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:  Hey folks!Welcome to Episode .165 of the TriDot podcast!  One hundred sixty-five episodes into our podcast journey as a company, and we have never really taken an entire show to talk about the TriDot platform itself.So we are going to be a tad, teeny-weenie bit selfish today and teach athletes how TriDot designs training, why that training is laid out the way it is, and how to best execute certain swim, bike, and run sessions.  We work really hard to make sure the podcast is valuable to all triathletes, whether you train with TriDot or not, so thanks in advance for doing us a solid and letting us take this episode to help guide the athletes that are using our platform.

If you are not using the TriDot platform to train, right now is the best time to give it a try.  We have our annual research project called the Preseason Project underway.You can apply to be a participant in that, you get two free months of TriDot training, and we get more data that helps our software engineers keep TriDot on the cutting edge of triathlon training.  It’s a win-win all around if you ask me, so head to tridot.com/psp to apply for that.

Our first coach joining us for this conversation is Joanna Nami.  Joanna is better known as Coach JoJo, and has been coaching athletes with TriDot since 2012.  She is a cofounder of Hissy Fit Racing, a fourth-year member of the Betty Design Elite Squad, and now has 18 going on 19 IRONMAN finishes on her accomplished triathlon résumé.  Coach Jo has raced three IRONMAN World Championships, and serves as TriDot’s Coaching Community Manager.  Coach Jo, welcome back to the podcast!

Joanna Nami:  Thanks for having me, Andrew, I’m super pumped to be here with you and John.  Go team!

Andrew:  Go team!  Also joining us is Coach John Mayfield.  John is a USAT Level II and IRONMAN U certified coach who leads TriDot’s athlete services, ambassador, and coaching programs. He has coached hundreds of athletes ranging from first-timers to Kona qualifiers and professional triathletes. John has been using TriDot since 2010 and coaching with TriDot since 2012. And John, I have to add a huge congratulations, you hit a new IRONMAN PR in your tenth IRONMAN finish in Panama City Beach just a few weekends ago, 10:56.  You slid under eleven hours, and it’s a new PR for you.  John, I literally was screaming and fist-pumping at the IRONMAN tracker app all day long as your splits were coming through, and every time I did my wife Morgan was like, “How is John doing?  Where’s John at?”  She knew what I was looking at.  So congrats to you, my friend.

John Mayfield:  Thanks, that means a lot, and even more so that Morgan cared enough to ask, that puts a smile on my face.  And it was my tenth IRONMAN, not my tenth in Panama City Beach.  It was my fourth time at IRONMAN Florida though.  It’s my favorite race, so it was nice to get that monkey off my back.  I’ve been trying for the last couple years to go under eleven hours, and I barely did it, but I got it done.

Andrew:Well 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 warmup question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down with our cooldown. On the cooldown today, Vanessa will be interviewing two athletes who have been through TriDot Pool School to hear about their experience.  Pool Schools are popping up all over the country, so head to tridotpoolschool.com to learn more and sign up.

Before we get too deep into our show today, I want to give a shout-out to our good friends at UCAN.  Here at TriDot we are huge believers in using UCAN to fuel our training and racing. In the crowded field of nutrition companies, what separates UCAN from the pack is the science behind LIVSTEADY, the key ingredient in UCAN products. While most energy powders are filled with sugar or stimulants that cause a spike and crash, UCAN energy powders, powered by LIVSTEADY, deliver a steady release of complex carbs to give you stable blood sugar and provide long-lasting energy. I personally fuel many of my workouts with the orange-flavored Edge gel and the unflavored UCAN Energy.  Between their energy mix, energy bars, almond butter, and more, there is definitely a LIVSTEADY product that you will love.  So head to their website, ucan.co and use the code TRIDOT to save 20% on your entire order.  That’s ucan.co, promo code TRIDOT.

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

Andrew:Most triathletes have a multisport watch of some kind on their wrist, tracking their every move.  Having it track our workouts is the big plus obviously, but a fun secondary thing that these watches can do is count our steps.For the most part this is a default setting that we all leave on, even though we get more than enough steps on most days as triathletes.  But I’m curious to hear, John and Jo, as our warmup question today: what is the most steps you have logged in one day, and what is the story behind those steps?

John:  My record is just shy of 58,000 steps.

Andrew:Oh!

John:  As you mentioned, I just had my IRONMAN PR over the past weekend.  My 58,000 steps comes from my PR the other way, on my longest IRONMAN.  That was a couple years ago at IRONMAN Texas.  It’s a logistically challenging race to begin with.It’s about a mile walk from the transition area down to the swim start, so before the race even starts you’ve already taken a few steps around the house, got into transition, then you walk a mile from the transition area down to the swim start, then running through transition and all that.  But then I ran the first of three loops, something like 8½ miles, then my stomach just exploded.  It’s like Mike Tyson punched me in the gut, and I went from feeling pretty good and being on a pretty good pace through that first loop, to just having just the worst stomach flu I’ve ever had for the next couple hours.  I ended up walking about 13 consecutive miles in the middle of that race, and then rallied for the last couple miles and actually felt pretty good to run it into the finish.  But yeah, it was an IRONMAN so that would’ve had a lot of steps in that day already, then just exacerbated by the fact that I walked for 13 miles in the middle of that marathon.  So I set a record for most steps in a day at my longest IRONMAN.  I learned a lot of lessons out there, so it made me a better athlete, a better coach, but I was kind of glad for that one to be over.

Andrew:Yeah, you certainly have me beat in terms of total steps in a day.  It is wild to think about that IRONMAN day.  I’d imagine for a lot of long-course triathletes, the most steps they take in a day might be at an IRONMAN.  You spend five, six, seven hours of that day on a bike, not logging any steps whatsoever, but still being active, and yet somehow you still get enough steps in for that to be the most steps that you’ll take in one single day.Coach Jo, what is this answer for you?

Joanna:  Well, I was pretty naïve to IRONMAN still after a couple, and decided during a family Disney World vacation I was going to be super on it and do a 16mile run from some cheesy resort in Disney World to come back.  I was all motivated, “We’re gonna hit Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, we’re gonna hit two parks in one day, we’re gonna knock it out, four kids in tow.”  Then about two hours into our Disney World experience for the day, I realized that 16mile run was a big mistake.  It was so long ago that I have no idea the mileage for that day, but that has got to be the most steps I’ve ever taken.  And for any parent who’s been to Disney World, you understand that you’re usually walking about 14, 15 miles a day by the time you’re through, then the fun of standing in line for hours at a time was just more mentally grueling.  But I survived.  Those are the things we do for our kids, so that’s got to be probably the most mileage I’ve got in a day.

Andrew:All right!  For me, this was actually right when I came on staff at TriDot.I was brand-new to the team, we had been podcasting for maybe a month or so, and my first staff trip, I went with John Mayfield, Jeff Raines, and Elizabeth James to IRONMAN Arizona in the year 2019.  It was my first time out there, I had the TriDot camera with me, and I was just walking all over that course trying to get pictures and video footage of our TriDot athletes who were racing.  The IRONMAN Arizona course is very spectator-friendly.  The run in particular, there’s a couple bridges that go over the reservoir where the swim is, and there’s running on both sides, so Jeff, Elizabeth, and I kept crossing the bridges, trying to catch John, trying to catch different athletes who were racing at different moments.  All in all, spectating IRONMAN that day, I took 42,000 steps in one day.  That is more than any race I’ve done personally.  I’ve gotten better, John, I think I’ve gotten smarter as an IRONMAN spectator. I’ve learned how to walk fewer steps and still get the same quality footage and pictures.  But that very very first time as a staff member, as the staff media guy out at a race, I took 42,000 steps just trying to get to different spots on the course and get different pictures of different athletes.  I’ve refined my workflow since then when I’m at a race, so I don’t know if I’ll ever top that ever again, but 42K is this answer for me.

Guys, we’re going to throw this question out to you.I know so many of you listening have your Garmin, Polar, Choros, Apple watch, whatever, on your wrist at all times.I’m curious to hear what is the most steps you have ever logged in one day, and what is the story behind those steps?I can’t wait to hear what you have to say!

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

Andrew:Ketones are nature’s super fuel, and the deltaG ketone ester, created by Professor Kieran Clarke at Oxford University, is the world’s first drink that delivers the exact ketone produced naturally in the body.  When I talk to TriDot athletes who are already using deltaG drinks in their training and racing, they all rave about the spark of energy and mental clarity the ketones provide.  Some athletes are taking deltaG performance on the side of their carbohydrate source, others are mixing deltaG Tactical in with their nutrition.  Both ways are highly effective, so however you approach nutrition, there is a deltaG drink that can mix seamlessly into your flow.So head to the website, deltaGketones.com, to learn more about fueling with deltaG ketone ester, and to book your free 15 minute consultation.  When you place an order, use code TRIDOT20 to get 20% off your super-fuel ketone drinks.

As sophisticated as the training design is, once you onboard to TriDot, executing your workouts is as simple as pulling up today’s session, and then going out and doing it.  Even still, we’ve learned many of the helpful explanations and tips that can help make your experience training with TriDot as smooth and effective as possible.Here to help us get the most out of our TriDot training, and answer some of the most frequently-asked questions, are coaches John Mayfield and Joanna Nami.  Now John, we don’t have to name names here, but there are some other training platforms that athletes can take a peek at versus TriDot.  Just to get us going today, what makes TriDot more sophisticated and effective than other training platforms and apps?

John:  It really comes down to what is behind the training that is prescribed, and how that training is prescribed.  Most of the training apps that have been around for years and years, decades, effectively are a blank calendar.  If someone does not go in and populate that calendar with sessions, then sessions will never populate.  It is completely dependent on a person to go in and create that training.  The athlete can go write their own training, they can hire a coach that can go in and day-by-day schedule sessions in there, or you can go in and buy a prewritten plan that will then populate to your calendar.Then once you begin to execute that training plan, if someone doesn’t go in and manually make changes, that training plan is never going to change.  So it’s completely static, nothing is adjusting, nothing is being updated by the training or the data that is related to the training.  That’s the majority of the apps that are being used.  Most triathletes that aren’t using TriDot are using one of those.  Then in the last couple years we’ve seen some others come along that are beginning to use AI and some technology to populate that calendar.  Kind of the same thing, it’s a blank calendar, but there is some software that is used to populate that training.  What separates TriDot from those other AIbased training apps, again, is what is determining the training, and how that training is prescribed.  Effectively, what these other AI apps have done is replicate the coach.  It’s saying a coach goes in and creates this program that says, “If I were coaching this athlete, this is what I would do.  Based on the results from a given session, these are the changes that I would make.”  So effectively it is still that individual coach or person who is prescribing the training, they’re just taking advantage of the AI to automate it, so the decision-making is still based on that one coach’s philosophy, their experience, their education.  So it’s relatively limited.  Really, what separates TriDot, again, is what is the training based on.  There is no one person who is programming the training with TriDot.  It’s not based on what one person or even a group of coaches think is going to be most beneficial to the athletes, it is actually based on data.  We’ve talked about it on almost every single podcast we ever talked about, that TriDot leverages data from millions of training files, millions of training sessions, from tens of thousands of athletes.  The software analyzes all of this incredible amount of data to determine what is going to be the best course of action for any specific athlete.  So because there is this tremendous amount of data from a tremendous amount of athletes, the software is now able to prescribe training specifically for them.It’s able to get very granular on a perathlete basis.  This could be anything from a young elite female racing short course, to an older male long course, and everything in between.  Every individual, every race distance, the data is able then to determine which is going to be the best course of action.  Then as that training is executed, the data that comes in then determines what happens next.  Whatever adjustments or refinements are not based on what a person thinks it should be, it’s actually what is the data telling us about what can we do, looking back at these millions of training files from tens of thousands of athletes.The software determines the best course of action.  So again, what really separates TriDot from every other training option is the fact that it is truly based on data, then the data that is coming in drives those adjustments and refinements, whereas everything else is simply up to the individual athlete or a coach to go in and prescribe or adjust those sessions.

Andrew:  There are a few different subscription levels that athletes can come on board at.That’s part of the beauty here, there are offerings for athletes of all budgets.  This gets updated from time to time based on new features rolling out and whatnot, so I don’t want to get too specific on what each subscription level has, but just in general, what differentiates each different subscription level within TriDot?

John:  Really what we wanted to do, and this is something we set out several years back, is to provide a solution for every triathlete.  What we found was that only about 15% of the triathlon market was able or willing to hire a coach and spend $200-plus per month on a training plan.Eighty-five percent of the market was training on their own, either making up their own training or just using a template out of a magazine or something like that.  What we wanted to do was provide solutions for every athlete, that’s what we did in creating these lower-level subscription options.  We have subscription options for every budget, for every athlete.  Once again, this is really where we get into the power of technology, because we’re able to leverage the technology to create the training plans, we can offer these subscriptions at these lower prices.  The effectiveness and quality of the training is in no way diminished.  In fact, you’re still getting that superior training plan, but we’re able to leverage technology to deliver it at the lower cost.  The higher options are largely convenience features as well as some customization.  There’s a complete listing of the range on the website, you can see which are available in which subscription option, but really there is a solution to get that high-quality training for every athlete regardless of their budget.

Andrew:  What is the process for an athlete coming on board with TriDot?  What are the steps from signing up for one of those subscriptions to doing your first workouts?

Joanna:  Yes, Andrew, athletes can go to TriDot.com and sign up for a twoweek free trial and quickly get their dashboard set up.  They will provide personal information to onboard, we will then set them up with their dashboard, and they can immediately see their workouts.  We ask them to sign up for an orientation call that will walk them through the platform, and they can ask questions at that time and get a better understanding of everything that’s available on their dashboard and what they need to know.

Andrew:  Yeah, Jo, I’m glad you mentioned the orientation call.  The orientation call is something that I did not do when I first came on TriDot.  I was like, “I’m a millennial, it’s an app, I’ll figure it out.” But there were so many things I learned down the line that I would have known right away if I had done the orientation.  The other really cool thing that we’ve implemented fairly recently is the Month One Mentor program.  Athletes that come onboard will get an email asking if they would like to have a mentor on TriDot.  Basically that is a current athlete, a current TriDot ambassador who is using the app, knows the app pretty well, is part of our online community.  If you opt in to having the Month One Mentor, that’s basically an athlete that you can bounce questions off of.  If you run into something, if you just have a question on a certain session, anything that you have come up in your first month on TriDot, you can ask a question to your mentor, and they can answer that question for you.  So if you sign up and onboard, and you see that email inviting you, “Do you want a mentor?”  Hit “accept” if you would like to have another athlete just like you who lives somewhere else in the world, they can answer a lot of your questions as well.So definitely do the orientation, and definitely sign up to have a mentor if that sounds good. John, anything else to add here about onboarding?

John:  Yeah, it’s a super-simple process, it takes just a couple minutes.  It’s answering just a couple questions, it walks you through.But I will say it is important to provide as accurate, timely, and current information as possible, because this again goes into creating your training.  It’s not just asking these questions to get a feel for who you are or just informational sake, this is truly what your training is going to be based on.  The more accurate the information you can provide early on, the better quality your training is going to be from the very beginning.  From there, two important steps to do as soon as possible: first, schedule your race, so that you’re now telling the software what you’re preparing for, so we can now be very specific in the training that is prescribed.  As Jo mentioned, you don’t necessarily have to, if you don’t know what your race is that’s fine.  But if you have the race, if you register or sign up and you know what your race is going to be, go ahead and add that to your calendar.  Now every training session that you do will be to prepare you for that specific race.  Second, connect your device.  Whichever device that you’re using, that is how TriDot is going to get the data from those training sessions, and that is how your training will then be refined going forward, is all based on that training data that you’re providing.  So get the race on the schedule, and connect the device.

Andrew:  Many athletes use a variety of websites and devices to track their activities, and John, you just mentioned the importance of connecting your devices.  There’s hardware options like Garmin, Polar, Wahoo, and there’s software connections you can make like Strava, Zwift, and Trainer Road.  What devices and platforms will connect with and work with TriDot?

Joanna:  Like many you mentioned, Andrew, just about everything, yay!  Apple watches, Garmins, Polars, Wahoo, Strava, you can download your workouts to Garmin, Zwift, Rouvy, and do your workouts from those platforms.It is pretty awesome.

Andrew:  I will say, if we took the time to dive into every certain scenario of what platforms a user might be using, and help them navigate making those connections, that might be a whole podcast episode in and of itself.  But we won’t do that right now.  Once you come on board, any questions you have or troubleshooting you have, based on the watch and software you're using, feel free to reach out to our support team.  They will help you make those connections properly.  Or you can ask athletes on the I AM TriDot Facebook group, “Hey, who’s using this watch?  Who’s using that watch?  Who’s using Rouvy, and how do you…” and athletes will be more than happy to answer those questions.  Our software development team is always working behind the scenes to make those connection processes as smooth as possible, and to add new devices as they’re coming out on the market, so just know that.  Now, some folks just want to log on and do their workout, other folks want to know why they are getting the exact session they are getting.  John, how does TriDot design training?  What training phases will an athlete see throughout their season?

John:  There are two phases that the athletes are going to see.  One is their race prep phase, and the other is the development phase. How the athlete has their season planned out is going to determine which phase they’re in. We have this longstanding saying, we’ve got several podcast episodes on it, “fast before far, strong before long.”  Effectively what we want to do is, in those months leading into a race we want to build our functional threshold in the swim, bike, and run as high as we can.  We want to get as strong as possible, as fast as possible, as efficient as possible, so that’s what we’re going to focus on in those development phases.  In that time, we are less concerned with building stamina.  We’re going to do that a little bit later, in the race phase, and that’s going to be contingent on the distance of the race.  So if we need to go longer, like 70.3 or IRONMAN distance, clearly we need to develop stamina, but that is going to come later.  That’s the “fast before far, strong before long”.  The development phase generally is earlier in the year.  So now, as we’re heading into the winter months, not a whole lot of racing going on, the vast majority of athletes are heading into development phases.  This is also something we largely center the Preseason Project around, is demonstrating the effectiveness of this “fast before far, strong before long” training.  We spend these preseason months building the functional thresholds in the swim, bike, and run, and then seeing that payoff in the race season with great results.  That race prep phase is going to continue to build the functional threshold, and continue to build the strength of the athlete, but it is also going to get more race-specific.  So for a short-course race, sprint or Olympic-distance, there’s less need to build stamina.  The stamina necessary to compete at the sprint or Olympic-distance race is going to naturally be built at those lower-volume sessions.  You don’t necessarily need long sessions to go out and complete a sprint or Olympic-distance race, whereas more so when racing 70.3 or IRONMAN, you do.  You need those long sessions, especially the long bike, the long run sessions, so that’s going to be a difference that we’re going to see. There’s going to be an increase in the training volume, you’re going to have more long sessions, longer long sessions. Those are going to be appropriate for you specifically, and the course that you’re racing.  You as an athlete, the distance of the race, and even the course itself is going to determine how long those long sessions are.  There’s a bit of a focus shift.  So in the development phase, it’s about getting fast before far, strong before long as much as possible.  Then in that race prep phase, which can last anywhere from eight to as far as 20 weeks out from a given race, that is where we get much more specific to the needs of that specific race.

Andrew:  So when an athlete comes on board with TriDot, there are a few settings that are available that we can tweak.  Again, you can absolutely just onboard, you can let that first session pop up, and you can go do the session without tweaking the settings whatsoever.  The default settings there are great.  But if you want to look at these settings and tweak them for your schedule or your preferences, Jo, what is available for us to tweak in the settings, and of those settings, which ones do you recommend your athletes take a look at?

Joanna:  Yes, Andrew, we get this question a lot from coaches that are coming on board to coach with TriDot, as well as athletes that are using the platform.  In your preferences there are a number of areas that you can tweak.  You can select the days you prefer your long bike and long run, your long sessions. You can opt to only bike and run if you’re not currently swimming, or just run, or just bike.  You can adjust volume, the number of sessions for each discipline.  With certain subscriptions you can add in strength-training sessions, swim analysis, and other perks that are earned.  It is important to make sure you have your long workout days selected, that your weight is always current and accurate, and that your personal information is correct. For each session, you want to make sure you’ve selected indoor or outdoor.  I’ve had a number of athletes that will come back to me and say, “This was totally wrong, I don’t know what TriDot is doing here.”  And I’ll be like, “Well, you selected indoor, and you biked 14 miles outside.”

Andrew:  Oh yeah for sure.  That TrainX score fires up, and you know you did the workout right so you're expecting a good score, maybe somewhere in the 80s or 90s, and all of a sudden you get a lower score than you were expecting.  It’s not because you did the workout wrong, and it’s not that TriDot interpreted the data wrong, it’s just that you didn’t tell TriDot what environmental conditions you were doing the workout in.  I know that can happen to athletes when they first come on board, and once you remember to simply toggle that indoor/outdoor button and to update the time of day, you’re bound to get the score that you’re expecting.

Joanna:  It is important to have those selections correct when you execute a workout.

John:  As Jo mentioned, there’s a whole lot of things that you can do to customize the training to really accommodate your schedule, your needs, that sort of thing. But I always say that the defaults are there for a reason.  What is defaulted is going to be the optimized training.  The sequence of sessions, the frequency of sessions, the spacing of those long sessions, all of that is going to be optimized to produce your best results with the minimal risk of injury.  So I would say certainly adjust those preferences as needed, but just know that the default preferences are there for a reason.  There’s a lot of thought given to why those defaults are what they are, so I would say just be careful in making those adjustments. Make them as needed, but just know that the defaults are there for a reason.

Andrew:  Yeah John, I’ll give one tangible example of what you’re talking about.  The default long sessions, for example.  The default long run will be on Wednesday, and the default long bike will then be on Saturday.  There’s a lot of reasons for that, it spreads out your longest sessions, your most important sessions.  But schedule-wise, a lot of folks get on and they’re like, “I can’t do a long run on Wednesday, I need to do both of my long workouts on the weekends.”  That’s a common sentiment.  So in your preferences, you can set to have your long bike on Saturday and your long run on Sunday.  Now, your long run on Sunday will be done with the fatigue from the long bike on Saturday, so you’re giving up just a smidge of the potential gains to be made by putting them back-to-back, but if that’s what your schedule allows, that’s what your schedule allows.  Any of the customizing that you do, TriDot is still going to optimize your schedule based on what you can actually do, and the training is still going to be very, very effective.  Or you can leave the default, and just from time to time as your schedule flares up, you can manually move a session around as needed.  Now, many of the questions I see from new users to the I AM TriDot Facebook group revolve around how to execute their sessions. How do we know what paces to hit, and which metrics – between power, heart rate, pace, etc. – to pay attention to for each workout?

Joanna:  Yes Andrew, most TriDot athletes when they come on execute initial assessments, an assessment for the bike, the run, the swim.  Then they usually repeat these assessments pretty much every four weeks, depending on when their races fall.  These tests establish their threshold pace or power in each discipline. From this data, the algorithm sets an athlete’s zones.  For swimming, this is swim pace per 100 meters or yards.  For run, this is pace per mile, and that’s for our workouts with intensity or intervals.  For easier runs, that metric is heart rate.  For the bike, it’s power or watts for interval workouts, and heart rate for easy rides.  So an athlete can set their power, pace, or heart rate as their primary metric in their settings, but it’s important for an athlete to check the session beforehand to make sure they know which is their primary execution metric.  So when we are looking at an easy ride or an easy run, where all of our minutes are falling on Zone 2, we can see that the little heart is highlighted, and that is the metric.

Andrew:  Yeah!

Joanna:  That’s the ones we like!  We can read a magazine, watch a show, answer emails.  That’s the nice, easy workout, so we would be looking at our heart rate zones for those workouts, versus workouts where we are pushing intervals, which may be pace or power.  I do add that a lot of athletes don’t train with power, so you can set the metric in your settings to be looking at heart rate during all of your bike sessions.

John:  We’ve seen that, over the last several years, where most athletes do have pace now for the run, and more and more are adding power to the bike.  We can use heart rate to measure intensity of sessions, but there are some limitations when using heart rate, especially for these higher-intensity sessions.  Heart rate is a delayed response, so it’s kind of a catch-22.  The more fit you are, the longer it’s going to take for your heart rate to match your intensity level.  If you have a relatively short burst of intensity, your heart rate is never going to get there, so you can’t utilize heart rate to measure your intensity. That’s why we use these more real-time, objective metrics like pace and power, especially in those higher-intensity sessions.  Now as Jo mentioned, when we are doing a session all at Zone 2, the intent of that sessions is different.  We’re either trying to provide recovery, or we’re focusing on things like aerobic efficiency.  There are certain things that are only achieved at very low intensities, so it’s important that the body is not working harder than we want it to, and that is why we have to maintain that lower heart rate.  Even if you're holding a lower power or pace, if the heart rate exceeds that threshold to cross over, we’re no longer achieving the session as desired.  That is why on those Zone 2 sessions, we follow heart rate exclusively.  It doesn’t matter what your power is or what your pace is, we are exclusively looking to maintain that Zone 2 heart rate.  Again, as Jo mentioned, every session has a little icon to tell you exactly which metric to follow, then those updated paces will be there.  As a reminder, your paces and power will adjust based on the environment.  We mentioned indoors versus outdoors, but even throughout the day as the temperature fluctuates, so will your intensities.  The software is looking at those conditions and then adjusting your intensities to that environment in which you are going to be executing the session, so that you are able to execute that session as desired.  For example, this morning it was 60° at my house, whereas it will be warming into the 80°s.  If I do a session in the 60°s versus the 80°s, that’s a completely different session, and the intensity of that session needs to be adjusted accordingly. So make sure that is being checked as well.

Andrew:  Before we land the plane on this main set, I want to make sure we spend a little time asking some of the questions specific to the swim, bike, and run sessions that I see athletes asking.  So let’s start with the swim, what tips do you have specific to executing your TriDot swim sessions?

Joanna:  Okay, mean coach here, bossy lady.  First off, read your swim workouts and do what they say.  I find athletes often swim for time, not changing up their pacing. They say, “Oh, I’ve got to swim for an hour, so I’m swimming for an hour.”  But it’s important to drill when it says drill, kick when it says kick, pull when it says pull, and to focus on nailing that pacing for each set.  I admit it is definitely trickier to hit pacing in the water, but after some work and time in the pool, I often find that my athletes start to get a feel for their zones by RPE or rate of perceived exertion.  They’ll know that Zone 2 is easier swimming, Zone 1 is drilling, and they’ll start to know what pushing Zone 4 feels like.  I often say at Zone 4, “You’re working at about 75% of all-out.”  I also like to give my athletes recovery swims that focus solely on drilling and form. Some of that includes becoming more streamlined, reducing resistance in the water, better body position, strengthening your pull, perfecting your kick.  Those are all things that we work on as far as drilling.

Andrew:  John, one last question about swim sessions that I see people post on the page, people ask about the total duration of the session.  The runs and bikes are pretty easy: TriDot will tell you to go bike for an hour, and it will include the zones.  But folks look at, “Okay, my swim today is supposed to be one hour,” and they add up the different intervals that they’re supposed to hit, and the intervals for that particular session might add up to 0:58, 1:04, or 1:05 with the rests in there, there sometimes is a couple-minute fluctuation.  For me for example, TriDot prescribes onehour swims, and usually it takes me an hour plus three or four minutes in the pool at my paces to do that onehour swim.  I just kind of roll with it, but some people look at the math and they’re like, “Wait a second!”  Talk to us about the duration of our swims versus the intervals that are contained in that swim.

John:  It’s more difficult to prescribe those sessions, because everyone’s pace is a little different.  If you’re doing 3 x 8 minutes on the bike sessions, eight minutes is eight minutes. If you’re prescribing 200s, everyone’s 200 is going to be a little bit different.  It’s prescribed based on your swim dot score, so your ability, your paces, your threshold, all of that gets slotted into certain sessions that are going to be prescribed for you.  But even within that, there is still a variance of those paces, and how long a given distance is going to take a given athlete.  As you mentioned, sometimes your main set is less than the prescribed, sometimes it can go over a little bit.  So really, the case with any sessions that is prescribed is that you complete the balance of time at Zone 2.  Say for example you do your warmup, get in the main set, and there’s ten minutes left.  Just complete that last ten minutes at a Zone 2 easy pace, in whatever intervals you’re feeling.  If you want to do ten minutes continuous at Zone 2, go for it, or you can knock that down into 200s, 100s, 50s, 25s, whatever you're feeling.  If you need some recovery, Jo will love this, spend that time doing some drill work.  You’ve done the vast majority of the intent of that session in that main set, so that balance of time is really about how you can best maximize that time.  It’s going to be a little different for everybody. Drilling is great.  If you’re a long-course swimmer., maybe spend that time doing a longer, continual swim at Zone 2.  Now if you go over, if for example you’re 60 minutes in and you’ve got another two or three hundred yards to go, I would say same thing, it’s going to depend on the specific athlete.  If you’ve been in the water for an hour and you’ve been following the prescribed session for those first 60 minutes and you leave two or three hundred off the end, it’s not really going to impact you that much, you’ve still gotten 60 minutes of high-quality swimming in.  If you’ve got a couple extra minutes to go ahead and knock it out, that’ll be good.  But if you need to get out of the pool – especially post-Covid, sometimes we’re still having to make reservations, and you’ve got the lane for a certain period of time and your time is up – no problem.  You still got the vast, vast majority of the intent of that session in, so I would say whatever works for you.

Andrew:  One more thing I’ll add about the swim, but really this applies to the swim, bike, and run workouts: read the session notes.  The session notes can be supremely helpful, whether you’re on the app or online.  There’s session notes right there in the workout, easy to read, and it just gives you those little execution tips on how to do your workout properly.  And something else that is really cool about the Mark Allen Edition of TriDot, for every workout in the app there is a video of Mark explaining that workout to you.  That, plus the session notes, will definitely equip you to have a great workout. Okay, on to the bike.  What do you both point out to your athletes about those bike sessions to help equip them to have a great workout?

Andrew:  During the workout itself, I love for my athletes to focus on single-leg drilling, or consistent pressure throughout the pedal stroke during warmup.  That’s a great drill to incorporate, staying in aero, fighting through those intervals.  We often talk about, “How am I going to make it through a five-minute Zone 5 interval?” By taking each one of those two minutes at a time, mentally breaking that down into smaller increments is super helpful.

Andrew:  Most bike sessions are pretty straightforward, with a warmup, some intervals thrown in there, there’s a certain duration that you’re supposed to hit. One that stands out in the catalog is called “Big Gear Workout”.  Tell me, what do athletes need to know about the infamous Big Gear Workout?

John:  Just for clarity, the Big Gear work session is a bike session that is a combination of high intensity.  There’s a lot of Zone 5, which is used quite sparingly in those bike session prescriptions, but then there’s also time off the bike doing a series of squats: fast squats, isometric holds, and everything in between.  So you’re on the bike getting a warmup in, you jump off and do these different squats, and then you jump back on the bike and immediately you’re pushing Zone 5, so you’re going really hard, then it’s back off the bike for more squats.  So yeah, it’s a killer set, and as Jo said, you’re likely going to feel it, not only the next day but for the next couple days.  But it’s a great set, it’s kind of a rite of passage.  It’s really weird, and in an odd way it’s kind of fun, but definitely one that’s going to increase the power, and you’re going to feel those muscles being engaged and strengthened throughout that set.

Andrew:  So Big Gear Workout definitely stands out in the catalog.  As coaches, are there any other special notes you have about specific bike workouts that our athletes need to be armed with leaving today’s episode?

Joanna:  Yeah, I would say there’s often a bit of confusion when athletes come on about the 30-30s versus the 30-90s bike workouts.  These are some of my favorites – super-short intervals, so we can nail them perfectly.  But they have to be distinguished, the two different workouts, because you’ll be at a super-hard effort for 30 seconds on 30-90s, but you get a full recovery in Zone 1 for 90 seconds.  Then athletes go into 3030s, which has a lot more 30second intervals there, but you’re not recovering fully during that 30second recovery, it is back to only a Zone 3 effort.  That is very tricky, and it ends up being a much more difficult workout, so it’s important to read that carefully and see what your recovery zone is there.  One is Zone 1 and one is Zone 3.

Andrew:  Yeah, and it’s funny, Jo, when you do that workout with those recoveries in Zone 3, at first you don’t really even notice, but by the end of the workout, it’s a little challenging to hold that little bit of Zone 3!  You definitely feel it by the end of the session, I really like that session, it’s a good one.  There are a few sessions, that I know I get in my calendar, where it will prompt you to ride at certain cadences.  For the most part you have your natural default cadences, and in the warmups there’s some stuff where you’re doing high-cadence pedaling and spin-ups. John, talk to us about those couple sessions where it’s prompting us to hold lower cadences in most instances for certain powers, and why that is the case.

John:  Yeah, there’s a lot of benefits to varying cadence, especially both high and low. There’s some different adaptations that happen.  As you mentioned, high-cadence pedaling, spin-ups, those sort of thing versus your lower cadences, more like a power interval.  One, it’s more of a grind, it’s going to engage more of those big muscles. It’s common to see a lower heart rate at higher power, simply because we’re relying less on the cardiovascular system in this case, and more on the muscular system.  We’re utilizing those muscles more, less cardio.  But what we’re going to see here is those muscles are going to fatigue, so this can really help dial in what is your optimal race day cadence, especially given your race terrain.  This is something that I found years ago.  I had a higher cadence than I do now, and as I was experimenting in training with my cadence, I noticed I was able to have a higher power output at a lower heartrate at a lower cadence.  But then there’s a point of diminishing return, and then even a negative return when you go too low.  If your cadence is too low, you’re going to burn up your legs.  So it’s finding that optimal place in between.

Andrew:  I do have a couple other follow-up questions about executing your bike sessions, things like power meters versus no power meters, executing indoors versus executing outdoors.  But folks, we try to keep these episodes to about 60 minutes – it usually goes 64, 65, 66 – so I’m going to move past that.  If you're listening to this episode and you’re wondering some of the specifics about executing your bike sessions based on the tech that you have, we do have full-length podcast episodes about executing your bike and run sessions.  So if there’s something we don’t cover here, by all means go find the full-length episode hitting each of the disciplines.  I’m going to move us on to the practical side of doing our TriDot training with the run workouts.  When we head out for a run, what do we need to know about executing these sessions?

Joanna:  Okay, mean coach again.  Please, please warm up!  Please warm up!

Andrew:  It makes such a difference!

Joanna:  Please do your dynamic stretching and muscle activation exercises.  When I talk about dynamic stretching – when John and I go on a 14mile run on a track at 6:00 a.m., we do leg swings front to back, side to side, calf raises, marching in place.  There’s a number of things you can do to get warmed up.  I ask my athletes to do about five to ten minutes of drilling.  When you look at those run workouts, there are five to ten minutes of drills prescribed on each run session, except usually for those offthe-bike runs. During the main set itself, I like to focus on run form and cadence.  It sometimes takes your mind off the pain when you’re doing intervals, to be thinking about proper posture, running tall, slight lean, having those feet land directly under your hips.  I talk about a crystal tutu, and letting those hands brush against it like an imaginary tutu around your hips.  The guys love that reference, but those are all good things to focus on as far as form while you’re executing the main set.

Andrew:  Are there any specific run sessions that you find athletes have questions with or that you find yourself as a coach giving athletes advice on before they head out the door to conquer that run?

Joanna:  I would say, we all love to talk about the MAV shuttles.  Those are a hard effort, so it’s very important to warm up and do muscle activation before executing a MAV shuttles workout.  You’re putting a lot of stress on the hamstrings with those surges, so when you’re executing a MAV shuttle, you do need recovery.  You need to think about how important recovery is after that interval, whether that’s a jog, or going to a walk for you.  You want to get recovered, and then start the next MAV shuttle.  I also think there’s a lot of misconceptions about the interval runs that we see that are Zone 5 efforts.  I think people coming onto TriDot think they need to do a continuous run after that, but that is a full recovery after the Zone 5 effort.  So when you see (4:00) in parentheses, that’s bringing it back down to a four-minute walk, and then starting your next Zone 5 interval. It’s important to read those specifics for those specific workouts.

Andrew:  I think my only other runfocused session question I want to ask before we move on to my final question is, I often see athletes post about the heart rate Zone 2 runs. John, when people come on and they get prescribed their first Zone 2 run, they sometimes find, depending on your ability, you’re jogging very slowly or even walking to keep your heart rate in Zone 2.  So just to put people at ease that that is normal, that is okay, just very briefly tell us what is the physiological benefit of keeping the heart rate in Zone 2, even if it means you’re not actually running during that session?

John:  I mentioned it a little bit earlier, but there are certain things that happen only when the body is working in what we refer to as the Zone 2 state or an easy state.  Even if we are running that easy pace, if the heart rate is increasing past that Zone 2 heart rate, we’re no longer getting the benefits of that run.  Say it’s a recovery run, and your easy Zone 2 pace is a tenminute mile: you’re running that tenminute mile, but your heart rate is five or ten beats per minute above that Zone 2 heart rate. Your body is not going to be recovering from that session.  That session is actually going to be causing and inducing additional training stress that is now going to even further demand the recovery that you need.  Same thing with aerobic efficiency, where the heart is building efficiency and increasing the volume of blood that is circulating, or a whole host of things, like mitochondrial density.  We’ve talked a lot about this in past episodes, but there are certain adaptations that only happen in Zone 2, so it is critical to maintain that easy effort that we refer to as Zone 2.  Ideally, the time will be spent running – at a certain point when that aerobic efficiency is there and we begin to realize and see some of these benefits of Zone 2 training, it will be much easier to sustain a Zone 2 pace at a Zone 2 heart rate.  We’ll be able to hold that Zone 2 pace for longer periods of time at the Zone 2 heart rate, and at some point you may even be able to hold a Zone 3 pace at the Zone 2 heart rate as you become very, very efficient in that.  There’s a lot of reasons and benefits to doing it, but as you said this is a slow process, it can take months, sometimes a year or more to really develop.  So ideally, it’s staying ahead of that.  We want to minimize the amount of time that we’re walking, we want to maximize the time that we’re actually running, so this is a little bit of a learning curve to say, “What pace do I need to start at in order to maintain this heart rate for as long as I can?”  Ideally, the whole time the sessions is prescribed, but even if you know at some point it’s going to exceed that, maybe it’s having a 30second walk break every five minutes.  Maybe there’s a oneminute walk break every ten minutes.  Whatever it is for you that you’re able to maintain that Zone 2 heart rate for the longest period of time while spending the most time running, that is going to be idea.  That’s going to take some time to dial in, a little trial and error, but you’ll figure it out sooner than later.

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

Vanessa Ronksley:  Listen up everyone!  We are here to talk about TriDot Pool School on the cooldown.  With me I have two graduates of the program who both saw the seconds fly off their 100 meter swim times after attending, so I can’t wait to hear about their experiences. Now, if you’re a new listener and you want to know what Pool School is, head over to Episode .156 to find out all about it.  I’m Vanessa, your Average Triathlete with EliteLevel Enthusiasm, talking with Scott Steiner, and my TriDot bestie who also happens to be a TriDot Ambassador, Rhonnie Andrews.  Welcome to the show!

Rhonnie Andrews:  Thanks for the invitation Vanessa, looking forward to chatting with you and Scott today!

Scott Steiner:  Hi Vanessa, hi Rhonnie, thank you for inviting me to the show. I’m a huge fan, and excited to be here today.

Vanessa:  Now Rhonnie, I know that you heard about Pool School because you’re an ambassador and a dedicated listener of the podcast, but Scott, can you tell me how you heard about Pool School and what made you decide to register?

Scott:  Yeah, this one’s easy, it was Episode .156.  I had listened to the podcast on my commute to work, and heard that episode the day it came out.  I’m lucky I did, because it literally sold out in a day or two.  Don’t tell Jeff, but at first I was a little skeptical because I thought, “Well, this just seems like a sales pitch.”  I kept listening with an open mind, and as I listened more to Jeff and Coach JoJo describe the process, I started thinking this concept and this format was exactly what I needed.  I have tried unsuccessfully to learn to be a better swimmer from online video subscriptions, I had a personal triathlon coach, and some swim coaches from local aquatic centers and fitness clubs.  But none of that worked for me.  Each of these coaches tried to start with my swim stroke and just fix one thing, or have me swim some drills, but not explain why I was swimming that drill or the purpose of it.  At this point I was really stuck in that state of nonimprovement, and felt like swimming was an absolute waste of my time in my triathlon practice.  To give you a reference point, last year when I completed my first full-distance IRONMAN, I passed over a thousand people on the bike course because of how slow I was in the water.  Yes, it was waves and waves of people on the bike.

Vanessa:  But that must have felt really good to pass all those people!

Scott:  On the bike course it does, but it’s terribly deflating to come out of the water and look at your watch and realize how far back, and how much of a hole you put yourself in.  So not only on the race course, but really in the pool, I felt like practicing was a waste of time.  I would just feel like, “Why am I even in the water?  I don’t see any results.  I should just quit and go for a run.  Why am I even here?  Why am I working this hard without seeing any results?”  Because I could really just do a few open water swims leading up to an event, and it wouldn’t really be any different in the results page.  So what I really needed, and what I felt like Pool School was going to give me, was that full stroke analysis, real-time hands-on feedback while I’m in the water.  That’s what they promised, and that’s what they delivered.

Vanessa:  Okay Rhonnie, your turn!  What made you want to DIVE into the sport of triathlon?  I just had to throw that in there to make Jeff Raines proud of how punny I am.  Anyways, can you tell me about where you started as a swimmer?

Rhonnie:  Absolutely. I started about eleven years ago. I was just stopped at a red light going to meet my friend for a run, and I thought, “I should do a triathlon, what a great idea!”  Two problems with that: I didn’t own a bike, and I didn’t know how to swim.  It’s easy to get a bike and start pedaling, but the swim, not so much.  I spent summers at the pool as a kid, but we did flips and diving board, underwater swimming.  I never swam 25 meters with my face in the water, never mind 500 meters or 750 meters for a sprint triathlon.  I knew a guy at a local run club, and he raced triathlons.  I asked him where I should start, and he pointed me to some locally-coached swim groups.  I spent the next ten years with various groups, I read books, watched YouTube videos, and made very minor improvements.  I could get through the swim portion of the races, with distances ranging from sprints to IRONMAN, but I didn’t enjoy it, and I actually considered switching to duathlons.  Then in May of this year, I was at the TriDot Ambassador camp in St. George when I happened to have lunch with Donnye Winship, who is now a TriDot coach.  We started working together right away, and he had me doing drills for the majority of my workouts, instead of countless meters of perfecting my inefficient stroke.  My speed was finally starting to pick up, and then I heard about TriDot Pool School on the Facebook group, and all the positive feedback from people that I knew that had attended, and times they were dropping off their swims.  So I knew that I had to go.  With the combination of Donnye’s coaching, and what I’ve learned at Pool School, I feel much more confident now, and I’m pretty jazzed about 2023 race season coming up.

Vanessa:  I love that! Yay!  It’s so nice to hear that you are excited about this race season, because I know that the swim has been a struggle for you.  It’s so fabulous to hear that you’re excited, and you’re not switching to duathlons.

Rhonnie:  It’s just defeating when, especially for a sprint distance, you come out of the swim and you’ve already lost the race, like you can’t catch anybody, you don’t have enough time. So I knew it was time to get that figured out.

Vanessa:  So the big question I’m dying to know the answer to is, and I feel like we need a drum roll, how many seconds did you knock off your 100 meter time from the initial assessment on day one to the second assessment on day two?

Scott:  Vanessa, I was ten seconds faster in the 100 at the conclusion of the Pool School. And when I say happy, I was REALLY happy with that improvement.

Vanessa:  Whoa! Congratulations!  I love that!

Rhonnie:  I was pretty close, I was nine seconds off my 100meter time trial.

Vanessa:  That’s mind-blowing that you knocked off that amount of time in a hundred yards. That’s not that much of a distance compared to how much time you knocked off, so I am super impressed.  Wow.  And since you’ve attended pool school, I’m just curious to know, have you continued to practice the drills, and have you become faster, because I think it has been a few weeks at least since you both attended Pool School.  Has it?

Rhonnie:  I think it’s been about three weeks.  I got an assessment after Pool School from my lane coach, Diego, and he specified certain drills that were my weakness and what I needed to work on.  So I don’t have to spend 75 minutes a day doing the drills like I did before, and just working on ones that are specific to me. As far as my speed, I am holding steady around the same pace as what I finished Pool School at, but I’m far more efficient.  My stroke rate is down, and I’m not as tired after my swim as I used to be.

Scott:  Yeah, I haven’t been able to practice as much as I would like.  As I mentioned, it’s been a very busy race season right now, we’re kind of at the end of everything we’re doing.  I’m actually out there running, and I find myself doing Pinocchio drills in running.  Don’t ask me why, but I’m thinking about how to improve myself while I’m doing other things now, so way different approach.  But when I got home from Pool School, a few days later I swam my favorite open-water lake swim.  I live on a large lake outside of Atlanta, and where I regularly practice.  So I went out for a onemile swim, and when I completed that swim, I was shocked that I was 3:45 faster than my previous best. So the ten seconds in the pool was one thing, but almost four minutes on a onemile swim in open water was huge for me. Like Rhonnie said, it felt more efficient.  A few days later, I swam at St. George and knocked three minutes off my IRONMAN 70.3 lake swim personal best.  So it translated directly over to the results page.  Then finally last week, I don’t really have a way to quantify this because I’ve never swam a 2.4mile practice swim, but I did here, and I came out of that feeling great coming out of the water.  My hip flexors didn’t feel destroyed, I wasn’t gasping for air, I wasn’t super fatigued.  The efficiency of that swim was there, and really bumped my confidence heading into Arizona for next week.

Vanessa:  Yeah, I think that is more valuable than time, is how you feel when you get out of the swim, because ultimately how you feel when you get out of the swim is going to impact the rest of your race.  Even if your time was the same, the way that you felt is definitely more valuable and important.  So good for you, that’s great!  Now Scott, what’s one memory that you will remember about Pool School?  It can be anything at all, so let’s hear it.

Scott:  Well there was a lot of fun, but like Rhonnie said, you’re broken up into these small groups, and you’re sharing this lane with your coaches.  To me, it was just how genuine everyone was.  Not just the coaches, but also the participants. Everybody there had this shared common goal, just to get better, or to help you get better.  So while you’re in those small groups, you can learn from the coaches and get that feedback, but you could also watch your peers executing those drills, and visually learn from what they were doing right or not doing right. To give you that feedback, in that format, it was just so fun.  It was encouraging, really reinforced what we were learning, and I just had a great time, from the time we started to the time we left.

Vanessa:  Well done, I love that!  How about you, Rhonnie?

Rhonnie:  Well, ironically, my favorite memory was very similar to Scott’s, and it was my lane. I had great lane coaches, Diego and Tony, and then Donnye came by, and Jeff Booher came by to give their feedback. But I was also very lucky that I only had one other athlete in my lane, and his name was Troy.  We worked really great together, it turns out my strengths were his weaknesses and vice versa.  So one drill, it didn’t matter how it was explained to me, I didn’t understand, and Diego just said, “Watch Troy,” and Troy did it, and as soon as I saw him do it, then I got it.  So that worked out in my favor, and he was just so positive the entire weekend.  And when we went to do our time trial, he was so nervous he wanted me to go first.  So I do my time trial, and he couldn’t believe how fast I went, he was so excited.  Then his turn, he ends up beating me by one second, so I’m not sure which one of us was more excited, me or him.  He ended up taking 30-plus seconds off his 100 meter time trial. It was really neat to see that.

Vanessa:  Are you joking?!

Rhonnie:  No, serious! Or hundred yards, I should say. But it was just exciting to see how excited he was.  For me, he was just the best person I could have been paired with, to spend the weekend with.  So that’s my favorite memory.

Andrew: Well that’s it for today folks! Big thanks to TriDot coaches John Mayfield and Joanna Nami for talking to us about TriDot training.  Shout out to UCAN and deltaG for partnering with us on the show today.  Head to deltaGketones.com to fuel your next tough session and race with deltaG ketones, and head to ucan.co to feel the steady energy of UCAN.  We’ll do it all again soon.  Until then, happy training!

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.

‍