The Next Level Podcast with Pablo Marcos

On this episode of The Next Level, we speak with performance coach Pablo Marcos and have the audio and complete transcript.

Christopher Jones
Today, we welcome Pablo Marcos. He's based in Spain. He's a professional performance coach, qualified across many different sport disciplines. Focus is on cycling, triathlon, working with a lot of professional triathletes and and cyclist as well, a sports scientist as well with qualifications with human physiology and also a core coach. And I understand recently in Kona, a competitor with a time of 9 hours 32 minutes and 52 seconds at the Hawaii Ironman. So we'd like to welcome you as our guest to our episode on the next level.

Pablo Marcos
Thanks a lot, Christopher. Thanks a lot for having me. It's a pleasure. And yeah, let's have a time and talk a little bit about some of our interest in core.

Christopher Jones
Brilliant. Thank you. So first question is how long have you been you using core yourself?

Pablo Marcos
So I've actually been quite lucky because one of the persons in core, Alvaro, is from my region as well. And I first heard about Core with a within a Norwegian train during COVID pandemic. And unluckily I got in touch with them and, well, I think I’m probably one of the first customers really started using it at 2021 with the idea of going towards Kona one day. And that led into quite a lot of researching and yes, testing myself.

Christopher Jones
Perfect. So when you first started with this, you had I guess some level of experience with temperature or your own thermoregulation. So would it be fair to say that you brought in some knowledge or was it a big learning experience for you?

Pablo Marcos
It’s been a bit of both, really. When I first started using core, it was mostly for two reasons. One, I was doing my thesis for my master's degree in high performance with the Olympic Spanish Committee. And I had to pick a topic. So I thought, why not doing it on something that I think is very real interesting that kind of intrigued me.

And I found pretty new although is not new because it's been studied for quite long, but probably there was quite a lot of a lot of studies on the topic but also because I often experience quite a lot of big strikes myself through racing, I'm always struggling with heat with humidity. I try many different hydration strategies and things but never really got to the bottom of it.

So I thought, well, I might as well do a little bit of studying for myself, testing in myself, and I'm definitely towards my thesis on and with a goal of going to Kona within the well to next year. Hopefully I, I thought it was, it was a perfect project for for myself all the time.

Christopher Jones
Do you think that this gives you a little bit of a difference so now that you that they understand how the course into the works and understand more about the data, does this differentiate you somewhat from others who may have less experience?

Pablo Marcos
Well, is a tricky question, I guess, because you never know what all the people is doing. But what I know 100% is that I used to hate any race where I could see the temperature going above 20 degrees Celsius. And now I'm hoping the average is 30 or 35 or something like that. And I actually look forward to hot and humid conditions. The big test for me was San Jorge before going to Kona last year, where we experienced quite a really high temperature, really dry conditions. And I realized that water had killed me pretty much in every single hot race in the past was actually fine. And I was like, okay, now I can deal with this and it's my legs, the one they have to take the effort and not my body with thermoregulation, really.

Christopher Jones
I think what's interesting is you do put this into practice yourself so it's not as they your coaching and just maybe providing instructions rather you have firsthand experience. So moving across to the athletes that you work with, like do you have to specifically identify individuals who may benefit from like using the core and looking at the data? Is it on a case by case basis, or are you just looking at all of your athletes and making sure that they're getting their data?

Pablo Marcos
As usual, the answer is it depends. I'll try to, well, obviously as a coach, I try to have what a face to face and close relationship with my athletes and understanding who might benefit from it and who might not. To me, the key question is one, the level, the level both at which level they compete or the level of experience. And the second one would be what type of racing they're going to do and if they can deal with more data. Because one thing could be right, I'll put the sensor of for you, I'll give you some structures and you just follow it. You just execute what I tell you. But I try to educate my athletes as well on why we use it. So to me, when I look for an athlete who can benefit from the core sensor could be mostly one that is trying to reach that extra, extra performance, extra level of performance, whether it's through physiological improvements with meteorological conditions and get that similar benefit that we could get with altitude training, for example, but at a way lower cost than something that we can manage and that we can do more often throughout the season, or someone who is preparing for a specific event that is going to happen in hot or humid conditions. But then I could also look at performance like upcoming athletes, like on the 23 is where we know that the level of racing is getting stronger and stronger and you want to look for that extra percentage everywhere. So that would be almost mandatory for me.

Christopher Jones
Okay. So thinking about the athletes again and having, let's say, access to a lot of data at the moment, what kind of reception do you see from the athletes? Do you find it on a case by case basis that some of them just want to follow instructions or some of them are interested in learning? Does it become overwhelming? How do you deal with this as a coach?

Pablo Marcos
Again, I think it comes with knowing the athlete that you're coaching. What I'm experiencing myself with athletes is that there's still quite a bit of hesitation about the core sensor or internal temperature in general. It's almost like people see it as a plus. You know, ‘that's not going to improve my performance.’ So it's nothing to be in comparison to power or heart rate or pace running. And they do it, I think is based on just not being educated on it. They see power numbers, pace numbers or heart rate changing almost instantly to what they doing to change in the conditions.

If you go up a climb and you'll see a spike in your power, you do a sprint you heart will follow with a little bit of lag, but will follow. So with cold temperatures, I think that that doesn't happen that way at all. And you need to understand trends. You need to understand how your body is responding. And the first thing that I tell my athletes is if we're going to use core the first thing that we want to do is put the sensor on for a couple of weeks. Don't even bother looking at data. Let that come back to me.

We'll do some analysis. We'll try to find patterns of what's happening in your training. We'll try to find which sessions you were struggling with and find correlations, and then we'll start putting strategies in place and we'll start considering what we might want to do or what we might need to change, because otherwise it's I find that it's going to be 100% of overwhelming.

I've seen, I have a really good athlete of mine called <Mike>, Really really nice kid from the UK top cyclists and he loves data. He absolutely loves data. We put a sensor in him and he was already looking at ‘why is my heart like this and why is my core still the same? Why is my core now 38.7 And I'm going <09:03> why is that...?’ -I think I've never had as many messages as I have from him. After his first times using core, and I was like, Oh my God, I've created a monster here.

Christopher Jones
Fantastic, thou, I think that some of the things you were just mentioning with regard to don't look at the data, It's a type of idea that we tend to bring along. First, you need to get used to it and understand where you're at and how your body is behaving to then be able to action the data. So it may seem, I guess initially you have a great new device and you want to understand it and immediately kind of, yeah, like your young athlete here.

But yes, I think the reality is some of the power comes through looking at the trend, understanding that and then using that to be able to work from. Maybe a question just to some of the athletes, and I'm not sure if that reflects very well on the athletes that you have. But if we have athletes to a time crunch, you know, they work in other jobs because they maybe are not a full time athlete. And that probably reflects a majority of athletes, most athletes or most people who are into sport, they have to work. They have let’s say busy family lives, other obligations.

How do you get the balance with, let's say, heat training? Heat training is one aspect of training, is it something which is like the most important or something which you can put by the side and not bother? How does this fit in when you work with an athlete and trying to compile a program for them?

Pablo Marcos
So when I come across with an athlete who is time constrained, often it comes down to priorities and on making sure that we know what we want to get and maximize the time we have. Of course, we would love to have 30 hours. Every one of us have 30 hours and do every single component of training and all the strategies but, often, when we need to balance the training with all the commitments. It comes down to managing stress loads. In my case, I use quite a lot of HR Beats to use well to keep track of how my athletes are coping, not just with the physical impact, but also with other stresses in their lives. And I know that well, we know that heat stress is a massive one and one that can, if applied in a wrong way, leads to, well, generate more harm than benefits.

So I think that making sure that we plan the season and that we, we would try to incorporate heat training sessions hundred percent, but doing it in a way that is not going to affect their balance in their lives. An example of this for me could be probably maybe incorporating those heat training sessions on very easy days, recovery days, where they might just put a couple of extra layer on and we'll keep track of that so we don't have the physical stress from, putting big numbers.

But we still apply that thermal stress. Or another one, which is my favorite. It's almost like lying to my athletes and saying, okay, we've got this time. You've had a very busy day, very busy week. Why don't you just jump in the sauna or go to have a hot bath for 30, 40 minutes, a couple of days a week, and just make sure that you do that, for example, after 60 days, which will help you to relax and just get your mind off everything else.

And again, that might not be the the best way of doing it, but I'll try to to incorporate some of that. And especially if if the athlete has I’ve said before, it's going to be hot or humid. Well, the race will be in hot and humid conditions. What we need to make sure that we've got some thermal stress and stimulus as well.

So it's a tricky one, I guess, because you do want to get the most of everything that you do. But as I told you, so we tell them we want to get the maximal benefits with the less amount of possible effort we can have. So that's the tricky part of being a coach. And that's the one that kind of gives me headaches sometimes.

But yeah, I'll definitely try to incorporate something, even if it means shortening the session sometimes, and just jump on the bath or sauna, as I said. And get that thermal stress at the end of the session.

Christopher Jones
Right. And do you feel that in terms of, let's say, heat block training where you might want to adapt your body, you can do that in a slow approach, which is essentially what you may have been describing there, where you're easing this into training. Would you find that top level athletes may do a dedicated heat block at the start of the season and then just do the maintenance versions, or is it really just a case by case basis as to what they can fit into training? And do you have your own preference about how you'd like to work in just this basic heated option?

Pablo Marcos
So with professional athletes and even high level age groups, I like doing a heat block at beginning of the season. I like to do, well with the... just, obviously, we start with a thermal test if we want, a heat run tests, making sure that we know what we are and we contrast that with some blood analysis, making sure that we know all the parameters.

And I like doing a block for two or three weeks where our focus is pretty much on that thermal enhanced stress, where we will analyze towards what the parameters are, and then we'll keep those heat stimulus throughout the season and we'll probably time closer to the event. So, for example, with people who passed a race in hot or humid conditions, what I like doing is depending on when they're traveling, if it's a week before or the same week of the race or the week before, we'll put another heat block for acclimatization, maybe five weeks out, and then we'll keep stimulus throughout the next three weeks, minus three, minus three minus one

We will have a high amount of heat stimulus. And then traveling, for example. It really depends on how the season of the outlook laid out. But yeah, definitely with higher level athletes, I'll definitely incorporate more often than some with age groupers and I'll try to apply that myself as well to make sure that I tested it and hopefully it improves my level as well.

Christopher Jones
Let's talk about the data that we're looking at. So with the sensor, we can get to the core body temperature data. If you have the option when you're with an athlete, you can look at the data immediately. Otherwise they might be doing a workout remotely. And then you can look at the data after working at the session. So what exactly are you looking at? What is good, what is bad, and how do you react on that?

Pablo Marcos
As I said before, I think the first thing is knowledge and understanding how it is for every individual athlete. I mean, we know what the general temperature should be for an average person, but we know that in sport, region one or two and a half degrees above those 36.5, 36.6 average is absolutely normal. So what could be considered like having fever or temperature in a normal daily life, that's absolutely normal in sport. So how then that applies to every athlete is slightly different. So the first thing for me is knowing what is their heat threshold, if we can call it like that, could be making sure that we do those run run heat test, heat run test, and then understanding those trends over time.

So to me, what I look at the sessions at the end of every session is if we know that the constitutions are a bit more tricky on any given day, how you look at the trends, how that affected our heart rate, especially how it affected power and core temperature and then following the session, look more into how much time we accumulated at each of those heat zones that we can calculate with for. Obviously now we have heat strain scores as well, which is quite handy.

But until now what I get to doing is looking at roughly how much sunlight we accumulated at each of those temperature zones over time. And I'm try to find those patterns with intensity, whether it's power, heart rate. And something that I do, which initially took quite a lot of time creating a spreadsheet, was told to taking notice of humidity, temperature, wind chill, like different climate parameters. And I had a spreadsheet to try to compare and understanding a bit better.

But it's tricky. I mean, it requires quite a lot of analysis, but if I had to say with two or three, it could be time that we spent on each of those temperature zones making sure that we don't overdo. We know that thermal stress when we are overdo It's not like when you do an extra hour doing even a few extra minutes at a higher zone time can have worse implications. So, is definitely something that I got to be careful with, making sure that we don't overdo. And then the last and not less, for certain is one of the most important, is how we can change or help our bodies to thermal regulate, whether it's through hydration strategies, whether it's with different type of fluids, different types of nutrition, whether it's with cooling beds.

We know that there are four ways of thermal regulation with the body heat change, convection conduction and so and so. So I think that finding the relationship between our core body temperature and how we thermal regulate it's also one to look for and to spend some time doing some testing and see what benefits more some of the outlets and but yeah.

Christopher Jones
Another let’s say a tricky question we take away that it is quite individual you might have to look at each athlete individually. What about with that a cooling strategies? Is that something where you can say, okay, I've learned that this happened and can I apply to all my athletes? Or is even the cooling approach it's still going to be individual, a different response from different athletes and what they need to do to be able to get to where they need to be.

Pablo Marcos
I think that they are some general guidelines that we could apply to pretty much every athlete. I think one of that is that one of the heats changing you can have it from conduction and that will involve direct contact with whether it's our clothing, whether it's with other materials, like, for example, like cooling vests is something that people use to look me funny. Two or three years ago when I when I was wearing our cooling vests before a race. But if we know that we're going to reach, let's say, 80 or 90% of our max power or whatever is through an event or something or phase and we need to be there, our temperature is going to increase starting like maybe one degree lower than the person next to us will benefit us. Whether we believe it or not is it is like that.

I mean, temperature will increase, it will start from a lower point, will get to one of those higher numbers after a longer period of time. To me, the other one as well would be evaporation, I think that is one that is quite general. But we need to we need to bearing in mind that obviously in hot and humid conditions, humid conditions especially, evaporation doesn't happen as often. So keeping changing that surface layer on our skin and get our skin at a lower temperature, whether it's dropping water on top of us, at the 8 stations or whether it's not blocking our skin with sunscreen. And I know that this sounds silly, but the biggest advice I gave, two of my athletes racing in Kona was don't put sunscreen on. That will just avoid evaporation.

You want to allow your skin to actually sweat properly and get that evaporation happening. So I think that's another one that could be applied to everyone. And then obviously, we need to start looking at sweat race. What is the sodium concentration in the sweat of every athlete and making sure that we balance that and we look into more details. I like using all the strategies to almost like lie to our brain, like we know the thermoregulation and how this is control happens at the... ah we've got thermal receptors which then send that sign out to our hypothalamus in the brain.

So finding ways to almost like lie to our own brain, obviously we’ve got it here on the front or on the side of our school, which means that one that I like is when we get to a station, is get in ice. I’ll put it straight there for a while. Obviously under a cap or you know, there are quite a lot of head bands which nowadays are quite cool for giving that perception of cooling and but yeah, I think the most important could be that conduction and that evaporation making sure that that happens properly. And then on top of that an individual will look more into the other strategies.

Christopher Jones
And you mentioned perception of cooling with headband and with ice, I'd like to explore how this is related to what your body is, let's say actually doing so. What we believe our temperature may be based on, let's say skin temperature may not reflect what's happening internally when we're doing an intensive activity.

Is this just simply a learning process that as an athlete than I become more familiar with my body? It is something which I can always use to my advantage? Or is it also counterproductive a time when I might be tricking my brain to tell, to tell me that I'm cooler, whereas my body is working a little bit too close to my threshold and becoming to a danger situation.

Pablo Marcos
That's a good question. I think it’s probably a bit of both. Our body will always send us signs that we need to either drop the intensity and we might feel hot or the opposite. It might make us feel cold and and give us the perception that we need to put clouds on or get warmer. The easiest example that I always use is when you're going up a climb. Even if it's cold, you start feeling really hot, if you are putting a big effort. And the opposite on a hot day in the summer, you go through a big climb. You are sweating like a pig. You get to the top, you think I'm just going to go down to the sun, block the sun. I'm not going to put a wind jacket or anything because it's really hot. And halfway through they're saying you are freezing and you are like, you're shivering already. At the end of the day, that's our body telling us something that is not really what it is inside.

If we look at core, we can see that temperature, for example, in that example, when I had to tried it in myself and I've seen data temperatures are still rising easily because as we said, it's not something that is happening straight away. It's not like I get to the top and suddenly it drops actually when I'm dropping down to climb and you think, Oh, my temperature's still rising a little bit and I'm shivering here. Well, that's obviously a mechanism from the body to almost like to put us under alert. So a think that probably requires a little bit of education and making sure that, yes, we are aware of how your body responds to certain situations.

Obviously, we're not going to put ourselves in the place of, ‘Oh I can see my core temperature is 38.9. I'm still put in a massive effort and think that I can cope with this for as long as I want still’. obviously will get to a limit point. Sometimes I tell my athletes, sometimes I tell them, well, see where that limit is, you know? In a world where we measure everything, where we try to keep every intensity and even racing to the exact values, to exact numbers, sometimes it might be nice to just go out and see what we blow up, and see actually what our body can cope with. And afterwards say, Right, I got up to this. If you allow me to use an example with myself and another athlete of mine and Kona, we both reaches temperatures of 41.3. In my case, I'm 40.8 for him in Kona on the last climb towards elite trail before we drop down into the coastline and then into a finish line. And, and oh, God, I was in pain there. I was in big pain.

But if I hadn't blown up beforehand in many events and I could have set my core body temperature, could, I could cope with that for, well, ten extra minutes. The classic thing could have been, last at eight station, stop, put ice and walk for a bit, I think is a mix of both. Obviously you don't want to put yourself in a position of danger, but when you're racing and you're aiming for performance, you also want to play with that limit a little bit. So yeah, I'm not sure if that answer the question.

Christopher Jones
I think it's a difficult question and then not kind of forget that on race day, other things are changing. We have other things to let’s say concern us, to worry us. And even just pushing through that pain, I don't think you're the only one who has ever suffered in Kona. I think that, yeah, it's quite a, quite a popular place to suffer.

Look, let's talk about that, sorry?

Pablo Marcos
Beautiful place to suffer, right?

Christopher Jones
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I'm lucky if I can stand on the sideline and watch everyone suffer. So looking about your own Kona preparation for last year, it would be great just to learn a little bit about what you did. And obviously with respect to temperature and heat, what did you do? Let's say almost like from a start to getting on location and then competing through the race, What was your approach to prepare, train and then to employ that during your race?

Pablo Marcos
Mm hmm. Yeah. The first thing it’s easier, it's easy to look back at it now and say, I did this and that. But I think that to me, the biggest change with using core is was like two or three years ago before even going to Kona and starting to understand how my body responded to heat stress. It's funny because I'm a heavy sweater, as I said, and I lose a really high concentration of electrolytes. And I always thought that the problem with my performance relayed there.

Then I also understood that, well, there are several parts in my races that weren't so much of a hydration were more by me blowing myself up too early and getting my temperature pretty high before going into the run. So knowing that obviously I put in place after St George, well, the first block actually of heat training was towards St George, because as I said, we were expecting really high temperatures.

But preparing for Kona with that knowledge, I did a heat training block of three weeks, I think it was in June 2nd half of June roughly, which actually was good because it finished just before a half Ironman, so I didn't focus too much on high intensity through those three weeks. I thought, right, I'm just going to go back to basics, build a solid base. And then I had a half Ironman that I had sign off for and I guess focus on those heat training towards hematological improvement.

So trying to get some of my values a little bit higher, trying to work on that heat training during sessions, but also out of sessions. So as we said, going into SONA, going into bars and then, I started using that as a way of thinking. Okay, so this is heat training during the base phase of my preparation. And once I went into a more specific phase, I kept doing some reminders.

So every week I would have my two easy sessions. I would do them on the turbo or the obviously I'm in Spain, which means that over summer we've got a nice temperature outside. But I found that doing them on the turbo was actually more useful for me at the time to making sure that I kept the temperature level, humidity level quite constant across the sessions so I could try to manage that load and then I would have those reminders. I could do my all the sessions outside, which again, they were quite hard, which means that my core temperature would still be quite high, but at least I was a bit more relaxed. And then what I started doing was trying, practicing through training my hydration strategies, I try to set different products.

I work by clothes with a brand who was developing some products, which were I meant products, which was quite handy, like as we said, to to try to lie to our own body and get that feeling of of having something that's good for you internally that I go to have my my girlfriend hating me. But she did a good job keeping ice, I do like eight stations on my long runs with ice and practice in like, as we said, like, right? Is it better if I put ice on my head or in my trial suit or different places, just out of interest. Because I think that when you're racing you don't think about that and you just put it everywhere.

But, trying to get that. What I did notice is that I used to have in the past some gut issues and we found that it was from getting water towards my stomach and then getting too cold. So with the ice it was actually easier to try to minimize that. So that was good. I tested the ice fast as well. Before some sessions. I did some long open water swims, so I did ‘okay, if I start at this, what happens towards the end of the swim’ when I come out and if I go on the bike, do I start a little bit cooler or do I start out at the same sort of temperature? Is the water hot or not?’

Then, one thing that I did looked into as well is I was a little bit scared about the time difference, like 12 hours difference with Kona, so I started tracking as well my circadian cycles. This was obviously closer towards the race. I did a protocol of well, I'm not sure how to call it life changing my internal time.

Christopher Jones
The body clock.

Pablo Marcos
My body clock like, which I started two weeks beforehand my traveling. And I did it with with go actually looking at the temperature how my body temperature change throughout day. I used one of those factors as to give my core sensor on throughout the 24 hours of the day and then I would have an ice bar at night. And try to relax to cool myself down and go straight to bed while obviously the classic take points away, and so and so. And that actually I do think that was one thing that helped me massively because I got to Kona and I remember people struggling the first two, three or four days, and I was like, well the first day was a little bit of a shock. Yeah, but I think it was more from the heat and humidity.

But after that I was like, Yeah, well I'm okay. I'm glad that I did that. And I could see on the patterns, apart from obviously that those two days of traveling were, it was a little bit else everywhere I find that had some quite quickly again. So that was good. And then one thing that I did do is I tested different kits as well. Obviously with my team we were a little bit limited towards which clothing to wear, but I did try to well, tell them, right, why don't we add some white here? Why don't we add some layers here and there? Then I wore this fancy what they call color sleeves which were white, it tries to minimize the radiation from the sun. And so and so.

But yeah, I was obviously I was quite limited on that so couldn't be much and. but yeah but those were several strategies that I used and well, I didn't mention it, but I traveled two weeks beforehand so it meant that my two weeks like taper week and competition week I was already acclimatizing to Kona conditions as I was there and the traveling, so if we go backwards I did five weeks where I did another two weeks of proper heat training, which that was involved in more intensity.

So trying to simulate race intensities. And then the three weeks leading into, into traveling with heat reminders I would go on the sauna and baths especially, I didn't fancy that much of the time I put in layers on because it was still hot here. But yeah, as I said before, it was a nice way to relax from the day, from long days of training so I could keep it that way. And yeah, know, I'm not missing much the, that is probably the biggest things that I that did. well, we did do one thing which I spoke with some of other Kona experts, and which is completely out of my expertise,

I'm not a nutritionist. I rely on other people for that. But I was quite interested and intrigued me to try to understand my carbs absorption and carbs assimilation ratios with different body temperatures. I don't think I'm anywhere close to that to understand fully how that happens in my case, but it's something that really intrigued me. And in hot conditions where we know that blood is going more towards the skin to enhance that evaporation and not so much to the guts, I think that that could be something to really look into. I'm not sure if you guys have got someone looking into it or if anyone is doing so right now. If you do, please let me know so I can do some reading.

But yeah, that's something that I did try doing like sometimes I well, I have some bad experiences getting my body temperature quite high and trying to digest up to 120 grams per hour. That wouldn't happen at all. And so the base at the same heat core temperature I get about to just 90 on I go to simulator and I could feel like I'm flying. I was in hot, and in cold conditions I can easily digest 100-110 grams. So that led me to in Kona, I ate, actually less than what I would normally eat for an Ironman. But I thought that better be on the safe side and maybe obviously in Kona, it was one of those races where you need to have just an average race and the three disciplines, you kind of go there thinking about having your best way un like a run.

So with that in mind, I thought, okay, if not, if I'm not going to be put in my best performance, I may as well just drop the intensity a little bit, making sure that I can digest this and I stick to the 90, 90-95 rather than going for 110-120 that I could normally aim for.

Christopher Jones
With Kona, this is probably just simplified like a pacing event. Obviously you have competitive, but essentially you fight against yourself to maintain a pace that is, let's say, sustainable to balance everything out. Cycling, on the other hand, is a completely different ballgame. So if you are approaching a cycle race, I think the variables will change significant because you, unless you're doing a time trial where it might be more paced, you have got a strategy, you have, let's say, recovery, the ability to recover during a cycle.

So if you were applying some of the knowledge you had to one of your pro cyclists, is it completely different or how do you work with them so that they get the benefit and can apply that but with a different racing style.

Pablo Marcos
I think in cycling it really depends on what the category they're racing on. For example, this kid I was talking to you earlier about he’s still under 19, he is 18 years old. And the type of racing that I do is so on and off. It looks like they are doing that village session for 2 hours, 3 hours. They are always the massive bars. And I mean he sports the roof is ridiculous. Like they don't have time to recover. They don't have time to place themselves within the peloton. And and then, okay, I can sit here for 20, 30, 40 minutes, whatever it is, until the next time where we know that is going to happen.

So in that case, it's a little bit tricky. For example, in that type of racing, we do analyze the profile of the course, the races that they’re doing to try to identify how the race might go. But it is really tricky. And in my case, sometimes that comes more towards preparation beforehand on making sure that we work on those amounts of logical parameters more than within the race per se. What we do, however, is apply the principle of cooling bass that we were saying earlier, if you're going to be going for an hour race, what we know that you can cope with perfectly or 1.5-2 hours, we want to get you starting as low intensity as possible because the other guys are not doing so. So then what we do is also we freeze all our bottles and what we're doing with Mikey, what we did with his dad is as we rather than having just the classic screw makes with the water, we do it in an icy shake or similar so that we try to keep that really, really cold on making sure that when he's drinking that it's always way cooler.

Even if the race is in hot conditions. Then obviously at his level it's not like they get the classic self with ice that we've seen very often nowadays. To put it behind their necks. And so but we, I did tell him to flush water over his body at every single opportunity that he has. Obviously within measures. So that makes making sure that he doesn't get cold. And so but again this a good relates with your question earlier about what's feeling cold on what's actually getting colder. But yeah, we thought our athletes which are racing at the <41:44> days is a bit easier. We know that the race is more predictable.

We can understand, okay this is what's going to happen. This team is the one that is going to be, you know, being at the front for the next 30-40 K You just sit behind, making sure that you hydrate, that you stay ah, we know that cold temperature behaves, sorry responds to intensity above pretty much everything else. So if you are, you know, tactically you're staying in a good place and within the peloton you're going to be saving water energy, save that glycogen, but also keep your body temperature low. And then when you're approaching the climb, make it maybe try to get one of those ice packs from the team car beforehand, put it under your neck or within your your jersey, and then, yeah, once the climb starts, don't look at data and just push.

Christopher Jones
Okay, wonderful. Look, this has been very enlightening. So I'd like to thank you very much for joining us on this session. So just for anyone listening to find out more, you could actually find Pablo on his website PabloMarcosCoach.com Also on Instagram. That will be PabloMarcosP on Instagram. So you'll be able to find out and see what he'd be doing. But thank you very much for joining us and sharing all of your insights into how you use thermoregulation and the core sensor. So appreciate your time today.

Pablo Marcos
Thanks a lot, Christopher And Brian, it's been it's been a really nice time talking to you guys so yeah, more than welcome.