Why Triathletes Run Out of Time Training For a 70.3 Ironman

Today's case study is the journey of Ryan, who is currently six months into his about 10 month journey to get to his first 70.3 half Ironman. But he signed up with us having never done a triathlon, a complete beginner and very enthusiastic new triathlete ready to take on the sport. And Ryan is 38 years old from Houston, Texas, and he was extremely motivated to sign up and get to the goal of his first 70.3 in Oregon, July this year. And he came in with some general, general running experience, no swimming experience and not much riding. He did the first step, the best step that we love, where he heard our message that we said, don't just start a program at the last minute, especially if you're a beginner. In his own words, he heard the message loud and clear that you can't expedite fitness, you can't rush it. So he decided last October just to get going with us. And that was the best thing for him. A big green tick for us for starting that early and giving himself the most amount of time to help him truly be ready for his first 70.3.

It's a great story again and I know we, we focus on a lot of beginners, but this is an actual real novice. And the irony of this whole story is that because of this podcast where we, we try our best to help every athlete around the world to be a better version of themselves, he heard that message and he wanted to sign up for his first triathlon and he joined us because of this podcast and now he's the star of this podcast in this episode. I love that.

Yeah. And I think one of the key things I liked about his application was that he wrote that he doesn't want to just complet the race and scrape through it. He wants to complete the race well. You know, just because it's your first 70.3 doesn't mean you have to have a poor experience. It doesn't mean you have to go in with a lack of confidence. Any beginner athlete, if they give himself enough time and preparation, can get to their first 20.3. Super confident and in a great position to execute and perform really well and get a really, really good result. It's an absolute myth and misconception that your first one has to be a bit of trial and error, that your first one has to be your first go to learn a lot. You know, if you do the preparation properly, if you have enough practice, sprint, Olympic testing, training, mock trials, mock triathlons in your preparation, and you've Given yourself enough time for that, by the time you get to your first race day, it won't feel like your first race. That's a really important point from us. We want athletes to understand, Boy George.

You have to have a lot of trust in the process, don't you? And that's what we really are big on. If you've done the work in training, you know your numbers, you know what your power numbers are, what your swim pace is and what your running pace is, you know, why would you not believe that going into your first race? And of course, we want you to do some other races in between, which is exactly what Ryan's done. He's done his first sprint race and, you know, the anxiety, nervousness that he's got for that race will be a little bit less when he comes to his big 70.3 in July. And, you know, if we get to do another race in between now and then, hopefully another Olympic. And that always depends on people's work and time and family and if there's a race available. But that would be what we'd be encouraging him to do. So he gets another experience of that week of the race, the night before, what meal to have, what to go to bed, what time to get up, what breakfast to have, how to set your race bike compound up, what should you be doing, you know, just before the race, how do you warm up properly, all those things. You want to have a little bit of an experience at that. And that's one of the things where we say you shouldn't really do your A race without doing something else. We're not talking about doing two a race at 70.3. We're talking about doing some minor BC races or some mock events where if there's no races available for you, where you get to practice all of that, you know, you get a little bit of nervous or not before, even though it's only a B race and that, that holds you in good stead for when it really counts on the day that you want to. And as we say, you just go out and execute what you've normally done in your training and, and that's the reason why you should be trusting the process. But, boy, it takes a lot of mental toughness to, to, you know, do something for the first time that you haven't done before and trust the process.

Yeah, and we' give a really, really important reason as to why we think that you need time on your side and the disaster that could happen if you don't do it this way. So let's go through the numbers. Let's go through his testing results so far in the program and he's, and his kind of first six months in the program and, and the training that we've been focused on. And then we're going to go through his first sprint triathlon, first race he's done and how he executed and the coaching that we go through from here to really help anyone in a similar position understand what they need to be doing to improve. So the swim, as he said, he came in with not much of a swimming background and his first 500 meter time trial was 235 pace. And from then to now he's improved a whopping 10 seconds per 100. So he's down to a 225 swimmer, which is a big change for a beginner swimmer. And we're going to discuss shortly some key things he needs to change to really be ready for that 70.3 because a 500 meter time trial to start is a great starting point. But you've got to swim 1900 meters in open water for a 70.3.

Yeah. And look, you know, swimming, the most technical sport you can actually try to start from scratch on, you're well behind the eight ball if you haven't swam as a, as a young child growing up. And so, you know, that's what we, that's what we have to deal with. And fitness is one thing. We've talked about that on the podcast many times. But you need to get your technique up so that you can actually, for the same fitness level, you could actually swim 10 or 15 seconds per 100 meters quicker than if you hadn't done any technique work. And that is the big change. And obviously when you get into the Northern hemisphere summer and they're in spring now, you've got more opportunities to swim outdoors, whereas during the winter you've got zero opportunity unless you live in a really temperate climate. So not only swimming, swimming in the pool and looking at your technique, but getting you used to open water swimming is going to be a key to giving you confidence on race day that you can get through it.

Yeah. I'll reiterate what I loved about Ryan's attitude from the start, and he really made these points, was that he put his hand up and said, I don't know exactly what to do and I'd rather just be told what to do. And I'll follow that process. Exactly what you said before, you've got to be actually willing to trust the process. And he was. And he goes, here's my level at the moment. I'm putting my hand up to say I'm a complete beginner. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And for a beginner, swimmer and bike rider, his FTP was at 150 watts. And he's very first test with us, it's now up to 215 watts. So that's a 75 watt change in this period, which is again we, we say those numbers not flippantly. Just because you're a beginner does not mean you're guaranteed 75 watt improvement. You know, you really have to work at that. You have to practice executing and yes, training itself. Even if you do, you know, if you just do any training consistently, you will improve. But to get 75 watts, that's, that's, that shows sign of good sticking to the good structure of the program. And as we'll talk about in his race results, what that actually means on race day.

Yeah, and look, when I looked at, when coach Matt was showing me his execution, I could see that he left a lot on the table. He's still, you know, we ask our athletes to try to get to that tipping point sooner after they've done three or four FTPs over this journey. And you know, he was still starting conservatively and had, you know, 15 to 20 watt difference between his slowest five minute effort and his fastest five minute power effort. And so there's still, there's still way more to improve and it's just about, you know, executing and trusting the process about. Yeah, I, you know, I'm, I'm improving at a massive rate because I'm following the structure of, you know, the program that we're giving him, which is, you know, it's kind of exciting that this is, you know, 75 watts is unbelievable for most people that would, you know, that would take 18 months to get that 75 watt improvement. But, but I think there's still another 50 watts out there that you know, with, with him getting, getting the confidence and understanding how to execute. And he's still learning, you know, as we've said many times, it takes two or three years to actually learn how to time trial properly. And you know, where I don't see say that flippantly either. That's, that's the truth. And there are some athletes who are extremely exceptional and they can pick it up very quickly. And actually Ryan's coach Matt is an example of that. He's only been following the program properly for a short period of time and now probably Equally to our fastest time trialer in our whole trivalo group and that includes Tom Page, who's world champion. So, you know, that's a big rep for someone who's actually learned it very quickly.

Absolutely. Talking about Ryan's running, you know, he actually started on a walk run program. So he spent the first month on a bit of a walk run program and didn't complete his first 5k TT with us until a month into the program. And his 5k time in those time trials has gone from 4:37 pace down to 4.29pace. And that's not even an updated number. And this is the point we want to make next is that that number was from a time trial back in January. Ide clearly he had some testing in February, March. He was supposed to complete especially before this sprint triathlon that he's done as his first ever race. But he had some interruptions, he had some sickness that stopped him completing that. So I have no doubt that that number is now outdated and he's 5k would be faster than that. But it's a really important point that we want to emphasize right now. It's probably the most important point of this episode that we want to get get right is that he actually hasn't had a completely smooth run in the training process due to various reasons, sickness, interruptions. He's missed a few key time trials and I would say end sessions as well. So firstly I want to talk about the endurance side and talk about this big lesson. Because he was more of a beginner, he started really quite low in terms of his longest ride and longest run. It's one of the key questions we ask an athlete when they start is what's your longest ride and your longest run so far and how far is that gap between where you are now and what you need to be doing volume wise for to be a 70.3 athlete. And once he did get running, his long run was 30 minutes. That was his long run and his long ride was up to an hour, you know, and so to slowly build that up from there to where he is now, he's up to around that 80 minutes above for the long run and about two and a half hours for the long ride. You know, that's, that's the process you've had to go through to get yourself 70.3 fit and it would be higher. But again he had some interruptions and, and a few of these key sessions have been missed where we haven't been able to build that, that volume quite up. And so this is the most important point of the episode, that when you give yourself the minimum amount of time to prepare, you are banking on everything going right and having no interruptions to your program to get through it all. But if you give yourself more time, you allow for what is inevitably going to happen, interruptions to happen. Whereas if you do miss some sessions, it's not going to be detrimental to your program. But if you just start a program 12 weeks out from your race, or 16 weeks out, or 20 weeks out, and you need every single one of those 20 weeks to go right for you to be prepared for your race. If something goes wrong for a couple of weeks and you're behind April, suddenly you're rushing your process, you're rushing your volume. It's not going to be very good.

The consequences are huge. Jordan I want people to actually stop and think for a minute. If you've got, say 10 weeks where you're trying to progress your long run from 70 minutes to 80 to 90, gently adding 10 or 15 minutes, if you miss a week here or a week there, you lose 30 minutes by missing two weeks out of four. So you're already 30 minutes behind where you should be. And so if you only give yourself 12 weeks, what do we do there? Do we just allow you to go from 70 to 100 minutes and just skip the progression, the 80 to 85? Well, that's a really big risk. The consequence is that your body can't cope. You may injure yourself, you may run yourself down health wise and get sick. And when your immune system's being challenged by training so consistently, anything that's out of the ordinary. And that's why slow progression is a better way to train. That's why giving yourself longer time is a better way to train. But also, you know, getting sick is going to also stop you from having consistency. So the idea that you can jump 30 minutes instead of 15 or 10, think about the fatigue you will have. Your body does not like to do extreme changes. We need it to sneak up on it. So the fatigue you would be carrying from that session would mean the consequences Monday and Tuesday. So you did that long run on the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, you have to actually kind of recover a bit because you've really pushed yourself too far from a 70 minute run to an hour 30. You know, at one hour 10 to one hour 30, you've jumped 20 or 30 minutes. And so you may have to actually pull back on the Tuesday session, which was meant to be some sort of intensity on the bike. And they're the consequences we're talking about. And that's why one of the key things that we, we brush over, you need to give yourself more time for these events. Well, that's a detailed reason why. And you need to hear that rather than the sentence of oh yeah, you should give yourself longer time. Well, why. And that's kind of what we're trying to get across.

Absolute best case scenario, nothing goes wrong, which is very unheard of. You know, most common case scenario, you lose a few weeks here or there due to sickness or a niggle or something or, or family or work interruptions or life just happens. And also very common, you lose two to four weeks due to something, something major might happen. And so if you have to think that, let's say you're only giving yourself 16 weeks and then two to four weeks of that is taken out due to life happening, you haven't got very much time then to get yourself right and you don't want to be in that position. So that's why we reiterate this a lot.

And also, Jord, don't forget, we try to do it where we're doing some sort of load into your body, then some sort of recovery and maybe a race in there. So in that you might have two races in that 16 weeks where you have to do a little mini taper and a little mini recovery. So already on top of what you're talking about with injury and sickness, you've got two weeks of interruptions out of the 16. So the longer you give yourself, the more chance you have of getting to the actual race day in the best shape of your life.

And of course, there's just the natural principle of programming that you can't just increase every week for 16 weeks. That's not how programming works. You need scheduled deload weeks and recovery weeks in there to allow your body to recover, to respond. So you can't just go 10 minutes, 15 minutes into your long run every single week for 16 weeks, you will break down. So there's that as well. So we want to take it to his first sprint race. He's just last week done his first ever triathlon, which is super exciting and huge credit to him to come from the position where he was to coming into this triathlon. We would say with athlete and coach confidence and you always have some, some nerves, anxiety for your first triathlon. But he's, he's trained so well that we had a very solid plan, albeit conservative. And we'll discuss why that was the experience. But I just want to talk about some comments from his coach, Matt in his post race analysis which said, what an incredible achievement, including your first ever sprint distance triathlon. And we were just focused on the race plan. And at Tribello we know that if you execute a race well, the results will follow. And so we'll go on to talk about his execution. But Matt just wanted to point out that it's not about results, but we want to highlight the results for your first ever triathlon and you came seventh in your age group, came 36th out of 145 of male competitors and 42nd out of 214 total participants, which is top 20% in your first ever race. And amazingly, your bike leg was 4th in your age group and 16th fastest male overall on the day on the bike, which we're really pumped with because we just love if someone can execute a bike well, it shows how much faster they can ride a course than other athletes who don't know how to execute well.

And look, when we dig into this, we'll see that he actually could have performed better on the bike had he not been so conservative. But he did follow the plan plan. And that's actually what we're more impressed with. He did execute a little bit too conservative, but that's better than blowing up. And to be fair to, to come forth in your age group when, you know, literally he only started in October where he hadn't ridden a bike. So you know, it's pretty incredible how much information he's taken on board. And Matt's done a great job in really coaching him along how to pedal the bike properly, which, which makes, you know, you and I so, so wrapped that, you know, an athlete gets a result like this because of his attention to detail and listening.

Yeah, spot on. And if we're doing a bit of a race analysis on the execution, we kind of want to talk about each leg and, and what he did well and where the areas for improvement are. And as you just said, Matt's done a great job and we, we call it implementing the Tribalo way. You know, we have our principles and we get all our athletes to follow these principles and we have the post race analysis to really, we, we want proof. We're just always looking for ways to improve and we're, this is why we're not afraid of testing while we're not afraid of races because we want to see in the data what's happening. Was your program effective? Where could we improve? Where did you go really well? What do you do the same for next Time and what do you change for next time? And so, yeah, I think the swim, one of the main points was there was definitely a bit of nerves about the open water swim. First time in a triathlon and it was as a sprint race. It's 300 meters, you know, and Matt's big point was, you know, you got. Just got to remember we've got to keep working really hard because your swim pace was fine. The execution wise, probably some improvement is went out a little bit hard and gassed a little bit towards the back end. But really got to remember that our big A goal is the 1900 meter swim at the half ironman. And so this is a great starting point, but the big work from here is to really keep pushing to that open water swim.

Yeah. And look, you know, the adrenaline at the start of your very first race and you just, you just swim faster than you want to and that's just what happens to everybody. But we're trying to get that message across. You don't have to do that. You can. You know, the last couple of events that I've done, I've actually walked into the water and tried to keep my heart rate down so that I'm not actually breathing heavily by the time I start to swim, which it looks really weird because I'm the only one doing it. But the purpose for it is that I try to keep my breathing under control so when I start swimming I'm not already out of gas in the first 20 strokes. So for a beginner, that's kind of all we want to push out there. That idea that, you know, you're not trying to win the race, so there's no point in, you know, if I'm talking to, you know, any of our world champion guys like Stevie Mack or Tom or I'm telling them, get going. You know, get into the water as quick as you can run. So it depends on who you are. So. So this is Matt's, you know, got Ryan to, to do this properly because he's a beginner swimmer and he knows that he will. You'll have an uncomfortable swim if you start out over gassed already from the start.

Yeah.

And that's the key to this.

Yep, absolutely. Looking at the bike, basically his range was around 195 to 205 watts approximately. And he absolutely nailed that power execution. His, his first half was 197 and he came home like a train in the second half at 211 watts and was flying home at actually 40Ks an hour. But explain to us why on paper, this looks like really good execution for your first triathlon. We couldn't ask anything better to do much faster second half than the first half. But why was this actually not ideal for this course and for Ryan?

And look, we talk about the negative split in running and a little bit in cycling, where we want to hold the power average for the whole of the ride, but when you break it down to out and back, you want to ride the course. And the course may have a headwind or a tailwind. So there's the first thing you're actually asking yourself. Is the start of this event a headwind or is it a tailwind, or is there no wind? So you're trying to work out what power to ride against the course, how the course is set up. And so for Ryan, for this particular race, the start of the race for the bike was the hardest section, and it was uphill. So that's the area where we would want to be riding middle to top of your range. And so because he was so drilled, Ryan was so drilled in being conservative early, he missed that opportunity to ride higher power, where the bike's going slower. And so when he came to the fast section, he had way too much energy left. So he left a lot out there. But that's okay for your first effort. We can't be critical of that. He's really trying to follow the principles of what we coach, but we always also add that you have to race the course and race your power as well. So that's a good lesson for him.

It just makes me laugh because we just go on and on about executing well and being conservative at the start and coming home stronger. And then you go, well, an athlete does it perfectly to what we say, and we go, actually, that wasn't good enough. But that's just the standards we have for. There are ways to get the absolute most out of every single course. And your first triathlon, we don't expect you to remember and know every single way. That's why it takes two to three years of time trialing to. We really call it the art of time trialing is to maximize every second on the course. And so unbelievable execution for the first one. And then we just have high standards of going, that's great. That's exactly what we wanted. But next time, you'll probably gain a couple of minutes in a sprint distance by riding the. The uphill slightly harder and then coming home strong with the. With the downhill and potential tailwind.

Yeah, look, you know, no, negative here. We're trying to get this message about Ryan's event across to everybody listening that, you know, it's just not about the average power. It's about how you execute the course setup and. And when to ride the power higher and when to ride the power lower. And that's the message we're trying to get across.

Well, the main thing is for a beginner cyclist to be one of riders on the day purely down to execution and riding well and riding smart. It's not about ability. It's not about how good your watts is or your average speed is. And we keep preaching this message. You can be as fit as you like. You can be a gun rider in terms of wattage and output. But if I execute properly, you're not going to get a fast result on the day. You're not going to get the fastest time you possibly could. And we talk about. It's not a ability thing in terms of your VO2 max, in terms of how physiologically capable you are. It's a skill to practice. It's a mindset, and it's a concentration thing. And any athlete, whether you push 100 watts or 400 watts, can practice execution. And if you execute right, you're going to get the best result possible on the bike. And that shows here which is probably the really the most exciting thing.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, you'll have some really good days where you're nailing the execution, you're really pleased. And then you'll have some days where you've actually, you've forgotten to concentrate on where am I in the course, what should I be doing? And. And they're the key things that I think when you're doing your first ever event, it's overwhelming. Jordan, you actually are just concentrating on trying to do a few things right. And as you know, to time trial well, you have to be asking yourself repeatedly over and over, where am I in the course? Is it uphill, flat or downhill? Is there a headwind or a tailwind or a crosswind? What's my cadence? What's my power? Is it in the range too high or too low? Or is it in the right level? So, you know, what's my heart rate doing? Have I had nutrition? There's seven things that I would be asking myself over and over within one minute. And that's how you should be concentrating. That's the discipline of concentration. And you wouldn't know what's going on around you because you are so focused internally about looking at all that information. Of course, you're looking where you're going so you don't run into people, but they're the things that, that you can't expect a first person doing his first race to have that understanding. That's taken me 45 years to understand that. And for you yourself as a bike rider, you've only been doing this for 10 years and you're just getting really good at it. In the last two or three years, when I was seeing you were taking it seriously and saying, listen, if you want to really ride properly, these are the things you need to concentrate on rather than just letting you go for a ride and, and letting you wing it. Well, you're going to be faster than, than winging it if you do it this way. And for the same fitness. We keep saying that the same fitness level, you're actually faster doing it this way.

Yeah, yeah, spot on. When we look at the run, the run data was a little bit skewed in terms of the race results. Had him at about 4.39pace, I think for the 5k, which comparative to his fresh is, is unbelievable. Training peaks had him at about 450 pace. There's, and there's some disparity sometimes. We always check the, the training peaks analysis if someone doesn't stop their watch till 30 seconds after they finish or. We couldn't quite get it exactly right, but he was somewhere between 440 and 450 pace for, for the 5k run. And as we, as we spoke about his fresh 5k in January was down below 4:30. We think that's still conservative because he, he did have to, as we said, miss some, some recent testing. So we would say that his 5k is probably another 10 seconds down on that. But the, the point here is that a, it's a great run and execution of the bike. He, he executed perfectly in terms of his first K was the slowest and his last corner was the fastest, which is exactly what we want, a negative split. But the big improvement here and the big coaching tip is we've got to keep narrowing that gap down. You know, if he's 5k is about 420 pace and he's somewhere between 440 and 450 for 5k. We really want to get that gap between his fresh and he's off the bike in a race as close as possible. That's the big goal.

Yeah. And again he was doing what the instructions were and now he knows from doing this race. That's such a good thing to find out after you've done the race. His First K was 447 and his last was 4. 22. And so, you know, looking at that, you go, whoa, that's 25 second per km improvement. And so, yeah, he had too much left by the end and didn't realize that until it was a little bit too late. So he did leave a little bit out there. But that's why he felt so good, because he did start conservatively. So following the instructions enabled him to come home so fast and he had had a ball passing other people who had done the opposite. And, you know, that's the same story you get every time when you actually execute like this. You're flying past people who are yelling out at you to say, oh, well done, mate, way to go. And you're feeling on top of the world. Even though you're not running brilliantly that fast, you are actually faster than the rest of the people around you, which is a great feeling.

Yeah. And to come into the race with a race plan where, you know, Matt was sort of saying, it's great, we've got, we've got, got updated FTP numbers we can go off for, for your bike leg, but we don't have updated run numbers. And so, you know, coming in with fresh testing numbers, we're going off your numbers from January, so naturally that's going to make you, us more conservative in the plan. And we can't, we can't just assume that you're faster because we haven't tested. We would, we would logically think so. We would logically, logically believe so, but we still don't want to bank on that without the test. And so it wasn't ideal to not have those new numbers, but it was a bit unavoidable and there. So therefore you have to go in with a bit of a conservative plan, which has again led him to run really strong in the back end.

That's a good point that we raised, Jordan. That's why testing is so relevant to your race plan. So if you've got a 5K test and it's done in January and you're doing a race in March, you're a little bit guessing here because you would expect your numbers to improve. But, you know, that's only if you've done the right training. If you've had a lot of interruptions, you actually don't know whether you've improved. So that's a good reason why it's so important to know what your form is currently. And lots of people get an opportunity in other races to see what their form is in the last four or five weeks, especially in summer when there's a whole heap of races available. But when this is actually the first race of the season in the Northern hemisphere, you haven't got a lot of that data available in racing or in training. So, yeah, it's another example of why testing is important for your race plan.

Just overall, a great journey so far to really come from where he has to. This first race is a phenomenal result. And then I can't wait to watch his next few months as he really gets, gets ready for the 70.3 Oregon and it's going to be. He's got such a good base to build off now because he's given himself that time. You know, his volume's at a really good spot and to build off that, that's why we call it a base period and base building period, a base phase. And then to build off that and then slowly work his way into what will be a race ready phase is the exciting part. And what gives him confidence to, to really be able to execute well in the 70.3 on race day.

Yeah, we've got roughly 12 to 14 weeks until he's 70.3 and that doesn't sound a lot, but it is actually quite a lot of time to, to get yourself more prepared for the 70.3. And I'm super excited to see how, how Matt delivers him on race day and how well a good a job Ryan can do in staying consistent. Because at the end of the day, the more times you, you miss sessions because of whatever the reason, the less satisfied you'll be come race day. When you stand on that beach and look back at your training, you want to be super proud of what you've done. And so I know that Ryan's, you know, really keen to nail everything, but life does get in the way and it does take a lot, as we said in the last podcast, a lot of planning and preparation to make sure that you can actually perform the training sessions and the testing sessions and on race day.

What a great position to be in. You know, it's to start where he was and to have completed his first ever triathlon. And I think it's exactly 17 weeks to the, to a couple of days, 17 weeks and a couple of days till the actual race of Oregon, which, you know, to be in the position he is in now, to have that base underneath him, to have done that kind of work and then be 17 weeks out, that's you just giving yourself the best chance of success. So good stuff. To Ryan. Good stuff to his coach Matt. We love, you know, the implementation of the the Trivello Way and the Tribalo method and we can't wait to see the journey from here. If you'd also like to experience the same sort of journey and get coached by us, you can go to our website travellowcoaching.com and apply to get coached there. As you just heard from Ryan's story, we coach athletes. We are from Australia, but we coach athletes internationally all around the world as all of our coaching and programming is online. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.

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