Grant Giles

Another shit race? WTF? I addressed all my weakness’s in training this time and the prep was perfect, how can this be? You thought you had all the answers and now all your left with is questions. The stamp reads: Return to sender… Once again you find you’re got the wrong fucking address on the package. But hey wait, I’m sure I addressed it properly this time. This isn’t fair….. And, f..k no…it’s not fair….buy it is what it is.

People who don’t complete can’t compete. There’s a direct correlation between clean training execution and racing well. I see a freaky correlation between those who are a sea of green on training peaks and those who are red and orange. That’s not rocket science right? Here’s the thing; it’s not about the sea of green, it’s about the placement of key sessions.

t’s not about how you start. It’s about how you finish. Anybody can explode out of the blocks. But they don’t hand out medals for the best starts. They don’t even hand them out for the best middle. They hand them out to the people who finish strongest. If you’re serious about performance, you have to stop obsessing over your front end and start building your back end. Stop rehearsing collapse. Rehearse build. You need to wax when everyone else wanes. Most athletes unknowingly train themselves to fade.

The race reveals the truth. Not just about your fitness, but about your relationship with the moment you’re in. Every second in training counts. Every one of them is precious beyond measure. The question is: how much of it do you actually use? Most athletes spend a surprising amount of time resisting what is happening. The session doesn’t feel right. The legs aren’t responding. The weather is terrible. The pace isn’t where they want it to be. So they mentally check out.

Don’t expect racing jewels from training junk. Real adaptation comes from clean separation. Easy is actually easy. Hard is actually hard. And long is actually sustainable. But most triathletes don’t train like that. They blur everything. Their “easy” rides creep into moderate. Their hard sessions are survival. And their long rides sit in this grey zone where they’re never fully aerobic, but never truly recovery either. So they finish a week thinking they’ve killed it…. but nothing was clearly targeted.

Making up for missed sessions? Bad idea! You miss some sessions, have a bad week…so you push to make them up, we’ve all done it right? Feels somewhat fulfilling to make up for the lost time doesn’t it? Until you experience the pushes pushback… There’s a wave you can’t see in behind this making up for lost time philosophy. In the following weeks that fatigue wave is going to come through and wipe out everything you are doing.

Ironman isn’t an endurance event. It’s a fatigue management problem. Everyone is fit. Everyone can go long. Very few can think clearly late in the race and hold their shit together. That’s where the real rubber meets the road. “Oh yeah, I rode so well… but I ran like a busted arse the last 15kms.” You hear that again and again. It’s not just about managing fatigue under load—it’s about not losing your shit under load.

Most athletes don’t break because they’re weak. They break because they can’t tolerate feeling weak. Just because you can push harder doesn’t mean you should. Feeling strong isn’t a cue to drive yourself into the ground until you feel like shit again. Yet that’s exactly what most people do. And if your core identity is tied to outcomes, you’re already on shaky ground. Because when you identify too closely with feeling strong, the moment weakness shows up .... you collapse.

The virus that kills sessions. If you practise giving up, giving up is what you’ll do… Train your brain to give up, and giving up is exactly what you’ll do. Ask yourself one deeper question: What does this session really mean?” Find meaning and all sorts of power will be drawn into your session. You can be the strongest athlete physically and still wilt under your own weak thinking. Because it’s about attitude not aptitude… Many of us suffer from a virus called; give-up-itus.

If your life depended on the next moment, how attentive would you be to it? Thing is—it does! How many moments have you let slide through to the keeper because you didn’t want to feel it? The loss of the life you wanted to live, that you rob yourself of in every moment, because you won’t show up for it. Some story about it being incomplete, convoluted, dissatisfactory. So you delete the experience and file it under trash. F..k man, half your life gone… most of your love gone, deleted… Chasing what?