How NOT To Ruin Your Training Program

Welcome to another episode of the Get Fast podcast brought to you by Tribala Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined as always, by your hosts, Australian Ironman champion and four times Nationals Masters cycling champion Gerard Donnelly. And I am Jordan Donnelly. If you want to get our expert secrets cheat sheet, that is a cheat sheet of the very best tips and advice the experts on our podcast have said to help you train smarter to race faster. Just go to getfastpodcast.com that's getfastpodcast.com where we interview current pro athletes, former pro athletes, current Olympians, former Olympians, doctors, nutrition experts and a whole range of guests where we have compiled their best tips into one cheat sheet. So if you want it, go to getfastpodcast.com in today's episode, we want to ask you a question. We want to ask what have you done in your training the last 12 weeks? Because about 10 to 12 weeks ago, the whole country was shut down by the coronavirus. And we said on a podcast at the time that we needed to readjust our goals, readjust what we were going to do with our training and set some different expectations and goals. And as a Tribalo coaching group, we did that. But we want to ask you, what did you achieve in the last 12 weeks? Because depending on what you've done, you'll be in a very different position. And we are already seeing certain athletes who have stuck to some good structures produce very different results 10 to 12 weeks later than others. So tell me your thoughts on this, dad. It's a pretty interesting period and we're just starting to come out of it. The country is still in lockdown. We don't really want to talk about the coronavirus itself because it's pretty boring. But in terms of a training program, what sort of things have you noticed?

Well, it's always easier now in hindsight to look back. And that's one of the things we did say in our podcast. At the time, we were in a unique situation. Doesn't matter whether it's a coronavirus or whatever the situation is. We've never experienced this before. And at the time we said we want to look forward and however long this period's going to last for. And we thought it might be 8, 12, 16, 20 weeks. We actually had no idea at the time. So we were basing our program around non race program, which was going to be preparation, kind of almost like a winter mode period where you really want to get your fitness to a point where you're really happy with. And for those people who were in the middle of races, it was really disappointing for them. And those people who are playing catch up, it was a great opportunity for them. And I've got to say, the Trivala athletes who are in that position might have been coming out of injury, illness or just playing catch up for so long. They really had a great opportunity to establish a really solid fitness base. And now looking back and saying those sentences at the beginning of that 12 week period, people were kind of reacting funny to what we were, what we were suggesting might happen. And as you said in your intro, lots of people took different pathways. And it's interesting to see the pathway that we've selected and how on board almost every one of the Trivalo athletes have been. And I'm really, I'm so proud of what they've done and it sounds like I'm boasting a bit, but it's because they've just embraced the direction we've taken them and they've seen the value that it's going to be. And let's face it, people had more time to actually train because they may not have been commuting as much to work, they may not have a job. So the two goals we tried to achieve at the start of the program was to get your fitness level as high as you possibly could during this period. And the second goal was to have fun doing it. And boy, have we given a variety of things to do, including criterium races, handicap races, time trials, and their normal training program, which was really based around strength and endurance. And we've had a couple of races just on the weekend where people have been, some still on Zwift, but some outdoors. And really people are in a better position than they were 12 weeks ago.

So I want to touch on those things in a moment in terms of what we actually did and the results you've seen. But I want to take you back to that first point. You said that the goal switched to let's build as big a base as possible. And the term base building probably doesn't have a sexy connotation to it. It almost sounds a little bit boring when you hear that. It sounds like the program's not going to be fun. And it's like you said, it almost has that winter hibernation context to it where it's going to be long, grueling sessions. But I would say the opposite has happened because after 10 to 12 weeks of base building, look at this type of position that you and other athletes are in and how much better you feel because of it. So talk to me a bit about base building and the mindset around it and why it's so important, why every program needs to have this period.

Yeah. And it's a period or an area that we always half do because we're in a hurry to get to our race. And the analogy of the house that's got a crappy foundation will have a crappy life. That house will have lots of cracks and, and bits fall off. If it's got a mass massive foundation. The house is rock steady for hundreds of years. And you know, the modern house that's being built now has got some of that dodgy dodginess to it compared to the, when you go to Europe, there's some magnificent buildings that have been standing there for, you know, four or 500 years. So that analogy of making sure that you do tick all the boxes of, of having a base and people are confused that the base is just doing really long slow endurance riding or, or as a triathlete, swimming and running and riding. But, but that could not be further from the truth. In your base you still need to have the variety that we have in the other phases of training. But we just spend more time doing certain things in that program. And the people who've been through that program understand what I'm saying. You, you still need to have some tempo, some strength, some intensity, some endurance. But it's the amount that you do that changes between there and, you know, from there to the next phase of your race preparation. And so really we've had such a great 12 week experience of this base building where we've had some fun races, you know, some really good strength training. The only thing that you can't get the same value is the endurance outdoor ride. And it's hard to spend, say you've been doing three to five hour endurance rides, rides or, or close to that. To do three to five hours on an indoor trainer is really difficult. But I've had a go at it and, and it is possible. 3 weekends in a row. I rode 101k race on Zwift just to test that I could do it and then added another 30 to 40k afterwards. So I ended up doing 140, 150k on, on an Ergo.

And would you recommend that?

Having a race situation in it really kept my mind active because it really was a real feeling of racing. And that's one of the things we will talk about is having to use the value of technology to Your advantage. So getting back to the point, the base building is not just long, slow training. That could not be further from the truth.

Awesome. So what did you do instead? What did you get the athletes to do instead of just long, slow training?

Okay, so. So the majority of our training was formed around making sure early that our intensity wasn't so high. And we had, we still had our, you know, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday type sessions, but we brought back the intensity and really made it more about strength. So as a runner, you know, we might have thrown in some hill repeats. As a rider, you know, Zwift has the capabilities of doing outdoors or just doing strength efforts. So the basis of our program was based around strength, strength and endurance. So if we can't do a one long ride on the weekend because we weren't allowed outside to ride, basically, then you needed to facilitate that in other areas. So we added a little bit more time to most of the sessions and we added some more strength, dropped the intensity. And once we did a few weeks of that, then we started to bring in some more intensity so that we, we just didn't have them smashing themselves from week one, day one, across the 12 weeks. So we had a little mini progressive overload training block of 12 weeks. And we're just at the outs coming out of the outside of that right now, which is quite exciting because most of the athletes and some people have had good experience and some people have had exceptionally good experiences, and very few people have kind of lost the plot. And we did say at the start, you know, athletes around the world will have decisions to make right now. When we did that podcast at week one or the week before, everything got locked down, we said, athletes have to make decisions. What do you want to be like in three months time? This is your choice right now. And the people who made the really good decisions to keep focused, keep motivated and the opportunities we created in our program with the handicap races, the time trial races, it really was more motivating and more interesting than they had been training before because they were training a little bit more almost isolated before doing, waking up, doing a session on your own, you're still doing that. But now we had some, some, some race intensity thrown in, which, which ended up being such fun as, as you know, you've commentated on most of the races.

So yeah, if anyone follows us on Instagram, you would have seen us. We did some handicap races with the tribal athletes on Zwift, which was really fun. We sent people off at our own handicaps that we selected, and we live Streamed it. And that was honestly so fun to commentate and watch. But for the athletes, it was just such an enjoyable experience to have that race like situation and really be competitive and you push yourself further definitely in that kind of environment compared to just a training session.

Yeah, and there were lots of good things that come out of that. We had a lot of riders who'd never ridden a handicap before and it is very similar to a real life handicap outdoors. We gave, you know, limit marker and group one, group two, all the way down to scratch time, time gaps. And you had to train, not train, you had to ride in your own bunch as you would in a handicap in, as a normal handicap. The difference was on the Zwift screen you can see how close the group behind is and how far away the group in front is. In a real handicap, unless you turn around and look, you've got no idea what's happening in the race. You don't know where anybody is. But this was kind of an added bonus, I think, and more fun because people could see whether they were catching groups or the group behind was catching. So yeah, it was such an enjoyable experience. And you know, from the people who are off limit to the people who are off scratch, you all have a race in, in your own little group. And then we had to learn how to sprint. So there was so many positive things out of that one session. Um, and then people could understand, you know, what, they got a real good feel for what their power data was and what they're capable of holding in a race situation. Because a handicap is like a team's time trial, like 10 groups of five to eight people doing a team's time trial. And once you get to the front of the race, then the handicap no longer exists. It's now a race against each other. Whereas up until that point you're riding together as a team. So there were lots of learning things for some of our new riders and some of the old riders who've been handicapped riders in real life knew exactly how to do it.

And we did have a few athletes actually get an improvement on their FTP from those sustained efforts, which was really cool to see. So what kind of results? Doing this variety of sessions and doing this structure and this change in structure, do we see that you say were exceptionally good?

Well, each week if we get a FTP update for an athlete, that's a really good thing. And, and occasionally each week I would get a couple of people here and there. Each week I was getting half the field getting FTP improvements because of the competition that they were having and they were understanding how to use their watts better. So as a learning experience for each athlete, they're improving and having fun doing it. So it was really exciting and I'm more than happy to, to sit down and keep updating FTPs if they're going to come in 10 and 20 at a time. It's a great buzz as a coach.

And what have you seen, you know, person A who completed what you hoped they would over this 10 to 12 week period compared to person B who didn't. And it might be. Yeah, what's, what's the comparison there?

Yeah, certainly it's a feeling for me that they've been left behind and you know, they're literally three months behind the people who have been unable to sort of participate. But you know, having said that, we've got a really good high percentage, you know, 90, 95% of the people have embraced it and actually, you know, run with it and had some fun along the way. And you know, I couldn't be happier with the outcome we were at right now.

So something you spoke to me about was, I mean, you've actually become a self confessed convert to Zwift. You never used Zwift before this period and their circumstances forced you to get on there and learn about it. I think you just preferred to get on the ergo and just do the session. You didn't want a screen in front of you, but in the circumstances you made the most of it. And you actually said that people are still using Zwift. Wrong. They're using Zwift like they ride outside. So explain that to me.

Yeah, and look, I coined the phrase to you adapt or get left behind. And so I knew nothing about Zwift. I knew that it was available. It's a another opportunity to have some interest in your riding. So I quickly spent the first week bringing myself up to speed. How do I do this? What's available? And pretty soon we worked out that there was a companion app where you could actually organize a meetup. And then we started our handicap racing through that meetup. But up until that point I was wondering what was the attraction of riding Zwift. So once I started to ride a couple of rides, there was just thousands of people on different courses all over the world riding Zwift. And it just reminded me of when you get a brand new bike and the first thing you want to do is go for a ride in your local area and where are the bunches? And in Melbourne the bunches are On Beach Road and you know, in Perth they're on the river and Sydney, they're on know at the hills, Queensland, Brisbane, everybody, every city in every state, every country town has got their own bunch ride. And it reminded me of just, that's what Zwift was. It was exactly the same as people just joining into lots of bunches and following. If four people went past you on Zwift, the temptation, because we're all competitive, is to jump on the back of those four people. And now what am I doing? I'm riding with someone else's group and then someone else had come past a bit faster so that group would jump onto them. And so it was just random riding, which intrigued me as to then. It just reminded me so much of all the people I see on the weekends, you know, the bunch ride warriors as we call them, who are just randomly riding all over the shop, everywhere around, around Australia and around the world outdoors. And now they're doing the same thing indoors.

And what's wrong with it?

And there's nothing wrong with that. A, it gets them out and it gets them starting to ride their bike. But as we've said many times, they will get to a certain level and they'll stay at that level. They won't improve, but they'll have fun getting to that level because they'll be riding with random bunches and people can do that two or three years at a time without wanting to get do any more. And they're just happy joining in in bunches. But, but the majority of people don't want that. They want more than getting to a level. They want to get in that bunch and instead of just hanging on in that bunch, they want to get nearer the front and actually do a turn maybe and then actually hurt someone in the bunch with some strong turns. And how much fun is that? So in order to do that you need to get out of that bunch and do some specific training to improve yourself, go back to the bunch and dish out some pain to the bunch. But that won't happen if you just ride bunches every day on Zwift. So it was no different to riding outdoors. The Zwift option was the same. And if you just kept riding outdoors like you do indoors, then you're going to be the same rider for as long as you want. You're going to be at one level.

So that's probably what you would have seen over this period is people would have either stuck to a structured program and used swift effectively for that regard, done it with purpose, Used it with volition compared to if you've just jumped on randomly and just done random sessions and gone with the flow and gotten competitive. It might have felt like you were getting a good sweat on Zwift, but you probably weren't getting the most out of your weeks, were you?

It's interesting because I've compared a lot of, even some of the Zwift races and I've compared that intensity factor to a specific session that we would load. So I let, I let our guys do once a week some unpredictable, intense riding against people who are going to put them to the sword or they can put others to the sword.

That's normally on a long bunch ride.

And that's normally in our bunch ride. So replicating that and seeing the intensity difference between that and the high intensity session that we give people, the intensity was nowhere near what we do in a training session. There were exceptions to that, depending on what bunch you ended up in or what race you selected. But when I've looked at what was available to them, what they selected, and it's okay to do that, but they just didn't get the same value as they would have had they done the training session. Interesting. Looking at the handicap races we did, the intensity factor was at the level substituted for our intensity session. It was right there. We had achieved the same outcome which was have a race at this intensity factor which was comparable to what our training session would have been. And that was it. We did that every Thursday, so. And plus we had the endurance ride on the, on the Saturday with intensity. And that was a choice to ride our training session or another bunch ride. So it was really interesting comparing the data and, and how you think that you've had a really hard session. But the intensity factor doesn't lie. It's looking basically at, you know, your wattage.

And you said at the start that the goal was to get through the period and build a big base, but also be able to enjoy yourselves and maintain main, maintain social connectedness so that, you know, it was going to be a period of isolation. We wanted to have an experience of feeling like we're riding in a bunch and talk to people on Zwift, that kind of thing, which is why the technology is so amazing. But like you're saying, if your goal is to improve not being structured and not having the sessions with the same goal, purpose or outcome that you would achieve in a structured training program, you're going to end up 10 to 12 weeks down the track further behind you are.

And at the end of the day you've got to make that decision, which way do you want to go?

So the same thing applies for the triathletes as well, because you don't have swift in terms of running or swimming. And most triathletes wouldn't have been able to swim pretty much at all unless they braved the ocean. But the same principle applies. You know, the base building is not sexy, but it's so necessary for this period.

And to be fair, we didn't have the opportunity to swim. So, you know, rather than get all down the dumps about not being able to swim, we substituted it with some more riding, some more running. So they were getting a positive out of a negative, and they were improving their riding in their running and. And there were still people braving the ocean swims, which was fantastic. And that showed the motivation they had. So there was, you know, with every negative thing, there's always gonna be a positive. You just gotta find it and, you know, substitute that swim session for something else. Great for a recovery ride. Because the days where we swim, we don't wanna be pushing ourselves in the other two ride and run events, we wanna be just swimming. So we just wanna make sure that's a recovery day.

Definitely. And then some other positives that came out of it. Were people really actually getting their indoor setup correct?

Yeah. And don't underestimate the social side that we talked about, which is the second point. So we've gone from a situation where most people are doing their program and they might be just listening to music and following the data, but now they can actually join in with some people they've met in our handicap ride, in our trivalo group. I know people are texting each other in their handicap group saying, you know, this week we want to stay together and do some more turns and make sure you do a turn and, you know, some really, some good things that were happening, communication stuff between. And getting that socialization that they were missing from the Saturday bunch ride. Wherever they were around the country, they were getting that in this group and, you know, texting backwards and forwards and, you know, jovial, hanging shit on people and. And making sure that, you know, people were getting to know new, new members of the group, which I. I think people were looking forward to the Thursday night races and seeing what handicap they were given and whether the handicap had been fair to them or it brought them in. And people were experiencing wins and getting on the podium and being in the winning bunch and catching other bunches. They were really experiencing lots of positive Things in the race situation. So using Zwift to our advantage is what we did. We just didn't throw people onto Zwift and go randomly riding. We used our training program, which you can load onto Zwift. So understanding how to use the technology was really important. And let's face it, I had no idea how to do it, so I had to learn myself. There was no one to help me. So I Googled as many YouTube videos as I could as quickly as I could, understood how I could load. The training peaks program was already on Zwift for me, using my head unit and Zwift together, so that I was using the power from my power meter on my head unit and the smart trainer power to Zwift and running them together and seeing if there was a difference between the Zwift power meter and my own bike power meter, all those important things. Because there were people who had differences of 10 to 20 watts between their smart trainer and their real power meter. And that means you're training to different numbers. So which number did you go off then? So those things needed to be identified. So, you know, for me, I've been riding the bike power meter for all those years. I don't want to jump to a new power meter. I'm using the Zwift for my resistance and to be able to get onto a screen and look, look at, look at a race. But I'm using my own power meter as my go to. So there are lots of things you had to learn to get up to speed.

That's probably one of your little pet peeves, isn't it, where if you need to learn these kind of things, you have to just take the time to do it right. A lot of people either just give up. They don't try it, they don't. They don't Google things. And you would say that you aren't technologically savvy. Yeah, but I've watched you just go and figure it out. Even though it was hard and even though it took some time, but then you know it all.

Yeah, the. The roadblocks are definitely there. There's no denying. Sounds like an easy thing to do. And once you understand how the technology works, and I'm no technician, as you know, if. If there's an easy way for me to do it, I'll get you or one of my other sons to work it out for me. But I'm willing to learn if it's going to be to my advantage. And that's the message I was trying to get across. To people. You need to understand how these things work so you can get the best outcome. If you don't, if you're not across it, it's like not knowing what your FTP is. That's, it's nearly as bad as that and not knowing what numbers to ride to. So if you don't know how to set these things up, find out, research it. It's really important that you understand how the Swift is, is operating and how your power meter and your head unit's operating so that you can differentiate between the numbers. So that does take some time. And things like what are you having on your head unit face so that you can look at data, you know, what do I have there? Cadence, heart rate, 3 second power, lap power, average power. They're key things that you need to be looking at. Because, because Swift doesn't give you lap power. Zwift gives you. You're too high, you're too low, and you don't really know what the number is. And that's why using your head unit as a backup is telling you my lap power. Say I'm trying to be riding at 200 watts. I could be riding 3 second power on Zwift 170, 190, 200, 205 every pedal revolution. Whereas if I'm looking at lap power, it's just sitting nicely at 200, even though every second pedal revolution it's jumping around. But those key things on your screen are going to enable you to do the session more effectively. If you understand all that and you've taken the time to work out how do I change my screen to set it up the way I want it, then you'll get a better outcome from the session. And the people who don't take the time to do that, they're the frustrating ones who really need to take ownership of their own destination almost. And that is something I really encourage people to do. And everybody's going to make mistakes early on, but once you've done it enough, it then becomes easy and it becomes straightforward. I just do this, this and this, and away I go.

I guess that's the difference between you being in control of your program and if you know the numbers you're trying to hit and you're looking at your bike computer on your bike, compared to letting Zwift dictate your session and getting on and joining a Zwift session and just doing what it says, you know, it's, it's not got your individualized program at heart, you know, it's just, it's just a random event. You're right.

And even some of the technical things, like you can, you can do the, you know, the Trivelo trainingpeaks program on Swift, but if you've clicked that Erg Mode button, then the session changes. The Smart trainer is controlling you because it sits you in the mid range of the range that we set for you, which is not what we want. We don't want riders sitting in the mid range of every single interval that we're giving them. We want them, if they're tired, to sit at the bottom of the range if you want them to, if they're fresh and ready to improve, because that's how we get progress. We want them at the top of the range. Having Erg Mode stops you from doing any of those choices. It sits you bang in the middle of that range. So there's a few things that people really have learned quickly and I've been onto them because you can see straight away who's on Erg Mode and who's not. And now no one rides Erg Mode and that's a taboo subject for us.

Yeah. So that's, I mean, the final big benefit to the base building period is now, if you've done it properly, you are in a very motivated position because you are confident in how you're performing right now. And you are also, like you say, ready for anything.

Yeah. And. And that's what we wanted to achieve in that first podcast when we predicted what was going to happen and we weren't thinking that it would be 12 weeks, but far out, it's actually been exactly that. And now people are talking, you know, NRL starting, AFL starting, netball starting. All the club local areas are now looking like they're allowed to start. You know, runners are now allowed to run in groups of 10 and 20 riders are allowed to. To do the same. Swimming pools are opening so slowly but surely, everything's opening up. It's like. It's like we've come out of a winter hibernation, except we've been training our butts off getting this big BASE ready, base fitness that we've got, that's got really good strength, really good intensity, really good fitness level. We're all ready. And if someone puts a race in front of us in four weeks time, we'll be at the forefront because we are so ready to race. And so it's such an exciting period now for the majority of the guys who've taken on board what we've planned for them and embraced it. And I'm really Proud of what they've done. Because now a race in September, October, November, you know, we can really plan our neck. We've done our base. We can go to the next build phase.

So I've got two questions off that, because we're not just filming this podcast to boast about how good the tribal hibernation period was.

It sounds like we're doing.

Yeah, yeah. But like you said, you're very proud of it for a reason, because you said, well, what's the goal here? What do we need to achieve and what do we need to focus on? And if people followed that, they would be feeling pretty good right now. But for anyone that didn't follow it or has gone, okay, well, I didn't. I underestimated how important a base period was. I underestimated, you know, how much I could. I could get out of this period. What should they do? Should they really go into a base building period now?

Yeah, it's never too late. And that's the key thing that, you know, we want to say to you. You are at a stage on the journey. And so the people who, you know, when we, when we came into that isolation period, people were at all sorts of levels. No one was at the same level when they came into that period. Some people at the top of their game, like we said, some people were struggling, some people were just marking time. So everybody came into that period. It was like we all started from zero, except people had different levels. But we've been able to establish a routine so that people didn't lose. The people who had great fitness didn't lose it. The people who had no fitness got it. And the people who are just mediocre, they've improved. So everybody from 12 weeks ago has gone from whatever level they were at, whether it's 5% fitness, 50% or 90%. The 90%, you know, the, the. The improvement is going to be minuscule compared to the person who's catching up big time. They might improve 50%. And so at the end of this period, we're not all at the same level still. The people at the top of the game are still at the top of their game if they continued the program. The people who've gained the most are the people who were really low. They're now, you know, on their way to the next level. So the people who've missed out altogether and who are, you know, feeling pretty bad listening to this now, it's just not too late for you. You can still start, you know, the races aren't going to be till the end of the year, possibly the important races, the national titles, if that's what you're aiming for. The big half Ironmans and Ironmans, they're still not going to be till, you know, September, October, November, December.

Yeah. And a lot of them are delayed, so they might be a bit further back.

Yep. So it could be next year. So. So there's still time. And. And if one thing that we've learned from this period is that it doesn't take long, 12 weeks seemed like a long time 12 weeks ago, but you look back, it's gone just like that. So, you know, we know that it works. We're excited because we know that it works and it's put people in such a better state of. Of mind and physicality and they're motivated now. And for the people who live in the southern states, it's still winter. So we now have an opportunity from what we've learned, to use Zwift properly through. Through winter and not just be a random bunch rider on Zwift, which is how I was worried it was going to end up. And now we're using Zwift for our races on a Saturday instead of. If it's pelting with rain and the Saturday bunch ride doesn't happen. Before, we just had to go through our own personal indoor replacement session. Now we can go and do a race as a bunch together because we've got that facility now.

Yeah. This all just reinforces what you really like to tell people. And when I asked you what do you want to talk about on the podcast this week? Because I always say, what are you. What is your biggest coaching tip at the moment? What are you trying to reinforce to people? And you said that you, you just want to reinforce how important the base building period is and how a lot of people don't get that, that is so, so vital to the start of the program. And you always start a program with that and you don't want to skip ahead at all until you've confidently built someone's base.

Shortcuts create problems in life, but it's massive for a runner if you try to run fast without having your body cope with the musculoskeletal pressure that running puts on it. If you cut that short, you are going to get injured and you're not going to be running. So, you know, bike riding, you don't get the same injury issues, but you can't still do the intensity that you need because you don't have that strength to back it up. So many Examples in the back of a time trial or the back of your 5k or 10k runs that you've been doing, the strength you've got from this 12 week period has enabled you to hold the pace that you want to. Whereas before you fall apart as you got tired in the race, that lack of strength has caused your pace to drop from 3:16 pace to 325 pace. And now, even though you're exhausted, you've got the strength to hold that 3:16 or 3:20 pace right to the end. And that difference is significant because of the base building you've been doing. And you wouldn't have had that had you not had this 12 week period. So with every negative, the COVID 19 virus is a big negative, but there's massive positives that we've come out of it with and we did predict that that would be the case before we did that first podcast. If you do X, Y and Z, you'll come out of it in this position. And the majority of our athletes have. And I'm really excited about that.

Yeah, I can attest to I'm happy to be the guinea pig for this kind of thing. When you end up feeling this strong and the strength can't be underestimated, just how good you feel in efforts because just doesn't feel like it's wearing you down, you know, you can really sustain them, which is such a good feeling, whether you're on the bike or running. I guess the second part of this was, you know, in terms of that next step, once you've built your base and you're happy with the strength you've got, what is that next step? What do you lead into when you've got. You're thinking about races in the future?

Yeah. Well, it's easy because if you can imagine a graph, you know, we've, we've got to ourselves this starting from low base probably, but some people are starting up there or we're trying to get to a point where we can build off. So it's like you're coming out of the ground of a foundation of a house and all of a sudden the slab's poured, everything's rock solid, then you can put the frame up. So we've established that base and now we can build. And that's the next phase, the build phase. We can build on our base by throwing in a race here and there. That is more important than the races we've been doing, which has been fun. And we can target specific races. And because our fitness level is where we want it. We can step up and really ramp up the intensity in the build phase if we wanted to, or we can just continue to steadily improve our frequency and duration of the training that we're doing. And the intensity can be ramped up more because we have got such a good background in for running. If we try to run fast in week four of a of a base building period and then try to run fast in week four of a build running period, the differences is going to be phenomenal because you're not going to have the soreness, you know, 14, 16 weeks down the track and you can run faster. You're going to be really struggling to run fast and pull up sore if you try to run fast in a base building period. So to answer the question, we have the opportunity now to have some more fun with our training because we can throw in the intensity at a higher level and not suffer the consequences if you weren't fit enough to handle it. And that's what the base has enabled us to do. It's enabled us to handle the next phase, which is the build phase with intensity.

It's exciting what could come next? Especially think about exactly what you said, what you can achieve in the last period and then if you stay consistent, where could you be in another 10 or 12 weeks?

And don't forget, we are continuing to build our fitness line. It doesn't plateau. It does plateau. If you ride zwift randomly each week and you ride in a bunch ride each week and I'm talking four or five sessions, it will get to a fitness point and plateau and then maybe drop. We're not doing that. So we are continuing to build our fitness line like that, even though we've done our base period and now we're into the build and as we get closer to our race ready fitness, then we just have all the pieces. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. We have all the pieces, almost all ready to complete the jigsaw puzzle. And how much fun is that when you've done all this preparation on the jigsaw puzzle and all of a sudden you're putting in the last pieces and they all fall into place really quickly. And that's what it feels like when you come to your race.

Perfect. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on on this topic?

No. Except that, you know, it's not over yet. So we could be in a situation where it could regress and I'm talking about the isolation, the spread of the virus could get worse again. So we could be Faced again with having to deal with another period of isolation. So we can't be counting our chickens. So we have to keep the focus on, yes, at the end of the year, we, like we said 12 weeks ago, we, we will be at the other end of it at some time, but we can't predict that. So we keep, we keep our focus going the way it is. So if it happens to be in another six weeks that, you know, we're still not really allowed to ride in our normal big bunches and we aren't at the moment really allowed to ride more than 10. So, you know, we've got to keep doing what we've been doing and not lose our focus on the end result. So that's the key thing I want to really talk about today was, you know, what did we try to achieve? In hindsight, we tried to achieve really good base with some fun. We did that. Now we're at the next step where we need to keep our focus on the big picture and do the things that are going to enable us to. The hard work's done. You know, that last 12 weeks was pretty solid training, but now it's time to sort of reap the benefits. It's like doing pre season training as a football club. And now game day starts. And our game day is the fun part where it's not necessarily, you know, the grand final is the big event for footballers and each week is the game day. And so we're at that phase now. We're going to have some fun with the fitness that we've gained in our preseason.

Perfect. That's an awesome way to finish. Thank you again for listening to this episode. If you want to download our Expert secrets cheat sheet, please go to getfastpodcast.com.com and download that there. Also, please go to your itunes and leave a five star review. If you are enjoying the episodes. It really helps other triathletes and cyclists like you find the podcast and enjoy it as well. Again, thank you very much for listening. See you next time.