We Reviewed 500+ Time Trials, Here’s The Fastest Way To Ride

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Tribalo coaching Jared Donnelly. We have analyzed literally thousands of time trial performances and the results are wild. From power control for beginners to advanced pacing strategies, this episode breaks down exactly how, how the fastest riders ride, including why a secret gear changing strategy could be the missing piece in your speed, or how course knowledge turns good athletes into fast ones. And why the biggest time gains aren't made on the flats, but on the slowest sections of the course if you know how to ride them. So if you want to unlock free speed, this episode is your blueprint. Dad, welcome back to another episode. It's going to be a good one.

Thanks, Jord. I really excited about this. This is one of my, uh, biggest bugbears is athletes searching for marginal gains in the wrong area. And, and I think the training side of the bike is so undervalued at the moment. Um, you know, people just think, yeah, I'm doing the, I'm doing the, the duration of the training, uh, and that should be good enough. But it's actually so much more than that. And, and that's like the, the small part of it. And actually doing the session in a, in a specific way will allow you to get that speed that you're looking for. I'm super excited. Get that knowledge out out there and get people riding faster.

Yes, exactly. Right. Before we get into the topic, though, just a quick shout out and welcome to the newest members of the Tribalo coaching family. These athletes have all jumped on board with the hopes of improving their results and we can't wait to help them. Big shout out to Michaela Graham from New Zealand, Andrew Brambrook from Victoria, Gus Coleman from Western Australia. I return to the program for Beth Cowley, who has been out with some chronic sickness for a long time. So big welcome back to Beth. Tom Bullcock from the uk, Shane Mitchell from Queensland, and Emily Engelbert, a professional soccer player turned triathlete from Western Australia. Again, we can't wait to help you improve on your journey. If you'd like to join these athletes and guarantee your own improvement, you can go to our website, travelocoaching.com a reminder, as you just heard, we coach athletes internationally from anywhere in the world. Now, dad, let's get into it. We love time trialing. It is our bread and butter. It is our favorite thing and luckily for triathlon, that is the part where the most time is to be gained in the time control on the bike. But we also just love cycling time trials on their own and can't get enough of it. And as you just mentioned in the intro, it's not just practice that makes perfect. It's perfect. Practice makes perfect. And we do think that a lot of people are putting the time in the bike in training, but not the right sort of time and not the right sort of training. And that makes all the difference.

Yeah, I've often used the golf analogy when I'm explaining to our trivalo athletes if you, if you are really diligent and know, went to the driving range for two hours a day and, and you had a really bad hook and, and you just keep going to the driving range and you just keep practicing as hard as you can without getting instruction about maybe changing your grip or your swing or your connection and you just keep hooking. When you go to the first tee on your next golf game, guess what you're going to do? You're going to hook the same way as you've been doing in practice. And so that's, that's practicing imperfectly. And so you want to actually know what you should be practicing on the bike. And, and that's the only way you' actually get the speed that you're so desperately trying to improve upon. And, and I, I can't wait to, to dig into the things that are going to be the keys to allowing you to get the speed that you're after.

So we want to go through a lot of the key learnings from all our analysis because we have just such great data and breakdown from so many athletes replicating efforts across the same time trial courses, very int time trial courses, hilly courses, flat courses, different conditions all around Australia and the world. And we just have incredible data that over the years we've collated and we want to talk about the key learnings here and I want to talk about our starting point and analysis is just understanding the basics of what we're trying to teach people. And we talk so much about power in this podcast. But power isn't everything and we talk so much about power because when people are new to power or beginner athletes learning power control is the fundamental skill you need to get right. But that's just the starting point. That's not going to be the only thing that you need to rely on to be a good time trialist.

Yeah, the metrics we talk about so often and power is the one that gets mentioned the most in social media and society and talk amongst, you know, cyclists and triathletes of the world. You know, watch your power. What's your FTP, what's your. What's per kilo? And so it is an important metric, but it's, it's not the be all and end all. It's. It's a guide. And everything that we do, we use as a guide so that we can execute properly. And we want to get as many guides to help us make better decisions as possible. And so power is just one of those guides. And we can rattle through all of the other ones, such as rpe. Your rate of perceived exertion, your heart rate, what's that looking like? Your actual cadence, of course, your power data. What is my overall power? What's my actual power at the moment? What's my lap power? And all of these things are going to contribute to you making a decision about where you are in the now, in the moment. And I just think that once we get that knowledge about going from A to B as fast as possible is the goal as a time trial, whether you're a runner, swimmer, rider, whatever, you're trying to get from A to B as fast as possible. So we're trying to use all these metrics as guides to help us make better decisions. So if we, if we don't use the speed metric against power, against heart rate, against rpe, against cadence, then we're missing one of the links. If we don't use power, against speed, against heart rate, against cadence, against rpe, we're missing another link. And if we don't have rpe, the story continues. You have to have all five of those things in your kit bag to make the right decisions. And that's the thing we want to get across. First and foremost is power is important. But it's only one of the metrics that we want to use, and it's only a guide. It's not the holy Bible. It's a guide to help us make better decisions earlier in the session and more importantly, on race day. We don't want to be that athlete who just blows their race apart because they got carried away by not using the guides available to them. And that's what the majority, unfortunately, of triathletes, of time trial bike riders, of swimmers, of marathon runners, half marathon runners, park runs. Go to any park run and you will see majority of the field. I'm not generalizing here. The majority of the field are running their first K the fastest, and they're progressively going to slow down as they go through the 5k. If they just use the data, whether it's pace or heart rate or whatever they're going to use on the day to guide them to make better decisions, they're going to get a better outcome. They're going to run faster or ride faster or swim faster. That's what our goal is, to get the fastest time we can. And I can't make that any more clearer. If you don't understand that principle and use the metrics as your guide, then you're just going to continue to be a similar type of athlete for years. And you sure your fitness will improve and the mistakes you make in your execution will probably get better over time. But if you're not actually understanding how to change things to get you to the right result, then you're going to stay similar as an athlete.

But there's a fundamental reason that we, we just focus on power so much and it's because it just allows us to have some of the most control about the effort. And realistically, we're just teaching athletes from the very start this fundamental skill around controlling power because it measures their effort. That's what the whole goal is around using that and focusing on that a lot. We're not discounting the other ones. We're just saying this is a really, really easy way to get on top of your effort and make sure you're not overriding or underwriting any sections and getting the most out of yourself. And we call it a fundamental skill because it, it takes athletes sometimes one, two, three plus years or athletes are still finding that in year four. They're finally getting it, they're finally getting on top of that control. And so, you know, it's really the metric that we're focused on to help athletes stay within the, the constraints of their ability for the, for the time trial so that they can average the highest wattage and speed possible.

And Jordan, I'll give one great example and look, this is obvious when you hear it, but, but people don't actually think like this. So if I said to you, Jordan, okay, your average power for the race that we're going to do is 200, you and I decided that's, that's the power we want you to race at for this 20 kilometer time trial and you could get the end of that session, that race or whatever the training session or race is, and you've, you've matched it, you've got 200 watts. And then we dig into the, into the data and we see that you've spent 40% or 50% of the time at 140 watts and 50% of the time at 280. And that gives you an average of 200 watts. And then I say to you, that's, that's okay, you've averaged that 200, but the way you've got it is not the way we want to do it. If you had have averaged 190 and 210 for 50% of the time, then you end up with 200. That's a big bigger. It's a huge difference in the way you've executed that session. You've been so high and so low, but you've got 200. The goal was achieved, but it hasn't really been achieved, it's been achieved the wrong way. So there's so many ways of getting the end result that could be positive or negative. And, and that's the next level that we're trying to get people to understand is it's not just the end result, it's how you got that, that average power that you are striving for.

Yeah. And the, the most simple way to put it is, is the first way you described then it's just much harder. You know, you, you might be averaging the same power at the end, but you've just, you've just burnt yourself silly trying to do that. Just going over and then trying to recover over, trying to recover. And, and part B, we know ends up being a better average speed, especially if you put the power down at the right seconds of the course. But it's also just a much more comfortable and easy way to ride. And you're constantly going to the red, which absolutely just kills you.

Yeah. And you can't recover that well once you've lactated and you know, you are in that red zone. We, you know, the only thing, once you hit your red zone with power and heart rate, you only have one option, that is to try to hang on or slow down so that you can continue to ride. And if you've ever been in a situation where you've done a 20 minute FTP, you've got to eight or nine minutes or even 12 and, and you've gone, oh no, I can't actually ride any harder here. And I'm going to struggle to ride the next eight minutes or 12 minutes where I'm, I've got no choice now, I've got to drop back, which is so soul destroying that you've, you know, you've got it wrong from the start. You've gone too hard and that's what we're trying to prevent. It's a guide to stop you doing that so that you can actually get close to the edge of the cliff and not go over the cliff, just get to that tipping point, but learn how to hold it there. And that's a huge skill that most people don't have.

Yeah. And then once you do start to get a sense of power control, the advanced level is. Is then using all the other metrics and, and we talk about this a lot. It's actually going back and, and using speed a bit more. And we're going to talk about how this can be a little bit confusing throughout this topic, but really the question is, as you said before, how can you go to A, from A to B, as fast as possible? And it's really, how can you maintain the highest speed possible while burning the least amount of energy, while being as efficient as possible? That's the whole goal, because that's going to allow you to maintain the highest power output and come home as strong as possible at the end. And the less efficient you are, the less energy you're going to have for the back end to keep pushing and keep holding that high average speed. So it's interesting, you know, when you're a beginner, we don't want you focused on speed because it's. You don't focus on the right input, you know, and it's going to. You're going to be all over the shot with your power. But once you get a sense of power control and you. And you learn how to ride evenly, you're then watching speed because you're kind of saying to myself, well, how do I need to ride to keep my average speed up? You know, and, and you have this own experience kind of at Geelong this year where you just know your body so well that you're really attacking the sections of the course, just trying to keep that average speed up because you know yourself you're not going to be going over your power.

Yeah. And you know, when you're in a position for. The example I would use on myself is that I'm not the athlete I was 18 months ago. For various reasons, it doesn't really matter, but I know where my current ability is and if I step outside of that, I'm going to pay the price hugely to be fading so badly that I'm going to be disappointed with the end result. So I'm really disciplined in saying I'm just not riding outside the range. And everybody should think like that they should think like, I'm trying to conserve the whole. Whether you've got a decreased form level, but you should just not worry about that. It's where I am on the day, where I arrive on the day is the ranges I should be in and not think about, you know, I could do this six months ago or 12 months ago. That's just irrelevant. And you need to be disciplined about staying where, where you're capable of performing. Because there's nothing worse than the feeling of trying to push power or the back end of a ride or try to run the pace you wanted to. When you've literally blown yourself up and it's a really shocking experience of, you feel like your whole body's like a brick. You're stiff, you're tight, you can't run, your legs feel like, what's wrong with me? It's just you've lactated so much that you're in the red zone and you can't do much about it except slow down. And for anybody who's ever run a 400 meter flat out that last 100 meters, coming around the, you know, the 300 meter mark into the finishing straight, you feel like you got a piano on your back. And that is a feeling you have in a time trial, whether it's a 400 meter or whether it's a 90k time trial. The only thing is, you know, in an endurance sport, if you've gone too hard, you have to hang on for half an hour, not 100 meters out of a 400 meter. So. So the exaggeration of the pain you're going to feel, and that's why we're so adamant that you, you just can't be undisciplined. And you can, but it will be a really unpleasant experience and we're trying to eliminate that. It's meant to be a really fun event where you're in control. And the minute you give control back, that means you've lactated, you've gone to the red zone, and that's because of your decision making. No one else has forced you to do that. You've done that yourself by making poor decisions early. And so we're trying to prevent that, but we still want you to be at the pointy end of your level, but just be disciplined enough to not go outside of it. And ironically, Jord, our best athletes, compared to our beginner athletes, the best athletes who perform week in, week out, they just are super disciplined. They don't go outside the ranges. Our beginner athletes have equal Amount of time in zone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Our advanced athletes have no time in zone 1, 2, 3,. Or time in zone 4 and no time in zone 5 and 6. They have one tower in our zone, powered by zones. And, you know, you would think that the person who's got a lot of spread across their power zones would have the fastest time, but it's actually the opposite. The person who's disciplined and stays in the ranges, they're the fastest riders. And for anybody out there listening, you need to think like that. You need to be. If the best riders in the world are doing it, that's what I should be aspiring to.

Yeah. It's interesting when you start thinking about the best riders in the world and this advanced level because we look at the pros and they, to their detriment, notorious for a lot of them not looking at their power too much in races and just racing the race and riding as fast as they can. And there's a little bit to be admired in that, in that they, they're just trying to go from A to B as fast as they can, and they don't really care about the power and they're willing to risk blowing up to get there. But we, we want to look at that and go. We don't always copy the pros. Why? Because they're different athletes to us and, and kind of chicken or the egg, you know, what comes first. Sometimes they're improving because they're forcing themselves to ride like that and go beyond their limits. And they might blow up run race, but they are. But we also know that a lot of them could actually improve their pacing strategy if they did pay more attention to power. And so just because it's a pro doesn't mean they're doing things right. And we can't blindly believe that they're doing everything perfectly because they're learning just as much as we all are as well.

And they're actually in a different race, to be fair. And, you know, the age grouper, that's where we're. We're really aiming this advice and we're using examples from professionals to help guide decisions. A lot of the professional races, you have to ride in a pack situation. It's like a. It's like a time trial where you. You're having to ride according to what the pack's doing. And we know that from, for example, Kona last year, you know, the eventual winner, he was in a pack out of the water, and he decided to drop back off because he felt the pace was Going too hard for him and he ended up winning, winning the whole event because of that. Great decision. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to join in with the rest of the pros, what they're doing, but as an age grouper, we're not even worried about that. You shouldn't be think, thinking like that. It should be, no, I need to be super disciplined and stay in my ranges. And that's the way that you're going to get the outcome that you want.

Yeah. So I really want to talk about a fascinating missing piece of the puzzle. And this is just a game changer. In our analysis and looking at the data of all these time trials and the trend we have noticed is something massive with cadence and gear changes and that this is just an absolutely phenomenal thing to learn and to find. And it seems simple, but it's just so clear cut in the data. And the fastest athletes, when we look at their cadence graph throughout the time trial effort, their cadence looks like such, such a dead straight line. It looks really close to what you might see like on Erg mode on the trainer. You know, they're just, their cadence is 91 or 92 or 89 for the time trial and just hovers around that. It's 90, 91, 92, 91, 90, 80, 90, 89, 90 just around there. Regardless of if it's a hilly course or not. And trust me, we've seen really, really hilly courses where the best, our best athletes, and we're not talking best in terms of time, that's really, really clear point. We're not talking the fastest in terms of time, but we're talking about the best executed and those athletes doing PBS for themselves. So whether it's a 90K, if they're doing three hours or two hours, you know, they've ridden their best PBS riding this way, but their cadence just maintains a really flat line. And then the riders that ride less effectively and slower comparative to what they could be doing, their cadence is all over the shop because they're getting to a hill and they're not changing gears fast enough and they're grinding away. And their cadence drops to 70 for 5, 10, 15 seconds and 75, 80, 85 back to that 90. And then they get over the crest of the hill downhill, and they're not changing gears down enough, quickly enough, and then they're spinning out at 105, 110. And then their cadence throughout the whole ride that's repeated is just a much more exaggerated up and down, up and down graph and so what we discovered was that realistically, in the 90k time trial example, we found that if you're changing gears properly in a really hilly course, this is not a bread and butter rule. We're just giving this example as something to work off. You know, we, we found a, a good rider was changing gears over 2, 000 times. That is a monstrous, monstrous number. And so Garmin actually tells you that now what you're doing. But you might want to look at your own Garmin and see are you changing gears that many times or are you in the, in the few hundreds over a big time trial and you're just rarely changing and therefore your cadence is all over the shop.

Yeah. And look, we've got to be quite clear here. You know, the course will dictate the amount of changes you need. And if you're on a pancake flat course where there is no wind, you could be only changing gears 40 or 50 times compared to a really windy day on a, on a really undulating course, you don't even remember how many times you're filtering the gears to make sure that you're staying in the cadence. And that's, that's pretty much what this, this particular point we're talking about. I do want to go back to the speed a little bit later if we can. Just a reminder, Jordan, there's a few more points that I, I didn't actually get to talk about, but while we're on the, the cadence thing, I think we should keep diving into that and I think the, the fact that people don't understand that it should be an automatic response when you're riding, when you're riding on a, on an undulating course, which, which requires a lot of filtering of the gears. If you're not sure what I mean by that is every time you feel the pressure change in your legs and you should react instantly about changing gears to a point. And so you and myself have been riding our bikes for a long time. We just do it automatically without thinking. But the beginner rider, to be fair, has not experienced this. They don't understand what the pressure feels on or off in their legs wherever they are riding outside. And you can do this inside as well. If you're on a free ride on any of the apps, it's hard to do it when you've loaded your in training peak session because there's no change in resistance of the terrain. So the terrain dictates what gear we should be. And I'll give you an example. I was driving behind One of our really good time trialers. And I was in the van and I just followed him for, I think it was a 14 minute section. And in that section it had rollers at a lot of hills and I wished I was able to. I was in the van by myself. I couldn't touch the phone. I wanted to film him and I couldn't tell whether he was going uphill or downhill. When I was riding behind him. His cadence remained the same and there were lots of hills that were 1 minute, 3 minutes, downhills that were quite fast. And his cadence remained the same. It was around that 87 to 90 and that suited him. That was his cadence. And other people might be 90 to 94 or 94 to 96 or 85 to 87, whatever your suitable cadence is. We're not discussing that. We're discussing the fact that you stay in your range of cadence just like you do in your range of power. And of course the, the selection of gears that you have will allow you to dictate that. And there will be exceptions of. On courses where you've got like Matthew Flinders drive at port in Port Mac, which has a 22% gradient. Well, no amount of gearing you have on your bike is going to help you on that particular hill. But for the majority of courses around the world, there are gears that you should actually have using on the day. So if your course, Mont Tremblant was on the weekend, really hilly, you would probably need a better selection of gears than you would on something where it's a lot flatter, around 70.3 California or something like that, where it's reasonably flat. So you've got to actually think about the course and selection of gears. So trying to maintain the cadence is going to be a little bit restrictive if you don't have the gear selection. So that's a whole new topic that you know, you need to be thinking about what race am I going? What's the course like? Understanding the gradients of some of the hills and making sure that you've got the right gears for that course so that you can do what we're saying here, which is keep your cadence even in the ranges. So you shouldn't be doing 99 RPM and then 70 RPM. You should have already changed gears so that you can stay at 85, at 86 or 87 the whole way, no matter whether the hill goes up or whether the hill's flat, sorry, goes down or whether it's a flat section of the course. So every time you Feel the pressure on your legs. That is my level of indicator. And you do this automatically. Jordan Most of the people who've been riding a long time, they just feel the pressure change. And when the pressure is eased, it must mean there's a dip in the road or you're going downhill or you've got a tailwind. So you need to then really change gears to make sure that you don't start spinning from 87 to 95 to 98, it's too late. You need to have already felt that and change. So you keep that 87. If we use that as an example, the minute you feel more resistance in your legs, you must be hitting a little rise. So you need to quickly adjust the gear so you can keep the cadence the same. And that allows you then to keep the pressure even on the power on the pedals. The pressure on the pedals gives you even power. Changing gears gives you even cadence. So. So it's what comes first. Well, you need to be filtering the cadence so you can keep the pressure even if you take too long. When you start to go into a dip, you'll go from 87 to 105 straight away. And your legs are revving and you're spinning your, spinning your ring and so to speak, you've got to not let that happen. And if as soon as you hit a little rise, you go from 87 to 70, it's too late. You've lost the opportunity. And if you don't react for those 42 times that you need to or the 150 times, then every time you do that, you see your cadence go 87, 70, 99, 87, 70. And you're just doing this roller coaster of cadence where you can't keep the pressure even. So therefore, your power will, your power will respond with your cadence changes. If, if you don't change gears when you're riding 87 RPM and you get to a hill and the cadence already is 70, guess what? Your power is going to go from 200 to 210 because you haven't changed gears. And so you're going to get these spikes in power, principally because your pressure on the pedals is wrong and you haven't changed gears. And that's the game changing thing that we wanted to talk about on this podcast.

Let's be realistic. It's not going from 200 to 210. It's 200 to 260, you know, because you're not changing gears properly. And then over the top of a climb and down when you're spinning out at 105, you're dropping to 140, you know, power. And so, yeah, quite simply, that athlete you were speaking about, who's just consistent pressure on the pedals, same cadence the whole time, if they had, you know, their twin next to them, that wasn't changing gears in time, that was revving and then grinding, revving and then grinding. They're just. Every time they do that for five seconds and they're just a bit slow on their gear changes, the pressure is going off the pedals, they're losing speed. And so they're just going like, they do that, like I said, 42 times, 100 times over the time trial, times 5 seconds, 8 seconds, 15 seconds to get that back. Look how much time they're losing for the exact same course and effort. And that's what we're talking about.

So if you put yourself side by side that you know, the person who's doing everything what we're asking, and the person who's not, they could be yo yoing like this the whole time from backwards and forwards. And eventually they'll get so fatigued from burning so many matches from not changing gears, then they'll just drop off. And. And the person who's staying consistent with the cadence, gear changing and pressure on the pedals and in the power ranges, they will have an easier ride compared to the person who's doing over under gear changes too slow, not reacting to the pressure on the pedals, and therefore their power is spiking and dropping. They're outside the ranges most of the time above the range, and they're outside below the range. And they may end up with the same power, but they've just achieved it in a different way, which will be slower and more fatiguing. And that's what we're trying to eliminate here.

Seems obvious. Change your gears. But it's a little secret weapon there that that is being completely underutilized. And people would be shocked about how much you really need to be changing gears how frequently. So that's the cadence. Just back to speed. You had some other points you wanted to mention for speed?

Yeah, look, I think level one for speed is. Is probably where the beginners should be thinking they should be trying to just ride even power as much as they can. So if 200 watts is their target power, we wouldn't be complicating them that much by saying, okay, when you get to a slower part of the course, we want you to ride the same power. But when the advanced person we want them to ride at the top of their range. So there's two things here. There's 101, power speed, and then there's the advanced. That's kind of the two camps that we're. If we really make it easy for people to learn this, and if we give them the advanced method too soon, it's too confusing. And so in general, we want you to have the same cadence, keep the speed as close to your average that you're trying to do as possible, and not be too concerned about being at the top of the range or the bottom of the range when you're getting the bike slower or faster. That metric of speed is a really advanced thing that if you can learn that early, that's great. But just learning how to keep even pressure on the pedals is your goal first and foremost as a beginner athlete. And the speed tactic is the second advanced level. And I think we didn't differentiate that when we talked about that early in the podcast. I think for those beginners who are really confused by what we said early, that makes it so much easier that if you just concentrate on trying to stay as close to what your, your, your number that you've agreed on to race to or to train to your power. The power number, the power number you have agreed to for this particular race or training session, that's what you should be concentrating on and using, obviously using your gears to keep that pressure even, to keep the power as smooth as possible. And then the advanced metric is the speed, which is the game changer. And if, if you can learn how to ride power evenly and then you go, right, I'm ready for the speed now. And the speed is okay. Using the speed in any training session, if you're doing it outside or any race where you know that the speeds dropped off from. If you're a 30k an hour rider or a 20 mile an hour rider for those in the northern hemisphere in, in the US you know that if you're doing 16 miles an hour or 25ks an hour, you are absolutely expected to ride the higher end of your power range. Whereas as a beginner, we're just saying, look, it's okay to be quite close to, to that power range. And I, and I hope that message is clear.

Yeah, I think it's important to also address some of the resistance or pushback we get. And I might even just say not even resistance, but just questions we get because it's really important that people ask questions if they disagree, ask the questions so we can explain our reasoning don't just blindly follow the advice because some of the questions we get is, oh, I just feel like if I stick to the power range like you're saying, and focus on this cadence and stuff, it feels like I'm just riding robotically and I'm, I'm just going too slow up the hill compared to everyone else. And, and also on that note, what you said before, you know, some hills I just can't get the cadence right. I can't change gears enough. And some downhills, I just, I can't keep the pressure on. They're very, very valid questions, but they're very, very simple answers. And I want you to answer in detail. But the first point I want to make is that when people bring up those examples, we just say that is absolutely true. If the hill is steep enough, like you said for the example of Matthew Flinders Drive, of course you can't stick to the cadence. You just got to get up the hill. That's it's common sense, of course. And same thing, once, once the downhill gets steep enough and you're going fast enough that you can't keep the pressure on the pedals and the power, of course, you don't need to keep pedaling and keep the cadence up. That, that theory goes out the window. That's common sense. But the times when those happen in races is so small in terms of the ratio of the, the event, whether it's two hour, four hour, six hour time trial, those times probably add up to a couple of minutes max. You know, it's very very, or a few minutes max over the thing. It's very, very minimal. So don't focus on them. You know, they're the outliers. Focus on the rest of the 99% of the time.

Yeah, the exceptions are obvious. You know, when you come to a U turn and most races have U turns or left turns or right turns or roundabouts. We're not talking about that. We're talking about when you've got the opportunity to keep the pressure on the pedals. And that's the key thing you said when you're going downhill and you can't contribute to the bike speed going forward by pedaling because there's no resistance, because you're spinning out. That's the exception we're talking about. But let's not get distracted by that. It's concentrate on the majority of the time when you have the ability to keep progressing and propelling your bike forward. That's what pedaling does. When you ride indoors, if you don't pedal, you stop. When you ride outdoors, if you don't pedal, you still roll. And so you get this false sense outdoors that I'm still moving. But we don't want that. We don't want to have any lacks or lulls in the pressure on the pedals. We want you to keep changing gears so that at all times you've got the same pressure you're feeling. And so that is something that people are not really grasping. And that's why the gear changing is so important, to allow you to keep the speed. So every time you stop contributing, the bike slows down. That's just normal physics, is if you don't contribute to the effort, the force gives you the speed that you're wanting. So if you're not giving any force to it, you're going to slow down because the wind will slow you down. Even, even on some downhills, you actually slow down if you, if you stop pedaling. That's why people get into a tuck position, because the more you sit up, the more wind you catch, so the bike will slow down. So when we're trying to stop the bike from slowing down the whole time, and that's another advanced thing we're going to talk about in one of the next few points, but really trying to get the bike to keep the speed going as consistently as we can. And that's. It's quite, it's quite a difficult task to do if you're not thinking about what you're doing the whole time. And that's why when people say to me, such a long day isn't 180k, I get so bored. 90k, it's so such a boring ride. There's no way I'm thinking like that. Every second counts. What's happening? What's happening to my bike speed? What's happening to my cadence? What's happening to my heart rate? What power am I doing? Is the bike slowing down? These are questions I'm asking myself every second of this ride. So I'm just filtering the gears, I'm filtering the pressure on the pedals, I'm filtering everything about what I feel and see that's happening. And you know, this is not a boast at my age, at 67, to be able to ride at 40Ks an hour, 30, 39Ks an hour. It's not because of my fitness, it's because of my bike execution. Fitness is helping, but my bike execution is really delivering the outcome way ahead now than my actual talent. And I don't think I've lost A lot of physical performance. I have lost a lot that's quite known now. But I'm still not that slower than I was before because I'm executing far better now than I did when I was a pro or even five years ago or even two years ago. I'm, I'm having to execute better now because, because I don't have the fitness to ride like I used to. So now I have to actually ride so much more cleverer. And I'm trying to implore the new people and our old athletes to make sure that they're going to try and use their, their skill as well. So, so let's, let's just talk about that as the, as the real key to, to what we're, what we're trying to get across here. So just to summarize, I am a way less fitter athlete than I have been, yet I'm maximizing my strategies about pacing way better than I ever have in my career, which has allowed me to not lose that much more speed. And that's what I'm trying to get across. If you act like you don't have the physical fitness, it will force you to ride smarter. And so we want you to actually think like that. You know, I've got to conserve my levels and ride this course really cleverly so that I'm not going to lose that much, but I'm going to be super strong when it counts in the back half of a 180k time trial or a 90k time trial, even a 40k time trial. If I really measure my effort according to changing gears, keeping the speed, momentum, pressure on the pedals, contributing at all times, trying to keep the cadence the same, that they're the ways that you'll, you'll just be able to ride super strong the whole way, rather than the opposite to what's happening. And this is the purpose really of what this, this session is about in this podcast is trying to get every athlete to think differently about why are we pushing this style of riding. Because we have the evidence that tells us that we've compared people who ride the same course by staying in every zone from one to six compared to those who ride the same course. Narrow range, power riding, when the bike's going slower, they're at the top of the range, or the bike's going faster at the bottom of the range, they just ride faster overall and they're less fatigued.

Yeah, that's the next point we're going to really touch on in our analysis is course understanding is everything and we're fortunate enough here that we have this go to time troll course course, this, this 16 kilometer 23 to 28 minute depending on the rider course here in Melbourne. And we just have so much data on this course and it's a really been a great experiment for us over the years to. We've had the same athletes in very similar conditions. We've had very much different conditions, but very similar conditions attack the course different ways. You know, really ride over, under, really attack the hills. It's quite an undulating 16k and recover on the downhills or really just ride super, super even. And there's, there's a fine line and balance in that. You, you don't just want to ride the same way, you know, the whole time and, and ride the same wattage and you don't want to be super over or under, you know, you want to attack the hills smart and not go over your range, but, but not be cruising up them either. That's the time to, to gain some time and most importantly, not go so hard that you can't get the pressure on over the top and down the hill either, you know, and that's, that's the fastest way to ride it. It's just so obvious in the data. But, but people are really underestimating how much they need to understand the course. And we just see that with the pros. You know, youngest vineyard guard had a, the time trial of a lifetime a couple of years ago when he won the Tour de France off Poga, where he knew that time trial course like the back of his hand. His course understanding was immaculate and he knew exactly where to put the power down. And trust us, where you put the power down matters. And we have that from Arahundala.

Look, I'd give you another example. The recent Giro that Roglich eventually abandoned due to crashes. He hadn't done any recon, which I was, he was almost boasting that, that he was underprepared for the courses. And I just thought that was, I was shocked and I was really disappointed. It was really, it was no wonder that at the end, you know, and I'm not saying the reason he crashed because he didn't know the courses, but I just don't think he had prepared properly. And at that level, I just found that to be outrageous. And, and so you've got, you know, if you, if you do one course and you did it again with the same fitness level, you probably execute better and then you do a third or fourth time, you really get to know where the nuances of the course are and that's why we push our athletes sometimes. You know, if they're, if they're doing a race that's in their other part of the world and they can't actually do a recon on it, we would, you know, use those apps such as Full Gas, which is now Ruvy you would you get them on the course and try to get them to, to see what the course is like and understand where the hills are. And of course you don't get the temperature of, or the wind, but at least you get a really good look at what the course nuances are so you can be prepared to know that there's a hill at, at the 12 mile mark or the 32 mile mark that goes for eight minutes. You know, you understand what you're going to be expected to compete on. But if you're going in there blind and that, that's really unhelpful, you'll, you'll get these 1 percenters by understanding what the course is asking you to do. And if you've got the opportunity to get there two or three days earlier, you know, if you can, you've spent all this effort and energy getting prepared for this one race. I'm always going to try to ride some of the course or get in a car and drive the course so that I know what to expect on race day and there's no surprises for me. I just, I just need to know everything about the course and going in there blind, I think there would be some good reasons why that's the only thing you can do because you haven't had the opportunity and I understand that. But if there's any way possible then you need to make that happen.

Yeah, I think that, I think that leads to this kind of main final point we want to, want to really make and that's you know how to attack the course and find your limits. And with all this said in terms of your execution, you need to be able to find your own individual limits of what's possible for you and what, what percentage of FTP you're going to try and hold for this time trial, depending on the distance. And we know that for a half ironman, the general range is you should be able to hold somewhere between 75 and 90% inside a triathlon when you have to run off the bike. But let's say it's a standalone 20 or 40k time trial, you're going to be somewhere between 95 and 105% about that range. Of your FTP. And this is where practice, good practice training sessions, course knowledge allows you to pick. Can I hold 98% of my FTP here? Can I hold 103 up the hills, can I push to 107% but still keep the pressure over the top? And that takes years of practice and skill to get right. But that's how you maximize every second out of yourself in a time trial.

Yeah, and people get confused about this and they're thinking that we're saying you can write 105% of your FTP for that whole 20k or that 40k. We're talking about the ranges here. You know, why are we giving you ranges? We're giving you ranges because there is no perfectly still flat course in the world that just doesn't exist. So you need to have a variation of ranges that you need to be able to adapt to. And if, if you're, you know, done all your research, practice the way we're talking when it comes to making decisions, you look at your speedo, and if, and if you're using miles per hour and you should be doing 20 miles an hour, instantly, you look down, glance down at your speedo, and it tells you that you're doing 16 miles an hour. You've got an easy decision to make. You just ride middle to upper end of your ranges. So that would be something in a 70.3, like 80 to 90% or 85 to 90%, but doesn't mean you got the excuse to ride at 94 or 98. That's not what we're saying. The ranges are there for a reason. Because if you stay in those ranges, you will actually not get into the red zone, not lactate, and not fade at the end of a ride because you've stayed disciplined. And so all of a sudden, if you see the speed doing 25 miles an hour, that's your prompt to say, okay, I don't need to be at 90% here. I can be at 75 or 78 or 82. And so you start to ride the course. And that's the key thing that people get the mistake of. They think that they've averaged 80 for the whole 90k, and they're very happy with that. But we dig deeper and they've found that they've spent 20 minutes out of three hours at 80%. The rest of the time they've spent 45% either below or above the range. And so get rid of those numbers below and above the range and put them into the right range, and you have A better experience, a faster ride. That's the thing we're pushing on this podcast, is by staying the range and riding the course properly, changing gears, keeping pressure on the pedals, watching your power, you will ride faster than you would if you did it the opposite way.

I want to jump in here and just talk about an assumption we're making because so far we've spoken purely about execution and how to execute the fastest time control. But this is assuming that you're executing in your peak fitness. But we can't assume that for sure. You know, the whole purpose of training is to improve your fitness. And so the way that you get better at time trialing is get fitter and then execute really well in that peak fitness. So how do you do that? Well, you need to raise your FTP, you need to train hard so you can raise your FTP and therefore in a time trial, you can hold a higher percentage of that FTP. And you need to practice threshold riding. You need to practice riding in the zone you're going to be time trialing in. And this is a really big one, you know, is finding out how much time in training you actually in that zone. And if you're doing threshold practice, what we find is when athletes are doing threshold training outside, because they're not keeping pressure on the pedals. If they're, let's say they're doing an hour session and they're, they're trying to average 300 watts and that's their threshold because they're riding so over under, they're actually only spending 30 minutes at that threshold and they're spending the other 30 minutes above and below, which isn't training that threshold zone, you know, and the athletes that are getting the most benefit are spending 55 minutes out of that hour at their threshold zone. And just think about if they're doing that every single training session, how much better that that ladder athlete. Athlete be, how much more they're going to be improving, how much more they're getting out of each session. That's a really, really important point.

And Jord, we, we really want our athletes to have a mixture of inside and outside. And the inside stuff is specifically talking about what you just talked about there. If you don't keep pedaling inside, the power just drops, but if you keep pedaling outside, of course the power drops as. Sorry, if you stop pedaling outside, the power drops as well. But the bike still moves, whereas inside it doesn't, as I said before. So if you do a mixture in your training sessions where you're doing some indoor training where you're having to keep pressure on the pedals. We want you still to do this practice outside so that, because that's where the race is, you need to practice what you're going to do on race day outside. So if you just ride indoors only when it comes to race day, you're going to struggle because you're not used to the changes in gradient and the reactions of changing gears and the different pressure you're feeling in your legs. So that's why we want you. And of course the handling skills of the time trial bike. But that's what we want you to experience in those outdoor sessions. But you'll get more bang for your buck with the pressure on the pedals constantly indoors you'll get a better fitness gain from indoor training sessions. But you don't get the things where there's gradient changes unless you use the apps properly, which is select courses indoor on the trainer that have changes in gradient. And for all those athletes who are out there training by using the training peak session in the actual app, doesn't matter what course you select, there's no gradient change. So, so you've lost the benefit of that, that training skill that we're trying to get you to use. So, so there's a lot of, a lot to it, but we want a mixture of that so that, so that you are getting the fitness and not, you know, a lot of those four or five hour rides that Ironman riders are doing. You know, 25% of it's freewheeling and so they're not getting the training effect that's going to be replicated on race day and, and so you get perplexed at the end. I did all these long rides. How come I'm so fatigued? Well, it's because you didn't actually replicate what's going to happen on race day. In race day you're not doing much freewheeling because you're in a race and the competitive nature of your, of your personality is. Well, I'm not, you know, in a training session you're not thinking the same, whereas we're trying to get you to think the same in training as you are on the race. Replicate the race experience in training. That's one of our main mantras is, is to do that. So there's a lot to take in here. But at the end of the day, if you, if you really concentrate on these tips, your speed for the same fitness level for a better execution will be faster. There's no, we have the data to prove it.

Yes. And that is the art of time trialing and that is the analysis we wanted to provide. And so if you follow all those tips, you follow all those execution tips, we know from the data that is the fastest way to ride the time trial and there's a lot to implement there and it can be overwhelming. And trust us that it takes a long time to get right, it can take years, if not longer. That combined with quality training and training where you're getting the maximum amount of time in that zone that's going to actually improve you and progressively overload you, those two things combined will explode your time trialing ability. So that's it. On that topic, if you'd like help improving your own time trial and getting the most out of yourself. Again, we've coached beginners wipe off literally 30 to 40 minutes off their 90 kilometer bike time. And we've helped mid pack age groupers get to the top of their age group podium. More specifically, we've coached cyclists to over 50 Australian Masters Time trial gold medals in the individual cycling time trial time trialing is our specialty. Which is what, which is what the bike leg of a triathlon is and the most time in the triathlon. So if you think yours could use some work, apply@trivelocoaching.com today. You again. We offer an eight week guarantee to improve your FTP or the coaching is on us. So go apply now. And by the way, once again our poor website was down recently but we have 100% solved that issue and there will be no more website problems going forward. So if you did apply in a recent period and you didn't hear back from us, this would be why. So we do apologize for that and we would love to hear from you. Go to tribalocoaching.com to apply for coaching and that's that on that topic. But dad, to finish off the episode we do want to touch on some some notes from around the world. There's so much exciting racing happening. Diamond League is back for athletics, which I'm just so pumped about, I cannot get enough of it. I absolutely love it. And in fact, by the time this comes out, Faith, Kip Yagon and Nike are attempting for Faith to be the first woman to break the four minute mile, which is absolutely absurd considering that she's still 7 seconds off and her PB is 407 and that the next closest woman is 12 seconds away at 4:12. It's quite astounding. They're going for it, but they've come out with just like the sub 2 effort with Kipchoge. They're pulling out absolutely no stops. They've designed a brand new spike for her. They've got a high tech speed suit, a, a completely aerodynamic performance bra. She's just got everything. They're pulling those tops out to, to try and get her every single advantage to break four, which is just so, so exciting it, it could be one of the runs of the century if she manages to pull it off.

Yeah, it is exciting. And as humans we're always trying to break boundaries and I think that's the competitiveness in every sports person in the world is they want to, they want to see how far they can push themselves. And you know, on a world level this is, you know, I can still remember reading and seeing so many movies, you know, when I was a Youngster, as a 10 or 11 year old back in the the 60s and 70s, knowing that Roger Bannister had broken the four minute mile, you know, and that was such a big thing at that time. And all the, all the runners of that era would, you know, you know, can I get close to it? And most runners are around 4 minutes, 24 minutes, 15 most good runners. And, and now, you know, majority of runners who are kind of elite have broken four minutes, which is kind of ridiculous. And, and I think this is one of those new boundaries. Can, can a woman break four minutes? And I'm, I'm thinking that absolutely, the way that women are trained these days, this will happen. It's just a matter of when. And I'm sure they're getting the best, best equipment and just like we're trying to do with the two, two hour marathon. Yeah, these are the barriers that humans strive for. And it's exciting. It's, it's, it's a, it's a whole new era. And look, unfortunately with the, you know, I wore some of the shoes that you, you showed me the other day and I can't believe the difference from what the shoes I used to wear, how much propulsion I got just from walking. I can't run, but just from walking in them. It just, it just seems almost absurd that there's a, there's such a huge advantage and that's why the times are, are different. But the times will be, you know, once the shoes have sort of stabilized to their best ability, the times will stabilize as well. So, so we have seen chunks of improvements from, you know, the guys are running on cinders tracks and now it's beautiful rebound surface where they're getting Push off there and push off the shoes. So yeah, there's a lot to unpack there but I still think it's, it's exciting times.

Yeah, look, if anyone can do it, then Faith can. Yeah. The most historic and incredible middle distance runner of all time, I think. And yeah, it's a monster effort to shave off seven seconds but with all the tech they're attempting, definitely possible. I'm nervous for her. I'm excited for. I cannot wait to watch. It's the biggest news of this week and potentially of, of this century of running or longer. And what you said before about, about, you know, it's common practice to break it now I was surprised to learn and I haven't fact checked this so I hope it's accurate. But still as many people have broken it and how it's commonplace. Only 1,755 athletes have broken the mile since 1957. And look, that does seem like a lot, but also it really is not much at all. Out of the 8 billion people in the world on the planet in history, only 1755 and faith about to be the first woman. So I really hope she gets there to finish off the episode. We can't forget our gratitude segment, dad. We want to finish off by saying what are you grateful for this week?

I'm just pretty excited. The whole, you know, summer season starts in, in, in Europe and I've already had a lot of races happening. You know, we're almost halfway through the Diamond League which is brilliant and you know, it's been a little bit of a disappointment to seeing Gabrison injured. But my gratitude is that we've got all these exciting things happening over the summer. The Tour de France starts next week and we've to chat about what is POG unbeatable, etc and we've got, you know, things such as the, you know, the bigger races in the tri season, a lot of the great marathons. Yeah. So it's a really exciting period and that's what I'm grateful for is, is to just really sit back and watch how things unfold and for those in the winter period in the Southern hemisphere, it does things don't go dormant. It's a great opportunity for, for you to get your strength and conditioning, your aerobic fitness back up for when it comes back to November for your summer season. So yeah, that's my gratitude is to get perspective of where you are in your year and, and make the most of the opportunities and I think that's what we should all be really striving for and be grateful for that we're able to. To be fit enough to. To compete. And I'm sure your story will lean to that exact topic.

Yeah, I love it. My gratitude is. Is, yeah, for myself, it's for it to finally be race week. It's been a big preparation for my. One of my key races this year is a half marathon next week. And it's just been some big blocks of training where it's one of those ones. One of those preps where you just kind of get into the last couple of weeks and you're just going, all right, come on. I'm pretty done with this mentally and physically. I'm just. I'm just sort of ready to race. I think that's a sign of a good prep that you've done all the work and you get to this point and you just kind of. You want to skip the taper phase a little bit and just get there. But the last 14 days hasn't always. Hasn't gone exactly to plan, but yeah, definitely ready to gear up for an A race and give it a huge crack next week.

Yeah. And look, for those listening, you know, it's just another great example. Getting to the start line is probably so underestimated. I know we say this a lot, but the things that have happened to you in the last 14 days have been pretty bizarre. And, you know, you had a skin, you know, addressed what. I don't even know what. How to describe it. Procedure is probably on your leg, which meant you couldn't supposed to be running for 14 days. You weren't allowed to sweat. So, you know, that's not ideal that you get that happening two weeks out and you know, then you. You get your brand new pair of running shoes and you go training and next thing you know, you come back to. To change shoes and they're gone. And so, you know, these are just little things that it can be so off putting that, that, you know, and then all of a sudden you. You get a fever for three or four days and you can't train again. You know, is that related to your skin procedure or is it just something out of the blue? You know, but these are things that happen in 14 days out from a race and you know, the race is still yet to come. And, you know, you've just got to be able to manage everything that's thrown at you to get yourself to the start line knowing you've done the preparation, as you said, and you've got to rely on that. That, sure. The last Two weeks is important. We always know that. But if you've done the work, you know, you can hopefully hang on to the fact that you're well prepared. Um, you just got to focus on the things that you can control. And, and that would be the advice I would give to you is, you know, you know, let's just get to this race and, and, you know, accept that things have happened and maybe adjust your expectations slightly and you'll get a better outcome and you'll be more satisfied with the fact that, you know, I'm going to be oblivious to all the things that have happened. I'm going to stick with my race plan and I, you know, doesn't matter what's happened to me. This is what I want to achieve. Well, that's only setting yourself up for failure, and, you know, that's hard for people to accept that. And you're in that position right now, so it's great for you to experience that. And, and, you know, you've got to think a little bit clearer than you would normally, so you have to adjust. And, and, you know, we talk about weather. You know, you've been training in Bali and you come to Australia to train, and you were a completely different athlete seven days prior to being in Bali to try and do some intervals, and then coming to Australia and you can do the intervals really easily. And it's just, you know, another reminder of how important understanding training and racing in different weather conditions can affect the outcome. So, yeah, I think it's a great gratitude that, you know, you are going to get to the, to race and, and, and put yourself on the line. And I think it's, I think it's a really good thing for all the listeners to hear that we're, you know, doing it to ourselves as much as we're trying to give you, give you advice on this podcast. But we try to walk the walk as well as do the talking.

Yeah, it's definitely been one of the more testing periods of training. It wasn't. I wouldn't call it a skin procedure. I just say that they got a skin cancer mole. It was cut out and it was three stitches, which doesn't seem like much, but it's quite a big cut for three stitches. But then they cut it out last week, and there's no question. You just got to get it cut out. When they, when they check it and they do the stitches, they give you the general aesthetic around that area, and then they turn and say, oh, so no sweating or exercise for two weeks. As a runner My race is in two weeks. I've got two weeks of training left to go. I live in Bali. And I didn't argue with him, but I said, I do live in Bali, though. And you just sweat walking around. What am I supposed to do? And they said, well, you've got to keep it as dry as possible. And then I've gone to the pharmacy to get some waterproof kind of patches for it. And I told the pharmacist my plan of. Look, I know the doctor said, and it's, it's a, it's a fair risk. Don't get it infected, you know, because that can be an absolute disaster and you wouldn't be able to run anyway. But I said, look, I, I can't not train for this race, so I'm just going to. My plan is just to redress it every day I'm gonna go run and probably sweat and, and it'll get a bit wet and I'm just gonna dry it and redress it. And the pharmacist just said, look, that's not ideal, but it's okay. Just get a hair dryer and completely dry it out and, and go that way. So just to mitigate the risk, obviously. Um, but then, you know, buying a brand new pair of carbon shoes, really excited for the race. And then first session I go to wear them and they get stolen in my warmup was, was absolutely devastating. I didn't even get to put them on. And, and these things just test you in the last couple weeks. But, but I think the last point I wanted to make on what you said was a cool reminder for us was that we always encourage athletes to start earlier so that you're not rushing at the end. And for us, I had a really, really, the key workout, the best workout happened two or three weeks ago back in Australia. And, and from there I felt like the work was done in the last couple of weeks was really fine tuning and, and luckily these things didn't matter as much. And I had a bit of fever for three or four days, so I couldn't train. But I really don't feel panicked about that because I do feel like the work is done. And so that's a really cool. That's a really good position to be in and a really relaxed position to be in because I'm not rushing to the end trying to get every single session in to get that fitness. I feel like I've got the fitness now. I'm just holding that form till race day.

Yeah. And I think that's the, the message you want to you would do as a coach to your athletes and that's what I would be telling you. And yeah, just control the controllables and adjust your expectations and just concentrate on being in the moment. That's the thing that we want to tell all our athletes and that'll, that'll give you the best outcome on the day. So yeah, it's a, you know, it's a really good gratitude to, to, to remind everybody that it's not all always going to go smoothly and you're just grateful. The fact that you can get to.

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