# Ranking The Best Ironman World Champions

An episode of [The Triathlon Hour](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1595443343), 25 Jan 2026, 1 h 24 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2640942/episodes/19697996-ranking-the-best-ironman-world-champions.mp3

Join Jack, Vicky, Appo & Greg as they discuss a recent article written by legendary coach Joel Filio about being too fit, too soon in the season. Then Jack ranks the best Ironman World Champions before the best part of every show - responding to your Spotify comments!

## Transcript

[0:27] SPEAKER_01: Yes, pretenders, welcome back.
[0:29] SPEAKER_01: It's great to have you on board, and I can't wait to kickstart the week with an hour, or Vicky is here, spoiler all of it, so possibly three hours of talking about triathlon and taking the piss out of each other.
[0:40] SPEAKER_01: We're on a bit of a hot street lately with having the whole crew on board.
[0:43] SPEAKER_01: And this week, once again, everyone is here.
[0:46] SPEAKER_01: So I just talked about her.
[0:47] SPEAKER_01: This week's been a big one for Vicky.
[0:49] SPEAKER_01: She's made her return to running on Strava and annoyingly has increased her 40-minute indoor trainer average watts by about 50 watts this week, although they did start at 110 watts.
[0:59] SPEAKER_01: So I don't know how much that's actually saying.
[1:01] SPEAKER_01: So she's already better than Greg, though.
[1:03] SPEAKER_01: That's the big story of the week.
[1:04] SPEAKER_01: Vicky, welcome.
[1:05] SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Jack.
[1:06] SPEAKER_00: Pleasure to be here as always.
[1:07] SPEAKER_00: You are right though.
[1:08] SPEAKER_00: Strava has uh updated my FTP to a whole hundred and sixty-six watts.
[1:14] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, either I'm doing uh some good work there or Strava AI is absolutely crap.
[1:21] SPEAKER_01: Both how's the running bane going, Vicky?
[1:23] SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, this week marked my return to running.
[1:27] SPEAKER_00: So I'm starting really slowly, as people would have seen, if they do look at my Strava.
[1:31] SPEAKER_00: I've done three runs, just a little bit of run-walk intro back into it.
[1:36] SPEAKER_00: But uh annoyingly, I think I'm actually on the verge of an injury already.
[1:40] SPEAKER_00: I don't think my body was quite as prepped as I'd hoped.
[1:43] SPEAKER_00: I've got a bit of um tid post pain, so I might have to take it easy for a few days and then build back in again, which is devastating and quite embarrassing, to be honest.
[1:52] SPEAKER_01: It's never a good thing when you're doing like one minute run, one minute walk, or like two-minute run, one minute walk, and you get injured from that.
[1:58] SPEAKER_01: You're like, this is the stuff that's supposed to keep me not injured.
[2:01] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
[2:02] SPEAKER_00: Like, tell me about it.
[2:02] SPEAKER_00: I was not in a good mood yesterday evening when I finished that run and thought, I've I've screwed it up already.
[2:07] SPEAKER_00: This is this is so depressing.
[2:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[2:10] SPEAKER_01: Annoyingly relatable though.
[2:11] SPEAKER_01: So it's good when you can be relatable to the normal person, I think, Vicky.
[2:14] SPEAKER_01: And uh he's here as always, the 207th ranked swimmer in Trithon, the 498th ranked cyclist, and the 601st ranked runner.
[2:26] SPEAKER_01: He's Mr.
[2:26] SPEAKER_01: Reliable on this podcast.
[2:28] SPEAKER_01: We've had about 30 minutes of audio issues before this, and yeah, it's still not fixed.
[2:33] SPEAKER_01: But Greg was sitting there as always, perfectly prepared.
[2:36] SPEAKER_01: So he might not be that good at swim bike run, but he's extremely good at tri-phon podcast technology.
[2:42] SPEAKER_01: Greg, welcome.
[2:43] SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Jack.
[2:44] SPEAKER_02: It's uh super funny you brought up the rankings because I was just looking at them beforehand because there's a Spotify comment we'll get to addressing that I was a second base, second best age group swimmer, and I thought, no, I'm the 207th best pro swimmer.
[2:58] SPEAKER_02: So I'm happy you brought that up.
[3:00] SPEAKER_02: Hoping to crack that top 200 this year, and uh yeah, and maybe maybe you know 480th in the world trying to get uh in that top 450.
[3:08] SPEAKER_02: I think that's like kind of where you made it.
[3:10] SPEAKER_02: So that's my goals for the year.
[3:12] SPEAKER_01: And Greg, I just talked then about how you you're kind of the rock of this podcast.
[3:16] SPEAKER_01: You keep the ship afloat.
[3:18] SPEAKER_01: And speaking about things that float, you had a bit of a story during the week?
[3:23] SPEAKER_02: It's not as good of a story as you hoped.
[3:26] SPEAKER_02: Uh I did not see anything floating in the pool.
[3:29] SPEAKER_02: However, I showed up yesterday and the pool was closed because they had an accident uh earlier in the day.
[3:35] SPEAKER_02: Didn't send out an email, but I just drove myself there, and uh yeah, um a bit of an unfortunate situation.
[3:42] SPEAKER_02: Not quite like the same situation when my friends threw a candy bar in the pool and got me uh out of swim coaching for a day because the lifeguard thought it was poop.
[3:50] SPEAKER_02: That's story personal attacks.
[3:53] SPEAKER_01: But that is real.
[3:54] SPEAKER_01: It's never good though, is it, when you like because it's already hard enough to get yourself up and drive yourself to the pool, get yourself ready, and then it's not open because of something like that.
[4:05] SPEAKER_01: Like there's a poo in the pool.
[4:06] SPEAKER_01: Like that is the worst case scenario.
[4:08] SPEAKER_02: It's pretty deflating, and I debated skipping, but I actually drove 20 extra minutes to the other pool and swam like shit.
[4:14] SPEAKER_02: So it was just a really good cherry on top of a great day.
[4:19] SPEAKER_01: And I just said literally one minute ago that we've got the whole crew here together, and as I said that, Apo's webcam cut out, he's disappeared, he hasn't messaged the group.
[4:30] SPEAKER_01: We don't know what's happened to him, we don't know if there was an explosion in his house and he's no longer with us.
[4:34] SPEAKER_01: If he is, that would be not that big a deal.
[4:37] SPEAKER_01: We just replace him with someone else pretty quickly and move on.
[4:39] SPEAKER_01: But hopefully at some stage during the recording, Apo jumps back on and joins the podcast.
[4:44] SPEAKER_01: But if not, you actually might just have me, Greg, and Vicky.
[4:48] SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna start this week's podcast with uh discussing an article that we read during the week released by super coach Joel Filio.
[4:57] SPEAKER_01: So, Joel Filio, for those who don't know, he's probably the most celebrated short course uh trython coach over the last decade or two.
[5:06] SPEAKER_01: Um he's had a heap of champions under his stable.
[5:09] SPEAKER_01: So he is a he is a very credentialed guy.
[5:11] SPEAKER_01: And what we thought we would do is read the article that he released during the week.
[5:17] SPEAKER_01: And so you guys probably haven't, I'd say, for the most part, um, seen it or read it.
[5:21] SPEAKER_01: You'll hear it here, and then we thought we might discuss it and and discuss whether we agree or disagree with it, what we do or don't disagree, and and and just I think I think it's a really interesting topic starter.
[5:33] SPEAKER_01: So, Vicky, did you want to start us off?
[5:35] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
[5:36] SPEAKER_00: So, by January in the Northern Hemisphere, athletes are into the first or second phase of their build-ups, depending on when they took their off seasons and when they are planning to first compete.
[5:46] SPEAKER_00: Previously, Joel discussed the most common errors seen in the build-up to championship performances, with periodization being one of the areas with significant room for error and where many athletes go astray.
[5:57] SPEAKER_00: When we see athletes running PBs in January or early season, for example, we can ask the question if an athlete's form is already at the best level historically so early in the season, where can they go from there?
[6:09] SPEAKER_00: It's possible to achieve PB performance without pushing too hard or incorporating too much high intensity early in the training for athletes in certain contexts.
[6:18] SPEAKER_00: There may be situations where these events and performances can be part of a wise plan.
[6:23] SPEAKER_00: However, often these performances come from an increase in high intensity specific training early in the season, which can be a compromise for the season target competitions when the best performances and form will be required.
[6:35] SPEAKER_00: These are the reasons why in general I haven't planned or encouraged athletes to participate in running races early in the season.
[6:41] SPEAKER_00: There was often speculation about what athletes like Mario Mola or Yellow Geans could run in standalone races during the peak of their careers.
[6:49] SPEAKER_00: But we weren't interested in finding out what they could do, as running events didn't form part of their goals at the time.
[6:54] SPEAKER_00: But also for three other important reasons.
[6:57] SPEAKER_01: And Joel goes on to discuss these three reasons.
[7:00] SPEAKER_01: The first one is one, opportunity cost.
[7:03] SPEAKER_01: What are you not doing if you are incorporating running competitions in your build-up?
[7:08] SPEAKER_01: You are either running these events under fatigue, and then it's less interesting and not representative of what the true capabilities may be.
[7:16] SPEAKER_01: And if you do rest enough to see what's possible, then you are not building the chronic load necessary for later performances for the goals that really matter.
[7:25] SPEAKER_01: The second point is the principle of the right doses of intensity at the right times.
[7:31] SPEAKER_01: We know that the total chronic volume accumulated over the long term is a key driver of achieving one's potential in sport.
[7:38] SPEAKER_01: And intensity management is the main way that we can successfully manage the accumulation of that long-term work.
[7:45] SPEAKER_01: Most athletes overestimate the amount of intensity they need to elicit the changes to reach their peak performances and underestimate the amount of total chronic load it takes to create long-term changes.
[7:57] SPEAKER_01: By getting ahead of ourselves and starting intensity too early in the season, enough to create PB running performances, we are creating long-term compromises in favor of the short term.
[8:08] SPEAKER_01: It's tempting to want to see those kind of short-term performances and can build confidence.
[8:13] SPEAKER_01: However, it can affect the long-term planning and progression of the season.
[8:17] SPEAKER_01: And the last of these three points, the principle of how many times each year you can put in a full gas effort.
[8:24] SPEAKER_01: Competitions hit different to training.
[8:26] SPEAKER_01: The stress is higher, the recovery takes longer, and there is less control over the effort compared to training.
[8:32] SPEAKER_01: Instead, I've found success in saving these kind of efforts for race days that truly matter.
[8:37] SPEAKER_01: It takes discipline to keep focused on the goals and targets.
[8:40] SPEAKER_01: I've noticed in the last years that many athletes want to compete more to have a greater variety of competitions.
[8:47] SPEAKER_01: That approach can be fine as long as expectations are adjusted to the peak performances that may be possible with such an approach, where the build-ups may not be enough to create the kind of improvements athletes want to see in themselves.
[8:59] SPEAKER_01: One trend I have observed is the desire and prioritization of short-term goals without understanding or internalizing the consequences for long-term progression towards one's ultimate potential.
[9:11] SPEAKER_01: It takes patience and a long-term view to create a plan and program for athletes to achieve their best performances, both within the season at the right times and over multiple years.
[9:20] SPEAKER_01: Developing this perspective and applying it to your programming is a performance advantage.
[9:25] SPEAKER_02: And Joel makes two final points.
[9:29] SPEAKER_02: Number one, although one can make the case that athletes in the southern hemisphere, whose main goals fall in the northern hemisphere summer, still ought to be following the same periodization model of those in the north.
[9:41] SPEAKER_02: And another concept to avoid is doing too much to prepare for the first competition of the season versus the overall progression through the calendar and goals across the season.
[9:51] SPEAKER_02: And that's uh the end of the article.
[9:53] SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the the first thing to say is I I actually think it's really different if we're talking about age group athletes and professionals here.
[10:00] SPEAKER_00: Like for professionals, I think what Joel is saying is spot on.
[10:05] SPEAKER_00: With age group athletes, I don't think it's quite so relevant because with pros, they tend to race more, they need to elevate their levels at the right time, um, on the right days to earn a living.
[10:15] SPEAKER_00: Whereas amateurs can they they can almost afford to like play with it a little bit more to do races that interest them or excite them, chase PBs in different areas like a 5 or a 10k.
[10:25] SPEAKER_00: But yeah, for professionals, I really agree with so much of what he said there.
[10:30] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, anecdotally as well, I was someone, again, like Mario and Yela, who he cites in that article, who probably never found out what I could do in a standalone 5 or 10k because it never fit for us in the season.
[10:45] SPEAKER_00: It would have meant shoehorning one in at a time that wasn't appropriate when I probably wasn't as fit as I could be, or I would have had to do it mid-season when again it wasn't really appropriate to be doing that because of what it would have taken away from the training block that I was in.
[10:59] SPEAKER_00: So my bigger goals, which were always triathlon goals, always came into play.
[11:04] SPEAKER_00: And you know, I've watched so many other athletes chase these, especially running times in these run races that tend to occur kind of somewhere between January and March, and hit these great PBs over 5, 10k.
[11:18] SPEAKER_00: Often they are then injured or fading by mid-season.
[11:22] SPEAKER_00: It's rare that they manage to maintain that throughout the year.
[11:25] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a really good point, Vicky, about the difference between A-Troopers and pros.
[11:29] SPEAKER_02: And you know, even short course versus long, I mean, what level you're at, there's a lot of nuances here, but I know everyone's I kind of don't like this article.
[11:37] SPEAKER_02: I feel like we're in this era of triathlon about like, oh, intensity control.
[11:41] SPEAKER_02: It's like the reality is the best people in the world and the people who are winning races and stuff, they're working hard all year.
[11:47] SPEAKER_02: Everyone's always talking like it's a long season, it's only January.
[11:51] SPEAKER_02: But like the best athletes are always good.
[11:54] SPEAKER_02: And like they don't have these massive peaks and get way out of shape.
[11:57] SPEAKER_02: And then yeah, they're just better, but I don't think age troopers should really worry about getting like too fit too early.
[12:03] SPEAKER_02: Just have a good balance of volume and intensity at all times and realize you're nowhere near the peak of like your genetic potential.
[12:10] SPEAKER_02: So you don't need some massive off season to get really unfit and then build your peak and all this.
[12:15] SPEAKER_02: I think you just stay relatively fit kind of all year.
[12:18] SPEAKER_02: And I I definitely would push back on athletes not doing run racing, you know, in January.
[12:24] SPEAKER_02: Um and Joel he coaches short course athletes who have so much race experience, and like the majority of people, and even a lot of pros don't have that, and especially if you're not on the short course circuit.
[12:37] SPEAKER_02: So I think racing is always good to have a bit of fun, like see where you're at, and it can be worked into training.
[12:42] SPEAKER_02: You know, people need to practice pacing, like all these little things that uh race experience does, even even pros.
[12:50] SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I think people could benefit from those low-key winter races, and you know, think about the best cyclists in the world.
[12:56] SPEAKER_02: They're doing cyclocross, indoor track for the track athletes, cross-country.
[13:00] SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's track athletes setting world records in January, and they go and just have a fine summer outdoors, too, right?
[13:06] SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, there's nuances here, but I think fun races in the winter can actually be beneficial for honestly most of the people.
[13:14] SPEAKER_01: I think I am more in agreement with you than I am with Joel, Greg.
[13:19] SPEAKER_01: I think Joel might be looking at this from a quite tunneled perspective where he's had at this point a lifetime of coaching people like Vicky Holland.
[13:29] SPEAKER_01: You know, you he's talking about your Martin Van Reels and your Yalagens and your Mario Mollers, Jake Burtwissels, Vincent Louise.
[13:37] SPEAKER_01: Like he's had this period that's gone for so long where he I think he's almost forgotten that most athletes are shit compared to those kind of athletes, you know.
[13:46] SPEAKER_01: Like that is the that is the top 0.1% or something in endurance sport.
[13:52] SPEAKER_01: And to your point, Greg, they're all short course athletes.
[13:56] SPEAKER_01: And with a short course season, you race so much.
[13:59] SPEAKER_01: Like you almost have to delay getting fit because your season's so long and so constant.
[14:04] SPEAKER_01: Like you race every month, you have a big race or two at the end of the year, of course you're gonna burn out.
[14:10] SPEAKER_01: But that isn't the reality for almost all long course triathletes, age group or professional.
[14:15] SPEAKER_01: Most professional long course triathletes maybe race five to six times a year, and most age group long course triathletes maybe race two to three times a year.
[14:25] SPEAKER_01: So you actually can afford to have a bigger preseason where you you get a lot of um good quality training in, high intensity training in, do things like run racing because your potential for burnout and fatigue is so much lower than the short course athletes that Joel coaches.
[14:42] SPEAKER_01: So I think for take someone like you, Greg, versus someone like Vicky.
[14:47] SPEAKER_01: I reckon it's the perfect example of who this method does and doesn't work for.
[14:52] SPEAKER_01: What race are you going to peak for at the end of the year, Greg?
[14:54] SPEAKER_01: Like Iron Man 70.3 LaQuinter?
[14:57] SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, you're giving up all of this opportunity to get fitter so that you can become the athlete who can do this stuff, like at the hope of maybe coming eighth at La Quinter at the end of the year.
[15:08] SPEAKER_01: Whereas Vicky might have an Olympic gold medal she's trying to win at the end of the year, and they therefore definitely needs to approach it this way.
[15:15] SPEAKER_01: So I think this advice is the best advice possible for someone like Vicky, but I think it's the worst advice possible for an age group triathlete or a developing pro triathlete.
[15:28] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and like you said, I'm I would be aiming to get eighth place in the 30 to 34 age group at La Quinta.
[15:33] SPEAKER_02: So, you know, we're talking about age group versus professional, me and Vicky, perfect reference.
[15:39] SPEAKER_04: Guys, I'm back.
[15:40] SPEAKER_04: Um, a little bit of internet dramas, but um, you know, you've got me back for a little bit anyway.
[15:44] SPEAKER_01: Um hang on, hang on, Apo.
[15:46] SPEAKER_01: Before we before we talk about Joel's article, that's Sam Appleton you just heard.
[15:50] SPEAKER_01: And guys, during the week, I found out something shocking about Apo.
[15:54] SPEAKER_01: Like, we knew Apo was well off, right?
[15:56] SPEAKER_01: 20 time, 70.3 champ.
[15:59] SPEAKER_01: You know, we we've heard about what Apo's done.
[16:01] SPEAKER_01: We know what Apo's done.
[16:02] SPEAKER_01: He's an absolute superstar.
[16:03] SPEAKER_01: And I thought he might have a bit of cash in the bank, but I didn't realise the levels of cash in the bank.
[16:08] SPEAKER_01: I found out during the week that Apo lives in a gated community with a median house price of 2.2 million US dollars.
[16:20] SPEAKER_04: That's a lie.
[16:21] SPEAKER_04: It's not a gated community.
[16:22] SPEAKER_04: It's just, I did say that because I I was just messaging Jack.
[16:27] SPEAKER_04: Um and it was the best way I could describe it, you know.
[16:30] SPEAKER_04: I don't live in a gated community, I'm not rich.
[16:32] SPEAKER_04: Um I'm only a um, you know, North American specialist, not a uh T100 or Pro Series specialist.
[16:38] SPEAKER_04: So unfortunately, the um the C-grade North American 70.3s only pay a couple of grand each win.
[16:45] SPEAKER_04: So um but anyway, I am back and I read this article and I I kind of like it's not binary, right?
[16:53] SPEAKER_04: It's not right or wrong.
[16:55] SPEAKER_04: I think there's a lot of nuance to it.
[16:56] SPEAKER_04: But one thing that stood out to me is I think the sentiment is I feel like it's a little bit outdated.
[17:03] SPEAKER_04: Like 10, 15 years ago, Trithlon was about that, right?
[17:07] SPEAKER_04: Like you took um, especially people in the Northern Hemisphere, took January, February, March, really easy base training because the season didn't start until Oceanside, and even Oceanside was a rust buster.
[17:18] SPEAKER_04: But now it's like the seasons for Trithlon are nine, ten months long.
[17:23] SPEAKER_04: I don't think you can afford to have that three or four month base training period where you're just doing easy miles and not doing any intensity.
[17:31] SPEAKER_04: I think um I don't know.
[17:34] SPEAKER_04: I like it, yes, what he's saying does protect long-term progression over like short-term results, right?
[17:40] SPEAKER_04: But uh I think the sport's just evolved, and I Greg, you touched on it.
[17:44] SPEAKER_04: Like, do you think Christian Blumenfeld is taking it easy in January?
[17:48] SPEAKER_04: No, that guy is fucking feeding himself every single chance that he can get to get better.
[17:54] SPEAKER_04: And I think Yeah, I just think that is a little bit more the sentiment these days.
[17:59] SPEAKER_04: Like people are just looking for any chance, and um, you know, they might have December, January, February without racing, so that means they can just focus on training, right?
[18:10] SPEAKER_04: So that's a three-month period where they have uninterrupted training where they can stack days.
[18:15] SPEAKER_04: And I think, yeah, I I just think that people these days are looking for every possible chance to improve.
[18:23] SPEAKER_04: And yes, I'm sure people aren't going like Christian's not setting PBs in January, but I reckon he's still working bloody hard.
[18:30] SPEAKER_01: The nuance in this article is crazy, really.
[18:33] SPEAKER_01: It's it's definitely not a blanket rule for everyone.
[18:35] SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think it probably applies to less people than it does uh more people.
[18:39] SPEAKER_01: And and I I just think that when it comes to fitness and progression in the sport and in progression as an endurance athlete, I don't think there's ever a time where you should purposely be trying to not improve.
[18:54] SPEAKER_01: Like maybe you take two to three weeks off at the end of the of the year over Christmas and New Year's and and relax a little bit, but our body doesn't really understand the concept of a season.
[19:05] SPEAKER_01: It really doesn't.
[19:06] SPEAKER_01: It it understands chronic training load, it understands stimulus, um, it it does it doesn't just it doesn't just magically peak at the right time of the year every year.
[19:16] SPEAKER_01: You know, if you we talk about Christian Blumenfeld, he's such a beast because he's been training for 10, 15, 20 years and hasn't really taken time off.
[19:24] SPEAKER_01: And like Apo said, well, he posted a a 4x4 kilometre um interval running session the other the other week on Strava where he ran like 305 per K.
[19:33] SPEAKER_01: So he's clearly not taking this advice of Joel, is he?
[19:36] SPEAKER_01: He's just trying to get better all the time, and then over time that leads to him becoming the best athlete he can possibly be.
[19:42] SPEAKER_04: That was on Christmas too.
[19:43] SPEAKER_04: Christmas Day, wasn't it?
[19:44] SPEAKER_04: That four by four K.
[19:46] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and Jakob Ingebrita did a double on Christmas.
[19:49] SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, I think something that's under underrated, and something that Joel says in the article about like saving that like deep like stress of like going all out in a race.
[20:01] SPEAKER_02: I think only the tippy top professionals even know how to do that.
[20:05] SPEAKER_02: You know, you do like a random age trooper, like they need practice going to the well.
[20:09] SPEAKER_02: Like they might not be able to be able to do it in an Iron Man because you can't like sometimes express that hard effort.
[20:14] SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're really not conditioned to like race that type of distance.
[20:17] SPEAKER_02: So I think going out there and finding what you're made of and like just suffering in a race is actually could benefit you to come become the end of the season because there's just nothing quite like racing.
[20:28] SPEAKER_02: You can get a lot out of yourself, and I think the I think kind of the benefits outweigh the risks, honestly.
[20:34] SPEAKER_02: I think for for most people.
[20:35] SPEAKER_02: I think more racing is good for for pretty much everyone.
[20:39] SPEAKER_04: And some athletes use races as motivation, right?
[20:42] SPEAKER_04: Like some athletes don't like staring down the barrel of 16 weeks of training with no interruptions, right?
[20:48] SPEAKER_04: Like I'm the kind of athlete that if I was looking at 16 weeks of uninterrupted training, that would I would fill me with dread.
[20:55] SPEAKER_04: Like I like the race.
[20:56] SPEAKER_04: I like breaking But you know what I mean, like it it it it breaks it up a little bit, and then you can use that as motivation and athletes race for enjoyment, and you also get pretty big fitness gains from racing as well.
[21:09] SPEAKER_04: Like and like you said, Greg, like you're never going as deep in training as you are in a race.
[21:13] SPEAKER_04: So you can use races as fitness boosts, right?
[21:18] SPEAKER_04: Like obviously you're not going to use your A race as a fitness boost because that's where you want to be the fittest, but you can use lower tier races, B races in your season as fitness boosts and launching pads into further fitness.
[21:29] SPEAKER_02: Vicky's just a level above all of us on this podcast, so that's why she is like it just doesn't apply to her.
[21:35] SPEAKER_02: She's uh she's got this different lens of like actual true high performance.
[21:39] SPEAKER_00: It's it's funny actually, uh listen listening to Afo there talk about the stone down the barrel of 16 weeks, whereas I would be like, brilliant, I've got a really big training block here, I can make some massive improvements, and I'm gonna I'm gonna turn up to a race and be so good after I've done this rock of training.
[21:56] SPEAKER_00: And I mean, maybe not 16 weeks, but you know, like.
[22:00] SPEAKER_00: I I hated it when I would have loads of races like close together.
[22:04] SPEAKER_00: Like I knew that for me, yes, I get that fitness boost from racing once, but if I have to race, I don't know, say three times in four or five weeks, that massively affects how good I'll be by the third race because I don't have the time to keep that load high in training.
[22:19] SPEAKER_00: Like I have to almost go back and put some aerobic volume in, otherwise, I really struggle.
[22:24] SPEAKER_00: So I quite like having my races spaced out and have a really nice, defined, big training block in between there.
[22:30] SPEAKER_00: That was kind of you know how I got the best out of myself.
[22:33] SPEAKER_00: And I guess just to touch on I think the mental aspect that you mentioned there, Greg, about how um some people really find that, you know, um motivating going to races.
[22:44] SPEAKER_00: There's nuance there and there's balance there.
[22:46] SPEAKER_00: Like going to races affects people mentally in different ways, right?
[22:49] SPEAKER_00: So some people are inspired, invigorated, motivated.
[22:53] SPEAKER_00: They love going to racing.
[22:54] SPEAKER_00: It helps them practice going to the well, as you said.
[22:57] SPEAKER_00: For other people, it's a peak of nervous energy, it drains them, it makes them stressed in the days and weeks leading up to it.
[23:06] SPEAKER_00: And you kind of have to work out what kind of person you are, and that that's whether you're a professional or whether you're an amateur.
[23:11] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'm absolutely for, especially amateur people, putting all these races in in off season because it just gives you something to focus on.
[23:19] SPEAKER_00: It's much more exciting to go through a crappy winter knowing that you've got a cross country, a 10K, a duathlon, whatever it is, planned in.
[23:28] SPEAKER_00: But it's a lot different, I think, when you're when you're racing for the cash.
[23:31] SPEAKER_00: But hey, that's just my lens, isn't it?
[23:33] SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, Vicky, I think Apo, like it's in it's insane.
[23:37] SPEAKER_01: He's a 20 times 70.3 champion, he's come fourth at the 70.3 worlds.
[23:41] SPEAKER_01: I think he might be in the wrong sport if he looks at a 16-week block of training and it fills him with dread.
[23:46] SPEAKER_01: Well, that's literally been his life for the last 20 years.
[23:51] SPEAKER_01: And he's just been living in fear and dread.
[23:55] SPEAKER_04: Every day I wake up with a gut-wrenching feeling.
[23:58] SPEAKER_04: No, I just meant like I like racing, right?
[24:00] SPEAKER_04: I'm a racer.
[24:01] SPEAKER_04: I prefer racing than I do training.
[24:03] SPEAKER_04: I don't like yeah, I don't particularly like extended training um blocks where I'm going hard all the time.
[24:13] SPEAKER_04: Like, I actually don't really like training hard for weeks and weeks and months on end.
[24:19] SPEAKER_04: I like breaking it up and racing and using that training to race.
[24:23] SPEAKER_04: Like, that's what I love to do.
[24:24] SPEAKER_04: So yeah.
[24:25] SPEAKER_04: I don't know if I yeah, I feel like I'm digging myself further and further down the uh down the hole, but uh yeah.
[24:30] SPEAKER_04: I like I'm a racer.
[24:32] SPEAKER_01: It would be crazy how good you would be if you had Christian or Vicky's mindset to training Apo.
[24:38] SPEAKER_01: Because for you to get that out of your career and not love it to the degree that those two psychopaths do, you could have been anything, mate.
[24:46] SPEAKER_01: And you still could be.
[24:47] SPEAKER_01: You're still young in your career.
[24:48] SPEAKER_01: There's no quit or retirement in you just yet.
[24:51] SPEAKER_01: Um the the only other the only other point I'd make is that I kind of just don't love the mindset for a lot of athletes of letting yourself kind of not train hard, letting yourself just kind of meander through training.
[25:05] SPEAKER_01: I love people who want to train hard.
[25:08] SPEAKER_01: I think athletes that want to train hard, want to be the best they can always, tend to be the best athletes.
[25:14] SPEAKER_01: Like, let me tell you, Jan Fredino trained hard his whole career.
[25:17] SPEAKER_01: He had a rule during some off seasons where he rode three hours a day minimum.
[25:21] SPEAKER_01: You know, that adds up to 20, 21 hours a week.
[25:23] SPEAKER_01: You know, Christian Blumenfeld, you you'd like you can't tell me Daniella Reef wasn't smashing herself during her off season.
[25:30] SPEAKER_01: Like, come on, Daniella Reef was killing herself throughout January and February.
[25:34] SPEAKER_01: So I don't know, I just I just from a mindset perspective, I love athletes who want to train hard.
[25:40] SPEAKER_01: And and I think, I don't know, for me, I reckon sometimes this approach can give athletes a bit of an easy way out and maybe lead to them not getting the most out of themselves if they're not someone like Vicky or Yala or Martin or Mario who are always gonna be that kind of athlete.
[25:55] SPEAKER_01: But I just don't know if it works for for lower level athletes, you know?
[25:59] SPEAKER_00: Alright, so with that, I think I'm gonna move us on to our second topic of the day.
[26:05] SPEAKER_00: We've seen a lot of posts on Instagram recently with people posting carousels of photos from 2016 as flashbacks on what life was like back then.
[26:14] SPEAKER_00: And actually, as a bit of a spoiler, I was going to do one of those myself.
[26:18] SPEAKER_00: I'm terrible at using Instagram, but given 2016 was a pretty massive year for me, um, with both an Olympic medal and turning 30.
[26:27] SPEAKER_00: So for those math geniuses of you, you'll know that this was also a big year for me.
[26:31] SPEAKER_00: Um, but I am, as I said, terrible at social media, so I've not done it.
[26:35] SPEAKER_00: But it did get us thinking about the last decade in triathlon.
[26:39] SPEAKER_00: So what we've decided to do is set our fearless leader Jack a task of putting together a list ranking the decade of Iron Man World Championship wins from worst to best.
[26:50] SPEAKER_00: Now, this list isn't about which athlete had the best career, it's each performance standing on its own, judged by how good a performance it was and nothing else.
[26:58] SPEAKER_00: You can definitely take into account storylines and pressure to perform and how that performance stacks up historically.
[27:05] SPEAKER_00: But for example, just because Daniela Reefe had a better career than Chelsea Sidaro and is a celebrated five-time champion, it doesn't mean by default any of any of or all of her wins will be higher on the list than Chelsea's.
[27:20] SPEAKER_00: But that specific discussion will have to wait until next week because today we're going to start with the men.
[27:25] SPEAKER_00: And even though it's been 10 years, there's actually only been nine editions of the race in that time due to COVID.
[27:31] SPEAKER_00: So, Jack, the floor is yours.
[27:34] SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I just want to start by saying, Vicki, this is my opinion.
[27:38] SPEAKER_01: I've been watching the Iron Man World Championships since 2004.
[27:42] SPEAKER_01: I've watched every single one of these races live.
[27:44] SPEAKER_01: And I realized during during making this list, I've actually watched all of these races start to finish more than once.
[27:51] SPEAKER_01: Like there's not one of them that I just watched them live and haven't watched it since.
[27:54] SPEAKER_01: I've I've watched them all at least a second time on the trainer or um, you know, I actually downloaded a few of these on my long haul flights last year, which is a fun fact, and watched them on the airplane.
[28:05] SPEAKER_01: So I I making this list, I was like, wow, I actually like I know all these performances really well.
[28:10] SPEAKER_01: So this is this is kind of per perfect.
[28:12] SPEAKER_01: And I think I've got some controversial opinions on it.
[28:15] SPEAKER_01: And and the first one I think is highly controversial.
[28:19] SPEAKER_01: So the worst Iron Man World Championship win over the last decade coming in at number nine is Jan Fredino's win at Kona in 2016.
[28:29] SPEAKER_01: The second, this this was the second of Jan's Kona wins, and I think a very slight step up in level compared to the previous year in 2015, which doesn't count for this list.
[28:39] SPEAKER_01: Um he beats he beat his two big German rivals with Sebastian Kinlay coming second and Patrick Lang coming third.
[28:46] SPEAKER_01: He won by three and a half minutes.
[28:47] SPEAKER_01: It was an 8.06.30 finish time.
[28:50] SPEAKER_01: I would say overall the field was close to the weakest overall field on this list, if not the weakest field on this list.
[28:56] SPEAKER_01: Um obviously it's an Iron Man World Champ, so it's still an insanely strong and deep field.
[29:00] SPEAKER_01: He did everything out to do, he swam front pack, he rode strong.
[29:03] SPEAKER_01: But Kinlay and Boris Stein, they just completely outclassed him on the bike that day.
[29:08] SPEAKER_01: They they put so much time into him.
[29:10] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean, his run was at a level at that point where it didn't really matter, and he ran up to Keenlay, and we thought we might get a run battle, but he was kind of a step above Keenlay that day, and it was ended up being a bit of a formality.
[29:22] SPEAKER_01: Um, once he got his gap on that run, he kind of just maintained it, and the the day was done.
[29:26] SPEAKER_01: But I think it was the second best Iron Man World Champs win of Jan's career, but the worst of the last decade in Iron Man World Championship racing.
[29:35] SPEAKER_02: So Jan won't be coming on the podcast now for uh that tell-oljack, so thanks for that.
[29:41] SPEAKER_01: Well, keep in mind he does have one more Iron Man World Champ championship win in this period, so we'll see where 2019 comes in.
[29:48] SPEAKER_04: No, Jan's not coming on, he's already uh microwaving our ideas of uh podcasting, isn't he?
[29:55] SPEAKER_02: I'll say he's going mental, mate.
[29:57] SPEAKER_02: Going mental.
[29:58] SPEAKER_02: You know, something that I've noticed with Jan, and I don't want to take discredit his his performances, but his bike position in 2016 and you know when he won the US Open and what was that, 2024 before he retired, it wasn't that different.
[30:13] SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, everyone else has massively changed.
[30:16] SPEAKER_02: I think Jan was sneaky, sneaky arrow early, and that helped him win some of those world titles.
[30:21] SPEAKER_02: And not to say that that's you know, it's not a great performance, but I think he was saving a lot of watts over a lot of competitors, and I don't think he had to bike that hard uh in some of these races to win.
[30:32] SPEAKER_01: Greg, don't think it's controversial.
[30:34] SPEAKER_01: I actually think that's just a straight fact.
[30:36] SPEAKER_01: Um coming in at number eight, Christian Blumenfeld's win at St.
[30:40] SPEAKER_01: George in 2021.
[30:42] SPEAKER_01: It actually happened in 2022, but it's the 2021 Iron Man World Championships.
[30:46] SPEAKER_01: I found this one hard to rank.
[30:47] SPEAKER_01: It was a strong performance.
[30:49] SPEAKER_01: It was ultimately a dominant victory.
[30:51] SPEAKER_01: He beat Lionel Sanders, who finished second um by four and a half minutes, and Braden Curry rounded out the podium only a handful of seconds behind Lionel after the intense run battle those two had.
[31:01] SPEAKER_01: Christian, he caught Braden on the run.
[31:03] SPEAKER_01: He sat in the bike group that he needed to, had a lot of help from some good cyclists, and yeah, he just spent the last half marathon on his own out in front, looking like he still had probably another gear or two.
[31:13] SPEAKER_01: And the reason it isn't higher is A, that it loses some points for happening in May at the start of the year.
[31:20] SPEAKER_01: It was at St.
[31:21] SPEAKER_01: George, Gustav Eden, who was the big favourite, wasn't there, and B, the strength of field was atrocious.
[31:27] SPEAKER_01: Like you go through these this list, and the strength of field for every single one of these races is 90 or higher, and the strength of field for this was 80 or 81.
[31:37] SPEAKER_01: So it's significantly lower than every other uh strength of field on this list.
[31:42] SPEAKER_01: So for those reasons, I yeah, it's really hard to judge, but I've got Christian Blumenfeld's uh St.
[31:47] SPEAKER_01: George win in 2021 as number eight.
[31:49] SPEAKER_02: I like that uh shout.
[31:51] SPEAKER_02: I mean, come on, is Christian Blumenfeld really a world champion, Jack?
[31:54] SPEAKER_02: Uh and over Iron Man?
[31:56] SPEAKER_02: I mean, that Mickey Mouse St.
[31:57] SPEAKER_02: George race, come on now.
[31:58] SPEAKER_02: That should that shouldn't even be on the list.
[32:00] SPEAKER_01: Well, that's that's a good point because I think a lot of people do, whether they admit it or not, forget Christian Blumentfeld is an Iron Man world champion.
[32:07] SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like the COVID NBA championship, you know, they were in that bubble.
[32:11] SPEAKER_02: They call it like a Mickey Mouse ring.
[32:12] SPEAKER_02: That was like LeBron's last ring.
[32:14] SPEAKER_02: It's like Blumenfeld, it's got an asterisk, you know.
[32:16] SPEAKER_02: He needs to he needs to win one for real.
[32:18] SPEAKER_02: And you're probably gonna listen and then do it.
[32:20] SPEAKER_02: So this one's for you, Christian.
[32:22] SPEAKER_04: So so you're saying Christian is not an Iron Man world champion, guys.
[32:25] SPEAKER_04: That's exactly what I'm saying, Appa.
[32:28] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[32:29] SPEAKER_01: Coming in Christian, and he will be listening.
[32:31] SPEAKER_01: Coming in at number seven, Patrick Lang's Kona 2017.
[32:36] SPEAKER_01: The year before this, Patrick Lang broke onto the scene finishing third by having the fastest run of the day, by far, too.
[32:42] SPEAKER_01: And in 2017, he came back and did that.
[32:44] SPEAKER_01: But he put together a more complete performance.
[32:47] SPEAKER_01: There's some question marks about drafting throughout the bike, but to go from having the 24th fastest bike the year before and being 15 minutes off the fastest bike to having the 11th fastest bike and only being six minutes off the fastest bike, combined with a front pack swim and having the fastest run by six minutes and 11 minutes faster than the third fastest run of the day, is a pretty huge step up in performance from the year before where he came third.
[33:14] SPEAKER_01: Jarn was there, but he was injured.
[33:16] SPEAKER_01: Lionel came second, and David McNamee came third.
[33:19] SPEAKER_01: He also became the man who finally broke Craig Alexander's long-standing course record.
[33:23] SPEAKER_01: Uh, he finished in 801, Croey's record was 803.
[33:27] SPEAKER_01: So this performance kind of showed signs of everything that was to come for Patrick Lang.
[33:32] SPEAKER_01: It was, I think 2016 where he came third, was probably the breakout, but this was the big day where Patrick Lang announced himself.
[33:39] SPEAKER_02: Just the birth of that new era where you can just sit in on the bike and be a pack rat and then just jog your way to victory.
[33:45] SPEAKER_02: No, I'm just kidding.
[33:46] SPEAKER_02: Patrick, I'm just joking, friend of the show, Patrick Lang.
[33:49] SPEAKER_02: This is the start, like Apo said, of his uh great reign.
[33:52] SPEAKER_04: Was that the year that he had um Andy Dreitz riding for him?
[33:56] SPEAKER_04: Or is that another year?
[33:56] SPEAKER_01: We don't talk about that on this podcast, Apo.
[33:58] SPEAKER_01: We don't talk about the fact that there was two men in the same Urdinger alcohol, alcohol-free alcohol suits uh five metres away from each other all day.
[34:07] SPEAKER_01: We don't talk about that here, Apo.
[34:10] SPEAKER_04: I mean, Patrick can't hate the show any more than he already does, so let's just have it out.
[34:14] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but there's a bit of a common theme in some things when it comes to Patrick Lang here, and maybe what holds him back.
[34:20] SPEAKER_01: And it takes me into number six, which is the very next year where Patrick Lang came back and defended his title, successfully defended his title, became a two-time champion with his win at Kona in 2018.
[34:30] SPEAKER_01: The year previous he broke the course record, but this year he destroyed the course record.
[34:35] SPEAKER_01: He took it from 801 down to 752, which at the time was kind of crazy because the eight-hour barrier still hadn't been broken.
[34:43] SPEAKER_01: And he became the first guy to ever do that, and he did it by eight minutes.
[34:47] SPEAKER_01: It was like, it was one of those moments where you're like, whoa, this is a crazy step up in level from year to year.
[34:53] SPEAKER_01: It's like what we had known as normal prior to 2018 changed after 2018.
[34:59] SPEAKER_01: And Patrick Lang, take away from him however much you will for maybe some drafting on the bike and and maybe not being the most complete athlete, but but having really defined strong tools that can help him put in performances like this.
[35:12] SPEAKER_01: You can't take away from the fact that he's the guy who I think took us into the new era.
[35:17] SPEAKER_01: I don't actually think it was the the Norwegians, I think it was this year, 2018, at Kona, where things changed.
[35:22] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, he, you know, Jarn had won two of the titles at this point.
[35:26] SPEAKER_01: Patrick now wins his second, and the big German rivalry is on, and have no doubt about it, those two, Jarn and Patrick, absolutely did not like each other.
[35:36] SPEAKER_01: I'm actually not sure if they still like each other.
[35:39] SPEAKER_01: This is the most real rivalry that we've had in Triton over the last 10 years because it wasn't just about the sport.
[35:44] SPEAKER_01: It was personal and it was real.
[35:46] SPEAKER_01: Um and Patrick Lang came out and made a statement here in 2018.
[35:49] SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, I'm not in your shadow anymore, Jarn.
[35:52] SPEAKER_01: I've broken the course record twice.
[35:54] SPEAKER_01: I've gone faster than you ever have here.
[35:56] SPEAKER_01: I've won it the same amount of times as you.
[35:58] SPEAKER_01: And it set up something pretty special in 2019, which we're gonna talk about in a bit.
[36:02] SPEAKER_01: Let's move on to number five, though, the fifth best Iron Man World Championship performance of the last 10 years.
[36:09] SPEAKER_01: Sam Laidlow in Nice 2023.
[36:11] SPEAKER_01: This is the performance that was so good it led to a year-long feud between Sam Laidlow himself and Rudy Von Berg Sr.
[36:19] SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna go back into details of that, but this performance came as a surprise to a lot of people, none more so than Rudy von Berg Sr.
[36:27] SPEAKER_01: I I've used the word dominant a lot in my podcasting career, but this was a dominant day from Sam Laidlow.
[36:33] SPEAKER_01: He went off the front in the bike, he used Clement Mignon for as long as he could, then he went off solo, and the rest of the field didn't see him.
[36:40] SPEAKER_01: They didn't see him all day.
[36:41] SPEAKER_01: He took off early in the bike and he won the race.
[36:44] SPEAKER_01: And there was question marks about his run because of what happened at Kona the previous year where he was caught by Gustav Eden on the marathon after leading in a similar way, but he went on to run, you know, the sixth fastest run of the day, a low 240 marathon.
[36:57] SPEAKER_01: He, you know, ran the same kind of pace as Magnus did live.
[37:00] SPEAKER_01: Jan Fredino was there this day and and was nowhere near it.
[37:03] SPEAKER_01: Patrick Lang put in one of the marathons of his life and still wasn't able to get anywhere near him in seconds.
[37:09] SPEAKER_01: So I I thought this this this run performance from San Lai though was super, super high level, a huge step up, and the overall day was yeah, completely dominant.
[37:18] SPEAKER_02: This was a turning point that we realized that Sam's like low-key full of shit sometimes when he he was going into this race being like, nah, like I don't know, like I haven't been running, or like I'm not that fit.
[37:30] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've had an injury, and yeah, and then he and then he wins the race, you're like, okay, and then he does the same thing at Roth the next year, and then he wins, you're like, Alright, this dude literally can't take anything he says seriously because when he shows up, he's obviously gonna be uh ready to race.
[37:45] SPEAKER_02: So I feel like he kind of ruined it for any other pro who was trying to secretly do that type of strategy, like the Norwegians or anything.
[37:51] SPEAKER_02: Like, now I know don't listen to the top pros they are trying to distract you from the fact that they're very good at what they do.
[37:57] SPEAKER_04: It's all mind games, right?
[37:59] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[37:59] SPEAKER_00: It showed like a level up in biking as well, didn't it?
[38:02] SPEAKER_00: I mean, he'd really shown that, I guess, the year before in Kona, but to do what he did in Nice and to give himself such a buffer onto the run, where he then, as you said, Jack ran so well, it was it was for me another marker of where the sport was going to.
[38:16] SPEAKER_00: Like, you're gonna have to ride so fast and so hard, and you're still gonna have to run off it.
[38:21] SPEAKER_00: Like, there's you can't be one or the other, you've got to be able to do both.
[38:24] SPEAKER_04: And I bet a lot of his competition, like Patrick, thought that they could give him a bit of a leash and catch him on the run, right?
[38:31] SPEAKER_04: And that was the first uh I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but like he silenced a lot of doubters that did doubt his run, and he dropped a low 240 and hung on for the win.
[38:41] SPEAKER_04: Well, he didn't even hang on, he like won pretty convincingly in the end.
[38:44] SPEAKER_04: And yeah, I think it was like Sam's not just a good biker, he's also a very good runner as well.
[38:50] SPEAKER_01: Well, the crazy thing about this appo, it was his first Iron Man win.
[38:54] SPEAKER_01: He hadn't won an Iron Man before this.
[38:56] SPEAKER_01: Like, he's the I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think he's the first guy to first guy to win the Iron Man World Champs as his as his first one in them definitely in the modern era.
[39:06] SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure about some guys in like the 80s.
[39:08] SPEAKER_01: Maybe they did, but you know, that doesn't really count.
[39:11] SPEAKER_01: So to come out and do that as your first Iron Man win, pretty, pretty incredible, really.
[39:16] SPEAKER_01: Okay, number four, Patrick Lang's Kona 2024.
[39:20] SPEAKER_01: Patrick Lang's 2024 win is the best win of his career.
[39:24] SPEAKER_01: If you disagree, you're wrong, as Greg would say.
[39:28] SPEAKER_01: Sam Lade, though, was the defending champ.
[39:29] SPEAKER_01: He went off the front, he rode, in my opinion, even better in 2024 than what he did in Nissat 2023 or Kona in 2022, but he blew himself to pieces doing it.
[39:40] SPEAKER_01: And Patrick Lang ran past him nose breathing on the marathon.
[39:44] SPEAKER_01: And I I think if you ask Patrick Lang what his RPE out of 10 was on the marathon at that point, at any point, I reckon it never got above five.
[39:52] SPEAKER_01: I reckon all day it was like three, four, five out of ten.
[39:55] SPEAKER_01: He was literally nose breathing this entire marathon.
[39:59] SPEAKER_01: He was laughing and smiling and chatting to the cameras.
[40:02] SPEAKER_01: When he saw people in the crowd that he knew, he would like run over to their side and like talk to them.
[40:07] SPEAKER_01: He was taking the piss on this marathon.
[40:10] SPEAKER_01: It was the easiest anyone's ever made a marathon at Kona look, especially considering how fast they ran.
[40:16] SPEAKER_01: You know, Magnus Ditliff was there, he came second, but Patrick Lang was over eight minutes ahead of him.
[40:22] SPEAKER_01: And on any other day, Magnus wins that Iron Man World Championships.
[40:25] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, this day, Patrick went 26 minutes faster than what he went for his last course record.
[40:32] SPEAKER_01: It was it was just an incredible performance.
[40:34] SPEAKER_01: But I think what the detractors would say is that despite finishing in 7.35, when only a few years previously you broke eight for the first time and it was a massive deal, I think what they'll say is that you sat in a massive lead group, one of the biggest lead groups we've ever seen at Kona, where everyone else did the work and you did none, and and you kind of just got to the marathon in the easiest way possible.
[40:59] SPEAKER_01: But if it was so easy, everyone would do it right.
[41:01] SPEAKER_01: Like obviously, not everyone did do it, and and it shows the level of the game Patrick has.
[41:07] SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to the the big time performers, when you think of what's going to come later on in this list, I just think that's the little 1% that takes this performance from finishing at number one on this list to finishing at number four on this list.
[41:21] SPEAKER_04: I will just say anecdotally, I was in that group that Patrick was in, and I know people like to give shit to Patrick for being a pack rat, but you know, that ride is still hard.
[41:31] SPEAKER_04: Like I got dropped up going up Harvey, and you know, to stay in that group and then execute that run, it's still a pretty phenomenal performance.
[41:37] SPEAKER_04: So, you know, I'm just trying to give Patrick his flowers and maybe get him back on the show, back on the side of the show.
[41:43] SPEAKER_02: I have that moment where he runs by Christian and like looks at him like, hey man, like it was super early in the run.
[41:49] SPEAKER_02: It's like seared into my mind though.
[41:51] SPEAKER_02: It's like kind of iconic, and then he goes on to just like like Jack said, nose breathe his way to win.
[41:56] SPEAKER_02: So um I I think you could almost rate it higher.
[42:00] SPEAKER_02: I mean, no one thought he was gonna win is a thing.
[42:03] SPEAKER_02: And I think you when you when there's storylines going in, and you know, you saw it when he crossed the line that day.
[42:09] SPEAKER_02: He was like, he was almost pissed.
[42:11] SPEAKER_02: Like, you fucking doubted me.
[42:13] SPEAKER_02: Like, I've won this race so many times.
[42:15] SPEAKER_02: So I think to do that, he was 39, maybe 38, 39.
[42:19] SPEAKER_02: Like, at the end of his career, it was super special.
[42:23] SPEAKER_01: And that leads us into our top three.
[42:25] SPEAKER_01: This is the most controversial one.
[42:28] SPEAKER_01: At number three, I have Jan Fredino's win at Kona in 2019.
[42:33] SPEAKER_01: Jan had an Olympic title, he had 270.3 worlds, he had two previous Kona victories, and this third win is the performance that standard stands atop any of those on the resume of what is Jan Fredino's career.
[42:46] SPEAKER_01: The storyline of this race is one that needs to be told in more detail, I think.
[42:49] SPEAKER_01: I I think I'm going to do that at some point on a podcast.
[42:52] SPEAKER_01: Jan had many great rivals in his career, but like I talked about, the one with Patrick Lang is the biggest, in my opinion.
[42:57] SPEAKER_01: It's the one that was the most real.
[42:59] SPEAKER_01: You know, like his rivalry with Sebastian Keenley was a friendly rivalry, for example.
[43:03] SPEAKER_01: Alistair Brownley and him, I reckon they did kind of motivate and dislike each other, but they never had really any big iconic races where they went head to head.
[43:12] SPEAKER_01: And I don't think Alistair irritated Jarn the way Patrick did.
[43:16] SPEAKER_01: I I think Patrick Lang genuinely just irritated Jarn, and it was like visibly obvious.
[43:22] SPEAKER_01: And Jarn won in 2015 and 16, then Patrick won in 2017 and 18, and Jarn was injured and walking the marathon.
[43:29] SPEAKER_01: And in that time, Patrick Lang broke the course record twice, won it twice, and he kind of stole Jarn's thunder a little bit.
[43:36] SPEAKER_01: And I think Jarn's the kind of guy who sees himself as the alpha.
[43:39] SPEAKER_01: He goes, I'm the big dog.
[43:40] SPEAKER_01: Like this little short German man with no hair isn't the guy.
[43:44] SPEAKER_01: I'm the guy.
[43:46] SPEAKER_01: And that led to this performance from Jarn where he did like crazy shit out there in the course.
[43:52] SPEAKER_01: He swam front pack, he was driving the pace at the front of the bike all day to the point where, in the last like quarter of the bike, he just took off.
[43:59] SPEAKER_01: He just took off.
[44:00] SPEAKER_01: Off.
[44:00] SPEAKER_01: He rode off solo off the front of the race, went into T2, put in the fastest marathon of the day, broke Patrick Lang's course record, won his third Iron Man World Championship.
[44:10] SPEAKER_01: It was an incredible performance.
[44:12] SPEAKER_01: There's an argument to be made it's the most complete performance on this list.
[44:16] SPEAKER_01: Because he didn't have much help.
[44:17] SPEAKER_01: He kind of did this race by himself.
[44:19] SPEAKER_01: It was it was not that far off an individual time trial to win this race and to do that and break the course record, incredible performance.
[44:27] SPEAKER_04: It's kind of the last of that pre-modern era, right?
[44:30] SPEAKER_04: That 2019 win of Jarn.
[44:32] SPEAKER_04: Like we went into COVID, and then coming out of COVID, the sport was just completely different, right?
[44:38] SPEAKER_04: Like that was the last of the pre-modern era, I think.
[44:41] SPEAKER_04: And yes, it was an amazing performance, and Jarn was untouchable.
[44:45] SPEAKER_04: But yeah, I kind of do agree a little bit with Greg that it was like after COVID, everything changed, right?
[44:52] SPEAKER_04: And you can see that in the results and the and just like there was barely any packs or anything now, uh, well, in that race, but whereas you look at it now, there's like packs of 20 guys up to Harvey and stuff.
[45:04] SPEAKER_04: So I think it's yeah, it's kind of the sport has moved on, but still in 2019, it was such an amazing performance for sure.
[45:12] SPEAKER_02: I've actually been meaning uh Quick Thought to talk shit on Apo for how many times it'd been like the sport's evolved, or like it's another level now.
[45:19] SPEAKER_02: I think we've heard him say it a hundred times on this podcast.
[45:23] SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, that's just that was just It's true, Greg.
[45:25] SPEAKER_02: But he's just like he's just I I don't know.
[45:27] SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, we get it, Apo.
[45:29] SPEAKER_02: It's faster now.
[45:30] SPEAKER_02: That's how sports work.
[45:34] SPEAKER_01: So before we get to the top two, coming in at number five was Jan Fredino's Kona 2016.
[45:38] SPEAKER_01: Number eight, Christian Blumenfeld St.
[45:40] SPEAKER_01: George 2021.
[45:41] SPEAKER_01: Number seven, Patrick Lang's Kona 2017, number six, Patrick Lang's Kona 2018.
[45:46] SPEAKER_01: Number five, Sam Laidlow, Nice 2023.
[45:49] SPEAKER_01: Number four, Patrick Lang Kona 2024.
[45:51] SPEAKER_01: And at number three, Jan Fredino, the great Jarn Fredino, the shirtless, two-nippled Jarn Fredino, Kona 2019.
[45:58] SPEAKER_01: And it does lead us into the point you guys were just talking about.
[46:02] SPEAKER_01: The next two performances, I'm sure you all know what they are.
[46:05] SPEAKER_01: They both came after COVID.
[46:07] SPEAKER_01: They both came in this new modern era, which is undoubtedly stronger than what we saw in Jarn's uh 2019 victory.
[46:15] SPEAKER_01: There's no doubt about that.
[46:16] SPEAKER_01: Not to take away from Jarn's um win, because I do think the field was still strong for the time, but but these next two I think are almost standalones in my opinion.
[46:27] SPEAKER_01: It's just what order you have them.
[46:29] SPEAKER_01: And I reckon I've gone the controversial order.
[46:31] SPEAKER_01: At number two, I have Gustav Eden's win at Kona in 2022.
[46:36] SPEAKER_01: Now, Gustav Eden's win at Kona in 2022 is still my favourite race performance in long course triathlon history.
[46:42] SPEAKER_01: My favourite I've ever seen.
[46:44] SPEAKER_01: I think about this race when I lay in bed at night, unable to sleep sometimes.
[46:47] SPEAKER_01: He was the favourite.
[46:48] SPEAKER_01: He'd taken over the mantle from Jan and Patrick and the previous era, and he was developing a real unbeatable aura over half and full Iron Man racing at the time.
[46:58] SPEAKER_01: You know, like Sam Laidlow went off the front and did everything he could to beat Gustav.
[47:02] SPEAKER_01: His best friend and teammate Christian Blumenfeld hung on for dear life all day.
[47:06] SPEAKER_01: And keep in mind, Christian Blumenfeld had won St.
[47:09] SPEAKER_01: George only a few months earlier when Gustav unfortunately wasn't able to make the start line.
[47:14] SPEAKER_01: This was the European Open, no bullshit science, Maxine Newman, not the same man we see today in retirement.
[47:21] SPEAKER_01: This was peak, aggressive, angry, wanting to kill everyone, Maxie Newman.
[47:26] SPEAKER_01: And trust me, he he did want to kill people.
[47:28] SPEAKER_01: Ask Daniel Backegaard.
[47:30] SPEAKER_01: There was a hit put out on Daniel Backgard's life by Maxi Newman.
[47:33] SPEAKER_01: So he really, he really did want to kill people.
[47:36] SPEAKER_01: That's not hyperbole.
[47:37] SPEAKER_01: Gustav did everything this day.
[47:38] SPEAKER_01: He swung front pack.
[47:40] SPEAKER_01: He stayed in that really select front bike group where Magnus Ditliv was putting in crazy surges all day.
[47:45] SPEAKER_01: And then he ran the perfect marathon.
[47:47] SPEAKER_01: He made it look easy on the marathon.
[47:49] SPEAKER_01: It was a thing of beauty.
[47:52] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just I just love this performance.
[47:55] SPEAKER_01: This this performance being ahead of Jan's 2019 and Patrick's 2024 list is just because I believe no one was beating Gustav that day.
[48:03] SPEAKER_01: I I don't I don't think anyone who had come before him was beating him on this day.
[48:08] SPEAKER_01: Whereas I think if you insert this 2022 Gustav Eden into any of those previous wins, Jan Fredino's 2019, Patrick Lang's 2024, I reckon this version of Gustav gets the job done.
[48:19] SPEAKER_01: It was it was a it was a perfect performance.
[48:22] SPEAKER_02: I feel like the fan favorite almost too.
[48:24] SPEAKER_02: I don't know, there's something about that race that I love to see.
[48:27] SPEAKER_02: And then Gustav was all he was proud like Sam Laidlow at the end.
[48:31] SPEAKER_02: He's like, I can't believe you lasted that long.
[48:33] SPEAKER_02: Like that was a whole storyline too.
[48:34] SPEAKER_02: Like, damn, I thought Sam was gonna blow up way earlier.
[48:37] SPEAKER_02: So I think from a fan perspective, that was probably my maybe my favorite watch of the last 10 years.
[48:41] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well he famously said he thought he could give Sam Laidlow 10 minutes off the bike and he'd still run him down.
[48:46] SPEAKER_04: I've got a uh hot take.
[48:48] SPEAKER_04: Is there a question mark over the um 50 millimeter stack height shoes that he used?
[48:55] SPEAKER_04: Obviously legal at the time.
[48:57] SPEAKER_04: Legal at the time.
[48:58] SPEAKER_04: I'm not I'm not calling for any relitigation, but um shoes that are hence since that race been banned.
[49:06] SPEAKER_02: We have a special guest joining us.
[49:08] SPEAKER_02: Um Hayden.
[49:09] SPEAKER_02: Hayden, what are your thoughts on these shoes?
[49:13] SPEAKER_01: Uh Apo, in my mind, no.
[49:16] SPEAKER_01: The reason why.
[49:17] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, me too.
[49:18] SPEAKER_01: The on the so they were a pair of on shoes, right?
[49:21] SPEAKER_01: And the on foam at the time, in my opinion, sucked.
[49:24] SPEAKER_01: So it might seem like it because you go, you look at these world athletics rules and you go, well, they can't be above 40 mil, and they can't, they can only have one plate, and these shoes looked like they were 50 mil.
[49:35] SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, if you've ever ran in a 50mm stack height shoe like the Adidas Primex Strung or or the Nike Vomero Premium, more foam doesn't actually mean faster.
[49:45] SPEAKER_01: Like it can, it can, but it can also just mean heavier and more cumbersome.
[49:49] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I I didn't really, I don't, I still don't think on it got anywhere near nailing the foam in their shoes.
[49:56] SPEAKER_01: So I reckon if you went on went back and put these shoes on today, you'd be like, oh, I don't really think they were that much better than like the Nike Alpha Fly at the time or or or that kind of thing.
[50:06] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I agree.
[50:07] SPEAKER_04: I'm just stirring the pot.
[50:08] SPEAKER_01: And number one, if you've uh if you haven't figured it out already, it's 2025, Nice 2025 with Kasper Stoyners.
[50:16] SPEAKER_01: The 2025 Iron Man World Championships podium was a Norwegian clean sweep.
[50:20] SPEAKER_01: We did the daily pods about this race.
[50:22] SPEAKER_01: You know all about this race.
[50:23] SPEAKER_01: We talked this race to death.
[50:25] SPEAKER_01: But it was the underdog, it was the forgotten Norwegian Kaspar Stoyners, that is exactly how you say his name, who came out on top.
[50:32] SPEAKER_01: He won the race in 751, which was 15 minutes faster than what Sam Laidlow won it in in 2023.
[50:39] SPEAKER_01: 15 minutes.
[50:40] SPEAKER_01: Sam Laidlow's performance was number five on this list that day, and Casper won Kasper beat that by 15 minutes, like absolutely crazy.
[50:50] SPEAKER_01: He just he just did everything he needed to do.
[50:52] SPEAKER_01: Kasper Stoyners swam front group.
[50:54] SPEAKER_01: Kasper Stoyners rode at the front of the race.
[50:56] SPEAKER_01: It was Select at the front of the race too, and people were hammering because people were getting dropped.
[51:01] SPEAKER_01: You know, this was a pace that Jonas Schomberg was struggling with, and Casper was sitting there looking quite easy.
[51:06] SPEAKER_01: And Sam Lato was there pushing the pace all day, and then he let the the Christian Blumenfeld Gustav Eden rivalry take place up ahead of him on the marathon, ran his own race, perfectly split the marathon, and then he ran 229 to beat Gustav and Christian, who, in my opinion, had probably their best performances ever.
[51:29] SPEAKER_01: I I think Christian Blumenfeld had the performance of his life.
[51:33] SPEAKER_01: I think that was the performance of his life in long-distance triathlon, and he came third.
[51:37] SPEAKER_01: And I think Gustav Eden was very similar to Gustav Eden of 2022, maybe 1% off.
[51:43] SPEAKER_01: But he didn't beat people who were weak.
[51:46] SPEAKER_01: He didn't beat a field where the favourites dropped off.
[51:49] SPEAKER_01: You know, I like usually three of the top six favourites are nowhere near it, and they have shit race and they blow up and they walk or they pull off or they're sick.
[51:56] SPEAKER_01: There was none of that.
[51:57] SPEAKER_01: Everyone raced well.
[51:58] SPEAKER_01: Sam Lato was there, you know, um Martin Van Rier was there.
[52:02] SPEAKER_01: It was it was incredible to watch.
[52:04] SPEAKER_01: So I think Kasper Stoyner's win at Nice in 2025 is the best Iron Man World Championship victory over the past decade in the men's.
[52:11] SPEAKER_04: I think I agree with that.
[52:12] SPEAKER_04: I think it's uh it's just a lukewarm take.
[52:15] SPEAKER_04: Um, it might not be the fan favorite, like uh like the Janfradino 2019, probably is the fan favorite, or the Gustav, like you said, but I think undoubtedly it is the Kaspar Stoines win.
[52:28] SPEAKER_04: Um, like just from a sheer execution perspective, numbers perspective, um, yeah, absolutely.
[52:35] SPEAKER_04: I think you're right, Jack.
[52:36] SPEAKER_04: The sport's changing, Greg.
[52:38] SPEAKER_04: 229.
[52:41] SPEAKER_02: I like to think about it from the fan perspective, and if this race unfolded exactly the same on Kona course, I feel like it might have been a fan, you know, favorite, right?
[52:50] SPEAKER_02: Because there would have been more of a battle, it would have been like Iron War II, but there's just something the Kona is just it's just a little something different.
[52:57] SPEAKER_02: We all know that.
[52:58] SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, shout out to Casper Stornez.
[53:02] SPEAKER_01: I think that's a factor, Greg, right?
[53:04] SPEAKER_01: Is that like this didn't happen at Kona, and in my mind it was still number one, and I said that to myself.
[53:10] SPEAKER_01: I'm like, if I'm thinking of this as the best of the last decade and it was at Nice, which detracts points, like clearly it does, because look at Christian St.
[53:18] SPEAKER_01: George and and Laidlow's niece.
[53:20] SPEAKER_01: If either of them had happened at Kona, they would have been seen as better as well.
[53:23] SPEAKER_01: So I do think that you lose points for it not being at Kona, but it was still number one in my mind, which I think just shows the strength of the performance.
[53:32] SPEAKER_01: Because if that had have happened at Kona, it would be number one by so far.
[53:35] SPEAKER_01: It's not funny.
[53:36] SPEAKER_01: It was um crazy impressive by Kasper Stoynas.
[53:38] SPEAKER_01: And the big question for me coming out of it is 2026.
[53:42] SPEAKER_01: Like Kaspar Steynas is the little brother, in a sense, of Christian.
[53:46] SPEAKER_01: You know, he's the he's the come and train with us.
[53:48] SPEAKER_01: Hey, you've been here all the time, you've been a great, you've been a great punching bag for me on the track over the years, but now he's stepped up and he's beaten Christian.
[53:56] SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I don't think Gustav would care, but I can't wait to see the fire in Christian's ballet in 2026.
[54:03] SPEAKER_01: And can Christian Blumenfeld finally win a legitimate Iron Man World Championship, in the opinion of Greg Harper in 2026, or is Casper the new big dog?
[54:11] SPEAKER_02: Well, we all know that there won't be a Norwegian on the podium, so um, that's a prediction that I made that I will be constantly bringing up on the show all year because I like to stick to my guns and I'm doubling down.
[54:23] SPEAKER_01: Next week we'll do the women's as well.
[54:25] SPEAKER_01: Um spoiler alert, the women's is a slightly more boring list because someone won a lot of world titles over the last 10 years in the women.
[54:33] SPEAKER_01: I won't tell you who.
[54:35] SPEAKER_01: Um, all right, we're gonna finish up the show today with some Spotify comments, as always.
[54:40] SPEAKER_01: I'll start us off.
[54:41] SPEAKER_01: Alice Langley says, Vicki, I didn't even notice you being hard on Jack.
[54:46] SPEAKER_01: Every episode I think about how weird it is that everyone agrees with Jack and no one ever calls him out on his bullshit.
[54:52] SPEAKER_01: I even started to think that maybe it's an in-joke.
[54:55] SPEAKER_01: Greg treats him like a cult leader, and Apo changes his opinions to mirror Jack's.
[54:59] SPEAKER_01: So definitely don't ease up.
[55:01] SPEAKER_01: Speak the truth, Vicky.
[55:04] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love this.
[55:05] SPEAKER_00: I wasn't aware that you were a cult leader until I listened to Jackson Laundry on the road to Oceanside, where I think he had a bit of a hot take that you are in fact a cult leader and that you tick many of the boxes there, and that actually by by plumping my ego, as you often do on the intros, that you're actually love bombing me.
[55:25] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this apparently is uh this is apparently what what cult leaders do, Jack.
[55:31] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I'm just pushing back.
[55:33] SPEAKER_00: I am being the resistance here and uh not allowing you to have it all your own way.
[55:38] SPEAKER_04: I just want to say that, Jack, your top ten list is fucking bullshit and Casper Storns isn't the number no.
[55:44] SPEAKER_01: Change your opinion now, Appo.
[55:46] SPEAKER_04: Change your opinion now.
[55:49] SPEAKER_04: Yes, sir.
[55:50] SPEAKER_04: Sorry, sir.
[55:51] SPEAKER_04: No, uh I feel like you and I go back and forth a bit, Jack.
[55:54] SPEAKER_04: You know, I uh I hate training and you love training.
[55:58] SPEAKER_04: So we found that out on this episode.
[56:02] SPEAKER_00: Okay, Jamie D says, Vicky's knowledge and advice is truly world class, particularly the no-watch in the pool advice.
[56:09] SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you finally got some true swim quality on the team.
[56:13] SPEAKER_00: P.S.
[56:14] SPEAKER_00: Given Sam Askidoran set the Kona record as an age grouper, does that mean that Greg is only the second ranked age group swimmer?
[56:22] SPEAKER_00: I think that's a little bit of rage bait there for Greg for uh Greg, off you go.
[56:26] SPEAKER_02: I've prepared.
[56:27] SPEAKER_02: So um Sam Askidoran has swam a 400 meter freestyle in 359-99, and I have some a 400 meter freestyle in 359-23.
[56:39] SPEAKER_02: So it looks like one of us is actually faster than the other.
[56:42] SPEAKER_02: And I've never swum the Kona course.
[56:45] SPEAKER_02: So that's all I have to say on that matter.
[56:47] SPEAKER_02: Case closed.
[56:48] SPEAKER_02: Mic drop.
[56:49] SPEAKER_02: 207th best swimmer in the world, right here.
[56:52] SPEAKER_02: Suck it.
[56:53] SPEAKER_04: Alright.
[56:54] SPEAKER_04: Lewis W.
[56:55] SPEAKER_04: L.
[56:55] SPEAKER_04: William.
[56:56] SPEAKER_04: That's a that's a big, big name.
[56:58] SPEAKER_04: What does WL yeah anyway says Jack is in Australia, doesn't he need a tattoo?
[57:04] SPEAKER_04: And uh yes, you know, there was I actually got a comment on my Instagram um wondering if we could get an update on the uh on the tattoo bet, please, Jack.
[57:14] SPEAKER_01: Sorry guys, my internet quality is really, really poor here.
[57:16] SPEAKER_01: So I'm just gonna move on to the next comment quickly.
[57:21] SPEAKER_01: 96 Mick Dundee says, I have an idea for a segment called Rate My Strava.
[57:27] SPEAKER_01: Listeners offer up their Strava to be rated, and you guys could either offer advice and or shit on it.
[57:33] SPEAKER_01: And we saw this comment and we messaged about it on the group chat, and we're so in.
[57:37] SPEAKER_01: I put out an Instagram story during the week saying, like, if you want to um have us rate your Strava, send your name.
[57:43] SPEAKER_01: And there was like a thousand people put it in.
[57:45] SPEAKER_01: And then I said to the group, like, Well, I thought there might be like 200, maybe at most.
[57:50] SPEAKER_01: How are we going to get this done?
[57:52] SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
[57:52] SPEAKER_01: And we were discussing it, and we kind of thought we might do it as a Patreon podcast where every week we maybe take two or three people and we go and we rate their Strava and we we kind of um, yeah, we either we either take the piss out of it or we tell them how much we love what they're doing, and and it actually become a standalone Patreon podcast.
[58:12] SPEAKER_01: So let us know if you would be interested in that because if you would, we'll do that every week, and that could be real fun, I think.
[58:19] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, let us know.
[58:20] SPEAKER_02: Sure.
[58:20] SPEAKER_02: Okay.
[58:21] SPEAKER_02: Um Peter English says, What's your opinion on form goggles?
[58:26] SPEAKER_02: Seeing a lot of people use them on Strava and seem quite handy.
[58:30] SPEAKER_02: It can tell you your pace, splits for each workout, total distance, and you can upload workouts from training peaks directly to them, so it saves you writing it out.
[58:41] SPEAKER_02: I'm reading this so bad, and uh leaving it on the side of the pool.
[58:45] SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's definitely another triathlon gadget, but it feels like it has practical benefits.
[58:50] SPEAKER_02: Thoughts?
[58:51] SPEAKER_02: So all of us on this planet were born with this thing, and it's called our brain.
[58:56] SPEAKER_02: And our brain can also tell you your pace and your splits and total distance and doesn't require a monthly subscription for your fucking goggles.
[59:06] SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, I don't do you want to do a whole podcast about it?
[59:10] SPEAKER_02: Like, it's it's it's it's a scam, it's a money grab, and like honestly, I I truly believe if you're like dependent on your watch or something like this to like stay engaged in your workout, your mindset's shit, and you're not gonna improve.
[59:22] SPEAKER_02: And I honestly I totally believe that.
[59:24] SPEAKER_02: So this just falls into that category for me.
[59:26] SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm gonna move on before Greg implodes with rage at this particular.
[59:33] SPEAKER_04: I just want to say something.
[59:34] SPEAKER_04: I don't think that you ever need to write out or print out like if you're going to a swim squad and you want everybody to see the swim session, then that is fine.
[59:44] SPEAKER_04: But I don't believe that if you're going to the pool by yourself, you need to write out eight by fifty as twenty-five hard, twenty-five easy, then the main set twenty one hundreds.
[59:53] SPEAKER_04: Like, you should just be able to remember that in your head.
[59:56] SPEAKER_04: And I think if the if you need like an engineering degree to figure out the swim set, I think it's the coach is like trying to overcomplicate it.
[1:00:05] SPEAKER_02: You haven't seen my swim sets then, you can't memorize them all.
[1:00:08] SPEAKER_01: There's no way you can memorize Greg's swim sets, Apo.
[1:00:10] SPEAKER_01: They're actually ridiculous.
[1:00:11] SPEAKER_01: No, Apo, they're ridiculous.
[1:00:13] SPEAKER_04: Are you serious, Greg?
[1:00:14] SPEAKER_02: I some people need to technical official like I I don't know what to say.
[1:00:18] SPEAKER_02: Like part of yeah, you should be able to memorize to a degree, but like I you know, if I'm trying to improve someone's skills from afar and we need to do like technical things with focuses, like, yeah, I'm gonna write a bit in there.
[1:00:28] SPEAKER_02: So it kind of depends who you are.
[1:00:30] SPEAKER_04: I'm just saying you don't need to write down four times one thousand.
[1:00:35] SPEAKER_00: That's true.
[1:00:37] SPEAKER_00: Right.
[1:00:38] SPEAKER_00: And I'll Luke says My opinion when you lower your body weight at the right time, six to two months before race season, and you do it slowly, and your FTP and VO2 threshold run at interval times hold up, you will always be a better or faster athlete.
[1:00:55] SPEAKER_00: Too much taboo around body weight.
[1:00:57] SPEAKER_00: The Norwegians did it, Christian Hoganhaum did it, all with results.
[1:01:01] SPEAKER_00: I would like to hear your opinions at a great podcast.
[1:01:04] SPEAKER_00: My first thoughts are six months before race season is still the previous race season.
[1:01:09] SPEAKER_00: So I don't think you can be looking at that as when you need to be starting to reduce your body weight because otherwise your body weight is going to be incredibly lean the entire time.
[1:01:17] SPEAKER_00: Um of course, uh being a little bit leaner for your key races is something that top athletes, many athletes do and can do to really um great success.
[1:01:27] SPEAKER_00: They can do that really, really well.
[1:01:29] SPEAKER_00: But it's always risky and it's always got to be done really steadily and really carefully and often with the right support, whether that's from your family, your coach, a nutritionist, whatever that is.
[1:01:39] SPEAKER_00: So just doing it sensibly is always the thing that we would say.
[1:01:42] SPEAKER_00: And and you are right, again, if your FTP, your view to match, your threshold is all holding up, then that's great.
[1:01:49] SPEAKER_00: But there are other indicators.
[1:01:50] SPEAKER_00: For example, we've heard even Lionel Sanders talk this year about red S.
[1:01:55] SPEAKER_00: We know that that's a big thing with females as well.
[1:01:57] SPEAKER_00: Those things, in those cases, your FTP might still be going really well, but what's going on internally in your body is not, and that's a risk for injury and illness and time on the sidelines.
[1:02:08] SPEAKER_04: James Mildrum says, any advice slash tricks on how to get better, how to better get in touch with your RPE.
[1:02:16] SPEAKER_04: And we've been banging on about RPE a little bit over the past few months, and I think it is a bit of a long-lost training metric, but it is kind of coming back full circle.
[1:02:24] SPEAKER_04: I think more people are starting to use RPE, and it can be a little bit vague, right?
[1:02:30] SPEAKER_04: Like I think a lot of the like on the Garmin, if you end your run, I think it's like from five to eight is all hard, right?
[1:02:39] SPEAKER_04: I think there's no real nuance to some of them, but what I do is I I try and group them into like one is obviously like walking around, right?
[1:02:48] SPEAKER_04: And then two to four is easy, five to seven is kind of moderate, seven to nine is hard, and then ten is all out.
[1:02:56] SPEAKER_04: So I try not to do it like each step, like um I try and group them into like um you know packages of three or four steps in one, but it is a little bit vague.
[1:03:07] SPEAKER_04: I think you just need to yeah, ask yourself like what effort does this feel out of ten, right?
[1:03:13] SPEAKER_04: And um, yeah, just kind of trust yourself a little bit.
[1:03:16] SPEAKER_04: Um, but ten is always maximum for me, and one is like just walking.
[1:03:21] SPEAKER_04: So if I'm doing a warm-up or something, it'd be somewhere around two to three, and then if I'm running zone two, Jack's favorite, it could be anywhere from four to six, and then into threshold might be you know up to eight or nine, and then ten is max.
[1:03:37] SPEAKER_04: So that's kind of how I do it.
[1:03:38] SPEAKER_04: I group it up.
[1:03:39] SPEAKER_04: I don't know if you guys have any other tricks.
[1:03:41] SPEAKER_02: I think a practical way, I think what age troopers struggle with is they don't know how to gauge it.
[1:03:46] SPEAKER_02: I think doing like descending stuff is just a way to learn.
[1:03:50] SPEAKER_02: So, like, say you're gonna do 10 100s, descend one to ten in the pool.
[1:03:55] SPEAKER_02: Try to shift through ten gears and then like kind of rate your efforts.
[1:03:58] SPEAKER_02: You could go to the track and do ten eight hundreds.
[1:04:00] SPEAKER_02: Like literally start easy and try to just get a little bit faster each one.
[1:04:05] SPEAKER_02: And you know, or you can set it on erg mode, you can go 150 watts, 160 watts, 170.
[1:04:10] SPEAKER_02: Just these type of things where you're like you're really progressing, and you can get a sense of okay, it was around that sixth rep where it seemed hard just to like get a sense of what your gears are and how you can use those effectively in training.
[1:04:24] SPEAKER_02: But I think athletes get stuck in kind of the just the easy or hard.
[1:04:29] SPEAKER_02: So when you say, Oh, RPE six, like maybe they they can't quite understand it.
[1:04:34] SPEAKER_02: But I think just exploring the limits of your body can um yeah help you in that in that way.
[1:04:40] SPEAKER_01: For me, I have one big tip or trick, and it's two to four weeks of no data.
[1:04:46] SPEAKER_01: And people hate this because it gives them anxiety, but I'm talking no data.
[1:04:51] SPEAKER_01: So when you run, you don't have a GPS watch.
[1:04:55] SPEAKER_01: If you do want to watch for time, either use the stopwatch on your phone because most people now watch run with their phone in their pocket, or go out and buy.
[1:05:03] SPEAKER_01: You can buy such cheap little watches, or you can turn your GPS off on your already existing GPS watch and just have a stopwatch.
[1:05:10] SPEAKER_01: And so doing everything to time for your running and not having any access to pace data for two to four weeks on the bike, having no extra access to power, heart rate, any internal measure or external measure of intensity, just again, time and in the pool, no watch, no pace clock, nothing, just no data for two to four weeks, and then how you would set up your training in that period is all on an RPE scale, all on time.
[1:05:40] SPEAKER_01: For example, or in the pool, you would still use distance, but with RPE.
[1:05:44] SPEAKER_01: For example, you might have an easy run.
[1:05:47] SPEAKER_01: So it might be hey, go out and run somewhere between two to four out of ten for 60 minutes, and then you go out and do that.
[1:05:54] SPEAKER_01: And because you don't have anything telling you you're running too slow, you don't have this kind of like, oh, I've got to run faster.
[1:06:00] SPEAKER_01: I've got to go against what I know I'm feeling when it comes to RPE and then lie about my RPE to myself and everyone around me.
[1:06:07] SPEAKER_01: So you actually start running five, six, seven out of ten and go, yeah, yeah, that was four out of ten.
[1:06:11] SPEAKER_01: Probably wasn't two out of ten, but it was it was just four out of ten.
[1:06:14] SPEAKER_01: So removing all data means you can't reflect on the sessions, means no one else is gonna see them, means they're not gonna go to Strava.
[1:06:21] SPEAKER_01: So there's no reason for you to lie to yourself and go too hard in any of these sessions.
[1:06:27] SPEAKER_01: It also gives you freedom to run hard or ride hard or swim hard where you might have been held back by your data.
[1:06:34] SPEAKER_01: Like, think about it on a bike session.
[1:06:37] SPEAKER_01: Power is kind of scary because you might go, like, okay, I'm gonna do five by five minute intervals on the bike, and then you look at your power number, you go, that's too high, I can't hold that in the first rep.
[1:06:47] SPEAKER_01: And you kind of pull it back a little bit, and then you get in this position where your easy stuff is too eat too hard and your hard stuff's not hard enough.
[1:06:53] SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, removing all data for two to four weeks is the biggest thing you can do, in my opinion, to get more in touch with your RPE.
[1:07:01] SPEAKER_01: And even if you already think you are in touch with your RPE, just to come out better on the other side as an athlete, I think it's an experiment everyone should play around with.
[1:07:08] SPEAKER_03: Love that.
[1:07:09] SPEAKER_01: Okay, my next one, Apo, also you agree with that opinion.
[1:07:12] SPEAKER_01: Paul Max says, it was interesting to hear the opinion on Thomas Rodriguez.
[1:07:18] SPEAKER_01: What are your opinions of pro triathletes on TUEs?
[1:07:21] SPEAKER_01: And has any of the panel ever had a TUE?
[1:07:24] SPEAKER_01: So I'll give my opinion, then I'll throw it to the professionals.
[1:07:26] SPEAKER_01: I think TUEs, 99% of the time, absolute bullshit.
[1:07:30] SPEAKER_01: I think there's people in our sport doping and cheating using TUEs.
[1:07:34] SPEAKER_01: I think the fact that they're not public is an embarrassment to professional sport.
[1:07:39] SPEAKER_01: I do not and have not ever heard an argument that convinces me that TUEs should remain private.
[1:07:46] SPEAKER_01: I've asked so many athletes, I've had athletes tell me who are using TUEs why, and I've heard the reason.
[1:07:52] SPEAKER_01: I've gone, that should be fucking public.
[1:07:55] SPEAKER_01: So sure, maybe there's a 0.1% case where it has some privacy stuff and you'd prefer it wasn't out there.
[1:08:02] SPEAKER_01: But for the benefit of the sport as a whole, TUE should be public.
[1:08:06] SPEAKER_01: They are a way people are cheating right now.
[1:08:08] SPEAKER_01: Trust me, it's happening.
[1:08:09] SPEAKER_01: Just just because you don't know about it because they're pro they're private, doesn't mean it's not happening.
[1:08:14] SPEAKER_00: It would be really awkward if one of us now said that we had a TUE, wouldn't it?
[1:08:18] SPEAKER_04: After that, I was nervous for you guys, the pros of the podcast.
[1:08:23] SPEAKER_04: I've I've never had a TUE.
[1:08:25] SPEAKER_04: I've um yeah, I can say that.
[1:08:27] SPEAKER_04: I've never had one.
[1:08:28] SPEAKER_04: And I do agree, Jack, I do think they should be public.
[1:08:31] SPEAKER_04: And there's some things that I feel like, yes, people can see that it like maybe it's an invasion of privacy.
[1:08:39] SPEAKER_04: Um, but I think as a public, like an athlete and a professional athlete, there's some things you have to forego, right?
[1:08:45] SPEAKER_04: And maybe some of that I don't know, I might get some pushback on this, but um you have to like there is a level of scrutiny that I think we need to be held to.
[1:08:56] SPEAKER_04: And um I think you're right, people do apply for TUEs to cheat, right?
[1:09:01] SPEAKER_04: Like people apply for TUEs for the benefit of performance, not for just general health.
[1:09:09] SPEAKER_04: And yeah, I think they should be public.
[1:09:11] SPEAKER_04: I've never had a TUE.
[1:09:12] SPEAKER_00: I think you're right.
[1:09:13] SPEAKER_00: I don't I can't think at the moment of a reason why you wouldn't um make it public.
[1:09:19] SPEAKER_00: Like you said, there's a there is a privacy element there, but we give up a lot of that anyway in doing what we do.
[1:09:25] SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, it's even things like inhalers and stuff.
[1:09:30] SPEAKER_00: Most of them you don't actually even need a TUE for because they're not of a certain strength.
[1:09:34] SPEAKER_00: There are only certain inhalers for like asthma that you would actually even need a TE for.
[1:09:39] SPEAKER_00: I think the only thing that's slightly different here is retrospective TUEs, and that's where you might have like um an accident or something where you're taken to hospital and then you're giving a load of medication that obviously you don't get a say in at the time because you might be unconscious or whatever, and then you have to apply for this TUE afterwards to say if you were tested shortly after you'd had this, then that would appear in your system.
[1:10:00] SPEAKER_00: And that might be a case where it's a bit sensitive and you possibly don't want people to know exactly what's been been going on there, but even so, like I still think you could probably make that that public.
[1:10:10] SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't really be something that probably needs to be covered in this sort of shroud of privacy.
[1:10:16] SPEAKER_00: But nope, I've I've never had a TUE and and like I agree with both Jack and Sam.
[1:10:21] SPEAKER_00: I can't really think of a reason why I wouldn't want it public for everyone.
[1:10:25] SPEAKER_02: I feel like the retroactive ones are like almost the most sketch.
[1:10:29] SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm thinking about your uh your freaking bronze medal compatriot over there, like oh, surprisingly gets a retroactive TUE in this best race of his life.
[1:10:38] SPEAKER_02: That was Henry Schumann like having the best like six months of his life where he's like getting retroactive TUE.
[1:10:43] SPEAKER_02: I don't even know the whole story, but it's just like a weird coincidence to me.
[1:10:46] SPEAKER_02: It's like I don't know what's going on.
[1:10:48] SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that a filing error?
[1:10:49] SPEAKER_02: Fuck I don't fucking know.
[1:10:51] SPEAKER_00: But it's in that I don't think it I I could be wrong, I don't think it was retroactive.
[1:10:56] SPEAKER_02: He was all sick before the race and then like somehow managed to get a medal, even though he was crazy sick, so whatever.
[1:11:02] SPEAKER_02: No, I'm just a bit conspiracy theorist, but it fuck medical privacy if you're a pro athlete.
[1:11:08] SPEAKER_02: Like that's all I gotta say.
[1:11:09] SPEAKER_02: Like, who cares?
[1:11:10] SPEAKER_02: Like that's just dumb.
[1:11:12] SPEAKER_01: Think about this year.
[1:11:14] SPEAKER_01: Is there a more embarrassing case than having to come out and say, hey, me and my boyfriend had unprotected sex, either vaginal or or oral.
[1:11:24] SPEAKER_01: We don't actually know.
[1:11:25] SPEAKER_01: Semen was exchanged, body bodily fluid was exchanged, and it led to me testing positive for a drug.
[1:11:31] SPEAKER_01: That is as bad as it gets.
[1:11:33] SPEAKER_01: That is as humiliating as it gets, but that's part of being a professional triathlete.
[1:11:37] SPEAKER_01: That is part of the game.
[1:11:38] SPEAKER_01: And at this stage, everyone's moved on.
[1:11:40] SPEAKER_01: Like, we're never gonna see a more embarrassing uh reason to for for a doping positive test than that.
[1:11:48] SPEAKER_01: It's never gonna happen.
[1:11:49] SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be the most embarrassing in the history of the sport.
[1:11:51] SPEAKER_01: And people have moved on, no one cares.
[1:11:53] SPEAKER_01: Everyone welcomes Imogen back into the sport.
[1:11:55] SPEAKER_01: So if that's the worst case scenario, I think like it kind of shows what are we hiding?
[1:12:02] SPEAKER_01: What do you got to hide?
[1:12:03] SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, you have a car crash or a bike crash, Vicky, and you get some human growth hormone to help repair a bone or whatever it is, and you get a TUE.
[1:12:10] SPEAKER_01: What do you got to hide?
[1:12:11] SPEAKER_01: Is it that you're still using it?
[1:12:13] SPEAKER_01: Or is it that you didn't actually need it?
[1:12:16] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you just you probably just don't want people speculating, being like, oh, they've come back from this crash and now they've got these amazing results.
[1:12:22] SPEAKER_00: But we know looking at their medical record, they were given this, this, this, and this.
[1:12:25] SPEAKER_00: And like, do you want that as like a cloud over your recovery from this awful incident?
[1:12:31] SPEAKER_00: I guess.
[1:12:32] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:12:32] SPEAKER_01: Well, just I just think have nothing to hide because if you have nothing to hide, the general public will realise like a one-time dose when you're in hospital has no real impact long term.
[1:12:41] SPEAKER_01: But if you're taking it for six months or 12 months, it has a huge impact on on chronic performance.
[1:12:47] SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, and performance in general.
[1:12:49] SPEAKER_00: So I think I think you're probably right.
[1:12:51] SPEAKER_00: I was I was just sort of clutching at straws as to what might be a reason, but yeah, I I don't really have one.
[1:12:57] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:12:57] SPEAKER_01: Anyway, doping sucks, and anything we can do to make the sport cleaner, I think it's a good thing.
[1:13:02] SPEAKER_01: And TUE's being public is is something that should happen.
[1:13:05] SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna happen, but it should.
[1:13:07] SPEAKER_00: LJ says, one of the reasons I love this podcast is how honest yet funny and light these conversations are.
[1:13:13] SPEAKER_00: Would love Vicky's take on this.
[1:13:15] SPEAKER_00: Cycle loss in female endurance athletes.
[1:13:18] SPEAKER_00: Normalized, misunderstood, or something we should be talking about more openly.
[1:13:22] SPEAKER_00: Have you had personal experience with it?
[1:13:24] SPEAKER_00: So absolutely shouldn't be normal, absolutely should be talked about more, and possibly, yes, it is also misunderstood because it's not a normal thing for you to lose your cycle because you're training hard or because you've gotten a little bit leaner.
[1:13:39] SPEAKER_00: And it absolutely is a warning sign that we should take into account and to really evaluate what you are doing in your training, in your eating, in your recovery, all of those sort of things.
[1:13:50] SPEAKER_00: So I think again, I touched upon it in the last comment.
[1:13:54] SPEAKER_00: Red S is something that we know more and more about now.
[1:13:56] SPEAKER_00: It's relative efficiency or relative energy deficiency in sports.
[1:14:02] SPEAKER_00: And a big factor of that is that you have a huge hormonal impact on both things like your estrogen, but also testosterone, things like thyroxin, and just so many widespread hormones are affected when you have enter this kind of red S.
[1:14:17] SPEAKER_00: And and as I said, having um losing your cycle is something that is just absolutely critical, like a big beacon warning sign saying you're doing something a little bit wrong here.
[1:14:29] SPEAKER_00: And what I would say is it's different for different people, okay?
[1:14:31] SPEAKER_00: So some people don't have a regular cycle anyway, and they never have done.
[1:14:34] SPEAKER_00: And so if that doesn't change, then that's one thing.
[1:14:37] SPEAKER_00: But if you are someone who has always had a pretty regular cycle and that changes, that's a warning sign.
[1:14:43] SPEAKER_00: It's not okay.
[1:14:44] SPEAKER_00: We used to, when I was probably, you know, 10-15 years younger, I think that it was okay.
[1:14:49] SPEAKER_00: It almost became like a, oh, well, it must just mean I'm training hard, I'm getting fit, I'm getting lean, I'm getting ready to race.
[1:14:55] SPEAKER_00: We now know that is not the case, and that nearly always it puts you on edge, it puts you on risk of injury, of illness, of underperformance, of getting bone issues, because as soon as you start losing that estrogen, the bone density crashes as well.
[1:15:09] SPEAKER_00: So basically, it isn't something that probably people talk about as much as they should do.
[1:15:14] SPEAKER_00: It is talked about way more than it was, and it is important.
[1:15:17] SPEAKER_02: All right, Greg Kay says Can we hear more Greg doubling down?
[1:15:22] SPEAKER_02: Love the attitude, Greg.
[1:15:23] SPEAKER_02: Such great listening.
[1:15:24] SPEAKER_02: Best part of the show.
[1:15:25] SPEAKER_02: Double down on doubling down.
[1:15:27] SPEAKER_02: I got a couple double downs for you.
[1:15:28] SPEAKER_02: Number one, Christian Blumenfeld, not an Iron Man world champion.
[1:15:32] SPEAKER_02: Eight hour Iron Man, not that hard.
[1:15:34] SPEAKER_00: And three hour marathon.
[1:15:36] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Sam nah Sam Appleton, Mickey Mouse wins.
[1:15:40] SPEAKER_02: Alright.
[1:15:43] SPEAKER_04: Was that from your burner account?
[1:15:45] SPEAKER_04: It is Greg K, so you haven't done a very good job at um creating a pseudonym there, Greg.
[1:15:51] SPEAKER_01: Writes his own comment and then reads it out.
[1:15:55] SPEAKER_04: Emily says, Ari Clare sitting up to inflate his power numbers seems like the most Ari thing ever.
[1:16:02] SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, for people that don't know, um Jack put Ari on blast last week for um supposedly Ari was supposed to do his TT efforts, obviously in the TT bars, but he sits up on the baseba knows it's at least a hundred watts more um sitting up on the basebar.
[1:16:19] SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, back to Emily's comment.
[1:16:21] SPEAKER_04: Especially since he's always preaching, train where you're at and not where you want to be.
[1:16:26] SPEAKER_04: Next he'll be telling us that he's the king of practice what you preach.
[1:16:31] SPEAKER_04: And you know, no lies detected here, Emily, and I think um Ari Clare needs to be taken to the tribunal and um his actions need to be reprimanded.
[1:16:42] SPEAKER_04: Ari, your next session on the road to Oceanside.
[1:16:45] SPEAKER_04: We need the numbers disclosed, whether you're in the T T position or sitting up on the baseball, please, for clarity.
[1:16:52] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was gonna plug it actually because I uh I think it's been a fun, a fun listen to.
[1:16:56] SPEAKER_02: So thanks for putting that together, Jack.
[1:16:58] SPEAKER_02: It was bullshit last week though.
[1:17:00] SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, because you're a cult leader.
[1:17:02] SPEAKER_04: But yeah, I just want to say that was so funny, dude.
[1:17:05] SPEAKER_04: I was cracking the fuck up.
[1:17:08] SPEAKER_04: Um we've also been put on blast, Greg.
[1:17:11] SPEAKER_04: I think we've been roped into this um you know, it's now a five-way um race for who's gonna win it at Oceanside out of Jackson, Ari, and um Justin, and now yourself and me are in that group as well.
[1:17:26] SPEAKER_04: So I hope your training's going well, mate.
[1:17:28] SPEAKER_01: I have an idea for the bet.
[1:17:30] SPEAKER_01: What about we we love tattoo bets on the triton hour?
[1:17:34] SPEAKER_01: What about if we just group you two in with those three, and whoever finishes last out of the five has to get pretender tattooed on them?
[1:17:42] SPEAKER_02: I actually might not be going, so we'll see.
[1:17:44] SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
[1:17:45] SPEAKER_02: I just thought of that.
[1:17:46] SPEAKER_02: This is hot off the press, just kidding.
[1:17:48] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure, I'll agree to it.
[1:17:49] SPEAKER_02: Whatever, dude.
[1:17:50] SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I don't have to get the actual tattoo anyway, as we all know.
[1:17:52] SPEAKER_02: So, all right, who's next comment?
[1:17:56] SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't think this is this person's um real name, by the way.
[1:18:00] SPEAKER_01: I actually think it might be taking the piss out of me, but Funner Urine, HHH, says the Greg vs age grouper challenge is one of Jack's better ideas in recent memory.
[1:18:11] SPEAKER_01: But why limit it to men aged 30 to 34?
[1:18:14] SPEAKER_01: What happens when Greg does his first Iron Man and someone like me, a 52-year-old man, beats him like a rented mule?
[1:18:21] SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't Greg have to pay for that too?
[1:18:23] SPEAKER_01: Well, Funner Eurine HHH, um, stupid name by the way, I agree in principle.
[1:18:30] SPEAKER_01: I just thought that if I expand it too much and say every time an age grouper beats Greg, he has to pay$100 to the group fund and then we do something special for a listener at the end of the year with that money, that Greg will actually go broke.
[1:18:42] SPEAKER_01: And I don't want him to go broke, I just want him to, you know, have to chip in a thousand bucks throughout the year or something.
[1:18:47] SPEAKER_01: So I'll put it up to Greg though.
[1:18:49] SPEAKER_01: If Greg wants to make it, that any time an age grouper beats him in 2026, he has to put a hundred extra bucks in that, and if 10 beat him in a race, he has to put a thousand bucks in there.
[1:18:58] SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm for it.
[1:18:59] SPEAKER_01: I'm for it.
[1:19:00] SPEAKER_01: But it's up to Greg.
[1:19:01] SPEAKER_02: You know, I think the age here is is a factor because I don't know if this guy's gonna like share his like testosterone that he gets subscribed from his doctor as a 52-year-old, because you know half the age group feel that 50 plus is on that T and not getting drug tested.
[1:19:15] SPEAKER_02: So if you want to share a little bit of that, because I'm an age group now, so I can do that anyway.
[1:19:20] SPEAKER_02: So uh yeah, I think that's uh that's an unfair advantage they have in that older category.
[1:19:25] SPEAKER_02: Alright, so last comment of the day.
[1:19:27] SPEAKER_02: Jay's Bland says, How about a new segment?
[1:19:30] SPEAKER_02: Listeners have to submit a training workout that they did that week, and you guys decide if it's shit or not.
[1:19:36] SPEAKER_02: No fence sitting.
[1:19:37] SPEAKER_02: So I've prepared um a s uh a workout that I saw someone do, and it was from it was from one of our own, Sam Appleton, and he ran fifteen point six miles at ten seconds slower than what I did my long run as.
[1:19:53] SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna rate that as shit, and I thought you were a better triathlete than I was, and you're getting your ass handed to you by an age grouper in training.
[1:20:00] SPEAKER_02: And we all know that training is the only thing that matters.
[1:20:03] SPEAKER_01: It's funny you say that, Greg, because I also prepared a little uh Strava activity that I saw during the week from one of our very own Vicky Holland.
[1:20:12] SPEAKER_03: I knew you were gonna do that.
[1:20:16] SPEAKER_03: Come on, man.
[1:20:17] SPEAKER_01: We know that Vicky has come back to training and has been shit.
[1:20:21] SPEAKER_01: She's been awful, she's been pathetic.
[1:20:24] SPEAKER_01: It's been embarrassing to have to witness it.
[1:20:26] SPEAKER_01: Let's be honest.
[1:20:27] SPEAKER_01: It's been embarrassing.
[1:20:28] SPEAKER_01: I've had secondhand embarrassment when Vicky uploads her rides.
[1:20:32] SPEAKER_01: This is a this is a lady who was 46 seconds of an Olympic gold medal, keep in mind.
[1:20:37] SPEAKER_01: And on January 24th, so only a couple of days ago, I thought I saw, I thought I saw light at the end of the tunnel.
[1:20:44] SPEAKER_01: Vicky uploads a one-hour ride, which for her is a long ride.
[1:20:48] SPEAKER_01: So she uploads a long ride at 161 average watts, which is 50 watts higher than her FTP.
[1:20:55] SPEAKER_01: And I thought, wow, Vicki's back, she's getting fitter.
[1:20:59] SPEAKER_01: All this 110 watt riding is actually helping her.
[1:21:02] SPEAKER_01: But then, yesterday, she jumps back up on the bike and she drops back to 40 minutes, so she does a 40-minute ride, she loses six watts, and I just think that Vicky that's shit.
[1:21:16] SPEAKER_01: That's shit.
[1:21:17] SPEAKER_01: There's nothing good about that.
[1:21:18] SPEAKER_01: 155 watts for 40 minutes.
[1:21:20] SPEAKER_01: Are you pedaling one-legged?
[1:21:22] SPEAKER_01: What's going on?
[1:21:24] SPEAKER_00: Okay, a few things to add in here.
[1:21:27] SPEAKER_00: Firstly, this is all your fault.
[1:21:29] SPEAKER_00: If it wasn't for you bullying me into getting Strava and telling me that I had to have Strava and have everything updated on Strava all year long, you wouldn't have to see it, okay?
[1:21:39] SPEAKER_00: And if you want, I can just block you and then you'll never have to see it, or I can just leave Strava, and then no one will have to see it ever again, and that's fine by me.
[1:21:49] SPEAKER_00: And the second thing to say is I did do that ride where, you know, big old jump in the FTP, thank you very much.
[1:21:56] SPEAKER_00: Um, and then at the end of it and the run that I did on the same day, two sessions on one day, which is again a novelty for me right now, I did think I was on the verge of an injury.
[1:22:05] SPEAKER_00: So today was just a much more relaxed spinning of the legs.
[1:22:10] SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
[1:22:11] SPEAKER_00: Not everything has to be hard, Jack.
[1:22:13] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[1:22:14] SPEAKER_00: There you go.
[1:22:15] SPEAKER_00: Those are my points.
[1:22:16] SPEAKER_01: Is anything ever going to be hard or is it just gonna be 40 minutes easy or it's for the rest of your life?
[1:22:19] SPEAKER_00: Jack, tell me, when was the last time you gave birth?
[1:22:24] SPEAKER_01: Or won Olympic medal.
[1:22:26] SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, no, the Rio Olympics didn't care.
[1:22:33] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I um I understand the hypocrisy of what I'm saying, Vicky.
[1:22:37] SPEAKER_01: I understand that uh you have been at a much higher level than I have ever or will ever be, and I will never achieve the greatness you've achieved.
[1:22:44] SPEAKER_01: But what you have to understand is that right now, current day, I'm better than you.
[1:22:50] SPEAKER_01: And given that that's the first time that's happened in my 30 years of life, I'm gonna take advantage of that.
[1:22:56] SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take the piss out of you because it's not gonna last long.
[1:22:59] SPEAKER_01: In six months' time, you'll be back to being better than me, and then I'm gonna be the shit athlete in the group.
[1:23:04] SPEAKER_01: And what what then?
[1:23:05] SPEAKER_01: I didn't take the most of the opportunity while I had it.
[1:23:07] SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take the most of the opportunity, Vicky.
[1:23:10] SPEAKER_00: I'll let you have it.
[1:23:10] SPEAKER_02: That's what we call a classic double down.
[1:23:12] SPEAKER_01: So we'll we appreciate that on the show, Jack.
[1:23:15] SPEAKER_01: And don't block me, Vicky.
[1:23:16] SPEAKER_01: I love saying your 111, 150, 148 watt rides on Strava.
[1:23:21] SPEAKER_01: They make my day.
[1:23:22] SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll see.
[1:23:23] SPEAKER_01: Another episode done.
[1:23:24] SPEAKER_01: Vicky, Apo, Greg, thank you.
[1:23:26] SPEAKER_01: Let's do it again next week.
[1:23:28] SPEAKER_04: Actually, quickly, before you sign off, I just do want to defend myself quickly.
[1:23:32] SPEAKER_04: I am also at altitude, Greg, so that's at least 30 seconds a mile.
[1:23:36] SPEAKER_04: He's been thinking about it in the table.
[1:23:38] SPEAKER_04: All right.
[1:23:40] SPEAKER_01: You're right.
[1:23:41] SPEAKER_01: You're right.
[1:23:42] SPEAKER_01: Well done, Apo.
[1:23:43] SPEAKER_01: You're very fit.
[1:23:44] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[1:23:45] SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys.
[1:23:46] SPEAKER_00: Bye now.

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