Episode 228: Ask Matt Anything on Racing - From Preparation to Performance
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Welcome to another "Ask Matt Anything" edition of the Purple Patch Podcast. In part 1 of our 2 part series of Q & A episodes on all topics related to racing, Matt answers your voicemails and emails on race preparation and practices.
In this installment, Matt answers your questions related to:
Integrating sufficient recovery into training
The constraints of metrics and how to move beyond them in your athletic performance
Implementing race day hydration
The logistics of fueling and hydrating on the move
Spotting chronic fatigue and the proper steps to righting the ship
Episode Timestamps
0:02-03:43 Welcome and Episode Introduction
3:43-Question 1 from Frederik: I heard you say that the three up one down training structure is not something you believe in. Is that something that applies to pro athletes? And does the answer change if you're talking about female athletes?
I have had athletes that have very successfully been able to accumulate three weeks of consistent training, and not start to overreach or not start to get too tired. But in the middle of the bell curve, I've seen that most athletes don't succeed with that recipe. And that's because quite simply, you can't beat physiology.
11:56-Question 2 from Jeff: I have a question about race execution for someone who may not really like using data. I'd rather be following general cues tied to RPE. Do you have any general guidelines to follow?
The power and the metrics, whether you use heart rate, whether you use power, whether you use pace on the run, they're really valuable. They're great to have, but they shouldn't be driving the ship. What should be driving the ship is you, your intuition.
18:57-Question 3 from Les: I'm curious to know your thoughts on race day hydration. My bike is set up to carry a 750 mil bottle between my aero bars and two more behind my seat and I'll need about one bottle an hour or so I'm thinking for Ironman Canada. What are your thoughts on how much to carry versus trying to mix it along the way with tablets?
I would probably lead with one bottle behind, one up front and then you are refilling your chamber on an ongoing basis at the front torpedo system with water. But then having on the top of your handlebars or in your pockets, even on your thigh underneath your race suit, you might have the sachets of precision that you can rip pour into the chamber before you get to an aid station and then squeeze and dump water over the top of it so that you fill in the concentration.
26:29-Question 4 from Richard: One thing that's taken many minutes of my time is the logistics of bike aid stations. I've got dialed into a new hydration plan. I take electrolytes to add to the water but need to continually stop and sort things out on the bike, grab more nutrition and stash it somewhere. It feels a shame to spend more than five minutes stationary over an Ironman bike leg, but I can't figure out how else to do it.
I would really recommend you have a torpedo at the front of the bike. That can really be a game changer for logistics and carriage because you can then grab water as you're in flight, slowing down being very safe, keeping that hand supple on the bar, grab the water and refill while you're on the go, dump that water bottle away, and now you've got a new reservoir.
31:43-Question 5 from Brian: Is it possible to still have occasional good races despite being in a state of chronic fatigue, and is it possible to lose touch with your level of fatigue?
So what we need to look at is how much long term damage is there? How much recuperation do you need? And then also a little bit of an objective review of what's the ultimate root of the problem? And you're not going to say oh, it was that it was my nutrition, it was my training program, it was my lack of recovery, because it's always more holistic than that.
Ask Matt Anything! Head to the Podcast Page at PurplePatchFitness.com/podcast and leave a concise question for Matt. Tell us your name, where you're from, and ask your question. We'll get to as many as we can in future episodes.
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:02
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 00:21
So you've got your strength training, you've got stress levels and inflammation, you've got the myriad of supplements that are available. Foods that you need more of, maybe foods that you need to limit, red flags to course correct in your health and performance, there is a lot to consider. It's almost impossible to keep up. But knowledge is power. And with the assessment of your biomarkers combined with the insights and recommendations from the team at InsideTracker, what you get is focus. You get precision, as well as trackable metrics to ensure success and improvement for sports performance health and of course, longevity. It's a great tool that I use, and you might consider it to, you don't even need to be a Purple Patch athlete to do so all you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch and you can use this code purplepatchpro20 and you get 20% of everything at the store. Alright, let's buckle up and dive in. I hope that you enjoy the show.
Matt Dixon 01:33
And welcome to The Purple Patch Podcast. As ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And today, yes, I get to take a little break of all of that structure. I've given Barry the day off at least off the ukulele. And we get to do one of those fun episodes it is an Ask Matt Anything, an AMA session. And today our focus is all about racing. We've got several questions on the docket. But it's very, very simple. In the last weeks, I've asked you, the audience to provide your questions around anything that you would like, and with a focus this week, all around racing. So what we're gonna do is we're going to skip all of the pomp and pageantry today, I'm not going to do Matt's News-ings, we're not going to do Word of the Week, we are just going to dive in to the questions. Now some of you guys left questions that were recorded on voicemail, you can do that at the Purple Patch podcast page. And you can leave your question around anything that you might like me to answer in an upcoming Ask Matt Anything show, or you can email us at the same place. And of course, we have that all typed up. And so we'll do one or two things today, I'm either going to play the question, or I'm going to read out the email. For you guys that engage, thank you so much,,,, I really appreciate it. My job's really fun today, what I get to do is listen to a couple of questions, have a little contemplation, and then pontificate. What more can you want, but most importantly, as an outcome to this, as I hope that the answers are informative and useful for you as you go on your journey towards the back end of this year, and try and have the very best race that you can in what ever endeavor you're going for. And so without further ado, what we're going to do is dive into the questions. And our first question today is from Frederick. Frederick, thanks so much you just failed on one thing, which you didn't tell me where you're at. But by your last name, I know that it's something European, Scandinavian, I believe. I won't name your last name because you don't want it named. But here's a great question that I really want to put to the front of the page or the front of the show today. So here we go. Let's have a listen to what Frederick has to say.
Frederik 03:43
Hi, Matt, thanks for a great podcast. I have a question. I heard you said that the three plus one weekly periodization is not something you believe in. Is that something that applies for pro athletes? And does the answer change if you're talking about the woman, athletes? Thank you.
Matt Dixon 04:08
It's a great question. Thanks so much, Frederick. And let me let me first for the audience explain what you mean by your question with three up one down. And so this is a common nomenclature around the way that you structure your training, getting ready for your race. So we're going to sort of wedge this into a racing question for you. And three up one down would be three weeks in a row where your training load is either consistently very strong, so a big heavy training week, or progressing in weeks 1 to 3. There are sort of two styles with that. And what typically -- then after that three weeks the coach prescribes or the athlete executes a week of recovery. So it's that load and then adaptation response, three weeks of training, one week off, that makes up a nice tidy month, give or take, and then you rinse and repeat as you go through the structure. And in concept, it's really nice, it's a very nice organizational approach, it has three weeks of training, and then the athlete can look forward to a nice week of recovery. And so a lot of athletes like this, because it clearly identifies the week of recovery, it identifies a block of work that they're going to go and do. The only problem with it is it tends not to work very well. And yet, all of the textbooks are full of this. And there's a couple of reasons that, I think are really important to bubble up here. Ultimately, it's about fatigue accumulation. And what I mean by that is that what you're looking for as an athlete, is to absolutely maximize your training load, or your training stress that you can apply while achieving positive adaptations. And in my experience, if we look at things in a broader context, what ends up happening when athletes adhere to three up and one down, is a lack of return on overall training investment when they put those cycles back to back. Okay, so I'm going to answer it. But I think it's important that as we supply this answer, I should first preface that training is always highly individual. And so as I'm speaking, as I'm providing this, this answer, in this perspective, Frederick, it's all within the context of I'm talking in the middle of the bell curve, because I have had athletes that have very successfully been able to accumulate three weeks of consistent training, and not start to overreach or not start to get too tired. But in the middle of the bell curve, I've seen that most athletes don't succeed with that recipe. And that's because quite simply, you can't beat physiology. Let's think about it in these terms. And I'm going to talk about what I observe when athletes are doing the three up one down. They might have the first week be really high quality training, check all the boxes, of course, within that week, not every week is hard or not every week is over distance, but they do a good solid week of training. And it's highly effective, forcing adaptations, etc. They rinse and repeat the week they do another second week of work is very good and very good solid. By the end of that what we start to see typically, is athletes creating a little bit of an accumulation of deeper fatigue. And by week three, the most common thing that we see is that athletes are having such an accumulation of fatigue from the initial two weeks, they're really struggling mentally and physically. And most athletes in that third week, are just getting through checking the box, and desperate, absolutely desperate and evermore desperate for a week of recovery. By the time they hit that third week, which I wouldn't say is a great week of training, it's done under an accumulation of too much fatigue. They're just desperate for a whole week of recovery. They turn their back on the sport, they recuperate, and finally they restore and they get to go and rinse, repeat once again that cycle. So what you've got over four weeks is two really good quality weeks of training. And then one week, which is substandard, because there's too much of an accumulation of fatigue. And another week that you're just forcing big recovery to clean out. So 50% of your training time is less optimal. So rather than doing that, what we tend to do is hit an athlete, again, in the same as any other common week of training, not every day being hard, not everyday being over distance, but a cycle of somewhere between 10-14 days. And then before deep fatigue starts to accumulate, we tend to integrate 2, 3, 4 days depending on the athlete, but a much shorter cycle of recuperation. And then boom, you go right back onto Plan. By doing this, we tend to have really productive training. But it's a less of a reservoir of fatigue to accumulate. So therefore the athlete bounces back much quicker. And when you string those shorter cycles together into the many, many weeks into many, many months, you've actually done more of the effective training. So it's not about recovering more and doing less work. It's ultimately about looking to do more work over the long term. And the reason I spend so much time breaking that down, because you need to start to think as an athlete as a coach, not in a single cycle of work. Two weeks up a few days down, or three weeks out one week down. If you're doing that. You need to think about many, many cycles of them and you're looking for the best recipe over that length of time. So those two magic words that come up to me there are consistency. and sustainability, good. So it's about doing more effective training. So if we layer this with individual response, unique physiology, etc, etc, you can start to come and start to find a recipe that's useful or productive for you. Now you can add as well, a layered component of an insight with metrics, a lot of people looking at HRV, or looking at a self test around how to actually feel today. So less sort of actually quantifiable data, but more of a little bit of a check in with yourself, looking at resting heart rate, looking at heart rate relative to power or pace, all of those components can be good, informative data points, but ultimately, it comes with what works for you. So the reason I answer it like that is in essence, it's irrelevant. Whether you're an elite athlete, a time-starved athlete, a female athlete, an older, mature athlete, you have to go on your own journey to find the recipe, what works for you, but I would think about it over the course of the long term. And so short answer, no, there's no difference. Ultimately, there's absolutely no difference whether we're talking about female athletes, whether we're talking about professional athletes, we are looking to do the most training that we possibly can over the course of many, many months. And we want that training to be effective, not just survival. So I hope that helps in concept. And that should be the thing that gets you ready for racing, which is our primary subject, Frederick, you snuck that in there a little bit. Without further ado, got a little bit for fun one here, we've got one from Jeff. I happen to know Jeff and Jeff, thank you for your message, but also, yeah, well, I'll let you play it. Barry, go ahead and play the question for me.
Jeff 11:56
Howdy Matt, this is Jeff from Dallas - Fort Worth, Texas. Longtime listener, longtime Purple Patch squady. I have a question about race execution for an hombre who may not really like using data like his Garmin Edge or his watch all day long. You know, just for governing my efforts. I'd rather be following general cues tied to RPE. When to turn it on in the swim, for example. Or how it should feel on the bike so I have some giddy up during the run. Of course, general guidelines and running past that famous wall and the last brutal leg of a - of a run - there in a 70.3 or full. I really appreciate your advice. Thank you kindly.
Matt Dixon 12:43
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jeff, Jeff, you're southern but you're not that southern. That would be like me talking about your apples and pears and going down the rubba-dub and my jam jar and all of that. And I can talk in the cockney English accent if you want me to do that, and yous two can go about and talk about it. But no one would understand the answer. And the reason that we played that, though, is because your question is actually very good. So I'm still going to answer despite the drawl that was a little exaggerated there, my friend. But anyway, I want to start by answering this question by telling you a little story about one of the athletes that I actually coach. And he tends to be a very metrics based athlete. He's really anchored in tracking sleepable and wearable devices and power and pace. And when he traditionally is training, he's very focused on FTP, and exactly what power zone and everything that you might imagine about being what you might label a metrics based athlete, and he raced last weekend. Now he traditionally has always stuck rigidly to a set number, a set power and a set heart rate on the bike. And the goal of that was to manage stress so that he could actually navigate his weakness running well off the bike. And I intuitively, as a coach after getting to know him for quite a while, I felt like the really rigid numbers were actually not just limiting actually his speed return but on top of that it actually was leading him to carry his racing with an added tension and an added almost mental tension around it too rigid of a race plan that didn't enable him to flow to enjoy the experience. It was almost like he was building a bridge rather than letting the race come to him and be fluid etcetera, etcetera. He felt like the metrics were holding him back. At least he wasn't leveraging the data to his effect. It was in fact shackling him a little bit. And so in his race plan, and I guess I should preface it with this as well. I think that the athlete had a little bit of an epiphany at the same time, he realized that an optimization of a race wasn't about power output on a bike, it was actually about wheel speed, how fast you could go. And so that actually opened up a crack in his mental armor a little bit. And I simply told him to do something very basic. I said, go and ride free, I want you to play at your riding. And the whole goal is for you to look up the road ahead and look for opportunity for you to maximize wheel speed, every chance that you can. It's all around Terrain Management, essentially. And the way that I asked him to manage his output was, imagine if you're going absolute full gas as fast as you can go, I want you because you're racing a half Ironman or an Ironman 70.3, I want you to go one mile an hour less than that. It's okay, I can do that. Now, if he was doing an Ironman, I would have said two miles an hour back, but a very simple gauge. And I said, I want you to build into this event, come out of the swim, feel the bike stabilize. And then I want you to go through a third of the race as a six out of 10, a seven out of 10, and eight out of 10 build through but your heads up display is all about Terrain Management. Now you can still reference your power, you can still reference your heart rate, but it is very secondary. If all that sounds fun he thinks it's really really basic. I didn't give him any specifics, I didn't want him to think in terms of numbers whatsoever. The numbers were just a backdrop for him. Now, what was the outcome? He went and rode the same bike course as he did last year, 12 minutes faster. And then he ran eight minutes faster than he ran last year. And it was no faster of a day, very similar conditions, exactly the same course. This is an experienced athlete that's been training with metrics has an understanding of how that actually liberated himself. And so that's, I think, a great case study to answer your questions in many ways, because the power and the metrics, whether you use heart rate, whether you use power, whether you use pace on the run, they're really valuable. They're great to have, but they shouldn't be driving the ship. What should be driving the ship is you your intuition. And actually having a little bit of liberation, looking for best opportunity, whether you're running and coasting down hill with good leg speed, managing the terrain as you go up hill, whether you're riding looking for speed return on your own, that is the essence of how you race. What should that feel like? Well, in an Ironman, it's probably five out of 10, six out of 10, seven out of 10 by third of the race. So far, a systemic perceived effort on the bike. As you go through the run in a half Ironman, it's probably 6, 7, 8 out of 10. So it's a very managed building effort in perceived effort so that you can maintain output, and then the run is going to be a step up from that. So you're gonna go from 7 to 8 to 9 out of 10 on a half Ironman. On an Ironman, you're just gonna get going. Consistent 7 to 8 out of 10 effort, looking to manage looking to manage with a 10k to go, hey, all bets are off, go as fast as you can. But that's the way in the most basic level, you want to think about perceived effort, terrain management, speed return, and utilizing your metrics as a backdrop as an information gathering exercise, but not something that's going to dictate your race. That's how I go about it. So Jeff, with your southern drawl and all that. Very good question. Thank you very much. Let's move on. Alright, question number three is a great one. Purple Patch athlete Les from Calgary, Alberta. Lovely town. Good part of the world up there. Thank you so much for your question. And so we've got this on SpeakPipe as they call it again. Yes, you called in left the message. Let's see what you have to say.
Les 18:57
Hey Matt, it's Les, Purple Patch athlete from Calgary, Alberta. I'm curious to know your thoughts on race day hydration. I've been using the PH product in part because it worked so well for me and also in appreciation of their support of our community with knowledge. And I'm -- my bike is set up that I can carry a 750 mil bottle between my aerobars and two more behind my seat and I'll need about one bottle an hour or so I'm thinking for Ironman Canada I'm just wondering about your thoughts on how much to carry versus trying to mix it along the way with you know ****** the tablets. Yeah. Thanks very much for your thoughts on it.
Matt Dixon 19:43
Les it's a great question. I love what you said there about Precision as well. I think they're a great company. I love the team there. I obviously am a huge fan of the product you know that I'm not a paid ambassador. Although I should be I need to speak to Andy blow about that. But now I just a big believer in their products. I love how they are democratic in their, in how people love the product. It's fantastic under fatigue, it's great under heat, really good hydration. But what you mentioned there I think is really worth bubbling up. Their commitment to education and supporting athletes, I think is fantastic, very like minded with us at Purple Patch looking to try and develop a lot of useful education for athletes. So I'm on board, and it's a it's a great business, I should point out by the way, folks that are listening or, or watching the show, if you do want to leverage a discount code for Precision Hydration, we do have one -- nothing we don't get anything for it. But there's a nice code, we'll leave it in the show notes for you. If you guys that are watching the show. This is the code right here, you put that in, you get a nice discount off everything in the store. So you have to wait and see what it is. It's very nice discount. But most importantly, more importantly, Les the answer to your question. It's a great question. It's one of the common challenges for athletes that are racing, what I carry this stuff, how do I do this? How do I manage this. And one man's opinion here, I would say as a as an answer to this, firstly, you've chosen a great race, it's going to be terrific. One of the legendary races in Ironman Canada. And the good news is precision will serve you very, very well over the course of this course. And as I mentioned, as your fatigue starts to accumulate, or if it's especially if it gets hot up there. And then this is where the product really rises above because it tends to stay tasting good for athletes, it just doesn't get old, which is super. But it's not about my ambassadorship for precision. This is all about logistics, and how you actually navigate through. So the first thing I'd say is whatever your cockpit setup is, so your handle bars and your aerobars at the front of your time trial bike, I think that the best water bottle sort of chamber that you have is more of a torpedo style. So something that you can front fill, that's going to logistically make your life much, much easier. Something that you can start with your Precision Hydration in, but as it gets empty, it's going to be very, very easy to refill. It is much more preferable than having a bottle up there that you actually need to pull out. It's accessible. It's easy to hydrate out of but it's much, much easier to refill. So I would obviously start your race with your concentration of Precision there. I would also start with another precision bottle behind you. So that's easy to either sip or refill as perfect concentration. And then you have -- Okay, what else do you need? So an option will be to have a third Precision Hydration, but that is often the place that people carry their spares. And whatever it might be, I would probably lead with one bottle behind, one up front and then you are refilling your chamber on an ongoing basis at the front torpedo system with water. But then having on the top of your handlebars or in your pockets, even on your thigh underneath your race suit, you might have the sachets of precision that you can rip pour into the chamber before you get to an aid station and then squeeze and dump water over the top of it so that you fill in the concentration. That tends to be a really, really good way of managing your hydration and knowing that you're getting a constant feed of precision on the bike. Remember that your mission on the bike is to get off and finish that 112 Miles not too dehydrated. You will be a little dehydrated, but you must get enough that where you're only about 1, at the most 2%, dehydration of your total body water. And so it becomes really, really important. If that means you have to stop. That's okay. But I would rather you have a chamber up front that you can refill with water. Now, some athletes tend to have a high concentrate of solution on the back of the bike in that bottle and use that as their refill. That's okay, you just don't want to start to be sipping that. So you might have multiple sachets that you use as a concentration. The challenge with that is you're starting to play a lot of mathematics there, which of course is a little bit challenging for athletes. So I prefer to have either a high concentration solution in a back refill and only drinking out the front or two optimal solutions and then go to the front and use sachets of your Precision fluid, whatever your concentration is 1,000, 1,500, whatever it is appropriate to you and use that for the best of the race or the rest of the race. Of course then you can also supplement as you go through aid stations. Grab a bottle, squeeze the water, dump the bottle in the trash off you go and carry on. That's a good way to maintain regular hydration with pure water. That's an absolutely fine thing to do to mix in taste, but also help dilute some of the fueling that your taking. If you take a gel right before you can stop and grab water, you don't have to have precision as you go with that. So I hope that I hope that helps. Very simply, it's always one of the big challenges. But I will say one thing to remember, for everybody, however you're carrying it, you want to think about an Ironman race as an adventure. It's a long, long day. And short term decisions can have long term negative effects. So if you do drop nutrition, you have to start to refill your bottles, that is a good investment. If you -- to make sure that whatever effort you're riding at, you ensure that you are never dropping off on getting the fueling and hydration you need to be successful over the course of the whole bike and the marathon coming off. And so if it means that you have to stop at three aid stations along the way, make it really quick, lose 30 seconds each one, but it is a worthy investment to make sure that you're not emptying the tank. Great question Les, thank you.
Matt Dixon 26:11
All right, question five. We've got two more questions to go, however the last one is a biggie, ladies and gentleman. Question five here, my friend Richard Rees, Mr. UK himself, well done. And I'm going to get to read this question out. So you can read along with me at home. It's a nice read and learn little episode here. So Richard says to us, "I've just completed my second full Ironman distance race. And one thing that's taken many minutes of my time is the logistics of bike aid stations. I've got dialed in new hydration plan, I take electrolytes to add to the water, but I need to continually stop and get things sorted out on the bike and grab more nutrition and stash it somewhere. And then I continue on. It feels a shame to spend more than five minutes stationary over an Ironman bike leg, but I can't figure out how else to do it." So Richard, that is a very common common challenge for athletes. And it's actually relatively similar to Les's question but I think there's enough nuance in here that I want to highlight a couple of components. So the first is your bike setup itself. And much as I talked about, with Les, I would really recommend you have a torpedo at the front of the bike. That can really be a game changer for logistics and carriage because you can then grab water as you're in flight, slowing down being very safe, keeping that hand supple on the bar, grab the water and refill while you're on the go, dump that water bottle away, and now you've got a new reservoir. So that can really save a lot of time. And then all you're carrying is the sachets. And you can carry the sachets in various places sometimes in the back pocket of your speed suit or whatever race gear that you're wearing. Sometimes in a little bento box, they tend to call it, which is the little packet that sits on the top tube. Some of the bikes now have integrated little storage systems in there some you have to get a little external little bag that sits on top of it often quite aero, not a bad thing to add on. And then the third sneaky place is sometimes just tucked up the leg of your of your bike shorts or your race suit that you can tuck it up, not too much of an aerodynamic loss. And you can hold it there, rip it out, rip it with the teeth, put the little powder in of your hydration, and then top it off with the water. So there's one logistical component. A second side of stuff is how do you carry all of your fuel. And so as much as possible, we try and get athletes to utilize really accessible fuel. And in general terms, it tends to be sugar early on to it for some athletes, but especially especially athletes, they're going a little bit longer moving to what we might call macros. So in other words, bars, or things like that, that are a little bit more straying towards real food, and then back to sugar on the back end bike. So the sugar is the easiest thing logistically, you've got little packets of gels. Some athletes, what they like to do is take all of the gels they're going to use, let's just make it up, you're going to consume 8 gels over the course of the bike ride, and they might put it in a little canister or a little water bottle, just a small water bottle, something that can be stored on the bike, and just adding a little bit of water shaking it up to make it viscous enough so that you can actually sip it down. It's really good. If the bottle is clear, it's good if you've got a little marker, and you can leverage that knowing total calories and you can meter that out. So that tends to be a really good option. If you've got single gels and then you go back to the bento box option or the storage that you can stuff some gels in there. And you can even stuff some gels up in the pant legs of whatever race suit you're using. So there's one side of things. I would then really encourage you for the middle couple of hours that you might be using some ours are some different foods to actually tuck in to a race pocket. So making sure that your race suit of choice has got a little bit of a pocket that you can put maybe a couple of bars in there, because you're probably not consuming more bars than that. And then ultimately, if you need to stop once on the bike, special needs or an aid station, that's where you can dump some of the trash out a good thing to clear the pockets and clear the bike very quickly, just rip it out and get it ready, and then restart with whatever you're going to leverage from the aid station. So if you think about it in those terms, I think that will be helpful. The two big takeaways: the torpedo at the front of the bike, and having a little look at can you carry gels in some form of a container that's very, very easy and accessible. But if you are going to do that you probably to get through in the nozzle, you might need to add a little bit of water, just to make it a little bit more liquid. And of course, knowing the mathematics of that is going to be very, very important. So hope that helps. And good luck. Let's get cracking over the rest of this season. Super Richard, by the way, I should point out, you've also got a really good taste in music so good on you.
Matt Dixon 31:11
All right, last question here. And as we started, we're going to finish the questions this week with a little bit of a dancing around. But I really liked these questions. And I think it's an important question. This is from Brian. And it might be not specific to racing, but ultimately impacts race performance. So I'm going to go with you here. And it's pretty big. It's really big, you got three questions, but I'm going to give you one answer to these three questions really around perspective. Okay. So first question is, is it possible for someone to still have occasional good races, and or training days, even if they're in a state of non functional overreaching, or chronic fatigue? So in other words, and for context here, Brian said that he's actually done some PRs over the course of 10k, et cetera and it feels like wow, I'm going great and then he's having really, really bad results and fatigue issues. So there's a red herring there. So that's one challenge that is got. Second. The second question related is, is it possible for the cardiovascular system to be significantly more developed than the musculoskeletal system? So a big engine on a weak chassis? It's a great question. And thirdly, is it possible for people to lose touch with their level of fatigue? Or what it feels like to be fully recovered? So similar to eating disorders, to Brian's question where they can actually lose touch with their hunger signals. So the short answer to all of that, Brian is yes, yes, and yes. And here is all of those three things it's unfortunately, too common. The good news is that you can reverse engineer and get out of this 100%. But you need to take action here, you really, really need to take action, and your level of overreaching or overtraining, I can't define on this show based off of that context. But my guess is that you are not in a place that some smart approaches right now and some bravery over the coming months can't very quickly reverse you out of this. At the same time, there is definitely some real red flag stuff. So you need to pause, you need to reset, you need to investigate and you need to set a whole bunch of habits, and you're probably going to need to be patient with your training and your racing over the coming few months. If, and just specifically to Brian as we dig into these answers, if you need some support, this is probably a really good occasion that you actually do get a consultation with myself or one of the coaching team that we can really have a look in. The second little bit of advice for you is that by hook or crook, you probably want to get some blood work. Under the guidance of either a professional coach or a medical doctor who really understands and has empathy with athletics, isn't just looking at regular scales, and really have a look at what's going on under the hood up here because a little bit more information as long as it is filtered through the lens of someone that is looking at things through performance going faster, not just the absence of disease, is really important. That's why something like InsideTracker might be really, really helpful. As long asyou then have someone to help you navigate and filter through and make smart decisions. So I do think biometrics are going to be useful for you, but they're not going to provide the answer. They're just going to provide the landscape for you. Okay, so very quick answers to help you with this. Can you still perform? Can you have some red herring type performances? The answer to that is yes. And there's good news and bad news of this. It's very, very common when someone starts to accumulate too much fatigue, and they start to move into a more chronic state of tiredness. I'm not calling this chronic fatigue by any stretch, but a more ongoing underlying set of an accumulation of fatigue, it's actually very common that they have really good days. And they have maybe even some PRs, especially on the shorter stuff. The challenge is that those become less and less frequent, and less predictable. And it's almost like you want to think about it as having the last line of defense where the body is in a state of chronic over stress, and it's fighting against it mentally and physically. And so as you go through that, you can have waves of almost euphoria and waves of high performance, but they are going to get shorter and shorter, and they're going to get dispersed in a more unpredictable fashion, particularly as you then are experiencing at the same time, the more ongoing fatigue issues, where you just start underperforming. And those fatigue issues --0 when I actually had really deep chronic fatigue, I used to call it or, or explain it as feeling like I was breathing fumes, I felt like I was a car that was on empty, and everything was just harder. And I could still generate high power, but it was -- it just didn't feel right. And that's where you're at there. So what we need to look at is how much long term damage is there? How much recuperation do you need? And then also a little bit of an objective review of what's the ultimate root of the problem? And you're not going to say oh, it was that it was my nutrition, it was my training program, it was my lack of recovery, because it's always more holistic than that. But it is a serious red flag for you that you are getting that accumulated fatigue. And so this is a time that you want to look at everything. How am I eating? What's my real intake relative to my training demands? I'd almost guarantee you it's less than you think it is. And it's nowhere near how much you're training. What's my sleep and sleep quality been? Like? How much am I doing so far as adherence to the training program? Keeping the Easy, easy enough? Am I is my total picture of stress too high? So you want to start to look at things in that context. So that's a big, meaty answer for you on the first part, but there is action to be taken there. The second question is, can an athlete be overdeveloped from a cardiovascular standpoint and undeveloped from a muscular resilience standpoint? Yes, yes, yes, yes. In fact, there's a really great common example of this, which would take an elite swimmer, so that was my background, originally swimmer, swimming, and then put them into triathlon. And that's a clear example of someone with a huge engine, years and years of cardiovascular conditioning, in an environment where 90% of your weight is displaced. Because you're in water, it's almost like training in space. Now you're moving to weight bearing. And you've got often hyper mobile ankles, very, very loose, and you're going into a weight bearing activity, where your body is having to absorb multiple times your body weight with every step. So there's a really simple example of an athlete that has high conditioning from a cardiovascular standpoint, but low muscle and tissue resilience, of course, that extends across all athletes. And so when we think about the right training recipe, it's why when we think about is part of the reason that we love triathlon or multi sport training, because that's actually something we can utilize. With any athlete of any level, we can do high intensity more frequently in swimming, and then even bike riding. And it can be of relatively little consequence on the muscular skeletal side of stuff, the body tends to recover quicker from it, you tend to leverage higher intensity more frequently, that's really good. But in running that is weight bearing. And it is all chassis dependent, you have to be very, very careful with the amount of intensity that you're prescribing to a runner, because of the accumulation of too much tissue fatigue. And so it's a very, very common trait. And in fact, I would say that a lot of athletes that fall into the chronic fatigue state, and I was actually one of these, were athletes that were actually really developed from a cardiovascular standpoint, and also quite resilient to injury almost by genetic standpoint. I could beat my body up and I seldom got injured, but if I had have had more muscular tissue issues, I might have been able to hold myself back from chronic fatigue. So there's a chicken and egg on on whether it's a negative or a positive, but yes, from the ground up that's really one of the most common things that we see with athletes. And then your final question, as we're dancing with you over the course of this whole question is, is it possible for folks to lose touch with their level of fatigue? Absolutely. And it's -- this happens actually outside of sport as well, where there are a whole bunch of just general population, people that may or may not even be into fitness whatsoever, but are walking around in a fog of fatigue, but they have no barometer for it. Because over the course of many, many months or years, perhaps with compromised sleep, less favorable nutritional habits may be under hydrated, not enough downtime, burning the candle at both ends working too hard, not enough exercise, their compass shifts, and they this, their new level of fatigue becomes normal, just really normal. And that's not great, because that's their existence. And that's how slowly over time people move into chronic ill health, is they're just functioning at a lower level. It's no different for an athlete. There is -- fatigue is a part of training. You shouldn't be scared of fatigue, you shouldn't pull back every time you get a little tired, we must burst through fatigue. But ongoing fatigue accumulation to where it starts to become maladaptive, is corrosive for performance. And I would say that the majority of athletes, particularly time-starved athletes, amateur athletes that are integrating this sport, into a busy life, the majority are walking around with too much of an accumulation of fatigue, and are underperforming relative to the effort that they put in. So I really believe in recovery. And if people are highly committed, and training really hard, and yet not getting the racing results, there's often a simple symptom that they are training too hard too much relative to life without enough recovery. And I'll add one thing, often not supported with enough caloric support, so far as post workout fueling, and daily eating habits. And so yes, you start to lose your compass, you start to lose your barometer. And the levels of fatigue just becomes normal. And it is a sub performance existence. And when that happens, well, you know what ends up happening, the cycle of frustration, you train harder, you're looking for results, you always think about yourself as the guilty party. But it might be the recipe that you're adhering to, that is the guilty party, and it is paralyzing your ability to perform. All that being said, Brian, there's a lot of time on that question. I left it to last. But I hope it's helpful for you. And I tell you mate, I wish you the best of luck. We are here to help. And I'll give you a special one, don't worry about anyone else of our audience here, from me to you, I think you'll really benefit with some help here. So if you're coached, I'd really have an honest question, or an honest conversation with your coach. If you're not coached, and then make sure that you reach out to us and we can really try and give you a little bit of support on this one.
Matt Dixon 43:22
All right. I hope that helps to everyone. I hope that that was a useful little session there. Our next Ask Matt Anything is on race anxiety. So talking about some of the fears, and a little bit of the performance anxiety that comes with the big event. That's going to be next week. But those are our questions. I always have fun on these episodes. As ever, if you want to ask me a question, I will endeavor to answer it, all you have to do is leave us a voicemail, make sure you give us your first name and where you're from, so we can either read out your question on the show, or of course, we can play it over the course of the magic interweb. But until next time, I hope you stay healthy. Have fun, keep training hard and if you do get to race, race well. Cheers.
Matt Dixon 44:10
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
athletes, race, question, fatigue, training, bike, week, hydration, precision, little bit, accumulation, answer, patch, sachets, purple, refill, feel, metrics, performance, bottle