That Triathlon Life Podcast - Are long triathlon brick runs worth it, dressing for cold weather running, compression boots, and more!

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

This week, as usual, we talk triathlon. We get into questions about TT bikes vs Triathlon bikes, counting calories as professional athletes, open water swim safety, and much more! To submit your questions, help support the podcast, and check out our gear, head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.com

Hello everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Eric Loggersome. I'm Nick Goldston. We are here to answer your questions, go over what's going on in our lives. And we haven't recorded for two weeks. So we had a huge backlog of questions, all really good. If we don't get to yours, it's not because it was bad. It's just because we only have an hour to talk to you guys. But we're super excited to be here. Eric and I are professional triathletes. Nick is a professional musician, amateur triathlete back into the swing of training. Eric and I live in. and Ben with our dog Flynn and Nick lives in Santa Monica. So every week we get to do a FaceTime podcast, which is extremely fun. And it's the only time we talk all week. Yeah, we catch up on life. We never talk during the whole week. We just do the podcast. I think this is our fourth FaceTime with you today, Nick.

Yeah, I think so. This might be the most upbeat one. We had a couple of somber chats earlier. It's been a day. I don't know. We'll get into that another time when our thoughts are more fully formed on it. No real problems. Just things.

Yeah. I was honestly so close. I say this a lot on the pod as a recording late at night, but I was almost like, we're just not going to do it on this week because I'm away tomorrow. I'm away Wednesday. It's our last chance, but I can't even fathom talking upbeat for an hour.

So we're canceling. Last week you are literally on the ground with the microphone. Yeah, that's right. But then we went for Thai food and ice cream and now I'm feeling a little better. So let's do it. There's nothing that Thai food and ice cream could not solve. Well, first of all, how are you guys, I'm kind of curious now. This is something

we used to do more on the podcast, and we haven't been doing it recently. And I think that's just because it's been kind of the off-season and pre-season stuff. How are you guys feeling in your training in general? Like, where's your fitness at and how do you feel about where your fitness is at? Oh, gosh. The fitness is not really that good. But we were recently on a week-long backcountry ski trip at a place called Padder Creek Lodge in BC, Canada. It was, the trip of a lifetime. Zero regrets, but it was in the backcountry helicopter accessed, ski touring with very little service, and

the only real activity you could do there was skiing, which was fine because we were doing it for eight hours a day, but we really missed a week of swim bike run. The way that I'm looking at it is that we spent a week at like 7,500 feet walking around in the snow all day long. So we're extremely like baseline aerobic, like red blood cells are topped off and we're ready for some serious training right now. Good, good.

And I mean, isn't this an okay time to be feeling not in tip-top shape? Isn't that kind of good, actually? Yeah, yeah. I think both of us agree that one of our major takeaways from last year was that we didn't come into fitness super early. You know, we went and did that couples try race that was like very early March and didn't feel great, but then the end of the season, world championships obviously worked out really well.

and a lot of times what you'll see is people who are super firing it, like Oceanside in April, really struggle to carry that all the way till the end of the season where the races really matter. So we're sticking with that. We're remaining confident. And I don't know, for me anyway, that backcountry trip was exactly what I needed

in terms of like kind of just a mental reset, very little Wi-Fi time, very little phone time, just out hanging out. And I feel super refreshed and, like, more excited to train than when we left. And that's huge for early season. When you talk about people who are really, firing early on in the season, often not making it to the end of the season still really strong.

How would you, if you had to divvy that up into a pie chart, how much of that do you think is mental versus physical? Maybe even like 50, 50. Okay. I don't know. I would say most, what do you think? I'd say most North America-based athletes are pretty good at sort of going with the flow of the season and peaking later in the summer.

I think it becomes really difficult for athletes that are in the southern hemisphere, like in Australia or New Zealand because they have races that are starting in January. So some of them have just trained through winter and it's summer for them. So they're in the heat. They're training like it's the summer. But then they have to hold on all the way till next summer for the northern hemisphere. So it just becomes like a huge toll. But for the most part, I think most athletes are pretty realistic about treating

Oceanside as an early season race. And you kind of have to if you want to be firing at all the people. PTO races in it, the World Championships. And it's equal part mental and physical. If you're too mentally fried and stressed at Oceanside, then you're definitely not going to last until September. Yeah, I'd say it's really hard to separate the two. Because they're very linked and you get tired and then you wonder why you're tired

and you think you're tired. Yeah, yeah. It's like they play off of each other and they're so intertwined. Honestly, like when we get our training schedules these days, we don't have other jobs to do. Give us more training. But then by the time we get to the end of the training, week, we're really tired. So I think it is the appropriate amount of training for our current

fitness. And it's interspersed with these like max effort sprints, which we're really not used to. And you recover from those within a couple of minutes and you're fine. But they do really kind of bring some element of fatigue to your whole system because they're a new stimulus. So that's added some some tiredness, I think. And although our training schedule does not look impressive on paper, we are slowly building fitness, which is the point of this time here. It's funny. I feel like most people think early in the year, no intensity. It's just like all base like zone one, zone two stuff. But that's really often training plans will have these short, sharp little efforts at the beginning of the year specifically. I don't totally understand where that comes from, though. Do you have an idea physiologically why that's the case? I think you can build some, I mean, there are studies and stuff that show that 30 minute max sprints and stuff will ultimately build your engine. make the longer stuff.

Oh, yeah, 32nd. Make the longer stuff feel easier when it happens. And I think a lot of this is by design because we're training exclusively indoors for the most part. And it's not realistic to do a five-hour base zone one ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the kicker.

So we're, maybe that's a way to like kind of fake a longer ride. I don't really know. But our coach gives us them. I think there's a high level of like neuromuscular. Like you're actually working your nervous system. And we were talking about this with a local guy who's a strength coach. and he was basically saying, oh yeah, if you do like a set of max reps squats or whatever,

you're really waking up all of the muscles. Everybody's coming. And you can get to the end of that and it can be really hard to like walk a straight line because your nervous system is so taxed from that, not even necessarily like, you know, this like fitness thing. And so I think that's part of like doing these maximum effort hill sprints is that's firing all of the muscles,

getting everything that you would use later on in this. season going from like a neuromuscular standpoint yeah yeah cool well uh enough about that i just wanted to talk real quick since the last time we recorded a podcast the specialized bike build announcement video for eric came out and our on video for paula came out and i thought it would just be worth it to just talk a little bit about like what that was all like since i they were they were quite different from the stuff that uh that's usually on the channel yeah much more involved, much more cinematic, much more time consuming,

and consequently much more beautiful, I think. We've had so much positive feedback and I didn't have much to do with it other than just being there, but you guys really... Other than being in it, you mean? Other than being the subject of it? We couldn't just film a rock.

No, but you guys really outdid yourselves and it's really evident that a lot of people appreciate it, reading the comments and all of that, including other, I think the biggest compliment is getting feedback from like other artists in the sport like Tauffer and Tommy and Talbot are all really complimentary and Nails tech

I had a few people too that that came out of the work to say nice stuff yeah and they know how much work it takes so I think that's like the highest form of compliment yeah yeah like from our from my perspective anyway and Nick you can speak for yourself but like I was so excited about specialized and like we collectively are so excited about on that it's just it's like the videos are like almost a way of like self-expression of like I've got all this excitement and like passion for this and this is just such a good excuse to channel all that into this you know this video conduit that could potentially cause other people to feel the same

excitement and I just like I want to share that and get that out and it's and the ability for us to use that and as excuse to go all out on the filming is just is this like super fun and cool yeah for Just to be clear, it's not expected from specialized or on or any sponsor to do that extravagant of a video. And there's very few other athletes who could do that themselves. Yeah. We love to exceed expectations. The sponsors that you both pick, you pick them very carefully and you try to make sure it's a really good relationship. You're not just signing every contract that shows up in your inbox, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of interesting the number of questions we got this week. but maybe we'll get to a few of them about sponsorship and how that happens. And it's not easy to, like, get to that point where you're even, like, talking to sponsors like this. But it all is, like accumulation of hard work. And then, like Eric said, just a celebration of that is being able to make cool content for them. And then ultimately race well with their stuff later in the season. But it all kind of kicked off with this.

So thank you to Nick for being here for all of it. And Nick actually edited most of those videos. well, right? It was a team effort. Eric fully did the Smith Rock one and then I just kind of touched up in and out points in stabilization and then colored it. So that was all him. And then the on one was pretty much all

Eric too. And then I just colored it and swapped some shots out. But the snow one was... I thought you did the snow scene. The snow one was me, yeah. That was the only one that I did. Snow was next baby. And the specialized dad. And the specialized one. Yeah.

Anyway, it was all a team effort. It was a lot of time ever. And there's Eric's concept for a lot of that. You know, that's, it's, I feel like people might assume that Eric is the one that has like the more technical camera knowledge and editing knowledge, but not as good at coming up with ideas and that I'm more the like creative type, but it's, it's quite flipped. It's like Eric, Eric comes up with the crazy ideas and then I'm more of the camera nerd. Eric's more of the creative, ironically.

It's true. Yeah. Yeah. We've talked about this in relation to songs. Like, I'll send songs and they can be like, this is an amazing song. And it took you forever to figure out, like, why I even like certain songs. But it's just like, I'm so feel-based rather than technique-based. The technique is important and I care and it's good. But as long as like the vibe and the nest is there, like the technique can, well, it'll work itself out. And then you just, you dial the technique up and then it's usually you have a masterpiece. That's what I like so much about triathlon in contrast to music is that, the technique. the more you become a professional musician, the more you might accidentally put weight into the technique stuff. And in triathlon, there is no feel equivalent, right? It is all just the numbers,

the speed, the mental headspace you get into. And I like that it's not as confusing in that way. Yeah. Yeah, totally. They're very different, but also complementary. Yeah.

Okay, so are we good to, can we get into questions? I think so. We're both, we're very, very excited about specializing on. Thank you to those companies. And let me also say that both of those companies have, like, treated, the relationship is really good, right, between you and them, which is nice. Yeah, we don't cry on the Zoom calls with those companies.

Foreshadowing. Right, right. Yeah, so love doing them and loved kind of going back and forth with them on the videos. That was really fun. Anyway, if you haven't all noticed, we don't do ad reads on this podcast. We haven't talked about this in a bit, but we don't do ad reads. And the reason is because we have very generous podcast supporters. So thank you so much to all of them.

That's a big part of what keeps this whole thing going and allows us all to put a lot of energy and time into it and make it as good as it can be. Thank you to all of you. You can submit questions to the podcast and support the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. And we love your questions. This week, Paul, I'm allowed to say how many came in.

I think I was on like the 100th email. And then I texted you, Nick. And I was like, I'm not even at the end and I'm reading 100th email. And I had to leave a lot of them out that were good. And just a tip, like if you send one in that has like five parts to it, usually I'm going to skip it. Yeah. Unfortunately. Because it's just, there's too many.

So the ones I usually gravitate towards are like the kind of sweetened to the point ones. And not that I don't read the long ones, but I just think that the multifaceted questions are sometimes a bit overwhelming. and often a lot more personal to that specific person and harder to kind of imagine making it a question that a lot of people could benefit from. Anyway, but any questions appreciated. We do tend to screenshot the superheartful messages and share them to each other.

Yeah, we do that. We read every single one. So if you send us a nice message, everyone here reads it. Every once in a while, Paula, you'll slip in some of those messages that are more something nice than a real question. You'll put them into the question so that I can read it and I appreciate that. Yeah, that's true. That's nice. You got to keep Nick happy. Yeah, yeah. I'm a sentimental boy, so I love reading those things. Okay, so first question, and I thought I would put

this one first, since it's kind of relevant to what we were talking about. Eric, congratulations on specialized. I'm curious why you chose the Shiv T-T as well. Would you ever recommend the Shiv triathlon bike or is the Shiv T-T-T-T a better machine? Why would one choose one over the other, thanks. Sarah, and there's a very simple answer to this, but Eric, I'm going to let you say it. There's a very simple answer? Well, the simple answer is that there is no shiv triathlon bike anymore. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't think they're going to be producing the shiv triathlon bike anymore. Is that supposed to be a secret?

Should we not be saying that? No, I think everybody knows that. I just don't know what the timeline is as to how many of they have in stock. And you'll still be able to buy one on the used market, obviously, for several years. and if you have the ability to, I do still think it's a great bike for most Ironman courses, especially if you want to carry your own nutrition.

If you want to carry your own nutrition, the Shiv TT is going to take some modification of like between the arrow bars bottle, between the saddle bottle, and there's, if you put something on it down to you, it's got to be an arrow bottle, and then where are you going to put gels? So for us, it makes a lot of sense

because it is insanely light, feels fantastic. Paul is racing primarily 100K distance where like they've got great aid stations, they've got good support, they've got good, you know, there's mechanics following around

on motorcycles and stuff, and then I'm going to focus a bit more on the races that I love, which are St. Anthony's Olympic distance and Alcatraz, Olympic distance, where the Shiv T, T is just, that is the bike.

Those are technical uphill, downhill, and that'll actually make a big difference having that lightweight, snappy feel. So, yeah, I do still think both bikes have, both bikes have a place, and it is too bad that they're not going to be making the shiv try anymore. Like last year I had options to ride both, and I gravitated primarily towards the TET. I just really like the feel of it and the way it rode, and it's what I trained on mostly. It's kind of challenging to transfer between different TT bikes when you've been training on one,

another one that's even slightly different can feel a little bit foreign. So that's why I kind of stuck with the UCI bike, even though that wasn't my intention originally. I just really, really loved it. And even if there were some aerodynamic penalties, like the Shiv try is much more aerodynamic, I still was more comfortable on it, and that was like the most important thing for me. It's funny.

Eric, when we were filming the specialized video and Eric was doing these like technical downhill little swoopy turns, he said, like, I cannot believe Paul likes this bike because it's very snappy, right? It's like ready to fly into any turn at any moment. Well, Nick, should we disclose? to the podcast fans that Eric...

Yeah, exactly. I think what we can mention is that I today spent most of my afternoon building up Paula's new Shiv T-T-T, she's going to be switching over to an extra small. And then Eric's going to take my small. Well, that leads me to what I was just wondering is, Eric, could you potentially ride Paula's Shiv-traathlon bike, which is a small? 100%. Yeah, if I was going to do like Iron Man, Texas, that is the bike.

He's going to be rocking that baby blue peach. I don't care. That thing looks amazing. Yeah, I love the way that looks. It needs to see you the light of day at least a few more times before going on the wall. Yeah. Cool. Okay, next question. Your photos from your vacation at Powder Creek Lodge are amazing.

I'm wondering if it might be a suitable destination for a ski vacation with my wife. We often ski at Lake Louise. My wife is an intermediate blue square snowboarder. I'm an aggressive skier with a racing background, but I'm terrible at skiing powder. though I have been curious about backcountry skiing for years, is there terrain available for the both of us? What I need to bring and buy backcountry skis and boots for ski touring. Congratulations, Paul, on your on sponsorship,

and congratulations Eric on joining Paula at Specialist. Yeah, I'm going to say this trip maybe wouldn't be exactly what you're looking for. It was an outrageously cool experience. Just to kind of give some background, we were invited by the owners of the lodge, John and Shelley, to go to this trip almost a year ago. they invited us and we of course said yes. Because they're booked out for like four years.

Yeah, this lodge is, they're so far booked out. It's a really unique experience because you helicopter in, you stay for a full week and then helicopter back out, but you're touring from the lodge every day. And they're guided ski trips every day with two really experienced like mountain guides. So you feel like you don't have to worry about reading the snow and all the avalanche risks. They take care of that.

To be clear, when we say touring, you are walking up. There is no cat skiing. There is no snowmobile assistance. The helicopter is not taking you to the top of the hill. No, you don't see the helicopter until the next Saturday. But yeah, you do need a set of touring skis. And it is exclusively powder skiing. Every single day that we were there, we were on a new part of the mountain and it was fresh snow.

I would say I'm like an experienced slash advanced level of skier. I grew up skiing. And I was by far the worst skier in this group. I was a little bit nervous in the powder. It's a different skill set than running down or riding down hills on resorts where there's no powder. So I don't know. I think it's for an experienced skier would be a fun trip, but for someone who's more like a blue run type of person, this lodge was a little bit advanced in the downhills, I would say.

Not a lot of like really mellow terrain to ski on. And we skied the mellowest stuff that they have because the avi risk, the avalanche risk was fairly high. So that you can do some steep stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it just sounds like this is a little too much going on for this person, but maybe one day. For this specific person, but I'd say like if you're a ski fan, there's no lodge better than this one. My dad often goes to backcountry lodges. And by far this one, he said, was the nicest lodge, the nicest accommodation, the best food that he'd ever experienced.

So it's called Powder Creek Lodge. If you do ever want to do this kind of crazy trip, look them up. Yeah, I'd say it'd be worth getting on their waiting list in case they have a cancellation or something. Totally. Yeah. Also, shout out to Jonathan Lee, who is on a different podcast, the Traynor Road podcast, which I used to listen to all the time and still do from time to time, who was there with you guys completely coincidentally. I feel like that's such a strange thing for me to hear when I saw his Instagram posting pictures of Eric. I'm like, wait a second. What's going on here? Yeah. Yeah. He's also friends with John. and Shelley, so he was there that week, too. So a lot of super fit people, and that was key because,

you know, you're hiking up for hours and hours altogether. Yeah, awesome. Cool. Next question. This is a question from Melanie from Long Beach. Hello, Humans and Puppy. I'm a recent TTL convert, started after Racing Indian Well 70.3 last year and seeing Paula crush it. I have since listened to every episode multiple times. I'm going to have to eventually wean off you all during my long runs because I'm getting too used to hearing your voices when I run. That's funny. We've talked about this before about getting too used to music when you run and then you race and you don't have music. I like that for this person, it's like listening to us is their entertainment. That's great. Well, we appreciate that, Melanie. So two questions. Number one, and I feel like this is a great

question because we say this a lot, but I've heard you refer to the Norwegians multiple times throughout the episodes. Sounds like a Bond villain. Are you referring to a specific athlete or a general group of athletes? I've read a little bit about their training methods, but curious who you're referring to and thinking of when you say it. Gus and Blue. Yeah. I thought this was a good question because you're right. All the people talk about the Norwegians.

And if you're just like new to the sport or you don't really follow the pro field. What is the Norwegians? Yeah. The two world champions right now, Gustav Eden, the Iron Man world champion and Christian Blumenfeld, 70.3 world champion. An Olympic gold medalist. And the Olympic gold medal. Also friendly with Nick. They know Nick.

they stayed at his house. Oh, I love them. I was messaging Gustav two day. Really? About what? I sent him these little clipons that go into the front of Crocs that they're little like headlights so you can walk in the dark with them. I said you should get these. Oh yeah, that is funny because he likes Crocs. He sent me a photo of what he was wearing and said that he hasn't worn the Crocs in a long time. He's in Croc Rehab. And then question number two is my question is probably more for Nick. What motivates you to keep racing? You don't seem to actively chase podiums. I am a race who will probably never podium and have gotten used to coming in last. However, my joy still comes from training and knowing I can complete anything if I put enough work into it. What would make you

stop? I think for me, my tri-career will end when my body physically gives out and even then I'll find something else to do. You're all the best, Melanie from Long Beach. I talked about this, I think maybe last week or the week before, but I think, I mean, you've all heard this, like, if you grew up like as a fat kid in your head that never quite goes away. And so I think I grew up as like a, I'll never be able to do endurance sport in my head. I just don't have the mind for that. I feel like proving that voice wrong is still kind of what keeps me going and what gets me excited. I'm so not naturally, well, I don't want to say that. I don't want to be insulting to anyone that feels this way, but I feel like my natural gifts in athletics are not in endurance sport. So it feels cool to be going against that

and training and getting faster at something that I'm not necessarily naturally gifted up. And I hope to be doing it forever. I hope to be doing it when I'm, I have to be one of those guys that like local races, like 75 only person in their age group up on the first step of the podium. That would be fun. So what gets you to the pool when you're like, don't really feel like swimming? Is it, oh, I might win my age group or I feel really good after I swim or I'm checking this off my training peaks? Yeah, I think if I didn't have the like the data, you know, like the Strava and the training peak stuff, I think I think that brings me a lot. That gives me a lot of

satisfaction. Like when it's done looking at it, be like, oh, that's good. And that's, like, last week I swam an easy 400. And I looked back at, like, I keep a record of like my fastest times in each distance and what date they were. That easy 400 was like five seconds faster than when I was a year into swimming, my all-out 400. It's moments like that that feel like, whoa, this is crazy. Like, that was so easy. And I remember still the feeling of that first all-out 400. The misery I felt after 200 of like, oh my God, I pace this bad. Like, this is so hard. Oh, why am I doing this?

Yeah. So the slow and steady improvement, and especially contrasting with music, that's so, so hard to get some kind of objective improvement on, that's fun. And in the pool, it's so controlled, you know, you really can measure that improvement incrementally accurately. I'd honestly say that, I mean, that I'm right there with you.

And even though this is our job and everything, that deep down the satisfactory, of getting better and working and self-improvement is more exciting than thinking about a race that's eight months away. Yeah. Even though for me, I feel like I do need that race to push myself, even though then I usually dread the race. It's like a weird catch-22.

It's like, I need the race to train hard, but I only really enjoy the training. Yeah. Morning of the race would be great to cancel that race. Also, but Nick, I just want to give you a little bit of advice. I think you need to cut the talking, cut the drills. How dare you? The strokes when you're at the pool. Eric and I looked at your Strava one day,

and it was like, I swam for 20 minutes, did 1,200 meters of drills, talked at the wall to a lady. That is not an efficient use of your time. Oh, I don't know. She was nice. Yeah, yeah. We're not entertaining any more conversations

about why you've plateaued. Well, okay, so today I swim next to Colleen Quigley, and we chatted a bit at the beginning, and then I never talked to her the whole time. I was just focused, and I did 2,200 yards, which is the most I've done this year. I showed up at the pool on time, swam all my stuff.

So now I'm more dedicated. Can we drop in like a sound effect of kids cheering? Yes. Done. Done deal. Done deal. But thank you. I didn't need to fight you on the spot next.

No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And I'm, I just kind of taken advantage of the early season and just trying to not hate swimming because that's the thing that goes for me. The running and the biking, I can up of the volume more and more and still enjoy it. But the swimming, it's like, that's what I'm like, oh, God, at the pool again. Like, that's what gets in my head. Totally.

I agree. I agree. Cool. Well, there you go. That was kind of a long answer. But thank you, Melanie. Next question is from TAL. Hi, writing to you from Israel, love the pod.

Question on 70.3 run training. What are the longer brick run sessions you do? And how often do you do them? Many coaches believe in running for 20 minutes as a transition run. to get the legs into run mode off a harder and longer bike session and keep them short to avoid injury. I feel that these runs are too short, and in races I can't run nearly as fast as I should be

due to leg muscle fatigue after the 20 to 30 minutes that I'm used to. Thanks, Tal. I like this question. I kind of can relate to it. Sometimes when there's a 20-minute, a lot of the times building up to a race, we'll do a hard ride, like really hard, two hours or more, and then we'll do a 10-minute race-paced run off the bike.

And I do often think that, like, is this really making me better at race-paced running or it's making me go too fast in that 10 minutes because I want to get the most out of it, not actually going race-pace? But maybe Eric can give some insight to this. I think coaches their first thought of that is just to, like, get your neuromuscular system used for running off the bike, not necessarily to, like, build fitness for the run. I mean, for me, I really look at it as like an opportunity to do that hard workout and get off the bike and run the pace that I can. think is realistic for me to run in the race and go, man, it doesn't feel that bad. And I finished that 20 minutes and I feel like I could have run a bit longer. I don't know how much longer. And then like I think the way that our coach operates for the most part is we're carrying

a fairly high level of fatigue all the time. We don't do this like almost nothing on Monday, then hero session on Tuesday. Right, right, right, right. Whatever. It's just we do like two hard bike sessions a week and two hard run sessions a week. and then this brick workout, and we a lot of the times are doing those hard runs, and I start these runs,

and I'm like, there is no way I can make it through this. And I get halfway through it, and I'm feeling okay, and I get to the end, and I think, there's no way I'm ever getting off the bike in a race and feeling as tired as I felt when I started that run,

and that's where I get the confidence to finish the run and a race from, not from that 20 minutes. Like the 20 minutes off the bike, I'm just thinking about, like, dialing in that pace, exactly how that feels off of a hard bike and getting some confidence from how that feels.

But ultimately, the fitness is built from the longer run workouts. The run workouts, the tempos, the stuff where you are actually getting into the 15 to 20 kilometer range in total run volume. Total run volume. Yeah, that's my thought as well. How many people can relate to that feeling when you start a session, you're like, there's no way I'm going to be able to finish this. And then you somehow do.

It's just one of those things that doesn't matter. I haven't been doing it that long, but correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter how long you've been in the sport, you still get that thought. You still get that feeling of your brain just like, nope, you're never going to be able to do this today. And somehow you power through and you're fine. Those are the good ones. Sometimes like the sound of the Wahoo lapping to start the interval kicks me into gear. Oh my gosh. Just the noise. Just like Pavlov's dog kind of like here we go. Not even just for laughing an interval, but even just starting a run. Like I'll just do like a couple super slow walk joggies. And then as soon as I push start that noise like

did it. I'm like, okay, here we go. Strava knows now. Strava's seeing this. That's so funny. Flynn, too. If you start Flynn's Wahoo, he's like, fucking charging. He starts salivating. That's great. So you don't really recommend doing like, if you're training for 70.3, like an hour run off the bike or anything like that. You think that's not a best use of your fatigue a lot? I think that could be a good tool for Iron Man training. But we've never done an Iron Man, so we don't know. But our Ironman friends do that.

I had to do that as part of my training. They don't typically go run at race pace for an hour off the bike. Maybe not. Maybe not. Slower. That's what I was doing at least. Yeah. Yeah.

Cool. Well, there you go. Tau. Hopefully that helps. Next question is from Natalia. Hey, everyone. Hope that things are going well for all of you. Paula and Eric, the photos from your backcountry trip were unreal.

This question is aimed at Paula now that her on-running sponsorship has been announced. but would love to hear from the guys too. How do you dress for running in the cold, specifically in sub-zero Celsius, so sub-32-degree temps? I find that I always end up overheating and then freezing, or I just end up miserable and cold the entire time. This is my second winter running outdoors,

and I still have not figured out what works. We'd love to know what clothing you find works best. Thanks, Natalia. Yeah, my go-to is a merino base layer. I think that's the hack. A-plus. because it'll keep you warm even when you're sweating, but not to the point where you feel like bogged down by sweat.

It kind of like wicks it away. And then I just have several jackets for different temperatures. If it's below minus five, I might use like the puffy insulated running jacket. If it's above zero, I'll use like the lightweight, more windbreaker style one. But it really depends on the actual temperature. I do think the biggest difference though is like keeping your extremities warm.

so having mitts, a hat, and a marino base layer, and the rest is kind of just as you feel. Yeah. It's like definitely a buzzword, but layering, very important. How often are you, is your core actually cold? I mean, I feel like when I'm running, that's never the issue. It's always hands, feet, ears, nose kind of stuff. Yeah, the core warms up fairly quickly,

but again, the marino never makes me feel too hot, like something like a cotton long sleeve wood or something. But my hands usually get the most cold. So I think gloves are always a good idea. And then a headband or something that you could pull off if it gets too hot. Speaking of, not to plug a sponsor, but the Costelli gloves that you let me borrow while I was there, Eric, they're cycling gloves. Yeah, and I loved those. Yeah, a lot of the cycling gloves are good for running because they have a really good wind layer.

Yeah. They're made for going 40K an hour or whatever. Right. I think those are like the GABA gloves or something. Well, that's how fast I run. So that works out just fine. My biggest issue with winter running is not like the clothing. I kind of have that not dialed, but the icy roads are what kind of scare me away from the cold weather.

Bend, it just gets really bad with this freeze thaw kind of hovering around zero temperature. And it's terrifying to run on. Eric actually slipped yesterday and cut his knee out. Oh, yeah, I meant to ask you. I saw that. What happened? Well, we, yeah, so we get a freeze thaw thing. So there's a little bit of ice on the ground.

and then we got like six inches of snow overnight. And usually what will happen if we get like this light dusting of snow, it'll sit on kind of the ice and actually give you some traction. So I was like pretty confident and made it through most of my run. But then it was like kind of running down this gradual decline on this super nice powder and just fully slipped out. Wow. I consider myself very good at catching myself while falling. And this was just boom, I'm on the ground.

Yeah, right. And I like slammed my knee through. it ice patch straight to the gravel below. And I, like, walked for a couple minutes. And I'm like, man, you know, actually, I think I'm going to be okay. I don't think this is that big of a deal. And then ran the rest of the way home and then got in the door and took off my pants. And I'm just like fully bleeding down my shit.

Oh, no. Giant gash in my knee, but I couldn't feel it because it was so cold. Oh, my gosh. That's why y'all should go to Tucson right now. Or Santa Monica baby. That's really my advice. Forget the Marino. Just go to Tucson.

Yeah, I should have been. wearing some yak tracks, but I got a little overconfident. I love those. Love those. Well, there you go. Cool. Thanks, guys. Next question is from Alexandra. Hi, Paula, Eric, Nick and Flynn, TTL fan here since day one. That's a day oneer for everyone. Thanks for everything you do and share with us. I was wondering if you could share your thoughts about V-O-2 Max, blood testing, and all the other test pro-triathletes like Christian, Gustav, and Lucy are doing and posting on social media.

As a pro-triathlet, is it worth it to have this data and how does it impact your approach in the sport, i.e. training, nutrition, et cetera. So I think it's actually interesting because on our way up to the lodge in Canada, we did listen to a podcast with OLAF. And was he on Rich Roll? Yeah. Has that we used with? And I found it really interesting because they were, you know, of course, asking him about the V-O-2 testing and everything. Who's Olaf, by the way? Olaf is Gustav and Christian de Norwegians coach. And basically, it came down to he's like, I am taking, we're taking all these lactates and everything because, like, I want to have this data.

And it's additional data point. They're not necessarily going like, oh, you're at point two, end the workout now. You know, it's like they're going to do, so go by feel and try to execute the work to the best of their abilities, but they've got all these data points that are kind of guiding maybe the long term how they're going to look down the road in a month or just knowing how their body responded to certain things. And I think our coach takes a very similar approach, but it's maybe a little bit more guided by just like he's looking at our performances in the workouts,

and how the wattages came out relative to how we felt and having a little bit of discussion with us. So I think there's a lot of different data points out there that you can use between power and mean speed is like, you know, not a great one, but heart rate and perceived exertion and everything. And these are all great things that you can look at to see how your body is responding to the training. And then for us like doing the blood test with like inside tracker,

that is like a great opportunity for us to, yeah, can see if like the supplements we've been taking have had any impact or just watch out for any red flags go like oh man like Paula's iron just completely plummeted over the last few months is there something to do with that didn't happen didn't happen but for example and then you can like take action on that before you necessarily just can't get out of bed I think this person's talking kind of more about the VO2 max test that you see people do on Strava or on Instagram because it's so impressive when they got the machines all hooked up and they're going to max effort. We actually did do that last year, but I think Paulo used it more to prescribe

watt zones on the bike. So what zone two was, what zone one was, what our fat max was and all of these terms that he throws out there and then builds a plan based on that. And we didn't think much about it. We just did what he told us to do and had good seasons. So the data is valuable if you have someone to interpret it and be able to implement it correctly. But if you're just going to do it and getting the numbers back and not really understanding it, it's not worthwhile, in my opinion. For what it's worth, the way I've heard

Christian and Gustav talk about it with me is that they've been doing this since they were out of the womb and they have been interpreting the data for a very, very long time. And it seemed like there were like a lot of people are trying to use this and they are not even using it properly. Yeah, I agree. And they're talking about other professionals. They're not talking about age groupers. So you can imagine what an age group are trying to interpret that data, how far that might be from being as useful as it is for the Norwegians.

Yeah. Yeah. Good tool, but also not totally necessary and must be used appropriately, I guess, is our advice. Yeah. Cool. And then there was actually a little follow-up here, too. Another question about the famous Norma Tech. Many athletes in my club bought it and can't stop talking about it.

However, it's not cheap. Is this something you feel is worth investing in to prevent injury and promote recovery? Or the infamous foam roller could be as efficient? I mean, you guys just got, well, you've had them, right? Yeah, they're not really the same thing at all, a foam roller. You can kind of like do a little bit of a flush type of a thing, like with rolling towards your core with the foam roller. But like we've said this before, like I think half of the benefit of, of the boots is that you're laying down for 30 minutes.

That is all you're doing. You can't go anywhere. You can't get distracted. And you're resting, horizontal. And then obviously there's some inflammation benefits and everything. But I think, you know, compare you to a foam roller, not quite the right comparison. And I would say if the amount of money that they cost doesn't seem like a huge deal to you, for sure, get one. There are some benefits to be had there.

But if it sounds like a lot of money, I think it better to spend on a coach. or getting a massage of something's really hurting. Yeah, I think a massage is more useful than the normatex, but over time you might save so much money not getting a massage. I don't think they've replaced a massage therapist, I guess is what I'm saying. We find the most useful actually post-travel or when your legs are actually a bit swollen or inflamed or you've been sitting a lot. So we'll use them for that purpose. We really like bringing them to race as if we're traveling overseas and sitting in an airplane flight for overnight, something like that.

Maybe if you do a lot of travel and airplanes for work and every time you come back, you know, you fly across the country for work and you get back in the evening, you just put them on for 30 minutes before you go to bed. It would be useful for that. Maybe your next day's training will be significantly better just with that circulation. I don't even think that foam rollers and the boots, I don't think they're even advertised as having the same benefits. Like they're very different kinds of things, right?

Yeah. I think what they're suggesting is that the foam roller is super cheap. Yeah. Can I get similar benefits? Because the normatics are $2,000. or whatever ridiculous amount of money there. And I do think that someone who did just spend thousands of dollars on Norma Tech boots are obviously going to rave about them.

Right, right. Yeah, they feel fantastic. They're very fun. That's right. That's right. Cool. Okay, well, there you go, Alexandria. Hopefully that was helpful.

Next question is from, it's spelled S-T-I-J-N, but it's pronounced Stain. He said, throw my name to Dutch Google Translate if you want the proper pronunciation, which I did. So it's pronounced. It's pronounced stain. He said, hi, T.T.L. Nesh, spelled, it looks like in Dutch. Day two, day two listener here from the Netherlands of Sweden. I've listened to basically every podcast episode, but can't remember you guys diving into your nutrition that much,

other than a love for donuts and coffee, amen to that. And the kids want to know, or at least this one does. A few questions. How many calories do you guys roughly eat a day spread out over the many meals slash snacks? Do you guys even know? No, we don't know. But if I had to just like throw a number out there, I'd say we exercise something like 3,000 calories on like an average day.

And then we probably have a baseline of like 2,000 and we're not losing weight. So somewhere around 5 to 6 depending on the day. No. Don't you think? I don't think it's that much, at least for me. Really? Yeah. The takeaway here is that no, we do not track it.

We could be thousands off. we are we go intuitively if we're hungry we eat and if we're not hungry we might eat if we know that we have a session coming up that we will be hungry for and we try to eat healthy we try to get a wide variety of things and have like a very large salad for dinner and try to get a good blend of protein and carbohydrates but we have I think both collectively decided that rather than spend a ton of time obsessing over that and weighing our food and everything like we want to have this be a sustainable lifestyle and just and do the best we can and make sure that we're not feeling depleted.

I would say that the less that I've paid attention to calories in particular, the more I've eaten, the leaner I've gotten, and the faster I've raced. It's like so, so weird. Because I used to be obsessive about stuff. Like, I'd buy cereal and look at the calorie count. And I haven't looked at a calorie number for years now. And it's, like Eric said, more intuitive eating to your hunger and then just making sure you're getting good healthy, organic foods and a variety of things. And like I said, when I look back at

photos of myself from that time where I was like calorie restricting, I was much less fit looking. I don't know. It's not about how you look, but it's just like I feel healthier now. I'm fitter now and I'm racing better now without obsessing over it. I can speak from seeing you guys eat and also seeing how the rest of the world you guys are used to yourselves and other pro athletes I feel like you know some non-pro athletes but I know a lot of non-pro athletes

and compared to them you guys of course you at least meet the calorie goals but outside of that like the actual things you eat you like you said you really do eat a big variety of things and it's like all these different kind of vegetables all these different kinds of fruits when we go out you're like Eric's picking

the thing with a lot of like fun colors in it that are like vegetables are different kinds fruits of different kinds. And something else I've noticed is that you eat really, really often. You don't eat big meals until maybe dinner, but you're constantly snacking throughout the day. But it's good stuff.

It's like peanut butter, whole grain toast, stuff like that, little sandwiches with eggs and stuff. I noticed that. It's like both of you just like, you need this constant like barrage of fuel. I feel like that's, like I feel better that way. And then it's also a bit of a byproduct of doing three workouts a day.

You can't have this gigantic meal and then train an hour later. So we'll have a regular size breakfast and then we'll have a little snack after the swim and then we'll maybe have like a little bit of a snack before the bike ride. And then we'll try to eat a big-ish lunch but not so big running is going to be uncomfortable

and so on and so forth. And then... Well, there's your nutrition advice from Eric Paul and Nick. Yeah. Right. Science. Science. I don't know if we gave any advice.

But also you guys eat everything. You eat meat, fish, dairy, everything. Yeah, we don't do a lot of dairy, but we're not like allergic to it or anything. Right. We just find it, yeah. And do you ever do shakes? Do you ever do like protein shakes?

More in the summer when we're hot. I'll do way more smoothies. Yeah. Or just like the harder the workout is the shake goes down sometimes on an upset stomach a little better. And you never, you never feel like you're like struggling to eat the like to fulfill a certain calorie amount to eat. Some people feel like they can't eat enough.

I'm 2,000 calories behind Whole loaf of banana bread How many slices have I had? Okay, more. I have two very ripe bananas right now and they, now I feel like I know their fate. Dude, you, four banana banana bread is the, dude, that is the sauce?

Honestly, my four, four made a really mushy good. My recovery hack, bake a loaf of banana bread, eat half of it. Laugh and sleep like a baby. I'm doing that tonight. I'm going to send you a pick. I'm going to send you a pick. Sleep like a baby.

Forget about all your worries. Oh, that's so good. That is so good. So hopefully that was helpful, Stain. Yeah, they just eat a lot. Oh, well, maybe I'll say what I do too. I burn like roughly 3,500 calories total a day. So if I eat 3,500 calories a day, I stay the same weight.

And I've noticed that it's not hard for me to do either. I don't eat as healthy as these two pros do, but I'm getting better. I have a salad in the fridge right now that I'm going to have after the podcast. Okay. Next question is Kylie from Boston. Love Boston. Kylie. Appreciate you already.

Hi, Paula, Eric, Nick and Flynn. Recognizing triathlon is a balance between three sports. Do you ever go through periods of hating one sport in particular? For me, it's always swimming. Girl, I know. Do you have a clear favorite sport that you're always most excited about to go and train for? For me, it's always running. And does this ever fluctuate between sports over the course of a training season?

and thanks and so excited to hear about your epic heli ski trip rooting for you in 2023 Kylie from Boston currently in a 10 year phase

of hating swimming just just a phase mom no here's the thing about swimming when I get in the pool I don't really hate it these days

it's just the idea of going it's like going to the doctor and all that but once I start going I don't mind it yeah no same I'd say like I go I just fluctuate

in like variation variability I don't want to go to the pool. I'll go through phases where I do feel like, man, I feel like my stroke's good and I'm making progress. And I actually do want to go and, like, kind of pick up where I left off the day before. And then sometimes you're just, it's like, man, I know this isn't going to go well.

I don't want to be there. No, I think what Eric struggles with swimming is that we swim at 8 o'clock and we meet our friend Andy at 8. So we can't really be late. So if we wake up a bit later, we're rushed all morning and then he's grumpy and doesn't want to go. That's true. So it's more a reflection of the morning routine being condensed versus not liking the pool. Yeah, that's fair. And is there a favorite?

I think I definitely get the most joy out of mountain biking specifically, but biking and exploring a new, taking a new road. I like running outside when it's not icy and cold with Flynn. Yeah. Yeah. Is that, can Flynn run in the summer pretty easily or does it get too hot in the summer? Like what's the season that Flynn can run comfortably? Like a fall run would be nice. Yeah.

The only thing that bugs me about the cold is the icy ground. I can otherwise dress pretty warm. Yeah. Anyway, that's my, what's your favorite, Nick? Yeah, the biking is definitely my favorite, but I've just been really, really trying to get faster at running. So a lot of my satisfaction comes from running and seeing small improvements in the run. Interesting. Yeah.

That's cool. I'm there with you on that. Because I just, it's so, it's funny, I don't put much effort into the biking and it's still so far, unbalanced, so far ahead of my running and my swimming. And I try so much harder on the running specifically and also a little bit on the swimming. Yeah. Well, maybe it's like our discussion about counting calories. Maybe you need to try less hard at running and just let it happen. You're right.

There we go. Yeah. Let it flow. Okay, next question is from Melissa. This is a great one. Love the pod. I have a swim safety question. How do you stay safe?

while open water swimming. I feel fine when I'm with my coach on his paddle board, but otherwise I don't go. I'm a certified lifeguard and I've been swimming all my life, but the danger of drowning in a freak accident is always on my mind. Once I made my boyfriend sit on the beach and watch me, but it's not like he could have done anything if I needed help. I see Paul and Eric usually swim together. Do you stop and check on each other every so often? Swim with one of those inflatable buoys. Only swim in areas with lifeguards. What are some safety tips you have, Melissa? Yeah, good question. There is kind of a weird, scary feeling about being all by yourself open water. Yeah, I don't think I would go open water swimming 100% solo without one of those

or like those pull behind bag. Yeah, the inflatable bags. Yeah, she's talking about that. Yeah. We used to use those when we swam in the, during COVID, we were swimming like in the Columbia River with like huge ass boats. Big fast river. So we were those buoys.

But when we swim here, we're just in the Deschutes River, which is like fairly small, fairly shallow. You can touch the ground at all times. We'll always go with each other so we can kind of keep an eye on one another. But I do think that those inflatable buoys do bring a sense of security if you are solo because you can always grab them if you're feeling panicked or feeling like something went wrong and you'll stay afloat with them. So they're definitely a nice tool for not just for visibility,

but also just to have a flotation device with you. Something I recommend to do if you're swimming in a place with lifeguards is before you go out, talk to the lifeguard and say, hey, I'm going to go out and do an open water swim. I have my inflatable buoy. I also use like a high visibility swim cap and just tell them. Just tell them. And then they sometimes will radio to the other lifeguards to kind of just like keep an eye on you, something like that.

It gives me peace of mind and also lets them know that there's someone out there. Totally. And also, wetsuits themselves are buoyant. So if that brings you any more peace of mind. Oh, yeah. Like you're not going to drown if you have a wetsuit on. Yeah. It's like sometimes it's uncomfortable how buoyant you are.

You're like trying to keep your feet down and they just like come up to the surface, you know. Yeah. The one time I was actually really scared to open water was when I was in Santa Monica swimming in the ocean and that's not because of fear of drowning it was just fear of like sharks and the unknown or the time with Holly and her group?

With you Nick because you stayed back and I did a little bit extra alone. Oh yeah, yeah. And I didn't like that. So I understand the fear. I get that. I get that. There's a lot of big animals out here

that could have whatever way with me they want. Exactly. Like it's all theirs. Yeah. I get the feeling. It's always there. It's the lasophobia, I think, is what it's called. Fear of like the deep ocean.

Does anyone not have that? No, I feel like if you don't, something's wrong. Something's missing in your head. Fear of the deep unknown ocean. I think that's the thing that doesn't need a word. Yeah. It's called being human. Okay.

Well, next question here is from Arturo. Yes, I just got an email letting me know my retro mint long sleeve is coming while listening to the podcast, which is a long sleeve that we just came out with a couple weeks ago. Pretty cool. Is this still in stock, by the way, as of this recording? I think we had like five left. Oh, boy. We might be down to less than that.

Single digits. By the time this comes out. Okay. Yep. So maybe not by the time this comes out in a couple days. But there you go. Cool. Thank you for that, Arturo.

He said Paula mentioned her biology background in the January 12 podcast. One of the big selling points for my Zone 2 training is my to comment. development. Do you adapt any other practices specifically for mitochondrial development, or do you consider cellular gains as an afterthought tied to training and diet in general? Thanks for all the inspiration, Arturo. Sweet. Yeah, actually. Last year, our coach started doing this, having us spend more time in this zone called Fat Max. For me, like I race at 310 watts or something, and like my fat Mac zone caps at like 240.

So it's not purely aerobic, but it's not like that hard, but over four hours, it's kind of hard. And one of the main benefits of that was mitochondrial density improvement. So, yes, a little bit. But we aren't, like, I joked about being a scientist, but we're not actually sport scientists. We definitely, we do know what mitochondrial density is. We know all the parts of the cell. But yeah, we have a coach who is fully a scientist who handles that. He's actually a rocket.

Isn't he like a rocket scientist? He has a PhD in thermodynamics. Is that why you're so fast, Paula? Oh, thermodynamics, though. Thermodynamics is not rockets. No, okay. He's not a rocket scientist. Never mind.

I like that. Paula's a rocket scientist. I like that. We should start that rumor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's start that rumor. Oh, that's so good. Eric, sorry, were you going to say something?

No. No, I was just going to explain what thermodynamics was. Right. It's fine. Let's save that for the next pause. Get really into the weeds. Hey, I just finished the bike sponsor reveal. And I'm now going to deal with Nick's track

Living Rent Free in my head for the next week. Appreciate that. And once again, the song is called S Workin' It and the artist's name is The TTL Kid. So go check that out. It's definitely picking up some traction on Spotify and I appreciate that, everybody. Can you see the listens, Nick?

Yeah, I can. And how is it? 4,000 or something now. Considering we just threw it up, you know, without doing anything else, I'm pretty happy with that. That's downloads, not plays. It's plays.

Yeah, I don't actually don't. It's just Spotify plays. I don't even know. Well, I'm a thousand of those, so it's $3,000. Okay, good. Okay, good. And I want to do it. I want to do another one soon.

I was thinking about putting up the song from the snow video and on, but it's, it's so low. It's like, it's beautiful. I find it beautiful, but it's not the same vibe. So I think that you need to have two separate albums. We need to have like the down tempo album and the hype album. That's right. That's right. But I do want to put up the one that we used in the original.

of bike build video. That one was really cool too. That one was really cool. So that'll be going up soon. I just got to finish it. That's the one. That's the one. Very nice.

Tom goes on and says, replugging an idea I've heard you guys mentioned months ago, any chance of a new TTL sweat trainer playlist featuring all songs from the TTL kid. Think of one remixing Flynn barks. Another the Lanaya mini-Steem would do for starters. Yeah, that's hilarious. So yeah, I think I'm just going to start uploading one-by-one singles

on the TTL Kid artist page, and that'll show up on all platforms, Spotify, Apple Music, whatever. And then maybe I'll also make a playlist so you can play them all through as your training. So keep your eye out for that. We'll keep you updated on that too.

Next question and last question. Hey, all, with all of your partner announcements, I was just wondering how they all came about. Did they approach you? Did you approach them? Do you sell yourself in your brand? Is it as simple as a phone call? Do you make some sort of proportionate?

or marketing package, do they care more now about social media influence and engagement over race results? I know you can't speak to the actual terms of your deals, but just wondering how these things come together. Thanks, Jason. So, I mean, is it mostly the same every time? It totally depends. And it's changed over the course of our career.

For me, anyway, when I first started out, it was 100% me knocking on doors of sponsors begging for, you know, just a free wheel set. or for, you know, a deal on a bike. And fast forward to now, we've kind of gone from there to getting free product, no problem, to getting a couple thousand dollars a year on top of the free product and some sort of, you know, potentially a bonus structure comes in before the actual just salary comes in. So a company won't necessarily feel like they want to risk just giving you X amount of dollars. But if you win world championships using their equipment, they can promote that result and that's worth whatever, 5,000, 10,000, whatever the number that is, they throw out there.

Now that we've got TTL and we've been established for a long time, Paula's had really good race results. I've had pretty good race results the last year. It's switched a little bit and companies are aware of us and like what we're doing and they will approach us a fair amount. Or if we approach them, they'll have a, they'll know who we are. So it's a bit of easier to get a reply. Yeah, it's not so much like, hey, we're Eric and Paula and.

we're going to do videos and they're going to be cool, I promise. You know, there's ideally, at least like inside of the space, and this isn't the, you know, case if we were to approach Maytag appliances. But if we're talking about a triathlon company or a bike company, that there's an okay chance that they've at least heard of what we have going on. And we've got this great resume that they go look at online. Then on top of that, I'll almost always supply the person that we're talking with, like this kind of two-page thing that just says, like,

here's how many YouTube followers we have, here's how many, Instagram followers we have. Here's like our top three results from last year. And here's like the specialized video we made. Or like the analytics on the channels, which are kind of impressive. Yeah. Across all of our platforms, like the podcast even. Yeah. And I don't necessarily see that as like us trying to sell them rather than usually what happens is like John in marketing has to go to his boss and say, hey, I found these cool people. He has to like kind of sell us to them. And so I'm just, you just try to provide them with some firepower when they have. that board meeting. Not every triathlete. In fact, most of the top triathletes aren't announcing new

sponsorships every year. It kind of happens after a breakout season where you have open categories and sponsors are interested. And Eric and I just kind of happen to have this coincidence with a few of our contracts that were up or categories that we didn't have filled yet, like shoes, plus paired with a good year, plus paired with TTL and all the media stuff that Eric can do and Nick can do. And that's kind of the perfect storm. but we're not anticipating every year having this type of a, not an overhaul, but like a, you know, a huge new list of new partners. Ideally, we'll keep these partners for a really long time and just keep delivering cool stuff and not necessarily refreshing the partnerships all the time, you know. Yeah, we would love it if we never had to do another sponsor negotiation thing again.

And like Paula said, it was quite the coincidence that we had each had several categories. where we both had like contracts expire at the same time and opportunities arose. Yeah, Eric and I are pretty much aligned on all of our sponsorships as well now, which kind of provides extra value to companies. Eric does really good media. I can be in the content when he's filming and shooting. And that just is a lot easier and smoother when we're both using the same equipment. Yeah, I feel like it does seem like, oh, look at all these new sponsors for Eric and Paula.

But I think the idea this time is like these should, these are great. sponsors and hopefully they lost a very long time, if not forever. Yeah. Yeah, that's our goal. I mean, we're not going to be racing forever. So as long as our careers will take us, whether that's five years, 10 years, two years, we'd love to stay with the same partners. And I think part of putting a big effort in to do cool videos like we do with On and

Specialized is just showcasing that it's worth it. And please keep these going. So it's not this easy for starting. We both experienced in the lows of our careers, send an email, no one replies. It's a lot harder when there's not results. Even if you're great at social media, it really, really comes down to race results, I think. I guess if I could leave it on a certain note is that anytime you're, what needs to happen between you and a sponsor is there needs to be a value exchange.

This is not just them wanting to help you out. This is them going, how do you fit into our marketing push? and that might be we need a Canadian female or we need we really want to move into the space of we're opening up in Sri Lanka or whatever and we need somebody that's in the Asian market or you know and so knowing what your value is what you bring to a company and finding companies

that you think have similar values and might have that hole in their marketing strategy that is a good way to go like in approach the conversation like that here's what I can bring to the table for your company to move the needle Have you seen a shift, have you explicitly or implicitly kind of seen a shift away from, for you two specifically, race results? Being that you have this entire world outside of just race results now that people find attractive.

I don't think so. I think that all the brands we work with now are still very much interested in results, especially companies like On. You just saw that with Chelsea and Christian. And then somehow magically I got looped into that. But they're all world champions. And that's ultimately what, that's how they showcase their footwear is this person's crossing the line first at the world championships. That's, I think, value to them. Yeah.

I think it is important. And I think it's less important than it used to be just because there is another way to be valuable. It's not like it doesn't matter. but being able to have the power to when you don't have the results to keep the storyline going and still bring some value of that company instead of just, you know,

if you were back in 2001 and you got injured for half a season, you're not in magazines, you're not anywhere, it's just, you know, people could just assume that you were tired. And now you can say, hey, I'm going to get physio and I'm overcoming it and here's the strategy I'm using and blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, yeah. And there's this ongoing thing and your partners can be integrated in that story and have your back and all the things. So I think there's like the results are not the end-all be-all, but if all of a sudden neither of us even got on a podium for four years, it would be very different conversations with these partners. Yeah, yeah, of course.

As we're negotiating the next contract or whatever. Of course. Well, I feel like that's going to be the end of us talking about sponsors and contracts for a little bit because we've really been going into it. Cannot wait to talk about our time. out our tempo run tomorrow on the next podcast. That's right. But yeah,

we went way over here, but that's okay. I'm going to edit it down and make it nice and clean. But yeah, this week, I'm starting real training. You guys are back to training

after the Powder Creek. We're becoming real trail. It's good. Again. Yeah. I'm really stoked, actually. Yeah. I can't wait.

As soon as we get this snow off the ground, it would be back right outside. It was so funny. We were like running in snow and we go to Powder Creek. and then we get back and it's like 55 degrees and we're running outside i'm like dusting the moped off we can stay here forever this is amazing and then next evening five inches of snow

seven degrees Fahrenheit welcome back yeah just kidding well we're very grateful for our swift setup yeah you guys are crushing swift lately good for you yeah honestly it is easier to do to do the trainer in the treadmill when there's when there's five inches of snow outside there's not this like, oh, I could maybe go outside if I spend an hour getting dressed. No, it's just, oh, well, I'm going out to the garage, hanging out in the garage all day. The decision is made.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm going to go make some banana bread right now. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, Nick. I'm going to go eat the last piece of ours. I did already. Oh, no.

There needs to be, does anyone know? Does anyone on the pod know? Do you have to wait for bananas to be brown? Is there any, like, wait, is there any aftermarket product where you can just buy mushy bananas for banana bread? Oh, interesting. I feel like I've seen that at Trader Joe's. Or maybe it was Stader Brothers in California.

I think they had banana bread. Bananas. I see. A bag. A brown bag with a handle. That's some clever marketing, isn't it? Yeah. They're not bad.

They're just perfect. They're banana bread bananas. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny. Okay. Well, thank you all for listening. We will be back next week, as usual, answering your questions. Thanks, guys.

See you later. Later.