How To Peak Properly For Your Next Race

You're getting it wrong. You know, there's still more time for things to evolve and I'm not talking about gaining fitness, I'm talking about reducing fatigue.

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 Trivelo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. This episode is also brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant Australia for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life, ride Giant. How do you make sure you are peaking perfectly in time for your race? You've selected your goal event, you've done all the training and hard work, but how do you know if you'll be in ideal shape come race week and more importantly, race day? We're answering that question in today's episode. Dad, welcome back to another episode. We've got heaps to talk about today. From the UCI World cycling today to the upcoming World Athletics champs and of course the main topic peaking. Welcome in.

Thanks, Jordan. Yeah, great to have another really topical topic because it's really important when things like the world Champs are on and that can filter down to masters age group racing as well. Peaking is such a difficult thing to get right and I can't wait to discuss it.

A normal starting segment. What are you grateful for?

Yep, really nothing to do with sport. I could go on about. I'm in week 14 but I won't of my comeback. The fact that I keep getting dropped in races that I'm entering on Zwift is kind of disheartening, but that's to be expected as you progress through the journey. So my gratitude has nothing to do with that. We've actually been in the middle of winter here in Melbourne, which is quite cold, not as cold as some places can get in the world. But our heater packed up three weeks ago so we do have my 90 year old mum staying with us for the last month. So I've been really desperate to get the house warm and finally the heater got turned on, the new heater got turned on today and. And it's so super technical. I can actually control every room in the house. Whereas our old heater was. It was just diabolical. Some of the rooms were freezing and other rooms were too hot and you couldn't really do much about it. Now I've got an actual house that funct fluently with controlling heat to turn rooms off now that all four children have left the house we don't need those rooms. So it's great. It's modern technology. I didn't think I could get across it when the guy started to explain it to me, but already I've got the phone app going and we're sitting here and I'm downstairs and the room down here was freezing 10 minutes ago. Now it's up to speed. It's brilliant.

Unreal. That's a good one. My gratitude, speaking about winter, is we just finished our Zwift winter series. Zwift Winter series every year. And as you know, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, it's a lot of fun. We have a yellow jersey competition. So it's a five race series when it's a handicap and then we do a point system. So first place we get 50 points, second 49, 48. And then you add up your whole points throughout the series. It's a real fun, exciting yellow jersey system. And anyone can wear the yellow jersey because scratch might not catch the front groups. And just grateful to see all the participation from tribal athletes. We had 78 riders take on start some races in this year's winter series. It was just so fun to see. I prefer to be racing, but I couldn't race this series. So it was really fun to watch anyway, it's so exciting to see the results each week, see the points adding up and then the next week see who. It's really important for certain groups to really make sure they do well to get maximum points and then to see the yellow jerseys at the end is just really fun. So grateful to watch that.

I must say, I have a hard time convincing people that it is A, you know how we talk about A races, B races and C races. These are definitely C races. They're all about fun and they're all about actually getting the goal out of the session, which is trying to ride for 30 minutes at threshold. That's actually the goal of doing a handicap race where you're not really riding over, under, you're trying to hold threshold. And as hard as I can try to convince people that the result doesn't really matter, that that's just not the way people take on this series. It's so competitive, people really wanting to know what their handicap is for this week and if they do well last week, am I, are you the handicapper, going to give them a better mark to make them improve or make it worse? So, you know, a couple of the scratch guys got up every, every week and we tried to get obviously as A handicap. You try to get everybody to the finish line together. That's the goal of a handicap. And you know, a couple of scratch guys were thinking, we're going to keep handicapping them out of the race. And we tried every week and they kept actually pulling their fingers out and riding harder every week and catching the front punch. So it was, you know, super coach Nick Lecandro actually won the A GR yellow jersey. And I did, we did everything we could to stop that happening. It was just too good. So it was a Matthew Vanderpoel effort.

Yeah, absolutely. No, it's a lot of fun. So what's caught our intention before we get into the topic of peaking, but it's all kind of related to what's caught our attention because we really want to chat about some of the major events that have been happening and we'll start with the UCI World Cycling Championships and we have two examples of our own athletes that went and competed in the, or try to compete in the masters age group. And we really want to tell these stories as anecdotes because there's both two really good lessons here in these athletes experience. So the first one, one athlete went all the way to Glasgow but didn't make it to the start line. So can you explain what happened and the decision making behind this?

Yeah, and frustrating experience to be preparing for an event for a long time, way back and doing everything right and ticking all the boxes and going, going to travel overseas and making the World Championships event his final destination in Glasgow and training in the Mediterranean and really doing some great climbing around, some epic climbs in Spain and France and just having the time of his life and really coming into the world titles in tip top form. Peaking as the topic is today and a week out getting as sick as he's ever been. Vomiting and diarrhea with, with some flu symptoms. Yeah, just amazing things going wrong and all. The whole family traveling with his family, wife and two kids. And the kids were in daycare and they come out with some bug from daycare and spread right throughout the family and you know, basically couldn't eat for two or three days. Just, you know, really the worst experience you can have five days out from something you've been preparing for and just having to go through that journey with him about what, what the best solution is. Can, can he still do the race? And of course he can still do the race, but my question was I don't know if he could make it because it wasn't like a course where it was out and back a Few times and a few loops like the actual elite race was, it was, I think it was 14 laps of a 10k loop or 10 laps of a 14k loop. Actually it was 10 laps of 14k lap. But the Gran Fondo for the Masters was one big loop. And if you actually, this came into a discussion to whether or not he should do the event because if he, it's 150, 160k in the Gran Fondo, if he got to 80 or 90k, he was actually the furthest point from, from home and no matter what he did, he was still going to have to ride 160k to get home. So, you know, not feeling 100%, he was nowhere near that. He was probably 5 out of 10 on the day of the event and he'd only really been able to eat food two days prior to the event and he'd lost three kilo and dehydrated as well as, as losing, you know, and he's obviously his, his energy levels were at all time low. So, so all the indicators are saying that, well, if you do do the race, what the, what the outcome is going to be is nothing more than average at best. Completing it would be the goal. He went there to come in the top 10, you know, to try and get in the top five. And you know, in his words, I want to win this thing and you know, so the expectation is not to go there and complete the event. That's what he could do any day and any Gran Fondo anywhere. So, so my advice, and having experienced that myself for some big A races where I'd had to withdraw or actually before I did do that scenario, I actually competed and competed poorly and asked myself after, when I did compete poorly, why did I put my, myself through that? And when, when I was putting that scenario to him, he really came up with the right decision, which was to, to not take part in the race and, and so disappointing to be traveling that, you know, and preparing for, you know, six to eight months out and then get to race week and you can't actually, can't actually do it. So I take my hat off to him. He didn't crack the shit. So he just really, he really just took it in his stride. He's devastatingly disappointed. But, but you know, there's, there's other, other things that he can, he's young, he can, he can front up again. And knowing that the World Gran Fondo Championships are going to be in his home state back in Australia in 2025 was a, was a Like a helpful scenario to think about to aim for that. So, yeah, look, yeah, it's almost a consolation. And you know, we had another, we had two other guys preparing for it.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a, just a really good lesson for everyone because I think nine out of 10 people would choose to race and it's really hard decision to say, no, I'm not racing. And yeah, you would just go, I'm in Glasgow, I've come all this way, I might as well just do it. But yeah, your advice was really against that for and for good reason. And I really loved his attitude because I just said to him, sorry to hear, like, it was pretty devastating for all the hard work you put in. And his response was just brilliant and exactly what we love on this podcast. And he said, well, I had a really good, I've had a really good fun holiday with my family. It's really good to be over here. Regardless, these things happen and we move on. And it was just such a good attitude. It wasn't what was me or you just appreciate what the, the trip for what it was. That's really great. But yeah, take us through the next, next couple of athletes. We had this. Yeah, we've kind of had a range of experiences here, which is really good to learn from.

Yeah. And look, Scotland's probably the furthest point from Australia and I should know, both my parents are Scottish and they caught a boat in 1958 to Australia and six weeks travel to get here. So I absolutely know that Scotland is the furthest point from Australia. So it is a long way to go. And one of our other gun athletes who's won four back to back individual time trial national titles, was planning to go, but things worked against him, you know, with work and family, so he had to make the decision a few weeks out that he wasn't going to go. So that's, that's an example also of a disappointment when, you know, the potential was that, that he would do very well there and you know, he's almost dealt with it the same way as, as Jacob did. So it was, it was, you know, tough again and, and we actually got Trevor to the, to the line, which was, which was, you know, one out of three. And we've said this on the, on the podcast so many times. You know, getting to the start line is something that's, it's not, you know, as an age grouper, there's so many things that can happen to us. You know, I could mention 10 things that would derail anybody's plans, you know, down to losing your bike or your bike not appearing, your luggage not appearing, your shoes are lost. You know, there's just minor things, your bike's broken, there's derailleur's broken. So many things can happen. Yeah, prevent you from actually taking part in the event. And anyway, Trevor got there which was, which was great and, and had the race of his life and you know, when I looked up the results, because obviously it was probably 11pm at night here for 10 or 11 in the morning in Glasgow and was waiting, desperately waiting to see what the times were coming up on the screen. And it's a live that shows you live tracking. So, so yeah, I'm always sitting there as a coach going, oh, how's it going to go? And, and it turns out he was, he missed out on second place by 16 seconds and first place was a minute and 10 seconds ahead of the rest of the field, which was quite strange to have someone that far ahead of the next five are all within 16 seconds of each other. And what a, what a great. My immediate reaction was look at his data, how did he perform? It was the fastest time in terms of speed, his average speed and his power was better than it had been, you know, for a long time. And, and, and he is a, you know, 66 year old, 65 year old athlete who's riding 42 and a half Ks an hour which is, you know, for those out there listening know how hard it is to ride above 40Ks an hour for a 30 minute time trial. So you know, Trevor's, he's, he's got every right to go and do a world championships and you know, to come in the top five in the world is, is pretty impressive. But he's so disappointed because he had a slight mechanical which was his chain dropped halfway through the ride which, you know, we saw Vanderpoel's crash and his cleat and his tightening mechanism come apart. You know, he would have lost 15, 20 seconds there with that. And Trevor's probably lost, we don't know, 10 to 20 seconds there, which, you know, what could have been, what should have been, that's racing. The thing that I'm trying to get across is we aren't defined by the result. It is a real, a real big bonus to get on the podium at the world titles. But if you execute the best you can, you do a pb, that's way more important in my opinion and it's easy for me to say that, but there's Been many events where I haven't actually won the race, and I've done a PB and I've been more happy than I have when I've won a race. So. So I'm a real advocate for, you know, if I've done the best I can and it wasn't good enough, regardless of the mechanical, that's just part of racing and can happen to anybody. So I'm really proud of, of all three guys attempting to go to the other side of the world and, and, and, you know, it wasn't to be for Trevor, but the experience was great and he'll be better for it. And his hunger is even, even more ferocious, I should say. And look, he's gone there as the Australian time trial champion, and his expectation would be that he would be. And he was. He was good enough to be, you know, second, third, or fourth, so. So fantastic efforts.

Yeah. Especially off the back of our time trial podcast last week, you know, we really spoke about, you know, where you can get performance gains. And it's incredible that we spoke about, you know, how many ways a time seconds can be gained or lost, and then to have second to fifth or within 16 seconds, just like what happens in the pros, it's unreal. And yeah, he might have gained a lot more time on them throughout the course and then lost that 15 or 20 seconds. I think when we're looking at the power, it almost looked like 30 seconds of power drop while that was getting fixed. So it's a long time to not be holding that top speed, but great lessons all around. I think it's really good. And we do want to touch on, kind of in line with the topic of peaking, how good van der Poel's performance was. And unfortunately, the women's race is on this Sunday, but this podcast will be released after that. But we won't be able to talk about it because we can't see the race yet. But van der Poel's form, I think he rode the Tour, he didn't ride exceptionally well at the Tour. He did some amazing things, no doubt. But by his standards and by the standards of the Freak 3 at the top, you know, Vanderpoel Van Art Pocket, he didn't win a stage, which just seems ridiculous to say, but to come into this in such good form and just rode like he did, you know, Van Aert said himself, I had great legs today, but someone else had better legs. And that just sums it up for me, I think.

Yeah. And even Pogasha said that was the Hardest race of his career. And a lot of them said that. He said he nearly fainted after he'd finished in between that and the podium and he said he'd never been so tired and he had sore legs and, and it was a brutal course. You know that I love that sort of course because the best rider wins and we are Van Art fans and pocket chart fans and not so much Vanderpoel but you know, what a, what an incredible ride that was. He was the best rider on the day and deserved to be world champion. And you know, we're going to talk about this later but you know he is the world champion cyclocross. He, he is the world champion road rider and he's in the, he's in the world champion mountain bike. So he could actually be three time world champion in one year on three different disciplines. So people who think Van der Poel's not up with the top riders in the world, you might have to rethink that one. And it's an example of getting it right at the right time. And there are many people in the world who do that. Well, we want to get into the.

Peaking topic but I do want to mention two just really amazing things that have happened in the last month. And one is that we've had four in the athletics. We've had four Aussie women break four Australian national records in a 21 day period. And it is just unbelievable to see especially coming into this run with the world champs in Budapest, which is why where I am right now actually next week and to see. So in the 800, Katrina Bessette broke her own national record running low 157, which is unbelievable. In the 1000 meter event which isn't run too often, we had both Abby Caldwell and Linden hall break this shine record. Abby Caldwell ran a 234 and then Hall 235. And that was both, both them under the Australian record. In the 1500, Lyndon hall took back the Australian record off Jess Hall. I think that's happened three, four, five times now. They just keep edging each other out. You know, Lyndon broke the four minute barrier for the first time three years ago I think so the first Australian woman to run under 359. And then they just keep edging each other out. And she ran a 357 I think and she beat Jess Hall's record by 0.02. So just hilarious that, that just. They just keep edging each other out and so great to see. And then Jess Hell herself ran a mile Australian record which was 4:15 in one of the most incredible races in athletics history. And that was the race that Kip Yagon smashed the mile world record by five seconds. It was 4:12 and she's ran 407. So to put that in perspective, the world record was 412 and just holes around 415, you know, that is just scintillating form. So this all happened within a 21 day period. It just shows the strength we have in athletics Australia right now. It's unreal to see.

So yeah, it's super exciting, isn't it to have so many women, Australian girls running so well and they're pushing each other. That's the good thing when you've got a little group of. It reminds me of the era when Herb Elliot, Ron Clark and under Percy Sariat and all those really gun runners of that era were all just pushing each other to be better, to be better athletes. And, and I think that's what's happening here. And the standard keeps going up so people have to, you know, come up with better, better performances. So it's brilliant.

Yeah. And to cap off the Tour de Femmes finished maybe one or two weeks ago and we hadn't talked about it yet but I think just has to be mentioned that Demi Vollerine capped off one of the most historic seasons ever. The, the amount of wins she had in one day classic races was. Yeah, topped off by this Tour de France win and she was too good for Anna Maek van Vleuten winning the last stage and crowning herself champion as well as the last time trial to really finish it off. So I just think that has to be noted because incredible performance over the seven day tour. The second female Tour de France edition ever. But what a season from her. I think it was, it was almost the perfect season and you can't get much better than that. And when you look at the results, not many people have had a better season. So really that just has to be mentioned.

Yeah. And that team that they put together, boy there were some great riders. Lottie pictures. Kopecki was just as good and had they not had the Tourmaline stage it could have been her tour. And but that's what a tour is. A tour has to have a mountain classic. But you know, watching her time trial as well, boy that was a great time trial. That was really, really good to watch and watching their execution and some, some got it really right and others didn't, as you would expect in most time trialing. So it was it was a fantastic tour, I really enjoyed it.

And the tactics really worked in Vollerin's favor because Kopecki had the yellow jersey going into that Tourmalet stage and into that last man on stage. I think the tourmalet was one before. Oh, Tourmaline. Yeah, yeah. And that put them in such a powerful position because Bolerang actually didn't have to do anything because if she just stayed in the group then Kopecki stays in yellow jersey so she could just sit and wait. And so it was like, you know, the 2008 Carlos Sastra tour de France where they had Sastra, Frank Schleck, Andy Schleck, all potentially winning the yellow jersey. And so they just had to sit there and that'd make everyone else do it, which is a really strong position to be in. But we want to get into the topic. So peaking, let's talk about peaking especially for the age grouper because you're coming into your goal race, whether it's a goal Olympic distance, a goal half ironman, Ironman, a world champs, you know, masters event and you, you know, you really want to make sure that you are in as best form as possible on the race day. So what are the key factors here? What are we looking for to get this right?

And remember it's not the same for everybody and if you think it is then you'll come up short or you'll over peak, which seems hard to do. You'll peak at the wrong time. And the example I could use and we've been talking about the world champ so we might as well keep using the same examples. And Trevor, in the individual time trial, three weeks out we did a time trial, a local time trial where you know, another practice event for him. We had, you know, 30 odd riders, you know, in the event. So he had a really good experience of a proper race conditions and, and you know, he, he, he rode to the level that I was happy with and he was sort of, you know, not, not convinced that his form was, was that good. And the only thing I could say to him was, you know, your form is building and in three weeks time with some freshening up and tapering, you will ride better than you did today. And to his credit he goes, yep, I think you're right. And what did he have to do? He had to trust the process. And, and I said to him that's what's happened to you many times before. You know, when I see your form building like this. And he did it, he did a little local club crit race that goes for 45 minutes in the local Wednesday week, went midweek Wednesday ride, and he rode some of the best numbers that he's ridden in years. And boy, did that really lift his spirits. And that with the time trial, where his time trial times and power was, was, you know, really solid. But, but he just got, you know, that that's where you get that confidence and trust in, in the process. And that is part of getting the tapering and peaking correct. And if you overthink it and expect to be in your best form three weeks out, you're getting it wrong. There's still more time for things to evolve. I'm not talking about gaining fitness, I'm talking about reducing fatigue. And when you reduce fatigue, you can actually ride better without gaining any more fitness. And that's one of the things that people might not understand about what tapering does. And I've often used the bell curve. So you try to get your fitness up as high as you can, four or five weeks out, and you know, the last time should be two to three weeks out, where you're training really solid still, depending on the length of the event. If it's a short event like a 20k time trial compared to a half Ironman or a marathon, they're completely different scenarios. So you can still train a lot up to that. Whereas in an endurance event, you don't. You've got so much fatigue from the training you're doing that you can't take that into the actual A race. So making sure that you have really trained well so that your fitness, if we use the example of training peaks, where they've got the performance management chart and your fitness number might be. Let's just use 100 if that's where you're trying to get to on race day, you will try to get to 105, 106 before then, so that when you taper, you lose a little bit of fitness, but you gain freshness. And so three weeks out, you're at 105, race day, you're at 106 weeks out, you're at 100. Three weeks out, you're at 105. And now you're back to. But what's the difference? You have no fatigue, you are fresh. And so therefore you can actually ride with more intent, with more intensity, with more power than you could when you're at 100 with high levels of fatigue. And I know that sounds a little bit complicated, but that is the art of tapering.

Well, I'd love to use a Story example because as you said, one, everyone is different and two, the feeling you get will be different for everyone and everyone kind of needs to figure out what works for them. This is why we'll talk about this. But experimenting with your B races and C races is so crucial to seeing how you respond to different levels of tapering. But I want to use the example of one of our riders who he came into a national time trial championships again and he was previous winner from last year. So he wanted to win again, he wanted to back it up. And I spoke to him after the race and he ended up winning. But he said it was really a true test of trust in the process. Again, because he did the same taper as he did the year before. But it is such a foreign feeling when you're training so consistently. You are training under kind of fatigue a lot of the time. And then he said leading into the race he was kind of panicking a little bit because he'd forgotten this taper feeling and he'd, he was feeling really sluggish and really slow all week and just wasn't feeling fresh. And even on race morning he wasn't feeling that great. And that can really mess with your head. And he said it wasn't until he did these, the three hard 30 second efforts, 10, 15 minutes before the actual race that he finally went, oh, whoa, I feel really good here. But it took that whole week of tapering to shed the fatigue. It took that whole warm up period on the day, right up until that last 10 or 15 minutes to really feel like, oh, I'm on here, I'm fresh. These three 30 second efforts feel really good. I'm pushing really high power. And then he wanted it again and backed it up. I think that's a really good example of how it is a little bit tricky to match your warped perception of how you're feeling compared to how you normally do with the taper to get yourself peaking.

Yeah. And the expectation is that you should be feeling good, but that's actually hard because the body does not like change. And so we've been training a certain way for three, four, five, six months and all of a sudden we stop training. That way the body gets accustomed and we talk. When we train with intensity and with frequency and a progression overload, we get an adaptation. We get an adaptation to training and absorbing load. Once we start to reduce that duration and the frequency of training and keep a little bit of intensity, the body all of a sudden is reacting to a different load and it's going to be questioning what's happening. I'm not used to this. And once again, we've got change happening. So our mind plays a really big role in how we actually deal with this period. And you need to be mentally prepared for the fact that you might feel different than you've been feeling before. And before the feeling of what you were feeling before different, that necessarily isn't good because that feeling is being constant tiredness. And so that's what your body's used to, so it gets used to that. So is it expecting that that's how it's going to wake up every day? But when you're in this taper peaking period, the body's almost going, what's going on? I don't feel tired. There's something wrong. Well, it's actually not something wrong. It's actually you freshening up so you can actually perform the way you want to when it counts the most. And that's why C races, B races are really great contributors. Plus the training you're doing to get you to your A race. And there is no such thing as 4A races in a season. That, that is just pie in the sky stuff. And, you know, there are people who can do well four times in a season. We've got thousands of examples of that at an elite level. Pocket chart, the Spring Classics, he was basically unbeatable, but then come the Tour de France, he didn't back up very well and people could say, well, he had a broken wrist, so he didn't train as well. Doesn't matter the reason, you know, that could have been a contributor, but it also could have been that he, he had such a hard Spring Classics that he still hadn't recovered and he's still not the rider. Yeah, I don't think he's. Yeah, I still don't think he's the rider that he was in the Spring Classics as he was in Glasgow last week. So we've got you. Yeah, we're trying. He's trying to peak three times in one season as a pro. And, and, you know, we were talking in spring about how can anybody beat this guy? And here we are. You know, he's, he's not done anything really since the Spring Classics and that's a harsh call. He's still an elite cyclist who's right there and can win on any given day. But, but, you know, he lost the Tour de France and he's now lost the Tour, the World Championships, and I'm just picking on him because I want to use that as an Example of how Peking can not be quite right. And we can use Remco Evenepoel as well. Unfortunately he crashed so he's had quite a large period out with injury but he didn't perform well at the world titles and the time trial is yet to come. So we've got Poga, we've got Remco, we've got Van Aert, we've got Roglic, we've got Ghana, we've got so many guys who, you know, I'm not sure if Vanderpoel is doing the time trial because he's got the mountain bike as well, but, but you know, I can't wait to see what happens in this time trial to see whether Pogacha can actually win that and, and prove us wrong that, you know, maybe he was really gunning for the time trial, something he hasn't won before. So, you know, we don't really know behind the scenes what's happening. But, but the point is there will be so many things that happen a hard road race like that, how much is it going to affect them for their time trial. So when you're trying to peak for an event and you've got two other huge events five days prior, how much is that going to take out of you or for some athletes, and I know we coach some athletes who need to do something hard before their a race and I'm talking five or six days out, they actually need to go way over the top in intensity and then they come out the next week after an easy week and perform even better. And that's happened many times. So there's so many examples I can give you of pros and cons of what works and what doesn't. One of the girls we coach for the Gold Coast Marathon, she basically had two weeks off before her Gold Coast Marathon and performed her PB by a mile. And I can say, oh, that's a great taper and peaking example, but had she done something different, could she actually run faster? So, you know, we're actually not going to know this worked for this time. Maybe if we tried something different in another race to see whether in fact she could improve with a different taper. And that's, that's one of the things I want to get across. And I know I'm keep on talking here over the top of you a little bit, but it's kind of one of the things that what seems to work once may not also work repeatedly for yourself. So you're forever experimenting and depending on the state of or Part of the year where your race is, whether you're coming from a winter, going to a main race that's in the summer, from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern hemisphere, or vice versa. We had the experience many times of trying to go to Kona in October, coming out of a June, July, August winter in Australia. And the majority of the Northern hemisphere had these beautiful summers. They'd all been racing, they'd all been training in great temperatures. We had no races and we were training in ridiculous temperatures that were making it hard for us to peak and train well for an event that was going to be the extreme temperatures of Hawaii, going from the middle of winter to Hawaii was such a tough ass to do. So they're examples of the pros and cons of what you can and can't do. I'm sure you've got some comment on that.

Yeah, well, I think we could clear it up by saying what's. What are the general guidelines and what are the general principles that we want to look at and then. And then apply that individually from there. Because like you said, what can work for you might not work that well for everyone else. And it's a lot. I think it is a lot about kind of personal feeling as well, which sounds ridiculous, but. And we can't always trust our feelings. We do know that as well. But what you prefer probably might have a better impact on race day mentally compared to what might be the actual, you know, totally best foolproof tape or form. And so one of the things we do know is that you do want to leave intensity in there, just dramatically reduce the volume. So come race week, I think it would be a mistake to take out all intensity. You know, you still want to feel sharp, you still want to feel fresh and strong. You just want to take out that volume so you do some intensity without inducing any fatigue. I think that's a really important guiding principle for people to understand. And then how much you do depends on the person. I personally really like to dramatically drop the volume. Just do really short, sharp efforts. I just feel mentally so fresh doing that. I really don't like. I just really want to make sure I'm shedding that fatigue as much as possible. And I'm not afraid of losing potential fitness, quote, unquote fitness in that last week. That's just my preference. But I think that's a really good starting point for people to understand.

Yeah, a lot of people absolutely think tapering means shutting down and trying to freshen up with no training. And. And that's, I think A big mistake. You really have to reduce the volume, there's no doubt about that. The only way to get rid of fatigue is to do less training and going out there almost. You know the example we've used of studying for an exam and cramming the last four nights, it's too late. It's too late to do that, cramming that, that amount of work, same in a sporting event. It's too late to try and catch up the fitness that's, that's finished. You now need to try to freshen. So you reduce the amount of hours you spend training, but that doesn't mean you don't do any intensity. And this is not the same for everybody. I'm talking generally for most athletes, if they keep some sort of intensity, really short, sharp stuff like you explained in your example for yourself, that works well for most people. So instead of doing a session where you've got 20 or 30 minutes of really high, maxed out, high intensity, plus your warm up and you cool down and you've got, you know, an hour and 10 or an hour and 15 during the table week, you would want to do, you know, between five and 12 minutes of hard stuff and, you know, a reasonably good warm up for 15 minutes and then five minutes of cool down and there's your 30 to 40 to 50 minute session. If you're in the unenviable task of going to an event where you've never seen the course and you're expected to actually go and check the course out, you might have to ride some of the course, which means I'm stressing to everybody, ride it at zone one and do your little efforts for that 10, 15 minutes. And if you have to ride for 90 minutes, it's not ideal, but if it means that's the only way you can get to see the course, then that's what you have to do. If you haven't got a car. So ideally you want to have a car so you can drive the course, but these are the things you have to do sometimes because you don't want to go to an event and not know what the course is, what the next corner is, where the hills are, that's not advisable. So we really want to reduce that option. But if we have to, we have to. But yeah, so just really revving up the legs, making sure they're not going to sleep. And the frequency of training is as long as you're doing something each day and each day doesn't have to have high intensity in it. So Reduce the volume. So don't have to train every day. You can do some walking or some, some basic stretching or some structured strength and conditioning. What you're normally used to doing, which is really light with no weights and stuff that you normally would do, but just reduce it all down. And then just try and make sure that you're eating and drinking, not overly eating and drinking, but if the climate's hot, that you're making sure you're hydrated well the whole week your electrolyte levels are good and you're giving yourself a really good boost in carbs. So that, and that doesn't mean go and pig out at the carb loading dinner. It means you just making sure that you've got the right balance of nutrition so that if you happen to be in an endurance event that you can actually enter the event topped up. Your fuel tank is at its brim.

The key to all the points you're making there as well is don't change too much. You're not trying to change the whole week. It's on a totally different new training week. So you want to try and stick to, to your same training schedule. You know, get your swim in or a couple of swims in, get a couple of rides in with a potential run off the bike. But yeah, you just. The keys are you reducing the volume, reducing the, not reducing the intensity, but reducing the volume of intensity. So like you said, you know, a normal high intensity session might be 20 minutes or 25 minutes worth of intensity, but here you might be doing 5 to 12 minutes depending on the session. And I want to make a point that it's a really good confidence boost a week when you do these sessions because there's no pressure to be hitting the top of the range. You're shedding that fatigue so you'll be feeling better. In some of these sessions, let's say you do two by five minutes or three by three minutes, just quite a short sharp session or I mean the day before we generally just do three times 30 second efforts. But it is a really confidence booster because there's no pressure on you to really hit the top of that range. You just want to kind of be in that range that you'd normally be and you might even be going at 90, 95% but it feels really comfortable and really cruisy and you're feeling really good and, and that could be a massive confidence booster. And I will say with the change thing, I had one example in one of my own races, I was really amped for this Race, and I really wanted to do well, and I just psyched myself out a little bit. And then the morning of the race, I got up a bit earlier than I normally would, and I really wanted to do some good kind of stretching DNS work. You heard us do some talk about DNS on one of the podcasts. Just kind of like body weight, strength and conditioning to open up. And I ended up just absolutely overcooking myself. I did about an hour of it, which I never do before a training session or a race. And. And I got to the event and my legs were cooked. I'd absolutely just. I'd hammered myself in the morning and still performed. Okay. But I just. I just did not like that feeling. Getting to the start line with heavy legs, you know, that was the total opposite of the. Of the effect, the desired effect. So it's really important that you're not trying to change too much race week, but you are being really conscious of your volume, intensity, and the frequency should stay pretty much the same.

Yeah. And you know, you will have that feeling of flatness because of the change, and just be prepared mentally for it and know that this is what's going to happen. Your body's going to be rejected, rejecting your plans, and be aware of that. And that is a normal feeling. So, you know, and I'm asking someone how you're feeling, you know, in the last week of the race, oh, I feel terrible. There's something wrong. Don't. Don't have that mental mindset. I'm feeling terrible. Yes. Because I'm tapering. That's a good thing. And change your mindset and think of it in a positive way. I'm meant to feel like this because my body's reacting to change and it's a good thing. And if I wasn't feeling like this, then I would actually be starting to be worried. So, yeah, I hear so many people saying I felt terrible during the taper week. And once you change that mindset around to. That actually is a normal feeling because we're just changing the body's normal routine pattern, which it doesn't like.

Yeah. So I guess we want to finish off with what can we expect kind of coming into the last block of training. Our advice has been, you know, you're not trying to pick six weeks out, you're not trying to pick three weeks out. So what is this last kind of block that'll be two to four weeks look like? And what can you expect?

Yeah. And I'm a big believer in to get race fit Guess what? Go and do some races. And if they're mock races that you've created yourself or club races or anything like that, where you're getting race ready. And we do that in our program anyway. We call our last four weeks of sessions, we call them race ready sessions. And whether you do that by yourself against the power meter or, or if you're running, you do that against the clock or if you're swimming the same thing, but there is some competition that you're trying to achieve in that session. And so you're getting your mind and your body ready to compete. Whereas the previous period of training is preparation of your body to train to get yourself into a fitness level. Where now we've accepted that our fitness level is pretty much getting to the level that we're happy with, now we're wanting to test our fitness level in competition. So I'm a big believer in finding as much competition as I said, whether it's a BC or local event, that's what you should be looking for. And you will, you know, you will get that. Really? I often say, oh, you know, you're really race fit and people go, oh, I don't even know what that means. It means that your body is adapted to the highs and lows of competition. And competition is unpredictable. It is so unpredictable. The whole, every event, whether you're doing an 800 meter or a 20k time trial, there is so many unpredictable things that can happen. You know, take a road race, you know, someone goes off the front and no one's expecting it. You know, you have to react to unpredictable things that are going to happen. You're in a swimming event and you're doing a 400 and some, some swimmers gets 10 meters on, on the field. You know, you have to make a decision about reacting to that or not following your own race strategy or reacting to that and seeing that person swim away. You know, these are things that, that you will do in those preparation races where you will get confidence in, you know, I can react to anything that's going to happen because I've done a few races that have actually got my mind to tune into the specific, the specifics of competition. And come your main race, you're feeling really confident with your, with your race readiness and your race fitness.

I think that's a great way to finish. Any final words of wisdom or anecdotes you want to say to finish off this topic?

Yep. The one thing I really believe in is you're still better under doing the preparation than overdoing.

It.

And that's. Yeah, that's a really controversial thing to say almost. Are you saying that we should be under prepared in our training? No, no, I'm saying that you don't go into a race exhausted and train too much. Whatever the time span you've had for that training period, don't try and catch up and skip things to get your fitness higher, which in fact will probably make the performance on race day worse because you're still carrying so much fatigue from trying to catch up fitness. If you haven't given yourself enough time for the event that you've selected, you're better off going into it fresh. That's my advice is not trying to cram training in at the last minute and getting into race day exhausted and performing probably below what you should have with less training.

That's awesome way to finish. It's going to be really exciting to see, especially with the World Athletics Champs coming up over the next couple of weeks. We have seen some incredible performances in Diamond League over the last couple of months. Some of the best performances, performances ever. It's been really a season to remember so far and so it'd be really interesting to see all these athletes. There's been what, seven, eight world records broken, maybe more. A insane amount. I would say 30 or 40 national records broken. People are just running out of their skin. So it'd be interesting, interesting to see all these athletes, how they perform at the World Champs.

But, but that, that's also a topic that this is a championship race and so the actual PB performance is less important than the victory. And, and the people who are trying to be world champions, they're the ones who don't care about whether I run a pb, break a world record. They just want to win the race and be world champion. And there's other athletes in the event who are happy to be in the final and they're trying to do a pb. So there's a whole lot of different things happening in these championship events and you know, you still need to peak for the outcome that you're trying to achieve. And I think it's going to be interesting to see the form that people have been having to hold in the Diamond League as an example for the athletics. Can they hold it when it counts the most for the World Championship it's.

Going to be really exciting as well because they've changed the rules in a lot of the distances, but specifically we're going to focus on middle distance and there is no more qualifying based on time. It is all position. So that is a big change that they've made because the old advantage was let's say there's three 1500 meter heats. The last heat knows exactly what time they need to run to qualify. If they just run a fast enough time. So they have such an advantage over heat one and two. But now it's just something like the top six from each heat qualifier. So it's full championship racing from the heats onwards. So you have to come top six in your heat. So it could just be, you know, three laps of just sit and kick. But then the athletes that don't have a good kick will want to make it faster. So it's just going to be I think a great combination of, of championship racing right through. And the same thing in the 5000 meters. You know there's two heats, it's the top 12 go through us or something like that. It's going to be great to see. Do they just go slow for half the. Half the race and then someone believes they've got great six laps in them or others need the pace to be high because they don't. They know they don't have a good kick. It's going to be, it's going to be a really exciting championship. So that combined with a to form.

Yeah.

We'll see who performs well in the, in the championship. Championship style racing.

Yep. I can't wait. It's going to be good.

That's it for this episode. Thank you very much as always for listening and we'll see you in the next one. It.