach In Real Time

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you by Tribello Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined as always by your host, Australian Ironman champion Jared Donnelly. And I am Jordan Donnelly. Today's episode, I am going to get you dad to put your coach's hat on. I get to sit here with you and hear constant conversations with you and your athletes. And there are lots of gold nuggets that you say that are extremely valuable in these conversations. So today we're going to go through some of the best questions that you've been asked so people can get an insight into some of your coaching answers. But you always do have your coaches hat on. And I want to ask these questions so the listeners can feel like they're getting coached by you, which again, I think happens on most episodes. But we're going to go through some of the best questions you've had recently just so the listeners can get an experience of you with your coach's hat on. But first, as always, what's caught your attention? Because there's been a lot happening recently.

Yep. And definitely the questions you're going to.

Ask I'm going to be very interested in.

And what's caught my attention is just recently the Geelong half ironman was cancelled.

And that's not unusual in the way.

The world's going at the moment. Very unpredictable, week by week events that are happening around the world and you just can't predict what's going to happen next.

So.

The example I'm going to use is the Geelong half ironman. And what one, one of the key things I want to say about that is you just don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

So one of the lessons I think is you need to really make the most of when you're fit, when you're.

In form, when you've prepared well, you.

Just need to make the most of those because you don't know what's going to happen next week or tomorrow.

You know, the worst case scenario is.

You could crash your bike and be injured and break your collarbone and you're out for six weeks and you miss the whole summer season of racing.

So they're just an example of how important it is to live for the day. And, and when you've got things in preparation, if something goes wrong, like the events canceled, that's very disappointing, there's no denying that.

But that doesn't mean you have to go into a negative head spin. You can still make the Most of an opportunity that's, that's still there for you.

You've just got to think outside the square.

And so what's caught my attention is the amount of people who didn't take.

The opportunity to go and do a.

Recon ride, recon day, swim, bike and run at Geelong. And it was a great opportunity for the Trivalo squad to go down there and, and go through the paces. And the things we learned that could have happened on race day, that happened on the weekend were mind blowing. And that was so exciting. Disappointing a little bit, but, but exciting.

So that the guys won't make that.

Decision on race day.

So I want to get into that a little bit, but I want to take it back a step because the race wasn't actually just cancelled, it was move throws a big spatter in the works because if it was just cancelled, you deal with that decision, but it's a different decision when it's moved to six weeks later. How do you handle that? Because while there's a lot of disappointment, people, you know, you're tapering into the race, it was canceled six days before it or something, or eight days before it, you've tapered perfectly. Most people are in their tape a week freshening up. How do you readjust? How do you deal with that disappointment and psych yourself up again to make it happen in 6 weeks time? If that date works for you? Because some people might be away that weekend, that weekend might not work, you know.

Yep. You've just got to go through it step by step and that's the logical, obvious answer.

When people go, oh, that's obvious, you would do that. But people don't, they just absolutely lose the plot and you know, they're not thinking through the method that should get the answer or the outcome they want.

So the first thing is it was canceled seven or eight days out and.

They were in their first week of recovery testing, which leads into taper. So the question I asked everybody was, are you available for the new race date? So we don't go past that question. If you are, great, this is what we do. If you aren't, awesome, this is what we do. So if you're not available for that race date, you go and do the race on the day that it's meant to be done as an individual. If you are going to do the race on the delayed date, I'm just.

Giving examples here, you're still going to.

Do the race but a little bit differently. The person who's, who's prepared for this race and is not doing the deferred race is going to race it.

The person who's going there who's doing.

The race properly in six weeks time is going to train it. So they're two different answers already. So we established that actually 100% of the people have moved their race date to six weeks time, which is great.

So therefore everybody was in the same position. So we need to restructure this prior.

Seven days to our recon, change it because it's not a taper anymore. It's a training week into training event and we're using the recon as an event, a B race or a C race, whatever we want to call it. So logically we're going through all the steps which is don't do the taper as we should be because we can't.

Have two tapers in six weeks time, can't have one now and then one down the track.

So immediately we've got to manipulate the whole program to delay the taper. Recovery is normal. We have recovery every three weeks.

So we have two weeks of training.

One week of not really recovery but recovery with testing and, and you know, so, so we didn't really lose that much progress. So again, if you think about it logically, great, we're still in a really good position. So we just change the next week and then after the event. Obviously we need some recovery before the event. We need to not go into it too tired. So we'd only use the Friday, Saturday as a bit of a, bit of a easier couple of days and then the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday post. A big training race like that, you need to recover.

So we have to really think about the post week. Whereas if that was your A race.

Then you would have a period off.

Up to two weeks.

Because you're doing a half ironman.

That's right.

Half Ironman is something that requires lots of recovery from. And if you're doing it as an absolute balls to the wall race, then it needs more recovery. If you're doing it as a training mock day, it needs less recovery because you're not. And I, you know, individually told all the guys when you're running, I don't want you to kill yourself in this run. I want you to run with the pace range that you have in mind.

In your pre race plan.

But you know, I don't want you sprinting the last 3k. I definitely don't want that. I want you to run the pace the whole way through and see if you can hold the pace. So they had specific race Plan.

Yeah.

And so therefore, they'll come out of it not as tired because they haven't.

Pushed themselves to the limit.

Every athlete responds differently. And some athletes I know felt really flat because they were just. They were really psyched up for that day. Some athletes were disappointed but understood it. And some athletes were ecstatic because they were coming in a little bit underdone or dealing with a light injury or something. What are the key mindset traits you would be wanting yourself and your athletes to have when this happens?

Yeah, definitely. I've said this many times on the podcast. For every negative, there's a positive. So the race has moved. That's a negative, definitely, because we're preparing for it on this day. So where's the positive? Okay, maybe I was fractionally underdone. And there were, you know, I've got various levels of people who have come to the program at various days and weeks. So they've got some with more preparation time, some with less. So the ones with less who had not done 90 or 95 or 100% of the program had done 40, 50, 60. It's a great opportunity for me to say to them, you've been given a second chance, and are you going to fluff this second chance by having another five weeks of really good consistent training? So there's a huge positive for those, the people who are in great form. You know, as a coach, I can tell them form can be held for six weeks. And if you have done a really hard event six weeks out, as one of our experts in one of the upcoming podcasts has told us, he would do a big event six weeks out.

From his main event.

And this is unbelievably the same time period, which is what I've been using a lot in my training programs over the years. So if you frame it so they understand, they've got the information that makes it logically make that this is a good outcome, then everybody's on board. But it needs to be explained. So in everything we do, the more information you have, the better understanding you have. Therefore, you can understand the goals and purposes of. Of what the changes are and how they're going to impact you. And they'll impact you in a positive way if you allow them to. And, you know, we're not making up positives.

There are.

They're there. And, you know, understanding you can hold form for six weeks, even though we've. We've prevented you from peing, now we've stopped you from peing.

And that's a manipulation of a Program.

Which is what I've done that last week and now I'm moving the, the peak to, you know, six weeks time. So there's, there's no negative there, it's all positive.

Yeah, yeah, and that's a great point because it's more for the person who was ready to race. Now we're in their best form that you, that it's hard to find a positive because they're ready to go, you know, and that's a really important point. So take us through some of the lessons because, yeah, we were surprised that, you know, with the amount of athletes that would have entered the event, you would think that more people would go and do a recon anyway. You might have had accommodation down there. You were planning to go down there anyway. You didn't have anything else on on that Sunday. So you'd think you'd go down and, and have a practice. Even if you didn't do the full 70.3, you'd go have a practice. But it was only travelo athletes down there on the Sunday.

Yeah, I was quite shocked that, you know, the number of entries they would have had on the, on for that particular weekend and people, as you said, would have had booked accommodation and you know, there were very few other other triathletes doing what we were doing. They may have done, done that on the Saturday, which is actually not the race day but, but they may have been there. But we were, you know, I didn't see much evidence of that because I was down on the Saturday as well doing the recon in the car of the road course so that I knew.

Where I was going.

That's another point in itself. But certainly I was surprised and shocked really that there weren't hundreds of athletes going through as a training phase knowing that, you know, they'd get another chance in six weeks time and I could practice in race conditions on race day. That was, that was interesting.

And the amount of lessons you learned from doing a recon are just invaluable. They can save your race.

Yeah, I don't even know where to begin. And I suppose the point I just made was me getting in the car, I'd driven from, you know, from the Dandenongs, which is a two and a half hour drive and I got down to Geelong at, you know, 6pm that night. So I've been in the car for two and a half, three hours or whatever and then quickly had something to eat and then jumped back in the car and drove another 45k of the bike course to know exactly where every turn was so that the next day I knew, I knew everything about the course, how long the hills were, where the turns were. I was looking at the wind.

Which direction was the wind blowing on that Saturday night?

And then I checked the weather in the morning, was the wind the same? And turned out it was, you know, just knowing everything about the course just in the car is, you know, if you haven't been, if, say you're a Victorian and you're going to Busselton and you know you can't practice on the course because it's physically impossible, the only time you can do it is the two days before you get there prior to the event. You would, you know, either ride it.

Or get in the car and drive.

It so that you know every single section of the course.

And the same with the run.

You know, Most runs aren't 21ks A to B. They're normally three 7k laps or, or two 10k laps. So you could get on your bike and just roll the bike course on the run course on your bike and it's not going to take any fatigue out of you, but you need to know where you're going. Of course there are Marshalls on the day, but you need to know where the hills are, you know, where are the aid stations going to be situated so that you can plan your nutrition. So that was a shock to me to find a lot of the Trivalo athletes didn't know the course, even though I told them that, you know, you need to know the course because there's no marshals out there to help you and I'm not going to be helping you with directions. That's your job, your responsibility, your planning and your preparation. So that. What does that leave you? 50% didn't do it.

And I was just.

That was a disappointment to me and it was, you know, an eye opener. And it's not for directions. That is an aspect of it. It's for you to understand where the.

Hard parts of the course are so.

That you can plan your race strategy. That was the thing that's most important. So that was one thing. We had examples of poor nutrition plans which, which definitely shocked me, especially when our coaching calls, when we go through that, you know, in depth and you should have been practicing that in all.

Of your training in the lead up.

To this, this point. You can't, I can't imagine how frustrated.

It was when I found someone hadn't understood that that's what they should have been doing in, in their training. Every Endurance weekend. So when they come to do the actual race day, they just follow the plan they've done before. And I always say to people, never try something on race day you haven't tried in training. So to actually see some people not really get it right, fade, fade due to nutrition rather than fading due to fitness. There is a difference. And yeah, that was a, that was a huge lesson. And luckily for those people, it happened in a, in a practice day because I guarantee in six weeks time that won't be a reason why they're struggling at the end of the, at the end of the race.

And the point of all these things is that you want all your energy on race day just to be going to the race. You don't want to have to spend all this energy figuring out where to go, thinking about what's coming next, guessing what's coming next, guessing your nutrition plan. You want all this stuff dialed in so that you can just focus on executing.

Yeah.

And you know, it's so important that you get to the start of the race on the beach, where you're just concentrating on what does my next five minutes look like? And that's how you should go the.

Whole five hours, six hours, four hours, whatever your race finish time is, you just should be looking five minutes ahead.

That's not what time I want to do. How's that going to help you in any stage of the race? I want to do five hours, 20. So what, what value is that to your thought process except for confusing you about the things you should be thinking about, which is in the start of the swim, how far should I swim? What should my heart rate look like in the first hundred meters? What should my pace be in the first hundred meters? You know, I'm getting to the, to the marker boy.

You know, I've got to remember to.

Look up, you know, have I looked up to see where the marker boy is? And now I can't see it. I'm swimming in the wrong direction.

These are things you should be thinking about as you exit the water.

What's my process with, with my goggles.

Cap, wetsuit, to the transition area, helmet, shoes, they're the things five minutes ahead I should be thinking about, you know, so, so absolutely understanding the important things. And, and if you're flustered because you don't know, you know where the start is, you don't know where the finish of the bike is, you don't know where the transition is, you don't know where your bike is in transition. So many things that will Distract you from the main thing you should be concentrating on. Oh, geez, I'm getting thirsty. I've run out of fuel. How far is it to the next aid station?

I actually don't know.

Whereas, you know, it's clearly put on the, the Ironman web page where the transition aid stations are at the 50, 60K, 28K, wherever, 75K, they're all there marked, so you should know that so.

That you can measure your drinks so.

That you don't have 25 minutes of no drinks. And they're, they're, they're preparation things that, that I think people are dismissive of or not respecting.

Yeah, underestimate and even, even smaller things in the lead up. So one thing I find is knowing where to park. You know, you want to go to the area and know where you can go to park, know what roads are going to be closed, because that can be. I can create a lot of anxiety if you get there or the roads are blocked, you don't know where to go, you're trying to find a park, the city's full, you end up parking six kilometers away. You're panicking because you know you've got a six kilometer hike to the race. That's an extreme example. But these things can happen if you.

Don'T know where you're going, especially when your bike has to be racked the night before. In a big race, you know, normally guys could park and ride to the event. If it's 5k, it's a warm up, it's fine. But in the, in the big, in the big events, your bike's racked the day before. So you know, even to the extent of what hotel accommodation have you got and how far away is it from the start? Have you timed how long it's going to get, how long it's going to take you to get to the start? If there are roadblocks and there are, most of the roads are blocked off. So you've got to understand and work that out the day before that. These are all the important preparation things that are part of making your actual race so much more enjoyable because you're.

Concentrating on the right things all the time.

And I had a phone call just today actually with one of the cyclists.

Who went to the nationals and that.

Was one of the things he said was this is the first time I've ever stood on the start line in.

The time trial where I could concentrate.

On what my next 15 seconds writing was about. Then the 30, rather than me having a heart attack because my Number and my transponder weren't ready. I got there late.

I didn't do a warm up.

I didn't know where the course went. I don't know what the next 2k looks like. And he just kept going backwards. Six weeks out I, you know, I'd done every session properly. I started looking at my hydration. Two weeks out my bike was in perfect condition because I've been serviced. Two weeks out I had the fast wheels. You know, I had slept well. You know. He just said it's the very first time my whole life I've got to the start and gone.

Huh.

All I have to do now is race.

Yeah. I feel like we've gone on about this especially with the nationals campaign recently, but it just was evident again with Geelong, Geelong cancelling and the experience that Sunday. And I think I was smiling while you were saying all that because I could hear the disappointment in your voice. It was. You had your teachers, coaches voice on because you were disappointed in those mistakes but lucky they were mistakes in a recon and not a race. And the disappointment just comes from it would have been shocking if it happened on race day, you know and plenty of people make that mistake and get to race day and do these errors and you just don't want that. You want people to have a really enjoyable day on, on the race.

Yep.

So we've talked about the preparation, planning.

But your actual then race, that was the next phase of, of the weekend that was, was, you know, interesting to me. The race plans that I'd asked people to come up with and I'd gone through them and, and some of the errors I was seeing in their race plan which would have given them a really bad outcome because they had overestimated their ability against the real data. And that was intriguing to see people just not get it right and may have to. It was almost like a teacher with his exam saying, oh, this is the.

Maths problem, this is your power, this is your running pace. Why do you think you can do 15 watts higher than you've ever done in training? Why are you going outside the range that we've set? You know, you're setting a pace that's faster than you've ever done before fresh, you know, you've got a 90k time trial in front of you, half marathon. Why are you picking that pace? So that was intriguing. And then seeing them execute the plan. So I still saw, looking at the data up post race, I still saw people's, you know, it's a 90k 245k laps.

I still saw people's first lap faster than the second lap.

And you know, I actually did the ride on the day and I know that people would be looking at my.

Stuff on Strava and they would clearly.

See that I was four minutes quicker on my second lap than I was.

On my first lap.

And you know, that's not thing to boast about. That's just to say that I'm not going to tell people to do this and then not do it myself. I've got to lead by example. And you know, these are the things that I want people to concentrate on because they made the mistake and then they had gone out way too hard and faded badly. So you know so many things that that contributes to is the bad run when you've gone too hard on the bike and you've swum too fast early.

An interesting part of this as well is this is really ingrained in your coaching philosophy and travellers coaching philosophy, which is you don't hand people their numbers and data and race plan on a platter. You know, a lot of people would expect, well, the coach will just tell me what to do. And you really are against that. You know why? Why are you so against that?

Because you've got to take responsibility for your own numbers on the day.

You can't ring me and say halfway through the ride, is this okay? You know it or you don't know it.

And if you know it, you know it's okay.

And if you know that, you've actually.

Got the race plan correct. Mind you, I don't let them go.

Into the race without me checking the race plan.

But then it's up to you to execute it. You are doing it yourself. I've got you to this point now I'm handing it all over to you and all the things you've learned through.

Our journey together, you will put them into practice.

And that's the thing, you've got to take responsibility for your own numbers. And if you don't know your own numbers, you've got very little chance of getting a good outcome. So you're just going to be probably like the other 90%, I hate to say it, who are just going by feel.

So what's caught my attention is that we talk about a lot of these extras on the podcast. Extras for your performance, extras, doing a recon as an extra example, supplements, the 1 percenters, sleep, nutrition, etc. They're all the 1 percenters, always trying to find the extra edge. But one big theme that keeps popping up for us is that your first priority should be consistency with the program. That is just fundamentally the thing that's going to give you the biggest gain, the biggest bang for your buck is just be consistent with the program. And so we talk about this a lot. So you do get a lot of athletes asking you about 1 percenters. But I would say for a majority of athletes, they do need to focus on being consistent first and they can look at the 1 percenters or it's always going to help. But your first priority is to go, let me not worry about all this other stuff until I can show that I am being consistent with the program, not missing a session or missing very few sessions. Achieving 100% is not always possible. But how long can I show that I can be consistent on a program for not just for one or two weeks, not for one six week block can I be consistent for 12 weeks, 24 weeks, six months, maybe a year? You know, and then once you're at that level, then the 1 percenters become more important, but they become less important if you're not doing the program properly. And that's really what's caught my attention recently. And we, I don't know if we'll have, we will have released the podcast yet with one of Australia's greatest athletes, but I would, I love that he really hammered this home that he just does not like any of that extra stuff. He really just said the consistency of the program is the main thing. And you'll be hearing that podcast pretty soon. And I will, I will drop the name so that everyone can get excited for it. It's one of Australia's greatest marathon runners, Steve Moneghetti. So we're excited for that podcast to be released. But yeah, that was something that really caught my attention.

Yeah, it's, it's a great point and it was good that he did back up the things that we have been saying about that. And there is a, an extra thing on top of that. Consistency is the body takes a long time to adapt to anything, whether it's good or bad. You can adapt to being a drug taker, a drug dealer, whatever, and your body will crave more of that.

If you've never done that before, it'll be a shock to the system. Same as if you start doing strength and conditioning program in the middle of a heavy training, consistent triathlon program or cycling program or marathon running program. Your body takes time to adapt. So you don't want to be throwing too many variables all at once. And that's why the 1%ers have to be added in gradually once you've adapted to the consistency of the program. And that's really the point you're making here. People are always saying, oh, should I be doing this extra? Should I be doing that extra? And I turn around and go do the program first. Before you even consider you've missed four sessions out of the eight this week. Why would you be asking to do extra stuff when you actually haven't even done all what's on the program?

Let's start with that and see if 30 days makes a habit. Let's see if we can do 30 days without you missing a day and then we can start talking about adding.

These extra things in and allowing your.

Body to adapt to the first phase, which is consistency of training. And then we slowly introduce the other things. So that's a great point you make.

Right, let's get into some of today's coaching questions. Um, so some of them will be short answers, some of them might but take long answer. But one common one is, you know, we talk a lot about doing brick sessions, ride, then run, run off the bike. Um, why don't we do swim then ride sessions? Because you don't, if you don't do that, you don't get the feeling of riding after a swim.

Yeah, and we should, that's the, the, the answer. We should do as many of them as possible.

But I would like you to explain to me how we could in our everyday schedule, in a, you know, Monday to Friday, when we've got to try and do probably a bike session and a run and then a run and then maybe a swim session.

How are we going to do that.

When we have to go to work?

So, so we, we just give up.

On that from Monday to Friday, five days, we can't do that. So that leaves us with Saturday, Sunday. Yes, that is exactly the time when we should be doing it. Especially when you've got an endurance. Normally the weekends are the endurance period for average person who's on a program.

Because you've got more time because you don't have work.

So in an ideal world, if you didn't live in Bendigo and the ocean wasn't 200km away, you could go to the ocean and do a 15, 20 minute swim, then do your endurance. Right. So that would be something that I would recommend. But we, we don't push that because we don't want to, we don't want to cause people to have that consistency failure when it's just probably impractical. So the practicality of doing it is making it, making it hard, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. I would encourage most people, if they have the ability and they live, you know, within an hour's drive of, of an, of an ocean, they're willing to drive to do that. Go to a pool if you, if you, that's the second option. But, but certainly it would be most beneficial once a week to do a swim and bike because we do plenty of bike run. So it's a really good question, but it's more the practicality side of it that prevents us from doing that.

And even if you're up to, you know, half an hour away from the ocean, it is adding a lot of time onto a Saturday bunch ride. If your bunch ride is up to four to six hours and then you're adding a half hour to the beach and back, that's an hour of travel plus the half hour swim, you're adding an extra hour and a half onto already a massive endurance day. It can just get out a bit out of hand.

And especially if your bunch ride starts.

At 7 and it's not daylight till 20 to 7, you literally only got, you know, 15 minutes to swim in daylight. Unless you want to swim in the dark, which, but anyway, these are just.

Sometimes they could be called excuses, but if you really want to go the extra length, that's, that's what I would be doing.

I would be doing one day a week where I would make the effort, you know, wouldn't have to be each week. You could do it once a month where. But just to get that experience of swimming and riding. Yep.

Next question. Often on the Garmin watches, it tells you, gives you its advice on what you should be doing next. You'll finish a workout and say you need 10 hours of recovery or you need three days of recovery. Or for me, often the most frustrating one is your new threshold is this. Do you want to accept it? And I look at the numbers like that's not my threshold. And I don't know where they get those numbers from. It's like they think that every session is a threshold test. Because I'll do a slower run and it'll say, here's your new threshold, which is frustrating. So the question is, should I listen to my Garmin?

No. Next question.

Okay, I need to explain. So I've not gone into detail in my research about how Garmin comes up with its, with its advice. And the reason I haven't is because when I was in the middle of a Recovery phase. It told me that I was overreaching and overreaching for those who are not sure what that means is you're training too long, too hard, too often. And it's told me I needed six days off and I'd already had one day off and two days of easy writing. So effectively he was saying I needed nine days and it was so untrue because I use performance management chart in training peaks and I also use HRV heart rate variability, so I have all these parameters. I also use an OURA ring, so I have all this information that is.

So much more accurate. I'm sure the Garmin has some equations that it comes out with the reasons why it does, but. But I don't know, I haven't investigated. But all I know is when I see those messages that I get, it tells me I've got a new FTP and it's 400 watts lower than it than my FTP. Then I start laughing and start texting people you know, I need, sorry, I can't train this week, I've got to have six days off according to Garmin, so. So now I don't take any notice of it.

Yeah, fair enough. I imagine that if you put in all your bits of data and testing data correctly, it may spit out something that's a little bit more accurate. But again we haven't tested it enough to.

Yeah, but I.

Look, that is, that is definitely true. If, if I checked in my Garmin FTP it may be set wrong because I haven't bothered to go in there. And that is absolutely correct. If you want to have accurate information, you have to input the information correctly. So you would need to have your heart rate threshold. Right? Yeah. FTP.

Right.

Well the example I gave you last week as well, it's was I was frustrated that I did a ride run and it somehow for some reason didn't count the ride because when I finished the, the run off the bike, which is a very easy run, short 20 minutes, it said you only need six hours recovery. It and it just hadn't taken into account the ride before it, which was extremely difficult. And so that was just a discrepancy that I thought was very inaccurate when I clearly needed more recovery than six hours. But it's almost like it just didn't count the ride or something. Maybe it hadn't seen saved or.

Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah.

Next question. When I'm in a crit race, this is more cycling specific, what power should I be looking at?

None.

Expression, silence. So if you're in a crit race.

And some guy attacks up the side and you happen to look down and you're 150% of your FTP and you know that you can hold 150% for 24 seconds, generally that's your, that's your longest time. Are you going to yell out to him, sorry, I can't go any harder because my FTP or my power number is at my maximum? No, you're going to ride the race in a criterium. So that power is important to specific events and in a criterium at all times, you need to be concentrating on what's happening tactically in the race. And if someone is absolutely hammering it up the back straight on a course that, you know, we're using sand down as an example, you need to follow the race, you know, you need to decide whether you're going to go with that jump. And you could be pushing for 55 seconds, your best 55 second power you've ever pushed. You've just got to go with it. And I just don't, I don't even want to know what the number is because if I look down and see a number I haven't seen before, it instantly in my head it goes, I haven't got much longer here because I've never been here before. I don't want to know that. I want to just concentrate on, I cannot let this wheel go. That is my job right now. This is the race right here. This could be the break that I'm in and whatever the power is, so be it. So the power is really useful afterwards after the race to go back and see what the requirements were. Maybe I got dropped on that hill. What power was I pushing when I got dropped? Oh, okay, it was 510 watts. Maybe I need 550. So good training information. Go out and practice 30, 40 second efforts at 550 watts so that the next time I do have someone jump at that, you know, amazing power number, I can actually respond because I've done it in training. So. So afterwards is really important. And we're just talking about crit racing here.

Yeah.

In the crit race, if I happen.

To be in a break and maybe it's a two man break or a solo break or a four man break, I will start to look at the power that I'm doing when I come through to do my turn and I'll look at average speed to make sure that I'm not going faster than anybody else. When they're doing their turns. And in fact, I want to be probably the weakest rider in the group so that I'm conserving. So they're things that I would be using my data for. But the majority of the time in a criterium, I'm actually just responding to the race and I'm moving myself into positions that are going to give me protection from the wind, not going to have me too far back, so that if someone makes a move, I don't have to make up 20 or 30 bike lengths. And I've got the people I think I rate the best in my sight. So they're things I'm thinking of, not the power.

So to clarify, I know the answer to this question, but if you're in the bunch and it's quite a high tempo and you look down and then you see that you're riding above your FTP for the hour and you're 10 minutes into the race, you're supposed to look at your data then and go, what do you do there?

Well, I know that's exactly what happens in every event. And it's no different to you running an 800.

You know that the guys are going to run the first 200 too fast. You know that from all your experience. And I know at the start of.

A criterium, most of the guys are.

Fresh, they're excited, they love racing. The first 10 minutes is helter skelter. And I know all I have to do is withstand this storm because it won't keep going. It will ease up at some point. That's my mindset. And I don't care what I look down and see. I know that it can't. I know straight away we can't sustain this because I know the numbers from when I analyzed previous weeks, what the average power was for the ride. And, you know, last week might have been the hardest ride we ever did. And some, some of the rides we're.

Doing, the average speed is going up and up.

You know, we used to do, you.

Know, 10 years ago, we were doing 42Ks an hour for the hour, and.

Now we're doing 45.

So I know what to expect, you know, in a race now from the power and the average speed. So it's unsustainable at times when we're sitting there doing first five minutes, 10 minutes at 47ks an hour, when the average ends up being 45 for every race we've done in four last four years. So it's not going to continue.

And the other, the other point you Made before is, you know, what are your options? You know, what's the alternative?

Sit up?

Yeah. You're going to look. Are you going to look down at 15 minutes and just pull out of the race?

Yep. No. So you've got to just frame it so that, you know, I understand it's going to be hard at the start and I've just got to, you know, sit in and manage my ride as much as possible and the outcome will be okay.

Perfect. Next question. Technology. You get a lot of technological questions and you would find ironic because you're just no technology guru yourself, but you're just forced to figure it out. And these apps do try and make things as easy as possible. They try and give you instructions, but everyone runs into problems. There's a lot to say on technology. You get a lot of questions about this. A frequent one, which have been getting recently as well, is people looking at or using the wrong data and people getting confused about what's the difference between their kicker data, their bike data, what they're seeing on Zwift, what they're looking at on their Garmin computer.

Yeah, there's a lot in that question. The first thing I want to say is the technology can be a game changer, both negative and positive.

If you don't get across it, you actually can't proceed. So you actually need to do. It's no different than doing course preparation, knowing where the course goes in a.

Race, you actually need to find out and be informed about how it works. And, you know, it's, it's easy just to ring up and ask someone and.

If you have someone who can help you, fantastic.

But there's so much information on YouTube, you know, there's, there's guys who have done every test possible. You just gotta basically Google it. And, and there are every troubleshooting experience that people have is there. And the fact that, you know, over 40 million people use Zwift, you know, over a year, shows that it works. You've just got to do your own research, be informed and spend time in preparation. That's the first thing I want to say. The second thing is Zwift has some really good elements about it, but it.

Also has some drawbacks.

And the things that, the main thing that has a drawback in if you're.

Trying to train on Zwift as compared to racing, there's no drawback in the racing. There's lots of drawbacks in the racing, but as a person who's trying to improve their cycling, the racing's fine. You Just go with the race. But if you're actually trying to do a training session, the actual Swift Hap app has a problem because it doesn't give you lap power, it gives you instant power. So I've forever getting asked the question from people. I look at the screen and one minute I'm doing one second, I'm doing 200 watts, the next second I'm doing 220, the next second I'm doing 180. How do I get it to stay even? And that's where lap power, if Zwift had that function, it's extremely obvious to anybody who rides a bike, but seemingly not obvious to Zwift or whether they don't care about it. I'm not sure what the difference is, but that's what you need. So that you can. If you're doing a training session that is asking you to do 5 minute effort or 10 minute efforts, or 30 second efforts, or 15 second efforts, you.

Can'T stay in the range that you're.

Trying to train to if you're looking at instant power where it's going. If you're trying to do the range of 200 to 220 watts and one pedal revolution is 240, then you ease up and you go to 180, then you push it again because you're too low, you go back to 230 and you can't even get in the range. The experienced advanced riders can hold really smooth pedaling techniques. So they can hold within 5 watts of.

If they want to hold 200, they can be between 995 and 205 or 201. So experienced riders will be able to get around this. But the lap power function is so important to be training to, and that's.

Where your head unit comes in handy.

Because you can actually use the screen for Zwift for what its purpose is. It's got the training program up on the side for you. You can see how much time you've got left, what your cadence is, what your heart rate is. But to look down on your bike computer and see what your lap power is for the 30 second effort or the five minute effort, that's how you should be using it. And the second point I want to make about that is you shouldn't be.

Using the Smart trainer's power meter unless you've tested it. And it reads identical to your bike power meter, which is unlikely.

Which is. Well, there are.

There are some that are reading reasonably good now, so.

But the majority of people we coach, There is between 1 and 20 watt.

Difference between their bike power meter and their smart trainer power meter.

So what's the big deal? Well, if you are a person who's outdoor and you do the majority of.

Your training outdoor on the bike and.

All of a sudden you want to ride indoor, if your power number for.

The same session is different indoor than it is outdoor, then all of a sudden you're going to either fail the session because it's too hard or the.

Power number is too low and it's too easy.

So you're not getting either way, you're not getting the result that you want.

So the way I go around is.

Not use the smart trainer's power meter.

I use a smart trainer's capabilities as.

Resistance and its ability to link to Zwift.

But there's non smart trainers that do that as well.

And I use the power meter from my bike to link to Zwift and the power meter from my bike to link to the Garmin so that I'm using the same power meter. So I'm comparing apples with apples. I've not got power meter from my kicker and then comparing my power meter from my bike, I'll have two different results which does happen.

So especially true for triathletes who if they have a road bike and a time trial bike and they're not always training on their time trial bike, they end up with three different power numbers. They're trying to compare, you know, their indoor kicker, their indoor road bike, their indoor time trial bike there versus their outdoor road bike. This is the outdoor time trial bike. That's actually five there. So.

Yep.

So what?

We don't race with the kicker power meter when we do a triathlon. Yeah, we race with our bike power meter. So you want to be using the bike power meter indoor and outdoor. That's as simple as I can get it. So you need to work out how to load your bike power meter. And there is a simple way. Even I worked it out. So it must be simple to load your bike power meter onto Zwift.

Yep. Perfect. This is more of a cycling specific one. Pretty simple thing for you to explain, but I thought this was a great little question because a lot of people participate in the bunch ride on weekends. And how do you get the bunch ride roll smooth, specifically the roll calling role when you get to the back and then the gatekeeper role. Can you explain those?

Yeah, there's a couple of really good things that'll help you a bunch on a weekend if you can have someone who can take Control, that's the first thing. And if everybody's willing to listen to that person, that also helps. So what are we trying to achieve? We're trying to achieve similar speed and.

Not surging and slowing down.

We want to keep the roll smooth. So the way to do that is the person who's rolling over the front.

Rider, not accelerate away from the front.

Rider, but as he gets to the front, then he eases up slightly so the guy coming over him doesn't have to fight like crazy to get to the front.

So the guy who's at the back, he needs to call the next person in.

So we've established what the person at the front should be doing as he.

Rolls over the front and he needs to keep the power on until he gets to the front and then allow the guy coming behind him to roll over him. So he needs to ease up slightly. So how do we make the back smooth? So as you know the roll order, you would know that you're following Joe.

And if you see Joe, you would.

Know that that's your time to come out and then join the roll on the other side. But if someone else changes position and you don't look, you could run into them. So the etiquette is for, as you move out to take the other position, call the person's name who you're just about to roll over, which might be.

Jim and go Jim, you're up.

And.

And if everybody does that, there will be no one running into each other.

And that will stop people from creating a gap because they didn't know that they were last.

Someone had dropped out and they were expecting Joe to come past and Joe didn't. And all of a sudden there's four bike length gap.

You've got to accelerate now and join.

And it disrupts the whole roll. So that's a really little etiquette thing.

And lastly, the gatekeeper.

The gatekeeper, if you've got, I'm talking about if you've got no gatekeeper in that previous example. But what is the gatekeeper? So you might have six people doing.

A roll on a Saturday bunch ride.

Or a Sunday bunch ride and you've.

Got 20 people sitting on.

And some of those people sitting on.

May want to join into the roll.

But they might be happy just to.

Sit back and let the roll keep.

The pace of the ride going. So the gatekeeper's job is to actually call out next as the person comes back towards the last rider, the gatekeeper who's sitting there waiting and he doesn't join in he just calls next, next, next to every person coming to the back and, and the people in the role know that the gatekeeper's doing that.

They don't have to look.

And why is it important not to look? The minute you take your eyes off.

The front direction of travel, the person in front of you may break or slow down and you've run into them and all of a sudden the bunch has crashed. And that's why it's really important to.

Have calling Good clarification for the bunch ride. Last couple of questions. Athletes that have had a successful race or campaign or goal and this is applicable to our athletes who just had a successful nationals campaign, they asked what next? You know, their next big race might be six months away, eight months away. How do you manage the programming and what do you focus on from now till then?

Yeah, really good question. And it seems obvious the answer, but.

For most people I haven't really thought it through. I'm in great form, I'm on top of the world. What else can I do? That's one train of thought. That was the hardest campaign I've ever done. I need a rest. That's the other train of thought and both are equally okay. So if you're feeling like you can keep going, my advice is to take a short break of easy riding for or training if you're a triathlete for a short period of time, and I'm talking possibly up to seven days, you know, depending on what the event was that determines the recovery, and then go again. And if there's a few races in six weeks time, eight weeks time, 10 weeks time, then you plan from that a race backwards. A lot of the guys want to have a break and therefore we do the same recovery period could be 7 to 2 weeks and then rather than joining into their next 8 week goal or 10 week goal, their a race is 30 weeks away. What do we do with those guys? Well, we need to give them a focus that's slightly different to the guy who's going to keep going with his campaign of the next event and we need to keep it enjoyable. So we talked earlier about frequency, intensity, duration in our podcasts. So our program is so well balanced that at any stage, at any part of the year, if you all of a sudden decide that you've found an event that's six weeks away or eight weeks away, because we maintain the same balanced program that covers endurance, intensity, recovery, tempo, strength, all of those things are covered. We just need a short race ready period where we can step up from the sabbatical period that you're kind of in at the moment. So if all of a sudden you change your mind and you found an event in between your, your big goal, then it's really easy with the program. We have to actually step up and lift yourself Specific. And we've got an example of someone who's a cyclist who's done really well in time trialing, wants to do a team's time trial ride. So that's fun for him. He can practice that for five weeks. It's a B race for him and a good experience and keeps him nice and motivated and keen to, to keep his training. But we would change the structure of his program from he's been trying to be a criterion racer, a road racer and a 30 minute time trialer. Now he's trying to be a 2 hour 10 minute time trialer. So we just have to adjust it slightly because we've already got his endurance. He's already been doing the sub threshold, which is ironically that 90k pace that he would be riding at. So it's kind of fun. And that's the period where we don't expect Van Aert to ride nine months of the year. At his maximum he has periods where.

He has.

Recovery periods where he goes into a training block and then he, for example, he might come to the Tour down under in January. Then he has maybe eight weeks of really solid training after that, including the Tour down under ready for Paris, Roubaix, Flanders, Gent, Wevelgem, that Spring Classics and he really races well there. Then he has another two week period and then a training, a two week period of recovery and then a training block of six to eight to 10 weeks ready for the Tour de France. So you know, they're not training flat out every week. They are varying their intensity and their duration. The frequency of their riding remains the same, but it's just a manipulation of the intensity and frequency. That's, that's what we're, we're trying to, trying to achieve here. So that the expectation is that you can't hold form for 30 weeks. You just can't. You know, six weeks is the maximum.

Sorry to clarify, is a manipulation of all three. The frequency stays the same, but the intensity and duration drops.

Yes, sorry, I didn't make that clear. We manipulate two and we keep the frequency of writing going.

And that's really important because you say to a lot of athletes, don't do yourself a disservice, but when you say have a break, you're not just Totally going off and having a complete break and doing nothing.

I'm more than happy if you want to have that in the first week. Seven days to ten days to two weeks. Don't ride your bike, don't go for.

A run, don't go for a swim.

Absolutely happy with that. You need to have a period and if you're not happy doing that, I'm happy for you to just do easy training as recovery. But you actually need to work out which suits you better mentally, physically.

Either is fine.

You're not going to lose anything really. It's going to in fact make you recover better from such a hard training period leading up to your A race. So we really want to keep the intensity changed and the duration of the riding, we want to change that, but we want to maintain the frequency. We don't after you've recovery period. We want to keep you with the style and the program that's been ingrained and your body's adapted to.

We don't want to lose that adaptation. The minute you start mucking around with that, then you have to readapt to.

The consistency again, which is the frequency of training.

Yeah, because you might just say I really don't want to train for anything for two months. But you might as well keep training the same frequency, just shorter and less intense.

Yeah, no intensity at all. Just enjoy yourself, go riding with your coffee mates and just move. Just keep having structure where it's, it's not hard but, but don't lose that fitness base that you've worked so hard to build. And unless that's it for you, you know, there's, you've done your a race and you don't. But you know, we're thinking in the big picture here of it's not normal that people would do that, that they would come to a race and then that's it. Because you know you're thinking of health and fitness now.

Yeah.

You know, it's going to. You've already got a lifestyle where you've got structure and your health is at its best it's ever been. You know, you want to keep that structure going so that you are maintaining a healthy and fit, fit lifestyle. Of course you may be injured from. It's a good opportunity but it's also a good opportunity to try other things like the example we've given.

Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I really like these questions because they give, you know, real world examples of coaching because a lot of coaching is about the training program and you know, I guess the science behind how training works and how do you get faster and the physiological adaptations. But all these questions I asked today were more about what do I do in this real world application, and your answers for that have been really good. So I want to finish off by asking, what do you think is the most important part or all parts of a program?

Well, it's such an easy answer. Consistency is king. And if you can manage consistency, and I'll go as far to say is.

It doesn't actually matter as much as people think about what you do, but.

If you can maintain consistency for a long period of time, you will be.

A better athlete than someone who's on, off, on off, on off. Of course, after you've got the consistency under control, you actually need to think about the intensity and the duration, the frequencies under control, the consistency, and that will get you to a fitness level and that is the key. But then you need to start thinking about the duration of your, of your training and the intensity of your training.

But consistency is king, no doubt.

Easy. That's a great way to finish. Well, that's been it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next time.