# Road To Ironman 70.3 Oceanside - Episode 6

An episode of [The Triathlon Hour](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1595443343), 11 Feb 2026, 1 h 20 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2640942/episodes/19697991-road-to-ironman-70-3-oceanside-episode-6.mp3

Kristian Blummenfelt has called out the Oceanside boys for their training methods and so the show starts off with their response. Then they go through their training weeks before putting Jackson’s coach on the hot seat.

## Transcript

[0:15] SPEAKER_06: And here comes the jet intro.
[0:25] SPEAKER_06: Alright, welcome back, Threshold Farmers.
[0:28] SPEAKER_06: We are on week six of The Road to Oceanside.
[0:30] SPEAKER_06: How good is life?
[0:31] SPEAKER_06: Thank you for having us back in your ears.
[0:33] SPEAKER_06: Last week we went through our training weeks, and then we had my coach, Lauren Goss, join us for the coach's hot seat.
[0:39] SPEAKER_06: And this week the format is going to be exactly the same, except we have Jackson Laundry's coach joining us for the last 30 minutes of the recording today, and Ari and I are gonna grill him on why Jackson doesn't train more.
[0:50] SPEAKER_06: So we're looking forward to welcoming James onto the show.
[0:53] SPEAKER_06: But uh speaking of Jackson, Jackson's here.
[0:55] SPEAKER_06: How are you doing, Jackson?
[0:56] SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm a lot better than I was feeling last week at this time.
[0:59] SPEAKER_00: So I'm I would say great.
[1:01] SPEAKER_00: I had a over five hour training today.
[1:03] SPEAKER_00: Everything went good, body felt good, and as we all know, if you're a pro tra athlete and training is going bad, your life is going bad, and everything is a disaster, and nobody wants to be around you.
[1:15] SPEAKER_02: You feel bad too.
[1:16] SPEAKER_00: And it's just not a fun time, but feeling good now.
[1:20] SPEAKER_00: Happy to be over the majority of what this illness was, and we'll get into it later.
[1:25] SPEAKER_00: Last week's training, though, numbers, not so hot.
[1:28] SPEAKER_06: Almost no showed the podcast today, is the rumor because Jackson's training was so bad.
[1:32] SPEAKER_06: So we'll we'll get into it.
[1:33] SPEAKER_06: And uh just like every other week, we also have the only pro male triathlete I know of who wears hoop earrings, Ari Klau.
[1:41] SPEAKER_06: Well, except for Jamie Riddle, but he can rock it.
[1:43] SPEAKER_06: He actually looks real good in those.
[1:44] SPEAKER_06: So, Ari, how are you doing?
[1:46] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I actually uh was going to bleach my hair like Slim Shady style, and then Jamie Riddle did that too, beat me to the punch.
[1:55] SPEAKER_02: So I might do leopard print hair though.
[1:57] SPEAKER_02: He hasn't done that yet, so just so he knows I'm not copying him.
[2:01] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, leopard print hair for Oceanside.
[2:04] SPEAKER_02: It's kind of what I'm thinking.
[2:05] SPEAKER_02: Oh god.
[2:05] SPEAKER_06: And moving on from that topic.
[2:09] SPEAKER_02: God, how bad would it be if you guys lost to a guy who has leopard print hair and poop earrings?
[2:14] SPEAKER_06: That was gonna be the if you had to lose if you lost the race, you were gonna have to do that, but you're just volunteering for it.
[2:19] SPEAKER_06: So all right, before we get into our training week, boys, uh, we've had some feedback from Jack this week.
[2:25] SPEAKER_06: Christian Blumenfeld slid into the trough on our DMs, and he said that 25 hours, he said, quote, tell your oceanside boys 25 hours a week is not enough.
[2:36] SPEAKER_06: That is low volume, it should be for adaptation weeks only, and we need to train harder.
[2:42] SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's talking to you guys.
[2:43] SPEAKER_00: I got pretty much the same message.
[2:44] SPEAKER_00: He sent me, he actually sent me an ad for a shirt that he got that an ad that was sent to him that said iHeart Canada.
[2:52] SPEAKER_00: So, and it said it's an early Valentine's gift for her.
[2:55] SPEAKER_00: So maybe he's got a new girlfriend who's Canadian.
[2:58] SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
[2:59] SPEAKER_00: Like interesting.
[3:00] SPEAKER_00: I didn't ask him about that.
[3:01] SPEAKER_00: I just laughed, laughing emoji did, so maybe we can get more information there.
[3:04] SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yeah, he said 25 hours a week isn't volume, that's adaptation week.
[3:09] SPEAKER_00: 21 is a week with sickness.
[3:12] SPEAKER_03: So that's that's Christian's Christian.
[3:15] SPEAKER_06: Well, I guess I had a week with sickness this week, but I'll I'll ask Christian how many hours of Zoom meetings he had last week.
[3:20] SPEAKER_06: That's my LinkedIn response.
[3:21] SPEAKER_06: But Aryan Jackson, what's your excuse?
[3:23] SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've been saying it for weeks.
[3:25] SPEAKER_02: 25 hours is not high volume.
[3:27] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
[3:28] SPEAKER_06: It is cool that Christian is in fact listening to our show.
[3:31] SPEAKER_06: Maybe I'll we'll see if he actually shows up to Oceanside now.
[3:34] SPEAKER_00: He might be scared.
[3:34] SPEAKER_00: You never know.
[3:36] SPEAKER_06: He's definitely not scared.
[3:37] SPEAKER_06: Chirpin.
[3:38] SPEAKER_06: Maybe that is his defense mechanism.
[3:39] SPEAKER_02: Well, he better look out for his tires this year.
[3:41] SPEAKER_06: Well, maybe we'll have Christian on Christian.
[3:43] SPEAKER_06: If you're listening, we'd love to have you as a guest on the show before Oceanside.
[3:46] SPEAKER_06: We can plan how we're gonna drop these guys, and you know, then you can outrun me and win the race, and it'll be fun, fun times.
[3:53] SPEAKER_06: Also, let's get into the training.
[3:54] SPEAKER_06: Jackson, tell us a little bit about uh your bike session of the week.
[3:58] SPEAKER_00: So I only did one actual bike workout this week.
[4:03] SPEAKER_00: I attempted another one early in the week, and it was just the first couple days of the week were almost a write-off.
[4:10] SPEAKER_00: Like I I did I started doing each workout and at least like got a little bit of frequency in, but the body just had nothing, and I just needed to recover the first few days.
[4:21] SPEAKER_00: Um but later in the week on Friday, my goal was to just get some intensity in, and I didn't really have I had this as planned in my workout was a uh Zwift race, part of the whatever the Zwift Watopia or Tour to Zwift that's going on right now, and it was supposed to be like a long warm-up and then like a set after the race, and I was like, just just join the race, see if I can find some intensity, see if I can get some energy, which is what I did, and I ended up doing the Zwift race, it was like 55 minutes, and I kind of felt crap at the beginning.
[4:56] SPEAKER_00: But on the hills, I actually found some energy and was pushing some threshold efforts uh on the hills, so there's like quite a few hills here, but the first kind of long and you were like seven watts per kilo after that parasite.
[5:10] SPEAKER_00: I heard, yeah.
[5:12] SPEAKER_00: I actually didn't reduce my weight, which would have helped me, but oh, defeats the whole purpose of the parasite.
[5:18] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you guys don't adjust your Zwift weight every day before you don't weigh myself before I get on.
[5:24] SPEAKER_00: The good thing about having it in kilograms is it's like you're not usually fluctuating more like a full kilogram, right?
[5:30] SPEAKER_00: Like you don't have to adjust it by one pound.
[5:33] SPEAKER_00: Uh but so some of the hills like 10-minute hill at 330, uh 7-minute hill at 373, 2-minute hill at 280, and then the last hill was a three-minute effort, 315 at 412 watts.
[5:49] SPEAKER_00: So I got some intensity, and I got my goal.
[5:51] SPEAKER_00: That was all I had.
[5:52] SPEAKER_00: It was only a two-hour ride.
[5:54] SPEAKER_00: I called that a win because my goal last week was to just find some intensity, get the frequency in, and see if I can maintain fitness until I got through the antiparasitic meds, which just made me feel absolutely terrible.
[6:07] SPEAKER_00: Like it just like robbed my energy, and it was tough because I could feel that my stomach was getting better at like processing foods, but then I just like it felt like I just had low testosterone all week, and I might have.
[6:21] SPEAKER_00: Like, I've had that before, I had that in 2019.
[6:24] SPEAKER_00: When I had the previous week of training pretty hard and not catching up on calories, it's possible that like my tea just got knocked down because I just did not take in enough calories.
[6:34] SPEAKER_00: So last week I just was I didn't want to push through that too much, and even though you know, for oceanside itself, maybe taking a risk and pushing through might have been worth it, but for the whole season, you don't want to put yourself in a hole.
[6:48] SPEAKER_00: So I think I played it right because today I finally felt solid.
[6:51] SPEAKER_00: But the bike workout, totally not impressive.
[6:54] SPEAKER_00: Uh, two-hour ride with basically a few hard hills, and that was it.
[6:57] SPEAKER_06: Well, glad you're on the other side of the sickness.
[6:58] SPEAKER_06: That sounds pretty horrible.
[7:00] SPEAKER_06: Something's killing the parasite, so I guess it was killing you a little bit.
[7:02] SPEAKER_06: Makes sense.
[7:03] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a little bit.
[7:04] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I hate being on medication when you like feel like crap.
[7:07] SPEAKER_00: It's not something I do often.
[7:09] SPEAKER_00: It's like if you absolutely need it, but um, you know.
[7:13] SPEAKER_00: I think I'm on the other side of all these bullshit illnesses I've had.
[7:15] SPEAKER_00: Like, I've had like four illnesses, and it's my own fault, probably for doing way too much, too much travel, too much like going to Mexico twice, and all kinds of stuff, just adding stress, and now I'm on the seven weeks of no fucking excuses.
[7:30] SPEAKER_00: Like, there's nothing.
[7:32] SPEAKER_00: Like, I barely have plans for like half a day on a Saturday here or there between now and Oceanside.
[7:38] SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna eat healthy, sleep well, hydrate well, train well, do it all over again every day.
[7:44] SPEAKER_00: So, this is the last week you're gonna hear me bitching about.
[7:48] SPEAKER_00: Oh, I didn't have a good week.
[7:49] SPEAKER_00: I'm not feeling good.
[7:50] SPEAKER_00: Like, it's my own fault.
[7:52] SPEAKER_00: Fuck it, it's done.
[7:53] SPEAKER_00: Moving on.
[7:54] SPEAKER_02: Alright, we'll hold them to it.
[7:55] SPEAKER_06: Do it.
[7:55] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, Jackson's Road to Oceanside starts on week seven.
[7:58] SPEAKER_06: You heard it here first.
[8:00] SPEAKER_02: Wait, what are we?
[8:01] SPEAKER_02: Week five.
[8:02] SPEAKER_02: No, this is episode six.
[8:03] SPEAKER_02: Oh shit.
[8:04] SPEAKER_02: Um, my bike session, so I uh I feel like did we all have terrible bike weeks?
[8:11] SPEAKER_02: Justin, it looks like your ride was pretty well, like you had a big long ride.
[8:14] SPEAKER_02: But this was bad.
[8:15] SPEAKER_02: It's kind of my own fault, but I wanted to share it anyway.
[8:19] SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe a word of caution.
[8:21] SPEAKER_02: So I bought uh 160 millimeter cranks uh a couple weeks ago.
[8:27] SPEAKER_06: After hearing that Jackson and I both used them?
[8:29] SPEAKER_02: Um no, no, it was actually before this.
[8:32] SPEAKER_02: No, it actually was before then.
[8:34] SPEAKER_02: Um I and I just hadn't put them on uh you know because I was in Texas and I needed I didn't have like the tool with me, but eventually I was like, fuck it, I'll just go to the bike shop.
[8:45] SPEAKER_02: So I put on the 160 mil cranks and didn't realize I didn't do enough research.
[8:51] SPEAKER_02: I thought you just put the shorter cranks on and boom, you you'll get a better bike fit or your watts are better.
[8:58] SPEAKER_02: Didn't realize you were supposed to raise your saddle by the same amount that you shortened your cranks.
[9:04] SPEAKER_02: So I basically just fucked with my bike fit and had like absolutely awful feeling TT bike workout.
[9:11] SPEAKER_02: So it was 10 it was 10 by 2 minutes on one minute off, and I did those, those were at like they were supposed to be pretty hard, uh, all in TT position.
[9:21] SPEAKER_02: Those were like 350 to 360, which like the power wasn't bad, but I was like, oh, this doesn't feel good, and it's like oh well I just switched the cranks, it's obviously gonna like take me some time to to just get used to the the difference in pedal stroke and whatever other differences are going on.
[9:39] SPEAKER_02: But honestly, the position besides from that felt pretty good, felt like pretty compact, and then it was a 40-minute sort of like solid effort um between that before another set of 10x2 minutes.
[9:52] SPEAKER_02: Um and I was pushing like 310 watts and it felt it felt so so horrible to just like keep pedaling the bike at all.
[10:03] SPEAKER_02: Um and I had to get off the bike after like 23 minutes, I want to say, because my glutes were so they were like on the verge of cramping.
[10:13] SPEAKER_02: Um so I literally got off the bike in the middle of an interval to like stretch, and then I finished it up, and I finished the last the last 17 minutes were at like 280 watts, just like dying.
[10:25] SPEAKER_02: Like I felt I just felt like I couldn't ride the bike anymore.
[10:28] SPEAKER_02: And then uh I did another 10x2 minutes, you know, kind of just tried to gather myself, and I did another 10x2 minutes at um these were like 330 to 340 watts, and these these were supposed to be more than the first 10x2 minutes.
[10:43] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I was not not that it's a waste of a bike ride.
[10:48] SPEAKER_02: I kind of messaged my coach and I was like, oh my god, that was so stupid, what a waste of a bike ride.
[10:52] SPEAKER_02: And he's like, No, you obviously still got like adaptation from it, even if the numbers don't look good.
[10:58] SPEAKER_02: Um but that was one of my only like real bike sessions of the week, and that was just a really, really uh silly, stupid mistake.
[11:09] SPEAKER_02: Um and then what I ended up doing is I raised my saddle by five millimeters, and then that also threw off my bike fit because I didn't because then you you know you need to like raise your front end a little bit, and then I decided I just fucking took the cranks off and put the 165s back on.
[11:25] SPEAKER_02: So you did it.
[11:26] SPEAKER_02: So I was just saying, I'm not I'm not doing this.
[11:29] SPEAKER_02: I'm not this is very unprofessional to do this without the help of a professional, and I'm like we're the experiment over.
[11:36] SPEAKER_02: Maybe we'll try again after Oceanside.
[11:38] SPEAKER_02: So that's my 4A and 160mm cranks, and uh we're done, we're done for a little while.
[11:44] SPEAKER_02: We'll try again later.
[11:46] SPEAKER_00: Just too much, just too much into Vathom moving his seat and his front end five millimeters each.
[11:53] SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't have the spacer.
[11:54] SPEAKER_02: I would have moved the front end too, but I didn't.
[11:55] SPEAKER_02: Again, I'm in Texas on a training camp, I didn't bring the spacers, and I was like, ah shit, should I go to the hardware store and buy like a five millimeter washer?
[12:02] SPEAKER_02: And I was just telling telling my coach all this, and he's like, dude, just like make the call, like stick with it, or just switch back.
[12:09] SPEAKER_02: And I was like, you know what?
[12:10] SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna switch back.
[12:11] SPEAKER_02: Like, this is this is stupid.
[12:13] SPEAKER_02: You know, like I'm fit, super tired, coming to the end of this training camp.
[12:17] SPEAKER_02: Not the time to be fucking around with your bike fit.
[12:19] SPEAKER_00: So if anybody out there wants to buy some 160mm cranks, uh already's got a set for sale, half price.
[12:24] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, no, that's paid good money for those.
[12:27] SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go, I I'm gonna do uh yeah, shut up, bro.
[12:31] SPEAKER_02: You know you DM'd me because you knew there's Sram Force.
[12:36] SPEAKER_02: I don't got that, I don't got that kind of money, dude.
[12:38] SPEAKER_02: Come on.
[12:39] SPEAKER_06: It's funny because I was I was messaging Jack during the week this week, and he coaches, you know, you, Apo, Greg, Jocelyn, a bunch of other pros, and and he said Greg is by far the best on the ground to start 2026, and usually that spot's been dominated by Ari, but Greg has overtaken him as Jack's best athlete at the moment.
[12:57] SPEAKER_06: And I feel like this session is like a classic example.
[13:01] SPEAKER_00: This is probably what tipped the scales.
[13:03] SPEAKER_00: Like Greg's been putting in the work, getting some good workouts in, and then Jack just sees that Ari fucked the dog on a workout because he didn't change his seat height, and he's like, Fuck you, Ari.
[13:12] SPEAKER_00: Greg's my number one now.
[13:14] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Greg's.
[13:15] SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that's those rankings are like performance rankings, power rankings, Jack's favorite, like best friend rankings.
[13:22] SPEAKER_02: Like, fuck.
[13:23] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know where I am on those.
[13:25] SPEAKER_02: I might be number four, unfortunately.
[13:26] SPEAKER_02: Shit.
[13:27] SPEAKER_06: That's funny.
[13:28] SPEAKER_06: Um, because I also messed with my TT fit a little bit.
[13:32] SPEAKER_06: It's been, you know, a long many, many months since I've done serious work on the TT bike, and I kind of just got into it a couple weeks ago.
[13:38] SPEAKER_06: And I did end up changing my saddle.
[13:41] SPEAKER_06: Um, and so when you really change anything, even if it's your front-end angle or the saddle brand, like you make kind of sometimes some super small tweaks.
[13:50] SPEAKER_06: So I've been making one millimeter micro adjustments and writing them in a note when I make the change, like and the date.
[13:57] SPEAKER_06: So I'm like up one millimeter, January 26th.
[13:59] SPEAKER_02: And then I've got to why why though?
[14:01] SPEAKER_06: Like just just uh just so like I can I don't really know.
[14:06] SPEAKER_06: Try to remember, I guess, like if something like why are you changing it though?
[14:10] SPEAKER_06: That's all why am I changing it?
[14:12] SPEAKER_06: Just because it feels weird.
[14:14] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, because it because I'll be like, oh, I don't know if I'm getting enough glute activation, or like maybe I'll be able to generate more power one millimeter higher, or like you know, like little things like that.
[14:23] SPEAKER_03: Oh, fair enough.
[14:24] SPEAKER_00: I'm just kinda always I'm always tinkering a little bit.
[14:26] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm tweaking shit all the time, like not all the time, but every like I've never had the exact same position season to season.
[14:33] SPEAKER_00: All like the one year I slam the saddle like degree angle way down, like tip the nose way down, um, and that really alleviated a lot off my back.
[14:44] SPEAKER_00: But I think a lot of that alleviation was actually because it effectively lowers the seat, and my seat was probably too high.
[14:50] SPEAKER_00: So this year I've come up.
[14:54] SPEAKER_00: I'm still at like a 10 degree saddle angle, but I was at one point I was at like 17.
[14:57] SPEAKER_00: It was ridiculous.
[14:58] SPEAKER_00: That's insane.
[14:59] SPEAKER_00: 10 is already crazy.
[15:01] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now now it's around 10, so then you have to compensate, and I dropped the seat a little bit, so I'm still finding like where's that sweet spot.
[15:09] SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, little little changes and apparently a lower seat's more arrow.
[15:14] SPEAKER_00: This is what people are saying.
[15:15] SPEAKER_00: So maybe Ari, you should just get used to that low seat and you'll save a few watts.
[15:19] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, dude, it was it was like all glutes.
[15:23] SPEAKER_02: It was bad.
[15:24] SPEAKER_02: It was bad.
[15:25] SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if it's the type of thing where if I just like said, okay, I'm riding this for the next month and I'm not touching it, that I would have I would just get used to it.
[15:33] SPEAKER_02: But I don't know, five millimeters it's quite a change, like, for someone who's been riding the same position for you know how I I like millions and millions of of pedal strokes and whatnot.
[15:45] SPEAKER_02: So it is, yeah.
[15:46] SPEAKER_06: I can tell change like two millimeters, no problem.
[15:48] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, oh yeah.
[15:49] SPEAKER_00: Two is even a lot, but you could try halfway.
[15:52] SPEAKER_00: You could I've heard I've even heard that when you go shorter cranks to like do half the difference with the seat, it I it never made a lot of sense to me, but um yeah, I'm not touching it.
[16:02] SPEAKER_02: I'm not I'm not touching it until after Oceanside, and I'm going, I'm I decided only ever doing stuff like that again, like with a bike fitter or during arrow testing.
[16:13] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, fair enough.
[16:14] SPEAKER_02: So that I know like I at least have a very definitive this is faster or this is more biomechanically efficient, or I have more power this way somehow, and then just like go through the adaptation process from there.
[16:26] SPEAKER_02: But this experience this week was like you shouldn't just make a random change in your bike fit uh a caveat, you know, one millimeter here, here or there.
[16:35] SPEAKER_02: Um you might fuck something up, or you know, you might lose the US Open Deon Fordino because you got quad cramps.
[16:42] SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
[16:43] SPEAKER_06: I also feel like you know, for our listeners out there, like early February, mid-February is the time to dial in your bike fit.
[16:49] SPEAKER_06: Like that's why I'm tweaking because I do not want to adjust anything after the end of February, probably hopefully for the rest of the year until I get a new bike or new parts.
[16:58] SPEAKER_06: But I do like to be locked in to the fit I want to be on for race season and then build all of my muscular adaptation and neck muscles and all the other stuff that go with being an arrow around that fit.
[17:08] SPEAKER_06: And so I feel like now's the time to like tweak things.
[17:11] SPEAKER_06: And then the other thing I'll say is like the indoor to outdoor fit is so different.
[17:14] SPEAKER_06: Like, I'll be kind of uncomfortable on the trainer and then I'll go outside and ride an arrow and actually have to watch where I'm going, or I'll shift a certain way to maintain my weight on the saddle, and then the fit will be great, and that's actually what matters.
[17:26] SPEAKER_06: And then I'm like, all right, well, I just gotta tough it out and make the indoor fit feel good because I know I feel great outside.
[17:30] SPEAKER_02: That's true.
[17:31] SPEAKER_06: So anyway, my it's a good segue into my week.
[17:34] SPEAKER_06: Um, I had a Christian Blumenfeld sick week, so trained 20 hours and uh had a cold and you know, kind of like had to make those decisions when you're sick of do I do the training or not?
[17:49] SPEAKER_06: And do I just nap?
[17:50] SPEAKER_06: And I was sleeping 12 hours and I missed all my morning swims, uh, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and like napped every day and yeah, kind of sucked.
[18:00] SPEAKER_06: Took a day or two off of work as well, but tried to get the training in, hid the files on Strava, as one does when they call and sick to work, but still goes on a bike ride.
[18:10] SPEAKER_06: And I did no bike sessions throughout the week.
[18:13] SPEAKER_06: I just did three easy rides totaling seven hours, and then on Saturday, I had a big day planned where I was gonna do four times 30 minutes at 340 to 350 watts.
[18:24] SPEAKER_06: So I was gonna try to do a five-hour ride with two hours at 70.3 effort, which is like I texted my coach, I'm like, that's kind of like impossible, right?
[18:32] SPEAKER_06: Like, isn't 70.3 effort like a two-hour effort in a two-hour ride, not necessarily a two hours in a five-hour ride, you know.
[18:41] SPEAKER_06: So anyway, it was supposed to be like a really hard kind of bury yourself day.
[18:46] SPEAKER_06: And I woke up and was like, all right, I'm just gonna ride like LT1 and do five hours.
[18:51] SPEAKER_06: And I didn't, I I went out solo on my TT bike thinking, okay, it might be a three-hour day, might be a four-hour day, wasn't sure.
[18:57] SPEAKER_06: And then I kind of went out and felt terrible for the first hour, but then started feeling really good, and the power was coming easily.
[19:03] SPEAKER_06: And if I honestly finished, and it was like one of my best rides to date, I think.
[19:07] SPEAKER_06: Um, and so I finished with 290 watts normalized for the ride, five and a half hours, and my average heart rate was 126, so it was like a solid like zone two day, and I did about three hours above 300 watts.
[19:20] SPEAKER_06: Um, I won't go through all the intervals, but it was like an hour at 300, and then two by 30 at 315, and then 30 more minutes at 320, and then 20 minutes at 360, and then 45 more minutes at 300 watts, and I finished pretty cooked, went right to bed, felt horrible.
[19:35] SPEAKER_06: I chugged Dayquill before and after the ride and just like got just toughed it out through the through the cold.
[19:40] SPEAKER_06: And I didn't have a fever or anything.
[19:42] SPEAKER_06: I just have been obviously like congested, you probably can hear, and like just basically on an IV drip of Dayquill, which like if you're not in the US, is just cold medicine basically getting me through not sneezing and stuff.
[19:55] SPEAKER_06: So it was not a failure of a week because I had one big five-hour ride, but no actual structured bike sessions this week.
[20:02] SPEAKER_02: The lesson here is no excuses when you get sick race week.
[20:06] SPEAKER_02: No, for sure.
[20:07] SPEAKER_02: No excuses.
[20:07] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[20:08] SPEAKER_02: You freshen up, you freshen up, and you take your night, your day quill and your night quill, and you can still pop off on a good five, five and a half.
[20:14] SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't know.
[20:15] SPEAKER_02: If it's a full Iron Man, like if you had to run a marathon after that, I imagine you probably would be cooked, but you can uh, you know, the bike legs will come around.
[20:22] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's funny.
[20:23] SPEAKER_06: I've tried to race sick twice.
[20:25] SPEAKER_06: One time I had a flu and I DNF'd off the bike, and still my only DNF, it was absolutely horrible.
[20:30] SPEAKER_06: And then the other time was last year in Peru, I had like a cold very similar to this, and I was able to still make the podium.
[20:37] SPEAKER_06: It was like definitely I was like 10% off, but I just gutted it through, took some cold medicine, and like my power was about 20-30 watts off, and my run pace was 10 seconds a mile off, but I was still able to finish the race and get the paycheck and make it worth it worth the trip.
[20:52] SPEAKER_06: And it was one of those races where I was on the fence about do I start, do I line up or not?
[20:57] SPEAKER_06: And sometimes trying is worth it.
[20:59] SPEAKER_06: And the same goes, I think, for training.
[21:01] SPEAKER_06: But it is a fine line you're walking because you know you it's easy to convince yourself, oh, it's only February, I should just take it easy, maybe take some anti-parasite meds and skip my training this week.
[21:13] SPEAKER_00: Oh god.
[21:14] SPEAKER_00: The mental state I was in last week, there's no way that that was the thing I wanted to be doing, I'll tell you that.
[21:21] SPEAKER_00: But I will say you can you can race sick, you can race sick for sure.
[21:26] SPEAKER_00: Um if it's if you don't have a flu, if or if you don't have a fever.
[21:30] SPEAKER_00: That's really the key.
[21:32] SPEAKER_00: And then also if you have congestion, if it's like upper respiratory, you're might be okay if it's in like your lungs.
[21:38] SPEAKER_00: That's where it's probably not great.
[21:40] SPEAKER_00: And that's what I've always found.
[21:41] SPEAKER_00: If I've had anything like nasal or whatever, it does not affect my race.
[21:45] SPEAKER_00: Um like I I was still getting over a cold in Indian Wells, and that was my best race of the year.
[21:50] SPEAKER_00: And but I had done it enough times to know that it wasn't gonna like I had gotten past the worst of it, and it was just lingering, and I was like, This is gonna be fine.
[21:57] SPEAKER_00: So it didn't it didn't affect me at all, but yeah.
[22:00] SPEAKER_00: If you have a flu even within a couple days of a race, it can be so hard to potentially still have a good day, but some people do, like some people pull it off.
[22:09] SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think that's a good model.
[22:11] SPEAKER_06: Like flu with fever, probably skip your training.
[22:14] SPEAKER_06: Cold with like lung or breathing issues, like probably back off the intensity.
[22:19] SPEAKER_06: And if you're like me and you just have a you're sneezing with a sniffles and you have a head cold, like clearly it wasn't that bad as long as I was sleeping.
[22:26] SPEAKER_06: So anyway, got through it.
[22:28] SPEAKER_06: I can definitely ride an Iron Man at 310 watts now.
[22:31] SPEAKER_06: I'm feeling confident.
[22:32] SPEAKER_06: How about the run, Jackson?
[22:35] SPEAKER_00: Well, run.
[22:36] SPEAKER_00: Uh I would actually say out of the three sports, it was the one that I did the best at.
[22:41] SPEAKER_00: Um maybe it was just luck.
[22:43] SPEAKER_02: Just no surprise there.
[22:45] SPEAKER_02: It's not luck.
[22:46] unknown: What?
[22:47] SPEAKER_02: It's the parasite.
[22:48] SPEAKER_02: That's the whole point of having the parasite.
[22:49] SPEAKER_02: So you run faster.
[22:51] SPEAKER_00: So you lose weight and you run faster.
[22:53] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[22:54] SPEAKER_02: Trigger warning.
[22:55] SPEAKER_00: I had this was this was my workout Sunday, so by this point I was starting to feel like the actual parasite itself was probably gone.
[23:04] SPEAKER_00: Um and it was about an hour 25 minute run or hour 20.
[23:09] SPEAKER_00: It was 19k.
[23:11] SPEAKER_00: All week, all my easy stuff.
[23:12] SPEAKER_00: I just ran extra easy.
[23:14] SPEAKER_00: I tried to just like save it for the intervals, try to do something decent on the intervals.
[23:18] SPEAKER_00: Uh so this was four by eight minutes tempo, two minutes easy, and I went out pretty slow.
[23:26] SPEAKER_00: I wanted to throw myself a softball so I could actually, you know, get a hit rather than striking out, as they say.
[23:33] SPEAKER_00: Justin used to play baseball.
[23:34] SPEAKER_00: He knows.
[23:34] SPEAKER_00: Wow, big baseball reference from the Canadian.
[23:37] SPEAKER_00: Uh so 10.5 miles an hour for the first rep, 10.6 for the second, 10.8 for the third, 10.9 for the fourth.
[23:46] SPEAKER_00: So it's like an average speed of just under 330 per K for the workout.
[23:50] SPEAKER_00: Um heart rate was Yeah, like below threshold, maybe getting close, like up to the lower end of threshold on the the later reps, the last two.
[24:00] SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean, I just didn't have much to push myself hard.
[24:04] SPEAKER_00: So you you gotta there's two ways you could do this.
[24:07] SPEAKER_00: I could either okay, run at like 70.3 pace and do less time, like do four minute or something, or just do the workout for what you can do on the day.
[24:18] SPEAKER_00: And I decided for that option this time around.
[24:22] SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, I mean, it's fine.
[24:24] SPEAKER_00: I got through it.
[24:24] SPEAKER_00: I was happy to get a workout in and you know, call it a success.
[24:28] SPEAKER_00: Pace wise, those are gonna need to be a lot faster at the same effort um by the time the race comes around.
[24:36] SPEAKER_00: But I've got seven weeks of no excuses for that, so that should be doable.
[24:40] SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's in my own basement.
[24:43] SPEAKER_00: Um the the old woodway, so no excuses of burning out the motor or not going fast enough.
[24:50] SPEAKER_00: Although any freaking treadmill goes up to 10.9, so I would have been totally fine in uh Ari's world as well.
[24:57] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, even in my tiny little uh foldable treadmill I have in my garage goes up to 18k an hour.
[25:02] SPEAKER_02: Although I haven't actually tested it, so yeah, I don't know.
[25:06] SPEAKER_02: God, this is such a low energy week so far.
[25:09] SPEAKER_02: Everybody's like sick sick or getting over a parasite.
[25:13] SPEAKER_02: I didn't I mean my run workout wasn't even it was still pretty good, but I kind of blew up really bad at the end, and I and uh it came like I s absolutely sputtered to the end of this week.
[25:27] SPEAKER_02: Uh just like feeling so tired to end this training camp.
[25:31] SPEAKER_02: And um yeah, I don't know.
[25:33] SPEAKER_02: Maybe last weekend with the 10 mile race came back to bite me at a tiny bit, like that fatigue just hit me.
[25:38] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, ruined your season.
[25:39] SPEAKER_02: Hit me later in the week and ruined my season.
[25:41] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I I mean I was supposed to have a huge ride Saturday, and it did not end up being a huge ride at all.
[25:48] SPEAKER_02: I barely made it through through any of it, any of the planned intensity.
[25:52] SPEAKER_02: Are you eating enough?
[25:54] SPEAKER_02: Sleeping enough?
[25:55] SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, yeah.
[25:56] SPEAKER_02: I mean, I probably I don't know.
[25:59] SPEAKER_02: Did you get a parasite?
[26:00] SPEAKER_02: No, I don't think so.
[26:01] SPEAKER_02: I think I just I had a probably the best uh five-ish, six, maybe the in like biggest training load sort of weeks of training I've ever strung together.
[26:12] SPEAKER_02: Like, not in terms of like I pushed huge power, but definitely the big volume uh frequency of intensity was higher than I've done.
[26:23] SPEAKER_02: So I think it make it made sense to me that I just got really tired.
[26:28] SPEAKER_02: Um and I'm still I was still swimming, you know, eight times a week, and all of these swims were pretty hard.
[26:33] SPEAKER_02: Like there weren't there were no l like easy aerobic swims on this camp really at all.
[26:40] SPEAKER_02: So it's yeah, it's not a surprise to me.
[26:42] SPEAKER_02: Anyway, my Sunday long run, you know, it was like 31k, so just under 20 miles, and it contained an interval session of four by four K with two minutes walk slash stop rest.
[26:56] SPEAKER_02: And in my head, I was like, okay, this is basically the last thing for this entire training camp slash like training block.
[27:04] SPEAKER_02: Once I finish this, we're going into really prep for Dallas and Oceanside mode.
[27:10] SPEAKER_02: So I have 16k of intervals between me and basically the end of this training block.
[27:14] SPEAKER_02: And then I had like a a long, easy ride afterwards, but but no intensity on that, so I wasn't as worried about it.
[27:20] SPEAKER_02: But um yeah, so the first one I went uh I don't have the splits in front of me, but it was 1213, 1216, and 1213.
[27:32] SPEAKER_02: So quite quite good paces for the first three, but I could feel like I was getting kind of nauseous after rep two, and just I don't know, I just I wanted to stop.
[27:45] SPEAKER_02: And it's not really like me to want to stop a run workout, especially when I'm already running fast, but I just felt horrible.
[27:51] SPEAKER_02: And then I started the fourth one, and you're kind of like, come on, come on, like this is the last interval of the last day of training camp, like of the training block, like let's go, and I just did not have it.
[28:02] SPEAKER_02: So I ran, I went through 3K in 920, so it's like just under 307, which is still quite good.
[28:08] SPEAKER_02: I looked at my watch and I was like, Alright, I'm still like I'm I'm like running really well.
[28:12] SPEAKER_02: Like, this is low-key still a banger workout, even though I'm kind of feeling like shit.
[28:16] SPEAKER_02: And then I blew up to a 322 last K for uh for uh thir 13 or no 12.
[28:29] SPEAKER_00: So annoying, dude.
[28:32] SPEAKER_00: 15k is the work and he fucks one K up.
[28:35] SPEAKER_02: I'm not comparing myself to anyone else.
[28:37] SPEAKER_02: I'm comparing myself to myself, and the fact of the matter is that's a big percentage drop-off.
[28:42] SPEAKER_00: That's not a big like the way he has it written here in our notes is four by four K, big blow up, sad face.
[28:49] SPEAKER_00: He ran 15 of the 16k, like flawlessly, and then the last K, okay, 20 seconds per K, or no, not even 15 seconds per K seconds per K slower.
[28:59] SPEAKER_00: One of the K.
[29:00] SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, I'm gonna pose a qu a question to uh here Jackson, you pretend to be Christian Blumenfeld, because we know he's listening.
[29:08] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[29:08] SPEAKER_02: Christian, you had four by four K and um you did 3.75 of the reps pretty good, and then you ran a 322 last K.
[29:17] SPEAKER_02: How are you feeling about that?
[29:18] SPEAKER_00: Um I well for one thing, Christian Blumenfeld wouldn't do that.
[29:22] SPEAKER_02: So it's it's just okay.
[29:26] SPEAKER_02: Yes, we have our answer.
[29:27] SPEAKER_02: It's so bad.
[29:28] SPEAKER_00: He probably wouldn't uh uh no, I'm Christian, so uh oh god, I forget what the accent's like.
[29:34] SPEAKER_02: Uh that's uh last kilometer.
[29:38] SPEAKER_00: The buddy wasn't firing today.
[29:40] SPEAKER_00: It was not good, not good.
[29:42] SPEAKER_02: Okay, so yeah, not not good.
[29:44] SPEAKER_02: That's the conclusion.
[29:45] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not good, but I that's what Christian would say.
[29:47] SPEAKER_02: I mean, look, it was still like if you take the average of the whole workout, it's low-key, still one of the best workouts I've put together the entire block.
[29:55] SPEAKER_06: It's four by four K above and faster than your 70.3 pace.
[29:59] SPEAKER_06: I mean, that's a freaking hard work.
[30:00] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it was like threshold, it's like true, true, true threshold work, and like 4Ks at threshold under fatigue are low-key brutal.
[30:09] SPEAKER_02: Um but yeah, I mean, just uh it's good workout, but just didn't quite tilling the wheat and the the farmer's scythe like doled.
[30:19] SPEAKER_00: I was expecting like last rep like first K 310, second K330, third K stopped.
[30:26] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, me too.
[30:27] SPEAKER_00: Well had to stop to walk.
[30:28] SPEAKER_06: That's a big blow up.
[30:29] SPEAKER_06: Big blow up is you you made it through two of the four reps and then you walked and I mean contrasting that to the bike workout is like the bike workout, you were off like you had to stop, you were off.
[30:41] SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously there was a reason for that, but like I think you just hold yourself to an extremely high standard on the run for understandable reasons, and like you you're way harder on yourself.
[30:52] SPEAKER_00: Like if you did a swim like that, you'd have been like, yeah, it was an awesome swim.
[30:55] SPEAKER_00: I only slowed down a little bit on the last part of the last exactly.
[30:59] SPEAKER_00: So, but you know what?
[31:00] SPEAKER_00: That's just it.
[31:01] SPEAKER_00: Everybody has their their like I'm kind of the same on the bike.
[31:04] SPEAKER_00: Like, I hardly ever screw up a bike workout and even him off by a few watts.
[31:09] SPEAKER_00: And if I am, I'm like, man, I was off.
[31:11] SPEAKER_00: And then you look at it and you're like, oh, I was actually off by like 10 watts.
[31:13] SPEAKER_00: Like, who cares?
[31:14] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it's just yeah, the expectations we all have of ourselves of of certain things.
[31:20] SPEAKER_02: Um, and this one, it wasn't even I don't know, I wasn't even like that broken up about it.
[31:26] SPEAKER_02: It was kind of it was a painful last K, but I was more so like I just didn't feel good at all.
[31:32] SPEAKER_02: Just the feeling of it.
[31:33] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I mean, and clearly your body was like saying something.
[31:36] SPEAKER_06: Like you you usually like rip these workouts and you're like, yeah, I crushed it, I felt great, I love running, and you're like, yeah, it's nauseous, you're not feeling good, you're coming off of huge weeks and a 10-mile race, you're still getting after it.
[31:48] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it's one of those things where aside from the last K, like I think I probably would have been able to just run the fourth one the same as the first three.
[31:56] SPEAKER_02: But if I was feeling great, I don't know if I would have gone too much quicker.
[32:01] SPEAKER_02: You know?
[32:02] SPEAKER_02: Like it wasn't like, oh, I'm so fatigued, I'm running so slow.
[32:06] SPEAKER_02: It was like pretty normal pace, just feeling bad, until like the endurance just faded a little bit.
[32:13] SPEAKER_02: You know?
[32:14] SPEAKER_02: Like it wasn't like I was completely off from the beginning pace-wise.
[32:17] SPEAKER_02: It was just kind of the sensations.
[32:19] SPEAKER_02: So it kind of tells you like you can still run really well when you don't feel good.
[32:23] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[32:24] SPEAKER_02: And you can swim and bike well when you don't feel good.
[32:26] SPEAKER_00: That's a good point of like a topic of conversation is what does feeling good mean?
[32:32] SPEAKER_00: How important is it?
[32:34] SPEAKER_00: Like, it's it's totally it's I've had times where I feel so bad to start a workout, and then I have a great workout, and the opposite can happen.
[32:41] SPEAKER_00: It's it's so like important, I think, to just go and just tr to start the set and just go for it, assuming you're feeling fine.
[32:50] SPEAKER_00: Um outside of obviously if you're like really sick or something, but assuming that's gonna go great and just do your best.
[32:57] SPEAKER_00: Um, but I've definitely like people have different ranges on that.
[33:00] SPEAKER_00: Like some people will just can work out, even pros.
[33:04] SPEAKER_00: Like, some some will be like, eh, I'm not feeling good, I'll move it to another day, whatever.
[33:08] SPEAKER_00: But I'm kind of on the the side of just go for it and do what you can, and uh yeah, it more often than not, you'll feel better than you think, especially as I I find when I'm deep into a block, it can take me a lot longer to warm up.
[33:20] SPEAKER_06: Do you guys get that sensation?
[33:21] SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah.
[33:22] SPEAKER_02: Oh, big time.
[33:23] SPEAKER_06: Like sometimes, like the first two reps when I'm under fatigue are are much worse, but then I finished the workout way stronger.
[33:32] SPEAKER_06: Like my long ride this weekend was a good example.
[33:33] SPEAKER_06: Like 300 watts in the second hour of that ride, perceived effort was identical to 350 watts two hours later in my workout.
[33:43] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know what the physiology of it is, but yeah, it's that's like one of the hallmarks for me of being fresh is like I basically don't need a warm-up to go to just like start the session, and vice versa, being super fatigued.
[33:56] SPEAKER_02: Anyway, what what were you up to?
[33:58] SPEAKER_02: Not threshold farming.
[34:00] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, well, I uh I don't know if you saw my Strabo this week.
[34:03] SPEAKER_06: Follow us on Strabo if you're listening, because that's where you get the real insight into all of these training sessions.
[34:08] SPEAKER_06: But I titled it just say no to threshold farming and got a bunch of likes.
[34:15] SPEAKER_06: Um the workout was 20 minutes LT1, which is like you know, upper aerobic zone two, and then four times 400 on the track hard, but not max effort, and then 20 more minutes of LT1.
[34:31] SPEAKER_06: So, you know, I kind of it was a cheeky title, but it really was.
[34:34] SPEAKER_06: My coach and I have been avoiding running at threshold.
[34:37] SPEAKER_06: We're trying to work on the upper end of speed or VO2 max work to improve turnover and just like running economics, and then kind of keeping the rest at a more conservative, like tempo-e LT1 steady pace.
[34:50] SPEAKER_06: And so I did this workout in the slow shoes again, the Brooks Glissey Max.
[34:54] SPEAKER_06: Have not done really much work in carbons yet.
[34:57] SPEAKER_06: Um, and I did 20 minutes.
[35:01] SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm reading the comments on those.
[35:04] SPEAKER_06: What are they?
[35:05] SPEAKER_06: All right, I didn't even think I looked at them.
[35:07] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we'll tell them after.
[35:08] SPEAKER_02: I'll go, I'll go after.
[35:09] SPEAKER_06: All right, well, I did 20 minutes, uh, you know, 625 per mile, and then I felt pretty terrible um going into this workout.
[35:15] SPEAKER_06: But it was one of those workouts where I was thinking about like, okay, do I do I push through?
[35:20] SPEAKER_06: Do I pull the plug?
[35:21] SPEAKER_06: And I was kind of like one of those, I'm like, all right, I'm committed, I've just got to get into this, I gotta do the work on the run.
[35:25] SPEAKER_06: I can't just like be skipping the run workouts, gotta execute and push through a little bit of fatigue on this one, um, which I'm really hesitant to do on the run, but I kind of like trusted the base that I've built and obviously glad I did.
[35:38] SPEAKER_06: And then I did four 400s on the track holding 73.
[35:42] SPEAKER_06: Um, probably like eight out of 10 effort.
[35:44] SPEAKER_06: I was happy with those shoes on one minute rest.
[35:47] SPEAKER_06: Brooks glissies.
[35:48] SPEAKER_02: Damn, still on the glissies.
[35:50] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and then 20 more minutes at LT1 on the track, which was definitely harder than the first 20 minutes.
[35:54] SPEAKER_06: My legs were pretty cooked.
[35:56] SPEAKER_06: Um and it ended up being like a 13-mile run.
[35:59] SPEAKER_06: But it was a really good run week.
[36:00] SPEAKER_06: I ran 47 miles this week.
[36:02] SPEAKER_06: Um so my biggest run week in a long time.
[36:07] SPEAKER_06: I don't know, maybe ever?
[36:09] SPEAKER_06: Very long time.
[36:11] SPEAKER_06: Um, and had another really nice 15-mile long run yesterday with uh average pace under seven-minute pace and average heart rate of 120.
[36:19] SPEAKER_06: So, like seeing numbers I've never seen before on the like aerobic base side of things for the run.
[36:24] SPEAKER_00: That's a big jump in rerun mileage, right?
[36:27] SPEAKER_06: Like you were mostly under 40 for the rest of the year.
[36:30] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're running in the 30s, low 30s, I thought.
[36:32] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it actually yesterday was supposed to be a three hour ride with a 45 minute run, and I I didn't have time um due to just like some personal stuff, and uh ended up basically switching it to a normal long run.
[36:46] SPEAKER_06: And that's like the only reason I ended up at that mileage.
[36:49] SPEAKER_06: Um but because I only trained 20 hours a week or 20 hours last week and I did like no bike intensity, it didn't it didn't feel like a jump at all to me.
[36:58] SPEAKER_06: Um but it'll be something to be somewhat mindful of.
[37:02] SPEAKER_06: I don't think it's like the new normal, it wasn't necessarily like an in in uh in a very intentional like jump in mileage.
[37:09] SPEAKER_02: Okay, I want to go, I wanna go through these comments real quick because they're funny.
[37:13] SPEAKER_02: So uh there's four comments.
[37:15] SPEAKER_02: First one, so the it the title is Say No, All Caps to Threshold Farming.
[37:22] SPEAKER_02: Anti-Threshold Farmers Unite in the description.
[37:24] SPEAKER_02: Comments.
[37:25] SPEAKER_02: First guy, Rose, parentheses, Rob X, who I'm 99% certain I ran with this sorry, walked with this guy on course at Iron Man Arizona, and he told me that uh he knew you, Justin, that you guys were boys.
[37:38] SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
[37:39] SPEAKER_02: Am I right?
[37:39] SPEAKER_02: Rob, Rob never heard of threshold farming, that's a fucking lie.
[37:44] SPEAKER_02: Next comment, Colin McMillan, Ari is a threshold farming Chad, not glazing.
[37:50] SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Colin.
[37:51] SPEAKER_02: Third, Josh Gutman, you don't have to farm threshold, but Ari might plow your field with a mile to go at Oceanside if you don't.
[38:01] SPEAKER_02: And then the fourth comment, which is probably the most helpful, come on, man, don't fight it.
[38:05] SPEAKER_02: Just grab your damn scythe and get a few more threshold bushels.
[38:09] SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm talking about, Chris Chambers.
[38:12] SPEAKER_02: It's a movement.
[38:13] SPEAKER_02: Threshold farming is a movement.
[38:15] SPEAKER_06: Well, question for you guys.
[38:16] SPEAKER_06: We're seven weeks out from motion side.
[38:18] SPEAKER_06: You guys know my training better than anybody.
[38:21] SPEAKER_06: I have 20 healthy weeks under my belt with a bunch of LT1 work and you know, maybe six weeks of good speed work with a small number of hard reps at 200 and 400 meters.
[38:33] SPEAKER_06: Uh what's next?
[38:34] SPEAKER_06: Do I start just ripping threshold miles at 320 per K and start to extend all the way to 4x4k before oceanside?
[38:40] SPEAKER_06: It's a long season, I have a history of stress reactions, I seem like I'm getting faster and progressing.
[38:45] SPEAKER_06: What would you guys do if you were my coach?
[38:47] SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I've got strong thoughts on this, Jackson.
[38:50] SPEAKER_00: I'd keep doing what you're doing right now and then sort of lean into a bit of a threshold phase in the last like few weeks.
[38:59] SPEAKER_00: Like I don't think you need to I think you need to trust like trust this process because yeah, it it threshold is I mean some people say it's less likely for injury because you're running slower, but it's not less likely than four by four hundred and and then a bunch of time at like quite a bit slower.
[39:16] SPEAKER_00: So I would say to you you'd want to do some leading into the race because that's like your race pace, right?
[39:20] SPEAKER_00: Or a little bit above.
[39:21] SPEAKER_00: You want to be efficient at a little bit above race pace, and then you get into the race and you're like, okay, I've got this.
[39:26] SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, I think don't don't just jump into jump on the bandwagon like your plan is is working right now.
[39:34] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I I'm in I'm in total, total agreement.
[39:36] SPEAKER_02: I feel like philosophically, what you want to do with training just across a long period of time, swim, bike, run, or put whatever discipline you're doing, speed, skating, ultra running, I don't know, is basically slowly ramp up your training load.
[39:56] SPEAKER_02: Like basically the amount of TSS you're doing not maybe not week by week, month by month, year, year by year.
[40:03] SPEAKER_02: And so the whole thing with threshold farming is like that's probably the number one way, uh, especially on the bike and run, to just get as much TSS as possible, right?
[40:16] SPEAKER_02: Because if you're doing like shitloads of of VO2 and fast track reps, yeah, that's like a decent amount of training load, but there's high risk with it.
[40:24] SPEAKER_02: You can't do it all the time.
[40:25] SPEAKER_02: So that's where I mean, that's where the term you know the farming came from.
[40:29] SPEAKER_02: It's like you can just get out there and and do so much threshold at a relatively low risk compared to everything else.
[40:37] SPEAKER_02: So no, like you should take the next two years to slowly, slowly what to like slowly build up your weekly training load on the run.
[40:46] SPEAKER_02: So that can start with aerobic volume, a little bit of LT1, a c a couple 400s here and there, and then you bump up the LT1, and then at a certain point you're like, okay, I'm able to handle this load pretty easily.
[40:58] SPEAKER_02: We need to increase it.
[41:00] SPEAKER_02: Let's add in some more threshold, and then before you know it, two years from now, you're doing fucking 30k of threshold a week.
[41:06] SPEAKER_02: And like, that's what you have to do to get a stimulus, because that's just the level that your training load is at.
[41:11] SPEAKER_02: You know, that that's the the philosophy of it anyway.
[41:13] SPEAKER_02: So no, you just keep it's the you gotta go back to basics, it's specific adaptation to impose demand and uh progressive overload.
[41:22] SPEAKER_02: So you're doing that, you're doing that perfectly.
[41:24] SPEAKER_06: So a lot of buzzwords from Ari there.
[41:26] SPEAKER_06: I like Jackson's answer better.
[41:28] SPEAKER_02: They know to threshold.
[41:29] SPEAKER_06: I like Jackson's answer better.
[41:31] SPEAKER_06: Keep doing what I'm doing, do a couple weeks of threshold.
[41:33] SPEAKER_06: That sounds right.
[41:34] SPEAKER_06: Thank you.
[41:34] SPEAKER_02: I like Ari's.
[41:35] SPEAKER_02: I like it too.
[41:36] SPEAKER_02: I had to give the the the cult answer.
[41:38] SPEAKER_05: I just had to listen to progressive overload and stimul stimulate the stimulate the what?
[41:45] SPEAKER_05: I don't know, whatever you said.
[41:47] SPEAKER_00: Swim, swim in one uh swim week in one sentence.
[41:51] SPEAKER_00: Oh god.
[41:53] SPEAKER_00: Just pitiful.
[41:54] SPEAKER_00: Just absolutely pitiful.
[41:55] SPEAKER_00: Pitiful.
[41:56] SPEAKER_06: Alright, Ari, what do you got?
[41:58] SPEAKER_02: Um I was tired and uh swam kind of slow.
[42:03] SPEAKER_06: Alright.
[42:04] SPEAKER_06: I swam 2150s under 110 pace.
[42:10] SPEAKER_06: Long horse meters.
[42:11] SPEAKER_06: He had to describe his workout.
[42:13] SPEAKER_06: I had to drop the workout in.
[42:15] SPEAKER_06: Oh god.
[42:16] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[42:16] SPEAKER_00: That's that's all right.
[42:17] SPEAKER_06: Uh so let's wrap up our training totals and difficulty, quick, quick fire, and then we are gonna welcome Jackson's coach on to the show.
[42:24] SPEAKER_00: Alright, 16 hours and 50 minutes.
[42:26] SPEAKER_00: This I'm gonna take a lot of heat for this.
[42:28] SPEAKER_00: It's it's fine.
[42:28] SPEAKER_00: I'm glad this section we don't have much time for.
[42:31] SPEAKER_00: Three out of ten difficulty.
[42:33] SPEAKER_00: Like, it was supposed to be a pretty hard week.
[42:35] SPEAKER_00: I just couldn't, I just couldn't do it.
[42:37] SPEAKER_00: Couldn't do it.
[42:38] SPEAKER_00: It is what it is, I've talked about it enough.
[42:39] SPEAKER_00: Two out of ten execution.
[42:41] SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's nothing more to say.
[42:43] SPEAKER_00: Like, it is that's it.
[42:45] SPEAKER_02: Uh 27 and a half hours, eight out of ten difficulty.
[42:49] SPEAKER_02: It was quite difficult, and honestly, I'm gonna change it to a three out of ten execution.
[42:54] SPEAKER_02: Um execution.
[42:55] SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
[42:56] SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna keep it actually at a four.
[42:57] SPEAKER_02: It could have been worse, but it was not great.
[42:59] SPEAKER_06: Well, you meet the Christian Blumenfeld bar for volume, but you're at the bottom of Jack Kelly's coaching totem pulse.
[43:04] SPEAKER_02: I was I was in between adaptation week and good volume week, according to Christian.
[43:09] SPEAKER_06: I trained 20 hours, it was a sick week.
[43:12] SPEAKER_06: 6 out of 10 difficulty with a 6 out of 10 execution, uh, probably 5 out of 10 execution.
[43:17] SPEAKER_06: I was sick.
[43:17] SPEAKER_06: It was not great.
[43:18] SPEAKER_06: Shortened and messed up a bunch of workouts, but had one good run and one good swim and one good bike to save my week.
[43:25] SPEAKER_06: So we're maintaining, not going backwards, at least.
[43:29] SPEAKER_06: And with that, that wraps us up our normal show.
[43:32] SPEAKER_06: Um, for our special feature, the last few minutes of the show, we are gonna welcome on Jackson's coach to the show, where we are going to hit him with a bunch of questions about the approach and uh how he works with Jackson and why he doesn't train more.
[43:47] SPEAKER_06: So, Jackson, why don't you introduce your coach here?
[43:49] SPEAKER_06: Welcome to the show, James.
[43:51] SPEAKER_01: Hey, thanks, Champs.
[43:52] SPEAKER_01: Happy to be here.
[43:53] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I've been coached by James for this is the 14th year.
[43:58] SPEAKER_00: Uh James.
[44:00] SPEAKER_06: James had an ITU career 14 years straight, no breakups.
[44:03] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, this no breakups.
[44:05] SPEAKER_00: Well, unless you count that I have a different swim coach now.
[44:07] SPEAKER_00: So but uh but that does swimming's 10% of the race, so barely counts.
[44:13] SPEAKER_00: Anyways, um James had an ITU career in the you can correct me on some of these details, James, at the end, by the way, if I have them wrong, but kind of late 90s, early 2000s, was ranked I believe as high as second in Canada for his ITU uh ranking at one point.
[44:29] SPEAKER_00: Started LPC.
[44:30] SPEAKER_01: Might be a little bit generous.
[44:32] SPEAKER_01: Uh maybe a very uh maybe there might have been a week in there where depending on the rankings, I was let's say top we'll call it second.
[44:40] SPEAKER_00: We'll call it second.
[44:41] SPEAKER_00: He started LPC, Loring Personal Coaching, around 2005.
[44:46] SPEAKER_00: Uh 2007.
[44:48] SPEAKER_00: 2007, and he's been doing it ever since.
[44:50] SPEAKER_00: He's been IT, he's been the short course age group coach for the World Championship for Team Canada more than once, at least once.
[44:58] SPEAKER_00: Uh had a bunch of athletes going to worlds all the time, getting on podiums, and he coaches myself and a couple other pro athletes.
[45:07] SPEAKER_00: Garrick Loewen, who's been actually with James even longer, and then Nick Chase, who's the kind of founder of RTS.
[45:15] SPEAKER_00: So uh welcome, James.
[45:17] SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait for these guys to grill you and uh test test our coach athlete relationship a bit and ask some questions that maybe you're not ready for, so that'll be interesting.
[45:28] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[45:28] SPEAKER_02: I got a question.
[45:29] SPEAKER_02: Me, me, call on me.
[45:30] SPEAKER_02: This guy barely trains.
[45:32] SPEAKER_02: Why does he barely can you explain to me as his coach why he barely trains?
[45:36] SPEAKER_01: Oh boy.
[45:37] SPEAKER_01: Um so barely trains.
[45:39] SPEAKER_01: I guess we'd have to define what you mean by barely train.
[45:43] SPEAKER_01: Are you talking in terms of volume, intensity, the overall overall stress load of each week?
[45:48] SPEAKER_02: Or no, well, I guess that started as kind of a joke.
[45:53] SPEAKER_02: He barely trains compared to Christian Blumenfeld.
[45:55] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but uh it is a good question because I I did hear the the podcast, right?
[46:00] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I think from was it last episode's podcast?
[46:04] SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, why doesn't this guy train hard?
[46:07] SPEAKER_01: And uh I thought about that actually as well, because I think it was a great question.
[46:11] SPEAKER_01: And I was listening to some of the the weeks that you guys have been putting up, and I thought, I'm like, man, these guys are they're they're getting fit, they're getting strong, uh, and they're they're really gearing up for this race, you know, this oceanside race, uh, this North American classic.
[46:28] SPEAKER_01: And there's that old school traffic in me that starts thinking about the oceanside curse and you know, maybe getting too fit too early in the season.
[46:36] SPEAKER_01: And I guess a big, big part of Jackson's buildup has been that he had uh he had a pretty late season with La Quinta in the first week of December.
[46:46] SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's holiday season.
[46:48] SPEAKER_01: He had a big move, uh, you know, changing cities, selling his house.
[46:52] SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of life, life uh stress involved with that.
[46:55] SPEAKER_01: And sometimes sometimes we get wrapped uh into working too hard too early in the season.
[47:01] SPEAKER_01: If there's a lot of other stuff going on, life's priorities of moving, getting settled in another city, um, if there's a couple of sicknesses or or some tummy issues from you know for a couple week period, that that obviously has to be factored in.
[47:16] SPEAKER_01: You got to be careful you don't soldier through too much training or do too much threshold farming early in the season.
[47:23] SPEAKER_06: Uh it's a pretty good answer, James.
[47:25] SPEAKER_06: I mean, we've been giving Jackson some shit, obviously, since starting the show, but I ended my season in September and Ari just trains like a maniac 365 days a year.
[47:35] SPEAKER_06: And uh yeah, I mean, what I'm hearing is like, yeah, he's gonna be doing a lot more volume and intensity as the season progresses, and we're just early in the season right now.
[47:44] SPEAKER_02: Can we can we go back to the oceanside curse real quick that you mentioned?
[47:48] SPEAKER_02: Did like is that a thing?
[47:50] SPEAKER_02: Uh did Jackson suffer from that in 2022?
[47:54] SPEAKER_02: Like, what are yeah?
[47:55] SPEAKER_01: So the the the when Jackson won, that was um, you know, it was a nice surprise because the the fitness actually wasn't really that high.
[48:06] SPEAKER_01: And maybe and and I think that for an early season race, especially coming from Canadian winter, it's also difficult to optimize form for a season opener as well, like in terms of race specificity, right?
[48:19] SPEAKER_01: And maybe you don't you know you know you don't have much open water swimming, even if you break away for a one-week or a two-week camp.
[48:25] SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, you're you're training on the treadmill a lot, you're you're training on your smart trainer a lot.
[48:30] SPEAKER_01: And Jackson tends to you know do most of his riding on the smart trainer, anyways, but there's something to be said, right?
[48:36] SPEAKER_01: By training in the climate, training outdoors, and and that could be difficult to you know have good race form for an early season race.
[48:45] SPEAKER_01: In Jackson's case, he had a really good race that one day, but really the the fitness and form was building towards you know the weeks, months down the road, and that was a nice early season.
[48:58] SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you kind of smash it early season, even if the fitness isn't super high at the end of March.
[49:04] SPEAKER_06: When he won that race, James, did you think he could win, or were you as shocked as everybody else that he beat Lionel, Rudy, and Alistair that day?
[49:11] SPEAKER_06: I mean, that still probably goes down as Jackson's best performance of his career, and it was that early season coming off of the smart trainer in the brutal winter of Canada.
[49:20] SPEAKER_01: That I would say that uh he probably overachieved in the swim.
[49:23] SPEAKER_01: That was an exceptionally good swim for him from you know what uh what the training had indicated and the fact that there was obviously not much uh, you know, you don't have any races under your belt that uh helped optimize that that race form.
[49:37] SPEAKER_01: Um in terms of the biking numbers, he knew we knew that he was quite strong on the bike, and that is his skill set is really well suited for races like Oceanside, St.
[49:46] SPEAKER_01: George.
[49:47] SPEAKER_01: Those are probably you know two really good races where you know the humidex might not be that high.
[49:53] SPEAKER_01: So if you're coming from a Canadian winter or you're doing a lot of training indoors, that's around room temperature, then races like uh St.
[50:01] SPEAKER_01: George and Oceanside are gonna be good if you if you know if you don't have to worry a lot about optimizing heat prep.
[50:10] SPEAKER_01: Uh so it was, I wouldn't say it was a big surprise, but um, I would say that he swam very well.
[50:16] SPEAKER_01: He he biked to what he was capable of, and then he ran really well off of the bike, but it wasn't an exceptionally difficult bike for him.
[50:25] SPEAKER_01: So he was showing a lot of good numbers in terms of the in terms of the training that it was possible, it was within the realm of possibility, but I would still say that that was it was a nice surprise to have that result so early in the season.
[50:38] SPEAKER_02: So you're kind of like uh uh almost maybe understating how good it was.
[50:41] SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like the people he beat, and it's it's still the course record.
[50:46] SPEAKER_02: Um it kind of leads me into one of my other questions, which is Jackson has had some really, really good results the last two years.
[50:55] SPEAKER_02: Do you think that a race like that Oceanside, or you know, a lot of these races where he's gotten the better of Lionel in North America, is that Jackson's peak?
[51:05] SPEAKER_02: Is he you know at his peak holding it, or is there another level that he can still reach, in your opinion?
[51:11] SPEAKER_01: There's definitely another level.
[51:13] SPEAKER_01: Uh every athlete has setbacks, you know, uh it ebbs and flows a little bit.
[51:17] SPEAKER_01: So last year there was uh there was a couple of setbacks with with injuries, and uh, but I would say in terms of where his true potential is, have we is there low-hanging fruit?
[51:28] SPEAKER_01: Have we has he harvested his potential?
[51:30] SPEAKER_01: Definitely not.
[51:31] SPEAKER_01: Uh he's still a young buck, as far as I'm concerned.
[51:34] SPEAKER_01: And uh, although he's been in the sport a long time, there's still a lot of areas where he can still improve.
[51:41] SPEAKER_01: Of course, the sport has improved a lot and continues to evolve as well.
[51:45] SPEAKER_01: So he's got to improve as the sport continues to improve.
[51:49] SPEAKER_01: And uh there's there's many areas where he's still going to get a little bit faster in, a little percentage here and there, and his his ultimate peak is is still is still in the future.
[52:02] SPEAKER_06: So you've worked with Jackson 14 years, means you basically started coaching him when he was what 15 or 16.
[52:09] SPEAKER_06: 19, okay.
[52:10] SPEAKER_06: And so what's something Jackson used to do poorly in the first say like five years of you working with him that he now nails?
[52:18] SPEAKER_06: Like what's something you've seen like is maybe like just the biggest like behavioral improvement, not like, oh yeah, he used to push you know X Watts and now he can push more, but I don't know.
[52:27] SPEAKER_06: One of those habits that you think you've you've seen grow or mature over the years that's helped him perform better at a higher level.
[52:33] SPEAKER_01: Jackson's been very coachable over the years.
[52:36] SPEAKER_01: Uh uh our dynamic has changed a lot, like from the early days when he was really, you know, new into the sport.
[52:43] SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, he was like first or second year in university, and and and then he was working a lot as well.
[52:50] SPEAKER_01: And it was difficult for him to kind of consistently uh you know train well week after week after week.
[52:58] SPEAKER_01: And in the last few years, his training consistency has uh been very good, where there's there's not too many really bad weeks, uh, and and and there's not too many really epic weeks.
[53:09] SPEAKER_01: He's just chipping away week after week, achieving a good level of consistency while having that right perspective, perspective in terms of what phase of the year are we in?
[53:20] SPEAKER_01: Like this is is this a time of the year in December, January where we pull in the reins a little bit, and then maybe in a few weeks from now, or starting real soon, is when we're starting to push a little bit more.
[53:32] SPEAKER_01: So I would say in his perspective has gotten um, he's been really good in terms of perspective, having that confidence that, hey, I want to beat these two guys in Oceanside by the names of you know Justin and Ari, but at the same time, I also want to more importantly, you know, have good form for these later season races as well.
[53:53] SPEAKER_01: So I'm not gonna maybe get too wrapped up in terms of this short-term race, whereas maybe the Jackson from a few years ago would have, you know, really, really wanted to like push epic results and search for confidence in some workouts and and try to nail like the exact workout description of a workout or really try to push that high end if the body wasn't maybe ready for it.
[54:17] SPEAKER_01: Whereas now he's got that that quiet confidence where he's looking for, okay, I don't necessarily have to like you know hit a hit a home run every workout, um, but I need to just keep on chipping away.
[54:30] SPEAKER_01: And some workouts maybe I'm gonna push a little bit less so that I can achieve good consistency week after week and continue to build progressively.
[54:39] SPEAKER_02: I I want to go back to something you had mentioned uh when talking about Jackson's sort of uh potential and how can he reach it.
[54:47] SPEAKER_02: Um Jackson's progression versus the progression of the sport, and and Jackson, maybe you can chime in here too on on just what your thoughts are.
[54:56] SPEAKER_02: Where were you in the sort of uh you know overall echelons of the sport when you guys started working together?
[55:04] SPEAKER_02: Have you progressed, uh, you know, you've outpaced the progression of the sport, you know, where are you now?
[55:09] SPEAKER_02: Like your progression versus how you know how much better the sport has gotten since you guys have been working together.
[55:15] SPEAKER_00: So at the beginning, actually, I'd like to hear James's perspective on the beginning because it's so far ago that I kind of forget, but I was not really that good when we started together.
[55:25] SPEAKER_00: Um, but in terms of the last almost 10 years or over over 10 years, I definitely like outpaced the progression at least until 21 and or 22, and then the last few years, although my some of my best results are still 23, uh 2024, I was kind of a write-off year, but even in 2023, I had some really strong results and I was kind of keeping pace.
[55:51] SPEAKER_00: But my rank it's terms of like ranking, like I was after that oceanside win, I was ranked eighth in the world, and the the end of the prior season in 2021, I was ranked 10th in the world, 10th or 12th.
[56:03] SPEAKER_00: Um so I don't think I'm further from the peak, the top best guys.
[56:09] SPEAKER_00: I think there's just more guys now that are up there, and there's just so hungry, and the gaps are just getting smaller and smaller.
[56:16] SPEAKER_00: So um definitely with 2024 being a bit of a down year, I'm looking to re-accelerate ahead of the pace of improvement.
[56:24] SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, I'm curious to what James thinks from my early career because like early on, I wasn't even racing pro.
[56:30] SPEAKER_00: I wasn't racing pro when I started with James.
[56:32] SPEAKER_00: I went to 70 or I went to age group worlds for two years first, and uh it started from there.
[56:37] SPEAKER_06: We love an age grouper.
[56:39] SPEAKER_06: I mean, that is that is pretty crazy just pulling up the rankings.
[56:42] SPEAKER_06: Jackson, you've been ranked in the top 100 world rankings for nine years in a row, with zero years outside of the top 70, which is pretty crazy.
[56:51] SPEAKER_06: Like very few athletes have done that nine years in a row without one year of not having three consistent top 70 world-ranked results.
[56:59] SPEAKER_06: And yeah, three of those years, it looks like number 12 you finished in 2021, top 30 in 22, 33 and 24.
[57:07] SPEAKER_02: Dude, even like Gustav and Jan, you know, we got like the some of the biggest names in the sport who've had like a complete year of like a you know, a drop-off.
[57:15] SPEAKER_02: So you know, even calling it a write-off year in the you know the past year, it's you know, still pretty decent.
[57:22] SPEAKER_04: Top 50 in 2025, in 2026 so far.
[57:27] SPEAKER_01: And when Jackson first uh sort of got into the sport, he didn't really have much of a swim background at all.
[57:32] SPEAKER_01: Like uh uh before I coached him, he he had some experience um you know doing some of the kids of steel races, and he was that guy that was dead last out of the out of the water.
[57:42] SPEAKER_01: And um, and when I started working with him when he was about 19, the swim was definitely a limiter.
[57:48] SPEAKER_01: But he also wasn't he didn't really have any big bike credentials or run credentials.
[57:53] SPEAKER_01: He was never on like a radar screen by say Trathlon Ontario or Trathlon Canada.
[57:59] SPEAKER_01: Um and he was actually one of he wasn't even there, there were other juniors on on that I had coached.
[58:06] SPEAKER_01: I remember when when I first started coaching him, we did uh a 20-minute FTP test, and and he was he was the the lowest performing junior.
[58:15] SPEAKER_01: Well, what was the number?
[58:17] SPEAKER_06: What was the number?
[58:19] SPEAKER_01: You couldn't swim, and you had the lowest FTP.
[58:22] SPEAKER_01: Uh I actually I would have all of that data, and and my memory it was around like 270, 280 watts of him absolutely.
[58:30] SPEAKER_00: 285 for 20 minutes.
[58:31] SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
[58:32] SPEAKER_01: So just bearing himself, and that was still that was off of a you know, a little decent fitness.
[58:38] SPEAKER_01: Um, but just he's a perfect example of just someone that you know, maybe what wasn't considered like this talented phenom as a junior athlete, doesn't have a big swim background, didn't didn't really have a lot, you know.
[58:51] SPEAKER_01: In in in high school, there wasn't really any big run credentials.
[58:55] SPEAKER_01: He was like Ari, were you like a 40-minute mile or so?
[58:58] SPEAKER_01: Jackson, maybe what like 430 best case scenario.
[59:02] SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, so they're in a 924 3k in grade 12.
[59:06] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so not bad, but uh, but you know, we see some of the traffics that you know Jackson has you know been competing against over the years, some of the credentials they have over like the the 3k and the 5k distance.
[59:18] SPEAKER_01: And he and he's never he never had you know those kind of numbers early in his career.
[59:23] SPEAKER_01: Um, but he just really you know chipped away year after year and then just gradually progressed, you know, in those early years, where the bike FDP increased by what about 100 watts roughly or approximately 100 watts over uh over a 10-year span.
[59:41] SPEAKER_01: So so I I think that a lot of traffic's uh you know struggle with that kind of delayed gratification, right?
[59:49] SPEAKER_01: Of they want to see that success right away.
[59:51] SPEAKER_01: And in Jackson's case, it took maybe a little bit longer, but then he started to get it pretty quickly.
[59:57] SPEAKER_01: And part of that too was you know, started training full time after he got his degree, worked for a little bit, but was able to train full time, really good at uh at the recovery and just getting the most out of his training week after week.
[1:00:11] SPEAKER_01: I like it.
[1:00:12] SPEAKER_06: So at the end of last year, Jackson and I both raced Boise and he uh he finished the race with a little bit of a limp, and I thought, oh, it'll be interesting to see what the rest of his season looks like.
[1:00:23] SPEAKER_06: And then shortly after, I see he's at a three-week altitude camp with the Norwegians right before 70.3 worlds.
[1:00:30] SPEAKER_06: Was that your call or his?
[1:00:32] SPEAKER_06: Tell us about the the famous Norwegian altitude camp before 70.3 worlds.
[1:00:36] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so he has had some some really good success um uh prior to usually St.
[1:00:43] SPEAKER_01: George, where he would go to do some high altitude training, he's done some with uh with with Matt Hansen, and he's done some other blocks.
[1:00:51] SPEAKER_01: And we we talked about like the physiological adaptations that he might get from that, but then also balance it with potential psychological adaptations that he might get from that.
[1:01:02] SPEAKER_01: And I think that there is some evidence over the years where he's just felt really strong after doing um, you know, maybe a 10-week to three-week block at at altitude, and part of that is also maybe psychological as well.
[1:01:19] SPEAKER_01: Bottom line is he just often feels strong doing that.
[1:01:23] SPEAKER_01: Um with the Norwegians, that was kind of a unique situation, right?
[1:01:28] SPEAKER_01: Where you know, yeah, you have Kasper, who just recently won the World Championships and riding that high.
[1:01:35] SPEAKER_01: And uh, and obviously with the the resume of of Gustav and and Christian to have that opportunity to kind of train with them, even if that sort of deviates a little bit from what is maybe the best training for Jackson, it's sort of balancing right uh this opportunity and what he knows or what we know maybe works well for him.
[1:01:58] SPEAKER_01: What we know is that the training that works probably best for Jackson is quite different from a lot of the training that the Norwegians do or from the so-called Norwegian method.
[1:02:08] SPEAKER_01: Jackson tends to benefit from a maybe a more polarized uh approach where you know certain times of the year uh or at least you know touching upon that high, high intensity, uh the VO2 max, of course.
[1:02:22] SPEAKER_01: Of course, that's tricky to do at altitude.
[1:02:26] SPEAKER_01: So when he does have the opportunity to go to altitude, is there the opportunity where he could go a little bit lower altitude so that he can still get the proper high intensity training without it being too stressful on him?
[1:02:39] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that camp, I was fully supportive of it.
[1:02:42] SPEAKER_01: I think that you know he had that wonderful opportunity.
[1:02:44] SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you need to kind of change up the stimulus a little bit, especially if you want to get longevity in your career.
[1:02:50] SPEAKER_01: Like he's been racing for many years, and sometimes you don't want to just do the same old, same old thing or always do what has worked for you.
[1:02:59] SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you do want to change up the stimulus, sometimes you do want to search for clues a little bit and try something uh a little bit different.
[1:03:07] SPEAKER_01: Uh, so for example, Jackson recently working with with Greg as a swim coach, I think that's a great idea.
[1:03:13] SPEAKER_01: Why not change it up a little bit instead of let instead of let like us trying to evolve or doing the same thing year after year?
[1:03:20] SPEAKER_01: I think it's good to kind of mix things up a little bit.
[1:03:23] SPEAKER_01: I think it's good, you know, if you're riding indoors in the Canadian winter all the time, then doing the odds with stage for fun once in a while, I think is a good training to make it sustainable over the course of the year.
[1:03:35] SPEAKER_02: The odds with stage, is it three of them a week?
[1:03:39] SPEAKER_02: This entire bike program.
[1:03:43] SPEAKER_06: I mean, it is it's a good answer, James.
[1:03:45] SPEAKER_06: I think if I if Ari and I had the opportunity to train with the Norwegians for three weeks, we'd probably say yes, wouldn't we, Ari?
[1:03:50] SPEAKER_02: Oh, 100%.
[1:03:51] SPEAKER_02: And that's I mean, that's the type of training I want to do anyway.
[1:03:53] SPEAKER_02: You know, Jack's go in there and say, oh, it's not for me.
[1:03:56] SPEAKER_01: Like he might have got a bit carried away with it, right?
[1:03:58] SPEAKER_01: With trying to, you know, like maybe.
[1:04:00] SPEAKER_01: How can you not?
[1:04:01] SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you want to balance, right?
[1:04:02] SPEAKER_01: Doing your own thing and then feeding off of others.
[1:04:05] SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we we can uh when we're in that environment, sometimes we go sometimes a little bit too all in with what others are doing.
[1:04:13] SPEAKER_01: And in hindsight, you look back and you're like, oh, maybe I should have done that, but I've also should have deviated a little bit and done a bit more of a balance uh between the two.
[1:04:21] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's easy to say that, but at the same time, you know, if he goes to Marbella and goes top five, it's like, oh, that was awesome.
[1:04:29] SPEAKER_06: You know, you you're always taking some risk.
[1:04:31] SPEAKER_02: On that camp, were you just like training with them, or were you, you know, taking lactate and like fully, fully following their program and like you know, maybe dropping off the back of some of the run workouts if you needed to slow it down?
[1:04:45] SPEAKER_02: Like I say, I feel like they like basically live at altitude.
[1:04:48] SPEAKER_02: You know, there's like not much difference between their threshold paces up there.
[1:04:52] SPEAKER_02: How closely were you following their program versus training with them?
[1:04:56] SPEAKER_00: Um they don't take lactate that much, so like they did the one day and I got one lactate reading.
[1:05:02] SPEAKER_00: But um Damn, that just exploded the internet.
[1:05:07] SPEAKER_00: Does the Norwegian message for three weeks and gets one lactate strip?
[1:05:10] SPEAKER_00: They've done it so much that they know like they do check in with it here and there, but they know the feeling of what their lactate's at, so they don't I they don't waste their time doing it every single workout.
[1:05:21] SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it was pretty close, but I definitely on more of like the easier base mileage stuff, I was more going by like what I know is the right volume and and frequency for me, like they ran more than I did frequency-wise, but in terms of lining up the intensity, um, I lined up most of the biking and running, and then the swimming, not so much, mostly because I couldn't even swim on their pace times, to be honest.
[1:05:47] SPEAKER_00: Um, like at altitude, they just swim so well, and I just have a heart I really struggle with altitude on the swim.
[1:05:53] SPEAKER_00: And maybe maybe I should like James suggested, I should have gone down lower and done more of my own swimming because that was where.
[1:06:00] SPEAKER_00: I lost my chance at a good race in Marbella just because I I hadn't done the intensity I needed to.
[1:06:07] SPEAKER_00: I would say.
[1:06:08] SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I wasn't like I followed them a lot, and like I did regret a little bit in terms of I I think I followed their run program too closely, and I should have done half one of the two workouts a week with them, and then the other one more like what James suggested, a little bit higher intensity and kind of keeping in touch with that speed.
[1:06:26] SPEAKER_02: Well, um, I want to ask about your brief foray into Iron Man uh in well 2024.
[1:06:34] SPEAKER_02: And yeah, what's the you know reflections on that?
[1:06:38] SPEAKER_02: And is there more in the future?
[1:06:39] SPEAKER_02: And were you planning to do more Iron Man last year, if not for injury?
[1:06:43] SPEAKER_00: Good question.
[1:06:44] SPEAKER_00: Uh I definitely wasn't gonna do as many as I did in 24.
[1:06:48] SPEAKER_00: And in 24 I did four.
[1:06:51] SPEAKER_00: I was only supposed to do three, but Augusta got cancelled, and last minute they let us do Chattanooga the same d the same day.
[1:06:58] SPEAKER_00: Um, so we just drove over to Chattanooga and did the full.
[1:07:02] SPEAKER_00: Um but it was uh in hindsight, it was too much in a short period of time.
[1:07:07] SPEAKER_00: And and James knew and was kind of like that's a lot of Ironmans, and I ended up getting caught chasing the series uh when that was never the plan from the start of the year.
[1:07:18] SPEAKER_00: So I think like last year I I definitely was spooked from that and was more thinking, okay, let's do one, maybe two, but then I got injured so early in the year it became clear that okay, let's just get back into shape and then see, and then I got injured again.
[1:07:34] SPEAKER_00: So I probably would have done one or two, and uh this year the plan is gonna be to do to start with Texas and maybe see from there have the potential to do up to three, but likely do two.
[1:07:50] SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, I mean I haven't touched my pot, I haven't gotten close to my potential at the full distance, and I'm interested to hear James's opinion on where uh you know he thinks the season focus will be in terms of full versus half, but I I really want to make sure that I have my 70.3 speed first, and if it's not there, I don't need to just be like, oh now I force myself into the full distance all year because that's just not like that's what I did to that's what I did in 24 and it didn't turn out great.
[1:08:22] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, James, what are your thoughts on that?
[1:08:24] SPEAKER_06: I mean, I I have a bunch of follow-up questions to that questionnaire, but maybe James, you can share your perspective on like when Jackson got into full distance Ironman racing in 2024, he'd obviously had a decade of success at 70.3 and then did three in a year, right?
[1:08:42] SPEAKER_06: And uh yeah, what what was your perspective on that as a coach?
[1:08:44] SPEAKER_06: Were you making those decisions together?
[1:08:46] SPEAKER_06: Was that driven by Jackson primarily?
[1:08:48] SPEAKER_06: And you were sort of like, I guess so.
[1:08:50] SPEAKER_01: Uh so the I the opportunity with the Iron Man Pro Series was appealing, and uh the the point structure, as you know, is was you know it it's evolved you know since the the first year, but uh especially in that first year is very biased towards the full distance in terms of points.
[1:09:08] SPEAKER_01: So you you you pretty much you know you had to do three Ironmans in the season, which uh I'm not a fan of doing three or four Ironmans in the season.
[1:09:17] SPEAKER_01: I know some athletes uh can you know can do that and do that with with success, but uh I find doing like one or two uh if you're if you're if your skill set is a little bit more of a 70.3 uh specialist, then one or two is is is a decent amount.
[1:09:34] SPEAKER_01: Three is three is a challenge, right?
[1:09:36] SPEAKER_01: To to optimize form throughout the year.
[1:09:38] SPEAKER_01: And and that sort of goes with the oceanside race, right?
[1:09:41] SPEAKER_01: Texas is three weeks after oceanside.
[1:09:44] SPEAKER_01: So trying to balance properly building up for both races, uh, the best answer is that you can't really build up for both, and you you get reasonably fit for both, but then you have to look beyond that as well.
[1:09:58] SPEAKER_01: And what you can't do is try to get too fit for oceanside if you're wanting to do an Iron Man three weeks after that, and if you're wanting to have even better races later in the summertime and then peaking again in the fall.
[1:10:14] SPEAKER_01: So it's just having that right approach in terms of periodizing the the entire season calendar because you can't get have optimal form for every race, but you want to have decent form for a lot of these races, but it's uh it's a bit of a puzzle sometimes in terms of which ones to put more emphasis in terms of gearing up for.
[1:10:34] SPEAKER_02: Justin, how are we feeling about our betting odds after that answer?
[1:10:37] SPEAKER_06: I don't know.
[1:10:38] SPEAKER_06: I don't know.
[1:10:38] SPEAKER_06: It sounds like you're all in on Texas and not Oceanside, Jackson.
[1:10:41] SPEAKER_06: Is that true?
[1:10:42] SPEAKER_06: I mean, is that kind of what you and James have discussed?
[1:10:44] SPEAKER_00: Well, we can't reveal all the secrets, but yeah, I mean, there's gonna have to be some specific training, obviously, for Texas, but uh it's more like what he said, is you're gonna go into Oceanside at 90% and hopefully Texas at 90%.
[1:10:58] SPEAKER_00: And if you go into Oceanside at 100, Texas will be 80.
[1:11:01] SPEAKER_00: Like, that's just kind of how it is.
[1:11:03] SPEAKER_00: Um the good news is that I don't think the training is insanely different.
[1:11:09] SPEAKER_00: Like, it's not like I'm gonna be doing a bunch of six-hour rides like two weeks before Oceanside.
[1:11:13] SPEAKER_00: I'm not um uh we're kind of not on that like camp of needing all these way over distance rides.
[1:11:22] SPEAKER_00: Um, even when I did that year where I did all the fulls, I think my my longest rides were peaking out around five hours, so it's nothing that needs to just like totally take the speed out of my legs.
[1:11:33] SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, it's definitely I am kind of in agreement on the two fulls is kind of ideal, but at the same time with the series, like it can be tempting.
[1:11:44] SPEAKER_00: So uh the good news is like last time when I did those four, it was placid was the first one, and then Kona was the fourth.
[1:11:53] SPEAKER_00: So this time Oh, that's like four months.
[1:11:56] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was insane.
[1:11:57] SPEAKER_00: So this time it's uh with starting with Texas, it spreads things out way more, and if I even if I did do three, there'd be a but much bigger gaps, but um we're just gonna have to see where things lie after Texas.
[1:12:10] SPEAKER_00: And at this point, I kind of have two separate potential paths or two or three or four for the season, and and Texas may be my only one.
[1:12:20] SPEAKER_00: Like we just have to really not um overcommit to something, and and if it's not if I'm not feeling it at the full distance, like we'll just focus on 70.3 again, and that's kind of gotta be um you know, not chase something if it's not there.
[1:12:35] SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we're gonna have to see.
[1:12:36] SPEAKER_00: But oceanslide, you guys know I'm gonna be in shape.
[1:12:39] SPEAKER_00: Don't you worry, you're gonna see the next seven weeks.
[1:12:41] SPEAKER_00: I told so James, uh, you maybe didn't even look, but last week I barely trained 17 hours, less than 17 because they don't count, um, they don't count strength strength.
[1:12:52] SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it was an off week, but I'm feeling way better now, and I feel back to myself.
[1:12:57] SPEAKER_00: So uh I think and by the way, you guys failed to mention I still have the single biggest training week, I think, of this whole series at that 29 hour week.
[1:13:06] SPEAKER_01: So why why such an emphasis on total hours spent in a week?
[1:13:10] SPEAKER_01: Like what what does total hours spent have anything to do with we don't we don't make the minutes count, we count the minutes.
[1:13:17] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we do and Jackson, I I trained 31 and a half hours two weeks ago.
[1:13:22] SPEAKER_02: So okay.
[1:13:23] SPEAKER_06: There you go.
[1:13:24] SPEAKER_06: I have a follow-up question for James on that.
[1:13:26] SPEAKER_06: What role do you play in selecting Jackson's races, if any?
[1:13:31] SPEAKER_06: Like, are you just reactive and Jackson tells you because he just mentioned all there's three or four paths for the season?
[1:13:36] SPEAKER_06: Obviously, there's a big financial component, if not the main driver of trying to select and pick and choose races based on podiums and sponsor contracts and pro series bonuses.
[1:13:47] SPEAKER_06: Are you reactive or are you guys collaborative, or are you just say, you know, are you making these calls for Jackson?
[1:13:52] SPEAKER_06: How does that kind of work at the highest level of the professional sport?
[1:13:56] SPEAKER_01: I'd say both.
[1:13:56] SPEAKER_01: I'd say, like in the early years, I would definitely be more involved where you know Jackson's fairly new in the sport.
[1:14:02] SPEAKER_01: He might not know like what all the races are out there, and uh especially when he was doing some ITU races, and uh, you know, it I would sort of be more, you know, more helpful in terms of well, there's this option, there's this option.
[1:14:18] SPEAKER_01: Jackson's been doing it for so many years now.
[1:14:20] SPEAKER_01: Uh a lot of it is just guided uh by what the pro the announcement of the pro series.
[1:14:25] SPEAKER_01: Also T100, if there's a possibility, if there's merit in him maybe getting a start, chasing a start, uh, so so weighing the the pros and cons.
[1:14:35] SPEAKER_01: So so I would say uh we usually meet, you know, at the end of the season, once the Iron Man Pro Series is announced and go over potential options and come up with a tentative race schedule.
[1:14:49] SPEAKER_01: He's the one who nowadays mostly comes up with that on his own and then just runs it by me.
[1:14:54] SPEAKER_01: And uh sometimes my job is to try to, you know, convince him to take out one or two of those races that uh, you know, that might be chasing a mortgage payment or something, uh, rather than maybe focusing on let's properly build up so you can nail a couple of races that that matter the most.
[1:15:13] SPEAKER_01: Um so at the end of the day, it it is a profession and you're trying to pay bills and make some money, right?
[1:15:20] SPEAKER_01: So so we're trying to do really well in a bunch of races, but you're also trying to make some money too.
[1:15:26] SPEAKER_01: So so there's those two sometimes conflict, sometimes they can be conf conflicting, you know, against each other.
[1:15:32] SPEAKER_01: Uh so sometimes I I I can be the voice of reason and say, well, you know, maybe, maybe this approach might be a little bit better, but a lot of the times we don't need to decide on the exact races because there's so many, there's so many variables as the season progresses, and it's good to come up with a few contingency options as well.
[1:15:52] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:15:52] SPEAKER_02: Well, James, you're clearly extremely uh knowledgeable, uh experienced, easygoing.
[1:15:59] SPEAKER_02: It's no surprise to me that Jackson has uh stuck with you for 14 years.
[1:16:03] SPEAKER_02: So I have uh the last question is a little bit open-ended.
[1:16:08] SPEAKER_02: What is your number one goal for the rest of Jackson's career?
[1:16:13] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that there's still there's still a lot of unfinished business.
[1:16:16] SPEAKER_01: So I know that he's he's gonna he's accomplished a lot, but there's still a lot that he can accomplish, especially at the full distance.
[1:16:23] SPEAKER_01: So number one, you gotta pick one.
[1:16:25] SPEAKER_01: Number one goal.
[1:16:26] SPEAKER_01: That's there there's gonna be massive improvements uh at the full distance.
[1:16:31] SPEAKER_01: Kona?
[1:16:32] SPEAKER_01: Uh Kona would Kona is uh is definitely an option for this year and and and future years as well.
[1:16:38] SPEAKER_02: All right.
[1:16:39] SPEAKER_02: Full distance, Jackson.
[1:16:41] SPEAKER_02: Excited to see it, excited to see those Iron Man likes in Oceanside.
[1:16:45] SPEAKER_06: I want to hear Jackson's answer to this too, though, because we'll we'll dig into it.
[1:16:48] SPEAKER_06: Do you have one goal for the rest of your career, Jackson?
[1:16:50] SPEAKER_06: Like, is there something where you're like, man, when I'm 50 and I look back at my career, there's one thing between now and that retirement day that's inevitably coming for all of us that you want to achieve that you haven't yet?
[1:17:02] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it's the same thing.
[1:17:04] SPEAKER_00: I've got a I know that at the full distance I can be very successful.
[1:17:08] SPEAKER_00: Um and it doesn't it doesn't necessarily have to be Kona, it doesn't have to be a certain race, but I need to, you know, go through the next several few to several years and ha get to the point where I've I've achieved what I know I was capable of at that distance or at least as close as I possibly could.
[1:17:28] SPEAKER_00: And I do still think I can push it at the 70.3 level and and maybe get back to, if not even slightly better, than than what I've done in the past at 70.3.
[1:17:39] SPEAKER_00: Um, but if I were to not top that result of you know fifth fifth and seventh at worlds and winning oceanside 70.3, that wouldn't necessarily that wouldn't break my heart.
[1:17:51] SPEAKER_00: But if I were to not improve beyond what I've done so far at the full distance, it would.
[1:17:56] SPEAKER_00: Because I just know there's so much more there, and like every single time I've done a full, I've thought, oh, I didn't pace that right, or I went too hard on the bike, or I didn't nail my nutrition, or I didn't nail my run pacing, or whatever.
[1:18:08] SPEAKER_00: And that's just a low-hanging fruit, not to mention like really dialing in what we know works for training for foals.
[1:18:14] SPEAKER_00: We haven't had enough time or you know, um just practice yet to know what is the perfect you know build for me for a full.
[1:18:23] SPEAKER_00: So those are the things we're gonna nail.
[1:18:25] SPEAKER_00: And uh the good news is we got lots of time to do it, and yeah, we're we're taking 30 plus minutes off my 70 point or my 140.6 PR, that's for sure.
[1:18:36] SPEAKER_06: I like it.
[1:18:36] SPEAKER_06: 30 minutes or more in the full Iron Man.
[1:18:39] SPEAKER_02: You can go sub-eight like Greg Harper, maybe.
[1:18:41] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, exactly.
[1:18:43] SPEAKER_06: Thank you for taking the time, James.
[1:18:45] SPEAKER_06: It was awesome to hear more about the way you approach things with Jackson.
[1:18:49] SPEAKER_06: Uh, maybe you can tell our audience a little bit about your coaching business if anyone's looking for a coach.
[1:18:54] SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, I'm the head coach of Loring Personal Coaching.
[1:18:57] SPEAKER_01: And uh you can go to teamlpc.ca to hear more about it.
[1:19:01] SPEAKER_06: Awesome.
[1:19:02] SPEAKER_06: Awesome.
[1:19:02] SPEAKER_06: Thank you, James.
[1:19:03] SPEAKER_06: Thank you, Threshold Farmers, Tempo Farmers, VO2 farmers, all shapes and sizes, walks of life, welcome on this podcast.
[1:19:11] SPEAKER_06: But uh we are halfway through the podcast series to the road to oceanside almost.
[1:19:17] SPEAKER_06: I think next week marks our halfway point, and we're gonna feature Ari's coach on uh next week's podcast, wrapping up our little mini-series here.
[1:19:25] SPEAKER_06: And uh yeah, stay tuned.
[1:19:27] SPEAKER_06: Have a great week, everyone.
[1:19:28] SPEAKER_06: We will talk to you next week.

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