Using Science To Improve Endurance Performance with Dylan Johnson

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, Jared Donnelly. Based out of North Carolina, Dylan Johnson is a professional cyclist, a YouTuber and a cycling enthusiast as well as a cycling coach that has over 10 years of racing and training experience. He draws from that experience as a top level ultra endurance mountain and gravel racer. But more importantly, he actually looks at the science and makes coaching decisions based on peer reviewed research. And if you look at his YouTube channel that has about 130,000 subscribers, some absolutely brilliant topics on there. He basically looks at all the latest scientific studies and papers and does reviews on what's actually working and worthwhile for training and racing and what is not worthwhile to pay attention to. And we had a great conversation with him today where he gave some absolutely brilliant bits of advice for what you should be paying attention to as a cyclist to help yourself improve. As well as unpacking his recent experience at the famous, now famous and ever growing unbound gravel race which happened a couple of weeks ago, and breaking down his performance at the race and the unique pacing strategy that he went with which we absolutely love. And it was a great conversation, wasn't it dad?

Yeah, we really covered some great topics today with Dylan and yeah, I just love his approach, his attitude and his willingness to change. And that was one of the things that we asked him about was, you know, how his philosophy and he self coached and how he has changed from when he was, you know, an 18 year old to where he is now. And there were some really key things he was talking about and understanding the importance of execution in endurance racing that is gold for anybody. Whether you're doing endurance, marathon running, triathlon, endurance or gravel or mountain bike, these are gold really key concepts that he gets across that is so much aligned with our philosophy. And and I love the fact that he used the world championships of gravel racing to not go, as we call them sheep many times, not go with the front pack and race his own strategy and be willing to let the front guys go. And I love that fact that he's, you know, he's experimenting in the biggest race of his career to do that and the outcome was that he, you know, he improved his time but unfortunately the competition's better and better every year it becomes more popular so his placing doesn't actually improve. But things you talked about on the Podcast were really goal with nutrition in endurance athletes. And also I think how long your endurance session should be in preparation for a 10 hour or 15 hour or 20 hour event. These are really good tips that we cover in the podcast. And I suppose one of the final things that I found was intriguing was the hindsight of his peaking strategy that he felt he actually got a little bit wrong and how he's going to learn from that. So I think there's so much gold nuggets being thrown from him experimenting on himself and his wealth of knowledge of the studies that he's researched. Yeah, there's some great topics today to really listen to.

Dylan Johnson, a very big welcome to the podcast. Our first question that we like to ask every guest is, what does cycling mean to you?

Whoa. Right out of the gate. Well, thank you so much for having me. I mean, cycling is most of what I do. I mean, it's my occupation at this point, both with my YouTube channel and kind of a little bit of professional racing as well. But I mean also it's been a passion of mine since I was, I don't know, I think at 12 years old is when my dad got me my first mountain bike and we started mountain biking together and started racing at 14. So, yeah, I mean it's been, it's been probably my biggest focus for well over 10 years now.

Yes, it's, it's fantastic seeing your YouTube channel and there's so many really great videos you've put up for the listeners that we have on our podcast. It's worth checking out Dylan's YouTube videos because there's so many good information packages in there. And one of the things that we really want to sort of establish is you've got yourself from a mountain bike into a gravel rider. Tell us and explain to the listeners, is there a subtle difference in how you prepare or are you still doing the same method of training that you were doing for mountain biking?

Yeah, uh, there are subtle differences, but the type of mountain bike racing that I was doing I would actually say is fairly similar to the bigger gravel races that you'll see here. Mainly because I was, I was into ultra endurance mountain bike racing. So there was a pretty substantial chunk of my early 20s where my primary focus was 100 mile mountain bike racing. And we've got a series here in the US for 100 mile mountain bike racing. That, that was my focus for probably four years. Um, and that's, that's almost all I did. Uh, I, I race a few shorter races. There was a brief Period when I was a junior where I did some road races and some cyclocross races, but mountain bike racing was always kind of my focus. Um, but those a hundred mile mountain bike races, they'll take, you know, six to eight hours to complete. And a lot of the big gravel races here in the US tend to be over 100 miles. So anywhere from 100 miles to 200 miles. And they also tend to take, you know, six to eight hours to complete, sometimes longer. So the duration of racing that I was training for didn't really change. I would say that the subtle distinctions are more in the technical handling ability. Obviously you need a little bit more technical handling skills for mountain bike racing. And then there's probably a little bit more tactics involved with gravel racing because, uh, there's a lot more drafting involved in, in a gravel race. Not that there wasn't drafting involved in marathon mountain bike racing. There actually there actually can be because a lot of the race is done on, on gravel, but there's more of it in, in actual gravel racing. So I, it, it wasn't really much of a learning curve for me to figure out the tactics like I, I follow road racing. I kind of, you know, I kind of know how road tactics work and I got the hang of that fairly quickly.

I would say let's, let's dig into your most recent probably you'd call it your a race which was the gravel unbound, the world championships of gravel racing, which we had one of our guys come and do in America. And just let's really dig, dig into your race strategy and I think it's really an interesting thing for the, our listeners to understand about your execution, about your race plan and, and how you went about it, knowing the standard had improved incredibly over the journey that you've been racing. This particular race you've done this how many times this particular race?

This is my, this was my third, my third time. Um, yeah, so ever. I mean every single, every single year the competition seems to get stiffer and stiffer at unbound. And I mean this was by far my best executed unbound in that I didn't have, I didn't bonk or cramp or crack and I didn't have major mechanical issues like flat tires which are so common out there.

You just went the wrong way. That was one of the problems.

Well, yeah, yeah, that, that cost me about seven and a half minutes and, and probably, probably cost me anywhere from five to five to eight places depending on how well I sprinted in the group that was right ahead of me.

We're not super familiar. Do you have the map on your, on your black computer, on your Garmin or anything or. Because there's obviously no directions out there. Yeah.

So, I mean, most races, they have the course marked, so you can just follow the course arrows unbound is not marked at all. You need to have the course loaded on your head unit. I was with a group of four guys. All of us had our, had the course loaded on the head unit and somehow all four of us missed it. But in our defense, it was pouring rain at this point. So hard to hear your head unit beeping and hard to read your head unit when it's covered in mud. So we saw Freddy Oet, Freddy Oet's.

Situation where he lost his head unit and then had to come to an intersection and just stop and wait for the next person to come because he didn't know where to go left or right.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, that happens out there too. Or, or people are riding for so long that their, you know, head unit runs out of batteries. So. But yeah, I guess the, the tactic that I used, you know, if there are a lot of triathletes listening, this is probably going to sound pretty familiar to what somebody might do for an Ironman. Obviously, in a, in an Ironman triathlon, drafting is illegal. Right? I know, I know that, I know that they still kind of like try to get behind each other even though that even though there's a, you know, a legal distance, there's still a little bit of a drafting effect. I, I know that all plays in, but. So, so basically what I did is, is I rode the race as if it was a time trial instead of riding the race as if it was a mass start event, which it is. It is a mass start event with drafting legal. And I, I rode at last year's winning average speed for the first half and the second half. And basically what that meant was that I let myself get dropped very early on because almost always the group goes too hard at the beginning and then slows down. And I was hoping that I would catch a lot of riders as the race progressed. And I did. I mean, I was catching riders all day, just non stop catching riders. I mean, at mile 25, I was probably outside of the top 100. And then by the time I hit the line at 200 miles, I was 25th place.

Can you take us through? You've got this plan in your, in your mind. You've, you've decided I'm not going to go with the lead Group that must be, as a competitor, that must be such a difficult decision. At what point in the race did you make that? In the, in the, the nine hour day that you, that you had planned. How far into the race did you decide this is too.

I mean, I let myself get dropped from the lead group probably after 30 minutes. I mean, honestly, from the, from the minute the race started, I, I could see the lead group inching ahead of me. I mean it's like, it's like there wasn't even necessarily a decisive moment where I let myself get dropped. It's just like the lead group was like, was going away as soon as the race started. And I knew that that would happen if I was having a good day. And I did the typical strategy of stay with the lead group as long as, until you get dropped. I might have been able to stay with them until mile 120 or 130 probably. And then I, I obviously would have been a lot more cooked for the last 70 miles than I was when I was doing this strategy because obviously if I'm, if I'm letting myself get dropped immediately, I have a lot more in the tank and I did, I, I felt, I felt better in the second half than I have ever felt at unbound before. The first time I did unbound, the second half was, was absolutely miserable. There was a point at which I was sitting on the side of the road for 10 minutes. It was so bad. And somehow I, I got ninth place and this was 2018. I got ninth place with a time that was over an hour and a half slower than the time I got this year. That got me a 25th, 25th place finish. So it just kind of shows you the level that this race has gotten to.

We absolutely love watching your recap video of the race because dad was licking his lips watching it because we are so much about the same philosophy of not gassing yourself like that. And you don't just because the whole race is doing it. The whole race could be wrong. And you are big on this and you've spoken about it a lot, that when you break down the numbers and you are such a data person, when you break down the numbers, every single one of these endurance races follows that pattern of even the winners, even though they won their power data from the first half to the second half, even if you broke it down into quarters, it just absolutely plummets. So yeah, we really want to dive into it a little bit more. We spoke about it on our podcast last week. But now that you're here. Take us through kind of the mindset around it. Like dad said, letting them go after half an hour is tough mentally, but then the whole experience of catching people all day and then even more so the experience of finishing so strong.

Yeah, I mean I think that, so letting, letting riders go so early when you, when you could easily stay with them is obviously very tough mentally. And I, I don't, I think a lot of people would have a very hard time actually doing that. I think a lot of people talk about negative splitting and talk about doing an even pacing strategy and the amount of people that actually do that is, is, you know, when they talk about it is very small, especially in these endurance races. Because the thing about, the thing about when a race is, is going to take seven plus hours is that in order to actually evenly pace or actually negatively split, you have to. Your perceived exertion is so low in the first hour. Like it, it doesn' like you're racing right like that first hour. My perceived, you know, if we're doing perceived exertion out of 10, like 1, 1 out of 10. My perceived exertion was like at a 3. Right. It was so low because I'm so fresh because I've tapered for this race. Um, and I'm, you know, I'm doing a decent power output but like it, it feels like I'm doing nothing. You're so, you're so hyped up on adrenaline, you got a bunch of caffeine in your system. You know, you, you fresh because you've tapered and it, and it's very hard to actually pull off.

What percentage, Dylan, were you sitting at and what was your goal of your, of your power?

Yeah, I, so I, I'm going to be honest. I, my targets were more around speed and less around power.

Looking back though, looking back at the.

Data, looking, looking back, I think in that first, I think in that first hour to two hours I was trying to hold between it. It depended whether it was a climb or a descent. I was trying to do a little bit more on the climbs, but I was probably trying to hold between 70 and 85% of FTP and that that.

Perceived exertion of 70 to 80% in hour one compared to hour eight. The perceived exertion scale. What. Where would you rate it there?

Yeah, I mean so, so if you're doing a 10 hour race and you just take the first hour versus the last hour and you, and you wrote it, let's say you wrote it 75% the entire time 75% for most people in the first hour is probably going to be a three if we're doing like a one to 10 scale. And then by hour 10, if you did it right, you should be at a 10 out of 10, right. That, that's, that's how you know you did it right. If you can still hold it. But it feels like a 10 out of 10. So the perceived exertion is just going up throughout the day. And the thing about endurance rate, so I would say that probably if it's like a one hour time trial, you could definitely expect that to be the case where, you know, you start the first five minutes, you know, is a, is a five out of 10 and then it just keeps going up and by the last five minutes it's a.

10 out of 10.

But the thing about endurance racing is that, you know, depending on your gle, you know, your glycogen state or, or what the terrain's like or whatever it is, who you're, who you happen to be riding with, you kind of get these fluctuations of how you feel. Like some, you know, sometimes you feel better in our six than you did an hour five for some reason. So it's not necessarily linear like that. But I will say that the only part of the day where I was maxed out, going as hard as I possibly could was the last 15 minutes.

That's awesome. We're so happy to hear you say that. It's just exactly what we want our listeners to hear because it's the message we try and hammer home all the time. And even just then when you said, you know, the first five minutes of a time trial, if it was only an hour, should be a 5 out of 10. But still, most people get that part wrong and they still go way too hard in that first five minutes. Especially for you, though, being a, having a profile like yours, everyone knows who you are, so it must be even harder to let the front pack go because everyone's going, what's happening to Dylan? You know, or you don't pay any attention to that. It'd be good for this is to hear.

Yeah, there were, there were people that thought I was having a bad day. I passed people and they said, oh, Dylan, you having a bad day? No, I'm not.

You're about to though, because I just passed you.

Right? Yeah, I mean, I, when I, when I say I was out of the top 100 at mile 25, that's, that's not an exaggeration.

Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah. And do you think you made the right decision? You kind of finished YouTube video going both ways.

Yeah, I, so I, I have been going back and forth about whether it was the right decision or not. I think, I mean, I said this at the end of the YouTube video. I could have gone with the, the typical strategy and then when I got dropped at mile 130, I could have been further up the road and then by the time I hit the finish, I end up with a better time or trying to stay with them for that long could have been so catastrophic to me physiologically that I, I would have ended up, you know, 30 minutes slower than I, than I ended up. I, I really won't know because I can't go back and do the race again. And even if I do, you know, if I do a different strategy next year, it's, it's different conditions, it's, it's different competitors, you know, it's not, it's not apples to apples. So I'm never going to know. But as of right now, my three attempts, it was the best execution, just not the best placing. And I think that all comes down to the competition has gotten out of control at that race.

It's a really good summary. And let's just put our coach's hat on because you've been a coach for a long time. If you are coaching yourself, which you obviously are, what are you saying to yourself for the next time I do this particular race, am I going to aim to get my threshold of 75% higher than it was for this time? What are my key things that I need to do to be able to ride with the front pack for longer and just give our listeners your coaching plan philosophy that you're going to do from now till next time you do the unbounding.

Well, you know, I don't think that my, my run up to unbound was perfect, actually. I think the biggest mistake that I made this year is gravel racing is just exploding here in the US and there are so many races to choose from and I think I bit off a little bit more than I could chew this spring. I mean I was, there was a, there was a five week period where I did a, like a major gravel race five weeks in a row. So five weekends in a row. I was, I was racing my bike for six to eight hours on the weekend. And you know, there's a lot of crit racers who will do that, which I don't think is that big a deal, or cross country mountain bike racers who will do that where they race every weekend, but they're only racing for an hour and a half or, you know, or maybe two hours. I think that doing that every single weekend and having it be a six to eight hour effort, that was pretty much the only hard riding that I was doing. And, and other than, and, and I felt, I felt very tired for the three weeks leading into Unbound. And, and to be honest, it would have been nice to get in a solid training block in those three weeks, but I, but honestly it was more, I was more focused on recovery and I felt good enough going into Unbound. Like I didn't feel tired the week of unbound, but perhaps my fitness could have been a little bit, a little bit higher had I focused a little bit more in training and a little bit less on racing is what I'll say.

That's a fantastic lesson for everybody to hear because, you know, even the best people sometimes get it wrong. And it's easy in hindsight to go back and think, well, I thought I was doing the right thing because I want race intensity so that when I get to the main race, my body's gonna cope with it. But we know, and we've told this to many of our listeners, that you've probably got a window of six weeks where you're in your peak form and it could possibly be that you were probably a week outside of that you're on your way down rather than because you've lost so much fitness because you're recovering from so many races. And we use the example a lot in the Diamond League for Athletics, where they've got you a period of six to eight weeks where they're racing for points to win huge prize money. So they need to be up for a long time. And it's really good to watch people manage that whole period. And that's different though, because this is endurance sport and most of those guys in the Diamond League, the furthest they're running might be 1500 or 5k or 10k, whereas you're doing six 8 hour races five weeks in a row. And I think the listeners need to hear that. You just can't keep beating yourself up week after week and expecting you to be performing at the top of your level when it counts the most. Would, would you say that's a good summary?

Yeah, definitely. And I, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think that long distance triathletes actually tend to get this right more than cyclists do. I mean, usually they're picking one or two big races on the calendar that they're training for and they're not necessarily. I mean pro cyclists are racing all the time as opposed to triathletes who seem to, you know, just, just focus on. On a couple.

That's spot on. We just. I think that I heard you having a conversation with an athlete this week about that. And they were just doing their 70.3 athlete and they wanted to do. They've kind of done a whole bunch of 70.3s over our summer here. And then they had another one penciled in in a couple of months and you could talk them out of it. Dad. And just said it's probably a little too many. Let's just, let's just back that off. Is that right?

Yeah. And I really wanted them to do some more training. Exactly what Dylan's just said. Get a training block in, skip that race. Even though this particular athlete was in great form, they'd been winning every event. And when you're winning it's so much fun to keep racing because that's what we do it for. And why would you opt out of a race where you could. She won her last race by 15 minutes, so why would you not race?

Because.

But eventually it will bite you because you haven't done the preparation for your big race. And what you said was spot on about Ironman training. You actually can't do a lot of Ironmans back to back because the majority of age groupers that we're talking about and talking to here on this podcast are doing between nine and 15 hours. So they just can't. And most of them aren't full time. They're actually working and family. So you've got to actually select a race that might only be one in six months and, and do all these little races leading up to it. But, but the experience you had, I think with endurance training in particular, you've got to be real careful about how many races of that length and, and physiologically your body just won't cope eventually.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I think that there's, there's you can even find. And I'm not, I'm not super big on anecdotes. I like, I like looking at research. But you can find anecdotes of this in pro cycling. One that comes to mind is, is Matthew Heyman when he won Perry Roubaix, he hadn't. Because of an injury. He had not raced at all that spring. Like Perry Roubaix was, was, I don't know, one of his first races in, in quite a while. Versus Perry Roubaix is at the end of the Spring Classic season. So everybody that he's racing against had been racing every, you know, the past month or so. Over a month. Right. They. They have a lot of racing in their legs. And he, he, I. He obviously had the performance of his life at that race. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he was fresher than his competition was. I mean, of course, I don't know that because I'm not his coach or anything, but it's a theory that I have.

You must know you're talking to the right audience. Speaking about Matty Heyman on this podcast. Mostly Aussies listening to this podcast. We actually got to speak to him on the podcast, asking about it. And, yeah, he did say it was a big combination of freshening up and the ability to have a really good training block again without having the fatigue of racing. So, last couple of questions on Unbound before we move on. Quick one. Do you have a coach yourself or are you coaching yourself?

I coach myself.

Great. And then you mentioned that you went based on speed, and we wouldn't normally ever recommend a triathlete, for example, to time trial on speed because the conditions can always just be too varying. But from my understanding, you did it for specific reasons, and that was based around the previous year's results. So can you explain that thought process and why you went about it via speed instead of power?

Right. So I had, I have an idea of what power is too high and what heart rate is too high. So had I gone. Gone off on this mission of holding last year's average speed, and I just. My heart rate was through the roof and my power was higher than it should have been, I for sure would have backed it down because I roughly know if my heart, you know, if my heart rate's over 170, that's probably not sustainable. If it's over 180, I'm in deep trouble and I need to back down very quickly. But probably in the 160s is manageable for a race of this duration. Um, as far as power goes, you know, I, I think I was, I was thinking if I can, if I can try to do 300 to 320 on the climbs and then two 80ish everywhere else, that's. That might be manageable if I'm having a good day. But really, the reason why speed was my target and not power and not heart rate is because I, I was not even necessarily going into this race thinking I want a good time, like I want my, I want, I want a fast time, I want a, a good placing, right. I want to, I want to place high and, and so that's why I was taking a look at last year's and not just last year's but previous years winning average speed and it seemed like 20 miles per hour was the benchmark. Normally Norma, they don't even hit 20 miles per hour. It's, it's usually 19 something but it's very close to 20. Last year they did 20 right at 20. And I think the year that, the fir, in 2019 when Colin Strickland went under 10 hours for the first time, his average speed was 20. So it's like if I can hold 20, I, I have, you know, I'll have a good placing by the end. And it turns out that the average speed this year, I think the winning average Speed was like 21.4 or something. It was so fast. So, you know, there's a multitude of factors contributing to that, but that's, that's kind of my reasoning for going with speed as opposed to power or heart rate.

Great answer. Just one more point I wanted to bring up was how did you go with your nutrition? And it was interesting watching a lot of the highlight shows that we watched and the nutrition tents were all set up really well. People seem to be very organized. What practice did you do? Obviously you were doing six to eight hour races week in, week out. So how long had it taken you to dial in that this is the nutrition I need for a 10 hour or 9 hour 50 race?

Yeah, so I've been doing, I mean I've been doing a hundred mile mountain bike races since I, I, the first a hundred mile mountain bike race I did, I was 15 years old. Um, and I've been doing well at 100. There was a, it was a long period of time where it was a learning curve where those races were not going well for me. You know, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. But I was doing well at a hundred mile races since I was 21. And, and I mean over that time I really figured out what, what works well for me. And I, and I am totally somebody that can bonk for sure if I, if I don't stay on top of my nutrition, I can a hundred percent bonk late in a race and it's happened many times. So I think the thing, the thing to realize about nutrition is that it's very individual. But with that being said, there, there are, there are a few rules that you can follow if you're, if you're a newbie and you don't even know where to start, personally, what I do is I, I shoot for 80 ish. If, if I can shoot for over 80 grams of carbs per hour, that's probably good. And I get most of those carbohydrates from my fluid intake. I use flow formulas and they've got, they've got a ratio of maltodextrin to fructose that's been shown to have a really high absorption rate in the literature. And then I'll also use goo energy gels. They've also got, got the same ratio of maltodextrin to fructose. And, and when you have, when you have this ratio, the multidectrin and the fructose can utilize different transport pathways and you can absorb more carbohydrates per hour. And I'll shoot for roughly 80. And I actually don't even really take in any solid food. Like, I don't, I don't do bars. I don't even do like the shot blocks or anything. It's liquid calories. And then as solid as it gets is gels. And that's, that's my calories for the race. And it, and it's, I, I've gotten it dialed to the point where it's been a very long time since I've bonked in a race.

Fantastic answer. And it's so refreshing to hear someone who's really understood the, the from historic practice that's, you know, you've got to bonk to understand where your limit is at some point in time. It'. Experience. As everybody who has been in that situation where you just feel like you can't ride anymore, you can't push the pedals, you are sitting on the side of the road thinking, how am I actually going to finish this event? So it's really good to hear you say that. And you have been vulnerable in these positions, so you have to have learned from mistakes to get it right. And that's one of the key things we want to get across to our listeners.

I also want to touch. Oh, go ahead, Dylan.

Well, I just wanted to. So I also want to clarify because sometimes when you throw out these words like bonk, cr. I don't know, hit the wall. When I talk about bonking, I'm being very specific with what's going on with my physiology. Physiology. Even though bonk doesn't sound physiological, you know what I mean? It's bonk like what, you know, that's, that's a very crude word. Bonking is referring to having your glycogen be depleted to the point where your, your performance tanks. Right? And, and it happens very suddenly. And anybody who's experienced knows what I' but you could go from, you know, cruising along at a good pace to absolutely crawling within 15 minutes if you, if you experience this and it's, it's not having enough glycogen. Not having taken in enough glycogen is specifically what I'm talking about here when I say bonk.

It is interesting too. Just before we, before we leave this topic. You need reminders throughout an intense race to continually keep your nutrition up to yourself. And there can be periods in the race where you're concentrating so much on, you know, the length of the hill, the cadence you're riding at, the power that you're trying to push, your heart rate. And all of a sudden 20, 25 minutes goes by and you actually haven't consumed any nutrition. Is there any little tricks that you use to remind yourself that, hey, wait, I need to, I need to take a drink?

Yeah. Well, so I think that is one of the advantages of having your calories, as in your, in your water bottle, as part of your fluid intake. So when you are intaking fluid, you're intaking calories. So really. Kind of takes a lot, it takes a lot of that, that mental processing out of the equation. I just have to remember to kind of take in a gel. What I do is a little bit complicated, but I, when I, that when I'm actually racing, I don't actually find it to be that complicated. I have roughly 60 ish grams of carbohydrates per bottle. And how fast I'm drinking those bottles will dictate how many gels I need to take in per hour. Right. So if it's very cold and I don't need a lot of fluid and I'm only going through half a bottle an hour, I might need to take two gels. But if it's very hot and I'm taking in a bottle and a half per hour, I don't need any gels, right? Because I'm trying to hit this 80 grams of carbohydrates per hour. And of course, you know, people are like, okay, well that's a bottle an hour. But I, when you're actually out there racing, sometimes you need a bottle an hour, sometimes you need more than a bottle an hour, sometimes you need less than a bottle an hour. And the gels is kind of how I regulate the amount of fuel that I have coming in when I'm not exactly a bottle an hour or a bottle and a half an hour.

I'd love to know a bit of the science behind what you've read because you've obviously chosen your products like you mentioned before, based on it's showing the absorption rate seems to be high. There are a lot of companies out there, from what you know, they all claim to be doing a great job. You know, is there much difference, for example, in the absorption rate between companies? Can you even know that? Because every country is going to have different companies that people prefer. So how can an athlete make sure that they're actually getting in a high quality product that's achieving what they want? Right.

So I mentioned the maltodextrin to fructose ratio and there's actually, I, there's a, there's an article that's come out recently that's they've played with the ratio a little bit and they claim that you can actually get it as high as 120 grams per hour. But before, before that, before that paper came out, I, I believe they put the limit at 90 grams per hour. So obviously it's up for debate. How many grams per hour can you actually absorb?

But.

There, there is this, there is this ratio of maltodextrin to fructose and if you get it roughly right, you're, you're, you're at least in the right ballpark. And most nutrition companies are getting this right at this point, although they're not going to advertise it. So for example, goo gels, I had to email them and ask them what the ratio was. You can see that the first ingredient is maltodextrin and you can see that the second ingredient is fructose. So you know that they have more maltodextrin than fructose. And then they got a bunch of other BS in there that may help or may not help. But if, if they are at the very least getting this maltodextrin to fructose ratio correct, then it's probably good enough.

And you would recommend maybe just emailing your own company and asking them because they're not going to give it to.

You on the bottom, you would probably, they. There are very few companies that advertise this probably because it's not common knowledge. I would think that these companies should be advertising it, but whatever.

And what is the correct ratio?

You. So I believe it's a 2 to 1 maltodextrin to fructose ratio. And don't quote me on that because there, like I said, there is some recent research where they've actually been playing with these ratios to get that absorption rate even higher. So, so it's actually like, like I said, I mean like so many things in sports science, this is not, this is not set in stone. It's up for debate. Everything that I'm saying could be completely debunked within the next 10 years. But yeah, so I would, I would say, I would probably, you would probably have to do some emailing or at the very least some, some digging on the Internet to actually figure this out because it's not going to be advertised.

We won't put a headline up saying Dylan Johnson says the ultimate ratio is 2 to 1. I want to move into the training side of things. And yeah, I just. Your really big skill of yours is clearly how much data you like to read and the papers you like to read. And everyone wants to know in those golden sessions throughout the week, you might be doing two high intensity interval sessions. What's the best bang for your buck? And it depends so much on what the goal of the athlete is, et cetera. But we want to know from you, what are your go to interval sessions, what do you like giving athletes? What do you, what do you always go back to as you know that this is a really safe bet to help someone improve.

Yeah, I, I believe that I actually did a video, it was probably titled what are the best hit sessions or something High intensity interval sessions. And if I, if I remember correctly, so I. In that video I wasn't necessarily saying like these, these are my go to or these are interval sessions that I think have a good bang for your buck. I was purely looking at the research and trying to come up with what is the research seem to suggest is an effective interval session. And, and I believe that what I came up with was that the, the Tabata style interval so like a 30, 20, 30 seconds, hard 20 seconds, easy. Doesn't have to be that. It could be you know, 45, 15, could be 30, 30. But basically this type of interval where you're going, you're basically sprin out and then you, and then you take a short rest and then you sprint and then you rest and then you sprint and then you rest. Those seem to be particularly effective and, and then I believe that the Steven Seiler has done some work where he's found that the 4x8 is, tends to be a particularly effective workout versus longer intervals than that or shorter intervals than that. So I, I believe that I gave four by eight a nod there and I'm trying. I know that there was a third one. It might have been the typical VO2 max interval session where you're doing a, you know, four minute efforts or five minute efforts at VO2 max, but I can't quite remember, to be honest with you.

Well, more importantly, what's, what's your go to?

Yeah, I would say so. I, I'll, I'll, I do all three of those that I just mentioned for sure. And I tend to do them more as tuneups in the last three weeks before a race just to kind of give me that last little percentage before the race. But those efforts are not terribly specific to the type of racing that I'm doing. And if I'm talking to triathlon triathletes here, those aren't terribly specific to triathlon type efforts either. But I, I've seen some research that suggests that in that last month before your peak event, mixing specific work with your typical high intensity work that you would use to achieve a peak may be the way that you achieve the best outcome. So I, that's what I'll do. I'll combine specific intensity, specific race intensity with these kind of more general high intensity workouts. So a specific intensity workout about, let's say we're talking about Unbound, where I was essentially trying to ride at tempo pace for 10 hours, is, is your typical tempo workout where I'm, you know, I'm doing intervals at 80% of FTP.

Those. That's, that's a great answer actually. And it follows our philosophy to the letter almost. And look, we're all, we're always trying to improve our threshold number and our VO2 engine so that we can actually sust, you know, instead of riding at 250 watts as your 75% of your threshold, you could ride at 280 watts as your 75%. So we know that we do need to improve our threshold riding and our VO2 so that we actually can race at a higher level with the same heart rate, output, et cetera, which means you're going to ride at a faster speed and you're going to finish higher up in the, in the race. But, but actually the one thing I wanted to ask you, Dylan, was when you're not racing and you're doing some preparation for a 10 hour or a 20 hour event, what does your long ride look like? Is it similar to that in duration? And I know you just said that you are very specific about trying to ride between that 75 and 80 to 85% in those specific training rides. But how's the duration for these events? Are you have a limit on that or are you out there doing nine hour days? Give the listeners an idea about what you're actually striving to do in your preparation as an endurance rider.

Right. I think that there's a point at which a training ride is, is too long because it takes and, and this is going to be different for different people. Right. So what too long is for one person is not the same as too long for another person. But I think that there is a point at which a training ride is so long that it takes too long to recover from. And, and had you just been more consistent with your training as opposed to doing it one very long ride and then recovering for five days, you probably would have gotten a little bit better fitness gain from that. So when you're Preparing for a 10 hour race or a 20 hour race for that matter, you know that's something that's going to take a long time. That doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do a, a 10 to 20 hour training ride. And in fact I would probably steer away from, from that sort of thinking that the longest, I think the longest ride that I did in preparation for Unbound, which took me 10 hours was a 8 hour ride and 8 hours is very long and it, and it takes time to recover from and had I been doing a, even a, even a seven hour race, I, I probably wouldn't have done an eight hour training ride. But yeah, I, I wasn't, I wasn't necessarily out there riding for 10 hours to prepare for a 10 hour day.

How many of those long six hour plus rides did you do then? If you got up to eight hours, I guess you were racing as well.

But yeah, yeah, I mean it's so I, I was racing so much that those races that I was doing were like my long ride and my intensity for the week and then every, everything else was just recovering which is as I've already said, was not optimal. But in a normal layout, baby, yeah, in a normal lead out, I would say I'm probably doing a ride like that at least once a week and probably there are probably some weeks if, if it's a high volume week where I might do two or three rides like that. But that, that'd be, that's not a typical week. I would say on a typical week it's, it's one ride like that per.

Week week, something else. If we go completely Opposite direction. It's really gold information to know, but something else you're good at is looking at every other kind of end of the spectrum where the 1 percenters lie. And so that's the golden part of training is those interval sessions and your endurance, getting that volume in. But you've done a lot of videos on the 1 percenters, you know, finding strength, lifting for cyclists, finding marginal gains in your equipment, your, your chain shape, you know, your, your chain ring, everything else. So give us an idea of, out of all the one percentage you could possibly look at, what do you think's actually worth it? What kind of, what kind of things actually going to make a big difference if you, if you paid attention to them?

Yeah, the marginal gains. Right. Which marginal gains are worth it? Which marginal gains are not worth it? I don't, I'll be honest, I don't consider weightlifting a marginal gain. I consider that just a, just a gain. And I, and some of the aerodynamic stuff, I don't, I don't consider that marginal gains either. I, I just, I just think that that's, I, you know, I don't know. Different people have a different definitions of what marginal is. Right. So you, you use the term one percenter. I, I think that weightlifting is going to give you more than 1%, and I think that some of this aerodynamic stuff is going to give you more than 1%. So if we're, if we're using 1% as, as the threshold at which it's a marginal gainer and not, I would, I would almost say those, the, the, those are past 1%.

I get who I'm talking to here. You know, you got to really be careful with your language, but I like that.

That's good. So, so I, so I guess that's your answer, right? I mean, I mean, I, I, I put, I put a very, I, I, I put a lot of emphasis on weight training. In fact, I have not, I, that is the topic that I have done the most videos about. I think I have four or five videos about weight training at this point. And, and yeah, it's, it's, it's a big part of my coaching and a big part of my philosophy. So if, if I had to, if I had to choose one, that's it right there.

How often are you training yourself in the gym and lifting throughout the week?

Yeah, so, so I haven't, I haven't been in the gym myself since the spring. And that's just because race season got so hectic and it, it was too hard to recover. From races and go to the gym, which is can be the case for a lot of cyclists and triathletes. Although I, I would probably encourage a lot of age groupers to try to try to make the gym a regular habit year round because the older you get, the more muscle mass you lose. And they've actually done research to show that, you know, that they, they take a group of college students and then they take a group of masters racers and gy improved performance in both these groups, but the improvement in performance was actually even greater in the older athletes. So it, it be, it actually just becomes even more important as you age. And I think it becomes more important to do it year round. I would say that for me right now with my race schedule, it tends to be more of an off season activity.

And aerodynamics wise, what's, what do you, what do you think people should look at first? If it's definitely, if it's more than 1%, if the gain's that much worth it, right?

Yeah, well, I guess it depends on what kind of racing we're talking about. If we're talking about Ironman triathlon. I mean if I feel like Ironman triathletes are very tuned into this. Right. You know, they, Ironman triathletes are already very big into aerodynamics and you might, you might even need to talk to more of an aerodynamic expert than I am. I don't, I don't claim to be any sort of aerodynamic expert, which is why I had Josh Portner on my podcast has to talk about it. But if we're talking about unbound gravel, I mean, it is atrocious what you see out there as far as the lack of aerodynamic understanding and there is so much that people could be doing. I mean the arrow bars is a hugely hotly debated thing. I don't know why it's hotly debated. It was never a debate in my mind. I put arrow arrow bars on my bike the very first gravel race I ever did. And I never understood why anybody would not use them if they were an advantage. And then, you know, we get into arrow helmets, we get into skin suits, we get into arrow socks, all of that. There's a lot of gains being left on the table when you look at the starting line at unbound.

Fantastic. Let's just move along because I know we've taken up a fair bit of your time from your coaching hat. Has your philosophy changed much from the last sort of five years, looking back to 10 years and coaching yourself? It is a difficult thing. Having done it myself for 40 years. Is there anything that stands out in your mind that you are now differently doing than you did when you first got into this? Is there something that you've learned that that was, that was not working well and this is now a game changer? Is there something you can identify that stands out in your mind?

Yeah, 100%. So I, I'm completely somebody who, I am 100% willing to change my opinion if I have data to back it up. And, and I can point to multiple examples of this. Like, I don't, I don't just say that this has happened. So I mean, probably the biggest example is that I used much a sweet spot trainer. I would just smash myself at sweet spot every single day when I rode. And I didn't have a very good understanding of training. I just, I just thought that, I don't know, I just thought that I needed to ride hard every single day. And then I got to college and I started doing more research into how to properly train. I read a lot of these studies about polarized training and in, it completely shifted the way I, I trained. I mean I, it basically did a 180 in how I trained. Right. I went, I went from a I'm going to ride sweet spot every single day person to more of a polarized or, or at the very least pyramidal type person. I did the, I did the same thing with weightlifting early in my career. I had never even set foot in a gym and I, I didn't, you know, it was probably like a typical cyclist that was worried about gaining weight when they go into the gym because you know, I was trying to, I was trying to be lightweight for some reason. And, and, and yeah, I mean I completely flipped my opinion on that as well. And, and those are just two of many examples where I have, I, my opinion on a topic has flipped when I've looked at the data on it.

What's the most recent one you can think of? It could be small.

Let's see. Most recent one that I flipped my opinion on.

What? Man, you pre doubt it.

No, yeah, I, I, you know what, I, I actually did a video on, on, on whether or not you should be doing intensity in the off season. So I was, I was very much of the mindset that, that you don't, you don't really need to do intensity in the off season. Like going to the gym and weightlifting is, is already enough intensity. And then I read, I read a study and there was a little bit more research, but there was one study in Particular that was particularly convincing that had subjects do, they didn't even have them do very much intensity. It was like one intensity session every two weeks in the off season. So that's, that's not a lot of intensity. That's not going to mess up whatever training you're trying to do in the off season. And when I say offseason, I'm not talking about the base season, I'm talking about the off season. Like racing is done and you're sitting on the couch season. And, and the, the subjects that they had do this, this once every other week. Intensity in the offseason were way better off when racing came around. Like they were obviously better off when they started their base season. That's to be expected because they've been doing a little bit of maintenance. But even, even months later when they got to racing, they were still at a higher fitness level. And that, that to me there was one, that study particularly was convincing to me. And then I think there were some, there was some other research that, that pointed in that direction as well. Because you never just want to take one study. Right?

Yeah.

So I actually kind of had a, had a little bit of flip of opinion when I looked into that research and I actually incorporated a little bit more intensity than I normally would have this off season.

And what about the, the things to not worry about and to avoid? What's a common question that you would get where you go? That is just not relevant. You know, don't suck and spend too much time thinking about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean there's usually, there's not a lot of things that I, that I try to avoid. Say don't spend too much time thinking about. I don't know. Yeah, this, you know, I think sometimes newer cyclists, they get a little. And, and this is going to sound very hypocritical because it sounds like I, I stress every single detail and in a sense I do stress the details. I'm not somebody who just wings it. Right. You've heard that in the. Me talking about my, my, my unbound strategy and me talking about aerodynamics and me talking about training. It seems like I'm really thinking about all these details. But I, I think sometimes when new riders are get to race week and they're over obsessing about every little thing that they're. They're doing, I think sometimes it does more harm than good and sometimes they might be psyching themselves out to the point that it's negatively affecting their performance. And that's not everybody. It's probably certain personality types that are more pro what I'm talking about here. But I've, I've definitely, I've definitely seen newer riders in the sport just, just kind of stressing a little bit too much on, on race week, if that makes sense.

For sure. I could see you want to ask a question there.

Now you go.

Well, last few questions to finish off. Dylan, we really appreciate your time on the podcast. We want to know from you what is your most memorable race or performance?

Memorable could mean, mean it's memorable because it went really well or memorable could mean memorable because it went really poorly. Right. I mean, I would say the first time I did Unbound was super memorable because I, I felt so awful that it's hard to forget.

Right.

And, and you know, I already, I already talked about how I was sitting on the side of the road for 10 minutes. I mean, for me to do that mid race, I, I, you know, it was bad.

Performance.

Yeah. The one you're most proud of. That would be the way of doing it.

Yeah. I mean, so when I was 21 was the first year that I, so I was, I was Talking about how 100 mile mountain bike racing was, was my main focus for the, my early 20s. And the first year that I won this hunt, this national hundred mile mountain bike series was when I was 21. And I mean there were, this is a series of races. So there were multiple races that led to that series victory, but probably the last race in that series I was battling with a guy all series and, and it really did come down to this last race. Like had he won the last race, he would have won the series and had I won the last race, I would have won the series series. And it turns out that I, I won the race. He came in second. It was a very close battle and it's very. I, you know, when you have races like that that are, are very hotly contested and they're very close and, and you come out the victor, that is, that is a lot more satisfying than when you just show up at a race and you're clearly the fastest and you just blow everyone away. You know what I mean? There's something very satisfying about having a very close race with very. And, and, and somehow you just, you edge everyone else out. Though I, I would say those are the most memorable races for me.

That's great. And overcoming adversity is really where we get our biggest thrills from. As you say, you know, you don't get the same adrenaline rush when you expected to win but when, when you've got competition and you are under the hammer and you come out on top and you've, you've. Whether you, you've had good tactics that done it, or whether your preparation has been better or whether your taper was better, the satisfaction about overcoming the challenge is what, what's really what you're telling us. And, and it's a great little story and I'm sure you had many other memorable performances. But, but when you have to overcome adversity and you have to work your way through a chess game to sort of come out on top is. Is so much fun. And I suppose the people who are listening, they're always doing that with themselves and trying to. We're not talking all the time to people who are on the podium even though you have been very successful. But for the listener, it's about just doing your personal best and overcoming adversity and getting the consistency in your training all the way through to your A race and getting all these things right. It's such a great, satisfying feeling when you finish that race, whether it's an Ironman or whether you've finished on top of the podium, you look back and go, wow, that's what this is all about. And it's great that you've touched on so many of these topics, Dylan, and you have the same philosophy as us, so it's really good that you've been able to get your opinions and ideas across to people in such a really good way. And I love the fact that you finished there saying, don't be too anxious about every little detail. You've got to still enjoy what you're doing. And just recently we've had so many people going to their A races in Ironman or Unbound or this weekend there's a half marathon. You've got to really enjoy the fact that you're ready and fit and you have a plan and all you've got to do on race day is have a smile on your face and enjoy the fact you're going to execute to the best of your ability. And I think that's the main message you've got across here, that you are willing in the biggest race of your gravel bike race, you were willing to let the field go. That's the message that if anybody can get out of this podcast today, if it's good enough for people at the hardest race they'll ever do, it's good enough for an everyday age grouper. And we want to thank you for getting that across. Jordan, is there any Other questions you want to throw at Dylan, what are.

You training for next? What's the next big race for you?

Yeah, so Unbound was actually part of the, this lifetime Grand Prix that I'm in. The lifetime Grand Prix, for those who don't know, is a six race series here in the U.S. it's, this is the first year that they're having it. It's very selective with who they let in. It's only 30 men and 30 women. And so obviously if it's just, if it's so selective, it's, it's basically the, the 60 fastest riders in the U.S. although there's, there's some riders not in the U.S. that are part of the series as well. And it's all, it's all off road races. So there's six mountain bike races and six gravel races. Unbound was part of that series and, and there's still four more of those, those races left. So I would say that that is my main focus for the rest of the year. And I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to not make the same mistake that I made in the first half and, and, and not over race. And there are plenty of other races that I could do on the calendar, but I'm going and, and I'll, I'll do some other racing, but I will try to make those last four races my A events for the rest of the year and make those my focus.

And disappointingly, you've just picked up Covid in the last two weeks and that's from our coaching business. We've had 30 or 40 people with COVID and I've learned a lot myself about not coming back too soon and letting the illness get to a good position. And I don't want to tell you what to do here, but you need to not overdo it too quickly. Even though you've got some races coming up, it's really important that you allow yourself to get better first and hopefully that's what you're planning to do.

Yeah, I could not agree more. And that is exactly what I've been doing and that is exactly my advice. And this is super relevant right now because so many people are dealing with this and it seems like for whatever reason, now more than ever, it seems like every time I pop on social media there's another, there's another person that's, that's got Covid and, and they're dealing with it. And I've heard horror stories about people training through it and then completely ruining their season. And, and certainly there are people that prolong how you know the time that they're sick by trying to get back too soon. And that's not just with COVID That's. That's with any illness, even. Even a cold. You can have a cold last for a very long time if you're too stubborn to take a break. So take a break. Break. And when you get back to training, ease back into it. Don't just, don't just say, okay, I've taken a week off. Now I can do a. Now I can do the biggest week I've ever done because I'm, you know, fresh as a daisy. Don't do that.

Dylan, we want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We really appreciate your time. Everyone can find you on your YouTube channel, Dylan Johnson, or on Instagram. It's Dylan Johnson with J, A W. Not. Not the official, official way to spell your last name. But thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate it your time.

Yeah, thank you guys so much.

This was.

This was a great conversation. I. I enjoyed it.

Awesome. Cheers. Thanks everyone, for listening. We'll see you next time.

Everybody.