Interview with coach Marcel Obersteller – Triathlon: “The head is always stronger than the body”

Marcel, you coached me as an absolute beginner who wants to run a triathlon in two months. What is the most important thing when you look at beginners?

Most beginners have to reduce the pace. This is the most important thing you need to know: your head always wants more than your body can. The body is subject to certain adaptation processes that cannot be accelerated. The head often overlooks these adjustment times. Therefore, as a coach, I have to bring structure to training and pay attention to sufficient regeneration times.

And what does it look like?

You can only improve one of the three disciplines. A second is held at the same level, the third is neglected. It’s just like that. For you, for example, it is now swimming that we put back there. You can already crawl – whether you are two minutes faster or not, it doesn’t matter. Now we focus on metabolic training, i.e. the energy supply and the economization of your individual future competition speeds.

What does that mean specifically for my training plan?

I try to convey a feeling with the units for what you can do. What do you do in an hour, what in ten minutes? This feeling is not there at all. If you sit on the bike and I say: “Find a speed you can drive for an hour!” You don’t know if that’s 30 or 35 km/h. I will now give you an orientation with our training.

How do you control the training – do you lead me to certain limits?

There is the permanent performance limit, this FTP value with which all trainers work. It indicates the maximum average performance that an athlete can maintain over an hour. You are currently moving below this threshold. We slowly feel ourselves on this. If we are too fast, you are out of action for a week or hurt yourself. The art is to adjust you so that you are not shortly before the end of the competition in September. People are often over -motivated in the competition, go off too quickly, and then it starts.

You affect 20 athletes. Are there top athletes too?

Yes, really good people, but no professionals. One of my protégés was a professional for four years, but now has family. I haven’t had Olympic participants under my wing yet, but very fast people.

What is your philosophy as a triathlon trainer?

I can’t impress me with performance, but with willingness to perform. I treat everyone the same – whether a beginner or a top athlete. You can impress me by being ready to work on yourself. People have to come to me with a goal, otherwise it makes no sense. It can also be put on. In case of doubt, it has to be worked on longer.

Is triathlon an elitist sport?

Yes, I always say triathlon is the golf of endurance sports. No more bike from the triathlon crazy people under 10,000 euros. If you want to go to the Iron Man in Hawaii (the unofficial World Cup on the long-distance triathlon, editor’s note), this costs at least 8,000 euros for you as a participant. The starting place costs 1200 euros and you have to go for two weeks. With twelve hours of time shift and an hour of acclimatization that you can create a day, you just take so long. In addition the flight costs. If you still take the family with you and knit a vacation around it, it will quickly be 20,000 euros for the whole tour.

Still – why should someone start with triathlon?

An Ironman is like a birth. You walk through hell, you have insane pain. But then there is such a point, usually the last two or three kilometers while running, you don’t know anymore: I cry with pain or already with joy? This point was always the most beautiful for me. When the pain turns into joy, in luck. That was still a thousand times more beautiful than the finish, where I didn’t feel that much anymore.

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What was your most beautiful competition as more active?

That was a competition after I had long stopped as active and started again on the long distance, in Podersdorf, Austria. I had only completed half of the training in advance because I had the feeling that I’m just in a good mood. I then started without a speedometer, without a clock: I didn’t know all the time at which position I was lying nor how fast I was on the road. I was just enjoying, I had fun all the time. And in the run I finally put my best time – 8:40 hours. When I looked at the target clock, I was totally surprised. Why am I so fast? I asked others: Is the route shorter here? But no: everything was right. I then asked the competition judge: how many have I become? And he said: Well, fifth! Not noticed? Congratulations!

What do you miss as active from your time?

The training camp! Honestly, I never lived for the competitions, but for the training camps. I loved being somewhere in the world, getting up, meeting and advising me with my boys and advising: What do we do today? Run first, the wheel? Or just swimming? And then we walked across the island by bike, and somewhere a cappuccino was taken, wonderful.

What is your strength as a trainer?

Without thinking it in any way: Training science is actually exhausted, which is no longer rocket science. There are many good people. My strength is my holistic look as a sports scientist and a prospective naturopath. I can always strain my athletes to the limit without overloading them. I know my people well; I know who has how many children and who may be in a difficult phase of life. Then I call at the right moment and say: “You, we take the training out.” I always get mirrored: “You did that at the right moment.”

Is that maybe the advantage that a trainer will always have compared to artificial intelligence?

Yes, exactly: Because the AI already adapts the training plans to the current level of performance. But the AI does not know: Do you have children who need more care or stress with a work colleague? I can always react. My athletes are open to me because I don’t evaluate them. If you tell me today you can’t do your training, then that’s the way it is. You don’t need to have a guilty conscience. My athletes can be honest. As a result, they keep the joy of sport much longer.