Top 10 Triathlon Race Day Mistakes To Avoid

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching Jared Donnelly. In today's episode, power meter failures and the most vital triathlon race day mistakes to avoid. Let's get straight into it. Dad, welcome back to another episode. What are you grateful for this week?

Thanks, Jord. Well, it is mid September, October, November, December period of the year and that means the seasons are changing. For the Northern hemisphere it means the end of the brilliant hot weather they've been having. And for the Southern hemisphere it means finally an end to winter and into some beautiful weather. And we have daylight savings, which some countries around the world have, some others don't, but certainly means we've got longer mornings and longer nights and with the increase in temperature, I just love this period. From now till the end of autumn, this is my favorite period of the year.

Awesome. My gratitude is just simply I'm loving pro athletes, all sports, triathlon, cycling, running, and the new wave of social media and YouTube and Instagram where athletes are so open and willing to share everything about their online, their, their training sessions, their data, their insight into how they're going about training blocks. Just gives us as fans and this is our livelihood, such good insight that we can learn from, that we can use, that we can get inspired from. I absolutely love it. There's just so much content out there and I can't get enough of it. So absolutely loving it. Before we get into the topic, we're going to go back into a new section from the mailbag because we do get questions from listeners on Instagram or via email. And this one we got a question in that said hey guys, I love listening to the podcast. I raced at Sunshine coast yesterday. This question was a few weeks ago and my power meter failed to work even though it's never not connected before. And I know you guys love the bike discipline and I was wondering if you know why this could be. I ended up doing my ride on RPE rate of perceived exertion because my heart rate monitor fails at every race after the swim, so I don't wear it in races anymore. So basically in the bike she had no no heart rate monitor and no power meter. She managed a third in the age group, but bummed that to have no bike data. The bike was wet in T1 when I set it up. It hadn't rained, but maybe condensation got in. I'm hoping it'll connect up again. But wondering how to avoid this in a race situation when bikes are left overnight. Just wondering if this has happened to any of your athletes before. You have a question on this? You have an answer to this?

I do. And the old Glad bag over the cranks is going to help that. So if it's going to. If for some reason condensation moisture gets in just being exposed to the elements all night, if the temperature drops. Yeah. You know, putting a, putting a towel, wrapping a towel around your chainring around your power meter and then covering it with a Glad bag or a rubbish bag should ensure that when you get there the next day that a it works. But from yours and my experience, when you rack your bike after you've set yourself up in transition before the start of your swim, there could be, it could be 6:00am and then your swim could be 7:30am or quarter, eight or eight o' clock and there could be an hour and a half time lapse between when you leave your bike set up to you actually coming back to the bike to start riding. And you might set it up at 6am when the temperature is 14 degrees Celsius or coming back at 24 degrees, it could be an 8 to 10 degrees swift switch in temperature from when you leave to after you've had to swim and come back into transition. So that could mean that your power meter could be 1 or 2% reading lower or higher. Because you know, generally a power meter is, has a strain gauge in it and it's made of metal. And as the temperature heats up that slightly expands and could read a couple of percent out. So you're going to have this situation no matter what happens, even when you leave the transition before the race starts, you could have another issue as well as overnight. So it's not something that there is a real answer to, but these are things you can try to do. You and I talked about this a while ago saying that, you know, in an ironman, if you're, if you're okay to spend 30 to 40 seconds calibrating your power meter when you come out of the swim, that could actually save you your whole ride. Because if you get the calibration right, right when you start riding, as compared to calibrating it two hours before you start riding because you've, you've set it up, gone to the swim, come back and then start riding, it could be 1 or 2% out. So therefore you're getting it accurately done right at the minute you start riding, which means you might ride at the right power and not have to guess about two or three percentage either way. So I think that that could be something that the age group Ironman athlete could sacrifice over a 10 hour day or 11 or 12 hour day, sacrifice 30 seconds or even up to a minute to get your calibration right. And so now I really kind of be okay to see people standing in transition from the swim to the bike pushing their calibration on their Garmin or whatever bike computer they're using. But you know, as I said to you, you know when you come in from the swim, you're getting your wetsuit off, you're arriving at your bike transition point. You could just touch the screen on your bike computer that wakes it up. Then you could go straight away calibrate and while it's calibrating, you grab your helmet, grab your glasses, grab your nutrition, get everything sorted, get your wetsuit off. All those things could be happening in that 30 or 40 seconds and you grab your bike, it's already calibrated for you. Whilst if you do that first when you get to your bike after you've arrived from the swim, transition. So yeah, that's my response to that.

Yeah, really if you break it down, I think the calibration process takes less than 25 seconds and so you could definitely fit that in there in between doing things. And that's if you are a person that doesn't feel rushed in transition and yet you could definitely. It's one button to wake it up and then depending on the the head unit that you use, it's usually just clicking settings sensors press calibrate. But you'd have to quickly just want to spin the wheel, spin the, spin the cranks just to make sure that they're on zero haven't been touched and that could definitely fit in there and you don't lose too much time. And one extra thing part of this question was your heart rate monitor seems to fail after the swim. Make sure you've got a heart rate monitor that is swim compatible. There are definitely a difference between especially Garmin products triathlon heart rate monitors and non cycling just cycling running ones. But also that's an extra thing that you could just spend 15 seconds doing is just in T1 if you don't wear it in the swim, just spend the 15 seconds chucking your heart rate monitor on once, once your wetsuit is off. So yeah, really good question there. It's leads into the topic and it's, it's thinking about some Mistakes to avoid on race day. One last point before we go into the main topic is you said for Ironman athletes you would sacrifice that time. What about 70.3?

I definitely think you would consider it if you weren't trying for a podium or a top 10%. I think, I think I've got to be very careful here because I think the value of it almost overrides everything else. So I would be getting good at that, that quick system of waking it up because in a half Ironman, I would still want to know that my power meter is reading more accurately than not. So definitely for the, for the age grouper whose pure purpose is a pb. And if you do the same thing each transition every time you do a race, you calibrate your, you can include that as in your T1 time. So I think it's a no brainer for the person who's really just trying to improve. Everybody's trying to improve. I mean the people who are trying to improve plus be at the top, you know, winning the event, you could win or lose by 10 or 20 seconds, which has happened many times to our truck allo athletes where we've won by 17 seconds on 23 seconds and it could be the difference. But you could have ridden probably more accurately had you had the number more accurate so that you could make a minute or two up in a 70.3 90k time trial by having the calibration correct.

On that note, let's get into the topic. So top 10 race day specific mistakes to avoid. So the first one, look, this seems obvious but we, we seem to overthink this and a lot of athletes just then totally throw, throw the planning out the window and make this mistake. And so we want to provide some specific examples of what we're talking about because even if you don't think this is you, you might be surprised that when we talk about some specific examples, you go, oh no, I've actually done that. And that is trying something new on race day. And it's just when, when the race day is coming and you've put so much mental and physical effort and time, blood, sweat and tears into the preparation and it means a lot to you. It's natural to start overthinking things on race week and start, and start doing really random things, nonsensical things and, and we see it all the time and it's just, it's just when you look back in hindsight, we go, what? What were you thinking? And athletes just go, I don't know. I just was panicking. I just, it just, it just all happened and I overthought it. And we'll go through some specific examples, but the first one is last minute carb loading. That's a really big common one we see where just suddenly leading to the race, people go outside of their normal diet plans and completely over carb load the night before and the morning of which is just something their body's totally not used to. And you're really risking completely messing up your day just based on this alone.

And not only that, Jordan, but the timing of your fuel intake. And I'm not talking about race day fuel intake. I'm talking about your meals, your, your dinner the night before, your breakfast of the morning. The timing of that is really important and you need to come up with a strategy that you know is foolproof, that has worked in your training sessions the night before, the particular food that you've eaten the night before. If you've had an average training session the next day where your stomach's a little bit upset for whatever reason, you could have had some spicy meals the night before. That's, that's, you know, that's had an effect on you the next day. You want to avoid those things. So you should be practicing these things. No different to the training sessions. You're practicing to make sure you can run, swim and ride in the right ranges. But the food that you eat the night before and the timing of it, when should you eat? Should be at 5:00', clock, should be at 6:30 or, you know, you wouldn't want to be eating at 8:30 or 9:00', clock, unless that's something you do all the time. You want to replicate the normal, everyday activities that you've been doing in the preparation for this event. You don't want to stray differently. Don't try something new the night before and the timing of it. Don't try and change the timing of it. So the type of food you eat and the timing and then the next day. I've had some people send their, and we asked them to send their race checklist to us and it says, we know, what time I get up, what time I have breakfast, what am I having for breakfast, when do I leave the hotel, when do I, you know, get down to the transition? And I'm seeing things like a huge meal of breakfast that's really within, you know, an hour or 45 minutes of the race. And I'm saying, okay, have you done that before? No, no, no. But I just know that I need extra today. Well, that's actually not how it works. You need to have the same strategies that you've done in training. And if you've done this in training, had something to eat 45 minutes before you, your training day, where the training day might be a 90k time trial with a run off the bike, then that's okay. If that's worked for you before, that's okay. We're saying that's fine. Stay with what you're doing. What we're saying is stay with what you're doing and you've practiced it. But if you're doing something different on that race day by eating more than you normally would and with less recovery time from eating to actually starting the event, then, then that's risking something that could possibly spoil the day. And we say this a lot, you could be as fit as you like. If you have an upset stomach from food that's not digested, food that's different to what your body's used to, doesn't matter how fit you are, you're going to have an average day because all you're going to be doing is going to the toilet or worrying about the upset stomach or cramping that you've got in your stomach. So that's a really good big thing that I think people do make that mistake a lot. They panic about I. It's almost like cramming because, you know, they've heard so many people say, oh, you need the fuel. If you don't have the fuel, you won't get through the event. And that's true. But you've got to have it as a measured method that you've tried and tested all the way into this event.

Yeah. And there's plenty more examples. And another common one is trying some sort of random bit of equipment or some sort of thing that's, that's trending right now that someone tells you about, like, oh, you actually, you need this in the race and then you just go, okay. And then try it for the first time in the race. And that can come down to something on your bike or something you wear or some sort of, you know, gel on the legs or something. It can be really easy and I know this feeling to turn up to race day. And we speak about a lot, the race day excitement and you might go talk to your warm up tent or you might be in the warm up area and you're looking around and everyone's doing their own variation of stuff and you start looking and going, well, what are they doing? What do they know that I don't know. And you go, maybe I need to do that. And there's a little bit of panic that you don't trust your own process. You go, maybe I need to do more of that. Or someone just says something in passing like, oh, you should do this and you just take it on board because you're not trusting your own process. And yeah, we see it play out many times. I see it a lot of running events where people have their own warmup routine and then you see other people doing their kind of warmup routine or their amount of strides. And I see people just, just not thinking and they end up doing. They see a lot of other people doing these massive strides and they end up doing four extra strides that they plan to because they just want to kind of feel a part of it. And instead of doing just three simple strides, get your body warmed up, not over fatigue, they end up cooking themselves before the race because they're just kind of following whatever someone else is doing. And so it's a really easy trap to fall into because you're nervous and there's a lot of energy and you are looking around and you talk about this a lot where you've just got to stay in your bubble and trust your process and don't get caught up in anything anyone says about, oh, you've got to do this for today.

Yeah, your execution for race day with the swim, bike and run is trusting the process. But trust your process of your race planning and preparation beforehand. And if you, if you've heard someone in transition say, oh, these caffeine gels, they're a game changer for me and you just go, oh, maybe I need that and you haven't done it before, that is the last thing you want to be doing. And you know, if the actual race day nutrition is something that you've never tried and for some reason you think, oh, I should try that because you know, I'm feeling a little bit thirsty. Don't do that unless it's the last choice and you're running out of fuel and you are going to have a hunger flat situation. That would be the only time where we would say, look, go for it and look, you know, having coke at the end of a long day is something that you should actually practice now and then in some of your long day training sessions to see if it does work for you. So all the things we're talking about, don't throw them in on that day. Try them in training and then you've, you know, in know if you Know the race day nutrition is different to your nutrition that you've been using for the last six months or six years or 60 years in my case. You want to make sure that you've actually tried the race day nutrition so that if you do lose a bottle or you've run out of fuel or something bad's happened to your nutrition, you know that you can actually take the race day nutrition. So make sure you find out what is available on the race day and then go and try it in some of your training sessions so that your body can cope with it.

Point number two is leaving things till race day to test all your equipment. That is a big mistake. And not testing all your equipment during the week to make sure it's all functioning properly.

Yeah, And I see some people turning up and putting their wetsuit on and it's got holes everywhere and they go, oh, I didn't realize I had that. Oh, that's right. I remember last time I had, you know, and they haven't done anything about it. From the last race to this race, you want to make sure that, you know, your cleats are not worn, so you're going to foot's going to slip out whilst you're pedaling. You want to make sure that the tires are brand new, that you're not going to give yourself more risk of having a puncture. You want to make sure your bike's been serviced before you get to the event. Then, if you've traveled on a plane or in a car or on a train and you have your bike packed away and you unpack it, the first thing you should be doing is testing that everything's functioning. Your rear derailleur is not bent. Every gear works fluently, like it used to when you were training. And if you find that it's not, you've got to immediately go and get it serviced again from where you are at that particular event. And there's a lot of people available to help you at transition the day before and even the morning of when people have a blowout puncture, which reminds me, don't pump your tires up to maximum overnight. And the next morning, if it's boiling hot, you want to be careful how much air you're putting into your tyres because they're sitting there in the sun as well, and you come back out and, you know, occasionally you hear this bang in transition where someone's tyres are blown.

The tyre one is a really, really good point, because I've done this so many times where you just want to have Confidence in your own tire pressure. What tire pressure do you train with? What do you pump it up to? And what are you confident in? And what do you know works because there's tire pumps going around everywhere on race day and you're watching everyone else go, and someone else might offer to pump up your tires for you. And this has happened many times, and they go, what do you want? You know, 75 psi, 80, 90. And then they might just go, oh, you should go 90 here. And they'll pump your tires up to what they might do. And you've got to be really confident in what you prefer and what you like and not sit there and panic and go, oh, the two people next to me have gone to 90, but I normally go 80. I might just go 90 here. You know, you've really got to, again, just have confidence, that process. And that comes from the preparation.

Yeah. Changing your strategy. I've heard someone in transition say. I've heard them say, what tyre pressure do you want? Because someone was helping them pump the tire up and they said, 120. I nearly fell over backwards when I heard them say 120. And then I could hear little whispers, oh, maybe I should have 120 in mine. And before you know it, we're just like random sheep, aren't we? We're just following the leader and. And that's. You just got to stick to your process, you know, stay in your bubble. And we say that about your actual swim, ride and run. Stay in your bubble for all the other stuff and. And have that checklist. So you're just not worrying about what's going on around you. There's a whole lot around you that's the big mistake, is buying into that noise. And guess what else it does to you? It creates more anxiety. You just get more nervous because you doubt yourself about, am I missing the mark here? Because all these other people are talking and I'm saying most of it's garbage, but you know where you are and even if it is something that might have helped you on the day, my advice is to just learn for next time and try to implement that in your preparation next time. And then don't try and do something random on the day. That's what we're trying to avoid here.

Yeah. And on that note, this is a very fine line, but if you're really not sure, you can ask someone. Just be careful about who you're asking and why they're giving that advice. But you can put your hand up and say, is anyone here a tire expert or a bike mechanic expert, because I think I normally ride it at 80 psi, but I'm not sure if that's the best for me. What do you think? Ideally, you're not in this position on race day for sure. But if you just. Do you find yourself in that? You can have a conversation with someone and they might say you should go 85 or 90, but then ask why. Why do they think that? Why are they giving that advice? How do they know that? Because they might just say, oh, that's what I normally do. But their tyres could be different to yours, so that's not a good enough reason. So you say, well, I might just stick to my own then, if that's your reasoning. But if they give a really valid reason and they know what they're talking about, then you might be inclined to listen.

I would be very careful about who I'm asking that question to. Jordan, I'm kind of trying to agree with you here, but. But I would not be asking that question on race day. And look, if someone weighs 100 kilo and you weigh 60, you're just not going to put the same tyre pressure in. You don't need to. The 100 kilo person needs to have more pressure in the tyre so they're not bouncing along the road and. Whereas the 60 kilo person doesn't need that because they're so light.

Yeah, I'm just catering more to the absolute beginner here because I definitely know I've been in that position where I've gone and I've gone. Actually, I have no idea what psi I normally put in and I don't know why I do it. But now that you listen to this podcast, hopefully you don't get to race day.

And the beauty, the beauty of it is you would have a coach like us who would tell you that before you went to the race so that you would be clear on what your PSI should be.

Yep. Yeah. And just on the. The new tires thing, great to get new tyres for, for the race. Just again, make sure you ride on them beforehand because often they can be a little bit more slippery or something and so you don't want to come down around a corner because they're brand new, fresh from the shop and you haven't actually tried the bike yet or fitted them in.

Yep. The only thing I would add would be to make sure you ride your bike and you go through all the gears and make sure they're functioning. So you need to go for a ride on your bike after you've Traveled and that should be happening anyway. If you're arriving at race two or three days earlier, you should be riding your bike clearly. But you need to find out if everything's functioning, if there's any damage and you need to really get onto it asap.

Point number three is not knowing the course of the day, the race course, and not studying the conditions for the day.

Yeah, this is a no brainer as far as I'm concerned. Everybody should have known this way long before they get to the weekend of the race. And you should be actually thinking about that in your training sessions, about what are the requirements of the course that I'm racing on. You know, the difference between racing, you know, Kona to Nice to some of the local races in Australia where we've got Port Mac in Sydney, Port Mac's in Port Macquarie, sorry in New South Wales and Busselton's in wa and they're completely different courses. One is Pancake flat and the other one is unbelievably rolling hills. And you know, Kona is incredibly hot with lots of hills and Nice is, you know, very hot with more hills. So understanding the course in your training and then on race day not being, understanding what you should be doing, how you should be strategizing with the course conditions, I'm talking about gradients here, temperature and you know, you want to know what the temperature is on the day so you can actually organize your nutrition a lot better to allow for changes in temperature and knowing where the wind direction is coming from so that you, you know, we talk about this a lot in our bike training tips and racing tips where you know, you need to be riding differently into a headwind compared to what you're riding with a tailwind. And of course where the hills are, you need to be riding the hills differently when you're going up them compared to going down them. So understanding the course will help you make better decisions on race day.

Yeah, you just don't want any surprises on race day and you just don't want to get caught out at all. And you want to control as many variables as possible and you can't control the wind or the conditions, but your knowledge of them helps you perform on race day and not have anything surprise you or catch you off guard. And I think the wind, well, sorry, course wise, yeah, you want to know where you're going, especially in transition. You don't want to want to know where you're running out from so you're not wasting potentially minutes getting lost in transition because every transition area can be quite different. And then wind wise, I think this is a really big one because it really dictates how you race the race. And if you're not aware of the wind, you're really not going to be racing the race well. And you're going to be losing average speed on the bike and running because you're not aware of which direction the wind's coming from. That's a really big one.

The example I'll give you is there happens to be one of the major marathons happening this weekend in Melbourne. And I'm looking at the weather because I'm talking to our athletes about their race plan. And I know that the last section of this course runs directly north and the wind is coming from the north, so it's going to be a headwind for that last 40, 50 minutes. And so if you know that in preparation for the race, you can actually adjust your effort according to this is in a running race, it's no different to a bike race or to anything you're doing that has the elements are going to contribute to how hard the experience is. And as you, if you've experienced, and everybody out there should have experienced, what it's like running into a headwind, it's terrible. And, and you know, people think that they can hold the same pace into a headwind in a marathon, you can't. You're going to run slower. It's no different than thinking you're going to be able to run up a hill the same pace as what you're doing on the flat. You can't do that. The effort has to be the same. So if you understand that concept, then your, your pace will have to be slower. So you have to allow for that in your actual race plan. And at the end of the day, knowing there's going to be a headwind in the last section is really vital information.

Good point. And if anyone is listening to this before the Melbourne Marathon on Sunday, lucky you, because that is a really big thing that could make you come unstuck. Point number four, don't even start the race injured. And we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago with Lucy Charles opting out of the World Champs because she didn't want to risk injury. But yeah, you've really got to think smart about what position your body's in at the start of the race and what are the consequences of actually racing.

Yeah, we talk about consequences a lot and we've got just to continue the theme that I'm talking about with the Melbourne Marathon happens to be this weekend. I've got two athletes who were preparing for this event and we've got plenty of others who are actually made the start line. We've got two athletes who unfortunately have been injured during the build up and both of them could probably run the event, but it might cause more issues down the track. So short term gain for long term pain is not a theory that I adhere to. I want the athlete to have a long and enjoyable career as a runner or a triathlete, or as a cyclist or a swimmer. We want to make sure that we're looking after the athlete's health and well being, not just for the one gratification of this event. And it's more than likely if you haven't been at your best form because of an injury, you're not going to actually perform that well either. And both athletes have events coming up. The two I'm talking about have events coming up in the next month where if they do this event and they end up worse, they could end up destroying this event and the next one and probably a flow on for maybe two or three months. And the question I would ask the athlete who's so determined to run no matter what the state of their injury is, and we get that at those athletes, they just want to compete. I've entered the race, I've prepared for it, I know I'm injured, but I still want to do it. And I'd say to them, are you okay with the consequence of possibly having four weeks or four months where you can't actually do what you want to do, which is do some more events and train? And if you're okay with that, then great, go ahead and risk the fact that you might get a worse injury and ruin your whole year. And if you can answer that question in the positive, then fine, go ahead. But if that worries you, then you should, you know, look for the next event.

Yeah, this leads into the next point as well. And we did touch on this previously, but it ties into injury and risk and consequences. And it's be really careful with where you're getting your advice from. And that includes us because we will talk about some things on this podcast that apply generally, but it really might not apply to your situation. And you really need to think about that carefully. And there's some things that will really apply to your situation that you should take. But other people don't know you. They don't know your goals, your training history. You, you have all the information about yourself and you don't know where their advice is. Coming from. You don't know what, what their goals are. You don't know what their history is. You don't know their experience. They might have had one shocking experience from something and so they've, they've canned that thing forever in a race and they would, they would, their advice to it then becomes don't do this in a race. But that might not make sense. They just, they made a mistake and they might have not, not have done it properly. I mean, I'm just making up an example but they might have drunk too much water in a race once and then had really bad stomach problems and just said no, you should not be drinking water in a marathon. It upsets your gut too much. But that was just their experience and you don't know the background of their story. And so just be really careful about where you're getting your race day advice from. We spoke about before how there's a lot of advice flying around on race day and some, a lot of last minute stuff and yeah, you've just got to be really careful of this. Yeah.

And making that decision about, you know, strategizing around the race tactics but also making that decision about should I or should I not compete in this event that you know, you need to get the right advice a from the medical practitioner. He will give, he or she will give you the long term outcomes and consequences of your decision if you want to do the event. When you've got a minor niggle or a semi major niggle or a full blown injury, that's the best people to get the advice from. The medical practitioners. The coach is the next person. They know you well and they know your motivation and how you are not wanting to miss events. But sometimes you just have to listen to the advice from the medical people and your coach. And if the coach is worth their grain of salt, they would be looking after your longevity and making sure that you live to fight another day. And yes, it's disappointing, yes, it's unfortunate, but it's better than having this decision and spending another four months injured because you've just disregarded the advice. And getting the right advice is more important than asking 15 people and waiting till you find someone who agrees with you and then, then you feel like you're justified in making that decision. Now people, you know, they don't know you like your medical practitioner or your coach. So you know, don't be taking advice about whether you should or shouldn't be racing injured or whether you, you know, anything to do with the race unless you trust that person, they know you intimately. Don't get advice from people who don't know your ins and outs, your history, your preparation, you know anything about you. You need to stick with the people who know you.

This is where I want to actually bring up Ned Brockman right now. So if you're in Australia, you should definitely be watching what Ned Brockman is doing. But even worldwide it is, it is absolutely crazy and incredible what he's trying to achieve. Right now he's actually going for the 1,000 mile or the 1,600 kilometer world record. So how quickly can he run 1600 kilometers? And so he's trying to do it over 10 days. The current record is 10 days and 7 hours. So he's basically running approximately 6 minute K pace. He's running 160 kilometers a day for 10 days in a row. This is just absolutely out of this world, what this challenge is. And so he's basically running for 16, 17, 18 hours a day with four to six hours sleep in between that and just repeating it day on day. And it is truly remarkable to watch. He's got a live stream that's just running constantly and I'm checking it multiple times per day because boy, running 160 kilometers a day is not good for the body and you can see it playing out and he is just, he ran, he's already done run the record from running across Australia. He's just one of those people who are just out of this world with what they can do. It's the David Goggins kind of thing. And he's really encouraging the public to one, he's raising money for homelessness. So he's really trying to get as much support for homelessness and he's really encouraging the public to get out of their comfort zone and try some new challenges and push their bodies to see what they can see, what they're capable of and do that while donating. And I absolutely think that his cause is one worth donating to because of what he's, he's trying to achieve and the insanity that he's putting his body through. There's not enough superlatives or description of just how I just. The numbers are just out of this world, 160km a day for 10 days in a row at that kind of pace. But you have to understand that you're not him. And I don't know what he's made up of. I think he's running on current stress fractures. I think he's just pushing through it, which is again unbelievable. But already this week, I had a friend get really inspired from this challenge and run a half marathon. And a lot of people are posting online saying, I'm going to run a half marathon or I'm going to do this or that. And again, I don't want to sound like the Grinch here and say, none of this is good. I was really pumped for my mate who run a half marathon. He's never ran more than 10Ks. And so that was incredible achievement. The elation he felt from that was, I did something I didn't think was possible. Two days later, he messaged me. He said, I'm going in for scans. I think I've got a stress fracture. And again, it's just the consequences thing you talk about. Was that worth it? I don't know. We can ask him in a few months, but you've just got to be really careful about doing that. And we're getting into really deep topics here. We're not trying to talk about how you should live your life. But for my mate, I'm sure he's not going to enjoy being on crutches for the next few months. And he'll probably say, maybe I didn't need to do the half marathon. Maybe I could have just done 12k or 14k or donated some other way, just donated to the charity or found a different uncomfortable challenge that didn't result in a stress fracture. So it's a really fine line here between not trying to sound boring and, and just, oh, don't do anything too exciting. But, but be careful who you're getting inspired from or getting your advice from, because Ned Brockman is. It's just unbelievable to watch. I can't even believe how he's doing this. And props to the, to the record holder from beforehand, who was actually an Australian as well. Yeah. And I know you have thoughts on this as well, where. Yeah, it's a fine line between not trying to be the boring coach. It's too conservative. But also just. Just having to think about what, what decisions you're making.

Yeah, look, it's a little bit off topic as well, because we're trying to race day mistakes. And, and I'm putting this in the category of this could be a mistake for your next race if you're in the middle of a preparation and, you know, you say to your coach, I'm doing an Olympic distance triathlon, but I've got this group ride that's 160k. Is it okay for me to do that? Or I want to support Ned Brockman and he's asking the public if they could run 10% of what he's doing. So it's 16k a day or 10 miles a day. You know, they're great, they're really good things that are really helpful and they're great for aerobic fitness. But is it going to be detrimental to your preparation for your event? So that would be something that I would call a race day mistake. Even though it's not a race day mistake, it's part of a mistake that could have severe, severe consequences for your race day. So, so yes, I would rather be the party pooper, the, the, the boring coach who's super conservative because that way you get to do it, you know, the events that you're actually aiming for properly. And so if you're, if you're okay with the consequences of missing events because you didn't make it to the start line because of what you did somewhere two months out or, or two weeks out, then, then that's fine. But I would think that that's not the case. I would think that the majority of people would be really pissed off that they didn't make the start line. And the disappointment is really hard to hide because we are competitive beasts and we've prepared for an event and we've invested money and time and we've booked all the accommodation and travel and all of a sudden you're not doing it because of something that you didn't need to do, that wasn't part of your program, that's caused you to miss out. And, and that's kind of what I'm, I'm trying to look after the big picture, the, the ten year athlete rather than the this weekend athlete. And, and you know, live for now is a great, a great way to live. But, but you should be living for the total. And, and I think that's, that's my message.

Yeah. And what I take from Ned Brockman is, and guys like him and David Goggins and anyone achieving these remarkable ultra feats is, it's not a test of fitness or running ability. It is a test of the mind. And they are showing us how far you can truly push your body and what you're really capable of. And it's so much more than we think. And I take huge inspiration from that. But to your point before, about, if you want to get, if you're thinking about if you've got an injury or something and you want to get the right advice from a range of people and a team of people, if Ned Brockman was in your corner or something like that. They might be telling you you've got this, you can push through any. And. And that might be a bit of advice you need at that time or you might get a doctor saying you're at a high risk of stress fracture. Yeah, I would recommend not running and you, you choose to take that advice. So I think it's just understanding that, yeah, people will come at you from, from their perspective and what's important to them and then you need to make the right decision for yourself. So, yeah, I think, I think that's enough on that.

I think that's a great summary and, and yeah, we could talk about that forever because that is a. Well, that, you know, is very deep.

Yeah, yeah. But last thing I'll say is that if you do want to see a man going through something that remarkable that has. Is just one of the hardest things, one of the toughest things you could ever achieve in running, then go watch his live stream. It's Ned's uncomfortable challenge. And if you feel like donating there, definitely donate and support him. It's. It's pretty amazing to see.

I was going to say, Jord, there's a. Like Lockie Morton is just ridden around Australia and, and he's on a bike and he's done that whole journey in 13 days. Was it?

Yeah.

I could be wrong here. I should. I need to get that information right. It doesn't really matter. He broke the record by some ridiculous amount.

Six days or something. Yeah.

Yeah. So he couldn't have done. It was 30 days, I think. I think the record was 37. He's done it in 30. So he's broken it by seven days. Something like that.

Yeah.

And he was writing 100. He's riding 400 and 70 kilometers a day. And the wear and tear on your body compared to Ned Brockman, they're both equal in terms of duration, equivalency for riding and running. But the difference from running is you're actually pounding the road yourself compared to riding on a bike where the impact on your legs is so different, so inferior compared to doing the running. They're both incredible challenges and they're both great human beings who are inspiring. I love. You know, we've had Lockheed Morton on our podcast and if you want to listen to that, that was one of the best episodes of someone explaining why. Why is he so determined to push himself and challenge himself? And I think that that's a great insight to how a brain can work. And this guy never ceases to amaze. Me and I, you know, I'm thinking that he might try to break the world record of going around the world and you know, this could be a stepping stone for that. So be interesting to see where that goes. But yeah, I just wanted to make that point that, you know, depending on the sport you're doing, it'll have different outcomes as well. Doing it as a running challenge compared to a riding challenge, that the outcome for injury is nearly, you know, 10% less of an impact on your, on your body. And I think you've got to be super careful about what challenges you put in front of yourself.

Moving on from that, the next point is don't go against your own form. You have to race to your current form and not the form that you wish you could do.

Yep. And the line that I use a lot is don't get your ambition and your ability confused. Because I've done that many times in my career. I've wanted to do something and I've just not been in that form. And I'm getting a big lesson in the last two years of my life where my ability, current ability is 50% of what it was two years ago. And due to whatever the reasons are, it doesn't really matter. The point is I need to train and to race. If I'm going to race, I need to be at the level that I'm at and not think of, you know, days of grandeur where I could have done this. You know, the classic example would be when I did some really good marathon runs back in the 90s. But early 1991, 92, you know, running a marathon and 2:30, so 3, 3:30, 3:40 pace. I can't run 6 minute K pace but I could run those paces. And that's a, that's a ridiculous example, but it just shows you that's one person can do that and now I can't. So, so for me to go and expect to go and do a 5k run, he. I used to be able to run 3k 3:30 pace. Let's go and do a 5k at 3:30 pace. And I just filmed you doing it actually during the week, which is even funnier. And, and that's getting your ambition and ability confused. It's, it's an obvious, you know, of course you're older, you're not going to be able to run fast. And that's logic. But I'm, I'm trying to put this to the athlete is what you were doing six months ago or six weeks ago that determines where you are in your planning for your current race form. So, so what you did six months ago has no impact on what you are able to do right now, unless you've trained the same or better. And if you've trained the same way and you've improved and you are a better athlete, then you can actually look for improvements in your pre race planning. But if you haven't done the same training and you've actually gone worse, just because you've done it six months ago doesn't mean you'll be able to do it this time. You've got to actually match the training with your ambition. So your current form is your ability and your ambition is got to be determined by where your form is. And so you might have, you know, a series of races over two years where you could be doing in a 70.3, you could be doing 5 hours 30, 5 hours 15 and then 5 hours 25, then 4 hours 50. They could be your four results over two years and you would be going, how is this possible? How can I be going so up and down? And it's because your training form is at where it is in those. You could have had injury, you could have been sick, you could have been out of the sport for eight months, who knows? But you can't expect to do what you did before unless you've got the training to match it. That's my point.

And how do you know your form? Well, you should be definitely testing yourself in the last couple of weeks leading into the race and then really analysing your training numbers as well. The next point is, and this kind of comes off, that is focusing on the end time or the result instead of the actual execution.

Yes, and I get this question all the time and even talking about the marathon coming up on this weekend, I want to do this particular time and I can give examples over the years of people having goal targets and being super disappointed, just really unconsolable or inconsolable. Let's use correct English. And you know, just getting that, that end goal time is too much of the actual aim. And I think, I think if you end up pushing yourself as hard as you can and executing as well as you possibly can on the day, then, then you should be satisfied with that because that's all you could do. And if it, if it falls short by a minute or two minutes or four minutes or 10 minutes, then you can't be upset because you've done your best, you've prepared the best way you can and you've executed well. If you haven't executed well, you haven't planned well, you haven't trained well, then you could be disappointed with all of that. But if on the day you've got a plan that's really close to your current form and ability, and you've done everything you possibly could on the day, then the time will take care of itself anyway. You will get the time you deserve. Unless some catastrophic event happens like a puncture or nutritionally, you can't take any more nutrition in or whatever happens. But you need to focus on, how am I going to get that goal time rather than the goal time. That's the one thing that we really push at Trivalo is to make sure that people are realistic about, yeah, sure, the finish time is important. We want to aspire to either a PB or matching or doing as well as we can, and that's important. But I'm always saying to people, tell me, how, how are you going to achieve that goal time? What things are you thinking about in this race that are going to get you the time you want? And if you just spend the whole time in that race thinking about, I've got to do, I've got to break five hours in this 70.3, or I've got to break four hours in this marathon, that's all you think about. Instead of thinking about, what pace should I run the first 5k, what pace should I run the half marathon, what pace should I swim at, what power should I ride at, what pace should I run at? If you think about all those things and do the execution that we're asking you to, the goal time will be close. And you've got to be at the end of that, happy with that, regardless of whether you reach it or beat it or you're just over.

And one of the most common questions we get is, what time do you think I can do? And inherently, there's nothing wrong with that question. It's a fair question. But you. You or we don't like it because you're focused on the wrong thing. And so instead the question should be, because, sure, we can answer that, but we don't want that to be the question. The question should be, what pace do I think I should do? And even one step further, you should be coming to us and saying, here's what pace I think I'm capable of based on my training history. Do you think that's accurate or not? And then, of course, that can give you a predicted time or range if you're focused on the input and the execution Then you're not going to be focused on the end result. Next point, point number eight is stay in your lane. And this is quite simply be boringly conservative. That's, that's what an endurance event is. That's what a triathlon is.

Yeah. And I know that that's not what we want to. You know, we watch so much sport on telly and we see unbelievable feats of grandeur and extraordinary efforts like we're talking about before, you know, people doing things that are outside of their capacity. And, and this is not the sport to do it in. Endurance. Endurance sport is about staying in your lane and sticking to your ranges and being conservatively boring all day will get you the result you want. And, and doing something outside of the box sometimes will have such a detrimental effect, the consequences are you completely miss your target time. And I think if you have that mindset of, I don't, I don't want to make this, you know, an attractive, exciting event for me where I've got highs and lows. I want to stay as balanced and as, even as I possibly can all day long. And I, I can then have an incredible feeling coming down that finish line knowing that I have executed unbelievably well. That's the experience and the exhilaration I want to feel and not get these minutes or, or 5 minutes or 10 minutes of, of gratification when I pass a bunch and I'm going double the speed and power that I should be. Or I come to a hill and I show everybody how strong I am on the hill and then I basically come to a crawling walk an hour later. You know, they're the things that are going to derail you rather, you know, and there's, they're short term, you know, fun things to do, but in the end, they're going to cost you dearly. And you need to stay boringly conservative. And, you know, we talk about staying in lane the whole time. The more you can do that, the better their fun is going to be. You know, when you come to the last couple of K in your run if you're doing a triathlon or, you know, the last couple of K as a marathon runner, and then the joy of crossing a line, knowing that you've executed to, you know, to a magic experience and then the exhilaration, post that finish line and sharing it with your family, they're the things that should be the exciting parts. Not making it exciting, you know, by being outside of your lane during the event.

Yeah, it's, it's embrace the atmosphere, Enjoy the atmosphere and the excitement and the adrenaline that comes with it, but don't get swept up in it. And that comes, that comes out in the form of sprinting off at the start, sprinting out of T1 and then getting on the bike and hammering the power when there's people around you and the crowds around you coming out of T2 on the run and sprinting your first K while the crowd's there, and then. And then hitting a wall 2k in because you went way too hard. You know, it's. It's really staying conservative, staying to the plan that, like you said, that might seem fun at the time, but that's going to create a really high and low race. But we can tell you that nothing is more fun than coming home as strong as possible in the last 2K 3K, when you've stuck to your race plan, when you've got heaps left in the tank and you're flying through and everyone else is fading away. And when you do that last 2k and you race properly, nothing beats that feeling. It is incredible compared to walking over the line.

Yeah. And we've had so many athletes contact us saying, you know what you said about people passing me early and then not passing me at the middle of the race, and then I'm passing them all back and the comments they're getting from the people that you're passing towards the back half of the race, and that could be the last 15k of a marathon or 10k of a half Ironman half marathon. And people are going, oh, way to go, you're running well and you're actually maintaining your pace where the other people are just slowing down. But the feeling, the buzz you get from passing slower runners is something that's worth savoring because it shows you've executed well. You feel this exhilaration of, geez, I'm actually doing well and people are telling me I'm doing well. And the crowd can see that you are running at a different rate than those around you. And it's because you've measured your effort and you haven't made the crucial mistakes of going, you know, getting your ambition, your ability confused, you're sticking with your strategy.

One bonus mistake we don't want you to forget at Trivelo is our unwritten rule. And if you know, anyone that has a race coming up over summer has an A race coming up, our unwritten rule is that it is your duty as a Trivelo listener that if you like the podcast, if you like this information if you think it's valuable, if you're getting something out of it, then someone, someone else might as well, another athlete might as well. And our unwritten rule is that you need to share it to them. So if you think that someone is racing this season and could use these mistakes and could use these lessons, then please share it to them. Moving on to the next point. And this is more of a mindset mistake that we don't want you to make on race day. And it's to do with warranted versus unwarranted nerves because nerves and race day anxiety are real and they're warranted and it's a big event and you should expect to feel nervous and, and levels of anxiety. But a really big point is that you don't want to feel unnecessary or unwarranted nerves. And what do we mean by that? And I'll get you to explain this, but the less prepared you are, the more you'll have unnecessary anxiety, which is just a big mistake. You don't need to put that extra pressure on yourself by not being prepared enough.

Yeah, I want to start by saying, preface this whole conversation by saying I think nerves are good. I think having some butterflies, it means you care, it means it's important to you. And if you didn't have that, it mean you're probably, probably a little bit too blase. And you, you want to have a spectrum where you've got 0 to 100. You don't want to be at 0, you don't want to be at 100. You know, and we, we use this analogy a lot. The balanced athlete is going to actually probably perform better than the over aroused athlete who is, you know, just like a cat on a hot tin roof. And then the layback athlete who just seemingly doesn't even have a worry in the world. And so having some sort of a nerve means you care and it means it's going to get some adrenaline flowing. So it's quite a good thing to have. And I think that's, that's important that it's okay to have some nerves. So, so yeah, that's the first thing to get out of the way. But, but you should be thinking about why am I nervous? What's getting me, what's getting me the anxiety here and normally be the unknown. What is going to happen to me? How am I going to perform? That's why you've got this anxious state of mind. You're, you're unsure about how the race is going to pan out. And so if you have this race day plan with you, your coach, and you've thought about it, you've gone back to your history and you've looked at all your training sessions and you've worked out what your your power is, your swim pace is, and your run pace is, and you know, you're really clear on that, then that will take away pretty much the majority of your anxiety. Because you can go to bed knowing that. Guess what? I only have one task tomorrow. And people say to me, what's that? I just have to go and execute. I don't have to worry about anything else. I already have my plan. All I've got to do one job is go out and execute my plan and make good decisions, informed decisions about what's happening during any part of the race, looking at the data and making better decisions. And therefore, you're in control. When you're not in control, the anxiety's through the roof. When you're unsure about the outcome, anxiety's through the roof. When you have more control, you watch, your anxiety levels just dampen right down. Because I say this to athletes a lot. When you stand on the beach as a triathlete and there's 1500 people around you, you would guarantee that 1400 of those people don't have a plan. And they are literally packing themselves. They are totally unsure about what's about to happen, and they're just hoping to the gods that they end up having a good day. Whereas you're standing there going, I've got my race plan. I'm well prepared. I've trained my ass off. All I've got to do is execute, and I'm at peace with myself. I can't wait for this to begin. That's the sort of attitude that you should be thinking about with this nerves and anxiety.

I'm still nervous, no doubt, but I know I'm just nervous because it's up to me to execute and not for other reasons that are creating really unhealthy and unnecessary anxiety. And that leads us to our final note, which is basically the biggest race day mistake you can make is trying to fix things on race day, when really the work for race day is done in the entire lead up to the race. And that's the night before, that's the week before. That's the taper period. That's the race ready period. That's the start of your training program. All the work for actual race day to get rid of all these mistakes happens before race day.

Yeah, the planning and preparation, it doesn't get much of A wrap does it? It's all about, you know, performance. Everything's about performance. But performance can only happen if you're planned and prepared. And so cramming in training in the last two weeks of your preparation, that's a disaster waiting to happen. You're better off being under fatigue than, you know, doing all these last minute training sessions and getting into the race so tired that you're, that you actually can't perform. You perform worse than you would have had you not done that. And so they're things that we're trying to prevent you from doing is doing things that are a panic sort of stuff where food and training and all these things, you just not allowing the process to take its course. It's too late for all these things to be changed. So race day is for you to be as calm as possible and just replicate what's happened in training on race day. Except you've got all these marshals and volunteers helping you get around the course, who are helping you have a great day. And, and that's, that's what you should be doing. You should be thinking about that for that last period of, of your race.

Preparation and a little bonus one we want to talk about. And you finish every single race plan call with this. And I love it because you go through all the plan, all the preparation, all the data, and often on that call by the end, it's borderline overwhelming for an athlete. But that's what planning, preparation is. It's just going through all the details meticulously and then you take a step back and you look at the bird's eye view, perspective and you say, now don't forget to enjoy the day. And that's one of the biggest mistakes you can make is at the end of the day, if you're not enjoying it, that's a huge mistake because it's all part of the fun. The nerves, the night before, the warm up, the atmosphere. It's not worth it if you're not enjoying it.

You want, you want to have that mindset that I'm, I'm, you know, everything I've said in this podcast, I'm prepared, I've planned, you know, I can't wait to execute. That's the fun part is, you know, I just bring it on. Let me start this event. I am super pumped. I can't take the smile off my face. I'm not injured, I haven't been sick. I'm as fresh as I can possibly be. I'm tapered, I'm fully fueled, you know, it's like the Blues Brothers, you know, get out of jail, we jump in the car, full tank of petrol, and off we go. You know, it's. It's a fantastic feeling that, that you should be remembering that you are fit and healthy and that you. You can and will perform the way you want to. But don't forget to enjoy it as you're going along. You know, have a happy smile on your face and, and. And, you know, be in your. In your zone, in your bubble, but, but have a. Have a calmness about you that's. That's making you say, I've got this, you know, halfway through the swim. I'm swimming well. I'm really doing a good stroke. I feel relaxed on the bike. I'm in the ranges. I want to be. I'm really happy about this. I'm executing the way I want to. I get off the bike and I can run the pace I want to. How good is this? This is what it's all about. I'm so pumped about this. It is. It is hard work, but I'm. It's in my ability and, and, you know, now can I push myself to finish strong? And that's the fun part of the whole day, is you actually getting to the finish and being super proud of what you just achieved because you have A, executed B, prepared well, planned well, and C, you've actually enjoyed the whole experience.

Very well said. Couldn't have put it better. And that's a great way to finish. As always, thank you very much for listening to this episode, and we hope to see you on the next one.