The Story of Gerard Donnelly - Our 100th Episode Special! [PART 1]

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, 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 Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Welcome to a very special episode of the podcast. I am very excited for this episode, dad. It's a very special episode because it is our 100th episode of the podcast. Welcome for the 100th time.

Wow, that went quick. I'm pretty excited as well. I'm not so excited about our topic, to be honest, but. But it's, it's been a great journey and I really hope everybody out there has got some value out of what we've been trying to get across to the listeners. And it's been really enjoyable talking.

So for this episode, we're doing something that I'm personally really, really excited about and you've said that you're not, and that's we're going to tell the story of Gerard Donnelly and the listeners need to know, dad, that you hate talking about yourself. I've had to push you a bit on the podcast to talk about yourself through a lot of the episodes, and that's quite simply because, yeah, it's not about you. You're trying to help other people. But you will tell a story on this show or you'll tell a story to our athletes when you know it's going to benefit them, when you know it's going to help them because you've experienced something and by hearing the story, it might be a lesson that helped them improve. And so that's the aim of today. And so today you've agreed to go through your story and your career, and it is an epic story with some truly amazing lessons in it. And whenever I ask you about it, I still learn new things because there's just so much to uncover. And at the start of every podcast I say, here is your host, Australian Ironman champion, Jared Donnelly. And now we're finally going to hear the details of that story in depth, of how you achieved that amazing feat and more. So we've interviewed some fantastic guests so far on the podcast, some very high caliber athletes and high caliber people in the industry. And now it's my chance to interview you. So how does it feel being on the other side and being the guest on the show?

Yeah, I'm interested to see how this goes. To be honest, when you were mentioning about my journey, it kind of brought goosebumps to me just thinking about some of the things along the journey already. So I don't know how I'm going to go with this, but really, as you said, the reason why you want to tell a story is because I made so many mistakes along that journey and I want to shortcut that for everybody. I want to let them understand what I did wrong and what I did right and don't do the things I did wrong. And I did plenty of them. But I was experimenting all the time, so I suppose it's going to be valuable for people to hear that it's just not always success. You have so many poor results that you learn from that. I think that's the important part about. That's what I'm going to focus on today.

One of the major principles which we'll get into is execution. And there is a big reason why execution is one of your most founding principles in coaching, and that's because on the bigger stage, you learned a hard lesson about execution. And that'll come towards the end of the story. But let's get into it and let's take it right back to 1981. 82, and you started doing what you call Mickey Mouse triathlons.

A really good mate of mine, and we were both playing footy together, said, have you seen this thing on telly, the Hawaii thing? And I know many people have talked about this in their stories and yeah, I had seen it. It was like a freak show on telly and they've turned it into a freak show. Look at these idiots doing, you know, a whole day's worth of activity. And whoever crawled across the line, you know, was the winner. So that got the interest of a lot of people. And there was a, you know, an event that happened in Melbourne called the Nautilus triathlon back in 1981. It started in Frankston and finished at the City Square. And my mate said, come on, let's do it. I didn't even have a bike, so I had done no training. I hadn't swam, ran or ridden competitively, competitively for years. I just played, you know, team sport and really loved it, really loved being a part of team sport. So. So I agreed to line up for this race and. And that was kind of the start of the journey. And I just thought it was a fantastic experience. The whole day was. Was action packed from me borrowing a bike from one of the kids at school, coming out of the water, getting on the wrong bike, riding 10k down the road, thinking, this bike seems too big, even though I'm not sure. But anyway, clearly it was the wrong bike. Rode back to the start, change bikes. Thank God the guy whose bike I was on wasn't out of the swim yet. Got the bike that was, There's a blue one. It was the same as what I was riding and I think it was a gitan. And jumped on that and had a much more enjoyable experience on the way to Elwood. And there was no Marshalls at any traffic lights, so you just had to stop at the traffic lights. And so it was, it was clearly early days. And then ran from Elwood to the city on some journey that was through the back streets and I don't know, people just made their way to the city somehow.

And.

And there were some really good guys winning who seemed to be right across this sport. And I was not one of those good guys.

You weren't, you weren't a hack, you weren't athlete. It was your first time doing a triathlon.

I was a hack triathlete, there's no doubt about that. But I rated myself as a sportsman, so I thought, well, I'll have a go at this. And it was a good lesson in so many things about preparation and planning. And I did no preparation. I had no planning, pretty much had no idea what I was doing, but still enjoyed the journey. And I really understand now what triathletes who are new to the sport, the excitement and exhilaration they feel, no matter how bad an experience it is, it's still pretty fun. When you finish today, you've gone through three different sports and the ups and downs of the day and the things that happen to you, amazing things that happen to you and the people you're swimming next to, bumping heads and the people you're on the bike with, chasing each other. And then, yeah, it was, it was a lot of positives, even though there's plenty of negatives. But that kind of, that was it. I just thought, oh, I'm going to see what, what I can do in this.

And you were one of those triathletes that got addicted straight away.

Yeah. With a poor performance. Yeah, I think it either you either go, that's crap, I'm not doing that ever again, or my mindset was, you know, I can do better than that, so let's see what I can do next time.

That was my point just then. You weren't a hack athlete. You were, you were a talented athlete from when you were a kid. You won state titles, went to nationals, won national title as a 12 year old. So you, you had that fitness in you. You were always a good runner, but as you said, you, once you got older, you switched more to team sports and enjoyed the team sports a lot more.

Yeah, definitely. And I'd grown up being really into cross country and athletics, track, and my dad was really great coach and we had a fantastic running group as 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 year olds down in Warigal. Before my dad was coach, we had Jeff Watt, who was a local optometrist who happens to be the father of Kathy Watt, the Olympic gold medalist from Barcelona 1992 in the road race. So he knew a thing about coaching and he had some good pedigree, obviously with his daughter being an Olympic champion. The first Australian to ever win a road race at the Olympics, which is, you know, incredible. He'd run Boston Marathons, Chicago's. This is in the 1960s and 70s. So to have him mentoring us and my dad learning all of the things that he knew already about interval training, who would ever, you know, it seems common now, but in the early 60s and 70s there was very few people doing that type of training. You know, fartlek was a bit of a word and you know, Bannister was breaking the four minute mile and Ron Clark and those guys, Herb Elliot, you know, in the 60s were kind of dominating athletics in Australia and the world. But he was learning. He just used to, you know, there was no Internet to find information. You had to get books and read things in newspapers and talk to people and he was great at that. Jeff Watt was ahead of his time and he taught my dad so many good things. And they used to have hours of discussions at night when they come over to our place and discuss training and, and it was, it was kind of interesting because you're all caught up in that. Even as a 10 or 1112 year old, I can't believe how determined and motivated I was to have success. And. And we were doing training sessions as 12 year olds, like on a Monday night. I can still rattle off the sessions we did. When we talked to Moneghetti on the podcast, he talked about doing the same sessions for 25 years. Well, that's what we did for since I was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. And it only took till you know, when I was 10 or 11 and 12, where on Mondays we'd do an 800, then a 600, then three four hundreds, then three, two hundreds. And they were all pretty fast. I can remember running the four hundreds in 70, 71 as a 10 year old, a 111, 112 on a grass track that he'd moan for us, bare feet in bare feet. And Wednesdays were six four hundreds and Thursdays was eight two hundreds. That was our program. And then we'd race on Saturday and then Sunday we'd go for a long run in the hills as a 10 year old. And I base my whole running coaching on a lot of those principles.

It's funny that 50 years later it's still the same principle.

And I think we trained probably too hard.

A Wednesday, Thursday track session in a row.

Yeah. And Monday was, you know, after a Sunday and Saturday race it was. But we were, we were the fittest guys in Australia and no one was training like that.

If you look at Olympic 800 meter runner at the moment, the sessions aren't too dissimilar. They're still doing 800-603-2200s.

Yes. Plus they're doing run in the morning, you know, an easy run in the morning, five days a week.

It's funny you bring that point up because I want to bring this out early. And this is absolutely unbelievable. If you're not, if you're listening to just the audio, you won't see this. But it's worth jumping on our YouTube and checking out the footage of this. And you pulled out this. It's an old lecture pad book. It's dated 80, 1986. And it is every single session of every single week of your pro career. And we'll get into your pro career soon. But we can flick through this book and we were flicking through it earlier and there is still eight by four hundreds. So this is in the 60s, you're doing the intervals with the 400 sessions.

And I'm 28 here and yeah, 20.

Years later you're doing the same sessions. And then 15 years later we were doing the same sessions as kids. And now in 2021, Olympic athletes are still doing these types of sessions. It's remarkable because in that era, like you said, there was in the 50s, Roger Bannister and John Landy broke the four minute mile for the first time. And they were the first ones that were experimenting with what do they need to do to run four laps under 60 seconds. And they were doing all sorts of tests and they were doing all sorts of sessions where they would try and run under 60 as many times as they could with a break. And they would shorten that break. It was really experimental time. And then the Nike story worldwide at the same time you're doing this as a 10 year old. Nike is starting to develop in the 60s. And 70s worldwide. And you even Nike was previously Tiger. You even got yourself a pair of Tigers.

Actually Asics was Tiger. Okay, yep. So Tiger used to be Asics and now it's Essex.

Yeah, okay. Yep. I thought, I thought I might have that story wrong. But regardless, you know, that experimentation worldwide was all happening where Nike was being developed and their sort of athletes were doing the same sort of experimenting and their famous quote, Coach Bauman, which is now there's the Nike Bauman headquarters in America, Prefontaine. And yeah, yeah, he will Baumann coach Prefontaine. And they were experimenting with all these types of sessions. And then in Australia there was the Coach Percy Saturday. Yeah.

And New Zealand had Arthur Lydiard, who's our guest last week, was taking a lot of his training sessions from the 70s.

Yes, yes. Right. From Ryan Bolton. Yes. And so this is all happening worldwide where similar style sessions are coming and you're hearing hearsay. It's exactly what you're saying. It's just remarkable to me that. And then we look at this book and so you can see on camera. I'm just going to show the camera here, this book. But it's got Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, week eight. What did you do in the morning? The exact type of session. You've got four by 400 here with. You got your swim sessions, your bike sessions. It's absolutely incredible. We'll get into this book a little bit later. But it's just such a funny point, isn't it, that you were doing these sessions and so then when you come back to the 80s and you start doing triathlon, you know, how to train like an athlete. And so when you decide that you like triathlons the next three, four, five years, you start training a bit more and start taking it more seriously.

Yeah. And grabbing all the experience that I had as a, as a young kid and just remembering the discussions that Jeff Watt and dad had had about, you know, what we should be doing now and how, how to prepare for the season and, and having your goals and what, what times do you think you can do? And, and the, the idea of having data and, and you know, why did I get. Create a journal? Like it's all handwritten and there's no computers for the, those who are listening. There was just no telephones, no computers. Up until 1990, something. 90, I don't know, I can't remember. 94 or something. And up until that stage, you know, everything was just learned from reading about it at a magazine or, or, or just historical books. That had. Someone had done biographies on the life of Herb Elliott and, and Percy Saturday's coaching, you know, remarkable. He'll repeat sessions on the sand dunes at Portsea. You know, that's legendary stuff. And her belliott won the 1960, 1500 meters by 8 meters, you know, just, just ahead of his time. Just had been coached brilliantly, had a massive engine and was a talented runner, you know, Olympic champion. And, and, you know, they're examples of just getting information. And we still do it now. You know, stuff that is relevant, you use. Stuff that's not relevant, you discard and learn more. And that's, that's kind of a message that I want listeners to hear, is, you know, I'm still learning about what works, and I'm still experimenting with myself and reading and hearing other people's ideas and trying to implement them into programs on myself and knowing that this is a better version of version 45. Now I'm at version 70. There's so many versions of you just trying to keep ahead and give everybody the opportunity to be the best they can be. And it doesn't have to be winning Olympic Games gold and winning Australian titles. It's just being a better version of yourself. And, and that's where the planning. And that's why that book is it to me. I think that is data personified. It's. It's me just writing in what I did. I made a plan of what my training week looked like, what my training month, what my training year. And, and there, here I am filling in the data. And we talk about that a lot in our podcasts, post, post analysis. And I was doing that for my training sessions before I had the luxury of sitting at a computer with a spreadsheet.

You've got your races and you ride in your swim leg. How did you feel what happened? Your bike leg, How'd you feel what happened? And your run leg. And you're just putting in your time because there's no more data available.

That's right.

But you wrote.

I wrote, swam strong, lost concentration, finished off the pack. That was my summary. Ride well in the heels on the bike, was weak on the flat, or, you know, we just ran super.

Yeah.

You know, 112 for half marathon. I was like, finished the race off, you know, really pleased.

Yeah. And one of the things that stood out for me in the book is that you wrote down every single race and every single result, and through 83, 84, 85, you were doing every local club race. You started doing some interstate triathlons and your results were slowly getting better. You know, in the 81, 82, 83, you were doing local, what you say, pissy little club triathlons and coming 10th and 12th and then you start to come top five in those local ones, then you start to come top five or six in bigger triathlons. And by the time you hit 1986 you were training really hard and performing well at most races you were entering and in the journal, it's so funny, you were doing one or two triathlons a year in the first few years and then you start ramping it up and then something changed in 84, 85, where you suddenly did 15 races throughout the year. And then there was a turning point on your honeymoon in 1986. So talk to us about that.

Well, certainly getting to that turning point from, as you said, I was teaching full time as a phys ed teacher at a Catholic school in Melbourne, at St Bernard's in Essendon, which was unbelievably good opportunity and I lived about, I don't know, 15k, 20k away and the traffic then wasn't that good. But it's a nightmare compared to what I, what it is not now is a nightmare compared to what it was then. But I just used to commute on the bike as part of my training, so I didn't have time to train because I was coaching the school cross country boys most nights or I was coaching the swimming squad in the morning. So it was far easier for me just to commute on the bike and get my riding in and then swim with the guys and run with the guys. So I ended up pretty much doing three sessions a day and working as a phys ed teacher. I had a fantastic life. It was how good is this? This is, you know, and teaching during the day was, was really good. I really enjoyed it. And, and so getting to that point of starting to do a lot more races, getting fitter, concentrating on my training and, and, and experimenting with a lot of the training sessions with the boys at the school to, to get them and you know, the sessions, what do we do on the sessions? We did lots of six by fours and eight by two hundreds and, and seeing how they coped with that volume and learning that they couldn't quite cope with it because they didn't have the background fitness and so a lot of them got injured early. It was too much, too much intensity. So really learning unfortunately by making mistakes.

Which is a great point because we haven't released this podcast yet, but we just got interviewed The Norwegian head triathlon coach, one of the top triathlon coaches in the world at the moment because of the success of the Norwegian athletes. And we were shocked to hear him say on the podcast almost identical what you just said just then with his athletes. He said, oh, I actually wasn't that good at the start. I was very much experimenting. My athletes got injured. This is with world class athletes and it is just a constant learning process, no matter what level you get to.

Yeah. And so by the time I'd done that for three or four years, I was really into it, like in a big way. And it got to a point where the teaching bit was. Was getting in the way a bit. You know, I couldn't fit in enough training and I was trying to build relationships with. With bikes and bike races and bike shops, and so it was pretty full on.

Trying to get some sponsorship.

Yeah, yeah. Trying to get some assistance. And I could see if I wanted to be serious at this, I had to have the right equipment. I had no equipment. I just had a clunker of a bike. And, um. But I found some really good people who helped. And Peter Lamont from Action Cycles, you know, what a helpful guy. You know, just, yeah, what do you need? You know, I'll help you. And he came up with this ridiculous bike that was a normal back wheel and a small front wheel. And I think Francesco Moser wrote it in a time trial to hold the world record in the hour in the velodrome. And he rode a similar bike. And Peter LeMond made this bike for me and I wrote it in the Hawaii loves you triathlon in. In Kauai. And he couldn't turn because the wheel hit your foot. It was just a weird bike, but it was state of the art and that's how involved he was. So you got people around, you surround your people yourself with people who are. Who are on the journey with you. And that. That was good. And so by the time I. I eventually got married, I was determined that there was the, you know, I. I had a few goals in mind, but I needed to be on board with your mum to say, this is what I want to do. As soon as we got married, I said, on my honeymoon, I had lots of time to think because we were, you know, away from school, away from training, not doing anything but relaxing and enjoying ourselves. And lots of time to think. And it was there. I just thought, you know what? I just want to have a crack at this. I want to have a crack at seeing how far I can go. And I Said to her, I don't know how we can do this, but can I do this full time? And we talked about it for the whole time we were away and she said absolutely. And she was phys ed teacher, ironically as well. We went through school together and we both went to the same uni together. And so she had a really good job and through that she was able to work full time. We didn't have any children. It was 1986 and I put my resignation in after a couple of good results and, and, and that next year I turned full time.

So you first kind of really, you basically made the decision on the honeymoon but you didn't fully commit yet. But talk to me about. Because you knew you had talent and that thing inside you saying I want to give this a crack full time and see what I can do. And you've spoken to me about having four goals in your life and how this all kind of came together in that year.

It's so true. And growing up, one of my biggest ambitions was to be a professional sportsman. And I just didn't care what sport. I wanted to be a professional soccer player. I played state level, I wanted to be a footballer, I played another good level. But in the team sports I just felt let down a lot of the time by my teammates. Even though I loved the team environment, I wanted to be in a sport where I was responsible and only me. And so I thought I still want this ambition to be a professional footballer or soccer player or a cricket player. But I was kind of being held back. And so I thought, well, if you're such a hero, go and do it as an individual. Go back and be a running, you know, a track runner or. But the triathlon kind of thing, you know, this was it. I thought this is the sport that I think I can fulfill that goal of being a professional and see how long I can be. So my ultimate goal was as a physique teacher. Growing. I just wanted to play sport. That's why I became a phys Ed teacher. Anything to do with, you know, marbles, where there was competition, I wanted to be involved. And when I was at Unique, we did gymnastics, we did trampolining, we did sports that I'd never ever seen because we had no phys Ed when I grew up at school we had sport which was play footy in winter and you place cricket in summer. That was at my school. So I never knew what phys Ed was. And I heard that there was a course where you could actually be a phys Ed teacher. Thought that's what I want to do because I can just play sport. And through unique. I just played sport for four years and there was some, some theory stuff there that I didn't have much interest in, but I should have taken a bit more interest in. But, but certainly, you know, that was such an enjoyable part of my early, early days. And so the goal of being a full time at something was now firmly entrenched in my head.

This is my opportunity and be a professional.

Yeah. And the risk reward was huge. Here I am asking my new wife if I can not work full time and just have a, you know, have a muck around with being a professional athlete. And, and we both were on board with it. We decided that if I could do well for the rest of the year, then next year we would start it. And so the events came for the rest of the year and that's when I started to actually do okay. And then what were the other three.

Goals before we get into those races?

I wanted to, I always wanted to represent the green and gold. I always wanted to represent Australia. And whether that was on the ATH track or, you know, there wasn't much opportunity as a footballer, but as a cricketer, I thought I could be a test cricketer. That's how ambitious I was. But anything to do with representing my country is. It was a really big drive for me. So anything to do with national championships was, you know, and, and being able to represent your country in Olympics or Commonwealth Games. I just thought that's a goal that I, that I would like to tick off. And I'm picking goals that are pretty bloody massive here. I want to be a full time professional athlete and I want to represent my country. So I'm not picking little, little things here. And I think that's what drives me with my coaching is I really want people to think about what do they want to get out of the sport they're doing, whether they're cyclists or whether they're runners or whether they're triathletes or mountain bikers. What are you trying to achieve? And being a better version of yourself is as big a goal as being a representative of your country. And that's the message I want to get across. There's no, that's big, that's small. Everything you select is your big goal. And being a better version of yourself is massive because that takes commitment, planning, preparation, all the things it takes to be an Olympian. And you know, we've talked to many Olympians on this podcast and they all say the same thing. You know, it's consistency, it's the willingness to put yourself out there and risk everything and put yourself on the line, pin a number on, and even if you're not racing, just try and consistently train to improve yourself. So that was the second big goal, and I thought I could trump that one by saying, I want to win a national title, I want to be an Australian champion at something. And so on that honeymoon, they're the three things that I started with, and I added a fourth. So the three things was, if I'm going to do this, these are the three things that I want to tick the boxes of. And your mom, as you know, is on board with whatever crazy ideas I have. And she would never say to me, are you being a bit ambitious with that? You know, what else? If you don't achieve those three things, will you be forever bitter and twisted? She never said any of that stuff. It was like, if that's what your dream is, go for it. And the fourth thing was, I want to do this in my own time, so I don't want to have to stop because of some reason. I want to be able to do this. And when I'm finished, I'm finished. And of course, there were reasons why you have to finish, but, yeah, so that was the goal. There were the four things.

Let's see how it unfolded. So that year you started entering more races and performing well. And there is one particular race which changed everything, and that was you ended up going to Hawaii for the World Long Course Championships. And I want to bring something else out again, another prop, because we have this incredible article that I think one of our clients might have. Oh, no, actually, I think Gran kept this, didn't she? Yeah, she did. And this, the headline reads. And I'll show it on video, but for those just listening, the headline reads. So you.

You.

You're not quite a professional yet.

I'm still working at St Bernard's yeah.

And you've gone to this race to test yourself against the world's best current triathletes. And you've. You're really improving as an athlete. And this is the 23rd of November. It's dated 1986, and the headline is dark Horse Stuns Field. Gerard Donnelly recently left Australia with high hopes of finishing in the top 20 of the world Long Course Triathlon Championships in Hawaii. And there's a quote from you that says, I didn't expect to finish anywhere near the winners, as I was basically just aiming for a place in the top 20. But you ended up coming fourth in that race, and there's a whole lot here, you do know what to expect. It says here you're still sports master at St. Bernard's College, which is in contract restricting in how much training you can actually fit into one day. Um, so you set off on the beach in hopes and with nervous tension, and it goes through the race and it's quite an incredible read, to be honest. But that. That probably cemented in your mind that you can. You can do this.

I've got a preface, though. Jord. It was. What date Was that? October.

23Rd November.

November. Okay. So most of the guys had done Hawaii in October. So I'd picked a race that I knew there was probably not going to be such a good field because they'd all competed. And mind you, Scott Molina was in the race. I think he won.

Yeah.

Who has won? Kona.

Yeah.

So. So I was, you know, I couldn't get to Kona that year in 1986. I don't know what the reason was, but so I thought, what's the next biggest world race? Because Kona is a world Ironman. This is a world long course. So I thought, right, this is a race and I'll. I'll just see how I go. I had no. I rang the race organizer and said, you know, I've come somewhere in Australia. I think I came second at the Endurathon. Australian Endurathon Championships. And so she gave me accommodation. So that was my first experience of I had to fly over there. And then she gave me accommodation. I stayed with some other people where I met some really good people, shared accommodation and raced and. And was. Was ecstatic with the result. I. I just never knew that the level I got to was. Was, yeah, it was a real game changer for me and come home from that. And it was, you know, exciting to say that, yep, this is. This is a chance for. For me ticking off some of these goals that I had set myself. And that was a real turning point, that race. And you know, I look back on that and. And that gave me an unbelievable confidence that if I kept training and learning about how to get myself better, that I could do whatever I wanted in this sport. Even though I hadn't won anything. It was just a confidence booster for me and I thought I belonged.

So you came home and quit your job?

Yep, I resigned and taught. You know, it was November, so just finished off the year and resigned and. And started my career in, you know, day one. I was as a professional. And yeah, it Was a really exciting period and it was, you know, as you would expect. You know, what races can I do? Can I do 100 races in two weeks? Can I train the house down made. I made a hundred mistakes in the first two years of, you know, the first six months, first three months. You know, everybody's telling me all the. I got all advice from all. Reuben Chapins came out to. He was in that race as well. And he was a really good Hawaiian athlete. He came to. Came to Australia and stayed in Melbourne and. And Brian Upton was the guy who let him stay at He's. It was the. The pub in Mount Waverley on the corner there, across the road from the glen. Can't remember the name of the club but. But Reuben came out and he was professional, he was full time. And so which I trained with him. Boy, did I. I was on a steep learning curve and he was just laughing at the stuff I was doing. He said, you're training too hard. Because I was still doing my ATHS training, you know, still doing the. The intervals, not doing any endurance. I was competing in an endurance sport. You know, I was. I was doing all this hard stuff. Hard stuff's good, but not every session. And that was a. That took a long time. And now it's easy for me to say now, you know, you're trying to do art and people go, no, no, I want to get better. And that's how I was. I wanted to get better. I want to get better quick. I want to get better now. I don't have four years, I have to do it now. And I didn't have the base and I got really good at getting the base really quickly. And one of the decisions we made, because your mum was teaching at Berwick and I was teaching at Essendon and we lived in Box Hill, which is halfway between, so it's a fair distance between the two jobs. So now I wasn't teaching at St. Bernard's and I was free to live anywhere and we both decided that we needed to go to Dandenongs to train. And it was very close to Berwick. It was literally 15 minute drive for her school and I could live anywhere. And I chose the Danny Nongs because it had the famous Sherbrooke Forest where Ron Clark used to train. Chris Wardlaw, you know, in his heyday, was a really good runner before he coached Moneghetti. This is, you know, in that era.

So for those that don't know, the Dandenongs is this hilly region which we still live now. You know, the Family still lives. And it's 40km east of Melbourne and it's the closest kind of real good hilly mountain range.

Yeah, but it's Nothing like Boulder, Colorado.

Or it's, it's 600 meters.

Yes, is the maximum to Olinda, but it's the hills. And the strength that, that I knew was the difference between pretty much winning and losing. And, and that's what I lacked. I lacked strength. I had speed to burn. I was a really good 800 meter runner and it was something that I, I just couldn't sustain it. I'd run well, you know, for half, half marathon or even, you know, 10Ks and 15Ks, but when it came to the marathon, I just faded badly. And so that was an easy no brainer. We have to move to where I can train at Sherbrooke Forest, um, and get the leg strength that I, you know, really needed so that the back half of these runs I could sustain the pace I was starting with. And you know, all the athletes I coach will laugh because, you know, starting strong and finishing and fading is the thing that, you know, that, you know, I've said for fuck's sake, so many times to people, you know, what were you thinking? And it's exactly what I was doing. But it was because I wasn't fit enough. The guys now are making the mistake. They're fit enough, but they're still picking the wrong starting number. So, so that was, you know, that was a game changer. And within, within a year, well, within six months, I was, you know, I was running the house down without doing the hard, flat out intervals that I used to do. I was still doing, you know, one interval session a week, but you know, two heel repeats, you know, one he'll repeat and one long endurance run. And you know, that is still the bread and butter of, of what I, I know works and we've got examples even the last three years of people trying to run too fast and then getting them to run strong in the hills and they're doing PBS without doing any intervals and not getting injured. It's an unbelievable experience you have to go through yourself before you can manage to help other people.

So talk to me about your mindset and how you were coping over that two year period. You were really changing your training based on everyone you were learning from. You said mentioned that one guy that told you, you know, you needed to train a bit easier, but it wasn't just him. There was a lot of athletes you were going to races, learning from people, training with different squads.

I Was like the super sponge. You know, I had all my own theories but these guys were beating me. So I wanted to know why and what was I doing wrong. That because I, you know, without being too boastful, I really rated myself yet I wasn't winning everything. And for me that was a little bit hard to take. So I set about finding out what everybody else was doing and just picking and choosing the components that I thought were useful and getting rid of stuff that I thought was waste of time. And so I joined groups for running, I joined groups for swimming, I joined groups for riding. And I started by doing all their sessions and realized pretty quickly there was so much irrelevant stuff happening. And then just picked the one session with each group that I thought was going to help me push me. The day that I wanted to train hard, I joined those groups and they were smashing me in, in most sessions and it was quite frustrating and you know, just really had to hold my nerve and back myself that it will take time and I can't expect it to happen. You know, I'd been really seriously doing it for, since 84 so I should be doing better than I am, you know, considering I'd really been serious for quite a long time. But not now. When you, when you go professionally full time, it's not a great difference from what I was doing before except I have more period to rest in between my sessions rather than working. So more time on my hands and I could do a lot more of the 1 percenters with the stretching and strength and conditioning and sleep, having naps during the day, eating really well. So all those things started to slowly help me perform in training better and, and, but really getting information from other people, understanding, asking questions and learning and, and being leaving my ego at home and act, you know, just pretending I know nothing and, and I'm going to learn as much as I can and, and I think that was the turning point for me was you know, stop acting like you know everything and, and learn from people who are better than you.

So 1987, you go through that year and you were, you had some good results, were you? Where were you sitting comparative to the Australian field in all these races?

Unheard of.

Yep.

Just most people, you know, were winning. Same people were winning a lot of the time. First, second and third, fourth. Didn't change much.

Fifth.

And the depth started to grow in Australian triathlon cause it became very popular and I was sort of getting shunted further down. Couldn't work out what races suited me really. And that was a big a Bit of a, you know, because I didn't have the endurance at the start. And then that, that year of being in Belgrave, you know, it took, it took the whole year before I started to really develop my running skills. And as I said, I rated myself as a runner, yet I wasn't really running well in triathlon, which proves that, you know, it's a three sport event, it's not just running. So, so I really riding around the hills of the Dandenongs on the bike, you know, and remember the gearing and the steel bikes we had then? Like I, my gearing was 53, I think we had a 5 cog back, but it was, might have been a 13 straight block, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 or something. Trying to ride around the Dandenongs with a 53, you know, 17 on some of the hills. I was zigzagging, you know, I couldn't even get up some of the hills and boy did I become strong in the legs and become a really good bike rider over a period of time. But it wasn't my strength. You know, I did swimming squad as a junior, so I was competent swimmer, but I was not an elite swimmer and I'd been in a bike club since the early 80s. So I knew how to bike race, but I didn't know how to time trial. I had very good tactical understanding of bike racing, but I had no idea how to ride threshold and so I wasn't strong enough either. I could, I could do one and two minute efforts and with the best of them then recover and because I was, as you know from a runner, you know, slightest recovery on a bike and you're good to go again. But holding that sustained threshold was something I was very weak at and, and so that's what I honed a lot of my training around was doing. You know, you've seen that diary, it's got, you know, 4 by 15 minute efforts threshold, you know, just holding, holding what I felt was going to be my race feeling because I had no power meter or data or anything. So it was just doing repeats of deal riding and trying to measure my efforts, really practicing how to measure your efforts in training so that when it came race day, not overcooking it, which I did many times, but boy, it was a real learning curve and, and by understanding how to train better, the improvement started to happen, you know, slowly, but not quick enough for my mindset. But certainly my mindset was how am I going to get better? Because I'm absolutely behind the eight ball here, there's guys who are way better than me.

That same year, Japan, Ironman, you got to Japan which is a, to race against some of the world's best. Um, and you had a great result there which again was probably proof of how far you were coming. And you came seventh, which was.

Yeah. And look, I still wasn't competing that well in Australia. It showed you the talent and depth we had in Australia and I, I was surrounding myself with really good people and Peter Farmer who actually his wife Judy Farmer, she had a clothing company called Fancy Pants and that's the kid I wore. We became really good friends. He was I think about 10 years older than I was, a really quality triathlete and a thinker. Attention to detail was really serious about it and he was my mentor and again surrounding myself with people who are just fantastic and I suppose his advice. And I trained with him all the time. You know, from early days the long endurance sessions slowed me down. Not trying to do, you know, three hours hard and then that's enough Jared, you need to do five hours, you need to do six hours slow down, get the strength in you and stuff like that was invaluable. And without those people around me I think it would have taken a lot longer to get to where I wanted to be. I suppose that same year you went.

To Kona, you were lucky enough to get to race Kona.

Yep. And I was about to say with Peter Farmer we had a team called Team Australia and Peter Stevens who was the chief editor of the Age at that time, he managed to get Carltonara Breweries to sponsor this Team Australia. And through this group we got to race at Japan and we had the best athletes in Australia go in this team and it was brilliant to go on a team to Japan and Scott Tinley was there, some of the legendary world class athletes were there and to come in the top 10, it was another example of, you know, I'm doing well internationally, I'm doing as well as I am Australia, as I am internationally. So. And that was a great, a great experience and, and then going from there to Kona. What was that like first time? Yeah, and, and I was quite sensible because I, I had the long term plan of I'm going to do this race and learn. And Peter Farmer drummed that into me, Edori Dunkona before and he said it's like nothing you'll ever experience again. You can do Ironman's anywhere you like but this is, this is completely different. And I'd heard and seen on Wild World of Sports Them running through the lava fields and the intense heat. And so you were just, you were so nervous going there. And we trained all through winter in Melbourne to go to Kona in October. What a ridiculous preparation. We trained it really well, but we were freezing most of the time. By the time we got to Kona, we got there, you know, a week early, thinking that was good. And my goal was just to experience it the first year and then come back again to race it. So I was really pleased with. I got through it, I got through it. I shared some great experiences. And again, the Team Australia had a. Fosters. Team Australia and that was some really exciting times. Met some great people. Greg Brown and. And the like. So, and, and ended up training with those guys a little bit more closely from that point on. And, and from that point. So Japan and Kona were two really good experiences that again gave me confidence that I was on the right track. And coming back, it was entering the Australian summer, so we had trained the house down in winter. So that summer was a real example of good preparation. And then coming into, you know, December, January, February, March, April, the form that we were in was, Was outstanding.

So, I mean, the result in Kona was not as relevant to you, but you came 57th or something and you. There's a great photo crossing the line, I think, with one of your teammates, Rod Sodaro. You guys hold each other's hands up because it was just a fantastic feeling to actually finish because you were so nervous about what would.

And run strong, run even. Run strong, ride strong and not, not just run controlled with patience and do the whole race with patience of not trying to kill myself. And there were plenty of people falling apart. That was the year Julie Moss crawled across the line.

The famous video.

Yeah. You know, that got the headlines. The winners didn't get much headlines, but she got the headlines for. She was an absolute gun triathlete. I think she won Kona, but she pushed herself way beyond. And you know, that was. That was an eye opener to me to see what. How far the human body could actually go. But it was a good, good, good experience to go and do it and set me up for.

So at this point, how is the dream of becoming Australian champion going?

Because it's pretty far away.

What would you be ranked among these? 10th, 12th, 15th?

If I was lucky, yeah.

And yet you had this dream and you were starting to come into form.

Yeah. And there was a bit of pressure on my. I put pressure on myself because here I am, I've had a whole year of no work. And there's people, people around you going, how's it going? You know, doesn't seem like much has changed. So I felt a little bit of that. It wasn't intentional, but it's always there, perceived. Um, but I just stuck to, you know, what I thought was working and, and as I, as the longer I lived in Belgrave, the better I was becoming. The coincidence was, was extreme to me because I. In my journal, I was just running similar courses every single week. And without trying. My times were coming down. I was getting stronger and stronger and writing same courses each Wednesday, I'd say two minutes faster. You know, I wasn't trying to kill myself, but I had no data. Except for the time you're doing the exact same loops. Yeah. Because that had the most hills.

Yep.

And in other days I was doing easy rides. I'm just talking about the days where I was meant to be riding and running hard. So that was kind of exciting. I knew from the times that I was doing without any other data, I knew the times and of course there's wind and rain and, and temperature that would affect those results. But, but generally I could see that I was improving from, you know, six months early. I was doing now 15 minutes faster than I was doing six months ago. So that's gotta be good. Good sign. So I couldn't wait for the races to start happening. And. And I'd set myself on Foster 1988 for the Ironman. So now I'd done Japan and I'd done. I'd done Hawaii. So I thought I was pretty, pretty, pretty good shape to go. Okay.

That was the Australian Ironman Championships in Foster.

Yes.

Had you told anyone that your ambition was to win when you were not a way?

No, that was just between your mum and I. I think I told Peter Farmer that, you know, and he believed me. He. He said, there's nothing stopping you here. You. You've just got to believe in yourself.

Guys didn't rate you. It would have been embarrassing to say it.

Yeah, no, I just wasn't even mentioned, which is great. Underdog. That's a great way to come into it. I wasn't a factor or a consideration.

And so at what point, how long out from the race did you start to believe that you would go?

Well, at this race, we did the World long course. Sorry, the Australian long course two weeks prior. And we were just looking at that before, and I actually ran super in that, in that day. And, and I knew then that I was, I was, I didn't win that race but I came, you know, pretty good at placing somewhere I can't even remember. I'd have to look the, look up the book but, but yeah, that was a real confidence booster and it's amazing, isn't it? You know for those listening how a shocking result can just deflate you so much and then some good performances can. You can just start to realize that you, you're a chance for whatever you want to do.

So I really want to paint this picture of this, of this six months, three months, one month leading into the Australian championship because two weeks out you suddenly found yourself in a really good position. But the lead up to that, it was a single minded goal.

Yeah and look I'd done the endurathon at Geelong, I think I came second. So that was another result.

The results were suddenly 10th, 15th, seventh down to.

Yeah. So you know don't forget I had started this in 84, 85. So I had people say oh you just came from nowhere. And I'm saying no I had since 84 to 88 I had four years of being nowhere. And where have you come from? Well I've done all of this planning to this week and the confidence I got from Geelong, you know I really thought I should have won that race but just fell short a bit. But just knowing that I can do this and it was all to do with execution, better execution, stronger at the back half of the ride and the run and being a hold your nerve, not lose the plot, have a tough mental approach that I deserve to be here. And all those things that I tell my athletes now prior to their race is they're talking about doing a PB and you deserve to think that you can do a PB because all the training you've done is telling me that that's possible. I won't tell you that if I don't think it's possible. And being patient in the race and being conservative almost it's a big day, it's nine hours and for summits 1112 hours. So, so you've got to actually think about the big picture all the time and, and, and just concentrate on being in the moment. And in those days it was listening to how your body's feeling, how you're coping and you know the, the nutrition advice I had from Dr. Louise Burke who's just one of the best nutritionalists now, pioneering nutrition. Pioneering. And we did some testing at Footscray Institute on it was an epic testing. I think I've told you this story. We did two weeks on a trainer on an indoor trainer. Well, it wasn't a smart trainer. It was a. Just one of those ones where you just had the roller underneath your back wheel. And it was 120km each Saturday, two Saturdays apart. One week you were on the nutrition, the other week you weren't. You're on a placebo, just a glucose sweet drink. And it was a competition. It was teams of. It was 10 people. I think it was five. Five teams or two. There's 10 of the best triathletes went and helped Louise with her nutrition experiment. So it was a study and on nutrition and endurance and, and I. It's when you're in a room with, you know, Greg Stewart. Greg. Greg Brown, um, all the top drivers, all the. Yeah, you know, Greg Stewart had come second in Hawaii, you know, just incredible athlete Tim Bentley. I could rattle, rattle the names off and, and you know, you were in that room you don't want to be. And they were taking muscle biopsies in the middle of it. Blood tests. She was ahead of her time and, and giving you the drink, but you didn't know which drink you were on. So, you know, I don't know, 80k into the ride, I, I'm riding too hard and fading badly and you know, guys are riding really well and you kind of look around the room thinking, is he just fit or is the, or is the nutrition helping him? And I had to get carried to the car. That was a horrible experience. And then the next week I was thinking, well, I hope that wasn't the drink. And now I'm going to perform worse because it was the worst experience of four hours on a bike that I can ever remember. Anyway, of course the story is just rode the house down and finished 20 minutes quicker. And her drink was a game changer. So that's what I used at, at Costa. And you know, all those little things all contributed, came together at the right time and, and you got to be grateful for knowing all these people at the time, you know, the Peter Farmers and the Louise's and um, and you know, going back, right back, you know, to the start. So, so you're thinking of a lot of these things when you're preparing. You've got a lot of time to, to think about this race. It's. For me, it's the big race.

It's your A race.

It's. It's what I'm, I'm. This is my destination race. And not sure what I would have thought if I hadn't performed. But as it turned out, winning that Was a. Was a game changer.

You talked about having a tough mindset there. Anyone that knows you knows when you decide that you want to win something, you're ruthless in your attitude towards it. And you've told the story on the podcast, actually, of how much it was your focus and how when you were doing this course around the Dandenongs and doing your big loop, and when you'd finished the loop, you would visualize yourself finishing this round Iron man and crossing the tape and putting it. And you'd actually put your hands in the air on the training run.

Yeah, I had bollards to stop motorbikes and bike riders from going into the trails of Sherbrooke Forest. And the bollards are still there and it could just fit your body through and you know those bollards. And because you've run that loop many times, and when I came to that at the end of that loop, that was fist pump, hands in the air. I had to go through the bollards to get that. So that was, you know, an excuse if anybody was looking at me going, what the hell are you doing? So I have to get through the bollards. But that was me visualizing coming down that finish straight. And I remember coming down that finish straight, thinking about that training session that I did repeatedly, where I absolutely deserved in my mind to be coming down the finish straight at Foster Tongue Curry that day, knowing that all the work I'd done and I had a lead where I could come across the finish line and, you know, how did, how.

Did the race pan out from, from the start?

Yeah, look, I was in good swimming form, so I wasn't that far back behind a really good swimmer called Rick Pallister, who was a gun swimmer. And he was off on the bike miles ahead of everybody. And I. I don't remember many other people around me at transition, but I was head down to try and catch him, and I caught him. I don't know how into the, far into the race, but I think it wasn't more than 30 or 40k into the race. And from that point on, I was in front and I knew there was so many good athletes behind me and I just could have been coming. They were coming. I knew that because we had out and back and I could see, I could sort of see where they were. I was always thinking of, in terms of data, where are they, how far? And I was looking at my watch to see how far they were at the different variations of the turns. And it was a really dead Road suited me down the ground, undulating, you know, just like the back of the Dandenongs, just crappy roads and, and I knew the strength I had and all I had to do was maintain that lead from these guys no matter how hard they were riding, as long as I stayed ahead.

Do you have any low points on the bike?

I don't remember that. I remember the run also.

You probably don't remember low parts when you win a race.

Yeah, no, it was all. It all seems pretty fine actually. But, but, but in the bike I knew that I had to concentrate on my nutrition because I had that experience lab and, and that was a key thing. I definitely felt I had an advantage if I could keep myself from going hunger flat. You know, I could maintain whatever pace that I, I was giving myself and, and you know, that's hard to do when you know you've, you've only got two drink bottles and you know, we didn't have. I don't think, I don't think we had stations where you could stop and get special needs bags. Whatever I carried I had and it was good enough to get me through. So. So I remember coming off the bike and just really trying to find out from anybody how far behind they were, which is a really bad way to think. You need to be thinking about what you're doing next.

Reasonable in a marathon though to.

It is. Yeah. Just know I was asking the question because I wanted to know whether I needed to be right at the top of my range for my running or whether I could ease into it. That was kind of what I was asking. If they were right there. I knew that I was going to be under the pump so I didn't want to run too hard early. And so they're, you know, their experiences that I pass on now to athletes is having knowledge about what's happening is really crucial in making good decisions. So I knew the guy I'd trained with, Rod Serdaro. I trained with him a lot. He was a better runner than I was and it turns out he was second off the bike. And I thought, well, this is going to be interesting. I think I only had two or three minute lead and anybody would think, well that's a fair way but you know, we're both competent runners but he's a better runner in training. But I wasn't sure how hard he'd ridden. He was a very average swimmer. So he must get second off the bike. He's come through the whole field. So he, I thought he must have written the house down, but he got to be tired, so maybe he's not going to run as well. But we'd done lots of long, hard rides and runs off the bike where he dropped me. Remember distinctly being dropped by him many times. And so I thought, geez, I'm under pressure here and this is going to really test me, so just hold my nerve, run the pace that I know I can sustain and try not to, because we passed each other. And I tried to look like I was relaxed and he was like pumped super aggressive. And yeah, Jared, you know, you're going well, you know, really encouraging. And I was thinking, geez, he's on, he's on fire. And I was thinking, I don't feel, I don't feel that good. I don't feel like he looks. But I put on a brave face as we went past and he high fived me and I was just trying to check how far up behind he was and yeah, just really concentrating on him too much and then snapped out of that and started concentrating on, stop thinking about him. Run your race. And then they had kilometer marking, so I was able to time from my limited watch that I had that I was still running the same pace and then starting to think about all the training sessions that I'd ever done, including 400 runs around Sherbrooke. That was. Was going to be the difference right now. And, and now's the time to, to really think positively about how well prepared I am. And he's going to have to run the house down to catch me because I'm strong, I'm super strong. And at the back of that course was a couple of hills and I thought, you know, on the flats I was running well, but as soon as I got to the hill, I just felt like I was home. And did you pass him again? Yep, yep, we did, yep. And. And he, I think the next time he said, you got this, you know, I can't get you, he conceded. Yeah. And it was something like that in a really good way. You know, he actually went on to win two years later, which I was so wrapped for. But, you know, his time was going to come. But it was, it was at that point I thought, he's conceded. That's interesting because I'm still, I'm still, you know, possible blow up, blow up, you know, but it was only about 5k to the finish, I think. I can't remember the details, but do.

You remember at the point where you. You'd want it?

Not until I thought 1 or 2k to go. I Still didn't know where he was. He could have told me that he's conceded and he was. That was his tactic. I don't know. You know, you just don't know what people are thinking. And he could have improved. So there was no information to tell you what was going on and how.

Was it to come down that straight?

I have to. Yeah, it gets me emotional even now. So you just think about all of the things you've ever done since you were a little boy, almost. So I do get emotional on these things. But it was one of those days where you just couldn't be more proud of what you've achieved and stop.

That's right.

And I suppose, you know, thinking about my. My dad and you shouldn't get emotional like this about something that's 40 years ago.

But.

But that's how much it meant to.

Me.

And I think finishing and seeing Andy at the finish line and Liam had been born and he was in the pusher in that first dream of winning Australian title. So that was, you know, that was kind of so special, but it was just not about me. It was everybody involved who had guided me, who had. And every time I saw another person like Peter Farmer was there, it was. Yeah, this sounds terrible. I don't even know whether this should be on.

I disagree. And that's why I pushed you on it, even though I know it would bring out this reaction because.

Yeah, but just hugging your mum and hugging Liam and hearing the announcer saying, you're the Australian iron Man champion, and it's something that's meant everything to me, and. And it's not. It's not the end of or the best thing that's ever happened to me, but it's one of those things that I suppose because you work so hard at it and you've gone on a journey yourself with a whole group of people who are in your corner, and I think I just was so wrapped for everybody involved that they were a part of that. That journey. And even, you know, Peter Lemon from the bike shop and, you know, the guys I've mentioned all the way through from Jeff Watten and dad, of course, but. But it was. It was one of those things I'll just never forget. And it's. It makes it worthwhile. And whether you win or lose, the satisfaction, you know, the next year I lined up again as favorite, of course, and. And, you know, you brought back to earth very quickly. You know, I got second and I was distraught and the feeling was. Was so different and. And Tony Sattler, who'd come seventh in Hawaii. He was no slouch. And to be beaten by him was, you know, so the emotion of that year and then knowing that I'd arrived and ticked off one of my. My goals was. Was fantastic. And, and I was super confident from that point on about any race that I went into. And, and of course, going from there to, I think the Australian biathlon, which is duathlon, was on next. And that was a ridiculous event. 10k run, 80k ride and 10k run for a duathlon, which now they do 525. And to win the Australian Duathlon title, literally straight after that, you know, it's.

The same, Same triathletes competing.

Yeah, exactly the same. And, and, and all of a sudden I, you know, people were asking me what training I was doing, whereas I was asking everybody else for the previous two years. And that was a real, A real interesting feeling I had. I. I was quite shocked at how people rated me from not ra Just by winning one race.

It was one big race.

Yeah. And I gained a lot of confidence from the methods that I had instilled in myself. And I had been coaching people for free for years and learned so much about coaching others, and coaching myself was quite difficult. So. So there's so many positives that came out of that for the next sort of two years, but that was two goals ticked off. I was a professional triathlete and I won a national title.

And people have been asking you how to train ever since, for the next 30 years.

Yeah. And that actually gave me confidence too, because when you do something well, you believe in yourself, don't you? You just go all. It worked for me. Why wouldn't it work for other people? And that's the fun part for me is knowing all the mistakes I made in my training, in my preparation on race day. You know, you just learn so much from stuffing things up that you become, when it comes together, that's what gets you emotional. It's because there's so many things contributing to it that you've done so wrong, and all of a sudden you've done it all right on the one day. And I suppose I don't want to be boasting, but I pride myself in performing when it counts. And I was just so wrapped that on the day that I actually. It's a mental. It's a big mental thing. You know, I'm putting so much pressure on myself to perform here because this is one of my big goals. No one rates me and I performed when it counted and backed myself and hung tough when I was under pressure. And so I learned a lot about success and a lot. Learn a lot about failure. But that day, really, it gave me confidence as a person to believe in myself and if I could instill that in others, that I'm coaching. If you do the work, do the preparation, and you're ready and prepared, as long as you execute, you'll actually get the result you want. It might not happen every time, but there will be a day where it all comes together.

Might take five years.

Yeah, well, that's about the length of time it took.

Technically, it took your whole life. Like you're saying every moment. And I know why you don't like talking about it, and I know that it. To get emotional about a performance like a sport, performance can seem trivial.

Oh. And that's what I'm. That's why I don't like talking about it, because it is so insignificant in the scheme of the world. And I end up emotional. And it's just like, why are you emotional about that?

But I just totally disagree with that notion that it's insignificant, because I just think we've spoken about this before on the podcast, but I just think sport is this special thing where you don't have to worry about a lot of the problems in the world, because there are a lot of problems in the world that take up our time and attention and our energy. And when you watch the Olympics, you get to see all these miraculous stories that get everyone emotional. You'll be watching an athlete that you have absolutely don't know from a different country, and people will tear up watching their story because of what it took to get there. I just think that is the power of sports stories and the power of sport in general. And like you've said, whether you've done this to become Australian champion, or whether any athlete that has set a hard goal like a PB or a certain performance that has put the same amount of pressure on themselves, because whether it's going for the Australian title or not, we put out the same pressure on ourselves. And then to achieve it has felt the exact same feeling. And I would probably say to you it was a different extent because that's how much you wanted to win it. How emotional you get now shows how badly you want it to win. I don't think you could have achieved that result without wanting it that badly.

It's funny, when I had all those losses and there were out of 100, there were 98 losses and two victories. I was not emotional when I lost I was so determined to improve, so keen to. What do I need to do to get this victory? What am I doing wrong? It was, it was study, analyze, think about it. Determination, no emotion. And yet when I started winning, my emotion was not happy. It was always tears, you know, every time, every time I did something and it, you know, it just became emotional. So my demeanor between winning and losing was quite contrasting. And I never cried when I lost. Yeah, yeah, that was the last thing I thought about. I cried when I won.

Yeah.

So that's.

You're. I will say, knowing, knowing you in my lifetime, you've always been a terrific loser on the outside, but I know how much it eats you on the inside.

Oh, absolutely. I still remember and I don't want to tell this story because I end up start crying again. But, but Kathy, Kathy Watts, mum, Kathleen Watt and Jeff Watt died tragically. He died from hypothermia on a training run at Mount Erica, 1967. I can still remember about that period somewhere around there, 68, 69, something like that. And he was an absolute gun runner and a really competent orienteerer. For those who don't know what that is, that's running with a compass and you have to get checkpoints in the bush. So he, he is an experienced endurance athlete and he went for training run in September up at Mount Erica and the weather is quite fluctuating, so it's not, it's not a big mountain. But there was a race on that weekend. He was doing his preparation. That's the sort of person he was going check the course. Anyway, it snowed when he was up there. He had a shirt and a T shirt on, short shorts and a T shirt on. And, and he didn't come home. And they sent the search party out. It was snowing up there. He couldn't understand where he was, what had happened to him. He knows everything about running and orienteering. Anyway, they found him in the snow 10 meters off the track. Tracks were all gone because the snow had covered the tracks up and he just got hypothermia and died. It was an absolute horrible story. And I remember winning the, the national 800 meters as a 10 year old and giving my medal to his wife and, and that meant more to me about who he was and what he'd done for me. And I told you, I told you this would happen. But, but you know, that was one of the best things I could do was to give mine gold medal that I'd worked so hard for as an 8, 9, 10 year old to her. And you know, I can remember running around the yards and she's going, no, I can't take that off you. And I'm saying, yes, you have to. You know, and that sticks in my mind as well. And that's, that is what it means to me as, as an athlete and that's how passionate I am about, you know, seeing you succeed, seeing my children succeed, seeing my athletes succeed, it means equally as much. And I've been on the phone to guys who have, who have done PBS and I'm in tears with them and it's, I'm very bad with holding my emotions. But even, you know, some stuff that you guys have done, graduating, you know, you couldn't be prouder. It's, and it's just the trait that I have. I just start crying. But I wanted to tell that story because it doesn't just happen by yourself. You have to have help in everything you do. You have to surround yourself with the right people who are in your corner. And there's so many genuine people out there who are not in it for themselves. They're not trying to get something out of, you know, that they just genuinely care about others and you know, they're the people you need to put yourself around. And everybody's got their close circle of friends and you want to surround yourself with like minded people then not waste any seconds with people who drag you back and hold you down. And they're the things that I think I learned right from an early age from my dad was, he just was a sponge and he just could not tolerate people who were negative and he just wanted to associate with people who are successful. It doesn't matter whether it was work or relationships or sport. And that's kind of how I've tried to be. And that journey still goes. Now. I'm passionate about who we have in our group and, and I'm very selective now about who we let in because I just want like minded people. I don't want to waste time with people who are not motivated like I am, who aren't, who aren't determined and who aren't passionate and they maybe just want to say they've got a coach. I don't want to coach those people. I want to, I want to coach people who are thinking like me.

And I'll put a caveat on that for anyone listening. That's very high bar to hit. So they're not going to, I don't think anyone's going to be as motivated as you. They don't have to be.

No, that's what I mean.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. You want motivated athletes.

I don't mean they aspire to be a professional triathlete or give up everything.

For the sport or win national titles.

Or represent their country.

You want them to better themselves.

That's exactly right.

Yeah. And I mean, coming full circle, that, you know, the story started with you. You know, papa who. Your dad. My papa, who's not alive anymore, you know, took those sessions in the 60s, and he was at every race, he could be out for you. And I think as soon as you cross the line, and mum was there and Papa's there, I think that's what. What makes it so special when you combine the whole story of how he actually got there. And you've said your gratitudes for mom multiple times on this podcast. And still 30 years later, you still say how she's still supportive. And I think every single athlete listening knows that. That you can't do it without your support crew or.

Yeah, and look, that's what I struggle with this podcast is it's. It's all about me, which I'm not comfortable with. And. And I'm. And I agreed to do it because I hope that I could get some messages across about. It's not all about you. It's about the journey you're on with the people you've chosen to be with. And that's, you know, you make good decisions with people you surround yourself with, and you make some shockers and you get into trouble with the wrong people. And I was like that as a young guy, had some dodgy mates and quickly learned from, you know, getting into trouble. You know, that that's. They're not the people, and it's not what I. Who I am or what I want to be. And so I'm happy to talk about things that. If I can give advice to some of the young people, and we do. We coach. You know, coach Zach, who's 19. You know, you're 29. There's so many things that, you know, you're going through the period that I did, and I made so many mistakes. And you and I have talked about this. You've got to want to do it yourself. You've got to have your own inner drive. It can't be someone else wanting you to do things. And I'm talking to the general athlete now. You. You can achieve whatever you want if. As long as you put the time in. And. And it's what you want. If you're doing it because the, the reasons aren't correct. You will not be successful.

You always say that to an athlete that is, you know, that asks to sign up and you, you know, ask them a few kind of questions to see where they're at. And you ask them, well, why do you want to achieve this goal? And if the reason is not a good enough reason, you will call them out on it. That's not a very, it's either not a healthy reason to do it or that's not a true reason to do it.

Yeah, and I've been sucked in a little bit from people over the journey. That talk, the talk. And I've missed, I've misjudged people that I thought this won't last. And they've been incredible. I've heard lots of people who are really confident who don't last. So I've had, I've had the whole spectrum. And so I can't judge people until I see their performances. And that's what I've learned. Whatever people say or however they act is irrelevant when it comes down to what they do. That, that says everything.

I do want to finish off a career. And we're doing, we're going to do two parts to this episode because we do want to tell the whole story, but we want to finish your career as a professional triathlete because it has some unbelievable lessons, especially from a coaching perspective. And so after becoming Australian champion, you had a really good year. You won the Australian duathlon, You had a great result at Reunion in France. Yeah. You went overseas with another team. Yeah.

And that was against. It was Northern Hemisphere, Hemisphere versus Southern Hemisphere. That was the competition. It was, it was a 3k swim, 130k ride and a 30 something k run and we climbed a thousand meters on the bike and it was 36 degrees at sea level and 12 degrees at the top of the hill. And, and you know, the Northern Hemisphere had Scott Tinley, Scott Molina, Mark Allen, they had the best athletes of that generation. We had. Greg Stewart had come second and you know, the rest of us who were nowhere near the level of them, not.

Quite, because you were, you were, you had yourself in good form, you had the confidence. Now you knew you were a good racer and you went to Kona again, this time to race and this time to do well. And again it was an internal goal to do really well. But you would say you were, I mean, let's just tell the story. You, you, you raced well, you swam well, you were at the front of the pack in Kona on The bike things were going to according to plan.

Yeah, definitely. I had a goal of. That was not one of my. My four goals was. But I just wanted to be successful at that race. I just. I didn't set a goal on that. I just thought, I'll just see what I can do here. For some reason, I. I don't know whether I thought that it wasn't as special as the other goals that I'd set. You know, winning an Australian title and representing your country. It was just a race, but it was a big race. It was the world title. Ironman. Anyway, dwell on that too much. But. But I certainly. Because it was a no wetsuit swim, that helped me a little bit. And I. And I wasn't that far behind. I think I was around 52. I think I wrote in that book, 52. So I was quite happy. And I got out really high up in the field and didn't have to ride too hard. And we've talked about Rod Sodaro, who was the guy chasing me at Foster at the Australian title. And he never caught me on any. Any event until the run. So I'd been run down by him in many races, never caught me on the bike. And he was an incredibly good bike rider as well, but he was swimming. I had such a leader on him in the swim. We were riding similar. So he wasn't ever going to, you know, catch me on the bike. And three quarters away around Kona, he comes past me and it shocked me. I was. It threw me. And he yelled out, as he does with his confidence, come on, Jared, let's go. And I did. I picked up my pace. I followed him. I think we were fourth or fifth when we got off the bike. Sixth, something like that. Somewhere around there. This is at Kona.

Yeah, this is the elite.

And there's only Mark Allen and Dave Scott ahead of us and. And Scott Tinley, the legends of the sport and a few others. Mike Pig, I think. And I got off the bike and Rod sat down and he's going, now you just got to finish it off. And I'm saying, well, what are you doing? I'm not running. I've got an Achilles injury and I'm not running. And I had changed my race plan. And I have told this story before.

And this is on the biggest stage.

And I thought, you're an idiot. What have you just done to myself? Rod wasn't the idiot. I was the idiot. And I'd raced his race not knowing that he wasn't going to run. And so it Put me in an unbelievable position. But I started running and thought, this is not good. I'm in a bit of trouble here. It's hot, I'm struggling. But I just did the same thing, thought about all the training, the mindset, went through the process and the course is quite different. You run from. The course is not the same now as it was then, but you run from one end of the island through the finish area and then out to the lava fields. And now you don't do that. So we, we, I think we might have ran 8k or something to the finish area and we go past all the family and that was great. And I was quite, quite in control, running well, holding my place. And then we get out into the lava field. You go up the hill and. And then the wild world sports camera crew came alongside of me and I remembered this vividly. And I've been showing the video a few times from one of Richard Harvey sent it to me regularly.

He's a tribalo athlete.

Yes. And he's always digging up this video. What were you thinking, Jared? And, and the guy's going, oh, I think, I think he said, you're in seventh place overall. How you going? And I think I was in a dream. I think I was starting to suffer from dehydration.

And you don't even look at the camera. You don't even move your head actually in the clip.

And all I say is how far behind is the next guy? And that's the wrong mindset. We've still got a fair way to go, but I kept going and kept my form, kept running. Okay. Tried to get as much drinks into me as possible, but I think I was definitely dehydrating. And because we not really trained properly in the heat from our, our winter, I think it was slowly catching up on me and we, we got to about, I think, 38, 39K mark. I was still in the same position. I hadn't lost any spots. And leading Australian, thinking, you know, just got to get to the finish. I'm not going to win. I'm not going to beat Dave Scott or Mark Allen, but I'm pretty damn happy with where I am and, and just hold it together. But we went down. Coming into town. For those who've been to Kona, it's a long downhill. That's the one. You go out into lava fields and. And all of a sudden my quad started to cramp up and I think there's 2K to go. And I'm still seventh and got onto the flat so it goes down the hill flat, and you go a little bit of a loop, and then you come into Alihi Drive. And I was literally 1500 meters from Al. And it was like the. The. The girl we talked about crawling across the line. My left leg just cramped up. Calf, quad, hamstring, adductor, my glutes, hip. And then all of a sudden, it was in my right side, and I. I couldn't put my foot down. I couldn't straighten my leg. I was in agony from. I just couldn't straighten my. My foot couldn't move. I was on the side of the road. I was trying to stretch people giving me drinks, just doing anything I could to progress. And at that stage, I thought, I can't finish. I'm stuck. I can't actually move. And I could see people passing me. And a couple of Australians went past me. I think Greg Welsh and who ended up winning Hawaii, Tim Bentley. And they were the two Aussies who went past me. And. And I wasn't counting places. I just knew that people were passing me. And it was devastating. Yeah, I was just distraught, but continued on. Somehow got sort of the cramps away and then came across the line. Someone told me I was 23rd. And as disappointing as it was, I was proud of myself to get to the finish. And the next two hours in the tent, I was like, screaming and yelling. I just couldn't get rid of cramp. It was in my chest, it was in my back, and I was on a drip. And eventually it subsided. But, yeah, I'd gone beyond where I could possibly have thought I could ever go. And looking back, I thought, geez, I had a pretty tough mindset there because I was in trouble. I was in trouble a long way before then. But I kept running and absolutely the strength of my hill training. But it was just bad execution. Racing someone else's race, not getting enough nutrition, not training in the heat. I could just keep listing the things that. The mistakes I made in that race. But there was a lot of positives, and I still. Still was happy with what I'd done. But I thought, next year, I'm gonna nail this. This is gonna be my event. And I thought I could win that race, but it wasn't to be. I never went back. So looking back, it was kind of one of those unfinished events, but that's what happens.

And it created. For those that know, Travelo philosophy is a. Created some of the strongest Travelo training principles. I mean, execution now is 50% of the game plan with Trevelo. And it probably stems from results like that.

Yeah, definitely. Riding too hard caused my dehydrate dehydration which caused my cramp riding someone else's race.

And you, you always say it's not a, the race isn't a 39 kilometer marathon or 40, it's a 42 kilometer.

And it's not a two race, not a two leg event. It's a three, you know, it's three.

Sports, which is so harsh to say because the result is nothing.

And it was a great lesson. It was a lesson that I never would forget.

Which is why when you say it to athletes, you're saying it with conviction.

Because I've done it in the biggest stage and you know, we've seen a lot of, you know, I watched Australian Story the other night. Jana Pittman story, fantastic story. What an athlete, maligned athlete, but what a class athlete. World champion, but she never won the Olympics for, you know, lots of reasons why. But she won two world titles as a 400 meter hurdler. She's now a doctor. She's an incredible person, six kids. But you know, she, she said that, you know, that Olympic gold medal was, it still haunts her even to this day. So examples of, you know, things sometimes don't happen that the way you want it.

You had one final goal though to try and tick off or you finished your career and that was to represent Australia.

Yep. And, and I really changed my whole mindset because you couldn't do it in any, you know, there was no Olympics, there was no Commonwealth Games. And all of a sudden it became part of the Commonwealth Games in 1980, 1990, March, I think it was 1990, something like that. And I thought I'm doing all this Ironman stuff. Can I do an Olympic distance as fast as, you know, to get selected for Australia? That was my next goal. So I'd done Kona, then I went back and did Boston again, got second and after that I said that's it, I'm not doing anymore. I'm going to concentrate on. And I thought now I'll just, I'll just do this. And this could be the, the end because we had Liam and Matt was due to be born. I'm desperate to get selected for Australia. It's the last goal. Can I hang on to be a professional athlete for another six months? After Kona in 1989, I sort of had the Ironman win. I'd got second again. I done well at Kona. So even though I thought that I could do Kona again in 1990 I just. The Commonwealth Games, when it became available, that was a game changer. So I kind of lost focus with the Iron Man. I was just going, this is my chance to tick that final box, represent Australia and I'm a chance here. So I changed my training to start to go back to a lot of the speed and intensity stuff and still kept doing the strength stuff. Did more hill repeats like intervals, which we do a lot of now, as you know. And we used to do that at Sherbrooke. There's a, there's a hill packet track. We used to do some intervals up that he'll repeat intervals and. And really, you know, focused on doing. I think it was a five race series and they selected, I think they selected six male and female athletes to represent Australia in the Commonwealth Games for the very first time at Auckland in 1990. And. And I had to compete in all these races all over. There was one in Albany, in wa, there was one in Noosa, there was one in Geelong. I think there was one in Wollongong and Adelaide. There might have been a race. So I was up against it and we had some really good athletes by this stage. So it was a big change for me, focusing my training differently. And to cut the story short, it was five epic races that there's a story in every single one of them. And I, and I didn't win any of them, but I got accumulation of consistency. I based my, my, my goal was if I can be consistent and be in the top five or six, because they're taking six if I'm coming first, second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth in any of these races, it's on a point system. They can't ignore me. And I'd been, you know, this is the first time I'm back in subjective selection and you know what happens if five of us are on the same points? You know, anyway, I didn't think about that. It was like, I've just got to perform. And so eventually, you know, came down to, I remember Noosa, I tore my calf muscle with 1k to go and still kept running. And that was an injury that stayed with me from. I think that was November 89. And then I had to run at Geelong. I was injured and I raced at Geelong and still got a really good place. I think it might have been fourth or fifth at Geelong. I might have been sixth at Noosa. Running with one leg for last cave.

If we wanted, we could just go to the book and we would see all these.

Yes. And all my writing, what was going on and anyway, Geelong, they read out the team after that race and. And yeah, that brought tears to my eyes again and I just couldn't believe that I'd actually been selected and you know, I had a ruined calf. It was January and the race was. It was February or March, the Commonwealth Games and I couldn't run. I could not walk to the car after that race. My calf was so, so torn.

Did everything to get selected.

Yep. So. So that was one of the prouder moments. I'm. And getting the. The green and gold jersey, the running gear, the blazer. I've still got them. They're in the back of the cupboard somewhere but they come out fancy dress. When you were little kids used to wear them and that was. That was absolutely the most proud I think I was of anything that I'd done was finally ticking. That represent your country and, and going to the Commonwealth Games was only a demonstration sport so it wasn't a real sport in the Commonwealth Games, which was. We found. So we weren't allowed to march at the start. So it was. It was a little bit disappointing to be honest. But we got to be there and you know, I got to see Dicostella and Monarchetti run the marathon and Lisa on Dickie win. I can't remember whether On a Getty won or Deeks won. I just. We had legends and I watched Andrew Lloyd win the 5k be in the Kenyans. I was there. Yeah, it was great. We did our triathlon first and then I was able to stay. So it was a fantastic experience. Unfortunately, I went there by myself. Your mum couldn't come but I was pinching myself saying, here I am, you know, I've ticked off the last, last box and. And I was so injured after that and. And it was from my back and turns out later that, you know, I didn't know at the time. I've got a chronic back injury which I've had since then, but managed it fine and I just continued to get injured from that point on and ended up running some individual marathons after that. When Matt was born in 1990 and you were born in 1992 and Georgia was born in 1994, so we had the four kids under five and I couldn't do triathlon at all. I finished as a professional. I ticked my boxes. Couldn't have been prouder. Look back, the only thing I probably wished I'd done better was Kona. But I was determined to run a good marathon and, and that was my next goal. Got my calf fixed for a Period. Trained really well. Did 3 or 4 individual marathons without 180k right in front of them, which was so much fun. And then coaching my brother to do a, you know, break three hours, then break 248, then break 240, you know, just seeing me improve for 20 minutes was huge buzz. So. So, yeah, it was. The finish. Finish line was obvious and evident. There were no funding, financial money in triathlon. So four kids. No. So, you know, we had your mum and, and her grand. Her. Your grandparents and my mum, your grandmother, all helping with, you know, looking after. It was. It was time to. Time to get a real job, as they say. And. And that was pretty much after that. After Commonwealth Games, I never did a triathlon ever again and I still haven't done a complete triathlon since, which is a bit bizarre as I love the sport. And only last year I did a. I did an aqua bike, which was because I still can't run. And, you know, that injury stayed with me for two, three decades. But I had such fun doing the aqua bike and I just thought, I wish I could run. So, yeah, it's been an interesting period.

This is a question a bit off topic, but I'm curious to know your answer based on knowing your mindset. If you had the choice of not going that hard at the comm games and not injuring your calf so bad that it ruins your next 30 years of running, would you, if you had your time again, would you not do it? Or was the goal so big you think you wouldn't be able to say no to?

No, I definitely wouldn't be able to say no. And, and I made mistakes with my injury, and that's one of the things I push people now is I didn't have the advice. There was no sign, you know, sports injury was not a regular job for people. You know, there was very few sports physicians, you know, who were, you know, you can count them on your hand in Australia. How many were doing it full time? So I had no advice. You know, I. I thought that icing and resting and then returning to running was all I needed to do and I just kept repeating that mistake. And then I'd last two runs, two weeks, two months, and then I'd tear it again, then I'd tear the other leg because I was compensating. So I just kept making the rehab mistakes. And that's why I'm so adamant now is do the ice, do the rest, but do the rehab, you know, make the leg stronger. The reason it's Breaking down is because there's a weakness there, but I never treated the weakness. And so looking back, yes, doing those events and pushing myself so hard and causing that injury. If I had the right advice to say, do the rehab, I would have got over it better. I would have been able to run forever. But. But, you know, that's why I'm saying people, you know, don't. Don't just expect to rest and then come back and then resume. And I say that all the time in our podcast. You know, start slow, build it up, 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off. You know, again, you're one of the.

More conservative coaches I know, and that is. Comes from those experiences.

Yeah, those experiences that I don't want anybody to go through and I don't want people to get to. My passion was running, and I can't do it, and it's so disappointing. And I love seeing everybody else running well, and the feeling you have, the euphoria you have when you're fast on your feet and it's fun on the bike, but the bike's propelling you. But as a runner, you're in control of. And it feels great to run fast. So I don't regret it, but I just think if I had better advice in concentrating more on the rehab, I wouldn't be in this position. So I think the training and competing contributed, but the rehab prevented me from getting over it.

Well, this has been part one of the story. Thank you very much for sharing it. The journey doesn't end here, though, because you switch the determination and the mindset of an athlete to your coaching career, and the story has just as many epic twists and turns and lessons over the last 20 years. As a coach, some incredible things have happened, which we'll talk about on the next episode, but I want to finish this episode with a gratitude because we do normally start the episode with gratitude. And my gratitude is I'm grateful for you sharing your story and for the story itself. I think if I was ever going to get emotional, it'd be now, but for everything that it's taught me. And that is why I wanted to share it on this podcast, because I have had countless tribal athletes come up to me on a ride or just in person and say how inspired they are by you and how just watching you perform, even as a master's athlete, is incredible to them and on a. On a Saturday bunch ride. And so, yeah, while we admit that it's, you know, sport isn't everything and this story is not everything, I really wanted to tell It. And because of how much it's influenced me, my brothers, my sister, our family, our extended family, that all is into sport as well. Our cousin Shauna, that works in the business that we interviewed on the podcast 20 episodes ago.

That got me emotional.

Yeah, that is my. That's my gratitude. And so that's the gratitude for this episode and this story.

That's a fantastic gratitude. And look, I'm grateful for you putting me through this, although it is tough to get through it. But I'm grateful for the fact that I've still got a journal that I've kept since 1986 and just bringing it out and it sits in the same spot in the cupboard. I know where it is. And there's actually two of them because I filled the first one up and had to go into the second one. Thank God your mum had put November 1987, because that told us when the new one started, when the old one finished, because I was putting November, but not the year. So I had no idea what 100 pages of what year was it. So all I could tell was where the races were. So that journal, that really taught me a lot. And I'm grateful for. That's helped me understand how important data is because the data that I was collecting, with no data to collect, it enabled me to be a better athlete because I was tracking everything. I was fully understanding where I was at at any particular minute. I'm grateful for the fact that I was so attention to detail about that and, you know, putting, putting race number one. And you've seen there's. I don't know, there's a hundred races with results where it was, what the result was and even at one point how much prize money I won next to that. So it's.

Which is the funniest part, because it.

Is because one race I came first, I won $100. That was quite a big race. So I just feel that stuff like that to still have available. It really has made me understand how technology has made it so easy for us to have that much information that we should be using it better. And it's really what I was using with. I haven't showed you this, but there's a few graphs at the back. I drew graphs of my heart rate.

From the training peaks performance graph.

I was manually doing a page of graphs and. And trying to come up with some sort of, you know, standard thing that I could. That I could plot on this graph. My running.

I was on a graph before Microsoft Excel.

Yes. I was putting week one time and Putting the running dots on. So I'm grateful that I kept that stuff because it really taught me about attention to detail and preparation and without that, I don't think I would have been nearly as good a competitor. I was looking for the extra stuff all the time. I don't know what other people were doing. I know Peter Farmer kept a journal. I think he might have been the one that told me that I should need to do that. And as usual, I would have gone, I guess not really. But I still remember when you asked me that question about we were on our honeymoon, I was so focused that I was trying to think of what are the 1 percenters I need to do. And as a physio, Phil Bedlington, it just crossed my mind now I know we should be finishing, but what a person, what a human. Just saw that I had this back injury and he got me through 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, just treating me every week. He treated me for free every week at Sandringham Sports Medicine, where the pool is there now. And he started in the little back room out the back. And I just hope he listens to this podcast because I did see him a few years ago. There's another guy, Oscar Carlson, who was a good mate of Phil's as well. And Oscar still trains triathletes and Oscar must be 70 something. I saw a picture of him on Facebook down at the beach swimming a few months ago. I just thought, that's fantastic. I yelled out to your mum, Oscar's still swimming. So people like that, that, that you're on your journey with and, and I'm grateful for all of that. All of. So, you know, it starts with the journal, but, but I'm, I'm grateful the people I've met on this journey, I suppose that's, that's the bigger picture is the, the good people I've, I've met and, and become associated with and learnt from and they've, they've bolded me into the way I think and the way I perform as an athlete and, you know, as a person, that's completely different. But, but as an athlete, I couldn't have been happier with the people I surrounded myself with and who went out of their way to help me. And without that, I would never have achieved anything. And that includes your mum working full time to support me and never questioning, never getting jealous, never complaining and just doing everything so that I could be successful.

Unfortunately, someone came along and turned the journal into an online calendar called Training Pigs. And that's right that makes things a lot easier.

It does, doesn't it?

This has been a big episode and I've loved every second. And there's more to come. Yeah. Like I said, I'm really excited for the next part of the episode to talk about, really how, how Trivalo was born and out of coaching and some of their stories over this last period, which has developed into what it is now. And who would have thought, you know, 30 years later, there's a podcast that's going out to now over hundreds of thousands of people that are hearing this, this Journey. And. Yeah, I can't wait for the next episode.

Fantastic.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next one.

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