StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Ironman Triathlon, with Mark Allen

Episode Date: February 22, 2019

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel…. Swim… Bike… Run… Science! Hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice enter the world of endurance as we explore Ironman Triathlons alongside Mark Allen, voted ESPN’s Greatest Endurance Athlete of All Time, and exercise scientist Samuele Marcora. Photo Courtesy of Mark Allen. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Hi, I'm Mark Allen, six-time Ironman World Champion, and this is Playing With Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing With Science. Today, three is most definitely the magic number as Chuck and I enter the world of endurance and triathlon, which means only one thing, Ironman. Ooh! Not Tony Stark, though.

Oh. But something even better. Yep, I'm already exhausted, I'm telling you. Well, we'll have the greatest of all time, the GOAT. We're talking about Mark Allen, six-time Ironman world champion. The man ESPN voted the greatest endurance athlete of all time. He will be joining us. And also Samuel Makora from the University of Kent in England,

who says endurance is pretty much all in the mind. Not in my mind. The only things up there are a cobweb and an angry looking spider. For those of you that aren't familiar with triathlon, it's quite simple. You swim, you run, you ride your bicycle. Sounds simple, doesn't it? 2.4 miles swimming.

Yeah. 112 miles bicycle riding. Right. But you don't have a basket on the front, so there's nowhere to put the shopping. And then it's a 26.22 mile marathon. Gosh. Oh, man, I'm exhausted saying it.

You got to get it all done in one day. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's no taking a nap in between. All right, so that's Ironman Triathlon. And Mark Allen is better and has been better than anyone ever. So, our first guest, Dr. Samueli Makora. Welcome to the show, sir. Just before we get going, your research combines physiology and psychology to investigate fatigue in endurance performance.

Can you discuss how triathletes differ from other kind of endurance athletes? Above and beyond, they do three events and some other endurance athletes only just do the one. Yeah, I mean, in terms of the basic principle that govern endurance performance, I think they apply across all the sports. I think the challenges for Thai athletes are in terms of training, therefore combining training for different disciplines, which can, I guess, because of the volume of training

that they have to do, they're probably more likely maybe to suffer from overtraining, which is a form of chronic fatigue. Maybe we can discuss that later. But also, it's more difficult to pace yourself when you have to combine and manage your race across three different disciplines. So in a way, you could say that from that point of view, it could be more challenging than other sports,

but I think the basics are very similar. So when you talk about fatigue, I think that you're looking at a different definition from many different people. Some people will work for an hour and say, oh my God, I'm so fatigued. You know, I can't go on. And then you'll have some people who will run, you know, 50 miles and they'll say, I'm

fatigued. Is there a baseline definition in your studies that says this is what fatigue is? Do we have a base definition for fatigue yeah that's a million dollar question no we don't okay there are many definitions and actually it has been a problem for a long time because it impairs if like communication between scientists and also between scientists and the public because fatigue can mean many many many different things. And some of these things, for example, the sensation of being tired after a long event that you just described, a lot of people use, they call that feeling

of tiredness after a demanding task fatigue, and that's fine. But that's, for example, that's a feeling that you can feel even at rest, you know, or being tired. But fatigue is also being defined as a reduction in muscle force or muscle power as a consequence to exercise. That's what the physiologists look at primarily. What I'm interested in is the definition of fatigue, if you like, as this increasing perception of effort as the time goes by when you do a task. So what I'm interested in is the fact that in order to keep performance at a certain level over time, you have to increase your effort. And this is perceived as an increase in what we call perception of effort.

And that's, if you like, the symptom of fatigue that i concentrate most of my research on interesting what i feel from what you've just been saying is that an individual as an athlete or a non-athlete can impose their own levels of fatigue upon themselves i can't do any more i can't do no more that's it that's the one and and then the the actual physiology is yes you can but you've self-imposed that upon yourself do you find that that happens more and more or are people built differently to think in a different way yeah i i don't i wouldn't call it self-imposed but what you're saying what you're referring to is the difference between when we feel that we cannot keep going and and because of that we

we stop or slow down in a race and what your body physiologically is actually capable of doing that's where that's where the disconnect is but But the first kind of fatigue, which is this feeling, which is primarily dictated by how the task feels, which is the perception of effort, which increases over time to the point that you feel it as that you have given it all and therefore you cannot keep going. That's a psychological phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that it's self-imposed. If I cut your arm off, you will feel a lot of pain. It's a psychological phenomenon, but that's not self-imposed.

It's because I've cut your arm off. But there is a distinction between the feeling of not being able to continue and the actual ability of the body to continue. That's where the disconnect is and where it's quite interesting also for athletes. What you're saying is fascinating for two reasons. One, based on that, you can fatigue just a part of you. For instance, if you're a basketball player and you shoot the ball 600 times in one day, you can fatigue your arms to the point where you can't lift a basketball anymore, or you feel like you can't lift a basketball anymore,

even though you can walk around and you can maybe run to the store. But what you couldn't do anymore is shoot a basketball. So that's the one thing that strikes me from what you're saying. The other thing that it makes me curious is, is there a way to measure what is left in the tank of the physiology that you're discussing? So my point would be like, all right, now just bear with me here, Doc. Bear with me because I don't know what I'm talking about and I'm just trying to give- That's what I say.

You don't say that about yourself. That's what I say. Oh, that's your line? So let's just say for instance, like glycogen, right? Everybody wants you to eat a lot of carbs before a race because you got glycogen and that's fuel and that fires the muscles and boom. All right, so just using that

as a very loose example is there a way to kind of measure like at the end of an event or a task okay the tank is empty or hey you think you're done but your tank is a quarter full you can do more you lazy piece of crap now get in there and get to work. Feel better? I'm sorry, that was me channeling my father. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Go on, Professor, because it is a great question, and

it's going to get an answer. It is, and fortunately, I think it was published only a year or two ago, a colleague of mine, a Spanish colleague of mine, which has worked many, many years in Scandinavia, where they have a school in physiology where they do a lot of muscle biopsies in people who exercise. So he learned this technique, developed this technique there, and he actually used it in his lab in Spain. And what they did, so they did what we call a VO2 max test, which is used a lot to measure the maximum oxygen consumption, which is a measure of

fitness in endurance athletes. But the task itself is basically, in this case, cycling for as long as you can, but with the power output of the bike increasing over time, until the point that you cannot keep going anymore. You cannot cycle anymore. This is a very common test. But the smart thing that they did is to, immediately after what we call exhaustion, immediately after they couldn't go anymore, they applied a large cuff, similar to the cuff they use to measure blood pressure, but around the leg muscle. So basically to block the circulation, both

arterial circulation, so blocking the blood coming in with a lot of oxygen, but also blocking the blood coming out. So they kind of froze in time if you like the metabolic situation of the muscle. Yeah.

And so that they had enough time to take a muscle growth. Basically, you cut through the skin and the fat, and then you go into the lab and you analyze the muscle for a lot of things. What they analyzed it for was for the concentration of ATP, which is, as you probably know, is the chemical energy inside any cell, but also the muscle cells. And then they calculated for how long they could cycle from a purely energetic point of view at the point where they stop. So at a very, very high intensity for an endurance athlete, 100% of Yotu Max, to give an example, marathons, even elite runners, they run about 80% of Yotu Max. So it's a very high intensity endurance exercise.

And they calculated their subjects. They could have kept going from an energy point of view for another six to eight minutes after they stopped. And that's at the peak? That's at the peak? At the peak. At the peak. Wow. So, okay. Wow.

You're the professor, I'm not, but here's my theory. Go ahead. The brain stops the muscles expending any more energy because it sees it getting to the red zone because the brain is wanting to keep energy for itself in an emergency. Is it a self-preservation thing from the brain that's doing that with the muscles? Or have I gone completely out on that limb and I'm about to fall off? That makes a lot of sense.

I mean, it may not be scientific, but it makes sense. It's almost like a self-preservation thing. It's almost the way your body slows its metabolism when you don't eat if i'm the brain and you're using too much of my energy right i'm shutting you down yeah now that's the professor but no that's just us that's us doing our own experiments right now professor we're running our own lab right now so where are where where is this theory of mine in in the world of reality. Actually, your theory is in between a common one and mine. Okay. It's not a real theory, and I'll tell you why.

So the most common theory is that, but this is about what I would call a teleological explanation, which in physiology is interesting, but we cannot really test them experimentally. So we can test the mechanisms. So is there the why? So why this kind of system that prevents you from fully, for example, using your physiological capacity? Why would it be beneficial for survival? Why did it evolve?

Why did we develop this perception of effort that stops us before we can actually fully use, for example, in this case, the example I made earlier, fully use our energy reserve in the muscles. I think actually that a lot of people think is to avoid

basically killing yourself during exercise. And to be honest, the muscles themselves, some people think that's the organ that is protected, but I don't think so because the muscle, I mean, you can do an operation. You can have them of oxygen for hours and they recover. You know what I mean? They're very tough organs. Obviously, the brain will be the next one, the most important to save. But in general, whole body homeostasis, I think that which is the state of your body. We have

a lot of physiological systems that do that. So, doing exercise, it's extremely difficult to kill yourself. It seems to me like from a mental standpoint, and this is what I want, here's my question. The perception of

effort, if your perception of effort is lower than other people's in other words you think that this is actually easier does it translate into better physiological performance good question yes and this is what well it depends what you mean by a physiological performer i mean endurance performance endurance performance is what i'm saying. Can I go farther? It's really what I'm asking. Can I go farther? Yes. Absolutely. This is what I've done. If you reduce your

perception of effort, even without changing your lungs, your heart, and your leg muscle, which is what most people think is the only determinant of endurance. Of course, they are important. Nobody says they're not. But I can change your endurance performance without changing all of those factors. For course, they are important. Nobody says they're not. But I can change your endurance performance without changing all of those factors.

For example, I can reduce your perception of effort, for example, with some psychological techniques like self-talk. Also, that's what caffeine does. Caffeine doesn't really make your lungs, your heart, your muscles better at endurance. It makes your

brain better at endurance by reducing perception of effort. And this will translate into an improvement in performance. It can also work the other way around. So if I make your perception of effort higher, even if your physiological capacity is normal, your endurance performance will be reduced. And this is the kind of experiments that we did using mental fatigue. So we mentally fatigued people before an endurance test.

And of course, we did that by asking people to do mentally fatiguing tasks on a computer for 90 minutes. Clearly, that doesn't fatigue your leg muscles, right? Not even your fingers, I guess. Maybe your finger, maybe. But we found the same reduction in endurance performance that we found in a previous study where before the endurance test we fatigue the leg muscles so i'm saying is that there is experimental evidence that fatiguing your brain is as important as fatiguing your legs in terms of impairing performance, endurance performance. Wow.

Okay, yeah. Wow. And on that wow, we will take a break. Professor, please stay with us. Professor Samueli Makora will be back after this break and later in the show. Iron Man. No, not Tony Stark.

No, it's Tony Stark. It's Tony Stark. Yes. Okay, Tony Stark will be here after we've spoken to the professor after the break. We may or may not have told the truth. Yay, Tony Stark. be here after we've spoken to the professor after the break. We may or may not have told the truth. Yay, Tony Stark! Yes, you can stick around.

Right, more from the professor when we get back. Welcome back to Playing With Science. This is our endurance and Ironman triathlon special. Yes, we have a great guest with us, Professor Samueli Marcora, and coming up after him will be Mark Allen, a.k.a. Ironman. Tony Stark, then. Okay, Tony Stark is coming on just to make Chuck happy. But more with the Professor. So, Professor, I mean, you've lit a fire under Chuck in the first segment there with how you can

lose the race, debilitate your performance by being mentally fatigued before you even step foot on the track, on the road or on the field. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. So now what I was fascinated by was the direct correlation between the mental fatigue and then the fatiguing of muscles. You know, that correlation would lead me to believe that you can screw yourself

before a race or a competition even begins by getting in your own head or fatiguing yourself mentally before you actually get into the competition, which then in turn leads me to ask, could you mentally fatigue and screw your opponent the same way?

Does it work? So it works internally. We know that. Does it work? So it works internally. We know that. Can it work externally? Can I mentally fatigue my opponent? So, okay, you and I are in a race and you come up to me and say, oh, you're looking tired.

My God, you look so tired. All of a sudden. Did you sleep well last night? Exactly. Is everything okay? Does that technique work? Is your wife cheating on you? Oh, no, no.

By the way. Sorry, no, no. By the way. Sorry, Professor, please. So can that work? Actually, yes, but in two different ways. So one is probably more practically achievable, and the other one is more science fiction. The first one is that I think it's maybe related to yourself, but I guess, you know, some, so emotional regulation,

so controlling your emotions, which in a social setting like sport often you have to do, is very mentally fatiguing. So they did, a colleague of mine here in the UK did a study, and I want to tell you about this study, it's one of my favorites, it's quite good, I think, for an agent. So, what they did, they showed a YouTube video of an Asian woman vomiting and eating her own vomit. Oh, wow.

To a group of cyclists. And the reason to do that is to induce what you just did, to induce an emotion which is disgust. In one condition, the control condition, they didn't show any video. In one condition, they showed the video and they told the participant that they could express their emotion. No problem. So they could express their disgust as you did just now. In the other one, which are called the stiff upper lip condition, which is very relevant to the English here,

is you see the video, but maintain a stiff upper lip. Do not show your emotions. The group that did control their emotion went significantly slower

in a cycling time trial in the lab performed afterward compared to the group that could show their emotion and of course also to the control group that didn't see any video. So if you can induce with mind games and stuff some emotions in your opponent, and the opponent, because of the social situation,

has to control these emotions, you could actually fatigue him or fatigue her by doing that. Another more science fiction way, which is related to a study which I did, is by subliminally priming your opponent. is by subliminally priming your opponent. So what we did, we showed subliminal images, which is images that consciously you cannot perceive,

but your brain still registers. Okay? Oh. Yes. And we showed in, we had two conditions. In one experiment, we compared happy faces and sad faces during an endurance test. And because happy faces are associated with positivity, energy, encouragement.

Yeah. Sad faces are associated with depression, being slow, being tired. Disapproval. Exactly. And we found a significant difference between the temperature exhaustion test in the happy phase, which lasted longer, compared to the sad phase, which lasted. With the temperature exhaustion,

which is this test of endurance that we do in the lab, was shorter. The same thing occurred using action words versus inaction words, like things like energy versus things like toil or stop. Right. And so we show these things,

but they didn't see them. It's all subliminal. It's all subliminal. All subliminal, but we were able to affect their perception of effort and their performance in this non-conscious way.

So I guess if you could act into your opponent's phone, mobile phone, and stick some subliminal images in there, you may be able to screw up with his brain. Professor, you've become Dr. Evil in the space of the show. I love it. Oh my God, it's so good.

What I'm hearing is something we've touched on in other shows. We are so focused on building muscle mass developing our fast twitch muscles and in this case having more endurance and working towards those physical goals but the carpet can be pulled from under our feet quite simply by half a dozen subliminal photographs or a woman vomiting yes so by the way that that video, I watch that every day just for fun. I'm just saying. You need help. I'm just saying.

What I'm thinking here is it's happening more and more where the brain is the new frontier of our training, of where we are the key to us, hold the key to our success. Yeah. I mean, are you developing techniques for brain training? You're nodding, so you are. Would you like to share with us, please? Yeah.

First of all, though, I would like to say that although the ultimate, if you like, limiting factor for a new customer seems to be the perception of effort, so how they feel to run at a given speed. That doesn't mean that

your leg muscle and everything else that's connected to the functionality of your leg muscle is not important. Because of course, if your leg muscles are weaker or well-conditioned, to produce the same power output, for example, during cycling, you will have to recruit your muscle more

intensely. So the signal from the brain to the muscle will have to recruit your muscle more intensely. So the signal from the brain to the muscle will have to be more intense to produce a certain power if your muscles are weaker. And that's what you perceive as effort. What we perceive as effort, not signals from the body, is how intensely your brain is driving your muscles. That's what we perceive as effort. It's still very important to take care of your muscle fatigue and everything else.

However, as you rightly said, all these experiments that, for example, I've done, but also others have done, have shown that, of course, that's important, but you can just change the perception by doing change in the performance because the state of your master is not the only factor that determines the perception so we can give the athletes a novel and novel application that can improve their performance above and beyond what they

achieved just by training which, which they should keep doing that. Of course. But they can do new things on the top. And one of the stuff that we tested and we actually keep testing with the thanks to general British minister of defense is to add, we call it cognitive workload. So add the load during training, but not physically. For example, by running faster or by running longer, which is what most people do

in training. Or by reducing the resting periods if you do interval training, these kinds of things. We increase the training load by increasing the cognitive, the mental difficulty of the task. And the way we do it is by increasing the cognitive, the mental difficulty of the task. And the way we do it is by adding a cognitive task to the endurance task.

So, for example, the first study that we did, we had computers and screens in front of the cyclists which were training hobbies on a bike. And one group trained three times a week for an hour on the bike. Actually, both groups did that. But one group, on the top of that, they did this mentally fatiguing task also for an hour three times a week

at the same time. And the group, from a physiological point of view, both groups improved, obviously because they did the same amount of physical work. But in terms of perception of effort, and therefore in terms of endurance improvement, the group that added the cognitive load to their training

improved their performance much better. And now we are testing this also during running by developing tasks that you can hear through headphones. So while you're running, you hear like a stimulus in your headphone, you have to respond. So you can actually do it also during the running. So let me ask you this. I mean, we're out of time, Professor,

but I just want to, as a quick takeaway, it seems to me like everything that you're saying, if I want to, or any athlete out there, I include myself, If I want to, or any athlete out there, I include myself, if I want to improve my performance, can I do so by talking to myself while I'm doing my task? Can I do so by mentally fatiguing myself while I'm doing my task? I mean, can I achieve those two things on my own is what I'm asking. You do this empirically and under controlled conditions in an experiment, but can I do that for myself as just a person who maybe wants to run a little bit faster or wants to go another mile on my morning run?

Can I do that? Yes. I mean, self-talk, there are a lot of, you know, stuff on the internet that you can look at. But we found that motivational self-talk, which is a skill you need to learn, but it's easily learned,

can improve your endurance. So I would definitely suggest to do that. But learn, but it's easily learned, and improve your endurance. So I would definitely suggest to do that. But also, obviously, at the moment, we are using apps and computers and things. But, for example, one suggestion in terms of, if you like, implementing this idea which I call brain endurance training, who are the cognitive load to your training, one way of doing it would be to train on purpose when you are fatigued.

Like, for example, instead of doing all the tennis session maybe in the middle of the day during the lunch break because you feel better, do it on purpose

later in the day and maybe try to run at the same speed that you would if you were more rested. Wow. That's great stuff.

Professor, thank you. Thank you. You have been enlightening and a great pleasure to talk to. Right, Professor Samueli Makoura from the University of Kent in England. And you can think yourself to a better place. We will take a break. And who's coming up next? Tony Stark.

Told you, he'll be here very very shortly he's just gonna open the window he's gonna fly straight in yes he is we'll be back after this break welcome back to playing with science this is our triathlon and endurance show. We have spoken to the wonderful Samueli Macora, our Italian professor in England, talking about how you can think yourself to a better performance. Right. Now it's time to talk about that better performance.

With someone who will not be bettered, Mark Allen. Yes. Six-time Ironman triathlon world champion. The man ESPN crowned the greatest endurance athlete of all time. Not just a year, a race of all time. I'm the greatest, Howard. Look at me. I'm pretty. I'm the greatest of all time, huh?

Somehow, I don't believe Mark Allen is going to have any of those thoughts, and he seems such a nice gentleman. How heavy a burden was to want to then wander around with that title on your shoulders? Yeah. You know, that title of greatest endurance athlete of all time, it was in a poll that ESPN did worldwide. And I got a call from a friend of mine that said, hey, there's five people in the running for greatest endurance athlete of all time, and you're one of them. And I'm like, what? So I went on to their website and saw it.

And then I was actually, I had gone down to Argentina to do a training camp down there called Fit Soul Fit Body. And I got off the plane, looked on my phone, and there was a result that I'd won it, which was mind-blowing. Because, you know, in the sport of triathlon, I have this idea that I know what goes on in triathlon. Other triathletes know what's going on. But it never really occurred to me that maybe the rest of the world is checking out what we're doing. And so it kind of was sort of like, wow, maybe the Ironman, maybe what I did was kind of a good standard. You know, so it was pretty cool. If you've been world champion six times, I think we're way past the good standard point. Yeah, that's called the gold standard.

That's not a good standard. What's interesting to me is you were All American in university as a swimmer. So you've kind of got one third of this triathlon thing under what I would call control. What drew you to this particular field of endurance? Being great at swimming is just not enough. I really have to challenge myself like maybe with biking and running too. So you'll get used to Chuck if you run not enough. No. I really have to challenge myself, like maybe with biking and running too. So you'll get used to Chuck if you run long enough. What drew you? What drew you to the other two disciplines

and the world of triathlon? Well, you know, I love an athletic puzzle. You know, I swam for 12 years as a kid all the way through college. I was actually, you know, All-American is very misleading because I was never fast enough through college I was actually you know all-american is very misleading because I was never fast enough to make it to uh you know national championships or to make it to

uh olympic trials even so I kind of had this thing in the back of my mind that I was you know a good athlete but definitely not an outstanding athlete and and in 1982 I saw the Ironman on television and it was back when you, wide world of sports was. Yeah, yeah. Jim McKay was always talking about something amazing. And I turned on the TV and he was talking about this thing called Ironman. And he said the distances, you know, it's 2.4 miles swim, 112 mile bike ride, and then a marathon. And I thought, how many days is it going to take these people to complete that crazy thing?

And he said, it's a one day event. One day. And you have to finish by midnight, 17 hours later. And I thought, totally crazy, totally nuts. Two weeks later, I go, I have to go try that and see if I can cross that amazing finish line in Hawaii. And that was it. It was just this crazy, non-logical thing that was calling me to go there to do the Ironman. And, you know, it turned into a little more than just a one-time shot. Were you one of those guys that rocked up, the guy that everybody hates and went,

I swim better, cycle better, run better, or did you have to earn your stripes as it were? Well, the first six times I went to Hawaiiaii i did not win i was i was oh for six and so you know think about it this way you're i the first year i went there i just went with the expectation or the hope anyway that i would cross the finish line and i actually throughout that year did did pretty well the next year i came back thinking maybe i can be pretty good at this i ended up finishing third. And then I finished fifth the following year, but I was closer to the leader at the finish line. The year after that, I was second.

The year after that, I was fifth. And, you know, I could be in the lead of the race early in the bike. I could be in the lead of the race at the beginning of the marathon, halfway through the marathon, even as late as, you know, just a couple miles to go. But I kept falling apart, you know, and I couldn't hold it together. Something was going on. And so each year I would go back thinking, okay, this is going to be the year. And after six shots at it with zero victories, being in the lead and falling apart, you know, my family and friends are going, look, you're not cut out for this. Go to the other places where you've shown that you can win, where you can beat the guy who is beating you, a guy named Dave Scott.

And you do have to ask yourself how many times you're going to beat your head against the wall for a goal that maybe you're just not going to get, you're not going to achieve. So how did you crack the code? Did you just kill Dave Scott? Is that what happened? You've done it again, haven't you? You've resorted to violence. You know, in 1989, I really tried to... Before I started training, I said, am I really going to go back?

Am I really going to devote a whole other year for this endeavor? And I was really close to following my friend's advice and saying forget it throw it in the trash let everybody else race there but i i just knew that i i hadn't had my best race yet and so in 89 i as i started training for my seventh ironman hawaii um i said i'm gonna go there and really put it all together i don't care if i win and i don't care if i get fifth or tenth i just want to have a race where, you know,

I really do give my best effort. I swim, I bike, I run, I don't fall apart. And I cross that finish line strong. And so that was a real shift actually in the focus. You know, if you're trying to win, if you feel the wind slipping away, it can like close down your energy and all of a sudden the flow is gone.

Interesting. We're back to that mental state again. So where did you – you said it was in the marathon that you went from where you wanted to be to the place you didn't want to be. So how did you structure training? How did you then – did you then fall back into your own mind and build that positivity? Or was there some other place that you physically and mentally went to?

I had to really change my training around first and foremost and do some longer workouts, do some longer days because I was doing a lot of training for sure. You know, you get second, third, fifth in Hawaii, you're doing some training. But my longest days were, I realized we're still too short to win a race that takes eight hours. Right. And so, you know how in the beginning we default to doing the things that we're comfortable doing or that sound exciting to do. And then over time, if we see that that's not working, then we have to change that and maybe do something that's completely uncomfortable. And that's what I had to do in 1989. I designed five training days where they were simulating Ironman. So I wanted to do an eight-hour training day. The longest

days before that I did were about five or six hours. And I saw that I was falling apart in the race after hour six of the race, you know? And so I did a, I do a 30 minute swim, get out of the water, bike seven hours, get off of my bike and run 30 minutes. Wow. So then I started seeing that, okay, I can do a solid, strong eight hour day, but I knew that wasn't enough. And the part that wasn't enough is that I had this just complete fear of the island of Hawaii. It's a very intense place and it's a very, you know, like, you know how it is like you go if you're going on vacation, you go somewhere where you just feel good and you go, ah, this is wonderful. You know, I could just be here forever. going to Hawaii to do the Ironman is completely the opposite of that you get off the plane there's no air-conditioned jet white they they roll these

steps up to the plane and you go right down onto the hot tarmac of the runway and so immediately you're hit with this heat and this wind and the sun is beating down because the flights always get in around about 1230, midday. And I would just feel like this flower that was just withering and shrinking. And I could feel like every bit of confidence go out of my body. And so when I went there in 89, I just thought, you know, I have to work with this environment as opposed to trying to be in competition to it. this environment as opposed to trying to be in competition to it. And, you know, it was, it's sort of like, if you're, if I had been trying to be stronger than this energy,

and there's no way it's like being stronger than a lot of lava flow or being stronger than a 30 mile an hour wind, there's no way. You have to just sort of surrender to it. a 30 mile an hour win there's no way you have to just sort of surrender to it there it is this is what it's going to be and try and to not try to avoid it or make it anything different than it is so that's it's so funny you say surrender because all right so i used to hang out with three guys and they did tries all the time okay and uh shout out out to Carlos, Dave, and Sean. And I was the fourth guy who refused to compete. You know, I was just like,

you guys are crazy. And they were. And so are you, by the way. I'm just letting you know, okay? Anybody who watches a triathlete train... Matt took that as a compliment. He should. He should take it as a compliment

because he knows it's true. They're crazy. They're seriously crazy. Okay. So triathletes are people who don't know what torture is. They call torture tickling and they think they're being tickled

when they're being tortured. And so this is what I learned from hanging with these three guys. So you've realigned your mental aspect to this is what I learned from hanging with these three guys. So you realigned your mental aspect to, this is what I want to do. I know the parameters of where I am. And then you go back into your training. Did you do the thing you hear a lot of people say, I train harder than I compete. So as when I compete, it's more comfortable for me.

Or did you find another way to solve this particular puzzle that you say? I like that. I train harder than I compete. Yeah, actually, that's what I did in a sense. Like in my hard workouts, I always tried to make some element of it harder than that element would be in the race. So if I had to go a certain speed, I would do workouts where I would go faster than that speed so that when I'm in the race, even though a training day or a training workout is not going to be as long as Ironman, at any one point, I knew, my body knew, my perception of what was going on knew that this was not my top end speed. You know, when I had, I would look at the course profile and see

how steep the hills were. And then I would do climbs that were either steeper or longer than what I would come across in the race. So that in the race, it's like, yeah, it's hard, but I did elements and this element in a harder situation in training. And I did, I did a lot of my training in heat so that it's like, okay, K 85 90 but today it's 105 or 102 or 100 degrees and so that again is just affirming that i can handle this difficulty and so it does truly change your perception of what's going on out there in the race course you know yes it's hard yes your legs are killing you yes you you want to quit you All those things are there, but then there's that little, that other voice in the back of your head that's going, yeah, but you've done this, and you did something that was even harder than this. And so it just, it takes away a lot of the stress, and it takes away that perception that it's this impossible beast that you can't slay as opposed to.

I got to ask you this. Okay, so these guys used to come in when they would get their times and they would say, oh man, I'm really excited. I did really well for my age group, right? And they would all say the same thing. And I would say, yeah, dude, but that dude over there, he looks like your dad and he just serves you lunch. He killed you.

And they would all say the same thing. They would say, no, dude, you don't understand. This is a sport where you get better as you get older the older dudes have an advantage you that's what they would say they would say you're never going to see like a 20 year old guy win a triathlon like not against those guys because older means endurance is that? Or were they just making excuses for losing? Those losers. Those losers. Yeah, you know, there is definitely longer events take more of, I guess you'd say, a developed mindset. You know, you have to be stronger in your mind and, like I said, be willing to just surrender to something that can seem really impossible in the moment. But stick with it and don't give up and keep getting yourself back into that champion's mindset, which is a place where it's hot, it's windy, your legs are killing you, you want to quit.

It doesn't look like you're going to be able to win or achieve the goal that you want to do. But you stay with it anyway. You stay engaged anyway. And then things start to turn around and that flow comes back and the next thing you know you know miles are passing and you didn't even you didn't even know it and so that takes time to develop okay okay sure somebody young can have a very aggressive uh intense focus but i think it takes i think it takes a lot of years of developing yourself to get to the

point where you have that focus it's very patient that's interesting you say an old bull sitting on yeah and how long did it take you personally uh and obviously you you you found it reasonably quickly to not have the negative conversation during a race and would only focus on this I've got, this I know how to do. I trained harder than this. I'm not at the envelope, the edge of the envelope of my stress here. I'm in a good place. Rather than, oh, man, can I make this hill?

Can I do this? Am I going to get that? How long before you got rid of the negativity in your thinking? And were you ever on the bike going, I'm the greatest of all time. That's right, Howard. I'm pretty. I'm pretty, Howard. Look, I'm the greatest of all time. That's right, Howard. I'm pretty. I'm pretty, Howard. Look, I'm so quick.

I turn out the lights. I get in the bed before the room go dark. You know, I met Muhammad Ali at Super Bowl a number of years ago. Quite a few years ago, actually. And I was introduced to him. And he sounded nothing like that. Well, no. At that point, he wasn't really talking.

Oh, okay. All right, man. We were introduced to each other, and somebody said, you know, this is Mark Allen, the Iron Man champ, you know. And he kind of does this little thing with his head, and he smiles. He gets this twinkle in his eye. And it was the coolest just connection, you know, because he was so in there. Yes, right, yes. But the speech wasn't there for him.

But anyway, what the heck were we talking about? Okay, so how long did it take you to rid your mind of a negative thought process in the race? You know, I'll be honest with you. I won Ironman six times. And in every one of those victories, I'll be honest with you. I won Ironman six times. And in every one of those victories, there were thousands of moments where my mind wasn't quiet, where the negative thoughts did come in, where I wanted to quit, where I thought, I can't do it. I can't take another step.

What am I doing? I need to get a real job, not do this stupid sport anymore. the sport anymore. But the thing that was different was that in those victories, those thoughts would come in, those negative thoughts, that negative chatter, that internal dialogue that doesn't help you out. And I'd take a breath and then I could get it to be quiet again. And so it doesn't matter how positive you are, you're going to have moments in something that's an endurance event like that where you get the negative thoughts, but you bring yourself back to that quiet place much quicker. And the young guys, they get into that negative space and they might be in it for

10 minutes or 15 minutes. I hopefully would be in it for like a couple seconds and then get back into that flow, just that, okay, you know, you go back to surrendering saying, okay, who cares if it's hard? This is what I asked for. I put myself in this position here. And then you just start to engage in that more of a flow state. So it's not like all of a sudden you go from being this really negative dude to being Mr. Positive. You know, that's very unrealistic. You just get better at managing it. And depending on your ability, your skills, your fitness, all that, it will reach a tipping point where you're managing it well enough that all of a sudden you go from second place to first. From being the runner-up to being the champion, from letting those moments drag you down to being able to continue to pick yourself up and take that next step and keep going the best you possibly can. So it's a huge tipping point. So the muscle that makes the difference from second to third or fifth to first place is the

one between your ears. Yeah. Look at that. So I think this is a perfect time to summarize your career numerically. And that is with the following one, 6, 21, infinity. And 1 is for the first official triathlon world championship victory. 6 is for the six times that Mark has won the Ironman. 21 stands for his two-season run of 21 straight victories along the way defeating every one of the top 50 triathletes in the world. And Infinity represents the acknowledgement by ESPN as the greatest endurance athlete of all time. Pretty damn cool, man.

1-6-21 Infinity, Mark Allen. Yep. Beauty of numbers. You have Mark Allen Coaching, which is an online coaching program. If we were to join that, how much brilliant Mark Allen do we get? And how are you working with these guys when you're not actually stood next to them,

poking them with a shark's dick and tell them to run faster, swim further, cycle better? Yeah, you get a lot of me on that coaching program, markallencoaching.com. of them poking them with a shark's dick and tell them to run faster, swim further, cycle better. Yeah, you get a lot of me on that coaching program, markallencoaching.com. I provide people with training plans that are all based on the philosophy of how I got myself to be the Ironman champion. And it's all based on those training methodologies, but customized to the fitness of the person and the goals of the person and their age,

the races that they're targeting. And then you get a ton of support from me. So there's always that chance to email and to ask the questions and get the answers. And that website again is please? MarkAllenCoaching.com. Cool. Well, to make this the best interview ever

I'm just going to say Tony Stark it was a pleasure you've never had that before have you you must be fed up and then some

Mark Allen sir salute you been a pleasure absolute pleasure and thank you for sharing your experience it's

it's been revealing and I think our audience will have enjoyed it. So thank you once again for your time. All right. Thanks, guys. It's always great

and I'm happy to chat anytime. Thank you. Wow, what a great show. I can't believe we had Tony Stark on. I'm getting used to saying wow after interviewing our guests. Yeah.

But that is... Yeah. I mean, not just... I'm in awe of the numbers, which you so eloquently put through, but the journey. It wasn't like, you know what, dude, I'm world champion, and it was so easy.

He had to struggle. He's the greatest endurance athlete of all time, and he struggled. And he had to come to terms with, in the end, just as Sembwele Makora. I'm going to love saying that for a while. It's what goes up there. It's what goes on

up there on the top deck. And he said until he got able to have that voice in his mind, but get shot of it within seconds, rather than the younger athletes who'd still be arguing 10 minutes down the road. And that's the big key.

Brilliant, brilliant. Think yourself to a different place, to a better place, to a better performance, to greater endurance. Yeah. I just hope he gives us a tour of Stark Industries. That'd be great.

Oh, well. Open the window. We'll fly out in our Iron Man suits. Right. I've been Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. You sure you're not Tony Stark? Oh, I've been Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. You sure you're not Tony Stark? Oh, I'm Tony Stark.

There you go. This has been Playing With Science. And it's not been enduring, or has it? Yes, it has. It's been an endurance triathlon special, and I'm so pleased that we were able to make it. Hope you've enjoyed it. We look forward to your company very very soon