How Do I Plan My Next Goal? AKA 'Sublime 23 - Pt. 4'

The final episode of this mini-series-inside-the-bigger-series where Chaders discusses the results of his personal-best-beating attempt a week later! Chade talks about how he'll prepare for next time, what he'll change from the first time, and most importantly, what his next big challenge will be!

‘Diary Of A Big Lad’ is an Osborne Road Production featuring Chade O’Brien and Nico Diodoro. Theme tune written and performed by Jay Stevens.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Last time, in episode three, we did a play-by-play of Chad taking on the challenge. If you haven't listened to it yet, I highly recommend you go back now and hear what you did so you don't get any spoilers. If that was you, welcome back. If of course you have listened to it or follow the big lad on social media, you'll know he not only met his target, he exceeded it. Now, seven days and a morning later, we met up to talk about how he feels about it all a week afterwards, if he'd set his next challenge, and if so, what that challenge is. Enjoy. Um so how do you feel about the Sub-23 challenge a week later? Again, I'm sure everybody's all clued up, but if you're not, last week, on this day, Chad O'Brien did well, it was a Saturday, wasn't it? But you beat your 5k running record in under 23 minutes. Uh it's been a week. I'm assuming you're all healed up from your role. How are you feeling?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

My roll.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Yeah, your little impressive uh stunt drop at the start during warm up.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

I didn't actually run. I just did roly polys for three three miles. Five. Still still smashed it. All uphill as well, incredible. Yeah. It's rolling up. No. Do you know what? It it's weird because um when you when you've when you when you're doing a challenge or a race or something like that, you're really pushing yourself. Um as the infamous song once said, pushing to the limits. Um it takes it out of you. Even even though you train for however long, you know, you're doing four runs a week, five runs a week, the actual race day, yeah, it really took it out of me. I was quite sore for a few days after normally. I I'm ready to go even a day after or 48 hours after, but it took me a bit of getting back into. Uh so uh feel feeling good about you know what I've done still, uh, and it's just on to the the next challenge, really. But it yeah, it did take me a few days to recover. So I guess uh on the back of my learnings from uh the goal would be plan for that, you know. Yeah, uh hit a goal and normally give yourself a day or two days to recover. Maybe take a few more days off.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

How do you mean do you mean general recovery, like just muscles from running?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

General, yeah, just general like soreness in places where I don't normally get it. Uh I suppose when you well when you're running faster and uh faster over longer distances, you um you deplete your you you deplete your energy at a quicker pace than you normally would. So the lactic lactic acid builds up quicker, which uh I guess aids to that soreness and probably didn't eat properly. That's a point after more treaty things, so uh yeah, maybe a lesson learned from uh that especially considering the uh goals in the future. I need to consider that my recovery uh fuel. That's a very sensible.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, that's a really, really good point, isn't it? Because I didn't even really thought that. I think we were too busy getting excited about you beating the record to stop and think about how we were gonna uh yeah recoup physically. There was uh on the day you weren't quite sure. Uh when I listened back to last episode, uh there was a lot of chat about what your next goal would be. Um and you said that once you'd set one, you were gonna jump straight into it. Um have you set a new goal? And if so, what is it?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah, so we did the recording on Saturday, uh, the day of the the day of the the challenge being complete. And then on Sunday, uh late Sunday afternoon, evening time, yeah, I already set my new goal. Uh and started it Monday.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Oh well. Not messing around at all.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

No. Well, I know see, uh because I'm doing it all through Garmin, it kind of just sets up your you know, your workout schedules once you've set your goal. Um I knew that the first run would be a baseline run. Um so regardless of you know, skill and whatever, you do like a very short baseline run. So I knew it weren't going to be too much for my body, so to speak. And also I did that run in the evening to give myself a bit of extra time to recover anyway. Um it was a nine-minute workout, like from you know, a couple minutes warm-up, a couple minutes cooldown, and then you know, five minutes of actual exercise, just doing best I can in five minutes. Uh so you know that just sets your baseline so it can work out. Your initial workouts um based on the goal. Uh and I suppose I should tell you what it is.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

I was gonna say, yeah, the build-up is yeah, absolutely exquisite. The tension there. I can't wait for you to say what it was. What what is it?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

It's to become the world's greatest ballerina. Oh, of course. It's not, of course, it's not. I mean, I mean, that could be a goal in the future, however, maybe number three or four, yeah. Yeah, but we're not there yet. Uh no, it I'll tell you what it's called, first of all. And I'm not even sure if we came up with this name on the last one, but I thought this is kind of gonna stick, I think. Uh, it's called Chasing 49. Okay, yeah. Not not the age. No, you know, I'm not I'm not looking forward to 50. It's also not a goal I'm hoping to achieve by the time I'm 50. Um I haven't got that, I haven't got 15 years of patience with me. Uh it it's uh chasing 49 because it's um it's gonna be a 10k run. So we've gone down the longer distance route.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Uh I'm going to attempt to beat my fastest time by a significant amount. Uh, because I think my fastest time's in and around 53 and a half minutes for the 10k, possibly 54. I'd have to get the exact numbers. Uh, and I'll send them to Nico and he can put it in the descript. Cheers. Um excuse me. So I uh naturally chasing 49, uh, as you can imagine, it's to get my time um in in under 50 minutes. So to be in the 49 minute mark. Wow. Uh that's the uh that's the goal. Which uh of course it's nearly four minutes shaved off my best time. Um and I still think it's realistic because I've I've not like I've not just tried to double, you know. Yeah, I've not gone, oh well, last time I did 20, I was aiming for 23 minutes in the 5k, it was like 46, like because that that would be me sustaining my pace in a 5k over a 10k. Yeah, and um I've got to think of uh you know um uh again lactic acid build up and whether uh I I I I would hit my uh limit. Uh uh I reckon around I reckon about 744, 755, maybe even eight minute uh eight minutes of my own. Um once I start going over that uh sort of 5k mark. I think that's where if I try going any faster than that, even if I wanted to, yeah, yeah, my muscles just wouldn't have the the build up for that in the amount of time that I want to do it. So the goal is 10k in under 50 minutes. Uh I think that's challenging enough. Yeah. It will take me some training to get there, but also realistic in the time I've got, which is 12 weeks.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

11 weeks now. 11 weeks from now, and we've had a week of it.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Okay. So you've gone for a longer distance. Um, so what does that change prep wise?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Um will you be changing anything in the training process or switching anything around to try and uh meet your target or I think I think there'll be a I think there'll be a lot more um variations of workouts, things like uh goal pace runs where I'll uh I'll I'll run at goal pace for longer distances and like veering off and then doing stride uh stride training, which is where you you work on your cadence. So essentially how often your feet touch the ground and improving your you know your I think it's like called SPM, I can't remember what that stands for. I don't know if it is simply just steps per minute, might well be. Um so if you need to improve your speed, it's not just about you know, like how how do you actually improve your speed and about understanding how often your feet hit the ground. So I think there'll be a bit more of that involved so it becomes a bit more technical as opposed to you know sheer um short sheer pushing through. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't think that'll get me through this one. I think I've got to be careful about that pacing as well, because if I do set off too quick too soon, yeah, I'll just um I'll just deplete myself really early on and I I've got uh well it's like double the time. So I I think that there's an element though of it which is slightly different in the 10k, wherein you have more time to make up for mistakes because you've got more time. Ah, that's interesting. Okay. So, you know, if you're out a little off pace, you know, going too slow, maybe even going too fast, and then you end up going too slow, you've got more time to recover from that. So, you know, if you need to slow down for a little bit and get your sort of motivation back up, even if you do that for a few minutes to recompose yourself, then a few minutes in the 5k could make or break your time, but in the 10k, I think uh you've got a bit more time to uh make up for that. Uh uh but I think pacing is gonna be a strong tack on making sure that that's done right. Just because you know, once you've got to uh once you've got to sort of like five miles, yeah, bearing in mind you've already done two miles more than you're in your 5k, that last mile, you're not gonna have tons of energy left in the tank to sort of speed through to pick up your pace. So um I I think by the time I hit the 5k, I need to be on pace at the very least. Maybe just a bit above pace, because I think towards the end of the run, what I'm noticing from the training that I've done this week so far is I am setting off a lot fast. Um and whether that's just just naturally me getting into the uh running rhythm or um or not, and as the uh as the distance goes on, I am just slowing down. And uh I suppose that is gonna happen. So it's just figuring out what the sweet spot is in terms of pacing to start with, that gives me enough energy throughout in case I do slow down a little bit. Um I think it'll come down a lot of it will come down to energy as well towards the end of the race.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah, I think like you said earlier, like your diet before, obviously after for recovery, but yeah, I guess it's really worth looking at what yeah can help you in the build-up because it is a lot more uh yeah, intense pressure for a longer period of time, isn't it? So you're gonna need the right amount of fuel to be releasing at the right time as well, I would imagine. Because it's like you said, yeah, you've got recovery, but at the same time you don't want to be crashing halfway at the 5k mark when you're literally just reaching halfway.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Yeah, I mean I'm not sure it's desperately needed, but maybe something I need to consider to maximize my energy. Like, you know, you have them you can have the little pouches that you can take, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. Normally in a 10k, I don't think you'd really need it. You know, you can be alright for uh uh an hour's run. But like I did a run yesterday, um, and it was sort of like five minute warm-up, five minute cooldown, but then an hour, an hour of running, and um I I know they're not 100% accurate, but eleven hundred calories burnt um for me. Yeah, which is an insane amount of calories, like first thing in the morning, yeah. I'd not even had a quarter of that yet. So, you know, that energy had to come from somewhere, and after it I could feel like I was lightheaded, obviously lost a lot of fluid. Uh so you know, it's just little things like that. I've probably which is the good news. I'm glad that's happening early doors because as the training regime goes on and I'm doing these runs more and more, knowing that the end goal is to do an ultimate version of this, um need to be monitoring how my body's reacting each time I do one of them runs and what anything that I do differently that it helps make it um better essentially, or helps me feel more energetic when I'm doing the run or not depleted after and you know motivated before. Uh so nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Why 12 weeks? Like how what made you land on that number?

SPEAKER_01 13:44

It's what I did for the 5k, and I think uh I I just think it's a a pretty good amount of time to train for a race, not something that's too far away that you kind of don't get straight back into it, and it's not uh too close that uh I set the bar a bit too high, you know, I've got a bit of time. Uh and on honestly, when I did the the the 5k, I figured, oh I'm at some point during my training, I think I'm gonna get pretty close to the sub 23 mark, and I didn't. So you know, the fact that towards the end though, I I said, you know, I did a bit of research and saw some like tips that pop up on the Garmin that kind of said you don't you don't really want to do that. So even if you feel like you maybe could, um, if you put all your heart and soul into your training, like give it like 110% like for a run, and you don't hit it, like you you you you're not gonna have that natural and further push compared to a race because you've got the adrenaline and everything like that uh for a for a race or a you know uh uh an actual goal to me. So um I think the amount of time that I had helped me get ready for that mentally and physically, you know. So I think it's a good amount of time to to do. And also as well, naturally, as I'm doing all this, I'm losing weight at the same time. So I figured by the time the goal comes round, I'll have hopefully lost another nine pounds. So I'll be sitting around the 15 sort of stone mark. Um that's where that'll help me um help me in terms of my pace and my speed and uh make achieving the goal a bit easier. Yeah. So you know, uh again, it's a significant difference from where I am now to where I'll be in 12 weeks' time in terms of physical weight.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

So fair enough, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

It's just a strategic way around of doing it, really.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Nice. Cool. You um mentioned speaking of equipment that you're using, uh the Garmin paid off. You're happy with the results that yielded? We're happy with the training period. Is all the gadgets and equipment is that all are all of the gadgets and equipment staying the same? Is anything that you're gonna adjust anything? You're gonna change the way you're using something?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

No, I don't think so. I think I I have thought about um I've just thought about getting new things and stuff. Like are you updating it? Maybe yeah, just upgrades, you know. Uh Chad Chad Suit Mark III, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Nanotech.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yeah, absolutely. But I think I might need some upgrades in so much that I've got a lot of um a lot of joggers and not so many shorts. Yeah, so we are getting into the warmer weather now. When I started this, it was winter, uh, and also something to readjust for because uh, you know, water intake, um, I'm gonna be sweating even more. Like it was quite warm when I was running yesterday, so I was up against it a little bit. So uh I didn't need to think about that. Uh whether I actually need to be wearing gloves and a hat. No, the hat's the hat's quite useful for capturing the sweat as well, so it's not like literally dripping into my eyes, um, or maybe even getting a sweatband.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

I was gonna say, uh, is it the perfect excuse? Yeah, I think it could be, couldn't it? Perfect excuse for headband times, especially if you're like your headband.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

And the wristbands, I've never really got the old wristbands and stuff, but maybe I should have a you know uh a sweatband for uh on the old wrist for wiping away sweat. I mean, yeah, there's all sorts of little things like that that I'll probably invest in.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

How does the uh the family feel about you diving straight back into the next one? Is it I guess they're used to it in its sort of business as usual at this point that you're working on something like this, but um are they happy about it?

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Er obviously Charlotte and the kids didn't actually um come to the race because you know round about Rocky uh that time. However, I think they will come uh this time. Obviously, it's gonna be a bit longer as well, so um should be a bit more of an event. Um and I think I'm gonna try and build it up a little bit more in in some respects. Uh I don't know what that looks like yet. I don't know. They might do a GoFundMe and some sort of uh sweatband find. You'll figure out where that go fund me should go. I don't know what that looks like.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

I guess. Yeah, that's interesting. That's very interesting, yeah. So we're looking at a bigger, better, badder, chatter challenge.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Hmm. Uh and one thing for sure I definitely need to be more strategic about is uh when I'm doing the warm-up walk pre-run is where I start that run. Yeah, yeah. Don't start it at the hill.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

You were quite tactical in that making sure you ran you didn't do the whole thing uphill, wasn't it? You know, there was a point where you were yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Well, uh yeah, the the elevation gain was becoming um becoming significant because we s I started at the hill, did a lap, and in the sort of like last uh three quarters of a mile, I would have had to pretty much done that entire bit uphill. Um now I didn't set the rules on, you know. Now it's got to be this course and it's got to be this way. It was just a distance event. So uh naturally wouldn't be able to do this in an actual race, but um I just turned around and went the other way.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Uh and that that that kind of my fault. I wouldn't have been in that position if I'd have thought, actually, do you know what, make sure I start um start in a good place so I'm not making things ten times harder for myself. So, you know, either walking in the opposite direction um might have been a useful tack, uh, or just um just not starting at the hill. No, I was just gonna say, I mean, it's gonna be I'm gonna have to do the hill a few times because naturally the distance is double. So, you know, I'm gonna have to loop that course at least uh two, two and a half times. So yeah, you know, I'm gonna hit it at least twice, but um thrice, no, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, yeah. I think that's it, isn't it? And that's the other good thing about uh, and I think it's really good advice for anybody doing something similar of act like recording, not literally like this necessarily, but recording the results and the um what do you call it, the stats of like how it was working. Because obviously, like you said, if you hadn't paid attention to that, you could well have just started on the hill. So, like you said, you're starting and ending on a an uphill. Um my point is like you know, you you know what you're going up against this time as opposed to just doing it, not thinking about it and not paying any attention to uh how exactly you've performed and what's been affecting the performance because if that had been flat or all downhill, I assume you probably would have been even quicker.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Um the thing is part of the mentality behind you know racing or hitting a certain time is how you prepare yourself mentally for those hill climbs. And um I hadn't because uh until I got round, I didn't really I started at the hill, I'm gonna have to go back up the hill. So I know I've not mentally prepared for this. So the only solution is to not do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Turn around and go the other way. Albeit more strategic about it this time.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

I think that's the main thing we've learned really over the last four episodes, isn't it? It's like you're just becoming more and more strategic and more data being gathered about like what you're using, what you've got, what you're up against. Um, and again, it obviously pays off, you know. It's not a case of like, I just did it. And you like you think, uh, when you're actually looking at a at beating a specific target, you need to know all of the specifics about what you've got, um, which I think has been yeah, really interesting to listen to. And I think if you're up for it in uh about seven or eight weeks, we can uh do the same again, maybe for the um chasing 49.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Would you um have any advice to leave us with uh as we close out yet another episode?

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think if there's anything like Nico just said there, we'll learn um there's th there's three things that I think you you need to do if you're if you're looking to hit especially a running. goal and and the first thing is um put on your trainers and start running that's uh a really good start that's good yeah don't don't overthink that part of it you know get your get get your get your dancing shoes well not your dancing shoe on your mocky and everything get your trainers on and just start running that's my best advice to this day I still get unmotivated and it's not until my feet are actually hitting the ground that I'm actually you know uh I I re-motivate myself you know I rarely you know ten minutes into my run thinking I can't bother this I'm gonna walk on very easy to do that before you start the run though that's step one step two kind of the opposite to step one in some respects is when you're actually trying to hit your goal absolutely think about the strategy behind it. You know how many workouts are you going to do? Are the workouts realistic? Are you gonna have enough time to do the workouts that you set? Are you overshooting? Are you undershooting? And and find a good strategic balance spend a couple of hours on a weekend or whatever thinking about what you can do right now, what you're gonna do in the middle and where you're gonna actually do it, where you're actually going to do the run, the race, who's gonna be there with you, um have you got the right equipment to do it. That strategy I think is really really key and really helped keep me motivated um throughout the entire thing and then the third thing the most vital thing that you can do from now until hitting your goal is just to keep on sweating Diary of the Big Lad is an Osbone Road production featuring Chad O'Brien and Nico Diodoro. Theme tune written and performed by Jay Stevens. For more Diary of the Big Lad content find us at Diary of the Big Lad on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and thread So there you have it the conclusion to our little mini series insider series.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

To everyone who's been with us from the start, thank you. To everyone who's just joined us at the end, thank you. And to anyone who for some reason just loaded this episode up and scrolled to this bit at the end you you're a weirdo, but thank you. We'll be back to do the same again next time when Chad hits his next big challenge. If you've enjoyed the show, if you've got any feedback for us or you just want to say hello, feel free to hit the send a message to the BigLad button in the description on your podcast player. We'd love to hear from you. Till then, have a great one. Bye