Ironman Winner Shares 20 Years of Hard-Earned Lessons (Pt 1)

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo 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, Gerard Donnelly. Most of you don't know the full story of Jared Donnelly, former professional Ironman, Australian ironman champion, top 20 or 23 I think specifically at Kona Ironman world champs, 20 plus time Australian Masters and age group champion across road racing criteria, Criterion Racing, individual time trialing teams, time trialing and aqua bikes, a 2 hour 32 minute marathon PD that was pre super shoes era as well and has won countless other races. So today we're actually going to get an insight from Jared, the super coach on some hard earned lessons over his career. Why hard work isn't enough, why copying others fails, and what the real keys to success are. This is 20 years of no BS triathlon wisdom. Let's get into it. Dad. Welcome back to an episode. I had great fun preparing this with you and going through the lessons and extracting them out of you. So I'm just going to go through, I'll say each lesson, then you give me the story or the example or what the lesson means. So number one, hard work is super important, but doesn't necessarily mean success. What is that lesson about?

Yeah, look, I could give an example. And for those who've listened to the podcast a lot, it is important to be having a good work ethic. There's no doubt in my mind that hard work is one of the key ingredients to success. But it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be successful because you can work your backside off. And the golfing example is a classic, which I've used many times. You can go to the driving range, you can spend eight hours a day at the driving range and you don't get a lesson and you just keep practicing a hook, you're not going to do anything on the day when it counts except hook because you've practiced the wrong technique. And so that person's working hard, but they're just working incorrectly. They're working the wrong thing. So hard work is important as long as you're actually doing the right, the right, the right things that are going to get you the success you want.

So what are you saying in a training sense? You know, people can train hard but doesn't mean they're training well.

Yeah, so the example for, for a bike rider is more is better. And, and if I just go and compete in this race and I really got smashed. And the natural reaction for that competitive athlete is to go, right, I'm just going to train harder. And that's a natural reaction. And I've done it myself. I'm clearly not working hard enough here. I actually need to do something about being more regimented in my attention to detail for hard work and that's not necessarily the right thing to do. And a lot of times I've actually taken days off after a poor performance and realigned and got rid of my fatigue. And that's what the poor performance came from is poor preparation in not getting to the event in the right shape. Not from not working hard enough, but from not tapering properly. It could be any one of those reasons. So it doesn't necessarily mean you have to actually work harder after you've had a poor performance. So that would be what I'm trying to get across here. Hard work is so important ingredient, but it's not necessarily the answer all the time.

Next one, you need goals for direction, but you need flexibility in that process. What's the juxtaposition there?

Oh, look, over the years I've tried all sorts of ways to keep motivation going. And the one I always fall back on is if I haven't got a goal to work towards. I do. Even though I'm a pretty motivated person and pretty disciplined, I do really need something to work towards and I think that's really important for me. And I'm not talking about, you're asking me about my tips. I don't talk about anybody else. I'm just talking about what drives me. And there's nothing that's going to get me out of bed knowing that in 15 weeks time I'm actually going to do an ironman or I'm going to do a marathon or I've got a half marathon. And I want to be as prepared as possible in 15 weeks time. So every day from that date backwards I'm not wasting. And so that's a great motivator for me is to have something to strive towards. And I just glean every single day how closer am I getting to the form I want to be on that day. And so one of the problems with that is if you've got the goal and things go wrong, then you're left almost goalless. So you've got to have some flexibility around those goals. And if you have an injury or get sick, that goal is not the be all and end all. It's something that's that you've had planned. But it doesn't mean that your world implodes because you can't get to that goal. There's going to be another race somewhere in the world that you can realign your passion towards that next goal.

I love the paradox you hold there that it's almost too, or it is two opposite truths at the same time. You know, you're, when you were first talking about being driven towards a goal, that single mindedness to going, you are so committed to that goal that your, your motivation levels are at an all time high. And as you were talking, I was, I've got a double session today. I've trained this morning and then after this podcast I've got to do my second bike threshold session. And just before we hit record, I'm thinking, gee, I'm tired. I'm really not not wanting to do this bike session. And as you were talking about the goal, I was going, well, gee, you know, there's only 10 of these left before the big race. I go, I better do this session. It's that, and that's the power of having that goal. But then you completely flip it and say, I'm single minded towards that goal, but if it doesn't happen, I'm okay, you know, and, and that's what you're talking about, right?

Yep. But I'm not going to let that goal go without a damn good try at keeping it on the, on the page as my goal. And, and look, I'm, I'm talking from someone who's competed since they were nine. And you know, I'm nearly 70, so it's 60 years of, of competition. And one thing I've learned is, you know, you can't be defined by that one race. It has to be, it has to be flexible and you have to be able to. And that's how I've only learned this later on. I was not good at losing goals when that was what I was training for. I, I was very unhappy when I didn't get to compete for some reason in that goal or achieve the goal. And now looking back when I'm, you know, I've got more maturity about my thought process. It's, it's not the end of the world. But it doesn't mean that I'm going to try less in trying to achieve that goal. It just means I've got a better perspective and I'm a better person. We talk a lot in our podcast about being balanced in, in training and in competing, but I think in life, if you've Got that balance. You've got it. You've got a better chance of having a happier experience day after day if, if, you know, we're going to talk about this later on. But, but I just think this, think if you're too single minded and not flexible, you're going to have some disappointments that aren't you, you shouldn't really experience. If you've got better perspective on things, you can, you can accept things that go wrong because let's face it, not everybody has the perfect progression towards their goal. There are so many things that get put in your way. You've just experienced that, you know, anybody's just had a race recently and you, you were sick twice in that whole preparation in the space of 15 days. And you know, so many things went, went against you, but you still ended up achieving the goal, which is super impressive. But it wasn't looking that good, was it? You know, seven days out. So, so yeah, you've got to have that perspective and, and be okay with that. And that's, that takes a certain maturity, I think. And I didn't have that early. I definitely didn't have that.

It's an example you've been using more and more recently is you just constantly asking the question to athletes and saying, do you, are you sure you want to race? Do you have to race? And of course, the answer is always yes, I' to this the whole time. And you just keep nudging the athlete and badgering the athlete and you badgered me and just said, you actually, you just flat out say, I don't think you should do it. You know, you've been sick, what's the purpose of doing it? You have a goal time in mind, you're not going to get that if you're sick, it's okay not to race. And even though as athletes it's hard to hear, there's always a race around the corner. And as an athlete, you don't believe that, but that's what you're saying in your experience.

Yeah, and I think I made that mistake is I've told the story many times on other podcasts. You know, scrolling back through the last 300 podcasts we've done, I've explained that example where I've trained my backside off and I'm in the form of my life and I'm unbeatable in my opinion. And I really want to do this race to prove it to myself that I can actually achieve this goal. And I got sick and I actually could not perform anywhere near 100% I was at best 70%. I got smashed in that event. And from that actual one, it was a three stage race. The Tour of Bright, it was. And that was the biggest lesson I ever learned in, I think in, in understanding how goals are important, but they're not the be all and end all and that at the end of the day you can't compete at the level you want to when you're 70%. I just learned that and I, I've never entered another race not prepared in terms of 100 health. Not talking about training, I'm talking about your actual physical health.

Yeah.

And it's quite detrimental afterwards. I suffered for weeks after that because I pushed my body so far that it took another dive. You know, I was actually coming good. And then I did that to myself. And not only was I absolutely fuming for the result, but I was actually sick again for another two or three weeks. That really destroyed, you know, literally six weeks.

You started to touch on the next lesson, which was your behavior cannot be extreme. What does that mean?

Yeah, and I've had to learn this lesson exactly. So many lessons I've learned. Like I'm so driven that, you know, I'm not even knowing that I'm knocking people out of the way to get to my destination. And I'm, and I'm not being a really good human being. And that was me younger was, you know, I would want to win marbles, I just had to win everything. And so my whole personality was built around how well prepared can I be? And it was extreme. It was too extreme. There's no balance in it. And all of a sudden I was not communicating. People losing friendships because I was so driven and I could still be quite successful if I had a more balanced approach and it was more enjoyable. And when I was winning things, it was so much fun and so happy. But when I didn't win, I was so unhappy. And the behavior, the highs and lows, it's bipolar celebration. You're. You're extremely unhappy or you're extremely happy over the top. And, and that was unhealthy. And that's not a, that's not a good person to be around. And for those who care about you and love you the most, it's hard for them to really be on board with that. And you can understand how relationships get strained by that. And that's just not in training and in racing, that's in life. If you're, you know, if you're an extreme smoker or drinker or gambler, that behavior is unsustainable. I'm always saying anything that is extreme, extreme laziness, extreme, I don't care, I don't give a, you know, about anything that's extreme behavior. You know, find a middle ground somewhere so you can actually, you know, we want to enjoy our time on, on earth and, and I'm forever seeing, you know, people that we love passing away and you know, just yesterday your cousin had a baby. So it's happening at both ends of the scale and, and you just get perspective of how quickly, quickly 80 years seems to go by with, you know, people will not even understand that sentence. You know, you're in your 30s and you think, I've at least got 50 more years. You know, I've got a long, lot more time on this earth. And, and when you get to my age, you start to think, well, I don't have that much more time. I've done 2/3 of my life, am I making the most of it? So I'm trying to get that, that behavior to be more enjoyable of your life rather than being extreme. And I'm using the example of sport. And so I feel like I'm a better person to be around now. And I think I was not a very good person to be around as a competitive athlete in my younger days. And your mum's put up with a lot of poor behavior behind closed doors. It's easy to be gracious out, out in the open, but your true feelings are when you get home, I suppose when you really feel depressed about things that are not going your way and questioning everything you're doing. So, so if you've got this extreme behavior of I have to win or nothing, I don't think it's sustainable and I think you need to really reconsider what are you doing? And you know, you're talking to me and asked me questions about when I was a professional. So this was my job and I'm trying to earn an income here. So, so it's, it's okay almost to be extremely driven because as you know, in the world of sport, the most successful athletes seem to be the most single minded people. And even though their behavior is extreme. But if we did take a sample study of, you know, I can't remember who I was watching the other day. One of Australia's best swimmers who is pretty much unbeatable for so many years, he's really having a hard time after retirement mentally when she's had that dopamine release of success for, for 10, 15 years of her life and I don't remember her name, but.

Wasn't Ariana Titnis, was it?

She's still swimming? I think so. So she had a year off. It doesn't matter. But. But, you know, I can give you lots of examples of cyclists, of track runners, of endurance runners, of swimmers, of footballers, basketballers. There are so many people who've lost their way because they didn't have a balance in their career, even though it was their job. And we talk, you know, a lot of the time. Our podcast is aimed at age groupers, so it's even more important that you don't make this about your performance. It's got to be an extremely enjoyable thing that you're doing, that you want to be healthy and fit, that you've got an opportunity to race and you're pushing yourself against yourself as an age group. It's different if you're a professional trying to win. You know, like I was. I was being, you know, my future has been determined how much money I could win, even though there's hardly any money in the sport. But. But that, you know, so the extreme behavior can be excused sometimes, but it's actually not good enough. That's my hardest lesson.

That's extremely powerful, and you've talked about that before, but the way you just shared that is honestly one of the best lessons you've ever shared on the podcast. I think it's a high bar at the start, but the next one is being informed allows for better decision making. What do you mean by informed?

I always feel like I'm at confession here, and it's not easy to be vulnerable in this, but I'm going to try my best. And I think not understanding the requirements is what I'm talking about. And it doesn't matter. Everything I'm going to talk about today can relate to your everyday life, but it's so important in your chosen sport, whatever that is. So if, if you're not informed about, the example I'll give you is, yeah, okay, you're going to do a marathon and you haven't bothered to check the course in any part of your preparation. And you may laugh at that, but there's probably 70 to 80% of the people just know they're doing a marathon and they haven't really looked at the details. And, and a few people I've actually talked to, and the Melbourne marathon is a classic example. It's pancake flat. And then at the end it's got hills and. And people go, oh, I didn't realize we're Going to run up through the tan, and the tan's got this climb and, and I can't remember how many people told me, I didn't realize we're going up through the tan. I didn't look at the map closely enough. And so you, and I just think that's ridiculous. Everybody should be looking at the course. And that's an example of you not paying attention to detail, not being informed enough. And so you're running a pace that you think will get you the goal you're trying to achieve. And you forget that there's hills at the end, which is going to slow you down 10 seconds per K, which is going to make you miss the goal. You know, that's what I'm talking about, understanding the requirements of the goal you're setting. And so getting all the information about, you know, what's the wind doing today? If you're a bike rider and it's a time trial, what direction is the wind coming from and how strong is it, what's the chances of weather, wet weather, you know, am I good in surf conditions as a triathlete? And so you're faced with a race that's got horrendous swim conditions. You know, have you practiced that? So we're talking about being informed so that you can get prepared properly for the, the races you're going to do and the training sessions you're going to do. And it'll, it'll, it'll actually make you able to understand the requirements and therefore you'll make better decisions about everything because you understand the requirements of the event. And, you know, I could just mention so many sports, you know, car racing, if you wanted to, you know, you know, where's the longest straight where I can go 300ks an hour. How many turns are there? You know, just knowing, knowing information about what you should be doing will help you make better decisions. You know, if you're, if you're going to build a house and you haven't checked out that the, the plasterer, the plumber, the electrician, the painter, the cabinet maker, the floor board guy, the tiler, they were, they add up to 50% of the cost and you just, you forget about that. I can get more expensive tiles, more expensive painter, more expensive, you know, different styles of electrical work in the house, different standard doors, architraves. If you haven't done any of that information, if you haven't got any of that knowledge, you know, you, you're either going to be extremely short in the amount of money you need to Build that house or you're going to have a house that's lacking all the things that you want. Right. They say, oh, you want that, but that's extra. And every time you think you've got something, you've got a door that you want. Oh, no, that door you've picked is not $80 per door and you've got 25 doors, it's $75 more than that. So, you know, this is information that's crucial to the outcome of that. And that's an example that in everyday life, the more informed you are, the better off you'll be by making the right decision, the less information you have, you're more than likely going to make some more mistakes.

The Formula One example is, is so appropriate because they, their races can come down to a tenth of a second or less and they have a team of 20 plus getting every single bit of data and information possible to help the triathlon make the best decision to try and wipe off 1/10 of a second, which is absolutely crazy. The next one I think you wish you had in your pro career, but it's become a lot more applicable or just a lot more. We've gained a lot more knowledge of it the last decade or few years. Is that nutrition is more important than most people think.

Yeah. And back in the 80s and 90s, we just didn't have the knowledge it was and we didn't have the actual nutrition available to us. And I can still remember Professor Louise Burke now, who we had on the podcast and she's been on our podcast. She is, in my opinion, one of the gurus of nutrition and sport. And she was a young graduate, I think, at the time, and she did some testing on a group of us here in Melbourne and she was one of the first people to test endurance athletes with. She did muscle biopsies. I'll never forget that. Having someone stick a needle into your quadricep and extract some cells to measure how the glycogen stores were being lost at a rate when we were doing 120k indoor session on a, on a trainer. And any of those people who are in that session will never forget it was over two weeks and, and, and so she was trying to create a nutritional drink that we could use in endurance sport because it didn't exist. You know, Iris, I've told the story. We, when we did endurance training, we would basically go to the supermarket and get as many bread rolls and jam sandwiches and bananas and anything we could to stick in our back pockets and some water because There was no sports drinks that they didn't exist in the 80s and 90s. It was just, it was just water and whatever food you could eat and, and I can, you know, I weighed about 10 more kilo with the fueling I had in my, my back pocket and, and you just couldn't exercise with intensity and try to eat sandwiches. And so, you know, I, I just think we were, we were not reaching our potential because we were so malnourished as, as endurance athletes and, and I think a lot of the times that they're doing now compared to what we did in the 80s and 90s. I'm sure the running shoes contribute to slower times. As a runner. I'm sure riding a road bike that's steel framed, doesn't have disc wheels is going to slow us down by 30 or 40 minutes. But I, I still think nutrition, nutrition cost me. I think I was 2k from the finish in that day where I finished 20 something. I was still in the top six in the race and 2k from the finish I had full body cramp and I could, I could not. I was like the, the rubber man. I was, you know, I was like a rapper trying to do a dance. I could not function because I had completely. My, my body was lacking in any fuel and plus the temperature of Kona and, and you know, that's a huge lesson. What could I do that I didn't. I consumed as much fuel as I could possibly carry with me and you know, it just wasn't adequate for the effort I was putting in. And you know, it doesn't matter how fit you are, you could be as fit as you've ever been in your whole life. If you don't have nutrition on the day, the fitness is going to be irrelevant. You're going to come to a grinding halt. That's exactly what happened to me. That is one of the worst lessons. One of my biggest regrets is just getting myself in that position to fall short and you know, it doesn't really matter but it mattered to me. Um, I really wanted a top 10.

And I, as I turned out Ironman World chance finish.

Yeah, yeah. As I turned out, I didn't go back there because I had a back injury which that was the start of my back injuries in 1989 and I only got fixed basically three years ago. So, so there's a lot of lessons there that you know, nutrition is key and. Yeah. And for those who just dismiss it as, you know, yeah, yeah, I'll take nutrition. Yeah. Don't worry about that I'm fit, I can get through this race. And not only that, but, you know, before the race, every day, fueling. You know, we had, we had so many nutritionalists on their podcast, but Louise would say, you know, you, you fuel for the requirements of the day, and if you have an easy day, you don't need as much. If you're having a hard day, you need more. And, you know, we don't think about that much. If you do an endurance day, well, the night before is really important, and during the day, during the event's really important. And then post. So you recover for your next training session. So not only is it going to be a preventer of success, it's also going to be something that could really help you train better and recover better. And, you know, there's a whole lot of examples of athletes going for illegal supplements to help them recover better so they can train harder. Well, if you just fueled better without taking any illegal substances, you're still going to be better off than being blase about your nutrition.

Yeah, it's no doubt that records are tumbling like bricks at the moment due to technology, due to super shoes, due to faster track times and training methods. But one of the biggest factors is using nutrition, not just in racing, but in training to fuel probably four sessions. So the sessions are better quality, so you're getting fitter and recovery between sessions, which is wild. It was pretty cool to think that you're right on the forefront of that knowledge. We look at now Professor Louise Burke's studies and research is worldwide and is the basis for a lot of endurance sports knowledge right now. And it's kind of cool. You look at those studies online. Like, 12 athletes were tested using her home concoction of potato starch carb mix before we have all the products now. That was her pioneering that. And you were those people in that 1988 study that helped us understand glycogen use.

Yes, we were the guinea pigs. And who was to know that she was going to be the leading worldwide nutritionalist expert from a little small lab in footscray? And for those who don't know that story, we did it over 2 weeks. It was 120k on the trainer and we were giving a placebo drink one week and we were giving her her nutritional drink, home batch potato drink. And we didn't know which week we were on. And the first week they carried me to the car, I was that exhausted. And I was thinking the whole week in between, what happens if I had her drink? And next week was going to be worse. I didn't actually want to go back and anyway went back and I had her drink. Oh my goodness, what a difference. I was like completely different athlete. I was almost laughing around everybody. You could tell the second week everybody knew who was on it and who wasn't because the people who were on it the first week were going, oh, this is pretty easy. And the second week they were going, oh my God. And so for that, for us, that was, that was my first experience of. I was the same fitness level between a week, a seven day period. I'm not really going to get better or worse. In fact, I would have been worse because of the, the deterioration of that, you know, that first effort. And that was enough to, for me to say that this is such an important part of this sport, of any endurance sport, and if you're dismissive of that at your own peril, the next.

One is quite specific. You're not giving yourself any chance if you've got dodgy equipment. So I'm curious to hear what that means for you. And I have an opinion on it as well.

Yeah, I can tell you one story. I went to New Zealand to do the Double Brown Iron man after I won the Australian Iron man. And I was pretty confident about winning my second ironman back to back. And, and I got an upgrade from my steel frame to an aluminum frame. And it was one of the, the newer state of the arts. And it had a bottom bracket that was, that was not because the weight, a lot of the weight was in the joins of all the tubes and they had to be really strong steel. And so they'd found a new glue that they'd put the bottom bracket together with. It was really lightweight. And so a great lesson was I hadn't really tested this bike very well in training enough clearly because within 40 or 50k of that 180k, every time I push down the pedals, the bottom bracket was moving apart. So that meant that the chain at the back was going from the inside 30 or now in those days we had an 18 tooth gear and it went to the 13. So it went 13, 18, 13, 18, every pedal revolution. So it was doing this and we didn't have gears up here on the handlebars, it was down the down tube. So I was riding one hand trying to hold the gear while the bottom bracket was just doing this expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting. And so that's an example of dodgy equipment that just ruined my. I'd flown to New Zealand. The whole experience of that was Just disastrous. And I don't think I've ever been so angry with myself about just not giving myself every chance. And I picked that bike up and we were out in the country and I threw it into the paddock, and I got picked up by the sag wagon and the guy saying, where's your bike? I said, I don't care. It's over there somewhere. And I was so angry. And, and that was a lesson that, you know, from that point on, I even know a lot of the people who know me now. I'm not a bike mechanic, but I want the people around me to get, get me the best equipment so that come race day, I don't have that as an excuse. I don't want to have a mechanical. And I'm sure there are, there are times when you get punctures, when your tire completely shreds and it's out of your control. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about you not having your bike or your running shoes or your swimming equipment, your goggles, goggles leaking, you know, and, and if you're in my position as a professional, not going to the wind tunnel, not testing your aerodynamics, there's a. I could mention 50 things. So, you know, equipment comes under nutrition as well. But, but just, just knowing all of the best things that are going to make you on equal level to the people who've done all that, that work as well. So we hear lately now where people are going, oh, in order to be up there with the really guys who are winning, what are they doing? And they've all tested, They've all got the best bike, they've all got the best position. They've been in the wind tunnel. You know, you can't not be. You can't be second rate in preparing yourself for your event. And that's what I learned.

I think it's important to note here that watching you exhibit this behavior since I grew up, you're not saying spend on everything unnecessarily. You're not saying you need to go buy the best equipment unnecessarily. You're just talking about, always about the cost of dodgy equipment and trying to take the cheapest route or the shortcut ends up costing you in the long term. That's a really big one. And I still remember that growing up, we would ask for, can we have this toy? Can we have that toy? Can we buy this thing? And it was pretty. Most of the time, met with no. But something that was never met with a no was your generosity to go buy new running shoes. Anytime our shoes were worn or needed them, we'd go straight to the running store and we'd get new ones. And that was always so exciting because it's the same lesson. You're just saying your kids are running full time. Basically, you're running training properly as kids, you need the right equipment. And that's what the lesson's about.

Yeah, for sure.

Next one is copying other people rather than doing what's right for you. I think this is obvious, but I'd love for you to dive into what you mean here, what this means for you.

And look, I'm trying to give examples of. And I think it hits home better. When I decided that I wanted to be a professional athlete, I started reading everything I could find. And you've got to put yourself in this position. There was no such thing as a computer, a mobile telephone, the Internet, Google. It was you trying to go to the library and finding books about runners or cycling or swimming that people had written about that was. You're trying to find information about. About anything. And so. So you end up kind of looking around at other successful people. And that still happens, by the way, today you're looking at who's successful and what are they doing. And the Norwegian methods are classic. Okay, whatever the Norwegians are doing, we. Everybody wants to follow. Why? Because they're winners. So. So the evolution of improvement is because people do something well and then people want to emulate that. And so I started down that track of doing that and I was relentless. I would look at the races, see who was winning and, you know, go up to them at races and ask them, you know, subtly. I'd say, oh, you know, Jordan, fantastic win today. You must be so happy. And, you know, everybody be going, oh, thank you. I'd say, oh, what do you think was the specific thing that enabled you to compete like that? And most people are really generous. They'd say, oh, I think it was because I did more long runs or I was in the hills more, or I did some more interval work and I would get all this information from everybody that I would always ask. I wasn't backward in coming forward when I wanted to find information out. And then I would try to join the groups that were. That seemed no different to. When there's a good bunch of riders around your local area. If they. If they're better than you, you want to join them because you'll improve and are a good swimming squad, you know, you want to get in amongst them because you think it'll improve you and, and that's all fair and reasonable. So I was doing the same. I was going to find who. And to be fair, we had one of the best triathletes in the world, Greg Stewart, who ended up coming second at a Y behind, I think it was Dave Scott or Mark Allen one year. And you know, so I thought, well, this guy's at the top of the tree. He lives in Geelong, which is about 100k from where I live. And I would go to Geelong once a week and train with those guys. I would drive all the way to there, to Geelong, to their training venue and they were really welcoming and encouraging and I just watched what they did. And then I'd go to another training group who had some good athletes. Stephen Foster was a world class athlete and I did some training sessions with him. And you know, we learn a lot from others, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you can copy that and you'll be successful. And that's the thing I started to learn was they're not doing anything really special here. And in fact, I think a lot of the stuff they're doing, they could actually be better. From all my research as an exercise physiology student at university back in, you know, 10 years prior, I had a lot of knowledge about that. From my years, I think it was 77 to 81 and here I am as a pro triathlete, as an 86, 1986, 87, 88, 89 to 1990. So I had that period where I was learning a lot and not really being successful but, but I, I got a lot of information from a lot of people and worked out that there were better ways and, and I started doing that myself. I started training myself and not worrying about anybody else and all of a sudden I started to be successful. And you know, the ironic part was, George, some groups everywhere around, we still didn't have communication then, but I would become. People would come up to me at races and ask me the questions I was asking those people who were successful and all of a sudden people wanted to copy what I was doing. And I had moved from the suburbs out to where we now live and we've been here for nearly 40 years. We moved, we, we picked up and moved ourselves to the best training venue and that happens to be in the Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne for the area where we lived. And, and why did we move there? Because it had the Sherbrooke Forest, which is where all the best marathon runners were. Ron Clark and Rob DiCostella and the like. And, and for riding in the hills, it was just epic place to ride your bike. And I had a, you know, I had a lake, Listerfield Lake, which is only five minutes away. And so we had so many good areas to train. And, and that can't be underestimated. You know how important, I suppose doing your own thing and staying, staying on your training course rather than copying others. I think you learn a lot, but you need to hone it into what works for you. Yeah.

So the two kind of key things there are, I think you always talk about that every program needs individualization so you can take bits and pieces of what works, but you still need to apply it to yourself. And then you have the irony of people then copying you. But the principle still applies that they could take what's working for you, but they still need to apply it to themselves. And, and that leads into the next one that you said is you need to have honest assessments of your own strengths and weaknesses. Why is that so important?

Yeah, and look, a lot of us really enjoy things we do well and that's fair and reasonable, but really we need to dig deep in the things we're not doing so well. And I think that's the thing that defines a really disciplined, motivated athlete. They're willing to work on their weaknesses instead of enjoying the things that they do really well. And I, and I think that's what I'm trying to say here. If you don't actually understand where you're weak, then how do you work on it? So you need to have a really good analysis of where you are. And one of the best ways to do that is after each event or even a bunch ride or a group training session, you get really good perspective of where you sit in that bunch or that swimming squad or that running group, you get instant feedback. And I think that's where you should be assessing. Geez, I didn't run very well against this group or oh my swimming really sucked today. I didn't have the endurance today. I was really good early, but I really faded. No one else in the swim squad faded or on that bike ride today. I got caught out on every hill. I was weak. That's a self assessment that you should take on board and start to develop areas where you're weak. And if you don't assess yourself honestly, how are you going to improve?

And that comes down to lots of self evaluation in terms of race results and the training you did and your training logs from that era is absolutely epic. There was no Training peak. So you were writing down every single session in a logbook but when you performed well you're going what sessions led to that? When you didn't perform well, okay, what sessions did I do in the previous block? And that was really informing your future decision making.

Yeah, there's no doubt about it Jordan. And I've shown you my journals and I've still got them from the 80s and 90s and I had a page for each week's training and I had notes in there about what I did and how I felt which is what I push every athlete that we coach to do in training peaks. It's actually there for you. But here I was handwriting everything and, and that enabled me to flick back through 10 pages of 10 weeks. Each page was a week. And so I could see what training I'd been doing. I could see where I was successful in races. I was doing this a lot. Where was I going well, what training was I doing? And then trying to replicate that and maybe adjust it to even better performances. And that is part of that preparation stuff where you're really digging into the data. We didn't have much data. It was more about time that I was spending training and and I would be giving myself an assessment out of 10 about how hard did I ride today. And it was easy to say I did intervals as a runner today and I did 1k intervals and I could use my watch and I could have heart rate there. But on the bike it was like I did five hours today and I did it at seven out of 10. And so that was kind of what the race that I was aiming for which is Ironman. You know, back in those days I didn't realize that Ironman was ridden at 65 to 75% but I was working it out very quickly that 7 out of 10 was where I should be training if I wanted to do those long rides and if I dropped and made it easier. But I had no idea whether I was in those numbers because I didn't have power. So it was 7 out of 10 at the start of the ride felt, you know, 7 out of 10 but by 4 hour or 5 hour I possibly could have been riding at 3 out of 10 but it felt like 7 out of 10 but I didn't really know. So I certainly did a lot of really in depth analysis of what the information I had and it really helped me in improving my training and enabling me to be a better performer. By no doubt we have split this.

Episode into two parts. So that is the end of Part one. Please tune in for part two to hear the rest of the awesome lessons for this episode and if you like what you heard in this episode in terms of coaching tips and philosophies and our principles of how we go about things and you want to get coached by us, go to trivelocoaching.com we coach athletes from anywhere in the world. We have a guarantee that if you don't improve in the first six to eight weeks of coaching with us, the coaching is on us and that's not unreasonable. We don't demand a crazy training program that's, that's not, that's completely hard to do. It's completely reasonable training program that all age groupers can do. We adjust it individually to you and fix it to you. We just know that with some structure and the right training sessions we can guarantee your improvement. So if you want that, go to travelocoaching.com and apply to get coached there. Thank you as always for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. You.