Wiping 1 HOUR Off Your 70.3 Time [CASE STUDY]

Welcome back to another case study episode where we take an example of one of our athletes, we take their improvement and we show you exactly how they did it so that you can learn and hopefully take some lessons to apply to your own training and racing and get similar improvements. Today's case study is an epic one. Our athlete wiped off over an hour between 70.3 races on the same course, same race, one year apart. That just sounds extreme, but there is more nuances to this story of exactly how they wiped off over an hour in one year, which we can't wait to tell you about. So, dad, the start of the story is an absolute classic. Can you introduce the story of Tommy for us and tell us how it all started?

First of all, Tommy is just a genuinely great human being and I know we say that a lot about all our athletes, but he epitomizes the type of athlete that we love. Very humble, willing to listen, trusting process. Yeah. Attention to detail and just wanting to improve. So this is a great story. He finished the race in 2023 in Geelong and he was in the change toilet block and there happened to be another Trivalo athlete in the toilet block at the same time. And he's told me this story that, you know, he obviously didn't look in a good way and he'd had the worst event that he could ever imagine.

He.

He barely made it to the finish line. And I think the. I don't know who the other Trivalo athlete is. I'd love to find out who that is, but I really, I'm grateful care. And he asked him if you're. If Tommy was okay and he said no, not really. And, and then Tommy sort of said, well, I sort of saw all the Trivalo people really going well throughout the race and not struggling at all. And you know, how do I get in contact with that person? And, and the Trivalo athlete said, I'll just call Jared and, and, and you'll be right. Just go from there. And, and, and I think, I think that's. And he did, and he contacted me and when I got kind of looked at his, you know, at his race and I, I just thought, oh, that's okay. I mean, he got there in the end and. Because I don't know what type of an athlete he is when he rings up. I don't know if he's a, an athlete who performed at his best on the day or an athlete who performed terribly. As it turned out a year later, that result was terrible compared to the ability that Tom has. And it was, it's a great story. I love the outcome this year, being at the race and witnessing him with a big smile on his face coming through the finish line, absolutely nailing it. And you know, you could not have seen a happier face. And it was great. It was great experience for athlete and coach.

Yeah, I love that from the Tribalo athlete. And I think, you know, he described it as himself as saying he was just a distraught him in being in the toilet block. And he just said, I've just never been so exhausted. And there's a clear difference when you're in that, in that zone at the end of a race and you see other athletes coming past. Not necessarily it's about their speed, but it's about the way they're carrying themselves. And that's what we really pride our athletes on, is finishing the race feeling really strong and such a great feeling. And yeah, so glad he took action on it straight away. And so we want to, we want to right now just compare the races, compare the results and then we'll break down how he achieved that and what happened in that year and really what we did with him. So Geelong race last year, six hours and five minutes is what he did for the 70.3. It's not about placings, but for context and relativity. He came 90th in his age group out of 105. He swam 41 minutes, he rode 3 hours 11 minutes and he ran 2 hours. And that run is a really key piece of data to, to look at and we'll explain why in a second. Because he's. His runability was far better than a two hour half marathon runner. And so to run, that shows how underprepared he was. Compare that to this year. He relatively. He came 39th out of 95. So he's gone from 90th to 39th. Different field obviously, but relative. It's, it's nice to note, but he did 4 hours 54 minutes. One year later, the same course, always similar conditions. Actually a lot of people went slower this year on the course. There was a bit more wind, swirly wind around. We found a lot of people were just fractionally off their speed. So 1 hour 10 minute improvement. So we break it down the swim 33 minutes, that's a 7 minute improvement. The ride 2 hours 37, that's a 34 minute improvement on the bike. And he ran 1 hour 35, so a 25 minute improvement on the run. And as you said, the biggest factor and the biggest improvement was he was not just short in the toilet block afterwards. I saw him after the race and he was the most bubbly, happy, energetic person out of almost the whole Trivella group. He just, his smile was as big as I've ever seen after a race and he kept shaking his head and he was just so happy. And he, I think he said thank you to me a bunch of times. I said, well, it's a trivelo system and it was dad coaching you, not me. But. But yeah, could not wipe the smile off his face. And the way he came home strong was probably the key part of that to that enjoyable experience.

Yeah. And look, he didn't have everything going his way in between that whole year. And that's one of the things we want to dive into in this case study because people think, oh yeah, if you just stay consistent, which is true, you will automatically improve. But this is ridiculous. This is an hour 10 minute improvement. I've never seen this much improvement. Like I'm pretty happy. If people can get five minutes or even 10 minutes is pretty, pretty amazing. And it's not like, you know, as you're going to find out, it's not like he was an average runner. He could run 5K in 20, 21 minutes. You know, that's, that's in the top percentage of runners. You know, if anybody can run 5 minute, 5, 5 minute k pace for 5k, you know, they're doing pretty well. That's a 25 minute 5k run. And his, his ability was a 21 minute when he first joined us. So to run two hours in a half marathon when you're capable of running a 21 minute 5K, that doesn't add up to me. And so that's, that's what we want to talk about in this case study.

Yeah, for sure. I think we can kind of start, start there and break down the data. But I guess the one point I wanted to make before we dive into that was once you did sign up, you got access to his previous training, which is always great to see when an athlete signs up and you look at where they're at now and kind of they've done in the last block and you were kind of shocked at what he'd done and actually how he finished the race based on what he'd done. So can you explain that for us? Because it's actually a really common thing we see with athletes.

Yeah, and I suppose I was shocked at what he hadn't done. He hadn't really trained or prepared properly for that event. And I Think it's easy to say, oh, I want to do the Geelong half Ironman, or I want to do a half ironman around the world. And, and we've had athletes who've never done any triathlon sign up for a half Ironman, and we're okay with that if you give yourself enough time. But I don't think you really understand how hard it is, the training and what it's like on the day. And it's, you know, if you're doing it just purely to test yourself, you know, with the biggest challenge you'll have in most of your life, well, that's exactly what you're doing. If you're underprepared, it could be an excruciatingly uncomfortable day. And that's what he experienced because he really was underprepared. And when I looked at the training, it really was very minimal training, you know, you know, spasmodic swimming at best. And, you know, I think he felt probably that he was a reasonable runner, so that was his strength. So a little bit of running and a little bit of riding. And I think when he, when he first joined the program and I put in front of him what his first week was after his testing week, I think, yeah, he would have been quite shocked at the relentlessness of the sessions. And even though they were all reasonably easy sessions, because first of all, we want him just to get his body. Because I'd seen he hadn't done any consistent training, was to get his body adapted to some consistency day after day. And I think that was a shock to him.

Yeah, look, it's. It's a conversation we have a lot and it's a pattern we see a lot where I, I'll just talk to any friend or someone that just says, oh, you're in triathlons, I'm going to do a half iron man. And I kind of. I don't want to push people when they're not asking questions. You know, you don't want to be that person that tells people what to do. But I kind of politely ask, oh, what have you been doing? Tell me about your training. And then I hear what they're doing and I just go, oh, you are. You really are under prepared for this. And you kind of have no idea what's going to hit you. But it's not my place to say, you haven't asked for help, so it's not my place to say what you need. But we definitely get athletes calling up and they're at the beginning stage of their triathlon and it's fine to be a little bit naive of, of what you need to be doing. That's why you're not a coach or that's why you're not a triathlete. You don't know. No one's ever told you before. So it's fair enough reason to not know. But that naivety is almost dangerous because people are really thinking that what they're doing is enough. And I think your words to me were that, yeah, you were, you were shocked. You actually made it through that race day in six hours, five minutes. It was, it was an incredible mental effort to get through given the lack of preparation. And so it's just a reminder for a lot of athletes that it is a big, big race and it is dangerous to go in under prepared. And there's a lot more work than you think.

Yeah, and I, I, I did learn something that, you know, he's gutsy because if you're struggling that much in an event like that, that's a good trade. And that's, you know, for every negative experience there's always a positive. And that was one I found, was, oh, geez, Tommy, he's, he's a pretty gutsy guy. He can, yeah, no matter what the conditions, he will, he will, you know, persevere at no matter what situation he finds himself in.

So the first point you notice was that one, he had not done enough endurance. But he tested him in a 5K time trial and you found out he was actually a really good runner. He ran 21 minutes, you know, for 4:12 pace for his first 5K test. And so he could run 5 kilometers really well. He actually, he could ride an hour. Okay. But he did not have that endurance. And so that was a really interesting starting point.

Yeah. And you can be confused a lot when you see someone's ability and you think, oh, you know, that's great. And you would presume, and you should never do that in life, don't presume anything. You should actually find the facts. And so to get him to run, you know, an hour and a half or two hours, he just didn't have the ability to sustain a pace because he was good for 20 to 30 to 40 minutes at best. And the event he's training for was, you know, in the end it was a two hour run. So just because you can run 5k well doesn't mean you're going to transfer that across to, you know, how we use our formulas where 5k should know 21 minutes should equate to a 44 minute 10k should equate to a 1, a 1:40 half marathon. Should equate to a 3:10 marathon. Well, you know, that's okay if you've done a lot of endurance work to make that formula work, but if you haven't done a lot of endurance work, then that's out the window. And that was the first thing I noticed. And so it was, you know, it was almost like, oh, okay, we need to really get your endurance up and we can just forget about running fast. Let's get you running longer each week and adding on a small percentage to your duration only. Yep. And the key, I was just going to say, and the key thing not only for, for his running was for his bike as well, you know. You know, oh yeah, I can, I can ride, I can do 30, 40K. Well, can you do 50, 60 or can you do 80, 90 or can you do over 100? When's the last time you did, you know, if you're, if your race time is 3 hours 11, a lot of your training should have been between 3 and 3 hours 30. And how many of those did you do? I couldn't find any. So, you know, that, that to me says that, you know, that's what we need to do is just spend time getting your aerobic fitness up. And so that's what we got to, got to work with straight away. And of course he had such a bad experience in April, it was March, in 2023, April, May, June. He was just on board with, you know, with progressing himself. And, and we didn't throw him into a three hour ride straight away. You know, we didn't throw him into an hour and a half run. It was, it was just starting, starting low duration and just adding time to it.

Yeah, and I love that, you know, off the top of your head you can just kind of look at an athlete's data. And what you just said then was super accurate. You straight away you go, okay, 21 minute 5k runner. You know, in your head you quickly do some math and go, he's about 140 half marathon runner. He should be, you know, fresh. And we use our actual equations and we would get quite specific with that. But off the top of your head, that's accurate. And then yeah, potentially a three out 3:30 to 3:40 marathon. But yeah, as you said before, something definitely doesn't add up. So I want to keep going, we've done the racing data, I want to keep going through the training data in terms of the improvements in how much improved and then we're going to talk about. Yeah, even more specificity in terms of. So we've spoken about. The main factor at the start was the endurance. He had to get his endurance up. That was the first thing to do. But then we're going to go through some specifics about how his training unfolded. So the swim, starting with the swim, his first 1km time trial with us is 24 minutes at 228 pace. A year later, just before Geelong, he did another 1k swim. He did 1811. So that's a six minute improvement at 149 pace. So 228 pace to 149, that's whopping. So his indoor FTP number went from 171 watts to 257 watts. Almost 100 watt increase over the space of a year. But more specifically, how did that translate to speed outdoors? This is really interesting. He went from 33ks an hour for his 20 minute test outdoors to. Honestly he went to 37ks an hour towards the back end of last year. But even since then he went up to 42Ks an hour in his last test. And you kind of go, how does that math add up? You know, how can he improve 5km an hour in that whole period with that big wattage increase? And then between the end of last year and Geelong, which was last month, he didn't improve his watts that much but he speed dramatically went up. And that's because so many factors that we always talk about of where you can get free speed is he got a bike fit, which is a massive difference and he was just continuously learning and improving and making leaps into all the other factors that we talk about, how to ride the bike properly, how to execute better, you know, ride the bike evenly with more speed, which results in a great average speed at the end. So that's a really important note. And then obviously his run, we mentioned it was 21 minute 5k at the start. Already a good runner, you'd think maybe not that much to improve. From April to December last year he did another 5k time trial and he got down to 1759. So three and a bit minute improvement. He got down from 412 pace to 335 pace.

So.

So honestly, great improvements all around. Can you talk about the main theme of training that you kind of saw in terms of pattern with Tommy and why this is very impressive for anyone to aspire to? That's a typical age group athlete.

Yeah, we always say similar things in the case study and Tommy epitomised Exactly what our theory is. If you just keep fronting up each day and ticking off the training sessions and not making a hero session out of every day and just doing stay in your lane session type of training. And we don't mean, you know, in the swimming pool lane or on the, on the road. We mean stay in your ranges and, and concentrate on the key factors a being am I hitting the duration of the, of the session? You know, if the session's asking me to do an hour 10, did I do 45 minutes or did I do 50 minutes or did I do the hour 10? And every time you, you lessen the duration, you're missing out. And there could be a whole lot of reasons you ran out of time to do the hour 10. And, and that's a legitimate reason where it's okay, if you can only do 45 minutes, then fine, we've talked about that many times. But, but simple little things like that, if they keep continually happening, then you're, you're going to miss out on that aerobic fitness that we're trying to get. We're not, we know we're not pushing people to, to be professional athletes who train seven days a week and who can ride 5 to 800k a week. We've only got three sessions as a triathlete to training and if you're, if you're only doing 20 minutes or 30 minutes midweek and only getting out of the two hour endurance ride, you're only getting 65 minutes each time you do that. You're, you know, you're missing out on a third of the duration time that the expectation is for next week to add on and therefore your progression is so much slower. You know, if you've got five, ten years to progress to the athlete you want to be, fantastic, that's okay. There's no issue. But most people don't want five or 10 years to progress to the athlete they want to be. They want to be that athlete next week. And you know, so the duration often gets overlooked, I think as a key component of the improvement in your ability as an athlete. You know, we talk about frequency a lot, being consistent, we talk about intensity a lot. You know, how to manage each session with the intensity that's being asked of you. But we don't talk a lot about the duration and it is a factor that people can implement better into their programs.

Because one of our golden questions is if someone's right at the last part of their preparation for a race, we would go, okay, we can tell you how you're going to go based on this golden question, what is your longest ride and run? And there's two factors to that. There is the endurance base phase part. So what's the longest base phase? Stuff you were doing, but then what's the longest race ready stuff you're doing? Like you said before, yeah, you're okay time trials, but what's the longest, you know, race ready half? Ironman specific race pace bike TT did, you did, was it 40k, was a 60k, was 80k, you know, because it needs to be right up there. Same thing with the run. What's the longest half marathon run? If you did, was it just a 10k time trial or was it right up to the time you're expecting an hour and a half, you know, training run it at 95% of your threshold pace or 95% of your real race pace. You know, really getting the most out of yourself. So that's a really key part of what you're talking about. I guess I want to move into the consistency conversation because this actually wasn't an example of a super consistent program and that's really important for age groupers to realize. We preach consistency as many episodes as we can, but this is an example of he didn't have the consistency that we would love, but he didn't let the consistency give him huge gaps in the training. So we'll explain that for a few parts. But the first part is he was actually out for 12 weeks with a foot injury. And so this is just a note to say that that's actually okay. You missed 12 weeks of running in that. He still improved that much. That was actually a golden opportunity for him to then really focus on his cycling and his swimming, which he absolutely became such a stronger athlete in both those disciplines.

Yeah. As you say again, for every negative experience you have, there's going to be a positive outcome if you just find it. And so, you know, okay, I can't, I can't run. Let's really put our heads down and see what we can do on the bike. And we added more bike sessions to replace the run and really concentrated on his swimming and got a lot of technique work from Brenton Ford at Effortless Swimming and really concentrated on doing the program properly and getting the most out of his technique and that improved him incredibly. But they're spending more time on the bike, not just doing hard sessions, but doing the other stuff where the Zone 2 stuff is going to make your aerobic capacity much better. You're going to be able to sustain a lot more fatigue if you've got more time on the bike in your legs. And so that was a great opportunity. So there was one aspect was injury. The other aspect was he actually traveled a bit with his partner, so they ended up going to South America. And there was a whole chunk of time where he couldn't ride because he was in places where there was nowhere to ride. You know, no hotel gyms to jump on. And he had to make the most of trying to be consistent with whatever he could do on any given day, whether it was a hike or go for a run or found somewhere to swim or he actually found a gym bike at a hotel. So in that period, he still had that mantra of I need to stay consistent in doing something. And so, you know, he came back from that holiday and we retested him again, and he'd done such a great job when he was away of maintaining some activity that he wasn't that far behind his testing numbers when we tested him that first, very first week when he came back. So that was an example of making the most out of, you know, not a really ideal situation when he's, you know, his goal is to be a better athlete for the next 70.3, but he's still got to live his life. And part of it was having a great holiday. And I just want to make that clear that you can, you can still do what you want to do and not be a hermit to training and still get the best out of yourself, as long as you plan well for your holiday and do some research, find areas. I'm having discussions right now with people who aren't going on vacation, and I'm saying, yeah, no worries, have a great holiday, but here's what you can do. And somebody found a pool that was 15 meters long, and here they are just doing laps of that. That's great, Great. You know, it's. It's terrible to do that week in, week out, but as a one or two off, it's okay. At least you're doing something.

Yeah. The theme for me really is, you know, don't. What's the saying? Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. And it's, it's really, you know, we get caught up in this. We want to have a consistent block of training, and then, you know, we have a bad week. So often we hear, oh, I just want to start fresh again on Monday and. And don't turn a bad, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday into a bad week. You know, if you have that bad Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you can still do enough Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday before Monday to get yourself back on track. And that, that is actually consistency on a different level and even more so, okay, you have a bad Monday, don't make it a bad Tuesday, you have a bad morning, don't have to make it a bad session that, that afternoon, you know, there's nothing stopping you from, you know, in the first 10 minutes of a session, it's not good. But you can still turn things around for the rest of the session so you can get more and more micro on that and, and still find more consistency. And so consistency isn't black and white. It's either, it's not you are consistent or not, you know, it's not that linear. It's, oh, a binary, I should say. It's, it's really about showing up in ways that you can just find a way to get through it and do whatever you can. And that's an example of what Tommy did is exactly what you're just saying then, you know, it's not ideal, but you know, had, he had a few months of really good training, but then bang, got stuck with an injury for 12 weeks. There goes the running. But he was able to find positives in that and work on swimming and biking. Those holidays, bang. Another, another factor that kind of took his training out a little bit. But instead of just going completely AWOL and just not training at all, he, he was able to keep up enough that when he came back to training, he wasn't starting from so far back, which we talk about a lot. He's still starting at a level where he had been consistent enough that he could keep seeing that improvement. And over the course of a year it becomes a linear improvement. But to get there, it was that staircase example or that weird wonky line example where there's some parts of consistency and there's some parts not so a long winded way for me to actually explain that. But it's really important, I feel like, for people to understand.

Yeah. And look, I agree totally, but I want to yell out and scream out, stop trying to be perfect because it's impossible. We can't, we just can't so be okay with having, having things crop up. And, and as you said, so well there it, you just gotta, it's one day and don't make it, don't make the next six days out of that week the problem. The one day was the problem. Let's fix up the next six days. And, and that's how you, you work, you Fix perfection.

So the last point is that it wasn't just about the fitness. Once he was getting fitter and getting the right training under his belt, it's then how learning how to execute all the disciplines and focusing on the bike. You know, he was, he was quite fit, but he had to learn how to ride the bike properly and learn how to ride in the correct power zones and learn the skills of time trialing and when to put the power down. And as you always say, learn how to ride the hills better, learn how to ride the wind better. You know, you're looking at this data and saying, you know, you've got to stay out of these danger zones with power and learning where to measure your effort. And that is the difference between riding 33Ks an hour and riding 42Ks an hour.

Yeah. For a person who's, you know, showing a level of fitness out of 10, you could be at 7 and you go and ride the way you normally do with that same level of fitness out of 10 and then go and ride the way we want you to ride. And for the same fitness level, you could be 4ks an hour faster over 60k or 90k or whatever the distance is. It's just understanding how to stay in your power ranges. And if you haven't actually got an FTP and don't know what your power ranges are, that's going to make it difficult. But, but once you've established all that information, then actually practicing that. I can't imagine how many times we've said this sentence. Practice. Staying in your power ranges is a skill and it takes a lot of work. And that's the key to the safe for all age group athletes is just stay at your ability and you will actually ride faster. If you've had a graph that shows zone one up to zone six with all equal time in each zone, that will be a slow way to ride. If you have a graph that shows zone one to six with nothing in zone one, nothing in zone six, and a whole lot in zone three or four, depending on the event you're doing, then that's going to give you, for the same fitness level, a better outcome. So spending time getting him fit, then spending time learning how to ride and to run and to swim in the areas that your current level of fitness is at, and that's getting practiced at that. And that takes time.

Yeah, look, the power distribution chart is a tool we're obsessed with because it breaks down, okay, you wrote this power, but where were you putting down the power? And that's a big question to ask. And he was getting so much confidence from his race ready sessions where you were looking at it and you can say he's putting the power down at the right times and he's putting the right power down in the right areas. And we had an example last week of someone who we set them a power target and they hit that target perfectly in a long time trial. But it was a shocking performance. It was a really, it was a horribly executed performance and they left insane time on the table. So that just shows it's not about the number they wrote. They averaged the right number, but how they got that and how they distributed the power was completely wrong. And it, and yet we have to say to them that's actually not, that's actually not the way we want to ride. And so that's hard for someone to hear because just learning to look at power is hard enough. And then you go, well, I've written the right power. What am I supposed to do here? That's still wrong. And so yeah, it's a whole nother level of training and racing. And so I guess I want to conclude by saying this story is just a great example. This case study is a great example of what we actually normally see. A lot of the time it's never a smooth program and so everyone's going to have interruptions. But if you just stick to it as much as you can and you can still get the improvement if you just keep the long term in mind and not again, not panicking about a lack of inconsistency in the short term or the micro level.

Just while you were talking, I was just thinking this is an insane case study because I've never seen anybody improve in 12 months with the less than perfect program because of the things we've discussed to get such a massive improvement. I've just never seen anything like it. And I just want to make sure that people don't have that expectation that you will improve an hour. Have the expectation that you'll just be a better version of what you are currently at. If you follow a lot of the, you know, the case study examples we're giving and you know there'll be days where you're improving two or three minutes then if as long as you're comparing apples with apples and there'll be days where you know you're the same or fractionally worse and you know it depends on how well prepared you are in the preceding time for that event. So as long as your progress is going in an upward direction Then you're going to have highs and lows. You know, we've got examples of all the elite athletes around the world who are performing well in one month and then two months later they're four or five seconds over 1500 meters slower. You know, it depends on what stage they are in their program. So we all want to get to a race like Tommy did and have an improvement like that, but just be aware that it's not going to be as dramatic as that ever. I don't think.

Yeah, that is the one problem with the case studies. And that's why we have, you know, try to pick athletes with a range of different improvements because we don't want to just do the massive ones all the time. I actually had an athlete that say to me recently after an FTP test, they improved a whopping 25 watts or something. And we had just done a case study on someone that improved 40 watts. And they said to me, oh, wasn't 40 watts, but still happy with 25. And I was pretty wild up. I said, don't ever say that to me again. I never want to hear those words again. You're not comparing to a 40 watt increase. 25 is insane.

In a six week block, 2.5 might be something that I would expect. You know, 3 watts over six weeks, you're doing well. But I just want to, I want to reiterate that the thing I loved about Tommy was he was on board with the process and he really wanted to learn and understand everything about the nuances of the training and the more informed he was about the sessions that I was asking him to do and asking questions, why are we doing, why are we doing this particular session? And, and then really understanding that, yep, if I go and do it this way, this is trusting the process because, because it's, you know, I saw those Trivalo athletes a year ago seemingly going well. And so I want to be that athlete. And, and you know, sure enough, that's exactly what he experienced by doing it in training. He replicated everything he'd done in training on the day where he wanted it to happen, which is on the race day.

Yeah. And I think one of the final lessons I want to mention is for any beginner athletes out there. Don't underestimate the event, don't disrespect it, be prepared for what the requirements are for the event. Yeah. You don't want that experience that Tommy had the first time around. So that's it for another case study. Thanks always for listening. If you want to get improvements like Tommy or any of our case studies, you can go to our website, tribellocoaching.com you can apply for our coaching there. And we have a eight week guarantee where if you don't improve your time trials, your tests or your FTP in the first eight weeks and the coaching is on us. So it's a pretty sure guaranteed way to make sure that you can get improvements in your training and racing.

There's an asterisk there, George, that it's not 40 watts, it's improvement.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's it from us.

Thanks as always for listening and we'll see you in the next episode. Sa.