Triathlon Coaches React To Ironman 70.3 World Champs

Was this the toughest bike course in triathlon? Well, it was certainly exciting and fantastic. The World 70.3 Championship was in Marbella, Spain, and the course was unbelievable. It was aesthetically pleasing, it was beautiful, and the course, the bike course, turned out to be super fun to watch with a really flat, not fast, but flat, fun run course to watch when you could see the footage. But today we want to break down the World 70.3 reaction, everything that happened to finish off the Ironman season. And the stuff we saw, not only from the pro triathlete perspective, but the data we saw from our own athletes and the lessons we can take from, from the Ironman Pro Series this year and some really key data points for how you could have ridden this course well and still execute well. So, a bit to unpack here. There was a lot of exciting stuff. I just want to go straight into it. It was pretty unbelievable to see a rematch between Lucy and Taylor so quickly after the the heavy, heavy race that was the Ironman World Championships in Kona. Just a month later, they back up and it's those two at the front again.

[Speaker] Yeah, wasn't it spectacular? And I love the World Championships. It really brings out the best of the best and you either got it on the day or you haven't. And this is one of those days where I was so worried that the Kona experience would really have destroyed Lucy and Taylor's opportunities to do well. And it was really great to see, I think Lucy didn't go so deep in Kona and therefore probably was a bit fresher. I think Taylor, having only 4K to go when she ended up sitting down on the highway at Kona, I think she almost did the full Ironman, which created so much fatigue. And I think that showed a little bit in the run and maybe at the back end of the bike, but Lucy was just incredible. It was a one-horse race. It was fantastic to watch. Sticking to her strategies, and she did have some good strategies in the race. She was just the outstanding athlete of the day. It was a superb victory.

I know what you meant by she didn't go so deep at Kona, but I just want to clarify that point for anyone listening, that you know that they both went deeper than possible. You just mean that the point of the race that she was taken off, she didn't endure that full 42 kilometers of the marathon, which really does take it out of you. Of course, her body was in all sorts. But as you said, Taylor went that bit further in terms of the marathon, and that is really hard to come back from. And it brings up an interesting point about, you know, recovery. I just think, looking at a lot of our age group athletes, we're really particular about the races that they pick for the season and not having back-to-back races too close to each other because we just see the recovery needs to be a lot. And it's hard because unfortunately the pros just do it so well, and they're kind of— we always speak about You can't always copy the pros because what they're doing is, is supernatural. They're the top 20 athletes in the world, the top 30 athletes in the world, and they're that for a reason because they can remarkably back up race after race. And what Taylor and Lucy did after enduring that at Kona, uh, is special. But we see it all the time. Athletes, age group athletes do a marathon, you really need to give yourself a lot of time to come back from that. Um, age group athletes do a 70.3 and you can't just do back-to-back 70.3s as an age grouper a month apart. You know, a lot of the time we're saying give yourself at least 3 months, maybe even longer. And if someone wants to book in 2 races between that, we're kind of saying age group athletes, that's not such a good idea.

Look, it depends on each individual, doesn't it? And some people are really good at recovering. And don't forget, the pros we're talking about, and this is what I worry, is all the age groupers, they want to emulate what the pros are doing. Oh no, we often have someone say, "Well, you know, such and such did 4 races in 7 weeks." But you've got to remember, they're resting all day in between their training sessions, and you're not. You're going to work for full 8 to 10 hours, and you're probably dealing with family. Most of the pros don't have any children. There are certainly some pros with children and families, but most of them are— you know, they've only got to really worry about their own training sessions, nutrition, and rest and recovery. And you can't compare the program that a pro sets for races to what an age grouper can do, unless you're single, you know, you don't need to work as much. There's always, you know, when we look at who it is, that's what you've got to identify. You can't just across the board say age groupers can't do the same as pros, or age groupers should be able to do exactly the same as pros. There's going to be individual nuances for each person, and you've got to work out how quickly you are at recovering, and that will determine whether you can back up a lot. But, you know, doing a lot of races mediocre, I would rather do some specific races really well. Rather than just having a full— and I think that's one of the main lessons that the pros have actually learned since the magnificent 2 years of having so many races with 3 new organizations, or 3 organizations now with the T100, Ironman Challenge, and you know, that's really opened up the calendar. And so therefore, pros have got all of these opportunities to earn an income, which is so important, and really try their trade against other athletes. But they've realized that if you're trying to do everything, you can't do it that well. And I love the, the Norwegians' attitude. It's all about championships. It's either the Olympics or the World Championships, and every other race is, is really important in my season, but they're not my A races. Um, I want to win those other races, but if I don't, it's no different to the, the World Tour cyclists who are preparing for the Tour de France. They might do 8 lead-up races, and we don't see them win every one of them, although Pogačar he makes a mockery of that sentence. He wins everything. But the majority of riders are just trying to get fit, race fit. So the best way to get race fit is to race. And you know, in TriVelo, we encourage our athletes to do as many races as we can, as long as they're B or C races. And we're not trying to taper for a short sprint race. You know, it's just part of our week's training where we— you know, unless this is your your A race, that's different. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about someone who's got an A race down the track, and we're trying to get you into one race a month just so that you get race practice. And it's ironic that a lot of our most successful athletes over the last 5 or 6 years are the ones who race the most. And so it's a bit of a conundrum where you've got us saying, "Don't race too much," but you need to race to get race fit. So, yeah.

But let's be specific there. When you're saying race a lot, we're talking about putting yourself in a TT event at least once a month where you're doing an 18-kilometer time trial or whatever your local crit is, putting yourself in a parkrun, a 5K parkrun. We're not talking about a 70.3 every single month.

That's— No, no. We could be talking about sprint triathlon. We could be talking about Olympic distance, but I draw the line there. If it's 70.3 once every 4 weeks for 4 months of your summer season, that's 4 70.3s in 16 weeks. That's just a bad idea if you've got a full-time job and a family. You probably won't have a family after that, and you probably lose your job because you're so exhausted from the training and the racing. So it's, you know, we want to do— look at the pros and try to pick out the things that are relatable to you as an age group athlete and not pick out the things that you can't actually emulate because of the reasons I said.

You mentioned cyclists there, and we actually said 2 years ago that once the Ironman Pro Series was announced and the T100 Series, with all the prize money, we said the triathletes, this is all new for them and they could learn something from the cycling world because that's how the cycling pro teams work is come November, December, around now, they inform the world what their key riders are nominating for next year because they know that Pogačar— I mean, ignore Pogačar, he's not the best example. They know that their other key leaders can only pick out a few key races to do. They can't do it all. They will just burn out. And so, yeah, the triathletes are having to learn that. The other outlier in triathlon seems to be Hayden Wilde, who is remarkably just now very good at the short and long distance. But even he, twice this last season, he's tried to do the T100 on the Saturday and the ITU race on the Sunday. The first time he did it, he won the T100 remarkably easy, but he was nowhere to be seen in the ITU race. He was exhausted from the day before. And I kind of thought it was a little bit arrogant, and everyone was talking about how good from Hayden Hayden Wild backing up after yesterday. And I was kind of going, this is a bit harsh for me, I'll admit, but I was going, what's the point of backing up, um, if he's going to be nowhere in the field? And I wouldn't say that to any normal athlete, and I wouldn't think that of myself. You don't think, what's the point of turning up if I'm not going to win? You know, you have to be a certain type of athlete for that. But Hayden Wild is that athlete. He's an athlete that wins everything, you know. So, um, I kind of thought that. And he did it again at Wollongong. He did the T100 on the Saturday and then backed up the Sunday, and everyone was talking about how amazing it is. And I said to myself again, what is I just don't see the point here for him. You know, he's not proving anything. He's nowhere near the pack. He doesn't have it in the swim because he's so exhausted. And he actually did a good interview which changed my mind a little bit. And he said, I know I'm not going to be there, but I want to see how close I am. You know, I know I'm not going to race well, but I just want to see how far off I am with this fatigue in me and how close am I actually to be able to do two races in a row. And I thought, you know what, if that's his goal and perspective and he's happy with that, then freaking good on him because It is a remarkable effort to back up, but I just, I don't see how he's ever going to come close to Matt Hauser the next day when Matt Hauser's fresh and he's trained this whole year for that race. And yeah, it was, it's an interesting topic. And yeah, kudos to Hayden Wild for being honest about, you know, his expectations for it and what he wanted.

Yeah, look, I actually love Hayden and his attitude. It's absolutely brilliant. And Gerard, he's a racer and he just, he just loves racing. So we can't be, we can't be like, we're trying to give Advice for age groupers here. So we're saying don't try to do what Hayden did.

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, and we love racing too. And so yeah, we definitely can't fault Hayden for that. I just thought the decision-making was interesting, but I like his perspective. So that leads us to the men's side of things at the Worlds, which was again an unbelievable matchup between Christian and Yellow Greens. And that was just classic racing and, uh, absolutely epic. Bike race from the pros into a one-on-one duel, which was for the ages. Unfortunately, again, there was just disastrous footage from and coverage from Ironman. I said this from Kona. I've said this a lot, but it really played out in this race where everyone who was watching it knows how they just, towards the sprint finish, they cut to a classic picture of just Mark Beaumont. And anyway, it's It's not worth talking about that, but the one-on-one battle was unbelievable. It was classic racing— the surging, the bluffing, the playing games. Christian was sitting in drafting and not wanting to do any work, and all led to a dramatic sprint finish, which is everything you want to see at the World Champs.

It was an absolutely fascinating race. I could not keep my eyes off it. And look, on your point about coverage, look, the T100 are actually giving us time splits, uh, what pace they're running. But Ironman can't, uh, it's not like Ironman can't do it because, you know, the rival company is actually showing them how to do it. So that, that gets on me a bit. And Ironman, they don't have the order of who's in first, second, and third right half the time. Um, you know, we can see on the telly that, um, Lucy Charles-Barclay had passed— sorry, Taylor Knipp had passed Lucy Charles-Barclay, but the placings on the screen were saying that Lucy was still leading, and you can see clearly she wasn't. And yeah, and there's no power numbers, there's no pace, there's no average speed. So, you know, if they want to get it to be a really good visual, they need to lift their game a bit. I know it's difficult, but that's one thing we could do. But oh gee, what a, what a great race. And look, Yellow Greens, I just feel that that was one of the all-time great comeback victories. You know, he didn't have the best swim, he crashes in the roundabout in the first 5K, gets up, he's got a cracked handlebar extension. He's, uh, you know, he's— derailleur's bent. Um, he gets back on the bike really quickly, um, then gets to the top of the climb and then gets off the bike again, bends the derailleur with his hand, gets back on, um, and then gets transition and drops his bike. That's his fault, obviously. All of these mistakes were his fault, um, because he went into that corner too quickly. That's how he crashed. Um, he admitted that. He's not even, um using any excuses, but I'm saying this is an example for all age groupers to say, "Look, no matter what's going wrong, just hang in there. You just don't know what's going to happen next." And this is a great example of that. And he chased back on the bike and he got back to the lead and started aggressively riding, and it was just a great victory from someone who was, you know, really had every reason to feel sorry for themselves. You know, he's in transition, he loses 15 seconds. That really matters. He's dropped the bike on the ground. He has to pick it up. He can't hook it over the bars. I mean, to be fair, most of the pros should have the slots so they don't have to hook their bike over the bars. But, you know, that's what it is. That's what the age groupers have to do. So it was quite funny that he actually couldn't put his bike on there.

I meant to go back and look at it, but he twice he tried to hook it from the seat, which is what you normally do. But I believe the race ranger was stopping him and he's— and just not being used to that because it's a relatively new thing. Um, I think that would mean there was no gap under the seat. And so I— that was on the first look when I was watching it live, that's what I thought. I didn't actually go back and look at the replay, but I wonder if that was actually the problem.

Yep. And look, it just didn't faze him, and he just surged up to the lead. He just— he ran up to the leaders and then recovered a bit. And, and the whole tactics that you're talking about with him and Christian and the other, the other athletes that, that eventually got dropped, and, and even Casper's run, he, he's basically stayed 30 seconds behind them the whole way. And, you know, he was kind of reliving the Nice experience where I think he was waiting for them to blow each other up, which I was thinking this could happen, that these two at the front could do exactly the same thing and he could do it again. He could actually win the race when these guys are surging and hitting the hill hard. And, and Jelle was saying that Christian was really breathing heavily, and, you know, he wasn't sure whether Christian was making it up or it was real. Because, because every time he'd breathe heavily, he put a surge in, and then Christian wouldn't get dropped. But felt like his breathing was he's going to get dropped any minute, and then he realized he couldn't drop him. And it was, it was great to listen to his story about how the tactics played out. And, and, you know, I think when it came to that finish, I think he was confident that he could outkick Christian. But remember, Christian won the Olympic Games gold medal with that enormous 1.5K kick. And Gerard Donnelly said, "Oh, I think he waited too long. Had he gone that earlier, I might have been in a little bit more trouble." Well, that was interesting. But maybe Christian couldn't and he was already on his limit, so we don't know.

That's what you always say with racing, Dad. You always say that if they're not going, it's probably because they can't. And sometimes this happens in cycling a lot. In a breakaway, you think, why isn't anyone doing any work? And, and sometimes people are playing games, but a lot of the time it's because they can't, you know, they're just hanging on. And so you've got to remember that mentally. Uh, I thought it was really just paying attention and good race strategy. Yeah, I think they both knew that whoever got to that corner first had a remarkable advantage, and there was that argy-bargy trying to push past each other to get to get to that corner first. Um, and Jöller did the right thing and held his ground and just made sure he got there first. It would have been very difficult even if Christian had the legs to come around him after that. Um, such an interesting finish to, to the course. And, um, Christian didn't have the legs anyway, and it looked like he, he got hit with some cramp, which is very common for him, which is a little bit frustrating. I don't think he— without cramp, I don't think he had the legs anyway to sprint past him. But, um, but yeah, great strong finish.

Interesting finish, wasn't it, where you had a narrow bit where they ended up banging into each other to see if you— that's a little narrow chute bit.

Yeah.

And then it was a right-hander, then another right-hander, then another right-hander. It was— yeah, it was— you had to know the finish. And a lot of cycling races we talk about, you know, you need to go and see what the finish is so that you can actually work out where to start your kick. And this was no different. Um, you know, the actual course knowledge was a key factor in— if you didn't know that finish you would have lost that race. The good thing was they both knew the finish, and, um, and the best man won on the day. And that's what I like to see. I like to see the best guy on the day win. Even though he had so many things go wrong, he still prevailed. That was brilliant.

And that's what we want to touch on in a second, because that's stories we saw a lot with age groupers and being a world champ. There's a lot more pressure. I mean, I, I just want to finish with— I don't know what your thoughts were on— I was a little bit irked about Jelle Greens attitude once he won. It was— he was very— there was a lot of adrenaline. He was absolutely pumped. Um, but I just thought that the first thing you would do would be congratulate Christian and then go celebrate. And he kind of— he kind of looked at Christian, went to shake his hand, he kind of just looked at him with as little acknowledgement as possible and just went off and celebrated and saw his family, which is all fair enough. You just become world champion. But I just thought, when you go through a battle like that, give the congratulations first and then go celebrate. It was— it was seriously 3 or 4 minutes plus before he went over to Christian to just say congrats.

I think you're a bit harsh, George. Um, I, I, I think he's defending a title back to back. There's so much emotion. You did mention that. It's— it is an emotional period, and, and you're, you're caught up in the euphoria of it. And you know, when— you know, I remember watching you play and win a grand final at footy. I don't think the first thing you did was go over to your opponent and shake hands. It was, um, it was, you know, jumping around with your other 18 mates. So, um, you know, you've got to think of the person in that, in that situation. And look, to be fair, he is a really gracious winner, um, and, uh, and I rate him. He's, uh, he's a, he's a great athlete. And, um, yeah, he was, you know, he was full of praise afterwards in the interviews for Christian and his— how good he is and how if he can beat Christian, you're doing well. Um, and that's, uh, I think that's— yeah, I think he's a great champion.

You're not wrong, man. I think the fanboy, the Christian fanboy in me was just gutted for him to, to not walk away with a world title this year, um, when He's won a lot, obviously, but this was what he really wanted to do. And in one of his Norwegian videos with him and Gustav, someone was saying that, oh, Kristian wins a lot of races and Gustav wins the important ones but doesn't win a lot of other races. And Kristian butted in and said, hey, I'm glad to win all these races. I want to win every race I turn up to, but my goal is the world title. I couldn't give a crap about any of these races. I want to win world titles. That's my thing. I think there's a good point there.

The age groupers as well. We have a lot of athletes in our age group coaching business who are at the pointy end, and they feel pressure to win, but you can't win every race you're in. Christian's an example of this. He's unbelievably talented. How many times has he won a world title? He's won 4 or 5 world titles plus an Olympic Games gold medal. He's a big winner, and so is Gustav. And now Kasper is as well, and Jelle is now, you know, back to back. But they don't always win, and that's the thing as an age grouper. You know, we've talked about this in the World Tour cycling, you know, except for Pogačar, we have to put that aside, he's a one-in-a-century rider. But, you know, Wout van Aert's had 200 second places, you know, Cavendish has had the same, you know, 200 or 300 second places. And, you know, to have that expectation on yourself that I have to win or do a PB every time, as an age group athlete, I think you're setting yourself up for failure, and I think that's a real issue.

Yeah, we have talked about this a lot, and I do want to make— really emphasize there, because whenever we talk about this, we say, you know, X athletes had that many second places, but the metaphor is exactly what you just said then. You can't PB every time, and when we're talking about a win, we're talking about a winning result or an improvement. And just to have the expectation that every single time I turn up to the start line and race, it's going to be my best result is, is just ludicrous. It's actually not possible because if you kept doing that, you'd probably end up a pro yourself and then winning every world title, you know, because it'd be infinite progress. And so we're not saying lower your expectations. You, every— as Christian says, every time you get to the start line, you want to do as well as possible. But just knowing that not everything's going to go to plan, and you want to race to where you're at for that day and for that race and the context.

The realistic expectations is what I want to drill in. I want to drill this home to every age group athlete who's listening to this. You know, if you took a 2-year period, you know, December last year, you could have been on fire. You could have had the best 18 weeks of training that you've had in years, and you've reached the highest power numbers, you're running the fastest you ever have. Who knows what happened from December to October now? You could have had so many things go wrong. You could have had an operation, you could have been sick, you could have lost your job, you could have, you know, anything that's going to stop your consistency in training, you can't just say, because I was doing the best performance in December of 2024, anything below that from that point on, I, I look at that as a failure. And, and if you, if you have that attitude, you're just going to be— you're going to have depression the whole rest of your athletic career. So you're going to have highs and lows. Our goal as consistent athletes is to not have highs and lows. Our goal is to be as level and as even as possible, and that means training every week as much as you can. But, but let's just get real here, it doesn't happen like that. And you know, you will be sick at some point, there will be roadblocks to stop you from training. You could break your bike, you could lose your bike, your bike might not get off the plane from a trip. There'll be 100 reasons why you can't consistently train properly. So we're trying to get this message across that whenever you come to your next main event, you have to race according to the fitness you have for that event, and that's the PB. I don't think Ben will mind me bringing this up. He just did Harvey Bay on the weekend, and initially he was a little bit disappointed with his performance, but when I said to him, you've just been on a work 6-week, 4-6 week job where you've been restricted in training, like 30 minutes on one day and 20 minutes on another, and had to ride to work, and it was out of his routine, and the only days he had was Saturday and Sunday. And he was not the same athlete that he was a year ago at that event. He's a completely different athlete. He was a way lower fitness level, but he's comparing himself to what he was the year before. And after we had a good discussion about that, he just changed his whole mindset. It was like, ah, what am I thinking? I know all these things have gone wrong. I know I've— he moved house, he had saddle sores where he couldn't actually sit on his bike for 3 months. He moved cities, he went from Gladstone to Toowoomba. Just that in itself is hard. So all of these examples are, are real. They're life experiences that will either make you the same athlete, better athlete, or worse athlete. And if you can get that mindset, you'll have a much more enjoyable experience as an athlete.

Yeah, and tying it specifically to the World Champs, we had a funny conversation between a couple of weeks out and the week of the race where you and I kind of said to each other, everyone seems really nervous, you know, and talking to the athletes, we're going, everyone's really putting a lot of pressure on on the World Champs. And, and you put it brilliantly, you said because it has this World Champs title in front of it, it adds this perceived pressure and everyone feels it. And everyone is flying all around the world to get to Spain for this big pressure race that you've been training all year for. And it is natural for it to feel like there's more pressure, but that's an illusion. There's not, you know. And I want to talk about that in a second, but it happened with our athletes. And you and I were talking through conversations with athletes going, oh wow, this person's really nervous for this. Firstly, that's okay. It's okay to feel nervous. But if it's starting to derail your enjoyment of the week leading in and you're putting so much pressure on that it's taking away from your experience, that's not what we want. And two, if it's forcing you to make decisions that aren't in your best interest and stopping you from thinking clearly, that's a problem as well. And it was happening to our own coach, Matt Phillips. He was putting his own extra pressure on himself as a coach. He's going, "I'm at the World Champs." I've won all my races this year, there's a lot of pressure on me to perform well here at the World Champs. He will be happy for us to say this, he admitted to us that week where I think you talked him through it a little bit and calmed that pressure down. He said, "I don't know what I've been thinking.

I just need to relax and just do what I've been doing all year and the result will take care of itself." It's a real pity that Kristian says, "I'm only interested in World Champs events," because again, athletes think, "Oh, this must mean more to the pros than—" Yes. And so therefore, we're going to copy them again. And look, the best way to perform is to think of the event, and if you've ever been in a cricket grand final, a football grand final, or a tennis final, you got this thing about, "Oh, this is the final. I need to play or race or compete differently than I have the way I got to the final." So no, you don't have to do that. You have to actually emulate exactly what you've been doing and not change too much. Changing too much could actually make you have a worse result. Sure, we want you to race, but we want you to stay in the ranges that's got you to this position and trust the process. And when people start thinking like that, their anxiety and their levels of fear about performance become really reduced. And if you just concentrate on being in the moment and what's going to get me the best swim time rather than the time, concentrating on how I'm going to ride these hills rather than the time of how the bike goes, what pace I'm going to run in each of these kilometers rather than the finishing time. The times at the end will look after themselves as long as you're concentrating throughout the day just doing what you do well, and that's matching what you've done for 6 months to get there.

Yeah, our pre-race video to our athletes, you, you just said this so well, you said remove the world title aspect because with that comes the expectation that 'Hey, it's the World Championships, so you need to do something special.' And he's saying, 'No, you just do what you've been doing this whole time, and that will be enough. And if you try to do something different or something special, you'll risk having a much worse outcome, because that's never—

you can't just suddenly do something special or different that you've never done before.' And I've heard a lot of stories from athletes who were disappointed with their World Championship. And I'm not talking about— I'm just talking about in general. A lot of the stories going around is, 'Oh, I couldn't run so well because this was such a hard bike course.' course. And that sentence is true, that this is such a hard bike course, but that doesn't mean you can't run so well. The people who are in that category, they didn't run so well, they rode the course poorly. They— we've got data that shows our athletes who did very well rode the first hill, that first section, in their ranges, and therefore they're able to ride the second section the same power number.

Those who overrode the first hill Because it's the World Champs, because there's a lot of excitement and atmosphere, and you've got to do something different. You've got to really hit this climb like a pro cyclist.

And, Gerard, there's people flying past you, and you think you're in the wrong because you're the only one riding so slow. Everybody else is— and all of a sudden you think, oh, I'm doing it wrong, I need to increase my effort here. But if you then— if you were able to grab those people who flew past you on the bike and went and looked at their run times They'd be the people who are saying, "Oh, you know, it's hard to run well when it's such a hard hilly course." But we've got examples of our athletes setting PBs on this run, at the World Titles in the run, because they actually rode the course properly.

That's the main data point I want, and key point I want to get from this episode, is that I saw the same thing. I saw a lot of posts online of people posting their race review and just saying, "Tough day out there, incredibly hard bike course," which it was, "I couldn't run well because of it." And yeah, that last part is not true. And if you rode the bike course properly, you could have ran well. It was a fast course, had a lot of turns, so that slows you down a lot, a lot of dead spots. So that disrupts your continuity a lot more than you anticipate, but—

And the surface was a little bit—

A couple of surface changes, yeah, but a couple of little rises. But yeah, a few of our athletes ran half marathon PBs, 70.3 PBs off the bike. And so, yeah, if you rode in your ranges well and rode to the top of your range but not over on the bike, you could still run well off the bike. So that's a really important data point to remember with all tough courses out there, that don't use that as an excuse. If you execute well, you can still have a great run.

Yeah, and look, we saw that at Nice at the World Championships at the Ironman. The age groupers who rode the hills too hard couldn't run at all. And we had examples of guys who— our own guy Stevie Mack ran a 2:59. Marathon, off those hills. And that's the fastest he's ever run off the bike. And if you get that right, it's such a good feeling to really know that you're in control.

Quick shout out to our travel athletes who all executed so well: Coco, Laura, Charlotte, Peter, Tommy, Andrew, John, and our very own coach, Matt Phillips. So proud of the way they executed. Enjoyed their run experience because of it. But I want to talk about some things that happened to these athletes, which again, anything can happen at any time. And you put all this pressure on the world title, you want it to all go perfectly. And for a few athletes, it went, it went very wrong. You know, Laura came in with a bit of an injury and, and couldn't quite run and was very nervous about how the run was going to go. Peter, his bike didn't turn up in Spain. You know, you get to the world champs and your bike doesn't turn up. The same thing happened to our athlete Fiona in Kona. Unfortunately, had an accident once she got into Kona. Her bike was ruined, had to go on a new bike. Tommy got off the plane sick, which is just such a common thing nowadays post-COVID. It just feels like any plane you catch could get you sick. Um, John had 2 punctures in the race, you know, completely stopped him. And so while we want to have the best day possible, just like Yellow Greens, you know, all these things can happen. And so what you're going to be happy with is how you respond to that and how you respond to the challenges. And if you respond well and execute around that the best you can, you will finish the day satisfied and enjoy the process.

It's such a great point. And look, out of those athletes, you know, the people who had nothing go wrong, they were few and far between. The majority of people have stories about— just last weekend, one of our guys, Mitch, his wetsuit, and the day before the race at Challenge Canberra, filled up with water in his practice swim. And you know, We always say, "Don't try something new that you haven't tried before," and he had to go into the race, you know, with a brand new wetsuit that he hadn't tried before. And so they're examples of, you know, so many things can happen to you, and it's how you deal with those and how— we call it roadblocks, we always have in our podcast. How do you deal with the roadblock? Because there is a way around, you've just gotta find the solution, and that's the key to being a good athlete. I think Jelle Geens is a great example. You know, so many things went wrong, he found solutions straight away. 'You know, my derailleur's not changing. I can't get the easiest gear on these climbs. I need to bend my derailleur back so I can get the easier gears.' So he gets off and does it, and now he can ride so much better. That's someone thinking really clever through the challenge that's put in front of them. So a big shout out to our group, and you know, we had some fantastic outcomes. We don't want to talk individually too much, but yeah, so there's some outstanding results.

Yeah, I want to touch on that, the mindset around roadblocks, and it seems so simple, but we all, in the heat of the moment, it's very hard to get this right. But it is really about the story you tell yourself about what's happening. And if you aren't able to adjust your expectations of the result you wanted prior to the roadblock, then you're not going to be able to move through it. And we see this a lot. Roadblock happens, the way around it, you know, Jelle Geens would rather not get off the bike and fix his derailleur because he's going to lose time. You know, he'd rather not have that happen. But if he stays with that, he's potentially going to ruin the rest of his race because he can't get the gear he wants. He's, he's going to grind away and not ride like he normally would. The small decision to have clear thinking to fix the derailleur so he can get in the gears that he wants really makes the current situation better. And so a mistake we see often is that athletes just take too long to accept the roadblock's there, you know, and If you're sick, for example, you might deny that for a while and say, no, no, no, I can still race how I want to despite being sick. And that would lead to a much worse consequence because you try and ride or run to the power or pace that you would fresh, and you blow the whole day up. Whereas unfortunately, the reality is if you back off slightly, you might still be able to get through the whole day. If you just go a little bit more conservative, you might be able to finish the race. In a form that you'll be happy with. The athletes that can accept that, even though it's so different to the reality that they wanted for the race, will end up with a better outcome. The athletes that deny that and reject that and don't respond to it and keep telling themselves the story that, "No, this is the outcome that I wanted and I will do anything for that," unfortunately, it might blow up in their face. That's just one example, the sickness, but it happens all the time. Really, the story you tell yourself around the roadblock, you just need to make sure that you're not not hanging on to that, that goal and expectation you had. If something's put in front of you, you just have to adjust. And if you can do that, the quicker you can do that, the better the outcome will be.

I couldn't agree more. And look, the example you gave was, uh, Tommy had exactly that experience. He was really sick. And if it wasn't the World Championships, our advice to Tommy would have been, you can't race, you're just unwell, and it, it could actually make you sicker and, and, you know, destroy you know, it's the start of his summer season because he lives in the southern hemisphere, it could destroy you for another 4 or 6 weeks. And, and so he was really clever, and he basically stopped training from the minute he got sick. So he did none of the preparation work leading into the race, and then he had a new race plan based on 60 to 70% of his, of his normal level. So whatever his race plan was, we, we, in order for him to finish, that was our goal, instead of trying to be, you know, as competitive as he wanted to be, changed his expectation. My goal is to finish and I want to do it as well as I can. He ended up negative splitting the run, um, even though his, his riding, uh, power and his run pace was lower. But the way he executed was someone who really listened and executed according to their current level of fitness. And I just think that was an outstanding— that was one of the best things as an age grouper I've seen someone do. And he didn't crack it and just say, "Woe is me," he did something about it. He found a solution to get a good result. He came away from the event, sure, not achieving the goal times that he wanted to do, and this guy's improved out of sight. We'll do a podcast on him, a case study on him, but his time will come, and that's a great example of someone really learning to race at their current level. One final note on—

we just want to touch on our coach Matt Phillips because it's a good case study for someone that felt like he had a lot of pressure to see what place he could come in the world considering in his age group he keeps winning every race he's in in Australia at 70.3 level. You know, okay, what is the best in his age group? How does that compare to the rest of the world? And as you said, it takes a lot of discipline on the bike on that first climb when all your age group is coming past you because they're either overriding the hill or that's their power and they're that good. And they're just better. It takes a lot of discipline to, to hold back. And to his credit, he rode— we looked at the data, it was quite incredible. On each climb, there was kind of 7 main climbs or segments you could, you could take, you know, you could really break it down to 2 longer climbs, but within that there was kind of 7 segments. His wattage was unbelievable. He was really aiming to ride between 300 and 320 on those climbs. Every segment we broke down of 18 minutes or 26 minutes or 13 minutes, it was 312 watts, 313 watts, 311 watts. The whole way through. He didn't over or underdo it. He held on to the end. That allowed him to run as well as he could have, exactly as well as he normally runs off the bike, which shows that a hard bike doesn't have to equal a slow run. And that got him 11th, was it, in his 8th in the world?

Yeah. When I went to bed, he was— I'd screenshotted— he was top 10 in the world, and then someone must have finished later. And look, that's a— to be at that level as a 37-year-old who works full-time with a family. Yeah, fantastic, fantastic outcome. And yeah, to be, to be fair, this course— and this is not an excuse, this is just reality— some courses suit athletes more than others. And, and Matt's, uh, not like, uh, Yella Gaines, who's, who's a lightweight whippet. That's, you know, really strong, powerful athlete. And this is not really the course that would suited him, but the course is where the course is, and you have to you have to prepare as best as you can for wherever the course is in the world. And, and that's the beauty of world championships— they're going to be different, uh, flat courses, harder courses, hillier courses. So you can't use that as an excuse. But this course doesn't actually suit him, even though he's still, you know, in the top 10 or 11 in the world, which is fantastic. And, and also, uh, you're going to say—

sorry, I'll cut you off. Just on that, uh, you know, we don't, we don't mention that place to, to harp on about the place, but we mention it as the story of, you know, He was on a great day, on his best day, depending on who turns up, he was dreaming of a podium. You know, how can I go at the World Champs? I'm at the pointy end. On the bike, we're watching him, he comes out of the water second, he's such a good swimmer. On the bike, we're watching him go between third and seventh. On the run, the same thing. And so with a bit of perceived pressure, with a few athletes watching him going, how's Coach Mack going to go? You know, because he's always winning things. You might think, you know, what's a failure to you? You know, is fourth place or a seventh place or a seventeenth place a failure? And it doesn't matter. What matters is he finished and said, "I executed the bike as well as I could have. I rode the hills with the power I wanted and didn't fade, and I ran as well as I could off the bike, and that gave me 11th, and so I cannot be more happy with that." And that is the perfect outcome.

Absolutely, that's the message you should be thinking whether you're trying to go to the podium or just doing a PB. As long as you have executed the way that you had planned to and you've given all you can on the day, then you can't be anything but happy. How can you be disappointed if you've actually done your best? And it doesn't matter where you come. It's a bonus if you get 1st or 5th or 15th. It's just where you come. And I think if people change that mindset about my happiness is determined by my finishing place, I just think that's just such a downward spiral path for depression.

And an ultimate example for that is our Swiss athlete Coco, who— she's actually a doctor and an age group triathlete. And if she was worried about places, she probably wouldn't have had a good experience because, you know, her strength is her run for sure. But she came out of the water, I think, 75th or something in her age group, got off the bike in 28th, and ran the absolute house down and finished 7th in her age group in the world, which is a top 10 finish. Is, is, yeah, a great thing to have. But it's more about the fact that if she was worried about the placings the whole time, she wouldn't have felt that good when she was 75th out the water. But she just did her job, swam as well as she could, rode as well as she could, and then ran, honestly, a blistering 1:23 half marathon, which, to be honest, puts her in top 20 or so, I think, out of the pro category in terms of the run. Lucy Charles ran a 1:17 and Coco's run a 1:23, so that's very, very good. But she just did her job, ran really well, came storming through the field, and then and you finish the race and go, what did I come? Well, yeah, you're 7th in the world, which is great, but you didn't worry about the placings, you just executed what you needed to.

Yeah, and if someone had been telling you halfway through the bike, you're in 60th, now you're in 50th, you think, oh, my day is done. But no, that's the point we're trying to get across. Just stick with it, um, and just do the best you can, and the result will take care of itself. And I think that's the one message that did post this podcast for the age groupers. They need to understand that you just I think that was a message we said to the athletes at the World, was no matter what's happening around you, you just concentrate on your job. And if you do the best you can right to that last step across the finish line, then that's going to make you the, the happiest athlete you can possibly be, uh, for the effort you've put to get to this event. And, and if you, if you feel like you didn't execute the way you want to, then you can be upset about that, but, but that's in your hands. You know, you've got the ability to do whatever you like. Ride harder on the hills or ride where you should be. Run the first 5K too fast and then fade. You've got that ability to do whatever you want, but that's up to you. And if at the end of the day you've done the way— executed the way that you want to, then you can't be anything but happy.

I think, Dad, sometimes it can sound like we're harping on about this because we get really passionate about these specific messages and want to really hammer the point home, which I think we've really done that today. But it's important to us because we hold this funny paradox where we're racers ourselves. You and I just love racing and love being competitive. We love it when an athlete feels the same. We never want to take that away. We're not saying it's not important. It's so important. That's why you train the whole year for it. But you want to hold the complete opposite truth at the same time that it's not going to define who you are. You want to do the best job possible but not let that pressure dictate, you know, anything extra around that. And so I just think it's a fun thing to talk about. And yeah, it's just this weird phenomenon of getting the most out of yourself and enjoying that process without it being, you know, the only thing that's important in your life.

They're the things that really each athlete needs to do well, is being in the moment. I talk about that a lot when I'm talking about the race strategy plans in our meetings with all athletes who are coming up for their race, and often they've said to me, "What do you mean being in the moment?" Well, it means concentrating on, you know, what power am I doing right now, how do I feel, what's my heart rate doing, what's my cadence, how fast am I going. They're things that you can concentrate on being in the moment that are going to get you a good outcome, rather than "I need to ride fast." That's not helpful information. Of course you know you want to ride fast. How am I going to ride fast is what you should be asking yourself. So I can concentrate on all the things that are going to contribute to allowing me to run, to ride or run or swim fast. And I think if you get that mindset, then you take away a lot of pressure, a lot of— you sort of release the shackles a bit. I just got to do my job today, and if it's a good outcome, I'm happy. If it's a poor outcome, I can do something about it. You're either winning or you're learning. They're the two things that are happening. And I'm not talking about podium, I'm talking about improving yourself. If you didn't improve, what can we learn? What can we learn about doing it better next time?

Yeah, yeah, I love the way the industry is that, you know, we all treat every race we go to like we're competing for the Olympics, and I don't think we should ever apologize for that. I love that. And when we're as coaches having race calls with our athletes for their A race, doesn't even have to have a world title in front of it, we have the same amount of specificity and dedication for the Melbourne 70.3 or the Noosa Olympic or the London 70.3, whatever it is, whatever random races around the world. We have the same level of love and dedication to trying to make it the best possible outcome. And it's fun. It's a fun part of all this that we all treat ourselves a little bit like pro athletes even though we're not, and I love that process. Sometimes we do see it go too far where athletes put too much pressure on themselves and it takes away from that experience. So getting that right is our big message.

I'm just so passionate that if you have the right real understanding of where your current form is and have a plan based around that, most of the races will be fun because you're going to get the outcome that makes you happy And if you've got the wrong idea of where your form is, and we talk about your ambition and your ability confused, I've always said that a lot, um, it couldn't be more important to know that when you're coming to each of the races you're coming to. And yes, we aspire to be a better athlete than we were for the last 10 years, but it just doesn't work like that. And that's, that's the thing I want to get across to people, is you'll have much more fun in this sport if you actually do your race plan based on what your current form is and then execute the best way you can, you will have a much more fun experience. I could—

yeah, that's perfectly well said. And so if you want help yourself getting a training plan to help you improve, but then more specifically getting a personalized race plan and race call going through all of this for your A races and finding out where your form is and having a coach side by side with you working out the best possible plan for you and helping you on race day, then that's exactly what we do at TriVelo Coaching. So go to trivelocoaching.com.au apply to get coaching there. We have limited spots coming into the end of the year, into December and the Christmas and New Year holiday break where we can't take on any more over that period. So go to travelocoaching.com.au and get that specific help there if you want a coach in your corner helping you with your race plans and your form and your numbers and, and having that enjoyable experience. That is our specialty. Thank you as always for listening to another episode of the Get Fast Podcast, and we'll see you on the next one.