Episode 236: KONA - Evolution of the Pro Performance (An IRONMAN Master Coach Insight)
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With the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championships looming, one can’t help but wonder about the level of performance to expect from an ever-growing field of high-performance athletes whose athleticism seems to trend upward every year.
Beyond Kona, professional triathlon has witnessed performance and endurance levels rise and the makeup of endurance athletes shift based on the growing demands and expectations of the sport.
In today’s episode of the Purple Patch Podcast, IRONMAN master coach Matt Dixon uses his experience as both an athlete and coach to examine the shift over the past few decades in the athletic approach to training, nutrition, recovery, and all the elements needed to perform at the professional level in today’s triathlon landscape.
Matt takes a look at the future of Professional Triathlon through the lens of its past by highlighting 6 main principles he has observed around the changing of the sport.
The Application of Science: Improved access and understanding of scientific data for optimal training and recovery.
(34:03) "We have seen over the last five to ten years, a wonderful marrying of coaching, experimentation, research and applied research on the fly, or with a collaboration to accelerate learning of what truly works, and perhaps most importantly, what doesn't work. There has been a radical increase in the understanding of what it takes to achieve performance improvements."
Triathlon as a First Sport: Early exposure and focus on a multisport approach.
(37:28) "In the last few years, we genuinely are starting to see athletes that grew up as triathletes. It was their first real elite experience. And with this, we started to see the average age of world-class being dramatically reduced."
Perceptions of Possibility: the elevation of athletic performance through breakthrough individual performances in all three disciplines.
(39:58) "There is simply no place for being a weak bike rider. You cannot excel without being a great runner. And you also have to ultimately swim at or very, very close to the world-class level in swimming. It's a prerequisite now."
Evolving Nutrition and Fueling: The evolution of science and approach in stabilizing energy, predicting performance levels, and improving recovery.
(44:41) "this has proved to be a genuine and serious performance paradigm shift, particularly in long course racing, those that are benefiting from it, they're bonking less and experiencing less gastric distress."
Advancements in Equipment Technology: The radical increase and optimization of technologically advanced triathlon equipment.
(47:05) "Gimmicks are less dominant now. There's a smarter filter going on. And the access to all of this equipment is much more democratic."
Structure of the Sport: The shift in race format and approach by the Professional Triathletes Organisation.
(49:29) "The race formats and the structure has elevated the required range of participating pros. And I predict that this is only going to accelerate over the next three, four, or five years. What it means to be a serious professional triathlete is going to change."
The aim of this episode is to shape your expectations and performance levels based on an understanding of what it means, and what it takes, to deliver a world-class triathlon performance.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:38 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
03:45 - Episode 236: KONA - Evolution of the Pro Performance (An IRONMAN Master Coach Insight)
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
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
In today's show, we dig into high performance. For so long, many of the tools and approaches that were used by pro athletes were simply out of the reach of us mere mortals. But the world has changed. And there is no better example than InsideTracker, a simple blood draw that allows huge insights into your own biometrics. And from this, the InsideTracker team of experts can provide advice and insight into where you should place focus and emphasis to ensure that you can optimize your health and performance across sport and life. Now, the action plan that filters the noise and allows you to improve your eating, sleeping, and even your training approach. All of the elements are delivered in a nice athlete portal, making your improvements trackable, so that you can ensure that you leverage across your athlete journey. It's a wonderful tool for us, we leverage it and I encourage you to utilize it as well. You don't need to be an elite athlete to care about your health and performance. And guess what, you don't even need to be a Purple Patch athlete. To integrate it into your pattern, all you have to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch that's inside tracker.com/purplepatch and use the code Purple Patch Pro two zero. That's Purple Patch pro 20. And it is the start of your performance journey. All right, let's get on with the show.
Matt Dixon 01:52
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, your host, Matt Dixon. And this week we're gonna have a bit of fun, I'm going to put on my Ironman master coach because I'm going to talk about a sport that is evolving under our feet professional triathlon. Now, I cast my mind back to about five years ago, and I was coaching at the time a full roster of professional athletes. And I made a speech to a few of those athletes, and I warned them the sport is evolving. I encourage you to take action now shift your approach, or I'm afraid that the whole sport will bypass you. The steam train is coming. Well, guess what? I believe that that change has come. Your training approaches the opportunities for professional athletes, some of the supporting elements around equipment, nutrition, and recovery, what it takes, and what it means to be a professional triathlete. And while the future looks promising for the truly elite, we are experiencing right now genuine elevated levels of performance. Now we're gonna soon see this performance level in action with the looming Hawaii Ironman World Championships, but it goes well beyond this race. And so I thought today what we would do is cast our minds back over what professional triathlon was, but also frame how that sport has evolved. I even had some thoughts over what it might mean for us. And so today, it's quite a meaty one. So we're going to bypass Matt's Newsings, we won't do Word of the Week this week. We are simply, Barry, going to dive right in. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the meat and potatoes is.
Matt Dixon 03:38
Yes, folks, the Meat and Potatoes, and let me tell you something - Professional triathlon is in a state of rapid evolution. The depth of fields has never been greater, the performance levels are higher, the blend of hard work from the athletes being guided by applied science is closer-knit than it ever has been before. And we sit in a hurricane of new understanding of many of the performance elements that foster athletes going faster. And so it's getting real folks, it really is. And I thought it would be fun to dig into this. So what we first want to do is take a little pause and look back at the sport. Now, we're not gonna go through a whole history today, we could be here all day. But it is important to provide maybe some personal reflection on the typical setup and approach of both my years as a professional triathlete, but also then a coach of professional athletes over the last 15 years or so. So let's first think about my middling career at best.
Matt Dixon 04:50
I was a professional triathlete in the late 90s to about 2005. And in many ways, I was really really lucky. I got to compete amongst Some of the most exceptional athletes in the history of our sport. I was emerging off of the back of legends such as Paula Newby-Fraser, Mark Allen, Dave Scott, Mike Pigg, Erin Baker. And at the time when I was competing, I was getting soundly beaten by the folks such as Peter Reid, Tim de Boom, Craig Alexander, Cameron Brown, Norman Stadler. While of course witnessing multiple women champions such as Natascha Badmann, Lori Bowden Heather Fuhr, Michellie Jones. And so, when we think about that generation, what was the general approach back then? Well, I don't want to dumb it down too much, because these were incredibly smart athletes. But in many ways, there was an element of a little bit of make it up as you go along. Now, that's not fair for me to say. But there are some important perspectives that you need to draw from this and a few key points.
Matt Dixon 06:01
The first is, during the younger stages of the sport, which really extended into my time as an athlete, the sport was entrenched in much of a 70s and 1980s, tough man type mentality. It's a very simple mindset, where the overriding focus was a ton of miles, a lot of hours of training. But really little regard around the value of recovery, nutrition, strength training. The primary emphasis that was predominant in a professional field was, get the work done, and letting fitness and bravery, and toughness be the main driver to who would excel. Now, among those really committed to the sport during those years, the smart ones, the really smart ones, were those that individually, on their own accord integrated some of those missing element. Those athletes that were really equipped, and able to actually self-manage, and amplify focus on elements such as recovering and nutrition. And they tended to be many of the names that I just mentioned, they were the ones that optimize their talent potential, and actually became champions. But in general, this was highly individual as a pursuit. There was little real access to cutting-edge technology, high-quality coaching, or much of the applied science that we see permeate in the sport nowadays. It was culture-led, and individually driven. In fact, most of the training advice that I got coming in was just stuff that was shared amongst athletes. And the fabric of the sport and the culture retained more of a professionalism aligned to paid adventurers than genuine, true professional sports. In fact, I remember in the early years of my professional career receiving advice of hey, it's okay if you just have hamburgers at the turn point of the Hawaii Ironman. And my training was really linked together from a coach borrowing workouts from print pages of Triathlete Magazine or other professional athletes. While always been told you've got to get lighter, you've got to get lighter, have a strict caloric deficit diet, all the while, trying to do more training hours than my body was anywhere near equipped to actually absorb and positively adapt to. So most of the days of the training then were either moderately hard or very hard. And I was, of course, dumb enough to follow along. Now, let's have a quick pause here, and pay homage to some of those names that I mentioned. Because we should, if we think about the culture-driven and individual heroism that occurred out of that sport, think about just how good those athletes were. Not just their physical abilities, but for them to filter through that culture in that noise, and have the right mindset, self-management, athletic IQ, and self Training Management. Nearly all of the athletes that we began the show talking about, in many ways were lone soldiers that were having to work out themselves. It was still a new sport, and working it out they certainly did.
Matt Dixon 09:35
And so that was my athletic career. That was what I went through. And of course, I was one of those athletes that had a pretty big engine, was probably not really suited for that professional sport because of my size and frame, but drove myself into the ground making all of the mistakes and the patterns that much of the culture dictated at that time, so I then moved along and of course, came out of overtraining and chronic fatigue. And I started as a coach, a backbone as a master's degree in exercise physiology, a pre-existing coaching career in swimming, my own mistakes as an athlete. And my coaching focus was primarily focused on professional athletes from around the time that I finished my own career 2005 or so, all the way to about 2020 right around when the pandemic occurred. Now, nowadays, I still maintain a few special projects. But the Purple Patch pro squad that sat at the very center of Purple Patches of business, it was really those 15 years, about 2005 to about 2020. Now look, we did really well as a group. We have more than 400, Ironman and Ironman 70.3 wins and podiums. We produce multiple world champions. And in these years, those pro athletes, when we think about professional triathlon at that time, it really began a major revolution itself. And it was very different than my time as a professional competing athlete, but it was still a real struggle.
Matt Dixon 11:18
And I want to outline this because many of the names that I've talked about, these athletes had to achieve great performance, still in a less optimal environment of professional sports. Now, I want to underline here that being a professional athlete and but particularly a professional triathlete, is absolutely a monk's life. It is nowhere near absolutely nowhere near the romantic exhilaration that so many perceive that it might be. It is repetition, after repetition, after repetition of habits, and very strong work. It is an incredibly simple existence, with no real escape from the focus that it requires. Nothing in your mind is free from the focus and control around your sleep, your eating your training, your recovery. And it is all in pursuit of competing at the very razor's edge of world-class performance. And the professional athletes that I coached over that time in the main was still on an individual mission. They had surrounded themselves with good support, but it had to be all driven by them. They had much greater access to coaching, but they had to pay for their coaching. Their equipment levels were much improved. But they still had to fight tooth and nail for support and access to that equipment. And they may have been lucky enough to train in a squad setting. But typically, they were still responsible for all of their expenses and their travel to any training camps, or any opportunities to be embedded in those squads. And all of that was invested in so they had the privilege of competing for awards, in which price purses would barely cover their training expenses. And sponsor bonuses would maybe support a couple of months of rent and food at best. There was no big support team of therapists and nutritionists and mechanics unless the athlete went out and paid for those mechanics and nutritionists and therapists themselves. And even some of the very best in the world. It was still living paycheck to paycheck with very little security at all. Now, before I paint it as so woe is me existence. This was living a wonderful life in many ways. It was their passion. And it was a quest to world-class performance. And the opportunities were better than when I was racing. There were more races, there was the creeping of an evolution of greater price purses. But it was really a sport that was undergoing professionalization, rather than a true established professional sport. The lion's share of the responsibility burden still rested firmly on the shoulders of the individual athlete.
Matt Dixon 14:24
Beyond the structural side of the sport. There was also a paradigm shift around what it took to actually compete at the highest level. I mentioned that in my generational years. It was anchored mostly on toughness, hard work, and there was really lip service given to many athletes, at least the dumber ones amongst us around components such as nutrition and recovery. But there was a real up-ending, a greater intelligence put around training methodology. And over the course of the early 2000s through the 2010s, there started to be a shift into understanding the absolute value and importance of recovering protocols around recovery. There was an explosion of focus around daily nutritional habits and fueling, there was a radical improvement in technology and data, including components such as power meters, bike and helmet technology, Workout Tracking and analysis, and much more. Now, in truth, while this all sounds like a great thing, those early years of this shift really created in many ways a wild west of performance. Because these elements emerging as a core focus really collided with the explosion of social media at the same time. And with social media became the online experts and the emergence of something that we might call bro science. Yes, it started to take its grip. And so there was a little filtering over the next great thing and all of the promises and athletes would start navigating this absolute blizzard have new promises, the next performance enhancing taller approach or magic diets, and the athletes just had to physically filter this blizzard of bullshit and all of the fake promises around voodoo diets, brand new equipment, special recovery tools, and approaches, enhanced laser pajamas, whatever it might be. And they realize that there was a necessity to leverage the technology the approaches the greater understanding. But it became almost an impossible task without running down culdesacs of voodoo promises and quackery. And so at best, it was confusing. At worst, it was damaging to some athletes’ health and performance levels. Now, I will say that as a coach during this time, I was always so impressed, so impressed with the evolution of mindset and professionalism, and the ability of my coached athletes to actually truly perform. I cannot count how many times as a coach, I paused and just thought, wow, they are so much better than I was, and in fact, athletically so much smarter. They are better at self-empowerment. They have greater control and management. These are true world-class athletes. But what did that look like on the race course?
Matt Dixon 17:46
Well, over the course of these years, we experienced some wonderful athletes and performances. We got the joy of watching Chrissie Wellington, the Brownlee brothers, Jan Frodeno, the early years of Danielle Reiff, and many more legends to be. And the field started to get deeper in speed. In fact, there started to be an ever-increasing number of athletes who you could expect could realistically be competitive at this level. But also, in general, it wasn't that deep. In fact, there were too many races where when you looked at the starting list, you could almost write down the podium of the finishers. There were still many weak fields in the sport. The truth is, and there were some truths, it still wasn't a truly professional sport. There was a huge divide over what it took to be successful and a short course ITU Olympic distance athlete, and the long course athletes and half Ironman athletes. In fact, over the course of the early 2000s into the 2010s, it was close to impossible for a short course athlete focused on Olympic distance to successfully step up to long course and immediately shine. And at the same time, there was very little opportunity for a long-course athlete to ever drop down to an Olympic distance and have any sort of impact at all. I still remember the first wave of Olympic distance athletes who decided to step up and compete at the half Ironman distance race level to participate at the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Las Vegas. And the vast majority of them got simply left behind on their non-drafting bike. And those that managed to stay with the front group struggled off the course of a 90 Kilometer very hard bike ride. Their resilience simply wasn't there. Over the years they developed but the first shift in it. It just really was truly a different sport. Now my main focus was coaching Ironman and how Half Ironman athletes. And so I saw consistency weaknesses that permeated through fields at these distances. I personally had many Ironman and half Ironman distance champions who won despite having incredibly weak performance levels, well down the elite scale. And in the cutting-edge pro level, a swimmer emerging 15 or 20 minutes behind the swimming leader, but still getting onto the podium or even winning. Ultimately, the blunt truth is that that highlights what could be achieved at that level at this time. We even saw world champions who were incredibly fast runners, but they did it following a bike ride that maybe will finish 15 or 20 minutes slower than the fastest bike riders.
Matt Dixon 20:55
Now in general, over the course of this generation, throughout this time, a fast men's half marathon split following a swim bike of a half Ironman would be somewhere around an hour and 14 minutes, women - an hour and 20 to an hour and 24. That's what it took to be truly competitive. And in fact, it was jaw-dropping if you saw a male post an hour in 10 minutes an hour and 11 an hour and 12, wooh, they are a runner. Even more so when you saw a female athlete popping an hour and 17 to an hour and 18 minutes off the bike. That was fast-running at that time. Now make no mistake, these were amazing athletes with greater success. But the whole sport at that time was in a collision of a real transition emerging out of old school training methodologies and mindset that were really born out of the 1970s with the impact and the influx of new data, tools, gadgets that ended up creating this blizzard akin to the Wild West. And all of that wrapped around an enhanced appreciation of high-quality coaching and supporting experts. And so these years were certainly more professional in approach, certainly compared to when I competed. But there was a long way to go in terms of financial opportunities, athlete support, and perhaps most importantly, the connection between physiological research and understanding and applying that research to actually fostering athletic performance. In fact, if I reflect on my role as a coach when I was guiding a professional athlete, I was almost wholly responsible not just for training and road mapping, and career development. Of course, that would be my central role as a coach. But I often found myself supporting with logistical planning, trying to facilitate and support an athlete securing sponsorship, even some contract negotiations and advice around brand and social media. Sometimes even trying to source additional employment for the athletes so that the athlete can maintain their focus on their primary mission of being a world-class athlete. I cannot think of many other occupations in where there was such a stark divide between the effort and the commitment required to be a world-class, and the inspiration of the results that it actually yielded. Whereas there was just sparse financial returns that came from that effort. Maybe I can - teaching, nursing - but you get the point. You see, to be a pro over these years could mean several things.
Matt Dixon 23:56
There was of course, at the top end of the sport, some of the finest to ever grace the stage of triathlon, and they were evolving performance levels. There was a mix of very good athletes also. And they were able to compete at the highest level. But through the harsh lens of world-class sport, these athletes were still honestly really lacking in a key area or discipline. We saw drastically weaker swimmers. We saw poor bike riders relative to the rest of the field. We saw runners that were strong and resilience but not to the level of a true professional athlete, or at least what you might think of a true professional triathlete. And to cap this whole situation off as well. The professional fields were made up of too high of a percentage of athletes that were simply in honesty, nowhere near the performance level of what should truly warrant the label of professional. We had athletes participating in the pro field, but routinely finishing 30, 45, 60 minutes behind the podium, across every level, objectively, all three disciplines. We had athletes that were labeled Pro, but couldn't swim, bike, or run fast enough to be competitive. And it was seldom these athletes’ fault. Because the qualification levels were loose, relatively easy to access. And when an athlete did establish the qualification levels, so many other athletes and coaches would say, go for it. Go and race at that level, learn the ropes from the insight. But there were consequences of this approach. The first was that the athletes that tried to step up in level and were nowhere near good enough had a very rapid loss of confidence. Their love for the sport evaporated, and most of these athletes had quit within a year. But another result was there tended to be a corruption of the women's professional field, where we often had female pros that were much faster than the slower end of male pros. And those male pros got caught up in the women's race dynamics, causing confusion or race-changing impacts. And so if we pause and looked at many of the pro fields throughout this time, the typical analysis would be, and it sounds harsh but, shallow in depth. A sprinkle of potential winners at best, often arriving for an athlete with a clear core weakness in one of their main disciplines that constitute triathlon. Now, this isn't negative or insulting of these athletes, what it is, is sports. And many of these athletes were absolutely marvelous. And I've mentioned a coach, some of them and it was a joy. They were performing at the highest level of one of the toughest sports available. And they were doing so self-supporting, making happen off the back of their own work ethic and their own financial risk. These are make no mistake, simply amazing people excelling within a culture and a framework of what the sport was at the time.
Matt Dixon 27:23
But all of that is simply a backdrop to now: The Evolution. Because we are experiencing a tidal wave of the evolution of the sport. Folks, there is no hiding anymore, because I believe that the sport has changed. And many including me saw this coming. Some athletes have slept all their way through and have been caught out. But I'm going to highlight six main principles that I've observed over the change in the sport. Now, before we dig into these, I do want to make a key point of the lens that I'm viewing this from. In general, I believe that sport has a wonderful and important role in all of our lives. It is inspiring, it could provide excitement, inspiration, something for many of the up-and-comers to really aspire to and dream of competing at it showcases the value of our commitment, our focus, our teamwork, our dedication, and more. And in fact, you competing and committing to a tough challenge and embracing the journey of in sport, you will, by proxy improve your health. It's going to provide satisfaction, and also a vote of huge lessons that you can go and apply to business and life. And so the value and the rewards of sport, extend well beyond win or lose, podiums or qualifications. But what we're talking about today, we're talking about professional world-class performance. And the truth is, when we just take that sliver of the overall body and journey of athletes competing, when we really go well class, the game is different. You see, an amateur should seek to integrate sport into life so that you the amateur improves health and your life. But someone chasing world-class performance must by definition, make that pursuit, the central focus from which all other components of life orb around that pursuit. And it can be, make no mistake, brutal, but it's true. This is not a hobby. It shouldn't be a hobby. This is world-class sport, and it requires, unparalleled commitment and focus. If an athlete isn't good enough, someone is going to take their place. And that failing athlete will be quickly forgotten. And that be the truth. And so what I'm doing today is highlighting some truths. In the evolution of the world-class side of sport, we are talking about elite sport here. And in that very thin razor side of the overall sport, there have been radical shifts, some of them permeate into regular amateur sport.
Matt Dixon 30:41
And so let's go back to my words, to those pro athletes, those Purple Patch pro athletes five or six years ago. The sport is changing, get on board, or you're gonna get left behind. You could see it. There were more athletes coming in. There were better athletes, performance levels were rising across swim, and bike, and run. We started to see individuals breaking down barriers of accepted speed. And those individuals tended to be doing it across individual disciplines. Which was easy to forecast that over the following years, folks were starting to be able to put it all together and raise performance levels, individually in disciplines and put it all together. There was going to be a radical paradigm shift in performance. So let's go back and think about what we talked about 2005, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, really through until about 2015 and 16, I talked about an elite male pro running off the bike and a half Ironman that give or take somewhere around 113 to 114. A female 120 to 124 with, goodness me, 118 just being groundbreaking. So now let's think about a top male professional in half Ironman distance right now, what are they doing? Well, a top pro will emerge out of the water surrounded with many other male pros, swimming about 21 to 22 minutes in the swim, that's quite fast 1.2 miles at about give or take a minute and 10 second per 100 meters, they then are going to get onto their bike and ride their bike for 56 miles or 90 kilometers, averaging somewhere, course dependent, between 27 and 30 miles an hour, that's quite fast on the bicycle. But then they are getting off the bike and able to run a half marathon, 13.1 miles, at give or take somewhere between a 505 and 515 pace for each mile. Now the women's performances are just as impressive. They are going fast. And as you can tell, when you start to see this performance level, there is very little room to be competitive for any sign of weakness. So the question is what's caused this paradigm shift? And the answer is it's not one thing. And I believe that things are only going to accelerate over the coming year. So let's go through one at a the time.
Matt Dixon 33:36
The first I'm going to start with is what we might label science getting applied. Gone are the days where exercise physiologists and different performance scientists are simply hiding in laboratories, performing theoretical research that ultimately was really challenging and tough to actually apply to coaching and athletes. In fact, we have seen over the last five to 10 years, a wonderful marrying of coaching, experimentation, research, and applied research on the fly, or with a collaboration to accelerate learning of what truly works, and perhaps most importantly, what doesn't work. There has been a radical increasing in the understanding of what it takes to achieve performance improvements. But aided with that there has been a development of some filtering of so much of the noise out there. Less of an opportunity from the bro science and quackery and quick fix merchants to have any real voice to interrupt performance evolution. For so often there was a real divide, just a practical divide between academia and coaching practice, or at least the inability to connect the dots and make best-in-class understanding, easily applicable by coaches and athletes, and it's changed. There's been an increase in information sharing. There's been greater collaboration. Coaches are less isolated now and tend to have much better resources even if some of the resources are coming through. Yes, that dreaded social media.
Matt Dixon 35:24
As some of the best examples of this are some of the training setups that we start to see now, more team-focused. Now, a great example of this is the well-known Norwegian athletes, Gustav Iden, Kristian Blummenfelt, but also coaches who have crossed between professional cycling, a classic team setup environment, and into triathlon. A great example of that multiple World Champion producing coach Dan Lorang. This is a collision of applied science and coaching methodology. And this improvement in understanding and access to this knowledge is assisting athletes to train smarter, but with a more holistic and sensible approach to training methodology, how to actually effectively leverage data, how to utilize and build appropriate approaches to recovery, and so much more. And so it's no wonder that out of that, we start to see general performance levels starting to rise. And that's a really good thing.
Matt Dixon 36:32
A second component that we start to experience, for the first time is what we can label triathlon as a first sport. We've cast our eyes back and thought a little bit about the history of the sport, and the structure of the sport previously. But most of the wonderful history of some of the legends of the sport, the pages of the history have been mostly written by folks who were competing at the very top level of triathlon, following elite competition. In a prior sport, some of the world's best started in swimming, rowing, runners, all related, but they didn't grow up a triathlete. It was more of a reincarnation, something to progress to. But now, in the last few years, we genuinely are starting to see athletes that grew up as triathletes. It was their first real elite experience. And with this, we started to see the average age of world-class being dramatically reduced. Whereas typically, the elite long course athlete would be 32, 35, 38 years of age, instead we started to see athletes competing at the world-class level 20, 22, 24 years of age. And this has allowed, enabled, and in fact, and forced elite athletes to be more balanced across three disciplines because they've had true professional development as triathletes. And that becomes a really important component. And so we have the application of science we have true triathletes from the ground out being developed. But number three, there's been a shift in mindset. Now, this happens across sport. But we have to acknowledge that this is in part what has happened here as well.
Matt Dixon 38:33
Number three is a perception shift in what's possible. Sport always evolves. Performance Levels are often driven by individuals who break through to new levels, and then the competition gradually raises their own level. And suddenly, everyone's better. Tiger Woods in golf was a great example. They were paradigm-shifting athletes, and then everyone's level started to rise, and it takes time. The interesting part about triathlon is its comprised of three disciplines: swim, bike, and run.
Matt Dixon 39:10
And in prior times, it's been anchored in preset belief of what performance levels could truly be achieved. There have been historically wonderful bike riders. But often, these great riders struggle to run really well. And there have been some amazing run performances. But quite often, they've been coming off of the back of weaker bike rides. Finally, individual performance races in disciplines started to occur. We saw breakthrough female athletes running one hour and 15 minutes and a half marathon off the bike. But now it started to elevate to performance level raises across all three disciplines. And what that means is there is simply no place for being a weak bike rider. You cannot excel without being a great runner. And you also have to ultimately swim at or very, very close to the world-class level in swimming. It's a prerequisite now. expectations just started to rise. And the barometer across the pro field of what is good has shifted. And of course, when perceptions and expectations change, performance levels rise behind it. If I think about myself, I could scrape by as respectable. As I was a top-level summer, I was a very strong rat rider. And then I ran like a donkey dipped in cement. When in today's world, I would be scraping by with the female pros and losing at that. It is simply a different sport. So we have three components here. Of course, it goes well beyond mindset and expectations to really facilitate a paradigm shift in sport.
Matt Dixon 41:10
Well, there is a huge one. And that's nutrition of fueling. This has been the driver of great performance gains, particularly as we extend to long course racing. When I was an elite athlete, nutrition science was in honesty, misunderstood and often led to a loose structure of a somewhat random approach to many athletes. We understood that fueling and hydration was important. But we didn't know enough to truly nail best performance return. Add to this, I reflect on the early years of my own coaching of professional athletes, where we saw the majority of athletes, nutrition scientists, and coaches myself included, trying to actually minimize caloric replenishment. It was all about going under the radar, just consume enough fuel. And the mission behind that was to try and allow performance, but also limit gastric distress. I remember recommending athletes aim to fly under that radar, try and take in the minimal possible. We want to fuel you it's important, but we want to keep your stomach clear. Now, at the same time, research was backing us up. peer-reviewed research stated that is impossible, that there was no way that more than 60 grams of carbohydrate could be consumed by an endurance athlete absorbed and utilized. And so if research was driving this and coaching was driving this, and there was a lack of understanding, we then had on top of that athletes trying all sorts of combinations of electrolytes, hydration, and fueling approaches. So of course, the outcome of that was a high frequency of low sugar crashes or what you might call bonking. And at the same time, it was really prevalent to see athletes going through huge bloating and gastric distress. It was always labeled the fourth discipline because it was such a struggle for so many athletes. Now, this is a wonderful example of on the field, applied coaching. And that driving the science in many ways, because before we knew it, under athlete and coach experimentation, something became clear.
Matt Dixon 43:41
And that was that it actually is possible to train the gut to absorb more calories. And on top of that, we started to understand the athletic performance would actually rise and benefit from consuming more calories every single hour. They started to drive up the ceiling of how many calories an athlete could actually absorb. And we started to see that when they could absorb more their performance levels rose. And so now, rather than - oh, there is a glass ceiling of 60 grams of carbohydrate - it is very common to see elite athletes consuming 90 100 up to 120 grams of carbohydrate an hour, double the caloric replenishment, and on top of it, benefiting considerably from doing so. Research is now validating and in many ways, catching up to this. And this has proved to be a genuine and serious performance paradigm shift, particularly in long course racing, those that are benefiting from it, they're bonking less and experiencing less gastric distress. Now even if I bring this all back to myself, which I know it's not about me, I recently did the Haute Route, that seven-day riding challenge. And I had a weirdly magical shift in my fueling experience because I had gone through my whole athletic life having to navigate some gastric distress or having some sugar crashes. And by adopting this approach and training my gut, just having it be a nonfactor stable energy whenever I needed it. Of course, on top of it all, it certainly improved my capacity to recover. And that has a huge imprint on the effectiveness of an athlete's training, and therefore, dovetails to better racing performance.
Matt Dixon 45:45
Let's talk about equipment. Number five, there's two more to go. But this one's pretty simple, a radical improvement in equipment levels, and how to optimize that equipment. I think there's two components to this. The first is the great investment in design and engineering that we've experienced across bikes and all of the related equipment. And that's allowed huge return in speed, with evolve, geometry, equipment design, and more. But there's also been an understanding shift on the best bike position, and the equipment surrounding it to leverage speed return. An addition to this component, such as the racing suits are improved. They're more comfortable, they're faster, they've got special fabrics, they're more efficient at cooling and dissipating heat. And of course, running shoes evolved. And the appreciation that minimalist shoes, the old racing flats are probably not the fastest option when you start to apply a racing flat over the course of long-distance racing. And so now we have light and fast, but also cushioned, and that enables greater run performance. There is so much that we could go into equipment evolution, but it's suffice to say that gimmicks are less dominant now. There's a smarter filter going on. And the access to all of this equipment is much more democratic.
Matt Dixon 47:16
The final component that we want to dig into, let's just pause and take a deep breath. We've got equipment, we've got nutrition perceptions have shifted. There's a great transition of applied science that goes in. But the final component that I want to talk about is something that many people haven't really realized, and that's the fabric of the structure of the sport. I think this is important, because I think this is the one that could have a seismic imprint on professional triathlon over the course of the coming three to five years, and what it means and takes to be a successful Pro.
Matt Dixon 47:55
In the last couple of years, we've seen a radical shift in the opportunity for pros, they have more opportunity to receive financial reward for their efforts. Now we still have right at the center of the sport, the Hawaii Ironman World Championships, the Ironman 70.3 World Championships, and those are still pillars and backbones of the sport. But the professional triathletes organization, commonly known as the PTO has emerged in a key player for supporting athlete interests and providing serious earning opportunities. And, of course, the potential to drive the sport professional triathlon into a different commercial level. The ultimate success of the PTO, and that quest, well, that's to be determined. But the one thing I will say is they do have serious momentum. And in addition on their team, they have some serious experts, and they have created momentum in the midst of a pandemic, a very challenging environment. And so, with any organization, there has been some growing pains, there have been some missteps. But where they sit right now is a great platform and an opportunity. But the thing that's emerged out of the PTO, that I think is important, not just for commercial interests of the sport, and the opportunity to actually yield financial returns for the world's best triathletes.
Matt Dixon 49:28
But the race formats and the structure has elevated the required range of participating pros. And I predict that this is only going to accelerate over the next three, four, or five years. What it means to be a serious professional triathlete is going to change. I think that we will hear much less of or I'm a long course athlete or I'm a short course athlete, and instead, there is just going to be an elevation of performance level. There is no doubt that to be at the top end of the sport, and actually creating real earning opportunity, an athlete can have no weakness. But in addition to this, athletes are going to need to have range, they must be able to be fast over two hours, and fast over many hours of racing. And we have some great example of athletes that are leading the way here, Gustav Iden, Lucy Charles (-Barclay), Kristian Blummenfelt, these are the archetypes of what the next generation of serious professional triathletes are going to be based around. They're going to be fast, and they can go long, and they will have no weakness. And what will happen here is that that classic archetype of a long course racer, the big diesel engine, I'm quite fast, but I can sure go long. Those athletes, it is the blunt truth of world-class sport, they will be left behind. It's inevitable. We are going to start to see a filtering of truly world-class sport. And in many ways, it's cruel.
Matt Dixon 51:22
But instead of complaining about shorter formats, the true world-class are going to develop the required capacity to have range of speed, they're going to be ready to be highly competitive at the Hawaii Ironman World Championship but also perform at the very highest levels across all three disciplines in Ironman 70.3 and 100 Kilometer type distance. We are going to see a true blending of the professional athlete. Now, I'm not sure about the Olympic distance, that might still have its own personality. But I tell you what, we are going to see very, very fast athletes across all three disciplines and there is going to be very little wiggle room for anyone else to shine. This all adds up pros that are listening. The train is leaving the station. It is time to radically rethink what world-class performances. And I encourage you to shape your expectations and performance level around what is coming rather than even what is now. And that is the beauty of sport.
Matt Dixon 52:33
Now we're going to see this all on show in a couple of weeks. We're going to see the return of the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. Thursday, October the sixth is the professional women's race, and Saturday, October the eighth is the professional men's race. This is the first time that we're going to see a world championships on the Big Island since 2019. And it promises to be an incredible race. In both fields, there are a slew of athletes that could have a huge impact on the overall race. There is going to be a group of very fast swimmers coming out of the water. We will witness a large amount of cyclists showcasing new levels, I believe, of riding performance. And it's anyone's guess if we're going to see a whole new running performance level in the run. The caveat of that race is its Kona, the Hawaii Ironman - unique in its challenges, and predictable. In fact, at the same time, we are going to see many athletes buckle under the emotional and physical pressure that this particular race brings. It is won on the run, but it can be lost in so many areas. So the truth is with Hawaii, it's not always the best athlete in the world that wins the World Championships. It's the best athlete who can manage the challenges that Kona brings on that day. But make no mistake, we are experiencing firsthand a sport that is radically improving. And over that first weekend in October, we might just don't expect to experience something different on the Big Island. But whatever happens, if we fast forward five years, I predict that there is going to be a shift of what it will mean to be a professional triathlete. And it is going to be very different than what it means up till now. A whole new level of staggering performance. Athletes with a huge range of speed from short course racing up to the longer Ironman distance, and few of the best athletes in the world having any clear identifiable weakness across disciplines. And hopefully, to back it all. I hope we see a huge shift on how these athletes are supported and compensated. There are going to be no hobby in the pros of the future. We are experiencing the true professionalization of world-class level of sport. It's happening. And in fact, it's already begun. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
Matt Dixon 55:08
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.
Matt Dixon 55:52
Simply email us at info at 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, sport, coaching, performance, triathlon, race, disciplines, professional, ironman, world, approach, competing, professional athletes, fast, professional triathlete, professional sport, training, world class performance, simply, support