The Story of Gerard Donnelly - Our 100th Episode Special! [PART 2]

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo 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, Gerard Donnelly. Welcome to the story of Gerard Donnelly, Part two. In part one, we told the epic story of dad, your journey as an athlete, as a professional athlete and what that entailed and the big highs and lows of your professional, professional triathlon career. And we finished with you retiring from professional triathlon. At that point you had four of us kids under six years old. And so in part two, today we're going to tell the story of your coaching career, how your coaching has developed over a 30 plus year period. And I didn't think the story could get any more exciting than part one, but there are just so many surreal, cool, life changing moments throughout this part of the story that you've even said multiple times equal some of the highlights of your professional career. So now we're going to be going through that in today's episode in part two. And a major part of that story that we're going to tell is that although you retired as a professional athlete, you were not done competing. And your journey to once again reach the top as a masters athlete is one of the biggest contributing factors to your success as a coach. So welcome to part two. Again, you're a little bit reluctant to keep going with this story because it has to be mentioned that it was a traumatic experience, Part one going through.

Thanks, George, for putting me through another. Yeah, I hope I don't traumatize the listeners too much again with my, with my emotion. But I suppose it's an example of how things mean so much to you and it's an example of people who put their heart and soul into things and you know, it just means, it means a lot. So, yeah, I think it's a good attribute for others that I see. And so when it happens to me, it's, I find it almost embarrassing, but it is a reflection of what it means to you. And yeah, there's so much that we can explore in people's own journeys that mean a lot to them and that's why it brings out emotion.

Absolutely. So let's start with how your coaching career began. You had already started coaching in the 80s while you're an athlete, while you were learning what it took to be the best and what the best programs in the world entailed, and you had a group of athletes that you were coaching at that point. And we mentioned in part one, one of them was a man called Banger Harvey, who is still a Tribalo athlete to this day. And it's just funny that you were coaching him back in the 80s and then he's now a Tribalo athlete now.

Yeah, it's a fantastic story, isn't it? And, and look, it sort of started when I was teaching at some, you know, at some Bernard's in Essendon. My, my desire to get the young kids to be, you know, the best 800 and 1500 meter runners they could. The, the 4x8 relays, the, you know, the cross country team, the swimming team, getting those squads to do personal best and if possible, you know, win something. And that was always there. I just really enjoyed seeing other people succeed through my help. And I think that was, that was right from when I was in my 20s.

And at that point throughout the 80s, you and a few other triathletes were so invested in triathlon that you started what, the triathlon school?

Coaching. Triathlon coaching school. It's not the School of Rock. Isn't. Was really innovative for our time. We were definitely ahead of our time and guys like Oscar Carlson and Phil Bedlington and, and you know, there's many more involved who are the driving force behind that. And, and I did mention them a little bit earlier. We had budding triathletes who wanted to learn how to be a triathlete come weekend camps that weren't anywhere except in the heart of Melbourne. I remember lining up at the Sandringham Tulip street facility there where had a swimming pool and we ran swim courses, we ran bike courses, we ran running courses, we had nutrition courses, strength and development. And that's the sort of stuff we're talking 1988, 1987, 1989. And you know, I had to come up with writing a course for that that you could sort of use as a template how to train on the bike, as a runner, as a swimmer. And ironically that kind of became a template for, I suppose for future coaches who took over that business model. And then all those years later when I was investigating getting certified as a triathlon coach, I find it ironic that I wrote the first program and yet here I was trying to qualify myself as a coach. Yeah, anyway, that's the story in itself.

Yeah, that is, that is quite funny, the irony in that. And at that point you were also going to high schools and taking some of the old wind trainers down and trying to get some kids involved in triathlon.

Yeah, well, I thought it'd be with the help of these guys, I thought it'd be great if we could just bring triathlon to schools. And having been at, you know, the sports master at St Bernard's and head of phys ed department, I could see the kids wanted to do something different. And I thought, you know, it's a really hard sport to do because it's, logistically it's, you need a pool at school. Where do you ride your bike safely? You know, that in itself was a scary prospect. So I decided, well, I'll jump them on wind trainers. And running around the school was fine, but so I took the course to the schools and, and that, that was really interesting.

What kind of wind trainers did you have back then?

We had these manure or Minolta, I think they were, they weren't too bad. They just front wheel off on a fork and back wheel on a roller. And of course every kid had some bike that didn't fit and it was a logistical nightmare. But we, we just, we persevered and I think we got some kids, you know, maybe if we got half a dozen kids to start doing triathlons, it was well worth it.

Absolutely. And so from that point, you know, moving on to the 90s, you had stopped competing yourself in triathlon. You decided that was enough. Although it should be said that you decided you would see how quick you could be in a marathon and you'd ran a few marathons in Ironmans, but you hadn't had a proper crack in peak form at a fresh marathon. And you really started that journey and you took a few others with you and you were coaching your brother Frank. For those that are in the Tribala community and Greater Melbourne community will know Frank very well and a few others. My uncle Paul Rouse is also a tribal athlete you've been coaching for 30 years and a few other friends around that you, you started almost a running group and we're coaching people for the marathon now.

Yeah, and we entered a few teams in those days. The Melbourne marathon had a teams event and we formed a three man team. Dave Parker was another guy involved in that, who, you know, it was a guy I went through uni with and Gary Pollard, another guy. So we had a little, little community and at the end of the day getting these guys to do PBS was, I was just as intent myself to do my own, to get, to get everybody to really run well on race day and, and I, I absolutely enjoyed that process of just coaching people for running and experimenting on myself again. And I did have an inner desire to see what I could do outside of an Ironman in the marathon. It was pretty frustrating running, you know, quite slow in an Ironman marathon and then, you know, knowing that you possibly could run half an hour quicker as a fresh. And I wanted to test that theory to see actually what I could do. And, and that was a bit of a slow journey cause I was still injured from triathlon days. So I nearly had to take almost a year and a bit off from running before I could go again. But it was great to have Frank especially start his career to break three hours and then over a three year period go from 256 to 248 to run a 240. And that was pretty exciting to literally run 20 minutes quicker over three years. Three year period by doing the program that I was giving myself. And he was on board with it, did everything, didn't miss a session. We ran together a lot, ran the hills together. That was exciting.

Yeah. And there's actually Paul put up a great photo in our Facebook group and it's a travel, it's a public group so if you want to find Travelo coaching on Facebook, you can request join and we'll add you in there, buddy. Put up a great photo of one of the team's events where there's a few of you running and there's some very handy times in there, all sub three hours. And like you said, you and Frank were handy runners yourselves. You know, Frank running a 240 and.

Your PB was 234 I think.

234, yep.

And look Paul on that, that we won the teams event at the Melbourne marathon with the three of us. It was the three combined times and Dave broke three hours and Paul broke three hours. So they'd ran, they ran 30 seconds different 258 or something and, and my 234 got us, got us the victory which was pretty exciting for the group to win and another example of preparation and getting the result.

Yeah, absolutely. And so as we move through the years, I mean you quickly developed the same passion for coaching us kids and juniors as you experienced when you were younger. And I guess it was you wanted to pass that same feeling you had as a kid, you know, getting to train like that.

Yeah, I definitely was really grateful for what my dad had done and we talked about that in the, in the previous podcast with Jeff Watt and, and I'd learned so much about what the younger athlete could cope with because I, I'd had it done to myself. So I Was careful because you obviously be my children didn't want to be that dad who was the pushy dad. But you showed signs that you were interested and the minute you weren't was the time to stop. And you guys were all on board with it. You definitely, everybody listening. All four of our children growing up were the smallest kids in every class. So physically developed, you were probably a year or two. And I think our dentist told us the best example was your teeth determine your physical age, not your chronological age. And he's saying Liam, our oldest son, was. His teeth development was like three years behind his age. So by the time he got to 18 or 19, he just started to grow. And you were the same, you were tiny. So you were a physical disadvantage in every sport that you competed in at school. And that to me was an incredible challenge to try and get you to be competitive.

I think we all had a lot of fun. I mean, you had a lot of fun coaching us and the squads that we were in as juniors and we just had fun doing well. You know, I think times when you didn't want to run as a kid, but then you'd remember that school cross country is coming up and you want to win it. And when you perform well at those things. Yeah, it's funny, you're Learning as an 8 year old, what motivates you to train. And I have fond memories of any talented kid in the neighborhood would come and join our little squad sessions where we would be doing mini hill repeats around here because we lived, grew up in Belgrave, as we discussed in part one. But you know, you would get in their ear and they would come and join and we would have mini squads of eight kids and any talented kid that could run, you'd be getting them to join in the groove.

Yeah, that was my theory. Get as many people involved. So it became a fun factor in the competitiveness of people, is what I was absolutely using to drive doing it solo. As everybody knows as adults, it's hard work, you have to be intrinsically motivated. But if you put people together in a group situation for certain training days that are important, the high intensity days, as we know now, then you will use that one session to motivate people to push themselves better. And I can still remember you guys saying, I want to win the school cross country, I want to win the swimming events and I want to win the athletics. And you know, that was your goals. And in the local primary school of Belgrave, you know, you were, all of you were undefeated in every cross country from Prep to grade six and, and that was something that you were proud of, you know, and, and you worked hard for it and you probably deserved to do it because no one else was doing any training.

I never noticed probably until now. Just thinking back about how much of your lessons were having a big impact on me. I remember being nine years old and every year I was looking forward, look forward to the cross country to win it. And to be honest, because we were training, you'd win it by a country mile. But I was still so nervous. I remember waking up the morning of the school cross country day and that was all I was focused about. And I got up early and inst. Watching tv. I sat there stretching in the, in the living room. You would have been at work at this point already, but I spent the whole day nervous. None of the other kids are focusing on the race. And this is the same thing that happens as an adult when you've got your race, you wake up in the morning and you're doing that as a nine year old is just so funny. But as we hit the 2000s, you really had transferred this professionalism and drive as an athlete into coaching as kids. And anything that we're involved in, whether that was school or little athletics groups, and it was transferred straight to us. And a few of the key things are as we got older and got a little bit more serious about training. And I say older, I mean, 10, 11, 12, you had the same philosophies. You kept notebooks for each of us where you would write in every session we did. And next time we'd go to the track you'd say, okay, last time we did these four two hundreds, these were your times. And you had every single session recorded for us as well as every race. You had a scrapbook of every single race performance. So then when we did that race again, you'd said, oh, you ran this last time aiming for a pb. And it's all the same principles that you did as an athlete. Did it with us kids. And then now it's just again transferred into training peaks. And we have, you know, in Trivelo, we have Excel spreadsheets with just relentless data on athlete performances, you know, split times, that kind of thing. It's just funny how it is transferred all the way through.

Yeah, I think you've got to find ways that. And look, if you ended up winning events, that is a bonus. It was me trying to give you the idea that you just wanted to be better than you were last time. And if that ended up you Winning, great. But as long as you performed equal to and tried to improve, that was more important. And that's why those notes were so important to you. I'd say, you know, here's your most recent times, how you're feeling and it was always based on that, do you think you can run strong tonight? And there were the questions you, I'd ask you, you know, you're right to go tonight and say maybe not feeling so well. And we'd say okay, let's just try and match, match what we did. So it was always based around some data and some feeling as to how we were going to train. And there was never pressure to win. That was, that was far from, you know, and the conversation in the car on the way home from a race day or from a training session was how do you think you went rather than what happened, why didn't you win? And that's the analogy I want to make with everybody I'm coaching now is it's about how you felt you performed and making sure you go back because you're, the performance is raw straight afterwards. And that's the best time to self analyze your performance. And you learn so much more about post race as much as you do in the race. And so you guys embraced that a lot. And I never wanted you to have pressure and I'm not sure whether that was the case or not. But you had your own pressure you put on yourselves. You didn't need me adding to it. And it was more about the performance rather than the result. And I still believe that is something that's made my career so successful is forget about the result, that's the goal. That is exactly why you're doing it. But if you organize yourself with the process then the result should take care of itself. So I suppose if I could get children to understand that concept and embrace would be a no brainer for adults. And yet I think children are more trusting of the process than adults and they don't question so they believe that you know exactly what is best for you. And that's kind of the relationship I want to build with the athletes. I certainly want them to ask questions and to make me explain what the purpose of, of this session is. And if that enables them to perform the session or the event better, then it's a, it's a win. But they certainly need to be on board with, with the, the process that we're doing.

I have been asked that throughout my life a few times did I feel pressure because of your success or did I feel like it would put pressure on us because we did train a lot. Um, and the answer is such a resounding no. And in fact, in hindsight, I almost think that you instilled that lesson into us so much that going through all those years as a junior, I was just so focused on my own race and I just, I was so drilled into my own race, I barely was paying attention to what was happening around. And that was almost, it was almost to a detriment where almost needed a little bit more pressure to be a bit more ruthless and kind of have a bit more of a winning edge. And maybe, but maybe it was a good thing as well because we were quite underbelved as kids. We weren't as good as the kids that were developing. So how do we put our. That pressure on ourselves to actually win? It would have been maybe worse because you just couldn't match some of those kids that were.

Well, it would have been unfair. Yeah, you're already an unfair disadvantage being physically immature. And for me to have the expectation that I want you to win, you would have given up. And I wanted you to be, I wanted you to participate for as long as you wanted to, as long as it was fun and enjoyable and, you know, there's so many little things you could do to make it fun. And that's the team environment. And that's kind of what led to your secondary school achievements, was based around that fun factor with, you know, your mates doing the same thing.

And that's, that's kind of how this, this kept progressing as you were really involved in a lot of coaching with us kids and, and those around us. And you ended up being a bit of a scout for the high school. We went to and ended up sending a bunch of talented kids and we ended up with this kind of super team. And the high school cross country system that we competed in here in Melbourne was quite competitive. And it's, it's a really fun system. It's the same, similar to the college system in America where you race and every point counts, you know, so it doesn't matter if you're coming first, 10th or 70th, your top six places count. So if you're the sixth best runner, but you come 60th, you know, it's a total point system. So it's a really team environment, which is really fun. But I mean, the point I want to make is that I just remember as a kid, you know, learning all these principles and it's just so funny how they still apply. And you had us Our squad going up to Sherbrooke every Sunday and do, to do the long run, you know, to do the long hill run. And your version of the long hill run as a pro athlete was a two hour loop around, but ours was, you know, as a nine year old I had a 20 minute loop and Liam, my older brother, had the 30 minute loop and I couldn't wait to graduate to the 30 minute loop, you know, and that, that was the long run for the week. And yeah, as we started to go through high school, the fact that, you know, on this, on this point of I don't want to hammer this, but yeah, being smaller and feeling like we're at a physical disadvantage because there were kids that were a foot taller than us and stronger than us and had muscles already. The fact that we had such a good training program and we, and we stuck to such good training principles, which was have a good aerobic base and do these track sessions and do the Sunday long run, you know, we were able to qualify for the state team and compete in nationals and I think, you know, both did reasonably well at nationals. I think Liam got a top seven finish in one year which just showed how good the aerobic capacity was as, as juniors, even though we weren't anaerobically as strong and physically as strong as other runners. I think that really tells a good story of that.

Yeah, I don't underestimate your determination and your competitiveness. So, you know, it's one thing to be fit and you are probably fitter than anybody in the fields that you're competing in. They were just more talented at the time because of their physical. But I never ever mentioned that to you that, you know, don't worry, these kids are, these kids are bigger and better and stronger and my expectation is that you won't beat them. That was never a message that I would send. Everybody who starts is a chance. And that's the message. I was sort of saying, you know, if you strategize well enough and don't be a sheep and sprint. And I can remember so many Saturday cross country events where most of the, you know, there's 50 or 60 guys lining up on the, on the start line and it was the fastest hundred meters out of a 3k race that you could possibly see. And I would always be saying to you guys, don't sprint at the start. Just work your way through the field after five or six minutes of everybody's reached their anaerobic threshold in the first 30 seconds and start. You know, they've Blown up, and then you guys can strategize your way through the field. And, you know, but that wasn't fun. You know, everybody was sprinting, and here I've got you guys 20 or 30 meters off the back. And, you know, you did well to. To kind of accept that and cope with that. But that same principle now is run to your pace, ride to your pace, you know, without, you know, just don't be a sheep and follow someone else's race plan. That's great for the guy who's a winner. That's not great for the guy who's, you know, possibly going to finish a minute behind him. Why is he going to start at the winner's pace? It's going to be an ugly finish for all those guys. And they were going so slow by the end. You guys were always fast finishing.

That principle of the aerobic base is just so true, isn't it?

Yeah, most definitely. I think that the strength you had for the back half of your running races was purely from those Sherbrooke runs. Obviously, the intervals were giving you the intensity you needed, but you were so strong because you've been running up and down these mountains since you were, you know, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, all the way through to. You were 16, 17, 18 when you left school. So you'd had a good 10 years of Sherbrooke and, you know, every trail up there, you know, you could be a guide for running trails at the forest up there. So it's, you know, it's the same principle all the time. It's a boring thing, but it's actually why you were successful and, you know, for you guys to make the state teams as junior cross country runners. When we went away together, people were thinking you were just there as a brother or sister because you were so little against the other kids in the team. And yet here you are lining up on the start line and people go, oh, you know, great result from a little kid. So it was. It was really. I was proud to see that you guys embraced the whole thing. You never let it worry you that. That you were physically smaller, but you still put yourselves out there.

Well, so naive that I didn't actually realize. I didn't. I didn't realize until a few years ago. I don't think I saw a photo of me with my athletics teammates, and I am just that much smaller. And I went, wow. I didn't. At the time, I didn't realize how much of a disadvantage it was because you never mentioned it. So I didn't have any reason to believe that being smaller was such a disadvantage. But it is very funny looking back. But I mean, the point of all this is that you were so involved in the. Just the culture you were trying to instill in anyone that enjoyed running and that came into our school cross country culture. You know, you would talk to us about race tactics the whole way there and even other runners in the school, you know, you were making sure that we were creating a really good team environment. And we, you started this thing called the huddle. And before each race, you know, it's 120 kids or whatever in the race and you just go to the start line and start normally and you made us all get in a team huddle. And the, the cross country captain, which happened to be our middle brother Matt, the first year this happened, was would do a little speech and get around revved up and then go to the start line. And I was running with some old school mates a few weeks ago and they were telling me that because we were laughing about how we started this huddle thing. And they were telling me that every single team now, 10 years later, does it. Every team does a big team huddle, like a footy huddle. And I just thought that was so fantastic to hear that, that really, that passion for the running was a sign of your passion for coaching at that point. And it was you just instilling it wherever you could go.

The inclusiveness is also the importance of that. So we had guys in our cross country team who were going to come first, second, third, fourth, fifth in the top 10. But because the formula was you're only as good as your sixth runner. And I was instilling in everybody that we need to be encouraging our sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth runner. I think we had ten runners in a team and if those six, seven, eight, nine tenth runners in our team could beat the fourth, fifth runners from other teams, then we would win on the day. And every week you either won or you lost. And so the idea was to make everybody feel a part of the team. And coming 67th or 94th was just as important as coming fifth or first. And everybody felt that, I think. And that's what you're wanting to. You're wanting to get everybody on the same page and believe in the same formula.

So it was at this point that we were in high school. We were all catching the bus to and from school. Slightly less driving and commitment from you, although it was still very big, but you were able to get back into some training yourself. And you were slowly able to get back into cycling and you started to really enjoy it again.

Yeah, but I, I definitely during that period made a conscious decision that it wasn't about me anymore. And, and I really was invested in making sure that you had the same opportunities that I had when I grew up that my father had given me and he, he literally took me to, I could play state level badminton. I mean who would have thought in a town like Warigal. I played state level cricket, football, soccer, cross country swimming squad, athletics, table tennis. And so that was my philosophy. I was just going to do the same. And you guys can select what sport you want to do when you've had a go at the mall. And if you wanted to do triathlons, fine, but if you didn't, don't worry about it. You, you. So, and you guys have selected touch, touch footballers as your passion in surfing. Um, and only recently you've, you've really taken to back to running and, and you know, possibly venturing into triathlon. So as an example, you know, you can actually pick up a sport that you, you think you might have a crack at and, and do quite well at it because you were exposed to a variety of, of sports and that, you know, your eyes were open to what's out there.

You were just trying to take advantage of any second you could because yeah, I remember you would pick us up, you'd have to leave work early and pick us up from school to take us to our squad training, our athlet and we would go train and you had a spare hour and so you'd bring your bike and you'd start doing it an hour, push out a max one hour session and start doing some interval training again. And you couldn't do any bunch rides on Saturday because we had Saturday sport all day and there was four kids playing Saturday sport across Victoria. So tough to get around. But the point is you really just start to slowly make a comeback as we got a little bit older, 15, 16, 17, you were able to just slowly increase that riding and get that passion back.

It's interesting you mentioned that because the big athletics carnival day was middle of October at Olympic park and it was the associated Private Schools, public schools, sports, which is huge. And de Castella had set records there and Mottram and you know, it's a big athletics day and the Melbourne to Warrnambool bike race was always on the same weekend. And I think I've told the story. I only did my first Melbourne to warnable a year ago. Was it two years ago at 61 and I, I think I entered it 10 times from when I was, when I was 40 and when you and you guys were in the middle of your. And I had to choose between doing the Melbourne to Warrnambool and going to watch you guys at Olympic park and for you to make the 4x8 team or, you know, being the team was just massive effort and, and so it was a no brainer. I, you know, I'm gonna miss the melt warning. I'm gonna get there one day. But, but yeah, just, just starting to, to redo some of the training principles on myself when I could see that you guys, because I used to go to your, your training sessions, we used to pick you up from work at, from school at 3:30 from Berwick and take you to Frankston where your squad, your new squad when you'd grown out of being coached by me and it was time for me to step back and let you have some other coach take over and have other young kids of your age to train with, which I thought was more important than being, that was the main part, being isolated with your dad. And so that was a whole new opening for you. You enjoyed that so much more than training just with the three of you. And so that was worth the trip from me leaving work at 2:30 to get to, to Berwick at 3:30 to drop you off at Frankston at 4:30. And I used to watch training sessions and, and you know, really make sure that the coach was doing what I thought was ripe and after I totally was on board with what she was doing. Nikki, Nikki Frey and her sons were really good runners and, and that was easy for me then to go, right, I can, I can step away and I can go and do an hour while they're training and, and that's what I did. I started to do some training again and it was a horrible experience early because I was that far away from, you know, 15 years earlier, almost had that much time away from and in hindsight a mistake that I made. And I would, I would tell this to young athletes in their 30s, 40s who have got young families not to stop doing. You don't have to do it at the same level, you know, you don't have to compete at a high level but to keep your fitness so that when you have the opportunity and your kids are gone that you don't start again. And literally I would. It was three or four years of me just being really average, getting dropped by guys that, you know, that I had no trouble with earlier. And just having such a low base and it was, it was, it was not enjoyable early on to try and get myself fit. It took a long time and yeah, I really enjoyed the process because I was coming from such a low beginning so the only place I could go was up. So I was improving a lot. But it didn't happen in six months like I thought it would. I was a different shaped. I was, you know, probably 8, 10 kilo heavier than I was when I was a professional. I'd lost my aerobic base. I was at rock bottom in terms of fitness. So I had to start the journey again and get my thinking cap on again and try, you know, as you, you guys were not needing me as much. Then the opportunities for me opened up again. So I think that would be the message I would send is keep doing something whether you're doing a 20 minute run every second day. I didn't do any of that. I should have been doing something. I used the excuse. I didn't have time. Well, I did you just make time. I should have planned better like I started to do when you guys were being, you know, being coached by someone else. There's an hour, you know, I could use 20 minutes of it to run if I wanted to.

Yeah, I feel like that would be some. It is a lot of advice you give to people when they come into the coaching program and they just want to get as fit as fast as possible and they want to get there within six months or a year. And a lot of people, once you started racing again, probably assumed that, you know, you, of course you were a previous professional athlete, you're a gun masters rider, you're doing well, but it wasn't that smooth sailing for you. It took you years to get back there and you had to be patient.

Yeah, look, I was. You asked me some questions earlier about when did you start to get some success again as a master's writer. And I think it was five or six years before I actually had a breakthrough event. And, and then I thought, oh yeah, I'm on the right track again. I'm finally arrived again in my own little mind. But up until then it was more fun and I didn't want to be the professional again. I wanted to see definitely what I could do against masters athletes. And that was a challenge, but I still didn't want it to be my everything. I wanted to have that balance. And I think that's one thing that I still believe now is that you will do better if, if you have a balance in your life. You know, if, if you. I'm still making those mistakes, I'm still got the balance wrong at times and, you know, your mum will, you know, point that out to me when I've got too carried away again, because it's easy to do because if you're so motivated, you're single minded. And it's not, it's not the Olympics, it's not the, you know, the be all and end all. There's other things going on that you need to have perspective and, and it's fun and, and challenging, but it's just got to be in perspective with whatever's going on in your life. And I'm forever saying to people, if you do something to the extreme level, it's unsustainable. And that's the philosophy. I think if everybody can, the message they can get from what I'm. The story I'm telling now is do it to the extreme. It won't last. Something will give. Whether you break down, whether your relationships break down because you're so selfish, you're single minded, your determination's far outweighed by what else is happening in the world. So, you know, if you try and lose weight, the analogy be, if you're trying to lose weight over a period of six months and if you decide to lose one kilo every month, you could be, you know, drop six kilo, which would be a pretty big thing for a lot of people. We all hear the stories of people dropping 30 kilo in two weeks, but guess what? Ask them two years later what their weight is. A fair percentage, I don't know, the stats would be back to the weight that they were. So if it's unsustainable, it won't succeed. So if it's, if it's, you know, that's the balance philosophy that I think you need to have in your training and in everyday life. And that's the thing I tried to learn from what I did as a professional, which is I needed to be extreme to succeed. Now I don't need to be like that. I want it to still be fun. And I absolutely love riding my bike. And if I was able to run over the journey because I still haven't been able to run properly since those injuries, I would still run because I love it. The freedom of running, especially in, around, you know, Sherbrooke and, and you get, you get to see things in slow motion. Bikes is good as well. And when we travel overseas, I'm exploring wherever I am in Spain or Italy or France or Belgium. I'M exploring on a bike pace and you see so much and your mum and I would, she'd go for her walks and I go for my ride in the morning when we're in overseas and I'd come back and say we've got to go and see this. I just saw this on my ride and we jump in the car and I'd take it to something I would never have seen if I wasn't on my bike. And that's the passion I have. I love being good at it but I actually love the, the experience of riding and having the sun on my back and exploring new places around the world Pre Covid so the fun factor was important to me and I had to put goals in front of myself unfortunately because as much as I love riding my bike I still found it hard in winter or I'm still got a full time job. I have to fit the training in so I've got to be motivated to get out of bed at night. You know twice a week I was getting out of bed at five to four to go and do a training session down at the beach with the group of guys I was training with. We were doing teams time trial every Tuesday, Thursday getting I had to be there at 5:30 for 5:30 start. So you know it's 45 minute drive plus getting up and making sure you got everything organized. So it's a really early start so I had to have a goal to allow me to get up at that time in the morning. So. So you have to play tricks on yourself to get yourself to the start line almost and in the best shape possible and that's the things I was doing so it wouldn't interfere with the family. I'd be finished the training session at 6:30, I'd go to work, we started work at 7am and get home and time for you guys after school. So that was the plan that I put in place and I did that for I don't know, 15 years whilst you were in primary school all the way through to when you finished secondary school and went to uni. So, so that that worked really well because I was planned and there was.

A pretty life changing moment in there I'd say which was a. And I say life changing because it was a bit of a turning point in the evolution of your coaching career and that was the Cadell Evans story and I think this really flipped something in your, in your brain about and about the trajectory of your, your own coaching and your exploration of performance and we have told this on one of the earliest podcast episodes. But not a lot of people have heard one of our very first episodes. So tell this story about riding with Cadell Evans and what that's switched inside of you at this age.

Look, as everybody knows, Cadell used to come home in our summer, in the European winter, and he had a house in Bowen Heads. And as a family with a couple of other families that you've grown up with, we always holidayed together, the three families in one house in Bowen Heads. And we spent a lot of time and we went to other places as well, but we spent the majority of your time at this house in Bowen Heads. And there was always a group on the Saturday morning. I was always a group every morning. And Cadell would occasionally ride with the local group, which was really good of him because this is 2006. 5, 6, 7, 8. You know, he was starting to become. In 2011, he won the Tour de France.

So he podiumed in 2007.

Yeah. And he was, you know, on the Giro, he was, you know, successful and he won Flesh Wallone and, you know, he didn't really need to be riding with, you know, a pack of old guys in Lycra, but he did and he gave his time and it was really impressive, actually. And we do a thing called country turns where you would ride side by side to abreast, and everybody would move up one and Cadell would get to talk to you for, you know, a minute, and then the person at the front would move over to the left and the next person would move up and then Cadell would move up to the next person. So the groups became huge because they knew that possibly Cadell was going to ride and. And it was a really good community thing that he was doing. And he was encouraging people to ride their bikes and asking them, how's your training going? He's a fantastic person and he comes across, you know, a little bit out there. And that's what you have to be to be a champion. I think you have to have some sort of difference between the commoners, as I would say. But he was really good with his time and one day I managed to. To ask him because he would always go from that ride onto his then proper ride. It was like his warm up and then he would go out from that point where at the back of wherever Paraparap or. Or the Bells beach circuit. Anyway, I was so keen to go for a ride with him, just me and him and I. And I just kind of. He took off and everybody turned and that was the Protocol. And I kind of stayed back a bit and, and came up behind him after about five minutes. I think I scared the living daylights out of him because he hadn't started training, but I was, I rode flat out to catch back up to him and said, oh, do you mind if I just ride behind you? And I think he was not happy at all because that was his rule that no one wants to ride with him. But he goes, oh yeah, okay, whatever. Anyway, so he started doing what I didn't know what he was doing. He started doing his efforts that his coach from Italy had been sending him online and, and anyway, he started doing the first ever. Then he sort of pulls up and I think we'd ridden about five minutes and, and I was doing everything in my power to hold his wheel. I was trying to hide from the wind. I certainly had understood what side of the wheel to ride on in a crosswind. And I could see him sort of looking under his arm to see if I was still there. And of course at the end of it he sort of puts his hand up saying, oh, that's it for the first effort. And so I was like breathing flat out saying, what are you doing? What's next? And he'd say, I'm gonna do five of these. I was thinking, oh my God, I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna keep up. But I said, what pace, you know, what speed are you riding at? He said, speed? No, no, I'm riding to power. And you know, after the next five minute we ready to start the next one because it was one minute rest and then away we go again in the next one minute. I'd ask him a few more questions. What do you mean, what's power? What are you talking about? You're powering your legs or. And the next, next one minute was, no, no, it's a power meter. And I'm just blown away. I have no idea what he's talking about. And anyway, we finished those efforts and then we were heading to Point Addis, which for those who know the west coast of, of Victoria, it's got Bells beach and, and you know, all the famous surf resorts. Anyway, some of the, the roads down to the beach have got some hills. So he said, I'm going to do some one minute hill repeats at the Point Addis circuit. You can come there and we'll just cruise along and we'll talk till then. So I had the opportunity to ask him all about the power meter and he explained it all to me and oh, my mind was Blown. I just thought, this is. I need to. I need to get a power meter and start training with power. And rather than just perceived exertion, that's what I'd done for literally 20 years. And at that stage I had a computer that told me the average speed and the distance and I think I had a polar heart rate meter. I can't remember exactly when I got that, but. But anyway, we did these one minute hill repeats and. And I said to him, oh, I'm never gonna be able to keep up with you on these. He says, I'm just gonna go up and back. Why don't you turn halfway and I'll go to the bottom and then I'll see if I can catch you. So we did that and I can't remember how many we did, but, you know, in my mind at the time I was thinking, oh, far out. Cadell Evans is chasing me up this hill. It was like a race situation. It's like my childhood dream. You know, I'm on my bike and he probably wouldn't even remember any of this, this. But it was everything to me. It was, you know, can I stay away from Cadell and get to the top? And, you know, the first couple, I was pretty gung ho. And then as I got tired and tighter, he's passing me halfway up the hill and. But he was laughing a bit, but, but anyway, and then he said, great stuff. You've done a really good job. Now we're going to go and do some. I think it was more tempo work around. And at this stage I'd already done 120k. It was 35 degrees, I think I had one drink bottle with me and I'd ridden as hard as I'd ridden in the last, I think, decade. And I said, how much longer? And he goes, oh, it's probably another hour and a half before we get to Bowen Heads. And I said, even I knew then that that was enough. As much as I wanted to keep riding with him, I had to crawl. I basically crawled home at 10ks an hour and stopped at Torquay before and sat under a tree with a can of Coke. And then I got back to bowing heads and when I got back, the guys at the house were asking, you know, did you ride with Cadell? You planned it at work. I said, yeah, you would. It's the best day I've ever had. But the reason we're telling it is because it changed my whole thinking about training and how organized he was and specific he was with what he was doing. And we used to go in the afternoon to the beach with you kids and I remember sitting on the beach looking at the Barwon Bridge and I saw Cadell behind the motorbike in the afternoon doing motor pacing in the afternoon. So he did that 150k ride in the morning and here he was doing motor pacing in the afternoon. He did tell me he had strength gym work to do at lunchtime. I didn't know about the motor pacing, but I saw him in the afternoon and I thought that's what it takes to be the best.

Well, that's, he was, he was top three, top five GC rider at that point. So.

Yep. And, and it was such an eye opener to me of the professionalism that he had. He was, you know, I think I was quite knowledgeable as a, as an athlete and as a coach, but this was next level to me and it really was a turning point that if you want to be successful and I'm. It doesn't have to be all the time about winning, but if you want to be better, you have to do things better. You have to, you have to be organized, you have to manage it better, you have to, you have to act like a professional. Even if you're a master's writer, if you want to be better, you have to do things better. And if you're going to spend an hour and a half, do it properly, don't do it like make it up as you go, you know, have structure, have a plan. And from that point on, even though I felt like I was very organized, he exposed that I wasn't. I thought I was, but it was next level. And I think that that really helped me in my adult life post professional to be a much better coach, I reckon. And I was a much better athlete because my time, efficient training went through the roof. I didn't have the time, but now I was training so much smarter.

It's such a you story to just decide that you told the guys, I've got a plan here, I'm going to ride with Cadell tomorrow. And you sat at the back and you peeled off and you had the guts to go. Now I want to find out what he's doing. And it's just typical of your personality, same as in the 80s. I'm going to go find out what the best people are doing and here's your chance to do it. And it was one of the most beneficial decisions you've made.

Yeah, it was a bit of a risk because he could have told me to rack off, but he, that's the sort of personality he was. I think he thought, oh, this guy's that keen, you know, what harm's it doing? I think he felt sorry for me. But when he realized that I could actually hold his wheel and I didn't add the very first five minute effort, I moved to the left a little bit and I was looking down and we were doing 45ks an hour or something like that. And I thought, oh, must, mustn't be that hard. It must be a tailwind or. And I moved and, and I nearly lost five bike lengths because I put my nose in the wind for a second. It's like, oh, shit, how hard is this? And back in behind his wheel and as we know, there's a 30% effect of drafting and that. And that was an eye opener to me because whether you're riding into the wind or against the wind, with the wind, he could ride the power meter both ways because the course we were on that turned, turned left and right. And so we had crosswinds and we had tailwind, then we had a headwind and you get, he was holding the same power, yet the speeds were different. You know, one minute we're doing 55 with the tailwind and the crosswind we're doing 45 and in the headwind we're doing 40, you know, so. And he said, I've done all five efforts the same. I said, no, I haven't. We've done them. This speed, that speed. He goes, speed's nothing. Speed's good at the end when you've got an average, but the power is everything. I actually met Cadell about 10 years later on a charity ride and my job was to get the corporate riders to spend a minute beside him. Almost like we had the country turns. And I was to ride beside him. Sorry, behind him to protect him from being cross wheeled or from getting, getting crashed. And so I didn't get a chance to say to him, you will not remember me, but I did this on this particular day. And it was a bit of a game changer. And in his typical modest fashion, he goes, oh, that's great. But yeah, there's no recollection of it, but yeah.

And I wanna, I wanna leave the coaching side of things aside for the moment. I mean, from that point on you just dived into power. You bought Joe Friel's power book right behind me. We've got the shelf here and there's Andy Coggin and, and what's his first name? Alan the power guru. I can't remember training racing with a power meter. It's got the power meter Handbook. You know, you've got these, all these books from the 2000s that you just got your hands on. And you know, we use Andy Coggins power zones in our training programs at the moment. And you, you dive right into that and got so heavily involved. And again, even as a junior I mentioned that I was the first person out of any runner I knew, I honestly believe the first junior 15 year old in the state to get a heart rate monitor. I had a polar heart rate monitor, a polar heart rate watch. And I was so tiny that the big bulky polar heart rate was bigger than my wrist. You know, it felt like it was as big as my hand. And kids would look at me and go, what is, what does heart rate got to do with anything? Or what is pace like? Why are you looking at pace, you know, and as a 15 year old you couldn't even understand what pace was.

Get some high heart rates. There's a, I can remember vividly saying 209s and 210s, 213 I think.

Yes. But that's, that's how far ahead you were. And I guess this really was the catalyst again to get that, bring that competitiveness out of you. And as we got older and you had more and more time, the older we got, you started that full blown self experimentation again. And internally I think you really started a quest for, to get to the top of your game. And I'm gonna say really for Masters domination that that journey began.

Yeah. And I was so much more excited as, as I was compared to being a professional because I had so much more help. How exciting is it to know that the session you're doing is you can quantify exactly what you're doing, whereas you're not doing it by feel. And that was a game changer and I loved, I couldn't wait to train again to see what my, my tools were telling me as I was training. Whereas before it was totally on, you know, can I push a bit harder? I don't know if I'm pushing the right power on the bike or the pace as a runner, I don't know. I've got no idea. It just feels like I'm trying harder. But now I could look down and see. Well, actually I feel like I'm pushing out of my power's dropping, you know. And it would, it would prove to me that I started every, if I use, you know, Cadell's training method and I actually did a lot of those five by fives from that, you know, that was one of my go to sessions for myself. If it's good enough for Cadel, I'm doing it. I didn't know the theory behind it, but now I understand. And, and I would, you know, definitely without the power meter, I would be doing the first one at, you know, way too hard and the last one creeping. Whereas now I was measuring my efforts from start to finish. And even that was exciting to know that you're actually doing all five at the right intensity.

So from that point you put a little as, as you always would, you put a few goals in your head. You started doing more and more races and some key goals came up on the calendar. And once you decide these things in your own mind, we all know that you get hell bent on achieving them. And I'll start with the first major event that you wanted to win and that was Tour of Bright. And Tour of Bright is a tour in Victoria and really gained some legs in that period of when you were racing in 2008-2013. And Shane Miller actually mentioned on the podcast few weeks ago that in that period because cycling was exploding and Kandel won the Tour de France and you know, it was selling out, it had the most riders competing every single year and it was hyper competitive. And that was a bit of a monkey on your back, wasn't it?

Yeah. And look, some of the great riders, Richie Port and Simon Garans and you know, some really good riders have had a crack at it and there's still some great riders who have done it to this day. And I'm talking masters, I'm not talking the Open, because the Tour of Bride is, it's a local Victorian three stage tour and at one stage it was a four stage tour and now it got dropped back to a three stage tour. I had time trial at a road race with a hilltop climb finish and it had a hilltop climb road race finish. So it was a real climbers, threshold type athlete, cyclist event. And that was what I thought was my strength was threshold riding from triathlon days. But I soon learned very quickly that I wasn't that good in the mountains. I was good as a triathlete, but not, not as a cyclist. So am I time trialing as a, as a short time trial. So the events were 20 minutes. I was great for 180k but I had no high end power for 20 minutes and I had to reinvent that. So, so I kind of embrace this and all of our community, our group that I trained with the Tour of Bright was the big, the big event. It was like the world titles of, of Tour stage racing in Victoria, especially for masters riders. Yeah, it was, it was a stepping stone for the, for the open elite riders to go on to better things. And we didn't have the NRS in those days. National Road Series for the up and coming. You either became a good rider and went to Europe and you know, like the Simon Clarks and Simon Guerins and Richie Ports and all the guys who've made studio grades, they've all done these, you know, these type of open races and done well and then got looked at and went overseas. But, but this was an event that I thought, right, I really, I want to have a crack at, you know, see if I can win a masters event such as this. And that was a driving, a driving reason. Again, it's the goal setting that was the thing that was going to, you know, I had to, I had to put something in front of myself and I thought this, this Tour of Bright thing is, is certainly one thing I want to do. And so I started doing the event and, and I was again very average. So it took me to change my whole training process and, and start seeing the guys who are doing well, what were they doing and learning again doing the whole situation scenario repeated like it was 20 years earlier.

Contacting guys like Shane Miller and yeah.

And you know, Dave Sturt, he was a bit of a legend skills, you know, he taught me so much about preparing. He was, he was a master's writer, you know, probably six or seven years younger than me, but a really, really talented writer and had written a Sun Tour. And so I learned a lot about preparation for stage tour riding, which I knew nothing about and got really good advice from, from people like that and, and you know, took a long time for me to start to get some success, but I really enjoyed the whole process and got excited about it. Couldn't wait for the Tour of Bright every December. Trained the whole year for the Tour of Bright. And that's what it was about for those few years.

That was an interesting one because it took you a few years longer than you'd like to finally win it. You know, you just had problem after problem each year. Some years you had a mechanical, some years I think you were sick. You even had a crash one year before it and took a lot of persistence to finally win it. So it was a pretty satisfactory, satisfying achievement when you finally did win it.

Yeah. And it was a little bit demoralizing when I thought that I was doing everything right, but I wasn't getting any, any success. But I, I knew that I had to just do it and it all had to come together eventually. So I did probably eight or nine tour brights and I, you know, I got second, third, fifth, you know, and just missed out here and there and, and then finally, finally won one. But, and that was a very satisfying moment and I nearly lost it on the, the climb to Hotham. I don't know, bore the listeners with it, but all I had to do was finish with the lead pack and I think I had a 15 second lead and the guy I had to beat, I just had to mark him and I was feeling fantastic. But I've learned that I don't go well above maybe 1500 meters at altitude and Hotham was over that and I was going great guns till the last 10 minutes and, and I started to falter and I'm not sure if the guys realized, but I was doing everything to hide and the guy who is second got a gap on me and I only ended up winning by eight seconds and he, he brought seven seconds back. I don't know if you realize all you had to do was attack a bit more and I was done. But it was another tactical but, but yeah, it was, it was, I learned a lot about, you know, stage racing and, and understanding, you know, how to defend a yellow jersey. And it was, it was life lessons that now you see on telly, you.

Know, this is what this whole period was. It was just you have throwing yourself into everything and even the altitude lesson there. You know, a couple of years later you had your first experience spending a month at altitude in France and now you can handle altitude, you know.

Yeah, and, and, and I was shocked that I couldn't perform as well as I could meters lower. And that was such a physiological shock to me. And, and I years later bought an altitude tent and I did the 2019 Masters preparing and we might talk about that, but that was a game changer to train to sleep at altitude.

So you were competing as much as possible, racing, having a lot of success, state titles. But one of the big ones you wanted was the Australian Masters Championship road race. You wanted to go there and win. And it's the exact same story. You'd been there a few years and you'd same thing, gotten some second seconds, thirds, fifths and again a goal in your mind, single minded, you wanted to win. This, this is one of my favorite stories of just showing your mental resilience and determination. And this race I think it was 2014 when you finally won it and got yourself 26 years later, another Australian Masters champion, Australia, another Australian champion jersey, another Australian championship title to your name. And that race, I just remember you said before it, you said to us kids that no matter what you were going to win was just this single mindedness, determination. And we were also invested because we were older now and we wanted to see you performing and competing again because we had heard how you were as professional in your younger days. And yeah, I mean you can tell the story of the finish but it's, it's a pretty epic way to just. It was basically all grit just to make sure that you would win that.

It's interesting because I've competed at, you know, five more, four more after that and, and this was at Bunningong. So it had special significance because that's where the elite national road race is. And so this was at Ballarat 2014 and I was in great form and really hard race up Buninyong, I don't know how many laps we did. And it came down the normal circuit to the finish line at Bunnyong, which is where it is right now. And, and it's kind of downhill finish and tactically you need to, to really understand that finish. And I had gone and recond it many times and understood, you know, if the wind is coming from here, you need to be sitting on this side of the wheel, etc, etc. But we came to the finish and there was, I think it was four riders fighting out for the win. And one of them was, I remember AG Giramondo, really good sprinter and I thought, I don't know, I didn't get rid of them on the climb. I could have blown this but almost because I'd said to myself that no matter what happens today, I'm going to give everything to make sure I win this. And so I could not have timed the sprint better. And I've tried to teach the guys I coach. Sprinting is not all about the guy with the best power. There's three aspects to sprinting. There's the position first, where are you in the position for the sprint, the, the timing, when do you start your sprint and then your effort, the power. So there's so many examples of people giving the power. Even last Saturday's bunch ride at the wrong time. They may have been pushing more power, but they did at the wrong time. They're positioned wrong and they timed it wrong. So I couldn't have been better positioned. I was behind two of the guys who are leading it out and AG was behind me, which I didn't really like. And then timing the sprint got that right and then it was the effort and we were side by side and I thought, well, who wants this more? And I remember getting cramped in my stomach in the sprint because I was straining so much for the power. And I, I think the photo shows me winning by a wheel, but AG was a better sprinter than I was, but I definitely got the position right, the timing and I just was determined with the power. And so that was another example of fulfilling an ambition based on everything I'd known that came into that last sprint. Understanding the scenario. And it's like a chess game, isn't it? You know, you've got the race where you're trying to get rid of them on the, on the climb. It didn't happen. Now I have to look for plan B and they're examples that I try to tell the athletes that I'm coaching that you've got to have all these other opportunities and options up your sleeve if things don't pan out well. But I've learned a lot from other people. Tim Jamison has taught me that about sprinting. It's not necessarily the most powerful guy that's going to win the sprint. It's the guy who's got the three things. The, the position in the bunch. If you start the sprint from 10th, you might end up 4th and you might have had the highest power of the whole sprint, but you started too far back. So that's your position, the timing. If you start a sprint into a headwind 200 out, everybody's getting a free ride. You're actually the lead out man, not, not the guy sprinting. So the timing's crucial and then the effort is when you need it most, which is the power.

That's why Tim keeps winning every sprint every Saturday. You just can't beat him. My favorite part of that story is that when you came home and told us and you explained that, that you just had your head down and you just were putting every single thing into the pedals to make sure you won. And then you looked at your power data after and you're a very light rider and so you don't push high watts. Your watts per kilo is really high, but just in terms of high wattage, it's not as high. And for that sprint, you pushed over a thousand watts, which was just a. I think it was a 10 second power record.

And I still haven't matched that power number to this day. That is the highest power I've ever pushed. And, and I was quite shocked that I, I think the determination, no matter what it took, was the point. And then looking back saying, well, I can, I can push that if I'm, I'm really.

Mode.

Yeah, yeah, yep. And the will to win was, was what got me over the line for sure.

And like you said, you won four more Australian Masters Championships after that, basically four in a row. Maybe there were some gaps in there, missing some years, but that, that one always stands out as a really clear memory. And to paint the picture of kind of what ability you'd gotten yourself to, you know, you were really riding as many variation of races as possible and there was a specific race, the Phillip Island Grand Prix where you, it was an open race with, you know, basically elite riders in there and you managed to get yourself a top 10 finish against some gun open riders and that really showed where you were at as a, as a late 40s, 50 year old rider.

That was a bit of a shock actually because it was 100 something K around the Phillip island circuit. You know, it's a, it's a really tough circuit. It's got all these little climbs out the back and, and it was a huge field so positioning was important and you know, making sure you're near the front third so that you're not going to get gapped. And so much about tactics was in that and of course I was fit. But I try to explain to people that I coach as cyclists, the fittest person is never going to win every time. It's the fittest person but the person who's got the best tactics. And I was really good at positioning myself in a field and that day proved it because I was near the front, the break went, I got in the brake and I basically hidden at the back until that point came and I was able to be fresh enough to join the break and it was a long way out and it was, I think there were 10, 10 of us in the break and the expectation in the break is everybody contributes. And here I am with the elite riders of Australia and I'm sort of shaking my head going, I'll help you when I can but. And everybody's cool with that. You know, I'm not going to feature in the finish here boys, but you know, by the end of the row I end up 10th. But you know, I was lucky to stay with him.

Yeah.

So that was an example of. It's not necessarily fitness alone, it's, it's your tactics and knowing how to, how to Protect yourself and hide and knowing when to burn your match when you need it. And I was pinching myself that whole day. I still remember that vividly saying, far out. Look at the guys I'm riding with here. And I'm still here. And the fitness kept me there, but my tactics got me there.

One of the last points to touch on which really just exemplifies this mindset you have of soaking up as much information as possible, which, which is what you've been doing since 1985. And that's. So you won the Australian Masters championship when in 2014, for the first time. And you won the Champion of Champions threes three times. So that is basically at the, at the championship. There's, there's the road race, there's the crit and there's the time trial. And so you can become Australian champion, each of those individually, but then the Champion of Champions is. There's points allocated for each and whoever has the best points across all three gets Champion of Champions. So you'd won that three times, but in winning the Champion of Champions, you'd never won the time trial. Second, third, again, whatever. And once again, when that happens to you, we get a recurring theme here, that you get hell bent on winning it. And coming into the 2018 Nationals, it was. Or 2019, I can't remember the year. But you just said, I need to get this monkey off my back now and win the National Time Trial. You wanted to win champion champions again for sure. But you wanted to win the Australian Palm Trial Championship.

And it was interesting because I remember talking to you about it because you were in the office and you were sort of saying, what are you gonna do this year, dad? And I said, well, do I just keep going back and repeating the same thing? And you were saying, well, why not? Why wouldn't you keep doing it when you're enjoying it? And I said, I tell you, what I aren't enjoying is not winning the time trial. And I've come second. Jim. Jim Aarons beat me by 0.01 in a time trial. How's that possible? Anyway, that happened a few times. Jim and I have been very similar. Just one of the guys who I've grown up riding with and he's a fantastic guy and I couldn't be happier to lose to him, but I lost to him by under a second two or three times, so there wasn't much between us. Anyway, I think I said to you, if I'm going to go back, I have to win the time trial. And that's going to be my goal and I want to be, you know, one of the few people to have won the road race criterium in time trial at the same championship. So I win the whole, all three. And so that was, I think, I think was in Adelaide and, and I said, but I have to do a few things different because, because I'm doing something not right to not win this tactically. I'm winning the criterium and the road race because of my tactics and my fitness. But in the time trial it's, it's fitness and my fitness is not good enough. And so I remember discussing it with you saying, this is what I have to do. I have to train a lot better, a lot smarter for this event and I have to do a whole lot of other things. And you were going like what? I said, well, I know the value of altitude and that was one of the key things that I thought if I could sleep at altitude and train properly, not at altitude because they always say sleep high and train low. But if you can sleep high and train high, it's a double effect. Well, I couldn't train high because we.

Live, basically we live 500 meters, not 2,000 meters.

That's right. So I went and found myself at altitude meter tent and much to discuss with my wife, used it for eight weeks and, and, and lost four kilo. That was the other thing. I felt that I was not at the right racing weight, that I should have been, you know, and as a, as a 50 plus, you know, 57 year old, 58, 60 year old, whatever it was, as a 60 year old. Are those things important? Well, not really, but if I want to actually do this properly, that's my point. It doesn't matter how old you are, if you want to do something properly, do it properly. So the weight was a, you know, I had to do extra things. I had to concentrate on the right fuel, really good, nutritious fuel, which will lose my weight and not eat the crappy stuff for just a period. And remarkably, the weight just fell off me. I didn't do anything, didn't do any harder training. I did more specific training to time trialing. But you know, the altitude, the concentration on the food and training more specifically for this event were the three things that, you know, that were the added things I needed to do because I was doing okay before, but I needed to have a difference and, and going to that event, I wasn't sure, but I knew I'd also go on to get a bike fit to, to really get Me in a professional optimal position on the bike that was going to allow me to be faster. And that took I reckon, six weeks of me riding like a dog on the time trial bike. And I, this is a good lesson really because I rang the guy up and said I've been averaging 42Ks an hour in these 20 minute to 30 minute events and I just competed on the weekend with my new position and I busted my ass and I rode 38ks an hour. I don't think I'd ever ridden under 40ks an hour in my entire time trialing career. And it was almost, I was in shock. I didn't, I was trying, I didn't know what had happened. People said, oh, how come you didn't compete on the weekend? And I said, well you didn't go to page three of the results because that's where I was, I was that far behind. And I rang him and said, what do we do about this? He said, you just keep training in that position, you trust the process. And it was really good advice. That was March when I got that done, the race was October. You said you got six months. And by the time I got to two or three weeks out from October, I was back riding faster than I was before I changed my bike position. So I got back half a kilometer an hour. I think I was back to, I think I did, I don't know, 42.8 or 43 kilometers an hour on race day. So, so, but that took literally three months before I started riding back in the 40Ks an hour. So I'm always telling people to be patient and I had to really do that myself and trust the process and I was going to give it time and if it didn't start to turn around then I would question it. But, but I couldn't question it without giving it a chance. And that's the thing I would tell people who are starting a new journey, don't give it four weeks, give it four months. Maybe give it. Some people give it four years and you'll get to your destination.

And so you went and you clean swept it and it probably capped off years of working in the master's category of self experimentation, of trialing everything again, making mistakes and putting it all together to put the best preparation in, in a six month plan to get you that win. And once again, very satisfying result to cap off a, a big 10 year or 12 or 15 year period.

Yeah, and I, I do feel that that was the most rewarding result out of all of my masters. And I Put it in perspective, you know, there's hardly anybody in our age category anymore because people have given up racing. So it's probably easier to compete in that age category as compared to a 35 to 40 or 40 to 45. So I understand that. But the guys who go to those races, they think they're a chance. So you are, you don't have the depth, but you have same quality riders who you've been racing against for 10 years. So it's the same guys and whether they're 50 or now they're 60, it's pretty much the same guys. So, so that was very satisfying and it proved to me once again that you need to do the next step, extra stuff to, to give yourself the opportunity. It may not happen and it's not, as I said, you know, winning was a bonus, but, but you need to do something better than you've been doing before to get the next level result. And, and honestly, winning the time trial set up the next two days because the road race was next and I was so confident and, and, and tried something in the road race that I'd, that I'd always wanted to do and attack on a downhill because this is, it was similar to Chris Froome style. It was similar to Port to Walunga climb and it was in Adelaide. And the, the descent was really technical and the climb was parallel to Walanga Hill, which is like a 10 minute climb, but it was about 3 or 4k up the road, so it was 3 laps of that. So the descent, the climb, flat bit, et cetera. And just before the downhill, I attacked on a mini app uphill and got 15, 20 meters on the bunch and two other guys came across and they were really good descenders too, which, which helped. And the three of us stayed away. And then I was able to ride the last hill away solo, which was so satisfying the way that I was able to do it because masters riding is really hard when you're a marked rider. It's hard to get away because they just chase you down and sit behind you. So I'd experienced that a lot over the years, so it was really good to come up with a winning tactic that was going to catch people by surprise and no one would have thought you would attack on a downhill. And then the criterion was like, I've won two, I am not going to lay down here. I am going to go into this race with the mindset that I am determined to make it a clean sweep. And, and you know, it was a shocking day at Adelaide it was raining, the course was dangerously slippery. Victoria park course, for those who know it. It's got the last corner, it's a really tight right hander and it was wet. Positioning was key. You had to be in the first three riders around that corner because it was literally 200 meters to the finish. If you were fifth or sixth, you were too far back because you were going around the corner so slow. And I'm telling the story because again, it wasn't particularly about the strongest rider, although I was, or I think the strongest rider anyway, but positioning, if I wasn't where I put myself, which was second round the corner, I don't think if I try to come from 8th and be arrogant, I wouldn't have won. It was all to do with tactics and that was rewarding as well. And finishing with the three.

Yeah.

And it was almost like that's a chapter finished. And although I still love writing Masters National Championships, but I'm certainly not preparing myself, I'm more preparing others.

I'll just quickly show for the video as well. This is actually one of my favorite frames. I'll just quickly grab it. But we've got a frame from that national title and it's just. I'll show it on video here. And it's just the end of the road race and you can see behind it's. I don't know how far it is to that corner, but you're just well clear, you know, and it's very satisfying. You're up celebrating the win and it's Got Jared only 4 times Australian Masters Champion of Champions and yeah, like you said, just capped off a really great decade plus of campaigning for these races. And one we didn't mention was the World Masters title where you got second or third, I think. And that was another one that you really. I say second or third flippantly because to you, I know if it's not first, it doesn't matter, but to everyone else, second or third of the World Masters and that's a whole other story. That is another frustrating one for you. But it was again one that you really put your head down and committed to and felt like you were strong enough to win.

Yeah. And look, it should be mentioned, you know, I didn't get the result there in the time trial in the road race through various circumstances which probably don't have time to go through, but, but that may be more determined to, to, to reach for goals. It's not all. You're not always going to get the goal, not always going to get the Result, it is important to, to strive for it. But you know, we've, we've highlighted specific things over a period of time. But the in between there were other events where I didn't get the goal, I didn't reach the result I wanted. And so don't feel like you're hearing someone who just wins everything. It's not the case. For every win there's 70 seconds. And I always shake my head and laugh a bit when I look at Sagan, Peter Sagan, he's had equally amount of seconds that he has had first and he's won a hundred and something races and he's got second 100 something something times. So no one remembers that. They just remember him winning a lot of stuff, you know, three time world champion. But he's, you know, it's not always going to end the right way and, and, and that's okay too. It's, it's how you deal with that and what that does to your mindset. And for me that's like a red rag. I'm not going to let that happen again. I'm going to do everything I can, which is next level to make sure I can achieve what I wanted to achieve.

And in all of that, you always had a feeling that you were going to go back into full time coaching. You just didn't know exactly when it would be. But throughout this period I think it was kind of decided for you when people were noticing your dominance and people started to really ask for your help. And again, once you started training properly for cycling, you had a quickly formed a group around you that you were helping, you were getting help from other people as well as you started to coach. Friends around you, teammates around you. Other athletes would come and ask for help and you know, you tell the story. You were a full time painter, that was your full time job obviously. But you were getting interrupted at work to answer calls about coaching. That's the point it was getting to.

It was funny hearing the Joe Friel story about his starting a bike shop and. Sorry, starting a running shop in Boulder and, and he had more people coming in asking about training than buying running shoes. And that's kind of, you know, I was, I didn't want to go back to teaching. I wanted to get a career that paid better than teaching because I had four children and we wanted to put you through some, some good school. So I needed a better job and we worked our way, my brother and I had worked our way with our dad going through unique, helping dad in his painting business and so we did that till we were, you know, 18, 19, 20, 21. And I vowed that I would never paint again once I'd qualified as a teacher. But here I am back painting and doing really well in our, in our own business and, and I was helping that many people. I was getting all the calls during work hours and it was really affecting my painting. In the middle of painting a wall, I'd have to stop. And I didn't have to stop, but I wanted to stop and answer a call. Someone wanted to talk about, you know, their training and it was fun. And the painting wasn't fun, but it was the means to an end. You have to, you have to earn money and you have to work. But, but certainly my passion was still helping people. And I was helping people, you know, everywhere I could turn I was, I would gladly write programs for people and discuss their progress and it just became too much in the end and something had to give.

It was at this point that Trivello was born and we will break down the name because for those that don't know, Trivelo is quite simply the tripod is triathlon and velo is the Italian word for black or cycling. So that's what trivalo actually is. It's funny that if I say the name to anyone in the industry, they get it straight away. If I try and try and give my email to someone that needs my email for some reason they, they can never understand what Tribalo is. And they, it's Trevello or double L O or something like that.

But yeah, it's basically just trying to say that we, we help, you know, anybody wants to swim, ride and run and, and, and ride it. So that, that's where it was. It's a great name.

And at this point we want to give a quick shout out to Darren Rutherford from Giant. We've actually had him on the podcast so you can listen to the episode with him. But he was instrumental in helping bring Tribalo to life. Giant have been our long term sponsor here at Tribalo and they've absolutely backed you, dad, and Darren's backed you completely and Tribalo into this wonderfully big, close knit, epic family that it is now. And throughout this process of you really trying to get to the best level yourself as a master's athlete throughout this. Tribalo was born as the full time coaching side of things and it's just grown into this. Yeah. This wonderful thing it is now.

Yeah. And look, Frank, my brother, who I was partnership with in the, in the painting business just said look, if you want to pursue your coaching career. Yep. Stop painting. Let's start your coaching career properly. Think of a coaching business. Name clothing, the Celtic business. Painting will back your coaching until. Until you can earn enough charge, people to be coached now. Don't do it for free anymore. Make it a proper business. And without that, again, people around you to support you with your dreams. It's very difficult, but what an opportunity for my brother to sort of say, look, go for it. See where it takes you. That's your passion. And, you know, Darren Rutherford from Giant was instrumental in, you know, I remember sitting down saying, what are we going to call a coaching business? And we came up with some ridiculous names and, and he was instrumental in the name and what are we going to look like? How are we going to. How are we going to be identified? What's a safe color? And I was, I was always in love with the Belgium, the German colors, the national road colors, and they stood out and they've. They don't. I mean, they last the test of time. You know, they don't. They don't get old. Some brands look good and then all of a sudden it looks old and tired. And, you know, the Belgium kit's been there since the, I don't know, the 30s. And the German kits, the same white with the black and the. And the orange or the yellow, the Belgians, the blue with the black and the, you know, and you identify because it stands out. It's forever. I was talking to someone the other day, look, the, The Jeep, the Great Britain kit, like, it just keeps changing. You know, the Australian kid is iconic. The white with the green and gold bands, it's iconic. I love the Australian national kit. And getting a national jersey as a master's rider, it's. It's kind of not exactly the same, but it's close enough. And I'm so proud of that, that jersey because I love the look of it. And I wanted that to happen with tribalo's kit. And so, you know, I was fumbling around with this and Darren, Darren and I came up with, you know, not only the name, but the kit. And, and it's a white kit, which is so safe at night and in the early mornings when we're training. I didn't want dark, and it stands out so much. You can see people come in the other direction in the kit. It's, It's. I'm really proud of the kid, actually.

We're so proud of the kit, and we just love seeing it out there. And I think this is the point that we want to talk about with Traveller now is that it started, you know, it's. For us, it's a, it's a family business. You know, the Donnelly family is just, is what Trivelo is and what it's come from. And especially it wouldn't have started without, you know, you and Frank. And that's why we want to mention you, Frank and Darren at the start of it. And, you know, Tribalo now has evolved into this thing where it's, you know, full time is you, me brother Liam. Liam's wife works in the business. Shauna, our cousin, who has been on the podcast before, works in the business. So it's really just, it's a family business now that has grown into this massive thing that probably you always wanted but didn't quite expect it to turn out this way. And I mean, even Mum as well, you know, we, we take tours to Belgium and Mum is so instrumental in making that happen and she won't like us talking about that because every time we do a tour she says, I'm not, I'm not being the swan year again. I'm not providing everything for everyone. But she does such a great job every time that she ends up continuing to do it. But that's the real family theme of, you know, how Trivalo is, and not just from us as a family that run it, but that extends to the theme of what Trivelo is for our athletes and our Tribalo clients. And athletes are family and anyone that's involved in Trivalo knows that. And you can't describe the, how close knit the family feels, you know, when you go for a ride and the amount of close friendships that have now formed within the Tribalo community. There's groups of people that are now considering each other as best friends and you would now consider a lot of athletes as extremely close friends of yours personally, regardless of the coach athlete relationship. And that's just what Travello has been, has grown into.

Yeah, there's no doubt you've covered a lot of topics there. And, you know, some of my people I spend my social time with, not only am I their coach, but I'm, I'm their friend. And, you know, looking around Australia, I've got. Got people who I've actually never met personally, yet I have a relationship with that's very deep. The amount of knowledge I need to know about what's happening in your personal life to enable you to be a better athlete that you're asking me to help you with is you have to share a lot of personal, private stuff between the coach and the athlete. And so, you know, that's quite important to have that special bond. And it's deep. And the analogy is like, they're all my children, which sounds a little bit strange, but that's how I look at it. If I want my kids to succeed, I want my athletes to succeed. And I don't mean win, I just mean be. Better versions, when they come to us, they get the joy and the happiness first and foremost from what they're doing, the process of the training, the goal setting. If you haven't understood how important goal setting is from the last period of time that we've been talking about, it is crucial to understand that if you are going to sit there and make a statement about what your goals are, you have to be committed to the process and don't make the goal if you're not committed. And I have to be blunt to say, halfway through that journey, you've talked the talk, but you're not walking the walk. You're not going to get the goal you want to achieve. You're going to fall short. You need to rethink. And most people go, you're right, it's not what I thought I was able to do. So I'm quite blunt sometimes with it's black and white. Even though I really want to be on an emotional journey with people, but I don't want to give people a false sense of where they're at. And I don't want them to get on race day and be disappointed. I want them to be clear about what their potential is, and that's what planning is for a lot of the athletes. And so I just think the journey and the personal, personal of it is based around my family. How am I going to treat my family? And everybody could ask themselves, it's a client. But no, don't think of it as a client. Think of it as someone you have a personal relationship with and you just want them to be better. And the joy I get is equal to the joy I've experienced myself. And there's been some occasions, I know at the national titles where I've been in tears. With example would be I've got so many times I've been in tears with a victory from someone I've coached. I've just given them the big embrace, the hug, and I can't speak. And, you know, I could rattle off so many times that that's happened, just like I do when you guys have done well, you know, when you, when you were little, that's the feeling I get. And, and I love it. I could not be happier in my job knowing. And it's not just about the victory. I'm sure they've won the national title. And I talk about. Joe Spano is my shining light, you know, but I've got many Joe Spanos, and I'm just as happy as someone who's, who's come from the back of the pack in a triathlon and is now the middle of the pack and has done a PB by 15 minutes. The embrace is the same. So. So I think as long as that passion is still there, and I feel like each one of my children are important to me. I'm so determined to keep growing this business, to make it so that people want to be long and they want to enjoy what we offer. And the journey is the key. The destination is, is what the journey is all about. You know, you're going to get to the destination eventually, but the journey's the thing that happens every day. And that's where the magic happens, I suppose. But the fun at the end when you get to the destination is well worth it. And you look back and you go, you're really satisfied with, with, with how, how it all evolved. And, and dad used to say, you get what you deserve. And I just thought, what does that mean, get what you deserve? Well, if you don't do any training, you deserve to get a poor result. If you train as well as you possibly can, the result you got, you deserved. And that's what it means. It means, you know, you're in charge of what you deserve by your actions, by everything you do. Every day will determine what you deserve at the end. There will be times where there's bad luck, where you get a mechanical or, you know, something, something unexpected happens. But the majority of the time, you know, however you've gone about the process and the journey, you'll get the result that you want. And you've got to be a believer in that. And I am a believer in that. And as I said earlier, for every success that I've had, there's been lots of unsuccessful programs that I've done for myself. But I can identify the reasons why I didn't get the result that I deserved. It could be just someone's better than you on the day, someone's prepared better than you, and you got to accept that as well. But, you know, as long as you're happy in the, in the, in the journey, which is the key thing I think, but that, that family side of it that I, I just, I want to make sure that everybody feels that they're part of, part of that, that togetherness. And you know, I've got examples of people becoming really close friends just because of the link of. We've got a group down at the Mornington Peninsula who are all on WhatsApp together and they all meet and, and they join, join together for their bunch ride and then they come up to town and turn around when they see our bunch coming towards them. You know, they've got their own little community there and there's another community in South Australia and one in Queensland and you know, people in New Zealand and we've just got little groups everywhere, growing. We started off with quite a big contingent in Perth in the early days when we first started, you know, one guy joined and, and all of a sudden five of his mates joined because he felt like he was part of something and his performances were improving every time he raced and all of his mates are going, I want to be part of that because I see what you're doing, you're getting better and I want to be part of it. And he was loving the relationship I had with him was incredible for a long period of time.

Yeah, I mean that's a great summary. I think what you spoke about then. We, we personally don't like using the words clients or you know, business here because we, we want to see the Trivalo family and our athletes are family and obviously it's a business but we don't want to see it that way. We want to see it as, it's, it's passion and it's what we love doing and it's why we love doing the podcast and why we love releasing this information and talking about this stuff non stop. And we would, you know, we discuss race tactics, we discuss triathlons, we discuss all the best cycling races on the podcast. But we would do that anyway. So we just press record basically. But yeah, it is all those little things that like when you're riding on the street and you see a traveller rider, you yell out, you know, and it's such a standout kit. I can't tell you the amount of times I've just been running and then a bike rider will fly past me and yell out, or someone will yell at. I don't even see them. But they recognize the Tribalo singlet. When running at events, it's always great to see fellow Travelo athletes and you cheer each other on even if you don't Know who's cheering you on in the race, you know, it's someone to do with Travelo. And, yeah, talking about both the local Melbourne scene and the fact that we're all online. You know, we've been all online for a long time, but we started in Melbourne and, you know, there's a bigger bunch here that wear the Travelo jersey with pride. And anyone that gets it, you do really wear it with pride. And Nick Granger, who is one of our long, longest serving Tribalo athletes, he recently did a summary, kind of. He's finished up with Tribalo, he's 70 now, and he's stopped enjoying it competitively, which is exactly the principle you're talking about. So he's just going to enjoy recreationally riding. And he gave a bit of a summary saying that, yeah, everyone that puts on the jersey wears it with pride. And that's such an amazing thing, for it to be our thing. You're talking about the same kind of concept for an Australian jersey. And, yeah, it's kind of surreal to. When you see a big bunch In Melbourne, sometimes 30 plus riders, sometimes 40, all wearing Trivelo, it's quite a surreal sight. But we've worked really hard to extend this to the online community. You know, we've got our online clients that we coach every Monday on Zoom, and you get to chat with them on there and get to know them, and we have our Facebook groups where everyone shares a whole range of information, inspirational things, funny things. We have our events. You know, we've got training camps. We've got a training camp coming up next week, which people are attending. And I think it comes down to the why behind why you do everything you personally. And I think that's fair to say that you moved on from being a professional athlete and even a professional masters athlete, and your dream now is for other people, it's gold medals or podium finishes for other people, it's Conor qualifications for other people. And it's. Or just simple improving in PBS for your athletes. And. And I think you've definitely taken that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you've taken that ruthless competitiveness and that win at all costs and be the best mentality and everything you've achieved and you've transitioned that now into, I want to do that by being the best coach. You know, I tried to be the best athlete I could, and now you want to be the best coach you can and everything you experimented on yourself as a master's athlete, plus all your experience as a professional has led you to this stage. And is it fair to say that you get, like you said, just to kick out of all these results as you did, as your own personal results?

I think you've summarized that spot on that. My, my next goal is to be so proud of every single athlete that I'm coaching because they've achieved what they set out to when they contacted us. And, and that's mine. My full determination is, is what is it going to take to get you the result you want? And I've got some outlandish goals. And I've got some goals.

It doesn't sound like you.

They're very achievable. And, and we just have to understand that each person's in charge of their own destiny. You, you can pick the highest goal that's, that's possible. Got guys who still want to win Masters road titles. I've got guys who just want to go around the Gran Fondo 10 minutes quicker than they did. I've got guys who just want to be healthy and fit so they can be a better dad or a better mum, you know, but you need to have goals. And, and, and my job is to make sure that everybody now is achieving those goals. My, my career as an athlete, I've, I've, I've achieved what I wanted to achieve. There's, there's probably a couple of little things that I want to do, which I'll tick away in the background to keep myself motivated, to get myself out of bed. I love the team's time trial at the nationals. I think that's a fantastic concept. You're in a team environment, you're working together, you're helping others. I can physically help people in my team to get a national jersey. I think that's great. Again, it's me really hell bent on and I'm encouraging as many people to join this event as possible and to see the triathletes who are now getting to understand that they can run in a triathlon. They don't have to walk if they do it properly. And, and they'll get the results they want if they, if they persevere with the coaching structure that we're giving them. So, so that's what, that's what my determination is from this point on is to, that's my goals, is to, you know, it's okay being an athlete because you're in charge of your own destiny. But now as a coach, I'm in charge of my children who I, I definitely want to see them reach the potential that they're they're wanting to, and they've contacted us for. And that's a fun journey because there's so many personalities, so many ways people do things differently that I've got to be across and I've got to be flexible. And it's a challenge for me because my hard, fast, rigid way that I coach myself doesn't work for everybody. For other people, it works. For some, it doesn't. So I've got to find what works for people. And that's a challenge in itself. And rather than experimenting on myself, I'm probably experimenting on you a bit. And we've already gone down that track in the last 18 months and saw how things can improve. And you've proven how quickly you've developed as a cyclist. And you probably don't want to talk about that too much, but your watts have gone from 278 to 358, you know, just by us experimenting. And that's. You weren't a bad cyclist to start with, and that's outstanding improvement. And, you know, your running times have come down from just doing the things that I told you about, you know, going back to the hills, going back to Sherbrooke. You. You've gone back to Sherbrooke, the place you grew up running, and all of a sudden your running times are coming down again without you doing any hard intervals. So these are all examples of. Of us experimenting. And, you know, no one out there has the. Has the almanac, the answers to every question. Every coach out there is learning, and if they think that they're not, then they've got it wrong. You have to keep exploring and learning and understanding. And we've interviewed a lot of good people, a lot of coaches, a lot of Olympic champion coaches, and they all say the same thing. You've got to keep learning to give your athletes the best possible sessions that you think will get them. And not every session works the same for everybody. So they're the things I have to think about now as a coach. And. And it's a. It's. I'm excited about it because it is so good to see people get the results. And that phone call I get post race, as a triathlete, for someone who's, you know, trying to break five hours for the half half iron man, and they've done a 452 or a 4,59 and 59 seconds. It's a great phone call. It's, you know, it's an emotional call, and there's just countless examples of that. You Know, girl Emma in New Zealand is a 158 half marathon, and then she comes out and runs a 151. You just. You can't even speak. It's. It's like, wow, you know, how did she do it? Four sessions a week, you know, all hills, some harder hills, some easier hills. Obviously, there's other recovery runs, but there are examples of knowing that there's certain things that are going to get you the right results. And it's not because we've read it in a book. It's because we've actually tried it on ourselves. And. And the theory, you know, in the book is a theory, and it's only a theory until it becomes, you know, in practice, becomes effective, and it gets a result. And I'm always tweaking things, you know, I'm never going to say, this is the. This is the final program, program forever. And we just follow that. It's, oh, far out. We should. Should have a little go at doing this now. And that's a challenge that I'm absolutely up for. And spend most of my time reading research articles and looking for things that have been successful. Just like when I became successful as a triathlete, I had that many people contact me, wanting me to help them. Why? Because I had been successful, not because of me, but because of what I'd done. And the same thing happened when I was a master's writer. I had all these masters cyclists contact me when I started to win again. How did you do that? What sessions are you doing? Because people want to associate with success, so. So, you know, it's a fair responsibility on our hands to. To make sure that we're delivering that. But that's what I'm. I'm, you know, spending all my time, you know, and it's the most enjoyable period, I think, of. Of my career, I think, as a. As a human being is now doing something that I absolutely love and can't wait to get up. And it's no issue for me to spend. And you're holding me back from spending so much time in front of the computer, you know, analyzing and writing new programs and stuff. So as boring as that sounds to some other people, that's what inspires me and can't wait for the next 10 years to see how it develops and where we go to. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing success stories, you know, on a daily basis from everybody we're coaching.

That's music to any Tribalo athlete's ears, because we should understand if you don't understand by the last two episodes, part one and part two, that once you set your mind on something and a goal, then that you achieve it. So if that's your goal with coaching, then any athlete should be pretty excited. And yeah, where it's, it's, it's incredible where Travelo is now. As I said a few times, it's quite surreal. You know, we're worldwide. We coach athletes in Australia, New Zealand, the uk, the us, Canada, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, even the Caribbean, South America. It's incredible how far we're starting to reach. And even this podcast now, you know, we started putting it out just to our athletes and it was, you know, getting 50 listens per episode and then we put it out publicly and now it's getting thousands of listeners per episode, which is super exciting. So I want to finish with some gratitudes again, you know, because this is in celebration for episode 100 and we hope you have enjoyed the story of Jared Donnelly and the story of Trivelo coaching. So I would. Firstly, I'm grateful for you, the listener, for listening and being on us on this journey with us. We really appreciate it and we bring it to you because we have had such great feedback and our traveller. Another gratitude is to our Trivelo athletes that are listening. You've really made Trivelo and the Travelo community and the Triavello family what it is and it's such a strong sense of community and family and that's what we absolutely love. And once again, Dad, I want to say thank you for sharing your story across two episodes. I know the first one was quite traumatic, but I hope that everyone now sees the professionalism, the ruthlessness and the attention to detail that you had as an athlete and how that contributed to, to your success and how you've applied that same level, plus the greatest level of personal care I've ever seen in a coach to your athletes. I think that is truly what has made Tribalo successful so far. And I can't wait. And we can't wait to write the rest of the Tribalo journey in history from here on. So, yeah, on that note, thank you very much for listening. We have really enjoyed. I personally have enjoyed bringing this story to you. If you've enjoyed it, please let us know. Leave a comment on YouTube Leave a comment on Instagram on your podcasting app. Leave a review. It would help us and we love hearing when you enjoy an episode specifically. Also, always share on Instagram, share our posts on your story. We'd love to see who is listening to the episode where you're listening from and how you're enjoying it. And dad, that's a wrap for this episode.

Thanks, George. I've really enjoyed it. And the last thing I want to say is I am absolutely grateful for the people who've entrusted. I'm not getting emotional here, I've just got something stuck in my throat. I'm so grateful for the people who trust me, the people I'm coaching, that they know that I've got their best interests at heart. And I love the journey and the relationship I have with the people we're coaching. And it always amazes me that how we end up with like minded people. I'm astounded, but I shouldn't be because you should surround yourself with people who think the same way as you and that's what we've attracted. And the people in our group, they all think the same and it's no coincidence that they all get on famously with each other because they're all on the same journey. And so I'm really grateful for the people that I've met and the way they trust that they know I've got their best interests at the forefront of my coaching. So, yeah, very grateful.

That's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening to our 100th episode special. We've got some absolutely brilliant guests to finish off the year. Some of the best guests we've had on the podcast that we just could not wait to chat to and we can't wait to bring to you. So that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.