Ultimate Pre Race Preparation

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Gerard Donnelly. Everything we do in training, all the preparation, the work we put in, is so that we can get to race day and perform well. We want to stand on the start line on the beach, ready to hit the water, knowing we are in the best shape possible. And we speak a lot on this podcast about race execution, how to attack the race, how to have a race plan. But your race doesn't start when you're on the beach on the start line. It actually starts the moment you wake up on race day, or in fact, it actually starts the night before the race, or the week before or even two weeks before leading into the race. So we want to ask, have you ticked every box in the last couple of weeks before your race to make sure that you're feeling confident on the start line? And that's what we're going to discuss in today's episode. But first, it's good to be back in the podcast studio. We've had some of the top coaches in the world as guests on the show in the last few weeks, which has been amazing, but we haven't been back here in a while. We haven't done our gratitude. So, dad, welcome to the episode. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. I'm looking forward to today's topic. I would almost add that, you know, two weeks out, maybe your preparation starts six months out or, you know, the minute you decide to do the event. But anyway, we'll talk about that. My gratitude is along the lines of around the COVID experience. We finally, in Victoria, are free to move around, at least around the state. We're still not allowed to go interstate too much. We're allowed in New South Wales, but we're allowed to go anywhere we like in Victoria, which is fantastic. And most Victorians are making the most of that. And as a group, we went to Bright, which is one of the meccas of riding in Victoria and probably in Australia. It's got such variations in terrain that you can do really good flat riding, you can do really good hill climbing, you can climb to 1800 meters. Yeah, it's got everything. It's just beautiful roads. Yeah. Normally nice weather. And we were blessed just recently. And I'm grateful to be able to take 42 people away for a week, weekend as a training camp and have everybody have the right approach, the right positive attitude, really get into it on the weekend. It was really tough training program that we set everybody and we had, you know, levels from beginners to, to advanced elite and everybody mixed well, even though we weren't allowed to sort of group together. But it opened up kind of the night before. But I was just grateful that everybody got on well and got into it and had a positive attitude about it and we had the freedom to do the things that we actually love, which is go away together as a group and experience each other's company and have a really hard training block.

I was going to do the same gratitude I would because I had so much fun that weekend. I just can't believe how amazing it was to do the rides we did. And the big Saturday arvo stage was just so much fun with the variation in riding through the valley and then up a couple of climbs and we turned the corner at one climb. You could see a kilometer up. It was kind of the face of the climb. You could see a kilometer up and there was just travel. Riders sprung out across the whole crime and it was a climb. It was unbelievable is the quality of guests and coaches we've had on the podcast the last few weeks. I'm just grateful for technology and the ability to connect and the fact that we can contact them and get them on the show and have those top quality conversations with coaches that we are looking at ourselves anyway. And especially Joe Frio is an example of someone that you've been reading for 20 years. To be able to actually make contact with them through various forms of technology, Internet, social media and yeah, get them on the show is just amazing and it's a really cool opportunity and I'm glad we got to do that.

And their willingness to share their, their knowledge. I just think I couldn't agree with your gratitude anymore that that is spot on. I just love the fact that there's so many people out there like us thinking the same way that, you know, we want to help, help others improve. And then a guy like Joe Friel, he's probably never heard of us, yet here he is giving his time and he was more than happy to give more time. Ariel from. From Nor, you know, the Norwegian guru coach, you know, he's the same, giving his trade secrets to us, you know, Ryan Bolton, exactly the same. It's. It's brilliant that people are so willing to give their time and, and give information.

Moving on to the section I just tried to skip to, which is what has caught your attention. What's caught your attention?

I definitely have started swimming myself again, which has been kind of fun. And your brother Matt and I have been hitting the pool and we are probably the two most unfit swimmers going round.

I reckon there's an excuse there because no one's been able to swim for six months.

That's right. And I'm clinging to that excuse. But the pool has been open for at least four or five weeks and I think I've swam four times, which is not something I'm really proud of. But. But what. What's caught my attention is my swimming technique and my fitness. They're two totally different things. My swimming fitness is absolute garbage and my swimming technique was equally absolute garbage. So I'm just using myself as an example to get the message across that what caught my attention was how quickly I can swim faster without being fitter. And why is. Because my technique is what I've concentrated on in the four swims. I've only done four swims and in week one I could barely hit 150 per hundred and two days ago. I'm not any fitter. There's no way I'm fitter. But because I've concentrated on the drills and my technique, I'm swimming 132s, 133s. You know, that tells a story that. That's what's caught my attention is. Come on, everybody out there. Do your drills. Concentrate on your technique. Chase, Chase. Someone who'll review your technique and, and tell you things you need to concentrate on. Practice those things and do the training and you will be an infinitely better swimmer.

And Joe Friel took that to the extreme and he said, I don't, I don't want you doing any training. Just do your drills, you know, and you'll be better.

Yeah. And he, he used examples. If you can't swim 1 30, hundreds, you shouldn't be doing any intervals. I just found. I thought that was a bit harsh and extreme. Almost.

Yeah.

But when you think about it, you know, I reckon. But percentage wise, the majority of our guys can't swim under 130 per hundred. Most. Most of us swimming 135s. 140s, 150s, 2 minutes, 205, 210. That would be our range of athletes that we coach. And so really saying you all need to be just doing drills and that's what he thinks about technique. So I'm kind of backing him.

Yep, absolutely. What caught my attention was Christian Blumenfeld talking about the Norwegians just Went out and did his first Ironman debut, Ironman and broke the world record.

That was just brilliant, wasn't it?

In a ridiculous time of 7 hours 21 minutes.

That blows my mind.

Yeah, yeah. And so we spoke to Arild the coach a few weeks ago and we asked him about Christian and Gustav. And Gustav just won the 70.3 world champs a month or two ago. And he also debuted in his Iron Man a few weeks before Christian and smashed it out of the park. I think he did 7, 40 something, maybe don't hold me to that. But Christian's come out and done this time. And granted there's some story about the swim had a massive tail sweep. I don't know if it was an A to B swim compared to being point to point.

So it's got the, it had a tidal effect which, which means they were. I saw, I saw one article where they, the swim was getting wet. That was. You didn't have to swim, you just had to get wet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it was such a current.

Yeah, it was. The swim time was like 39, I think. Yeah.

Just out of this world, I mean Kona's the best. Elite guys are swimming 48 or 47 or 46, something like that.

It's like a nine minute advantage there. But regardless, his bike and run was still phenomenal.

Yeah. And the bike is a lot flatter than any other courses.

So it's got, it's got everything going for it.

Yeah, but what's wrong with that? There's nothing. People go to Berlin Marathon to try and do a pb. Why? Because it's slightly downhill the whole way.

Yeah, yeah. And. But he didn't just beat the world record by minute or two. I think it was 16 minutes. He beat about 15 minutes.

Smashed it.

Yeah. It's just awesome and it's just great to see their, their training protocols and them, their training principles. You know, the results are showing from what they're saying.

And how fortunate were we to talk to the guy who coaches, you know, those, those two athletes that we're talking about, Christian and Gustav and, and Christian is the Olympic champion and now is the world record holder for the Iron man. I mean the, the Olympic Games is a, is an Olympic distance. It's a, you know, 15, 40, 10. The Iron Man. For those who are listening and don't know, it's know 3.8, 180 in a marathon. Yeah, they're completely two different events. And here he is, he's the best at both of them in the space of when were the Olympics? July. And now it's November.

Yeah.

That's unbelievable. It's incredible.

And he's the world champion of the itu, so that's sprint and Olympic distances combined, basically.

So he's got everything covered from the shortest triathlon event to the longest.

He wants, he has said openly he wants to win Kona and win Taupo World Champs 70.3. So he wants to have all four in the same year, which is, I.

Don'T doubt that's possible.

It would be impossible for a lot of other people. But I was laughing because Gustav was being a bit of a smart ass on Instagram and Christian said, so pumped, my Ironman debut this weekend. And he'd just done a couple weeks before. And he said, oh, don't worry about Christian. It's easy. That was a big shot to everyone that's ever done an Iron man. But for those two it is a bit easy.

Well, you and I, you know, having talked to his coach, we know what, you know, what's gone involved, what the process was to get to this point. They've been doing this for eight years under the, the guidance of, of a team of experts who are culminating their efforts to this point. So if you think it's just fly by night, it's not. They've all been together since they were 16. So you know, eight years ago, 2012 is when they started this process. So. So it just doesn't happen like that, you know, for you, for the people who sign up for an 18 week half Ironman program. Yeah, you know, the elite people have taken eight years to get to this point. You know, there's only so much you can do in 18 weeks and they're so dialed in.

I mean, two weeks ago Christian released a running training video where he was doing uphill 2 kilometer reps and he was stopping after each. The whole thing was up a hill, but it was stopping every two kilometers. And there was a coach behind him in the car and they were taking his lactate and making sure that it was just higher than his first lactate threshold point, but just under his second one. And like to be training like that is just. And that was what I real told us. And it's, it's really dialed into the data.

And not only that they started that run, it was 28k just to give the listeners an idea of what they were doing that day. And I did 7 by 10 minute efforts, which is pretty much uphill running. And they started at 1500 meters of altitude and finished at 2500 meters and he ran 28k uphill doing this session. You know, sets of efforts that sort of takes.

No wonder he can run a 2:34. That's right at the end of his iron man. But that just blew my mind and I thought it was worth mentioning. But let's get into the topic of today.

Just gotta. Before we get into that topic, we're talking about elite athletes who train full time. And it's great to talk about that, but the listeners out there are all everyday triathletes, everyday cyclists, everyday runners. And I don't have the facilities, the time to invest. So don't feel like that's what you should be aspiring to. You want to aspire to be a better version of yourself. And, and these are, these are really great things to hear. But you know, you can't go to altitude for 20 weeks a year. It's not possible. And because you've got a family and a job and a life. So these are the reasons why these people can do it. Because they're spending this time, they've got the best science backed, you know, facilities where you can do measuring lactate, you can be at altitude running. You know, they're doing six week blocks times three. They're doing, you know, 18 to 20 weeks a year in altitude above 2300 meters.

Yeah, you're spot on. And on that note, they are aiming to do the INEOS thing and break seven hours for the iron man. That is their goal. But they're doing it unofficially like Kipchoge did where yeah, he's getting, he's going to get a draft in the bike, um, draft running as well. And I don't know what they're doing about the swim. Maybe they'll pick another sweeting course. But that is their aim, which would be again a phenomenal effort if they could pull it off. Because you still, even if you're getting a draft, you still have to complete it at that pace.

That's right.

So in the intro we spoke about the fact that the preparation starts from the moment you sign up and the moment you do your first training session. And it's all the way through. But you really want to think about your race day execution, your race day plan, that you start getting dialed into that in the last couple of weeks. So what do you need to start thinking about a couple of weeks out? And yeah, we really want to get the listener to understand that. You know what, let's start with why we're talking about this. Because there was the first two XU race on Sunday of the season. First race back in a long time. It was blowing out the cobwebs for a lot of people. And you made an observation about the whole day, about the atmosphere. It was a great atmosphere. There's a whole bunch of tents lined up. And as a coach, what were you observing across 500 athletes that you, you saw lining up?

Yeah, look, we're jumping into the middle of the topic, I suppose here, but we can, we can just mention this and then, and then reframe it as to what I think should happen. Look, because we haven't raced for so long, I kind of was really standing back and just observing rather than doing my usual thing, which would be to interfere and, and almost take over as a teacher coach to say, what the hell are you all doing? Stop making it like a social session at the bar. You know, you got a race in about 40 minutes, all of you and you're all, you've been standing up in the tent chatting away. None of you are thinking about anything but the topic you're talking about and you're having a great time. And I thought, don't be a party pooper. Just stay silent. Just, just observe and we'll, we'll make some comments at another date. Funnily enough, this is what the date is. The very next podcast.

Let's make a caveat. This wasn't just trivalo athletes, but you. No, but this is for some trivalo athletes.

Yes, everybody. There was very few people. It seemed like just a social. I thought I was at a festival, music festival that sort of felt like. And then every now and then I'd see someone who was actually preparing properly and it was gold. It was, you know, someone had, you know, had a towel, they had some stretching bands, they had, you know, some lotion they were rubbing on their legs for. You know, they had their nutrition, they'd gone and done a warm up. You know, they come back, they had their timing that I could see guys checking their time, so now I need to do this. And they weren't conversing, they were saying hi and you know, just, they were getting distracted by other people and you know, they just weren't involved in the conversations. That was, that was really good to see that. I loved the fact that people were catching up and hadn't seen each other for ages, hadn't raced. So, you know, it's not like it's your A race. None of the guys we coached, it wasn't their A race. So they needed to be a little Bit more relaxed and just good to.

Have a hit out.

Yeah. And it's a, you know, it's a B race training race. And the goal was to practice your execution and see how you. See how you measure up. First race back from a bit of a long period of abstinence from races. So. So I kind of. I just never would prepare like that. And that was my first thing. It was like, I just. I don't want to talk to anybody. I want to. I want to be in my own space and I want to get my mind thinking about, you know, swim and transition and then the bike and what am I. How am I going to ride it and transition and then the run. How am I going to start? What are my paces? I'm just running that through my head from the minute I'm there. And when I get there, I'm absolutely thinking about my warmup and working the time from the start backwards. So they're the things that I kind of was definitely in two minds whether to interfere and just go, right, everybody shut the fuck up and listen. Where are your towels? Why aren't you sitting down, doing a little bit of stretching? Why are you standing up for 45 minutes? It's not healthy. It's not good for your race. You're just standing there. You know, that's actually making you getting tired. I'm getting tired watching you stand. So, yeah, that's kind of the first observation.

And what that brought to mind was the fact that we do talk a lot about the actual race day execution. But you've got to be, you know, really in the mode the minute, the minute you stand there before the gun goes, you've got to be in the mode to race. And that starts that morning. That starts night before, starts the week and two weeks before. So let's go back to the original starting point is a couple of weeks out. What do you need to start doing in preparation for your race?

Before we start that, ask me that question again. But before we start that. It just wasn't our athletes. It was everybody. Everybody's walking around. It was like ants going left, right? And. And no one seemed to be doing that. But. But I want people to enjoy it. So it is important. And some people like to talk, that that relaxes them. Some people like to stay silent. That's me. That's you. Other people get their relaxing from. From just incessant talking and. And that's okay. But the person you're talking to has to be the same because you don't want to be Talking to someone who doesn't, doesn't want to be talking to, if you know what I mean. You've got to actually pick who you can talk to and who you can't talk to. So it's important that you're aware of other people's preparation. I know you felt a little bit uneasy about getting down, doing some stretching and doing some, you know, pre exercise stuff because you didn't want to put pressure on other people because here's you doing something serious and they're all standing, talking that they would have looked and gone, oh, what's Jordan doing? We should, should we be doing that? I'm sure that's what would have happened. So do we lead by example? But everybody's got their own preparation and everybody competed quite well actually, so I can't say. But the only thing I can say is they might have competed a little bit better had they concentrated because they still made mistakes, which everybody's making mistakes in the actual execution. There was lots of things they should have done better. And I think it could have been a little bit more mental concentration pre race that would have helped them eliminate some of those mistakes, I think.

How does it feel knowing now you're going to get a few calls from somebody saying, are you talking about me?

That's typical. But look, we learn from, we learn from everything. And if I can highlight things and people know that it's, I'm doing it so that you can not make that mistake next time and get a better outcome. And look, one of the things I noticed was I took out of the 17 athletes we had racing, I took everybody's transition one and transition two times and wrote it in my diary. And the fastest was, I think three minutes total. T1 and T2 was three minutes 30 and our slowest was seven minutes 50. That's four minute difference between the fastest transition we had in our group and the slowest transition. And I'm sure if I did that across the whole race of a thousand people, there would be people, you know, a couple of our guys missed out on the podium by four seconds. One guy missed out by four seconds in his age group. And you just go to the guys T1 and T2 above him and that guy beat him by 35 seconds in transition. And you don't want to lose a race in transition. And I'm always an advocate for saying slow down in transition, but I don't mean slow down in your speed from the water to the bike rack or from getting off the bike to run rack. I Mean be controlled and be efficient. I don't mean dawdle. So people take it the extreme. Sometimes when I say keep your heart rate down, I don't mean sprint. I mean just be efficiently moving across the ground and try to relax and breathe and control yourself and think about the process. So, so to have a four minute difference between the fastest in our group to the slowest in our group, I'm horrified at that stat. You know, that's just a waste of four minutes. You know, when everybody can be fast in transition, there is no, it's not based on ability transition, it's based on your efficiency and how good you are at executing it. I'd love to ask everybody who practiced their transitions prior to that week and just because it's not in the program, does that mean you're not doing it? These are the things you need to be thinking about doing. Do I have to put it in the program? Go and do practice, transition. You need to be doing that. And you know, you and I were out on the side street, you know, two hours before the race with you practicing with your shoes, you know, before we even got to the venue. There's just examples, examples of making sure you've got it right.

So let's go back a couple of weeks before and this starts from a couple weeks out all the way up to you standing on the beach. And what do you need to do there to make sure that the actual race execution is as good as it can be?

Yep. And look, I think the example we just used on the weekend is not a good example. I want to hone in on your A race. Let's talk about the A race. Let's not talk about that weekend anymore. Let's talk about the A race and something you've trained for six months, a year, you put your whole season, you've already done your B races, you've done last weekend and many of those. Now you're at your A race. So forever during the program, whenever I have periods of, and we've talked about this many times, whenever I have periods of, oh, I'm struggling a bit, I think about standing on the beach. What am I going to feel? Am I happy with everything I've done six months ago, three months ago, two weeks ago, my preparation, my taper all the way up to the warm up the sleep the night before, driving to the venue, is it easy to park all those things? Am I happy with ticking all those boxes? And it doesn't have to be just a triathlon. It can be your marathon it can be your, the grand fondo that you've prepared for as a bike rider. You know, standing on the line, whether it's the beach, straddling your bike or, you know, put your foot on the line. As a marathon runner, the two minutes prior to your start is the time when you reflect the most. And if you're in my mindset, I'm thinking about, I could not be happier with my preparation. And if you can, if you can say that line, then you've done everything in your power and you will have a good day if you stand on that line and go, I missed six out of 15 endurance rides. I'm not feeling like I'm, I'm a bit worried about how I'm going to go here today. That's not a good feeling. So, so six months out, I'm thinking about that all the time. What am I going to feel on the start line? I don't want to have that. I've got A or B option. I'm so wrapped with what I've done. I'm not that happy. I'm not that happy. Means the outcome is in the hands of the gods. I'm so happy the outcome's in my hands. It's like if you use the analogy as the AFL, you know, the teams who are 9th, 10th and 11th with three rounds to go are relying on teams losing above them. You don't want to rely on other people, you want to be able to rely on yourself for that particular day. So, so, so really I'm, I'm thinking two weeks out from this a race, the Monday, two weeks out, right? The race is in two weeks. These are the things I need to achieve in the next two week block. So you've got your base, you've got your build, you've got your race ready. And now we're in the taper race preparation. The key things are I want to get rid of the fatigue that I'm carrying and I've carried it for six months. With increased fitness comes increased fatigue. It's just a byproduct. That's, that's what happens. In order to get ourselves fitter, we have to train hard and we get tired, that's just a fact. But when we reduce our intensity in training, our fatigue drops massive, but our fitness doesn't. So the things that I'm thinking about two weeks out are I want to really get rid of this fatigue and, and there's so many things I can think about doing such as sleep for two weeks. I am really going to concentrate on getting to bed early and you know that you have to get up early on race day. It starts so early. If it's an ironman, it starts at sunrise basically. So you need to train your body in that two week period to start going to bed earlier and getting up at, you know, the time you're going to get up on race day. That's the first thing I do. And the second thing is I'm, I'm really trying to do all of the things like if you've got the recovery boots, you know, don't miss a day. If you've got recovery drink, make sure you're using that every day. You know, we don't want to do that during the season. We don't have a recovery drink every session during the season. We want to spare that for the hard, longer endurance days or the intensity days. We don't need a recovery drink on a recovery day but during the two week taper we need to be giving ourselves all the recovery things that we can. Massage. Don't get the massage the night before the race. Get the massage two weeks out. Get one that week and one at the start of the race week. Foam roller, stretching, eating a really good diet that's going to almost not worry about what you've been doing for six months but, but be okay with, with increasing the carbs a little bit and you can do the, the super compensation method which is quite risky but something that, you know, we've probably talked about a bit before. But, but you want to not do things that are too, too extreme unless you practice that. Exactly right. In a B race. Yep. So, so we want to, we want to just think about keeping the, the hydration level. If you're in a temperature that's, that's kind of hot, you do that naturally. But if you're not in a temperature that's hot, it's easy to not, not to drink. You need to keep the electrolyte levels high to not just bloat yourself with water but you know, have water and some electrolytes and the recovery drink as well. So you need to be consuming, you know, a fair amount of, for two weeks. So it's almost like you know you're going to start, you want to start this event with everything topped up. You know, you don't want to go for a drive to Queensland when you start with, you know, 220km worth of petrol left and you and your car takes 800km of petrol. You know, you want to start with it all topped up. So this is what you're thinking about. Two weeks out, you're thinking about, I want to arrive on race day, everything, fatigue gone, freshness in my legs, fully hydrated, great amount of sleep, my nutrition at its peak. And, and the final thing is to, to not waste energy mentally thinking about the race. And I want to talk about that a little bit if we can, either later or now. And that's to do with the race plan. The minute you have your race plan sorted and you don't need to think about the actual execution of that till probably the day before when you start, absolutely starting to concentrate on it. In between, you need to not stress yourself, you've got a plan, let's just leave it till we get to race day because you don't want to be creating more anxiety, more fatigue, not sleeping well because you're just thinking about the race, have your race plan in the second week of your two week, have that all sorted after you've done the testing and then leave it, leave it alone, don't think about it, sleep well, you've got your race plan and then come race weekend, then start thinking about it. You know, the confidence you should have from, from that preparation means you don't need to waste energy stressing about, have I got the right race plan? You know, can I execute it? You should be confident that this is based on absolute data that you just tested literally that week. It's the most up to date data you've got. You've got historic data anyway to compare it with. Your confidence should be sky high, the self belief should be sky high because they're the things that you've done so well from getting up to this point. So don't waste energy on things that you can't change from this point on. So there's no point in thinking about things that you can't control.

It's different to a team sport, isn't it, where the outcome is just so out of your control. You can play as well as you can, but the team might not play well. You don't know what the results going to be. Whereas individually you know your numbers to a T. You should have done plenty of sessions and testing at your race pace. And so basically you have the race plan and you look at those numbers and you should say, yes, these are my numbers and I can hit them. So it's just about doing it, actually doing it on race day.

Yeah, and I've said in lots of podcasts, you know, you literally got the answers to the exam, so why wouldn't you be relaxed, you still have to concentrate, still gonna hurt when it comes, it's still gonna be hard, you still have to execute. But you've got, you've got, you've got all the answers in front of you and you pretty much know really the expected time and there's a little range there that the expected time should be reasonably accurate from, from everything you've done up until that point. So the last two weeks is just as crucial as the six week, or six, sorry the six month training program and is just as important as the race day execution and the two week period. People dismiss or don't take enough interest or I don't know what the word is, but they just don't respect it. I suppose that two week period, it's just a period where I'm just getting through till the race day. No, you should be absolutely Monday, two weeks out. And I put it in our training program all the things, you know, the details such as, you know, you should have thought about this before. Are the goggles going to be the right ones? They're not going to, you know, they're not so worn that the next two weeks they actually don't work. You've got really quality goggles. Your wetsuit is exactly the one that you're happy with. You know, the bike, is it serviced, does it have new tires, are all the gears working? These are all the things that should happen, you know, two to three weeks.

Out, especially at the bike service, the tires and stuff. Because you don't really want to, you don't want the service on the Friday and then you don't ride the bike to the Sunday.

That's right. Even the power meters and you know, charging and all that sort of stuff that, that's close to race day. But that should be thinking about, you know, two weeks out, you're running, you're running shoes. You should have had this plan anyway that you've been training a certain amount of time with the one pair of shoe and the other pair of shoes are the race day shoes that you've been wearing, wearing in over a, over a period of the last two months. So you get to race day with your, your new running shoes that have been worn in enough so that they're not that new but they're not old and they just feel perfect. So that's the checklist and then in that checklist is just the things we talked about. Nutrition, hydration, sleep recovery, getting rid of fatigue and race plan. So this is such an important two.

Week period and the checklist is another point to focus on because excuse both our coughing, by the way. I find myself we've just done a three hour hill ride this morning, which was unbelievable. But it is hard to do a podcast after that kind of ride. The checklist thing, that is something that does need to be practiced previously because I've made the mistake of doing a checklist, a fresh checklist for a race, but because it's the first time using that checklist, you could forget something to put on the checklist and therefore you forget it on race day. So you want to have a checklist that you used before that, you know, has everything on it. Um, that's just a small thing, but that makes a difference because if I'm making a checklist on a Saturday morning before the race Sunday, I can still forget something on the Saturday morning. Whereas if it's a checklist I've tested before and I didn't forget anything last time, then that's going to work.

A really good thing to do is post race, go back to your checklist and say, and write in, fill in I should have done this and put add that to your checklist so that, that's the one, that's your new template. So your checklist is a template, that's how you should use it. And as you do each race, add things post race that you did wrong and adjust your template. The next time I need to wake up two hours earlier than the hour early, I need to have two alarms because I slept through the first alarm or it didn't work. So, you know, simple things like that. It seems so important to wake up at the right time.

And the last point to note, in that last two weeks, we won't go into all the detail of this, but in terms of the training sessions, there are some specific things you want to make sure you do.

Yeah, well, reducing the fatigue. How do you do that? What does it, what does that week, two weeks out look like? Well, in our program it looks like really like you've almost retired from, from training, but all of a sudden we've got testing. So we want to know on race day what our best 20 minute FTP is from 10 days prior. Sometimes you want to know what our swim pace is, but it's absolutely not as crucial as the bike. The bike is the test that you absolutely need to do two weeks out, which is actually 10 days out by the time you do it on the Wednesday or the Thursday. And you need to do it outdoor and you cannot do it on an indoor trainer. And I Will absolutely crack it if I see someone do it on an indoor trainer. You're not racing on an indoor trainer, you're racing outdoor. So you need to do it outdoor. And it needs to be out and back so you can actually get your average speed. So your average power and your average speed is really important in your race plan strategy. So that test will determine what percentage of your FTP you're going to race at, what your number is, what your range is. So that test is really crucial. And you've, you've just heard me say that you need to reduce fatigue, but a 20 minute, you know, test is not going to hurt you. And, and you still need to keep the, the body and mind awake with some intensity. So we're not doing an hour and an hour and a half intensity ride. We're doing a 20 minute hard session. Sometimes we get people to do a run as well, but that has different connotations depending on the event you're going into.

Sometimes the 5k time trial, sometimes the 10k time trial.

Exactly right. You should have done some progressive fast runs. You should have done some 10k time trial. You should have done some 5k time trials. The swim and the run are not as important and it is more important to not fatigue yourself in the run so that you, you know, potentially you don't want to injure yourself by running too hard.

The flip side of that coin is that it can give you a lot of confidence to do a fresh runtime trial.

It does, Yep. And so you, you know, you're finding your form and you know, by the time you get to your run, whether it be the Friday or the Saturday, you know, you've still got eight or nine days to recover from it. So I really do that for myself. But I know that I have to be careful with who I'm giving that to because each person will deal with it differently. I'm doing it for that reason because I want to know what form I'm in and that will probably not change much from the previous one that I've done. My form will be almost, you know, fractionally faster, but it should be the same from the, the test that I did probably four weeks prior or the progressive fast run that I did three weeks ago. So knowing that information is going to set up your race plan. And, and if you don't do that, you are flirting with danger as to not having an accurate race plan up to date. Accurate race plan. So the goal of the two week of that training program is to reduce fatigue, keep training, but at a low duration. So you're cutting down the volume and you are definitely trying to measure when you're fresh. And that's why we have, you know, the Monday, Tuesday, possibly Wednesday. And you can move that FTP test to whatever day the weather is better. And that's what I generally do. It doesn't really matter whether it's a Wednesday or a Thursday or Friday. It doesn't. Whereas the run can't be really, it can't be the Sunday, it can't be the Saturday. It's better to be the Friday. So you've got that extra couple of days to recover from it. And the swim, it can be done anytime. So we're really trying to just do a few things which is get our confidence up from time trialing in the pool really well, doing good FTP and running strongly. And that sets up our race plan strategy. But it also, as you said, really gives us confidence to stand on the start of the race day going, oh my God, I just tested so well. You know, these are my numbers, I know I can do them. And I'm fresh because of the taper period that I've had. My legs are as good as gold.

And that probably takes us to the last week where it's mostly just what kind of session.

Yeah, well, this is the thing. There's just not one taper that works for everybody. And so for me to give advice to say this is what you should do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. It's a little bit, I think it'd be a little bit wrong of me to do that. I know what works for me. Definitely. I know it works for most of my athletes that we're coaching. But you can generally say that you need to have shorter sessions and it's okay to have a little bit of intensity. That's my rule. How much depends on the person. Some people need to do a little bit more than others. But you know, you generally, you want to be doing, you know, a couple of five minute efforts on the bike, maybe three early in the week, you know, a couple of short sprints in the pool. If, if you get to the venue early, you need to be riding and riding the bike on the run course and riding the bike on the ride course. To know the course. You don't want to be running the entire run course. Obviously if it's a marathon, that's ridiculous thing. That's not what people would do. You would ride sections of the course or would drive sections of the course. You need to know the course, you need to have driven it or at some period in the last six months where you've done it or you've written or ran it. So you need to know every single intricate part and hill and turn and where the wind is. You need to know all that in that week. So you're doing those training sessions based around course knowledge. So if I'm trying to do the bike session on Tuesday and it's a warm up and then a main set, three by five minute efforts and a cool down, I'll do that on a section of the course. If I'm there a week early, if I'm not getting there till after I've done that session, I'll just do it on my normal velodrome or wherever I normally train. So I'm thinking about that all the time and all the time just making sure that I'm not stopped training. I am absolutely doing something each day, but it's really minimal. I'm trying to keep the fatigue as low as possible. I won't lose fitness. It's just, it's just not a worry to me. And I think I in, I told you there was a period where I actually didn't train for a whole week and I had one of the best races of my career. I'm not sure that's a good, a good thing. But that showed me that the last week I don't need to be doing much and I'm. And that gave me confidence for my tapering for that point onwards. All the training's done. You're not going to get any more fitness by training harder that week. In fact, you're going to create more fatigue. And it always shocked me when I went to Kona and I saw people the Thursday, the Friday, two days before. I think the race was always on a Saturday, even the Wednesday, doing hill repeats flat out as a runner in the, in the hardest part of the day, 4 o' clock in the afternoon, it's 30 degrees, was boiling hot in it. Unbelievably tanned, fit looking guys. It was really intimidating seeing them train the house down. I'm thinking, Jesus, they look good. But I'd love to see their results because it was three days out and they were smashing themselves. It just didn't add up to me.

Yeah, I guess it's just, it's depending on the person again. But you're, you're trying to keep the legs awake and, and get some intensity through them without creating any fatigue.

Yeah.

That's why you can do a few five minute efforts or something.

Yeah. But These guys were, you know, I watched them for an hour. They would, they were seriously training. It was like a midweek, normal training session.

Yeah.

Maybe they didn't even do the race.

Yeah, yeah, that would be. That's another story. If you, you try to follow them, you try to do what other people are doing and they're not actually racing. They're just there supporting Jer.

I saw these guys all, all train the house down. Should I be doing that?

Yeah, you got no idea what. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the last week. So let's take it to the day before or the night before.

Yeah. What, what are we trying to achieve here? We're just trying to get our mind now. The body, the physical part of our body is done. It should be as ready as it's ever going to be. And now it's all about the thought, the process of our thinking, our mind getting that right. And you should not just start thinking about this on the Friday. But, but I've already said try not to think about the race, the whole of that, that last week. Get your race plan sorted after you've done your testing and then don't think about your race plan again. Relax. Get your mind thinking about other things that, you know, do some good reading. You know, just not thinking about the race. But then when we get to Friday, Saturday, you know, you want to start thinking about. I need to get my mind with no fatigue. I just need to get all the stress out of my mind. And I'm still not thinking about the race too much, but I want to just relax and take my mind off the race and prepare mentally by not thinking about it too much. And that seems the opposite to what you would think. I would say because I don't want to waste. I can't do anything about it. I'm a big advocate for spending time thinking about things that you can control. And what can I control on Friday, Say the race is Saturday. Let's go back Thursday. Friday, say the race is Saturday. What can I do about anything on Thursday or Friday about what's going to happen in the race? Not a great deal. So let's not worry about that. Let's just try to free our mind. And even if meditation is something that you do, doesn't have to be called meditation, but just think about freeing your mind and relaxing and you can go through relaxation stuff where you're just trying to breathe and line your back and give yourself periods of 5 and 10 minutes where you're just trying to. We're trying to rid our body of fatigue, yet we don't think about ridding our brain of stress. I think it's important, absolutely. And I just feel like it's a load off my shoulders. Like, you know, everything else that's going on in my life to this particular period, I just want to not think about how work's going, you know, what's happening with this or that there might be a project at your house. It's stressing you. I just don't think about any of that stuff. I just want to clear my mind of all the stresses. And then when it's time to start thinking about my race, then I want to really start thinking about my race. I want to go through that and that doesn't happen. So I think for me, the night before I go to bed, I've got everything set out with equipment, clothes, nutrition. And then at the same time, I'm running through the strategies of tomorrow morning. I'm going to. I'm thinking about, you know, my checklist, my template. What time am I getting up again? Now I'm setting my alarm, so when I go to bed, I feel confident in my thought processes that everything is checked off. So it's going to give me a better opportunity to sleep well on the night before. And if you don't get a good night's sleep the night before, it's okay. You've already had two weeks of brilliant sleeping. You probably find if you do all that checklist, well, there's nothing else to worry about. So you will probably sleep better anyway. So my direction is to think about your brain at this stage, your physical side of it's all taken care of. So the brain is the thing you're trying to manipulate from the day before to the morning of. And if you can wake up the next morning with a clear, fresh mindset, positive mindset, and then you go into action. The minute you wake up, you go into race mode. You concentrate on every bit of checklist and everything's already done the day before. I probably skimmed over that too much. But the night before you go to bed, your checklist should be, what time am I waking up? What am I doing for the next 15 minutes? It's gonna take 15 minutes to get organized. I have to get the car packed. I've got all these times written down. How long does it take for me to drive to the venue? It's 33 minutes, all our 40. So every time, every checklist along the way, an example for that would be when we're at Bright for you. We were going out to do the first day's race and we, for those who don't know, a training session evolved around three, three particular sessions, three really hard sessions. One of them was a time trial and we all, we all would ride out to the venue, which was about 30 minute ride. And on the way out, your chain dropped off and jammed between the crank set and the frame. And we couldn't get it out. So these are things that could almost have derailed your, your first race. And you know, if you had not allowed enough time because we, it took us 10 minutes, 10 minutes to get it out. We had to take the back, we had to take the disc wheel out at the frame upside down, two people pulling try and get the chain out. It was, you know, these are things that can go wrong through no fault of your own, but that can throw you out. What happens if you can't find a park? What happens if there's roadworks that you didn't allow for? It's going to take you an extra 15 minutes. So these are things that, you know, if, if you happen to be, I'm thinking of, maybe you're at Noosa and you, you live literally in a hotel 400 meters from the start. You have to worry about that, you know, and you've got, you've got the toilet facility in the hotel. If you're driving to the local venue and it happens to be Melbourne half Ironman Live in The Dandenongs, it's 45 minute drive. You know, you're not, you're not next to the venue, so you've got to think about driving and parking. So there's two ways of thinking about. You're either at a hotel right next to the venue or you're having to commute somehow. So these are the things you need to put into your template checklist. And, and when you wake up, you've got to be in race mode. You, you, you know, this is it. Wake up, let's go. Here I am, I'm ready, I'm awake. And it doesn't start when you stand on the beach. It starts when you wake up and you're absolutely checking off those lists and you're going through, getting down to the transition, making sure that your tires aren't flat. You know, take your pump with you. Don't forget that. You know, take your, as we call it, the crack pipe, which is the adapter from the, from the pump for your disc wheel, if you have one. And you know, the patch to cover over the Disc wheel. These are little things I'm, I'm thinking about in my mind. All of the bike equipment needs to be charged the night before. Your power meter, if you've got electronic gears, they all need to be charged. And if you've got, you know, form goggles, they need to be fully charged. If you've got a Garmin that needs to be fully charged, you've got a watch that needs to be full. You've got so many things that need to be fully charged the night before. And you know, the example is. But you know, I charged it two weeks ago, but it could have leant against the wall or been in the back of your car and accidentally the Di2 has been pushing against something which will flatten the battery of your gears. So just because you charged it two weeks ago and it should last for six weeks, that's not necessarily what's going to happen. You could have been on a plane and it could have been leaning against other baggage, which meant it was turned on the whole time, so it's flat. So these are the things you need to have all done the night before. So when you get there on race day, all you've got to do is put your drink bottles in, lay out your stuff on your transition area the way you want it to be done, and then go through your warmup. And your warmup involves physical and mental, which is what we talked about in the start of this podcast. So the physical is I need to have the time to do the warmup, whether it's the swim warmup or whether you can't swim and you can only do a walk or run warmup or some stretching. You need to work out before this day. What are the available options to you? It's preferable if the weather and temperature is fantastic, that you get in the water and do a couple hundred meters of swimming. That is such an advantage. Before you get in the water, you need to do a bit of walking, a bit of stride through running. If you've got the opportunity to have another bike there, I would definitely. The distance of the event determines how much warmup you do. If you're doing an ironman, you need very little warmup. If you're doing a sprint race, you need more warmup. So that when you hit the sprint race, 500 meter swim, 20k ride, 5k run, it's over in an hour. So you need to be actually warmed up for 30 minutes of really serious warming up. It's an ironman, you just need to swim a couple hundred meters with a few little 10 second spurts so that when you start your 3.8k don't need to be running or riding beforehand. So depending on the event depends on your warmup and get that time right so that you can arrive in your rolling start if it is for the swim where you want to be at the right time. The other thing is to make sure that you've had some time to yourself after you've got everything ready and set that you have some time to yourself to absolutely stand on the beach like we've talked about and think backwards. Think backwards about how well prepared I am. And this is the mental training. What a, what a great day it's going to be. How am I going to execute? And that's the time to get into the zone of my execution starts now. And executing means getting in the right position on the roll out where I want to be. You've selected whether you want to start early in your age group, middle or at the back. You decide that if you're going to be an athlete who's going to be challenging for a podium, you need to be reasonably at the front of your. Of your age group. If you're a person who's just trying to do a PB and it's your first go, be okay with being at the back. If you're a really good swimmer but not such a good bike rider or runner, be closer to the front so you're not swimming over people. You know, these are all the things that you should have thought through. So it's race time and now you know, everything you've done that 10 minute period you can be. There's been times where I get emotional when I'm doing an Ironman. I absolutely think about everything that's happened for me to get to that point. So it's a funny experience. But you're almost, almost tearing up sometimes. It's euphoric because it is because it means so much to you. Super sprints, Olympic half iron man maybe, but the iron man. Wow. It's. And I, I think now about Kona, that's exactly how I felt. It's wow, this is, this is a big day. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I want to make sure that I, I am thinking positive and no matter what's going to happen to me in the Next I'm Christian 7 hours.

30 or if I'm 10, 12, 14.

Hours, could be 15 hours that I am totally expecting anything. And I've got plan abc. And no matter what happens, I'm going to finish this thing and I'm going to finish it. Midnight also. I'd rather live in my feet than die. My knees sort of thing. You want to give your all but you've got to actually execute everything that you've trained for. And sure you'll make mistakes but you can always not make too big a mistake and think about. You just gotta be concentrating. You should be physically exhausted from the end of this day. You should be also mentally exhausted. You should have concentrated that hard. You should have been in the zone for that much of the day that you should be so exhausted mentally at the end of the day. To achieve what you want to achieve on this day is going to take physical and it's going to take mental. You're going to be tested so many times. I'm talking Ironman here. But you are tested in a, in a sprint race.

It applies to every race where it.

Gets hard, when it gets hard, that's the test. And don't expect that it's not going to appear. Whether you're doing an 800 or an Ironman, there's going to be a point where it gets hard. What are you going to do? You're going to accept and, and, and run with it or you're going to shy away from it? You know, it's almost like the flight or fight response. It's too hard and you give up. You can't, you've got to, you can't let everything you've done in the previous six months, year or eight years, it all, it all rides on my mental status. Everybody else is having trouble as well. You've got to deal with it. And knowing that you've done it before is so good. It's a strength, it's a power that you can go. Great. Here it is. What am I gonna do? How am I gonna deal with it? And post race you'll look back and go, I did it. And that's where you get emotional again. You're just so proud of your, of being challenged and coming through it. It's absolutely brilliant.

That's what I love about sport. I've said it so many times and I'll say it again, it's the person who does the Ironman and finishes in a blistering time of nine hours. The age grouper or the age grouper that finishes in 14 and a half hours, they both went through the same challenges. It was just as hard for each other compared to their ability and they're just as ecstatic when they cross the line. There is no difference in the challenges they've overcome and everything you're talking about to get to that point and succeed regardless of their finishing time. The ecstasy and the euphoria is exactly the same. That's why I love sport. And it applies across all distances. It applies across every event. 70.3 Olympic sprint, even cycling time trial. If you've trained for Three Peaks or the Alpine Classic or something, and that's your, a race that you're, that hurdle you're trying to get over. The story is the same.

The marathon isn't, you know, you're spot on. It's just, we're not just talking about triathlon. I'm giving you the experience of the triathlon. But it applies to every sport that you're, that you've, you know, we could take the tennis, you know, and people scoff at tennis, but if, you know, you watch the pros who are doing a five setter and it's 40 degrees and they're in the fifth set and it's 18, 17 in the fifth set, it's who wants it the most. You know, the mental side is going to be the key. So every single sport is going to have a period where you're going to be challenged. So if you're not prepared for that, then you're naive. You know, don't think that the winner isn't experiencing that. That's why he's the winner, because he was ready for it and he accepted the challenge and he dealt with it the best. And for you to do a pb, which is more the person we're talking to here, you don't do a PB by doing it easy. You do a PB by being challenged and accepting it and actually dealing with the challenge. And, you know, we don't do all this training not to, you know, come good on race day. Training shouldn't be called training, it should be called race day preparation. And so every single session you do is race day preparation.

Yeah.

And at the end of the day, I've done 4,000 hours of race day preparation. Why wouldn't I expect that? I can deal with it. There'll be so many challenges out there. Whether it's a mechanical on your bike or cramp or physical, you know, ill, you feel ill, you've got to deal with a way to get around it to get to the end. And you know, if you end up with a pb, the triumph is the completion because it's an epic event, a marathon, a gran fondo, you know, you should feel proud. And then if you've done better than you've ever done before. It's a bonus. It's fantastic.

That's a great way to finish. We hope that by listening to this you can really make sure that you've got that last couple of weeks in terms of your pre race preparation. Right. So that you can get to that point and then execute. We speak a lot about training in this podcast. We speak a lot about race execution, but you want to make sure that you don't forget this part. And that's the most important part. Yep.

And we deliberately didn't talk about the race plan or the execution because this is. People disregard this aspect and it deserves a whole podcast.

That's it for this episode. As always, thank you very much for listening. If you can go leave us a review on itunes, podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast. Leave a comment. If you Watch us on YouTube, be sure to like subscribe and leave a comment there. We really appreciate it. Other than that, we'll see you next time.