How Much Should You Train? Pros vs Non Pros

Because what happens is if you keep failing the program, if you keep failing sessions and you're expecting too much of yourself, it just leads to so much negativity. It leads to just you beating yourself up, some negative self talk, and you lose a lot of motivation. And, you know, we. We talk about this almost every year as we come into the winter months in the Southern Hemisphere. This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. The average pro athlete, and specifically the average pro triathlete or cyclist or runner will train between 25 to 35 hours per week. Yet the average age grouper probably has a maximum of 10 to 15 hours to train per week, and that's an absolute maximum. More realistically, about six to 10 hours. So why is it that we think we should be on the same program as a pro? And that's what we want to discuss in today's episode? Because as always on this podcast, we want to use what the pros are doing to influence our decision making. But there's a difference between modeling what works and setting yourself up for failure because you're trying to stick to an impossible program like the pros. So that's today's topic as well as a lot of other stuff that is what's happening in the professional world of sports. Dad. Our first segment for every episode is what are you grateful for?

Yeah, it's a good topic today. Had lots of discussions about it with some of our athletes exactly about that topic. So it's really good timing, my gratitude. And we discussed this earlier, and I kind of. I'm a bit uneasy about discussing my recovery from my back operation, but I want to. I want to use it in a positive way to help recognize, to help everybody out there get some perspective about what they're doing in their everyday life, and also to understand that there will be periods where you yourself may have some mishap, where you have to come back from some sort of illness or injury. So I kind of want to say how grateful I am about the things I can be doing, positive things I can be doing while I'm coming from a recovery phase which is going to last for up to 12 weeks. And one of the things I'm grateful for along that journey is that there's so many good sporting things on at the moment when I can't actually spend A few of my hours, maybe it's 10 or 15 hours training, I can actually really concentrate on the sporting events that are happening right now. And obviously the Giro, the Tour is coming up. A lot of the soccer around the world is coming to its conclusion in Europe. Our particular team, Celtic, going for the treble and the fairy tale story for those who have been following Wrexham United in the English leagues and the Diamond League. It's all starting in the summer for Europe. And. And yeah, I'm just really grateful that I've got this opportunity to actually spend time watching some fantastic sporting events that are going on around the world.

Yeah. But I think it's great to. We did say that we're gonna update your listeners on your recovery journey and how it's looking and how you're approaching it mentally. It's a pretty painful process with how slow it is. And you did say that the recovery period is 12 weeks, but that's kind of just the recovery till you're sort of even back cycling, let alone starting from scratch again and, you know, starting from almost ground zero, then you've probably got another three to six months of work ahead of you in terms of training to get your fitness back. So it is a. It's a long road of recovery. And you do. You have been really using that to get across our own athletes about almost a bit of perspective, right?

Yeah. And it's really important at this period that I want to get across a few things and I have to actually give a lot of the advice that I've been giving out over a long period of many years, and I have to take that on board myself. And so I think. I think it's really great that I have to go through this because I'm going to get a whole lot of good perspective myself about how hard it is for people who have been injured and their method that they use to get themselves back to. You know, the Remco evenepoel example is a classic where, you know, barely able to walk and then he comes out and wins a world title, which we spoke about in the last podcast. So I really want to share my experience and the way I'm going to go about thinking about my recovery and trying to implement a program that can maybe help some others who are in a similar position. So to start with, I certainly, you know, in the last. This is week three and a half now from my operation, I've been able to sit up a lot more and walk around a lot more than I have in the first two weeks. Was Pretty average. So week three and four has been a lot better. And each day I'm getting better. I get to see my super surgeon tomorrow, Mr. Ian Wang. So I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say about my progress. But generally I've been able to start from literally a minute's worth of walking. And I covered 40 or 50 meters, and now two weeks of doing that, I'm able to progress to, you know, 50, 50 meters, to 100 meters, to 400 meters, and got to myself to a kilometer of just slow walking, which took 20 minutes. So that's, that's a kilometer per. For every 20 minutes. So that doesn't seem to be such a good pace, does it?

But.

But they're. They're the things I have to do. And I have to take it slow and let my body recover and heal from the operation so that I can actually not be in any more PA or cause the operation to be rendered useless by rushing myself back into things that I shouldn't be doing. So I've got to allow my body to recover first. So that's the first thing. And I've got that clear in my mind. I'm going to do everything that my surgeon tells me to do and not anymore. I'm going to follow the process and make sure I'm more conservative than being more gung ho, which is my normal approach to everything I do is go as hard as I can so I can get back as quickly as I can. And in this situation, I'm going to take the opposite approach and give my back every opportunity to heal properly and not have regrets about doing something silly that I shouldn't have been doing, which might actually put back my recovery. So that's the way I'm thinking about that. And I understand that I have a great level of Fitness. Over 30 or 40 years, I've banked a lot of weeks of training, a lot of days of training, a lot of years of training. So I'm absolutely trusting that process. And which is what I tell everybody who's coming back from injury. You've got great levels of fitness. You've got layers of fitness that you've been putting into your body over the years. Trust that that will come back to serve you well. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to know that I'm not going to panic about losing my fitness so quickly. And as it's only been three and a half weeks and a good example of understanding how my fitness is disappearing, obviously I can look up performance management chart in training peaks and that would tell me that it's clearly, clearly going in the wrong direction. I'm not even worried about that. But one of the things that is really viable to me is my resting heart rate. And I've been a person who's taken their resting heart rate for literally 20 years. So I know what my resting heart rate is most mornings when I wake up. And now that I've got Oura ring or any of the gadgets that you've got these days, it will tell you what your lowest resting heart rate was overnight. And mine is always between 44 to 48, 49, 50. Depending on how hard I was training the day before, it can be around 50. If I've had some hard sessions, if I had some recovery sessions, It'd probably be 44. If I've got things that are on my mind, it'll probably be around 48, 50. So I've got all this information that I know about how my recovery for a particular day is after a night's sleep. And interestingly enough, the day that I had my operation, my resting heart rate the night before was probably a bit higher. It was around 50. And that whole week before that it was around 44 to 45. So already I had anxiety the night before the operation. And that was something that was, you know, really hit me straight away was, geez, five beats is quite a bit when I've been used to seeing it, around the 44, 45, 46 mark. So straight away I'm at 50. And then from that point on I have slowly progressed over two and a half weeks. And I woke up this morning and it was 60. So the last one week it's been going from 55 up to 60. The periods where I was in most pain, it was also hovering around the 55 to 60. So that's, you know, when I'm at 60, that's actually 15 beats higher than I have been for probably 20 years. On average 15 beats higher. So that tells you how much strain and stress the body is after an operation like I've been through. So they're really good indicators to tell me that, geez, I am probably losing fitness because I'm not doing much during the day. I'm sitting around and doing, you know, walking for 20 odd minutes is not actually contributing much to my fitness. It's contributing to my rehab, but it's not helping my fitness. My fitness is continuing to fall. So I have to be really clear in my mind that that's okay. Because I've got that much stored fitness in my bank that when I start training again, it will come back quickly. And that's what I'm hanging onto. So that's one point. Understanding that, and I'm trying to give you examples to everybody listening out there, what are the things I'm going to use my mindset as? And I can be tricking my mind if I want to, but I'm going to play that game, and it's really helpful. And the more I talk about it to other people that I'm coaching. And one of the things that I'm really pushing is getting perspective. Perspective of this is a situation I'm in and understand there's a whole lot of people in a worse situation than I'm in. But I'm in this situation. And now it's made me realize how much I miss my activities, my training, whether it's swimming or riding or running or whatever my activities are, I absolutely miss it because it's taken away from me right now. So I've got this perspective of, you know what? There's days where I feel really bad, I don't want to train, and I feel like, oh, jeez, this is too hard. But now when it's taken away from me, I would give everything to go and ride my bike right now, but I know that I can't for this particular period of weeks. And I'm okay with that again, because I'm going to trust the process. But I've certainly got ingrained in my mind that I actually do love what I do. I love training and being fit and being healthy and looking forward to the days where I can get back into it and know that it's going to be hard periods. But I'm okay with that because it's what I want to do. And it's became very clear to me. So that's kind of really. I'm quite happy about that, actually, that it's given me a reset to understand that maybe I was getting a little bit stale over the last year or two. But a reset like this, where something's taken away from you, where you actually can't do it, it just instantly gives you perspective.

It just can't be overstated, I don't think. And we've spoken about these topics before, and it can sometimes just come off as a classic cliche, you know, get some perspective, there's someone off, worse off than you, that kind of thing. And we hear these. These kind of moral tales from when we're children, you know, like, don't complain. There's someone worse off than your position. And that gets really old really quickly. And as you get older, you kind of dismiss those cliches because you might be pissed off about a situation or you might be feeling stale or negative about your situation. And we sort of have a rule in our family that it's like a no complaining rule and it seems really trivial, but it makes such a massive difference in all complaining does is make you feel bad about the situation, make you feel worse. It definitely doesn't make you feel better, it makes you feel worse. And it's really bad thing for the person you're complaining to because then you're putting them in a negative state and they have to show empathy towards you and think about your negative situation. It's a really selfish thing to do. And it kind of comes back to the whole reason why we do this segment of the podcast, a gratitude thing. You know, when you have this perspective, suddenly you're grateful for, you know, what you did have and the fact that you could train. And yeah, we're not here to sit here and preach stoic philosophy, although I think it's so simple, but it is just so much more powerful than we give credit to. And it really, the way you're viewing your situations and the way you view training and the way you view your experience and whether you are grateful for it or not and whether you have good perspective really influences how you feel about your day and how you feel about your week. And I just think that can't be. Yeah, can't be overstated. Like I said, I think it really shapes your enjoyment level of your training and your enjoyment level of, of your preparation for a race or something. And I just think that's so important. So as. As cliche as it can be and as simple as a statement, it can be like, get some perspective what you're saying when you're actually in it, you do realize how powerful it is. And it's. It's just a good reminder for us when we're feeling negative about things. Yeah.

And look, I've got to be grateful. We're extending the gratitude because I think it's important. I really do. And we don't flippantly do gratitude in our podcast because it's something to fill in time. We actually want. We want everybody who's listening to our podcast to put this into their daily living because it is a different mindset. It is a great way for you to think about things differently. And you've had so many examples with your early days as a fitness almost guru with the group that you had where people were just having so many good outcomes from changing their mindset at 6am in the morning when they had to say in front of a group of 20 people what they're grateful for. And I just thought that was super powerful. And for me, I just think when people are, I'm really grateful for this as well. When people ring me or I'm ringing them to say, hey, great, great training session on the weekend or really, really fantastic race, half marathon time is the best you've ever done. And they're coming back with me saying, oh, thanks, thanks so much. How's your rehab coming along? And I can have two answers here. I can go, oh geez, it sucks. I feel really down. And I can then give that person such a downer experience from their euphoric great training that I rang them to talk about and all of a sudden I'm making it a negative experience by telling them how crap I feel and I'm intentionally pushing myself to be not negative about it. You know, what are the positive things? Every day I'm getting closer to it, to actually being able to train again. Every day the pain's getting less and you know, thanks for asking, but I feel like I'm on a journey and I'm looking forward to, and I'm super motivated. I'm looking forward to the day I can ride and super motivated to tr. Train really well. You know, it could be 12 weeks of no training and then 12 weeks of getting myself back to the state where I was before the actual operation and that actually adds up to 24 weeks. Or it could be closer to 30 weeks depending on, you know, that's almost, you know, going on to two thirds of a year. But my motivation is that I've got a long time to be active. It's just, you know, it'll be gone in a blink of an eye. In three years time, that 12 week period or 24 week period will be insignificant. It's huge now because it's right in my face at the moment. But I really want to thank the people for asking firstly about my progress. But I don't want to be doom and gloom. I want to be, I'm on a journey. We can learn lots from this and help each other along that journey of having some good experiences. And I heard Geraint Thomas say, for every bad experience have, it makes the good experiences so much more worthwhile. And that's another cliche, but it is so true because it means more to you when you've had so many things that you feel like you've been, you know, things didn't go your way and it wasn't, you know, it was out of your control. And all of a sudden, you know. Another example would be roglic in the 2020 Tour de France, when he lost the last stage time trial to Pogaccia. Well, he's turned that around and beaten Gary, Aunt Thomas in exactly the same scenario. So, you know, there's another example of adversity. And, boy, did he make, you know, he felt unbelievably satisfied about, you know, he felt bad for Geraint Thomas, but. But, you know, to turn it around and. And actually do exactly what happened to him, do it to someone else, and to end up winning the Giro because of that was pretty bloody impressive, I reckon.

Yeah. And it's a real fine line here of what you're talking about, because it's not. I think this is really important. It's not pretending that everything's positive and everything's okay and just. And, you know, if someone says, yeah, how's your back surgery? You're not sitting there and pretending that everything's happy to go lucky, but you're not. You're not dwelling on what's happened. I think that that's the key, and that's. That's the whole purpose of the question. What are you grateful for? And it's, you know, when someone says, how is your backstory? Obviously you'd rather not have the back surgery. You know, obviously you'd rather not have the. The first place. You'd rather still be training, not have to go through this process. That's just kind of a given. But you're not going to sit there and just say, you know, obviously it sucks, but you're not going to sit there and just say, look, it sucks. It's hard. Instead, you're trying to focus on, well, I've been really enjoying, as you said, I'm grateful that I've been enjoying the sport. I've had some time off to relax and have a bit of a reset and all those things you just mentioned, that's the purpose of the question. So I think that is a really important distinction to make. And, yeah, it's funny, this gratitude segment, sometimes it's a minute from us where it says something simple, and sometimes it's. It's extended out like this, and I guess I'll finish off with mine. And I do really want to talk about what an experience we had last Week, which I did not think if you had asked me at the start of the year that you told me I was going to have this experience, I would have said yes. But we actually got invited to go to a race in China last week and so five Travelo riders got invited to do this cycling race in Shanghai, coincidentally called the Giro d' Italia event. Even though it was in Shanghai. They do these kind of jira to tell you almost grand fondo events around the world. And yeah, just as I said, I did not think I would end up in China this year. Especially after the last few years of what's happened. They only just opened to international visitors last month for the first time in three years. So to be there was a really, truly surreal experience. It's hard to explain. A lot of people ask me what it was like. I said it felt like stepping into a different universe. It's completely, completely different world and way of living. And yeah, to get to do a 90k race and it was, I tell you what, it was a lot more than a gran fondo. We were told that it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, super high standard. And then we got there and there was three pro continental Asian teams there that had turned up that had, you know, team car and it was funny that the day before the race you had to go get your registration number and stuff and we're all pinning the numbers onto our bike like you normally do and they had their team mechanics cleaning their bikes and putting all their numbers on and we're going, geez, what have we stepped into here? But truly an amazing experience to ride around Shanghai. I'm so grateful I got to have that because it was nothing like I've ever done.

Yeah, it was one of those things you are very grateful for. It's perfect for the gratitude segment but just explore a little bit more about what it was and the fact that five guys, like minded guys who are loving their cycling were able to go together and travel together and be really well looked after by the time the, the organizers of this event and be treated like professionals and tell us a little bit about how, how that felt and, and you got a little glimpse and of what it would be like to be on a mini world tour sort of experience.

Oh, spot on. We, it was really a really well put together event but specifically we, as you said, we were just completely looked after. So we locked up at the airport and we got taken to our hotel in a bus. You know, you stay, all the riders stayed at the same hotel. There was Buffet breakfast each morning the tour guides took us around, which was very necessary because we were in the outskirts of Shanghai and no one spoke English. And then, yeah, you, you prepare for the race as like a pro. And it was a, it was two days of racing and there was a team's time trial on the first day, which we really would have liked to have done, but it was full, a full event. So the day two was the 90k stage race. It was a completely televised event. So it was, you rock up at the start line and I think last year's event had a million viewers, which seems like so much, I mean compared to China's population of a billion and a million is not much, but it's a fully, completely, really high funded TV event. And so when you're racing this, the entire road was blocked. I've never been on a course so blocked off like it was around like a pro race. They had 3,000 cops along the, along the route, staff, volunteers. It was the race itself, you know, just never experienced anything like it. Riding through these closed streets and villages of China. It was, it was just so special. I just felt so lucky to be a part of it all.

Yeah. And, and you know, the race itself, the expectations from us was to just go and do your best and have some fun as a team. We're a team of five and a lot of the Thai teams and other Asian teams had, you know, up to riders. So you're a little bit outnumbered and probably the level was a bit above, above our level. But you know, your attitude was great and you know, our team tactics were, you know, just see what happens and make sure that we work as a team. And how did that actually, how did that end up? And I've put some stuff on social media with you and the breakout. Tell us how that eventuated.

Yeah, so it was great talking. We had a team meeting with you once we rocked up and found out the company because we're going there thinking we don't know what the race is going to be like. You know, is it going to be a decent grand fondo where you're averaging 40Ks an hour, 30 or 40Ks an hour. And then we quickly spoke around and found out once we were there who these teams were and how the quality. And we knew it was going to be a really high quality, fast paced race. So we all got on the phone.

To you and just, just, just to set the scene. Before you talk about that, you weren't in the Gran Fondo. The Gran Fondo was after your race Your race was 100 selected riders from all over the world and, you know, you happened to be picked up at the airport and the guy who got in the car with you was none other than Andy, you know, Tour de France winner. So I'm just giving a little bit of perspective here. So go on.

Yeah, that's a great point. And hopefully we'll have Andy on the podcast soon because I had a great chat to him in our bus ride from the airport to the hotel and it was pretty cool to get to have a real in depth conversation with a Tour de France winner. But yeah, sorry. So it was, you know, in the actual Gran Fondo behind us, they started 20 minutes after us. They were. There was a few thousand people riding, but yes, ours was 120 riders, I think. And yeah, we had a chat with you about Team Tacos and we're going. We don't know the riders. A lot of them knew each other because they raced each other on the Asian circuit. We don't know really how it's going to play out. It's a flat course, so it's going to be super fast. Does that mean it's going to be really hard for a brake to get away? How do we try and shut down brakes with five of us or varying levels of ability informed? We try and pick someone to ride for. And so we had that great chat with you and it's, it's a good example of team tactics. You sort of saying that your big message was, you've got to be in the race. It doesn't matter about their ability. You've got to do things to be a part of the race. And there's no pressure from us because we're turning up to an event that's not an event we trained for specifically. So the best advice I thought you kind of gave was have some fun and take some risks and see what happened. And that resulted in me getting in the breakaway. And it was funny because the race started with no neutral zone, which is pretty different. And the race organizer kind of said, you know, just use a bit of common sense at the start, making sure that everyone gets out safely. And we just knew that wasn't going to be the case. And the gun went and it was just hell for leather from the, from the gun. It was just. I did my peak power and peak heart rate in the first nine minutes of the race. 90 kilometer race, to give some perspective. We all three of us hit over 200 beats per minute heart rate, which is just crazy. My heart rate Never gets over 192 and 193, maybe 195 in a bike race. The only time I've ever hit 200 was when I had Covid. And so I assumed that it was something to do with COVID that hit that. And so to hit 200bpm in the first nine minutes just shows what was happening. And it was just going. There were guys just sprinting all out. We had five of us who were trying to. A few of us just shut, not shut down attacks, but go with any moves in case they, they stuck from the very start. And it was probably the, I don't know, maybe the. I'd gone with two, Mitch had gone with two, Nick had gone with two. Our guys, you know, trying to like just jump across and be part of it. We could see the same teams trying to send two guys at a time. And it seemed like maybe that at the 10 or 15 minute mark after a dozen moves had tried to go. And it's always that case when everyone just starts to feel that fatigue a little bit and the, and the group just starts started to back off and a few guys went. And I just happened to jump on a guy's wheel who I knew was a good rider as he went. I saw him winding up a bit and then that's the brake formed and there was nine of us that formed the brake and that was it for the rest of the race. The brake stayed away and it was a pretty, yeah, pretty cool experience.

Yeah. And so obviously we can't leave it at that. We have to actually explore what happened in the race. The other Trivalo guys are now happy that one rider is in the brake. Probably in hindsight you weren't the best endurance rider to be in the break, but that's the lack of having a crack and being at the right time at the right place. And so you're finding yourself in a break with guys who are riding probably at above your level.

Yeah. When the break was forming, I was absolutely on my limit. That was just me, I was really hanging on. And the break is forming and they're flicking their elbows to come through and I'm saying to the guys, just let me sit on for a second, I've come across. There was kind of four guys there and then five of us went across and they were screaming at me. And that's, that's, I guess pro racing is they're trying to intimidate me and I'm, I'm just going, I actually can't just. And I kind of they let me sit in for a couple of turns and then we all nine people started working together and I was seriously on my limit and I was just going, I cannot risk going through a turn here because I, I might get dropped. And I missed one more and then one of the guys just went like nuts at me. And then I tried to call someone else in and there was. So there was three guys on one team in the break and one tie team and there was three guys from another Thai team, but they're both tie teams and they're both kind of working together. So it's almost six out of the nine were all kind of part of one team, even though they were, even though they were distinctly two different teams. And then there was three of us that were kind of isolated and yeah, I tried to go through and two of them just sat behind me and let the wheel go and said, we're not going to close the gap. And it was, you know, it was a 2 or 3 meter gap to the, to the back of the breakaway. And they said, we'll, we'll sit back. If you want to drop off, we'll sit behind you. And within five seconds, the gap was 8, 10 meters. And I, they just bluffed me and I just thought, I have to, I don't want to miss this break here because I don't, I don't know if I'll get back on. They might just jump me because two of them are together. And so I put in a huge effort to get onto the back and that put me so far in the red zone and I just thought I have to just try and roll through with the group and not do a turn on the front, just roll straight over. A lot of the guys are doing turns between 10 and 30 seconds and once I started doing that, they let me do that. They didn't, they didn't ask for more than that. As soon as I got to the front, I just rolled over and I just spent the next 10 minutes surviving, just trying to get my breath back. And then it kind of settled into a pretty good roll and luckily I was able to the next 30k 40k, because I looked down and I've gone. We're 25ks into the race. I am absolutely, you know, I am just, yeah, I, I thought, how am I gonna go another 75k here or 60k? But yeah, you just, as with everything in cycling, it always, you know, can calm down. You just gotta, I said to myself, to survive the next minute, just, just try and get through the Next minute and hopefully the tempo goes down and, and that's what happened. And yeah, it just kind of settled like that for the next. Until about the 60k mark and we were getting time updates on the board, which is pretty funny. It sat at a minute for a while and while it was at a minute, everyone was working pretty well together. And then at about the 60k mark, it was 2 1/2 minutes. And once that happened, then everyone start looking at each other and I knew that fireworks were going to happen. And then, yeah, guys just started jumping and they were in a great position because, you know, one of their riders could go and it would be up to the basically non team members to chase them because the rest of the team just sit there and, and say, well, that's our guy, so we're not going to chase him. And then once we bring them back, the next guy would jump. And it just, it just felt like we're in a horrible position. And as you said about, you know, form, I. If we had team radios very early on, I would have been screaming in the radio to our guys, get up here. You know, get out of the peloton and get up here. Their mindset was kind of like, well, we've got a guy on the brakes, so we didn't have to chase. But I was completely isolated up there. I was easily the weakest rider out of the nine in the breakaway. I was outnumbered. It was just a really poor position to be in. And that's just, that's not really trying to complain about it. It's just the fact of where I was in the race and the two guys back in the group are stronger than me. So it's much more beneficial if they're up at the front. So if I, yeah, if we had our time, in hindsight, if we had team radios or something, we would have probably said get away from the group, try and bridge a gap across the breakaway, which would have been incredibly hard in itself, but that would have been our best option. And yeah, basically how the race unfolded was they just kept jumping. I was, I was already on my limit, let alone trying to chase down every attack. A few guys got up the road, me and another guy who were kind of isolated, didn't have team members, were sort of rolling on the front, trying to limit some damage, but not really doing much. I thought that's how to play, how it play out to the end. And then with about 10k to go, I ended up crashing, half crashing around a corner. The guy in front of me saw the Corner too late. I was just kind of on my limit, so I was just looking his back wheel. I wasn't looking up, so that was my mistake. Came around this corner way too fast and I went into the dirt and kind of only half fell. I managed to get my leg out, my hand kind of came down, but it was in some grass and I didn't fully crash. But by the time I got my back on my bike, they were already 30 meters away, 40 meters away, and then that was it. I couldn't. Couldn't close it back, so I had to just ride the last 10k solo. And that was my race.

It's a great story and so many lessons in there, isn't there, about, you know, how to communicate in a really big event and how important race radio is to get your message across. And also, is it advisable that the guy you don't have in the break is the one that the guy you do have in the break is the one you don't want to have in the break, probably with the level of riders that you're riding against. And, you know, who knows, the other guys in our team might not have done any different than you, but we sort of don't want to let the breakaway get four minutes. You want to keep them within a minute. So there is an opportunity if something happens to you that, you know, one of our guys can get across and they're just little examples. It's always easy in hindsight, but the goal was just to have a good experience and learn a lot and another race under your belt and, you know, learned so much about racing at that level and how easy it is to get isolated and how good it is to be in a break and how bad it is to be in a break that's above you. And what do you do? And do you do more turns? Do you have less turns? Do you be bluffed into doing something you don't want to do? All the questions and analysis you and I had after the race was really good. And that's what a club racer would expect to have happen. If he, for example, if someone's been riding D grade and they've been winning D grade races, and all of a sudden the race director puts them up to sea grade for next week, and now they're in a group that they're out of their limit, do they change their tactics in riding? Do they go on the break, or do they be more conservative, a more defensive style of riding, etc. So. So these are all scenarios that you know, As a bike rider you're going to face. And whether, whether you win a, in a, you know, a Chinese representative race or whether you're in a local club race, the same scenarios are happening. Club races don't have a lot of alliance with team members as you do in a, in a sort of a race like that where it' specifically around teams. But, but there's a lot of alliances in club races where there's four or five mates who won't chase other mates. So it probably is a team's event anyway. But yeah, they're great lessons and, and especially for the guys back in the bunch not knowing what the scenario was up the road, they didn't know that, you know, they knew that the, the guys up the road were damn good riders, but they didn't know how you were coping with that or, you know, so they were doing their best to, to not let anybody bridge. So, you know, in hindsight they should have been keeping the bunch, the breakaway closer to the bunch and the peloton so that if something did happen, they could see that that was happening and they could change their tactics. Always easy in hindsight, but lots of good lessons and a great experience.

Yeah, for sure. And I guess to finish off, I did ask you after I just said I was constantly going through situations in my head, what are my options here? What should I do? I knew the attacks would come at some point. I knew that would just counter. I just felt completely stuck. And afterwards you just said pretty bluntly, had to completely call their bluff back and just say, my stronger riders are behind me, I'm not doing any work. And, and if guys, you know, if you have to let guys go up the road do that, because what you said was really right. They're all competitive races. They might let one of their guys go up the road or two, but they're going to want to race as well. You know, they're not, they're not there to sit there and come sixth, seventh, eighth. And so just if, if that means letting, you know, two guys go up the road and then the race becomes a bit more for third or something. That was my best kind of tactic in that situation, which was helpful to sort of hear afterwards. So we do want to talk about a few other topics and the main one is the juror, because so many cool things happened in the race that, that's worth talking about. And as you mentioned before, you know, Roglis just beat Thomas in the final time trial, which was really exciting. And I will say that a week ago, I said to some of the boys, rog, which is going to win this? Thomas looks strong. Everyone thought Thomas was going to take it home. I, I just, I just watching the way he was riding, I thought, I think Ruggage is going to take this from Thomas. And yeah, he got him on the final time trial. He was down by 26 seconds going into the time trial. He beat Rockage. He beat Thomas by 40 seconds, so taking the lead by by 14 seconds total. And that was with Mechanical from Roglich. So he probably would have beaten him by a minute in the actual tt, which is crazy to think about, but something that Thomas said, which is just so funny for everyone. That's a usual listener of the podcast. They said, after how you're feeling, bittersweet, you tried your hardest, you're losing the last one. It's a lot of, you know, he said he was so happy to be in this form because he wasn't even near this form three to six months ago. So if someone had told him he was going to take second at the Giro, he said he would have been stoked. But to lose it in the last stage, he's just so disappointed. And one of the things really stood out to me. He said the manner in which he lost maybe hurts more because he felt like he really died in the back half of that time trial. He said, maybe if I started easier and finished stronger, but I still lost, it might feel a bit easier or maybe it would have been a different result. And that to us is just almost infuriating because it's like, how often are we going to see, you know, top level athletes kind of do a worse performance and make that mistake and it's, it's potentially costing the Duro. Yeah.

And look, if you had started easier and finished stronger, Roglic may still have beaten him. But the point is he would have felt better about his actual execution. And look, I remember, I think it was probably pre Covid the Dauphine time trial. I think it was Geraint Thomas did the actual. Normally the Dauphine does the time trial or the. On the actual Tour time trial course or something similar. And Geraint Thomas on that particular day and that stage on the time trial blew the field apart in the first half of that time trial. And then I think he was 15 seconds up on all of the big GC contenders for the Tour, which is on a couple of weeks after the Dauphine. And by the time they finished that time trial, he came fifth and he'd lost 30 something seconds in the Second half. And I remember on a podcast we talked about that actual performance and saying even the pros make a mistake in execution. And he got interviewed and he said, oh, I can't believe how foolish I was. I, I just rode way above my level and paid dearly for it and faded so badly that, you know, and I've learned my lesson. And here he is. You know, the point I'm making is they can continue to make mistakes just like we do all the time. And just because you do it once, it doesn't mean you're going to have to do it again. You have to really keep concentrating. And it's a great message that the pros at the top of their game can continue to make the same mistakes repeatedly. But, you know, if he wasn't getting information in his ear saying that he was 7 seconds down on Roglich already in the first 4K or going to 9 seconds down, would he have ridden that differently? And my guess is he would have, because the pressure is now coming from an outside source telling him that his competition is already ahead of him. And I think there's a lot to dissect in that. And, and I was saying to you, imagine if he didn't hear any of that information. He just wrote to his numbers and then came home strong like he would normally do from the experience that he has as a time trialist, and that if he got to the end of the race and did as hard as he could, he would have to be happy that if he lost by 40 seconds because he's done the best he could, but by having information telling him that he's already down after 5 or 7k, I'm not sure if it's a continuous and a positive contribution. It changes the mindset that I'm obviously in a race with someone else, but I'm not trusting my process here. You'd be looking down at your numbers saying, well, he's beating me by seven or eight seconds. This is the best numbers I can do. But what does he do? He would try to ride above that. And as we know, riding above your capabilities might work. One out of 100, you might be on a great day, your form might change to be one of those great days in your career, but the other 99 times, it's going to be a poor outcome. And when we use athletics as an example, every world record from 5,000 meters to marathon is one in a negative split, which means the second half is faster than the first half. So, so that's execution at its best. In Athletics. So it is similar in time trialing because it's you against the clock and athletics, it is you against other athletes. But normally, if you're running with a. You know, in a marathon, for example, or even in a 5k, you're still running against the competition, but you know your limitations. As if you're wanting to run 60 seconds per 400 meters and. And the race goes out in 56, you know, you need to be at the back of the field for that, for that to be working to your benefit. You can't be at the front because, you know, you can't sustain that. So they're good examples of, I think, for everybody listening out there, that, you know, if you don't concentrate on your actual ability going into an event and understand your numbers, and I'm a big believer in racing the race, and I'm a big believer in going by how you're feeling and then pinpointing all of that against your numbers and your actual. What you have done in training and possibly on the better days you've ever raced. But those combinations have to be taken into consideration as a group, not individually. And so you have to keep making decisions. And it doesn't matter whether you're in a little club race or in a half ironman or a club road race or swimming event, you've still got to decide how you're going to pace the thing according to how you feel. And so I think at the elite level, guys are still making the same mistakes as age groupers are, but it's more. It's more catastrophic because it's something that's on the big scene screen and the whole world's watching, so it's almost more embarrassing for them. So that's why I think, you know, I think it's great that Garant Thomas comes out and tells everybody that.

Yeah, for sure.

Brilliant.

Yeah. And there is. There is an argument for the fact that on that stage specifically, you want to do your best performance ever. So that one out of 100 times you say, well, this is the time to win the Giro. And a lot of people might do that for their A race. This is my A race. I want to do better numbers than I ever have. But you don't do those better numbers in the first half. The argument is still the same if you want to have your greatest race ever, execute your numbers as well as you should until that last period when it really counts. And then that's when you do your pv. That's when you do your picture best power numbers ever. Yep.

Set your race up so that you can use your power numbers at the start to not go into the red zone too soon. And set your race up so you can actually race it properly. And then. Then listen to all the splits that you're hearing in your ear because you can do something about it. But when you actually go into the red zone and you've ridden too hard early, you actually can't. You're pedaling squares, you. You can't change. The only thing you can do is go slower, which is quite frustrating and infuriating to be in that position.

You're helpless.

And, yeah, just so many good examples of what's happening in the world that we can use in our own little community of where we're racing and whether it's a club race or a local triathlon, these are so many good examples of. Even the best make these mistakes. So don't feel bad if you actually do similar things, but as long as you learn from what, what mistakes you're making and not repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, that's going to be your downfall. And I see this happening so many times. I had a guy ring up saying, I think he'd done 15 Ironmans and his best Ironman was under 10 hours, so he's quite a capable athlete. And recently he'd done 13 hours and 12 and a half. So there's a big gap between his best and his worst. And he's saying, I'm sick of. I'm sick of doing mediocre results. I want to get back to where I was, and I need to have a program that's gonna. That's gonna really help me concentrate on execution and getting the right fitness levels and understanding how to go about racing like I did before. And I don't want to keep doing the same stuff I've done before. And that's the sort of.

Of.

That's the sort of thing that we all should be learning from, is, you know, this guy's done 12 of them or 13 of them poorly. And, you know, that's a lot of mistakes to make year after year.

It's a lot of mistakes to make. Specifically, it is.

And it's excruciatingly a hard thing to go through when you're really not. Not able to function. You're at the mercy. You're on the death walk. You know, you're at the mercy of the event and you're just trying to get to the finish line, you know.

Like It's a poor 50 minute, 10k or something, you know, that's right.

Yep. So. So they're examples of actually, you know, doing something about understanding the situation you're in and changing, changing something up. And, you know, it takes a lot of guts to admit that you've. You're really stuffing up what you've been doing, you know, for literally a decade and now it's time to change. And, you know, my first thought is, how did it take you that long to come to that realization? You should have been changing straight away. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, once you realize what you're doing can be changed, then that's the good point that you've got to where you can actually now have a different approach to it and the outcome will be clearly improvement and the joy comes back into the actual event. I see so many people have poor events and still want to come back again and try and, you know, beat their head against the wall with the same tactic. Imagine going into a race with a new tactic that's actually going to be effective and you're going to improve and you won't be able to take the smile off your face. And that's what we're trying to get across is, you know, there are ways and means of going about things. And, you know, what you've done in the previous, you know, doesn't mean you keep repeating that thing because there are better ways, even for those who are doing very well. You know, you need to be open to learning if there's a better way of doing something.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

And another really positive thing I took from Geraint Thomas race was the fact that, you know, a couple, he's had a couple of years of poor form. A lot of people kind of, he said he's in the back end of his career, he might be washed up. And to see a result like this for what he's done the last couple of years is just so encouraging. And more specifically, his age and he's 37. They kind of asked him at the end of the race, you know, what's next for you? Are you done? Are you going to keep racing? You got to do more grand tours. And he said, I don't know yet. But he said, I'm definitely not done. He's thinking the Vuelta, he might like to have a crack at the vaulter again. He sort of said, I feel, you know, I feel as good as ever. I feel like I can keep going, I feel like I can keep performing. And he's 37 and it just, it's just another example of age not being a limiter. And there's just so many athletes out there that are peaking at 35 plus and, you know, it shows what you can do. He's literally at the very top of elite cycling and Grand Tour cycling at 37. And we just see, yeah, so many people. Cavendish is just retiring at 38. But of course, sports all over the world. You know, Tom Brady famously played till he's 44 in the NFL, which is one of the hardest hitting sports. Kelly Slater still competing on the World tour circuit at 52, which is just crazy. Elliot Kipchoge, don't forget he's had kind of the best five years of his life. But he's 38 now, so 33 to 38 is where he's really peaked. Serena Williams is retired at 40. You know, she was still running Grand Slams and easily the greatest, greatest tennis player that tennis has ever seen. And she's, you know, winning grand slams from 38 to 40, 41. And Mick van Vleuten is 40, multiple world champions still at the very top of her cycling game. I'm just rattling off all these, all these people who are, who are still peaking at around this age. Nicholas Spirig just broke the eight hour Iron man, the second woman to ever break eight hours for the Iron man last year at 40, 41. And I could just keep going, but, but I think it's really good examples of peeping, defying what we kind of perceive as age being a barrier. But I think it's just, it shouldn't even be a social kind of commentary anymore.

Yeah, and I love the way Geraint Thomas doesn't let the incessant questioning about his age get to him. He's got a great balanced mindset. I'm super impressed. I didn't really know much about him, but watching him lose this tour has given me more respect about that person and his personality than, than seeing all the victories that he's had over the generations. But he didn't snap at reporters, always asking him, are you too old? And he was very calm and he races like that. He's a very calm, balanced racer. You don't see him ever getting upset. Thibaut Pinot is a classic example of someone losing the plot when there's people doing things that he doesn't want them to do in a race. And yet Geraint Thomas, I thought his humility and defeat and praise of Roglic was absolutely brilliant. Brilliant. The sportsmanship he showed, I just thought was fantastic. He said Roglich was superior in the, the day that it counted the most and he deserved the victory. And I have no excuses, he was better than me on the day and I just thought that was fantastic. You know, his, his, his actual kindness and friendship he showed for Cavendish by doing a 1 1/2 hour, 1 1/2 kilometer pull to make sure that Cavendish got, got a lead out proper because he only had one Astana rider helping him. And all of a sudden here's Garant Thomas from Ineos Grenadier sitting on the front telling Cavenish to get on his wheel and taking him to 800 meters to the, to the finish. And Cavendish goes and wins and breaks the, the world record for the most Grand Tour victories in the history of cycling. What a great thing to do. And Cavendish was so emotional about what, what Garant Thomas had done for him. He couldn't speak about it. He was so, he was in tears saying how, how grateful he is for that friendship kind act that Gant Thomas did. So I'm really impressed with him as a, as a human being and I really hope that he keeps going and, and get some more success.

That, that was so awesome to see. And he, he put up a post and said, well, if I can't win, I want to try and help a mate win. And he could have sat in the peloton and sold sulked and he's lost grand tour by 14 seconds. And he didn't, he said, oh, what am I going to do here? I'm going to have some fun, I'm going to go help a mate. And it was so awesome. It's what sport is all about to me. Absolutely loved it. And I want to mention that we're talking about the people at the very top of the world here. We're talking about world champions at this age. But it has to be said that for our own athletes, we don't just see one or two athletes improving with age. We have many, many examples of athletes pushing their best cycling power numbers, pushing their best cycling speed, pushing their best run performances at 56 or 58 compared to where they were at 50 or 52. And they're not anomalies. It's so common. And so it's just really encouraging to know that and to understand that's possible. And for you as an athlete, you can improve and you can keep going and it doesn't have to necessarily, you don't have to believe that performance will just continually decline. And that's, you know, factually VO2 Max does decline with age, but that doesn't necessarily dictate performance. So I think that's really important to be said and it kind of leads us to the final part of the topic we wanted to talk about and that's, you know, age groupers versus pros. And, and you don't want to underestimate the toll of training. And pros train so hard, they train long, they train hard, they train for so many hours and if we try to emulate that, we're really going to set ourselves up for failure. Because what pros do outside of training is they recover, they rest, they recover, they sleep, they eat, and that allows them to train so hard and so long. Yet us as age groupers and amateurs, we lack the recovery. We have to work outside of training, we don't get time to rest and sleep. We have other things outside of life, other external commitments, you know, working full time, full time, families, just life admin. We don't have things looked after for us. You know, our bike mechanics aren't cleaning or maintaining our bikes, we're not having potentially dietitians or cooks, you know, doing all our meals. So it's really important to understand that pros train hard and have more recovery and we shouldn't necessarily aim to emulate the that.

Oh, it's a big topic, Jord and I, it's disappointing, we haven't got a lot of time to dig deep into it, but I just really want everybody out there to understand and the example I'm going to give. Fortunately we had my eldest son Liam and their two children and Lani, Liam's wife here whilst he was in China with the race and watching the sleep deprivation that they had each night with their 16 week old baby, waking up every two hours at 10pm, 12pm 2, 4, 6. It is just impacting on their functionality during the next day. And that fog that you feel from lack of sleep and you know that you have to perform at work the next day or whatever your day has and if you just, just put that on day after day and this has been going on for pretty much 16 weeks and we got a glimpse of it for a week and it is so draining and it is impacting everything. And so to not give that kudos credit and really understand the changes you need to make around your next day, just acting like nothing happened during the night, that's a recipe for disaster. You absolutely have to give that the rating it deserves because it's impactful on everything and you will end up being run down. So Badly that you won't be able to train anyway and perform. So my message out there is we want to have the best program possible. That is our ultimate gain goal. Sorry. We want to start with what is the ideal scenario for us. If I've got every minute available to me and I don't have any outside disruptions from work or from family or from injury, from illness, what is the best program I can do? Right, let's start with that. We put that up and then we have to be absolutely ready to adjust at any given day, on any given week, in any given block. And if you're not willing to adjust and be flexible, then you will be on a journey that's going to be. You end up giving the sport away because you are so disillusioned with your lack of improvement because of the missed sessions. And we've always said that consistency is the key to, you know, consistency's kink. Consistency is the key to improving improvement. If you can just maintain consistency. And I've had this discussion with many people who've started the program with me, and I'm saying, look, the one thing I want you to get really through your head is you just have to be consistent. And if you can get that going, then your progress will be so much quicker than you've ever imagined. The answer comes back to me. Consistency, no problem with that. Is that all you're worried about? And, boy, does that come back to bite people. People, you know, looking at someone's training peaks month where they've got possibly, you know, 35 sessions and they've done 12 of them. And, you know, as compared to someone who's been able to do maybe not the intensity they were meant to be doing because they had to adjust because of poor sleep or lack of time, but they've managed to keep doing session after session and they end up with 30 out of 35. The person who's done 30 compared to the person who's done 12 is so much further down the track. You know, they're building up layers of fitness, they're building up better resistance to load. The person who's doing shorter, maybe harder sessions but is not doing many of them is actually going to stay pretty stagnant for a long period of time and not improve. So there's so many areas that we need to talk about with the toll that training takes on the age group and how other things influence your performance, such as out outside things as, as what I explained with, with just having a young family or, or you might have teenagers who are going through hard times where you've having to spend time, you know, going, actually dropping them off at a party and waiting till 2am to pick them up. And then you get, not getting to sleep till 2:30. And that's a reality as a parent. And everybody in the age group from 20 to 70 is in one of those areas of young children, children who are teenagers or being grandparents for their children's children. So you know, there are going to be disruptions all the time. And the message that I'm trying to get across is yes, start with the best program and then be willing to adjust on a daily basis. And we talk about how you feel and how you feel is determined by what's happened to you in the last 12 hours, what's happened to you in the last 24 hours, what's happened to you in the last seven days. They all have an impact on what happens the next day. And don't just think, I had a bad sleep last night, I should be right. If you've had 15 days of great sleeps, you probably will be right. But if you've had 15 days of continuously the same interrupted sleep, my guess is you won't be right. So it's okay not to do the session that's prescribed, do something that's less intense, but make sure you do something. And that's my message across the board to people who are having trouble with coping with the program, them and their life. And, and there's so much to, to dig into here.

Yeah, it's ultimately, it's about, you know, just basically being kinder to yourself and potentially lowering your expectations of what's realistically achievable. And of course, as you said, the motivated athlete wants to come into a program and, and smash 12 sessions a week, you know, sometimes twice a day with, with a cycling session and run off the bike and some strength and conditioning. But yeah, realistically understanding what, what, what, that we're not pros and, and being kinder to yourself about it. Because what happens is if you keep failing the program, if you keep failing sessions and you're expecting too much of yourself, it just leads to so much negativity. It sees, leads to just you beating yourself up, some negative self talk and you lose a lot of motivation. And you know, we talk about this almost every year as we come into the winter months in the Southern hemisphere and the Northern hemisphere just come out of their winter months. But no matter where you are, you go through the same sort of motivation cycles where, where it starts to get tough to Train in winter, it's cold, it's dark, it's wet. When you're training early morning or late night, you're often training in the dark. If you're training indoors, you know, it's still not comfortable and it's really hard to get through these periods sometimes. So I guess, you know, what can you do about this as an age grouper? One is adjusting your mindset. But what do you do here when your motivation starts to wane a little bit?

Yeah, and this is the time when you have to think, you know, the big picture and there's going to be a summer. So, you know, if we just use the southern hemisphere as an example, we're coming into the colder, getting darker in the mornings and getting darker at night periods. And, you know, if you're lucky to be in the, you know, closer to the equator, if you're using Australia as an example, you know, the temperature is not so bad as it is in Tasmania or in Victoria, but. But certainly you're going to be up against the elements and there could be periods where, you know, you can't train outside because it's just literally lashing down with rain or wind or it's just really freezing cold. And you really need to come up with strategies. And that's what you do about it. You come up with strategies that are going to help you maintain your consistency. That's how you should be thinking. What things can I do that are going to enable me to be as consistent as I want to be? Because the big picture is summer will be here and the races that I want to do will be in my face. They'll be in one week's time. And I've got 16 weeks of winter or 20 weeks with winter and some spring where I can be as well prepared as I've ever been for the next period of where I want to be in good form. And so you want to think about things like the strategies I'm going to tell you are think about things where your weaknesses are. That's my goal, that's my mindset. I've got to concentrate on. What things did I do? Well, take triathlon, for example. Running off the bike. I didn't do that very well last season. I need to actually get stronger so that I can hold the pace I want to hold from the start of the run off the bike to the finish of the race, rather than starting at a pace I should be able to do and then fading. What are the things I can do in winter to stop that from happening? Okay. Be stronger in the back end of the run, which means do some more hills, do some more strength work as a runner.

Runner.

Not do some intensity work, but be stronger so that your body can cope with the load and the pace that you're expecting to do on race day. Do some more their strategies, do some.

More race specific intensity off the bike. You know, once a week, getting off the bike and running a 5k at your half ironman race pace or something.

Yeah, you've just got to come up with strategies and all of a sudden your mindset's like, how exciting is this? If I start to think about I want to be a better runner off the bike, am I stronger? Was I strong on the bike or did I fade during the events last year on the bike? Therefore, I again use this period to become a stronger, more robust cyclist. Things like my high end is good when it's set out properly, but when it's a race scenario where you've got so many things that are happening unpredictably, you need to actually do that type of specific stuff. And, and for example, Zwift crit racing is a great way of keeping your unpredictable, reactive style of racing in check and become better at that during the winter. And it's a great way to not have to do a training session. You're getting the same outcome where you're trying to ride at threshold with high over and under threshold efforts that are unpredictable. In the race situation, you're getting the same session. So use these fun sessions to make your 12 to 16 week period a much you look up. I know that when we ran our Trivalo handicap races, people were looking forward to a Thursday night race. They know it was going to be hard, but it was a fun thing because it was a handicap and that opportunity to win if the handicapper got it right was really a good buzz. And because most of the people knew each other, even if you don't know each other in a Zwift situation, it is still the competition that's going to push you to get the outcome that you want, which is to do an intensity session. And this is a strategy that you can use where you're doing a training session, but it's a race and they're the things that you're trying to strategize to make sure that you're getting the most out of the period where your motivation could possibly be low.

Yeah, what you're really saying is find a strategy that's going to motivate you specifically. So if that's picking A race between September and November, and that's going to get you out of rut, having something to work towards and really focus on, then so be it. If that's. If that's picking a weakness and deciding to get stronger at that, then so be it. And that could be anything. You know, you might find that you're getting a bit stale on the bike or stale in your running and maybe.

You want to do a period of.

Where you get to focus on strength and conditioning for six to 12 weeks where you kind of back off the training a little bit and do some gym work and do some variety, or I'm just using an example of whatever you can pick that's going to work for you and not put you backwards and not make you stop training and doing the necessary things to keep improving, but trying to find different ways to go about your training where you can be a bit kind to yourself because you're not feeling as motivated and pick a strategy that works. And we've spoken about the Zwift Winter series plenty of times, the Tribala Zwift Winter Series that we do. And absolutely in those periods when most days you're not enjoying training, that Thursday night race becomes the highlight of the week and you look forward to it so much. Handicaps are always fun because if they're done right, like you said, anyone can win. And that's just an example of picking something and we're going to do it again this year because it really is just something motivating to look forward to over winter. There's the endurance rides on Saturday morning on Zwift. I also found them really motivating that you're getting your endurance ride in, you do a long warm up, then you can do 100k in some of these big group rides. And it always ends up in a race in the last 20 or so. Okay, so you're getting this great fix of an endurance ride on Saturday and I look forward to them so much. And each week you're seeing your progress. So of what was your normalized power for the entire three hours? What was your normalized power or your average power for the last 20k? How did you actually go in the race? It's really motivating stuff. And I guess the last point I wanted to mention and finish on is that some of this topic can also make you believe a false narrative that you always have to be motivated and that training always has to be enjoyable. And that's just kind of a myth. And we don't want to promote that myth. We're not trying to say that you need to be motivated all the time or it always needs to be enjoyable. Of course we want to be enjoying the program process, we want to enjoy training, we want to enjoy our racing. But the reason that we train is ultimately to challenge ourselves. We're trying to push ourselves to challenge ourselves, to stress our body so that we can get better. And that's not always going to be a positive process. In fact, it's kind of an inversely positive process where we're putting ourselves through a negative experience to get the positive reward from it. And so I think that's really important to understand is that if you're not enjoying training, that's also okay. You might have to go through a period where you're not enjoying it as much and. And that's kind of part of the suffer. It's like, okay, well, can I still train consistently? That's my challenge. Can I still rock up to these training sessions when I'm not feeling like it and when it's hard? And then if you can get through those periods, that's a big reward in itself. So I think that's a really important point to mention.

Yeah. And having the big picture outlook is really important so that you can actually think your way through the day in the week, knowing that this is a couple of steps on the journey to where that November race is or that race next March. So if you keep thinking about what am I going to feel like on the start line on that day, and just say, oh, okay, I've got 17 weeks for me to turn my form around from what I've been doing the last two years. And yes, there are going to be times where it's not an enjoyable experience. But as we've said, if you can actually give yourself these strategies and have the goal of being as consistent as possible, because that's going to enable you to get more towards where you want to be on race day than being inconsistent and just doing big efforts here and there. So we're really pushing that point. It is not a false mindset. It's realistically working your way through so that you can get through the hard periods. Because there's going to be periods where you know you're absolutely not feeling like doing anything, but you've just, as I'm saying to people, just do 20 minutes. It doesn't matter how hard or easy it is, just do something. And a good reminder is just look back at where you've come from occasionally. What was I doing a year ago in terms of my performance, my average pace in the swimming pool, my average pace as a runner for 10k, what was my average power for 20 minutes? And if it's still the same as what it was then, then you've got something to work towards. If you found that in a year you've already gone up 15%, look back on that and use that as motivation, say, wow, look where I've come from. And I didn't even realize that I've improved that much. But because you're so micro working in the moment, you're not actually seeing where you've come from. And there will be examples where you, you might have been injured or ill or you haven't trained as well, where you haven't improved. But I guarantee the majority of people will, if they've done a good program and they've been consistent and managed to work their way from 50 weeks of training, they will see where they've come from. And that is so motivating to say, right, if I've done that, what can the next year look like if I keep going the same way? And these are really good ways of understanding that. You know, as an age grouper, we've got a lot of negativity to prevent us from achieving. And it's so impressive to see how well people do in these events, these big races that they've gone through anxiety and stress to, you know, in work and their family, and somehow they've got themselves unbelievably fit to compete as well as they possibly could. And I take my hat off to age groupers, you know, but the pros have got it easy compared to the age groupers, in my opinion, because there's so much more adverse stimulus out there to prevent you from getting to where you want as compared to the easier pathway. Don't underestimate how hard the pros train. But the pathway for them is easier than the average age grouper.

Once they are in that position, the pathway to get there and to be a athlete in a position that you have all these things looked after you, then you're pretty lucky. But there's a lot of people on the cusp of that pro category that are doing it just as tough. And it kind of reminds me of that. I think it's Muhammad Ali quote, I never understood it as a kid and it was, I always didn't like the quote as a kid. Where it was, he's really famous for, and he says, I hated every second of training. I was miserable, I suffered through it all. But he did it to be great, you know, And I remember when I was younger, I just thought, why would you say that? Why would you bother training if you hate it every second? You know, I wouldn't turn up if I hated every second. But you now understand what he was saying is that his goal wasn't to enjoy training, his goal was to be world champion and so he was willing to suffer through every part to achieve that goal. And that's the extreme end. And that's not necessarily what we're saying, but he is saying that you don't have to enjoy the training if you've got an outcome that you're looking for. And just understanding that is a real element to consider. So I think we'll finish there. Is there anything else you want to finish up on?

Yeah, I totally agree with that last point and I'm glad you said that is the extreme, because the other extreme of that is I love what I'm doing and therefore the pathway is easier and it is in life, if you love what you're doing, you will be better at it. And it's a, it's a real credit to Muhammad Ali for the fact that he was so driven to be the best in the world that he was suffering immensely through his training because he hated it. But you know, how, how good is it when you actually love doing something and you will be better at it? So, so there's the two extremes where someone's really loving what they're doing and they absolutely get better. And the person who's hating what they're doing just turns out get to the end result. I'm a big believer in let's just be okay with working hard and not enjoying some of the sessions, but still love what you're doing and be more balanced. I think that's my finishing point on this is for the age group who's got all these hurdles to cross to get to their end goal is to try to keep an evenness. A bit of a Geraint Thomas approach where, where you're doing your best in the circumstances, you're not going to be too extremely upset, you're not going to be too extremely angry and you're not going to be too extremely over the top about your successes. But you've got that evenness and he races like that. And that's how we should be approaching a lot of our training and our racing. It's not our full time profession, it's something we want to enjoy doing. So let's get a little bit more meaningful balance into it and sure, we want to train hard and improve, but at the end of the day, if we're putting ourselves under stress and strain, we're actually not going to enjoy it that much, and we're more than likely not going to continue. So there's the scenario and the conundrum.

I think, for sure. I did butcher the quote a little bit. The exact quote he said was, I hated every minute of training, but I said, don't quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion. And he definitely did that. But I'm glad we've provided two ends of the spectrum there and what it's about. So that's it for this episode. Bit of a long one. Again, thank you very much for listening, and as always, always. We'll see you on the next one.