What’s The Smallest Amount of Training Needed To Do A Half Ironman 70.3?

In an ideal world, you do a perfect training program with no injury, no sickness and no interruptions and you get to race day in peak form. But this almost never happens. And in the case of Jack, the complete opposite happened. He had so many interruptions to training that we almost pulled out of the race entirely. But instead we asked what is the absolute bare minimum training we can do here to get you through your first 70.3 half Ironman? And so today we're going to take you through exactly how we did that in this episode. So you dad, welcome back to another case study. Take us through how Jack first joined the program.

Jack was such an interesting character coaching interview we had. He was so eager just, you know, the motivated athlete is the probably the scariest athlete you can coach. And he was just so eager to come on board and he was going to do whatever it took to get him to, he just wanted to race. He's super competitive, came from a team sport background but, you know, obviously had a talent as an athlete and I wanted to see how far he could go as a triathlete and this was kind of a new world for him. So he reached out to us and wanted to get the best advice so that he could actually get the best outcome when it came to the races that he was going to select. And to my surprise, he was selecting a race that was not that far away, the Geelong 70.3. And you know, right from the outset we had to reframe his enthusiasm to say, look, you can't just jump into an epic endurance event like this without, you know, having barely ridden a bike and you know, sure, he's a good runner and you know, that was clear and he could swim but, but he had no idea really about the, the endurance aspect of, of an event like half Ironman 70.3. And it sounds, sounds, you know, pretty basic to do an event like this, but it can be somewhere between four and six and a half to seven hours depending on your ability. So it's nothing that into, with a mindset that this is going to be, you know, fairly straightforward and, and you just need to give yourself enough time to, to prepare yourself to get an outcome that's actually acceptable to your own mind and, and to those who are supporting you. And I suppose that's the first thing we said was this is not going to happen. You need to actually do a little bit of training before you put, you put your mind to getting to the, the race that we think that would be a good idea. And so that's was really Holding a guy back, that was, that was the first sort of I had to him was this guy's just super keen, let me at it, tell me what I have to do and I'll be ready and I'll be right on race day.

And for clarity that when he signed up, that first 70.3 was seven weeks away. So he was really determined to do that first race. It was only seven weeks away and we just had to basically say, no way, absolutely not. And there's a bit of conversation around it, you know, to explain why that's a bad idea and what the experience will be. And to his credit, he listened and he said, I'm here to trust the process. And actually the coolest part was he came to the race anyway because he said, I just want to see how it works. I just want to get involved and see the atmosphere and come support, drive other people and check it out. And he did that and it was awesome. It was awesome for him to see all that and for himself, that motivation runs through the rest of his life. He runs his own tomming business which keeps him very busy. And yeah, really, he just wanted to, he became really obsessed with triathlon and just wanted to learn how to be a really good triathlete and race really well. And he's really inspired by the pros. And I have to say from the start, and this theme carries through throughout the whole episode, is one of his key goals, and he wrote this down in our initial form, was wants to make sure he keeps having fun. And I have to say that's a really important theme for why I think he's been successful in this whole journey. So yeah, anyone that runs their own business and wants to dive in headfirst to as much training as possible, yeah, it can quickly go pretty south, can't it? In terms of having major expectations for yourself and not be able to meet those expectations.

Yeah. And also having a family and new to a sport and understanding the, the ins and outs of getting a bike that's suitable to you. You know, you just, you just take all this for granted almost and it is, it is a lot to understand about how well you can be prepared in terms of your equipment. So that was, that was also an initial issue for him is to get, get the technology working, get a bike, fit that on a bike. That probably wasn't perfect for him, but, but you know, that wasn't going to stop him. This is, this is a guy who is just single minded and, and you know, I loved his attitude and his approach and you know, no matter what hurdles we're putting in front of him to try and get him to start the training program, he was up for it. So he was willing to do all, all the required things, but there were some setbacks that, that were, you know, almost insurmountable. And, and I want to paint this picture that, you know, it wasn't easy for him because there was so much going on in his world. And for anybody listening out there, this is the same for you. You are probably dealing with lots of things with your, with if you've got relationships and you've got an extension of family and children and your work and keeping everybody and keeping the whole thing ticking along and then trying to do some training around those, those key things in your life, it's not that simple. And, and I want to really praise Jack for the way that he didn't drop his bundle at any stage, even though he was, in my opinion, he had every right to because things didn't go, you know, smoothly at all. In fact, it was, it was one hurdle after another. And, and I loved his, his approach where he just said, yep, I've got to deal with that, but let's get on with it. What else can I do? And so, yeah, that, that's sort of, that I want to set that tone of who we're dealing with here.

Yeah, exactly. So in terms of numbers and ability, as you said, came in a really strong runner. His first 5k TT was at 356 pace, which was great. Could ride a bike due to fitness, but no idea how to ride properly really. And so his first FTP test was at 248 watts, which is good power. But his latest FTP test just last month was 305 watts. So that shows a, a long way from where he came from. And he was a decent swimmer at 202 pace. So look, he trained really well for the first three months of the program. He was super consistent, super motivated, was absolutely loving the process, learning how everything works and nothing was an issue with trying to learn everything but then hit some major roadblocks as you said, and he was just absolutely under the pump with his own work and was just far too busy to be able to train really. And he had a newborn baby in that time, so those two things combined and basically training came to a big halt and he's progress completely plateaued. And realistically, he kept trying to do sessions and he had been training really well, but he would start and then stop again and then try and get going again and Then would just be flooded with everything else in life and stop again. And he was feeling really guilty for it. And he kept calling up and saying, I feel like a bad athlete. He felt really guilty. He was saying, oh, you probably hate dealing with people like me. And for us, we say the opposite. If someone's calling up, asking for help and trying to say, I'm really struggling with this, how can you help me? You know, we're never going to turn that away. We're never going to say that's a, that's a bad athlete or someone hard to work with. That's someone that's solution focused, that's really trying to take responsibility for their programming. And exactly what you said before, in fact, it's huge commendment to him to keep trying to push through anyway and not just throw in the towel. And that's the most commendable part, is that it was really a case of how can I make this work and how can I try and get back on track. And so we kept trying to trying different ways to get back on track and it kept, honestly, it just kept faltering. And I want to stop and talk about this process for a bit because this is a process that a lot of athletes go through. And we've had many conversations with athletes about what to do in these situations because inevitably this happens at one point or another. And how do you approach these conversations with athletes?

And it's not a minority, Jord. There's a fair percentage. I couldn't take a guess at it, but I would say probably four out of every 10 athletes would be having this conversation with our coaches and trying to find a solution. They don't want to give their goal and dreams away. They still want to do it, but they almost feel guilty being on a program that's so data driven and improvement based that they feel like they're not doing it justice. And so we actually want to, we want to hear that from the athletes. If you're struggling, we want to know, we want to know that you were still motivated but you feel like it's a waste of time because you're not going to get the outcome that you want to. But there's still hope. And if we're not allowing you to find another way, then we're not doing our job very well. So I want to say to everybody out there who is in this position, you've just got to find a way. And we use the analogy of the roadblock. And for every roadblock there's another option that you can take that'll get you to your destination as long as you're willing to think differently. And in this case, you definitely have to think about. Well, the planning and preparing is really two thirds of the actual performing. If you divide it into 3, 30% each. 33% each. The planning is just as important as actually the performing. If you don't actually have a decent plan and strategy around what day are you going to train, what time are you going to train? I use the example of if you get a doctor's appointment and it's for Monday at 3 o', clock, 99% of the time, unless something catastrophic happens with a car accident or you run out of petrol or something happened to your family, you would go to that doctor's appointment no matter what. That's the attitude you need to have with your training session. I'm going to train at 6am or I'm going to train at 6pm or 7.30pm you just make that commitment. And if, if you start doing that to yourself, you will actually make it easier on yourself because you've made a booking with yourself to do a training session. And that's the start of the preparation is actually finding out at the start of the week, going through your program and finding out what days you've got things where there might be parent teacher interviews, there might be meetings you've got after work, you might have a social function. It's getting near Christmas now. You might have three nights where you've got social functions. That means you can't train at night and you normally do train at night. So you now have to think differently. Okay, I have to go to bed earlier so that I can get up earlier and do those training sessions. And if you, if your function goes late, then you still have to set the alarm and get it done. And there are ways to go around the roadblock. And we, we know that, that that's not easy to do either. So if you think that it's impossible for you to have a late night, then get up early, you just need to give that day a miss and then live to fight another day there, then that's not making you any less an athlete. It's, it's actually being clever that you can, you know, you don't have to hit every day's, every training session, every day, every time, every distance, every interval. You know, that's our goal all the time, is to do that. That's what we want our athletes to think like that. That's your ultimate goal and that's what you should be striving for. But, but I don't know anybody who can do that. In all of the years I've been doing it, I would have less than five people out of 5,000 that I' who could actually say that they've done every session, every day for the last, you know, five or six years. And I, I do have some athletes who can do that, but which is insane. You know, the majority, not minority, the majority can't. And so you've just got to try and fit yourself into what can I do this week and, and strip it back. And that's the planning part of it. The preparation part of it is doing that. And the planning is finding out what you can do each day, what time you've got available. And if the session says an hour 15, I sometime really upset with people saying it was an hour 15, coach, I couldn't do that. So I didn't do anything. That is not the answer. The answer is cut out the warm up, cut out the cool down, do 25 or 35 minutes somewhere, at least have a go. And if you think that's not worth it, you are totally wrong. It is absolutely worth it. You do 10 of those in a month compared to 10, I'm not doing anything. You're 10 sessions ahead of where you would have been. And that's the mindset you need to have, is to keep thinking that I'm going forward. If I do something, I'm moving forward on my fitness journey. Don't be so hard on yourself that you're actually making it worse and getting depressed because you're not actually doing every session, every day perfectly like it's written. So yes, we strive for that, but that's not always possible.

And look, it just takes, it takes a really serious open dialogue and conversation with the athlete. And we have these conversations all the time where we just say what's going on? And, and he had had some conversations with us and sent them and sent some messages and he just said at one point, look, bear with me, I'm just really struggling to manage everything at the moment. And we just said there's absolutely no pressure from us. We're just here to help you find some solutions. And it can be really demotivating if we keep putting programs in and the athlete keeps not hitting them. That can actually make it feel worse because the training piece is just flooded with red. So it's also our job to keep meeting the athlete about where they're at and try and put things in there that become achievable and sometimes we do have these conversations and we say what's going on? And we find out from the athlete and you actually say, okay, in this situation, stopping training and not being on the program is the right thing to do. And that's not very often because often prioritizing yourself and making that training appointment with yourself, like you said about the doctor analogy, taking care of yourself is most likely the right outcome. And in his case, it was the right thing to do because he just wasn't getting any time for himself throughout his weeks. And we had conversations around, you know, sacrificing some, some time from his own work to reprioritize his own training. And that was something he was willing to do as well because he was just feeling overworked. And so it's this dialogue back and forth about, you know, where are you struggling, where are you falling short, where can we meet you? Where can we try and give you some more stability and structure in your training? And again, to his credit, he was very solution based and he was never coming to us complaining, saying, I give up because that's the hardest part to come back from. It was, it was, this is a tough period, but I'm going to try and keep trying to, trying to get through it. And so honestly, the amount of times even like he said then you set the appointment, he was determined as ever to get home and get on the trainer and train. And then he'd have to get off after 10 minutes or 15 minutes because his other son required attention. And you can't, no matter what you say about making an appointment with yourself, you just couldn't, you can't not do that. And so, you know, it was infuriating for himself to get on the trainer and pedal for 12 minutes and then that was his session done and I have to get off and that's, that's me done for the night. Or he would get on the trainer at 11:30pm at night, try that once, try and smash out a session, get to bed late, be up early the next morning and then be completely wrecked. And so, yeah, you can see all these roadblocks start popping up. And he started to get some consistency when we really just started completely stripping the volume back because unfortunately it just kept being all or nothing, all or nothing. And he made some mistakes where against our advice, he just decided that, okay, I missed Tuesday's hard session, I'm just doing double hard on Thursday and I'm going to do Tuesday's hard session on Thursday and I'm just going to do back to back. And remember, there was one session where we can laugh about it now, but he tried to do two VO, two sets in a row because he just wanted to make up for the week. That's how motivated he was. And he got halfway through the second session and just completely capitulated. And we said, no one in the world can do two full VO2 sessions in a row. But that was his solution of what he was trying to come up with. He was so motivated. He was just. He would miss a day, and so he would try and way overdo other days and just do everything at once and try and do a full triathlon in one day to. To make up the sessions, which is also not the answer.

And he was really grateful because that was the reason why he engaged our coaching group, was to make sure that he wasn't doing the wrong things day after day, back to back. And if I did miss sessions, what's the best solution to come back from that? And, you know, what he was doing was pretty much what most normal people do is, I've missed two days in a row, so I'll try and catch up the next three days. So you end up having, you know, three really hard rides and two really hard runs and a swim. And then by the third, end of the third day, you're exhausted. It's not, it's not because you can't plan to do the next session. It's. You're physically too tired, and that's the next roadblock you've put in front of yourself. So having someone to make you accountable, not only to train, but to also move the sessions around to make it so that you can actually seamlessly go from one session to another. And that's the thing. He didn't want to leave or lose was, you know, the minute he stopped getting coached, then he's back to his own old ways, which is, you know, just hit and miss, haphazard. And he'd already come from that. That's why he reached out. So now he's not wanting to go back. He's really reaching out for us to say, no, you can't do that. You know, it's okay occasionally to do back to back because you know that's not going to hurt you in the long run. But if you continually do that, you're going to end up being in a really big, dark hole of fatigue.

Spot on. So we, we just got to the point where we said, okay, this is. We really have to strip this back to the absolute bare minimum. And we we ended up having a conversation and setting some rules for the week. And it was, your goal is just to train each day. And at the moment it doesn't even matter what you're doing, just you're trying to get some exercise in each day. And we're, and we're trying to just get some variation between try and swim one day, try and bike the next, try and run the next and get double up days. Forget the set sets, whatever. And then we said, okay, if you can train, it's ideally to do what's programmed and there's an interval set, do the interval set. And we ended up writing the program where we would do the absolute minimum warm up possible. It's just basically get on the bike, get as warm as you can as quick as you can and do the main set. Because you would never get. Most sets take 50 minutes to an hour. And so we were programming these to be 30 minutes, where it's a seven minute warm up and it's 20 minutes of VO2 work and a two minute cooldown. That's kind of what we just shipped it right back. And if you couldn't even do that, it was just get on the trainer and just smash yourself for 30 minutes. Just ride as hard as you can, join a Zwift, race, something, who cares about the sets, Just get on and smash yourself. And if you can't do that, do something easy for 30 minutes. If you're exhausted from work or something, just get on the bike and spin your legs for 30 minutes. If you can't do that, do it for 15 minutes, do something for 15 minutes, go for a 15 minute walk or run. And that became our rules for the week. It was always these contingencies and the weekends it was, look, we want to get your long rides in and your long runs in. If you can't do three hours, do two, two hours. If you can't do two hours, do one hour. And it was the same with the run. If you can't do your 70 minute run or your 90 minute run, do 30 minutes. And that became the rules that we aimed for. And honestly, that got him some consistency again. And that's what got him back on track with just having some, having some green on the training peaks and feeling like you're doing something each day. And it's not the most ideal program and you're not getting that real base endurance fitness that we would, would be ideal. But at least you're getting some motivation back where you're seeing some success in your training.

And it's ironic, isn't it, that even though you're not completing the sessions to their fullest potential, you are still getting that chemical release of satisfaction. You actually achieve something and that can't be underestimated. Whether it's a 30 minute smash fest where it should have been an hour 15, you actually are not that disappointed anymore because you've got a different goal and every time you do something positive, you get this chemical release in your brain to say, you know, I'm pretty happy that I've actually done something rather than my alternative, which normally is nothing. And that can't be underestimated. And I think that's something that people who are in this position should, should experience it. Something is better than nothing. I've said that for so many years and no matter how short or long the session is, as long as you do something, you're still 20 sessions ahead of doing nothing. If you've done a month's worth of training, you did 2030 minute efforts, that's still better than the alternative, which is nothing.

Yep, spot on. And so we eventually got to 12 weeks out from the race and while he was getting consistency, the volume just wasn't enough. And we had a pretty serious conversation where we just said, look, this is working, but you're just not going to make the 70.3 the half ironman without the endurance. And while you're training well, you're going to have a pretty rough day on the day. It's going to be a real completion battle if you keep going like this. If that's all you can do, then that's fine. But he said, no, I want to be able to give my best effort and I want to turn things around. And so we said, okay, the midweek stuff, you're not going to change that much just with the way life is, you know, keep doing it the way you're doing. But can you commit to the weekends? Just making sure that it's an absolute commitment to get the race ready sessions in, to get the endurance and the race ready intensity and practice those long TT efforts on the bike and so we can get to race day. Confident in your ability tom trial 90km and confident in your ability to run a half marathon. Well off the bike. And his absolute credit, he just locked in and for that whole period made sure he did those. He barely missed a weekend or if something, there was some wild weather in there, he did it on the trainer or he did some sessions in some insane weather, but he really committed to that and that got him to Race day in a great position.

Yeah. And that was one of the key things is when you come into these races. The reason we do a lot of the high intensity stuff in midweek is many reasons, but one of the key things is to try to improve our fitness by using intensity. And our fitness can be our running pace, our FTP, our swim speed. We're trying to train with intensity to improve that level. Improve your FTP from 250 or in his case, you know, I can't remember what it was exactly. It was something, you know, 50 watt improvement he had from 248 to 305 or something like that. So that's where the, the intensity sessions during the week come in the long endurance rides. That's more race specific stuff where we might forego some of that stuff midweek because we don't have time, but we need to do the endurance stuff so that when we get to race day our body is going to cope with the long time that you're going to be out there. So yes, we can minimize the high intensity and be happy with our FTP or our running pace, but the thing now is to try and be able to hold that pace or power for a long time as a half marathon and in the 70.3 or as a 90 kilometer bike ride. You know, it's great to be able to hold 20 minute power or 60 minute power when it's improving, but can you do that for three hours or two and a half hours or three and a half hours on the bike? So that was the key thing that you did really well as his coach was to make sure that he started to get those race ready sessions where regardless of what was happening during the week, he would make sure that he got that endurance in. So come race day, a he had the confidence and B, he had the endurance to actually ride the numbers and pace, run the pace and swim the pace that you and he agreed to on race day.

And another tactic that you can think about and use, and this is just a quick shout out to another trivelo athlete, Dean, who's been a long term loyal athlete of Trivelo and they actually live in the same area. And Dean reached out to him to help get him going a little bit as well and just offered to go on some endurance rides with him. And if you need to, if you're struggling for motivation, you just need to look for any avenue where you can get some help and get some assistance to get you going. If that's getting a friend to go on a long run with you or doing something like that. I just think that was small but really profound thing that can really help just spark that motivation again. And you get out there, you do a great insurance session with someone, you get some company and then that can spark things for you to kick things into gear. So big shout out to Dean, but let's talk about race day and his first time going through a half Ironman race plan. And we always make our athletes send us their homework and tell us what they think they can hold. And honestly through his first go, it wasn't too bad. But as most athletes just really still not conservative enough, you know, he, he came to us with a race plan where he said he won't mind me, you know, saying these numbers. He said, I think I'm going to aim for 220 to 230 watts on the bike and then run at 4:20 to 4:30 pace. And I said okay, that's, that's great, you're not too far off, but what makes you think you can do that? And he said, well, I rode around that 220 mark in the 90k in training and around a similar pace for running. So I feel like it's a race and I can step up and really go for it in the race day and write those numbers. And I said okay, so you haven't done those numbers in training, you've done just under and your plan is to do more than that in the race. And he said, oh, when you put it like that, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do. And I said that's fine, you're not supposed to know, that's why it's your first time. But we often see this where athletes believe that race day should be a step up and they should achieve something that they haven't necessarily achieved in training. And we disagree with that, don't we?

Yeah. And especially if they haven't got the accurate data from their training sessions and have they done this as a combined back to back session. And so there's so much information that, you know, that's the reason why we make our athletes go back and look for their historical training sessions so that they can get a clear picture of what they, you know, it's very obvious when you look back at six weeks of race ready sessions, what is your average power? And it's such a smooth, easy conversation for those who have done this many times. But for a first time athlete, they're not really understanding what we're asking. We're actually asking you to go back and do your homework and find out what you've done on these sessions and then you can't make that up. The sessions are there, the power is there, the speed is there, the running pace is there. You, you have those sessions that, that are based on your current form. So, so for us to say that it's okay to do something outside of that is going to cause a whole lot of pain on race day. And it's not a short event, it's a, it's an enduring event where you need to be staying in your ranges and be disciplined to do that. And if you start badly with the wrong ranges, then that's actually going to be far worse than anything you can think of. Having the wrong plan is just about as bad as having no plan.

Yeah. So in terms of numbers and what's interesting here, and this makes a lot of sense, is that he did a 60 minute FTP test the week before which gave him 270 watts. And so by those numbers that should equate to being able to hold somewhere between 220 and 240 for race day based on everything we know. We also know that he had such limited base endurance and so the gap between cause he's 90k in training was 217 watts. So the gap between what he can do for an hour, but what he could do for 90k was quite different. And that's what's missing in the actual base training. So we had to be more conservative and say, okay, this race, especially your first one, let's just back it off and let's just go for 200 to 220 watts. That becomes your range and stay conservative all day. And then with a half marathon in training, you did 4:27 pace. We said, okay, instead of aiming for 420 to 430, back it off, aim for 430 to 440 and really start at the 4:40 end and see how you're feeling. Let's just make sure you don't blow up in there. Actual racing, to his credit, very, very difficult to do this first go. We have a lot of athletes still not doing this on their 17th go. Listen to the instructions and followed it. And even though he felt good all day and he had a really, really great experience because it was within what he was able, it was within the range of what he was capable of doing, he listened to the instructions and didn't go outside of that and had an absolutely brilliant experience because of it.

Yeah. And I would much rather the athletes come back after the race, to have a conversation with me, to say, like Jack did, that was the most fun I've ever had. He said, everything you said that was going to happen happened because I stayed in my lane and I didn't get ahead of myself, and I felt all day in control, and there was at no stage that I feel like I was struggling to finish. If, if anything, I was thinking I could be able to push more, and that's a great position to be in. And again, as you said, to his credit, he didn't go outside of that. And he could have easily said, stuff this, I'm going for it. But he knew that the risk was going to be probably bad because he hadn't done the work. And that's a lot of the things that you have to take into consideration when you have a race plan and a strategy is, have I done enough work here to allow me to be a little bit more risky and go further past the tipping point than I want to? And. And again, we said this a lot. You know, he's done a great job doing this and not going outside of his range. And therefore, he ended up with a fantastic outcome considering the race preparation that he had and the journey that he'd been on.

Yeah. And I want to tell one story which just epitomizes the day and everything we talk about. And he just. When we spoke after the race, he just said, you're going to laugh at this, but exactly what you said in the podcast over and over happened to the T into the letter. And he said, I. I was going one on one with this guy all day from the bike, and in the bike we kept. I would overtake him, and I was trying to stay in my range, and he would overtake me. And he did say, look, at the end of the bike, I did put in a little bit of a surge just to get away with him. And he said he was feeling good at the end of the bike, which was risky because he still had a run to go. But he said, I got to be excited. I felt fresh from the bike and put in a bit of a surge to get away from this guy. Not too much. And looking at the data, he definitely didn't go far over. And then they got to the run, and it was a classic tortoise and the hare fable, you know, And Jack just came out of transition and just ran his own pace. And this guy came past Jack within the first kilometer or two of the run, absolutely flying, and just got away from him. And Jack was tempted to go with him, but just said, nope, I'm running my own race here, and let him go. And that takes a lot of ego because you get in these battles in these races with people. And Jack didn't see him again. And Jack just kept running his pace and felt really good. And he actually did a big negative split and just got stronger and stronger as he went. And he did ask me in the conversation, if I feel good at the end, can I go for it? And I laughed and said, most often that's not the case, which is always what we say, but if you do feel good, you have absolute license to go for it. And it was so well executed and stayed within his range so much that he could really start flying at the end. And he was. He started going 425ks and 420ks and 415ks to finish off with. And at that level of the race in the last couple of kilometers, if you're doing that pace, you are absolutely flying. It looks like you're sprinting past people because most people are having the opposite experience. And he said that's what was happening. I just felt like I was floating compared to everyone else. And. And sure enough, with a K and a half to go, he sees this guy in his sight, and this guy is walking and Jack is basically sprinting. And Jack goes past him and just. He's laughing to himself in his own head. Nothing to do with, you know, being a mean person to that guy, but just laughing at the fact that he said, I can't believe that this story that they tell on the podcast so much that it just sounds like it's made up, but I've just literally experienced exactly what it is in the podcast, in real life, in this whole side, it's just textbook. And he said it could not be more typical of what you were saying. And he finished, as you said, with the biggest smile on his face and was just so stoked with the results because of that.

When you looked at his run data, it's pretty epic because he started really conservatively. And to end up with a132,133 for the half marathon at 4.28pace, when he spent most of the time early in the run running at the 440, you know, 445 pace. And it just shows you, if you. If you are willing to. To just be conservative, you know, you can come home and. And still end up with a really good time. And. And some people might say, listening to this, well, you know, he left a lot out There. Well, we would agree that this guy has got super talent and he's far better athlete than he then he actually got to perform as a result at Melbourne. But, but I tell you what, he did a great job considering the fitness level that he had. I think he reached his potential on that day with the fitness level he had due to his discipline and his motivation and sticking to the process. And sure, he's probably got 10 or 15 minutes more in him at the moment, but I feel like this was the best outcome because you got to experience what it is like to race properly and I'm sure that one day he'll tip himself too far over the other like we all do. We've all done that in a race or two. Any time. If you look back at your own career, you haven't nailed it every single time. And I'm in that category. I've had some disastrous races where I've gone ahead of myself and the outcome was poor. So it's good to have first up experience where you really nail everything so that the next time you use that experience, remember the feelings you had and then try to push yourself slightly more, prepare better and then try to get a better outcome using the experience that you've had where you have been conservative and knowing where your baseline is so that you can actually build on that for next time.

So yeah, as you said, you ended up with 208 watts for the average 90k for a time of 2 hours 28, which is a great ride. And then like you said, yeah, 428 pays for 132. And we did have that conversation before the race where I said, you know, the data shows us based on your short form stuff, so your FTP tests and your 5 and 10k runs, you probably are a 125 runner at the moment for a half marathon. And you're probably, you know, a much faster bike rider because we know that from your 60 minute test you can ride 270 for an hour, but you just haven't, we haven't had any evidence in training of what you can do when you, we put all this together, you know, for a long time and you just don't have the base endurance. So it'd be irresponsible of us to go off those, you know, those numbers of what we think you can do for the, for the fact that the risk is so great. And instead he finishes with a massive smile on his face with 446 and as you said, executes well knowing there's probably some More in the tank. But had you gone the other way, boy, it's not a very good experience. He probably never wants to do a 70.3 again, but instead, in this case, he's saying midweek, I still have no words for the weekend, I'm still buzzing. I just can't even describe how good it feels.

And look, the reason why he did run so well is because he rode so clever and the guy who was passing him backwards and forwards. Melbourne, for those people who don't know, that course has got quite a lot of rolling undulations. And the majority of riders at Melbourne really ride the hills for really hard and they are at least 20 or 30% over their average power for the whole day. And that's a fair few people in the field. And the trivalo people are going to ride reasonably even pace middle to upper range when the bike's going slower over the hills. And so most people are passing the trivalo people. By the time you get to the crest of the hill, they're all sitting up, getting their breath back, whilst the trivalo person keeps the pressure on the pedals, zooms past them again, only to get the same experience the next hill. And this happens time and time again over a period of 40, 50, 60K. And by the time you get to 70 or 80K, the person who's smashing it over the hills and recovering and then continuing to smash it, doing like an over under training session, they are going to be burning so many more matches than the person who's riding reasonably evenly, slightly over on the uphill, slightly under on the downhills, slightly over on the headwind, slightly down on the tailwind. And so when it comes to the run, you've conserved so well that you can actually run properly. And this is the experience that not only the age groupers have, but the professionals are having these experiences as well. So we keep saying the same thing, but every time I go to a race, which is I went to one on the weekend, a local race here, which was a week straight after the Melbourne race, I went to two races in a row and I saw exactly the same thing in a sprint, I saw people do it the same way in a 70.3 and I guarantee the next ironman that I go to, I'll see exactly the same thing. The problem is the longer the event is, the worse are the repercussions. In a sprint race, you can suffer for 2 or 3k on the run, where you're basically crawling to a trot rather than running again, but In a half Ironman it is not fun to walk for 5k and in an Ironman it is no good to walk for 20K. And this is the stuff that Jack didn't experience because he followed the process so well and hats off to him and congratulations on a really great outcome.

Yeah, it's yeah, really great story. And I was laughing with him about doing this case study episode. He said that's no worries but hopefully the next one is a year or two from now when I've absolutely smashed those times and I'm right down. Which we hope to do as well. So that's this case study. If you want to be one of these case studies, you want to get these results, then you can apply to get coached by us@trivalocoaching.com A few key reminders that we coach anywhere around the world, Australia or worldwide. A lot of of people think we don't coach internationally. We absolutely do. The time zones are no issues and we definitely make it work in a one on one capacity. We have an eight week guarantee that if you don't improve your FTP in the first eight weeks then the coaching is on us. Absolute money back. And so if you want that, if you want to apply, go to trivalocoaching.com otherwise we'll see you in the next podcast episode. In the back of. The back. Keep on.