Triathlon Coach Reacts To The CARNAGE at Kona Ironman World Champs!

That was without doubt one of the craziest Ironman races we've ever seen at Kona. So we're going to react to all the carnage that unfolded last Sunday and some big major lessons we think the pros are still missing and that you, the age grouper, can learn from, which is a bold statement. I know that's the fun of being fans of the sport and having a podcast is we get to sit in our lounge rooms and dissect the race and have this open discussion with you. So we can't wait to dive in. I'm joined, as always, by former Australian Ironman champion, two times Perona, two times pro Kona ironman athlete himself, head coach here at Tribal at Coaching, and my dad, Jared Donnelly. Dad, welcome in. You are in a nice hotel room, actually on a cycling training camp yourself. There's so much we want to talk about today. So let's get straight into it. How different was that race compared to what you're expecting?

Great starting question and I. My answer is it was not what I expected, but then again, it was what I expected. And that doesn't really make sense to start off this whole podcast. But. And that's the beauty of, of this particular race. It's just got mystique, it's got something different about it. It is not like any other Ironman in the world. And if we just looked at the pro field and didn't even look at the age grouper, and most of our advice is for the age grouper, but we can learn a whole lot today about how the pros went about executing their race at Kona 2024. And there are massive lessons out there. And this is what we want to do. We're coming from a place of trying to learn from the mistakes of all athletes, whether they're age groupers or whether they're pros. And it just so happened that the majority of the pros could not have executed worse. That was one of the worst executions I've seen in a long time. And there's a whole lot of reasons for it. You can't just say it's one reason that caused it. One poor decision has a flow on effect that is unimaginable. And for the majority of the pro athletes, I would say there's only two or three who could look back at that race and go, I measured that well and I was able to run at the level I wanted to. The other, I think there were 42 pros. I think the other 39 or 40 would be looking at their Runs going, what happened? Why couldn't I run at my ability? Why was I so far away from my ability? And I think that's, I want that to be the lesson for everybody from this podcast is let's dig into what they did and find the reasons why. And look, it's easy in hindsight all the time to say, well, that was a silly mistake. They shouldn't have done that. But that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to learn from mistakes so that the next time you're presented with this situation that you don't make that mistake and you look after yourself. And I'm going to use our, you know, two of our athletes that we had in that race and they nailed it. And well, all the pros were falling apart. And these two guys both, they both were around 9 hours 9, 9 hours 10, 9 hours 11. And so, you know, two of them beat a fair few of the pros in the run, their run times. And you know, you would say, well, that's easy when the pros are absolutely blown them, blown their race to pieces. Well, that's, that's part of the race. Your execution is part of the race. So if you got beat by some age groupers who are running the marathon, you can't use the excuse that they did that because they'd blown up. Well, that's part of the race. It's not a swim and bike race. It's a swim, bike and run race. So I want to use that example to show that if you just take the decision to stay in your lane all day long, especially at Kona, compared to every other event in the world, you know, you, you could get the result you want and you could be close. And last week we talked about the mistakes that you have, you shouldn't want to make on race day. And ironically, for people who want to go back to that, that podcast was only a week ago. It was that we did it intentionally to try and help age groupers who are going to Kona. And little did I know that the, the pros should have listened to the advice as well, because the majority of things we talked about, the pros went out and did the opposite to. And it can happen on the day, but it can also happen in your preparation. So there's a whole lot of things I want to get through in this podcast. And one of the things I said in that pre event podcast was you'll be doing very well if you can get your best PB Ironman time close to your Kona time. If you can get within 10 or 15 minutes, I think you've had a good day. And for our two guys, they were within five minutes. And if you looked at all of the pros, most of them would be, on average, I think we went through it, they would be somewhere between 15 to 30 minutes slower than what their PBS are and they would look back on Kona and go, well, I've learned a lot, I think, and that's where I'm a bit worried because a lot of them, I've seen the interviews post race, I don't think they actually understand what mistakes they made. So I hope this podcast is going to really help with the age grouper to understand that if you just make it simple and eliminate all the mistakes that we're going to talk about, you can get the, the result like our two guys got, which was, you know, running down the finish line. Sure, they're exhausted, but they are, they run, their run pace was the same from start to finish and, and they biked in their ranges and they swam in their ranges and they got an incredible outcome. And that's the fun part of doing it.

Well, couldn't agree more. We're really, really strong start to the podcast and we're going to go through a lot of the lessons that we spoke about in the last episode and we encourage you to go back and listen to that and listen to that in context of the race actually just happening now. And it was amazing that those tactics did pay off for our age groupers. And we're going to talk about some specific examples of what we saw with some of the pro athletes. And this episode isn't an analysis of the race just to, just to bring any athletes down or just focus on the negatives because the race had everything. It was carnage, because it had some of the most incredible biking we've ever seen. It was an unbelievable swim where 22 or 25 athletes or whatever it was all came out of the swim together, really. I want to start with the hype before the race. I think you said to me yourself, you said, I haven't seen a Kona Ironman World Championships have this much hype and this much attention and this much obviously social media presence than ever before. It was absolutely amazing to see. And so there was just so much energy and excitement coming into it. And I really think that the, the athletes bought into that, which was amazing. But a lot of the athletes seem to almost forget what triathlon is and especially the Ironman. You know, it's, it's it comes from a real place of almost a time trial background where you are, you're just, you're just supposed to go your pace for the swim, bike and run, and then it's very different for the pros. But what, what it is, is it's not a cycling peloton race. And that the cycling leg and racing it like a race and almost buying into that hype of this is a crazy event, we all need to race each other was a lot of athletes undoing.

Well, there's a lot to dig into there right from the start. And I was so wrapped that Kona had, you know, I don't know whether the mystique of now having to do it every two years, it's got a bigger build up and that's helping the mystique a bit more. But it is a race that, if I heard one person say it, I heard a thousand people say, this is why I do this sport. I've seen this race on telly my whole life. And you know, for me, racing it in the 80s, you know, I saw it, I saw 81, 82, 83. And I just thought that's what I want to, I want to go to that race. And, you know, here we are literally 30, 40 years later, and the hype is still there for that race and for any athlete to actually get to that race now because, you know, it is a lot harder to qualify now than it was back in the day. But, but yeah, it's got that mystique and, and I think the pros really respect it and I think that's a really positive thing. That, and I want to jump to the, you know, almost to the end of our podcast here where I, I do want to talk about how the pros respected the race and, and finished even though they were in, you know, the walk of death, the majority of them finished. So I want to praise them for that. And I think that's good. And I think that's the respect this race has. And, and, and so the hype before the race, with a lot of media attention from experts who really know their stuff, talking about how much time Sam Laidlow needs to have at the end of the bike so that he doesn't get run down. And I think all of that talk, it went too far. Instead of all the athletes just worrying about their own race and they, they bought into that. This is a race and I have to race the race. And as you said in that introduction, it's still a time trial. And, and if you, even if you're at the pro level as. And it's easy in hindsight, but at the pro level if you had raced your numbers all day and I can give you examples of that like Cam Worth and, and almost, you know, Patrick Langer was probably the only one who did that to, to the best who ended up running under 240. So that's the, that's the measure. Anybody who could run under 240 has got it pret day is, is executed pretty well and you know, a couple of guys ran 245 and the rest of it was 253, 310, 315 and some were even running 330. And that is so far away from their ability that it's, it's almost a crime. And a lot of it was due to this pre race hype which is, which is great. The, that is part of the race you not getting sucked in by the talk. And we call it the noise. And I'm a big believer in even the age groupers, you know, stop listening to the noise and just stay in your bubble and stay in your lane. And if you just worry about yourself, you'll actually have a decent day the minute you start, you know, listening to the advice from someone, oh, you got to go really hard on the hill to Harvey or you've got to, you got to really make the most of the section on the way out because that's the fast section. So that when you come in, coming home, it's a headwind that couldn't be further from the truth. That sort of advice. You've got to get so much more fluid into you than a normal race. You've got to eat more food the night before. You know, all the things that you, that we know don't work. That's the advice that's going around and, and you know, from the pros talking about what, what pace they need to do and trying to keep up with Sam and Sam, Sam believing that hype as well. And I'm, I'm giving my opinion here which could be right or wrong, but from, from afar I'm looking at it saying, well, he's almost bought into the fact that he's, he's listening to the hype saying, well I actually, in order for me to outrun these good runners, I actually have to have 8 minutes or 10 minutes lead. So I ride the race of my life on the bike. Which he did. He rode a course record. He smashed the course record, which is absolutely brilliant riding. That is amazing to do that but let's not forget everybody, it's a triathlon. It's not a swim and a bike. You know, we don't get an award. Well, he actually does. He gets the, the, the world record for Kona's fastest bike ride. But if I said to you, would you rather be the, the world champion or the fastest bike rider at Kona? Well, I don't know anybody who'd say they, you know, they'd give up the world champion title. And so, so that's buying into the hype. And whether he did that or not, I don't know. But it looked like he believed that he needed a big lead. So he's, he's overrode. You know, I think some of the riders were eight to 10 minutes quicker than they were previous years. And I know the conditions were far easier than in previous years, but that still doesn't equate to eight to 10 minutes. And if you ride eight to 10 minutes above what you've been training in, there's only one outcome you're not going to be able to run. And so let's dig into some of the reasons why this has occurred. And I think the pre race hype was one.

Yeah, look again, just a great summary. I want to give some context around this hype and where this has come from. For anyone that wasn't aware, you know, in the last two world champs, Sam Lalo, being the gun bike rider he is, has had enough gap coming into the run that he was able to hold everyone off. It happened in Kona where everyone thought Christian was going to be able to run him down. He had a six minute gap and Christian just couldn't do it. And then same thing in Nice last year. And so then the press conference before the race where all the pros get up on stage and they all sit there and they get asked questions. It's really cool because it's the day before the race. It's pretty nervy for a pro. And they're doing, they're really challenged to do what you always say in our, in our race episodes. You always say to people, you, you've got to stay in your lane, stay in your bubble. When the closer you get to the race, the more stuff is happening, the more distractions there are and you've got to stay in your bubble. And for the pros, this is the most difficult time to do that because you're on stage, there's a lot of cameras around, it's very hard for anyone to, you know, just to stay in their bubble and not get distracted in that environment. But I was shocked at this press conference because they asked Christian straight out, how much time do you need to be within Sam Laidlow to catch him on the run? And I thought, oh, he's not going to answer this. And he gave a dead serious answer. He said. It shocked me. He said, well, six minutes I thought was enough, but it wasn't last time. So I'm thinking maybe a little bit under six minutes. And I was watching this press conference going, I can't believe you just said that because one, I would just be keeping my race tactics to myself. But two, you're actually dictating your race plan based off him, which is the total opposite of what we would recommend for an Ironman. And again, I know they're pros and we know they need to race, but it takes me back to one of the things that you and I have said to each other about Lionel's pre race videos where again, we are so grateful for Lionel's YouTube vlogs in the lead up. What him and Tobacco Cox did with Daily Vlogs was some of the best viewing any Ironman athlete has ever gotten in the lead up to a race. It was phenomenal. And so we've mentioned many times before, we love talking about Lionel and we are so grateful for how much he shares and he opens himself up to criticism by doing that and he wears his heart on his sleeve and so we're huge fans of his and we always just want him to do well and any supporter of Lionel wants that. But the day before the race he got asked, so what's your race plan? If they're going up the road from you, what power are you going to stick to? And he laughed and scoffed at the camera and said, who cares what power it is? The race is the race. You've got to race the race. And you and I went, what the hell? That is not. That is not a good mindset to go into this race with. That is not the right answer at all. And it was, it turned out everyone was thinking that way and everyone was buying into this Sam Laidlow hype of we can't let him get too far ahead because we won't be able to catch him. And the only person that didn't do that on the race day was Patrick Lange and he raced his race and absolutely dominated the run. Everyone nearly killed themselves by trying to race the race with Sam Laidler. And it's funny, you tell this story a lot in your own on this podcast where At Kona itself, you did the same mistake. You tried to ride with a guy who turned out he wasn't running. You blew yourself up and blew your run apart. It's funny. Yeah, the pros have done the exact same thing here. Not knowing that Sam Laidlow is going to ride a 357 course record. Absolutely. Flying in the post race conference, Patrick said he looked down at it in the first hour and said, we are doing 46km an hour here. We are on track for sub four hour pace. This is crazy. I'm dropping back. That was his decision and it created a really interesting discussion between him and Magnus. So Magnus did live with second. Magnus grabbed the mic and said, yeah, but we thought that at the other races and we let him go away and we couldn't catch him. And Patrick basically said, oh, I didn't care. I wasn't willing to ride that hard in the race. So it's just this fascinating discussion around the race tactics and we really think that, yeah, racing the race too much was what cost a lot of these pros.

You definitely still have to race the race as a pro. That's your job. You can't ignore all of that. But you've got to make decisions like Patrick did. You know, this is way above my level. I can't run. And it's easy in hindsight. You and I say this a lot. It's easy in hindsight, but in the heat of the moment, look at Christian was vomiting on the bike and you know, and he was on the front just driving it and there were 20 guys sitting behind him, pretty much 12 meters apart, you know, pretty much all legal. You know, I think there was only one guy got a drafting penalty and he got actually two drafting penalties, which seemed a bit, a bit weird to me, but. But he was driving the pace so much that he actually blew himself up by being on the front and, and to the point where he's vomiting. And we know he does vomit in a few races. I mean, the last Iron man he did in the run, he was vomiting and he went on to win that race and run a really great time in the marathon. And so, you know, these guys are. It's either boom or bust. And I think that attitude is okay if you know that you can back that up. But now in hindsight, we know that pretty much 39 out of the 42 all blew up. And any of those athletes who rethought their tactics at some point, even Magnus with an hour to go, he had to rethink it because he was forced to. He was so blown up from trying to chase Sam that he couldn't hardly ride 200 watts in the last half an hour, so he had no choice but to slow down. And that actually saved him to enable him to almost run half decent. And I was watching him, I watched the whole race live and I was watching him in the tent and athletes were coming in after him and leaving before him. And I'm thinking, what is he doing? Why is he taking so much time in there? And he was, as we know, later on he was contemplating will he even bother to go running because he was so, so done, so cooked from, from that bike ride and by taking more time and relaxing and getting his temper of his temperature of his body down. And he said, oh, stuff it, I'll just go run and see what happens. And then when he got out there, he realized that everybody was at the same level as him or worse. And so that became another mental game of who can guts this out the most and keep, keep their mind and try to try to run evenly and not try to. You know, a lot of the guys got out of transition and tried to make up the time gap and blew themselves up that way so that if they hadn't already done that on the bike, they actually continued the same mistake by getting out of transition from T2 and running too fast and then, and then ending up walking again. So they were repeating it on the bike, they rode way too hard and then they did the same thing on the run to try and minimize the gap. And that's what racing is. You've got to race the race, but at some point during an ironman, you've got to look after yourself so much so that you will actually run past people if you measure it well. The guys who are blowing up and who was to know that there would be three quarters of the field would be running so poorly. And if you knew that, you know, before the event, you would just go about your business by staying in your lane and, you know, basically running through the field. Matt Hanson did that, I think, you know, I don't know where he got off the bike. He ended up running into 10th by, by running the second fastest time of.

The day, 245, I think.

Yeah, and that's just an example of someone who's, who's actually, you know, did what Patrick did and, and, and you know, just said, I'm not, I'm not going to be a sheep here. If they're, if they're going to ride like this and they End up running beautifully. Well, they're too good for me. That's, and that's the attitude you have to have. You have to know what your ability. We say this so much, don't we? What is my current ability? Don't get my ability and my ambition confused. And what is the form I've got now? And if I'm looking down and I'm writing 10 or 20 or 30 watts above it, my current ability for 40, 50, 60 minutes. There's only one outcome here, and that is that you can't run. And these guys are some of the best runners in the world. They are unbelievably good runners. They can all run, you know, somewhere around 220, fresh marathon to 240 to 250 after Ironman, after 180k. So they've all done it. That's, that's the reason why they're pros. And to see them, you know, almost on their knees is sort of sad. But that's the lesson for the age grouper. If the pros can do this so badly to themselves and they are unbelievably great runners, what do you think is going to happen to an age grouper who's, who's, you know, not got the time to train like these guys have? And the result or the consequence of your poor decision will not only you, instead of running a 240, you run a 315. If you're an age grouper and you're meant to run a 330, you'll end up running a five hour. Well, a walking a five hour. And that's what we're, that's the message we're trying to get, we're trying to get that across that, that you know, even the pros are making huge mistakes. And I know it's easy in hindsight, but this is the point of this, this analysis. It's almost like an analysis for the pro field so that all the age group is out there listening. You know, you can understand that everybody makes mistakes. And now we're trying, we're trying to point out where those mistakes are and, and the hype at the start and then the tactics of seeing what's going on around you and, and, and, and thinking that, oh, the time, I can't let this time be more than five minutes because I'll never catch him. You don't know what form he's in as a runner. You don't know how, how fatigued he is from his own bike performance. And no one knew that he was Going to ride, you know, under four hours and, and no one's done that before and, and guess what? Anybody who's, who's going close to that hasn't run very well and, and it's proved it again. The guy who broke the course record ran the slowest he's ever run.

Yeah, I really want to focus on that. Magnus Ditlev point in terms of especially comparing pros and age group is because it shows incredible, incredible strength and fitness and the fact that he is definitely in a position to be Ironman World champion and he was on Sunday. The fact that he could go so far gone, go so deep into the red, be so blown up, yet still come back and come second, that was incredible. But it's interesting because he probably, unless he blew up like that, he probably would have run that smart and he might not have come second. It was because he blew up and took that time that you spoke about and recovered and went out easy in the run that he actually had a really solid run and was passing people at the end. It's all you always talk about if you conserve. Actually don't know if you negative split it or not, but I would imagine not. But I did look at his splits. It doesn't divide it by two, it just kind of gives you each 4 or 5k or whatever. But he went out a lot easier.

Even Patrick didn't negative split. Patrick ran 1750s for his first 5k and ran 1940s for his last 5k. So even, you know, looking at Patrick's splits, there wouldn't have been anybody who ran even pace.

Yeah, I think he was, I think yeah, he was. Patrick was five minutes or four minutes slower or six minutes slower, something around there in the first half to the second half. But Magnus Ditlev said that in the last hour of the bike he could not push more than 200 watts. You know, for someone that's riding 300 to 330 plus for the, for the whole 180ks in the last hour, he couldn't ride 200 watts. He was riding that slow and it's incredible to me that he had to do that to get to the end of the bike leg. He had to do that to get into the tent and take four minutes to recover. I think it was four minutes he sat in there for and then he had to come out and just run easy and he thought about dnfing. He said no, I, I'm just going to go out and run. But to be able to have the fitness and strength to still run the marathon after that and then, you know, come through the field. And he said that he saw at the start people were getting away from him, but then as the race went on, they stopped getting away from him and they started coming back to him and he started overtaking them again. It's exactly what we talk about when you have good pacing as an age grouper. That's your exact experience that will happen in a half Ironman or Iron Man. People will take off in front of you at the start and you'll be taking them all over again at the back end and feeling great. And yeah, he. It's just such an interesting discussion point because, you know, his argument was, well, you know, Lalo was doing something that no one had done before, but he did that the last two Ironmans as well and still won. So, you know, we wanted to. I didn't want to let that happen again. But this is the genius of Patrick Langer. His decision was so smart for two key reasons. One, he just said, he just decided this pace is unsustainable. This is crazy. But two, he said it's not just it's unsustainable, it's the way it's unsustainable. There was a huge group. It doesn't always happen like this, although it's been happening more and more in Ironman. But there was 20 athletes in a row, all 12 meters apart, drafting off each other. It was a huge pack. You couldn't really move up and down the pack because you can't pass 20 athletes at once. Christian and stuff are on the front just doing monster turns and wrecking themselves. They're all already riding up over their race pace. They're already riding at a pace that's putting them into the Ren zone and blowing up. But not only that, Patrick spoke about the yo yo effect that was happening, that every hill or descent or turn or corner, this yo yo effect happens, which happens in peloton cycling and criterium cycling, where when you enter that turn or heel or something last, it's almost like the elastic band effect where everything gets stretched and then you have to overpower to get back into that 12 meter draft zone. And so the further back you are, the worse this effect is, this yoyo effect. And unless you're in the front view, you're losing so much time aerodynamically and losing the draft and you have to override. They're already riding 46ks an hour. You have to ride 48km an hour to get back onto the peloton again. Not only are you riding too hard, you're riding over under efforts too hard. If you've ever done any interval training, over efforts are the hardest way to ride compared to the same pace. And so Patrick just said we're riding too fast and we're doing this yo yo thing. This is crazy. And that is what was really blowing everyone up. I have no doubt that was one of the biggest reasons. So he dropped back and said I'm just going to ride my own power by myself where I can just focus on myself and not be part of this yo yo effect. And he still wasn't that far off the pack, but he was far enough off, laid low that it seemed unassailable. But turns out it was an absolute brilliant decision from him and really, really smart way to think about racing the race, but also racing your own time trial.

But how gutsy is it, Jord to not listen to all the armchair experts before the race saying, well forgive these guys, too much lead, we'll never catch them, we'll never see them again. And that's a huge risk that he took. You know, the sheep, I talk about the sheep mentality following, following the majority, whatever the majority does in the world, people think, well if the majority of people are doing it then it must be okay. And that's that comfort factor from, you know, if we use that example, if there's, and this has been a test that's been done where they get 50 people to line outside, line up outside a shop and, and all of a sudden there's interest from people asking why are the people lining up outside the shop? And all of a sudden people join the queue that actually don't know why they're joining the queue. But it must be good because the majority of people are queuing up. There must be something good in there that we're queuing up for. This is the same sheep effect that we've got where if 20 of the best pros in the world are doing this then it must be okay. And how gutsy is it to go? No, it's not okay. This is way above my level and I'm willing to sacrifice myself here so that I can actually have a reasonably decent run. And that's, that's the, that's the experience of a two time Kona world champion. That, that's, that's where that comes from. And, and I don my hat to that. That is, that's unbelievable. As I say, in hindsight that would have been so gutsy a decision to do that. And, and I yeah. What you talked about with, with Magnus Dietliev, he, he had to fight the demons and Magnus D. Magnus Ditliff and he had, he had to fight the demons and, and boy, would that have taken some determination, some courage and some staying power and some mental fortitude to actually just keep going. And especially when people are still running away from you, you're thinking, oh, what is the point of this? You know, I knew I was done and why did I even start running? And then if you just hang in there, you never know what's going to happen. And it's a 42k race, not a 28k race or not a 20k race or 15k race. So, you know, that's the thing we're trying to get across to the age group is just stay in your lane and you never know what's going to happen to those people around you, those sheep who are all racing past you early on the bike. And this happens in the age group all the time. All of the athletes that we coach, we say to them, just don't worry about the people are flying past you. You will see them at some stage later on in the day in an ironman, you will see them whether it's in the run or whether it's in the tent, you know, an hour later after you come in completely blown up. And, and so you've got to, you've got to be so mentally tough to do this and you've got to have discipline. And this is what, this is what we try to instill in our training sessions. And, and you know, a lot of that, that mental toughness and discipline, if you haven't been doing it in training, where you've just stuck to your settings and your power ranges and your run paces, the minute you go outside of those ranges there's going to be some consequences. And that's what we're trying to get across. It doesn't matter whether you're in the pro level or a top age grouper, we have the most success with the middle to. To beginner age group is because they don't have an ego, because they're not competing against anything but themselves.

So look, a question you always ask is, you know, where are the, where's the time to be gained? Where in the race and the course can you gain the most time? And depending on the course and the conditions and the race itself, you know, it might be most of the time it's the bike, but in this case, you know, a lot of athletes were trying to gain time on the Bike and ride really fast and it was at the cost of so much time on the run. So they were trying to ride 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 8 minutes faster than they could ride previously. But it was costing them 8:12, 15 minutes, 20 minutes on the run because they were blowing up. And so from your perspective when you ask that question, it's not worth it. And you always say when you get to the run league as the example for sacrificing time early on to get more back later. We always say to everyone, your first kilometer has to be your slowest. And we exaggerate it. We say if your race plan is to run between 4 and 410 pace, run the first K at 4 20, it will feel ridiculous, it will feel slow. Why would you lose 10 seconds of your pace at the start? You know, you'll feel silly, you'll feel like you're jogging because you're so tapered and fresh and if you've executed the bike well. But what we find is athletes make more than that 10 seconds back, way more normally in the back end when they're flying through the race. But all the athletes that try to run at the top end of their range at 4 minute pace or faster in the first kick, they don't just lose 10 seconds at the end, they lose 30 seconds or a minute or 5 minutes or 8 minutes. You know, it, it's, it's crazy how that phenomenon happens. And we saw this with the pros. They were trying to get, gain more time in the wrong spot and it ended up costing them later.

Yeah, I don't think though, look, I, I just think they expected they would run normally, that I think that's the mistake that, that even at pro level that if you over bike you, you're good enough and fit enough and, and professional enough to still run the way you want to. And whether that's Kona's the problem or whether you could do that at other events, but I still think that it's not going to be sustainable pretty much anywhere. If you ride 10 or 15% above what you're ever done before and then expect to run the same, I think you're kidding yourself and I think that's something that the lesson should be learned. And the pros, I don't think they'll do that again at Kona in two years time, but they may forget. And there's a new crop of guys coming through who are, who are, you know, enthusiastic and motivated and young and, and you know, this is what you have to do here. You have to stay, you have to race the race. And I actually think a lot of them actually don't know the mistake they've made. They, they think it was the heat and their nutrition they got wrong. And I've heard that mentioned many times with the post race interviews and hardly any of them are saying, you know, I rode 10 or 15% too hard. You know, I think when there's a whole lot of reasons, you will stick to the one that makes you look less professional. And I think, I think it's easy just to go with the heat. It is hot and that is a part of the problem.

Than any other years.

Yeah, but you have to respect that. And so we said that in our, in our pre Ironman podcast about the mistakes you make is not respecting the temperature. And if you just, you know, let your heart rate go above where it should be in that temperature, you're going to suffer the consequences of slowing down, whether it's slowing down on the bike and the run or just slowing down on the run. So, so there's huge time gains to be made by being slower on the bike because you will run normally. And, you know, I think the biggest blowout was, I think someone ran a 3:40, which is probably an hour slower than they would have expected. And you would say, oh, they were just, they were just trying to finish the race, which is true, but they couldn't finish it any faster. That's the point. They had blown themselves up so badly. And yes, I'm going to give this the order. When you ride outside of your range, the first thing that happens is you increase the body temperature, which will increase your heart rate. And so once you've done that, if you had a lactate monitor and took your lactate and you were riding 40 or 50 minutes, 15 or 20 watts above what you normally were. And that's some of the things that we've got information from the pros after the race that they were looking at their numbers and saying, this is way above whatever I've ever raced at or trained at. And so you're going to be increasing the lactate, which straight away, once, once you go close to threshold, you are then going to find it hard to not be anything but massively fatigued. And the accumulation of fatigue over a long period of time makes your legs feel like they're bricks and you get off and run and you just can't, you can't run like a normal person. You are so inhibited because you've got a high heart rate. Your lactate Levels are too high. And guess what? When you race or train, doesn't matter, race or train above your level, what happens to your normal fuel consumption rate? You need more. And so therefore you're running out of fuel or you're trying to play catch up with your fueling and then your gut can't handle it. And so there's all these flow on effects and principally why because you rode outside your range. So if you, if you don't actually go back to the rate, the main reason and there are six other reasons that flow on from that, such as what I've just mentioned and eventually it comes to the fact that you, you run not like you're capable of running, you run poorly and you're looking for reasons. And you know, I looked at, I looked at Lionel's post, post video and I'm so, I've got so much admiration for him to actually front up to the camera and, and have to face the music because he's put himself out there and he hasn't had the race he wanted. And I felt he was confused as to what happened and he nearly got close and I want to give my, my advice on that. And for those listening, you, you know, you might think that I'm being a bit of a smart aleck here, but I'm not. I'm trying to help. I'm trying to help even the pros where if they actually don't know what they did wrong, how are they going to improve it? And so he was saying that, you know, I didn't handle the conditions, which is true, he didn't. But a lot of it was to do with his preparation. He was showing us his sessions and we could see in some of those sessions that he was doing six by 30 minute efforts and they were right at where he should have been doing training. His lactate was right there. And those sessions are really great. But you and I have talked about this for, I don't know, four years now about the endurance session. Has to replicate the race. And if you can tell me that 6 by 30 minute efforts is what you do in a race, then I'll start training our athletes with that session. But that's not actually what happens in the race. In the race you don't get a chance to recover. You have pressure on the pedals for the whole 180k. And sure there's sections there where you're going downhill and you do get some recovery or you turn left or you're in a roundabout. You get these micro areas where you do Get a little bit of recovery. But by and large you are putting pressure on the pedals for in the pro levels. Four hours to the mid, mid range or the front pack age Grouper who's doing 440 to five hours and the mid range is doing five to five, 30 and the back of the field is doing six hours to six, 30 to seven. And so you've got, you've got to experience that in training at the intensity that you're going to do on race day. And you've got to get your body used to the fatigue that you're going to feel. And that's what Lionel was, he was sort of getting close to saying that. He was saying, I just felt tired, I just felt fatigued. And I'm sort of yelling at the telegone because you didn't do any 140, 160k rides without stopping. You just rode these intervals where you were riding beautiful power lactate low but you were getting these recovery periods in between these intervals. And that's not what's going to happen on race day. That training session is great. I would have that training session in my program but I'd also have the other session which is riding continuously with no break. And we bang on about picking a course that doesn't have traffic lights. It doesn't allow you to stop for two minutes. And why? Because every time you stop, you recover and you don't get the accumulation of fatigue. And these are the things that I'm trying to get across to whether it's a professional or whether it's an age grouper. You and I have talked about Ingrid, some making mistakes in races and in training and you know, everybody doesn't know all the answers. But if you, if you get someone who's looking from the outside and who can see a little bit of the detail and he's sort of admitted I didn't do enough long rides. Well, yes, that's exactly what you need to be doing. And he didn't go that. He said I need to be doing more of the three hour rides. Well, your race is four hours so you need to be actually replicating some sessions where you are riding four hours with pressure on the pedals. So this is an area where I think a lot of the guys, if they don't actually know what they're doing wrong, how can they fix it for the next race? And I think the gains of understanding that can be in the race for sure. But there's also gains from actually preparing properly for the event by replicating And I don't know if people out there think we're just saying those words. You have to replicate what's going to happen on race day. But that actually we mean that. We mean what are the conditions, your body and fatigue level you're going to feel by. I hate doing those 160, 180k days when I first started, but then I understood why I needed to do them, because when it came to race day, I'd done them before and I was in my zone, I was in my sweet spot because I'd done so many of them. And it was just a replication of a training session. For all the people who just did intervals, their fatigue was just so great, they couldn't handle it. And even though they were good riders and great runners, they couldn't actually execute to their ability because they hadn't prepared properly. And so I think that's, that's a really key point. We're talking about a lot of what happened in the execution. But don't forget, if you don't prepare well beforehand with replicating the duration and the intensity without getting recovery, because every time you recover, you've lost fatigue. The fatigue continues to grow in training and so does it. It happens the same way in the race. You're accumulating fatigue the whole way through the race and you're doing things like trying to fuel yourself so that your muscles and cells are getting enough nutrition to keep functioning, keep. You know, it's like putting oil into a. Into a rusty old car. The only way it's going to start functioning well is if it's really smoothly oiled. So the same with the body, it just needs to keep the fueling up to it so that you can actually maintain the intensity that you need to. So if you're overdoing it in training, sorry, in the race, in terms of power, then you're running low on your fuel. But if you've done that in training, your body will be used to it and it won't get the fatigue that's happening to these guys on race day.

So well put and so important. And we spent so much time on it in last week's episode where we spoke about what is your longest session that you've done. This is for age groupers, really, because the pros can definitely ride. They could wake up any day of the week and ride 180k most of the time. But for a lot of age groupers, they've never ridden more than 120k. And so to get to an Ironman Your longest session needs to be 160, 180k, not only once but repeated. But after the race we were doing our own analysis and we said, yeah, we were looking back on his key sessions and we said exactly what you just spoke about. We just don't think he did enough of the race ready long efforts and he was doing those five by 30 minute ones. And then the very nuanced thing that you just pointed out was he did start to get there. He said I need to do longer sessions. But he's specific words were I think I need to do more like two by one hour or three by one hour. And you're saying you're scratching your head going, no, you're still not getting it. Like whether it's 5 by 30 minutes or 3 by 1 hour, you're still not doing that long sustained time trial effort. And it's hard to watch because he did the right thing by getting to Kono a month early. He was on the perfect course for training. He was on the actual course. You can't get better than that. He was on the perfect course to go to 120 or 140k time trial. And again so grateful for how open he is because we tried to look at a lot of the other pros. You know, Patrick Langer has two sessions uploaded per month basically on Strava for us to be able to look at. And he actually uploaded some really key sessions and he did 3 by 140 kilometer race style time trial sessions in Texas, in Mallorca. So that was really encouraging to see. But Sam Laidlow doesn't upload any of his sessions so we can't actually see what they're doing. So we're just grateful that we can see what Lionel's doing. But unfortunately he's shown us that, yeah, it wasn't quite enough. And on the heat thing, I think again that was a lesson we spoke about last week in the pre race. You can't neglect the heat. And one thing you said to me before this episode is you said there's a lot to talk about, about what went wrong, but you want to give a lot of kudos to a lot of the athletes that really respected the race and shout out the guys that raced it smart, raced it well. There was a few guys that like we said, I think it was Matt Hanson who swam and rode within himself and came home in the second fastest run at 2:45 and was flying through the field to come 10th, you know, and yeah, there was a lot of blow ups for sure. But specifically you were talking about some of the commentary from the two legends, Dave Scott and Mark Allen. And I think they sometimes get a lack of respect themselves because the times back then weren't nearly as fast. And you are always pointing out that these guys were running back in 88 and 92 and 94. They were running 240s and 250s or sub three hours with the bikes that they were on back then with these heap of junk metal bikes that are so hard to ride where your legs would be like jelly and bricks afterwards. And they're running that well. And so you've got to put a bit more respect on their name and what they have to say about it. And that I think they themselves were saying that some athletes still aren't respecting the whole race and the conditions and potentially neglecting the effect the heat would have because the conditions this year weren't any hotter than when they were doing it in 1990 or 1992. And my last point on this is you might look at some of the times and I think this is brilliant what you said. I think it's very harsh. But it's true that if these guys aren't running near their PBS, you know, they can run down to 240 for a fresh half marathon, they can run it under 250. And if they're running 255s or 302s or 307s, you might look at that and go, whatever, it's a bloody good run for a marathon. If they're still getting under three hours, it's a bloody good run. And you're saying, no, if they're capable of a 238 and they're running 252, that's an absolute disaster. That's a 14 minute blow up. That is not a good run at all. And that needs to be looked at. And for an age group, like you said, that would be exaggerated worse because they wouldn't have the fitness. So you'd blow out by an hour. But for these Pros, if they're 6, 8, 12, 16 minutes off their run game, that is the worst case scenario for them and shows that the heat did get to them and the execution got to them.

And I think if we just strip it back to try and make it a little bit simpler for the listener out there is there are a lot of factors that come into it. If you rode above your level at another race where the temperature might have been 18 degrees, you would probably get away with less consequences. So, yes, the main problem was overriding. But overriding at Kona is not respecting the course and the conditions. And so that's the main thing we're trying to say, is that the heat and the current humidity and temperature and the harshness of that course, that contributes to it. But if you make the initial original mistake of riding too hard at that course, we saw the consequences. And, and, and, and I said at the start of this podcast, we had two athletes who, we drilled into them that you have to respect this race and be prepared to be 15 or 20 minutes slower at Kona than you are at the race that got you to Kona. And for them to be within four or five minutes was, for us, such an outstanding outcome. And if an age grouper can listen to that advice and execute like that, and we keep coming back to, the main thing is everybody out there will be saying, but these guys are racing each other. They're racing for money, they're racing for kudos, and they're racing for podiums. But you still have to race your race according to your ability and not race the race where other people are doing. Like the example we talked about with the sheep, you've just got to stay in your lane. I don't care what level you're at. This is that this is the best example that anybody aspiring to do in an Iron man could ever have. The pros absolutely ruined their races, except for a handful and I would say down to seventh place and, you know, maybe throw Matt Hansen in their 10th place. But the majority of the, the guys would be very disappointed with their outcome. In fact, almost embarrassed. But, but they would be proud of themselves for, for sticking it out. But if you don't learn the lesson of why, and we've tried to mention a lot of reasons, then you're going to make the same mistake again. And that's what we're trying to prevent in this podcast is to point out that the pros get it wrong. So why wouldn't the age groupers get it wrong and the age groupers get it wrong so much more than the pros? But if you want to have the race of your life and learn these lessons really quickly and, and do like, you know, that Jack and Michael did for, for Trivalo and, and you know, anybody can compete at Kona and be around nine hours, nine or nine hours 10, they're, they've done a great job. That's a, that's a great result to be. And I think they did 904 and 906 or something at their Previous races to get there. So, so that's, you know, I think that says it all.

Yeah, and, and huge shout out to those two. Look, they both, they both beat in their marathon. I think 17 or 18 of all the pros or something. And this is, you know, Michael's a full time school teacher. To have that performance and that execution and look, you keep saying it, there's many factors to it, but yeah, to be able to run faster at the back end and come home strong and execute to beat a lot of the pros, we were just really proud of that execution. And it was absolute carnage out there. We said that at the very start of the podcast. It was. There are so many things that happened in this race. And starting with the pro stepped into the water, they all got stung by jellyfish. Patrick Langer got stung in the face by jellyfish. And so I was asking you, would that have had an effect? You know, could there be some poor reactions and you're going, well, if the guy, that one got stung in the face, then maybe not. But we do have to point out the fact that Matt Burton got stung and had an anaphylactic reaction. Couldn't race the race. He had to go on the tent and that was it. You know, one athlete, I can't remember who it was, got stung on the bum and he couldn't sit on the saddle properly. It was so sore he couldn't ride the bike properly, you know, and, and then going on to the run, you know, Gustav Eaton, he sat down in the middle of the run because he couldn't take another step. He sat down for rest and then couldn't get back up. And that was his, his race done. Sam laid low, was a walking zombie. You know, there's a famous image of him sculling the two liters of Coke through the aid station. Christian was vomiting his guts up. There was absolute carnage at this whole race. And I think I'd like to finish by acknowledging that, but maybe just pointing out, you know, some of the lessons we did talk about in the, in the pre race and just some final notes on, on what we can learn from this race because these are pros and a lot of them did everything we said not to do in terms of the pre race stuff. So any, any kind of final notes you want to touch on?

Yeah, I just, I'm all the time I'm trying to come from a point of view where what can we learn from our, our mistakes, our poor performances and you know, most of the guys would go away from KONA going, that was, that was terrible. I'm not how, I'm not proud of my actual performance. I'm proud of the fact that I finished, but I'm not proud of the way I raced that race. And so if you don't learn those lessons, and that's the thing that I want to get across is, you know, it's great. It's a great opportunity for us to do this analysis and get the lessons out there and each age grouper who is aspiring to beat their previous time, and that's what, that's what all of us are out there, is to improve, improve our times in these events to be better than we were last year or two years or five years ago. That's, that's our primary goal for doing these incredibly challenging events such as the Ironman. And, and so if you don't learn lessons, you're going to keep making the mistakes and get poor outcomes and not achieve the PBS that you want to. And so this is where this podcast is trying to aim at. Look at what the, the athletes that we, we can have a look at their data and, and, and give their advice on the mistakes and point out things that you can do differently so that you don't actually do exactly the same thing. If you ever get the chance to go to an event like Kona or you go to an event where it's really hot or, and even the preparation point of points that we were making and, you know, and the only other point I wanted to make is, you know, age has no barrier in this event. You know, we've seen so many examples of, of athletes such as. Yeah, Crow Alexander and, and now Patrick, you know, three time winners, both of them.

Yeah.

At 38.

And Jan Frodeno won it, his last one at 38 as well. Yeah. All three of them at 38 years old. That to me is awesome. Crazy and awesome.

That is a, that is an elite field of, of athletes. And look, Dave Scott and Mark Allen were pretty old as well when they were, when they were winning. So, you know, there's a whole group of guys who just showed that, you know, if you understand and limit your mistakes, it doesn't matter how old you are. You can. This is a race of discipline and maturity and patience. And I've said that to all of our trivalo athletes every time they go to a, to an Ironman. I said, if you can have those three attributes, you will have a great day. But if you, if you are, you know, if a group of guys go past you and you want to join in. That's your first measure of discipline. Can you not do that and stay in your bubble? And you know that's, that's the reason why guys like Patrick Langer can actually win a race like this because they are super disciplined, understand their ability and they're limiting the mistakes. And, and you know, we talk. I know that you guys did the Australian open tennis for a lot of years and your brother Matt was in the. He did the statistics for forehand winners, backhand winners. And we always laughed at the guy who was winning these tennis events was the guy who's making the least, least mistakes and not so much making the winners, but he was not making the mistakes. And the same in any sport. If you can eliminate the catastrophic mistakes, you will end up getting the result you want. And I think that's where I want this message to go out to all those age groupers who are listening, who are, who are lining up for their next ironman in six months or three months or this summer in the southern hemisphere or next year. You get a chance to practice this all winter. And so you come into the summer season in the northern hemisphere understanding that even the pros get it wrong. And if you can just train well, similar to what's going to be expected on race day, the conditions, the intensity, the duration of your training, and if you can think like that, then you will have a really good outcome. So at the end of the day, that's my summary.

Yeah. And I want to finish on a final note of talking about the mental side of things. We touch on this a lot, that your mindset counts for a lot and credit to him. Patrick Langert has been very open about how he had a panic attack before, before an ironman early in the year. And I think he. I can't remember if I heard this correctly, but I feel like he said it happened again before Kona where he's worked a lot on it, but I think he still had a minor panic attack at the start of the race, which is an incredible thing to come over to go into the event. And then ditlove kind of said similar thing. He said he was on the start line. Yeah, really a nervous wreck. But both of them really said in their press conferences that they've worked on the mental side of things and the mindset side of things, which, which makes a massive difference. And I think Patrick had a bit of a quiet sense of confidence about him when I was watching the pre race conference. He was very vocal and I was surprised by that. And I'll admit I did not pick him to win this race whatsoever. And I had that exact thought when I was listening to, to talk a lot. I thought to myself, you're talking a lot for someone who I didn't think was going to win. And that was very disrespectful for a two time world champion for me to think that. But he was kind of directing the questions and kind of directing the press conference a little bit. But I think he, he really made Koner's focus this year and I think that just came from a place of not arrogance, just a quite a confident belief in himself. And in hindsight it was pretty healthy belief because he knew what he wanted to do.

He could have almost been planting the seed of hyping up the other athletes with, with what they should be doing and directing them the way he wanted. So, you know, it could be a genius, couldn't it could be a genius step. It's always easy in hindsight. But, but I hope that the listeners got, got some, some value from the, the, the, the delving into. You know, we pick on mistakes not to criticize, we pick on the mistakes to learn. And, and if you can take it from, from that point of view and we're not, we're not trying, we are actually trying to, and I've put myself down in this podcast for many years about the mistakes I've made because I've made all the mistakes these guys are making. And it almost frustrates me because I still see pros doing what I did wrong. And if I can just get them to listen to the advice we're giving, I'm sure that some of them may have had a different outcome.

It was a monster race. It was so cool. Can't wait for two years time. But the women come back next year and I can't wait for the race that that shapes up to be with Lucy Charles making her return. I think yeah, Kona is really something special. And I said before the race, I said in last week's episode that I don't mind the two year thing. I think it really does actually help build the hype on both sides. You know, the women will be desperate to get back there next year and the men will be just as desperate in two years time to attack the course again, especially how the course defeated a lot of them. So yeah, we hope you enjoyed this episode. That's it from us. And we'll see you on the next one. Sam.