How To Prepare For A Half-Ironman (70.3) Properly

What things should you be able to do to run well on race day? And I'm telling you the number one thing is that you have your endurance, strength and conditioning run down pat.

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching Jared Donnelly. In today's episode, we are going through how to prepare for a half Ironman properly, the exact training you need to do and the lead up races you'll need to do to make sure that you get to the start line fully prepared for the requirements of a 70.3 and everything that it entails. Firstly, before we get into that topic, our normal starting segments, which we haven't done for a few weeks because we've had a few epic guests on. Dad, welcome to the episode. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jord. Yes, absolutely. Looking forward to talking about the necessary requirements for Half ironman today. It's going to be fun. Look, that's a great segue almost because that's my gratitude is the unbelievable quality of guests that we have had recently. I keep pinching myself to be able to interview people who are really at the top of their game, not only as athletes, but as experts in their field, whether they're scientists or whether they're exercise physiologists or, you know, having people who are the best of the best and getting them on the podcast is, is just, we're just so grateful for, for that opportunity to, to be able to ask them questions that we've always wanted to ask. When you're reading some of the articles that they've written or listening to podcasts from other people, to actually have the opportunity to ask whatever you like and for them to openly answer and really give detail about what they mean and, and their version of how they see things in the world. It's just. Yeah, we just. The podcast has been such a great opportunity and tool to, to get to speak to some great people and look as a flow on from that. It's highly motivating when you hear, you know, quality people who are so, I suppose, in love with what they do and they love their job and it's, it's sort of, it's inspiring because you can hear the determination and the excitement in their voice when they talk about topics that they're just passionate about. And it just motivates me and to really continue to search on the journey of, to be a better version of yourself. And for those athletes that we coach, I know they love telling me each week that was unbelievable. I just felt like getting out there and training again, even though I'd already done my training session today. And that's what I want to hear. And, you know, for those people who don't coach, hopefully you're getting the same inspiration from, from, you know, learning how to do things better and so that you can actually compete to the best of your ability and enjoy the process. And that wasn't. There was so much evidence with that with Locky Morton last week. It was probably one of the, the all time best interviews I'd done that we had done over the. I think we're into our third or fourth year, 160, 70 podcasts that we've done. And it was, it was. I felt like I'd just gone through a whole life experience with him. The highs and lows that he's had through his life was, was epic. And, and that, that was also motivating to me to, to really understand that, you know, we don't get a lot of opportunities in our life to do things that we want to do. And so you need to make the most of those opportunities when they're presented to yourself and, and not to. Because guess what? You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. You could be in a crash, you know, hopefully not. But, you know, life can take a different turn very quickly. So when the opportunity is there for you, you should, you know, as long as everything else is in balance, you should be taking those opportunities to the best of your ability. So, yeah, that's, that's my gratitude for this week.

Mine was actually going to be exactly the same, so I guess I will just extend on that a little bit and just say feel very grateful and lucky to kind of live in this time in the world where this is possible. You know, the access to information is just, it's never been like this before in history and it's amazing the type of education you can get from podcasts and access to information around the world. So just very grateful for that. You know, there's a lot wrong with the world at the moment, but this is definitely something that's very exciting to have. And you know, we've watched a lot of, for example, Stephen Siler's content and the amount of times I've been watching content of him and then thought, oh, gee, I wish I could ask him this question. And then we got that chance to interview him for two hours and ask him all the questions we'd been thinking. So, yeah, definitely that is my gratitude and yeah, just very grateful to have access to these thought leaders in this industry that we're so passionate about. Moving on to our next segment, which is what has caught your attention.

Yeah, this is an interesting one. The world was really shining on cross country. Happens to be in Australia this year. The world cross country titles move around the world each year and it was unbelievable that Australia got to host them. It's a pity that the media didn't really get behind it and half of the Australian population didn't know they were on, which is really disappointing. But to have it such an iconic place at Bathurst, which is the home of motorcar racing. For those who don't know, who are listening from around the world, it's one of the big, the big venues or it's the venue for motorcar racing In Australia, the V8 Supercars race around Bathurst and it's got some epic hills in it. And to have the world cross country titles at the same venue, that would have been such a great advertisement to, you know, to say to all those people to get out and support it. The cross country supporters were there in their droves, but it would have been good for a few other people to have a real good look at what the best cross country athletes in the world are capable of doing. And it was so great to see after we Talked to Stu McSwain about two or three weeks ago with his intention to try and get the Australian team onto the podium. And fantastic that they did. They got third place and, and literally there was only 10 or 20 meters between first, second and third. So it was anybody's race to be won. And fourth. Yeah, so, yeah, great, great. Four man and woman effort. Two women, two men. And yeah, it was, it was outstanding to actually get a podium at a, you know, a world title event.

Absolutely. Was there a second part to your court attention?

Yeah, well, I just want to see if you want to discuss that first because then I want to go on to talk about the OAC topic. But yeah, what your thoughts on the world cross country?

Yeah, it's very similar. Absolutely love that it was in Australia. Would have loved more media coverage. Unbelievable that Australia got that bronze. It was. Every runner in the team had to run their best to get that, which they did. And cross country is just so brutal. In the women's event, it was absolutely cruel. In the actual 10k event, absolutely cruel. What happened at the finish, you know, the leader was coming to the home straight. It looked like she was clearly going to win and the heat just got to her. She looked like she could have passed out anywhere from one and a half K to go. When she'd broken away, there was two of them and the last hundred. We've seen this play out many times in the top of world sport, but she just started fading. There were 50 meters to go. She just collapsed just as second. Was absolutely charging her and past her and she ended up not getting on the podium. So very cool finish. And cross country is like that. It just is so brutal on the legs and they push themselves so hard. It's a great event. Doesn't get televised heaps, but it was. It was awesome to see it here.

Yeah, look, one of the things I, I didn't mention was the, the difficulty of that course and we're going to talk a little bit about that in preparation for Half Ironman and that Steve Moneghetti, on his commentary, I think he said he'd done 11, he'd represented Australia at 11 World Cross country championships. And he said that was by far the hardest course that he'd ever seen. There was not one flat bit of terrain on that course. So you're either running through a boggy swamp that they, you know, intentionally watered so that you had to feel like you're running through mud, then you turned and ran straight up really hard hills with little dips and rises along those hills and. And then through a vine. A vine field with grapes. It was really spectacular around chicanes of. Of tires, car tires. I think it had everything and, you know, the best runners won. There was no doubt in my mind it was. It didn't come down to a sprint. None of the races came down to a sprint, really. There was just. Someone just got away and. And the other runners in the field, men and women, either could hang on or they couldn't. And the majority of the time it was. They couldn't. And it was. It was great to see an epic, hard, difficult course get the best outcome.

And after the event, there has been a big announcement in athletics for Australia, and it is kind of a world announcement. I've seen it being plastered all over athletic sites around the world. But there is a big club that has been getting a lot of fame and attention recently, and that's On Athletics Club. And it's an athletics club founded and sponsored by the new running shoe that's getting a lot of hype, which is On Running Shoe company But over in the US the On Athletics Club are Making noise with the amount of results they're getting. Just in the last month they've had one world record, one American record, 1/3 best 5K run of all time. Actually, I think I've got that wrong. I think there's been multiple American records in there, both on the men's and women's side. So this new announcement has been pretty exciting for the Australian side of athletics.

Yeah. And Craig Mottram, who most people would know of his quality and his performances and his results, he's an outstanding, one of the all time greatest runners Australia's ever produced and he's right on board with this. And you know, he had a stellar career but he's now wanting to facilitate for up and coming Australians to be a part of the new group for there's an Australian version, there's an American version, there's a Europe version of on athletics club, which I just think is the best thing. It's almost like elite cycling where you've got teams and I hope that this really takes off, that on becomes one of the many teams like the Melbourne Track Club started this a long, long time ago, which Craig Mottram was a part of. And so, you know, giving athletes an opportunity to earn an income and get a wage, train professional under coaches, under supervised coaches and the results are clear to be seen. And you know, we've often said that if you want to improve, surround yourself with people who are better than you and watch yourself improve because you aspire to go to the next level. And Stu McSwain said that in his podcast two or three weeks ago when he first joined the Melbourne Track Club, that he was the 10th fastest out of the 10 athletes in that group and pretty much now he's equal fastest in that group and you know, what should he do? Move on to another higher and better quality group and train with them. But the point is giving people the opportunity to really pursue their career. And for most Australians, they would have to get a scholarship to an American university and enable themselves to continue their running with a scholarship that will enable him to have food and accommodation and at the same time get a degree or some sort of qualification while they're studying. So that's the only pathway really for someone to be full time from Australia. Whereas that pathway is open to all Americans and a lot of Europeans have the same opportunities. But this is an opportunity for the Australian version where they're going to be based in, I think it's in Richmond in the city and they've got a brand new gym and exercise Physiologists and physiotherapists, therapy and some funding to help them go to the, the events they need to be at and, and give them an income. And I just think it's, you know, it's, we need more of this. And you know, you wonder why British cycling went so well in the last decade or, or 20. So 20 years is because they, they basically followed the Australian Institute of Sports model and did it better and got funding from the lottery rather than the government paying for it. They got the lottery to pay for the funding for their athletes and they're world class athletes now as swimmers, as runners, as cyclists, you know, you name any sport, the English athletes are right up there world class because they've got something that's given the athletes an opportunity to function without having to worry about working. They can just concentrate on their chosen sport. So I think it's a great thing.

Yeah, that, that income thing is just so key because like you're saying they can just concentrate on the whole, the whole point of being an athlete in training is to be able to train and then recover from that training. And if you can't recover because you have to work on top of your training, you're just limiting yourself so much. And quite infamously we have an athlete here in Melbourne who just went to the Olympics for the marathon and he's been one of Australia's top long endurance runners, marathon runners, half marathon, 10k for a long time. That's Liam Adams and he's notorious for being able to compete at this high level while being a full time tradie. So he's on the tools all day which is the most labor intensive work you can do and he's training for marathon to compete at the Olympics and that is just an impossible task. Whereas if these young athletes are now getting an opportunity out of school to earn an income and train properly, their development will just be so much better. So it is really exciting. What's caught my attention is just after the Lockheed Morton interview last week I just wanted to touch on one thing that he spoke about and that is the mindse of not having, having to have everything go perfectly to perform well. And obviously we like to be as well prepared as possible. We want to tick every single box. We're very about that at Trivelo, you know, having a clear race plan and here's what the goals are but you have to be flexible as well and that things will go differently to plan. And there was a clear example we had in the Melbourne to warn you A few weeks ago, one of our athletes just wanted to give a big shout out to him. He turned up to the start line and he'd had problems with his bike all week and he'd been in the shop multiple times trying to fix it. It looks like they'd fixed it. Know you fixed the issue but you rocked up, started doing a bit of a warm up and his gears weren't working. And you're about to do a 260 kilometer road race and your gears stop working. And he was as resourceful as possible. He went around to every single team and just politely asked the team bike mechanics, does anyone have a solution to this? And one guy who was a really good bike mechanic said, you cannot fix this now. It's not possible to fix right now. After having a look over his bike and and instead of wallowing in self pity and cracking the seds, he figured out that he could swap the big chainring and the small chainring. So he had two gears, he just couldn't swap the back ones. So he got the gear in the back into what would be pedalable if he just was able to swap between into the small chainring for the hills and a big chain ring on the flat and decided he was going to ride the race and see how he went and see how long he could last for. And he rode the entire thing, stuck with the main group of the peloton, which is a bunch of elite NRS riders, into gears, which is just absolutely incredible if you know how hard this race is, if you know how tough it is, how tough it is just to stay in the peloton with all your gears, how good of a rider you have to be. And for him just to do it in two gears I think is a great testament to a flexible attitude. And he didn't complain once. Once he started riding, no one even knew that that's what he did. So I just wanted to give that.

Shout out, I just want to butt in there because I was the driver of our team for that particular day. I said on the radio just as you all started, are you okay, Nick, to ride? And his answer was, yep, all good. Instead of saying, no, my fucking mic doesn't work, but I'm going to see how I go. But he just answer was, yep, all good. And I thought actually that he got it fixed. That's what I thought because it was five minutes before I'd driven into the car, before you started the race. I thought, oh, he must have fixed it because his choice was get in the car. With me and watch the race or see how he goes. And you know, the attitude that he had was, was that's the mindset that you need to do. If things are going to go against you, you've got to come up with solutions and they may not be the best solution, but if you want to keep, keep going, you've got to get around these roadblocks and it's a great lesson.

I will shout out his name for anyone that wants to know. It was Mitch Lawn. So if anyone in knows our travelo group, he was a guest on this podcast because he owns the running company here in Melbourne, which is a shoe store. So that was him. So if you do run into him, you can give him a shout out for that effort. But there was also one more thing I wanted to mention specifically a post Locking Morton interview as well. And that was a correction to some news we had spoken about a few weeks ago in Peter Sagan's retirement. I did want to make one clear correction on that is that he has is retiring from road cycling. But he has come out and clearly said that he's not retiring from cycling overall. His first love was mountain bike riding and he wants to finish his career doing that. And specifically he wants to have a crack at Paris 2024 Mountain biking and he wants to have a crack at cyclocross events and a lot of the off road events. So we might still see Peter Sagan at the top of his game, just doing a lot of the alternative events. And I thought this was really timely with the world Cross Champs just happening in the last few weeks where it's Van der Poel and Van Aert who have this unbelievable rivalry that just keeps going. We see athletes like cyclists like Tom Pidcock who have come across some cyclocross and mountain biking, who are just unbelievable on the road. And he had one of the best stages of the Tour de France last year based on his descending. With Sagan now going across to mountain biking and everything we spoke about last week with Locky in terms of the alternate cycling calendar, I just feel like this is becoming more and more popular and this cross training style might become more and more appealing to athletes because it is actually a really good training style and it clearly works. I mean, Vanderpoel and Van Art are two of the best road cyclists in the world, even though they're doing all this off road stuff. And potentially more athletes will see benefit in this cross training style and maybe it'll make them better road cyclists than just sticking to a Pure road cycling. So I think that's pretty interesting.

Yeah, it's a great point you raise and it's something that we've actually, during the basically Covid period of those two or three years, we almost came to the same conclusion that that type of threshold riding and for those who don't know, the cyclocross is basically a one hour as hard as you can go. And there's I think There might be 12 World cup races before they got to the world titles for the season. It's a very short season, but each week or each five days or whatever the venues are, there's a one hour threshold riding. In real terms, it's a one hour threshold ride, it's a full body threshold. It's not just your legs as you would do on a road bike where you've got smooth, beautiful bitumen roads. You're going through sand on the beach with water lapping up to your feet, then you're getting off your bike, running upstairs, then you're going through mud, slipping sideways. It's a full body experience where your arms, shoulders back, your glutes, your stomach, you know, everything's being put through the wringer for one hour of flat out training. And we found the same thing when we did some handicap races that were only 35 to 40 minutes once a week that were everybody on the limit as a handicap you have to ride together. And so because you're in a team, it pushes you to ride harder. And at the end of that eight to ten week period, which is similar to what the cross training, cross fitness bike races are, you're just doing these threshold rides that are just giving you this unbelievable good base. And when you come to the road season you sort of, it's almost contradictory to that, that off season being, you know, long slow, aerobic fitness type riding, which we all, we all agree is important. But we also know that there's a lot of data telling us that if you do that plus one intensity at threshold during that period, you'll come out for main part of your season a much better athlete.

Totally agree. And yeah, it'll be interesting to see how many riders we now see come back from, from those events that didn't maybe originally start in road cycling and then how many are using these alternative events to potentially get better. It is we fascinating to see. But enough on that, let's get into the topic of today, which is how to prepare for a half ironman properly. And there's sort of five keys we want to go through in terms of Getting your training right and making sure that. But again, the goal of this is to understand there are certain requirements you need to be adequately prepared for to get through this race as well as possible. And so the first one, the first key point we want to talk about is how much time do you need to allow to Prepare for a 70.3?

Well, I'm going to start off with the predictable answer. It depends. And we've used this response to a lot of questions in our podcast and I want to clarify it's not a cop out answer, it is a reality answer. So if you come to the realization that you want to do a half ironman in 16 weeks time or 20 or 10 weeks time, the type of athlete you are at that current time determines whether that's a feasible expectation. So if you're a brand new triathlete to the sport, that's not a feasible or realistic expectation. You need near on six months to get yourself ready. And some people may need 12 months if they've actually not ridden a bike before or never done a triathlon. So your current experience is one thing, what have you done in the sport? The second thing is what is your fitness base? If you're at the lowest fitness base that you have had in the past five years or two years or one year, then you're going to need more time to get your fitness up. Before you can actually start being specifically training towards an event that has clear understanding of how hard it is to do a half ironman, you need to understand where your fitness level is. If you find you're at rock bottom, then you need more time. So there's two caveats that you need to understand is what your experience is and how fit you are for the requirements of potentially a five to six hour event, an endurance event that's going to ask you to swim for between 30 and 40 minutes, to ride between 2 hours and 3 hours 30 depending on your level, and run between an hour 10 and 2 hours 50 or 3 hours depending on your level. So right from the offset, the less experience and the poorer fitness level you have, the more time you need. So if you can get that right, then you're going to give yourself more chance. If you're someone who's experienced and have been regularly doing these events, then you can pretty much switch from your training in eight weeks. If you decide there's a okay, there's a new event or one of my events got cancelled as we experienced during COVID I need to prepare for an another event. If you've been Training the right way with a really good variety program that enables you to keep your endurance, your intensity, your zone two stuff traveling along together, then it's easy for you to switch from for eight to 10 weeks to get yourself race ready for that event. So there's quite contrasting examples of how much time a person needs. So that's the point I want to get across.

Yeah. And that's it. That has to be said from the start. Before we have any conversation about this, we just have to provide that context. And eight to 10 weeks is the upper extreme example of a really probably experienced athlete who's quite fit. And then the lower example you spoke about, which is a complete beginner who's not very fit, would need at least a year. Ideally, in an absolute ideal world, they give themselves a full year to be adequately prepared, to not rush their training, to not risk over training or injury. But we do want to create some categories in between that of just some general time frames. And I think we'll start at this lower end. A beginner, you know, who's, who's not very fit, you're saying? Yeah, preferably at least a year. But that can go down to someone who's coming across from another sport. They might have finished a running career or a cycling career or swimming career or some sort of career in other sport and they're very fit, but they're kind of new to triathlon as a whole. That could probably come down to maybe at a minimum six months plus. Would you say that's probably that kind of range that you're looking at for a beginner look?

It's very individual, Jordan, and you'd have to take it person by person. So, you know, there's so many variables that you've already mentioned in that two minute sentence. But the key thing that you must think about when you're asking for help from a coaching group is what is your expectation of your performance? So, so once you have established that my goal is just to finish the damn thing, then if you've got no experience, poor fitness level and you only got 12 weeks, the answer is yes, you can get through it. It will be a horrible experience, but yes, you can get through it. So there's an example of someone whose expectation is I just want to do it and I've only got unlimited time because this is happening in my life. Maybe I'm having a baby or maybe I'm getting married, I'm changing jobs, I'm moving interstate or whatever the reason and I' I just want to tick this One off. Then of course you can do it. If you concentrate on whatever you've got in the time available to get yourself as well prepared as you can, the performance will be at that level of the fitness you are. And if you gave that same person another six weeks or another 16 weeks, their performance would be up 10%. Another 20 weeks, they'd be up 15 or 20%. So the longer you give yourself, the better the performance will be on the day. So you have to make it clear in your mind, is it outcome based or just for me to successfully complete the event? So the longer you give yourself, the better version you'll be of yourself and therefore the result will reflect that. So that's really important.

Perfect. We can kind of categorize that into three different types of goals. You know, it's just complete it. There's complete it comfortably in quotation marks where you can get through it, it's not a horrible experience. And then there's complete it with a best time in mind. You know, where you're really trying to get the absolute most out of yourself. And like you're saying, depending on the category, depending on where you're at with your fitness and your experience, those three scenarios will result in different ideal time frames. But I guess we just want to give people a concrete answer that the longer you give yourself, the better and the more prepared you are. You don't need to overdo it. So an intermediate up to experienced athlete don't need to train for a full year just for one event. It is a long time to prepare for one event. We find that anywhere from that four to six month mark for anyone in those categories is generally a good time. But that is dependent on where they're coming from in their fitness, their exact goals, etc. But we just wanted to give some general answers that aren't just leaving things right up in the air, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And at the end of the day, once you've answered your own questions, then you'll have a clear pathway and the day will be difficult. Whether you're just trying to finish it, it'll be difficult if you're well trained and you're getting through it comfortably and it will be difficult. If you're an elite pointy end of your age group, your intensity is reflective of where your level of fitness is at. So people think that if the fitter you are, the more prepared you are, the easier it is. It's actually not true. It's the same feeling of this is hard and it's just you're coping with it at a higher level than if you were a lot fitter. So there'll be periods where the person who's prepared poorly and hasn't paced it or executed very well will have a worse experience than the person you know. If two person A and person B had very poor fitness, very few experiences at this event, one prepared and executed well, one prepared poorly and had a horrible execution, they went too hard too early. Those same people with the same base level of fitness will have completely different experiences on the day. And so that comes into it as well.

Yep. Yeah. The only time I would say that that's not the case. And so the last point on this is that is the underpreparedness. If you're going in under prepared, you, no matter what you do, how well you execute it will still be most likely a horrible experience. It's just a different feeling compared to, it's a different type of hardness compared to the person that's prepared because they're pushing themselves, because they can not because the event's forcing it on them. Yeah.

And also the person who's under prepared is more than likely going to be at some point going to be stopped in their tracks and they may have to walk for huge sections of the run, which is just, that's what we're saying is not enjoyable. You know, you are, as we've said many times, trying to do a swim bike and a run, not a swim bike and a walk. So you know, it's, it's, it's a real credit to people who can, who can run from start to finish because they're executed well, whether they're doing a 2 hour 30 half marathon or whether they're doing a 1 hour 10 half marathon. It doesn't matter if you can maintain the same pace from start to finish. That's based around your plan. You've had a successful day. As I say, whether you've run for two and a half hours, that could be a PB. You know, your previous best could have been two hours 45, but. And you've not run once so you know, they're the things that you should be taking out of the outcome.

Next, we want to go through it in simple chronological order and that's just go through how to be prepared for the swim, the bike and the run. So let's start with the swim and where do you start with here?

Well, again, where's your level when you come to come to practicing for your swimming? And you know we're trying to swim a 1900 meter event it could be a lake, it could be in a river, it could be an ocean. So already you've got three different variables. One's tidal and two have no salt water content and one has salt water. So the flotation levels in an ocean are different to a lake and a river. So there will be certain amount of skill that you need to get yourself on for the swim, which is quite different. There is skill in running and riding, but it is way more technically kinesiology wise. Stroke technique is so key to use swimming more fluently and more efficiently and with less energy expenditure than it is on a biker or as a runner. So if you can spend equal amount of time correcting your technique and getting some help, that would be one thing. Preparing yourself with some sort of endurance type training with some intensity in the water, in the pool. So equal amounts of time with drills, practicing your skill technique. And if you haven't been critiqued, you need to get that done and then practice the advice that you've been given. And also get your aerobic fitness in the water up to a level that you can cope with. You know, between 22 minutes and 40 minutes of swimming, depending on your level. So we know that this is the least time in the actual half ironman. So we would advise that two swims per week would be the minimum requirement. If you could do three, that would be a bonus of which one of them. If it's possible during summer to get outdoors rather than doing all three swims in a pool. I know that's not possible for a lot of people and you just have to make do with what you can. But the key things are getting your aerobic fitness up, making sure that you try to swim sometimes in similar venues and conditions that you're going to experience on race day and making sure your skill technique is being practiced regularly.

Yeah, and I guess we always look at the distance and swimming in this case and in a 70.3 as a whole, it's very achievable in training. So not while 1900 meters is a long time to be swimming straight in an event. And for any, for any age group athlete that's between 25 and 45 minutes of swimming, which is a long time to be swimming at once, it's achievable to achieve, to do that and more in training. You know, your training sessions can build up to 2-3km long, which makes you, it makes, it makes you very comfortable at swimming that distance in the actual race.

Yeah, I was just thinking about that myself. There's an event on the weekend coming up in Australia. It's the Australian long course titles at Huskisson. And I was just thinking about my own training and I was quite worried, you know, probably six to eight weeks ago that I hadn't really been doing the correct swimming training and you know, quite proud of myself when I was coming back from the Listerfield lake, which is a local lake where I swim and thinking, well, I have actually done quite a few over 2 kilometer swims, between 2 and 3 kilometer swims and all of a sudden my confidence level grows and that should be the same for every athlete that's out there. If you've done plenty of swims where you've done more than the swimming distance requirement of the race, then you should be confident and comfortable that on race day that that can be achievable. If you haven't done up to 1900 meters, then that should be one of your key goals is to build from whatever you're capable of. If you're only capable of swimming 500 meters in the first swim, you go to start there and progress yourself from that point over the period of time that you have between now and the race day. We hope that's not four weeks time, but we hope it's possibly 12 or 16 weeks. And just try to progress your distance slowly over that time period. And then all of a sudden, sudden your body adapts very quickly. It doesn't get fatigued as quickly as if you just tried to swim 1900 meters straight from the outset. So yeah, like everything, you want to progress slowly. So the body adapts and doesn't feel like it's exhausted and fatigued.

So we can say the exact same thing for cycling and running, it's the exact same principles apply. It all depends on where you're at right now and building up to the distance required. So let's move on to the bike and talk about the 90 kilometer race and how do we best prepare ourselves for this? And ideally, what would you see a client, you know, right up until that last race ready block to give them the best chance of performing as well as possible in a 90k time trial.

And again, I'll use the same principle. So, you know, let's look at how long the time on the bike will be and it could be anything from two hours to four hours possibly. So if you're a person who's in the three hour range for the 90k on race day, you need to be doing building yourself up from. If your longest ride has been an hour, you need to Start progressing that over the journey between now and race day by adding time each week and you need to go past your three hour race time. If we're using that as an example, you would be far better off building that up to at least four hours and incorporating a lot of hills into those training sessions so that you build the strength and the endurance at the same time. The stronger you are on the bike, the better off you'll be come event day. And these are things that are really important early on in the program. And once you've got that really good base of strength and endurance, then you can start to do more race specific stuff. So once you feel like you've got the base of strength and endurance into your body and you can cope with that and your body can adapt to that, that and you're not pulling up sore, you're not pulling up fatigued and lying on the couch for the whole Saturday or Sunday afternoon and being absolutely useful, useless to your wife or your partner or yourself. Then you start to look at the requirements of what the race is after. And some races are pancake flat, some races have got incredible amount of elevation in it, and some races are everything in between. So establishing what the race requirements are in terms of terrain will determine how you train the next race ready. We call the race ready phase. That can be anything from 10 weeks out to as little as six or four weeks out again depending on your level of fitness and your level of experience. For those athletes who are doing multiple half ironmans in a season like four half Ironmans over a period of 12 months, you wouldn't need as many race ready sessions as someone who's, who's not done any race ready sessions. The race ready sessions that we talk about are getting you to do endurance rides where you're riding exactly at the power and the speed that you expect to do on the actual race day. And that can be broken up into intervals or it can be solid block of 1 by 60, 1 by 75k or 1 by 90k. They're examples of practice sessions that you should be doing to prepare yourself for what's going to happen on race day. You can break up a three hour session into, you know, a warm up, a cool down and two hours worth of four by 30 minute intervals or three by 40 or two by 60, anything like that. That's going to give you an experience on the bike in the race position, TT position where you're having to ride at your power number that you expect to do on race day. And you can, you Know you can find so much out about yourself on those training sessions. You know what speed does 200 watts equal? If I do a course that's out and back. And the athletes that we coach know these sessions very well. And come race day, it's a no brainer because you've done these sessions multiple times in training. So you just slot straight back into what you've done in training on race day. And no matter what's going on around you, you just hone in on your numbers and you're almost oblivious to whatever everybody else around you is doing, unless you're an unfortunate position where you find yourself in a pack where you actually can't push the numbers you're trying to because there's people around you in the way. So there are exceptions to the rules for riding, which is different to swimming. But the preparedness for the bike comes down to getting yourself aerobically fit with endurance and strength as the key components. And then once you've got that established, then you can start to be very specific about the power and the speed that you're going to ride on race day and do those sessions 4, 6, 8, 10 weeks out from your actual race event.

It's actually a surprising prescription for a lot of people because the idea of either doing a 90 kilometer time trial in training seems absurd or doing these long race specific sessions. But, but we can't forget that a half Ironman is not an intense race. The whole race is done well below threshold. And that's why we call them race specific or sub threshold sessions. And so 4 by 30 minutes or 2 by 60 minutes in intervals in quotation marks seems like a lot, but you're doing it at a lot lower intensity than you probably imagine. For an interval, a traditional interval session in the race, you're going to be riding anywhere between 75 to 90% of your FTP. And when you, when you're riding at 80% of your FTP, it's a lot easier than you think. And in the actual race it's quite intense because you've just done a 1900 meter swim, you've got a half marathon to do after. So it all combined, it adds up to a lot more. But in these sessions, once you get used to them, they're a lot easier. And easier is always relative, but they're a lot easier than probably anticipated.

They do get hard, believe me. But that's when you should be practicing, practicing exactly what you want to do on race day in these training sessions. You know, if you're experimenting with how can I ride today at 85% of my threshold in first two efforts and can I do that in the third effort? And next week I'm going to try and ride 87% of my threshold and see what happens in my fourth effort or fifth effort. And then, you know, you're all the time experimenting. What happens if I ride at 90% in the first effort? Do I fail? So you come to race day with all these scenarios that you've already experienced. And don't forget, we've banged on about this many times. Race specificity is one of the most important things that you'll ever do in training. If you can manufacture something that's resembling your race day experience in training, come race day it will be so much more palatable on the body. You'll feel like you're just in another training session. Even though it's a race. You can rise to the occasion and possibly do better than you will do on race day, but the expectation isn't, the expectation is that you would stay within your numbers and therefore you will be able to run better. So riding to the numbers that you know you can do in training and then in training run off the bike, practicing this will be so confidence boosting to you come, come the actual day of the race. And don't underestimate how important the nutrition practice is during these training sessions because we want to practice the amount of calorie expenditure at the intensity of the race. There's no good practicing your nutrition when you're riding at 50 or 60% of your FTP. When on race day you could be riding at 82 or 90 or 75. So you need to practice the nutrition requirements at the intensity of your race day.

Spot on. I just want to quickly mention that the midweek sessions are very similar to what they are normally and that's, that's trying to help improve your ability to your threshold capacity, your FTP and then your ability to ride at that. So it's always including, we've spoken about this on many podcasts, but including VO2 sets, whether they're 30 second efforts or 3 minute efforts, plus some more intervals at threshold. So 5 by 5 or 3 by 8 for example, sometimes up to to 3 by 12, they're kind of what the midweek looks like. But I guess the key that you are always trying to get into athletes is they have to get to these race specific sessions and you're generally getting an athlete to do at least one 60 to 75 kilometer time trial further out and then one 90 kilometer time trial a bit closer to race day. And that is kind of a minimum requirement in your head, right?

Yeah. And we've just spoken specifically about the requirements of the race and we've talked about the endurance ride, which is, is the key part of it. And you've mentioned already that, you know, during the week we're really concentrating on other things. We're trying to, you know, if, if I, if you came to me and you said, Look, I rode 38ks an hour and that was 320 watts, how do I ride 40ks an hour next race? And my answer is going to be, you need to have your FTP at 325 watts. And how do we do that? We need to do some intensity, of course. We need to keep our endurance and strength and conditioning going, but we need to concentrate on lifting our intensity so that our threshold rises. So that's the only way you're going to be able to ride on race day faster is if you do those high intensity sessions midweek. So the week on the bike is broken up into obviously threshold sessions or over threshold sessions, such as you've mentioned, VO2 and the Endurance ride. So those three combinations are going to enable you each time you get on the bike to, to be a better version of what you were in the.

Previous race, plus any bonus zone too. Ryan, you can fit in the week is only going to benefit you from wherever you can to make sure that your body is getting that aerobic fitness benefit, but not so much that you're, you're doing too many sessions that your body's not used to. You don't build that up too quickly and your body ends up over training. So we take all these principles that we've already spoken about with swimming and then everything you just spoken about with riding, and how do we apply that to running and getting the most out of a half marathon at the end of a 70.3?

And it's kind of different now. We talk about the run because the run will be dictated to by how you actually perform the swim and the bike on race day. So if you perform above yourself on the swim and way above yourself on the bike, no matter how well prepared you are as a runner, the outcome will be normally a disappointment. And that's probably very typical of a lot of the results that we see across the board at most half ironman races that we look at results of and that we actually go and physically watch on race day, where we see people starting their run looking like a certain runner and then halfway through Looking like a completely different runner. They're basically falling apart. So, so preparing for a Half Ironman, as a runner, you still have the same principles as a swimmer and a bike rider with overload, endurance, strength, some, some form of intensity and some form of race specificity where you're matching your half ironman predicted time that you're wanting to do. Predicted pace. I should say time is, is a relative term because a lot of the races are 20.1 or 22.3 or hardly any of them are 21.1. So if we ever got a race that was 21.1 exactly, it would be a revelation really. But so the time is not that important. It's more what pace you're trying to run at. So we're really trying to get yourself prepared normally in training with those specific things we talked about for swim, bike and run. But the difference is on race day, if you have not done what you wanted to do in your race plan and you've overcooked it, no matter how well prepared you are as a runner, you will not be able to run the pace you expect to run. And so I suppose when we're preparing for Half Ironman, we have to take that factor in for the running component. And that is a key thing that people need to remember is the run will only be the outcome you want if you have done the swim and the ride the way you should have and not the way you've ended up doing it. So the massive difference in, in the three legs that we've talked about and the fourth leg is always nutrition. If you've swam and raced in the plan and you expect to run the way you should because you've swam and run properly, but you've neglected the nutrition, the outcome of the run will be similar to as if you've done the plan for swimming bike wrong. So it's not really a three leg event, it's a four leg event, it's a swim, bike and run a nutrition. So get those things right and then you will be able to run at the level that you expect to and want to. And that's the fun part of triathlon and the smiles on people's faces when they actually get to come home down the finishing chute physically strong and not creeping to the line, but rather charging to the line. As a coach, it's just one of the best things you can experience to see your athlete go from, from, from hating the experience and somehow lining up for another race and, or the opposite is just, you know, having the best day out and enjoying the whole thing and then getting to the end saying, I should have gone harder. Which, which, you know, is something that's very rarely said in any endurance event.

Yeah, exactly. So you touched on there that the principles of training are the same. You need to be doing an endurance run that matches or exceeds the distance that you'll end up running on the day. You need to have some intensity in there. But what specific sessions can people do to get race specific? Like we spoke about the bike, how can they best prepare for the intensity of the race? And what's going to happen in a half marathon off the bike?

Well, before you talk about that specific run that we do, that has got the race specificity of the event, we've got to make sure that our endurance run is one that's really made us a stronger runner. So if you live in an area that's pancake flat, you're going to be just disappointed with what's going to happen on race day because you don't have the ability to build the resilience and strength in your body to be strong in the second half to hold the pace you want to, that you've, that you've aimed at for the first half. And that is the big downfall for most people. They've set a pace that they think they can hold, they hold it for half the race or even three quarters of the race, and then fall apart in the last third or half or quarter. And that's the disappointing part. And that comes down to that endurance. And it doesn't sound like that specific, does it, to your race requirement? You know, you're asking me that question. What, what things should you be able to do to run well on race day? And I'm telling you, the number one thing is that you have your endurance, strength and conditioning run down pat. If you, if you have run, say your expectation is to run an hour 45 for your half marathon, or an hour 50 or two hours, you need to be doing training sessions that are longer than an hour 45, an hour 50 or two hours. You don't have to run them at the same pace. In fact, I don't care about what pace you're running as long as it's talking pace where you're not being pushed. But what I want you to do is concentrate on getting elevation. The more elevation you can get into your legs, not right at the start because that lobe will be too high on the body, but as you progress from maybe 100 meters of elevation working way up to 120 150, 170, 200, up to 300, up to 500 meters of elevation over a period of 26 weeks or 30 weeks, then your body will be able to cope with that. And come race day, you will be as strong as you've ever been in the second half. And that will be the key thing to enable you to run a fast half marathon.

One other trick we use is race pace runs off the bike. And we don't do this every time because we're not trying to put too much intensity of running in our week. But we definitely include after some of these big race specific bike sessions or long endurance sessions, sometimes a 5k run off the bike at your race pace, you really get used to that first 5k. And then sometimes that builds up to 7k or 10k or or 13k off the bike at that race pace. And so that really gets that specificity of that feeling that you're going to have in the actual race in training, which is really quite important.

Yeah, and again, that's determined by your level of experience and also your level of fitness. We can't put that on people who are really new to the sport. We can only give that to people who have done multiple races whose body can cope with it. That because you know, traditionally you would do that on a race ready cycle race with a run off the bike at race pace, at your half Ironman race pace, and then expect the next day to go and do your strength and endurance run. So that is a big two days where if you're not able to cope with that, that can be quite detrimental. And remember, you've run already three times during the week and in one of those sessions you'd be doing some more heel repeats or some straight strength work of some type. So it is a quite specific running program that we give for Half Ironman that enables people to run the same pace from start to finish. And that's the key thing I'm trying to get across here is different to the swimming bike in some ways, but same in others. The goal is to run the same pace from start to finish in a half marathon in Half Ironman. And if you can do that, you would have ticked off those race specific runs off the bike, you would have ticked off those hill repeats, you would have ticked off those strength and conditioning runs that over the distance time that you're going to do on race day. And you will have unbelievable confidence once you've done that your first time, A, to go and train the same way and better and B, for your next race to know that I can actually run this pace and maybe faster next time. And they're the fun parts that you have at the end of the race when you're doing the post race analysis with our athletes that can't wipe the smile off their face. You know, I've just done a PB overall. And why was the PB so good? Mainly because of the run. They improved 10, 15 minutes in their run, 5 minutes in their run. Sure, they might have improved 30 seconds in the swim, a minute on the swim, or in some cases 5 minutes on the bike, or in many cases 10 minutes. But the biggest improvement is from the run and the experience of satisfaction. When you run strong and you're running against people who are slowing down, you are actually not running faster, you're running the same pace, but everybody around you is slowing down. So you do feel the exuberance and exhilaration of I'm flying compared to everybody else. But the reality is you're not. You're just holding the pace that, that you're aspiring to.

To finish off. I want to give some. There's some bonus tips that you really have to think about and consider when preparing for a half ironman. And each of these could be a topic in that you do a full episode on. But I want you to give the one key tip for each of these topics and the key purpose behind it, why it's so important. So we'll start off with lead up races or practice races and making sure that the actual race, your goal race, isn't the first time you're doing this event.

And this goes for every sport. I don't care whether you're a cross trainer, cyclist, gravel rider, endurance swimmer. You need to have events that, that are under race conditions that make you prepare the night before, the week before, etc. The morning of the warm up. And having having those experiences and then going through the actual event sets you up beautifully for when it counts the most when your A race comes. So the more of these events that can be spread out well enough so that you're recovering from it and not losing too much time in preparing for a B or a C race where you don't have to taper more than a day or two. These are invaluable experiences not only in the preparation but in the execution. And then you can have a real good look at your post race analysis about what things do I need to improve on? And it will be hitting you smack in the face that geez, I just I was crap at the start of the swim, I didn't get anybody's feet. I swam crooked. I rode too hard at the start of the box bike. I didn't know that there was that many hills in it. I rode the hills too hard. I had so many time periods in zone one, you know, I got off the bike and ran way too fast. All the typical things that, you know, hit you in the face and say, well, I'm not going to do that next time. I've already made that mistake. So, so many reasons why you would use lead up races and you wouldn't finally want to just have a six month period or 20 weeks of just training where you don't know what's going to happen on race day. Your only time you're going to find out is on race day. And that's easy in a half ironman, harder in an ironman, but it's easy in a half ironman to do mini races where you might be doing a 1k swim, 60k ride and a 12k run. There are examples that you could do yourself in a training session along the journey of your period from now till race day. So all of these experiences will not only help prepare you for what the expectation is on race day, but it's also good stepping stones along that journey to see how you're performing and where you are, where's your form, what's the.

Key tip in next point, which is how to taper properly for a 70.3?

Well, this is a hard one because every single person should really have a variation of the proper taper. And what is the proper taper? And that's the question on everybody's mind. And it's so individual that we can almost say there isn't one. I've certainly experimented over 20 or 30 years with variations in taper, but I know that I coach people who do well with a harder couple of days before race day. I know I coach people who do well with complete rest before race day and everything in between. So. So the answer to that question is what works best for you is what you should do.

I guess the how is as less important as what the goal is. And the goal is shed fatigue and get to race day where you feel really, really good to perform.

And you're only going to find that out after multiple races. And that's another good reason why lead up practice races are good, because you can work out, you know, if you've done a little mini taper and didn't work so well. I was so tired and my legs were so trashed on the practice day. Well, I won't do that on race day. After the event, it's always a good post, race analysis time to do that and find out exactly what went well or what didn't go well for the next time you do this race.

Generally we're finding that majority of athletes are having a taper of seven to 10 days plus where they're not doing any major long or majorly intense sessions, but they're still doing intensity in that week leading up. It's just a lot shorter and the volume is cut down a bit.

Yeah, look, the taper is very specific and we have, you know, gone into some depth in some of the podcasts about it. But you know, it is an important part and you need to find out from your own experience what works best for you and help your coach with that and tell your coach, look, I felt like I've done better when I've done this type of taper and the coach will work with you on that.

The next bonus point is the race plan. So what are this, what's the key understanding of the purpose of a race plan?

Yeah, understanding where you are at on race day. And once you understand that, then the numbers should be real. They're not fictitious ones that you hope to do. They're numbers that you've done in training. And so that's the answer that you have to ask yourself. The question you have to ask yourself. And the answer is where am I at in the last month of training? And that's why we do some pre race testing prior to our main event. So we have the final peaked, rested trials for swim, bike and run that are going to formulate our race plan. And they're really key and they should be the most up to date exact example of what your capacity and capabilities are come race day. So you go into the race with a plan that's based on actual factual data, not on fictitious, I want to, I hope I can, let's see what I can do type of attitude. No, I'm going in knowing that I'm going to swim 140 per 100 pace. I'm going to ride at 36ks an hour based on my power and I'm going to run at 4:40 pace based on my running time trials.

The fourth leg of the triathlon, the fourth discipline that you already spoke about, nutrition. What do you want to say about that to finish? I guess it comes back to why, how important the practice and lead up races are on the lead up training sessions.

I Just don't want to repeat myself, but I have to. If you don't practice this in training, you're going to have a really uncomfortable experience. Whether your gut is hurting you, you feel like vomiting or you feel like going to the toilet, they're the three things that are going to be the worst case scenarios. Because you've tried something on race day that you actually haven't done in training, you know, there's nothing worse than doing a race where you have to go to the toilet for the majority of the time. It's so uncomfortable, it's so distracting and it takes away from the fun. And if there's no toilet nearby and you have to hang on, you can't actually concentrate on what you're doing. If you've got an upset tummy because you, you've had a bad breakfast or the gel's gone down wrong, or the combination you've used is not diluted enough, or you've grabbed something you haven't had before. Again, racing with an upset tummy is distracting. It takes away from the performance, feeling nauseous. There are other things that having the wrong fueling on the day. These things have to be nutted out way before race day. And as we spoke about in, in, in the preparation phases of, of the swim, bike and run, you need to actually practice the nutrition at the intensity of race day and so, and write that stuff down. Each week you do your training sessions, keep notes and a diary. I was a bit underdone today. I might need another 10 grams of carbs. Oh, that was way too much. I had plenty, plenty of carbs. I didn't, I wasn't even hungry that probably I could try to go a little bit less carbs because really, basically we don't want to over fuel ourselves. We want to, if anything, just be under so we can always top up. We don't want to be empty so that we're trying to catch up. But you know, the only way to get this nutrition right is to practice it and take detailed notes of what you're doing and try different brands and you know, if you know that one brand definitely affects you, don't use it, don't try something else. Well, before you, you, you know, you, you come to stand on that, on that start line and you're confident with your training swim, bike and run. Are you confident with your nutrition? Um, because that can be. No matter how well prepared you are as a, as a triathlete, if you have the wrong nutrition on the day, you'll underperform for sure.

And last point I wanted to mention, it's not so much about the preparation but how long should you expect to recover? How much time should you take off? Again, it's individual but what can you expect after a 70.3?

Because it's a massive event, I'm a big believer. And look, we coach elite guys who are in the pro ranks and we coach people who are doing their first time. So we've got everything in between. So the guys who are well trained, they should be able to recover a lot quicker than the person who's just new at this sport. So the expectation is that you need to have some period where you're allowing yourself to recover from, from what is a massive endurance event. Anything from four hours or 350 for the pros to you know, as I said, six and a half, seven hours. So in a half ironman, my expectation is that the more experience you have, the less recovery you need. And depending on what if that, is that your last event for the season or is it one of your three or four lead up races to your A race? So those factors also come into determining how much recovery you have. And there's no way I'm going to give people some intensity, you know, straight after they've, they've completed a, you know, a really tough half ironman race. So it could be two weeks, it could be one week depending on what level you are, as I said, and what your abilities are and how, how well you recover. And we have some really good top athletes who take longer to recover and you know, we don't know that until we've experienced it. So, so we're learning as coaches and athletes are learning as well that geez, I didn't give myself enough time to recover from that race. I'm still tired three weeks out from that past event. So again, it's like nutrition. You need to trial what works for you and don't ever come back sooner just because you're motivated. If you perform so well and you can't wait for the next training session, that's a great thing. But we know that letting the body absorb the load by recovering is going to actually improve us. Rather than continuing to, to create fatigue the minute you feel like you're okay, take extra time. You know, once you think you've got it again, take another day. And that doesn't mean stop training, it just means do easy stuff where you would be in zone one or two, swim, bike and run. You know, have some fun with your local mates who don't want to ride the way you've been training or running or swimming, you know, go for some coffee rides. They're the things that you should be doing. The more movement you do, the more post endurance events like Half Ironman, the more you move. That's what I'm telling everybody. If you're at a desk on a Monday morning, you've just done a marathon on a Sunday or a Half Ironman on a Sunday. Move around, don't stay at your desk all day. You need to keep moving. So these are things that are really important. You want to keep the tendons, the joints, the muscles functioning with as minimal fatigue creation as possible so that it's like oiling it every day. You're just getting things to keep functioning with no intensity. Intensity as low as possible. And if it means just going for a morning tea walk or just walking around the office, if you're an office worker, these are the things that you should be thinking about doing. And rather than just saying, I'm just going to do nothing for the week, that's actually probably worse than doing something.

Great way to finish. And it's been a big episode and I think the way we can summarise it is there's a lot to think about with a race like a half Ironman, a 70.3. But if you do some of the key golden things we've said in this episode that'll serve you in such good stead for the actual race, there's some really big things you can tick off which would get you 80% of the result that you want. There's a lot of little things to think about, but really the things that we spoke about in here are the things we've identified as the major ones that contribute to you getting the best result on race day. So thanks for listening to this episode. It's been a big one, as always. We'll see you on the next one.

You.

Want, like I give you back to.