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These are the questions athletes most often ask Gerard before they start with TriVelo Coaching. TriVelo is one-on-one online coaching for triathlon, cycling and running, for athletes in any country. It costs $99 USD a week, plus GST in Australia.
Your goals, your training history, your available time, your equipment and your injuries. Gerard reads all of it before he calls.
It takes around 30 to 45 minutes. The call is recorded so your future coach hears who you are from you.
If we can help, Gerard matches you with a coach. If the goal or the timing is wrong, he will say so.
There are four short onboarding steps, then we calibrate your numbers. You don't have to wait for a Monday.
Jump to: Who we coach, Equipment you need, How the coaching works, Your coach, Training around your life, Swim, strength and fuelling, Racing, Getting started and payments.
Start here. This is what the application is for and who it suits.
Because Gerard does not believe everybody willing to pay should automatically be accepted. He personally interviews applicants to work out whether TriVelo can actually help them.
That means understanding your:
Sometimes Gerard decides the goal itself is not realistic right now. He has told people their available training time is not compatible with their Ironman goal. He has rejected proposed races he believes are wrong for the athlete. He has also said that athletes looking for a short-term miracle may be better suited to another service.
The interview also protects you. Gerard wants you to understand how accountable and involved the coaching will be before you start. He does not want someone joining from a checkout page and discovering four weeks later that the service is completely different from what they expected.
The application checks fit. You don't need an impressive race history.
Yes. TriVelo coaches the entire spectrum: people who have never completed a triathlon, everyday age-group athletes, highly competitive age-groupers and professional athletes.
Gerard has said he enjoys coaching beginners because they often have enormous room to improve and are eager to learn.
The basic training concepts may be similar for everybody. The difference is that everybody trains to their own level. A professional and a beginner might both do a five-minute cycling interval session, but the power targets, volume, progression and surrounding program will be completely different.
Gerard does not select applicants on whether they are already fast. He selects on motivation, coachability and whether TriVelo believes it can genuinely help them improve.
No. TriVelo is not selecting people based on current race results. The objective is improvement relative to your starting point.
Most TriVelo athletes are normal age-group athletes, not professionals. A beginner improving from the back of the field to the middle is still improvement. A competitive athlete moving from fifth to first is also improvement.
Gerard cares much more about whether you are motivated, willing to communicate, willing to follow the process and genuinely want coaching.
Yes. TriVelo coaches athletes around the world. Gerard has coaches in multiple countries and time zones and tries to match you with someone geographically compatible where practical.
Time zone is not the only factor. Gerard also considers personality, expertise and coach capacity. Coaching across large time differences works, but if two equally suitable coaches are available and one is closer to your time zone, that makes communication simpler.
Wherever your primary coach lives, Gerard remains involved in the weekly oversight.
Gerard strongly prefers long-term coaching over last-minute race preparation. There is no single number for every athlete, because it depends on your current fitness, training history, event and goal.
The less time you give the coach, the less opportunity there is to actually improve you.
For a full Ironman, Gerard has described approximately a year as the model he prefers, particularly for less experienced athletes. He regularly pushes back on people approaching with only 12 weeks before an Ironman and expecting major changes.
For 70.3 athletes it still depends on what you have already done. Gerard once accepted an athlete only eight weeks before a 70.3, but called that very late. The athlete had already been training and wanted to finish strongly. That window only allowed about two useful calibrations before race day.
TriVelo's "race-ready" sessions become more prominent about eight to twelve weeks before an important race. Ideally that is the final specific phase of a much longer coaching relationship, not the beginning of the whole program.
Equipment affects the quality of your coaching data. This is what Gerard will ask about.
For cycling, this is the equipment Gerard is most consistent about. Yes, TriVelo expects athletes being coached on the bike to have a power meter.
The reasoning is simple. If your coach asks you to ride a session at a particular intensity, they need an objective way to measure what you actually did. Without power, the coach cannot see whether you rode hard enough, too hard, consistently within the range, or completely differently from what was intended.
Power also connects your training to race performance. Over time we want to know what speed a given wattage produces for you, what power you can sustain and what your heart rate does at that power.
Gerard strongly prefers the power meter to be on the bike you actually ride, not only inside your smart trainer.
Trainer power and bike power can differ. Gerard gives examples of athletes whose trainer reads 10, 20 or even 30 watts differently from their bike power meter. If you build a race plan on the wrong power source, you could ride too hard and blow up, or ride unnecessarily conservatively.
Gerard has sometimes let a new athlete start on trainer power while they organise a bike power meter. The long-term goal is always to train and race from the same power source.
If you only run, you don't need a power meter.
An indoor trainer lets you put your bike on a stationary trainer and complete cycling sessions indoors.
Gerard likes indoor trainers because they create a controlled environment. No traffic lights, cars, weather changes or interruptions. If your session requires five-minute efforts in a particular power range and cadence, you can concentrate entirely on executing those numbers correctly. He often describes it as a "science lab" environment.
It is particularly useful when you are learning to control power, doing threshold or VO2 sessions, dealing with bad weather, training in extreme heat, or do not have access to a safe uninterrupted road.
Gerard does not believe you should do all your riding indoors. Outdoor riding teaches things a trainer cannot fully reproduce: bike handling, changing terrain, wind, keeping pressure on over hills and descents, cornering, and how power translates into real speed.
TriVelo wants to use both: indoors for highly controlled work, outdoors for the skills and race-specific execution you need on race day.
Not every athlete absolutely needs an indoor trainer. The real prerequisite for bike coaching is a power meter. A smart trainer is an extremely useful tool, and depending on your location, weather, roads and schedule, Gerard may strongly recommend or require one so you can reliably complete the prescribed sessions.
For example, if your only chance to train is Tuesday morning and it is pouring with rain, having no indoor option can mean losing an important session. If you live somewhere with dangerous roads, extreme heat, snow or limited uninterrupted riding, a trainer becomes much more important.
The equipment Gerard commonly looks for:
For triathletes, Gerard also pays close attention to bike fit and the position you will race in. A time-trial bike is not automatically mandatory. Gerard has accepted athletes on road bikes, including road bikes with clip-on aerobars. Whether a TT bike makes sense depends on your race goals, current equipment and finances.
TriVelo would rather help you work out what you genuinely need than tell every athlete to buy the most expensive equipment available.
Yes. Equipment comes up constantly in Gerard's pre-coaching interviews because it affects the quality of the coaching data and how well training replicates racing.
Gerard regularly helps athletes think through bikes, power meters, trainers, bike computers, heart-rate straps, bike fits, aerobars and other equipment.
He is also very conscious that triathlon is expensive. He repeatedly tells athletes he does not want to spend their money unnecessarily. He discusses cheaper power-meter options, single-sided versus dual-sided power, second-hand bikes, road bikes with clip-ons and temporary workarounds where appropriate.
TriVelo also has relationships with some equipment providers and has offered athletes access to discounts where available.
The question is always what you actually need to train and race properly.
TrainingPeaks is the platform TriVelo uses to deliver and monitor your training. Your swim, bike, run and strength sessions appear on your TrainingPeaks calendar with instructions explaining what to do.
A bike workout, for example, might include the warm-up, the exact intervals, your target power range, expected cadence, recovery periods and cool-down.
When you complete the session, the data from your Garmin, bike computer or other device uploads into TrainingPeaks. Your coach can then see what actually happened:
There is also a post-activity comments section. Gerard considers this extremely important. The data might show you hit every interval, but it cannot tell the coach that you barely slept, had a headache, felt amazing, had sore legs or were stressed at work. That information comes from you. Gerard describes the comment section as your training diary and repeatedly asks athletes to use it.
The basic version of TrainingPeaks is free, and it is enough. Premium gives you extra data if you personally want it, but it is not required.
Calibration, programming, feedback and communication. This is the engine of TriVelo.
We will never use AI to write your program. We will never use AI to coach you.
Using AI to write programs goes against the principles behind our athletes' success:
We've coached endurance athletes by these principles since the 1980s, and they're why our athletes get results. Each one needs a person who knows you.
We do use AI tools to help analyse data, including athlete profiles, fitness readiness and training load. We do this because we want to be on the cutting edge of technology, and we want our athletes to get the best results possible. Your program and your coaching always come from your coach.
Yes, with an important distinction. TriVelo does not invent an entirely new exercise from scratch for every athlete every morning.
Gerard has built a large library of training methods and sessions he knows work. Some of the same fundamental sessions can be used by a professional and a beginner. What changes is how those sessions are applied to you.
Your program is personalised around:
Gerard describes pre-written programs as useful "skeletal frameworks." What TriVelo does not do is load that framework into TrainingPeaks for six months and tell you to follow it. The coach continually changes the progression based on what is actually happening to you. That is the personalisation Gerard considers important.
Calibration is a major part of Gerard's methodology. TriVelo does not want to guess how fit you are or base your training on numbers from six months ago. Calibrating establishes where you are right now.
Depending on the athlete and their goals, Gerard commonly uses:
Those results set your training ranges. If your cycling fitness improves, your training power should increase with it. If injury, illness or inconsistency causes fitness to drop, Gerard does not want you stubbornly training against an old FTP and failing sessions. Recalibrating lets the program move with your actual fitness.
Gerard commonly talks about recalibrating roughly every four to six weeks, depending on where you are in the program. We change your pacing and your zones as you get fitter.
Treat each calibration as a training session and a chance to practise execution: start under control, manage your effort and finish strongly. That same skill transfers directly into racing.
Because Gerard does not believe a coach can know exactly how you will respond weeks in advance.
TriVelo can work backwards from your race and create the broader structure. But the coaches wait to see what happens during the current week before finalising what happens next.
You may get sick. You may miss Thursday because of work. You may unexpectedly crush a session. You may show signs of excessive fatigue. You may develop a niggle. Your FTP may change.
If the next three months have already been prescribed as though none of those things will happen, Gerard considers that closer to following a training plan than being coached.
Typically, by the end of the week the coach has seen what actually happened and can adjust the following week.
The long-term direction remains. The short-term route can change constantly.
The first step is establishing where you are now. TriVelo commonly begins by calibrating your numbers so the coach has current swim, cycling and running numbers. Those numbers create your initial training ranges.
Your program is delivered through TrainingPeaks. Each session explains what you are doing and why. You do the session, the data uploads, and you leave feedback about how you felt. The coach looks at both.
Through the week the coach monitors how you are going and communicates where necessary. Towards the end of the week they assess the overall picture before finalising the next week's progression. That progression works backwards from your bigger race goals while still responding to what is happening now.
At regular intervals TriVelo recalibrates your numbers so they stay current. As the important race gets closer, the program becomes increasingly race-specific.
The goal is to arrive at race day knowing exactly what your body has demonstrated it can do.
Gerard acknowledges that AI can generate a training program, and may even generate a reasonably good one. The problem is that the program itself is only part of coaching.
AI or a generic plan does not automatically know that:
A TriVelo coach is meant to learn who you are. They see the data, receive your feedback, understand your work and family environment and continually change the program accordingly.
Gerard has said that if all someone receives is a program with no feedback or guidance, they could have got that from AI. The value of coaching is having a person attached to that workout who is watching, thinking, responding and helping you execute it properly.
How we match you, and what happens if the match is wrong.
Feedback can be as simple as a text or conversation, but TriVelo also uses detailed video analysis. Gerard regularly shows prospective athletes examples of Loom videos created for athletes.
The coach opens your TrainingPeaks data on screen and visually walks through what happened:
Gerard particularly expects this deeper analysis around calibrations, races and important sessions. TriVelo also does post-race analysis rather than simply moving on to the next week.
Gerard is equally strong on another form of feedback: explaining why. He tells his coaches that if they cannot explain why an athlete is doing something, they are not doing the job properly. The objective is for you to become a more informed athlete who understands why.
Yes, although Gerard is generally not the primary day-to-day coach for new athletes. He describes his role as "coaching the coaches."
Every TriVelo coach meets with Gerard regularly and reports on their athletes. Gerard wants to know:
Gerard and the coach then discuss the program together. He describes this as having two sets of eyes on the athlete. He may review feedback a coach has prepared, spot something the coach missed, or communicate directly with you.
With some new athletes, Gerard personally manages the first calibration and onboarding period before handing over to the assigned coach. The primary ongoing communication is normally with your assigned coach.
We don't put a limit on how much our coaches contact our athletes. Our goal is to get you the best results possible, and we communicate as much as that takes.
Depending on what is happening, you may communicate through:
Reviewing your data is at the centre of the coaching. If something needs attention, you hear from your coach.
One of Gerard's biggest criticisms of other coaching models is that an athlete gets a single call on Monday and has to wait until next Monday if something goes wrong on Thursday. His view is that one-to-one coaching cannot work properly that way.
Whenever the coach needs information they cannot get from the data alone. That means you should communicate when:
Gerard told one athlete that if getting the program right requires communicating eighteen times in a week, that is okay. The aim is to remove the barrier that says, "I shouldn't bother my coach."
TriVelo cannot coach you properly if you do not tell us what is happening.
Gerard normally assigns the coach rather than giving you a menu to pick from. He has personally interviewed you, so he uses that to decide who he believes is the best match.
Factors can include:
Gerard places particular importance on personality and care factor. The coach-athlete relationship requires honest communication, so feeling comfortable talking to that person matters.
If the match does not work, the coach can be changed.
Gerard interviews you first. That gives him a picture of your goals, personality, history, work, family, equipment and the type of help you actually need.
He then looks at the coaching team. Where practical, TriVelo tries to match time zones because communication becomes easier. Coach capacity is considered because Gerard does not want coaches overloaded. Specific expertise can matter too. Gerard has assigned an athlete with significant injury and strength issues to a coach with particularly strong strength-and-conditioning expertise.
Athletic performance is not the main reason TriVelo hires coaches. Coaches are selected primarily for their care factor and ability to help another person. Gerard then coaches those coaches himself, so every athlete is coached according to the same TriVelo methodology regardless of who their primary coach is.
Tell TriVelo. The ability to communicate openly with your coach is too important to tolerate a relationship that is not working.
Gerard puts considerable thought into the initial match, but personalities do not always connect as expected. If you are uncomfortable communicating with the coach or genuinely feel the relationship is not working, TriVelo can change coaches.
Gerard also remains available if there is something you do not feel comfortable raising directly with your primary coach.
Shift work, travel, family and missed sessions. Your program fits your life.
By starting from what you are currently capable of, not the distance of the race you have entered.
If someone has entered an Ironman but their longest ride is 45 minutes, TriVelo does not suddenly prescribe a five-hour ride. The athlete might start with an hour. The same applies to running and swimming.
Duration and frequency increase progressively according to your training history and how your body responds. Feedback matters enormously here. If the coach increases your load and you are struggling, the next increase can be delayed. If you are absorbing the work well, progression continues.
The goal is to give you enough overload to improve without destroying the consistency that Gerard believes is the foundation of endurance performance.
Yes. The coach needs to understand what your week actually looks like.
If Tuesday is unavailable but Wednesday is open, that matters. If Saturday is normally a family day and Monday is effectively your weekend, your program does not need to look like everybody else's.
Gerard describes this as the difference between telling someone what to do and helping them decide when to do it. The coach is involved in both.
If your availability changes during the week, you tell the coach and the program is rearranged. Gerard describes this ongoing logistical problem-solving as one of the things athletes are actually paying for.
Gerard treats work, family and training as interconnected. He does not believe training should automatically take priority over everything else.
He describes a triangle of work, family and training. If one side falls apart, the whole system eventually suffers. An athlete who trains so much that their relationship deteriorates or their work collapses is not following a sustainable program. Likewise, heavy work stress affects how much training you can absorb.
That is why Gerard asks about your job, work hours, partner, children and family situation. The objective is to understand the life the training has to fit into.
TriVelo is still performance-focused. If the time you genuinely have is not enough for the goal you have chosen, Gerard will say so. But the solution is not to sacrifice everything else in your life for training.
Yes. This comes up constantly. TriVelo coaches or has discussed coaching athletes working:
Gerard does not pretend every week must look identical. For one athlete on long FIFO shifts, the important 20 to 30-minute main set of a bike session stays the same while the overall session changes. At home, that might mean a long warm-up and cool-down, turning it into a 90-minute or two-hour ride. At the mine, the same objective is achieved with a short warm-up, the main set and a short cool-down in under an hour.
The coaching adapts to the time available while preserving the part of the session that actually matters.
TriVelo continues coaching around the environment you actually have. Gerard has coached athletes travelling for work, holidays and extended international trips.
The coach looks at what you can access. Can you run? Is there a pool? Does the hotel have a stationary bike? Can you bring your bike or power pedals? Is there a gym? What time is realistically available?
Gerard encouraged one athlete to begin coaching during three weeks in New York, because running, possibly swimming and a hotel or gym bike were all available. Another athlete travelled to Jamaica for six weeks using swimming, running and a hotel bike.
The program does not need to look identical while you are away. The goal is to preserve the right training stimulus and continuity using what is available. If you have an important race ahead, ordinary travel is not a reason to abandon training for weeks.
Yes. TriVelo wants the program to fit around reality rather than pretending every athlete has the same Monday-to-Sunday life. Your coach needs to know when you are available and what facilities you have on those days. The program moves accordingly.
The important distinction: Gerard does not want athletes independently dragging hard sessions around their TrainingPeaks calendar without talking to the coach. The spacing between sessions matters. Moving Thursday's session to Friday may affect what should happen on Saturday.
The program is flexible, but it is flexible with your coach, not separate from them.
You do not try to cram every missed session back into the week. And you definitely do not write the whole week off because Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday went badly.
Athletes sometimes miss the start of the week and think, "I'll just start again next Monday." Gerard's response is that you still have Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Your coach looks at what was missed, why, and what the purpose of the week was. Sometimes a session can be moved. Sometimes it can be modified. Sometimes the right decision is to let it go.
What TriVelo does not want is an athlete stacking hard sessions back-to-back to "catch up" and creating a new fatigue or injury problem. Communicate with your coach and let them reorganise it.
Yes, depending on where you are in the program and what the activity does to the training objective. Gerard does not want coaching to become so restrictive that you stop enjoying your life.
When one athlete asked about going surfing, Gerard's answer was essentially that athletes can make their own decisions and TriVelo will explain the consequences. Four weeks before your most important race is different from six months out.
Gerard encourages group riding at certain stages because it provides variety, enjoyment and unpredictable intensity. Closer to a race, some key race-ready sessions may need to be done alone so you execute your own power rather than follow a group.
So talk to your coach about what you want to do and how it fits the current block.
Potentially, yes. An injury does not automatically mean coaching has to stop.
Athletes have joined TriVelo with running injuries and continued to be coached in swimming and cycling while running was reduced or temporarily removed. TriVelo may also shift more cardiovascular intensity onto the bike, because Gerard considers it much lower risk than hard running. Running is then gradually reintroduced as your durability improves.
If the injury is severe enough that you genuinely cannot swim, bike or run meaningfully, the program may be paused.
The question becomes: what can you safely and meaningfully train while you recover?
The parts of the program that go beyond swim, bike and run fitness.
Gerard makes a clear distinction between swimming and the other two disciplines. You can improve cycling and running significantly by improving fitness. Swimming has a much larger technical component.
If your stroke is inefficient and you practise that stroke for more hours, you get fitter without getting much faster. Gerard compares it with practising a golf swing that has a huge hook. More practice reinforces the same problem unless the technique changes.
TriVelo has a relationship with Brenton Ford from Effortless Swimming. Athletes can attend clinics where available, or film themselves from the right angles and send footage for analysis. Brenton identifies technical issues and recommends drills. TriVelo has a drill library and incorporates the relevant work into your swim sessions.
If you already have a good local swim coach, Gerard is happy for you to use that person. The objective is to improve you, wherever the help comes from.
The outsourced assessment itself is separate. TriVelo athletes get discounted analysis or clinics through the relationship with Effortless Swimming, but if Brenton personally analyses your video or you attend one of his clinics, that has an additional cost.
Once the technical issues and drills are identified, TriVelo builds the relevant work into your normal swim program. Your normal swim programming is part of your coaching. Specialist outsourced analysis is separate.
Gerard views strength and conditioning through the lens of durability, injury prevention and function. The goal is functional strength that helps you keep swimming, cycling and running consistently.
For an injury-prone runner, that might mean specific calf, ankle, balance, hip or lower-leg work. For another athlete it could address an existing weakness or recurring injury. Athletes from bodybuilding or heavy gym backgrounds may have their strength work changed so it supports triathlon rather than competing with it.
Gerard has coaches with significant strength-and-conditioning expertise, and TriVelo's private Clubhouse contains strength resources. TriVelo can also connect you with physiotherapy support where required.
One nuance: if your training time is very limited, swim, bike and run may need to take priority over large amounts of gym work. Strength work supports the program. It should not stop you doing the actual sport.
Yes, particularly in relation to training and race execution. Gerard wants you to practise your nutrition during long training sessions rather than invent a plan on race day.
That includes understanding:
Gerard encouraged one athlete to take notes on temperature, intensity and what he consumed during training so he could build evidence for race day. With another, he specifically questioned whether nutrition had been practised in the months before her 70.3.
Race day should be a repeat of something you have already practised.
How we prepare you to execute, and what happens after you cross the line.
This is one of the biggest themes across Gerard's coaching. TriVelo does not want race day to be the first time you attempt the strategy.
As a race approaches, you complete increasingly race-specific "race-ready" sessions, usually during the final eight to twelve weeks. You repeatedly practise the power, pace, terrain, nutrition and execution you expect to use. By race week you have evidence.
Gerard requires you to think through and submit your own race plan based on what you have actually done in training. The coach reviews it. If you are too aggressive, the coach points to the training evidence and explains why. If you are unnecessarily conservative, the coach shows that too.
The goal is to arrive on race morning without guessing. You know what you have done in training. You know your ranges. Your job is to execute.
TriVelo analyses it. Gerard reviews what you did well, what went wrong and what that means for the next block of training.
That can include your swim, bike and run execution, pacing, power distribution, heart rate, cadence, nutrition, and how your performance compared with the plan you entered the race with.
Gerard has shown athletes post-race Loom analyses where TriVelo compares their execution with athletes who are particularly good at a specific skill.
A race also becomes another data point in the coaching process. The lessons carry forward into your next block and future races.
What onboarding looks like, what it costs, and how payments, pauses and the guarantee work.
Gerard generally describes four onboarding steps. You will receive:
Your existing training history is connected so TriVelo can see what you have been doing. Gerard records the initial interview so your assigned coach understands who you are rather than starting cold.
The first period of coaching commonly includes calibrating your numbers. That gives a line in the sand for your current swim, bike and run fitness. Once those numbers are set, your first proper training block is built around where you actually are now.
You do not need to start on a Monday. You can begin on whatever day makes sense once the onboarding requirements and necessary equipment are organised.
$99 USD a week, plus GST in Australia. Triathlon, cycling and running coaching are the same price.
TriVelo does not lock you into a fixed six or twelve-month prepaid contract. Payments are generally made one week in advance.
Gerard still views the coaching relationship as long-term. Paying weekly does not mean the intended model is to repeatedly jump on and off. Gerard wants continuity because fitness compounds over time.
If you decide the program is no longer right for you, you are not trapped in a year-long contract. Pauses are possible in genuine circumstances, particularly injury or significant illness.
Casually pausing because you feel like a couple of weeks away, then restarting, is something Gerard discourages because it destroys continuity and makes progression much harder. Ordinary holidays and travel are handled by adapting the program rather than switching coaching off.
If you sustain a significant injury that means TriVelo genuinely cannot coach you in swimming, cycling or running, Gerard does not want you paying for coaching you are not receiving. This is one of the main reasons TriVelo charges weekly rather than a year upfront.
Gerard uses the example of a broken collarbone. If you cannot train for six weeks, the program can be paused for that period. If you can return after two weeks, the pause may only be two weeks.
An injury does not automatically mean payments stop. If you cannot run but TriVelo can still meaningfully coach your cycling and swimming, the program is adapted rather than paused.
TriVelo does not want to take money when it is genuinely unable to coach you.
If your calibrated numbers don't improve in your first 8 weeks, the coaching is on us.
Bring your questions to the call with Gerard. He would rather answer them now than have you find out four weeks in that the coaching is different from what you expected.
Also see: triathlon coaching, Ironman and 70.3 coaching, cycling coaching, running coaching, about Gerard and Jordan.
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