TriDot Podcast Episode .218

Solving Your 10 Biggest Triathlon Running Problems

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. We are working our way through a three-week series where we aim to solve your ten biggest swim problems, your ten biggest bike problems, and your ten biggest run problems and today is the day we will talk about running. Our first coach joining us for this conversation is TriDot master coach, Jeff Raines. Jeff is a certified TriDot coach, a USA Triathlon level II coach, an Ironman U certified coach and he has a Masters of Science in exercise physiology and was a D1 collegiate runner. He has over 60 Ironman event finishes to his credit including the World Championships in Nice, France. Plus he has coached hundreds of athletes to the Ironman finish line. Jeff has been training and coaching with TriDot since 2015. Jeff Raines, welcome back to the show!

Jeff Raines: Thanks Andrew. I’m ready to hit the ground running today on this run episode.

Andrew: Mmm. Yeah you are. Also with us is professional triathlete and TriDot coach Elizabeth James. Elizabeth is a USA Triathlon level II and Ironman U certified coach who quickly rose through the triathlon ranks using TriDot, from a beginner, to a top age grouper, to a professional triathlete. She’s a Kona and Boston Marathon qualifier who has coached triathletes with TriDot since 2014. Happy podcasting day to you Elizabeth!

Elizabeth James:  Well, happy podcasting day to you.

Andrew: I'm Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always we'll roll through our warm up question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down with our cool down.

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

Andrew: With the popularization of rolling starts in triathlon, it is becoming rarer and rarer to do a race where you start at the same time as the other competitors and thus get to feel like you are racing everybody as you pass and get passed. However, even with a rolling start, you can enter the water right at the same time as another athlete to try to race them. So for our warmup question today, I want to hear who in your life would you most want to throw down with? What rival would you most want to crush if you could start your races together? Anyone in the world. Any name is fair game here. Who would you most want to directly race in a triathlon? Elizabeth James.

Elizabeth: So for me this was an easy answer. His name is Mark Wootton and this isn’t so much a rivalry, but he’s actually one of the best training partners that I have ever had. He’s paced me to my best races including my sub 3 marathon. I’ve had the honor to be part of his crew for Leadville, Bad Water, and some other really epic adventures. He has mentioned more than once that he really wants us to outright race each other instead of kind of being the encouragement and pacing for each other.

Andrew: Yeah, so he’s instigating this challenge.

Elizabeth: He has already thrown this challenge down, umm, and next April we are going head to head at the Eugene Marathon. I was just trying to recruit Raines just before we were getting ready to record here. So maybe Raines you can come pace me so I’ve still got my pacer and can throw down with Mark. Yeah, Mark, he’s retired from triathlon now. He’s really conquering the ultra marathon world and I would love to convince him back out of retirement just for one more race, head to head competition in a triathlon.

Andrew: Jeff Raines, what is this answer for you? Who would you want to race in a triathlon?

Jeff: Oh man. This is also a healthy competition and TriDot coach, Brady Hoover, doesn’t know this answer yet, but I used to coach him four or five years ago pre-COVID and he’s a great runner and him and I just became buddies, best friends, kind of remote training partners so to speak. We kind of were both having a marathon season where I had an A race marathon coming up a few weeks after his A race marathon that I was coaching him for. You know, we had similar projected finish times and we had a healthy competition and he ended up beating me. He ended up going 2:48 in his respective marathon and I went 2:50 in mine. That was four or five years ago. I want a rematch buddy. I want a rematch. We’ve actually never gone head to head in the same race before. So maybe we’d pick another marathon in the spring to do, winter. But maybe we pick a 70.3 and we both go head to head because we’ve never gone head to head in a triathlon either. So Brady, fastest marathon time this winter and let’s do Oregon 70.3, July 2024. Let’s go head to head buddy. Bring it on.

Andrew: This answer for me is TriDot coach and podcast regular, John Mayfield. He has beaten me on three separate occasions by one second. And there’s a back story to all of them where that’s the reason. At Clash Daytona, we got in the water I thought at the same time and we finished that race at the same time and I guess I got in the water a second before him because low and behold, he beat me by one second whereas I could have dropped the hammer and dropped him. But that’s another story. Escape from Alcatraz, same thing. I hopped into the San Francisco Bay right before John Mayfield. You can literally see it on the camera feed. There goes Andrew, there goes John, and we literally finished that race together and so he beat me by one second because I got in the water before him. Then…

Jeff: Did y’all hold hands across the finish line Andrew?

Andrew: We did not actually. That would have been cute. That would have been totally cute. We should have. Missed opportunity. I think I had my hands in the air. He kind of gave some Texas finger guns. I’ve got a picture of it on my computer that I bought from that race. Then in the Pearland Half Marathon. I went down to Houston, Texas and paced John at the Pearland Half Marathon trying to get him a PR at that distance. So I am slumming it at a slow pace for me to pace him to a PR and same thing I guess. I guess I crossed the start line just before he did, we finished at the same time and he beat me by a second. So on three different occasions I’ve been beaten by this man by one second. I want redemption. I want to throw down with John on a triathlon, drop the hammer, and officially walk away with a faster time than him. So, I’m calling John out. We’re going to have to get that scheduled and make that happen. Hey, I want to hear from you our TriDot audience on this question. Of everybody you know, who would you most want to race at a triathlon? Would it be a friend? Would it be a training buddy? Would it be a coach? Would it be a pro triathlete? Would it be someone else randomly? If you could race anybody on a triathlon, who are you calling out? Who do you want to throw down with?

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

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Andrew: Alright, very excited to solve some run problems today. I had a little list of my own of things that I thought people struggled with when it comes to the run, but just for good measure I threw out to the I AM TriDot Facebook group this question just saying, “Hey, when it comes to running, technique, workouts, race day, whatever, what are your biggest run problems?” And people gave a lot of great feedback, a lot of great responses to that post and from that I curated the list of ten talking points we’ll be working through today where we have Coach Jeff and Coach Elizabeth helping me solve your ten biggest run problems. Okay, let’s get straight into it.

Big run problem #1 is motivation. Some athletes reported being bored during their runs. Others struggle to get out the door in the first place to get their run going. Coaches, how do you amp your athletes up for the runs? Elizabeth, what do you think?

Elizabeth: What is going to get you out the door? Is it running with music? Is it running with others? If we can find something that makes it more enjoyable then that’s great, but I think the reality of this is, and this you know might sound a little harsh, but you are going to lack motivation at times. Like, sometimes you’ve just got to get out there and do it. I’ll often encourage athletes to just get out there and get at least ten minutes in. Most of the time getting started is the hardest part. So once you’re out there, you’ve done those first ten minutes, normally you’re like, “Yeah, okay. It was a struggle to get started, but I can do more.” And they usually end up doing at least 75 to 100% of the prescribed session. So give yourself the opportunity to get it done. Then I’ll say this too. For the athletes that don’t like running that are like, “Ugh, I just really don’t want to do this.” It’s often the things that we don’t like that we need to be doing the most. So acknowledging that you don’t want to do it and then doing it anyway can be a huge mental win and something that you can really draw back upon on race day and say, “You know what, this was hard for me, but I really committed myself. I put in the time and I know that I’m going to reap the rewards of that.”

Andrew: Yeah, it’s really interesting because just two episodes ago when we were having this same conversation about swimming, this was a main talking point was people saying “Yeah, just getting in the car, getting to the pool, getting into the pool is such a struggle.” And I resonated with that and I need to be going to the pool more often because of that, right? Like and for me getting out the door for a run is easy because I enjoy the run, but it’s different for everybody. So very, very good points there Elizabeth. Jeff, anything to add here about things that you do with your athletes to help motivate them to go out there and get their run sessions in?

Jeff: Yeah, you know, the run tends to be, you know, the hardest or maybe least favorite discipline for many triathletes, but at the same time it’s the easiest of the three to do, right? Just put on some run shoes, go out the front door, right? It takes me an hour sometimes just to get set up and everything for a bike ride. So running is the easiest of the disciplines to do, but it’s the least favorite or hardest for some. So I get it. I like to have little games so to speak inside the workout or workouts within the workout. Yeah, you have your workout, you have your 4 x 8 minutes let’s say inside of it, but I’ll even let’s just say like if I’m on the treadmill or elliptical, I’ll play a little like calorie burn per minute goals or have to have this cadence or you know, I have these little kind of games that I play to keep me intentional. Kind of keep me on pace. Just things like that so you can get creative with some of those, but I like to do that. Those really long hard sessions or those long runs, maybe you’re going to do it on a treadmill or just whatever it is, but just be a little intentional. That’s different for everyone, right? I may say, “Hey on your long run I’d like to see an average cadence versus stride length of this and then let’s do these things inside and hey, after that run we’re going to talk about it.” And is the data going to show. So just that accountability aspect and having that kind of workout within the workout can help keep that motivation sometimes.

Andrew: Yep great stuff from both of you on that one.

Big run problem #2 is suddenly having to go #2. Running definitely jostles our innards more than the other sports do and can definitely induce the need to potty mid session. How can we best prevent a GI issue from throwing off a good workout? Jeff Raines.

Jeff: Andrew, I see what you did there. You made going #2, problem #2.

Andrew: Every now and then I’m really clever. Every now and then I am….

Jeff: Yeah, I love this.

Andrew: Potty jokes, yeah. They’re good ones.

Jeff: You know, I’m going to refer to this as the “runner’s trots.” You know, that’s kind of arguably, let’s say, on social media let’s say, what the runner’s GI or the runner’s diarrhea actually for lack of a better word is referred to. So the runner’s trots. It is definitely a big issue. It is one that needs to be addressed as much as you want to blush or giggle here, it is a big deal. We have a whole podcast on this one. In podcast episode 133 and it’s the “ABC’s of #1’s and #2’s.” So you can refer to that one for a little bit more in depth, but I think the biggest thing and Dr. Krista Austin, a podcast regular, has referred to eating a little bit less protein and less fiber leading into those big long runs, those hard sessions. The day before and even race morning you want to stay clear of too much of those because they can trigger some of the runner’s trots. A lot of it can be like, I call it the ground and pound. The tolerance of the ground and pound. So just being out there longer, the ground and pound, like you said sloshing around and so we don’t want to do– we want to do a healthy amount of cross training, but we also want to build up the volume, duration, and also the tolerance of that ground and pound aspect on harder surfaces, right? But, you know, like some that have adjusted their diet and still just can’t seem to keep normal balancing during those longer sessions, have even taken things like Imodium or things that can help reduce or eliminate that runner’s trots or those symptoms and that can allow you to focus on your running and racing and continue to consume carbohydrates throughout the race, but give maybe a lower risk of those GI issues. But taking supplementation is not always recommended. It can be– or I would argue or encourage that it be more of a last resort.

Andrew: Gotcha.

Jeff: You don’t want to just always pop a pill or something before a long run or before a race and rely on that. Let’s try to cure it at the root of the problem, but last resort I would recommend taking Imodium or like a Pepto Bismol, you know, dissolvable single serve tab maybe like an hour before the session. I wouldn’t take it during. It’s actually recommended not to, but you shouldn’t rely on those supplementations especially also during like a high stress situation or a high sweat exercise because they can alter the water-electrolyte balancing throughout your bowels. But anyways, it’s recommended that you could take a single dose, nothing crazy, an hour before. You don’t want to do it every single day, you know, a regular daily fix. But a random every few weeks if you want to pop that or try that if you’ve tried everything and race day is just coming up and you need that. But anyways, I’ll just say those Pepto Bismol dissolvable chewables were a lifesaver for me, but it helped more nausea. So another piece of kind of runner’s trots is nausea, not just the whole diarrhea and loose stool.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: So nausea is a big one. A little bit of carbonation can help mid race or popping that little Pepto Bismol tab can just help settle the stomach, because when you have that nausea you just don’t want to eat, but you know, it usually happens later in a race or later in a long course let’s say marathon and it’s hard to rally back and it just by that portion of the race you need to eat even more, right? You’re at a deficit most likely even more and so you’ve got to continue to stay on your nutrition plan, but you have nausea and you don’t want to eat, right? So those Pepto Bismol chewable tabs just saved me and I refer to those as kind of that plan B or last resort or have them in your race belt just in case.

Andrew: Elizabeth James, what do you have to add here on potty prevention?

Elizabeth: So one of the last things that Raines said is you know, instead of just waking up and running out the door literally and figuratively as soon as you wake up to get that session in, that’s a big part of what I usually end up talking with my athletes about that are having these GI issues or feeling like they get started on a run and then it’s interrupted by a bathroom break. This really seems to happen most often with athletes trying to get that early morning run session in and it doesn’t matter necessarily if it’s just the easy run, if it’s a long run, but waking up literally running out the door a couple minutes later seems to be a trend with where we see these issues come up.

Andrew: Yeah, true.

Elizabeth: And it really can be remedied in that case by giving yourself a little bit more time between waking up and beginning that session. I feel like for a lot of the athletes that I’ve worked with, if they have a very consistent morning routine where they give themselves a little bit more time in the morning, they’re waking up, they’re having breakfast, they’re having their cup of coffee, they’re doing some activation or warmup exercises at the house before they even go and get started on the session outdoors, that really allows just that regularity of not only the routine of everything in the morning, but that bathroom routine as well. The other thing that I’ll kind of pinpoint here is that, you know, a lot of athletes may want to journal about their food intake and see, you know, why they might be having an issue on some of these run sessions, but maybe not others. I mean, if you’re going for your morning run and you ate chili the night before, well, you know, that might be an issue. But if you’re having like chicken and mashed potatoes, maybe not so much. So you can really kind of journal and look at what are the foods that are best supporting my training? Do I have a slight food intolerance to some of these things? Do I need to adjust my fiber intake throughout the day? We do a lot of these things going into a race to make sure that we’re prepared to not have that GI distress and those bathrooms issues on race morning, but what do you need to alter in your week by week nutrition that’s also going to support your training? I think that race week nutrition gets a lot of hype, a lot of attention, but our nutrition day to day sometimes really goes on the back burner where if we are a little bit more intentional about that it can support these training sessions without that same distress.

Jeff: Yeah, I’d add one last thing. Just being consistent. Doing those long sessions kind of at the same time if possible each day or each week, right? One day you work out at noon and then you workout at 10 p.m. and then you work out at 4 a.m. and you just jostle all that around, it can kind of throw things off. So and then as you get closer to race day try to, you know, the time of day at the start of the race maybe you start trying to start that workout or those last few long sessions the same time of day that the race starts and then you can start practicing those pre race meals and two to three hours out and those types of things.

Andrew: Big run problem #3 is nailing the intervals in your workout. Unless it is a zone 2 run, you’re going to have a few spicy intervals in your workout, sometimes zone 4, zone 5, up to zone 6. Athletes discussed fading on their final interval, just not being able to hold the intensity they’re supposed to all the way through to the end, or just not having the grit to dig deep and to do the pace they are prescribed. Coaches, how can we push the pace when the workout calls for it? Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: One of the first things to remember is that for these TriDot run sessions the intervals are prescribed based on your recent assessment results. So they are attainable. Like, you can do this. Often these intervals look super intimidating and that’s when that self doubt and the negotiation starts even–

Andrew: Honestly. Yeah. Yep.

Elizabeth: Yeah, even before you go out for that workout. So just know that this is based off of what you have already established is attainable for you. So don’t let that self doubt creep in. I mean, really going in with the attitude of like “I am going to give this my best effort.”

Andrew: Wow. Yeah.

Elizabeth: And then looking at the pacing of the intervals. Did you start too fast? I mean, athletes will often fade in the last couple intervals because they started off too fast at the beginning of the session. So you know, just because you can go faster on those cruise intervals doesn’t mean you should. You should be sticking to the prescribed paces so that you have great pacing throughout the session and aren’t just like nailing the first three and then falling apart at the end. You know, those paces are prescribed for a reason. Then if you are sticking to those paces and you miss the last interval by like a few seconds, then okay. Like, that is still a really good session.

Andrew: Yeah, true.

Elizabeth: The intervals should be challenging. I mean, you should have to dig a little bit deep at the end and that’s something that you can improve upon next time. You know, let’s say that you kind of started falling apart at the end of the last interval. That’s still a fantastic workout. The training benefit of that is wonderful. So you didn’t get the unicorn, maybe didn’t get the fantastic shoutout and that 100%, but from a training perspective you still made really good progress and that’s something that you can improve upon next time. Then last thing that I’ll say here, I love doing my speed work with others. Even if we aren’t doing the same workout, just being at the track with somebody else. Charles and I will go to the track together often and more often than not, we do not have the same workout, but just being there at the same time holds me accountable to the workout structure because I also know that like on the cooldown jog we’re going to be talking about like, “Hey, how’d your intervals go?” And you don’t want to be the that’s like, “Oh, I…”

Andrew: “I baled! I flopped it.”

Elizabeth: Exactly. Or “I paced it terribly.”

Andrew: “I’m a failure.”

Elizabeth: “I completely fell apart.” You want to be like, “Yeah, I nailed it.” Like, “I had a great session.” So involving others when you can even if it’s not the same workout can really just give you that extra motivation, that extra push.

Andrew: I love just the talk of like negotiating with yourself. I always think back to something John Mayfield has said on the podcast several times and that’s TriDot is designed for that last interval is where the biggest gains, the biggest fitness gains are and if you bale on that last interval and the rest you have leading into that interval is designed to be a certain amount of time for a certain reason. So the closer– and to your point Elizabeth– you might not nail it, but the closer you can come to giving it your all, all the way through to the end of all of those intervals, that’s where the biggest fitness gains are. I always remind myself of that when I’m doing those negotiations. Jeff Raines, anything to add.

Jeff: Get to a track when you can. It’s easy just to run out the front door. We all kind of have our long run routes or trails, but it’s a little bit harder to kind of plan and work around football games and things like that at that local track, but if you can make it work that’ll really help. I will say that, like you said, the last few minutes of a hard set are exponentially harder than the first few minutes.

Andrew: Wow.

Jeff: And the old school way of training, the whole training stress score model, doesn’t take that into account. It doesn’t take age, gender, environment all these things. So we know that our TriDot and RunDot normalized training stress is a much more new-age, accurate, hard core metric so to speak, but there’s a reason why you have been prescribed 4 x 5 minutes and then the next week 4 x 8 minutes or whatever that is for you.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: It’s different for everybody and then like you said, some people have one minute rest, some people have two, three minute rest in between those sets. So there’s a reason why and that NTS prescribed that for a reason. So like you said, those last few minutes or that even last set are exponentially harder, but they’re also more important. But a little trick is like if you’re just– obviously you don’t want to just bury yourself– you know, keep the integrity of the workout, right? I know you want to get that 100 TrainX and you want to get that last set in, but just know if you’re doing it safely or not or you’re burying yourself or you’re ruining tomorrow’s workout, but a trick that you can do is know the range of that quality set. So know your high and low end of that zone 4 and zone 5 range. So you might want to do the first set or the first few minutes of a set at a low zone 4 just to get a feel for things. You’re still doing threshold work, you’re still getting 100 TrainX score. Don’t just go out at the super high end of zone 4 and then by sets four, five, and six you just have no gas left in the tank. So there’s little things that you can do. You can manipulate where you’re at inside of that range to be safe and consistent and things like that.

Andrew: Big run problem #4 is elevation gain and loss. These are the hills people. This is running the hills. A couple components on this for you both to chew on that our athletes brought up, how to train for hills when you live somewhere flat was a common one especially for our Floridians and Texans. Prepping for hills when your training doesn’t prompt you to do hill repeats. I’ve seen hill repeats a few times in TriDot, not a ton, but how can you train hills if you’re not doing hill repeats. And then how to pace hills properly in your workouts. You’re supposed to hold certain zones, certain paces, and you go up and down hills it makes it hard to hold those paces. Jeff, start chewing through all those points for us.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s a lot. I mean, the big thing now is GAP, grade adjusted pace.

Andrew: Hills, baby, hills.

Jeff: So it takes the pace you’re running on that hill, but it says “Hey, this hill is 5% grade hill.” So internally your body may think you’re running a lot faster than what the actual GPS pace says. So GAP is something that you can use if you have to do a set on a hilly course. But then, if you have a hilly race coming up you want to get onto hills because we’ve said it before that the human body doesn’t really know a hill. It just knows that effort, but at the same time, you still have to know and get out on hills and practice the technical aspects of running up a hill, right? You’re going to pick your knees up higher. Is your body lean going to be a little bit different? Things like that. Your arm carriage might be a little different. So we need to get on hills, but there are times where I like to do them on that track, on that flat, really nail the pacing, get that internal physiological adaptation. But then as I get closer to a hilly race, race day, I’ll incorporate some of those sets on the hills. But the biggest thing I think that we should all be doing is the weekly strength training and I know you’re like rolling your eyes like, “I know I need to do my run drills. I know I need to do my strength training. Yoga, recovery, all those things that help your performance on a hill.” But there’s something really cool I want to mention real quick and a shout out to TriDot athlete and RunDot athlete Jeff Krebs. He just had a bunch of testing done in the lab with Doctors of Running coach and doctor, Dr. Matt Klein.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: They’ve been on our podcast before…

Andrew: Sure have.

Jeff: …and they have a great lab. So they did a bunch of exercise testing recently with Jeff Krebs in their lab doing all sorts of testing on different carbon plated shoes and all these things and just stride length versus cadence and performance and all these awesome metrics and what they deemed in his testing is that a lot of athletes put on these shoes and they’re not used to it. There’s kind of a wobble or an unstable aspect to landing on that softer, less dense type of foam. So that wobble effect is kind of like a hill or that stabilization effect. So long story short, when you’re doing your strength training, don’t just– we know you need to get out of the sagittal plane and all of those things that Dr. BJ Leeper has said, but you can do it on a slightly unstable, but safe surface. So instead of just doing single leg deadlifts, which that is arguably one of the most important and best strength exercises that you can do as a runner, single leg deadlifts, but maybe you want to do those standing on a little foam, squishy pad, right? So you’ve got to stabilize while you’re doing the single leg deadlift. So doing that will help that kind of stabilization or that wobble effect or if your shoe is an uneven surface type of a thing and you’ll have better performance and longevity in the race. So that’s something you can do is incorporate that into your strength training.

Andrew: Yeah, no definitely, people don’t think through the implications for stability of your run form and those stability muscles can, oh boy, they can add a whole lot to your experience if you beef those up a little bit with some of those deadlifts like Jeff’s talking about. Elizabeth, what do you have to add here on kind of these elevation gain and loss questions our athletes are asking?

Elizabeth: I think just a couple additional recommendations for somebody that’s training for hills that lives in like a flatter area. I mean, I know that the treadmill is a dreaded tool for some, but it really can be…

Andrew: I’ve embraced it in my mid 30s. I’ve finally started embracing the treadmill.

Elizabeth: Yes. See.

Andrew: It’s a little easier on my body.

Elizabeth: It’s really not that bad. It’s really not that bad and it can be a fantastic tool and especially if you’re looking for, you know, the opportunity to do some incline work if you’re living in a flat area. You know, I always say try to find some bridges, try to find some overpasses if you’re living in a more urban area that maybe is a little more flat; lots of sidewalks instead of some nice rolling hills that you can find. But the treadmill is a great option too and one of the things that I really like about using the treadmill is that if you understand the terrain of your upcoming race and you’re racing a hilly course, you can look into RaceX and look at, okay, what is the elevation profile of this race? One of the things that I’ve done is kind of recreate some of those like “hills” per se on the treadmill when I’m doing a long run that is forced indoors because of weather. So if I’m not able to do a run outside, not only does this make the time on the treadmill go faster, but I feel like I’m really getting some good visualization of where the hills are in my upcoming race course, getting some really good practice at just the technique of where I’m running the hills, seeing how that influences my heart rate. Kind of understanding what the grade adjusted pace, or that GAP that Jeff Raines was just talking about, is going to be as I’m climbing up some of those more steep inclines. I mean, some of the treadmills now have a nice decline feature that you can use to not only go up, but down those elevation gains as well. Then, you know, in addition to GAP, one of the other things that I’ve been using and a number of my coached athletes have been using as well is running with power.

Andrew: Yeah.

Elizabeth: So we’re not just looking at a specific pace, we’re looking at what that power is and how much we need to get up a steep incline. So you’re not blowing yourself up in a workout and using power can be a great way to pace the hills in your workouts and then ultimately during race day as well.

Andrew: Yeah, running with GAP is more accurate than just running by pure pace when you’re going up and down a hill and then running with power is even better than GAP. Just from my personal experience, we have rolling hills where I live. Nothing mountainous, but certainly not flat and when I would pace my runs by GAP, the GAP number on my Garmin watch was always a little bit delayed from what I was actually doing whereas that power number, it’s an instantaneous feedback on exactly how hard you’re pushing right then and there in the moment. Definitely makes a huge difference in accurately holding those zones whilst running up and down hills. So good call there EJ.

Big run problem #5 is fueling and hydrating your runs. I mean, this gets a little bit easier on the bike where you can actually put some bottles on your bike. You can put some fuel in your pockets, but when you’re out and about going for a run outdoors it can be a little bit harder to do. So guys, how can we remedy this on our run? How can we carry fluids, carry the calories we need and get all of that in? EJ, what do you think?

Elizabeth: I think there’s a couple different things here. First, as you mentioned, it is– it’s very cumbersome to carry everything for a run session. So I will often do a session where I can leave my nutrition, hydration in a specific location whether that’s in the, you know, edge of the driveway and I’m doing loops kind of by the house, or the Sunday track sessions and I can just leave it at the corner of the track. I can do my warmup, come back, grab some hydration. If it’s a longer session, you know, maybe have a gel there or I can grab that part way through as well. Then here’s something. You can also stop.

Andrew: Yeah.

Elizabeth: I think there’s just this runner’s mentality where they have to run for the entire session and walking or stopping, it’s not allowed. I think we’re getting better at that.

Andrew: Everybody saw Forrest Gump, Elizabeth. Everybody saw Forrest Gump and they just want to keep running.

Elizabeth: And they like have to keep going. Have to keep going. I think we’re getting better about this with understanding like zone 2 runs and heart rate and slowing down, walking sometimes if needed. But think of it this way. Like, cyclists often stop at gas stations along their routes to refuel. I mean, I’ve done so many long Saturday rides where I physically can’t carry all of that with me. So I’ll stop at a gas station, buy some more hydration, buy a little bit of a snack. You know, that’s allowed. Like, nobody questions that. You refuel and then you move on. But we don’t have that same mentality as a runner. I mean, you can go stop at a gas station. Get yourself a bar, get yourself some water, and then keep going. That’s okay too. I think another piece here though is that people often think that their run workouts aren’t long enough to warrant taking in sports nutrition. I mean, on the bike we’re out there for six hours, so it’s, you know, acceptable. But, you know, those run sessions can be opportunities for fueling as well and fueling during a session can lead to better performance even if it’s not a two hour long season.

Andrew: Better performance, better recovery on the back end.

Elizabeth: Exactly.

Andrew: Having your body be ready for tomorrow’s session that much more because you fueled that run. Yeah, all of the above.

Elizabeth: Um-hmm. Yep. Yeah. So just, I think this idea of taking in fuel for a run also needs to be a little bit more accepted just universally and when we’re doing that, allowing ourselves to stop, knowing that this is important, it’s critical for our training, hopefully that will help too.

Andrew: I love running at the track anyways so it’s easy to just kind of leave things in the corner of the track like you said and stop every couple laps for it. I very often on those long runs, when the runs get 90 minutes, 2 hours, whatever, whatever, I’ll do little out and backs from my house, right? I’ll go out 45 minutes, back, you know. Or out 30, back 30, refill, refuel, grab fresh gels and then go out another 30 and back 30 and so yeah. Doing out and backs, doing loops to kind of stop at your house. All great stuff there EJ. Jeff Raines, anything to add on fueling and hydrating or have we properly covered it?

Jeff: You guys nailed it.

Andrew: Yes!

Jeff: I’ll just say, don’t be afraid to walk. I’m becoming a more and more advocate of the run walk and I’ve been chatting with Jeff and Weston Galloway and just some really cool insight. You can still be fast and do those run walk protocols if you need to. Then you can always incorporate more of those as you’re early into that race prep stamina phase, volume phase, but then as you get closer to race day try to take fewer and fewer of those walk breaks if there’s a real big time goal in that A race, right? Just 30 seconds of walking you almost cover– speed walking I should say, you almost cover the same amount of ground as if you were running, but just call it random or if you want to have an exact protocol, right 4-½ minutes run, 30 seconds walk. Whether you do that continuously for your whole 2 hour run or you know, you just do some random 30 second ones throughout. Regardless, 30 seconds is enough time to bring your heart rate down and it really, really can be beneficial. Don’t be afraid to take those just random little breaks to refuel, reset, refocus, and get back in it.

Andrew: Big run problem #6 is improving our run form and this should be and will be it’s very own podcast so we’ll keep this light and breezy on this episode today talking to you Jeff Raines. Keeping this light and breezy here. We’ll go deeper another day. So what we want to cover here, people’s main questions on this topic that I saw in the group were: How to identify when something is off with our run form. How to decrease vertical oscillation as in how much that we are bouncing in our run stride. How to optimize our stride length. How to increase our run cadence. I think people hear about all of those metrics and they know they need to do certain things, but they don’t know how to achieve those changes in their run form. So Jeff Raines, jump in first. Maybe let’s start with vertical oscillation.

Jeff: Oh man, only 90 seconds. Holy cow. That’s a– That is a challenge young man. Okay. Vertical oscillation and stride length, let’s jump in. Just to throw out some numbers, 5 to 10 centimeters is a healthy vertical oscillation. That’s about 2 to 4 inches. The goal should be less vertical oscillation, so maybe closer to 2 to 2-½ inches being the goal, but 2 to 4 inches being okay, 5 to 10 centimeters. Umm, I’ll say this though, really taking a step back. The first thing you look for in pinpoint are deviations in your form, right? Now you don’t have to get a run analysis or something or go see a podiatrist only when you’re injured or a PT, physical therapist. Like, you could do it now when you’re injury free because finding and looking and addressing those deviations will improve your running economy and your running efficiency regardless of if you’re injured or not. You could be 100% injury free, but you have some deviations. You have some things going on; a mild hip drop or a leg crossing the midline or a leg kicking out wide. Little things like that could lead to an injury someday or eventually so we want to address them now. But also if addressing them you could improve your economy and that’s free speed, right? Leveling out that hip drip, right, might give you 10 seconds per mile because you’re traveling 0.1 meters longer now on that leg, that side that was dropped, right? Things like that. But, umm, too much vertical oscillation can be an inefficiency and that is that extra upward momentum. There’s two main ways to increase your speed in running. You can keep your cadence about the same. I like to stay in about a 5 to 8 step per minute window, but you can keep your cadence the same and manipulate stride length, right? So if the cadence is the same and you want to speed up, you’ve got to increase your stride length. You’ve got to travel further per step. Or the inverse, right? You can keep your stride length the same, but you’re going to have to increase your cadence to speed up, right? So there’s a game that you’ve got to play and it’s different for everybody. There’s no magic number. Most people I think would argue at least for longevity, endurance, shorter stride, higher cadence is key. Keeping the cadence about the same is a good goal and manipulating stride length a little bit more to dictate speed is a little bit more recommended so to speak, but again there’s always the “It depends.” I’ll end with this. You know, your Garmins will report average meters per stride, right? Most are kind of a 0.8 meters or 1.1 -ish meters is probably a normal range that I see in most. So you go do an hour long run, you know, not an outlier, right? Not weird hills or anything like that. It’s a decent run, good data, and you come home and you look at average pace and all that, but I scroll down and I say “Okay, average stride length was this compared to my cadence.” If it’s an easy zone 2 day, what was my stride length versus cadence? Was it an interval day? What was my stride length versus cadence? Long run day? Stride length versus cadence and you can start to piece together a beautiful picture or do some detective work and kind of see, okay this is how– You know, my numbers look a little bit more unique when I do this type of workout and things like that. So you can start to be intentional and diagnose yourself so to speak. But mainly in developmental phase, earlier in the season, and for my more experienced runners is where I’ll start to manipulate stride length versus cadence and you can adjust those year to year, season to season, and get more and more aggressive so to speak and be a faster, better runner in the long run so to speak or season to season. But that hopefully– I know it was over 90 minutes, but it’s a lot of info there.

Andrew: 90 minutes!?

Jeff: Hopefully that made a little bit of sense. 90 seconds, excuse me.

Andrew: It was over 90 seconds Jeff. It was all really, really good information. You are a scientist on this which we always appreciate and scientists know a lot of things and want to communicate those things that they know. So I always appreciate that in you. So I want to make sure that the takeaway is clear for somebody who knows, okay, maybe I have too much vertical oscillation or I have too short or too long of a stride length. What is the fix for somebody that can see those deviations in their metrics? Is it working on the cadence and working on the stride and seeing what decreases that oscillation or what’s the fix here if you know you have a problem?

Jeff: Yeah, you know, it’s better to run a shorter or less distance with good form rather than just tacking on a bunch of mileage with bad form because it reinforces bad habits and really focusing on your form is key. Maybe taking those walk breaks like we mentioned to kind of help wake things up, but a quicker turnover, plyometric speed, not skipping your run drills, and your strength session.

Andrew: Yeah. Good point.

Jeff: Do your warmup. Do the drills. It’s not the easiest thing to do in the dark in your driveway, you know, a bunch of high knees, butt kicks, A skips, things like that. But you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to do it. I’ll say late in a marathon, you know, mile 17 or so, your form breaks down. Your hip flexors are the first things to go and you lose the knee drive. When you lose the knee drive, you lose the distance per stride. You start to subconsciously kick out the lower leg and overly heel strike and try to grab subconsciously more distance to compensate and stay on pace. But the runner that can keep the knee drive, the distance per stride, the longest into that session is the more successful one and the only way to do that is muscular endurance and the only way to build that strength and endurance is to do your strength session.

Andrew: EJ, talk to us about cadence for people who know that they– there’s a couple posts where people very specifically saying, “I know my cadence is a little slow, I need to speed it up. How do I do that?” Talk to us about what our cadence should be and how to make sure that it is in the right zone.

Elizabeth: I think cadence along with a lot of the other metrics that Raines was just talking about, the first thing here is to kind of like know where you are and you can figure that out by either looking at your running device such as Garmin or Stryd or you can even manually count how many steps per minute you’re taking. But knowing like where am I at right now? Then asking yourself the question, does this need to change? There’s an acceptable range for running cadences and Jeff already kind of talked about how cadence and stride length are interconnected and there’s a lot of pieces to cadence other than just like how quickly your foot is hitting the ground; how many times per minute it’s hitting the ground. Because there’s this acceptable range for running cadence, just because you fall like a little bit above or below what might be considered ideal, doesn’t automatically warrant like an immediate overhaul in your running mechanics. You know, if your cadence is 140 steps per minute, then yeah, okay we’re going to want to pick that up. But if it’s something like 175 and you’re like, “Oh man. Ideal is 180.” Not necessarily. You are within an acceptable range here. So we want to go about this in a very smart and strategic way. If you are looking to improve your running and you kind of know where you are in terms of those metrics right now– cadence or otherwise– and you’re thinking “How do I improve this?” Working with a coach. Getting a run form analysis. I mean, those are some really key things that I think are well worth the investment because you want to make sure that you aren’t necessarily doing a complete overhaul of running mechanics for something that doesn’t need to change or you’re not compromising good hip extension for a higher cadence…

Andrew: Hmm, yeah.

Elizabeth: …and you’re putting more flexion into your running mechanics and creating other issues. So every time I hear Raines talk about it, I’m like, man. His athletes are so blessed with his knowledge in, I mean, all disciplines, but particularly the run and for athletes that are looking to really make improvements there and know that there’s room for improvement, working with a specialist is really going to be one of the greatest investments in that area.

Andrew: Okay, so big run problem #7 is getting the right run shoe or multiple shoes in a rotation. Athletes were asking questions about how many run shoes should I have? How do I know when it’s time to replace them? And how do I find a pair my feet will be happy with? Jeff Raines, what do you think?

Jeff: You know, I’d refer back to podcast episode #3 actually just to learn about running shoes in general.

Andrew: Episode 3, back in 2019.

Jeff: Throwback. Throwback, yeah.

Andrew: Still good. Still applies. Still good information.

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, there’s some new shoe models out there, but no, it still all applies. I like to have that one just good go-to safe shoe that you do the majority of your training in. It is good to have two or three pairs. Maybe a long run, a speed day, and then the one you’re going to race in. I kind of have that middle ground shoe. It’s not like a racing flat or race day shoe, but it’s not kind of my heavyish trainer. It’s kind of that middle speed day shoe, but anyways. Yeah. I mean, rotating pairs is also good inside of that. So if you’ve got three pair of running shoes for each type of run. You could even have another one of each of those that you kind of rotate in especially as you know one is getting toward the end of it’s life. So you don’t just want to throw out one shoe one day and then the next day buy a new shoe and go run a 15 mile run in it, right? So you want to cycle that new one in, but most shoes have a life expectancy. It will say that on their website. Most these days are kind of around that 300 to 400 miles. Some advertise more, but really honestly 400 miles is like a max I like to put on one specific shoe and then your kind of lighter, sleeker, less material, more of a race day especially the less dense, higher stack height carbon plated shoes. They’re kind of more of a 250 mile life expectancy type of a shoe. But the big thing is know what category of shoe you need. Are you– stability, do you over pronate and you need some “correction”? Is there an inefficiency? Pronation is good. Too much can be bad so there are shoes that try to help correct that a little bit. So what category are you in and then once you know that category go try each brand's version of that. I like to stay if you were blind folded and you tried on five shoes as long as you know you’re in that right category, pick that shoe that feels the best on your foot. Go with that.

Andrew: Yeah, Jeff earlier in the episode you referenced Doctors of Running and I cannot recommend their website and their YouTube content, their Instagram content enough. They really study how shoes interact with runner’s feet and all the information they put out on their website reviewing shoes, talking about shoes, is based in data and facts and studies. So definitely go consume their content if you have more questions on this.

Big run problem #8 is running off the bike. This is very unique to triathlon and duathlon. Everyone remembers the very first time they ran off the bike on race day and questioned all of their life choices. It’s very different. It’s a very different feeling. It’s not the same as just going for a run. How can athletes get better at settling into a groove off the bike and how can they have a great run split even on legs that have already gone for a swim and a bike?

Elizabeth: Okay, so I have to first say, like “questioning all of their life choices.” I mean that was very appropriate as part of that question.

Andrew: How many times have you done that as a triathlete? Many times.

Elizabeth: Oh yeah. You get off the bike and you’re like, “Why am I in this sport? What kind of torture do I put myself through on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis to do this?” So yeah, very appropriate as part of that question there. Here I would say practice and practice running different paces off of the bike. So TriDot prescribes runs off the bike that are all zone 2. Then we’ve got the ones that are zone 2 into zone 3 or, you know, starting at zone 3 easing back into zone 2. Ones that are at your goal race pace and so practicing, but also practicing all of those different paces off the bike is going to be incredibly helpful. And yeah, it’s going to feel weird. You’re going to question your life choices, but understanding how your body responds to that transition and really how long it takes to kind of feel like you get your legs back under you is going to provide you with information and confidence that you can draw upon come race day. I mean for me, I know that like my first mile off the bike, it doesn’t feel the same and I’m kind of in like one or two camps. I either get off of the bike and I’m like “Man, this feels good!” I think it’s just the adrenaline of like getting off the bike and I actually go too fast.

Andrew: Yeah.

Elizabeth: And I’m like okay…

Andrew: So easy to do.

Elizabeth: …rein this in a little bit. Like, we’ve got a ways to go here. Or I get off and I’m like, “Oh my gosh. This is miserable. I don’t know if I can do this.” Then, you know, like five minutes later I’m in a good groove and I’m like, “Okay, yeah this is fine.” So I think it’s just the practice, the experience, and understanding that it will come around, but knowing that and having the confidence that you’ll be able to find those legs again on race day is important.

Andrew: Big run problem #9 is staying healthy. We can’t show off our hard work and training if we can’t stay healthy enough to get onto the start line of a race and running has quite the reputation for ruining knees, feet, calves, backs, soles, and spirits. Coach Elizabeth, what do you have your athletes do to stay healthy?

Elizabeth: First off, you know, if you do too much or train faster than you should, that’s when you’re more likely to get injured and TriDot takes care of this for you. So stick to your training plan. Stick to your prescribed paces. If you are doing the right training right, then you have incredibly lessened your likelihood for injury. Then, be mindful. Listen to your body when just something doesn’t feel good. It is much better to back off, to take that session shorter than to push through on something that is painful and then really find yourself on the sidelines for multiple days or multiple weeks. Then, you know, not only just like with our feet, legs, calves, everything that you listed, but also our immune system. I mean we need to stay healthy too with that in terms of training and I think all of this comes with being diligent of the details that support your training. So eating well, sleeping well, prioritizing recovery, you know, replacing your running shoes as needed. All of those little details really play into preventing injury as well.

Andrew: Big run problem #10 is pushing past a performance plateau. Some athletes do the workouts, they’ve seen improvement in the past, but the run ability just seems to have like kind of leveled off at a certain point. Is there a point where we’re just as fast as we can get or are there tricks to pushing through and getting even faster? This is our last question. I’d love to hear from both of you so let’s maybe start with Jeff and move to Elizabeth to shut down our main set today. Jeff Raines.

Jeff: Yeah, there’s definitely “tricks” to getting past that plateau, always getting faster and we’re seeing with TriDot that people are older and older, but seeing more and more improvements even the older that they get. But, you know, podcast episode 82, Pushing Past the Performance Plateau, really breaks down swimming, biking, and running. But what I would say as far as the plateau effect, or not seeing as great of gains as athletes want, I get it a lot. Like why, why, why? Hey, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, whatever. You know, a lot of times the first thing I ask is “When was the last time you did all seven of your run drills before that run workout? and did you do that for all three or four of your runs this week?” Right? So actually it’s like have you done 30+ run drills in the last seven days, right? And they’re like, “Ooo, no.” Oh, hey, did you do your strength training? Hey yoga. Did you go get that massage or whatever. So those are the things I go to first and usually when those things are neglected you start to see less gains or a plateau even, whatever you want to call that. But spending more and more months in precious developmental phase is key. Athletes who put too many A races or they stay in that race prep, volume stamina phase I call it, too many months out of the year. So let’s just say, you know, nine months until your first half Ironman. Sixish, arguably of those should or could be that developmental phase and then the last couple months you’ll ramp up the stamina. That’s the fast before far. The strong before long. So doing that each season is key. Having too many A races and you only have two months of development and then you do stamina and then you do a big race. Then you sign up for another A race and you only get one month of developmental before you hit stamina again for that race and so staying in that precious developmental will help you get past that performance plateau. Don’t skip your assessments. We have a whole podcast on that. Even if you don’t think you’re going to see that great gain, you still need to do it. There’s so many benefits of doing those assessments. I alluded to earlier, fixing deviations and inefficiencies will help get past a performance plateau. You’ve gained as much fitness or functional threshold that you could in the last four months or the season or whatever, but hey, can you get even faster on race day by fixing inefficiencies? Leveling out a hip drop and all those things we mentioned earlier. A lot of athletes don’t train the zone 2 range enough or correctly. Hey, I’ve got a 40 minute zone 2 run and, you know, they may stay in zone 2 for the first 20 minutes, but then they want to go run fast and their heart rate is in the upper zone 3, low zone 4 for the second half. Well, you didn’t achieve the goal of that session. Mobility, stability, yoga, skipping those and not doing them correctly or just doing your favorite lifts all the time and not doing those less fun ones. So do the ones that you don’t like because you don’t like them probably because you don’t like them the most and you actually need them the most. Don’t skip your warmup, your cooldown, your foam rolling. Cross training. I’ll end with that. Cross training is huge for preventing injury, promoting recovery. If you can’t keep the integrity of a season, don’t force the session. I do a lot of my Thursday zone 2 hour bike rides as a cross training sessions. I’ll manually complete it. It’s totally fine. Keep your heart rate in zone 2, right? Keep the integrity of the workout, but I’ll do a lot of 15 minutes recumbent bike at the gym, 15 minutes elliptical, 15 minutes of rowing, stair master, and then I’ll manually complete that session. It’s fun. It changes things up. Doing that here and there can get you past that performance plateau of just doing something different, having fun, the morale, the motivation. I know that was a long list, but I tried to roll through those quickly.

Andrew: Yeah, and Jeff, it’s probably a little different for everybody. It probably depends on why they plateaued and so you just kind of gave us a lot of little bullets in the gun to fire and see what actually kind of helps us through that breakthrough. Elizabeth, close out the main set today. What would you say to an athlete who is just plateauing in their run ability?

Elizabeth: I mean, I’ve been there and I’ll admit it’s frustrating when you hit those plateaus. But I think having this growth mindset and understanding that there still is room for improvement and like your consistency and your diligence to many of the things that Raines just outlined are important and will allow you to break through that plateau and that’s a really important attitude to keep. What usually gets asked as part of this and I mean, we’ve touched on it a little bit, is you know, I’m ten years older now. There’s no way I can beat my times from when I was such and such years old and you know, maybe from a strict timing perspective you can’t, but there’s always other ways to measure improvement too. I think I’ll just leave with this. You know, Olympic track athletes still train day in and day out for portions of a second faster in their race and you know, those improvements may be slow after the initial gains are made, but there still is improvement to be made.

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

Vanessa Ronksley: Hey friends! It’s cooldown time and I’m Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm. Today on the cooldown we have Coach Ben who is currently located near the historic Roman city of Bath which I highly recommend y’all go and visit sometime because it is gorgeous. But back to Ben, he is a member of the Precision Coaching Team and has quite the triathlon resume. He is a former elite junior triathlete, has represented Great Britain as an age grouper at Worlds and European championships. He has eight national championship medals and is a two time national champion. Coach Ben accomplished all of this over ten years and has since progressed to coaching as a way of giving back to the community with the goal of helping others improve their physical and mental health and wellbeing through triathlon. He specializes in intermediate to elite level triathletes who have an interest in sprint and Olympic distance races. Not only is he a rockstar triathlete and coach, he rounds out his knowledge base working full time for a sports collagen recovery nutrition supplement brand where he supports people to optimize their recovery to drive better performance. Welcome to the show Coach Ben.

Ben: It’s awesome to be here.

Vanessa: Now, I love this little-known fact about you Ben. Before becoming a triathlete, you loved performing on stage in musical theatre and Shakespeare productions. So my question to you is, what was your favorite role that you ever played?

Ben: Oh, that is an excellent question and it’s a really, really difficult question to answer because I have two favorite roles…

Vanessa: Okay.

Ben: …and two complete polar opposites, but I will pick out a single favorite. My single favorite was a full, unabridged production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Schakespeare with my school stage company and I played the lead– not the lead role in terms of the human characters, but the lead fairy character of Puck, the young mischievous sort of almost devilish, but quite charming and quirky little fairy who kind of is seen amongst the entire plot and that was a role of a lifetime. I was quite young as well so I had the energy and the enthusiasm.

Vanessa: Yeah, right. That sounds like a very wonderful role to play and I’m wondering, was this a role that do you think fits your personality in real life?

Ben: It did certainly at the time. As I said I was a young teenager back in my younger years where I had the sort of naivety and the freshness and the keenness of a young person. So for then, it was the perfect role. I’ve matured a little bit now. It wouldn’t quite be the right role for me these days if I was to step back on stage, which I do not plan to. I’m far too busy.

Vanessa: Yeah, right? I understand that. That’s what happens when you enter triathlon and you do three sports and you also coach and then you have a full time job. There’s very little time for anything extra. So what super, awesome tip do you have to share with us today?

Ben: My super, awesome tip– I’m hoping it’s super awesome...

Vanessa: It will be.

Ben: …for everybody listening today. It’s all about nutrition and recovery. As a very injury-prone athlete and I’m sure there’s going to be loads of people listening today or whenever you’re listening to this who consider themselves injury prone, are currently injured, or are just recovering from an injury. They’ve tried modifying their training, they’ve missed training, they’ve missed races, they’ve been to the physios, they’ve been doing their stretches and rehab exercise. I’ve been there, done that. The one thing that really stuck me was that I wasn’t taking the time both when I was injured or not injured to optimize the recovery process and that was between training sessions when I was on the go. I wasn’t eating correctly. I wasn’t fueling for both the amount of exercise and then recovery afterwards. So again, it’s very much the little things. It’s about ensuring that you’ve got an ample supply of high quality protein, carbohydrates, you’re staying well hydrated to fuel the demands of the exercise, the activity you’re doing both in sport and your life and then not ignoring the fact that your life is still busy. You need to still keep eating, still keep hydrating when you’re not exercising because then that’s going to help you prepare for the next session, but also it’s going to reduce the chances of injury because your body is fueled, it’s full of the right nutrients to perform and then recovery afterwards. Recovery is where your sessions really count because you can do a really hard session if you don’t adequately recover and that can be nutrition and everything else. All the other modalities around it which I’m sure a lot of other coaches will talk to you about in future episodes. If you don’t optimize those little processes afterwards, the quality of that session just diminishes and diminishes and diminishes and then over time it leads to excess fatigue and then breakdown that your body just simply can’t keep up with. When you’re doing three sports multiple times a day, week, month, year, it stacks up and speaking from experience, it becomes a significant limiter and a significant demotivator for me to the point where I almost quit the sport because I physically wasn’t able to maintain the frequency nor the volume that I enjoyed doing.

Vanessa: Um-hmm. That sounds like the story of a lot of people. I heard a statistic when I first started triathlon that most triathletes will start and end their career within five years and I think that it’s mostly because people do not prioritize that recovery process. Like they don’t take the time to, you know, do the stretching, do the mobility and in addition to that just what you said is to make sure that you’re fueling appropriately because it can sneak up on us. If we’re underfueling or if our nutrient macro and micronutrients aren’t on point it’s definitely going to create that opportunity for the body to just breakdown.

Ben: Absolutely and in the short term, the body will make do and it will carry on and it will do its best to do the best that it can to deal with what you’re putting it through, but eventually it just goes, “I can’t do this any more.” This isn’t sustainable and if we’re talking about consistency over a long period of time, we want to be physically active not the least to be able to compete in triathlon, whilst just to be physically active so that we can maintain vitality, health, and longevity as we simply just get older. Our lives are busy. We squeeze exercise into the little time we already have. The last thing that we do is then account for the recovery process. So if we’re going to make one change as we go into the off season and into next year’s season, it’s optimize that recovery process everybody.

Vanessa: I love it. Can you share– I’m just dying to know what your favorite post workout recovery fuel looks like. Like, what do you do? What do you put in your body as soon as you’ve finished a training session?

Ben: I’m usually on the go after a training session so I need something fast. I need something palatable. I need something convenient with all the right nutrients that I need post exercise. So I’m very well hydrated already, so I will always have something also with electrolytes throughout the day regardless so I don’t necessarily have to worry about that. But I’ll have a really high quality whey protein plus collagen shake, a nice banana, maybe a muesli sort of granola bar afterwards just to get both a high quality source of dietary protein, collagen protein, and carbohydrates and electrolytes and then maybe an hour to two hours later I’ll have a substantial meal. I don’t quite have the appetite immediately post an intense training session to have a large meal with all the proper whole foods that we should be having as a non-negotiable every single day, multiple times a day. I need something fast, something convenient, I can get on with my day and then when I’ve settled, straight to a nice whole food meal to fuel me for the next training session or just to fuel me for the rest of my day.

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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