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The Endurance Matters Podcast, Hosted by Justin “BigMetz” Metzler, professional triathlete, is the ultimate destination for endurance enthusiasts. Join us as we dive deep into the world of endurance sports, from 5Ks to Ironman triathlons to Ultra Races, and everything in between. Each episode we'll bring you inspiring stories featuring athletes, trailblazers, and members of the endurance community. From the highs to the lows, this podcast will help us explore the limits of human physical and mental performance.
Whether you're a seasoned athlete or just starting your endurance journey, Endurance Matters is your go-to source for motivation, education, and entertainment. Tune in, lace up, and let's go the distance together!
Alright. Welcome to another episode of the Endurance Matters podcast. I am your host, Justin Metzler. And in studio today, I have Gordo Byrne. He is an Ultramam World Champion author.
Justin Metzler:He brought me his book today, which I can't wait to read. I almost bought it on Amazon in preparation for the podcast, so he saved me saved me there. I'm looking forward to reading that. He's a father overall. Very interesting guy.
Justin Metzler:Welcome to the show, Gordo.
Gordo Byrne:Thanks. Good to be here.
Justin Metzler:Alright. Well, I start off the show with a icebreaker hard hitting question. So my question for you today is if you had to choose between always double bagging it, and let me explain what that means. Maybe you know what it is. The full flotation pants with a wetsuit on top or no flotation devices for the rest of your life.
Justin Metzler:What's the choice?
Gordo Byrne:I'm absolutely going with the flotation. You knew that anyhow. I knew you would. Yeah.
Justin Metzler:But the double bag, I mean, that's that's an aggressive move.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah. You're probably gonna get some back pain with that.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. The legs are gonna be, flying in the air. You might be horizontal with the face down.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah, you can actually get that whole backside right out of the water when you do that. It's like I do a little bit of swim run, and they have those pull boys that are almost too big. Those give you almost too much lift. And if you're doing a bunch of siding, your back just gets absolutely jacked. 100%.
Justin Metzler:100%. All right. Well, cool. Let's dive right into it. So why don't you start off by just telling us a little bit about where you grew up and how you got into sports?
Gordo Byrne:Okay. Actually, my kids were asking me about this, last night. The, so I was the fastest guy in my school who didn't run track. So to give you a feel for kind of what the level I was at, I played football. In high school.
Gordo Byrne:I played two years of club rugby at university. I went to McGill University in Montreal, and that was pretty much it. No swimming. I was a camp counselor in the summers, so active, but no real sport, no endurance. Actually, got a lot into weightlifting in grades eleven and twelve with a little bit of running on top and got fairly strong for a high school kid.
Gordo Byrne:Didn't lift much, in college, and then got into my career in finance, in my early twenties. Started when I was 21. Then kind of in my mid twenties, decided that I got sick of being out of shape and started lifting weights again fairly seriously, got pretty strong, and was just doing hiking. So no competitive background. And, got into mountaineering.
Gordo Byrne:And then in my late 20s, discovered triathlon, started training and just kept getting faster and faster and faster. And so I signed up. Back then, you had to send a postcard in to sign up for an IRONMAN. It was like 1998. Signed up for IRONMAN Canada the following year in 'ninety nine.
Gordo Byrne:And so at the end of 'ninety eight, I turned 30. So around my thirtieth birthday, I go to my first Masters swim workout, and I didn't know how to swim. So anybody listening that thinks they're too old to learn how to swim, you can absolutely do it. And then just kept at it. And so from 98 to 2002, did a ton of training.
Gordo Byrne:And the end of 2002 was when I won Ultraman Hawaii. So obviously a really big ramp in terms of performance. And then by 2004, probably 2003, 02/2005, I was kind of podium at, most of the international, Ironman races I did. I was never all that fast in the 70.3 races, but in IRONMAN, I was very competitive. Not at Hawaii, but at that level, just one down from Hawaii.
Gordo Byrne:If I went to Hawaii, I mean, the best I would have been looking for back then would have been top 25 or something, meaning from twentieth to twenty fifth. Because of the swim. Sure. Without that wetsuit, you're using a lot of energy, and I wasn't particularly efficient in the water. I was relying on strength and fitness.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. Interesting. Talk to me a little bit about the world of finance. And I guess, like, my question is first, a, how passionate were you about that? Yeah.
Justin Metzler:And how intense was that world? Or I guess, how intense did you take it?
Gordo Byrne:So, I started out in London in my early twenties and just worked all the time. And if I wasn't working, I was hanging out with my Aussie friends in the pubs, and that was it. It was just work and party, early twenties, like that kind of lifestyle. And so it was kind of all consuming, didn't really exercise much. Now towards the end of that period, I did start riding my bike to the office and stuff, and we had a shower at the office.
Gordo Byrne:But riding the bike to the office is different than what you and I would consider riding. It'd be like twenty minutes each way. But it was something. It was a bit of movement. I got promoted, moved out to Asia, and I was in Hong Kong for six years.
Gordo Byrne:And so with the promotion, I was able to control my own schedule. And so when I got into triathlon, it was relatively straightforward for me when I wasn't traveling to get about fifteen to eighteen hours a week of triathlon training. And then obviously I did a lot of travel because of the nature of the job. It was a regional job. Some years I'd be on the road half my nights.
Gordo Byrne:So half my nights I wouldn't be sleeping in my own bed. So that would kind of mess you up a little bit. But I got pretty good at just making it work on the road, what I called hotel bricks. You just go into some hotel, and you're gonna do twenty minutes on every machine, and you'll do some circuits on the waits. And whatever time you got, whether it's sixty minutes, ninety minutes, or two hours, you'd just be kinda mixing it up, just getting volume in.
Gordo Byrne:And then the swimming would suffer a bit. But overall, it was pretty good.
Justin Metzler:And then I guess at that point, like you said, you ramped quickly into racing Ironman, racing professionally. Were you balancing the finance job, living in Hong Kong, and trying to race professionally all at the same time?
Gordo Byrne:Actually, that's a great question. So, okay. So 'ninety eight, 'ninety nine, I was juggling. I was trying to kind of do it all, work plus amateur training. Well, was not fast enough.
Gordo Byrne:I was very average when I started. Now in 2000, I took a two month kinda holiday, and I came here. And I lived up in Sugarloaf K. For so I flew from Hong Kong to California. I raced, Vineland, qualified for Kona at the half Ironman there.
Gordo Byrne:They used to have slots. Then I came here and did a six week block for Ironman Canada living up in the hills, which was a lot of fun. I packed a car, and I drive down to Scott Carpenter with the bike in the back and a cooler and, you know, swim, bike, run all day, and then drive back up to Sugarloaf. And for those of you who don't know where it is, it'd be like, what is it? Probably 1,500 feet, above Boulder.
Gordo Byrne:So maybe you're around 7,000 feet. So you're kind of getting that. I mean, it's an ideal altitude for hanging out if you're doing the altitude training thing, and then you're coming down here to train at the long course pool. It was heaven. I loved it.
Gordo Byrne:And then I go up to Canada and I'm second amateur overall. And I was like, wow, this was just so great. And, actually the guy that beat me, is, Jason. He's still racing age group. And we raced together over the years.
Gordo Byrne:Now we're still racing. He's about the same age as me. So now we're doing the same thing, but just twenty five years later. That's awesome. So I'm like, maybe I'll take a break from work.
Gordo Byrne:So I go back to Hong Kong, convince my boss to give me a one year leave of absence, go down to New Zealand to train alongside Scott Molina, John Newsome, and the group of athletes that John Hellemans had down there who were training for the Sydney Olympics. And these guys were so fast. I was getting lapped every 150 when we were swimming long course. I mean, was like, Brad Bevan, Craig Watson, Chris Gamble, Bevan Docherty. Mean, Hamish wasn't there, but it was a really good squad.
Gordo Byrne:And John let me just he's like, yeah, you can come. He figured I'd get sick of it and like leave, but I didn't and I got better. And that was great. So we that environment, I just learned so much. And I think around that time, so now we kind of roll over into 2001, I start racing elite.
Gordo Byrne:And back then, all you had to do is tick a box. They didn't have things like pro cards and stuff. And, you know, in the weaker fields, maybe I get a podium. In the stronger fields, I get totally crushed. And so then it's just working at it and kind of working your level up and trying to to figure out how to how to do better.
Gordo Byrne:I was doing some coaching as well, and I really enjoyed it. So I never went back to finance. I just took my life in a totally different direction. I did some financial consulting. I helped a friend start a business, and I worked in that.
Gordo Byrne:And that was great because I was working as a consultant so I could control my schedule. So half the time I'd be able to train. The other half of the time, you know, it'd be like working, but it'd be flexible working. So it was a really good period of my life.
Justin Metzler:That's really cool. Did you feel like you could get the coaching sort of off the ground right away, so that was stable enough to be able to support as much time as you were spending in the training, or was it sort of like cobbling it all together? Like a little bit of consulting, a little bit of coaching, spend as much time training that was left.
Gordo Byrne:As soon as I entered sport, people were asking me to coach them. So this was web one point zero. I mean, was bulletin boards that we used to post to something called rec.sport.triathlon. And we would just share ideas, and people started reaching out and asking me to coach. I took a couple athletes on, and then I took a few more.
Gordo Byrne:And then you roll forward, and then, you know, you're a top amateur. So people are like, well, this guy kind of figures out you know, he seems like he knows what he was doing. One of the first online magazines had me as a columnist, so that got my stuff out there. Focused on Ironman. Then I also started focusing on doctors, pilots, CEOs, business owners.
Gordo Byrne:So people that had come from a life that was similar to where I came from. And, you know, normally, the dream was to qualify for Kona. And I got a lot of experience helping people get that done, and then word spreads from the people that you've been successful with, and it just kinda built out from there. So I had that, which was kind of covering my basics. I had the financial consulting side, which had some upside because I was a investor in the startup, and it all just really fit together nicely overall.
Justin Metzler:Cool. I guess, like you said, Web one point zero, that was sort of the time frame. Were you always sort of writing quite a bit? Because now I subscribe and consume a lot of your content, whether it's on Twitter or on your Substack or whatever it is, and your writing is consistent and elaborate and detailed. And I think everywhere where you post stuff on social media now, there's just a lot to consume.
Justin Metzler:Have you always been doing that?
Gordo Byrne:Yeah. I've always written a lot from about the time I was 17 years old. So I've always been and so what's that now? Forty years. I've always produced a lot of content.
Gordo Byrne:The difference now is the reach that you can get and the video angle. Video is something totally new. Used to just be, you know, it was all just I mean, it was blogs. I mean, if you had a little bit of color on your website, that was kind of it and a few pictures in, but now you got that video component, and it's it's, shorts. Yeah.
Gordo Byrne:You know, my kids tell me, it's like, You got one minute, dad. That's it. So you got one minute to make your point. And if you're used to writing articles and chapters and books, it seems really short, but that's just how it's going.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And even me, I'm 32 years old. Like, I'm still stuck in the long form content era. Like, I had a blog spot when I first started racing professionally where I would recap every single race, recap my training.
Justin Metzler:And even this, this is a long form podcast, so you need people who are down with long form stuff. And I think we're maybe missing the 20 and under generation. But maybe that's my next evolution. We try to chop this up into little bits over there That's to get the sound
Gordo Byrne:it. I mean, you know, if you look at what you look at what goes viral, you talk to somebody for an hour and what you want is maybe three or four forty second clips, and that'll get somebody interested and connect with somebody and bring them to you. I think that's that's a really interesting way to look at it. When I write for the web, three ideas no more in a web based article, and that was that went back even before everything was on the web. When I was writing for, Triathlete Magazine, you know, I'd just be like, okay, what are the three things I wanna say?
Gordo Byrne:And that's it. And so you'd kinda like, you'd say why you're saying the three things, you break it down, then you'd wrap it up, and there's your page in the magazine. And, I brought that across to, you know, web writing. And because basically, you know, what do you got? You got you probably got somewhere between two and four minutes, and four minutes would be a lot.
Gordo Byrne:Everybody's gonna be reading on the phone, and you wanna kinda connect with them, educate them, where they're having a little break in their day. Yeah.
Justin Metzler:Alright. Well, I wanna transition a little bit because I guess I've always sort of, like, peripherally consumed your content like I mentioned, but since we've been swimming together a little bit more at the same pool now this year and, you know, a little bit more interaction on Strava and maybe a little bit on Twitter, I've been really sort of interested in your specific training. And I've got a lot of questions on training as a whole, but I wanna start with your training. So last year, you raised Challenge Roth, and I remember following the buildup to Challenge Roth, and I was sort of interested in it from two perspectives. A, the angle that you're in your fifties, and you have that's just a different type of training, and, you know, you have many years of experience, but training as a 50 year old is different than training a 20 year old.
Justin Metzler:So I'm curious to hear about that, but then also just the long wide scope that you take building up to races because I feel like your preparation for Roth was twelve, eighteen months in the making. So I guess as a starting point, can you talk to us about, like, how you think about approaching a goal and maybe what goes into planning that process?
Gordo Byrne:Yeah. So I do things differently, and I do things differently than I coach people because I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get my result. I'm focused on the results. Don't care. I don't if if I look bad at a race or I get my butt kicked in a workout, never cared about that.
Gordo Byrne:I've always just wanted to get better, which means I need to be true to myself. So what does that mean? Well, that means I'm okay with taking three years to get ready for an Ironman. I'm totally fine with that. If that's what I think it's gonna take me to have a race that I'm gonna be proud of, I'll do it.
Gordo Byrne:And that's what I did for Roth. So it was one year getting the swim sorted, one year getting the bike sorted. And then the last year was kind of run focused, but even that wasn't enough. I think it's gonna take me another two years to get to the point where I'm able to run a marathon the way I want to and the way I know I can. So if you're thinking about that, it's really a five year progression to a decent, Ironman result.
Gordo Byrne:Now my result in Roth was okay. From my age, you know, I almost got under nine hours. And for my age, it was the fastest anybody that was 56 has ever gone. So it was good, but I know I can go a lot faster. So it left me kind of motivated and hungry.
Gordo Byrne:So let's talk a bit about things I do different. I do a lot of easy training. And by easy, I mean zone one. So I do a ton of that. Why do I do that?
Gordo Byrne:I do it because I'm focused on economy and gross efficiency. So if talking about going long, you have to be very efficient. And what I mean by that is I want the cost, the internal cost of holding Ironman power and pace to be as low as possible. We measure that in terms of oxygen consumption, but you can also simply just look at what your heart rate is. Heart rate to watts.
Gordo Byrne:So you want that ratio of your watts divided by your heart rate to get as high as possible. Those sorts of changes take years. You can see them in a few months, but to really move the needle, you're talking five years. I mean, if you want to, and they will keep moving. If you look at these long term studies, they will keep moving for like ten years.
Gordo Byrne:So you're always thinking about base training and always thinking about building that mechanical efficiency. And then the other side is economy. When I was obviously somebody that can win Ultraman, it's gonna be very economical. In other words, when they're tired, they can still run and ride at a reasonable output. So it's got nothing to do with their five minute power is or what their five ks time is.
Gordo Byrne:It's what can you do when you're exhausted in Ultraman after two days of racing? What can you do when you're totally shelled? And the same thing in Ironman too. If you have the ability to run four twenty ks's when you're exhausted, you are gonna be a very fast amateur marathoner off the bike. I mean, it's different in the elite race now because the guys are running so fast.
Gordo Byrne:But back when I was racing elite, all I had to do was hold four minute Ks in an elite race. And I know not at first, but eventually, I'm gonna run almost everybody down. And I just realized that early on when I was, you know, way down the field. My first Ironman was like an eleven hour effort, but I passed 500 people. I was like, nobody's running in this race.
Gordo Byrne:And you just see it, and then you adjust the training to do that. So that's one thing. Another thing is I take a lot of low stress days. So I'm not constantly revving my nervous system. So at least across a year, at least half my days are days and I'm not sitting on the couch, I'm exercising, but I'm not stressing myself from a nervous system point of view.
Gordo Byrne:I'm not trying to do something hard. I'm not getting my heart rate up, but I'm just exercising and moving my body. So I'm still working on that economy and efficiency piece, but I'm letting my nervous system recover. That is essential as I've gotten older because I've got I mean, it feels like I got one hour a week where I can go hard, and I wanna break that up. So maybe it's like two twenty minute sessions.
Gordo Byrne:That'd be forty minutes there, and then maybe two ten minutes. So I sixty minutes where I can go hard. And by that, mean red zone. Zone four, zone five using a five zone model. If I back that off and I say, Hey, I'm not gonna go hard.
Gordo Byrne:I'm only gonna maybe I'm only gonna do twenty minutes of that stuff, then I might have two to four hours worth of tempo that I could break up. So you have to be much more strategic with how you're using the more peppy stuff. And when I'm talking about multiple hours of tempo, that's really only in the summer for about a six week block when I'm specifically preparing for a race. The rest of the year and sometimes even for an entire year, I'm focused on just that base building and increasing my general capacity. Most people are not willing to do that.
Gordo Byrne:They there's so much pressure on the elites now to be fit from February to November. And I just wrapped up a six month, what I call an anabolic block. I'm not doing anything really all that long. I'm not doing anything really hard. I'm just doing general based training and kind of building up my capacity.
Gordo Byrne:And folks, I noticed this as a pro. We'd go down to New Zealand. We do thirteen weeks and stay in the same spot doing the same week. And we do the local races down there. We'd come out of that, and we'd be so fit for the rest of the year.
Gordo Byrne:It would really help the blocks that followed it. And so now, you know, as an amateur, you can do that. There's no pressure on any of us. We're all just doing it for fun. And so we can train what I call properly and professionally even though we're amateurs.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I'm curious to hear because you said your sort of a target is always the races. That's your sort of focal point and what you're gonna judge things on. You don't really care about the sessions in between. But you get people who are racers who really thrive off the racing and sort of don't care as much about the training.
Justin Metzler:They don't care. They're like, alright. I don't really care as much about the session day to day process, and then the people who really are, like, living for the process. And I'm someone who gets more out of the the journey and the training and the week on week in the building, and the races for me are maybe second to that, where do you fall? And maybe it's somewhere in between.
Gordo Byrne:So to do to do an Ironman really well, it absolutely wrecks me. So when I get fit enough to really race the thing, that last ninety minutes is one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. And I mean, I see pictures of myself in that last 10 ks, and I'm like, wow, that dude's really kind of hurting. And so now that takes a lot of preparation, and you also need to, your body needs and your mind needs to be willing to let you go there. Because for many of us, if we're constantly tapping that in training, this is what I found.
Gordo Byrne:I'm not able to go there in a race because I've already tapped that aspect. Now I call that sympathetic drive, the sympathetic nervous system, but it's kind of everything. It's the whole body, the mind, it's everything, and you have to be emotionally invested. So I used to focus on I'm Canadian by birth, so I used to focus on Ironman Canada. It was a course I knew very well.
Gordo Byrne:I raced it a lot. And I was emotionally invested in the course and trying to win that race. And I when you listen to people, they feel some people listen to Jan talk about Kona, and he feels that way about Kona. You'll listen to other athletes talk about that. And I would focus on I mean, all year long, I'm thinking about Penticton.
Gordo Byrne:When I'm climbing in the hills here, I'm thinking about Richter Pass. I'm, like, thinking I'm running out by the reservoir and I'm thinking about running beside Skaaha Lake. And it was all of that. And it all comes together on the day. And then after that, I'm wiped.
Gordo Byrne:I'm like done. There's like, there's no way I'm doing anything for a month because I'm so tapped out. Now, what I've learned subsequently is, yeah, keep moving. Because if your body's used to doing a lot of exercise and you just take it down to zero, that's incredibly stressful. But so that part, so the preparation and just getting ready to have that kind of peak performance was I mean, I just love that and I still love it.
Gordo Byrne:So I'm really good at just sticking with it, for a long time. Now, racers. So my daughter, Lexi, our oldest, she's a 200 fly swimmer. And swimmers and people that do these shorter events, you don't see their best in training. So you could you can see her training, and you could say, wow.
Gordo Byrne:This young woman is a great swimmer. But you don't see that next level, that racer level. So somebody that kinda has like, you know, it's like zone zone one, two, three, four, five, and then there's race. And it it's just and it only comes out in a race where she has a strong field and she's emotionally attached to that race. So that kind of racer, that's a real gift.
Gordo Byrne:So my kids have that because they started racing before they can remember at Summer League, and that's a really neat thing. So my friends who raced as kids, some of them have, it's like this other gear, but it's not even like a gear. It's just like this other state, and they can just take it up. For me, I took it up, but I took it up because I was preparing properly and doing a proper peaking process. So I'm putting it all together, that's just normal physiology.
Gordo Byrne:But you wouldn't necessarily see something from me and be like, Oh, wow, Where'd that come from? Because I would have prepared and it would have all been in my training log. So it's a different thing.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I'm definitely the same. I didn't grow up racing super competitively. I was doing triathlon as a kid, like 12, 13 years old, but very recreationally. So I never really flexed that muscle of like zone 10.
Justin Metzler:You know what I mean? Yeah. So very much like my results throughout my career is you could look at my Strava and be like, yeah, that's exactly what he did in training for the eight weeks leading into the race. And he went to the race and did the exact same thing. That makes sense.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. So I definitely understand where you're coming from. I am curious to now transition things a little bit in terms of the elite world, the professional world, and the demands maybe that are different from somebody who doesn't have necessarily a twelve or eighteen month lead up to a race and doesn't necessarily have the ability to be as emotionally invested into one race because now the pressure is to perform on multiple levels. For example, you need to deliver results throughout the season for your sponsors. You need to qualify to race Kona, so you need a high emotional because that is so difficult now.
Justin Metzler:What are the differences, I guess, in your perspective, and maybe how do professional athletes strike that balance between not being revved up sympathetically all season, but then also leaving space to perform at a high level?
Gordo Byrne:So okay. Two things there. First, unless you're a top tier athlete, you should focus on winning races. Sponsors want you to win. So if you're second tier, then figure out what's where you're going to win and how you're going to win races because that's going to do a lot for you.
Gordo Byrne:Meaning you're going to get prize money. You're going get sponsor recognition. You're going get athletes if you've a coaching business on the side. So that's one thing. With these long seasons, I would say you gotta look at it like two seasons.
Gordo Byrne:That's what we used to do. So we would look at I would race New Zealand. I would race Canada. So March, August, there's two seasons right there. I think a trap that people get into with these long seasons is thinking it's one season and not coming down after that early peak.
Gordo Byrne:So if you are gonna peak early, then I say you gotta come down, and then you're gonna have to come back up. The other thing is one peak a year. In other words, you gotta decide what's your thing. When when do you when is your body and your life most conducive to doing the training and the preparation that'll get you closest to your maximum potential? Pick a race.
Gordo Byrne:Tim DaBoom did this great. He was focused on Hawaii. And he did other races, but his goal was Hawaii. And he was an athlete my age. He raced at the highest level and did great for many, many years using that strategy.
Gordo Byrne:I think a lot of athletes miss out on that. They're kind of like, I'll just wait till I fall apart, or they'll crush it in Oceanside to get a stress fracture and spend a few months injured. And that's gonna be their off season. And they're letting injury do the off season as opposed to planning. Something that's so much more powerful is if you have a plan and you back off before you're wrecked, your body is gonna respond so much better when you come back, than when you're trying to rebuild, from ground zero from this constant string of injuries that could really hold people back.
Gordo Byrne:So that'd be my thinking there. Think we thought there were some people it depends on how long a career you want, really, because you can race a lot for, say, eighteen months. But then normally something kind of goes wrong for you, and you've got have a longer rebuild period.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. That is exactly what happened to me. And it's interesting, because I feel like from observation, and from also self experience, you can get away with it. Some athletes can get away with it for many years. Like, I got away with it for many years, pretty much nine years in a row.
Justin Metzler:Very little off season, ten seventy point threes or Ironmans every single season, zero injuries. I'd get sick every once in a while, but nothing major, and then bang, major injury, huge reset, and very difficult to find the runway after that, and I think one thing I've struggled with in my career, and I'm just curious to hear your perspective on, is how to periodize a season and peak when it matters for professionals. Like you said, you might need to pick two peaks, but one thing I've really struggled with is getting those peaks timed accurately. So I will train. I'll have buildup races, and I've won a lot of those.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. But then when it comes to my A target, I'm not on the mark.
Gordo Byrne:So, well, I think about it in terms of a race block. That's one way that you can kind of get around that. So you're sort of like, all right. I'm going to have this block of six weeks where I'm going to do six races. Know, Scott Molina coached me 100 pro victories.
Gordo Byrne:And he would think in terms of a block. He's not necessarily He knows, all right, I might not because he can't guarantee he's gonna be on on the day, but he knows he's gonna be in really good shape for a period of time, six weeks. And so he's gonna do four four races in that six week period, and he's gonna have a race block rather than putting all the eggs in that race, in that one kind of magical race. Now if you're focusing on Ironman, that can be tougher to do because of the nature of the load and things like that. But for this, for everything up to 70.3, you can you can kinda do that.
Gordo Byrne:You can have this race block. And so then it's about getting ready for that block. Would challenge anybody that races just a ton all year. I would challenge them to get, unless they're at the very top, I was like, well, why don't we try and get you to the next level? Why don't we try and get you a level up by not doing a lot of this race specific training year round, but let's focus on a couple let's try and move the needle forward in one area, and if that an area that if we changed that, your competitive profile would change completely.
Gordo Byrne:And we're gonna focus on that for four to six months. And we're not forgetting about everything else, but we're doing everything else is kinda like a base training type thing. And that's how I approach it now too. So, you know, when I'm talking that, you know, swim year, bike year, run year, but you know, maybe like the last six months, I'm going do short course this year. I'm going to do nationals in, August.
Gordo Byrne:Now, I want the race in my mind to be over at T1. And I mean, I know that's a pretty bold statement, but I have confidence in my run and I have confidence in my bike, but I don't necessarily have the same level of confidence in my swim. So if I can lift that swim, that would be a change for me. And so I spent six months focusing on, all right, what's it going to take to become a better swimmer? And again, triathlon, a better swimmer, it doesn't show up in my 200 time or my 400 time.
Gordo Byrne:It shows up on just being able to sit on some guy who's gonna take me to T1 and then be able to ride and run to my potential, because it's all sub max. And so it's about becoming more efficient at a pace. And in the amateur race, we're a lot luckier than you guys because the surges don't last very long and they're not very hard. And so it's just a different dynamic. And so it's just the ability to sit there.
Gordo Byrne:And sitting there does not require me to sit at 110 meters pace. It's way slower than that. So it's a fun game to play. And so I think of it in terms of pieces and components.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. Interesting. I forget what you commented on. We had a Strava exchange, you said like the less stressful part of racing is like you're 57 or whatever, were like the less pressure, less stressful, something along those lines.
Gordo Byrne:Everything's easier when you're older. Yeah. Now you're having, because any Masters athlete will tell you, you're playing whack a mole all the time with all these little things that you're having to manage. And if you try and train properly as opposed to just trying to be consistent, everything will fall apart. So that's why I do so much easy training.
Gordo Byrne:I'm really cautious and back off. It's all it is about is just keep training, particularly with the run. If you can just keep running, there's been changes. I used to be a really high mileage runner when I was an elite. Just don't tolerate that anymore.
Gordo Byrne:So I gotta focus on frequency, a couple key runs, thought out, like, what do I need out of it? I can't just throw volume at myself and expect it to work.
Justin Metzler:Yeah, interesting. I'm curious to sort of talk about the other side of the spectrum. Like, you have obviously high performing elites, elite age groupers like yourself, who are taking it really seriously, trying to win your age group, get the most out of yourself. Professional athletes maybe fall into that same category. What about athletes who only have ten to twelve hours a week to train?
Justin Metzler:What's their approach?
Gordo Byrne:So, okay, don't negotiate with yourself. That's number one. So build a week that fits your life when you're at home. And by and what I mean by that is literally a week in terms of I'm gonna do this on this day, this on that day. Not the exact workouts, but like the swim, the bike, the run, put it in the calendar, and that's it.
Gordo Byrne:That's your week. You're gonna get time from that. Everyone in your life is gonna learn what you're doing and the day you're doing it. And that's gonna be probably worth, I don't know, one or two hours a week just by not changing stuff. So that's fifty to one hundred hours a year of extra training you'll be able to do because you're not doing all this variation.
Gordo Byrne:That's a big dose for an amateur. The other thing is think about what is your critical limiter for almost everybody's bike volume. And so you need to be thinking about, okay, how can I get additional bike volume? So great way for somebody without a lot of disruption is just a long weekend where you're gonna do two long rides. So you're gonna ride long on a Friday and you're gonna ride long on a Sunday.
Gordo Byrne:Or if you got flex work, you're gonna ride long on Wednesday mornings. So you're gonna keep your whole week the same, but you're just gonna put in a little extra volume. You do that a few times, there's another fifty hours. And so you're the game you're playing is being super consistent with the basics and then trying to figure out how can I get an extra fifty to two hundred hours if you're an Ironman athlete in the key parts of my year to kind of move the needle forward? And the rest of the time, you're just gonna train and be super consistent and stay below the breaking point.
Gordo Byrne:What I mean by that, we talked about when I was working in Hong Kong, if I went one or two hours over kind of that limit, everything fell apart. So like all of a sudden, I'm like tired at work. I'm not sleeping great. I'm not benefiting from it. So you have to stay under the limit much more as an amateur.
Gordo Byrne:When you're an elite, top amateur, if you have a flexible schedule, you go a little past the limit. Okay. You gotta have a nap. You gotta have a couple easy days. It's not a big deal.
Gordo Byrne:You just, you know, especially if you overload with volume, you know, it's pretty safe. Green zone stuff, you're gonna bounce back pretty quick. It's just not that big a deal. But if you're a working athlete with a serious job and you go over the limit, you don't have the ability to de stress your life. Your work stress is a real part of your life.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. And what about athletes who are confined by, let's say, twelve hours a week, feeling like they need to push sessions or push up the intensity to make up for the lack of volume? Yeah. I coach some athletes who are 50, have really high profile jobs. They're always trying to just push things, I think, because maybe in the corporate world, that hard work ethic or whatever pays dividends, but the overall stress in addition to that I find sometimes can be counterintuitive or counterproductive.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah. So two things there. First up, those individuals do not realize the amount of stress they're under. When you start measuring their morning HRV, they'll say, I have genetically low HRV. It's just my genetics.
Gordo Byrne:And I'm like, dude, it's not your genetics. It's your lifestyle. You're always revving your nervous system, and that's what's kind of pushing it down. So making that person aware that the adaptation piece, we need some days, I would say at least half, probably more than half for an individual like that, where we're not revving them up exercising, and we're focusing on strengthening the parasympathetic side with the easier training so they get better adaptation. That said, I have coached them hard chargers, and I call them best average trainers.
Gordo Byrne:And what they wanna do is they're like, look, I got so many hours, so many sessions, I'm just gonna best average everything. That works great, depending on the athlete, up to about 70.3 distance. It falls apart completely in an IRONMAN. So you can't prepare for an IRONMAN that way, but if that's the way you happen to like to train, you can run a good marathon off it, you can do a good standard distance, and you could probably squeak out, if you've been at it for a few years, a decent 70.3. So I would say go shorter.
Gordo Byrne:I would also say to really benefit, you're gonna have to back off on some of the days, but if you wanna do half your days where we're just gonna train best average, I've seen it work. The athletes that it works for though, they eat. So they're fully fueled. They're strong. So it's normally somebody that's like a naturally strong athlete.
Gordo Byrne:And by that, I mean they're probably a little more muscular, and I'm talking male and female. And the other thing is they've been at it for a very long time, so they've been consistent for a long time. So although their hours per year might be lower, the years have been stacked. And when, you know, when I got a buddy who's in his sixties. I mean, Ward Ward who's very fast, wins his age group at most things.
Gordo Byrne:And, you know, so he's stacking I mean, it goes all the way back to high school. I mean, so he's stacking forty five years of consistent training. And yeah, I mean, that makes a real big difference. And he's solid. I know who you're talking about.
Justin Metzler:You don't have to move huge rocks when you're trying to race in the 65 to 69 category. And you you already have that many years of evidence underneath you. It's yeah, powerful, I think at that point.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah.
Justin Metzler:I am curious to hear your perspective, I guess across all of these levels, whether you're elite, elite age group or age group are trying to get the most out of yourself off ten to twelve hours. What's your perspective on misses and adjustments? Because this is something that I see quite a lot with the pros that I coach, the age groupers that I coach. Some of them are very interactive with me. They'll say, hey, can I flip this?
Justin Metzler:Can I shorten that? And I can give good guidance, but I get a lot of folks who, hey, I had a work meeting, can't make it in the afternoon, kick it to Sunday. Now Sunday's a long run, my two hour ride. They're stacking, they're shifting, they're moving things around. If you get sick or you get hurt or you have a work meeting come up, what happens to that session?
Justin Metzler:Does it get kicked? Does it get adjusted? What's the advice there?
Gordo Byrne:Okay. Well, so the basic week. So the basic week gets you around a lot of that. So if you have your fixed week, that's it. So you get more stability in it.
Gordo Byrne:Now there are some people where they don't have control of their schedule. So I'd be like, all right, well let's try and figure out the days where we can start getting control of the schedule because that's really stressful. So whatever you got, you don't wanna have to be So try and get some stability in there. The other thing is the signal is in the miss. So when somebody comes to me with all that, I don't really care what the story is.
Gordo Byrne:The information is in the fact that there was a miss. So one miss a week, no big deal. Just forget about it. Two misses a week, well, we might be seeing the start of a pattern. Three misses a week, we're clearly aiming too high for the life.
Gordo Byrne:So we're gonna have to step it down because a program so, you know, in training peaks, if they hit the workout, you get green. Mhmm. First thing I do with somebody, I was like, look, all we're doing is we're building a green week. That's what we want. I don't care what's in it.
Gordo Byrne:I just want it all to be green. And that's where we're gonna start. And when we've been green for six to eight weeks, we'll know that we have something that works for you. And then, and only then, we can start thinking about what's in those days and in those sessions. Until you got the green week, it doesn't matter.
Gordo Byrne:Until you're able to do, don't worry about what you're doing. So that would be kind of how I would approach it with the person, because it's information. It's like, all right, we're just aiming too far. Let's just step it down. You will get more, the person listening, you will get more out of your training if we can just build something that you're hitting week in, week out.
Gordo Byrne:It's just going to compound. And it's a leap of faith at the beginning. But I mean, I used to tell people, you gotta give me five hundred days before you make your mind up. But way before that, they can see that it's working. Because the compounding I mean, by eighteen months, you're in a whole different spot from when you started if you can just stay healthy, have fun, and just roll it.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I mean, I find it sometimes difficult to get athletes to buy into patients because they have races on the schedule. They feel the pressure, especially from the professional side of things, to really push it, to feel like they're doing as much, and I think especially in 2026 where comparison is the thief of all joy because everyone's looking at what Christian Blumenfeld's VO two is, and what I'm doing on Strava, and this and that, and saying, oh, well, you know, this person trains twenty five hours a week. Why does my plan not have twenty five hours a week? How do you get folks who are demanding that as the expectation, but they can't in reality deliver upon it?
Justin Metzler:So they're constantly falling short, and then they're stuck in that sort of gray zone where they're actually not, like, the evidence to build from.
Gordo Byrne:That's the opportunity for you and me, not fixing them. You gotta be you gotta be what you want the team to be. And that was always my focus when I was the head coach. I'm gonna show everybody how to do it. I'm gonna do it.
Gordo Byrne:And I'm gonna publish, and everything I do is gonna be on Strava. And so when I say I train easier than every person my speed in the sport over 40, they're gonna be able to pull it up, and I'm gonna be able to produce charts from training peaks and data to prove what I'm doing. And I've done this from the very beginning. I mean, it used to be just a one page text thing that I would put up on my blog every week. This is what I did this week.
Gordo Byrne:And I would just do it every single week, holds me accountable. And it's about that. It's just about being transparent, and people are like, Okay. You know? Justin's doing it.
Gordo Byrne:This is how he's training. I can see the development he's getting. I can see that it's working, and you instill that power of belief in the team. Now some people, many people, are not gonna be able to overcome themselves, and part of that is the personality type that is attracted to endurance sport. But it's okay, because there's a lot of different ways to get fast.
Gordo Byrne:I mean, in this town, you can see many different approaches. There are people who are extremely good athletes, great athletes, world champions, who train completely differently from me. And that's okay. So what's that tell us? Well, it tells us maybe we should be a little more relaxed about protocol, and we should work with the athlete the way they wanna work because ultimately, it's gonna be about getting the work done.
Gordo Byrne:That said, you mentioned Christian. What everybody forgets about is the three years where he banged out four thousand hours worth of training. So you've got a human who can roll at 1,300 a year while winning world championships and gold medals. So if you're baselining yourself off that human, make sure you're an equivalent human. If you're not, you're gonna have to choose a different reference.
Gordo Byrne:That's why I follow 50 year old guys that I see win their age group in Ironman. If you win your age group with a great time in an Ironman race, I'm looking for you on Strava. I'm gonna try and follow you. I'm gonna say, hey. What's this guy up to?
Gordo Byrne:You know? What's what's going on there? Maybe I can learn something from it. So you have to choose the right, reference set for where you're gonna where you're gonna set stuff. And ultimately, you know, on this stuff, it's a blue collar sport.
Gordo Byrne:You need to be willing to do the work for the level that you want to achieve. Otherwise, you're just gonna be frustrating yourself. But that work is gonna change as you get older and as you develop. You'll be able to work smarter and the body's gonna change as well. So you'll need some slightly different, approaches.
Gordo Byrne:But the fundamentals are gonna still stay the same. It's gonna be volume. It's gonna be focusing on efficiency. It's gonna be improving your race specific economy. So the economy at race specific velocities, those fundamentals are gonna stay the same.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I am curious to hear because you coach yourself, correct?
Gordo Byrne:Well, you know, got a lot of friends that are really smart, and I'm always trying to pull stuff in. So Julie Dibbons coached me for a couple years. She got me through Roth, and I was really pleased with how that worked. I have a tremendous respect for With the coach, I just want to put something out there, when I was younger, I always chose coaches like me. So Scott Molina and I are very similar in physiology and in psychology.
Gordo Byrne:Although he's much more mellow than me, and probably he'd be a lot more fun to hang out with, I think, than me.
Justin Metzler:I don't know if that's true.
Gordo Byrne:Well, he's pretty fun. And I chose Julie and approached her because she thinks very differently from me. So as an older athlete now, I was like, You know what? I want a different view. I don't want somebody to tell me what I'm thinking all myself.
Gordo Byrne:I want somebody who's gonna be thinking differently and have different workouts and push me to do the sessions maybe I wouldn't do on my own, but able to explain why that's gonna benefit me. And so we had a really good partnership, and that worked really well. And then before that, I had John Hellemans, who's somebody I've known for a long time. He's my co author on the book. Because John, I was really struggling on the whole Masters Running thing, and he's about ten years older than me, and so he helped me through that with like, Yeah, I realize that you feel like you're falling apart all the time because you are, and here's some ideas.
Gordo Byrne:And even before that, Niels Vanderpol's coach, Johan Roiler, Johan coached me when I was just getting into coming back, And that was really great because we did a coaching exchange.
Justin Metzler:Cool. Yeah. I can't say enough good things about Julie. I was coached by her for five years. Okay.
Justin Metzler:2018 to 2024. And like all of my actual class results were under Julie. Yeah. So I really agree that she's, like, an exceptional coach, and similarly, she thought very differently, and I also appreciated how direct she was, especially with me. She would just tell me exactly what I needed to hear.
Justin Metzler:No bullshit. Straight to the point. And I always really respected that about her. And so I guess my question was if you're you know, we all have mentors, but I guess now heading into this next phase, if you are coaching yourself, how do you prevent yourself from becoming obsessed with the day to day and creating that plan? Because I think that's what I struggled with.
Justin Metzler:So I went from Julie to self coaching because I wanted to explore that and see if it could work. I did it for about eighteen months, and I found out it couldn't work for me because I coached 25 people. I spent a lot of time and a lot of energy focusing on those people. Yeah. And then I was devoting 50% of my attention to my own plan, and they were suffering Yeah.
Justin Metzler:Because of that. So I said, I need to outsource the coaching. So And I have a coach now so I can just do the plan and not think about it. Do you struggle with that or is it less pressure because it's more fun?
Gordo Byrne:So a couple things on that. I totally get it. That's why CEOs used to hire me. Cause they're like, I I don't wanna put any bandwidth on. You know the subject better than me.
Gordo Byrne:So just tell me what it's gonna take for me to get ready for this race. And I have confidence in you. And if I don't, then we'll just have a conversation then. So it was I get that. That's really smart to see that.
Gordo Byrne:So on the self coaching side, you know, it's pretty simple, actually. I think getting ready for races is actually pretty straightforward. You get very generally fit, and I know enough on the scientific side so I can assess that objectively. And then you need to set up a series of, like, rules. Like, okay, so I said earlier, half my days are easy.
Gordo Byrne:So I gotta make sure that I stick with that. So I need these low stress days in there. And then really I'm just focusing on one thing at a time. So I, you know, twice a week, so I'll have two days where I'm trying to move the needle on my one thing, and that's it. The rest is just endurance and strength and it's kind of filler.
Gordo Byrne:I think we can make it more complicated than it needs to be, and we can invest more mental energy than we need to put into it. I mean, see that particularly at the highest levels. I got a buddy who trains twelve hundred to thirteen hundred hours a year, and they think a lot about down to the minutiae of the sets. But if you're world class and you got the ability to do twelve hundred hours, so basically a hundred hours a month on average while racing and traveling around the world, you're getting it all right. I mean, you can relax about it, but again, it's the personality type.
Gordo Byrne:It's that always trying to do their best, and that personality type's great. You know, if you're in the water, you're constantly trying to get that little bit better technically, but you have to at times, you know, you gotta kinda unplug from that so you don't eat yourself up with obsession.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. That's where I sort of faltered with the self coaching thing, was I wasn't able to unplug. Every session was a critique. Every session was really trying to focus on every minute detail, whereas now with a coach, it's like, Okay, do a four hour easy ride. Put your garment in your back pocket.
Justin Metzler:It's okay.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah. So there well and and, you know, when you got a coach you know, if if you got a coach like Julia, who used to be an elite, I mean, she knows what it's like. She knows she can relate to how you know, like, she would say to me. I was like, hey. I don't have power on my gravel bike.
Gordo Byrne:She's like, great. Yeah. You know, was like, Just go out and ride and just go do a ride. And that's totally okay. And I, you know, I feel that sometimes, you know, sometimes I just wanna just go for a run.
Gordo Byrne:Like when I was a pro, I mean, we used to just go for a run, right? And then you just put 10 ks in the log and that'd be it. Now, because I wanna carry on a conversation with people and I wanna be able to quantify what I've done with people, I do measure everything in terms of heart rate and pace and all that, but it would be nice, you know, sometimes I get the urge, maybe I'll just jack it in. But like you said, if you just put the garment in the back pocket, that achieves the same thing. The data's captured, but I don't need to be focused on it, and then I just download it when I come home.
Justin Metzler:Yeah, cool. All right, well, I always finish the podcast with a rapid fire, but I've got a rapid fire about coaching and training topics before the rapid fire.
Gordo Byrne:Okay. So I want
Justin Metzler:to hear your perspective on just a couple of things, and just give me like a quick synopsis of whether you agree with it, disagree with it, like it, don't like it, you can elaborate a little bit if you want.
Gordo Byrne:Okay.
Justin Metzler:Alright. Number one, HRV tracking.
Gordo Byrne:It's a very good negative signal in the short term. So it's if it's a good red flag. Long term, as you become more resilient, it will appear in the data, but the data's very noisy. So you have to be looking at your average. So I've been tracking it now for four and a half years every morning, and there's been a clear shift upwards as I've become more resilient, more healthy with a very deep level of fitness.
Gordo Byrne:But that doesn't show month to month. It's like year on year, and there's so much noise in it. So I wouldn't use it for if you're you can't prove you're ready. You could definitely prove you're not ready, and you can definitely see year on year if you're becoming more healthy and coping better with all aspects of stress.
Justin Metzler:Okay, cool. Number two is chest heart rate monitoring versus an armband or optical sensor.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah, optical sensor is useless unless you're asleep because there's just too much movement. It's too bony. Arm thing in races, you know, I come out I come out of the water and I'm wet, and my body is really good at dumping heat, and until I'm hot again, it's going crazy. So the first that first bit on the bike, it's always crap data, but I don't care. I got Watts.
Gordo Byrne:And so I I I know what's going, but that can be frustrating for a lot of people for that if you're cold for that first bit of
Justin Metzler:the bike. Okay, interesting. Lactate testing intra training for athletes who train less than fifteen hours a week.
Gordo Byrne:Everybody needs the lactate test. I wouldn't coach somebody if they didn't lactate test. Doesn't mean you need to be going hard to get it. The most valuable lactate test is just figuring out what it takes. So how low can you get and what's the power and pace that it takes to get you off that floor.
Gordo Byrne:That is a test everybody that cares about performance should do. I also think it's a test that everybody should do just for general health, because if you're metabolically unhealthy, that's gonna appear in a lactate test way before your doctor sees anything.
Justin Metzler:Cool, interesting. All right, sauna and heat exposure in conjunction with training and then not in conjunction with training.
Gordo Byrne:Okay, yeah. It's totally overhyped. You know, again, geez, you're training you're training twelve hundred hours a year, and you're gonna wreck yourself by going in a sauna or turning the shower on your bathroom and smashing yourself for an hour. You really need to think about that. Is that fatigue going to be worth it?
Gordo Byrne:And if you're training twelve hours a week, forget about it. Just train more. That heat stress is gonna take so much volume out of your week, it's not worth it. At the high level, I would say be very cautious of taking training techniques from sports that have a history of microdosing EPO. There was a lot of talk when I was an elite with, artificial altitude, moving everybody's numbers.
Gordo Byrne:Subsequently, we found out that those guys were microdosing, EPO. So I'd be cautious with it. That said, I love heat training, and I love it. I love the sauna. I do it every day because it relaxes me and makes me feel good.
Gordo Byrne:It's on the adaptation side. I'm not trying to get my hematocrit to, like, 50 because of it or something like that. So I think that's good. If you're gonna race hot, you gotta train hot, and you gotta train the ability to drink and move fluid out of your guts when you're really hot. Very trainable.
Gordo Byrne:I trained for Ultraman, which I won when I was in New Zealand, just by wearing some extra clothes and stuff. I mean, it's, yes, you need to do it to perform, but don't expect, you know, if you're not doing the work overall, you're not gonna get magic from like putting a heatsuit on and wrecking yourself.
Justin Metzler:Yeah, couldn't agree more. What about cold exposure?
Gordo Byrne:That, so I don't like cold races. I don't like being cold. If you are an athlete who tolerates cold really well or doesn't tolerate cold well, choose your races wisely. I had some races in New Zealand that were really cold. Like it was actually snowing on the hills up above.
Gordo Byrne:And we kind of figured it out in terms of clothing choices. So you just have to be smart about what you're wearing. I do not enjoy, cold water. I'll tend to avoid those races. I had whole body cramps in Oceanside last year, like literally everything just because it was too cold.
Gordo Byrne:I got good they have us waiting in the corral like a long time. Even you guys. I mean, the pros went in, and they're just floating there for what seemed like forever. And I was like, was like, they would have had to fish me out. Like, I I wouldn't have made it to the start.
Justin Metzler:I wish I could bring back some cold races. I'm always scouring because I love cold races. I I like extremes. Like, I've done really well in super, super hot and then really well in super cold, I can't find any cold ones. And so Norsemen.
Justin Metzler:Maybe Norsemen. That'll do
Gordo Byrne:it for you.
Justin Metzler:They keep emailing me asking me to come. Maybe
Gordo Byrne:You this should do it. You can train for it here.
Justin Metzler:Okay. Maybe we'll talk about that because I I've it's always intrigued me. And maybe this is the point where I need something a little You
Gordo Byrne:just do that Estes ride, by way. There's your Norseman ride.
Justin Metzler:I do that twice a week anyways, just for my mental health. Yeah.
Gordo Byrne:So just that out and back and you're ready for the Norseman code. You just get ready to a bit of cold water and then a couple of green mountain loops, you'll be ready for the run.
Justin Metzler:Alright. Well, I mean, I can the cold water is never an issue. I mean, I did challenge Iceland two years in a row where it's like the glaciers melting into the fjord. It's like 51 degrees. And both GD and I won the race, and we were like, she hates a cold.
Justin Metzler:I don't know how she did it because she's from South Africa. And I'm like, I'm a Chicago guy swimming in Lake Michigan pretty much year round. So the cold for me is no big deal. So maybe maybe Norsemen. Alright.
Justin Metzler:Final one in the rapid fire before the rapid fire is high carb is going crazy. Ten years ago low carb's going crazy. What is it the high carb cyclical? Is low carb gonna come back around? Where do you fall on all that?
Gordo Byrne:You gotta do everything. You need your low carb days. You need your high carb days. If you're doing high carb all the time and you're an amateur, you're gonna be gaining weight. It's just too much energy going into your body.
Gordo Byrne:But if you wanna perform and you wanna rip, you're gonna need a fuel and you're gonna have to tolerate. And this is the males. I mean, some of the females probably don't need as much because they're not putting out as much power on the bike. But I would argue they would need to do more than they think.
Justin Metzler:Sure.
Gordo Byrne:A lot of them, most of them. And so it's both. And I think that's what a lot of amateurs miss. So they're kind of like, Oh, Killian just trains on water. That's what I'm gonna do.
Gordo Byrne:Well, maybe if you got Killian's physiology. What I do is I have days, most of my days, where I'm just eating real food. I'm not doing anything long enough to need to be pounding sports drink. But if I'm trying to stay on your feet at a master's session where I'm gonna be swimming five to six and a half thousand meters and forty minutes of that is gonna be full tilt, you better believe that I am carving up for that. Why?
Gordo Byrne:Because I'm gonna perform better in that session, but I'm gonna recover faster afterwards. And recovery is a challenge for a higher volume, higher performing athlete, and that's why I'm gonna fuel there. And then long days in the summer, I absolutely need to train the ability to do 23 to 2,008 calories of carbs on a long ride. I need to be able to process that and figure it out and just get used to it and get my body used to that because that's an essential part of a fast Ironman for me. I need to eat more.
Justin Metzler:You're preaching to the choir here because I'm eighty kilograms and I'm a big guy pushing and big so I need to be having, I was doing 150 grams an hour five, seven years ago, because I was like, I just, this is what I practiced in my training. If I do any less, start bonking. So I need to do this.
Gordo Byrne:Was doing that in the mid to late 1980s. That's where I got it from, him and Mark Allen. They were just eating tons. Yep. And so it's been around for a while.
Gordo Byrne:People have known. I don't I I think there are some elements of you know, on the on the lower side and the timing side, but really that's just the energy management side overall, and it's it's easy to get that wrong. And if you're an amateur and you under fuel and you miss your big day, it's not like you got another 10 of those big days coming up in your summer. I mean, those days are really valuable. You got to get the most out of them.
Justin Metzler:Sure. All right. Well, that's all the rapid fire before the rapid fire that I've got. I've got a little section here. I want to talk a little bit more about family.
Justin Metzler:I was reading an interview in preparation for the podcast, and I read that your last professional race sort of came around the time of the birth of, Lexi, if that's correct?
Gordo Byrne:Not so oh, last pro race. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that sounds that sounds pretty good. I was still pretty, I hung on into my I stopped racing elite in my late thirties.
Gordo Byrne:As soon as I turned 40, I kinda took a year off because I didn't wanna ups rock the boat by going straight into the amateur stuff. Mhmm. And I stayed pretty fast until 'forty '1 or 'forty '2. And then once Lexi's turned two and Axel was born, our second kid, then I kind of shut it down for a period of time, about ten years at Endurance.
Justin Metzler:Okay. I'm curious about that because Jeannie and I are expecting our first baby at the July, early August. And so I'm sort of thinking through those things.
Gordo Byrne:I've been
Justin Metzler:racing professionally for thirteen years. I've still got goals, but I'm curious if the baby's gonna impact things, and I'm gonna create more pressure. So I guess, like, what made that time period busier, more hectic, and maybe drew you away from racing as much?
Gordo Byrne:Well, I took a look around at so I was 40 when Lexi was born, when our first kid was born. So I was kind of at a natural transition point out of elite racing. I took a look around at my peers. So the other guys my age, and I had some older people too, and I didn't like where my marriage was going to go and where my family was going to go if I didn't back off. So that was something for me.
Gordo Byrne:I thought it was likely that my marriage would suffer. And remember, now I'm just a fast age grouper, so I'm not doing it as a living. And I was like, that doesn't seem like a good trade for me. So that's why I kind of decided, all right, I'm gonna take a break. I thought I was just taking a year off.
Gordo Byrne:But then we had another kid, and I was kind of like, oh, it just doesn't fit. The other thing that I noticed, and I would say to people, you know, pay attention to this. There will be times in your life, whether you have kids or not, when you're gonna stop recovering. So at first, the house is getting more hectic. There's stuff going on.
Gordo Byrne:I thought, well, that's no big deal. I'll just move the volume down a bit. I was always a high volume guy. So take 20% of my volume out, still not recovering. Take another 20% of the volume out, still not recovering.
Gordo Byrne:So the issue was I just had too much going on in my life to train the way I used to train. And at that point I was kind of like, all right, I guess I'll just take a break. Now, taking a break did not mean leaving health. So never leave health. I was still active.
Gordo Byrne:Every day I did cardio or some sort of strength training. So it wasn't like I shut it down, but I just changed focus totally.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. Interesting. I'm using this partially as a personal work through because I'm just unsure about what I want to do because I'm still passionate about racing, and I don't feel like I need to necessarily detract thirty hours a week, but maybe I can I'm I'm never really I can't be a thirty hour a week guy. Think, like, my sweet spot's more in, the twenty to twenty five hour range. If I do much more than that, start getting really tired.
Justin Metzler:And so maybe that's doable in conjunction with a baby, but, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna have to see. I'm curious to hear was two significantly harder than one and was three significantly harder than two?
Gordo Byrne:Yeah, three was mayhem. So when the third was born, we had three kids under four years old. So that was pretty challenging. But what that means is, I mean, it's great now. That I don't miss anything.
Gordo Byrne:I don't miss those races I didn't do. Being a father is one of the best things ever. So the trade off was really no trade. But there's identity. So you have your identity wrapped up in being this fast athlete and this stuff and winning.
Gordo Byrne:But it's way better. The day to day is being in a strong marriage with kids in a house that's harmonious and filled with love is just so great. Now it's like the best time of my life. And remember, you're not saying never again. You're just saying, look, in this season of my life, I'm gonna focus on something different.
Gordo Byrne:I'm gonna try and do that really well. So do the fatherhood piece really well. Do the husband piece really well. And then, you know, here I am fifteen years later, and I'm back to the same life. I mean, I'm different, the life's different, but it's effectively the same thing.
Gordo Byrne:I mean, it's, you know, it's like it's the triathlon lifestyle, it's great.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. Now that the kids are older, I mean, from observation, it seems as though like you're obviously taking your training pretty seriously right now. Monica still takes her training super seriously, your wife.
Gordo Byrne:Like she doesn't consider that. Really? Kids are number one.
Justin Metzler:Oh, I'm sure.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah. No, thinks honestly, she's on just maintenance, and that's the way she sees. Because remember, she's not running. She runs a little bit. She never rides unless it's with the kids a little bit in the summer.
Gordo Byrne:She still swims and she still lifts, but she's training just like an age grouper.
Justin Metzler:Do you guys have to have conversations around, like, how do we make the training fit in, or is it like pretty seamless now that the kids are older?
Gordo Byrne:So, yeah. Well, that was also the other thing too. I mean, it just didn't seem fair for me to put my training, like when it was nuts and we had all those preschoolers and babies around and stuff, it didn't seem fair. I'd be carving stuff out for my workouts and that. We make, so back then, we would make it a priority for the other person to get their exercise in because that was a health priority.
Gordo Byrne:In terms of training, what we try and do is what I recommend to people, see if you can get your control of your mornings. And then, you know, so then by the time your youngest is in kindergarten, you might be able to get fixed slot Monday to Friday in the morning, and you can do a lot with that a lot with that. And then because then and then because you can kinda cover for each other on the weekend, so you can get a little bit. But that's what we did. And there I do remember a period of time when money got a little tight, and Monica was waking up like she was waking up in the dark, running on the treadmill and then hanging out with the kids all day, and that'd be it.
Gordo Byrne:And that was just that was kind of what we had available then. And then we kind of restructured things, you know, you just don't lose each other and don't lose your health. It can be pretty crazy for a couple of years if you want to have a lot of kids.
Justin Metzler:Yeah, We don't know. We're gonna have to think about that, but we are thinking about already, alright. Because for both of us, being active is really important. I think for for Jeannie, even now, like, going through pregnancy and feeling really crappy in the early stages, like, for her to just be able to go get, you know, on a trainer for an hour or be able to go lift for half an hour. Like, that's a priority.
Justin Metzler:It has to happen no matter what. So we're already having those conversations of like, alright. Baby comes. What's gonna happen? Like, Jeannie's gonna have to get her workout done early.
Justin Metzler:I'm gonna be on dad duty until she's back. Okay. I'm gonna head off from my training or my work or whatever I have going on. We're trying to already sort of sift through that. There will be another piece because Jeannie is so good at triathlon that she ultimately probably wants to get back to racing.
Justin Metzler:And so that's gonna be something we need to sort out. But that's all really good advice on the family side, I think.
Gordo Byrne:Basic week.
Justin Metzler:Basic week.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah, so the whole family was on a basic week and we would change it once a quarter. So the kids would know what they were doing in the week. Cool. We would know, and we just did the same kind of thing. And we just put the family on a structure and we tweak it once a quarter.
Justin Metzler:That's good advice. We're gonna have to take that into consideration because we're planners, but not like we're not I like the once a quarter because that's something I was having a conversation with someone about this the other day. Like, I'm really good at thinking in a three month or a six month period. I'm terrible at thinking in a year or a two year or a five year plan. Like I have no idea what's gonna happen in five years, but I can handle the next three months.
Gordo Byrne:Exactly. I would say just do that.
Justin Metzler:Okay, cool. All right, well now I got the real rapid fire coming up before we finish up the podcast today. So question number one, most number of training hours you've logged in a week in your whole life?
Gordo Byrne:Twelve day camp, eighty four hours.
Justin Metzler:Okay. That's mega. Wow. That's actually insane. That was built up to Ultraman or?
Gordo Byrne:No. That was we got a little out of control. It was a thing called Epic Camp, and it was Epic Camp Australia. I averaged seven hours a day. Oof.
Justin Metzler:We did some hectic stuff with Julie. There was a forty two hour week in there at one point with the guys. So I kind of know what you're talking about. All right. Number two, weirdest or best thing you've eaten on a long ride or run.
Gordo Byrne:Oh, that's a good one. I did, you know, when I was training for the Leadville 100 bike, I had a fun day where I rode over to Winter Park, had a meal, and then rode back home. That was that was pretty cool. And Rollinsville used to have a place that had a really nice you get a huge piece of cake, and that was another one I really liked. So up there, Rocky Mountain stuff.
Justin Metzler:Jeannie and I's bucket list is to ride to Rollins Pass, hike over, stay the night, hike back, and then ride back down. That's like, we've been talking about that for years. We gotta make it happen. Maybe we'll have a baby on the back now. All right.
Justin Metzler:Number three, who has changed more diapers? You or Monica?
Gordo Byrne:Oh, geez. I don't know. I love babies, so I definitely did my share. We're probably, I don't know. I'm gonna say Monica will have me on the number, but I feel like I feel like I did my share.
Justin Metzler:Okay. Good. Alright. Number four. What's your current favorite running shoe?
Gordo Byrne:Oh, I'm gonna give you two. Cloud Boom Strike, I really like, but, Saucony just came out with the the highest level Saucony. What's it called? There's like I think it might be the Elite, Endorphin Elite.
Justin Metzler:Oh, like the yeah. Endorphin Pro series or whatever, even, like, a level above that?
Gordo Byrne:Yeah. Whatever the highest one is, the second version.
Justin Metzler:Okay.
Gordo Byrne:So the Prime X is illegal. The Adidas Prime X, the stack's too high, but the feel, I like that really cushiony feel. That high end sock and knee shoe has the same feel. And I just set a PB in the five k wearing it, so I have a very good vibe on it.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. That's how I feel about I actually don't feel that way about any shoe right now. Anyways, that's good advice. Alright. Number five, I've got six.
Justin Metzler:If you had to race Ironman Canada again, the same exact conditions, same exact course, what time would you go tomorrow?
Gordo Byrne:Oh, tomorrow? I'm not ready.
Justin Metzler:Alright. Six let's say, for example, you had, because you're a long long period guy, maybe the day of Roth. If that was Ironman Canada, same conditions, same course, everything.
Gordo Byrne:Yeah. So, actually, this is a beautiful question. I believe that with the bike technology and the shoe technology, it won't be course for course, but I think I can match my elite times now at this age. Cool. That's what I'm working towards.
Gordo Byrne:Because I was never that fast on the short stuff, the bike, the bikes are so good now, the velocity cost me 10% less power compared to what we were riding. And then the shoes are probably worth, I don't know, five seconds a K. So, I mean, there's real numbers now compared to kind of the old school stuff.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. 100%. To give context, you went $8.29 in 2004. So that's pretty ripping for, mid fifties.
Gordo Byrne:So what well, yeah. I'm I'm I'm definitely trying to go sub Simone. I saw what she did in in Arizona Mhmm. With the 04/30 bike and then the February run. You got that.
Gordo Byrne:And I was like, you know what? That's a great target.
Justin Metzler:Cool. Alright. Last question is what's one thing you're really looking forward to non sport related in 2026?
Gordo Byrne:Oh, oh, well, in so I got a friend who's turning 60, and they have these cruises where they take you around to ports, and then you go ride your bike and come back. It's like a small boat. And so he's doing that, and he invited me along. And so it's gonna be what is that? Think it's in Croatia in October.
Gordo Byrne:So it's something totally random.
Justin Metzler:Sounds epic. Alright. Well, that's all I've got for you today. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been a pleasure getting to know you more.
Justin Metzler:And, yeah, we'll see you all in the next episode.
Gordo Byrne:Thanks.