That Triathlon Life Podcast - Couples Triathlon pre-race discussion, getting lean, regrets, alcohol, spirit animals, and more!

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

Eric and Paula are racing in there first ever couples triathlon in a few days, so we go into the details about that, as well as answer some questions about getting lean on purpose vs by accident, what kind of racing regrets we have, alcohol preferences, and spirit animals. For more, go check out http://www.thattriathlonlife.com

Hey, everyone, welcome to That Triathlon Life podcast. I'm Eric Loggestrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. We have a little bit of an interesting show for you this week. This weekend, we are racing, so we're going to do a little bit of diving deeper into the couple's triathlon championships. But we're still going to do some questions. We're going to have some fun, as always. Eric, that was a great intro. Congratulations. Thank you very much. You didn't even mess it up at all. I know.

You guys aren't seeing behind the scenes where Paula just made fun of Eric for constantly messing up the intro. Yeah. Which you guys never get to hear because we get to try it a couple of times. But this time he really nailed it. I feel like you're coming around, Eric. Thanks, guys. It really just comes down to saying this is that triathlon versus welcome to, you know, the word that comes right before that triathlon life is critical and important.

I'm glad we got that. Yeah, you guys just hear like our insanely cool jingle, and it sounds like we're professionals at this, but it's highly edited. We record for about five to six hours every time, and then we whittle it down to about a 45 minute episode. It's noon. We should be done by dinner. Anyway, so yeah, we're going to talk about the couples try this week. By the way, just in case anyone listening for the first time, Eric and Paula are pro triathletes.

I am not. I am an amateur triathlete and a professional musician, but we just hang out and we talk about triathlon and try to answer some of your guys' questions. As Eric said, this week we're going to focus a little bit on a race that they have coming up in Florida. The first of its kind, I don't know if it's the first of its kind, but definitely the first of its kind at this kind of scope, right? Totally. Yeah, it actually is the first of its kind. The unique aspect of it is that Eric and I are racing as a team. And in a relay format, one of us will race first, tag off to the next person, then they will race. And the first person across the line after the second person wins. So it's a sprint distance for both of us.

And there are a really good mix of couples racing, like everywhere from ITU specialists to long distance specialists. And when we first heard about the couples try last year, I was like, how many couples could there really be? Like Lucy Charles and... Yeah, like three. Maybe three. But it turns out there's a lot and a lot of fast ones. So it is going to be a hard battle.

I can tell you that. You know what else I think that makes it a little deceiving is that I think it just so happens that the kind of triathletes that have more of like a YouTube online presence are the longer distance. are the longer-distance couples, longer-distance people. Or at least those are the ones that show up on my recommended videos and stuff on YouTube and on Instagram. And a lot of these couples that are racing are really, really fast at the shorter stuff.

So I think that's why they don't come to mind right away when you think of that. Totally. Agree. People like non-Sanford and Aaron Royal, who are my pick to be the most competitive people, yeah, you don't see them as much in the long-course world. So a lot of people that race exclusively, Ironman might not have heard of them, but they're really, really talented, well-accomplished athletes. Yeah, yeah, the thing about short-course racing is typically your Federation will take pretty good care of you. You know, USA Triathlon or Triathlon Canada will fight you to the races and frequently set you up with a bike and a power meter. And so you don't necessarily need to go out there and scrape up your own sponsors and kind of do some of the social media stuff that we have to

as long-course athletes and like small business of one, essentially. But rest of sure, these are very, very fast athletes and we're a little scared. Scared's not the right word. Scared might not be the right word. I was like, Paul, I'm like, how many couples could there be? I'm like, not only are there plenty of couples, but they are really fast people, like some of the best people in the world. Right, right.

Well, I mean, you recognize some of the names, but as you were asking us who certain people are, I was like, how have you never heard of that person? They're like, world champion in 2016. like they're gonna, they're definitely going to beat us. So it really just depends on what world you follow in triathlon, if you do follow triathlon at all and who you, who you know who's who's who, you know. What am I even saying?

So something you said earlier that I wanted some clarification on is each one of you are swimming, biking, and running, and then the next person is swimming, biking, and running, right? It's not swim, swim, bike, bike, run, run, right? No, no. Correct. You're correct. Yeah, got it. Okay, so that kind of makes it, do you have choice over who goes first?

Yes, actually, which also makes it, I'm just like jumping in and answering all the questions. But you can decide which athlete goes first, women or men. So we don't know who is going first on any other team, which will make it a really interesting dynamic. And we're still honestly debating whether we'll put me first or Eric first. It seems to me like it would make the most sense to have the faster swimmer first so that you can stay with the swim group so that you can at least kind of work together on the bike. Is that not what you guys are thinking? It would definitely be the case if we knew the men were going first or the women were going first, but as soon as it's TBD, we don't know what the other teams are doing, it comes a little harder to decide.

The thing about Eric and I is we're pretty well-rounded across all three things. So personally, I don't want to work with any girls. I want to go to the front and drop everybody, and I feel like that's our best chance of winning because of my bike. I think me compared to all the other women swimming-wise, I'm up at the front and same with Eric on the men's side. I see. So we're not the best at all three, but we're very good at all three,

which really is good. Do you think there's a world, Paula, where you could hang on with the men swimmers if it's mostly men and then stick on the back of the bike? I don't know. It depends. It totally depends who it goes. There are some men in the field I think Paula could definitely hang on with.

And then there are some men in the field that I will be struggling to hang on with. So it kind of depends. But if I could hang on to a pretty strong but not the fastest male swimmer and then ride with them within the legal distance, it's a 12-meter draft zone. But I can often, if my life depends on it, stay with Eric in the draft outside of the draft zone in training. So I think I could stay with some men on the bike. And then I would just be a matter of minimizing the damage on the run. Right.

That's. We'll see. We'll talk to some other couples and see what they're doing. We might have to have some strategic alliances, you know, behind the scenes, like survivor style. Yeah, that would be actually a good idea. Let's talk to Josh and Ashley and make an alliance. Yeah. We'll split the prize money.

You know what we should do. We release this podcast after the race, so then all our secrets are still with us. and when you guys have won the grand prize and we can show everyone how we did it. I think we should go down the list real quick of at least the top 40% most prominent names people would have heard of. That was the question that I had

is this a pro-only race? Yeah. There's no amateurs. It's only pros, it's invite only, right? Yeah. I mean, a big thing with this is there is a big prize purse, but it's not a big budget race

in terms of like the course closures and everything. It's in a pretty small area. so it doesn't really lend itself to having even 500 age group teams out on the course. But we have had that question a lot. So maybe that'll be something they add later in later years. Right, got it.

So yeah, and then do you want to go through some of these couples? Yep, so we'll just kind of go down the list. You can find this on the website. Let's just name like three at four. Championship.com. Got Josh Amberger, Ashley Gentle, Jess Broaddark and Jason West. Jared Brown, Emma Palant Brown,

Tim and Rennie. That's Miranda Carfrey, Tim O'Donnell, us, Rachel Klamour, Richard Murray, Samantha Kingsford, Sam Osborne, Christian Casper, Matt Sharp, Aaron Royal, non-Stanford, Seth Ryder, Roxana Slupec, Jeannie Messler. There's a couple more on there as well, but I don't want to butcher anyone's name. Know what I just realized, Justin and Jeannie are the only ones that share the same last name. No, also the Browns, right? Emma Palin Brown and Jared Brown. Right. Not 100%. in there.

We've got a hyphen, yeah. The other thing that's interesting about this is a lot of the couples, there's like one really, really good one, and then another that's unknown. Like, Emma Palant, she's very, very good. Jared haven't seen him race in a long time, don't know. Wild card. Wild card. Is Josh Amberger, I always think of him as an Iron Man distance athlete.

Did he do shorter stuff too? Yeah, he did a fair amount of short course non-draft racing back when that was a thing, and then spent a lot of time in 70.3 racing, and I'd say three years ago maybe switched over to Ironman. Got it. He's the same age as us. He got into 70.3 at a very young age. They're definitely a very strong duo

because Josh is such a good swimmer and Ashley is so good on the bike and run. So put those two together, they're really, really strong. Typically, when you think of like the liability factor of an Ironman athlete racing a super short distance like this, it's the swim and Josh is going to have no problem. Right, right. That's interesting.

Good point. And so you think you think you have your winners picked out already? Yes. I have my winners picked out too. I'm talking to them right now on a podcast. I do think we have a really good chance, but it's so very, very far from a foregone conclusion. I think my pick would be Aaron Royal and non-Sanford.

Is that Paula? For sure, that's my pick, yeah. If I was just on the sidelines watching, and I don't like to bet on myself a lot. So they're going to be strong. I think Kristen Casper and Matt Sharp are a little bit of an underdog couple. Yep. You don't hear a ton about them, especially in the long course world.

They haven't really stepped up to any long course racing yet, but they're very good at short course. Yeah, it's just kind of totally depend with them and non as well and Aaron with how well they can translate their ITU power onto a TT bike. How much time have they been on the TT bike? You know, are they bringing a TT bike? Are they just putting clip-on bars on their road bikes? We've seen that work before, though, right? So it's not like, it's not that crazy. Yeah, yeah.

If you have next level power and the courses like St. George, I think we're talking about Taylor Nibb, right? But this is completely straight-up drag race in Florida, zero elevation gain, probably going to be a little windy on the coast. So not having a T-T bike is definitely going to be a serious disadvantage. Right. And speaking of watching this, by the way, people apparently can, you can maybe be there,

But the easier way to watch it is to, there's a Facebook live stream, and you can sign up for that at Coupleschampionship.com, and I think it's $8, $7.99. Yeah, I actually just put the link on my Instagram bio. So if you're listening to this, you can go to my Instagram. And it would be great to support the whole thing. Yeah, they're definitely not trying to make money on this. I mean, the total output that they're spending is around a million dollars.

but people going and buying that or that's the only way you can watch it, right, is definitely a good vote of confidence of this should happen in the future and just like when you watch a YouTube video and give it a thumbs up or whatever, you're affirming and saying, I'm interested in seeing more.

Right. And by the way, I'm seeing now that it's $7.99 for the next four hours, which is those four hours will expire before this podcast is live. So apparently the price then goes up to $9.99. We'll see if that actually happens. But that's what it says on the,

the website. Yeah. That is great. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Really quick, wanted to ask you about just personally if you guys felt like the weather and the distance is going to have that much an effect on you guys or if you feel pretty

confident with both of those things. Because it's a lot shorter than what you guys have been racing in the past few years. I think the weather will have less than an impact than we think. Even though we're training kind of in winter and it's in Florida, it's still a very early race. So there's no way it's going to be blistering hot by 9 a.m. Yeah. And we've been doing. all of our, not all of, but a significant amount of our sessions in the garage. And if you don't

have much airflow on, I go as long as possible without a fan. We wear a base layer. I mean, you can get a pretty good, keep your sweat rate up and everything. So early in the morning, I don't think it'll be a problem. What about the distance? The distance? I don't know. We'll totally see. We've had a really quick ramp up here. We've only been on like a specific schedule now for about seven weeks, I think. And we kind of tried to just cram some base phase and some speed work in before this. Yeah. Yesterday. Paul was like, do some sprints. Yeah.

We're like, oh, God. It was actually way harder than we thought. We're like, oh, that's a stupid workout. But we did the six seconds and I was like falling over my bike. This is so hard. It was so hard. Well, it was six seconds on, 24 seconds off. So by the time the next six seconds comes.

That's not that much time. Yeah. Is that what the, Paul, I think you posted it a reel just today. Is that what you guys were posting about those? Yeah, we were doing our six seconds. Like, why aren't they sprinting on that trainer? Because we're doing a couple's try. That's right, baby.

You're ready. Speaking of which, I'm going to be there with you guys. That's going to be a party. Yeah, we're so excited that you're coming, Nick. That's going to be great. And I already told everyone here that if you guys win, we're going, we're canceling plans for a week and we're just going to go to Disney World. Yes. Yep.

Perfect. And retiring from triathlon. Simultaneously. At least for a week. Me too. I'll also retire from triathlon if you guys live. Okay. Okay, so let's do some questions here.

This first one is from Melissa, and these questions are not going to be related to the couple's try. Good evening. I'm a little late starting the podcast. We watched the vlog every Sunday, and I wasn't sure if I would enjoy the podcast as much. I have to say, I'm loving it. I can put my headphones on and continue with what I was doing

and not have to worry about missing a cool video. I'll keep this short and just give you the questions. Number one, what is one thing that you would never skip when warming up and after the workout? We're so bad at maintenance and would like a little tip that might help. And I also would love to hear this because I feel like so many of us do not have any warm-up. Good question.

Yeah, number one, thanks for watching every Sunday. That's fantastic. We do a little live show every Sunday morning where you can just like chat as the video. It premieres or whatever at 8 a.m. And that's like a super fun experience for us. And any time people say they never miss a show. It's 8 a.m. Pacific, by the way. Yeah, yeah.

Things that we could not live without. No, that's not the question. No, I mean, it's... F*** me. I know it's before warm up. You don't have to cut that out because we got 10-year-olds listening. I feel like they need to restate the entire six-paragraph question. Oh, yeah, poor Kate.

Poor Kate. Oh, man. It's what you can't... What you would never skip in a warm-up or a cool-down. Yeah. Okay. Of course. That's not something you can't live without.

We're talking like, I can't live without Flynn. I didn't even get a chance to finish my sentence of before a workout because I was really interrupted. Wow. Jesus. I feel like the heat acclamation is happening through the phone here. I feel a lot of heat. God, it's too bad this isn't going on. This is great material right here.

It's so funny. Okay, so Eric, sorry. Go ahead. What warm up could you not live without? In the pool, I really, really like to do this series of paddle things, paddle drills, whatever. I put on a pool buoy, and I do 100 with a right arm, paddle only in my right hand, and then I do 100 with a paddle only in my left hand, and then I do 100 with the paddle in both hands,

and I take everything off and try to feel super even and connected. Wow, so I, because I've noticed that you do that sometimes for the YouTube show, you'll do GoPro footage where you're doing single arm drill, right? And I'm thinking he's doing that for the show. But what you're saying is that you do that anyway. Well, I mean, yeah, single arm drill is definitely a good thing to do. And I think specifically putting a paddle on one hand and not having a paddle on the other hand, it's really good to try to mimic with the hand that doesn't have a paddle, the same feeling as the hand that has the paddle, you know,

trying to catch that much water on both sides, like evenness of your stroke. Paula, what about you? Do you have anything non-swimming, like running and biking stuff? That I wouldn't miss? Yeah. I would say as I've gotten more into 70.3 training, my warm-up has become less important and less specific. And I'll often ride 20 minutes pretty chill and then just get right into it because it's such a long session. And a lot of the time, the intensity is not high, high intensity.

So you can use the first interval or two to continue the warm up. So that's how I approach it is not feeling like, okay, from interval one, I need to be completely on because I'm going max effort. it's like 70.3 pace. So if we're doing six by 10 minutes, the first 10 minutes is going to be used a little bit as a warm up. So I don't know if that's like the right way to do it, but it takes a lot of pressure off of the warm up and not having to do this really strict, structured ramp or something like that every time you warm up. But to answer the question about what you do after workouts, I would say the most important thing is just to get food in as quick as you can. And a lot of the time we forget that or I do anyway. Eric's pretty good about it. but just making a smoothie, drinking something, getting fuel in right when you're done, so that you can recover for the next session. Yeah. I remember reading about this is that people are really, if they've got it drilled into their head, that they need to have protein, like right after they lift weights or workout.

But I think what I was reading is that for endurance athletes, what's much more important immediately after a workout, especially if you're going to work out in the near future, is to get carbs as soon as possible. because your muscles are at a glycolytic deficit. Deficit, right? And they are super primed to absorb it right after you're done. Yeah, definitely getting protein is a great idea. But if you were to just take just protein and forget the carbs,

that would be a huge mistake. Like more, if you're going to only do one. Yeah, I think it's carbs right away and then like protein 30 to 45 minutes after that to help with recovery. A lot of the shake mixes, like we use Momentus, have both. them so you don't have to think about it. They've got carbs and protein and a bunch of other stuff that aids recovery. So getting a sport-specific brand that you trust and like, like, Momentus, is smart just because you don't have to think about it. Just keep that on hand everywhere.

Just keep it everywhere so you don't forget and then go to the grocery store right after swimming and then not eat for an hour because you went to Costco. Yeah, Momentus specifically. And if you want to let them know that Eric and Paul let you led you to them, no one would be upset about that. You could also just get a donut in as quick as possible after swimming. Write that down, everybody. Write that down. In an extreme pinch, donut will do. Thankfully, honestly, it's better than nothing. But it's actually way better than nothing. Oh, yeah. No. Would you like a donut or would you like nothing? It's going to be donut every single time. Actually, I'm pretty impressed with Eric, because I want to get a donut every day after

swimming because the donuts are right beside the pool. And he often says we're not allowed to because we've got to go eat something healthier. I'm like, what are you talking about? We just swam for an hour and a half. I want to eat a breakfast burrito right then. I want a chocolate dip donut. Paula, this is a good reason I don't live there. If I was there, it would be us two against Eric. And we would win every time.

What would happen? Yeah, it'd be like, where are we going for donuts? Right. By the way, that was only part one of Melissa's question. So part two, I also, it's kind of similar, but is there something you regret in triathlon? Either something you skipped, didn't do, or even something you did. now in hindsight, you hadn't. So, for example, like, you guys haven't done

a full distance race. Neither of you have even, like, really race to marathon. So is that something you miss? I guess if I regret anything, I kind of wish I would have gotten into 70.3, like, one year earlier and just let go of the Olympics immediately after the Olympics. Because the year right after the Olympics,

Ben Canute had an amazing race in Chattanooga, got second place to Javier Gomez, and I really feel like I was in the type of shape around then to have a good result like that as well. And then I waited one more year and the next year was crazy, crazy. I would say a little bit more competitive. It was like when we went to South Africa

and Jan ran like a 106. Anyway, I would have gone in to 70.3 maybe a little earlier. Awesome. Thank you, Eric. And thank you, Melissa, for that. Great question. So, Paula, you just said something and I'm going to skip ahead to one of the other questions

that reminded me of what you just said. Let me see. Oh, yeah, here it is. Here's a question from Beth. She said, hi, absolutely loving the podcast. I get so excited when I get the notification that a new episode is up. Paula mentioned that as she gets closer to peak fitness, she focuses on getting leaner. What you guys have to change, stricter diets, lower calorie intake, just higher training volume.

What she was referring to is when you said that you have to be careful because when you get into race season, you get leaner and a little more prone to injury. So I think what Beth is asking is if this is an intentional thing that happens that you do, or if it's just your body naturally becoming leaner because of your training volume. I think something I've learned as I've matured a bit as an athlete is that, yeah, you can think about it a little bit, but thinking too much about your body weight backfires and often leads to the opposite effect or getting so lean that you get injured. So I personally don't think about it. It's just a natural training more, still eating more, honestly, because you're trying.

raining more. But naturally, you just lean out a little bit. And I think running as a big part of that, so if I'm healthy and not injured, I'm running more, and that makes me leaner. And I don't know, I don't love talking about body weight because I don't think it's that important in the sport necessarily. There's really accomplished world champions in triathlon that are of all different body types. And if you, I think we talked about this in a previous podcast, you look across the eight root field, and it's the same thing. Huge variety of different backgrounds and body types. and experience, and it doesn't matter. So I think focusing on that is detrimental, but focusing on just training well is ultimately

what will make you faster and better and race better. I think it's funny, the total divide here that you have, that a lot of amateurs they get into triathlon because they want maybe to lean out or to have a certain body type, right? And then the pros who are racing, oh, I don't want to say they don't care about that at all because I think it's impossible to avoid these societal pressures that we put on ourselves and when we see all the pros are super lean. But pros care number one about being as fast as possible, right? They want to be as fast as possible. Whereas a lot of amateurs will be like, you have the body of your dreams or you're as fast as possible. They'll pick the body of

their dreams. So there's like two very different scopes of what people want. You're right. I think it is very toxic in triathlon it sometimes though. When I was in the ITU circuit and racing as a 20 year old and also your age is very dependent on this because your body weight fluctuates as you're maturing and getting older and becoming an adult from racing as a teenager.

And I definitely went through my fair share of like body weight fluctuations as I matured from being 19 to 21 and transitioned to long course. And it's definitely something that just happens as you get older and I don't know

this is a really hard question to answer I feel like I could talk about this for an hour but it's hard and it's also like full of landmines right because a lot of people have a lot of serious mental hangups with this topic yes but I definitely wouldn't say that pro triathletes don't care about their body

image I think it's a huge issue but what I'm saying is that what I've come to realize over the last only two or three years is that power on the bike strength in the pool staying injury resistant, comes down to maybe being not as skinny as you thought you needed to be or wanted to be.

It certainly doesn't come by trying to get skinny. Like that inevitably is always going to go too quickly and it's not going to end up well. But over the course of years and years of training at a high level, your body's going to adapt to what you're asking it to do. And that is, it's going to end up being what it is. But you can't force it in six months to be where you want it to be. I think that's the best answer is. that you need to fuel for your exercise as best as you possibly can.

And over a period of time, your body is going to zero in on what the best version of itself is for that. And it may not look like what you had in your head or what people around you look like, but it probably is the best thing for you. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Super deep intense question. If y'all were animals, what would you be?

But you have to answer for one another. Oh, I didn't even see that last part. All right. Is this from the same person? Yes. The same person. We went from the most in-depth body image conversation to what animal would we be. I love it.

Oh, my gosh. Okay, so I don't know what's the right thing to do. We both answer for the other person. So Paula and I, I'll enter for Eric. Eric has got to be some kind of like, I think he's like a wild Mustang. He's like, he's pensive and stoic and strong and fast. Dude. Perfect.

I love you. Paula, what do you think? What do you think for Eric? I think you're not perfect. Okay, great. Okay, now Eric and I, Paula. I'm thinking some sort of like a panther, like a really like a beautiful cat that's like kind of elusive,

does its own thing, but also it's just like a straight up killer. Yeah, that's great. Yes. Definitely a predator. And we already know what Nick is. He's a golden retriever. We've talked about this a lot.

That's a fact. I was going to say potentially like a panda bear. Oh, I love that. Yeah, something that likes cuddles. Yeah, rolling around on your back. I'm so happy. Just sits around, eats all day. Golden Achivas are also good athletes. Like Lindsay's dog Chimmy, she doesn't need to exercise first thing, but when she does exercise, she can rage.

Oh, great. That's me. I'm Chimmy. That'll make my girlfriend really happy because she's fully obsessed with Chimmy. I know. The only thing is I feel like Nick would instigate all raging. Oh, right. Of course. the source of the energy. Well, Golden's are the same. They get really into, like, if they sense a little bit of excitement,

they just go crazy, right? Oh, my God. Do you sent us, you sent me that Reddit video of, like, the guy proposing and the girl's just, like, not even realizing what's happening because she's looking at the sunset

and the golden is just losing its freaking mind. That's what's great about dogs in general. It's like, you can come home and, like, nothing happened at work or whatever, but if you pretend, like something really excited happened,

they are so excited. They're just flying around the house. They are there for you. Yeah. In your big moment. That's right. Great. Okay, great.

Well, great questions. That was really on both ends of the spectrums of how serious a question can be. Yeah. Yeah, very on brand for our whole thing here. That's right. Okay, great. So this next question is from Max,

and it starts with greeting from Quebec City. So we got a Canadian here. Question for both Paula and Air. I saw you guys having beer and wine occasionally on your videos. How often and how much are you drinking in a typical week? And is it the same during off-season and race season? As an age grouper, I always wonder if my weekend beers have a negative impact on my training. I do not train to win races, but I don't want to ruin those 10 to 15 hours of training for a couple of drinks.

Great job on the podcast, Max. Good question. Very good question. Man, that's kind of... I would say that I have a drink most nights. I'll have like a little small glass of whiskey, like two ounces of whiskey or a little bit of wine with dinner. But I haven't really noticed any negative impact on training

until I start having like three glasses of wine, multiple drinks. And that is kind of what you want to steer away from. And something that you can still do on a weekend every once in a while, but whatever we want to say, like three drinks is definitely the line where it's going to affect your sleep and affect your recovery and everything. Yeah. I think if you're having three, I mean, I, I, Speaking of someone who has like 10 drinks a year, and it has nothing to do with athleticism.

I just don't love alcohol. But three drinks a night, I think, is definitely affecting your training. Like, there's no doubt about that. Yeah. Your sleep, everything. Yeah. But that's not what this person's saying. A drink on the weekends, absolutely no problem.

And I think going too much in the other direction of like I'm cutting out alcohol, that just makes you too anal about training. And then maybe you won't get faster. Yeah. someone sent in a question that we're going to answer, I think in a future week, about life stress accumulating with training stress. And, you know, if a beer at the end of the weekend is going to make you feel more at ease, there's a chance that it's better for you to have it than the stress of, no, I can't have this thing and constantly being on edge because of that.

Yeah, I think drinking is also a very social thing sometimes. If you're having people over, if you're meeting up with someone, you're going to have a drink. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. But I also totally respect people that don't like alcohol or don't want to drink or it's definitely not necessary. But if it's something you enjoy, it's not worth it to cut it out completely. Yeah, yeah. If you want to be in the sport for any length of time and enjoy it. Right.

Cool. Well, thank you for that question, Max. Our next question is from Katie. And she says, hey, yo, great pod this week. Honestly, the last 90 seconds when Nick was struggling with whatever phrase it was. And Eric just goes, how are you so dumb? I'm sorry, hilarious. Like just super organic and friends being buds.

I listened to it like four times so funny. Yep, that's pretty much a good insight into how we really are. So glad we were able to put that out for you guys. The next level behind that is we might have cut it out. We did cut it out. Paula said something similar to me at the beginning of the episode, probably because I messed up the intro. That's exactly what it was.

That's exactly what it was. And I was like sort of mimicking her. So it was just like a double inside joke. but it was very natural. I kept it in there. I thought it still worked. Obviously it did because Katie loved it. And we love you, Katie.

Thank you. So she says, anyways, hidden y'all with some questions again. You don't have to do all. You can pick and choose, but I like all of these. Number one,

we learned Eric's hidden talent is spelling and Nix is converting Fahrenheit to Celsius. So Paula, what is your hidden talent? I can tap dance really well. Excuse me? Oh my gosh. I just remember Paula.

a year ago, you sent me some pictures of you in like, I think in like a tap outfit when you were like two feet tall. Yeah. Or maybe it was ballet. I danced for 13 years, tap jazz ballet. Wow. So you never forget how to tap dance. It's like riding a bike. You know, you could just put music on, give me my tap shoes.

I will perform. Okay. Okay, tap shoes ordering on Amazon right now. Wow. I always forget that. I know that. And I always forget it. I have tap shoes in Ebinton, like at my parents' house.

Okay, so here's what's happening. If you guys win the couples try, we're going to Disney World, we're buying tap shoes, and we're going to get a video of Paula tap dancing in front of the castle, okay? That's what we're doing. We don't even have to win. I'm not, like, embarrassed to tap dance. I would definitely tap dance in a reel. Oh, my.

Oh, my God. I can't even believe this is happening. Yeah, I can't wait to do that. I can't wait to do that. We might as well win, too, though. I'm into this. Might as well. If it's a box, I can check.

I'm checking the box. Great. So that's number one. Number two, what's your go-to cocktail or happy hour beverage of choice? So I guess this is mostly for Eric. Sazirac. Cazerac. Cazerac.

Which is a whiskey drink. That sounds like a villain from a Marvel movie. I always forget Nick doesn't know about drinks. Is the Zazerac a well-known drink? Yes. Very well-known drink. Yeah. It's very cool because kind of the thing that differentiates it from a lot of other whiskey drinks

is you actually rinse the glass with absinth before you make the drink in it. Okay, that's crazy. I would make them at home, but I just don't keep absinth on hands. I go out for those. Right. And Paula, what about you? I really like Moscow meals, which is kind of girly. I also like Moscow.

I like how it doesn't. And she's like, yeah, it's kind of girly. Well, it tastes like ginger beer next. I love ginger beer. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't taste like... The less it tastes like alcohol, the more I like it. Exactly. This is your drink. This is your drink. Yeah. The first drink I ever had when I was legal, of legal age, was a Mai Tai.

So I think that's going in line with the girly drinks thing. I don't care. I'm comfortable with myself. I'll drink whatever. As long as it tastes. Okay, great. Next question. Number three, do you have any mantras or power phrases you say to yourself during a hard training session or during a race? Like, pain is temporary or whatever? Definitely not. No. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. I'll tell you what I tell myself when I'm racing, I think, or in a hard training session, I'm like, Paula's going to see this on Strava and I need to impress her. So I got to work hard today.

That's pretty much what I think. Strava is a good motivator for that. It really works for me. And I know for a lot of people it can be a negative too. But I think as far as I know, it's only ever a positive for me. Like when I'm going on doing slow stuff, I'm like, whatever. It's slow. But when I'm doing fast stuff, I'm like, ooh, my friends are going to see this.

And I want to push even harder. Yeah. Totally. A little bit of accountability. Yeah. I think it's really fun. If I, I can't imagine not having it. Not many pros post on Strava.

It's interesting. And we don't hide our data either. It's like you can go see what our power is. I think it's really interesting. It doesn't affect how we race. Like, nothing's a secret. Well, it doesn't affect how you race, but it could affect how someone else race is against you. Right?

If they know, ooh, she can hold this. amount of power for this long, I can't let her be off the front or whatever. That's great. Let them think all about us and our power numbers while they're racing. But the end of the day, like everybody's power meter reads a little different. Paula's coefficient of drag is not the same. You don't know how much Paula weighs. Like, even if you know Paula's power or my power doesn't mean that you can do that. It's just like, and vice versa.

I just want all the women to think that I can be off the front and they'll never catch me. Good luck. Well, they can think that because that does happen. So like the more they see my power, the better. The two of you are the funniest combination of like extreme confidence and extreme shyness and lack of confidence. And it's like, I feel like you don't have a middle. I just don't vocalize confidence. There's a difference.

I usually don't either. This is a little off-buff point for me. I love it. I love it. Well, I mean, I've been there for races when you are just like way off the front. And then there's races that you're injured and you can't. You know, it's like it's just like anyone else. just like any other athlete.

You have good days and bad days. Okay, great. So next one, Paula, Eric and Nick. Individually, are you more positive motivated or negative motivated? I love this question. For example, in races, I prefer my family say stuff like, you look so strong, way to go. Whereas my husband prefers people say like,

you piece of shit, pick up the pace. Thanks, love the pod. Tell Flynn, I said hi. Katie. I'm definitely positively motivated. At least internally, as I'm thinking about a race and how it's going or whatever, I'm not thinking about not being embarrassed.

I'm thinking about trying to have a really good race. And if my head ever does go to that space of negatively, you know, like trying to not look bad or it's not going well. And it doesn't have, it doesn't affect. It doesn't like have an effect. I don't think, oh, man, I better not get embarrassed. And then everything goes well. Right.

It never turns around. Right. I would say neither. I'm more motivated by knowing the facts of what's happening in the race. And a lot of the time in a 70.3, it's a little bit lonely. You don't know what the splits are. So the feedback I like to get from people that I know and trust on the course is just like time gaps and how other people are looking. Are they gaining?

Are they whatever? So I don't need to be told that I look like shit or that I look good. It's more like, am I going to win or am I going to not win? Right. Data. Just give me the data. Just give me the freaking data. I think for me it comes down to like a, and I don't know if it's because of the connection with music, but.

you know how, you know, like, when you're really sad, you want to listen to sad music and listening to, like, overtly happy music feels like a weird, like a betrayal inside your own mind, like something's just not right. When you're really happy, you want to listen to happy music. So when I'm doing really well in a race, I think I want to hear the good stuff. But if I'm not hearing that good stuff, it's almost bad. Like, if I'm feeling terrible and someone's like, oh, you're looking great, going so fast, I'm like, it makes me feel even worse. because it just doesn't feel right. Because you know that they're not telling the truth. Yeah.

You're actually full of shit. Yeah. But thanks. That's a good answer, Nick. I agree with you. Yeah. Someone's telling you you're doing great and you're not. It's like, just show that I'm not doing great.

Don't love it. Don't love it. I think I'm closer to you, Paul. I'd rather have information that might help me during the race, you know. Yeah. Okay, next question. I don't see a name, but it says, Hi, Team, loving the podcast.

I have a question specifically. for Paula. You had huge success on the back of COVID lockdown with a win at Daytona, and I remember you mentioning on the vlog that you had remained pretty much injury-free by listening to your body more that year. I can assume the lack of pressure from an empty racing schedule also helped you do that. I wondered if this experience changed how you train post-lockdown. I personally am a fan of training intuitively while my husband is more of a if it's in the plan, I do it kind of guy. Sincerely, a Canadian and living in Australia. That's a really good question because when I won Daytona,

I knew that it was because of my uninterrupted year of no injury and really low stress, like basically zero races. So I had nothing to worry about. And after Daytona, I thought, okay, I race well like that. I'm going to take that into future years and not race as much, listen to my body more, miss runs if I need to, lower volume on the run, all the things that I did in 2020. that led me to have success at the end of 2020.

But in reality, it's really hard to implement that when races are happening. It's a completely different world. The competitors that you race are getting ready to race. My coach is paying more attention because there are races on the schedule, whereas in 2020 it was a little more hands off. So it's really hard to put that into practice, even though I am completely aware that that's the reason I did so well that year. Do you feel like if you just never looked at social media,

You had no idea what any other athletes were doing. You just showed up to the race. Like, would that help? No. I don't. Because, like, no one else was doing anything during COVID either, really. I don't follow a lot of people that I actually race on social media. It's more just knowing races are on the schedule that puts a little more pressure in this deadline that I never felt in 2020. Even having couples triathlon this weekend, it was like, okay, we're trying to do these, like, sprint workouts this week.

Never in our lives would do that in 2020, like, in March. So it's just a completely different approach. at the end of the day, this is like our job and it's how we make money is going to races, and we can't just skip everything and put all our eggs in one basket for one race in December. We kind of do have to pick and choose what we're going to do throughout the year. And so I don't have a good answer for that. I think I'm not doing a great job of it, but I'm completely aware that that is something that works for me, and it's proven in 2020.

No, it's good to have that in your mind, even if you're still, obviously, you're just recovered from an injury. So it's not like you stopped getting injured after Daytona with all this wisdom. But it's good to have. Eric, I guess I've never really asked you how 2020 went for you with no races on the schedule and just like training without a kind of not without a purpose, but without this like super hyperfocused razor sharp edge, like the way that you are usually when you have races the whole time. Do you think you do better when you have races coming up on the horizon lined up?

Or did you like 2020? I love 2020. and it didn't have anything to do with racing. I just had a blast. It was like, you know, we've been racing as professional athletes and doing triathlon for so long, and it just felt like the longest summer off season ever. It was like, I always get in the off season, I kind of, you know, in December, I always wish, man, I really wish we could take an off season in July.

So there's not snow on the ground and we can do all the fun stuff. And I've kind of got this list of things that have been putting off, you know. So it was really, really fun. it definitely was not like the best thing for my for my training but I'd say like overall mental health and like long term wanting to stay in the sport and starting TTL like I really found I guess a little bit deeper sense of purpose that had kind of been bubbling below the surface for a while but it didn't result in like a great race at Daytona like Paula had that was just one data point I mean yeah no no no it doesn't mean you weren't fit I think through 2020 we were actually training pretty well and

a lot. Like, if you look at our training hours, they were less because we weren't swimming, because we couldn't swim. But we were still doing bike workouts. We're still doing tempo runs. And I was doing them and really enjoying them because I wasn't tired from swimming. And I just felt like I had this momentum going that I was training because I wanted to, not because I had to. Yeah. Yeah. If anything, like the thing that kind of caught me up with the races there at the end of the year was that Paula thrives a lot better with indoor training. And we were in Canmore. And it's a lot more of a mental struggle for. me and I had also kind of started, you know, doing TTL and everything. So I had just a couple

more eggs in the basket or, you know, stressors there. And, and I overtrained a little bit going into that last race, as crazy as that sounds, you know. Like, it was, yeah, having that situation, I still managed to overtrain and be tired for the race. So, like, I guess me, like, even if I have more free time, I just fill it up with more things. Yeah. But I'll, I will say, not having a pool to swim man, it frees up like three hours a day. Oh, it's, so. fantastic. I also told myself during 2020 at the tail end of it after I raced well in Daytona, I am

not swimming five days a week anymore. Just like three times a week, maybe like 3K maximum. It's all that's necessary. It makes you happier. It makes you train better on the bike and run. Freeze up time in the day. You can recover more. It's swimming. Oh my gosh. And here we are back to swimming

every day. I know. I was so encouraged by the Daytona result. It was like all these aha moments and everything. And then as soon as there's like a race and it just kind of well you guys also swam so well off of like no swim volume so what's yeah so why are you swimming so much i don't know because we have a coach that tells us to swim a lot i don't think i swam that well but paula definitely paula definitely

swam well enough is paula just an alien on this planet is that what we're figuring out it seems like all the things that we know do not apply to her she just somehow thrives without needing to do the same work that everyone else does. Is that right? Yeah, I would say so. I think we covered this last week or maybe not. That was a different interview. Yeah, I would say Paula.

One of our other interviews. Paula, it was for the, you're cheating on me? You can cut this out, but we had to answer some questions for like the couples try interviews for the YouTube video and they were like, which of you is more organized? Which of you is more talented? Which of you is? And literally every single question was Paula. and I just was sitting there.

Which of you makes dinner? Which of you does the laundry? There was no question for which of you edits the YouTube channel and the pictures. Right, right, right, right, right. Designs the merch. And it never came. Which is you as the artist who has no sense of time or anything but loves art. Oh, finally, me.

Right, yeah. No, they don't care. No. I don't care. I'm related. So yes. So thank you for that. the Canadian living in Australia. Great question. Once again, if you want to send in your questions,

we love getting them. You can send them into that triathlon life brand at gmail.com. We more than love getting them. If we don't have them, we don't have anything to talk about. So thank you in advance. We are pretty excited, obviously, to do the race this weekend. Thanks for listening to all the pre-race talk. Let us know if you liked it some way, I guess, on Instagram or somewhere where you can comment. But we will probably, we're going to try, since Nick is going to be there to put out some sort of video on YouTube before the race, and then we'll have some sort of a post-race show as well. So also keep an eye on YouTube, and we'll see you soon, or hear you soon, or talk to you soon, whatever.

Nick, since you're coming to Florida, maybe we should do a live recording, not a live recording, but record all in the same place. Yeah, we could do that. Okay, let's do that. That's fun. We'll post it at the same time, but we'll be all in the same room. Yeah, I love that. That's great. Fun.

That'll be fun. Cool. Maybe like if we can do it same day of the race. Yeah, like a little recap. Yeah, a little recap. Depends on our mood. Yeah, exactly. Depends on how many donuts we've had.

We'll either be crying, riding our trainers, or celebrating. Awesome. Thanks, everybody. Yeah, thanks for listening, guys. Thanks. See you next week, guys.