The Paradox of Training Hard

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 by your host, former Australian Ironman champion Jared Donnelly. And I, as always, am Jordan Donnelly. So welcome to today's episode. We've got lots to talk about on the podcast today. We're looking at overtraining and the paradox of training too hard. We're looking at illness and injury management. We're looking at Strava and perceived social media pressure, not just for professional athletes, although we'll touch on that, but just the standard amateur age group athlete like we all are. And a couple more interesting things. So let's get right into it. Lots to discuss. Dad, welcome to the episode and start us off with our normal segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. It is an interesting period and lots of things have caught my attention, but what am I grateful for?

Look, just.

I suppose I'm grateful for my job, really. There's been a few events happening over the weekend, and not just the last weekend, but it was more a standout last weekend where we had people doing the Melbourne to Warny Busso, half ironman, duathlon, state titles in Victoria. There was about 35k long run. I could go on and on, you know, little mock events happening. And I just looking around at the way people were performing, I just was so wrapped with the job I have. I can't. Not the job I'm doing for the athletes, but the job that I have, the opportunity I have to be a coach. That's what I'm grateful for. Because it's great when people do well and you feel like it's your, your own children doing well. And that's how invested I feel I am. So I'm grateful that I've been given the opportunity to enable people to perform at their best. And that doesn't mean winning. It just means getting a personal outcome out of having a program and a plan and executing. So I just couldn't be happier with my gratitude for how lucky I am to be a coach.

And you said to me, especially over the last few weeks, everywhere you seem to turn as travail, travel athletes doing really well, doing pbs. And it's. That's what sparked his gratitude.

Absolutely. Yeah. And again, I'm stressing they're not winning, but we are having winners. But that's not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say it's, you're getting the best out of yourself and if that's, you know, coming from, you know, the back end of the field to moving up, you know, and improving 10 minutes on a, on a, you know, triathlon course or getting to the end of the warning as the goal. There's just so many good things about that outcome.

Yeah, perfect. My gratitude, I'm grateful to be able to be going back to the footy again with crowds. Went to the Anzac Day game, which was really special, was the biggest crowd in the world since COVID and you still watch a lot of international sport and they've got no crowds over there. So really grateful to be able to go back to the footy again. And I in fact went twice over the weekend, which might explain my voice a little bit, but just love going back to the footy again. Very happy with them.

Fantastic.

Moving on to what has caught your attention. And what has caught your attention?

Well, obviously, as I just said in my gratitude, the next follow on from that is what's caught my attention, is, look, it was one of the biggest events for a cyclist over the, over the weekend was the Melbourne to Warny, which is, you know, the oldest race in Australia and it was the oldest, the longest event in the world when it was 299k, 300k. But Milan, San Remo, they added an extra kilometer onto their event to make sure they were the longest race in the world. But what caught my attention was that event and the history behind it and how important it is to each rider who enters that day. Because it's a massive day on the bike, you know, between six and seven hours, depending on your level. And it's an opportunity to get to ride with pros, you know, the NRS riders and the Masters amateurs riders line up on the, on the same start line and ride together. And that challenge for the Masters riders is fun. They're in a race with guys who are probably going to get a contract overseas in Europe, there's a convoy of cars, riders are dropping back, getting feed just like they watch on telly. So we've got Masters riders in amongst that and that's what caught my attention, really, the enormity of that event. And of course there were other events going on weekend as well.

I wanted to ask you about the Melbourne Tawarney specifically because, yeah, we had some traveller riders in there and just watching their preparation, I felt super confident in their ability to get through the day. But I know, and we had conversations about it and you had really in depth conversations with them about the fact that you can be as well prepared as you like. But it is such a hard event. That does not mean you're going to finish. It does not mean you're even close to being guaranteed to finish.

Such a true statement. The, the fitness side of it is absolutely crucial. The preparation, there's no questioning that, but it is only one piece of the puzzle and I could not stress enough in the week leading up to the guys and we had three guys competing in the event of, you know, of different abilities and different ages. And remember you're racing against 20, 20 to 25 year olds in this event and you know, we had a couple of 50 year olds and 45 year olds doing it and the expectation is to try to get to the finish in the time allowed so that you do get the medal at the end and the Melbourne toward medal is a very special medal. And you know, if you make it outside the time limit you could finish the race but you actually don't get the medal. So it's not an easy task to actually get to the finish. So what do they need to do in that race? As well as be well prepared, they actually need to actually execute. This is one of the most important races where execution is key. And we're not talking about really your own ability here, we're talking about how well can you stay with the field because the longer you can stay with the pros or the semi pros, as we as we should call the NRS riders, the easier your ride is going to be. And I heard a really great statement saying a couple of weeks ago, which was in life, if you, if you take the hard option, you'll have an easy time. If you take the easy option, you'll have a hard time. And there's not a truer sentence in this race. At the start of the race, you know, and in 20k or 40k or 60k there was going to be moments where you're going to be tested and if you take the hard option there and then it could mean you've got an extra 50k that's going to be a little bit easier. But when those hard moments come, you have to be mentally prepared to go with that. You know, you might be doing a PB2 minute effort, you know, in the middle of a 267 kilometer ride. But it's important to do that at that point. So you stay with the peloton and give you another 40 or 50k, that's relatively easier. And what's the other option? Riding by yourself for the next 160k or a small group of 2 or 3 instead of being with a group of 150. So that is so important that you are concentrating. So concentration is, you should have as much as physical tiredness, you should have mental tiredness from the amount of concentration you need to do. And what are you concentrating on? You're concentrating on where am I in the field and what is coming up. Is a hill coming up and if there is, I'm at the back of the field and if those guys go to their normal standard, which is really hard riding, I'll get dropped straight away. But if I'm further up the field by the time I get to this top of the hill, I might still be at the back of the, of the peloton instead of being 100 meters off the back and try and get back on the downhill. So positioning and concentrating on moving your position the whole time is what you should be extremely tired from. And you cannot underestimate the positioning you put yourself. If I'm going to give the best bike riders In Australia a 10 or 50 meter head start at the bottom of the hill, what do I think is going to be the outcome to this? I, I'm going to be off the back by a hundred meters but if I, if I start near the front of the bunch and then they go hell for leather and you know, by the time we get to the top, top of the hill I've, I've been passed by almost the whole bunch but I'm still in contact and I've still made a bad situation still. Okay, because I'm still in contact and then I can spend the next 10 minutes moving back to where I should have, should be for the next hard bit. It might be in, it might be in 2k, it might be in 40k when the next deal comes where I'm going to be under pressure again to, to get dropp and the concentration to continually move is what this race is all about. The fitness is key. You can't actually execute, you know what you're trying to do without the fitness. But the fitness accounts for nothing if you're going to give people a head start where it gets hard in every aspect of the race.

It's sort of the opposite to what we always say to do in any sort of race. If you're doing a triathlon it's conserve, it's conserve, come home strong. Whereas this is the, the total backwards approach where you're expecting the first hundred k to be the hardest or 150k because you're trying to hang on to, yeah, the good riders that are above your ability. So you're going harder earlier and not conserving. It's a funny thing to get your head around when you're so trained to do the opposite.

Yeah, I can't agree with you more. And I have to laugh when I'm telling the guys, you know, everything I've taught you about execution, about measuring your effort, throw that out the window for this particular race. This is probably one of the few races you'll ever get to ride with elite levels and it's going to be the hardest, you know, 267k you'll ever do. Not you're going to do many 267k races, but it could be the hardest 100k and then you've got to finish another 167 to get to the finish. Or it could be the hardest 200k. And in our guy's situation, you know, a couple of them lasted for 200k with the peloton, so they really had to manage the last 67. But up until then they had the time of their life staying with the bunch and experiencing what it was like to be in a pro peloton and, and really understanding that that is, you know, the thing that, you know, you have to ride way beyond your efforts and throw out the measured execution plan that I've drilled into people for so many of their training sessions and now here they are just having to go with the race.

Yeah. So last question on this. What, what made them so prepared? Um, what did you do in preparation so that they were at least confident on the start line in their fitness ability?

Well, they were questioning some of the training sessions I was giving them for a start because, you know, you want me to go for a six or seven or eight hour ride at this intensity. And, and without giving away too many secrets, we did have, you know, some motor pacing sessions where they had the motorbike for the first, you know, 100k to 120k riding pretty much on their limit, and then they had to continue riding for another, you know, four hours after the, the, the motor pacing session. So doing seven hours with three of three to three and a half hours behind the motorbike and then continuing to ride just like you're going to experience on race day. So really understanding what the requirements of the race are, how am I going to get them to ride fast, get practice riding fast, you know, in a training session where we just don't have, you know, groups aren't fast enough compared to the NRS pro style of riding. So the motorbike is, is the next next option. So things like that, you know, building the strength and so that they, you know, physically they were absolutely ready for whatever's going to be thrown at them. So, you know, that's kind of the, you know, the period that they had to, to really hone their skills of understanding the requirements of the race in their own mind. Why is Jared giving me this? Because he's told me I'm going to be riding at 45 to 50 ks an hour for 100 ks or possibly 150 ks or possibly 200 ks. And you know, they have, I think Richard told me, averaged 43 for the first 200k.

That's ridiculous.

I know it was a tailwind, which is very unusual for the Melbourne to warn them because normally a southwesterly is the prevailing wind and, and picking May the first for this race you would, you would get one every hundred years of, of a north easterly and they got it on Saturday. So, so you know all the scenarios to go. Well, this is one that actually did work in their favor. But again, having a tailwind means it's actually less, you get less protection from the bunch because, you know, if the, if the guys at the front are sitting in a cross headwind, you can actually ride with, you know, with more protection than, as you know, you know, when you're going downwind, it's hard to get any real protection in from the riders in front of you because everybody's going so fast. So, so yeah, so we did some special things in the preparation and, and at paid dividends incredibly and, and you know, having some conversations post race, they couldn't have been happier. And it's, it's, it's one they'll, they'll treasure and cherish for the rest of their lives. Having a Melbourne to Warrnambool medallion, it's, it's worth, it's worth that much and, and can never be taken away from them. They've done it.

Yeah. Yeah. And the requirements of the race is something that we speak about a lot. And I've questioned you many times over the years about, about sometimes are these sessions too extreme? You know, when in an Ironman program you've got athletes going out and doing, yeah, six, seven hour rides and you just go is that it's got that going to lead to over training. And your answer is always, of course it's extreme and it's tough, but it's an extreme race. You know, you can't, you've got to do it on race day. So how can you expect to just rock up and do it if you've never practiced it? You can't only do a three or four hour ride as your longest ride and expect to double it on race day and get through a six hour ride inside an Ironman with a swim and a before and a run after it. So yeah, you have to acknowledge that it is extreme training, but it's an extreme event. So the training is to match it.

Yep. The physical preparation, you can't, you just can't underestimate. We're doing an endurance event and the warning is an example and the Ironman is an example of that. Peaks race is an example of that. You know, anything that's seven, six or seven or eight or nine plus hours, you know, you have to be physically prepared with, with the requirements of the race and, and that's the physical side. But you know, don't underestimate the mental side. The preparation that you need for the mental side of these endurance events is equally as important as the physical side. Without doubt in my mind, if you, if you just train yourself physically and you hadn't thought too much about the mental side of it, and if I hadn't have had these discussions about concentration and your positioning, I think they would have a hugely different outcome.

What's caught my attention next was we just want to touch on this briefly, but just talking about social media pressure. Now, you don't spend a lot of time on social media, but you brought up something that you noticed on Instagram over the weekend, which was a pro athlete had a poor race and a lot of the pro athletes now have a social media profile where they post about their training. It's good for sponsorship that they can have a profile and have kind of a brand where they have 10, 20, 30,000 followers. But it means I have to be quite open and honest about everything they're doing. And that means whether you perform well or not, you've potentially got thousands of people looking at you and you saw a post from a pro triathlete who didn't perform well and then had to write about it. And bringing that up was interesting because it's what you spoke about after seeing some travel athletes not perform so well at a couple events and you had to really coach them through how to handle that. And handling that in front of thousands of people in an open format can be a different story. And it applies to not just pro athletes, but comparing yourself and how poisonous that can be, comparing yourself to other people on social Media, and we see this on Strava. So it's just something we wanted to touch on about handling that comparison and staying in your own lane and focusing on what you're doing and not getting caught up in that world of social media comparison.

Yeah, there's so many examples that we can give. And look, I talked myself about this probably 14 podcasts ago when we went to the nationals, and I hadn't lost an event for five years or something in my age category. And the expectation from others on me was something that I only realized when I came second in that race. And you know, I was, I was actually okay with that and being beaten by someone who was better than me on the day. I performed actually okay on the day. And so that was an example of me being happy in my own skin. Disappointing. I always want to win anytime I put, put a number on, but having to, you know, I suppose be vulnerable. And when I was reading the social media for this particular triathlete, who was an American triathlete, and he was consistently posting all the time, he's having some great results, doing well as a professional. But he set himself up with many thousands and thousands of followers on social media. And the expectation from them all was that he would do a video post race and analysis and talk about how well it went. And all of a sudden he's confronte with an absolute shocking result. And what I read in his insta story just made me want to talk to you about it and say, look, have a look at this. You can't be a front runner. You actually have to be able to run into defense as well. So it's great when things are going well, but you have to be a consistent performer. I'm not talking about the race here. I'm talking about as a social media performer, you have to be consistent. If you have a great result, you can't just turn up when that happens. If you have a poor result, you have to turn up as well and confront everybody that you've set a platform for. You've set the platform yourself. No one else has forced you to do this. But you actually have to be consistent in owning up to success and failure. And that's the measure of the athletes. Uh, I think if you can own up and be vulnerable to failure, you're going to be a better, successful athlete down the track.

And that's what I was going to say. You're not saying this for the followers. You're not saying he should do this for their benefit. You don't really care about that you're saying he'll be a better athlete and person if he owns up to it. It'll help his performances later.

Yeah. And, and his response was, I'm not in the headspace to, to talk or write about or film any videos. I just need some time to myself. And that's a fair enough statement. He probably does need time to himself, but, but, you know, he actually needs to be vulnerable to everybody as well as be happy to everybody when he's victorious and humble in, in victory and, and, you know, be congratulating in all the people who beat him on that day in, in a loss. And his own performance was what he was disappointed with. He didn't perform well. And all the feelings he had before the race was that he was feeling fantastic. All his training was going well, but on the race things didn't go well. But, you know, that's, that's going to happen. We've got so many examples of people that we coach that don't get to hit the day and perform the way they want to. And is it the end of the world? Yes, at that particular time, it is the end of the world because that's what you've based everything in your preparation about. But you've got to put it in perspective. There will be days where you don't go very well and if you're not willing to experience that, then you shouldn't be competing, in my opinion. So you have to be willing to win, lose or draw.

Yeah. And we, from a. Yeah. Age group perspective, we see this social media pressure through apps like Strava, where everyone uploads their training and we want to encourage everyone not to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to other people. You know, and it's, it's. Strava can be better for that. And so, you know, one example we use is that if you're going to fall into the trap of that, then stop posting your stuff on Strava or hide your activities so that you don't feel judged by anyone. Or, you know, I have some people who don't like going slow on recovery runs because they don't like people seeing them running slower on Strava, which it's just absurd because you've got to do recovery sessions, you know, but if you're so worried about that, then hide your activity so that you don't care so that you don't end up running fast in the recovery session.

Yeah. It seems ridiculous to even be discussing it. But, but that is the peer pressure. You either create yourself or is created from others to you. And the perceived pressure can be something that you should. If you're not able to handle it, you should remove yourself from it. Yeah. Why are we doing that? Because we want to get feedback. We want to get gratitude feedback from people to say, oh, well done. You're going well. And if that's the reason why you're doing it, it's actually okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But it won't last. If you have to. If you have to get praise from other people every time you go out and do some activity, at the end of the day, that's going to be. It's going to have a finite time, and it shows that you're actually not in love with what you're doing. You're only in love with the gratitude that you're getting from other people. And I think that that's going to be short term. So my advice is great, you know, share your rides. You know, and there are so many good things about looking at Strava because you can see if you're doing PBS and if you're improving or, you know, you know, you're in a period where you. You're not going. You're not going to get any cups or, or trophies from the ride because it wasn't a ride for that, you know, but because you can't be bothered, you know, turning Strava on and off all the time, it just keeps appearing. And now I've had a situation where I've. I've had 14 likes from, you know, the bit where I was walking my bike from the car to the start line. That's, to me, just people flicking through, just going like, like, like, like. And. And so that's how much value I take into that. You know, it's just, it's, you know, I'm not seeing who's liking it. I just don't care. Yeah, but. But from my own personal point of view, that the Strava segments are important to me because if I want it to be on that day, if that's what my goal is, so there is value in it.

But.

Yeah. So you've just got to be careful what pressure you're applying to yourself. And worrying about your own program and outcomes is more important than worrying about what other people think about you.

Yep. And there was a story you wanted to mention about and Boston Marathon story.

Yeah. And was. It's a. I won't go into the whole story, but I'll try to summarize it as easily as I can. And this, this athlete was an able bodied athlete and for the reason I won't go into, ended up being in a wheelchair. And his whole life as you can not imagine, because we're not in that position. But for those of you who have had that happen to themselves, they can imagine how much of a change that is. And the reason I bring it up is because it talks about context of what are you measuring yourself against. And this is a great example because this was an able bodied athlete. Now he's got a completely different. He was able to run before, now he can't run, he's in a wheelchair. So he's. Now the context is what can I do as a wheelchair athlete as compared to what could I used to do as a running athlete. So he can't use that old himself to measure himself. He's got to have a whole new set of measuring platforms. And he was telling the story about until he learned that he was never happy being a wheelchair athlete. He was just being talked into it because that's something he could do, get his mind away from the misery that he felt his life had turned into. Because he was measuring himself as a handicap athlete against his old able bodied athlete. And as long as he kept doing that, he was going to be, as he said himself a misery and there was going to be no joy in his life from this point on. And the turning point he said for himself was he got talked into doing some training and a really small event. And he had been training for this 5K sort of run, it's a 5K wheelchair event. And eventually he performed and finished it and never thought he could do it. His arms were killing him, you know, but he had, he had a measuring point, a starting point that he could sort of draw a line in the sand and say, right, I did 45 minutes for that 5K and the next time I'm going to try and beat that. And all of a sudden he had something to work towards, a goal to aim at by comparing himself with himself and trying to improve himself, not comparing himself to what his old self could do or what other disabled athletes could do. They had been doing it for 10 or 15 years. The people in that race who beat him by literally 40 minutes, you know, so he had to compare himself and really learn a hard lesson of you're only against yourself in everything you do in life. And I'm making the same mistake myself, you know, I'm comparing myself against people who are better than me. And that's inspiring to me because it makes me Want to try harder, to train harder and be a better athlete. That's good, that's absolutely good. But you know, don't ever forget that you're always trying to improve yourself against what your previous self was doing. And in the context of being an able bodied athlete to a disabled bodied athlete was, you know, showed that outstandingly as an example. So now his next event was a 10k, then a half marathon, then a marathon and he eventually signed up for the Boston Marathon. I think he ended up doing three. And the very first Boston Marathon they got invited, all the disabled athletes got invited. I think there was 50 or 60 of them and they had a little bit of a social get together during the week before the Boston Marathon and got to meet all the guys who won the handicapped Boston Marathon. And they were doing it in, you know, as fast as the able body athletes. I think they were two hours. And he was hoping to do four hours or something as a disabled athlete. And you know, straight away he went back to when the race came far out, how bad am I against the disabled athletes? And so here he went back to the old way of measuring himself against these other guys. And at the end of the race all the guys who had won and had come in the top 10 as a disabled athletes, they all gathered socially afterwards again and, and they all came up to him and said how did you go and did you enjoy it? And he was shocked at the fact that they didn't care where he came, the fact that this was his first marathon. Well done. You completed your first marathon. And he was almost in tears from their enjoyment and enthusiasm seeing him and perform to something he'd never done before. And he came away from that experience saying I can't wait for next Boston Marathon and I'm going to train my backside off to beat the four hour mark. And, and the journey he took for the next three years and he ended up passing some of those elite guys three years down the track. It was a great story and, and he was still improving himself but he was actually now having his level was getting so that he could compare himself against some of the really good athletes. He still didn't, you know, end up winning any of these races. But, but he, he just was in love with the journey again in his life. He, he said my family life, my relationships, my work, I became the person I was before my accident. And, and it took perspective of comparing myself against myself to understand what's more important. And it is a long winded story, I know, I apologize for that.

That's a great story. I think it was definitely worth saying. All right, we'll finish off with our last topic, which is we want to touch on the paradox of training hard. And to get better you need to push your body beyond what it is used to so it can adapt. It's a basic principle of training, but you do it too much and there's a very fine line that you can cross. So yeah, we want to touch on that. It's topical for me because I've just experienced that the last week. But basically you want to push your body but not over push it. You want to train hard but not train too hard and risk illness or injury.

We're all going to experience it. The illness, the injury, the over training. So let's just try and minimize those mistakes. That's the message I'm trying to get across to everybody who's listening. We will go through this. At some stage we will get injured, we will get sick and we will go into a training hall. So we want to try and minimize those three things from happening. And a great example last year during COVID with the illness, I reckon there would be the percentage. I don't know what it is, but I don't think. I think we have one person get sick during that four month lockdown that we had in Melbourne in Victoria, because.

I could leave their home.

Yeah, no one could leave their home. They couldn't socialize with the kids, couldn't go to date daycare and get all the colds from the other daycare kids and bring it home and they couldn't go to the office and share the same sick air that was, you know, and they couldn't get out in the road and share the snots and stuff coming out of people's, people's mouths. So they were training in a controlled environment. It was almost like a lab experiment. No one got sick. It was incredible. They were monitoring their training properly. We didn't over train people because right at the start we said, we don't know how long this is going to last. We don't know when the next race is, but we're going to take it slowly. We're going to actually pull back and then just do some, some training that's going to be in that zone one and two area with some intensity, but not focus on training hard when there's no race to train to at this particular point. And we threw in some interesting things like Thursday night races on Zwift. Um, so that was our one hard, intense race. We kept our endurance but we, we mainly trained zone two and zone three and four where we were not training high intensity. Um, but. But that was an example of, of what, you know, the illness is obviously caused because we are on a fine line between overtraining and under training. Because we're pushing our bodies so almost sitting on the fence, it's not going to tip ourselves over. So we are susceptible to poor immunity because we've run our immune system down. And if you've got kids coming home from daycare with a cold, you're going to get it, believe me. And because your immune system is not used to coping with it like we experienced in Covid, we had none of that to put us off. You know, you've got to be vulnerable and got to be aware of your vulnerability in these situations. So understanding when to pull back when you feel like there's a little tickle in my throat or I've got a little bit of a headache or I feel. I feel a little bit hot. Listen to the body. And that's why we really ram home how important heart rate variability is. And understanding if your heart rate is from the history you've been taking over the years, it's all of a sudden five or eight beats higher than it normally is. Listen to it. That's telling you something about the oncoming illness that's about to happen. Yeah, well, it's just.

Yeah, yeah. It's not just the training aspect, is it either? Because there's so many other factors in life contributing to fatigue. You know, if you're working really hard, you're going to be getting exhausted. And then if you're trying to work that hard and train at the same level, you might struggle. And if you're not sleeping and recovering properly, all these things combined can just tip you way over the edge.

So training is important. We understand that we need to overload ourselves to improve, to get to the PB that I was talking about in, you know, in the handicap example. But we definitely need to train hard at periods of time during our program. During our, you know, a year can be divided up into where our A race is and where our B C races are along that journey, the stepping stones. And we need to hit peak form at the A race, so the training has to progress. It doesn't mean it gets harder and harder all the time. It just means that it has an overload aspect to it and we have to have recovery. So we might have to train some days harder and then have more recovery so that we are getting that improvement that we're after. So if you're doing that, you're going to be more susceptible to illness. So listening to other things that are going to help you make better decisions is what we're sort of saying in.

This.

Paradox of training too hard. So you've got to think about. I've got this hard session coming up, but I actually don't feel that well and don't just go and do it. That is, that is definitely what I'm telling you. You have to be listening to and that's going to help you, as we proved in that Covid period, how well you can cope with illness and to eradicate it from. And honestly, I can't remember, I'm not scared to say this, the last time I was actually sick, couldn't train. And that's something that. Have I been fortunate? No, it's because I'm listening to everything about. I'm using my heart rate variability, I'm using the aura ring to tell me, you know, what's happening. I'm monitoring my heart rate, I'm monitoring my weight, I'm monitoring my feelings by writing down those things in my training peaks notes. And these are all things that can really contribute to me making better decisions so I don't get sick.

Yeah. And that's. That's to say you haven't. You hadn't had symptoms of sickness because you have had some and then you've just stepped back and rested and done the right things to make sure it didn't get worse.

Yep, yep. Got myself to bed earlier. Not burn the candle at both ends and reduce the intensity in that particular session. Still trained, but. And so I suppose, you know, we've talked about illness and injuries is something that, you know, again, you can be unlucky, but it's probably your fault that you've, you've caused it. And you know, that sounds a bit harsh, doesn't it?

But same as a sickness, I mean, you can get really unlucky and no matter what you did, you're going to get sick. But and say with injury, sometimes they just happen. But as always, we want to control as much things that are in our control as possible.

Yeah. And if you are a person who has chronic calf injuries, then you need to do the strength and conditioning to make sure that, that your body can cope with the training session you're about to give it. And if you get a calf injury and you haven't done any of that, well, that's absolutely. You deserve it. Because, because I'm so often telling people, you know, You've got this. This hip injury, or you've got this lower back, or you've got this hamstring or an Achilles. And if you don't manage that, then you are going to break down. It's not when it's a. It's a. It's, you know, so if. Sorry, it's. It's. When are you going to break down? You are definitely going to break down. If you don't look after yourself and manage the things that. And even if you did do those strength and conditioning and stretching and all the right things, warming up properly, cooling down, you still could get injured, but you are minimizing the risk of it. And so many times if someone's, you know, unfortunately, I've got a calf strain, and my first question is, have you neglected strength and conditioning? And now they have to be transparent and say, yeah, I haven't done it for ages. And I just shake my head going, well, it's your own fault. You've got to take responsibility, ownership for your own actions. And there are thousands of injuries like the one I've just gone through, like the one you just went through with your toe. I've got the fractured pelvis. You know, that's my fault for crashing, you know, and I've just got to wear that. So at the end of the day, there's unfortunate things that happen to you, and, you know, they can be out of your control. So I'm saying there's both reasons here, so illness and injury. There's a lot more we can say about injury.

Dr. Jordan Moncrief, who's our strength and conditioning expert, who we're actually going to get on the podcast, he's an osteo, and he talks about the fact that, you know, you've got to be spending as much time on recovery for your body, strength and conditioning for your body, and almost balancing your body out compared to the training, because the training that you're doing is wearing your body down. And so you need to balance that with the opposite. And so Most people spend 12 to 14 hours of training a week, and they're barely spending half an hour on strength and conditioning or getting their body right, you know, where that needs to be way more balanced, which seems pretty extreme, but it makes sense.

Yeah. And we did a little bit of an experiment with the warning guys and really put them on a program where, you know, we wanted them to actually get a balance of their body. And they were training extremely hard. So. So the harder you train, the tighter your muscles become, and that's more reason why you need to do this. It's not extra. It should be part of the program.

Yeah. It's offsetting the stress on the body that you're putting on it. Almost.

You've got to a point where you know, you cannot go for a run now without doing, you know, a 10 minute warm up in, in your lounge room that's going through a routine of exercises to get your body in tune with what's about to happen with your training session.

And I could, I would just run poorly and I'd be running with poor mechanics and I would be increasing the risk of injury, you know, eventually. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. And look.

Well, I was just gonna say, I mean something you always say to us is that, you know, remember these endurance sports, especially triathlon, it's not an intense sport so you don't, you don't need to risk injury by training with too much intensity.

Yeah.

And trying to push stuff too because six hour half ironman or a 12 hour ironman, there is not much intensity in that event. Yeah.

Yet a lot of the programs you get off the Internet have got, you know, 8 by 200 meter runs on the track. And we are not saying that that is a bad session, that is a great session. I've done many of them. But it's a great session for a 5k runner or an 800 meter runner or a 1500 meter runner. It's not such a valuable session for a marathon, especially a marathon in an iron man. And it still can be useful for a marathon runner to do some of those sessions. But I still wouldn't be doing two hundreds or four hundreds. And, and so you're going to, you know, increase the risk of injury is one thing from doing these sessions. The faster you run, the more stress you're going to put on your body. And especially when we're preparing like we talked about the, the warnable bike race. What are the requirements of the warnable long endurance, strength, speed on the bike and what are the requirements of a marathon in a triathlon which is a little bit different to a fresh marathon, but we're talking about a marathon in an Ironman and there is no time in that event where you'll be running more than sub threshold. So yes, we need to improve our running ability to be stronger runners. So we surely would concentrate. The requirements are what strength and conditioning as a runner running the hills and time on your feet. Run longer, you know, volume. So, so we, we, we do have some, some strength, shorter runs uphill. We do have some Fartlek style running. We do have some interval running, but it's not, you know, less than probably, you know, eight minutes. You know, that's our interval, four by eight. As a runner, where we can't run actually fast for eight minutes, we've got to actually measure and execute. So we're trying to restrict the possibility of injury here. In the particular training sessions we give, you might ask, well, where do you get your intensity? Well, we get it off the bike. We get all of our hard sessions where the risk of injury is so much less on the bike. And if you're doing 50, 50 reps in a swimming pool, you're going to get your heart rate going. You're going to get, you know, 40, 20s on a bike, your heart rate's going to be through the roof. You're still getting your cardio, which is what we're trying to get as an overload. We're still getting that from the swim and the bike and the running. That needs to be focusing on the endurance and the body's ability to be able to stand up and run for whether you're a pro at 2 hours 50 in the event or whether you're an age group who could possibly be running 3, 30 to 4:30. And for those who are, you know, doing 17 hours, are going to be running 5 hours, walk running 5 hours. So. So you have to get the requirements of the event. So in training you need to be focused more on in the running section, that endurance run. That's why we, you know, we have, you know, such long run sessions in, in our training.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we're going to risk injury far less by doing this.

Yeah. This method and the value of consistency absolutely trumps the potential value versus risk of training with too much intensity.

Yep. There's no doubt that you can, you could have some great sessions where you've, you've nailed some intensity, but you have two or three days off because you might get some doms out of it or a little bit of niggle from, from going too hard. You know, there's the example you were going to use of a runner who's preparing for the Olympics is a classic. Yeah.

Well, Stuart McSwane, who spoke about on the podcast, Australia's best current middle distance runner, who we can't wait to watch him at the Olympics because he had a breakout year last year. He was up there with the world's best middle distance runners. So it'd be really interesting to see how he goes. But there was an interview with his coach where Someone asked what's caused this breakout year, where's, where's he kind of come from? And the coach said quite simply he's had three years or so of training consistently without any breaks in illness or injury. And a lot of other athletes have periods of might be a month or two here or there where they get injured or they get sick and he just hasn't. And you know, it's in this third or fourth year that after such long periods of consistency he's suddenly just broken out and he's breaking Australian records left, right and center.

We have a lot of examples of athletes that we coach who have been with us for three, four, five, six years and people who join us at the start. Their expectation is actually, it's not in line with what is actually going to be in reality and expecting to improve in a 12 week program, a 16 week program, a 20 week program. Yes, there is expectation to get better and that does actually happen. But, but to get to the level where you are unbelievably improved three years down the track, that is what's happening to a lot of the Trivalo athletes who we coach who are having breakout third year, fourth year, fifth year. And it's from all that base training they've been doing the correct way with consistent training and the overload and the recovery and all of a sudden they start being a mid packer to the front part of the race and for some winning races.

Yeah.

And that's that. That has happened so many times that I know it's hard as a new beginner to our program to hear that because you just want to get there quicker. You just want to get to, you.

Want to get there in 12 weeks.

Yeah. And you will be a better athlete than you were in week one as you were in week 12. And that's what we're talking about with that. The examples I was using earlier where you've got to compare yourself to yourself and you might be comparing yourself to the people in your age group that are winning and that's where you want to be. But you've got to use this as a stepping stone. Compare yourself to yourself and progress. The 12 week program, then the 24, then the 36, then the 52. You've got one year under your belt. What were you like, you know, from week one to week 52 and you will just be shocked. I've got an example of someone who just did the busso half ironman on the weekend. Last year's bike section, 2 hours 40 this year 226 and he was on a 16, 20 week program, it's possible and wasn't with us for 12 months.

Yeah.

And you know, a 14 minute improvement. You know, sure the guys in his age group are riding 214, 216, but he's come from 240. You've got to be ecstatic with 226 and that's what I'm talking about. Understand your personal best for yourself and then start to strive to see where you want to be in another two years.

Basically. To summarize this topic and this paradox of what we said is training hard. It's about self management and it's about managing your own load and being self aware and respecting yourself and your body enough to know when it's time to push hard and when it's time to pull back. And that is a, a delicate balance that you have to constantly be working on.

Yeah. And an example of that is, you know, we have Dr. Mitch Anderson who's you know, one of the, the best triathletes that Australia's had over the, over the journey. You know, he's 119 man in his own right and he holds a 12 hour and 24 hour time trial record, world record for, you know, can ride 12 hours at 40, ridiculous 40 plus K's an hour and he can ride 24 hours at 38Ks an hour. You know, he knows what he's talking about and he's understood how to train hard and how to recover and how to manage illness and injury and all of the things that are going to happen to you on your journey. And his rule of thumb is you need to be listening to your body and if you're feeling unwell and if you're feeling 70% or 7 out of 10, that's where you should train. If you're feeling 8 out of 10, don't train higher than 8, 80%. You know, don't go and do a test or a race or an event if you're not at 100% because you will perform at whatever level you are at 80% of full health or 90% of full health. So don't have an expectation of doing the best you can, your personal best when you're actually not feeling well.

Yeah. And I mean the opposite to that as well is coming out of it. So this, I learned this lesson the hard way over the last week. You know, you've really got to respect your body's need for rest and recovery and it's not just when you're sick because over the last week I got a little bit sick and I did the right things and respect my body and took time off training and relaxed and then coming out of it feeling better. I was personally just too arrogant in my body's ability to come straight back. You can't just resume training hard, you can't just resume normal life. And I just, yeah, was over the, over the weekend, resume training. Like I said, I was out socially at the footy twice and got to the end of the weekend, I was completely run down again. And it just put myself backwards. And it's not, it's just you've got to respect your body's ability to get back to that hundred percent and not go above that too early.

And look, motivation's a problem for a lot of the people we associate with because they're so keen to get back. And, you know, you've had an off period and I'm going through exactly the same thing and you know, the temptation is to rush it and you could risk prolonging the injury or the illness. And exactly what you've just done, you've prolonged your last week's illness to this week. And in effect you've created the thing that we're trying to avoid, which is the lack of consistency and it's self sabotage, in other words. But you learn hard lessons and you know that next time that's not the track you want to go down. And for me, you know, I've had three weeks now with no training and that has been the cruelest three weeks that I can remember. But in perspective, it's minor. You know, in a year or two's time, three or four weeks off the bike, I could look back and go, I needed that time. And that's the mindset that I've got. I need to use this as my off period. It's forced on me. I didn't want to do it, but now I'm using it as a positive. Now I'm having a break because I actually can't train. So I'm now focused on, yep, enjoy the break. Because when you can train, I'm straight into it. But am I straight into it with a hard session? No. My first session is going to be an easy 20 minutes and then the next session is going to be an easy 30 minutes and I'm going to progress my way like that. And I remember coming back from a knee injury about four or five years ago, the first session was literally 10 minutes and I could hardly pedal. And then the next day was 15 and then I went to two sessions a day, one 15 minute in the morning, one 15 minute in the afternoon. And I just went about that program in a real methodical way. And what was my goal? Consistency. That's what I was trying to get. And as I progressed, I had no intensity for almost two or three weeks. I was just trying to get my body to adapt to a training regime of consistency. And then I introduced intensity and the whole podcast on that in itself. But that's what I have to do to myself now. And that's what I'm telling you as your coach, that, you know, you're coming back from illness. Are you going to go and do an intense session today? No way known. You're going to do something very easy, roll your legs over or an easy walk, run. And that's what we're trying to get across to everybody from this point, this whole topic, which is, you know, the paradox of training too hard, you can do it to yourself again, coming out of injury, illness or over training.

I can tell you that I was frustrated last week about being sick, but I am twice as frustrated at the fact that it's a second week of being sick. You know, it's supposed to. Supposed to just be one week and it's carried over. And the same thing for you. You know, you said it's a really cruel three weeks off, but you'll be even more frustrated if you don't do the right things. You go too intense, too quick, and then the injury turns into any longer than it needs to be.

Exactly. And at the end of the day, that is what we're trying to get across to everybody listening that you will be faced with these scenarios and we're trying to give you the tools to avoid the mistakes that we have all made. And remember, consistency is king. And at the end of the day, if you tamper with consistency, your performance will stay the same or regress. I can't say it any clearer than that.

I don't think, George, it's a perfect way to finish. It's been a very packed episode. Lots to discuss, lots of good topics. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next time.