How To (Not) Mess Up Your Race

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined, as always, on every podcast by your hosts. We have former Australian Ironman champion Jared Donnelly, and I am Jordan Donnelly. In today's episode, I'm asking Dad to put his coach's hat on and talk to me about racing season, because we have been in a lot of lockdown, especially in the state of Victoria, but worldwide. And we said eight months ago or seven months ago, whenever this lockdown started, it feels like it's been going forever, that the races have gone away, but they will come back, and they've started to come back. We've had a couple of Ironman or 70.3s in the last few weeks in Australia, and a lot of triathletes and cyclists are looking ahead to the summer series and races next year on the 2021 calendar, picking their goals. And with that comes some goal setting, comes some race planning and program planning. And so a lot of athletes now looking ahead and actually seeing a goal and race in mind. There's a lot of decision making that needs to happen. About which race do you pick, why do you pick that? And what's the thought processes that go into that? And so I want to ask dad to put his coach's hat on and go through the type of conversations and thought processes you go through when discussing a goal race with an athlete and what's approach appropriate and what's not appropriate. But before we get into that, as always, we want to talk about what's been catching your attention. So, dad, what's caught your attention the last couple of weeks?

Well, as you and I have experienced in the last five years, we've been in Belgium for the race that happened to have occurred last night, which is the Ronda van Vlaanderen, which is the Tour of Flanders. And it's kind of special for you and I because we've done it that many times now, and knowing all the climbs and the Bergs, the Paderberg, Koppenberg, Quaremont, the moor. Unfortunately, I didn't go there this year, but yeah, that was exciting to watch that race from start to finish last night, and what an epic race it was to see what happened to Alaphilippe and Van Aert. And who's Vanderpoel? Vanderpoel. Vanderpoel. My memory, just to see those three go at it and then to see Balafilip have that horrible crash and break his Arm or wrist or whatever. It was just epic. And, you know, this is a rivalry, a three way rivalry. And there's gonna be others as well that are gonna be, you know, on our, on our radar for the next three, five years, like Sagan and Jill Baer and than Avermaet were for the last sort of five, six years. So that's what's caught my attention. And it was epic, to say the least.

Definitely. I want to touch on the Tour of Flanders because it is, it is now our favorite race to watch. And that's why we both stayed up last night to 1am watching the whole thing live, because it was just so exciting. But I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on the guy who we spoke about a lot over the last couple of months, especially at the Tour, Peter Sagan. What's been happening with him?

Well, I've got to say I was beside myself with excitement to see him in the Giro win a stage solo. It was, I think, one of the best five stages I've ever watched of a Tour and even a one day race. It was exceptional. And we've seen some spectacular one day wins with Gilbert winning Flanders and Cancellara and Boonen and winning races that are epic one day races. But Sagan has been in such poor form. He's been criticized from pillar to post. He's tried his guts out from the Tour through to the, you know, the period between the World Championships and finally joining into the Giro, which he never does, and just struggling to, you know, to get anywhere on the podium and got thirds and seconds and can't sprint like he used to sprint. He's just been basically bagged. And we did talk about this probably three or four podcasts ago about getting yourself in the right preparation, the right form at the right time. And that's the key thing that we did mention. Look, his preparation for the Tour wasn't ideal, and he didn't spend a lot of time on the trainer like the rest of the world was doing during the lockdown because he just didn't enjoy that. And I think it really affected his Tour a lot. He didn't get the outcome that he wanted to because everybody was ahead of him. And this is pretty much what we've been talking about at the start of this podcast is, you know, picking your race and making sure that you get prepared for that particular day. And I would say Sagan's form is the best it's been right now. And, you know, had there been, you know, Milan San Remo and Paris Roubaix in the next few weeks or the world titles. I think you'd see a different Sagan in these events and even the Tour. He probably at the moment in the Tour de France, he would probably have won the green jersey in the form he's in now compared to what he was in during the Tour. And from a coaching point of view, it's so difficult to get that peak and get your form right for that short period that you can hold form. And here we are again seeing someone who's got it wrong, but there's another few races that they can have another go at. And what an unbelievable race he rode. And he was, you know, he was on a course that suited a lot of hill climbers. And look, let's face it, he's not a hill climber, he's a sprinter. And yet he rode away from a bunch of seven or eight guys in his breakaway who were much better hill climbers than him. The determination he had to, the resolve that he had in his mental approach to that stage was, it was just, it had spine, spine tingling for me to see someone with 17k to go, you know, do an ella Felipe almost, which it really was. Do a saggin, which is hold, hold a bunch, a chasing bunch at between 10 and 20 seconds for 17K, you know, that's one person riding against 17 of the best riders in the world and stay away. That was incredible. So, so I just take my hat off to him and, and congratulate, you know, everything he's done about, about resurrecting, never giving up, showing the naysayers that he's not done with yet. It's so exciting for the sport.

I agree. And I think out of his ridiculous 91 or 110 career wins or whatever it is, that would be one of his most special with how hard it's been for him to get there and to defy everyone. That said he was done. It was pretty special.

What caught my attention, if you get a chance. Sorry, I was just gonna say if you didn't see that stage and you get a chance, watch the replay. It is one. It's really. If you're sitting on the ergo on a recovery day, you just want to watch something that's inspiring. Absolutely. Put that on.

It was like a one day classic inside a Grand Tour. It was unreal.

It was, yeah. So what's caught your attention?

Yeah, I was going to say what's caught my attention, which is actually good timing because of the Tour of Flanders last night, but I was thinking about this Last week, before the Tour of Flanders and last two weeks ago, I did my first ever Zwift race. So I'm more of a runner and not a rider. I only ever ride to kind of do a bit of cross training or get a break from running. But I bit the bullet and did my first ever Zwift race, which was, I have to say, so much fun. I can see why it's so addictive. It was actually one of the most enjoyable things I've done in a while, especially I've been able to do any running races or anything. I just couldn't believe how fun it was. But I wrote down a note to say to you, how the hell do you sprint your sprint at the end? What are the tactics behind it? Because I was, I was totally lost in the big bunch sprint at the end. And it's funny that with the Tour of Flanders last night, it came down to a really tactical man versus man sprint between Van Aert and Van der Poel. And I don't think anyone predicted Van Aert to lose. Yeah, I actually texted and said, who's going to take it? And you said van Aert. And I said same. I don't think he's going to. I can't see him losing. And then Van der Poel outsmarted him. So just briefly touch on for me and maybe for listeners some tactics about sprinting because you've won a lot of sprint races in your time.

Well, first of all, isn't it great that during a lockdown you can find something that you can actually look forward to and you know, by you adapting to Zwift cycling, you know, it's just given you a whole new lease of life. And that's one of the things that we really pushed on our athletes from March was when there's nothing available, let's, let's invent something. And you know, we've pretty much done that since then. And as you just experienced, because you've been actually commentating on our races all through this period and you actually got to do one. And you can understand why people, you know, people lining up to do, to do these events because there's nothing else there. So it is something to really aspire to.

But explain what that means to our non tribala listeners. We run a private tribalo race for our tribal athletes and we've been doing every Thursday and because I don't join in, I've been commentating them, which has been pretty fun. And we upload the replay for our tribalo athletes to watch, which is really good fun, but I finally joined in one and I don't think I'll go back to commentating. I can't wait for the next one.

Well, ironically, your uncle commentated this one, Paul Rouse, and it looks like whoever's injured has to be taking over the commentary role. So Paul actually got broken ribs, so he's now doing the commentary. But we're getting right off the topic here, but how do you sprint and such a great question. And one of the sessions we do in our program is specifically based around sprint practice. And I'll use the example. Jordan, your brother was. Liam, your brother was also joining in on Zwift and I had him doing one of the sessions where he had to do some sprint practice and he was pretty proud of himself, pushing 700 or 750 watts in his 10 second sprint efforts. And then I said to him, the race you did on the weekend, when you got to the sprint, you pushed 420 watts. What's going on there? And he said, oh, I thought I was pushing way more watts than that, but it was after riding at that intensity and then trying to sprint is a completely different thing. Just sprinting when you're fresh. And you know, we're all very heroic sprinting with fresh legs, but there's very few events that you will ever do in club racing, state racing, national or professional elite racing where you're sprinting fresh. You know, Flanders was 257k and then they're pushing out, you know, 14, 1500 watts for the last 175 meters. And you know, that takes an incredible amount of fitness to do that, to sprint at your best, whether you've ridden 5k or 250. And the person who can sprint closest to their PB is the person who's going to win. And that's something we want to practice a lot in our training. Sprinting when we're tired, not sprinting when we're fresh. So a lot of the sessions we do, we have a hard Tuesday and then a relatively easy Wednesday where we're riding tempo. But in that session we're doing sprint practice because we're still tired from the day before. So you still got that fatigue in your legs. So you get a little bit of a feeling of sprinting with tired legs. And that is the key to improving your sprint, is to practice sprinting when you are actually not feeling fresh. And look, the bunch rides that we do on a, and most people do around Australia, around the world on a Saturday, if you've done an endurance Bunch ride where you've been out for two or three hours, have a sprint at the end to a signpost or to a traffic light or to something just at the end of that ride, you know, where everybody's exhausted and see the difference from the people who are really good sprinters when they're fresh and the people who are not so good sprinters because of, you know, they've got maybe 130k in their legs. So really, to answer the question, it is practicing it all the time, practicing it when, when you're tired, practicing it in events. And I often say to someone, you know, at the end of that criterium, you were mid pack. I didn't notice at the end that you sprinted. And the answers always come back, well, what's the point? What am I sprinting for? I'm just saying you're sprinting for the next time that you're going to win. You're practicing sprinting now for when you'll get an opportunity. Imagine if you're never in a winning position, but in five years of criterium racing and then one day you get to sprint for the win. If you had practiced five years with the sprints, whether you were coming 40th, 70th or 15th, when that one day comes, you will have five years with the practice sprinting in races, tired, and know when to launch your attack. If you're a person who needs 300 meters from the finish or a person who needs 75 meters from the finish, you've practiced all those scenarios. So that's the thing that I keep saying to people. Use every opportunity to practice what one day will enable you to win a race. And, you know, if people could just think about that in their training, because the training is there so that when race day comes, you've already had that experience in training and you can actually execute what you've done that many times in training that, you know, I've got to go. You know, it takes me ages to warm, warm my sprint up. I've got to go long or I've got such a great jump I can leave it to the last minute. So I practice going from, you know, 200 watts to 900 watts in the space of five pedal revolutions. You know, some people are really good at that. So, you know, understanding your timing for your sprint, and you can do this on Zwift all the time. Practice, you know, and I guarantee Jordan, the next three or four races you do, you'll start to work out what suits you better in your sprinting. Are You a long sprinter or a short sprinter? And looking at Van Aert last night, I definitely think he made a mistake. And Van der Poel made the right tactic by not sprinting till 170 or 150, whereas Van Aert should have sprinted from 220, because by the time they got to the line, Van Aert was riding faster than Van der Poel, but he'd run out of, run out of room. So that tactic didn't work for him. And Sean Kelly picked it. You know, if, if Van Aert sprints short, he'll lose. If Van der Poel sprints short, he'll win. And that's exactly what happened. So knowing what your capabilities are is really crucial to the outcome of, and knowing who your opposition is, obviously. And those two guys have ridden against each other since juniors. So I would have loved to have seen Alaphilippe in that sprint to see, you know, what was going to happen there. Because, remember, Milan San Remo, Van Aert beat Alaphilippe in the sprint. So, you know, you would think he could, he could do that again. So, yeah, to answer your question, it's just a whole combination of things that you will actually pick up as you start doing more and more practice sessions.

As always, I'll keep the listeners updated on my sprinting prowess. I'm sure everyone's enthusiastically awaiting more sprint results. That brings me to another point, though, that you talk about a lot. And in terms of the triathlon scene in triathletes, the similar sort of concept is that you can't sprint as well when you're tired in cycling, you can't run as well after a swim and a ride. And you say that so much and you often say to people, I don't care what your best half marathon is fresh, I want to know what it is in a time trial. Because the better triathlete you are, the closer those times will be whether you do it fresh or you're in a triathlon. And the less experienced you are, the bigger that gap is, right?

Yeah. And that's just before we go to the triathlon, just on the cycling, sprinting as close to your PB when you're tired. That's exactly the point you're making, which we're going to talk about for triathletes, but for cyclists, say your PB10 second power in a sprint might be 1000 or 900 or 700 watts or 500 watts, or if you're, you know, Cavendish, 1500 watts, something like that. If, if you can sprint close to that at the end of a 90k road race or 150k road race or a 250k road race, you're going to win the closer you are to your pb. Sprint fresh when you're tired. And I've got examples from my own career where I've had a 10 second PB in the biggest race, the national titles and it was within 40 watts of my best PB sprinting. And you know, there's no wonder you win the sprint because you're, instead of sprinting it, you know, 700 watts. When your PB is 1100, you're not probably you're going to be an also packed sprinter. But if you can sprint tired at 950 or 1000 watts and your PB's 1050, you're probably going to win most races. And so, so taking that to a triathlete, you know, we've got a great example, your uncle Paul Rouse, who's you know, just pick his numbers apart and it was a great exercise for me to go through his history. In the last sort of two or three years from 2016, his best half marathon was a 131, which is for, you know, nearly a 60 year old is pretty good running. And in a triathlon, his best half marathon in a triathlon was 132. Yeah, and it's no wonder he won almost every race in a triathlon that he was in because you know a, there's not a lot of 60 year old who can run 130, you know, 1, 1 hour 30. Most of them are running between 1 hour 30 and 2 hours 10 at that age and slower. But if you can run close to your fresh half marathon or Marathon or 10K, whatever event you're doing in a triathlon, if you're, if you're doing sprint, it's a 5k, if you're doing an Olympic, it's a 10k. If you're doing half Ironman, it's a 21k. If you're doing a marathon, if you're doing an Ironman, it's a marathon. So the closer you can get to your PB is you're going to be at the pointy end of your results every time and you will smash PBS week in, week out, race in, race out by really working on that aspect of your, of your running. And look, it's the same with swimming, it's the same with your riding. The closer you can be to your FTP depending on the distance of the event, the better athlete you're going to be, you're going to be on the podium in your age group if you can ride closer to your 100% FTP or closer to your meterage per 100 meter pace in the pool and your PB for whatever event it is as a runner for 10k for half an hour marathon or marathon, the closer you are to your fresh PBS for all those events, you're going to be pretty hard to defeat in any race that you do.

Perfect. On that note, let's get into today's topic and talk about races and talk about racing specifically. So like we said at the start, with racing's racing season pretty much coming back now and a lot of us looking forward to race goals somewhere in 2021, talk me through the process that you go through in your own head when you're deciding whether a goal is appropriate for an athlete or if you're going to try and persuade them potentially against a goal or tell them that it's not a good idea because there's a few aspects to this where one, I've heard you say the term a lot. You need to respect the event that you're going to do and that's one aspect. But what are some of the decision making factors and things that you really bring to an athlete's attention when deciding to pick a race?

It's a really good topic to discuss and we have touched it on over the journey here and there but now that it seems like in Australia and probably the rest of the world's going the other way where things are closing down because they're starting to have second and third waves of the pandemic but Australia is definitely heading in the right direction compared to the rest of the world. So we're actually, you know there's already states in Australia, Queensland and Wa that that have been holding races, you know the majority of this last sort of two, two months anyway so. But the rest of Australia is going to catch up in New South Wales and Victoria and Tasmania and South Australia in the Northern Territory are all going to be pretty much being out of you know, run races as normal. So so you know everybody's in that position again of all right it's like a clean slate. What am I going to select and and it was ironic that Port Mac opened and closed within the one day Port Mac's in May next year 2021 and just like it used to be when you know, Ironman was just so popular. I remember Melbourne, Ironman opening and closing in five minutes. It was full in five minutes and it was near impossible to get into the race, and that's where we're at now. We've. We've not had races, and now we've got the opportunity that looks like next year will be, you know, unless something goes backwards again with the pandemic, it looks like we're going to have a whole smorgasbord of races. So how do you go about that? And there's so many different reasons why people end up selecting things. And, you know, it could be that you've wanted to do this. And I was actually on a bunch ride on the weekend, and we happened to talk about the Melbourne to Warrnambool, and the guy I was riding with, we both did the melbourne to Warrnambool this year, and we both had really different experiences. He had mechanical crashing incidents, and I managed to get through and get to the finish okay. And he was saying, oh, you know what a great race that is. And I said, it is a fantastic race. I've tried to do that race for nearly 25 years. And here I am at 62, lining up for the melbourne to Warrnambool, which is one of the hardest cycling races I've ever done in my life. And what am I doing at this age lining up against NRS riders who are between 17 and 25. We're in the same bunch. We start together, we race together. And here I am doing a race that I should have done 30 years ago when I was the same age. But, you know, most people would have said to me, well, that's ridiculous. Goal at your age, what do you think is going to happen? And I just had a different mindset that day. It was, I wanted to enter the event and I wanted to finish it. That was pretty much the focus I had. And Cam asked me where I came, and I said, I think I was fourth in C grade, but it just didn't matter to me. I would have loved to have won C grade or B grade or whatever race event I was in, but the satisfaction for me crossing that line didn't matter where I came. The preparation I put into that race was totally focused on finishing. And, you know, lots of things happened during that 6 hours 58 during that day where I had periods of good periods, shocking periods, battling through some cramps, some dehydration, and coming back and eventually getting to the finish line. And it was very emotional to finish after going through such a really tumultuous day and period of training. Over six months of really, really, you know, putting myself through some massive training Sessions and the reward was fantastic. And now that's the example I'm saying now is, you know, you can pick any event you want. That's what I'm saying to everybody out there. There's nothing that anybody can do to stop you. You can select the most difficult and people might say the stupidest event that you know, you know, the Ironman was, was an event that guys thought up in a bar. You know, one was a swimmer, one was a rider and one was a runner. And they all reckon they were better and fitter athletes than each other. So they wanted to test each other by putting the three events together to see who, who would eventually win. And you know, it's just one of those big notary events and it's taken off. Who would have thought from 1970 to now that it would be such a popular event? A real box ticker, bucket list ticker. And so, you know, we do get lots of different applications for an Ironman from people who've never run more than 50 minutes or ridden more than 30k or swam more than 500 meters entering the Ironman. And you know, I'm never going to say that's a bad idea. It's a bad idea if you're not prepared to do all the things that I'm going to ask you to do. It's an okay idea if you're happy to go through what's, what's going to be between now and race day and be prepared on race day to execute. So there is no goal that's ridiculous or wrong. So let's get that right out there. So select something that you've had your eyes set on that you want to do that. It might be a bucket list thing, I don't care. It's, it's what you want to do. So, so have a crack at doing it. You know, the examples would be obviously the Ironmans for next year, half Ironmans, Olympic distance in triathlon, you know, Gran fondos as a cyclist, Three Peaks, which is unbelievably difficult event for most people. It's between seven and a half for the good riders and 14 hours for the, for the beginner riders. And you've got, you know, that many other gran fondos all over the world, like we've done like, you know, Tour of Flanders. There's such bucket list things that are still massive days. You know, you've experienced both Roubaix and Flanders of five plus hours over some of the toughest terrain in the world. And the satisfaction you got finishing those events even Though you were actually reasonably under prepared for it as a cyclist, you've been training as a runner, but you still managed your day because you understood and respected everything about that event. And you didn't take it for granted that I've got this at any stage, because the minute you start thinking that is the minute you're gonna, you know, you're gonna actually have a poor outcome. And it could be literally 10k from the finish after you've done, you know, 170k and it all falls apart at the end. And so they're the things that to start with is selecting an event. Obviously you select something that's going to suit you better. That would be the first thing I would be pinpointing. But, you know, we've already talked about some of the selection goal races over the past where people, very heavy guys picking, you know, hilly courses and that's not the best outcome for you, but yeah, have a crack. Absolutely. This is the time to select what you want to do. And there's a whole lot of processes we go through which. Which is probably what we should be talking about next.

Yeah, definitely. Some great points you raised in there. One of the key ones that stands out to me is that no goal is, quote, unquote, stupid. It's just whether you're willing to do the work. And we actually just recorded a podcast which is being released next week with elite marathon runner Dane Verway. And a topic Dane touched on was that his goals need to really alight him, you know, and really motivate a fire inside him. And it doesn't matter if the goal is really hard, if it really motivates you to do the work, work to get there, it's going to be worth it. But if you're just picking the goal and you're actually going to do the work, which happens a lot, you know, you see a lot of people sign up for a marathon or something like that, and then suddenly 10 weeks out they actually haven't ran. And that's making it really hard on yourself to get through the goal. And like, the example you just used was a podcast we did a couple of months ago where the title was how 100 kilogram cyclist became an Ultimate Hill Climber. And that was one of the heavy athletes that you coached came to you and said, I want to get fitter and lose weight and become a hill climber and complete this epic hill climb race. And he did. So again, no goal is unattainable as long as you're willing to do the work. And that story was a perfect example of that, if you haven't listened to that podcast. But like you just said, talk me through some of the biggest factors that you need to consider. And I think one of the ones I wanted to start on asking you is considering your level of ability. So the difference in what you have to consider, if you're an absolute beginner and for example, you've never done a triathlon, like those examples we said you said before of people who have never really ran or ridden that far, and then signing up to an Ironman, compared to if you're a more experienced triathlete, picking some of these goals.

Yeah, it's a, it's a really good, good topic and one that really needs to be understood. And, and the person who's got experience, that is a really significant advantage against the beginner. And there's so many things that experience enables you to do, not only in your preparation, but on race day. So the beginner has none of that. He has none of the failures, none of the successes. He just has anxiety about the decision he's made, whether it be being talked into it by his mates or whatever the reason he's selected, it doesn't really matter, but that's the selection he's made. And, you know, we can talk about, we'll use the Ironman as an example, but there's plenty of other, you know, races that you could, you could be thinking off the top of my head. The Everesting in cycling has become a massive thing where, where you can do an Everest on Zwift, you can do an Everest on your local hill. And for those who have never heard of what Everesting is, it's basically on a bike climbing the same meterage as Mount Everest. And, you know, Contrador did it on a smart trainer, and I think it took him, I don't know, eight hours or something. And the majority of everyday cyclists might take 12 to 14 hours to do the. I think it's 8,000 meters of climbing, but, you know, I'm taking 24. Yeah, yeah, but that's something that's great to say, I'm going to Everest, but, you know, let's just have a think about what, what preparation you need to do for that. And it's great to say I'm going to do the Ironman, but did you realize that it had a marathon in it? Did you realize that it's 180k ride? Did you realize that it's nearly a 4k swim? You know, I'm picking three peaks. Did you realize there's 4,500 meters of climbing in three peaks and it's 245k and it could possibly take you 12 hours. They're the things that I want to make sure before we take the next step in our program is that you understand the requirements of the event that you've selected and do you actually respect that? This is no walk in the park. And that's why we've picked goals that are hard, because we want to push ourselves and test ourselves and see how we cope. That's what goal setting is. Picking something that's out of your reach or out of your comfort zone. And, you know, they're the things that get us up in the morning or make us stay in bed because we're just losing the plot or we haven't got the right mindset. So really understanding what the decision you've just done is going to mean for you going forward between the day you sign up for that and come race day. And, you know, I know already the people who sign up for Port Mac during the week, you know, if I was that person who signed up for Port Mac, I would be searching for every possible assistance that I could get that's going to help me along that journey. And, you know, talking to people who've done it before, aligning yourself with other people who have experienced it so that you're getting as much information and feedback. The motivation to train would be incredibly good at that point. And that's all the initial stuff that happens. You know, you're gleaning information. You're like a sponge. You just, you know, you just want to hear a story from someone else who's done the Ironman and you can't get enough information from them. It's, you know, tell me more, tell me, you know, how did you feel? What preparation did you do? How much training did you do? How long did you take for each leg? You know, how many weeks or months did you put in beforehand? How much time should I have between now and race day? Should it be two months? Should it be eight months? Now all these are the questions that you've got. You know, how much riding should I do in my program each week, each day, each session? How much running should I do? Should I be running fast? Should I be running slow? There's just, you know, should I swim open water? Should I just swim in the pool? Should I join a squad? Should I, should I run with a running squad? There's just hundreds and hundreds of questions that are, that are spinning around in your mind and you're just getting so confused with it all. And that's a good thing because already if you're thinking like that, that means you're respecting the requirements. If you're not thinking like that, you're possibly not going to do any of the work and you're possibly not going to enjoy the process from when you just signed up this week to race day. The whole thing's going to be hard work. Not that the training isn't hard work, but if you don't have the right respect and mindset, the whole process is going to be a chore and unenjoyable. And when you come to race day, I guarantee it won't be fun either. Not that it's, it's easy for those who are well prepared, it's still a tough day. But the mindset's completely different. You know, they've got a job to do and they're hell bent on achieving it. Whereas the person who's just picking an event with no respect for it or care or understanding of the requirements, the whole process is going to leave them where they'll possibly never run or ride or swim again. They may, they may end up being, you know, just a one event wonder and put them off forever. Or they could be the opposite going, I totally stuffed that up. I'm never doing that again. I'm now, now going to pick another goal and I'm going to do it properly. So, you know, you do learn more from the mistakes than you do from your victories, but they're the things that I think you should be focusing on right now. If you haven't made that decision of what event you're going to choose, these are the things you should consider. What do you want to achieve yourself personally as an athlete? And I'm often asking you and many people that I'm what's next for you? You've achieved a sub whatever time in a half marathon or a marathon, whatever your goal was, what's next? You've ticked that box. What are you thinking about next? And if you're not thinking like that, you're not moving forward. In my opinion, you need to be always considering, but you know, at the same time enjoy the spoils of what you just achieved, but then reassess and, you know, think again, what's next? And so it is a big process from deciding what is next for you. And now we're right at that particular point as to what do we want to do with the next six months or 12 months of our fitness or our you know, it's our passion, isn't it? Whatever we love doing. You know, what's this particular event that I think that would really get me focused and motivated in training? And don't forget, it doesn't have to be an event. It can be. I want to, I want to be able to ride with my group on a Saturday and not be dropped. I want to actually want to have some say in the outcome of what happens and put some hurt on people. I don't want to be a follower, I want to be a leader. I want to be an instigator in the bunch of. I want to improve. I want to lose weight and be lighter on the climbs. I want to be stronger. I want to be able to sit at the coffee shop and have someone say, far out, Jordan, you killed it today. That feeling of someone saying that out loud is so rewarding. And that's not why you do it. It's a personal satisfaction, but it also helps with your journey.

Yeah, that last one's a really good point because it's actually a really common thing to happen in a bunch is that when you're improving, someone will say to you, whoa, you're improving. And whoa, where have you come from? And it's actually a good, for us, it's a good, tangible measurement of someone's improvement when they're coming up and say, oh, my bunches has seen the improvement in me. It's really good external reward.

Yeah. And some of the people say, well, I can't tell by the data whether the bunch ride was fast or not or whether I was going well. But the people in the bunch can always tell how well you're going and, and that's often better than the data. You know, a lot of the bunch rides can be affected by wind, by rain. The Bunch could have 40 people in it in one week and could have six in it the next week. Yet you really rode well. And with six people and with 40 people that you rode much faster. Obviously the bunch rides faster with more people. So, you know, things like that aren't good measurements. But, but for having people tell you that far out, you are strong today, that's such a rewarding comment to hear from both the coach and from the athlete's point of view.

Definitely, definitely. So what sort of. This is an open ended question, but what expectations do you want athletes to be really clear on heading into a certain event and the complexity or the difficulty of the event makes a difference, but. And even use yourself as an example. Well, what expectations do you have on yourself when you pick such a hard event like Melbourne to Warrnambool or Three Peaks? And what, what kind of expectations are you making sure an athlete is really clear on when they pick anywhere from an Olympic goal to a half Ironman or Ironman goal?

Yep. I think the initial conversation is around to start with, you know, how much time have you given yourself between now and race day? And you know, if race day is in February and we're discussing this in October, it's not a real. I'm talking Ironman as an example or the Melbourne to warnable and they're similar, you know, Melbourne to warn up seven hours on the one in the one discipline the Ironman can be between, you know, eight hours for the elite to 14, 16 hours for the, for the novice. So are you giving yourself enough time to prepare? That's the very first question that I'm going to ask everybody. And in an ideal world, we want to have more time. Remember, you know, you've got to have been able to practice if you're doing the Melbourne to Warrnambool, that many rides that are between four and seven hours, you know, if you've got 16 weekends between now and then and you've only ever ridden, you know, I'm talking ridiculous here. If you've only ridden, the longest you've ridden is 100k and you've entered the Melbourne to Warrnambool, you know, it's a pretty unachievable probably event to go into. But if we, if you chose Three Peaks and you're still only, you know, I have coached people who didn't, who hadn't, you know, had never ridden up the 1 in 20 without stopping, which is a local event, a local course in Melbourne in the Dandenongs, it's a, you know, between a 15 minute and 25 to 30 minute climb, depending on your ability. I've coached someone who's done a three peaks, whose first ride he couldn't get up the one in 20. So he's going from a 30 to 40k rider to 245ks. And you know, the longer time he gives himself, the better prepared he's going to be. But if he doesn't have time and he's picked the event too late, then we have to deal with the time that we've got. So you have to be prepared once you've selected the time frame and you're the one who selected that because you've come to get the coaching assistance with 12 weeks or 18 or 36 or 50 weeks. So if you've come to me with 12 weeks, you're going to have to work extremely hard in that 12 weeks compared to someone who can spread the load out and what comes with that illness, injury, fatigue, all these things are going to be major factors in the outcome that you're going to come experience on race day. The person who's got a longer preparation will be able to have a load that's manageable for a spread out period of time.

To be clear on that part, if someone comes to you with 12 or 16 or 20 weeks to an extreme event, what you would, you would say to them it's really not realistically enough time, but you would help them if they're saying, well, I'm doing the event no matter what. I mean, you probably try and advise them against the event. Correct. But if they're saying I'm doing the event no matter what, can you help me? There's not, there's not a whole lot you can really do, is there?

No, the only thing I can actually do is say to them, are you prepared to give me as many hours as you possibly can between now and that time? And so that's the second part of what I said earlier. First of all, what time frame is it from now till race and then how much time have you got each week, each day, can you train six hours a week or can you train 20 hours a week? And somewhere in between is where people will land depending on what job, what family, what commitments they have. So if you pick a shorter time frame, from 12 weeks to 16 weeks for an Ironman or three peaks, then you need to understand the next thing. The second thing is how much time do you have each day or each week? That that has to be. The next topic is, well, we can probably do this, but we need to be training probably 12, 14, 16, 20 hours a week. Are you prepared to do that? And if they say yeah, no worries, then we've actually, you know, we're not as bad as the person who then says to me, well actually no, I've only probably got six hours a week and I want to do the Ironman. Oh, you know, okay, you're entered, you're going to do it. So we'll have to come up with a plan. And you know, we're running a marathon. We're riding nearly 200k and we're swimming nearly 4k. So how much preparation do you need for a marathon? Ideally you need six months for a marathon. That's on its own. If you want to Be well prepared. But now you're giving me 12 weeks and you're giving me six hours a week. So yes, we can still try to do the best we can in that time. But I'm all the time reminding the person about the decision they've made and the disrespect they're giving the event.

It's an extreme example. It is.

I have been faced with that, you know, that athlete who's asked for that to happen and got a little bit frustrated with me by trying to talk them out of it. But if that's what they want to do, then we try to manage the load accordingly. And look, if someone's giving you six to eight hours a week and they're trying to do an ironman, you know, on a weekend, by the time they get to week 13, 14, 15, they should all. All I can do is train on the weekend because they haven't enough time left to do anything else. So it is a real issue with the type of event you pick. With the time that you have from now to the event and the time you can train during the week, the time that you have available, you have to really understand. So I really focus the discussion based around those two things. And then the third thing is, well, how motivated are you to do the program that is going to be really, really time precious on your whole life between now and race day? And you've got a job, you've got a family, you've got all these commitments. You know, we don't want it to be end up in divorce, you know, from your work and from your family. We, you know, we've always spoken in a podcast about balance and not being extreme. And so that's the third type of conversation I have is are you going to upset the equilibrium of your life as it is right now? You know, is your family going to almost divorce you from, you know, because you're divorcing them from. Because you're taking all the time for yourself. So it is, you know, it is a very selfish decision to do this. So is everybody on board with it? And that that's something that you actually have to consider, you know, when you're making these decisions, who, you know, is it going to be something that's good for your family or for your work or for yourself, or is it going to be a negative impact on everybody? So there's times and places for big goals, there's times and places for smaller goals. And, and that's where I try to direct people, is, you know, maybe don't let's not do an Ironman in 16 weeks. Let's do a half Ironman or an Olympic. Make that your goal and you know, then you can find out, you know, whether you like, like doing it, you know, but we still have the people. No, I'm entering the Ironman. That's what I want to do. But so, so they're the discussions we would have on this, on this topic. And, and it can, it can be quite heated at times because you they're contacting me for help, yet I'm giving them roadblocks as to why the selection they've made might not have been a very smart one. But at the end of the day, as I said at the beginning of this podcast, as long as you respect what the event is, you're prepared to do the work, you will be able to achieve the outcome. It may not be at a higher level than you probably expected, but, you know, at the end of the day, like I gave the example for the Melbourne to Warrnambool, you know, completing that event when you're riding against, you know, the best young riders in Australia and riding with them for, you know, 120k, it was just an achievement that I was interested in, just making sure that I got to the finish. And you know, I think there was, I don't know, 30, 40% of the riders who started, didn't finish or missed the cut off to get that little Melbourne to Warrnambool medal. And I've got millions of medals since I've been seven or eight years of age, ribbons and medals. And that Melbourne to Warrnambool is up there with my Iron Man Kona medal, you know, the Australian Ironman medal. They're those three medals and that's what it means to me. And so something like a goal like that, you know, I selected that goal 25 years ago and, you know, pretty much trained for that whole period before eventually I got a crack at it. And you know, one of the things that I tried to do all of my life was keep my fitness as high as possible so that I could pick an event without having to start from the beginning. Because when I selected the warning a year out, I was already where I wanted to be. All I had to do was lift for the extremeness of the warning, which meant adding, you know, lots more four, five, six hour rides into my, my weekly bunch ride, which were already four and a half.

I would really like to ask you about, I will ask you more in detail about that melan hornable day on another Podcast because it's a tough story and it was a really tough day for you. And I think everyone knows that one of your biggest strengths is your mental toughness and you're really challenged that day. So it'll be good to dive into that. What you said in there about respecting the event also plays into that means you have to understand there is a minimum requirement required in the training to get to that event. And there is minimal things that you need to do if you're going to get your body prepared for the event that you've chosen. And something you said in there would actually shock a lot of people. I know, it shocked me when you first were talking to me about marathon training and preparation. And just then you said, if you're preparing for Melbourne to Warnie, you know, it's a seven hour event, you need to be doing multiple four to seven hour rides. And that would actually be a shock to a lot of people because you think, well, I do my bunch ride on Saturday, that's enough, three or four hours. And you're saying, no, it needs to be five, six, seven hours, which can seem a little bit over the top or unnecessary. And I know the first time you were teaching me about marathon training and you explaining that you get your athletes to do three, four hour, really long, slow runs and I said that's extreme, isn't it? Because they're basically going to be running a marathon in training and you're saying, well, how, how else do they expect their body to be prepared for it? You know, I just assumed that a two hour run or eventually maybe a two and a half hour run would suffice. And you're saying, no way. And that's a, that's a factor that you have to consider, isn't it? That you know, if you're going to be doing this event in race, you actually need to be practicing these sort of distances in training. And a lot of people actually wouldn't expect that.

Yeah. And that's the next conversation we have on that initial contact is they're so eager to find out what sort of things should I be doing in my program. And I'm saying, you know, the three things that we base our whole emphasis around is consistency, which is, you know, the frequency of your training, the duration, which is, you know, building an overload process over the period of 12, 20, 30 weeks. And the intensity is final. The final piece of the jigsaw is the intensity. So the consistency is one of the key things in any goal setting program that you select. If you don't have consistency. It doesn't matter how hard you train, you're still not going to get to the start line as good as a person who trains consistently. And we all, we've already talked about it today about being moderate in everything, not extreme. So if you can consistently train six, seven days a week, missing very few sessions compared to the person who trains absolutely flat out for three or four days, we've talked about this many times. The person who gets the consistent right will outperform the person who just trains flat out for short periods of bursts. So really we're just honing in on that aspect of the program. Just be moderately consistent in your execution of a day to day program, week to week, month to month. Just tick the boxes off, do the required sessions and not have periods where you've missed three, four, five sessions and have the mentality, I've stuffed this week up, I'll just start again on Monday. Don't think like that. I've stuffed whatever I've stuffed up, which might be two days, I need to start now, I need to catch the next session now and not wait till next Monday because that just breeds inconsistency. So one of the first things we teach our athletes is trying to get green on. For example, training peaks is green means you've done the session correctly and we try to get that in our program each day. We don't want to see any reds, which means you haven't done it, or oranges, which means you've half done it. So, so we try and instill the consistency aspect into, into everything we do. And as you know, when, when I put in front of you, you're going to ride six hours, four times before you do this Ironman. And you're also going to run possibly two hours in the morning and up to an hour or two hours in the afternoon. You're just going to look at me saying, are you kidding? But that's the requirements. If you're a person who's going to actually run four hours on race day or possibly four and a half in the Ironman and you've only trained for 90 minutes or two hours, you're going to go well in the race for 90 minutes or two hours because that's what your body's been adapted to. So you have to experience in training what's going to happen on race day. Um, so you know, if you don't do it in training come race day, it's brand new and your body's not been through that journey. If you haven't ridden more than three hours and come race day you actually ride six, you're possibly not going to run at all. Yeah, so, so there's so many factors that you have to. When we say respect the event, you have to respect the training program. If you're not willing to do that, then you're going to be well short come race day.

That's a kind of good way to finish. And when you talk about the extreme nature of some of the aspects of a training program, when it's an extreme event, you're doing, you doing an Ironman, doing a half Ironman, doing endurance events, they're extreme events. But the whole training program is an extreme. And that's a really important point to remember when you, when you talk about these requirements, you know, from start to finish of a 30 week program, it's not extreme training the whole time. You're not doing for Melbourne and Warrnambool, you're not doing four to seven hour rides every weekend for 30 weeks straight. You're doing it at certain periods. There's certain periods of the training program that are really hard and then there's sections that are easy and so it's not crazy intense the whole time. But it just means that when it's time to do those things for that short period where it's two weeks or four weeks, you do it then. And the other times you manage the program.

That's a great point to make. And most people say we've got two types of people here. We've got the person who's motivated so well, they've picked up a really good time frame. They're prepared to put whatever hours in for preparation and they just go about it that I love that athlete, but that athlete's the hardest one to coach almost because they're too motivated, they train too much, they don't recover enough, they think they have to do six hours every single ride with the maximum intensity and they end up riding themselves into the ground. And you know, we've got some Ironman triathletes doing exactly the same thing, just training way too hard and not recovering enough. There are periods just like you said, where we need to do those endurance long days where we've got, you know, possibly a six or seven hour day. But we progress our way from the program, through the program by, you know, I said at the start, frequency, duration, intensity. So we keep the consistency going, which is the frequency and then we slowly build the duration. If the furthest you've run is 30 minutes, we're not going to start you in an ironman program at two hours, we're going to start you at 30 minutes and build you to 40 to 50 to 60 over a progress period of weeks. And the same with the bike. If you've never ridden more than 100k, your first ride is not going to be 180k. You know that that might happen 16 weeks into the program. So the duration goes along with the consistency. And as you get fitter, then you can start doing the intensity. And they're the three things that are the basis of every program. And if you don't respect what the consistency and frequency is and you just try and do hard sessions all the time from the beginning, you're going to be left short. You're going to get incredibly fatigued. You could get sick and you could injure yourself. So at the end of the day, these are the things that gonna. How unlucky was I? I got sick. How unlucky, I got injured. How unlucky? I just got this real fatigue. Well, no, it's purely because you've managed your program in a horrible method. And that comes back to respecting that. You can't just have it in a minute. It takes six months, or it takes three months, or it takes nine months. And you have to think of the big picture all the time. I can't go from being a really good 180k rider from a 60k rider. It's going to take me months to get to become a good hundred k rider than 120k rider, then 150. The same with the marathon. I can't just go and run 30k when the furthest I've run is 10. If you did that, you'd be out of action for three weeks with such soreness. And so we progressed from 10k to 12 to 15 to 20 over a period of months. That sounds very obvious to everybody. Why the hell do people continue to do. What I just said is not what you do. And that's, that's why people, once they've got a glimpse of how a program can really help them, then they'll never turn back and, and the old ways are gone. But it might take years for people to actually comprehend that, that that is the method that's going to work. It is going to work every time. The other method, there's going to be some unlucky thing happen to you, which is not unlucky, it's predictable. The thing that's going to happen to you is very predictable.

I think we'll wrap up there. That's a good way to. There's a lot to think about. There's a lot. There's a lot to consider in that. Especially with racing season coming up, we're hoping that that can help you make decisions that will either help you get through a program better or make you pick a goal that will light the fire inside you, but also is something that is appropriate to your situation at the moment. So that's it from us for this episode. Thank you very much for listening, as always. If you want to get more information, you can go to getfastpodcast.com you can join our email list there. And that's the best way to get access to our Tribalo coaching training programs to help you train smarter and race faster. That's it for this episode. Thanks, dad, for joining me. We'll see you next time.