Why We’ve Been Missing

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Welcome back to another episode in what feels like it's been a very long time between episodes and for good reason, which we'll inform you about. Oh, actually, I wouldn't say good reason. I'd say a very bad reason, but a reason nonetheless about why we we haven't been on and we've had probably the longest break we've ever had from the podcast. We'll just get straight into it. We won't sugarcoat it, but we don't want to spend too much time on it. We want to get back to the content of the episode, which we love bringing to you. But dad, you've been on quite a scary health journey which started three weeks ago on your return from incredible Europe trip. And yeah, we don't want to share all the details, but I'll just straight out say it was you were in a very bad position. Turned out to be an incredibly risky blood clot which you were essentially described as a ticking time bomb from every doctor you've seen so far. And that has put you out. And since returning, you've been in and out of hospitals and getting tests done every single day to try and figure out what's going on here. So it's hasn't been fun, but you're back home and feeling relatively okay despite everything. And I think we just wanted to let the listeners know a bit of an insight into what's been happening and why we've been away. And I guess it was kind of lucky that you are who you are and the data driven person you are. You were aware that something was wrong, even though there was no clear signs, just in the data of your training was the main thing that indicates you that something seriously wasn't right.

Yeah, thanks, Jordan. It's really great. We always used to start most of our episodes with a gratitude and this is probably the biggest gratitude I could ever have a shout out to, which is I'm so happy that I'm still here. And it might not have been the case if things had had turned out slightly different. I actually saw a hematologist today and he told me that the particular pulmonary embolism I had in my lungs, one in five people have survival rate. So I don't think I heard much more of what he said. For the next 15 minutes when I heard him tell me that. So that sort of hits home and you kind of feel very lucky to still be able to, you know, be here and see your kids grow up and the grandkids grow up and they're the things that cross your mind is it can be that serious when your health is not heading the way you want it to and when you think you're almost invincible and you're fit and healthy and you do all the right things, you know, eat well and you know, you're not extreme in anything you do with alcohol or, you know, never smoked and look after the diet and certainly take pride in being a really fit human being and to be told, you know, you've got something that's genetically turns out to be the issue rather than things you've done over the, over your 60 odd years on Earth. Yeah, it's a bit sobering really and I'm grateful for a few things and I don't want to make this all about me, but I think there's a lot of lessons that I've learned in the last three weeks which could be helpful to those people listening. And you did mention we are data driven and you know, we coach a really solid group of athletes and so we have a lot of information about where their capabilities are at any given time of the year, you know, pre race time, post race season, when they're, you know, they're in recovery and doing some base training. So we, we have really good idea of where people's numbers are and their abilities are, you know, what their form is at any given time throughout the year. And of course I've known that about myself for nearly 40 years as an athlete. And so when I know that I'm not feeling well, the numbers are telling me that and there's a lot of things that can mask information and that's, I think that's a really good point to note. You know, I had an operation on my back in the middle of this last two years where I actually haven't felt so good since I very first got my first blood clot in my leg two years ago. I haven't really felt that good since then, but from that point on then I had a back operation which took me out for a year pretty much before I could start to think about getting numbers back, power numbers back that I could ride before and had that back operation not been in that two year period, I think I would have come to the realization there was actually something wrong because my improvement wouldn't be There and it hasn't been there. I've got back to within 20 or 30% of where I was before the back operation, but I just can't get that next level. And some symptoms I've had where I've been totally out of breath walking upstairs and that just sounds like you're not fit for walking upstairs. But every time I'm doing something where I'm out of breath, it just seems to me to be not quite right. And some of the rides I've been on with you, I'm saying I really can't breathe that well. When it gets harder, when the gradient kicks up and I have to do a little effort, there's all these little indicators that make sense now, but during that 18 month period, you would have been sick of me saying to you, I don't know what's wrong with me, I just can't breathe when it gets hard, I can't seem to push the numbers. And you would be saying to me, oh, find out, ask doctors, go to your doctor and find out. And so going to doctors with, I can't breathe very well, I got prescribed asthma, which is fair enough option, try to breathe better with through some asthma. Or maybe it's that, but, you know, the indicators aren't that, you know, you possibly could have some, you know, embolisms in your lungs or clots in your legs or whatever, but the fact that I've had that two years ago, you know, that's probably a precursor to what was happening. And, you know, whilst they were finding that I had a pulmonary embolism in my lung, they do other tests that show what your heart's looking like and unfortunately they seen some things, things that they didn't like there as well, where my calcium score was off the chart. And that's not information you really want to be told whilst you're in hospital with another issue. So there's two things happening here and that made my stay in hospital longer because basically they're trying to suss out how did this happen to a fit athlete, et cetera. And again, it's genetically caused and not a lot you can do about that. So there's been all of that happening and trying to get to the bottom of, you know, how did this happen, what's the causes? Could there be anything done about it and what do we do now? And so I'm still on that journey, as I said. I saw a haematologist today who specialises in blood clots and next week I see a cardiovascular specialist with determining so I've got two separate things happening. And now it makes sense why my numbers haven't improved, why, why I'm out of breath when, you know, half your lung's not working. And ironically, we coach Dan, who has one lung, and so I've got a little mini understanding of what he's going through. And it is hard to ride with intensity when you're not getting the volume of oxygen that you need to carry around your working muscles to get that effort. And it's like breathing out of a straw when you. You start to ride hard, you just can't breathe. And so these little indicators should have been obvious, but, you know, when you put them all together, they make sense. But, you know, these things only happen individually. So it takes someone very clever to try and nut out what exactly is happening. And unfortunately, after one of my rides, one of my endurance rides, I went upstairs and had a shower, and then I ended up waking up on the floor, not knowing that I'd collapsed and on the way down hit my head on the table and. And ended up really kind of knocking myself out and not knowing what. I can't remember the Last sort of 30, 40 seconds. And all I remember is waking up with my face on the floor wondering how I got there. And so that was the reason for going to hospital because I'd actually fainted and hit my head and went to emergency to check out what was going on. And while I was there, they found the blood clot in my lung, they found the calcium buildup in my heart. So from that one fall, good things have happened. I've found out that there are some issues with my health. Without that happening, I would still be, you know, complaining about not being able to breathe when I'm training hard. And not really, as it turns out, with, you know, when you've got a clot in your lung, it can be. It can be deadly if it moves. And so without over dramatizing things, I just want to make sure that for all those people out there, you know, be a good idea to get a calcium score with your heart to find out what is happening. I didn't know anything about that. I'd never heard of it in my whole life. The calcium score is an indicator of the level of calcium buildup in your arteries. And as that builds up a lot, the blood flow is going through a tube that's narrower. So therefore there's less oxygen, less blood being pumped around the body, so your working muscles have less oxygen to work with. So these are things that if you've got a history or genetic history in your family. You should be getting this checked out. And, you know, this is something that I'll be really pushing on you, Jordan, and your brothers and your sister to get checked out because we have a genetic history with my father dying at 67 from a heart attack. And, you know, I'm 65 now and not far away from that. So it looks like I've been following the same course as my dad, but at least I've found out about it, whereas he didn't. So, you know, so there's lots of lessons on, you know, making sure that if you've got some symptoms that you go get it checked out. You know, the data was telling me that I couldn't train like I used to. Literally 12 months ago for, you know, the last 30 or 40 years, I could train the same way. And all of a sudden, 12 months ago, I can't from that first blood clot that I had. And it's been a breathing issue since then. So, you know, they can't tell me how long my clot's been in my lungs. That's an unknown. But, you know, those indicators and the fact that I can't ride, you know, even though I'm training the house down and I'm training athletes who are my age who are. Who are really riding, you know, improving still and riding really well with the same training program. So that was the confusing part for me was, you know, everybody I'm coaching is improving. Everybody. Your coaching's improving at my age. And yet I'm going backwards. And of course the mask things are, you know, you're having. I had Covid five weeks ago. I had an operation. You know, I was traveling, I was being. I was on a plane. You know, these are all things that you use as excuses, whereas that, you know, your normal feelings are real. So don't dismiss them. If you are having trouble breathing, go and find out about it. Yeah. So, yeah, I. I just think there's so much. There's so much there that can be helpful to, to anybody out there listening who's, you know, you know, in a similar situation. Don't leave it too long because Andy, my wife's. Her girlfriend's husband, went motorbike riding and didn't come home. He had a. He had a heart attack while he's at motorbike riding. And, you know, these are things that you just don't want to. To have to experience if you don't have to. And by finding out, you know, if there's Something not quite right. That was the thing that was on my mind the whole time. There's something not quite right. And I know that because I know my body well. Yeah.

And it was, it all was accumulating quite fast in that, that week of return, and you weren't feeling well all week and you weren't, you were just way off the numbers. And then you did the endurance ride on the Saturday, and it was interesting that we actually, all of us, my brothers and sisters, you were having this conversation before you ended up having a shower and fainting because you were just saying, what the hell was wrong this morning. You were just, your heart rate was so high and your perceived exertion was so high for, for literally 100 watts less than you would normally do in your endurance ride. And you're, you're saying to us, there, there's something seriously wrong here. I need to go get these tests and need to go see a doctor properly. And we're all saying, yeah, go do it. And then a few hours later, this all happens. And it turned out you were, I mean, it's, it's in somewhat ways you were comforted by the fact that doctors were saying to you, I don't know how you rode three hours on a trainer at that intensity with this clot in your lung and this, the risk that you were at and the ticking time on that you were. And even though as sobering and as scary as that was, you did find some relief in that, that you weren't going crazy. And that is the value of knowing all your numbers and knowing your data so specifically about what heart rate should be normal, what should be, should be normal, and what power should be relatively normal, give or take some degree, depending on the day. But yeah, it was this whole accumulation of things that led to that moment and terrifying and insanely scary. But yeah, to hear that a lot of the different doctors kind of say, you know, don't know how you've been functioning with this larger clot or even writing whatsoever, let alone training, training a lot and trying to train through it. It was kind of just a blessing in disguise that you had that information to go off to know that, yeah, okay, this is, this is. Something needs to be taken seriously. So, yeah, I mean, we, we apologize for the, for the breaking podcast and dad, your determination to do the podcast. You even asked me, should we do it from hospital? And I just said, honestly, it's probably one of the last things in my mind right now if we could just not, not worry about the podcast. And I Just. Yeah, I wanted to tell the audience that your determination was there to do it. It just wasn't for our family, it wasn't a priority. So that's where we were at.

And, Jordan, as you know, I pride myself in consistency, and that is one of the things in the 246 episodes that we've done that we have been almost weekly with our podcasts over the last four or five years. And that break was breaking my heart. And not to use a pun, but it certainly. I felt really bad because we love being consistent and unfortunately, it just wasn't possible. And the only thing I felt like doing was sleeping and trying to recover.

Yeah, I just. I said to you, we're not. We're not even having a conversation about this. It's not. We'd have to justify it. It's not. That's not going to happen. So, yes, my gratitude is very much that you're alive as well and that we get to do this. And there is a lot to talk about because a lot has happened in this month. And it feels like we were kind of laughing because it feels like it's the busiest month in sport, which we just love talking about all these things. It was the end of the Tour de France, the women's Giro, the pre Olympic, all races in the Diamond League. The Olympics started. It's story after story every single day, which we just love seeing. It's our favorite thing to talk about. And we. We weren't able to talk about it. So here we are and there's a lot to discuss. And I think we do want to. Even though it's old news now, compared to everything that's going on, we do want to touch on the end of the Tour because it was quite incredible, the athletic feet. We're watching from today, Pogachar. And look, it was always going to happen. In the last three years, no one has been on the level of him and him and Jonas. And it was my belief that Jonas was never going to recover after his crash to get to the same level as today. I played it almost as predicted. But the things we didn't predict were that Jonas would push his best power ever, you know, beat all his old times. He actually did get back to full fitness and more. And today still be. Still be too good. I think the question everyone is asking is we hate going down this path, but, you know, is it legit? You know, is it? And there is literally everyone's in two camps. There's literally half a camp going. This is just. It's too unbelievable. Like, it's just absolutely insane what he's doing, which it is. And then the other half's going, you know, it's. It makes sense. It's the modern era. It's modern era of cycling. It's possible they've shown that natural progression and it's completely believable. So, yeah. What did you make of the end of the Tour?

There was so much good about it and I was loving the battle and it was great to see the four guys actually start the event in the first place. And unfortunately, Roglich crashed out and we might talk about that later, but certainly to have Remco, Jonas and the POG racing each other, and I know they were at different levels of fitness, probably coming back from the accident that Jonas had, but, you know, you enter the race at the fitness you've got and you've gotta, you've gotta wear that. And he was never complaining about that. I love the fact that he actually beat POG in one of the stages. That was, that was fantastic. That stage. I could not, I would not have backed him to out sprint him. And I was thinking, what are you doing? You're on the front, you're giving the race to him. And, and yeah, to see him actually win that stage was, I think that was the highlight of all the stages for the GC riders. That was a great race and there were a lot of great stages, but POG was just too good for the majority of every stage. And he looked like he could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. And I saw some stages where he, he almost got criticized for winning and taking stages away from guys who'd broken away and, and it was. I don't think that's a fair comment. I think you've got every right to win whatever you want in any, any day, on any stage, and you shouldn't. You know, I don't think if he, if he didn't try and win and other riders won the stage, I think it would be a hollow victory if they know, if they knew the panel didn't try. So. So I just, I just want to. I just want every race to be an individual race in a Tour, and, and the winner should be the best rider. And if Poggs is the best rider for eight stages out of 20, then so be it. And if anybody else can beat him, then it's up to them. So. So, you know, I love the fact that Remco, you know, really improved as a GC rider. He. He'd lost a bit more weight. He'd done a lot more training specific to the Tour de France. He won the time trial. He was right there for most of the stages. Wasn't quite at the level of Jonas and pog, but he certainly protected his position as third place. I thought he did a great job. I thought Jonas did the best he possibly could as well. It just turned out that POG was just that much better than everybody and it still was a great race. I think the whole event was really, was really interesting and the race stages were great, but, you know, when you've got someone dominating like that, it still was a great Tour because there were other stages where, you know, cav. Winning the most, the most amount of stages in the history of the event. Of the event. Yeah, there was, you know, the French guys, Stage one, winning stage one and stage two. They hadn't won a stage in years. That, yeah, there's so many good things to, to remember about the Tour and even, you know, the time trials at the end, the last stage is a magnificent time trial down in Nice. Yeah, I really thoroughly enjoyed the whole, the whole Tour and what each day brought. And even though he won by seven or eight minutes, but don't forget, Jonas did that to him. He won by eight minutes in previous years. So, you know, people forget that. So, you know, it's, it's what form you come to the event with. And he obviously prepared, you know, to the best of his ever. His ever ability. I think that's the best he's ever ridden. And, and to be fair, Jonas is coming back from a, an injury. He didn't have a lot of time to prepare, but he still rode the best he could with the form he had. And that's a lesson I think we could use as age groupers is when you get to any event, you've got to, you've got to race the event at your, at your level that you, you enter the event at. And I think Remco did that beautifully. A couple of the hill stages, he just decided to limit his losses and rather than blow up and try and ride with the two guys, you know, who are knocking themselves out, he just sat back and tried to ride at his threshold, stay in his own, and only lost 20, 30 seconds each time. And that enabled him to get his third place podium just because he rode smart. And they're great lessons of, you know, and I think we can talk about that and when we talk about the Olympics, about, you know, running to your, to your level and yeah, they're great lessons that we could learn from, from any event that you're watching on telly. It's trying to, trying to see, you know, what the pros are doing and are they doing it well. And they're not, they're not all doing it perfectly.

Jonas's story for me was one of the most encouraging things, culminating to the stage we're in, which was one of the best stages, actually, I'm going to say the best stage of Tour de France I've ever watched. Maybe it's just recency bias, but the emotion behind it, the fact he'd come so from so far back, his emotion after the stage showed what it meant to him because he just said, he learned this year that cycling is not everything, whereas previous years cycling had been everything. Because the stage was so horrific. And you said it was an injury. Sorry, his crash was so horrific, use the word injury. It was actually life threatening. It wasn't just an injury. He was, he actually wasn't sure if he was going to get back on the bike again. And his first ride was eight weeks post crash and I remember seeing a post on it and we're only six or seven weeks from the Tour and I'm just going, he has no chance here. He's only just getting on the bike outside, he's as delicate as he can get. And I thought that was really encouraging for again us, because when you get an injury, the biggest thing you fear is the D training effect and the fact that you've worked so hard to get this fitness and then you're just going to lose it. And to see him have to have that time off and the amount of work he's done, yeah, that's just that last block of training enabled him to get back to his record fitness, which to me was just astounding. And I think that's really encouraging that it's hard to know how much of a detraining effect can happen, but when you've got that good base work under you and you've got that good endurance, you're not going to lose it all. And he was a really good example of that. So we actually had a really fun day in Italy where we made our own little Grand Tour stage and we picked three big climbs like they would in a Grand Tour, whether it's the Giro or the Tour de France and these hour long climbs and we're going to do a Grand Tour day and attack three and see how it could go. And we wanted to compare the numbers to what the pros do and have some fun and we'll Just ride them at our relative limits. And I was comparing watts per kilo and speed. And over the three climbs, we were probably averaging somewhere around 14, 15ks an hour for, you know, the climbs were anywhere from 40 to 50 minutes and about 3 1/2 watts per kilo for each one, which was pretty good, three even efforts. And then I was looking at the same climbs that you could see what riders had done in in Duro stages, and they were averaging anywhere from 5.1 to 5.7 watts per kilo. For these climbs, they were averaging 20 to 21 kilometers an hour, 22 kilometers an hour, and getting up them 15 minutes, 18 minutes, 22 minutes quicker than us, which was just pretty humbling to look at that and go, we were riding on our limits here, and they're 45 minute climb, they're 22 minutes quicker than us. It was just absolutely hilarious. And I was thinking as well, they do this day after day, this is just one day we're doing this, and they actually ride an extra 60 or 70 or 80k on the stage in between the mountains. So that was a really fun comparison to do. But you look at those numbers and then you look at POG this year, and he was riding some of the climbs at 6 to 6,7 watts per kilo. Just a lot of these Duro numbers from these stages I was looking at on Strava were coming from 2016, 2018, 2019. And then, you know, we look five years on and the standard just keeps getting higher and higher. And the question is, you know, how is Poga Char so good? And I've been getting any podcast or article or bit of data I can get my hands on to see what people are saying and to see what the reflections are. And I think there's three key areas that people are really underestimating in terms of sports science. I do think sports science can really answer for this. You can't say for sure whether he's clean or not, but I think that people are severely underestimating the advances in sports science, and specifically in three areas, and that is training, specificity, nutrition, and equipment in bikes. So you look at the bikes that they were riding even five, six, eight years ago, the bikes that Chris Froomer winning the Tour de France on. The bikes have advanced an insane amount, an exponential amount, since then, let alone from records 20 years ago or 25 years ago, when the whole Tour was not clean. If you jump on a really crap bike and made a really good bike, you can absolutely notice a difference. The bike will carry you so much faster. And you cannot underestimate everything to do with bike equipment, everything aero that I have right now. I think that is such a key factor. But the main one for me is the advance in training specificity. And since the evolution of power meters and training knowledge we have, realistically, the last 15 years, everyone's been training to power and been training every single session in the right zone. Poguchar's probably been riding in the right zone since he was 11 years old, 15 years ago. And you look 20 years ago, and you compare it to Lance Armstrong, and funnily enough, he. He was talking about this in his own podcast, comparing his own numbers to Porkuchar, and he was kind of baffled that Pork Acha beat his time up one of the clients by seven minutes. But I can't remember exactly what he said, but he. He kind of accepted it and said it kind of makes sense. But you hear those numbers, and I hear. I see a lot of commentary where people say, he's beaten Lance Armstrong by five minutes. How can he be clean? You know, And I think that's. That's actually quite an ignorant comment, because if you thought about it, I bet you if we looked at Alston's training program from back then, we looked at his training diary, I guarantee he's training extremely inefficiently. I guarantee he's training too hard, too much of the time. I bet you he's pushing himself. I bet you he's doing a lot of KS and a lot of time, and he's pushing a lot harder than a lot of other people. We know from his biographies, how well he was training and how hard he's pushing himself. But there's no way he's training to the accurate times in zone 2, zone 3, zone 4, and VO2 max. And spending the right amount of time. And with science that we know now, every single session that these pro riders are doing is dialed into the absolute specificity. I would argue that age group is right now, and our tribalo athletes are training more efficiently in the right zones than probably Lance Armstrong was in that group of riders 20 years ago. So I think that accounts for so much that if they were training that inefficiently, then of course, we can see these records kind of broken now. And then the last point was nutrition. And that again, Pogachar said this at the end of the tour. He said, every single gram of my diet is measured to the T. We know exactly how many grams of carbs, proteins, and fats I need. For sessions before races, in sessions, in races, after sessions, after races, to replace every single bit of energy lost. And that means that the body itself is performing at an absolute maximum capacity of what kind of energy it's churning out and what it needs back in. And I think those three things make a monster difference to performance that can explain how good he can be and why the, why the performances keep skyrocketing.

Yeah, I can't disagree with anything you've said. And I know that the bikes I was riding, you know, I've been riding since the 80s and you know, we had steel frames and they weighed, you know, 10 kilo and we only had a range of gears that, you know, I live in the Dandenongs in, in Victoria, in Melbourne. And you know, it's not, it's nothing like the, you know, the Dolomites or, or, or the Italian Alps. It's just got some really decent 7% climbs that go for 20 or so minutes. Nothing like our climbs that you get in the big mountains. But as there's still climbs and in some of the gearing I've got from when I first moved here, I couldn't get up a lot of those hills without being in a cadence of 40 or 45 because I had a, I had a rear cassette that had, you know, something like a 13, 18 straight block. So I had five gears and my front chain ring was 54, 44. So my lowest gear was 44, 18. Trying to get up 7 or 10%. We've got some 10 or 12%, there's some 18% climbs near where I live. And I couldn't get up a lot of those hills because the gearing I had on the bike didn't enable me, you know, out of my seat. I was just doing 2Ks an hour, 3Ks an hour, just trying to get up, zigzagging up these hills. And that in itself, you know, the gear ratios you don't even think about. These guys are spinning up these hills beautifully with magnificent cadence. Well, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, everybody was grinding at a 50 RPM because we had no gears that, you know, as I said, 44 tooth front chainring. The bike that I've got now has a 36 front chainring. You know, it's literally eight teeth less. So therefore I've got that much more. It's like a mountain bike gear. You know, my re. My rear cassette's got a 30, so a 36, 30 compared to a 4418. They're just incomparable. And, and so it makes it so much more difficult to ride, you know, ride fast because you're not on top of the gear and I don't know, people don't understand what that term is. You know, you can't get control of your pedaling if you're just grinding the whole time. And it's unsustainable for more than five minutes. You know, try and ride at 40 RPM for, for more than five minutes. That's a long time to be riding at 40 RPM. Whereas these guys are beautifully riding at, you know, 90 RPM on a 10% climb. And it's only, they only get out of their seat when they're, you know, hitting a 12 or 14% climb. So, so the gearing and the, the frame weight and you know, the setup, you know, we've got narrower handlebars now, you know, more aero and yeah, all these, you know, the wheels are better, they're lighter, everything's lighter. So yeah, and as you said, the training, the training's so different. You know, training to feel without any data, you know, compared to now, you just don't waste any sessions and you're not driving yourself into the ground. You know, you stay in zone two because you're in zone two. You know, I feel like I'm in zone two. But you got no data to prove it. You know, I feel like I'm riding easy, but turns out I wasn't. I was. If we had had a magic wand and could, could look back 20 years and see what zone two was, you know, your heart rate might have been, you know, 10 or 15 watts beats above what it should have been. Your power was probably 10 or 15 watts above what it should have been, but you could never tell. So, you know, your hard days were probably not hard enough and your easy days were too hard. So, so all those things count and we just don't know it. You know, what we don't know about nutrition. And back in those days, you know, people were having jam sandwiches as their four hour ride. Nutrition and a bidden full of water. And you know, we often joke with one of the guys we ride with, he only has 1, 1,650mil bidden for the whole four hours every Saturday. His body's totally trained for that. But you know, any youngster coming through, you know, they just need the fuel to be able to survive and to actually be ready for the next day's training session. So we've come so far and, you know, that's why it's, it's, you know, it's, it's really bad to compare. It's like, you know, the example I think of is when Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile. You know, Inga Britzen is running a mile in three, three minutes 40. I don't know what the 48 or 49 or 47. That's literally 70 meters. Roger Bannister is behind Inger Britzen and I know the track was cinders in those days and the spikes were crappy and they're going to make a huge difference to. But you know, it's a big gap between, between, you know, what the guys can do now compared to the training techniques back in Roger Bannister's time. I know that's an extreme example, but that's, that's what you're comparing. You're comparing just stuff that's not comparable. I don't think. And I think, you know, there are athletes not, you know, not in the same league as pog, but Jonas is not that far away and had he not had an interrupted injury prone build up to that to the Tour, I think he might have had another 1 or 2% which could have challenged a bit more. So yeah, watch this space. I don't think it's all one way. And this was a great Tour, a great year for the pog. He's won the Giro, he's won the Tour. You know, it's a real pity we didn't get to see him in the, in the Olympics. And mark my words, I think he wants the rainbow jersey. So that will be what a year to win the Giro, the Tour and the rainbow jersey. And you know, I wouldn't put it past me if he lined up for the, for the welter as well. But you know, but you know, that's the form he's in and why wouldn't you be going for everything? Yeah, yeah. So probably talked a bit too much about that.

No, that's, yeah, that's what we love talking about. And yeah, I guess that takes us to, you know, what else has been happening. The Olympics has started. In between that we actually had the Women's Giro, which we were super excited about because young Aussie Nev Bradbury actually got third in the gc, which was an incredible outcome. But I feel like it was poor timing for them because it was just, you know, just started the back of the Tour de France and the Olympics has started and then the Women's Tour de France is. I don't know if it starts mid Olympics or the back end of Olympics, which is going to be really exciting. Last year was an incredible event, but yeah, hopefully the spotlight stays on that as well because I think last year was, was unreal to watch. And the seven stage thing makes it super exciting because there's so much happens in a compact space. So we can't wait to watch that. And kind of the event we want to start with is our own Grace Brown winning gold in the individual time trial at the Olympics. That's. What a ride from her. Just, she's put everything into this. She's come close before, both at the World Champs and Olympics, and then to go to the top step was the first gold medal for Australia at the Olympics. What a performance.

Yeah. And look, I just want to mention Niamh Bradbury, who's actually a local Melbourne girl and dad was a bit of a gun rider and I've ridden against him and it's great to see the success from the local club riders. It's fantastic to see them on the world stage, getting on the podium in such a prestigious event. It seems a little bit more special when you've sort of got someone who's local to you, who's, who's really achieving and. Yeah, and Grace, you know, you've raced against her on our local time trial and so have I. And, you know, to see her motor past me at, you know, she's an unbelievable time trialer and you think you're riding okay and then see her fly past, it's. It's another level. And it was great, great to see her perform so outstandingly well when the competition she had was, you know, the best in the world and really tough conditions. Jord to actually not only be the fastest, but to be the most skillful rider to not actually fall over. And at one stage I was thinking, you know, whoever wins this is the person who stays upright because pretty much the majority of the field was crashing. You know, you could rattle through all the names and almost all of them had a, had an off on the, on one of the, one of the corners. And, you know, the event was projected to be a dry, fast time trial and it had a lot of turns, but it was no hills and long, straight sections of road. And, and what was happening was, you know, everybody was riding similar on the long stretches, but whoever could manage the turns in the wet was actually getting a second here, a second there. And if you look at the male race, it was, you know, the difference was 15 seconds from first to second and another 15 seconds to third. Whereas the women's race, you know, Grace won by a minute and a half, and a lot of the. The time she got was from other riders crashing, but she still was miles ahead with her. Her turning skills in the wet were outstanding. She didn't. She didn't come off at all. She was one of the few riders who didn't come off. And even in the men's race, there were riders coming off. So, you know, you've crashed plenty of times, I've crashed plenty of times. We're not picking on any particular riders, but what I'm trying to say is riding in the wet is a skill and it's part of the race. And if you fall over, it's, yes, it's bad luck, but it's probably poor cornering or misjudgment of your speed or hitting a white line that's wet. You know, these are the reasons why you're crashing, but you've got to take more care in those conditions, and that's part of the race. So the best rider won in those conditions, and she won convincingly. It wasn't an easy win. She won by over a minute and a half, and she just motored around there and. And when she was coming to the corners, although the camera didn't follow her very much because I think they were actually looking at so many crashes on so many corners, that seemed to be more highlights than actually watching the person who was riding the best on the day. And when you did get a glimpse of her, she looked magnificent and the speed she was riding at the position on her bike, and she gets fitted by one of the local guys here that we've had on our podcast, the bike fitter, Ken, which is, you know, and Luke's also fitted by him. So, you know, Luke Plat, the Australian writer who. He actually crashed, and he was a. He was a big chance of. Of being up there with the best riders. And again, that's, you know, I saw Philippe Garner almost crash. You know, he ended up hanging on to it. So, you know, the. The time trial was dominated by lots of mishaps, but, you know, still the best riders won at the end of the day. The best riders who could stay upright and the best riders who were fastest on the day. And. And Remco's job in the. In the men's time trial was outstanding. And it was predicted to be a big man, strong man's time trial, because there was really no hills, and yet a little, you know, small guy ended up winning the time trial. And I just Think that's, you know, that almost blows that the myth out of the water that only big guys can win flat time trials. You know, it wasn't much in it, but. But, yeah, after doing, you know, the Tour and then coming out and being the fastest at the Olympics is. I think it's one of those events that he'll treasure. One of those victories he'll treasure for a long time.

I think I know who you were talking about then when you said, I'm not trying to pick on anyone, and you ended up mentioning Luke Plapp. And it was not a. It's not trying to say it's a fault of anyone to crash. We just had such high hopes for him. He put all his. His eggs into this box. He'd been preparing for this for so long. He'd work so closely with Ken to get everything dialed down to a tee, and then to. To go out from a crash is just so frustrating, disappointing. And he put a great post up about it. Just saying. He really dreamt of this for so long and just absolutely shattering to crash and go out, but all eyes on the next Olympics already. Which is. Which is a great attitude to have, but it's. It. Yeah, it is the point. Like, you're saying that the race was a wet race and. And whoever could ride the fastest without crashing was going to be the best. And Grace Brown did that perfectly. So that kind of just sums it up. And. And look, Taylor Knibb was a. Was one who was one of the favorites for the women's, and, you know, crashed four times on there. And it's just. Yeah, even with the crashes, you still have to get the podium. You know, Chloe Dargam, who came third, crashed and still managed to get third, you know. Yeah. So it was. It was a fascinating race in that regard. It was just a whole other element thrown into it. And it's. It's just key for anyone. It's. It's cornering properly, it's learning how to bike handle properly, because this can be the difference for anyone in any race.

Yeah, look, even the. The triathlon, the women's triathlon, it was wet. And. And I think I saw probably 16 riders at different stages on different corners come down. So there was just crashes happening everywhere. And it wasn't so much in the men's race. Why? Because it was dry. The men would have crashed just the same as the women had it been wet. Mark my words. That would have happened for sure. You know, it was happening in the. In the elite time trial and for triathletes they're not as elite handling skills and I'm being very general here, there are very good triathletes who have got great handling skills, but generally they don't have the amount of time they spend on, on the bike because they've still got to practice swimming and running as cyclists should, should have. And the cyclists were crashing, you know, wout Van Aert crashes, Remco crashes all the time. Every, every Tour he's missed more Tours victories because of his crashing then, you know, so we're not saying it's one particular male or female that, that you know, but it's part of cycling. You've got to be able to, to read the conditions better and, and you know, the example of Luke, you know, maybe he was just attacking a little bit too much and, and just, you just got to be a little bit more careful on corners. It's easy to sit here from the armchair and say that. Yeah, but when you go for a.

Gold medal, it's like, yeah, yeah.

And every, and I'm always telling people every corner counts. You can get a second five faster than someone else. And, and you know, that's probably why Remco beat Filippo Garner, because he cornered better. But you know, that's a skill in itself. And, and I must say, when I was watching the start of the time trial, I was shocked that riders were, if they were turning left, they were on the left hand side of the road, coming around the corner instead of being on the far right and cutting the corner corner at the apex, they were hugging the left hand barrier and then ending up on the other side of the road. Of course, when it's wet you can't turn as sharply as you need to. And of course they're in the barrier or they're sliding out. And then I saw riders going around the corner with a left hand corner with their left pedal down and their pedal hitting the pavement. These are skills that should be rudimentary, basic skills that you don't do. And you know, I was shocked at that level that riders were making those mistakes. And you know, I just think they should be doing better than that at that level. Yeah. And you know, I think that was, I was almost thinking, what are these athletes doing? Why are they doing this? It's wet. Maybe they don't train or race in those conditions very often, so they get away with it. But, but you know, if you're going around a left corner, you start on the far right and you take the shortest line, you don't start hugging the Left hand side. And you don't pedal around a corner. You know, you get the speed before the corner. Put your left pedal up if you're turning left and your right pedal down and you lean into the corner, pushing down on your right pedal. They're the basics you should learn about cornering. And I wasn't seeing that displayed at all at that level, which I was pretty horrified with really.

Was it Remco that said that? He said he does most of his time trial training in the wet because it's just always wet in Belgium. And so he's just growing up doing that. It seems like any wet time trial he's just going to succeed. So look, the athletics is about to start and I'm on the cycling front, really excited about the road races. Cannot wait for them. But the athletics is about to start and the weeks leading up to the Olympics we had absolute fireworks of results happening. It was, it was insane. The last three Diamond League races were just world record, world record, world record. One of the women's 1500 race had basically a world record. And then seven national records on this all in the same race. In the one race it was the most insane time. So Faith Kip Yagon broke her own world record. She went under 350 again. So for the second time, which is just insane for her to do that. And then this race was just the most astounding thing I've seen. I was just, I could not believe what I was watching. I say that a lot on this podcast, but my mouth was on the floor. And because she, you know what you going where she's 50 meters ahead of the pack, just going a blistering pace that no one else can keep up with because the rest of the field normally runs anywhere between three, 55 and four minutes. But on her tail the entire race was Aussie Jess Hull who was just absolutely going for it. And she looks so good. And 300 meters to go. Keep Yagin looks around her shoulder and says, how is Jess Hull still here? How is she still on my shoulder? This never happens. And Keep Yagin was able to out kick her, but she only beat her by a second. And Jess hal ran a ridiculous 350.8, a 5 second PB, a 5 second national record, the fifth fastest time ever. So the fifth fastest woman ever. Just absolutely incredible. And what form she has come into the month leading into Paris and this is why this is so exciting because every athlete is now coming to probably their best form in four years. And Jess's post race interview, she Said that her and her coach, which is her dad, which is really cool, said that they thought she was in 352 shape based on all her training numbers. So I would love to see her training numbers to know what made them think she could do that. And then she just decided to run gutsy like she normally does and held on to Kip Yagon and ran a 350.8. I just still can't get over that time. And yeah, only five women have run it 350 or, or under like Kiton. I'm so excited for Jess how I think she could have a real moment here at these games. And she was incredible at the last Olympic Games, made the final, showed everyone what she was made of. She would have been disappointed with her result. She definitely could have run faster. Four years later, she's leaving no stone unturned and she is in incredible form. And I'll say that all of her top rivals in the 1500 are all. Top four are all doing the 5000 as well. She's the only one doing the 1500 only. So that is a little advantage she might have in the actual final of the race.

I'm super impressed with her race craft. You know, compared to what happened to her at Tokyo, she didn't seem to be positioning herself well. Maybe lack of confidence, but she's so gutsy and so she just gives her all. Every race she's in, she's just having a crack right, right near the front and, and now she's got the fitness to stay there, which is super exciting. And I, I love her progression. I mean, eight years ago she was running 4:10 and then she slowly progressed to 4:5 to 4:35-935 8, you know, 355 and now it's 351, 350. So yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible and so well deserved. And she's not the only one that the women are running unbelievable times now. The improvement has been such remarkable jump in such a short space of time and the times is getting faster and faster. I just don't think they've reached the ceiling yet. And as each Kip Diego style athlete comes, it forces the rest of the field to catch up and be better. And so at one point, you know, the best run for a female was 358, 357 and now it's 349. You know, that's an incredible jump and you know, it's got to be what we were talking about. Before we've got to be training smarter and getting the best out of themselves. And maybe their nutrition's better, maybe they're getting more sleep. All the 1% as we talk about for our age groupers, you know, they're doing just as, just as much better than they've ever done before because the times are. And I know the shoes help because they're assisting. I know the tracks are much better, but that hasn't changed in the last two or three years. That's been around now for I think at least two or three years or even four years. So the times are comparable to the last four years, but they're so much quicker now. And it's not just the 1500 or, or the 5K or the 10K or the marathon. It's the 800 as well. There's, there's some incredible 800 meter times net. You know, instead of just breaking two minutes, you know, if you don't break two minutes, you're no chance. You know, you've got to be running low 150s to, to be any chance to, to, to beat the British runners now. And you know, there's just such a, an incre. I'm just so pleased to see women's running is, is so good to watch.

Watch now on the men's side of the 800, we saw three of the top five fastest times ever in one Diamond League race. It was ridiculous that three guys ran 342 and the world record is 341.9 or 340.9. I think it's, don't quote me on that. I think it's 341.9. But three guys in the race all ran within a second of the world record. It was, it was just insane how hard they went out and how they held it. And you know, again, you look at most people and say a 145 is insane. And if you break 145 you're running ridiculous and then these guys are running 142s. You know, it's so much faster. You know, if we look at the last Tokyo Olympics, I think the winner ran 144 in the final. And it wasn't necessarily a slow final. And yeah, I just can't wait to see what's going to happen this, these whole athletic Olympics. And then again just how a week after that broke the 2k world record on the track, which is just insane. So across all distances it's going to be unbelievable. I absolutely cannot wait for it all. And it Starts in a couple of days, which is just so good. And I think we. We do want to finish by, by touching on one last thing, which is the triathlon. And, yeah, two key standouts. I think someone that was able to handle the hometown pressure and take the win as the world number one, Cassandra Bernd, that, that is a strong performance to, to feel the weight of the home crowd and be able to have that gutsy run and take the win away from Beth Potter, who ended up with third, who is easily the best runner in triathlon. I think that was pure guts and adrenaline that got over that line, which was awesome. And then on the men's side, we saw an insane level of execution, which there's already been a lot of discussion about where Hayden Wild took it out really hard on the run. It all came down to the run. As usual, Hayden Wild took it all out early on the run, broke away from Yi, ran a blistering first 5K, looked like he was going to win to the last 800 meters, started hitting a wall, had a truck on his back, and Yi came through and beat him by two seconds on the line. Yeah, what a wild thing of execution to see unfold.

No pun intended.

That actually wasn't intended.

Look, the triathlon Olympic race is quite an intriguing event because the swim and the ride are becoming more irrelevant almost as you see each race unfold. And if the race is going to be running in this fashion, and it has been, you know, for the last sort of eight years or even 10 years, it doesn't mean much if, if the bunch comes in with 30, it just becomes who is the best runner. And, and, you know, there are some things that might happen in, in the, in the bunch. Riders might need to bridge up to another bunch, and that might burn some matches for sure. And we've seen Hayden Wilde miss out on the front bunch. And, yeah, he was in the front bunch. So, you know, one of the New Zealand riders dropped back and helped help the second bunch catch up to the front bunch to try and save Hayden Wild's legs. But there's something that can be a contributing factor to how well Hayden runs against Alex. And that could be a defining moment that he's had to ride harder to get into that bunch. But unless things like that happen, if the bunches all get together quickly in male or female events, it just comes down to who can run the fastest. And by the way, the running speed the guys are doing now after the front three guys in the men's race all broke 30 minutes to be running 252 pace, 255 pace after a 1500 meter swim and a 40k bike ride is pretty outstanding to be fair. It's, you know, it's kind of bordering on just the back of Olympic level. You know, a lot of, a lot of good runners can run 29, 30 minutes. You know, 27 minutes is more elite, you know, Olympic level. But you know, a lot of these guys can now run 14 minutes, you know, as a fresh, as a fresh run as triathletes. And we know that, you know, a lot of the Olympic level 5K runners on the track are running anywhere between, you know, 1250 to 1330. That's the sort of. And here's some triathletes who are now, you know, around that 14 minute 1350 mark in, in their fresh 5K. So, so the level is good, there's no doubt about that. And you know, we've seen Christian Blumenfeld talk about I'm going to join the Tour de France. And so you know, you know, some great swimmers who are probably able to, to do well in some swimming events. And we've seen Taylor niv a gun triathlete join the time trial, individual time trial. You know, sure, she crest three times I think, but, but she's still good enough to represent the US as their best time trial or second best time trial behind Chloe. So it's, it's really interesting to see the level of athlete that we've got in triathlons is really good and, and you know, yeah, to win your home race as the number one athlete, as the number one female athlete takes some poise and some control and, and some guts, I reckon and you know, who can crack under those conditions. And we're watching the, you know, Australia's got a really gun canoeist, kayaker and you know, standing up when it needs to be counted. She's won three gold medals in the last two Olympic games. And you know, that's how, that's the stand, that's the level of a champion is, you know, can you do it when the pressure's on you? And you know, this is a great effort by the French girl to win that event and you know, take nothing away from the other athletes. It was a really close finish and it was just, you know, just her sheer grit and determination of sure the local crowd enabled her to run stronger at the end to win that race. I'm sure it had an effect being at home as a positiveness rather than the weight of the French crowd on her shoulders to drag her down. But. But in the men's race, you know, I really feel this is a good example for age groupers. And some people can say, you know, that the only way you could beat Alex Yee was to break away early. But we saw Christian do that differently at Tokyo, where he waited till the last 2k and put in a huge surge, which Alex couldn't. Couldn't respond to, and went on to win the Olympic triathlon gold medal. And I think Hayden's tactics were, yeah, gutsy, really inspiring to watch. You know, brilliant. Brilliant attempt to win, had the race won. But I think his execution was the thing that let him down. You know, he started that. That surge way too soon, and. And, you know, had he been able to hang on for another 900 meters, people would be saying, no, it was a. It was a great decision. But it turns out that, you know, he ended up coming second, and he gave his best, gave his all. But I think he had the ability on the day to actually win that event had he executed better. And. And that sounds a little bit harsh, I know, but. But I'm trying to learn, get lessons from this event from the best. And, you know, both him and Alex ran within two seconds of each other, but they ran two different styles. Alex ran in his zone and didn't go outside of that zone. When Hayden attacked, Alex didn't go with him. I'm sure in his mind, he was saying, I can't go with that. That's too hard. And if he beats me, well, he's better than me. But it turns out he was right. It was too hard, and it was unsustainable. And that's what execution is. Learning to understand where your level is staying in your lane. And if that's not good enough, you have to wear that. But it still gives you the best opportunity to still have a crack at winning. And we saw Hayden completely, you know, just not be able to respond because he. He'd hit the wall with, you know, with still a kilometer to go. And Alex seized that opportunity and blew past him. And, you know, Hayden couldn't respond. He was done. Once you've gone over that line, you can't respond. And it made it a comfortable win for Alex. Even though it wasn't comfortable, you know, he was able to go past him without a challenge. And it was a great example of holding your nerve and sticking to your strategy. And. And he got the outcome. And. And I think the mistake Hayden made was being too, too bold and too gutsy, and his execution let him down because of that and, and you could say, but he might not have won anyway. But I think on the day his form was great because he actually gave 50, 60 meters away in transition, caught up very quickly, so burn a match there. Then sat behind Alex and waited and thought, well, it seems easy. I'm going to go and I haven't ever beaten him in a sprint before, so this is a tactic I'm going to use, which is very admirable. But I think it was just too gutsy and he shouldn't have pushed so early and I think he had the ability on the day, the way he was running, because he was running some periods there at 240 pace, but it ended up being, you know, he ended up running 3 minute K pace where Alex stayed around that 250 and ended up winning. So, yeah, I think if we wanted to sum up this podcast, it was really knowing where your level is, staying in your lane, trusting the process and giving your best by not blowing yourself up is a better way. And sure, you might not win as many races and it's not as bold and as daring, but you know that you know you're going to give everything you can executing the right way. And I know there's so many examples of people who've just had a crack and ended up winning and that's definitely a possibility and I love that way of racing. But nine times out of 10 that will end up poorly for you.

It was a monster blow up. When you look at the first 5k to the second, it was 14:24 from wild to 15:25, so a minute slower in the second 5k, which is just really hitting the wall. Whereas Yi was a lot more even, not a negative split, but a lot more even in 1445, 1502. So fractionally slower and you could argue that while just pulls back that slight bit and you would be able to just hang on at the end. And you know, in hindsight you always say if, whatever, but we know from execution that as you just said before, there's no, there's, there's no shaming him for putting it all out there, but that doesn't make a good execution. And yeah, it was. I wish we could see the 1k splits to see where the matches were being burned early and how much of a difference it was between each kilometer. That would be fascinating to me. But yeah, look, we went through a lot here. There's just so many performances to unravel it. It's going to keep on unraveling. We kind of just want to have a general chat on this podcast. It's we return we could to come back to the podcast now. So yeah, it'll be a lot to talk about in the future and as always we want to apply it back to the age group and I think there's a lot in there from the Tour de Frances to athletic events, triathlon. There's so many things we can learn and this is the best period in the Olympics to have a look at what's going on and, and learn some valuable lessons and find out. You know, I love listening to all the media interviews. It's probably my favorite part because you hear a little tip about, about what this athlete might have done differently or what, what they did in their training or what their mindset was beforehand. And I love that from Jess hall where she spoke about the race plan with her dad where they said they think she did 352form, she's going to go for it. Which is a crazy thing to say when a PB was 355. You know, at that level they're looking for PBS of 0.5 of a second. You know, they're looking for the most marginal things. And she's saying I'm in a 3 second PB form. I just absolutely love that. And then her, her race tactic was to absolutely go for it. This is a Diamond League event. It doesn't matter. She, she was willing to blow up with 250 meters to go to really get this time and it paid off. So it's kind of that example you're talking about. You want to give it all a crack. You see athletes, you go into give it their best shot but you still need to execute well. And I think that's kind of learning here is that it's not just about giving it your best crack for the sake of it. It's giving you your best crack with a well executed plan. And that's kind of the major lesson here.

Absolutely. And I was, look, you wouldn't believe it. I was just actually whilst I've been lying on the couch for the last couple of days unable to do much and I watched a YouTube video of a race that I remember the 800 Olympic final. I think I was looking at 800 meter progression. That's what I was looking at. And they showed, I can't remember the guy's name, the American guy who was literally 20 or 30 meters off the back after 200 meters in the Olympic final. It was either at Montreal or LA in the 70s and, and came from last and ended up winning by the smallest of margins. And you know, it's one of the Most talked about 800 meter ridiculous runs in the history of the event of the Olympics. Though a runner could be that far off the back running the pace that was, that he thought was his level and he thought they were all running too hard and he didn't feel that good. And you know, after the first 400, he just got contact back with the last runner. And then by the 600 meter he actually felt comfortable again because they'd slowed a little bit and he caught to the middle of the pack and then he just went for it with 200 to go and ended up winning. And it was the most ridiculous race to watch at that high level. We're talking Olympics here where a runner can be so far back and again, it's execution and backing what you're capable of and giving your all. And at the end of the day, if it's good enough, brilliant. But if it's not, at least you know, you've executed in a way that's not going to leave you wishing what might have or what could have.

That's it for this episode. We're happy to be back. Thank you very much for listening to us and we'll see you very soon the next episode. Thank you.