Interview: Adam Didyk

The biggest buzz at London marathon this year wasn't just the racing, it was around Nomeo. It's a performance shot used by athletes like Cole Hawker and Conor Mance. Nomeo is used before their key sessions and races, whether it's breaking the American marathon record, or getting a world championship gold in Tokyo. What's also interesting is how widely it's being adopted, because it's not just by established elites. Emerging talents like Sam Ruth, the 16 year old prodigy, swears by the product and is already making ways. Check it out for yourself at drinknomeo.com and if you're an Australia or New Zealand, you can find it at AIDS Station and the running company. [Music] All right, this weekend on the inside run podcast, very, very special interview. We've got the pathways and transitions manager from Athletics, no Australian Athletics. The founder of Team Tempo is been a team coach at the Olympics, World Championships, Calm Games and World Cross Country is also the coach of both Australian record holders over the marathon. Jess Denson, who ran 221-25 in December last year and have to string toss, who ran 2o-620 just last weekend at the Gold Coast Marathon. I would say welcome back to the inside running podcast Adam Didick, but last time we did this was 2007 and the podcast was called Tell Me Your Tales at the time, but thank you for giving up some time and welcome to the inside running podcast. You know thanks, Brody. Yeah, I fondly remember that interview and it's been great to sort of watch the surge of interest your interviewing has had over the years to get it to where it is now. Thanks again up some time. We'll talk on the weekly show last night about how you very easy could have like declined this interview and said, hey I've got all the secrets. I've got both the national records. I don't need to be telling 30, 40,000 people all my kind of tricks of the trade. So yeah, we appreciate you giving up some time for us. No problems. I mean from my perspective, my headspace is in the way of how do we help coaches and athletes in Australia irrespective of whether I coach them or not. So if anything I've got to say can be useful to others and more than happy to share it. Hey, yeah, let's go back to last Sunday. Does it feel like it was a couple of months ago now? Like the world moves pretty quick. It was only nine days ago, but a massive success for half two up the goal coast. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, look, I mean I wouldn't say it's moved fast. You know, you just get back into your daily life and so you know, there's there the sort of things you go and plan for and to say surprised would be probably not accurate, but just, you know, really happy for him that he could execute on the day and achieve that performance. But certainly something here and I both sort of recognise as possible. So yeah, I mean I still remember finally on the on the finish line thinking maybe I should have got down the road a little bit and given him a yell this is going to get kind of close in a couple of the guys that have been helping with the elite athletes looked at me and said, said, do you think we'll get it? I said, I'm not sure he's it's getting pretty close. I'm feeling a bit guilty sitting here after eating croissants and drinking coffee, but you know, when he crossed the line under the record, I looked at him and said, I feel like I have the coffee and croissants now. But if he missed it by a couple of seconds, I would have felt like I probably could have had a purpose up the course a little bit. Yeah, what does your morning go? Like, are you getting there? Like, I'm sure you're up early. Like do you see him hours before? Because it's an early start at the goal close. Like you got the three o'clock alarms set as well. Yeah, yeah, it's I think four o'clock for a four 20 shuttle. So yeah, I just get up, get dressed and go downstairs to the to the shuttles and meet him there. You know, he's big enough to go and eat his breakfast for himself. Doesn't need me holding his hand. But yeah, I mean for a coach, it's it's not that you don't sleep the night for because of nerves because it's not really the case. It's more the case of I'm worried about missing the bus in the morning. So I had a pretty rotten sleep the night before and just got up had my little can of boss coffee and just got on with it. But yeah, no, it's no different to any other race day. You know, you're just just ensuring that any logistics need to be taken care of or taken care of. But by race morning, all of that's pretty well set. So and when you go to race like the goal course, their coordination so good that it's not really something that's too much of a concern. Yeah, and how early out did you guys circle say goal coasts? Like it's like I felt like I was a surprise maybe not for you because you know it was data kind of leading in. But for a lot of people to see a performance like that in Australia, like we're so used to seeing people head to Valencia or Fooka Walker or you know, Target or Berlin or whatever it is. So yeah, when did you decide on the goal coast that that could be the best place for you? Yeah, look to be honest, the the race options that we were searching for were not really happening. The event organizers were not overly supportive of have to come in and it was for no other reason than his times just weren't fast enough. And then we had the intention of having Isaac came debut in goal coast as well. So we sort of brought it back to to scale and thought okay, well, you know, we can be confident that the pace would be good if the two boys are running well together. And we know that goal coasts are fast course. I mean, I've taken runners effort years and recognize it's flat. There's absolutely no reason why you can't run fast in that course. I think the only challenge you have is whether the wind picks up or the temperatures a bit warmer than what season or at the time. And we prepared for those factors regardless. And then as the as the race built up, I mean, I was pretty comfortable telling other coaches that we were going to be doing it with the hope that more athletes would jump on board. But I don't see any any reason why people can't run fast in Australia. The you know, it's a great place and all the rest of it. But you know, the other part of it was we obviously had a few a few misses with races overseas. The first year, the first marathon have to went to and you might ask me that's later, but I'll jump to it now. I was in Hamburg and and he trained in front or mo did a stint of attitude and everything was going really well. But then a week out he just got a cute onset knee issue, which we couldn't settle down because you can't even get access to anti-inflammatories in France without a prescription and we didn't have access to those things there. So it was a bit of a disruption there and you know, he still lined up and still was on an amazing pace of 20k, but just couldn't finish off because the pain was too much. Then obviously Sydney fell into place where it did and then Valencia have to pretty much got off the plane and was sick within a day or two. So we just basically decided let's just minimize the complications, let's minimize the risk of travel, associated illness, not having to manage injuries. Let's just keep it really straightforward and simple in an environment that we can have a fair bit more control over and you know, run at the Gold Coast, it suited the timeline perfectly and gave us a bit more time after world cross which didn't quite go to plan for him. Yeah, there's something in that for sure. I've traveled the world around the marathons at you know, a much smaller pace and have to, but it's trying to get on the time zones and your food and bend away from your family. Like all these things, mine only be two or five percent here or there, but you chuck through a four of them in the equation and you're 10 or 15% off. Yeah and look, it wasn't that we didn't have starts in other races, it just wasn't going to offer the environment we needed for him to do what he needed to do. Whereas the race organizers in Australia, you know, Ryan McDonald, Ruhems was the elite at the Gold Coast, he's outstanding, you know, Tim Krosby and Melvin, you know, phenomenal support that they offer Australian athletes and now Vincent Lawrence is sort of really assisting the Australian athletes for Sydney. Why wouldn't you want to run in Australia? You got such an advantage of home ground and being so well looked after. It matches more than what most international events can offer. Yeah and then the whole aspect of like, did you pitch it to have to that he can win this thing? Like, do you look at the field, do you look at guys' PBs? Yeah, that aspect of like, you're going to be racing for the win, that's going to help you find a few extra seconds, extra motivation. I couldn't say we really cared about it too much at that point. It was more just, okay, what's the timeline? What's the preparation requirements? The preparation has to go well, put yourself in that picture. We don't know who's going to win to. If someone enters who's significantly faster and better, what are you going to do about it? Not much. So you just got to go out and do a V best and with the field when it got pulled together, that was a point where we thought, yeah, this is actually something you can compete for and win but it was still just that the purpose of it was to get a time out to be able to get invites into races where you could go faster. So the sub 210 was the initial aim and then as we got close from closer, the idea that he could run faster was fairly obvious and present. Yeah, let's talk about the train of block. Like, you sent me through a document. Password protected. We'll just talking about it off here. I'm like this is not that I've ever been involved They're very kind of top end of like coaching, but I was blown away when I opened this atom like you've done You said you've done some development to this document since then But it was titled a tale of two records and you've kind of put all the stats from everything from Cadence to training intensity distribution The the load that Jess and have to both kind of like under talking the lead up to their marathon records so This is they kind of you've worked with one for just been 18 years. Did I read? Yeah, yeah 18 years after He's kind of two but they've both ended up with national records under a very similar training approach Yeah, look, I mean, as I said to you just off air before I mean I've I've enjoyed playing around with AI to sort of do a lot of analysis and things like that So it's not like I'm sitting there cackling at all these numbers on on my calculator I've always been you know Someone who likes to control what I collect through spreadsheets and things like that And that's why I've never gone to the the training platforms and just had you know autonomy over the spreadsheets and how I write training and things like that And Previously it was more for a case of efficiency now. It's not it's just something I've gotten comfortable with But all of the analysis that you talk about is is actually been more to to learn for me and When I sort of saw the strength of what I could pull out of some of these Some of the data that I sort of punch into these systems and what it gives back to me it's been a I've learned about my training approach a bit Which says a fair bit, but that's why I do it. I do it to challenge myself and I see terms that come up Sociata research which I go and speak to physiologists about so give me better understanding of this and I think over of the last sort of 12 to 18 months. I've I've sort of zoned in on a few things that probably I find more relevant In marathon training and getting the right balance and how I prescribe and write it, but you know at there's a whole team behind this You know there is a physiologist in each camp Dietitian in each camp, you know S&C coaches and the likes and we all come together collaborate and and create an overall plan that sort of goes forward so my my role in coaching becomes more as a key collaborator and someone who I guess guides a team to get the best out of them So you know I'll go to a physiologist and I'll say hey This is what I'm thinking I wouldn't mind doing a bit of attitude here bit of heat prep here What are your thoughts and then they'll say well look at the timing of this probably could be better a couple weeks earlier Let's separate this and great. So um, I guess my responsibility in that is taking the initial plan and what we want to achieve And what I think we need to work on or what Love us we could pull to enhance the performance and there's is to help me refine that to ensure that it's got the greatest chance success so And I'll have to be pretty open in receiving that you know There's no room for being fixed in your thinking Uh when you're working with people you've got to be open to To bring your their ideas into it to help you and hearts what you're doing So I'm pretty fortunate Certainly through being able to coach Jess. I've had access to some amazing people for a long long time And now I'm in a situation where I've got a new team of people some of them work within the program that I run at AA And so great relationships to sort of be able to work collaboratively together Yeah, and like how often like I know you got the lab data as well Like how often are they in the lab to get their zones and is that like the starting point because it was very technical Like yeah, this document that I'm talking about. I hope I could you know be good to be able to show a few more people Hopefully you publish it one day But that was kind of like the starting point. It's like there's this is their thresholds This is what they're hard rights right true in different stages of the race And then I was very surprised about the cadence stuff as well how In-depth you kind of went with the cadence and how much that picked up for both of them from like 30k onwards Yeah, look uh Wow, um where do I start with it? Yeah from a some degree the the testing does assist a great deal But I don't know that I necessarily have ever used them to Guide the exactual the actual pace probably the the goal race pace becomes more the generator of the pace aims But the the testing sort of reinforces where the heart rate should be and things like that And I think what's been so powerful in the review process is now having race and I guess reasonably recent Testing data been able to sort of match up and sort of get a better understanding of how it um connects with the race For both of them they only did one test in the lead up um we did one For Jess after she returned from Tokyo, marathon with things were we're going pretty well I believe I'm trying to you know remember I'll talk my head And it was more okay, so okay, how efficient are you currently at the pace? We want you to become a fish in it and then if there was um I guess a bit of growth required then we needed to work out how do we achieve that efficiency at the pace we want to go after a record type result so That was really the idea Um with have to it was much the same it was like okay, let's get a bit of an understanding as to where you're at Hadn't been had the opportunity to do that. I mean, it's not that easy just to go and do a lab physiology test So having them both supported by AA through the NAS program we were able to get access to the VIS and sassy to do that Um and those physiologists certainly do help me interpret and understand those things I'm probably not ever someone who really cares about the VO2 max number I've sort of said this to coach in the past I'm more interested in the lactate curve and Whether it sits and how efficient they are at the pace as we want them to be so they're the things I'll look at and then I utilize that information to design some of those training sessions to sort of tease that out a little bit more and Yeah, I guess like I said Have a better understanding of where their limits are um and what what we need to grow from So that example we've just about like how do we make you more efficient at this pace? We want you to be able to go and marathon out because you'll talk about doing a lot of our work out to that 320 and then all of a sudden she's got to hold that for 42k um What's the answer like is it more threshold work? Is it more mileage? Is it like what how did you pull that off? I don't I don't think there's one answer Now I hate to hate to complicate it, but I think it's just being patient and identifying what the needs are So with Jess we actually planned out That Valencia marathon record attempt would have been 18 months before and I was actually sitting in Peru after the paris Olympics Peru because I was there as part of my role aays for world under 20s And funny enough the the person who was my roommate at that time was Bryce Anderson Who was the sports dietician who actually traveled with with Jess and have to To Valencia and was there the one screaming or on with a catering so he he heard the conversation where I said You know obviously came off the back of Paris. It was a good result But there was this idea that she could run much faster But where could we develop that opportunity? I said I think we need about 18 months to develop you into someone who can really go for it and and my thoughts were still around how do we crack to 20 so You know that was the hope to be able to put her in that situation and I said look we need this period of time to build this part over the next three months We need to build this part the following six months and go from there so Tokyo was a good Signpost that things were going in the right direction because she was largely on the Shrine record pace for probably 30k that day And then just a few things in the last 10k meant that she she just fell short of it Sydney I wasn't really too worried about the result That was still you know go and compete go and support You know really positive Moment in Australian marathon running history having that as a world marathon major Get it as a good party condition in going forward But we obviously had a bit of work to do in between to to settle things and just get get things right on track there so Volume no didn't really change much over that whole period of time What we did focus on a lot more with Jess is Just getting some of her sessions where she was above and below sort of race pace and we do a lot more of this now than what we used to Where it might be it we built up from sort of 12 to 14 kilometers of one kilometer on one kilometer off to then 18 to 21 kilometers 21 only because we got so close to half marathon we let it just continue on But it was 20 and so building where we're sort of going below that race pace and knowing that we can come back and keep hitting below that race pace knows that we're sort of getting that efficiency towards it. So That was probably the the spine of the the training But it was that coupled with alternate weeks You know pick up long runs which were designed to to challenge and stress athletes in the later stages the of the of the long run and you know some of this was built off of early last year we had Andy Jones who was the physiologist for sub two and worked on breaking four with faith gapyagon he happened to be in Adelaide in residence with sassy four a month And the university there and so I managed to grab a coffee with him a couple of times and and what what sort of really stuck out as one Idea that I wanted to flow on with and we certainly tested this with with have to in recent times as Physiological resilience so it's not just okay. We can do this test when someone's fresh But what do they actually do under pressure when they're tired? And Andy and I sat there and talked about how do we actually get them back in the lab, get it all set up, calibrated it, you know, towards the end of a long run and do like a VO2 test. And he said he hadn't found that way to do that yet. And I was of a similar opinion, it would really disrupt things because you have to stop set them up or the tubes and all those sort of things that go with it. So we just look, I just looked at ways to challenge them in that later stage to go, okay, all how good is your physiological resilience? How, how much can you still produce a good output later in a run to, to, to, to, to, to match what you could do early in a run? And we specifically did this with have to in a few weeks out from, from Carl Koso, I could talk to more of that later on if you like. Now let's go there now. Let's, this is, yeah, I've got so many like rabbit holes I want to jump down. So let's jump down and just want to ring close this off and go because this long run, I feel like it's a developed thing in Australian distance running where it's gone from this like two and a half hours time on a feet and just smashing yourself over short of workouts. And now it's like these long runs are quite meaty. I know when you're document, I think I saw that have to have 11 long runs in between 29 and 38K. But do you have, before we jump into that specific one, but do you have a general rule that you go, okay, the marathon block is X amount of weeks and I want to have this many long runs over 30K in there. Yeah, yeah, good question. Thanks for keeping me organized and thinking. So the long run, I guess a marathon prep block, we look at it being about 10 weeks with the last two weeks that being a taper. So it's two, four week blocks that basically build on each other. So one thing I'm always really conscious of is what they enter that marathon period with. So I don't really care how well they're going before they're going into that marathon block. And if we, you know, Isaac and I have reflect on the surface, he was going really to damn well leading into his marathon block. And that was, you know, he ended up being as we started the marathon block. So it was a, you know, right at start of that. But for sorry to interrupt, but is there a criteria you want to tick off before that 10 weeks? So like we kind of say that you want to do the work before doing the work. Do you want people at least a 25K long run or like are there some markers you're looking for? Don't don't want to have to build the volume too much by the time we get to marathon training. But I'm not really too worried about the specifics. Yeah. So it's all pretty general sort of training. And it's just about ticking things off and ensuring that you get there healthy with, I guess, yeah, relatively positive volume. But it doesn't have to be peak volume for sure. Just okay, we don't want to have to increase volume by 30% when we get to that point. So 10, 15, no worries. But like for some of the volumes that they're doing, if we want to speak K's a week, they might be 140 to 150K at that point, not 180. So the pundits at home can do the calculations. I might be a bit off. But essentially, we sort of then go into having the long runs where every second week in a marathon block is a specific marathon pick up run. So we don't do the higher intensity, long runs every single week that alternate. And we basically try to do two and a half hours on the weeks where we're not doing a pick up. And when we're doing a pick up, it's probably about two hours to two hours, 15, with some session or elements to it. So that could be anything. And it's not really uniform. It depends on what the athlete's sort of progression is capable of. But it might be, I know a few things we've sort of posted before, is like three or four by two K just at threshold pace with a kilometer in between. And then finishing off with 5K at the end at marathon pace. So when we sort of, when we planned out for half to his last one was going to be three by three K at the end of the long run. And then when we sat there and looked at, we were actually going to be working that takes half to us and Adelaide with Clint Ballinger, who works at the university here as a physiologist. He wanted to use a device called a Moxie, which basically it strapped the leg and looks at oxygen saturation. And we sort of said, wouldn't it be interesting to collect some data at start to then see what it's comparative with at the end. So instead of three by three K, we basically warmed half to up. We tried to warm him up, but it was pretty damn cold that morning. And after about 15 minutes, he got into his race shoes, did a three K at three minute K pace. His lactate's actually pretty high and we figure it might have been from his fuel and coming into that long run. And then we did two by four K at the end, which he was absolutely cruising, crushing that. And his results were much better there than it was right at the start of the day. So yeah, a few anomalies that are work through. But that's basically what we do with the long run. What we do with sessions is we go typically Tuesday Friday. And so on the Friday where they don't have a session or long run on the Sunday. So the Friday prior to just the general two and a half hours, that will be a pretty long session. So I'll be fairly marathon specific. Yeah. And then what samples, what would we see on a program? Yeah. I mean, look, it's a little bit like I was saying before, it might be one K on one K off for like 1820 K, two K on one K off, you know, that just just variations of that where we're playing around with going just sub marathon pace in the on's. And then the off's are not that are not that slow. I mean, for Jess, it's much closer to her marathon pace. I have to he's a he's a pretty chilled character. And sometimes I sometimes I haven't say, okay, that the offs could possibly be a bit faster. But it's sort of worked out okay for him regardless. So we've got two athletes who train quite differently as well. So their interpretation and execution of the training sessions can be kind of different. And that's why the way I give them their sessions can be a little bit different as well. But ultimately, that's really the flow of the training. The Tuesdays are pretty standard, you know, eight to 10 K, you know, not just one K reps, two K reps, you know, a couple of four Ks, nothing really that exciting there. And on the Tuesday after they have the session or long run on the Sunday, it's generally a pretty easy session. So so that'll be that'll be like a 20 minute steady and then four by one K at threshold pace. And then the Friday, right to that Friday, over the bigger one, don't they? Yeah. And the Friday, Friday will generally only be like a phallic. So it might be a monofalic, for example, plus maybe 10 minutes tempo at the end of it. So we try to get some easy volume out and any intensity is not of long duration on that Friday, Friday session or long run because they have to be fresh enough to do it. Otherwise, what's the point, you know, that if we're sort of taking them in their smack up every single time, then they're not really going to be able to get the specifics from it. So that's a big part of it is protecting the long run. That's the key session and then protecting the marathon specific session. So it's an alternate Friday, alternate Sundays that we do protect quite a bit. I love that. We should put that on a hat, protect the long run. Like a nice camouflage kind of like hips to hat. We could say he's out of, leave it with me. Leave that with me. We'll flicker some dollars from the merch sales. So is there any midweek long run at all or is everything else just like let's just fit as much jogging in as possible to recover in between? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, if we're talking about specifics, Monday would generally be two runs. You know, it might be an hour or 70 minutes in the morning, you know, 40 or 15 afternoon. Wednesday will be generally 90 minutes to two hours. But if they're doing 90 minutes, it might be another half an hour and an hour after the end. So they get, you know, two hours plus a volume for the day. Thursdays generally two runs, you know, again, similar to Monday. And then Saturday has probably been well noted. Now is is a day off. I mean, I put on their optional 30 minutes, but I'm more than happy for them to have a complete day off on the Fridays. It does not bother me if they do run on that day or not. Yeah, I actually like seeing when athletes say, no, I chose the rest day today. And it was interesting because when we sort of designed the Tuesday Friday, it was very different to what we previously did, which was, you know, pretty standard for Australia. It was Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday sessions. And we threw COVID. We actually went to the two sessions week. Knowing we're going to have a fair bit of time. No point getting too carried away risking injury. Let's just separate sessions a bit more. We just found people recovered a lot better between those sessions. We could do a lot more in them. We could either dial up the intensity or dial up the volume and know that we had enough time to recover. So that's how it worked. And the biggest positive out of it was people say, I can actually take my partner out for brunch on Saturday because I don't have to do two runs at day. And actually had one day of the weekend, which felt like a bit of a total rest day. So yeah, no problems being full rest. It doesn't bother me. We would take someone like a half to, he seems to love those Saturdays, by the way. Lazy Saturdays, I think he called them. So um, but you'd take someone who's got a good life balance and is happy and can stream, can sick, yeah, consistently 180k weeks together. Then someone is trying to cram case, get up to 210 and they're broken and they hate life and never get to take their partner out for brunch. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, but there is a lot of a lot of stuff around just giving the body of full day rest. I mean, certainly we've looked at it as a bit of a way of, you know, people have had repeat by interest injuries going. It's just a full day where you offload. And you know, I, I'm as much about the athlete being happy and healthy as, as any training we put in. They're not happy and healthy. Then the reality is the training. training may not make the difference that we wanted to. My bias in training is probably more from a psychological emotional approach. That was sort of what I studied at university. I did a lot of psych study and stuff like that. I'm very conscious of how stress builds up and impacts other elements like maintaining your training volume, injury exposure and things like that and health. I think it's important to kind of manage and promote a positive environment in that regard. Yeah, and that empathy, like the things that Jess is dealing with outside of running and have to are completely different like the, you know, juggling kids and partners and the stress comes at you in different ways. Well, yeah, I mean, look, it's very obvious to me that for Jess when we returned her back to training and looked at what her training volume was, it significantly down on what she was doing prior to having kids. And I said, your energy expenditure is going to be much greater as a parent. You're going to be running around after kids. You can have less sleep. You're not just going to be able to sit down. Not like Jess has ever been able to sit down and just put her feet up and watch a movie. It's just not her. Like she would be reading textbooks and stuff when we were on training camps. So that's just, she doesn't like to sit still. But essentially, you've got to recognize that there's an energy expenditure beyond your running. And whilst we measure everything in running, life will have a very different take on things. Whereas have to is, you know, pretty comfortable with sitting down doing nothing. You know, when we set up Isaac to go to some training with Melbourne, he goes, he's going to be bored because I really don't do much. But, you know, he's certainly pretty damn good at getting the training done. Let's have a quick break to talk about Nomeo because it's something that I've been looking into recently. The concept is pretty simple. You take it about three hours before a hard session or race. It's made from broccoli sprout juice, which contains an active substance called ITC. ITC has been shown to help reduce lactic acid build up and oxidative stress during high intensity efforts. What's interesting isn't just that sessions can feel smoother. It's what happens over time. If you're able to handle hard workouts better and recover more consistently, you can stack quality sessions. And that's really where performance gains come from. Over the past year, we've seen many elite athletes start using it, guys like Cole Hocker, Connor Mance and Andreas Algren. Andreas, who has had a huge season last year with his triple European records. I was so intrigued by the research and the results of Nomeo that I reached out to the team to learn more. And after trying it myself, I can only wonder about what part they played in all the records that were set at London Marathon this year. If you want to check it out yourself, it's at drinknomeo.com. And if you're in Australia or New Zealand, you can find it at AID Station and all over at the running company. Yeah. Are there any other things like outside the training that you think has contributed to these two breakthroughs? Look, I think it's just a healthy perspective. I mean, one of the things that I was most proud of Jess for actually stating after she broke the record was, she said, "I knew that whether I did it or not, I was enough without it." And I felt like when there's a peace of mind where you accept that you've got an opportunity, but your whole life does not revolve around that opportunity. It's important. And I think have to and his story and it's been sort of well documented. But I mean, there's just a lot more to life than running. Running's just a part of it. And I think both of them embody that. I mean, have to is constantly looking for how we can explore opportunities as an electrical engineer. That's important to them as well. So I'm really appreciative of the fact that athletes have that sort of perspective. I think when you get to the level of obsession, we think you must be a full-time athlete and you must do it this way. You've got to find the right way for you. And I think both of them have found a good balance that's right for them. And it's just all sort of clicked. I mean, one of the things I'd say definitely is required is the ability to understand how to do your training. So we've talked enough already about, "Okay, what we do, but I always say to coaches when I'm working with them, don't worry about what people do. Try to understand why they do it." And I guess that's a question you're asking now. Is what do we do? What we do? But ultimately, I think that's important part. So, you know, Jess's asked those questions over years and there's a really good understanding. Have to is really quite mature in his understanding of training and what works for him. And I've often had to listen to him and get feedback from him as to what works for him. And another one of my coaching sort of things I say is, "You're as good as the feedback and athlete gives you." So if you don't have a good relationship where they can give you feedback around what training feels like or how it's working or what they like doing or don't like doing or what they find challenging or easy, if you're not listening to that then you're not adapting the program to suit what they actually want to do. And so, you know, you can write an amazing program, do it in on all the scientific specifics and all the rest of it. But unless the athlete's giving you that feedback, it's really hard to tweak it. And the other part of that is if you're just copying what someone else has done or you heard someone's doing this and so you try to implement it. But you don't understand how it interacts with your training system, then when it's not working, you don't know how to tweak it or if it's not quite giving you the stimulus you want, you're not adjusting it to suit. So I think there are other key elements to it. The feedback the athlete gets and the understanding the coach has as to what they're writing and what they're doing. Yeah, well, put, it feels weird to ask this next question because they've just had massive breakthroughs and set national records. But do you look at them and go, "Oh, there's still a weakness somewhere that we can tweak and we can find more time?" Because when I'm watching have to dump the field at 30k and run the last, you know, 11 or 12k solo, I'm thinking, "Oh, if there was someone in front of him for nine of those K's, it's got to be worth a couple of seconds here and there. Maybe is a 205 guy?" Absolutely. I think they can both run faster. I mean, and that's a brave call for Jess, you know, knowing she's, you know, not far from giving birth to a third child. But I think that's part of, you know, performance coaching is always looking for better ways, always looking for areas of improvement. And that's why we go with such detailed reviews to then go, "Okay, where can we find it?" I mean, you know, you've got different athletes at different stages of career. I think HFD's got a lot of improvement left in him. I think Jess, you know, just given the stage of her career and still definitely has some improvement. And I think she'll definitely push towards it. She's pretty driven to run faster and be more competitive than what she has been. But there's a bit to manage there too. So yeah, I look, I think we're only scratching the surface with HFD. Obviously, it's only, you know, second year of marathoning. So, you know, when he was missing things like Valencia and feeling really down about it, said, "Look, Jess has been at this game for, you know, 12 or 10 years and she's broken Australian record. There's a bit of patience that sort of goes along with it. But I think we can sort of recognise HFD is an extremely talented young guy. And you know, even the guys who used to train at Villanova, you know, reached out to me after he attempted marathons last year and Randwell and Sydney and Gades. It was just a matter of time. We saw this for years. It was just a matter of time for we go to the marathon and does something that's really impressive. So, I think the signs are being there for a long time. And you know, likewise, Jess, I think we see someone who's just a really true marathons on her. So, she gets a lot out of herself, but her attributes are really true to marathoning. You know, that physiological resilience is really true to marathoning. And so, what if it doesn't show up in a 5K or a 10K or a half marathon? I've never really been attached to that idea that they need to be faster. They need to be fast times to be able to run a fast marathon. I think the marathon is its own beast. But we can certainly use them to guide us in how to develop that marathon. So, yeah, is there room for greater efficiency for Jess? I think so. Some of the signs I saw in the lead up to Valencia showed that there's still room for improvement. And I think the way I saw her running into Paris was almost up on what I saw her doing leading into Valencia. So, you know, there was no shock to me how well she ran in Paris because I saw some signs there that were just phenomenal. And, you know, delivered good results on both occasions. This has this like amazing ability to sit really close to her LT2. For a marathon, doesn't she? Like, when you compare it to half-dose numbers, it's also, but they both execute very similar when you put them next to each other in that document. But she can sit very close to that, like not many other people. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's a specific skill set. And I think the immeasurable part of Jess, and I certainly said this before, is she just has a way of managing herself and handling that tough part of a marathon better than most of ever seeing. And, you know, she has a way of keeping a positive frame of mind or using the challenges to spur her on rather than to doubt herself. And it's an interesting thing because I'm not sure if she's aware of how good she is at it either. And maybe the reason why she doesn't always talk about it. But as a coach, when I do reviews with her, she's one of a kind there. And she's quite brilliant. And that is the one thing that we know from a psych perspective, dealing with adversity, late neurase is a key to having strong marathon performances. And she does that in an amazing way. - Yeah, it's kind of like the opposite of her personality. Like she's so nice and friendly, but then she'll absolutely murder you in the last three cave in marathon if you're anywhere nearer. - Yeah, I still remember in the early stages of coaching her, and we ran City to Surf, and it's a story I know she's told where she got up in the middle of night, hit her knee, and she could barely stretch her leg out when we woke up in the morning to go to the race, and she said, "I'll still warm up," and then even in the race, she agreed to do it. I saw her hobbling around the warm up, but even in the race, comes to heartbreak, he'll and all these guys are flying past her. And rather than going, "Jesus, I must be going backwards." It's probably pretty typical for many athletes. She's going, "Oh, this is good. There's fast people. I can try to grab on to them, see what I can do with this situation." And I'm sitting there going, "I definitely didn't have the mental capabilities to process things in that way." So as I said, it's a kind of special element to her, and it's a hard one to measure. I can't put that one into the spreadsheet, but it's certainly very noticeable. - Yeah, how important has Bryce Anderson been over the last couple of years? Like you mentioned him a couple of times, but we've seen this massive, like I guess improvement in knowledge and fueling over the marathon, the less people are bonking. You got the shoes as well, which also make a bit of an impact, but and it was a sub, what sub 14 minute 5K guy, like he's not just a nerd who's got the stats, he's been there himself. - Yeah, Bryce has been a critical part of our team with Hav2. I'll be honest and say, we've worked with Liv Wands at Sassy with Jess for a long time, but I think really where the credit comes to, starting this trend of fueling Louise Burke, who worked at the AOS for a long time as a researcher, did a lot of work with racewalkers. And I'd say at the point when I was coaching Jess at the time and what was it, 2019, I started coaching Jared Talent and I was very exposed to the fueling that the racewalkers did, which was so far ahead, like light years ahead of where we were at or where we were being informed to go from our final perspective. And this was all because Louise did these amazing studies called the Supernova Studies, which she brought athletes in, racewalkers in from all around the world, really focused on it, provided some amazing funding to support that through research that she did. And we learnt so much. So I learnt from being on the bike with Jared taking care of all his fueling to go, "Oh, hang on, there's so much more here, we could be doing Jess." We're a long way away from where they are. And Jess Rothwell was working as the nutrition lead, AA at the time and she called me and said, "What are your thoughts as to where we can get to "from a marathon perspective?" And I said, "Look Jess, as you're aware, "there's so much that the walkers have been doing, "we're a long way behind that. "If we can influence the marathoners to start doing similar "to what the racewalkers are doing, "we're going to have massive wins in that space." And so it's about doing the fueling during long runs and sessions, consistently training the gut to be able to tolerate high levels of nutrition and fueling during races. Then we're, you know, we're going to see, it's a biggest win area. And so that started to come in. Bryce has certainly been sort of studying and learning along that pathway, but where I've worked primarily with Bryce's through the program, we've got a AA in the pathway, he's our pathway nutrition lead. And obviously before Havdood came onto Tanas, I asked could he support us with Havdood? And so he did. And it was such a benefit to Havdood because, you know, those training sessions where we want fueling done. And they're largely done in those specific sessions where we're pushing some intensity because you want to sort of have to, you want to trial that at race intensity is where possible. Bryce would get out on the bike. So, you know, Havdood being in Melbourne, Meabing and Adelaide, I can't do that for him. And Bryce would jump out on the bike with Havdood and do his fueling. So he's been critical in that sense, but also just being a support to have to in some of those training areas where we want a few specifics taken care of. And Bryce obviously worked as performance specialist for us as well. So he had the ability to take some lactates when we needed it and stuff like that as well. So, yeah, he's been awesome in that regard. And, you know, going to Valencia last year, he was actually going to Europe a week later. And we sort of convinced him to go to Valencia and help out knowing I couldn't go. Or I felt a lot more confident knowing that I had someone there who had that experience to be able to support both Jess and Havdood in that environment. - Yeah, yeah, it's been a massive, and I know the racewalkers as well, don't they dominate all they have, like the heat stuff as well? Like they've been ahead of their gaming, like the heat preparation. I think Bruce was talking about after we went to Doha. He's like, "No, the walkers have been doing this for years." - Yeah, and 100%. I mean, you know, Brent Valance, you know, sort of had a lot of support through the AIS. He definitely pushed the boundaries on some of those areas, but, you know, through the approach he took was quite open to allowing that physiology influence. And he had some really good people there to support him. And as I said, you've got to be open to having that support, which he obviously was. And so the racewalkers took on a lot of that specific preparation, which were just starting to catch up and get better at in the marathon space. There are some differences between walks and marathon running, largely in the fact that, you know, that the gut doesn't bounce as much when you're walking as what it does running. So the discomfort around the gut tolerance is probably heightened. The other part of it is in racewalks, they get access to fueling every two kilometers. Whereas in marathon, that's not typical. It's every five kilometers. So even the research suggests if they could fuel marathoners more frequently, that wouldn't have to take so much on. And therefore could probably, you know, on a whole take on more, but, you know, it's a comfort thing as well. And that's why you have to train them. - Yeah, yeah. Hey, Adam, our Patreon supporters are the most dialed in running fans in Australia and overseas. And we always are, we're not always, but we've been asking them what questions have you got. So do you mind if I five, throw a couple of these ones? They're a bit all over the place, but they're very well informed and big fans of the sport. This is a bit of a backstory to this. What is your coaching philosophy question is, Krokes asked Krokes from this and Krokes was not happy with the question because he thinks that's a stupid question. Actually, I've got it in our sandboard here. This is what happened when Krokes asked Krokes. - Now that you're a coach, how would you describe your coaching philosophy? - It's a shit question. I, people ask me all the time. And then what is it? - Come on Krokes. - You explain the question, me. - All right, all right. - So for you, Adam, what is your coaching philosophy? - Yeah, I'm not too dissimilar to Craig on this one. (laughing) I don't, I think your philosophy changes as you go. So I think if you get locked into any one sort of philosophical approach, you might not allow yourself that growth. So I think anything that comes from my philosophy is around constantly growing with the athletes as they perform. So that probably adds it to an extent. But I think it's more about looking at your coaching role. And I see that the athletes are actually the ones in control. And they choose whether they want to do the training I said or not. So, and if they don't want to do it, what am I going to do about it? So, you know, the athletes, I've even done sessions with this, some of our junior athletes saying, you know, the athlete is their own CEO, which was imparted on me by a cricket coach. And I like that idea. And that's what I feel like. It's about working with the athletes. And from cycling, some of the cycling coaches, Brad Aiken was one that sort of shared this with me. You know, we don't, we're not responsible for the performance, we're responsible for the environment that creates a performance. And I think that's another part of it for me is, how do I create an environment where we can get the most out of the athlete? And that comes down to some of the stuff I've mentioned previously. How do I keep myself open to influence from people with better knowledge than me? And how do I keep myself open to learning from the athletes around what works best for them and receiving that feedback? Yeah, okay. And on top of that, how much do you take from other sports? Like you just mentioned, Brad Aiken, his Bennigo boy, cyclist. I can Tim Decker's over your way too, isn't he? See Tim Decker? He was Bennigo boy as well. Yeah, it's been, I've been pretty fortunate, you know, being able to work out of Sassy where I get to interact with so many great coaches. And we've had opportunities where we've just come together. We had a group Tim Decker involved leading into the Paris Olympics where we were talking about some of the challenges we have. And as coaches sort of helping each other through it. So yeah, I love talking other coaches. I actually am really keen and interested in talking to coaches from other sports. I feel like in athletics, we probably present our own biases within our conversations, whereas some of the things that I've learnt from other coaches is amazing. And I, again, like I said, I was fortunate to work in the AOS program, but it access to aerial skiing coaches, muggle skiing coaches and diving and all sorts of stuff. And I just loved it. I love talking to coaches. And I don't, some of the parts that are really specific to coaching is not the technical and the tactical. And that's the bit that I really enjoy growing from. I mean, not too many people start coaching without having much of an idea about the technical elements. I don't know how many people put the hand up going, I've got no idea about anything, but I'm going to coach you. So I do feel that most people have already a background of information that allows them to put the hand up and say, I'll give this a go. So I'm sitting around and talking about all the technical stuff to me isn't what I find interesting. It's talking about how they interacted with challenges that they face with athletes. And that could be a range of things. But that's what I love about coaching. And I really invested my time and effort into being that style of coach, rather than just someone who's a guru on technical. Is your bookshelf full of sports biographies and you love the old neck flicks, like sporting docko? Doesn't matter what sport it is. Yeah, I'm looking at my bookshelf now. But to be completely transparent, I don't think I've read a book since my kids have been born. So it's hard, mate. Parenting is hard. I'm too used to getting to the end of the day sitting on a laptop all day long reading and reading and reading that it's not relaxing for me to read at the end of the day. So my formal learning probably happened a lot through books, my learning over the last 12 years now we'll call it since my son was born. My first son was born has gone to conversations and experience. And I just feel that I value that so highly, that experiential learning. And I know now how much I've grown over the last 10 years and knowing how I even viewed coaching, viewed my role, interacted with athletes has changed significantly over that time. So I'd be, yeah, I guess what I'm saying is I don't undervalue that and in coaches. I often say them, just keep coaching, like learn from coaching. You could go to all the courses you want, you can go to all the, you can read all the books you want, you can listen to all the podcasts you want. But at the end of the day, you've actually just got to try to implement it and learn from that and keep reviewing what you're doing. I mean, I still sit down right a training program and I crash halfway through writing a training program, head of my hands going, what the hell am I even doing? I still question every time there's still a level of imposter syndrome that comes into all of that. And I don't mind that. From that perspective, that's me keeping myself on my toes and constantly questioning what I'm doing and how I could do it better. So that doesn't fright me. That actually excites me that I still like that. - Yeah. Hey, Jake asked about data. And I'm interested in this one because of the correspondence, I guess we've have to. Like Keith says, we know that Adam loves his data. If you had access to every metrics, like HRV, like they chronic and acute load, what are your top metrics that actually influence your coaching decisions and most? Like Jess wears the ring doesn't she? You get her data when she wakes up every morning? - Yeah, I mean, I still value a conversation with the athlete over anything. - Okay. - But it's good to have, I think that the data helps you to review and reflect accurately, rather than just your perceptions. So there's definitely been some times where we have specifically leaned on the data to make decisions, but it's not all the time. I mean, I have to hate me saying this, but I'm constantly nudging him a week later. Can you please upload your data? So, but I know that he, I'm confident I'll trust that. If there's anything gone wrong or anything that's not going to plan, he'll call me and we'll have a chat. So I don't stress out about those things, but it does allow me to keep my spreadsheets nice and neat and my charts keep on going. And yeah, I do collect a number of those things. Geez, I'd love a live lactate monitor on athletes in the session out, probably my gold standard, but I don't think there's anything that exists that's of any note that, but if anyone's got one, or wants to throw me one, I'm happy to use it with athletes because that to me would be most interesting. But at the same time, I don't take lactates very often. I hate doing it as a coach. I know how to do it. It's just, I want to focus on coaching and I want to stay in tune with what I'm doing. And if I'm too focused on the logistics with grabbing blood and things like that, it just distracts me from my actual role out there in a training session. So if someone else can come and do it great, but I don't care that much, I think the athlete will give you pretty much the same feedback as what the lactates will. - Yep. Hey, Rory asks about integrating cross training, like Jess famously ran that 225 in Perth off a whole lot of elliptical work. Is it something you do when you're, like I guess need to as a bit of a last resort? Someone's coming off an injury or you're trying to, you don't want to be pushing their mileage too much. Like do you integrate it much? - Yeah, you do it when you need to. I'd rather run. But, you know, there are different constraints that cause cross training to be prominent in anyone's prep. It has to does a cross-training. And I'm not intending on putting it into this training either. We've used it when we were turning in from the knee issue after a hamburger last year, but that's pretty much been it. Jess uses it a lot because she has kids running around and it's not always easy to get out the door and go for a run, but it is manageable to jump on the elliptical in the shed and get some work done. And also just, you know, it's a great option when someone's gone, "Look, I'm a bit sore." I, you know, feel like I'm a bit unsure as to whether running's a good idea today. Let's trial on the elliptical and just offload a little bit like that. But I'm probably more to the extent of, cross-training is great when injured to keep above zero, you know, in fitness. But I don't think you can achieve the same level of specificity in cross-training. You could do exactly the same session physiologically, but you're missing out on the strength gains that you make from that plyometric element that you get out of running. So you cannot replace running with cross-training, but you can certainly support your running program with cross-training if there's certain elements that are breaking you down. And they're, they're, they're reasons to use it, but I still think running's the best form of training. Obviously. - Yeah. Terry asks, and we kind of spoke about the train and earlier in the chat, but were there any key sessions where you looked at the numbers for, you know, both Jess and have to lead into their national records that you were like, "Where on here?" Like this is a little big smile on my face. Can't we see it this get uploaded? Or see this happen in person? - Yeah, look, there was one session have to do a couple weeks out that was in Adelaide. It was, it was three by seven K. And I rocked up a bit, cropped that day. So Locky Scott jumped on the bike and helped him out a bit. But have to just sat comfortably on, on three minute Ks all day. And I was like, "Well, he's obviously fairly comfortable at that because it's at the end of a fairly big week of training." And last, last solid training sessions for him. And so, so if he was doing that under that fatigue, I knew that come right, so when he freshened up, things were gonna go pretty well. But I don't, I don't know that any one training session gives that confidence, just knowing that things have been consistently done well. And I think that was definitely the story of Jess. Like there's never one standout session you go, "Oh, we're on, it's more a case of, no, she's hit every session at pretty much goal pace of what we've set for six or eight weeks here." So, and I think what's so impressive about that is the ability to be able to recover, manage yourself to be able to keep doing the sessions at that high caliber is the most impressive part. And that's a reason why I think when we look at any athlete of note or any performance, it doesn't come from one session here or there, it comes from consistent discipline to be able to manage yourself across a long period of time. So every time I see a great result from an athlete, it norms respect for them because I know that hasn't come because I've just switched it on once or twice. It's time and time again, consistently delivering and probably even well before that specific phase come into play. - Yep, I know you're in like high performance, but for the rec runners out there and Alex asks, what aspects of Adam's training for Jess have to and others in the group, what do you recommend for club runners looking to improve, what would he not recommend? And then like on top of that, what mistakes do you see that the rec runners potentially are making that you're like, oh, that's a bad idea. - Yeah, look, it's a different space, a rec running space. And then I'm not gonna suggest this because I've coached, have to ingest it on going to be good at giving information to that the same as there are some junior coaches who are just so unbelievable, but their attributes don't lend themselves to high performance and vice versa. So I think we'll find our space for what we're gonna be good at. I've tried the rec running coaching and it's, I found it really challenging. But I think probably some of the key things, just keep it simple. I mean, obviously you're training to run for a period of time, you've got to get comfortable and confident that you can run for that period of time. I think if and doubt, jog, you know, like you're always gonna improve just by running. So you don't need to make it fancy and get overly complicated. And I think just, you know, maintain the key thing that's gonna help you to run well on the day is being healthy and injury free. So like I said, if and doubt jog or if and doubt cross-strain, don't push through things. I think it's probably the consistent message. But from a training perspective, yeah, just try to understand what your marathon pace feels like and spend a bit of time. exploring what that feels like in training. - Yep. What about tour wants to know double threshold? Yeah, you've tried it and experimented. This is the high for a moment. - Have experimented with it. I think it's really difficult to get right. Again, it's a lot of control by the athlete and I think that's why we see specific lactakes taken from athletes. I look off seeing good results with that, seeing good results without it. I'm not sold that. We need to do it just because other people do it well. I'm not really too interested about what other people do in that regard anyway. But we certainly tried it. I did it with Matt Clark and Isaac Haynes tried a bit of it as well. There was definitely some benefits that we saw from it. But I think just writing your training program, you can achieve similar loads. Just training one session on a specific day and how you structure your week. So yeah, I mean, definitely if you're curious, give it a go. That's any harm in it. - What about Luke wants to know about the transition? Three key things an athlete should focus on trying to convert a good five and 10 K times into like a marathon. And Jake like additionally has had he decide when an athlete's ready to race a marathon like versiting, needing additional time. You've kind of spoken about Isaac a few times was set to debut. When do you sit back and go, okay, you're ready for this now? 'Cause it's kind of the opposite in the recurring world. It's like, let's go straight to the marathon. You've been running for six months. - I think you're ready when you want to do it. If you don't want to do it or like then don't attempt it. But if you want to do it, then sometimes you've got to scratch at it and find out. So I think I'm trying to get to the crux of the question. The conversion of five K 10 K to marathon, as I sort of mentioned earlier, are not really massive advocate for saying you must run them well before you can move up. I think it depends on the stage in your career and how it fits into what you want to do. Think probably one of the biggest mistakes people make when they go certainly from a competitive five 10 K runner up to the marathon. They think they've got to go longer, harder, further. And I still recall pretty much the only thing we changed with Jess on her first marathon was we extended it long run. Everything else stayed exactly the same. And that's a far cry from where we are now. But that seemed to be pretty good for her at the time as well. So don't just rush to trying to do what you perceive marathon training looks like. If you haven't sort of progressed to doing that. Like that might take a couple of marathons or even a couple of years to get to where you want to get to. So if you want to go and explore the marathon before you fully training develop to do it, that's fine. But it doesn't, you know, you don't have to straightaway jump to doing, you know, 180 kilometer of weeks and things like that. I think you can do it off a fairly lower volume and we sort of get that feedback even when people look at half-dose training. Think you had one week after 180, I'd case, but there were a lot of weeks that weren't even Jess over the years. You know, might get to about 170, but probably sits more 150 high, 160, so you're most of a marathon, perhaps. So it's what you do with that volume. And that's why I don't think you need to just go further, longer, harder, you know, smash out long 30 kilometer runs and those sorts of things. You can sort of just build that as you progress you're running in a marathon. And that's partly the excitement. I have to still think there's a lot that we can build on there. Yeah. And like, Kaitlyn, I guess, as well, like over there in Adelaide, she's one or two marathons in. These guys have got 10 more years of doing this stuff. That's, that's absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And Kaitlyn's marathon prep was not typical before Melbourne either. I mean, we, I guess we capitalized on a really good, consistent block leading into Gold Coast, half marathon, which allowed it to get away with a few hurdles that she faced in the marathon block. So again, it's relying on what came before and not just what you do in the lead up to, that sort of builds that strength. So, you know, she's got a lot of room for improvement, Kaitlyn, I'm really looking forward to what her and Locky can do in that space. Yeah. Benny St. St. St. this one in. And when I first saw it, I thought, "Oh, this is a cheeky plug for Sydney marathon, but it's got a pretty good point here. How valuable was Sydney marathon in Half-Dew's development as a marathoner financially, obviously, a great choice, but also having access to a race of that caliber on the doorstep now must be great for developing our domestic marathoners. We've seen Australia and marathon records broken by Jess late last year and now Half-Dew, who are both races in the end 2025. Do you see this as a great way to take the strength built from a hilly marathon course into a faster course to chase times when planning longer term?" Yeah, first of all, I think it's just amazing for Australia and running to have a world marathon major in Australia. And it was something that we actively wanted to support last year. I think in relation to, you know, what I said earlier, we've got such great opportunities here in Australia. And I'm pretty, you know, I'm pretty patriotic, I guess you'd say towards things being positive for Australia and this is one part of it. To keep building what we're doing, we need to invest in what we've got here and that comes down to running the races here in Australia. Yes, definitely financial opportunities for our elite marathoners, allows them to take the risks and set up for the following year. So as a coach of athletes who have a professional mindset, it's unavoidable to look at those opportunities and say, okay, you know, we can pick up some good money here. So therefore, it takes a pressure off. We can look at a training camp or whatever have you take some time off the following year, 100%. And so I think that's of massive value. I haven't really thought too much about the idea of a healing marathon leading into Australian records. - I put out of the AI mate, feed that in there. - Yeah, yeah. (laughs) But I think, you know, we needed to get, have to do a finisher marathon and that provided that opportunity. And for him to be set up with pacemakers in the support and just to have that elite experience, also gave him a recognition of some of the things that we could focus on. And allowing me to sort of see how we interacted was probably the biggest plus because I couldn't go to Hamburg with him. I didn't go to Valencia. So seeing how he interacts in the days leading into the races, massive. I think we're just, it actually gave us a fair bit more work to do between Sydney and Valencia to get that right. Because she was, you know, hurting late in that race. So we had to really respect that recover from it. But hey, there's always benefits from a heart run, right? It's just how you, it's what you do to react to that afterwards. And we responded to it by giving her the opportunity to recover and then building her in. But still got massive benefits from running, you know, pretty tough, you know, marathon. So yeah, certainly I wouldn't say it had no effect. It just meant that we didn't have to rush back into training because she still got a good heart run under a belt. Yeah. Hey, a last couple for me, this dog I know it's everywhere. I tried to hit as many of those Patreon questions as possible. But the pacing strategy like in this document here, you've got a near perfect threshold marathon for half to like opening at 40 beats per minute below max and drifting only 17 beats per minute over the two hours signals like an exceptional acetic clearance and aerobic durability does have to go out on that day and you under instructions to keep his heart rate under a certain number or is it just like you're just in the pack and like and just nailed as well with her heart rate data. Like they both got to, you know, laid in the race where they could and we've had Dan Nash and ex-sus as you all just on the show before who's big on this kind of like stay under this number until 30k and then rip the bandaid off. Kind of thing. Was that instructional for them? I would say I doubt or I'd be pretty confident saying neither one of them would have looked at the heart rate the whole race. Yeah. And this is where I was saying that the data is, is, well, I mean, the data helps us to accurately reflect on what the situation was and that's how it's used in this space. But ultimately, I think it is, you know, you do learn how to execute a race, you do learn your pacing profiles. We were, you know, with Jess prior to Valencia, you know, I sat in on the technical meeting and there was two pace groups and, you know, she was in a cafe with Bryce and have to the day before her race and she said, so, you know, we had a team's meeting or WhatsApp or whatever we did face time. And basically, you know, sort of opted, she said, so I guess I'll go out with the second group and I said, you just call me when you get back to your room. She straight away knew that I wanted her to go with the, with the faster group. And so she gave me that call and said, well, you know, you're capable of doing that. And there's, there's certain evidence prior to that that gives you that confidence. Like I said in Tokyo, she was well on a strainer, a good pace for 30k, so I said, so what are we worried about here? You know, get onto that pace, you're there to explore what you can do, not to play it safe, so give it a go. And again, in her training, we saw that she could do that. As I said to you before, have to was so comfortable at three minute case and we saw that in his pickup long run and that three by seven K session. So why wouldn't we attempt to go and do it at three minute case and the pacemaker was there, it was at 207. It was an obvious just to go with that and put in the lead pack and I got asked this in the days leading in. So what's after you're going to go? Is he going to go with the lead pacemaker? Said, yeah, and it was as simple as that. And then it was a case of a cafe fill. You've got some legs you can go for it. And he did and it worked out. So yeah, it's not just a block. I'd, you know, ego, stab of, yeah, just go for the win and that sort of stuff. There's information behind that that gives us confidence in that. I think what we saw from half-do is maybe two or seven places not fast enough. Maybe on that date was, but there's certainly room where he can explore going at it a faster pace and seeing if he can hold a fast pace to the finish line. But my focus for him is not just about being able to run fast times, but, you know, in marathoning there's championship racing as well. And I think we need to give him exposure to championship style races as well so that he learns how to close fast in a competitive race. And that's what we'll be looking at in the lead up to LA Olympics to ensure that he gets there in a competitive sense, not just a guy who can run a fast time, one off. And certainly definitely what we've done with Jess in the past. We're not in a pace made race. Championship races have been used to build on the next, for the next championship race. And we need athletes to learn how to close hard and be competitive as opposed to just go off to Valencia run fast. And that'd be it. And like your structure with the marathon block and the taper, do you have something now that like have to is in a post marathon protocol? This is where I think rec runners need to get a whole of better that a lot of them rush back like, I feel fine. Like your marathon was four days ago. Like do you remember like a mile for every day for every mile? That was one back in the day, wasn't it? Yeah, definitely used to use that mile for every day. That was in part on me by Chris Wardle, who obviously coached many top marathoners. But I think now with the shoes, the one day per mile is probably less required. I used to see Jess when she would come back in the old school shoes and she'd go, I'm feeling really bouncy. I think I'm ready to get back in my sessions. And I look at her and like, you're crushing that ground. You're hitting her like a brick. I said it doesn't look like it to me. And so I think that proprioceptive sort of feedback gets impacted by the marathon. But I think with the shoes away they are now doesn't get impacted as much. And they can bounce back much sooner. I mean, the protocol we have to is he likes to have a bit of a break after his race. So he went into three days of just really light jogging. And then he just switched off for a week. And I spoke to him on the weekend. And he said, I feel like I might be able to get back in some structure this week. I said, well, see how you're going midweek or later in the week and give me a call and we'll start putting some structure back in and out. But honestly, if they're not, if they're not feeling like they're ready to get running, then I'd rather take the break. And if that ends up being three, four weeks, then we'll pick up where you're at. But it's a whole thing I say is like, there's a psychological and emotional toll that comes with running a big performance. And you have to respect that. So until he's ready to get back in on it, we won't. And I've offered the same to Jess. Sometimes she's wanted to get back for certain races and I helped her try to make that possible for her. But all with perspective, we saw her after Valencia after getting back for World Cross was just too tough. It was too short a timeline. And I sort of advised them of that prior to him accepting that spot. But it is what it is. And sometimes you've got to be optimistic and give yourself that opportunity. But that's kind of the protocol. I think it might have been Michael Shelley. He used to throw his shoes away after his last run. And it only cracked a new pair when he wanted to start running again. So I think that was Michael Shelley that said that. But I don't mind that idea. Shouldn't be in a rush to get to the next race. - Yep. Hey, with your athletics, Australian athletics had on. Do you, and with the coaching role there, this was a question I think scotted written here. I didn't have it in the notes. I sent you. But with the qualifications now, this is more so on the track. And so many points allocated to certain track meets. Do you think that's going to be a challenge for Australian athletes who are on the fringe and can't get starts in that top end dimelig standard races? - It's always been a discussion since the world. Rankings points came into place. But I think at the end of the day, the people who are going to be competitive find a way of getting like the, putting themselves in a eligibility position, whether that be through auto times or world ranking points. Yeah, we don't have as many here in Australia as what some of the other meets do. But also, we've got to be conscious the fact that our summer, we've got an amazing meet, Melbourne, my reply at meet that's given so many great opportunities. We've got Oceania's to take advantage of, which is nowhere near as competitive as some of the other regional championships. So there is definitely, if you set yourself up effectively through nationals and plan out, you can achieve those points that are required to get there. At the end of the day, if you go to a dimelig, you still got to place highly to get points. So going to a gold or silver bronze, you may be able to pick up more points there than you would go into a dimelig finishing tenth. So it's not always the best approach to getting your points. I was tip, you know, with only coaching road athletes now. I mean, it's a little bit less stressful, but when planning things out with Matt Clark to try to chase selection and my goodness did he give us some last ditch efforts to get in a selection, a selectable position. Yeah, it's a complex map of world rankings, points, calculations and things like that. And would be finishing races and straightaway chucking the grade of the race, the position, the time, and trying to work out the points go, okay, what's his average now? And, okay, where does that sit? And, you know, it was last year, we were so confident that he was going to make the world champs 'cause he was so well placed on world rankings. And then he goes and pushes the pace in a race in Belgium and drags everyone to a really fast race. And it ends up being the one event that I think only one non-automatic qualify gets in and parole had been bucking and runs 815 and still it doesn't get selected, you know, because he doesn't fit within the quota. So, yeah, you know, at the end of the day, you've got to just put your best attempt forward to picking up those points, achieving those standards and making yourself eligible. So until that gets to that point, it's, yeah, I don't know, I don't know that we're at a disadvantage. It just means we have to be aware of that for our planning. And I think that coaches need to take that responsibility to have a good awareness of how those points interact. And I certainly, through my role, helped to educate a number of coaches sit down, go through the points where they could potentially collect some. And, you know, 'cause I work in the pathway space on dealing with coaches and athletes who are having an interact with that for the very first time. And so it's a real mystery for them at that point and to help give them some clarity on that. You know, it's good when they sort of, when the plan comes off for them. - Yep. Hey Adam, this has been fantastic 75 minutes. I've loved every second of it. But what's one question I should have asked you? What have I missed? What are people gonna go, you know, Brady had Adam on for 75 minutes and he didn't ask him about that. Is there something like, one of these technical terms somewhere that I should have been like, hey, maybe I should have, I want about training intensity distribution. So like, so when I read this in your document, low, medium and high, we're talking about like percentages of heart rate or you're talking about paces. - Yeah, so that's interesting because it really depends on how you calculate it. So when I, I came across this more when I was doing analysis around Jess's Australian marathon record. And so I would not, it'd be unfair of me or inaccurate for me to say that it's been a guiding principle. But it's certainly something I've started to focus in on a lot more when I'm, when I've been planning up things for have to in recent times. So I'm just trying to actually - I've got the numbers here. So I go for it. - Jess's low was 77%, 18% medium and 5% high, whereas have to was 69% low, 24% medium, 8% high. - Yeah, so. - And I think that's good for the listeners out there as well but like so I'm reading that is like, hey, 77% of Jess's weeks are chilled, easy jogging. - Yeah. - High rates pretty low. - So I guess the first thing there is how's it calculated. I've tried to get it to calculate off of heart rate as much as possible. And in line with the zones that we've picked up from the lab testing, but initially I did it based off of RPEE. So I rate a perceived exertion. So on every training session, every run, I put an RPEE for the athletes to guide them just so they've got a better awareness of, I guess, how, you know, what's the style and design of that training session? So as I started viewing this, I then came across some research articles and I think it came up with the gold standard was for low at 75% to 80% for medium was 10 to 15 and for high, it was five to 10. And so Jess fit in with 77, 18 and five. And I think HFDO wasn't too far off that, but off of learning about that from Jess's race, I actually started putting into HFDO's spreadsheet, a live tracker for this. So as I'd pump his training data in, it would start to come up with what the last four weeks was and what the last eight weeks was of training intensive distribution for HFDO. I mean, it's probably what I've learned a lot of the time when looking at some of this physiological stuff. It's there to give us a better understanding. understanding of what we're doing and why does it work? Because a lot of us come with experiential learning that sort of gives us a model of what we try to follow. The TID actually started to give me a rationale to go, "Okay, well, we're getting the right balance here because it's just aligning with some research, which is a nice validation to have, but how true is it across?" So I'll learn more about that interaction with marathon programming as I continue to implement and track it as I go. So again, as I said to you previously, it's just my curiosity to go, "How does what can I look at to give me a better metric of what we do going forward?" And I tried doing this many, many years ago as a coach and I was regularly in contact with Steve Magnus, who's a physiologist in the US. We met back in 2014, and I 2013 at the World Champs in Moscow because he had an athlete and a strained team. And I said to him, "I'm currently trying to measure all the intensities of the athletes that I coach and trying to come up with what's a perfect model to peak so I can replicate it 10 weeks out." And he goes, "Oh, give that a go and let me know how you go with that." And I got about six or seven weeks into it, maybe not even that long. And it was driving me nuts trying to do all these calculations constantly. And I gave him a call and we were having chat. He goes, "How did you find that?" I said, "I gave up on it." And he said, "Why did you give up on it?" I said, "Because I'm never going to have an athlete enter into the last 10 weeks of an exactly the same way." So to be able to say, "I'm going to dial in and here's your exact last 10 weeks of preparation and it delivered results once so it's going to do it again." And there's just 10 weeks of management there. You know, like, "I can't control if someone gets kept up all night because the dog next door was barking." Or their relationship broke down and so they're stressed and can't sleep or they're not eating well enough because of this or that or whatever have you. So we cannot replicate the exact environment for that final 10 weeks to take place. So that's why, you know, when we look at TID, it's good bit of feedback. Are we getting the right percentage of work in? But I'm sure I'll learn and I don't think I'd get exactly the same percentage for Jess again in the future because I'm not just going to roll out exact same training. We'll tweak it, we'll just to show and interact with it in different ways. And maybe that, you know, she starts developing a niggle after a line, some lower intensity stuff and manage. But it'll certainly be fascinating as we go on into the future to keep tracking some of those things. Yeah, more data for you. Hey, thanks Adam. Once again, congratulations on all the success you've had. I can't wait to keep tracking. Jess, when she comes back from, because she's come back twice pretty successfully, one maternity leave, she come back and won the Commonwealth Games gold. The other one she come back and broke the Australian records. So time three is going to be interesting and then have to skies limit. Yeah, look, I mean, Jess is still wildly motivated to get back running. But she's very aware that being a mother comes first. That's something I definitely support. So we'll do what we can. But, you know, I would definitely have a lot of optimism here coming back again. Yeah, I have to do this and pretty exciting opportunities ahead and looking forward to what he can do. And I'm just enjoying seeing a guy like that give it a crack. I think he's just got so much to give this sport in Australia and hopefully he can replay all the support that he's been given. I just want to end this episode with a quick shout out to Nomeo after trying it in my own training on convinced. And every elite athlete I follow also seems to be on it. Doing it before hard sessions or races is a game changer. And I can't imagine doing one now without broccoli in my veins. You can find out more for yourself at drinknomeo.com. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]