How To Get Faster Without Getting Fitter [CASE STUDY]

How would you like to go faster on the bike without any extra training? And how would you like to go 3km an hour faster in a triathlon without needing to get any fitter? Free speed is the goal of any triathlete or cyclist. Just look at Jumbo Visma. They're willing to wear the world's most ridiculous space aero helmets in their time trials just to gain an advantage. So today's case study is a really fun one. This is an athlete who in a three week period improved their speed by three and a half kilometers per hour. This was in an Olympic distance. Aqua bikes are not quite a triathlon, but an aqua bike. So they're essentially riding, they're essentially three and a half kilometers further up the road in just three weeks. That is a whopping distance when you think about it like that, because it's essentially an hour execution at 40 km an hour. This is a different case study as well because we're not just discussing much of the training program aspect or specific training sessions or block periodization, anything like that. It's purely about execution. So, dad, take us through the start of Greg's journey and how this came about.

For anybody who knows my vocab, it's all around execution as well as data. And Greg was absolutely on the wrong course and along the wrong track with his execution. His story is that he's actually a good bike rider and he's powerful and strong and, you know, would, would be at the top of the range in most bunches going around town. But when it comes to time trialing, just being powerful and strong is only half the story. You do need to be a very fit and strong, powerful writer to time trial. Well, there's no denying that. But when it comes to actually executing, you do need to think about a whole lot of other things. And this is the highlight we want to make about this particular case study where without actually training, there's no training effect here. We've just gone from discussing how best to execute and then him listening and then implementing that strategy and getting a completely different result with, you know, with minimal time for improvement in fitness. And for me it was like an aha moment. It was, this is so powerful that it's like free speed because, you know, it was, it was impossible for us in that short period of time for us to get him up to a new level. And sure, his execution and the first effort was atrocious. You know, that's being kind. It was, you know, but he didn't know any better. You know, it was the same old story. I feel good early, I'll ride to these numbers and then all of a sudden I start to fall apart. And pretty much I'm riding now 70 watts lower than I started. And so it wasn't like it was a difficult task to outdo that performance. But remarkably, people continue to do that performance week in, week out and don't change anything. So by him listening and changing his strategy to start at a number that's more aligned with his actual ability, he was able to come home so much stronger and the enjoyment factor was so much more fun for him. And you know, he could not control his exuberance on the phone of far out. You know, I've just gone from, you know, never breaking 40ks an hour to breaking 40ks an hour just by changing my tactics in the way I write.

Yeah. And that's the key difference is when you compare the two, which we're about to, it looks like, well, this doesn't seem like it's that much of an improvement because all you had to do was, was ride smarter and, and the fitness was there. But to your point just then, well, he'd never actually done that. He'd never ridden, executed well enough to actually hit that speed even though his body was capable of it. And yeah, in a three week training block we might expect some small improvement, but not three and a half kilometers per hour and not getting the power so. Right that he did. So yeah, we're going to compare. There's basically, you got him to do an outdoor one hour FTP test which is quite tough and this and then you got him to show you really because he just started the program with us so you really wanted to see what he was capable of over an hour. We don't do that for everyone. But yeah, you, you wanted to give it to him to get, to get an outdoor number, a really accurate outdoor number because he was, he was preparing for the Olympic distance in three weeks time. And in that first one you gave, I mean, let's go through some of the numbers. So.

Just on that Jordan.

Yeah.

You know when you said earlier, you know, it seems easy and logic that you would execute better. But he had every opportunity in the first one because I talked him through that saying, you know, don't go out too hard, just ride what you think you're capable of doing so you can get through the hour. And those words fell on deaf ears because you're hearing those words but you aren't used to practicing that. And it's only when you make a mistake and you get to 25 minutes into an hour's time trial where you've made a real horrible execution mistake. You have to hang on for another 35 minutes and it's, it's the most uncomfortable 35 minutes that you'll experience for. And you don't want to do that. It's, it's like, you know, blowing up. And, and in a, in a 1500 you can only, you only have to hang on for another 10 seconds. Whereas, you know, in an hour's time trial, it's literally half an hour where you've got to keep writing and it's just a terrible experience.

I say this to people all the time is you just can't underestimate just when you, the. Any time spent above kind of where you're trying to average is dangerous time and time that you'll pay for, Even if it's 30 seconds or two minutes, you think, oh, it wasn't that much time. You know, it really is. And we just had a funny example today where an athlete was doing their 5k and I just reminded them that, you know, don't spend the first 500 meters, you know, above your goal pace. You know, that first 500 meters has to be the, the opposite where you, that actually has to be the slowest part of the entire race. And he said, oh, that's a great reminder. I really enjoyed that last time. That was a good reminder last time to really back off. And I said, you say that but. And this person was trying to run 4 minute K pace last time. And I say, you say that, but your first 20 seconds last time was 3:30. And then you backed off. And if I average your first minute, ye, you were at 3:55 or four minutes, but your first 20 seconds were still 3:30. And he said, yeah, well I can't remember looking down and going, oh, too quick again. I said, you just. Every single second above that time is just a risk that you're going to pay for it at the end. So I think athletes really don't underestimate that. And there's just no harm in taking the start slower and coming home stronger.

Yeah, that's the key word. What are you going to lose if you give up 10 seconds per km over a 5K run? If you're trying to run 20 minutes 30, the difference is 20 minutes 20. And if you're doing it over a 10K, you know, 46 minutes compared to 46 minutes 10 or 20, it's just insignificant because the rest of the 40 minutes you can make up the time that you've lost. You've got 40 minutes to make it up or 20 minutes to make it up. So be okay to give away. And that's what you are, you're giving away. And that's what people struggle with. They want to be ahead, they don't want to be behind right from the start. And you know, it's easy to catch up when you've started conservatively. It's harder to hold on when you've started too hard. And this is what this little case study is really trying to highlight, that with no change in fitness level, just by executing differently, you can get a completely different result.

So let's compare the two one hour bike legs. So it was the leg number, effort number one was a one hour FTP you gave and then effort number two was their one hour in a race and they were three weeks apart. And the average power for effort one was 3, 10 watts. And the average power for effort two was 330 watts. So within three weeks he was able to, he was able to gain 20 watts in the effort. And that's not a fitness gain. That was from being able to execute better, which meant he could hold a better average power. And we'll keep going through exactly why this happened. I'm just going to go through the data now and we'll discuss it. So average speed for effort number one was 37.5 kilometers an hour. Average speed for number two was bang on 40 kilometers an hour. Super exciting. And hit that goal that he'd be wanting to do for a while. Really specifically we wanted to compare a few key data points and one is the first five minutes. So in effort number one, where we averaged 310 watts, he spent the first five minutes at 345 watts. But more specifically, he spent the first two and a half minutes at 360 watts. So that is what you can really contribute the capitulation to. Whereas effort number two, where he averaged 330 watts, he spent the first five minutes at 315. So he gave away 15 watts there at the start, really took it easy. And that set him up for such a brilliant ride of effort number two. And then the last, the final 10 minutes or so or 15 minutes of both efforts, effort number one, he went right down. He was averaging between 280 and 290 watts I think was 286 or something. So that really shows he's gone out in 360, come home in 286 and that it's not only the wattage that matters, just the amount you'd be suffering, that matters about how much, how hard it would feel to hold that wattage just to hang on.

You never want to ride your bike again. You want to sell it there and then it's just a horrible experience.

Yeah, yeah. And then the last five minutes of effort, number two in the race, he was at 350 watts. So he's coming home like a steam train and there would be no better feeling coming home. That's what last five minutes. You've got legs for days and you're absolutely flying. You gave away that power at the start and you're absolutely smashing on the way home. So fair bit of interesting data there.

Yeah. And you know, the first five minute comparison with that two, two minute, people think, oh, two minutes isn't much. You know, how can you, how can you blow yourself up in two minutes? Well, you, you try and ride like he averaged 3:30 when he did it properly. So he was 15 watts above in his first five minutes and actually at 360 he was 30 watts above for two and a half minutes. Go out there and try and, you know, ride 30 watts above and see how long you last, your, your threshold. You know, you probably wouldn't get more than two minutes in before you actually start to lactate so badly that you can't keep pedaling. So, so it does matter. And two and a half minutes is quite a long time and five minutes is more when you know when. His true average power for the 60 minutes was 330. If we're not using the first one, which was 310 even in the first five minutes. In his first one he did 345 watts, which is 15 watts more than his eventual better power number, but it actually was 30 watts higher than what he ended up with in that first 35 watts higher than what he ended up with in that first effort, which is 310. So 345 and he dropped back to an average of 310. So he's 35 watts too high in the first five minutes. And you know, they're the things that, that are going to make it impossible for you to, to claw yourself back. And I always say the consequences for your actions can be good and bad and the consequence of starting at 315 to end up averaging 330. What a great outcome. And finishing at 350 for the last five minutes, you know, you're whistling Dixie, you're wanting high fives from everybody and you can't wait to do another time trial tomorrow because you've got this. All of a sudden, you're the time trial king, you know, and the opposite happens. The consequences are riding way above your number and, you know, creeping home, you know, with your head between your tail between your toes and, and you feel like you just never want to ride the bike again.

Yeah. And look, people would say, well, what's the difference whether you ride fast and then slow or slow then fast, shouldn't it average out the same? And it's absolutely not. And you can tell that in the speed. The speed is 3 1/2 kilometers an hour different. And we'll explain why that is and how that happens in a second. But I just want to make the point that sounds like we're absolutely grilling Greg here. And that's not the case because every single athlete that comes to us, 99.5% out of 100 execute this way to start. And this is a learning process and it takes athletes a long time to learn this. And we were actually having a discussion earlier today just about this in general, where essentially it's only the top level pro athletes who execute this properly, consistently. You'd say majority of age groupers, don't, don't do this. And that's okay. It's just. And that's why we're pointing it out and that's why we think it's so important. But Greg has gone on since then to execute exceptionally well and basically win every, every time trial and aqua bike he's been in.

Yeah, we're highlighting Greg's mistake. And I've made this mistake. Jordan, you've made this mistake. Every single athlete has made this mistake. There isn't an athlete who hasn't. So we're just pointing Greg's mistake. But the highlight that we're trying to get everybody to understand who's listening to this message is Greg learnt it straight away and didn't make the mistake. From that point on, that's what I'm highlighting. He listened. He took advice so well and to be honest, he was just saying, what did I do wrong? Why did I fall apart like that? And you know that's the best time to talk about that is when you've just experienced it. And the next question he asked was, oh, how do I fix it? And this is how you fix it. You start conservatively and if you find that you're feeling still crap, you stay at a conservative number until you, you're not feeling like you're struggling. And if you end up struggling the whole time. At least you've started and finished at the same number. And so you're not going to always improve if you start conservatively. That's not what we're saying either. But you're giving yourself more chance, more opportunity to do that. And every time you start above your ability, the consequences will be the same. There's a minority of people who can start way too hard and hang on and still get the outcome they want. They're the exceptions, they're not the general rule. And the age group is. That's what everybody in age group races. From my observations, I say that generally everybody. There are some outstanding people who don't do that.

Yes.

But the majority of people that I watch week in, week out, when I look at results on stat sheets and I'm forever going into results and I look at the first half of the ride and second half of the ride, I look at the times I don't even have to know their power. And if, you know, if a triathlon, a 90k triathlon's got 245k loops, it's perfect for me to go in and look at, I just randomly pick all the winning age groupers and then I go to the 10th place and I can see who's ridden well, who's executed well, and then I look at how they ran. I don't know anything about these people, but I can tell you that if you execute poorly on the bike, it's more than likely that you won't actually run the run that well. And, and, and nine times out of 10, when I look at their, their run split, it's exactly the same scenario. You know, they might have say they're trying to run A, an example I would Give is a 90 minute half marathon. In a, in a 70.3 race, the athlete could possibly have ran 112 for the first half. And sorry, not 112. So 42 minutes for the first half and ended up with 48 minutes for the second half to end up with 1A, you know, literally six minutes slower. And that's just the same thing as what we're doing on, we're just highlighting a bike and, and you know, but the flow on effect, as if you do that on the ride, it's going to actually carry in, carry into the, the trouble you're going to have as a runner if you, if you're executing like this because you're already spending the majority of the race in the red zone from, from smashing yourself too much on the bike. So, you know, it's. It's ironic that, you know, we've got a lot in the middle of the season here. We've got a lot of things, a lot of races happening. And I'm really imploring people to really take heed of this advice and you'll have such a better day. And yes, it's boring, yes, it's conservative, but guess what? It's so much fun at the end when you're actually passing people and coming off the bike strong and able to run as well as you want to. So there's reasons why we're pointing these things out regularly and by giving examples of real life experiences, then it's just not. It's not a theory, it's actually something that it's occurring day in, day out. And we've said before we're getting messages on Instagram about people saying, everybody knows that. Why do you keep going on about it? But people just don't implement it. And that's why we keep going on about it, because they might hear that message, but they can't actually execute that in their strategy for sure.

So Trading Pigs does this really cool thing where you can really break down. They give you even a power distribution chart to the point where they tell you how much time you spent in a certain watt range down to 15 minute increments. And you can really look in detail. But if I was to look at his power distribution, you know, it says how much time did he spend between 300, 315 watts and how much time between 315 and 330 and 330 and 345 and same thing down between 285 and 300, between 150, 175. And you can get a really good grasp of not only broader zones, so zones one through to five, but that specific detail of what is, you know, we went in and kind of added up how much time he spent inside the correct zone that he was sort of aiming for and outside. And in effort one, he spent 40 minutes outside of the correct zones that he should have been riding in. He spent 20 minutes inside the correct zone. And then in effort two, it was reversed. He spent 45 minutes inside the correct zone and just 15 minutes approximately outside of outside of the zone. So there's still room for improvement there. You know, our best riders spend five or six minutes outside the correct zone, maybe even less three or four minutes outside the correct zone. Because it's really just the cornering and certain U turn or a corner or an Undulation, that kind of thing. But that is a whopping difference when that, when that chart is flipped and reversed. What does that mean? Well, it means that he keeps the average speed of the bike higher for the same basically, output. Or in this case, he did end up averaging higher watts, but he could do that because he was staying in the right zones all the time and not going over and under, like, as an interval session.

We see so many examples of people who, who just keep getting that wrong. And even though they're understanding the concept, this takes practice and this takes time and it doesn't come. And that's why I'm highlighting Greg and you're asking me, you know, find someone who's, who's really got it straight away. And that's the good thing about Greg. He's actually listened. And that's why I want to round this home about him being a great example, because he turned it around and got instant success. And as you said earlier, last three races, he's won all three races by writing the house down because his execution has been second to none. And, you know, they're the things that, that we just want to make sure that everybody's understanding it will pay dividends. But it takes a lot of. A lot of practice to get used to this. And I don't expect all the people who join Trivelo, it does take a long time for them to actually practice this and get good at it because you've got these variations outside where you've got downhill and uphill and headwind and tailwind, and it's so hard to stay in those zones and, and that's where you've got to be good at using your gears and understanding, you know, the gears are there for a reason, to keep the cadence even, so you can keep the pressure on the pedals even. So one minute you're not spinning too high a cadence, and the next minute you're not grinding. And they're the things that you have to practice. And it's all very well telling people how to execute, but, you know, they need to know how. How do they actually do that as a bike rider or as a runner, you know, and these are the things that are going to make the difference to, to you, regardless of you improving your fitness. And that's the key thing we want to get across. This came about without Greg actually trained. It just came about with him learning the execution better.

That basically sums it up. I mean, this wasn't a complicated case study, but it was a really cool example of something we wanted to point out of this really interesting example we have of an identical effort three weeks apart with pretty drastically different results, which is really cool. And I guess the conclusion is regardless of your fitness level, if you just change the way you ride, you'll get a better result.

Couldn't agree more, Jordan. Hopefully without repeating it, we've got that message across and good luck practicing that to everybody. And you know it'll bring a smile to your face when you suddenly it's like an aha moment. You're going far out. I actually did do that and my speed's gone up a kilometer per hour just by actually executing differently.

Spot on. We hope you've enjoyed this case study. We're glad to be bringing them back to you. Look out next week for our normal Get Fast podcast episode and case studies every week. Thank you as always for listening. See you on the next Sam.