Why 99% of Triathlon Amateurs Never Hit Their Potential

Most triathletes never get to find out just how fast they can really go. Why? Not because they aren't fit, but because race day keeps going wrong. They either go too fast and blow up, or too slow. They have poor planning, inaccurate pacing, the wrong training structure. Whatever the reason, when it happens over and over, you go race after race without hitting your true potential. Today we're breaking down why that happens and how you can change it to get the most out of yourself, with examples from athletes who do get it right. So let's get into it. Dad, this is a ripper topic. Why 99% of amateurs don't race to their potential. Give me your overall thoughts and we'll dive into the 5 key reasons we've identified why athletes don't hit it.

It's interesting, we've been discussing this, uh, off air and, ah, so many people have actually gone through a career where they've not actually— they don't actually know where, where their, their peak performance is. Because they've, they've not given themselves the best opportunity to race properly or to train properly. And so they're going through years and years of competing in races, training, and they don't actually know what their capacity is. They don't know what their capabilities are because they've been so over-under training, racing. They're just not consistent. There's just so many things that that, that create this, uh, situation where you just can't get to the— that I actually was listening to Jan Frodeno the other day, and he was saying out of all the races he did, he said there would be 3 races where he thought that he got the most out of himself. And he said he still made mistakes on those days, and they happened to be the 3 world title races that he won, you know. And he was saying in the interview that you know, he's raced hundreds of races, but he, he said he didn't reach the potential in a lot of those races because of the mistakes he was making. And, and I think, I think the biggest thing that I've known, uh, across the board of all the athletes that we've coached over the, uh, 3 decades that we've been doing it is that athletes don't train consistently well enough to actually race the way they want to. And then they get into a race undertrained, with consistency and try, uh, race like they are fully trained. And so they're racing to the wrong, to the wrong numbers and blow up spectacularly and then say, next time I'll do that better, but they continue to repeat that problem race after race. And you could have someone doing 20 or 30 races who still hasn't nailed a, a race or a training, uh, block into the race to actually find out where they are as an, as an Olympic distance, a sprinter, a half Ironman, or a, or a marathon runner, or an Ironman. You know, they just haven't nail the race properly. And there's so many factors that contribute to that.

It's such a great point, and I love that point from, from Jan Frodeno where he thinks he only raced to his true potential a few times in a goated career. It's so important for us to remember that, that we're probably never going to get it perfect. And even if you have a great race, you hit a PB, it's one of your best races of your, of your amateur career, there's still things that you could probably improve on and still things to, um, mistakes that you made. And so that's the important point here is that No race will be perfect, but we're trying to eliminate as many of the mistakes as possible so you can get as close to your true potential as possible. And right now in this episode, we're going to go through some of the major mistakes to stop doing and what we see and the patterns we see and what you can do about it instead. So the very first point is, uh, we just see from the very get-go of the start of a training program all the way through to race day, um, not enough or a complete lack of testing and measuring yourself. Now, the best way to know how to hit— if you can hit your full potential or not is to go to a lab test and find out your VO2 max and find out what you're capable of right now and, and find out, um, where your lactate threshold points are and then measure those against yourself through a full program all the way to race day so you can really see, you know, how close to your potential are you actually getting and can you move the ceiling of that potential. You don't have to do a lab test, that's just one way. We just do it from field tests, from FTP tests, from time trials, but We can't start programming an athlete until we start testing because we just, we wouldn't know what to give them. We would be guessing the first few weeks. I think you could go this hard or that hard. We'd spend the whole time trying to figure out where they're at. So we want to know where, what their potential looks like from the very start of the program and then keep testing that over and over through to race day.

Yeah, we just want to clarify that we know what basically sessions to give them, but we don't know where they sit in that session. Because we're just at best guessing. So we have to actually have a line in the sand where we're going to say, from this, from this week, this is where your current form is. And you can't reach your potential unless you find out where your current form is and train to that. And then once you've had 3 or 4 weeks or 6 weeks of training, then you should be revisiting the testing to see, am I the same athlete? And so all the time we're trying to move move the, the, the cones almost. Here's where you are right now, here's where your form is, and that's your— if you were to race in that week of testing, this is your, this is your potential on this, on this particular phase of your athletic career. It doesn't matter what sport you're talking about, you need to find out where you are currently, not what you could do, not, not what your, your best PB half marathon or, or 10K time is, or your best 40-minute FTP or 60-minute or 20-minute, they don't matter from 6 weeks ago. That's probably the limit. So anything 6 weeks previous is almost out of date. You need to find where your current form is now and train to that properly in the next block of training and then keep revisiting that every 4 to 6 weeks. And people say, "Oh, I just hate testing. I just don't see the point." And the point is, if you don't do that, you could end up like so many interviews that I've done where I'm asking athletes, you know, how much do you test? And they're so motivated to get on the program, they're saying, oh no, look, I really haven't done any testing. And, you know, I'm saying, well, how are you possibly expecting to improve if you don't know what your current form is to train to? And, you know, I've just used the same number and I've been using that for 8 months. And so when you dig deep, they're the same athlete they were 8 months ago. They're really fit at this current level, but they haven't been progressively overloaded because they don't know, you know, what they were, uh, 6 weeks ago. Now they don't know what they are now. Now they don't know what they're gonna be in 6 weeks' time. And, and it's, it sounds very complicated, but you, you need to strip it back. You need to find what your form is right now and then train to that form and then retest. And, and if you've done well with the consistency in your training program and you've got a reasonably, uh, accurate training program and you spend a lot of your time with attention to detail about what you're doing in each session, 'cause that's a big contributor. If you just get— if you're just going through the motions and you're not actually paying attention, for example, you know, we give you a range and if you're sitting at the bottom of the range all the time and it's okay and you're happy with that, but you're not actually— can you go harder in that session or not? Are you taking note of what's happening in that session? So you need to find out what's happened in that block of training before you can make an assessment of what you should be doing in the next test. So, so I think, I think the testing is, is so, so obvious, but people shy away from it because their fear of, of being measured. And I get that, that's, that, that has anxiety around it. But if you think your mindset around, I don't wanna waste any training sessions training at the wrong numbers. If I'm on a bike, I don't wanna waste any running sessions running too slow or too fast. I wanna, I wanna train accurately for what my progression needs. And the consequences of training too hard or too soft are you'll either overdo it or you won't improve. So I just think your mindset should be, I wanna test as often as possible so that if I've got improvement, I wanna train to those new numbers that are better. And that's exciting.

Yeah, definitely. I always laugh when, you know, I get this question often from a friend who's just kind of casually doing a half marathon or something, and they'll say, "Oh, you're a runner. What time should I go for?" I just go, "I got no idea. Start giving me some information. What kind of runs are you doing? Have you done a fast 5K?" "Oh, I just go for jogs." You know, you could be an hour 40 to 2 hours 20. That's the range. But when we've tested our own athletes and we have weeks of data to go off, we can basically say to them, we know you're going to run between 1:46 and 1:48 tomorrow, and that's the value of testing. We know that's your potential, and we're going to push, create a plan to go to that. And for someone not doing that, like the casual runner that I'm talking about, you just don't have enough data. So they could run a 2:10, but maybe they're capable of 1:45, but we didn't know what replacement to give them because we've got no data, we've got no measurement.

I just would for my own mindset, I'm going to put an effort into training. I'm going to go for a run today. I would rather know what the purpose and goal of my session is today based on my current form and, and the information that I know I should be, rather than I'm just going for a run. That's okay to do that. It's absolutely okay. But, but don't have the expectation that you will get the improvement. The consequences of you just going for a training session— I'm going to go for a ride today. And yeah, that will be really beneficial for your health and fitness. Going for a run, going for a ride, going for a swim, doing some strength and conditioning, they are all very— they were going to get some benefit. But if you actually just go one step further and making it with a goal and a purpose that's really accurate around your current form, for the same effort you just did for an hour, one person's just doing that day after day, just blindly going around doing sessions compared to the person who's got detail, attention to what they're doing in the sessions, you know, if you track them, one person's just tracking like this, the other person's just going through the roof just because they're doing it a different way. They're both going out training. Both athletes are doing a really good job of going out and training. One's got some specific training guidance. And the other one is just, you know, and we always say if that's— if you're happy doing that, that's not a problem. We're actually trying to appeal to the people who want improvement here. So the person who doesn't want improvement, that other way of training is absolutely fine. You'll maintain fitness, but you won't get the improvement overload that, you know, and when those people say to me, I just don't know what I don't know why I'm not improving. I'd say, oh, you are actually after improvement, are you? And they go, yeah, yeah, I want to train and I want to improve. I said, well, but your actions aren't showing that. You're just doing the same sessions day after day with no variation in intensity and no seemingly any structure.

So that leads us to the next point, which is the mistake we often see is not making every session count. So what we want to see is making every session count by spending the right amount of time in the right training zones. So that doesn't mean that every single session is as hard as you can. That's not what we mean by every— make every session count, go as hard as you can. Every session has a specific goal and purpose. And, um, the zone 2 days, you need to stay in zone 2. And the VO2 days, you need to spend the adequate time in, in VO2. And so the difference between getting to your potential or not— and your point about, you know, if you just don't want to improve, um, that's fine, but that's not what this episode is about. This episode is about how to find your true potential. So if you want to get the most out of yourself, you need to be hitting your VO2 sets, you know, twice per week and doing that amount of work, whether it's 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 25 minutes of work at VO2 in those weeks. And you can only do that if you're training accurately to test the data and numbers. And rather than just moseying about in a general endurance session, you know, really pushing yourself to practice staying in zone 2 and pedaling at 140 to 160 watts for the whole 2.5 hours and keeping that pressure on the pedals. That is making the session count, um, rather than just doing whatever session throughout the week. Athlete A, who has their, let's say, 7 sessions per week, one per day, um, they do it to— every single session has its goal and purpose, and you stick to the right training zones. Compared to Athlete B, who just trains every day, both are putting in the same amount of time, both should improve. If you train every day consistently, you should still improve. Athlete B should improve, but they won't improve to the, to the capacity of their full potential like Athlete A will, who's training to the right percentages of their, of their tested numbers and their, their current fitness form and potential.

I couldn't agree more, and the example I want to use is, you know, Athlete B, who's training every day. You could do bunch rides 7 days a week, and that, that is going to really stress you and, and give you the overload that you need, and you will improve. You will be very good at riding bunch rides. You'll be the master, actually, of riding bunch rides. But there will be a point where doing that 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, you will just get to a point where you don't improve anymore. You, you've got to give yourself different stimulus to get improvement. So if you did VO2 sets, they're a great training session. But if you did them 5 out of the 7 sessions, at one point you're going to find that you're so exhausted you can't actually do those sessions properly. So doing one session the whole time sounds obvious, but most, most people who aren't really on a structured program aren't gonna reach their potential because they're just doing the same thing 7 days a week. So, you know, they've got no overload variation in any of the sessions. And even if, even if they did, it's, it's actually counterproductive because you need to, you need to have the idea that the numbers that you're trying to do are what you're, you're basing your session around. So, so if you're just randomly riding group rides where that might be a hard ride one day, it might be less of a hard ride the next day, or it might be 4 really hard rides in a row, that's great for a period, but it's going to backfire down the track. So you're not gonna be able to reach your potential by doing the same thing all the time. So, so, you know, understanding what the goal of the session is, consistently doing it, but making sure that you just don't do the same thing. All the time. You need to have a different stimulus. The body will adapt very quickly to the same stimulus that we give it. And pretty soon, your body will cope with— if your VO2 sets are around 300 watts, if you do 4 or 5 weeks of that, you will start to be really good at 300 watts. And if you don't actually bump that up to 320 over the next block, then you're going to stay the same. So the body will adapt very quickly to 300 watts. And find that it becomes easy after 3 or 4 weeks. So that's what we're trying to talk about here is what can you do differently to get to your potential. If you just continue to do the same thing over and over, you're potentially going to stay the same athlete.

[Speaker:GERARD DONNELLY] Yeah, it's the fastest way to lead to a plateau. The next one is a lack of consistency in your structure. Now before you roll your eyes and say that, oh, here we go, consistency again, we just started off there that you just— we just can't do an episode without mentioning it, but we want to talk about it in a slightly different way to, to provide a fresh perspective on it, to remind you why consistency is one of the most important factors to being able to reach your true potential. And, and one example that we see in our own data a lot is, for various reasons, you know, athletes don't have a full 52 weeks of consistent structure in the year. You know, we coach athletes who are forced to sometimes due to life circumstances or work or travel to go off the program. And we always implore our athletes, you know, we know that when you've got the training program in front of you, you tend to do it a lot better, you adhere to it. There's just that natural human behavior that just leads itself to better performing with accountability. But athletes will go off the program, maybe because they're forced to, and we say, please keep training consistently. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I will, I will. And our data just shows over and over again, you know, there's 7 sessions to do per week, and when they're on the program, they're doing 7. And then week 1 off the program, they'll do 5 or 6. Week 2, they'll do 4 or 5. Week 3, they'll do 3 or 4. And then they start doing 1, 2, or 3 sessions a week after that. And, and that creates that detraining effect we're talking about. Um, and that's just the data we see all the time, where without that, that program in front of you, we just see that consistency fall off. Now, what the problem with that is, you know, Athlete A, again in this example, they've got 7 sessions a week for 8 weeks, you know, there's, there's, um, 56 sessions there they're doing over an 8-week period, um, where they're getting value out of 56 worth of sessions. You know, the athlete who kind of teeters off and ends up doing 1, 2, or 3 per week ends up with, out of the 56 days, 25 sessions, you know, and they've done half the training. And so not only are they detraining, but they're, they're losing that ability to maintain fitness as well. And this is the biggest killer we see to consistency. It seems obvious when you lay out the numbers like that, you know, train more consistently and you'll be better. But that's how to reach your potential, by even when things are going a little bit off or wrong or life gets hard, your biggest goal should just be, I don't have to train the house down, I don't have to keep up my potentially my 2 VO2 sessions per week or my big 4-hour bunch rides, you know, but it's getting consistent quality in, even if it's really short stuff, daily to keep up that consistency and not lose that.

I think the first thing that we want to remind everybody is it is always harder to come back from time off. So if the time off is forced on you due to a health issue, you don't have any say in that. You have to take the time off if that's what you've been medically advised to do. And so we're not talking about those athletes, we're talking about those athletes who have a choice whether to take time off or not. And so the minute you take that choice of of I'm either too busy or I don't feel like it at the moment. So that would be two big things. I can't fit the training in, so work's more important, and that's absolutely fine. But my advice to those people is 20 minutes is probably the minimum time that you would need to get— we're not trying to improve, we're just trying to maintain. We're just trying to maintain our fitness. So do 20 minutes of something You know, when, when you feel like, oh, the session says I have to do an hour 12 and it's high intensity, that session is for you to reach your potential. We're now talking about the session to hold your fitness. And of course, if you can maintain your fitness at 6 or 7 out of 10 for long periods of time rather than doing nothing and letting it drop to 5 or 4, then you'll stop yourself from having to fight your way back to the 6 or 7 it could take 3 months, could take 12 weeks of you taking time off and then getting back to there. And if you had stayed doing those 20-minute or 30-minute efforts with no improvement, your level stays at 6, you've got a higher launching pad to go to the next level. And that's a key thing that people should really think about when they think about consistency. It's not consistent— the ideal scenario is you train the house down consistently doing exactly what the program asks.

For 52 weeks of the year, you know, but we just know that's not going to happen.

It doesn't happen for anybody. Look, if you wanna jump into my world, I've had 3 years where I've had some medical issue, 3 years in a row, and I've started at 280 watts and I've gone all the way back to 170, and then I've worked my way back up to 250, 260, and I've had another health issue, and I've gone back to 110 where I wasn't able to train for, in the first period, for 10 weeks, no training. The second period was for 8, and now I've just gone through a period where it's, it's going to be 4 weeks. So, so we've, we've got the— we've got this scenario where I am super motivated. I don't want to lose my fitness, but I'm forced to because of a health reason. So, so I can see my fitness just detraining massively. But, but my mindset is, please, I'm pleading with everybody out there, if you don't have a choice, fair enough. Like I don't. But if you do have a choice, take the, take the obvious step of just maintaining. And believe me, when you, when you detrain so badly, it is really mentally soul-destroying to have to come back to start your program again. Instead of, you know, sitting around 260, 270, 280 watts, you're sitting around 160, 170, 180. And it takes literally 7, 8, 9, 10 weeks before you get back to 220, then 230. And, and that is it's not an enjoyable experience. So I'm really pleading with people who've got a choice, you know, just search for maintaining sessions. And if you can keep doing that, that's what consistency is probably more about than what people think consistency is about.

Yeah, we're trying to explain how to get the most out of yourself knowing that inevitably you're going to get interrupted with training. We spoke to Dr. Stephen Sala about this, the founder of 80/20 Training. You know, an ideal program in triathlon with a full week, you're training 8 to 12 or 13 hours for the week, you know, big training sessions, full warm-up, cool-down, full main sets. But if you're going through a period where you can't possibly achieve that, he's saying forget 80/20, you know, we were laughing with him saying, you know, maybe you can only train 3 times a week, you've got 4 hours of training for the week. He's saying I would do 2 max intensity sessions and then 1 endurance ride for 2 hours, you know. We speak about just do 2 Zwift races for the week, you know, just all out for 30 or 40 minutes and then and then endurance ride. And look, that's not going to get you into 70.3 or Ironman shape for sure. You're not going to be able to turn up to a race and do well, but like you're saying with this fitness score, your general fitness and VO2 max level will still maintain around that 6, and that provides a launching pad for when you do step back into a full training load. You're not coming from that 4, and therefore you're— it's making it easier for you to get the most out of yourself.

I just find a couple of other examples of athletes who have not missed sessions with us. I think I've got one particular athlete, I reckon it's been nearly 7 or 8 years where they've just not had any downtime and they've progressed themselves. They were probably— they're in potential, I'm talking potential here, 4 out of 10. So 10's the top. So they've worked their way up to— they're almost at 8 out of 10 just by, just by not, not detraining. Um, and they haven't done anything spectacular. They've trained really, really well, um, and they've been so disciplined. Um, and that athlete's not on their own. There's a lot of others who are at their 3rd or 4th year where— and the correlation between improvement and, and results and satisfaction about your performance, and you feel like you're getting close to your potential, and, and that consistency over a long period of time that, as we talk about, that fitness in the bank, money in the bank. Fitness is money in your fitness bank. You know, continuous training, that's gonna give you more potential to get to your actual best potential race level than training really hard for periods and then having downtime. And that on-off training is nowhere near as good as just staying steady.

We've spoken about the training aspects, but now we wanna move to the racing aspect, you know, how to actually— if you've got all the training right, you wanna turn up to race day and get the most out of yourself on race day. And so this next one is a big pet peeve of yours, so I want you to explain it, but it's turning up with an inaccurate race plan, which is just setting yourself up for failure.

I think it almost stems back to when you first start a program with us where we want to find where your form is, and that's our theme. We want to know where your form is at any given time throughout your career when you're under the TriVelo system. So we're always trying to be inquisitive about What's your current form now compared to what it was 6 months ago or 6 weeks ago? So, so therefore, when you come to race day, you may not be in the, the best potential of your whole career, but we'll certainly accurately know where your current form is so that we can give you the race plan that'll allow you have to have a really enjoyable day. And I think, I think getting that race plan wrong is stemmed around what I want to do and what I'm actually capable of doing. And, you know, getting your ability and your ambition confused. I say that a lot in the podcast. And I, I was a, an example of that myself. Oh, this is what I really wanna achieve, but I'm not in that form. So why would I try to have a race plan that's actually gonna blow me up? Because the goal that I've set is out of my current form's reach. And so a lot of people actually take, take the other, uh, tack. They don't wanna race. Until they're in their best ever form. Well, I would say to those people, you're probably not going to race too often. If you take Jan Frodeno, for example, he would have only done 3 races. So you have to go into other races where you're not at your best potential, but you, if you're really clever, you can understand what your race form is, your, your training form, your current form, and set the, set the strategy to have a fun day. And, you know, you, at the end of the day, you know, well, I know I can do better than that, but that's the best I could do. On this particular day. And the only thing that's gonna happen if you have an inaccurate race plan is because you've got those two things confused, what your current form is and what you wanna do. And therefore, you, you race too aggressively and you don't get near. You actually perform worse than had you had a more conservative, race plan. You will blow up and it'll be a really big disappointment. And, and, you know, that's quite depressing when that happens continuously.

'Cause what's the options here? You have a race plan that's too aggressive and you blow up, and we see it so often in half Ironmans and Ironmans where the run just becomes a walk and it just becomes a survival state where you're either in zombie mode or you're just literally getting through. And you can be proud of yourself for getting through for sure, and it's a bit of a battle, but it's nowhere near as fun as having an accurate plan and being able to run home the whole way through at a pace that you set out that's actually achievable for you. And the other side of it is actually you can be too conservative. And we had a— this is very minimal amount of people, but it does happen actually. And we had a great story from the Sydney Marathon last weekend where an athlete of ours, Andrew, he joined the program very late for a marathon. And so we had very limited data on what he could do. And unfortunately, he was quite sick in the final weeks leading up, which really limits your data as to what they're capable of, not only because you don't have fresh form kind of testing, but you don't know how the sickness is going to impact someone on race day. You know, some people bounce back pretty well and can race well, and some people get halfway through the race and just go, I don't quite have it. But anyway, with limited data, we, we really did predict he was around a 3:33 to 3:38 runner, um, and he finished bang on in 3:36. But what was really interesting about that experience was, hey, it was awesome to know that we can predict that right to the tee, basically. Um, but B, essentially, he's, he said that he He listened to us too well and was really quite conservative at the start, which is just awesome for a marathon. That's what you need to do because most people don't listen. But he did realize about 10 or 15 kilometers in he was probably fractionally too conservative and he should have been running 5:05 pace, and he was kind of holding 5:10 to 5:15s. He's going, geez, if I don't pick this up, I'm not going to run my goal time here. And that's a really important point, is that we don't want athletes to go conservative just to fly home at the end, but you'll lose— you can lose 4 or 5 minutes the other way, you know, by being too conservative. So it does work both ways where he had to We want you to get to your marathon pace quickly, you know. Go easy the first few kilometers, but get to your marathon pace and then hold that for the next 35K.

I think there's a lot of confusion around the negative split in marathon running as an example. You know, the goal, if you can really understand this, the goal is to find the pace that you can hold the whole way.

Yes.

And if you can have a 10-second negative split or even split or 10-second loss the other way, you know, that's really what you're trying to do. You're trying to be on the tipping point without tipping over. And if you take it too conservative, and there's very few people who come up to me at the end of an Ironman or a marathon and say, you know what? I just took it too easy. And hardly anybody can say that, you know, even though they did come home strong. But the goal is to try to, you know, if you were coaching Wout van Aert, you wouldn't say to him, you know, your potential is 400 watts for 20 minutes, but I want you to start at 350 and finish at 450. He would just look at you like, what are you talking about? I'm gonna ride 400 watts for the whole of this ride and possibly ride 405 in the last 2 minutes. That's the mindset that the average age grouper should have. Find where you're able to hold. Don't go over it. Don't go under it, but try and be as close to that tipping point as you can. And sure, when you're not sure about your form, then you should be a little bit more conservative, and I push that on everybody. If you're unsure, be more conservative, and you'll have a, a great day. That, that, that is a better outcome than going the other way. And, and so the, the negative split phenomenon that, that people talk about, and a lot of people don't really understand, is that you're not trying to come home— if we use power, a lot of the guys when we do a 20-minute effort, they, they think they can go up in 5-watt increments for every 5 minutes. And, and for you and I, we just go, well, well, that's okay for your first go at it, but But we don't, we don't expect you to be 20 watts higher from the first 5 minutes to the last 5 minutes. We'd like you to find your tipping point at maybe the 6 or 7-minute mark and seeing how well you can hang on to that, that number. And if you only go up 2 or 3 watts, at least you know that you've found that number and you've given yourself the most opportunity to reach that potential that we're talking about in this podcast, potential in training session, potential in your race result. And if you get that race plan right, you give yourself the best chance of reaching what you should be able to potentially do on that day, given your current form.

Such an interesting point because, yeah, we do a lot of FTP testing and you do spend the first few really trying to find where your potential is. And athletes often, when they have a 20 or 30-watt gap between where they start the FTP test and the end, we keep saying, geez, you're really not even ceiling yet. We, we need you to be more aggressive next time and, and start at or just above where you were because the gap's so big. And eventually you'll find that tipping point, which is the most important part. So the next one is, is on race day, there are actually quite specific but big mistakes to avoid. So despite all the training, despite your fitness, despite, um, your race plan, you know, you just want to make sure you don't do any of these to put yourself into that survival state and and there's some big ones we want to go through, and the first one is the most obvious, but nutrition.

How often does someone do all the work, but something went disastrously wrong, and we look at the nutrition after, and you say, "Oh, you were completely underfueled." Yeah, there's so many examples, Jordan, and it's so disappointing for the athletes who've really trained well and really been serious about their preparation and done pretty much everything that we've asked, and, and the only thing that they really didn't pay enough attention to was how their stomach was gonna deal with, the nutrition that they were gonna feed it. And, and when you dig deep, some athletes think they've got it right, but they actually haven't really put the nutrition into their bodies on the days where they're doing those race-specific sessions at the intensity they're going to race at for an Ironman or for a marathon. If you haven't practiced that at the intensity you're expecting to do on race day, and how, how do you do that in a marathon preparation? You know, do you go out and run a marathon and test your nutrition? No. You do a lot of sessions where you're doing some easy runs where it might be, you know, 2 or 3-hour run. And, you know, at, at the back end of that, you're trying to run marathon race pace and, and then consume some nutrition to see how it fits, with your, with your stomach and how, how you can cope with what you're putting in.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you should be experimenting week in, week out in your endurance days to, to know that my body can cope with this amount and then try to put more in, see what happens, try to put less in, see what happens. You've got literally, if you give yourself a proper 30-week program for a marathon, you've got literally 28 practice days, 28 single long endurance days to practice that. And so getting that wrong I don't think there's a really good reason for that to happen. It's just that you haven't really understood it properly. And there is no, this is the exact formula for you, Jordan, that you should be having, that the whole world should be following. No. Your nutrition formula is specific to you and your requirements. And so to try and put your formula onto me, that could be catastrophic or it could be actually okay. But no two people are the same. So there is not one rule that says you should have 60 grams of carb per hour. You know, it's just like your average heart rate, 72 for the world. Well, there's a small percentage of people who have actually got a heart rate of 72, but the rest have got 90 or 60. So, so what the nutrition that suits you, um, is really determined by the temperature of the day, the intensity you're doing, the duration of the session, um, and, and, you know, those things actually determine how quickly the fuel's being used or consumed. And, and you've gotta be experimenting with all of that. So if you get that wrong, you're— I don't know how many times— I interviewed someone the other day and they just did the Wisconsin Half— the Wisconsin Ironman, and they trained really well, and they just got stomach upset halfway through the bike and couldn't ride to their potential, couldn't run at all. They, they were hoping for a 4-hour run, they ended up doing 5 hours 30 walking, just because the nutrition was so bad that they couldn't actually exercise. And, and you know, when you dig into the, the story of what they were consuming, it wasn't practiced well enough, even though they had thought they had. But that's an example of how you will not get your potential outcome if you don't get this right.

It's okay to make those mistakes because we all have to. That's how we learn. But you just want to make those mistakes in training so that you can get the most out of yourself on race day. That's what we're trying to avoid. And so you almost want to risk it a little bit sometimes in training and have a day where you go, oh, I overdid it there, but that's, that's where I know I found my limit of of grams of carb per hour rather than, you know, trying to test it on actual race day. The other main factors all under the same umbrella are equipment failures. You know, you might wear a suit for the first time and it gives you such bad chafe that you can't run, you know, or new shoes that you're getting complete blisters in and it derails your run performance. Something about the bike that you're not used to and you seize up in the position because you've changed position at the last minute. Some sort of equipment failure, cramping, dehydration, you know, not getting your fluid intake right. It's the same as nutrition. Some other main ones are getting the actual course on the day or the conditions wrong, and that's, that's one that gets so many athletes unstuck. Underestimating the potential course, whether it's elevation, you know, a high amount of elevation for the bike leg or the run leg, what type of swim it is, you know, if it's an open water swim and you've only ever swum in a lake, that can really derail someone in a half Ironman or Ironman because it's a terrible experience when you're swallowing water because you're not used to to wave conditions, and then the actual temperatures, the heat, the wind, that can just pull you back from getting the most out of yourself because you're performing completely differently to what you used to.

Yeah, and look, that comes back to your race plan as well, Gerard. We can link that— the course description should be part of your race strategy. So for example, we've got coming up the Nice World Championships. That is one of the most brutal bike courses in world triathlon. I absolutely love it. It's fantastic. But, but if you don't allow for the fact that you've got 2,000 meters of climbing or 6,000 feet and you expect to do, you know, the example I would give you, uh, the flattest course that I know in Australia is the Busselton, uh, Ironman. I think there's about 10 meters of elevation on the whole course. Um, so if you go to, to, to Nice from doing that race and expect to do the same bike time, you've got the wrong race plan. You have to allow for the fact that you're gonna be way slower. You could potentially be, as a mid-pack age grouper, 30 minutes slower for the same distance just because the course is different. So, so that's not going to allow you to reach your potential if you've got the wrong finishing time.

Yeah.

You know, if you're trying to do 6 hours and you actually can only do 6:30 because the course is so tough, if you haven't, um, allowed for that in your strategy, then you're, you're gonna feel very disappointed again. And but, but it's the wrong, it's the wrong information. And if you go to Kona expecting to run in that temperature, like you can in a, in a, a marathon in an Ironman where the temperature is literally 15 degrees cooler, no humidity, if you don't adjust your run pace, you're gonna be extremely disappointed as well. So, so the course conditions not only temperature but the elevation are huge factors in people screwing up their race plan to not reach their potential.

Yeah, it's— you cannot underestimate how often we think this gets overlooked, getting the actual course requirements wrong or not understanding, you know, how tough the specific course requirements might be and then getting the conditions wrong on the day. And we're just saying all this because we do want to avoid that sufferfest which a triathlon can turn into so easily and avoid that zombie walk. you know, and instead be able to finish the race knowing, geez, I really couldn't have given myself much more of a chance there. That was awesome. And the last point you wanted to mention was a bit more about mindset in terms of getting the most out of yourself, and it's under this banner of discipline and making sure you have enough discipline to not overdo it or underdo it.

I love the example of the marathon, and you're going to experience this, and you have with a half marathon, and people around you at the start line forcing you to feel like you are running the wrong pace because you are running slower than everybody around you, but you're the only one doing it, and you're looking around you and there's 2,000 others flying past you. And, and that takes a lot of discipline to say, no, I'm not gonna be sucked in to running other people's paces as a— that's an example as a marathon. And, and so if you don't have that discipline and aren't really kinda in a bubble, then you will blow your race up just because you've followed people for 3 or 4K at a pace that's unsustainable. And so that will cause you to not have the race you want. And that's what we're talking about. What are the things that are gonna derail you from reaching your potential? And this lack of discipline is a key thing. You've got your race strategy, if you've done that right, you've, you've got your form and your ability totally, totally in tune, but you actually don't execute it. You, you go with, with the mob. You follow the mob's pace. And as a, as an Ironman, for an example, you jump on the bike and guys are whizzing past you and you just forget about your power numbers and you start chasing people down. As an age grouper, that's not what we want you to do. As a pro, maybe you've got reason to do that when you wanna go with the pack. But, but you can blow yourself up by riding someone else's race just because it felt like it was good at the time. That takes discipline. And then when you get off and try and run in a, in an Ironman, I feel great. And the amount of times people have said to me, I say, "Why did you run that pace?" "Oh, Gerard, I felt great." And I just don't want to hear that sentence. I don't want to hear— I want to hear, "I felt great at the end. That's why I ran so well and so strong at the end." And instead, "I felt great and now I'm walking." Well, I didn't— I don't— you know, do you feel great now walking? And that lack of discipline is going to cause you to have no chance of reaching your potential goal that you thought you could do. And you've really, if you think about it, you've wasted all of that money on your travel, your entry, all that discipline that you've done in your training sessions, your preparation, uh, you know, the early mornings, and all for what? For lack of discipline when it counts on race day? No, I can't, I can't wear that. I, I think people have to be really, uh, you know, just take the last step, race day discipline. And, you know, we just had, uh, one of our coaches finish their first Ironman, and I want to, I want to use this as an example. I tried my best to, to get her to, to think about this race as you're trying to finish this race. We're not worried about the time, but want you to enjoy it and run the way you want to. She was so worried about her running some of the previous Half Ironman races where the temperature's been absolutely horrible, and she's, you know, she's run between 1:50 and 2:05 for a half marathon in a triathlon. So her goal marathon pace was 4:10 to 4:30. That's where we're trying to run her range. And so she's come out super disciplined, followed the structure the whole way through the race, really taken note, and ended up running a 4-hour marathon, which is literally somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes better than she could have. And that, that's the result you get for reaching your potential, because you actually stuck to the task of being disciplined. And, and what a what, you know, what an experience it is for her to, to feel that, you know, not be walking like a zombie for the last 20K when you've overdone it, and not finishing, you know, 30 minutes possibly slower than you, you could have if you hadn't have been disciplined with the pace that you're— that you've selected. And that's a big shout out to that athlete for, for doing that. And as a coach, you would expect that to happen, but we all make mistakes. I mean, I've done that many times got, got it wrong and, um, and really faded. So I think that lack of discipline, I don't think it's— I think it's very underestimated.

Yeah, we're so proud of Abby and her performance. And, and as a coach, there's sometimes that pressure on you to, you know, um, you know, to, to— you tell your athletes to do one thing and you've got to walk the walk yourself, you know. And it's, and it's not about ability and It's about execution, and we say that to our athletes. It's the same message to our coaches. And as coaches, we can feel a little bit of pressure to say, well, geez, I tell my athletes to do this, I better follow the same principles. But if you do that, it'll hold you in really good stead. And Abby's coaching is second to none. She knows the TriVelo method inside out, which is why we love her. But it was her challenge to herself to go, okay, you know, the first Ironman here, can I do what I say and show my athletes that I can execute this way? There's a bit of pressure there, and she absolutely did and had the best performance because of it. Um, which is— yeah, big shout out to her. We absolutely love having her on the team.

Yeah, and look, at the end of the day, um, that's the thing we're trying to— we're trying to— we're trying to get this message in this podcast for people to, to reach their potential. And, and if you, if you can take all the key points here, uh, you give yourself the best opportunity, and, and therefore the sport becomes so much fun. I don't— whether you're a marathon runner or whether you're a cyclist a Gran Fondo rider, an Ironman, a Half Ironman, it doesn't matter what sport you're doing, if you actually listen to some of these points, you will get more out of yourself than potentially you could have if you didn't hear these things.

And by the way, if you want help finding your own true potential and training to it and racing to it, we help age group athletes exactly like you find their potential and race to the best of their ability. Now some common questions we get are: Do you coach internationally? Yes, we absolutely coach athletes from every corner of the world. We are all around the world across Australia, Asia, Oceania, Europe, America, South America. So we can help athletes from any time zone. That is not a problem. And the other thing we say is that if you do sign up, some people ask, you know, do you just do, you know, advanced athletes? Absolutely not. You know, we help absolute beginners of triathlon wanting to do their first triathlon, whether it's a sprint Olympic, half Ironman, or Ironman, all the way to pro level. So we can help anyone of your ability, and we guarantee that it Anyone that comes in, if we don't help you improve in the first 8 weeks, then the coaching is on us. That is absolutely our guarantee to show you we can help you improve. And then the other question we get from that is, oh, well, is the training ridiculous? You know, is it even achievable to have that guarantee? Yes, it's very achievable. You can ask all our hundreds of other athletes that have gone through the TriVelo system. The training is achievable. We work with you very closely to make it achievable to your life. So if you want help with coaching, go to trivelo-coaching.com.au and apply. There. Now, one question we have been getting a little bit, which we wanted to talk about to finish this episode off, is what races are we aiming for? And people have expressed interest in our races and just how we're applying our own coaching to ourselves. So we thought this would be a good chance to go through my A race right now. Unfortunately, you've had some health issues which has stopped you from having some race goals for the last 3 years, but specifically right now. But the comment we got last time was, what am I training for? And so we just want to touch on— I want to get your perspectives from the coach as how you think the training going. We're 5 weeks out from my A race from the year, which is Melbourne Marathon, um, and I wanted to get your thoughts on where we're at and what we need to do to finish off live on the podcast. So I will start off by saying, uh, you know, we talk a lot about practicing what you preach, and we say for marathons, Ironman, those ultra endurance events, you need to give yourself a lot of time. And we started this prep in November last year, so it was kind of 11 months of planning to get to here, uh, because we knew it would be the biggest volume of running I've ever done to try and work our way towards, you know, 100-kilometer and plus training weeks. And so I am very glad that we, we made that decision and did that. We knew it was the best thing, and it's meant that despite interruptions, being able to get to this point 5 weeks out relatively safely, mostly injury-free, a few interruptions of other things, um, but in a good position and not rushing to the end.

Yeah, I think that's one of the key things, uh, that we tried to say in this podcast actually, um, and you've you've emulated that by declaring that you wanted to do this marathon way back. And the earlier you started, the less the interruptions affect the program. If you start kind of 16 weeks out, if you have some of the interruptions you've had have been 4 or 5 days where you can't run due to, you know, flu, bronchial infection, some slight injuries, you know, all these things have a huge massive effect when you're only doing a 16-week program. But when you do something for 50 weeks, they're inconsequential because of the massive base that you've got. So yes, it's frustrating. And as we said in the podcast, no one has the perfect program. It's impossible. Everybody has ups and downs. It's how you manage those and come back and not— one of the things you do very well is you listen to the advice. You know, you're super motivated. I've got to get back into that hard session. And I'll say, no. You can't. You've gotta let your body actually recover properly before we can get to that hard session. You'll be fine. And, you know, even you're worried about, you know, missing training sessions that are key, but that's where you've got the advice and we can talk it out saying, well, you know, is it really that important that you do this session tomorrow? Give yourself another couple of days, and sure enough, you can actually perform that session better. And so they're the things that I've loved, and you've been like that ever since you were 7 years old. And, you know, we've been coaching as a father-son like this your whole career. So you know all the answers you're going to get, but somehow you still want to find another way to, to, to get— you know, a motivated athlete is a really hard athlete to coach because they'll do anything to keep the training going, um, which is, you know, which is a good lesson for everybody listening, is, you know, um, yes, you should be motivated to, to not miss any sessions, but it's okay, you know, be a little bit kinder to yourself and And if you've done the work for over a long period of time, a missed session here or there is not the end of the world, and a poor session here or there is not the end of the world. You haven't had too many of those, but when you have, it's been good to talk it out because, you know, you just did a 32K 2 weeks ago and, you know, that was a good example. It actually poured down rain. The course you selected had soft surfaces which turned to slush. And you were still able to manage the pace that we wanted you to do in preparation for your marathon. We tried to do marathon pace, that day, but you were running on surfaces that weren't able allowing you to actually run easily, but you still managed to get the session done, which is absolutely fantastic, but it didn't help your confidence that much because you felt like, oh, boy, that was really hard to run that pace. But, but by talking it through, you know, yeah, but look at what you were running on. You're running on slush. With with no pushback. From the minute you were on some bitumen, you said straight away, oh, far out, what a difference when I was running on the bitumen compared to the muddy sections. Which the muddy sections took up about 20k of the run. So, so, you know, those, those little stepping stones, they're really good. You're doing a good job of that. You're not getting ahead of yourself. You're running to your, to your potential at the moment. Hopefully in the next 5 weeks, that, that can be where, where it needs to be. We're not trying to improve in the next 5 weeks. In fact, we're trying to stay healthy and, and just trying to maintain the level you've got now. And so, yeah, as a summary for those listening, I think you've done a great job to get to this point. There's been lots of ups and downs along the way. You know, we'll go into this race with really accurate expectations of your pace, and, and that's going to be super confidence-building for you because you know from the training we've done that you can do this pace. And on the day you know, you've got the potential to do whatever you like and make decisions yourself around how the course is set up with the wind. And, and you know the course very well. You've grown up in Melbourne, uh, you've run around the Tam, which is the hillier section, um, uh, at the end of the Melbourne Marathon, which everybody knows is the hardest part, um, and you've run that course 5,000 times. So, um, so you've got a really good concept of, uh, where your form is and how you're going to execute. So I think, yeah, for those listening, it's, it's a great example of someone really dedicated to a goal. And, uh, yeah, everything's going well so far.

It's a good summary. I think I like that point that everyone needs a coach, even the coaches need a coach, and it's just so beneficial to have someone to bounce those ideas off. And, and yeah, I think the key lesson for me in that was, um, you know, it was so beneficial to be able to a couple weeks ago do a 32K, you know, still 7 weeks out from the race, uh, and Despite everything we know about— we spoke about the course I was going to do it on beforehand because we know how important that is. That's a big lesson to our athletes is pick a good course so the session's not ruined. And it was just unfortunate that it was— woke up in the morning and it had predicted less than 50% rain and it was thunderstorm rain. And what is normally a nice, tanned, firm kind of surface was just, yeah, slush. And unfortunately those factors get taken out of your control. The session was supposed to be a couple of days before that But the 2 days before that was almost hurricane winds. It was 40+ km/h winds. I still even considered going to the course where I was going. I got there and they shut the road because the trees were falling down. So, you know, there's always these little interruptions to finding the right course. But my point here is that you'll be able to do that 7 weeks out and get that confidence booster. Even though since then I've been a little bit sick and that's a little bit of an interruption. You know, you're not rushing this last 5 weeks, not trying to, you know, fight to get— gain massive fitness back. So that's kind of where we're at. And, um, yeah, I just love your point about letting go of the expectation that every week has to be perfect. That's a big— been a big lesson for me. You know, I really worked hard to build up my weekly volume, and I've had to have a few weeks where I had to cut that right back. And in my head, I was thinking, no, I wanted to get this base volume and hold it there. And obviously you have your deload weeks, um, but just having that reminder from you saying, you know, just it's better not to do it, and 'You know you can do that volume, but doing it this week, the risk is too high.' That was just a really good reminder. We'll keep updating over the next month leading into the race about the race goals and the race plan and what we're doing. Any last points from you in these last 5 weeks, what the priority is?

Definitely just trying to not cram, cramming like a student going to an exam. You've got this big exam sitting at the end of your year. People know that they should be doing the work building up to it over a long period of time, but inevitably as humans, we just do it at the last minute. And that's what you should, you know, as an athlete, if you've done the work previously, that's the thing I would, you know, say to our athletes as you're getting closer to the event. Don't try and, you know, do things that are a little out of the ordinary. Stay disciplined with, with the program and trust the process, and don't try and catch up. That's, that's areas where you're going to— you're already you know, your immune system's already right at its maximum because you're working and training really hard. And so, you know, sleep and nutrition and hydration are really key things that you should be thinking about in this next 5-week period and not trying to do those hero sessions. Just stay disciplined.

That's it for this episode. We wanted to finish with our normal segment, which is our gratitude, and we encourage all athletes out there to take a moment now with us to reflect on what you're grateful for this week. It's a really important part of the athlete's mental health, and we find it a great way to finish the episode and have a think about your week. So Dad, what are you grateful for this week?

Yeah, look, our eldest granddaughter. We've got 4 grandchildren now, which is absolutely fantastic. I absolutely love spending time with them. Eden, the very first granddaughter, she's now 5. 5 years ago was our first grandchild born. And for those who know that journey, Eden was born deaf and That's not something that we tell a lot of people, but I want to— the reason I'm saying it is for gratitude. Eden has no concept that she's got a handicap. She is the best little kid. She's full of life, loves— doesn't even think that her wearing cochlear implants is a handicap. It's just what she's used to. And I think that's a— for me, it's a great lesson of being grateful for what you've got. And she's just having a ball as a little 5-year-old, and she's into everything. She's, you know, learned to ride a bike now with no training wheels and all those things that the kids do as they grow up. And I'm just so grateful that, you know, that she's actually got to this stage where it hasn't really impeded— this disability hasn't impeded her potential almost as a young girl. And it's great to see her just full of life and full of beans. And she's a great sister to her, to her brother, um, great, uh, example. And yeah, I'm really grateful for the fact that she's able to lead a really normal life due to the, the modern medicine that we have, uh, in the world today. So that's my gratitude.

I love that one. A big happy birthday to Eden, who we love very much. My gratitude is just to flow on from the marathon training, but I'm really just grateful to, to not be injured, which kind of sounds weird to be grateful for something you're not. But we always say to athletes, be grateful for your consistent periods because they're always there. And, and while I've had some interruptions this year and been quite sick and been right on the limit sometimes, um, I was really worried about this prep, getting injured, and just with the increase in volume. And that was a concern of mine all year. And to get to this point and, touch wood, be injury-free right now, um, it's very relieving. So I'm very grateful for that.

I've got to say, Gerard, um, the reason you're not injured is because you pay so much attention to your functional strength. And so that has gone a long way to preventing you from being injured. And of course, the program, we don't, you know, we don't put you under pressure to create the injuries, but you do a lot of, of work not running with your functional strength movement patterns. And I think that's a great example for those to hear, to hear that's a really big reason why you actually haven't been injured.

And yeah, the last point is we, we had a pretty honest discussion, yeah, back in November, December. And, you know, we don't think you have to run 80, 100-kilometer weeks plus to, to do well in the marathon. And especially for a lot of our triathletes, we don't get them running nearly that volume. But we just decided, you and I, this is kind of a good chance to, to try and go for that because we could fit it in. It's not, it's not the only way, it's just one way. But that is a big amount of volume, so we knew that would put pressure on. And so we decided, okay, everything else has to be a priority. Not getting injured has to be priority if we're going to try and go that big. So glad it's all worked out for now. So that's it for this episode. Thank you very much as always for listening, and we hope you enjoyed it and got a lot of value out of it. As always, we'll see you on the next one.

Cheers!