The Biggest Mistake of My Career (Kona Ironman)

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined as always by your host, former Australian Ironman champion Jared Donnelly. And I am Jordan Donnelly. Before we get into the episode, just a reminder, if you want to download our Expert Secrets cheat sheet, that's a cheat sheet of the very best tips and advice the expert guests will on our podcast have said to help you train smarter and race faster. Go to getfastpodcast.com that's getfastpodcast.com so in this episode we're asking the question, who's responsible for your success? Is it the coach or is the athlete? And I want to start off and ask you that question straight away because it could be controversial, but as always, there's going to be a lot to it. But who's responsible for the success? Is it the coach or is it the athlete?

Well, if the athlete does really well, of course the coach is responsible. And if the athlete does poorly, it's the athlete who's responsible. So that's the simple answer to that next question.

That's funny.

So, no, really, it's plainly obvious that both people have to be invested in getting the success that the athlete really desires. So. So the athlete needs to be totally committed to executing everything that's on the program and in the manner and fashion that the coach wants. And the coach has to be on board as well with listening and hearing the feedback so that they can make better decisions together as a team. It's a definite team. And the advantages of having an athlete coach relationship is incredibly powerful.

The reason we decided to speak about this topic is because we wanted to talk about the concept of taking ownership for your program and it is a mistake. You see often that athletes don't take enough ownership and maybe they put too much responsibility on the coach to try and do it for them. So what mistakes do you see athletes making in regards to this mindset and this lack of ownership?

Definitely putting too much trust into the coach. That might sound really strange thing to say, but the example would be, I've had some athletes repeat two sessions in a row because they haven't understood what each day's training program was about. Two bike sessions in a row. Monday's recovery Tuesday is a high intensity session and halfway through the Tuesday they're doing because of a technological glitch, Training Peaks has loaded the same session twice and they've got three quarters of the way through saying, I think it's the same as yesterday. That's clearly a person who's not invested in their program. They're just going through the motions and ticking the box of I've done that session, what's next? And that wouldn't happen if the person was focusing on exactly what the requirements are each day, each week, each block, each month. So that come race day, I know that I've got 16 weeks worth of Tuesdays where I'm going to be doing some high intensity. And if I started an ergo session that was seemed too easy in the first 10, 15 minutes after the warm up, I would be going, what's, what's going on here? This is not the session that I meant to be doing. So that's an example of someone who's clearly not taken responsibility of their program. They're just ticking boxes.

So what do you mean by understanding the requirements of the week and the requirements of the Tuesday sessions?

Yeah, so if, if I give you a map, a road map to follow and it's got 16 turns in it and you just look at the final destination. I want to go from A to B, but you don't take notice of I'm meant to have turned left back there. And you know, because I'm traveling north, I should eventually get to my destination. Well, you might end up taking two or three hours longer than you should have if you had to follow the, the map properly. It's the same example as an athlete who's got a program but has no detail about what to focus on. So understanding the requirements of the program is knowing what's happening on Monday and not just that I'm going swimming or that I'm going to do an easy ride. What is the swim session? Go into the program, identify that I'm warming up and I'm just doing some four hundreds today. And what's my time? I'm sitting on, you know, 8 minute, 400 total time per 400. What am I doing as power with my recovery ride? I'm sitting at 140 watts to 160 at 90 RPM. Right. I have that detail. Next day, what am I doing? Okay, this week we've got 4 by 8 minute efforts on the bike at 300 watts to 320. Last week I did 301, 302, 304. See if I can do 308 or 310. This week there are things that you can do that are showing you understand what is the purpose and goal of every session. And that's taking responsibility rather than saying, you know, in the next three weeks I'm doing four by eight, ergo sessions and I'll just do my best to get through them and I can't remember what I did week one or week two and week three, I'll just do the same. You know, a really invested athlete would say, right, 304, 305 was difficult to achieve. Can I, can I match that from last week and do a little bit better so that I actually get some overload into my body, which is going to improve me as a cyclist? If I do three weeks where I stay the same, but it was at my limit, that's actually overloading you. If I do three weeks where I was, you know, probably 50, 50% of the mid range instead of 100% or at the bottom of the range, if I'm doing the sessions at the bottom of the range and it's not uncomfortable, then I'm taking the easy way out. I'm not taking responsibility when that. You know, the athlete has to understand that in order to get a really good outcome on race day. These are the times when you practice to push yourself and the coach can only provide that program for you. It's your responsibility as an athlete to understand where you're at in terms of the swim pace, the run pace, or the bike power and understand what you did last week or what, what you've done in the past. And, and you know, great examples of athletes who've done 6 by 1k repeats over a period of five years and they're still running them at 3:06 pace, which is fantastic pace, but they, that they're questioning, or maybe they're not even questioning. I'm still running my 5k race or 10k race at, you know, 31, 20. I've never beaten that in five years. But in any of your program, have you actually tried to run faster than you have in the previous five years? That sounds logical, doesn't it? That in order to get better you would have to change something in your program and not do the same. So understanding the question that you asked, what does understanding the program mean? That's what it means. It means, it means knowing your numbers so that you can have a mindset or a framework going into the session that this is my goal, okay, 306, 1k or 4:06 or 506, 1k reps, whatever the pace is, know what you've done before, have an expectation of what you're going to do today.

I understand sometimes an athlete wants to Take that decision making out of it and just let the coach do it all. I don't want to think about it. I just want to turn up and do the session. I do understand that mentality. I could never personally go into a training week and not look at the whole week and know what I'm doing and get mentally prepared for it. Especially the Tuesday Thursday sessions are really hard. It's like a race. You're mentally preparing for those efforts because they're really tough. And I almost need a couple of days just to think about them and kind of prepare for those sessions. I can't imagine rocking up and doing six 1ks without having thought about it beforehand.

Well, there's two types of athletes we're describing here. One who's really invested and probably, you know, is, is categorized as too serious, probably, but, but that's the kind of athlete we love. And then there's the other seemingly less intense athlete who's just going to rock up and, and go through the session and whatever the coach says, I'll do. And that could possibly work for a lot of people, but in my experience, the people who invest in themselves more will get a better outcome. And I know for a fact that people like Coach have anxiety about some of the Tuesday, Thursday hard sessions. And at the end of the day, you know, you're in charge of, of everything about that. Your preparation, the meal you have the night before, the sleep you have. So they're all things that you should be practicing anyway so that you are in control of the outcome.

So there's a bit of a paradox here. You've said multiple times in all other podcasts and videos that we've done that athletes need to trust the process. But at the same time, you're saying don't blindly trust the process.

So that's absolutely. One of the key things is to be 100% on board and, and have confidence in, in what the program you and your coach have worked out together. So never shy away from that. You need to be 100% on board and, you know, you need to be flexible with that and be, be willing to discuss changes that you think might benefit yourself. It's your program. You know, the coach is there to guide you. It's your program. So the more or less involvement you have could depend on your own personality anyway. And we have examples of people who blindly do trust the program and will do whatever I say and not question it, and that's absolutely fine. And I'm probably giving them more information because they're not asking for it. And I'll be saying to them, we're doing this so that you can improve this weakness that we have so that come race day, this doesn't happen. And I get the response, oh, great. Whereas other people just would be questioning almost every session, what are we doing this for? And that's great as well. Every personality is different. And from the coaching point of view, I've got to identify what makes people tick. But from an athlete point of view, you know, it's clearly evident to me the people who have more involvement in what's happening and question things and understand their own data get the best outcomes. That that is just, you know, there's 1 in 10 that is different. But 90% of people get a better, get a better outcome having that approach to their program and take responsibility for their own program. And I certainly wouldn't want to be in a position where I'm unclear about what the expectation is. And if you took an example, if I was lining up for six four hundreds on the track as an athlete running, and I didn't know that that was the session today, and the coach says to me, right, you're doing six four hundreds at 60 seconds with two minute rest, my heart rate would go straight away through the roof and I'd be going, right, and instantly I'd be going, how am I going to execute this? I would be having a plan in my head what pace I'm going to run. And that's okay, but I would much rather know in advance and if I'm, if I'm not taking the least amount of interest, that it said the program was six four hundreds, then eight two hundreds following it. And I just, I just thought four hundreds and, and I didn't look at the whole program. And I ran six four hundreds at 55. And then the coach says right now for the eight two hundreds and you go, oh, I didn't know there was two hundreds in it. And you can't execute the two hundreds properly because you're so exhausted from running the four hundreds above the range or at the highest end of the range. So that's an example of how taking no interest can affect the outcome of the session.

We had an example here of a professional athlete, professional runner, who came on the podcast, Jordan, and he spoke about how he personally doesn't want to know. He rocks up to a session, those hard sessions. He knows the rest of his week. He knows his recovery runs, his endurance runs everything. He knows his own paces. So he's definitely knows his own numbers. But in Terms of the specifics of a tough session, he doesn't want to know. He just wants his coach to tell him on the day. And their whole group is like that, which we found very surprising. And I guess there's positives and negatives to that. The negatives is, like you said, you're not prepared for it, and the coach can just spring on you, and he does. He said this. The coach just springs on them an extra 1200 or an extra 1k rep when they're just flat out exhausted. But there has to be an advantage in that also, in that a race isn't going to go as predictable as possible. So preparing for or practicing a challenge when it's unexpected, there's some benefit in that.

Absolutely. And I think it's a. A great thing to be throwing in at people and seeing how they react is also interesting and intriguing because that situation scenario could happen in a race, and you have got to expect the unexpected and everything. So, you know, we really go on a lot about having structure and making everything organized and ordered. But very few sports in the world does that happen. There are more predictable sports. Team sports is the most unpredictable. Cycling is very unpredictable sport because everybody makes split decisions. Depending on what happens in certain situations, there's always a different reaction, and you have to be ready and anticipate that. But in the sport of triathlon, it is a very predictable sport. There are very few things that can actually be a surprise. Of course, a mechanical on the bike is something that's out of your control. But it could be in your control if you put on dud tires that you've had for, you know, two years and you get a puncture in the race, that's in your control. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, you know, something, you've got everything, right, Brand new tires and you still get a puncture or, you know, the chain drops off or, you know. And that could also be bike maintenance. Yeah, there's always. But there's something could go wrong. Yeah, so. So you, you still want to. You still want to keep in mind that it is great to have unpredictable things. And we have one session in our program that is an unpredictable session. And we want people to, to race or to ride hard against hills that, that appear on a course or to ride a bunch ride that's really got guys who have got egos and are pushing hard. And we want that in our program. We want that unpredictability. But to have that every session, I just think, as I said, the Example before you could actually not get the right outcome out of the purpose of that day's program. And throwing in an unpredictable added section to the program is great. That's a really good idea. So that you can see how the athlete can manage that. And does he lose the plot or does he sulk? Does he just give up? You know, there's so many things you can learn from that example you've given, which I think is valuable. But I'm saying the majority of the time you need to as a triathlete because the event is so predictable that you need to have a good routine pattern. Now the swim's an example of you could get punched or kicked accidentally and panic can set in. You could overheat in a wetsuit. Panic sets in. There's a bad chop, you've swallowed some water, Panic sets in. There are really real things that happen. It happened to me many times and. And it's really being prepared to deal with those things and just relax and, you know, I'm not gonna drown. I'm a really competent swimmer. I might have to lie on my back for 10 or 20 seconds just to compose myself or take the goggles off cause I can't see and clean them and put them back on. In the space of an IRONMAN, you've lost 20 seconds, you know, over 10 hours. I don't think it really matters that much. That is one of the key things that we want to practice in in our program, which comes back to taking responsibility, is you have control over every aspect of what's happening all day in your race. So you want to have more control in your training sessions as well. Be. Be used to controlling your training sessions, but be prepared for the unpredictable thing. That. That is certainly something that. I'm really a firm believer in not making everything so structured and regimented that. That you are not prepared for the unpredictable event.

And like you said, specificity to the athlete. This is especially prevalent for triathletes because the training should be predictable. Specific to the race is a lot more predictable for a professional runner like the example we used. Their whole career is almost based on racing and race tactics and unpredictability. It could be a slow race, it could be a fast race. It's definitely not going to be predictable. So there's a key difference.

It's a great example. And I've always said that most of the world titles, championships and the Olympics are never run in fast times. And. And you need to have prepared. And this is a little contentious thing that I'll Say here, but the early Australian athletes, track and field athletes, the Derek Claytons, the Ron Clarks, de Castellas Monegades, there was, you know, some Chris Wardlaw, there's some great runners who've, who've really done well internationally. Mottram, you know, John Landy, Lloyd John Landy, sorry, how could I forget him? Ron Clark, there's, you know, just names that are world known names, you know, and we've got some great athletes in Australia now that really the top of the field in Australia, but they're not internationally well known, they're not as good as those, as those athletes. And I'm sure it's to do with the certain ways that those athletes trained. Percy Seri was a classic coach that was thought to be quite mad in some of the stuff that he was getting Ron Clark to do. Herb Elliot, how could I forget Herb Elliot, which is his number one athlete who ran the fastest 1500 meters in 1960, which that record was held in Australia for four decades almost before it was broken. And you know, that's examples of what we're talking about. You know, if you're not improving, you need to do something different. And those guys were definitely, the rest of the world was looking at how they were training and trying to emulate that. And you need to be pushing yourself in those training sessions and not just doing repeated things that you've done year after year. You need to be having progressive overload. Even though you could be the best in your country, if you're not the best in the world at what you're doing, then you need to push yourself further. So getting back to a triathlete, you know, you don't want to be just the same, you want to extend yourself in every session. So taking responsibility in every session is what we're trying to say here. And I'm using the elite examples where even they need to take responsibility for their outcome.

Yeah. And I mean you've seen still elite pro triathletes not know their numbers, competing on the world stage, not knowing their numbers. And I mean let's go into more detail about knowing your numbers. It's not you said before about in training, you need to be knowing what you did in the intervals in week one, week two, week three, so you can compare. But this leads all the way up to race day into. You need to know what your threshold, swim, bike and running numbers are so you can race to them and you know what's, what's going to, you can sustain and what you can't sustain.

Yeah, and obviously as a swimmer, let's just go through as a swimmer, on race day, you're either a 48 minute swimmer or you're a 102 swimmer. And if you wanted to start with the 48 minute swimmers, how long do you think you're going to sustain that before your heart rate goes through the roof and your arms end up full of lactate and you swim a108 just because your competitiveness caused you to start with the 48 minute swimmer over. I'm talking 3.8K. If you're a 2:40 marathon runner and the guys on the start line are all 208, 210, 212 and you start the first 5k with them and you can keep up with them because you're a reasonably competent runner and you end up running 305 because you ran the first 5k at 32 minute k pace, which is what a 208 runner, 210 runner, 212 runner will do. That's an example of just a catastrophe.

Yeah, extreme examples.

Extreme. Yeah, but, but that's, that's what we're talking about here. It just, it sounds so obvious that, that knowing and understanding your numbers and you know, I've been told by many pro triathletes, no, no, you don't worry about any of, any of your numbers on the bike or on the run. If the race is going up the road, you need to be a part of that pack. And that's absolutely true to a point. But if you look down and your FTP is 350 and you've ridden the last 25 minutes at 360, 370, how much longer do you think you're going to be able to ride in that bunch for? And I say bunch in a triathlon is not meant to be a bunch, but that pace line that is, you know, possibly a kilometer long, you know you're not going to be able to run because you have blown yourself up on the bike. So that's, that's another example of your ambition and ability, which we talk about a lot. Being confused, you want to be with the leaders. You, you know the race is up the road. But at this stage, if, if you actually analyze the numbers, you know, you're gonna over five hours, you're probably, instead of riding a 420 bike or 430, you may end up with a 445, 450 and run horribly. So by, by making that decision to join the elite riders that you're not at that level yet you're better off riding your own pace and ended up with a better ironman time and live to fight another day understanding and taking responsibility for your numbers. And that trickles all the way down from elite to the age grouper to the beginner or the middle of the pack person who's just trying to do a pb. If you start doing someone else's race and disregard your numbers, then you're going to have a poor outcome at the end of the day. And I've done it myself, so it is a very disappointing. I've done it on the highest stage at Kona where I've actually followed someone else's pace because I was shocked that they could actually catch me and they've never caught me in any bike ride before. And it made me change my effort to match the effort they were doing. And I've told this story many times, at the end of the bike they weren't running. I didn't know that. But they were just going for a flat out swim bike and didn't end up running. And how foolish did I feel when I actually could hardly run because I'd ridden 20% above what I should have been on race day?

Yeah, well that is powerful when you think about mistakes that athletes make in terms of trusting the coach too much. Something that comes to mind on this is when they rely on you to tell them what their numbers are, they come to race day, you're not there racing with them.

Yep. This is my biggest bugbear is if I'm saying, and I've done this a few times when we've had some group rides and early on in my coaching career, which is, you know, back in the 80s when we had no data so there was really, you know, it was really going by feel so the coach had less influence. You could give up a training program on the, on the bike. You really couldn't work out too much detail. As a runner you could always get the average pace per kilometre that was always available as a swimmer. But certainly going to a ride where I've stood and talked to people and said, okay, we're going to do a 20 minute climb here, I want it to be your best effort. And looking around the group of 12 people picking out one person, what's your last, best 20 minute effort on a hill? And them just blankly looking at me going, I have no idea. And then I'll point to the next person, I'm not going to name names. And they'll say I did 306 watts four weeks ago on this climb and I'm really determined to do 310. And there's two examples of someone who's totally across everything they're doing. And the other person's going, I have no idea what I did last time. And what do you think is going to happen? The person who has no idea what number to start at, he's possibly going to ride with the other person who's totally organized because he seems like he knows what he's doing. So I'll just follow him and I can normally keep up with him anyway. And they're actually relying on someone else's pacing to get the outcome. And they may well beat that person or match them, but they've relied on that person being a healthy and fit on the day and able to run or ride to those numbers. And that's happened to you in an 800 meter run where we knew that one of your competitors who happened to be your cousin could run under two minutes for 800. And you were trying so hard to get that elusive 159, 800 meter mark and you run under 201 five times. Not, not run under two minutes. And all you had to do was stick with Angus because he's run a 157. And that was the plan that day, yet we didn't know that he was sick. And he actually ran poorly that day and didn't break two minutes. And you put your faith in basically following his race. And that's a great example of, you know, not trusting your own performance almost your own numbers, your own data, and putting your race in someone else's hands.

And that leads us to kind of the last point of not getting influenced or swayed by external factors. And external factors being other people, group writing, bunch writing, not letting your program get derailed because you get pressured into doing something that's not part of your program.

And we have mentioned this many times and all the athletes I coach, they don't even brace this with me anymore because they know. And I'll. If someone rings me and says, oh, there's, you know, there's a group ride going on Sunday and it looks like it's going to be an easy ride and we're only going for a couple of hours, is it okay if I join in? And, and I'll, I'll say, of course, as long as you get the outcome of what the session we've planned for you is, and if it turns into something else, then are you strong enough to let those people go because you've done that session the day before, which is your endurance ride with unpredictable high intensity aspects where you're allowed to ride as hard as you like. And if someone, someone's pushing their pace, then you can match it. But to do that the next day, I'm just going to put the onus back on you. And you know, 50% of the riders will say, ah, I felt good. So I went ahead and just joined in and I ended up doing two hard rides in a row. And then Tuesday I'll get a phone call saying, I don't know what happened Tuesday. I could hardly hit those numbers on the Tuesday session. I'm not sure what's going on. And you know, you don't have to be blind, Freddie, to understand that what you did on Sunday could possibly affect Tuesday and then Wednesday and then Thursday. But it may not affect that and you may get away with it. But doing that repeatedly is going to be self sabotage. And it's doing a version of the program. And I'm all for having flexibility, but as long as it fits into the structure, you know what the aim and goals are of each day.

Well, you should know that's taking responsibility.

And that's the question I ask the person straight away is, well, you know, as long as it's a, as long as it's what you say it is an easy ride, then go for it. But the minute it doesn't, and you know, we've all experienced it where people go, yeah, we'll just go and have an easy ride. And all of a sudden someone rides off and the human nature and competitiveness, even myself, I would be going, oh, I'm not gonna let them go up the road. So I'll chase. And all of a sudden the whole bunch is chasing and the ride turns out to be flat out, you know, ego ride that it wasn't supposed to be, that everybody agreed to. So they're just examples of real life things that happen. You might decide to go for a run with someone who's really good runner and they're just saying, look, it's going to be easy and I'm meant to be doing a recovery run and you end up doing a PB on that day, which is fantastic. But that's not the day for that. You might have to restructure your whole program now around getting a recovery somewhere else. So you are actually affecting the decisions you make in your sessions affect what happens down the track.

Yeah. And granted, when you're a beginner, a lot of this stuff is harder to manage. Owning your own numbers, remembering it all getting used to just even seeing numbers and data, if you've never used it before, it is hard. But we know that there's more leeway maybe at the start to fix these kind of things. But by the time your race comes, your success in the race is your responsibility.

The sooner you can grasp this, the better. If you've got a 30 week program or a 50 week program, or a 20 week program, that's your campaign. If you only grasp that in a 20 week program at week 12, you've pretty much trained blindly for 12 weeks in my opinion. And you've done an eight week program where you've been on the ball. So I'm telling you whether you're a beginner or an elite, and there are elite, people don't know their numbers. As we've discussed. Whether you're an intermediate beginner or elite, you need to understand after your initial test at the start of your campaign what all your numbers are. Swim, bike and run, you need to know that. And as a cyclist, you need to know that as well what your FTP is. As a marathon runner, you need to know what your capabilities are per kilometer pace for every session you're doing. As a swimmer, you need to know what pace you can swim at. So if you disregard that at all, then you're compromising your program which will compromise the outcome of your race day. So that's the important thing. The message we're trying to get across here is taking more responsibility and understanding everything you can about the information that you need to train and race to is going to make you so much more confident on race day and be able to execute your race plan on race day. Because you're so into every single detail about what's happening around you. You've spent that much money and that much time. Time and money, the two key things that we as humans base our existence around. How much time is that going to take me? If it takes too long, I'm not doing it. How much money does it cost me? If it's too expensive, I'm not doing it. So you've already invested time and money. Why not make the most of it and do it properly? Half assed doing things is one of the biggest things that I get frustrated with because people have already invested in paying a coach, they've invested in the equipment, invested in the race, accommodation, travel, you know, don't go there under prepared. That's wasted all that time and money and frustrated the people around you who've seeing you go through highs and lows of motivation and grumpiness. You're not just affecting yourself, you're affecting other people around you. So if you're making this commitment to select a goal, then I think you need to take on board some sort of responsibility about the process. And to say that I'd rather leave it all to my coach, I think is deflecting and it's easy come race day, I don't think my coach is very good. I didn't get the outcome I wanted. Well, you know, everybody needs to take responsibility. The coach definitely has responsibility for your outcome. The athlete has equally, if not more responsibility. And the coach can only direct. The athlete has to actually execute the sessions and the race. And I've said many times, you're well prepared, you should be confident. You know all your information, you know all your data, you've got a race plan. The next step is up to you. Think about that all day long. You're in charge of the outcome. And you know that can't be any more plainer truth. And once if you, if you think about that now at the start of your campaign, then if I'm going to be responsible on race day for executing some race day strategies, I'm going to make sure from day one that I take in all the information that's given to me. If come on exam at the end of vce, I'm responsible for the answers. I'm going to take more interest in the session from day one in biology all the way through to the biology exam.

I think that's a perfect way to finish. There's a big episode on taking responsibility and I think that last five minutes really sums up in clear fashion the fact that it is a shared responsibility. But if you've got a good coach and you've got a good program, then the execution can be easy if you, if you own it.

And it's a, it's a fantastic experience. And I've told you so many stories and I get emotional about it, how, how fantastic the, the day is when the athlete gets the achievement that he wants and the coach is a part of that success. It's the athlete actually executing which makes the coach so proud of what he's done, the athlete what he's done. And it's really fulfilling from the coach's point of view as well, because you've enabled that person to have a really good program. You've gone on the journey with them and you experience the highs and lows and come race day when they actually execute well, it's one of the best days. It's like experiencing that with your child, succeeding in, you know, being able to do a handstand finally or ride a bike without crashing. You know, there's, there's so many good things about that and that's why having a great relationship where both of you are invested equally is going to get a really good outcome. Great.

That's it for this episode. Thanks very much for listening as always. If you want to get our expert secrets cheat sheet, and that's a cheat sheet that gives you the best tips and advice to train smarter and race faster, go to getfastpodcast.com and if you want help with goal setting, if you want help with your programming, the best way is to get on our email list. You can go to our website, TravellerCoaching.com to check out our programs. Otherwise go to GetFastPodcast.com you will get onto our email subscription and we email weekly and that's the best way to see our programs. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.