How To Do BASE Training Properly (Triathlon + Cycling Offseason)

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo 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. One of the biggest mistakes we see in athletes is that they are rushing to get ready for a race and they are doing it without an optimal level of base fitness. Majority of athletes that come to us are very fit. They're much fitter than the average person. But being fit and decently trained doesn't necessarily mean you have a good base, especially not in our experience. In our experience, most athletes have a much lower base than what is necessary. So how do you base train properly and set up the rest of your season for the most success? If you do this right, you will have the best season of your life. So welcome back to another episode, dad. First, let's start with our normal segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jord. This is exactly one year on from my operation, May 2023. Some people might think that's gone by very quickly. I beg to differ. It's been a long journey. I am grateful for the expertise of my surgeon, Mr. Ian Wang, and his amazing skills in allowing me to have basically no more back pain since that operation. And it's an unbelievable feeling each day where I just actually don't think about my back hurting anymore. It's been something that's just a continuously painful experience day in, day out for almost, I don't know, last 20 years. It's just been a part of my everyday existence. And to have a period now where I don't even think about it, is really a great load off my mind. And even getting on the bike now, halfway through a ride, I was saying the other day I was just enjoying the ride. And by this stage in the two and a half hour hills ride, about two hours in, I would start to feel my back really hurt again. And I actually thought about it on the ride on the weekend how I don't feel any pain in my back and what a joy it is to just ride and enjoy the riding. So, yeah, my gratitude is thank you so much to Mr. Ian Wang and I know he listens to our podcast and I know he's aiming for the upcoming marathon. So yeah, yeah, my gratitudes to him.

Great one. My attitude is also something to do with this week, but it was to do with the fact that on this weekend it was Mother's Day and so I'm going to Take the opportunity to be grateful for mum. I think it doesn't. It shouldn't take a specific holiday of the year for us to be grateful for our mothers. But I do think that is a nice celebration. And I was walking around the city on Sunday and could see a lot of people out with their mum, celebrating, spending the day with their mum. And I really think that's great. And while there's a lot of people that might not be able to celebrate that day and it might not be a day of celebration, for various reasons, that does actually make me more grateful that we can celebrate that. That I can celebrate that. So that's my gratitude. Before we get to the topic, anything caught your attention around the world at the moment in terms of any sport?

Yeah, there's lots going on, isn't there? And the one thing that I'm always a fan of is the Giro. It's the second biggest race in the world. And some people, the Italians will argue it's the best race in the world, but certainly this year it's a. You know, the Giro always has a different type of racing. It's. It's really attacking. They have shorter stages, and it's really a great spectacle. Normally this year, the competition is really lopsided, and everybody realizes that the four or five best riders in the world, four of them have been injured. And that's not the fault of Taday Pogajar. That's just the way it is, and that's the way the world operates. Everybody can't be at their best every week or every month or every year. And so in this particular year, he's seemingly a standout level to everybody else. And no matter how hard everybody else tries, they're just really spectating. And if he decides to attack, he can, and he, and he does win. And he's already won three stages in week one. And, you know, he could have as many more stages as he wants to, really. And I think I was saying to you off air that if there's other competitors who are at his level, he can't afford to do a lot of the things he's doing. But at the moment, there's no one really going to challenge the consequences of his. Of his actions, which is, you know, attacking at will. And it's great to watch. It's. It's fantastic. You know, if he wants to attack the race, he can. And, and, you know, he can still fight the next day and the next day and the next day. And. And that's kind of what happened early on. The Tour. Last year at the Tour de France, he was riding with that freedom to attack and it was great entertainment and made people watch the sport. And that's, that's part of it too, isn't it? But Vinegard was just biding his time and, and pounced when, when the Pog was getting tired and, and ended up beating him in the Tour. And people say, well, he was injured and yes, he was, but he also lost the Tour the previous year the same way, and he's riding the same way this year in the Tour of Italy. But he doesn't have the competition that's going to challenge him. And that's my opinion. And I think Alan Piper would be almost aghast if he saw some of the tactics that he was doing in week one, where he's really risking a lot and it can come undone. We've seen Roglic a few years ago, seemingly unbeatable after two and a half weeks and then crack with two or three stages to go and end up losing the Tour. And so this is something that's caught my attention and I don't want to, to wish ill will on him. And I really love watching him. He's a, he's a, it reminds me of Sagan. I used to love watching Sagan. He was a breath of fresh air for cycling because of the way he rides and, and you know, you just got to be careful though that, you know, you still got to exercise caution and, and that's the way we coach, I suppose. So we want people to execute to the best of their abilities and not just throw everything out the window and, you know, and respond without tactics. But yeah, that's just, that's the way I see it. And hopefully it doesn't backfire on him and that he gets to, to win the Tour and the Giro and then go on and win the Tour would be a fantastic double.

Yeah, I mean, people are already asking him and he's already said himself that he's, he has got the Tour de France back in the back of his mind and he, and he wants to conserve energy and conserve his lead, which is just an outrageous statement, you know, to be that far ahead in the Giro, to think, say you're thinking about the Tour de France, you know, it's just insane that he's, he's that good that he could quite comfortably win both. But the Duro is, as you said, renowned for being just an insanely tough race. And it's renowned for having huge blow ups and, and massively wild, wild shifts In GC and year after year, we've seen in the last week just huge changes where there are some relentless stages in there where a rider just can't hack it. And Garrett Thomas got asked and said, are you, are you fighting for second already? After the fourth or fifth stage, he said, what do you do when Pocket Charles was so good? And he said, look, I don't wish bad luck on anyone. I don't wish for today to get knocked out of the race for any bad luck. But it's a big major stage race. Absolutely anything can happen. We keep that in the back of our mind. He can have an off day, everyone can have an off day. And in the Giro, you can have a really off day. And so, well, it seems unlikely. We've always just got to remember that. So, yeah, super interesting on the major stages. Note, the Vueltre Femme was on at the same time last week and that was super exciting to watch. Jimmy bouldering absolutely dominated as usual on the hills, but there was one stage that absolutely stood out to me and it's going to be part of today's topic, and I think it was stage five, where American Kirsten Faulkner won with one of the coolest attacks we've seen, I reckon, in a while. And what was so cool about it, and what stood out was that she attacked on the climb with 6 or 7k to go. Really launched a good attack. Some key riders behind really pushed to bring her back. The gap was 7 seconds, 6 seconds, 5 seconds. It literally got back to 6 meters or 7 meters at the top of the climb. And she just did the best thing in cycling, which you absolutely love and you'd be super proud of, is that she just did what all cyclists need to do a lot better, and that's just kept the pressure on the pedals over the crest of the climb, they. They got within 6 meters of her or whatever and they just back off slightly because you get to the crest, she just kept the pressure on the pedals. She stayed six or seven meters over the crest and then as it started to descend, she still had the pressure on the pedals. Then it suddenly went back to 10 meters and then 15 meters and then 20 meters. And then suddenly on the descent, her gap was out to 50 or 100 meters again. And she was absolutely ruined at the top of that climb. But by the time they descended into town, she had a 22nd gap again and then she won the stage. And that was absolutely brilliant. And gosh, you talk about this a lot, but, you know, that section over the top is the most important part where you can gain time on your competitors. And that's what she, she did. And if you can translate to triathlons, you know, if you go too hard on the climb, then you don't crest it properly, you don't keep pressure on the pedals over the next one or two K, you can lose 50 to 100 meters, to 200 meters, to 20 seconds on yourself. If you had a virtual self riding next to you, like the American custom Faulkner, if you had that person next to you virtually keeping the pressure on the pedals, you'd see how much further ahead they get of you. So I just thought that was a great, great lesson in real life application.

It's also demoralizing for the opposition. And they got so close with all the effort they were making to get back to her wheel and they think that they'd done it, but they actually hadn't done it. And that's another lesson as well, is, you know, just don't get to 5 meters. You've got to actually make that, that gap close down. And, and what she did was, you know, she made them pay for that. And, and you know, that's the thing about training this way is if you, if you do that, and we see that a lot in bunches in, in groups that we have ridden with all over the world. I've been in bunches where people are absolutely hammering me on some of the hills and I'm really struggling to keep up at the start of the hill and then halfway up the hill, the pressure is getting less and less and by the time we get to the top, you know, I've actually recovered because they've slowed down and, and then I ride away because they're soft pedaling by the time I get to the top and, and then freewheeling on the other side and, and that's kind of a part of the topic we're going to talk about today is, you know, not giving yourself recovery, endurance, riding endurance training. Base training is about building your endurance where you're not giving yourself recovery all the time. And really want to dig deep into that today.

Yeah, we're going to get into that topic in a second. But let's start off a bit broadly with the topic and understanding how to do base training properly. And there's a few key parts we want to talk about. The first is the notion of what off season is and, and what the base training purpose and objective is. And more specifically, most people see off season as a chance to take a break and we want to start by discussing the concept of taking a break, because on one hand, you do want to make sure you schedule in some physical and mental breaks throughout the year because you're most likely lead to burnout if you don't do that. But there are some huge, huge caveats to that, and we want to go through them now to make sure you don't make a mistake and you understand the goal and objective of what a break is and how you should do it without losing fitness, to make sure you're not going backwards. So you've actually changed your attitude on this over the years. You used to be very relaxed, I would say, about people taking a break and people having some time off. And I think your advice many years ago would have been, sure, take as much time off as you want, keep some training up, and come back to some structure when you're ready. I think now, with a lot of experience and a lot of athletes coming through the program. Yeah. Explain your slight change in attitude and mindset around this.

Let me make it clear that I want people to not try to train 52 weeks of the year. We just don't want that with the same intent. There's got to be variation, just like there's got to be variation in your training. There's got to be some days where you're riding or running for recovery. There's days where you've got to be riding with intensity. There's days where you want to be riding with endurance. The same with your structure of your year. You just can't go at the same intensity for the whole 52 weeks. You have to have periods of build preparation, racing period, recovery period, and then, you know, resuming your endurance base phase. And, you know, for those in the Northern Hemisphere, this is completely the wrong time of the year to be thinking about this year, right in the middle of your summer or starting to be at the start of your summer, sorry. And your season is about to begin and you should have done all these things in the last three months. But for the Southern hemisphere, this is where we're heading into now for those who don't live in the northern parts of Australia, where it's pretty much summer all year round. So we're really trying to make sure that you do take the breaks when they're necessary, and you can't continue to push yourself for 52 weeks of the year. So I haven't changed much on that thought process. But what do you do in those periods? That's the thing that I'm more honing in on now and making my attention to detail about that because I've been, I think, quite lenient for people who, you know, who want to continue being coached over a period where they've got a long term goal that might be 18 months or two years where they're, as a triathlete, they may actually want to get to Kona or they're wanting to get to, you know, to a higher level. They want to, you know, be in the pointy end of their age group or just basically improve themselves. And that last point, just basically improving yourself. If you take a break and you actually do nothing, say you left it, if we had a ceiling and you're at a level of, you started with us at 5 and now you've moved up to 7 and you still got quite a way to go to get to the ceiling, which is 10. If you take that break at 7 and you don't look after yourself when you've taken that break. And I don't mean keep training the same way. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, you know, don't stop training, but do it in a different method. And I like to talk about that as well. You could come back at level five and then it might take you, if you've taken six or eight weeks off, it might take you another six or eight weeks to get back to level seven. And so what have we done? We've actually taken, you know, 12 to, to 18 weeks, which is almost a third of your year, where we're only back to where we were. And that's how people get frustrated because they feel like they're not improving year in, year out. And guess what? They're not really. They might go from 7 to 8, but the person who kind of stays with a purpose and some structure, but it's not hard structure, but still giving them an idea that they're maintaining fitness and not dropping it off dramatically. They're just going to go from 5 to 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 to 10 over a period of 5 or 6 years where they could have taken the other person 10 years to do that because they're doing this. Get to seven, go back to five, get to seven again and then go into seven and a half, then back to six and a half and they're just not progressing the way that, that you know, you want to do. And boy, it's, I find it hard to give away fitness. You know, just get injured and see how, how frustrating that is. You know, get injured and you're not allowed to train and then you can't do anything about the training going down the drain, your fitness going down the drain. And so the people who are, who are fully healthy and need a break, that's important to do that. But you know what I've learned is people will say to me, yeah, I'll be fine, I'll go away and I'll look after myself. And don't you worry, I'll be coming back to training just as fit as when I left. And within looking at, I can still see what they're doing or what they're not doing. And they've had a really good mental break, but they've actually regressed in their fitness so much that it's going to take us almost the same amount of time to get back to where they were. Well, what's wrong with that? Well, there's actually nothing wrong with that unless you want to improve. If you want to improve, then there is a lot wrong with that. And if your goal is to be a better version of what you were prior to the break and in the next coming year or two, we've got plenty of examples of people who have stayed true to the program for three years, for five years. And we've got examples of people who've been seven and eight years and their progression is incredible. And it's so obvious that they're not doing this. Stop, start, stop, start. And I get frustrated watching it. I can't imagine what it's like going through it and get a little frustrated when people say to me, oh, I thought I would have improved a lot more. And I can say straight back, well, that six week period where you basically did nothing has caused you to be in this position and you're going to take longer to get to that ceiling point that you want to reach. And that's the only thing that's wrong with it. There's nothing else wrong with it except that don't expect to improve at the rate that you would have had you continued to train with some basic structure. And we're not talking about intensity. We're talking about periods where you can learn to improve the areas where you're weak and let your brain not be punished so much by, oh God, he's a hard session coming up. I don't know if I can get through it. You can't do that for 50 weeks of the year. That's, you know, as humans we will actually start to hate our sport if we're doing that. We've still got to have the love for riding and the passion for training. And you know, we've had some gorgeous autumn days in the last 10 days here where we live and just been beautiful blue sky days with zero wind and you don't get a lot of that. And we've had 10 days of it and it's been around that, that very comfortable where you're not having to wear a long road jumper or, you know, you can still get away with the T shirt and if you're running and, and you don't have to get rugged up with gloves or a beanie and on the bike you don't need the winter clothes. But, you know, I was riding on Sunday, it was just spectacular. I'm just enjoying the fact that I've got pressure on the pedals. I'm getting a good endurance ride at for, you know, three hours and you know, there's no wind and I'm not, I'm not trying to do anything spectacular. I'm just trying to. And I enjoy the ride and, and that's that they're the things that, that I, you know, we've had a big summer and, and I'm still enjoying, but I'm still getting my endurance in. I'm still, still riding with pressure on the pedals. It's not hard. It's actually hard on your legs, not on your heart and lungs, but it's not hard like I'm gonna get off the bike and lie down. You get off the bike feeling refreshed and you've got that exhilaration of you've just achieved a really good experience of a ride where. And I select a course and I'm lucky because I live in the mountains and if I can. It happened to be Mother's Day of all days and you would expect the traffic to be so bad. And the main roads, it was, but I was lucky that I know the roads to go where there's no traffic and, and it was just a joy to be out there. And that's what I'm talking about is, you know, you can still have structure and still enjoy yourself. And so they're important things mentally and physically.

That's a really good point. And I think we can definitely get caught up in just the intensity it takes to get to an A race. You know, just the closer you get, the more the pressure does build. And we talk a lot about taking the pressure off ourselves and just following the process and just giving our best effort. But the mental toll it takes to just want to be as consistent as possible and get everything right in the last six weeks of the race ready, you're constantly thinking about the race plan and the execution and the whole build up to the day and the nerves of race week and then the release of getting the day done and the adrenaline after and you are physically mentally exhausted after. And it can feel like that training has to be like that all the time. And you do forget that. Oh no, now it's actually a really fun time just to relax and I get to go train and I don't have to hit any numbers and I don't have to really hit these goals of sessions to give me confidence for race day. And each phase has its own pros and cons and I definitely vouch for some of the pros and cons. I personally am someone that absolutely loves VO2 training and I don't know if that's because I've been doing it since I was six years old, but I just don't get sick of it. And I prefer to do that all the time. A lot of people hate that and they want six weeks away from that because it is kind of sickening sessions or so that's my pros and cons. But other people go, they can't stand the race ready session, race ready phase, the real specific zone, three to four race specific sessions and they go back to base training and go, oh, this is nice, this is what I love doing. Like you're just saying, I love riding my bike and just being relaxed and taking it all in and being in some good weather and going for a cruisy run with no pace. So I think one of the main points that stood out in what you were saying there was thinking about human behavior. Unfortunately, we are just not as we overestimate our ability and we're just not as good as we think we are. And in terms of specificity towards training, we just see so often time and time again athletes that say, oh, I'll be fine, just to take a break and not have any structure. You look six weeks later and out of a potential six training sessions a week that you could do if you're training once a day, with a rest day, 36 sessions. Athletes will have completed eight sessions out of 36. And it's just incredible that someone can be so consistent for a 24 week training program to a 70.3. And we all do this and I myself am the most guilty of this that as soon as I don't have a goal in mind, my training consistency just absolutely drops. And it's just, yeah, we do overestimate ourselves of humans. And we see this time and time again and it is frustrating when you. Well, go on.

I was just going to say, Jordan, I. Look, I totally agree and like I said before, it's okay. It's okay to do that. So please don't think we're saying that's not what you should do. But don't have it both ways. You know, I'm going to take this mental break and this physical break, but I still expect to be improving at a rate that I should improve at even though I've taken all this time off. That's all I'm saying. And the consequences of your decision is that you won't improve your fitness. You will do your best to actually maintain it. It's more than likely that you'll regress and that's okay as long as you don't expect to continue to improve. The way a person who takes a short break and is really motivated and focused during that break to just look after themselves. And I don't mean be strict and do hard training sessions. I just mean just look after yourself, have fun and enjoy training where it's all easy and don't even have to train if you don't want to. But remember, if you don't do that, you're going to lose some fitness. And I think my point I'm trying to make is, you know, you can't have it both ways. You can't take the time off and expect to be where you were when you come back.

So, yeah, this is really summarizing. Just the first objective of, of the, of the base phase and, and the off season is understand what your goal is and what do you want to get out of it and how do you want to come out of it. That's, that's the main part. And that was going to be my next point to follow up with is, you know, I went through this myself last year. I decided to take some time off the bike. I did ride my bike for a fair chunk. I thought, you know what, I'll be fine. I'll keep up my running fitness and keep up all my extra training. Just not bike training. And boy did I regret that because coming onto the bike after all that time was so hard. Even though I was fit, I wasn't bike fit. And the frustrating process it took of six to 12 weeks of just head down training, not hitting your numbers anywhere near where you know you're capable of and just having to suffer through that, I said I never want to do this again. I never Want to have to go backwards to, to get back to where I know I was already. That was just very frustrating. And so, yeah, I think understanding the objectives of the base phase, know that it goes faster than you think. Before you know it, you know, 12 or 16 weeks have passed and you're at the end of winter and you're coming into spring and then you start thinking, oh my gosh, the first week race is only 8 weeks or 12 weeks away. Am I in the position I wanted to be in at the end of this base phase? Am I coming out of this in the right ways? Because we can lose motivation in winter. We can lose motivation when it's cold and wet and dark. And even if your offseason isn't necessarily in winter, you are just taking a break. Just know that it goes a lot faster than you think. And we want to utilize this time and maximize it and come out the other end in the best shape possible to start our next season. So yeah, go.

If, if you, if you, if you don't have that goal of, of something really close, then it is easy to think, oh, I've got all the time in the world. You know, it's, it's, my next race is 22 weeks away. Well, you know, that's the time to actually start to set yourself up properly. And, and that's what we're trying to say is, you know, have that mental release where you're not, you're not honing in on high intensity sessions but you're still maintaining some fitness. And, and when you get to that, that 12 week period of that winter, you can look back and go, I'm really satisfied with where I'm at right now. I've really worked well with a lot of the weaknesses that I've had that I've come out of summer identifying. And I've got a really, really good endurance, fitness, aerobic capacity now to do some hard training because I'm actually well prepared aerobically from the training that I've been doing in the last 12 weeks. And what a good situation that is to find yourself at the start of spring when you may only have eight to 12 weeks to your actual first day race. And the difference between that mindset and far out, I didn't do exactly what I wanted to do. I've got to catch up, I've got to get some more endurance into, I've got to get fitter right now. And you know, you're so far behind the people who have actually been doing that and so therefore their level is going to be higher. And if that happens year in, year out, after three or four or five years of doing that, the gap between you and someone else three years earlier who was at your level is A, is a mile apart. And that's the frustrating part that I watch as a coach where I see person A doing it this way and person B doing it that way. And it's like investing in super, isn't it? Somebody puts in a small amount, somebody puts in a big amount at the end, the person who's invested more gets the benefit. The person who invested a small amount isn't getting that value at the end. And it's the same with training. The more you invest in the time and doing things in the right structured way and getting advice on that about how to go about your winter off season training, just as much as it's important to get advice about how to do race ready training sessions for races. So it's just not a matter of doing the same thing year in, year out, doing the same training year in, year out. You have to divide the year into sections so that you're doing it at the right time that suits your goals and ambitions.

Yeah. So I think on that note, we want to go into how do you actually get it right? How do you do the base training phase to, to maximize your potential? And I want to start off with mentioning the obvious ones. And we have talked about these so many times in various forms throughout the podcast, so I'm going to fly through them, but they are very important, so I'm skipping over them. But they are the foundations of the base phase and that is just blatantly volume and duration, getting enough volume in, getting as much zone to endurance, working as possible, doing it out in the hills, you know, doing as much riding and running in the hills as possible as consistently as possible, and really working on volume duration and that frequency of volume over intensity necessarily. And that doesn't mean we don't do any intensity in base phase. In fact, we're going to talk about how important intensity is in a second. But before we do that, based on that knowledge, that pace phase equals pretty much you're trying to increase your volume of Zone 2 riding and just get that aerobic fitness going. What is the biggest mistakes that you see with base training that you want to eliminate straight away?

And I'm being pretty analytical again, which is what most people know that we stand for. If I looked at some people's training sessions and I would just look at the time that they rode for their endurance ride or their time they ran for their, for their run. And I open up the session, I say, oh great, this person's done four hours. Wow, that's fantastic. And they've been in the hills and then I dig a bit further and I see that they've actually ridden for three hours, 20, and they've been stationary at some point for accumulation of 20 minutes, 40 minutes for that four hours. So they've had periods where they've stopped for coffee in the middle of it. They've, you know, they've been on a course where there's traffic lights every hundred meters, so every time they have to unclip. And this, this ride basically had stop start the whole time. And so when we dig deep, that person looks on the outset to, on the outside to have done, you know, three to four hours of endurance. But when you actually look at it, what, what are we doing in the endurance ride? We're trying to create a fatigue level at a low base. And every time you stop, you recover. And whether you stop for 30 seconds, five minutes or 20 minutes, you're getting recovery and you've lost that continuous endurance fatigue that you get when you don't stop. So, so getting it wrong that way looks good glossy that you've done three hours on the bike and you've run for an hour and a half, but you could have been stopping and, you know, and getting drinks and having a break in between and you're not getting that fatigue from the endurance ride. And you know, that comes back to what are we trying to achieve if we're trying to get pressure on the pedals? Well, you can't do that every time you unclip off the bike for a traffic light or for waiting for a group. If you ride with a whole lot of buddies and the ability level in your group is extreme. You could have five guys standing at the top of the hill waiting five minutes for a 20 minute climb for the slower people to come up. And so therefore you've lost the fatigue from the endurance goal, which is you're now recovering and then you start again and you create fatigue again for the next 20 minutes until you stop again. And then the next hill you have to wait again for the people you're riding with. A couple of simple things you can do to stop, that is go and ride to the bottom of the hill to catch up the slower riders so that you're not standing up there waiting for them. And you actually get to keep riding for that. And therefore you've eliminated that stopping. So your Fatigue is still growing as the ride goes on for the two, three, four hours. And you know, someone who's just continuously ridden for four hours against. If I use myself as an example, Jared A rides for four hours, doesn't stop at all, doesn't unclip, the fatigue is growing the whole ride. I'm getting tired, I need more fuel. Jared B is with his mates and they stop 50 times. And that's not an exaggeration. You know, if you're a really heavily built up course with traffic lights, you could be unclipping that many times and then you're waiting for people at the top of hills. I'm just not getting the same fatigue level as I am if I'm, if I'm riding, you know, with pressure on the pedals the whole time. And so I'm getting a bit a different outcome from that session. It's actually a far easier session and I'm not getting the endurance base session that I'm looking for. I'm getting a stop start training session. So digging deep into the analysis of what actually happened in that, in that training session is really one of the things we do well. And I'll be picking people up on this. You need to change course, you need to not do that course. You need to be having more pressure on the pedals, you need to stop, stopping, stop at the end of the ride and have as many coffees as you want at the end of the ride. And therefore you've got the value out of that session. So these are the things that people are getting wrong in this base phase. They're thinking they're doing this endurance. The example I'll give is during COVID we had that period where in Melbourne we weren't allowed out of our houses for 12 weeks. We basically could not go for an area of more than five kilometres. So imagine going around the block, you know, on your bike for a three hour ride, you know, with a limit of five kilometers. So we decided, and it happened to be winter anyway, we decided to, you know, do something different and we jumped on one of the endurance rides in Swift. And you know, at one stage we had, I think Saturday morning there was a, there was a ride at 7am that went for 100k and I think we had about 25 Trivalo people in that, that ride. And, and you know, guys like myself have been doing endurance riding and I ride most Saturdays for the last 30 years as a bike rider I've ridden between 100k and 200k. Most Saturdays it's been very rare that I've missed. Now I, I class myself as endurance fit. The first couple of weeks on these swift rides. Halfway through the 100k, at the 80k mark, I was getting crap and I was quite shocked and I couldn't understand what was going on. And I thought, oh, you know, maybe it's my endurance fitness. It could be that maybe it's my hydration. Being indoors, I'm sweating a lot. Maybe I'm not fueling properly indoors. And when I started to really think about it, after three or four weeks of doing it, I stopped getting cramped. It was clearly the endurance rides I do outdoors have a lot of freewheeling and a lot of variation in terrain. Where I'm off the pedals, the pressure's not on the pedals all the time. Even though I, I emphasize that that's what I'm trying to do. It is a lot of off the pedals. And in a zwift race, if you do that, you get dropped straight away. You have to keep the pressure on the pedals. There's no, it's relentless and that's what's good about it. And that's also what's bad about it, is, you know, it's so hard, it's so different. And after we had, I think 10 weeks of that, all the athletes that come out of that 10 or 12 week program who were just doing that weren't allowed outside during COVID They had the best performances for the next three to four months in their careers because they had experienced that base phase of pressure on the pedals and the endurance with no stopping, which is creating the fatigue. And your body adapts to that, which is what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to, we're trying to get our body used to burning fuel where we're not getting the recovery in the middle of a ride. And that's what the training session is about. And if those examples can make sense to people, then that's what we're trying to achieve. When you go out, if you get that goal and the mentality of this is what my goal is today, then you will improve next summer astronomically, like we experienced.

It's a pretty good promotion for a base phase. If you think about how fit you can come out of the next six to 12 weeks. If you, if you think about that, it's, it's pretty awesome to think about. And you're someone that has the least amount of freewheeling that I've ever seen on the bike. And so for you to be feeling that way on the zwift just shows that you know how much freewheeling there actually is, even if you can't help it outdoors versus indoors. And that doesn't mean that you have to do every session indoors. It's incredibly tough to do and it's significantly more boring than outdoors. But when the weather doesn't allow it, it's actually the perfect solution. So, yeah, look, and even from a running perspective, there is a huge difference. And if I use Melbourne, for example, if we do our long run in the city and we try and run around any of the hills around the city, you know, we might get an elevation of 150 or 180 meters, plus so much stoppage at traffic lights, which is just my absolute nightmare running, I just can't stand it. Whereas if you make the effort to drive out to the Dandenongs and do your long run in the hills, you are not stopping once and you're getting 400 meters in elevation. And the difference in quality between those two long runs, if you did that over, over a 12 week period, one athlete A versus athlete B, if it was just to. Again, if it was Jordan A or Jordan B, one person is getting much more quality from those long runs than the other. So it's a really, really important point to talk about. And it's a huge mistake that you see in this phase. So look, when I first, when we first started talking about this topic off air and we first started discussing some of the ideas around it, I think one of the first things you said which startled me a little bit was you said, well, actually we get triathletes that come to us and test really well for endurance fitness and they've been training for a long time. But most athletes don't actually have a good base. They don't have the quality of base that is actually going to set them up best for a race. So they might have been training for a long time, but most athletes haven't done what you just said. 12 weeks of pressure on the pedals in the heels properly. Most athletes haven't done 12 weeks of really good elevation running with lack of stopping for 12 weeks straight as a BASE phase. So can you explain that concept a little bit, Ted, that weirdly, some of the fittest athletes going around don't have as good a base as we think.

Yeah. And they're probably doing okay in events. But my caveat to that is they could do better. And being fit for your event is exactly what we're trying to Achieve. But if you just go through each season and you're training the way that I explained, where your course selection's poor, you got lots of recovery, you're not getting, not getting that. You know, that consistent pressure on the pedals and fatigue build up and you're, you're really not reaching your ceiling. You're, you're always underdoing it and, and you know, you get exposed in, in some form or another down the track. And if you keep, and I can use the example of a lot of guys who love doing crit racing during summer. They have come out of their winter really fit, really trained well, great base phase, and there's others who don't and the people who don't take a long time to get crit fit, they take a long time to keep up with the pace that the guys who've had a great winter start the first race flying. So the two examples I'm going to use and the person who comes out of a great winter and does crit race after crit race and races a lot, but, but neglects his endurance during his actual racing season, he progressively loses fitness and by the end of the crit season he is actually riding worse because he hasn't maintained that endurance. And base phase endurance is not just for that period of base phase. It's still part of your program that should be going ongoing week in, week out. The person who's done a very average winter based phase, he's playing catch up. But halfway through the season he might have actually caught up. And if, you know, if he's smart and he's realized that he's unfit, he would be doing those endurance rides and not racing so much. And then second half of the season he has the best season ever because he's actually caught up in his endurance and he's not had, you know, six months of racing criteriums without training properly. And that's an example of actually.

Getting.

The training wrong even during the actual race period. Not only getting it wrong during the base period training sessions, but actually having a poor outcome in the season where you are desperately wanting to perform well. And there's so many examples of people doing both and making mistakes when it matters most that they haven't done that work and, and they just get found out. And that's kind of what we're trying to avoid is you can seemingly be fit for your races, but eventually if you don't do this type of preparation, it will catch up with you and you won't get the performances the Breakout performances that you expect to have over the next six months, 12 months, 18 months. So you think you're fit enough. And the example I gave with jumping on Zwift from, from outdoor to indoor, I thought I was extremely fit as an endurance athlete, but it turns out I wasn't that fit. And you know, that's what I'm trying to, that's the point I'm trying to make is, you know, don't neglect and don't half ass do your endurance training. It's got to be part of your program and you can't race all the time. You know, we've talked about, you know, six week period of where you're going to be best in your, in your taper period for the key races. But around those periods you still need to incorporate operate some endurance. And that should be part of your program year in, year out, week in, week out.

Yep, totally agree. And I think it's. Athletes often are so good at the specificity of what they've been doing. And we see a lot of endurance athletes who do a lot of zone two to four work. So it's a lot of zone two bunch rides with some constant zone three to four efforts and a lot of mixed intensity sessions that we see that do lack that top end zone 5 and 6. So they come very good at that specific intensity. But it's not, it's not, it's kind of in between base and, and the intensity they need, whereas they kind of need almost that more polarized approach which is where that kind of method comes from, where they need more pure zone 2 stuff and then more high and 5, zone 5 and 6 stuff. So that takes us to the intensity factor of base training. Now obviously if you're coming off the end of a racing season, we want to back off some intensity. We don't want to go straight into VO2 work and do those types of sessions. But if you're a fresh athlete kind of starting a new program and you haven't come up for big racing season, you can kind of jump straight into this. This is what happens for a lot of athletes to start with us. But this is your chance now to do a lot of VO2, zone 5 and 6 high intensity work to coincide with your endurance work and really get that stuff in there a lot of endurance athletes don't do enough of and that a lot of endurance athletes aren't actually that good at. So it's, it's do more of the sessions that you're not good at. Do more of the VO2 work that you're not good at to help improve that side of your, your engine.

Absolutely. And you know, if we use the 8020 method, you know, you're going to spend a lot of time during the base phase doing a lot of longer endurance type of training like we've been talking about. And the 20%. Yeah, you know, you don't want to be between three, zone three and zone four. You want to be really hammering it for zone five and six, short bursts, short training, hard sessions once a week and make sure that's part of your program. And you will come out of winter with not only a really good endurance base, but you still have that rev in your legs that you can really put to good practice when you're, when you're coming to your races and especially criterion races or road races or track racing or you know, or any of those examples where, you know, you need that race intensity, race specific feelings. And if you haven't done that, any of that for 12 weeks, then you're going to take a long time to, to get the legs to, to wake up almost to get back into it. And the second reason is if you want to, as we've talked about many times, if you want to go from a four cylinder car to an eight cylinder car, if you don't practice what an eight cylinder car can do, you know, you're not going to lift your FTP and lift your VO2. You need to practice that in order to lift it. And so come the next season, if you've got a raised FTP number, you're going to ride faster. If you've got a better VO2, you're going to be able to, you know, reduce the buffer of lactate, you know, way longer and hold higher power. And that's when you see, you know, guys are on a climb together. One guy is just talking, the other guy's just gasping. The guy who's just talking, he's nose breathing because he's, he's got a very high threshold in VO2 compared to the average Joe. And he's worked at that through these types of sessions. And the only way to improve that is to do those sessions, not avoid them. And people think that the winter period or the base period is just for long, slow, boring stuff. Plus it's fun. You're getting challenged. Some people say it's not that much fun getting pushed that hard, but you're getting that release of, geez, that was a great session today. I need to do that once a week. And before you know it Your threshold's gone up 5% and your VO2s numbers are going up. It's a really, really good way to combine what seems to be a boring, monotonous period where there's nothing much actually happening. And that's why we encourage people to, you know, to go into some other forms of, of, you know, intensity, whether it's a, if you're a runner, a triathlete, you know, go and do some cross country running, go and do some fun runs. If you're a time trialist, go and do some gran fondo, long endurance rides where you're being challenged. You know, we run a, in our coaching group, we run a Thursday night winter Zwift handicap race. We've done it for four or five seasons now and we coincide it with the tours. Like we're doing a pink jersey race and we'll do a yellow jersey tour. They're examples of creating things where you're going to have some high intensity with some socializing and, and look forward to some structure where, you know, you're in a racing situation and it's fun.

Yeah.

And when you're doing it as a group, even though, you know, the only way we can do it is by handicap because in our group we've got people who are at, you know, winning races outright, we've got people who are beginner. So we can't just have a race against each other. So we have to manipulate it to make it a handicap, which is the fun part. And everybody has a chance of winning because I give, you know, the people who are just beginners, I give them eight minutes, start against the people who are, who are on the, on the podiums and their job is to catch them. And the job of the people at the front is to stop being caught. So these are examples of making it fun and, and, and getting some variety into your seemingly dull, boring, you know, endurance phase.

Yeah, look, that's a great way to sum it up. And I think we kind of want to touch on those points to finish with, with the base phase. It is your chance to, to do something different. But also you, potentially, you're not rushing to get ready for a race, so it's a great chance to work on your weaknesses. Especially a lot of athletes are dealing with constant niggles or constant injuries that are just lingering and you're just getting through week to week because you are wanting to get ready for the race and you're wanting to get up for the race and you're really toeing that fine line of pushing yourself. For an injury. So it's a great chance to, if you need to back off a little bit and let that injury heal a little bit, or it's a great chance for you to do some extra strength work or rehab work or physio work, or work on that injury, or work on your weaknesses, introduce some strength training, anything that's going to help get yourself on top of it in this period so that when you get back to the racing season, you're not at risk of injury. Again, extra sessions of potentially the weaker leg in your discipline of a triathlon. So if you're, if your swim is particularly weak and you want to get better at that, this is the time to add in an extra session or anything along that nature. And the purpose of is exactly what you're saying. If you do find that base training is quote unquote boring, and it would only seem boring maybe compared to preparing for a race, then go find some races to do. Swift races are on every single day, all day, every week. If you're a triathlete, go do some crit races and practice that over under style training that you absolutely do not get in a triathlon. Go do some cross country events or some road races, you know, a 10k or a half marathon or some sort of road fun run. Even if it's 5k park runs or every single Saturday morning around the world, not in every single country, but they are very, very popular. Any type of trail run or some sort of fun winter run that happens a lot over winter, just anything different to what you normally do, even if it's a gravel ride for triathletes, go into a gravel event which is a long threshold, endurance style, style, run. I think this is your chance to do something a little bit different rather than the specific training required coming into a specific race.

And also if you happen to get injured during the season proper, where you're in the middle of races, the idea of I have to get fit for this race and that's one of the problems with people getting injured, is they're not respecting the injury and giving it time to heal. And that's why it's really important to think clearly about what races you want to enter and not entering too, too soon and giving yourself the opportunity to not have pressure to get to a race because you've come off an injury. And you know, I've had quite a few examples of discussions which are really good with a lot of the athletes we coach. And I'm sort of saying to them, look, you've got this race that's really causing you to train differently because it's too close to the injury you've sustained. And we're trying to fast track you because you've had, you know, six weeks off due to the injury and the race is in in another seven weeks. You know, forget about that race. Go to another race and, and give yourself the proper opportunity to redo the base phase, get yourself strong again and take the pressure off. And I know you might have entered it, you might have, you know, got accommodation, airfares. All these things are factors that weigh heavily on you and cause you to make poor decisions about the health and safety of your body and that should be the priority. And you know, normally you can defer races and you can, you know, get credit for airlines and you know, these things can be worked out, but you don't want to be just all the time putting yourself under pressure. And this is the period where, you know, it seems like this is the obvious period where you can do some strength and conditioning and make sure that you're a strong and robust athlete so that when you are in the, the rigors of race season that you don't break down. And that is what we're trying to say. But during the season this also happens as well. If you happen to do break down for some reason, then you need to not just try and fast track yourself and you'll end up being that injured person, recover, break down again, not do the right amount of training, the rehab, not do the right amount of endurance based training and you'll have this cycle of years of just continuous revolving injury door and not improving. And you know, everybody knows who's been injured or been sick. When you can't train, it's kind of frustrating to see your fitness go out the door, which is what we talked about earlier. So, so these are the things that we're trying to prevent and these are opportunities for you to, whilst you've got, you know, opportunities to do things that you, that are going to improve you as an athlete. When it counts most during the summer.

Season, that's a great way to finish. And I think just on that mindset note, I think one of the things that you said to me was you can get caught up in getting a little bit tired of training and thinking I just want to have four weeks off or six weeks off and it could become a kind of a chore. But then especially with you thinking about your back surgery at the start of the episode, it's like when you are training well and someone says to you. You have to take six weeks off. Right now, you're injured, something's happened. You are forced to take six weeks off. It's the worst feeling in the world. It's, it's, you just hate it. And that makes you remember how much you love training. And so if it is feeling like a chore, obviously you do need a mental refresher or whatever. But just remember how much that you don't want to not train if you, if you're forced not to. And I think that's, that's a good way to, to think about it. So we'll finish there. That's a great conclusion. We hope that we've convinced you of the importance of the base phase and not to neglect it, as well as how to attack it properly and set yourself up for a successful season. Thanks, as always, for listening. We'll see you on the next one.