That Triathlon Life Podcast - Botox in triathlon, racing injured, and choosing the right time to race a full ironman

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

This week we kick things off with some running, cycling, and triathlon news from the LA Marathon, Strade Bianche, and Ironman New Zealand before doing our best to answer as many listener questions as possible. Halfway through we try out a new segment: The Newlyshreds. Let us know in the comments if you’re into it! Our questions this week brought us to discussing:Racing the Ironman 70.3 World Championships while injuredOptimizing and clarifying how to qualify for WorldsWhat race shoes to wear when running loops on clay or dirtHow much time to wait after a 70.3 before racing a fullMinimum swim volume to complete a sprint triathlonWhen racing locally, how much to ride the course before race dayStrava “Athlete Intelligence”If we were Pokémon, who would we be?How to get maintenance tips when working on an older bikeOur go-to quick and healthy mealsTidiness and OCDThe Alcatraz swim and how to approach itFlying mounts for 70.3 and full Ironman racingBotox and triathlonA big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive! To submit a question for the podcast and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcastWetsuit recommendation: Orca Float V2

Hey, everyone. Welcome to That Triathlon Life podcast. I'm Eric Loggersome. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldstone. Welcome to our podcast. It's about triathlon. Paul and I are both professional athletes. Nick is a professional musician, amateur triathlet. And the way that we run this show is we talk about what's going on in our lives and in the triathlon world and some other worlds from bike run. We love all of it. And then the bulk of the show, we take questions from people who ride in. So if you have ever written in, we really appreciate it. And if you are waiting, now is your chance. People last week did heed our call and we got a lot of questions. And in fact, I think we're going to try to set a record. today with the most amount of questions answered. Not that we're going for volume. We go for quality here, but today we're going to go for volume. Take it away, Nick. I think actually, you know, you've got some news. We've got some stuff. We've got house news. It's a devastating thing that happened last night. Do we want to do like our news or the world news first? Why don't we start with your news first and then we'll accelerate into the world of sport news. But you, I don't even know

this news because you said you wanted to save it for the pod. I don't even think we're allowed to call it devastating since there's actual devastating things happening in the world? Fair. Fair. I thought I said it was unfortunate. I thought I said it with an appropriate amount of sarcasm in my voice. Do you want to tell the story since you were the most mad about it? I don't even think I was the most mad.

I was mad after the fact, you know, repeatedly. So what happened? Paula made, in my opinion, the best banana bread that she has ever made. I knew that's where the story was going. You already know. If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you probably also know what's going to happen. So our wonderful, beautiful dog is an angel.

And if you've listened to the podcast, like recently the latest big episode, he got locked in the room with like 200 donut holes. Didn't touch a single one. At nose level. At nose level, very importantly. On the coffee table for a couple hours, didn't touch a single one. But Paul and I go to do.

date night after she makes this beautiful banana bread. We're coming home. We're both daydreaming, night dreaming, whatever, fantasizing about finishing off this banana bread. And what do we find on the countertop, but an empty banana bread tray? In the place where it was. It was not on the floor, the knife that was like in the banana bread ready to cut the banana bread into small pieces, still in the banana bed tray, but no banana bread. Yeah, to be fair, he left like the crispy edges. I see. So he didn't even have the decency to finish it off. He left you the butts of the bread.

There was so much chocolate in there too. So we were kind of hoping he would die. Tragically. Or at least feel really sick, which I think he did. Because he was like in a coma for the whole night. But we came in and he like kind of walked behind the corner wagging his tail, but looking at us like he did something bad. Oh, you knew?

Could you tell? Are you mad at me? Oh, he 100% knew he was bad. But, like, while he was doing it, you have to imagine he's thinking, well, I'm already in trouble. Might as well eat it all. Might as well finish it off. So he has a thing for banana bread. Nothing else has he ever done that for.

You could have a piece of steak on the countertop on a coffee table. He wouldn't touch it. It's actually insane. This is his third full loaf of chocolate chip banana bread, and he's still here to tell. If anyone knows why dogs have a thing for banana bread. We're very curious. The major thing Like honestly why I was bummed about it is like

I got this chicken sandwich with bacon on it And I set the side of the bacon And I was bringing it home to give Flint some of this bacon And then you know And we'd had a great day together Like I took him for an hour drive in the car And my boredom And he had his face out the one

Like it was great And then he just like betrays me By eating my banana bread So the bacon is still in the fridge And I'm TBD I might still give it to him Because I don't think he remembers at this point It's been 24 hours

Right Yeah, I'm surprised he remembered by the time you guys came home. Yeah. But they know. Anyway, this is dragged on approximately three minutes too long. His memory was jogged. Well, Mike, have you guys heard shame on? Wow, I'm like George Bush.

Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me. I feel like this is the third time now that Flynn has eaten a blowful banana bread off of the counter. In six years. I see.

This is not often enough to like remember. I see. I see. Paul is right. That's what happened, but let's get on to what you've prepped. A lot of stuff happened this week. A lot of stuff happened this week.

Because it was going to be so hot, I don't know if you guys heard about this, and I'm very curious what you think about this. The L.A. marathon organizers decided that since the course at mile 18 passes the finish and then you do an extra eight miles to come back to the finish, it was going to be so hot that they offered all of the amateur racers

the chance to stop at mile 18 and finish and get their finisher medal. Whoa. Yes. See, I've always felt like I think it's unfair that in triathons they like shorten the swim frequently for random different things and that it can be a bazillion degrees outside

and they're like, no, you're running the whole distance even though people get heat stroke like every single time we do this. It wasn't that hot though. It actually ended up being, it was like 85 degrees. Yeah, you finish it. You've been. Right. It's hot. It's hot. But you trained for a marathon in Southern California, not in Alaska or in Antarctica. It can get that hot. I don't know. I mean, people come in from other places, but this is interesting. I kind of feel like... Did anyone take that option? Yeah, yeah. But most people did not, but people did take that option. The thing about it is like you get to that point in the marathon and that's where you hit the wall even if it's not hot. So it's obviously very tempting to finish there, even if it's not because of heat.

It gives you that option. Yeah. It's a dangerous psychological game. Yes. Yes. I agree. So I don't really necessarily think you should get a finisher's medal. Would you even want it? I don't think so. I think that's

what I think you wouldn't want it. You'd just be like, you know what? I was not that in shape. I was like dreading this anyway. It's super freaking hot. I'm happy to stop here. You know, they didn't have a 10K option. So whatever. I'm not going to like go around and say I did the L.A. a marathon without explaining this crazy situation.

Yeah, ultimately it's for everyone's doing it. Yeah, it's not like getting a, you know, they're not getting a marathon tattoo. Well, this is what, when you said, Eric, what about when they cancel the swim and an Iron Man, you still get your Iron Man finisher metal, you know, so that's, but everyone has to do the shortened course, so it's a little different, but there is a, it feels like there's a little play in there. Yeah, I don't know, maybe it just, it just kind of like feels a little bit indicative of, okay, not every single person is out here to like get their fastest marathon time and that's the entire thing.

And there's some people that are okay with bailing a little early and next time I'll do the whole marathon. But I was out there. I got the snacks on course and it was a vibe. Right. And you started early. But moving on to the pro race, there was the women's race. I thought what was really cool about this is this woman, Prisca Cherono. She won with 225-18 and she's 45-year-old mother of three. three from Kenya. And the professional field. And the professional field. So L.A. Marathon famously does not have a super strong professional field or amateur field for that matter.

But still, to win a race, there's prize money. And she was also actually the overall winner. She got an extra $10,000 for being the first across the line. The women started at about 15, 16 minutes before the men. So she won. But the real news of the day came from the men's finish. because with, I would say, a hundred meters to go, there was this helicopter camera of the leader,

and he seemed like he clearly had it. There was no one 20 meters behind him. There was no one there. And as he's getting closer and closer to the finish, you see the second place guy who's looking like he's going twice as fast, starting to catch him. And spoiler, if you want to see this, pause the podcast, and watch it right now.

Okay, there's your warning. The second place guy catches him at the tape and beat him by 0.01 seconds to win the L.A. Marathon. Full-blown finish, Cam. Yes. They had to go to the camera and everyone was saying that the tape isn't actually what decides the finish. There is an actual line. And everyone, you know, this was all over the internet of this finish because it was so dramatic. Also, the guy who ended up getting second collapsed over the line and had to be pulled off of a stretcher. He was so rigged up.

You could just see it in that whole last 100 meters, just falling apart. And what we found out, and I do not see this in most of the articles about this, someone on social media posted the video of about maybe 150 to go. The leader who was leading at the time, who ended up getting second, he was getting led. There's the media car, there's the car with the time on the top, there's the modos. They all, a bit from the finish, pull off to the side. to let him cross the finish line by himself, and he followed them the wrong way

to where the media cars go. And then he had to backtrack. He probably lost like 10 seconds. He had to backtrack and run to the finish. So he lost the race right there. Yeah. He was so cross-eyed. He was like fully delusional at that point, for sure.

Brutal. Yeah. Yeah. He was losing it. So if you haven't seen it, check it out. Really rough. The Strade Bianca happened and Tare was supposed to do well here and he did. He won with 80 kilometers to go.

He pulled away and won. The French guy who everyone's been talking about, Paul Sexas, he got second really great performance. I think there was some drama in the women's race. Like some people went off course. Yes, they did. Demi following went off course. Yes. She did and she was not that upset about it apparently.

Like she wasn't annoyed. Well, her teammate ended up winning and coming third. And the women's race was much more exciting to watch actually. Like it was a nail-biter until the end. What is the deal with all the going off course lately? It's like every single race. Yeah, she was led off course. It was not her fault.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bummer. And if you're an athlete, you're not going to not follow the lead media car. Of course. It happened in the U.S. half marathon championships as well. The top three clearly were going to win one off course as well.

And then did it up coming like 11, 12, 13th. Yeah. How does that happen? Does anyone know how the people who are the media motors or whoever are, do they have a GPS file they're following? Are they supposed to be led by someone on course? I don't know. That would be great to understand. Yeah.

But it's not, I don't think people are saying, oh, it's up to the athlete to know the course. But when you're a cyclist who's racing every weekend on different courses, and if someone's leading you a different way, you assume maybe if you did know it that the course had been changed for a crash or something like this. And then for the running race, this is the last kilometer of a fast half marathon.

You're not thinking straight. You're just following who's leading you. So I don't think it's on the athlete at all. No, I think anybody who comments on this and is like, oh, they're so dumb. They should just ignore the media mode has never been anywhere near this situation. And if you've been in this situation,

leading a race, following a motorcycle, there's no way that you're going to not follow it when it does something. Yeah. That's so heartbreaking. Unless it's really heartbreaking. Just like drills a bunch of cones

going straight through a line of cones. You're trusting that person that they're thinking more clearly than you are. Right, right. Well, Elise Chabby did win the race for the women's in the Strad de Bianca. So Paul, thanks for that.

Appreciate that. Finally, Iron Man New Zealand was the first Ironman race with the new 20-meter draft rule for the pros. So this was kind of interesting. It was also almost every, yeah, it was the first Iron Man of the year. So we had on the men's side, Trevor Foley won, which was the first American to win this race in a long time. And he ran a 235 marathon. No, that's not true. It's the first American male to win it in a long time.

Right, which is, I have a thing on that too because Kat won the women's race. And she beat Chelsea's record by 11 minutes on it. Yeah. And I think also Chelsea's run record got beat by Tamara. So it was really fast race overall on the women's side. Yeah. Which I think is a little bit of it because it's a pro series race. It attracted some really fast people this early in the year on a different continent. Yeah. So we talk about Oceanside being kind of an early place to have a really good race. This is almost a month before that. And it's a full. And this is a result of the pro series, right? I mean, at least I don't remember

Iron Man New Zealand having stacked start lists until like Pro Series started becoming a thing. Yeah. I could be wrong. Well, yeah, you make it a pro series race and suddenly it becomes really appealing to spread out your Iron Man's a little more if you're not cramming three Iron Man's into six months.

Yeah. I think it's not a bad idea. But it's really hard to finish the season in December at a T-100 and then get ready for a March Iron Man. I think it really works better if your last race of the year is Kona in October. You take your offseason and you have a bit of a longer build into it. Totally.

Also, it's still challenging, though, because most people live in a climate that's hard to train for an Iron Man through the winter. So you have to go on camps or be really good at riding the trainer. But kudos to everyone who went and especially who went and performed well. I think it paid off for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking about how hot it was for us when we were. over there. I was imagining it. Yeah, I was wondering that if it's like different at this time of year.

Because the UV index was just insane for 70.3 worlds in December. We were cooking in the sun. And if we were saying like if it had been an Iron Man and you were racing for four or five hours longer, it'd be totally cooked. It's not as much later. That's crazy. Yeah. Do you guys feel like the results would have been any different if the draft rule wasn't at 20 meters? I think so on the men's side. Do you think Pierre LeCora would have won? I don't know who would have won, but I think it's cool that two men, well, the podium was Pierre LeCour was second and Matt Hanson was third.

And those are traditionally athletes that come out, well, not Pierre, he's a good swimmer. But Matt and Trevor, a little further back, rides super hard, but usually can't really put a dent in the front because they're all riding in a pack. But in this race, they could put a dent in them. And they're used to coming out and riding really hard and running really hard. and now that pays off. So I think it really impacts the race. Yeah. It is kind of cool to see that now.

Yeah. It's already working. We're already seeing the changes. For sure. I think you can still ride kind of in a pack, like at least visually having someone in front of you, because Kat and Hanna Berry and Lottie Wilms, which ended up being the podium,

we're still riding together, quote unquote, like they were with each other, but obviously getting left less of a draft effect than at 12 meters. But no matter what, still at 20 meters, you do get a boost of like riding with someone, not being by yourself, staying on top of it, and having a bit of a carrot if you're behind. So do you think, obviously it's clear to see how it might affect the bike, but do you think this might affect the way people swim? I don't know.

I'm always swimming as fast as I possibly can. I feel like at a camera for it was Mark who said this on Pro Try News or where exactly heard it, but it's like definitely making it, if you are a fast swimmer, there's more motivation to actually swim fast because it's not like, oh, guaranteed I'm just going to get rolled up by 40 guys or 40 women, like within two minutes, you might actually have more motivation to swim really fast and then bike the first 40K kind of hard. I also think the swim matters a lot as evidenced by two people that are usually not in the front of the swim.

Trevor and Cat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Still matters, but it's not devastating if you're behind. True. Yeah. Cool.

Okay, so normally we would do a segment here, but we're going to save that for halfway through our kind of half rapid fire style questions to keep things moving along a little bit. So as Eric said earlier, thank you everyone for submitting your questions. This week we're going to do, we're going to try to break our record here for question answering. You can submit your questions at that triathlon life.com. podcast, and you can also become a podcast supporter there, which is fun because this week, podcast supporters are going to get a little visual aid element of our segment.

And we're going to play a little, a game called the, you've heard of the newlyweds? This is the newly shreds. It's the TTL edition version of this. Okay. Maybe it needs a jingle. I don't know. We'll see. But we'll start with questions right off the back, because we have no time to waste.

This one is from Caroline. Hi, Paula, Eric and Nick. I qualified for niece, but am now injured. Best case scenario is that I can compete in the swim and bike and swallow my pride to walk the run and hope to finish under the course cutoff. Worst case is I take a DNF and only compete in the swim. My question is, is it worth going to get some experience and soak up the atmosphere or should I take the partial refund? It would be only my second 70.3. I had a did not start the one, I had to DNS the one I had planned for this year and hope to qualify again next year. That said, there's also a chance that I will never run again.

Oh, boy, that's harsh. Wishing Erica smooth recovery and return to competition, thanks, Caroline. Also, the little additional information here that's important is that Caroline is getting a complicated procedure. It's a knee replacement. Paul, is that right? I believe that's what it said in the email. Yeah. And so there's a very small chance that she will be recovered by this race.

according to her. So what does this mean to you guys? When I first read it, I thought it's definitely worth trying to go and injuries get better. And then when I saw that it's like a pretty major surgery, I thought you definitely shouldn't go. I think putting the pressure on yourself of having a deadline, it's kind of like Eric getting his surgery. He's not putting anything on the calendar because having this deadline is stressful in a way that you might accelerate your, come back at an inappropriate rate or, you know, become sad or, you know, it makes it worse to go through the recovery when you have a deadline like this. Yeah. What I'm doing, which is something that you could do,

is there's like an open water swim that's halfway through my recovery timeline. That's going to give me an excuse or a reason to be more diligent with swimming, but it has nothing to, it's not contingent upon my, you know, your knee or my hip being ready in time. and it won't cause me to push it, like Paula said. But it is an event that feels important. I mean, I guess I can kind of speak to this because I went to a World Championship injured, knowing there was a good chance I wouldn't finish the run. And it was a horrible experience.

I wouldn't suggest anyone do that. It's not fun afterwards. It's really hard to enjoy it. It makes the lead in not fun. And it makes you want to just go home right after. So if you could get half of your money back right now, that's great. Also, think about what you'd save on the flights, the accommodation. You're going to save so much money if you're thinking it from a financial perspective.

I don't know. Usually I'd tell people to go for it, but in this situation, I might say... I'm on team. Don't go for it and be careful and do the recovery, right? Although, if there were a race to go to just to soak up the vibes, it is a world championship. This is how I feel. I'm on team, be careful. and go for it.

So don't do anything that will hurt you, but it is such a cool vibe as an age grouper. And I think if you go in, not thinking you might be able to finish, but knowing you won't, maybe it will eliminate the thing that Paula is warning you about, which is like the feeling of, oh, that sucked. The thing about this type of surgery, though,

it's not like it just affects the run. There's no way you're going to get bike fit enough to complete a course like this hilly and this hard. Oh, that is the other. piece, right? You can't just soft pedal this spike. Yeah, you have to get up the hill hard and it makes it harder to get the cutoff time because the course is

so hilly. I think Paul is right. You're going to make yourself miserable trying to get ready and then thinking about how you could have been in the whatever. I think it to split the difference, like you could do what Nick's saying and just like book to travel and go and hang out but not race if that's not going to tear you apart with FOMO.

But don't do this like, oh maybe I'll just bike until it hurts or, you know, like I don't think that's going to be fun. I love that. I think that is the perfect. If you can afford it, that is the perfect compromise. Because you did earn the vibe. You just now, you can't do the race, but you earned being there as part of the vibe. Yeah.

Best case scenario, you got friends who are racing and you can be there a support crew and feel the whole thing. Yep. Yep. Great. Awesome. Well, good luck, Caroline. And I hope the surgery goes well. Next one is from TJ.

Hey, Team T.L. Really appreciate the work your team does to make such a great podcast. I know this has already been addressed. But the more I read about it, the less I understand. This is a real Michael Scott situation where I need you to. explain it to me like I'm five. It's my goal this year to qualify for 70.3 world championships, and I'm trying to fully comprehend this as to know which time to strive for. I'm in the 30 to 34 age group, which seems extremely competitive. My best 70.3 is a four hour 51 minute, but I've had

big improvements lately. It seems there is no exact time that will qualify you for 70.3 worlds. It's based off how you do versus the field that day, question mark. If this is true, would it be easier to compete at a smaller 70.3 race compared to ones that sell out. I guess the only real answer is to get faster, but trying to be strategic. T.J. I have no idea. Yeah, I feel like you have the most intimate understanding of this topic, Nick. Especially with the new criteria is and stuff. Right. I mean, it is the same for the pros in a certain way, which is you go to less competitive

races, you're more likely to get your world slot, right? And it's the same for age groupers. You go to less competitive races, you're more likely to get your world slot. but it really is. It used to be more luck of the draw. Now, theoretically, it should be less of a luck of the draw because of the way that they wait these times. If you have a truly good race, then you're placed higher up in the performance pool,

which is this new system that Iron Man does, to try and equalize times across different ages. So before, you could have had a really great time, but three guys show up in your age group, let's say, that are faster than you are, and then you have no chance of getting the slot if they take theirs. Whereas now, if you have a really good time compared to the rest of the field when adjusted for age, it still gives you a great shot at snagging one of those slots.

So it's still worth it to go as hard as you can, even if you know for a fact, you'll be, you know, fourth or fifth in your age group. It is just about getting faster, but if you can pick races that are less competitive, you know, like racing at Oceanside would not be a good place to try to get your qualification because it's such a hotly competitive race. but maybe somewhere in, for example, I've heard that races in Asia are in general less competitive. So if you're willing to travel to there to get your slot,

you would increase your chances a lot. And if you have a 451, that is a pretty good time. I qualified in Moro Bay with, I think, 445. And I got the last. That's not too far off? No, it's not far off. And that was the last slot in my age group. I barely made it.

So it is possible, especially depending on where you are. Is there any way to know which race is? might be lower attendance or easier, quote-unquote? Here's what I would do. I don't know if there's technically a way. T.J. was saying that they could check if they sell out or not. That's one way to know. But the other way that you could do it is you could go on the USAAT website

and see what... USAT assigns scores to finishing times. And you could look at a few races and see, and you can compare these A-to-A. You can compare the scores and see, oh, where there are a lot of people over 110 score at this race? not many over here, that's the way I would probably do that to check for less competitive races. I also think new races

will be less competitive. Like Dallas. Or like the Northern California, Redding race, maybe. Even though California is kind of tough. The West Coast of General is kind of tough. Races that don't have a reputation yet? Yeah, that's a good idea. A new race. Yeah.

Like that. Okay. Next question here is from Alex. Hi, guys. I have a potentially complicated shoe question regarding a cool event. I'm likely doing the Fenway Park Marathon. That's so cool, which is a marathon fundraiser consisting of 116 laps around Fenway Park, which is where the Boston Red Sox play, around the warning track. So the warning track is within the stadium, but on the outside of the stadium. If you've

ever seen those races, they sometimes do it, like the seventh inning with like, they let a fan get a lead, and then their track guy in a funny suit tries to catch them by the end. That's the warning track. Nice. The surface is a well-maintained gravel or clay, although not super competitive. I don't want to run a marathon

without putting my best foot forward, so I'd want to try for a new PR. What shoes do you recommend for this surface? Should I just treat it as a road race and wear my usual carbons, adjust to something with more grip and stability, or ditch the carbons altogether? Alex.

So for context here, it's not just running on this dirt clay mixture. It's also you have so many turns. 116 times like six turns, you know, and they're not 90-degree turns. I mean, the one around home plate basically is a 90-degree turn. So would you still wear regular pillow shoes, carbon racing shoes? The race in Vancouver, the T-100 in Vancouver, was primarily on relatively good quality gravel. So it was not on pavement.

And it was quite annoying to wear super shoes with zero grip. You could feel your foot slipping with every step. And like we've said before, super shoes are not great for corners. But some are better than others. I think Nike's a pretty tippy and then I don't know. I think the ons are actually a little bit more stable. I know I'm biased. I feel like this is a bit of a replay of last week's question where we broke this down real hard for somebody.

For the golf course. I was thinking the Cloud Ultra Pro, which is the race trail shoe might be good because it feels super stable. It has grip. and it has boing. Boing. I love boing. End of question, end of discussion. I think that's it.

With the boing. I think that's it. The boing is the way to go. Yeah. But no matter what, carbon shoes are faster than training shoes. I mean, if you're going to pick shoes that you already have in your arsenal, don't pick your training shoes. Pick your carbon shoes for sure. Yeah.

Who cares about the corners? Deal with the slippage. You might have a sore ankle the next day. Yeah. But it's going to be faster for sure. And you'll get less sore. Right, right, cool. Next question here is from Austin. Hey, TTL, I've been listening to the podcast for a few months now. Love it. My question is, I'm training for my first 70.3 in July and can feel the itch of potentially wanting to do a full at some point. How much time would you all think is needed to train after completing my 70.3? I'm an athletic trainer in professional hockey. So my race window is only a few months in the summer. Thanks for all the fun episodes and good luck with the labrum recovery. Eric, we have a ton in the hockey world and it's always. night and day when they're fully recovered.

Cheers, Austin. That's great to hear. Love to hear it. Yeah, because I'm going to be doing hockey-level maneuvers, for sure. Checking people on the course. Yeah, pivoting, turn in. It's kind of crazy to think that you want to do a full when you haven't even done a half yet. I would just take it one step at a time. And also, you might just want to do another half

because they're way better. But I think you could do a half in June and a full in August, for sure. Yeah, I think so. Especially if you treat that half. knowing you're going to do a full. Yes, you're doing a little bit longer rides. Yeah, but geez, if you've never done a triathlon before, I would suggest doing your first full in 2027. Why rush into it?

This is like so common, you guys. Like, as having worked in a triathlon shop, the number of people that walked through the door and were like, so I signed up for an Ironman in six months, what do I need to buy? Don't have a bike, don't have a wetsuit, don't have anything at all. But, you know, saw Iron Man on TV.

This is so common. I mean, it is much more challenging to finish and therefore has maybe a little bit more prestige or bragging potential. I mean, it sounds so hard to do one. And I've never done one. I can see the ambition of doing something extremely hard that sounds impossible.

That's the idea. It's not like, I want to do this. This is going to be my new sport. This is like, this is a crazy thing. And then next year I'm going to like do rim to rim to rim. And then the year after that, I'm going to climb, kill them and jump. So if you're that set on it, you can for sure do one in the summer.

Yep. Whenever I hear this, I feel a bit used, you know? Because I'm like, oh, bet. No, come, come, come, come hang out with us. Don't just use us and leave us, you know? Yeah, well, that's our job to, you know. What do you mean, Nick? You've done a full.

That's the triathlon experience. Like people just like do, they've never done a triathlon. They do an Iron Man and they never do triathlon again. They never intended to do triathlon again. They're just like. I think that's pretty rare. Yeah, maybe. I ride with people who have done that, though, and I'm like, why did you do this?

I think you got to be pretty locked in on that. Otherwise, I think a lot of people do kind of like get into it and end up getting into the community and everything along the way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. That's just the job of the community and of the race itself to put on a good enough event that you want to come back for more. You're right. You're right. That's true.

That's true. It's also so expensive to invest in the gear once you have it all. Yeah. It's hard to just abort ship. Yeah. Okay, next question here is from Ash. Oh, boy. Thank you for the pronunciation guide here.

Hello from Gloucestershire. Spelled's not like that. UK. What do you think is the minimum swimming you can get away with for a sprint, or maybe Olympic distance? For context, I'm a child onset former triathlete. Wow. Already bringing that back from last episode.

I joined my first club, age 10, but I'm now 35. Haven't done much for 10 odd years, mostly sticking to trail running. I'm thinking of training for a sprint next summer. I've just broken my wrist, hence not sooner. I really enjoy swimming, gross I know, but my closest lained pool or open water spot is about an hours drive each way,

and I can't afford to go regularly long term. I'm not remotely competitive in terms of my biking or running either. Swimming was my strongest discipline, so the time doesn't really matter. I just don't want to feel like crap getting out during the swim. Good luck to Eric on his hip-healing ash. Well, that's too bad. You will always feel like crap getting out of the water,

so that's never going to change. But this question is still valid. So what do you think? I'll be like, what do you, what does people, like we answer this question so often are a question similar to this? And it's always kind of the same answer. It's like, how slow are you comfortable going?

Because you could not swim a single time. You could put on a wetsuit and you could do like double arm backstroke and get through a sprint trathon. No problem. Double arm backstroke is the ultimate. Feeling completely fine. So like, are you comfortable with, that and then you just like ratchet up the number of swims that you're going to do from there.

I think you should at least go to that pool one time and swim whatever the race distances once straight through just so you can tell yourself that you can do it. I think that'll tell you a lot. Yeah. And then put on the wetsuit for the race and you're floating and you're totally fine. Yeah. Oh, boy. That's kind of a good idea except when you do anything.

in practice that replicates what you're going to do in the race, it feels seven million times harder. Yeah. Like if you run a half marathon in a workout, it's going to feel way worse than in a race or way longer than a race. Yeah. Even if you swim 2K in the pool, it's going to feel like never ending. Whereas in a race, it kind of goes by quicker. But yeah, I guess if you can do it in a pool, you could do it in the race. There you go.

Yeah. To never have done it kind of would scare me too much. But like this person, she said that she did triathlon back. and then a while. Yeah, you're right. So, like, yeah, you can do it straight off the couch. Pretty confident. Probably, probably true.

Wow. I love the idea of that, though. There's for sure people who do that. Next question here is from Fernando. Hey, guys, I've been thinking about this question for a while, especially now that the T-100 Spain will be in the city where I live. When training for local races, how would you find the balance between knowing the course perfectly in order to get a home court advantage versus getting so familiar with it that

you no longer feel the excitement on race. race day. Thanks for everything, Fernando. You know, I was thinking about this last week and just kind of not this exact thing, but what occurs to me is if you're local, you're not going to, you don't need to go out and

ride the course like in its entirety frequently slash maybe ever. I think if you like do a training ride on the back half of it sometimes because that's where you ride normally and you know every inch of it, like you know the roads so you know what it's going to feel like, you know where the big climb is, I definitely wouldn't go out

and like do multiple reps of like the entire course. I think that's a recipe for setting yourself up for like being a little intimidated by how long it is and stuff. I think instead of thinking about the losing excitement for the race, having people come to your hometown and race is enough excitement in itself to make the course not feel like, oh, I've been there, done that. because I've raised in Edmonton before where I grew up and ridden those roads 10 million times. And it was the most exciting race of the entire year for me because people were coming to my city to do the course and to see these roads that I train on all the time. And that was cool to me. So there is a little bit of, I think, a home field advantage to knowing the course so well and to having your friends and family watching you and to sleeping in your own bed.

So that's way more of a benefit than feeling a bit stale by the course if it's something you ride all the time. For sure. This is kind of how the same way I feel about doing the High Cascades 100 mountain bike race here in town. I've ridden every single trail and I rode like a little bit of the actual connections that you need to make in the race. But certainly didn't feel like I needed to go do each, you know, in order the entire course. And yeah, there's a whole excitement of people that you don't, people that you know come and experience. your home place. Right.

Fun. Next question here is from Kim. Long time from the very beginning listener and current TTL team member, Eastern Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador? Wow. So Newfoundland is the dog or is the place? Wait, isn't Newfoundland? No, it's just a place.

It's not a kind of dog, right? Yeah, it is. Oh, it is. But it's also a place. Yeah. So I'm a little confused here because Labrador is not a place, right? No, Labrador is a place as well. Really? Newfoundland and Labrador are both places and dogs?

Yes. Okay, so, Kim, I guess you're telling us where you live, not their two dogs, but lots of talk of Strava items recently. My question is, for those who have the paid subscriptions and get the athlete intelligence feedback after a workout is posted, how reliable do we think the info in this recap is? They often seem to be quite positive and leave me with a good vibe, even if I think the workout hadn't gone well. But are they accurate? Your commitment to all you're doing for the sport is amazing. Great respect. Appreciate any thoughts on this.

Cheers. Kim. First of all, Newfoundland and Labrador is a province. And Newfoundland is the island in the mainland region is Labrador. Okay. So let's go back for a second. So the name of the province is three words, Newfoundland and Labrador. then there are places called Newfoundland

and there are places called Labrador and then there's a dog called a Newfoundland and a dog called Labrador, is that right? Am I in inception? Am I being punked? What's the question? I missed it. The Strava athlete intelligence thing, the little AI recap thing.

I see, okay, okay. I think it's super entertaining and fun to screenshot and send to your friends. I'm not changing my training based on it. Really? You're not going to go against your coach based on these. Strava athlete intelligence?

No, but it is wildly more positive than my coach. I agree. Yeah, I literally read it just to make fun of it. That's how I feel about it. Does it have a tell me more button?

It does. It does. Don't stop. Yeah. Tell me how great I am. She actually cut and pasted this huge paragraph into the question

in case we weren't familiar with the lingo, which we are familiar. But you can disable that on your Strava, which I have done. Okay, okay. Yeah, it's like your fastest running pace in five days.

I'm like, what? Why do I care? Strong pace over rough terrain and with great elevation gain. Keep pushing. Yeah, yeah. I love it. So what's the basis of the question? Do we trust it?

Do we trust it? Basically, I... No, we don't trust it. It's not a real human. No. It's just... It also makes up facts sometimes. It feels big beta.

wrong sometimes. Right now to me. But I'm sure it'll get better over time. I just don't like AI things in general. But it's nothing against Strava. Right. I would definitely not upgrade to premium for that feature. For sure. Yeah. I agree.

Next question here, and it's our last one before her little segment. This is from Gabby. Hey, here's a random one for the Rapid Fire style week of questions. If you were a Pokemon, what would you be? Hoping for a speedy recovery for Eric. Cheers, Gabby. Eric, if we could capture all these good vibes going your way for recovery and direct them towards your hip, you'd be healed already.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been, I feel like when I use the laptop, they're just like, Osma, I was seeing the buzzing, buzzing into your hip. I love it. I couldn't even name one Pokemon if you were going to pay me $1 million. You could name. There's a turtle one. No, I couldn't. Charzard was like super rare. Wait, Paula, I'm going to name one and you're going to tell me that you have heard about this

Pokemon before. The yellow one. The yellow one with the, with the lightning. both ears and the tail. Pikachu. Boom. Nailed it. Okay, I get a million dollars.

I got to be Pikachu. Eric, you named the one that I see myself as. Charzard? No. Oh, they both have... Oh, you're... I think you're confused. I think you're putting Bowser

and Charzart together because Charzard does not have a shell. No, no, no. I was saying there was a turtle one. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I know that there's one called Charzard because it was like super rare. Right.

But why is this question is so ridiculous. Do you know enough about them to be like on that one? First of all, I had all 150 playing cards and I played the game so I do know all of them. All right, Nick, you just tell us which Pokemon we are then. Paula is Pikachu. For sure. Okay.

Why? Because you're like the main character energy kind of and Pikachu is like the main character of the 150. Is that, how am I main character energy? Or the franchise player. I mean, you're like the main character of this pod. You're kind of like our star athlete and everyone loves you.

Yes. You twisted that to be positive. What? How else would it be positive? Is he also a little negative shithead sometimes? No. Not at all. He's actually, you are unlike each other in that way.

He's always positive. And there are the solarities end. Yeah. Yeah. No, Eric, I'd say you might be my favorite Pokemon growing up, which was Machamp. He's like, he's very strong. He's a very strong Pokemon. He's like the strongest.

Eric does have big biceps now. I'll do some, I'm from his European crutches. No, I'm doing like some upper body focused little stuff in the gym because I can't do my lower body. So I was doing some bicep curls with the TRX. Nice. Pretty sore right now. No big deal.

So yeah, I'm a champ. That's me. Matchamp. And I was going to give myself squirtle because I always liked the squirtle. That is just fun to say. Okay. Now, if you are a podcast supporter, first of all, we so appreciate you being a podcast supporter.

And we know that this is mostly something that you do out of appreciation for the podcast. But we do like to every once in a while do some fun little things. So this is going to be the podcast listeners are going to get this on audio, but you're going to get this on video as well. We're going to play a little game. I already teased it before called the Newly Shreds game. Now, Eric and Paula both have pen and paper or pencil and paper. And we're going to play, this is how it's going to work.

We all have a pencil and paper. You have one to, right? Okay, great. Yes, yes. We do. Oh, yes, I do too. Sorry. And we are each going to say, of the three of us, who would fare best in these questions? Okay.

Or not necessarily fair best, but you'll pick up on this as I'm saying it. We write it on the piece of paper and then we show it to the screen. Exactly. Okay, three, two, one, reveal. Exactly. All right, exactly. So here's the first one. Who would survive longest in a zombie.

apocalypse, okay? Maybe I'll put some Jeopardy music in here. Can we say it? We don't say it, we write it down. Can we say ourselves? You can say yourselves, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not an ego thing here. We're trying to go for reality. Oh, I forgot my horrible handwriting's going to be on full display here. We can just have our name on each of our names on a piece of paper and then flash who it is. Wow, you just turned it to do a system there. That's true. Okay. We can, We can do that. We don't need to write every time.

We just have a flash card with all three names. All right. So it's just more front end work versus in the middle. I might just do a little hybrid, which is write this one down. If it happens to work the next time, I won't rewrite it. There you go. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Yes.

Okay. We're using brand of paper. Paula, we're doing a three to one reveal. That's the point of the game. This is might as well. Three, two, one reveal. Eric, we can't see yours. Can you bring it close to the camera?

Paul. Paul. You think I would? Paul. Yeah, because I would save you and then I would be dead. He would sacrifice themselves. Yeah. That's cute.

That reminds me of Dwight Shrewd in the office when they're like, if the world was ending, like, you know, I forget exactly what it was, but it was like, Dwight, what if you were dead? And he goes, oh, please, if I were dead, you've died two weeks ago. Right. It's like Eric would save us all. Yeah. Eric for sure is the most able to do this. Okay, next one here. Who is most likely to accidentally start a small fire?

Okay. Write this down if you need to. Three, two, one. Why me? Because you're doing mechanicky shit. That's true. All three of us did not change our answers for that one. You think I'd be most likely to start a fire?

You just kind of like get in a rush sometimes and like bump stuff and yeah, I could see like, you know, accidentally knocking a paper towel onto like the gas stove or something. Our apocalypse gas stove. Yeah. Now that we're in end times. Wow. Like Paula hits her head on like the shelf and the van like three times a day and we've had this van for three years. So that's where that's where my thing came from. Got it.

Okay. And every time I'm like, we're getting into this stupid van. Just kidding. How dare they install that there? Okay, who would get kicked out of a fancy restaurant first? Okay. I need to write this one down. I don't think any of us would.

We're so mature and polite. We are. We are. I mean, I can explain my answer. Let's just see. Okay. Yeah, okay. You ready?

Right? Ready? Eric's still writing. I have a mechanical pencil. Same. You need a surface He needs a back He's riding in the air

I think I just have like a You know Not even a number two Like a number one Yeah use this book And then burn it later Number two Taekondoroga Funny

Hi bud Okay Oh Flynn's here Does his breath smell like Banana bread and betrayal Oh Okay There we go

So Paula Paula put up Flynn And then the two of us Put up Paula You think I'd get kicked out of a fancy restaurant You know what? You're either the least likely or the most likely.

The reason that I said you is because I'll just let myself get taken advantage of endlessly, even if somebody's doing something shitty or brings me like the wrong food and you actually speak up. So you're like the only, I'm just not even going to start a confrontation. Interesting. I think you would get kicked out for like standing up for yourself, not for being the shit. But I do think of the three of us, Paula is the one that has the best manners, is the most like polite. Like classically trained. Yeah.

Even if it's fake on the surface. Well, I mean, manners and politeness kind of are fake, right? But it's still about knowing what you're supposed to do. Yes. So I just like Paula, you sometimes, if it's a very fancy place, maybe I could see you saying, I don't know, like something like that. But otherwise, I don't think any of us would get kicked out. No. We're all pretty good in a wide variety of situations.

You'd have to be like a wild human to get kicked out of restaurant. Yes, correct. Yeah. Yeah. Most people we know would never. Right. Right. Okay.

And then the final one here is who is the most likely to forget their passport on an international trip? Oh. Sorry. Sorry, Eric. Maybe we could reuse the Flynn side. Three, two, one. Everyone wrote Eric. Yeah.

Well, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to. even try to defend myself. I have forgotten my past. I don't know visually that was the best game because you could barely read our papers. But it's still fun. I also think, though. I mean, you also announced on the podcast what each of us said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes.

I mean, that kind of like defeats the purpose of the segment, does it not? Well, I think there's an element of FOMO that might happen if you would want to see those actually holding them up. And we're referencing to the fact that you can't read the writing. You know, if someone's watching, that's part of it. Yeah, it's fine.

It's fine. You can just do a little, like, our name tag here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bing, bang, yes. That's a good idea. That's a good idea. My pencil is seriously just very faint. Yeah, well, should have thought of that, I guess.

And I have shit light right here. We'll do Sharpies next time. We do have another style of that game. If you liked it, let us know. You guys have been popping off on the Spotify comments lately, and I really appreciate that. To be fair, Nick, you said, you'll need a pencil and paper. Yeah, because I assumed it'd be something we'd be like erasing.

Your fault. Yeah, I thought originally we were going to be erasing, and then I had the idea of folding this paper so we could use all four sides if we needed to. But you're right, we only needed three. We need little whiteboards like code names. The whiteboards would be fun. That would be fun. I think in the good, so we can do the segment again, we should get whiteboards. All right.

Okay, great. Amazon. Done. Done. Put it on the podcast tab. I'll do it. do it after this. Back to questions here and oh my gosh, we are running out of time, so we got to be really fast here. Longtime listener, watcher, first time with a question. I recently inherited

a bike of my dads from the early 70s. It will be more of a display piece, but it's been in a musty basement for years. Any experience or resource recommendations, books, websites, socials for older bike refurb. Taking all suggestions or lessons learned, thanks in advance. Truly grateful for the energy and the vibes you guys bring each week. Please keep it up and have a good season. Keith from Connecticut. I had an idea, Eric. Do you remember that website, Sheldon Brown.com? Yeah. That was my idea. It's like a little like bike maintenance Bible. Yeah. I got a lot of good information on there. Yeah. Anything else you'd recommend, Eric? I mean, just kind of like as the problems come up, YouTube them? Yeah, I mean,

YouTube is kind of the answer to everything now. And I think if you Google a couple of, you know, Google will take you to YouTube. You'll probably come across a style or a person who does bike tech stuff that you like. At least that's what happens to me, especially when I'm looking at like cars or bikes or anything. You'll come across bike tech with Eric or someone else and you can dive into their entire catalog. Yep. Love it. Okay, we're going to move right along here because we got a lot to go. This is from Dot.

Hey, y'all, question on nutrition. What are some of your go-to quick, healthy-ish meals when you don't have time or don't feel like cooking? Maybe some meals you all normally cook while traveling in the van. My schedule is that is so tight I'm usually eating on the go or making something in advance or only have 20 minutes. Thanks for always keeping me entertained and motivated while training. Sincerely, Dot. Are they in the U.S.? It's hard to tell.

It doesn't say. Is the Trader Joe's like combo things? Is that a specific Instagram account that you found that does that? I don't know what you're talking about, but I was going to say Trader Joe's is a good hack for quick meals because you can buy, like for example, something I do, I'm on the 20-minute plan as well, a bag with pre-cut mixed veggies for stir-fry, and it's not frozen, they're fresh. And then you can get like the Thai wheat noodles that are pre-cooked and just need to be heated and some chicken breast or eggs or the sauces and throw it all in a pan and it's like a stir-fry in 15 minutes.

Yeah, that's good. I think eliminating some of the chopping and the, you know, the vegetable prep saves a lot of time. And although sometimes I feel wasteful buying like a bag of pre-chopped veggies, it does save a lot of time and allows you to have much more variety because you're not going to buy a whole cabbage and a whole carrot and a whole celery. But if it's chopped all in one bag, you just pour it in and it's ready. So we do that a lot. We do a lot of veggie bowls. So you could also meal prep on Sundays and just have veggies cut for the week. Make rice, make chicken, put it all together with a yummy sauce. That's a good quick option. We do a ton of pasta. And like Nick knows, I'll put like a lot of veggies in the pasta. So like add spinach, add peppers, add ground turkey, add pesto sauce, add Parmesan cheese. And it's like this one pot pasta. It's so good too.

With all the things. So, so, so, so good. You could even add broccoli with like three minutes to go in the pasta cooking time. So then you have broccoli cooking with the noodles. Is that what you do? Yeah. That is so smart. So I'll set the timer for like N plus three.

And then when it goes off, I add the broccoli and then three more minutes and it's all done. You drain it all. Broccoli is cooked properly. The noodles are cooked. And then you add in some other veggies and the sauce and the cheese and the meat. I feel like we could, I think people would be interested in your recipe for this. I've had it so many times it's so good. Like when to put in the cheese, what kind of cheese, how to cook the stuff?

Well, you can do anything. I mean, sometimes I use parmesan. Sometimes I use feta. Sometimes I'll use peppers. Sometimes we do corn, sometimes we'll do olives, sometimes we'll do pesto. So like what are the key components, though, are pasta, veggies of choice, and then like we do a pest. Is it pesto? We usually do pesto.

And Trader Joe's also has this really good red pepper pesto. It's a little bit different than just regular pesto. I really like feta cheese in it personally. I like that briny kick. And if you use kind of curlier noodles that have a lot of like sauce holding capability. Well, part of the signature of this dish When I think of it that you make it, Paula, is that you often use two different kinds of pasta.

Oh, yeah. And I love that. It feels fun. When it's the three of us eating, sometimes one thing of pasta is not enough. So we'll do. Two that are both different shapes. And you have to check the cook time

because sometimes different shapes have different cook times. Yeah. But you just do that math along with your broccoli math. Oh, so do you only do the two different types when I'm there? No, we'll do it sometimes. No, a lot of the times will end up for whatever reason because you were here with like half a bag of pasta.

And then you're just on this permanent like bag and a half rotation. Right, right. But you're right, the two different types of noodles really adds an element of fun. It's fine. It's the best. It's really fun. It's really fun. Okay, great.

Thank you, Paula. That's perfect. Next one here is from Poppy from the UK, West Sussex. Hey guys, long time listening. Second time submitting a question, Poppy, this time it's going in. Paula mentioned a couple episodes ago about the importance of tidiness, specifically the need to hoover before heading out on a bike ride, this resonated with me as I struggle to get on with my day, work, train, rest

if the house isn't completely clean and tidy. I'd love to know your cleaning routine, any product recommendations, and how often you do a full house clean. I definitely should be asking how to mitigate the need to have everything tidy 24-7, but I'm not there yet. Poppy.

No, I think it's a genetic, psychological thing. Some people have that, some people don't. The need for everything to be, in place and organized and if they're not, it causes you stress. I have that. My dad has that. Poppy clearly has that. Eric and I don't.

Well, Eric has it more than I do. I think it's not so much an on-off. I think different people have different thresholds, but there are definitely people that it's like on. Yeah. There's no sliding skill. Yeah, I love the thought of like, I come back from my bike ride and the house is completely tidy.

The laundry's put away. The dishwasher's empty. And I can actually like chill and recover as soon as I'm back from the ride. versus like coming back from the bike ride, the house is a disaster. I feel like I have a thousand things to do. Yeah. It just lets me like go and train in peace. And the way that I attack it is the house is kind of always clean,

so I'm not doing this giant clean every week. If you've got to do three workouts a day and it's got to be totally clean before each workout, dirt just cannot accumulate. Yeah, like I actually think vacuuming is quite zen. We don't have an enormous house. I like our little vacuum. So I just do that like every day, basically, because we have a dog. And I don't know, I'll clean the toilets every week, I'll clean the bathrooms every week.

When I have an easy day, I usually spend, do a little bit more of a deep clean of the kitchen. So I don't know. I think it's like my hobby in a way. Well, as far as hobbies go, like, I don't know, like collecting cookie jars doesn't really, I'm sure it's fulfilling. But actually keeping the house clean is so helpful to the people who live in the house. and to my own mental piece. Right, right. And I think I can like, yeah, like I said, do other things better when it's in order.

I also don't like accumulating too much stuff. So I like, you know, if we have too many shoes in the back, I'm like, Eric, go through and like, what are you not wearing in the last five weeks? Get rid of them. That type of thing. So that we're not just accumulating things. Yeah. But I imagine if we have kids, this will go away a little bit or it'll have to because you just be. become so much busier.

Too much. Yeah, and you just get more stuff and you're constantly preoccupied. So I don't think this phase will last forever, but it's, I don't have any tips. I don't have any. I try to use natural products. Yeah. I don't know. But it's not, I guess I'm not alone.

Yeah, not alone. Okay, next question here is from Saul. I'm going to try to shorten this a bit. I've been loving Thursday releases of the show. my signal that the weekend is almost here. I've been trying to get into the sport for a few years now with many of my setbacks due to the crushing demands of family life, as Paula was just alluding to. While looking for fun events in my areas, I live in the South Bay area, which they're not talking about South Bay, Los Angeles. I think they're talking about San Francisco. A few years ago,

I found the escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. Last winter, I randomly signed up for the random drawing thinking there was no chance. I would win a slot. So of course, I was selected and signed up. and that's the first half of the question. The second half is that they are freaking out about jumping off the boat and swimming in that water. And what ways can they not freak out? And also, since they're looking for a wetsuit, are there some good entry-level wetsuits you would recommend? I actually use the float at Alcatraz because it's a bit thicker and it therefore is warmer. Yeah, so they do, some brands do make a thermal wetsuit, but these are often a little bit harder to get off and on.

they're not as flexible. They're the kind of wetsuit you're really only going to use in Oceanside or in Alcatraz because a lot of other races are just not that cold. So just buying a wet seat that's a bit thicker like the float is actually a great tip. We've answered this question before. You just do it and it's not that bad on race day. I don't have any. This is what Eric has always said.

It's part of the thrill. You don't even, you're just swimming. Yep. You know what? Let yourself get a little worked up because that's kind of fun. But everybody does it and it's not that bad. It's so much different than waiting into the water where you have so much time to process how cold your toes are and how cold your nuts are, you know, et cetera, step by step. You can like, this is just like you just rip the band-aid off and it's great.

Yeah, it's actually the one race that I don't feel the cold at all because there's so much going on in one second when you jump in. Yeah. So the thing that's scary is the fact that you're just in the middle of the water and it's kind of hard to see where you're sighting. but you're jumping on with other people. There's boats kind of directing you where to go. You've been sitting on this boat for an hour in your wetsuit, getting nice and toasty warm. So your core temperature is up.

Yeah, it's not that bad. Yeah. It's just a crazy, crazy race. And it's so cool that you get to do it. Yeah. It's way worse running out of the water with your toes and feet that are like ice cubes. That is worse. That's way worse.

That's the worst part of the race. Oh, plan for that. Yeah. Oh, and yeah, disclaimer like we always got to do. We're sponsored by Orca, but we use stuff that we love. So that's why we brought up Orca. If you're looking at their line, so they have two different levels of things. There's the apex of the float, and then there's the athlex of the float.

And basically you just get a slightly lesser neoprene, but the same kind of like concept of how the suit was designed with extra floatation and warmth. Yes, nice. Okay, so sad news is we're definitely not going to get to all of these questions. We tried. We tried so good. We'll do two more. This one's really fast. Paula, flying mount, dismount,

can you give us mere mortals your thoughts on getting confidence how you actually do yours what you think of when mounting and dismounting? Shout out to the six for being among your top listeners to locations. That's Toronto. Okay, got it. Six I X, is that a thing? Yeah. Okay, got it.

I think it's from Drake. Oh, okay, got it. OV. I think it's just not important in 70.3 Iron Man and the amateur field especially. And there's way too high of a chance of running into someone else or kicking off your bottle. So I don't think you need to do it or worry about it. There's so many other things to think about. In ITU racing, it's 100% critical and it's something athletes that do that short course racing practice to get smooth at it so that they keep the momentum, jump on their bike while it's rolling fast.

Same thing with the dismount, but way less critical in 70.3 and especially less critical in amateur racing. The last couple years that I've watched Oceanside, which has like the highest number of pros of any race, watching Paula race, I would say the vast majority do not do a flying mount anymore. It's because there's bottles hanging out of the back. It's just too, there's too much going on. It's a little harder to bounce.

It saves you like three seconds in a four-hour race. Yeah. Yeah. But it's awesome. So if you want to do it, go for it. Yeah, I'll still do it. Yeah. I mean, the thing that's actually cool about it is if you've come from a short course background,

it's a bit of a flex to be like, look what I can do. Whereas like, Lionel never really does it. Even Lucy Charles doesn't do it. Yeah. Best athlete in the world. World champions, yeah. So it's definitely not necessary, but it is definitely cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, so speaking of things that are not necessary, here's our final question here. This is from Mike. My wife is a dermatologist and finally convinced me to try Botox, partially so I can't make sexy eye gestures at her. Dermatologist Botox? Is this a thing? Yeah, yeah. That's who administers Botox, I believe, is dermatologists.

I thought there was like a plastic surgeon or something like that. Oh, you know what? You might be right. I am out of my element here. I'm like, Donnie. I'm definitely not in my element, but continue. Eric, you don't have Botox? Not yet. Okay, okay. Took my TT bike out for the first time since fall. I've discovered a critical flaw I cannot see an arrow turns out I rely on wrinkling my forehead

to look up at the road face too frozen can't do it TLDR Botox is a DNF waiting to happen Mike Oh my God Can you Can you believe that Botox fully just makes your face

dysfunctional It like arrests the muscles So you can't I don't know Who wants this? You can't make expressions anymore. Eric, it's not about expressions. It's about looking like a newborn baby when you're 50.

Okay. It's a wrinkle thing. Can it be reversed or is this guy just screwed and can't look up for the rest of his life? I have friends who are at my age or younger who get Botox injections every six months. We're giving L.A. a bad name here. And so since you have to get it every six months, I imagine it does go away. So you do have to whip up to continue to get the effects of it. Because people that get Botox and fillers regularly, you can for sure tell. I don't know.

I mean, it's a look some people like. You can see it kind of, right? I like my forehead wrinkles. I like my smile wrinkles here. I'm not willing to part with them. Yeah, this is not a question. It was just a little bit of a funny story. That's inc.

I can't, yeah. I was. Don't get Botox on your forehead. Yeah. Or like have them, you know, a whole thing. hold it like can you get it held up like a yeah can you hold my hold my eyebrows into the looking up the road position please maybe you can like duct tape I'm just going to look surprised 100% of the time yeah tape your forehead to the top of your

helmet it's like the like the tape strips to keep your eyes open one for each eye um okay that's all we've gone quite over this is the longest podcast we've done in a while here um that was fantastic we tried to get through all the questions but you know We just had too much ding-dang fun answering them. Yeah. We got very carried away with the Flynn Banana Bread story at the beginning of the podcast and I completely spaced on a couple of announcements

that I, or things that I wanted to bring up. We announced the development team. The 2026 development team is now announced out in the world. They're awesome, incredible people. We're so excited. So if you could, go over to Instagram and follow each one of them. We did a collaborative post with them each last week. That would be huge.

They're on their journey to become professional triathletes and we're stoked. No, they already are professional triathes. Oh, yeah. I mean, we've talked about this before, but there's turning professional and then there's making a living in the sport and having that being your primary occupation. That's what we're trying to help them accomplish and that's what they're trying to do. Then the other thing is, I said last week that I was going to potentially put out two YouTube videos.

I didn't quite get two done, but I did put one up. It's all about like the kind of the process of me deciding to get surgery, our time training in Tucson with Heather Jackson. And my new TT bars. Paula's new TT bars. I think it's really fun. Nick, you said it was fun, right?

I loved it. I thought it was great fun. I think it's, it started with the intensity and somberness of the surgery or hopefulness, I should say. And then it ended really like fun with the Tucson stuff. Yeah. Yeah, because body was like, this bag hits my knees every time that I ride, throws it in the garbage with the gas station.

You got him washed to the very end for that. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, anyway, I hope you like that. I think it was like a real good classic TTL. Next thing that put up is going to be Wadi in my final hurrah bike packing trip

to Patagonia from Tucson. And then we'll kind of be, we'll be back to the update on the surgery projections. Yeah. Thanks for hanging out. Everybody, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.

And we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.