The Triathlon Hour with KRISTIAN BLUMMENFELT

[Music] So we started the triathlon hour as a training podcast where we would talk for, you know, an hour to two hours with the best triathletes and coaches in the sport of triathlon about their training and try and get all the secrets all the details that had never really been talked about before and we did that for about three or four years. And then I just needed a little break from it and we went into doing some other stuff. But we've decided that in twenty-t physicist, we want to bring that format back talk to the best triathletes on the planet talk to the best triathlon coaches on the planet. And we went into the training session about their training and try and bring you their secrets. We needed a little break from it but we're back. And we got together as a triathlon hour team and we thought who do we want to bring back to start this new generation of training podcast. And we all unanimously came together with one name and that's the most popular triathlete on the planet right now. In our opinion, probably the best triathlete on the planet right now, at least definitely the best male triathlete on the planet right now. That's been backed up by his performances at Iman 70.3, Jolong and Ocean side this year. It's the one and only Christian Blumenfeld. Christian, welcome to the triathlon hour. Thank you very much. It's good to be back. Is it like three years since the last recording? So it's definitely good to be back. Listening to the road to ocean side boys. It was really good to meet that mid person in ocean side, met up with Eric Klau. I've seen Justin before, but first I had a proper chat with him. So yeah, it's been cool to follow the show over past couple of years. Well, we used to do podcasts together all the time and I reckon we were the place talking about your training in more detail than anyone. But then you're right. We've kind of had a little bit of a break up. We haven't talked for about two, three years. So you're right. It's really good to be back. And I can't wait to get to the bottom of all the new secrets in the Norwegian method and the Christian Blumenfeld method. You know, I have to save a little bit for the Norwegian method podcast as well. So they have told me to try to keep it or try to ease off a little bit on the amount of podcasts I'm joining on. But I thought this week is good to jump back into it. So I give you like an opportunity to drag out all the secrets that you can get out of me. Okay. Okay. Let the interrogation begin then Christian. I'm not going to waste any time now. So I want to go. I want to go straight into training and then we'll finish the podcast talking about your racing. We'll talk about your long ocean side. Ironman Texas. We might even go back and talk about the Ironman World Championships from last year and all the racing you've got to come this year. But let's start with training. So I think the big change since I talked to you last is you're now a self-coached athlete. You were coached by all of Alexander Boo. And now it's the Christian Bloomenfeld method that's taken over and it's proved to be pretty successful. What have been the big changes you've made to your training since moving to being self-coached? First of all, I would say like it hasn't been dramatic amount of changes like both myself, Gustav and Casper have been under both Aril Triton and would have Alexander Boo over the last like 15 years. So first 10 years were Aril was the head coach and had like seven or eight year or Ula was involved and they were overlapping for a couple of years there. And both of them had the philosophy that the more the athletes know and understand of the training, the more likely they will have to have success in the future. So already when we started back in 2010 that was like this philosophy that they were also supposed to educate us as athletes. We can sort of take more control over the training. So a lot of the principles in training that we're using now is coming from what we've learned from both Ula and Aril as well as all the coaches that has been involved. But maybe the change we did from 2040 to 25 was maybe going a little bit more back to living more simplicity like the whole 2025 felt or 24 felt we were maybe too much like measurements that didn't really lead to any improvement in the training. So in 2025 I went more back to just making quite simple sessions that I could sort of recognize where my shape was going in which direction and building up the program around that and also focusing more on hours as well as having a training environment that's more like I would say athletes focused. So finishing the 2024 season that maybe had not enough athletes around me in order to sort of have fun at training like I was still doing the sessions but was at the highlight of the day while what we made the change in 2025 were at the it's a training session that's sort of the key point of the day and that's what we are supposed to talk about at the dining table and yeah. So let's talk about the philosophies that make up what you Christian Blueman failed does in training because the Norwegian method and what you've become known for is a high volume approach a lot of time spent focusing on your zones and your lactate measurements. Would you say that you have moved away from that a little bit and you're training more to feel now are you still a high volume guy what makes up the philosophy of what you've been doing over say 2025 and the start of 2026. I wouldn't say the philosophy changed it's still trying to get back to high volume and the threshold session is sort of the key around that it's more like the minor structure throughout the week and I feel like I can get the answers of warm and fitness is based on what I'm performing at a track session as an example and a lot of this sessions that we're doing is still the same framework as we have done for last 10 years. So like a track session can be still 6 or 7 by 2k or 10 by 1k and then 10 by 400 in the end and that's like a session we have done for many many years and I know what elected supposed to be at the different places and the same with the bike it can be 8 to 9 by 10 minutes uphill and we have still going to a lot of the same places for training camps as we've done before like the front on the earth to see on Nevada. So we still have a lot of the same session to measure itself up against what we've done in the past maybe it's been more like just this simple structure about having both Gustav back in a better fitness than what he was in 23 and 24 as well having Casper around who has been quite hungry after having maybe two years we wasn't really performing at his best. So I think that environment around me where I'm having like two guys who is really hungry and motivated to bounce back have been helping to when you say that you've been getting back to a high volume approach what kind of hours you've been hitting per week at the moment. So I tried to have as many weeks as possible above 30 hours this winter and then I tried to do the threshold sessions where worked up to like 75 to 80 minutes on the bike and then often doing like a 4 by 4k. Like a 4 by 4k threshold of that on the run. So like the key session on the run this winter was a 4 by 4k and a typical it did like twice a week and if I was very mentally fatigued and felt like physically tired then I was maybe putting in like a view to max session on the bike instead just to get like a change of stimuli and that view to max session could be like a 6 by 5 minutes of the 40 seconds above threshold and then 60 seconds on threshold. And getting that change should sort of makes it a bit easier to get through a interval session if I'm feeling tired. And I want to talk about the structure of this because now that you're running your own program you kind of have freedom to do whatever structure you want. Have you kept the session days the same as what you've always done them and your easy days the same as what you've always done them or have you shifted the structure of your training inside your training week. It's very much the same like we had so many years where we had like this 4 day cycle on a training camp where we had like double hard on day one and long in all 3 disciplines on day 2 and then double hard on day 3 and then I rest day on day 4. But then that cyclist would be replicated every 4 cycles was basically a 16 day cycle both me and Gustav felt that we never came into like a rhythm having that structure. So then we moved into a 7 day cycle again by the end of 2022 2023 I think so we have used like this 7 day cycle since 23 I think where we're having a rest day on Monday and Friday. And we have played a little bit within that 7 day cycle especially over the winter where we've been back home in Norway where we've used Saturday as an example for an intense discussion in the pool and then instead of having like 3 hours on the turbo we've been doing like a 3 or 3 and a half hour hike slash run in the mountains just to get out and get like the hours in without feeling that we're just grinding. But it's more like getting some fresh air and just getting the hours on the legs and then some they have always been a brick day so they without swimming but a threshold bike, a threshold run. And then are you doing 2 block sessions and 2 run sessions a week or are you doing? three bike sessions and three round sessions. - Now we've done two and two, so two swim, two bike to runs. - Yeah, and what day are you doing the bike and run session apart from the weekend? - Yeah, EC Monday is typically like just an hour, EC swim, an hour, EC run. And then two stay in the threshold bike, as well as a threshold swim, and then an EC run, one stay, just EC, all three. Turris day is where we typically been doing a track session in the morning, and then sometimes on 50 meters in the pool, just to get a little bit of activation, and then an EC recovery is spent on the bike, and then Friday again, rest day, and then the weekend. And then like an easy way to just add on hours is to make the bike sessions longer. So like instead of doing the intervals already after 20 or 25 minutes, we've been riding to a place, and it takes us like an hour and 20 minutes to get there, and then we're starting doing the intervals, like in the lunch of water, the swim sessions after like 90 and two hours, where I try to be around the, or just below threshold power. - We're gonna come back to the bike. I want to hone into the run to start things, because you're in great run shape. You obviously had the showdown with Yellow Gaines and Hayden Wild, who many people were saying were the best and second best, 70.3 athletes in the world, and you'd been relegated somewhere to number three or four, somewhere back there, and you obviously, oh, Crowey had called the race pretty much. Crowey said that you maybe had lost, and then before we knew it, you'd run up to both Hayden and Yalla, and taken the lead and ran 106, and then obviously Jonas Schomburg and Sam Longer off the front at Ocean Side, and you had to run a low 107 to get the win there as well. So you're in probably the best run shape we've ever seen an athlete being over the middle distance, two of the fastest times ever. Definitely the fastest back-to-back times that any individual athlete has ever ran in the history of the sport. So that's pretty crazy. So obviously what you're doing in training on the run is working. Let's talk about these sessions, because your sessions are clearly the fundamental part of your running week. Like, yes, you do a high volume approach. I see on your Strava that you run 100, 120, 130 kilometers a week, but you are so consistent with the threshold sessions you do twice a week in your running. Can you talk to me about them, how you progress them, what pace as you do them, how you do them, just everything about these sessions? Yeah, so this winter has had the key session that I've been doing most of the time being a 4x4K on the track, with Sparks, the Philosophidies Winter was just to sort of really use months to just build the foundation. So without stressing the pace too much, I was more locked in at 3.15, 3.10 pace for those 4Ks. Even though I felt like I could have gone another 5 or 10 seconds quicker per K, I was just locked in at that 3.15, 3.10 pace. The idea was more on the days where I felt like I had more to give. I would rather do a longer back session in advance to really stretch it out. So some days I could have done a 5 by 15 minutes on the turbo, and then straight on to the track, 4 by 4K. So I tried to stretch the track sessions out longer without being too crazy. And then when I got to learn so a lot, I started with some little bit shorter sessions or shorter repetitions, so I went into like some 2Ks. So I had like one session there at 10 by 2K. I felt like I wasn't really pushing the pace too much. So the first time I started doing like a higher intensity and shorter reps was actually off to New Zealand, where I started adding in 20 by 400. So I did that session three times off to New Zealand before Jilong, and as well I did like 20 by 1 minute after Jilong before ocean side. So I've done very limited amount of case around 3 minutes pace actually until that point. On the easy side, I haven't really challenged out to one part. There's been quite the easy on the easy stuff, and a lot of it have been like in the mountains, and in like a hilly courses. Are you still seeing volume in your running week as like the most important part, or do you think that nailing your 2K sessions a week is the number one most important thing? And then second to that is the total volume outside of those sessions. I think to nail the track sessions, it's like the most important thing. And then I've been trying to do more hours on the legs outside of that. But if I feel like fatigue, I can still sort of add in more hours on the bike and then get through with a minimum amount of running. So I could still do the 4 by 4 case twice a week and then do maybe 80 or 90K in total for the week if I feel I'm on the limit. And also if I feel sort of getting close to an injury, I will often just swap out the track session with a treadmill session and do it uphill instead. So that now would maybe do five by 10 minutes instead. To still get 50 minutes at threshold, but at a lower pace, so maybe at like 7% incline just to get less of impact on the calf. 32 kilometers of threshold a week will blow some people's minds. That's probably less, oh, that's probably more than what some people do in a month. So yeah, that's that's pretty crazy. You're still definitely, we haven't talked about your training in a few years like we talked about, but you're still training as crazy as ever. You're still like, you're still at the top of a top of like the who trains the hardest and the craziest ladder in my opinion. So I'm glad we've started this new generation of training podcasts with you because it's only downhill for every podcast we do from everyone from this point on. That's insane, mate. It's insane. And like some of the things you're doing, like when you're feeling a little bit of an injury coming on, you just you just go and do 7% at 50, 50 minutes at 7% on the treadmill or you go on and doing these crazy three hour like long runs in the mountains. And you're doing those 16K sessions in spikes. Let's talk about that. How are you not breaking down doing 16K twice a week in spikes? Why are you choosing to to wear spikes over say you're super shoe? That kind of thing. Actually, I had like, that was one of the mistakes I did this winter because I did the, we had like quite cold temperature for like a couple of weeks. And then the track was getting like quite icy, like not ice on it, but like, you know, the humidity brings like quite slippery and hard surface on the track. And I was wearing, I wanted to wear a spike because it would be too slippery to wear super shoes on the track that day. I think I used to take socks as well. So my toes were sort of a bit too cramped up in the front. And after like three or four K on one of the sessions, my calf muscle just snapped and I sort of had to throw in the towel and yeah, call it a day. And since then I will, that was like one of the reasons why I did a lot of the sessions and moved into the treadmill and the intervals in uphill instead. As well like doing the EC sessions uphill running. Are you generally thinking at the moment that you're not wanting to train in your super shoe though? Like are you doing like basically no training in your super shoe and saving it for races? Now I've used some more and more. A little bit because I wanted to dial in the stride. There'd been more. I sort of hit the rocker in the right way because I felt that I was probably landing a bit too flat in New Zealand. So I felt that it was like no bounce in the shoes in New Zealand. So I had to go more on the fourth foot and sort of press down the toes a bit more. So when I did that in the sessions off New Zealand and going into gelong, I really felt like the bounce and the respondent. I drew again. So I did the threshold session yesterday where I did like a seven by two K in the neighborhood here. I did them as well in the racing shoes just to work on that stride and sort of work when getting up on the toes. That could have been one of the mistakes I did going into New Slasier. I didn't use the rest shoe enough to sort of dial in that stride because when you put on the new set of shoes like it's a little bit of change. You're a crazy man. You're a crazy crazy man in the kindest way possible. I say that because you just did ocean side four days ago and you're doing seven by two K already, whereas most people are probably just getting back into their jogging. I don't think anyone that did ocean side has done a session like seven by two K since it and you did gelong a week before and you did 20 by one minute on one minute off in the week before that. Like you really don't stop do you and how are you able to do that without breaking down? I think the key there is to have again a little hours in the bank like to have a good good foundation before I start that block of racing. So if you used to do like 30 plus hours with a lot of like with 16 case on the track with bikes then when you then do a race with the super shoes and just bouncing with foam then the impact from the racing itself can sometimes be less than the impact from heavy training day. But I must say like I was quite tired and smashed up after ocean side like the following Monday there after like a short night of sleep and having the pack and travel over to Texas I say it felt like that was almost taking more out of the body the fact that I couldn't do too much of training that day because I think the best recovery you can do is to have like 90 minutes on the bike and then 45 minutes in the swim and then maybe an easy jog like just to be moving because I think that's the sort of activating the muscles enough. What pace did you do for these seven by two k's yesterday? The first one I was quite cooked from the heat the day before so I started off at like three thirty pace and then Casper went to the front and he could put them from three twenty and down to like three fifteen pace and then I did the last one at three or eight so still relatively controlled if you if you look at the pace I did in ocean side where I think average like a three ton so quite on the or still on the careful side of it. And probably my last question about your running specifically is that you talked about on the weekend how you you do a brick and I know that you do a lot of your running after you ride how many of your runs are you doing as strict bricks where it's like you know five ten minutes between the bike and the run and how many you're doing where it's more gentle bricks where it's just later on in the day after a hard ride. So the Sundays like the brick day and the Sundays we have like a fifteen thirty minutes turn around when we get back home and then changing to run gear and other days I've done like the bike in the morning and there may be three hour rest and then four hour rest of it almost like as a second session. What one do you think is is more important do you think it's more important for you to have like a short break between the bike and the run regularly or do you think it's more important to to have a longer break but still do it after the bike that day. Like if you're doing a very specific I think you want to have as little rest as possible in order to practice the nutrition because if you do four hours break in between I also need to eat something more than just the more than well if it's a short rest in between I can do like two more than bars and a gel and then head out again. So it's more like the balanced air because often when you're on training camp you can't just do race nutrition you also need to get more solid food on board because of the weekly volume is higher than what I'm doing in a race week. That's maybe the main challenge on the biggest training days like it was going to have to fuel more than what I do in a race. I said that was my last specific run question but I actually do have one more I just realized. You said that you were doing four by four K and then two Ks and some one Ks and then you after New Zealand before Jolong has started to do 400 meter reps 20 by 400. I saw a year again and he was turning off and I had to run it up and we need to do desperate last minute training four by 400s. That's a quick turn around. I know you're kind of joking but do you actually have those thoughts where it's like oh shit Hayden's going to be there, Yala's going to be there I'm going to have to run fast let me go and do some panic training and some panic fast training. I wouldn't call it panic training but it's more like to activate the higher pace and with the more rest I do, the more I'm activating the muscles and running the quicker I do expect to get the progression. It takes a bit longer time to train up the endurance than getting a little bit of extra leg speed in. Yeah well that's what I was going to ask. How important do you think it is to progress your reps to start from going longer like doing your four by four K down to your 400 reps where you're doing lots of them you know 20 by 400 with short rest. Do you think that you need to do that? Like do you think that's the big change that unlocked your run in your long and ocean side or do you think you would have ran the same if you had have just kept doing say longer reps like four K reps, three K reps, two K reps. No I think I would have had to go down to at least one K reps in order to get the rest speed in for 70 but three simply because the pace I was doing over the four K is like yeah three ten pace and the gap from that to be comfortable that just over three minute pace is a bit too much so that's why I sort of went beyond that and went down to like a two fifty pace for the four hundred to have some sort of distance above the expected run pace. And their intersection itself like if I feel that 68 or 66 is coming quite easily then I will also take down the rest. So to start off with I might go out with like a six second rest and the better I feel throughout the section I can either keep it at 60 and then try to go for the 63 or 62 and like with the same feeling or I can bring down the rest and also the bring down the impact on the legs by doing like a 40 seconds rest and then but then still keeping the ventilation high. And I'm going to come back to the run battle with Hayden-Wild, Yellow Gaines at Jolong and the one with Schomburg at at Oceanside. I'm just going to I'm going to hone in on training for a little bit longer before we come back to that but we are coming back to it onto the back I said to you before the podcast that something our mutual friend Cameron Worf said I was going to ask you about and I'm going to start start with that so Worfie said to me that it's going to be interesting to see how the Norwegians deal with the training required now that it's 20 meters like will the Norwegians particularly Christian be able to do the training and figure out what training they need to do to have success with 20 meters versus what they have been doing at 12 meters. Has your bike training changed now that it's 20 meters are you prioritising it more? Have you figured out the secret or does Cam Worf know it and you still don't quite know the secret? I'm not sure if Cam Worf knows the secret because in Oceanside I had to when I was passing him on the bike I was like screaming to him like hey buddy hang on my wheel take my wheel so I was like tributing to be his domestic author on the bike course but like I don't feel the difference between 12 and 20 is changing the race too much in terms of how I'm racing because I feel quite bad at staying sort of at that 13 to 12 or 14 meter gap and the same I'm bad at staying at the 20 to 24 meter distance so if I go at let's say 25 or 26 it's less different there than it is on 17 18 meters with a different or with a 12 meter rule so I feel it's less yeah still because I'm not good at staying exactly on the 12 meters so I think it's other guys who is better at taking advantage of the old rules versus myself. And you have touched on the structure of your bike week but let's just go over it again refresh our mind what is your training structure when it comes to your bike week? For the weeks I'm doing the most volume I often add in like another 60 or 90 minute recover ride on the Monday or Friday but that's like a little bit optional but then the Tuesday is a threshold session we have doing like maybe 7 by 10 minutes or 5 by 15 minutes or something like that on the bike and Wednesday maybe between 3 and 4 hours easy Thursday just like 90 minutes recovery then Saturday when I'm not at home in the winter then we do like a 3 hour easy ride and then Sunday is maybe 2 and a half to 4 hours including like 90 minutes of threshold and that can be like uphill riding we need to do like a big loop and do threshold in all the climbs that we're doing so we're accumulating like 90 minutes in total or it can be one of that loop. This is something honestly really exciting that I've been testing with my athletes and myself for the past 5 months and I've also been getting feedback from some of the sports biggest names who have been testing on themselves and I can finally bring it to you. It's a product called Nomeo and Nomeo for those of you who haven't heard of it is a supplement that you take 2 to 3 hours before key training sessions or long runs and long rides and definitely before your race on race morning. Nomeo is a concentrated dose of ITCs with a decade of research behind it that has been shown to reduce lactic acid build up by up to 12%. Now what that does is it delays for tea and makes it noticeably easier to push harder during your training and on race day. The only way I can personally describe it is it's like you just have this little bit of an extra gear in your hard sessions and can ride that little bit harder and run that little bit faster at that point when you're so used to things feeling really hard. It just leads to your sessions being that little bit better because your power or pace is just that little bit higher and I also think you can do it a little bit longer. Like I think you can kind of drag out your sessions a little bit longer because of it and then ultimately because of those 2 things because you're pushing harder and you can do a little bit more you're just getting fitter. I've also both noticed myself but also I've been told by other athletes that have been trialing it that during long rides or long runs they notice that things are substantially easier later into the ride or run when they're really used to feeling pretty cooked from fatigue. They just seem to not be a fatigue as quickly. I think a big thing and a big reason why I'm so excited about it is Casper Steuiner's used Nomeo in the lead up to his Ironman World Championships victory last year as a bit of a secret weapon in his training and racing and it was something he wanted to keep as a bit of a secret as he felt it was that big of a performance enhancer for him and it showed by how he was able to just keep pushing for long in that race later into that race compared to everyone else. He takes it before all of his hard sessions and every time he races. And this thing keeps happening in his races where like the last five kilometers of his runs in 70.3s or look at the last half of his Iron Man World champs marathon, he just seems to be fresher than everyone else around him. And it could be that he's a really smart pace, sure. But also, Nomeo is a new thing into Casper Steuerners' routine and look how he's been performing since using it. I just think like everyone else who's been noticing how much it delays for Teague, I think Casper's noticing those same things. And I honestly think Nomeo is something everyone will be using in 12 months time for all their key sessions and before all of their races in triathlons. So I'm kind of telling you about it now and so excited to tell you about it now so that you can take advantage of it as almost a little bit of a secret benefit that no one you're really race against is going to be using on that start line. And so you can get the benefit that they're not getting. And I think particularly in a sport like triathlon where everyone is training so hard and everyone is kind of up to date with the latest technology, it's so hard to find things that other people aren't doing that will make you faster. And so I'm just so confident this is one of those things and yeah, really excited to be telling you about it because of that. And just to be clear, Nomeo didn't approach me or the podcast partner. I reached out to them and asked if they would join the podcast because after I'd been trialing it for the past kind of four or five months and doing so with some of my athletes as well and seeing the benefits from it. And then learning about how other athletes have been doing this as well and talking to other pros and realizing just how many pros have been using it as a bit of a secret weapon. I was like, I've got to reach out like I want to tell the world about this. And luckily they said, yeah, they'd love to partner with the podcast. So because of that, if you do want to use it yourself, try it yourself, which I highly recommend you do, we've got a discount code for you, which is TTH 15 and it gets you 15% off your first order. If you're in Europe, then it's available on Nomeo's website, which you can just Google. If you're in America, you can only get it from the feed.com. And if you're in Australia, then you can only get it from aidstation.com.au. And the TTH 15 discount code works there as well. I'll put all those details about where you can buy it and the discount code in the episode description today. And I know this is a long one, but I'm just excited about it. Like I genuinely think this is going to be something that everyone's using in the sport. And I feel like I'm kind of the one of the first people really talking about it. I kind of feel like how I did the first time I tried the Nike Alpha fly back in 2020. And I was like, whoa, these are going to take over the shoe game. And everyone will be racing in these and look at how that's going now. I just think Nomeo is going to be something that every triathlete is using in their training and racing pretty soon. So I think take advantage of that little benefit that you could potentially get to make you faster before everyone else is using it. That's my opinion. Sorry about it being so long, but yeah, just pumped and excited about how good I think Nomeo is. And last time I checked your Strava, you had been hiding your power. So are you going to give away some power numbers here? What power are you kind of holding for your Tuesday, seven by 10 minutes, for example? So those that are like in at home in on the turbo, like a three, 63, 70 at home, while in Lanzarota I had like a four by 30 minutes thing like three, 70 maybe with like a five, seven minute rest maybe in between those two. So that was a session where I dropped Maris Berkisets in Lanzarota. He came into the training camp with quite a cocky attitude and he was looking at both me, Gustav and Casper and just looking forward to drop us. So that was like a quite important move to put him on place for two of the days. So I had two days in the lab as well as winter together with or two days on the bike together with Ula on in the lab to do some testing on some different sensors and there I had like one day where I had like a LZ1 at like three, 30 or something with like 0.7 in light head but that was after like a lot of turbo riding and low cadence work. So I had some quite low values there at the high power. While now I think the LZ1 is maybe just above 300. I'll start with the Maris Berkiset or as Justin Raleigh calls him the jerk set. He I was messaging him and he said that he thought he could drop you on the bike. He thought obviously on the swim and the run you are going to be too good for him in training camp but he showed up to training camp like you said quite cocky feeling like he could drop you and he said that he was really, really shocked at how strong you are on the bike and you hear those numbers like three by 30 minutes at 370 watts and so people sometimes talk about you as being quite heavy but you're actually much lighter than people realize I think you're you're a small bloke so three by 30 minutes at 370 watts is actually insane power for someone your size and I do think it's quite underrated just how strong your bike is and and those numbers kind of back that up. But I do feel I've been riding worse in competition than what I've been doing in training. So I still think it's some work to do in order to transfer it into a good race bike leg. And how do you do that do you think? I'm not sure maybe I have to ask Mars who is a riding better in competition than he does in training. So that's maybe why we are training together so we can learn from each other. You know how in your running you do you're doing like the four by four K and then you feel like closer to the race you need to do four hundred whereas in your bike and my ride in saying that you kind of keep it as longer reps like seven by ten minutes closer to the race or do you or or am I missing something and you actually start doing like five by five minutes or five by six minutes or something like that. No that is often coming a bit up again it depends on the what kind of race I'm doing but like again in between New Zealand and Jolong I was using like six by five minutes as the main session on the bike where I did the 40 seconds well above threshold and six seconds on threshold to just activate all the muscle fibers that I could do and getting the torque up. How often are you doing big gear intervals? Not too often like I don't have a number on it for the last couple of weeks I've been more focusing on how they low gear intervals like they're working on the cadence and getting more comfortable at like a 95 to 100 in cadence but I think that's an area where I can improve more because I feel often in a race as I end up riding at like just riding through a heavy gear and that might disturb my run legs coming off the bike so I think just getting used to being comfortable at like 97, 98 in cadence is something that can help me especially here in Texas but I think like with all the flat riding we're doing here in Texas I will add in some sort of five and ten minutes sort of intervals but not with too high power bit more like working on the low cadence and just activating and working on the pedal face. When you were doing those 40 seconds above threshold how far above threshold are we talking here? And we're talking your second threshold, your anaerobic threshold, you talked about what your aerobic threshold is which is maybe somewhere between 330 watts. What is your second threshold power at the moment do you think and how far above that were you pushing for those 42nd reps? I think between New Zealand and New Zealand and the two of that session and the first one was quite close to the race in New Zealand and then I had maybe like a 390 to 407 on average over the five minutes and then the following week I did like a 340 so a little bit above but at the best I've done like that session but as a five by ten minutes at the 450 I think for the last ten minutes but that's on the road bike and in a climb so like standing. Yeah I don't really know what to say to that that's quite crazy that's like just that my brain doesn't really comprehend those numbers that's how good those numbers are. Well I guess. Yeah I mean that's high and like I said what do you think your second threshold is right now what do you reckon your LT2 is? I need another good week to get it recovered from the race but maybe like 75 to 38 on the flat and then maybe just over 400 in a climb. Yeah crazy crazy you are in insane shape this year and like are you more motivated than ever coming off last year with your third place finish losing to both your teammates at the Ironman World Championships and then that crazy crazy sprint finish with the elegans to come second at the 70.3 World Championships being so close to winning both of the biggest races in our sport last year. Are you now over preseason and offseason and where you're at right now? Are you as motivated as ever? Are you just wanting to win everything and be as fit as you can all year or are you like more focused on the World Championships at the end of the year? I would still say I'm quite focused on corner and October and motivation wise like I feel all three of us was quite hungry and motivated for last year and I feel it was quite natural. to be still having the same hunger for this season. I feel it's much the same, but I just don't want to go into the same track where I'm winning all of the non-important races and then coming out as at the looser in the end of the day. So that's more on my mind this year. I need to dial in to really climb another World Championship title because that's more getting onto my nerves, you know. Well, I mean, yeah, I hear you, but you have started the year by dominating Jolong and Oceanside. But I guess New Zealand you had a bad one, so maybe that's a positive. Yep, that's a positive, but also had a bad one in Oceanside last year. But it's not like I've been tapering to be very fit this time around. I would say it comes from the more volume-based training that I've done. And that's also limit that approach I want to do after text us to do like two weeks to sort of let the body rest almost and then almost like restart again and have the mindset that I had like in December with building up the training and the hours and the fitness again almost from the base again and imagining it's December. Do you think that you'll fit right now than what you were before the Iron Man World Championships or the Iron Man 70.3 World Championships last year? No, I think I was in better shape going into this. Maybe I was a bit too much of a 70-bit shape going into this than a full armament like because my 1K reps in Fondreux last year was quicker than my quickest 1K rep in Fondreux in 2024. And my 5-minute power on the bike was still quite solid last year. So maybe that was one of the mistakes I did last year that I should have done more challenging extensive workouts instead of having too many simplified workouts. Like I still did like 10 by 1K and 10 by 400 as one of the weekly sessions on the track last year and I did with like two elected I was maybe running a 301 or 302 pace for the 1K in altitude and yeah I felt like the leg speed was actually what should have been in 2024. And going into Geelong this year, the showdown with yellow gains and Hayden Wild, I say this in the most respectful way I can but were you surprised by how easily you beat them in the end? I'm not sure like it's more like an unimportant race in the end of like if you're looking at big picture like it's more about who is winning the World Championship titles and yellow was the one who won it last year and even though I was like a minute quicker than him or so in Geelong that doesn't really matter it's like what I feel like it's it's about those World Championship days and it is easier to win with a bigger margin if whenever it's going out in their pace like Hayden and yellow was pushing the pace on the bike and maybe they were destroying both of each other's run legs a little bit more than what I was doing with myself when I was just riding my pace further behind so in one way like I got a good drop by 90 seconds by Hayden on the bike but I felt that the bike like in all she said was more stressful because I was like surrounded by like 20 guys and it was more like on and off the pedal and more accelerations while in all she said I could just ride my rhythm and come off the bike and just do my thing on the ground. Yeah, in Geelong you could be more just rhythm and focus on yourself. With Hayden you haven't had a showdown with Hayden over the middle distance yet like obviously Taupo or Topar and and then last year he did the T100 and he looked unbeatable basically like you can look at the Topar race and be like yeah he was going to beat yellow though even though he didn't this is what people say like he just blew up and then he went and dominated yellow at all the T100 races and then yellow beat you at 70.3 World Championship so it was like oh clearly Hayden's the guy. Do you think that he he was as fit at Geelong and and put in the same performances as the same level as what he was at all those races or do you think he was just a bit off and you still need to have a showdown with him in better shape or or do you think 20 metres and the the bit of extra distance over the 70.3 distance just put it back in your favour. How do you guess he's been racing stronger than what he did like I guess he was yeah he just didn't have the leg speed that he's normally having on the run so typically he would probably be running a little bit faster and a little bit more in control so I guess he had the sort of day at 90 or 95 percent compared to what he has had at his best. And then Ocean side I guess you were back in the main group and Jonas Schomburg and Sam Long were off off the front. What did you make of that race? What did you think of the form of Jonas Schomburg and Sam Long and and your team make Casper Steuiner's who ended up in third position? That was more like a tricky one because looking back now I think one of the mistakes I did were that I should have just put the hammer down the first 20k on the bike and then sort of been ridden riding myself up to Jonas and sort of just keep him under control because I think he got like a minute to solve for the first 67 the case and it was more like just establishing around the minutes I was more in a stressful situation with the third day guys so was around me and trying to avoid the penalties and trying to be in the right position in the group and yeah that was more stressful and it was almost like a chemical situation there after 45k when everyone was just always taking each other but when they then made it to the front they were too cooked to actually do any work so it was small just sitting up and it was like a tricky situation to be in but then after like an hour and 15 minutes I thought it's around 45 minutes left and it's probably easy to just ride steady up front or in the front instead of looking too much at everyone else from that point when I went into the third position or like in front of my group then I saw that it was two guys up front and I was doing like the timespots up to who ended up being Sam Long and he was like a minute and so in front of me from there and the last 20-25k I think we lost another minute but still like I felt that it was tricky with the dynamic in a group. What do you make of Jonas Schomburg's race? Do you think that he can be the guy to kind of compete with you over the 70.3 and even the full distance coming up in Texas in a couple of weeks or do you think that you still pretty much have his measure and at the end of the day can just outrun him and get the job done? No he's a dangerous guy because it was just the Queen's Senate or Gamble where they had a minute or three minute gap to me like I wasn't really in control of that so yeah if he had had three minutes off the bike he would have won the race and I wasn't really aware of the time gaped up to him so I think for the future races and also here in Texas I need to be more aware of where he is and on this course it's even it's more out in back sections and it was in ocean side but it's less than what he had in G-Long so I think you have like three places on the course where you can actually get the time splits up to the front and that's not really a lot over 180k so it's still going to be a lot of riding in the blinds sort of so then it's better to just go out hard early on and be around him as well as be around Martin. And the difference between the full and the 70.3 for you is something that I think is really interesting. I kind of think that your best performances have been over the 70.3 distance versus the full distance or bear you've still had some great days obviously you won the IMM World Championships in George and then you've come second and and third as well but do you think that you're going to get to a position where your full distance this year is much stronger than your 70.3 performances or do you think that that balance is just something that you struggle to find and and and you're always going to be pretty good over the 70.3 distance and have to kind of figure out the adjustments that you need to make to be at your best come corner. It could have been the fact that I tried to balance short middle and long over the last five years like both in 21 as well as in 22. I think I did all from super league distance and up to arm and both years and the same like going back again to Paris and trying to be ready for Olympic distance maybe that's been sort of putting me towards something in the middle rather than dulling 100% in for the full distance so that's maybe something I can use the second half of the year to do right but having said that like I was winning with a big margin here in Texas last year and felt I was doing well especially on the run in Frankfurt but maybe it's like a muscular fatigue as well but you just need to get more of those sessions underneath the belt. Yeah because if you look at the like the day in Corona 2022 where you came third and Gustav Edden won the race and Sam Leather came second and then at Nice last year in 2025. where you came third and Casper, Stoyner's won and Gustav Eden came second, you were in both of those races with the leader at halfway through the marathon. So you're there, right? You're in the position where, okay, we've got a half marathon to go and I'm running next to the leader of this race. So clearly you have all the ingredients, right? And it's just, you just need to finish off the run. So do you think that there is something in training that it is? Like obviously you just, you started talking about it then, but maybe going to that in a bit more detail. How do you get that last half marathon done where instead of finishing third, you can finish first this time? Like I've done some races earlier this season, I feel I'm having the second half of the run better or stronger than the first half or like both in Hawaii and in this I felt cooked already coming off the bike and there was more like a survival getting into the 25k mark. Well, in this I felt okay coming off the bike, but I felt quite 38 after like 10, 15k. So maybe I just have to build up this season a little bit like I'm doing with the winter training and that's a, again, something I will try to change this year. Yeah, but you're still going to pretty much keep your volume high all year. Is it the sessions that change a little bit? Like you're still going to try and tick off as many 30 hour weeks as possible, aren't you? You're not going to take like a down period? No, no, so the hours will be the same, but maybe it's more around the interval sessions. So rather than trying to lift off the pace to be closer to three minute pace for the run, that's an example, I will maybe do five by five k instead and just look in at three 15 pace and just get the duration in at a higher pace and it's still going to be higher than the hour and a pace. There's more like just getting in more distance on the track sessions and the same with the bike, maybe doing more intervals around the 15 to 20 minutes and just the griding through. I want to talk about food and diet. You, your coach, your old coach, Ola Valegzander-Boo, he was pretty famous for talking about how the limiting factor for you was just how much food you could eat. And as long as you could eat as enough food, you could train as hard as you wanted pretty much with your physiology. Where's your mindset at with food and diet at the moment? Are you eating whatever's in sight? Do you care about how in quotation marks healthy the food you eat is? Are you thinking about it at all? That kind of thing? No, no, I do think about it. So we try to balance it right because that's when we're training the most than it's nice to have that add on calories from candy and chips and the sheeding stuff. Also, I think if I eat that too much over time, I'm just getting too fat, you know? So I think, as an example, going into Paris, I guess I was probably four kilos overweight compared to what I should have been. So I still need to be careful with the nutrition, but it's like a thin balance. That's pretty big revelation that you reckon you were four kilos too heavy for Paris. Did you think you only realized that after the fact or when you were going into the race, were you thinking like, oh, I think I'm just too heavy to run as fast as I need to to compete with Alex Yee and Hayden while here. It was more when I saw the photos from the race when I saw myself running. That's okay. That's a heavy bloke. He should have been lighter. I should have had people taking pictures of me before instead of in the race. So I could have changed it like the last four weeks, but I think it comes also a little bit down to what's the focus of the training. I think going into Paris, we were working a bit too much on improving the capacity rather than being more race-specific. I think by lifting up the intensity, it's also easier to get a little bit leaner. This takes me into before the I-M World Championships at Nese last year. I've been one to ask you about this for so long. The photos you had posted before Nese, like you were loving it and you were taking the history that you were posting to your short list selfies at the pool and everything. We had a good laugh about it. We thought it was very funny by you. Were you doing that because you felt like you looked good and you looked good. Feel good. Let me post this on Instagram or will you just play in games with everyone? It's good for algorithms as well. The funny thing is often I can be 78 kilos and people can say, "Oh, you look lean." I can be 78 kilos and people go, "You look fat." So I can still get those people saying, "Oh, you have lost weight, even though I haven't lost weight." No, it was just warm in France. We had a pool in our garden and it just makes sense to do a picture without the t-shirt. I've always been that guy who was going to the pool with a t-shirt on. But then last year I could finally take it off when I was at the pool. You always had that one friend who was going to the pool with a t-shirt on. When you're in school, everyone had that friend and if you didn't have that friend, it was because you were that friend who would do the swimming lessons at school in the t-shirt and get picked on for it. The same with the track sessions. You have the one who is having the biggest six packs. The other one was feeling warm too early and have to take off the t-shirts. Even they've only done three by one can have seven left. Well, I just, I'm just keeping it on them and that's, I'm confident. Yeah, well, I've been at the Andora track with Jan Frodeno in, it's, it's snow's mate, 5.30am, it's dark and it's snowing and he's still too hot for that t-shirt. I can understand. Yeah, I mean me too. I look at it and I go, yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't own shirts if I was that bloke. Casper's Dinos, your, your long-time teammate. I want to talk about this dynamic a little bit because obviously you're, yourself, Casper and Gustav trained together a lot and you and Gustav were better than Casper most of the time. Obviously there was that one famous race and Bermuda, I think it was where he beat you too and you had the podium clean sweep in the, in the short course, but then over long course you and Gustav were definitely better through that like 2018 to 2022 period where you and Gustav revolutionized the game with the two best athletes, I think we've ever seen and and are probably the reason why the games where it's at right now in 2026. But then in 2025 Casper kind of comes back to the group after a year or almost two years break from being with the group full time and he can't, he kind of, he goes from being the third member of the group who is often looked at as the training partner to to winning on the biggest stage and and beating both you and Gustav on the podium at the Ironman World Championships. Did you know that he was in that shape? Were you surprised that when it was yourself and Gustav and Casper out in front that he was the man to come out on top or is he always being this athlete and just hasn't quite been out of show in the big races until last year? He's been more on and off but like over less the maybe three years he's been in a better shape than Gustav on training. Like the whole 2025 it was basically me and Casper sort of pushing each other and then the Gustav was behind. So it was more like a surprise how Gustav managed to pull that second place out of the hat that was just crazy. Like Casper was the one who was for most of the time keeping up with me and for most of the time also dropping Gustav. So for him I think it's been more a thing about feeling confident to do his own things in the race as well and not the stress too much about what other people are doing and like one example there is how he was letting us go like twice on the run there and he was just saying to his pace while I was sort of joining Gustav on his sort of stupidities and he ruined both my legs and his legs and then Gustav Casper came back again after sort of had following his race strategy to plan. When Gustav won the iMamworld Championships in 2022 versus when he came second last year at NICE in 2025 which version of Gustav do you think would have beaten the other version? Was Gustav fitter and better in 2022 than what he was last year when he came second? I think he said that his performance in NICE last year was better than 22 but he was more happy obviously winning a wide end getting second in NICE so like it was like two different feelings there from his side and especially with the shape he has been in for the last two years to be able to bounce back with his strongest armament performance was quite important for him but then it was a bigger struggle for him to bounce back off the net because I think he was quite sort of empty and done with the year eight weeks before my Bayer and this year going into the iMamworld Championships and I guess throughout the whole year are you thinking about your competition much or are you just focused on yourself? I would say mainly focusing on getting my own fitness up where it needs to be like focusing on my own training but I still find it interesting to see how other athletes are training and performing like it is interesting to see what you and I sure am doing and he is racing how he is solving it as well how Magnus Ditlevi is going to perform here in Texas and Yellow, Gains and Martin like it's it's always new guys and I think it's uh and advantage to have like an idea of what they can put together on the race day. But in that end of the day I need to be in the fitness, my best fitness in order to win on our way. If your someone who is injured, has been injured, constantly gets injured or wants to do everything you can to stay injury free while you're running, then you need a lever movement system in your life. 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But if you don't win, Kona this year for example, who do you think it is that might be able to beat you? Because I don't think it's many people. I think it's a very small amount of people. But in your mind, if someone is to beat you, do you think it's Caspar, do you think it's Yalla, do you think it's Ladello, or in your mind if you're there fit enough, you're unbeatable. We have like a habit that when an Norwegian is turning up in a world championship on the debut, they tend to win this. And Morris Brexit is going to have his debut in Hawaii. So maybe Morris, Joe jokes aside, no I think maybe Caspar Caspar can be dangerous. Like he's often or he tends to enjoy heat and humidity. And like he had a really good day in Tessivent in Tokyo, where he came second all really like seven years ago. And for him, heat and humidity comes as natural as racing in altitude. It comes for me. So he doesn't really feel the effect from it. And Yalla can also be a dangerous guy like a good runner. He's obviously solid on the bike, but especially what he can do on the run is something that can be a dangerous weapon after one queen K. I have heard that about you actually, that if the world championships were done at high altitude, you'd be like a five time world champion by now. But unfortunately, they're not down at sea level. We need to bring the armoured world championship race to Granada. So we're swimming in that lake and then we're riding up and down the mountain and then the finishing off at the track at 2,300 meters. Then there would be a walk in the park. And everyone has to race in spikes on the track. I want to ask you about Lionel Sanders, because I know that you and Lionel are pretty good friends. And although you might not see each other that often, when you do, it's always high quality entertainment for us who get to watch along. Do you think that Lionel Sanders can be competitive at the Iron Man World Championships this year? Short answer? No. Long answer? That is too good. I think like you saw with Mungus Ditalab, for example, he's been bridging up on the swim and he's now often in the first pack on the swim. And he still has the horse power that's probably stronger than Lionel for most of the time. He did perform well in Dallas from what it looked like, but maybe that's a little bit like with my issue as you were relating to. He's good over the half, but he is struggling over the full distance. And it is a long time since 2017 when he came second. The depth in the field is just a different level. He's not getting younger with the airs. Well, you've taken over as the coach of the Norwegian method now and you know Lionel very well. It's a core liberation. We're all coaching each other. Okay, let's quickly break this down. Who is, who, like if you were to do percentages of who coaches between yourself, Gustav, Caspar, and you can add Marius in there now if you want? Who percentages of who coaches? What is each person's percentage? I would say one third each has to support. So it's like, we do try to, as we all have the same coach in the past, we have sort of the same philosophy. So like yesterday, we all did two case on the run and Gustav changed his sixth one to be a two by one case. Instead, Caspar did six of them and I did seven. So we can do the same session together, but we'll still do the individualize it as good. So even though we train together, and I think that's maybe the key. We see the value of training with each other so we can do our own training together with each other. So we can still get the best out of our own training. So you got all the credit for the coaching last year as the head coach, but actually it was all three of you. You were just unfairly getting all the credit. Correct. Let's go back to Lionel. Let's say that you take over as head coach for Lionel. What do you change in his training or maybe his approach in general to get him to maybe not win the IMMM World Championships, but get as close as possible to winning the IMMM World Championships as you can? For first thing, it's not like a quick turnaround. I think it was onto the Bright Pathway in 2022, when he was actually all in for the Norwegian method trying to do more hours as well as more threshold work and as well, he needs to get into our environment. He's just doing his own training in his own basements and not really having athletes around that he can pick up, just daily small tips from other athletes. He should have a higher or have better athletes around him than he can train with. Yeah. I don't think he's going to do that though. I think it's too late for that now. So maybe that's why you think he can't have a good day there. And one thing, if you are into your third year, you still have to be training as you are a desperate guy in the early 20s because they are like turning everything upside down in order to catch you. So you need to have the same sort of desperation in your training and do basically everything they are doing in order to still be on top or not being caught because if they are going to altitude, you have to go to altitude yourself. You can skip it just because it's inconvenient to travel. I want to ask you about some here and it's kind of related to what you just talked about, which is like this desperation of people who are at the top of this sport. And obviously to be at the top of this sport, you have to train a lot and you have to train hard. When it comes to following your program, you have this seven day program that you follow all year round basically and you train hard year round with a few little down periods here and there. But not really. When it comes to your session days, like you choose day and your Sunday, for example, if you have yourself a session that you've set, like seven by 10 minutes on the bike and then you go into your track session on Thursday, which is let's say it's four by four K. If you don't feel good on that day, do you ever just bin the session and go, no, I'm just going to go easy today and I won't do that session this week or I'll push it back to the next day or do you always just do it to the best of your ability unless you're going to get injured, like if you're just feeling shitty, do you always still try and get it done to the best of your ability? Yes, I would say so. It depends how bad I feel. If I do a track session on something, like the four by four K, if I feel great and I normally do that three 10 pace, then I feel garbage on during the warm up. Maybe I will put the base at the base part, like three, 25 pace and just feel rolled through it because it's not necessarily that I will feel shop again the next day and it's maybe just good to just stay in this rhythm of the hard, easy, hard, like that structure. But if I feel completely out of it, empty and have to go down to like a three thirty pace and I feel like I'm well too off of what I was supposed to do. Then I can call it a day after like maybe even the first four four K. And tapers I want to ask you about these now because between like this is crazy what you've done. Like you've gone New Zealand into Jolong and then you've traveled from Australia to America in a week you've done at least one session that we know about in that week between Jolong and Ocean side with the twenty by one minute on one minute off and then you've done I'm and seventy point three ocean side you've dominated both those races and then four days after ocean shot side you've done seven by two K's. Like obviously you don't really you don't really stop but are you doing any tapering into your races where where is your philosophy right now around if you want to be you know at ten out of ten on race day what do you think is the perfect taper for you and is it much of a taper at all? I think the key part for the taper is what you do like the last two days and typically with when you're doing arm and you have like the pro panel days like an hour and it's like an awkward break in between often and then you have the pro briefing and then you have the next day you have checking your gear and all of those things that just dealing time from my training schedule so it's hard to even put in the three by forty five minutes activation over those two days each day so like having like easy swim back and run for those days and I feel that in itself is enough taper typically to to get ready for a big day and on top of that just doing cable loading and hydration and I think it's nice to keep almost like the normal training room until maybe four or five days out from the race and maybe the last let's say ten days out until the three four days out then I'm a little bit more aware that it's no reason to do like a hero session but I still want to finish either 70 to 100% of a normal session. Yeah and with I'm in Texas in two weeks time are you going to do your classic Norwegian method big brick one wake out? That's the plan so the plan is to do one tomorrow I will probably be a little bit more like I'll be holding back a little bit more on the bike there and let the models and cuspere and just sort of pull the train a little bit more on the bike there and I will see how I'm feeling simply because I think I was getting a bit of overcooked here on the Tuesday and Wednesday and then for the run tomorrow I think I will try to reach out to like 40k if I feel good. What I did last year was more like just playing it safe and stay at like 30k for those sessions but I think I can buy using carbon shoes for there I would rather do 40k with carbon shoes than 30k without tomorrow and then we will put in like another like threshold session midweek on both the swing back and run and then the final key or big big day will be Saturday what week out from the race? What's the 40k run tomorrow gonna be? What will the session be? That's not like a it's not too important what the session is if itself if it's like 5k's or so we have like a loop here which is almost or just over 2k so I might do like some 6 or 10k's and do it yeah 4 times do 8k's maybe and then live it a 4 mile up and cool down again so it's more like running like 30 minutes and then having a little rest to hydrate and then running another 30 minutes so I'm not too locked in at the distance. And I want to touch on your VO2 max test quickly which is a pretty sharp change of direction but obviously you've done that two years now where it's probably it's created waves let's be honest where you know 50% of the people go this is the world record this is the highest ever recorded VO2 max and they get around you and then 50% of people tell everyone they know that it was fake and and his VO2 max isn't really that high tell me the truth what is the truth of this situation when it comes to your VO2 max. The truth is that so I did the three similar measurements so actually the highest one was on the bike where I think I had like two and a half minutes above 100 but also the gross efficiency there was quite low so the power I got out from the VO2 was lower than what I've had at the best I think was down at like 7 or 18% or something but of course like when I'm recording numbers like that all of us to be quite sure that he's doing the measurements right from his side so even like the second day when we did the second round when we did the measurements he was using like a long simulation machine and just sort of making sure that the long simulation machine is giving out like six liters of oxygen per minute and then checking if the readings was accurate and we didn't go before and after and as well he was sending in the machine to validation at the factory to make sure that the machine was all good and I have done the same sort of numbers on two different units in the Bergen so from everything all of the manufacturer can see the numbers are real but then it's more about understanding why the numbers are so high like what it comes from and one of the sort of philosophies that they're coming up or thinking could be the race now is maybe the training in the cold is doing something with the round fat production or something but I don't really know too much about the brown fat but yeah that's something to look into more in the future. And another sharp change of direction obviously the Sam Leybo caffeine story is a famous one and one that me and you've talked about every time we've done a podcast because it's my favorite story in the entire history of triathlon by far there's not a close second how are you going with your caffeine at the moment are you still drinking as much coffee as ever how much caffeine have you been taking in in races and have you have you tricked any other young triathletes recently into destroying their races and having diarrhea via caffeine intake. So in July now in August I had like 600 milligrams my plan was to stay at like 400 for a little bit more conservative but then out on the final 10k one so I'm relying on the Morton gels in the eight station on the run course and then I found okay I need that final push now to in order to catch both them and you and us so then I will for two of the eight station there also grab like another 100 milligram caffeine gel for Morton the white ones. So I took another 200 milligrams here for the final 10k just to give myself a little bit of extra push to bridge up but I've tried to be a little bit careful you know when you're getting older the heart has to be important to take care of my health so on the easier days I tried to do a little bit less in order to sleep better during night and on the bigger training days I'm really a little bit more on the breadball and coffee and caffeine. How much are you prioritizing your sleep at the moment are you a guy who's focused on getting 10 hours sleep a night or are you you're not sleeping much? For me if I get above eight hours then yeah it's perfect I would never be able to sleep 10 hours like constantly because then I feel I'm getting like I will not be able to sleep the next evening so yeah it just over eight hours is perfect and that's also where my bed or my mattress 8th lip comes handly in like that's a perfect sponsor plug. You got Red Bull Morton and now you're mattress sponsoring in pretty much the space of 30 seconds. Yes and yep that's going to be no it's just just a bummer I can't travel with the mattress because it's a bit heavy it weighs like 20 25 kilos but at home it's a recent while I'm sleeping better at home than I do when I'm traveling. I guess like there's only a few things I want to talk about now we haven't talked about your swim at all or swim training because I kind of find it pretty boring but have you made any changes to your swim training lately like how do you think you're swimming do you need to make any improvements is there maybe something you need to change in your training or is everything going pretty good? I think I'm going backwards on the swim so there's something I need to lift up and I think one of the things I should have done is more open water swimming and I felt like I felt odd when I swim in a new seal and I'm like oh shit this is a while since I've been in the open water so I think that's something I will add more in over the summer. Other than that it hasn't been much of a change. I do feel I swim again better at the practice than I do at competition and that maybe comes down to I need to do a little bit more open water sessions and maybe not just easy open water sessions but also some of the interval sessions out in a lake or in a sea. That's what I was going to ask. What do you think is the best way to do your open water sessions so that when you get to a race you feel good? I think Or at least when I do open-boiled session, I think both doing just study Alte1 swims, but also typically either time-based, or if you make a loop with them boys. But I do think, yeah, like two sessions a week is great. - Would you wear your wetsuit both times or do you think it's important to do open water with no wetsuit? - I don't think that's a big difference. Like typically the wetsuit these days are so flexible in shoulders that of course like the buoyancy is a little bit different compared to having no wetsuit, but to swim without the buoyancy is something you practice in the pool at a daily basis. So it's more like being sort of in the sea or like looking up and sort of having that little bit shorter stroke rhythm and having the catch a little bit more like straight on the catch. And I was swimming more open water last summer compared to what I've done this spring. So yeah, that's something I definitely have to add in more after Texas. Unfortunately it's not too many places I can do open water swims here in Texas because there was like alligators and snakes in the lake there. - Yeah, maybe avoid that. Going back to your change of program from being coached by all of Alexander Booter self-coached, we obviously haven't done a podcast since that. How did that transition go? Like how did that conversation happen with yourself and Gustav and Olaf? Was it like was it easy? Was it a mutual decision? Or was it actually a tough decision that took a bit of like time to come to that conclusion and was a really hard conversation to have? - It's always like a hard sort of conversation to have. Because we've been working so closely with each other for so many years. So it's almost like a little break up in one way. But Olaf have always been sort of quite clear and open at. He did enjoy working with us, but he would also be more than happy to help us find a new coach if we find like the need to change the coaching environment and feel like the need to change. So he has always been like what confident in his work and that when we feel the need to change that we are more than so welcome to take that direction. But of course, it's not easy to sort of, it's still sort of a little break up in one way. But I still do have a great relationship with Olaf. Like I can still call him if there's something I'm wondering on and like yeah, want to discuss with him. So yeah, but again, like to bring it up the first time and saying that I think me and Gustav wants to take more responsibility and control our own training. It's a change. Yeah. And I guess, how does it go with yourself Gustav and Casper? Because am I correct in saying that Casper is still coached by Mikael Eden, brother of Gustav Eden? No. He left him like a year and a half ago. So he left the national team and yeah, like took that sort of step. When he joined me and Gustav then he also left that group. Yeah. But Solvi is still coached by Mikael? Yes. She is. Do you guys do much training with her? Like in the lead up to her coronal win last year, were you guys involved much? Nothing really. Like she is now here in Texas with us. We are living together and we try to do as much training as we can do together. Well, that fits in. But we didn't really do much training with her going into coronal. She had like her program and we had horse. And also she was coached or she still coached by Mikael. Were you surprised by her win at the IMM World Championships in Kona, or was it not a shock to you at all? It was not a shock that she was performing well. But it was a shock that both Lucy would sort of get a heatstroke out there on the run course and Taylor would sort of pull out of the race with like one K to go, I think, no one saw. So that race dynamic happening. But she has always been like a machine on the bike and on the run. Like it's not a surprise that she can perform over the full arm and distance. Like that's something we knew, basically, even for Tokyo that she could be a beast on the bike. And especially with the way she's been racing short course where she typically gets out of the water like two minutes behind and then she's riding the same pace as the 10 girls up front is getting who is even riding with like a motorbike right in front of them. And then she's running like 90 seconds slower than the best of them. Like she has showed some skill sets and fitness that she could be good for the fullest in the future. Yeah, everything you see is kind of how I see things. It is crazy how much there is still impacted races by the dynamics, even at 20 meters, I reckon, especially. Like at Oceanside, it was pretty crazy that front group at times, like the motorbikes in there and all the back and forth in the group. Like I don't know if 20 meters has made as big an impact is what I thought it would over the 70.3 distance when the fields are still stacked. So it'll be really interesting to see it Texas, like with a really stacked field on a course that's pretty flat, like whether the 20 meters impacts it a lot. Do you expect it to? Do you think things will kind of break up over the last 90 K on the bike? I think you might not see the difference on the bike split. But you can maybe see it on the run split. If you see what I mean, like people can still hang on and be a part of the group. But with the 20 meter, it's 12 meters. Like it is less traffic. So in end of the day, they will be playing more for the run. Yeah, the run becomes more honest, doesn't it? That's what it's looked like so far. It's like the run you used to be able to fake it a little bit and just like stay in the group at 12 meters and then run probably above what you should be able to. But that's the one thing that Sofa in 2026, no one's being able to fake their run anymore. Like the good runners are really showing that they're the good runners and the suspect runners are kind of being shown to be a little bit suspect. Which you think should extrapolate and be even more noticeable over the full distance? Yeah, but again, like I feel on the swim you can draft, you know? Like there is a little bit of, it's the swimming is maybe the place in the Triton where it's the most benefits of being on someone's feet or being in the group. So then to have a little bit of benefits of staying 20 meters behind is it just fair in one way. Like it's just create a little bit of dynamics out there on the course. And then same way you are allowed to run behind someone and taking the draft on the run. It's just a part of the racing strategy. And yeah, you should just play within that rule that. Yep. And if you do complain about it, don't hate the play, hate the guy. Yeah, like you can't do like a 50 meter draft. Like even that's 50 meter if you have like a car in front, it's still some drafting I think. So yeah, like it's, I guess 20 is, it's working fine. And Texas coming up, it's going to be probably hotter than what it is in Bergen where it's probably still about negative like 400 degrees there. Versus the hot day, it's probably going to be at Texas. Have you been doing any heat prep for the race? I will start today actually. So right after this pod, I will put on like with the clothing and go out for a run. And hopefully it's going to be like 30 degrees outside. And I'm going to be cooked after 20 minutes. And I will jog the, yeah, try to make it up to 16 minutes. Are you doing any passive heat at the moment? Are you doing any saunas or hot bars? Are you just doing all, are you just going to do all active heat like while you're riding and running? Mainly active heat like we do have like five or 10 minutes in the hot tub after swim here at the Villa Sports. But we don't really count that in as a heat training. There's more like a social thing after this swim. I did a podcast with a heat specialist and it was pretty interesting. He did it because of the Norwegians and he wanted to test it. And they did, they did five, 40 minute baths every week. Would you ever get in the bath for 40 minutes every week? Or do you think the saunas the way to go if you're going to do that? I think the bath is maybe the best because then like the water is maybe cooking your mord and just air. But I don't know. I guess it's two sides like two things of the same sort of. Yeah, but you just need to have even warmer sauna than the baths. I don't know. Well, Christian, I've taken up a lot of your time. I figured we haven't done it in about three years. I'm going to, I'm going to make this one a long one. So last question for me before we wrap things up, everyone listening pretty much probably trains, whether they train as seriously as you or a little bit more casually, they probably do some training. What would you give if you were going to give everyone one key swim, bike and run session that they should start adding into their training every week? What would it be? What swim session? What run session? What bike session? So, so one of the my key sessions in the world now is like I start off with 500, 400, 300, 200 and 100. Easy swims with a 4x50 drill in between those. And then I do it. up again as well or twice true as like 5k That's a nice one to mix up like an easy swim with a little bit of drills and then on the run Yeah, I do recommend most of you to put on a little spikes So you do your typical track session that you know will do but if you're doing a 10 by 1k or 20 by 400 start putting on the spikes for the final reps reps or the last two hundreds and just strengthening up your calf muscles You will thank me later and then for the bike do uphill threshold work so find like the longest hill you have in your neighborhood or in your area and try to collect like 80 minutes of climbing so if it takes you 8 minutes up the 10 times up and down Do you think that most people should be doing that in TT position or seated on the TT bike or on the road bike? What's best practice? I think you can change like the clothes you get to embrace them more specific you want to be for the race itself like if you do it in the air position you can sort of accept to have a little bit less power than what you would have done if you're on the base bar or if you're even standing so just play around with the use it almost like a trailer you know and very very very very very last question from me on the road to ocean side the boy is joked about how you classify your training week so a training week is 30 hours or more and then you had some different classifications based on how long the training week was so can you just make it very clear for me right now like maybe what the hours are and what those classifications are for each each hour of training you do it in the week yeah i was quite surprised because they were like saying that the now i'm just checking my own sessions here they were they were saying like a 22 hour training week was like a volume week like no it's not like at least for most in the regions high volume week it's like 30 plus or maybe even close to 40 but i think for the last couple of weeks when i was racing i still got like between 20 and 25 hours of training so that's more like what 20 to 25 hours is what you're squeezing in if you're doing transatlantic flights and racing and recovering but if you're on a training camp you're not really allowed to average in less than 30 hours okay so 30 hours or above training week 20 to 25 is heavy travel slash racing week what's less than 20 uh sickness that's like if you hit by covid if you look into a basement then you have to just go out and get some fresh air so 19 hours is still a covid week yeah yeah then you're just out like uh getting a little fresh air and sort of yeah Christian mate it's so good to talk to you again like i said um in 2026 from now on on the podcast what we want to do Christian is we want to get back to what made the triathlon hour uh the most listen to podcast in triathlon which is once a week every week we get the best athletes the best coaches the best people in triathlon and we ask them in detail about their training their racing go deep go deeper than than whatever other podcast does and then around the big races you know like i'm an Texas i'm an World Championships ocean side um lake placid uh races like that we want to do the the recap and preview preview shows with the group and and maybe not do them so much on the weeks where nothing's happening and instead replace them with an interview like this one with with yourself where we go go deep on what makes uh you such a special athlete and and get an insight into what you're doing and and how you're doing it so yeah we we we got together and we thought there is only one guy we want to start this kind of rejuvenation of the triathlon hour in 2026 and and it's because we believe you're the best triathlete on the planet right now and we think your the the way you train and the way you talk about how you train is kind of unrivaled so you haven't you haven't disappointed you've lived up to the hype and i know it's been three years but let's not make it three years between this one and the next one because that was uh that was so good mate and uh i learned a lot and had fun like always so thank you for being the the man to uh to to start the rejuvenation of the triathlon hour in 2026 i really appreciate it and uh and and i wish you all the best of luck for for texas thank you so much