Step By Step How He Got Faster (Without Getting Fitter)

Last weekend, 19-year-old Aussie teen sensation Cam Myers broke the Oceania 3000-meter indoor record. It was the opening meet of the season indoor, the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston, and there were records tumbling everywhere. And Cam Myers ran a blistering 7:27 for 3K indoor. That is 2:29 minute K pace, or 4-minute mile pace for our North American audience. And he just smashed some of Australia's best-ever times at this. At just 19 years old. And after the race, a reporter asked him, how do you keep improving like this? What are you doing? And he said, it's simple, I just prioritize weeks over workouts. I'm another year older and I've had another year where I've averaged 130 to 140 km weeks of running without interruption. So it's no hero workouts, just stacking good weeks on good weeks. And so today in this episode, we're talking about a story of our own athlete, a guy who just keeps improving month on month, year year on year, and we talk a lot about stacking improvement, longevity, and improvement over time with consistency. In this episode, we have an athlete who has been with us for about 4 to 5 years now and just keeps PBing races, and he's loving the journey. And so by the end of this episode, we're going to show you exactly how he has done it. So welcome to the episode, former Australian Ironman champion and multiple age group Masters national champion Gerard Donnelly. Dad, we love this story because it is the textbook example of consistency consistency over time.

Yeah, and at the start of the year in January when we talk about race setting goals, um, and, uh, you're kind of thinking out loud about what you want to achieve over the year, uh, and then you suddenly think about what do I have to do in my, uh, my months leading into that race, and do I have to do something special, do you have to do something different Well, probably fine-tune some of the stuff you've been doing over the last 12 months or 6 months or 3 months, but really just keep turning up. And eventually, we're gonna show some examples in the episode today about, you know, just coming each day to training and just getting fitter from today's training session. And then, you know, tomorrow's another day and just getting some little incremental improvements. They all add up. And I actually said this to one of our athletes athletes last week. I said, even though it's only a 15 or 20-minute run, if we give you 2 of those and you miss both of them, you're missing 40, 45 minutes out of your run volume for the week. And it doesn't seem significant, but, but it is actually significant because we're trying to get you to 30 or 40K for the week in running volume, or 20 miles. And now we didn't reach that goal. We're, you know, possibly an hour short. So we can't progress. We can't progress to the next week's goal, which is, you know, maybe 32, 34K. So all those little incremental, uh, duration— because remember, we talk frequency, time, and intensity— but the duration of the training session, especially for runners where we don't actually push some intensity a lot of the time, it's super important that you get these layers of, uh, of training into your body, into your legs, into your musculoskeletal system. Um, sure, we get, you know, we've said many times, we get a lot of our fitness improvements from the hard bike sessions we do. But, but, but this example we're going to talk about is someone who just keeps turning up and he's not really doing anything outstanding in, in any of his training sessions. And, and that's the story we want to get across today— just turn up.

Yeah, look, uh, the, the cool thing about this, and we'll go into the data, is, is that the, the data itself, while, um, just shows steady grade improvement, it is nothing outstanding, and it's not You know, it's not 150-watt improvement in, in 3-minute FTP tests or anything like that. But we, we look at race results and it's always, it's always interesting to compare race on race, you know, especially 70.3s because you turn up once a year to do a 70.3 and the conditions can be wildly different each year. But when you've got your home races that you continuously do over and over and you get a lot of race data, there'll be some outliers, but you do see general progression. And for him, he's just seen great, great progression across the summer racing of triathlons. In Melbourne, Victoria, and there's one specific race series where there's 6 races across summer here, and it's the same courses every year, and they— the 6 races are all slightly different, but every year he gets to compare kind of his times. And some years there's horrific conditions on, on one day, but the point is we've seen— you've seen this great trend of he's basically wiped off, you know, 10 minutes across sprint distance over comparing apples with apples, comparing course with course over the last few years, you know. And in one year it might have been worse where it was I think he did 1 hour 15 for, for the sprint distance. And then another year where he was improving, but the conditions weren't as good, it was 1 hour 07. And then, you know, his latest result was 1 hour 03, all comparing the exact same course. But across the board, the point is he's, he's wiping off 10+ minutes across sprint and Olympic distance. And the main thing is, you know, bike speed has gone from low to mid-30s to 35 kilometers an hour a couple of years ago to now he's consistently riding 38 to 39 kilometers an hour on the bike. And that's that's a whopping difference in speed. And, and being able to compare, uh, 70.3s, uh, he's, he's now riding same thing, 10 minutes faster across just the bike leg. Um, between Melbourne Half Ironman 2023 and 2025, he actually wiped off 17 minutes on the run. And we have to put that within the little asterisk because last year's Melbourne didn't have a swim. So that definitely, uh, creates some less fatigue. It's just a bike run. Um, but still, that, that's a whopping difference across. Half marathon. And overall, he's just— he's turning up to races and getting PBs and really enjoying it. So I guess the golden question, Dad, is how?

Yeah, it's been interesting. Every time I have a conversation with him and, you know, just a general chat after the event, and you can't wipe the smile off his face. He's just saying, you won't believe it, I just PB'd again. It seems to me like every time I have a conversation with him after a race, it's another PB. And I said, I just don't understand how you can keep PBing every single race. Well, I do understand, um, and it's a great conversation to have with him. And, and it's, you know, I'm always congratulating him, not, not because he's PBing all the time, but because he's really learning how to, how to train properly and how to turn up. And then the key thing that he has done so well is changed his mindset, uh, and understanding how he can best, with the fitness levels he has, how he can ride that bike, uh, so much more efficiently. And I think that's one of the big things that, uh, we, we have talked about this, you know, out of our 300 and— what are we up to, 315 episodes? We would spend pretty much 50 to 60% of the time talking about this one key concept. And And I know that a lot of people out there are just doing a generic program off the internet, and that's the difference between doing a generic program and getting a coach to help you in your corner and to really explain to you how to ride the bike more efficiently for the same level of fitness. And I think Lee has really, uh, understood that now. And, and I'm not saying he's not any fitter than he was 2 or 3 years ago. That's not true. He is fitter, uh, because he's got 3, 4, 5 years now of training under our TriVelo system. But he's certainly learned how to ride more efficiently. And I still remember when he was a 31, 32 km/h rider. Um, he's done a lot of things to make that better. Get a better bike, get a better bike fit. Mm-hmm. Uh, train, uh, some better training sessions, obviously. Mm-hmm. Uh, and, and then learn how to ride the wind and the changes in gradient. And that key concept is the one thing that you can do above all other things, uh, for your own improvement, for the same fitness level, you can ride possibly 2 or 3 minutes quicker over 20K. Um, and I think that's— that has to be the standout thing that, that he's done differently. Yeah.

When we look at his— we had all the data from, from, you know, 20 FTP tests the last couple of years and swim time trials and run time trials, 5K, 10K runs off the bike. And there's no data that stands out with any insane jumps or leaps over the last few years, yet his racing has drastically improved. So, so you were, you were really touching on that there, but explain that process. You know, you're turning up and you're doing these FTP tests and you might not be seeing a drastically greater number, yet you're improving as an athlete. So how does that happen?

And I think the key thing is, and you know this as well as I do, that, you know, you're not really being defined by the actual number or the speed that you're doing in that 20-minute test. It's actually the concept of learning how to execute on any given day. And, ah gee, we're having trouble getting that across to a lot of people who are really pushing back on testing, um, and I think it's all about just the number and the speed. Well, that is a lot of what it's about, but, but you could be in the greatest form of your career and have a couple of bad days leading into an FTP test, which is not an A race, it's a it's a training session and, and not have slept well or feel a bit of fatigue and actually don't perform the way that you deserve to because you're, you're just a bit off on that day. So, so the goal is to actually then say, okay, if I was trying to ride 200 watts in that FTP test and, you know, my last test was 195 and I'm really trying to ride 200 watts, so if I start at 193 and I feel like I'm not really able to push much more than 193, instead of just blindly going on to push 198, 200, 205, and then getting to 14 minutes and blowing up, I would rather the athlete stayed at 193, 194 and just guts it out there. And that's what we're talking about, learning to execute according to how you feel. And, and so that's why a lot of the time there's not these big jumps where people just have this expectation over a period of 18 months that every single time they do an FTP test It should be 1 watt improvement or 5 watt or 10 watts. And you and I know that— well, I've been doing FTP tests for 40 years. And, and, you know, if I had that mindset, I wouldn't ride my bike anymore because there's no way I can keep improving every time I do an FTP test. Because there's something in your world that happens that's gonna be— you're gonna be really good form, mediocre form, or really poor form depending on what part time of or part of the year you're in. So, so, so you— I think I'm trying to get across that you just don't measure your improvements by these, you know, 5K time trials or 1K swims or 20-minute FTPs. They're just really good perspective of where you're currently sitting. And, and the main thing is to understand that I should train to these numbers for the next block of training because this is what I tested to, and that I'm, I'm really learning how to execute according to how I feel. And that's what I think Lee's doing so well. And when we— you and I looked at his data, we couldn't see any of those huge jumps anywhere. I think that— and yet, and yet, when you look at his race results, there's huge jumps everywhere. And, and that's the, that's the difference between training sessions and then tapering for a race to get the result you're actually after, the improvement you're after. And And you know, it, it shouldn't be that every time you race you improve. That's actually a fallacy as well, you know. But, but to Lee's credit, it's, it's what he's actually done, which is, which is terrific.

I, I do laugh at, you know, I'm thinking your version of FTP tests in the '80s looked a little bit different. I've seen the scrapbook of, you know, you had a course that went from point A to point B and you would just time yourself on the old school timer and go on 28th of January 1986, here's the time I did, you know. And then the same thing 3 months later, here's the time I did again, depending. And you're just trying to compare your own apples with apples then. And you still do that to this day, you know. You've got a 2-hour loop around the Dandenongs where you're just saying to me last week, when I'm riding well in zone 2, I'm doing that in an hour 54. And when I'm struggling in zone 2, I'm riding 2:06, you know. And it's all the same tool and same principle of you just trying to get some comparisons and get some feedback and What you just explained is that it really shows your FTP number does not represent you as a whole as an athlete. It's just one bit of data that we like to, to use and test for many good reasons. But there's this huge argument against FTP at the moment, and I see it a lot around where people say FTP isn't an accurate representation of threshold. Uh, FTP is dead. It's a waste of time. It's, you know, you could, you could get the same equation from a ramp test or, or some other variation where you do a 6-minute um, lactate test or something. And we just go, we understand all those points and we know for sure that from all our data, the 20-minute test is not the direct accurate representation of threshold, especially the 95% number. Yeah, we use 95% of your 20-minute number to get your threshold. We know most athletes are closer to 90% based on where— if we get them to do a 20-minute test and then get them to actually do 60 minutes, you know, their 20-minute number is more like 90, 91, 92%. But that's irrelevant. You know, we, we use 95%, just have a standardized number to compare apples with apples, but we do the test for all the reasons you just mentioned and for all the value you can get from it. And so, um, it's, it's such an important part to, to include in a program, um, for all these other reasons that you're mentioning, not just to get this, um, calculated threshold number. That's, that's one of the lowest reasons we're getting it, and that number does not define you as an athlete. And clearly that's the case for Lee.

Yeah, and, and to take that point one step further, uh, Lee's getting— he's not afraid of testing ever, never has been, loves to race, uh, can't get enough of racing, can't get enough testing, will do that without question, which is fantastic. But the beauty of that is, remember, it's still a high, high-intensity training session. It's you, yeah, you're either swim, riding, or running at your threshold. So just remember that that's actually what the session is. And then there are information we can extract from it that we use for you to train to for the next 3 or 4 weeks in your training block. But principally, first and foremost, it is you practicing, you at threshold. And, and if you avoid that, then when it comes to a race, it's a foreign territory to you. Um, you know, athletes in a sprint, uh, event, especially, are really doing the whole sprint at their threshold. And as you go through the distances up to Olympic distance to half Ironman to Ironman, obviously, you're not doing any threshold in those longer distances. But, but, you know, you are still trying to measure your effort. That's the secondary point. You're trying to measure your effort according to what you can sustain over 180k or 90k or a 40k. So it's really your threshold of 40k, which is critical power, your critical power for 40K or for 90K or for 180K. So it's you trying to measure your effort. So you getting used to doing that is one of the skills that you have to learn. And, and I think Lee's really got, got a hold of that. He's got a great grasp of that concept of how to measure my effort in a 5K run or a 10K run or a progressive half marathon. Mm-hmm. So that I can start, start at a pace that I can sustain in a half marathon and finish off strong. And if you keep repeating that over periods of time in training, when it comes to race, he's proving it that, that this is the thing, the concept that's getting it. The training program's great, of course, but, but by keep measuring yourself, you know, constantly throughout this period and racing a lot, you will get better at racing. And, and we have actually in the last 3 or 4 episodes talked about that, um, that, you know, the best form of training is to, is to make it into a race. Of course, you can't do that every training session.

Yes.

That's not what we're saying here. Yeah. But, you know, when it's available, use that, use that to your advantage. And, and just like we talk about the pros in the world, you know, the cyclists or the best athletes, the best runners, you know, they don't go to every race expecting to win. There's gonna be periods where they do expect to win because they're in form. But, but when they're building up to a grand tour, they're just in that race to get, you you know, get race experience so that when it comes to the actual Grand Tour, they're ready. Same with the guys who are preparing for the World Cross-Country Championships. You know, they're not expecting to win every single race they're doing in the 7 weeks leading up to it. Some athletes can do that, but the majority can't. And so they're using the races without the expectation of the win pressure, but they're getting the value of the race pressure, which is you learning to execute under pressure.

And not to mention the mental discipline and training you get from these executed efforts. And that's why it's so important that it's, you know, it's a 20-minute effort that you're doing each time and not a shorter one. Because, you know, when it's really hurting at the 14-minute mark, 15, 16-minute mark, right in that patch where the end is in sight and it's the most painful part, you know, practicing getting through that patch and focusing and concentrating and talking positively to yourself and training yourself to talk well That comes through in a race when you're 3/4 of the way through the bike leg in a race and you're hurting and the mental demons start coming in and you've been here before and you know what to say to yourself and you know how to get through it. And you need to practice that in training. If you don't practice it in training, you can't turn up on race day and expect to get it right. You're gonna be, those, those demons are gonna come the first time. It's the first time you've, you've, you've had to face battling them cuz you've, you've missed testing, uh, in the training. So not only are they good physically, but, but mentally they're, they're super important.

Yeah, the body doesn't want to be shocked by something new. We are creatures of habit, remember? And if you've actually practiced this in training, then you just— your body, your brain goes, oh yeah, I dealt with it this way in training, I'll just use those same principles in this race. But if you haven't done that in training and it comes to the race, you are a little bit at a loss as to what to do about it. And that's where most people, instead of getting their brain to think about what can I do about getting myself to the end here they're thinking about, I just want to stop. I, I just don't want to stop. I want to stop this. My head says this is too hard. And, and that's the difference between people practicing, uh, and executing under pressure and those who don't do that, those who wait till just race day. And, you know, we have some athletes who are really pushing against being tested, and they just, they just want to get to the training session and get— then get to race day. And we're really adamant that they don't do that because we want them to have so many experiences in training so that whatever is thrown at them on race day, they have had that experience in training so that they can actually cope better. Um, when someone throws you a curveball in life, if you've actually experienced it before, you'll go, oh, this is what I did last time and it worked out okay, it worked out okay. Uh, maybe I can try this and maybe I can do a little bit more than I did last time. But when something new's thrown at you, it does take a little bit to comprehend and to get your head around. Um, and you're not normally going to be able to deal with it as efficiently as you had you have trained through that before. So when, when we say to people, practice what's going to happen on race day in training, that's actually literally what we mean. Put yourself in the scenario of what's going to happen on race day. Not exactly the same, you know, duration of the event, but, you know, similar experiences are going to put you in good stead for when it comes to when it really counts in your mind. That you want to be at your best today.

Yeah. And, and let's talk about the specifics of, of the training program itself because, uh, Lee had an interesting journey with us. And we've spoken to a couple of athletes who've had this similar journey where we used to have a, um, a generic program and membership where, um, people would opt for that if they didn't want the, the intensive one-on-one coaching. And we just discontinued that because we found that, uh, and this is, this is definitely Lee's case, athletes weren't executing the program the sessions, they were doing them and following it but weren't executing exactly the way we would want. And, and, and getting that critical feedback from the coaching that he was steadily improving just from consistency and, and, and building a great base. But he had a big jump when he, he contacted us and just said, look, I feel like I can get more out of myself, um, and I feel like I need more individualized help. And once he did that, that's when it was just this exponential increase of, um of real rapid improvement because he had eyes on him, you know, really making sure the sessions didn't change too much, but making sure the execution of the sessions and the blocks of the program were all A, tailored to what he needed and not just generic, and B, he was getting the most out of the sessions and getting feedback from the sessions. And that's a really, really important point. And just touching on that, you know, we actually, we ended up just continuing it because because we really pride ourselves on being able to help athletes improve. And it was a little bit of our ego and reputation, uh, was at stake because we, we really, we really back ourselves to get results. And, and when athletes who are on a very similar program not being coached, um, aren't getting results to the ones who are— the training's not that much different, it's more individualized for sure compared to our, our intensive coached athletes, um, getting drastic improvement. You know, we didn't want, we didn't want people saying, oh, the TriVelo program doesn't work. We would rather just back ourselves and say, oh no, come get coached and, and we'll back ourselves to make it work. If it doesn't work for you, then we can say, hey, that's not on us, because, um, yeah, we back ourselves like that. So that was our, our little, uh, our kind of fork in the road decision. Um, but for the athletes that have jumped on and got the intensive coaching, they've seen that dramatic jump.

Yeah, there's a whole lot to unpack there, and it proved to you and I uh, it just was staring us in the face that we had a really good program for these non-coached athletes that was quite similar to what we were giving to the coached athletes. But if you haven't got attention to detail, uh, with another set of eyes, um, you could, you could start that session on the bike and, and with, you know, with all good intentions, you think that you've done it well And then you get someone who's a really good coach who actually has a look at that session and says, did you realize, Jordan, that your cadence was meant to be 90 to 95 and you were actually 75 to 80? Did you realize that the bottom of your range was 200, but you spent most of the time at 190? You know, there's a whole lot of detail that, that you're not actually seeing because you're just going through the motions. You know, you've had a big busy day at work. Here's my session that's just put through generically. You just— you don't think about it. You just jump on, and it could be your FTP setting on TrainingPeaks is different to the one you're looking at in Zwift. There's so many things that you could not be paying attention to detail about that having a one-to-one coach who's actually gonna look at it and dig into the session to see how well you did it, that changed everything. And, you know, now I'm gonna go for a run, yeah, it's just a 40-minute run. I don't want you to run outside of zone 3, but, but it's not meant to be a recovery run. And then, you know, off you go, and you spent probably most of the time above zone 3. And then, you know, you go on to the next session. But the coach that now has a look at that and goes, hey, Lee, you've actually run that too hard. And then the next day, you can't do the high-intensity bike session because of what you did on the run that day before. So all these little incremental pieces of information that the coach can make you aware of and then get you to get, get better at looking at the detail yourself and taking ownership yourself of what the session should be. And that's actually what was happening with a lot of the people who were on this program. We're just blindly doing the sessions. And then the next thing is, I'm so exhausted because I, I trained poorly with the run. I went above my ranges. I couldn't do the next session. I got tired because, because I've done 2 hard sessions in a row. The coach says, hang on a minute, let's change the next day so that you don't actually, uh, go into a big hole. But if you're by yourself, you just keep doing the program that's set for you, and eventually you're just going to progressively get worse. And so, so, you know, we learned a lot of information, a lot of feedback about, you know, the attention to detail for coaches changing programs midweek because of you're not actually coping, that's a big thing. And if you're just doing it by yourself, you just think, oh, I've got to do the program, I've got to stay consistent. But you're not getting an outside, uh, voice saying, no, you're exhausted, Jordan, you, you can't do these sessions, you need to actually have an easy day. That's when you've got a coach, you'll be telling that. But when you're doing it by yourself, you push on because you just got this thing of, I'm looking at Strava, everybody's training, I should be training too, even though I'm exhausted, I've got to get out there. And, and they're the little minor things that, that you don't think of, uh, that then you think, oh, far out. And, and Lee's just— he just can't— he can't emphasize— every time I see him, he's going, what a difference it is having someone who's making me accountable and he's just keeping an eye on me. And I can actually have a conversation about how I'm feeling, and then we can adjust the program according And that's been the big game changer for him is actually having someone in his corner on a journey with him rather than, yeah, I've just got these sessions that, you know, and as you know, you can get 'em off the internet or ChatGPT or whatever, but, but you don't have, you just don't have that someone in your corner to, to actually discuss about how you're going with it. You know, were you at the bottom of the ranges because you didn't realize you're at the bottom of the ranges or because you were tired? You know, which one is it? And so there's so many questions that, that, you know, remain unanswered when you're doing it by yourself.

There are what— in what you're describing, there are what feels like hundreds of little nuances that can make a difference. And when— if you think, if you just took the top 30 kind of little nuances of examples you were just mentioning about little things that make a difference for an athlete, like where was your cadency, where was your power, you know, how much volume off the bike here and there, like all these little decisions they add up very quickly to a lot of little things. And if you're not getting those right, you know, by the end of the week there's a whole bunch of decisions there that could have just kept you a bit more stagnant as an athlete. And, and, or even just the opportunity cost of— here's, here's a whole bunch of ways, here's a dozen ways you could have trained a little bit more quality this week without changing too much and got a lot more out of the week. And then you stack those weeks on weeks, and that, that is, that is the value there. And so, you know, let's take nothing away from Lee. He his improvement over these last 4 or 5 years is because of his consistency. And the program before gave him a great base and got him really reasonably fit. Um, and, and his improvement is probably due to lots of reasons, but— and you know what we talked about at the very start of the episode, years of good, you know, stacking good training. But one of the main reasons is now being guided really individually. And, um, and he's been coached by both you and, and Coach Paul. Um, and that improvement still continues. And so, um, I wanted to ask you you know, a clear example, a specific example. People might be wondering, you know, what the difference is. And I think one you highlighted was, was seeing his difference in the race-ready period, you know, coming into a key race or 70.3. What did you find in, in terms of the sessions and, um, what the difference was?

Yeah, well, when he was doing it by himself, it was selecting the wrong course first of all. Um, so, and, and not, not really getting to understand that his the race-ready range that I should be riding in. I think he knew that, but, but how to, how to actually implement that into the course he'd selected. So if you've got a course where there's, there's no hills and it's just dead flat, and there's not many courses like that, but if you do select a course like that, what are the nuances that you should be thinking about, um, to, to make that execution really good? And the key things are the wind. So if, if it's a headwind in one direction, you know, when you looked at some of the sessions he was doing, he was actually riding with the tailwind. He was riding higher power than he was in the headwind. And so that actually needs to be flipped. And if without someone looking at that data, he would never know that that's what he should be doing. And, and then, you know, when he comes to a hill, he was riding 70% above his range.

Mm-hmm.

You know, his range might have been 220, he was riding some of these hills at 330, and, you know, and then over the top of the hill, he was riding at 15 or 20 watts, hardly pedaling, uh, to recover from that massive effort he'd just done on some of the hills. So, so the coach going, what are you doing? You know, you've got to think about staying in the ranges no matter what the course is. You've got to be changing gears so that you stay in those ranges and not go so far over that you have to actually soft pedal on the other side. So, so those intricate pieces of information that the feedback was coming compared to when he just went and did his own race-ready sessions. And yep, I did, did the, uh, 3 by 40 minutes. Um, you, you and I have discussed this many times. If you want to average 200 watts and you do 250 and 150 but spend no time at 200, you still end up with 200 watts. But if you spend half the time at 210 and half the time at 190 that's only 10 watts either side of your 200, you still end up with 200 watts. So you can ride completely different but end up with the right average. And that's what a lot of our non-coached athletes were doing compared to when they were getting coached was, you know, hey, you spent so much time out of the range, yet you still average what we asked you. And they would be saying to us, yeah, I got it right, didn't I?

What's the problem? Yeah. And can you just be clear on that? Why is the former a problem?

Well, you're, you're just basically riding too hard to ride too easy. And so every time you burn a match by riding outside the ranges, you're increasing your heart rate, which increases your lactate levels, which actually burns more nutrition, which makes you tireder, and then you can't run. So, so that's a quick summary of why you shouldn't ride out above or below the ranges, and that's our basic principle.

Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot more nuance to it, but that's very good quick summary. And I will make a point there that we have to keep clarifying that, you know, with new sports science, yeah, you're not supposed to use the words lactate anymore because they think that that's not the reason you're fatigued. But it's, it's quite a complicated thing. But for the sake of ease and what we've said for, for a long time, we do say the words, you know, that lactate. We're just describing that fatigue feeling, you know. Lactate is the byproduct of fatigue. It is quite a little bit nuanced. But, um, yeah, that race-ready period, it's so important to get these sessions right coming into your race and to get the value. And you spoke about an example of, you know, we're trying to get you to spend 3 by 40 minutes at your 70.3 range. And so we're trying to get you to spend 2 hours, um, riding the range to get that physiological response. And if you're not executing it properly, you're really missing the value of the session. And I mentioned opportunity cost before. And really, when you're riding over and under, you're not training that, that, that right zone. Um, you know, out of 2 hours of work, if you haven't executed, executed properly, you might only be spending an hour in the right zone. And an hour above and below, which isn't helping you get specifically fit for your race, you know. And that's a really important point to, you know, just those little mistakes cost you the gains you could be getting from executing the session properly.

And to go on from that, Gerard, the reason why Lee's been able to run so much faster now is because he's actually got his power right in the range. None of these spikes bikes, none of these drops below the range. And guess what? He gets off the bike and he feels like it's a fresh run, not like a run off the bike. Um, so he's able to run really close to his actual PBs for 10K, for 5K, and for half marathon because he's not so shattered from this crazy bike riding style that he was doing before, which was just riding as hard as he could on the hard parts, um, and then just recovering. And now he's, he's, you know, we don't push him on the run. We never have. Yet he's running faster than he's ever run in races. And it's all to do with, uh, is, you know, measuring your effort and riding efficiently on the bike so that you can actually run well.

Don't make no mistake and do not underestimate that point. You know, if you are getting to your half marathon off the bike or any run off the bike and you're not running as well as you like, you're plateauing, you haven't improved for years, maybe you should be looking at, at the way you're executing the bike leg. Because it is a much more enjoyable way to run when you've executed the bike well and you can run a lot faster for the same fitness level. You can run a lot faster. And so if you're finding that you're plateauing on the run or you're even having to walk because you, you're so gassed, you could really think about making this change, which is a bit of a secret sauce there, but If you make that change, I guarantee you'll improve as an athlete.

We've had quite a few athletes who've said to us, ah, at the end I felt so good on the bike, I was— in hindsight I should have pushed more because I ran so well today. And I'm going, no, hang on, stop right there. The only reason you ran, ran so well is because you stayed in your, in your ranges on the bike. And, and don't think about I should have, could have would have. The reason you've actually had the best day of your life is because you rode the way that we've trained you, and the way that you've executed has allowed you to run like that. So yes, of course you could next time be at the top of the ranges in that ride. You know, if we looked at the data, he might have been spending them— or he or she might have been spending a percentage in the middle or to the lower ranges. But the minute you go outside the range, uh, it changes everything. So So yeah, that has to be really clearly drilled into all of our athletes. And that's— if you listen to this for the first time, you know, it's such a game-changing thing to do, but gee, it takes a lot of effort to stay in those ranges because there's people riding past you and, you know, the competition of the day. And, you know, you can't come to a hill and everybody else is riding the old style, which is flat out up the hill, and you're getting passed. And so you feel like you're the odd one out all the time, and And I think Lee said that to me a few times. He said, far out, once I let my ego go and let all these people ride past me on the hills, um, you know, they could do that for the first third of the event, uh, especially in a 70.3, but in the second third of the event, I didn't even see those athletes anymore. I went straight past them on the next section, didn't see them again, and probably finished 8 or 9 minutes ahead of them. But early on in the ride, those guys smashing it past me. And you know, sometimes you just got to stay disciplined and trust the process, and, and you will prevail. And I think that's one of the things Lee's done so really well. He, you know, he really listens to the coach's advice, and, and, and he— once you start to see that it works, then you get this, oh, far out, this is so exciting! I now trust this process, and I'm all win. And that's the thing that I think was a turning point for Lee. Once he started getting some PBs and he thought, oh, there's a bit more to this. And, and, you know, I've watched him come from a 34-35 km/h rider. And a couple of weeks ago, one of the races, uh, one of the individual time trial training races we had on a Tuesday night, he actually beat me in the, in the time trial, which was a really proud, proud moment. I just said, that is brilliant, Lee. You know, you finally, uh, I was riding 6 k's an hour faster than him, you know, 4 years ago, and here he is now, he's beating me, um, which I think's, you know, kudos to him. It's, it's absolutely fantastic improvement. We don't need to see that in a 20-minute FTP. There's an example of that. And, and another example would be guys who are just doing a bunch ride with their buddies and and there's no 20-minute FTP there. It's, I'm smashing all my buddies who used to drop me. That's an example of you feel improvement that, you know, and other others will comment as well. But far out, how well are you riding? Um, and, and you should be listening to that because people aren't going to say that flippantly. They're not going to give kudos when it's not deserved. They're going to, they're going to say to you, you're really riding well. But it might not be showing in your 20-minute FTP. That's our point here.

Yeah, yeah. No, congratulations to Lee. It's amazing, and we want to celebrate someone who's getting the process right and then reaping the rewards and getting the enjoyment out of it. It's the most enjoyable way to train and race is to be doing the process well and enjoying that improvement. So look, if you're someone out there that is looking for the same type of nuanced improvement and help like Lee was, and you feel like you'd be getting more out of yourself, then go to our website, travellercoaching.com.au, and apply to get coached. And we'll take you through the same audit that we do with all athletes. And we, we see what you're doing now, and we tell you where we think you can improve and tell you if we think we could coach you. Um, because look, our methods don't, don't agree with everyone. And so, but if you do agree with this method and you want this kind of improvement, then apply to get coached, and then we can have a chat and we can help you make that jump like, like Leigh has, and, and give you the, the specific sessions nuanced to you and the specific changes individualized to you to, to help you get that improvement that you're, you're probably training so hard for and looking So go to tryvelocoaching.com.au and we look forward to, to meeting you. That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening to another case study, and we'll see you on the next one. Good morning.