The Improvement Possible in a 12-Week Program [CASE STUDY]

Welcome back to another case study episode where we review one of our athletes and break down exactly what we did with them to get an improvement PB or a great race result and a reminder of our unwritten rule for athletes. If you enjoy our podcasts and find them helpful, the best thing you can do for us is share the podcast on your social media or to an endurance friend who you think might also like it. Today's case study is Tyler from Arizona in the United States. We're always trying to bring a variety of examples to show you of athletes and this case study is what you can achieve in a short space of time as Tyler has been on the program only for about four to five months now. He came to us as a very fit young athlete, married with two kids and he had great top end speed. His first 5k time trial with us was 18:40, well in the top range of athletes, that's 3 minute 40k pace per kilometre. But as you'll find out, we've been able to even smash that time and often there's a myth that it's easier for beginners to find massive improvement. Well, this case study shows it's not just beginners that can find massive improvements on a new program. Top end athletes can as well, with the right structure. So dad, introduce Tyler a little bit and where he's come from.

Yeah, it's a great story and a great guy to coach and I love his determination, his passion for what he wants to do. He had a really average result in the middle of 2023 in June. I think it was at the big island of Kona. He did a 70.3 there and you know, his expectation that he was a really quite a good runner going through his school and college days and his expectations expectation was that, you know, he could swim, ride and run reasonably well and he had an absolute, really disappointing day and I think that was the catalyst for him to reach out and not repeat that again. And I, I absolutely know that he reached out and wanted to really learn everything he could about improving that result. And, and when he, he did reach out, the next race wasn't that far away, it was only six weeks or seven weeks away. So we only had limited time. And, and, and you know, I sort of pointed out to him that, you know, there's not a great deal we can do and I think he thought the opposite. He was sort of saying, well, I think there is because I couldn't go any worse. And definitely when we started working together there was a lot that we could do. In his cycling for sure. And just understanding how to ride a power meter and just start from the basics, the beginning of how to ride properly. And if you can do a half ironman, you think you can ride a bike and that's probably true. You can. But there's riding a bike and a half ironman, there's racing a bike. And, and he went from. I think he averaged 31ks an hour for that 90k and by the time he did his race in Texas, it was something like 35 and a half Ks an hour. So it was a massive improvement. That alone. But you know, I know that he ran Something like 139. We can talk about this later. But this is, this is the time where, you know, you're kind of asking, why are we bringing this one up? Because he ran a 139 half Ironman at that race. And for someone who can run under 18 minutes, that's really a really poor outcome. And it can be many factors that cause that. The heat of the day, the hilly course that he was on. You know, remember he's at the Big island in Kona and it is a tough place to race and you know, the heat and the nutrition and, and your fitness can be found out big time there for anybody who knows who's raced there and just understanding how to ride the power. And obviously his run was affected by the bikes, the bike at that race. And I think he was a bit shocked that he couldn't run any better and he really had a bad day running. So I think, I think that was kind of his catalyst to, to. And when he told me what his, what his results were and what his PB times were for 5 and 10k, oh, it didn't make sense. And.

Yeah.

And so, you know, turn the clock forward. He rode 4 or 5Ks an hour faster and ran 9 minutes quicker than he did in Kona. For a guy who's at a good level and you know that you can't. I think that was 10 minute, a 20 minute faster ride and a 10 or 9 or 10 minute faster run. So he actually improved 30 minutes from June to, to that race in. What date was that, Jordan? October.

Was it 22nd of October? Yeah. Yeah. And really just after six or seven weeks of a structured program, I'm going to break that down now and let's really clarify those results, the timing and the numbers and then kind of break, break down what that means because there's the numbers, there's the data and then what the actual data means and One thing we want to point out here is again, this is a great improvement of execution and learning how to race, like you said before. And the run numbers have improved massively. The bike power numbers haven't improved crazy amounts, but the bike time has. So it's just another example of that as well, which is awesome. And again, we're going to point out all the factors why that could be. It's not always just down to getting fitter. As you said, it was a short amount of time. It's a lot of other nuances around it. So just before we go into the the results and the kind of the training that got those results, what would you expect for someone that can run? His first time trial with us was 1840, but that wasn't his PB necessarily. He actually had run 1745, I think sometime in the previous year before that. So someone that can run sub 18 minutes of 5k fresh, what do you think they could run in a half marathon?

Yeah, well, even if you rounded it out to 20 minutes, you're pretty much going to double that. So for a 10k, you're going to double that and add, you know, another 10 minutes. So then you double that and add another 10 to 20 minutes, as we've shown many times in our other podcasts. So 20 minutes becomes 40 and if you go at the worst extreme it becomes a 50 minute. But he's definitely a 40 minute 10k runner or under, which we know from what he's been doing in the last four or five months, he can run 10k at 38 minutes. So. So even if we rounded it out again to 40 and double that, it's 80 minutes and then added 10, that's 90 plus you would add 14 to 19 depending on your ability. So 134 to 136, something like that is probably the worst end of the range. And a 130 is about his range. So he would have been disappointed with a139 for sure.

And that's the generic equation you've just given as well. But when you hear his history, because it depends on your training history, who you are as an athlete, when you hear his training history, 1745 is very different to 20 minutes. You've rounded out there as a generic equation. But you look at the type of runner he is, you look at, yeah, his training ability to run 1745 indicates that it should even he should be at the top end of that equation. At the half marathon, he should be at 125ish.

Yeah, definitely under 125 in a half. In a half Ironman half marathon race, he should be under 125. And that's where our goal is. And, you know, that's what we're working so hard to get to him for this year. Coming.

Yeah, it's a great point, but it's just as a coach, you said before, you know, something didn't add up. You go, we've done a 139. That doesn't indicate. And maybe you're just better at 5k and you haven't trained as well for the half marathon distances, but that's the gap you're trying to bridge. So let's break through it. So the first key result is that first 5k TT he did with us was 1840. Like we just clarified, that wasn't necessarily his PB, but that's the form he came to us with. And just last week he did a 1607 fresh 5K. So that is. That's 313 pace, I think. 3 13, 314 for 5K. That is a whopping improvement. And you look at someone and if they do 1840 and they ask you, how much do you think I can improve in a year's time? Not even just three, four, five months, but a year's time. Again, it depends on how. If they're maxed out at training, they're not going to see much improvement. If they've got room for more structured training, you'd realistically say, I think you could break 18 minutes, I think you could get to 1730, maybe even low 17s, but to get to 1607, it's pretty solid.

Yeah, I think you've been a bit generous there. If someone comes to you and their form is, you know, is 1850, 1840, anything under 19 minutes, you wouldn't expect to improve a minute. In a short space of time, you would expect to improve 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds, maybe, but to improve a minute 30 from that very first starting point. And to be, to be clear, one was a race, the 1607, 5k was a race, and the 1840 was us getting him to establish his pacing. So it's an individual time trial with no competitors around you. So there is a factor of the competition is going to push you more for sure. And I'm pointing this out so we're giving a really good perspective and we're comparing apples with apples. So both of them weren't races. But despite the fact that's as good as you could do on that day, and then it just Shows in a race situation, he had to actually race the race and still execute. You know, he's learned a lot about that and, and you know, normally he would say that he would fade at the end, but he was in a pack and it was actually a return, it was a great, a great event because it was a return to his high school and there were some young guns there who were talking up the trash talk at, before the race started and you know, he quietly said to himself, I'm really going to try and show these guys what racing is all about. And they were all together and he ran away from them at the end with a, you know, a blistering 3 3:04 or something last K or some, some ridiculous time which, which he was very satisfied with and ended up taking home the trophy.

Yeah, and the, one of the coolest parts about this is you just mentioned to me, you know, really want to point out the fact that you haven't really done any speed work. You know, this is, this is really fast running for not much speed work in, in terms of the intervals.

Yeah. And a lot of people keep questioning why we do that and we've said the answer many times. You're getting your intensity from a lot of the bike sessions. You're getting when do you think you're huffing and puffing, when are you really out of breath on the bike and in the pool you could be doing 10 sets of 25 and at the end of each swim, 25 meter swim, you are gasping at the end of that, trying to recover to go again for the next 25. So the cardiac improvement is there from the bike and the swim and as long as you've got good legs, good skeletal system and your muscles are really adapted at running, you don't have to do, you know, eight by four hundreds on the track to, to get an improvement in running. And we've proved it. I don't know how many times this has been proven for, for us and, and, and especially the other thing we push is the strength running from hills and, and absolutely he's done that really well and he's a lot stronger runner. So why is that important? Well, you can hold the form that or the pace that you're trying to achieve at back end when pressure's on. Everybody's great when the first few K when you're fresh, but can you hold that pace? And that's where the strength and endurance comes to the forefront so that you can actually hold the pace you want to from start to finish.

And once again he's not training to be a good 5k runner. He wants to be a good triathlete and a good half Ironman racer. And so what does that actually mean? Well, there was seven weeks or so to prepare for the next half Ironman race. What could he learn in that? And what were the results from June for that Hawaii half Ironman to October the next half Ironman, he ended up biking 20 minutes quicker. So a 250 down to a 230. And then his run improved as well from a 140 to a 131 or 130, 32 seconds or something. So a nine and a half minute improvement. So look, you know, we always do your two diligence when you see these big numbers and go, well, come on. What other factors were there? Were the conditions way more favorable? Was the course way harder? We know that Kona is got more undulations, but the undulations weren't, they were difference but not significant difference. You know, I think it was 700 meters to 400 meters difference in elevation. So enough to warrant some factor, but not so much that it would result in a 20 minute improvement just from the course alone. So when you see half an hour improvement over the race, you go, well, that's, you've learned something here.

Yeah, you know, we, we always talk about the total time and the distances could be one factor, but they were very similar. 90k. You know, sometimes we've had the extreme at, you know, in the gold in the sunny coast in Queensland was 85k instead of a 90k time trial. That's a massive difference. Yeah, yeah. So this is certainly not the case. So we're trying to always look for things that are going to be significant differences when we're trying to compare apples with apples. So we don't always want to, we don't want to brush over anything. We want to make sure that everybody's clear when we do these case studies that, that the facts are as, as close to the truth as we can get. So that, so that we're not inflating any of the results just for our own purpose here. We're trying to get people to understand that with certain things that you can do in training, you can get improvement. And one of the key things was obviously riding the speed that he was back then to what he did in the, in the Arizona race was, was, you know, phenomenal. Four plus kilometers an hour faster than he did there. And, and he, if I asked him what do you think the difference was between that preparation and what you did in Arizona. And he would say, those race ready sessions you got me to do, I couldn't do them at the start. I couldn't ride in the ranges. I was above them, I was below them. And gradually over that five or six week period, I got better at it. And all of a sudden it was like a switch had flicked and I could then put the pressure on properly. I was able to stay really much closer to the rang. I wasn't gassing myself by riding way above the power just because I thought I would go faster that way. And therefore, you know, when you don't gas yourself, you're not riding slow when you're trying to recover because it's got undulations in it. So every time you go to an under undulation, the mindset of most triathletes is to go hard, you know, on that, on that hill. Well, if you go too hard then you're gonna have to soft pedal at some stage later to recover. And so that's why the bike slows down. So this is an example of someone really learning that concept incredibly well in such a short space of time. Because I was hammering him with this, you know, you're still not getting it. You won't improve your speed unless you can stay in these zones. And I want you to really concentrate as much as you can. And you know, a couple of times you just did a section was Outward Bound and I'd say, no, we need to go out and back. So you're experiencing crosswind and tailwind and headwind and the undulation. So get used to the conditions. And then we can see what your average speed is against his power. And, and all of a sudden he's on board with all this information and it's like, it's like someone's opened the key to the safe for someone to go, why didn't someone tell me about this before? And now he's, he's just saying, oh, I can't wait to do any more training. I can't wait to do the next Saturday's training because now I think I'm, I'm getting it and I want to see what power gives me this, this average speed. And so he was on board with, oh, if I do this power, I can get another half a kilometer an hour faster on the bike. And, and then he started thinking about his bike position and getting his head down and, and getting his shoulders narrower and his elbows in and, and you know, does it affect my breathing? And, and you know, of course we were doing runs off the bike. And was that, you know, was it riding harder, affecting the way he ran? And found out after a few training sessions that no, it wasn't affecting him that much. So he could ride a little bit harder. Because the concept is that you don't over bike so that you can run properly. But if you're fit enough and you ride the bike properly the way we're explaining, you can run really well because you haven't spiked your power. And that burns matches, which inflates your heart rate, builds lactate, burns nutrition quicker and therefore you run slower.

As you always say, it's never one thing. If you look at that first race result, it was probably a mix of ingredients that you throw into the melting pot about, you know, not understanding how to ride properly, not knowing how to stay in the ranges, not practicing staying in the ranges that resulted in a 2 hour 50, 90k bike leg. And then not only that, but running slower was result of the same sort of things. But when you've gassed yourself on the bike and you haven't ridden the bike properly, you're giving yourself way less of a chance to run to your capability. Which is why he ends up in a 140, which we know physiologically is not where he should be based on his 5k and 10k ability. So once you fix that and you learn how to ride, not only does it improve the bike leg and you get a 20 minute PB on the bike leg, he was then able to run 131 off the bike. And that is for the same reasons, for all these, all these ingredients that you throw into the melting pot that create that improvement.

You would think, Jordan, wouldn't you, that if you ran, if you rode 2 hours 50, that's an easier ride than 2 hours 30. Logically that makes sense, but you know, riding 2 hours 30 is a way harder ride. But he wrote it as easy as he rode the 2 hour 50. So the effort, the effort, the feel of, you know, that perceived exertion was just as hard as 252 hours 52. And, and the difference was he wasn't gassing himself like in that 2 hour 50 ride. He had massive, you know, efforts all the way through that ride and there that caused recovery. And Whereas in the 2 hour 30 ride he didn't, he didn't go into the red zone at all. He stayed in the ranges. And don't underestimate how influential that is for your run.

Yeah. And yeah, you can just summarize it all by these improved results come from that overall guidance, that practicing execution, doing those race ready training sessions, which you couldn't do at first and then after a short amount of time got really used to them sticking to a structured program, of course, learning how to race, learning the mentality of racing, having a race plan based on data, you just cannot underestimate all these things and when you put them all together, how much of an improvement that that can make. Not just the physiological improvement, because as we've shown, and we have other case, many other case studies like this where athletes will get a monster improvement at race based on all those things, even though they're not necessarily fitter. And so the last analogy I want to use there is you talk a lot about the engine analogy where you want to improve the size of the engine, which is the VO2 max capability, and that's really important. And then once you've got that bigger engine, you want to improve how much of the engine you can use. So that's, you use the cylinder example. If you give someone, you build them to an eight cylinder car, it's no use if they can only use four cylinders of it. So they have to increase the size of the engine, but then increase how much of that capacity they can actually use. And the final factor which I would say has happened for Tyler here is you've got the engine, you've got the ability to use it all, but now who's actually driving the car, who's actually executing it, who's driving the course? And so that's that third part of the, all this execution stuff we're talking about.

Yeah, and if you use that engine analogy one step further, if you look at the Formula one races, most teams have two cars and they should be identical cars. Why is one, why is one car beating the other car? In some cases, One car's coming third and the other car's coming 15th. Well, that's the driver. And this is the point that we don't really think that the listeners have really understood is, and that's how to race the way we've been trying to explain. And, and if you implement all of those things that we're pushing you to stay in those ranges and understand what power you can ride and have a good plan, then, then you will be a really much better driver of the, of the actual event and, and get an outcome that you want. And you know, if you use the, the, you know, the formula run races, they're, they, they're gaining a second on this corner, they're gaining a second on that corner. A Left hander, a right hander, accelerating later, earlier, braking later, passing smarter, you know, starting fast. It's all these one little 1% efforts they're doing.

Oh, one, yes.

Yeah. And they just, they just keep adding up over lap after lap. You know, if I, if, if you beat me by 0.2 of a second every lap, you end up beating me by, you know, over, over an hour's race by quite a bit of time. So the same thing here. And, and I've just got to remind everybody, we picked on this particular case study because it wasn't someone who'd been training for a long time. This is just a, this is a short period of time, literally five or six weeks from when we started coaching Tyler to his race. And ensure the time between June to October is longer than that. But we weren't coaching him from June, you know, July, August, September. And we started coaching him in December for a race in October. So, so we, the point I'm trying to make is he, he actually was at a good fitness level, but he just wasn't driving the car very well. He learned how to drive the car. Of course we gave him a better program than he was on. Of course we gave him lots of, you know, execution guidelines and race ready training sessions that improved that. But to his credit he listened and was really on board with wanting to learn and soak up as much information about how do I do this better? And, and just by concentrating on the bike it really improved his whole triathlon experience and he was able to run, you know, still he's got a long way to improve on his run. But what would we expect in five weeks of run training? I don't think we'd expect very much, but we got a lot out of it.

Yeah, and notably his swim is already very good. Like we said in the intro, he's, he's a very capable athlete and he's swimming between 124 and 130 per 100. That's his ability. So that's really well above average. So in conclusion, I mean the main point is he had such short prep for the race, but he learned so much. So I mean if you asked him, dad, what's the difference? What do you think he would answer with?

Yeah, he's just his knowledge, his knowledge and understanding of actually how to execute and you know, it's a broken record, isn't it, that we keep saying, and if people could only get this. And I know that there are lots of people who come up to us at races and Wherever we are. I was just at the Tour down under, had some people come up exactly the same, saying, I love the podcast. And, and my, my execution is, is exemplary now compared to the athlete I was before. I think that's the thing that, that he was, you know, he just understood how to race in across all three disciplines and, and how to manage himself on the day and the preparation before and the race strategy and plan we gave him that was absolutely level at his current ability on that day. And the fact that we made him do his own homework and, and he came with his race plan ready to discuss it with me. I think, I think they're the things that, you know, the 1 percenters that, that, you know, you need to have in your arsenal in, you know, in your kit bag, so that when you actually arrive on the start line on the beach, you actually stand there going, well, I know exactly what my plan is today. All I have to do is execute.

Yeah, yeah, it's that iq, isn't it? It's that racing iq. It's that IQ as a cyclist that you want to elevate. And yeah, I just love that point you made of, you know, at the start of the race ready sessions, you really struggled to hold the power and stay in the ranges. And you're saying to him, tyler, bloody stay in the ranges. And it's like, okay, fix it for next week. And, you know, you're really emphasizing that point. And then after a bit of practice, you can actually hold it and you mentally and physically, you learn how to hold it. So he achieved the first goal of that short preparation for the race where he wanted to learn as much as he could to improve. And now the next goal is to build on that for the next summer of RA racing and see how far I can take it.

Yeah, I'm excited and I'm almost having to hold him back. And, you know, when the next block of training started, just at the start of the year, you know, the responses I was getting was, I can't wait for these hard sessions. And you know, it's, it's exciting, but, you know, it's a long season. It's, it's, it's still in the middle of winter, even though it's not that cold where he lives, but it is, it is winter and the races aren't available, so we've just got to go through this process and, and be patient and, and start to build that engine again. And it's exciting to guy like him who's just chomping at the bit to improve himself. It's, it's, it's really great to have guys like that on board.

That's another case study episode. If you enjoyed it, make sure you tune in weekly. We have a normal weekly podcast episodes plus a case study every single week. And if you want to get coached like us and get some results like these, then go to our website, TravellerCoaching.com we coach athletes from all around the world. We are based in Australia but it's all online so we have athletes from every single continent. That's a common question. We get is could you coach me in the UK? Could you coach me in the US? Yeah, absolutely. Go to our website TravellerCoaching.com and you can see our guarantee there that if you don't improve your FTP in the first eight weeks of training, then the coaching is on us. So thanks as always for listening and we'll see you next time. Back.