Why You Aren’t Testing Enough and What To Do About It

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. Today's episode doesn't have a clear subject title, and that's because we're doing a bit of an ad hoc episode on a bunch of topics that we are finding really exciting at the moment. We're just finding with sport. There's so much to talk about, and we could just talk for days, which we do, and we happen to record some of them and put them into a podcast episode for an hour for hopefully your enjoyment each week. But we've got some ad hoc questions that we've been getting recently, which we've been answering and we found would be really valuable for the podcast because they're common questions, common problems, and the solutions will help you train smarter and race faster, which is always our aim. So it's a really exciting episode for us. We're going to talk about a lot of the things that we love and we can't wait to get into it. Dad, welcome to another episode in a makeshift studio. Podcast studio. We're away from the Get Fast podcast studio. Welcome in. What is your gratitude for the episode?

Well, it's along those lines. I'm looking forward to today's podcast because there are some questions that keep cropping up and for the new listeners who haven't heard the answers to those questions, but for the old listeners, it's just a reminder that this is a common theme. People are asking similar questions that you had right at the start of your journey. But, yeah, because we're out of our home environment, as we said in last week's podcast, my gratitude's based around that and the fact that I can go riding with my two sons. I have three sons and one daughter, but that I can actually ride with two of my sons. I'm so grateful the sun's shining. I was sitting in the. In the first class, as they call it, where I had you and Liam in front and I was just sitting behind on a recovery day. I was pushing 80 watts and my heart rate was 90 while you two were chatting away. It was. The sun was shining on our backs and I took a few photos. It was great. So my gratitude is to be able to ride. Yeah.

With.

And I don't get the opportunity to do that with you ever. So it's great because we live in different parts of the city or suburbs or states. And on top of that, you and I actually got to do a training session together, which is one of our hard intensity training sessions, the VO2 session, which I definitely need work on. In fact, most people need work on. And you know, I'm so used to training on my own numbers alone and I don't push people to train together, but it was good to have one other person. And you know, you're clearly a better rider than I am and so therefore you wouldn't say clearly, but you're giving me, you're giving me, you know, between five and ten seconds, start on every three minute effort or two minute effort or two and a half minute effort. And the incentive for you to catch me before the end of those three minutes was huge. And the incentive for me to not let you catch me was huge. So I was worried that we would be pushing outside our range. But as it turned out I was at the top of the range and so are you. And I've found it hard to get to the top of the range and all of a sudden I've got one other person training with me which is enabling me to think more competitively. And as I say to people, you know, stay in the range and ride to the top if you can. Stay in the range and ride at the bottom if you're not feeling it. But there's days where you've got someone around you, as long as you're not going crazy and going way outside your range and above it, it's still a great session to do with someone.

And yeah, I think that's a really important distinction to make is because we don't encourage group training. But if you can make the session work and you do plan it out properly like we did and you decide that these efforts, the session you're doing is on the same goal. Firstly, it's actually part of your week. So yeah, you want to do the same session, but writing together doesn't work. Just doing the same session. You have stagger it out and we've been doing that our whole lives with different training groups. And you would always, you know, our local kids community when we're running together, you would always handicap everyone in the efforts. You would never make the running groups all start the same because it was just unfair. The fastest person was getting the least around the most amount of rest and the person at the back was getting the least amount of rest and expected to keep up at the same pace. So that doesn't work.

And plus the faster people are getting Incredible endorphin releases. And the people who are getting left behind are going to drop off the training session and not come. And by almost handicapping the training session for every effort, it's incentive. Like, you know, I know that you're chasing me. It's incentive for me to try and stay away. It's. It's a win. Win.

Absolutely. My gratitude is yesterday was the winter solstice, so the shortest day of the year. And I'm so happy that that's happened already. And every day from here is just up. Every day is just getting longer and longer again. Really nice. And it feels weird because we've still got so much winter to go. But you know, in the middle of summer, when you get the summer solstice and it's the longest day of the year, you don't really think about our days are getting shorter now, but. Because you're just enjoying summer. But I like that perspective. It gives us some hope to get back towards summer, which can't complain about now because we're in the sunshine.

I absolutely love that you've reminded me of that because that's a turning point for me. The days are now going to get slowly longer by minutes. And we've almost, you know, the halfway mark. I hate the summer solstice because halfway of our summer's finished at least. I know half of our winter. Winter really is behind us. So. Awesome.

What's caught your attention? There's a lot of things happening in our favorite sports around the world.

Well, I don't know where to begin, but I was talking to you earlier about I just can't keep up with all the events that are going on. And, you know, the Tour de Suisse just finished on the cycling scene, which I love to follow. You know, we've had the Tour of Romandy, the Tour of Slovenia, the Tour de Suisse, Criterium Dauphine, the Giro. And also one of the really important events that's happening now is the national championships in Europe. So every country is having their national road race championships and time trial. So when they get to the Tour de France, this is a tradition that the European countries and I know a lot of the other non European countries are doing the similar thing. Australia does it in January and you get to wear your national jersey for the whole season. And so it's a big thing in the Tour de France to be able to ride the French national champions jersey or, you know, for our favorite, Wout van Aert, riding the Belgium national champions jersey. So they want to win that. And get to the big event like the Tour or the Giro or the Vuelta in the national jersey. So that's kind of an exciting. There'll be all those races in the next two weeks, pre Tour de France.

As well as what you were saying, you know, all the events that we have the opportunity to access and all our athletes are doing, it just feels like events are popping up left, right and center.

I could have said in my gratitude exactly this, because I always grew up knowing exactly what job I wanted to do. And it was. I wanted to be a professional sportsman. And all I cared about was sport. And whether we were playing table tennis or badminton or marbles, I just wanted to play. Play games. And eventually I've got a job where I'm actually following sport. And it's, you know, I need to. Need to be up to speed with it. I just love that. It's, It's. There's so many good events on, you know, one of our athletes, in looking just at the athletes we coach, Nick went to the US to do the World Gravel Bike Championships a week ago against all the pros. And Nick's not a pro. He's a guy who works full time. And here he is mixing it with Tim Decker and all the best pros in the world, and he was right there with them. And that's exciting that we're actually helping a guy get to his dream. Georgina is going to Montreal to do the World Sprint titles this coming weekend. We've got guys training up for the hort route, Dave and Richard going to the Haute route, the Maratona Rob's going to, which is another event. There's all these events everywhere around the world that guys are preparing for. We've got guys doing Gold coast half marathon and marathon next week. I just keep rattling off events, you know, the UK Ironman is on in Bristol, which we've got. A guy in Cairns has just been on the Australian Duathlon titles in Canberra. There's just event after event, and the Golden League is happening, right? The Diamond League, sorry, it used to be called the Diamond League of Athletics is happening. And, you know, you can add as many as you like to that list.

Yeah, it's. It is really fun to see just the amount of things happening. It's kind of overwhelming. It's almost like so many things were stopped with COVID and then we just weren't expecting everything to come back. And it feels like it's come back with a vengeance, which is really nice. But like you said, there's just so many different sports you know, we talk about triathlon, where There's Sprint Olympic 70.3 and Full Ironman, distant races, but that's just. That's just scratching the surface of what's available. You know, all our cycling athletes are just finding events left, right and centre. We're doing a handicap race on Sunday, which we're really excited for. Just a local club race. But there's just so much opportunity to test yourself. And that's the fun of it. You know, you train a lot and we've trained a lot over the last two years without races. And now we get to just try a hand at all these different things. And it's funny when you sit down and try and map out your goals, because we had this conversation last week, you almost. There's, you know, when you're picking events like this and they're all kind of different sports, suddenly you're thinking, well, am I training for five different sports here? I mean, what am I really trying to focus on? But it is really exciting.

Yeah. And there's so many opportunities now. And look at. I still got reminded that the whole. I think it was the whole Jumbo Visma team had to leave the last set of tours that were on with COVID With COVID yeah. And you just forget that. It's still. It's still quite a significant thing in the community that, you know, in Australia, I think there's 40 people dying per day. That was 30, it's moved to 40, and they're predicting it'll be 50. Is it per month or per day? I think it's per day. Anyway, it's one too many. And so it's not. It's not going away yet. We're all living with it now and things seems to be back to normal, except the infection is still worldwide in a massive way and you can't take for granted that everybody's immune to it. With all of the vaccines are available, people are still contracting it. And I just saw Sargan has had it for the third time. Pretty unlucky.

Yeah, absolutely. What caught my attention is a friend called me up last week and said that they wanted to do a half marrow and they were just going to do it solo. They just wanted to have a crack at it and tick off a goal. And then they said that the longest run they'd done so far is 11Ks. And we're asking for some advice about it. And you can imagine how that conversation went. But what are your thoughts on someone attempting an event like a half marathon? And you could give the marathon example and the furthest they'd done is half the distance. What would you say to them?

Well, unfortunately, I'm just a party pooper, aren't I? My answer is don't do it. But to be fair, if you want to do something, I just can't get around my head that you want to do something where the outcome's going to be uncomfortably awful, but you'll tick the box. So it's just not my way of thinking. But I firmly believe that people should have a crack at whatever they want in whatever level of preparation they've got. That's fine. So I am changing my viewpoint. Most definitely I'm changing my viewpoint, but I still don't think it's what you should do. If you want to have a crack at something, give yourself a chance. I always use the examples. Going into an exam, you know, you know nothing. You're going into the exam and you know you're going to fail. What's the point of going in there? That that's how I look at it. Got to give yourself some chance. And look, you might say that, well, I've done 11k out of 21 as my longest run. I've given myself some chance. That's true. It's better than no training. So the answer is, you know, you have to be super conservative on the day and, and, and a whole lot of things have got to go well for you to have an enjoyable fun day out of it. And I think that's the thing that I see as the biggest problem with going to something under prepared. It's not fun, there's no enjoyment factor. It's actually agony and you hate it. And more likely than not you'll never do it again because it was so uncomfortably bad experience or your mindset is I'll never do that to myself again. I'll be prepared next time. So there's two outcomes that could possibly come out of it. So with those two thought processes, I would say, yeah, have a crack.

That's basically how the conversation went. And I said, a lot of people have asked me this question and I ask this question all the time. And I always say there's no doubt you can complete the half marathon. How you do it is a totally different story. I'm sure you could get through it. At worst case scenario if you had to walk two and a half to three hours or in this person's case, you know, they can run 5, 6 minute k pace, so a slowest result for them would be walking or shuffling at 8, 10 minute k pace. So I have no doubt you can do that. Is that what you want to do, though? And for some people, the reward of ticking off the goal like you're saying and saying you completed it outweighs the pain of suffering through it under prepared and that's fine. And so this is the conversation you have, but what is the goal? And that's the next question. Are you. What's the purpose of you doing this? Is it just to tick it off or you want to get fitter? And he was saying, well, no, I've been really getting into my running and I want to get into it properly. And he was saying, should I do it or not? And I said, I'm not going to give you an answer to that. If you want to do it, you can do it. Here's the strategy. Be super conservative, etc, etceter. If it was one of our athletes, we would say to them, don't do it. And he said, that's all I needed to hear. He said, I want to keep running properly. And exactly what you're saying, if you do it and stuff is so bad that you could end up injuring yourself because you're not prepared properly, or you just hate it because it hurts too much, then that's not worth it. You'd rather train properly and then have a crack at it when you feel really prepared. And then you'll probably get the bug and want to be more prepared. Even more prepared next time.

Yeah, select the event that gives you enough time. So defer it. That's all I'm saying.

Absolutely. Continuing with the topic of questions, we do mention Erg Mode a bit on this podcast and now when it comes up, we just say, you know how we feel about Erg Mode, we don't like it, end of story. Go back and listen to old episodes. And we've had a few more comments recently across the various social media platforms saying, where do you speak about it? Why don't you like it? Because we constantly get new listeners and I actually struggled to find exactly where we spoke about it out of all the episodes we've done. So I figured we'd just answer the question again once and for all. Why don't we like Erg Mode?

And it's not just one answer. There's a whole lot of reasons why it's not such a good option to choose when you're training. Number one, it's lazy because the actual machine is controlling your cadence and you're just having to keep up with it. So it's not teaching you good bike skills, good bike pedaling technique. Some would say it is teaching you that because it's forcing you to pedal higher. So that is true. But the machine is actually determining how you should be pedaling and you're not. The minute you leave that machine and start to do that outside, you actually are waiting for the machine to do it for you. And all of a sudden you have to create that good pedaling technique. So that's one aspect. But I suppose the main one is if you're doing a training session and you're using the Erg mode Zwift, have this unfortunate algorithm where if I said to you in the trainingpeaks program that I've set for you, I want you to ride between 200 watts and 220 watts, ERG mode will sit you at 210. It'll sit you halfway between the range that we've set. It won't let you go to 200 or 220. It'll hold you at 210 unless you manipulate it yourself by reaching over to your laptop and changing the setting so you can go up or down. And that's kind of artificial, isn't it, having to do something to the computer. But what's the problem with sitting halfway? The problem with that is you've lost the overload, progressive progression adaptation that we're trying to search for in training. So over a three week period, if I'm asking you to do that same session where your range is between 200 and 220 for three weeks in your training block, you will ride at 210 for three weeks. No matter how you feel, if you feel like you want to ride at 220, it won't let you unless you manually change it. So we want the freedom to ride wherever we want in the range. We want the freedom to ride at 200 if we're feeling crap today, we want the freedom to ride at 210 if we're feeling, you know, 7 out of 10, we want the freedom to ride at 220 watts if we are feeling great. But the Erg mode stops you from doing that. Erg mode also applies to cadence. It does exactly the same thing. If I say to you, ride at 90-100rpm. ERG mode at Cadence on Swift will ride you at 95rpm unless you manually change it mid ride. So really that's the main reason that stands out to me. And the second one is it's something that it's manipulating your, you know, it's pedaling for you and when you come to do outside riding, that function isn't available to you. So let's just keep it. Even though it's just an unrealistic training platform we're using, let's try and keep it more real if we can. So that would be the third reason. So when you go outside, people are lost and they pedal terribly because they're used to the machine controlling their pedaling action, and they have to now generate it themselves and the body's not used to doing it. Your body will adapt to whatever you've trained at. If you've trained for two years on Erg Mode mode indoors, when you go outside, you're lost. You're literally lost because you're waiting for the machine to give you the feeling of. Of what you're supposed to be doing with your pedaling action.

That's a really good argument, especially for the hard sessions. But for the recovery sessions, I recently saw a good argument for that as well, against Erg Mode. And that was. It was comparing two graphs of a. Of a cyclist who was doing a recovery ride or a Zone two ride, even. And the first one had them. You start the ride, and it took them straight to Erg Mode, and they were doing 40 minutes at zone two and then down. And it looked at their heart rate, and their heart rate completely spikes at the start because it's. They really jump into it and then it's. I think there was a steady drift there as well, or something. There was some. Just some key parts of the ride that didn't look great, as well as the fact that it feels shocking. You know, the machine holding you in that when it's supposed to be a recovery ride or a zone 2 ride, they're very close in nature. And then there was another graph of a cyclist who does their own recovery ride, and they start pedaling, and then they go right back down in watts because they're feeling crap at the start. They're probably getting rid of some lactate from yesterday's session, and they increase the watts again. And the graph's kind of all over the shop. And eventually, after 10 or 15 minutes, they settle at a wattage that's comfortable and they sit on that. And the thing is, their heart rate stays low the whole time and remains that way and remains really steady. And they finish that session feeling really replenished, refreshed. They've got what they wanted out of it. And that's two different ways of doing a recovery session. And one rider feels really good, the other rider feels like they've just done another session because they've been forced into a wattage that might not have felt comfortable that day. That's the whole point of a recovery day, is to make you feel better, not worse.

I love that point you've brought up. And I'm. Most of the times I get on my bike, the first five minutes is the most uncomfortable, whether I've got an easy day coming or whether I've got a hard day coming. And I just have this mindset every time. Let my legs catch up. That's what I think. Okay, I don't care if I'm riding 50 watts for five minutes. I'm just letting that. Sometimes you. Usually I'm just letting my legs catch up. And then all of a sudden, 10 minutes into the ride, I look down and I'm now at 100 watts and my legs are. It might be started at 85 RPM and now I'm spinning away at 98, 100 and my legs have caught up and I'm ready to go now into my actual warm up section. So the point you made is so, so accurate. And I don't know whether it's because I'm taking longer to warm up because I'm getting older, but it's certain. Certainly feels like I need more time to let my body catch up with what I'm actually aiming to do for the day. So hopefully that makes sense. With the Erg mode, there's a few key things that there's just something not right about letting a machine dictate what you want to do. And it takes away that freedom and most importantly, it takes away the progressive overload which we strive for.

A lot of people use the argument, I don't want to harp on this too much, but a lot of people use the argument that it's good for beginners because it forces matter wattage. And I would say the opposite. Beginners need to practice more pedaling properly. It's probably a more advanced person might use it to force them at a certain wattage. Again, we're not advocating for that. We would just say never use it. But the beginning argument to me is invalid. I think that's when a rider needs to learn the most how to ride at a certain wattage and how to practice pedaling properly. Next topic is testing and we did a podcast, one of our very first ever podcast episodes. Probably don't go back and listen to it because the audio recording is horrible and the topic you can go back and listen if you want, but the topic is why do we test so much? And we still get lot of questions and queries about as a coaching group we test way more than a lot of other coaching groups out there. And people are still shocked at how often that is. And we wanted to clear up some reasons why. And also the fact that it's not just FTP test every single time there's variation in it, but there's such value in constant field testing right from the start.

I want to say that I do spend a fair bit of time explaining why we're testing to our new athletes. And even athletes who have been coaching for maybe six months, they still haven't changed their mindset around it. There's resistance and I really feel that they're thinking about it the wrong way. And that's what my goal is, to make sure that they're understanding why we're doing it. Because once you have that mindset of this is going to be helpful to my progress, then you should embrace it, not resist it. So there's a whole lot of points that I want to go through that will enable you to understand what the purpose and goal of constantly evaluating where you're at at any particular stage of your program. Those words rather than saying testing mean more. Oh test. Fear, anxiety, resistance. I don't want to, I don't want to put myself through all of that. Well, that's the wrong way to look at it. I, I want to know if what I've done in the last three weeks is working. So I want to continually measure myself in any way, shape or form that I can think of. Whether it's a zone two ride where I'm trying to keep my heart rate under 136 yet the average speed for the ride if I do exactly the same course and I used to use this when I had no data, I use exactly the same circuit from start to finish. I can get there 30 seconds quicker with the same heart rate and be able to push higher power. There's a measurement of test of how fit I'm getting, how my aerobic capacity is improving. It's not a measurement of my FTP or my running pace. On my swimming per 100 meter pace. It's an actual. It's a data point that helps me in a zone 2 ride. Another example would be if I'm doing half Ironman or Ironman race ready training phase. I want to be doing out and back 30k efforts or 40k efforts or if it's, if it's a marathon, if it's an Ironman race, I might be doing 260k. If it's out and back, starting at the same point, finishing at same point. And therefore I'm trying to see that I think I can ride at 75% of my FTP in an Ironman. In these two sessions, these two efforts, 260k efforts, am I able to ride 75% or is 75% too high? I'm finding this out in training before race day and if I, you know, if I have done four of those in the last seven weeks, which is what you should be doing in a race ready phase, you will have four examples of where you sit and they may vary, the distance may vary between 120 and 160. And sometimes we do 180k as intervals, as broken up intervals. And so that's a test without it being a formal test. It's a training session, it's your Ironman training session. But you are testing yourself to see come race day you can look back on that data and go I want to ride at 190 watts for the whole 180k. That's what I want to do. Even though I tested 178 was the best I could do, but I still want to have my race plan at 190. And you look at me going, well that doesn't make any sense but that's the type of response I'm getting. And I'll have to say, but you didn't ride at 190 for any of your training sessions. Yeah, but on race day I'll be better. Well no, that's not going to happen on race day. You won't be better. And if you ride at 190 you'll walk the whole marathon. So, so understanding that evaluating training sessions, whether it's an actual FTP test or a 10k run or a 1500 meter swim, they're only part of what the testing protocol is because we're trying to measure how our progress is going at any given point of any given season. So that's kind of where I want to start.

Well, let's clear that up straight away. So we do have formal testing weeks scheduled into the the program quite regularly where, where the whole week is based around a swim time trial, a cycling time trial and a run time trial. Or if you're just a cyclist or a runner, then it's just around a cycling time trial and run time trial. And you do need less deload that week. But for the triathletes they it's really a recovery week based around those scheduled tests. And that is an intimidating week, no doubt, but they are really important to have in there. And then around that, we're having all these other example of field tests that you're talking about where it's race simulation. And technically what you're saying is that every training session is a chance to test your numbers, which is very true. But what we call these tests or race simulations is where you're really putting yourself in that race environment. And you might put your race wheels on your bike, you might put your aero helmet on, you might do a proper warmup as if it's a race. You might structure your nutrition that morning like it's race day nutrition compared to just having whatever, whatever fuel you need to get through the training session. So they're really important distinctions. And I guess the summary is we're just trying to make sure we're not leaving any opportunity on the table. Because you're constantly evolving your fitness, which is why the testing is so important. Because you do a block of training, your fitness increases. You need to do another testing week to see how far you've progressed so that your next block of training you can train to your new numbers. We've established that many times. But even in those blocks, it gives you confidence for if you do a time trial, a random 5K time trial off an endurance ride, which we throw in sometimes just to see where you're at, that can give you confidence that, wow, I can run that pace off this endurance ride. Next running session, I know I can hit these numbers, I'm going to actually increase it this week. Even though I tested three weeks ago, my next testing week isn't for another three weeks. It's this stuff week by week. You're actually getting as much opportunity as you can to get that stimulus overload which is going to make you become a better athlete.

Unbelievable what you've just said. It sums up the exact main goals around why we're testing. And, and also, don't forget, you know yourself how you've trained and you are super confident, aren't you? Coming into testing week, if you've had a three week block where you've nailed it, and you will be quite surprised if you don't do well in your testing week because let's face it, you want to keep improving your numbers. That's what our goal is each month. We want to make sure that we were better than the previous month, better than previous six months ago. And I always say to people when they start the numbers you have today, in six Months time, you'll look back at the number you had today and you're very happy with it today. But in 6 months time you could be 4 watts higher, you could be 14 watts higher. In some cases you could be 40 watts higher depending on the entry level you come in to the program at. Obviously the people who are really at the top of their game have been doing it for a long time. The gains are minimal. People who are new to it, the gains are maximal. So you've got an idea. And this is one of the things that I think helps keep focus for people who say to me, I'm really getting tired with the program because I've been doing it for such a long time. I just don't see how that's possible when you know that every single opportunity in the period of whether it's three weeks or four weeks, you're going to actually be measuring how you're going. So my mantra is I better pull because I don't want to get to that testing day and have had three weeks of crap training, have had three weeks of inconsistent training, had three weeks of not be bothered training. Where my mind's going, I'm getting tired. Well, that's an indication where you actually shouldn't be training at all if those things are happening to you. But I find it such a motivator to me that I know this is going to come up in a few weeks. I want to do everything I can to prepare. Once again, it just comes down to your own mindset. Can I prepare myself for this mini little test? And, and it's a reflection of how can I prepare myself for my a race. It's a microscope look at what happens. So if I've been sick for two of those weeks, my expectation is completely different than the confident person I am. When I've nailed three weeks of training, if I've had an injury, if there's been stuff going on, I have different expectations, okay? My goal is to match what I did last time. I have no expectations expectation of beating it because these things have happened to me in that period. And to go in with the attitude that I should have improved is madness. And that's really detrimental. And you will have almost depression about what you're doing.

It's funny, it's ironic that the people that resist testing it becomes more of a negative feedback loop because you resist it because it's uncomfortable, because it's scary, because you get anxious and then you build it up too much and then every time you do it, it becomes worse. Because you putting it off, and we do have athletes that put it off continuously and just miss the testing sessions. Um, and then what, what do you think's gonna happen on race day? You know, it's this really bad negative cycle that gets you to your aid, race in. In bad shape. Whereas the people that embrace it and do do them all and look forward to it, like you're saying, and, and treat every test just as a chance to practice, just as a chance to feel those nerves, to feel that little bit of anxiety which we all get before hard efforts. You do that enough times, by the time you, by the time you've come to race day, you've experienced so many different scenarios where one time you did a test like you said, you were completely. You were sick. Adjust your expectations. One time the Walmart didn't go to plan. One time you were absolutely on fire and you nailed your numbers. And by the time you get to race day, you have all these experiences in your experience jar that you can draw from to make feel like you're well prepared. And that's a really key point. But the next point I wanted to touch on was just the value of field testing in comparison. Because we know that lab testing, for example, is the gold standard of physiological measurement. There's no doubt about that. That. And that is so valuable. And we've discussed this on the podcast a few times, and we had Nick from S Performance come on and talk about that a few podcast episodes ago and why, you know, that gold standard could really give you a deep insight into what your body's doing. And we know that the limitations of that are that you can only do it at certain times throughout the year because lab testing takes more equipment, it's more expensive, and it's more in a controlled environment. And so you have to take that with the field tests. Right? And so for most people, they think field tests are just the time trials that we're talking about, just an FTP test. But that's not all it is. An FTP test gives one part of the picture. You use that FTP test to then go do a race simulation and go do a 40 kilometer time trial out on the road based on the FTP test you did. And then you can use both those numbers to get a really accurate estimation of what you can do on race day. And it's the same thing with a 5k or 10k time trial off the bike. It's the same thing with a half marathon practice session. It's the same thing with a, a practice brick Race, you know you're using all these things in conjunction with your, with your time trials to get as much data as possible to give you the best outcome on race day.

Yep, again, you've nailed it. And just to add to that, if the field testing is, is the ultimate test and no matter what you do indoors, lab testing or training on the, on the kicker or running on a treadmill, they're not the experience you're going to have on your race day. So your final testing period can't be on any of those indoor stuff. It'd be good to do a lab VO2 test just prior, but you still need to test that outdoor because what are you experiencing outdoor that's different to indoor? Well, the conditions, there's uneven temperature where the temperature changes from the start of the race to the finish of the race. The wind, the terrain, the ups and downs of the hills, they're the three key things that you can't do in on a kickr in a lap. So come race day you need to have the most up to date outdoor testing possible. And I'm absolutely adamant that going in with an FTP test done on the kickr is next to useless for your upcoming 40k time trial or 70.3 or Ironman race where you're trying to get your 75% if you're an Ironman, you're trying to get your 80 to 90% if you're a half ironman. You know, these are numbers that are really important and if you don't do them in the, in the conditions that you're going to experience on race day, then you're going in with kind of numbers that are artificial. And I get a little bit frustrated where people go it doesn't matter where I do it. And I say, well, it actually does. And the next step is to be a little bit more specific is let's say we're using a 5k run as your time trial. If you just run with the tailwind for 5k that's artificial, that's actually not going to give you a real experience of what it's like to run into a headwind and run with a tailwind and therefore your average speed is going to be different so your time will be faster. Just like if you run into a headwind the whole way, that's actually not helping the data that you're going to use. Just like on the bike, if you just do one direction and it happens to be a tailwind or it's semi downhill, you know, we can't use the average speed in our data for race day planning. So there's so many things specific about just don't do it outside and leave it. I'm doing it outside. Do it outside properly. So, you know, people think that that's a little bit too technical. But if you're not going to do it properly, I'm a believer.

Don't do it and do it enough. And that comes back to the point I was saying before. It's that when you do it in all these different scenarios, you just have so much data to look at and to pull from. When it gets to your race, how confident are you? Yeah.

Oh, well, I've done it 17 times this way.

Yeah.

I can. I can know that that's my base number which leads to the next thing. It's a guide.

Yeah.

We're not going to stick to it from start to finish. Oh, I'm not going to. It's 18k out of a half marathon with 3k to go. I can't go outside my range. That is not what we're saying. Once you're on top of your race and you've done 12k or 14k and you're confident as you progress through the race, the risk is less. We've talked about that. At 6k out of a half marathon, the risk is quite high for you to start going, I've got this. And start running above your pb. You know, if you feel you can do that and you're happy to take a risk and the outcome could be a fail, then go for that. I want people to race and use their data as a guide. So many people are getting or misunderstanding what we're saying in our coaching philosophy. It's this is to help you from ruining your day. And then I want you to race. Once you've got control of the race, race it. You are in there to do a pb. You want to improve yourself from what you did last time. Don't be happy with staying with the same numbers. You've done three or four races, put yourself under some pressure and try to see where or how far you can actually go compared to what you've ever done before. And that comes to the next point, which is you've probably got a whole lot of questions. I'm taking a lot of time on this, but execution. And we talk about testing. Why are we testing? Because we are trying to practice execution and whether it's just a training session and you're meant to be doing three 15 minute efforts as a runner and you're Supposed to run between 4 minute K pace and 4:30. Your execution in that range in a training session, it's not a test, it's just a training session. But you're practicing running your race pace and the minute you look down and you're doing 355, you're outside the range. So you are now telling yourself, ease up. You look down and you're running 4:45. You're running too slow. I need to pick it up a bit. So this is you practicing execution, not in a testing protocol, but just in a training session. And of course in our testing protocol sessions, we absolutely want to be learning how to execute. So testing has got its really positive outcomes because we're getting data. But the key thing that people forget about testing is it's a session where you're practicing how to measure your effort. And that's what counts on race day. That's the big thing that people get to the end of the race going, ah, I went too hard. That's the normal answer I get. I hardly ever get, ah, I went too easy. And I had so much left. That's 1% of the people who finish an Ironman. Half Ironman, you know, half marathon. You know, Nick at the unbound, you know, it's a 300k gravel race. He's not going to get to the end and tell me you went too easy. You know, the execution practice is for you to know what your numbers are and try to stick to them. Good example. We watched a YouTube video on Dylan Johnson, who also did the unbound gravel race, who's been an incredibly good athlete. This is the world championships of gravel, so the very best riders in the world are here. And his best time was 11 hours 30. And he tried a new strategy where he was not going to ride like a sheep with the front pack if he found that the ride, the power he was pushing was too high.

And this is a guy that's come top 10 multiple times.

Yeah, he's come fifth and his best time was 11:30. And to summarize it very quickly, he didn't go with the front pack for the whole. He dropped off. Just like we talked about with Christian at the Ironman at the world championships and Lionel. So there's this now it almost feels like I feel like we're getting our message out there, even though they've probably never heard of our podcast. But these are the things that even the best at the highest level are saying, no, I know what I'm capable of. Let's not be A sheep. And let's stick with my numbers that I know that I'm only capable of because he said he faded. He looked at his Data from the 2009 Eames last time I think he did it before COVID and I think he was 280 average power and he finished at 228 average power for the second half. So he faded badly. So this time he wanted to ride the same power the whole way through. And the conclusion was he finished an hour and a half. Hour and 10 minutes. I think he finished in 10. Something he did just broke 10. Yep. So he finished an hour 20 better than he did. He came when he did 11:30. I think he was in the top 10 this time he was 25th. So his result was diff was worse in placing. His time was an incredible pb. What do you conclude from that? I conclude that the standard is improved that much. And that's what he said. Well, I'm so happy improving an hour and 20, but I'm just against better people now. So that's kind of an example of how execution is crucial to getting the outcome. And if the standard's better on the day and you've planned your race and executed it well, you've got to be happy.

Absolutely. I think to clarify those numbers, I think it was 2018, he did 1130, 2019, he did 1040, and then this year did 958. So it was.

And you went the wrong way for at six games.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I guess in summary, you're just allowing yourself to make more informed decisions. That is the whole summary of this whole conversation. And the more informed decision you can make or you're able to make, the better you're going to perform. And I want the listeners to really take in what you just said. Dad, coming from you, who's the most competitive racer? I think I know. But you're so adamant about knowing all this data, yet what you're talking about when it comes to racing and taking the race on, you couldn't walk the walk any more than anyone. And listeners need to know that it's not just robotic data following. You are the biggest data nerd. You are trying to give yourself as much information as possible. So in a race, you know what kind of decisions you can make that will give you the best chance of success. But then you're willing to race because some people go too far the other way and they use data in training, but once they get to the actual race, they want to look at their garmin. They let's say, I don't want to pay attention to my numbers. I'm just going to race it. Whereas you're so not afraid to look at your numbers because you can say, well, I'm in this breakaway and I'm currently holding this power. And I know that if I sustain this much longer, I'm not going to be able to hold it, no matter how strong mentally I think I am. It's just too far above my ability. It's ability and ambition getting confused again. So that's what we're talking about. Examples of using the data to make really informed decisions. In that sense, you shouldn't roll a turn again, or you shouldn't stick with this pack, or you need to back it off a little bit and guess that's what we're talking about.

Yeah, there's a whole lot of things in there that you've said. So, for example, if I'm in a race and I'm talking about cycling race as compared to a time trial or a triathlon or a running race. If I'm in a running race and the pack are running, my average pace for the half marathon is going to be 4:30 and I'm in the pack and they're running 4:20. I at the start of the race will cope with that for a short period of time. And if they continue to run at that pace, then I will drop off and I'll go back to my pace and then try to pick it up later on. The reason I'm sticking with them for a short period is because they may just do that at the start and then go back to a comfortable pace on a bike. It might be exactly the same thing at the start of a climb. We're halfway through the race, we get to the bottom of a climb. I know a lot of the guys in the race have no idea about measuring their effort across a 5k climb. So they're all going to ride too hard at the start. So I've just got to weather the storm. And this goes a little bit against my writing to my numbers, but this is a race situation.

Again, you're making an informed decision, which is.

Which is a different scenario. So I'll ride with them till I think that they're going to slow down, and if they don't slow down, they keep the same pace, then I'll let them go and not blow up myself and live to fight another day. But I'm not gonna. If there's still, you know, two minutes left after the top of the hill to the Finish, I'm going to go with them. I'm going to race and blow myself to smithereens if it means that's what's going to happen. So I can keep up with them to give myself every chance. But if there's 40k to go, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to ride to my numbers. If I'm doing a crit race on a Thursday night, I'm not even looking at my numbers. I'm just going with the race. If I get in a breakaway and I'm struggling a bit to roll turns, I can feel that anyway, without looking at my numbers, that I'm really struggling here. I better, actually. And then I look down and I can see I'm doing 340 watts as I roll through a turn. I can only do that at best six by two minutes. Here we are, we've got 50 minutes of the breakaway to go. So I've got to make decisions based on what I'm seeing, but more so what I'm feeling. So I have my race strategy, my numbers in my head, but I'm in there to race. So, yes, I'm absolutely going to do everything I can to do a better performance, but I'm not going to focus the whole time going, I'm not going with that break because they're riding 2.5 watts above out of my range. That's not what I'm saying. I'm using my numbers to my advantage and making informed decisions as I go. And sometimes I make mistakes on that and that's okay. But then I learn from that saying, I could have gone with them, it turned out, because they slowed up, I let them go. I shouldn't have. I should have hung on for another 30 seconds. So you can practice, practice riding way above your limits in training so that you can then withstand that onslaught. And I know that at the start of a lot of those crit races, when I look at the data from the race, if I've stayed with the whole race and I look at the data afterwards, this is really good to do as a cyclist. I see the first 15 minutes I average 300 watts and the last 45 minutes I average 240, that happens almost every week, the pace falls away. So I've just got to know that, you know, if I'm in the race going, oh, I can't handle this for an hour. Well, it didn't last an hour, it only lasted 15 minutes. So straight away I'm getting information post race about, well, I can withstand that, you know, in the future. Because I've looked at other people's numbers and shown me that the race slowed down. So it gives me confidence that I just have to withstand this. And I say that in my coaching tactics to people. You know, the race is going to be hard early. Just hide and withstand the pressure and they will slow down.

Yeah, we had a interesting conversation. We did a lab test a few years ago with a guy and he was interested that you were, you wanted to look at your watts on your Garmin while you're doing the test because he's going into max test, just need to max out. And you were just, you just wanted to know your numbers as you were going through until it was getting to a hard point. And then once like cross that hard point where you get into your max zone, you just stop looking at numbers and then you're just giving it your all. And we had a great discussion about what's was, what's better there. Because he's saying the numbers are limiting you when you're looking at them. If you know your numbers well, you know what your limits are. Once you get close to them, you're already putting a perceived ceiling on your head. He's saying if you're not looking at them, you can just go to max. And you're saying, well, no, I know my numbers really well. I know I can push myself to my max limit. Once I get up there, I'll stop looking at it. And you're both right in different contexts. And this is what we're talking about. You don't want to go one way or the other. Like you always say, you don't want to, to be extreme one way or the other. Absolutely no data or all data based and you've got to find what works for you. If you're someone that you know you can push yourself to your limit, then be happy to look at the data a bit more. Whereas if you're someone that looking at the data scares you mid race and you start to panic, then maybe you need to not look at it as much and focus on racing and focus on just hanging onto the wheel in front. And I guess it just comes down to, you know, once it gets to that hard part of the race, you know, the numbers just stop mattering at some point and it's just, that's your time to do a pb. That's your time to go further than you have before. That's your time to get more out of your body before. That's what all the Training is about, that's what all the preparation is about. That's what the whole taper phase is about in that situation. To dig deeper than you do in training and in race simulation and produce a result that you haven't produced before. And that's how world records are broken, that's how world championships have won. That's how rice is a one, you'd say.

And it really depends on the sport. You know, I was giving an example in cycling there where it is a peloton, a mass group of people we could use the example of in Gabritsen with his 1500 meter and you know, you've been astounded how many people in that race still run ahead of him in the first part of the event. Knowing that he's the fastest runner and he's behind them. You know, that's almost shocking to you because they all should be just following him and then trying to out kick him because he's going to run the fastest time. He's run faster than all of them, yet they're in front of him at the start of the race. Wouldn't they be better off sticking with his pace? And this is the question, you know, how do you race? That suits you, you. And there's, you know, time trialing is a different kettle of fish because you're on your own on a bike and there's no drafting advantage, you're solo in a running race, there's pacemakers, there's sitting in behind people in wind, in the headwind. On a race bike, the same thing. There's so many things. So it depends on the event and that's why there's so much, there's never one answer. You need to have a combination of all of it. Not be extreme as you said, not be just driven by data, not be just driven by no data and go by feel. All the information is there. My advice is to gather it all and you'll make better decisions about every single event you're ever going to be doing from this point onwards. You know, if you try to build a house with a free handed drawing of a plan compared to exact details of the measurements of what wall goes where, how high the stumps are, how deep they have to be in, the thing's going to be so much, the outcome is going to be so much better of the result of that building of that house. It's no different to you constructing your seasons plan in training, specific sessions you do specific specific C races that you put into your program so that when you come to your ultimate a race for that season and many seasons ongoing. You've got all this wealth of knowledge and understanding and information about what suits you better and what's going to enable you to be a better athlete from what you were last time in this particular event. And if you don't use those things, then I think that's you're going to be worse off. I think that that has to be hit home is these things are available. Don't be lazy. Do the preparation you need and plan well and the performance will take care of itself. But if you don't take any notice of anything that's going on around you, you're normally going to be shocked at the outcome because you didn't expect that. Or, you know, an example would be not knowing who your competitors are and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Like a different just pick a swimming event. When we watched the Olympics in Tokyo, the female I can't even think of the names because it's the world record holder from America who the Australian girl.

Beat Ariana Titmous vs. Ledecky.

And Ledecky always goes out hard and burns everybody off and makes everybody try to chase her and then they all lactate. And that's her tactic for the last 10 years. And Titmus didn't. She raced her race and then came over the top of her. So there's an example of someone knowing their competitors well and racing a strategy that's going to be effective. And it worked. You know, Inga Britzen's doing this every time he runs a 1500. He stays within his lactate levels. And then he tried to do a pacemaker world record at the, the, the.

Yeah, the last Diamond League.

Last Diamond League. And he kind of. He just missed it by 0.0 something.

It's a really good point. So since last podcast, since we we spoke about the Ingrid tactic, he since did a Diamond League race where he's completely flipped his tactic. And he wanted to do the mile world record, which was 346.3 or something. I think 346.3 and he went with the pacemaker. So pacemaker went out early and Eagan Bridson was second within 150 meters, which he never does. But. But he went out hard, went behind the pacemaker and held on and he ran 346.4 or something. He missed out on the record by 0.1 of a second, which is just so cruel. But he definitely wasn't as strong in that last 400 meters. He wasn't able to hang on one, because he's going for a record pace. But two, I do believe it's because he ran slightly differently and he didn't. I wonder if the pacemaker was able to run his pace at the start and then, then pick it up, pick it up. It would have been a different result. We don't know.

And as a coach I would be saying maybe you need to practice a bit more running outside your zone so you can, you know, Olympic Games and championships, world Championships, they never run evenly. And you need to practice uneven, unpredictable style of running.

A great example of that was Keighley Hodgkinson who won the silver 800 at Tokyo. Yamaha. Young, 19 or 20 year old, absolute gun. All her PBS are negative splits like you talk about. And at Tokyo she run an unbelievable negative split to run 156 for the 800 which was a British record. I think it was a British record. And then her coach at the same Diamond League event last week that was on her coach came on interview and said today she's running a different strategy. She's running a. She's got trying hard to run a reverse split. So harder the first lap, hang on the second lap. And she really struggled and she wasn't that happy with her time. She's still ran, I think it was 157.9 or 158.1 or something like that at a really good time. But she one faded. But two, she really lacked confidence in the third 200. And it was noticeable that she, she was just expecting to hit a wall with 200 to go. So she stayed a little bit conservative that third 200. And it's exactly what you're talking about. Her coach is doing what you're saying and saying, all right, let's change it up because you run really good negative splits. But you need to practice going out really hard in a race in case that happens at a World championship event.

So there's not one right way. That's what I'm trying to say. You know, you shouldn't always try to be conservative. There's times where you need to actually train a different way and race a different way to suit the actual event. If you're trying to qualify in your own country's national championships to get selected for the Olympics, it would be, you know, if it's a time qualification you're after or a placing, they're two different scenarios. So if they only take first and second at the national championships and nothing to do with time, then you Race the race to come first or second. If they only take time and your position doesn't matter, the position will because they'll absolutely take the first three who got the time. If you're fourth person who got under the qualifying time, you won't get selected anyway. But if it's a time selection thing, they have to make a decision about who they're going to select, then at least you've qualified. So you would race the race differently because you'd race it, try to get the time. So, you know, that's an example of all these different scenarios where you've got to actually try and adapt your strategy and all your data and information that you know against what the requirements are of the race. So I think, you know, without confusing anybody out there, you know, I'm not a believer in just data. I'm not a believer in just racing. I want to have a balance, just like that's the philosophy I have in every single thing I'm doing. I don't want to be extreme eating, I don't want to be extreme not eating. I want to have a really good healthy. That's why we're interviewing so many people about nutrition. Help me spread the word about doing things in balance. And this podcast is first and foremost about giving people information about how to train, how to race, how to plan, but trying to keep it balanced because. Because if it's all too serious and too extreme, it will get too hard, too much, it's unsustainable. I've always said that anything that's extreme, it's unsustainable. If you can eat this style of food for 25 years, that's sustainable. So it must be balanced.

Coming back full circle to the original point of this great conversation, which I've really enjoyed, we value field testing. We value testing ourselves regularly. I have seen some sports scientists online giving FTP tests a bit of a. A hard time saying it's not an accurate scientific measure. And our whole point of this conversation is it's just not about that. You're looking at it so narrow minded from a scientific view about what's the most accurate form of testing. And their argument against it is that you do your 20 minute test and you take 95% of that number to get your estimated FTP number and they just say the estimate's too wild. 95%, just a standardized number. Some athletes would be 92% of that number, some athletes would be 97%. We know that that's fine. We take that and we use that data with a whole bunch of other field tests that are super valuable. And that's what we're saying. And that's part of the coaching process that I think sometimes scientists miss. It's not about. Because when you come to race day, it's about having as much data as possible to make informed decisions. Because you're not going to know exactly what you can do in that 40k time trial or 90k time trial or 180k time trial, unless you did that exact time trial in a race, which is just so brutal to ask of someone to go do 40k time trials over and over again. One hour test to go do a 90k time trial over and over again a week out from your race. It's just not possible. So that's where our gripe is with a bit of the rhetoric out there against it. And that's why we value field chest so much. Yeah.

And it has to be in the natural environment and that's kind of. We don't make it artificial the whole time because there's so many other elements that come into it. And we really got to hone that. Part of the testing is that, you know, the lab testing is great, but you don't race in a lab. We race outside in the environment against other people.

Well, I think we'll end up finishing there. We had a whole bunch of other questions, but we got stuck on this topic for a while, which I don't mind and I hope the listeners don't mind. We hope you found it valuable. We'll have to answer a whole bunch of the other questions in another episode. I do just want to finish off by giving a shout out to. In that Diamond League race last week, Ollie Hoare, the Australian went with Inger Britzen on his record attempt. Just stuck on on his wheel, on his tail as well as he could and ended up running an oceanic record. The fastest mile ever by an Australian 347.8 or something. It was unreal. Such an incredible performance and so good to see just the Aussie talent coming through. You know, McSwain was undoubtedly the best runner out of this pack and now Ollie hall has just beaten his. You know, McSwain broke the oceanic record last year. Ollie Hall's just beaten and it's great competition. Peter bowl at the same event ran a Oceanic record as well. 144 flat for 800. So he's just on fire. So all these athletes coming to real good form for the world Championships next month as well as the comm Games and Katrina Bissette ran in one of the most stacked 800 fields World Athletics has seen probably since the Olympics and ran another sub two minutes her season best low159s. She's just consistently put up, putting up159s now, which was her goal. Now the next step is to break that PB of hers. Get 158 and get those girls to the front, front in. You know, they're running 157, so really exciting to see from an athletic perspective.

Yeah. And look, you can't help when they run the mile. You can't help but think back about the four minute mile, can you? From, you know, the 1960s and how fast. 16 seconds faster than, than the boys ran on that famous day when they break. 4 minutes, 16 seconds is the length of the straight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thirteen seconds. Sorry, yeah. 147. So it's, you know, it's nearly the length of the straight. How far that the guys who broke four minutes would be behind.

Yeah, it's, I do think about that every time I watch them all. It's, it's incredible. But that's it for this episode. We hope you've enjoyed it. Thank you very much for listening. As always, we've been getting always constant great feedback. Whether you reply to our emails or you leave a comment on YouTube or Instagram or anywhere you listen to it or on Spotify, all those comments help. So if you do like it, please go leave us a review on Spotify. That's probably the best place to help our show get to more people. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next time.