How To Make Your 2nd Ironman 10x Better

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. So you've decided to do another Ironman. What do you need to do between now and then to best prepare yourself? It's common that once the dust settles after your race, once the pain subsides, as triathletes, we can't help ourselves but think, I want to do it all again. Which in the case of an ironman, I don't know why you would ever say that, but it just happens to be the case. So if you are going to sign up, if you are going to brave the race again, how would you like to hear the exact breakdown of what you should be doing to rest up and prepare yourself to be fitter, faster and stronger for the next race? How do you want to make sure that you just don't repeat the same race next time? And that is a very common scenario we see here at Tribalo Coaching, where athletes just turn up and complete the race to the same ability at the same time, make the same mistakes over and over again. So in this episode, Jared is going to be breaking down step by step what you should do after your race, how to get to the start line of your next Ironman in the best shape you've ever been in. And these principles don't just apply for Ironman, they apply for 70.3 races, of course, and on some level, any race, although the shorter distances can cope with much less recovery and much less planning. So that's a lot to get into for today's episode, but we want to start with our normal segments. Dad, welcome to the episode. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, George. I am grateful for one of the longest serving athletes that we've had in our business called Nick Granger. And in the last couple of weeks he's slowly winding down his racing career as a cyclist, as a specifically as a time trialist. He's been, you know, up there with the best in the world he his age group as a time trialist. And it's kind of sad that he's decided that he doesn't want to race anymore and it's the end of a journey and I'm really grateful to have known and shared that journey with Nick and I've learned so much coaching him and I'm sure he's learned a lot about how to race better through our coaching, but it's been a fantastic relationship and it's pretty sad, but I'm really grateful to, to have known and to have coached Nick. And, yeah, just want to shout out to him and, and say thanks very much for the journey which is started back in 2014.

Yeah, it's really great that you touched on that. We will be doing a bit of a post on Nick because he's a special athlete here at Tribello and he's been with us a very long time. And so if you want to see or hear more about Nick and why he's special enough to get the gratitude on the podcast, go join our Facebook group and check out what we have to say about him in there. Because when you told me dad, that he was finishing up, it was with a tone of sadness because with any journey, like you've said, when it comes to an end, even though it's the right decision, it is sad for that coach, athlete relationship to come to a close. My gratitude is for the medical system. I am just grateful for all the doctors, nurses, anyone that works in healthcare out there that if we do get sick, we go and we get treated by these experts and we just put our trust in our health in their hands. And just at the time being when the healthcare system is under a lot of pressure, I'm just really grateful that we have that there, we have access to that, because a lot of other countries in the world don't have this sort of very good access. So that is my gratitude for today.

It's amazing, isn't it, George, how much how many people really care about other human beings and their occupation is totally about care and it's a special breed of person. And I have to agree with you. Very grateful.

Next segment. What has caught your attention? It was some pretty epic racing over the weekend, wasn't there?

Yes. Look, I can't go past not talking about the World Championships. Far out. What a week of racing. And I could not keep my eyes off whether it was the under 19s, male and female time trials, under 23s and the pros. And the same with the road races. Thank goodness we had a few days off in between so that I could have a spell from being glued to the. And I, you know, I don't think I've ever watched the 260k race from start to finish, but that's exactly what I did because so many things happened in that race. That has got to be one of the best road races I've ever witnessed in. And I've Watched a lot of riding since the 80s, so it's 40 years of watching races. Even the coverage was spectacular. They had cameras at the right spot at the right time and just to see a guy prepare like Alaphilippe to defend his title and do the preparation that was required and then on race day, execute, far out. That was super impressive. And what a spectacular world champion we have again. And you know, over the last, I don't know, dozen years, we've had some fantastic world champions. Sagan winning three in a row and now Alaphilippe winning two. And they are exciting bike riders. They're willing to take the race on, they're willing to have a go, willing to put it all out there. You know, risk, reward, fortune, favors the brave, et cetera, et cetera. And the way he animated that race and the French team, the way they rode. And it was intriguing watching the tactics between the countries, the Belgium tactics and the French tactics and the Italian tactics, the dominating countries of the world, really showing why. And the time trial, just, you know, Garner winning that by the merest of seconds and unfortunately our favorite son, Woot came second again and oh my goodness, he. How many seconds has he got at the world championships now? It's nearly half a dozen. And I think people forget that, you know, he has got that close yet the day he wins. And he will win a world title at some stage. As a time trial I saw as a road racer and an Olympic title, I imagine. But yeah, just the excitement and the understanding of how to execute your time trial and you know, there was only a mere four or five seconds in it and that could be cornering, that could be the start, that could be the finish. It could be you drifting off, you know, not concentrating for four or five seconds, for 10 seconds, getting more aero in your position. I did note that a couple of times as they were coming into a left hand corner, you know, the bike would slow down and they would have a drink at that particular time. And, and I don't think that's the right time to drink. There's a special time to drink when your bike is going at its fastest, when you're not going to be slowed down. That's the time to have a drink, if you're going to drink. And you know, I'm being super critical here, but that was the difference. You know, you don't want to be taking a drink when you're going slow. You're going to slow the bike down more and you're actually not concentrating on the corner. Coming up So I found that intriguing that I saw at least 10 people do that and just was yelling at the telegram, that's not the time to drink. You should be drinking when the bike's doing 60ks an hour and you can just have a quick sip and it doesn't slow you down. So stuff like that. It was just intriguing to actually witness cycling at its best. And I think I sent you a little clip of the post podium celebrations. That Alaphilate got down off the stage and I went to the front of the stage and put his hands and started the slow hand clap that progressively got quicker. And 5,000 Belgians joined in to celebrate his victory. You know, they love to cheer on a champion, whether he's a Belgian or whether he's French. It was, it was really fantastic. The sport is just, you know, it's in a really good position.

The crowds on the day were as good as you've ever seen in any race. So you almost say better than the Tour de France crowds, which is something big to say. But it was just absolutely wild, the atmosphere on the Aliford Leap note, I wanted to ask, did you think that this is why I found his race so impressive, is that he didn't just win an off tactics, which. There's nothing wrong with that. Um, so much of bike racing is about tactics, but the French really just rode the other riders into the ground a bit with their attacks. And he just had to be mentally tough enough and strong enough to attack when it was hurting most. And I feel like that's how he won because the other riders were everyone. There was a lot of good tactics going on, but the other riders just didn't have the legs when they had to go. And just. Alaphilippe also was in as much pain as them, but he just put his head down and buried himself when he was already hurting the most.

Yeah, and he, he actually, he had to attack three times and we talk about burning matches and that last attack was his last go at it. And the first two they got back on and, you know, everybody thinks, well, that's it. Well, no, he. He was on his knees, there's no doubt. But his mindset was, I've got one more. And. And those guys were probably in equally as much pain as he was, but he had the better mindset that, in my opinion. And he had the will to win. And the other guys definitely had the will to win, but they weren't willing to risk another go and potentially blowing up. And I just thought that was outstanding, what he did. That third Attack that he did was the clincher. And. And he still had to time trial from that point on to the finish, which that wasn't easy with four guys chasing you and then a peloton of, you know, another 16 chasing them. So he used tactics like, you know, he raced the motorbike ahead, you know, up the hill. I'm sure he was using the motorbike not to cheat, but to act like that's another rider I'm chasing you. And he's very clever like that. I just think he's an all rounder that we haven't seen for such a long time. He's rivaling Sagan.

I really can't wait for his next year. I feel like he did so well to win the world champs last year off the back of an incredible season. But because of everything that happened with COVID just the race changes, the schedule changes, he didn't quite get a good crack at the whole year as a world Champion. Everything was a bit out of place. He wasn't quite informed for a lot of the races. He would have loved to have been. So I'm really excited for him to have another crack. He really respects cycling and wants to do the World Champion jersey proud. And I was talking to a tribal athlete about him who said that you can tell he loves cycling because whenever he gets one of these jerseys, the yellow jersey in the Tour de France or the World Champion jersey, he buries himself with the jersey and that's that respect. So I'm keen to see how he goes over the next year wearing the rainbow jersey once again. What caught my attention was just this notion of there's two aspects to a race. It's your mental side of the race and your physical side of the race. And your body can only perform physically to a certain limit, but your mindset and the mental side of the race is a really important part to make sure you get right as well and perform at your best. A lot of people lose the race or lose their performance before the start line even begins. They talk themselves out of a good performance. And an example of this was the Collins Cup Triathlon a month ago between all the best triathletes in the world. It was a really interesting format. It was basically Team Europe versus Team America versus Team International. And there was races of just three people at a time. So one person from Team Europe would race one person from Team America versus one person from Team International. And our own Aussie, Ellie Salthouse was riding Team International versus European champion Holly Lawrence. And Ellie Salthouse was Absolutely the underdog in this race. And a lot of people were just saying that Holly Lawrence was too good. But Ellie Salt House has had an incredible year so far. And from the moment the gun went off in that swim, they were side by side, neck and neck, and not one of them would budge to let the other one go in front. So, you know, you'd think that Holly Lawrence might be a slightly better swimmer. Ellie Salthouse would just duck in and go on her feet and get a good draft there. But they sat side by side and it was quite aggressive swimming to watch. And to me, it really looked like Ellie Salthouse was just making a point that I'm going to stay next to you, even if it might be easier to go back and sit on your feet just to show you that I'm here to race and I'm not the underdog. And then on the bike, she just put the pressure on even more and she just absolutely hammered it. Um, and Holly Lawrence ended up crashing. And before the race, you would say that Ellie Salt House was again, the underdog. Holly Lawrence was going to win. Um, and because of the crash, you won't know what the final result of the day was. But whether that crash was coincidence or not, I'm not sure, because maybe Holly Lawrence was under so much pressure that she was taking corners more risky than she needed to, because Salt House was putting her under. Under that much pressure, or whatever the reason for the crash was. Maybe it was completely had nothing to do with what was happening in the race. But if Ellie Saldhouse had had lost that mental game before the race had even started, she wouldn't have given herself a shot, you know, but you have to get to the start line believing that you could perform as best as possible. And I think that was a really clear example. She just had an unreal day and she wasn't willing to lose it, whereas everyone else was writing her off a second.

That's such a great point. You've got no chance in the race. If before the race you think you've got no chance and you might as well not even pin the number on, you've got to go in with that attitude that you never know what can happen. And as you've just said, opposition could get a crash or a puncture or have a brain fade or make a mistake. You're only in it if you're in it. And. And if you're mentally not in it, you definitely got no chance.

Yeah, it's. It was a. It was a clear example to me and I think we also experienced it when we do these Thursday night Travelo Zift races where you're racing on Zwift. You can't actually see anyone else. So on the screen it might look like someone's riding really well, but they might be on their limit. So you can't mentally write yourself off thinking that your stuff because they might be one second away from blowing up. And the fact that you can't see them just adds a really interesting dynamic to the race where you've got to try and be mentally tough enough to not let yourself lose the race mentally before someone else beats you.

That's such a great point. And I really, I'm kind of, I don't know, 40 years of racing bikes, I can tell people around me what their body language is, their breathing, the way they're pedaling, their cadence, the way their body's rolling on the bike. If they're struggling, I can see it in their body language. I can see others who are not breathing, who are looking like they're doing it easy and. And they look, you know, they're the ones I gotta watch on Zwift because it's an avatar. I have none of those sensations coming back to me. So I have no sense about what's happening. And you're right, you know, you just never know what's going on in people's minds, regardless of the way they're physically writing. So it's a really good mental battle. And you know, those Thursday night races being a handicap for those who don't know, you know, you've really got to turn yourself inside out a lot of the times to keep up with the group that you're riding with. And it feels like they're all riding strong and you're struggling. But when you talk to the others in your group after the race, they've got the same feeling. Oh, my God, I just had to hang in another minute there, you know, otherwise I was going to get dropped. And that's interesting because you don't see that feeling on a game on a screen. Whereas in real life you get those cues from what you see. And for those who've done lots of cycling races, that is one of the biggest advantages, to understand what's going on around you, to focus your mind on who looks strong and who's actually going to be the danger to you in your race. That's in a cycling race, as a triathlete, if you're running side by side at the last leg, you can tell by the breathing. You can tell by if you just put a surge in, whether they go with you or whether they lose a meter, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many things you can do to test the water. And yeah, it's a great point. You bring up that, you know, you just never know what's happening in other people's mind.

All right, without further ado, let's get into today's topic because it's a ripping one because we want to try and show you and tell you how exactly you should plan out your year if you've signed up for another race. So let's just take the scenario where, dad, the race is finished. You at what, some point in the next half an hour to 24 hours, you decide that you want to go again. You get that endorphin rush, you get that huge fulfillment release from the incredible experience that the race has provided, and then you want to go again. You want to experience it all again. You forget all the pain it took to get there. You forget the pain that you were feeling in the middle of the race and you sign up again. So from your perspective, what's the first thing that you need to do?

Just before we get to that, I just want to agree. The range of emotion that happens on Ironman day, and it doesn't matter if it's 70.3 or Olympic distance or sprint for that matter, the range of emotions you feel throughout the experience of the event range from I've got this to I don't think I can finish. That's the extreme ranges. And everything in between is, why am I doing this? I want to sell my equipment. I never want to do this again. This is fantastic. I'm loving this. And when you get down the finish chute, especially in an Ironman, you forget almost everything from the previous 12 hours or 10 or whatever the time it's taken you to finish that event, that's all wiped away as you run down that last hundred meters. And then you're deciding in your mind, that's it, I'm never doing this again, or I can do better than this. I have a real sense that that wasn't my best effort and I know now what it takes. And I'm going to train differently. And I think that's the question that you need to ask yourself almost instantly, the post race analysis if you've had a horrible experience. I am still amazed at the amount of people who resign within a day or two for their next event. And that thought process that going through their mind is from, that was just so hard, you know, I don't know if I could ever do that again. I don't know if I could put myself through the training or the actual day where, you know, I started at 7am and now it's, you know, 7pm and I'm still out here doing this race. You know, that's, that's how difficult it is. And you go through such a range of emotions. So the post race analysis is unbelievably important to really find out and ask yourself, why am I doing it and should I be doing it? And if you can answer those questions because I love doing this and I want to experience an improvement, then you should be doing it. But don't do it the same way unless you've had an unbelievably great outcome. And as you and I know, there'd be very few people in the world who'd say they nailed an Ironman and I'm included in that. You know, the only one race that I know was the race that I won, I suppose, and I still made mistakes, plenty of them. So, you know, they're examples of what you should be thinking about post race. And that's, that's it's hard for you to think like that. The emotions are so scattered in your brain and you just don't even know what to think about. But when it's raw, that's the time to really ask yourself the serious questions. If I'm going to do it, am I going to do it properly? Not saying you didn't do it properly last time, but am I going to give myself the best opportunity to get the best outcome next time or am I going to repeat the same things that I did in the preparation and in the, you know, the, the actual execution of the, of the, of the event on the day?

So let's break that down because what you said is so true. There's so such a wider range of emotions happening. There's just a lot of things you could be focusing on. The best parts of the race, the worst parts of the race. Regardless, you've decided to sign up to an event sometime in the next six to 12 months to redo it, to re. Go through it all again. And most people skip that keyword that you just used in there and that's post race analysis. So most people go, right, what training program do I need to do to start for next year? But while it's all very raw, you do need to sit down and do that post race analysis, don't you?

And what are you looking for in that post race analysis, you're looking for things that want to get you better next time. And if you don't ask yourself, how did I swim? Did I get on and travel in the right direction? Did I prepare myself well enough? Was the swimming training that I did good enough for the race? And you know, then you know, was I fit enough in the swim to not be so tired that I could actually ride the way I want to ride? Ask yourself those in depth questions on the bike. Did I have the right power number range to ride at? Was I riding at a power that was too high? Was I fit enough to ride that power for the whole day? Had I practiced that power number that I chose enough in training? You know, these are very specific questions. If I ride this power, can I run the pace I want to run? Have you practiced that in training? You know, have you done enough strength training in running so that you are strong in the second half and don't fade? There's so many in depth detail post analysis questions that you need to be asking like I've just gone through. And if you avoid those detailed questions, then you're still not doing your post race analysis properly.

Because how often would people have an incorrect view of how the race went until they do the post race analysis? You know, how many times athletes come to you and say I raced like crap and then you do the analysis with them and turns out they weren't too bad or the opposite. They thought they did really well and they might have gotten a good result, but you look at the analysis and they actually executed really poorly.

Yeah, and amazingly with that poor execution, they still actually did okay. Imagine how well they'd do if they didn't do, say, just random. An hour 30 for the first half of the bike and then an hour 45 for the second half of the bike. A 15 minute differentiation, which, don't laugh, I've got plenty of examples of people doing that, but they didn't even realize they were going slower because they weren't paying attention to any of the details. So when they find out that they went too hard and faded, it's almost a shock to them even though they still had a good experience. Imagine if they actually executed, as you just said, correctly and didn't have that, that period of slowing down. You know, you want to be strong from start to finish, evenly strong. You know, I'm not saying, you know, smashing it. I'm just saying patiently swimming, riding and running to the areas that you know that you can cope with. And as you get closer to the finish. You can risk a little bit more and push yourself to try and do a pb, but this is not the event to try and do a PB from the start and swim in the start of the ride and start on the run, that is, this is not the event, any endurance event that you try to do that, that tactic is a failure waiting to happen. That is suicide. That is self sabotage. I can't put it any other simply than that.

Yeah, I mean the first example of an athlete feeling like they race really poorly and then you go through the data and you find out that they actually did quite well. It's so important to understand that that is a high possibility for a lot of people because you can't base how your race went on emotion. You have to look at the data, you have to look at the facts and that will tell you the true story.

Yeah, and the data is so important. But the feel like you just said you felt like you didn't race very well, but then you look at the data and it turns out that you actually rode to a number that was way below what you were trying to do. But for some reason your average speed was actually in the area where you were hoping to. And it could be that the power meter wasn't reading properly. We've talked about that many times in our podcasts. So you could be getting back, fed back incorrect data and that's why it's good to have lots of data feeding back to you so that you can relax and put your mind at ease. That you know, okay, I'm averaging 30Ks an hour, even though my wattage is telling me I'm 30 watts lower than the range. But the speed, that's kind of what's important. I'm averaging the speed that I want to. So let's just go with the power meter, reading this number for this speed and instantly you've got a changed mindset about how you're progressing through the race and you won't get to the end of the race unclear about what happened. And mostly if you're unclear about how you perform, it's because you don't know what's happening. You haven't been taking any notice of your feelings and that in comparison to the data that's being fed back to you.

So you do the post race analysis, you get true data, you get true facts of what actually happened. What do you do next?

You take as much time off as possible and you don't start your preparation until you're fully recovered. And if it happens to be an Ironman. That is different recovery from a sprint or an Olympic. So every person's different. I can't sit here, Jordan, say you should take two weeks and four days off. That's your recovery from Ironman because you know, you're 29, I'm 100 and you know I will take a lot longer to recover from that event than a 29 year old. So I have to work out in my mind and how my body is feeling every day from race day. And I always say to people the goal post race is to recover as well as you possibly can. And that might involve just walking. I'm saying to people, your goal in the next week or two or however long it's going to take, you must move. You must move with no intensity, but you must move every day. For those people who sit in an office desk and they go back to work on a Monday morning after doing an Ironman on the Sunday and that does happen, the worst thing you can do is sit there for eight hours. You need to be getting up as often as you can and moving around and rehydrating yourself. And that may take two weeks, it may take three weeks. You've got to listen to your body and don't start with any specific structured training until you actually feel mentally ready and physically you're not actually still struggling. I've seen many examples of marathon runners who've under prepared for the race, perform shocking, just done it as a bucket list and then they can't walk for literally six weeks afterwards. They've got no chance of doing any running but minimum six weeks because they're that sore, you know, joint soreness, muscle soreness, possibly blisters, you know, mentally they're absolutely shot. So the recovery is the first thing that we really want to concentrate on post race and in that recovery period use that to do your planning. Find out when the next race, the next a race is the next Ironman. If talking Ironman, when is that event? Is it in a year's time? Is it six months? And then you know, absolutely think about what you're going to do differently that you, that you wished you had done immediately post race the event you've just completed.

Okay, so there's a lot to unpack over the next six months or 12 months because how do you approach a year long program? You know, let's say that the Ironman is somewhere between six months away or 12 months away. More likely it's 12 months where you want to do the same one again. Do you Just start day one, a year long program building all the way up to that A race. Is that the best tactic? What should you be focusing on? How do you approach a year?

Yeah. And look, that could well be a good tactic for person A, but we've got 3,000 different variations of person A, so there is not one fit for everyone. So you want to, you want to make your A race, the one that's the big picture, the one you're going to target for the entirety of that program. But along the journey, if it's going to be a year, as the example we'll use here, you really need a lot of stepping stones in between little mini, mini goals. And we call them B races or C races. And what is the difference between an A race and a B race and a C race? Well, mainly the taper. The A race, we want to actually shed as much fatigue before the big race as possible. Whereas the B or C races, we're not entirely focused on the outcome as much as we are the practice of the B race, you know, learning how to execute. And therefore if we taper too much to shed our fatigue like it's an A race, then we're losing fitness on the journey to our main A race. So that's why we don't spend as much time tapering for the B races so that we're not interfering with the actual ultimate goal which is the A race. So yes, we need to pick the race. And if it's six months away then you need to think about a lot fewer events in between as compared to a 12 month journey. And for an Ironman it is so much more important to get a longer program structure then you know, we still see people, you know, applying for a, for a 12 week or a 16 week Ironman program, which, you know, that's okay if you've been training for a year at a really good level. And I'm not talking about fast or slow, I'm talking about, you know, the preparation level that you've been doing. Endurance running and riding and swimming. That's similar to what's going to happen on race day. If you're someone who signs up for a 12 or 16 week program, the longest time you've swam is 1500 meters for a 3.8k and the longest ride you've done is 60k for 180k and the longest run you've done 15k for a marathon, you're not going to have a good outcome. So you've got to give yourself absolutely enough time. And again it depends on what type of athlete you are, which I've, you know, if you come to me and you've already done, you know, 650, 160k rides and you've already ran 30k and 35k and you've swam up to 3.8k many times you're in a different position to the other person I just described. So, you know, 16 weeks could be okay for you to, you know, get to your race ready phase, which is skipping all of the things that we would like to, I suppose, have control over you as your athlete, to help make sure that you get your fitness where it should be so then you can actually start building properly. And because the base period is the fitness building period, you still improve your fitness and build your fitness during the build period and the race ready period, there's no doubt about that. But you set it up in the base period. So without that sort of structure, I'm trying to help someone, I'm not entirely sure about what fitness they've got.

So we'll go through the phases in a second in terms of the step by step how to approach it. But just mentally, is a year too long to be sticking to a training program and to build up to an A race?

I would say yes, if that's all you were going to do is just train and prepare for that one event. And that's why I said five minutes ago that we do need stepping stones along the journey. A, to make it interesting, B, to give you goals to aim at, C to find out where you're tracking and obviously D, to practice all about racing. Every time you step on the beach, to do your next race or put a number on for whatever sport you're doing, you are getting another opportunity to practice race execution. And the more times you do that, the better it'll be on the day that it counts most to you. And that's the A race. So I'm a big believer in racing as much as possible, within reason and having enough recovery between the B races or the C races before your A race. So we get asked a lot, you know, can I do this race, this race and this race? And I'll say, you know, tell me the dates and if they're spread out enough, I would absolutely say yes, you should be doing all those races. But be aware that you won't be at your best three months out, two months out, one month out compared to what you'll be when you've peaked for your A race. So as long as you understand that mentally and you, you've, you've got that in your mind that, you know, I still want to practice my execution but it's not necessarily about the racing fast and doing a PB and if that happens along the way then fantastic. But, but you know, not being fully tapered, that shouldn't actually happen. You may be improving from one month to another, but it may not be your best ever performance in a B race.

Let's go through the specific phases then. So you've done your post race analysis, you've taken three to four to six weeks off wherever it is to recover and you're ready to start training again. What do you, what are you doing with an athlete in this first block? What is, what is the goal? What is the purpose? What are you trying to achieve?

Well, with every build and taper and race ready event you've got yourself to the highest peak level of fitness you possibly could. And then with the recovery you're slowly trying to rid the body of fatigue. And as you read the body of fatigue, the only way to do that is to, is to rest and therefore your fitness also drops. So just as we know when we improve our fitness numbers, fatigue goes along with that. So as you train harder, fatigue is being carried along, your fitness improves, but you are getting tighter. The same thing happens on the other side when you're trying to reduce fatigue by resting or recovering. Your fitness drops and it doesn't drop at the same rate as fatigue, thank goodness, but it does slowly drop. So to expect that you can resume your training program at the swim pace, bike power and run pace that you did four weeks ago or two weeks ago, whenever the event was that you've just completed. You should not expect to start training at those numbers and I wouldn't want you to because we don't want to be training at our peak numbers 8 months out, 12 months out from our next event. We need to give our body and our mental side of our training an easier progress with patience and a really good period where you're not stressing your body like you would the race ready phase where it's all about short, high intensity, getting the body really primed for a, for a big race. So we want to actually slow it all down, calm it all down and, and just start to build the fitness again and not get the fatigue so high that you are actually going to burn out. And they're really key important things to remember and reducing the risk of injury as a part of that. So, so our actual goal is to start to build in, in this, what we have, you know, it's, it's a generic word, the base period. And people would say, well I'm, I've just done an Ironman. Why do I need a base period? Well, you know, the football analogy is, you know, the season finishes, you have a rest and then you do preseason. So instead of saying preseason, this is your base period. And if we, if we turn the preseason into football sense and told the footballers they're going to do some base training, I'm sure they have the same reaction to triathletes or cyclists or marathon runners. I don't like base training. It's, it's just boring. You know, it's just long, slow stuff. But that's actually what sets you up for the rest of the year. And you know, building a house on, you know, dodgy stumps, you know, for four story building and you know, in the biggest wind it just collapses. Whereas you just put a great foundation down. Solid concrete base. The potential for it to blow over is minimal. So we need to have that base again. That's not going to cause anything but building the fitness, it's not about pushing the intensity too much. You should be pushing the intensity to what your level is and we would test you straight away to see where you are from when you finished your race and then train to those numbers. And you know, it is all about trying to build fitness and doing some less intensive but more, I suppose, duration type training sessions where you're building the time of your training rather than focusing on the intensity. The frequency should be similar. You know, we've got three aspects, frequency, duration and intensity. We just don't want to have too much intensity early on. That's kind of the concept that we're trying to approach and if you can get your mind around this has a definite purpose, then you will be on board with it. I need to go and do some easier riding, but I've got to stay out there a little bit longer, especially when we're on the bike. I need to slow my swimming down. I don't need to do such high intensity hundreds and 50s and 25. I just need to get some fitness back in the water. And as a runner I don't need to be doing flat out intervals. I just need to get my body running again and limit the risk of injury. You may have carried something out from the previous event and this is the opportunity to just get your body adjusted to the rigors and allow it to absorb what's going to come in the next six months.

In terms of the enjoyment factor, is this a period where you actually could get a little bit more enjoyment because there's no, not as much pressure on the program and you're so far away from the race. So you've got a bit more flexibility to maybe do a variation of sessions or even some little races or challenges that you might not do when it comes to the pointy end of the program?

Oh, absolutely. And I enjoy this period more than anything because, you know, we do train hard and those sessions, mentally, you've got to be up for it when we're actually getting close to race day. And because I love training, I love training at a lower intensity where it's enjoyable and I know that it's not going to hurt me. And because I love the actual training aspect, I can be out there all day. I mean, the hard part for me is doing the intensity. And that's the thing that makes me squirm a little bit the night before. Knowing that tomorrow's session is going to be quite intense and I've got to be mentally and physically ready for it. But knowing that I can go out there and go out for a two to three hour ride with just, just gentle pressure on the pedals and, and if I wanted to chat to someone side by side for three hours, you know, I'm achieving what I'm trying to do, which is building my endurance slowly. And I just find it a great period. And if the weather's fantastic, it's, you know, it's a really great, great period to be going for a run or going for a nice easy swim or, you know, just going for a ride with the group where it doesn't matter if you're not sitting on the front. That much the opposite to what we've talked about a lot in our program where it's structured and you need to be getting the most out of every session. Of course, you still need to get the most out of the base period. And it wouldn't mean sitting in a bunch ride where you don't go near the front for four hours and you just sit along and you don't get your power over, you know, 30%. Well, that's actually, I'm giving you a really extreme example. That's not what we want to do. We want to share, share the day's ride so that you're on the front at some time or if you're just riding by yourself, you don't want to be seeing a hill. What you used to ride up in eight minutes and now it's taking you 12. That's absolutely okay. That's what you should be concentrating on.

Let's not get it twisted. You're not saying that every single session in this space building period is long, slow, easy, no intensity. There's absolutely intensity in the block of training. And am I right in saying that you just have the freedom to, for example, to go on these unstructured, unstructured bunch rides and attack hills, attack each other, race your mates a little bit because you'll be getting the benefit you want at this point in the program.

Absolutely. And don't forget, you've tested yourself at your new fitness level. So the intensity will feel so much lower than it was six weeks prior or four weeks prior or two weeks prior, whenever period of recovery you had off. So if you've dropped 10% on your power number and you were a 200 watt rider and now you're 190, you know, that's going to feel so much different as a training session to what it was six weeks ago. So instantly, even though it's got intensity, it's still in your control that you can, you can function well. So it is a time to have, you know, more fun in your training and it doesn't have to be as specific. It still needs to have structure and it still needs to have a goal and a purpose for every, every time you actually put your running shoes or your, your goggles or your cycling shoes on. You still need to understand what's the purpose of today. Is it to have some intensity? Some, you know, is it to have some easy recovery? Is it to have some pressure on the pedals, you know, and then just appropriately do that? But, but you can't maintain that flat out training mode that you have in the last six week race ready. You can't do that from, you know, six months out or a year out. And that's what I'm trying to get across. It has to be a planned gradual build of your fitness. And even regardless of where you've come from, you know, you just still need to pull back and start again.

So you've completed the base phase. Uh, what do you do in the next block of training and what do you need to change?

Yeah, so this is the time where we actually need to change our mindset from, you know, very particular specific sessions. Again, um, and we're still building our fitness. That's why it's called build. We've got a really good base. Our fitness level is where we want it so that we can actually do some training with intensity, uh, then we, and we can recover from it. If we did the build phase without the base phase, we would not recover from the hard sessions as well as we could if we had the base phase under our belt. And why does that affect us? Well, it affects the next day that you can't actually hit the next day's training because you're not fit enough. And then it affects the next day and all of a sudden you're getting really tired in the middle of a block instead of getting tired towards the end of a block when you're about to have a recovery period. So you don't actually hit the targets of the build phase where you want them to be. And that is the mistake that people make by not concentrating on making sure their fitness from the base phase is good enough. And the build phase is now going to test how well your base phase was. And at the end of the day, if you find yourself struggling with straight away with the intensity sessions and you can't back up, then I would be instantly saying you haven't done enough base.

And I don't want to glaze over the build period too much. But in terms of the freedom and flexibility to race in this period, is this where you can still keep including B and C races?

This is the time where you want to. Because you don't really want to do a lot of racing in the base phase. You want to just concentrate on not stressing your body with race like, you know, activities. I would say as soon as you, you leave the base phase, then it's time. What am I saying? In base phase you can do long endurance type events that might be, you know, 160k, 140k rides, 120k rides, 200k rides, where you actually can't ride with intensity because it's such a long day. So it's actually doing exactly what we want. Whereas now in the build phase, you could be doing some 60k races here as a bike rider, or you could do short brick sessions, you know, 40k, 10ks or 60k, 15ks or 90k half marathons as part of your, as part of your build. So that you're instantly getting your body to rethink about, oh yeah, this is what I'm training for. This type of training session is replicating what's going to happen on race day. So you need to start putting that into your build phase. You need to have those race like experiences as a training session and you will then instantly feel where you're at with the numbers you're riding at it will have the other advantage of allowing you to aim towards a weekend or a day and not have this period of 2, 3 months with just training, training, training, training, training, training. That's all you're doing. So it breaks it up. It has goals and aspirations. You know, I was able to last six months ago for this particular type of session, which you would repeat in your, in your training, training program, you would repeat almost similar sessions in the same fashion. We're not going to reinvent the wheel and give you a completely different program that you just did. So you could see, you know, six months ago for that, for example, the 90k time trial with the 21k run off the bike brick session, you rode 3 hours 10 at this watts and then you ran 2 hours 5 at this pace. That's your marker. How close am I to that? And all of a sudden you get on the race day, you've already got an example of what the power you should be riding at for that time. And if you feel already you're on top of that, you then instantly got good information about. This is fun. I'm actually now using a race plan just in a training session based on what I have been previously able to do. And all of a sudden now, because as you know, the first program to your first race is going to build a certain level of fitness. The minute you finish that event and then start the second program to your next race, you are a better fitness person because you've built a layer of new fitness on top of what you already had. It's like money in the bank. You just keep adding to it and just keeps filling up. The fitness is the same. You just add the fitness training and you are a better athlete than you were a year ago, than you were two years ago. Layer upon layer of building fitness enables you to come these days where you're doing for the example, we're talking about a brick session, you can cope better with that power and ride a faster average speed and get off and run a faster pace, providing you've been consistent and you've done the, you know, the base training. So there are lots of good opportunities in the build phase to practice what's going to happen on race day. But the main focus is to still continue to build your fitness, um, and train with intensity that's, you know, progressively getting higher than it was in the base phase.

And we did say at the start that we're talking about Ironman specifically here. So a lot of the distance examples you've used apply to Ironman in terms of this phase, you know, getting to 60 or 90k distance sort of races. But the principles apply no matter what distance. If you're doing a 70.3 or a Olympic distance that you're training for, the principles are the same. You just decrease the distance of the kind of races or time trials or brick sessions that you're doing in this build phase. Moving on to what you've already spoken about and mentioned a couple of times and that is the race ready phase. So what, what are you focusing on as an athlete in the race ready phase?

Right. Once we agree that we've finished our base and build phase, the next phase is actually the fun part because you are, you are ab absolutely concentrating more on very specific race style type training sessions where we are practicing every week what we think we can actually do on race day. So on any given weekend we will be doing, if you're an Ironman athlete, we would be training on the bike, doing intervals of maybe 4 by 45 minutes or 3 by 1 hour or 2 by 90 minutes at your race percentage FTP. And then when you come to do your race plan just before your race day, you have all this data to go back to. What could I do for three hours? Could I hold 75%? Could I hold 74? 71? And you have an instant idea of what you're capable of doing. And the same with the run. We do specific progressive fast runs, we do some half marathons, we do some 30Ks, and we get an idea of what pace you can expect to run at on the race day. And having them as brick sessions, you, you might be able to do fresh half marathon or fresh 30k times. But can you do that after a, you know, 140k bike ride or 160k bike ride, or even more 180k bike ride? What can you run? So this race ready phase is exactly that. It is preparing you for race day. And you are doing many examples in your training. That's practicing what you would expect to do on race day. And you don't try and do an Ironman every weekend. That's not what I'm saying. You would pick certain distances and progress them. So the race ready phase, you might be capable of doing 4 hours 30 on the bike. And by the time you get four to five weeks into your race ready, you are actually ready to do six hours on the bike. The same with the run. You might be able to run 25k by the time we get to the, you know, close to the race Day you, you have run 30 to 35k. Um, and that, that sounds like a build but it's actually the race ready practice because your body can't cope with you doing six to eight weeks of full Ironman distances, full marathons every week. And we wouldn't want it to do that. We want to progressively build you up to that even though it is race.

Ready now for an athlete that is getting to this race ready phase, they're coming up to their Ironman again. You know they, they already did an Ironman a year ago and they're coming up to this race for the second time. Sure. Doing a race ready phase this way would probably be different to how they did it last time unless they were part of Travelo coaching. What kind of mindset do you want them in in this race ready phase compared to last time and what do you want them focusing on leading up to this? Having a crack at this race again.

Yeah. And that's the time in this race ready phase for you to absolutely go to back to your post race analysis of what, what you did on that day previously. And, and then your focus would be you wouldn't, you wouldn't almost. You couldn't wait to get out of bed. I've got to practice today. What's going to happen on race day? Because you've got a clear picture of remembering what happened to you. The numbers you rode, the feeling you had, the time it took. And on these race ready practice days that's what you should only be thinking about. Can I ride 190 watts for 180km? In the last race I started at 220 and I ended up at 140 and my average was 180. If I start at 180 can I sustain that? And I'm going to practice this in my training right now. And if my number's already improved from that point and I should be at 190 watts now instead of 180. Let's have a go at it in training and see how you cope and that's what you should be concentrating on. And you know I got off the bike and I was able to run 5 minute k pace but I ran 4 30s and then finished at 6 minute k pace but my average was 5. Let's start at 5 and practice that and see if you can cope with that for 25k or 30k off the bike, whatever your race ready brick session is. And then you get a clear understanding oh 5 minute K pace. That's way too slow. I can do better than that, or that is so hard I need to actually pull back and do 5:15. And so the race ready phase is setting you up for you, determining what your race plan is going to be. And without any of this race ready stuff that we're talking about, you're still going in aimlessly with no idea about anything. And the training you've been doing is probably replicating what you did last time. So you've got clear pictures from what you did last time, what your goals were, what your race results were, and now are you the same results athlete or are you better and can you sustain fractionally better in your training? Therefore, you should expect to do slightly better in the next race to finish.

Off the final phase leading into the race. What is the forgotten phase of training?

And I think this is probably like the school student who doesn't do any work all year and then all of a sudden realizes that the exam's tomorrow or next week and tries to cram all of their training or all of their study into the last few days. And instead of recovering and tapering, they're actually training harder than they should be. And anybody who underestimates the value of recovery and taper doesn't understand the concept of fitness and fatigue. And what do I mean by that? We've talked about it many times. As fitness builds, fatigue builds. So when we start to recover just before our race day, we are going to admittedly lose fitness and we know that and we're quite happy and understand and in our mind we've resolved that, but we are massively reducing fatigue. So you will be in the form of your program's life. So if it's a six month program, this will be the best form you'll ever be in because your fitness hasn't dropped that much from when you started your recovery taper. Two weeks or 10 days or whatever suits you better and there's no one fit for everybody. But we like to think that it should be around that two weeks period. You do test yourself in that period to see what your updated most recent swim speed, power, number and run pace is so that you can helpfully put that into your race plan. But this is the period to shed fatigue, not lose too much fitness, be in the form of your life and be ready mentally also to embrace what's about to happen, the biggest day of your, you know, current, current triathlon career.

How do you improve your caper experience leading into the race compared to last time?

Look at what you did last time. And if you think that that was leaving you a little bit underdone. As in, on the race day you felt like, ah, I took a long time to get going. You may need to not taper for so long. Everybody's different here. And your experiences from previous campaigns should be making you adjust your taper every time. So on a, on a campaign that you think you did the best you possibly have, try and replicate that. And of course there could be improvements with that. But in general terms, the taper can go wrong. With people actually going to sleep, they think the taper and recovery is actually resting completely. You need to keep some sort of movement going. Just like the post race. I'm talking about move. The pre race is you need to move each day but you know, with very limited duration. So we're not doing long sessions, we're just doing short, sharp little sessions. And of course we do test, you know, with a, with an FTP and a swim time trial two weeks out and, and also a run. But the run is less important than the other two and in fact the bike is the most important. The other two could cause people to, to have some fatigue buildup, which we don't actually want to do. So it is really important that you, you keep training, but it's at a, you know, a different volume, but there's still some intensity there. And you know, you've got to keep records of what you're doing so that you work out over the journey. What suits you better compared to, you know, a pro says, I do this and everybody follows that pro. Well, that's okay for him, but it might not be him or her, but it might not be what's good for you. So my advice is to just hone your taper to suit yourself and tell your coach that, you know, I think I did better when I actually trained a little bit more, more leading into the event and then I shed the fatigue, you know, five or six days out rather than 10 days out. Acclimatization to the actual venue is something that's under, understated and underestimated. You know, if you're living in Tasmania and you go and do an event in Cairns, you know, you probably need to spend a little bit more time in Cairns pre race than post race, so your body gets a chance to adjust. And we've talked about that a lot. You know, going from Melbourne to Kona is a great example where it's, you know, Melbourne winter training to Kona, you know, the hottest place on earth to do at Ironman. So they're things that are important in the taper recovery period as well. And it's, and once you've, once you've got your power numbers and you're happy with your data, don't keep testing yourself to see if you're still, still okay after four or five days. Just have confidence in the fact that you're ready. Go. As I saw many times on Alihi Drive in Kona, two days out before the Ironman guys, doing flat out intervals as a runner up and down in the middle of the day in the heat of the day, pushing themselves, sweating like, you know, no, nobody's business and, and looking fantastic. But yeah, I would love to have seen how they, how they actually went in their event seeing that they'd done their race probably two days out before the event. So the taper recovery period is, is, is crucial and key to the final tick of the box. So that, you know, come race day you should feel unbelievably fantastic and at the start of the race you'd be, you have to slow yourself down all the way through this, this event. Slowing yourself down is going to be the key to getting a good outcome because you feel so fresh and that's what the taper recovery phase enables you to do, you know, and you get this is where the biggest mistakes are made because you get sucked into thinking I can go harder. But don't disregard the data that you've trained to and trust it. And as you progress through the race then it's time to actually push yourself a little bit harder in knowing that you've got it in control.

It's a really great summary of an entire plan and process a lot of tools that you can use to have a better campaign for a second Iron man or a top when you're going to do a race again, just from an athlete perspective, dad, what are you, in summary, what are you saying to yourself, what are you doing differently mentally to tie this all together to make sure that come race day the second time you're having a better experience?

Yeah, my main goal is this is what happened last time and I'm going to improve on that. That is my total mindset. From the minute I cross the line in the last race, I'm already planning how I'm going to do it differently. Aspects of my training, aspects of my preparation, taper and execution, they're all things that I am wanting to improve on. So I'm not just going to repeat exactly the same things. I'm going to push myself in areas and that's what I'm thinking about during my, my campaign. You know, this is an area I think I was weak in. I didn't have a good second half of the run. I need to go and do some more endurance in the hills. You know, I'm thinking about those things. What am I. What can I do that's going to enable me to get a better outcome? Did I do enough strength and conditioning? I'm going to spend Mondays and Fridays now, religiously for the next six months doing that. Did I get myself enough foam roller? Did I get enough sleep? These are all the things that I'm going to try to do differently so that I just don't wake up and repeat the same thing and expect a different result, which is, as we say, the definition of insanity.

That's a great summary. And if you are doing another Ironman, if you're doing any other race, use these principles and use them to your advantage. Because like you just said, there's no point repeating the same race, repeating the same race in year eight year out, or getting the same result. So hopefully this has helped. If you are doing another Ironman, how to set up your next year of training? That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next time. It.