Duathlon World Championships: Allan Egbert’s Path to Success

I was

these

And then all of a sudden I went to middle

And then I went right

duathlon in the middle or Olympic distance. And then I

world, the longest duathlon in the

were just like,

How are you doing

But I wouldn't have been able to do this without you

Yeah.

your training,

me able to complete this race.

I wouldn't have been able to

put that all together,

Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. Today we have a special guest, of our everyday athletes, Allan Egbert from Ohio. Allan welcome to the show.

Thank you. Welcome. See you guys.

So we'll start off asking you kind of like, you know, what's your athletic background? What initially got you into some endurance sports?

I've kind of always been an athlete.

I did very well

high school and,

in pole-vaulting is where I, made it to a

and then after that, I

love

do some fighting is boxing and stuff and martial arts. And, then it got into,

doing triathlons with the canoe bike and run. I was doing a series of those with friends.

from there,

had a mixture of stuff I was doing. then

yeah, I was very active, always loved competition and I loved the training, just working out with.

friends and

that's that always kept me as soon as someone says they're doing something that was interesting to me. I was like, huh, I'd like to try that. So I would get in with

So how long have you been doing triathlons now, like swim, bike, runs?

2018,

started to, I hooked up with Matt Ambus, who is a triathlon guy here. He's also

soon as I had permission, cause I had a neck surgery was done. And, but as soon as I had permission, I was allowed to,

bike, run and swim,

my run was

had to learn to run 13 miles and that was a five miles back down, seven miles.

And I kept working my way all the way up to, I was able to do

from there I started, yeah, I was just hitting the races, but my swimming,

never found time to put my swimming in. So I think a couple of years I finally said, you know what, I'm not improving in anything. I said, I'm just gonna stick with the bike and run. And even one year I just told him, said, I'm just gonna do all running events.

just so I can focus on something.

then all of a sudden I got into, I said, let me try this duathlon. And all of sudden I started to see my bike and my run started getting some benefit.

So you went from like more explosive sports like pole vaulting, kickboxing, boxing into triathlon with the help of a friend sounds like and and now a couple of months ago a month ago you did the world championships in duathlon in switzerland correct? Congratulations that's amazing.

Hmm hmm.

I did.

That's it.

behind that is to me, I was doing sprints on these duathlons. And then all of a sudden I went to middle distance. And then I went right to a 70.3 duathlon in the middle or Olympic distance. And then I went to the world, the longest duathlon in the world. people were just like,

How are you doing that? How are you just... I don't know, because everyone I went to was a new challenge for me. But I wouldn't have been able to do this without you guys, without your training, me able to complete this race. I wouldn't have been able to put that all together, because I was kind of in control of my own programming.

Yeah.

I mean, I got done with that race and I was standing there going, well, that's not bad. That was a good race. And I tended to slow down. I slowed down a little bit. I ran into some issues, but I got done and I was good. I've been in other races. When I hit the finish line, I had to sit down. I need to sit down and no one talked to me. I'm exhausted. But I did really, I did good.

Hahaha

underestimated every time I look at my program, I was like, now how am I going to go 120 miles and he's got me working out for an hour? Or I would say, you know, and I did not understand the whole concept of putting the little pieces together and to getting the full picture. So it was pretty neat when

Mm-hmm.

I finished that race.

So maybe a little more, this is super cool, Allan, maybe a little more context. What's, for everyone listening, what is, what are the distances of the Zofingen race in the duathlon?

It's 6.2. And then we did 96 miles on the bike. And then I ran again for 18 miles.

Run.

for people listening. It's like an Iron Man, right? Like in terms of the distances, it's even a bit bigger by the sounds of it.

how did you find Athletica to start? Like how did you kind of come across us?

Matt, my friend Matt is, was already training with you guys for six months. And he kept saying, Allan, I like these guys. This, this is working because he's tried other programs and I've been writing my own programs.

whatever I signed up in December for this race, I got, cause I went to nationals and, qualified.

So by January, I was like, man, I said, these, I need a coach. This is real deal. This is a legit race.

said, try you

I said, well, I said, I got a couple other coaches calling me. They're wanting me to coach them. They want me to coach me.

But they were wanting $360 every two weeks. You had to have a down payment. You had to eat. And they were telling me, and I was like, guys, I'm trying to get an airplane flight. I said, can't compete with that. said, so I'm going to look somewhere else. then they pretty much, some of them downsized it to a piece of paper and says, follow this paper. And then this will cost you this much.

I was like, Matt, I'm going to go with you. So I followed, he hooked me up and then I started to, I got involved with you guys. But yeah, that's, you know, when these games come up, you don't think about it until all of a sudden you're like, now I'm pretty serious. I need to, I need to coach.

What do you pay attention to on the platform, Allan? What helps you out? Is it some of the comments that the AI coach is giving, or is it the overtraining warnings or anything like that that kind of stands out in terms of what helps you

navigate your day to day?

I had a warning setting up on mine all the time and I ignored it because it says, you're running too fast. You're running too fast for this level. We need to increase you to go to the next level. Well, I was like, I've already got 12 hours a week for this and now you want to move me to like the 20 hours a week. And I was like, I'm just going to stay where I'm at and maybe I need to, you know.

push myself a little bit more, but keep the hours down. I did not want to go more hours into my workout because 15 hours a week was, 12 to 15 is I think I asked the program to set me up for. So I went with that and I did not want, and every time it came up, you should advance your running.

when I looked into that,

It was asking basically I seen it was more hours or another half hour, an hour through the week that I would have to run. So I was like, I think I'm good where I'm at,

Other than that, the other ones, when it says that, they would adjust, the program would come in and it would adjust. I would look at it Monday. I would scan everything. I would say, OK, this is what they're going to have me do. And then all of a sudden, I would go do it. And I'd come back. And the program says, you worked out at this level. Now here, we backed you off 30 minutes. I was like, wow, I didn't know you backed me off 30 minutes. And at first, I wasn't catching on to that.

The program kept modifying how much effort I was putting into it to how much I needed to put out. And at the end of the week, you can look at your chart at the bottom, your miles, your hours, your fatigue. And when I first look at that, started with you guys, I was like...

What does that mean? What is that going to do for me? mean, and as I, as the months went on, I started seeing the numbers and they start making, I started, you know, hitting the numbers better.

And now if I didn't want to hit and I'm really tired, I would get my 45 minutes in. But my level of

intensity might change

I don't know how many times

just sitting there at the house at the kitchen table and my wife would say, "are you leaving yet?" I said, "yes, I gotta go run". "You've been there for half hour staring at the door". I know it. I want to do it, but I don't want to leave the house. then she says, just go run for an hour. Just go run for a mile. Just run down, hit the gate and come back. And you should be good. That's all you need to do. And she knows every time I do that.

you

No

I come back 8 miles later and I go, huh, I felt better after that mile.

Isn't it the hardest part is to just leave like get out the door sometimes. Yeah

Get out the door.

totally.

I think we've, hear this with many successful,

athletes on Athletica, very steep learning curve to begin with. But once you get there and you get through that learning, is that one or two months, you kind of off to the races, right? But, but yeah, you know, not withstanding, it's, it's a certainly a challenging process in the beginning.

you.

so much for articulating that, Allan, because I think it's a really important message that all of our athletes kind of need to take, especially if they're contemplating or considering Athletica. A story like yours is really important for them to appreciate, that you might not have it on day one, right? But over the week or two weeks or three weeks or four, all of a sudden things are starting to make a little bit more sense. And then two, three months.

on, it's really making sense. And now you can, you you start to see how the pieces of the plan are going to set you up for that,

When you achieve something big and something that you've been working so hard for months at end and then when it's over, it's hard.

mentally, it's just like, well, now what? So I'm in the same boat with you. Gotta find a way to reinvent myself.

Man, you got a beautiful race. kind of watched you on the phone the whole time when you was competing. So I was like, she's moving. So you did good.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So can you walk us through your typical training week?

Because of work, I'm always working 10

But

when I get done with

I would come home

even though I have to go to the Y and teach cardio classes, and then I...

Got grandkids who want to train, want to be duathlon. We want to do duathlons too. And so, you know, I got all that going on and I have to come home and fit a workout in.

pretty much, come home and I've got to get on my plan and,

set up a workout program, not set it up, but start working on it. So I'm going to go run on my bike first. And at the time I'm biking indoors. So I have to come in, get my bike in, and then I have to go out and run because the bike is, you want to do that when it's a little daylight out.

it's on the computer or it's outside and then I have to go run. And most of time I just run in the dark, put my glow up.

outfit on and just go run in the dark.

pretty much, I just knew one thing. I had a mission and I had to get it done. And I was,

I was so worried about racing, just, whatever the phone said, go do. Now, I'm like, let's do this one Wednesday and, but I didn't do that bike. Well, I'm gonna do him Friday. And then I don't do it Friday, I move it to Saturday. I'm gonna do it Saturday. No, I do that now. And even in my watch, I download them now. I wasn't downloading my workouts before. I would write them down.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

and then go out and do the workouts and try to watch my watch. Okay. I get 30 seconds here and then I would take off

push feature is so handy, Allan? Like, it's so cool when you just, that session just lands on your watch, you press start, and it just guides you with whatever you have to do, eh? Like, that's just so convenient. It's like the coach is right there with you.

They

Yep, and I've been using that lately

I'm telling you, I stick it on my heart rate and it'll run by my heart rate or I can go by the pace. So if I do the heart rate, it says heart rate's too low, pick it up and I start picking it up or it'll say too high and bring it down and yeah, is, Matt used it way before I did. He kept saying down there, I don't have time to do that stuff. But some reason it got real easy because I clicked on.

Thank

And there it was. It downloaded it, started putting it on my Garmin. And now every time I hit my Garmin, it shows up

Sounds like you're getting more confident in using all the

So that's awesome. You mentioned something about teaching cardio classes at the Y. What do you teach?

huh.

cardio kickboxing class and, I started that in 98

cool.

I used to teach three times a week, but now I teach, I let someone else teach the other two classes and I teach every Monday

a full body workout. usually do, I, my every class is different. I'll do TRX to steps, to weights, to,

Floor work, I even throw your guys' stuff in there. We're all swinging legs, doing single hops, jumping up and down and says, this is good for me, this is good for you guys. we, yes, so.

that's amazing. That's amazing. So do you record that and put it in your training diary as well?

I want to and I never do that. I... Yes. You know what? Yes. Usually I go with the next door. As soon as the class is done, I go to the next door and then I start doing my hip flexor ability and then do the single leg squats and jumps.

You

All you have to, it all counts!

It does. Yeah. Yeah, that's your S and C workout. That's your plyometrics, mate.

So Allan, you have three coaches here in front of you. What questions do you have for us? How can we help you

with your next adventure?

you guys had a, like I just did a race yesterday. I did a 5k race. My sister was putting one on and fan work. And so I got to go over there and do the 5k

I was thinking, I said, man, if I could have my watch have a program

it should tell me every mile that, hey, you're gonna PR, so let's set you at a 6:58 the first mile, 6:57, and then, you know, and I was, and off I go.

But other than that, stuff like that where it says, this is a race. What's your goal? What's

agenda? Stay on

you know, we want we are actually working in Athletica more towards that pacing projection or pacing guidance, race prediction. And a lot of this we had, you know, a couple of podcasts ago, we had Dr. Andrea Zignoli our back end, you know, AI scientist for Athletica. And

He along with another

Paul, our another Paul. He actually designs our Garmin app. I'm not sure if you've seen him on the forum before as well. Andrea and Paul are actually working towards like a prediction and pacing guidance alongside the workout reserve concept.

Do you have the, have you downloaded the workout reserve app?

know

if I have

again, it's one of those advanced, honestly, one of those advanced features for sure. But I know Marjaana uses it and I know I use it. quite like it for your, it's almost kind of like a battery feature where it's like, you can kind of see how much is left in your tank, right? So imagine if you knew how much battery you had for something like a 5K, right? And then you could kind of milk that battery down.

just right so that you hit zero or negative just as you cross the finish line, right? So it's, we're actually working on a feature like that for pacing. So it's a really good comment that you made, Allan.

You guys updated, I've seen a couple updates that was on there that you guys are saying, hey, and I can't think of exactly what it is, but a couple of updates have come up that I was like, I should look into that and read to see what that's

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think this is really one of the key themes is this, that, know, Athletica is a complex product and there's, you know, is almost like, you know, how long is a piece of string? Well, you can go so deep into Athletica, but there's another where area where you could potentially work on for yourself in the future is download the workout reserve, get your head around that and see how that optimizes both your training and potentially even your racing as well, because it's a real time app, just like the Garmin app.

you know, where you're actually getting that training and it's keeping you in the zones. The workout reserve actually, like I use it in my bike training all the time. And I actually can see in any given effort, how much, you know, ultimately how much energy I've got in my tank for any, any given effort. So I find it really useful for making further, further gains in my own fitness.

yeah.

see, one more.

You can also look at the running pace profile and you can take a look at that and that'll give you an idea also of what you've done in the past and what your profile is now. You can target a 5K and say this is what I can handle for sure. Maybe you can go a little bit more.

Okay, so I pretty much drained myself in that 5k because it was a sprint. Pretty much I sprinted for three miles. So I would like to know. I'm on a look and see if there's a battery,

much fatigue that I used in that because I did very well at that. I knew I was going to do good because people were asking me, everybody's wanting to know, what are you going to do? Are going to win this? So I'm not a sprinter.

Yeah

I'm a long endurance runner, but I told them the day before I did three

Hahaha

pace and then I did two miles at threshold and then a mile cool down. I said, I hit seven minutes on both of them threshold. So I'm thinking I'm going to hit triple sevens today. And I kind of beat that. had a 6.45 in

Yeah, that's awesome. Like I like how you used your recent experience to create your racing strategy.

how is your fueling in the race for the Zofingen? I mean, that's a big long race. How did fueling go for you on the day?

I, this goes with it. My energy level must have been, I must have been pumped because it felt like it only took me 2 hours. Now imagine I'm out there for over 9 hours, 9 hours of 5 and a half, 6 hours. I was up and down the mountains and then I come back and I have to run 18 (miles). The whole time I come off that bike. I already knew mentally what I had to do.

parked my bike and it's raining, just pouring down. My hands were wrinkled up and my bucket with the gear in it's full of water. And I mean, you think of my towel is soaked and I'm trying to get down and I'm taking my helmet off, putting my shoes on. Everything has to stay in the bucket. They got rules there. They're very strict. So I'm putting my wet shoes on and I put my running hat, water is pouring out of it, shaking it off, put my running hat on.

I run 18 and during this whole thing, I have 18 miles to run and it really, it just felt like a half hour run. The time I got done, I was like, there was no way I was out there for 9 and a half, 9, almost 10 hours. You know, I'm out there competing and it did not look that way. It did not feel that way at all. So I'm like, how is that? How is that? I was out there competing for that long and.

It did not feel like I was even out there that long at all.

I'm like, it must be in the training. It must be because I was just chucking along, just moving.

And we love hearing that, Allan. That's just music to our ears.

Yeah,

So, Allan, tell us more about why are you doing these crazy adventures and so many other new adventures ahead. What is your why?

I think I just love the, the competition or finding other people to compete with. And we all have the same mindset and the journey. Really, I have more fun finding, the journey to put things together, to make, to make myself into this, athlete that's going to compete towards.

a certain goal that it's just fun to do. I'm more, think about it. have more stories about my workouts than I do the race.

and usually other people talk about the race and then I'm like, but you know, we did this and this and you know, the group of us all went and,

I think the 'why' would be more, it's just something fun to do and time flies.

really like hitting these journeys or these missions basically. I've got a mission to go get prepared for this race.

One of the things that I'm into, Allan, is just wellness and wholeness and longevity and lifespan, health span. And one of the things in this whole area that we know brings health and happiness to an individual is

sense of purpose and I think you you've you've hinted at the fact that this gives you a sense of purpose I don't know if that's that's right or not but it's but it's I'm that's why I'm feeling a little bit in in what you're saying here

what I do, you know, and I've already got some other races, know, kind of going to give me little bit of a challenge and I'm trying to get ready for them. So yeah, again, like you said, it's something that I really like to do.

Allan, what role does nutrition play in your training regimen? know, do you follow a specific diet or have any nutritional strategies that work well for you?

I do. Pretty much I eat the same foods for 30 years. I eat the same foods and it was oatmeal at 9

and I got rid of oatmeal. Then I had eggs.

then it switched to two boiled eggs

but I meal prep every week. It's meal prep time.

I do steaks and chicken thighs, and I do 12 chicken thighs, two, three steaks, and then I cut them up and I put them all in

my containers.

And then I'll switch where I would do sweet potato, avocados are always.

always welcome throwing avocados in

I'll switch and put some rice in there. Then when it's race time, I will do more

I've been meal prepping for a long time. And every Sunday

get the grill out and I get all my foods all prepped up and set it all up in the refrigerator.

I have a gallon of water at work that I keep track of. have Celtic salt that I put in there. So it makes my own electrolytes.

I've been doing that for a long time.

That's great. Yeah, I like it. everything you've mentioned is pretty much is all whole food too, right, Allan? So we're big proponents of that, getting things from Mother Earth. And you've mentioned that there, and especially with steak, know the density and the micronutrient density within that, the B vitamins, the iron.

Yeah.

It's all kind of coming with us. We've spoken that on other podcasts as well before with Mickey and others. So, yeah, so, so vital and it's obviously working for you, Allan. So it's really good.

So, you know, this is, we've heard this before with other everyday athletes, but, and I really, reflect on my own journey as well. And Allan had this here, but, you know, we might be starting at one point and we look to some of these races and it could be anything. It could just be me a 5k race.

could be a Zofingen, Iron Man, something like that. And they are, they're out of reach. There are physical barriers at that point and there are mental barriers too. But you just do, you have like one goal and say, okay, I'm just gonna get out there and figure out a way that I can get my head around doing that. And once the, you know, once that physical barrier is broken, the mental barrier is broken as well and we can do anything. When, you know,

it's nice to have some company along the way. We need coaches and, you know, now programs like Athletica to show us the way. Of course, with Athletica, even with coaching process too, right? There's a steep learning curve. we spoke, know, Allan spoke a lot about that today where if, know, getting in there and seeing some of these big terms, you know, we're well and truly aware of that in Athletica. And it's something we have to do better on.

but it's worth your time in educating yourself, going through that educational process. so sticking with things after one or two weeks. And I'm not sure you didn't mention this, Allan, but we have an excellent forum as well. And you can get a lot of help on the forum. Paul, Marjaana, myself, we're all there on the forum helping people out whenever we can to kind of help them along in this process.

Even the Garmin push feature, Allan mentioned too, was really handy where guidance on your everyday session can be right there on your wrist or in your cockpit of your computer. So pretty handy there too. And yeah, and then once you've done all this, Allan mentioned, this becomes part of your identity, which loops back to being, coming back to the whole

lifespan, health span, wellness, philosophy, becomes part of your identity and your sense of purpose in life. that's something that you happy and feel really good with your life as we go through it. just a great podcast, Allan, and thank you so much for sharing all of those great points with us and the Athletica family.

Yes, thank you guys.

Yeah, thank you, Allan. Appreciate your time.

Thank you, Allan.

That is all for this week. Join us next week on the Athletes Compass podcast. Ask your training questions in the comments or on our social media. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe on YouTube and in your podcast listening stations and give us a five star review for more information or to schedule a consultation with Paul, Marjaana or myself. Check the links in the show notes for Marjaana Rakai

Allan Egbert and Dr. Paul Laursen am Paul Warloski and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you for listening.