Ace Your Assessment Workouts with Proper Pacing

TriDot Podcast Episode 282

Ace Your Assessment Workouts with Proper Pacing

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Announcer: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We'll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let's improve together.

Andrew Harley: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the TriDot podcast. The day this episode goes live to you, the triathlon public, it is Monday, February 17th—President's Day in the United States. So happy President's Day to y'all. But the day we're recording this episode is February 14th, Valentine's Day worldwide. So just wanted to say much love to the TriDot podcast audience. Today on the show, we're going to talk about a series of workouts that everybody either loves or loves to hate. We are doing a deep dive on how to nail your assessment workouts. Specifically, when those assessments come around, how do you pace them properly to really get the most out of that session? I've got two coaches on the show to talk us through all the tips, tricks and wisdom they have for doing these workouts effectively. Number one is Elizabeth James. She is a professional triathlete who has coached with TriDot since 2014. And I've also got coach Matt Sommer, who is a strength and conditioning specialist by trade and has been a TriDot coach for a long time as well. So excited to have the two of you on the show. Happy Valentine's Day, Matt and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth James: Happy Valentine's Day to you too, Andrew. I know our audience can't really see, but I thought I'd give a little special token—got some little heart earrings on here to commemorate our day.

Andrew Harley: Well done, Matt. Any heart earrings over there?

Matt Sommer: No earrings today for me, but Happy Valentine's Day, EJ, Andrew, to you as well and to our entire TriDot community, family and everybody out there. Always a privilege to be on here with you guys. I love talking shop and EJ and I, when we do these pods together, bounce off each other. So I'm really looking forward to sharing some tips, wisdoms, and how not to break so many hearts on assessment day.

Andrew Harley: There you go. Well, I am Andrew, the average triathlete, voice of the people and captain of the middle of the pack. As always, we're gonna start with our warmup question, settle in for our main set conversation about pacing your assessments, and then we'll wind things down with our coach cool down tip of the week. Coach Elizabeth will give us a Valentine's Day themed training tip to cool us down with. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Warmup Question

Announcer: Time to warm up. Let's get moving.

Andrew Harley: I've got a doozy for our warmup question today. What I want to know is: what is your biggest tri purchase miss? As in a product that you bought that just didn't work out for you personally. And please hear my heart—we're not trying to throw shade on any particular brand or their product today. It's very possible for a product to be excellent and work for a lot of people, it just doesn't work for you. I'm curious to hear what was something that you tried that just didn't work for you. Coach Matt, what is this answer for you?

Matt Sommer: Oh, geez. This is such a tough one. There were actually three things that popped into my mind, and I'm gonna go with all three. I'm on the Garmin ecosystem. A long time ago, I thought it would be kind of cool to try another brand of watch. It just didn't work for me. I'm not gonna throw it out there. I'm like an Apple guy—that'd be like giving me an Android and saying, go at it. I was frustrated, and it was just one of those things where I was ready to throw it against the wall and I went right back to Garmin as quickly as I could. Secondly, a different nutrition product. Again, I don't want to throw anything out there, but I know what works for me, and I tried something new, and let's just say it didn't work in obvious ways. And the third one I think everybody will relate to—there's nothing worse than an apparel failure. That one pair of shorts that you just love, they look great, but boy, did they rub the wrong way, if you know what I mean. They just didn't work for me.

Andrew Harley: And again, going to the spirit of this question—the nutrition brand, the watch brand that you're talking about, we probably have audience athletes that use those and love those products. It's a very individual thing. Very good answers there, Matt. Coach Elizabeth, over to you.

Elizabeth James: What came to mind for me was not so much the physical discomfort, but maybe more discomfort of my pocketbook and ego. I wish that we had TriDot Pool School 10 years ago because I think about how much money I have spent and how many hours I have spent with all of the tiny little swim toys, or to be very honest, swim lessons from local coaches. We needed TriDot Pool School. For me, as I was getting started in the sport, I think that would have been much better than all of these toys that I now have sitting in the closet that did no good for me in improving my swim technique at speed.

Andrew Harley: This answer for me—there is a power meter on the market called a PowerPod. I had the original PowerPod that debuted in 2016. It was a Kickstarter thing at the time. Long story short, I had my first 70.3 coming up. I didn't have the budget for proper power pedals or a power hub at the time. This little gadget—all the reviews I found online said it was a viable product. People reported it was very accurate under most conditions. Basically it hangs on the front of your bike and reads wind speed and direction and has some accelerometers. It's making an educated guess on your power input based on environmental factors. But guys, this is the part that's on me. I put it on my bike the day before this race. I synced it to my Garmin watch for the first time the day before that race. I did like a 10 minute tune up spin trying it out for the first time. Andrew Harley just didn't have the patience to go through the couple steps to get it set up properly. And so for me it was absolutely worthless on race day. To no fault of the product—I see on their website they're now on version 5. They also have a new product called the AeroPod that estimates your CDA values in real time. Really cool company, but it did not work for me on the occasion where I tried it, and it was a big miss in my purchasing history. Again, not their fault, but mine. So that's my answer here. Go to the community hub and find the question asking you what was the biggest purchasing miss that you came across in your triathlon history. Can't wait to see what you our listeners have to say.

Main Set

Announcer: On to the main set. Going in 3, 2, 1.

Andrew Harley: For every single triathlete, when you fire up your training schedule for the week and you see what TriDot has in store for you, when you see assessments on the calendar, there's a reaction. It might be nerves, it might be anxiety, it might be confidence and excitement to get after it and go get it. But you will react. It is not a normal week, everybody knows that. There is science and art to really nailing these workouts and getting the most out of them and getting the most out of yourself as you're putting forth this benchmarking effort. Coach EJ, let's maybe start with this question: What do the assessment workouts actually consist of for the swim, the bike and the run? What does the athlete actually go out and do and what is the purpose of these workouts?

Elizabeth James: Let's actually start with the purpose here because that's the whole reason that we're doing them. Overall, assessments are essential tools for coaches to enhance athlete development and performance in the sport. There's a lot of facets to the assessments themselves. One of the things is it's a performance measurement—assessments are quantifiable pieces of data that we can really look at for tracking improvement over time. This can help the athlete see what progress they're making in each discipline over a long period of time. This is great for goal setting—not only week by week, day by day, month by month, but looking at the season. It's valuable information. What's great about this is within TriDot, that information is also used for race execution. This is just one piece of information that's used by RaceX to help set race pacing, which can help an athlete set their goals for a specific race as well. Drilling down further, we can go into training optimization—we need these assessments to ensure that athletes are doing the right training and that all of the training stress prescribed to them is appropriate. If the training stress is appropriate, then that's also a great way to make sure that athletes aren't getting injured. There's a big injury prevention piece to assessments that I think is often overlooked. Then there's competitive preparation—time trials are so important not only for the training aspect and getting that physiological response that we're looking for in those upper intensity zones, but also developing the mental skills. If you're getting nervous for the assessments, great! What an opportunity that is because we're going into races too. I guess I wanted to start with the purpose there because it's a long list. There's a ton of reasons that we do these assessments. The CSS test for the swim, a 20 minute power test or a 15 mile time trial if power's unavailable for the bike, and then a 5K for the run—sometimes that can go into a 10K depending on the athlete's speed. Those are what you're gonna see on the schedule. There's a number of reasons why those are important, and thus today's podcast about digging into all this.

Andrew Harley: Obviously, the main point of today's show is to talk through how to pace these workouts. I find this fascinating—I've heard a number of different strategies. There's no right and wrong way to do these. The wrong way is if it doesn't go well for you. But there's a number of different ways you can pace these, and coaches kind of have different formulas for how to get their athletes to perform well on these assessments. Just on a higher level, Elizabeth, why does it matter? Why does the pacing matter for these? What impact does how we choose to pace these sessions do for the session itself and the end result?

Elizabeth James: With the assessment, we really want it to be an accurate representation of an athlete's current fitness level. With that, we want it to be an even effort throughout. There are different ways to mentally approach that. Some athletes like to think of it as one big chunk—I'm here and I'm hanging on. Others do much better to chunk it into different sections, whether that's evenly chunked sections or getting shorter and shorter. I'm a sucker for that—okay, let's hang on the longest at the beginning and then get it shorter, shorter, shorter. For a newer athlete, it might be more of a negative split. For an experienced athlete, they may be able to know what their target is and hold that throughout. But the main thing here is that we want as even of an effort as we can hold, because then that's going to give us the most accurate representation of fitness. Pacing is very much an acquired skill. You will learn how to do this the more that you do the assessments. That's part of the reason that they're there so often. If you only do something once a year, twice a year, that's not a skill that you're necessarily going to hone. So having these assessments so often is an exercise in learning how to pace, and you will get better and better at this. Just like we were saying, you need the mental skills for racing well—you need pacing skills to do well in a race as well. Nailing your assessments is a combination of fitness and execution, just like racing is. What great practice.

Andrew Harley: Matt, I'm curious to hear from you: when we get done with the effort—we finish the 5K run, we finish the 20 minute power test, we finish the 400 meter swim—what will it look like if we've nailed the pacing and gotten it right? And what will it look like if we've totally flubbed it?

Matt Sommer: That's a great question. I think it's a reflection upon what your training was. To really answer that question, you got to sit there and look back on what was your expectation. Had you done the work over the past three weeks to elicit an improvement? Have you done work over the past three weeks to maintain where you were? Or has your lack of work over the past three weeks probably resulted in a decrease, and you got to meet yourself where you are there. If you've been working hard, you've been working at the top end of your zones, you've really been nailing your workouts and you've been consistent in your training, I would expect to see maybe a 2 to 3 watt, 3 to 5 watt improvement on FTP. I would expect to possibly see maybe a 12 second improvement on the swimming and on the 5K, maybe 5 to 10, 15 second improvement. I gotta be gentle how I say this—the faster you get, the stronger and more powerful you get, the harder it is to make gains. When you are maybe starting with a slower 5K time, it's easier to have maybe a one minute improvement. But when you are already running—I'll use me for an example and I'll be very honest—I'm a 17:07 5K guy. For me to make a dramatic improvement, to see a change in my zones, I've got to drop about 15 seconds. At a 17:07, 15 seconds is huge to drop. But when you're running a 29 minute 5K, 15 seconds is not a huge improvement. Same with power—if you're really pushing a lot of watts, you might get a 3 watt gain, and I'm going to celebrate the heck out of that. Other people, they may improve by 15 or 20, but they're relatively new to the sport, they're getting better at completing these assessments, they're coming back from injuries, they've been more consistent. So a 15 watt improvement maybe in one month is still something huge to celebrate. You just got to meet yourself where you are and ask yourself: have I been doing the training to elicit a change? Have I been doing the training to even maintain where I am, or have I not been putting the training in? Meet yourself where you are and be honest with yourself.

Andrew Harley: Let's get a little more granular here. Swim, then bike, then run. I really want to hear what are the strategies you employ with your athletes for them to successfully pace these workouts and wrap their heads around the effort. For the swimming, every single athlete's gonna have the same thing—they're gonna have a 400 yard or meter effort, rest for 10 to 15 minutes, and do a 200 yard or meter effort. That's the game, that's the program every single time. Elizabeth, how do you have your athletes pace that 400 and 200? It's so short in some ways, but if you start off too hot, that short 400 becomes a very long 400.

Elizabeth James: Yes, it absolutely does. I think the tendency in a lot of these assessments is for athletes to start off a little bit too hard. That's one of the reasons why for the 400 and for the 200, one of the mantras that I've told my athletes is: breathe, pace, kick, race. A lot of times when athletes are going out hard, they forget to breathe. Then all of a sudden they feel hypoxic and they're 50 meters into the 400 and they're done already.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, just gasping.

Elizabeth James: Absolutely gasping. So that's why the first part of this is breathe. Do not forget to breathe at the beginning. Settle in a little bit. Then the next part is pace—think about your pacing. Think about those threshold efforts that you've been doing in the pool. That's what we're trying to mimic here. Then the third segment, think about the kick. From a lot of the athletes that I've worked with and watching them do some of the assessments, and I know for myself too, as I get further into it, there's little technique cues that I can give myself, and it's often forgetting to kick. The last part is just, all right, come on, it's time to race. Let's burn it down. Let's see what's left. So breathe, pace, kick, race. For me, that works for the 400 and 200. You've got four segments there. So for your 400, you've got something to think on for each hundred. For the 200, most of the athletes are doing this in a short course pool, so they've got four laps to do, four segments. That's what I give them for the swim.

Andrew Harley: Coach Matt, for your athletes, what do you tell them to look for and how to nail that 400 and 200 swim?

Matt Sommer: It's funny, very similar to EJ, I've got a different saying. Mine is the Dr. Seuss of swimming: pace, base, build, race. Pace that first 100, pace that second 100, build the third 100, race the fourth 100. I always try to take my athletes back, and I want them to think about the workouts that we've done. That's the classwork. We always got to go back to practice. Do the assessment how you train. I remind them, listen, you've done threshold 200s. You've done threshold 300s. Think about those. Think about how well you executed those. Leverage that mindset into that. If you go out there and you properly execute your threshold 300s in training, all you're doing is repeating that on assessment day. And that last 100 is just a little bit faster. You're just emptying the tank. I remind them of all the successes and all the achievements that they've had during that training block. It's a lot of mindset going into it. Leverage that mindset of, oh, I've done this. This isn't new territory. I've been there, I've done that. Now the 200—all gas, no brakes. You just got to light it up. And I love EJ's reminder of kick, kick, kick, kick. All too often, we get those arms going and they start to feel like concrete because we're not using our lower body. For me, that swim assessment is one of the biggest struggles. I get in my own head about this one, but I remind myself, you've been doing this for the past three weeks. You've had threshold 200s. You've had the 300s. You've had the building 200s. You know how to descend, you know how to build. Remind yourself of those skill sets that you've been developing over the past three weeks and just go out there and do what you've been doing. Get out of your own head, have fun with it, and reward yourself for the hard work. And breathe. The pool does create this anxiety for people because we're underwater. It's just a challenging environment, a medium that we're all not super comfortable in. But remind yourself of what you've been doing in the training and just go out there and celebrate it in the water.

Elizabeth James: I love that, Matt. That's absolutely fantastic. The one thing that I was going to add—this is something that I didn't usually have as a conversation with my athletes, because so much of it was just perceived effort. But now some of my athletes are starting to use the Form goggles, and so they have that at each wall, and they can actually do a little bit more precise pacing with this. Some athletes have always had the ability to look up at the clock and be able to do the math. That was not me. If I tried to look up at the swim clock, I'm losing seconds because I'm trying to catch what the time is and then figure out my—

Andrew Harley: And then process.

Elizabeth James: Yeah. But there are a couple tools. If an athlete's using the Form goggles, that's a great piece that might help them execute their assessment a little bit better and get used to that pacing. The other one is the tempo trainer. You can set the tempo trainer in your swim cap to beep either at a specific cadence to help them with that arm movement or to beep when they should be at the wall. Then they can get an idea of, okay, did I hit the wall faster? This is beeping in my cap. Oh, maybe I'm ahead of pace of what I did on my last assessment. Or, oh yikes, I'm a little bit behind—it just beeped and then I'm doing my flip turn. There are some advances in technology that, if an athlete has them available, that's fantastic. I don't use a lot of that when I'm swimming, so I still kind of go back to perceived effort on these assessments. But just wanted to make sure we made a note of that too, because I think it's becoming more and more incorporated into the swim sessions.

Andrew Harley: One other reminder I'll give people too is because unlike the bike and run, the swim is the only one where you have two efforts that we're measuring—the 400 and then the 200. TriDot will tell you to take 10 to 15 minutes and just rest, relax, do some easy zone two back and forth, keep it light, keep it breezy, and make sure you feel fully recovered before that 200. You get no brownie points, no bonus points for doing that 200 too early or unrested. TriDot's not even telling you to do X number—it's not saying, hey, do 10x50s in that time. No, do what you want. Keep your body moving, active recovery, but really give yourself the chance to fully recover. Because on that workout day, it is that 400 and that 200 that matter. So take that time that you need.

Matt Sommer: One thing I was going to point out—in that 10 to 15 minutes, one strategy that I have my athletes employ that has been a game changer for a lot of them is reset, refocus. Just start all over with the drills, with your warmup. What puts you in the best position for the 400? Repeat. Start over with the warmup, do that 200 build, rest for two minutes, then blast off with that 200. So after the 400 is done, I just have them relax for maybe a minute, catch their breath and then reset, refocus and just start over with their drills and then start over with that 200 and then go into the 200. So it just gives them a little bit more of a structured approach rather than arbitrary "what should I do?"

Andrew Harley: Yeah, I personally will do an easy 50, like a really easy 50 and then rest for a minute or two. Really easy 50, rest for a minute or two, keep the body moving. Maybe I'll try Coach Matt's approach there. Onto the bike. Like Elizabeth said, it's one of two things. You get a 20 minute power test if you have a power meter or a trainer, a smart trainer. If you don't have those tools, it is a 15 mile time trial. I did that one time. I was a brand new TriDot athlete. I was prescribed a 15 mile time trial. I didn't know I could do a 20 minute power test instead. And so I did a 15 mile on Zwift test and it was fricking hard, y'all. So this is two very different kinds of efforts. But let's start with the power. How do you advise your athletes to handle that 20 minute power test in terms of pacing it?

Matt Sommer: The way I like to break that one down is I do have my athletes do the 20 minute power assessment. Depending on what training platform they're using, there's so many different ones out there. A lot of them have built in FTP assessments. I think the bottom line we need to think about here is it's a 20 minute FTP test. It's not a ramp test, it's not an 8 minute power assessment. It's a 20 minute power assessment. That is the assessment that TriDot uses in the algorithms for all its calculations. So it's important that we respect that and not try to flub it by doing a ramp test or an 8 minute power test or any of the other ones that are out there. Consistency is the key. If you look at some of the training platforms out there, probably one of the most popular ones and one that I know a lot of people use is maybe the Zwift FTP assessment. There's a standard one out there and it consists of a warmup that does have some accelerated zone four, zone five efforts, and then some real easy zone ones, and then it goes into the 20 minute free ride assessment. That's where your actual 20 minute effort comes. Whatever it is that you do, whichever assessment you follow, consistency is the key from round to round, month to month. We gotta be able to compare apples to apples. That's personally the one that I utilize. I also think it's important that when doing that assessment that you do it on the same course each time. There's a lot of different opinions on what course should I do it on—should I do it on a flat one? Should I do it on a hilly one? Consistency is key. I personally, when I do mine, I love doing it on the Alpe—

Andrew Harley: I go to the flat desert. No!

Matt Sommer: And I'll explain my rationale. That's a free ride. Most of the time you cannot use erg mode or I don't think you should personally use erg mode when doing your 20 minute power assessment. We're not trying to dictate the results. It's a free ride effort where it teaches you how to intrinsically motivate yourself, how to shift your bike and manage your power. When you're riding on the Alpe, it's a steady state, steady state grade, pretty much the same angle going up. So that minimizes the amount of shifting that you're actually going to have to do. When you're on a rolling course, you're having to constantly shift, it's undulating. So you have times that your power is going to drop, power is going to go up and you have to be very mindful of making sure you're shifting. And you can't always tell when those hills are coming on Zwift. When I'm on the Alpe and it's a steady state grade or climb, I can manage my power just by focusing on my cadence and my gearing. It's almost like a modified erg mode. It's almost like a cheat code because you don't have to shift quite as much. And I can really just stay down, grind it out, focus on my cadence. When you hit the little flat on the switchbacks, that could be an opportunity—it gives you that quick 10 second little micro break that you might want to have a little bit lower and then accelerate the power back up. I really love executing mine on the Alpe on a steep incline because it keeps me a little bit more honest and holds my power a little bit more steady.

Andrew Harley: Matt, how do you pace that in terms of the watts you're putting out?

Matt Sommer: Great question. So I break mine down into basically four different steps: 8 minute, 5 minute, 5 minute and 2 minutes. I kind of chunk it, and there's a reason I specifically choose 8, 5, 5, 2. The first eight minutes, I want to approach it as a normal threshold effort, near top end of what my current threshold range is. I'm used to it. The first eight minutes is just getting comfortable. It's not trying to do anything crazy. I'm staying disciplined. I'm staying focused. I almost think of it as a warmup. So that first eight minutes is a near top end threshold effort. It's what I've been doing. The next five minutes, it's a top end threshold effort. I mean, we're at the top of what is normally threshold for me. So now I'm 13 minutes into this assessment and I'm dancing the dance I always dance. I'm singing the song I always sing. Nothing new. It's ordinary.

Andrew Harley: I just took the top end of zone four for that first 13 minutes.

Matt Sommer: Yes, you're right near the top end of zone four for 13 minutes. So now it's really seven minutes of showtime is left. Now what I like to remind people of—of that last five minutes and those next two minutes—go back to workouts that you've executed. We've all loved to hate step-ups. You have five minute efforts of zone five. You've done it. All you got to do is leverage the mindset—that is a five minute step-up at that point and then the last two minutes, that's a power builder. You're going to go to that zone five mindset of power builder. Think about the workouts that you've executed in training and leverage that mindset. I go to that all the time with my athletes: 8 minute threshold interval, 5 minute top end threshold effort, a 5 minute step-up, and now we're looking at a 2 minute hard power builder. The other thing that I like to do is my cadence will gradually drop as I go into each chunk. That first eight minutes, I'm going to keep a cadence of about 85 to 90. The next five minutes I'm going to drop it 80 to 85. The next five minutes I might go 75 to 80. And that last two minutes I'm going to be 70 to 75 because it becomes more muscular as I go on. If you keep that cadence too low, your legs are going to die and you're going to fall out. So it kind of pushes and allows me to leverage and use my muscles more as I get closer to the end. I found it very successful for myself. I have a lot of athletes that have gained a lot of success following this. And again, the biggest thing that I go back to is this is how I coach my athletes. So this is how we practice. That is how they train, that's how they race and they perform. So it's important to kind of maybe practice these tactics and these techniques in your three week, four week build leading into your assessments.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, I love that, Matt. I love how you've broken that down. I said a little earlier in the podcast, I personally go into the bike with just a power number in mind and I usually base it off where I did last time. If I held 205 last time and I was blacking out by the end and my training went well this month, let's try targeting 208, 210 and holding in that range for as long as I can. That can work very well when you're staying on top of your assessments. But if you go a couple weeks, all of a sudden that really gets a little wonky and your body might not be where you think it's gonna be and you find that out 10 minutes in, 12 minutes in, 13 minutes in. So I really like the consistency of your approach and how it takes all those variables off the table. So I'm going to give it a go, Matt, the next time I have a bike FTP test myself. Elizabeth, what does this look like for your athletes?

Elizabeth James: Yeah, really, really similar. So mine isn't 8, 5, 5 and 2, but it's 8, 6, 4, 2. So just decreasing by 2 each time. But I mean, very, very similar concept and chunking it into those familiar efforts. Again, let's go back to what we've practiced. For me, this also depends a little bit where I'm at when I take an assessment, how long it's been since I've done that before. When I'm coming back from an injury, I'm more likely to negative split this and to build throughout. Now, if I've been on top of my assessments month after month after month, and I have a really good idea of where I'm going to be, especially after years and years of training—as we talked about before, I'm not expecting a big change. Truthfully, what I'm working on in that assessment is I'm going to hang on to this. There have been times where I've gone into the assessment and I still chunk it. I do 8, 6, 4, 2. But my watts might change two or three throughout the entire thing. And I'm just honestly hanging on for dear life. So I'm just thinking, okay, hang on to this for eight minutes. Great. Check. Hang on to it for six minutes. Great. Check. Now it's getting smaller. Four more, two more. Just hang in there. I think that's something too—as we practice this, the delta between our first minute and our last minute may vary a little bit on our experience and where we're at in our season, where we're at in terms of our consistency in training. I can tell you that as I'm coming back into assessments, there's going to be a larger delta in my first minute and last minute than there was in 2019 when I was on top of it and doing assessment month after month after month and just nailing it in terms of my execution. I think there's a couple things that athletes can take from that, couple different approaches. And just again, reiterating that this isn't necessarily something new. You're going into this with some good information on the training sessions that you've done leading into it. So take what you've learned from those sessions and then apply it to how you're going to execute this test.

Andrew Harley: The other question I have to ask here though is for an athlete that's going to do the 15 mile time trial—that becomes a different ball game. They don't have power, so they have to go out and actually ride 15 miles. Coach Matt, what would you say to that athlete in terms of how to pace that particular effort?

Matt Sommer: Wow, that's such a hard one. First and foremost, I don't envy any of my athletes that do need to go out there and execute a 15 mile time trial assessment. I personally have not done that. That's something that I personally don't have experience with. I've had some athletes that have to do it. It's just one of those things where you got to set yourself up for success. Environmental conditions can be the biggest player on that 15 mile time trial test because obviously it's based on speed and it's based on heart rate. I've told my athletes, listen, if this is the route you got to go, know what direction the wind's going, ride with it. Don't try to ride into it because the 15 miles you're going to cover it faster with the tailwind. A headwind's not going to be indicative of it. Don't try to go to one that has a lot of turns in it because you want to minimize any of those turns. And you just got to put a full out, all out effort into it. It's very much intrinsic. It's kind of like when you're thinking about running around the track for 12 and a half loops to do a 5K assessment. Boy, what a mental struggle. So being out there for that long, it's challenging. I would recommend to them that they also possibly have somebody around for safety purposes that maybe could either be leading them or behind them at a comfort distance, just to make sure that's watching other cars, other motorists, whatever else there is out there, just to create a safe environment. Because we all know when you're out riding on the road, how often can you go 15 miles without having to stop, whether it be for a stoplight, a motorist, an animal, another cyclist or something. So you really got to make sure you put yourself in a good position for success if that's the one you're going to execute.

Andrew Harley: I would definitely try to find a time of day where there's not going to be as much traffic on the road. Just lowers those odds of being slowed down by traffic or a red light or whatever. Where I live—Elizabeth probably knows where I'm going with this already—we have the famous Texas Motor Speedway, NASCAR track, 20-ish minutes from my house, probably about an hour from Elizabeth, on the corner of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro. And if you go out there on any Saturday or Sunday, there are a handful to a dozen or two triathletes out there in aero just clocking laps. The road that goes around the property is five miles on the dot. It's remarkable. It's a circle, it's a five mile circle essentially with two stop signs that you can blow through if there's no traffic. I feel like if I had to go out tomorrow and do a 15 mile time trial for an FTP test, in my head I would approach it like this is a sprint triathlon. This is a sprint triathlon and there's no run off the bike. Because hopefully everybody's racing a local sprint from time to time—they're a ton of fun. So you kind of know what that distance is like, what that duration is like and what your legs should feel like throughout to not blow up. I think within a couple tries you'll probably dial in what your feel should be like to be peaking by that 15 mile mark. I think that's the best I can offer—go into it with the mentality this is a sprint triathlon bike split, I don't have to run afterwards, and just try to adjust the RPE accordingly. Coach EJ, any insight that's better than that? Probably so.

Elizabeth James: Oh no, I wouldn't say better insight. I actually loved the 15 mile time trial. I did this a lot first starting and I didn't have power, but I also had a fantastic replicable course to do it on. At the elementary school where I was teaching, I would do this. It'd be Tuesday afternoon, get out of school at 3:30 and it was just a straight stretch on the highway. I had 20 miles that usually Charles and I drove home together. So he just knew on assessment weeks like I'm putting the bike in the back and after school that day, I'm just riding home. I would get on the bike, I'd warm up a little bit and a couple miles into it I'd start the stretch because it was just a straight stretch of highway between the town where I taught and where our home was located. And I loved it. There was just something about it—felt like a race. And because it was the same stretch of road, there was something about just flying down the shoulder of the highway. I mean hardly any traffic. This is rural Nebraska. Weather was pretty mild. So yeah, I loved it. It's something that I did get to be very familiar with what that effort was like. Even then I was chunking it into like 5 mile chunks. It's like, all right, 5 miles down, 5 miles down, 5 miles down. But yeah, you kind of learn what that is and you get better with it over time. I've talked about this with the other assessments—the first time I did it I definitely got done and was like, oh, okay, could have gone a little bit harder, but I didn't know. So it's something that you build upon and just continue to improve. Yeah, maybe I'm in the minority there that I kind of missed that. But I also had a pretty good setup with how I could execute that workout.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, sounds like it. And I think for anybody it's try to find the most consistent spot to do it. I do wonder for athletes that do the 15 mile time trial essentially every four to six weeks, how much better prepared are they to hold aero on the race course than an athlete that's inside on the trainer all the time? But that's a different podcast for a different day. We've got one more sport left to talk through. We've got the run. The run for every athlete is either a 5K or 10K time trial. I think most athletes get the 5K. Some athletes get the 10K. I, for example, had the 10K for a while and my coach encouraged me, hey, just do the 5K. It does the same thing and it saves you the training stress. Now I'm an injured athlete often on the run if I run too much, so that was specific to me. But talking about the 5K—it's just over three miles. You can chunk it up a lot of ways. You can chunk it up by time, you can chunk it up by distance. Let's go to Coach Matt on this one first. How do you tell your athletes to approach this 5K time trial?

Matt Sommer: Wow. This is a mental struggle for me personally. This is the hardest assessment for me to execute because I know it's going to hurt. I know I'm going to have to dig deep. I'm going to have to put myself in the hurt locker.

Andrew Harley: Thankfully for you, it hurts for 17 minutes and six seconds.

Matt Sommer: Oh, man. But it hurts. It hurts so bad. Again, I do chunk this one as well. You guys love my analogies. I'm going to bring another one to you. Training is like baking. Assessments is like cooking, if you understand the difference between the two. Baking is precision. It's chemistry. It requires exact amounts. If it calls for half a cup of flour and you just randomly decide, oh, I'm going to use three quarters of a cup—

Andrew Harley: It's not going to turn out right.

Matt Sommer: Yeah, huge difference. A tablespoon of baking powder and you're like, I don't really like that, I'll just use a teaspoon. Not going to happen. Cooking is a little of this, a little of that, and you hope and you pray that it tastes good when you serve it. Well, every TriDot workout that we get has a recipe to it. So every training workout is baking. It's there. We know what to do, we know how to execute it. We can get the product out of it. But on assessment day, we're left to cook. We have to decide how to make it ourselves. So I like to write out a recipe, not just for myself, for all my athletes, of how to execute each one. That's the chunking piece that we talked about for the pace, pace, build, race on the swim, or the 8, 5, 5, 2. I give them targets for that 8 minute, the 5 minute, the 5 minute, the 2 minute. I give them targets to hit so that it's piece by piece, the little goals along the way. Well, for 5K, I split it into four sections as well: three quarters of a mile, three quarters of a mile, one mile, six tenths of a mile. And again that first three quarters of a mile, you're just wetting your whistle. You're just getting comfortable doing what you always do. It's just a normal threshold. The next 3/4 of a mile, top end threshold. Now we're 1.5 miles into it, and all you're doing is what you've been used to. Now, that next mile, that's where it gets special. That's where you decide, am I going to take some risks or what am I going to do? And a mile and a half in, you should have a pretty good idea on if it's your day or not. Is it time to swing for the fence?

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Matt Sommer: Next mile. That next mile is where it can be showtime. And, well, by the time you get through that mile, you got six tenths left. And that's where it's just hold on for dear life, get those legs turning over and go for it. And you know it hurts. It can hurt. And it can be a mental struggle if you're out there by yourself. I personally don't like doing 5K assessments by myself. I love having somebody out there on the track, whether they actually are pacing me or they're just out there running. Having somebody out there helps keep me motivated. They're almost like a rabbit. I've been fortunate enough that several of my athletes, I've been able to get out there and pace them. I tell them, I'm like, listen, I can dial you in. I'm fortunate enough that I've been faster than most of them. I will dial you into exactly where we go. Stay on my heel. And I will lead them. That way they don't have to think and they can just focus on execution. If you're fortunate enough to have somebody, they called me the human metronome. It's like, that's fine, let's get out there, let's do it together. But the most important thing on that pacing piece is I'm not going to slow down. If you slow down, I've got to keep you honest and I've got to sustain our target pace. So if you start to drift off, I'm not slowing down to give you a false sense of accomplishment. I'm keeping the pace so you can see the distance between us. And if you feel like you can pass me, you need to go past me. And I will not continue to speed up to keep up with you. I'm going to let you create that separation so you know you're ahead of whatever agreed upon pace we're trying to execute. So having a good pacer out there can be a huge, huge, huge benefit, I think, on the 5K. But you got to have that conversation beforehand about, you know, don't slow down because I'm slowing down. And if I get ahead of you, don't speed up to keep up with me because you need to kind of know where you are based on that agreed upon pace.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, this one for me is the easiest one to pace because I—like you, I'm very gifted. I'm not good at everything in triathlon, that's for sure, but I am very gifted at holding a consistent pace on a track, settling into whatever pace I'm aiming for and just staying there without looking at my watch every other second. For me, the 5K, it's usually the first half mile—those first two laps is just settling into that pace, getting the legs at that pace. And then I just try to hold that consistent pace that is. And I aim for a pace that I know is going to be challenging, but I'm pretty sure if it goes well, I can probably hold on to it. There's a risk that I won't, but I usually do. Once I start seeing 2.8 miles on the clock—2.75, 2.8, 2.85—that's just give it all the gas you have left. If you can pick it up, pick it up. If you can just hang on for dear life, hang on for dear life. But for me, it's just settle into that rhythm that first trip or two around the track, stay at that challenging pace the whole way through, even keel, lap, lap, lap, lap, lap, and then give it all you got when you see the finish line in sight, so to speak. That works out well for me. But again, I have a good ability to hold a certain pace and a good RPE awareness when it comes to running. Elizabeth, pacing the 5K for your athletes, what do you tell them to do?

Elizabeth James: First off, I just love that. I mean, both of you have already presented different pacing strategies and the distinction here is based off of, like, are you on the track or is your course on the open road? Because that's one of the things that I will discuss with my athletes. And it does depend.

Andrew Harley: It's very different.

Elizabeth James: Yeah, if they are on the open road, I'm starting to think now that I need to break my mile and a half up into two chunks and be like Matt, because I always think of the mile and a half and then the mile and then the last six tenths. So maybe I need to break that into four chunks.

Andrew Harley: So funny, I think of it as mile, mile, mile, the last little burst. Truly, in my head, I feel accomplished when, okay, one mile down, two miles down, three miles down, finish line. That's not how I pace it. But anyway, keep going.

Elizabeth James: Yeah, well, and I mean, whatever works well in terms of your mental approach to feel successful in that. But yeah, I think there is a difference between somebody's mindset going in more of an open road course versus being at the track. I love doing the 5K assessment on the track because Andrew, like you, I'm like, okay, I just need to hang on. And every time that I come through and I'm on pace, that's another win. So I'm just counting wins with every single lap of the track. And I'm not even necessarily thinking about what mile I'm on. If I'm doing a 5K on the road—and you know, I don't necessarily say that athletes should use a 5K local race as the assessment; we need to build those mental skills and do it without that competitive environment. But if there's an opportunity to jump into a 5K too, I definitely don't think of it in little 400 meter segments. I'm thinking it more in the miles and chunking that down. But again here, there's a couple ways that we can do this and depending on the technology that you're used to, or if you have somebody there, let's find a strategy that keeps you motivated and helps you know when you are on target. For me, if I'm out there on the track by myself, I will set my watch to beep for whatever seconds it should be when I'm crossing that line and then I know, yes, that's another win, that's another win without me having to look at my watch and do the math. I just know I'm on target, I'm on target. And that positive momentum is something that just spurs me forward. If I've got a training partner that's out there, I'm very fortunate that Charles will come and pace me to a number of my 5K time trials. That's super helpful. But if you don't have that, finding a way to maybe set your watch to beep at whatever interval that is and just giving yourself that continued guidance throughout I think can really help somebody, especially as they're learning their own pacing strategy.

Matt Sommer: Something funny that I love and I love the motivational pieces is for me, I love counting the laps backwards when I'm out there on the 5K and I'm running on the track. Counting backwards to me is that sense of accomplishment. I don't count upwards 1, 2, 3, because the numbers are getting bigger. But if I'm like, all right, 11 laps left, all right, 10 laps left, all right, nine laps left. It's that sense of accomplishment. And I'm getting there. One thing that I have found so detrimental to the 5K assessment and I actually have this conversation with my athletes is you gotta know what the winds are gonna be. Wind is the biggest factor when it comes to a 5K time trial because it's not equal. If you have double digit winds—you're not going to get a double digit benefit. I know it's circular in nature, but running into that headwind can totally derail your 5K time trial. I ask them to really make sure—let's take a look at the week ahead. Let's see what the weather looks like. Temperature, I'm not too worried about. But if it's icy, snowy or extreme winds, if we're looking at 15, 20 mile per hour winds, hey, pick a better day to put that 5K time trial on because you're setting yourself up for failure by going out into windy, windy conditions like that.

Andrew Harley: Two more questions about the run. Elizabeth, help us out here. How can we—if an athlete is listening that's prescribed the 10K instead of the 5K because they're strong enough to do that—it's a compliment if you get that. How do they pace it?

Elizabeth James: Yeah, and definitely a compliment if you are prescribed that 10K. It means that you have earned it and your RunDot is indicative that you can handle that. So congrats to you and we'll celebrate by doing 10Ks instead of 5Ks. But yeah, this is tough. Like you said, Andrew, it hurts. There's just something that I think is mentally, oh, just so challenging about the 10K, especially when you are prescribed it as the assessment because you know that basically it's telling you that you can hang on to your threshold for that longer distance. As you said, there's not that much difference necessarily from the 5K to the 10K. And it depends a little bit athlete to athlete and what the A race is that you're training for and the purpose of those training sessions leading in. But I'm going to go back to that practice and the training sessions leading into it. If you have had some of those threshold sessions where you are hanging on to those higher efforts, oftentimes you're only going to have 30 to 60 seconds in between some of those longer efforts. And so truthfully, we're just kind of taking away those mini rest breaks and you're powering through and you've already proven to yourself that you can handle those paces. One of the things that I really like athletes to do is as they're approaching some of these assessments and they're getting nervous, they're like, well, how in the world can I hang on to it? Whether it is the 5K or the 10K, it's like, all right, let's look at the planned NTS for this assessment. Let's look at the NTS scores that you just produced in your last three weeks of running. Hey, look at that. It's similar. You've already done this. That's the rehearsal, that's the practice. Now it's showtime. And so I think there's just also that mental component of it of like, you can do this. You've already shown that you can. And now let's go out there and execute it. Yeah, I wouldn't say that probably answers the question in terms of approaching it, but look back at what you've done, and what you've done is going to help you set that plan in motion for executing the 10K. And congrats to you. You're hanging on to a high percentage of your threshold for a long time, and that's going to produce great race results.

Andrew Harley: I just remember being at the four mile mark of that, and just like your legs are screaming, your lungs are screaming, and you're like, really? I've got 2.2 miles to go of this. But shockingly, the pace I set out—kind of educated guess looking at my thresholds and a lot of the things you're talking about—wow, shockingly, I held onto it and hit a time I wasn't dreaming I could have hit. Particularly the second time I ever did one of those. Matt, over to you. I see athletes on the Facebook group and in the community hub talk about doing this on a treadmill. They'll do their 5K or 10K in a controlled environment. The treadmill belt's moving. Obviously it's a different muscle input. You're not pushing off the ground on your own. Can a treadmill be used for effective assessments?

Matt Sommer: Interesting concept. It's definitely not the preferred method. Obviously we'd love to get you outside, get you on the track. Worst case scenario, the road. There are certain times of year though, that we just have to get on the treadmill. I have some athletes that train in the Pacific Northwest, up in Canada, up in Idaho, and they just can't get out there. I have an athlete yesterday that I spoke with. It was negative 20 degrees Celsius. I had to do the conversion—it was negative four Fahrenheit. There was no running outside. I mean, safety becomes an issue or it's pouring down rain or it's snowing or just extreme weather. So they're limited to the treadmill. That's where it becomes a useful tool. That's where you're spending your training time. That's where you're practicing. So, yeah, we need to use it. Now just like erg mode on the bike, you can control the outcome. If you do it on a treadmill, you can dial it in. It's specific, it's disciplined, it's precise. So you can really dictate the result you're looking to get. Is that good? Yes and no. It depends. There's pros and cons. To your point, Andrew, there's a different kind of response coming from the belt. The belt is propelling you forward, so you really need to make sure that you're lifting up and that you're pushing off the belt. If somebody really wanted to do a 5K time trial on a treadmill, I brought this up and they quickly declined my invitation—do it on one of the self powered treadmills. Get on one of the curved treadmills that requires you to actually run, not be on a self driven belt. Because now it's non erg mode. And quickly I'm like, hey, does your gym have one of these? And they're like, yeah, why? And I'm like, well, that's where I think we should do this if we're going to have to do it inside because those crazy curved treadmills, they don't propel you, you propel it. Again, that's a skill. I don't run on those personally. I run on a motorized treadmill myself. I've never done a 5K assessment on a treadmill myself. If it's been too cold or the weather's been bad, I've postponed it to the next week. I've waited till I could get outside. But I do have athletes that do it. Whether it's personal comfort, whether it's safety—at the end of the day, we're benchmarking, we're looking at progress. We're trying to make sure that their training zones are where they need to be. And again, I'm not going to say that 3.1 miles inside or outside is any easier or any harder. It's still kind of finding that grit factor as well. Can it be a viable tool? Yes. Is it the best tool? Maybe not. But if it's the tool we have to use, we go with it.

Andrew Harley: Whether an athlete loves these workouts, hates these workouts, or maybe a little bit of both, assessment day can definitely come with some extra adrenaline, some extra nerves, some extra emotion. So to wrap up our main set in 30 seconds or less from each of you, just give us what you tell your athletes as their hype guys, as their coach, to kind of get them in the right head space for these workouts.

Elizabeth James: I think when I'm talking with my athletes about assessments, a lot of it comes down to that continued relationship with them and knowing what they need in terms of either support or encouragement. It's the same as I go into them—I know I'm nervous for them. The thing that helps me do the best is just the reminder of what I've already done. For some athletes, it is looking back and really just reflecting on the hard work that's already been done. And this is a great opportunity to showcase and shine for that. But also the reassurance that this is a snapshot—that one day is not going to make or break you in terms of who you are as an athlete. No one day ever does, whether that's an assessment or a race. We're so much more than even outside of triathlon. Just reminding them that this is not a make it or break it situation. It's a snapshot. We're looking at progress over time. And ultimately, at the end of the day, it's practice, it's going to be okay.

Matt Sommer: I tell them the first thing is set yourself up for success. Plan, don't force the workout. Don't look at your day and be like, oh, crap, I have to do it now. Plan for the assessment. Go into it in a mindset, in a head space that you're ready to execute. Don't let it consume you. Let it fuel your passion. Don't let it consume your passion. I always remind my athletes—and I do this a lot, I have my quotes—I'll send them a text message that day: You didn't wake up to be mediocre. Reward yourself. Celebrate everything you've done over the past three weeks. Go out there and reward yourself. Execute with passion, execute with purpose, and give yourself some progress. Go out there, make it happen and just be proud of yourself. Make yourself proud. And if making yourself proud means you didn't stop the assessment, there's the win right there. And then afterwards, we always debrief, we celebrate the victories. Whether the dot moved, whether the watts went up, whether the watts went down, we find some form of success out of every assessment. Was it that you felt better executing it? Was it the average heart rate was a little bit lower even though the watts didn't go up? Was it that you actually got through the 400 this time and didn't stop? That's a win for some people. Did I get through the 5K and not get sick? That's a huge win. There's always something to celebrate. And celebrating those victories is the most important thing after the assessments, no matter what the result is.

Cool Down

Announcer: Great set, everyone. Let's cool down.

Andrew Harley: For our close cool down today we always end the show with our coach cool down tip of the week. And as promised, Elizabeth has a Valentine's themed cool down for us here on President's Day. Really jumbling our holidays together here. But that's all right, Elizabeth, what are you going to leave us with?

Elizabeth James: All right, well, this one was inspired by a song on the radio because as I was on my way to the gym today, they were playing all the Valentine's Day songs and they had the one "Listen to Your Heart." So we're gonna go with it. Your tip is to listen to your heart and pay attention to your heart rate on those zone two aerobic workouts.

Andrew Harley: Ooh. Good reminder.

Elizabeth James: Yes. Do not try to go what you could do. Definitely use those as an opportunity to do what you should do. Watch the heart rate. Keep it aerobic. There is great, great, great training benefit from zone two.

Announcer: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to TriDot.com and start your free trial today. TriDot, the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.

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