The Most Effective Offseason Training & Workout Plan

This episode of the Get Fast podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. You are joined by your host, former Australian Ironman champion Jared Donnelly. And I, as always, am Jordan Donnelly. With the triathlon season pretty much coming to an end, it's now time to think about how you should train in the off season. What you should focus on, how you can make the most of it, and how do you make sure that you can be at your best when racing starts back up? So most people like to take a little bit of a break, have a bit of a mental reset or mental freshener. However, too many athletes make a common mistake in the off season, which puts them further behind weight toeing that line too much and taking too much time off and undoing all of your previous hard work. So we're going to talk today about some top training tips for the off season. But first, dad, welcome to the episode. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. Good to be back. And this is probably a funny one, but. And I know Andy, your mum and my wife is not. Doesn't listen to our podcasts very much.

So she listens to some of them.

I can say this, I'm grateful for her, and it's a little bit weird to be saying this across on a podcast, but since I met her, which we did meet when we were at school, 17 year olds, she has been unbelievably supportive of my pursuits. And right from the very first race I did in 1981, she's been at every race. And when I decided to start doing some more events and she's fronted up again and supported me and been right there backing me, you know, made sure I've got the right nutrition and everything, she knows she's just gone straight back into the zone of being incredibly supportive. Unbelievably grateful for her, even though she might not hear this.

Yeah. And you always say that, that you can't do this sport without the support of those around you.

Yeah, it's. It's an uphill battle. If you're battling the people around you to do what you want to do, it almost makes it not. Not manageable. And to have someone who's 100% with you, even though some of the ideas and the plans that you want to do just seem a little bit too far out there, he never questions. And that to me is that's. I can't be more grateful for, for.

That good one, my gratitude. I was actually thinking about this today because I was watching the Champions League highlights on my phone and I'm super grateful for the amount of sporting access we have with technology now. I remember being a kid, if I ever wanted to watch the Champions League, I'd have to get up at 5am or 4:55 for the European time zone and flick onto SBS and watch it live. And it was my. If I wanted to watch it, that was my only chance. I didn't do that. I couldn't watch it. There was no replays, there was no Internet, Internet to jump on it. And now I just can wake up and I watch every single highlight reel of every match on my phone, on YouTube. And we actually have so much sporting access to every event around the world, and I absolutely love it. And that includes, you know, watching the Tour of Flanders now and everything.

So you can't miss a thing.

Exactly.

If you didn't get to see it live, you just have to find it. And like, I missed the store gift. I used to love watching the store gift. And sure enough, I could go into the store gift and find every race. And it's like fast forwarding every race. It was fantastic to see the. The gift being run and. And the handicaps, the mile handicaps, the 2 2k handicap. It was terrific.

Yeah, yeah, we haven't spoken about that, but that was unreal. Again, Stuart McSwain, we've spoken about him on the podcast. His running is just ridiculous and they put him so far back and he still almost caught the leaders.

I know, and that was one of the things I was going to talk about, but there's too many things to talk about because the Olympics are coming and the selections are happening right now for track and field and offer every event, marathon, triathlon, everything's selection right now. And that's a whole whole new topic to talk about. How do you peak for an event now for an event that's going to be in July? That's an interesting one.

Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll move on to what's caught your attention. That's obviously one thing that's caught your attention, but what was your. What caught your attention? For today?

The unexpected thing happens. That's what I love about sport, and that's what keeps me motivated. If the predictable thing was going to happen every time, I think sport wouldn't be as interesting. And I'm not talking about just triathlon. I'm talking about soccer, footy, gymnastics. The best people don't always win, and that's the beauty of sport. And if you go in with the attitude of, say I'm racing against Van der Poel, Alaphilippe and I'm good, but I'm not as good as them and I can't win if I have that attitude. I'm never going to win. You should have the attitude of on any given day, everybody is a chance. And as long as you have that mindset, then you are a chance. But the minute you say I'm racing for second, third, fourth or fifth, that's exactly where you'll finish. And it will be a shock if you win because you not thinking about it. Right, let's just have a look here at what's happened in the. In the monument. So far we've had Milan, San Remo, Strada Bianca and Tour of Flanders. The three massive races for spring, which you know. And we've got Amstel Gold coming up this weekend. Fleche, Willone and Liege, Bastogne, Liege. In that period, Van der Poel, Van Aert and Alaphilippe, who are the three best riders in the world at the moment. They can't win every race and if they do, it'll be a miracle. And already out of those three, they've only won one. So straight away, two other riders have already beaten the three best riders in the world. If that doesn't give you enough evidence to tell you that you are a chance on any given day to beat anybody, as long as you follow your structure and your plan, you will actually give yourself the best opportunity as long as your mind is mentally across it. And coming up, we've got, as I said, Amstel Gold this weekend and then on Wednesdays, Flesh will own. I'm just picking on cycling here. And then the following weekend is Liege, Bastogne. Three massive races in seven days. Those three can't win all those races. So there's going to be a new monument winner from somewhere else in the field. And that's how you should be thinking about it. You know, they can't hold form, as we've said many times. How long ago was Strada Bianca? It was, I think, March. So by the time we get to the end of April, start of May, you know, that's eight weeks. So you just can't be informed for that long a time. So. Which is why I was thinking about the Olympic selection. It's probably another topic. But I just wanted to say what's caught my attention is the fact that anybody can win on any given day.

We see that example all the time in AFL and we have this rule of Thumb that whenever we see an AFL team above $5 in the betting, we want to put money on them. And if Eston's our team, I don't know if we should say that publicly on the podcast we spoke about AF last episode, but if Neston's ever over $5, we put money on us. Because for some reason Neston have this habit of when we're completely underrated, we go out there and beat teams we shouldn't beat.

But that in itself tells you something. The pressure is off because you're not expected to win. And that's why you should actually be performing better, because the guys who are having all the pressure are the Alaphilippes and Sagans and Van Aerts and Van der Poels. They're expected to win. How hard would that be to front up every race when I'm expected to win today, the pressure from the team, from the media, from the fans. Whereas the guy who's got no pressure and you know, even the betting saying, you know, you're 5 or 8 or $10 chance as compared to $1.20, you just go and play free. Spirited and amazing what happens.

Yeah, and we see it so many times with underdog teams, and any team can turn up on the day and win. Any individual can turn up on the day and win and perform really well. And that's just a clear example of that.

But the Milan San Remo, we did mention it. Jesper Sturfen's attack with a kilometer risked everything, but it paid off. You know, that'll work one out of 20 times. And that was the time it worked. And he's now a Milan San Remo Monument winner.

Yeah, yeah. Now that's a great one. What caught my attention. There's two things I want to touch on. One, I saw someone online do a Zwift ramp FTP test, and they did it on Erg Mode, which in our training philosophy is a big no, no. But I wanted to get your thoughts on doing a ramp test on Erg Mode and why.

Why?

It is a bit of a no, no.

Well, Erg Mode, for those people who don't understand it, is. It's basically the kicker, holding you at a set value, no matter how hard you pedal and try and go above the power number that the Erg motors set you at. You can't. It will just bring you back to say you selected 200 watts and you wanted to all of a sudden ride at 210. If you've selected ERG mode, you're stuck on 200 watts for however long you want to ride for, whether it's a two minute effort or a five minute effort or a ten minute effort. The problem with that is we want to do overload in our training each week. We want to progress with resistance that's greater than the week before. That's the principle of overload. If you're doing a program that has three weeks in a row of the same session, if you're stuck on the same number for three weeks, unless you physically change that number on the Erg mode setting, you'll ride for three weeks at the same number. So that's actually going to stop you from improving. And so in a ramp test, you're predicting that you'll be able to hold this number by using Erg mode. In a ramp test, by doing it freestyle, you're hoping you can hold this number. And if you can't, then the Erg mode factor doesn't play. And Erg mode, all you've got to do is keep up with the cadence in Erg mode. And that's not, that's not simple. But it is not the way real life writing happens. So for those two reasons, it doesn't replicate real life and you're absolutely not able to use the overload principle.

And I guess from a testing perspective, you're either you're performing to the numbers you set for the test, so you're not allowing yourself either to perform better than you could, or you might fail because you've set the numbers too hard.

Yeah. So you're guesstimating and you're gonna be accountable for that number the whole way. And as a ramp test, you go up, obviously every minute, you go up a percentage of watts. But as a normal FTP, which is not a ramp test, if you did it in Erg mode, which someone actually did during the week, accidentally, they're stuck on 266 for the whole 20 minutes. And I've got no idea whether they could ride harder or lower. Cause the minute they tried to ride harder, all that happened was their cadence went up and the power stayed the same. It's a really useless tool.

Yeah. Heavily against it at Trivelo coaching. And I wanted to ask you about how you're feeling because you had an Aquathon on the weekend which performed very well out despite having a crash, which you won't be that impressed to talk about on the podcast. I can't remember the last time you crashed around the corner, but it was. What caught my attention was the fact that you kept riding through Pain. And then the days after you've, you've been in a bit of pain and you eventually went and got an X ray and turns out you've got a fractured hip. Which to me just, I pretty much, I shouldn't have laughed, but I laughed when I found out because I just thought, of course you rode through a fractured hip for the rest of the ride. And this week, rather than thinking something was seriously wrong, you just kept saying, oh, just doesn't feel quite right, you know, and that was your attitude and that, that speaks to a lot to your mental toughness, I think.

Yeah. And at the time, to be honest, I made a mistake and crashed, which is not something I recommend. But what you do after that is what counts in my view. And so my mind was, I've only ridden 1km in the 90k and I've crashed, I've swam and then I've ridden and I've still got 89k to go. Short hurt, but I'm not physically, I didn't think injured. I was okay. I had massive bruised hip from landing on my hip and my arms were bleeding and the bike was fine. I checked that, grabbed the bike and jumped back on. But it's a natural instinct to just get back on. And of course it was quite uncomfortable for the next 10 minutes and trying to check out if I could ride properly and pedal properly. But my focus then was like, okay, that's happened. I can either just stop now because it's not comfortable, or I can just don't use that as a, as a excuse almost and concentrate on the ride. So I decided to do that and I, I then pushed lap on my Garmin after about, I don't know, seven or eight minutes. That got rid of the start and the crash and then I just focused on the numbers and I got so in the zone, where am I on the course? What's the headwind doing? What's the tailwind? And I just did not think about that for the next two hours and got to the finish line. Was really rap with the numbers I was riding. I was, it was kind of uncomfortable, but that wasn't what I was focusing on. And jumped off the bike at the timing chip and could really not walk very well. And I thought, geez, I actually have hurt myself here. It suddenly came back. It must have been okay in that position on the bike. But it just made me realize that if you, if you try to overcome things with thinking about stuff that you can control rather than what's happened. We did talk about this in the last episode. And. And it was funny to experience it firsthand. It was like, what do I do here? I've got a few choices. I could. It did, you know, it was uncomfortable. It did hurt and I won't lie, it was like, far out. I can barely pedal here. And then once I was warmed up and my feet were numb anyway from the swim, it was so cold. Six degrees or something. But at the end of the day, I was really happy that I continued. It really reminded me that you can do more than you think you can. And I didn't do it to see how tough I was. It was because I was focused and wanted to actually compete and I wasn't going to drive all the way to Shepparton to do one K on the. On the ride. So afterwards it was, yeah, a little uncomfortable and got progressively worse the next couple of days. And I thought, oh, actually, this. It's not healing like it normally would. So, unfortunately, got the news I had actually fractured my pelvis. So. But anyway, that's just, you know, one of the things that happen. And for me, the next phase is I'm out of action for however long it takes to heal. Could be four weeks, could be six weeks. That's just depends on the healing process. But I'm searching now for a positive. Things happen for a reason a lot of the time. And if you just have the negative attitude of poor me for the next four weeks, I can't train well. It's going to be a miserable four weeks. So I have to actually change my mindset and go, right, what can I do that's going to be positive out of this and get a really good outcome and it doesn't come straight to you. I'm going to have to think about it. I don't know what the positive is, but I'm going to be searching to see. And I'm going to let you know over the journey of the next four to six weeks, when I'm not training, there will be something good come out of this. I'm yet to see it, but that's how I'm approaching it.

Yeah, and we speak about this a lot and I would really like to clarify the language we use when we say there's a positive. In no way are you saying that the event was positive because it wasn't. And whenever something bad happens, you don't, you know, the aim isn't to try and trick yourself to say, oh, it was a positive event, because you're never going to do that and you're Just lying to yourself. If that's the case, you're trying to find a positive in what's presented to you now and what you can do as a decision from now. And so something bad happens. I think it is poisonous to try and convince yourself that it's a good thing. And that's not what we're saying.

Yeah, no, the actual crash trauma was bad. Yeah, that's, that's full stop. And now I'm searching for, you know, this could. My, my next few weeks are changed now I'm going in a different direction and I'm now interested to see what that direction is.

Yeah.

And yeah, stay tuned.

Yeah. And for me, I experienced that the last month when I was injured with my toe and I couldn't train for three weeks, which I can't remember last time I had to have three weeks off. And yeah, obviously that was frustrating itself. But in that three weeks I did a lot more other little hobbies that I like doing because I had more time for, you know, I got to watch some more things and read some more books that I hadn't had time to do. And that's a positive, that situation. It doesn't mean that the injury was positive, but you're just finding the positive in your choices from there.

Yeah, spot on.

Obviously I'd prefer to train, but. Cause I can't. There's other things that you can do. No, that's good, good, good lesson. And that's why I wanted to bring it up because I think even this, that little act of pressing lap is so key for your mindset because had you not, your power would be all over the shop. You'd be the rest of the 90k you'd be looking at, geez, I'm average at 150. You know, because you've been stationary for so long, you wouldn't be in a good mindset, but it's almost like you did an 89 kilometer or 87 kilometer time trial instead of 90.

And the good thing was it came up on Strava as a 91.5k swim. My whole session I forgot to push stop after the swim. So I was getting comments from people saying that's a long swim.

91.5K at world record pace as well, swimming 42K's an hour.

I was so excited that I forgot to push stop.

Right, so getting into today's topic, top training tips for the off season. Now just give us a bit of a general overview of what the goal is with your mindset and your training. When you come into the off season. I put that in quotation marks. Because there's never really a distinct off season with triathlon cycling. There's always races on. You know, Cairns is in June, but for the 2 xu kind of series and for a lot of other races, they don't start back up again until September. October. Ish.

Yeah, look, Australia is lucky, isn't it? Because. Because we've got states that have got a completely different climate. Northern states, obviously, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania. There's a vast difference between the temperature in July in Tasmania as compared to Sunshine Coast. So the races can still go ahead during the winter in a lot of the warmer states, just like in the Northern hemisphere. But for the majority of people who can't travel interstate, the season finishes when the summer season finishes. So we're talking about that specifically. We're not talking about people who are preparing for Cairns and are preparing for Port Mac and Sunny coast in September, so. But the majority of people will have a race coming in probably November. We're talking specifically triathlon. And as a cyclist, that'll be exactly the same. The road season starts and then the crit season starts in summer, and a lot of the national championships are in November. So the winter period or the off period, the very first thing that has to happen is, and this is my number one thing that is really crucial is you need to have a mental recovery period and you need to finish your last event. And if it happened to be Sheppard on the weekend or Murray man in South Australia, you have a little mental break. And it doesn't mean you stop training, but you just stop structure and trying to look at numbers and just take that all away. And my big thing in recovery, week after a half ironman, whether it's the end of the season or the middle of the season, is you just got to move. You've just got to recover and move. And what does that mean? It means walking. It means, you know, just doing something that's going to get blood flow to help your body repair the damaged muscles from the. The big event that you've just finished, whether it's a half ironman or an ironman or even a, even an Olympic distance, you're still racing at your maximum for that period. So in order to help you recover physically, you need to move. And whether that's just do a little bit of swimming, a little bit of walking, a little bit of running, a little bit of riding, but mentally you need to not have structure and wake up each day and understand that it doesn't matter what you do today, as long as you do something. And if you end up walking for seven days and that's all you do, great. But you don't want to have to wake up and go, what have I got on today? Oh, yeah, I've got to do this session. You just need a break from that. And that may be two weeks. For some people, they may need four weeks. But I'm not saying physically rest, I'm saying mentally rest from structure. And you still have basic structure of I'm going to walk today, I'm going to run tomorrow, I'm going to ride Wednesday. But it doesn't have to have specific goals, whereas every session we give our athletes has a specific purpose and a goal. Today is about recovery, tomorrow is about intensity, next day is about, you know, threshold. So they're the things that I would first out of the bat, say in this period, recover.

Yeah. And there is a fine line you're talking about is you're not trying to give your body such a physical break that it goes backwards and declines in fitness.

Yeah. As you know, the minute you, you stop overloading your training, you will either one or two things happen, you'll start to lose fitness or just maintain it. And that's why we want to move, we want to maintain it for a period because after, you know, there's a lot of studies telling us different things, but, you know, two to three weeks is when the fitness gains start to actually lose. So you don't want to spend all that time building your fitness over a period of a year or two years or four years and then have a period where you have to catch back up again. So maintenance is really important word that I use and it's really easy and enjoyable. I love going for easy ride, you know, where I've got no pressure and I can ride as long as I want. If I want to stop after 40 minutes, I do. Yeah. And if I want to, you know, go for a swim and I end up doing 500 meters, so what?

Yeah.

As long as I've moved and gone and done something where I've got a little bit of blood flow and I've got some cardiac outcome out of it where I'm not sitting at 70, resting heart rate for eight hours a day.

Yeah. And to give a running example, you call it a smell the roses run, where you just go for a run and don't look at your watch. Yeah. You can, you can stop and walk for a bit if you want. You can stop and smell the roses Especially when we're running around here in the Dandenongs, it's really nice to get to a view and then stop and look at the view for a few minutes and it doesn't matter.

Take a breath. Yeah. It's so enjoyable period. And then the whole of the off season to me is really enjoyable because you get to actually concentrate on something completely different from the, I mean there's still an a goal down the track somewhere that you're going to to be working towards or working backwards from. But this is a period where it's less structured and you can actually concentrate on things that you need to work on. So a lot of identify. Everybody knows themselves very well. What is my main weakness? Am I a crap swimmer? Well, what am I going to do about that? And there's the questions you should be asking yourself. Is my bike leg letting me down? What are you going to do about that? I fade in the run. What am I going to do about that? And ask those questions about how your season went, what the areas of weakness were. Did your nutrition plan go to plan? Can you concentrate on some 1 percenters that you didn't have time for? So the list goes on.

Yep. Let's go through each leg specifically because, because I know you like to break it down into each leg and go through your swim bike and run them. What would you recommend people focus on for each leg? So we'll start with the swim. I know you have a really clear tip for swimming in the off season that you just think is very vital for everyone. No matter what ability you are.

It's a no brainer. And if, if you don't take this advice, you are going to end up the next season swimming exactly what you did this season and the previous five. So I don't care whether you're a 101, 100 meter swimmer or a 150 or a 210 per 100 meter swimmer. Everybody can improve their technique. And I've seen examples of 8 year old skinny little girls with no muscle fat flying past guys who have got huge muscles in the pool. It's, it's got nothing to do with your brute strength. It's got everything to do with your swim technique. So you need to actually identify areas that you can practice in the off season that will improve your technique. And guess what? You will swim faster with the same fitness, with a better technique, you'll swim faster. And if you don't believe that then you've got your head in the sand. Yeah. So swimming is a skill acquisition it has a fitness component. It's not like running and riding where the majority of it is a physiological fitness component. Whereas you can get as fit as you like in the water, you can train eight days in seven and still swim the same pace. Why? Because you're practicing the wrong stroke technique. So you need to practice good practice, not incorrect practice. And if you keep reminding yourself and swimming with poor stroke, no matter how fit you do, you get, you'll still swim poorly. You won't be tired because you're fit, but you won't swim any faster. So this is, this is a gain that's going to give you an improvement in your result. So now there's no pressure. Go and get your stroke analyzed, practice it in the skill drills and you watch how quick you start swimming.

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. That's a really simple tip. That's probably your main thing for swimming in the off season. It's that simple.

Absolutely. I mean the stretching and strengthening stuff for swimming can be done at the same time. So you're gonna concentrate on the drills, not so much on the fitness and definitely making sure your flexibility and that's really a help in swimming is to making sure your shoulders and your arms and all the upper torso has got some reasonable flexibility.

Absolutely. So what's your advice on the bike in the off season?

Yeah, the off season for the bike is the period to have so much more fun. We have spent so many hours solo riding and at sub threshold training levels with high intensity, midweek training all on your own. You know, now's the time to ride with your mates. Pick some, some random challenges, you know, gravel ride or an overnight ride, endurance events. I'm, I'm really keen on building the strength and endurance. That's my number one tip. During the winter period, that endurance ride that was very specific that we were trying to ride at exactly the right threshold for the sub threshold. Half ironman or the tempo ironman pace or the sweet spot Olympic distance pace. We've been specific. Now's the time to build up the strength and endurance so that next season or just prior to your A race, we can go back to those sessions. But you will have such a bigger strength base and endurance base and you'll be able to hold those power numbers at the back end a lot better. And you know, they're the things we talked about in the last couple of weeks was how did you ride the last section of your, of your event? So the last two races I did, my last section were the best. And that was purely because of all my, my strength and conditioning over many years of riding around where we live, which is in the hills.

Yeah.

So I'm advocating get in the hills, get some strength. It doesn't have to be high intensity training. It just needs to be endurance with strength in it. And that would be the focus that I would be doing for that period.

Absolutely. So basically to sum it up, you just want people to have some fun, get back into groups, enjoy your riding. The only structured goal for this kind of period is to make sure you are doing some strength and endurance. To really give yourself that, that base in this period.

Yeah, that's a hundred. A hundred percent, spot on. And there's a couple of little tricks you can do. And we did this last year in Covid. We, we ran some Thursday night races. It's good to have intensity, but, but not so structured. Intensity, not repetition in five by five minute efforts. That's right. And, and having a race, you're getting the intensity that you want. It's a controlled environment on the ergo. And you will get a training session in where your competitiveness will give you the intensity that you want. And you've already got one of the hard sessions out of the way that you still need to train with some intensity during the winter period. But it's fun and it gets the competitive juices flowing. And, and definitely the endurance rides, you need to go with your mates. And, and they've always said, you know, we can't train with you because you've got, you know, you've got to do this, this and this. Well, now let's do whatever we want. Have some fun with it.

Yeah. You can do. Go do some big epic rides. Really push the distance. Test yourself. Yeah. Do a challenge with some mates.

Yep. And a great opportunity to test your nutrition in those times. And I know the intensity won't be the same as a race, but, but you can experiment with other products that you've heard about. This is the time to do it. I know you might be totally happy with. You got your nutrition all sorted, you've never had any trouble with it. I wouldn't change anything. But there's always possibility that something might be a little bit better. So it's a good time to try it and see if it does. You know, you want to all the time look for improvements. And if you just say that this training program works for me, I'm not changing it. That's really a bit naive. We want to always search for something that's going to give us a little bit more More percentage. And these are the times to do it for sure.

And you might stuff it up and you might bonk, but it doesn't matter because it's the time to experiment in this period.

It is.

And the word you use, which I really like is go do some unpredictable riding, make it up and see what happens throughout the week. As long as you're getting some strength and endurance, as long as you're really giving that a crack, then the rest of the time go have some fun in some bunches, go do some random Zwift races, sign up for some Gran fondos, whatever.

Yeah. And we're so against that during the, the serious part of the season. We want to keep our structure but there has to. You can't do that 12 months of the year. You need to have a change up and obviously there is huge advantages for it because you will come into the season with a massive base.

Yeah. If you do the, if you do.

Yeah. And, and, and your freshness is there because you've been having fun with it. The training structure is hard enough and then the mental side of, of getting up for it, I mean I don't see that as a problem, but definitely knowing that, oh geez, I've got to go back and do 3 by 1 hour sub threshold if it's is going to really test me, you know. But knowing that I can hold numbers that I couldn't hold last year is so exciting to me. It's like, let's have a crack at this with this new endurance strength that I've got.

Yeah. And like you said at the very start, as an overview, I mean, look at your weaknesses and see if you can work on them. So if you know that you're weak in one part of your, of your bike, then you can actually go and practice that.

Yeah. And that's the whole idea. You can't be doing the same thing week in week out. There has to be a period where you take a step back and have a look at what you're struggling with and then you do everything you can to make that not a weakness and even turn it into a positive, a strength.

And similar advice for running.

It's almost identical. The one thing I would do would be searching for fun runs, 5k park runs, 10k races, half marathons, trail running and then intersperse that with hill running. Like as you know the Dandenongs, we've got Sherbrooke Forest here in Victoria. And you know, every state in Australia has got an area where it's fantastic to Run through forests and trails. And the plan is to get your strength and endurance in your legs for the running. You don't run fast in these sessions. You just enjoy running with a group. And if people want to stop and have a drink for five minutes and a chat, awesome. It doesn't matter. You're going to be out there for two or three hours anyway. And this is a time to get those long runs in. So that when it comes to doing the endurance runs with specific goals and pace set, you've got this enormous running base where you've been able to run for a long period of time. And there's no substitute for running up and downhill. You don't have to run it hard, that the hill creates the resistance.

Yeah.

And not even, even if you're not even trying to run hard up a hill, you will get out of breath because it's just the nature of running uphill. And the same with running downhill. You can just let yourself go and get that eccentric contraction of downhill running which really builds strength in your legs.

Yeah, yeah. There's just, there's nothing more enjoyable than running through a nice area and running around hills. It's just, it's so much fun. And for the pavement pounders, for the road runners who like to run on the, the flat and keep a good pace so, you know, it looks good on Strava, it'll be a little bit of a shock because you come to the hills and suddenly a really good runner is averaging 6 to sometimes 9 minute K pace because the hills can be so extreme. And you've just got to not worry about, watch, not worry about the pace. You're just doing it for the enjoyment factor, but also the strength is.

Yeah, the pace is completely, you know, and that's why just doing the Same runs for 52 weeks in a year, you're going to not get the overload that you need. And it's incredible the strength and conditioning you'll get in your legs from running up and down hills. And people don't believe me, but we moved from the suburbs to that was the principal reason why we moved here 37 years ago is to be right next to Sherbrooke forest where Rob DiCostella and Chris Wardlaw and Steve Montaguetti and all the guys would come for miles to run here. Now we live right next door to it. Yeah. And it's just an epic place to run. And without trying, you, you just get stronger as a runner. And how much do you see people fighting at the back end of a Triathlon, back end of a marathon, because I don't have that strength from. From the conditioning. They would have got through the off season with all this endurance. Strength. Strength running.

Yeah. And I mean, I. I love it so much that I was supposed to run earlier today, but I knew I was driving out here to. Cause I live in the city, but. But I knew I was driving out here to record the podcast and I put off my run. Cause I said I'm gonna record the podcast and then run around here because I just much prefer to run around the hills. And I know that I'm gonna get so much more out of my 40 minutes. Even though it's just an easy run running up and down hills.

Yeah. The variety and the very unpredictableness of the hills, it really keeps the interest going. And it's just better scenery than the suburbs. And there's no traffic lights or traffic. Most of the places you run, you're in the bush and all you see is kangaroos.

Yeah, exactly. Saw a snake on the last run.

Which wasn't fun, but that'll get your knee lift high. Oh, gosh.

Yeah, I think I. I think I did jump over it and it was on the edge of the track.

It's.

Yeah, I really don't like that. But I wanted to touch on the park runs. We haven't really spoken about them in detail on this podcast, but they're one of the most brilliant things in the world. And the fact that they're worldwide is amazing. Basically, every single park in a local area, every Saturday morning, 8am will do a park run. And it's a 5K, usually 5K run, and everyone just turns up and it's timed and it's an event and there's marshals, and it's just a structured race and you get to run with people around you and aim for a pb. And if you go to your local one every single time, then you're always comparing your times and this is that time where you get to go have some fun and have a crack at some five kilometer races compared to, you know, you're always training to run off the bike or training under fatigue or testing under fatigue.

Yeah. And so many good things about this. This is an incredible explosion of a worldwide phenomenon. I think it is brilliant. And you've got people who are running 5k in 35 minutes, you've got people who are running in 15 and no one cares. Everybody lines up and they've got an incredible system. And every park run in the world is run the same way. They've got a webpage. You sign up, you register, you get a number, a tag and as soon as you finish, they've got your time, they scan you. Yeah, it's listed on the webpage and they've got all of your times that you've ever run. Yeah, it's, it is fantastic. And, and I just think that, you know, if you wanted to include that as part of your endurance, you would go and do a warm up, do the park run and then go for a run for an hour just chatting to people who you've just run run with and before you know it, you've got a two hour run with an intense 5k in it.

Yeah, I see heaps of people doing that. Whenever I go to a park run, you know, I'll finish the 5K and then someone will finish and then I'll just keep running and do another 5k and make it a 10k total.

Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. I wish there were more events like it. It's. It's just I never thought that it would take, take on, but it, it really has and I commend the people who, who started it. It's a fantastic concept and it works.

It's always a great atmosphere. I mean, depending on where you go, I usually go to the Albert park one in Melbourne and that has 400 to 500 people on a Saturday morning. It's, it's really good atmosphere and everyone's really in a friendly mood and like you said, the range of ability doesn't really matter. Everyone's just happy to be there on a Saturday morning. It's a great way to start your weekend.

Yeah. And when I look at some of the results and I see someone's done 320 park runs in a row every Saturday, like that's a year and a half of not missing a park run. It's incredible. It's motivating to, you know, how many can you do in a row? And look, I don't advocate doing a park run every Saturday, but, you know, if it means that you only be motivated, then use it for that. At least you're running with other people. Yeah.

Well, that's a pretty good overview with some training tips for your off season. I think if you take this on, you're going to be in a really good position. You're going to mentally and physically do really well and it puts you in really good stead to start your structure again and come into racing season ready to, Ready to rock pretty much. And ready to start where you Left off and pick up and keep improving.

Yeah, well, definitely, you know, if you, if you look at the professional triathletes or the professional cyclists or professional swimmers, they, they don't train 52 weeks of the year. They have a period where it's, it's the competition phase, it's the off season, even football or soccer or everybody has a period where you need a break and then you need to rebuild again and then you start getting ready for the racing season, then you're competitive in the season. So this is no different. And if you think that you can just keep training the same way, you will stay the same. You, you'll actually just be so stable in that and you won't improve. You've got to give yourself a break so that you can actually come back fresher and more motivated, if that's possible. Who would need motivation after you've finished the season? You've probably got areas where you think, far out, I need to improve that. And this is the chance. Now I'm saying to you, write it down, the areas you think you're strong in, the areas you think you're weak in. And, and don't just write it down and put it in a book somewhere, stick it on your laptop and say, have I done the strength and conditioning that needs to happen so I've got a better core so that I can hold my form on the bike and hold my form when I'm running? Am I going to work on that? Is my left and right power balance really bad on my right? Am I going to do some one legged pedaling action just to, am I going to concentrate on building that? So many areas where that you could actually make a list of things that, that you need to, and you know, join a WhatsApp group with four other people and say, did you do your strength and conditioning on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday? And you know, you can lie on that WhatsApp thing if you like, but it's going to make you accountable. It's not structure, but it's just actually, you know, this is what I said I was going to do and all of a sudden three weeks have gone by and I haven't done one strength and conditioning session. But if I've got other people saying, yeah, I did mine, well, more than likely start putting your socks on, won't you?

Yeah.

And away you go.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a good summary. And I can't, you can't explain how much variety can help. There's so many examples. I remember every time I'd finish footy season, I would just be so sick of footy. You know, you've just played 20 games in a row. You've trained every Tuesday, Thursday. And I just, I love footy, but I just wanted to, didn't want to touch it. And then you have three months off and then you come back for your first kick and you think, geez, it feels like this season just finished, you know, but once you start kicking again, you start getting that itch and then you cannot wait for your first game back. And that's what it does. You know, when you, you do so many races in a row, you can get some fatigue and you think, oh, all I want to do is just have no structure and just enjoy myself. And then. But once you do that for a couple of months, you start craving a race again. And the variety actually really helps you.

Yeah. And I suppose the question might be, how much time should I take? And look, you need to take as long as you need. And if you can imagine you were injured and you'd just broken your pelvis and you had to take six weeks off. You watch how much you want to do some training and the minute it's taken away from you, then you get the understanding of how much you actually do enjoy it. So enjoy the period off, but still move and be grateful that you can resume whenever you like. Because there are people, including myself, who actually can't do anything now. And now I realize how much I love it.

Yeah. And that is a great way to finish. I do just want to touch on one last little bit of advice, completely off topic that you just reminded me of. And that's the power balance thing between left and right. So if you've got dual sided power power meter pedals, then you can see your left and right power balance. And for me, my left leg is always stronger. It's always 52, 48 or 53, 47 to my right. Right. And so I started my easy rides looking at having the power balance on the screen so I could focus on that, something easy to do. And I made a huge mistake the other night, and this is something that everyone needs to be reminded of, is that you have to calibrate your Garmin because before you ride, and you should do this all the time anyway to make sure you're riding to the right power. But I was sitting there and I was trying to put more and more pressure through my right leg and it just kept being 55, 45 left to right, 57, 50, 43 left to right. My left was Just. And eventually, I was putting no pressure through my left and putting everything through my right, and it was still 51, 49. And I was going, what the hell is going on? And for half an hour, I was. My right leg was absolutely exhausted, and my left leg was not doing anything. And I realized I forgot to calibrate my Garmin, and I calibrated it and then went back to it, and the way I was pedaling, it was 70, 30 right to left. And so I went back to normal pedaling, and it was just such an frustrating mistake to make. And so.

Yeah.

Remember to calibrate your Garmin.

Yep. The. The process, when you. I've always said you grab your bike, turn the Garmin on, calibrate.

Yeah.

They're the three things you do. Obviously, put shoes and helmet on, but you don't just grab your bike, turn your garment on, start riding. Yeah, that's not. That should. Every time you ride, you should calibrate to get the same number that you saw last time you calibrated.

Yeah.

It's no different to going on Zwift, where you have to search for the power source.

Yeah, exactly.

So that should be part of the routine.

Yep.

Good point.

That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening, and we will see you next time.