#16 Why Triathletes Keep Breaking Themselves on the Run

In this episode of Cartel Coaching, Emz and Tim dig into one of the biggest challenges for endurance athletes: running injuries, how they happen, and how to return to running the right way. They break down why running tends to break people down faster than swimming or cycling, how strength work and biomechanics help, and why recovery, patience, and consistency matter more than chasing pace or round numbers.

What we covered

• Why triathletes often get injured when they focus too much on mileage or speed
• The role of gym work, strength, and plyometrics in better running performance
• How life stress, underfueling, poor sleep, and load stacking can increase injury risk
• Why running injuries often creep up slowly instead of appearing all at once
• The importance of adapting to training load before increasing it again
• Why Strava, watches, and “rounding up” sessions can encourage poor training habits
• How to use surface choice, shoe rotation, and pacing more intelligently
• When to keep running through a niggle and when to stop immediately
• How to return to running after injury with a walk-run protocol
• Why hopping, single-leg strength, and basic movement tests matter before running again
• How to approach race decisions when the A-race goal and current fitness don’t match

Key takeaways

• Running is a one-legged, high-impact sport, so small mistakes show up quickly.
• The body needs time to learn, adapt, and accept training load.
• More intensity, more volume, and more fatigue at the same time is a recipe for breakdown.
• Not every session needs to be “perfect” on the watch.
• If pain changes your biomechanics, stops improving, or lingers, it’s time to get assessed.
• Returning after injury should be gradual, structured, and guided by strength and control.

Practical advice from the episode

• Back off early when a niggle appears rather than pushing through for weeks
• Use a simple traffic-light system to decide whether to run, rest, or seek help
• Rebuild with walk-run progressions and strength work before resuming normal running
• Keep the long-term goal in mind and protect bigger race plans by being patient now

Notable moment

Tim and Emz also discuss the mental side of racing and training — especially how hard it is to step back from a goal when motivation is high. Their athlete scenarios show how good coaching sometimes means holding athletes back so they can succeed later.

Who this episode is for

This episode is for triathletes, runners, and endurance athletes who:

• keep getting injured
• struggle to manage training load
• are coming back from a break or injury
• want to run better without breaking down
• need a smarter approach to race prep and recovery

About Cartel Coaching

Cartel Coaching shares practical, honest advice for endurance athletes who want to train smarter, stay healthy, and keep progressing.

Come find us Cartel Coaching — Swim. Bike. Run. Together.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:16

Team, welcome to Cartel Coaching. I'm Callum Millwood. I'm an ex-professional triathlete and a three times Iron Man 70.3 champion. And now I'm getting a proper reintroduction into the sport of triathlon as an age grouper. I spent a number of years at the pointy end of the sport, and now I've got a business, a life, a family, and the same 24 hours as everyone else who's trying to figure out how to be competitive again. And I tell you what, it is super humbling and it's interesting. What I bring to the table is the elite side of things. I'm living the age group reality right now. Not going to pretend that they're the same thing. With me every episode is Tim Brazier, who coaches everyone from first timers to Olympians, and M, our resident age grouper, who is keeping us honest. This is Cartel Coaching, and let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Welcome back to Cartel Coaching. So today you've got Tim and myself. Cal is off having a well-deserved break and a little holiday with his fam. So it looks super lovely. But we've got a we've got a hot topic today. And I think it's one that will resonate with lots of people. It definitely resonates with our community in cartel coaching. We've just had our little chat with our team to talk about all things running and running injuries. This one's particularly good for me because I am one of those classic triathletes. I'm the classic triathlete that does what they can to try and get their running under control, but gets to a certain point and then just somehow just continues to break themselves. So, Tim, let's let's dive into running injuries. But before we do, how how's your injury going?

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Because you're gonna not bring that up, actually.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

You're the man down at the moment.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I'm in a moon boot, unfortunately. Um I wasn't even out running. I was out walking the dog and jumped forward and to see where the dog had gone and landed on a curb and went down and fractured my fifth metatarsal. So if you don't know what a fifth metatarsal is, it's you can go track back from your toe, um, your little toe, and come back about halfway down your foot, and that's a nice clean fracture I put on my foot there. So I'm lucky enough to not need surgery, so I'm just stuck in a moon boot watching the bluebird snowy days go by. Play me a give my little violin out and uh coping with that for now. But I'm halfway through, three weeks in. Yeah, it's good. Um yeah, it's not bad. And uh three weeks to go in theory, before I can really start moving on it and rehabbing it, as I said to you on uh our call earlier, the atrophy already on my calf has been pretty significant. So gonna have a good rehab phase that I'm gonna have to work my way through before I'm taking on too much running.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Yeah, that's uh that's wild that it happens so quickly just in that about three weeks. But also I'm really keen to to watch along to see you put your your money where your mouth is, too.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Yeah, well, I need to. Yeah, and I'll be employing a physio to look after me and walk me through it and I can have to have some pretty good contact in that space and walk through what really needs to be done and we'll try to capture some of that and share that as well because it's you know it's one thing to get back running, um, but it's another thing to get back running to the volume you might want to run, or to not cause yourself some other injuries and you know that's what a lot of people have experienced before, right, is that I could go back and run, but it's gonna be so unbalanced and things aren't gonna be firing properly or working well, then something else is just gonna pop up as soon as I start to push the load up. So really got to just look after it from day one and start a really good process.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

It is the common trap, right? Like you've you come back off an injury and you were doing really well. Like I even think about it for myself and look at, you know, I've I've just come back from a calf injury too, and I felt like I was starting to make all this really good progress. And then then we were we weren't back at square one, I would say, but we were I was back in 30-minute jail, I think for for a bit, right?

SPEAKER_03 4:29

Yeah, you do get to there. Yeah, you were. And uh I mean it's just a bit of reality of it, isn't it, unfortunately. Um but also I think what it did allow us to do is probably something that um it happened at the start, is just get a bit more of a follow-up by mechanical assessment and really understand where the weaknesses were. You know, what are the what are the fine foundational issues you haven't been addressing um from day dot, really, um, and how do we change those? And we'd started to address some with the gym work we were doing, um, but it was a probably a combination of load, gym, run load, and life load that caused the issue, right? And I think it's a really hard one for a lot of people because we use exercise to escape life stress.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 5:17

Um, that it's hard to park the exercise when a lot of that's going on, and often that layers of life stress as well as the final nail and the calf.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah, that that spot on. I think the life stress is one of the biggest factors. And I think, yeah, for me, you I I think, yeah, you're you're totally right. It's it's it's like the walls feel like they're closing in around you when that one outlet that you had is suddenly being taken away. And I even think that's probably part of the trap that we fall into is that you can because there's warning signs, right? Like you can kind it's not like it's not often that it it comes completely out of nowhere, like shock, horror. We're we're all no one's no one here is stupid. We all can sort of see what's what's happening, but you want to keep it going so bad that you you try to sort of blink it, you know, you put your blinkers on. Like I I remember with my calf injury, I you know, I was I was fatigued, I could feel that my running was changing a little bit, I could see some variations in you know my heart rate and my pace and and even just how I was running um before the injury happened, you know, before I was even hurt, like I there were things that I was picking up on, but I just just couldn't let it go. Um so I guess Tim, what why is it that the run is where it all breaks down? It feels like we could just cycle and swim forever. What's what's the difference with the running?

SPEAKER_03 6:43

Yeah, well, I guess that you know sometimes the cycling and swimming forever, you know, you feel that way. Cycling and swimming has a process which is longer. It's a bit of a longer burn. If you've people picked up a shoulder niggle, often it comes up further down the track than a running niggle will come up because you're running, you're carrying your own weight, and you've got the impact. Um, and that's the biggest difference. Swimming is supported by the border, biking is supported by the bike, it's not weight-bearing. You can get away for a lot longer. Where running has a frustratingly innate ability to sneak up a lot faster, um, which is the issue. And so, you know, we really have to think about how it stacks quietly in behind, and sometimes we we don't really feel it until it's too late, um, or we're just whispering to ourselves, ignoring the signs of it, um, and and not thinking about really what's important and what we need to be doing now to help us run tomorrow. Um and the thing with running is every stride is a force your bones, tendons, your muscles have to absorb, um, and they've got to be able to recover from, they've got to be able to bounce back. Um, and I think what happens over time is if we're not allowing them to bounce back enough, they just keep stacking up, right? And it gets to this breaking point. Um, so the recovery becomes such an important element of that and how you space your running out and allow those muscles, tends, etc., to bounce back and recover. And it's going to take time for that. And we were talking about today on our call about there's nearly three stages. It's like there's a learning stage. So you do a session, you sort of learn about it, or you're running a running volume, your body's learning. What is it like to tolerate this running volume? And then it starts to adapt to that running volume. It's like, cool, I think I can handle this now. This is really, really good. And then you get to a place where you it's accepting it. It's like, okay, I can do 30k a week, and that's really, really good. But often the trend that we see is cool, I've just run 10k a week of length to do that. Now I'm going to do 18k, now I'm going to do 30k, now I'm going to do 38k. And people don't go through the other two stages, they don't let the body adapt to the load they're working at, and they don't sort of get to the position where they're accepting the load that they're working at. Um they spiral forward too quickly and don't let the body adapt. And it it is the muscles, the tendons, the bones, all those. And then when you layer on that, the constant fueling issues we see in the sport, that's not body recovering very well either. You know, lack of sleep, stress from life, um, that all impacts recovery. And that what's going to happen there is it's going to extend out your timeline of what you can actually manage and what you can actually increase. So we have this 10% sort of rule around increasing volume. And whilst that's, you know, a nice rule, it's just sort of a handrail, really. It's helping you get there, it's not a law. And if you've got all this other stuff going on and you're not recovering properly, then the 10%'s probably not even a thing. It's probably 0%. You're you're trying to maintain what you can actually do without breaking yourself. Um and that's the next important part of it is have I truly adapted and accepted this load? Am I truly able to advance forward and be in a position where I'm going to be able to recover from that new stimulus? Um and I think that's a the next part of it, right? Is what are those stimuluses? Are they changes in pace or are they changes in volume? Um and or is it changing overall training load from swimming and biking too? The impact of that. And that's one of the next flaws we see is people then start to change pace and volume within the same week. The easy runs become faster, the hard runs are just outright too hard. And then they put their volume up too. Um and then we get another implosion and it it becomes another issue.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Hmm. Well, yeah, you've just started to work back in a little bit of quality. So it's taken me a while, but but I've got a few quality sessions popping back into my program. And I it was really interesting to see it, you know, the the amount of variation and that you you'd put some walking in there, that it wasn't just we're not just gonna go balls to the wall here. We're gonna do small, small, controlled, you know, bursts of intensity with the sort of in in session recovery. Um and it was it was super controlled, and I don't think I've ever actually run fast in a controlled way like that before. It was it was interesting, Tim. I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Well what was well, I think what's interesting too is that you haven't done a lot of quality, but you've stepped into those phases and handle it fine.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

Um and that's because you've got a bit more of a foundation now. You know, you've accepted and adapted to load stimulus, we've advanced the run load forge, you've accepted and adapted that run load. We've got way better at being in the gym all the time.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

You know, becoming a bit of a gym buff. And yeah. Have you in constant Lululemon in no time? Oh God. And uh, you know, and that's all just created this foundation which we're able to now just step forward, okay. What is that next step? Can we handle that? What does that look like? And then move forward again. Um and part of that's just removing the ego, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:25

Yep. It's getting your head out of your own way.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Um I think Strava plays a big role in that though.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

Oh, hate Strava.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Yeah, hate you hate watches, you hate Strava.

unknown 12:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Uh anything like that, like, you know, and I and I I find myself, I do I don't like Instagram, but I'll find myself on it because it's on my phone, it's there because I need to use it. Um but it encourages poor behaviors, right? And this is what watches Strava tracking devices can do. It can encourage poor behaviors, and you've got to be really disciplined on yourself to discourage that poor behaviour. Um, because of the way that our psychologies work, it just draws you in. You know, we we talked about this in our call as well. Like, why are we rounding up sessions? Why do we have to round up to five miles? Why do we have to round up to 50 minutes? Why do we have to round up to make it a hundred K week? Like, oh it's a cool goal, but you're hitting ninety. Why do you need to run the extra 10k? Like what does it what does it really mean? Um to who? As well? Like, and Strava starts to make it mean something to someone else. Well you think it means something to someone else's but they probably don't care. Let's be honest. But it's really interesting, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

It is, and I'm I'm one of those people. I can't stop rounding things up. And I'm and I I know you've caught me as well as the person who stops the watch at the traffic lights. You know, why are you doing that? I I don't know why I do it, and I don't do it for like something on Strava. It's almost like I feel wonky if the um the number isn't just a nice round number, but I'm gonna make it my goal actually. I'm gonna try and just overcome that, and I'm just gonna stop my watch exactly when this the sessions end, and I'm not even gonna look at what the number is.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

That's my that's my goal for the and I'll explain that explain that on a little bit more, and I even find it around drills a little bit too. Like you're still doing work. You might be staying at the s uh the traffic lights for all of thirty seconds or a minute, but your heart rate's probably still in zone one. You know, it's it's probably sitting at the top of zone one, it's come down from the top of zone two, it's sitting in zone one, you're still capturing stress, still stress happening on the body. Um but we park it because our average pace is gonna drop from five minutes twenty to five minutes twenty-five, and it's the end of the world. I can tell you right now it's not gonna be into the world, um, and it really doesn't matter because it's not gonna change the outcome of your race. So what is I think we need to get our heads around what is real noise and what's really important. Like what what generally matters when we go out and exercise, what really makes a difference to either our health and well being and therefore our longevity, um, be it life or sport, and then our performance as well. What are the things that really make an impact? And you know, just changing your watch and trying to chase five seconds per K is not going to be one of them. Um that is for sure. Um it's it's not the most important part of it. Um, you know, our consistency of what we do, balancing our load across life, across disciplines, across intensities is really, really important. Um being gradual in our approach is really really important. Um you know, those are all things that we should worry about, but I think we go down these rabbit holes, right, and worry about other aspects. If we think about that as well, like just talked about what's really important points. Well, when when we're talking about running, you know, what do we not need to worry about? Yeah, what are some of those things that aren't worth attention and that is Strava that you see online that thinks it's a shortcut. There's no shortcuts to running, unfortunately. Um the newest carbon shoe might be a shortcut in speed, but it's not a shortcut to actually affecting your calf and lower um lower leg niggles or helping you um feel your calves feel better because what we are seeing is people wearing carbon shoes more or finding stress fractures further up the chain in their femurs or hips. Um and we and we don't need to chase pace all the time, it's all noise. But some other things that are worth attention that we do need to think about in running is that rotating your shoes is really important, and that shoes that do suit you and that aren't dead, you know, haven't had the end-of-life crisis, um, is really important. Um sleep and life stress is really important to manage. And then the other thing when we're thinking about running is really thinking about the surfaces we're running on. Um so you know, are we running on hard surfaces all the time? What does that mean? If we're getting bigger volumes, how do we find softer surfaces? Um, how do we get off concrete onto ash felt off ash felt onto gravel trails? Um and you know, and then thinking actually is the surface too soft if we're on sand, what's the impact of that going to be on our ankles and even our biomechanics too?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

So what's your take on um on doing some trail running, Tim? Because I often am on the fence because I think, oh god, I don't want to ankle sprain. But do you th do you think there's some merit there?

SPEAKER_03 17:59

Based on my current foot, I'd I'd uh be scared to do it, but to be honest, I'd be saying that I think uh trail running is a big bonus and often the the reason people are getting issues is because they're running too fast and fatiguing themselves on trails. And you know, then they um and that's what happened for one of my injuries a few years ago. I kicked a rock and and broke a toe, and it was just second big run in a few days. It was really fatigued. Um I was feeling pretty good within myself, but legs were actually pretty fatigued. And it caused an issue and just not aware, your proprioception's not ready to go, you're not ready to fire. Um so it's it's really important, especially when you're getting new to trail running, that you're you're building your way into it. Um and that you're finding good surfaces that there's gonna be any trip hazards on the start with, they're gonna be smooth and easy. And some of those cycle paths are fantastic for that. Um railway lines and that sort of thing, they're they're amazing. Um but yeah, real technical trails, probably something you want to build into quite slowly.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Yeah, I have a little spot that turns into a trail as I'm coming home on my new running route. And I just always choose to walk it. I'm like, I I don't think this is a good idea for me. Um head of Iron Man. I would prefer to not have the rolled ankle. But um, but I do think I am gonna integrate some um, yeah, some trails uh that are more like fire trails and and so you I get the benefit of the softer surface and um less trick hazards, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

Totally, yeah, it's a great option. I think it's really important to um to look at that surface, right? Understand it. Um and don't be also don't be afraid to turn around. It's not right. Um just because you're committed to it doesn't mean you have to do it. Um it's important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

And now what about when when do we know? So we talk about stopping and turning around, that's good advice on the trail. But what about when we're feeling something, Tim? So it's sometimes I think when you're an endurance athlete and you're training for big things, you're gonna feel stuff. So, you know, you're gonna you're gonna have little little things pop up, something might hurt. You know, we we do a lot of training. I think one of the challenges you have is to know, well, can't should I run through this or should I stop? What what's your take there? Like where when when do we stop and when when do you think it's okay to keep going?

SPEAKER_03 20:35

Yeah, I think you've got to look and this is like if we're talking about a traffic light system, so green being it's a niggle. Okay, and often we can work through niggles, but you've got to make sure if it is a niggle that it eases as you warm up. You're not limping, you've got no gate change, and also it can settle the same day. And what often our process there is we're reducing the load, we don't have to fully stop running. We might take a few more days in between each run. Um, so that's where we can so we can back off. Um if it's a warning sign for an orange light, is we need to stop this run, as if saying it's changing how you're moving, so changing your biomechanics. If you've got sharp or pinpoint pain, and it's worse during or after the run. So we need to end that session completely and walk home, get picked up, and reassess for tomorrow and reassess the next day, and make sure that pain's going away. And then you might do another little test run to see if the same things happen or if it becomes more of a niggle issue. Um, the go see someone is it's probably or very likely an injury. And in that case, it's lingering for days. There's bone point tenderness, um, you get night pain, or you can have some morning stiffness with an Achilles issue. Um, make sure you get that properly assessed. So if it's not improving, you need again to a CFISIO, especially after two days, um, it should be. Be getting on the right track. So get in, see a doctor, sports doc, or a physio, and shut down your running and deal with it then and there. And you often find with quite a few cases, if you can shut down your running for a few days when you're starting to feel that initial issue, especially that initial pinpoint tenderness or something that's just hanging around a bit longer than a niggle, you find that in three to four days it's probably gone away and you're going to be okay. But I think a lot of us will still push through that level of pain and discomfort. And then you'll be really trashed and you're going to lose three, four, six weeks rather than just losing three, four, five days.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

So then once you are injured though, and and you've got to come back, you know, how how do I I think that's one of the challenges, right? Is that you've you've started, you were at a point, and then you've you've busted it up, and then you've got to come back a lot slower, and that's how I felt in my 30-minute jail. So what are some of the ways that people can sort of gradually get back into their running, um, coming back off injury? What what do you suggest?

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Like, I mean, first and foremost, you should be able to hop without pain. You know, if you can hop without pain, you're probably starting to be in a good place where you can go out and start a walk-run protocol. Um, real basic walk-run protocol is two of each, and you might start with a one minute w-run, four-minute walk, do that for thirty minutes in total. You might do that twice if that goes well, then you go to two minutes and three minutes walk. So two minute run, three-minute walk. Do that twice if that's gone well, then you step forward again to three minutes and you work your way up till you get to four minutes run, one minute walk for 30 minutes, and then you might go next time 15-minute jog. And it's a real gentle process, but that'll only take you two or so weeks to get through that if you're doing that every second day with a day off in between. A real safe, easy approach. You're doing 30 minutes work every second day, that's great. You're improving your fitness, you get everything back to usual, and and you're on track. If it's something a little bit more significant, so we're thinking about me with my foot of all this calf atrophy happening, need a little bit of a strength for a pro-perception, getting back in the gym as soon as you can and starting to work on your pro-perception, your isometric strength, it's gonna be a really, really good starting point. And then slowly building your way up under the guidance of a physio to some sort of basic polimetric work on that foot is the most important part and getting yourself to that point where you can hop pain-free and then transition into your walk-run cycle from there. Um and you really need to be guided by a physio around any significant injuries. Um But always again come back to the principles. You get you're gonna learn, okay? Learn something about yourself. Can I cope with this? Is this like okay? Then let yourself adapt to it, and then let yourself accept it, and then you can move on. Yeah. Um but make sure make sure you learn, you're listening to yourself and you're doing sensible things to start with.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Yeah, I love I love the hop test. I love that I stand there doing the hop test, totally not being able to hop properly on a leg, but then convincing myself that that's good enough to run. It's like, oh yeah, I can hop once and then just stop. Yeah, I'm good. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

No.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

She's not good, folks.

SPEAKER_03 25:28

Um and I think there's a you know, we've got to remember running is a one-legged exercise. At any point, you're not gonna have two feet on the ground. So to think for a lot of people, like, can you actually hop a few times? Can you stand on one leg? You know, and not fall over. Um So really important simple things, but really important to actually guide being ready to run.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah, and it's amazing the difference that the strength work has been doing for me. I was even noticing it this morning, um, yeah, I just I I was a like I can I can basically do a pistol squat now, which is something I could never do before. Like, not even close, like no, no chance. Like I've just got much better single leg strength now. And fingers crossed, it's gonna get us to Iron Man Tim. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

But before Iron Man, we actually have a different event, and I I thought it'd be fun to act to do a bit of a case study. It probably is our last last part of the running. You've got three athletes who are running in Sydney Marathon in a couple of weeks. Um we'll go athlete A. I'm gonna out myself as Athlete B. So Athlete A has been just focusing on her marathon, and she's been extremely diligent. She's done a great job. She hasn't gotten distracted by lots of other shiny events and things happening. Um, athlete B is me. I'll out myself. I got an injury early on in the marathon build and had to sort of take a big step back and have now um fully sort of committed to my Iron Man uh programming, and I've also now entered a 70.3 in a couple of weeks. And then we have Athlete C, who is actually doing, yeah, I'm nailing it. I'm such a good athlete to have, aren't I, Tim? You love it. Um we've got Athlete C, who's actually doing a great job. So um Athlete C's goals is also an Iron Man, also has a 70.3 coming up, hasn't had any running issues, but has been really sort of steadily increasing, but probably hasn't done the in enough to be primed for um for the marathon. So Tim, we're all your athletes, so so talk us through the scenario and talk us through how you how you sort of manage that with each.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

Yeah, well you've outlined them all, and if we work back, I mean athlete A is really easy, right? Um they can go for goal, we've just got to create a really good race plan and really good um fueling plan and just execute well on the day and make sure we've practiced that. And we're in a position where we can practice that. We we can invest time in some of the other little bits and pieces which are gonna make a big effect come race day, which is fantastic. Um we take Athlete B, this girl called Emma, she's done a great job, you know, coming back from the calf injury, has positioned herself really, really well, but also needs to be able to protect where she needs to be. And where we need to be is running a lot better volumes consistently and and be a place that we're prepared to run a marathon off a bike, which is really different. Now the risk of running a marathon very soon off a capped running load is that we're gonna risk being in a position to run a marathon off the bike because we could create more issues um and stop that progress. Um so we're really gonna try and hold you back um and just accept the position that we're in, and accept we've had to go back and nail off some more basics that we maybe didn't think we'd have to initially, and look at what strategies we can put in place to have a learning experience in Sydney. So, you know, we're gonna go there, we might run up to a half marathon if we're going well, uh things are going nicely, um, but we're gonna practice some fueling, you know, we're gonna cap ourselves with pacing, we're gonna practice being patient, aren't we, Em? Um we're gonna pr you know, maintain um some common sense and apply it so that we protect the A race um in doing so. And and I think this applies now to Athlete C, who's been doing a great job, but probably at this stage isn't ready to do the whole marathon, and the impact could be the same. Um and it's just a reality of where their training has been and where they're at. Um and it's the the I the sorry the marathon run is now gonna be a half marathon because they're fit enough to run that really well. They can learn a lot about themselves by doing that. Um they can have a great training day out, and we can find some we can have some wins, we can find out more information, um, and we're gonna get some success out of it. Um and that's a really nice place for them to be, but we're trying to hold them back because they're protecting their bigger gold again. You know, the A race is the Iron Man. Um and we want them to be in a position they can do really, really well there. Um but it's hard for all of you because the thing is we put these races on the calendar and we're motivated by them and we want to draw a line in the sand and say that we you know we're we're doing this and that's gonna drive our training. And so pulling out of them or changing the plan is really hard. Um and it's it's a tough thing for most triathletes because they're all quite motivated people. Um which is a fantastic place to work, right, with all these motivated people, but it does create some challenges which sometimes requires a psychological hat.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

It sure does.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

I'm actually quite happy that I'm gonna DNF it though. So I'm I'm it means that I get to watch Athlete A cross the finish line and um and I think that's that's gonna be really fun. And um, yes, um I I actually think it's kind of a blessing.

SPEAKER_03 31:35

So you're gonna have to pull out of the appropriate point though that's gonna allow you to get to the finish line in time.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Well, yeah, I've already mapped it, Tim. So I've I um I got I actually did it through AI. I was like, show me where I should drop out, which would get me to the right spots where I could still cheer on athlete A and get back to the finish line in time. And so I think I've got it nailed. I've got a good it's my race strategy, and it means that I'm gonna get on a line bike and I'll be biking. So it's almost like a backwards draft one for me. I'll trickle this whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

There we go.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Well, that's a wrap. But if you want to keep the conversation going, come find us on Instagram at cartel.coaching. And for coaching camps and community, you can check out our webpage. I've linked it in the show notes. See you next time.