Episode 174 - How to Stay Motivated in Triathlon – Insights from Mark Allen: Part 1

How to Stay Motivated in Triathlon – Insights from Mark Allen: Part 1

 

Mark Allen is one of the greatest triathletes of all time and I was lucky enough to sit down with him for today’s episode. ESPN hailed him as the greatest endurance athlete, and he’s impressively claimed victory six times at the Ironman World Championship. He’s an absolute legend!

During our conversation, Mark shared his insights into motivation, mindset, nutrition, and what it takes to succeed in triathlon. It was so juicy that I’ve split it into two episodes. 

This week it’s part one, enjoy!

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Episode Transcription

Episode 174: How to Stay Motivated in Triathlon – Insights from Mark Allen: Part 1

Welcome to the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. The show designed to serve you up evidence-based sports nutrition advice from the experts. Hi, I'm your host Taryn, Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Advanced Sports Dietitian and founder of Dietitian Approved. Listen as I break down the latest evidence to give you practical, easy-to-digest strategies to train hard, recover faster and perform at your best. You have so much potential, and I want to help you unlock that with the power of nutrition. Let's get into it.

[00:00:00] Taryn: My guest today is widely regarded as one of the greatest triathletes of all time. ESPM dubbed him the greatest endurance athlete of all time and known as the grip, his remarkable ability to. Hold steady under immense pressure. He is a six time Ironman world champion.

He won the Nice international triathlon 10 times and has won numerous other triathlon events throughout his long and prosperous career. He was undefeated in a 21 race streak from 1988 to 1990.

His legendary victories at Ironman World Championships in Kona, particularly in the 1989 war against Dave Scott, have cemented his status as a sports icon. Can you guess who my guest is today? I had been weeing in my pants. Waiting to interview Mark Allen, and it is one of the greatest conversations I've ever had.

And I'm so excited for you to hear this episode. 

Mark agreed to talk to me on the TNA podcast, all about motivation and mindset as a triathlete. It was such a great conversation that went for a long time that we've split the episode into two parts. And you're about to hear part one today. So let's get into it.

[00:01:46] Taryn: Oh, Mark Allen. Thank you so much for joining me on the TNA podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today and I really hope fingers crossed that it's the first of many, because I know that you have so much knowledge and expertise tapped in that would be so good to share. So thank you so much.

[00:02:06] Mark: YeaH, I don't know if I have a lot of stuff. I might, have everything I gotta say in this one episode. But if there's more, I'm more than happy to come back, for sure.

[00:02:14] Taryn: Yes. Thank you. I'll hold you to that. So we hear so much about, you know, your triathlon career, your golden years, your big battle with Dave Scott. I love that story, but how did you actually first get into triathlon and what actually motivated you to pursue a career or the triathlon as a sport?

[00:02:35] Mark: Well, when I was 24 years old, I was, I'd been out of college for two years. And I really didn't have a, a real career direction. I was searching. I had a degree in biology. And I thought, medical school, nutritionist. I couldn't find the right pulse and, uh, one February Saturday 1982, I turned on Wide World of Sports, which was like the only sports program at the time here.

[00:03:00] Mark: And, uh, the announcer, Jim McKay, was talking about this thing called the Ironman, which I'd never heard of before. he talks about the distances and, you know, 2. 4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, marathon. And I'm thinking, how many days does it take them to do that? That sounds nuts, you know?

[00:03:16] Mark: And then of course I found out later that it's a one day event, and at first I thought, these people are absolutely nuts. You know, like, why would you want to do that? But then, you know, as the show progressed, , and I saw just that, that human side of something that challenging, where people were going I don't know if I can do this, but I'm going to try anyway.

[00:03:38] Mark: And, you know, I saw these just seemingly ordinary looking people crossing that extraordinary finish line on Ali'i Drive in Hawaii. , it just mesmerized me and captured my imagination. And about two weeks later I thought, you know what, I need to go there and see if I can cross that finish line.

[00:03:55] Mark: And I had a, background as being a competitive swimmer growing up. I did that for 12 years, but I was very mediocre as a swimmer, you know, I don't have the wingspan, the shoulder flexibility, the knees that bend backwards. I don't have any of that stuff, right? , so I was pretty, pretty mediocre at best as a swimmer.

[00:04:12] Mark: So I thought, all right, the Ironman is going to be in October. I've got about eight months to train. I've never really run or biked other than going to school or running in playground, you know, and so I thought, hmm, eight months. At a sport that I'm only doing for once, you know, I'm going to be really bad at this, but I saw right away that I kind of had like a knack for running and cycling. Like my levers are put together to actually generate power on the bike and to be efficient running. And I had the swimming background. And probably even two things more was that I had this huge cardiovascular engine already built from the years of swimming.

[00:04:49] Mark: And, as a swimmer you really do develop , that self discipline to get up and do the workouts and, come up with the games that make it interesting every day and come up with the little wins that keep you going from week to week. because, you know, when I start very first started in triathlon that year, you know, I wasn't expecting to do well.

[00:05:06] Mark: And so the motivation was purely just to, See how good I could get in that amount of time and you know fast forward to to Kona that year I actually came out of the water in second place on the feet of the best guy at the time Dave Scott and halfway through the bike ride I was still with him the best guy in the sport at the time and we had a five minute lead on the rest of the field and Shortly after that my derailleur broke and I didn't finish the race.

[00:05:33] Mark: So, you know, I didn't Achieve that sort of outward dream that I put out there to my family and friends. I want to cross that finish line. But I had been with the best guy in the world for several hours of racing, and that's when the real, the big dream was born. I thought, you know, maybe if I take my time, develop my skills, my experience, my fitness, maybe I can be the champion of this incredible race.

[00:05:57] Mark: And so, it's just interesting that something went from, this is nuts, why would anybody want to do it, to I want to do it to just cross the finish line and move on and then get serious about life to thinking,

[00:06:09] Mark: maybe I have a talent for this. Maybe we're swimming didn't love me so much.

[00:06:15] Mark: There's a lot of love here in this sport called triathlon, you know, but it was still wasn't a big, , thought out plan. I was just, , you know how you have those things in your life that feel like callings? Like, maybe they don't even make logical sense to you, but you're just attracted to it.

[00:06:29] Mark: And you know , there's something there for me. And I really felt like that, first year in the sport. And then, actually, a month after Kona, I was, that year, 1982, I was invited to be on a, newly formed triathlon team in the San Diego area. And They paid me a salary. They were going to pay flights to races.

[00:06:46] Mark: I mean, all of a sudden, I didn't have to work. And I had the opportunity to actually just train and really see how, how good I could become. And shortly after that, Nike picked me up and, and, , the rest is history. But it,

[00:06:58] Mark: you know, , it wasn't part of a big life plan that I had. I didn't put it down on a spreadsheet.

[00:07:02] Mark: I didn't write an affirmation. It was just Something inside I could feel was calling me and, looking back, obviously it was, I'm glad I went with that calling.

[00:07:13] Taryn: Yeah, very successful career as a result of one moment watching a TV show going, I want to do this. This is going to be awesome to hang on a minute. I'm actually up there with the pointy end of the field to, I'm going to win this thing. Like very rapid progression. And it is testament to your mindset probably.

[00:07:29] Taryn: And just the way that you're built and the way that you work, which is why you were so successful in the end. I love it. I love it. It's not competitive at all, are you?

[00:07:39] Mark: Well, you know, that's an interesting question. Like , I do some ambassador work for Ironman. So I'm there at their world championship and the race director, Diane, Diana Birch was saying, you're like one of the most competitive people on the planet.

[00:07:50] Mark: Look at what you did. And I go, to be honest, I'm not really like super competitive. And she goes, cut the shit, you know, like, come on. And I go, no, you have to understand, like, I don't live to compete with people. I don't live to do something that shows somebody like I'm better than you. that's not my motivation.

[00:08:10] Mark: My real motivation. In the sport, and it probably came from sort of that, sort of humble sport background as a swimmer, being mediocre. It was really just, I love that feeling of seeing how good I can get. Like, you know, when you make those little improvements in your training, all of a sudden you're swimming a little faster per hundred, or cycling, you do a route a few minutes faster, or, running on the track, you improve your 400 time, whatever it is.

[00:08:36] Mark: That's super satisfying for me. I said, however. When I'm in a race, I don't like to lose.

[00:08:44] Taryn: Yeah.

[00:08:45] Mark: And so, I didn't really like the racing part. It was kind of like the excuse to have these companies pay me money so that I could actually do the training part. I love the training part. But , when I went to the races, even though I'm not naturally a competitive person, like I don't seek out competition with other people.

[00:09:05] Mark: I knew that my job, my responsibility, my obligation to myself and those who supported me was to go there and do the absolute best that I could. And I knew that some days that was going to be crossing the finish line in first place. And I knew that some days I was not going to win. You know, only one person wins every race.

[00:09:27] Mark: And so, even when I was finishing second, third, fifth, whatever it was, I gave everything I had all the way until I got to the finish line. Because I felt like In doing that, put out that energy of giving your best and you just never know how your best might match up against other people and something might happen, a kilometer from the finish line with everybody else.

[00:09:46] Mark: You just never know. And so, when I crossed every finish line, even if it was not a victory, I knew that those supporting me, they knew that, yeah, I gave everything I had. And that was, that was a good feeling.

[00:09:57] Taryn: Triathlon is a very addictive sport like that, isn't it? There's always something little that you can improve and you can work on something and get some little marginal gains. It just fuels the fire and especially with three sports to get better at, there's always something to, always level up.

[00:10:12] Taryn: And I love that about that. I was very much addicted to triathlon myself when I trained many years ago now. , I am highly competitive. I'm not. I'm not going to shy away from the fact that I'm highly competitive, but you're kind of like a humble competitive, which is much nicer. I think I would love to chat to you about your nutrition as you headed towards Kona, you know, to go from not doing anything other than swimming to racing, , one of the biggest events in the world and the hardest events in the world. Did you have any nutrition plan? Or any help with that. And then, you know, what was your race nutrition plan like back in 1982 when everyone had one type of gel and Coca Cola, and that was about it.

[00:10:52] Mark: nutrition part was the most, I would say, underdeveloped and archaic piece of my racing. Even in Ironman in 1995, technology and real understanding of how to create products that can actually get absorbed easily. they were just on the low end of finally starting to figure it out.

[00:11:11] Mark: And so like nowadays, you know, the athletes can get. A hundred, 150, even 200 calories an hour, more in per hour than I was able to. They can absorb it because the products are so much more developed in Kona especially our times weren't limited by our fitness. Our times were limited by our ability to get in calories quick enough to sustain the fitness that we were capable of doing. so 1982, my first Ironman, obviously I'd never done the sport before. It was going to be the first time I'd run a marathon. First time I had ever moved my body for however many hours it was going to take. I didn't know how long it was going to take.

[00:11:46] Mark: But, for sure, at least eight or nine hours, right? first of all, I looked at what the sport nutrition drink was going to be on the course. And it was this stuff called Guconade. Like, does Guccanade sound good to you? I,

[00:12:00] Taryn: Sounds like diabetes.

[00:12:02] Mark: yeah, I'm not gonna drink Guccanade, alright? Maybe it was the best stuff on the planet, but I wasn't even, I wasn't even gonna come close to that stuff.

[00:12:09] Mark: And so I looked at, I had heard what Dave Scott took, and he ate a lot of dried figs because it's highly concentrated, sugary, whatever, right? But of course it's got like a lot of fiber and it takes forever to break down, I mean, stupid stuff, right? I did my research and I figured out, I analyzed my calorie needs on the bike and I realized I'm going to need 42 figs to get through the bike ride.

[00:12:33] Taryn: That's a shitload of figs. 

[00:12:35] Mark: I had 42 figs stuffed in my bike jersey, which was a wool jersey by the way, because there wasn't really lycra. so here I am in the tropics in a wool jersey with 42 figs stuffed in. I look like a, I look like a chipmunk. Back here. I, I started eating figs and I got to fig number 13 and I went to put it in my mouth and I'm like, if I take this thing in, the other ones are going to come right back up. I was so sick to my stomach and I'm like, okay, that was really dumb, , so obviously figs didn't work, you know? And so just because you read something a pro is doing or saying they're doing. That does not mean it's going to work for you,

[00:13:17] Taryn: Such a good point.

[00:13:19] Mark: Yeah, and so, In the years that I won, I kind of settled on a rhythm of drink that was kind of like Ensure, which has carbohydrate, fat, and protein in it.

[00:13:28] Mark: It was kind of like a milkshake.

[00:13:30] Taryn: Hospital kind of formula when you're 

[00:13:32] Mark: yeah, they give it to sick people in the hospital who can't take solid food. And so I would drink that on the bike until I just couldn't stand that anymore. And then I would shift over to a little bit of sports drink. And then on the run, I would just drink Coke.

[00:13:45] Mark: And I had a couple gels that were made by this company, Lepin. I couldn't take any of the other gel products that had been developed at that point. They just made me sick. But for some reason, the Lepin was formulated a little bit differently and I could actually take in a few of those and then salt tablets you know, you look at that and you go, yeah, that's

[00:14:03] Mark: probably, you know, 

[00:14:04] Taryn: how did you survive?

[00:14:06] Mark: how did you even go as fast as you did with that garbage that you were thrown in there?

[00:14:10] Mark: it would be fun if I could transport my body back to that time or transport that body up to this time and just try it once with all the sport products that you have now.

[00:14:21] Taryn: Yeah. Huge advances in sports nutrition in that time, but I guess testament to the quality of athletes. Coming through also that you could do a full distance event in those conditions, which with such terrible nutrition and still have such a great day out in the office. Yeah, it's massive. I wish I could do triathlon now with everything I know.

[00:14:44] Taryn: Working with triathletes for so long because I started triathlon when I was just a dietician and it's a completely different skill set and knowledge base from a regular dietician to somebody that specializes in sport and then, you know, specializes again into triathlon. like, I wish I knew then what I do know now.

[00:15:01] Taryn: Cause again, I'd probably would have been way better than I was as well. 

[00:15:05] Mark: Yeah, you know, I, I really tried as best as I could to craft my eating habits and nutrition habits around how what I took in affected my body. So for example, back in the 80s when I started the Pritikin diet was really popular and everybody was eating all these carbohydrates they weren't eating a lot of protein and everybody was having rice cakes , and bagels with bananas on them.

[00:15:26] Mark: And I'm like, I was always craving protein. And so, you know, I made sure that I ate a lot of protein. I didn't gorge on carbohydrates. You know, I was very counter the very popular theory at the time. And, back then actually science was saying, Oh no, endurance athletes don't need any more protein than like an average sedentary person.

[00:15:49] Mark: And I'm thinking, yeah, that doesn't make sense. and then probably toward the end of my career, there was a research study that came out and they go, Ooh, we were wrong. Actually, endurance athletes need as much protein as like bodybuilders. Because you're constantly breaking down your muscle and you're having to rebuild it.

[00:16:04] Mark: And I was also, I was not fat phobic. Like a lot of people back then were deathly afraid of any kind of fat, like butter or oil or, and I just, olive oil tasted good to me, avocados tasted good to me, almonds tasted good to me, all of the stuff that now is kind of standard, like, people get in high quality protein, people get in good oils, they're conscious of the volume of carbohydrate and the source, types of carbohydrate that they take in, yeah, it's just fun to see how nutrition has changed, even a lot of the training philosophies that, that I use as a coach now are kind of almost completely flip flop of what I did back in the day, because we just did what everybody else didn't.

[00:16:47] Mark: And nobody had really done research on endurance athletics at the level that we were doing it. And so we were kind of paving the way with, what works? How long is long? How long is too long? How much speed work is enough but not too much? You know, does it change as you age? Questions that now are we have answers to them.

[00:17:09] Taryn: thank goodness,

[00:17:11] Mark: Yeah. 

[00:17:11] Taryn: having the ability to tune into your body and go, well, this, this feels right, or this doesn't feel right as I think a really valuable skill for every triathlete, because there are so many, I always talk about shiny objects. There are so many rabbit holes you can fall down and new diets and new products.

[00:17:25] Taryn: And you need to really stop and just think, right, well, what actually does feel good for me and what works for me, rather than just, like you said earlier, following what a pro does and going this is what they do. So that. That will hopefully work for me as well. It's really like n equals one, you are your own experiment and figuring out what works for you.

[00:17:42] Taryn: And you obviously did that too through your career, which is really valuable.

[00:17:47] Mark: And also, I mean, you mentioned this earlier that there's so many things that you can utilize to get better and that you can constantly be adding things and getting a little bit better, which I always tried to back up and go, okay, now first and foremost, am I covering?

[00:18:02] Mark: The Rock Bottom Basics. I have to swim, I have to bike, and I have to run. Am I doing that in a way that makes sense? Am I doing that in a way that's sustainable? Not just for this week, or this month, or this year, but for, 3, whatever, turned out being 15 years as a career. Without burning myself out.

[00:18:22] Mark: and then, you can start adding in That second level of things that might help you out, whether it's working with a nutritionist or, having a bike fit or getting blood work or, you know, working with somebody with mindset, you know, all of these things. And at some point you also have to say, okay, that's enough things like I can't add in five more new things into.

[00:18:46] Mark: the 12 that I'm already doing. Otherwise, my head's just gonna go WOOOOO! You know, and, I won't even be getting sleep because it's gonna take me all day to, and all night to get all this stuff done. So, at some point you also have to say, Okay, that's enough. 

[00:19:02] Mark: Let me just see what I can do with that.

[00:19:04] Mark: And then, take all of the things that you feel are working and test them over time. You know, what might work really well for a day, or a week, or a month does not necessarily mean that it will work well. for two years, or three years, or five years. And, something that you were just saying about, getting these incremental, these little bits of improvement from nutrition and all that, but listening to your body, if all of the promises of percentages of improvement actually were there from all of the things that I used, I probably would have been able to finish Iron Man in about three and a half hours.

[00:19:40] Mark: So

[00:19:40] Mark: obviously, All those amazing promises about how this product, and that product, and this nutrition, and that one's going to give you six and a half percent more, you know, whatever. Cut it back a little bit.

[00:19:52] Taryn: Yeah, n equals one. I always go back to that. I work with age groupers as well, just like you work with age groupers now, and they juggle a lot. You know, we have all the training that you've got to fit into a week because we're high achieving people. There's not one sport to train for. There's three plus throw on some strength training and some ability and things like that.

[00:20:11] Taryn: Plus you've got, you know, work, Some people still work full time, part time, shift workers. Then there's family commitments. It is a lot. We are very highly functional humans to fit everything into that week. Do you have any tips for staying motivated and consistent with training when there is just so many competing priorities in a triathlete's life?

[00:20:35] Mark: the key word that you mentioned there is consistent. if you can train consistently, also going to stay motivated. and consistency is not a, it's not a measure of how much volume you're doing. It's not a measure of how fast you're going. It's a measure of the frequency with which you get in the planned workouts that you have planned.

[00:20:57] Mark: And so, first piece of keeping motivation up is to not over promise yourself to your sport. So, think about how much time you actually honestly have that you can carve out to train. And then figure out, the best way to structure my training so that in the 8 hours a week or 15 hours a week or whatever it is that you know that you can actually get into your life without having your whole life blow up.

[00:21:24] Mark: Then it's figuring out what kind of training is going to help me optimize that time. You know, like I'm on a platform called TriDot and it's, it's one of the best platforms for Really optimizing benefit per training minute or hour that you put in for each sport. And that's another thing that will motivate you.

[00:21:43] Mark: If you're staying consistent, meaning you're not getting injured, you're not getting burned out, you don't have this ideal huge amount of training. If you could do it, you're going to be great, but you can't fit it in. And if you're cutting back training every day, it's going to be motivating.

[00:21:58] Mark: You're going to feel like, oh, jeez, I, I shortchange myself again. However, if you or you and your coach set up a training plan that takes in the realistic hours that you have to train, and you set up the training plan based on that, you're going to have that positive feedback of getting most of those workouts in.

[00:22:16] Mark: That's a positive

[00:22:17] Mark: motivation. Secondly, you will stay consistent because you're not over stretching yourself to the point of breaking. you're going to start to see results, another thing is I coach a lot of midlife to older folks, And one of the things that, that I have to sort of help them restructure is what they're trying to do, like, yeah, I did the sport when I was 23 to 30 and then I had a family and now, my kids are out of the house and I'm back at it, but I'm just so slow compared to what I was and I go, do not get in a competition with your 30 year old self, you will always lose, let's dial it back and maybe, the goals now aren't necessarily to see how fast you can go, but to, you know, be consistent with your training and to, Just see what you can do on each and every day, however you start the day, make it end a little better than it started.

[00:23:08] Mark: And some days are going to be slow, some days are going to be fast, some days you will have to just take it off because nobody can anticipate how training and life will impact all of that into that ball of wax of stress that you can manage. And so then, you know, give yourself a hall pass from time to time also.

[00:23:24] Mark: And say, you know what, I am tired. I need to step away and manage a few things over here so that a day from now or two days from now I can actually get back in my training. And give yourself that freedom to be flexible within that, that, that mantra of trying to be consistent. And if you can do that, you know, and, and acknowledge the little improvements that you get from time to time and realize those are huge.

[00:23:46] Mark: And also to ask yourself what's my why here? Just to get fast. Or am I seeing that when I exercise consistently, my whole life is better. I'm happier. I feel stronger. I'm healthier. I feel more vibrant. And this was a question that a lot of triathletes, everybody had to ask during covid when there was no racing, Everybody thought, oh, the race is the reason that I'm training.

[00:24:15] Mark: The race is just the excuse to train. And when the races were taken away, people were like, why am I even training? I go, well, ask yourself, what do you get from training? And they're like, oh, wow. Yeah, it's stress relief. It's time away where I can just daydream about other stuff. and I love the community that I get to train with.

[00:24:33] Mark: And so you find all of these things that turn it more into a lifestyle and a journey. That makes it so worth it, and that, that in itself, when you get to that point and the racing, yeah, the races are the accountability piece that a lot of people need, like, without a race, you know, you're not quite scared enough to get out there and train on some of the days when you could, you know, but when you have a race coming up, you're like, ooh, okay, I'm going,

[00:24:58] Mark: you know, 

[00:25:00] Taryn: When it's dark and it's cold and you're tired the alarm goes off and you could so easily just hit snooze or turn it off altogether. I love the word lifestyle because triathlon is very much a lifestyle, isn't it? And success in the sport will come when it is part of your lifestyle, but then it is a battle or you bite off more than you can chew a lot of the time.

[00:25:22] Taryn: Because we are kind of high achieving, high performing people and I love the consistency, you know, trying to actually be consistent because then you're available for training and then that's how you actually progress forwards rather than getting injured and taking weeks off or getting sick and having another week off.

[00:25:37] Taryn: It's that availability to train and the consistency piece that will lead to success long term.

[00:25:43] Taryn: All right. We're going to have to leave it there, Mark. Thank you so much. We've covered some incredible insights into motivation, mindset, and what it takes to be consistent as a triathlete in training, but we are far from finished yet. There is so much else I want to talk to you about. So in part two, we're going to dive even deeper into.

[00:26:05] Taryn: Some mental training techniques and try and get Mark's advice on overcoming self doubt and staying motivated through every season, every training session and racing. So make sure you subscribe to the podcast and I'll see you back next week. 

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or want to share with me what you've learned, email me at [email protected]. You can also spread the word by leaving me a review and taking a screenshot of you listening to the show. Don't forget to tag me on social media, @dietitian.approved, so I can give you a shout out, too. If you want to learn more about what we do, head to dietitianapproved.com. And if you want to learn more about the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program, head to dietitianapproved.com/academy. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to helping you smashed in the fourth leg - nutrition!