The Race Ready Training Structure That Guarantees Results

You're really trying to hone in on the specifics of your race and during the other periods of training, like the base and the build, where you're trying to, you know, trying to get your fitness and your strength and your endurance and all those things that, that maybe needed work since your last race. This is the period now where you're going to start to train really specifically around the requirements of the actual event that you're doing.

This podcast is brought to you by Tribal O, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivello coaching, Gerard Donnelly. There is a secret formula to perfecting those final weeks of training before your race. A great training program should finish with a training block that makes sure you are totally ready for your race. And the key emphasis is on the word your. We call this the race ready phase and it needs to be specific to the distance, intensity and other requirements of the event you've chosen. It's your golden opportunity to dial in your performance and get your body primed for race day. So what needs to happen in the race ready phase? What sessions do you need to be doing? And what does the taper phase look like? There are many parts of this phase that athletes tend to overlook and there's certainly a lot more to it than trying to cram in as much last minute fitness as possible. So today we're going to talk about how to structure your final training block to guarantee results. One final reminder before we get into the episode. This is the last week to get 15% off access to any science and sport product. There's gels, bars, carbon protein mixes, all available to help you fuel yourself properly. So go to Science and Sport and use the code travel podcast sis when you check out. Sorry, that's scienceandsport.com as always, this episode is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant Australia, for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant Dad. Welcome back to another episode. Let's go with our normal starting segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. And this is a really good topic, isn't it? The race ready phase. All the training's done and you're kind of getting close to the your main event, so I can't wait to talk about that. And look, I'm at the opposite extreme level. I'm so far away from a major race at the moment, it's kind of quite funny for me to be talking about that, because it's just not on my thought process right now is getting ready for a major race and yet there are massive races occurring everywhere around the world at the moment with so many a races in every sport you can think of that are happening. And I wanted to just bring up a gratitude that's a little bit left of field. As athletes, we're going to have setbacks throughout our career as swimmers, riders, runners, triathletes. And handling those setbacks is really important. And my gratitude is that for everybody who goes through a major obstacle, whether it's an injury or some illness or some lack of motivation, these are all setbacks that will prevent you from becoming the best version that you want to be. And when it happens to you, you feel like the whole, you know, you're the only one who's ever experienced that and you feel like the whole world's against you. This sucks. How come I'm in this position? How did I get myself in this position? It doesn't matter the reasons. The fact is you are in a period. For example, using myself, having my backup rated on nearly 17 weeks ago. I'm so grateful for my comeback journey where I've been able to be consistent. And I've had a few setbacks in the comeback post the operation where I've strained my calf and hurt my hamstring, possibly just pushing it a little bit too much and not doing enough of the strength and structural functional training that I should have been to keep everything functioning. But handling these setbacks that we're all going to experience is going to be the key to it. And my gratitude is that I've been quite lucky so far and I've progressed generally on a steady come back with not having too many jumps. And we talked about this a few weeks ago, but. But I have been able to be consistent and that is one of the key things for anybody who's going to go through some sort of injury, the focus should be really focusing on small steps and, and making sure you stay consistent and knowing that your fitness will get back to where it was before at some point. There's no timeline for that and everybody needs to. To focus on the small things that are going to get back and get them back to where they were. And just thinking too far ahead is detrimental and oftentimes is mentally a challenge that we're probably not able to cope with very well because you are so far away from where you were as a fit, healthy human being. And it's quite a shock. The numbers I was writing compared to what I was writing, but I was aware of that and was able to mentally be okay with that. And that's. That's the thing I want to get across, is I'm grateful for the fact that I understand that and I want everybody else to think the same way if they come back. Journey and I think I use an example of. For those of you who know, we coach one of the pro triathletes, Kelvin Amos, who's just had a crash at the 70.3 at Sunny coast, and he's broken his collarbone and torn some ligaments in his shoulder. And, you know, you feel like it's the end of the world. And it is for a pro triathlete who's trying to make a living out of the sport. And he'll be out of action for the next six weeks, weeks or however long it takes for him before he can actually train properly again. And so you sent on a different direction, aren't you? Your whole world changes because now you can't train how you used to. You can't get up and do the things you used to be doing. So you have to think about it differently. And that is a really important thing. And I think I'm grateful that I've had a few experiences like this where I've had to come back from adversity over 40 or 50 years of competing as an athlete. It's been many setbacks. And if you just keep the focus about what you can do each day and the journey is quite slow, but you will eventually get there. And I think my gratitude is all around just knowing that if you follow that philosophy, you will eventually. And I'm not there yet by a long shot. Someone asked me the other day, what's my next A race? I just don't even thinking about that. They're so far away. But my job now, my a race right now, is just to maintain my consistency. And each day I train, I'm getting slightly better than I was last week.

Yeah, that's a great gratitude. And as always, we try and find silver linings and things. And one thing I think you've been grateful for in this process is, you know, post surgery, you've actually been doing a lot more of the stuff that you weren't doing, you know, prior to the surgery in the last couple years in terms of functional training and getting back into resistance training and weights and body weight work. And that's kind of been a good blessing in disguise is, you know, it's kind of forced you to get back to that, which You've wanted to for a while and haven't been consistent with. So that's a great one. My gratitude is I was thinking about a lot of things I was grateful for and there's a lot, a lot of lists, so I just trying to pick one, but I just can't go past the weather. The spring weather is just absolutely brilliant and I think everyone feels it and always puts you in a good mood and it's just unbelievable to training and. Yeah, I think I say that one a lot. I've said a lot of times over all our podcasts, but definitely feel it every day when you wake up and there's good sunshine.

I absolutely think people have a different attitude when the. When it's a nice warm day and the sun's shining compared to a drizzly, shocking Melbourne day that we get quite a bit of. Yeah, it just seems to be an unbelievable change in attitude. I don't know what it's about, but it's real.

Well, there's definitely studies on seasonal depression, so it's. Yeah, it's not. It's not like it's something made up. Moving on to our last segment before we get into the race ready phase topic, and that is what has caught your attention. There's one thing we want to talk about and it is the absolute talk of the cycling world at the moment and we wanted to discuss that. We've been having discussions every day and night about it ourselves. We've been having discussions online about it. We put up a bit of a cheeky video on our Trivelo page that sparked a lot of debate and the comments were just so interesting. And it's about the Vuelta Espana and it is what is happening with Jumbo Visma, if you haven't been following along. Basically super domestic Sep Kus who has taken Jonas Vinegar to Tour of his Tour de France wins. He's taken pretty much luggage to a Giro d' Italia win and his own Volta Espana win. He's unbelievable. He's ridden all three Grand Tours this year. Supposed to be as a domestique, but he ended up in the red jersey. We've spoken about this in the podcast the last couple of weeks, but he's ended up in the red jersey and they're in a funny position because they've basically got three team leaders, you know, going into it. Vingard and Roglich were supposed to be the main two leaders with Set being a domestique again. And it's created this funny position where Roglich and Vinegar technically supposed to work for Sep because he's in the red jersey, but he's not their leader, and they probably both think that they're better than him. And it all came to a head two stages ago where they attacked him and he's in the red jersey, and there was only three of them in the front of the race. And there's no doubt about it, they attacked him. And a lot of the cycling world blew up about it, including us. We were, We. I was. I had mixed emotions about it. But you were ropeable about it and you were really disappointed in. And I mean, you kind of. We don't want to judge characters on here on this podcast because we don't know the inside stories of everything. We're just watching what's on tv and it's never a personal attack on anyone. But you're just going, if they were my teammates, I would be absolutely furious. So let's talk about kind of the. What's unfolded here and why we think this, this was the wrong move by Jumbo and, and unpack that. And look, everyone can have their own opinion. No one knows what's going on behind closed doors with them, but we thought it was disappointing to see after all the work said they've done for them, for them to turn around and almost try and attack him like that, and they didn't even take the red jersey off him.

So, yeah, great summary of what's happened. And as you said, it's really clear these are just our opinions and, you know, take it for what it is. That's. This is the way we would go about it, and it's not necessarily the way Jumbo Visma are going about it. There's a. There's a few main points that I want to get across. People have saying, the main comment for people defending what Vinegar and Roglic have been doing is that the best riders should win. And technically, that's actually correct. The best rider should be the one that the whole team rides for. And the main point I want to make to that is this is not an individual sport. This is a team sport. And if Roglic and Vinegard or Poga or Remco didn't have their team around them, they would have a lot harder time achieving the results that they have. So you can say what you like as a. You know, the best rider should win, but the best rider wins because of the team around him, surrounding him. And that's the point that really gets up my nose, is you are not clearly understanding. You're almost thinking, and I'm Talking about Roglic and Vinegard actions, which was to attack Sepp Kuss when there was no other teams or riders, they were already clear there was only three of them left on that climb. And if there's other riders around, then fair enough, you should possibly try to beat them to win the stage. But when there's only you three left in the one team and you're three.

Minutes clear in the top three in.

The race and there's no pressure, this would have been an unbelievably good will for all three of them to ride up the last 2k together, arm in arm, come across the finish line and whoever's bike crossed the line first, well done. Or, you know, give it to someone who hasn't won any many of the stages, give it to Rogley or whatever they decided, but show unity and ride together. There was no need for them to ride away from Sepp Kuss. And interesting, he made a comment on his microphone and we don't really know what he said. And it's been predicted that he said, go, go. Which is very generous thing to say from him.

I'm not convinced of that. I feel like, you know, Yumbo warned that straight away. They tweeted it out straight away saying, you know, Sep's given the all clear. And I don't know if that was a media stunt or maybe he did, but he's just being too nice, you.

Know, could have been misinterpreted. No, no.

Yeah.

I'm getting dropped. But, you know, hats off to Sepp. He never complained one bit and he was all about the team. And the rest of the world is.

Complaining more about Sepp about this, which is pretty funny.

Yeah, it is. And look, the finish, you know, when you win a stage. Roglic won that stage and there was no celebration. That to me tells me that he knew that. I think I might have done the wrong thing there. And Jonas won his stage. It was pretty similar. And, you know, ironically, we talked about Jonas won it for his daughter's birthday. Well, it was actually Sepp Kuss's birthday the day they attacked him. So look, it's a team sport. Let's get this clear. He's not being gifted his position. He's earned this position in this race. They haven't waited for him on any particular stage on any day. He got in the break. It was hard work that day that he got the lead. He rode really hard and won that stage. So that wasn't a gift from his other two teammates. He went out and done that and so he set the lead up and ever since then they have not looked after him one bit. On the Tourmalet, Vinegard attacked him and Sepp did the right thing and stayed.

With the group and almost lost his lead because of.

That's right. Until it was clear that he could ride away and he jumped the group that he was with and got second solo. But you know, they weren't riding for Sepp Kush that day. So there's no gifts here. And I think that's the main point is if you're got a guy in the leader's jersey in your team that's clearly ahead of the rest of the field, you should be supporting him no matter what your level of performance. Past history is, you know, these guys are the champions of cycling. You know, they're in the best four riders in the world for the last three years. You know, Poga, Roglich, Evanopol and Vinegar are seriously four best riders going around. So I understand that they probably think they deserve to be in a, in a position where they can do whatever they like, but that's not how it works. You can't, you can't pick and choose between I want to have a team today, but tomorrow I'm going to be an individual. It is a team sport and if you think it's not, then I think you've got that quite definitely wrong.

And I think last night's stage, you know, after the backlash there that happened from I think or any cycling media outlet around the world, was just going what the hell yumbo doing. I think majority of people felt that they did the wrong thing. There was definitely people, especially on our post arguing, saying no, that's crap. You know, Jonas and Roggage are clearly better let the best man win. Yeah, a few, few various arguments around that and we would just refer back to, you know, everyone has bad days and there's plenty of times when Jonas and Rogic have had bad days and seps dragged up the mountain. He was, he probably felt good that day. He probably could have written off because they were having bad legs, but that's nature of these grand tours and they're so exhausted from racing so much that the leader is under pressure and he waited for them. He didn't write off on them, you know, and they've had the benefit of, you know, they haven't had to sit on the front protecting the leader's jersey. Jonas and Rogue, they've probably got pretty good les in comparison to what they normally have. And last night's stage they did the right thing and they worked with Sepp the whole stage. And I wonder if that was a big thing from the team directors to try and win some fans back. But we saw that with them on the front. By the last 2k, when the attacks started coming from other riders, Jonas and Roglic actually struggled. They were behind and they were able to jump on a. Roglic was essentially. But Jonas got dropped a little bit in that last K, which shows how much harder it is to work on the front. They kind of got a taste of probably what Sev's been through all these years, doing all the work on the front and then still maintaining a top 10 position in the Tour de France. So I think last night showed that they had to ride differently. And it's actually not as easy to just sit there and have fresh legs all the time as you think.

You know the Angolura Stage back in 2020 or 21 when Roglic was struggling and Sepp had great legs and he did not go with the leaders, he stayed back and guided Roglic and he ended up winning the Tour. He basically sacrificed his ride that day. So, you know, you can't have it both ways. And the amazing fact is Sepp's ridden three Grand Tours in one year.

Exactly.

It's, you know, it's pretty special.

It would be so special if he rides all three and then wins the last one. It would just be incredible. So there's three stages left. That was the last mountain stage last night. There is Achilles stage with a bunch of Category 3 clones, but looks like from here he should hang on and they did the right thing last night. So that was a bit of a turn of events. And look, we, like you said, we don't know what's going to happen. Behind closed doors they do present a very united front. There's a lot of drama around the Tour de France about way up versus Jonas and we know that that wasn't the case. They handled that very well, but I feel like they've handled this a little bit more poorly. Of course Jonas and Roglich in great form, would love to win the Volta, but that's being part of a team is like. And also I think a few people have made the point that you're playing with fire and just the risk, the unnecessary risk of anything can happen in a three week ra. And we talk about this all the time. In any endurance event over half Ironman or ironman, it's a 4 to 5 hour to 10 to 15 hour race. Anything can happen. You can't be too arrogant in the halfway through the event, whether it's a one day, eight hour race or whether it's a three week race because you don't know what's coming next. So you've got to play things smartly no matter what the event is. You know, Roglic or Jonas or whatever could crash and then Sepp's under pressure because he's got no one there or I mean anything can happen. And so yeah, just the unnecessary risk is what surprised a lot of us. Yeah.

And look, we've not even mentioned Remco's. I think he won his third stage.

Yeah.

And he's got the climbers jersey which probably doesn't mean that much to him but he says it does. But, but yeah, he's, he's actually got something out of this tour and I think that's one of the things we've talked about a little bit of limiting your losses. This is a great example of having an absolute shocking GC tour. But he's still come out of it with a climbers jersey and three stage wins.

Yeah.

So it's a pretty good tour. That's an unbelievably successful tour, although his main goal wasn't achieved. So, so that's another great example of someone. And I was interested to see him pointing to, you know, I'm a very clever bike rider when he was finishing the stage today and you know, I'm mentally tough, which is true. But I would have liked to him to see him stay back and try and outride the other GC riders just to have a bit of a competition. But that's not what cycling is about. It's taking your opportunities when they arise. And, and you know, he made the most out of a really poor scenario situation. I'm pretty impressed with what he did.

Last thing before the topic. I mean there's three athletes that we continuously reference, probably four actually, but three that we continuously talk about. And one is Jakob Ingebridson, the other two are Wout Bernard and Faith Kip Yegon and they're just three athletes that are just blowing their sports apart at the moment. And Jakob just broke the 2 kilometer world record on the track, a long standing record held by Hisham El Guerrouj. T3 and he negative splitted. So he did a 222 first K and then a 220 or high 220s, a low 221 second one K which every, every time he does these world records he negative splits and again Once again, a lot of the fields started with him in that first one K and they all positive splitted because they can't hold that, but he can hold that pace. So just thought it was worth mentioning.

That's a great point, Jordan. And that's another example of guys who are trying to run the race for the race victory. And ironically, I think eight out of the first nine ran PBS but not negative splitters.

So I wonder if they would have ran faster in that field if they had stayed back a little bit. Let's get into the topic. The topic everyone wants to know is how to do this race ready phase properly. So straight into it. What is the difference of a race ready phase compared to other training blocks?

Well, I think you're really trying to hone in on the specifics of your race and during the other periods of training like the base and the build where you're trying to, you know, trying to get your fitness and your strength and your endurance and all those things that, that maybe needed work since your last race. This is the period now where you're going to start to train really specifically around the requirements of the actual event that you're doing. Whether it's an ironman or half ironman or marathon or Olympic distance or you're just trying to replicate the specificities and that's why we call it race ready. You're getting yourself ready for the race requirements. And that's as simple as I could make it, I suppose.

Yeah. And I guess the main point is you're coming from that build phase and that base phase and this race ready phase is only going to work as well as possible or more effectively if you've done that previous phase successfully. If you haven't got that strength and endurance built up properly behind you, then the race ready phase becomes so much less effective.

Yeah, and we really have seen that in a lot of examples of the athletes we coach, the ones who come on to a 12 week program instead of for an Ironman, a 26, six week program. We've got no control over that previous 14 weeks and they may have done a really good basin and build phase. They may not have. So the race ready phase is really determined by how well you do that preliminary training, the preparation work you do so you can start honing your skills for what the requirements of the race are. That is totally determined by how well you did that preparation phase.

So I want to get one more level of specificity here because you've mentioned the words getting ready for the requirements of the race, but what is the, what is the specific goal here? Yep.

So we want to get our body used to what it's going to feel like on race day. And as unlike the build and the preparation phase, we're really just going out to build our fitness levels. And now we're actually trying to prepare our body to experience in training what it's going to be like on race day. So for example, we want to do some swimming sessions where you're actually swimming. If you're doing a 1900 meter swim and race day, we want to have an experience of that going into an ocean or a lake or wherever, or the pool and swimming a 1500 or 1900 straight out. So you get some sort of feel for that. You want to have blocks in the pool where you're doing 4 by 500 or 5 by 500 that add up to close to the distance you're going to do. And each sport is different, has got different nuances. With the distance you would do, for example, marathon, you wouldn't continually go and do marathon time distances every long endurance run. That's not what I'm saying. But on the bike, you would try to replicate the power and the average speed and the cadence and the position you're sitting on and practicing everything about the actual numbers you're trying to do for your actual race day on those training sessions, the specific power number that you hope to hold and finding out what that equates to in speed. And as a runner, you want to get off the bike and run some specific runs off the bike that have been at your race pace, bikes sessions at your race pace and then try and run to the pace that you aspire to on race day for whether it's 5k, 10k or 15k. I'm not an advocate of doing that for 21k because that's kept for race day. But getting a feel for what it feels like to run that pace that you're wanting to run on the actual race day. So they're the real things that you're trying to do in these sessions.

Yeah, you've really nailed some key sessions there that you need to think about. And I guess regardless of the makeup of the session itself, the goal of these sessions and how it differs to base phase training is that the sessions replicate the race intensity. So like you just said, you're riding not only the distance, which you just kind of described there, but also the distance at the race pace intensity as much as possible. And doing that intensity and the distance, almost 80 or 90% is the example you're using there. So let's say it's a half Ironman, So it's a 90k bike ride. You're not getting them to do a 90k time trial, but you're getting to them something close maybe 60 to 80k at the race intensity, but also as much as possible, replicating the race conditions. So that includes the terrain, that includes, ideally, the actual conditions, the temperature, if that's possible. But yeah, really specifically the elevation of the course. So if it's going to be an undulating course or a hilly course, and it has anywhere between 300 meters and 1500 meters of elevation, these race intensity sessions need to replicate that.

Yeah, and it's very difficult to get all those things because you might live in a completely different climate. You might be going to a race. And the example we always use is if you go to do the Ironman at Kona and you come out of an Australian winter, it's almost impossible to replicate that unless you were in a lack of getting the temperature the same as what it's going to be in Kona. And, you know, we're trying to get the elevation right. That is really crucial that you understand what the course details are. And that means doing a bit of research, finding out, you know, how many meters of elevation are in the course. Are they long climbs, are they short, punchy climbs? And trying to replicate a course that you can train on that is similar to what's going to happen on race day. And that seems like a lot of effort, but. But you're doing a lot of effort to get to this race. So make sure you're doing the efforts in the right place. And, you know, we talk about specificity, not only just in the training, but in everything that you've just mentioned. And these are the things that if you get this right, come race day, it will just be a continuation of what you've been doing for the last four to eight weeks. And there should be no surprises on race day because these are numbers and beads and paces that you have replicated over and over in training. And the added bonus is you all have a taper. And so therefore you would imagine that you could replicate it exactly what you've been doing in training. And some. And that means actually improving.

Exactly. And we do take this to the extreme. You know, we have an example of an athlete where you really wanted them, they were quite an experienced athlete, but you really wanted them to get their nutrition right, because they kept getting their nutrition. Something was going wrong with their nutrition in the Ironman. And so you gave them a testing nutrition session where they literally did a 3K swim, a 180 kilometer bike ride, so the full length of the Ironman bike ride and a a 30 kilometer run. And that was really important for you as a coach because this athlete just wasn't getting the nutrition right and you didn't want them to go to another race without dialing in the nutrition. So you had them almost doing an Ironman solo just to get this right. And again, this was a very specific athlete who had had a lot of experience with Ironmans, has done plenty, so could handle that. But that is the extremes you're willing to go to to get this race specificity right.

And imagine the confidence you get from doing these race specific sessions and whether you're doing a 60k time trial for a 90k half Ironman event or whether you're doing 4 by 30min and your training session that add up to a similar time you'd expect to be on the bike. And if you can hit the numbers that you think that you can hold on race day in training, your confidence each week builds and then you start experimenting with oh, if, if 200 watts equals 35Ks an hour and I want to ride 36, what is, what does it feel to do in training 210 watts and see what 36Ks an hour feels like. And all of a sudden you're starting to really hone in on the specifics of what you want to do on race day and you're replicating it on training. And if you fade, if you say for example, you did 4 by 30 minutes and you're trying to ride 200 watts and if you started to fade and started to hold 195, 190 by the third and fourth effort, you know 200 watts is too high. So you've got instant feedback straight away as to where you're at currently eight weeks out or six weeks out.

So that's really honing in on the training. But you're a really big advocate for getting to this race phase and whether it's, you know, the final eight weeks or ten weeks or six weeks weeks, but starting to think about the race well in advance and not just thinking about what's going to happen on race day in the last two weeks or one week. Because a lot of these things that we're about to talk about, it'll be too late for them. And the first major checklist we want to kind of talk about now is your equipment and you really need to start Thinking about your race day equipment and everything that's required well in advance to make sure that you're adequately prepared. Because there's a lot of things that you need to get right. And you know, it comes down to something like your bike has so many components to it that you need to make sure actually. Right. So that nothing goes wrong on race day or you're limiting any chance of something going wrong on race day. So that's taking it for a service a month out or even longer to make sure that everything's working perfectly. And there's a whole bunch of equipment you need in triathlon or even just cycling. And having your equipment up to scratch is really important to start thinking about again, a bit more in advance than.

Just the last week, especially the bike that, as you said, has got so many more things that can or can't go wrong. So understanding the amount of elevation will determine what gear ratio you have. For a start. If you're on a pancake flat course like, like, yeah. If you're on a pancake flat course like Busselton, you know that the gear ratio you have set up on your bike doesn't need a lot of gear changing. If you're on a really hilly course that has so many ups and downs that you need a really wide range of gears, then you need to have the right gear ratio already on your bike. And that means the front chainring and the rear cassette have to be specific to the requirements of the day. And people, that is a very simple thing that you should be across. And if you're not across that, that, that's something you should find out straight away. Is your bike gear options going to allow you to ride in the ranges of power without riding such a low cadence or being spinning out with a high cadence because you can't get the gear ratio right?

Yeah. And it comes down to everything with part of your equipment for race day. So when you think about the swim, you know, when's the last time you wore your wetsuit? If you've just been doing pool swims, you can't pull your wetsuit out on race day. What if it has a big hole or tear in it? You know it's going to be a disaster. Is your tri suit up to scratch? Does it have any rips or tears in it? Is it old and your chamois aren't fresh? And if you're going to be sitting on the bike for a 90 or 180 kilometer time trial in your tri suit, making sure that it is, you need to Get a new one if necessary. Making sure your running shoes aren't at the end of their lifespan and if you've done 300ks in them, especially the new race shoes, that's probably too much. And if you're going to get new shoes or new bike shoes or your cleats are too worn, these are all things that you need to start thinking about. Your race wheels, do they run perfect? Do they not rub against your bike? With the race setup up, are your brakes and gears are working? What tyres are you choosing? What tyre pressure are you going to be running on this specific course? Have you practiced with that tyre pressure? And tyre pressure is a big one because your subjective feeling of tyre pressure is so interesting, especially if you're deciding to run potentially lower tyre pressure, but you're not used to that. It feels really flat and it kind of can feel slower even though it's actually not. So, yeah, doing a full practice race through routine of trying everything that's going to happen on race day is really important to do weeks out from your race so that you can identify any gaps in potentially your equipment.

Yeah. And, you know, I've often had some comments saying I feel really weird wearing my helmet, my race helmet, you know, in a training day on, you know, in amongst all the, the other guys who are riding on, on the local circuits. And I've got my disc wheel and I've got my tri suit on and I've got my aero helmet and I've really got myself in the race setup. I feel really awkward. Well, don't, you know, you are actually practicing what's going to happen on race day and making sure that everything's comfortable, number one, and you're not overheating with, you know, with the helmet that you've selected, the gears are running properly on your bike with the disc wheel as compared to your training wheels and, you know, your shoes and everything's functioning well, you're comfortable, the position, you've got the bike set up, you need to practice that in full race conditions. And we do that regularly in our races that we call, you know, pre race ready sessions and we, I'm saying full gear, everybody in the full gear. And that way you find out if there's something not actually working well, well in advance from the traditional last minute take it to the bike shop, which bike shop owners hate is, you know, 200 athletes bringing in their bike for a tune up, you know, three days before the race. And you should have all that done well in advance.

Yep. Some other things we hadn't mentioned were, you know, your drink bottle fittings. A lot of people have aero setups or any kind of setup on your bike. Just making sure that it actually all works and your drink bottle doesn't fly out. You know, if you're going to have gels on, on the day, but you're never actually, you know, taping gels to your bike in training. Need to make sure you've got that process right, so you're going to lose your gels and you get used to taking them out of their spot. Your Garmin, or, sorry, your, your head unit on the bike. I shouldn't just say Garmin. There's plenty of brands out there. Or your, your run watch settings. Making sure that your data screens are set up properly, you know exactly what you want to be looking at and what you're focusing on the race. And yeah, you can see there's a lot here that, you know, you really want to start thinking about in these, in this final race ready phase. I mean, you should be doing it in training anyway. But this is really specific to the race ready phase as well.

Ironic. I was watching the world titles in Nice and the bike camera was on Cam Wirth, which was a really good rider to follow because he rode so really well. And for about, I don't know, it seemed like it went for three or four minutes. He could not get his drink bottle into the rear drink bottle holder behind. He just couldn't get it in. I think it was Camworth. I could be wrong there, but whoever the rider was, they could not fit it back in. And it was infuriating watching. I can't imagine how bad the rider felt because he just couldn't fit the bike bottle into the bidden hole.

Yeah, yeah, spot on. One other thing we want to touch on was understanding the race rules. This is a bit of a unique one, but, you know, majority of triathlons have similar rules. But it's a really good idea to read the race guide, read the specific rules for the day and especially around, like, areas you were allowed to go and not go where the toilets are, that kind of thing. This is more race day preparation, but I'm more talking about the actual race rules because there are some little nuances in the rules that you might not be aware of. They're really important to understand, especially in a cycling time trial or triathlon's a lot more lenient with this. But your bike set up, making sure your bike's set up as legal and you're not doing anything illegal. You don't want to turn up to race day and be denied for anything. That is going to be an absolute disaster. And for us, we have the cycling Nationals, Masters coming up and they're really quite strict on bike fittings, UCI legal cycling time trial limits. And a lot of our time trialists have great setups that are specific to triathlon. They need to adjust that for cycling. So, again, you don't want to get to the start line and get rejected for something like that because you haven't read the rules properly or you haven't read the event guidelines properly. That's a really key one that you have to look at well in advance, because if you need to change something, you need to take it to the shop. Again, it's going to take time and you can't afford to risk that in race quick.

And the worst thing that can happen is you get to. In every UCI time trial event, and whether it's a nationals or a state or a world championships, they have. We call it the jig. And you put your bike and it's a setup bike jig that measures every component that they're looking for, whether the seats behind the bottom bracket and the extension bars aren't too far out in front of you. These are all the things they're looking for. And if you have to change that, it means you've been training in the wrong position. And all of a sudden, on race day, you're going to race this race in a different position, otherwise you can't start. So he say to you, your seat's too far above the bottom bracket. You have to move it back. So all of a sudden, all the training you've done has been having the seat where it is, and now, five minutes before the race starts, you have to ride the whole race with a new seat position that is just not ideal preparation. Or he makes you pull the handlebars back towards closer to you than you've had them for the last six months. That's a scenario you don't want to be in.

Yeah, and all these things are just little nuances that we're talking about that really you just have to start thinking over in this whole preparation phase. But I want to take a back to the training and the numbers and your actual physical performance, because all we're saying here is designed to get you physically confident, but also mentally confident for race day. And we're going to talk about numbers in a second. But when it starts to get to that final six weeks, four weeks before your race, you actually start envisioning the race day more and more, it starts to become a lot more realistic. This is the race you've been training for and leading up to. And I kind of wanted to ask you personally, before we get into the numbers and everything, what is that feeling like when you've been training for an Ironman for a year or anyone's a race that they've been really preparing for, you start to get a little bit nervous. You know, things start to really become real for you. You're doing these sessions that are replicating race day. Can you give us an example for you personally where you might have felt. Yeah, I think nervous before a race leading into it and maybe potentially underprepared and kind of what that taught you?

That's a really good question. I think back on maybe the first Ironman, I had a race three weeks prior to that. I think it was two or three weeks prior to it as a half Ironman, it was actually called long course. So it was. It was 2, 80, 20, the PTO distance. Ironically, that's what. Although they're doing 18k run to add up to 100.

Oh yeah, true. Yeah.

I was in the middle of my Ironman training and this was a race as a stepping stone just to get me race ready. And I got a little bit confused in my own mind as to the expectation of my performance. And I was quite shocked at how poorly I performed in that event. So much so that I really lost confidence. And instead of it being a really good idea, it was actually quite detrimentally meant to my mental approach. And I really came into the main event, the Ironman, really unconfident about my performance basically on that one race instead of basing it on my previous six months of unbelievably great training. And when I look back now, I could see that I was still in the middle of a heavy training load when I did that race. And I didn't taper. And that's not the race I was aiming for. I was aiming for one that was three weeks later and I had a taper in me and I had a really hard, you know, half Ironman man under my belt from doing that race. But my mindset was that, oh, I don't think I'm in that good a form. And you know, history says that I went on to win my first ever Ironman and you know, didn't look back from that point on, but it was a real good reminder of. Of, you know, really not being that confident but just trusting the process. And you know, I remember being that week of geez, I hope I don't perform like I did three weeks ago because this is not going to be fun. But, but I had to keep thinking, you know, let's just see how I go. Just keep putting yourself out there. And you know, when I got on the bike I've never felt so good. And obviously because we're riding much slower speed in an Ironman compared to a half Ironman course was completely different. And you know, I had freshened up so well that I was ready to go. So immediately halfway through the race I knew this was going to be a great day. And, and that was something that I really want to get across to people. You know, you need to have a confidence in trusting the process.

Yeah. And I think that that confidence comes from proof and evidence in your actual data. And that's why we take it back to the training now where knowing your own numbers, understanding your own numbers, if you do it right, can you give, can give you so much confidence in this race ready phase. And I think for all our athletes, you know, you, you really implore them to start to learn your numbers again. Once this race ready phase starts really hitting you start doing some of these key sessions, really get a feel for what your numbers mean to you and where, when you sit in that range of percentage of your FTP, for example, and we'll explain that in a second. Get that feeling of what it's going to feel like on race day and don't just think about these numbers in the last week leading up to the race. So can you explain this kind of concept for us? Yeah.

So we want to start this race ready phase with a classic which we always use is finding out, let's just use the bike. Finding out where our current FTP form is. Doesn't matter what happens six weeks earlier, but we're say, say we're 12 weeks out or eight weeks out depending on what event you're doing. And we start, start with what is exactly our FTP number. And from that I would be wanting for that athlete. If it was myself, I'd be going what? Right, well I'll just make a number. I've just done 200 watts. That's. And I've got to find somewhere between 80 to 90% of that is going to be my race power. So what is 80% of 200? It's 270 watts, something like that. It doesn't really matter.

So 80% of 200 is 160.

160.

I don't know how that was very Easy. I don't know how we didn't do that.

But so, so, so we're wanting to, we wanted to find out what our number is for 80 to 90% of that actual FTP. And so straight away we're in race mode. Thought we are actually knowing now that 160 watts is 80% of that 200. So our very next training session should be focused on if I want to do 80% it's 160. If I want to do 90% it's 180. And they're the numbers that are my range between 160 and 180 watts. And so very first training session in that eight week race ready phase, that's what my focus is. And I'm going to see what it feels like to ride 165 or 170 or in training experiment I'll ride at 180 for the last effort and I'll try and ride 160 for the first effort and then I've got a really good feel of what that experience is like. And then the next week I do that same session. I now know what I did in week one and I'm, and I'm going, well, I think 180 equaled 35Ks an hour and 160 equals 34Ks an hour. And I'm just giving you fictitious numbers here. And so, so we've got a real clear idea of what 35Ks an hour is. In over 90K, it's 2 hours 30 or 2 hours 35, whatever that number is. And straight away we know that 180 is 2 hours 25. So our aspiration is to be a 2 hour 25 90k rider or a 2 hour 35. And so you have got something to focus specifically on in those training sessions. If I want to do 35ks an hour, this is the number I have to be at or better. And so if I can't do it in training, I immediately know on race day day that from all the six weeks that I've done, I haven't gone any better than 180 watts. That's as good as I can do. So you go into race day with a clear picture of exactly what your capabilities are. I'm sure you're going to be freshened up with your taper, but this is what the race ready phase is actually trying to give you in terms of your race plan. So you should be thinking about backwards from your race day about what you have as an expectation of the average speed or the time for your 90k and what power is required to do that. And these are the sessions that we're talking about. And whether you're doing 4 by 30 minutes at 160 to 180 or you're doing 2 by 60 minutes at the same, or you're doing 160k straight out, you need to be trying to hone in to those numbers between that 80 and 90%, which in this case we've given the example of 160 watts to 180. You've got to find where you are in that. And obviously if It's a straightforward 60k compared to a 4 by 30, 30 minute effort, you've got breaks in those 4 by 30 minute efforts. So you've got the ability to try and experiment a bit more. And you have to be less risk averse when you're doing a straight out 60 or 75k time trial. But these sessions are key to giving you the mindset about what you are capable of doing. And that's why it has to be more than one go at this. You want to have six or seven, eight goes. And when I ask people to submit their race plan to me, they have no problem. They are absolutely across it. They could tell me without even going and researching. Well, last week I did 175 and I was absolutely nailed. I don't think I could hold that and run well. And already they're forming a really great race plan eight weeks out. And I'm saying to them, great, you've done that. Week one, let's see what happens. Week two, see if you can hold it again. And if it feels different to week one, then already you're improving because these are very specific sessions compared to what you've been doing before, which is really just trying to build your endurance. And now we're actually trying, trying to get you to ride to a specific number. As an example, we were using the bike and the same would be the run off the bike, you know, working out what pace you're capable of doing and what pace you're not yet. And the goal is to strive to get better.

Yep. And this is what we talk about with guaranteeing your own results. Because if you do this properly, if you're doing this throughout the entire race ready phase and you're having so many goes at this and you're just giving yourself more and more confidence about these numbers you can hit. You turn up to race day and unless something goes disastrously wrong, wrong, you know exactly how you're going to perform as long as you just execute the plan properly and do all the things we talk about a lot. And in all these episodes about how to execute on race day, you've got your number there, you're confident you can hit it because you've done it so many times in training, you know your own data and all it's left to do is execute on that race day. And I think that knowing the data is the first step. So paying attention to your own data and really getting a good grasp of this, if you're not paying attention to it, if you're not even tracking it, then that's a problem. But yeah, if you do this for an entire training block, you get to race day supremely confident in the performance you're going to give.

And also if you've got some events that you can do in that last eight weeks, like the example I gave with me doing a half ironman before an ironman and most people can actually find an event or if you can't do one in your training block where you are actually practicing the night before, the morning of getting up and being ready for the event. Yeah. So if there's not a race available, do your own personal mini time trial where you're getting to bed the night before and getting up early and, and having your race equipment all like you're going to do on race day and then going through the whole event and I don't mean a whole half ironman, I mean doing either a swim with a, with a ride and a run and that's giving you a really good practice. And if it's in a real race, then fantastic. But you're, you're actually getting to practice what your expectations are going to be on race day. And that's what the race ready phase is really asking you to do. And I'm a big believer in doing that. And people say, well, you know, eight or nine weeks of this, isn't that too much? Well, no, you want to be race fit. And look at the examples we use incessantly on all of our podcasts with Inka Britzen or these guys doing as many races as they can so that when it comes to the one that they really want to do well in, they're race ready, they're race fit and you know, guys who are doing the grand tours, they go and do a Dauphine or something like that pre stage tour before the tour to get themselves race ready ready. And that's what we're trying to do here. These training sessions are really mini race ready sessions that are going to replicate what's going to happen on race day.

Yeah. And I guess that final point is this confidence and that at peace mentality you can have when you're doing this right. You come to the final weeks of preparation, you come to the last taper week and you come to race day and all this is taken care of mentally and all the physical work's been done and you can actually now just look forward to the race two weeks out. You can start to really enjoy the process of getting excited about the race and looking forward to it because you've done the hard work mentally and physically, you know your numbers, you know what you need to do. Rather than the classic case of some a student who's well prepared for an exam isn't cramming at the end and they get there in a really fresh mindset, but the student who hasn't studied and spends the last four nights, you know, staying up all night, cramming, everything in is as stressed as possible for the, for the exam and doesn't go into. It's not a very enjoyable experience. It's the exact same thing with training. And you know, you can really enhance your experience of the race by doing this.

It's such a great feeling knowing that, well, this is. I'm as prepared as I possibly can be. I actually know what my capabilities are in my, my swim, bike and run numbers and my plan is exactly to replicate that and if I can on race day improve slightly because I'll be a little bit fresher. So it is such a mindset change from being overwhelmed and standing on the beach, just feeling like I don't know what's going to happen today to the person who's not in that situation. They are totally confident about all they've got. The only job they have to do is execute according to the numbers that they've, they've prepared themselves for. And what a different feeling that is on race day.

That's a great way to finish. This is the race ready episode and we hope you enjoy it and use this to your advantage for your own race ready training and we'll see you in the next episode. Sam.