I Won 6 Races Without Getting Fitter

We are so excited to bring today's case study episode because we have none other than our own athlete and coach at Triavelo Coaching, Matt Phillips. And Matt is a physiotherapist up in North Queensland, lives on the Sunshine coast and a very, very good triathlete. And he came to us as a very good triathlete. But the topics we're going to explore today is something that is still so underrated in the triathlon community, and that is how Matt has not drastically improved as an athlete under our tenure. And a lot of his numbers look quite similar and we'll explore all that in a second. But since coming on board, he's gone from the pointy end of races to winning six out of six of his last races in his age group category. And that is down to some really key secrets of Travelo method that we want to talk about. So we're really excited to have Matt on board. He's going to talk as both an athlete getting coached by travel coaching and a coach himself as a coach here, and how he has to have two kind of hats on all the time, thinking about himself as an athlete and implementing the lessons himself and then applying that to his athletes that he's coaching as well. So we're really, really excited for this episode. And he's fresh off his first ever overall age group win at Geelong. 70.3. So, Matt, I've said it to you a billion times so far already, but big congratulations on that race. That is just a monumental effort. It was a goal for you for the year. Are you still riding that high of that race win?

Thanks, Jordan. Yeah, it was. It was such a battle out there on that course on that day. Like, it wasn't the way that I expected the race to go and had to overcome quite a few obstacles throughout that to. To get to the end and actually cross the line with the narrowest of margins. So, yeah, it is. It was my goal for 2025 to try and get an overall age group win. And I've got another three races planned this year and for it to happen in my first 70.3 for 2025, I was absolutely stoked.

And let's be clear here, when we talk about overall age group win, we're not talking about your individual age group, which is the 35 to 39 category. We're talking about the fastest age grouper on the day. And, you know, for someone at your age, at that ripe old age of 37, you know you're competing against some really classy 23 24, 25 year olds. And you know, our own athlete, Tom Page, won this race last year as an overall athlete and you are literally two or three minutes behind what he did last year. So that puts you in some pretty decent company. So, yeah, so don't do a Tom and underrate everything that you've done. This is pretty special, mate. So, yeah, big shout out from all your followers, especially us as Trivalo community. We just loved seeing you cross that line and I think you had 37 seconds up your sleeve, which was even more remarkable.

Yeah, and I want to jump on that and just talk about and jump into the race because everyone wanted to hear how it played out. And there's a little bit of a. We're so happy to have so many consistent age group wins at 70.3s and overall wins, which, you know, the fastest age group athlete on the day. And that's happened a lot over the last couple of years. But the curse of that is that it can be a little bit expected of some of our top tribal athletes. And, and we had Tom on the podcast late last year where, you know, he won the world title as in his age group category. And we had a lot of comments pre the race going, you know, Tom's going to win the world title. And after, of course, he won it. And then as Tom explained on our podcast, he had so many battles to overcome in that race. He had so many things go wrong that almost took that world title away from him and it took every single thing he had to win that by a narrow margin, you know, and so you look on paper and just go, oh, Tom won. He won another race. Of course it almost happens here as well where we see another tribalo coach win the overall thing. And it just was not that case at all. You had a lot of things go wrong on the day and it took everything you had to win the race. So give us a little bit of insight into some things that went wrong and how you overcame those hurdles.

Yeah. So I think the build into Geelong was. It wasn't potentially as long as I wanted it to be. I'd been on holidays over in New York and got back mid gen, which gave me just enough time to do one good race ready phase. And my numbers were really good in training, but I knew that for me, my build in my most important races are at the end of the year. And the tactic going into this race from Jared was to not start at the front. My swim league is my strongest discipline, but to not be first out of the gate. As often that just ends up meaning I'm out there all on my own. So I tactically started a few places back, maybe 60 to 90 seconds back, and with my swim being my better leg, I attacked the swim quite hard. I wanted to try and see if I could get as close back to the front of the race as I could. And I was able to swim well and came back out in front of the age groupers. But then once I got out of the water and started to take off my wetsuit, I soon realized that something just wasn't right. My quads didn't feel right and my right quad was cramping on the run into transition. And then as I hopped on to the bike, as we come in a transition head up that hill, it was, it felt like I was one pedal stroke away from like a quad cramp the whole way probably for the first lap. And my legs kind of didn't really come back to me until that second lap. So it was, it was hard. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you know now what that was potentially from. I mean we always, we're always guessing.

With cramps, but we've discussed that both with yourself and Jared and a few things that are probably, I practice a lot of my nutrition in my race ready phases, but one thing that was different was probably having double the amount of caffeine before a race and also potentially carb loading too much or even that position of the swim in a wetsuit with my legs being extended for that period of time. Um, so yeah, there's definitely a few things that we'll try into to next race. And, and even I was able to have less caffeine before mooloola bar, even though there wasn't a swim before, but I just felt a lot better on that bike.

Yeah. So moolah bar was a week later for, for reference. And yeah, immediately you, you decided to not, not take as much caffeine. And if anyone just listened to the episode with Tom and Roland, you know how. I don't know what it is with tribal athletes and doubling their caffeine intake on race day, but it seems to be a last minute strategy that, that everyone can fall victim to. And, and, and it raises a good point actually that you know, we as coaches say all the time that we're, we're trying things and we're making mistakes. And I guess one of the main lessons I really love honing on is that you don't have to have a perfect race day to have a great result. You know, everything doesn't have to Go perfectly. In fact you should expect things to go wrong because inevitably they will. And they that something that can go wrong could be as minuscule as dropping a gel and it can be as massive as quad cramps at the very start of the bike or something worse, a flat tire or something like that. And it's how you handle those moments that depict what kind of race you're going to have and what kind of racer you'll be. And Matt, you really, you had some hurdles and you stepped up to the plate. So talk us through the rest of the bike leg. You know how was your power numbers compared to the plan and how do you think you executed?

Yeah, so my goal power numbers for that race were 290 to 310. I try and keep a quite narrow range that I've been able to execute in many race ready sessions quite comfortably and run off the bike. So I know that with this course it says flat on the picture but there are some undulations and getting out of transition has its challenges. The road quality is poor and I had to be really mindful of how I distributed my power out through there. And throughout the, the first lap I, I really had to kind of scale that power back and, and think on the try and project many throughout that first lap is what I'm going to do. So I, I decided that I'd try and get some, some electrolytes in and potentially did that too quickly in that I probably drunk 600 meals of of water in the first 40 minutes which then had its issues on my belly as well. So once I'd got through the, the first lap and back into town my legs came back to me and I was able to execute that second lap more as I wanted to and more that I was prepared. My average power for the the whole ride was 291 with a normal hours of 293. So quite close. And, and then I was averaging around that 42 to 43 k's an hour which is, which is what I have done in training.

Yeah. And so dad as the coach, you know, swimming, he's clearly his strongest leg. He's just been executing the bike and training unbelievably and just. And to have that, that average and normalized so close 291 and 293 and to have that narrow window of 290 to 310, you know that's the kind of riding that we want to see and so that's super impressive. And then Matt, your run is where, where you're really trying to, you're really trying to improve and you know, there's more time to be gained there. So dad, as the coach, what was the expectations and the conversation like around the, the bike heading into the run for this race?

Yeah, and look, we, when you, when you're a spectator at watching your athletes, you don't know what's going on out there. So you've got no idea what is, what's, what Matt's feeling like, what he's, what the position he's in. It's all pretty chaotic on the day, isn't it? And, and it's actually chaotic for the athlete. I, when I saw Matt on the run, you know, he was absolutely running straight towards me going, what's happening? Where am I in the field? And I'm trying to remain calm, saying, just concentrate on your running mat. And you know, the things that he knows as a coach, he would be telling his athlete, don't worry about where you are, you can't do anything about that. You just have to run your race. And then, you know, eventually I'd say, and you have a 30 second gap. And so he got his answer, but it wasn't the first thing I was going to give him. So I didn't know what happened on the bike. I had no idea that he had cramping in the swing. This is nothing that's ever happened before. And I didn't know that he doubled his caffeine. So these are the things that.

If.

He was coaching his athletes, he'd be going, matt, why would you do that? And, and so he knows the question that I was going to ask him afterwards. What? And so they're the things that we all have to take ownership of and we have made those mistakes as well. Not with caffeine. I don't actually drink coffee, so it's even a weirder sentence to say. But you know that whatever's happening, he looked good as a runner when he was running. And that's the thing that I was most happy with. You know, if someone's actually in a daze, in a zombie state where they're not even worrying about where they are in the field or what their times are, then I'm worried. But this guy's just jumping out of his skin going, you know, you know, what's my time? What am I doing? It means he's concentrating. So that was, that was really good. So we know that his bike and his swim are his trump cards. And so the job is he's running his work in progress and not that swimming and riding isn't. But we really are honing in on his run. And that's when he came to us six months ago. You know, he was adamant that, you know, he's. I just need to improve my running. I need to improve everything, but my running really sucks. I need to. I need to really fix that. And. And so the strategy was you can only run where your form is now. And the usual information start conservative and just let the race develop the way you want it to, rather than come out of the gate and run way above your level and fade. And Matt knows that. Everybody who listens to our podcast knows that. But trying to do that is not so easy. When you're in a race, you're in a competitive environment, you've got. You've got the endorphins of. He knows he's in the lead. So there's that aspect that he's got in his mind, how do I mentally manage this? That pressure of, there's a whole group of hungry wolves chasing me. What should I do? And these are the things that he really relied on, his coaching, where it's just controller controllables. You know, you can't. You can't worry about what they're doing. You have to just run your run, and if it's good enough, fantastic. If it's not, then you've done your best. And. And I think that makes the athlete more at ease with the expectations from outside, the noise outside and your own expectations. If you can't do any more than you're doing and that's the best you could do, it's different. If it's not the best you can do, and that's a worry, that's where you would be disappointed. But if it's the best you can do and someone's better than you, then you just take your hat off to them and say, well done. You're too good. But. But Matt was fighting for this, for this position, and that was the fun part for me, was watching him really dig in. And, yeah, that was exciting. And I know Matt was kind of desperate for information, but, you know, knowledge is a really good thing, and sometimes it's also a negative because it puts more pressure on you. So you gotta be very careful who you give the knowledge to, because I've had situations where people have actually changed their strategy and ended up getting a poorer result because of it. So let's be very careful about what information you give. So it was great to see Matt fight the competition. That's the best aspect of It. And what a difference it is at the finish when you've given your all and it ends up being a victory. That's the most satisfying part, and that's that conversation we talk about many times on the podcast. You know, Matt and I could barely talk to each other afterwards. It was. It was fun.

Yeah. So, Matt, I want to throw to you here in the back half of the run because, yeah, the first bit of advice, which is the coaching advice, is run your own race. Stick to your own plan. And you. You. You did execute as well as you possibly could. It was 357 pace for the first half, 356 the second half. So you averaged that basically right on 356, 357 for a really good run of 122. But there is no denying the fact that you're racing to win and you're in the lead and there is a gun runner coming behind you. I. A 114 or 116?

114.

114, yeah. So you had a couple of minutes lead on him off the bike, and you know he's coming. And so, yeah, you're running your own race, but in the back half, it's time to try and win the race. And so you are racing and you're trying to hang on. So how was your mindset there, knowing that that gap was getting smaller and smaller and you just had to give everything you had? I think your heart rate hit max of 191, which is. Which is really high.

Yeah, The. The race itself, the run leg had so many ups and downs. I got off the bike slightly in front of another really solid athlete, Bailey Tudum, and he set off out at T2 quite fast, but with my pacing, I just let him go up the road and just stuck to my. To my pacing. At the start of this half marathon, I think around the 10k mark, I was able to overtake him. And then I was a bit naive, thinking that that that was the lead. And. And I was. I was feeling comfortable. And in my mind I was saying I just need to make sure that I don't cramp and have to walk because if that will be the only thing that will derail this race, little to my knowledge, I didn't realize these two runners that were coming behind at 335 pace and 340 pace and that lead that I had got chewed up quite quickly. And at the 17k mark, I had Glenn come past me and I knew I had a good idea that I had 60 second buffer off him, but that meant that I had to stay on his hip for that run. And from 17Ks, which is just as you go back past transition and up the hill, it was, it was very challenging. It was very challenging. I, it also taught me some things about myself that you, you really can't. When you think you have nothing left, you really can dig deeper. And that, that last 5k for me, I think my splits were 3 50s and then the last was a 336 as not only Glenn came past, but also Oliver, who was the, the guy who ended up getting second, who ran the 114. They both came past me around 1k to go. So, yeah, it was ups and downs and I really did have to dig deep to get that win in the.

End because you ended up winning by 34 seconds. And so if you don't run that those 350s, fasten your pace, that 336 at the end and dig that deep, you don't get the win. And so that's what we're talking about when on paper it looks like it all went smoothly, but that's how far you had to go to get that.

It's interesting too, those other athletes, they don't know where you've started in the swim and you don't really know, but you do know, because that was our tactic was to start back. And so you, all the time, you had a buffer, but they may have not known that or they may have known that, but when they, I was standing at the finish line and when you, all three of you came in, everybody turned around to look at the screen to see what their finish time was. And the other two guys had just passed. You were not expecting to. When you came across the line, they looked at the screen and went, oh, Matt's actually in front of us even though he's behind us. And that's a weird thing in a sport, isn't it, that depending on where you start in a triathlon doesn't really dictate where you finish. So that was kind of a funny moment for me to see you actually, and I knew you still had X amount of time up your sleeve. So it's happened a few times. Happened to Tom up at Sunny coast where he had a 30 second buffer and the guy was running away from him. And that was one of the instructions I gave to him, was you just have to hang on and you'll still win even though you might not come second. So. So it's really great way to think through that last 5k when chaos is happening in your mind, this is hurting, this is hard. That's the overriding thought you have and you're not thinking clearly because it's hurting so much and this is a pace that you're not used to. And you know six months ago you weren't able to run 410 and here you are now running 355 and finish off with a 330 something. And you know that in itself would be enough to be satisfied. But no, you are an ultimate competitor so you've gone the extra step which is hard for anybody to do and gone no stuff that I'm not losing this, I'm doing everything I can that way. When you got across the line and you know you ended up on the ground, you know that you've given everything, there's not another ounce you could have run and that, you know, how was that feeling that when you finished then.

Like as I crossed the line, like I had nothing left. And yes I did just roll over to the side and just laid on my back for a good 30 seconds where I gave my thoughts. By then I still didn't know that I'd won. It wasn't until I got into and received my medal and sat down in the chair and I actually asked one of the Ironman officials there, can you check the placings for me? Um, and, and he looked on the screen and, and then it came up as me as the overall winner and all that pain just went away.

Because.

It, it, it was my year goal. Uh, and I didn't ever know if I was ever going to achieve an overall age group win. Uh, and that's the, some of the things that were going through my head at the time. I was like this may be my last chance to achieve this and kind of helped me really dig deep in the, in that back end.

That's just awesome. And it's leading by example and I think it does give you super coach status. And not because of the placing necessarily, but because of the execution and because of the work you put in training and how you've executed a race and dug that deep. It's unbelievable to be honest. And I want to use that to kind of go back to the start and just talk about this notion of how much execution in training and racing completely changes your results and completely changes your, the time and how fast you go on race day. So you know, like we said, your power numbers, you change power meters. So it's a little bit hard to assess your power. Exactly. But I think you tested indoor and outdoor and they, and they kind of. Oh, I think you tested them, the old power and the new power against the trainer and figured out that they're not that different anyway. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct, yeah.

Yeah. And so your power is relatively the same. So it's not like you've your V2 max, your FTPs gone through the roof, yet you're riding, swimming, riding and running all together the best you ever have. So what do you put that down to?

This is this is the Trivello method here. So like coming to Trivelo and being coached by Jared, the main thing that has really stood out to me is being taught how to ride a bike and distribute, distribute my power over a course and time trial correctly. And that goes into. I remember the first time I did a outdoor ride, Jared looked at my power profile and we said, matt, this is good, but there are a lot of areas here where we can be a lot more even. He showed me an example of another power profile of Nicolandro and also Tom Page. And that was just a light bulb moment for me where I went, that's what it's supposed to look like. And look at mine. And then from that moment on, I spent the net the last seven months trying to, to, to master that. And, and it has meant that I am riding so much faster but also getting off the bike feeling so much fresher.

That's the key difference. And so, dad, this is what makes Matt such a good coach as well. Because the, the willingness to implement the change straight away and then the discipline to not just wait for race day to do it, but to do it in every single session and then keep seeing those changes and then see the proof in the results in training and therefore when you get to race day, that makes a difference.

Well, it's interesting Jord and Matt will agree with this. You know, when you come at a level already, it's hard not to get ahead of yourself and think, I know how to ride a bike. I've been doing it quite well. What, what, what things can you tell me to do that are going to make any difference to me when I'm already at the pointy end? And to Matt's credit, the difference in most athletes that I find, if they're not willing to listen or change, nothing's going to change. And Matt was so keen to embrace any information and so by pointing out particular things about how to ride the hill, how to keep the pressure on over the crest, keep the pressure on the downhill, all these little things, he just, he just embraced that and actually went out and practiced that. And, and as man will say, it's not easy. It's such a hard skill to learn and so frustrating at times because you just can't seem to master it. And you know, there's certain levels you can get to where you're improving and then all of a sudden you don't improve. But to be fair, when we looked at some of Matt's earlier race ready stuff where I think I gave him some, Maybe it was four by 30s and he might have been riding them at 280s and by the end of that, you know, Melbourne build and then by the time he does Geelong, that's two 270.3 builds, he's not riding those four by 30 at 280 anymore, he's riding them at 300 plus. So it doesn't seem significant, but it is it. And he's. Not only is he riding higher power, but he's riding the uphills and the downhills completely differently. So he was riding them at 41Ks an hour and now he's riding them at 45 in training, you know, for those 30 minute efforts or 40 minute efforts and you know, and he eventually did an FTP at 46Ks an hour for an hour. And you know that's not possible if you don't change something. And that's the beauty of the athlete that Matt is. And because he's a coach now, he's having to tell this story to his athletes to trust that process. And if he's not on board with it, how is he going to convince his athletes to be on board with it? So when you experience it yourself, it's so much easier to tell others, look, just do. And you'll be such a better rider straight away. And you've already found your athletes and you're getting such a buzz like I do, getting it out of you to see you ride this way compared to what the way you rode before and you're experiencing that coaching thing when you're telling your athletes to do the same and they're all going, wow, how good is this for the same effort, for the same fitness? Just distribute the power differently where it counts. I can ride faster. That's like, is that true? Can that happen? And you know, that's the thing I think Jord, that Matt's done so well is he's just taken the information and gone right, this is all I have to do. If I go and do this in training, I can replicate it on race day. And that's basically the principle that we work on. What's going to happen on race day? If you can't do it in training, how are you going to do it on race day? So it's a pretty simple concept, but boy, it takes some doing.

That's your experience, Matt.

Oh, 100%. Yeah.

The.

And you did say there, Jared, like it's challenging. Like two it takes. Not only is a race ready session like that physically draining, but it is mentally draining trying to concentrate on the power meter and make sure that you're changing your gears in the correct position. And there'll be times throughout the those kind of sessions where you might have a momentary lapse in concentration and you'll find yourself swearing at the power meter because you're just, you're not doing it correctly. But over six months I've been practicing it and being diligent and also it's the same thing with my athletes, trying to coach them through that. And, and there's often it takes, I keep explaining, it doesn't happen overnight, it takes months. And you will never perfect this like there will always be improvements that you can make for this writing. So it's been, that's been the game changer for me in regards to bike speed and bike execution both in training and race day.

And so dad, you raised a brilliant point there that I want to hone in on and that is that we spoke about how your FTP hasn't drastically increased, but you spoke about how his race ready sessions, the numbers did increase. And at that top level, a 20 watt increase of what you can hold is statistically significant. And that's a really important point because we, we do these FTP tests and, or 20 minutes or 60 minutes to just get a gauge of, of. We do it for very, very many reasons that we've spoken about in the podcast. We do it for something recurring that we can continue to do to, to measure against and we do it for race practice and execution practice. But we're not trying to be a really good 20 minute rider. That's not the goal of triathlon. We're trying to be a good 70.3 athlete. And so what, even though that FTP number didn't go up and your ceiling didn't necessarily rise, your ability to hold a higher percentage of that raised and that is the goal of a triathlete. Um, and not only that, but as you said, Matt, you know that means that you can average a higher speed because you're, you know, you're holding a high percentage of the FTP and you're doing it more evenly. So you're holding a high average speed, which makes you go obviously faster and faster time throughout the race and you're riding more efficiently, which means you can run better off the bike. Off the, off the bike. So all those things combined result in just a great outcome.

I think, Jordan, I'd like to add to that if, if I. It's like the key to the safe, isn't it? If I said to you I've found a performance enhancer that's going to get you to ride 2 or 3 kilometers an hour faster, which means you might ride 5 minutes faster over 90k 70.3 time trial. You know, you will be going on, you know, it can't be that simple. And I'm saying, well, this performance enhancer is ride the course more efficiently and you go, well, that's not a performance enhancer. Well, it is. That's actually for the same fitness level that Matt has. You know, he's been this fit for six months. He's had got this conditioning and sure he's slightly improved his fitness maybe, but it's pretty state pretty stable. But now he's just riding incredibly faster than he ever has before. That's the performance enhancer he's been doing. He's been practicing execution and that's the key to the safe. And we talk about this a lot, but I don't think people really understand or give it any kudos. But it's the absolute number one thing that Matt's done differently than what he was doing before.

What do you think about that, Matt? Because, you know, you knew it already and you had heard of, you know, you knew our methods already and you just hadn't implemented them in practice as, as carefully as we'd like. And that was the conversation early on in your programming going, you knew what you should have been doing or potentially what you should be doing. But to put them in practice is something different entirely. But what are your thoughts on that kind of, you know, if you really, it's kind of an arrogant thing to say, but pre Trivelo method and post Tribello method, you know the mindset around that.

Yeah. So like I've listened to every Trivelo episode from when I started four years ago and the difference between like what I thought I was doing in regards to a negative split run and executing my bike even throughout a course, what I was actually, what I thought I was doing and what I was actually was doing were two completely different things. And it took a coach's eyes like Jared to go over my power profile and look at my power distribution and go, you have spent so much time over the zone and so much time under the zone, under your desired power zone. And that's an inefficient and slow way of riding. And once I saw that and I was able to analyze that myself, it made, it just made a lot more sense.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think the listener needs to understand that not only does it make you ride faster, it enables you to run the way you probably should be running. And I think that's the aha moment for Matt is we haven't done any freaky running sessions to get you from a 410 runner to a 350 low runner. It's pretty much your riding has enabled you to run properly. And you weren't that bad a runner. It's just that you were so gassed from the bike session that you were. The fatigue was overwhelming for you to be able to run properly.

A great example of that was Port Macquarie 70.3, which was my first race, first 70.3 distance. And after being coached by you for a few months, I actually went back and had a look at what my power distribution was like across that course. And I spent 46 minutes above FTP in a 2 hour and 17 minute ride and, and cramped as soon as I hopped off the bike. So. And, and I just, I didn't know any different at that time.

So. But it's interesting you did know because you'd heard it, but you'd heard it on the podcast because you listened to every podcast. But, but it's hearing it and, and practicing it is, is the thing that I'm passionate about. Getting this message out to everybody so that they get an opportunity to race as they should. And this is the point and the purpose of having these, these podcasts with you is to spread that message to people who don't have the opportunity to be coached by us. But, but yeah, it's, it's free advice and it's easy to hear it, but poor Matt. How hard is it to. To do it?

Yeah, and that's the main point that I'm trying to get across to, to my athletes as well. If you go back and look through their power profile and you look at the spikes, it's, it's not one or two spikes that, that derail your race, but over 90ks, if you've got 50 or 60, that ends up accumulating to 10, 15, 20 minutes above the range sometimes more like my case, 40 minutes above the range. And that only does one thing, is take away from your ability to run off the bike.

Until you experience the feeling and the difference, it's hard to believe. You can't quite believe that actually makes that much difference. But then once you feel it, you go, oh, wow. This is what running is supposed to feel like. And that allows you to. We always talk about the goal is to get your run off the bike as close to your fresh run as possible. And you think, well, how can that be possible after a 90k ride at 90% of your FTP? But it is if you ride efficiently and execute that way. So that's a really, really big, big difference. So I want to finish by talking about kind of what's next for the year. Now that you've ticked off the big goal in the first race, how does the rest of your year look? And after, I want to throw it out about, you know, kind of the, what you, what you're looking for in a coach for the rest of the year. So Matt, what's, how does the rest of the year pan out?

So next race for me will be Port Mac 70.3, and then from there I'll do Sunny Coast 70.3 leading into Spain in November for World Champs. So I took my slot for Spain at Melbourne 70.3 last year and that is my a race for this year.

And coach, what are your thoughts on where the coach needs to go?

One of the things that we don't really emphasize is that things take time. And even though this is a really short journey for Matt so far, there's so much more room for his improvement. And this year in 2025 is just one of the stepping stones in a period of five, six more years of, of being, you know, the athlete that he wants to be. That can go on forever. But, but you, you have to be willing and disciplined enough to not think that you can fast track anything in life. You just need to do the work to get better at it. And, and I think, you know, all the races you have lined up, they're going to have good results, they're going to have average results and they're going to have poor results. And it's just a matter of how you deal with all those ups and downs. And during the year, you know, we don't know what's going to happen to us. We don't know whether we're going to be injured or sick or have a great six month uninterrupted. There's so Many things that can make you a better athlete and there's so many obstacles just like you found in that race. But the measure of a good athlete is how do they deal with the planning of those things in preparation for their training and on race day. Can they deal with things that go wrong in training? Can they deal with, you know, your wife rings up and says, I can't do what I was supposed to do. Can you go and do that for me? And that you've got this training session lined up. So they're examples of things that you know are out of your control a lot of the time. But if you plan well and you do all the right things, and Matt's an example of that to a T. But you've got to be able to make sure that you understand things don't happen quickly. You've as a runner for Matt, you know, this time in November, he'll be a much better runner than he is now. He's already a better runner than he was last November at Melbourne. He's already improved a few percent. And as, as he progresses through the program, that's the expectation that you have. Things take time and if you stick with it and be consistent, don't be extreme in anything, be extremely lazy or be extremely over motivated, but just stay at it. Matt can do whatever he wants and so can any athlete, but that's not easy to do. Consistency is probably the hardest thing to manage. So staying disciplined and not expecting things to happen straight away and staying consistent. It's the same message I would give to any athlete that comes on our program. If they can think about that through their whole, whole athletic career, they will get some good results.

And a really great example of that is yourself, dad. You know, in, when really time trialing for you in a cycling perspective and then in a, in a more aqua bike perspective, you were better at 59 in terms of power and average speed than you were at 50. You know, with that continued practice and honing in that craft and continued execution, that's a really encouraging thought, you know, because you'd think that you would slow down and in fact you were getting faster and stronger and executing more efficiently, which is just amazing. And that was when, you know, winning all your billion Australian Masters time trial titles that you've got as part of the Palmares. But the point I wanted to finish off was, was Matt, I think you, the attributes you take as an athlete are what make you such a great coach as well. And that's the care factor you have for your own preparation. You know, our motto is plan, prepare, perform and you embody that perfectly and that allows you to coach so well with the athletes because you've got that care factor for wanting to do the execution properly and that will get the result. And so any final thoughts from you about what you want potential podcast listeners to hear or even your own athletes listening about your journey so far?

I think what Jared just mentioned then as well, you can't rush endurance fitness and that. Being patient. I'd love for my run to be a 116 and sometimes it, it takes a bit of time for me to get some perspective and have a look where I have come from. Like I only was able to run sub 40 minutes in an Olympic distance 18 months ago and at Noosa I did 3640. So it's that perspective sometimes that you need to look at and go, yes, it still is moving in the right direction, but I just have to be patient and give it time.

Brilliant final answer. Any last words from you, dad?

No. It's been great. Having Matt come on board with Trivelo is such an asset and I'm so confident when I give an athlete to Matt to be coached, I know that he totally has the care factor and a lot of, and I say this, you know, not flippantly, a lot of athletes are so involved in self interest and that's fair enough because they want to improve and they want to be the best version they can. But very rarely can you have an athlete who's at that top end who has a care factor and that's what, that's what makes a good coach. And Matt's outstanding as an athlete. He's leading by example. And I have so much confidence in giving any athlete to Matt to coach the Trivalo method. And I know that because he's, he's understood how to go about it that he's sen the same message to each athlete. And that's what I'm, I'm so pleased that Matt's coming. And talk about gratitude. We didn't, we didn't do this on a, on a, on a athlete profile sort of podcast. We normally do it when we're talking about discussion topics but, but yeah, I'm so grateful to have Matt in our, in our, in our trivela community and he's an absolute asset to, to anybody who's come across him.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. It's been such an asset to have Matt as part of the team and we've absolutely loved the journey so far. Matt I'm continue to watch for the results from here on out and see the rest of your journey for your a race this year. So thank you very much for joining us. And thank you everyone for listening. And if you'd like to learn the TR method and experience it yourself and have the feeling that Matt had, you can go to our website, troaching.com and apply to get coached there. That's it for this episode. Thanks very much for listening and we'll see you on the next. Back. Keep on, Keep on. Keeping.