Training Skills To Make You Go Faster (Part 2)

So these, this is such an important training skill to learn in enabling you to be a better athlete. And this is what we're trying to get across to everybody. Listening to this podcast is what things can you do to become a better athlete and improve and this is one of them.

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 Coach Coaching Jared Donnelly. This is the second part episode of our topic on training skills to make you go faster. These skills are so important to your training and racing that we wanted to discuss each point in detail, which is why this ended up in two parts. So in part one we talked about preparing properly for training sessions, being patient with improvement, getting and understanding how to use data properly, respecting your own individual ability and respecting the purpose of certain training sessions. And we have more to talk about today, lots to discuss for this topic. Dad, welcome back to another episode, our normal starting segment. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. Yep, it'd be good to follow up on last week and sorry, we ran out of time and we just keep rambling on too much about the gratitude and what's caught our attention and I'm probably going to do the same again, although we had a brief discussion before we came on air to say that we wouldn't do that and we'll get into the topic. So I'm going to start by saying what am I grateful for? Well, following along the lines of what's been happening over the last four and a half weeks now, I've now progressed to two kilometers in 30 minutes of walking. So that's I was doing one kilometer in 20 minutes. So I'm actually, I'm going five minutes quicker and that sounds like a little hilarious sentence to say, but I'm doing 1k every 15 minutes now, so 15 minute k pace, that's something I never thought I would ever say in my entire life, but I am so grateful to be moving forwards and simple as that.

Perfect. And if it's following our three ways to change your training is the three key principles. Increase your frequency, your volume or intensity. Your intensity's gone up fractionally, your total volume's gone up from 1k to 2k and that frequency is still there. So you're doing well.

Well, Jord, 400 meters seems a long time ago. That's all I could do four weeks ago. And now I'm up to two. Pretty. Pretty proud of myself. Got huge endorphin rush from that. And I'm not being sarcastic, it is a good feeling.

And look, not being facetious here whatsoever, I mean, it's kind of. It's funny to joke about, but you are genuinely grateful to be able to walk 2km again, and that's the whole point. And you really are taking on that lesson of small improvements are big wins. And I can't wait to see where it is in six weeks time. My gratitude for me, if I could, I would say this gratitude every week, but just not to bore everyone. I wouldn't say the same thing every week, but I am just so lucky with the way the world is now, 100% of my work is on my laptop, unless we go to races or anything like that. But that means I can work from almost any location possible in the world. And I have been taking advantage of that. I'm currently still overseas, but I'm just unbelievably grateful that this is what I get to do. And just the fact that it's 2023 and this is an option, I literally do not take it for granted any day of the week.

I'm actually going to add a gratitude on that because I think it's fantastic. And I really love the fact that you're getting this opportunity because at some point in your life, you're going to actually settle down and have a family. And this is the time to make the most of that, when you've got that ability to do it and you're not tied down. And I'm really encouraging you to do whatever you can because you'll be married or working hard for the rest of your life. You might as well, you know, try and see as much of the world as you can when. When it's possible. And. And one of the things you just got to do was what something I did when I was actually almost your age in 1986, so I think I was 27. And you're just on 30. And I went and saw Celtic win the FA cup at Hampden, and you got to do that on Sunday, watch Celtic win the FA Cup. So I'm very grateful that you actually got to do the same thing I did as a youngster. And it's something I'll never, ever forget. The, the joy and the excitement of being in a crowd that's so happy to sing and enjoy the spectacle of what soccer brings.

I will say I use the word surreal a lot, and I've been using it A lot lately, but it was quite a remarkable experience to know that 37 years ago it would be almost to the week, because the Scottish cup final is always the same week or two, just like the grand final is on the same date every year. 37 years ago, you were standing outside Hampton park going into the Scottish cup final. And literally 37 years later, I was doing the same thing. And I was actually standing out the front waiting to meet some people to go in. And there was a guy dressed in a kilt playing the Scottish bagpipes, playing Celtic tunes. And I just had a moment to soak it all in and it was quite an overwhelming feeling. It was really special and it's a big part of our family, so it was a really cool thing to do. Moving on to what has caught our attention. And I normally ask you what's caught your attention, but I'm just gonna have to launch straight into it here and talk about the running the Diamond League that was on last weekend. It's hilarious that the week before we spoke about form and we spoke about how athletes might not be coming into the start of the season in that good form yet. We saw two of the greatest races of Diamond League history. But specifically, I want to talk about the 1500 meter world record. And what we witnessed was, I honestly believe, and I can't understate, this was one of the greatest runs in athletic history because I'm overseas, actually, I'm on European times zone. So I got to watch the race live, which, you know, normally I have to wake up in the morning and watch the replay because it's happened overnight. And this 1500 meter was a pretty, pretty strong field and my jaw was on the floor watching this race unfold.

Oh, was it? What? And watching the replay, I couldn't believe what I was watching and seeing. The time that was the world record was broken by three seconds.

Not quite. Not quite. It was. The world lead was broken by three seconds, but it was the world record broken by a second.

Yeah. And to run under 350, you know, not too many people, ladies can do that. It's quite spectacular. And the way she did it. And the Scottish girl, Muir.

Yeah.

And our own Jess Hull were absolutely doing their best to stay. Stay with her. And the rest of the field were literally at the other end of the straight. So there was 100 meters between first and and fourth.

Yeah.

It was an incredible race to see the field so spread and such differences in ability.

I want to take everyone through the race, in case you didn't see it or you haven't watched a replay. But Faith Kip Yagon was on her way to being one of the greatest 1500 meter runners of all time. The only thing that she didn't have for her was Ginzibi Dibaba has held this world record of 1500 meters for over a decade now. She ran low 3 50s, 3 50.1 or something and no one's really gotten close to that except for Faith Kip Yegon who had a crack at the world record last year and she missed out by 0.2 of a second and she ran that solo as well. Um, and she's turned up to this race and they just went out in blistering speed. They went through the first 462, the second 461, so, so they went through 800 meters in 2:04 and like you said, they were straight away, they were 40 meters ahead of the rest of the pack. And these are in that pack were four Olympic 1500 meter finalists, you know, and a whole host of talented athletes, including Linden hall and Abby Caldwell. Abby Caldwell and Lyndon hall both been running really well and they were back in that pack. And two athletes went with Faith Kip Yegon and the Pacemakers. And that was like you said, Lauren Mew and Jess Hull. And I was watching going Laura mules around a 354 PB, so she might be able to hold this pace, that one world record pace. But even then it's a stretch for her. Whereas just how her PB's was high 357s. I was going, she is risking it all here and this could blow up in her face. But credit to her, she just said this is a, this is a historic run. I don't know what she was thinking mentally, but she's gone. I'm just going to go with this. And it paid off for her. But anyway, 200 Australian record. Yeah, exactly. Four through 800, that is blistering speed. You know, the 800 last week in the Diamond League, you know, a bunch of the girls ran 204, 205 in the actual 800 race. And then once the Pacemakers dropped off, Kip Yagon just kept going by herself. And she's so unbelievably strong. And she said that she's been getting stronger. She's been training with Kipchoge's team and coming through the last lap she was ahead of the green light and the commentator and the whole crowd started to feel, oh my goodness, this could actually happen. And then 200 to go. She was well ahead of it. The commentators going, unless something disastrous happens here, she is going to break this world record. Which the commentator put it perfectly. He said that it's equivalent to Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile all those years ago. Forty years ago, a barrier that didn't seem possible. And I want to correct you before when you said not too many women can go out of 350. Well, no one ever has. And it's a barrier that did not seem possible. To see a woman running the 340s for 1500. And she's not only broken it, she smashed. She ran 349.1 or 349.2, was well ahead of the world record. Came home in that last hundred flying. She ran a 58 second last 400. Once again, I'll compare that to the 800 field. You know, not many of those girls are running a 58, 59 second lap in the 800. Yeah, yep, she's done it in a 1500. It's just I, I was, my jaw was literally on the floor. I could not believe what I was watching. One of the coolest parts was as I was watching her, I still had my eye on Jess Hell in the background who dropped off Laura Muir and dropped off Kibia. And I thought she's just going to keep going backwards here. But she held her form and held strong, didn't give up mentally. She must have been so strong. And then she started coming back at Lure Moore and she ended up, they, they ran the same time together.357, which was, as you said, an Australian record. What a gutsy performance overall. That is just one of the best races I've ever seen.

Yeah. And at this stage of the season we talked about form and this is, you know, only the third Diamond League race. We're well away from the World Championships that are later on in the year and whoa, this is going to be interesting. I'm gonna really, I'm gonna keep talking about this run and see what happens and you know, can she hold form until when it really counts or what's going to happen with her form? I'm really intrigued to watch this. So watch this space. But yeah, that's, is that enough on, on her? Because the 5k men's, 5k and just before we leave her, I mean the qualification time not long ago for the men's, for the Olympic 1500 was 336. So you know, 13 seconds behind the men's qualification is pretty impressive for a women's 1500. Fantastic. But, but the men's 5K. Oh my God. Like the 13 minute barrier was something that not many people can really consistently. Yeah, yeah. Look there used to be, I think at one stage there's only, for decades only three or four people had ever broken 13 minutes. And to see 13 people in the one race break 13 minutes, I just thought was, was blowing my mind. I'm wondering, I was starting to think is this track short because there's so many good times being run here?

Yeah, yeah. I, I would say that this race was the race of the year if not been overshadowed by keep a race on the same night. But same thing. Watching that race just going what the hell is going on here? And the, the pace wasn't blistering. The, the pacemakers set a good pace through two and a half K but then they, they sort of slowed for a K and a K and a half and even the commentator called out and said oh look this isn't going to be a fast time anymore. They've, they've slowed down too much. They ran a 238 kilometer twice in a row which come out of 3 to 4 and 4 to like 2 to 3 and 3 to 4 which is still blistering. But that's not, that's not you know, low 1250s pace. But then the last two and a half laps they just absolutely turned it on. They ran a 2:25 last kilometer. But as you said most impressively going through the bell lap there was still a pack of 16 all bunched up, winding it up. It was a 54 or 53 second last 400 incredible kick. And honestly more guys might have run under 13 minutes but someone fell with 300 to go and that stopped a bunch of guys. But yeah, 13 people under 13 minutes.

Normally where you just see the name and the time and sometimes you might get a PB or a season's best. Yeah, there was just every single person had done something that they hadn't done before. So yeah, form again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask that question. I'd love to follow these guys and see how maybe that's what the new standard is. The new standard is this and, and there's more to come. You know, I shouldn't be so negative and say I don't know if they can hold this. Maybe this is their baseline and they're, they're gonna, the level has just gone up. And don't forget, you know, the running shoes are helping here from what we used to over the Generations. But we've had a fair few years now of the new shoes, so shouldn't be that much different. The times they're running now should be similar to what they've been running in the last two or three years with the new shoes. So that'll be interesting to see.

Yeah, and there's a big argument now as well. With the continual development in sports science, the access to training information worldwide. You know, all training groups are really seeing what everyone else is doing. Everyone's refining their methods, new shoe technology, new recovery strategies, nutrition, everything. I think it's just continually advancing, so hopefully that's helping the sport. And you talk about form. We were just talking off air about the fact that unfortunately Stewie McSwain was 200 meters off the back of this race and he ran a 1323, which is no slouch of a run. But when he, when he's 200 meters off the back of this group, that's a tough run for him to, to do. And maybe that's just first race of the season. Dusting off the cobwebs. 5k is not his pet event. Maybe it's a bunch of these factors and he's actually building his form to get informed a few months or he's a bit off the pace at the moment. We won't know until a couple months time. But that was definitely something interesting to see.

It's good that he's actually in the event and he would know his form better than anybody and know what his strategy is going for the season. So, you know, it takes a lot of guts if you don't think you're informed to run in a race of that standard. You know, it's not, it's not the best experience to be off the back so far. Not good for your confidence. Yeah. So there's a whole lot, a whole lot to unpack there. But let's just watch this space again. There's a lot of watching and learning going to happen, I think, which is exciting, isn't it? It's, it's, it's what we love watching.

No, the, the Faith Kip Yagon run. I just, I watched the world record attempt last time where she missed it by 0.2 and it was devastating, you know, and she's done this, she does this last 800 meters by herself both, both times. And to see her get so close and not get it and then this time just absolutely obliterated it was. Yeah, standing. She did a lap of honor around the track. Standing ovation the whole race. Stood there and clapped her and gave a big hug at the end. So strong. And I have to say that we do go on a lot about race execution from the pros. And this is an example of she went out hard, but she didn't blow herself up for her ability. But it was so impressive to see Laura Muir and Jess Howell take the risk and go harder than what there was their pace, and they just held on. They obviously didn't negative split, but they held on and just held running Australian records. So it's an example of not always negative splitting. But the difference here is the only people that can probably afford to do that are these pros. And we've seen so many examples. We've spoken about so many times on the podcast about how pros still stuff it up. But this was an example where Jess had a chance to do something special that she's never done and went out way harder than her probably ability. She was able to hang on and she was able to do a PB and Australian record. It's a good example of when it can work. But for us amateurs, we're probably going to pay the price more if we attempt something like that.

Yeah, I love the fact that she had a crack and, you know, everybody knows the consequences. You could end up, you know, running an 8 second slower than you expected to, and you'd be disappointed with that. But also, you know, there's another race, there's always going to be another opportunity. And as long as you're okay with the consequences of your decisions, then. I'm a big believer in execution and planning and strategizing. But I'm also a big believer in having a go, you know, risking some things and being okay with the consequences.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's get into the topic. So last week we spoke about some of the top training skills you can master to get yourself faster. And today we want to keep going through some key things you need to be doing in your training that's really going to make sure you're getting the most out of yourself and make sure you're training efficiently. Because everyone, as we say all the time, you can have the same program, but two people can do the exact same sessions completely differently. And one person will be getting the right reward because they're training really well. There's a lot of factors to get right there, and someone else might not be doing this session exactly how it should be done, not getting these things right. So take us away with your next point. Dad, what is a top training skill that you think an athlete needs to.

Master following on from last week, it was really hit home during the week, well in between podcasts where I had the opportunity to run some people through some time trials. And it's not a, it was a practice time trial. So it was a training day. And watching, observing and analyzing the results, I really felt that a lot of the athletes that were coaching have really understood the way to execute and I was really wrapped with that. So to get the top training skill out of this, they've been doing this in training, they've been executing in their training sessions and on days where they're feeling good, they're executing to the top of their range. On days when they're not so good the same session, they're lowering their expectations and adjusting where they should be on that day. And the same thing happened on the time trial. And it's not a real race, there's no marshals. It's just a training race that we put together and we make it a race by putting people a minute apart. And you feel like you're racing when there's someone in front of you and there's someone behind you. So that actually confuses your expectations because you are now in a competitive situation, which is the intention of doing a practice race, so that you have to actually not worry about who's behind you and who's in front of you in a training session and concentrate on your data and your, on your numbers and ride to those numbers. And you want to in training, obviously feel like you're able to push where you want to, but if you wake up on that date and you don't feel like you've got it in you on that day, especially in the warm up when you're already feeling, oh boy, this is not going to happen today. I'm just feeling absolute garbage. So you need to be prepared to adjust and lower your expectations. If you have a certain level and that's what the expectation is, and you're nowhere near that in the warm up, then straight away change. This is no different in a race scenario. If you come to the race day and you feel like, oh, it's just not happening, you get out of the water and I'll use a triathlon as an example, you get out of the water and you start to ride and all of a sudden the power that you wanted to ride is not happening in your legs. So you need to change something and adjust. If you're on the start line of a marathon and you expect to run 4,30k pace and you know 430 seems like that's sprinting. You need to adjust and just be prepared to get a better outcome rather than being pigheaded almost and stubborn and saying, no, this is the numbers I want to do. I should be able to do these and stick with it. Because if you have things that are going to be outside of your control, such as lack of sleep, such as poor nutrition, such as stress from work, things such that maybe a little niggle, you come to your training session, you need to take into consideration all these things and be prepared to adjust up or down. If you're feeling fantastic and fresh and jumping out of your skin, the opposite should happen. Don't go past the zones of where you're meant to be on that particular day because the consequences of that could have big repercussions three, four, five days down the track or even two weeks down the track. So go to the top of the ranges that the training session's asking you to do, but don't go outside that because I feel fantastic today and I'm just gonna really have a crack. And occasionally that's okay. You know, you need to give yourself a little bit of fun in training, but to do that repeatedly at the wrong time is going to have consequences. And so really listening to your body, both for good and for both for poor feelings, that's what we're trying to get. That's a skill, that's a training skill that you should start to get in tune with and the quicker you can get in tune with your feelings. And I'm talking to athletes all the time about, they're sending me a text saying I woke up with a sniffle or a sore throat and I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over again. And just because I'm talking to different athletes, I want to put it out there on the podcast. You need to understand how you feel health wise as well. Not only in terms of, you know, nutrition fatigue, but are you actually healthy 100% or have you got a bit of a runny nose or a headache or a sniffle? If you do have that, you need to adjust as well. And if the session's asking you to do a high intensity session and you don't actually feel good, then you shouldn't be doing that high intensity session. You need to use this training skill to adjust and be prepared to change your mind on the session.

That's really great. I think the summary of what you're saying is basically the ability, the skill to know how to adjust yourself so to be able to understand what to do and exactly what you're saying. If you're not feeling that great, then knowing that you can lower expectations, knowing that you can go to the bottom of the range or if needed, completely change the session, you know, it's okay to miss a hard session one day if you can change the week around and you can do it when you're feeling a little bit better another day. And that's a bit of a skill in terms of knowing the programming. But the second part of what you're saying is knowing is one thing, but actually being willing to do it is another. So I know I shouldn't train hard today because I'm exhausted. I know I probably shouldn't push it because I'm right on the edge of being sick. I've got a little niggle, I'm stressed at work, I've had absolutely no sleep. The kids have kept me up all night. Something like that. So knowing that I might, I shouldn't potentially do this session hard, but then actually being willing to make that decision. They're two very different things, but two things that an athlete should master if you want to get consistent. And not doing this right will stop you from being consistent in the long run.

And look, I've got to say, over the years, I've really found the athletes are really getting on board with this. And it's great that they're learning the mess the message is getting in and they're taking ownership. And that is a training skill itself. It's not one of the points, but it is a training skill to take ownership of your own destiny. And I find myself almost getting frustrated with someone who's actually not done that. And I'm really questioning what didn't you understand about what we've been talking about for years about adjusting your expectation and not doing the session at all. And maybe resting. The worst case scenario is resting, which in fact is the best case scenario, because that's what you need. Or just adjusting the session outside of the ranges. So lowering the expectation to the range level, lower level or higher level, or riding outside those ranges, below, not above, but only below, and then not doing the session at all. So these are things that you can learn the skill of understanding how you're feeling and then taking the appropriate action so that you live to fight another day.

Absolutely. So if you are tuning into this episode, you didn't hear part one. Basically, we separately wrote a list of six. We discussed three each in the first episode because that's what we had time for. And now this is our second three each. That's point number four for you. My point number four was the ability to objectively analyze your own performances. And this comes down to both in, in the category of training, so understanding and, and analyzing your own training sessions as well as more importantly your racing. So that can include testing. We, we test our athletes very frequently every four to six weeks. So understand being able to analyze your own testing performances to see where you went well, where you can improve, how you executed, but most importantly in racing as well. And we, unfortunately, we're such emotional beings that our subjective feelings can so easily get in the way of what the objective data is telling us. And so the ability to somehow separate them is really quite hard to do. And the most experienced athletes still struggle with this. But how often, dad, are we in the form of our life? And do you see athletes in the form of their life who don't realize it? And then three months later, six months later, 12 months later, whatever it is, when you're not in that form anymore and you're completely out of that form and you can't even get close to hitting those numbers, you go, oh wow, I was in really good form then and I didn't realize it, I didn't appreciate it, I wasn't looking at it objectively because as athletes of course we want to keep improving. That's our whole goal is no matter how good we are, we always think, oh, there's a little bit more there. You know, you might do a 5 second PB or a, or a 5 watt PB, but you think, I've still got more in me, I can still get more out of myself. And we do need to stop and objectively analyze our own performances and know when we're doing really well. I think this is just so underrated.

And if I continue the theme on, from talking about the example that we're already using, which was the little time trial that we had for a small group of athletes on the weekend. And you know, using the same course is really a great way of getting perspective. And I'm not talking about a race that is an example we're using. But in training, for example, if you're doing hill repeats, you know where you start point is on the same hill that you use for the last three or four years and you know where your finish point is for two minutes or three minutes or four minutes and you don't actually don't have to even look at your watch to know that you're inform or out of form by where you End up at the end of that where you, when you hit your finish line, you can just look at your watch then and go, huh, that was my two minute hill a year ago. Now it's my 152 hill. So you get instant feedback by simple understanding the analysis that you've been doing over the journey. And using the time trial example that we did on the weekend. We've been running that time trial since 2016 and most of the athletes who've been doing that time trial have historic data. And of course the course is the same, but the wind conditions can be completely different. So the better athletes.

Look, I think we just got cut off there a little bit with the recording, but we're back now. And so you were just halfway through. Yeah. Understanding the skill of being able to objectively analyze your own performance and using, using personal time trials or races to get that right.

Yeah. And the example we were using was the particular time trial. And I think that you could look at your data and, and if you didn't take notes and put it against the data that you did, say in 2021 or 2022. And for a lot of the riders, they've been doing it that many times, the wind would play a role in it, in your results. And obviously the form you're in. You know, if we're looking at a race that's in October and we do this time trial in June, that our expectation isn't that we would be in the form that we want to be in October. So there's a skill in itself is understanding that I did the best I could today with the form I've got for June. And I have high expectations that this will be a stepping stone to a better performance come the week or two of the race day. Where I want to be in my best form. So these are objectively analyzing your performance based on where you are in a given point in a training block. And that's a skill, is understanding how badly or how poorly you went. But put it into perspective. I understand that I want to do well. I tried my hardest. It felt incredibly hard like it does every time I actually executed well. I negative splitted by a couple of watts. These are the things that you should be looking for objectively to say that was a good performance. But understand that my form doesn't need to be where it should be in four months time. If this is a week out or two weeks out and you performed down on what you should have been doing, then that is an objective analysis as well. And then you would be looking for reasons why. And that takes a bit of skill. Has it been a hard training block? Did I sleep well last night? Has there been pressure from this race, etc. Etc. And going through all those analysis will really help you and talk to someone about that, talk to your coach and get their perspective on it. And there's been many times when I've said to you a couple of weeks out from a national titles, geez, I don't feel so good and I haven't really hit my straps and I'm a bit worried and you've almost laughed at me saying, you will perform well when you get that fatigue out of your system and you always come up for the race. And that's all I needed to hear is someone else giving me some advice on stuff that I would be normally giving advice out to. This is such an important training skill to learn in enabling you to be a better athlete. And this is what we're trying to get across to everybody listening to this podcast is what things can you do to become a better athlete and improve. And this is one of them.

Yeah. And I think having that coach to talk to is so valuable. Or even just an external voice, but you've got to make sure that external voice does know what they're talking about and can objectively look at your situation themselves. And that might even be your partner or a friend or ideally a coach. But often the first point that you're making to an athlete is sometimes just consoling them about a training session or a training week or a race or a testing week. And you're really just quickly trying to put in perspective. You're not trying to downplay a negative result, but you're also going, okay, what does this negative result mean? It was an improvement. What are the reasons for that? And once you understand the reasons, then the result might not be ideal, but it's a little bit easier pill to swallow when you go, well, okay, that was a crap training session. That was a crap run. I didn't enjoy that. But. But I am really tired this week. I had a big day at work. I actually didn't get to eat properly today, so I went into the session a little bit hunger flat, all these little things that might have happened. And then the exact same thing applies to a race or a testing session where it's even more important because you really want to perform well there. And so, yeah, it's so often that the worst one, I think is when an athlete has performed well but they can't see it or they are performing well and they're trying to say to you, I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm out of form or something. And again, so often we're talking going, this athlete is flying. And they see it. And that's the most frustrating one because it's like, come on, like, look at your data. Like, look, look at this. It would take away whatever subjective feelings you have. I know you might have had a different expectation in your head that you wanted to beat your watts by 30 instead of 15, but far out. Look at the data.

Yeah, and. And I've had some real good conversations with, with your mum, with my wife, about when I've come home from a Sunday morning session and she'll, you know, I think she's interested. She'll go, well, how did you go? And I'll, you know, she can tell the look on my face is, I didn't go so well today in today's session. And she will say, was that expected? And it's such a good question. And then I'll have to answer saying, well, no, I've still got six months more training before my main race, so, no, it's not expected that I would be riding where I should be. And what a great question to put. Give me almost perspective instantly and then I'll almost ponder on that and go, oh, yeah, you're right. I don't know what I was expecting. I haven't actually been doing much time trialing specifically for this distance and this intensity. I'm in a really heavy training load. Not sure what I was expecting. I do want to go fast every time I do it. But asking yourself, realistically, what is your expectation today?

Yeah, realistically is the key word there. All right, your next point. Point number five.

Yes. So I think this is something that if you're like most age groupers where time is a problem, we are trying to train as time efficiently as we possibly can because there are so many other things happening in our world. And I blatantly tell everybody that I coach from right from the beginning. Your work and family are streets ahead of your actual training sessions. So you've got to get your family life sorted first, make sure your work's not being interfered with with your passion for your training, and then you can organize all your training sessions around those two things. So that triangle of love we've talked about for three years on our podcast, where if one of those three sides work, family or training isn't functioning very well, the triangle will collapse and that's the thing we want to avoid. And so therefore management and identifying the key sessions in the training block in the week, in the session, you know, if you're time poor and you've only got 35 minutes to do an hour 15 session, don't do the warm up and then just get off, do one minute warm up, do the maximum effort you can for 20 minutes, do a five minute cool down, or vice versa. But the main set stays the same. So identifying the importance of the session, the week, the block, and making sure they're your priority. And we have a lot of recovery, we have a lot of zone two riding, we have some endurance, we have some intensity. Sometimes it's important that you don't miss the recovery that could be the key factor of that week. Sometimes it's important that you don't miss the zone two. And the high intensity is not that important this week. So you've got to identify which are the key sessions in that training block and you make sure that they're the ones you almost make an agreement with yourself about. This is not negotiable. I cannot afford to miss out on these sessions. If you're doing an endurance sport event that requires you to be out there for anything from four or five hours up to 15, then clearly you need to not really muck around with the endurance session in your training block. So identifying the key sessions is a skill, and if you don't understand that, then you need to learn that skill because you will be faced with so many scenarios where you have to make a decision about what to give up because some outside influence in your life has caused you to not be able to do the program that you'd planned so beautifully at the start of the.

Week, week, there's such an argument for this, and I want to use a clear example of an example of this actually working in someone's favor who's short on time. And Dr. Steven Seiler, who came on our podcast a few months ago, made this point really clearly. Everyone talks about the 8020 rule, and 80% of your training needs to be easy and 20% hard. And our sessions can be an hour 20 long because we do a nice 20, 30 minute, half hour warm up. We do the main set, then we do a nice cool down. We're trying to get a big aerobic benefit on top of the potential fitness gain, VO2, max gain, anaerobic gain from the main set. But he made a really clear point. He said, if you've only got four to five hours of training to do A week. Just do it all hard. Do it all as hard as you can because your other time is going to be recovering anyway because you're not going to be overloading yourself. And we had a really good example of this playing out in action just recently where Liam, who's one of the writers that came to Shanghai, China, he was. The call was made eight or nine weeks out that, you know, we're going to go do this 90k race in China. And he was not in bike form, so he had eight weeks to get himself bike fit and not a whole lot of time to train. So his training sessions were literally just a couple of zift races throughout the week, maximum intensity, changing them up between the type of race, whether it was a crit race or something with, you know, which is really over under efforts, combined with other races which weren't so short and sharp up. And one long endurance ride on a Saturday with big blocks of intensity in it, he joined a bunch ride that has some really hard, intense periods in it, but it's also an endurance session and that was all he was doing. And he came in to this race not knowing how he's going to go and in unbelievable form just from hitting those key sessions. So what you're saying about if you've only got 30 minutes to train, make sure that 20 or 25 minutes of it is high intensity. You know, do a short warmup, tiny cool down. If you just strip it back to the important parts, you're going to be getting the most of the benefit. We do all the other stuff because we like exercising, we like riding our bike, we like running. I like going for a long hour sessioning and getting outside for that warm up and cool down period. And it's really good for us. But when we really break it down, the key part of the session is that main set. And that was a really great anecdotal example of someone who did the bare minimum and got themselves really fit specifically for a top of. Right?

Yeah. And you know, people are always saying, well, you preach not to do hard sessions all the time. Well, when you really analyze this, we're still saying the same thing because he's doing maybe a Tuesday hard session for 45 minutes. And mind you, he just had another new baby, so his time was even less. His sleep quality was shocking because the baby was was awake every two hours during the night to 12, 2, 4, 6, 8am so Tuesday and then possibly a Thursday and then possibly a Saturday or Sunday. So he was getting ample rest in between. So he was able to ride hard every session. And so you've got to be careful in what you're hearing in those advice. That's a skill in itself, is hearing the correct advice. But you told us, Jared, that you should not be training hard consecutively. You should need some zone 2 and some variety in your training sessions and recovery. But you're already getting the recovery because you're taking days off. So in between you're getting ample recovery. The only thing you're going to be missing is increasing the volume of your training, which will in the long run be detrimental, but for a short eight week block. And that's all the options you've got. You don't have any other options. You need to actually train as hard as you can in those sessions. And some people take it too literally. When I just said train as hard as you can, you know there's going to be variety in that as well. You can't go and do a three hour endurance ride as hard as you can because that's not what I'm saying. You still need to warm up properly, get the endurance factor with some sections with intensity. So you know every week and every session has a nuance and a variety that you're trying to get some sort of strategic outcome from. So they're the things that you need to be hearing when we're talking about this. So that example is spot on of someone and I'm regularly getting people who are training seven days a week and not performing as well as someone who's training four days a week and they're questioning, you know, oh, this guy's not doing half as much as I am yet. He's riding just as well. But there's so much you can say about that in the long run that won't be the case. That will only last for a certain amount of period. And you yourself have experienced this because you haven't been able to do a lot of consistent training that's got volume in it. A lot of yours has been fitting it in where you can and you're still performing well. But the minute you go past the time limit, such as 60 or 80 minutes, then your lack of endurance is a real limiter in your program right now. And you understand that because you've learned that skill of I'm good for this amount of time and I'll try my best to keep going when the race is maybe another hour longer and I'll hang in there and try and use the other skills of hiding and protecting and preserving. But, but at the End of the day, you understand that your lack of training in a certain area is, is a handicap for you in your performance. So you'll try to use other strategies to get yourself to the end goal.

Totally agree. And I was very specialized for one hour crit races this summer, which was super fun. Oh well. Although dad, I did win a five hour race, so I will claim that. But I know exactly what you're saying. And my.

But I think that was, I think, Jordan, that was after two weeks of base training camp.

Yeah, it was.

We did three or four hours every day. You did have some endurance.

No, you're right. My fifth point is down the same line and I kind of labeled it as the ability to have more tools in the toolbox. So the ability to do a variety of sessions well, and there's a variety of sessions that you should be doing throughout the week to really get the most out of yourself. And often we find that we specialize in one certain area or another and we stick to what we're good at and we avoid the sessions that we suck at. And so if you're really Good at over Unders, 60, 30s, you, you really like that session, you'll keep going back to it. If you're really good at swift races, those short sharp crits, you'll go back to it. If you're not so good at the five by fives or the, even the four by eight, some of the longer threshold efforts, you kind of avoid them because they really hurt. And maybe you're really good at zone two riding. So you do a lot of that because you've got great fitness, but you don't like the high intensity stuff. And I'll just keep going with examples. Maybe you do like a bunch ride, but yeah, you avoid the bunch rides where they go right in the hills because you're not strong enough and, and the ability to understand that you need this wide range of sessions to be able to do well and you need to be doing them consistently. That's going to make you such a more well rounded athlete and not just stick to what you can specialise in and what you're good at.

And that's a challenge. And I'm challenging a lot of the athletes that we coach all the time. And I would say to them, hey, you are fantastic at over under because that's what you've done for 25 years of your cycling career. You've done bunch rides where, guess what, you swap off turns and you're absolutely excellent at that. And the minute you have to Ride for five minutes on the front, you absolutely fall apart. And this is the area we need to work on. So understanding your skills is a skill in itself. Understanding your strengths and your weaknesses is a training skill. And it's easy just to do the things you're good at and the things you enjoy. And the point you're trying to make is go outside your comfort zone and improve the things that you're not so good at. Keep practicing the things you've done so well over the journey, but get out of that comfort zone and become an all round better cyclist by pushing yourself in areas that you need to improve in. And you can't do that unless you have the skill of identifying what your strengths and weaknesses are. And that's probably where your coach can come in. And I've had this conversation many times with a lot of athletes and I can hear myself saying, you know, you're good at that, that, but you're somehow avoiding every single week, that main threshold session that I'm pushing you to do. And you're coming up with the best excuses I've ever seen so that you, you can't actually do it or you miss that session and you know that's the opposite to what you should be doing, you should actually be embracing. I can't wait to do this session because this is the one thing that's lacking in my, in my cycling. And I will be a better rider. I will improve if I get better at this session that I suck at, at. And that's the way the mindset should be. Not avoiding it, but embracing it and knowing that this is going to be the game changer that I've been searching for. That's why I've got the coach, because he's pointing it out to me that you need to stop doing the things you're good at. And I've got examples of people who are actually trying to hide in sections of training so they can just do PB efforts on certain hills here and there. And that's great fun. And I'm not saying don't do that, I want you to do that. And we did a lot of that in Belgium, where we can. In Belgium, the roads have got Strava segment on the road. If ever there was a carrot to be put in front of a group of cyclists was to put the word Strava segment here.

Especially a group with our ego, you know that's right.

The next thing you know, everybody's looking at each other and will I, won't I, will I attack this hill. So they're really a couple things.

Click up the gears and you go, all right, I guess, I guess someone's about to attack you.

Or if you do go across the other side of the road saying to everybody, we're not going to do this when you're riding 6 or 700 watts. So these are good things to do, but they're not good things to do all the time. And I encourage you to not use the training sessions for what their value is, which is if the session's saying, yes, just do three or four hard efforts and protect yourself in between, great, you've achieved that goal. But if you're doing a session that's asking you to actually get some threshold and then try and do some hard efforts when you're tired after doing a lot of threshold writing where you've been on the front a fair bit and doing a lot of work, and then you're trying to replicate a scenario. And I look at one of the gran fondos that we have, the Tour of Brisbane, it finishes with a long hill, a 10 minute climb hill, and a lot of the sessions I was giving our guys on their endurance days, because this gran fondo is a four or five hour ride, was to go and do a hard endurance day where you're really pushing yourself in the main set, where you're getting a high fatigue level, a high stress load level into your body and then go and do a 10 minute hill at the end of that session. You know, this is the sort of session that's going to give you the right outcome for race day. And understanding the areas that you need to practice is the training skill. And understanding the race requirements is a training skill. So doing all that research so you can be a better bike rider when it counts because you've understood all the components of what the nuances are and the requirements are of that actual event that you're training for. And, and once you, once you have that, that understanding in your toolbox, then you're, you're, that's a training skill to add to your toolbox is to understand what I should be doing in my training sessions.

Yeah, I call the ones that you're not good at, I call them the, the yucky sessions or the yucky period. And it's, it's really embracing a period of growth, going, all right, I'm going to suck at this for a little bit bit, but I will get better just by, just by repeating it and doing it and practicing it and it's even, I'm finding it right now with. I've just come off a summer of largely cycling and not so much running and now I'm back to basically a pure running focus and running a really. Yeah, a full running program and it's kind of a, it's a yucky period. And I just hit last week, I just did 6 by 3 minute VO2 intervals and I finished the session and went well. That sucked. And they really hurt because I have not done them for months and. And you just have to embrace it and go. They're going to feel really disgusting for a block but then you'll come good. And then. Same thing. Did a 5k time trial on the weekend for the first time in months and the exact same feeling. It sucked. It really hurt. Not the time I wanted, not the feeling I wanted. But you just know that you do a couple of them, it's almost like blowing out the cobwebs. You do a couple of them and then your body starts to learn and adapt and you get better and it's just embracing that suck your period of what you're not good at and you will get good at it and you will get to a point where every session you can complete with confidence.

Yeah. And look, if, if I take a scenario of someone who's been injured and, and they're just starting their, their rehab back on cycling or, or back running or back swimming, even if the session's easy, you have to understand that it's going to be hard for you because you're not used to it. You've lost fitness, you've lost the muscle tone, the muscles have atrophied over the rest period while you've been injured, you've lost that kinesthetic awareness of if you're in the water, the feel of the water, as a runner, you feel awkward with your stride length. As a bike rider, you're actually not pedaling smoothly. These are all things that you'll suck at all the time when you're coming back from injury. So understanding that is another training skill.

Skill.

And that's the point. You know that this is the worst you're going to be. So the exciting part is just give me another week and another four weeks and another eight weeks and just watch where I am then. And you know, if you're going to do two four week blocks of VO2 with some threshold running in some park runs, you will. That's. This week is the worst you'll be. And you know that. And that's the thing that's exciting is because even though it's still going to be hard in eight weeks time, your form will be better because you'll be running so much faster. And you can already objectively see that. Look where I was eight weeks ago now. Look who I am now.

Spot on the last point. And it's funny that we both had the exact same point for the last one. And we're always going to bring this one up and before I say what it is, because sometimes when you say the word people just tune out because you're like, I don't want to hear this again. But I would just say that if you get this one right, this last point, then all the other points are basically obsolete. You could not do any of the other points we said over the last two episodes after anything we've said in part one and part two, you could dismiss if you got this one thing right. And I think that's really important. And I want to say that before we launch into what is the last point, dad?

Yep. And even without saying that word, if you have a period of training where if you use the Training Peaks traffic light system where there's green everywhere, you will be achieving this point. If you have a Training Peaks program that has red and orange and one or two greens, you're not achieving this point. And it's quite obvious that if you turn up each day and master the day's outcome, the goal and the outcome of the day and keep repeating that over a period of time, that's what consistency is called. And if you can do that, then you will be a better athlete today than you are than you were six months ago, than you're going to be in six months time. So no matter how hard you train, if you just nail the keep fronting up and turning up each day, sure you have to have a decent program, but just continually exposing your body to a load will actually get you better and better. I saw a YouTube example of a guy who decided he was going to run 10 miles every day for 30 days. And I just thought, that is ridiculous. I'm gonna watch this video. This is the ridiculous training program. And you know, the guy was really good. He was just saying, I just wanted to challenge myself. And his day 12 and his day 18, his day 24, he was in all sorts of trouble and he made this thing that he wasn't allowed to run any of them under over 8 minute mile pace. And some days he was on 7:56 average pace and he had to basically run flat out for the last mile to make sure that he was, you know, still under 8 minute mile pace. He said to him, he said to the video, why did I set that standard? I'll never know. But the point is by the time he got to the end, he actually had not run any hard days. And his last two I think he ran, he was averaging 7:30 to 7:50 minute mile pace. The whole 30, 30 days of 10 miles. That's a lot. It's an hour to an hour 20 every single day. And by the time he got to the 30th day, he ran 6:20 pace, I think 6 minute 20 pace and he was on top of the world. And he said, I am exhausted, but I feel that by doing this every day, and this is not something I would recommend, by the way, I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that. But by being consistent, consistently turning up each day, his body did have an adaptation to load. And sure, he had periods where his body was screaming out stop. And technically he should have. He could have absolutely had dire consequences of injuries and shin splints and stress fractures, the amount of things that could have gone wrong with this madness that he was putting in front of himself. But you know, I guarantee that probably two months down the track, you know, that was a great training block that he would have under his belt and it was all because of doing it every day.

Yeah. I think the point you put in your notes is make consistency your number one goal. And if you do that, you can almost disregard anything else you've said and that is probably the fastest way to improvement. So that's a great way to finish. I wanted to ask you a question. Out of everything we've said in part one and part two, what is your favorite training skill to master? And that's not different question of what's the most important? Don't try. They're all very important, as you said. Every single point is very valid and important. But what's your personal favorite?

Without doubt. If, if I execute, I feel like I've mastered the training session and we're asking what are the training skills? And execution for me is everything. So I take great pride in if I'm feeling crap, that I adjust my expectation and execute according to how I'm feeling. And that gives me such a buzz a because I identified that I'm not in the best form today when I meant to be doing a hard session. But I still execute the way I should be according to the number I've now selected. If I'm supposed to write at 280 watts and my range is is 270 to 300 and I get to 270 just. And I've executed by starting at 268 and finishing at 271 for whatever the effort is, I feel like I've achieved an incredible outcome even though I know that my form is not good on that day. So execution for me is the biggest bonus that I can feel is it's giving me the best bang for my buck if I execute well, no matter whether it's a hard, easy or a long day. Mastering the skill of execution conquers everything.

Yeah, I think to me it's the point you made about understanding the purpose of the sessions and the ability to execute the requirements of the session. I think we refer to it often as knowing what to do and how to do it or what to do and when to do it is so key to. A lot of people are just missing that knowledge. I just don't know what training sessions I should be doing or when I, I should be doing them. And when you get a training program, I love the learning curve that new athletes go through is when they start to understand the specific requirements of each session, each day, what the whole goal of the week is, what the whole goal of a training block is. You start to really feel like a professional athlete. I just think it's a really rewarding experience to go through that and I like seeing a lot of people are just kind of turning up and going for a run or going for a ride with no structure in the session, no variation in the sessions. And I like it when a new athlete starts to get that professionalism in their training structure and understands, oh, in the warm up I'm aiming for this wattage or I'm going for this pace in the, and then I, and then I do my three 30 second efforts and the structure behind a session, then this is the main set and, or whether it's a, you know, it's a race ready sub threshold session where it's, it's, you know, three 20 minute efforts at your race pace. And I love it when an athlete really starts to understand how to execute that stuff because it's really just, I think it elevates your training to another level not just physically but mentally as well. You really, it shows that you've got a good grasp on training knowledge and what you're supposed to be doing. So that for me is one of my favorites because I think it's the most rewarding for athletes. Leads.

Yeah, I have to agree. You know, the, the two things you know, the last point was consistency. And execution of that is also execution covers a lot of things. Execution of, of being consistent, you know, over. Over a 30 day period, how did you execute that day after day? How did you execute the actual session itself? And, you know, being. Being good at and consistent at execution is. They go hand in hand, I feel.

Yep, absolutely. Well, that's a great way to finish. This has been a great two part series. I hope you've learned a lot from this. There's a lot in there about how to improve yourself, but you can see there's so much potential for where you can improve yourself as an athlete. So, as always, that's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you on the next one. What.