How To Improve Swim, Bike and Run All At Once [Case Study]

Welcome back to another case study episode where we review one of our athletes performances or improvements and break down exactly what we did with them to get that result. Before we get into the episode, we want to remind you of our athletes unwritten rule for us. As you know, we do this podcast for free. We give you all our best information and tips to help you train smarter and race faster. And the only thing we ask you to do in return is if you listen to an episode that you enjoy or find really helpful. You can really help us by making sure you subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to it or and share it on your socials. Go to your Instagram or your Facebook and share a photo of the episode. It's something we'd really appreciate athlete to athletes. So today's case study, Harrison, 24 year old from a smaller town out in the country here in Victoria, Australia. Very great story here. He runs a family business, works long hours and this is just a great case study of someone being able to improve in all three disciplines with a super consistent training program for the year. And it's a pretty straightforward case study. So dad, take us through a bit of background around Harrison.

Yeah, and I suppose we all want to make sure that everybody understands that not every case study we do has some absolute standout gems of information. But this does have really good information, but it's not extreme. And what are we trying to get across here? Well, Harrison, you know, he's in a family business and he can see that that's going to be part of his life for the next 30, 40 years if he continues down this journey. He's told me that he wants, he wants to, you know, start to run his family business. And, and so he's got very limited time that they work long hours and as a 24 year old that's a, that's a lot to, to manage when you're young and you've got, you know, aspirations to have a reasonable good social life I suppose at that age. I can't remember it's that long ago, George. And you know, it shows the seriousness side of Harrison and wanting to get the most out of himself. And you know, when he contacted us, it was a referral from one of the mates I used to train with back in the 80s who was a really good triathlete and he actually taught Harrison as his PE teacher. So it was a great story of someone really understanding what it takes to get improvement. And, and the number one thing is he's done so well is his consistency. And you Know, there's a lot of challenges he's had. He works, you know, incredible hours and he's only got limited time to train, you know, anything between six and eight to ten hours a week. And so you want to get the best bang for your buck. And you wouldn't expect there to be drastic improvements with that amount of time available to train. But what he has done well is, you know, prioritize the sessions and that meant, you know, getting up early or training late after work. And they're the things he does. He does all the hard yards and doesn't shirk any of those, you know, and you would feel pretty tired after a big day at work and maybe you've been working 10, 12 hour day and then to have to go and train after that or get up, crack a dawn and train before work, you know, it takes a lot of self discipline I suppose and really want to know, hone in on that. It's, it's, it's something that, that everybody has going to be challenged by and the people who can get on top of that and be consistent with their training regardless of the hurdles that are thrown at you, regardless of the roadblocks and you know, we say it consistently, there are going to be many and you know, injury, sickness, you know, meetings at work and if you can still maintain consistency, this guy epitomizes getting improvement from sticking to the task and getting the basics right, just really honing in on that. And look, one of the things he asked us right at the beginning was I just want to learn as much as I can so I can be a smarter athlete and understand why these sessions are going to help me improve. And I think I've said that a lot over the journey, that if you're more informed, you will be more likely to do the sessions better. So if you understand why this session is going to help you, why we do a recovery session because we want to let our body heal. And so recruitment of muscles happens after a hard session. So you want to recover. And if you understand that theory of recovery, then you will implement recovery. If you understand that you need to have overload to stress the muscles, then you'll be on board with a hard session. So they're examples of him just wanting to learn about why the sessions are where they are and when they are. And now I think that's the key thing that he's really stuck to that basic task of here's my session, how can I fit it into my weekly program? And you know, we've watched the results Come. And for us it's just as sensational as someone who's done something as absolutely amazing from the previous case studies that we've had. But you know, truly this is sort of amazing in its really simple form.

And look, I will say that I want to reiterate that first point you made, that, yeah, not every case study has to be this sensationalist. The most exaggerated results, which we get a lot of, and it's really fun to talk about those and really see some extreme changes from complete beginner to really good results. But at the same time there's no, no bouncing around the fact that he's had 100 watt FTP improvement, a 3 minute improvement over 10k and a 5 minute improvement over the swim, which we'll get to those improvements in a second, how they've come about. But they're incredible results. But I think the key we want to make, key point we want to make here is that, yeah, this is a pretty straightforward program and a pretty straightforward case study of, yeah, a guy who came in and just wanted to, like you said, said, learn as much as he could, stick to some structure. And it's just a very typical kind of age group athlete, someone that works long hours, time is limited, and what they can do with a consistent program over the course of a year when they actually stick to it. And like we said, we do have some remarkable stories of athletes we coach. And today this is really, we just want to highlight how this program works and the awesome improvement you can get from sticking to something really consistently and trusting the process. And I was listening to a Joe Friel podcast, we love Joe Friel. He was talking to some of his coaches and they were talking about a range of periodization methods that you can use with age group athletes and studies showing some wildly different types of programs that they could work. Really mixing things up with having a super, super high intensity and volume week and then having three weeks of low volume, low intensity after that, that kind of structured training and all these different examples of what could work. And it was really interesting to listen to. And at the end of the episode they said to Joe, the godfather of triathlon training, what's your conclusion here with all these methods? What would you like to say? And he just said, if you're an age grouper, I'd probably recommend not doing any of those methods and just keeping it simple and sticking to structure, finding what works within your time limits and ranges and do it consistently and just stick to the basic principles. And I think this is a great Example, this case study of that. And you don't always have to overcomplicate it.

Yeah, it's a good story actually. And look, one of the things that Harrison's done well is, you know, he didn't have any idea of what to do and when to do it in his, in his previous training. And that's the thing he's been, you know, he tells us he's very grateful for because now he knows that he's got the right training session in the right balance of rest recovery that's, that's enabled him to see completely different results from where he was just kind of training too hard all the time and not really having any sort of structure that made sense. And now he really has learned a lot about, you know, managing himself on day to day basis at work and fatigue levels and food and nutrition and recovery and then being able to train really well when it counts and watched himself improve seemingly with, you know, less effort almost. Sure we still train with intensity and we have to focus and there's some hard days there but, but you know, previously it was all hard and yet he wasn't getting the, the improvement that he was looking for.

Yeah, and I think that's the big key is that in his, when he's goals, when he first signed up with us, we make all that. All our athletes kind of write in their short term and long term goals. And one of his short term goals was I just don't want to waste any sessions. You know, I just want to be able to turn up each day and just know that I've got a session designed for me that's actually going to keep the needle moving forward, just going to help me keep improving. And he kind of felt like he was wasting a lot of sessions because he was just turning up and doing whatever on the day. And yeah, I guess those were his big challenges that we had to overcome. And you know, the goals of the program were to stick to what he could fit in his week. And he started with a lot lower volume. If you look back at the start of his program, he's probably doing seven to eight hour kind of training weeks just as he got used to the training and then now he's able to average somewhere between 9, 10, 11 hours of training a week, depending on the week. Sometimes it does go a bit higher if he's got a little bit of time and sometimes a little bit lower with deload weeks, et cetera. And has to be said that he does work Saturday sometimes. So that makes the endurance stuff Hard on there. So these are all challenges that you have to overcome. And yeah, that combined with you didn't have as much structure and he needed guidance around what to do each day. And as we start implementing that and start implementing the core principles of our program, you know, getting the right type of high intensity sessions, getting the VO2 Max sessions in where they're needed. And this year he was aiming, I mean at the end of last year he was aiming for Melbourne 70.3. So as you get closer to that, it's more race based kind of sessions that you can introduce. And he was able to cope with that because he'd done, you know, he started December 2022. By the time it came to July ish, August, September 2023, he was able to really do some good race pace bike sessions with some 5 kilometer or progressively faster runs off the bike at race pace. So yeah, that was some of the challenges he had to overcome. And that consistency, by the end of last year his results were just a world away from where he started.

Yeah, and I think we should go into some of those results. But the, you know, the actual understanding of how to implement those race ready training sessions we've, you know, race specific training sessions we've talked about in a lot of our podcasting and he got first hand experience at that and it's all very well hearing someone talk about that, but actually going out and putting that into your, into your session and you get a clear understanding of oh crap, I can't actually hold what I think I can hold as power or pace on the bike or running or geez, now I'm able to do that. After three or four weeks of doing these sessions, I actually can now get closer to what my aspirations were for, what I think I could do. And the example I would use is when he first started, he did a sprint race which was 20k ride and a 5k run. And you know, that was I think March 2023. And by the time he got to November 2023, which is literally six, half.

A year later, yeah, eight months later.

He was riding you know, a lot faster speed than he was in a sprint race. Like you know his, I think his Average speed was 34.9, 34 point something. And come the 90k he was able to average 35.4. That's just mind blowing that you could, you know, you could actually be faster over 90k than you are over 20, just with 6 months worth of training.

That's probably the key point is. So if we look at these first FTP tests, his starting FTP was 171 watts, and then his FTP in December last year was 276. That's 105 watt FTP improvement. So that's pretty monstrous. But we do want to make a really big, big asterisks here that his first FTP test he probably put down to a little bit of lack of experience and execution because only four to six weeks later he did another one and he was able to hold 220 watts. So he's already, you know, that's a 50 watt improvement from test to test. But that highlights a really good point is that one, we're not trying to just say some sensationalist FTP improvement, even though that that has been his improvement. But by second test, just by learning execution and how to execute a test and how to execute over 20 minutes, he found massive gains just from a bit of practice. And so you can just think that even if you don't do any training, if you just were able to do two FTP tests and practice that execution before a race, think about the gains you could find there. So realistically, from Jan Feb to November, the watt increase has been another 56 watts or 57 watts, which is still massive. But we do really want to make that point. And then what does that actually mean on race day? Well, as you said in March, you rode 34.9 kilometers for a 20 kilometer race. And then November, like you said, he's faster, not crazy faster, 35.4, but it's over 90 kilometers, you know, almost five times the distance. And he's riding faster. So that just shows what that actual improvement means.

Yeah, and if we dig a bit deeper, which is what we always do, you'll find that his power was actually lower in the 90k time trial than it was in the 20k time trial. And that shows again, execution on the course, when to ride harder, when to ride softer to get a faster speed, and other things that would help, that would be getting a bike fit and getting more aero. You know, these are all key things that contribute to, you know, we want to ride our bikes faster. That's the goal. You know, how fast can you ride from A to B? And what things can you do to enable you to be a 33k an hour rider to a 34 to a 35 or 36k an hour rider? That's, that's what we're after. And anything you can do, and all the things we talk about in the podcast are all contributing to this. Of course, the training and has been the key number one thing. But execution, as you just said, contributes a lot and then the setup you have that, you know. So all these things combined are enabling each one of our athletes. And Harrison's a standout at this, where he can actually ride faster speed for less power.

Yeah, it's another reminder that although we base all our training around power and our execution around power for the faster speed is the goal. So power is just a means to get that, that faster speed. So going through his other results, his first 5 kilometer runtime trial was 4:15 pace and then his latest 10 kilometer time trial was 351 pace. So he's 25 seconds faster per kilometer for double the distance. So that is just a massive improvement. So what does that mean? We'll have a 10k, that's a three minute improvement and over a 70.3. That would add up to a six minute improvement. And we can't actually compare that because you didn't do a 70.3 half half marathon at the start. But if you just add it, if you ran 4:15 pace for a half marathon compared to 351, that's a monster improvement. That's big gains in a race time. And then same thing with the swim, his first time trial was 206 pace and he's now down to 149. And so again, if you equate that per 100 over a half Ironman over a 1900 meter swim, that ends up being a five minute improvement. So yeah, just awesome results to see. And I guess we want to kind of conclude about how know straightforward it seems, but some pretty awesome results.

Yeah. And you know, everybody who listens to our case studies is obviously wanting to know the improvement that's important. But the question is how, how does that happen? And we're trying to give that information as we're talking through the case studies and I just gave an example there of on the bike, you know, doing certain things really well in training and, and, and but one of the key things is that, you know, you've got to have the mindset that it's not going to happen in a minute or a week or a month or six months. If you've got the idea and the attitude that this could take two years or three years. And you know, Harrison's only 24. He's got literally another 30 years. If you wanted to in the sport and learning as much as you can early on and then trying to practice that is going to take time to get to where you want to go. And there's no ceiling for anybody that's out there or that we coach, but we still want to be pushing that ceiling higher and higher. And, you know, I continually have race analysis discussions with people and say to them, at the end of the day, you know, dig into your race tactics on the day and find areas where you're, you know, maybe not performing as well. And I just got on the phone this afternoon to someone and, and you know, we're Talking about their 40k Olympic distance time trial on the bike. And I was pointing out that he spent 20% of his time at least 60 watts higher than he averaged for the ride, and then he averaged 25% of the time 50% lower than he averaged for the average power for the ride. Well, that's, that's over 50% too low or too high. And so therefore, those pieces of information, they're the things that are going to get you to improve as an athlete without changing your fitness level just by, you know, not spiking and not riding softly, just riding in the right zones. And so, you know, being in it for the long term, you'll learn all these things. And it takes practice. That's what I'm trying to say here. You just can't do that in a race unless you've actually practiced it and shown yourself that, okay, I've got no time in zone one and two and I'm doing an Olympic race and no time in zone five and six. All my time is in zone three and four. And so once you can master that, then you will start to see improvements. And this is some of the stuff that Harrison's already started to pick up on and doing well.

Yeah, I think we've used the term like straightforward or simple a couple of times in this episode. And what does that actually mean? Well, I just think it means that over the course of over a year now, he really just stuck to the basics and he did them really well for a year straight. And that's actually quite hard to do. It's simple. It's simple method, but it's hard to execute. And that's kind of the secret sauce. It's where it's, yeah, if you can do it for a year straight relatively consistently, everyone's going to have some interruptions. That's basically what he did. You know, he's done really consistent endurance rides and runs. He's done really consistent high intensity sessions midweek he's done really consistent runs off the bike. He's got a really consistent swim sessions. So mixing up between high intensity swim sessions and endurance based swim sessions. So, yeah, I think my conclusion for Harrison is that I got to meet him in person recently, which is always awesome. And he was just chatting about the lessons he's learned from Trivelo. And one thing he kind of said a couple of times was he just loves trusting the process and just trusting what we have to say and not trying to overcomplicate it, not trying to do too much. He said that he's really motivated in periods to try and train more and try and overdo it. And he knows that that's just almost counterproductive right now for where he's at, especially early in his journey. And you, like you said, he knows he's in it for the long haul and he can, he can get to a point where he can start really increasing the volume. That's another option. But not to over complicate it right now. Just stick to the program, stick to what's working and the results are outstanding because of it.

Yeah. And I suppose my final word would be that, you know, he is having the right mindset of I'm in this for a long time, I want to learn as much as I can, and the improvement takes time. And that's what he's sort of opened himself up for, knowing that if he keeps the dedication that he's got and the mindset that this is a journey I'm on, I will continue to improve as an athlete. And that's the thing I love about his attitude is really going to hold him in good stead to get the improvement that he's looking for.

That's it for another case study episode. Thanks very much for listening. Join us next week for our normal Get Fast podcast episode and another case study. Cheers.