How To Actually Improve In Triathlon

Today we're breaking down one of the most impressive turnarounds we've seen. Just over a year ago, Justin crashed in a triathlon. Since then, he's now riding nearly 40km an hour for 40k and finally running sub fours off the bike off that 40k. So we'll unpack exactly what changed his training habits, race strategies and the key decisions that are making the difference so you can steal the same playbook for your own training and racing. So this is the case study of Justin. He's a father in his late 30s and actually his son Jackson has started joining in some some of our Tribello training sessions, which is so great to see to start off with. I just want to mention that he's a really perfect example of a few key things that make a great athlete to coach. And it makes it our favorite trivalo athlete. And that doesn't mean that they're a good athlete because of their ability or whether they're winning podiums or not or how fast they can go. It's the way they go about training and the coach athlete process that makes a difference. And a complete beginner can be a great athlete if they do this again. We don't mean great athletes in performance. They can get the most out of themselves if they follow these processes. It's great teamwork between athlete and coach. There are some really key factors that made him a different athlete in just over a year, which will take you through what really made the difference. So, dad, one of the starting points I want to say is that what made him really good is his ability to always question and say, how are we going? Always reflecting, how are we going? What do we need to do next? What do we need need to focus on? And as a coach, he's asking, how do I improve? That's such a great question from the athlete, but it's also one that can kind of come from a mistake in place for an athlete. So when you hear this question, what comes to mind for you?

Yeah, the first thing that I always think about is how have you got the improvement? And don't forget that. What are the things you've been doing? And because they're so motivated and so excited about Far out, I'm really seeing some progress here. The next thing they want to do is how do I get this quicker? How do I get to my next point of reflection as a better athlete? And I have to keep reminding them, you know, you just do what got you to this point. So if you look back, concentrate on the things that got you here, don't try and reinvent the wheel, okay? I've got to this level now and I need to do something else to be better. That's not necessarily true. You can make some fine minute changes, and that's what we want to do. We want to actually assess how we're going and then make some adjustments. But you're not trying to rewrite the storybook. You're trying to continue the journey. And one of the hard parts for the motivated athlete is to understand that these things take time. And we don't have time in our life, we just want it now. That's actually the way we live. We want to see our results instantly. Unfortunately, as a runner, it takes longer than it does for a bike rider and for a swimmer, it's triple the time. So you've got these time metrics that frustrate athletes and so trust the process. Remember what got you here, and then give yourself appropriate time to keep improving. And they're the things that I think most athletes across the board should really be considering when they ask that question. What do I have to do to get better? You don't have to do much different than you're already doing.

So he joined us in April of 2024 as an Olympic distance athlete. So his goals were the world diathlon champs last year, which were in Australia at that Olympic distance, and then the Olympic distance world champs at the end of this year. But he had joined us after crashing in a race five days prior and he was a good athlete already. He's had a really great running ability. His PB for 5k before he came to us was 3:40 pace. So low 18 minutes for 5k. But yeah, as we mentioned, he had a big crash in a race before just starting. So we were kind of really starting from scratch. It took a little bit to build him back into training. We're starting from scratch with running, so we couldn't test him straight away. And. And it really took a full year of training to get his running back to where he was pre crash. So. So that was. That's been quite a journey so far. But he's now there and past it, which is super exciting for himself. But we want to go through each discipline and what's made the difference. And I want to start with the swim because this is something that every age grouper needs to hear. If they just think, why am I the same swimmer? Should I focus on? There's two key questions here. Should I do more swimming or why am I the same swimmer? And here's a great example of even though we've still been doing our normal two swims per week, there's some athletes that we definitely do three swims per week for different reasons. Maybe they're an aqua black athlete or they really do need that practice because they're coming from so far back. But, but for many reasons, including the swim is the, is the least amount of reward for time that you're going to get compared to bike and runs. You might as well train the bike and run more to get more time gains in your actual race, but that doesn't mean you can't improve. And we, we say that a lot. And I want to commend him on his swim because he actually just did a, a PB1K swim inside of his endurance session this morning. So not even a time trial, but he started the endurance session with a K swim and then there's a bunch of two hundreds, hundreds or fifties afterwards. And he just ran 136 pace for a K. And his first test with us was 146. So really big improvement per 110 seconds off per 100. And again, we've only been doing two swings per week. But I want to commend him because he's a great example of what you said last week on the podcast that practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. And he is someone that's really focused on getting the most out of himself for every single session. And he's really focusing his sessions on what drills he's doing, improving his form, improving his technique, really paying attention to his times. How did that hundred feel? You know, how did the hundreds feel today? How do the 50s feel today? What pace am I doing? And I think that has allowed him for just his two swims per week to bring that time down, which is so commendable, I think.

Jordan, not just talking about swimming, but the more time you invest in your performance in training preparation, planning, execution of your training sessions, the amount of time you look at your data, the more time you invest, the rewards are tenfold. And the correlation I see with people who are just going through the motions and they may not be concentrating for two or three weeks, their performances are a reflection of their concentration levels in what they're doing. The people who are motivated and are seeing some improvements and they're loving that and they're the ones who are really concentrating on getting the information that they want to know about what should I be doing on Tuesday? What did I do last Tuesday? All those intimate details about what you've been doing. Where am I currently at in my form and my performance level? They're the athletes who get the high correlation with improvement. The athletes who are just opening the session up and then having a look at it 10 seconds before they start the training session to see what they're doing. That's the example of not being planned and prepared for what you're about to do. There's nothing wrong with doing that, except you're not really informed enough about, okay, have I thought about what I did last week on this particular session? Or is it a new session and a new block? What's my expectations? Have my numbers changed? The person who's across all that information, that's the example we're talking about with the swim rather than the drills are in the swimming sessions we give our athletes. But are you doing them? And the next step is, are you doing them properly? Because you can practice the drills incorrectly and not get any improvement in your stroke technique. And I was actually just talking to my younger brother Stephen, and he's just a swimmer and he's just doing four sessions of swimming each week. And he said to me, it was interesting when we were going for a bit of a walk together, he said, I had to go back to the drills you sent me from Brenton Ford effortless swimming. The drills that he set up. I actually had to go back and look at them. They only go for 15 or 20 seconds and I was doing them wrong. I had forgotten exactly what the drills were supposed to be doing. So what a. And he said within three swims, I started swimming faster again because I was doing the drills properly. And that's what you're talking about. That's what perfect practice is, being informed.

Yeah. And it might not be perfect practice, but it's focused and it's better than just going through the motions, which is the absolute key here, onto the bike. So he came to us Approximately about a 240,250ish kind of watt rider for 20 minutes. We'll start with a 20 minute FTP, but it's probably the least, least appropriate here when we just talk about actual race execution and race speed and your ability to run off the bike, which is really, really important. I say ish because because of his crash, we couldn't actually test him straight away. So he ended up doing a block of training with us and then we tested him, which kind of skews the data a little bit. Anyway, his first test was 250 watts for 20 minutes. But we always say, well, You've had a really good block of training here post crash, so you're probably fairly lower before that. But regardless, his 20 minute number is now 273 watts. So 23ish watt improvement, nearly 10% of your total FTP, which is really good. But I want to focus on where he was lacking with the bike. And I'd say out of the three disciplines the bike is the one where he had the most room to improve and still has the most room to improve, which is really great. But he's a good rider and he could already ride mid to high 30 km per hour depending on the distance. But there was a lot of problems with his execution. He was kind of a messy rider with his power. And we had a great chat a couple of weeks ago comparing his first couple of races with us, the power graphs and just how all over the shop it was, it was riding 300 watts, 200 watts, 280 watts, 180 watts, and his recent races where he was just really holding a narrow range of, of 260 to 270 and just sustaining that, that pressure on the pedals and not riding up and down, which is just exactly what we want. And because of the way he was riding, he wasn't able to run well off the bike. He was a, he can run 3:40 pace fresh, but he couldn't get under 4 minute k pace off the bike, whereas an athlete of that running ability should be able to. But the way he was riding wasn't allowing him to run off the bike properly. And so he's really just drilled this over and over in practice and, and again, something that he's done really well is turned up over and over again to practice time trials, FTP tests, practice races, and he'll do the race and then we'll look at the power. How'd you go this time? And slowly over this journey, the power profile and the power zones have gotten better and better. And it's subtle, but that makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it?

Yeah, it's undeniable. The relationship between how much you're willing to see where you are and then do the work and then keep finding out again two or three weeks later, how have I gone in that, in that block? And for those who shy away from that, you know, I understand there's anxiety around that, you know, trying to measure yourself. You know, you've, you know yourself, Joel, when you, when you see that the program's got a 5k or a 10k or a half marathon or a 60 minute FTP or a 20 minute FTP. All of a sudden the heart rate skips a little bit. You know, you think, oh, far out. I'm going to put myself on the line here. But you shouldn't be thinking of it like that. You should be thinking of it in fact, the complete reverse way. You should be wanting to know whether the training you've been doing is working. That's the first thing I'm after. I can't wait to test, to see. I'm really happy with what I've just done in the last three weeks. That's an example. In my mind, I have trained the house down and all the data says that I'm riding and running and swimming so much better. I can't wait to see the next new level so that I can not waste time training at the previous numbers. I want to train at the new numbers because that's how I'm going to get better. And if you start thinking like that, you'll embrace, you'll embrace the testing. And obviously we're really pushing the execution part. And when you look at Justin's profiles from his previous races, he was like, he had his finger in five zones. He had his finger in recovery, he had it in zone two, zone three, zone four, zone five. He had a little bit of power and all of them. And we know that that's the slowest way to ride. That's what execution is, not having your finger in five zones. You want to have your finger in, you know, the one zone that's, that's going to give you the fastest speed. So nothing in zone one and two, nothing in zone five and six or four and five. Everything is a half ironman in zone three. And if you're an Olympic distance, most of it in zone three and four with a crossover, an ironman, most of it in zone two. So the specific events you do, you don't want to have a little bit of power in every zone. And we know that all the data we've done over the many years we've been measuring this, that is the fastest way to ride.

Yeah. And I want to give a little bit of a specific story because the a race for last year was the Townsville World Duathlon Champs. That was his, a goal race. And he had a bit of a wake up call, which sounds a bit harsh, but I want to talk through the process because it's exactly what you're talking about here. And in that race, in his race, we actually had our own athlete, Steve McMillan, win the whole race world duathlon champion for his age group, which was a phenomenal result. And we did a case study episode on this with Stevie Mac. So you can go back and find that episode, Steve McMillan, which we broke down his training and how he, he became world age group champion, which is just such a fantastic achievement and title. And he was absolutely chuffed with that. But Justin was walked away from that race bitterly disappointed. And last week you spoke about on the podcast not measuring your race success on any results or positions or placing, but on your performance execution. And for Justin, that was what kept him up at night a little bit after was I think he raced really well. And he had a really respectful time and commendable time and he raced his guts out for his ability. His time was really, really good. But when we dipped into the data together, we both knew that he left a lot of time on the table because of his execution. And that was a mistake that he said, I'm never making that again. And he committed in training from that point onwards to fix. And what we were able to do was look at his power and run data compared to Stevie Mac's as an example. And we're not comparing athletes to say, you need to be more like this person because they won. But you say if you want to improve, here's how the winner performed, here's how the winner, Stevie Mac, executed to get the most out of his ability to, here's the way he rode. And you talk about that time percentage in zones. Stevie Mack had 77% or something like that. We had the exact data we could look at of his time in the exact range that he wanted for that bike leg. It's hard to get a hundred percent because turnarounds, u turns, slowing down with traffic, taking drinks, et cetera. But we found that he was at 70%, 77%. And I think Justin was a fair bit lower. A fair, fair bit lower. And we often see athletes, you know, anywhere from 40 to 50% compared to that 77%. So only spending 40 to 50% time in the required range means you're spending 50 to 60% of the time outside that range in the wrong zones, riding too hard or too easy. And that's a slower rate to ride. And that was a wake up call. And then from then every single session, Justin would say to me, Bang, got 57% today. Bang got 63% today. And he was measuring that gold standard number and saying, how do I get closer to that number? And since then, he's been riding better and better and holding A higher average speed in the race, which is the whole entire goal of why we at this data.

Yeah, there's no doubt. And you know, if you're now understanding what to concentrate on, that's the next step. If you actually don't know how to improve yourself, you know, I want to ride faster. Yeah, that's a great goal. But the question is how, how am I going to do that? And of course, you know, if, you know that if you soft pedal a little bit because you've ridden too hard on a particular stretch of road that might have been into a headwind or a hill, if it forces you to soft pedal, you know that you've ridden too hard in that section. So they're the things, they're the actual details, that attention to detail. People saying, I want to ride faster. I'm just saying to them, have you thought about how you're going to do that? Tell me, how are you going to ride faster? And if they can't actually answer that question, they haven't been thinking about it well enough or listening to this podcast because we say it almost every week for the same fitness level. So if we took Justin back to that race and he was at that level of fitness, his form was right there and we said to him, ride like this, he possibly would have been four or five minutes quicker. And people just go, that's just rubbish. That is not possible. Same fitness. Justin A versus Justin B. Ride this way, compared to that way, you end up with a faster time. And that's when it hits home to me. Without doing anything different, but just concentrating on where I'm putting the power down and where I'm not is going to give me a better result. I'll take that every day.

We just had the most brilliant example of this. An athlete of ours did a 40 kilometer time trial and she had done this months prior and then did it again. And average the exact same watts, same course, very similar conditions. One had one day had more wind than the other, but this actually helps in our favor. The day that had more wind, she rode two minutes faster than the previous time for the exact same wattage. And we would dig into the power and time spent in zones because you could average the same watts, but how you get them is different. You can, we talk about this all the time. You can average 200 watts and if you rode the whole thing between 190 and 210, you'd average 200. But you could also write the whole thing between half at 150 and half at 250 and also add to average 200. And that's exactly what she did. She changed the way she rode and put down the power at the right time and ended up with a faster result for the same power, which a 2 minute faster result of a 40k for the same power, which is fantastic. And so we move forward and earlier this year, after many would say frustrating races where he just wasn't getting the result he wanted in terms of power and speed and time, he finally had a day where it all came together. And he rode 39.8km per hour in an Olympic distance triathlon for 40k. But then more importantly, the frustrating part was not riding to his ability, but then unable to run off the bike to the pace we know he can run. And so he just couldn't get, he couldn't get a race where he was running 10k off the bike under 4 minutes. For various reasons. There was days where the weather was shocking, things didn't go to plan, et cetera, et cetera, but couldn't. We knew that every single race we're going into, he should be able to average 350 to 355, but it hadn't happened in a race yet. And we just kept saying, this is your ability. We know you can do it. You will get there. Just keep trusting the process. And then bang. This day he wrote 39.8 ks per hour for the bike and then came off and ran 355 pace for 10k off the bike, which is just when that all comes together like that, you go, yes, this is finally working. Now we keep going.

And also, George, it gives the athlete confidence of what we've been saying. I've been beating my head against the wall for a lot of triathlons for a lot of years. I know I'm a good runner, but I have never done it in a triathlon. And all of a sudden, the one thing that we changed, apart from every other change that we made, the one thing we changed that created the sub 4 minute k pace was the way he executed the bike. His running form was no different all those previous races, it was just that he was so exhausted from riding that erratic way. And all of a sudden when you ride in the ranges, you can run closer to your potential.

Yes, exactly. And so that takes us to the run and we'll go through some key training changes in a second about what we actually focus on to help this process. But as we said, when he did start testing with a scan, he was at 351 pace for 5k, it's taken this long. And he recently, over the last couple of months did a 5k at 3.37pace. So he's fastest ever. I think his PB before joining Tribalo was 3,39. And in training, this has been a great process. And over the last 12 to 16 months he's constantly asked, what do we need to do with the running? How do we get the running back to my old form, how do we get there? And the answer was, you're actually on track. You keep just wiping off 1 to 2 seconds, 2 to 3 seconds here or there per kilometer that we don't need to change much. We're on track, we're doing the right things, we're doing the right running sessions, we're doing the right volume, we're doing the right runs of the bike. Just keep trusting that process. And next thing you know, it's, it's 16 months later and he suddenly wiped off 14 seconds per kilometer for 5K. And just recently at a duathlon, which was 5, 16, 5 or 5.18.5, he ran his second leg. So the second 5K at 3.41pace at the end of a 5K run beforehand and a 18 kilometer max bike ride and then off the bike, he's around 3.41pace. That's the type of athlete we're saying, you know, just off. He's not, he's only fractionally off his, his fresh pace now, which if we tested again very soon, I'm sure he would be quicker. But what we're saying previously was, you know, not being able to run under 4 minute pace, that gap, you know, 20 seconds gap was too big. So you want to close that. That's the goal of an athlete.

Yeah. And look, remember when you're in a duathlon, you've already run 5k and you've ridden pretty much, you know, 35, 40 minutes and then to go and run 3, 40 pace for the second 5k, he was nowhere near that. He was literally running 405s at the second half of a 10k in an Olympic distance. So it's literally running 20 seconds per kilometers faster in races now. And regardless of where he finishes in the race, the joy that you get from improving your pace, and that's what we're talking about before, if you get on the podium, it's a, it's a bonus, absolute bonus. It's fantastic. But it's actually not what you, you know, majority of our athletes out there aren't going to win. There's only One winner every time there's a race. So out of the 350 that are in your age group, there's only one of those 350 is going to win. So everybody else really needs to strive on, can I get better than I was last race? And this is the thing that he's so excited about is I'm actually running the way I want to. And look, the podium's not that far away from me. It's, you know, instead of being 100 meters down the road, it's now five or six metres. And that's exciting.

So one of the things he does really well is he's constantly reviewing his own work. And I love that you said this again last week on this episode. We did last week where it was Jarrod shared 40 years, four decades worth of triathlon lessons. And one of them was constantly review where you're at. Be really attentive to your own details and numbers so you know what's working and not working. You spoke about how you wrote down all your training and you would do a race and if it went well, you'd go, okay, what training block did I just do? So I know to do more of that, or if it didn't go well, what training did I just do? Maybe what was I missing? Or why did the race go wrong? And Justin's really, really good at this. And after that joathlon race, he's saying, what's helping me ride and run so well right now? And he wrote down a list of 10 things what he thinks is helping. And we spoke about strength in there and some, some hill, repeat kind of running strength, getting the volume right with running just being consistent, et cetera. But one thing I said to him that he missed in that, in that bullet point list was make no mistake, the way you're riding and running now is down to your execution. You're riding better because of your execution. Sure, your power's up a little bit and your execution on the bike is allowing you to run faster off the bike. You couldn't run fast before because you weren't executing properly on the bike. And that is a really, really key factor.

Yeah. And look, don't forget, a lot of athletes just think it's just about doing key sessions. It's about doing 100 key sessions, not just a few here and there, staying consistent throughout that period. And we talk about fitness in the bank. We've said that sentence so many times. So as a 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 7 year, 15 year athlete, the difference between a 2 year athlete or even a 6 month athlete is vast. The difference between a 2 year athlete and a 10 year athlete is enormous. It's like worlds apart. What do I mean by that? I mean you've been training, you've got this fitness aerobic capacity that your body's used to. Your legs are used to the load from running and the intensity on the bike and the swim stroke. You have been doing it for a while and if you've been doing the right program year two and three, all of a sudden you don't do anything different and you just take another leap. And this is going to be so important for Justin and athletes like him who are getting towards their second and third year in this program. And you know, we don't say this very often, but very few of our athletes get injured from running and so they remain consistent and consistency is the king to allowing you to build that fitness that we're talking about. You know, you may have been doing six months with a great running, but you had three months off. And then you do this, you get to a point, then you have a breakdown and then you go back four steps, then you get back to that point and that's another 16 weeks gone. So these are the key things that I think he's really done well. And what are the secrets about? We do have athletes get injured, but we are really very conservative in our running approach so that we're trying to minimalise that. We can't say we have 100% success, but we are certainly striving for that. And one of the reasons is that we're really trying to get the athlete to understand that the training load from running takes years to get your body to adapt to. And if you just skip that and just try to run fast all the time, you're just going to break down and you're going to lose the consistency which is going to frustrate the hell out of you.

I'm really glad you made those points because that's how we want to finish. We really want to talk about some of the key secrets that have made it the biggest difference for him and turned him into a better athlete. And what are the keys that actually make a difference in your training? And you spoke about two there. Consistency. Consistency means the training can be a little bit boring, a little bit monotonous. But we spoke about this as a coaching group recently where if it's feeling monotonous, it's feeling a bit repetitive. Well done. You're in a great position of training. It means you're stacking together a lot of consistent weeks in a row and you're in the golden period. And a lot of those athletes that are having consistent interruptions, sickness, injury, illness, family events, travel, something coming up would kill to be in your position where they're a little bit bored because they've been able to do 12 or 16 weeks in a row. A very similar structure. Of course, we like to change things around a little bit for some variation and we like to have our different focuses all the time. But if you're getting a little bit bored from consistency, you need to relish that period you're in right now because once it's taken away from you, you'll be wishing you're back here and wishing training was a little bit boring.

One of the podcasts we had one of Australia's most famous athletes and you know world renowned marathon runner Steve Montaguetti, and he's done a Fartlek session for probably three decades. The same session every Tuesday or every Thursday whenever he does it. And you know, when he goes to these world titles and Olympic Games marathon and he gets on the podium at a world championships, he wants to do more fartlek because he knows what it's working. It's made me a really good athlete. So I don't want to change my program, I want to stick with and I'll just adjust it a little bit. But I'm doing monafartlek. What's called Monafartlk here in Australia. It is called Fartlek worldwide, but he's got his own version of monafartlek in Australia. And it always makes me laugh when people say bit bored with these sessions. And I'm going, oh my goodness. Are you going well at the moment? Yeah, yeah, I'm really loving it. I'm really improving. Well, these are the sessions that are making you improve. So why wouldn't you have a different mindset around? I want to do more of that because that's actually how I've got to this point where I'm now a better athlete than I was.

You spoke about trusting the process of building time and time. And what's really impressive about Justin and his mindset is his ability to hold both short and long term goals in mind. And of course in the short term we want to see improvements, we want to see short term, little ticks along the way, little 5K PVS, little 20 minute FTP test improvements. But a lot of our athletes want all the results in the first six months or all the results in the first 12 months and the Magic happens. You just can't get those drastic changes in that first six months unless you're starting as an absolute beginner because you've got heaps to go. But the magic really does happen when you're doing these same sessions off a much bigger base. You know, doing 5 by 5 VO2 intervals in week 6 or 12 by 18 of the program will definitely improve you. But when you have a killer base underneath you and you can do them even better in year two or three, you're getting so much reward out of that, which is, yeah, he was really, he's really focused on the short term. What am I doing to improve right now. But he's always saying, hey, here's where I want to be this time next year. Hey, here's my goal in 18 months. So he's an Olympic distance athlete now. He's already got his 70.3 goals for next year. And he, and he loves to mention our boys Tom and Roland. And he's always saying, I can see them in year three, four now and I can't wait to be there in two years. He's really saying those sentences, I can't wait to be patient. And I'm flying now. But where do you think I could be in two years? I'm a 337runner now. Maybe I could be 327 or 323. Keep going like that. If you stick to the process.

Yeah, that's the exciting part. When someone's really on board and trusting the process and yeah, unfortunately he has to wait for the time period. But that, that builds resilience as well. And you have to have a really strong mindset to just know that what I'm doing This week, in 12 weeks time, I'll be three times better than I was this week as compared to where I'm going to be in 12 weeks time. That's the way I keep looking at it. And when you do look at your data a lot, you should reflect backwards. Far out. I was doing those 5 by 5 minute efforts at 245 watts. Now a year and a half later, I can't wait to do these five by five again. And now I'm doing them at 3:05. You know, that is game changing information for you. That's so motivating to remind you that I just have to do the simple things and trust the process and stay with the program. And because there's nothing creative that you have to do differently except do the time and the improvement will come. And that just doesn't mean monotonously going in there, not actually understanding where you are on a given day. That detail is the key. So I'm excited. His attitude is what I'm excited about, and that's why he's getting this improvement.

This next point is one of the best things you can do as an athlete and the best habits you can get into. And it's be so involved in your own improvement. And we've spoken about this before, but he's constantly messaging me reviews of the last training block, what he thinks is working, what he's enjoying. He's asking me, what do you think? What do we need to improve, what feels good, what's not. And he knows his own numbers so well. So he sends me all that stuff and I can say, great, this is great thinking. Here's what I think you're missing, here's what I think we can add to it. And it's just such great conversation because it's both of us working on the problem and the example I'll use today. And he's one kpb. There's not many athletes that know their data better than we do. You know, we, we are data nerds, so we can go into every athlete's data and we know exactly what to look for, things to point out that the athletes won't see. But today he did his 1k swim. I wouldn't have seen this PB because the Garmin didn't lap it as a full kilometer, it lapped it as 990 meters. And so when I was looking through the swim, it didn't come up as a 1k PB. And so training has this great function where if it's an official time, a 1k or a 5k run and it's a top three performance, it'll tell you there, say, hey, it'll give you a notification. This is a top three performance. You can click into it and see all the other performances. But because it didn't register as a 1km effort, the Garmin must have gone just short or something. You didn't see that that was that pace. But because he knows his own data, he was able to say, hey, actually, even though this wasn't a time trial, I've actually just clocked my fastest time across this one K. So that was really, really impressive. And that's him knowing his numbers really well.

Yeah. And there's a certain madness in being invested, and I just think that's a key to anybody's improvement. How invested are you in your improvement and their examples? You've got to give examples of what it means to be invested. And I think that is the biggest differentiation between someone who's going through the motions and someone who's really invested in everyday living with work, with your family. If you invest time in, in your family, it's amazing how it's a great experience with the family. If you invest time in the job you're doing instead of saying, I hate my job and you don't even want to go there. The experience is completely different when, when you've got that mindset. But when you are invested in, you know, getting the best out of yourself, whether it's at work or at home or your own personal performances, it is the correlation again is high with the people who are invested in their own improvement.

So for him, it's great improvement so far. He just keeps slowly ticking up and up and up and just keeps slowly increasing that. If he continues on this trend, we can't wait to see where he is in two, three, four years. And it's an exciting journey so far. And as he keeps going, I'm sure we'll keep updating you because it's been great progress so far. So big commitments to him on the way he goes about it. And we hope this episode has helped you figure out what improvements you can make in your own training, what you could focus on and what you could do a little bit differently to get, get more out of yourself. If you want to get the same type of coaching, the same level of coaching that Justin has and get this improvement, you can go to trivelocoaching.com and apply for coaching there. We coach athletes from all around the world. No time zone is an issue because all the training is online and all the coaching is delivered online. We have international coaches to suit different time zones and we guarantee your improvement. If you don't improve in the first block of training with us, then we'll give you your money back. That's how confident we are. We can help you get an improvement straight away. So go to tribalocoaching.com and apply to get coached. There's thanks as always for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.