How a Pilot Still Manages Ironman Training

The following case study is just a fantastic classic journey of taking you through to your first Ironman. All the expected challenges, all the ups and downs, what to do, what not to do, all the mistakes that come with training for this monster, monster event. And this is an awesome story of Shelby, one of our tribal athletes who decided to commit to Port Mac Ironman. And unfortunately, as you'll hear in this story, that plan got thrown out the window last minute as she was really ready a few weeks out to race that race and she had to defer and try and peak again six weeks later for Cairns Ironman. We just had Cairns Ironman over the weekend. What an epic event. That is what you think? That is the toughest course on the Australian schedule. So we're going to go through Shelby's whole journey, what she struggled with, what most people do struggle with in leading up to an Ironman, how he got through some of those challenges and how she ended up having an unbelievable day which is really hard to do for the Ironman race. So dad, we always talk about the Ironman is a different beast, but every time a tribalo athlete comes to the Ironman phase we just, we, we get reminded, even though we don't need it, just how big a process it is. And for all our Ironman athletes that competed over the weekend, it's just, it's not the same as a half Ironman. It's not the same as a triathlon. It is literally double a half Ironman, which is hard enough. It is just an insane thing to train for and get your body ready for.

Oh, there's so much to unpack in Ironman, isn't it? And there's so many stories and just one of the things we were talking about was you feel like you may not have nailed your race and then you start talking after the race to other people and you think, oh, compared to what they did, I actually quite happy with my race. Now you get perspective, don't you? In different ways post race. And look, going to your first Ironman is probably the hardest one to do, but it's probably the easiest because those who've done one and go back again know what actually happened previous. And the reason they go back is because they probably left a lot out there and they want to rectify and improve upon what they previously did or they had a great experience and they want to do it again and see how much faster they can go. So the first one you kind of got the unknown. You're worried. But you know, a lot of people do it can't be that hard, can it? You know, there's thousands of people seem to be doing Iron man each year but, but really when you go to prepare for the first Iron man, there's so many hurdles yet and so many boxes you have to tick before you actually get and wake up on that morning and then sort of say to yourself, well, I actually made it to the start line and, and I. Even in our little community of trivalo athletes, we have so many stories of people. As you just mentioned in the opening, Shelby was meant to do a previous race and didn't even make the start line and now she's lining up again to see if she can actually get her first race done. So yeah, it is a classic event of endurance and it is the ultimate in triathlon and doesn't mean to say you do sprint races and you're not really a real triathlete. That's not what I'm saying at all. But yeah, just to try and put this, you know, Whether you're an eight hour competitor or whether you're a 17 hour competitor, they hurt a lot. One just hurts a lot longer for the day than the other one. But yeah, gee, it's tough to get to the start and feel happy about your preparation and there's so many things that you put in front of you that derail your whole planning and you just want the absolute best scenario. But gee, that's kind of like 1% of the cases. And yeah, let's just dig into it.

Yeah, let's go through it. In her own words, she said three quarters through the swim she's going, I'm never doing this again. And then not even 24 hours after the race she goes, I'm doing another Ironman. And that's just the up and down nature of the whole journey.

To be fair, that was one of the worst swims I've seen in a long. And I said that at Basso and I never thought I'd be able to say that again so quickly. Basso and Cairns have been two of the worst swims I've seen in a long time. I've watched a lot of races around the world over the last 25 years and I haven't seen conditions like that twice in the space of six months. And like, when you think about adding 10 to 15 minutes onto your normal time across the board, I'm not talking about an individual here or there, I'm talking about the majority. We're not talking about the pros obviously, but for the average age grouper who's trying to battle between 145 and 220. You know, it just knocks them around so much more and more and it takes so much out of you. You're there for longer, you're swimming harder because you're fighting such big waves and seasickness and swallowing so much water. Don't underestimate how much that affects your actual nutrition on the day. Swallowing too much salt water and you're burning so many calories that you have to really have a different nutrition plan post that event.

So let's get into it. Who is Shelby? She is a 26 year old pilot, which is impressive in itself for, for her age. With an absolutely wild schedule for training. For an Ironman, you're in a different. As a, as a pilot, you're in a different city every two to three days. So managing that training schedule and planning around that becomes very difficult just to stay on top of because you gotta, you don't get this typical Monday to Friday schedule where you get the same thing every week. And that's hard for coach and athlete, but specifically the athlete just to, you know, feel on top of things. And it can feel like training can get away from you so easily because you just all over the shop and. And I will say she just handled that whole part of the process brilliantly, but really such a committed athlete and she did such a good thing. She came to us with 11 months to go to before Port Mac. She only started triathlon a year and a half ago and decided to do the Ironman and gave herself 11 months to prepare, which is amazing. Um, but I will say she started off the program essentially, you know, relatively injured from pushing too hard through a marathon and, and she kind of ended up with shin splints from the marathon and had to be forced to take a break from running. And that was the first tough conversation. And we'll talk about the themes throughout this process. But in the Ironman process you've got to put a lot of trust in between, have a lot of trust between coach and athlete and program and athlete. And we had to have the first challenging conversation where you say we think you need to just give yourself some rest from running and you can still get some fitness from bike and swimming, but you're just not getting anywhere with running. You're sore, you're injured, and for someone that's the motivated athlete and the committed athlete like you talk about, it's just so hard for them to hear. And when the full trust isn't established yet because that just Takes time. They kind of want to resist it and it feels like you have to go backwards and sometimes you do have to go backwards a little bit to one step back, to take two steps forward. But yeah, that's the first test of the trust in the coaching relationship to make that the right decision. But thankfully she did trust that and took some time off and she'll be glad she did because when she came back she was more pain free and were able to build up the running slowly and she never looked back from there and she just basically started pbing all her runs through the whole process right through to cans.

Yeah, I'm, I can't wait to talk about that in a little bit more detail when we get onto the run in the, in the actual race. But, but it, you know, I've, I've always known this theory that, you know, if you're training for a triathlon, the run leg, you don't have to be for an ironman and that's the caveat there. For an ironman, you don't have to be doing four hundreds on the track and eight hundreds on the track. If you're doing enough high intensity on the bike and in the pool where you're really stressing your cardiovascular system, you know, you just need to get your body toughened, hardened for running. And that just means regularly running and, and ideally, if you just ran at your marathon pace the whole time, you would be nailing that by the time you got to the race. Because what you do on in training, if you're a person who runs 6 minute K pace in training for, say you did that for five years and you never did any other intervals, you'd be very good at running 6 minute K pace in a race. That's the example I would give. If you tried to run 5:30, you'd probably blow up even though you're really fit, but you've never actually run faster. So the theory is if you can pick a, pick a pace that you ideally want to run at and just keep doing that in training, you will build up a resilience and your body will get adapted to that style of running for that pace. If you want to run faster, obviously you need to stress the body to a point where you can run some sessions that are faster than that so you get that overload. Optimization of the training program and using the bike and the swim will also cardiovascularly wise make you be able to co parate lungs with the intensity of the run. But generally she's proven our theory time and time again. That if you just get strong and resilient as a runner, you'll be able to run well on race day. And it's not about you being fast on race day because let's face it, you're running a marathon after you've already been out there for, you know, the best person is going to be out there for already five and a half hours. If they swim an hour and ride four hours 30, that's five and a half hours. So you know, who can run a really good marathon after five and a half hours of quite high, intense exercise, enduring exercise. So, so that's our theory. And, and she's just proven it again.

Yeah. And I can't tell you how many times in the last six to ten weeks she just kept saying the sentence over and over how easy running feels and how strong she feels and just how the pace just feels so comfortable. And that comes from that building of strength. And there was definitely a, a threshold there that was crossed at some point, six months plus into the program of really that endurance running where she, she went from, you know, feeling like she was gaining fitness to crossing that and going, feeling really fit, if that makes sense. And, and that happened in a few ra. Long runs where she's going, oh, whoa, I can run these paces extensively and I can run a half marathon PB in a 70.3, race in the lead up and feel absolutely unbelievable and run a 10k PB in the back end of that 70.3 just because of how strong I am. And that's actually what happened. And so look, I'll go on, I.

Was just going to say, you know, before you go on from that point, you know, that just proves the theory, how do you do a 10k PB in the. And you know, obviously people would say when they're listening to this, well, you haven't run any hard sessions, so obviously your 10k PB is not going to be that. But you know, to do it in the back of a half ironman where you've already run 11k and you're doing your last 10k as your fastest ever. I just think that just, you know, it's another, another piece of evidence to show you that you can still run really competently and where you want to faster than you can do in training, even though I said, you know, if you, if you spend a lot of time running the same, you'll run the same in races, but you can actually pick the, pick the pace up because you've got that resilience from, from all of the volume of running you've been doing. And we're talking, you know, 30, 40, 50Ks a week here. And. And that's kind of going to give you that resilience plus the intensity. Don't we just. Everybody bypasses what happens on the bike. It is. It is VO2 threshold work that we're doing, that. That gives that intensity so your body can cope with something that's. That feels like it's harder than it should be.

And she's through this whole process. I don't want to skim over the fact that she's dealing with every part of the process in triathlon that all beginners deal with, you know, and specifically for her, she really struggled with the VO2 work on the bike. The whole bike process was brand new. She hasn't ridden a bike before. She's new to it. All the stuff around that, we always talk about riding to power cadence, pressure on the pedals for a new athlete, we can't underestimate how confusing that is and how hard it is to get right when you haven't been riding your whole life and you haven't learned how to change gears and keep pressure on the pedals and. And she was really struggling for a lot of that. Starting four to six months, she couldn't quite nail a VO2 session. That was super frustrating for her. For someone that's really diligent in everything that she does, she was just really getting down on herself about some sessions. She would almost hit her, but not be quite there. We felt like that some of the FTP tests were actually just a bit inaccurate. Something was going wrong. Something was missing between the tests and the actual sessions where she wasn't nailing them. And so she had to work through all that while still building up and running. So there's a lot of stuff you're trying to learn as a beginner athlete. You just have to trust the process. And this is what we go through. It'll all come. It'll all come together. But it does take consistent progression and just consistent work at it for it to eventually come together. And that's why you need to give yourself that time as well.

And also, Jord, you know, you talked earlier about her particular job, which is really shift work. And let's be blunt about this. Tuesday could go 18 hours. Wednesday could be off. Thursday could be six hours. Friday could be, you've got one hour to train, Saturday you've got none. You don't even know until your schedule comes out. And, you know, majority of people have a really clear Monday to Friday work where they work 8 till 5 or whatever. But there is so much impact when you've got a schedule like this and a lot of the time you're actually awake at night and you're not getting enough sleep and so that impacts everything. You know you're not aging properly because you have to be super organized to make sure that you're ticking all the right boxes and look to become a pilot at that young an age is pretty impressive. So she's obviously a talent and a very organized person. So that's shone through because she managed to schedule everything so that she didn't really miss a lot of training. She's done an exceptional job at this. I feel, and that's an example to everybody that even with the weirdest working hours, as long as you're organized and that's what plan, prepare, perform is all about. The planning part is well when am I going to train with the schedule I have? And if you're not paying attention to that the only outcome is you're going to miss sessions regularly. And you know, I think that's the thing that you are so much proud of her for doing.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think that if she wasn't as planned as she was, there's no way she would have gotten the results she did. And she just had to be with her schedule and and really inform us of of what was coming up so we could make informed decisions for her programming. But yeah, you have to be that diligent to have that kind of schedule and train well for an ironman. So that was definitely a key part of the process all the way through. And she also another thing she did really well which is just good for any preparation is really making smart decisions around your practice races. And so she ended up aiming for an Olympic race in Fairbut was actually husky try. So it's kind of an Olympic it's 1k swim, 60k bike, 10k run. So longer bike than normal and then Geelong 70.3 as a build up. But this also they were really good lead up races and good timing out from Port Mac. It brings up more interesting conversations around what's the goals for them. And the Husky trial was a really good confidence booster because she hadn't raced for so long. She really needed to get back into a triathlon and experience a race again and put together. And that was a real encouraging performance all around because she just didn't know how she was going to perform in a 10k off the bike. She didn't know how she was going to go in a race environment, sticking to power for the first time and it was a really great result all around. But she was still had a long way to go with her fitness and then come to Geelong 70.3 again. It was, it's a, it's a great point for people to realize that for her she really had high expectations of herself. And, and these are, these are all things I want you to touch on in a second. But it's, it's a classic conversation we have constantly with athlete and coach of is this your B race or is this your A race? Because if it's not your A race, you need to adjust your expectations and of course every athlete wants to do as well as they can in the race and we don't, we don't reject that. If you. And we always. We're not saying turn up to a race and don't try, that's never the case if you're pinning a number on, you're going as hard as you possibly can in the race. That's if you're going to go race, we're racing properly but you just have to have the right expectations around what form you'll be in and what you could possibly achieve. Because we haven't trained for that specific race and we're not peaking for that race and we had some great conversations around. It was constant back and forth of no, I want to do really well at this race and you can do as well as your form is right now, but we haven't trained you for this. We could have trained you for this in the last eight weeks but that would take away from your Ironman training. So which one do you want? And it's a to and fro that of course you've got your friends and family there. You're putting pressure on yourself to perform well. You want to beat your last 20.3 time. They're all natural things that you want to achieve but they're all not going to help you specifically with your Ironman goal. And yeah, your thoughts on that kind of conversation that comes up all the time.

Yeah, I'm pretty direct with it with the athletes that we coach and you know, if you give the athlete the reason why, then they'll be on board with it. I think that's true in anything you're talking about, whether it's training session or resting, if you give the reasons why. And so when you break it down, okay, so you've got a say. Geelong's march and Port. Port Mac is may and so if you wanted to really make Geelong your equal to Port Mac, there's your first mistake. Because if you do that, what happens two weeks before Geelong you have to start your taper and then, then you've, you've pushed yourself so hard at Geelong you might need a little bit more recovery. So therefore the week you have recovering might extend into 10 days. So in fact, the preparation for that Geelong race has cost you nearly three weeks in that preparation for the big one, the Ironman in Port Mac in May. And so that is a reason why you would think, oh, maybe I'll just do a little taper and I'll be happy and satisfied with whatever I can do at Geelong will be good enough. And as long as the athlete's on board with that and you've discussed that, if they're still saying adamantly no, I want it to be my best race, then that's when you're going to have to have really serious discussion about this will impact Port Mac. And as long as you're okay with the consequences, you may be 5 or 10% down because you've missed possibly a week and a half of really good preparation for Port Mac because of what you want to do at the Geelong race. And, and you as a coach, we can only say, okay, here's the consequences. Are you okay with that? And the athlete will go, well, no, not really. I want to do well at Port Mac as well. And so, you know, you're, you're giving the athlete the decision making and, and if they're okay with, with that, and then normally they're not because they're so competitive, but you've had that discussion, so.

Yes.

So you know, that's one of the key things that I'm adamant at and I'm really, I've, I've learned that I have to have that discussion otherwise it really comes back at Port Mac and they'll go, oh, I thought I would do better than that. And then you'd have to have this discussion. Well, because of what you did leading up to your previous race where we tapered for longer and recovered for longer because you wanted to make that an A race, the form you're in in March is different to the form you'll be in in May or September in any given year. So if you're preparing for an event that's six months away or 12 months away, if at the three month mark, the six month mark or the nine month mark, you'll be in different form, so the expectations that you would be able to perform at your maximum that you would expect in, you were doing in say, November, but you're doing a race in March. That's just plain wrong. You're a better athlete after having a buildup that's designated to a longer point than a shorter buildup. So that's an expectation you have to drill into the athlete that you know you'll be at the best form you can be in March, but it's going to be different. It's not the form you'll be in. Six months later you'll be in much better form because you've had longer to train and prepare. And if they don't understand that concept, then you're still battling with the whole discussion. And they're the things I'm nailing with the athlete is why is this going to be an issue when we get to the next race? Because it does impact your training build.

To her credit, she listened and she trusted against her will. And she'll probably laugh at that because she, she'll probably remember those conversations. But it brings up an interesting point for us because I remember having some conversations with you around it as we do with all our athletes. And we, we're just always discussing form people are in and, and races that are coming up. And you know, for us the temptation would be to try and help the athlete feel a little bit better and in those last few weeks do Some more specific 70.3 race intensity training sessions. But that takes away from the Ironman preparation and it's only eight weeks, nine weeks or so between Geelong and, and Port Mac. And so we're, we're doing Ironman specific work. We're doing, we're, we're gearing our training around that. And yes, it would be tempting to placate the athlete a little bit and get them in 70.3 form and have some confidence. And in that situation we have to back ourselves and go, no, we think you'll perform fine in the 70.3 anyway because you're getting super fit for Ironman. But we just don't want to waste any weekends doing 70.3 specific work because that's not your a, that's not your A race goal. You know, your A race goal is you want to perform best on race day at the Ironman and you want to be in your best shape. So of course, the week out we do the right things. We, we do some testing, we do some time trials, you're doing endurance work anyway, so it's not totally different. Um, and that helps inform us of a good race. Plan for race day. But it takes a bit of backing ourselves dad, and going trust this. And, and I said to you, I feel like she's going to go great anyway because her fitness is just becoming so good. Um, but you also can't promise that to the athlete because we haven't actually done the, the kind of race ready work where we could, where we could guarantee that if that makes sense. Um, but I will say, you know, she was concerned with, she really wanted to beat her 70.3 time, her first one, which was six hours. And I said to you, she'll beat that, no worries. If that's her only goal, then that's okay. And it turns out she blew it out of the water. She did 508. So it was a 52 minute PB or something around that area. And that's because you're getting insane fitness from the Ironman training which is really great. And to her credit, she blew my run expectations out of the water and I set up quite a conservative race plan because we weren't sure how she was going to put together her first half marathon off the bike again in this prep and she went out as conservative as I asked and then just blew that out of the water and we were too conservative in that run plan. So that just backs up what we're saying again.

Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there. And when you're training for an Ironman, you don't do the intensity for 70.3, but you've got that aerobic fitness from those long sessions. So you've got that resilience as a runner because you've been doing two, two and a half hour runs. Whereas if you're just specifically training for Olympic distance and a half Ironman, you know, if you're 140runner or 150runner, you're not doing many runs over that over that time. Whereas if you're training for a marathon, you're doing lots of time over 2 hours, 2 hours, 22 hours 30. So. So you are actually building a lot more aerobic capacity to do well in shorter events even though you don't have the intensity. And I think the same on the bike, you know, you're so strong after doing four or five hour rides and if you specifically training for 70.3, you'd be doing two, three hour rides, three hour, three hour 30 rides. So that longer over. We know that from all of our research from, from all our athletes that if you can get longer endurance sessions in on your body as a runner, and as a rider, you know you're, you're going to cope with the duration of the event. It's just the intensity you need to get good at. And so the other aspect that we, that we really want our athletes is to always feel like confidence in the program and confidence in their training, confidence in their preparation. And so a poor result is not going to help that. So it is a, it is a concern that, that we let athletes do these, these big profile races as a build up for you know, we could just say no racing, we'll just do our own mock races and you know, you don't have to pay the money, don't have to go and fly there, don't have to pay the accommodation, the entry, just do your own. But it's not, it's not the same conditions. You have traffic where you have to stop. Whereas in a race like this everything's open and the road's closed and you're in a race environment. So it is a better outcome all round to do these practice races. And it's a key thing for your ironman. There's no doubt about it in my mind. And it gives the athlete confidence. And when she nailed that 70.3 inch along, most of the athletes are doing the same. It's just such a big, you just trust the process more because far out, how good did I run today? You're actually shocking yourself, you're going, I just felt fantastic. And if the opposite occurs and that's a bad thing because you just all of a sudden question everything you're questioning and there could be a reason why it didn't happen. But nine times out of 10, if it's part of the journey and as long as you've got that expectation, which I said 10 minutes ago, that you aren't in the same form as you would be when you're getting to the end of your A race. And so as long as the athlete's on board with that and they have as you said, just break six hours, well that's, that's a no brainer. She's going to do that and, and you know she's, she absolutely smashed it. So you know straight away she's already won, you know, she's won her goal and then she's PB to half marathon in a triathlon again, you know, and the second, I think the second 10k was her PB 10k. So yeah, yeah. So there's just so many things happening that she's just, she's just, I can't wait for the next training session I can't wait for the race for. For the Ironman. And so they're really good things to do and, and it's part of that. That confidence building and the mental side of racing and training is so undervalued and you can do all the training sessions you like but to. To get some feedback that's so positive in a race environment and that's why you and I push our athletes to try and other races like we do some time trials on a local road here we've got the local people doing the time trials and we, we. I send people to obscure events just so they got this competition and they get feedback about where their form is and I think that you know getting practice your execution in races that don't count for anything for your but for your a race that I I just.

Went through the exact experience the last few months where I just. I'm living in Indonesia and the heat and humidity is just out of this world and I just cannot get close to my typical race paces in practice training for a half marathon coming up and I really started to say to you I know it's the heat, I know it but I still. You still starting to doubt yourself and you're going but is it all the heat or am I just not as fit as I think I am? Like I just maybe I just can't run these paces. And then I was back in Australia over the weekend in some cooler temperatures and it was definitely the heat because Suddenly I'm running 10 to 12 seconds faster per km in a training session. And, and that's why these little things are so important, why we we schedule them in like that mental confidence is just so vital. So for Shelby she then kicked on for a preparation for Port Mac. She was looking really good and a few weeks out her plans get completely derailed. She gets assigned some international duty with work and there is just no way out of it. And she cannot race Port Mac and has to be overseas. So not only is she has she. And in her words she said it's so deflating because I have woken up every single day for the last 11 months and thought what am I doing today to best prepare for the Ironman, you know which just shows the level of commitment but everything around her planning, her schedule, her life, her work. I was thinking before about the travel. You know when you think about how hard it is to lug your bike to a race. You know she's doing that every two or three days carrying her bike with her for work. So she can keep training on the bike and packing it up and putting it down. Packing it up. She must be the biggest expert at packing the bike out of anyone.

I don't think people realize how hard that is. You're not just packing a case to go to work, you're packing a bike every day to go to work.

That's ridiculous. Yeah. So the dreams is suddenly thrown out the window a little bit and she's going, what do we do? What do I do? I've turned my life around for this event. And also part of the Ironman process is you start to lose your social life in balance. And not just, you know, she enjoys training with friends and we had to really, in the last 10 weeks I just said look, I know you love this social stuff but this is the period where you've got to start cutting more of that out and we might be able to fit in some every now and again but this is race ready phase now. And, and she accepted that. And but it also cuts into just your social balance because you're so exhausted from these big sessions, you can't really go to social events with friends. And so the point is all this commitment for then the race to be kind of taken away from you, it's just so deflating. And so the decision was okay, can I defer it? Can I, can I? And am I willing to enter Cairns if I can't defer it and pay the money again for, for another race and, and rejig everything? And, and what do we do then? Do we do we have a break from training? I've just done a huge race ready Ironman phase. I'm ready to peak in the next few weeks. And she was starting to really absolutely fly. And that was the decision. She just said no, I've trained this much for an Ironman, I want to do it. But now she's actually overseas for it for seven to 10 days. And so that interrupts your training in itself for the Ironman phase. And so the decision was okay, let's just take a little bit of a break. Once you get back from that overseas, you've got six weeks again to get yourself Ironman race ready. You already right now are Ironman race ready. You're as fitted as you could be. So rather than trying to continue for another eight weeks, it's too long to be in a race ready phase and to try and peak. So we just backed it off a little bit and just went a little bit shorter. Really backed off the volume for a couple of weeks while she went overseas and then just picked up where we left off with in that last five to six weeks and peaked against the cairns. And that was just another classic process of. We've spoken about this before with anyone training for their first Ironman is. It just, it takes every single Ironman race ready session for it to click. It won't click on your first one, it won't click on your second one and for a lot of athletes it doesn't click to their sixth or eighth one. And for her it was a classic case of in the last couple of sessions leading into Cairns it finally all just clicked and she really understood what we were saying and, and the bike sessions just started to feel really strong and one of the key ones was a, was a 35k marrow pace run off the bike where she just felt on top of the world. So much so that she was naughty and did a extra 3km and ran 38.8km, almost close to a marathon. And this is only a few weeks out from Cairns which as coaches we're not happy with, you know, essentially doing a marathon in your training. But she just said she felt so good she wanted to prove she'd get that close. So we can't argue with it. And the truth is in the numbers she ran, unbelievable.

So I didn't get injured. Don't forget Christian Blumfeld ran a marathon before he won the Kona.

Exactly.

Kona Ironman. And not that we say that that's what you should be doing. No, that's not what you should be doing for everybody listening to this. But yeah, certainly I think the way you guys handled that, it was really good to watch and I was blown away by the fact that she had such resilience that okay, reset and again, trust in the process and got to a really good level of fitness. And as you said, you just can't hold that for eight to 10 weeks you've got to actually give yourself a reset. And I think that was a really good thing and it was almost like a blessing in disguise almost because I think that sort of pressure kind of now she really understood that I really do want to do this event, even though she did want to do it before. When it's taken away from you, all of a sudden you get more desire to am I ever going to get to do this damn event? You know, and we always talk about roadblocks and that's just one of them and there's still a couple more to come. So tell us what happened next.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, basically. Then get to, you know, has a really good race ready phase and then gets to eight days out, nine days out from the race, is really ready to do her final testing and taper and ends up having to go to the doctor and then has to have emergency surgery on the Saturday, goes to the doctor on Thursday or Friday. Straight away, they book her in for emergency surgery on the Saturday, a week out from the race and she just calls and goes, I can't believe this, but this is a surgery she's been googling. How does it all work? ChatGPT what's, what's the recovery? Trying to ask the doctors. I've got, I've got an eye man next week. And then the doctor's saying to the other doctor, the consultant, you know, what's the recovery? She's got a triathlon next week and she's going, it's not a triathlon, it's an iron man. It's not trying to convince them of what the enormity of the event is next week. It's not a, it's not a little thing I'm trying to recover for. This is an ironman. And, and the level of stress that comes with that, just insane. And once again, is the race derailed again? You know, I'm having emergency surgery where you're under general anesthetic. What's the recovery going to be? Can I possibly race? My whole tape is interrupted. I don't get to do my last test now. Which is kind of the best part of the confidence booster because it shows how fit you are. Just what a roadblock to be thrown in front of you.

Yeah. And you know, you have to actually account for these things. And, and if you don't, it's to your detriment. And so, you know, you are, this.

Is on the extreme end, to be, to be honest, of what can be thrown at you. But, but yes, you're right. We always say anything can be thrown at you.

Yep. And you know, coming from a cooler climate to a warmer climate, you know, if you don't allow for that, just as the example you gave from Bali coming back to Melbourne, you know, you're a different athlete in the space of seven days. It's nothing to do with your fitness, zero to do with your fitness. It's to do with the environment. And for those who dismiss that, they're on the wrong, they're on the wrong program. And to have surgery is another factor that has to be accounted for. It can't be dismissed. And I always laugh when, if you ever go to the doctor and they say, oh, do you do any exercise? And you say, oh, yeah, I do triathlon. And majority of people, I'm being general here, really don't know what's involved in that. And you know, oh, yeah, you do a bit of exercise, bit of riding, a bit of swimming, a bit of running. They just don't understand, you know, if you're a cyclist and you're doing, you know, endurance events, gran fondos at a 150k, 200k, marathons at a 42k and endurance, you know, I don't think the average person understands how gravity that is. Yeah. And so, yeah, you should be right to exercise. This is not just any exercise. This is, this is an event that's, that's going to take all of my might to, to get to the finish off. And I've just had surgery. Is this okay? And you're seriously asking that question? It's not a joke. You are asking for some really good advice here. And unfortunately, unless they know what is involved, then they're not really, they're just going to give general advice. You know, I think you should be okay to exercise.

Yeah. And the advice was, you know, recovery can be anywhere from, from two to seven days, depending on the person, depending on how bad it is. And that doesn't really help either. And so we just had to take it day by day and go, we can't change anything. You have to do this. You have to take the pressure off yourself to forget the taper, forget sessions. You know, your whole goal is recovery and just see how your body is next week. And literally each day waking up and going, am I recovering? Am I resting? Can I train? Can I be on the bike? Can I run? And it was three days of recovery, definitely really mentally trying to force herself to be good more than physically. But each day was fractionally better. Went for a first run on the Tuesday or Wednesday, I think super light, and then first ride on the Wednesday or Thursday and just didn't feel great. But each day we just said the legs might come back more and more. And at that point, when you've trained 11 months, for almost 12 months now for an ironman and you're literally down to the wire of whether your body's going to be ready or not. It's, it's mentally that's so hard. And it takes again, a lot of resilience to get through that. But these are the challenges that in different forms do pop up. And then to get to Saturday and be like, okay, it's seeming okay, but now we've got an Ironman tomorrow and how is my body going to respond in an Ironman? It's a big unknown and it's hard to have full confidence going into a race with that cloud looming over your head.

Imagine the thought process yourself, Jord. If you've got to get to Port Mac and you've had to cancel it and now you think you've done everything right to Cairns and then it looks like you might have to cancel it again and you know, twice in a row in the space of eight weeks I think is be pretty demoralizing. So I think she should, you know, she deserves a medal for actually getting to the start line after what she's done over that period. And we've spent a lot of time talking about that and the reason is we want to tell every athlete out there that it's just not smooth, the preparation. If you think it's going to be smooth and you think you're, you're a very organized person, then think again. There are so many things that can be thrown at you and this is the measure of the woman or the man as how you deal with it. And if you can do this in the preparation, planning phase, doesn't matter what happens on race day, you're going to be such good capacity to deal with anything that's thrown at you, such as a crap swim like was presented to every athlete who started at Cairns. And you know, this is, this is what it's all about. This is the practice things you do so that when it comes to race day you've got the mindset and of course you've got the fitness but it's the mindset that when something's thrown at you, you lose your mind, you lose the plot and they're the things that we're trying to instill in our athletes is, you know, just deal with it in a, in a calm and, and thought provoking process that how am I going to get around this? I've just lost all my nutrition. What do I do now? The nutrition that I wanted, that they said I had on course. Morton Black wasn't available at half of the aid stations and that's happened to one of our athletes was relying on that gets to every aid station and there's none, there's none available. What am I going to do about that? So you've got to have this thought process about navigating things that are going to happen to you. So that's why we spent this time. So we do talk in these case Studies a lot about the actual event and how well they performed. But we don't talk a lot about getting to the start line and the things that you have to do so well, so diligently. So now we've got to the race day.

Yeah. And look, the race plan, you kind of go, here's our normal procedure. But, but you know, for you we've got, here's what we think you can do. You know, if nothing else had gone wrong or anything, here's what you're capable of, here's what your, all your data and your training sessions so show you can do. But then we have to account for Cairns is such a tough course and it's a tough course on a bad day of conditions. It's a tough course in good conditions. But Sunday was forecasted for really choppy water and really quite strong headwind, meaning majority of the bike was into a headwind because there's an extra little loop and that extra loop was into a headwind. And so for everyone that makes it a slower day. So, okay, we have your ideal race plan but then we have what the conditions are for the actual day, which is now this is kind of plan B and this is what we're kind of predicting and then we have to say. But also there's plan C which is your body just might not be ready now because of this surgery and because of these last minute things and if that happens, that's going to derail your day and you just have to expect that that is an option. Ideally that doesn't happen. Obviously, ideally you get through tomorrow and you're. Everything goes smoothly, but you can't mentally ignore that fact that that might be an option and it might be a completely different day to what you're anticipating. That's, that's quite hard to hear. But you have to say that because if you pretend it's not an option and then suddenly your body's just, you've been in general surgery, anesthetic surgery a week ago and your body just can't cope with it. Suddenly your day is just about absolute survival and all the training paces and plans we planned for are out the window. For an iron man, I think it's.

A really good point, Jordan. If you ignore that and bury your head in the sand, you're not going to allow your body and your mind, more importantly, to cope with whatever happens. And I think you're doing yourself an injustice if you try to say nothing's going to happen to me, I'll be fine. That's what Planning the race strategy is about if this scenario happens, this is my plan B. And if I feel really bad, I've just got to run slower or ride slower or swim slower. And. And if you're not on board with that, then you're setting yourself for. Setting yourself up for failure, I think so. I think Shelby did a great job of listening to that advice, and in the end, it ended up giving her more conservative approach so that she could actually really do well in the event.

Yeah. And we just said, you have done everything you can, you have trained the best possible, you have, you have left no stone unturned. So therefore, you can't ask any more of yourself and your body gives up tomorrow, that's not on you. That's just going to happen. But it didn't. And the day turned out well. And thankfully, in tough conditions, it was a rough swim for everyone. And she did not enjoy the swim or the bike ride very much at all. She was really hoping to enjoy the bike ride. And it wasn't, it wasn't a great day on the bike because it was a slow, slower day for everyone. But the swim, yes, she was outside the range, but so was everyone. And that's always funny for us, watching and tracking everyone live. We can see that everyone's swimming slower. And that's a big lesson for an athlete is, you know, don't come out of the swim and panic if it's slower because you don't know how everyone else did either. And that's something we try and ram home. But everyone was slower. So we're watching. Okay, going okay. The swim was poor, plus we have people on the ground telling us that the conditions are crazy. So that's everyone. And then you watch the bike and we have the full range of what would be the A result or the B result. And she dipped under six hours, which on a good day she could, she could be a 5:30 5:40 rider, but with a strong headwind like that, it's going to be the lower range. And the low end of the range was to crack under six minutes. And she did that and then gets to the run. And we had a conservative range of, of 5:50 to 6 minute pace. And we knew that she's capable of. And she'd done that 38k off the bike in training at 5.45pace. And we knew she's capable of that, but it was too risky to go for that and we needed to go more conservative. Um, and to her credit, she blitzed the run and average 5:44 pace and came and came home in that marathon, just absolutely flying. And honestly, to put all that together after that day and the preparation and everything that happened, just to get to the start line, she was grateful for. But for it to all go as smoothly as that and to guts it out like that and to finish off with that kind of marathon, 402 marathon, a PB marathon, inside the Ironman. Absolutely phenomenal.

Yeah. And that's the, the fun fact is that we, we push this on our podcast a lot. If you, if you do well and swim in the ride, you will have equally a good opportunity to run the way you want to. And for the majority of the athletes from the Trivalo camp, we had probably nine out of the 12 have the runs that they wanted to, which is a very high proportion really. And, you know, we actually had a, a person negative split. Fiona, man, negative splitted. Which I digress from, from what we're talking about with Shelby, but, but, you know, that is pretty impressive. An athlete in their 50s can, you know, can run 445 pace, 450 pace.

I think there is a case study coming on, Fiona.

345. And that's not to take away from Shelby. It's just an example of, you know, if you do things well, this is what you'll be able to do. And, and I think the fun thing is when you are still running past people who are walking, you just feel so inspired and so motivated. And I think that's the, you know, that's the bit that you, that you want to experience. And if you haven't experienced that yet, there's a, you know, that's what your goal should be for the next, next time you've done it. And you know that the story that she's got is, you know, obviously I can do better. You know, I want to. I want to. I want to beat this. And that's her mentality literally straight afterwards, you know, far out. It was really hard. Yes, it was hard, but. But the way I ran now, I know that I can ride better and obviously I can swim better because the conditions will never be like that. And the ride, the ride always, always gets a little bit of a rough deal at Cairns because you actually do an extra section into a headwind, which normally most courses around the world, you start and finish at the same spot. And so you've got equal time into the headwind and tailwind, but you start 30 to 40k away from the finishing point. So you're doing two loops out and back, and then you do an extra into the head, which means the bike time will be so much slower than any other Ironman that you've ever done. So that absolutely changes. And if you're only dealing with times, then Canja can only be compared with Cairns. So I think overall it was a really good story of really someone with resilience and great planning and determination and willing to trust the process and be on board and being open to anything and just trusting that if I do have this race strategy with plan A, B, C and D, I can choose to select which one I can do on the day. Depending on how I feel, I'll get the outcome that I want. And I think she nailed that.

Yeah, absolutely. It was an awesome story. And then I do want to touch on the 9 out of 12 run athletes thing because we don't want to shy away from ever. Whenever an athlete doesn't run the way we want, we go straight into it and we dig deep and go what's happened here? And when you're watching on the tracker, it can either be something completely unexpected or it can be just a blow up or it can be something that's a little bit harder to dig into. But you know, we looked at our athletes and one of the runners was coming from an injury so the run wasn't expected to run as they wanted. And that's okay. One was Roland who was in his pro debut as an ironman and we'll do a whole episode on this with him and dissect it and just talk about our learnings as coach and athlete there. Because if you listen to the episode pre, he was really, he really had high expectations for the race. Since we want to break down really what, what happened for him and, and he's been extremely quote, gracious in defeat in, in his race and it was self defeat because he's, he's competing with himself. But we can't wait to dig into that one and give our thoughts about what happened for his iron man. And then one last athlete which is really interesting and we'll, we'll dig into this in another episode is it's quite hard to figure out what went wrong because sometimes you look and you straight away can go, okay, something went drastically wrong with nutrition. That was a problem. Something went wrong with the execution either on the bike or the swim or the start of the run and that's what led them to run poorly. But this athlete is quite interesting where nothing seemed to go wrong. All the training added up to X paces on the day, all the bike and Swim data was as expected and they just, they had no nutrition problems and they couldn't run the way they wanted. And so we're digging right into that with that athlete. And that's part of the learning process is going, what do we need to improve here to get this process right? So it's important to acknowledge all those things and that's what, what we think good coaching and learning is about.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. And look in that scenario and I've had a bit of a dig into it, which, you know, that's the thing that I really want to find out. As a coach, I want to learn from experience. And if the day I think that I know everything is the day I should really give up coaching, because you should be learning about every scenario. And my conclusion already is that it's just not one thing. And I've said that many times on our podcast. It's a combination of many things that can actually derail the most important part, which is to get the run right. So, yeah, I've already seen some things that little bit here, a little bit there, times seven, and then you've got the end result. So, yeah, I'd really like to share that in another episode, actually. It'd be a good one.

Yeah, for sure. And what we love is when you use data and you have the training data and the racing data and the way we go about it is you always find the answer. When you dig deep enough, you always do find the answer, which is the exciting part. So that's it for this case study. A really big one. But this was big. Congratulations to Shelby for nailing this first Iron Man. What an absolutely epic journey. I'm sure every listener will be able to sympathize with the amount of things that went wrong there and the resilience she showed to get through it. So what an absolutely epic journey. And we can't wait for future updates on how she goes in her future Ironman journeys, considering she wants to do another one. So congratulations, Shelby. If you want your own help with Ironman or 70.3 or any distance, you can go to trivelocoaching.com and apply to get coached with us there. As you just heard about how our experiences work, a reminder that we coach athletes from all around the world, not just Australia. We have coaches around the world and athletes around the world all competing successfully across all distances. So if you want to get coached, we have an eight week guarantee that if you don't improve in the first eight weeks, it's your money. Back. So go to trivalocoaching.com and sign up for to apply to get coached there. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you on the next one.