Home Sweet Home: Training Tactics For Where You Live

TriDot Podcast Episode 277

Home Sweet Home: Training Tactics For Where You Live

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Intro: 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: Welcome to the TriDot Podcast. It is a snow day for the podcast, and by a snow day for the podcast, that basically means it's snowing outside of my house while recording this episode. That is such a rare occurrence that I had to lead with that today. Happy snow day to all of our listeners and to all of our coaches on the show here. And I've got two guys here that are probably more used to getting snow than I am. Our first coach joining the show today is Will Usher from the United Kingdom. Will is the performance director and founder of Precision Race Team, a premier race team based out of the UK. Also with us is Coach Tony Washington, who is the founder and lead coach at Team No Coasting based out of Chicago, Illinois. Will, Tony, welcome back to the show.

Will Usher: Thanks very much, pleased to be here. I'm excited for this topic, as well. This is something that certainly comes up all the time.

Tony Washington: Likewise, thanks so much, it's great to be here.

Andrew: And that topic – that I neglected to mention in my excitement about the snow outside of my house – today, we are talking about how to train most effectively based on where you live. And what I mean by that, is where you live, there's certain training realities. If you go out of your front door, your back door, and there's a bunch of hills, or a bunch of flat, or it's really hot and really humid – wherever you live, your location, there are certain realities that affect how you train and get the most out of your training. Coach Tony and Coach Will are here to help us optimize our training based on literally where our house is. It's going to be great. I am Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always, we're going to roll through our warm up question, we’ll settle in for that main set conversation – optimizing training based on where you live – and then we’ll wind things down, getting our Coach Cooldown Tip of the Week from Tony Washington. Lots of good stuff, let's get to it.

Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.

Andrew: In triathlon, there are a lot of things to get right to have a successful day at the races and in your training. There's big skills, big things to get right, like fueling properly, hydrating properly, making sure your bike isn't falling apart while you're riding it. And then there's small things to get right, like learning how to grab your bottles from bottle cages, or fish a gel out of your pocket and slurp that gel down while you're on the run. There’s the flying mount. There's all sorts of skills in triathlon, big and small. And what I want to know, as our warm-up question today, is what is a triathlon skill that you simply are just not good at, right? I have an answer. Coach Tony and Coach Will might be perfect, I’m not sure. We're gonna find out, but excited to see what our listeners have to say here. Coach Tony, kicking us over to you. What is a triathlon skill that you are not good at?

Tony: I've been told repeatedly that I am not good at walking.

Andrew: Okay!

Tony: So the training, when we're doing our run-walk scenarios, I walk very slow, it turns out. And late into races, or in transitions, or when my legs are stopping working, I walk slow. I'm about a 25-minute per mile walker instead of like a 16- or 17-minute per mile walker. I have been passed many, many times deep into a race when something's on fire and I'm walking and people are just cruising by.

Andrew: What's so interesting about that, Tony, for our listeners who haven't met you or seen you, Tony's very tall. He's got some long legs. Tony, how tall are you?

Tony: I am 6'5”, so like 197 for metric.

Andrew: So I would guess one of your steps walking would be about five of mine walking, and yet you're still a slow walker. That is so fascinating, and not an answer I would have expected here, but I love that answer. Coach Will, what is a triathlon skill that you are not good at?

Will: Yeah, so for me, it's – particularly sprint and standard distance – hitting the right tempo off the bat in the swim. Our next swimmer, a sprinter, and the intensity of short course racing, I really struggled to slow down enough because I'm going to be excited in the moment. And I remember one race in particular – in fact, I was doing a relay, it was a 750-meter swim, and my partner at the time, some of her work colleagues were there and they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna sit on your feet." I was like, "No, you're not." And I went out so hard. And we're 300 meters into the 750-swim, and I was in pieces. I actually had to pause and do some breaststroke at one point. It was awful. Luckily, I still beat them, but I mean, it was a close run thing.

Andrew: And stopping to breaststroke, for you, is an abnormality with your swim background. For me, that might be very normal during a race. But what's interesting there, Will, I want to point out to a lot of our listeners that might be newer to the sport, or maybe just a couple years into their triathlon journey, and they might feel they're still kind of a newbie, so to speak. Coach Will is very experienced. Coach Will has raced over 200 triathlon events and is still saying that he can struggle to nail the pacing on a short course swim event. So, you're not alone. You can get better, but it's okay to not be perfect there. That is something I sometimes, occasionally do, as well, Will. This answer for me, a triathlon skill that I am not good at, I have a plethora of things I could have gone with here. But the one I want to point out is, I cannot do anything on the bike with my right hand. I want to hold onto my bike handlebars, basebars, aero bars with my right hand at all times. I can let go with my left hand and grab a bottle, grab a gel, eat a banana. I can do anything under the sun on the bike with my left hand. If you tell me whilst riding, "Andrew, here, take this bottle for me with your right hand," I will not do it. I will not let go. My brain just will not let me. It's just wild. So that's my answer. I'm sure I could do some drills and fix that, but so far I've been able to do everything I need to do with my left hand because I'm just a scaredy cat apparently. Apparently, my right hand is my control hand when it comes to the base bars and all that jazz. So that's this answer for me. We're going to throw this question out to the TriDot audience. Make sure you're a member of the I AM TriDot Facebook group. I pose the warm-up question every single Monday to the athletes in that group and enjoy seeing everybody's answers. We also put this question in the TriDot Community Hub. So if you're a TriDot user, make sure you're active in the TriDot Community Hub, and this question will be there to see what our users have to say. Can't wait to see what triathlon skill, big or small, you are not good at.

Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…

Andrew: So TriDot's technology makes our training the only training in the world that can accurately prescribe, and effectively prescribe, an athlete’s sessions with their location – where you live, where you actually are – in mind. It will adjust your paces based on the environment and all sorts of other factors. But once we are equipped, even once we are equipped with the best training session possible for us today, we still have to go out and do that training session the right way. And where in the world you live will present opportunities and challenges to you doing that right session right. And that's where the expertise of Coach Tony and Coach Will should come in handy today. And gentlemen, I want to start with this: as you work with your own athletes as coaches, how much are the variables of their home base location a factor in their training? How much is this something that you have to kick around and talk with them to make sure they're doing their sessions correctly? Coach Will?

Will: We talk a lot about, in TriDot, about athletes being intentional with their training, and efficiency is only efficient if you follow the path of least resistance, right, with regards to getting the right training done right, in the right time, and so on. That, of course, is impacted by where you live. As you mentioned, it could be the elevation, the weather, accessibility of swimming, bike and run routes, is it cold, is it hot. But a big one, actually, for me, is things like the active time trial routes, or interval-appropriate training routes.

Andrew: That's a great point, yeah.

Will: A massive problem in the UK, it's a very densely populated place. There are lots of small roads, blind corners, potholes, so that really matters.

Andrew: I'm glad you said that. I’m not sure how much I have this in our notes, but I am sure we’ll get to it. But I find, Will, when you go to do that time trial – like for me, it's almost got to be a track because of the rolling terrain we have here in north Texas. And even, like, my interval sessions, and some threshold work – I'm not at the top of my fitness right now, but when I am at the top of my fitness, my interval pace is 5 minute miles, right? Like you really get the legs spinning. My MAV shuttles are down in the 4 minute miles, for those MAV shuttle sprints, and it can be terrifying getting your feet spinning at that pace on uneven sidewalks, undulating terrain, streets where the gradient, and the slope, and the slant, and the condition of the road is constantly changing, particularly if you're doing that run where it's not perfectly bright outside. So anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of ourselves here. Coach Tony, I want to kick this over to you, too. When you're talking with your athletes that you coach, how much does the variables of where they live make it into the conversation?

Tony: We talk about it initially, very early on – where they live. I have folks who live in the desert of Casablanca, Morocco, in Houston, where it's really hot and flat, but also some up in the mountains of Colorado, in the mountains of northern Arizona, where they're – literally, it's an 1100-foot drop right out of the belt coming out of their house. So every run or bike ends with straight down a mountain or ends with this insane climb. So we talk about that a lot. We talk about exactly this – how we're going to do this – and we'll explore some trails or we'll explore. During COVID, everybody discovered trails around their house that they've never seen before, when places were closed off, kind of thing, so it was really fantastic. But that's something we talk about really early on. I have folks who live in Atlanta, quite a few folks who live in Atlanta – very hilly and super hot in the summer. So we deal with that.

Andrew: So guys, as we get deeper into this conversation, I want our athletes to hear from you on why it's so important to do our training sessions the right way. Because we could, based on where we live, we could see what our session is, we could see the paces TriDot has in store for us, and we can go out the front door and go for a ride, and go for a run, and just do the best we can to stay as close as possible to the zones but not stress about it. We can do that, right? And we're going to get a workout, we're going to get a decent workout. But talk to us about why solid session execution is so important. Coach Tony?

Tony: I remind my folks that as they – if they're doing an outside workout – as they're getting started, to update the position, update the time, that way, you know, TriDot's pulling the current temperature and location, and to adjust your paces. If you're waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning, and you live somewhere where the sun's still coming up and it's 50, but it's going to be 80 later, it's a big difference in your paces. So I have them really try to actively look at their pacing for their workouts. Super, super important. We know all the different kinds of workouts you're going to get in a week, in a month, are all focusing on different things. Things are going to get you stronger aerobically, things are going to raise your overall ceiling, those kind of things. And when we pile all those workouts together, you make a big, round, fast athlete. Having the correct paces adjusted for your current time, place, and altitude is what really gets you there to make all of the math work out for your training.

Andrew: All very spot on. Coach Will, anything to add there about why you emphasize to your athletes getting this session as right as possible, based on where you live?

Will: One thing to always take into account, whether they’re sprint or full distance Ironman athletes, whether they're pro athletes or family, men and women, is that we're all time poor, and efficiency really matters. One of the traps that people fall into quite regularly is they fall into Zone 3. If you just had said to someone, “Go out for a run,” typically, they'll end up in Zone 3. Why? Because they're running at a nice pace. They feel like they're moving, right. It hurts a little bit, enough that you feel, "Oh yeah, great, I'm doing something. It's great.” But actually, you're doing not a lot of good in any particular area. The key things to remember in training, really, whilst we have multiple zones, if we look at two areas in particular, you're either improving your cardiovascular efficiency – which is sort of Zone 2 area – or you're trying to raise that ceiling, like Tony mentioned – which is kind of Zone 4 and above. If you do the bit in the middle, you do neither of those two things particularly well. Zone 2 is really, really important for efficiency and for success in endurance sport, but equally, you're not going to go any faster if you don't raise your threshold. And so if you do the right training right – i.e. follow your plans the best you can – you can have that perfect balance. If you do something in between, then simply you won't. You’ll be inefficient, and therefore you won't get the results as you may have done had you followed it perfectly. Now that is difficult, and there is benefit to going outside if you're feeling awful and you want to just try and get out and do something. TriDot will pull what you've done out and give you the credit for that. But it's still not as efficient. I say we're time poor. We're very driven people. You want to hit the right results. In order to do that, you've got to compartmentalize your training like that.

Andrew: Great stuff there guys. Okay, so what I want to do today – and we'll get into this here – is, I want to run through the possible training scenarios an athlete might face and hear from you guys on how an athlete can best train in that environment. Obviously, we can't cover every scenario an athlete might face in their particular location, but overall, I think we can hit a lot of the highlights, and people are gonna recognize certain realities they have as we're talking through the list I've created here. I want to start with the swim because the swim is a little bit different to the bike and run. We typically are finding a body of water. The terrain of where we live doesn't matter as much, the environment doesn't matter quite as much. So let's start with just the swim before we get into some bike and run realities. The big thing with the swim, again, it's not where you live and what city or town is like; it's literally just what swimmable bodies of water do you have access to. Let's run through a few scenarios an athlete might face in regards to swim training. Some athletes are very blessed here. They have easy access to a pool and open water. How should they balance spending training time in both? Coach Will?

Will: Yeah, so what I'd say is that the pool is for fitness and technique, and the open water is for skill and familiarization. By skill, I mean things like sighting, things specific to open water swimming. I see too often people going and doing a 2000-meter, nice swim around the lake, and then trying to equate that to a 3500-meter interval session that they should have done in the pool. They're not going to get the same benefits, right? If you look at the 10,000-meter swimmers at the Olympics, if you look at pro triathletes, most of the work is done in the pool, most of the hard work. But the lake and the open water are also important. What I would suggest – when the season is right, not in freezing temperatures, and an appropriate venue, of course – is that maybe you use your Zone 2 sessions, which typically tend to be much simpler. So like, it could be five blocks of 10 minutes, or five 500s, or something like that. That's a great session to go and do at Zone 2 in the lake. So you're getting all your skills, you're doing that, the intensity is lower, and it's a case of managing that through being body aware, right, because it's much more difficult to be accountable in terms of times and accuracy. Most GPS, despite what they might argue, are horribly inaccurate in the water. We regularly have people allegedly swimming over the motorway when they're in the lake next to the road, right. It's clearly wrong. So what I would say is, you know, that's how you'd balance hard work in the pool, along with your technique, and then skill and familiarization in the open water.

Andrew: Yeah, and that very much is in line with how I handle, at least, being in Dallas/Fort Worth. And I know, like, I'll give TriDot staff member and pro triathlete Elizabeth James a shout out here. I know Elizabeth, she lives in Dallas like I do. She gets in the open water a little bit more often than I do. Swimming in open water confidently is a little bit more important to her, as a professional who's racing in a pack, than me, who's time trialing as an age grouper. What I usually do, Will, is exactly what you're talking about. I spend a majority of the year in the pool, and for me, when I have race day coming, I like to make sure I get in the lake once before race day. Just to get back in open water, just to remind my body of what that difference is like. That way, when I hop in that open water swim venue on race day, it's not, "Oh, I haven't done this in 6 months," it's, "No, I did this last week." Just to kind of brush off those skills and the familiarity with that environment. Will, I’ll bounce this one over to you, as well. What if an athlete has limited access to a pool? What do they do about that?

Will: Yeah, so I mean, this is familiar to me. I grew up in southern central England, in Wiltshire, and my club – well, nearest club, in fact – was 20 miles away. As a kid, then, I was swimming twice a day, 6 days a week. That's a lot of driving. With triathletes, typically, quite often with family and got to do 2 other disciplines, that can really eat into your time. You can do time-based sessions in open water. Like, you can set the watches up to do that sort of thing. I would say that swim bands are phenomenal. We saw a huge impact over COVID when people just couldn't go swimming. We used bands a lot. And actually, for some people, that was hugely effective, and for others, just sort of mitigated the losses a little bit. And I would say, though, that it's unlikely that you're going to have open water access all year round, just with temperatures, and safety, and all those bits and pieces. So it is still going to be important to really manage your time around the really key sessions, and again, if you look at your TriDot program, what you'll find is on the XP for the session, you'll be able to see the most important session of the week. So if there's one that you've got to do, it's the one with the highest XP, and so be mindful of that and plan around that. So maybe you've got three swim sessions, you've got to do at least that one, and make the time to get to the pool, otherwise you're just not going to get the gains that you'd like to.

Andrew: Totally fair. Another scenario I see athletes on the I AM TriDot Facebook group and in the Community Hub – I see this posed every so often – some athletes, the pool they have access to – they have a pool, but it's an unconventional length. So Coach Tony, there's athletes that report, I think frequently. I see people say, “My pool's 33 meters.” It's longer than that 25 that some people have. It's shorter than the 50. And more importantly, TriDot workouts aren't prescribed for 33 meters. And some people, they have just the pool in their backyard, or they have just the HOA community pool. Those, you know, you can get a couple strokes in, but then you're hitting the wall. They're under 25 yards or meters. So Coach Tony, how can somebody execute their swims as effectively as possible if the pool isn't that standard 25 or 50.

Tony: There's a couple different strategies. So if it's something, like 33, that rounds up well to do three laps for 100 or so, I'd have folks do that. I'll look at, hey, this workout's gonna take, this session is going to take about three minutes or so if you're doing, say, a 200 or something, or 250 for three minutes for super crazy fast, and then see how many laps that would be and adjust it for that. Also, with a very short pool, I've also used swim bands to attach myself to the side of the pool and just turn this pool into a giant jacuzzi. I've done that in a couple places, like hotel rooms. But I'll adjust it based on time, those kind of things. If not, I've done the swim bands that either attach to your waist, or attach to your feet, and attach it to something very sturdy. I've learned the hard way that you can pull pool deck furniture into the pool if you're strong enough.

Andrew: Yeah. If you're 6 foot 5.

Tony: Long arms! But that's pretty effective. It's actually funny because it turns a small little pool into a big giant jacuzzi, so it's almost like an open water workout. I've also had people work out in endless pools, so they're really fortunate to have a couple of folks who have endless pools in the backyard. So same thing, they're adjusting their workouts based on time. “I need to do 3 x 5 minutes instead of 3 x 300 yards,” or something like that. So adjust them like that.

Andrew: And that, Tony, is – that’s a big spend, right, to buy yourself one of those endless pools. They are not cheap, but triathlon's not cheap, and if you want to be a triathlete bad enough, and you just do not have swim training around you, that might be something to look into – either financing, or splurging on, or whatnot – you make that one purchase, it's big, it hits the credit card hard, but hey, it takes that problem, that barrier, of being able to swim out of the equation. So good tips there, Coach Tony, on how to handle a non-standard pool. Coach Will, what would you say to an athlete that has limited or no opportunity to train in open water? Kind of the inverse of what we're talking about before, where, “Okay, I can get in the pool easy, but I just never get in open water. My races are in open water.” What do you say to an athlete like that?

Will: What you can do around that, is that there's always going to be some open water available, but it's not available on a regular basis, right, so you can't train in it. So where I'm going with this is that I recommend that – there's most lakes, or most open water venues, that are properly managed will also offer a familiarization course, and it might be something that you need to really plan, right. You need to say, “This weekend I'm going to go and do this. It's going to take me two hours to drive there.” Alright, but it is important – particularly if you've not done it before. I've had national level swimmers who get inside water and freak out because they can't see the bottom, or a fish touches them or something. So you know, it is really important –

Andrew: Was it a fish or was it a shark?

Will: Well, exactly.

Andrew: No way of knowing, Will.

Will: Right. You know, Florida, it could be an alligator, right. It's a dangerous time. But yeah, so it is important to go and do that, but make an occasion of it. Okay, so ideally get familiarization done early, well before your race, so that if you do have a problem, like you feel nervous in open water, you have time to counter that. But one of the things we've done quite regularly, is we’ll do, like, a swim to bike brick, right. So we'll go in, or we can make it part of your race rehearsal weekend, which you have two big race rehearsals prior to every race – use those sessions to go and park your car, have everything ready. Do your swim, go straight out onto the bike, and then run off. It's a great opportunity to practice everything you need to practice for your racing, not least the packing for racing. Because that's something that you can do a race rehearsal at home, and you're like, “Oh that's great, no problem.” Well yeah, because everything's around you that you could possibly need. It's only when you've driven 100ks to a race venue and you've forgotten your goggles, or your race belt, or whatever, right, that there's a problem. So actually, it helps you process that entire race organization and rehearsal day. So that's what I would take for that.

Tony: So another thing to add, is if they're going to be doing a race that's going to be wetsuit legal, is wear your wetsuit at the pool. Something that is something you probably don't use very often, except for in the race scenario. Or when you get to the race venue, you're going to practice that in your open – if that it might be your only open water practice. But definitely to practice with your wetsuit to make sure it doesn't rub, make sure it does those kind of things that you're not used to. And then for open water practice at a pool, what I'll do is I will – especially if I have somebody I'm swimming next to – I'll have them, when I take off for a lap, I’ll have them move my water bottle, and then when I come back, sight, try to find my water bottle, and I'll look for that water bottle. I'm trying to sight for that water bottle, I'm practicing sighting, and I'm practicing looking to the side. There's a lot of current, those kind of things. Those skills that we're going to practice in the pool with no open water swimming. Another thing I'll do, is I'll get a swim squad together, and we'll bang each other around. Practice some drafting tactics. Practicing me crashing through the crowd, kind of thing. We'll get three people and I'll swim through them and bump them around a little bit, kind of thing, getting a little bit used to open water, reduce some of that anxiety that might happen in a real open water swim. And then getting to your race venue early. If you know you've had one open water session in the last six months, getting there an extra day early, pony up for the extra hotel room and earlier flight, to get in the water hopefully and do that. I've done that a couple times – for Escape from Alcatraz, and jump in that freezing water of San Francisco Bay, where there's no sharks or sea lions. But the super, super cold water, a good practice here in the city, I'll do that in about 50-degree weather, or 50-degree water temperature, to get that open water to practice that.

Andrew: Really good, tangible tips for how to get ready for open water if all you have is a pool. And Coach Will, kind of the last obstacle an athlete might face is: maybe they don't have open water, but they also don't have a pool, right? And there's not a body of water. What do they do?

Will: I would say that you can do an awful lot of work with stretch cords, you mentioned before. They are the next best thing to swimming, I'd suggest, in terms of muscular development, technique, and so on. What I would say is get a light set. Don't think you're Army and go massive, the heaviest bands you get. Go the lightest ones you can find first and work your way up. Something I'd also say is that don't attach them horizontal, which would seem the obvious thing to do. What you'll find is that if you spend a lot of time bent double with the bands out in front of you, you'll damage your posterior chain quite badly. We saw quite a few that type of injury coming in over COVID because people were over-reliant on bands. What you can do, an easy fix, making sure that the window upstairs is secure, is put them on the upstairs window, so that you're doing it vertically so then you don't put the pressure on the posterior chain. But make sure the window doesn't come out. So that's what I'd say with that. I would caveat it by saying, really, you've got to be swimming at some point. I would only recommend that sort of approach for somebody who's a reasonably competent swimmer in the first instance. Bands should be enhancing, not replacing, your swim training.

Andrew: Lots of good swim scenarios there we ran through. Hopefully that covered most of what you guys and gals out there are facing in your swim training. And the next category I want to get into, we're going to start getting into some stuff for the bike and the run. Let's walk through how to best take on the terrain of our hometown as we execute our training, mainly focused, again, on bike and run here. So Coach Will, first thing, if an athlete lives somewhere totally flat, what are the opportunities and challenges of training in a totally flat location?

Will: Totally flat, I would argue, is better than monstrously hilly, right.

Andrew: Interesting.

Will: And you look at the Tour de France cyclists, and so on, you see them climbing up mountains for hours on end. But actually, the vast majority of triathlon courses are very flat, in particular IRONMAN. There's probably a handful of really hilly IRONMAN around the world. But more than that, the flat means it's more likely you're going to be able to do interval work out on the bike, which doing interval work in the time trial position – or on your drops, if you're on a road bike – is a great thing to be able to do in the real world. The other thing about flat conditions – nearly always means windy, right. And there's some famous Belgian and Dutch cyclists over the years who have been phenomenal Tour de France athletes because riding into the wind for two hours is still resistance, right. It's still the same. Chris Froome, you know, not wind, but in his early stages of his career, he used to ride with the brakes on in Africa because it's creating resistance. Now, whilst it might not have the hip angle that you would achieve riding a bike, say, if you're riding up a 10-degree incline, of course, the angle your body is different to how it would be on the flat. So you can't do that, but you can create resistance. I say wind would be normal. I wouldn't recommend riding with your brakes on the whole time, by the way. It gets very expensive very quickly. But it can be done. The fact is, I think, as an environment, if you had to have one or the other – it might be a little bit more dull, but you can do everything you need to do in a flat environment. And of course, if you do need to do long climbs and so on, you can do indoor cycling. You've got Zwift and FulGaz. You connect that with something like a Wahoo Climb. That raises the elevation on the front end of your bike as you're doing the various hills. And there's, like, it's out to Zwift, or if you're on FulGaz course, you'd be whatever the course has available. So you can do those long climbs with the relevant hip angle indoors. I would say flat is good, and you can make the best of that in nearly all scenarios.

Andrew: I think athletes have this notion that, "Oh, I live somewhere flat, so it's gonna be tough to get ready for a hilly race." To your point, well, power is power, right? If your legs are used to producing the power, your body almost doesn't care if that power is taking you uphill or taking you faster on a flat. It's just used to holding “x” number of watts for “x” amount of time and trying to get you ready to do that, whether you're riding on the flat or riding up and down hills. When it comes to the run, is there any – I grew up in Florida where it was perfectly flat, and so it was easy to just go out and hold the pace you're supposed to hold. With rolling terrain, it's a little bit different. I love running somewhere flat anytime I can get the chance. But are there any challenges, Coach Tony, when it comes to running in a flat location? Or is that just like the dream? If you have a flat terrain, no worries, no problems, just go bang out your workout?

Tony: It's kind of a dream, but it also can develop some kind of pattern that injures. If you're continuously running on a sidewalk that's so, so flat, you're just repeatedly pounding your knees and ankles in the same exact angle. So I encourage my folks to go find a trail, or a gravel trail, or a dirt path, or anywhere to get a little bit of terrain, a little bit of – as your foot lands in a slightly different angle than it would continuously for 10 miles on a flat sidewalk or road. But definitely can be good or bad, it's one of those things. Just like cycling, running in the flat could be great. Like you're implying earlier, getting your four-minute per mile intervals done in the flat is safer, for sure. But definitely, I tell my folks to get a little trail running in, literally just to avoid having those repetitive injuries. Making all those little muscles in your knees and ankles and feet stronger with a little bit of variation in a flat train. You usually can find something. Even uneven sidewalks can be better than anything like that. But definitely, it's harder, and more terrain is better, but flat can be done for sure.

Andrew: Yeah, and TriDot Coach Jeff Reines, who's on the podcast frequently, he is a run guru for sure. I've heard him say many times that marathon courses, half marathon courses, with rolling terrain are actually easier on your body than a course that is totally flat, for all the reasons you just outlined, so interesting stuff there. Another reality for a lot of athletes is they don't live somewhere flat, they live somewhere hilly – and whether that terrain is rolling, like what I have here in Dallas, or whether it's just straight up mountains out of their backyard, if an athlete leaves their house and every turn they take is either going uphill or downhill, that creates some challenges to doing the right training right, and holding your paces. Coach Will, how do you coach your athletes in hilly terrain to execute their workouts as best as possible in that environment?

Will: Yeah, so you can obviously train well in that environment. What the hills provide is resistance. If you're struggling to hit your watts, you probably won't when you're going uphill. Certainly, some of the hills we've got around here, if you're not maxing out your watts, you're probably falling off your bike. You can use it for some strength interval work. For example, if it was 5 minutes at “x” watts, then you could do 5 minutes uphill, then roll downhill, back down the same hill, 3 minutes, then turn it about and train in one place effectively. You can get that interval workout done within that same environment. Ordinarily though, I think it's phenomenal for heart rate rides and efficiency, pedal efficiency, that sort of thing. Just take it easy, enjoy the long Zone 2 rides outdoors. If they're hilly, that's great. Just back it off. Make sure your gear selection is relevant for that. For the more classic power work that needs to be done to be more specific, to be efficient, to be doing your right training right, turbo is a phenomenal tool. We alluded to earlier, a lot of the time, it's certainly in the UK, it's inappropriate for your interval work outside because of the traffic, the quality of the roads, blind bends. I mean, the road outside our house down in Cornwall is – I think Tony would definitely be able to touch both sides of the buildings on each side. That's the road, right. You've got to ask yourself how appropriate is it to be doing 45k an hour, 300 watts, giving it all the beans in that sort of environment. Power work, specific work, do it on the turbo. It's what it's there for, it's efficient. Heart rate rides, and you can do some strength interval work, as well, out on the hills.

Andrew: I like to remind athletes, Will, that, again, where I live, we don't have mountains in Dallas, clearly, but we do have rolling terrain. It’s actually – some suburbs are flatter than others. My suburb is pretty rolling; I have to do some searching to find a flat stretch of road for a time trial or a fast interval. If I have a TriDot session that I want to make sure I get the intervals correctly – right power zone, right pace – for running, it's go find a track. For cycling, it's hop on the turbo, the indoor trainer. When I ride outside, or when I run a path that will be rolling, you just do the workout as closely as you can, and you know, okay, there's going to be a couple minutes here, a couple minutes there, where I just didn't hold the right power target, the right pace target, the right heart rate zone target, because I was outside and the terrain was hilly. You might be on the bike, and you're supposed to be at Zone 2 power, and you hit an uphill where you’ve got to dip into Zone 3 and 4 to get up that hill without falling over. That's the reality for athletes. The trade-off is you might not hold the power zone you're supposed to hold for the exact time you're supposed to hold it, but the plus is you're getting experience riding outside, and there's some benefit there.

Will: One thing I'll say on that, as well, is that we have race plans, right. If you're trying to hit a target wattage, or a target heart rate, whatever it is – if you're on a static turbo, in a controlled environment, it's relatively simple to do. It might not feel that simple when you've got 2 blocks of 18 to do at “x” Zone 4 wattage, but basically it's the same. You turn your legs over, you hit the power, well done you. But when you're outside, like you say, it's much harder to do. If you're going downhill for example, it's even if it's a slight downhill, even like a negative 1 percent, it's going to be much harder to hit the power. So being aware of that environment, making a plan around that, etc, I think that's real racing. It's skills that will be relevant when you come to race, and you can't expect to hit your power number on the nose. Some people do, congratulations, but what happens if you get a crosswind? How's that going to impact you? Because you're struggling to hold your bike up, let alone move forward. So yeah, getting those sessions outdoors, as well, super important. Again, race day rehearsals as well, really important for that, but you don't want to have left it to then to discover that you find riding outside hard work.

Andrew: The last thing when it comes to terrain: there are athletes that, they have access to flat terrain, they have access to hilly terrain. I think of our athletes in Colorado or in California where – our California athletes can run along the beach, or they can run up in the California hills, right, so they kind of have access to both. If you have both, Tony, talk to us about where you should kind of take different workouts to optimize the fact that you have both flat and hilly terrain for your bike and run.

Tony: “Hey, what are my intervals today? Oh man, I do have 2 x 18 in Zone 4. I know this road up Malibu Canyon is gonna be incredible, and then I'll be able to get a great warm up on the way up PCH on the way out, and then blast up the hill, turn around, and then come down, and then do it again, kind of thing. So really, really be intentional. Maybe I had some kind of sickness, but I know when I look at my workout every day – actually before I go to bed – I'm already thinking of what the plan is for tomorrow. Like, well, the last couple days has been icy in Chicago, so I'm getting some of the workouts done inside for running, those kinds of things – but I'm really intentional on what's going to be done. So if they have the chance of having both sets of terrain, it's really amazing to go, “Hey, my goal race for the year is super hilly in Nice, or in Madison,” or those kind of things, get a little bit of that stuff done – of both of those things, and make just super strong for both of them.

Andrew: Great points there Tony. I want to move on from terrain – I think we've covered that well here – and get into talking about the realities an athlete will face based on their climate and weather patterns of where they live. As I said earlier, TriDot is going to give us the right session with the right paces to match our environment, but there are still measures we can take to execute better in the temperature, the humidity, and the elevation we have at hand, based on where we live. So let's talk through those. Coach Will, how can an athlete do their training well if they live in a hotter climate?

Will: It comes down to prior planning; it prevents poor performance. The key is, if you know it's going to be 30 degrees – don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. It's probably quite cold. You're thinking, “Well, that feels chilly to me,” but 30 degrees here will be, trust me, very hot. If you know it's going to be 30 degrees later, then you need to get out early, right? Early is always best in that sort of a hot environment because it's had the whole night to cool off. If you leave it to the evening, it's still going to be really warm. And if there's humidity, it's going to be worse at the end of the day than it is at the beginning of the day. That's how you need to sort of tackle that and appreciate it. I would say that it's one of the obviously huge advantages of TriDot, something that we've – I’ve been coaching 25 odd years, and we just didn't have the access to the same technology that we do now. And you know, what would we do if someone said, “Well, I'm now having to train at 3 o'clock in the heat of the day.” Well, that wasn't very clever, but okay, just back it right off. We'd say probably switch from using your pace as a Zone, to do your workout, to heart rate. That has complications all of its own because you can't get yourself into Zone 4 heart rate immediately. So you need to be sort of mindful, and you will have to use a bit of RPE, and that has its inefficiencies. And people will often train, like we said, in Zone 3 as a result. The wonderful thing about TriDot, of course, the environment, you just only start your session, you click start time, and it will modify your training for you. And so what was maybe a 4-minute K is now a 4:15 minute K because it's a lot harder, or more humid, or whatever it might be. So “use the system” is my best advice there. However, don't freak out if you forget to press the button because we're all human, we always forget to press the button. I nearly always forget to press the button. Try to work out what's happened. So if you've gone out at a 4-minute K when you should have been doing 4:15s because it's super hot, then fine, it will mitigate that and deload you in the sessions behind that session. It won't be the end of the world, but yeah, pay attention to your training. The other one, of course, is training indoors. It's a controlled environment. Unless you're in the UK – quite often you don't have any air con, and actually, the shed where you do your turbo and have your treadmill is a fridge in the winter and a sauna in the summer. But for those lucky enough to be able to control that environment, the indoor training is a very good. One thing I realized over this podcast I haven’t been saying is training indoors is really great. I am an ex-swimmer, and so I am quite good at following a black line and quite easily controlling my boredom. I would say that, for a lot of people, training outside, that's kind of half, if not 80, 90, 100% of the point of doing triathlon, is they want to be outside and enjoying the world. So please don't, at any point, take that you cannot train outside. You certainly can. But it's just those, maybe think about specific sessions that are really important. Like, again, we mentioned earlier, looking at the XP of the session – which is the most important swim, most important bike, most important run for the week? Maybe those are the ones that you have to sacrifice your outdoor time and focus and do it on a treadmill, on a turbo, or on a track, whatever. And the rest of it, you can be a little bit more varied.

Andrew: Really, really good, just overall, point there, Will. I mean, for me, living in a hot climate, obviously, I'm in Texas, and it's snowing right now. But usually, it's quite hot throughout the year. I think a lot of people buy a treadmill – or get a gym membership and go use treadmills – and get indoors in the wintertime, right, when it's cold. And here in Texas, we can usually train outside pretty effectively through the wintertime. I have a treadmill in my house for the summertime, and that's when it gets the most use. Because even in Texas, you can wake up at 5 a.m. and go do an outdoor run. It's already 94 degrees at 5 a.m. in Texas in the summertime, often. I've done my 5k assessment at the track at 10 o'clock at night and had it be 94 degrees, and you're still sweating, and you're still fading in the heat. But, Will, I love the statement you said, to use the system, use the technology, let TriDot adjust your paces based on what the temperature is outside when it's hot. And get a little bit of time outdoors in the heat, but be smart about it. Don't let it get to a dangerous level. And use those indoor tools when you have to, for sure. Coach Tony, I'm going to go the other direction to you. For someone who lives at a higher or lower latitude, it might not be training in the heat that's a problem. It might be training in a colder environment that is the problem. What can an athlete do if there's a good portion of the year where it's just cold and it's affecting their training? How can they still get the training in as effectively as possible in a cold environment?

Tony: Definitely. So safety comes first. If you're going to be – if you live in an ice-bound area, it might be very hard, but I have a really good friend who does a lot of mountain biking with studded tires. It sounds fantastic, it's one of the things that we’re gonna explore this winter. But there's no such thing as too hot or too cold, it's just having the right equipment to overcome, kind of thing. And in the heat, we're practicing our cooling strategies and in the cold, a lot of layers. I think I have about 5 or 6 different kinds of gloves depending on how cold it is. I rode the other day; it was chillier–

Andrew: Yeah, I got one pair.

Tony: Yeah, exactly. So it was chilly. I did an hour and a half ride, and it was probably 15-ish or so. So minus about 20 there, Will. So it's pretty chilly, but nothing a lot of layers haven’t worked out. I was, in fact, coming back, and I was hot. I had a little TriDot skull cap underneath my helmet, my layers of gloves, a couple of layers in my jacket, some nice tights, some wool socks – some over my shoes, over my socks – and then a kind of a bottle of lava. In the end – I haven't used it in a while, but I actually have, like, a full face mask kind of thing, you'd see that, and it can be done. And it's funny, you almost probably won't feel it, but you're starting to come back frostbite when it's that cold, but there's plenty of people who do that all the time. Somebody that Coach Julie trains ran yesterday in near zero and came back with a frozen mustache and eyebrows kind of thing. But you never regret going out there and enjoying running outside. But layer up and be safe. There's plenty of things – like I use some things called Yaktrax that'll turn my shoes into kind of like ice shoes, and I have some Hoka Speedgoats that are great trail shoes, that work really good in snow and ice. It actually makes me, running in a slippery surface, make sure my foot's coming down in the right spot. If it's too far forward, I'm gonna slip forward; if it's too far back, I'm not moving very fast. So it makes me run very pure. I actually don't mind it at all. So just layer up. If it's really cold, I'll actually warm up a little bit inside, doing some calisthenics or getting on the bike for a couple minutes–

Andrew: Ah, interesting, yeah.

Tony: –and then jump outside with a little warm up. I've gotten used to it, having lived in Dallas before coming here to Chicago, I'll run in shorts down to 10 degrees or so. 10 degrees, long sleeve shirt, gloves, and a little hat, and I'm blasting. It's good to be outside. Nice crisp, clean air when it's that cold.

Will: Actually too – I know Tony's ex-military, I’m ex-forces, as well – and it reminds me, what you're saying there, the sort of the sort of sum up statement, was something my sergeant-major said to me – I was at Sandhurst – which is, “There's no such thing as bad weather, just a bad choice of clothing.”

Andrew: Oh, interesting, yeah.

Will: You can do an awful lot of stuff, but it might take you an hour to get dressed.

Andrew: The last environment related question I wanted to ask, I'll pitch this over to Will, is about elevation because where you live – I mean, I live in Dallas at 500-something feet above sea level, not a big impact on me. People live all over the globe at different elevations, and elevation, obviously, has implications for how much oxygen is in the air, how your body responds to that in training. So depending on where somebody lives, if they are dealing with living at a higher elevation, how is this going to affect their training? Is this going to affect their training? Maybe if you live there your body's just used to it, and it doesn't affect your training at all. So Will, really quickly, just talk to us about what the elevation of our hometown might mean for our training.

Will: Certainly. So I mean, right off the bat, trust the system. If you input that you are 2500 meters or something, it's going to work out what you need to do in terms of pace, intensity, and so on. This applies to being indoors, as well, of course. Sometimes people might miss altitude – just forget and assume that it's all right. The key thing about altitude is that the oxygen quality is – it's the air is thinner, and it's been well documented for improving fitness, and that's largely down to the lower oxygen levels, which force your body to create more red blood cells and overall cardiovascular efficiency. What I would say though, is that – say you're on business, for whatever reason, in a place where it's high altitude, you're going to want to back it off as a general rule. TriDot will tell you what paces you need to do, but I would ease into it gently. If you live there your whole life, still the system's going to take that into account, but your new thresholds will be understood once you start doing your threshold testing. What you can do is what you can do. I do have an interesting anecdote. A friend of mine who lives in the high alps, his mom – it’s actually the highest village in Europe. It’s Saint-Véran, which is about 2700 meters – and his mom was from Lyon – which is low-level hills. It's not really not really mountains – and anyway, she came to the high ups and met Ben Wile’s dad, and they got married and great, and then she spent the rest of her life there. She actually doesn't ski; she's scared of chairlifts, so that's a problem. So she just potters around the town. She's quite a mumsy mum– doesn't do loads of fitness but just walks around the town, and interestingly, her red blood cell count is something like 3 times over what it is equal for a Tour de France cyclist. It's staggering. But that sort of development will occur if you live at that sort of level. Now, not everyone lives at 2700 meters; in fact, very few people live there, but you get my point.

Andrew: And just a quick add-on for what TriDot does with elevation – and I know this largely, in part, from TriDot Coach Jeff Reines – the system actually, if you're visiting an elevation, it can tell, “Andrew lives at 500 feet above sea level, and now he's in Denver, Colorado, 6,000 feet above sea level,” it's going to back my paces off accordingly, if I'm visiting there for a weekend. But if you were to move there and live there for one month, two months, six months, 12 months – in the engine that spits out your training, there’s all the data and studies about how people's bodies adapt to elevation, and it's going to start tweaking your paces accordingly when it sees you've been there for a month, you've been there for three months, you've been there at six months. All that data, of how the human body responds to that, is in there. And so TriDot Coach Jeff Reines moves from Austin, Texas to Midland, Texas – I think it was about a 3,000 foot elevation climb for him moving – and so right away, it was really interesting, Jeff Reines could see how TriDot immediately change his paces, and then kind of observed over time how it kind of backed off those tweaks as he lived there longer and longer. Anyway, going back to Will's vernacular, trust the system, trust the training, know that it's accounting that for you. One more thing I want to ask about, and then we'll kind of shut down our main set here today. There are training implications, there's training challenges that might be presented with how remote or non-remote where you live is. So if you live in the heart of the Dallas suburbs, the Chicago suburbs, like me and Tony, there's some training challenges there. And if you live somewhere a little bit more remote like Will in Cornwall, or away from a big hub, a big city, there's just different infrastructure that poses different challenges. Tony, maybe I'll have you speak to somebody who lives in the city; Will, somebody who speaks to an athlete who lives somewhere more remote. How do you talk with those athletes about getting by the challenges that might be introduced by living in those types of environments? Tony, big city, what are the challenges to a big city athlete?

Tony: Big city, probably start out first with safety. Finding a place that's safe out there away from stuff. Thankfully, the city of Chicago and the areas around there have, actually, a decent amount of parks, and you can go find some places to ride. You can use something like Google Maps, MapMyRide, or Strava to find places where people are riding. I remember also, going back to COVID, they'd close several of the trails in downtown Chicago. We discovered that a whole ton of cyclists would go park at this one park and then ride north out of the city near Northwestern University and north of downtown Chicago. Well, it turns out, that's what everybody and their brother did, as 20,000 people a day were riding this trail north of the city. We'd pack up our car and drive 45 minutes and drive that trail. If you look at some places, even a lot of cities are starting to come around, that infrastructure change, to really incorporate a lot of trails and places. You can look; I found a running trail in Seoul, South Korea that was like this underground park thing. It was pretty interesting; it's an underground river kind of thing. But it turns out, the same thing, 1000 users a day on Strava were running down this incredible little underground park thing. It was a couple miles through central Seoul. So be safe. Find something out there, look where the heat map is. Something in Strava will show where lots of runners are – this is the relatively safe place to go ride. And then find a park. If it's a place that has a big park– New York City and different areas. That's one of the things I look for all the time when I'm traveling somewhere: look for a place to park, have Strava build a running route for me, and that's usually a nice place to go.

Andrew: Yeah, very, very good tips there. And yeah, for me, living in the Dallas suburbs, there's just certain roads I'm not going to ride on because of what the speed limits are on those roads and how many cars are on those roads, and certain times a day where I don't want to be out running or riding because of how many cars and whatnot are out on the road. So yeah, it's just being smart, and staying safe, and finding the routes that let you do the paces you need to do while staying safe. Will, for an athlete who lives somewhere more remote, maybe they're, you know, a lot of the things we've already touched on, right – maybe they don't have regular access to a pool, maybe it's a little bit harder to get to a track, you know, whatever, whatever – if somebody's in a bit of a more remote location, what are usually the challenges you're having to talk through with those athletes?

Will: Yeah, so I mean the great thing about remote location is that, broadly, it lends itself beautifully as a triathlon playground. You think about where people go for training camps and so on; it's generally more remote environments, and so on. The things that you've got to look at are largely the points that need facilities, i.e. swimming. So I would say that you need to plan your week around swimming because the run and the bike, broadly, you can get those things done, right. But assuming – if you don't have the pool, you don't have the open water, or whatever it might be – you're gonna have to somehow get around that. So keep that as your primary focus, work that out, and then everything else will fall out from there. The only thing I would say is like, again, growing up in Wiltshire, deep in the arable countryside of the UK, things like a mobile phone – making sure it's fully charged, sharing your location – because should you have an accident, or an irreparable puncture, or whatever it might be, chain snap, then you're gonna need to phone for help, right. Because you can't rely on a passerby.

Andrew: That's a great point.

Will: For me, there was one bus a week that went to market in the local town. You missed the bus, that's it for next week. You have to be a little bit more self-reliant or make a plan around, “should I have an issue, can I get out of it?” The other thing to consider, again, it's just that general awareness and revised safety things that change, in so much as – where you may be concerned about cars, you're concerned about coming in and out of trees, right. When the light changes with polarized lenses, you might not be able to see what's coming in the road, or you might just not be able to see the pothole, or the way that the road is, the cameras working, whatever. So just be a little bit more aware, not least because, again, you're on your own potentially. So, yeah, again, that may well serve to train with a partner if you can.

Andrew: Alright, in like 12 seconds each, as you look at a globe of the entire world, if you could just name a city or two that you deem – of all these things we've talked about. If you were to tell an athlete, "Hey, this city and this city are the perfect place to train. They have relatively few challenges, they have a lot of opportunities, they have everything you need.” What locations do you guys consider the most ideal training environments on planet Earth? Coach Will?

Will: Yeah, so I've coached all across the globe, at camps from all across the globe. The place that has it all, broadly, is probably Majorca, famous for a lot of pro cycle teams. We're basing out there, but we've run camps there for years. The road quality is amazing. You can ride country lanes, you can ride mountains, you can ride flats. You can do an hour climb if you want it. The water is great most of the time of the year. It's a phenomenal location, and if you're in Europe, broadly, it's very accessible. It's like a 2-3 hour flight.

Andrew: Coach Tony?

Will: That sounds like an amazing place. In the US, maybe San Diego. It's really nice and all that at all times of the year. You have those mountains, and you have the beautiful water, and it's near the home of the birth of triathlon. But having just gotten back from Nice, oh, that was really nice. The mountains of southern France and Monaco area were incredibly beautiful, great little towns slim in the Mediterranean, hard to beat.

Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.

Andrew: Alright, closing the show like we always do, getting our Coach Cooldown Tip of the Week. And today, I'm gonna throw out to Coach Tony. Coach Tony, can you close us out with just a minute or two of a triathlon tip of some kind to leave our audience with today? What do you got?

Tony: Hey, we talked a lot about indoor training, and having just did a hard ride yesterday and looking at my bike right now actually, clean off your bike. We're sweating all over your bike, and that's getting a great set–

Andrew: Great tip.

Tony: –and having done a lot of bike work on our ever-growing fleet of bicycles here in the household up in Chicago, the headset will rust itself apart. Wipe off your bike or use something continuously protecting that headset, protecting all the bolts on a tri bike. If you look at how many bolts that hold the aero bars, and the base bars, and your water bottle, and your garment on – if you look at them, they're all rusty, usually. So use something to protect those things. Wipe them down after every ride, and then don't hang your wet towel over your front wheel unless you want to rust all of your brake parts. Hang it on something else. But wipe all that stuff off. Having literally just did that last night, and noticed I have a flip top open bar on the top portion of my Canyon Speedmax, and there's a little bento box in there. You'd never think that water, and sweat, and goo could get down there, but sure enough it did in just a one-hour ride yesterday. Wipe that – yeah, nice, tasty – but wipe that stuff off. And then know that when you transition to outside later in the season, you may be having some issues dealing with that kind of thing. Make sure your bike shop, or you personally, are going to take some attention to those things because a lot of rust. Your sweat is pretty corrosive.

Outro: 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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