Use This Simple Race Tactic to Dominate Your Next Event

Over the weekend we had one of the toughest and most grueling and most physically and psychologically demanding events on the cycling calendar here in Australia. It is truly a magnificent event. Super popular for a reason. Infamously hard, notorious. It is the Three Peaks Challenge and we have spoken about this a lot in the podcast before. But we're really going to dive into this race because the lessons you can learn from how to execute this race properly apply to every single endurance event. And it applies to endurance events from the sprint distance triathlon up to Olympic, up to half Ironman after Ironman. And this is essentially an Ironman on the bike. It is 234km with over 4,000 meters of climbing all in one hit. It's called Three Peaks because you climb up three epic peaks, three massive mountains that you have to get over with a lot of cycling in between. And pundits from all around Australia turn up to the beautiful mountain country of Victoria, Australia to take on this challenge and a lot of people crumble. You get to the last hill where there is a. You turn this corner coming up to the last climb and it's called WTF corner because it's 15% for, for 600 meters or so and then it averages 11 or 12% for the next couple of kilometers before you have to finish. What is then an easier part of the climate still averages between 6 and 11% and that is how you have to actually finish the day with 200 kilometers in your legs. So you get people getting to what WTF corner. And half the field is walking because it's just so impossible and you're so tired and fatigued. So dad, you've attempted this challenge multiple times and had a range of different experiences. We've had a lot of trivalo athletes do it and we're really proud that it's of course when, when a race strategy has to be a little bit more complicated and a little bit tougher and a little bit takes a little bit more concentration. We pride ourselves with our tribal athletes and getting that right. And we get tribal athletes having a really good experience on race day because we really help them plan, prepare the race plan side to actually have a good experience from race day. So today we're going to go through all the details of the race, how our tribal athletes fared over the weekend. Did they have a positive experience or not? And what we did to help them succeed. So talk to me a little bit about the, the notoriety of Three Peaks and, and just what, how special the event is.

Yeah. And look if, if you're in Europe, you might be sort of going off 4,000 meters of climbing. That's not much when you know, you can go to the Italian Alps or the Dolomites or the French, French Alps or the, you know, any of the major mountain climbs in Europe, which, know as you and I just spent last year at Stelvio and some epic climbs like that. Well, this is Australia's biggest epic mountain range. And yeah, it's one of those big days where people prepare year by year to come back to peaks and, and it certainly had people on its knees many times. And look, a lot of things happen on this particular event in, in Australia because of the temperature, the variation in temperature that you can get. It's, it's like, you know, if you imagine the middle of summer in Europe in July and you're getting up to the top of some of the climbs and it's 30, 30, 35 degrees Celsius, which is, you know, 85 to 90 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit and you're, you know, you're, you've just got 200K in your legs and you're faced with another two and a half hour climb to finish. And yeah, that puts, puts a perspective of this event and the temperature's hot, you're exhausted and a lot of riders just don't understand the event and therefore suffer the consequences. And you really have to actually understand the event. And it's not just this event, it's any endurance event. The strategy should be the same. And I don't use the word race in this because it's a real challenge. This one, a lot of Ironman, a lot of marathon for the majority of athletes except for the front 30 or hundred in world marathon races around the world. The rest of the marathon is an event for, for the age grouper and that's who we're talking about. We're not talking about the elite, we're talking about the age grouper. For any challenge marathon cycling event like this, Ironman, Half Ironman, any event that's, you know, got endurance in it, you have to have the same mindset and you know, they're the things that will make the experience so much more enjoyable. And we're always pushing that in, in our podC triathlon for Ironman, for Half Ironman, you want to enjoy yourself on the day, be prepared properly. So we get the training in, then we really hone in on the race plan and the strategy and how you're going to take that into the race and your job is always to execute. And it doesn't matter whether you're doing a running event, a triathlon, or this type of cycling event, you still have to implement the key strategies of endurance, which is staying disciplined and following the process and sticking to your plan. And that's what being disciplined is, and concentrating on staying in your ranges. And the minute you get ahead of yourself, then the consequences will change. And that's kind of how I want to summarize the start of our discussion. All endurance races are based on similar things. The athlete being able to be prepared properly enough to just go out and simply execute, as long as they stay disciplined and stay in their ranges. Whether it's running pace, whether it's a swimming endurance event, 5 or 10k, or it's a marathon, or whether it's an ironman, or whether it's an epic event like Three Peaks. You've just got to stay in your capabilities. Don't, as I say, get your ability and your ambition confused.

It's a really interesting point you brought up early, which, you know, 4,000 meters of climbing isn't, isn't insane, you know, because you can go on a long ride around any of the Alps in Europe and do three climbs for the morning and get 3,000 meters pretty quickly. But I think the difference is when you mentioned our examples when we were doing those kind of rides, rides and doing them, you know, just at a comfortable pace each day you're just doing that, but not, not much else riding in between, you know, so the total distance of the day ends up being between 70 and 110km. And the difference here, which a lot of people underestimate, is that extra 150km in between where. Or more where the whole day adds up to 234km. And I think, because we're going to talk about this, but because the challenge is called Three Peaks, all the focus tends to be on the Three Peaks. And, and a lot of athletes will forget about the amount of time you have to spend riding in between and how much that actually impacts your experience on race day. Because we said it's, it's an iron man of cycling because the, the absolute gun elite riders did it in seven hours, but majority of the field is doing it from anywhere from eight hours, eight and a half hours up to 13 hours plus. So it's a long time to be out the bike and there's a lot of climbing in there, but there's a lot of cycling in between the climbs.

Yeah. And, you know, for the Trivala athletes, We have a straightforward, simple game plan. We talk about staying in the ranges on the three climbs. Tooonga Gap is anywhere from 20 minutes for the best rider to 45 minutes. So that's a huge range, the first climb, and it's a standard climb with 6 to 7%. And then the second climb is Mount Hotham, where it can be anywhere from an hour to 15, an hour 20 to three hours for the, the 13, 14 hour three peak rider. And Falls Creek is the last climb where it can be anywhere from an hour 30 to three hours if you're walking four hours. So we've got these three distinct climbs and, and that's what everybody focuses on, you know, how, how to keep up with the bunch that I'm in. I have to stay and ride above my level. And we want to kind of just dispel that myth that you don't actually have to do that. Um, but people forget about what you just said, which is the in between. And you know, there's, there's sections that are, you know, hour and a half to two hours between, between the hills where you've, you're either on your own or you're in a bunch. And, and that's where a lot of mistakes can be made. You can, you can do the climbs very well, but you can override the in betweens. And, and as you said earlier in your introduction, these big bunches get together of, you know, some of them are 30, 40 riders, some of them are 60, 70 riders and they are flying along at, you know, at breakneck speed. Everybody's fresh. You've only climbed one 30 or 40 minute climb and it's really early. You've trained well, you've, you're, you're tapered, you're loving life and everybody's in this big bunch roll and you're doing 45Ks an hour. And then you hit the next hill and all of a sudden you've overridden and you don't realize it till you're halfway up the next hill. And then when you get to the top of that climb, and I think it's only 1700 meters of elevation, so it's not like a European climb where it's, you know, two and a half, 3,000 meters, but it's still, still a tough climb. And it's for the, for the average rider, it's somewhere around two to two and a half hours of climbing. But, but by the time you get to the top of that hill, there is another, you know, three hours of rolling hills till you get from the top of that mountain to. To the next sort of main point, the next town where the next main feed zone is, and you can override that section as well. It's not a. It's not a. It's not a mountain. It's not one of the three peaks, but it's a long way and it's got a lot of climbing in it, which are only short cl. And so people knock themselves out here as well. And so. And when you get to the, to the last stage, where you get your last drinks and you refuel and then you head to the bottom of Falls Creek, people again riding that other hour and a half way above themselves. So by the time they get to the 200k mark and turn left at WTF corner, they are pretty much cooked. And if you get there and you haven't got anything else left, it's going to be an absolutely horrible. You could be resorting to walking. There's people on the ground screaming with cramp, people pushing their bikes, people looking for the sand, sag wagging. I can't do it. I want to give up. There's just. And I'm not talking ones and twos. I'm talking hundreds of people in this situation and they've just overridden and it's too late. When you get to the 200k mark and you've still got another two and a half hours of climbing left and you're, you know, you're in a bad. In a very, very bad way, and it becomes really unenjoyable. And, you know, you want to sell your bike, you want to throw it in the paddock. Yeah. You just want someone, you just want to. You just want to lie down and curl up in a ball and cry. And I'm not exaggerating. It's the people who are listening to this, who have done this event, who have ended up in that state, know exactly what I'm talking about. And you don't have to have done this event to have that experience. You could be doing an Iron man or you could be doing a marathon and walking 12k of the marathon. You know, I'm talking about, and this is what we're trying to get across in these podcasts, is there's a better way, there's a much more enjoyable way. You may not be setting world records, but you will have a great experience on the day and you get to enjoy the whole day. And there's so many examples of guys who are being coached with discipline, like the five of the trivalo athletes. And I must say, for the first time in all the years I've been coaching Trivalo athletes to this event, this is the first time 100% of our riders nailed it. Every other year I might get 80 or 90% doing that well and two people absolutely stuff it up and it's like Ironman. We can follow and track the progress because they have timing markers at the top of each climb. So I can see in front of my computer when I'm watching the race over that eight or nine or 10 hours on a Sunday morning, I can see how people are progressing. And so it was so enjoyable from a coaching point of view to see all of our athletes getting to the particular points at the right time. And I was super confident when I knew they just passed the last checkpoint to get to the base of WTF corner that, you know, barring anything going wrong, they were all going to make it up. And the message we were telling them before in our pre race planning strategy calls, where you will get passed by a lot of people throughout the day and then there'll be a turning point and ironically, that turning point is left at WTF corner. You will start passing a lot of people and the people that, that have passed you, they will be, they'll be wishing, wishing they'd followed your strategy. And, and after the race we had all the calls from the Trivalo athletes saying, oh my God, it's exactly what you told us was going to happen. I was just riding past people, after people, after people. I was, you know, people jumping on the back of me trying to get a free ride because I was looking so strong. And, and people commenting on, you know, God, you're riding well, so good, you know, and, and thanks for, thanks for towing me and, you know, and it's a great feeling when you're in control and it's not a great feeling when you're not in control. And that's the difference between what we're trying to get across here and we can learn a lot in our post race analysis. And that's why I think this podcast is a ripper. It actually relates to all sport. It's just not this particular event we're talking about. If you can get our message from what we're trying to get across here in this podcast to all sports, then you will be a better athlete in your chosen discipline.

I love the relationship between what you're saying here to the same experience in an Ironman and the same experience in a marathon or any endurance event. If you've overridden the bike in an ironman and you get into transition, then you try and start running. You'll quickly go, oh, I've overdone myself here and There's a long 42.2km ahead of you or even if you didn't override it that much, but you overrun the first 10 or 20 kilometers and it's a really, really tough back half and a lot of people who have bonked in any triathlon will have experienced that. So I laugh because you said, you know, staying in your ranges. The race plan is relatively simple, but it is the epitome of way easier said than done. And that's true for any endurance event because it's laughable how simple it is. But how come majority of athletes can't execute that way? You know, why is it that it's, it's so hard to actually do do, even though you know what you should do?

I, I've, I've had to think about this a lot, Jordan, over the years and, and I think hopefully I'm getting wiser as I get older. But I think, I think people forget how, how important it is to not just go by feel at the start because obviously everybody's fresh and tape it and people forget that. You know, I say to them, the people who have not planned and executed, they've planned well, but they actually haven't executed. I say to them after the race, why did you ride above the level that we planned on that first climb? And the answer is always, but Jared, I felt so good and for me that's the moment where I go, well, you know, just because we talk about riding or running or racing, to feel obviously early in the race you're going to feel different to what you're going to feel after 200k in your legs. And that's how you should be thinking. I feel great now, but I actually have to measure my effort. And as we've said many times, whether you're running a two minute race or 20 minute FTP or a, you know, a four hour marathon, you've got to measure your effort over the time you think it's going to take you. So if you're doing an event like this and you know, you're an 11 hour 3 peaks rider or that's what your goal is, or 11:30, then why would you be riding ahead of that schedule in the first two or three hours? Surely you've got enough intelligence and logic to think that that's a bad strategy. But yet everybody does it and you And I have talked about this. We actually did a little bit of research about marathon runners and how they poorly execute. People say on our social media that everybody knows to negative split is the goal. But, but you and I know that not many people do that. And peaks is exactly this. Our athletes were in the minority. I'm talking 1 or 2% of the athletes in this event would have felt strong at the end. And, and you know, people say, oh, that's okay. At least I got through it. Well, there's getting through it comfortably and there's getting through it with agony. And I don't know which one I'm going to choose. I'm going to choose one where I'm really enjoying the day and, and getting to experience the, the, the glory of executing well. And, and you know, I've done both. And, and I can tell you I didn't enjoy where I was basically survival. I was actually in survival mode. Whereas the other time it was like, how good is this? I feel super strong because I've just kept to my ranges and, and left my ego back at the start. And, and I think, I don't know if it's ego or if it's just. You think that you go by feel because you feel so good early on that, that that's what you should do. You should ride to that feeling. But we know that numbers don't lie. You know, all the training you've done, you know, they're the, they're the real numbers, so you should stick with those. And, and if you want to dismiss them, and I just think that's, that's, that's your, it's back on you. You've got to, you've got to take responsibility for that. And we say that, say that a lot. You know, if you make a, if you make a decision, you have to wear the consequences of that decision. If you ride the first client too hard, you're just setting yourself up for failure.

Yep. Yeah. I want to touch on the Tokyo marathon thing you mentioned because we got sick of people telling us that we were wrong with our, with our attitude towards negative splitting. And I got really petty with it and I went and collated the data of the top 500 athletes at Tokyo, and this is the first 500 results. Because I was like, well, everyone says good runners know how to execute properly. I said, oh, let's look at the first 500. And out of the top 500, only 10.4% negative splitted. So one in every 10, pretty much actually negative splitted the marathon and only one in the top 100. So we know a lot of that comes from the fact that the top 100 are really racing. And so they're all pushing each other too hard in the first half. But that said, you know, one in the top 100 to actually negative split. And of course, they're. Yeah, they are racing for their career. And so it's slightly different, but 10% the first 500, that's irrefutable evidence that.

But we dug in a little bit deeper and looked at guys who are coming 25th or 110th. You know, there's no need for you to be running with the front pack who are going to run 204 or 206 when you're a 216 runner. You know, that's not logical, but that's what they do. And we have a lot of feedback saying, you know, elite runners, they have to do that. They have to stay with the front pack. And my question is, oh, why? Why do they have to do that? Why don't they run at their level and try and run home faster? And maybe instead of being a 216runner, if they, if they pace it well, they could be a 214runner.

Yeah. So I just wanted to point that out, but I want to ask you about your own experience with peaks. And, and this can kind of tie into. Because we want to talk about our race strategy in more detail and really how we prepare the athletes. But. And this, because it's, it's how you should approach every event. But you had one experience where you were actually, um, towing or you're riding with some tribal athletes in the event yourself, and you gave the option of saying, here's the pace I'm going to ride. And, and it was a pace you picked that you thought a few of the travel. Travel athletes could hold with you. Um, but you lifted up them up to their own devices and said, you can do your own race plan. This is years ago. Um, or you can stick with me and I'm going to write a really even tempo and tell us about, you know, the ones that decided to stick with you and the ones that decided to go off on their own.

Yeah, it's. It's one that I'll never forget because I learned a lot about, about coaching that day. I think. I think I did make a mistake as a coach that day and let athletes make their own decisions rather than being really strict with them saying, why would you change what we've done? Because we all prepared together that year. We did. You know, I don't know, 10 weeks of training in the Dandenongs on a Sunday and we done our normal Saturday endurance ride and we all knew our abilities. And I think the thing I kind of wanted to happen was let people have their own method and learn from their mistakes. But I could have prevented it had I been more disciplined and strict with them. So maybe it was a mistake as a coach, but I'm not sure about that. I know that they'll learn a lesson from what they did, but on that day, I think we were planning just to ride. There's a big thing in peaks where there's an 8 hour group, a 9 hour group, a 10 hour group, 11 hour group, 12 hour group, and they've got ride leaders. And for me, I think I'm not that happy with that style of. I think it's got some really good merits. But how many riders can actually ride 8 or exactly 9 hours, or exactly 10 hours, or exactly 11? What about the 924 rider or the 1050 rider or the 1117 rider? Where do they fit in? So people either want to be with the nine or ten hour. And marathons do the same. You know, am I a 330runner or am I a 4 hour runner? What about the guys in between? Are you supposed to run faster or slower than the group you're with? So I think it's a bad strategy. I think it's a bad idea in general. In the world where you have these paces and I think it takes the. You rely on other people and that's something we don't ever want to do as a coaching group, we want to have total control of our own destiny. And I think that's a lesson in itself that putting your hands in others, they could make a mistake. And what do you say at the end, my race leader, my pacer, got it wrong. Well, that's really on you. You can't be blaming other people. I would rather be in control of my own destiny. And so this particular year I decided that we'd train together and we would have a strategy where we would not worry about the actual overall time. But I can guarantee the guys that it would be under nine hours. That was our goal. And so here I am talking about not doing that. And I'm saying, here's your goal. But to cut the story short, I started off with the guys, we got to the first climb and I stayed with my strategy, which was going to be riding between 70 and 80% of my FTP on all the climbs. And that was our plan. That would get us there in reasonable time, under nine hours, somewhere between 8:30 and nine hours. And we would have a great day. And I think we had six or seven guys with us and only one person stayed with me on that climb and he stayed with me the whole day. And he ended up with the time that he's never done better since. It was, it was an all time, you know, performance by this guy and he was probably not the best rider in the group yet. All the other guys said, do you mind if I just go, I feel good, I'll be fine, I'll just ride at my own pace. And I said, yeah, yeah, you make your own decisions. And I was in my mind going, oh, I don't want to really, I'd rather they didn't do that. But, but you know, they want to do that. I don't want to spoil their day, really. That was kind of where I was. But, but it was against what we'd all talked about. It was against our race plan. It was, it would. We trained together knowing these numbers. And so, you know, I thought, oh, you know, they'll learn a lot about themselves. They'll either have a great day and smash their times or it'll end up disastrous. And, and you know, the simple finish of the story was the one guy who stayed with me, he ended up with an all time great. He passed every single one of the other guys who left and some of the other riders he beat by over an hour. That's how much they failed by. And they were all prepared the same. So it wasn't like we were comparing apples with oranges here. We'd all done the same training, so it was just purely execution that caused them to not get the event result that they deserved. And to me it was a great lesson on you have to stay disciplined and you can't get ahead of yourself. And sure, I found it tough as well, but I was basically in the wind the whole day. So the things that we talk about in strategies for our athletes is in between the climbs, hide, get a toe, don't do any work on the front of any bunches, just sit in and follow. But that's where you can save yourself a whole lot of effort so that when it counts, when you come to the climb. But that was an example that I wanted to tell because you can make decisions based on how you feel, like I said earlier, that are going to be catastrophic for you. And you just can't get ahead of yourself at any point in endurance races and that's the point of what we're getting across in this podcast.

And now, as a coach, you will never let any athlete do that again. And you're super strict and no more lessons need to be learned. You can tell them exactly what's going to happen if they try and do that. And we really have to grill it in. And it takes a lot for an athlete to trust that process and to trust what you're going to say when you're actually in that position. You get to the first climb and you do feel really good. And it takes a lot of discipline to stick to what the coach said. But one message we really stressed before the race was, you know, you don't want to get to the end of the race and have had a bad experience because of your decision making and because of stuff that's in your control. It's a big day. Just like an Ironman. Stuff can go wrong. And so you might not get the result you want because of a lot of external factors, but that's okay. If you've done executed everything in your power, you train the best you could, you execute on the day the best you could, and something else gets in your way, then you're not going to lose sleep over that. But it's a pretty bad phone call to have with your coach afterwards when you go, I should have listened. I didn't. I was potentially arrogant in my own ability. I thought I, you know, could beat all the lessons that you were saying that you've already seen play out every, every single race in an Ironman since 1988. That's not a good position to be in. And you will lose sleep over that if you go through that.

Yeah. And it's another year before you can actually do something about it. And, you know, it's a big motivator. But, yeah, you're right. The decision I made from that point on and this year, we were pretty adamant that anybody who wants to do this event, if they're not going to follow our race strategies, we actually don't want them to be a part of being coached for this event. And everybody had to buy into that. And so much so that, you know, our race plan strategy beforehand was showing examples of, of someone who did it really well, you know, and, and trusting the process is, is. Is what it's all about. And having confidence in, in the strategies that's put in place. And it's not a dictatorship. It's a. It's a discussion between the coach and the athlete saying, you know, here's Your numbers from all your training, this is where you need to stay to. And you have to agree to that. Both athlete and coach have to come up with those numbers. And based on your, you know, I mean, your current form at the moment, barring illness, we've had a couple of people who've gone into this event, you know, during the COVID period, not knowing they had Covid and, and not understanding why they were struggling so much. But that's ex. That's external. This is, this is out of your control when you've got this situation and not knowing they had it and just finding out a day later when they tested. But, but, you know, this year, it was so good to have those phone calls afterwards with. I've got to say, it is a, it's, it's no different to Ironman, no different to marathon. Every time I coach or, or any of our coaches coaching endurance athletes who are raw and emotional straight after the event, this is, this is what coaching and coach relationship athlete is all about. When you know that the athlete has unbelievably nailed their execution and they are over the moon and you're on the phone and, you know, the athlete on the other end is so happy that they're so emotional. It's raw. They're, you know, they're in tears, some of them, and you think, oh, wow, this means so much. And, and it's, it gets me as well. I end up the same. I'm just, you know, just so happy for them. I'm getting emotional as well. And it's, it's a great, it's a great feeling between, you know, private feeling. And I'm saying this on a podcast, which I don't want to embarrass anybody, but it's, it's, it's something I think people need to hear how much it means when you do get it right, when you nail it, you just get emotional. You just, you just, you're so proud of yourself for executing in a manner that you didn't think you could do. And you, you stayed disciplined and they're the things you're happy about because you kept in control all day. And it's a shared experience between you and your coach that you just want to hug them. And, you know, all of the phone calls that we had with our five athletes were incredibly positive because every single athlete nailed it. And that's the first time that's ever happened. And, and I've just enjoyed that, that, that post race phone call the most out of I have in a long Time and, and you know, you know, there's, there's bits there where, you know, the athlete's so excited that I actually can't, they can't talk and they just can't. They're just, they're just so grateful that, that A, they listened and B, they were, they were disciplined enough to execute the way they had to. And that's a great feeling.

Yeah, that's, that's the kind of part we want to finish on. As we've spoken a lot about mindset and race strategy and race preparation, but the athletes actually have to go out there and do what we said is actually so hard to do. It's so simple, but it's so hard. And they all did that. And like you said, majority of the time athletes have good experience but had to have 100. You know, good experience is pretty special because every year something else can go wrong and, and the athletes might not have that good experience because A, they made some poor decisions or, or you know, they just made some mistakes nutrition wise or something like that. Yeah, but to have that, that full 100 experience, I think controversially, you know, you're really adamant to people about this event that it's actually not about the time, which is so for anyone that is part of the three piece community, that is just the total opposite of what it's all about. You know, the whole mindset of the thing is what time are you going to do three picks. You know, you've got to go under eight hours, you got to go into nine hours and you have the opposite approach and say so many external factors for the day about what time you can do and you need to ride the climbs at your, your pace. But in between you might get lucky and get in a bunch of 40 and you don't have to do any work and get towed at 42ks an hour, not overworking to the next climb or you might be stuck a bit solo. There might be, you might be solo, you might be with three or five people and yeah, a little bit of strategy about what you try and do. But, but you might be going at 26Ks an hour into a headwind in those in between sections and you lose 20 to 30 minutes just in those flat sections. So you know, you always talk about that we have our goal times for sure, but that is not the focus of this. The focus is to have a good experience and to hear and see and have the post race calls with the athletes who had such a positive experience was just the absolute cherry on top and a Brilliant way to cap off a great Sunday for the tribal athletes.

Yeah. And you know, the examples we use is hardly any of our athletes were anywhere near the 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 hours. You know, our best rider, who's a 60 year old, he did 827. You know, where does that put him in the 8 or 9 category? You know, another one of our riders actually just did. Did do 901.

Yeah.

You know, another 9, 19, another 927, another 930. But all of these athletes were in their capability ranges and it's. Oh, yeah. And this was my time. I had the greatest day out. I'm so happy. The way I executed. That was so much fun. Passing four or 500 people in the last, you know, 50k with people yelling at me, saying, oh, far out. How strong are you? Way to go. You know, even people are in agony having enough energy to say, far out, you're riding well. And that's the bit that they love the most. And oh yeah, this is my time. And, and that's what I wanted to get across was, you know, the time is what your time is. And as you said, there's so many factors that can, can change that. What happens in between the, you know, the climbs. So the climbs are like 50% of the ride and in between is also 50%. So you can be lucky or unlucky with the speed that you get. You get in between. But, but it's, it's actually the experience. And ask any one of those tribal athletes, you know, are they. Is it the time that made it so good or is it the experience? And every one of them have said to us in this post activities call, post race analysis call, that they had the best experience on the day that they've ever had in their, in their athletic career. And that's a, that's a big sentence. So, so yeah, that's the bit to me is, you know. Yes. That we are. I'm the most competitive person who wants to know times the whole time. But I've had many days where I've performed as well as I possibly could. I've had standout days where the time hasn't been that good. It's just, just that I've just really nailed the execution. There's been other days where I've won the race and performed poorly and I'm happier with the execution day than I am the poor performance. And that's how we should be as age groupers. We should be. The icing on the cake is to be on the podium or win your age group. But it's more about you, the challenge that you've set yourself with an event like this, how well can you strategize from training, preparing, getting your sessions in for the previous year and all for this big one day, and then getting there the night before and making sure you stay disciplined and getting your nutrition right and riding in your ranges. That's the thing that you'll be most proud of. And by the way, this was my time. And you're not defined by the time. You're defined by how, how you finished the event. Were you standing or were you crawling? That's in my mind. More important.

Yeah, it was, it was pretty special on Sunday. We were, you know, everyone was messaging in the coaches chat that we have every checkpoint update. You send a screenshot of where the athletes are going and, and he's sitting there going, come on. As it just. You're a little bit tense watching, you know, and, and as the athletes get to that last checkpoint, everyone's going, come on, just get to the end. And then as each one would finish, you know, that elation of, you know, they had the success and then to, yeah, hear the emotion afterwards. You know, one of our athletes who's been with us for a very long time was just, yeah, as you said, is really, just really raw and emotional, which is the best part about it. And there's nothing to hide from there. It's, it's the best part of competing because you give everything mentally and physically in the preparation and the race, and you just get to share that moment and just. It's just bloody awesome.

Yeah. And look, you know, it's easy when it's the next day and day after, you sort of settle down, but, you know, the phone call 10 minutes after you cross the line, it's still very raw. It's that, you know, you've still got massive fatigue and you're just coming to terms with far out. I just did that and I did it really well and it just blurps out, you know, every emotion you feel just blurps out. And that's, that's, that's a, that's a really good experience for both the athlete and for the coach.

Yeah, we're just super proud of our athletes and, and honestly, congratulations to anyone that got through the day and, and even if you didn't have a good experience, you know, we know the mental toughness it takes to get to the line and it's actually, it is definitely harder to get through it when you, when you haven't paced it as well as you wanted, and you've really got to crawl up that last climb and, and every single inch and ounce of your body wants to just give in and throw on the tower because it's just absolute hell. And so to battle to the line, we would congratulate anyone to get there because it takes a lot of mental toughness. Once you've gone, you see a lot of athletes go so deep that, you know, there's. It feels like there's almost no return. And, and you yourself have ended up in a medical tent in this race for various reasons and mistakes you've made yourself. So it's not like we're coming from a place of. You've done every single race perfectly, as always. That's, that's the lessons we're saying. But, yeah, just. It's just an epic event that we really wanted to highlight this week.

Yeah. And look, Joe, we've talked a lot about the execution and staying disciplined and the whole day experience, but if you don't get the planning right, the, the training and, and doing the right sessions and, and you're really preparing yourself, well, from a long way back, you know, this is no different to what we talk about. People ringing up and trying to get coaching for eight, eight weeks to a. To a 70.3 or, you know, to, even to a. To an ironman, where you're just not giving yourself enough time to, to get the right outcome. And, And Peaks is the same people are in love with, oh, yeah, let's do Peaks. It looked like an epic day. And there's all the social media, there's always hype around it and they forget the actual training bit. You know, you have to do a lot of big days. You know, six months out, you need to be riding, you know, when you're going to be out there for 10 or 11 hours, you need in training. Between six months out to the race day, you need to be doing multiple long rides. And don't forget that that's part of the event. It's not all about the race day. It's. It's everything that you. That's why the emotion's so raw, because it's not about just the day, it's about what you've sacrificed all the way to that point. All those crappy days where the weather's been, you know, you don't want to go out there and you know you're getting tired and you know you're getting grumpy, but you've. You've got to do this stuff to get the result you want. So the execution is key. We've honed in on that today. But don't forget, the program needs to be really appropriate for you so that you can actually get to do the executing properly.

That's a great way to finish. We hope you've enjoyed our analysis of this event and how it can apply to any other event that you're going to line up for next. And just remember that, yeah, plan, prepare, perform, that is our motto and that is how to get the most out of yourself. So we hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to be coached by us and help with your race strategy and these race tactics for your next race, you can go to tribalocoaching.com au and sign up or apply for coaching. There's that's it for this episode. Thank you very much for listening. We'll see you on the next one.