That Triathlon Life Podcast - Base training, run form, injury detection, bonking, and more!

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Eric, Paula, and Nick officially take their first questions from TTL nation!  They go into some nuances about olympic qualifications, Eric and Paula pick a favorite sport from swim, bike, run, and we find out who would pick coffee over sweets. There's much more so make sure you listen to find out. Thanks for listening and subscribing!

Hello everyone. Welcome to That Triathlon Life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerschum. I'm Paula Findlay. And with us is our good friend Nick Goldson, music producer, great nominee, 8 group triathlet, extraordinary. And the reason this podcast was so successful last week, 100% because of Nick. Okay. Okay. It's just not. Everyone's like, you have great podcast voices and we're like, no, we don't. Nick just made them sound good. You first of all, you guys have great podcast voices, but you know what, on me like halfway through the week is that I think most people that listened, they didn't realize, they thought I was like a one-time guest. No, no, no.

Nick is here to stay. Yeah, very sorry to inform you all that I'm here for good. Hilarious. It went very well. Sorry, go ahead, Paul. No, I was just going to say what you just said. We are blown away by the response. We were very nervous to, A, do this, and then B, put it out into the world.

and the feedback that we got, the response that we got, the rankings that we got. Let me just interrupt right there and say that we are 29th in sports podcasts on Spotify. Hello. I don't even understand that. That is so crazy. At least for like one day. No, we are currently 29th. No way.

Yeah. We're currently 29th. Well, I mean, going into it, I mean, I thought anyway, like literally everybody out there goes, oh, we're so funny when we have a conversation. We should have a podcast and just talk about things. And I was just fully prepared to be embarrassed and shut it down after one week. So, I mean, anybody who watched, I mean, listened and downloaded. Thank you.

That's amazing. And I don't know, we'll do a second one here. Thanks for being a repeat listener. It's funny that neither of you guys can get the watched out of your brain. Because Paula, at the end of the first episode, said, thanks for watching. Eric just now said for everyone who watched. It's so. We are such YouTubers.

Yeah. Wow. So if you did just like stumble across this and you haven't seen our YouTube channel, That's where we start in kind of what our bread and butter is. But we're trying out podcasting. And let me go a little further with that for people who don't know. Eric, his name is Eric Lagerstrom. He is a pro triathlete.

And just like, well, not like maybe other sports, pro triathlon has a very wide birth of, is birth the right word or breath? Birth shit. a wide range. It has a very wide range of skill. Whereas I think to a certain extent to play in the NBA, everyone is very, very, very, very good. Whereas in pro triathlon, everyone is very, very, very good,

especially compared to amateurs. But there is such a huge difference between the people who are winning races and the people who are technically pros but are at the back of the race. And Eric, it would be, and the very close to the top of that, in the sport. And Paula, his name is Paula Finley, she also is a pro triathlete and also is at like the very, very top of that. So these aren't just, I didn't just find these two on the street. Okay, these guys are the best of the best. Thank you for that wonderful and true.

Of course. That was, yeah, he's right. And I, and I am an amateur triathlete that would make even the slowest pro seem like Superman. So, so Paula and I are a couple. We're a unit. We both do professional triathlon. Nick is here to keep us from getting in a fight on our own podcast and bring the entertainment value. Okay, let me tell you what else I'm impressed by. So we basically started this podcast with the hopes of keeping it very conversational but answering your questions. And I opened up the TCL customer service email the day after our release.

And it was filled with questions. I've never seen so many emails on that account. We tried to go through them and sort of filter out the ones we're most interested in talking about. But just a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to send us an email. We're going to try to get to most of them if we can. My prediction is that emails will become less frequent as we go on. So if we don't get to your question today, we might get to it another time.

But thank you so much. It's going to get worse and worse and worse. Paul's going to spend all her days and nights reading through emails. Reading through comments or questions. But Nick's written out the, I don't know, maybe most relevant or entertaining ones for now. Well, some of them were like 20,000 characters long. Yeah, some people wrote some novel. I think I got, I shortened them a bit.

But yeah, we have a bunch. But before we get into that, I was just kind of wondering, what's your guy's life like right now? Like, are you still kind of base phase just doing fun rides? Are you doing structure? Are you doing long rides, long runs? How much do you care about the quality of the training that you're doing right now? Yeah, our coach is sending us a schedule that progresses every week and probably gets three or four hours more of training each week. So it started out very basic, like a 12-hour week, basically an hour up to 20.

So, yeah, the rides are structured, but also leave room. for riding outside since the roads are so dry now and nice year in bend. And unfortunately, the snow's not great, so our skiing career has come to an abrupt end. Oh, no. Yeah, it's very sad. But we're able to run outside. I mean, the positive of bad skiing is great weather for running and riding outside. So we're not too sad about it.

Yeah, it is like uncharacteristically warm right now. People are calling it junior. It's, I mean, it could switch at any point in time, but we're very blessed to be able to ride and run outside at the moment. And you guys actually, hashtag blessed. And you guys actually have the same coach, which isn't necessarily that common for triathlete couples, right?

Not common, but very convenient because we do, aside from Eric doing a little more volume on the run, we pretty much have the same schedule, which makes it really easy to train together. Oh yeah, speaking of which, Paul, your foot was kind of hurt last year. Kind of.

Yeah. It was fully, fully broken. Yes. Catastrophically non-functional. Right. Catastrophically non-functional is great. So how are you, I mean, how much are you careful about that right now? Is it even in your mind when you're running? Yeah, for sure.

It's something, which I'm sure most of you can relate after having an injury. It's really, even if there's no pain, it's easy to not think about it. So a good strategy for that anyway, for me is to run with other people and just have conversation while you're running and it's really easy then to forget about, oh, is my ankle hurting or how do I feel this very second the whole time? So that has been a really good thing is to have other people to run with. And in terms of I'm making sure I only run every other day right now, so not every day. And it sort of gives me a day in between to heal any swelling that might come up and just be really confident heading into each run that it feels good. So I'm pretty much past the point of fear where I'm like, is it going to hurt today or not? That's the worst. But, still definitely being careful and really only running like three hours a week. So very low volume. Yeah. Yeah.

I think we could note as well that one of the primary reasons we moved here to Bend, which is an Oregon, is for trail access. And we, like Paula, 100% never touches road asphalt or anything. And that's a big component as well to be in three. Until it gets closer to a race, then I'll do some runs on the pavement. But in terms of just like base miles, I think a really important thing for me is just running on soft surface. So easy to find here. And Eric, you kind of have some hip stuff that flares up every once in a while,

but you've started to do a bunch of, like, strength work, stability work. How is it feeling right now? I know it seems like it only kind of becomes a problem in, like, a race scenario where you're, like, really pushing it. But, like, there's a great Louis C.K. skit where he's, like, you know, going to the doctor and they said, no, you're just old now. Like, this is just your life. Like, you have incurable, shitty ankle.

Just take a bunch of a leave. Yeah, you got to weigh that against how much. much you care about your digestive system. Yeah, exactly. But that's a little bit where my hip is at. I've got a torn labrum and it's just, it causes me pretty much daily discomfort or tightness and stuff, but I'm working through it and I can

I'm pretty much never fully injured to where I can't run. But yeah, with enough PT and kind of some exercises and stuff, I can manage it and do as much volume as I want. I remember when I was starting in like running, cycling, and just thinking yeah, these people who get

injured are like 90 pounds. nothing's, I'm not going to get injured. Like I did a... You're a healthy boy. Yeah. And that, wrong. Wrong. You know, I got a bunch of different injuries.

Like, do you have, for people who are listening who are not veterans of the sport? It's so hard because every time you go out for a run, for me, something else kind of hurts. And most of the time, it means nothing. It goes away and doesn't mean anything. But then some of those times, the thing is the thing that sticks with you for the rest of your life. So do you have any tips for someone who's kind of...

maybe getting into it and hasn't been injured yet. That's the hardest part for me is distinguishing between just a soreness from maybe a strength training workout or something you're right that hurts one day but goes away the next day. And often with injuries, that's what people think. They're like, oh, it's going to go away. It's fine. I'll run through it.

I only have 2K left. I'm going to finish this run for sure. But then it turns into something. So I guess my guideline for that is if it's hurting two workouts in a row, the same thing, that's a red flag. Because there are definitely things that get tight and then, you know, overnight get better. So distinguishing between that

and something that's potentially serious is the challenging part and ignoring it is what gets people in trouble. So that's kind of scary. I would say that of the times that I've been injured, I can definitely look back and go, there were quite a few moments

along the pathway where I was going, I just definitely don't want to want to believe that this is an injury and maybe just maybe one more run and it'll go, like you kind of have a good sensation and coming back to remembering Like each workout like is not going to be the one that like makes or breaks what happens later in this season and trying to remember that.

Like I can I can do a 30 minute run instead of a 60 minute run today. That's not going to be the thing that changes my race in September, you know. Right. Nick, tell us about you're back in Santa Monica now. How's your training going? Oh, well, today I did exactly nothing because I had I'm supposed to pick the way that my training works is I pick a race and then I. I buy a plan that is the exact amount of weeks before the race that I am now. So what race are you doing?

Well, that's the problem. I have not picked. This year I want to do my first full distance triathlon. What? You didn't even tell us that yet. I told Eric, I think. I don't think you told me. This is breaking news.

Okay, well, breaking news. You know what's funny? I told Lindsay. I told Lindsay Corbyn, another pro triathlete that we're all friends with. Well, because I asked her what, because neither of you do full distance. You guys are like 70.3 specialists at the moment, which is also known as a half Iron Man. And for people who don't know, like there's a-tricksy. Trixie if you're listening.

By the way, I just want to put it out there that Trixie listened to the podcast. Trixie Mattel is a drag queen, and we talked about her last week on the podcast, and she's a friend of mine. She would love to be on the podcast. Because the only person in her life that cares about running is me. so she gets to talk to two other people that care about running, she's in heaven. So she wants to be on the podcast. She's coming on at like sixth episode at the very soonest.

We got to be good at this. That's what I told you. I said, we wanted to be like super polished before we get her on here. Yes. But anyway, as I was saying, the half-distance Iron Man, it's not like the difference between running two miles and four miles from most people. It's really a completely different style of like training and preparation and racing. and the amount of racing you can do, it's really very different.

So Eric and Paul, it's not like they're not fit enough to do a full distance. It's just kind of a different style of racing. But as an amateur, I thought it would be fun to do it just once, probably. And I haven't picked my race yet, but I asked Lindsay because she's an incredible champion, an Iron Man champion, and I asked her about what race she thinks I should do. And I gave her a few options. and I'm not sure I think maybe the one in

Lake Placid in New York have heard good things yeah yeah so I have to pick a race and you know what I'll say this by next by the next podcast I'll have it yeah and if anyone wants to give me any I feel like I'm opening up the floodgates here but if anyone wants to give me their favorite Ironman

course to do email Nick yeah don't email me yeah you can message me my Instagram is just my name which is Nick Goldston S-T-O-N so if you want to tell me some whatever you think is a good first race and I don't care how much elevation

or whatever. I just want it to be memorable and beautiful. So whenever I have that, then I'll get the training plan locked in and I'll start training. Sweet. I think that's what's important with an Iron Man especially. Just enjoy where you're going. Right. Yeah. I'm not trying to do it fast. I don't think. I just would like to not die halfway through the marathon. That would be nice. You just got to go get your MDOT tattoo. Oh my God. We just found out, I'm not going to blow this guy. name up, but we just found out that someone we know who does have an M.Dot tattoo did not do an Iron Man. He did a, like, doath, no, yeah, a duathlon Iron Man. And got an M dot tattoo? Yeah. The M. Dot tattoo is, that's, that's a pretty bold statement as it is, and to not be able to

back it up is. You got to do the swim, bro. I don't even, yeah. I don't, I don't have no what to say. He should, he has another tattoo on his other calf. You got to do the swim, bro. I don't know who this is. You get an asterisk on his other calf? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, anyway, real quick, real quick, I don't know how much is supposed to be publicized, but you're dealing with Wahoo?

Like, that's official now. Wahoo? Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, they're one of the most recognizable brands. Yeah, we've been, we started talking to them late into last year, which was kind of a weird time to negotiate contracts. everything kind of happens in the fall. So we used all their gear.

They were super generous. They set us up with kickers and the rival watch and all the bike computers we need. And we used their equipment all of last year. Totally loved it. I have always been a fan of the brand. And then thankfully this year, they wanted to work with us too. So we have a final, you know, formalized contract. And, you know, we're while hooligans.

Wah hooligans. That's great. And I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but we can cut this out if I'm not. Paula let me borrow her Wahoo element Because my bi-computer I don't know if that's I gifted Nick a Wahoo element I'm allowed to say that

Okay And it's awesome It is way better than the By-computer I had before That stopped working is I mean for starters like The computer had before If you had a

We could just say it There's only one other computer That you could possibly have before It was a Garmin 520 And if you put a route in there It doesn't tell you which direction. So, like, if your route crisscrosses or, like, like, figure eight, like, you don't know

where is where. Yeah. Like, that's the first thing. And also, like, syncing stuff to it always took so long with the Wahu, with the element. It's, like, instant you change it on the phone. It's instantly there. I love that about it. That's what sold me on the bike computer was the ease of use of it.

And I don't personally use the map function very often, but just the simplicity of being able to change the data screens because I like having a different screen when I race versus train takes like one second to change it. It's so easy. It's so good. Yeah. Really good. Like honestly, I don't want this to sound like a sponsor plug, but we're so, we're so impressed. And same thing with the kicker. Like, we've never had an issue setting it up. And I often get a lot of questions of like, what's the best trainer to get? And even before

I worked with Wahoo, I would definitely say the kicker just very, very easy, never breaks. It's the standard. It's the standard. The biggest thing when you're using gear a lot is that it just, it has to work each time. And I would 100% take less bells and whistles for just something that does, just works every time, low stress. Garman has a lot of bells and whistles that are appealing, like attaches to Spotify or whatever. But that comes at a cost of being. Wahoos also can control your Spotify from your watch. Oh yeah, they can.

Never mind. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, there's, there's some wild and crazy things that are not necessary. And I feel like Wahoos were just made by athletes for athletes. You can't pay for your coffee with your Wahoo watch. There you go. Which you don't need to do.

No. I mean, how often are you going out without your... I mean, I'm not running or biking without my phone ever, and that has Apple Pay on it, which is the same thing. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Okay. Well, before we move on to the official questions, let me just answer a question that I feel like we got a lot. Will we have guests?

Yes, we will have guests on the podcast. And her name is Trixie Mattel. Okay. We are. are going to get tricksy on this podcast if it's the last thing we do. We don't want it to be in every single episode thing, but we definitely will have guests on the podcast. Yeah, I think it would be interesting to bring on some people that other people that listen might know and we can bat around some stuff, like having Talbot on and doing a little bit of talk about YouTube or

that kind of thing I think would be pretty fun versus I don't know. Yeah. Oh, so first question is from David. He said, you both have have really great but sort of unique run form, how did you develop your form and speed, or did that just come naturally to you? Eric, you ran cross-country or something. I don't remember, but like both of you, I'd be really interested to hear about that. I think this is going to be pretty interesting because I think we're going to have completely different answers. I would personally say that I'm definitely not a naturally good-looking runner. I've got some great pictures from high school.

But you are naturally good-looking. Well, that's what matters, right? I've got some great pictures from high school where I just look like I'm sitting in a lawn chair and my arms are flying all over the place and it just is like a catastrophe. But I had the engine from swim team to, you know, just like go hard versus Paula. I mean, like history has shown, especially over the course of last year. She can run approximately one mile and, you know, the two months before a racing go out and run a 1-18 half marathon and just it's mind-blowing. versus I feel like I would have to do consistent 60 mile weeks.

I know, but I'm just saying, I think I would call you a little bit more of a natural runner than I am for sure. Totally. Yes, next question. No, I personally don't ever think about my run form and I've never tried to change it. It is something you can change, but it's not as important as, say, technique in the pool in order to go faster. I think trying to change your run technique, it's one thing to maybe try to change. change your cadence, but changing technique is very hard because it takes a lot of effort and conservative thinking to, like, actually make an effective change. So, yeah, it's really,

I don't have any tips for. Right. It is hard. Eric's arms do a funny thing. You can, you can definitely change your arm carriage. Wait, I do the same thing with one of your arms, right? Yeah. I do this, like, I do the same exact thing. And I've had a running guy look at it before me, like, you need to fix that. That's weird. I'm like, oh, I guess I do that. I mean, it's really interesting to note, though. There's plenty of Kenyans out there that have, like, super unconventional arm carriages, but they're from their waist down. It's beautiful.

And typically when a funky arm carriage comes in, it's because you're trying to counterbalance something that's going on from the waist. Below the waist. And I think ultimately, as long as, like, the leg swing is going pretty well, the arms don't matter as much. Less important. That is so interesting. Agreed.

That's really interesting. want to make sure that you're not trying to force it and use your arms to like essentially swimmers will do this a lot because we're just used to muscling through the water with our arms and you'll try to start throwing your shoulders around to get a little bit of extra speed and i think that is a thing that you should try to not lean into with trying to use your shoulders to to propel yourself forward and keeping that more relaxed um and that that's like like paula said and like you just said like that's the thing that i've i've struggled with a lot is this kind of screwy arm throwing around thing and the thing and the thing and the thing that's

that I enjoy doing the most to work on that is putting a treadmill, like putting a mirror in front of me on the treadmill, and then I'll just kind of work on trying to keep my shoulders relaxed, and typically focusing on that relaxing and not like scrunching them up and everything will ultimately just have everything flowing better and kind of clean that up rather than like, oh, I'm trying to tense down and keep my arms from flailing around, just relaxing. It is interesting that as you were saying that, I was trying to think about pro triathletes that I think have really great run form. And there are very, very, very few pro-traged athletes

that look good when they're running. And even like the fastest people, like, I mean, Danielle Aref is like really one of the best ever, if not the best ever. And she doesn't look like a pro runner when she's running, right? A lot about Iron Man running is efficiency. And efficient running isn't necessarily beautiful running. A lot of people maybe shuffle a little more

than like a very bouncy Kenyan who kind of like gazelles through the air. Jan is a beautiful runner, but someone like Daniela, I think is just super efficient. Same with Heather Jackson, just a very efficient runner and kind of glides along the ground. So it might not necessarily look the most beautiful of all time, but it's very good for Iron Man because you're wasting no energy, especially after riding 180 kilometers. Yeah, and the big fundamental difference between triathlon run training and run run training is that runners are never showing up to the track very fatigued.

It is our job as triathletes to run while fatigued. So we'll do a tempo run the day after we did a super big hard bike ride and your legs are always tired. But that's kind of what you're working on. And unfortunately, that does lend, you know, it will cause some of these like weird things to happen as you're running while tired. Good question, though. Yeah.

Thank you, David. That's great. And I feel, that's really interesting to hear like the lower half of the body versus the upper half of the body. I find out to be super, super interesting. Okay, we have too many questions for the amount of time that we have. Let me see. And don't forget my rapid fires at the end.

I actually have rapid fires for you, Paula, because you ambushed us last time. Okay, fine. Okay, so I thought this would be really funny. Someone asked this. I thought this was a great question. I guess let's try not to go too deep into it, but I want to hear your guy's biggest bonk story. This is from Niels. He said, give me your biggest bonk story.

I don't bonk. Paul is just... Just kidding. False. False. False. Can confirm. But Paula, can you recall like a good bonk that you had?

I don't know. I think I have a hard time associating like, wow, I'm so grumpy with that. That's because I'm bonked, you know? So I don't process the fact that I'm bonked. I'm more like, get me food. I'm so hungry. So we honestly, I don't like long. bike rides that much so I don't do super epic long bike rides and therefore rarely bong.

Right, you're only going to bunk on a bike ride. I would honestly disagree. I think Paula semi bonks somewhat regularly because we like go on an afternoon run a little bit too late because I was editing and she thought we were running at three and then we ran at four but she had a snack at two and so it's my fault. Sorry, but like you can feel the hangar coming on slowly but if If hangar is bonging, then I bonged every day. It's a soft bong, but it's definitely a bong. Eric, you answer. I've been, like, trying to take this time to try to come up with, like, one epic, epic moment.

And, like, I don't know. I can't honestly think of one. Nick, can you? Wow. Yeah, I, oh, very much, because it's only happened to me twice, and it's on the same exact stretch of the same road. Okay. I don't know why, I don't know how, but it's this, for people who live in L.A., it's stunt. It's going up stunt in Malibu.

And to get there, you probably have to ride from Santa Monica like an hour and a half, two hours. So not that long, but it's just a lot of climbing. And both times were in the summer. So it was really hot. And I remember the first time it had never happened to me. So I didn't really know what was happening. But it was like, I'm riding and I'm doing an interval. It's like a 20 minute interval or something.

It's the third one. And I'm like, huh, the power is going down like a lot. The power meter. I literally thought the power meter is really. reading wrong. Like the heat and the elevation or something is making it read wrong. I'm like, I'm doing like 190 watts, but I'm clearly doing 300 watts. It's what it feels like. I'm like, oh, interesting. And then all of a sudden it's like, I look up and everything's like delayed. Like I'm like, uh-oh. Something's wrong here. So I got off the bike and like sat in the shade

in a treat, but I didn't have any food with me. Yeah. It was a long time ago. That's borderline like heat stroke. Yeah, it was not good. Well, what was amazing is that my friend, Katie who actually helped me get into triathlon. She came back down when I didn't show up for 15 minutes because I was like walking my bike. And she just brought up like a granola bar. And like literally 10 minutes after that, I was completely back to the moment. Revived. Wow. Amazing. Yeah. The blood sugar dips a little low and the brain's like, uh-uh, no more.

Right. I don't think I've had an experience like that. But I will say one time when I was riding with Unich in St. George in the heat. And I wasn't racing, so we were doing, I was doing a three or four hour ride or something and going with you. And you're a good cyclist. Not on that ride, I wasn't. But it was so hot. And we literally just stood in the 7-Eleven, like under the air conditioner and we're setting off the door ringer. And the guy was like so mad at us. Eating snickers and like Gatorade. Like I don't think we were necessarily food bonked, but we were so hot. And that's, those are the bongs I remember is the heat into like. inability to continue. That was hot. By the way, just so everyone knows, my 5, 10, and 20 minute heart rate records of all time were set on that ride with Paula. Because of the heat, I think. Yeah, I don't know what it was because the power would, I didn't send any power records. It was just heart rate.

That's a, that's a good, like, FYI for people racing St. George. I don't know if it's like that in May when the world championships are, but it can get so hot there. So do some heat training. St. George is wild for that. Like one day it could be hurricane force winds and rain. The next day it could be 100 degrees. And it just, you just don't know. I mean, remember at Worlds when Eric was in the run and it's like a perfectly nice day and then all of a sudden it is pouring like it is the end of the earth?

Yeah. It was unbelievable. And then it went away and it was like a sunny day. Very weird. I feel so bad for anybody, all of those of you who were on the bike at that point. because I almost got blown over up on Red Hills Parkway, like, while running. Running. It was gnarly.

Imagine spectating. Yeah, Paula and I were really in the, we were in the pits. Okay, next question. This is from Claire. Hey, Paula, Eric, and Nick. I love the podcast. Great to hear more detail about the training we see on the vlog. As an international listener, my question is this.

If you could live anywhere outside of the U.S. slash Canada, still as pro-triathletes. where would you live? We have a few European hotspots over here, for example, Leeds in the UK, and Gerona in Spain, which seems a bit like triathlon mechas, but the whole world is your oyster. Thanks, and looking forward to the next episode.

Gerona, Banyole, that was probably the first couple of things that came to mind as you were reading that question. Yeah. I would say a no to Leeds due to rain. I would rather train somewhere where it snows than somewhere where it rains a lot. But yeah, I agreed.

Gerona is a great place. I also really like training in Nusa in Australia. It gets probably very hot in the summertime, but beautiful place to open water swim and good riding. Something about Australia just feels so cool to me. I don't know what it is. Exotic. Maybe it's just so far away.

Yeah. And there's a lot of great triathletes that come from there and really great swimmers. Yeah, yeah. The downside of it is it's just so far away. It's kind of an intimidating trip to make. I think the really interesting spin on this question is where we, would live if we could be due athletes. Because the most complicated part about being a triathlet

and the time we spent in our van and everything is finding a pool that you can swim at. And as soon as you go, okay, all we have to do is bike and run. So many new possibilities open up and everything. I've always been super interested in going to Mammoth for a training camp, but they have no pool there. Things like that.

There are quite a few places that would be interesting if you didn't have to worry about pool access. Yeah, even like you could kind of go off the grid too. and somewhere beautiful in nature and just bike and run every day, which is kind of what I was just doing in Tucson, but you never have to worry about a pool that would really switch things up.

Swimming ruins everything. I agree with that. I can get behind that. That's a great way to end that question. Swimming ruins everything. Next. We have a few friends who are really passionate about swimming, so I hope they don't get insulted by that.

We can also cut that out. I'll switch it to swimming is great. Okay. But what's funny is that, for people who don't know, both of you are, I would say, I mean, both of you are pretty well-rounded, but it does seem like you're slightly above-average swimmers compared to your other two sports. Would you say that's true? Eric, you've told me before that you feel like you don't have a strength, but it seems like swimming is probably your strength. Yeah, you're probably right. I definitely

came into the sport from a swim background, but I did start trathelon when I was 12, So I think I've done a pretty good job of leveling things out. But if, yeah, if you just had to, I think it like world championships and stuff, I'll be first to pack out of the water pretty consistently. The bike is a little bit of an if, you know, if I'm like top five cyclists out there, top 10 cyclists, and the run is kind of depends on the date less consistent for sure. Paul, actually, this was going to ask you guys, this was a little question I had. if you were, if you had to switch now currently with your fitness and your career to cycling or running or swimming, forget about the money, forget about any of that, just like what you would like to do. If you had to do just one, which one would it be for each one of you?

I think being a professional runner would be the coolest, but I do think I would be best at cycling. We've talked about it a little bit actually inspired by like Lionel's Our Record attempt. I think Paula could have a lot. a pretty good shot at, if she focused on it for a couple years, like the Olympic time trial team. I just said this to someone yesterday. I was saying how I thought Paula could be a pro TTIR. I would think so. I on the hand definitely could not. I think the one thing that would be a limiting factor for me, and obviously this is something I could work on is my skills. But that's why TT, it's maybe a little less that comes into play less. I think at like the Olympics, the TT. The T.T. riders also have to do the road race. I don't think they take TT specialists. I think you would be

totally fine doing the road race. I think contesting a sprint is another thing, but you just have to get to the finish line with the bunch and whatever. Well, one of my all-time heroes in life slash sport is Claire Hughes, who's a cyclist Olympian from Canada, multiple medalist, and also is a medalist in speed skating at the Winter Olympics. And she actually lives down the street from my parents in can more so I see her once in a while. But she has red hair. She wrote an amazing book. She's just like the most inspiring person and reading through her stories of cycling and me having some success at races with, you know, because of the cycling lag. It's just, it is a very cool sport. And I don't know exactly like what the depth of cycling in Canada is, but it would be a cool.

I did consider it when I was sort of retiring from Olympic distance triathlon. What about trying to go for the Olympics and cycling? It like crossed my mind. briefly. But yeah, women's cycling is hard. I don't know much about it. Eric, if you had to go back and do just swimming, just biking, or just running, knowing what you know now, I feel like I know the answer to this, but you go ahead. I think I could have done, I think I could have done pro mountain biking. Yeah. But we just, unfortunately, where I grew up, we didn't have any mountain bike trails anywhere close.

We didn't even have like a BMX park or anything. But that was fully what I was most into as a kid, building jumps in the front yard and going off of them. and I love being in the woods and the technical aspect. My one gripe with triathlon is that there isn't enough technical aspect to it to where your skills versus your engine play any sort of role.

So mountain biking. It does seem like it's all engine based. I mean, even some of the best cyclists in triathlon, we know that they do almost all their training indoors. At least in the 70.3, the Iron Man distance. Like ITU was definitely more fun with that. You got more pack dynamics. and cornering played a big part.

But yeah, that would be it. And then real quick, if you had to start again, so forget about what you've now gotten good at in life. I would be a cross-country skier. Seems like you already are a professional cross-country skier at this point. Actually, I briefly mentioned in our last podcast that my new cross-country skis came. So the next day, I went cross-country skiing with Lindsay,

and I was so bad. It was so horrible. But in my mind, I was like, I'm going to be like Jesse Diggins, like, so good at this, but it was icy. It's a very technically hard sport. Oh, really? I kind of assumed that if you could ski, you could cross-country ski. It's just the fitness element is what's different.

No, it's very technical. And there's no edges on the skis. They're very light. They're not super stable. So there's an element of learning the technique, kind of like swimming. I'm fascinated by the sport, though. I think watching cross-country skiing, like Olympians do it. It's so beautiful and it's so hard.

They just look like they're working harder than having any other. There's some footage out there of this guy who went to the Olympics for cross-country skiing, but he qualified in some weird way like it was in their country of origin or something. And he had only ever done it on the roller skis. And his first time ever wearing the skis was in the race. And you just see the footage and he just like, he can't even stay up. Yeah, it's so different. It's crazy to watch.

I have a question for us. How do we feel? about people switching citizenship to represent another country at the Olympics if they have a parent from that country. I personally am against it. Yeah, that's really a good point. Maybe this is too controversial and we'll have to cut it out.

We love controversy on the podcast. I wish there was like a forum section or something that we could just say, ready go, everybody else. You should have to endure Canadian winter for at least two years before representing Canada. Okay, so that's, you just like really opened up where this really came from. There are some people

that are non-Canadians trying to represent Canada specifically at the Olympics and we were just kind of going oh man, you think you want to be a Canadian but you've spent your entire life on a beach somewhere

training for triathlon like the real Canadians have had to suck it up and run in minus 40 in Ontario you know or whatever. So it seems kind of opposite of the spirit of the Olympics,

right? I think the whole point isn't just who's best. It's like we're, It's like this beautiful, epic, huge competition. And when you see someone from Cameroon, you want them to be from Cameroon. When you see someone from Russia, you want them to be from Russia. When you see someone from Canada, you want them to be from Canada.

Not all those athletes are just like from the U.S. And have one parent that's from Cameroon, one parent that's from Russia. And they're just taking the pass of least resistance to get to the Olympics. Yeah, we're not talking about people who grew up in Cameroon and then when they were 20 moved to the U.S. No, that's legit. Yeah, that's cool. I was born in Bermuda. Yeah.

Right. Yes. Thank you next. All right, Paula. Can I do my rapid fires? Excuse you very much. I'm rapid firing you. Okay?

So, first of all, give up coffee or give up sweets. Which one? Sweets, maybe? Oh. Chocolate is included in sweets. Yeah. Yeah, I am, the mornings where I don't have coffee before swimming, I truly swim worse, and it's harder.

Or my perceived exertion is higher. Yeah. So I think it's for sure, I know it's a performance enhancer. I do think there might be something to coming off coffee for a period of time and then reincorporating it for a race and getting like a boost from it. That's what Lindsay does. But I could definitely live without sweets if I had to choose. I'd rather have coffee.

What about you? I'm cringing and disgust for everyone that can't see me. Well, what would you pick, Nick? Oh, I already don't really drink much coffee. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're going to snotty. I think I would, I might drop the coffee. I love cookies and I do really like sweet.

I think I could probably give up either one. But if I got rid of the coffee, I would bring in like Yerba Mata tea, some alternate caffeine source. So I'm not sure that's fair. Would I allow decaf? I don't know. Or do you guys don't even think of decaf. Decaf is coffee though.

So no. I think like my favorite part about coffee is more the process of coffee. I think plenty of days I can get by without it, but I love the Swedish concept of FICA, like going to coffee. We have an espresso machine in our house, but we still love going to a coffee shop, saying hi to the barista, doing the whole hang out and getting the, you guys are laughing because Paula is. Paula can't go 30 minutes without eating bread, I swear. This bread ahead of dinner time here. Should we make sure we do this after dinner in the future?

No, no, no. I love it. It's very. It's very us constantly eating at any moment. I couldn't give up, preach. No problem. This is the quietest I've ever eaten a baguette. Right. Secretly. That's great.

Okay, yeah, I agree. I mean, I also love the, like the process of coffee, right? I love that as well. It's just, for me, coffee has some, like, weird mental things sometimes. It gives me anxiety sometimes, and I can't really figure out what it is. I'll tell you why. So I'm a little cautious about it. I'll tell you why, because your natural status is your natural energy level. I'm already hyperactive. It's already above that at which most people arrive at when they have coffee. So I just turn into like a musk rat. I don't know.

Okay. Next question. One to ten, how large of a role does music play in your training? Oh, I have a good answer to this. 10. That's my answer. I used to not be able to do a single run without headphones. Like if I was running with people, I'd have one ear in, if I was on the treadmill, both ears blaring, any run, iPod. And I feel like it was really impacting my racing in a negative way because I would never hear myself breathe. And I sort of intentionally did it because I could drown out my breathing and I felt like I could push harder if I couldn't hear the feedback of how hard I was working. But then I'd get to a race where you're obviously not wearing music. And it would be really, really hard for me to listen to myself breathe. So ever since then, I've completely ditched

running with music and I think I race better because of it. And I don't find, I don't mind it either. I sort of like the peace and quiet of going for a run without it. And a treadmill is different. Like, yeah, I'll put on the speakers when I'm on the treadmill, but not my headphones.

Because I do like being able to hear my cadence and hear my breath. I would agree. I would actually agree with the not doing headphones while running thing. Like I'll listen to my, if I have my phone with me, I'll have it just like on speaker mode, but playing kind of lightly just to have. that like the tempo and stuff there maybe and then on the treadmill the same thing just have a

speaker going but it almost feels claustrophobic to have the headphones in yeah that's that's something i was going to talk about is i always run with headphones if i'm by myself yeah but i've had this happen where during very very difficult efforts my instinct like i i have to take them out and it's not a it's not a the physical presence of the headphones it's the stimulus of the music. It's like my brain is already like at 100% and having music that it has to like decode, right? It's just extra information that your brain is trying to work on. It's just, it's like not what I want. I would also say that's because you're a musician. And when you listen to music, you're not just passively listening to music. You're really listening. And the lyrics and the

melody and everything is like something you're very in tune with, whereas some people just have it on and don't even hardly pay attention to it. It's just noise. The bike is another story, especially trainer rides, have to have music. And sometimes the speaker will, like, die halfway through an interval, and I'll be like, Eric, go get the charger. I need music. So riding on the road with headphones, not a fan of, but if I have like hill repeats, I'll put one earphone in,

or a podcast in one ear. But, yeah, music isn't as essential to my training as it used to be. However, I obviously love music and have it playing a lot of the time. Totally. Don't rely on it. I thought about it because yesterday I went on this trail run with this friend of mine who was, he's like top five L.A. Marathon pretty much every year, really, really fast runner. Yeah.

And he never, ever runs with music. And, you know, he's done like 80 miles a week. Yeah. I cannot imagine doing that much, but he's like, yeah, I can't. It's just, it makes me feel claustrophobic. He can't even run with a hat on. Oh, wow. He's weird.

That's weird. Yeah. He's, he's. I really like that question because it really collided our worlds of music. in sport. Does Trixie run with music? Yes. Well, Trixie does sometimes podcast, sometimes music, and for her first couple marathon cycles, she would do like guided runs. So I would have like music, but then it would have a voice to be like, okay, now step it up to whatever pace for these next five minutes. Interesting. That's wild. And that helped her a lot. In fact, we were talking about that,

how she doesn't have that now and she's feeling a little less motivated. Interesting. Wow. Okay, last little thing, both of you, do you still think you'll be, trying to do races when you're 70? Seven zero. Because there's people that are 70 doing races right now. I don't think so. I'm not even sure I'll be doing races necessarily when I'm like 50. I think I'll be in,

and I've done a lot of racing in my life and it'll be much more like a completion mindset. And I would like to do 100 kilometers of trail running maybe, but I don't even, probably not competitively, just to be out there and do it and complete. Right. On the flip side, you never really lose. your competitive edge. For example, my mom is in her 60s, and she still races rowing. She grew up rowing.

She was on the national team for rowing, and she still loves it. So I would say if my body allows it, I would still go in races with different goals, obviously. But I really admire people that can go in their 50s and still run pretty fast to have marathons. But was your mom ever, I mean, I'm guessing your mom was never at the level that you guys are in your sport, right? She didn't go to the Olympics, but she was on the national team. I don't, yeah, maybe she'd... Oh, really? Okay, okay. Because what I was going to say is,

I understand what Eric's saying is like, once you've done the professional triathlon thing for many years, doing it when you're 50, it's like, well, why don't I do something different and try to accomplish that and achieve that? And like doing a 100K trail race or something, that seems like a really cool and different achievement.

That's the thing about triathlon is you have swimming, biking, or running issues from. You could do any of the three and still race later. Well, do you guys have any final thoughts? other than us being extremely thankful that so many people downloaded the podcast and gave it a rating. Do you call those rapid fires? Because I don't.

I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. I'd say we did not do the best job of rapidly firing answers. Like we could have been faster. Well, maybe we'll do rapid fire by Paula every other podcast. How about that? Okay, that's great. But truly everyone who listened, we are so grateful.

It is really fun for us because we talk to Nick a lot anyway on FaceTime. So that's what this is, basically. we're just now letting you in on our personal conversations. I like to think that we're talking to everybody and Nick at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we... I represent the masses. Yeah, after seeing the results and feedback from the first one,

there is a little bit of underlying stress going into the second one. Like, can we do it again? Is it going to be as good? No, no stress. Trying to keep it fun. No stress. But thanks for us. The TTL, TTL is extremely patient and dedicated to both of you.

I cannot handle it when you call it TTL Nash. I'll get used to it. I can handle it every time I listen to it because I listen, maybe like half of those thousand listens are me listening to it. But every time you said that, I would just crack up. I think Eric said it first. No, 100% no. A long time ago.

I think you said it first, Eric. Eric does watch The Bachelor some. I watched The Bachelor one time. TTL. I prefer The Bachelorette. Well, because I'm thinking of like Vap Nation. like vape nesh, you know, like people who vape and they're like really into it.

No, definitely don't know. No, I'm thinking of Bachelor Nation. I don't vape and I don't watch The Bachelor, so I don't know where it came from. Anyway, if you have questions, guys, first of all, please keep it less than 20 pages long and send it to that triathlon life brand at gmail.com.

Paula has to also train and she has the vlog so she can't spend hours and hours and hours reading the questions. Although we're very thankful for the questions We do love it. Yeah, it's great. And if you want to start and end them with a compliment, we also won't turn those away. Which most of them do.

Yeah, they do. Also, one last little showed out is that our new travel mugs drop today. So those will still be in stock when this podcast drops. Those are so cool. And you can find them at That TriathlonLife.com. Yes. Little plug. Little mini plug.

Oh, yeah. Those are awesome. I have one real quick story. I was doing a ride. Sorry. 40 minutes later. One hour later. I was doing a ride in Tucson and I made to myself some tea and it was too hot when I got to the trailhead.

So I couldn't drink it. So I put it in the travel mug, closed it up, did the trail ride, drove home that night, totally forgot about it. The next morning, like probably 12 hours later, it was still hot in there when I opened it up. Those things are amazing. Still too hot to drink. Still too hot to drink. It was amazing. So they worked really, really well.

Well, thanks, thank you. Boom, drop the outro music. Thank you for listening. Tune back in next time. Maybe it'll be one next week. Maybe the week after. We're trying to talk Eric into doing this every week. Thanks for watching, guys.

It's not watching, Eric. Thanks for listening. Shit. Thanks, guys. Bye. That's funny. Thanks, everybody.