What Do We Really Put In TriVelo Drink Bottles?

Last weekend, the state cycling individual time trials were held here. And at the event, a cyclist came up to one of our athletes and said, I want to know what's in Trivelo's drink bottles, because I want some. And while this is a very nice compliment, this is because across seven different age group categories, we had six podiums, including three gold medals, a silver and two bronze, as well as a fourth place. Now, we don't just say that to brag. Although we're very proud of our results, we're mostly proud of our ability to teach people how to improve your time trialling from your fitness and strength on the bike to the ability to hold threshold for longer and improve your lactate threshold, and how to execute on any course and get your best result. We always say to athletes at Trivelo, the tougher or more complicated the course, the better for our athletes, because we know how to squeeze the most out of your ability. And every weekend we have athletes competing all over the world in time trial or triathlon events. And in today's case study, we want to hone in on the results of this particular event and how you can see the same improvements on the bike. So, dad, whether you're a cyclist in an individual ITT or on the bike leg of a triathlon, which is essentially a 40k or 90k or 180k time trial, what does it take to be successful?

It sounds a very straightforward question, but it's so complicated. The answer, and I don't want to make it complicated, I want to make it simple so that everybody can actually take that advice into their next event. So the goal for every athlete is, is to maximize their potential. And whether their potential is the back of the pack, the middle or the front, you want to actually come away from the event being satisfied with your performance. So what does it take to be successful? Are you happy with your performance? So let's just dig into that a bit. I think the number one thing is can you ride as close to your level as possible on the day when it counts? And if you can do that, that's how you are successful. And every time you do that, you've actually found a new tipping point and you can go from that to the next race and know confidently that that's what you did last time. And the goal is to train a little bit more and then start with that previous threshold level you reached and try to add to it. And, and that's the closer you can ride to threshold throughout the whole ride, whether it's 90k or 20k or 180k, the closer you can ride to that for the whole time, the faster you will ride. So if you do a lot of what we advise, which is be conservative and come home stronger, that's not you riding to your tipping point the whole way. And it takes a super confident athlete to do what I just said. And so for the majority of people that's a big risk. And the risk is it's got huge consequences around that. If you tip over that point, you will actually have a poor performance and you'll feel very average. Like we talk about negative splitting, you know, be stronger at the end, you feel great. You enjoy that feeling of passing other people who have gone too far on their, on their race day. So, so I'm wanting you to be just under that tipping point. And the sign of a good rider and the successful rider will be that one person who can remain right there and for the whole time. And that's as simple as it should be. Start the ride and stay as close as you can to your tipping point and at the end, unleash everything. So you tip over the edge with 50 meters to go and you will have been a successful rider on that day and you'll probably reach the potential that you should reach for that session.

I love that word tipping point instead of the word threshold in this instance because not every time trial is going to be at your threshold. For the 20k time trial, yeah, sure, you riding as close to your threshold as possible and over. If it was a one hour time trial, you would be hoping to hold exactly at your threshold. But the ability to do that is very tough. Just because you're riding for an hour doesn't mean you'd be riding at the power that we know your ability to your threshold is for that whole time. And, but the, the reason I love the word tipping point is because in a 40k or 90k or 180k, your tipping point is actually, you know, depending on the length, a percentage of that threshold. So for the 180k, your tipping point might be at 75%. And so your, your goal is to ride right at that tipping point for the whole 180km, which I really love. And of course, if it's a 20k time trial, what you're talking about is going over the tipping point to get the most out of yourself at the end. But if it's in a triathlon, you won't be doing that. You'll be staying at your tipping point because you need to be able to Run, run afterwards.

Yeah. And it's important to understand that, you know, the tipping point is you understanding what your form is on that current day and you could have been sick four days earlier. And so your actual tipping point might be back a bit from where you would have expected it to be had you been 100% healthy. As people know, we don't advise people to race when they're not quite 100%, but, you know, that's a tough task in itself to stop people from who are motivated from actually putting a number on. But, you know, the good rider will still have a great day if they perform to the feelings they have on that particular day. And I'm watching the Olympics, I'm watching the Tour de France women's race at the moment, and, you know, seeing people being interviewed after the race and saying, I had good legs today and so I feel like I can give my best today. And other people are saying, oh, geez, I felt really average in the first half of the race and then my legs came good and therefore I was able to change my expectation and ride to new levels. And that's someone who's really in tune with how their body's reacting to the stress you're trying to impact on your body when you need it to work for you. And so you have to be aware of, yes, these are my numbers that I know that I'm trained to and I should be able to race to, but is it going to happen today? Have I, have I timed my, my potential ability to maximize my result on this day? Have I tapered well and have I peaked on the right day? And watching some of the Olympic athletes who have performed really below their level, oh, it's super disappointing that they actually have got the peak wrong, got their taper wrong, got their peak wrong, and you know, they've missed out by two or three weeks. And, you know, that's part of being successful as a time trial or as a racing competitive athlete is not only knowing where your point where you can't go over, it's understanding how you feel on any given day.

Yeah, that's such an important point. I think if you do some really good work too far out from the race. And you did see this with a lot of Olympic athletes, not just in cycling, but in running as well. They just couldn't hold that form, you know, a month out from the Olympics all the way through. And it was really good to see some other athletes like Jess Howell break the world record three weeks out and then be able to maintain that form and hold that right through to the Olympics. That was really, really special. So if we look at the athletes over the weekend, so the first point is, you know, riding as close to your tipping point as possible. That person is going to reach their potential. The next point is execution. So, yeah, if we look at the athletes over the weekend, as case studies, we had athletes with sort of three types of results, even though we had really good placings. It's not all about placings. And you're more interested in the execution, whether they came first or fifth. You're more interested in the execution of the, of the athlete's performance.

Yeah, it's. It's a great topic to talk about. And I'm about to send out an email with some results so that each of our athletes can see what the other athletes in our squad, how they executed. And to be fair, out of the six athletes in this particular event, I think there were three firsts and some seconds and a third. So most people got the outcome of placing. That's one thing you talk about is did you get the placing you want? But more importantly, as you said, how did you achieve that? Did you do a really good execution or did you stuff it up and still manage to win? So we had all three. We had all three examples. I had people who got the win, but their execution was not as good as they could have done. And that's probably, you know, you're not going to ever say lucky. You're going to say that they were fortunate that someone else didn't cash in on the fact that they made mistakes during that event. And, you know, that's actually a sign of a very successful athlete who still doesn't perform to their potential and still ends up with a result like a victory. So we want to make sure that our athletes, you know, enjoy the result and don't take that away from them. So the first thing I'm going to say to the athletes is, congratulations, everybody, on some great results, but let's see what we can learn from the weekend's data. And so I'm highlighting in my email that, you know, some of our riders rode way too hard early, even though that's drummed into them, but it happened to be slightly downhill from the start with a tailwind. And look, if you've ever been in a competitive situation, you are so motivated on the line to actually, you know, don't just hold me back because I just can't wait to race. And so for an athlete to be told that you have to conserve with the tailwind and the downhill, that just goes against the grain. You just don't want to be that person you want to be. No, no. My bike's calm, fast, and I want to be. I want to be having fun here. But, you know, when you turn around and hit the block, headwind, and it finishes uphill for two or three minutes and you can't ride the power, you are absolutely blown. You've gone over that tipping point. You will regret that decision. So the athlete who's going to ride too hard too early with the tailwind is going to really struggle on the way home. So we had that athlete. We definitely had that athlete. And they know who they are, and they're disappointed with that. We had the other athlete who went the conservative way and went too soft at the start and had way too much on the way home into the headwind, which is okay. But, you know, you look back and go, oh, I left a bit out there, really, didn't I? I didn't actually ride hard enough in the tailwind. Closer. Closer to my threshold. So all the time we're trying to use our threshold as our number, and we determine where we are on the course, whether it's a tailwind or downhill. So we'd be slightly under that, and if it's in a headwind, we would be slightly over it. So going too soft at the start is that person who's not quite riding hard enough to their threshold. And then we had a couple of people who nailed it. And, you know, the average speed out should be faster than the average speed back, and the average power out should be lower than the average power back. Because when the bike is going fast, that's when the power should be at threshold or slightly lower. When the bike is going the slowest, the power should be at threshold or slightly higher. And looking at their power was brilliant. It was, you know, 2 or 3 watts lower on the way out and 2 or 3 watts higher than their threshold on the way back. And they ended up with riding close to their threshold. And that's the actual beautiful way to execute. So close to the tipping point and on the way back, being willing to unload. And this is a time trial when they're not running afterwards, it's just a pure time trial. So that's the example that we had in. Out of six athletes, we had all three examples. Too hard, too soft, and then a couple who got it brilliantly. Brilliantly. Right. And that's why it's good to look at this data for everybody to look at the data from other athletes.

Yeah, really, really great points. And I think that you mentioned that even a poll after his gold medal, or maybe it was before his gold medal at the Olympics, said that, you know, the person that's going to win this time trial is the person who makes the least mistakes and he's talking about a specific place and trying to win a medal. But the same principle applies for every single athlete in a time trial or triathlon. The least amount of mistakes you can make, the better your performance is going to be and the more it's going to help you at the back end.

Well, at that level, we're talking the best time trialers in the world. And you know, there's always going to be, you know, we looked at the Olympics time trial and I think even a pole beat Ghana by 8, 9, 10 or some seconds like that. And, and Wout was 10 seconds behind Garner. So I think there was 20 seconds between first and third, which really over that time is not a, not a great deal of difference. And corner and cornering too soft on one particular or being in the wrong gear or not having the right gearing for, you know, or getting the headwind a little bit too soft and not riding too hard in the tailwind and all these little things. You've got to do all those little things right when you're against athletes of the same level as you. And the example we were talking about before, we're talking about you comparing yourself against you. And now at this level, we're comparing 10 of the best athletes in the world who could finish within seconds of each other. It's the person who makes the least mistakes who's going to come out on top with the victory. And after all, at professional level, all that matters is winning. You know, coming second doesn't, doesn't matter at this level. And you know, sure, if Garner executed the best he could, he's got to be happy with that. He can't be unhappy if he's. But I can tell you I watched that race at 2am in the morning and I saw him nearly come off his bike. And he had to, he saved it unbelievably well. It was really great handling skills. But he would have lost five or six seconds in loss of momentum by not pedaling in that straight stretch of road. And I think he moved from the road to a, it was almost like a path, there's a little lip and his wheel got caught and it sent him sideways. That could have cost him the event. And you know, that one thing is not going to be the only thing it could have been a couple of corners that didn't take the right. The lines. Right. So. So there's so many little mistakes that you can make. Wow. Crashed and, you know, he's obviously going to lose some momentum there in the women's race, Grace Brown won the race by a long way, but she was the only one who didn't crash in the top. I think it was two other girls who didn't crash in the top eight. All the rest crashed at some point and they're all good riders, but, you know, she didn't make any mistakes. Part of staying on your bike is part of time trialling and, and you've got to ride to the conditions. We did talk about that in the last podcast. But they're mistakes that you make that will cost you the event. And, and so it's a really good point to understand, even for the age grouper, you know, if you can make less mistakes about riding outside of your power ranges, you know, cornering better, you know, making sure your nutrition's right, getting your aerodynamic position on the time trial bike better, not having your head with your helmet sticking up in the air, you know, making sure you've got the right stuff on metrics. Stuff. That's not a word. Make sure you've got the right metrics on your. On your bike computer, that you're reading the right information and concentrating on where you are on the course. They're all little things that are going to allow you to get the best result, to be able to ride as close to that tipping point as possible. So they're the things we want to get right. And having a mechanical, having the wrong gearing for this particular race, they're things that's your responsibility. You need to have your bike set up properly and be at the. At the bike shop. So you don't have a mechanical, you don't drop your chain, you don't go to the race where you need a 54 chainring because you're riding eight kilometres with a downhill tailwind and you don't want to be spinning out your gearing at 105rpm because you don't have a big enough gear to ride. These are really important things that you should understand about the course you're about to ride on.

Yeah, the mechanical thing is so true. And Grace Brown, who had a perfect race in the Olympics, didn't crash and won by a long shot, just had the opposite experience a couple of days ago in the Tour de France time trial, where she Had a puncture. It was only a six kilometer time trial. She had a puncture and a lot of people and, you know, I saw someone counted the time from when she put her hand up to say she had the puncture to get her bike change to getting back on the bike. And it was something like 25 to 35 seconds of momentum loss by the time she got back up to momentum. And she, she ended up only being 26 seconds behind Denny Vollering, who, who won the stage. And you know, that is, that was the difference. She could have won another stage at the Tour de France off the back of her Olympic win. And a lot of people were asking why wasn't she riding tubeless in a 6K time trial? You know, why was that tire choice the best setup? Because potentially that could have saved her. The puncture might have been so bad that she had no shot anyway. She might, might have need to change bikes regardless, but maybe the tubeless set up would have allowed her to keep riding and I'd have to stop and take out the wind. And we had our own athlete at Worlds last year. Have a mechanical same thing, lose momentum. Kind of did the maths himself about how much momentum he lost. And he ended up becoming. I can't remember if it was you.

He came fourth instead.

He came fourth instead of second at World's age group, you know, on the podium. And it was mechanical. So that's harder to justify whether that was your own fault from the setup or whether that was just something that was out of your control. But no matter what, you're always. I spoke to him the other day and he was, he's still, still pissed off with that and still thinks about it at night, you know, about. If that didn't, didn't go differently, you could have had second at World.

Yeah. And I think, you know, the question is what, what can you do to make sure that you are successful? And, and these are the things we're trying to point out. And it's just there's so many things and when you start digging deep and it's great because we've got more examples of people who are doing things well and probably want to talk about that next.

Yeah, I think the next part is we've spoken about what the goal is. It's be able to write at your tipping point and execute well. But then it's the question, okay, well, how do you get there? What changes are important in training? What do you need to do in training to become a better time trialer?

Yeah, I don't even know where to start there, Jordan. There's just so many points that we need to bring up and obviously a training program is crucial to getting that right and spending time. If you're trying to be a better cyclist, whether you're a triathlete or a cyclist, pure cyclist, who does road races and time trials and criteriums, we're talking about cycling here as an example. We could be talking about running as well and swimming. You still need to have that ability to sustain your effort in training. And if you don't do that threshold type of training, you won't be able to replicate that. When, you know, people say to me, why do you need so much threshold riding in training? When I'm riding bunch rides where it's all over under efforts. Well, if you look at the majority of races, there's a lot of times you watch on the pros, you know, I think Tour of Flanders, Paris, Roubaix, the winner time trialled for the last 20k at threshold. You know, that's happened time and time again where they break away and they have to actually time trial to win the road race or the one day stage race that they're doing that happens more times than a bunch sprint. And you know, so yes, you've got to be a really good sprinter to win a bunch sprint. But if you've got your bunch sprint, you know reasonably well and you don't have the ability to ride in a break at threshold, you've only got one, one trick, really, one weapon in your arsenary. But if you can sprint and time trial and ride hill climbs and corner well, doesn't matter what the course throws at you or what the scenario is in the race, you can actually respond because you are a good time trial. You can ride at threshold. You practice your sprinting, you practice your cornering, downhill, descending, you practice your hill climbing, you want to be good at all those things. So no matter what happens in the situation in a race, you know, you don't want to be that person who says I have to keep this race together because my only thing I could do well is sprint. Or you don't want to be that rider who says I have to break away because I can't sprint. You know, you should be getting, getting good at all those things. And one of the things you do in training, you know what, how do we get better at that? We ride threshold in training. And as much as people don't want to do that a, because it's really hard and you're really replicating you know, getting close to that tipping point in training and, but that's the best way to actually improve. And that's the thing that we push a lot is, you know, getting guys to write, finding out what their threshold number is and training as close to that tipping point as possible. So that as each week and month progresses and into years, that tipping point threshold, as we talk about so many times in our podcast case studies, Johnny started at 240 watts and now he's at 290. So instead of being a 33k an hour rider, he's a 38k an hour rider. These are examples of what they've done with their threshold riding to enable them to be such a better bike rider all round.

Let's go through a specific example then from someone from the weekend and one of our athletes, Sean, is a great case study who had those exact numbers. He came to us as a 33 kilometer an hour rider, has been with us for a few years and in those years has had some major interruptions with crashes where he was out for a long time, really extended periods of six to 12 months. But he keeps coming back and keeps building on his fitness and he just rode 38.9 km per hour over the weekend and the fastest speed he's ever ridden. And so what are some of the differences for him that's allowed him to become a better time trialer?

He's a great story because I love his determination from a lot of setbacks and we all have setbacks, don't we, if things go wrong in our lives. But, but the measure of a woman or a man is who can, who can ride out those setbacks and still keep concentrating on the goal at hand. And, and perseverance is, is something that I think about with Sha. You know, he came to us wanting to be a better rider. That was basically, you know, I see the Trivalo guys at all these time trials. I see them at the road races and they're always on the podium. I want to be a part of that. And you know, it was out of all the athletes who raced a particular race on the weekend, Shaun got on the podium for the first time in a state time trial. That's a huge effort. And I think, you know, as a non biased coach, I was certainly biased that his performance for me was, I enjoyed his third place more than I probably should have. But it was something that meant a lot to me and to him obviously more so to him. But that's how much I care about guys who are Getting something that they deserve. He's really done the work, and whatever I've given him, he's just gone out and done it. And I say that a lot about the people who are successful, and that seems to be a common trait. Tell me what to do and I'll go and do it, because I know and I trust the process, because I see your guys get the results. And it's not something we put in our drink bottles. It's because we work hard and we are consistent. We are consistent with our training and we've got the right program. And as long as you can turn up each day, as we've said many times in the 250 podcasts, turn up each day and just do what you're supposed to be doing. Don't have those hero sessions that cause you to be inconsistent. Geez, I wrote out of my sight today and smashed everybody in the bunch, and I was way over my numbers, and I'm a bit tired the next two or three days. Is it okay if I just ride easier? Well, yeah, it's okay if you do, but the consequence of your action has caused you not to be consistent. And Sean has really learned that that well, because when he first started, he started to get stronger in his local bunch. And, you know, I would have to say to him sometimes, Sean, today is not about smashing everybody. Today is about you riding in Zone two. And if you're finding your bunches riding too easy and you're not able to ride up to Zone two, then just sit on the front. Sit on the front all day. I'm sure they'll be happy to ride behind you. And so that's what he started doing each week. And the guys were. I could. And Sean was telling me, he said he could hear them saying, look at Shaun. He's on the front all day. What an idiot. You know, he's doing all the work. Well, they're the idiots. He's the one actually improving. You know, they're all hiding every bunch ride. Sean's doing the work, sitting on the front in the wind where it's uncomfortable. He's not riding at Threshold. He's riding at Zone two. But anybody who knows to ride at Zone two for two hours on the front of a bunch, it's really hard to do. Just ask the pros who have to ride, you know, on the front of their peloton, and they're not riding at zone two. I know that, but it is still hard work to just stay pressure on the pedals, and, you know, that's the type of riding that's got him to be aerobically really fit. He's also gone out and done all the hill repeats that we've asked him to do. The strength efforts, the low cadence stuff. He's also spent more time on his time trial bike in the time trial position. As uncomfortable as it is, he's persevered and adjusted his fit and he set up and got better wheels and better position and, and pedaling better and understanding, you know, how to ride the gearing better, you know, everything that I'm suggesting and he just takes it on board and goes away and makes things better. And it all culminates. And it didn't happen in four months. It took years to get to this point. And I think almost the longer it takes you, the more it means to you because you've had to work so hard and you haven't got the rewards. But there's been, you know, there's been so many times where, you know, he's, he's put himself in positions where he's out of his depth, he's uncomfortable, he's really having to almost suck it up a bit because, you know, he sees how we get our athletes to be better because he understands, because he's in the, he's in the program. And I'm forever sending people to races to keep testing themselves. And a lot of athletes, including myself, aren't that keen to race when we're not at the level we want to be or the competition's too hard for us. And so if you keep avoiding those scenarios, you're not going to be pushed as much as you would be if you stay in your local group and you're the kingpin there. You're not getting pushed the way you should be. And that's why I always say to guys in our bunch, you know, come along to the bunch ride because there's guys who are better than you. And the minute you become the best guy in the bunch, then that's when you probably need to find someone who's better than you to be pushing you. So this is an example of the things he's done. He's gone to these races way out of his depth, being at the back of the field, getting dropped and in doing time trials where he's miles away from the podium, but he's just persisted and eventually he's getting to learn how to execute to his numbers and eventually those numbers start to improve and all of a sudden he's moving himself in a time trial field from the back of the time trial in his age group to the middle. And every time he goes away from a race, he's got more things to concentrate on and more motivation because he can actually see himself moving up here. I'm getting better. And in the last couple of years where he's gone to the nationals, the nationals here in Australia have masters riding with the elite riders. They have a road race, time trial and a criterium and he's put himself in those events and that's, that's against. The guys who turn up to those events are the guys who think they can win. No one else turns up to the mid packers. It's not like triathlon, triathletes, everybody goes because they're all riding for its personal improvement. That's the difference between a lot of cycling communities and a lot of triathlon communities. There's still guys in triathlon who want to win, don't get me wrong, but majority of people are trying to do pbs, but as a cyclist you're either first or you're nowhere. And, and you don't get that PB experience in a bunch. Right bunch ride because you could come 50th and still have had a great day of attacking and, and you know, not get the result. So, so he's putting himself out there and, and that's what's really changed his ability to, to, to step up, putting yourself into an uncomfortable position. And I don't mean you have to go and do things that are outrageously going to, you know, embarrass you or things like that, but you know, just ticking away in the background where you're not the center of attention and, and you're just getting better by putting yourself against people who are better than you and you will lift to their level. And you know, that's, that's the difference between staying in your little group where you're dominating and putting yourself against, you know, the small fish syndrome where little pond compared to the ocean. And so I think that's a great example of things that he does. Well, no different to any other athletes that we coach. They follow the same principles and you know, you've got confidence when you know that the group you're with has a lot of winners or a lot of people who do their PBS or who are improving all the time. You know that if you just follow that process, then you'll get the same result. So that's, that's a confidence thing as well. And so he knows that if he just keeps putting himself out there, keep doing the training Keep ticking off the consistency, he will get a result like that and guess what? That's what happened. Yeah.

And it's so satisfying for him, you know, as a 60 something year old now to be riding as well as he ever has compared to the start of the program and achieved now his first podium at that state level. I think that's just a phenomenal experience to have and to enjoy. It's just so worth it. So to finish off, I have some last few questions on some specifics around time drawing and a lot of people then ask for. Okay, so if you improve your fitness and you learn to execute well and do the basic principles of conserving and knowing when to push harder on the power compared to the wind or the terrain and then push and go easier on the power compared to the wind terrain. But what about on technical courses which a lot of triathlon races or time trials have? Where do you rate cornering coming into the corner, coming out of the corner, taking the corners hard in terms of time gains versus risk compared to the long straight sections. Where are you putting down the power and where for age group is he trying to find time? Because we saw Demi Vollering one by six seconds in the stage a couple of days ago and she was railing the corners. She was, it was nerve wracking to watch how hard she was going into them and I believe she was just gaining the time there. It looked like they were all pretty similar in terms of the straights and she was able to win a stage that way. But we don't necessarily recommend that for age groupers. So where do you rate kind of the cornering and in terms of time gains?

I rate it highly and I think that she was not the typical athlete to win that, that short time trial. It's, it was supposed to be the, the short, strong sprinter line.

World champ Chloe Dygard was favorite.

Yeah, yeah. So, so it was, she wasn't the, you know, she wasn't meant to be one of the favorites there. She's an unbelievable rider, so why shouldn't she be? But, but you know, I think that that actually answers that question is it means a lot. And, and I think Remco Evanopol did a great job on the Olympic Games time trial. And I remember we watched Jonas a year ago at the Tour de France win the time trial and put time into poga chart. And do you remember the camera was on him on all those corners, railing on those corners and he was getting 4, 5 seconds out of all. He had great course recon. He, he'd done that course so many times and so did the others, but he was willing to, you know, push more through those corners. And I think I remember some stat that came out that he, I think he beat him by 24 seconds through the corners and I think he only won by 40 something seconds. But on the straight sections and on the hills, they were very similar. But I rate your ability to corner safely really highly. And ironically, I was Talking to Steve McMillan, one of the guys we coach who's at the world titles, triathlon titles, age group in Townsville, right at the minute. And his race is on Sunday. And the Townsville course for the 40k time trial has got one section out and back that's basically dead flat with no wind. And then before you turn around, do the second lap out and back, you're going through the streets of Townsville, left, right, roundabouts, left, right, left, light left, everywhere. So, you know, we're talking about, you know, how safe do we go around these corners? And I'm saying you go as hard as you can. Unfortunately, there's other age groupers on the course, so it's not a closed time trial circuit like we're talking about with the pros at the World Championships or the Olympic Games or the Tour de France. So you've got to. And I've had this situation. I actually fractured my pelvis cornering on a corner in a race where one of the age group has moved out and I was on a line and I had to swing out and my bike slid underneath me just because I didn't allow for the age grouper to do something different than I thought they were going to do. And I said to Steve, you know, you've got to make the most out of these corners because pretty much on a flat course with no wind, there is no other areas to make gains. So, you know, with that many corners you got on this course, you could actually end up 20 or 30 seconds further up the road, which the race he's going to be in, which is a 10k run, 40k ride and a 5k run, he could be winning or losing by 20 or 30 seconds at the end of that whole event. So I think it's super important that we get good at cornering. And as we talked about in one of the previous podcasts in the Olympic Games, seeing professional athletes pedaling on a left hand corner with their left pedal down, and seeing them pedal on a right hand corner with their right pedal down, I'm just horrified at that. And you just need to practice that Sort of stuff and get better at it and understanding where the line is for the corner. And every single corner that you're going to come across is not the same. They're not all 45 degree corners. We've got roundabouts that, you know, got a little bit of a camber. Some roundabouts have got off camber, some, you know, where Vollering crashed it on smalling stage, they went round a roundabout and instead of coming out of the roundabout straight, they actually turned left out of the roundabout, which is what caused the crash in front of her. And so, you know, she actually managed to hold it up because the girl in front of her was crashing, but the girl behind her ran into her which caused her to crash. So they're things that you want to be good at, skillful at, but sometimes it's out of your control when people are crashing. But the point is, if you get really solid at knowing where your tipping point is, where your bike can be leaned over, then you can make one or two seconds. And if you've got 10 corners in one lap of a course, there's 20 seconds. And most time trials are won within five. You know, the last time trial series that we had, one of the guys lost by 0.05 seconds in our, in our group. So, you know, do some corners a little bit better and there's, there's a, there's a win. Isn't you to do a lot of things well? But exactly that is important.

And the last point I want to ask to finish off is about heart rate. Because as much as that, the plan is to. How can you ride conservatively and ride just below that tipping point? Um, the point is you're trying to find your tipping point and that you, you really have to remind athletes that when we say conservative, we're not saying hold back and until the last couple of minutes and then go all out. That's kind of not, that's. That's going to result in the outcome you said before, which was too soft, you know, and so you can actually use your heart rate. You want to be on the limit the whole time. You don't want to be conservative, as in you got heaps to spare. It's. What do you think about using the heart rate to really establish that you're on your limit?

Yeah, it's a tricky one because there's a couple of things that go wrong with the heart rate as compared to using power and to feel. So the heart rate, when you start, your heart rate is going to be, for example, if Your average heart rate for your time trial, Jordy, is 175 beats per minute. It's going to take you from when you start the time trial to the fourth minute or the fifth minute before you get from it's resting on the start line. Mine's probably a little bit adrenaline, so it's at 90. So it's going to take me three or four minutes to get to 120. Whereas if I just concentrate on the power, the first couple of pedal revolutions, I'm at my threshold power. And so if I was going to go by heart rate, I would be having to ride flat out. I would be riding way over my VO2 to get my heart rate to get it to 175, and that would destroy my race. So there's a problem straight away. So the next problem is, are you really well tapered? And if you see your heart rate higher than it normally is for threshold, because you're well tapered and that happens a lot when you're well tapered, you can push higher heart rate. So if you see your heart rate, it's now 182, you've got a decision to make. Am I going to blow up in a minute? Because it's at 182, I've never been here before, so there's a problem with heart rate again, whereas the power is. I know My threshold is 210, and maybe I feel good. I can push 212 and I trust it. Whereas heart rate, you know, is it a hotter day? And therefore my heart rate for 210 watts used to be 175 beats per minute for 210 today, because it's 35 degrees. 210 today, my heart rate's 180. So what do I do? Do I slow down? So. So there's all these issues with heart rate, but I think once you're into the event and the conditions are good, I think the heart rate can be trusted for a guide. It's the last thing I'm looking at. If I look down and I see my heart rate's at 183 instead of 175 and I'm feeling good, guess what? I'm going, you beauty. I'm not holding back here. I am. I'm smashing my PB heart rate here and I'm going to go harder. It's not something that's going to hold me back if I know that I'm finishing the event there. But if I know that I've got to get off and run that's a whole different story. So, so it depends on the scenario that you're faced with, with heart rate. So they're just some little nuances that you should be considering when you're thinking about just using heart rate on its own in training. It's, it's, it's really, it's really quite useless when you're trying to do VO2, because if you do a 30 second on, 15 second off, you'd be lucky to get your heart rate in the first four or five efforts to 150. By the time you get to the second set, you might start to get it up to the 175 where you're aiming for, but it could take you the whole first two sets to get there. And if you just were relying on heart rate and you didn't know what your power was, you wouldn't know whether you had a successful session or not because your heart rate stayed quite low. It's just the nature of the effort you were doing wasn't long enough for your heart rate to catch up quick enough.

Yeah, it's an important point to know your own body and to be looking at the heart rate data in training for these very reasons, to figure out when, in different scenarios, what your heart rate does. A really common one the last few years has been what is your heart rate doing when people are post sickness or post Covid? A lot of people are finding that, oh, I know I've been sick when I can. My heart rate is 10 beats higher for a max effort or a VO2 effort. But it's really good when you're doing VO2 sets to see what your heart rate does and what does it get up to? And when you're doing threshold efforts, what does it get up to? And when you're practicing races, what does it get up to? And then you can just have all that in the back of your mind, like you said, as a guide to use and follow and just give you some more information. So some really big tips here. We hope you've enjoyed this case study. We really want to dive into time trialing because we've loved our own results. We hope you can use this information to get better results yourself. Anything to finish off?

Yeah. Just one last thing on the heart rate, the resting heart rate in, in my experience, in the last month, it's a huge indicator that something's not quite right. If you're used to seeing 45, 46, 47, when you wake up and all of a sudden you're seeing 57, 58, then that to me is a signal that there's something not quite right going on in the body. And if that continues along that trend, then you need to do something about that, whether you go to seek some medical help or whether you actually take it easier in your training. But that is a sure, a sign that something's about to happen with some sickness or something not quite right with the stress levels that you've been putting yourself on. So I think heart rate is probably the best value right there in understanding how you're coping with your training load. And I know that on race day, if I wake up on race day and my heart rate's 10 or 15 beats higher, it's because I'm thinking about how am I going to perform and it's not a reflection. Nine times out of ten about I'm unwell, it's me being quite nervous because the adrenaline's flowing and I'm excited for the day. And that's happened to me with my HRV as well. It's said to me, don't race today because your HRV is really poor. Well, that's me just being super pumped for the event. So they're the only other things that I would add to, you know, using as heart rate as a really useful tool in your training and racing that.

Sums up a big episode on time trialing. If you want to get the same results, if you want to improve your time trialing, if you want help with all these things, with the training and fitness to improve your strength, to improve your lactate threshold, how to execute properly inside a race and how to get the most out of yourself, how to find your own tipping point. You can apply to get coach from us@tribalocoaching.com thank you very much for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.