Year In Review: TriVelo’s 12 Best Lessons

This podcast is brought to you by Trivalo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Welcome to our final podcast episode of the year. We've had a massive year on the show. We've had some of our best guests ever. Our audience has increased a ridiculous amount. So to all our listeners out there, thank you very much much for listening all year. We are glad that we seem to be bringing you content that you enjoy and a lot of you keep coming back. Every year at this time, we like to do a final episode where we review the year and give our 12 best lessons of the year. Coming into Christmas, 12 days of Christmas, of course, we want to give our best 12 lessons of the year and it's a podcast we love doing because we get to summarize some of the key things that really stood out, some of the key themes, some of the key learning, some of the key lessons, the key things we we spotted and summarize it in one big episode and we learned a lot this year. As I said, we had some unbelievable guests and we could talk about all of them in detail. But we've got a massive episode to get through. We're going to summarize our 12 best lessons of 2021. Firstly, dad, welcome to the episode and we're going to do our final gratitudes of the year. So what are you grateful for this year?

Well, one of the things that I suppose my dad drummed into me was the importance of family. And he was a big believer in getting together and just celebrating Christmas together. And, you know, I was one of five children, so we were pretty much spread out sometimes people were overseas. But, you know, the big thing was you had to go to their home Christmas Eve and stay the night and have Christmas Day. And that was something we did for forever. So I used to love that and I try to do the same with you guys. The important, you know, you understand the importance it is to me to, to get together and to my wife, obviously. And I'm so rep that, you know, Liam and Lani, our eldest son, who live in the Sunshine coast, they're going to be able to, with the borders opening up, come down for Christmas, which is going to be fantastic. So getting family together, I'm absolutely grateful for and looking forward to it enormously to. I think we've seen that granddaughter once in she's now 14 months which is pretty horrible thing. I, I think that's one of the downsides of COVID where you just, you know, you're missing out on chunks of your grandchildren and children's lives. And everybody around the world had a similar experience. And I'm not the only one who's done that. But, but this is exciting to have them possibly come down and spend a week or two with us. It'd be great.

Absolutely, yeah. My gratitude is on similar theme. Basically. I was watching a presentation recently and the person presenting was talking about the fact that there's a lot of negativity in the world and a lot of negative things we can focus on. And the news is really good at that, focusing on how much, how much bad there is in the world. And the person was saying that statistically we actually live in the greatest time possible in human history. We have the least amount of poverty, we have the least amount of violence, we have the least amount of war, we have the greatest health care available to us on average. And all these things add up. We have the greatest technology. All these things add up to us living in the greatest period. That's not to trivialize any of the negative things. There is still a lot of poverty, there is still a lot of violence, there is still war torn countries. But just statistically it is the least amount ever in history, which is a positive thing in itself. And given this year, you know, even the last couple of years with a global pandemic, it's the greatest time to be able to have a global pandemic because we are still able to be completely connected to each other. We have so many resources available. You know, this pandemic would have been a lot worse even 20 years ago, let alone 50 years ago or 100 years ago. And for me, I'm just really simply grateful to be able to live in, in this time and in this era and basically as long as society, modern society, keeps advancing, you continue to live in the greatest time. You know, a hundred years ago was actually the greatest time for those people compared to the rest of history. But for me, that's what I'm grateful for. Bit of a funny one, but I hope it makes sense.

No, that's awesome. And you would never think the way the media depicts things that you feel like you're in the worst possible time. So we are definitely being channeled into thinking certain ways by media. So it's, it's interesting you've said that.

We won't do a. What's caught your attention today because we have a Massive episode to get through. So let's just get straight stuck into the 12 lessons. Lesson is a theme that kept coming up all year and it's one that you've really been hammering to a lot of people all year. And that is the importance of goal setting.

Yes. And ironically, the podcast we did when you interviewed me was, I think that was a shining light. There are a few things I would like people to get out of that. And as difficult those podcasts were to do for me, I really wanted people to understand that without goal setting, I, I don't think I would have been motivated and self determined to, to pursue and push and be relentless. And so goal setting set me up for my challenge. And, and it can be a massive goal, it can be a minor goal, but as long as you've got something to work towards, I think that is the key to getting out of bed every day. If you've got a reason to get out of bed, you know, you feel like you've got a purpose. And I think that's something that when you've got no goal, you're just waking up and you know you've got some sessions to do, but there doesn't seem to be direction. And as I said in the podcast, standing on the start line of 800 or the beach of a triathlon or start of a Grand Fondo, you know, you've worked all your way to this point, that's your goal. And, and you know, being satisfied with your preparation is, is because of that goal. And that, that is a key factor in, in the outcome of, of your whole program is having something to work towards, having a purpose, having a goal.

Having an aim seems so obvious, doesn't it? But you could probably tell clearly the motivated athletes have a very specific goal in mind. And the athletes that are coming to you saying, I'm just losing track, I'm losing motivation, I'm losing consistency. They probably haven't got a clear objective that they're working towards.

That's very true. And I think the person who says, let's just take an example, I want to do the Brisbane Gran Fondo or the Noosa Classic or Amy's Gran Fondo and you go, great, that's a good goal. But the other person who's more motivated says, I want to do Amy's Gran Fondo and qualify for the world titles. That's a goal in the goal. And someone else says, I want to do the Amy's Gran Fondo and on the first climb measure my effort so that I can finish the race strong rather than smashing myself and fading. That's a specific goal. You know, how fit do I have to be to be able to do that? I want to beat my PB and I just don't make an event. The goal, what is it in the event that you're trying to achieve? So it's great that you've had an actual event or just I want to be fitter, but, you know, what part of fitness do you want? You know, I want to be able to do endurance rides and not be suffering as much. I want to be able to ride with my bunch and be able to keep up when they go hard. You know, have some specific goals that are going to be more meaningful than just the general. The general is great to start with, but you need, you know, you need to work out exactly what is the outcome from that event.

This definitely gets into the nuances of goal setting and the old smart analogy, but this s in the smart analogy for goal stands for specific. And if someone just says I want to get fitter. Well, if you go do one run, technically you're fitter than you were yesterday. And so you've achieved your goal, you know, and that's not. It's not specific enough. And I guess the cliche is that to have a successful goal in mind, you need to know specifically what you want. And I mean, that's. That seems like it's very simple, but for most people, it's. They don't actually have an idea of exactly what they want. And if you first step in good goal setting is know what you want, and if you can do that, then you've ticked it off.

That's a great summary.

Point number two. Best lesson number two, people are still underestimating race execution and executing well in the race. And I think it's just what we say is that no matter how fit you are, if you don't execute well, it can still be a disaster.

There's so many examples, and right from beginner to intermediate to elite, and we did use Geraint Thomas as an example in the professional levels. And you can't get fitter people than the professionals. So it's a great example for us mere mortals, age groupers, beginners or hacks, whatever we want to call ourselves, that if the professionals get the execution wrong, the outcome is horrible and they're the fittest people on the planet, make no mistake. And the example that he did was that time trial in the dopan A and people might remember that we talked about this on the podcast and he was something like 18 or 28 seconds ahead of the field at the halfway mark and ended up finishing eighth or ninth. And the rest of the field were all bunched at, you know, five seconds, four seconds, three seconds, two seconds apart. Yet Garant Thomas was 25 seconds ahead. So he clearly was on a great day. Already gone too hard one of those two outcomes. Anyway, he finished eighth and I think he finished 20 something seconds behind the field, which is like a 48 second turnaround. And he, he really was angry at himself because he just said, I absolutely stuffed that up, I went too hard, got ahead of myself and paid the, the biggest consequence which was, you know, finishing out of the top three, losing in the dopanine, losing 20 seconds to his competitors or 40 seconds to his competitors, which he had to get back somewhere else in the, in the Tour. And ironically he was, he thought in the best form of his life. And it proved it because the next day he actually won the next stage. He attacked with Katie Go or something. Yeah, Katie Go turned, turned the corner and got a jump on them and won. And it was just another example of it doesn't matter how fit you get. If you get on race day and don't have the execution down pat, you'll still have a poor result. And that you need to think about that sentence. You know, you can train your bum off and be, do everything right, but get on race day and make a mistake, it will be not the result you want. And so don't underestimate how important the execution part of your program is. The program's got many parts. The planning of what your goal is, then, then structuring the program and doing all the 1% as we've talked about, you know, hundreds of them. And then come to race day actually executing and missing one of those components will not give you the outcome you want. So, so take heed of it.

That's why we make the point is that unfortunately a lot of athletes think because they've done such a good amount of work, which is just a tremendous effort to get to race day feeling so confident in the work you've done, that's not enough. And I think that I've done all the work, the race will take care of itself. And that is a saying that we probably say that you've done the work, you don't need to be nervous, but you still have to execute properly.

And it's almost like self sabotage, isn't it? Not giving the actual execution the respect it deserves. And you know, we just had Ironman on the weekend and we had two athletes, one younger, one more experience, one first time we had many other, other athletes, but we're just picking on these two. And, and the outcomes were still fantastic for both of them. First time finished and under the time he wanted the other athlete, you know, on the podium. Second, great results for both of them. But the execution could have been better and, and you still get the outcome you want, but you know, you could have got a better outcome had you executed better.

Yeah.

So, you know, there's example after example of that.

Lesson number three on the theme of race execution is having a proper race plan with accurate and up to date data. And we've spoken about this before, just having a race plan is you're, you're ahead of 95% of the field. But we do have a lot of our own athletes. We get athletes who send us their race plan first and then you can assess it and see because you want them to come up with their own numbers and so they're aware of what they should be doing rather than you kind of spoon feeding them, you know. But we do still have a lot of athletes come with completely inaccurate data to what they can or what their ability is.

It's a great lesson in for me getting the athletes, if I force the athlete to come up with a plan rather than me just giving them, they, they're not as invested if they have to actually research. How am I coming to this data? How, how am I coming to write down that I think I can ride between 200 and 220 watts for six hours? 20. Where did I get that information from? And I want that to be, I want to see that, I want to see where they've extracted from their historical data. So that means they have to do work, they have to actually prepare. Prepare by looking at their history. Their most relevant and recent history will give them a starting point. Their experience in training sessions, their experience in some brick mock sessions, double bricks, or some previous races will give them examples of what they're capable of doing. And hopefully between that point and now, they've improved in many areas. But actually understanding and doing the research will give them an unbelievably clear picture of where they're at, rather than just saying, these are the ranges I want to ride to, this is the pace I want to run to, and leaving it that that's not good enough. In my opinion, you need to come up with the actual research. It's almost like writing a novel and then at the end of the novel you have to Give acknowledgement to where you found your sources. Referencing, referencing. So this is. This is exact an example of doing a little bit more work and having to explain your reasons why you are so much more invested. Well, in the middle of the race, you'll be going, yep, this is perfect. I'm doing exactly what I know I should be doing. If I give you the data, the numbers, maybe you'll take it in, maybe you won't. It's like glazed eyes sometimes when I know they're not listening. So I want them to come up with it. And I'll say, well, yes, you've got all the research, right, but this particular race is faster than any other race. There's more people in this race. So the possibility is you could ride lower power and still have a higher speed. So you need to take that into consideration. It normally gets hot there, so you might have to be taking that into consideration. And these are things that the raw data is not taking into consideration. The course might be extremely hilly, it might be slow, you know, cold and wet. So the race plan has more than just the data it has what are the conditions of the race? And so these are really good examples of how then you can have a discussion with your coach about, this is what I think I should happen. And then the coach can go, look, take this into consideration, you know, and give his ideas of what he thinks is right about your plan or what he thinks you need to actually think about more. And also your history. Have you done 15 ironmans? Have you done five? Is this your first one? You know, that conversation for me was completely different for the two athletes that I coached for the BUSO last week. As an example, one was brand new and one had done heaps. So the conversation was totally around the new person to be conservative. You know, you don't. You've never experienced this before in a race. You've done all the training, but be conservative. Be more conservative than you think you need to be, whereas the other guy had done 15. You know, you know, and you've been there, you know, sit on that line, sit on the fence of, you know, pushing yourself for a pb and. And two, completely conversate different conversations.

So, I mean, that's why we're talking about this. We've just hammered home the importance of the actual execution. You can only execute well if you've got a proper race plan. And that race plan needs to be based on sound data, plus a thorough conversation about, you know, the conditions of the race and how that data will be applied. And Then the last point about that is, and firstly before I go to the next point, this applies not just to Ironman. I mean Ironman is where it's probably the most crucial because you've got the biggest day ahead of you, but right down to a sprint distance triathlon, you know, you should be having exact numbers to stick to. But that takes us to the next lesson which is attempting any endurance event without respecting nutrition or with new nutrition on race day, which is just suicide.

And I think it rates equally with your, your race plan and your execution.

Especially with the 70.3 and Ironman.

Yeah, and look, if you're doing a sprint, I think the nutrition has some role. If you, if you've not eaten well a few days before and you might be dehydrated, you could end up cramping in a sprint because it's a high intensity activity. So it still will play a role. But for the actual event in an endurance race, the nutrition is as important as your execution. There's no doubt in my mind if you do all the fitness work that you're supposed to, your execution is perfect. You do nothing wrong on race day, yet you don't succeed because you ran out of fuel. It can be that simple. It can be catastrophic. And don't underestimate how important the fueling is. And people are sick of me saying this to them. If you get a brand new car, if you don't put petrol in, it doesn't matter how, everything works perfectly, it won't go. If you're fit and have great race execution, if you don't have fuel, you won't go any further. You will come to a grinding halt at some stage where you have to walk and you spend the next hour trying to fill your body with some sort of fuel to get you to keep moving to the finish. And if you think that that's not important, then you are going to be heading for a big lesson in not respecting the role that nutrition plays in an endurance event. I don't care whether it's a Gran Fondo Peaks Ironman 70.3. There's just so many examples of how nutrition is the thing that people paid no respect to. They trained the house down, their execution plan was perfect, they actually executed until they ran out of fuel and then I couldn't execute at all and their fitness was of no value to whatsoever.

Yeah, there's respecting it thing is huge. I mean you see so many people think about the nutrition two weeks out or even a month out, it's way too late. You Know, you don't start training a month out from the event. You should start training your nutrition six months out.

Right, yeah. Practicing what you're going to do on race day is the key. And, and look, I've still had athletes who are making changes two weeks out, which is not ideal, but at least, it's, at least they've actually been practicing. Um, and, and you know the outcome's gonna be better.

Yep. Probably this is a subtopic and we won't go into it. It's a different rabbit hole. But it probably comes back to what we talk about in terms of training for the event. And one thing we don't see in training programs enough is doing six hour rides like you would an iron man. So you can't possibly practice your nutrition in a six hour ride if you're not doing it in your program. Yep. The next three lessons we've picked out kind of key, key lesson for each discipline, swimming, riding and running. So we're just going to go through lesson five. The key for swimming that we really have. Hamm, It's a no brainer.

And swimming is a skill with fitness. It's a skill first and foremost. So you can be as fit as you like. If you don't pay attention to your technique, you will stay the same swimmer, you'll be very fit at that pace, but you won't swim any faster. So take time away from your intervals. And Joe Friels put this beautifully in his podcast. He wouldn't allow his athletes to do any intervals if they couldn't swim 130 per hundred or faster, which I found fantastic. And so, so with that information, I've actually implemented that into my own program which we've mentioned on the podcast. And I think that that is the one game change that you can do as a swimmer is spend time doing the drills. And there are many, many drills that you can do that are going to help you along the way. And you know, we've interviewed Brenton from Effortless Swimming and he's got 60 drills that you could do. You know, you need to do your research, you need to go and find out about this and you need to start practicing these drills ahead of your intervals and you will, you will find it's absolute game changer.

The key for writing, we basically summarize it as there's three key sessions that just keep standing out and if, basically if you had a program based around these three sessions, you'll improve as a writer.

Yep. It seems so simple and that's what it's meant to be out of the seven days. If you choose to ride four days or if you choose to ride three days, you need to do two high intensity sessions and one endurance ride. So zone two and lots of threshold and VO2. So threshold is zone four 96 to 107% around that range. Give and take some books depending on the athlete. Some books give you different numbers, but that is the range you need to be and, and the VO2 needs to be 110 or more of your FTP. So those two sessions are key. And the endurance ride in zone two and the longer and, and hillier and more strength based. You do your endurance rides just like we've emphasized going to talking about in running. But those three sessions, that's probably the minimum requirement. And anything you can do on top of that, that needs to be without intensity and without endurance. It needs to be basically in that zone to feel where we're doing 20% of our training with intensity and 80% with aerobic fitness as our goal.

That's how to improve as a rider. And then that, that a caveat to that is, you know, for example, in a time trial instance, when we get to the race ready phase, we include a really key session like the, the sub threshold race ready session. And that's a little bit different but we won't go into that. We're just talking about how to improve as a rider.

Is these generally that if you, if someone's asking me I want to get better on the bike, what are the key things I should be doing? I don't have much time or I have a lot of time, I would say, yep, you got to do two intensity sessions and one endurance. That's your, that's your bible.

Absolutely. Speaking of strength, the key for running.

Without doubt this is I'm almost cocky now as a running coach, but I shouldn't be because it's always dangerous, because you never should get ahead of yourself. And there are also issues with what we really push in our program, which is doing a lot of strength work in heels. I'm a big believer in it, but you can actually get injured doing a lot of it. And how do you get injured doing it? Well, it does put a lot of strain on your Achilles and calves. And if you're not strong enough to do that in the first place, then before you go and run some hills, you need to actually build a good stable skeletal system and muscular system that's actually going to withstand the hill running up and the hill running down. So you need to Allow your body to progress in this. You just don't go out and run two hour endurance run in the hills. If you've been spending the last two years running on the flat, that's a really bad idea. But the results we've been getting from guys doing very little interval training and really concentrating on hill, not just up, but heel down and endurance using hills as well. So specific hill repeats and specific endurance running with hills, the improvement in shorter 5Ks, 10Ks half marathons, it's almost close to 100%. There's very few people who haven't improved.

The correlation among our athletes between this hill and strength training and improved PBS just can't be denied.

It's just not one thing though. There's a whole lot of other things that go with it. But having this in your program and you can't do it for a whole year, you have to have periods where you're doing other things. But, but that, that forms the basis that sets you up for your year.

Really good point. Next lesson of our 12 best lessons of the year is not repeating the same mistakes. This is just a bit of a general one, but we just felt like that this had to be said this year and it seems to be coming up a bit.

As the saying goes, the definition of insanity is repeating the same mistake and expecting a different result. So if you're a person who goes into, let's just use a marathon or 10k or even a triathlon, if you go in and you run too hard at the start and fade at the finish and end up not beating your pb, and then the next race you go, I'm going to train harder, I'm going to do everything right. I'm going to get to the next race and I'm going to beat my pb. And then you start too hard again and fade again, that is what we're talking about. Not learning from your mistakes, expecting, you know, for some reason it to be okay to not think about why am I not improving? And it could be down to just execution. So repeating the same mistakes is more than likely to be doing too much hard training, not enough hard training, poor execution, rubbish nutrition, not enough strength. It could be any of those things. And I'm not just picking on the one thing, which is execution, which is the easiest example to give, which is.

The most common mistake.

It is the most common mistake people make when they race. But there are other things that contribute to it. You know, I didn't have a good race. I go back and I keep doing the Same training, I didn't have a good race because I wasn't fit. Go back and do the same training, that's a mistake. I didn't have a good race because I executed poorly. Going back and doing the same training is not a mistake. So they're two different examples of what caused the outcome in the first place. So you have to identify that before you can actually fix it.

I guess it's one of your biggest frustrations is to see an athlete stuff up the race execution, for example, have a conversation about it and then it happens again and say, what did the conversation just mean? Nothing. What happened?

Or I agree with that one, that's exactly the biggest conversation I have. But the other one is I don't know what happened to me. I thought I raced really well. And they haven't even looked at the post race analysis to find out that they were trying to run 4 minute K pace and their first four were 320, 3, 30, 340, 350 and progressively they went 4, 4, 5, 4 10, 4, 20. I don't know what happened. Well, have a look, you know, do some research, find out what happened. If you don't, if you don't actually know what happened, how are you going to do anything but repeat that mistake again next time?

And I guess it's the opposite. As a coach, you're proudest when someone's made a mistake previously and then the next race they fix it and then they have a great result because of it and you go, that's exactly what needed to happen.

Yeah, it's almost like a game changer in their mind, like a light bulb. Far out. I didn't trust that. You know, I always thought that I had to go harder so that when I got tired I was always ahead of, ahead of my time. Well, it just doesn't work like that. It never has and never will. There are very few people or examples in the world of elite athletes who smash out the first bit and come home strong and still get the result they want.

But on that note of exactly what you just said, that is lesson number nine for us and how important a post race analysis is and really making sure that you don't jump to an emotional post race analysis and it's probably best not done straight away, maybe 24, 48 hours later or even later in the week. But assessing the facts of what happened and being able to see the facts and not just the end result, you know, a lot of people's post race analysis is, well, this was my time and it was crap, you know, but what you're talking about here is, well, how did you get to that time? Because that will give you a better story.

That's a, that's a pretty example of, you know, I've been guilty of the same thing. What just happened. Why, why did that happen? What extreme disappointment. It's, it's happened to me many times and, and I've learned that I just have to look at the data. I'll just say to myself, just get over it. That's what's happened. Wait till I've looked at the data before I can actually analyze properly what just happened so I can fix it. And I kind of summarized that a little bit before in, you know, not repeating the same mistake. So it's, it's a similar thing, but, but it's the post race analysis. Without it you're not going to learn. And I think I've learned more about, you know, in the race you learn shitloads about what's happening to yourself. You know, halfway through a race, if it's not going well. I know that I've either upset the execution or I haven't prepared well enough for the requirements of the race. I didn't do enough hills, I didn't do enough speed work, I didn't do enough VO2. I can see it in the middle of the race when all of a sudden I'm getting left behind or getting dropped or not responding. These are examples in my own mind when I'm actually in the event going, I'm doing the post race analysis already in the middle of the event going, right, I'm gonna be better prepared. So that's an example. But so the post race analysis can be during the event because you know, what your goals were are gone. And you know, we've talked about that a lot too. You know, even though the goals are gone, still limit your losses so you can get a good outcome so that, you know, mentally you are tough enough to keep going to the finish. And that's a, that's a great, a great lesson to learn as well. But the post race analysis, it just shows you stuff that you, you might not have even thought of that was happening. Examples would be on a time trial course that's really undulating and all of a sudden you see eight spikes that are 50% over where you should have been, but you didn't realize. And that's affected your fatigue enormously, which is, you know, slowed you down, eventually caused you to not be able to. It's not that you weren't fit enough. It's just that you, you did too many hard bits, you know, burnt too many matches. There are things that, oh that makes sense. I don't have to, I do that next time I'll be more even in my power. So that's an example of really getting some detailed data. The obvious one is seeing what your power is at the start compared at the end. If it fades then that's an obvious mistake. Not understanding how the weather affected your heart rate which, which you know, if it's 35 degrees or 30 degrees at 2 o' clock in the afternoon in the middle of an ironman, that's going to be different to what the heart rate Response is to 9 o' clock in the morning in the, at the start of the bike when it's 21, you know the heart rate can cope with that and maybe you haven't trained in, in the heat so you're not used to that. So, so you have to actually if your pace is 4 minute k pace at 21 degrees at 35 your heart rate might be 175 at 21 degrees for 4 minute k pace but at 35 at 4 minute k pace it could be 190. That's unsustainable. You are capable of running 4 minute k pace but your body is going to have trouble consistently keeping that going. So you have to make decisions about that. You can possibly not know that but you'll see that in your the post race analysis. What was my heart rate there? Far out. Look, I didn't, I didn't notice that was happening and instantly you've got a reason why you couldn't run 4 minute K pace. I didn't realize it got to 32. So you know, next time after my post race analysis, next race I'll take more notice of, you know, what the temperature is in the afternoon or in the event that I'm doing and allow for it to slow down a bit and not just try and keep 4 minute k pace going and eventually run at 6 minute k pace because I've totally blown up because I've been running at my heart rate at Zone 5.

Comes back to the point you made earlier at point number three for us which was having a proper race plan with accurate and up to date data but also taking that data into the conditions of the race and if you don't do that then these kind of things can happen on race day. But also your post race analysis isn't going to be accurate if your original race plan is inaccurate and that can definitely happen where you may have created a race plan off inaccurate numbers and numbers that you couldn't hold. And then when you get to the postgres analysis you go, oh, this is my plan. And I stuck to it. And you're still missing the data. And because it was wrong from the start.

That's a great point. If you, if you've set yourself to ride 250 watts to 260 and you actually can't do that, but you didn't know that for some reason, just say that happened and your number should be 240 to 250. The whole day you're going to be getting this negative feedback that you're at 244, 245 and you can't go to 250 or even 260. So your mindset is I'm not going very well and having the wrong data, it will give you the wrong feedback. So, so you come to the end of the event going that was crap. I didn't ride the way I wanted to. But it's based on incorrect information. And the next point is we just did this in the coaching call. The event is scheduled for 90k and you happen to have an event that only does 88k or 92k and you're basing your data on time. Last time I did 2, 22 hours, 20 for 90k. This time I did 2, 26. But when I go in and have a look at the actual distance of the race, it was 92 km or 93 km. Frustrating, which in actual fact you rode better than the 220 because that was 90k. And that's why you should be looking at average speed, average power, the distance. All these things in the post race analysis are going to give you a more accurate summary of how you went. And I was able to point that out in our coaching call that the particular race it was to do with distance, the time was, was actually faster. But the reason why it wasn't because the distance was low, it was 88k and the average speed was almost identical to the previous race. So the disappointment of I didn't ride very well. Well, that's actually not true. And, and therefore you need to. Your post race analysis has to be accurate.

Yep. And I mean another example in that is, let's say that you know your plan was wrong because you tried to run 250 watts. You're supposed to be riding at 240. You may get through holding a 250 for the bike, but you can't run because you're just so exhausted. And in the post race analysis you might think I rode fine, but I couldn't run for some reason. That's because you didn't know you were riding, you were riding too hard.

You actually didn't ride fine. You were riding way above. And it's never going to be able to be a good run from that, from that scenario.

One last point on this as well. And this is where having the skill of the post race analysis kind of comes into it because you need to know how to do all this and what to look for. And that's where having a coach being able to walk through it with you really helps. And because you might not know what to look for yourself, which is why you get the post race analysis wrong. But you've spoken a little bit before and this is a bit more advanced data on how you got the actual power. So let's say you were trying to aim, trying to hold 200 watts for the ride. And let's say you got to the end of the ride and you held 200 watts. The story of how you got there is so different. And we look at normalized power and we look at variability index, we won't go into it too much, but basically variability index is almost how different your normalized power is to your average to your average power. To put it in layman's terms, it's how close did you ride to 200 watts for the whole ride and how many times did you go way over or way under? And so if you've ridden really erratically, your variability index might be 1.2 or something or 1.3 or 1.05. Whereas if you've ridden really close to 200 watts the entire ride, aka you've ridden really smoothly, your variability index would be 1.00. And so an athlete that's executed well could in a postgres analysis say, I rode 200 watts, tick I stuck to my plan and my variability index was 1.00, which means I rode smoothly. Another athlete, I rode 200 watts. Tick stuck to the plan, but my variability index was 1.15, which means I was riding way above and way below. And so again, the result is you're exhausted off the bike because you've been surging and not surging and surging. That's the kind of thing that is hard to look for if you don't know what to look for. But shows the importance of the post race analysis.

Yeah, what you're talking about is definitely advanced and look, in that scenario you could also be totally perplexed. As, as I rode 200 watts, I.

Don'T know what happened.

Yeah, and, and, and you know, the next step on that could be that the course is very undulating. So it's okay to have a variability of 1.05, but you better have trained on that course to make sure that you can run off the bike having a variability of 1.05 and normalize power of way above your average power. But we still wouldn't be recommending that in a triathlon. But there are some time trial events for cyclists and you know, the national time trial, the Australian title is at Fed Uni and it has got a climb that goes for two minutes, that's up to 18%. So your variability is going to be massively different. You normalize and your average nearly 10 or 11 watts different because of the scenario of that course. And you need to have a big variability because that's the only way to ride well, because the biggest gains are on the slowest part of the course and you don't have to run. So there's different scenarios.

Exactly.

That can be taken into consideration. There are some courses where pancake flat, you need to be doing just that. Where it's undulating, you need to be changing your whole style of time trialling.

So we're not saying all this to confuse you, we're saying this to really highlight how important this is and how overlooked it is.

From one piece of data, you can get six different scenarios.

Yeah, exactly. Our last few points for the year, point number 10. This was from Steve Wonogetti and we just both thought this was absolutely brilliant. You don't need variety for variety's sake. You don't need to change things up in your program just to change it up. You know, often we get afraid of, you know, creating the same programs over and over because, you know, the athlete might get a bit bored or something. But why fix something if it's the best type of program you can be doing? You know, why would you do something different if these are the best sessions you should be doing?

It's such a great sentence, isn't it? For variety's sake. You know, miners, Fartlek, you know, he's been doing that for, I don't know how old he is now, but it's got to be 40 years. And, and he doesn't do it exactly the same every week. There's variations of it when he's coming to race, period, when he's in base, period. But, but that is one session, that it's his go to session and, and you know, our threshold session or our VO2 session, there are many different ways that I can get the athlete to do the same outcome, but I'm changing it for variety's sake, just to keep people motivated. But the motivated athlete doesn't need that. You know, the sessions that work need to stay in the program. And that is the message that he was saying. Whether it take you do that for 40 years or you do it for four minutes or four weeks, that is the important thing. The one sessions that work, and we already know what they are as long as they're at the right time of the year. In terms of the preparation for your race, you know, consistently doing a similar program, people would say, well, that's just boring. But if it makes you the Olympic champion or the Commonwealth Games champion or your local club champion, I'm sure there are. That's a hard thing to say. There are, you know, just because you win doesn't mean it's perfect. There are things you can do to improve yourself, to be better than you are. But, you know, what you know works for you. You need to keep that formula and, and have some variations in it if you want to, depending on the stages of the year of the preparation you're at. But, but don't think that your program has to be varied just because it has to be varied.

Perfect. Lesson number 11, embracing technology to your advantage.

And we had the perfect person this year, didn't we? Shane Miller, the absolute guru of tech technology, and he's across every aspect of it and has been a great rider in himself. So he's walked the walk, so he's very qualified to talk the talk, I thought, and the examples we've got of. I still shudder when I see triathletes with their whiz bang triathlon watch on their arm that's telling them their swim, their ride and their run information. And when you're on the bike and you're in the TT position, your wristwatch is facing away from your face. So if you're trying to ride to power and you don't have a legitimate bike power meter bike computer on your bike that reads power, you're possibly going to have the opportunity to crash into someone when you're trying to turn your wrist to see what your actual data is, and you're probably more likely not to keep looking at it because it's such an effort to move your hand. And the minute I move my hand, I stop pedaling with the Same pressure on the pedals. It's like going through a roundabout. You know, that's how much wattage you'll drop every time you look at your. You know, it's near impossible to do two things at once when you're concentrating on what is the power I'm riding at now. And when you look at it, you'll start easing up on the pressure. So the minute you look at it, it's dropped anyway. So that's an example of having technology but it's not actually, you know, in being used the right way. So there's thousands of other things that we've identified in our technological advances.

They just kept popping out for a year. Yeah.

That you know, we could rattle through. You know, there's millions of them, you know, running to pace, running to heart rate right into power, you know, cadence.

Form goggles.

Yeah, form goggles. Having the average pace that you're swimming at.

Everything to do with Swift and the indoor trainer.

Yeah. Yep. Smart trainers. Heart rate monitors, blood lactate measuring facilities, testing in the lab, VO2 testing. There's so many advances that you can get a hold of that'll make you a better athlete. And you know, just having the Training Peaks app or any app that gives you the ability to read your sessions.

Can't do a post dose analysis.

You cannot do an execution with, you know you can by feel but it's pretty much been proven that there's about 10% of the people of the world can, can compete really well to feel and the rest of us are going to go too hard and fade. So, so without technology, we have technology. Don't be putting your head in the sand and refusing to use it. Get, get aligned with it and learn and do your research. It's part of your program. Be prepared, understand how your garment works, where are all the settings, have the right information on your screen, not just put up with the generic one that they give you, which is another bugbear of mine. So, so you know, if you're not willing to, to read the instructions on your, your garment for example, then how informed are you going to be? You don't even know what's on your screen. So, so technology's there and it's, it's something that, it's a great tool and if you don't use it, you're, you're going to get left behind and I.

Have no doubt that we'll be talking about the running power meter in the next five years. And if you're not even already on a bike, power meter Then you're going to be even further left behind with the running power meter.

So it's going to be exciting. And look at, some of the guys are already using it. You know, we know the Norwegians are already. So once the Norwegians do things, that's going to be the go to country from now on because they're at the moment the fastest ironman, you know, World Championship 70.3, Olympic champion.

So we've got everything.

People do tend to follow people who are successful and just ironically, we had the head coach as our podcast main man. So, you know, we've got a lot of the secrets from that. So, you know, and he, he exudes technology. He's got all, you know, we've seen countless videos of them doing a 28k run, taking blood lactate every 10 minutes. So that's.

They do 1k reps, take the blood lactate and there's 60 seconds rest.

That's taking technology to its, to its limit.

The last lesson of the year, we really want to touch on this because it's a bit of a life lesson as well as a training lesson. And that was the podcast we did with my cousin Shauna, your niece, where she had a incredible comeback from cancer and she was an athlete before having cancer and then afterwards she had to start from rock bottom from absolutely fitness level of zero. And her example of patience was just one of the most incredible examples and analogies I've ever heard about how slow she had to be in her progress. And she would do sessions where she was literally progressing 40 meters of walking that day. It was just so, so much slower than any of us could ever, ever imagine doing. You know, and we all want things now. We want it, we want to improve right now. And it's a real problem that we aren't willing to be as patient as she was. And that, that part of the story was really just incredible. If you haven't heard it, go back and listen to that episode. But for me it was the, the best part about the story was that she got to a 10 kilometer run PB faster than most of our normal athletes do with how slow she was going. You know, it is the exact analogy that the fable of the tortoise and the hare, you know, where the hare takes off and sprints out at the start and the tortoise goes at its own pace and the head, the tortoise ends up winning because the hare took a nap. And that is just a perfect example of what we all do. You know, we all take off at the Start, go as hard as we can, and that's great for the first two weeks, but then we end up having two weeks off because we've gone too hard or something happens. And Shauna was the exact hare that just kept going along, but she actually gets to the end result faster. And she was a real life example of getting a 10k PB and being able to run that distance. And she even said it on the episode where all her friends got inspired by her starting from scratch and they all started doing, you know, five kilometer jogs and they just went too hard too early and none of them end up being able to run, you know, a 10 kilometer, whereas she got there ahead of all of them with how slow she went. So for me, that was just incredible. Lesson in patience.

Yeah, I suppose, you know, we push the plan, Prepare, perform the three Ps. Well, for Shauna, I've just written down patience, persistence, perseverance, you know, that's another take on the P's and she exudes those three. So, you know, to go for a one minute walk, you know, it's almost laughable. But that was how she started. I was able to walk for a whole minute and I got 50 meters. And from that day to the, you know, she's still continuing on her journey right now and she's been able to run an hour and a half at pretty, pretty solid race tempo, pace. Not race pace tempo, but you know, how patient do you have to be to be able to. Tomorrow I'm going to walk for a minute 30 and the next day I'm going to try and walk for two minutes. You know, you've got to have some sort of patience to, you know, and, and perseverance. Knowing that, you know, things might not go well. I feel really bad. The chemo, you know, all the things I have to do with the doctors, it just wasn't possible today. So that's okay. We just missed that day and go to the next day. And I suppose the persistence thing is the one thing that she, you know, no matter what roadblocks were put in front of her, she, she navigated her way around it and, and you know, persistence becomes consistent and, and that's what she was, she was, she was so persistent and, and I'm going to get better and talk about goal setting. You know, I want to be able to run 5k, not fast, I just want to be able to run 5K. You know, let's start with 1K. And you know, one minute became two minutes became four minutes became 10 and 20. And all of a sudden she got to run 5K. It took a long time. It didn't happen straight away. And I think that's a lesson for everybody. We are too impatient. We are the now generation. I'm included in that. And technology's caused that, which is good. But I suppose we've lost the art of understanding that things take time. And when people join our group, I say that right at the start. Don't expect in four weeks or eight or 16 weeks to be the athlete that you've dreamed of. It's most definitely not going to happen. You will start to see improvements, but it won't be in a short journey. It'll, you know, the biggest improvement I found for the majority, and I'm generalizing here, three years into their program, that seems to be the point where they can almost do no wrong. You know, everything changes. And the people listening who are in our program to this, who've been in that, on that journey, will agree with that. It doesn't happen in the first short period. When I'm taking. I'm talking a year as a short period.

And don't get me wrong, you get massive improvement in the first year.

And it does depend, Jordan, on where you came from. Yeah, if you come from a beginner base, it's outstanding. We've had examples of 100 watt improvement, but the base was low. So we're not kidding ourselves here. You know, we've got people who are beginners, mid packers and elite. The elite improvement, it only needs to be 1% and that's good enough, you know, whereas the. The beginner improvement can be up to 100%. So. So we've got everything in between. But the point we're making is you have to be willing to go the journey. And that's what Shauna was. She was absolutely committed the goal and she was committed to the goal and the journey. And if. If we can get one message across for the whole year is the destination. And I've said it a lot, is the main goal. But the journey is more important in my eyes. And if you can keep that as your focus, it is easier to get up every day because you know where you're going. And all you're doing each day is executing the plan to get there. And it might be a big day where you take big strides, but it might be a short day where you're doing recovery. But each day contributes to the journey, which contributes to you finally arriving at your destination, which is your A race.

That's a great way to finish. Thank you very much for listening and thank you for listening all year. It's been a great year of podcasts for us. We've absolutely thoroughly enjoyed it. If you're not already, follow us on YouTube trivelocoaching. We're actually called train smarter, race faster on YouTube, which is our tagline for this podcast, the Get Fast Podcast. You can find us on Instagram Travelo Coaching. You can also find us. We have a free Facebook group where we post a lot of stuff in there, a lot of people. It's a community where people post questions, get help on certain topics and we like to chat to you all in there and help answer questions because we like hearing what you want to know about. So you can just search TRO coaching and that group on Facebook or if you go to our Instagram Travelo Coaching, there is a link there to join the free Facebook group. And last thing from us is that if you enjoy the podcast, if you've enjoyed them all year, please leave us a review. It really does help go and leave us five stars and leave a positive comment. You can do that on podcast or, or even on our YouTube channel. And other than that, thank you very much for listening again from all of us here at Trivelo. The entire Trivelo family have a very merry Christmas and a happy and safe new year.

Anything from you dad to all listeners out there. I really want you to make sure that you start your journey today and not wait for the new Year and you're in control of your own destiny. So make sure you, you, you get what you want each day. And that would be the message I want to leave for Christmas. You know, you're in charge, you know, take control.

We will have a couple of weeks break over this Aquasmac New Year period and then our first episode will be probably a week into the new year and we can't wait to bring you bigger and better episodes all of next year. Thanks very much for listening and we'll see you in the new year.

Sam.