How Dave Increased His Bike Speed From 40 to 44km/hr [CASE STUDY]

In today's case study episode, we have a cyclist who has increased his time trial speed by over four kilometers per hour. He went from averaging speed of low 40 kilometers per hour to 44 and a half kilometers per hour. And in a 40 kilometer time trial. And whether you're a cyclist or a triathlete in an Olympic distance triathlon, the, the distance is 40 kilometers. That's going to wipe off almost six minutes. That is a monster gain. And for someone that was already riding 40 and a half kilometers an hour, they're clearly a good rider. But to go up to 44 and a half is a massive, massive gains. We're going to go through, as always, exactly what we did to help him change and help him improve. So I want to introduce this athlete, Dave. He's a small, very light master six athlete. So that makes him in the 50, 55 to 59 year old category. But being quite small and light, that makes it hard to be a good time trailer. Not always, that's not always the rule. But you know, you tend to think as these good time trollers that can really just be a rock and hold that monster power. But he's a great climber, he's also a surgeon, so he has a very intense workload. And all these factors are really important to set up the actual phase of who this athlet is that we're talking about how we help them improve because we're trying to give you examples of how people can get these results when they're in similar positions to what you might be yourself. So he came to us three years ago because he'd been writing for a long time and he just found in the last few years of his training before he came to us, something was stopping from improving and he wanted to find out what it was. And basically the setup for this was he tried a lot of things. He was with a coaching group, they had no structure, they were doing the same sessions every day. And he did improve a little bit doing that, but he hit a wall. And then he moved on to some online programs and once again he was basically just a one dimensional rider. He's, he'd improved but after a while he hit a plateau as everyone does when they do the same kind of riding. And his numbers stayed the same and the setup really is he was, he was flogging himself in training for years and ended up hating the sessions. He wasn't improving and not enjoying it. And from trivelo perspective, what are our goals? Number one is improvement, number two is enjoyment. Or we could even flip it around. We would say enjoyment first and then improvement and it was doing either. So, so he really felt like he was missing something. And dad, welcome to the episode. I want to say that two of the key things he felt like he was missing were the communication and accountability. So let's kind of go into, through. That's the setup. Let's go through with Dave kind of where he was and what he felt like he was missing.

Yeah, Dave's been a real joy to coach and so are most of the athletes that come on board. And I've absolutely loved seeing his improvement. And ironically you mentioned that he's in the Masters six category and that's, that's not a young rider. And you know, for all those people who've ridden a time trial bike and know what 40 km an hour is and so hard to do, and the majority of riders that, that we Coach range between 28Ks an hour to probably 35, 36Ks an hour. That would be the range of athletes that we coach. And, and we have a small percentage, maybe 15, 20% of athletes who can actually ride above 40Ks an hour. We have 2 or 3% who can ride above 45. So we've got a really vast range of abilities in our coaching group. And, and Dave was one of those guys who was a good rider, but I felt like he wasn't reaching his potential and it was such a breath of fresh air when he came on board because he was absolutely sick of the way he'd been doing it for so long and he was really not enjoying the lack of improvement. And therefore you don't enjoy your riding as much as from all, everybody out there listening, you know, that you'll get more fun when you're riding better. The correlation is huge. And when you're writing poorly, it sucks and you hate it. And he got to a point where he probably wasn't going to keep writing that much more. But anyway, he, he, he decided to reach out and we're so grateful we did because of, it's, you know, formed a really great relationship with Dave and, and he lives in WA and I live in Victoria and so we don't see each other that often. But I feel like I know him quite intimately and had the privilege of taking him to Belgium and seeing him first, firsthand and what a pocket rocket he is as a bike rider. And I cannot get across the message to everybody listening here how particular he is about his training. And there would be over the three years be very few sessions that he's missed. And that is one of the things that he said to me was he loved the fact that he had someone who made him accountable and was desperate for structure. Just wanted to know what am I supposed to be doing tomorrow in relation to what I did today and should I do something hard tomorrow and because I've done something hard today and that waking up each day knowing that my session's already planned out for me and I know that my coach has got my best interest interests of improvement at heart and this is going to be a little bit of a slow burn, but I have to go backwards before I go forwards. And. And he had that mindset straight away in an initial consultation was, you just tell me what to do, Jared, and I'll do it. And that's music to my ears. And someone who's going to really trust the program, not do a version of it and they will get the outcome. And it's not a three month outcome that we're looking for here. This is a 3 year and he didn't ride 44.5 ks an hour in the first 6 months. He was miles away from that. It's a process. So everybody out there who's listening to this, don't think about these things as a quick fix. You have to put the time in and there's so much to learn about when to apply the right power in certain positions in a race. And training to execute like that is the key to doing it in a race. And it doesn't matter what sport you're doing, whether it's time trialing individually or time trialing in a triathlon, you still need to learn how to ride the bike properly in the conditions. And of course, getting a bike fit and getting the setup right with your equipment, that that will go a long way to improving you. But you need to know what sessions to do, how to ride the power in on a time trial bike. It's just not the same as riding a bike. You need to understand when the times are to ride a little bit harder and when the times are to ride a little bit easier.

That's so true. I mean, yeah, finding speed on the time trial bike, as we've spoken about in many podcasts, comes down to many factors and you've just identified some of those key ones. It's starting with what training are you doing. And for him, he was doing far too much of the same type of training and he wasn't doing anything specific enough that was really going to improve his time trialing. He was training really hard. But as we were about to show you, the actual training that he needs to be doing was quite different to what he was doing. And then it comes down to a lot of other factors. Your position on the bike, your equipment, what you were saying, just setting. Sure, upgrading your bike, upgrading your position, upgrading your all forms of equipment is really going to help. But then that won't make a difference if you're actually not executing properly. And you can do some great training. But if you get into race day not executing well, you know when to push the right power at the right times, when to back it off, when to push harder, executing evenly. These are all things that you need to be able to get right. So let's go, let's get really specific with his training and go through what he actually did to improve. And the key one I want to start with is that one of the most important sessions in his program to improve this is the sub threshold session. And can you take us through what he's built up to now, what he does regularly in terms of this sub threshold session, and define kind of what zone that it's in?

Yeah, and look, this is just one of the sessions. And for those who are listening, don't try and do this session every day for five days or six days. This is just one of the sessions that are in his program. And does this one stand out more than the others? Probably not, because each session that we have in his program is really specifically aiming at something that we're trying to achieve with him, and in his case, to be a better threshold rider. And so the sub threshold seems really weird when we talk about specificity, don't we, a lot on this podcast. And if you want to ride faster, you need to practice riding faster. And that's true. That is absolutely true. There's nothing wrong with that sentence. But you can't do that day in, day out. And that's why the sub threshold, where you're writing just below threshold, you know, IF threshold is 100% and sub threshold is somewhere between 88 and 94 to 96% of your 100% effort, so doing that is repeatable. And that's why it's such a good session to do. And you can do it for, you know, if we're doing threshold or VO2 work or max efforts, you know, the time we can spend doing that is somewhere between eight minutes and probably 30, whereas as a sub threshold session, we can do two by 30 or two by 40. But I need to be careful what I say here because he built up from 2 by 10 minutes, 2 by 15, 2 by 20, 2 by 30 over a period of three years. So, you know, he can really nail now. And where he lives in wa, there's a great time trial. There's actually great bike paths for time trialing and there's one north of the city where it's specifically for time trialing for road, for bike riders. And it's uninterrupted, no traffic lights, and you can ride in one direction for 40 minutes without having to be, you know, really disrupted at all and then turn around and come back. So he does that session and he's built that up to 2 by 40 where he's riding, you know, anywhere between, you know, we give him a variation between 86 to, to 90, 90 to 4, 94% of his FTP. And, and to be able to do that, you know, week in, week out, that is one of the key sessions that is actually going to get you to be able to ride at threshold and above so much more comfortably. If you've been able to do, you know, one hour 20 of riding it between 80 and 92%. And that's an extreme example. It's taken him a long time to get to one of those or two of those sessions. So, you know, repeating sessions of, of doing, you know, two by 15 minutes, that is where most competent cyclists could start. And you know, not just riding at 90% the whole time, varying it from, you know, five minutes at 86 and then four minutes at 92 and then three more minutes at 88 and you know, in that 15 minutes, so that you're getting the feeling of if you're on a perfectly flat road, which he is at the back of wa, not all time trials are perfectly flat. So we need to understand that when, you know, we need to vary our power. So we're trying to replicate that change of power, change of percentage of power in a training session so that it replicates what we might encounter during an actual real time trial where we've got hills and wind. So we're not just sitting on a number for two by 40 minutes. We're, we're varying it so that you are getting used to changes in, in pressure on the pedals. And that is, that is something that's taken a long time. I keep emphasizing that and I really want that message to get home. Don't go out and do this straight away. This is something you have to build into.

And what you've just described there is a bit more of an advanced kind of version of the sub threshold session rather than just doing two by 40 minutes at that range, 88 to 96. You know, there are reasons why we, we sometimes break it up into the 40 minutes broken down into 10 minutes.

Of this and 6 minutes of this.

And 3 minutes of that. And yeah, that is to replicate the course as well as to get used to sitting in various parts of the range to see how it feels and see what you're capable of holding. So that's a really cool example of how it can actually work in the variation you can get in that one session. So we want to keep going through what changes were made to his training weeks and his overall structure. And one of the next ones is the balance between training on his own and not being in a group unless we needed him to, but then certain times when he was actually in a group. So can you talk us through that?

It's a really good topic because the majority of cyclists love riding socially with their mates. And that's what we want. We encourage that. It's got so many positives. You will be pushed. If you're in a group that's better than you, that's a great outcome. Getting yourself in a group that, where the, your mates are better. If you're the kingpin in the group, it is a lot harder to get the value out of the session. The things you would try to do is attack and stay away that you know, you're making a competition within a competition. But, you know, the, the thing that he was doing before was just all the rides were group rides and all the rides were chasing and competitive, everybody pushing each other and that's great. We want to pick the eyes out of that and select those sessions where we want them and not do them every day, every week. And so continuing to ride that hard the same way every day is unsustainable. And so therefore it's extreme riding. And anything that is extreme in this world, we can't maintain. It's unsustainable. So we need to actually have days where in a four week block, I might say to Dave, okay, two of these sessions out of this four weeks, I want you to go with a group and I want you to make that as hard as you possibly can. We're using the group for our advantage. We're using that group ride where he's going to be pushed. And we know that's the Tuesday morning and he can go, or the Friday morning he can go and do that session. And I'm saying to him, feel free, you ride as hard as you like in this, you can attack, you can hang on, you can be the aggressor, do whatever you like, but just push yourself. And so he knows that that's the purpose of that session. We talked about the sub threshold session. We don't want him to go over, over his 94% in that sub threshold session. But here we are, we've got the next session where we're asking him to do completely a different form of training. This is where he sort of was going, wow, this is great. I've got a specific session on a Sunday that I need to do and now I've got a couple of bunch rides that I'm allowed to jump into or not. And if I feel he's done too many of them in a period, I would say no more bunch rides. You need to go and do a specific training session where we, we're controlling your threshold or your VO2. So he's really on board with that. And there's some days where we've got an event coming up where it might be a particular road championships or a race that he's aiming for. Well, I will throw him in a few more bunch rides. But prior to that, maybe 14 weeks out or 10 weeks out, we would be doing a lot more of training on his own where he's riding specifically to his numbers. And, and we're controlling that. And you know, there is a difference between riding hard, controlled and riding hard with the freedom to ride as hard as you like. And, and getting a mixture of those two things is gold. That's what we want. We want to have that, that variation in the training. And again we're, we're trying to stop you from repeating the same thing day after day. That is that if you haven't heard it already, that's the message we're trying to get across. And you know, that's an example of, of how he's adapted one of his other sessions.

Perfect. And then another key one is something that we've built up over time and we've used that built up word a bit and we want to say that and stress that because he is three years into the program and what he's doing are quite, quite large sessions. We wouldn't expect everyone to build up to 2 by 40 minutes or 3 by 40 minutes sub threshold. And we wouldn't expect everyone to do this session, which is he's consistently doing four, five, six hour rides in the hills, basically huge volume at zone two. And now he can even handle in these rides, strength, efforts. You know, you're giving him strength. Efforts in the hills at 70, 80, 90%, you know, kind of efforts in the middle of those four to five, six hours. And just think about how strong he's getting doing that kind of riding. And he can do that and recover well, you know, he can do that. It doesn't wipe me out for the week and it takes a lot to get there. And that, and that consistency you mentioned at the very start of this topic, when we started talking about his training, you know, he's, he's been one of the more consistent trainers and that's allowed him to get to this point. But that is such a key session. I think, you know, the thought process needs to be. You can just imagine how strong he is being able to do that because he does it so consistent.

Yeah. And it's important that we do that in the right range and not be riding too hard. Because if you do do that too hard, and that sounds like a really funny and strange thing to say, but what scenarios would you find if you do you find yourself in where you are riding that long four hour plus ride? Well, if you're with a group who are better than you, you've got no choice if you want to keep up with a group to ride at the best rider's tempo, and that's not your zone two, you'll be in zone three, four or five at, at variations. So right from the outset I said to Dave, I would rather you did this on your own if you're okay with that. And he was absolutely okay with that. And the reasons were so that we could stay in zone two and you weren't being pushed into areas where you didn't want to go because we still have to train the next day and the next day. And so he did that beautifully. He embraced that. And we didn't start at four hours with Dave. Even though he'd been doing a lot of endurance riding with brunches, he'd been doing quite a lot of four hour rides with bunches. But I tried to explain to him that going 4 hours solo compared to going with a 4 hour bunch ride, there's lots of periods where you're sitting in on the bunch and you're getting a free ride, whereas when you're riding by yourself, you are in charge of every stroke, pedal action that you're doing and you're in the wind the whole time. So. So he goes a lot more tired than he ever imagined when he was doing it solo. But so we started a long time ago with, you know, Two to three hour endurance rides. And, and we've built our way up to as you've explained already to that he, he regularly does five and six hours in the hills and, and he can recover no problem. But that took a long time.

I mean just try it, you know, go for a four hour bunch ride where there's guys attacking. It's really high intensity. Both sessions are fatiguing when and then you go do four hours of just zone two pressure on the pedals solo and it's a different type of fatigue. Zone 2 solo just wears you down because you're having to keep the pace up yourself. And even though it's zone 2, it should be below that LT1 it still absolutely wears you down. So kind of some summaries about his training week is he definitely rides the time trial bike at least once or twice per week and that is so specific to making sure that his time traveling actually improves. He has three really easy days in the week, recovery days and the rest of his week is as we mentioned, kind of makes up, he's made up of VO2 sessions sub threshold like we said, high volume. Zone 2, potentially a high intensity blunt tri in there. And so that kind of summarizes his training week and then moving on to how he kind of fixed his time trial and he gained four and a half kilometers per hour in terms of speed. The next kind of things, we're looking at his time trial position and his execution. So he has definitely been someone that's looked at every element of his bike, his bike position, his equipment, he's upgraded it all to help him get the most out of himself.

Yeah. And look, one of the things we probably didn't mention was he's regularly racing time trials and he's in a fortunate position. One of the sessions that he does in that week block and it could be, you know, in a six week period, a two, three week block period. He may have two time trials that are available to him and he, we would slot that into his, his Sunday session and replacement for the sub threshold session. We don't do that too often. And he's lucky. Being in Western Australia, the Australian Time Trial association run time trials pretty much every second weekend which is absolutely brilliant. If you live in wa, in Perth, you, you have that opportunity to really test yourself. And it reminds me of in England they have time trialling is a sport on its own. It's a bike riding sport and, and people are only time trialers, they don't do anything else, they just time trial. And so you know, they're getting huge numbers to these time trials in WA and you get a chance to really hone your skill of execution, which has taken the great conversations I've had with Dave has been around analyzing what he's done in these ATTA time trials and looking at, you know, sometimes I do a five lap course and we can break it down and say, look, lap one, you did 270 watts and your time was five seconds faster than lap two, lap three, lap four, et cetera. And we break that down and see where he can improve and put the power down differently for the same fitness that he has. And those nuances are really the execution thing that we kind of gloss over a bit, but that takes a lot of our time together, is working out where we can improve with the same fitness level. And of course the bike time trial position, getting a bike fit, the equipment you're using, which we'll talk about now. And that is going to be also a game changing thing that he can do.

Quite simply, he improved his bike, improved his bike setup, got better equipment all around, not just the bike itself. He got more aero. And that all contributes. But what's, what's really interesting is he actually got a new power meter for the bike and it was reading lower power. You know, when he switched over, it was clearly reading lower power than what he's used to. And that could be a big mind game with yourself. And you're having to convince him to, you know, you're riding well and he's actually riding faster, but his power power is lower. And that could be a real big ego blow. And you're having to say to him, forget the old power meter, it's different equipment now, so you have to go off the new power meter number. And that is frustrating because you work so hard to get that power up and now you're riding 20 watts slower. But understand, the whole goal is to go faster. It's not about improving power necessarily. The goal is faster. And that's what he was doing. So that's really a funny one to think about.

To Dave's credit, he got over it very quickly. But I have trouble with others who just are fixated on the power. And my example to those people are, look, if you rode 44.5 ks an hour and you averaged 60 watts, would you be upset? No, you wouldn't. You'd be kind, oh, 60 watts will get me 44ks an hour. I'll take that any day. So, so that the power number is whatever it is. And if you can ride 40Ks an hour and that equals 200 watts. Then, then you need to ride 210 watts to do 41Ks an hour. So that's kind of what we're trying to do. And whether you used to be able to ride with an old power meter, 250 watts, and now that same number is 200 for the same speed, that's all that matters, is the actual speed. And whatever that power number is to get that speed is the important thing. So we fixated on this. Well, what's your power? But no one actually should ask, you know, what's your watts per kilo is more important than that. So that's another whole topic anyway.

But yeah, but once again, the watts per kilo is only determined by the power meter. So yeah, it is a bit of a rabbit hole. But yeah, I mean, and we move from that to the execution. And we don't want to gloss over, but we don't want to go into too much detail because with execution there is so much detail you can go into. And that's what you need to understand is that you could be breaking down every single lap. And we had a great example actually last night where there was a local ITT race in Melbourne. A bunch of our guys did. It was a five lap course and we were looking over the data, I was looking over the data on everyone's individual laps and there was definitely multiple examples of people riding higher power for a lap, but it was a slower lap. They were potentially 6 or 8 or 10 watts higher in a certain lap, but they rode slower. And that just shows that they've ridden harder in the wrong sections for that specific lap. And it happens all the time. I mean, I just actually did a heel repeat session this morning. And it was not just a straight heel gradient. It kind of kicked up a little bit and then it had a bit of a fairly false flat section and then it really kicked up again. And every rep I did, I kind of wrote it slightly differently, you know, did the first section a bit harder probably. Sometimes in the reps went too hard in that section. Therefore on the false flat, I went too slow. And then, you know, it kicks up again. And regardless, however you execute each individual lap, you'll get a different time, but it's not always going to be linear. Like more power equals better time on these climbs. It's, it's where you execute so that just, it really, it's a hard concept for a lot of us to understand. But when you break it down like by lap, you can actually see the evidence.

Yeah. And Dave's really good at the analytical side of, of his training and his racing. And that's. Oh, that's music to my ears if someone's really that invested. And we have great conversations about his execution and any, any particular event that he's been in or, or is going to do. And you know, one of the things that I've really drilled into him is to, to start little bit conservatively and try to come home stronger. And because that's the opposite to what he was doing when he first started and now having to say to him, you can risk a bit more because, you know, we know that your number is a little bit better than that. So you know, in some of the races where they're not your complete, a race where you're banking six months training into this one race, the other races you should be experimenting with where, where is my red line? You know, can I cross it? And what happens if I do? You know, the example would be if you're taking a really sharp corner on a ride that you're out with and you're, you don't know how fast you can go around that corner and you're just testing to see what angle you need to be putting your bike at. And then when you fall over and hit the ground, you realize that's the tipping point. And this is the same with, this is the same with ft, with your power number, you know, push yourself as close as you can to the red zone, that number where you might actually have to back off slightly because therefore you get better perspective of. And that's what Dave's really good at. And he's really embraced that concept and his execution is outstanding from where, where it started with. And, and because he's really willing to listen and comprehend the, the explanation of why we're doing it this way. And, and you know, we know that when the bike is going slowest, that's the time when you need to be at the top of the range that you've set yourself. And when your bike's going fastest, you need to be not at the top of the range, but you need to be somewhere in the range, but conserving so that when the hard bit comes again, you're ready to push the power again. He's embraced that concept and that, that is hard for me to get across. It sounds so easy. But people, when they get out there with the tailwind and they end up, they end up riding more power in the tailwind than they are in the headwind and Wonder why they're slower.

Exactly, yeah. Slower overall. And that all these factors are what contributed to such an incredible improvement in time trialing speed. But it's not just his time trial that he's improved, he's become a better all round rider. And I think one of the best examples of this was he ended up winning the state road title over in Western Australia. And I think for you that was one of those examples of just a classic great post race conversation which you love having with an athlete whether they, whether they win a title, whether they have a great pb, whether they have the best executed performance they've had in a while where they're seeing the results come off. It was something that he never thought he'd win actually. He said himself he never thought, he's never come close, he never really thought it was possible. And that would have been a great coach athlete moment where you know to take that state road title is exceptional. It shows exceptional being an exceptional all well rounded rider. A complete opposite to the one dimensional rider he was before.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. And because we had brought along his zone two endurance and strength, we'd brought along his sub threshold, we brought along his high intensity bunch riding and specific training sessions around that. We'd allowed him to recover in his weekly program. We'd given him lots of races, we'd talk tactics, we talked about attacking the bunch, you know, using his strength. His strength is threshold riding, his strength isn't short punchy climbs where the big guys can really punch it out. But he's got great recovery. So his tactics to win a state road race is most people can be as strong as they like but if they don't have the right tactics plus the ability to execute, they'll never win anything. And so it was a really enjoyable discussion for him to come out and say I could not have raced that any better. I did all the tactics we've talked about for two years and I was able to attack and separate the sprinters, get rid of them and then it was almost like it was too easy in the end to win and it was a great conversation and one of those ones that you really love your job for. And the excitement he had about, you know, winning something he never thought was possible and you know, a couple of things he asked me to do when he joined was, you know, see if I could win a race and see if I can improve my time trialling and be competitive and, and you know, he's, he's quite feared now in a lot of local bunches. As a, as an older guy, you know, Dave's there today, you know, expect a hard ride and a lot of the guys are looking in awe at what he's doing, you know, as a, as a young 50 year old. Now he's an older 50 year old, he's actually better than he was six years ago. And it's, you know, he just, you can't take the smile off his face the way he's just embracing the fact that he loves, it's almost like his job now, he loves racing his bike. And, and that all round thing that you mentioned is, is the key to it and having variation in your program where you're not doing the same thing over and over. And, and as I said earlier, doing the same thing will get you to a certain point and you will get fit. And that's, I'm not disputing that. But it will eventually stagnate and you'll be the same rider forever. Unless you change something.

Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, in conclusion, we actually asked him, you know, for this case study to summarize his experience. And he said a lot of great things, which we're really tough with. But I think one of the best and also funniest things he said was that, you know, having the coach to talk to that he could, he was close enough that he could see as a mate and as a friend, but at the same time he was slightly fearful that, you know, what would happen if he, if he missed a session. I think you laughed, you laughed pretty hard at that.

Yeah, well, it's a funny thing to hear actually. I, I don't think that I put fear into people, but evidently there is a certain, where I must have a different tone to my voice where I'm saying what happened yesterday or what happened over the weekend. And I think people really are uncomfortable answering that question if, if they've legitimately been lazy and, and, and I can never accuse Dave of that. You know, he's had some horrible crashes, which has really put him back a fair bit. He said that's a good point. He's had a lot of setbacks over the journey, unfortunately, crashing where people have fallen in front of him and you can't do anything about some of those things and, but it changes, changes the next six weeks, doesn't it? If you've got broken bones. But he's been resilient enough to come back and because he's got such a great fitness base, he's been able to, you know, resume very quickly and Almost get back up to speed and just going through Covid at the moment. So, you know, once again he's got a race in four weeks he's been aiming for and you know, how is this going to affect his, his performance we'll never know. But that athlete, coach relationship where there's a healthy respect. I respect the fact that he really wants to improve and he's, his desire is, it comes through and I'm absolutely on board helping people who are reaching out with, you know, asking any questions they liked because if they're there to improve, that's, you know, I just, I can't embrace that enough. And, and you know, he barely missed a session in all the times. It's always been through sickness or injury and it's not because he couldn't be bothered or lost motivation. So you know, the care factor I suppose is what he's trying to say to me is he loves that aspect and that's what, that's what he feels. He's got someone who's actually making him accountable and he's got the best program that he's, he's never done a program like this before in all the years of riding. He's been able to bring along the areas where he's felt he's weak.

He's.

His high intensity stuff, his ability to ride threshold and you know, ability to sustain sub threshold riding, getting stronger and you know, in, in getting that endurance strength work. Yeah, they're the things that he's just loved got him along this journey.

Yeah. He basically just said the fact that we care so much about his improvement is the best part about it. And it's a really great balance between when to push and when to not. I think that's really key. And we joke about the fear thing and I do want to reiterate to people out there that you don't ever, or we don't ever scold anyone for missing a session. The what happened? Question is genuinely just asking is there something happening? And normally there's valid reasons for why people miss sessions. You know, they, they might say I didn't feel like it or they might say I was just too fatigued or something. Might have come up with work life, which is the, the age grouper training life cycle and lifestyle. But we just want to reiterate that the number one goal, the primary goal from us is the enjoyment factor in the process and the improvement in the process. We can tick those off. We have. So this has been a fairly in depth case study and we've gone Right into detail about this. So we hope you've enjoyed this insight into this improvement. But we achieved our goals of enjoyment and improvement. Any last thoughts from you?

No. And I think that last point you made, you know, definitely my questioning is always around, is everything okay with your training? Not as to why you didn't do it in a harsh way. It's, it's always, you know, are you okay making sure that you're making good decisions yourself? And that's one of the things we do say a lot on the podcast, is you have to, you know, understand how you're feeling. And that will determine whether we adjust the program. And that's what Dave's really good at. He'll let me know very early on that not quite up for it today. And we'll, we'll adjust the program straight away. And that's what makes him hardly miss anything through, through illness or, or being overtrained or, or, you know, he's just never experienced that under this program because, because he's quick to tell me what is going on with his feelings and, and I can adapt and adjust that quickly. So he's, he's got the enjoyment factor because, you know, the improvement keeps happening and you know, when, when you're improving, it's so much more fun than, than stagnating or wondering what is going wrong with me. So, yeah, it's been a really good one to get out to the audience because I really rate the way he's gone about it and I think he's got a lot more to improve on even now. And I can't wait to see him, see how he fares in the future.

That's it for this episode. Thanks as always for listening. If you would like to achieve the same kind of improvement as Dave has and enjoyment, you can go to our website, travelcoaching.com and apply for coaching there. And the process is we simply have an interview and consult with you and find out what you're doing and see if the coach athlete relationship can work. And that's really important to us that the relationship is there to establish from a foundation to help you again enjoy that process of achievement, improvement and enjoy the actual process of training itself. So tune in weekly to all our episodes. We have a weekly episode where we discuss how you can train smarter, race faster, and of course, the case study episodes, which people are absolutely loving. Thank you very much. We'll see you in the next episode. Back again. Keep wanting, Keep wanting.