Ultimate Race Predictor Training Sessions

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jarred Donnelly. How can you accurately predict what time you can do on race day? Everyone wants to know what they're capable of for their race. What time do you think I can do? What pace can I expect to run at? Or what watts can I hold? These are all great questions we get very commonly from our athletes. And coming up with a race plan that's based on your ability, not just what you hope to do, is crucial to a good performance. So how do you come up with an accurate prediction? There are a bunch of key race predictor sessions and ways you can and should do in your training program to help predict this. So we're going to go through them all today, but before we do, we want to remind you of the athletes unwritten rule. So all sports have some unwritten rules. And endurance athletes, we have this mark of respect for each other. When you see another endurance athlete out on the road, a cyclist or runner, you give them a wave or even just a little nod. It's a mark of respect that you're both training, doing the work, and you're on this journey together. And so another part of the athlete's unwritten rule is for us, as you know, we do this podcast for free. We give you all our best information and tips to help you train smarter and race faster. And the only thing we ask is that if you do listen to an episode that you enjoy or you find really helpful, you can really help us by making sure you subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to it on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen and share it on your socials. Go to Instagram or your Facebook and share a photo of the episode. It's something we'd really appreciate athlete to athlete. As always, this episode is brought to you by our proud sponsor, Giant, for all your bike training and racing needs. Ride life. Ride Giant. Dad. Welcome back to another episode, our normal starting segment. What are you grateful for? And I've got a feeling I know what it is because you're in a different state at the moment.

Yeah, look, it's really good to see on social media that people are sharing our podcasts. I love that. That's why I really enjoy the fact that people are getting so much out of it. And I don't know whether it's because you mentioned it in the last couple of years podcast to share it. But it was really great to see our podcast being shared by other athletes on social media. So thank you for those people who are doing that. What am I grateful for? Well, as Jordan just alluded to, the Tour down under in Adelaide is on and as a World Tour race, it's the first race of the season, it's almost exciting even though we have a bit of a lull. We have the Cadell Evans race which is another World Tour race in Geelong in a couple of weeks. So there's a couple of races early in January and then there's a bit of a break, isn't there, before the Spring Classics. So before you know it, the Spring Classics will be here which will be unbelievable again which will get very excited and we'll get get around that. But here I'm in Adelaide and as you know, Jord, I've been coming to Adelaide since it first came here. I don't know, it came early 2000s or even 1990s I think. But yeah, we came here for four or five years in a row to with our, with our riding buddies and had a great week of training and riding ridiculous kilometers and getting very tired and getting very hot because normally in Adelaide it's somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees every day. And I really feel it for the. That's Centigrade for those in the Northern Hemisphere, which is about 110 degrees Fahrenheit. So really feel for the riders in riding in these really oppressive conditions. And it's great racing and really good opportunity for the local Australian cycling fans to get around a World Tour stage race. So happy to be back here again. Haven't been here for five or six years. Yeah, love. Adelaide's got such good riding venues. You know, every city's probably got some good things and some poor things about riding, but Adelaide has some of the best hills out the back. Really worth getting yourself over here if you can and start riding the Adelaide Hills because they are a spectacular training venue.

My gratitude is on a similar thing theme. Just, you know, think about World Tour or world elite athletes. At the moment the Australian Open is back on in Melbourne. It's one of the four major tennis tournaments around the world and it's just such a fun time to be in Melbourne. It's the sun's out, everyone's pretty happy. You can go watch this show and open at night after work if you want. You can get really cheap grandpa stickers and just head in. It's a really Good atmosphere. They've just done such a good job of making it an incredible tournament. And it's just so fun to have the TV on it all day and at night time just with some sort of tennis playing. And I absolutely love it. And I'm very nostalgic about it as well because I worked there for over 10 years. So, yeah, I've loved it since I was a kid. Brings back a lot of good feelings and memories. And I just love this period in Melbourne when it's on. It's probably one of the best times of the year to be in Melbourne, I think.

Yeah. What a great topic, Joy, because, you know, you didn't just work there, you were a ball kid there at the Australian Open and you were doing semifinals and finals, and then you went a step further and became a supervisor. When you were too old to be a ball kid, you became a supervisor of the ball kids. And I think you were a really great advocate for, you know, wanting to know what it was like to be looked after as a ball kid. And then when you, when you became a supervisor, you were able to really understand what the kids needed. So you did a great job when you were in that period of, that 10 years of working there. I think that you've made some relationships and friendships there that you've, You've still got today, which is 10 years later. So I think that's a really great period of your life and one you'll never forget.

Yeah, I was talking to some mates about it and I said, one of the highlights of my life was when I was. Because you can only be a ball kid from 12 to 15. It's an age limit and was when I was 14. 15 and getting to do the Roger Federer Novak Djokovic finals and seeing them win, seeing two of the greatest players of all time win. When you're in the middle of the court, you know, there's, there's an umpire, there's six ball kids, and then there's two of the best players and you're all within five meters of each other. It's pretty special. And I was laughing with my mates saying, imagine peaking at 14 years old. You know, that's one of the highlights of your life. But you're right, it was turning into a ball kid supervisor was almost more fun because the kids just get so excited. And your job is literally just to make sure that they're getting to court on time, that they understand what to do. And they come off court, they're just full of adrenaline. They're just so hyped. And you just get to have fun with them for a couple of weeks and make sure that they're surviving. There's some hot days, so you really got to make sure that they know how to look after themselves. And it's such a fun two weeks. Just, you know, they're having the time of their lives. And I like facilitating that because I remember when I was a ball kid, I would wake up so excited each day and I was having the time of my life. So yeah, really fun experience. Moving on to what has caught your attention, I think you do want to talk about straight away the Tour down under women's which just finished and point out some key notes from the winner there.

Yeah, that's great. Actually. This is a World Tour race for points for the season. For the women, it was a three stage race. Sarah Gigante ended up winning the Tour and what an incredible Richie Port like ride. On the last hill at Woolunga Hill. She pretty much rode the whole peloton off a wheel, which was very Richie Port like, wasn't it? That hill is his hill and I think Sarah's doing exactly the same thing in the women's competition. And you know, to be fair, all the best riders in the world aren't here, but you can only race who's here. And that was sensational. And I loved the way she took all the risks and went to the front and it was a bit of a headwind and people were getting a good sit and you know, there's some talented riders on a wheel that she just rode off the wheel and she ended up winning the stage, which actually gave her the overall Tour leader's jersey. So she won the Tour. Congratulations to her. It was outstanding effort.

Yeah. And I think one of the things you pointed out was, you know, for her to get that result, you. We always like looking at what type of training people are doing. It's good to get insight into that and for her to have that performance. You know, her method of training was high volume and really big volume training. And she came into that stage super confident. She actually posted about it online hoping that she'd take the win on that stage. And she kind of put it out there herself to say this is the stage I'm going for to try and really, really win this race. And yeah, just interesting to see that, that big volume style of riding and. And when I say big, it's really big, you know, absolutely massive weeks. I think you pointed out what 700 +, 800 + k weeks kind of thing. And that is the type of volume that's, that's got her this to this level.

Yeah. And it doesn't work for everybody. And lots of climbing in that training. And, you know, that's why she's one of the best climbers, I think. One of the best climbers in the world. I can't wait to see her in the World Tour this year. And she's had a few setbacks over the journey. Since she won the Australian road road champ a couple of years ago, she's had some illnesses and some setbacks. So it'd be great to see her racing against the guns overseas. Can't wait.

Mike, what's caught your attention? We will get to the topic, but I do really want to mention this. While we're still in early January and we're thinking about goal setting and the funny thing about New Year's resolutions and goal settings that by the time you get to the second week of January, 95% of people have dropped off whatever they had planned. And there's nothing wrong with using New Year to start some new goals. But the reason goals often fail is that it's easy to set the goal. That's the easiest part, but doing the work for the goal is the hard part. And I was reading a great article from an author that I really, really love, and he just always has a bit of an inverse opinion on how to approach things and a backwards opinion on how to approach things in such a good way. I thought it was so relevant for goal setting. And he just really spoke about the fact that, yeah, sitting. You always talk about this sitting around at dinner or at a pub with your mates and setting the goal, that takes no effort. You know, anyone can say, I want to achieve this goal. But then you have to ask yourself, okay, well, what work is required to achieve that goal? And so a better way of goal setting and it's inverse goal setting is asking yourself, what struggle am I willing to go through this year? So you get to pick the struggle if you're going to pick the goal. Every single goal has some challenge and work and struggle associated with it. So what struggle and sacrifice are you willing to make this year? Is a better question than what's your goal? Because if your goal is an ironman, you go, okay, that's going to take 10 to 12 hours of training a week for six months. That's such a big generalization. But in this case, you don't say, my goal is to do an ironman. You have to say, my goal is to do 10 to 12 hours of training a week, every week for the next six months so that I can complete the Ironman. So it's a bit of inverse goal setting, but just asking yourself, okay, if I want to set a goal, what's that going to take? What struggle am I willing to go through?

I think it's fantastic, I love it. And you can narrow it down into the micro view of that and say, okay, I want to achieve 200 watts as my FTP. Well, rather than saying that, because again, that's easily said, it can be flippant. How do I get to. How do I do that? What. What things do I need to do to be able to ride 200 watts? You know, what sessions do I need to do that, enable me to do that? What consistency do I need to achieve? Am I willing to do those things? And then if I, if I achieve that goal, fantastic. But if I don't, at least I know I've done all the things in my mindset that have enabled me to strive for a goal like that. It's just so easy to sit there with your mates and someone says, I'm doing the next Ironman, and everybody goes, yeah, yeah, I'll do that too. It doesn't. That is just, I think, the dumbest thing you can possibly think about doing just by being. It's almost like the sheep mentality. You know, someone said they're going to do that and almost the fear of missing out, the FOMO effect of that is, yeah, I'll do that too. When you haven't even considered if you're married and you've got kids and you've got a job and you've got pressure and, and you've got to train, you know, you just can't do those decisions. You can and everybody does, but I just don't think that's the right way to go about it. And what you just said there, inverse goal setting, I just think that's brilliant.

Yeah. So often people will say the goal, but then if they actually broke down what it's going to take, they might think twice and go, oh, actually I don't want to do that. Which is so fair. And that's why you ask the question, you know, if you've decided that, actually, that's not for me, that's the whole purpose of the inverse goal setting. And if you look at the work and go, oh, no, I'm willing to do that, that's what I want to do this year, then that's awesome. Then you can really be congruent in that goal. So that was what caught my attention. I really love that article and I thought it would definitely help people with, with setting some goals and asking what they're willing to struggle for this year. So getting into today's topic, race predictor sessions using data and specific sessions to predict what you can do in a race. We want to go through running potential, bike potential. We'll give an honorable mention to swimming, although it's a lot simpler in the swimming regard. But if you're thinking of doing a fresh 5k, 10k half marathon or marathon run, or you're doing it inside of a triathlon, we're going to go through some specific examples and same thing with the bike as well. So let's talk about from a running perspective. And the same principles kind of apply whether you're aiming for a 10k fresh run or a half marathon, fresh run or a marathon fresh run, or you're thinking about doing it inside of triathlon. Take us through kind of the mindset about understanding how you're going to go about using data to predict your race time.

Yeah, there's some specific stuff that we've used from our data collected over a long period of time where we can look at an athlete. And again, we, we have to be general here. We can give examples of specific things where it's really not appropriate. So the general rules will fit most of the population, but there will be always cases where this just doesn't work. This method of predicting doesn't work for this athlete. And so what do I mean by that? Well, so you, you may have good 5k speed and you actually want to do a marathon. And we have some predictions about what you can do for 5k that'll determine what you can do for 10k, which should determine what you can do for half marathon. And then once you've done half marathon, you should be able to predict what you can do for a marathon based on those sessions, but based on those times and paces. But if you've just trained specifically for 5k, and I'll use you as an example, you trained specifically for 800 and all of your training was based around being fast over two minutes. And you know, if we use that predictor, you, you were supposed to be able to run a 2:34 marathon and you had done hardly any endurance training. So there was no way in hell you were able to run that time. But the predictor said that's what you could do. And yeah, sure, you had the potential to do that if you hadn't done the endurance training. But, but that's not where you were at yet. The predictor still told us that that's what you could do if you went out and run and you could say, okay, I want to do a marathon in the next four weeks, based on that, I should be able to run at this pace. And you would have been probably lucky to break three hours if you'd gone out at that pace. And that's a negative thing of some of the predictions, but we've got some really good data that's pretty decent for most of the population and there will be exceptions. And that's the point I'm trying to make.

And it's also, if it's not accurate to what you can actually do right now, it's at least a bit of a guide to what you should be capable of. That's important to remember that if you do the correct training and the specific enough training for that event, then you should be able to get to this. That's kind of where you can use it as well. But yeah, you definitely can't just take a 5K and say, well, my predictor says, which we'll explain in a second, I can do this for the marathon. You've got to do the specific work around the marathon to get there. But let's start at that 5k. Let's say you've got your 5k time to predict your 10k time. If you haven't done one, it's simply doubling it and then just adding a little bit, isn't it?

Yeah. And for every person, what do we add? I mean, if you're an elite 5k runner and you can run 15 minutes and there's a formula for that, if you're a new person couch to 5K and your best is 30 minutes, they're two different scenarios straight away that we'd have to not give the same strategy to. So really when we're doing 1k intervals and you're trying to run, you know, 30 minutes for 5k, you know, if you can't run those 1k intervals around six minutes, you're not going to probably break 30 minutes. And 1k intervals will have a rest period of maybe one minute, two minutes or three minutes in those. So that's an example of, well, if I can't run 5 or 6 1k reps with the rest in between at 6 minute k pace, then I can't run 30 minutes. That's, that's a given. And the same if you're a 15 or 16 minute marathon runner, if you can't run, you know, 3 minute K pace over 1K. You're not going to be able to run 15 minutes with, you know, three 6 by 1K intervals with a 1 minute rest. If you can't do them in 3 minutes, you're not going to break 15 minutes. And they're good, simple little rules that you could think about, you know, go, go to a 20 minute 5k run up, you know, if you can't run six 4 minute ks with the rest, then 20 minutes is out of your range at the moment.

Yeah, so that, that's a great first example of a session is, you know, building up to six 1k intervals and when we usually start, then we give one to one rest ratio, so almost one to one. So if you're doing them in four minutes, you know, you take three to four minutes rest in between and that's allowing you a lot of time to recover. And that even exemplifies your point that if you can't do, you know, those intervals at the goal pace, with that much rest, there's no way you're going to be able to do it continuously over 5k. But then over at program, you might build that session down to 6:1ks with 1 minute rest, you know, really short rest in between. And that gives you a really good indication as to what you might be able to hold in that 5k range and then even a little bit to the 10k. But we are talking about endurance athletes here a bit more. So let's say that you, you do a 10k time trial fresh. You know, what's our generic equation to predict your half marathon from there?

Well, if you can knock out a 40 minute 10k, we'll just use that number and that's 4 minute k pace for a 10k. And you've done endurance training, so you're training properly for the marathon where you've done lots of, you know, two to three hour endurance runs in the hills, like we've told them many times on our podcast, then we're talking to you. But if you, if you've just done 10k and you haven't done any endurance, this doesn't apply to you at all. So get that right. So, so 40 minutes, so double that is 80 minutes. And then if you're, if you've done really good training over 15 years, 20 years, and you're really, you know, 10K is your bread and butter and you've done lots of half, half marathons and plenty of marathons, then, then you could possibly add 10 to 14 minutes onto that. So 40 minutes, double it 80 minutes and then add 10 to 14 minutes which is a 90 to 94 minutes which is 130 to 134. If you're in a mid pack range, you would probably add somewhere around 14 to 18 minutes on top of that. So you know, this is very general again, but they're really good examples of what you can do for 10k and then you know, doubling that time and adding some time onto it, a percentage. And so we're talking somewhere between 10 and 18 minutes depending on your experience as a runner, the amount of races you've done, the consistency of training, the endurance training you've got under your belt. So you would be in that range of adding between 10 and 18 minutes and you should set know specifically select a range in there that is applicable.

To you and then that's a great kind of general predictor. This is a timeframe to give someone to work towards and then what do we do session wise to actually give ourselves more data to work on what kind of session would help predict a half marathon?

Yeah, so when we're looking at half marathon to try and give us some predictions of, of whether you can do a 1:30 half marathon or a 145 or a 2 hour half marathon, lots of sessions like you know, 3 by 15 minutes at that half marathon pace, 4 by 4 by 10 minutes at half marathon pace, you know, 6 by 8 minutes at half marathon pace. They're all good things that are going to give you that 40 to 50 minutes of running at half marathon pace. And if you can cope and be strong all the way through to those, say you're doing 6, 6 by 8 minutes, you know, 48 minutes at half marathon pace, that's, that's a really good indicator that you're capable of running, you know, somewhere close to the pace you're thinking you can do for a half marathon. So lots of shorter intervals as well. If you're thinking about your 4:30 marathon, half marathon runner, 4 minute 30 pace, half marathon runner per kilometer, then if you can't do, you know, 8 by 1Ks at 4:30, then that's another indicator that you're not ready for that pace for your half marathon. But they're really good indicating sessions that you are. So if you can cope with all those sessions at that pace, then you would have a lot of confidence going into that, that you can hold that pace as long as you've done the training for the endurance.

Those bigger volume sessions. If you just use a Great, great indicators. And indicators are a really good word as well because you just can't, you know, practice super high volume all the time. Doing an hour, hour 10 or hour 20 of worth of intervals, you know, you're just going to be, got to be too gas. And even these longer ones like you said 3 by 15 minutes, that's quite tough. You could build that into a bit of an endurance session with a warm up and cool down and the whole session is going to be about an hour 15, hour 20. But the point is in training, not to gas yourself so much trying to get as an accurate prediction as possible. But these give you a good indication of, you know, for decent volume you can hold this and then you've got to reassess how you feel inside of that. And you can't do these two regularly either. You know, maybe every so often you might do this, but if you're going to build it up, you know, it's, it really can't be, you know, try and do this two or three times a week.

No, it's one session per week over a three week block and then have a recovery period and repeat it again with a different time. So you might start with, you know, 4 by 8 minutes or 5 by 8 minutes or 6 by 8 minutes and progressively get the time longer so that it gets more similar to you holding, holding that pace for longer periods. But you don't, you don't want to. If you're a 1 hour 30 half marathon runner or a 1 hour 45, you're not trying to replicate 100 minutes or 90 minutes, you're trying to replicate 45 to 50 minutes so you can actually train again the next day. You can't try to replicate the time of your race in training and this is not the session for that. You want to do some sort of intervals that are similar but half, half the time that you expect to do on race day.

So before we jump into the marathon predictor, I just will remind you of the big kind of disclaimer that you've already said, dad, but it just comes with such a big asterisk that we've said the word so many times. These are generic prediction equations, you know, and so that what that means is they will apply to an average amount of people. But it's almost like a bell curve where there is going to be allies on either end of the spectrum. You know, some really good athletes will be able to do much better than the predicted time and a lot more beginner athletes will do a lot worse than their predicted time. So you've got to figure out maybe where you might fit into that. And the only way you can know is with true experience in getting into the races. But the whole purpose of this is we're trying to give you some helpful information as to what you can predict and potentially aim for. And so I guess before we go into the marathon stuff, I just want to take it back a step and ask you, what is the value of predicting it like this? If it could be so inaccurate, why do we bother doing this, trying to do some race predictor sessions and use these equations?

Well, if you've, if you've not done a lot of races, you don't have a lot of data to go back, fall back on. And you know, if you're a person who's done an incredible amount of fun runs, 5k, 10k half marathons, you've got such an amount of documented data about what your capabilities are. And you know, for someone who's new to it, they've got to start somewhere. It's like when you first start our program, if you've never done a FTP test, the first question I get asked is what power do I start at? And if I'm asking someone to do a 5k run, they're saying, what pace should I start at? Well, we don't have any history of power or pace. So using some information like, well, what have you been able to run? If you've done something a little bit fast in the last month or so, was 4 minute k pace attainment sustainable? And they'll go, oh no, no, no, I'm more like a 4:40. Instantly you get some validation of what your current form is and then you can apply that to the training sessions. And then when you start doing these training sessions where we're doing something like three by 15 minutes and I'm asking you to run 4:30 pace and by the time you get halfway through the second 15 minutes, you are at 4:40, 4:45 pace. Clearly we've got it wrong. Clearly that pace is too hard for you. So you're getting instant information, instant feedback about where you sit in the pacing range for that event. And that's why training in the zones for power and the pace for running and also pace per hundred in swimming really gives you accurate feedback about what you can do when it's continuous race.

So let's go through the race predictor equation. Then from half marathon to marathon, we always like to double it and then add something that's just kind of like an Easy principle to follow. So how does that work for half marathon to marathon?

Yeah, so I take, I just use myself and I've done a lot of marathons and I've done a lot of marathons fresh and I've done a lot of marathons in an Ironman. So there are two different things here. Let's just talk about the fresh stuff. So if I can run 70 minutes for half, for a half marathon, my PB was 2:30 for a marathon. So basically double it and add 10. It's, it's such a straightforward equation and I would class myself as reasonably solid runner. So I'm giving myself 10 minutes and it's very humbling.

You, you're Australian Ironman champion, you can class yourself as elite. I think the top of elite is what it would be.

But yeah, if I'm talking about someone who's, who's going to run 90 minutes for a half marathon, you know, that's 1:30, so that's three hours. You know they're going to have to add, you know, something like 18 to 22 minutes possibly. So anything from 10 to 22 minutes is their range. And again it comes back to what's the experience of the runner? How much endurance training have they done? How many fun runs have they done before? So all these questions you have to keep asking yourself and we keep saying the same thing over again but that's how you get to understand where you fit into this potential. Predicting race strategy and so we're really trying to identify what pace can you do on race day as a half marathon, run 10k run a 5k runner or a marathon runner. And these are the methods that will give you a really great guide so you don't actually run too hard, too early and fade, which is the majority of marathon runners do all over the world. And we're on a conquering journey, you and I, Jordan, to stop this and turn it around to get people to work out their pace right from the get go and stick to it. And it's going to be my challenge here. I am trying to spread this message with your help.

I honestly think it's working. With the amount of people that have come up and say to us that their whole race strategy has changed, I think it's working.

And the feedback for runners is the one I'm trying to get because in triathlon I think people understand it because there's so much to it. It's three sports. Whereas a runner, you think you've got it because you know I'll just run at this pace and get some, get some time ahead of my, my overall time. But that just doesn't work. And, and you know, the sooner people understand that that doesn't work, it's never worked and never will work. So, so let's just get off that bandwagon and, and we get some great comments back on our social media saying, well, you know, lots of people have done PBS using that method. Well, sure, they've probably run faster, but they could have run way faster had they actually measured their effort properly and come home stronger.

Yeah, and I was talking to a running friend last week specifically about this. It's funny that this topic's come up, but she broke three hours for the first time and it was her fourth attempt doing it, and she was just over the moon and things have gone wrong in the other three attempts. And I was talking to her and her partner and I said, what do you think the difference was this time? Why did it work? And he chimed in and said, from his outside perspective, it was the first time he watched her not run with anyone in the race and just decide to run her pace from the start. And the previous ones, she really felt more comfortable. She wanted to go off with the group, either the pace group or some friends who she knew she could be with. And every single time they would just take off too quick. And he said he was riding the bike next to her for a lot of the race. She did her own pace. And then he said he watched her pick off those same friends that had ruined the race the other years. One by one, throughout the race, you know, they took off, they did the same strategy. And the first time she changed it and that, that got her through and she came home so strong. And her comment was, you know, for the first time, I actually felt like I had more in the tank at the end and I probably could have gone quicker. And I was like, that is just such a key indication that it's well executed, you know, and had you gone earlier, harder, you might not have felt that way at the end. You might have blown up. And that shows that you was well executed. You stayed within your limits for as long as you needed to. So that's just a really specific and example of what we're talking about.

Yeah, I just had one from, from the Cadbury's Marathon down in Tasmania. One of our people we've had on the podcast, Rachel Balding, did that marathon and it was an incredible wind run event. Blockhead wind, massive tailwind, and it went out and back twice. So you had the headwind twice. And her question to me was, should I have sat behind people who are running at the pace that was faster than I wanted to go into the headwind, or should I have just run solo into the headwind and stayed to my running pace? And I thought that was a great question. And she decided to run with these five. Really? Really. So it was a pack of five. Five guys, actually. And they were doing a great job blocking the wind for her, and they were running into the headwind themselves. And then in the tailwind, they all picked the pace up. So. So they kind of run too, too fast for Rachel. So she ended up being isolated by herself. And ironically, she passed all of them before the end of the race. And. And they really struggled, you know, because they were running, you know, almost putting the spinnaker up, running too fast with the tailwind, and then they really blow themselves up by running, you know, really hard into the headwind of. To start with. And, and I think. I think that's a great lesson of, you know, and the question is, what should you do if the pace is. If the pace is too hot for you? Is it worth trying to get protected and save some energy rather than running into the wind by yourself? And that was. It was really well done by her. And. And she ended up running under 330, which is her goal was she ran 3 and 326, which is. Which was, you know, really rock solid run for her. And. And, you know, actually by the marathon distance, she ran 329 because, you know, in training peaks, we get the exact 42.2. But. But the race is never 42.2. It's always 42.6 or 7 or 8. So that extra 2 or 300 meters is an extra 2 or 3 minutes by the official numbers of. Of the results sheet. But I digress a bit there, but it is funny when people go, oh, I didn't break the number. I was trying to. But, you know, over the actual distance, you did.

Yeah. I don't know if you can claim it, though. I think you have to claim the actual marathon time, you know, Exactly. You can't. Yeah, yeah.

So. But it's good for your confidence knowing that you can run that pace for sure. The results are the results, and they're the same for every. Every event.

Yeah, we've digressed a bit. It is a good example and it's context dependent because that answer for Rachel worked where she sat beside to sit behind them for the headwind, and that worked for her in that Period. And sitting behind the tailwind didn't work. But had they been running 5 seconds quicker per kilometer in that headwind, that might have been enough for her to say, that's too quick. You know, actually that pace is just, just too fast and I need to drop off and it would be better for me to stay solo and not risk blowing up. But yeah, there's a lot of questions to ask in that moment. Um, anyway, we've gone down the pacing strategy. The conclusion was as a generic equation where I'm surprised, I'm not, I'm not surprised anymore. I was previously surprised at how often, you know, that 14 to 22 minute of doubling it, adding 40 to 22 minutes for most of our runners. How you can take that equation, you can look at the runner and go, based on what I know about your experience, your training history, your build up to this over the last 12 weeks, you're probably going to be more of that 18 to 20 minute mark. Or you look at an athlete and say, you really should be about that 14, 16 minute mark and how well it works. You know how often someone is right in that. And then if they're very beginner, you're saying, look, you're probably going to be, plus the 22 minutes, you're probably going to have to double that half marathon time and add 22 to 25 minutes just based on your preparation. And yeah, it's, it's incredible how, how well it really works. There's great confidence the athlete to go well. Yeah, based on our experience, this is really what they think they can achieve. And that's, yeah, that's great for your race planning.

And we didn't really talk about some of the old style of predicting, which was the Yaso 8 hundreds. And just to simplify it, what the method was, if you could run 10 times 800 in training with the goal, if you were aiming for a 3 hour 30, you would have to run each 800 in 3 minutes 30. If your goal was to run 3 hours in the marathon, your Yasso 800 should be 3 minutes for each 800. And the rest period in between was 3 to 4 minutes, I think. And so it was a really, really kind of another general predictor which was, you know, a lot of people used over the journey and it's a tough session to do 10, 8 hundreds. And you know, if, if your goal is a 2 hour 30, you have to run those 8, 10, 8 hundreds in 2 minutes 30. And you know that it's a great confidence booster knowing that you know you, you're around the mark. So, so anybody who's thinking that they're, if they're trying to break four hours for a marathon and they can't run 10, 8 hundreds in under four minutes per 800, then that would, you know, you'd have to think twice about that goal. So again, this is examples of things you can use to give you some more information about actually what should you be running, what your pace should you be aiming to run at on race day.

And you use that example of myself earlier in the podcast where when I was doing a lot of speed work on the track, we were doing similar sessions where it was 6, 8 or 108 hundreds and I was running them at 230 to 235 pace, which should have indicated a 23235 marathon. But there was no way in hell I was in that shape to run that on the marathon. But I was quite good at running those 800. So the specificity there is what we're talking about when you can use some generic equations as predictors, and that's the whole goal of this, is just to try and find ways to find some data. But your training has to be specific to the actual race. So that kind of summarises the run perspective. And from the bike ride, we have some more stuff that we wanted to look at to really help you just get an indication and get a plan in place for what you should be aiming for. Whether you're doing Olympic distance triathlon at 40 kilometers, a half Ironman at 90 kilometer time trial or an Ironman 180 kilometers. So let's go through the ranges of what you can actually do on race day based on your FTP numbers.

And this also applies to cyclists, Jordan, who are doing time trials. And there are some time trials and I know in Great Britain and England, time trialing is a huge sport and they have 40 mile, 60 mile, 100 mile, they have these races going all the time. And these percentages of your FTP can apply to you as well. And obviously, because you're not swimming and running, you could be more at the top of the ranges that we're going to give you. So it does apply to triathletes and to cyclists who are time trialists. So obviously we really start with what's your FTP, your best 20 minutes, get that percentage, 95% of that for your best 60 minutes, that's what your FTP is. And then we take a percentage of those numbers that you've got from that 60 minute FTP equation and and there is, you know, exceptions are really small compared to the marathon, half marathon and, and 10k experiences we've had. Most people fit into these equations. So the majority of people could say, if my FTP is, you know, my 60 best 60 minutes is, is 200 watts, then, you know, for, for 180K Ironman, I should be able anywhere between 65 and 75% of that. And you know, the people who. And how do you determine where you sit in that 65 to 75? That's the question everybody asks. Well, that's great. Thanks for telling me that. But where do I sit? And so again, we ask you to, you know, who are you? Are you a person who's doing your very first Ironman? Are you a person who's doing your 10th or your 20th? How have you trained in the last six months? Have you done enough endurance? Right. How's your nutrition? These are all questions we would ask you to what are you normally like in terms of podium? Are you in the first 10 of your age group? Are you in the bottom 10 of your age group or are you in the middle? And so if you're at the pointy end of your age group, as an example, we're talking about the 180k time trial. In an Ironman, you should be able to ride around 75% of your FTP. It could be 73 to 77% anywhere in that range. If you're in the mid range, you would be more likely to be 67 to 73% of your FTP. If you're in the beginner range and you haven't done a lot of races and not 180k race, it's your first Ironman, you could potentially be between 60 and 66% of your FTP depending on how well trained you are. So that's a big range, but I'm giving you examples of who you are as an athlete and then you determine where you sit in that percentage.

And that first point is to use a bit of a particular equation, get that range 65 to 75% and then do a session, do a few sessions to actually test that theory. And we'll go through some sessions in a second. But can you give us the ranges for a half Ironman and the ranges for an Olympic triathlon as well?

Yeah, for a half Ironman, it is definitely pushing the barrow up to 75 to 90, you know, 90 to 92%. But we just use the equation of 75 to 90 straight out. And there are outliers who can do 93, 92, 94. And there are people who cannot get anywhere near 75% there at 72 or 70 or some people are even in the 60%. Again, it depends on your experience and your fitness level and your, your, you know, racing capacity as a time trialist. So, so they're, they're the real general ranges. And again, if you're in the, in the top 10 of your age group, you would be closer from 80, 86% to 91 or 92% if you're winning that. If you're winning your age group, you would definitely should be riding at 90% or above. I'm talking 1% above that. You've got to make sure though that your testing is right. So that's the real important thing. If you've only ridden indoor and you haven't done any FDA outdoor FTPs where you're going out and back for 10 minutes, you actually can't say that what you do indoor, you're going to do outdoor. So there's so many more variations in, you know, terrain gradient changes, wind and temperature. So, so again, you know, these equations really only work if you're really well trained outdoors. And so I'm a big advocate for people doing a 60 minute outdoor time trial and not using the easy option which is the 20 minute FTP and taking 95% of it. So before a lot of our races in Ironman and Half Ironman, we make our athletes do a 60 minute time trial and we make it out and back. And whether you do 15 minutes out and back, you know, each time to add up to 60 minutes or two 30 minutes out and back, you've got to do it out and back. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But, but you know, these are the ranges for Half Ironman and for Olympic distance we're, you know, it's 80 to 100, but we use 80 to 95. There are athletes we coach who can ride right at that 98, 99, almost ride their best, you know, in a triathlon they can ride their best 60 minute FTP number which is there, they're going to be winning their races that, you know, they're going to be riding 53 minutes for, for a, for a 40K time trial and, and the range goes from 53 all the way up to an hour 30. So you, if you're an hour 30 Olympic distance 40K time trialist, you would probably be more towards 80% or 85%. So yeah, so they're examples of the, of the three ranges we use for those particular 40K, 90K and 180K time trials.

And then yeah, to finish off, take us through the kind of specific sessions, you just use the out and back example and all these sessions that you're going to give are based on out and back. And there's a couple of reasons for that. But yeah, there's more thinking about the Half Ironman or Ironman, you know, what are the race specific sessions you can do to help predict your race day plan?

Yeah, and you know, we only do these sessions and we call them race ready and it's the period leading into your race and you know, prior to that we're doing a lot of the base and build phase training where we're getting you in the hills and doing endurance strength training. But when we're doing the, you know, the last six or eight weeks or for some people again this varies compared where we're talking about, people have done 20/2 ironmans compared to 10 compared to 5. If, if you've done very few half Ironmans, you need to do a bit more race ready sessions where if you've done a lot of half Ironman races, you know, you can get away with the last four weeks almost of race specific. And if you're doing three or four half Ironmans in a season, you know, we don't want to be doing a lot of race specific sessions before each half Ironman because we need to keep your endurance training going. And that's, that's a whole other topic. But, but the point I want to make here is if you can do for a half ironman for 90k, if you can do, you know, four by 30 minutes and if you can hold, you know, 90% of those four by 30 minutes of your FTP, that's going to give you super confidence to know that, you know, for two hours in training, you know, four by 30 minutes with five minute break in between. Yeah, you're going to be, you know, able to ride the power that you want to. If you're, if you're pushing 90 or 75%, you're getting instant feedback because by the time you do the third or fourth 30 minutes you're clearly understanding what your capacity is as, as a, as a 90k time trialer and you know, that's the starting sort of, you know, we might do six by 20 minutes. All of them trying to add up to somewhere around, you know, an hour, 40 to two hours in training with, with some substantial gaps in between to recover. But they're great sessions to to you know, to get, get you really clear and, and you start with shorter, more reps and shorter time and then you go less reps with longer. So you go 4:30, then you go 3 by 40, then 2 by 60. And then we would get you to be doing a 75k time trial straight out or a 90k or a 60k depending on how long and how many Iron man half Ironman you've done.

Yeah, that's awesome. That is a great indication of progression. And the principle is the same for Ironman. It's really building up to get closer to what the total volume of the day is going to be. So it's the same sort of progression building up from if you've done some half 100 training doing those sessions you just said and then eventually building up for Ironman training, you know, doing 4 by 30 kilometer efforts, you know, or even you know, 3 by 50 right to it, that's 150 kilometer session. And you actually understand it's all lower intensity. It's, it's in that range is, it's what you said before, the 65 to 75 of FTP range. But really building up to that to get some sessions in that just give you such a very clear indicator that okay, I held that in training for 150km and so it gives me good confidence that I can hold around that on the day maybe slightly lower because it's, you know, the whole day combines a lot harder.

Yeah, this is what we're talking about. What sessions give me confidence to predict what I can hold. And you know, without fail people go into these races knowing that in training I've done this and it's not a fictitious number that you think you're making up. It's actually we're using these numbers and if you can't, if you're trying to ride at 90% and you can't and you can only manage 84% that's what you should be doing on race day. You shouldn't be saying but I want to ride 90%. Well if you haven't done it in training, there's no miracle. From training to racing there's nothing going to change except you're freshened up. You're not going to improve 6% from, from your race training, from your training, race ready sessions to your actual race day. And you know, because you're running after it as well, we don't really want you to do that as well. We want you to, you know, be comfortable and actually get off the bike fresher. And being able to run, run better by, by actually staying in the range. So, so it's really important that you, you have these sessions so that you can get a clear understanding of, oh, I've done this, I've done this 84% in training. That's, that's kind of where I should stay. And for next race in my training, leading up it, up to the next race, the next, you know, 16 week training block, I want to move that to 86% or 87%. What are the sessions I need to do to do that? And that's what we talk about going out and back. We use the power and we want to give you an idea of what your average speed is for these sessions. So we want to know the power that really helps us stay around the right power in the race. But then we can go a step further. And if we know what you know, if 90% of your FTP equals 35 kilometers an hour and the only way you can find that out is to go out and back. If you do a one direction training session, you could have a block headwind or a massive tailwind or a crosswind. And so you're not getting an accurate perception of what your average speed is. So the only way to do that is to start at one point, go down, turn around and come back and finish at the same point. That'll give you an even tailwind, crosswind, headwind feel. So therefore, once you understand that, that, you know, 90% gave me, it gave me 35Ks an hour, then straight away you know, that 35Ks an hour over 90 kilometers you can go and work that out is two hours 30. So straight away you've got a lot of information about what time you're going to do on race day, what power you're going to do and what average speed you're going to do just by doing this in training. And I think that's an area where people just really don't think about and that's an area where you should be really getting. Just the training effect from these sessions is the most important thing. But the information you're getting to predict what can happen on race day is the next step.

And it brings up such an important point to finish on. Because this whole time when we're talking about it, we've been talking about the input, which is the power, the work that you're doing. And we haven't actually really talked about the time, the time predictor. And that's because we don't like predicting the time or focusing on that because that's just focusing on the outcome which you can't really control. You can only control your process and your input. And the time could be affected by the conditions of the day could be way worse. And so your 90% of FTP could result in a 2 hour 8 one day, but a 2 hour 14 on another day on a different course. And so look, it's great to use this and use the speed, as you said, to get a indication of what your total time could be, but to rely on that is just not what we do. We focus on the inputs, we focus on the part that we're doing and not focus on the, the end outcome.

Yeah, and it's really, really good point. And one of the things I want to say is we're trying to give you not an exact time. We're not the average speed. We don't want you to say I should do 35Ks an hour. We're trying to give you a range from training that you could possibly be between 34 and a half to 35 and a half. That's what your goal is and that's what you should be hopefully getting. When you see 90% or 85% you can see what your average speed is from training, it should relate to race day. So straight away you're getting an indication of how long you're going to be out there for, which is really what we're trying to. We're not trying to get an exact time here because that's concentrating on the wrong thing, but we're trying to get a gauge of how long you're going to be on the bike. And by predicting, you know, the power, pace and, and time, they're things that are going to help, help you get a, an idea of where you're going to help, you know, add your swim, add your bike, add your transition, add your run and you're going to get an idea of. I could be between four and a half hours to four hours 40 depending on the conditions and depending on the severity of the course.

And the one thing we want to mention with the swim is, you know, obviously the same principles apply. If you do a time trial swim in the pool, you can get a really good gauge for what your pace per hundred is. But just don't make the mistake of not doing any sort of time trial out in the open water because it's totally different and a lot of athletes would get out to the open water and it's, it is just such a completely different feeling for so many reasons. And they're not necessarily swimming nearly the same as they do in the pool. So you know, it can go a lot of ways. You can, you can go slower in the open water because it's so much more uncomfortable. You're not getting the push off of the wall, that kind of thing. If you're a good turner in the pool, if you're really good at swimming in the pool. But also you might go faster because you've got a really good wetsuit and you got that buoyancy. And so depending on you and your experience and your training history as a swimmer, it can go a little bit back and forth both ways there. But the important part is to get some a good prediction of what you can do in the open water. You need to go and actually do it in the open water.

And that is a really important point for swimming. And I can't believe the pushback I get from swimmers who just don't want a time trial. They don't want to go into the pool and do a 1k time trial. And for obvious reasons, not a lot of people can go to an ocean or to a lake and do an outdoor time trial. A because there's no facility near where they live. They could live in the middle of a continent where there's just no water to swim in except for a pool. And so they're not getting that experience. When they come to race day. You want, you know, you can do intervals and that's what most swimming sessions are. They're all based on 25 meter, 50 meter, 100 meter, 200, 400 intervals. But very rarely do you see people do a 1900 meter time trial or a 3.8 kilometer time trial in swimming. And we should be doing that regularly. I'm not saying we should be doing 3.8, but we should be doing 1k time trials. We should be doing 1500 meter time trials, 2k time trials and 3k time trials so that you get used to AM I A 140 per hundred swimmer outdoor in a time trial? Sure, I can do it over ten one hundreds indoor with rest, but that's not a really good predictor of what you can do outdoor. It gives you a range again like we've talked about with the other sessions. But you need to do those time trials and, and avoiding them is just not going to give you a prediction of what's going to happen on race day. And people come out of the water going, oh, you know, I've been swimming 140/40 per 100 in in the pool. How come I spend 148 today? Well, you didn't do any 1k time trials out. You know, all you've done is intervals with the rest. And so your body's not. Not had an experience at swimming a thousand meters straight with no. With no rest. And Obviously, you know, 140 to 148 is probably about right if you're taking the rest period out. So doing those intervals are brilliant for all sorts of fitness gains and technical advances in your stroke. But doing the time trials is the key to understanding how to predict what you're going to do on race day. And that's what this topic's about.

Yeah. So that's a good way to finish off in conclusion. You know, this episode has come with a lot of disclaimers, some constant disclaimers about that. These are generic equations, but that's because we don't want someone to take what we've said and say, oh, you said I could do this. But, you know, we can't apply these principles to everyone on this podcast. We're talking generally. But what we can do and what we know we do is we can take our athletes and we can say with supreme confidence, in most cases, we can look at their training data because we've been coaching them, we know what they're capable of and we can use these equations and we get them right most of the time. And so that's the advantage of when you do all this. And there's these equations and then there's the actual training, implementing the training sessions that we've kind of talked about to back up that data and go, all right, based on that, we're really confident that you're going to hit these numbers. And so that's the conclusion we want to finish with. Yeah, it was a lot of disclaimers, but, you know, that's just necessary because you can't cover everyone in the topic. But if you do what we're saying in thorough detail in this episode, then you should have a pretty accurate estimate of what you want to be able to do on race day. Anything else to conclude from you?

No, I think we've given a lot of really insightful sessions that will help you predict and get a really close, accurate idea and confident, you know, and reality check, oh, geez, I've overestimated my ability here. And if, you know, doing the stuff we've talked about in training will give you a really realistic view of what your capacity is as an athlete. And I think that's. That's the purpose of getting this information across and it's a lot of stuff you might have to re listen to here, but really there's some great things that you can do to give you clarity and confidence about what to do on race day.

That's it for this episode. Thanks very much for listening. If you would like to be coached by us and you want to apply to get coached by us, you can go to our website, TravellerCoaching.com au we'll go through the application process and and if you end up being coached by us, it comes with an eight week guarantee that we will improve your FTP or the coaching is on us. You can go to our website and check out all the details there. Thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.