That Triathlon Life Podcast - Crank lengths in triathlon, getting sick before a race, cramps, and more!

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

This week we start with some Bike Tech with Eric, and then move onto your questions about triathlon! Questions about adjusting to time zones and climate for a race, how to manage tubeless tires, dog bonking, and more! To become a podcast supporter, as well as submit your own questions for the podcast, head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.com

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Hockerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. And welcome to our podcast where we talk about trathlon, a little bit of what's going on in trathlon, and some of our trathlon journey. But most importantly, we take questions from listeners and try to be helpful. The reason that we might be able to be helpful is that Paul and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a amateur triathlet, but a good friend of ours, and he helps us you know, bat around ideas and answer questions properly. Speaking of ideas, after watching World Championships and Nice,

did it increase or decrease your likelihood to do an Iron Man at all? And did it increase or decrease your likelihood of wanting to do that one? I think definitely watching it, my takeaway, not even processing, that it was an Iron Man, just like, this looks like a cool race. You know, that was more the thing. Super honest race. Yeah. This is an awesome course where the best well-rounded swim bike runner is going to come out on top.

Yep. I think we were saying, Nick, if it was in Kona, the podium probably would have been different. Like, Patrick may be in front. Like, you couldn't hang on the bike on this course if you didn't have the strength because it was so hard and hilly. Yeah. And like made me wonder like last year when Sam was off the front, but then Christian Gustav and several other people were in a group behind him, and then they just barely caught him, would that have happened this year?

Yeah. You can do a whole bunch of if and hands, but I think the takeaway was that it was super cool to watch. And I think the vibe and the atmosphere from what I could tell from just watching the stream looked like a lot of hype and a lot of really, really dedicated fans in a city that's behind the sport.

So I think it was a success from my perspective, but I wasn't there. Yeah, I don't know if I want to do an Iron Man, but that would be really high on my list. Yeah, I think I'd pick that one over Kona. Oh, 100%. Yeah. That was the basis of our whole conversation last week, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, because Nick has the Kona-boner, but I don't really have that. I do, I do. I feel like I watched Yon win in 2015, and I've never been able to let go of that image, and I feel like now I need to live in the shadow of the great Yon. What I will say is that it seems like the strongest person on the day won the race, which is nice to see. Like he was really strong on the swim, led, you know, off the bike, and then ran a great marathon.

We're talking about Sam Ladelo. So congratulations, Sam. Zero percent chance he listens to this, but it's fine. Of course. Of course. I'm a fan. We're not literally saying, hey, Sam Ladello, you. You know, I think he's like, we were also talking about winners that are good for the sport.

And I do think he's, like, good for the sport. He's entertaining. He's engaging. He's someone you want to. cheer for. He's well spoken. He has a cool story with his family behind him. So yeah, in terms of like a winner that showed emotion crossing the line, all these things that just makes someone really, really likable and easy to cheer for and be a fan of. I think he checks all the boxes. So I was happy to see it. Yeah, same. I just was missing what Eric said last week about a battle at

the front. Once we knew that Patrick wasn't going to catch him, I just, I wish there was a little more of that, but he clearly was the strongest. You mean in your dreams at 2 a.m? You were wishing there was a battle? Well, I successfully woke up and did not check my phone and watched the rest of the race. Oh, damn. Yeah, so I didn't know. And I watched most of it at one and a half times speed on YouTube, which is funny because

when you do that, and then for the last like 10K, I switched back to regular speed. And your eyes get used to the run cadence of one and a half. half time speed and the one time speed is like wait a second. They're not running this slow. It looks like they're just like death marching but you know you just get used to it. Yeah that's so funny. I was waking up in the night to pee and stuff as I do

and like quickly turning on the live stream and checking the split. So I was like updating Eric secretly at like 1 a.m. He didn't like that. He didn't love that. I'm trying to freaking sleep. I don't care. I'm going to find out in the morning. That was my plan. I was like oh my God. I'm destroying everybody.

Yon is not in the picture. Oh, my God. This is crazy. This is crazy. It's fast for Eric. If we're cool to move on here, I had a couple of updates for us. So the first thing is that this is now a three-part series of the USAT

refs and what the situation is. No. It's just one final update here. It's like an ongoing series. Okay, make it fast. We have to correct something. Refs are paid for Iron Man races. They're just not, the people in the tents that are kind of like overseeing the penalties, they're volunteers.

Okay. The ones that you go and argue with when you get your volunteers? They can't do anything. Referees aren't going anywhere near that. All right. They can't do that. So that's the update on that. And then also I wanted to update, this is from Don.

He said, not a question, but I enjoyed hearing about Nick's dad and his discovery of the cloud monsters. I'm not an 80-year-old, but I am 51 with hip arthritis. i.e. an 80-year-old left hip, and can confirm the cloud monsters make it possible for us old dudes to keep running. Hope you're doing really well, Don. And I'm excited because I, for the first time, they're in shipment right now going to be running in Cloud Monsters as well. So I'm excited to try them, too. Nice. Who did you get the shipment from? I talked to Hannah.

Oh, nice. Yeah, Hannah got me two pairs of shoes. Wait. Hannah's hooking it up. I hope I'm not putting Hannah on blast on the podcast. I hope she won't get in trouble for this. I'll clear it with her first before it goes live. Okay, so next thing here, we're going to do a little, and we haven't done this in a while, and I know it's a very popular segment.

We're going to do a little bike tech with Eric. I was actually just doing bike tech with Eric in the garage by myself on my broken brake lever. Because he crashed yesterday. Oh, a teaser for later. Yeah, should we bring that up a little bit? We just went straight into talking about freaking Iron Man World Championships and didn't even talk about what's going on. Well, Paula said not to bring it up

because your knee still hurt. Yeah. Yeah, it's a touchy subject. Eric crashed yesterday. It doesn't matter me if anybody knows. Eric was on a five-hour ride, and I kept like, check and find friends. Where are you?

Not updating. Getting super annoyed because I just want him to update me every once in a while on his five-hour mountain back cries. Every five minutes, you want him to update you? No, like every two and a half hours, like once. But I get a text. four and a half hours in. It was like,

I crashed, but it's fine, I'm coming home. And I'm like, okay, do you need to pick up? Like, how bad is this crash? And then he shows up and he's like bloody all over, super bad road rash. Gashed his shin, obviously is very sore

to the point where I'm like, I don't even know how to like wash off all this yucky road rash because he crashed on Lava Rock with dust and all the grossness. I guess Eric should be telling this story, though. You're doing such a great job. I'm enjoying hearing you say it. Apparently it was on a trail.

I mean, my personal opinion is Eric was going too fast on it and I wasn't even there. And I think he got too excited. He was like sending it, you know, like they say. This is, yeah, this is what mountain biking is. And then there was like a rock that was kind of hidden under dust or sand or something and hit it on a trail where people ride big downhill bikes and shuttle it. But Eric's on like this little cross-country bike and it just. didn't have the capability to handle that blow.

So I think that when you're on trails like that, Eric, you need to go a bit slower. You're actually completely right. I started out very conservatively and I just got more and more excited. It's like, it's true, Nick. This is like a 25 minute downhill. You just like get into it, you know? Right. But this was, I mean, I still feel like I was riding within my abilities.

But this particular spot on this particular trail, I still don't know what I hit. It was, everything was going fantastically. I didn't like identify any sort of an obstacle and all of a sudden, boom, just flying through the air over my handlebars smashing my body into the ground. Like it could have been worse, but his knees kind of banged up, which sucks

because he's leaving for Italy with Unique on Saturday for Xero World. So hopefully he can get in some training before that. And the other thing is the cut on a shouldn't was so deep that he got three stitches. So ideally he should not swim for a bit.

Yeah. Which also is not ideal. Can't really run. Wait, didn't you pray for a swimming injury last week? And here we go. Yeah, that's the thing. I did. It's very ironic.

It's very, very, very, like, you get careful what you wish for. Unfortunately, it's affecting the other two things as well at this point. And that is not what I wished for. Yeah, it sucks. But we're really grateful for our friend Nate, who's an ER doctor, and did the stitches for Eric. You basically numbed it, cleaned all the stuff out of it because it's super deep and dusty and then stitched it up and I felt super queasy. It's the good thing I'm not a doctor.

Yeah. Yeah, but I had a bed to lay down on. Paula was having to stay sitting upright in a chair, which if I had to stay sitting upright in a chair, is doctors like, oh, wow, that's a lot deeper than I thought. Yeah. Don't say that. Go on say that. And I was like, I wanted to be a doctor forever.

I mean, I still kind of do want to be a doctor, but I don't know. Not a knee or a doctor. How often are doctors looking at open wounds like that, right? A surgeon maybe, but a doctor, I can't imagine it's that common. There are times of medicine where you would never have to, but it's, I don't know. You wouldn't like your training. That's true. And by comparison, like, this is not that bad of a gash of what you normally see.

So anyway, that sucks. Well, speedy recovery, Eric, we hope. But you're walking around just fine. I know it's sore today, but it just happened yesterday. I mean, think if you had like a really rough workout, right? It takes a few days to be covered from that. Yeah, of course, he was supposed to take a day off today. And, of course, he went to try to run.

So, you know, that's fine. I walked and jogged a little bit until it bothered me. But yeah, I think it'll be okay. It just was not part of the plan when I feel like I had a somewhat limited time of focus training here with my mountain bike before going to Worlds to, you know, a little bit more fitness. Okay, so back to bike tech with Eric. This is a brief interlude.

Here's a question from Chris from Sacramento. I, Flynn, Nick, Paula, and Eric. I have a pair of specialized torch two road shoes that I love. Hold on. Hold on. Nick Flynn, Paula, and Eric. No, Flynn, Flynn first. No, we're not answering this question.

Flynn first, then Nick. I want to know who this person is. Then Eric last. In order of importance. Yeah. And contribution to the podcast. If you're new here, Flynn is our dog. Yeah.

And he contributes jack shit. He contributes negative. He's negative. He pays no taxes. He is himself a bill. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Anyway.

Okay, so sorry. Sorry, Chris, you got a little roasted there, but don't start your highs with Flynn. So, Chris says, I have a pair of specialized torch two road shoes that I love, but just this last week, one of the boa laces snapped. I was wondering if you, probably, Eric, have any experience with replacing the boa? I really like these shoes for my road bike, and I'm trying to avoid doing the huge sin of using my tri-shoes for training and on my road bike. I'm also trying to avoid buying a new pair of shoes since I'm working hard to. finished paying off my student loads. I'm on track to be done by August of this year.

I love you guys and I'm super stoked for your guys' race season, especially you, Flynn, who I see is still holding strong to more Strava followers than Nick. So this is a question from a long time ago that I saved. Flynn no longer is anywhere near me in Strava followers.

Well, we're slacking on him with his Wahoo. I saw like the last update from him was like in May or something. Shoot. We've been traveling and it's all, yeah. Well, we'll say Flynn Strava is Flynn the GWP, right? So you can check him out on Strava. Yeah, anyone who doesn't follow Flynn, go do it now.

We got to catch up to Nick. So what's the question? The lace snapped for the boa. Is there any way to fix that? Like the boa cord? The plastic, yeah, the little plastic cord. Yeah, you can just get replacement entire boa units and they screw right in. So you don't have to replace the whole shoe.

You can just replace the singular boa. Yeah, I would just, yeah, you place the, Boa, it comes with the crank and everything. I think they come in twos anyway, and a new set of Boas is going to, just be glad you did it anyway, because it's going to feel incredible. Right. But yeah, you don't, you just do the whole unit. Great. So is that, is that, it's, if you think it's user serviceable, it's easy to do yourself at home, or would you bring it into a shop?

No, I would, I don't think you would need to bring it into a shop. If you've got a shop, I'll do it for you. Awesome. But it's like you get a little flathead screwdriver in and like pop the boa, dial off and undo this cord. I think you should be able to do it at home. And where do you get the boas from? Specialized.com? Yeah. Specialized is going to have like the specific ones for Specialized

versus you can't just like get a random boa, brand boa. Gotcha. Okay, okay. Cool. Thank you. Eric, that's great. And then one more bike tech with Eric here. This one's a little more involved.

Hi, mom, dad and dad love. See, that's better. There's no Flynn involved. I love being a part of the best family in triathlon. I'm wondering if we could get some bike tech with Eric. I finally got myself set up with a set of tubeless training wheels and converted the racing wheels to tubeless as well with the Schwabee ones. I punctured on my first ride on the training wheels,

and it was too big to seal, running some stands, which is a brand of seal. I had my gravel bacon strip style plugs, but they were too big, bought the road dino plugs, and still wouldn't hold about 60 PSI without spitting sealant. I know I can pull the tire and patch on the inside, but I've always struggled with a sealant making a mess when I pull tires on the gravel bike. How do I pull a tire with sealant in it? Can I reuse and reinstall the tire? How do I clean out all of the old seal it to store the tires for later use? And if I put a dinah plug in a nearly new tire and it did seal, can I really ride the life of the tire with that dinah plug in there?

Or will I always have issues with it? That sounds like bad luck. You install tubeless and then get a gash that big. That's bad luck. That's very bad luck. That's nothing to do with the technology of tubeless, not sealing. Some gashes are so big, they're not savable. But in that case, your tubed tire would also be unsavable.

Yeah. And if it's not sealing, even if you put in like a dinah plug or any of those solutions, I would just get a new one. Yeah, versus patching it. Yeah. Yeah, it might be worth just getting a new one. But I would say that the one downside of tubeless, sort of hijacked bike tip there, but it is messy. So no matter what, when you take off the tire and there's sealant, you got to be really careful. We have like a laundry room kind of like cleaning up tub that we use to dump stuff like that into, but it's going to make it much.

But you can get it off there, right, Eric? I've seen you do it and keep it like all within the tire before. Yeah, if you're careful, yeah. Yeah, I'm just really careful with it and make sure that you like maintain the boat style, you know, bit of the bottom of the tire when you take it off. And then I'll like hang it over something like my bike work stand so that it maintains that tension and the boat style. Especially with a gravel tire that already has some structure. Some of the road tires are so floppy that it's really hard to keep it curved. Yeah.

I guess if you wanted to really go for the minimum amount of mess possible, if you've got an empty one of the like two ounce. syringe-style squirt bottles that stands come in. You've got an empty one of those. You can just slowly suck as much of the sealant out of the tire as possible before fully removing it from the wheel. And that'll minimize how much you get all over the place and then you just squirt it back in after.

And do you think that if this person takes the tire off and cleans out the inside and hangs it up as long as it's not in the sun in a cool place, do you think that tire could be reused then months later, even like a year later? Oh, 100%. Yeah, I've got a closet full of mountain bike tires that I've had for one years, two years,

because they're like for very specific situations, like extreme mud when we did Maui or whatever. And I put them on and I've taken them back off and they're all just sitting there aging. Like Lance Armstrong was, I'm not like, not say anything about Lance Armstrong, but he was like famous for having tires that had been aged like six years or something.

They would make the tire and they would put them in a warehouse and they just sit there. Really? For whatever voodoo reason. Oh, it was like more of a... It wasn't a practical reason. A superstitious reason?

No, it was. It was some sort of aging with how long it had been since the tire was created or whatever. I just thought it would be more supple or something. That's interesting. And then the last little thing here, can a dinah plug last forever for the life of the tire? Do you trust it? Yeah. Yeah.

I've had a diner plug and a tire in a gravel tire for months. and months. Okay. Yeah. And you know, if I was getting ready to do a gravel race or some really big ride where I was concerned about getting stuck or something, then maybe I would take that opportunity to swap out that tire for anyone, but for just doing training rides. Yeah. Or even like put a race tire on there or whatever and then put your old tire back on there for training with the dynam plug in it. So you're not necessarily like replacing it prematurely or anything like that. Yeah. It's like, lot more likely for it to work on a mountain bike tire or a gravel tire with lower pressure than it is for a higher pressure road tire.

Well, there you go. And that question was from Erica. So Erica, hopefully that helps. Moving on here, we're going to go on to our main questions, even though those were questions, those are questions specifically for Eric, but these are questions that you can send into the podcast yourself. You can send these in at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast where you can also become a podcast supporter. We don't do ad reads on the podcast. We rely on podcast supporters. And every week,

we try to pick a podcast supporter that gets a little special piece of gear that we produce. And those are also on That TriathlonLife.com. So this week, we put our random number generator to work and found that drum roll. Amy Oliphant, you want a pair of socks. Congratulations. Just find me on Instagram, message me, and make sure the address is right, and I'll send you those socks out right away. First question here is from Barbara. Hi, Paula, Eric, and Nick. Love your podcast. I have a question about going to races that are in different time zones and that are hot and humid. I live on Vancouver Island and am doing the Iron Man World Championships in Kona. This will be my second time there. I'm a little concerned in freaking out because I made my flights and hotel reservations too

close to the race. I usually go to all my races a week out from the race, but this time I messed up and I'm only five days out from the race. I'm there on Monday at 6.30 p.m. I'm worried that I won't be ready to race for Saturday. I'm going into the sauna after my swimming. Is there anything else I can do to help me acclimatized to Hawaii weather before I go to a race? Barbara. This to me is like classic type A super triathlet that's like needs to check all the boxes.

To me, Monday is perfectly fine. That's a lot of time. Like pros go out to Kona super early just to like ride the. the course and because that's their job and they have the time to do it, but Monday is completely reasonable and that's a lot of time. I would also say that the two days difference or three days difference of a week is not going to help you acclimatized to the conditions necessarily any better. And I think that week you don't really want to be acclimatizing to it because it's so close to the race and acclimatizing to hot and humid temperatures takes energy.

It's just tiring you out, right? Yeah. So what you're doing by going in the sauna after. swimming, doing some acclimatizing work before you leave is going to be more beneficial anyway. It's too late, too late one week out. Yeah, it's too late one week out anyway. And you're on the West Coast. The time change is not huge.

The flight is pretty short. I think Monday is fine. I'd probably go Monday if I was very safe. I'd say Monday is too late, but it's not too late now for World Championships, which are four or five weeks away to do some heat prep, right? Yeah, totally. Of course. That's kind of the timeline that I would do anyway.

It was like, you know, six or five weeks out, start the sauna heat protocol. We've talked about it in previous podcasts with like the core sensor and stuff. That's a bit scientific. But any kind of exposure to heat and humidity will just make your body better prepared once you arrive. It's going to be hot either way. Like that's the nature of that island. And Barbara's been there before. So I'm sure she knows.

Yeah, totally. Okay. Next question here is from Stephen. Hey, everyone. Love your podcast. issue in the past with muscle cramps, primarily quads and hamstrings. That's happened on both the bike and the run. I've read and listened to many differing viewpoints around the causes, but I would love to know if any of you have experienced the dreaded muscle cramps and how you

were able to work through them, particularly during a race. And do you have any suggestions for hopefully eliminating them? Have you been recommending using certain supplements? Is it hydration-related, sodium, et cetera? Muscle fatigue. Thanks so much and keep the awesome episodes coming. Stephen. Neither of you, I can't recall really a time that either of you have, like, had debilitating cramps. Yeah. It's not really an issue that I face. No. I'm occasionally had, like, one muscle cramping for a minute, but it's not, it hasn't been Nike. It's not where it's debilitating at the point where you have to stop. Yeah. But, Nick, you've had them before? I have had them before, yeah. What do you do?

Well, first of all, I have also, as Stephen has, like, read forums on the internet and read stuff about it, try to figure out because it was a problem for me in a few different races. And I think it's easy people like, oh, it's a sodium thing, or it's like, oh, it's a nutrition thing. Oh, it's a stretching thing. And I think it's never just one thing. I think it is, for certain people, it is very much a whatever, sodium thing. But for example, my friend Serena, who just raised Santa Cruz last weekend, she took in 6,000 milligrams of salt on the bike and still had severe cramping issues on the run.

So, I mean, that's an insane amount of salt to take. It's probably cramping because you got too much salt. Is that possible? But what I mean is like there's... There's, and she's super strong. She's super fit. It's, there's other stuff that can happen. So for me, I have noticed consistently, the reason I'm cramping and I've said,

support for it. It sounds like a joke, but is when I'm putting my body through something that I haven't prepared for well enough in training, that I didn't do a good job to train for. And it's like when I'm doing a longer ride at a higher intensity than I've ever done before, or a longer run at a higher intensity than I've ever done before, like I cramped on my first Olympic. And now I'm very unlikely to cramp an Olympic. So that's for me the problem. For some other people, you change a bike fit a little bit and they get cramps because they're utilizing muscles. they weren't using before. For example, me this weekend, I did these intervals on the TT bike,

and I haven't been riding the TT bike a lot, and I cramped a little bit in my groin and in my hamstrings because it was a different stress on my body that I wasn't properly used to. So I don't know. It seems like for me it's when I push myself a little too far. Other people swear by the sodium thing. Other people swear by nutrition things.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. It can happen for a variety of reasons. It only happens to me if I eat Chipotle and then run it within five minutes. But that's like, is that like a stomach ache or you mean? That might be a stomach ache, yeah. When you did the double chicken and the guac and the cheese and the sour cream.

Then I get an ache. Yeah, so hopefully that helps a little bit. But I find like training, training for me at least, anecdotally, like preparing myself in training is what fixes it. Okay, next question here. It's from Rover the Triathlon dog, and Paula loves this question, so we're reading it for her, but Paula does promise me she does have an answer for this. Hi, TTL Nash. I love your podcast and listen to it every week with my owner.

My question is for Flint. My owner is a long-time triathlete and takes me out running with them. I really enjoy our runs. They've now switched to the 70.3 distance, and they've been taking me out to their long runs. I was fine with the shorter runs, but I find that I bond. with any runs over an hour. Do you have any nutrition tips for me? Do you load up on carbs before the run or carry some nutrition with you?

Thanks in advance for your insights. Next time I'll ask for some tips on staying arrow while in my owner's bike basket, Rover the triathlon dog. Cute. When I said this to Eric, when I read it out, Eric's like, dogs don't balk. Dogs get tired, but it's not nutrition related. I think more likely they would. I'd maybe need water in the heat.

But when Flynn is super active, like doing, I don't know, we can't really run with him for more than an hour because his joints just can't handle it. He's so big. And he has no regulator to turn it off. You know, he'll just go, go, go until he dies. But if he has a super active day, like, we're camping and we're in the river. He's paddleboarding. I will give him an extra cup of food at night or half a cup, something like that. And he acts hungry all the time.

He's not a pig. Like, he's not super food motivated, but he does let us know when he's hungry. And I think that's just because his, like, metabolism is so high and he's super active all the time. But I would just be careful, I guess, with the increased run distance with the dog, like, especially if they appear to be struggling. That's when I get concerned with Flynn. If we've overdone it and he's barely getting back to the car and he's limping or he's panting too hard, that might be too much. so maybe stick with the shorter runs with rover but don't bring food on the run

that's insane it seems like humans are really well adapted to progressive loading our training and getting better and better running further and further and further and I just don't know if that is common across all mammals so like certain dogs I think maybe

like Flynn like Flynn's never going to be able to run a marathon alongside you potentially or maybe you maybe You could train him. And like you said, most of the time for Flynn, the problem is he'll hurt himself. Not that he's balking. Like, he doesn't know balking.

He will go until he's passing out on the ground. Yeah. I don't think, honestly, have we ever had a point where we felt like we could continue running in the middle of the winter? And Flynn wasn't okay. I feel like any time I can think of that you would have said that Flynn is, it was too much running, was in the heat. heat, yeah. And he's just panting so hard and appears like he's going to die. But I can't remember ever experiencing that, like on a winter run. Yeah, he can't more. He can kind of go forever in the snow because he's cooled off. And even in the creek, like if he can dip off and drink every

couple K, he's fine. Yeah, it doesn't seem to be like a fitness thing versus a thermal barrier. Yeah. From what I can get, can tell. That's true. But we know people that run with their dogs for like hours and hours. And it really is breed. Is it the same breed dependent? Yeah. breed dependent. Yeah. But in terms of carboloading, I don't know. Don't change your dog's diet too much. I think that they have really sensitive stomachs compared to humans.

I mean, the thing about this, like a dog is not that far removed from its lineage where it needed to catch an animal to survive. And you're not catching an animal in the morning and the evening every single day. Dogs would go for like days at a time without eating. Also, you're not catching an animal for night. 90 minutes. You're catching it for 45 seconds, right? Yeah. At most. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I think they've definitely gone, you know, are well adapted to a low glycemic, like low glycogen stores. Yeah, right. I would say this. We, we know we have a pretty wide audience here. If there's anyone that is a vet or some kind of expert on this, we would love to have you, maybe you can message me and tell us what your thoughts are on this subject. Because we have a lot of people listen to the podcast that have dogs, and this might interest a lot of people. Yep. It's interesting to me.

I just have personal experience. Yeah. Next question is from John. Hi, Paul, Eric, and Nick. Question for you all on managing health issues and the lead up to a race. I'm currently two weeks out from 70.3 Jones Beach, which is the first year of this race. I was going to do it, but I'm going to be in Italy with Eric. So I might do that race next year.

and have come down with a pretty nasty sinus infection over the past week. I've been taking over the countermeds, but the severe congestion has made cardio difficult to manage. And my energy levels overall are quite low. I had been really dialed into training over the past two to three months in the lead up to the race, so I feel like I have very good fitness foundation right now. With that being said,

would you ever take two to three days off completely from training and try to expedite a recovery so you could get proper training in over the next one and a half weeks. Or would you try to train through the sickness to some degree while potentially risking a longer overall recovery? Thanks for all that you do for the TTL community, John. First of all, John, Sam Ladelow had COVID two or three weeks ago and then he won real championships.

So the good news is you could still get a really good result out of this. But the question still stands. Eric and Paula, would you guys take two to three days off completely to try to expedite your recovery from illness? I think it just kind of depends on the nature of the illness. If it's like a coughing thing and it hurts to breathe or if you just really feel so terrible that you can't actually get any quality work in, then yeah, definitely takes some time off. Well, I don't think quality work is what he's after. I think even when you have a sinus infection and you're fatigued is going for an hour, easy ride worth it.

Yeah. That's kind of what he's getting at. Yeah, no. No. I had this whole situation at World Championships for cycling a couple of weeks ago, I guess like a month ago now, but really bad conjection leading up to it. I felt like I didn't have a choice but to go out and exercise because I had to like preview the course.

Had I laid in bed for all day and rested more, I think I may have felt better on race day. But you kind of have to read the situation. If you're still two weeks out from the race, yeah, I think taking two or three days off is probably a good idea. And it'll just make you more rested. You're not going to lose fitness in two or three days. It can only be good. So I would say like go for a walk, be active, do yoga, or like move a bit, but you don't need to go train while you're that sick. As an age group, I also would take two to three days off completely for sure. If I were feeling really sick, for sure. But if you're just dealing with minor things, a lot of it for me is, do I actually feel like training? Or, you're, you know,

is my brain and body telling me to I don't feel like it. I tend to try to listen to that personally. I don't feel like training any day though and I still do it. That run I just went on. I was not excited about it. But I was greeted by a beautiful,

beautiful rainbow. If anyone who lives in L.A., if you saw the rainbow today, it was unbelievable. Everyone was out taking photos. We don't get rainbows here that often. Go see it now. Yeah.

Go back in time and see it. Run out. Eric's never sick. And I would have said I'm never sick either until I got sick at the most important time of my life. Yeah. So I'm about to do for my sickness. Oh, wait, I crashed.

That's kind of like a sickness. Yeah, Eric's supposed to take two or three days off and he ran run today. So don't take his advice. Well, it's curiosity got the best of him. We were trying to debate with Eric's knee of like it was better to go for a little jog or go for a ride. I thought maybe riding would be better just with no impact, but the range of motion is so much bigger. So figured running was safer. Yeah.

Yeah. Swimming would be the best. It's also easier just to go walking. Yeah, swimming would be great if I didn't have stitches. I got like the perfect combination of injuries here to not be able to do anything. Paulo told me to not do anything just because of the knee balk. And then the doctor told me to not swim for three days. He said if I wasn't racing world championships in two weeks, he would tell me not to swim for 10 days.

So if everybody has stitches. That's the actual rule. Got it. So, Pa, Paulo, by the way, is your coach. So two reputable sources telling you to take the day off. Yeah. Just ice the knee, get the inflammation down. Got it.

So, John, do whatever you're feeling, but I think we're all a fan of taking two to three days off. Here's a good question. Next one is from Kylie here. Hey, guys, what are the advantages of different sized crank lengths? Is it a bike fit issue? And what do you all run? I heard Eric say before, he has 165 millimeter on his mountain bike. Love it.

Sweet. Best question ever. Crank arm length is interesting for TT bikes because by shortening them, you increase the angle of your hip when you are on the pedal stroke in your knees high close to your chest. You're less pinched off at the top. Yeah. So I think a lot of people have been shortening their crank arms on their TT bikes for that reason to have a more open hip angle and make it easier to run off the bike. So that's why we both have 165, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I guess the thing that you might bump up against and that people would argue on the other end of it of going too short would cost you some leverage. So that used to be what people said, but then they did some research on it and show that there wasn't really a significant power loss by doing that. So let's run 50s. Well, yeah, there is a point where there is. But I don't think the 175 and 165, they found that there's not a significant power loss there. It's just like cadence. Like there's a range that is.

a pretty wide range that is efficient depending on your physiology, depending on what you do. Yeah, I was just thinking, like, if you're like 6'5 and running 1-45s, right. I think there's got to be a spot of diminishing returns. Yeah, definitely. But for us, like, super average-sized people. I don't think, yeah, I didn't really notice much of a difference between 175s is where

I started. Now I'm at 165s. Just over the years crank arm approval for going short, has shorter than shorter. Yeah. Also, don't forget that if you changed your crank arm, length, you need to adjust your saddle height as well because your foot will be not as close to the ground.

Correct. You need to raise your saddle. You got to think about it kind of backwards, but people often do that. Like change their cranks and then leave their saddle and then their saddle's too low. Yeah. Yeah. It could be 10 mil if you had 175s on there to go to once in a, that's significant. Going from 175 to 165 is a lot.

I don't even think they send 175s on bikes anymore. Yeah. 170 is kind of normal and then 172.5 might be like 172.5 is like what my bike came with and I switched it to 165 for my CT bike as well for the same reason. Yeah. I think that you can

go lower on a TT bike, maybe higher on a road bike but your mountain bike is 165? Yeah, I just did that because it felt better on my hip and my road bike and my TT bike were both 165s as well. So keep it the same. I just felt like I don't want my muscles to be doing too many different things. Did you ever think about

the pedal striking as a potential? also bonus to keeping shorter cranks or do you think that's not an issue? It's an issue for me, Nick, with how hard I corner. With how hard you pedal through corners? Yeah. It's, yeah, we're not doing fixed gear crits here, so no. You can, you know, coast and have your pedal up in a corner. Yeah.

We just got specialized e-bikes. Oh, yeah, you did. They're low to the, like, we felt like when we were cornering on those, because you kind of want to pedal through the corner sometimes. those can hit the ground. So you've got to be careful. They're the Globe Hall STs, and they are super fun. We each got one so we can like e-bike together. It's really cute.

The cool thing about them is they have like all these attachments with baskets so you can do useful activities with these bikes, like take them grocery shopping or I don't know. In their ads, they have people like delivering newspapers and stuff because they have such a big storage capacity and a huge capacity for weight as well. So you can really load those puppies up. Yeah, I'm going to get mine out with like attachments for gimbals and cameras and places to put my drone. Yeah. Love that.

We've wanted e-bikes for a while. And then when we were at Worlds watching the mountain biking, our specialized guy, J.B, was like, oh, I want to send you guys these halls. They're so cool. Like, you can do so many things with them. We're like, we will accept. Well, do you guys remember? we were at specialized on the launch day of that bike. Of course.

And we went to the launch party, definitely not because we heard they had cake, but because we were excited about the bike and nothing to do with cake. It was fun. Yeah, we were there for the wind tunnel. Yeah. And they were launching this bike. And for the employees, they had a party like cake and whatever, La Croy's. And then they offered us some cake and we didn't want to be rude.

So, of course, we had some cake. But it wasn't just any cake. It was like helmet-shaped. Yeah, it was very creative. Like the kind of cake that they make on like cake wars. Yeah. Actually, one of the bikes was actually a cake. We didn't realize that until they cut into it.

Until we sat on it. Yeah, oops. Sorry. I'll just take that one. I'll pay for it. Anyway, after having the cake, we all agreed that we needed one of those bikes as soon as possible. And we're really psyched that they made it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I can't wait to write it the next time I'm in Bend. You're going to have to get one, Nick. Actually, my mom wants to buy one now, so we've at least sold one. Wow, that's great. We love that. The marketing is working. I really need to get a coupon code track our sales. We did have someone that emailed in who said that they wanted affiliate links from us so that they could give us credit for the stuff we recommend. I know. We'll put the engineering team on it.

If I had a dollar for Cloud Monster I've sold. Yeah. I mean, you sold one to my dad. So, okay. And then last here is a bit of a kind of a discussion or I don't know. I'm just going to read it for you and then we'll see where it goes. Kind of a discussion about hamburgers. Let's hear it. Yes. And it's kind of long. And I didn't pair it down at all. But here we go. It's okay. I love it. I like it. I'm into it.

So here it is. We can't, we can't. keeping this anonymous and you'll see the obvious reasons. You had a dentist comment on sugary foods. You had a referee comment on regulations and a laundry expert give advice about detergent. Oh, speaking of which, I did just get my dirty labs detergent in today. I unboxed it live on FaceTime for Paula, so I'm excited to use that as well. Back to the question. So I feel the need to chime in here based on the recent question regarding McDonald's.

I work at McDonald's headquarters in their technology division and being a super healthy eater myself, oftentimes ask myself the same question as last week's listener. Here's my professional opinion as it relates to McDonald's. Like you said, eat what you want and what makes you feel happy after a race. But if you think that a unique burger place or an artisanal organic restaurant that is so cute is healthier for you in some way, it's not. It has similar nutritional value. Juicier burger sounds good, but to me it also sounds potentially undercooked,

and I can promise you because I've seen it, McDonald's has super high food safety standards. So if you find yourself in Singapore next time, you are better off eating and drinking McDonald's. I wonder if that's a jab at the, everyone getting sick from the water. Healthiest option at McDonald's is a quarter pounder. It's never frozen with no cheese. Double up on all the veggies, easy to do in the app. And if you are hungrier, opt for four nuggets versus fries and lay off the sauces.

Yes, ketchup is a sauce. Every food has the right place, time and quantity, cheers. And keep it anonymous. Great. So is that a low-key McDonald's ad? for that chicken sandwich? It's a quarter pounder, Eric. It's not a chicken sandwich.

I'm going to fight against this here. And I think, first of all, like, we, whatever we say here, has nothing to do with how body types, body sizes, calorie counts. We're not talking about that. We're not talking about, I feel like McDonald's is often used in context of like, oh, it's bad for you, makes you gain weight. That's not at all what we're talking about here. We're talking about the quality of the food.

And my resistance to this, is just because something doesn't make you ill, doesn't give you a stomach ache, doesn't mean that it's not harmful for you. Right? There's a lot of things you can eat. For example, like aspartame was this sugar replacement that's been used in diet sodas and gum a lot, and people have been eating it for years. And now just this year, it's officially a carcinogenic substance.

So it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to make you ill to be not good for you. That's my stance on this. And for them to say that McDonald's is in no way less healthy than an artisanal burger place, I also think this whole thing is ridiculous because we were making zero comments about health with our post-race splurge food. This is entirely not even what the question that we answered was about. We were just saying we prefer that artisanal burger to a McDonald's generally speaking. It has nothing to do with health. Or food state standards. race party mode. I enjoyed hearing, though, about McDonald's hearing the safety standards,

knowing that the quarter pounder's never frozen. That's all super interesting to me. I don't know. I think it's a fair point that he's making. That's another thing. Frozen foods. Like, freezing vegetables at the source, a lot of times preserves more nutrients than keeping vegetables fresh and never frozen. There's not necessarily anything inherently bad about freezing foods. Yeah, he's talking about the tasty, juiciness. Yeah, right, right. And I'll say, I'll agree with Eric on this. Like, if McDonald's made a burger that was the same size as some of these burgers that I'm thinking of at like a local place, I would be maybe more into that.

The problem I have with McDonald's burgers is that those thin little patties are not going to satisfy my craving after a 70.3. I need something that's going to, like, put me in a coma. Well, isn't a quarter pounder, a quarter pounder of meat? Yeah, but I want like a triple quarter pounder. I want a three quarter pounder. Oh, gotcha. Maybe that exists. Maybe you don't even know. Yeah, but I have had like a full pound patty burger before. It is a unit.

It does not mess around. But it was fun. It's like people, the people I was with were like, this guy needs help. Is it a pound before it's cooked or after? Oh, I don't know. Probably before. Yeah. Yeah, probably like the raw meat is a pound.

Interesting. I don't know. I don't want to give this guy a hard time because I, I, I, I read it and I thought, oh, wow, fair point. We have no reason to bash McDonald's here. I was just saying, in defense of us, we did not say the McDonald's was... In defense of us. It was less healthy than those restaurants.

We were just saying... That's true. That's true. In terms of like personal preference, taste, taste, experience, all of that. Yeah. Some people might prefer the artisanal grass fed. Elkburger. So, last thing I'll say is that...

a third pound burger, which is, of course, bigger than a quarter pound burger, but people weren't buying it because they thought it was smaller because the number three is smaller than the number four. Idiots. Gosh. So dumb. So, yeah, that's another little fun. They have to call that, like, let's think of a name where you could call that burger that

would make it sound bigger. That's why they have the double quarter pounder. Okay. Because even if you said a half pounder, they might also think that's smaller. Half. I don't want the full. I want the full quarterfounder. Yeah, I don't want the half quarter founder.

Oh, this is great content. No one is listening anymore. I do like chicken nuggets, though, I will say. And if you're into health, switch the fries out for the chicken nuggets. And don't get the McFlurries. But if you're into living your life to the fullest, get the McFlurries. Next. I'm here for a good time, not a long time, okay?

Well, those are all the questions that we had. But I would like to say that I am heavily considering, I'm like 95% of the way there, doing 70.3 Los Cabos on November 5th. And I also found out recently. Well, I was going to do it. And then Eric's all mad because, like, he wants to go to Exterra Tahiti and he wants either me or you to go with him, Nick. And now he's mad that we're having a Los Cabos party and no one wants to go to Tahiti with him.

So if you're listening to this, if you want to go to. to Tahiti with me. Send a pig. Yeah, send a pick and I'll swipe right or left. I don't know. You got to be a very cute redhead triathlete. If you have a dog named Flynn, that helps as well. So, yeah, I don't know, Nick.

I'm torn. Okay. I mean, I actually might race Augusta next weekend. Oh, really? I still haven't booked anything for it, but I'm on the start list. Okay. And I have no reason not to do it. it.

If you haven't booked anything. Other than I don't want to. But I feel like I'm in this weird place where nothing sounds great. Nothing's really

motivating me, but also I'm like, this is my job. It's only beginning of September. I don't want to take a break now. It's the post

Euro trip multiple world championships funk. Yeah, I'm in a funk. And I'm like, I should just go to Augusta and try to win a race and then take a break.

I don't know. I'm so torn. If anyone has a like a massive Airbnb and Augusta. And it's feeling especially generous. It's definitely going to put it over the edge. And a private jet to fly me there.

We'll provide you with two double quarter pounders with cheese as payment for the Airbnb. No, I would pay. I would obviously contribute. But all the hotels are sold out. Oh, really? For the race. It always happens like right around transition. You know, every hotel is like four times more.

expensive and sold out. It's funny because the Los Cabos stuff is not. There's like tons of stuff available. That's because it's a resort place. It's literally all hotels. Oh, yeah. Got it. So it's actually a pretty easy race to do because of that.

Other than the blistering heat on the run. If you're interested in racing Los Cabos, go watch our Los Cabos YouTube video from a long time ago. Yeah. We do it. We say where to swim, what grocery store to go to, a coffee shop go to. It's one of my favorite video. Yeah, that was like the start of our, we didn't even call it TTL back then, but we were doing like race guides kind of thinking that people would watch them a year later or two years later and go back for advice. I watched it.

Yeah, it's actually really good advice. It's funny to hear you guys talk. It's like, Eric's like, my name is Eric Lagerstrom. This is Paula Finley, my girlfriend. It's like, yeah, we know, dude. Now it's so silly. But at the time, it's like, of course, you had to introduce yourselves. Yeah, maybe if I kept introducing us all the way till now, we would.

gotten more subscribers. Last thing I'll say is that we're recording this on Monday. Tomorrow's just Tuesday. We don't do ad reads on this pod, but we do like to talk about our sponsors. Wahoo is one of them, and they are releasing the Wahoo kicker move tomorrow, which is a really cool kicker that literally moves back and forward side to side. It's kind of like real life feel. So when you put your bike on it, there's some motion as if you're riding on the road,

which is super cool. We love it. Made a really sweet video. Yeah. That's... I got to upload right now. It's out, right? It'll have come out two days before the podcast comes out.

Yeah. Yeah, it'll be out. We don't know what the price point is, but if you have a kicker, obviously, you've never had a reason to buy a new kicker because they never break. But now's your reason to buy a new kicker because the move is different. It truly feels different. You have the option to lock it so it can act like a regular kicker,

but the front and back side to side motion, getting up out of the saddle and sprinting, all of that is, surprisingly, feels like you're riding on the road. So it's cool. For those of us with old people worn out hips, feels great. Yeah, it's good for your body to not be so, so rigid on the trainer. It's like a cloud monster of trainers. Possibly more revolutionary.

Wow. Wow. Don't do ad reads, but go by a cloud monster, a walkie, kick or move. Right. athletic greens we wouldn't bring it up if we weren't legitimately excited about it the video is awesome the thing is really cool yeah it's neat it's a neat bit of kit as if we needed more things in our garage

okay so next week Eric and I are going to be in Italy on Monday and Paula you will still be here so do I get a week off maybe I don't know if I'm going to let you off the hook that easily I think we should put your mom on the pod he can like come in like phone a friend She can like pop in for a minute.

She'll come in. She'll make herself known. She is assertive. Yeah, I think she'll be great on it. She's an interesting way for sure. I mean, I don't know how any of this works with the mics, so I think I get a week off. Okay, we could do that because then Eric and I can talk Xterra in Italy.

We'll see. Maybe we can even get some other athlete from Xterra on. Yeah, send healing vibes to Eric so he can be better in time for his race. And we will chat with you next week. Ciao. Bye.