#ICYMI - Ironman Triathlon, with Mark Allen

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Mark Allen, six-time Ironman World Champion, and this is Playing with Science.

• 0:07Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:08Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science.

• 0:14Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 0:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Not Tony Stark, though.

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 0:27Gary O'Reilly?

  But something even better.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  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 McCora from the University of Kent in England, who says endurance is pretty much all in the mind.

• 0:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Not in my mind. The only things up there are a cobweb and an angry-looking spider.

• 0:59Gary O'Reilly?

  For those of you that aren't familiar with triathlon, it's quite simple. You swim, you run, you ride your bicycle.

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm, sounds simple, doesn't it?

• 1:07Gary O'Reilly?

  And then 2.4 miles, swimming.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:11Gary O'Reilly?

  112 miles, bicycle riding.

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:15Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  Gosh.

• 1:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, man, I'm exhausted saying it.

• 1:26Chuck Nice?

  You gotta get it all done in one day, you know what I mean?

• 1:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, there's no taking a nap in between.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:30Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so that's Ironman triathlon, and Mark Allen is better and has been better than anyone ever. So, our first guest, Dr. Samuel McCora, 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?

• 1:55Gary O'Reilly?

  From other kind of endurance athletes, above and beyond, they do three events and some other endurance athletes only just do the one.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  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 in three 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 to other endurance.

• 2:49Chuck Nice?

  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 just, 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, in your studies that says this is what fatigue is? Do we have a base definition for fatigue?

• 3:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a million dollar question. No, we don't.

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  There are many definitions. And actually, it has been a problem for a long time because it impairs, if you like, communication between scientists and also between scientists and the public, because fatigue can mean many, many different things. And some of these things, for example, the sensation of being tired after a long event that you just described, that's 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, of being tired. But fatigue has also been defined as a reduction in muscle force or muscle power consequence, as a consequence to exercise. That's what

• 4:13Speaker 03

  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 the time goes by when you do a task.

• 4:27Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  So what I'm interested in is the fact that in order to keep performance at a certain level over time, you 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 the the the symptom of fatigue that I concentrate most of my research on.

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 4:48Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I 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 we stop or slow down in a race.

• 5:36Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  And what your body physiologically is actually capable of of doing.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  That's where that's where the disconnect is. But the the first kind of fatigue, which is this feeling, which is mainly primarily dictated by how well the task feels, which is the perception of effort, which increases over time to the point that you feel it as that you've given it given it all and therefore you cannot keep going. That's not really that's a psychological phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that it's self-imposed. You know, if you if I cut your arm off, you will feel a lot of pain. It's a psychological phenomenon. Uh, but that's not self-imposed. It's, you know, because I've cut your arm off.

• 6:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Um, uh, but it it there is a distinction between the feeling of not being able to continue and the actual ability of the body to continue. That's

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  where where the disconnect is and where it's quite interesting to. Also for athletes.

• 6:34Chuck Nice?

  What you're saying, 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,

• 7:14Chuck Nice?

  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 I 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.

• 7:29Gary O'Reilly?

  That's what I say. You don't say that about yourself. That's what I say.

• 7:31Chuck Nice?

  That's your life.

• 7:34Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 8:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Feel better?

• 8:07Chuck Nice?

  Feel better now? I'm sorry. That was me channeling my father. I'm so sorry. I am so sorry.

• 8:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Go on, professor, because it is a great question and that's gonna get a good answer.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  It is. And fortunately, only, 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, they 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 V2max test, which is used a law to measure the maximal oxygen consumption, which is a measure of fitness in endurance athletes. But the task itself is basically is. In this case was cycling for as long as you can with but with the power output of

• 9:02Speaker 03

  the bike and increasing uh over time until until the point that you cannot keep going anymore you cannot cycle anymore.

• 9:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  All right, this is a very common test. But the smart thing that they did is to immediately after uh what we call exhaustion, immediately after they couldn't go anymore, they applied a a a large cuff similar to the cuff they use to measure blood pressure but around the the leg muscle. So basically to block the circulation both active circulation so blocking the blood coming in with a lot of oxygen but also blocking the blood coming out. Um so they kind of froze in time if you like the metabolic uh uh situation of the muscle.

• 9:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  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 it was for the uh concentration of ATP, which is, as you probably knows, is the chemical energy inside the any cell but also the muscle cells.

• 10:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh huh.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  So and and then they calculated for how long they could um uh cycle from a purely energetic point of view at the point where they stop. So at a very, very high intensity for an endurance up, yeah, one hundred percent of your two max. But to give an example, marathons, even elite runners, they run about eighty percent of your time, okay? So it's a very high intensity endurance exercise and they calculated that the their subjects, they could have kept going from an energy point of view for for another six to eight minutes after they stop.

• 10:43Gary O'Reilly?

  And and that's at the peak, is that that's at the peak uh uh?

• 10:46Speaker 03

  At the peak.

• 10:47Gary O'Reilly?

  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? You know, that kind of makes. That's doing that with the muscles? Wow. Or have I gone completely out on that limb and I'm about to fall off?

• 11:12Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 11:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, that makes a lot of sense.

• 11:15Chuck Nice?

  I mean, it may not be scientific, but it makes sense. It's like, it's almost like a self-preservation thing. It's almost the way like your body slows its metabolism when you don't eat.

• 11:26Gary O'Reilly?

  If I'm the brain and you're using too much of my energy,

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:29Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm shutting you down.

• 11:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, that's the perfect...

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  But no, that's just us. That's us doing our own experiments right now, professor. We're running our own lab right now.

• 11:38Gary O'Reilly?

  So where are... Where is this theory of mine in the world of reality?

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Actually, your theory is in between the... A common one and mine.

• 11:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  It's not a... And I tell you why. So the most common theory is that... But this is about what I would call a teleological explanation, which in physiology, interesting, but you know, we cannot really test them experimentally, yeah? So we can test the mechanisms.

• 12:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  So is the why, you know? So why this kind of system that prevents you from fully, for example, using your physiological capacity? Why would it be a fish for survival? Why did it evolve? Right? Why did we develop this perception of effort that stop us before we can actually fully use, for example, in this case, the case I... The example I made earlier, fully use our energy reserve in the muscle.

• 12:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  I think actually that a lot of people think is that, is to avoid basically killing yourself during exercise.

• 12:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  And to be honest, the muscle themselves, some people think that's the organ that is protected, but I don't think so because the muscle, I mean, you can... You can operation, you can park them of oxygen for kind of hours and they recover, you know what I mean? It's not... They're very tough organs. Obviously, the brain would be the next one, the most important to save. But in general, whole body almost stays. I think that, which is the state of your body, we have a lot of physiological system that do that. So during exercise, it's extremely difficult to kill yourself.

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  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?

• 13:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Good question.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Yes, and this is what, well, it depends what you mean by physiological performer. I mean endurance performance.

• 13:42Chuck Nice?

  Endurance performance is what I'm saying is can I go farther? It's really what I'm asking, can I go farther?

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. And 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. And 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.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  So if I make your perception of effort higher, even if your physiological capacity is normal, your endurance performer will be reduced. And this is the kind of experiments that we did using mental fatigue. So we mentally fatigue people before an endurance test. And of course, we did that by asking people to do mentally fatiguing on a computer for 90 minutes. Clearly, that doesn't fatigue your leg muscles, right?

• 14:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  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 fatigued the leg muscles. So what 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.

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 15:25Gary O'Reilly?

  And on that wow, we will take a break. Professor, please stay with us. Professor Samuel Macora 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! Yes, you can stick around. Right, more from the professor when we get back.

• 16:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. This is our endurance and Ironman triathlon special. Yes, we have a great guest with us, Professor Samuelie Markora. And coming up after him will be Mark Allen, aka 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 just in the first segment there with how you can lose the race, uh, disbeltate your performance by being mentally fatigued before you even step foot on the track, on the road, or on the field. Is that right?

• 16:41Chuck Nice?

  Correct. Yeah, so now what I was fascinated by was the direct correlation between the mental fatigue and then the fatiguing of muscles. Uh, you know, and, you know, that correlation would lead me to believe that you can, 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.

• 17:26Chuck Nice?

  Can it work externally? Can I mentally fatigue my opponent?

• 17:32Gary O'Reilly?

  So, okay, you and I are in a race and you come up to me and say, "Oh, you're looking tired."

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  My God, you look so tired.

• 17:37Gary O'Reilly?

  All of a sudden, "Did you sleep well last night?"

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 17:39Gary O'Reilly?

  "Is everything okay?"

• 17:40Chuck Nice?

  Does that technique work?

• 17:41Gary O'Reilly?

  "Is your wife cheating on you?"

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no blow.

• 17:44Gary O'Reilly?

  By the way.

• 17:46Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, Professor, please. So can that, can that work?

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Actually, um, ye- ye- yes, but in two different ways. Okay. Uh, one is, uh, probably, uh, some more, more practically achievable. And the other one is be more science fiction. Uh, the first one is that I think it's, it's maybe related to yourself, but I guess, you know, some. So emotional regulation, so controlling your emotions, which in, in, in a social setting like sport, often you have to do. It's very mentally fatiguing. So they did a colleague of mine, um, here in the UK, did a study. Uh, I want to tell you about this study, it's one of my favorite, it's quite good, I think, from agents.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  So what they did, they showed a, a YouTube video of an Asian woman vomiting and eating her own vomit. Oh, wow. To, to a group of, of cyclists. Uh. And, and the reason to do that is to induce what you just did, to induce an emotion which is disgust. Mm-hmm. Okay. In one condition, okay, the control condition, they didn't show any video. In one condition, they showed the video and they told, uh, the, uh, the participant to that they could express their emotion, okay? No problem. So they could express their disgust as you did. Yes. Uh, just now. In the other one, which are called the stiff upper lip condition, which is very relevant to the English here. Yes.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  Is, is, uh, uh, you see the video, but maintain a stiff upper lip, do not show your emotions. Right. Okay. The group that did control their emotion went significantly slower in a, in a, in a, in a cycling time trial in the lab. Perform afterward compared to the group that could show their emotion, and of course also to the group that, uh, the control group that didn't see any video. So if you can induce with mind games and stuff, uh, some, uh, emotions in, in your opponent. And the opponent, because of the social situation, has to control this emotion, you could actually fatigue him or fatiga. Uh, by doing that.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  And other more science fiction way, which is related to a study which I did. Is by subliminally priming your opponent. So what we did, we show subliminal images, which is images that consciously you cannot perceive, but your brain still register, okay?

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  And we showed, 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, you know, positivity, energy.

• 20:35Chuck Nice?

  Encouragement.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Sad faces are associated with, you know, depression, being slow, being tired.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  Disapproval.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Exactly. And we found a significant difference between the time to exhaustion test in the happy phase, which lasted longer, compared to the sad phase, which lasted, with the time to exhaustion, which is this test of endurance that we do in the lab, was shorter. The same thing occurred using action versus in action was like things like energy versus things like toil or stop.

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  And so we showed these, these things, but they didn't see them.

• 21:12Chuck Nice?

  It's all subliminal. It's all subliminal.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  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 and. Wow.

• 21:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, you've become Dr. Evil in the space of the show.

• 21:34Chuck Nice?

  I know, I love it. I love it. Oh my God, it's so good.

• 21:38Gary O'Reilly?

  What I'm hearing is something we've, we've touched on with 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.

• 22:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes. By the way, that, that vomit video, I watch that every day just for fun. I'm just, I'm saying.

• 22:09Gary O'Reilly?

  You need help.

• 22:10Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying.

• 22:11Gary O'Reilly?

  So what I'm thinking here is we, it's, 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.

• 22:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Gary O'Reilly?

  And I, I mean, are you developing techniques for brain training? You're nodding, so you are. Would you like to share with us, please?

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, first of all, though, I would like to say that although the ultimate, if you like, limiting factor for your form seems to be the perception of effort, so how they feels to run at a given speed, that doesn't mean that, you know, your leg muscle and everything else that is connected to the functionality of your leg muscle is not important. Because of course, if your leg muscles are weaker or, you know, well-conditioned, to produce the same power output, for example, during cycling, you will have to recruit your muscle more intensely.

• 23:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  From, 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 are 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, in training, take care of your muscle fatigue and everything else. However, well, as you rightly said, all these experiments that, for example, I've done, but also others have done, has shown that, of course, that's important, but you can just change the perception and by doing that, change the performance.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  Because the state of your muscle is not the only factor, that 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 they should keep doing that.

• 24:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Of course.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  But they can do new things on the top. And one of the stuff that we tested, and we actually did testing with the thanks to General, the British Ministry of Defence, is to

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Add, uh, uh, uh, we call it cognitive workload. So add the load during training, but not physically. For example, by running faster or by running longer. Yeah. Which is what most people do.

• 24:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Or by reducing the resting periods. If you do interval training, this kind 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 adding a cognitive task to the endurance task. So for example, the first study that we did, we had computers in, uh, screens in front of the cyclists, which were training hobbies on a bike, in the bike. And, uh, one group, uh, trained three times a week for an hour on the bike. Uh, actually, both groups did that. But one group, on the top of that, they did is mentally fatiguing task, also for an hour, three times a week, at the same time.

• 25:15Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  And the group, uh, 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, the group that added the cognitive load to their training, uh, improved their performance much better.

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  And now we are testing this also during running, uh, 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.

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Uh, so you can actually do it also during running.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this, very, I mean, we're out of time, professor, but I just wanna, 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,

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  uh, if, if, if, if I want to improve my performance.

• 26:13Chuck Nice?

  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?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  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 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, to add 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 sessions maybe in the middle of the day,

• 27:34Speaker 03

  during the lunch break because you feel better, do it on purpose later in the day. And maybe, and try to run at the same speed that you would if you were more rested.

• 27:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's great stuff.

• 27:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, thank you.

• 27:46Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 27:47Gary O'Reilly?

  You have been lightning and a great pleasure to talk to. Right, Professor Samuel Macora 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?

• 28:02Chuck Nice?

  Tony Stark.

• 28:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Told you, he'll be here very, very shortly. He's just going to open the window, he's going to fly straight in.

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes, he is.

• 28:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. This is our triathlon and endurance show.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 28:27Gary O'Reilly?

  We have spoken to the wonderful Samweli Makora, our Italian professor in England, talking about how you can think yourself to a better performance. Right.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Now it's time to talk about that better performance.

• 28:41Gary O'Reilly?

  With someone who will not be bettered. Mark Allen.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 28:45Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 28:59Chuck Nice?

  I'm the greatest, Howard. Hmm, look at me, I'm pretty. Hmm, I'm the greatest of all time.

• 29:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Somehow, I don't believe Mark Allen is going to have any of those thoughts in him. He seems such a nice gentleman. How heavy a burden was to then wander around with that title on your shoulders?

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  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.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  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.

• 30:13Gary O'Reilly?

  If you've been world champion six times, I think we're way past the good standard point.

• 30:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's called the gold standard. That's not a good standard.

• 30:21Gary O'Reilly?

  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...

• 30:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Field of endurance and

• 30:39Chuck Nice?

  Being great at swimming is just not enough.

• 30:41Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 30:41Chuck Nice?

  I really have to challenge myself, like maybe with biking and running too.

• 30:45Gary O'Reilly?

  So you'll get used to Chuck if you run long enough.

• 30:49Gary O'Reilly?

  What drew you, what drew you to the other two disciplines and the world of triathlon?

• 30:54Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I, I, 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 to make it to, you know, national championships or to make it to Olympic trials even. So I, I kinda had this thing in the back of my mind that I was, you know, a, 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 know, Wide World of Sports was

• 31:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  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 two point mile for, 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, it's a one day event.

• 31:46Chuck Nice?

  One day.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  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, you know, it was just this crazy, non-logical thing that was calling me to go there to do the Ironman. And, uh, you know,

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  It turned into, it turned into a little more than just a one-time shot.

• 32:13Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Well, the first six times I went to Hawaii, I did not win. I was, I was 0 for 6 and so you, you know, think about it this way. 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, and then I finished fifth the following year, but I was closer to the leader at the, at the, at the finish line. Year after that, I was second. 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 beginning of the marathon, halfway through the marathon, even uh, as late as, you know, with just a couple of miles to go.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  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, you can win, where you can beat the guy who is beating you, a guy named Dave Scott." And, uh, you know, you do have to ask yourself, how many times are you going to beat your head against the wall for a goal that maybe you're just not going to get, not, you're not going to achieve. And so I-

• 33:41Chuck Nice?

  So how did you crack the code?

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:43Chuck Nice?

  Did you, did you just kill Dave Scott? Is that what happened?

• 33:46Gary O'Reilly?

  You've done it again, haven't you? You resorted to violence.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  You know, in 1989, I really tried to, I, I, before I started training, I said, "Am I really going to go back? Am I really going to devote a whole nother year for this endeavor?" And, uh, I was really close to following my friends' advice and saying, "Forget it. Throw it in the trash. Let everybody else race there." But I, I, I just knew that I hadn't had my best race yet. And so in 89, I, as I started training for my seventh Ironman Hawaii, I, um, I said, "I'm going to 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 10th. 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

• 34:31Speaker 00

  cross that finish line strong." And so that was, that was a real shift, actually, in, uh, in the focus. You know, if you're trying to win, if you feel the wind slipping away, it can, it can like close down your energy and all of a sudden the flow is gone.

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 34:48Gary O'Reilly?

  We're back to that mental state again.

• 34:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Gary O'Reilly?

  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?

• 35:10Speaker 00

  I had to really change my training around first and foremost and do some do some longer workouts, do some longer days because I was 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, were still too short to win a race that takes eight hours.

• 35:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  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 in nineteen eighty nine. 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 were 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 thirty minute swim, get out of the water, bike seven hours, get off of my bike and run thirty minutes.

• 36:13Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  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 way. They they roll these steps up to the plane and you go right down onto the hot tarmac of the runway.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  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 twelve thirty, 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 eighty nine, I I decided, you know, I have to I have to work with this environment as opposed to trying to be in competition to it.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  And, you know, it was it's sort of like.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  If you're, if I, I have 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.

• 37:44Chuck Nice?

  There it is.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  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.

• 37:53Chuck Nice?

  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 shout out to Carlos, Dave and Sean. And I was, I was the fourth guy who refused to compete, you know? I, 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, anybody who watches a triathlete, a triathlete.

• 38:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Matt took that as a compliment.

• 38:21Chuck Nice?

  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.

• 38:43Gary O'Reilly?

  But 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?

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. I like that. I trained harder than I compete. Oh.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, actually that's, that's what I did in a sense, like in, 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, than that speed. So that when I'm in the race, e- 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, 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.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  So that in the race, it's like, yeah, it's hard, but I did element 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, Kona's 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 know, 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.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  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.

• 40:39Chuck Nice?

  I got, I gotta ask you this. Okay. So the, the, these guys used to come in when they would, 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 true?

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

  Or were they just making excuses for losing?

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Those losers.

• 41:27Chuck Nice?

  Those losers.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, there, 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.

• 42:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, okay, okay.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  For sure, somebody young can have a very aggressive, 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.

• 42:28Gary O'Reilly?

  It's interesting you say all of that.

• 42:30Chuck Nice?

  The young bull and the old bull sitting on a hill.

• 42:31Gary O'Reilly?

  And how long did it take you personally, 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. My, I'm not at the envelope, the edge of the envelope of my stress here. I'm, 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?

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  And were you ever on the bike going, I'm the greatest of all time. Hmm, 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. Hmm, hmm.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  You know, I, I met Muhammad Ali at a Super Bowl a number of years ago, quite a few years ago, actually. And, and I was introduced to him.

• 43:21Chuck Nice?

  And he said nothing like that.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Well, no, it was, you know, at that point, he wasn't really talking.

• 43:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, okay.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  But we, 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 gives this, does this little thing with his head and he, he smiles, he gets this twinkle in his eye. And it was the coolest just connection, you know, because he, he, he was so in there, you know?

• 43:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, right, yes.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  But the speech wasn't there for him. But anyway. What the heck were we talking about?

• 43:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so how long did it take, how long did it take you to rid your mind of a negative thought process in the race?

• 43:58Speaker 00

  You know, uh, let me, I'll be honest with you, I won Ironman six times and, and in every one of those victories, there were, there were thousands of moments where my mind wasn't quiet, where the, 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. But, the thing that was different was that in those victories, those, those thoughts would come in, those negative thoughts, that negative chatter, that internal dialogue, it 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 gonna have moments in something

• 44:43Speaker 00

  that's an endurance event like that where you, you get the negative thoughts, but you bring yourself back to that, that quiet place much quicker. You know, 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, 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.

• 45:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Got you.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  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.

• 45:48Gary O'Reilly?

  So the muscle that makes the difference from second to third or fifth to first place.

• 45:53Chuck Nice?

  Is the one between your ears.

• 45:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. So I think this is a perfect time to summarize your career numerically. And that is with the following: 1, 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.

• 46:39Chuck Nice?

  Pretty, pretty damn cool, man. 1, 6, 21, infinity, Mark Allen.

• 46:44Gary O'Reilly?

  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 stick and telling them to run faster, swim further, cycle better?

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, you get, you get a lot of me on that coaching program, markallencoaching.com. I, I provide people with training plans that, that are the, all surround, based on the philosophy of how I got myself to be the Ironman champion. And it's all based on that, 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, you get a ton of support from me. So there's always that chance to, to email and to ask the questions and get the answers.

• 47:38Gary O'Reilly?

  And that website again is, please?

• 47:40Speaker 00

  markallencoaching.com.

• 47:42Chuck Nice?

  Cool. Well, to make this the best interview ever, I'm just gonna say, Tony Stark, it was a pleasure.

• 47:49Gary O'Reilly?

  You've never had that before, have you? You must be fed up and then some. Mark Allen, sir. Salute you. Been a pleasure.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  Thank you, Ken.

• 47:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolute pleasure. And thank you for sharing your experience. It's been revealing and I think our audience will have enjoyed it. So, thank you once again for your time.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Alright, thanks guys. It's always great and I'm happy to chat anytime.

• 48:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 48:13Chuck Nice?

  Wow, what a great show. I can't believe we had Tony Stark on.

• 48:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you know what? I'm getting used to saying "wow" after interviewing our guests.

• 48:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:19Gary O'Reilly?

  But that is...

• 48:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:22Gary O'Reilly?

  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."

• 48:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:33Gary O'Reilly?

  He had to struggle.

• 48:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:35Gary O'Reilly?

  He... He's the greatest endurance athlete of all time and he struggled.

• 48:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Gary O'Reilly?

  And he had to come to terms with, in the end, just as Samuel Maicora. I'm gonna love saying that for a while, yeah.

• 48:45Chuck Nice?

  Samuel Maicora.

• 48:46Gary O'Reilly?

  It's what goes up there.

• 48:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:48Gary O'Reilly?

  It's what goes on up there.

• 48:50Chuck Nice?

  It's all upstairs.

• 48:51Gary O'Reilly?

  On the top deck.

• 48:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:52Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 49:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:03Gary O'Reilly?

  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.

• 49:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I just hope he gives us a tour of Stark Industries. That'd be great.

• 49:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, well. Open the window. We'll fly out in our Iron Man suits. Right, that's... I've been Gary O'Reilly.

• 49:24Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 49:25Gary O'Reilly?

  You sure you're not Tony Stark?

• 49:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm Tony Stark, yeah!

• 49:28Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go. This has been played 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.