The 60min Exercise Guaranteed to Improve Your Time (That’s Not Training)

People are actually afraid to go out too hard now, and in fact, they're actually going out too conservative. And now I'm having to convince them that they could start where they left off before.

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivelo coaching, Jared Donnelly. So, last week on the podcast, we spoke in depth about the stories we tell ourselves after a race. And these stories can either enhance our future training and performance if they're. If we put them in a positive light, or they can be detrimental. And if they're detrimental, sometimes these thought processes can be toxic and really set us up for failure going forward. We want to ask you a question about race day. How long do you spend reviewing your own race performance? Is it the one hour after the race, is it just that night? Or do you mull over it for a couple of weeks? And more specifically, do you have a process to review your own race objectively? One of the biggest things we see holding athletes back from improving is they don't know where they're going wrong. And professional sports teams around the world will dedicate entire staff teams to conduct performance reviews on players on a weekly basis. Yet you might finish a race with no idea where you could be finding improvement. And this isn't just for beginner athletes. Just over the weekend, we had one of our top athletes finish scratching their head, wondering what. What actually happened there. They needed some external perspective into their own performance. So being able to review your own training and racing is a guaranteed way to level up your performance, get the most out of yourself, and as always, train smarter and race faster. And that is today's topic. As always, this episode is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant Australia, for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant. Dad. Welcome back to another episode. Going with our normal starting segment. What are you grateful for?

Well, this is going to be a really good topic today. I'm really looking forward to it. Um, at the end of most of the races, I'm really excited to talk to people. Sometimes I'm a little bit careful about listening to how their performance went first. And so my gratitude today is around that actual understanding how the athlete has responded to their event. And generally it's a fun experience because they're so happy with what they've just done. And I experienced that on the weekend at the Melbourne 70.3 and also experienced it the week before at Noosa Olympic distance. So we've had two big races in two weekends in Australia and it was a really gratifying experience to have really good conversations with pretty much everybody who had competed in those events. And the majority of people, even if they were a little bit on the side of maybe I could have done a bit better, but they were still happy with the way they executed. They were still pleased with their performance. It may not have been a pb, it may have been slightly down on what they've done before, but they were still pleased with their performance and the way they stuck at it. And I'm grateful for that attitude that people are displaying in our group, in our community. And I think that is a really important aspect that people should consider as sports, men and women, that it's not all about the success and the podium or the improvement. It's. It's about the journey that gets you there and you should be in love with that as much as you are in love with the actual outcome. And don't think I'm diminishing the result. I'm not. That is super important how you actually performed, but don't let that be the one that dictates you about how you feel about yourself post race. And this is my gratitude's kind of a double edged sword here. I'm really grateful for people who understand that and not down on themselves. Even though they may have disappointment, they're still grateful for the opportunity to be fit and healthy, compete in a race and perform at a level that they're really satisfied with. So that's my gratitude.

My gratitude follows on with that. It's, it's a, just a total gratitude for our athletes in our community, the type of people we have. So often our athletes are showing real generosity at events, real encouragement to each other, real sense of community and not just within our, our walls, but to other athletes as well. And it's just really great to see. We had 35 athletes compete over the last few weeks across Noosa Triathlon Melbourne 70.3 and Dirty Warning. And there were just multiple examples of people going out of their way to help out and help other people which this is really great to see and it's really what the sport is for and it's yeah, we're going to talk about this in, in, in the post race analysis topic but it just shows and reminds us that there's so much more to the sport than what the outcome is on the day. And that timing chip that goes through or the potential place in your category. There's so much more to it than that. So that's my gratitude, which kind of leads us into what's caught your attention. And we kind of want to keep talking about these races that have happened the last two weeks. As I said, I think it was 35 athletes across two weekends, across three different sports, an Olympic distance, a half ironman, and a 240k gravel race. And for us, we're just so stoked to see so many athletes toe the start line. And we. We say this often, but I want to reiterate this point that getting to the start line for the age grouper is a lot of the battle sometimes. And coming into Noosa, we had three athletes pull up with serious tightness in the weeks leading up to it, and a few had to really back off the running and to get to the start line, they couldn't risk the running load. And same with the Melbourne half line. I mean, a couple people experience the same thing. And we even saw at Kona last month where Lucy Charles had an incredible preparation leading into it, but she put up with a tight Achilles the week of the race, got an Achilles injury, and she just got through the race. She just made it through.

So it.

It's not just age groupers.

It's.

It's. Everyone's experiencing this. So to get to the start line is kind of the first. The first big goal. So you got to congratulate yourself just for getting to the start line. And that, again, ties into that gratitude of grateful to be here, fit and healthy and ready to give a performance.

It's definitely something that's really becoming more prevalent. I think the way people are honing their training to a much higher level, and as you do that, the risk becomes greater. I was really just talking to one of our comrades, I would say, Dr. Mitch Anderson, who's been on our podcast, and I often ask him for a lot of advice on treating athletes who are. Who are potentially injured or sick. He's always got a wealth of information, and he was saying exactly the same thing. He said, you know, the load that people are training at now compared to what when we were competing, it's a much higher level, and the opportunity to recover as well as you want to is limited because of the time you have available with the rest of the things that are going on in your life. So, you know, paying particular attention to the training that you're doing and then trying to really focus on being recovered well is part of the actual program now. If you don't do that, you're going to open yourselves up to more risk. And even if you do that, well, you still, you know, look at the example you just mentioned. Lucy Charles Barkley in the race, she, she hurt her leg, one or two K's in, and had to run the whole marathon like that. So you can't imagine there'd be a better prepared athlete on the planet and yet still had trouble. So it's not something that we're anybody's immune to. It can happen to anybody. And it's not always because you did something wrong. It could be just a whole accumulation of events that are causing something to happen at the wrong time. And you've just got to be aware of the warning signs. And sometimes you can prevent it, but sometimes it's just completely out of your control. So. So, yeah, we don't take that lightly when we say, you know, getting to the start line's the most hardest part of the, of the actual training. It is, it's looking after yourself so that you actually can get to the race and compete the way you want to. And that goes with the gratitude too. You know, getting there to the start line, people are very grateful. They're not injured, not sick. They haven't missed the event, they haven't wasted money because they have to transfer the event. And it's such a pain in the neck when you realize you can't actually do the event. You actually have to pull out. And we have the Busselton Ironman coming up in Perth in Western Australia, and people have been training a long time for this during winter, and already we've had a couple of people, unfortunately, have got serious injuries that are going to prevent them from competing. And that's a bitter pill to swallow. Uh, and I really feel for these people, but their attitude has been absolutely fantastic. You know, what can I do about it? They've, they've really learned that, that, you know, not to drop their bundle and get on with life. And, you know, I live to fight another day. That attitude I just love. And that's what we're trying to, to instill in our athletes, to be resilient, to be okay with disappointment, and to be humble with high achievement. And if you can do that as an athlete, you know, you're going to set good examples to others and we'll have a fantastic, you know, boarding world where people are really in it to improve themselves across any sport we're talking about and also be good humans whilst they're doing that.

Couldn't agree More just very well rounded and it, it, these kind of things become apparent when you actually get to race day and it's, it's funny, you do so much almost solo work to get there. You can put so much pressure on the day and we've just got to take a backward step and go, you know, the actual outcome isn't everything. We don't want to tie everything into the, into the result without, like you said at the start, diminishing the result and diminishing the outcome because that's what you're doing. All the training for is, is to, is to try and achieve something. So it's a double edged sword and we're going to really dive into that. And the last thing I wanted to mention, and this is just a very specific example of an athlete experience and this athlete was kind enough to really write us a nice letter just explaining their experience with us and how grateful they were. And it's also a good indicator of how you can make something work and how you can make someone's process work even if it doesn't quite fit into the guidelines of what we'd prefer. The quote unquote travelo way to be but an athlete call you up. And he was a complete novice triathlete and he said, I want to do an Ironman in five months. And he'd never ridden more than an hour, he'd never ran more than 10K. And he says, I want you to get me fit for Iron man of five months. And alarm bells are going off in your head saying I don't think this is a good idea. You know, and you're not really the type of person we would like to take on. Not because we don't take on beginners, but because that's a, that's a really quick timeline. And your advice is more conservatively saying it's a really tough challenge to ask of your body to get yourself prepared well enough to do the Ironman. Is that right?

I think you're being generous. I don't think he'd actually ridden a bike that much in his whole life. So that's how. And he didn't actually have a bike to ride. He had a commuter thing that he might take down to the shop for a 50 meter. But yeah, absolute novice on the bike and hadn't done much swimming. And he said, I've spent all of my life in the gym. I'm, I love, I love my strength and conditioning and that's what I'm good at. I want this challenge of endurance. Can you Help me. And the story is, well, yes, I can help you, but I'm not happy with, you know, you coming into this event. You've picked a really big event to prove your, your worth as an endurance athlete. And, you know, to be fair, I don't think that it's a good idea. I tried to talk him out of it, and he was adamant that he would do everything in his power to make sure that, that he ticked every box that I asked him to tick and he would be. There would be no stress related with him doing this, this, this training program. And I said that they're great words, but. But you don't know how your load is going to affect your everyday activities. You know, you still got a job, you still got a family, you've still got a social life. You know, this is, you know, I don't. I'm trying to, to recreate in his mind the reality of what he's actually asking to do. And, and if you had have done a few runs and a few bike rides and a few swims, I would maybe be thinking differently, but you've basically done none of that. So we've really starting from scratch and your body has not absorbed any load of endurance in your whole life, except for lifting weights in a gym. So that's where we started. And cut to the chase. Yep. So cutting to the chase, he absolutely did everything we asked. And some of the sessions in that 20 weeks that we had were absolutely horrible. They were a huge learning curve for him and he was overwhelmed with fatigue and could not really believe that. That he could be so tired and, and we had to monitor a lot of that and, and had to adjust a lot of the training so that he could actually recover from, from. And we tried to do as slower, a progressive build as possible within 20 weeks is, if that's possible, to be able to go from zero to running a marathon, go from zero to riding 180k and go from zero to swimming nearly 4km. You know, how do you progress that slowly in such a short period of time? But to his credit, he never complained once and just said, you know, basically, tell me what to do, coach, and I'll go and do it. And he did. He did all of that. And even when we were talking about his race preparation, I was sort of being Mr. Super Conservative, like I am generally known for, to try and make sure that people can get through the event as, as enjoyably as they can and not be crawling to the finish line with some stupid race strategies and, and, you know, we were talking 13 or 14 hours for a first time Ironman person who's never done a triathlon basically before, it could have been 15 hours for all we knew what was going to happen. But anyway, to cut to the chase, he actually performed way above the expectation that he and I both had and he ended up just ticking over 12 hours. He nearly did 11:59. He was actually running the last 3km as a negative split because he realized that, hang on a minute, I can break 12 hours here. Had he realized a little bit earlier, he may have got there, but he just ticked over so out of the only disappointment he had in talking. This is a great topic because the result don't be dictated by this result. You know, 11:59, 12:01, what's the difference? You know, it's an outstanding performance. But you know, he still had to say, yeah, but coach, I wanted to get under 12 hours. No you didn't. You wanted to finish. That's all you wanted to do. And now you've changed your expectations. So this is a really good example of, of getting the narrative right because you know, you can't change your, your perspective just because all of a sudden you're seeing another goal or target that you could have done. You know, he was laughing, but you know, deep down he just wished he had broken that 12 hours. But, but you know, it was a super performance. He, he ran, he ran the same time. We'll dig into this later on, I'm sure, but he ran the same time from start to finish and actually ran the last 3k the fastest. It was, it was a brilliant execution. And he rode, his bike was the same. He actually rode above what we set, ran above what we set, and basically an hour and a half faster than we thought he could go, which is pretty mind blowing.

Yeah, I just want to finish off by reading out what he wrote to us because it was really nice. He said specifically the meticulous training plan and constant communication transformed me from a novice to a confident endurance athlete. On race day, the Trivala team support allowed me to not only finish, but surpass my projective time by an hour and a half of what you were thinking, all while thoroughly enjoying the experience. And he really said, I told Jared I didn't want to just finish. I wanted to try and finish strong, which as he said, is hard enough when you're trying to just progress to getting it to the finish line in five months. He said, most importantly, I enjoyed every single second during the race across the finish line having learned more about myself than I ever thought I would. It's a day I will never forget and a journey I'll reflect on for the rest of my life, taking the lessons I've learned and applying them to other areas. It isn't about reaching the destination. It's about the journey and who you become on the way. Jared and the Trivella family are directly responsible for making my journey so positively profound. I can't recommend them enough to anyone seeking coaching and aspiring to improve their abilities in endurance sports. Thanks for everything, Tribalo. And that's the kind of stuff that we get super grateful about. And it's just a really cool story and it's. It's a little bit different. It's. It's a challenge that you wouldn't always want to take on. I'm not trying to say, please call us up 16 weeks out from your Ironman, but it does show what's possible. And. Yeah. And that kind of leads us into the race. Ready topic, right?

Absolutely. It gave me goosebumps reading. He actually wrote some other stuff as well, which you've. You've summarized very well. But reliving the event with him, and I talked about that in my gratitude earlier on in this podcast. Reliving the event with him. I even get still emotional thinking about it and the journey that we were on together and how difficult it was. And that's what makes it super special at the end, regardless of the time, as long as you perform the way you wanted to and you're proud of your performance. We're not trying to diminish the outcome ever here. It is important that people aspire to a goal, and that is important. But you've got to be happy with everything that you did to get to that point. And that's the message we're trying to get across, is it's all inclusive. It's the day you start the conversation you have with your coach, who you reached out to to convince that you could do it. And from every step onwards, from that point to the. To the phone call at the end about, hey, what a fantastic job you did today. And yeah, it's. It's. It's quite a journey for both the athlete and the coach. And it's. It's why I love doing what we do.

We want to make sure that we're reviewing our performances and races objectively. So there's two schools of thought that we want to approach this from. Dad, you can get a range of emotions from athletes when they cross the finish line. Majority of the time, it's a positive experience and they're absolutely stoked. Crossing the line. And sometimes it's not, and you have to manage that as well. So the two kind of angles you have to come from the objective data analysis, what does the data say? And then there's the story behind the data. There's the human, there's the emotional element. So talk us through this starting process. As a coach, how do you approach this with an athlete? What are the first kind of things you go about doing?

That's a great question. We really have a whole lot of things that we have to consider. What has happened in the event? And the majority of the time, like you just mentioned, it's been an incredibly successful execution by the athlete. And it's a really happy conversation. I absolutely can't wait for it to evolve. And I can see the data because I'm following the process online. And most of the events that everybody enters, talking in terms of triathlon and some of the other sports as well, marathon, have really good information about what's happening during the day. So as a coach, I can sit and follow people and really understand how they're performing. I have no idea about how they're physically, emotionally performing. I can see the data and what their times and average speeds and paces are, but I can't actually understand what's happening to them during the day. They could be hitting these targets and they could be doing it easy, or they could be hitting these targets during the race and really struggling because, I don't know, I don't have that context. All I have is raw data. So it's exciting to get to communicate with the athlete post race. And, you know, the first question is, well, how soon is soon? And, and for the person who, who is really ecstatic, it can't come quick enough. They just cannot wait to get on the call and, and, and really just blurt out exactly how they felt and how good it was. And, and I can't get enough of that. That's, that's absolutely a brilliant phone call. And then, you know, occasionally you get people who are confused by their performance as they didn't think they went too badly, but they're not understanding whether they went bad, good or bad. And then you've got the third athlete who just feels that they had a shocker. So you've got those three emotions coming back at you. And, you know, as I say, the majority of time it's a great conversation. But for those who are really questioning what happened, that's, that's really where we have to. Both the athlete and the coach have to get to work and really find out and dig deep and really delve into. Well, let's just go through it. Let's just go through every aspect of the day and also the week leading into it. What was our taper like? What was your nutrition like? What were you feeling? Were you feeling crap or were you feeling good and the numbers were giving you the wrong information? You know, there's got to be a story behind the good result, the average result and the poor result. And the story's great. Listening to the good result, the story's not so good listening to the poor result, but we have to find out. And you know, I might mention, whilst there's great conversations about a really good result, we still have to put our coaches and athlete hat on together and dig in to see whether could we done a better job. And what do I mean by that? Well, well, you could, for the same fitness, have executed differently on the bike and the run of the swim, got a better result by riding the power differently or by running the run pace strategies slower and then coming home stronger or running too slow early and having to catch up. That, that's, that's quite rare for that to happen, but it does happen. So with the same fitness level and with a slightly different, better execution, you could have actually got a faster result than you got. So it's really important that we start that process and I think that that is something that the athletes that coach look forward to and, you know, really on board with. I'm going to understand from the coach's point of view what I could have done or what we did well. And I can give him feedback about how I felt and the reasons why I actually rode like this or swam like this or ran like this. He can get my reasons. And I need to be as a coach listening to their story and summing up in my mind whilst I'm listening, whether that's feasible or whether that they could have controlled better the example I could give. On Saturday, we did the Dirty Warning, which is one of the longest gravel bike races in Australia. And it's just a new event, only been going for two years. And it goes from Melbourne. Sorry, it goes from really Geelong to Warrnambool, which is a country town, it's 245k's around that on gravel. And one of our coaches, Nick Lecandro, who's a really top gravel rider, top mountain bike rider, top road rider, top time trial, he's a really good cyclist and he was Putting himself into a challenge where he was against some of the most qualified gravel riders that Australia could assemble and some international guys, Australians who have done very well internationally, Trekkie Johnson, etc. So the situation came that he was in the front pack and gone over the hardest climb and really felt like he was now in a position to be probably, you know, maybe in the top 10. His goal was to be in the, you know, as high up as he could possibly be. He had no idea where that was going to be but, but he had a situation where on the downhill after that harder section where he felt like he'd done all he could to, to stay with a bunch and he was now with the select group, so all he had to do was stay with these guys and he was going to contend for a top 10 spot. But he lost the group on the descent and you know, they descended way more aggressively than he did. So he lost time. And when we got to the next feed station, his sole mindset was on. I've just stuffed it up. I should have. I've lost them on the descent, you know, I've ruined my race. And his mindset is thinking about the wrong thing. He's now dwelling on that issue that caused him to be in the position he's in. And you know, I'm having to, I'm not hearing or knowing this until he's right in my face and I'm giving him a couple of drinks. And this drink feed station lasts for between 20 and 30 seconds. So I've got to actually get some information to him as quick as I can. Nick, don't worry about what's just happened. You need to concentrate on the next 150k because he's only done 100, the next 140 or 150k. And you need to think about how you can stay in this race. And by the time he got to the next aid station, he had had about another two hours. So it's around two hours between aid stations over this eight hour ride. And his mindset was fantastic. He's back in the race, he's concentrating, he's got a different mindset and that's the sort of things we're talking about that was during the race and we're talking about the post race which is useful for the next time you race. And you could have found yourself in that situation during the race and not had the ability to think through that. And I must say a lot of our athletes have heard us talk about roadblocks being put in front of you that you have to navigate around to get the outcome you want. And so this is going to happen pretty much to everybody who competes. There's going to be something not go to plan where you have to think through it. And that's part of what we're talking about here. Not just post race, we're talking about even during the race or even prior to the race. Another guy who came on the podcast, Dr. Mitch Anderson, who people would remember, he had a puncture in the dirty warning race, the same race on the start line, you know, that is as off putting as you could possibly get. And I'm looking at him, he's looking at me and the sealant coming out of his tire and what are we supposed to do? The race is starting in 30 seconds, so he just, he's spinning his back wheel, hoping that the puncture is going to seal and off he goes. And the next aid station, I'm a feed station, I'm saying, is it staying up? And he had to pump it up. And so, you know, there's another whole set of circumstances. So there are many things can happen as I'm explaining.

Yeah, I love that example so much, especially of Nick, because, and this is why we say that it's not just for beginners, it's this race review, you know, all the way to the top level and coaches and Nick himself, he knows all this stuff back to front. But when you're in the race, when you're in the moment, your own emotions are taking over, you can forget that very quickly in a snap moment because you might be frustrated, then you just need a bit of an external perspective or an objective point of view just to remind you. And sure enough, you turn it around straight away. But we see this happening at the pro top level all the time, Men and women in the elite races, especially in the high intensity races like the ITU events or the super sprint events, when it's just every second counts, you see mistakes being made constantly and that's why this is so important. So right from the full spectrum of the scale, from a potentially quote unquote poor result to a good result, it's just as important to be doing these reviews because the good result, as you said, you still need to dig into. Okay, well, this was a good result. Why was that? You know, you had this whole, what did we do in this last 12 weeks? What are we doing in the 12 months leading up to this? What do we do in the last six weeks? What was the race ready for? You know, what was our Taper period, like exactly what you said. What was your morning routine like? You know, you want to break down all these things and figure out what works so you can keep it for next time and still look for improvement. And then for a potential poor result you can go, okay, well what was our training? Ask the exact same questions. What was the race ready phase? What was the taper period like? Asking all these questions, looking for potential clues as to what can give you an insight into the performance as well as what actually happens in the race. And sometimes you'll find that, you know, a poor result isn't actually a poor result, it just needed more of a story behind it or some. There's always some reasons behind things and more often than not, I would say these kind of results that we're disappointed with can be put down to potentially just a incorrect point of view of expectations, some sort of thing happening out of your control or we have to own up to when a mistake was made in the preparation or a mistake was made in the actual race. So I just want you, before we dive into some more of the processes around what we're looking for with the data, just remind us why is this so important and getting this right moving forward, good or bad, what are we trying to achieve moving forward?

It's really critical that we go through this post race data analysis and finding out the story behind the athletes execution and the reasons why certain things happened the way they did. And I'm talking about the really good reasons and the things that they might not have done so well. So the reason we're looking at those things is so that we can actually get better for the next race. That is the primary concern that we're trying to do. We want to actually wrap up with all the information and you've seen this on telly with pro basketball teams, pro football teams, the review is crucial so we can get the improvement, find the areas where we're lacking, where we were found out, and then actually implement strategies that we can work on to make the outcome next time completely different to what we just had. And that's also including some good outcomes. So what can we do better that we did well? And for some people they're just at the beginning of their actual ability to understand how to time trial in a triathlon where I'm really honing in on the percentage of time that you're spending in zone one, zone five and six and the percentage of time you're spending in zone two or three depending on the length of the event, whether it's Olympic half Iron man or Ironman, the percentage of time you spend in those zones changes, obviously. So looking at that and then understanding that, geez, I still spent 35 minutes in zone one and I still spent 22 minutes in zone five, their areas. Even though you had a great result and you executed reasonably better than you had before, there's still room for improvement. And you can, with the same fitness level we've said many times on the same day, get a different outcome by minutes. I'm talking five minutes. We had an example almost three weeks ago, one of the guys who's training for an upcoming Ironman in Busselton in Western Australia and he did a training session where it was 160k. And when we, when we had a post training session analysis of this event, this training session, I was pointing out to him he had such a percentage of time in Zone one and Zone six and he just didn't realize that he was actually soft pedaling and spiking his power so much. Even though he had a good training session, he actually went well in the training session. But I was saying to him, we need to actually develop this a little bit better. And this is no different to what's happening on race day once we're analyzing how you went in the race, whether it's swim, bike or run. But the next week he went out and I'm telling this story because it's quite incredible, the difference. He's only one week different in his training. He can't possibly have improved his fitness that much. So he did, I think he did 5 hours 25. This is the time it took him to do that 160k. And the week later he did 180k and he did two minutes quicker than he did for the 160k. So he was actually 20km faster by changing only one thing, which was staying out of zone one and zone six. And he's on the phone to me afterwards going, I get it now, I really do get it. And that's an extreme example that really happened that he was faster over 180k by changing the way he rode the 180k compared to what he was. And obviously he rode lower power the second week, the first week than he did the second week. But he was also had, you know, about two or three, sorry, 20 or 30 minutes lower in zone one than he had the week before and he had virtually no Zone six after we had that discussion. So he'd eliminated some of the complex areas that we wanted him to stay out of. I'm always saying to people in their pre race plan, I don't want to see your power number below this, this number. I don't want to see your power number above this number. We want to stay in the tram tracks, almost stay in their lane. And the more time you spend out of your lane, the worse it's going to be. And this is why this post race analysis is crucial to actually getting to get the athlete to see whether they did stay in their lane, did stay in their zones or did they keep spiking and therefore when they spiked, they had to soft pedal again to recover. So this is really crucial for them keeping on learning. Am I improving this or did I just repeat what I've done in the previous races?

There's almost four levels to post race analysis mastery. And if we're looking at from a data perspective, the first level is level zero where you don't actually do a post race analysis and you don't review your own performance and you're not going to improve that way. The second is to look at your data, compare your times, compare the basics. How did you, what were your times? What is some data showing? Maybe you're looking at heart rate, maybe you're looking at some of the basics or you're just reflecting on your performance. And then the next level is looking at the data properly. So what power did you average? What pace did you average? Did you negative split or not? You know, breaking it down from your power compared to previous races power, your power compared to your training power, you know, that's, that's the next level that can really be beneficial. But then what you're talking about is you start to get to that master analysis where you're going, okay, well, yes, this is the average power. Yes, you might have negative split, yes, that power stayed in the range. But what's the story behind that? The objective numbers story, not the emotional story I'm talking about here behind that average power. So let's say that you were supposed to stay between 220 and 240 watts. Let's say you average 230, but how did you average 230 is exactly what you're talking about just there. You know, you might average 230 by riding at 100 watts sometimes and 400 watts sometimes, you know. And that is a shocking way to average 230. It's a really poor way to execute that. One, it's going to absolutely fatigue you for the run. And two, that extreme top riding is not the most efficient way as you just Gave with that example of the 180 kilometer time trial. Whereas if you average the 230 watts by mostly riding at 220 and 240 and only minimum amount of time outside those ranges, that's a totally different way of riding to get the exact same number. And so that's the, that's the real advanced analysis that we're talking about. And I really want to make the point that what we do with our athletes is after every event, every race, every time trial, we are putting everyone's data into some detailed spreadsheets where we break down each leg of the race, the swim, the bike, the run, and we break it down even further to what was their average power, what was their normalized power, what was their heart rate, what was their cadence? And we're breaking it down to the first half and the second half. You know, what was the average power in the first half, what was average power in the second half? Then we break it down even further. What was potentially if it was a four lap race, what was the first lap, second lap, third lap, fourth lap? So athletes can see exactly where they might have been going higher or lower. And when you get to see your own data, and it can be a little bit confronting or vulnerable, seeing it against other athletes, but you can start to see where you can improve. You can see where the athletes performed really well, where they're actually doing it well, you can see the athletes that are fading potentially. Data just makes it so obvious about what's happening. So I mean, we use these spreadsheets just as such learning tools. And it's incredible what you can learn from your own data and everything else.

Yeah, and that athlete spreadsheet is unbelievably valuable. There's so much information there and it's really worthwhile athletes looking at other people to see how, how others performed. And that actually helps you because you can look at some of the good performances that are in the race from your fellow athletes and you can look at the people who didn't perform well and it jumps out at you, how they executed over the swim, bike and run. And that is a really detailed amount of information that you can actually use to your advantage so that next time you're actually learning from what you've seen from your own data and from how other people who might have done fractionally better than you. So it is really another piece of advanced data that you can actually have the benefit of using for the next time. And I just can't underestimate how important all those little Bits of information that we're talking about can contribute to you making better decisions based on all of the things that you've done in the post. Race analysis and the actual data side of it is super important. And as you mentioned, you can get 230 average with spending half an hour in zone one and half an hour in zone six and still end up with the right average. But that's actually, as you said, not helpful for so many reasons. And one of the main reasons is you could, if you're spiking that much to be in zone six and that much to be in zone one, you could be burning the nutrition in a completely different way than you're meant to. So you could be going through the nutrition faster than you need to be, which is going to have an impact on you on the bike at some point, especially if it's 180k and then it's going to have a huge impact on your running. And if you haven't trained like that, where you've got spikes and lows because you're in a race situation and you got super competitive and people are passing you and you're following them and gassing yourself when you shouldn't be and following your own race plan, I'm giving examples of what could happen as to why you would be spiking so much and not understanding how to ride the hills in the zones. Instead you see a hill and you think, well, it's, you know, the rule is when you go bikes going slowest, you ride higher power. Well, there is a line for that. And so you're gassing yourself over these hard sections and they're all burning fuel quicker than you should be. So by the time you get to run, not only have you actually executed poorly on the bike, even though you've got the right average power out, you are so much less fueled than you should be for the run and you're more tired for the run. Not only the nutrition side, but physically your fatigue levels are so much higher with so much spiking over where you should be, where you should be actually riding in. And don't underestimate the example I gave you of Mark a couple of weeks ago with his 160 and 180k. When he got off the bike after 180k, he was so blown away with how comfortably he was running compared to the previous week where he'd spiked a lot more. So that's a good, you know, that's a real time example of what I'm talking about. And this data Side, we could bang on about it for so long, Jordan, but we really want to get onto the emotional side as well as the actual story behind your race. But yeah, I don't know if there's anything else you want me to talk about with that, but that is kind of if you get this data and delve so deep into it like we are, and not just skim over it like, oh, yeah, I average what I supposed to, and let's just move on. You're not getting what you should be out of, out of your analysis with the data. You need to go further. You need to dig as far as you can. And that's why the people who actually do that review. It doesn't matter what sport you're in. The more detailed the review is, the more knowledgeable you are about that performance, which you can then take into the next performance. And you add up 10 or 12 of those races over two or three years and you compare what you're like two years ago compared to, compared to the knowledge you have now. And you are a much better prepared athlete because of the experiences that you've had and the reviews that you've done on yourself, which you will not make the same mistakes again. And I now have an example where in some of our testing, people are actually afraid to go out too hard now. And in fact, they're actually going out too conservative. And now I'm having to convince them that they could start where they left off before and still attack the event. And that's how you know you're going from one extreme to the other. You go too outrageous to too conservative. But they're things that you learn and you learn where the line is. That's what we're trying to find. You know, when you go around a corner and you want to see how quick you can go around a corner and you angle your bike over and if you end up on the ground, well, you've found the line, haven't you? It's gone too far. So this is what we're trying to find out here so that we can use this information to our best advantage coming up for the next races.

And a really good example I want to use, and last point on the data is in these spreadsheets, we give everyone's normalized power versus their average power. So if you don't know much about power, normalized power is basically an indication of how smoothly you're riding versus how erratic you're riding. And if this example we keep using, if someone's really riding in zone one Times sometimes zone five, sometimes the gap between the average power and the normalized power will be extreme. And in every single post race analysis email we send out athletes, we're always going, we're asking the question, look at your normalized power, look at your average power. What's the gap? If it's too big, you're riding too erratically, you're not riding smooth enough, you need to improve. And that just gets hammered home. And over the years, we have seen the majority of our athletes just slowly, the majority close, close, close, close, close that gap. And there was a time trial last month where I was looking at that gap and there was barely anyone that had a difference of more than 6 or 7 watts, which is really, really good smooth riding. And this is not on a flat course, this is an undulating course. And so we're just so proud to see that when that point is hammered home so often, the whole group is getting it. So you mentioned then that why this is so important. And you know, if you take this time, you know the title of this podcast is 60 minutes to guaranteed Improved Time. If you take the time to do this review, you will find improvements. Because even if you perform well, no one has a perfect race, no one has even close to a perfect race. You will always be able to find time gains. And that's the exciting part, is that even if you do well, you can still find more. So I guess the last question I want to ask on this process is when is the best time to do the review? Because it almost comes in two parts. There's that initial post race reaction which you do want to acknowledge and talk about. Then there's potentially a better time to sit through the data more objectively, take the post race emotion side out of it. So when do you think it's best for a co triathlete to start to review this process?

Yeah, and look, if it's a big race, normally we would have a recovery period in the training block straight after a big race. And I'm talking, you know, half Ironman up to Ironman or marathon or an endurance like the Dirty Warning where it's an eight hour and, you know, straight, straight after the race. The next day is probably not the best time. You know, it's best to let it sit for, I think, three or four days. And that gives the athlete more time to actually go through and have a look at their analysis themselves. So they're ready to have that conversation. It's no different to the conversation we have pre race where I'm asking Each athlete to do their homework and tell me the, the examples of why they've selected what power and pace and to ride, swim and run at. That takes some time for people to go through. And so this is the same with the post race analysis. We want to actually give people the opportunity and to let the emotion disappear and the reality to sink in. And oftentimes they will be talking when they go back to work on the Monday. You know, if you're in an office situation, you would almost guarantee that someone in the office or at your workplace on a job site, if you're a tradie at Smoko, they'll be saying oh, how did the race go on the weekend? And you know, you probably have a different opinion on Monday morning compared to what you would have on Wednesday. And if you talk about the race on Monday to some people, you actually get perspective from their reaction almost and what you're telling them, what story you're telling them and then you're forming an opinion about what you felt happened after you've had a day or two to mull over what you think happened in terms of data and in terms of how you personally executed physically. And so I think the longer it takes, you know, it's, and you've got a cool, calm approach to it, then you know, closer to the race it's too much emotion. Give it three, four, five days and then you can have a really sensible conversation where there's no emotion, you know, it's done and dusted but, but now that the real goal is to find out what we did well and what we did poorly and, and then move forward. And as long as you've got that done within, you know, seven to 10 days depending on how long you've had for that recovery period before you start your next block, that's actually more important I think, not to rush into it, but to have all the information and you don't want to have a conversation with someone who actually doesn't know what happened to their data. That's actually quite. Then the coach is spoon feeding them. I want them to be informed. I want them to know what happened with data and they can also tell me what happened emotionally in the race.

Some factors to consider when you're doing your own review and some things to think about with what could affect your performance is one, if it's a race you've done before, you can obviously compare your times to previous races and not compare, just to say better means you've done better. You know, you have to think about the conditions of the day, but it's good to compare and go, okay, what's the story here? Well, I rode faster. What was the day like? Was it better wind? Was it worse wind? I might have lost places in the race, but I've actually performed better on the bike. So that tells a story in itself. The context of your training block, how was your training period running in? Did you have any unexpected uninterrupted period? Did you have some sort of injury? Did you have some sort of sickness? Execution is obviously a big factor that we've spoken about your mindset leading to the race and in the race itself. You know, that context is important to think about for your race review. What's happening in your life right now? Has work been busy this week? You know, you might be leading up to your A race, but then you got slammed at work, didn't get the sleep required. You kind of came into the race under a bit of fatigue. So these are all some external factors to think about when you, when you're conducting this review for yourself. But I guess we want to finish with one of the most major points that we've harped on a little bit in the last couple of weeks. But it's about this point of please don't attach yourself or your self worth really specifically to the result. And so we've used the words we don't want to diminish the outcome, good or bad. We're not trying to pretend like a bad result didn't happen or under celebrate a good result. That's not what we're talking about here. But what we really want to emphasize is, and we'll keep beating this drum over and over again because our principles here are enjoyment of the whole process, the training process, the racing process and everything around it, and improvement. And it's ironic to say this, don't attach your self worth to the outcome because our entire podcast and our coaching is based on performance. You know, we're trying to improve. But there's a difference between the pursuit of improvement and the pursuit of a goal. But then attachment to that goal or outcome and attaching your self worth and your self value as a person and whether you're happy or not to that outcome because if you go down that path, we know it's quite a dangerous path to go down. And we've seen athletes kind of dig themselves into a hole by kind of, you know, mentally saying things to themselves or believing stories such as, if I don't get this result, I will be unhappy if I don't come X place, if I don't get X time, I won't be as happy as a person and I failed as an athlete. And that is just, they're just horrible things to say to ourselves. And this sport, unfortunately, I think is rife with it. And there's not enough sports psychology, I don't think, for the age group athlete. And athletes around the world have top notch, highly paid sports psychologists and mindset coaches helping them through this process. And age groupers turn up to these big A races where they've trained so hard for it, they've put in so much time, effort, work, they put just as much pressure on themselves as the professional athletes, but don't have the same sort of mindset help or potentially support around them. So I think we really want to make this point that you are not any worse off because of the outcome. We want to focus on the execution, we want to focus on your part in the process, we want you to just focus on your enjoyment in the process. And you want to review the outcome, you want to review the result and find out the story behind what happens. But yeah, I think as a coach you're always encouraging people not to beat themselves up when it's poor result or on the opposite scale, get to sit on their high horse when they get a really good result. You know, you want to be more, a more balanced approach. Right?

Yeah. And I suppose that is also one of our philosophies is trying to not be extreme, extremely negative or extremely positive. We've always pushed the, the well balanced athlete will prevail over the extremeness of, of anything. And you know, I've said so many times, anything that is extreme is unsustainable. And what does that mean if, if you go on a, a bender of drinking or, or whatever, you know, training too hard, anything that's just, you know, way over the top, the end result is going to be that you can't keep doing it. At some point you will give up on that quest. And whether you're training too hard or eating too much or not eating enough, these are all things that are extreme. You just want to have a balance more balanced. And so understanding that the result of the race is what the outcome of all of the preparation you've done, that's actually a measure of what you did in the 12 weeks before, the one week before the race plan strategy, the actual execution. That is a number that tells us what actually happened. And what we're trying to say is don't make that number dictate how you actually Go about your life. That is the result. And you should be more focused on did I actually achieve the training I wanted to? Did I have the right race plan and strategy? Did I execute well? And if you do all that well, then the result is whatever the result is and you should be extremely pleased with that. If you're ticking all those boxes that I just said and if you actually didn't train well and you didn't have a race plan, you didn't execute well, well, the result will be what you deserve and you need to actually accept that as well. And I look back on some of the races that I did over the journey and my expectation and I know a lot of the who we coach are similar mindset to me and to you, Jordan. We are super competitive people. We don't like to have a poor performance and whether that poor performance is relatable to a position. And when I was a professional it was all about position because if I didn't actually get on the podium, I didn't earn any money. So there was an added pressure to actually perform and get the position I wanted. Sure, I had some great races, but I might have finished six or seven and it didn't actually end up in a payday for me. So there was that other pressure was, geez, I actually did the best I could today but didn't get the outcome I wanted, which was the podium and income. So that's a different pressure that I was putting on myself and I was actually living my life around that result and I was really not good to be living with at that time because if I had a race where I didn't end up on the podium, I was pretty depressed about it and down on myself. Yet I've had a fantastic race a lot of the time just the people were better than me and that took a lot of, a lot of learning race after race. I wasn't going to win every race. That's just not going to happen. So I had to really quickly understand that I can't associate myself with just what the position was. It was, I'm going to be a better athlete down the track if I concentrate on the things that are going to make me a better athlete and not concentrating on whether I got first, second or third. That was really detracting from me learning and being a better athlete and a better person, by the way, because I didn't want to be that grumpy person for two or three days post race where no one could actually talk to me about the race because I was so disappointed with my outcome, and I'm embarrassed about that. That is a really poor way to behave. And there's been a lot of athletes who are professional who have done the same thing and learnt the lesson. There's others who haven't who are still like that. And, you know, we've got a great example of one of the athletes who competed on the weekend. And. And his expectation probably would have been that he would, you know, probably be in the top three overall in the amateur race at Melbourne. 70.3. And he ended up coming second, which was incredible. He actually won the race last year. So coming second would probably be a disappointment to me if I was in his shoes. Maybe for you, Jordan, as well. But when. When I looked at his data and we haven't had this conversation yet, he ran the fastest he's ever run, and his bike time was literally within one minute of what he rode last year. So he actually performed really well. It was just that someone was better who happened to be another tribal athlete who beat him on the day. And I was really watching Tom's behavior afterwards. I cannot praise him enough. He was so gracious. He was full of smiles for everybody. I mean, we had a huge crew of people at the race, and he was asking everybody how they went and really seriously asking them, tell me about your race. And. And you wouldn't know that he was disappointed. And I'm sure deep down he felt like, you know, that was a race that he really wanted to win, but the outcome didn't happen that way. And I just love the way he handled himself. And if. If I could have been like that, and he's 21, I would be such a better human being if I could, you know, if I could behave in that manner. It was. It was really good to see, and I'm so proud of being associated with a guy like that. It was brilliant.

And the important part to note for me there is that he. He didn't try and hide his disappointment from you either. He. He said to you at the end, he expressed his disappointment and had that conversation with you, and that's the appropriate thing to do and, and to talk about. But it was just so impressive to see how he didn't let that affect his demeanor with other people. And there's a profound listen in there from your own experience where it's a pretty big thing for you to say that, you know, you're embarrassed looking back, and that's kind of. You felt like that's the attitude you needed to. To be able to win races. As a pro is you need to almost have that killer mindset that I want to win and nothing else. And you've probably now learned that that's not the case. And I kind of want to ask you to finish off about that Australian champion Ironman win. Was there a different process there or do you think you maybe were still in that mindset that was a little bit toxic or. I feel like based on what I know, you just put your head down and trained really hard by yourself and turned up to the race saying, I've given everything I've got here and if that's good enough for a win, that'll be it. Plus, you obviously were in the mindset of giving absolutely everything that day. But I mean, talk to me about that. Where, where do you think you sat mentally around the position there?

Yeah, I think you've hit it on the head. I don't want to talk too much about that event, but as an example for what I'm trying to say in this, this time where we're talking about post race analysis, I definitely learned that if I am going to bank on, it's got to be a placing that I'm, that I'm gunning for here. And all my focus is on that that will be detrimental to my, to my performance. And I can give you so many examples in sport. You know, the Australian Rules Football example of the, the sirens gone, the match is drawn or a basketball game where the, you know, the match is drawn and it's free throws. And if you, if you get the three, the free throw, you actually, your team wins the championship or the person takes a mark and kick for goal after the siren, you will win the Grand Final. Their pressures that if you take them on board that if I kick this, we win rather than going, if I, if I do two bounces and then go through my routine where I actually have elbows high, follow through with my hand and, and I know the distance. I've done this practice for the shooting a basket 10 billion times in my career. If I go through that process, then I will get the basket rather than saying I have to get the basket and that therefore we will win. I'm thinking about the wrong thing. So in my example, I just departed myself from wanting to win the event. I was going to do the best performance I could. And my concentration on that day was being in the moment. I was super determined, super competitive. And you're right, I just basically put my head down and followed the process of being in the moment every minute of that day. And you know, before I knew it, the race was pretty much over and I was coming around to the finish line and I was still in front. That's actually how it panned out. You know, at no stage was I thinking, you know, I can win this or I can do this or I can do that. I was just concentrating on what do I have to do now to get to the finish line faster than anybody else. That was my mindset, thinking about things that will help me get the desired result that I want, not thinking about the desired result. And I think if you can, if you can do that in your own journey, then the result will take care of itself. And my father used to tell me that all the time, do the work, son, prepare properly and the result will take care of itself. And never a true word was spoken.

To be clear and to summarize and to finish. We're not saying don't care about the result. You know, you almost have to be robotic to feel that way. We're just saying good or bad. You know, we're just saying that your, your worth as an athlete or as a person isn't attached to the result or outcome. You know, if it's a bad result, you can be disappointed in the outcome, but that's the, that's the race, you know, that doesn't, it doesn't change your, your own self worth. And it's the same as a good result, you know, you don't, if you're sitting there celebrating a good result like you're the king or queen, you know, and you're attaching your self worth to that result, you're setting yourself up for a high chance of failure because there's, you're guaranteed you're not going to have that perfect race every time. And so when it doesn't happen, if your value of yourself is whether you win or not, when it doesn't happen, you're in trouble. You know, that's a really poor place to come from. So, so we often see athletes potentially go into a spiral because their potential self worth or identity is wrapped up in the performance of a race. And so obviously we're human and we care about the result and that's okay. You want to learn from a poor result and you do want to celebrate a good result, but it's not the be all and end all. I think that's kind of how we want to finish this race. Review. Any final thoughts from you?

Yeah, I think you summarized it well. We're still honing in on the balanced person, the balanced personality the balanced character, that's more important. And yes, ecstatic. Be happy internally doing cartwheels, but externally still be modest and humble and the same when you're having a poor result. Be very upset and determined that you're going to do something about fixing that next time. But on the outside, be balanced and get perspective around it. And I think that will be enabling you to be a better human and enjoy your sport. Way better than attaching yourself to outcomes.

It's just a slight change of mindset, isn't it? It's doing internal car, it's doing cartwheels and being ecstatic and jumping up and down about the right thing. It's jump up and down because you executed how you want it. Jump up and down because you did 20 weeks worth of awesome training. Jump up and down because you had a race plan and you executed as well as you wanted. Don't jump up and down because of the external significance you're getting from other people or the kudos you're getting from other people. Because if you rely on that and not on yourself, then you're relying on other people or your own happiness, enjoyment or fulfillment in the, in the race. And the same thing negatively, if you want to, you know, be disappointed, be disappointed in the potential lead up or the performance or the training or the mistake you made. You know, think about that. Don't be disappointed because of other people's expectations of you or the people at work who say, oh, that's, that's a poor result, isn't it? Weren't you supposed to win that kind of example? So deep topic there. As we said, we wanted to talk about the objective stuff. We wanted to talk about the human emotion side. It's a bit of a strange one to kind of touch on, but there's so much behind it. And for us, we definitely see the importance around there, the human emotion side and the stories compared to the data, a lot of the time they're very intertwined. But we really want to hammer this point home, so we hope we've got that point across again. This, this race review is so important for your own journey, your own improvement. We hope you enjoyed the episode as always. We'll see you in the next. Sam.