How To Ride A Complicated Bike Course Well

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. Welcome back to another episode. We're really excited to be coming from you from the studio again for the first time in a while. I think the last few episodes we've either had some really great guests on which we've loved, or we've actually had to be online ourselves for different reasons. So it's good to be back in the podcast studio, the Get Fast Podcast podcast studio together to discuss a lot of the things that have been happening in the wild world of sports the last few weeks. There's been some ridiculously exciting things that we can't wait to talk about as well as today's actual podcast topic is talking about how to ride a complicated, complicated bike course properly and how to ride it well so that you perform well and don't blow yourself up. Because the more complicated the course, the more technical you have to be and the more specific you have to be with your power number. So we're going to get to all that. But firstly, dad, welcome to the episode. We haven't done gratitudes in a while, so what have you been grateful for recently?

Well, it's funny you should say that, that we're back in the studio because for the last 100 and I don't know, 20 or 30 days since January, we've had a renovation going in the middle of our studio. We've. So we've really only had a bedroom and a bathroom and a half a couch to sit on. That's four months or something. And we had our kitchen outdoor with no hot running water. So it's been very interesting. So it is really gratifying to finally have it finished. And I know you were quite shocked when you walked in to see that what it looks like now compared to what you grew up living in for 20 odd years. And now the house looks completely different even now. We haven't added anything on, we just gutted the inside and changed it around and now it's. Yeah, we're very grateful to be able to do that. And it feels like we're in a different house.

It was funny coming home and seeing the camp setup that you had going with no running water. There was a little kitchen out on the deck and as the weather got colder, Mum was starting to get a little bit more agitated with the time it was taking to finish, but I.

Must say we had the best summer and autumn. Like you, we couldn't have been luckier. And it was only the last two weeks where the temperature's gone from, you know, basically mid-20s to 12 or 8.

Yeah.

And we sort of got inside just in the nick of time. So mind you, when you were younger, we've renovated this house four times. That's not something you should be proud of. But we, we had a house for one child and then we had a house for two, and then we had a house for three, and then four. So as the family grew, the house had to grow with it. So we've lived in this one house. As I've told listeners many times, we moved to this area principally to train as a professional for the hills and the running through the forests. So we just love living here. It's now, I think we've been here for 37 years or something like that. We moved here in 1987. My math isn't very good.

35.

Yeah, 35 years. So we tried to move a lot of times and every time we just keep renovating. So it's, it's a bit of a joke now. We will, we will move soon.

Yeah, absolutely. My gratitude is I just found myself really grateful recently for the amount of access we have to information. I just, it was, it's just crazy to me to think that you can access almost any bit of information you want at the drop of a hat. And it really changes the way the world works because suddenly any person is available to just look up something and figure it out in within five seconds, you know, and you can do that, your phone in your pocket. And I'm really grateful for that because it makes our job easier and it really just allows anyone who has access to a phone or anything that we have in kind of the first world country the ability to develop themselves and, and learn and educate themselves without having to go through formal education or anything like that. So it's, it's really powerful. That's my gratitude.

I just want to add to that because your grandmother's here, she's 90 and I was just helping her with her phone before we came onto the PODC podcast to teach her how to do audio messaging. And she, she grasped it straight away. I love the way she just isn't afraid to have a crack. It's not that easy for a 90 year old. You know, 70 years of her life, there was no such thing as a mobile phone. So it's pretty amazing.

Her emoji use is exceptional. Moving into what has caught our attention in the sporting world. There are so many things to talk about, but we have just been waiting to chat about this. And that is Jai Hindley, the Aussie. First Aussie to ever win the Giro d'. Italia. The, one of the biggest Grand Tours, the second biggest Grand Tour on the calendar. He burst onto the scene a couple of years ago when he came second in a heartbreaking fashion. When there was the, the, the race was it had a lot of Kobe issues. The world was kind of all over the shop and they ran it anyway and it just happened. He happened to get himself in a position where a few of the favorites dropped out and he came second. He had the pink jersey going to the last day and he lost it in the last time trial. And then a couple years later he's come back and he's won it. What a ridiculously amazing story for Australian cycling.

Oh, where do I start with this? There's so much to, to, to be grateful for. The talent pool in Australia and young cyclists, male and female at the moment is exceptional. And you know, you just, you can run, run through the names. You know, Perth seems to be producing some unbelievable people. You know, Jack Hayes, Dora.

Jai's from Perth.

Yeah, you know, I can't even think of the names now. I was thinking about it before, but there's, there's Robert Power, you know, who's the ineos Gun.

Who's Plap Blue Plum.

Yeah, Plap. Yeah, yeah. If we, you know, if we really wanted to make a list, we could get 10 guys who are in the Tour right now, Tours who are, you know, just outstanding. They're actually firing for stage wins. And, and now here we are. The story of Joe Henley is fantastic because like, how ironic that he ends up taking the pink jersey exactly the same fashion he did in 2019. And the last stage was a time trial again. And the difference this time was he put such a big amount of time into Carapaz on the second last stage, the penultimate stage. What a, what a sensational ride that was. That was one of the, like you know, that I was at, at the Tour de France when Cadell won. And ironically it was the time trial was the second last stage before they went to the Champs Elysees, which is a non event really. And Cadell was behind slick Andy Schleck and he put, I think he beat him by two and a half minutes in the time trial at Grenoble, which is where your sister, Georgia, your mum, Andy and I were Staying. So we were on the time trial course and we actually were getting news, flashes of him getting time on, on Slick. And in the end, he absolutely smashed him. And it was a procession the next day, and funnily enough, it was a time trial again that was sort of deciding whether you win or lose. And, and put this in persp. Perspective, Cadell Evans was the first Australian to ever win a Grand Tour. And, you know, there's only three Grand Tours. There's the Welter, the Tour of France and Giro. And, you know, one Australian in how many hundred years has won a Grand Tour and Jai is the second person and no one's won the Giro. He's the first Australian to win the Giro. So I put it up there with the two most successful riding exhibitions that, that Australia's ever produced. It's. It's equal to what Cadell has done. And look, the other one would be Goodell winning the World title. So there's three world class performances that Australians have had and we've won many stages in Classics and, and in the Tours. But to win the Grand Tour, that is, you know, there's only now two people have done that and Jai is one of them. And Cadell's a legend. He's won the World title and Tour de France and has come on the podium and the, the Giro. But this is. You've got to put Jai up there. This is, this is outstanding. He's only 26 and he's already come second, so he's come first and second already. And he's. He reminds me of the same person, not the same personality as Cadell. He's just a humble guy and, and he lets his actions do all the. Yeah, all the speaking because he's very quiet. And Cadell was the same, you know, just, just wanted to, to do, rather than say I love that about them. His performance on that, on that mountain stage where the Bora Hansgrove team had the guy drop back and Carapaz and Jai attacked the other two contenders and, and then the Bora Hansgrove guy sat on the front and then they just rode carapace off the wheel and Jai put in minute 20 something.

He won. He won the.

He won the. That was him winning the Tour right there. And what a sensational effort it was. It was spine tingling watching it. And it reminded me of, you know, cheering Cadell on, you know, literally 10 years earlier.

It makes me think, you know, we had Dave McKenzie on the podcast last year and he won a really famous stage in the Giro and that is. That is one of Australia's best performances. You know, Aussie winning a stage in the Giro and it was one of the most epic stages. And like you're saying when you put it in perspective, he's won one stage, you never take that away from someone. But Jai's won the whole Grand Tour and that's just phenomenal. I was a little bit. This is tiny Sarah and I'm going to touch on, but I follow a lot of cycling triathlon pages. That's how I really like to keep up with social media. My whole social media feed is just sport and cycling, athletics and triathlon. And there was so much great stuff on it from those pages. None of the mainstream media outlets anything. Absolute crickets. It's kind of devastating. It's just such a ridiculous achievement. It's really should have been major headline news.

And well, I just remember Kajal had a ticket tape parade in Melbourne and at the city center, City Square straight down changed its name so many times but it was packed Fed Square, it was 10,000 people in dressed in yellow flags. And that should happen for Jai. You know, it's massive.

Cycling is getting bigger in Australia. It's getting much bigger. I went actually this is a completely off tangent story, but I went to JB hi Fi today and was looking for some camera gear actually and saw a whole section on cycling bike computers and there was a headline. So jb, I've got cameras, phones, phone accessories. I've got the headline of the heading of everything. And they had this area that dedicated to cycling bike computers. And I went, whoa. That shows the market for it and the need for it because you would never see a cycling specific section in a JB hi Fi store. So it is getting bigger. But you're right, it's a bit of a contrast in the Tour de France is the biggest grand Tour. If you said to someone what's the Giro d'? Italia? They probably don't know, but in the cycling world it's the second biggest Grand Tour.

Absolutely. I agree with you. The look, ABC did a really good job covering it but the other mainstream media just, just gave it a blip, you know, still the footy was, was dominating and you know, we're just very biased. Obviously we want to, we want to see people get their deserved accolades. And I agree, I felt like it was pretty average.

But anyway and it might have been on some of news outlets, channel 7 or 9 or 10. I don't, I don't really watch the news at night because then a lot of people consume their Media, through social media. And so I was just disappointed to not see it on there. But I could be corrected wrong if some people saw it on the news or something. I just didn't personally. But, yeah, again, back on a positive note, Bora actually released a documentary, mini documentary on, on the tour and how it went. And it was. It was spine tingling. And the clips they release of them on the radio, on the car, they're always my favorite clips when the managers are in the car and they can't speak. Yeah, they just, they're just breaking down years, like. And when he's, when he's breaking away, he's just screaming into the mic, legend.

Come on, Joe, you're winning the tour.

And it's just.

Do it for Australia.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I also loved, and this is probably my favorite part, what you were speaking about with Joy, being very humble. They gave great inside access to the bus the morning of the stage and. And they're basically having a chat. And I really liked what the manager had to say. I thought the director, Sporty, if was kind of similar to your kind of philosophy. And he, he was sort, no matter what happens today, be proud of yourselves. We're going to give it everything today. It was just a really measured response. It wasn't overly hyped, it wasn't full of fear. He was just saying, we're going to give it everything. And like you say, the result will take care of itself. Whatever it is, it is. And then Jai chimed in, they asked kind of his opinion and he must have been as nervous as anything with the whole Tour on the line that morning. And he's giving a speech to his teammates and he just says, same thing. I'm super proud of what everyone's done. And then he just quietly says. And he says it so softly. He just says, I can die for this today.

And.

And I just thought, oh, my goodness, that is a guy that is just quietly so ready to give everything he can to this stage. And you just, you see him after the stage, you see him after the time trial, and he's just given everything. He absolutely has. And it was such a rewarded victory.

Yeah, look, it was a really good insight on the bus. I loved the fact that you sent it to me so I could watch it. And it's worth trying to see if you can. If you can find it. And, yeah, he really is. His gratitude to his teammates before the stage was, you know, I'm so grateful you've got me in this position. Let's just finish it off. And, and I'll do everything I can to make sure it happens and just, just keep backing me the way you are. It was, it was really brilliant. And at the end, he knew what he'd done, but he was that exhausted. He actually, he was, he couldn't respond. Yeah, he was. He'd gone so deep. I haven't seen anybody look like that since I fell off my bike and started walking up the hill.

Yeah, the doctor had him in his arms and he kind of looked like he was about to pass out in his arms. So that's a big segment on Joy and we, we just, we're happy to talk about it because it's so incredible. And every cycling or triathlon fan deserves to know or see that story. Go look up any clips if you haven't actually seen it. It's truly amazing. And that makes me really excited for the rest of the cycling season, especially the Tour de France. And I can't wait to see what he does in the future. But moving on to another, before you.

Move on, I just want to say, like, he just came and grew up in a normal cycling club and, you know, he's actually reached the pinnacle of his, of his cycle, of the Mecca of cycling. You know, to win a Grand Tour, it just shows that, you know, we've got a lot of talented people in Australia and around the world, there are a lot of talented people. And, you know, if you just hang in there and get the right people around you and do the right things and work away at your craft and be consistent, there's no ceiling, anything's possible. And this is another example of Australia is not renowned for being over the last hundred years as being the dominant force in cycling. Yet in the last 10 years, we are dominating world cycling. You know, when you travel to Europe, you've experienced it yourself, it is a passion there. Well, we've got equal passion for local football and local cricket and local netball and, you know, World cup soccer. And we've got lots of sports that are, you know, equally or more dominant than cycling, yet we're world leading in cycling. So, you know, it doesn't matter whether you're 20 or 50, you can still aspire to achieve things. And I think there's a great lesson there to everybody out there that, you know, if you've got goals, have a go at it.

Someone else with wild goals who has now ticked off three of them or four of them is Christian Blumenfeldman. He's not the only one that achieved something ridiculous this week. The sub 7 and sub 8 project happened two nights ago where they were getting. They had two male athletes aiming to go under sub 7 hours for an Ironman for the first time ever and two female athletes aiming to go under sub 8. Two of the original athletes that were supposed to compete had to pull out due to injury and sickness. Alistair Brownlee and Lucy Charles. So they were replaced with two other male and female athletes respectively. And all four athletes hit the goal. Christian and Joe Skipper was the fill in. Christian Blumenfeld and Joe Skipper went under sub seven for the Ironman and Nicholas Spirig and Cat Matthews went one under sub eight for the Iron man for the first time. And it was quite a remarkable event to watch and, and Iron Man's not a great spectacle. You know, watching a, a 6 hour 45 race which was for the men's and 7 hour 30 for the women. So they smashed the record. But it was pretty inspiring to see. And the way they were able to do it was with a lot of respect. The event was designed around how fast they could go, so they were getting every advantage possible. They were getting drafted in. The swim straight down a current one direction, not out. And the bike, they had 10 teammates just pulling them, riding ridiculous speeds and then they had running paces. But you still have to physically do it. And it was pretty incredible to see.

It was amazing, isn't it? And it reminded me of Kipchoge's attempt to do break the breaking two the two hours and, and you know, it's harder to get an advantage in running, but Kipchoge got it when he ran those guys in an arrow fashion. He sat in the middle for the draft. But boy, wasn't it inspiring watching the time trial, watching 10 guys ride 100 miles at 55Ks an hour. And same with the girls riding 47Ks an hour for 180K, 112 miles, 180K. And you know, the, the triathletes still had to hold the wheel. They weren't doing any turns but they still had to pedal and they weren't seeing the wind. And we know that it's 30% more, 30% less effort when you're sitting on the wheel, but you still got to hold the wheel when guys are doing 55ks an and then he's got to get off and run sub 2:30 for a marathon. And he ran 2:27.

I think he ended up running 230, 230 in 10 seconds or something.

Yep. So you know, boy, try doing that on its own, you know, swimming on Its own riding that, you know, that power on its own. And then running. You know, the percentage of people who can run under 230is really small in the world, let alone at the end of five hours. So. So it was really, you know, as you say, it's hard to watch that for a long time, but it's engrossing watching those guys swap off turns on the bike and. And you know, a lot of the time they were doing 60ks an hour for the majority of the ride and. And they had an accident at one stage, didn't they? One of the guys cross wheels and next thing you know they were nearly on the ground. But they saved it. So, you know, they really had planned it well and they rode to their numbers and one team did it one way and the other team did it another. And the outcome was, was quite significantly different in the male race and in.

The female category, like you said, they averaged 47Ks an hour approximately around that mark. And Nicholas Spirit came out before and said she was aiming, going to aim to ride 41 or 42 kms an hour. And they absolutely smashed that. The most exciting thing for me was that in both races it was really a race down to the end. There was 3 minutes difference or under 3 minutes difference between each other in the males and females. And especially in the females, they were. They were kind of together for a little bit and Nicola passed Cat and then Cat came back past her, which means they were really racing at the end of this, which is just so brutal, you know, And I think Robbie McEwen said it really well. He said that the fact that they're that close at the end of this event, that's a sprint finish in an Iron man. And that is just painfully brutal and just made it all the more impressive for me that that was so close.

It's slow motion passing, isn't it? You can't change your pace when you're trying to run 42ks. You can't go 30 seconds faster to get around someone and put on a surge. It'll blow you up, you know, so you've got to go four or five seconds faster. So it's like slow motion passing. And the same happened on the bike. The groups passed each other and got passed back again. So it was. Yeah, it was, was. It was good fun to watch.

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, a really ridiculous achievement. Mark Allen came out on social media the day before and because Christian in the media said that if I can do this, it means he's won the Olympic gold, he's won the Olympic World championships. He's won the Iron Man World championships. He probably would have won the 70.3 or a lot of people aren't sure if he would have beat his country compatriot, Gustav Eden, but he would have been up there. But he got his wheel broke and so he's got. And then he wanted to go on a sub 7 and now he wants to win Ironman Kona. And he came out and said, if I win this, it shows I'm the strongest Iron man athlete in the world at the moment. And Mark Allen came out and said, hold up, buddy. On social media.

Seven more of them.

Yeah. And he. And he said, you haven't been to Kona yet. Let's just make sure you. You can win at a Kona first before you start throwing those things out. And I thought he had a point.

Well, Mark Allen won it five times and Dave Scott won it seven. Yeah, I think that's the right numbers.

Yeah.

But between the two of them, they won 12, so. So, yeah, it's. At the moment he's the standout athlete. Absolutely. But, you know, the true sign of the greatest of all time, as we call the goat, is someone who can repeat it.

Yeah.

You know, you look at Kelly Slater as he's still on the tour at 50. At 50.

Yeah.

That's someone who's, you know, proving time after time that he is the greatest of all time surfer. And he's still right up there competing against, you know, the young punks and. And knocking a lot of them off. So. So what Christian's doing is sensational. Don't take anything away from it. He is the standout athlete at this particular time. But can he do it over a period of time? And I would have to agree with, you know, it always sounds like the old guys are, you know, getting defensive. Well, fair enough. Because they dominated it for. Not for a year. They dominated for, you know, 12 years.

He was also, I think, just trying to put some respect back on Kona and why and how brutal that was. And a couple of comments were saying, you know, a lot of. A lot of bigger guys struggle in Kona because of the heat, and Christian is a bigger guy. And I personally have not many doubts that he will win Kona this year, which is a big statement to say. I just. But I think the Heat, they're going to train for it perfectly. They're going to train for it scientifically. They'll master that because they've got the science behind it. But he hasn't done it yet. So it's not just a given. Yep.

Their preparation second to none, there's no doubt about it. And certainly the temperature at, at Utah was not. Yeah, it was right up there.

Yeah. Yeah.

And they were at altitude and there was a lot more climbing.

Yep, you're right.

And I have ridden Kona a couple of times and you know, the wind is probably the thing that's, that's more damaging than the, than the temperature. It's just such a brutal wind.

Well, Christian's come out and said that he thinks Kona suits him more than the Utah course. He kind of thought if he can win Utah, he's more confident to win Kona because he said it's, it's a bit flatter.

It is.

And that suits him as a bigger build.

You can't say it's flatter because it's got a, it's got a 30 something minute climb.

Yeah, yeah. A bit flatter than Utah. That's what he meant. Yeah, yeah. But incredible project. Great to see it. Great to see the innovation. Just like the Subtitute Marathon. That was unbelievable to watch. I'm sick of seeing any negative comments around it. You know, it's great to see what people can do completely assisted, see what they can achieve.

Yeah, look, I can't wait, I can't wait for October to see Kona come along because it's, you know, let's just see. There's so many good athletes really striving to knock him off, knock off the Norwegians and our man Lionel. And I'd love to see a head to head like a Dave Scott and Mark Allen that we saw for many years. It was just brilliant watching and I'd love to see Lionel getting up there and challenging absolutely enough about our favorite.

Athletes that it gets. That's going to do some, some help with your cycling and riding and specifically how to write a complicated course. Because the easiest, quote unquote, easiest course is going to be a long out and back where there's not, not too many hairpin turns and you can really ride even power and you've got the best chance of sticking to your numbers and that's going to give you a great result. But when the course becomes a little bit more complicated, what do you do? How do you best write it so you don't blow yourself up? And this is true for if you're just talking about cycling time trial on its own or cycling time trial as a part of triathlon. And the reason this comes up is because we were discussing a hot Dog course. We did a race simulation a few weeks ago with the hot dog course, and I found I was probably looking at the wrong numbers in that and you were coaching me through kind of how to approach it a little bit better. So take us through and let's start with that example of a hot dog course, meaning it's a bit shorter and it's a lot of hairpin turns. So you might do, you know, five laps of two hairpin turns per lap. So it's 10 hairpin turns at a time, which really slows you down.

Well, when you said more complicated courses or easier courses, we're talking about the management. Yes, the actual course, you know, even if it's, if it's a long out and back, it could still be hard to manage if it's got undulations. But if it, you know, the easiest course to manage is the flat pancake make, you know, long drag out 45k and long drag back 45k with no hills in it, you know, and for, for the bigger guys, they can just sit and grind that power out, sit on the same number for, for two hours, you know, and there's no real thought process except to hold the power, hold the same number. Whereas the minute you put a hill in, the minute you have wind, the minute you shorten the course to be out and back, left, right turns, then all of a sudden there's complexity. And the management of that course can be the difference between, you know, if I said Jordan is rider A and Jordan's rider B. And you wrote it in one fashion, and then you wrote in a fashion that I helped you with. I'm sure with your same level of fitness going into the race, rider B would beat rider A. And that's the only way to get people to understand that you've got the same fitness level. You're just riding it differently. And that's the question you're asking, how do you ride it differently and what are the things you're looking for? So in a hot dog course, let's take that example, and the course we selected was there's a little circuit here in Melbourne, the Burnley Boulevard, and It's probably only 2.2k.

Yeah, two and a half K. Yeah.

So it's, it's less than four minutes out and back. So you just turn around and you've got four minutes to ride the power that you want to ride. And then you've got to jam the brakes on, do a U turn and then get back in and start again. And you're doing that you know, if it's a 20k circuit, you do it five times or four times, five laps.

Ten hip in turns.

Yeah. So you got ten hairpin turns. So. So if you just looked at average power for that ride and it. Let's just take the example. It was 300 watts, was your. Was your average power, and your normalized power was something like 306. And. And you were saying, well, you know, they're my numbers for my next race. And I'm saying, well, they're not your numbers for your next race. And you couldn't understand what I was saying. I said, let's just look at, cut out the turns. Let's just look at what you rode that four minutes in between the turns. And it turns out you went, oh, my God, I can't believe it. I was riding 320 average 318 to 320. And my normalized was 323. So all of a sudden, you're now looking at two different sets of numbers. You're looking at your total average power and normalized power, which is 303.05 or 305 and 310, something like that. Yet when you're riding without turning and stopping, you're actually riding 320. And so if you were now taking those numbers into your next race and you were looking down and you got a hot dog circuit again, you would now know that the average power and the normalized power is not that relevant to the way you're going to race it. Yeah, because they're numbers that are literally 10 or 15 watts short of what you're trying to achieve. So you have to aspire to ride differently in between. And using the lap power function on your bike computer is really the only way to do it. And if you're not willing to do that, you'll be only have to look at the average power for the whole ride and the normalized power for the whole ride. So if I'm saying to you, Jord, you need to ride this race at 318, 320 average power, and then you start riding it without pushing lap, you will be sitting at 300, 305 going, what's wrong with me? Why can't I hit these numbers? My coach has told me I can ride, you know, 3, 18, 320. Well, that's not what your coach told you. The coach told you in between the turns. That's what you need to be riding. And if you don't push lap, you're still going to see average power. Being decreased by the turns because every time you stop pedaling, you know, just plummets down. Well, I was stationary in Zwift's 20 minute time trial last Thursday night for two minutes and my average power went from 294 to 281. By the time my avatar started writing again, I'd lost 13 watts in the space of 30, 40 seconds. So this is what happens every time you turn. So you need to eliminate the turns out of your data harder. And that's the key to it, is to start pushing lap as you get back into your nice, comfortable TT position, got your bike speed back up and now you're back to 320 and you push lap then, and you just hold that 320 and the minute you stop pedaling again, that number is irrelevant until you get back out of the next turn and then you're back in the nice comfortable TT position, you push lap again. So that's all you have to do. And that will keep your power where it should be. Your normalising average will still be lower, but you'll actually race better. Because what'll happen if you don't do that is you'll start chasing the number I should be riding higher power. So you actually ride 330, 340 in between to try and keep the average power where it should be. And that's the mistake people make, is they actually blow themselves up by trying to ride too hard. It's like. It's like the avatar on Zwift not working. And the first thing I did was, oh, far out. I want to average 290, but now I'm back at 281, I've got to ride 300 to get back at 290. I've only got 8 minutes left of the 20 minute ride, so I can start blowing myself up by riding the next four minutes at 300 and all of a sudden I can't sustain it. And don't forget, in a duathlon or a triathlon, you have to run. So you can't afford to blow yourself up and lactate yourself and then get off and can't run at all. So, yeah, the question you asked me is very straightforward question, but the answer I'm giving you is quite complicated and people almost shake their heads going, I don't even know what you said.

It does make sense, but it took me a while to get it when I was having this conversation with you and you're saying, no, you need to be pressing lap out of every corner. And I just said, I don't want to do that. My normalized power will account for the corners. What's the problem here? And exactly what you're just saying. You're just saying. Two main points to summarize is.

You.

Will, the power will just drop too much. It's not a true reflection of what you need to ride in between. And therefore, if you're just looking at your average power and normalized power, normalized average power, like you said, you're going to be riding way too hard. I'm going to be trying to ride 330, 340, 350 watts, not knowing that I'm doing that to try and bring that average up. And you end up just blowing yourself up in between each corner.

Yeah. And don't forget the second point is mentally you feel like you've, you're not doing well, you're not performing well today.

It's defeating.

Yeah, I'm not going so well. And, and you know how you create anxiety and panic and you tighten up and, and you're not, you know, we, we perform better when we're most relaxed and enjoying it. But if there's tension because we feel like our performance is substandard, we do tense up. And I'm talking specifically in a time trial situation, whether you're running time trial or whether you're riding on a time trial, if the numbers aren't what you like, and it could be that the power meter is not reading properly, but it still creates anxiety. And there's other things we've talked about many times. If you look down, your power meter is not reading properly, but you're averaging 44Ks an hour. That should relax you again because you're doing okay. But in this situation, situation, you know, you don't have, because it's so many turns, the course is so technical, you're not getting the right information fed back to you. So it, it will create anxiety, intention.

Tension, you start negative self talk, you start going, what's wrong with me?

Yep. And you know, the tendency for some people is oh, I've ruined the race. And this is not something I would think about. But you know, I've seen a lot of people lose the plot and then almost give up mentally instead of, you know, know, working out what they can do about it and understanding that the data they're looking at is actually not as, as helpful as it should be because they're looking at the wrong things.

So really it becomes so important to have your lap power on the screen. And in that kind of situation, are you not Even having average power there, you're just having your lap power because it might be defeating or you still want it there. Anyway, just to cross reference and check.

Well, I have it on, on the other page in those situations because I'm, I'm interested to see what the average power for the whole ride is. But as long as in between the sections I'm riding at the power I want to, which is what my plan is. And I've only been able to understand that because I'm practicing that in a, in a specific situation where that's, you know, you'd only do that if that's the course you're going to race on. So if you've got long, long out and back sections, you know that you don't have to, you know, there's only three turns or four turns compared to 12, then the normalized and average are going to be a lot closer. So the more turns there are, the further away your average power is going to be from what you should be riding at. And so that's why you need to understand what is the course. So has the course got lots of turns? Has it got 15 left turns and 12 right turns and 8U turns? Well, that's 30 turns. So the average power is going to be miles away from what you're actually going to be doing going in between those turns.

And so that's, that's a bit of a clearer example because it's out and back but just short. So that's why it's called that hot dog circuit. But there is an example with the masters cycling time trial this year is a up and down, left, right course. So that's quite complicated. It's very, it's very different. There's whole different sections. You're going north, south, east or west depending on what part of what course you're on. So how do you go about that? You're pressing lap every single time you turn a corner.

Yeah, well, well the main thing is if you stop pedaling for a roundabout or a left or right turn or a U turn, that's, that's dropping your power straight away. So, so in the time trial situation, I, I could end up having 14, 15 lap pushed on my, on my bike computer because in between us I'm just concentrating on if 29 is my number, then I just want to make sure every time I come out of a corner I'll push it again. So the next two minutes, I don't care if it's only two minutes between, but if I'm only off the gas for one second or two seconds, I'm not bothered about that. But it's when you're doing a U turn or a complete right hand turn where you're going around a corner and there might be, you know, up to five or eight or 10 seconds where you're not actually pedaling and a U turn, there's definitely up to 15 to 20 seconds where you're not pedaling. So that's going to be significant. Whereas through a roundabout that, where you might just be off the gas for one or two seconds, I'm not pushing left for that. So. So the lap button is determined by how long you have stopped pedaling for.

Then how complicated do you make it where you're actually just doing too much with your bike computer? Because depending on what corner you turn into, you might turn straight up a hill or you might turn straight into a headwind or a tailwind and then you're the number you then want to ride for. That next two minute section is quite different each time.

That's right. But you would know that, you would know that your range is. Just use your example, it might be 315 to 325. So in turning into a headwind, I'm going to be near 325. Going in turning into a downhill tailwind, I'm going to be at 315. Every time you push lap, you know what, what's happening. If it's a flat pancake, no wind, I'm going to be at 320.

Is there a situation where the range would widen for you where you would go, all right, I actually want to. And the, the nationals time trial course is an example of this where it's really steep. H, you probably want to be going a bit higher than that, that 10 watt range.

Yeah, it's a great example of Ballarat where we had the hill that went for it was a minute 50, I think. And you know, if I take a couple of people I coach as an example, 300 might have been their, their average power for the whole ride. And on that climb they were doing 360 watts for those two minutes, which is not something you would see in a time trial a lot because I'm a big advocate for staying in a shorter range. 220 should be your highest and 280 if 300 was your, was your, was your average power. You know, 220 to 1 to 320 to 280 is, is quite a good margin for tailwind and headwind and Uphill and downhill. But that, that particular course you really needed to be, you know, right up there, literally 20% higher than your average power for that particular course. And, and there's another course we've got in Melbourne called Q Boulevard. And, and that's an out and back circuit which we did race on about a month ago. And you can't ride that like a time trial. You have to ride that like it's a series of interval training sessions. So every time you come to a hill, if you're trying to average 300 watts, we use the same number on all those hills that were between 30 seconds and a minute 30 or minute 45, you should be at 250, 260. And that's not how you write a time trial trial. You should always in a time trial be just fractionally over and fractionally under.

So you meant 353.

Yeah, 350.

360.

Sorry, so 300 is your number. I shouldn't have said two. And, and that's, that's foreign.

You know, range is so much bigger.

Than, and on, that's on the uphills and on the downhills the bike's doing, on most of the downhills the bike's doing 50, 60Ks an hour. And you could be pushing 50 watts or just tucking and getting aero. So that's why it's like a series of intervals where you're recovering on the downhill and you're ready to put the gas on on the uphill. And I know many people have trialed this and I've done it myself, where I've tried to ride evenly over the hills, uphill and downhill, and not so hard on the uphill. And then I've ridden it, same person, same fitness level, doing as a set of intervals and I'm way quicker. And they're examples of, of riding a certain way according to the specific requirements of the course.

If that's a very cycling specific time trial course, pretend there was a triathlon there at that Q Boulevard course and you had to run off. You probably wouldn't be as aggressive, right? You'd probably just hold back a little bit. Even though it's faster, you don't want to be surging yourself that much and be doing an interval session and trying to run off. Is that correct?

Well, that's interesting question because I actually did do a triathlon on that course. We swam in the Yarra in 1986 and I wrote it like an interval course and I didn't know what I was really doing. In those days. And the reason I did that was because I trained on the course. And so I had actually specifically trained that way to not write it like a normal time trial course. And I just had to back myself that I could run the same way whether I did it as an evenly spread power effort or a set of intervals. And, and I still was quicker doing it as a set of intervals and having to run off, off the bike. So, so you would actually focus if, if that was your A race and it was on the Q Boulevard. And this is just an example. It's got, it's got like, I think it's got four heels out and four heels back. So it's eight heels on, on a 10K, so it's 5K out and back and you do that twice. That's a 20K circuit. So that's, it's 14 hills where you're really just attacking it and you need to ride it like that. And that's the only way you can get a better result. And no matter which way you try and look at it, that is the way to ride it. So it's really taught me a really good lesson that I am a big advocate for riding conservatively within your range. But there are exceptions to it and these are examples that we're talking about where you need to really identify what training you need to do for the specific race that you've selected. And course knowledge is the key. So you know, for those who masters rider who are aspiring to go to, you know, the UCI World Championships are in Wollongong and the Masters Aussie title championships are the week before. So they're going to be on similar courses. I don't think they're using exactly the same course for the UCI time trial as they're using for the Australian Masters time trial. But it is a technical course and this is what people should be thinking about who are going to aspire for this course when we talk about cyc. So yeah, it's important that you prepare yourself not to ride steady state for a 30 minute time trial. You prepare yourself so you're going to be used to riding over power, recovering and going again.

Last example then to paint a clear picture is recently there was the Port Mac course which has that brutal, brutal hill in the middle of it. And you do it twice. I think they do it twice. Right. You go back again and you go back to the conservative approach. It's such a steep hill. What's, what's the mindset there?

Yeah, the Port Mac course is quite interesting for Those who've ridden it, and I've written it many times myself, and it's got kind of two sections. It's got the first section which is quite undulating, and then as you get out, halfway down to the 45k turnaround, it kind of flattens out and then it's got a couple of rises out there, but back towards town, back towards Port Macquarie itself, it's got this one climb that's 14 to 18%. And you need to have the right gearing on your bike so that you can try to get up it as conservatively as you can without grinding away. And I stood on the course many times and watched the Ironman and saw guys in the first lap just smashing it up that hill, riding 4 or 500 watts, like we're talking about with the Q Boulevard course using as an interval. And that's not the day to do that in an Ironman when you're trying to ride 180. When I'm talking about those interval type time trials, they're 30 minutes. So the difference between 180k and doing that, you wouldn't want to, you know, you have to. At a 14 to 18% gradient, you have to be, you know, you're going to be up there, you're going to be, you know, 20 to 30% over threshold, but you're trying to do it as conservatively as you can, you're not trying to give it to it. That's the difference. And people say, no, I can't ride any lower power. I'm not asking you to ride, you know, the maximum power you can. I'm not asking you to ride, you know, so slow your bike can't go up the hill. You've just got to have the mindset that I'm going to get up this hill as easily as I can without burning a match. And therefore you need to have the right gearing on the bike to allow you to get up a cadence that's not at 50 RPM out of the seat, struggling, zigzagging up the road. You need to have a cassette on the rear that's a 30 or a 32 and a small chain ring at the front month it's a 36. So, you know, if you've got the right gearing, you can just get your way up the hill without pushing power that's through the roof and that'll really help you for the rest of the ride because you're doing it twice and you've got to run off the bike. So they're little things I'm talking about with specifics of courses where if you've got the right gearing, you can change the power and the approach.

I'd love to see if you had a power meter when you did the Q Boulevard back in the 80s, how you actually, actually went in terms of the, the over and under and also in Kona. And that's the last example I want to ask about. But you gave that, you said before, you know, there's quite a big hill in there. So again, in that situation, it's another iron man. How are you riding that hill?

Yeah, and because it's over, you know, between 30 minutes and an hour, depending on who you are. And you know, we've got to be talking general here because there's guys who can ride it, you know, really quickly and there's guys who are going to take maybe an hour and a half. So the, the range is massive. So the rule of thumb is the longer the climb or the longer the time that you spend on the climb, the percentage of FTP drops back. So if it's 30 minutes, you possibly can ride it maybe 85% to 90%. If it's an hour, you should be possibly riding 75 to 80% of your FTP. If it's an hour and a half, you should be trying to ride at 70%, 75%. So, you know, we know that the pros in Kona can average percentage wise of their FTP between 80 and 83%.

For the whole ride.

For the whole ride. So they're going to be riding probably at 90% on that hill. Some of them will possibly be at Threshold if the race is on. And we know that Christian will let those guys go if that's what they do, because he's already did it at UT where they were riding at his threshold. And so he wasn't. He knows that he can't ride at threshold for 180k, so he let them go. So that was a decision he made. And that's what I'm saying. You need to understand what you're capable of because that's just one hill. And if you ride that hill too hard, it means possibly in an hour's time, you can't go back to riding 80% for the rest of the ride. I'm talking about a pro here. So as an amateur, they might be trying to ride 60, 65% for the whole 180k or 75% for the whole 180k. And they might ride that climb at 80% or at 70%. So they're going to have to ride a little bit higher threshold for that climb because you can't actually ride that low unless you've got the right gearing again and the wind will play a part in that as well. So you don't want to be spending, the longer time you're going to be out there, the less you want to be over your threshold for the day. And I'm not talking about you, your, you know, FTP threshold, I'm talking about your threshold of the day, which is.

You know, if you're 65% or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. If you're 75% if you're an age grouper, not 80% if you're a pro. So you don't want to be spending a lot of time over that percentage. But as I say that it is determined by the time that it takes you. If you happen to be riding in a block headwind that could be 50, 60 kilometers an hour, that's the same as riding a climb at 7%. You've, you know, you are struggling in that, in that headwind. It's like riding a climb. So you can't afford to be, let's say it's two hours into that headwind, you can't afford to be at 90% when your average is 80, you're not going to be able to sustain it. So it's logic, but people don't see it that way. And the same if you did it the other way and you're a two hour tailwind and you're riding right at the top of the range, what happens when you go into the headwind? You actually have already spent your bickies with the tailwind and yet you're going to spend longer in the headwind. As something you and I discussed the other day.

Yeah. You said to me, why would you want to spend any second longer in the headwind than you need to? When you get in the tailwind, you don't need to ride that hard because it'll fly through. But I really like that advice. It's really simple. You just said if you push a little bit higher Watts, you might get to the end of that section 10 or 20 seconds faster. That's 10 or 20 seconds less pain of. Whereas if you are riding lower in the headwind and higher in the tailwind, you're actually riding longer in that headwind part and it hurts more.

That's right. And there's a fine line between how much do you ride in the headwind and the uphill section. But the rule of thumb is when your bike's going the slowest, that's the time when you need to be at the top of the range to make that period. When your bike's going the slowest, that period of time, you want to make that the shortest period of time as possible. That's where the biggest gains are. There's no gains. And when you and I are riding side by side doing 55ks an hour with howling tailwind, if you ride 5% or 10% harder than me, you might beat me by 10 seconds because I'm still flying. Whereas if I ride 5 or 10% harder than you in a headwind, I could end up getting a minute on you because the bike's going slower. And therefore if I get a minute on you, I'm going to actually get bigger. You know, distance in between us.

Yeah, it's really race saving advice. I mean, if we didn't have that chat, I would have gone into the next hot dog circuit and tried to ride at certain numbers and would have been been very disheartened that I wasn't holding them. I was probably. I would have ended up holding 10 to 15 watts lower than I should have and would have been very disappointing. So, yeah, taking this as like you said, it does seem a little bit simple on the surface, but also the execution of it. Yeah, you really need to think about that and get that right.

And look, I hate to try and, you know, complicate things. I'm trying to make it as simple as possible, but there are a few rules that we need to follow. And with everything that we talk about, there are always exceptions. And as long as you understand the tipping point of going over the cliff, once you go over the cliff, there's no coming back. You need to not do that. You need to get as close as you can to the edge and hold it there. And you only find that out by practicing where that edge is. And that's why you need to understand what the requirements of the course are before race day and then work out your plan accordingly.

That's a great way to finish. Thank you very much for listening to another episode with us. We really appreciate all of you who listen and tune in. Audience is continuing to grow as always. If you could leave us a five star review, it really helps get our rankings up on any of the podcast app. We really appreciate it and make sure you leave us some feedback if you're ever watching us on social media or YouTube. We really appreciate knowing what you're enjoying and what you like to listen to. That's it from us. And we'll see you next time, Sam.