The Long Haul: Strategies for Stamina Sessions

TriDot Podcast Episode 247

The Long Haul: Strategies for Stamina Sessions

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

Andrew Harley: Welcome to the TriDot podcast! I honestly don't know how we have done 240 or so episodes of the TriDot podcast without bringing up today's topic. We are talking about the infamous “long run”, or in the case of a triathlete, the long swim, the long bike, and the long run sessions that pop up on our training schedules. What are these sessions for, and what do we need to know in order to nail them? Here to help us is Coach Raya Usher. Raya is a British Triathlon and IRONMAN Certified Coach, assisting athletes competing in ITU and longer distances. Having been a former Canadian International Alpine ski racer, Raya understands the intensities, pressures, and physiological demands that are placed on athletes, no matter what level they are competing. Raya has been competing in triathlon since 2015, and has podiums at IRONMAN events, and has qualified and competed in ETU, ITU, and IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships. Raya, great to see you! How is the triathlon season going over there in the UK?

Raya Usher: Hey Andrew, it is so great to see you! Things are going great here.

Andrew: Also with us is Coach Brady Hoover. Brady is a full-time triathlon and running coach from Newburyport, Massachusetts. He is a Certified Functional Strength Coach, an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, and a Strength Program Design Specialist. Brady is a double-digit Boston Marathon qualifier, who has been training with TriDot since 2018 and coaching with TriDot since 2019. He also serves on TriDot's Coach Support Team, teaching coaches how to get the most out of coaching with TriDot and RunDot. Brady, welcome back to the show!

Brady Hoover: Hey everybody, it's so good to be back. I'm really excited about this!

Andrew: Yeah, I figure this is a good topic for the both of you, so thanks so much for coming on to talk about those long sessions. I am 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. Lots of good stuff, let's get to it!

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

Andrew: I am not a golfer, but I imagine executing a perfect triathlon race is probably akin to shooting the perfect round of golf -- mere impossible to do, and somewhat subjective as to what that even means. Even when your race goes really, really well, I think we all look back most of the time and wish we had done a thing or two differently on our way to the finish line. As our warm up question today, from all of your triathlon racing, what is one moment or one decision that you wish you could go back and change? Coach Raya, what is this answer for you?

Raya: Well, when I saw this question as a prep question, I said to my husband Will, “Can you remember any of the things that I've done to mess up?”

Andrew: “I always race perfect! What is he talking about?”

Raya: Right. And I remember – like out of the decade that I've been racing, he's been my coach for seven of those years – so he kind of turned around and went, “Well, where do we start?” There was a lot to choose from, but I think the biggest blunder that I would go back and change was IRONMAN Staffordshire, I think in 2017. It was just about the time where I was starting to compete rather than just complete my Ironmans, and we had changed my race nutrition strategy to be a liquid-only fueling strategy, where all my gels were decanted into my water bottles, and that was it. I was told that the bike course was beautiful, but a little bit “rugged” shall we say, as the tarmac goes, and I should make sure that my bottles are well secured. So rather than thinking about talking to my coach and asking how best to secure my bottles, I started thinking about all the options. And I ended up with wedging tissue into the bottle to try and make them more secure. Well that didn't really go to plan, and all of my bottles popped out of my bike. I had three bottles on my bike, and all of them went within the first kilometer, and I was in such a headspace that I wanted to win my age group and I was going for it, that I didn't even know that I'd lost my bottles. I lost all my nutrition.  I didn't even go to take a sip out of my bottles for like 20 kilometers, and then realized how much trouble I was in. Needless to say, fast-forward to the run, I had a huge amount of issues because I'd taken on-course nutrition that I'd never trained with, I didn't drink enough, all of the things that could go wrong with your nutrition did go wrong, and it was super hot. So yeah, I kind of bonked, had a bit of heat stroke, had some GI distress, and it basically ended up kind of in the middle of the pack where I always did, because of that blunder. So yeah, I made a big mistake on securing my bottles, but now I know how to do that with precision and perfection, so lesson learned.

Andrew: Yeah. So you're equipped to do that for yourself, you're equipped to help your own athletes with that, but if you could go back and just talk to Coach about how to do that, yeah it could have been a better race. Great answer here, Raya. I'm sure there are folks in our audience who have had a similar encounter with rough roads, that's for sure. Coach Brady, in all of your racing, what would you go back and change if you could?

Brady: Oh gosh, I think about this all the time. All the time, still to this day, IRONMAN Arizona in 2018. I had done one IRONMAN previous to that in 2016, and that was the perfect race, right? Everything went perfect. So I was like, all I’ve got to do is replicate that for IRONMAN Arizona. Well, it's the desert, so I thought it was going to be a warm swim. That water is chilly! I went there, I showed up with a sleeveless wetsuit. I'm like, “58 degrees, no big deal.” Being from New England, our ocean temperature doesn't really get over like 62°. I got this weird thing start to happen to my body after about 30 minutes in the water – because that's when I'm usually out of the water when I'm doing those half-Iron-distance races – I started cramping up, all kinds of stuff. Anyways, it wasn't the best swim, it was freezing cold. I get through transition, I was nice and warm, hopped on the bike, executed the bike power just flawlessly. I was dialed in, making up lost time. However, I had never raced in the desert. I've raced in hot temperatures before. Being in New England we get a lot of humidity, so I always know when to drink. In the desert, you don't sweat. Or I wasn't sweating, it was evaporating. You don't get thirsty. So that internal cue to drink – I mean, I knew to drink, to hydrate – but I get halfway through that bike, and I didn't even realize I’d barely had anything except for my bottle, which had my calories and electrolytes in there, but I wasn't getting the fluids I needed. I knew what I needed to be taking, I needed to be taking in like 30 ounces of fluid in an hour, but I was probably taking in 20 ounces, if that.

Andrew: Yeah, and all because you just didn't feel the urgency to drink.

Brady: Yes. My kit was never wet. I wasn't sweating, it was evaporating. So then I get to the run. I come off the bike and I think I was at like 5:15/ I was in a really good place. I do well in the swim, but I do even better compared to my age-groupers on the run. So I was like, “I am going to throw down, maybe get that Worlds slot, looking at a top five.” The family says I was in a good position, they were tracking me. I get through that first loop, Mile 13, I was clicking off like a 2:58 pace. Everything felt good. I get to Mile 16, double hamstring cramp, there it comes. And it was just a battle.

Andrew: There it was. Yeah.

Brady: I was trying to take salt, trying to get in whatever I could. Tried to get some Coca-Cola – I would never take Coca-Cola in the middle of a race, but it was that bad.

Andrew: Oh I would. Yeah I would.

Brady: And I knew then I’d screwed up, and I started thinking about, “How much fluid did I take in on the bike? Oh, I went through special needs, but I think I only picked up one water bottle on course to refill my torpedo.” Actually, I refilled that thing three times. So it came to bite me. I had a battle from Mile 16 to about Mile 23, and then finally the legs would turn, they had stopped cramping up. I was doing that shuffle that everyone does towards the end of the IRONMAN.

Andrew: The famous IRONMAN shuffle, yeah.

Brady: As soon as I got my legs back, things felt good. Things were clicking, and I ended up running a 3:20 – I know people who would kill for that – but I should have been like 2:58, 2:59. Then when I looked back, that would have been fourth or fifth place. So I still think about that today, but there are some good life lessons. I say to my athletes, “I've made all the mistakes so that you don't have to.”

Andrew: But it's funny, like both of your stories are related, in different ways, to nutrition going awry on the bike, and then paying for it on the run. And I guess, in a way, mine isn't all that different in that respect. So my first and only IRONMAN to date, IRONMAN Waco, I felt ready. I knew what I was doing, like I was going to have a great IRONMAN debut, I was going to go sub-12:00. And I get onto the run course, and I started having that GI distress of, “Oh, my body has been taking in all these gels and whatever for X number of hours, it's never done that before.” And my stomach started acting up, and I didn't have any form of GasX or gas relief, Pepto Bismol, all the different things you can put in a personal needs bag or in your transition bag. It was just something that, in all the things that I had prepped for that race, I never tossed those kinds of items into my bags. So sure enough, halfway through the run, my stomach starts acting up. And my legs were there, I wanted to keep running. The TriDot workout did their job, I was ready to go for that sub-12:00. But I was just in and out of the Porta Potty the whole back half of that run. And a little GasX or a little Pepto Bismol probably could have at least helped the situation. So that's what I would go back and change.

We're going to throw this question out to the TriDot audience. We do this in a couple of ways. I'm going to post this question to the I AM TriDot Facebook group, and then we're also going to post this question to the TriDot Circle community, to our athletes that are on Circle. So go find the post asking you, from all the racing you've done, what is one thing you wish you could go back and change from your time on the race course? Can't wait to hear your stories and what you have to say.

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

Andrew: Before we get too deep into the show, I want to talk about our good friends from Precision Fuel and Hydration. We've spoken to Sports Scientist Andy Blow during several episodes of the podcast, to help our listeners nail down their hydration and fueling strategy for training and racing. The big takeaway from those episodes with Andy is that there simply isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to race nutrition. And that's why the team at Precision Fuel and Hydration have developed the Fuel Planner. Head over to precisionfuelandhydration.com to take the Fuel Planner, and get your free personalized fuel and hydration strategy. The plan provides guidelines for how much carbohydrate, sodium, and fluid you should be aiming to consume, so that you know your numbers for your next race. You can then hit those numbers by using the Precision Fuel and Hydration product range, which is designed to make it easier for you to keep track of your intake during racing, as the carb and sodium content per serving is smack bang on the front of the packaging. It could not be easier or tastier. Just last night actually, I encouraged my brother, who is signed up for his first half-marathon, to head to the PF&H website and do this himself. So head to the website, and as a TriDot listener you can use the code TRIDOT24 to get 10% off your first order of electrolytes and fueling products. That code just updated, so if you're a long-time listener, for the year 2024, our code is TRIDOT24 at precisionfuelandhydration.com.

With the intelligence of TriDot’s training design, some of our training sessions are short and sweet, some are more standard in their duration, and some are longer than the rest. And those are the sessions we are here to talk about today. How long do our long workouts need to be? When in the training schedule should we expect to see them? And how can we execute them to the best of our ability? All of that and more with Coach Brady and Coach Raya. And let's start here today with defining for our athletes what is a long session? Or maybe asked a little differently, what is considered to be a long session? Is it the longest workout of our week? Is it the longest workout of our training cycle? Or is it a certain duration or mileage that makes a workout a long one? Coach Raya, what do you think?

Raya: Well, I think you've actually answered it quite well in a few of those.

Andrew: Nice!

Raya: Yeah, well done! You knew! It is exactly that, it is your longest run, swim, or bike of the week. I often will say, especially depending on what time of year it is or what point you are in your season, I'll often say to my athletes, “Okay, this is the big Kahuna session of the week.” This is the important one. This is where all of your scores on your TriDot come from. If you're looking at your TrainX weekly scores, the value of your sessions, these are the highest ones, the most important ones. They're the ones to focus on. If you've trained on platforms outside of TriDot, you might have heard them called something else in the past. You might have heard them called the “long slow distance set”, or the “all day pay set”. Now we here at TriDot mix them up a little bit, but that in essence is what you're looking at, your longest session of the week for your swim, bike and/or run.

Andrew: Yeah, I love the additional tip there, Raya, for our TriDot athletes. Some athletes already know this, some might not have realized it, but your TrainX scores for the week are weighted, and your long sessions are your more critical sessions to get in, are actually worth more, when it comes to the end of the week score. So some people might be confused, if they maybe miss that long session but did everything else perfectly the rest of the week, that score is maybe lower than they were expecting. Well, that was an important session. You can actually tell which sessions are more important to your workout week by that NTS score and your XP points. The more XP points the session is worth, the more important it is to your week, and the fewer XP points, the less critical that session is to your week. So if you have to miss a session, start with the ones that have the lower XP. And Raya, to your point, the long sessions are often the ones that have more XP points because of how important they are. So just throughout our season, when should we expect to see our long sessions start being a little bit different? We know we have a weekly long session, and that's true for the swim, bike, and run. Sometimes those long sessions are an hour and change, sometimes those long sessions are four or five hours and change, as the season progresses. Why should we expect that session to be a little bit different? Brady?

Brady: Generally we have two different phases in TriDot. We have our “development phase” and then we have our “race preparation” phase. So depending on the race, your fitness, and how long you've been in the sport, those ranges can change. Let's take a marathon for instance. I'll often get a 12-week prep for a marathon. I have some runners that have a 19-week prep for a marathon. So it's when they hit that race preparation phase, or the stamina phase as we like to call it, that's when you start to really see those long runs increase week over week. I like to say, in that development phase, all those long workouts are still there. They'll often be an hour, or 1:10, but they’re front-loaded intervals, and then you've got the easy run afterwards. You know they switch, and you know you're in that race prep phase, when those intervals flip flop. In marathon training for instance, you might have a two-hour long run, but for an hour and a half you run in Zone 2 pace, and then the intervals kick in. That's when you know you're in that race preparation phase. There's a way to get into it in the calendar setting so you know exactly when and where you are in your training. Take a half-Ironman or an Ironman for instance, and the periodization for that is much, much longer. You'll know when you go into that, because you'll start seeing on the long rides, “stamina session” on the bike, and some of those keywords other than the “threshold and hold” or the “over-unders”. You'll start seeing a lot more stamina sets and you can go, “Oh, I must be starting my rice preparation phase.” And if you look a week ahead, each week the long sessions are getting just a little bit longer than the week before.

Andrew: Yeah, and I know, for folks when they come over to the platform for the first time and maybe they're used to training a different way, or they've had a different coach that doesn't use TriDot to coach their athletes, and they might be confused. That, “Okay, my long run this week is only ten minutes longer than my other runs. What's the deal?” Raya, I know you've probably navigated some of these conversations with athletes before as well. So when we don't have a big race on the schedule, why is it that those long sessions aren't all that longer from some of the other stuff that we're doing?

Raya: Yeah that's right, and you've actually covered this on a couple of the podcasts previously so beautifully, and Brady's indicated it, is that we've got two big phases that we use at TriDot. And that is based on our “Power-Stamina Paradox”. So a lot of our methodology that the system has proved, is that actually if we work on power and threshold in shorter sessions in our “off season”, we're doing shorter, sharper sessions to get faster. If we can during the off season focus on getting you faster, what’s that going to do to your race prediction? Well, hopefully that's going to shorten.

Andrew: Yeah, true.

Raya: So depending on the distance that you're racing, your long slow distance or your long discipline runs, bikes, or swims are not necessarily going to be as long. So in your development phase, like you said, we tend to see those being the same time or duration as one of your high-intensity sessions, but it might just be a heart-rate-based version. Or in the race prep phase, depending on what race distance you're doing, you can start to see that dramatically increase depending on whether you're doing short-course or long course. If you are an athlete who's doing just short-course, you might never see your run get longer than 20, 25, 30 minutes, because you're only focusing on that very, very fast-paced run. So it also depends on the sort of racing that you're doing on the platform.

Andrew: Yeah, very true. This is kind of jumping ahead closer to race day, but I think this is a massive question that I see very frequently when it comes to the long workouts – people want to know, “Do we need to have completed the distance of our race in training?” So for example, if we're doing a marathon or if we're doing an Ironman, don't we need to run 26.2 miles in training so that our body knows that it can run 26.2 miles on race day? Don't we need to go out and bike 56 miles or 112 miles in training to know that when we get to that middle-distance or full-distance that, “Okay, my body in training has biked that far, it will be fine on race day.” People think they need to do that, and TriDot rarely has you do that. Talk to us about what determines how long we need those long sessions to be. Brady, what do you think?

Brady: So a couple of factors. When it comes to the swim or the run it's threshold pace, and threshold power on the bike. And then the estimated time it's going to take for you to complete that race, whatever it is that you're training for. I'm often asked that, especially with runners I coach a lot on RunDot, “Why is my longest run only X amount of time?” And I laugh and I say – I don’t really laugh, but I explain it to them like this. Just think about that 2:45 session that you're doing, and you're running three other days during that week. How much weekly volume are you doing? You're doing about eight, nine hours of training for a race that you're probably going to finish in four hours, maybe five hours for some. You're getting all that training in, but you're getting it during the week. And unlike conventional training and spreadsheet training, you're getting a lot of intensity during the week. You're getting those high-quality sessions, where you might be working on training one of three different energy systems. We're training Zone 2, our oxidative system; Zone 4, our threshold or our glycolic system; and then we've got our phosphagen system, Zone 5 and above. You don't get a lot of that in your traditional marathon training, but you will see it in RunDot and in TriDot. So you're getting a lot more quality, I like to say. We like to say “fast before far, strong before long.” And we all know that at some point in time, even the best of runners, their running form and their running mechanics break down, and with that comes a greater risk for injury. Now we want that athlete to be healthy, we want them to be injury resilient. We want them on that finish line and feeling fresh. So there's a law of diminishing returns to going over say 2:45, three hours, because the form is just so bad that you're at a higher risk of injury. And then muscle memory comes into play and you're just reinforcing bad mechanics. So you don't really want to go over that for those very same reasons.

Andrew: Yeah, very interesting. And I feel like runners struggle with this concept more than triathletes do. Because I think for a triathlete, there's this innate understanding that, “I can't train the full distance for all three sports.” Just the time it would take, the toll it would put on our body, I think most of us kind of understand – especially if you sign up for a middle-distance or a full-distance race –your body can't absorb that much training to do the full distance in all three sports as you get really close to race day. But runners I think very often have this mindset of, “Oh, I need to have done that 26.2 miles. I need to have done that half-marathon, that 10K distance before I get to race day.” I'm curious Raya, as you and Will are working with your athletes at Precision Coaching, are there ever occasions where you do have an athlete do the full distance before the race comes up?

Raya: Very rarely, especially if we’re talking Ironman distance, because it's so far.

Andrew: It’s a ways!

Raya: It’s a long way! I mean, I haven't been doing a huge amount of running, so a 10K feels like a long way for me at the moment. So if you think about that from a conceptual perspective, if you are starting with an athlete, especially if they are on the beginning of their triathlon journey, a marathon is a really considerable distance. The other thing I think that pure runners really struggle with is that they can’t understand how triathletes can ultimately be as fast if not faster than them off the bike, than with them running six or seven times a week doing 40, 50, 60, sometimes 70 miles of running. And most of our triathletes on TriDot are doing a marathon off the bike after 112 miles, and they're running brilliantly with two and a half runs a week sometimes - two independent runs and a 20-minute brick run is what most people are training on as a TriDot athlete. But we have amazing anecdotal stories about athletes. We have one lady – I won't mention her name, but she is in her mid-50s – and she's very normal like she's done a lot of marathons. I think she's done London six or seven times. And this year, she ran the London Marathon as a C race. So it was not even really in the program, but she was running two and a half runs a week, training for middle-distance triathlon, and came within a minute of her PB that she set 20 years ago.

Andrew: Ah, so cool.

Raya: I mean, our hearts don't understand what we're training, it just needs to be training. So we can, as triathletes, do a lot more, non-impactful endurance and stamina work, where our heart rate and our cardiovascular system is developing in a much more safe and secure environment without the impact that running has. So we're running 2½ runs a week, whereas runners feel the need to run six or seven. And I agree with you 100%, that's why when runners come to RunDot, they cannot compute why they're only doing three or four runs a week. They're like, “Why? How is this possible? I should be running 70 kilometers or 50 miles!” But the progressive load that our system calculates indicates you don't need to be running that much. You need to be recovering, and maximizing those breaks in between the runs. So yeah, it's definitely not necessary to run that far.

Andrew: Now I want to ask this, and you both hinted at this already, but I want to specifically call it out. Because on TriDot – and this isn't just TriDot, it’s in the endurance sports community – there's kind of a debate about which is the right approach. Basing your workouts on hitting a certain distance, or basing your workouts on hitting a certain duration, and people kind of belong to either camp, or people kind of dabble in both just depending on what they think and believe. TriDot prescribes all of our workouts across the board, from now until the end of time. it will do so by duration. It's never “Go out and run 10 miles,” or “Go out and run 5 miles or 6 kilometers.” It's always, “Go run 40 minutes. Go bike an hour and 25 minutes. Go swim for an hour. Here's your intervals to do inside of that hour.” It's all time-based. And that certainly is the case for these long sessions. That’s part of where, “Okay sure, of course you're not going to hit your mileage, because we're not even concerned with your mileage. We're concerned with how long you're on your feet being active.” Why is that the case, Raya, inside of TriDot?

Raya: Well, I have always been a time-based coach as well.

Andrew: Nice!

Raya: Yes! I always agreed with this methodology. But we always have to remember with TriDot, and why it plans sessions and periodization as it does, is because of what it's learned through big data. And what we have to remember is as we become better athletes, our thresholds improve. As our thresholds improve, so does the time it is going to take us to run, swim, or bike specific distances. So when you first start running marathons, you might be a 4½-hour finisher. But in a year or two years’ time, you might have improved by almost an hour, and you might be a 3½-hour finisher.

Andrew: Yeah, that's a great point.

Raya: So if we're doing distance-based work, you're always going to be running a very long distance. But because what we like to do at TriDot is really clear progressive load, where we layer the training very systematically and carefully to make sure we never overtrain or overload an athlete, we do that by working out the time versus your predicted race times. So it means that no matter what fitness you are, we know that you need to run X amount of minutes at this threshold in order for your threshold to improve, or X amount of minutes in Zone 2 to work on your stamina going forward for your race prediction time. So with time, we can calculate that progressive load far more accurately than distance, which is just going to lead to overtraining, injury, all of that sort of stuff that we just want to avoid when we're training athletes.

Andrew: Yeah, and my coach, John Mayfield, always puts it this way when we talk about this. He always says, “Your body doesn't know how far it’s gone.” Your body has no idea, when it's pedaling on your bike, whether you've ridden 20 miles or 30 miles, it knows time, intensity, and duration. It knows how hard it's working, and how long it's been working that hard for. So that's also a reason why TriDot bases everything on time, is it's trying to keep you working at a certain intensity for X amount of time. Raya?

Raya: It also knows the environment in which it's operating, right? So the system knows, but also your body knows.

Andrew: Yes. Great point.

Raya: So it knows how hot it is. It knows how cold it is. It knows how humid it is, just by feel. And often, if you're training in some more difficult climates – and Brady and I live in very moderate temperature climates, or extreme on the other hand – but down in Texas, or in southern Europe, it is hot a lot of the time. And if you're overtraining and over-cycling or over-running in those distances, you're actually just putting yourself into a far deeper hole than you need to be, when you can race or train at very specific shorter distances, even though it's your “long session”, but to get exactly the same outcome.

Andrew: Now for triathletes – which if you’re listening to the TriDot podcast, chances are you're a triathlete and not just a runner or a cyclist or a pure swimmer – but for triathletes, we have to balance three different long workouts. Because we have three different sports, so there's the swim, the bike, and the run to think about, whereas a runner just has to think about, “Which of my runs this week is the long session?” For us it's the long run, the long swim, the long bike. And I've just noticed in my own program design – I've raced everything from sprint to Ironman, and obviously when you sign up for a middle-distance or an Ironman, you really start seeing that the bikes – my normal long bike on a week when I don't have a race coming up is an hour and 25 minutes. And all of a sudden there’s an Ironman on the schedule, and my long bike gets up to 5½ hours, based on my expected finish time. And same thing on the run, instead of my long run usually being an hour and 10 minutes, now my long run goes all the way up to 2½ hours. The swim though, I think the longest TriDot ever had me swim to get ready for Ironman even was an hour and 20 instead of an hour. So I guess I'm saying all this to say, I've kind of noticed in all three sports, TriDot handles how long your long session needs to get a little differently across the three. And I'm just kind of curious why that's the case, and what we as athletes can learn from why TriDot does what it does in that regard. Coach Brady, teach us a little bit about this.

Brady: Yeah, it has to do with how we measure a lot on intensity. We’re intensity-based versus volume-based. So that has a lot to go with predicting, “Okay, how long is it going to take me to finish that Ironman swim, that Ironman bike, that Ironman run?” Then what I've seen and understood over the years is there's a lot more intensity in those swims. Like I've had that hour 20 minute swim, and there's a lot of Zone 4 in that swim. From a normalized training stress standpoint, that’s the equivalent to going long and slow for 4,200 yards. I'd much rather be out of the water in an hour and 20 minutes than having to do a long swim for an hour and 40 minutes. I'd much rather have that quality, that intensity in there, and be out of the water sooner in my training, to have more time with the family, more time with the kids.

Andrew: Yeah. Coach Raya, anything to add on what our body needs in terms of a long swim, a long bike, and a long run with all three sports being a little bit different?

Raya: Yeah, I think a lot of people are always surprised when they join TriDot, because the standard amount of swims that are allocated to an athlete is only two. And everyone goes, “I’ve got to work so much harder on my swim, so why is there only two sessions? It's crazy, it's not enough!” But the way that the swims are structured tends to be very focused, as Brady said, on slightly higher intensity, which gives you such a bigger impact in terms of building your strength. The faster you can swim, the stronger you get. The stronger you get, the shorter your swim time is. But also I think it's really important to remember the percentage of time that you'll be taking for each discipline when you're racing. So the swim, while sometimes I agree can be the most daunting discipline, it is by far the shortest. So in order of prioritizing what you need to focus on in your week, two swims generally will have you swimming actually far more distance comparatively to your race, than your bike and your run. So you're still getting a huge amount of volume comparatively speaking. On the bike, you've got to work on your power and your stamina, because it is the longest section. So you'll often find that you have one more bike than you do in any other discipline. Unless you count your small short brick run, which then counter-balances that argument. But there's a lot more volume in the bike. And then finally, you're going to be working on pace and also technique with a lot of your warmups in your run to make sure that we are reducing the risk of injury whilst we're building your stamina and your speed.

Andrew: I've had in my program, long training sessions that are all Zone 2. I've had long sessions where there's intervals built in. Sometimes those intervals are in the front of the workout, sometimes those intervals are on the back half of the workout. I know this is all intentional, but not all of our long workouts are created equal. Raya, talk to us about just some of the physiological adaptations that we're looking for in these long sessions that might cause some of them to be designed differently.

Raya: Most of the time, that is all down to the period in which your season is in. So we work on shorter, sharper sessions in the beginning phase of your season, which is why often your longer sessions might be shorter. But they tend to be quite juicy, and there will be a lot less Zone 2. And you'll sit there and you'll have done maybe three or four spikes of Zone 4 and you kind of think to yourself, “Gosh, that felt really difficult. How the heck am I going to do 30 minutes of Zone 3 now?” So actually, you find your longer sessions a lot more varied, and a lot more mixed, when we're getting into that sort of development phase. As you then come out of your development phase, you're going to start to see the sessions lengthen. As those sessions lengthen, we start to then work on our stamina. But often, when we're working on stamina, having focused on those shorter sessions for such a long period of time – especially if your development phase has been a 16 to 20-week phase – it can be a lot on your body to increase those sessions. And sometimes they can jump by like 30 minutes a week. So rather than throwing thrashy, juicy, hard intervals in there, they'll reduce the intensity of those to help you build that stamina. Once the stamina is built and we get closer to race day though, well you get the longer sessions AND some juicy parts to that, just to really make sure you're scared for race day, whether you can hold on to those zones, just before race day. And then finally you'll get the scary sessions, those race rehearsals, where it basically says, “Entirety of session at race pace.” And that would be the sort of the cycle of sessions and why you see the different varied sessions as they occur.

Andrew: I want to spend a little bit of time on this. For the swim, bike, and run, we've already kind of identified that there's different sessions in there, they all have different reasons and purposes, but they all are a long session. Across the swim, bike, and run, some are longer and some are shorter than others. But for the swim, bike, and run individually, I want to hear what practical tips you give to your athletes for executing a good workout when their long sessions come around. And I want to go sport-by-sport here, so we can make sure we give each sport the proper coverage. So Brady, I'll start with you on the swim. What do you tell your athletes, Brady, when they have a longer swim session coming up?

Brady: So longer swim sessions, those are going to be more race specific. So I say those are the sessions that you want to practice breathing to that favorite side, but you want to breathe to that other side too. Because you never know which way you're swimming, right?

Andrew: Yeah, or where the current’s coming from, where waves are coming from.

Brady: Yeah. “Okay, the buoys are going to be on my right? Awesome, that's my strong side.” But what about if they at the last minute switch it and you're going to swim it the other direction, counter clockwise? “Oh, no, now I'm breathing to my weaker side.” So you want to practice that, you want to be intentional in your training. Not only that, in those warmups – and TriDot will prescribe this too – is trying to sight five or six times in a 25-yard length. There's a reason for that. We're going to have to do it every five to ten strokes while swimming. Yeah, six times is a lot in 25, but you just want to get used to it. You want to get in that rhythm, you want to develop that cadence. Then I'll often say, depending on – and Will did a great video on this – there's a couple of different ways to sight. I like, when the water’s like glass, you can just crocodile it. Just lift up your head just enough, it doesn't require a lot of energy, and then you can get back down and get into your rhythm. But then you can get out there and you can have whitecaps. Well you’ve got to really push down that water, and pull your head way up. I don't even know what I would call that one, just trying to survive, right? You might even have to tread water a little bit to see that buoy. “Am I swimming in the right direction?” Because you don't know if that guy or that girl in front of you is swimming in the right direction, so just be intentional. I'll say to put a cone down at the end of the length, and try to sight that every time.

Andrew: Moving on to the bike, the practical tips you give your athletes when it comes to a longer bike session. Now again, there's a wide variety in how long your long bike sessions can be, so we can't cover everything here. But for that long bike each week, what are you telling your athletes in terms of practical tips to execute that workout well? Coach Raya?

Raya: For me, it's two main focuses. It's honing in on your nutrition, and really making sure you know exactly how many grams of carbs you want to consume each hour, and training yourself to consume that in the right amount of time. Some of my athletes I have racing the course on a virtual platform, so they can learn when the hills are, when the descents are, and when they can fuel appropriately. And finally pacing. Those would be my two things that I have my athletes focusing on. Pacing, because often we tend to either push too hard on the uphills, or if you're on a flat race course we tend to think, “Ah, I can just push it an extra ten watts, it's fine.” But it’s an extra ten watts over 180 kilometers.

Andrew: Adds up, yeah.

Raya: It adds up! So those two things are what we focus on as we're getting into the sort of the meatier end of the season.

Andrew: Coach Brady, anything to add on practical tips for having a good long bike session?

Brady: Having a big meal beforehand. As those rides get longer, I say anything over 90 minutes, you're feeling as if it was race day. You mentioned the GI issues that you experienced. So anything over 90 minutes, if that means you're having 60 grams of carbs and that's going to be race day, we want to practice it over and over and over again. Because if there's going to be a product that's going to give us GI issues, I would much rather find out about it in training, than find out about it in a race rehearsal and have to reengineer somebody's entire nutrition program. So like I say, there's no wrong product when it comes to nutrition, it's what works for you. But we want to practice it, because a certain product might have worked great for two-hour rides, but as soon as you go 2½, 3 hours, all of a sudden you’re getting stomach issues. So now we're going to have to look at what's in the makeup of that product. “How much fructose and glucose is it? Oh, it's really high in fructose. Well, let's try another product that's a little lower and maybe more balanced.” We want to find that early on, so that we have time to practice it, see what it does in our body over three, four, or five hours, so that we're not surprised when it comes to race rehearsal, and then we’ve got to scramble with five weeks until race day to find a new product that's going to work for us. I mean, sometimes these things happen one-off – it happened to me in my last marathon on May 5th. I had done 70-plus, long-course, half-marathon or longer and never had a GI issue, all of a sudden I had issues. I lost six minutes to the port-a-potties. I didn't change the thing, it's just we have those one-off days, and when we would look at it, I can't pinpoint what went wrong. I don't think anything went wrong, except for maybe the night before I was at the mercy of the restaurant. So now that I'm thinking about this and talking through it with you guys, if you're going to be traveling and you're not going to have access to a kitchen, maybe having a meal from a restaurant the night before that big ride, because that's what we're going to do when we get to wherever our destination is, if we don't have a kitchen.

Andrew: Yeah, great point. And the way both of you are harping so much on bike nutrition really highlights how important that is, both for fueling your bike split and for fueling the run that comes right after it. Raya I’ll ask you this, and then Brady can chime in if you have anything additional to add and then we'll move on to the run. But I'm just trying to think of some other things, when it comes to our long workouts, that athletes might be thinking about. And I think a big one with the bike is biking indoors versus outdoors, and how much time we are spending in our aero position versus not. When it comes to those long sessions, what do you tell your athletes, Raya, on those two bike experience items?

Raya: So it honestly depends on a couple of factors. If my athletes are incredibly good cyclists, i.e., they've been a cyclist for years, they are competitive, and I know that they've got excellent bike handling skills, I am very happy for them to stay on the turbo and in aero, cycling exactly what they need to. That might be because we're focusing more on visualization of the race course, and we're actually cycling the race course on a virtual reality platform, so they can focus on learning that course and being competitive. On the flip side, if I'm coaching a novice or beginner triathlete, then actually I will have them doing as many of the rides as possible outside. Because learning how to cycle in different environments like the wind, like rubbish tarmac – which is definitely something we suffer from here in the UK – understanding the difference between riding up an actual hill versus like Oahu climb, is very, very different. So it all depends on someone's ability, experience, what type of bike they have. If someone's racing long-course but they're on their road bike and they're constantly training on that, which is often the case, then we don't necessarily have to train them into aero quite as much. So yeah, the answer to that is, “it depends”. And if you are listening and you don't know what to do, I would say make sure you're comfortable riding outside in all weather conditions. Look at the race that you're going to be racing at. Is it a windy destination? Is it a flat destination? Is it hilly? Go and practice in the environment as much as possible. And if you live in the polar opposite environment to where you're racing, you can then try and emulate what you're going to be racing outdoors, but indoors. So if you're somewhere like me who lives in the UK, it's very rarely warm really. And I'm going to be racing in Cozumel. So I will put the heaters on, I will close all the windows, have no fans running, to learn how to adapt and acclimate, as I think you guys say in the States, but acclimatize in Europe. So a very long-winded version to say it kind of depends on experience and race environment.

Andrew: That was super helpful, great response there. I think that pretty well covers it. Coach Brady, I'll have you move us on to the run. I know you love the run. I love the run. When the long run comes up on our calendars, what are you telling your athletes to do in terms of executing a good long run session?

Brady: Yeah, so first of all, looking at their workout, depending where they are in the world too, is normalizing the environment. We're headed into summer here, and for you guys, it's been hot in Texas for a while now.

Andrew: Indeed!

Brady: So I always say, go in there and set the time of day. If you're starting to run at 7:00 and it's a two-hour run, I'm actually going to put the time in there for like 8:15. Because we know it's going to heat up a little bit, and I'm thinking about when it comes to those intervals that I'm going to do in that second half of the run, that's going to be about 8:15 is when I'm going to hit them. I want to know what that pace is, I call it “permission to slow down”. I love it in the summertime, I'll watch my threshold pace drop by 15, 20 seconds and I'm like, “Yes!” I call that permission to slow down. So I use that with all my athletes, I say, “Before you go out, give yourself permission to slow down. You know your own environment. Go in there and put that time in there.” If it's an hour run, and we're going to run at 3:00 in the afternoon, put in 3:30. It might heat up in that 30 minutes, and that's when going to be doing your intervals. So that’s a difference of five to six seconds right there. Give yourself permission to slow down. Sometimes it plays with their heads, but if you're training for that full marathon, and that cool, crisp weather comes around, you're going to have another gear.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Brady: And hydrating, on hot days.

Andrew: It's crucial, yeah.

Brady: I don't like running with a run vest. I have one, for when I know I'm going to be up at our summer place in Maine that we rent out.  Then I'll go, “Okay, I’ve got a 17-mile run. There's nowhere for me to get water unless I go out and back, out and back, out and back. Who wants to do that?” I've tried every running belt there is. I can't find a good running belt that doesn't bounce around, so I went to the running vest. Electrolytes, figuring out your electrolyte needs, and again practicing your fueling. Anything over 90 minutes, again we want to fuel it like it was race day. Whatever that fuel may be, whether it's gels or a sports drink, we want to practice that. That's what I'm conveying to my athletes.

Raya: The only thing on top of that, that I would add when my athletes are doing their long run, is to be very mindful of their cadence. Because as we do the long run, our form starts to break down a little bit. We get tired. The “Ironman shuffle” is called the Ironman shuffle for a reason, we're running tired. So we tend to lose form as the run goes on. So the studies suggest that anything over 175 steps per minute, when we're running, massively reduces that risk of injury – tweaking up the hamstrings, those Achilles going, ankle twinges, anything like that. So just keep an eye on your cadence, and make sure it's not slipping too far under that point. Especially if you're a spinner or a high-cadence cyclist, you'll do better running at a higher cadence too. That's the only thing I would add.

Andrew: So our longest sessions can definitely put more wear and tear on our body, and have us feeling a little bit more beat up afterwards. So Brady, especially with your background in strength training and functional movement, I'm curious to hear what you coach your athletes to do in terms of recovering from these longer workouts?

Brady: So everybody gets a foam rolling plan. So after a long run, this is what you want to do. It's real quick, it's simple, it should take no longer than ten minutes. It's how to foam roll every large muscle group in the body, and even some of the smaller ones, including shoulders too. Then spending a little bit of time stretching. And though this isn't much of a recovery, but strength training. Strength training is crucial in this sport. You might get away with it for a year or two of not strength training and not having an injury, but it's a matter of when, not if. In this sport we're always moving in a sagittal plane, so we can get out of balance. So we want to maintain balance. We want to think about those muscles that are supporting us with every stride, our glutes and our core. As Raya mentioned, form is important on those long runs, and what's going to be crucial to maintaining good form as you go past 75 minutes, 90 minutes, is your strength training. When I'm out for two hours, I still maintain pretty good form, and I can feel, “Oh thank God I've been strength training, I can feel my glute medius.” That's my stabilizer muscle, I can feel that. I can look down at my feet and go, “Okay, I'm still getting a good knee drive.” If I wasn't strength training, those things wouldn't be happening.

Andrew: Yeah, great reminder, that strength training is definitely almost a precursor to having good long sessions, having that strong body and being able to recover on the back side. I'll also add, it's been reiterated on the podcast many times, but to sleep. Sleep well after those sessions. Your body recovers when it's at rest, so make sure you get a good night's rest. And then fueling your body, we have full-on podcast episodes about fueling your recovery, getting in some protein, getting in carbohydrates. So absolutely reference some of our TriDot podcast episodes about those items as well when it comes to your recovery. But Brady, I love the reminder that having a strong body is step number one to being able to recover well from these longer sessions.

Raya, I'll have you speak to this one. We have a very special workout. It's been referenced a couple times in the show already today, but I wanted to ask about it specifically. There's a special long session in our calendar called a race rehearsal. If you're a TriDot athlete and you're racing Sprint or Olympic, you don't have these. Frankly, it’s just because your standard workouts are already the duration of your sprint and Olympic, so there's not a need for a special race rehearsal workout. But if you step up to the middle-distance, to a full-distance, to an ultra-distance race, you will be prescribed a race rehearsal, usually two weeks out and four weeks out from that big race. These are the longest sessions you're ever going to see on TriDot. They're supposed to mimic your race as closely as possible in a couple of different ways. Raya, what do we need to know about having a great race rehearsal session?

Raya: The name of the session kind of spells it out for everyone. But this is your opportunity to dress rehearse everything you're going to do on the day. So hopefully in the weeks leading up, like Brady said, any session over the 90 minutes, you're practicing taking on the volume of carbohydrates that you need for each of those hours. But now we're putting it all together. So we're going to practice having a really good meal the night before, something like you would have on race day. Wake up, have a simulation race-day breakfast, make sure your nutrition is planned. Maybe even be wearing the clothes that you're going to be racing in. If you can ride in an environment like you're going to be racing in – a lot of my athletes can't, because frankly we like racing outside of the UK, so we have to fly to get wherever we want –

Andrew: Fair. Yeah, that's fair.

Raya: Yeah, exactly. So for a lot of my guys, that's why I have them on the turbo doing the race course in front of them so they can see. I'm a big believer in visualization, understanding what you're going to see on race day and learning the course. I used to be a ski racer, so the course was only two minutes, so it took a lot less time to remember the course. But still, having those race rehearsals gives you the opportunity to figure out where your descents are. I should probably be drinking or eating every 10 to 15 minutes, but when are those 15 minutes going to take place? Am I a good enough bike handler to do it whilst I'm climbing, or descending, or on a flat? So we're strategically figuring everything out. So on race day, hopefully it all goes to plan. So it's not just about practicing cycling at a specific power for a certain amount of time, or a specific heart rate for a certain amount of time. It's putting it all together so there's less surprises on race day.

Andrew: I just wanted to differentiate that one from other long workouts we'll see in the program while we're talking about long workouts. But last question for today, I'll ask this and then we'll kick it over to Vanessa for our Coach Cooldown Tip of the week. But I just remember personally, especially when I was getting ready for my first full-distance race. For some athletes, this might happen when they're getting ready for a middle-distance race, a 70.3. Some of those long workouts can get intimidating. Athletes who have a marathon on the schedule, sometimes you look ahead a little bit and you start seeing, “Oh man, those runs go up to two hours, three hours, four hours.” Those bike sessions get up to three hours, four hours, five hours, six hours, seven hours. And for me, when I was getting ready for my first Ironman, I was intimidated by some of those sessions before I even got to the session. Because “Man, I've never been on a bike for 5½ hours. I have to be on a bike for 5½ hours? Can my butt even handle being on a bike for 5½  hours?” And you have these mind games going on that can just put you in this anxious space right before you even go into the workout. So just shut down our main set with this today, and I'll have Brady go first and then I'll have Raya shut us down. What do you tell your athletes in terms of going into these workouts with confidence, going into these workouts with the right headspace to be able to crush the workout, get the most out of it, and then move on in the training program? Brady, what do you think?

Brady: I mean, we've been on this steady kind of progressive pattern for a while now. We're at 2 hours and then we're going to 2½ on the bike, then 3 hours, then we're going to cut back a little bit. It's like building blocks. So I say to them, “You've been there before. This is just the next new distance.” It's a PR distance every time. If they're training for their first Ironman, every time they just achieved 2½ hours on the bike, “Congratulations, that's a PR for you!” Three hours comes up, it's another chance for another PR. Then when it comes to all of those intervals that they might see, they might have a stamina build like I had this week that was like 3x10 and 8x8, something like that, and it's just so daunting and overwhelming. And I say to them, “That first interval or two, you’ve got a long ride ahead of you. Look at your zones. If it wants you in Zone 4 for that first 10-minute interval, you have my permission to take 10 watts off.” Yeah, your target power might be 200 watts, but that lower end of that range might be 185. Why don't you take that first one at 190, see how you feel that day. Get a little warmup in, and oh, you'll surprise yourself. That felt good. Now bring it up a little bit. On that third one, if it's 3x10, hit that power right on. Then if you're feeling good halfway through that 5 minutes, keep on pushing that up a little bit more towards the top end of that range. Do the same thing for those tempos that follow it. It's going to give you confidence, and it doesn't seem so daunting. It allows you to break it up into smaller bite-sized chunks instead of looking at it as, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to be on this bike for four hours?” It's little bite-sized chunks, and you can break it down in 10 minutes, then 5-minute rest. 10 minutes, 5-minute rest. And you can even play like, “On that last interval maybe it's two, two, and two.” You do that five times, and it just makes the time fly by.

Andrew: Yeah, so something Brady that did help me, when I got to some of those long workouts, is involving some others in the workout. Living in Dallas-Fort Worth we have a pretty good number of TriDot athletes in Dallas-Fort Worth. So when some of the popular Texas races will come up, people will start messaging, “Hey, who's going out to Texas Motor Speedway to do their stamina ride this weekend?” And three or four people will go out there. They're doing the same race, they'll meet up together. You're not doing the ride together, because you all have different paces and different intervals and whatever. But just knowing there's other people out there, is certainly helpful. Coach Raya, what do you tell your athletes to do to really crush these long workouts and ease their anxiety that they might have going into them?

Raya: So here's the first thing. If you are new to the sport, or if you're getting back into it after a long break, do not look at how long those bikes are going to get, or how long those runs are going to get. Take everything in small, mentally achievable bite-sized chunks. One week at a time. Because what you're currently capable of doing, next week will be totally manageable. And if you take it week-by-week, you are not going to feel daunted about the 5, 6, maybe even 7-hour bike that you have further down the road. And if you do that, everything is going to feel so much less intimidating, taking it one step at a time. The other thing that I would say is that confidence comes from preparation. So the more you focus on doing things bit-by-bit, and just trust the process, you'll really enjoy your training so much more.

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

Vanessa Ronksley: It's cool though on time y'all! I'm Vanessa, your Average Triathlete with Elite-Level Enthusiasm! Today, our Coach Cooldown Tip is coming from Jared Kaminski. He's joining me from Cameron, North Carolina, where he teaches Advanced Placement environmental science at a high school. He is also a USA swim coach, and coaches the TAC Titans in Cary, North Carolina. Jared started training and racing triathlon in 2019, and has since become a multiple Ironman finisher. He is an All World athlete for 2023, and a 2023 USAT Age Group National Qualifier. He began coaching with TriDot over a year ago, and specializes in athletes who are beginner and intermediate, as well as anyone who wants to improve on their swim. Something that most people don't know about Jared is that he is an anomaly, and can actually touch his tongue to his nose. I've never actually met anyone who can do this. I think it's only like 10% of the population, so I'm wondering what it is like the first time you realized you could do this.

Jared Kaminski: Hi Vanessa! I think I was like six or seven years old, and we were just kind of messing around. I have an older sister, so we were just trying to be goofy and kind of weird each other out, and I just kind of discovered that I could do it. It's kind of like, “Oh, I can do that!” And then everybody else in the room tries to do it, and no one else in the room can do it, so it kind of turns into this joke, and nobody understands why you can but they can't. I have actually never met anybody else who can do it, so that's kind of interesting too.

Vanessa: That is very awesome, I love it. So what is your tip that you would like to share with everyone today, Jared?

Jared: So my tip goes along with swimming, and it's understanding what body line and proper body position is in swimming. It's understanding that as you’re swimming, whether it's open water or in a pool, everything should line up behind your head. Your chest, your stomach, your hips, your feet should almost all be hidden behind your head. So if we take a snapshot of you swimming down the pool, we should see your head, we should see one arm out in front, one arm behind you, and everything else is kind of tucked up and hidden behind you. Maintaining that proper body line reduces a bunch of drag forces, so that you're not having a bunch of water press on you, and you can swim faster down the pool. It alleviates a lot of pressure as you’re swimming, especially on the shoulder joints, and even on the neck if your head's a little up, and it helps you swim straight. If you've got a nice tight core body line, you don't look like the little wiggle worm snake down the pool. It helps you swim straight in a pool, but it also really helps you swim straight in open water, so you can trust where you're going and you don't have to sight as much, and you know that you're swimming in a straight line as you move down the pool.

Vanessa: Yeah, okay. So what's the first thing that you generally look at when you're trying to fix someone who has a wonky body line?

Jared: The first thing that we usually look at is we're going to look at their hips, and make sure that their hips are on the surface. If the hips are not on the surface – so we should see like a tiny little thin film of water across the suit on your backside as you're sitting in the water, just in a nice prone position with your hands at your side. If the hips are low, we then go and check your head. Your eyes should be looking just on a slight angle out in front of you and relaxed. So what a lot of people need to realize is that your head and your hips act like a teeter totter. So as your eyes go up, your hips go down. As you tuck your chin, your hips go up. We just want them in line with each other. So that's the first thing that we go and check. If all of that looks good, then we call it “swimming through your core”, where we want to engage our core muscle, bring that belly button into our spine, and think “straight lines”. Straight-line swimming is fast swimming. So those are your two key components. There's a lot of drills you can do with a snorkel, and some kicking drills just to help feel that body position on the surface, and then as you get more comfortable, and that core strength and that kick strength starts to pick up, as you're swimming you'll be able to maintain that line for longer and longer.

Vanessa: Mm-hmm. I think one thing that I had a swim coach once tell me was to try to imagine that you have this rod going from the top of your head all the way down through your spine, and you want to keep that rod straight. And they would always say, “swim like you're a log in the water,” going straight and keeping everything really tight, and it will help to keep you going on a straight course.

Jared: Yeah, absolutely. That pole through the center of your head is something that we still use today. That’s your axis of rotation that you're rotating around. So the straighter that is, the longer that axis is, the faster we can swim through the water. And I think the biggest takeaway in making sure that we have a good body line and being very efficient in the water, is understanding that even though swimming is the shortest part of any triathlon we do, it's the only discipline that is going to affect the entire race. So the more efficient we are, and the more comfortable we are in the water, the better the rest of the race is going to be for us.

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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