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The Relaxed Running podcast is a behind the scenes conversation with the best athletes, coaches and professionals in the world of distance running. From training, hydration and nutrition to racing and recovering, we learn from the best in the world.
Relaxed conversations which are packed with actionable takeaways to help you take your running performance up a notch. Save yourself years of guess work and learn from the people who are doing it at the highest level.
Tyson Popplestone (00:00.046)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Relaxed Running podcast. Tyson Poplestone here. Great to have you with us for another episode. Just before we get into today's episode, I wanna let you know that the Falls Creek run experience coming up in January is still accepting early bird pricing until 1st of October. So if you're keen to come and join us at Falls Creek in Victoria, Australia, make sure you jump across to relaxrunning .com. Hit the camp link to find out more lock in that early bird price.
Today in the show, super excited to introduce to you three time Ironman world champion, Craig Alexander. More affectionately known as Crowey. I've been pumped for this episode for quite some time to ask him about training and racing, recovery, strength, so much more. We cover a great deal of information for athletes in all forms of endurance training sport. I there's gonna be a lot of value taken out of this one. Really excited to bring this one to you.
This episode is brought to you by Pillar Performance, a brand new sponsor here at Relax Running. If you're interested in Pillar, they're a micro nutrition brand working with the likes of NN Running and athletes like Aliad Kipchoge. Their goal for us as endurance athletes is to make sure that we get to the start line of our races ready to roll. They're a great product, 15 % off your first order using the coupon code via the link in the description to this episode.
Also excited to let you know that we are partnered today with a brand new sponsor, traininghouse .shop. If you're interested in finding out more about traininghouse .shop or purchasing some products from their website, they've given the first 30 listeners only a 15 % discount code. So can get that in the description to this episode as well. But for now, here is my conversation with three time Ironman World Champ, Mr. Craig Alexander.
it's good to finally have the opportunity to sit down with you. I know we were just saying it was a little bit back and forth before we had the chance to find a time because you're a popular man in the world of endurance sports. And what were you saying? You'd had a couple in a row and you just like to hit refresh a little bit and bring in some new energy before you just keep them coming. Yeah, that's for sure. mean, think when you... And look, don't get me wrong. It's an honor that people are still interested.
Tyson Popplestone (02:17.838)
in the things that I did in my career and my journey through the sport, which probably wasn't the traditional journey. I started very late. I played soccer until I was 20 and really didn't have a background in endurance sports. So it made, I'm always chuffed when people want to talk about my career and things that I've done. But I think when you do a few podcasts or interviews in a row, you get a bit sick of the sound of your own voice and your own story. So it is good to hit refresh and come back full of energy at a later date.
Yeah, I was, I was saying just for everyone listening, I was saying it's hard when you've spoken about yourself for so long to feel as though you're bringing anything fresh to the table. And especially when you're competing at a level like you are, and you've had as many podcasts as, well, I'm sure you've done. Yeah. I'm sure that issue is magnified. I get a small taste of it just when I do these solo episodes here by myself, but yeah, it's, it's always interesting that there seems to be no correlation.
between how bored you are by your voice and the amount of people who are still interested in listening, is a relief. Because if everyone else started getting sick of our voice, it'd be a little bit more of a concern. But mate, yeah, I mentioned to you a couple of times that recently one of the big podcasts I did was your mate, Mark Allen. And it's really interesting, like a lot of the things that we spoke about in terms of endurance training for him were,
It felt like really trending topics at the moment. Like one of the things that really stood out from the conversation with him was I had no idea how on board he was with like this low heart rate training back even in the late eighties, early nineties. mean, I'm 37 now, I've been involved in distance running since I was sort of 11 or 12. And I've noticed a real trend the last few years in this zone two heart rate training. They're the YouTube videos that trend. So I was kind of keen to.
To keep that theme going, the training conversations is one that people who listen to this podcast and myself, selfishly seem to really love. So I thought maybe as a, as a little bit of a foundation starter, we could, I could put this to you. Cause I think one thing I've noticed with triathletes in comparison to runners is you guys are, you seem a lot more structured in terms of how you actually look at a year plan in comparison to a, average distance runner. There seemed to be a lot of focus on off season, high mileage taper.
Tyson Popplestone (04:32.878)
race day and how that's all structured, particularly with reference to like Ironman, it seems like it's even more of a focus point than the shorter distances. So mate, it's a fairly broad stroke of the brush to kickstart a conversation, but I mean, maybe I could hand it to you and you could just lead us in with a little bit of an overview of when you're peak Ironman training or getting ready for a big one, what that preparation phase actually looked like from 12 months out.
Yeah, okay. It is a good question. I maybe if triathletes are structured, it's because I guess the nature, particularly the longer events, you can only do a couple a year and it's probably similar to marathon running. You build up to those longer efforts and part of your build up might be some other races that are usually for me, they were shorter distance races. It's interesting that you mentioned Mark, because I did
read a lot about Mark early in my career. I mean, I was self -coached. I couldn't get a coach early in my career. I guess the thing I had going for me was when I started in the sport, which was quite late, 20 years of age, was about almost halfway through a physiotherapy degree. So was learning about the principles of physiology and endurance training and all of those things, which helped me a lot because I couldn't get a coach. And then later in my career, when people...
wanted to start coaching me, I kind of felt, I've got this far on my own maybe. And I had a lot of advisors and I used to reach out to Mark, Quar, like Greg Welsh. You know, I met Steve Monaghetty throughout my career. whenever I'd meet world -class athletes, I'd always take the opportunity to ask questions and, you know, just get them to have a, really just hear their philosophy on training and the kind of things they did. And what you understand is there's a lot of similarities.
which are guess the principles of training that you were referring to before, but there's also individual differences. We're not all the same physiologically. We're not all the same in terms of our training background. When we started in the sport, our biomechanics, metabolically, we're all different. Emotionally and mentally, we're all different. But I certainly lent on Mark's, I think Mark's Kona and Hawaii preparations were outlined in a book called The Law of Running. That's where I first saw his...
Tyson Popplestone (06:55.362)
what he would call his push phase. And that relates to your question about the build up to, and it's so interesting that you mentioned that because, you know, the one time in my career where I kind of felt exposed by not having a coach was when I started doing Ironman, which was in my thirties. I've been racing as a short course athlete for over a decade on the US circuit. And I kind of feel with the shorter distance and that kind of felt like more of my wheelhouse. was
I hadn't run growing up, but I played soccer and you need a lot of speed for that. And you develop an aerobic capacity playing soccer as well. But at the school athletics carnivals, I was always good at the, I think I ran like a low 5 ,400 in high school for 400, yeah, for one lap of the track. it seemed to be where my natural skills were, guess, or natural talents lay. Although I did okay in cross country as well. But again, I think that came from the soccer training. I played soccer to
quite a high level and we quite serious fitness training. So yeah, but when I stepped up to Ironman racing, I felt a little bit exposed. I wasn't sure if the training I set out for myself was the right sort of training. I actually wrote my final lead in to Kona the first year I was doing it in 2007. And the day I started it,
Coincidentally, went around to a friend's, we were living in Boulder, Colorado at the time, so I'm training up at Altitude, and I went around to a friend's place. My wife and I for a barbecue, and he happened to have the Laura of Running book on his coffee table, and while he was cooking the barbecue, I'm flicking through this book. And it was almost crazy how similar the plan I'd written for myself was to Mark's plan in terms of the way the week was structured, how long that final push phase was.
and the total volumes of the three disciplines were almost identical across the board. I mean, there was a little variations here and there, but basically I think Mark had set himself 27 kilometres a week to swim. I was at 25 or 26 K. He was biking, I think, 800 or 850 a week. I'd set 750 to 800 of a week biking. And the way it was structured with a couple of long rides and semi long rides and then intensity was very similar. And then same with the running.
Tyson Popplestone (09:15.618)
two long runs a week, one long run, that was a long run day with a second run. There was a second longish run during the week on the Thursday, long run day was Sunday. And the structure was very similar to Mark's, long ride Wednesday, long run Thursday, long ride Saturday with efforts, long run Sunday with tempo efforts. It was very similar. yeah, it was very reassuring leading into my first
Hawaii preparation to know that one of the icons of our sport had done a similar. And of course, you never know if it's going to work because to that point in your career, your training histories are a little different. I guess physiologically, some people respond more to intensity, some more to duration. For me, I always felt like I had natural speed and what I had to work on was the endurance side of things. know, going into that first Ironman, I think at 33 years of age,
most of the main contenders had been doing the long style, I mean, distance racing for five or 10 years by that point. So I felt like I was giving away quite a bit in terms of not only experience, but that endurance base, that ability, that really deep seated aerobic conditioning to hold pace after hours and hours of exercise. But yeah, it's funny that you mentioned...
you know, how things go in cycling. I really feel now with social media and things blowing up the way they do, there's a lot of focus on polarised training, the 80 -20, you know, the Norwegian method with the Ingebrigtsen brothers and everything that's going on. I kind of feel a lot of these ideas have been around for a long time. Maybe they're just getting more airtime now. I think the thing that doesn't change is we can lean on sort of the principles and these patterns or these
styles of training that have seemed to work, but it's still never a one size fits all. I mean, if you're training 48 hours a week, just by definition of that, you can't do a lot of intensity. And even if you're working at 80, 20, you might even be working at 90, 10, and at that point, if you're up to 40 hours of actual training time, that's still a lot of intensity. So, if it's eight hours of intensity in a 40 hour week, that's still quite a bit of intensity.
Tyson Popplestone (11:38.978)
Yeah, I just feel that what I learnt from Mark and a lot of the other pioneers in our sport, and I spoke to all of the previous Hawaii winners, I was lucky that I knew them through mutual sponsors or through friendships or just through the sport that I had access. was living up in Boulder, Colorado, so I used to see Dave Scott regularly. would swim in his, he had a really high level swim squad, so I'd go and swim with Dave Scott. I'd ask Dave questions daily, pretty much. I'd call Welshy, he was...
a good mate of mine and probably the guy who got me into the sport. When Greg won Kona in 1994, that was really the reason I started taking the sport more seriously. I was doing a lot of biathlons at the time, swim run races, but I hadn't really sunk my teeth into triathlons as such until Welsh really won in Hawaii. But I had access to all those people and what I realised was they were all doing a sort of a similar, the way they would do
So to your question, this kind of what I would consider a pre -season of December, January, where there was kind of a high volume phase, a lot of focus on zone two and all the benefits that zone two bring you like those metabolic benefits of being able to metabolise fat as a fuel, the higher and higher intensities, the more proficient you get at it, laying down more arteries and vasculature to deliver oxygen to working muscles, mitochondrial density, all of those things.
So a lot of volume in December, January. I would never just go slow all the time though. I always had tempo somewhere in each of the three disciplines. And I would also do a lot of, when I was doing zone two, I would be in the hills a lot to get that natural intensity. And when I was doing zone two work, I didn't have to be in zone two the whole time. I know there's stories about Mark capping his heart rate monitor and not wanting to go. You know, by that point in my career, I was in my thirties and I just felt so long as...
This session was predominantly zone two. It didn't matter if I slipped up into zone three, if I'm climbing a hill or I'm on a long or really hilly run. So I probably wasn't as disciplined as Mark was around those zones, but I knew what zone two was. And December, January was a lot of volume, sort of trying to reap the rewards that you get from zone two training. I always felt strength in zone two went well together.
Tyson Popplestone (14:01.752)
So there were a lot of hours in those months and then I would come into sort of end of January, February, drop the volume right back, step up into more sort of tempo or threshold work and then a period of more, I guess after that VO2 or even really race specific brick sessions and leading into my first races of the season. But then in the years that I did race Ironman, I would come back to another big volume phase in sort of late July or through August. So was about four or five weeks, my specific build up to Kona.
I'd spend the most part of the season doing Olympic distance races and half Ironmans. But then when I get to the end of July, going to a four or five week block, whereas, yeah, I was hitting those numbers that I mentioned before, of six swim sessions a week, 25, 26 K swimming a week, 750 to 800 K a week on the bike. So that was basically broken down into two long rides, a Wednesday and a Saturday of around 200 K or six hours.
One of those could have a bit of tempo work in it, particularly the back half of it. I'd also do a semi long or longish rides on Mondays and Fridays. They were four hour rides. Tuesday and Thursday were harder rides. were 90 minutes to two hours. One of those sessions was behind a motorbike, what we call motor pacing, similar sort of stimulus neuromusculator running on a treadmill, I guess, forcing cadence and turnover. And there's different ways you can play with that session for heart rate as well.
So that was one of the hard bike rides. The other one was usually on an indoor train or out on the road. And then from the running standpoint, yeah, was around 120K. Sunday was the long run day and double run day. So I'd run anywhere from 30 to 34K. A lot of race pace or Ironman pace, and for me, Ironman pace, my Ironman pace was 345 per kilometer. That's a 236 marathon, which is what I was targeting to run off the bike.
So a lot of my, when I was training for shorter distance races, a lot of my run training was just fast, as fast as I could. For Ironman, it was very controlled. It was more about holding, and that's the difference. Like people would say to me, did you ever run a marathon, a standalone marathon? I never did. The only marathons I ever did were off the bike. And you you'd speak to people and they'd often say, that's crazy, that's harder than running a marathon. I actually don't think it is. I think running a marathon,
Tyson Popplestone (16:28.462)
the way you watch the world -class marathoners run, where they're clipping along at low 250s per K the whole run. And then they might even throw in a 5K segment from 25 to 30 or from 30 to 35, where they're down around 14 minutes trying to break the field up. To me, that's much a harder style of running and much harder training and much a harder standard of running to achieve than just trying to clip along at 330 or 340 per K.
where you know that that's the pace, it's steady, that's what you train for. You train your body to fuel yourself at that pace. Biomechanically, you train to hold that pace. It's a different kind of running. So a lot of my speed in the long runs were really controlled when I'd get in that Ironman training phase. And it was a lot more, I would call it speed work, I guess it was more tempo or threshold, but it was right at.
that really control pace, which it needs to be when you're training 40 hours a week. And it was a full -time job. I was training six, seven hours every day. A lot of recovery, trying to sleep a lot. Ice baths, I was in the sauna, I had the compression on, I was getting a massage, five massages a week. Very high price I'd put on sleeping and eating as the cornerstone of my recovery. But then a lot of supplemental recovery protocols as well, just to be able to sustain that.
sort of work late for four or five weeks. Man, it's so interesting. So maybe about 12 months ago, I went through a phase where I was really curious to get back into some form of endurance based sport. Like I was competitive as we spoke about sort of before we hit record up until about maybe 2014, a couple of big races before then. And I had a few years away where I was just dabbling in the sport and trying to get more involved in just other things outside of, you know, the
endurance world that I'd spent so much time in. And then about two years ago, a mate said to me, like, mate, I reckon you should have one more crack at like a second running career, maybe in the marathon, something off the track that you'd be a bit more interested in. And I started to do some running and get some fitness. And I thought, well, you know, like one of the things that I'm keen to do is to get involved in the world of Ironman. And so I started to do a little bit of research and naturally I stumbled across, I didn't know how accurate they were at the time, but I saw
Tyson Popplestone (18:47.342)
what was said to be your training program. think based on what you just said, it was fairly accurate description of what it was that you were doing. But by nature of who I am, I've got that reputation where I go, if I'm going to do it, I want to do it at the best possible level I can. I mean, outside of endurance training, I'm doing comedy, I've got two kids around four, and I saw your training week and I thought, well, if I want to do this well, I've got, I don't have time. And so it's always quite amazing. I think that's perhaps the most impressive thing.
that I always take away from a conversation with a bloke in peak Ironman training is just the commitment to the cause. And I mean, that was only hours on the road or in the pool. Wasn't even considering the massage and the saunas and the ice baths and whatever else it is that you were doing. So I kind of got knocked down a peg and thought, I'll just focus on the marathon training for a while. But to your point, I mean,
With the marathon, I've even noticed the structure. Like it's quite a long event by nature of the event. There's so many variables from training, taper, high mileage, strength. Nutrition was one that was a relatively new kind of endeavor for me. Cause on the 1500 days, you were never overly worried about nutrition, especially on race day or in the race. Whereas, you know, in the marathon, the Ironman, you want to be at the top of your game towards the back end of the race naturally. Yeah.
Want to make sure you're fueling really well. so that's a, that's something I'm keen to pick your brain about before I do though. I'm, I'm amazed constantly. think it's a Venapool the cyclist. don't know his first name or where he's from. I think he had a background in soccer as well. And he's now turning out to be an unreal endurance athlete in the, the Tour de France scene. It's, don't know why it shocks me because I often think of a soccer player as more, just a top end high end speed, despite knowing how many miles they clock up in a game.
Seems to be a nice little transition that some of you guys make to elite level endurance sport. Yeah, I think two sports in particular, soccer and AFL, you need to develop an aerobic capacity. And it's kind of interesting because when we think of those athletes, they are explosive and they're physical and they're fast. So they're amazing athletes because they have to check a few boxes. You need to be able to have a good top end speed.
Tyson Popplestone (21:09.006)
and hit that top in speed in a short period of time. You need power. But those games go for a long time, like a soccer game goes for 90 minutes. I I took my son actually to the Swans Giants game last weekend, which was a cracker of a game. I mean, they're athletes. They're still trying to hit top speed deep into the fourth quarter, which, as you know, requires a lot of training and specific training. So I think there's a lot of sports where
And the two that come to mind are AFL and soccer where you do develop an endurance and aerobic capacity. so you're not only working on speed and endurance, but you're also working on speed endurance, the ability to hold speed later in an event, which is important. You know, all the different styles of triathlons and running races, they have different requirements and I love them all. I mean, you talk about the 1500, it's an amazing event. The 1500 in Paris just recently was an unbelievable race.
you know, the ability to change pace and even the pace that they just hold like Inga Britson just went out at a really, really quick pace, which probably hurt him in the end, it's, you know, all the different styles of racing, they just require different high level abilities. And I kind of felt with even with my triathlon training, you know, the speed I developed early on that I sort of had naturally, but then you work on in sprint distance triathlon and
We had a televised series with enduro's and triple super sprints and that kind of speed helps you even transition into the what we call Olympic distance races, which are two hour races, finishing with a 10K run. And interestingly, you know, I met Robert de Castella very early in my triathlon career. He was actually at a triathlon event handing out the awards and I think I finished second in the event. And I was chatting to Rob about, he was asking about
So it was only a sprint distance race, but I was telling him I was about to do my first Olympic distance race. And he said, you know, Olympic distance triathlon, said, running a 10K at threshold at the end of an hour and a half of exercise. He said, that's kind of like marathon endurance. That's what we used to have to do in a marathon. You're at threshold for two hours. And so that was sort of some advice that always stuck with me, you know, that, and it's true in triathlon, the best Olympic distance triathletes.
Tyson Popplestone (23:33.686)
even though you're running off the bike, you're running close to your PB for 10K off the bike. And you need to be able to, which is what you, as an elite marathon, you need to be able to run a really good five or 10K at the end of the event to sort of separate yourself. And, yeah, it was just interesting how there are, there is a lot of crossover, I think in the training, but I always felt that those, that speed training helped me when I stepped up, when I stepped up to half Ironman's for the first time and I was racing the sort of the long course specialist, I always just had more speed.
I was off the front of the race and same when I stepped up to Ironman, I felt the speed really helped me. But conversely, when you would do an Ironman race and fully recover from it, I remember coming back down to Olympic distance races because some of the biggest races I used to do in the US were the Olympic distance races. They were the ones that had the most media attention and the most prize money. And because of those two things would attract the best field. So as a competitive athlete, you want to go where the best field is and
I would always wonder how stepping back in distance after those first couple of Ironmans, how it would impact my speed. But the interesting thing is, I found I was able to still hit top speed off actually less work once I'd recovered, because the strength endurance that you get from the longer training helps your speed. All those things work hand in hand. You just can't do them all at the same time. So it's just an interesting little, something I noticed about the interplay of all the distances and people often say,
You don't really need speed for O -Men. We actually do. The faster you are, the higher your threshold. mean, as you step up in distance, the pace you're able to hold is just a percentage of your threshold anyway. So the higher your ceiling, the higher the pace you are able to hold for either a half marathon or marathon. So you're always trying to improve threshold. Lifting the ceiling of the 10 is always the goal. And then having the ability to hold that pace for a long period of time. So you're working in endurance and strength and all those other things, but...
Yeah, I kind of find all the training goes hand in hand. You just can't do it all in the same week and in the same day. Yeah, it's very interesting. Stewie McSwain, who's a friend of mine, has been on the podcast a few times. He was telling me a couple of years ago, he'd just run 331, which was his PB at the time for 1500. He's now run 329. But when he ran 331, I said, mate, like talk to me because yeah, you've recently run the Australian record for the 10K.
Tyson Popplestone (25:58.35)
you're running fast over five K like how different is that training? And I asked that because I always liked that, that feeling psychologically of coming into a 1500 knowing that your training was maybe shorter and faster than what it may be needed to be. So I was doing stuff at 800 meter pace and just doing my best to hold on, but feeling relatively comfortable for that first couple of laps. goes, mate, I'm, I'm just coming off 160 K weeks. I hadn't, and he hadn't done anything faster during training than 60 seconds.
for 400, so 345 pace, which is really interesting in something that I know in my own running career, I way overlooked and probably in all honesty, didn't really understand, but it is incredible how many athletes seem to have the ability to do that. I don't know specifically what Ingebrigtsen is doing for training. I've seen a couple of videos, but I know, I mean, the Norwegian method is a big part built around his name and that longer, slower kind of foundation seems to be a real central point.
And he also has an incredible ability to go, right, well, today's race day, how about we just step it up and run 12 .45 or whatever we need to run. So it's interesting that you were sort of privy to this throughout your career because I mean, you mentioned at the outset that you're looking at the likes of Mark Allen and what it was that he was doing and chatting to a number of elite athletes in their fields before you started to make that move towards the Ironman. But it's impressive that you're
ended up so closely to where Mark was based on the fact that there are so many different approaches to it. What do think that was? Was that just as a result of perhaps, you know, having his influence through the emails and the conversations or is that just you studying the field and what's working for the elite athletes? Because I can imagine there'd be so many different approaches. Yeah, it's a great question. And I actually probably had more to do with Dave Scott than I had to do with Mark Allen because Dave was just in Boulder and we were in Boulder. So
And you know, we made the move to Boulder in 05 because, for a number of reasons, but I wanted to try altitude. As you know, when, I mean, you get to a certain point when you've been doing it for a while and you feel like you're maximizing your training and nutrition and a lot of things, and you're looking for areas to improve and those areas of improvement come in incremental gains after a while. When you're early in your career and you start training and you're improving, you're on a...
Tyson Popplestone (28:21.9)
I guess a nice trajectory trending up, but at some point you plateau off and you get close to what people call your physiological ceiling based on your genetics and your training practices and all those things. But there's always things you can do like enhance your recovery. And one thing I thought I could add into the mix was altitude. You know, some people respond, some don't. I'd been living and training in San Diego, which is at sea level and that had worked. I'd had a couple of great seasons in the US.
But the first year I went up to altitude, I came down to sea level and possibly had the best performance of my career. It was in an Olympic distance race. So was before my Ironman racing days. so the altitude worked for me. So that was the first thing I knew that Mark and Dave and a lot of athletes, male and female, who had had success at Ironman had done a lot of their training up at altitude. And the benefit of altitude, as you know, is your body becomes
better at sending oxygen to working muscles, that physiological adaptation, getting more red blood cells, more oxygen carrying capacity. And Boulder was great because it was at five and a half thousand feet, so about 1 ,800 meters. So you could actually still do quite a lot of intensity at that altitude. You're not up at nine or 10 ,000 feet, but you could go up and do your zone two up that high. Like I used to go up and do my long, I'd do a six hour long ride and four hours of it would be above 7 ,000 feet.
So higher than Kosciuszko. But then I could go out east of Boulder into the sort of the farmlands, the rolling terrain, and I could do intensity at pretty much sea level effort and intensity level. So for me, Boulder was a nice mix, but I mean, that's a great question. Who knows why you get to the level. I think I had a very high motivation to do well in Hawaii because even as a soccer player,
the two endurance events that I used to love and follow every year were the Ironman in Hawaii and the Cooling Gutter Gold, the Surf Ironman race. And I watched those every year. They were always on about the same weekend, two in October. So I'd watched both those races and events for years before I ever did a triathlon. it just became, when I decided to get into triathlon, which was kind of a right round about story as well, just, yeah.
Tyson Popplestone (30:52.076)
That became the race that I knew. Triathlon wasn't in the Olympics at that point. All the athletes that I read about and saw on television had cut their teeth in Hawaii. I triathlon's grown into a lot of great things now, including Olympic status. And it's all been amazing for our sport. But my dream was Hawaii. That's the race I'd seen and watched for five or six years. Yeah, so I mean, look, who knows why you have success. I mean, it was amazing to emulate to some degree what
what Mark did, of course he won six titles in Hawaii, I got three. And I just think that race, whilst I felt I was more suited to the shorter distances, I mean, those longer distances, like marathon running, you just gotta, you can train that endurance over years, right? And it takes a while. I think something about that race just appealed to me the mental challenge of it, having to manage yourself being out there for so long. You know, I always enjoyed all,
all the distances, the short short course is good because it's about top end speed and fitness and tactics, changing pace, racing with different, I guess, strategies. The longer you go, it's more about a steady state effort, I guess, particularly in triathlon and also, know, withstanding pretty brutal conditions, Hawaii's hot, humid, it's windy, it's quite hilly.
And I think that I was just highly motivated to do well in that race. I was prepared to do the training that you needed to do because it was, for me, it was the race that I'd seen many years before. was the race that really got me into the sport and sort of ignited my passion for triathlon. So, you know, I was always really motivated to prepare well, to train hard for that race and then to kind of race tough when I was out there. So I think there are many different ways, as they say,
It's not a one size fits all. So, you know, we can certainly learn a lot modeling the training that other people have done, but in the end, we've got to find out what works for us with our own physiology, again, our own emotion and mindset and also our own situation in terms of the other things we got going on in our lives. Yeah, it's a good point. One thing you said earlier, which I was interested to pick your brains about was, I think it was around July, you said you'd start your five week build up specifically.
Tyson Popplestone (33:12.814)
to that Ironman distance, seems like a relatively short buildup. And I know you're coming off six months of, you know, volume, which is probably starting to get quite significant as well. But like specifically, what was the difference in that five week buildup? I think you said some of the volume increased, but was it, was it a dramatic increase or was it, was it like quite subtle? So I guess if we look at the whole 12 month structure, I finished Hawaii.
take a couple of weeks off. Usually if things had gone well, you're flying back to the US or to Europe for promotional work. I'd usually have a couple of weeks completely off, but I love training and I love moving. And in fact, just training without structure is probably one of my favourite things to do, just waking up and doing whatever you feel like doing. Could be a surf, it could be paddling a ski, a mountain bike ride, a coffee shop ride.
Technically, I would give my legs a bit of a rest after the marathon. So it'd be mainly non -weight bearing and different things, but I'd get back into the training. Then I'd do that really sort of zone to strength, heavy focus through December, January, get a bit more race specific and then hit the ground running. First race of the year could have been end of Feb, usually March. He's still in a big race up in Singapore. Get to the US around April.
A couple of big races over there, an Olympic distance race and then a half Ironman in the St Croix half Ironman, which at the time was one of the biggest races in the world. So, but even through sort of, I want to say March to July, I'm still training. I'm probably averaging 25 hours a week. Upwards at 30, of course there's table weeks in there and maybe some travel weeks and weeks where you've got promotional work scheduled, that sort of thing. But I'm still,
But there's more of a focus at that time of year on threshold work, know, over threshold work, maybe VO2 max, as people like to call it. Cause I'm racing sprint distance races and Olympic distance. But it was part of the bigger picture for me. You you hear some people talk about reverse periodization, doing a lot of really top -end speed work before coming into more of a base phase again. I don't know if I was doing that as such, but I was just trying to mix the stimulus up. I didn't want to go long and...
Tyson Popplestone (35:37.998)
Zone two all year and even as I said to you, even in December, January, when I'm doing zone two, I'm still doing tempo at least once a week in each of the three disciplines, just for the heart and lung activation, but also just the neuromuscular, firing the muscles quicker, that kind of thing. So I would go through April, May, June, July of racing and then lockdown, but even...
that July, August five a week push phase or prep phase if we want to call it that. It still had some threshold work in there because I would always do a half Ironman race four weeks out from Kona. that became the world championships that race. So in 2011, the 70 .3 of the half Ironman worlds were typically later in the year.
And the first year I won those, was in, I think, November, December. Then when I started racing Kona, I only raced the Half -Eye Man Worlds once when it was after Kona, which was the next year. The first year I raced Kona and the year after when I was defending the Half -Eye Man Thailand, it was kind of hard because I'd done well in Kona, so you're doing more promotional work and you're sort of not focusing on training. But I had a good race. I still went and got four at Worlds.
You know, I feel it was a worthy title defense. And it was coming off my first Ironman as well. So yeah, learning how to recover and manage that. But then in 2011, the powers that they shifted it. So the half Ironman worlds were on a month before Hawaiian. To me, that made more sense. But it meant you had to factor some speed into your training. couldn't just do Ironman specific training. But I always felt that helped me anyway, as I said.
the speed helps the Ironman training. And I guess to put it in a bit of context for the people listening.
Tyson Popplestone (37:42.094)
To do very well at a world -class half Ironman race, you've got to be running, well, in those days, pre -super shoes, you still had to be running 68 or 69 minutes off the bike for half. So about 320 per kilometre pace. So you need a bit of speed for that and speed endurance. I mean, it's not super top end speed, but being able to hold, typically you come out of T2 around 315 per K and then the pace blows out a little bit, but you average around 320s and you've run, think,
I think that's like a 68 or a 69. And that'll get you towards the pointy end of a world -class half -ironment, particularly if it's an undulating course. Maybe require a bit quicker if it's a dead flat course. But yeah, so my big push phase, July, August had quite a bit of threshold work still in it. when you add that into the mix of that kind of volume, 40 hours a week and the distances and the mileage as I mentioned before.
Now we've thrown a bit of threshold work into the mix in all of the three disciplines and we're at altitude as well. So that impacts recovery. Yeah, it was a tough balancing act and there was very little margin for error. mean, I was so mindful of sleeping as much as I could, eating well, eating enough in the gym, know, couple of three or four times a week. And I had a little setup at home that I do every night around
Not so much stretching, but mobility exercises, lunges, things like that, taking muscles through range under load dynamically. You know, I'm a big fan of, for instance, for running, I think the lunge is one of the best running exercises because you're loading your hip flexor eccentrically right through range. And as we know, good runners can access hip extension and a lot of hip extension. particularly if you're a triathlete sitting on that bike a lot and you're closing off that hip angle, I think the lunges are really good exercise.
I had a little set up at home with a yoga mat, a Swiss ball, some stretch cords, some hand dumbbells, and I would do that sort of routine every night. So I was, I think I was blessed with pretty good biomechanics. My body was pretty durable, but I worked very hard on that as well, on core strength and stability, moving well, good functional, efficient movements, which of course have an injury prevention value, but also an efficiency and a performance value in an event that's
Tyson Popplestone (40:05.166)
you know, even an Olympic distance, an event, it's an hour 40, you know, it's about holding pace as much as it is about speeding up towards the end of the race. And that's particularly true the longer you go. So for half Ironmans and Ironmans. So, you know, I think I checked all the boxes and that was a very, very, that was the hardest period of training of the year for me. End of July through to, so the last week of July through to the end of August, that period was about four to five weeks.
A lot of volume, quite a bit of intensity, quite a bit of threshold work, still at altitude, hot, hot summers in Boulder. So there's another load and stress on the body you're trying to manage. So I was trying to do all the things that I could to be sustainable in my training and consistent and feel strong, hit all the benchmarks that I wanted to hit, knowing that you're not gonna, you when you're under that kind of load, you're not hitting PBs every day. You know, some days you just...
your feet are like concrete, they feel that heavy, your legs feel that heavy. Same in the pool, you feel like you're sinking, but you know, get through to the end of August. And then there was a two week sort of really specific race prep phase leading up to the Half Ironman World Championships, which were always mid September. And then coming off that, I had four weeks for the final run into Kona where I'd do two big volume weeks again or...
pretty much ramped the not to the same extent as I'd just done in August, but I'd push it right back up there. And then another two week, very targeted taper into Kona where slightly different taper, I capped all of the intensity in that final taper right at Ironman effort level. So, you still need to be able to swim quick and Ironman you got to get out quick. in terms of recovery, it's a non weight bearing activity and
So you recover well from the swimming, but biking and running that last two weeks leading into Hawaii, I was very mindful of just capping my intensity right at, right around that race pace intensity for both those disciplines and yeah, just trying to manage the load again and come in fresh. But for me, coming off that kind of workload, I could never go into a taper of just nothing. I felt lethargic and my body was used to some sort of workload. So I just...
Tyson Popplestone (42:27.63)
But again, that's a balancing act. think tapering is a very individual thing. And some people, again, respond to laying around doing nothing. I think most people like to move, keep things moving, sort of priming the body for a big effort ahead, you know, just fire up the heart and lungs and the nerves and the muscles. But it's a fine balance. You want to prime things and fire them up without sort of creating any residual fatigue because there's no real fitness gains in the last seven to 10 days that...
will come at the, you know, that, sorry, that won't come at the expense of fatigue and overloading a little bit. So you just kind of maintain and feeling good at that point. Yeah. I really relate to that approach to a taper as well. Like I always felt quite sluggish if I had a race the next day and I had the option for an easy jog or a rest day completely. I always took the easy jog, even if it was just for a little bit of a burn of that emotional stress that you might feel or that nervous energy.
Just to help sort of navigate my way through that. You mentioned your tapers, you know, not just towards the race week, but also just sporadically throughout your actual training blocks. How did you structure those taper weeks in terms of, were you looking at data to decide when it was that you would put a taper week in or was it based on feel or was it like, all right, every four weeks is a down week? Right. That's a great question, you know, because.
And it's very topical right now because AI and data is coming into endurance training. And I remember being involved in a project with AI 10 years ago and thinking, wow, this has enormous potential. But at the time it wasn't quite factoring in all of the variables that, you know, a coach or that you would factor in to craft a great plan. You know, back when I was doing Ironman, I think we're at the point in...
in the evolution of wearable tech and data where we could capture the data, but we still didn't quite know how to interpret it correctly. And we had, we had softwares where you could upload that data and look at it like a calendar, like training peaks and those sorts of things. But again, there was no system for crunching the numbers to tell you, how well your, it was really to evaluate a taper or even a race performance or even a training performance.
Tyson Popplestone (44:47.544)
to truly evaluate it, what you need to do is come back and close the loop and actually see how that performance compared to the data and what the data suggested you were going to do in that race. And here's, we've used your data to train a certain way. The data is factored in your own training zones, your thresholds, your own load, your previous history, because it uploads your own previous history. It factors in the environment, the altitude, the humidity, so change your zones accordingly.
But then when you actually do the race performance itself or the training performance, unless you come back and evaluate related to what the data prescribed and what it predicted, there's no way of knowing how effective it is. I think that's where we're currently at. When I was racing, we were nowhere near that. to answer your question, it was trial and error and a lot of subjective, subjective. I I trained a lot to RPE. did get, when I stepped up to Ironman distance racing, I got a power meter on my bike.
Prior to that, I didn't even really train with a, I did get a heart rate monitor when I moved up to altitude for the first time because I wanted to see what running at different altitudes, what that impact and stress, what the stress was on my body. Even at Boulder, 1800 meters doing threshold efforts. How does that impact my body? How's my heart rate doing those as opposed to C level? What's the change in stress?
So again though, unless you have a lot of data to fall back on, like unless you've tracked that data for a long time, you see this data and you wonder, well, how does it relate to what it's supposed to look like? So I think that's where we're at in our evolution. Now we've got so much data and people are starting to input it and monitor it and clean the data and normalise it so that we actually know what it means. When I first got that heart rate monitor and I was training up at altitude, I was able to look and say, well, yeah, and doing these threshold efforts running,
I'm working a little harder than I do at C level, but is that significant? I don't really know what to base an opinion on. So was a lot of trial and error. And to be honest, very, very early in my career, I trained a lot to RPE, Rate of Perceived Exertion. And having that science background and studying physio, there were a lot of studies, and I read quite a few research studies that showed that very experienced athletes,
Tyson Popplestone (47:06.542)
can use RPE quite accurately. They know their body quite well. They know what a recovery run feels like. They know what a zone two run feels like. They know when you're pushing up into more tempo, upper zone three, when you're getting close to threshold or at threshold. And you know, in the studies that I read, when they would test people and get them to evaluate it based on RPE and then give them a heart rate monitor, it's quite close, quite accurate. But again, I think we're at a place
now where we can be a lot more accurate than that, particularly, I mean, guess coaches these days and athletes these days where we can be a lot more precise with monitoring the load and prescribing a taper. Cause that's what your question was. For me, it was a lot of trial and error and how did I feel in these subjective measures I had of walking upstairs? How did my legs feel? You know, if...
If my goal is to hold 4 .1 watts per kilo on the bike for 180K, I should be able to go out the weekend before and do nine or six or three minute efforts right at that level quite comfortably. So it was more a subjective feeling and just making sure that I'm really overloading on the recovery. A lot of sleep again, eating the right things and enough of the right things. The compression, the ice bath, the massage.
and just throwing as much of that against the wall as possible. And hopefully a lot of that recovery would stick. But to be quite blunt, I had no way of really evaluating whether I feel my tapers were good. Could have they been better perhaps? And I guess that's where we're moving into now with this wearable technology. We've had the wearable tech for 15 years now, maybe 20 years even more. But now we're getting to a place where people have actually written programs around interpreting that data and what does it mean?
based on, like it's all in good to say, yeah, I won this race. Well, that's almost an external measure because you're comparing your performance based on what other people did. How is that performance based on your own potential and your genetics and your training, what you could have done? I mean, that's the real measure, really maximising our potential. Have we maximised the things, our training practises?
Tyson Popplestone (49:29.518)
Because there's some things out of our control like genetics, but there's a lot of things in our control, the way we train, the way we recover, what we eat, all of those things, the people we train with, the people who prescribe our training. There's a lot of things that we can do in and around our training that we have control over. The evaluation piece is an interesting one because I'm we're getting more and more to a place in endurance sports where we can be more objective with these evaluations. To your question, and I know I've gone off on a tangent, but I had
It was always a work in progress with me. Like, how much time did I focus on my training plans and my programs and my taper? Well, how long's a piece of string? I was always working on it and refining it and making notes and comparing and evaluating after the fact, analyzing and thinking, were there things I could have done better? What do I need to change moving forward? And that was just an ongoing process that never ended.
Yeah, it's so funny you say it because I think it doesn't matter what level you compete at, what sport you're in. There's never a point where you go, cool, I figured it out. like we're done and dusted. So I always find that a little bit freeing because I think, especially with some of the athletes I coach, there's a lot of overwhelm that comes with not knowing what the right move is at the right time. And I think just sort of relaxing into that knowledge is freeing and just going, all right, like we're going to learn. And if you can take a bit of a
Zoom out to the whole project and see what's worked in the past and you know, just not be so emotionally connected to the work There's some there's some real benefit that comes with that I love what you said about RPE as well because my whole career was very much based on on rate of perceived effort until about 18 months ago most of The coaching that I prescribed with the athletes that I'm working with was was done at RPE as well and it wasn't until I had a couple of guests come on the show and start talking about some of the data and Convince me of why I should compliment it with
you know, a heart rate monitor and some real structured zone two training or whatever it might be that I started to take it a little more seriously. And I think for me, even I'm exactly like you, I think I can tell fairly accurately what zone I'm in when I'm out training, particularly a jog. But it's nice sometimes just to have the accountability factor of the watch to look down at and go, all right, yeah, like you're getting a bit excited or you're thinking about what the pretty girl is going to be thinking on Strava when she sees your upload, which probably shouldn't talk about on the podcast based on the fact I'm married.
Tyson Popplestone (51:53.038)
It's a really interesting thing, It's a, yeah, you're right about how, how many advances have sort of taken place in the field over recent years. The fact I'm talking about data blows my mind because 10 years ago, it would have been a subject that I would have thought bored me, but it's kind of got me a little excited at the moment for some reason, maybe because it's so tightly affiliated with running and performance. Yeah, sorry, go on. I was going to say it's a funny one though, because I, again, but this is where you cannot.
separate the physical from the mental though, because I think for some people, they'll want to have the black and white numbers and the objectivity of it. But that could be stifling and suffocating for some people as well. So I still think RPE is a great measure. Again, I just don't think there's a one size fits all. I mean, if someone's data driven, then there's no question that getting the wearable tech and these different
ways of normalizing the data and interpreting the data. That's the way to go for those people. for some people who are more, I guess, cognitive or emotional and they don't, I mean, it's not a one size fits I still think RPE is one of the most undervalued tools there is in coaching. you know, we seem to be in a world where we're trying to force people into one way or another. And I just feel it depends on the athlete and the person.
You know, I still rarely run with a watch when I go, I try to work out most days and I just don't most of the time even bother with it. I couldn't be bothered. just want to, know the different places I like to run around here and run down and check the surf out from my house. So I know my loops and I don't need to be breaking records every time I go out. yeah, it's a great point you make though. I think it's handy to try and be across all the different.
styles of coaching, whether they be data driven or more of a subjective feel. But in the end, it's going to be driven by what the athlete themselves want. Yeah, it's a really good point. Where are you based, Crowey? What beaches are you checking out on those runs? I'm Southern Sydney, so I'm checking out Wanda, Allura, Cronulla, a couple of little point breaks or any, Cronulla Point, Sanchez, so... Yeah, I surfed a little bit as a teenager, but then...
Tyson Popplestone (54:14.072)
for obvious reason. And I lived nowhere near the beach back then by the way. So was like an hour train ride each way. So that sort of stifled my surfing a little bit. But I was all about soccer back then anyway. But my son's riding to it now. So yeah, we go down and we try and get down there a couple of times a week at least. So it's great. Yeah. Crowe, before I let you go, you mentioned something earlier that I just wanted to pick you up on before I said goodbye. And you're talking about the evening routine with your strength.
just that mobility routine, you'd go through the motions. Strength is something that I've heard you talk about a lot as a real benefit to the training that you're doing on the bike and the pool and the running. Was that the strength routine or was that the mobility strength routine on top of whatever you were doing in the gym? So it was a bit of both. So as a physio, I learned about the importance of moving well.
it's the most efficient way to do it, especially in anything that's a repetitive motion over time, like running or swimming, you you want to be, you want to maximise every stroke or every stride or every pedal stroke, basically. And moving well has a huge injury prevention benefit as well. If we're moving the right way, we're less likely, particularly as the loads go up or the volumes and intensities and all of those things. But I got shin pain and shin splints very early in my career.
And I went and saw a physio who was a mate and he's like, mate, you should know better. Your core is very weak. yeah, I just, I had a huge focus on core stability, core strength and activation. Right from early in my career. Sometimes it's not even strength. Like when we sit at a desk a lot or we sit in the car or we're on a bike in that sort of hunched over position. So our posterior chain's in that lengthened, weakened position. Important muscles like the glutes can just turn off.
So sometimes they're strong enough, they're just inactive. So we've got to learn how to turn them on and there's certain mental cues and exercises you can do to do that. So that's where it started for me. But then I would always, triathlon is a strength -based sport. And I think particularly as I stepped up in distance and got a little bit older, as we get older, the things we tend to decline in our speed and strengths, that's where I put more of a focus.
Tyson Popplestone (56:36.396)
Our endurance keeps improving into our late 30s and our 40s. So I had two sort of what I would consider strength routines. One was the one that I would just, was more core stability, core strength, and I do that at home. To sort of improve compliance, I thought if I don't need to be going off to a gym to do this routine, it's something I can do at home. There's a million, I mean, you could Google core stability exercises for running and there's a lot that come up. Start with a dead bug position.
hip bridging plank position. And most of these exercises start as static holds and then progress to more dynamic movements, combined movements and movements that actually simulate the way the muscles have to work when you're running or cycling. So alternating legs, those sorts of things. So I'll do those at home. But then I'll go to a gym and do what most people consider a strength routine. Yes. And that became more and more important as I got older. I think in my thirties I would
And I would do the heavier lifting to try and get the strength gains again during that December, January period that we talked about when we're doing a lot of zone two. So I feel the heavier lifting when you're trying to get the strength gains and your muscles are fatigued is counterproductive to running or cycling fast and putting out a lot of power. So I would use December, January to run a lot of hills, ride a lot of hills and get in the gym. And the kind of lifting I was doing in the gym was heavier than I would normally do.
So I'd try and get the strength gains December, January, February, and then revert back to more of a maintenance routine to try and maintain those strength gains that I'd got. So less time in the gym, less weight. But yeah, just really trying to consolidate those gains that you work hard to get. And that makes sense because that sort of time from end of February onwards, you're doing a bit more race specific work, a bit more speed work. And again, just...
like anything with a balanced training program, it's about putting the pieces together so they complement each other. you don't want to be doing a heavy lifting session in the gym and then going off to try and run track hard the next morning or it's not going to work. And really at that time of year, you need to be working on the speed. So that becomes the priority and the focus. So as you know from coaching, it's about just structuring things in a way that they complement each other.
Tyson Popplestone (59:00.61)
But yeah, I had two, what I would consider strength routines. One was actually a lifting routine in the gym. And a lot of those exercises were exercises where the strength gains transfer really well out into the real world of swimming, cycling and running. So back squats, front squats, inclined leg press, lunges, step ups, and even sort of faster, more explosive movements as race season came around, box jumps, power cleans. So that was kind of the lifting.
routine and a lot of body weight stuff too, chin ups, push ups, which was different to the core strength slash stability routine, which is more about activation and turning on muscles around the pelvis and challenging the pelvis to balance with different stimulus like standing on a Swiss ball or one legged, a lot of single legged stuff and, but just getting the muscles to work in a way that's very specific to how you want them to work when you're cycling or running.
Yeah, it blows my mind. I'm in the gym quite a lot and I'm still sore from three days ago. I did an online Pilates class that regular listeners will know. I'm a big fan of move with Nicole, little dancer, ballet chick. And, I'll tell you what was a 40 minute workout and I cannot believe how sore the outside of my hips are and how low I've got so much work to do in that part of strength. It's a, it's amazing. yeah, yeah, you're not too far removed now, Crowe. What you're still, you're still running camps and coaching and you got your hands full with.
with the other side of Triathlon Life? Yeah, so we've started a coaching business. It's been going 10 years now. I've got six or seven coaches who work for us and they're spread out all around the place. And my main involvement with the business is we have an online community. delivering a lot of content, Q &As, webinars to the online community. I host one or two Zwift rides a week for our athletes so we can train together virtually in the virtual world.
which is something I guess new the last five or 10 years. And we run camps, yes. So we've had the last couple of years, well, our camps flatlined for obvious reasons during the pandemic. Nothing was going on there, but yeah, we've been back going a couple of years now. We've two camps in Mallorca each year in Spain, beautiful training over there. Next year, we've got three camps scheduled for Kona, the big island, beautiful.
Tyson Popplestone (01:01:25.832)
And also we've got a couple of camps scheduled on the East Coast of the US. So, yeah, I go to each and all of the camps. So that's a fun thing for me to interact with the athletes. It's good to, a lot of the people that come to the camps have sort of worked with us online. So it's good to get in front of people. Because that's, I consider it to be a really important part of coaching too, just interacting with people as a person rather than using all this technology, which has its advantages as well.
But yeah, so I'm doing a part of that. I still work with quite a few companies. I'm a partner and ambassador for quite a few companies, which I feel very honored to be and still turn up to a lot of events. I'm going to the Ironman World Champs in Hawaii this year, which is the men's race this year. Of course, they've split the men's and women's. Now the women's race is coming up in a couple of weeks actually in Nice, but the men's race is on the big islands. So I'm the event ambassador in Hawaii.
and also the event ambassador for the Huff Ironman or 70 .3 World Championships in Taupo, New Zealand in December. So yeah, still getting around, still getting around. So which is great. mean, it's, the sport has been so good to me. It's been something I've done my whole adult life. I raced as a pro for 25 years and to still be involved, you know, after three decades, I feel very lucky. Yeah. Yeah, it's unreal.
Crowey, mate, I got my eye on the clock. I know you got to get out of here at three o 'clock. We're pushing that. I'm going to love you and leave you. But hey, mate, thanks for being so generous with your time. I knew there was going to be a absolute world of gold, little nuggets you'd throw out there. So I'm sure the audience is super grateful. I'll make sure for anyone who hasn't got their finger on the pulse of what you're doing that it's tagged in the show notes to this episode. So check that out there. But mate, thanks for coming on. Thanks for making the time.
Tyson, thanks for the invite mate. It's always fun to talk sharp and good luck with everything you're doing as well.