On the podcast this week, we have Kyle Smith! Kyle is a professional triathlete from New Zealand. Raised in Blackburn, UK on a diet of motocross and modern pentathlon, he moved to Taupo in his youth, found triathlon and set about becoming one of the best in the world.
He is often first off the bike with blistering swim and bike splits, and this year he's been backing that up with solid run performances. As you’ll hear, he prefers the middle distance events such as T100 and 70.3, but he's found success at every level from World Triathlon short course racing, to off-road XTERRA. After 2 frustrating years dogged by illness, Kyle has been showing his true potential in 2024. After winning the PTO Championship race in Samorin, he was beaten by the width of a running vest at the T100 event in San Francisco. He’s currently 4th in the T100 rankings and is focussing on the World 70.3 championships in his home town of Taupo, NZ later this year.
Conversation topics include:
- Why no one remembers the guy with the fastest bike split
- Building resilience through injury and illness
- Winning by learning to race smart
- Girona vs St Moritz - which is the best training location?
- The balance between technology and human instinct in training and racing
- Disrupted training plans and adapting to imperfect situations
- 70.3 Taupo - an opportunity to race the world championships in your home town
To find out more about Kyle Smith, please check out the following:
Instagram -
kylesmithnzl
YouTube -
Kyle Smith
Kyle loves the following book:
Legacy: What the All Blacks can teach us about the business of life By James Kerr
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I'm your host Simon Ward. I'm not sure if you've picked up on this from previous podcasts, but one thing that I and many other guests have mentioned, and one of the critical elements for good human and athletic performances to get older, is the concept of mobility. I must admit, it took me quite a while to fully get the message about this, but for the last four years, I spent at least 15 minutes every morning working through my own daily mobility routine. Now, you might not have the knowledge or the understanding to put together the movements that you need to get some mobility, so to help with that, I have put together a routine for you. It should take no more than 10 minutes every day to work through, and it covers all of the main joints, and if you'd like to grab hold of your copy for free, please just click on the link in the show notes below. On the podcast this week, I have Kyle Smith, Kyle's a professional triathlete from New Zealand, although he was raised in Blackburn in the UK on a dieter motocross and modern pentathlon, and he and his family moved across the sun hemisphere to live in Taupo when he was 12. And there, he found triathlon that set about becoming one of the best in the world. You'd often see him coming off the bike first after a blistering swim and bike split, and this year he's been backing those performances up with solid run splits as well. As you'll hear, his preferred distance is the middle distance, such as T170.3, but he has found success at every level from world triathlete on short course, French Grand Prix, to racing off-road air exterior events. After a couple of years frustrated by illness, Kyle's been showing his true potential in 2024, and after winning the PTO Championship race earlier on this year in Samarin, he was beaten by the width of a running vest to the line at the T100 event in San Francisco recently. He's currently third in the T100 rankings, but as you'll hear, near the end, he's really focusing all his efforts on the world's 70.3 championships, which are in his hometown of Taupo, New Zealand, later on this year. Anyway, that's enough of an introduction, let's crack on and hear from Kyle. Welcome to the show, Kyle Smith. Oh, thank you for having me. Yeah, we've been trying to tee this up for a long time, haven't we? And I guess it was quite a good delayed podcast, because since we were supposed to first walk off, yeah, done a couple of good race results, so yeah, I guess, silver linings to a delayed podcast. Absolutely. Longer than you might realize, because I think about two or three years ago, Tim Hemming, whose friend of mine said he'd done an interview with you, and he thought you were really interesting and talented character that I should chat with on the podcast. And for some reason, I never followed up on it. I don't know if it was a time when I already had lots in the counter where there was other stuff going on, but I'm sad in a way that I didn't catch it with you when you were just starting out on this journey, but hell, we've got a lot more to talk about now, right? Yeah, exactly. I think I was pretty green and fresh back when I talked to Tim, and hopefully I've learned a few lessons. And I've been on a hell of a roller coaster in the past three years. So yeah, hopefully we can delve into a lot of the learnings and whatnot that I've come through these past couple years. So the sharp-eared listeners will pick up an antipodean accent. You race for New Zealand, but actually you hail from Lancashire, which is over in Blackburn, which is not far from where I am, but I doubt if anybody really pick up on that accent. So how did all that happen, you know, being born here, raced in the New Zealand? It's a funny one that DePencey was asking that who gets the truth of where I was born. You know, if I'm talking to my French friends, then it's definitely under wraps. But yeah, I was born in the northern England, Blackburn. I grew up in a small town just outside of Blackburn, and yes, I had a pretty standard northern English childhood, you know, football was on the cards, sort of played for Akron, Stanley, and did some sort of camps with Blackburn Rovers and whatnot. So for those northerners would know, those teams quite well. But also, yeah, like my parents, yeah, guessed quite humble backgrounds. My mum's parents were farmers and dad's parents were miners, so yeah. But the one thing that they taught me was hard work and to never settle for, you know, something that you, a dream that you don't, you know, don't settle for not having your dream situation. And yeah, I think the earliest memories that I have is just how hard my parents worked for, to provide for all three of us and, you know, from pretty working-class backgrounds. My two older brothers represented Great Britain World Championships for motocross and modern mentathlon, which, you know, if you know those sports aren't exactly cheap sports to operate in, yeah, me as the youngest and third child was juggled in between the two. And then, you know, I love that, love doing motocross, I love doing horse riding and those two, which if I say that on the surface, it sounds like, you know, very upper-class sort of sports. But yeah, my parents wanted the best life for us three boys and they worked super, super hard. Yeah, I've got a few friends who were, they're all fell runners and they live in the, on the other side of the fells, but not far away from where you were brought up in, in howarth and around there. And a lot of them have motocross bikes and trail bikes, trail bikes. So they're doing the, you know, the balancing and the hopping and the heaving a bike up a pile of rocks and it's physical work, isn't it? And it requires a lot of skill and coordination and strength, but also a degree of aerobic fitness to, to keep, to recover from an effort like that and keep doing it, and, but then stay on top of the bike and keep it balanced for, for several minutes. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you look at all of those motocross athletes now and even MotoGP and they're all doing, you know, pretty much the same training as we're doing, they're doing a lot of hours on the bike, on the road bike training and, because, you know, it's such a physical effort doing, you know, motocross and whatnot, but yeah, and then when I was, yeah, I guess probably how would I be maybe nine years old, there was always this talk of immigrating somewhere. And because, you know, my parents just saw that opportunities where we lived were quite limited and, and they sort of wanted a better life for us three boys and yeah, New Zealand was always on the cards, Australia was on the cards too, and also Canada, but I guess it was kind of like the Goldilocks zone where Canada was too cold in the winter, Australia had too many snakes and too, yeah, and so we ended up in, in New Zealand and then yeah, honestly, yeah, we went to New Zealand and I absolutely loved it, I was 12 years old 2010. So yeah, and then we moved to a place called Taupo and you cannot move for triathlon in Taupo, you know, Bevan Dockety in 2010 was the Olympic bronze medallist and obviously there was also the silver medalist from Athens and so there was just this sort of aura of triathlon in the town at the school that I went to, we did a school triathlon and there's a triathlon club that was, you know, bigger than any other club, you know, that was in the town and so yeah, just obviously from what I meant, I thought I had the swimming and the running and from motocross, I had the bike skills and so yeah, my parents went down to the local bike shop and bought a cheap bike and then, yeah, I guess got into triathlon from there. What you said about modern pentathlon, I've spoken to a few people have done that actually, Graham Brookhouse is a friend of mine, I don't know if you know, Graham, he won a medallat, Barcelona Olympics maybe, bronze medal in the team, but Graham's become a really good age group, high and distance athlete and obviously super swimmer, super runner but very powerful on the bike as well so it seems like you end up with a whole lot of skills from that and I know in British triathlon when we used to have the talent ID program, what we looked for in young athletes was an ability to swim well and ability to run and we weren't bothered about the biking because we felt like if they had the swim skills and the engine that comes with that and they had the running speed, you could easily put the biking power on that and I mean that's the talent ID model we used to find Alistair and Johnny Brownlee and clearly there was, the model was fairly good and robust and a lot of the other athletes that have come after that have been found so yeah, I think that's, that development's important but also I like the fact that you play football so multi sport or multi directional and coordination and balance, the same as riding a horse and the same as riding a motocross bike and so all of those things mixed in together I think helped to create a robust individual would you agree with that? Yeah, for sure and it's what I tell any sort of juniors that I speak to, I try and give that to especially tri-sport topo who helped me out so much when I was coming up but you know you see fresh face 8, 9, 10 year olds and they're always asking what do I need to be and I tell them you just need to do whatever sport you want to do whether it's hockey or whether it's football or snowboarding, skiing, just mix up because then you're naturally going to find out probably what you're good at in comparison to your peers and also then yeah you know and it's always a good feeling and I always see the most passionate kids in that whatever sport it is they always excel in that because they find out what they enjoy and they find out it's kind of like a natural selection process also and also yeah you know if you're not the best as a kid and you just kind of keep progressing and then yeah like it's probably the most important thing and that's where I sort of talk to all the juniors about just enjoying it first and foremost and really you know obviously you don't have to enjoy everything you do in every day but yeah the backbone is probably in my career is that I absolutely love it. You were already doing motocross in Monpentathlon, I'm playing soccer when you were in the UK, do you think that you would have had the same athletic development if you'd stayed in the UK or do you feel like New Zealand was a place for you to prosper? Yeah I honestly have no idea I mean I was obviously quite a talented child you know I sort of excelled in a lot of the sports that I did but yeah equally I'm not sure maybe I would still be doing modern motocross and I never would have picked up triathlon, I wasn't on my radar as a 12 year old before I moved to New Zealand and then triathlon became the thing that I did when I went to New Zealand so I probably it's really hard to say I want to see how I can only sort of speculate but I definitely I think attribute my triathlon career to even the fact not even New Zealand just even the fact that we moved to soap war and triathlon was such a big part of yeah the atmosphere of the town it's a town of you know 25,000 people that would you know have a triathlon club with hundreds and hundreds of people in it and a race every Monday night. I've spunked quite a few people and then we're grated to both Australia and New Zealand they always talk about how much more of an outdoor society is to compare to the UK but I would argue that if you were brought up on a farm and you were doing modern pentathlon and motocross and playing football you were a pretty outdoorsy sort of person before you left the UK. For sure yeah yeah I mean we were never like I think I had the best childhood I could have imagined and you know obviously my parents yeah provided that for me and yeah like living on the farm and some of like the memories of just absolute mentality just like havoc being wreaked every single day basically and school holidays and yeah our parents really installed a level of I guess self discipline in us like we always had free rain over what we wanted to do so you know if I wanted to even as a 10 year old if I wanted to go out to swimming pool like my parents were never taking me to the swimming pool it was always me having to ask and yeah if I wanted to go play football or if I wanted to just go mess around a little bit like whatever my parents sort of they were pretty yeah relaxed with how they yeah I guess yeah they made sure that we were responsible for our own work and I think that's something that I've carried on to this day and that's probably hard work discipline and you know doing it for yourself from a young age was probably why I'm here now and my two older brothers two are both you know successful business owners now and they excel at whatever they do and there's always this even at home every time I go back there's always this mentality of growth there's always a mentality of doing better there's always a mentality of working really hard and you know both my parents now like you know they're obviously still working really hard but they never stop like you know they never take a day just to relax it's just not in this sort of mentality or their ethos there's always something to do there's always something to fix there's always something to tinker with and you know like sometimes when I go home to relax it ends up being the busiest period of the year which is yeah I love it. When I first spoke to Tim Heming and he interviewed you he said you know Kyle's is a really strong swimmer comes out the front of the pack most the time and then he's a really strong biker and I looked at your results then and it looked to me like I couldn't tell whether you just gave everything in the swim and the bike and and then you just were a bit gassed when you go on the run or whether actually running was just not necessarily a strongly suit but then when I spoke to Ryan your manager he said actually you're you're a pretty good runner as well so was that just physical development and maturity in the sport do you think or or was there something else yeah like when I first started triathlon I was always a runner like out running was always my yeah the best of the three for me like it was always something like a countdown and growing up was always running like yeah throughout school here at high school in New Zealand I won national titles I won read I still have regional records in New Zealand for you know the 3k yeah like 830 on the on a grass track there's a 16 year old for a 3k like yeah I was a really pretty good runner but yeah I guess and I was always a very weak swimmer and then through my development has obviously I recognized my my weakness was the swim and I put so so much work into it and as triathlon and the balancing act of triathlon yeah I suppose and also just physical development through puberty and what not I put on quite a lot of like I'm a quite a heavy built character like I'm a quite a stocky guy in comparison to triathlon so yeah like just sort of that run back to way but and my swimmer my bike came up however yeah like in those in those early years so 2019 was my first 70.3 in Talpo and yeah like that day I had a great day on debut at yeah I let out the water and was pretty locked up all day with maximum and and and also have one of the quickest runs and swimming and biking hard became my ammo and it was also something that I didn't want to have a risk not doing so in every single race that I end up doing it was always okay I need to swim really hard bike really hard and then wherever my fitness will carry on my run and I was always running around that long 12, 113 and you know some days that was good enough to hold on and some days it wasn't and you know I won all the races in New Zealand on that on that basis just with the lack of depth and not strength but definitely numbers everyone's doing an individual effort so I could get away and when I came to Europe for the first time I sort of realized oh wow like you have to play the game better and it took me yeah a long time to sort of realize that okay if I just back off on the bike a little bit then I can actually count on a strength of what my run actually is and that literally hasn't it's been this year that I've been able to to do that and yeah and been able to sort of realize that if I just back off 5% on the bike it just gives me so much more glycogen stores so much more energy to carry on and just lay down around that I know I'm capable of but it was definitely like a stepping confidence that I had to do and just realizing my own physiology and backing my run a bit better over those yeah definitely over the 70.3 distance being being a bigger build it reminds me of a conversation I had recently with Dougal Allen and Dougal's now a cycler for the America's Cup team isn't it he was telling me how much weight he's put on since he's not been running and he's been in the gym and doing all this sort of cycling to build his power up maybe there's another career for you in a few years time yeah that'd be pretty cool actually I know a few people that are gonna be on their Emirates but yeah so like yeah obviously Dougal absolute powerhouse and I've raced him a couple times and yeah like legend of a guy and probably he had similar thing that I did where it was sort of you have to yeah you have to show your strengths but I think nowadays that this sport you know it sounds a bit cliche but the sport seems like it's changing quite a bit and you know there's no room for weakness anymore everybody especially in Europe can swim from pack everyone swims are approximately the same and everyone can pretty much ride the same like if I just looked at the challenge champs a month ago I was lining up in the start line and I turned to Jan Stratton and I said there's gonna be 20 guys going into T1 because the canal was so shallow and yeah lo and behold there was 20 guys or 17 guys coming to T1 together who can all swim in the front pack and then we got on the bike and everyone's riding I 300 watts especially for the first 20-30 K and I knew that I was running well and before the race I said like I'm not gonna do any unnecessary work that I don't have to do and I'm not gonna spend my energy in a place where it's not gonna reap any reward and yeah like even when Fred Frank went up the road and put two minutes into me in the last couple last 20K or whatever it was I knew that the only thing I could do then was limit my loss but I also had to keep riding at my own power since I went above and beyond that it would have detrimental to my place where I could actually expand the energy which is on the run. Yeah that definitely sounds like a maturity and confidence thing rather than just a fitness thing from what you're saying is just biting your time and knowing how to play as you say play the game to get the best out of yourself rather than your younger self would have just gone with Fred and tried to stay with him but then pay the penalty later on. Exactly and now it was like actually it was before Singapore and I was having a coffee with Jan Tadino a great friend of mine now and obviously I trained with him for a few years and I was sort of trying to put a lot of pressure on myself and it was unnecessary and he was like dude like you can only control what you can control your position that you finish is totally out of your control you cannot control how other people handle the heat you can't control how you come into this race with whatever weapons that you have and you don't have the other things and you need to know those weapons you need to know your limitations and your and yeah and the race you know he kind of gave me a few pointers on the bike especially I was sort of like okay and you know I just have to I don't need to lead the swim I don't need to lead the bike I just need to buy my time and I came away from that race with a result that I was happy with I wasn't very satisfied with a fit but I was happy with it especially in those conditions which have historically been my Achilles heel and then I took that into the challenge champs and thought you know like I know my limitations I know what my strengths are I know where my fitness lies I've done all the testing I've done all the training and I know exactly what I have in my weapon arse theory but you know you can't do what you don't have and so when I came to the race when Fred went up the road I was like okay right now I don't have that and I just have to let that go and then I knew what I had on the run and I put that debt like the best run performance that I've ever had down and that was a confirmation for me of that. There's a couple of things you mentioned there about how firstly how the triathlon has changed I remember being in Kona to watch my first race then to 2001 and you got the likes of Andy Potts and those guys being a couple of minutes out of front and then people coming through in ones and twos for the first 10 and you know then it took about 20 or 30 kilometres up the road for it all to sort of come back a little bit. Back to the last time I noticed probably the change probably about 2016-2017 when it felt like T1 was more like a WTS race and 20 guys not just jogging through T1 but absolutely sprinting to get on the bike and get on that get on that train because if you're at the back of the train to get to the front you've got to expend 500 watts for a good 10 minutes haven't you to get by the time you do get to the front and you cut so that's one thing I've noticed the other thing you talked about is about learning to play your own race. When Chris McCormack went to Kona the first time he was dismayed about the fact that some of the previous winners had just been biding the time on the bike and then doing it on the running he said I'm going to show them all it's not about running it's about triathlon so he smashed the bike and didn't finish the run and the next year he smashed the bike and didn't finish the run and the next year at that second year when he didn't finish he ended up having to get in the car and Mark Allen was in there and he's saying you know Chris you were running six minutes per mile there that's a 240 pace so it's not like you know you stand the distance race that feels slow but that's a good pace for this event that's your strong suit you could easily run that pace just take it easy on the bike the next year he took it easy on the bike had the fastest run and that was the key for him to winning in Kona was learning to dial it back early on to play strong suit later and that again that's a maturity thing isn't it really it's also such a pride thing like yeah absolutely and I talked to Brad and Kerry before Kans about this it's a hard thing I think as Kiwis and Aussies we're all like you've got to do your fair share you have to work hard you can't sit on can't be a pack rat like who like that's just not a that's not kosher way to win the race you know that's just not okay and it took me yeah like I say like I was still doing it in the top I say only point three just six months ago I led the whole bike and you know it's like okay I did that that day because I think that was what I had to do but equally like it was probably more of a pride thing rather than tactical thing and at the end of the day it doesn't matter who does the most work on the bike you only get paid for lifting up the tape and you get more a lot more cut off for lifting up the tape at the end of the day than you do for pulling a group of people around away or wherever you know well I mean you know I've known Alistair since he was 14 and that's always been Alistair's mo smashed the swim smashed the bike and you can do that on a standard Olympic distance standard distance race it's more difficult on an 8-hour race isn't it but I feel like I know that's his identity and that's again that Yorkshire pride I do wonder how much different some races would have looked if he'd been able to dial it back on the bike a little bit yeah and obviously I've raced Alistair and I think he's also it was both me and Alistair and Ibiza that were just like we were trading blows basically the whole ride and we just yeah we were just going round for round for round for round but yeah like at the end of the day I ended up almost doing anything I ended up jogging around the last 8k and sort of Alistair and yeah it's like great no one remembers the fact that like you can remember that next evening and Christian Blumifat had this amazing finish and there was a cool battle but no one remembers yeah yeah and Alistair just went blow-for-blow on the bike in my riding 400 not what's for most of the ride like you know in the time you're like yeah I'm gonna work out I'm gonna pull this my turn and I'm gonna make this go suffer but you know as a tactical point of view it's like okay you know it's a triathlon at the end of the day it's another cycle race yeah well I had a lot of mates when I was racing age groups stuff who would you know they'd bomb on the run but they'd all talk about who had the fastest bike split the next morning and I'm like this is a triathlon man it's not right race it's not even that it's like it's who has the highest power now isn't it it's like yeah no one gets paid and the biggest power file like you know well beat it PTO might bring they seem to be doing things a bit differently PTO might bring something like that in soon but maybe that maybe that's your other bonus as well as the enjoyment factor of having a sprint finish right yeah exactly and you know there's so much more satisfaction now from like yeah it's it's obviously it's a patient game that you have to play and it's sometimes a little bit frustrating but equally like it's yeah you've got to be on the fly like in San Francisco I was reacting on the fly and obviously went to the front and pushed really hard at the start of the bike because that was the best tactical move for that race especially on that course where you know you get a lot more bang for your buck riding hard up the climbs and it was more of course it suited riding harder and yeah I remember Rico came up to me on lap maybe 4 or 6 in San Francisco and said dude we've got to push harder the guys are catching us from behind and I was like I don't know about you bro but I'm pushing real hard these guys are pushing way harder than we are to catch us so just let them catch it's fine like yeah so this this might be interesting for some of the listeners is that the way you're talking about you know him coming up to you and you and Alistair doing turns at the front triathlons an individual sport and this you're in a non drafting event but the way you're talking would make these some people to believe that there's some teamwork elements so just can you just explain how all of that works when there's a set distance that you're supposed to keep from the game front yeah so there's obviously a 20-meter draft and yeah obviously it's been quite a talking point of the last couple of races that you know the maybe some athletes aren't maybe following the rules as close as they should but I always definitely try and keep as far back but basically yeah like when you're passing each other especially at the climbs and it's all ebbing and flowing and someone might be wanting to take the lead and keep pressure on the front and basically you follow wheels and even at 20 meters you're still getting a small draft effect that is quite small but you are getting a small draft effect but when you're basically passing yeah words are exchanged whether it's you know keep pushing hard or whatever it might be or settle it down a little bit the group cohesion is a little bit there so yes when Rico came up to me we're on a climb so we're going quite slow we're going I don't know maybe 15-20 hour and you know you can exchange some words like you know good job or push harder or whatever and yes and Rico was saying you know and yeah and like in yeah it's even like a psychological thing when someone's in front of you to follow a wheel instead of you know being on the front and you have to keep track of your numbers and you have to keep looking down at your head unit to see what speed you're doing if you're just following the guy in front then it's psychologically a lot nicer to be yeah obviously carat following carat yeah so yeah we obviously talk to each other we tactically talk to each other we sort of like see who's in the group and yeah we might need to push a little bit harder if there's a really good runner in the group or look we're the best like like I said to Rico like we're the three guys who we went off the front of the bike in in San Francisco we end up being the fastest runner us to so we don't have the panic we can just relax and make sure you stay safe and out of trouble you you talk about writing to numbers do how much do you refer to your power meter as you in the on the bike section less and less now it used to be almost gospel especially when I was like I was saying before at the New Zealand races when it was more of an individual effort but yeah now less and less at the end of the day you just have to follow the wheels and you have to stay in the race and you have to you know be at the front of the race or you have to be in contention and whether that's gonna be yeah for engine parts or if it's gonna be like San Francisco 375 watts for two hours you just have to do that and it's more about feeling and it's more about you know the some days as everyone listening will know pushing their threshold might feel easy and some days it's impossible you just have to keep pushing forward and moving forward and yeah I'm relying and I now started running without a running watch too I feel like in the challenge chance I ran without a running watch and I feel like if I had a run watch on that day I would have slowed down significantly at the start because I thought I would be running too fast whereas I was feeling comfortable I was feeling relaxed my breathing was good and I felt like okay the question that I kept asking myself was can I hold this for an hour the halfway through the run can I hold this for another half an hour yeah I can I'm fine I'm doing okay instead of what referring to a sort of pre-step thing that I have but yeah definitely on the bike yeah I'm sometimes referring to the numbers I'm looking down making sure I'm not like way way over what I should be pushing and and I'm still riding within myself yeah that reminds me of a story where are you you a student of the history of our man do you know all the guys a little bit before you started yeah normal stuff that was a very champion of Barry's household town was also a champion then I think and in in the press briefing he'd go and somebody said well Barry's had a power meter on his bike but it was all covered up and I remember seeing this and he came by the cannon day I started to get his bike and we were on the next boom so I said do you do you not use that power meter he said no not really I have to have it for the sponsors because they like to SRM used to put all the data up then in the press conference somebody said to him and what power are you going to ride out and he says this if normal goes up the road I have to follow him it doesn't matter what power it is because if I don't I'm going to lose the race so you know we have to forget about power sometimes if you want to stay in contention it was exactly to your point there no exactly it's obviously it's like what I was saying before you have to know your limitations so yeah you know if someone's going up the road and that's just going to blow me to pieces then you have to know that but equally it's like okay but that's also going to probably buy them to pieces you have to play the game a little bit and yeah like the PTO at the moment we're having like a bit of discussion where the because I think they want to start broadcasting power numbers which would be I think really good for the broadcast if they can see our cars pushing whatever 380 watts and whatever it is you know and there's discussion whether athletes would consent to their numbers being released you know like oh because other people can see them or another people whatever it's like I said to Dylan PTO look you even got it what you don't like it doesn't really matter if it's being broadcast I'm not it's not like someone's watching you know my power numbers and going Paul Lee cars pushing 375 watts for two hours okay now I'm going to do that and I'm going to now it's like you've either got that or you don't and yeah I think I think we can yeah pretty safely say that broadcasting power numbers will be a pretty cool thing for the broadcast I'm just thinking about that Yumbo Lisa bike Visma Lisa bike van you know that's supposed to be going around the Tour de France looking at all the data and helping the athletes to sort of fine-tune there thing and I'm like if vinegar's going up the hill and Paul got just breaking and he's saying he's on 500 watts here if you've got it you can go with it but if you haven't that knowing that data's not going to help is it not exactly and yeah at the end of the day it's like even in the Tour right it's like whatever you've got to follow the wheels if you want to win the race and yeah some days that's you know some days you have to be willing to lose it to win it and yeah it's definitely up in a few of those situations where yeah something's got up the road and you're like well I'm gonna be able to like even in San Francisco on the run it's like okay you know I have to be willing to lose this race to win it and it was a touch short but yeah like that's just racing and racing's racing that's what's exciting about it and that's why we don't get paid to train we don't get paid for training sessions that are out of this world we get paid to turn off on race day you know yeah you've been having a good year this year haven't you but I just want to rewind a little bit because the 2022 and 23 were a struggle weren't they you had a good race result then you seemed to be off it and then you were ill and then you'd come back and there's a couple of things there firstly when I speak to Ryan he told me about the mold in your flat end your owner and it reminded me of watching one of those programs with house you remember the doctor the investigative doctor because how would you ever discover that mold was the cause of your illness it's not a typical thing that you'd look at so just tell us about that whole process of being ill and the frustration and the mental resilience you need to sort of deal with those massive fluctuations in health and performance yeah well first of all like it was obviously 2021 was the time that I went to Europe and I left New Zealand yeah I was expecting to go for three months and three years later I was still in Europe you know it was yeah it was a tough time because like I couldn't get back to New Zealand and I wasn't making any money I was living on a shoestring budget off the bones of my ass and yeah it was a tough time and I was getting some decent race results in there but I was racing French Grand Prix I was racing French Iron Tour I was racing you know 70.3s here there and everywhere and yeah it wasn't until yeah end of 2021 I started training with Jan and I guess had that a little bit of confidence and belief that I could be one of the world's best athletes because I was training alongside the best who ever do it and I was excelling and yeah had a really really good six months there and of training and I was yeah on the precipice of trying to set the world alive and then yeah obviously we moved in well I moved into this affordable apartment in Gerona this was the main reason why we sort of moved into this apartment and to be honest with you it was a nice apartment and it was the only sort of one that was in my budget in the area so yeah moved in and also at the same time I'd just come down from altitude and I was training super super well at altitude and I went back and moved into this house and straight away got sick and I just thought yeah I've just been training for six months super hard and I'm super fit I'm just on the limit and yeah got sick and then kind of struggled to come back from there and I was like okay maybe I've had COVID maybe I've had something and then yeah I went to Lanzarote 70.3 and I was having all sorts of yeah sort of GI issues and IBS and whatnot and even a net race I had to stop for the toilet and just missed out on the win there to Leo Bajera and yeah I still thought look I'm super fit I've just been sick for a whole week and you know I've just you know arguably taken on one of the most exciting middle distance athletes that is going to make the jump and then it was St. George Ayaman Worlds and again same thing I couldn't really get out of my own way in training and I was kind of doing a good session here and then I'd be super tired and then yeah it was super super up and down and again I just thought okay maybe it's just the remnants of having COVID or you know I still have this IBS issue I was super tired like almost waking up like the feeling of being hung over every day I just overcooked out of over-trained I also had a bike crash two weeks before St. George and I was kind of struggling with my breathing a little bit but yeah nonetheless I went to St. George and had a pretty decent race just off the back of six months of really good work and you know you can sort of ride out a month of bad training if you've had six months of really good work and yeah I got to St. George and then yeah sort of had a spectacular blow up but I had not a bad enough performance that it was a concern. Not the sort of place you want to go to with breathing difficulties there there was it just because you are an altitude yeah and that's what I put it down to like in the swim for the first K and a half I was like almost like wheezing and then it sort of settled down a lot and and then obviously the bike was fine and I led most of the bike and and I had a really good first half of the run but yeah blew up these spectacularly and pop all time for I don't even know what it was in 305 marathon for 11th place and yeah I just thought it wasn't bad enough to have any concern and then that was kind of the start of the struggle I went to challenge shams two weeks later and yeah I just had the weirdest sensations the weirdest feelings of I couldn't even push power and had no K race there and not enough kind of the cause concern and I just basically couldn't get out of my own way in training I kept getting sick I kept getting inflammation I wasn't I'm not injury prone touch wood at all I've never been injury prone but yeah I was just getting these niggles and inflammation and IBS and breathing difficulties and always sort of having flam on my chest and I didn't really know what it was for yeah I guess like four or five months after May 2022 I raced a couple of PTO races and they were terrible and then obviously I raced Kona and DNF Kona with the same thing you know I was just super lethargic couldn't really train when I was in Kona like struggling so so much just in those couple weeks leading up and obviously our DNF Kona and and I hate DNFing with a passion and it broke my heart to debut in Kona and something that I've dreamed about for a long time and into DNF and then yes I had a lot of I had a lot of questions to answer and honestly I didn't really know where to go from there and yeah I sort of spent a month after that pretty down in the dumps but you know it's not like I was ever going to give that up. I was never going to retire here or anything like that so I just had to go back to the drawing board and find solutions. I hope you're enjoying the show so far and learning a lot if you aren't already a regular listener I hope you feel you might come back please make sure to hit the subscribe button so you know whenever a new episode arrives I published these twice a week ad-free and with the mission of improving the health and performance of endurance athletes around the world and to help me I'd love it if you could share the episode with one person you think could benefit if you have a couple more minutes perhaps you could leave me a review on your chosen platform once you've finished listening to this episode okay let's get back to the show so how did you come to the idea that it might be mold or something then because you've yeah well this doesn't come into like yeah a long time after so I went back to New Zealand I was just a little bit yeah obviously yeah I'm living in gerona when you can't train properly it's probably the worst place in the world and yeah I just needed to I just needed a break so I went back to New Zealand New Year's Day we booked a last minute of flight me and my girlfriend Quira who's never been to New Zealand before my parents were currently building a house they bought a little uh rented a little porta cabin for us and we went back to New Zealand and the worst month in history of weather that they've ever had flooding everything and to be honest I loved every single second of it like I was out training in the rain I was out training in whatever like and I was training super well and all of my symptoms that I'd had in gerona almost went away okay and like I just felt good every day like I had energy I felt happy I felt you know I like I was on a momentum I raced a couple of conti caps I got on the podium I was trying to call for the Olympics and I was like wow I've just tried for six weeks and I'm back you know like the old knees back I can recognize myself and I was so happy yeah just loving it and then I raced Abu Dhabi WTS had an okay race like not you know what can you expect of six weeks of training after you know walked by DNA thing halfway through the bike and corner and yeah like I was I was almost back and then I went back to gerona and I went back into the house and almost instantaneously instantaneously those symptoms came back where and it got to the point where I almost had anthropologic shock one morning where I woke up and I was lying on the living room floor like I couldn't breathe my eyes and watering my nose was itching or sneezing I was like I'm allergic to something in gerona I think it might be pollen or it might be a tree or it might be an olive tree or something yeah and then went out for lunch for a friend and their mother was also having lunch with us and I was like I come outside and I feel fine and I'm like you know so it can't be something atmospheric and yeah like she said oh maybe it's mold and I had no idea like had no clue that mold could even be a thing and then I went back after lunch the apartment started again and I was like get me the f out of here I'm never and and yeah I walked out the door I called up yeah and I said hey dude can I rent one of your little apartments for you know a week or so and until I find a new house and yeah like we did that and then yeah and then we moved out and went to another house and that wasn't amazing either they also had mold also like gerona has a real big mold problem just a hot humid damp place in the main city itself so yeah we moved to another place and and then the symptoms continued I thought maybe I've got a parasite maybe I've got something and yeah again I couldn't really get out of my own way in training and then the day and then again I was just yeah that we moved out of the apartment we moved into another apartment which was also bad then we moved into a new apartment which was we tested it it was super dry nice no mold okay this is great we can get back on the thing but the symptom was persisted and my training was still terrible I did an effing Belgium with an Achilles problem and it was just like I just had inflammation in my body and again I was like and to be honest with you I wasn't in the best place mentally I knew I wasn't going to give up I'm triathlon is what I do it's my hobby it's also my job and so when you take that from underneath my feet it was quite a tough time and yeah I was having lunch with with Keira and like almost in tears and he was like babe just book a flight go home go back to New Zealand and yeah like I was like oh wow like you think so and she was like like you're not yourself and so yeah I went back to New Zealand in October and same thing again went back and jet legs day one started feeling good again and just something clicked and and actually sorry I put the flight and then I put the flight for the day after escrow yarns race and I wanted to do Scrail a bit of fun have a bit of fun before I left you know and I was driving to the start of Scrail with a guy Nick Howell who's he moved to Andorra from Gerona because he had really big mold issues as well to the fact that it was so bad he spent time in hospital and hence why they've moved out to Andorra to get away from it and he was telling me all his symptoms and they're basically with textbook to mine and and also Keira's my girlfriend was struggling a lot worse than I was and yeah so he was saying like just because you've moved out doesn't mean you've got rid of it the stuff lives in your body it's really hard to get rid of mold once it's in your body so yeah he basically pointed us in the right direction and Gerona actually went for a console in Harley Street in London with a specialist and they basically put her on a program of yeah like it's a it's a hard thing to to get rid of but basically they're an anti-fungal natural medication of all sorts of chlorella charcoal clay I don't know what the clay is called but yeah basically a whole whole mix of things that go in and get rid of the mold I mean that sounds like an incredibly frustrating and you know depressing period of your life because like you say you know you're feeling better feeling worse feeling better racing not racing and but no answer and I think that's often the worst isn't it is just not being able to find a solution you talked about the fact that triathlons you passion and you hobby so I got a feeling that you'd still be doing this stuff if you weren't racing as living in you know you had another career did that help with your mental resilience and your mental strengths like what else can I do I love this stuff so I'm not going to give up I just need to keep pushing on through it yeah and as well like I guess what I talked about earlier my parents it's like they sort of taught us that from day one it's like you don't you know you don't give up you just find solutions and that's what they did you know they immigrated to the other side of the world and they took their three kids and left all their friends and family behind for a better life and you know it's even for me it's like triathlon is a life I want to live I'm up here in cent where it's now and and I honestly like pinch myself with how lucky I am to be in the situation where I can chase this professionally and I absolutely love triathlon I love you know the dedication the hard work that I got to put in and especially when the results come flowing when when all the things align and there's no better feeling than working so hard for something and putting months and months and months of preparation and dedication against all will and then finally succeeding it's a really good feeling I hear that you have um quite a quite a focused attention to detail is that right yeah I tried to um yeah it definitely uh yeah would be something that I'd probably describe myself as yeah I heard I heard that you built your first tri bike from bits that you sourced on the internet um but you put together quite a you know quite a smart machine from doing that yeah my first bike again it's more of like a it's just a problem-solving activity I guess is maybe problem-solving is the yeah the back behind of my career so far but yeah my first bike was like a bike that my mate was going to throw in the in the garbage and the in the rubbish because it was like rusted all the bolts wouldn't come loose and had seized everything and you know the top tube and other headset bearings that all rusted out and yeah but it was a nice frame at the base of it so I took it off his hands for free you didn't want to sell it to anyone for liability issues and then I built it up with yeah parts I begged borrowed and yeah bought off the internet and yeah that was uh that was my first bike and that's what I won my first 70.3 on it was a old Cervelo P3 with alley bar bar handle bars I don't condone carbon parts from alley bar bar you know they still got it you still got it no nice uh I sold it actually not with the alley bar bar bars on but I did sell it when I came to Europe till forward my lane fair okay uh but head like you know the armpads were too uncomfortable so I cut up an old pool boy and stuck those under the armpads and it was all sorts of like cool stuff you know like bodged and you know the SIRM magnet mount was made out of a door hinge that I'd been and stuck onto the bottom of the frame and those epoxy parts onto it and yeah it was awesome yeah I've got a prediction that when you're a multiple world champion kaolin you've retired you'll be trying to find that bike again and you'll have to scour the internet to get it back off the person who's sort of like guarding it for you well I actually saw it for sale not long ago and they usually were like yeah they because I don't know how is on marketplace or something in their life I saw I was like oh that's my bike going thick tonnet and they were like oh the bike is rode by cosplay whatever that brilliant it was still a bit expensive for me to buy a bike though so which you've mentioned it a couple of times about the championship and that's a Francisco race the 2024 has been a much better year do you think this is the year when we're seeing the real Kyle Smith the guy who's learned all those lessons built that maturity and confidence and now got all the fitness and everything in place I hope so yeah there's been a lot of lessons that I've learned through the years and and maybe sometimes that I haven't been able to implement those lessons like I learned so so much from Jan and and and his training ethos and and the confidence probably the biggest one that I learned was the confidence to go easy and yeah that's probably what I'm learning and just consistency and just keeping myself in check and keeping myself healthy and you know I'm not trying to limit the days that I'm sick or limit the days that I'm too tired or and just be consistent throughout you know a season yeah but health is the backbone of it all I mean yeah like without that it's really hard to build a really good engine on top of you know that so yeah I'm feeling right now I feel like I haven't got rid of the mold completely if I'm going to be honest with you just had a test not long ago and it's still in the system it's a lot less than it was but I'm still on the protocol to get rid of it it can take up to a year to get rid of so yeah like I'm still but I'm feeling pretty much 100% my ideas is completely gone and and obviously the results and the training is is showing that yes and despite those dark two years there are a lot of lessons to be learned from that that you'll that you'll be able to refer to not least of which is just building that resilience that you know there is usually a solution if you can solve the problem so you got to keep pushing forward and searching for it right yeah exactly and you know like I'm so I guess like grateful and I've sort of like almost taken a helicopter view of everything that I'm doing and training and life and having good balance and surrounding myself with great people and good friends and yeah just like yeah just trying to alleviate mental stress and you know just make life as simple as possible and hence why I'm up here in St. Moritz I've got a really good group of guys that I'm training with up here and honestly it just makes the world a difference and yeah like I think I'm just flourishing because of it and yeah hoping to keep this momentum rolling and keep throughout the season it's a nice part of the world to live isn't it somewhere it's I've ridden through there once as we talked about before and the roads the climbs and the lake everything is superb I guess you must struggle if you want to have a flat ride right yeah yeah yeah there's not much but there is there is okay amounts of flat like and obviously there's always the turbo which I don't mind I don't mind riding the turbo but yeah we've been making most of the hills and while the sessions are tailored to ride the hills around here but the running is like probably the one that's blown me away the most like that's the and one of the reasons that I came here in the first place because Brad and Kerry came here last year and said that he absolutely loved it and it was one of his favorite places to train and from coming from him who's from such a beautiful play part of the world for me I was like well here he's saying it's great then it must be great and I wanted to come and give it a go and yeah we're actually considering you know maybe moving here instead of Gerona a bit more permanently Gerona definitely isn't a place that I could see myself living long term and this place feels you know a lot more like home here at Stasis for me it feels a lot more like home yeah it's interesting that isn't it because Gerona gets a lot of publicity around all the professional cyclists and I know Jan has got a bit of a base there maybe for part of the year so but it's interesting what you say about Gerona and I guess if the environment doesn't suit your health then you definitely don't want to be hanging around well I think there's maybe part of it there's maybe this like part of my brain that associates Gerona with bad health and bad performance and obviously that's not probably true but like yeah and there's obviously a lot of athletes that are there which is probably one of the reasons why yeah I don't see myself being there it's very crowded and there's a lot going on all the time there's a lot of distraction which is you know it's sometimes fun but when I'm just trying to get my head down and do the work there's a lot going on and yeah I'm quite like yeah I love hanging out with people and but I don't like too much distraction and people it's just easy to try and yeah like if you think about the early days of triathlon everybody talked about San Diego and there's a big community there but everybody knew what everybody else is doing always still that Dave Scott was pretty smart because he kept out of that type of thing then then everything went to Boulder for the shorter distance leads became a bit of a center based around the sort of growth and the success of Alistair and Johnny Brownlee Gerona is a place where a lot of the cyclists go and there's a point where the the environment grows too big doesn't it and actually has a negative influence on your performance I think and it's there must be a happy medium of finding finding training partners in an environment that suits what you want to do which is training so you need to have the pool you need to have the right sort of weather the right sort of roads but not so much that it then starts to go over the top of the bell curve yeah exactly and I think a lot of people obviously see the success that Jan had and other athletes have and they attribute that to Gerona and not the actual simplicity of the work that has to be done and obviously Gerona allows you to do good work it's always pretty nice weather probably a bit too hot for me to be honest like I struggle when it gets you know 35 40 degrees in the summer not much prefer it up in the mountains where it's a bit cooler but yeah like a lot of people that tribute yeah I guess they see all these pro cyclists going to Gerona and all these pro triathletes with success who are in Gerona and I think they're there because it's like it's a tool for their training and it's like okay this allows me the nicer weather just allows me to train a little bit more consistent and put in the hard work but a lot of people I think go yeah as they think if I go to Gerona then it'll be the solution to all my problems when yeah yeah it doesn't it's kind of doesn't sometimes work like that so what does your typical training day look like is it fairly conventional swim first then bike and then run in the afternoon or do you do it a lot differently to everyone else no we just uh yeah I mean it depends day on day obviously I think up here in the mountains we've got yeah four guys basically scheduled to work around so we always find a happy medium and yeah a lot up here it also depends on that where the energy has to be spent so for example we have a hard run session that's the most important one then we'll probably go and get that done first and yeah like and then maybe swim in the afternoon and or in the evening and or you know sometimes we'll go swim in the morning but here in St. Moritz like the pool is you can't get into the pool before 10 a.m so we up here we swim yeah first uh sorry we swim uh last and we run first or ride first or whatever um but yeah back in Gerona I generally have yeah pretty standard day where I start my day up with a swim and then yeah go from there but then when it gets too hot in the summer I like to try and run early early doors before yeah the sun comes up and it gets unbearable yeah so it just kind of depends day on day I'm pretty flexible as long as my training picks goes green and that day and yeah I'm pretty happy to switch it up I'm not sort of like so set in my ways of having to do it one way or another so when you're at St. Moritz what's the actual height of St. Moritz um so he's yeah the whole sort of plateau up here's 1800ish like right right so it's not a scream altitude but do you do you running up there or do you live high and train low yeah we do all our running up here everything up here swim run bike as well uh we do a lot of the riding up from here and yeah I I find altitude okay like I don't seem to suffer like yeah that much at altitude which is good so it's a lot more safe for me uh yeah but like everything's basically done on this 1800 plateau which is I think quite a good way of doing it um yeah what I enjoy it and what about the pool is is that a 50 meter pool no the pool's 25 meters um and yeah it's not a massive pool which is probably the only reservation that I have about here it's uh and it's sometimes quite crowded but you know it's at the end of the day you get the work done and it's a yeah it's a pool at the end of the day you go up and down it and get your get your job done but yeah a 50 meter pool will be nice and I love the new has a 50 meter pool that's just open uh which is quite cool and it's again about the same as here and Livina um I don't think the running is quite as good but yeah anywhere in the mountains really is and to be honest with you like yeah I think the one thing that I've learned is you just like nothing's ever perfect you just have to work with what you've got whatever it is if it's a car park that you have to run around which is what we were doing and door a lot of the time running around a car park doing our run sessions or whether it's a beautiful trial that you can run on you just have to sort of yeah be adaptable and make it work so you you I might use this as the title actually don't give it don't give up find a solution what are my other guests um had this uh she's a dietician had this phrase which is there are no solutions just compromises and that's just exactly what you've mentioned about training there you know I know a lot of triathletes particularly the recreational ones they like to fit the training in around work and you know but then if they get out of that routine to get a bit frustrated or the pool's closed boy you're saying is when you when you go up to Jerome you might like to sorry when you go up to some reach you might like to swim in the morning the pool's not open so there's no point in getting frustrated there's nothing you can do and when you get there you'll have the same issues that the rest of us have is that there's lots of people there with their kids and you there's the four of you probably squeezed into 25 meter lane with somebody like me who wants to do the same session but i'm not quite as fast yeah that's just it's just sport in general i think like it's no like i think a lot of people get bogged down with like the perfection of it all but if a climb if you if your efforts on training piece say ten minutes but the climb or wherever you can only do them as nine minutes that doesn't mean that that session is not successful like at the end of the day it's just progressive overload you still you let your body a little bit and then your body adapts to that stimulus and that's what you got to do and whether the climbs nine minutes or 11 minutes your body is just you know it's being stimulated the exact same or whether it's you know if you got to do your efforts in the open water or in the pool or whether it's you got to run trails that's up and down or you got to run up hills instead of a flat run and just because you're down and doesn't say you're running four lengths per k it says you're running four thirty per k as long as you're putting in hard work hard effort then your body will adapt to that and that's the stimulus that you know you're putting your body through and it doesn't have to be perfect and yeah i actually really like what you just said about you know compromised there's no solutions it's just compromise and that's exactly it well we're doing swap right i'll use your phrase and you can use the one i've got perfect um it's generally gone that's generally how i work with everything like you know and it goes back to your dietitian brand is like yeah like if if there's no sis protein shake to use then there's chocolate milk if it's you know if i've got no chocolate milk then it's milk and if it's whatever you know you can always at the end of the day don't have to complicate things and i think that a lot of people yeah definitely i've seen it so often and some coaches also don't help that i've seen a lot of coaches you know i think a lot of coaches coach and a lot of coaches dictate and i think like the dictator coaches you know the effort has to be ten minutes and the recovery has to be four minutes on the door or else it's a failed session and you're getting a ball looking and it's like ah like as long as like the basis is done and you're doing like yeah the outcome of the session within that range then that's what your body has to do again to perform on race day because we don't get paid to train so you're working with Dan Lorang now did that link come through Jan Frodeno yeah um that was like because basically the first year of training with Jan i was coached by Jan Frodeno screenshots of training so it was kind of like i get a screenshot for the week and it was like okay nice we yeah we have a hard run on Friday i don't exactly know what we're doing but i know it's gonna be hard so and and to be honest with you even that like very unstructured and coached way of training just really worked for me and i adapted super well to the ethos of the training and and the and like i say like the just the progressive overload of the training and i got into insane shape through just that and so then when i dnf'd in kona um like i said i was a little bit of a loss and i was a little bit of a um yeah kind of like just grasping at the straws really um i reached out to Dan and unfortunately he'd already gone home because he didn't have any males racing um and i reached out to Dan and he said to be honest with you Carl i'm i'm too busy to take on any more athletes and yeah that's just what was what it was and then yeah finally it came to time where yeah i guess i sort of yeah kept pushing and i knew i wanted him as a coach obviously his pedigree is amazing and i think like me actively seeking after him and obviously still training with yarn and yarn's final year was kind of a nice incentive for him to take a risk and it was definitely a risk on me i mean i had no good results at that time just word of mouth and yeah like now i guess that risk is paid off for him and like um and obviously his coaching ethos has worked on me so i'm super fortunate to be able to be working with Dan and it's a really good relationship we have i've i've chatted with a lot of top coaches not just from triathlon but the one thing that seems to run through them all is um the wisdom that they've acquired but the simple way in which they get that almost like a filter like i know all this but you don't need to know all that you just need to do these and there's a there's a certain number of guidelines like train train regularly be consistent stay healthy avoid getting injured sleep well eat well turn up tomorrow exactly it doesn't need to be much more complicated than that does it and and i think also um what marks out these coaches is have fun and enjoy what you're doing like if it becomes a chore then there's probably something wrong either in the relationship or the training you're doing yeah exactly and there's always a adage that i got told quite young about you know filling a bucket full of rocks you've got a pile of rocks you've got a pile of pedals and pile of sand and it's which order do you put those and and and you've got to fill your bucket with the big rocks first the basics yep and if you get the basics right that's going to take you 99% of the way and those small things the arrow chain rings the arrow whatever like that those things have to come last when you've mastered the basics and you know i think all the wearables and the whatever they they come last after the basics are done right but if you're doing those things and the basics aren't done right then there's yeah you're just pissing in the wind really have you have you come across Steven Seiler no he's the guy who's credited with bringing um polarized training to everybody's notice because he looked at the diet training diaries of 1500 endurance athletes across the range of sports and notice that 80% of it was this sort of low low sort of intensity moderate to low intensity and 20% of it was sort of like threshold and above but Steven he was if you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs the triangle yeah he created Seiler's hierarchy of endurance needs in it if you like i'll send it to you because it's a really interesting thing and it really sums up what you've just said there at the bottom it's just trained frequently and consistently so whether it's you or me whatever your schedule allows make sure that you can do that on a regular basis right if you're doing that then the next thing is to just add some intensity it could be random you could push hard up a hill you could do a few lengths in the pool sprinting with your mates you could you know run at a steady pace and then and then do the last 10 minutes as a bit of a kicker um but you can put them in randomly just to tick a lap sort of faster twitch fibers and if you're doing that regularly then maybe do be a bit more structured about your intervals right now those are the bottom three of this sort of seven or eight tier pyramid and he's got a big blue line there and everything below that is the thing he says 90% of your success will be based on ticking all these boxes the other 10% will be training altitude playing around with your nutrition peaking tapering wearables and all the things you mentioned there the power meters and the run power meters and you know HRV and all of that but most of those there's no point in spending time and effort and thought on those unless you've got those bottom three layers in place i'd say it's 99% to be honest with you i think like the way i look at it is like you know you've got to avoid that you fill every season and you know you start off the season after off season and your voids pretty empty and then you just progressively overload yourself into you're filling up that void and filling up that void and you know you i think you get to a point where like you know you're within a percent or a few percent of what i've ever done you know it's like but obviously when we're now talking about you know trying to win the biggest races it is those 1% is and it is just trying to make those differences and those kind of things but i literally think that it's 99% is just that the basic of yeah getting out every day it's progressively overloading or whatever that progressive overload allows like you have to be stimulating your body so if you're just doing the same thing every day i don't think you're getting any progressive overload and you're just you know maintain it in homeostasis whereas you know if you're slowly progressive overloading every day or you know you or you have an easy day so you can allow another push the day after it you can just slowly take like it's so slowly it's so frustrating nudging the needle ever so slightly and yeah that's the basis is i think of endurance sports and you know you see it wherever you go like if you look at the documentaries that come out of you know africa running there is so simple they're not even running with gps watches they're running off gay every day i'm just going to push myself harder and yeah i think somehow sometimes technology can actually be more of a limiting factor than it is because you can be constrained by numbers and yeah well it's it's a tool and you know i'm a bit older than you kyle so i can remember when i started out doing triathlon there weren't any heart rate monitors i think polar were just building theirs and using them in in the sports science setting but not on general release but people forget that until the mid to late 80s athletes were still winning olympic medals and setting world records without all of that and you know your coach would be stood at the end of the lane in the pool or by the track with a stop watching the notebook and you'd be running based on feel and i think i the one thing i feel like has been lost a lot these days from athletes is this ability to go by feel and it goes back to what you said earlier about racing without a power meter racing without watches learning what your body's telling you and doing that so often that you can be very very precise with that about if i run at this pace i'll be fine for next half hour but if i push 1% harder i'll go over the red line and you know then i'll blow up and but you only know that by by listening to your body not by looking at your watch yeah i just see it so often where it's like obviously there's a i guess there's like a xy axis where there's a cross in the middle where technology is super helpful and it's like okay you know i know whatever call it for me maybe it's like 315 pace if i'm running a 3-pin pace at altitude that's like the place where i'm going to push the needle the most but you know if i'm like if i took my watch away and maybe that ends up being 320 or 310 whatever like i'm still nudging that needle it's just not optimized whereas i think like yeah a lot of the numbers and a lot of the data and a lot of like that stuff can actually be a limiting factor because if the coach has prescribed 350 watts i can't go over that even though i'm feeling like i can go way harder than that and maybe that needle has been the best at more than that yeah i think like i i definitely i i definitely went through a time where i was super into all the technology wearable sleep trackers blue coast monitors all that stuff and now i literally like yeah i just rather like even power like yeah i do power because obviously then my coach can see it but yeah sometimes i just wish that i could you know just simplify a life yeah but i think because i've i've done all those as well and i think maybe you've learned the lessons that those have you know given you so that you can do it yourself now without that data yeah for sure we've been chatting for a while Cal but i've got a few i've got a few quick questions for you before you go you've mentioned racing um french grand pri which is super short and super fast you've mentioned french iron tour um you've raced iron man you've raced 70.3 you've raced um in will triathlon series what what's that's a that's a whole massive spectrum which which do you feel um is best your best suited to and actually which one of those do you prefer i love middle distance um so t100 and n 70.3 and and half distance i think is definitely my wheelhouse where yeah where my power suits me um and i'm just learning to get more efficient for the iron man distance and i still have this like yeah thing that i can't let go of with world triathlon it's just a dream that i i came to middle distance just having off the back of a not so great world triathlon year and yeah i obviously had success pretty much straight away at middle distance and so i sort of like put the world triathlon thing on the back burner until yeah obviously 2022 i tried again to qualify for the Olympics but i wasn't in great help so there's still a thing there that i i'd really like to succeed in world triathlon and obviously go to an Olympics um but yeah for sure um 70.3 and 200 distances where i think that my talents lie and we've known that for a while too even from testing is you know you were talking about your talent idea um stuff with the British triathlon we sort of had that intraathlon is on too and we had lots of lab testing and whatnot and that came out that okay like even as a 17 18 year old it was like okay you're gonna be really suited to you know long distance and middle distance because your threshold is quite high or very high i don't like trying to blow smoke up my own ass but yeah i think it was like one of the highest threshold run cases they'd ever recorded but my top end wasn't much higher than that so my bandwidth above my 70.3 pace wasn't massively higher yeah obviously it was like a limitation for me in in sprint distance racing i mean it it seems like the the training and the from 73.3 to world triathlon series isn't that much different you can cross between those two fairly well but from Ironman um it's different i was listening to um Christian Blumenfeld's coach talking about when they'd been training for WTS they were doing a lot of short hard stuff based around VO2 max so they were really burning a lot of calories and you know high energy usage stuff but when he was then training for um world championship Ironman they had to really detune the body a little bit and get it back to burning fat so there was a lot of lower intensity stuff so that that i think perhaps that understanding of energy metabolism um folks perhaps don't get that sort of mechanism they think about the training but it's it's not just about you know longer stuff and slower stuff it's about um how you utilize your energy so so there's one thing but also WTS race is quite stochastic on the bike isn't it and regardless of how high your FTP is that that's a different physiology to be used to super high power bursts coming out the corners and accelerating but then easy back into riding in the peloton that's a different type of physiology again yeah for sure and like yeah i mean it's something that i thought that it was purely the swim for me in WTS like i'm i again in the pool i have quite a high pressure but i'm not super fast off the line and so i just sort of in WTS racing we'll get bogged down off the line and then suddenly you're in the pack and you've got nowhere to move and you end up a minute down out the water and then it's an uphill battle from there um whereas in 70.3 racing it suits my physiology a lot better and and yeah with the Iron Man it's just that's just a mathematical equation of energy burn versus time and you have to be able to get deeper into the race with more energy in the body and yeah that was something that i definitely hadn't i'm only actually done to Iron Man's but yeah i definitely haven't um mastered that one just yet and i think yeah i think i could still be quite good at it but right now there's so much opportunity in middle distance that and it's something that's in my wheelhouse that i want to keep focusing on that well what about 2024 World 70.3 in your hometown of Taupo right i mean that's got to be in big ball letters on your calendar underlying multiple times with flashing stars around it i would have thought it's yeah we've described it perfectly and that was obviously four years in the waiting and that's why one of the reasons why i raced in 2019 the 70.3 there because world was going to be there just the 12 months later and obviously the world flipped on its head and and now a four years later and it's going to happen this December and yeah it's like yeah being uh like this season was literally like okay this is the it's the race of the year i'm not racing kind of this year i'm not racing anything like that obviously now there's been a little bit more to you 100 and my recent success in the series so you know i'm not i'm not honestly i'm not sure what that looks like just yet i'm gonna have to be a decision based on yeah where i am probably in september but yeah like yeah it's definitely thrown a curve ball into the mix and but to be honest with you i'm almost willing to walk away from a massive paycheck of whatever it is to whether 200 series 200 grand to you know perform and my hometown race that honestly i owe my whole career of triathlon too and yeah they'll be super special to race at home i mean the town's got population of 25 000 people and it's a massive triathlon community and yeah it's going to be super special for a hometown kid to hopefully do well there and that's been yeah on the calendar since the day it was announced i guess if you if you've grown up in New Zealand probably about the most the only thing more exciting than that is playing for the all blacks in Auckland right yeah i know yeah and that's never going to happen for me so it's probably like yeah i mean a little bit of super special and to be honest with you i just want to live without or any regrets and so if i you know do if i did kona i would have been would have been a little bit if if i wasn't you know super compromised it's definitely going to compromise the build up and so i just want to race that race and look if i've given it my all and i and i don't win the race then i'll we'll have no regrets about it but yeah that's the one that's going to be super special for me that feels like it's going to be a massive test of that maturity and comfort it's not to just go you know off from the from the gun as hard as you can because you've got all that and not just the normal adrenaline but the adrenaline of being in front of all your friends and family and people have known you and what's your growth yeah for sure but i think that confidence also comes from what you do in training and and and what you do in that build up so you know if you're if i've done everything right then you almost have that ability to yeah just a bit bit more level headed a little bit less hot headed in their own so that's the plan anyway so you're you're 24 now is that right uh 26 now okay 26 so my i got my sums a bit wrong there so what do you think the 36 year old kyle smith would be doing you still be in triathlon would you be a coach and or would you just be a retired athlete swimming by kid and running it most days i hope i'm not retired at 36 i hope i'm still going um you know i think maybe 40 now is is the mood 30 um i hope i'm still going i hope i've got a few you know titles to my name and yeah like and hopefully you know a legacy isn't something that i decide and it's not something that i definitely go for but you know it'd be nice to have some impact in the sport and you know whether that is coaching or i've been asked quite a few times so uh people would a coach um for me to coach and you know i'm always flattered when i get when i get asked and like and you know i yeah i guess i just try and spout what i've learned and i guess my my knowledge on other people and and try and help as many people as i can and i guess a lot of people sort of see that and yeah maybe you want me to help them but right now i'm definitely not at the capacity to you know take that role on a another and i want to do it properly if i did uh help people out in a coaching capacity but yeah um to be honest with you i just love the sport i love giving back to the sport and uh i love what has given me and and i would just like to even if i inspire one person to case that then yeah that's that'll be amazing yeah hopefully you know 36 year old car will have you know a couple of kids on the way or whatever and and and try and spout that active lifestyle on on them too well kyle it's been it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you thank you so much um i wish you all the best for your remaining t100 races this year and obviously for world 70.3 champs in tap i hope i hope that day is as fun and exciting as it sounds like it could be not not just the the racing experience but the experience of you know being in that event with all your friends and family watching as well that's just going to be fabulous so uh best wishes for that and thank you for being here oh thank you so much Simon it's been a great chat little pleasure okay kyle take care and all the best with those races thank you again to kyle for being my guest on the show this week towards the end of that conversation he made a great point about doing more of his training and racing but i feel now rather than using watches and other gadgets and i really like that approach and it's one that we've talked about many times in the show before with other guests and like kyle i feel like we all probably get far too sucked in by the data and the objective information maybe we should do a bit more on how we really truly feel like like old school stuff we talked a lot of a lot of subjects in the show so please check out our show notes links to all of those topics that we covered as well as links to that free daily mobility plan which i mentioned in the intro to make sure you don't miss any of our future episodes please go to iTunes search for high performance human travel podcast and then click on the subscribe button and once you've finished listening to this episode please could you share this with just one person you think might benefit that'd be absolutely awesome and if you've got a couple more minutes perhaps you could leave me a review on your chosen platform that's all for this week i've obviously i will have another great guest in seven days time and i hope you'll be able to join me but in the meanwhile happy training and enjoy the rest of your week you
