359 - How to Race at Your Best — Lessons from the Purple Patch Pros
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
On this episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon and Purple Patch Fitness Coach Max Gering discuss lessons from Purple Patch Pros for racing success. They emphasize tailored training programs and the importance of mental resilience. Key stories include Sam Appleton's overcoming illness to achieve a top-six finish, Sarah Piampiano's resilience after a poor swim, and Meredith Kessler's improved bike performance through terrain management. They highlight the importance of post-workout fueling, smart pacing, and mindset. Examples like Jesse Thomas's Ironman win and Tim Reed's mindset shift illustrate the value of staying present and adaptable. The podcast aims to help athletes integrate sport into life and achieve their potential.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
Episode Timecodes:
00-1:09 Promo
1:39-5:48 Introduction
6:07-13:55 Pre-Race Story
14:30-16:02 Purple Patch Training Blocks
16:18-22:17 Awareness in the Swim Story
22:33-31:25 Bike Stories
31:45-42:11 Run Stories
42:35-47:10 Fueling and Hydration
47:27-51:23 Jesse Thomas Story
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 00:00
Folks, today's show is all about lessons from the Purple Patch pros, and it's around racing something that we take very seriously. We love our athletes, and we want you to go fast at the same time, we want you to amplify your life. When you join Purple Patch, you get a completely tailored program, but also the support of some fantastic coaches, we operate as a team. And so if you want to come on board, you can become a member of our tri squad, in which you get access to the entire Purple Patch coaching team. Or you can choose to go a more custom and tailored program, in which you get to get designated with a singular Purple Patch coach. You still have access to all the pros, but every single one of your days is tailored by your coach. You might even get lumbered with Max, who joins me on the show today. It's a special occasion, but we take performance seriously. We have a lot of fun doing it. If you are interested in taking the conversation further after today's show, feel free to reach out info@purplepatchfitness.com we can set up a complimentary consultation. We'll go through your needs. We'll make sure you get the right program for you. Either way, we know that you want to thrive and be successful. Join us. All right. Enjoy the show. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 01:41
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and once again, well, I get to get a little bit of an easier time this week, because I welcome back my co host and fellow Purple Patch coach, Max. Gering. Max, welcome back to the show.
Max Gering 01:55
Thanks for having me back. Happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday,
Matt Dixon 01:59
this is a part of our race preparation series. It is race season. It's upon us. Got a lot of racing going on. I've got some plans to head to some of the races, and you had a little bit of a good idea of something that I think is going to be valuable, but also a little bit of fun. And you know me, I like to find every excuse for laziness a little bit easier on me so. So why don't you introduce to the listeners at home your concept and what we're going to do as we go through today's show?
Max Gering 02:33
Perfect. So today we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive back into the Purple Patch pro history, not for the sake of just talking about all the amazing wins and experiences that you've had with athletes, but really to give the listeners practical lessons that they can implement into their race season this season to help them race better and tap into their train potential. So we're going to go through swim, bike, run, mindset, nutrition, self management, all the topics that are a part of racing. And for each topic, I'm going to ask you to tell a story about an athlete that you've coached so that the listeners can learn from something that that athlete went through. Maybe it's something that they did well, maybe it's something that they didn't do so well, we are going to find out that's the big idea behind today. And the reason being is I love stories. I think that stories are really, really valuable. Then make it easier to learn lessons. When we hear about someone else having done something or gone through something, I think it's a lot easier, sometimes, based off of that, to implement, implement it into our life and think to ourselves, oh, I could also do that. Or when you find yourself in a similar situation, remember what someone else went through,
Matt Dixon 03:41
so what you've done there is you've actually taken away the rug from under my feet, because it's it's no longer easy, because my task is to tell stories, but also tell stories that are really applicable to the listeners and easy to action on to help them race faster this year. So suddenly the spotlight is on me. I will say, though, that when you, when you came up with this idea, right? I thought was a great one. It was right from the start. My, you know, when I, when I started Purple Patch, my narrow, my focus was quite narrow. I wanted to coach world champions. That was it. I wanted to really coach elite athletes and people that were very dedicated, but very quickly, I started to have this parallel journey of working with very busy, time starved people and world class athletes and and over time that time starved athlete and helping people integrate in sport into Life, helping people be successful and and ultimately, I'll set, in a very American way, smash their goals, but not at the consequence of their health and how they perform in the other aspects of life, I think, really became my passion and and I really loved it. And I'm very, very thankful of my journey of coaching elite athletes and. Yeah, and that really served many of the lessons up, of which maybe we'll unpack some of them today. That helped me then really do what I feel like is our lives work, my life's work, for sure, which is to help people integrate this sport into life, so that they go fast, because that's important and is fun and it provides great pride and satisfaction, but also really amplify the other parts of life. So So I hope that this isn't just, you know, a trot down memory lane some fun stories, but it really is something that's going to empower people to race faster. That's what we want them to do. So I guess, without further ado, if you're ready, shall we fasten our seat belts and and wave the check of Lang and say, All right, let's rock and roll. It is time. Let's get into it and potatoes. All right, time for the meat and potatoes.
Max Gering 05:56
All right, I'm gonna pull up a timer here, just in case. I need to keep us on a short leash and keep us, uh, keep us going. They don't get too excited. I want to start with before the race. Story of a pro. It can be something that either didn't didn't go well pre race, and they had to make a mindset shift or a last minute adaptation to help them then go race and tap into their potential.
Matt Dixon 06:22
Um, so, you know, you sent me through the the topics ahead of time. And so I had a little think and and this one of I came up with two athletes, and I should say on this one, it's countless. How many times we had athletes that had adversity going into races and things did not go well and still had great performances. I think I want to tell you two stories on pre race, because I think they're very, very different and quite short at the same time really useful. The first is around adversity, your original question, and the one that I think shines above all others is Sam Appleton. Sam Appleton, Australian athlete, great, great professional Half Ironman. Focus now, does Iron Man distance racing? And he had really taken multiple years of progression, getting up towards very much world class performance, and had got fourth at the 70.3 World Championships in the same year that Tim Reid, other Purple Patch Pro, had won the race down in Mooloolaba in Australia, and the next year, we were really looking to step up to the podium, And and 10 days out of the race, he got absolutely sick as a dog. There's a lot of sickness around this year. There was a lot that around that year. And he got absolutely sick as a dog and, and it was a zero training type of sickness. There was no movement and, and, of course, that is calamitous for confidence. It's preparation goes out of the window, etc. And the race was in South Africa. He was based in Boulder, and we come up with a decision of, do you even go and, you know, do you even get on the plane go all the way halfway around the world? And we finally decided to do that. He arrived and and it's where we spawned the the great Purple Patch saying, which is, don't go in with low expectations, just go in with no expectations. Be curious, and we he got healthy. That was number one absolute priority. Everything we did over about a week was just to get healthy, and then we actually ramped into the race day, so we did a little bit of work trying to just get him back on rhythm. There was no taper, because he just spent the last six or seven days doing nothing, basically. So we actually built workload going into it. And and then his race day, the most important thing was mentally for him to get into the mindset of, I'm going to let my body provide the answers, not my mind to pre determined whether I'm ready or not. And so he raced fearless, and he was very aggressive on the swim, on the bike, he was riding with a big group of about 10 to 12 athletes, and he went to the front of the race and put together the fastest bike split of the day, and finished right up in the top six. It wasn't the top three that we were really hoping to set the next step up, but it was a vastly superior performance than anything he'd done to his career so far, and it was a huge growth opportunity for the continue of the journey. And for me, that was just a huge thing of like, as you go into races, things can turn to custard, and quite often we just let ourselves collapse mentally and don't give ourselves a shot. But Sam, on this occasion, and multiple occasions following that, by the way, had some form of adversity where he was brave enough as an athlete to really step forward and race. Well, I think it was great.
Max Gering 09:57
I love that story. And I think for the listener, you know. Even if you're your version of racing in Iron Man is 13 hours, which is still fantastic. And there's nothing to be taken away from that. This idea of, if you're going, if you're facing adversity, going into the race, and you make the decision to go race, you need to go race. You need to commit. You always say, you know, you can't jump off a cliff with one foot, keeping one foot on and going to race and pushing your body. And what stuck out to me, and what I'm taking from that story that I'll definitely use when I coach my athletes, is not letting your mind determine what your body's capable of going into the race, yeah, being present and giving it your all to see what you've got, and then going with the day.
Matt Dixon 10:40
You know a good, good friend of mine who most listeners will know, Mark Allen. He, he, I remember a quote from him a long time ago, but he said, You know what, whatever percentage that you have that you bring to race day, just make sure you get 100% out of that. And, and Matt's a commitment thing. It begins with commitment. And we've talked about this more broadly. When the gun goes off, you need to get from A to B or start to finish as fast as you can, period. And so no matter what your preparation is, once you do, decide to race, go and and I tell you what, even if the day is muted, even if Sam had have been really suppressed all day, and it was a struggle, there can be a lot of lessons, a lot of growth, a lot of pride and satisfaction from going there and achieving that. And sometimes you can get more out of that, even if the performance is actually muted, which I think is important. The second story, that's just really short, but is interesting, I think, is there's so much focus pre race, around the taper and getting it right, and particularly as the distance of races get longer, whether you're talking about going to half Ironman or Iron Man, or marathons to 50 K's, it's a very different type of thing to to land the plane in the right spot. You got a more, much broader Bullseye and and there is no set way for athletes to prepare their body to have performance predictability on race day. The key in the journey is to start to understand what works for you. And we had athletes, and I'll just tell this story around that we had athletes such as Jesse Thomas. People would have heard that really liked to do very, very little. He liked his muscles to really repair, get fresh, and his last two or three days were minimal training. 20 minutes of this, 10 minutes of that, Laura sidle was a very different athlete. And if folks know Laura, she was an absolute warrior and one of the most seasoned professionals still racing professionally now. And what we started to work out with Laura is she performed better when she had training rhythm going into it. So we needed to make sure that we didn't build hard training in so far as stuff that was going to suppress her, but she needed longer work. So it was not uncommon for Laura to ride two hours, even three hours the day before a race. And that might seem absolutely crazy, but that's what she needed, two days out of the race, running 60 minutes, even sometimes 70 minutes. The way that we achieve that is to rest her multiple days before that, but then ramp into it, and it started to work for her. Now she's might do things a little bit differently, but that was in her younger years of racing professionally, that's what started to work. If she went down in a taper and had the typical sort of take it out of Triathlete Magazine and template it, she would never race well. And so I think the message out of that is, as an athlete, you really need to understand what works for you. Don't just look at your neighbor. Don't follow what Jan Frodeno or Daniela Ryf do because they're world class. Do what's right for you, because we're all built a little bit differently. Yeah,
Max Gering 13:51
I love that. And the way to do that is, that's why you need B races, you need rustbusters, you need things throughout the season. Don't let it all hang on your one key event. And one thing that I've learned from you also is when things go well in those lead up races, pause to reflect on why they went well. That's where you're also going to glean lessons of what you should be doing in a taper, like what works for you, not just pausing to reflect when things don't go well, also pause to reflect when you win, because those are the things you want to double down on, most likely,
Matt Dixon 14:20
yeah, and I'll add one thing to that as well, the way that we construct our training, Purple Patch. You know, we have, typically a couple of weeks of stronger work, not every single day, but, you know, heavy work for two weeks. And then we have what we like to label a transition week. That transition week, particularly as we edge into the season similar to now, it really has the personality of what would be a typical race week. And the reason we do that is we want to infuse recovery into the block of training so we can create consistency, but we also enable athletes to start to understand how it is that they can get their body right. Right for that weekend that, typically, on a transition week, is some form of simulator, something that has the personality of a race, and we know that it can be influenced by lots of different stuff in life. But over the course of a season, the body gets familiar, but also you can tinker and start to understand what works for you, so that we can achieve, ultimately, this thing that is, I think, the magic elixir of performance and confidence building, which is performance predictability. I know what works for me, so you actually build it into the training. And I think that's a really simple and quite frankly obvious thing to do as a coach, but it's amazing how many athletes get to, you know, their pre race week or two weeks before, and do things that they haven't done ever before. It's suddenly a radical change in the way they construct their training, and all that's going to do is physiologically confuse the body and, I think, erode confidence in the mind. So there you go,
Max Gering 15:59
right onto the actual racing itself. Probably all of our triathletes favorite part of the race, the swim. What do you have for us? There
Matt Dixon 16:12
two things. Goodness me, I'm being too nice to Sam Appleton here, but awareness in the swim. You know, further even at the elite level swimming in a straight line is is the number one performance predictor of people swim and and that's really important. But another thing that you develop as you become more familiar with open water swimming, more skilled open water swimming, is awareness and an awareness of what's going on around you. And, and this is something that not just pros should really be aware of, but you see it consistently. And I've watched world championship races where professional athletes lose minutes and minutes of the swim mostly because of a lack of awareness. And, and I'll give you a really specific example of this with actually that very same race, the Iron Man 70.3 World Championships in South Africa. That was the first time that they were using drone technology to actually telecast from above the swimmers. And you imagine a, you know, sort of diamond or arrow shaped swim with the leader at the front, you have this group. And, and they had a lot of footage from above, and I could recognize I was watching the footage. I wasn't live in South Africa. I was watching the footage. And I could see Sam appleton's stroke, and I could see that he was sitting about 13th or 14th in the swim. And there's a lot of movement going on. And, and I thought he's got to be careful here. There might be a split in this swim, and and I saw him, and I saw him sight, sight, sight, sigh, sight, multiple strokes, and you could see it was looking around. And slowly, you saw him weave up into swimming, moving up actively and proactively, moving up into the group to about fourth or fifth position. And that was an A proactive movement. Within 30 seconds, the group split, and it split at about 10th or 11th spot. The top 10 swimmers ended up coming a minute out of the water from the group that split, and if he had split and lost that group, he wasn't catching up. The interesting thing about that race is, at the end of the race, and we're talking about the pointy end of professional racing, but at the end of that race, of those 10 swimmers that came out of the water a minute ahead, nine of them finished in the top 10. So it was it became a cycling group, and going on from there. So as an amateur, you mostly don't need to worry about group splits and missing this and getting top 10, etc. But in order for you to have your swimming training, meet your race day potential, you do need to have awareness of your surroundings, and that can be so far as what direction you're swimming in, whether you're swimming into the sun and where the buoy and the course is, or maybe you do have swimmers around you that you can get into a group if you're a little bit more advanced, so that you can make your passage of the swim a little bit easier and a little bit faster, and so that awareness in open water is such a critical tool or skill, and it's ignored. Most people just train, train, train in the pool and then hope that it transfers into open water swimming. But you need to become familiar with it. So that was number one, the second quick story. And then then I'll let you rebound off of me was Sarah piampiano, as everyone knows, one of my favorite Purple Patch pros to coach, but her weakness was the swim relative to her bike and her run and one of her Hawaii Iron Man World Championships. I can't remember the exact one, but it was a very, very hot year. Yeah, and we were hoping to get Sarah well under an hour in the swim at Hawaii. She was a sub 60 minute swimmer, Globe generally, but in Hawaii, it's a tougher swim and and we really worked a lot on her swim that year. And as sometimes happens, she had a really poor swim. And it wasn't just poor, it was catastrophic. She actually came out of the water second from last in the pro field. And this is someone that had aspirations to try and be in the top 10, and she was second from last in the pro field. Her time was somewhere around 114 it was back. It was catastrophic. I was covering my my Purple Patch logo on my shirt, when, when it happened and, and it's emotionally a double whammy for a pro athlete in Hawaii, because as she rides out, there's a long out and back section. So she saw the gap, she saw the leaders, and she was just going up, cooking the climb, the out and back, climb in town, and she saw she realized she was 15 to 17 minutes down on the leaders. That's catastrophic, and it easily could have undone many athletes races. Sarah rode her bike the best that she could, the way that we had planned her to ride her bike, and managed to put the swim behind her ears, it just evaporated. And and she moved up. She managed to come off the bike in 24th place. And then she put together the fastest run of the day and moved into seventh place. And and she salvaged what was an exceptional performance, probably one of the performances of her career. But she didn't allow looking at the split coming out of the swim to determine her mood or her strategy on the stuff that she could control in front of her, and that is world class mindset right there. Control what you can control, and put what has been massive adversity and ultimately real struggle of failure behind you. Don't worry about assessing your readiness. Get on to the next thing, the stuff that you can control. And that's what she did. I absolutely
Max Gering 22:14
love that story. I don't think there's anything to add to that one that's a that's a good one. I will remember that. Let's get going to the bike. What stories do you have for us? When you think of the bike, it's a long bike ride for a lot of athletes, if you're doing a full Ironman, if you're doing a half Ironman, especially, especially if it's your first, and even if it's not your first, you're trying to go fast, it's a it's a tough ride. So what do you have for us there?
Matt Dixon 22:42
Um, I've lots of stories of the bike where we had a really good reputation of developing very, very strong bike riders at Purple Patch and
Max Gering 22:54
and always, when we still we still do, we still
Matt Dixon 22:58
do generate. I think it's, one of the superpowers, I say, with, with, perhaps over in oversized ego. But we, we really do have a good reputation for developing very, very strong riders and taking people to a whole new level. And Sam Appleton actually really did that, and Tim Reed really built up their their their bike performance. But listeners have probably heard me go on and on about throwing, you know, intervals and specific sessions and and everything around the training in the classic sense of the word to our programming. And I always used to get questions, what are the workouts you're doing? What are the thing you know, what's, what are the types of intervals, and I think that's relatively overblown. I don't want to dismiss that. It's still important, but, but that's not where the answer was for us, and it was really about what folks have heard me talk about a lot before, around Terrain Management, becoming a better craftsman, an artist on the bike, to try and get the biggest speed returns for the fitness that you have. There is one Pro that that maybe stands head and shoulders above the others relative to how she started to to what she became. And there was an athlete called Meredith Kessler, when I, when I first met Meredith, she she'd done an Ironman, and we've gone about 12 hours, and her bike took her, you know, next to close to all day, and she was on a little old Quintana Roo and didn't know how to shift gears properly, and just threw the hammer at it. And she actually had a few accidents in her professional racing. Absolutely nothing to do with her. She was leading Eagle Man and an amateur athlete, crossed the midline accidentally and went head on into her, causing a huge concussion, things that were out of her control. So she became more fearful on the bike or aware, because she didn't want to get more concussions, so she rode with let's call it a less prep. For a ball aerodynamic position. Her fit was quite conservative, and her handling skills, she wanted to never really ride on Deep Dish wheels, because she wanted to have the best handling, particularly in Hawaii. And she also had overheating problems, so she didn't wear an aero helmet. So she so she had sort of everything against us, as far as technology, equipment positioning, etc. And over the course of a couple of years, what she did is she really took on board becoming a better craftsman, and she trained and trained, practiced and practice really how to leverage smart Terrain Management, gaining speed over the top of rollers, maintaining speed through the bottom of rollers, shifting up cadences to try and vary the load on her body. And the stuff that we is a story for another day, but really becoming an artist on the bike. And the year that Meredith got seventh at the Hawaii Iron Man, she was up there out of the water, but she actually rode solo. She didn't ride in a group. And we had another Purple Patch pro who had better equipment, better aero helmet, better position everything. And they ended up riding randomly, exactly the same power to weight ratio over the course of 112 miles. So the other athlete had every advantage, aerodynamically to Meredith. They both rode the same power relative to their weight, and Meredith rode 15 or 16 minutes faster on that course. She also came off the bike fresher to run better, and that was such a point of pride in the athlete that she invested in the stuff that is longer term, benefits, not easy to apply, takes a lot of focus, but got A great yield and a great pride in our emphasis on that, because at that time, it's becoming more common now, but at that time, it was so much just about hit a power and average it and the result will be great. And we always said, it's not about that, yeah, hit the power, but actually use momentum flow over terrain, and that was really the key for us. So Meredith was the big bike lesson for me.
Max Gering 27:27
I like that. I think it's, you know, if the if a professional, someone's trying to become world champion, is willing to make that investment in the bike and in their craft, I think it should be a big red light for a lot of amateur athletes who are going into races this season, reminding them, set some process oriented goals for yourself for different parts of the race, in this case, the bike about what you're looking to accomplish in the race, and don't just be focused on the end result of the race. Maybe it's a good idea to pick a race this year where you just really focus on riding the bike better. Yes, you want to still swim really well and run fast and nail your nutrition, but set some process oriented goals around the bike, and look at the race course before and think about how you're going to ride your bike better in that course. So you can have a story like like Meredith.
Matt Dixon 28:19
You can one thing I'll add to it is you can feel this when you go and ride outside and Max, we were recently at the Napa training camp, and we had a an amateur athlete who's a lovely guy, Paul from Toronto, and Paul and I riding next to each other, and we were just cruising along, and we had the group behind us. And as we came over some rollers, I just sat next to Paul, and I just said, Okay, now accelerate. Pick up your cadence. Picked it up. Okay. Now add a gear. Keep picking up your cadence. Out of gear, building momentum, and then he'd have a little look behind him, and people would be 50 yards up behind. And you know what that is? That's fun. You know that's fun. It's like, wow, I can actually feel that, no different than if you go out into the ocean and you actually want to go body surfing, and the first time that you feel that, whoosh, that's what it's like. And so it's a real opportunity to go and play with it. And I really like your thought there max of sometimes racing is a great opportunity to apply that and say, See what happens. Go without a power meter. Go and ride the terrain, see whether you ride faster or slower. It might just be that you ride faster and you feel fresher. Who knows? So that's it. One more, one more bike story from the pros. That's actually because we learn a lot from struggles and failure. So we talked about Sarah and we talked about Meredith. Sarah pimpiano, Meredith Kessler, there was some they actually had a great lesson at Iron Man Melbourne, the first time. And Iron Man Melbourne was a race that was out back, out back, so a two loop on the coast bike course, pretty much dead flat. And the year that they both did it, it was very. Very, very windy. So you had this head headwind pressing against them on the way out, turned around, tailwind making them fly on the way back. And they both made the same mistake that that highlights the consequences of not executing what's under your control. Because they came out of the water and they were so consumed by this big headwind that they just got into working, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, pushing out for give or take. 2528 miles, they turned around minimal fueling, minimal hydration, because their focus was on the race and pressing against and suddenly, woof, they're getting pushed, and they're riding 4550 kilometers now, and they felt great, and the bot in the the energy cost was less than the the they weren't getting signals. And so they turned around, and they zipped down, went fast, and they didn't fuel and hydrate much. They made that turn at the halfway point, boom. The lights went out and and they failed, both of them, to do what was under their control. They didn't execute their fueling plan, and in a longer distance race, that's very, very difficult to come back to, because they got into a really steep hydration hole, and they also were under fueled. So they managed to get through the caloric bonk, as they like to call it, but they never really emerged and didn't run very well, so they went all the way to Australia with a pretty harsh lesson that they applied to the rest of their career. So that's one little lesson, is make sure you take care of the details on the bike as well.
Max Gering 31:32
Yeah, I like that. Stay present so you can make good decisions. Don't get caught up in the moment. Yeah, applies to any race, especially the longer races. Yeah, all right, on to the run.
Matt Dixon 31:47
I got two here. I'm gonna bring up the names of a couple of, a couple of athletes that were really my favorites to coach, and I keep saying that they're all my favorites. I like I like them all for different reasons, but one of the original Purple Patch athletes, Matt lieto, many people will be very familiar with Matt because he's one of the main commentators on an ironman.com now a lot of the Ironman races, but I coached Matt before coaching his brother, Chris lieto, who obviously went on to second place at the Hawaii Iron Man. And Matt was a good summer front pack swimmer as a very, very strong bike rider like his brother Chris, and his run was his weakness. It wasn't as weak as my run. He used to outrun me, but it was to his weakness. And he had a lot of challenges in Ironman racing to to really execute a good run and, and this is back in the day, so the performances have really shifted in in running. And so when we'd say these times, remember, this is 20 years ago that we're talking but Matt, Matt was running off the bike, not, not good pro male run splits, 315, 317, 318, really struggling, coming to part in a lot of his running races. Really frustrated. Rather than finishing races at third, fourth, fifth place, he was finishing at 13th, 14th, 15th place in Ironman racing. And I encourage Matt to embrace walk breaks. And said, Look, your challenge is your form is exploding in the back half of races because of mechanical fatigue. Let's come up with a strategy, not a point of weakness, but a strategy to try and offset mechanical fatigue. So you need to walk early and consistently. So we came up with a plan at Ironman Canada to run to walk every single aid station, 25 aid stations 1520, seconds, 30 seconds, if needed, right from aid station one, and we're going to commit to it just as a test, as you suggest, Max and and he did it. He came off the bike. He was right up there. He was actually running shoulder to shoulder with someone, that athlete, and I can't remember who it was, but that athlete ran through the aid station. Matt Walt, yeah, I think looked at him. Matt gradually built up, went to the second aid station. Matt walked it carried on. Matt's fastest run splits by mile. Was split number mile, 1819, 2021 20 220-324-2526, was a little slower because he was running down the chute kissing babies and doing all the things that he liked to do, but he broke three hours and that ended up with a podium finish. So it wasn't a tool of weakness, and I think it really was one of the stories to really lay down the testament of walk breaks are really useful tools for many, many athletes, even up to the elite level. And of course, we now leverage them at all levels of the sport and and that became it takes confidence to do that in many ways, to actually integrate walk breaks
Max Gering 34:54
for the listener. Can you describe a little bit physiologically, what's happening? Why is the. Walk with beneficial what's allowing is it is that they're just not burning as much energy. They're able to maintain better form. What's happening there with the amateur athlete that's really helping them tap into the potential? Yeah,
Matt Dixon 35:12
it's not really saving energy, because you're looking to maximize energy expenditure over the course of the whole race. You just want to go as fast as you can doing it, what it's really doing is it comes down to the root cause of this, of what is the biggest limiter in Marathon racing off the bike when you've already got multiple, multiple hours of fatigue in your legs because you've swum the distance and ridden the distance, the biggest limiter is not cardiovascular fitness. It's mechanical fatigue. It's musculoskeletal how many athletes have gone through where they look down, they think, I can't even get my heart rate up, my legs just won't behave. So we need to come up with a strategy to try and get in front of that a little bit. And as people and you stood on the sidelines Max and see this as people are running in an Ironman, quite often, their posture is so poor because of the fatigue that's occurred with the fitness and they're running with such low economy that the cost, to your point, is radically skyrocketing for every step that they're taking because they've got poor posture, poor, rebound, etc. So instead of that, it's better to have walk breaks to give mental and physical periods of restoration, so that then when they are running, whether they can run one minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, 10 minutes, they are running with better form. So we always had this saying, run with the best form you can for as long as you can, as often as you can, and so you break it up with walk breaks. The other part of it, then, is make sure that you're integrating the walk breaks at a time there that has minimal speed penalty. So do it on uphill grades and at the worst flats, or at time that you can do something useful going through aid stations so it maxify, maximizes the potential that you're actually going to fuel and hydrate, possibly properly, because you're actually going through rather than just chucking it down you. And I, I see people that that do this. You know, we had an athlete that ran 234 at the New York Marathon, and he took six or seven walk breaks. This is a tool to get there, because he really leveraged it. But um, it's, it's not about how you run in the first 10k or the first six miles or so of the marathon. It's can you maintain the same form, the same posture, with the best speed possible in the last 10k because that's where all the damage occurs, the back half of the race, basically, so that that's the spirit behind it. I love it.
Max Gering 37:45
I think that's a really important lesson for a lot of athletes, and if they do that, they'll be a lot more successful. And we see, I see athletes struggle with it, even in training runs. Just as a side note, I mean, mentally, confidence wise, they have a hard time integrating walk breaks into a soul filling run to an easier zone to run. There's just something about it that makes them uncomfortable. But once they start to do it, and they do it a few times, it isn't unlocked, and they look at the time at the end of the run, they say, Well, I ran actually faster in this run, and it still ended felt easier. Yeah,
Matt Dixon 38:14
exactly. There wasn't a Purple Patch pro including, you know, Stanford, Stanford train runners. Jesse Thomas, you know, Melinda Elmore, Olympic, Olympic Games qualifier in the 1500 Canadian marathon record holder. There wasn't a run a pro, pro, Purple Patch Pro, that didn't integrate walk breaks in training. That's every single one of these. And a part of the reason that we did it in training as well was not just we wanted to achieve all of the benefits of the training, cardiovascular and muscular, but we wanted to minimize injury risk and minimize the negative impact of the subsequent days of training, so you could go out and do a big, long trail run, integrate some walk breaks. The next day be really good to go and do a tougher swim, and by the day, following that, go and do intervals again. So we wanted to avoid the long tail impact because we're balancing three sports. So it's all about smarter training, rather than just, I need to do it and shit. It's hard. I've got to go long, so I'm just going to suffer through it this site. You know that that's not what the sport is about. It's not about going into the gym and climbing up a rope and hanging there as long as you can. That's that's the wrong mindset. You don't want to be a doorman of an Eastern European disco. You want to be a ninja. That's what we're looking to do.
Max Gering 39:35
I love it. Anybody else that comes to mind on the run before we get into nutrition?
Matt Dixon 39:41
Yeah, yeah, I've got, I wanted to integrate Cecilia Davis Hayes, who many people won't have heard of Purple Patch pro but, but let me just Cecilia Davis Hayes is one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met in my life, and she successfully raced as a professional. Or athlete and achieve multiple podiums and achieve qualifying time in the Olympic in the marathon. Olympic qualifiers stand alone marathon as well, all the while, been in residency at Columbia as a medical doctor, and everyone that's gone through, or anyone that has known anyone to go through the journey of medical school and residency. It's very, very difficult to have any sort of a life outside of that whole dedication. She was racing professionally around the world, and did it really successfully. And for her, it is the one of the great case studies of the time starved athlete, and it so happened to be at the world class level. But one of the things we learned with her, who was she was very tall, over six foot tall, when she ran, she looked, and I say this in a really complimentary way, she looked quite gangly. She didn't look like a natural runner. She had long limbs, so it was loping more and pretty high injury risk. And we we really leveraged the bike, particularly strength endurance, that low big gear work that we do. We leverage the bike and other modalities, even the rowing ergometer, to help her running. And she got faster and faster and faster running. You know, 120 or so off the bike and a half Ironman and and again, this was 10 years ago, so that's pretty darn good split. 245, marathon runner. She never, ever in any week of training outside of our pro training camps that we did. She never ran more than three days in a week. She just couldn't. And, you know, we like to do high frequency, short, easy stuff. It was just her schedule. She ran three days a week and and so you can leverage other multi sport disciplines to run faster when your run performance in racing is not up to snuff. It's typically not because of your running training, it's typically because of your pacing relative to fitness, the readiness in the other sports, swim and bike, and potentially your fueling and hydration. Those are the three things that you want to probably look at first if you're struggling on the run.
Max Gering 42:18
Really good, really good lesson and story for people to remember. And on that note about fueling and hydration, let's get into fueling and hydration, nutrition.
Matt Dixon 42:26
It's not a story about a pro. It's a story about the whole Purple Patch pro squad, and it was born out of my own mistakes as a pro. I was I trained myself into the ground, and I ignored all of the aspects that ensure that you have a best chance of long term performance and sustained high performance. I under recovered, I under ate, I under fueled, etc, and much of the detriment, I ended up with chronic fatigue. In other words, I was a dummy. But one of the things that I think was such a differentiator with the squad and became embedded as a part of our culture. We had a set of practices and a set of habits that were non negotiables, that the athletes could support each other on, hold each other to account and and build a sense of belonging around. And I would say the first one that we always started with was post training, fueling and ensuring that every single session, whether they were doing a 40 minute easy run, a 90 minute hard ride, six hours with an hour run off, whatever it might be, post workout, fueling was the number one habit, so that way could get control over their Eating, maximize adaptations, build consistency and adaptations. It is still the number one thing. And I think that gateway habit was one of the and I would couple it with one other thing that's not nutrition, which is to really embrace going easy in the easy sessions. Those two things were two of the gateway habits across the pro squad. Many of the names that we've talked about already that really enabled them to have great performance predictability and real longevity in their careers. We had incredibly low injuries. We had very low changes in performance. And what I mean by that is athletes tend to be really consistent. They showed up and they raced. Well, we didn't have too many athletes that had one great race and one catastrophic race. And I think the post workout feeling was huge, coupled with that, and I'll give you a specific name, actually, the relationship with food became really important as well. And Sarah piampiano, after she'd broken her femur, which was a catastrophic injury, reinvented herself as an athlete, and one of the big things she did a lot of work with Scott Tindall from fuel in that's how we actually met Scott and Sarah was Scott's first triathlete that he worked with. He came from professional rugby, professional hockey, professional rowing and. Um, he got Sarah to fuel the training. So he looked at she looked at food as fuel. What does my body need? Not? What do I want? And I think that was the radical shift to actually have her go from really pretty good to world class. And the last four or five years of her career were built off of a platform of fuel and and so less around racing and more preparedness to race. If you want to race, well, you better start looking at food as fuel and feeding the beast. It takes a lot of calories to support the training necessary to be ready for a marathon, a half Ironman, an Ironman, an ultra, whatever it might be. And under that umbrella, absolutely embrace post workout fueling. It's a great habit for every level athlete. I would say, I love
Max Gering 45:55
it. Super important for all of our athletes, especially if you want to also have that energy in your life, even if you're not looking to be a world champion, this is really, really important. And I one one thing on nutrition, then we'll keep going, is, I think it starts with a mindset shift. A lot of athletes say to me, it's hard. It's hard to eat so much. It's hard to be on top of my food. You're right, it is hard. But so is training for an Ironman in general. So is running a marathon in general. You do hard things as an athlete. Doing hard things is part of your MO so just add it to the list of hard things that you do, and start with small changes, like post workout fueling. You know, don't go from zero to 100 but the commitment to eat more and fuel your training starts with a mindset shift. And for a lot of athletes, I think they need to get out of the it's not just about how many grams you're consuming on the bike in your training. It's the whole day. What are you eating? What are you drinking throughout your day? That's really where the Unturned stones are. Self management and race strategy or mindset. You can choose our next one, potentially our last one.
Matt Dixon 46:57
Yeah, I got, I got a couple here that I think are good. I think this is a really useful one for amateur athletes. But it's a it's a story of a pro, and this was many fans, Favorite pro for many years, a guy called Jesse Thomas that I got to coach for. Actually jet coach Jesse all the way through his pro career, so for 10 years, and from amateur to retirement, a really a world class athlete. And we had, we had one year that he was racing, the Half Ironman World Championships were in zelland Z in Austria. And I really felt like this was at the height of the Sebastian keenly era of racing. And I really felt like Jesse had an opportunity to to go there and get on the podium and and as he entered the last probably 10k of the bike race, he was sitting with Sebastian keenly, both very, very strong bike riders coming up on the front group, and was basically in fifth or sixth place. But Jesse was a great runner, and, you know, toe to toe with the greatest runners in the sport. And I looked at it, and she was like, it's done. And, and unfortunately, and these things happen in sport, he got a penalty penalty on the bike, which was unfortunately, and people always say there's a bogus penalty, but it was enough that after the race, both the head referee and the referee that did it realized they'd made a mistake and apologized and and it took him from sixth place to 16th place. He ran into 12th that that day, Jesse really could have been top three, one of the biggest frustrations of his career, I'm sure he was in he was in Austria, deeply frustrated, and I persuaded him to delay his flights home, and said, You should go and race an Ironman in Wales. And Jesse had not trained for an Ironman. He had no aspirations to do an Ironman. He he was deeply frustrated. He thought I was bonkers, and I suggested he should do it and and he did it. He of a quote, zero training for an Ironman. Now, these pro athletes are incredibly fit, well, able to go the distance. Mostly of that is mindset. There is some difference in in training approach, but I really had confidence that Jesse could do it. But here's, here's the, the key thing of the story, when he did Iron Man Wales, which listeners will know if they've done that race, a very, very difficult Ironman, one of the big, challenging races. And he said, how my hell am I going to go and do this? I said, he's very, very simple. What I want you to do is swim, bike and run like it's training. I want you to go and train all day. Don't race this thing, and so you can utilize people around you, other athletes, as Pacers. But if it feels too strong, stick to training you. And just train all day. And with 10k to go, if you feel fine, you can race your heart out. Just let it. It's a 10k race. You go and do that, but train all day. And I've got to say, Jesse did something that is very, very difficult to do if you've never done it before and you're racing at the pro level, he went and trained all day and and what that enabled him to do is what most athletes should do in their Ironman performance, is to not override, not over swim, stay really calm and just focus on himself, fueling, hydration, pacing, etc. He got off the bike. He didn't have any of those deep, low moments that sometimes occur. He was just internally focused on what he had to do all day. He got to 10k he was in a foot race. He raced, and he won the race. And the one that winning the race is fantastic, first time Iron Man and everything like that. But it was because he had the courage to actually pace in a really sensible, smart way. And so many athletes get over their skis, as they say, and too ambitious with visualizing the dream race performance, when often the dream race performance just comes from, or emerges from being consistent all day. So I'm not sure you have any rebound on that, but that was Story number one. No,
Max Gering 51:19
I really, I really like that. I see a lot of threads of connection between that story and a lot of the other stories of success of these athletes is it comes down to being present and controlled in their races, and then they're able to go and make really good decisions and tap into their potential. And I think that's just something for me that comes to mind, but we'll keep rocking and rolling. Anything else on self management and race strategy, another athlete you want to highlight, or do you want to do? Mindset?
Matt Dixon 51:45
The only thing I say race, the race in front of you, Rasmus Henning, 2009 iron man, China, first year, 113 degrees, 45 degrees Celsius, incredibly hot. You remember, Rasmus was an Olympian. He was one of the world, one of the sports, great athletes in the history, and probably a typical two hour and 40 minute or so marathon runner off the bike. When he won Iron Man China, his run split was 338 it was so suppressive, and he still won the race by half. Now, it was so suppressive. But what he did was he was aware present, and he adjusted relative to the oppressive conditions to give himself the best opportunity to run the waste. And the interesting thing about it is that rate his run was mostly pretty even split there. It wasn't very fast relative to but it was race, the race what's in front of you? So stubbornness that that was just a small one, and then just on mindset I won't go through because of the sake of time, but I have to mention Rachel Joyce, because Rachel Joyce, I had the privilege of coaching her for Several years. She was, she had. She faced so many setbacks every year, stuff that were out of her control for the most part. And I don't think I've seen an athlete that similar to what we talked about with Sarah in her swim, but Rachel had catastrophic stuff occur. Severed tendons in her foot in May, trying to get ready for an October Iron Man in Hawaii, she had so many setbacks in her season where she could compartmentalize that and coming back to it race, the race in front of you, have the mindset, commit and give it your best. And you know, Rachel was was podium after I coached her, but 4/5, six, it's a Purple Patch Pro, and every one of those races included adversity and and I think that's just a really great one. And the final thing I'll just say, knowing that we're running out of time a little bit, but Tim Reed winning the Ironman 70.3 World Championships. I've told this story before, but two weeks out of that race, he was so fearful of racing in a town very close to his hometown, because he was going to be racing in front of his family, school friends, childhood friends, etc, and there was huge expectation with the Australian public, and he saw that as a weight on his shoulders. And what Tim successfully did was listen to, as you say, Max. He listened to the right loudspeaker in his head, and he shifted his perspective from that being an additional pressure and a weight to actually saying, hang on. This is an amazing opportunity. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I get to race near my hometown, with these folks that are cheering for me and other Australian athletes. And it became the wind under his wings. And in that race he it came down with one kilometer go shoulder to shoulder with Sebastian, keenly and and I think that if he had have had that as a weight on his shoulders, he. He wouldn't have won that sprint finish, but that became the fuel to lift him, and he won that race by two seconds and became the world champion. And and it's a mindset shift of treating the racing opportunity as fun and a privilege and an opportunity, rather than a test of pass, fail and and a weight on your shoulders of stuff that you perceive can be negative when actually they can be positive. You're the brain mechanic, my friend. So, so I'm sure that one resonates with you.
Max Gering 55:34
Yeah, I really like that. Both of those stories, I need to do more research on Rachel Joyce's career. It sounds super interesting and fascinating. I think, to wrap it all up for our athletes, we covered a whole host of topics. I think, as people continue to embark on their race season, I encourage our listeners to really think about the type of athlete they want to be, think about their strengths, think about their weaknesses. And before you go into a race, think about the different things that could happen in that race, and make sure you think about how you ideally want to respond, and take time to do that before you go race. And maybe it's something that's going to come up in the swim, maybe it's pacing, maybe it's the bike, maybe it's the run. We covered a lot of different things, but really bring intention to your racing before you go into the race, to take time to think about what could happen. How do I want to respond? What's the type of athlete I want to be if I look back and tell the story of my race like we just told all these different stories? What's the story that I want to tell about going and embarking on this journey?
Matt Dixon 56:38
Yeah, I like that, because the one thing that we can almost certainly guarantee is the racing experience will not be simple and fluid. We will be met with adversity and challenges, and so it's how we respond that ultimately creates the champion. I think that's true, yeah, and that's it fun. Thank you very much. Max, appreciate it.
Max Gering 57:00
I like this one. This was a lot of really good stories.
Matt Dixon 57:05
We could there are many more in the suitcase of dreams. So we can, we can pull those out. But folks, listeners, thank you very much for listening. Hope that's helpful. Hope you can pull some of those stories and maybe carry you with you on race day as ever. If you want to extend the conversation, reach out to us. Info@purplepatchfitness.com if you have any follow up questions around racing, feel free to ping us. We'll be happy to try and answer your questions. And if you'd like an individual consultation with Max or any one of the Purple Patch coaches, and then we can set that up for you. Info@purplepatchfitness.com most importantly, Max, I think I can speak for you and the rest of the Purple Patch team, whether you're a Purple Patch athlete or not, I want to wish you the very best for racing season. Go have fun. Keep the rubber side down. Enjoy it and give your best. All right, guys, take care. See you next time. Guys, thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community with that. I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun. Keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Purple Patch pros, race preparation, athletic potential, tailored program, coaching team, race season, swim, bike, run, mindset, nutrition, self-management, race strategy, adversity, performance predictability