We Lost The Nationals Champs: Here’s What happened & How We Learn From It

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. So last week, dad, you and I both had a crack at a national title. You in the individual time troll and me in the national sprint champs, and we both came up short, we both got bronzes. And after everything we've spoken about with pre race mentality, what to do in race week leading up to your race, and how to execute your best performance, it's just as important in these situations when it's a difficult result to swallow to do a post race analysis, because every race is an opportunity to learn and potentially make some valuable time gains for your next race and improvements. So today we're going to do a post race analysis on ourselves, which we'll both admit is a lot tougher when it's a result you're disappointed in. And on a much more positive note, we're definitely going to talk about some of the tribal athletes that had major success as we had multiple athletes win national titles and some best place performances over the last week, which is really exciting to talk about. So, dad, welcome to the episode. Let's start with what are you grateful for today?

Thanks, Jord. This is probably going to be one of our tougher podcasts to do. When you're having to self analyze and it's hard to be critical about yourself, that's not something that human nature's used to, but looking forward to it actually, because there was some outstanding performances and you don't have to actually evaluate yourself on whether you won or lost. There were so many people who did pbs and that's, that's equally important.

You're evaluating yourself on your goal. If that's, if that's a middle, so be it. If it's a pb, so be it.

Exactly right. I want to make that point. So gratitude, I suppose I'm grateful for my granddaughter Eden. And I really noticed and the analogy, and I don't want to trivialize this, but the analogy I want to use is in relation to this chosen sport we have with having a granddaughter who lives miles away and they don't know who you are. I haven't seen you. It's been Covid. She's 18 months old. She's seen us for, you know, literally two weeks out of 18. So what I'm saying is she doesn't know who we Are. And, and the time I'm spending with her, she's been with us for two weeks and the getting to know her and getting to get her to trust me as her grandfather has taken a real effort and I'm really determined to spend time with her so that she trust me and will come to me. And so the time spent with her and the trust is enormous. Now that she's actually just left today and she knows who I am, she comes to me, she puts a hand up and wants to walk with me. They're all things that, they're all very trivial but they mean give me a lot of pleasure because we have a relationship now. But the, the thing that stands out to me is the time I spend with her is equal to the trust she has in me. And that's no different to the time you spend training and the trust you have in your race plan and execution. So I think that's. It's kind of a really weird thing, but it really blew my mind that if I didn't work at it with her, she continued to go to her mum and dad and not spend any time with me because she doesn't know who I am. So now, leaving here after two weeks, she's really happy to go everywhere with me without her mum and dad. And she'll come to me now while she's in her mum and dad's hands, which is even fun. If I say to her, let's go to the park, she'll leave her mum and dad straight away. I'm going to the park with grandfather, so that's great pleasure for me, but I wanted to, yeah, I want to. You know, it's a little thing, but it's, it's really important that, you know, they're the things that give, give you pleasure. So I want to, I want to spend. And I love having grandchildren, can't wait to have more. But, but yeah, it's been. I'm really grateful to have my granddaughter.

That's a great gratitude. My one is on all the technology available in racing. You know, our Garmins, our watches, training peaks, even. It just gives you so much data to be able to use and we're so used to it now, but it's. It is so valuable for your performance to have all these things to look at in the swim, on the bike and running. You can just get constant feedback about how you're going and you're really not bracing blind. And I don't envy you having to race through the 80s and 90s without any information. And just guessing how you're going. I just. On the weekend. The amount of, the amount of equipment you need to race is quite big, but it is also handy. So I absolutely love it.

That's a great gratitude. And the one thing that's changed a bit in the swim is. And you and I are both using the form goggles and we're not part of Form Company but you know, we're not part of Garmin company but we use the tools that are available and form goggles enable me to see what my average heart rate is. They will see what my average speed per hundred meters is, how far I'm traveling in the race. I can roughly work that out anyway and the time. So there's so much feedback coming to me whilst I'm swimming, whereas in the old days it was zero. I basically could have been swimming flat out at the start and not know it. Yeah. So that's a great, great, really important one.

Let's get into today's topic because we, we lost the National Champs and we want to talk about what happened and how we learned. So what are you personally asking yourself after a race? And how do you start this conversation with yourself and talk to me about kind of timeframe because straight after you finish everyone asks how do you go? And then there's that night when you go to bed and sometimes you can't sleep because you're thinking about the race and then the next 24 to 48 hours unfolds.

It's a good question to start with. And the post race analysis starts when you see the time that you did against the other people. So you finish your race, no one knows how well or how badly they did. You have an idea of how you executed and you've got to be satisfied or unsatisfied with that execution. So you have your plan, you execute your plan and at the end you wait to see how that stacks up.

So you could be completely satisfied without even seeing anyone else's results.

And that's the point I'm trying to make. When I finished the time trial, I couldn't have ridden any harder. And there was instantly, I knew that I had done everything I could. I'd written the numbers that I wanted to in each of the sectors. As you know, we broke down the sectors into many small parts and, and if someone was going to beat me on the day, then they were better. So that was the mindset I had when I was waiting for the results. And as it turned out, there were two people better than me, which is disappointing. I want to win. I'm not going to enter any race thinking that, you know, I'll just be happy with wherever my goal is to win this title. And coming second or third is, is not the goal. But at the end of the day my, my very first reaction is, well, he's just better than me on the day and, and I've got to accept that. But I'm still going to try and find out where was he better than me and how can I beat him next time. These are the things I'm now determined as soon as I get the result. And I've got to in my own mind be happy with accepting the result. If I'd executed poorly, then I wouldn't have been as pleasant. I suppose in my own mind I would have been more critical about my performance. I'd be angry with myself, but I couldn't be because that's the best I could do on that day given the preparation that I did. And that's an important thing to look at. And you got to be honest with yourself. Did you train properly in the period leading up to it? What was your form like? Were you in good form? What were your numbers stacking up compared to what you've done previously? And they're all the questions I started to ask myself from that moment on and I couldn't wait to open up the data and, and see where I'd, where I'd thought that I'd executed quite well and whether, you know, these are the numbers that I should have been writing to. So, so that, that starts instantly, you finish. So when you're in the middle of the event, all I'm concentrating on is what should I be doing at this particular moment? Am I on a hill? Am I on a flat bit? Am I into a headwind? Am I into a tailwind? And I'm trying to execute my plan so I'm not thinking about the result at any point during that. It was a 27 or 28 minute race, so my whole focus is not on the end time or the end placing, it's on getting around the course as quick as I can based on the plan that I'd set. So not much more you can do, especially in an individual time trial. You're basically racing against the clock and so is everybody else in the race. And at the end of the day you find out who was quicker. When you're on a head to head race with other people, like a championship or national titles, you know, you only have, you only have to beat the others in the Race like a, you know, 5K track national title. It's great to do a good time, but you're actually racing against the race, the rest of the field. And the person who gets across the line first could run 10 minutes slower than their PB and still win the race if they've just jogged. That's scenarios that do happen. So we're talking just about specifically time trialing here. So don't think that I'm disregarding road running or track racing or swimming. Whatever the winning time is, is good enough to win in a swimming race. You know, if you're swimming 400 meter swimming race, you know, and you do 10 seconds slower than you did, but you still won, that's the outcome you're trying to do. So, but you'd still be dark on your execution if you, if, if you went out too hard and faded in just one. So these are the things we're trying to identify to the audience is what are we looking for and what was your form and how did you execute against your form and why was your form good, bad or, or pathetic on the day? So, so they're things that I'm trying to search for.

And you concluded that your execution was as good as you could do. So what did you go to next?

So I wanted to compare. Strava has this really good function, it's called compare. So you can go into your session and as long as the competitors you're racing against are on Strava, you can actually put the comparison of what you did against them. So that's the first thing I did was after I, that's not the first thing I did. After I looked at my data, my power, my power numbers on all the sectors, then I concluded that, you know, I would have liked to have ridden harder on the first stage, first section, but I knew that in the recon I did that and I couldn't ride hard on the rest of the, of the race because it is basically 4 minutes 30 where you've got to ride 120% of your FTP. And I concluded that I couldn't ride at 124, which is what, what I needed to do to, to actually win the race. So I already tried that and it didn't work. So I had to ride to my numbers. And one of the guys I coach, his text was, you know, where do you think I went wrong? And you know, I want him to identify this. I'm going, I'm gonna have a discussion with him. But I, I've looked at his Data. And he, he was in the same race as me and he finished one place behind me. Not going to mention any names, but he'll now know who that is I'm talking about. And looking at his start compared to my start and I think I beat him by maybe 50 seconds. And he has been riding equal to me or probably better than me. So I was a bit disappointed with his result and I now can see where he went wrong. His execution was what caused him to get the result he did. So his overall power was probably 8 to 10 watts higher than mine because that's what his power is at the moment. You know, his is around 290, mine's around 280, 280, 282, something like that. And that's what a point that I want to talk about later on, you know, two, three months ago, mine was 298 to 304. So that is the problem. Not, not what I did on race day. My problem was I wasn't in the form I was in August, September, October, November. I'm in January and I'm riding 280, whereas in August, September, October, November, I'm riding 298, 302. That's my problem. So getting back to the comparison with where did this athlete that we coach go wrong? So his first section and it is at Fed Uni, it's basically straight up. Then you get a little 20 second recovery before you turn left and go straight up again into a 14 to 16% hill. That goes for two minutes. And so that total, total section has got two uphills with 1 22nd downhill in between. And you have to ride at 120 to 125% of your FTP. And he's ridden, so he's. Remember, his overall power is about 8 watts higher than mine and he's ridden 30 watts higher than me in that first section for the very first section. And then with 22nd rest and then the next section, he's ridden 40 watts higher than me in that section. I wasn't writing as high as I probably needed to, but that's what I wanted to write. I rode the numbers I wanted to, but he's actually written way above. He's written three 50s and 360s for a 290. I've written 315, 320 for a 282 though he's significantly riding higher watts than me.

So you can look on the Strava compare. He's gaining time.

He's gaining time to me. Yeah. And then once we get up to the top and it flattens out. It becomes a normal time trial where it's just got basically undulations for the people who don't know what this course is. It's a brutal course. It's got this ridiculous start to it where it's four and a half minutes of uphill at 120 to 125% of your FTP. Then it goes to a normal course when in fact it has a tailwind out. So you would probably be riding 95% of your FTP. So his numbers have dropped back to 250, whereas mine have stayed at 270 for the next section. So instantly, by the end of the next term, which is six minutes, six minutes of riding, I've already caught back up 15 seconds on him because he's gassed himself too early. And the competitor who beat me in this race, he's ridden nearly 25 to 30 seconds faster than me over this first four and a half to five minutes. And already after four and a half minutes, I'm 30 seconds behind him on the Strava comparison. And that's a significant amount. But he's, he's just riding better than me. I can't ride any harder than that. If I do, I'm going to blow up. Which is what happened to the guy we're talking about who I coach. He's ridden, I think, poor execution of sector one, which we call Sector one is that hill, the two sections in the hill. I'm going into a lot of detail here because this is what I think each person who does any event should be doing. They should be gleaning what happened in the race in so many of the sections. Don't just look at your end result. Divide the whole course into two minute sections, four minute sections. This is what post race analysis is. So you can actually find how well did I go around this corner and in this race there were nine corners? No, there were many more.

We said it last week.

I can't remember how many, you know. So there's a second on every corner is nine or 10 seconds and I lost second place by six seconds or seven seconds, you know, Did I corner well? Yes, I do. I know I did the best. I'm probably the best corner in the race. So that's not where I'm losing it. I'm losing it on the high intensity sections. The two riders who beat me rode better there. But as we got to the end that second section, they were still 25 to 30 seconds ahead of me. And then we turned and from that point on to the Finish is still 13 minutes of riding, 14 minutes of riding, and I ended up riding 10 seconds quicker than them from that point to the finish. So I've come home strong and ridden well because I've not gassed myself on the first section. Whereas the guy we coach who ended up coming behind me, he lost a lot of time. I'd caught 10 seconds back on him and then I put 30 seconds into him between that turnaround to the finish. So, so the people, everybody else in the race rode slower than me from the halfway to the finish, but I'd lost time at the start to the winners and second and I put time into one of the guys I coach. So, so I can clearly see and tell him that he has gone too hard too early and, and that has cost him the rest of the race when. That's why in, in training him and I, his times and my time were very similar, but I've improved by 30 or 40 seconds in the race from my training, yeah, my training mishap, which I call it. But he's actually done what I did in training in the race. So that is, that is his big mistake. And we need to discuss that. And I want him to have known this before we discuss it because I want him to go through and find out. Don't send a text to me saying where did I go wrong? Tell me where you went wrong. And it really opens up my eyes that what do I need to do? I needed to be better in the hill section of that course so that I could be competitive for the rest of the section. I had to ride lower power because in my practice runs it was blowing me up and I was way slower in the rest of the course. So I, I have poor form against the winners. That's the, the problem. So, so I wanted, I needed to be having an FTP of 300, not 282. And that would have enabled me to ride 3, 360 watts instead of 320 on that section, which would have enabled me to ride two or three seconds slower than the winners and then beat them in the second half. So that's my post race analysis of myself. And you know, the next question I ask is why Wasn't I at 300 watts? Why wasn't I at 302 or 298? Why was I at 282? And that's a really tough, tough question to ask yourself. And it's clear that I hadn't prepared well enough. I'd lost form. And there may be many reasons for that and you have to identify them. Why wasn't I as well prepared as I was in August, September, October, November? And I'm being asked for myself? I didn't train as well. Lots of other things were happening around me, but they're, they're my own reasons. The fact is I got to the race in this form, so that's the disappointing part for me. Not, not my execution, not my preparation of the day. The plan, plan was all right. Everything I did was fine, except I came to the event in poor form compared to my competitors. Well, compared to myself, yeah, I'm pretty much 18 watts down, which is nearly 6% on what I'd been able to do previously. So that's the disappointing part. But at least I understand now that I know what wattage I need to be at to actually be competitive against the guys who are well deserved winners.

So what specifically do you need to adjust in that final two to three months? Because you're riding as good a power as you needed two or three months ago. What went wrong in training and what would you change?

This is some specific sessions that were getting me to ride at good numbers and I missed out on those sessions for various reasons, which I don't need to go into that. But that's, you know, I can clearly see that there were key sessions in each of the blocks that, that I was missing. And, and that's what gets me up for my form to be in this, in this state. And, and you know, that's my own fault. Whether they're valid reasons or not, that's what happened. So I can't afford to go in to the next time to a major event where I, you know, it's, it's my, a race where I don't do the correct training. Great lesson to be, to be learned. And it's always easy in hindsight. But you know when people say what happened? Because the expectation is that you should win and that's a hard. It's like someone sticking a knife into your stomach and turning it. What happened? Well, how do you answer that? What happened? I was beaten by a better person. I didn't prepare myself well enough. Well, they're two hard things to say, aren't they? When you're so proud about your own expectation and your own performance. To swallow those two sentences is not something I'm comfortable with and boy, does that give me determination to prepare better next time. And I don't mean the execution or the plan. They were fine. I Mean the actual training that needed to be at a much higher level than it was.

And you are really careful with form with your athletes. You are really diligent in not getting them in too good a form three months out from the A race and making sure they're aware of that as well. And that can lead to sometimes panic because you think, well, when am I going to get informed? Because, because I'm not there yet. You want to get there sooner. But in your example you were there much too early and it fell away.

Yeah, but also I wanted to be in that form in those months and then build on that for the race ready phase. And I completely disregarded my own training for the race ready phase. But that's my job as a coach, is to concentrate on everybody I coach and I think I did a really good job of that with the results we got. But I didn't do a very good job of myself. And that's the disappointing thing because I, I can do that. I can do well as a coach and I can do well. So in my job that's, everybody's got their own jobs. They do well in their job and they do well in their passion. So that's not an excuse because you're concentrating on other people. But that's what I did. I, I didn't concentrate on the little things that made me become a better writer, which was analyzing my data through my training sessions, going in to see how I did do on the Tuesday high intensity session. Did I hit the numbers, you know, did I get the Zone 2 session right? Did I do enough of the endurance stuff? Did I have enough of the intensity in that? These are things that I wasn't taking much notice of. And if you don't keep that detail, which is what we talked about in a couple of podcasts prior about self analysis, as you, as you are going through your program, you know, know what the numbers are you want to achieve before the session, execute the training session and have a look at the, at the afterwards, how well you went. I stopped doing a lot of that, so I was actually not across where I was at. So, so they're things that I, you know, they're all the 1 percenters that I tell everybody else to do. I in fact wasn't doing and that's my own fault. You know, I need to blame myself for that and I have to wear the consequences of it. But I can tell you, next time I set myself for an A race, I won't be missing all that information. I'll be getting across all the stuff and if I see things in training that I'm not happy with, I'll be determined to. I need to get my FTP back from 282 to 298. I don't know how to do it. I've got to go and actually do those sessions.

That's really interesting. So across the whole week there were plenty of examples of successful results and we've spoken about that. We had, we had two individual time trial national champions, we had multiple podiums, we had two teams time trial championship winning teams. We had a second and a fourth. I think in the teams time trial we had two winners in the triathlon sprint national championships, one winner in the Olympic distance and multiple podiums as well. So you've done a lot of post race analysis over the last week. So what are some of the things that stood out in these successful results where you do this and what kind of conversations are you having? Because just because you do well doesn't mean you don't do a post race analysis.

Yeah. And looking at a couple of the guys who got on the podium, who one particular race where we had first and second, I'm still talking about the individual time trial. Another guy got fourth who had won last year. And they guys who get fourth, third, second, you know, they can see that they're close to winning the national title and it's a big thing to wear the jersey and get a jersey, Australian jersey and something that you know you'll have forever. So they're big a races and one of the guys lost by seven seconds. One guy lost by 0.14 of a second. So you know, they'd be thinking that's a missed opportunity. And for one of the guys it's happened two years in a row and he's lost to the same person who happens to be a Trivala athlete as well. So. And he's within seven seconds. Last year was within two seconds. So he's there thereabouts and that's a tough conversation because he's done very well. He's just missed. It's just a bit here and a bit there and what could I have done differently? And he's ticked every box. It's just that the guy ahead of him is just fractionally better on the day. I feel for him. But you know, my approach is that things are worth waiting for and eventually you'll have your day. And the guy who's got a beat is so measured, so professional, so you know, he has to really step up a notch and it's all the little things that he's already doing well. His preparation was unbelievable, his race plan was fantastic. And it, in your own mind, when you lose by 5 or 6 seconds or 4 seconds or 0.1 of a second, you look back and go, what things could I have done differently and could I have cornered better? Could I have stayed more aero, you know, could I have kept the pressure on the pedals a little bit more going into the corner? Coming out of the corner, was I guessing it too much? Did that cost me? Was I riding over the risers too hard? You know, did I, did I lose on the downhills now? I didn't keep the pressure on the pedals. You know, you go through and analyze it here, there and everywhere. As, as you know, you and I have done with yourself, trying to find ways and periods where the guys you're racing against beat you. And that's what you need to do. You need to keep doing that and, and then have a concentrated clear mind on next time. You know, I can do a little, few things better in training to get my FTP up a fraction. That, that's the bottom line. If you can be a better athlete in better form, then, then you've got more chance of being successful. So, so looking at the two guys who did win, one guy obviously won by six or seven seconds and the other guy won by four seconds.

Amazing, isn't it?

It is. And so we've had two Trivalo athletes win by that margin. We've had two Trivalo athletes come second by point one and by seven or six. So, you know, there's euphoria and there's disappointment in people we coach and they're not doing a lot wrong. The guys who are winning are doing almost everything and, and they have anxiety as well about, you know, how close was that? You know, boy, I did, I did everything pretty pretty much the way I wanted to. And there's still things that they're wanting to improve on. But it comes back to improve your FTP and you will have more cards to play with. You can ride harder where it counts. Just like in my position, you know, my FTP wasn't good enough, you know, and that comes back to how do you improve your FTP? Well, you've got months and years to work on that. And, and as you become a better time trialer, you will improve it. And if you're not improving, you gotta ask questions, why aren't I? So they're the challenges, even with the guys who have won and I can, you know, Joe and Julian won. Joe Spano and Julian Painter and they've won. Joe's won three national titles on the time trial in a row. Three years in a row. There was one year where there was no race, so he could have won four in a row. Julian's won the last two. So, so they've proven performance and they, and they get everything right on the day they get into form on the right day and you know, they're the best in Australia, so, so they're not doing a lot wrong. But they both want to improve. Already they're saying to themselves, where can I? These guys were so close behind me, how am I going to stay on top? So, you know, it's tough for the guys who have lost, it's tough for the tougher for the guys who have won because they've got some guys who are right, right there ready to take their, their jersey off them.

It's such a wide range of things you can look into because when you're looking at these margins, you start looking at the most minute details of what you're talking about. And, but you can also go much more basic in terms of the postgres analysis and there are just some really simple key things to improve on. You spoke a couple of weeks ago about, you know, transitions in triathlon, which, you know, there's people, there's a gap of someone took a minute 30 and someone else took four minutes 30. And how is that possible in transition when it's such a simple thing? And even in individual time trial, there are some macro things that need to be worked on and fixed and that can be as simple as setup or like you said, cornering. Yeah. Which you can lose a whole chunk of time on hairpin turns, that kind of thing. So I guess you have to be aware of the right wide range of things to be able to look at and that from a bigger scale there's really simple things and you can go right into the minute detail of every single section where you could have gained or lost a second or two.

The question's always going to be, how can I get better if I won and I had people finishing within five seconds of me, I need to get better. Because the person who came second, they are so determined to not let that happen again. And so you need to improve even if you're the winner. So second, third and fourth, they want to get better and they're asking themselves, how do I get better? And there's not one thing that's going to make you better there's 15 things that are going to make you better. You know, you need to train your VO2 better so you've got a bigger engine. So therefore your FTP can improve. You need to do more aerobic fitness so that you are actually fitter. So in the back half of when it really counts and the pressure's on, you can hold the power that you need to, to, to get the result you want. If you aren't aerobically fit enough, you will fight anyway and not be able to hold that. Have you got the right race plan? Did you execute properly? Was your preparation the week before? Was the night before? Was your warm up proper? Were you in the sun and you warm up, you know, overheating? You saw a couple of guys warming up in the sun. We have a tent there, get in the shade, get under the trees or go and do it on the road, you know, change some things that if you think that you're not happy with, but there's never one thing that's going to be the simple off. I just do this, I'll be a better rider. It's actually not, you know, if you do 15 things better, you could possibly be 32nd better rider.

And even on a macro level, there were some funny incidents that happened throughout the whole week. You know, in the team's time trial, I was in the start line and saw a team go past and they, it's a, it's two right hand turns, three right hand turns in a row off the starting ramp and I heard them go, come around the second right hand turn and then it's 100 meters down to the third right hand turn. And I heard someone say from behind to their teammates, we going left or right next? You know, this is the very start of the race and it just highlights that they hadn't looked at the course and didn't know where they were going. And that hesitation will cost you in the race. I'm sure there's plenty of people in the individual level which didn't know exactly which way to go and that can cost them 5 or 10 seconds here or there. We had in your own team, you guys go the wrong way, you know, those kind of things are a debacle. Which cost you.

Yeah, absolutely. And luckily enough it didn't cost us the championship, but we made some massive errors in our, in our team's time trial. And I'll put my hand up, you know, I was a part of that. We made some mistakes. We managed to go the wrong way and end up still winning title which is, you know, we all thought that we'd blown it, but to the credit, of the four riders who are in the team, no one panicked. And we. We didn't try and ride above ourselves to get the time back we'd lost. This is a whole different topic here, but I'm really part of it. I'm really proud to say that, you know, guys rode solid and kept their cool, didn't lose the plot, and. And all we could do at the end was wait and see whether it was good enough or not. And it ended up, you know, ended up being good enough, which was quite a relief. When you've made a mistake like that, you think you've just ruined all of the work that you've done. Sixteen weeks that we prepared for that team's time trial, you just think, far out. That is so annoying that you've made such a catastrophic mistake of going the wrong way. And, you know, I was part of that.

I liked. I liked a lot of the examples in the team's time control, specifically because it can add up so much. Different time in our team, we had a situation where my gears wouldn't change back to the big ring at the top of the hill, and. Same sort of situation. We spent 30 seconds, you know, kind of the team waiting while I'm trying to shake the bike and get the gear pack on. But you have to take that on as a team and not panic and not try and overdo it. Once you. Once the gear finally changed and you got in a position, and you might lose a chunk of time, but you'd lose more if you panicked and overdid it the next section or if you stay calm, you can stay on track for your race. And there's just so many lessons to be learned and to think about in your execution.

Yeah. And that's the key point we're trying to say. You can't just make it simple and say, if I had done that better, I would have won because the other person you're racing against might have done 15 things better than you. And you've got to be better across every aspect of it.

Right. Oh, so normally we would have had this conversation already where we would have dissected my race. You would have called me up as a coach and a dad, I'd say, and we always talk about the race, and we haven't done it yet because we decided to do it on this podcast. So I'm ready for it to happen live.

So the first question I would ask you is, Jord, how do you think your race went.

I was disappointed in the end result. I wasn't disappointed in my performance or execution and I think I was just. I think I swam okay. I was disappointed in my time compared to other people and that shows me that I swims too far back. That was obvious to me. I was really happy with my transitions. I'd done a lot of practice on them and my transitions were in the top kind of times on the day, which was really worth practicing my bike, I executed as well as I could. But I think we'll get into this where in comparison, comparison to some of the other Travelo athletes where I would normally be a similar time or faster, I was slower. So there's something to unpack there with feeling. I executed well, but being slower. And then I capitulated on the run and got really bad cramp which is super unexpected in a sprint distance because it's such a short event. You know, it's an hour 10, hour 15 and I. And that's really frustrating. But I'm not, I'm not disappointed in myself for that part. I think that is a potentially a result of coming back so quickly from COVID or. I don't know exactly why. Just being, I think just overall being underprepared for the race and a bit of a lack of training leading into it. And as you always say, if that kind of happens, it shows that you're underprepared and if you're under prepared, you can't expect the same result. You would. So that's kind of my overall summary.

Yeah. Now, and we're going to do this as if we're just talking as a normal coach to athlete. And, and I would say that's your analysis is spot on. Everything you've said so far, there's clearly you need to do more work in the swim and, and we, we've known that you are improving incredibly but now we need to actually this is going to be a thing that's going to hold you back and you need to actually do some more work in the swim and you need to concentrate more on the drills and you need to add another session of drills into your swimming from the sessions that you're doing already. And this is going to take time. It's not going to improve in three weeks. It's going to. It's going to take you a full year to get your swimming where you want it to be. That as if I would talk to you as an athlete. So for the listeners out there getting privileged information here about where I see this particular athlete who happens to be my son in the field as a triathlete. And I would be, you know, trying to be not too blunt, but telling the home truth. But you already know that. And you know you need to improve your swimming because you haven't come from a swimming background like your brothers were, because by the time they'd had enough of swimming squad, you'd hardly done any swimming squad. So you missed out a little bit. You are a competent swimmer, but you weren't a swimming squad swimmer. And there is a huge difference. The people who swim in swimming squad can pick up swimming really quickly and resume their swimming ability, whereas you didn't have a lot of racing practice as a junior, but you have really concentrated on improving your stroke. So, you know, through Brenton Ford, with effortless swimming, we have really improved most of our athletes in the swimming area because the drills are so unbelievably good. And we've done a lot of podcasts about this. Even Joe Friel said, you know, if you're not prepared to do the drills, you're not going to improve. And so you know that. So that's the first thing I would say. You did the best you could in the swim section, but there is so much more improvement, which is kind of exciting, and you've just got that ahead of you. You need to. You can't say I need to improve my swimming if you're not prepared to do the work, which you are. So transition wise, can't fault it. Really happy with. With the way you've actually practiced it. And I need to tell listeners, you actually stubbed your toe in practice four triathlons ago, which stopped you from running for nearly three weeks. And that's how much you were putting into your practice. You slipped your foot off the pedal and it dug into the bitumen and took your front toe nail off, which meant you actually couldn't run for a period. So that's how determined you are to improve your transitions. You are practicing them, and I guarantee everybody out there can honestly say they're not practicing transitions, which it's something you need to do. There are five or six examples in the race on the weekend at the 2xU, which happened to be the. We're talking about this because it's the national title for sprint. So everybody in Australia should be coming to this race that they want to win this national title. I saw six races decided by transition. People were too slow in transition. You beat fourth place by a minute and a half in transition, and you beat fourth place by four seconds. But he clearly would have beaten you had he had transitioned the same as you.

Correct.

So he's beaten you in a lot of the other areas. He's beating you in the swim and not the bike. But he's beating you in the run. Clearly. But we'll get to that. But transition wise, you've given yourself every opportunity to place in the podium and it actually that is what happened in your race and I can see that in other races where I've seen people lose and win podium spot because the transition was shocking or the transition was excellent. So let's go to the bike and we need to tell everybody that you had Covid 10 days prior to both the Teamstone trial at Ballarat where you were in a four man team and you came second and then four days later you backed up. That was on the Thursday. Then you backed up on the Sunday and did the sprint distance. We originally weren't going to do any of the races because I'm a big believer in if you have a virus, it's really dangerous to do high intensity activity and you could do damage to your body. So I'm especially not going to do that to my son. So I'm really questioning the motivated athlete will say, yeah, I'll be fine. And you are motivated and you want to race, you are a racer. But we had to really think carefully about whether this is a good thing to do. And each day in your progression from, from COVID every day was starting with recovery ride, recovery run, then easier ride in zone one and two, then stepping up to a little bit more zone three and all the time asking how you feeling you're coping, is your heart rate, your heart rate was really high all through these easy sessions compared to what they should have been. It was 10 or 15 beats higher. And that's not a good sign. That shows you that the virus is still there. So for everybody listening, these are things that you, you need to be asking yourself, is it worth the risk? And it's not. That is my. Because you could end up with chronic fatigue or swollen glands or glandular fever, or if you're pushing your body ahead of when it's ready for high intensity and if you put yourself in a race, I'll just do it easy. You don't, you are not going to just do it easy. You're a competitor and you're going to do hard as you can. Otherwise don't do the race.

And to give some context, you know, the Sunday, the week prior was this second or third session I'd done easy. And you just said if by miracle on Wednesday we've done some hard sessions, you feel fine, you can race a Thursday, but let's just scrap the race on Sunday. Let's just act like you're not going to do that. But then the couple of hard sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday gave me a lot of confidence because although my heart rate was high, we, I was feeling fine. And so you said, well give the, give the race a crack. And because it was a teams event, I was able to be a bit protected. We had a strategy in the team to me not do as much work at the start and if I can help at the end that so be it. But got through that race comfortably, although again the heart rate was high. And that gave confidence to say, actually I think I can race on Sunday. So that's where the kind of change in decision making happened. But it's still, you still, there's still so many unknowns about how you're going to respond.

Yeah. And the fact that you've done a couple of, only, you know, a couple of little efforts, 4 minute effort, 6 minute effort, couple of 1 minute efforts, couple of 30 second efforts and your heart rate was really high in the, in the leading up sessions and then your heart rate was massively high. You had a peak heart rate of all time on that Thursday teams time trial where you weren't actually riding as an individual riding in a team. So that's quite significant and that's a little bit scary for me. Anyway, you got through that and you were exhausted, but that's okay. And then we made the decision that you would compete on the Sunday because you, you felt like if you can do that Thursday, you can do Sunday, Matt. And we learn a lot of things on the Sunday because in the, in the bike you actually rode, compared to your previous 2xu race, you rode fractionally better numbers, slightly slower speed sweep is 43.5 and you have 42.9 for this one. But it had three times the amount of turns. The previous race only had three turns, this had eight. So your speed is going to be a little bit slower because of the turns and that's just the fact of the race. But the power was a couple of watts higher. So you actually rode higher power for slower speed. That's due to the turns, but it was fantastic that you were able to ride that power, especially after, you know, only seven days previous being unsure whether you're actually going to do the race. So really was happy with your execution. One thing that I did pick up was your power in the first five to eight minutes was 15 watts to 10 watts lower than it was for the last 15 minutes of the ride. So you rode 300 and something watts for the 300, five watts for the last 15 minutes and you rode to 80 for the first 15 minutes. So you executed well. But you were too slow in the first section. Why were you too slow? You're too gassed because you're not fit enough in the swimming. And if you improve your swimming fitness and that, that will improve your speed, you will be able to cope with riding higher power. Straight away. We need to practice a couple of sessions where you do swim, get on the bike and try to ride the power you want to ride and get used to doing that action because clearly I did the same thing. I was probably 20 watts lower in my first 10 minutes than I was in my last and that showed that I was gassed as well. So they're two areas that both of us need to improve on. So I'm telling you, the listeners this because I want you to go and have a look at your data and what were you doing in the first five minute power? What were you doing the first 10 minutes? What you're doing the first 15 minutes, then go to the last five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I'm not talking about when you put your shoes in to your feet and clip in. I'm talking about once you've been time trialing properly.

Well then there's some time there for clipping.

Yes, you need to get the clipping done properly. But I'm not talking about when you're taking your feet out of the shoes. I'm talking about when you're riding properly in, in the race in the middle section you should be, you know, what did you do? It's for the 40k race it was 3 laps, for the 26.7k it was 2 laps. What was your first half, what was your downwind, what was your headwind, what was your second half? Downwind? Headwind. Have all that data written out, have a look at it. You can't make this, you can't make judgments. If you don't have the data, you've got to go and extract it. So you know, I'm dividing it into laps, I'm dividing into one direction, the other direction. And you know we always say the biggest gains in time trialing is in the hardest parts. And it was a basically pancake flat course with you know, 2 or 3 meter rise past Fitzroy street, but it had a Little bit of wind. So the harder part was on the. On the outward bound to Elwood. You needed to ride higher power there and the faster time back, you need to ride a little bit less power because you're, you know, you're riding the same speed as other people. The biggest gains when the bike's going slower, as we know. So I was really pleased with the way you executed. I was really pleased with the way all of the Trivalo people executed. I looked at every single one 100% road stronger in the second half than in the first half. That's the first that hasn't happened too many times. So that was fantastic to see that.

Question I would have, because it worked out well that the kind of third sector was the headwind. So you want to go harder there anyway. But mentally I was trying to go a bit harder because I don't actually want to feel as gassed in the fourth sector coming into getting off the bike. I'd rather back off a little bit and just let the legs recover a little bit heading into the run. I don't want to have as much lactic as possible. Is that a fair tactic to really kind of. Let's say I'm trying to push 5 watts higher on that third sector, maybe go for 10 watts instead and then back off 10 watts on that tailwind, sector four. And also second part of the question is, what if it was the opposite? What if sector three is a tailwind and then sector four, the headwind, and you're kind of gassing yourself a bit getting off the bar?

Great question. No, you do not go way above. You continue with the plan. You don't want to be spiking. You know, spiking causes all sorts of problems. The heart rate spikes, your nutrition gets used quicker, you lactate more and you actually feel more tired. You know, that's the end result. You actually feel more tired. So the minute your heart rate starts to spike, you're putting yourself under pressure. So you're better off being at the top end rather than being above the range in the harder part. And therefore coming into the tailwind, you, you are still controlling everything. You're keeping it, keeping it in the right ranges. Every time you spike, it's burning a match. So you don't want to be way outside the range because, you know, this is the hardest part. You know, the example is that time trial at Bunnyong with the hill. You know, I tried that in training and I couldn't ride the rest of the. The race 15 watts lower. So you Know, go and try it if you want, see what happens. But I can tell you that'll be the result. So the good question and so I was really happy with the way you rode except the only thing I can pick up is we need to be riding the power. You want to ride for the whole ride. The listeners need to understand I'm not trying to tell you to ride slower than build progressively faster. I want you to ride the power from get start to finish. That is for the headwind, that is for the tailwind and that's the number you need to ride. And if you, if you can ride better than that on the day and you still run well in the post race analysis, you can work that out. Did it affect me in the run? If not, great. These are numbers we can now aspire to, but you need to be actually riding it from the get go. Once you, once you've got your legs out of the swim, now they're on the bike, they've got to be as quick a point where you hit your target straight away. And that would be the thing you need to work on as, as our analysis of your race. You did pretty much everything right and I think the people who you're used to riding similar times to actually got their legs quicker than you did. And I think that could be, you know, four or five seconds there or 10 seconds there. And don't forget you're, you're in covert form, you're not in, you're not informed that, that you should be able to ride as these other guys are in, have hadn't had any effect of illness. So you know, you only have to be off 1 or 2%. And it's the footy analogy, if you know, you don't come to the, come to the game. You know, even though you could be playing the bottom team, if you're the top team and you're off 5% you will get rolled by the bottom team. So the same thing is when you're on the bike, if you happen to be 1 or 2% off, that'll cost you 30 seconds and that's what's happened to you. My analysis for you is you've got to take into consideration the illness. And these aren't excuses, these are actual facts. You know, if you didn't have an illness I'd be saying you have to improve your training. But we also know that in that seven weeks from the last race you've basically only had two and a half weeks of proper training. So in actual fact your ride was quite Good. But when we get to the run, you know, the virus has actually had a massive impact on your run because you basically stopped for two minutes with cramp in your hamstrings. And you know that's, that's not normal. You're a 1625 K runner. And one of our really good athletes, Calvin, who won the national title, Kelvin Amos, he's a 1605 5K runner. Well, he's run around 17 minutes. You've run 20, 30, you know, you're, you're 10 second different runner and over 10K you're slightly faster than he is. So, so I would say you would have, you know, if you pushed yourself hard on the swimming bike, you would have good a better back end because you are a faster runner over 10k. But, but you're actually three minutes slower and it's only because you stopped for up to four and a bit, four and a half minutes with cramp. So they've actually run okay. When you're running, you've been running the right pace but, but because your body's shut down on you and it's, it's really a combination of the lack of training fitness you had in that seven week period between the two races and Covid was the final straw. Your body's not coping well at that high intensity, high heart rate, your body shut down. Even in a short event, you can get cramp at the highest level. You're trying to run 320, the 325 pace and you know, you're barely running 3:35, 3:45 pace. So my analysis for you is fantastic effort to actually get to the start line, the run. Maybe you rode fractionally too hard in the ride because of the form you're in. And because you had Covid, you needed to take that into consideration a bit more. And that's easy to say that. But you know, you're competitive and you want to, you know the numbers you're trying to ride to and you hit those numbers. But it actually affected you in the run. Had you ridden slower, you possibly could have run faster or not stopped with cramp. So you would have probably ended up with maybe an 1830 instead of a 2030. And would those two minutes, would you have, you know, if you'd ridden a minute and a half slower, it would have come to the same result probably. So, so going slower on the bike is not normally what you would have to do, but it's because of the COVID and the preparation you'd done has caused you to, to really not have a run that, that you're proud of. So that's hard, that's hard to hear, but that's just the facts, unfortunately.

And as you say, it's. If you go into a race under repaired, it's, you have to expect an under prepared result. And yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a run at the end. It's not a walk run, unfortunately, that we know we spoke about that a lot and it happened and it was pretty frustrating. But do you see that as, as.

A fair analysis of, of is that anything unfair that I said there? And this is something I would say to everyone.

Yeah, I think the context we would, we would talk as bluntly or if not more bluntly in person because it's, we're just trying to find the facts or the truth. We don't ever need to sugarcoat anything. But yeah, it's, it's just the way, the way it went and we both don't like ever talking about, oh, you, you could have done this. Well, you know, because you didn't. And that was the result that you had on the day and that was the best your body could do. Whether it was, you know, something like cramp, which feels so uncontrollable sometimes. That's, that was your body's response. And I had been asking were there other things I could have done that could have prevented the cramp? Because once I started running I knew I could feel it coming straight away. So I was really trying to run with relaxed form and as soon as I hit some corners, my hamstrings just went. But did I need to relax more on the bike? Even if I was riding that power? Just was I quite tense or do I need to relax my form a bit? Even in the swimming, was I, was I kicking too much? I kind of ask all these questions and really hard to answer because you don't know exactly what contributed to cramp. But my best guess is just the.

Like you said, the combination of everything.

Combination of the last seven weeks. Judah, you know, I had an injury seven weeks ago and that's why I missed a whole bunch of training, had a couple of weeks back training and then got covered. So the same thing as you. We never are trying to paint these as excuses on the podcast. This is just a very raw insight into the kind of conversation we would have and the questions we would ask. And I just don't, the only thing I actually don't like is you saying, oh well, you would have done this. Well, had you not cramp, it's like, well, that's not, that's not how I did. You know, the results show, and I know you don't mean that, but you're just trying to paint a picture of what I expected to do. But yeah, you know, when you get to the end, you have to tell people what result you got and whatever excuses are there don't. Don't count because this is the result you ended up with. So.

Yeah, but you have to, you have to acknowledge that in your own mind. And I did say to you before, the race is, you know, you're going into it under, under prepared and you have to accept the result. And, and that's. It's all very well to say that.

But because you're competitive, once you've got the number on. Yeah, you forget that advice.

That's right. Yep. And, and, you know, things happen and cramp is the body's response to say that it's going to stop you from injuring yourself, and so therefore it wants you to stop exercising. So it locks you up. And it's a preventative. Cramp is a preventative technique that the body has to stop people from going one step further and tearing, Tearing muscles. So why do we get it? There's so many reasons why we get cramp. It's never one reason. But if you're, you know, your nutrition could have been so at low levels because of the virus you had with COVID you know, your electrolyte levels, your hydration levels, your, Your iron levels. There's so many things that could be at rock bottom that unless you're doing a blood test, you know, but no idea. But it can't be. It can't be at its, at its highest, highest level. So.

And even if we did blood tests, I mean, we've had a few experts on the podcast kind of say that we don't exactly know what causes cramp. It's, it seems to be indicated by a few of these things.

So the, the muscle is, is over. It's over fatigued, so it's going to lock up. So. And it could be because you went too hard on the bike or swim or kicked too hard or, or didn't have the right nutrition or, you know, didn't have enough hydration and, you know, tension, tension. We know, you know, if you tense up, it will have. If you tense your arm, you can cramp it straight away. So. So there's so many reasons, but the bottom line comes back to, you know, we know looking back, that Your fitness, fitness is a big contributor to crap. And you know, the fittest people can still get cramped. Don't get me wrong, when you talk.

About fitness, you're talking about are you into this intensity fit? Are you fit enough for the intensity requirements?

That's right, yeah. And so we know your preparation was compromised. So we would expect that your fitness is not where it should be for this particular event, but you still want to do it. So you have to, you have to accept all those things. And my summary is that, you know, under the circumstances, kudos for starting the race that, you know, and I would be saying this to any athlete, you know, fantastic. You put a number on. You risked everything, you risked your pride and everything that goes with competing and you want to win and you came short. You took it on the podium, which was pretty incredible. At the end of the day you are unhappy with the result, but it's, it's going to be something that's going to drive you on for, for the next race. And we're already planning what we can do better in your training and we need to be consistent. And it's, it's easy to say that but you got injured so you know, we need to try and work out. Now the injury you got was a cork, so it's, it's not something that you did on your own. Someone actually ran into you on your quadricep muscle and, and caused trauma. So it's not like you overdid something. It was just happened to be in a, in a touch match.

But, and yeah, I mean this is, it's a really good theme to kind of finish off on because we are really big about taking responsibility for every part of your performance. And it's just because if you want certain results, you've got to take responsibility for everything you can control. And in this situation I got this core playing touch. And that is, you know, if you wanted to compete well in a race, then you would prioritize not playing touch. And we had a conversation coming into this summer season, I said, no, I still really enjoy playing and I still really enjoy playing this team sport. It's only a six week competition and that was my choice. And you know, you could say, well, an area you can prove is to not make that choice and not play because that injury took me out for three weeks so, and interrupted three weeks worth of training. So yeah, if you want to be really critical, you can, you can say, well, that was the choice you made and that, that ended up in that obviously you don't mean to get injured or caught. And yeah, I mean, same thing with cramping. You could, you know, it seems a little bit out of your control, but you can. I still need to do more testing onto on my hydration levels throughout the race because I'm still trying to find a balance of taking in enough water on the bike. But if I take too much, I'm finding my stomach really struggles in the run. So that's still something I'm working out. And maybe if that was improved, then the cramping wouldn't have happened. Even though we know that hydration and cramping don't really have a scientific correlation. But again, just proving the point of these kind of questions and taking as much responsibility as you can for these outcomes.

Yeah, and look, we've got so many other athletes who, who absolutely prepared well, had a great race plan, executed the plan perfectly, and got the result they wanted. I'm not talking about winning. I'm talking about getting a pb. A personal improvement is, is really what we're all trying to achieve. And if you end up winning the national title, that's an unbelievably good thing. And, you know, all credit to you. And if you get a pb, in my eyes, that's your own national title. You know, every time you, you compete, you want to improve on what you did on last time. That's just a natural thing. You can't compare one race to another in triathlon, especially because the swim's never the same. The bike from this time, compared to last time it was 20k. This time it's 26.7. The conditions of the day and the run was 5k. And some runs are 5.3, some runs are 4.9. Um, so you need to, you need to compare your, your average power, your average swim pace, and your average pace on the run. They're the three things I'm talking about as PBS and also T1 and T2. So, you know, don't look at the actual finish time of the race because every day the weather is different on any given course. And there's no. Unless you do exactly the same course, exact same weather conditions, then that's the time you can compare. But you can't compare race to race. You can only compare your swim speed per 100 meters, your T1 time, and it might be the T1 is six minutes this week and one minute the following week because it's 100 meters compared to 400 meters. So you're going to compare your T1 against the rest of the field, you.

Can compare that because it's less of an ability thing and more of a skill thing. Whereas you can't compare your power to the rest of the field because your power is your own individual.

That's right, yeah. So, so on the bike you're just wanting to compare your power to the last time you and your average speed. And, and we've proven in this analysis that you rode better power with a slower average speed because it had more turns in the course. So therefore every time you turn, you slow down, slow down into the turn, you slow down out of the turn and, and turning left as well, turning left and right. So, so average speed is good. Power, if it's working correctly is more you should be looking at for comparison. I'm talking about average speed is important because that shows how fast you're riding compared to everybody else. But, and obviously the pace you're running at, if you end up running a 5k at, you know, 18 minutes and the next race you do 18:50, but it's 5.3k, well, that's a better run than 18 minutes. You know, that's obvious, but people don't look at it that way. Well, I ran 18:30 last time I ran 18 minutes and I'm saying, well, last time it was 5k, this is 5.3. So you're way ahead because your average pace was 324. Last time it was 327. So they're the things you need to be looking at in your post race analysis and go into detail. I've gone to great lengths today for you and I to discuss intimate macro stuff that, that, you know, people don't do. You know, I'm not that into it. Well, you are because you spend all your time training and you spend all your money buying equipment and entering races. So you are into it, in fact. And you, you would be absolutely fooling yourself and having a lend of yourself. I reckon if you aren't interested in.

Improving, there's so much gold in it and there's so much gold in having this conversation. And that's why you do it with all the athletes after the races and why that as an athlete you need to do it with yourself. And it's just so important. I heard a great analogy where it's talking about having the right strategy and you might get on a plane and have the most enjoyable flight you've ever had and you're supposed to go to Hawaii, but you land and you end up in New Zealand, you know, and it was a great flight, but you're in the wrong spot. And for me, that's how you approach. You know, you finish this race, next race is in four weeks time or six weeks time. That's your aim. You want to get on the right flight to your next race. And that's why you have to do this, because it lets you know, okay, you need to get on this flight and do X with your swimming and do X with your training. And that's going to get you to Hawaii for your next race. Whereas you might in the next six weeks do some enjoyable training. But it's the wrong flight and you don't improve for the next race.

Yeah, you're still on the flight, the plane to New Zealand. Each training block you're on the same plane with the same result and not willing to look at what do I need to do to change things. Unless you're willing to look at what you need to do, then just keep doing triathlons the way you are because you won't improve and you won't aspire to it. And I think it's a cop out for people to say, oh, it doesn't mean that much. To me it does. If you're, if you're doing all this effort, it means everything to you. Deep down in your own mind. Outwardly you can say that, but everybody wants to be a better version of themselves. You know, you get such an affirmation from knowing that you improved. Tell me you don't, because I don't believe it. The minute you do something better than you've done before, it's a great feeling and you get a chemical release from it. We know that and that's why we do it. We've kind of got an addiction to it. So do the things that are going to enable you next time. You pin a number on whether it's a fun run, whether it's a, an individual time trial, whether it's a triathlon or, or a, you know, a swimming race, you, you want to have done all the things that you need to have learned from the previous experience better. And that I think is the value of the post race analysis.

That's a great way to finish. We really hope you've enjoyed this conversation. As we said, it's quite an intimate and raw look into the type of conversation we've have and we really hope you find it valuable because, I mean, it's valuable for us. I mean just that last 20 minutes of hearing you say that is extremely valuable for me and it's what an athlete needs. So thank you very much for listening to this episode, as always, and we'll see you next time. It.