How He Added 100 Watts in Just 18 Months

A super exciting case study episode to come at you with today with one of our most exciting young athletes, Ben, who has battled injury for the last 2 years, yet has still taken the program and absolutely run with what he can do. He's taken his bike from 259 watts, his very first 60-minute test with us at 37 k's an hour, to almost a 100-watt improvement over 22 months at 349 watts and 44 k's an hour. That's 259 watts to 349. And 37Ks an hour to 44 kilometers an hour in less than 2 years. So how did he do it? Well, we're going to break down exactly how in this case study episode. And this episode is brought to you by TriVelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter and race faster. I'm your host, Jordy Donnelly, and I'm joined by former Australian Ironman champion, head coach of TriVelo Coaching, and my partner in coaching crime, Dad Gerard Donnelly. Dad, welcome to the episode, another case study episode. We love bringing to all the TriVelo audience, the data about things, because that's how we coach. Give us a bit of an introduction to how Ben was when he first started with TriVelo.

This is a great story and I really am excited to tell it. Ben was a really decent runner before he came to TriVelo and he was reaching out to see really what the story was with triathlon and to see whether he could, you know, have visions of being a professional triathlete. He's only a young guy, he was 20 2, I think, when he first came to us 20 months ago. And yeah, he really was unsure about— you know, pretty competent runner, you know, could manage 60K a week, 50K weeks, and had really not done any serious bike riding and swimming. So he really loved the idea of triathlon and was interested in to see where he could go with it. And so yeah, he came with a little bit of knowledge about training and discipline and That's what really attracted me to him. He really knew what he wanted and he was really keen to get some advice about how to best go about seeing how good he was as a triathlete. So that's pretty much where we started.

So some data points: his first 20-minute indoor test with us, in a 20-minute FTP indoors, and now there's been a lot of noise lately about FTPs are "irrelevant," they're useless, you shouldn't be doing them, and we have a lot of thoughts on that. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you'll know all the reasons why we just totally disagree with that take, but we'll mention that a little bit later. First 20-minute indoor FTP, 246 watts, July 2024. Uh, 2 weeks ago, his most recent indoor 20-minute FTP, 346 watts. That is bang on a 100-watt improvement. So that is super exciting. And as I said in the intro, the 60-minute test outdoors, which is what's most important, 259 watts to 349 watts. And I guess that's the story here is, is he was already a good runner. Wanted to test the waters with, with swimming and cycling and see where he could go. And, and that was your goal as coach, is to say, okay, you're a good runner, let's, let's concentrate on your bike riding and your swimming, and then bring along your already established running, uh, gradually while, while you do that. But things didn't turn out exactly as we'd hoped. And, and in these case studies, we want to share the good and the bad. And he's had a pretty tough journey, um, which has been mentally hard to get through. We want to share that side of things as well because it didn't go smoothly.

A lot of the stories in the case studies, it's like a happy ending, isn't it? Here's an athlete who comes to us with this desire to improve across swim, bike, and run, or just be a better bike rider, be a better runner, or any myriad of aspirational goals. And we normally have like, "Here he is where he was, this is where he is now, and what a great story." And this is true. This is ab— there's no denying he has achieved incredible improvement in the space of 22 months from someone someone who really had never ridden a bike properly, very much a beginner. And so we don't want to shy away from the fact that this isn't a story that's finished yet. And that's the thing I want to get across is Ben is going to be a long-time athlete. And at, you know, he's now 24, so he's got the world at his feet. And he hasn't really had a good crack at triathlon yet with some of the injuries that he's had over the last 18 months. And that's the negative side is getting some injuries and not being how to pursue his ability to compete in a lot of triathlons. And so, we've done quite a few Aquabikes and quite a few sprint and Olympic distances, but not a lot of 70.3s, which is what he has been aiming for, because every now and then, we're getting a little niggle which is preventing him from training properly. And therefore, it's been so close to a race where we actually can't do a full race. He's done a couple of Aquabikes where, ironically, he's won in both events that he's done at Geelong and Sunny Coast. and so, you know, this story is not all about just happy endings where you've got people really, you know, nailing everything and it's just a great story. We want to show that there are struggles with a lot of athletes and, you know, we don't want to shy away from that. And this is one of the key things we want to present here, but what he does about his His disappointments in the injuries is really the message is, you know, you can have a lot of bad things happen to you that, you know, almost career-ending and feel like, you know, "Woe is me. Why is this happening to me?" Or you can take the other tack is, "Oh, sure. I can't run at the moment. What can I do about my swimming and my bike riding?" And boy, what a story. He has absolutely taken that by the, you know, as they say, the bull by the horns and made the absolute best out of a really dire situation with his running injuries and seriously, one of the elite cyclists in the sport already after only 18 months coming from a beginner. So that is a story in itself.

Yeah, we always talk on the podcast about the fact that triathletes, you're training for 3 sports at once and so the joke is you're just going to be average at 3 sports and that's kind of what happens because you're trying to bring all 3 along at once. If you just did a cycling block, for a specified period, you would just really improve your cycling, but then your running and swimming would probably fall behind a little bit. But when you're injured, we kind of— we don't lick our lips a little bit, but we go, hey, what a great opportunity to work on your other two disciplines because you've got more time now. You know, when you're trying to do all three, you're capped at your time per week unless you're a professional. And in this case, yeah, we always say, hey, if you're injured in one, generally you've got a chance to really improve the other. And yeah, Ben, as you said, has taken that mantra and just really dialed in his swimming and cycling. And, and we've spoken about his cycling data, but it's— he's just become an absolute phenomenon on the bike because of the time he's been able to commit to it and become an absolute weapon of a cyclist. And so I don't want to harp on the injuries, but we did want to mention it and say it was— they've kind of been a strange and, uh, shock to, to all of us. And, and our, um, in-house physios in TriVelo, um, has seen it kind of strange as well because he was running more volume than when he came on the program. Something about the change in training and the biking affected his running for some reason, even though he was running less and running easier. He was getting injured on easy runs, which was just quite surprising when the load was down and the intensity was down. You really— it's a bit of an outlier of an injury, and there's some structural issues that he is addressing and with the close work of a physio. So that's that journey. But because of that, it just meant, okay, well, if I can't run like I want to, 'How good can I get on the bike?' And yeah, talk me through, you know, what does the goal become with the training? You have some conversations and say, 'Hey, are you willing to become really good?' And he just dialed in. He just dialed in his intensity sessions, his work on the TT bike in position. As a coach, what was the plan with him and what did you start focusing on?

Yeah, well, look, right from the outset, in his first actual block of training after he did his testing week, he just started to get really sore in the legs every time he was running. And that to me was quite foreign from a guy who was regularly doing 50-60K weeks of running to then come back to 20-30Ks of running, no intensity, and just because he'd been riding a bike in a different position, using different muscles, working the body completely different to what he's been used to for the previous, you know, 10 years of his running life, his body was not coping with this new activity of swimming and riding. And it I really hadn't come across this before, and I've really learned a lot as a coach from this experience with Ben. And a lot of the new athletes, I now say to them, if you haven't done a lot of riding, we have to really be careful with your running here because if you haven't got the right bike fit, your body's not used to pedaling with low cadence or spinning your legs with high cadence. And we do all those variations in our training program where we're getting them used to doing strength work on the bike. We're getting used to ride a high cadence, so we stimulate their cardiovascular system. So we've got a lot of those things happening and the body may not be used to that if you're new to cycling and it does affect and have an impact on your running. And that was really brought home to me and that was a big lesson that I learned straight away. So for every negative for me as a coach, there's a positive outcome. So I don't— I now look for that in new athletes. So we had to pull back on his running and within 4 weeks, we had to actually stop him running after 4 weeks on the program. Where he was just sore. He wasn't actually injured at that stage. It was just soreness. So we went from, you know, running 3 or 4 times a week and riding 3 or 4 times a week and a couple of swims to 7 days a week riding and really getting his body to get used to the riding position and getting himself bike fit— fitted, so that we— making sure that we weren't actually sitting in the wrong position which is causing the injury. So getting those things lined out first and then starting to get him to you know, do a variation of recovery rides, endurance rides with pressure on the pedals at Zone 2, some VO2 work, high intensity, high cadence, and some low strength work, threshold work, and then improving his duration for his long run, and then doing some of that gray area sweet spot subthreshold stuff. Instantly, that was his program for the next period. And The results were as we would expect, but for Ben, he was just like, "Oh my God." He was so excited from all the— and I've got to tell you, he was quite disappointed with the phone calls we had where, you know, "I don't know what's going on with my body." But you know, once we just put that to the side and then, "Okay, let's concentrate on this," and he just embraced that with open arms and boy, did he take that on. And that's why the improvement was there because he was really concentrating on what are my numbers last week, what am I doing this week. And not riding the sessions too hard when they should have been Zone 2 and pressure on the pedals, not trying to ride it in Zone 3 and go above the ranges. So, so many things he was doing really, really well, and he listened and took the advice and didn't do a version of it. I'm almost summarizing the ideal athlete here. You know, if you can just be a good listener and understand how you feel each day and ride in the ranges and not do something outside of it, no hero sessions, be consistent. And he had already had that ingrained in him from his running days anyway. So it was a real pleasure to actually move along this journey for the next couple of months until we reintroduced his running, walk running again. And to be fair, we did reintroduce it and then he got different injuries. He got some calf niggles and some strains and so we were, you know, forever stopping and starting his running. So we didn't really ever get on a really good period where we had 6 months of running. So I'm sort of summarizing a whole 18 to 20 months here, but certainly in the initial period, we really never narrowed in on the bike riding and he saw huge improvement straightaway, but it's actually continued. You know, not just in— you would expect it from a novice rider to really improve straightaway. Everybody would expect that. But it's just continuing to happen. I mean, I think we worked out, Gerard, it was— if he had done the speed he was doing, I think it was 37 k's an hour for his 20 minutes in his first outdoor test.

For his first hour time trial?

Yes. And if we projected that for a 90K, it would have been somewhere around 2:38. And by the time he did his first actual 70.3 event, he was already from a 2:38 rider to a 2:20. And then his next event, he was a 2:10. And so he's literally had 30-minute improvement in 18 months. And, you know, just stop and take a think about what that would take to do. I just think it's quite phenomenal that, you know, he's really taken a negative and just turned it into— he's an absolute elite cyclist now.

Yeah, absolutely. To clarify that, Mathew, you know, we go— his first hour with us was 37 k's an hour, which shows the talent he has, you know, as a beginner rider to ride 37 k's an hour for 1 hour straight is, is very good. And we know that we didn't do a 90k time trial to start with him because there's no need to do that. But we know that if you translate an hour to the full 90k, you drop about 3 kilometers per hour on average. That's just an average. That gives him a hypothetical time of 2:38. And then, yeah, just 5 months in, he did his first 90k and did a 2:20, which was phenomenal. And then, yeah, his best is now 2:10. So that's clarifying that math. And I want to touch on the testing a little bit. Before we dive back into kind of the program and the training, because the testing is a key part of this. And if you follow Ben on Instagram, he is great with his, with his videos on his testing and his uploads and his weekly training stats. It's awesome to watch if any age group athletes want to be inspired by a fellow age grouper. And he, he constantly posts videos of when he does a test indoor or outdoor. And when you're following him, it feels like every few weeks he's doing another test, which is part of the TriVelo program. It's not every few weeks. It might be once a month or once every 4 to 6 weeks. But it reminds you of the consistency of, of why testing is important. And there's a lot of pushback online right now about FTP testing. And the arguments are all these things. They're irrelevant. Uh, they're not accurate tests. They don't give accurate threshold data. A triathlete doesn't need a 20-minute number. And sure, there's all those things are technically true, but that's not why we test so regularly. And if you look back at Ben's program, he's done 13 20-minute tests over the journey so far and 8 60-minute tests. On top of a bunch of 60K, 75K, 90K time trials in training. He's doing a lot of consistent testing. Why do we love it so much and why do we dig our heels in and say we will back this in any day of the week?

Look, the number one thing that we really want to get across is the more times you do a 20-minute or 60-minute or 70K or 65K, the more times you get practice at executing. How do you feel early? What should I do with the power now? How's my heart rate? Practicing execution is the only way to get better at it. So, you know, why not use the testing protocol that we have available to us already to get better at that? And there's no coincidence that the more you do it, the better you get at it. And a lot of the results where he's got improvement, it may not be just solely the training. It would be he's actually better at executing because he practices it. So that's a really key important factor that people just don't even consider. And then I've had a few people say to me, "Oh, I should practice that on my Saturday ride." No, practice that when you're doing 5x5s or 9x1 minutes. Practice what your execution is over 1 minute. Don't start at 400 and finish at 250. You know, get used to executing across the time that your particular session's asking you to, whether it's 5-minute effort or 10-minute effort or 20-minute effort. It doesn't matter. Get used to executing so that you're really in tune with your body. So, so that's one of the key things. The other is perspective. If we didn't have the test results, we would not have a clue how much he's improving, um, a, in watts, and more importantly, speed. Speed is everything. And so, so knowing that he rode 37 k's an hour back in September 2024, and now he's riding— what was it— 44 k's an hour, um, for the same for the same test, uh, 22 months later, we have great perspective of the fact that he sees it as an athlete and he is so happy. You know, we talk about, you know, two things you want to achieve in a program: the right program and enjoying the process. And you won't enjoy a process if you're not improving. There's no fun when you're staying the same or getting worse. So, so this is motivating for an athlete to see, oh God, if I keep doing this, where's my ceiling? You know, Ben's saying to me early days, you reckon I can ride 39, 40 k's an hour? And I'm saying, mate, I don't know where you're going to end up here, but that is the least of your problems. You're going to be— you're going to go and pass that pretty soon. And pretty soon he was riding 39.5, then, then just over 40, and that was a great phone call, um, and, you know, do you reckon I can get 42? Why couldn't you, Ben? And all the time, I'm never putting a ceiling on our athletes. And, you know, I think his last 20 minutes, uh, a couple of weeks ago on the velodrome was 47.3 k's an hour, um, for 20 minutes. And, and I, and I know we didn't do a lot of outdoor because we started in July 2024, so it was the middle of winter, so we didn't do a lot of outdoor testing. So we didn't have any data there, and that's another reason why we test. I'm really disappointed we didn't have an outdoor test to actually give perspective here.

At the very start, yeah.

At the very start. We had an indoor one, and we've got, you know, we've got 100-watt perspective there, improvement. But imagine if we actually— and, you know, this is why I'm pushing back on you should be doing FTPs for their very two good reasons. And then one of the key things is the outdoor FTP and the indoor FTP, they're kind of two different beasts. We use the 20-minute in an indoor, and this is a TriVelo philosophy, and it's— I'm not really bothered what everybody else thinks about it, but this is why it works for us, is because we— when we do our high-intensity training sessions midweek, which are, you know, it could be 5 by 5 or, you know, 10 by 3 minutes or whatever the session is, we're using that indoor 20-minute FTP. It's very accurate for that. But we don't use that for our race day. We use the 60-minute, the outdoor 60-minute. And so there's a clear distinction. We're using them you know, according to how we think their value is situated. And that's why we get, you know, we've got some of the best time trialers in triathlon in age group and in elite. And that's a big statement, but it's really true. And, you know, every time you see someone ride a bike well, it's normally got a triathlon, you know, kit on. And I'm— a TriPelo kit. A TriPelo kit, sorry. And I'm You know, I'm so proud of that aspect. And because we've taught our athletes to ride the bike so efficiently, their running is where they want it to be. And this is the key thing. And unfortunately, Ben hasn't had a chance to prove that yet. But, and I digress a bit here, but I really wanna push back on, you know, the reason why we're using the FTPs. And we can— and as the athlete has so much motivation about I wanna train more, give me some more training because this is, this is, this is working. I just love it. This is working.

Yeah, look, some— a lot of people have to say to us, hey, 20-minute test is not good because, um, the equation is you take 95% to get an estimated threshold number, and people say that's not accurate, you know, it's not accurate enough. And we just go, we don't care, we're not using it for that measurement. We do have that as a standard equation for everyone. We know that most of our athletes sit somewhere between, you know, 90 to 93% of their 20-minute number is more like their threshold, but everyone's different. So we just use the 95% number as a standard standardization for our training, and we know that all our sessions that we program based off that 20-minute number work out well as a great range, you know. But we're, we're just not sitting there worried about whether it's the exact accurate threshold or not. Um, the only way to do that would be to get a lab test, you know, every 4 to 6 weeks to get your absolute lactate threshold numbers and then train to lactate if you're going to do that, you know. So we're just not worried about that. We're, we're age groupers doing field tests for, for this benefit. And how good is it for Ben to be able to sit there and say, because we tested right at the start, the 60 minutes, and now to sit there and, and, and enjoy that progression and go, I am literally 100-watt better rider and, and 37Ks an hour to 44 because we have all this data. That's just the absolute benefit of it. So, look, the, the running has definitely been up and down. You know, he did get some, some great triathlons in there, full triathlons. He had a couple of great runs off the bike with very limited running. You know, he had a 1 hour 24 off very limited running at Cairns. I think he said, you know, that was something that kind of lit a fire in his belly with a 30-minute, 31-minute swim, which his PB for the swim is actually a bit lower than that, under 30 minutes at 1:28 pace, which is very, very good swimming. That Cairns race was the 2-hour 20, and then a 1:24 off that. I think that was a bit of a turning point for him to know that, geez, I can be quite a good athlete here if I put it all together. Unfortunately, the running has just been up and down since then, and he hasn't been able to put it all together. But then we just take a different approach and go, okay, and we say, okay, if you can't run and run as well as you want, let's just take that off and let's just focus— take the pressure off yourself and let's just focus on Aquabike and just get your swimming, biking in races as good as possible. And again, he's done that, and now he's just entering Aquabikes while the injuries are there to get that as fast as possible.

Yeah, and, uh, we must really point out that he's working extremely hard to get his body strong. Whilst he's kind of re— almost relearning how to run properly, so that he doesn't actually be predispositioned to— and the injury has been a lot of little niggly calf injuries that are not fully blown tears, but you actually have to stop running for a short period of time. Sometimes it's only 10 days, and then he can resume again. But if you don't actually fix the weakness in the muscle, then you will continue to— you know, it will rear its ugly head again and again. And that's what's happened. It's like 3 times in 8 months where we've had the same thing derail. And it was great to have Grace Thack on the other day talking about exactly this. You know, consistency in running is everything. And So just throw away the intensity for a period, and this is what Ben's had to do is, you know, every time we've come back, we've got the walk/run going, we've done 30-second runs, 90-second walks, we've done everything right. We've done some strength work, you know, guided by the physio, and we really haven't put a foot wrong. And all of a sudden, there's another little strain, little, you know, area that's weak that's derailed the consistency. But once we got over those walk/runs and into some 30, 40, 50K weeks of running, then we introduced some more intensity into his running, and that was too soon. That was a mistake that, that we didn't know or foresee. And so, so now I'm, I'm on board with Grace from that podcast a couple of weeks ago. You know, every athlete's different, and some people are more robust than others. And, and for Ben, you know, we're taking the long journey approach here because he's going to be, you know, when he's in 2 years' time, imagine the athlete he's going to be if he's had 2 years of good running. Like Grace Sedge, you know, she was a good runner, had lots of injuries and hasn't done a hard run in 18 months and yet she's running the best she's ever run. And so that really confirmed our theory which we've been putting to bed in the last 6 months is get the strength into your body again so that you have no weaknesses in your calf and let's just not do any hard runs anymore. Let's just make all your running about getting some duration totals at the end of each week, 30K weeks, 35, 40, 45, 50K weeks. 5, 6, 50. Just keep progressing with no intensity. And that's our— that's our plan now. And you know, that's the story that's only halfway told now, but we wanted to get across that if you think about the negative all the time and don't think about what can I do about the things I have control over, this is a classic example of that, taking this and running with it. And I've had a lot of other athletes, and I've used Ben as an example where they've been rightly depressed about injury. It is really soul-destroying, and everybody's gone through it. You're facing it right now, Gerard, with little niggles that you've got yourself trying to prepare for the next marathon. And it is really, you know, it gets you down. And so you can, as I say, feel sorry for yourself for 5 minutes and say, "What can I do about it?" And this is what I love about Ben's attitude. Always got a smile on his face, and if you've seen him on YouTube, he's such a likable, lovable guy, and he's she really embraced, "Alright, I'm gonna be the best rider I can possibly be and really improve my swimming." And both are going through the roof. And I want to get this message across to everybody. You know, I've had to do it, you've had to do it, Gerard. Get over yourself and your sadness and take control of the things you can do something about. And I think that's the message here that I wanna get across loud and clear is we're all gonna go through bad periods. It's what you do about the things you have control over that make the difference.

Yeah, I always like the strategy and notion of let yourself feel the negative emotion about it for however long you think you need to. Like sometimes it's a moment, sometimes it's a bit of a week where you're just allowed to be frustrated and a little bit depressed about the injury. And then once you've just allowed yourself to do that, you go, right, what's the next step? Whereas if you just fall into the trap of either wallowing in it too long and, and woe is me, it's not helping yourself. But if you also try and move on and pretend that it's okay without acknowledging it. Sometimes you can rush back into things without acknowledging it properly. Just a reference to the Grace episode because we recorded that last week but we haven't released it yet. We can't wait for you to hear that one because she has undoubtedly turned into top 3, top 5 runner in triathlon right now. She's easily one of the strongest runners, but you'll be surprised to hear that she does undoubtedly the least amount of running in the pro field. You know, so how are those two things true? How is she such a good runner off the least volume? And you'll find that in the episode that's about to be released. And yeah, for Ben, uh, for Ben, the best part about this is, uh, when he gets himself right again, fully fit with running, you know, he's now an unbelievable bike rider. He's a gun swimmer, and when he's fit, he can run a 1:18 half marathon, or, you know, he can run a 35-minute 10K. And so now when he gets his running back, he's coming back, but his bike riding's improved pretty much half an hour. He's an elite bike rider with already a great running base behind him. So I can't wait for that. I guess to finish off that, I want to ask you kind of the key question. What do you think has contributed the most to his bike improvement? What are the key factors that he's done that's made him— made this progression so possible?

Yeah, and look, it's definitely a combination of many things. And I say this on the podcast of over 300 podcasts, it's never one thing. And this is another example of that. And he's doing a lot of things very well. Attention to detail, that would be One of the key things, he really does have a really good understanding of what the purpose of each of the sessions are. And when I say to him, look, on the Wednesday this week, I want you to be strict with your Zone 2. I don't wanna see anything outside of Zone 2. And other days, I'll say, okay, this Wednesday, it's okay. You can ride Zone 2 when you can go and find some hills and just be slightly over it. And then I'll look at it and he's really nailing that and not doing a version of it. And so therefore, when it comes to the hard sessions, he actually is fresh enough to ride in the race ranges that he wants to. And let's face it, all of us wanna ride— if we've got a range that's between 200 and 220, we're gonna take 220 every day because we wanna get better. But that's not necessarily going to be the best way to do it. If you're not feeling great on a particular day, don't flog yourself at 220 when 200 is still okay. And so Ben's good at that and understanding, um, he's trying his best to, to get the most out of the session, but if he's not actually feeling it, his goal is then to get through the session. So he does that well. Um, he really has done a lot of good strength and and endurance work. And he does ride, which we do do a lot with a lot of our triathletes. We send them into their local bunch, whatever city they live in. We encourage them to find a bunch that's gonna really push them where it's not riding in the ranges. It's the unpredictable rides where you're getting pushed at 130%, 140% of your FTP, and next thing you know, you're riding at 50% of your FTP, and then 2 minutes later, you're really riding flat out again because someone's attacked. So we want that unpredictable style riding and that really builds resilience and durability in you and also getting the long rides. So making sure that— and he's done that many long rides that are between 4 and 6 hours in his last 18 months. He hadn't ridden more than an hour when he first joined us. So it's got to that point where he can handle that. In his local bunch ride, he's kind of a bit of a revered a good rider now, whereas at the beginning he was getting dropped and couldn't hang on. Now he's at the pointy end and that's also a good perspective. We talk about FTP, but knowing where you are in a little bit of a group situation, and he doesn't do that a lot. He doesn't ride the bunch ride. We just do that sparingly and when we feel it's right. A lot of the time when he's finished a big build-up to a race and then he's got a little bit of a down period, a lot of the time in Melbourne when it's winter, we really wanted to get in those bunch rides with his local bunch. And, you know, he really is riding the bike well for those endurance sessions. So doing the Zone 2 and staying in his zones and not going outside, that enables him to ride the hard sessions hard enough and get the value out of that. And that long ride where he's getting pushed with others for competition— pardon me— and then doing solo stuff where he's going in the hills and getting that strength work where he's not trying to ride anything more than between zone 2 and threshold, where that sweet spot gray area. Pressure on the pedals, long climbs, lots of elevation, 1,800 meters, 2,000 meters of climbing. So a lot of that, and then there's the recovery days where he's just spinning the legs at 50% of his FTP, just getting the blood flow, and that's a true recovery day. Not trying to get some fitness gains in a recovery ride. That's not its purpose. So I've summarized a lot of what he's doing. And just keep doing that consistently. Like the example of just train consistently and you will see and reap the reward. But if you have periods where you're, you know, haphazard with your training, and he's certainly not that. He's, you know, he's really dedicated to making sure that he's getting— and look, he has a lot of periods where he's got travel and, you know, he's got a normal lifestyle with a job he works really hard at. He's not got a cushy job by any means. He's in a job, it's a tradesman's job and it's quite tiring what he does, so, and in his family business, so he's, you know, he really is working. As you know, in a family business, you're really trying to work a lot of hours. So it's not like he's got an easy lifestyle and he's obviously trying to enjoy himself socially. He's got a partner and so there's a lot he's doing well, I think. So deep down, I think that the answer for me is that consistency, attention to detail, and really listening to what the goals are of the session and really achieving that. It's not always the case, but generally he's doing that well.

I would take that another level, what you just said there, you know, the specificity of the session, and just say, you know, time spent in the saddle, race-specific. You know, he's really got that specificity. He's done a lot of 75K, 90K efforts you know, in TT position, honing his craft as a time trialist, honing his craft, what he's going to do on race day. A lot of sub-threshold sessions in that 70.3 range, that FTP range, and just that consistency of time spent in that position, spent in the race-ready position, both power speed-wise, aero-wise. It's just, I think that specificity has really elevated him. He's just, he, you call him the king of Beach Road and Albert Park, which is the kind of two best circuits for, for time trialling in Melbourne, because he's just so much time on there on the TT bike. Just whizzing around. I think that is a big key. And the last bit of perspective— oh, you go.

And also getting a really good bike fit. And so that's enabled him, and he just looks beautiful on the bike now. His position looks fantastic. And you're right, that is probably all the endurance stuff I talked about, and then going doing those race-ready stuff where even though he hasn't done a lot of 70.3 races, full races. He's done quite a few race-ready builds over, I think, 5 events of 70.3 duration. So he's done like 5 times 8 to 10 weeks over that period. It's like 40 weeks of race-ready stuff. And his time trial is just, you know, some of the 75K time trials, 60K time trials, 90K time trials, we're sitting in that position, not getting out of it. And it's It's, it's a joy to look at the, the improvement over that journey. The position, the feel, being comfortable in that position, but actually executing where if I give him a 75K, he doesn't start out at, you know, 15 watts above where he should and finish 10 watts below. He starts conservative and gets through it and makes sure he gets the execution right. So a lot of those things, and they seem really minor things, but they're actually every little piece in the cog makes the jigsaw puzzle work perfectly. And I think a lot of athletes could take— they don't do that so well. They might have a great program, but if you don't do these other things well, the program becomes isolated on its own then.

As you always say, looking at the bigger picture, just keeping things in perspective, he's only 22 months into his triathlon career and journey, so we can't wait to see what he's got going forward with him. If you do want to look him up on Instagram, it's a very aesthetically pleasing Instagram, it's Ben Morgan you can find him there. But yeah, what a journey he's on so far. We're super proud of the effort he's put in, which is why we love to bring this case study to you. Any final thoughts you'd like to make on his journey and comments for other age groups aspiring to get, you know, to try and see similar improvement?

Yeah, I just think if you really are determined to aspire to something better than what you're doing right now, he's a classic example of someone who's put their head down and really a good listener. And of course, he has to have a a reasonably good program, but his attention to detail is something that I think age group athletes could take more notice of. And they'll, you know, just by being aware of— we talk about plan, prepare, perform. It's just not a slogan. If you're not well planned for your week in terms of where's my work, where's my social time, where do I fit my training in, that's planning. That's planning your week. Plan your month. Where's my next race? you know, prepare. What is my session today or tomorrow or Saturday? So I know what I have to do today, 'cause it'll impact 3 or 4 days later. So that's the being prepared. And the performance thing is going and doing the sessions, being consistent, not missing things. We don't expect to have TrainingPeaks green the whole time, but we aspire to it. And, you know, listening to your body and knowing when enough's enough and talking to your coach about, "I'm not feeling too good," getting the thing adjusted, getting the sessions adjusted according to how you're going. So that you still get the green look in TrainingPeaks, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the hard session we had planned. So flexibility with your coach is probably what we do very well with our athletes. And I think that they're the messages I want to get across from this case study.

If you'd like to get the same level of individualized coaching, if you'd like to get the same level of detail, the same data analysis, us as coaches pouring over your data and measuring where you're improving, where you can get more improvement, then go to tribalocoaching.com.au. It's the exact level of coaching we provide, it's what we pride ourselves on. Apply to get coached there, we'll have a chat with you and see where you're at now and see if we can help you improve and, and get closer towards your goals. That's tribalocoaching.com.au. That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you in the next one.

I was going to say, the story hasn't ended. Um, I can't wait to see where, uh, where we can bring you the, um, episode 2 of where Ben is, uh, in a couple years' time, because it's going to be super exciting, um, when he starts to actually get some consistent 6 to 12 months of running under his belt.

Brilliant. That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you on the next one.