ROAD TO NOOSA TRI — BIKE EPISODE: FIT, GARMIN HILL, TUBELESS, DOWNHILL BRAVERY (WITH DAN ATKINS)

[00:00] In the Beginning Podcast, Road to the Noosa Triathlon Series continues. Courtney Atkinson — three-time winner of the race — and one of the best triathlon brains in the business, joins us once again. Dan Atkins, how are you? Good, and now we've arrived at the bike episode. Great feedback already on the run training, but today we're on the bike. Before we get into the 40K course — the ups and downs, the hills, the climbs, everything — Courtney's got a little experiment to show us. Courtney, what have we got here?

[00:30] We've put a couple of pieces of paper in front of Dan — put him on the spot a bit, definitely. But I thought it might be interesting for the listeners. Before I managed to win this race, I got second a fair few times, going back now — this is going back 24 years. And this is my training week from 24 years ago, October the 1st — so a very similar time out from the race as we are now.

[01:01] This is what I did that year — I actually got second to Craig Alexander, who went on to win way too many World Ironman championships to even count. One of the greatest in the sport was third, and I ran home in a 32:19, just to give you context. So this is a couple of pages from your training diary, Courtney, from 2001, where you finished runner-up. Yeah, correct. So I'm going to run through it for everyone. Monday, October the 1st —

[01:32] — we would have started out in the morning with a 3K recovery swim. Just to give context, the Sunday before that we do a long run — we'd only run for about an hour twenty-two, so about 20K — and then done a 3K time trial in the afternoon. This would have been around when I was training with Col Stewart. I reckon a yoga and stretch session on the Monday as well, so it was a pretty light day. What's this — I missed a ride going up the

[02:03] back of Springbrook — so I've skipped a session there. That's the kind of thing we want you to cast your eye over once we get through these pages, Dan, from a coach's perspective. Tuesday, we've got a build run of 15K in the morning, done over three laps, so each lap you know what you're running so you can build down. That was around Pizzey Park. Looking at the time, 56 minutes, average heart rate of 139. I reckon we'd have started with a warm-up lap into moderate, and then probably run a

[02:33] lap hard. We always used to say we'd run it in 14 minutes, but the lap was probably short by about 500 metres as well, and then into a 6K swim. A pretty decent swim set in the afternoon — main set of eight 200s on 2:40s, rolling in on 2:25s. Wednesday, a long ride in the morning — 140K. Dan will know this route — not sure if your boys ride around the same location. I've gone up Beechmont, the Beechmont climb.

[03:04] I've done an individual time trial from Canungra to Tamborine — you probably don't want to do that these days with the amount of traffic out the back there, along the road going towards Beaudesert. And then come home via Henry Roberts — descended Henry Roberts, which is actually interesting, because this year for Red Bull we were looking for categorised climbs around Australia that Strava could use. Red Bull owns the Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe cycling team,

[03:34] and as part of that team they run an induction programme for juniors, where anywhere in the world you can ride a categorised climb on Strava that's been chosen, and the best in the world get invited to a training camp — with two pro contracts up for grabs off the back of it. Henry Roberts was one of only two categorised climbs we could find in Queensland, and there were only two in Melbourne — it's actually really tough to find a proper categorised climb. So, going down — Thursday rolled into a 3K swim, which looks like a little bit

[04:05] of a warm-up swim, same as before — five 200s on three minutes at 2:25s, eight 100s. I recall we never really did a lot of hard swimming under Col Stewart — when we did swim fast, we swam really fast, but a lot of it was just mileage. That afternoon looks like one of the biggest sessions — an hour and 45 minutes, on the wind trainer with pretty solid gearing. Thirty minutes done, then run off the bike 6K in 20 minutes, then another 10 by 3 on the wind

[04:35] trainer, in 53:15. I used to use one of those wind ergos, so this would have been strength loading, I reckon. I haven't got my cadence written down there, but at 127 to 135 heart rate, I reckon I'd have been loading at about 60 RPM give or take — that's a fairly normal cadence for that kind of session. Then run off the bike another 6K, so nothing crazy at this stage. Friday, we'd always take a rest day — and interestingly, you should read out the notes here, Liam.

[05:06] Bone scan on sore foot? Oh no! So this is about five weeks out from Noosa. I was racing a lot around this time, because I know after Noosa that year I went over to the Phuket Half Ironman Triathlon and won that two weeks after Noosa, so I was obviously in reasonable form. But yeah, even then — we talk a lot on the podcast about dealing with injuries, and it doesn't matter what level you're at, you're still dealing with the same things. Saturday morning, 50K time trial,

[05:36] that would have been over here at Robina. Does 9:36 mean anything to you? Yeah, I know the loop — there's a couple of sets of lights in there now that didn't used to be there, so you can already bring out the excuses for the boys. I've had some good banter with the old boys compared to what the young boys do now, definitely. I've got run off the bike there in fifteen and a half minutes for approximately 5K — I reckon we'd have run pretty solid off that bike. And then in the afternoon, another five-and-a-half K swim.

[06:07] Sunday, long run again — we'd only run 20K. When we talk about running these days, Liam, we run a lot longer sessions — I'd only ever run up to 20K in the long run when training for Olympic-distance, and even for the Half Ironman that I raced off the back of that. Then a 2 to 3K swim in the arvo off the back of the long run. But interestingly, we'd always do a 2K time trial in that swim, so it was never an easy swim — a 23:07, with the first 400 in

[06:39] 4:33. So that's pretty good. Looking at all this, this is the training programme of one of the best to do it, 24 years ago. How different, how much change do you see in that? Twenty-four years on, how does the training routine of the best in the business look now? Yeah, the first thing I notice is that clearly Courtney's preparing for something.

[07:09] We know he's preparing for Noosa and potentially onwards from that to Phuket, so you're looking at these big rides — 130K or thereabouts — to help prepare for the 70.3s. Lots of strength training. The interesting thing now is we're a lot more data-driven, so we're talking watts — I can say I need you to ride at a certain watts-per-kilo for the next six minutes. It's a lot more specific, more sciency. But at the end of the day, once these guys understand all their

[07:40] numbers and how they're riding, it's easy for them to look at their Garmin or whatever computer they've got and just tick through it. The volume looks pretty similar — not sure I'd get a lot of my guys onto the wind trainer sets that Courtney's doing there. Why's that? I actually like the wind trainer myself, personally — it's great for a lot of our age-group listeners too, because you don't have to go outside, you're indoors, you can do it whatever time and

[08:12] just get on the wind trainer and go. That's perfect. But we live on the Gold Coast, so — if you're in Europe, sure, but riding a wind trainer here is incredibly hard to justify. Still, the session plans he had done are similar to what we'd do. How would you attack it? With the wind trainer, just looking at that data, that harder session looks like strength-endurance work, so I'd have been down around 50 to 60 revolutions per minute cadence.

[08:45] Do you do strength-endurance work on the bike these days, or how would you attack that this close to a key event? I wouldn't be doing it this close to a key event — we're so focused on turnover now, and the pace these boys are running, like a 13:40 in the French Riviera with four guys under 14 minutes, which is just grease lightning, it's so quick. Creating that strength-endurance in your legs just makes them a bit too muscle-dense and slow, so instead we do more

[09:19] cadence work — a lot of sprinting. I'm not seeing a lot of 10-to-11 watts-per-kilo sprint sessions here, and when these guys race the World Championship Series, it'd be interesting to pull up a report — they're doing 30-to-32, 5-second efforts above 10 watts per kilo. Someone like Matt Hauser, 78 kilos, that's around 850 watts, 30 times. Putting that into a training programme, you think about

[09:51] that — if I was a coach saying you need thirty 12-watt efforts of three seconds over 40K, you're not going to be able to replicate that in training for Noosa. Obviously they're more specifically training for the Olympics, but they're the same guys who go on to win Noosa. Do they need to do that same thing at Noosa, or does it change in those last few weeks? I think the thing is, obviously we've got a World Championship

[10:21] coming up in three weeks, at Wollongong — the great thing there is it's a strength-endurance course with hills in it. So we're riding hills three times a week, two of those are non-specific training sessions, and the other one's very targeted — sprints, 15 seconds of this, 30 seconds of that. I put a lot of time and effort into thinking about what it takes for that, but in my mind it comes back to thinking about the event. How does that look up Springbrook? Because I know

[10:53] on that type of session I'd go to Springbrook and do three reps — it's about a 7K climb, and I know my time at a certain marker, a bridge, partway up, then my time at the top, and I can gauge whether I'm in good form by comparing that to my heart rate and power. What's your structure for that session — how are you prescribing it? Well, at the moment with the roadworks, what we plan and what we actually get is different — for example, we were doing 12-minute efforts on Wednesday, but had to shorten them to 8-minute efforts, we had to change it

[11:24] on the fly. But like you, Courtney, the boys know exactly how far they've gone — where the bridges are, where a U-turn is, whatever it might be — and they'll also know if I ask them to jump in and out of the corners, they'll know how and when to do that. So there's all this extra specificity you're putting in there. That's what I'm hearing — one of the biggest changes is there's just more data-driven stuff, so you can say, if you're doing this here,

[11:56] that's going to help at this point of the race. And probably, just from what I'm looking at here — someone else might look at it and say this is exactly what we do — but the running-off-the-bike side of things is a bit more specific now. A lot of people aren't running off the bike that often, but for us that's at least once a week — the second time might just be an aerobic run off a bike session on the time trial bike. Love hearing that.

[12:27] Even though they're targeting World Champ Series short-course racing, they're on their time-trial bikes once a week — why? Because position on these things is absolutely critical. Feels like we're about to get nicely into the cycle leg of this triathlon. But just quickly for both of you — sitting here as an amateur, seeing these diaries and what you put yourselves through, and the specificity of it — the thing that jumped out to me is when you talk about running off the bike.

[12:57] I've done some brick sessions, as I know them, running off the bike. Courtney, when you do these — or Dan, when you're training the team — is it a proper transition, where you practise going straight from the bike into a run? Or is it finish the ride, park the bike, take your time, get changed, fuel up, and then go? Again, it depends on the set and what part of the season we're in. If it's going into

[13:27] the first race of the season, we'll definitely go somewhere like Runaway Bay Sports Super Centre, on the Luke Harup track, and take our shoes and practise transitions like it's part of racing. We need to practise it — people have got new shoes, new laces, new bikes, they haven't tried the new helmet. You have to do it, and it might only be short, might only be 400 metres running off the bike, but you're practising getting shoes on, helmet off. This time of year, once they've

[13:58] raced a lot and have their routine down, we're still doing it within about a minute of getting off the bike. Fast! Yeah — meanwhile I've never transitioned under 60 seconds at Noosa in my life, ever. For age-groupers, we're talking about training with having a bit of food, changing clothes properly — and honestly, for the general masses, that's not a problem. Go do that, get your fuel in.

[14:31] Most importantly, take your time. Put your socks on if you have to. If you're one of the athletes I've coached whose run time is slower than their bike time — take your time. I've coached people to an hour on the bike and then a 58, 59-minute 10K. It's almost a badge of honour for some of them in a weird way, but a shout-out to anybody who can pull that kind of power on the

[15:02] bike — I respect that. I love hearing that the focus is still on the run off the bike, because that's what makes triathlon triathlon, compared to just being a runner. You can be the fastest runner in the world and it doesn't mean you're the fastest triathlon runner in the world — it's a jigsaw puzzle, and part of it is having the ability to run well off a bike. Let's keep our powder dry on the run though, we'll get to brick sessions and run last, since that's the order it comes in the triathlon.

[15:33] Before we move on and wrap up the bike — we've talked about the running a bit that's in there too, and the swim, because I know there's a lot of over-distance stuff, jumping in and doing a 2K time trial. How would you approach that these days? Not that way anymore. Both of us, Courtney, lived through the era of the 2K time trial, which was murderous, but we were

[16:04] strong then, but we wouldn't match the front-end speed they're doing today. They're just so quick off the line — with 70 blokes around you diving off a pontoon, you've got to break out fast and hard. We're talking elites here, but I think it's of interest to everyone listening — you could say it's more important now to have a strong 100-to-200 split and then be able to aerobically hold pace after that, more important than how quick you can

[16:34] swim overall. That's the front end of what you're working with. That's really cool — this is the level that's evolved over time in triathlon, and in endurance sports generally, and we see this in running too. Everyone compares times, times, times, but the real thing is racing — working out how to race it. For some people that might mean focusing on time, going well, if I do my best swim, manage my bike ride, then I can

[17:05] run well. But at this level, to win Noosa, you have to have the right tools in the shed. Most people won't win Noosa, but let's talk bike — this is where we're at now. You touched on this a bit in the first episode of the series — this 40K with the great downhill part of the race, the climb as part of it. What's your overarching philosophy towards

[17:35] this bike leg, the 40K of the Noosa Triathlon? I think I said it in another episode — don't just train for the distance, train for the specifics of the course. The first 5K, you're going to feel pretty good — you'll get on the bike rested after the swim and the run up to transition, and you'll just be keen to get going.

[18:05] The crowd's pumped, the adrenaline's flowing — be prepared for that lactic boom, as I call it. The first 10K is pretty raw, pretty flat, pretty calm. The first 3 or 4K you're going past all the tents with everyone excited — just stay calm. You're pretty protected from the wind there too, and the weather's not really going to play a factor as long as it's not raining. But then you're going to hit the hill, and you want to make sure you haven't created too much

[18:36] lactate before the hill, because I've always said that's where the race starts. OK, let's dumb this down for anyone about to do their first Noosa Triathlon — what do you mean by lactate, how far in is that hill, and how can they avoid generating too much lactate in that first 10K? Well, it comes back to your training and how well-prepared you are in the lead-up — like I said, train for the core specifics, not necessarily the distance.

[19:06] If you know you'll be on the bike for around an hour fifteen, make sure some of your training rides go up around two hours or so — adding in hills, adding in some of that strength-endurance work Courtney was talking about. Just vary what you're doing, don't just sit on Zwift and ride the flat route every day. Make it a bit uncomfortable from time to time. So — you get out of the swim, you run up the beach, adrenaline's there, but lactate's starting to creep up.

[19:36] So it's that ugly feeling of pain that comes up, gets in the back of your throat, and you feel like you're going to throw up. You can keep that at bay through the first part of the bike as long as you don't sprint out of transition on legs that haven't really been used yet, because you've been swimming. The blood's still dispersing itself through the body — it was up here, now you want it down here — and if you sprint, it just goes 'no, stop,' and almost pulls you up. So spin your legs.

[20:09] Just be comfortable. So it's almost better to be in a lower gear early on? I think so — if you're highly trained then no problem, go for it, but the over-gearing stuff Courtney was talking about, you don't want to do that in the first 5K or so. Spin a bit, get the body to reconfigure, reset in the sense of, OK, I'm riding now. You've gone from your arms in the swim, now you want to go into your legs.

[20:40] It's called neuromuscular conditioning — the brain needs to reconfigure with the body and go, OK, we're riding now, and it's going to take a couple of kilometres for that to reset. If you push too hard through that, with the evil side of your brain saying 'go for it, let's fly past our family and look like a machine' — no, don't do that. Stay calm, have a drink, get the salt water out of your mouth, because you

[21:10] don't want that — if you haven't cleared your mouth out by then, you'll likely throw up by the time you hit the hill. And get some carbohydrates into you. For the age-groupers listening — we know the run-off-the-bike brick is so important, but if you've only got limited time, you're not a pro athlete training 11 sessions a week, how important is a swim-to-bike brick? Is that one you can skip if you have to make choices? It's not as important —

[21:41] of the two transition brick sessions, that's probably the lesser priority — you'd always prioritise running off the bike. But if you've got the time, say a nice 8-to-10-hour training window a week, it can help to be time-efficient if you've got your wind trainer set up. A lot of community pools will let you set your wind trainer up beside the pool, or you can do it wherever you're open-water swimming, or even at home.

[22:11] If that's what you're doing, do it, but make them ugly sessions — say, a 200 swim, then 6 minutes on the bike as hard as you can. I said earlier, don't do that in the race, but I did say it's trainable — if you've got a short window of time, say an hour, pull out the trainer, do the swim, do short, sharp efforts, spike the cortisol, spike the lactate, and just deal with it.

[22:44] I like this. The other thing you mentioned there is Zwift — is the Noosa course on Zwift? I don't think so, but I'm pretty sure it will be at some point. Zwift is great, it's fantastic — it's probably brought a whole heap of people into the world of cycling who might never have considered it for fear of riding on the roads.

[23:15] How important, in your opinion, is it to spend as much time as you can out riding the roads, out training that actual feel of rubber on road as opposed to the trainer, in the lead-up to Noosa? You're talking to athletes who are time-poor — training on Zwift or a trainer is so good. If you're a tradie starting work at 6am and

[23:47] you're on the bike at 4am, then yeah, Zwift is perfect. But plan for at least one session a week out on the road — there's nothing like the feeling, and you also need to get used to how many people are around you coming out of transition. You'll have a bit of the wobbles, so you want to stay calm and comfortable with people around you. If I've got one chance a week to get on the road, should that be my harder session, or is it better off to

[24:18] be a longer ride, if that's one of a couple of sessions you do a week? I'd do the longer ride with some work built in, 100%. If your long ride's two hours — hugely achievable to get through 40K in two hours — do 30 to 40 minutes of work within that two-hour ride. Again, don't make it too comfortable — like I said, train for the specifics of the course, not the distance. Find something that's undulating.

[24:49] A bit ugly, in and out of the saddle, but you're also getting used to your bike. The one thing we don't want you to do is go all-in buying a new bike and then two days later you're stuck in the aero bars the whole week and you don't actually understand your bike. Let's stop here, because I think this is really interesting — don't make fun of people who end up locked in the aero bars, Courtney, I can say that because I've been there myself. So this idea of comfort on your bike, again, as

[25:21] someone who's ridden the same bike in 9 out of the 10 Noosas I've ever done — do you want me to tell you my first-year Noosa bike story? I told this in one of the earlier episodes. Go on, tell us the bike story — but remember, we're on the topic of bike position. First year going up there, I didn't own a bike, had signed up for the Noosa Triathlon, thought I'll just hire one up there. Called up Noosa Cycles — 'hey, can I book in a bike for the triathlon this year?' I walked in there on the day and I'm like, I'll get

[25:53] out — I've booked. How far out from the race was this? I got up to Noosa and walked into Noosa Cycles on the Friday — the race is on the Sunday, so it was two days before. I said, I'm here to get the bike. They said, great, what size do you need? I literally said 'medium,' because I didn't know anything about bikes, and he said '50,' meaning centimetres — I had no idea what size would fit me. Then he asked if I needed pedals, and I said, of course I need pedals mate, how else am I gonna

[26:24] make the thing go forward? He asked what sort I wanted, and I said the flat ones — I had no idea. That's how naive I was heading into my first one. We've had a few people write in with similar stories, honestly — I asked what size, I said I didn't know what bike size I needed, and when asked what sort of pedals, I asked for flat ones like you'd see on any bike. That's how naive I was. And then I started the ride, and within the first kilometre,

[26:55] my chain came off, and I had people coming off the side of the road in my first Noosa helping me get the chain back on, because I'd just had no time to get to know my bike — well, I had 48 hours. But to your point, yes — now I know the bike I ride really well, how it feels around corners, how far forward my seat should be, all that sort of stuff. As an amateur, I can testify it's worth the time. And haven't times changed — that same bike, I'm assuming,

[27:26] was the same bike you were getting your tyres pumped up by Richie Porte for, last year. Richie came over and asked what PSI I wanted, and I said, whatever you think, Richie — I know where I sit in all this. So, back to bike position — if someone listening still hasn't figured that out, or has just been riding the bike the way they've always ridden a bike, talk us through how you find a comfortable, efficient position on the bike. That's a tough one to answer.

[27:58] But hopefully your story there, Liam, has some people out there thinking, OK, maybe instead of doing that, I could hire the bike one or two weeks before the event and take it with me — that'd be more optimal, and get your bike shop to help set it up. There's nothing wrong with not understanding it, just ask the question. Most importantly, being set up right is so important for your running off the bike — you might get through the 40K fine, but there are certain

[28:30] intricacies of the setup you need in order to run efficiently. So, bike fit — let's hit that. Do your boys use a bike fit, and how do they go about it? That's the elite level — what about someone just starting out, who hasn't done that? Where do I go, what do I do? I'm in the same boat myself, since I mostly ride mountain bikes but I'm always wondering if I should get a bike fit on my mountain bike too — is that part of the reason that, every

[29:01] so often, I get leg or hip niggles — is that contributing to it, and where do I go? I think the big thing there, Courtney, is mountain bike setups, time trial setups and road bike setups are all different again. Generally on a mountain bike you have it a little lower, because you sit further forward pushing up over hills. Time trial bikes, you tend to be a bit higher and further forward. But for someone thinking about, or doing, Noosa, and wanting to get a bike —

[29:31] just go to your bike shop and have that conversation — say, I'm new to this, I want to know the minimum standard I need to get through the bike leg, I'm willing to hire a bike for now but I need it a week or two out so I can adapt physically to it. The elite guys are setting their bikes up three, four, five times a year — for the guys I'm working with, they're tinkering minutely, changing seat and handlebar positions.

[30:01] And then there's the time trial bike — one of the boys this year said, last year I couldn't run off it myself, he'd run a 30:30 for 10K off the bike in a World Champ Series race, but he just couldn't run off the time trial bike. So he's gone and invested with a bike shop that understands time trial positions, raised the front end, and gone all in on it. Are they still using — I saw there's been a big movement in bike fit toward data-driven video analysis,

[30:36] all of that — am I right that it's kind of CdA checks and all sorts these days? Has it come back a bit though — so if I've got my local bike store and they've got some sort of video and AI system, is that my best option starting out, if I've never had a bike fit? Not necessarily. Certainly if a bike store has that option, use it, but generally when I worked in a bike shop,

[31:06] that was my job, bike fitting, so it's something I still do — I look at the boys on the bikes, we talk about their setups, I can spot little intricacies, sometimes their seat's moved in travel or something. I can tell by the millimetre whether they're off. And I'm watching them 15 hours a week too, from behind, most of the time. But most bike shops will have someone in the shop who can

[31:37] simply put you on a $1,000 road bike, get you on a wind trainer, and do a basic knee-over-ankle, seat-height check — general stuff that's enough for you to get through safely without damaging anything so you can run off the bike. On the next level up, say I'm trying to break two hours, trying to get into the elite age-group

[32:07] amateurs — is the three-hour or two-hour mark the goal? Say I've bought the bling — a $10,000-plus time trial bike, disc wheels, bought all the speed you can — where do I go from there? I'm in that boat, trying to break two hours with that level of bike, what would your recommendation be? If your budget's 10 grand, have

[32:38] another grand for the fit, minimum. Some of the guys are spending more than that — going to wind tunnels. We've got a wind tunnel in Australia now, so you can buy time at $600 an hour to do a bike fit and get an actual CdA reading for that. It's a wind tunnel — like we said, buy speed.

[33:08] So if your financial advisor at home has said, go do your thing, go spend the 10 grand — make sure you've got the budget to get it set up right too, 100%. Do your research, especially if it's second-hand, because generally when you get a bike you'll have to buy other parts for it. It's very rare to buy a bike from someone and it's already perfect — crank length alone has changed so much over the years.

[33:38] The guys I coached were on 175s and now on 167s, some of them on 165s. Is that a hip-angle thing? It's a hip-angle thing, and it's for running off the bike — triathlon's really developed its own level of metrics and ideas as the sport's evolved. Still being a young sport, we're now having conversations across track sprint coaches, endurance coaches, triathlon coaches — I have conversations with all

[34:09] of them about what if we tried this or that, just to improve the run off the bike. It's really detailed — a set of cranks with power on it alone could be two and a half grand. The cost thing's an interesting one — we used the number $10,000 with an extra $1,000 to set up. At what point does the setup become more valuable than the level of bike itself? Say you've got 10 grand to spend — 9 grand on the bike, 1 grand

[34:44] on the fit, or 10 grand on the bike with no fit — where's the right level? We're talking budgeting now. Always factor the setup cost into your total budget. And I ask this not just for those in the sub-two-hour category, but also for people who might not be great runners or swimmers but love the bike and want to spend their money there — because I've never done a bike fit myself.

[35:15] I've never even thought about it — if you told me to spend $1,000 on a bike fit, I'd tell you to get stuffed. That's how I operate on a triathlon level, so I find it really interesting you'd prioritise that money on bike fit if you're taking your triathlon that seriously. Absolutely — if it doesn't fit well, to me the whole bike's rendered useless. You're going to feel great — remember, we're running off the bike, and OK, the bike's the

[35:45] sexy part, the wheels — you've got to talk wheels too, have you got a $10,000 bike with wheels to match its quality, the best tyres, a wax chain, all these add-ons when you're looking at it. So the bike might only be 6 grand, but you spend another 3 grand on race wheels or better tyres. Generally speaking, you've got to feel good that you can generate the power on the bike

[36:17] but then get off it able to walk and move properly, and even negative-split the run like some of the athletes I've coached have done. This is so cool, we could get into all the data around helmets, cycling shoes, aero helmets, everything. We've had a few people ask on a more basic level though — if Noosa's my first triathlon, should I buy a road bike or a triathlon bike?

[36:50] What budget should I be looking at — people do whole podcasts on that alone. But if I'm in that situation — I want to do triathlons, I'm going to do Noosa, and I'm likely to continue, this is something I want to get into — what are the main three pieces of equipment, and at what level should I choose them? Is it a time trial bike first, or am I better off on a road bike with aero wheels, then bring in the helmet as the

[37:22] third piece? Probably, yeah — or aero bars if you've just got a road bike, that's probably the next step in your journey. But again, it comes down to how committed you are to it. I'd always say buy a bike brand new before second-hand, because you get the warranty, and you'll generally get a simple bike fit thrown in as part of it. So —

[37:53] you go into the shop, say I want a medium, or I don't know what size — that's exactly what the face-to-face shopping is for, to get fitted the right way. Same as learning to clip into a pedal for the first time — a friend of mine has done three Noosas and still can't have a drink on the bike, because she can't take her hands off the handlebars to reach down. Three years I've been trying to teach her — she's like, I can't do it, I

[38:23] so she just drinks after she's finished. Basics like that take time. But again, if this is an event you're doing every year with mates, a great getaway with the family, just get a road bike, maybe add on some tri-bars. That's even the basics, right — get some tri-bars, and if you've got a normal bike you don't have to go to the next level. But if you're going to race, and

[38:55] am I right in saying, if you want to race and improve, and your goal is to start with Noosa and then move up to a half Ironman, maybe eventually qualify for a full Ironman, it's probably worth the time and investment in a proper bike at that stage? Yeah, do it, it'll make a 100% difference. Those aero bars are also the

[39:25] one bit of beginner advice — if you buy aero bars randomly online, take them into a bike shop, because I've done damage to my handlebars screwing on aero bars with no idea what position they should be in. And before racing with them, make sure they're properly tightened — I've had a Noosa where the aero bars dropped away on me mid-race, dangling off the front because I hadn't tightened the screws properly. You've brought up a good point,

[39:56] Liam — if you're travelling to a triathlon for the first time with a packed-up bike, get a bike shop to check it's done up the right way once you unpack it. That's one of the great things about Noosa, there's a bike mechanic at the Expo every year — always a line, but even if you think you can't be bothered, if it's your first time unpacking a travel bike, take it to the mechanic at the Expo, you'll appreciate it 100%. And wheels — are your athletes all rolling discs?

[40:27] Yeah, they're all on discs — brilliant once you get over the hill, it's a nice, slow descending hill there for a bit. One of the big talking points now is tyres — this is all new territory. Let's move onto tubeless, tyre width — it's going wider and wider. I think at the Tour de France this year, the stat was

[40:59] 85 to 90% of riders were on 32mm tyres — 3.2 centimetres wide. What would you have raced on, back in 2001? I'd have been riding 19mm, I reckon. Wow, almost half as narrow — and we'd have been pumping those up to, I'm guessing, 130 PSI.

[41:29] Probably 120, 130. What PSI are they racing on now, tubeless? I'll take a stab here, since I haven't been on the road side of things since tubeless really became a thing — but on mountain bikes I know what I run, and it blows your mind hearing the PSI mountain bikers ride at. I'd guess road tubeless is around 80.

[42:03] It's probably not lower than 80 PSI — generally about 60 to 70 PSI, from what I know about people doing triathlon on tubeless. Absolute idiot question — if there's no tube, what's in it? Just air, it's sealed. The tyre grips around the wheel — tubeless wheels are hooked onto the rim, and the tyre hooks onto that. Like a car tyre?

[42:34] Yeah, exactly — our cars don't have tubes in them, it's the same technology, same engineering. Whereas if you put a tube in, you pump it up — my tube tyres, I pump those up to about 100, 110 PSI. What did Richie put in his? Richie had his around 90, because it was a bit wet, and he

[43:04] said it'd be a bit slippery around the corners, so a lower PSI would help — whatever you say, Richie, I stopped questioning it once you'd raced the Tour de France. But why does not having a tube let you run lower PSI? Well, the width's one reason — there's more of what they call 'bag,' so a 32mm tyre holds more air and you can run it a little lower. The quality of tyres now is different too, they're a silicone compound compared to what Courtney and I used to race on.

[43:36] The walls are reinforced, so they're better for resisting punctures, and they just roll so much better. The technology's out of this world — better cornering, better acceleration, better general comfort. When we used to ride on 120 to 130 PSI on aluminium wheels, it was pretty firm on the road. From my understanding, at the lower pressure you're not bouncing, there's

[44:08] not as much bounce across the road — roads aren't perfectly smooth, you're not racing around a velodrome, so there's a whole range of factors that go into it, but essentially it's traction. Better feel on the road. With your expertise, at what point does tubeless become worthwhile? What sort of triathlete should make the jump from

[44:38] tubes to tubeless tyres? The top-end guys are all pretty much running tubeless now. For a better age-grouper — if you're chasing under two hours and last year you missed it by 30 seconds, that could be the difference, small as it is. But it's also about choice — if you bought a mid-range new bike now, I'd assume it'd come with a tubeless option, or close to standard.

[45:10] You could probably buy a $1,500 to $2,000 bike with tubeless wheels and a baseline carbon wheel. People get caught up in the depth and quality of the carbon, but it's the hub that actually makes the wheel spin — as long as you've got sealed bearings, and you can even go to a bearing shop and buy ceramic bearings to put in your wheels, and they'll roll that much better straight away.

[45:41] So the best bang for buck is ceramic bearings. This is cool — one thing I want to say, a Noosa tip: run your tyre pressure about 10% lower than normal if you're an age-grouper. Why? Because as soon as the sun starts hitting the transition zone — what's the worst sound besides a bike crash at a triathlon, other than walking away from the Expo and

[46:11] hearing that hiss — especially on a 10-year-old tyre. That's happened to me once — I was there, the bloke on the megaphone giving the five-minute warning that transition needs to be cleared, I've laid my towel down, shoes lined up, checked everything, gels where I need them, and then the panic begins of does anyone have — because I

[46:41] — and this is something we don't recommend — I ride Noosa every year leaving it to the triathlon gods, and I say if I get a flat, that's my race done. I'm not changing tubes mid-race, that's just a sign from the triathlon gods that I wasn't meant to finish that year, and we move on. So I never carry anything, which is definitely the wrong thing to do. And the year that happened, I was

[47:13] frantic — and this is the great thing about the triathlon community, everyone's ready to help. Someone jumped over with a spare tube, someone else with levers, and next thing I had a new tube in my tyre. There you go — we've covered bike fit, which I think was a key one, different types of bikes, and the final one is nutrition on the bike. You're out there for at least an hour for most people, up to an hour and a half or longer. How important is it to get

[47:46] the right nutrition in before the run, and where's the tipping point where it starts causing discomfort on the run? Well, like the training we've talked about, this part's trainable, and it's probably the least thought-about for most people, but I think it's the easiest part to help set yourself up for the run off the bike. Invest a bit of time and education into what you should have — because the big factor with Noosa is you're swimming in

[48:16] the ocean, and chances are you'll take on some salt water, which isn't great for your stomach — you're generally going to bring that up at some point. So think about what you can stomach on the bike that sets you up for the run. One trap, going back to bike fit for a second, for higher-end age-groupers who've invested the 10 grand — how often we see that bottle on the back of the seat fling off

[48:48] and that's their nutrition gone. Have a look at some YouTube videos of what the pros are doing — wrapping hair ties around their bottles to keep them in place. It's happened to me, the bottle falls out the back and there's all your nutrition gone. So while it's more aero and faster back there, make sure your key nutrition is somewhere at the front of the bike that's definitely not going to fall off. You can go as simple as buying a Powerade at Woolies, but as long as your stomach's used to that,

[49:22] then don't change it on race day. One of the things once you get off the bike on the run is that there's generally a nutrition sponsor — not sure who that is for Noosa this year, we should find out before the run episode, but almost worth having the same nutrition on the bike too, staying consistent, because switching nutrition can really cause GI —

[49:55] gastrointestinal problems, which can create cramps because you're not breathing effectively. Most certainly always have some water, to clear that salt water out of your throat — the first 3 to 5 minutes on the bike, have a gulp of water, don't swallow it, spit it out. That clears the salt water from your mouth, or even in transition, if you take a moment like Liam said, just sit down and have a bit of a drink of

[50:25] water and clear the salt water from your mouth. I reckon Pure Sports Nutrition looks to be the partner for Noosa Triathlon this year — that's a tip, since it's likely to be the nutrition on course during the run, so it might be worth getting used to for your bike too. It's also worth knowing your backup plan if you lose your nutrition, which does happen, and your great plan goes out the door — or you're just an age-grouper

[50:57] and an amateur, and you thought you'd take an hour on the bike but had a flat, so it's just not the perfect race and you need more nutrition — good to always know what's on course, we've said this about marathons too. So, just quickly, because we've given the bike a lot of time — if you're a bike nerd, chances are you're already listening to some cycling podcasts too — but on this Noosa Triathlon thing, can you talk a bit about the hill? We've touched on it in an earlier episode, but that's another feature of this

[51:27] race. Courtney, you've described the downhill descent as your favourite part of the Noosa Triathlon bike leg, but for someone doing it for the first time, or early in the sport, it's an intimidating hill. Can you give some simple advice on how to approach it? You're generally there a couple of days before the race — go for a drive, you may not be able to drive up Garmin Hill in a car, but drive to the bottom, get your bike out, and ride up and over it slowly, just to get a sense of it.

[51:58] The average gradient's about 3.5 to 4%, it's not crazy, but it can kick up to 6% in places. It's just a disruptor, and even the elites focus on trying to mix it up there. But really, if you're calm and look after yourself, it's not a problem going up — sorry, I'm talking about the downhill. I'm not worried about the uphill, completely different — the downhill's pretty simple, if you approach it right.

[52:30] You do have brakes if you need them, so it's simple, but I can tell you, even tapping the brakes can be intimidating for someone. We've talked about bike comfort, bike fit, but this is a new arena — being on the bike at speeds you've probably never hit before. There's a few little tips I can give on bike technique — you want to almost press your feet at three o'clock, imagining

[53:03] the pedal stroke as the face of a clock, 12:00 at the top, 3:00 and 9:00 to the sides. Put your weight over the back of the seat, pushing through the handlebars — if you've got normal road bars, go into the drop position rather than the hoods, since the hoods keep you more upright. Get onto the drops, keep your fingers near the levers. Be careful with disc brakes not to grab too much, even lightly. Push all your weight as far back

[53:33] as you can over the back of the seat — that gives you better purchase on the ground. Just make sure you're not pedalling through it. That's genuinely helpful, because pedal position, body position, body weight, handlebar position — that's easy, simple and tangible for someone going down that hill for the first time. As they approach it, they can lock in: here comes the hill, feet at three and nine,

[54:03] hands here, backside back — and get down nice and safely, that's the key for anyone doing it for the first time. Just get to the bottom of that bit. And then the final run into transition — get the shoes off. What's that last K look like? A bit like the start, where the adrenaline's flowing, you're feeling good coming in, starting to hear the crowd, seeing the tents, knowing you're close to the finish. On the day before the race, go and walk where the dismount line is.

[54:35] Go and look at exactly where you get off your bike — do a little recon so you know where it is, because it comes up pretty quick and slides off to the right, it doesn't keep going straight. So don't do the Forrest Gump and keep riding straight through — you need to angle off to the right slightly. Check it out, so you know that, because even though drafting's not allowed, you could be coming off the bike with 20 to 30 people around you. You don't have to hop off right at the line —

[55:08] you could hop off before it, just consciously check how many people are around you and get into your own space, away from everybody. Quickly on what drafting is — if you're an age-grouper chasing a sub-two, you don't need me to explain drafting to you, but I'll talk to the first-timers quickly about it. Courtney, you'd rarely have experienced it yourself — actually, you did it once with Ken Wallace, back in the pack, but normally you're at the pointy end. For first-timers, drafting

[55:39] is riding behind someone to make life easier for yourself. For first-timers, if you're a long way back, honestly, you'll do it anyway, but the moment you see a marshal come along, drop back or swing out — they're generally on a motorbike, so you'll hear them coming — and if they catch you, you cop the penalty. Don't draft deliberately. There's a lot of people on

[56:12] that course anyway, so it's hard not to draft by the time you're out there, just because there's so many people around. I'm not encouraging it, but don't stress if you're momentarily a bit close — that's different from blatant drafting. Let's finish it there and get to the run episode next. Don't blatantly draft, be clever about it. Very nice.