That Triathlon Life Podcast - Do professional triathletes take pre-workout, Do Eric and Paula stretch? Indoor vs outdoor aero testing and more!

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

Our last episode of 2023 and, as usual, we answered your questions about triathlon! Questions about just "jumping into a 70.3", taking photos and videos while training, what to do with bike tires when riding a trainer all winter, and more! To become a podcast supporter, as well as submit a question of your own, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.comEric's Spotify Playlists:POW DAY SHRED TIL BED

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. And this is our triathlon podcast where we talk about stuff that's going on in triathlon, what's going on for us in triathlon. And the bulk of the show is questions from listeners. So that's how we hope to communicate a little bit of hopeful information is through questions from you. The way that we feel adequately equipped to answer said questions is Paul and I are both professional triathletes have been for over 10 years. Nick is some random guy we met. On the street.

Done a couple triathlons. He's got a Grammy. But we got him on here because he does an incredible job with music and has an awesome viewpoint of someone who has not been doing this for a long time. So I think it balances it out pretty well. Okay, you know what this reminds me of? So in a deck of cards, there's 52 cards. And if you were to shuffle those 52 cards, you get a combination of cards that is likely never to have been seen before and will probably never be seen again. It's 52 factorial, 52 times 51 times 50 times 49, all the way down to one. There's more combinations of those cards than there are atoms in Earth.

Really? And I feel like, Eric, every time you enter the podcast, you're checking off another one of these. I don't think there's two ways that you've done it the same. And for episode 99 here, I don't think that was one of them. I'm on a mission to never do it the same way two times with just things in life and also the podcast. Yeah, good job, Eric. Well, it is Christmas time. And if you're listening to this podcast at Christmas time, you're a true fan. Because I feel like this is a good time and common to be very tuned out from the internet, which is a good. good thing this whole week. But if you're listening, thanks for being here. Eric and I are in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, which is where my family is. And we did a big drive to get here on winter roads.

It was a little sketchy, but we made it and we're glad to be here. And Nick, you're all the way in New York still with your parents. So we all got a little family time for Christmas. And I am just craving being back into a routine and not traveling and swim bike running with simplicity, again. We've still been training, but it's obviously a little more complicated when you're on the road. Yeah. Do you feel some empathy for people that are training in climates like that and in environments like that when you're there? Just like, how do people do this? No, because I did that for a long time. It's cold in Canada, but it's not the reason that this is stressful. It's more like when we're in Bend, we have our bike set up on the kickers. We have our routine. We have our swim group. It's just easier. And here we're trying to work around feeling like you need to hang out with family all day. and wanting to, but also training. So it's...

Yeah, I would say that the empathy for anybody specifically in Canmore who has to deal with the cold is completely balanced out by... You look in any direction at all, and you're completely awestruck by how beautiful the mountains are. If you're, like, grinding it out in, like, the tundra of Kansas, yes, I feel pretty bad for you and, like, good for you. Yeah. Did you mention that Canmore is right near Banff, which is world famous?

No, we didn't mention that. because we don't want anyone to come visit here. It's too busy. It sucks. It's terrible, but it is right next to Banff. We rode there from your parents' cabin. Do we want to call it a cabin? Is that bad? I don't know what this is a cabin. Yeah, it's a cabin, I guess. It's like townhouse cabin situation. It is like touching Banff basically, and this is actually where we're going to get married in the summer. I love it. Breaking news. This summer. Breaking news, Nick. Breaking news. Oh, no. Here we go. Oh, I love the breaking news, jingle. Yeah.

It's going to be the ring bear. Exactly. Anyway, let's get to you some questions. And also, with the holidays, also comes a decreased number of questions sent in. So if you have a burning desire to send one in, then do that for next week, hey? It just becomes more of like a,

we have less questions to talk about and it's just us talking about cabins in Canada. Random stuff and Adams and whatever. I'm going to say, if we got less questions, are we sure we want to skip straight to questions that quickly? Well, I have a couple of things. to be honest that we need to talk about. First of all, last week we were saying how

someone asked a question about Christian getting singing lessons. Christian Blumenfeld, who is the current gold medalist in triathlon and very successful in all levels of triathlon, someone was asking if he got singing lessons to help with his breathing in swimming. And I texted him because we're friendly with him, and unfortunately he got back to me after we recorded the podcast. But what he told me, and then several other people also were very eager to tell me on Instagram. that this was part of an April Fool's joke that he said that. So yes, he did say it, but it nailed it. I don't even think he said it. I think the PTO made it up. Oh, yes. Okay, you're right. You're right. And it's not even that funny, but. Well, now it's really not funny because it was

totally wrong. Exactly. But yeah, but there's that. And then the other thing was that we always get questions about people asking about the TTL Sweat Playlists. So, Eric, do you want to, I don't want to steal the Thunder. Let us know what's going on. Oh, yeah. It's been a very slow, soft launch because I usually send these playlists to a couple of people who I know have good taste prior to actually officially launching them. And I did a little bit of a tease on my Instagram story, like six days ago or so now.

But the next actually two playlists are ready. And I've been working on these for probably a year now. Lindsay and Paula are both big fans of one of them, but I wanted to basically make kind of a pair of playlist, depending on what kind of your vibe is around getting hyped up. So one is called Powder Day. I think I've had it called Pow Day forever, but I'm just going to switch it to Powder Days for like people who, you know,

just so it's obvious. But like in my mind I built that for like a little bit more serene, a little bit more tranquil hype mission. And then I also made Tread Till Bed, which is... Right, of course. which is titled based off of a piece of artwork that a good friend Danny Gardner made for us that we're hoping to put out in some prints

on a t-shirt, but it's just like a really fun slogan and that playlist hits hard. So like only put that on if you... Bangers. Bangers only. Only put that on if you are ready to do some work. Right. V-O-2 max.

Sesh. Yeah, so that's what's coming up. Those are both available now on my spot. Defi to go follow along with. I just hadn't made a big thing about them. So how's the best way to find this? We'll put the link in the description of the podcast. Yeah, yeah, we'll do that.

But if you don't like links or whatever, you can also just go look for me on Spotify, I think. Yeah, follow Eric on Spotify for easily findable future playlists. And Eric, you made both those playlists public, right? Yep, they're both public. All right, cool. Heck yeah. Okay, now we can get onto questions.

But before we do... No, we can't. Oh, no, we can't. We got to do the bottles, Nick. Well, that's what I was going to do. Before we do, I just want to say, we'll throw it on a lot. Oh, but wait, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick.

Last week, we said if we got 15 new subscribers in a week, we would bring Nick to Bend for the recording of the 100th episode and we will do a live filming of it. We, I think, barely got 15. I didn't count it, but it was, I thought it would be like, no doubt 15, but I don't know, it was kind of on the edge. So you guys are just going to have to wait in suspense and see. Maybe I'll be there. Maybe I won't.

Because I think we got like 14 and a half new subscribers, you know? 14 and a half. So if you want to make sure this happens, then you can still go. It's not too late. It's not too late. Also, Nick gets really upset when I call you all subscribers. He wants us to call you supporters, which I do agree with because this is not a subscription. this is like a supportive mission to keep this running.

Well, the issue with the nomenclature is that you can subscribe to the podcast to get it weekly. That's not the same. Becoming a podcast supporter is different, right? Like Apple and Spotify, I'm not sure about Spotify, but Apple uses the word subscribe so that it's one of your podcasts. Kind of like you can subscribe to a YouTube channel. Yes, yes. Okay. Okay, so it is a supporter.

That's why Eric and I, months ago, decided to settle on the word support. I think the appropriate thing would be if you want to submit your questions to the podcast or become a supporter of the podcast you can go to that triathlonlife.com slash podcast and just so you know the supporter system is a subscription model so you don't even have to think

about it. It'll just take money out. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So thank you for your support. We also, something we do as a small thank you to our podcast supporters is that we try to every week pick a random podcast supporter to receive a little TTL prize.

TTL being that triathlon life. And this week we put it into a random number generator and we got Holly Deschennes. This is the way I'm going to pronounce Holly's name. Now check out this place. Tell me if this is even more confusing. Holly is from Oregon, Wisconsin. Which one is it, Holly?

Are you from Oregon or are you from Wisconsin? Apparently the name of the town is called Oregon in Wisconsin. That's cool. I didn't know that existed. which is funny because it kind of brings together. You guys are from Oregon. I had the worst day of my life in Wisconsin. So it's kind of like it's all comes together.

Just kidding. That was not the worst day of my life. Beautiful. Okay, so first question. Hi, team. I saw Paula's recent post about making arrow gains at her latest trip to the wind tunnel. Just a dumb question here.

Paula, in the past, you thanked several people for their help in making you faster, including Nick. We all love Nick, but I'm curious what his role was in making you faster. Hope you guys enjoyed your time together and enjoy the offseason, Brianna.

No, I mean, when I did that post, I was like thinking about all the people that took time out of their lives to come and help us in the wind tunnel. And Nick, you were there. And it didn't mean you were like physically in the wind tunnel tinkering with the position and giving your advice. Well, you weren't giving your advice. Unwarranted and unwanted, but my advice was there. Yeah, exactly. And as everyone who does triathlon knows, this is very much a team. support in a way that you need a good support team around you. And Nick, you are, not to butter you up live on the pod, but an important part of us, important part of our day to day joy and everything in the sport. So I think you're, you are a big part of making us faster. I think I got something in both my eyes. I think in this particular situation, it is like, it is important to note that going to the wind tunnel is a pretty complicated thing. Yeah. And I'll just like break the whole thing down for you. Paula is in and out.

of the wind tunnel and she's cold and like trying to push a set amount of watts and hold her head in the right position and everything. So Paulo is there like our coach. Our coach, Paulo. He's there doing like little adjustments on our arrow bars and like kind of mentally thinking what is going to be the next test, conferring, you know, what I'm concurring with him. I'm getting video and photo of Paula doing that. I'm also making a spreadsheet real time of like, here's what we changed. Here's how Paula felt about it. Here's a picture of it. And here's, you know, the outcome anecdotally from the wind tunnel guy so that at the end of it we can compare that against the notes that they gave us. And then Leo, the wind tunnel guy, is conducting the test. So then there's no one left to talk to.

That's where Nick comes in. No one loves talking more than Nick. And it also happened to be like donut day, cake day. And there's no one better to accompany you to those types of days. That's right. There's a lot of things going on in the wind tunnel. What we learned last time we were there is we both felt so overwhelmed and unable to think straight at the end of the day that we weren't like super confident in what we learned. So having extra people around to do these little dumb tasks that seem dumb, but it's really hard for one person to do all of it. Even not an engineer or bike mechanic.

Yeah, but you clearly have knowledge about aerodynamics and we needed help with photo and video. And we'll have one more question about arrow testing as our last question too, which I think is interesting. It might take a while to address. Next question here is from Emily, Hi TTL team. I would love to hear you guys talk about your transition into 70.3 racing from short course.

When many pros talk about 70.3s, they make it seem like such a short, casual event, just throwing in a 70.3, or just hopping into a few 70.3s, etc. I'm a newer pro who just made the jump up at Indian Wells a few weeks ago. Let me tell you, it did not feel like a short day to me. Is it something that just comes with more experience

at the distance, or does it still feel like a long day, but you just get used to it? I'm interested to hear your take. Love everything you guys do. Thanks, Emily. My potentially unpopular opinion here is that these are Iron Man specific athletes

who don't feel completely prepared to have their best day at a 70.3. So they're just diffusing pressure in any way possible by saying, I'm just jumping into this 70.3. I'm just stepping down. No, she's talking about short course athletes that are stepping up. That's what I thought at first when you started answering that, Eric.

But as I reread the question, it's actually not totally clear. She is a short course athlete. But it could be, she could be referring to these like Iron Man athletes who then jump into a 70.3. She said when many pros talk about 70.3s, they make it seem like such a short casual event. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think anybody who says the term, I'm going to jump in is trying to make sure no one thinks they're taking it super seriously. Right.

But I would say more often than not, I feel like I hear that from people who are Iron Man. specialists. Yeah, this is like such a short thing for me because I usually do double. Right. But what I, where my brain went on this question is that if you're a high level enough short course athlete, someone like Vincent Louis or Hayden Wild or something, Hayden or Katie's a Ferris, you're training enough hours in the week to do a 70.3 very well. And the difference is the bike position. Doing it on a TT bike is different. But in terms of, of training hours, training volume, how the training is made up, it's fairly similar. And I would say that from us jumping from short course to long course, the training actually

didn't change very much at all. So it's not that it's no big deal, but your training should be able to support that. You certainly will have the volume, maybe just like Paula said, the TT position doing 30-minute long intervals versus three-minute long intervals. But if you're at that level, like WTS podium, you're going to be able to fake it, no problem. That reminds me of something you said, Eric, about how in your experience, maybe at first when you started doing 70.3, there was a clear difference in intensity level during the race for each sport.

But as time has gone on, now 70.3 just feels like Olympic distance watts for longer. Yes, very much. Especially the PTO distance, which is less than a 70.3. It's kind of just like an extended Olympic distance race in terms of effort. but the difference between short course and 70.3 is not as drastic is the difference between 70.3 an Iron Man in my opinion,

but I've never done an Iron Man. That's a hot take. That's a hot take. Yeah, assuming that you are not having any sort of thoughts of doing an Iron Man that season or in the next year, yeah, I would agree. Yes, of course, short course athletes are doing

way more intensity and being, and, you know, getting tired in that different way. there's no way they could do the hours that the best Ironman athlete in the world is doing, for example. Right. But I think, like, Lucy probably did do a lot of intensity in her buildup to Kona, so I don't know. Do you think that there's more burnout, you see more burnout in short-course athletes? Or I'm just kind of curious, like, what is harder on the mind? Less hours, but more intensity or more hours and less intensity?

like in general, maybe not specifically on you guys, but you've known many pros, you've known a lot of short course people, you know a lot of Iron Man people, you know a lot of 70.3 people. Where do you see it? Where do people crack? I think this is going to be personality dependent

and person dependent. I can see even like in myself and Paula, comparing the two of us, if we have a day that's a little bit unstructured, Paula, and we have to ride the trainer, Paula is always wants to put in some intervals into the thing and break it up and do little bits of speed,

same thing in the pool versus I'm like, I just want to like kind of space out and like not go above like tempo pace, you know? And I think that like there's some athletes who are short course stars who never who will never make the jump to 70.3. The first person who comes to mind is like Simon Whitfield. And I think he, for example,

was just such a pure racer and loved that high speed so much that getting into a 70.3 and training for that boring. Just like not interesting versus some people are the opposite. Yeah, it's very personality dependent. That's a good answer. My mind went more to like the financials and I think there's more burnout and short course just

because if you don't make it to the Olympics, which is your only goal, there's not a lot of sponsors in that area of racing and you just yeah, you retire and you do something else. It's also a lot more hectic just in terms of like what 70.3 is when you turn

pro, you can go to any race in the world that you want to go to versus a the nature of ITU racing unless you're the best in your country convincingly by a long ways. You're still kind of waiting to see whether or not you're going to get selected to go to certain races.

You have to be kind of just a little bit more on and ready to go at any time versus like I'm taking the next month to prepare perfectly for X and then I'll take three weeks off and then I'll take two months to prepare for the next thing. It's just a little bit more.

You're in control more. Yeah, you're in more control and that's like comforting for a lot of people. I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a short course athlete versus like a non-draft athlete. And I'm wondering if you guys can think back to that time when you were doing short course stuff

where it was draft legal and you could maybe at certain points kind of sit in on the bike. And I'm just wondering if you, was that comforting to know while you were on the swim or something that you're like, as long as I make it out of this water, I can recover a little bit on the bike

or is it the opposite where it's like, no, you can recover on the bike, whatever, and 70.3 because you're just, by yourself anyway, but when you're short course, you have to stay with the group, so it's just tape to tape, super focused. No, short course has much more high spikes,

but then also some like zero watt time or like low watt where you're actually recovering in the pack. And is that comforting? No, none of it's comforting. Racing short course is the most stressful shit ever. And you don't know that's going to happen either. Right. Right. At least for me, I never could count on that. Yeah.

And it's very surgy. It's very surgy. Yeah. Even if it was going, like if the best race of my life means that I'm in a break with four guys and it's hard 100% of the time. Right, right. You guys are taking poles and no breaks. Yeah. You can't count on it. Every race I won in WTS like every big whatever

world race I sat in on the bike so hard. Like I was, I heard coaches on the side saying like don't let Paula sit in but I was just a master of drafting and I was strong enough that the surges weren't too hard and then I could run a really fast

10K off the bike. So it's a whole different mindset. So smart, smart racing. But I do think that the sport has progressed to the point where you can't really do that anymore because Florida Duffy has changed it. Right. You know? Yeah, that's so cool. Back when I was, I did what I had to do at the time.

Well, back to, back to Emily's question, though, as far as hopping into a few 70.3s, do you feel like the length of the race has decreased in your mind? Kind of like how a lot of listeners, I'm sure, can relate. What running three miles felt like when they first started running versus running three miles now feels like they feel like they're completely unrelated. Does a 70.3 to you right now feel shorter than it did at first? No.

No, 100% not. No, every time I'm like, I can't believe I have to go that far. Why am I doing this? This is horrible. I think it's like, it's just so hard. It's so hard that it's, it's in this weird space of where, yeah, four hours sounds like it should be at it. You would just, out of necessity, have to do an intensity that shouldn't be that bad. But it's just, it's so fast and so hard and everybody's so good and it can hold that high

intensity and pain level for so long now. Especially with the PTO. If anything, it feels longer. Because the first time we had no idea what we're getting ourselves into. Right, right. Now you do, unfortunately. Thanks for the question. That was good.

Good luck to you if you're, uh, if you're going to continue to do 70.3s. Next question is from Sean. Hey, TTL peeps. I got a bike tire question. Now that we're in wintertime, I'll only be riding on the trainer, like many, I assume. I'm not brave enough like Eric. The cold hurts. Anyway, I just got some new tires

for my last race and I'd like to not waste them on the trainer. So my question is, is it okay to store my tires for a few months? They won't rot, dry out, or anything like that, right? Are there any tips? F.I. They have like 65 miles on them. One shakeout ride and a race.

Happy holidays, y'all, Sean. So first of all, for the people who aren't as familiar with this concept, why would you want to change your tire when you're putting it on a trainer? So if you have a, I think we talked about this before, but if you have the type of trainer where your tire is actually contacting a steel drum and that's the method of resistance, that will wear your tire out significantly faster than even riding it outside. Which seems crazy to me. I've never understood the physics of that, but. I don't know the exact physics. I think it's just because the contact patch, like how hard you have to push it in and like how much the tire is having to, you know, like bow around that.

that still drum, I think that's just more significant than on the road. And it's in one exact position versus you're like moving slightly on the road. But to answer the question, though, storing your tires, 100%. No problem with that. There was actually stories a while back of like Lance Armstrong would age his tires for several years before using them because he thought they'd make them more supple. Yeah, they're definitely not going to dry out, assuming you don't put them in the sun. So yeah, totally not a concern at all. Yeah, yeah. The only thing would be is if you're running two tube list, then you'll need to make sure that when you go to get them, or if you took them fully off, obviously you want to like clean the ceiling out or whatever. But if you were leaving them on the

rims, you just want to make sure that when you put those tires, those tire and wheel combination back on your bike, that the sealant has not dried up. And you could also buy a trainer-specific tire that's not intended to be written on the road, right? That's a little more robust for the steel drum. I think that's the move. It's a very hard rubber. Hard rubber tire. And that's, that's what it's designed to do. But the move is really just to get a direct drive. If I were to like rank things that are worth spending money on in triathlon, a kicker is like top three things.

Okay. Next question here is from Kevin. Kevin on the night shift? Kevin on the night shift? Oh my God, he's a listener now? That's an inside joke that no one will get. Yeah, let's just tell them really quick that we went to the couple's triathlon and

Nick came with us. Of course, Nick came to the couple's triathlon, by the way, obviously. Yeah. It's like you guys kind of one freaking day. to yourselves. Yeah, no, but the grand prize was like 100 grand and this was this race in March and it was a super sprint and it was a relay. And we showed up at the hotel at 2 a.m. And the guy working at the front desk name was Kevin and he was just like out of it because it's 2 a.m. He was way out of it. He was way out of it. And then we started calling him Kevin on the night shift and then we thought that would be the best name for a band. If we ever do a band where it's like the three of us somehow and which I, by the way, I'm for it and I could totally make it. And I could totally make it. it happen. I know people. We'll be called Kevin on the night shift. Yeah, Kevin on the night shift. Yeah, it'll be like an 80s cover band or something. Yes, yes, exactly. Okay, let's hear Kevin's question. Okay, Kevin, here we go. New listener and really enjoying the pod, it keeps me engaged on my commute

to and from work. I have started from episode one and I'm working my way through them all so I can be fully caught up as new ones drop. Have you ever, or do you take any pre-workout supplements? Do you preload long rides with salts, caffeine, not named coffee? So first of all, for this question, pre-workout is something that is really popular in people that go like lift weights and in some other sports. But I don't know any of my friends or I never hear about it in triathlon. Do you guys ever use any pre-workout and do you know any other pro athletes that use pre-workout? No. No.

Coffee is our pre-workout. Do you think part of it is because it's a little scary taking that stuff and not knowing what's in it? Yes. Yes. One word answers. If it makes that big of a difference, it's probably illegal. Right. Right.

This is, I don't know if we should put this in the podcast, but we got approached by a nutrition company. Yeah, we can. You think so? Yeah. And it was like a significant amount of dollars that they were offering us. But it was this company that sells pre-workout. stuff like you're talking about and like testosterone boosters, one look at the website and I'm like for one million dollars, I would never. You just, you can't align yourself with that. And the,

like to risk your career for a tainted substance that's not NSF certified is not worth any amount of money. So it's something you really have to be careful of if you're in the testing pool of endurance sport. But I think that the demographic that they're marketing to, which is, the CrossFit bodybuilder type, they take those because maybe they are effective for building muscle, but I don't know. I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot. Anything. With a leash. If you want to take that out, you can.

But it's an anecdotal, interesting sponsorship thing that had come up in this. I remember. I looked at their website and I was like, wow. That guy weighs 500 pounds of pure muscle. I don't think this is the right fit. But they're trying to get into the endurance sport. space. Do you guys ever do any caffeine pills or anything other than coffee?

No. No, just coffee. We're fairly pure in terms of what we take. The one thing that I'll do if I feel like my stomach can't handle the acidity of coffee is that I'll just, then I'll just go to like one of the caffeinated gels before a workout. And I'm like, oh, bonus, it's like got some carbohydrates in there and maybe I won't balk too. Yeah, like the other day, we ran out of caffeinated beans. So I was like, okay, well, I'll just have a decaf coffee because I like the taste.

then I'll take a caffeinated precision to get my caffeine, which the rightly should work. You didn't squirt the precision into the coffee as a sweetener? I did think about that. Gross. Gross. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Yeah.

Nice. And then like maybe the odd like Coca-Cola or something, or do you not even think about that? Is that just like a treat that caffeine is just a side of like whatever it's there, but you don't really care. It's an interesting thing to play with. I never thought of caffeine as like, oh, I need this in the mid-race because it's a caffeine boost. But our friend Jackie Herring is at every pro-breeding, is there going to be Coke? Is there going to be Coke? Like she needs Coke on the run because it's like that hit of it is caffeine.

But I have never tried it in a race personally. The Coke? I'll grab sometimes like so I'll run out of transition with a gel and it's usually a 100 milligram caffeine gel. And sometimes if it's things are going real sideways, I'll take a Red Bull in like at one of the aid stations. but like I definitely intentionally use two 100 milligram caffeine gels on the bike and then one in the middle of the race. Oh, of the run. One in the middle of the run. Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool. But that's not like, I think like if you, I think Christian is popular for like taking caffeine pills that have like probably, you know, four times that amount in it. I think there's a diminishing return there. And then I also have increasing number of porta-potty stops. Right, right, which obviously is really good. to slow you down. Yeah, but to answer this question, I would say that any, any, like, nutritional supplement that professional triathletes are promoting in general should be fairly safe to take.

Like, we only take things that have that NSF certified label. Anything else you should maybe steer clear of. And then the second question here from Kevin, Kevin on the night shift. How often do you stretch or do yoga? I'm flexible as a number two pencil, and I fear it is hampering my riding and running. Do you stretch before and after every ride run swim or just one big stretch at night or in the morning? First of all, I feel like it's so funny here. It's like, I wonder if the consensus is that being stretchier is faster.

Stretchier, being stretchier. When I heard one big stretch, I just picture like Flynn doing the downward dog. Exactly. This is the extent of my stretching. I do a downward dog in the morning and I do a downward dog in the night and that's it. Just like Flynn. But I grew up dancing and I'm actually pretty flexible to the point where I think it really made me injured early on in my career and now I'm less flexible, which is a good thing. Some flexibility is good.

Mobility is good. Having some, you know, a little bit of a warm-up routine. But I would say like sitting and doing static stretching like a ballerina is maybe not always the best thing. But if you're like after traveling or whatever, we have a good like mobility routine from Aaron Carson at AC Fit that we. do just to mobilize ourselves, but less about just the goal is not to become more flexible necessarily. But I could see someone that really has no hamstring flexibility that could hamper their TT position and stuff like that. Eric and I actually don't have that problem. Could be something you might need to work on, but it's a bit of individual. Both of you are super flexible. Even Eric too as a guy

is very flexible. Yeah. It's amazing. He's like legs completely straight, bent over in his camera bag, just shuffling everything. Crazy. It's amazing. Every time I'm like, geez Eric, it's like a Were you a dancer? I was got maximum points on the presidential fitness test for flexibility. Yeah, that's good stuff. So I would say, like, this is probably something that you should do with the guidance of a trained professional. Yeah, agree. But if I had to just, like, make one blanket statement, I would say that probably 99% of the age group triathletes out there and some pro-traithes out there could get faster at swimming with some shoulder stretching.

Oh, yeah. So you can, like, further back. Yeah, of course. And there's no issue, like, there are some things that would say that, like, stretching your calves is not good for running because you actually want more elastic. There's no issue with that in swimming. And if you can't freaking put your arms into a streamlined position straight over your head without maximum effort, you're probably leaving a little bit of speed on the table when it comes to swimming.

Yeah. Yeah, Eric always says that. I know marathon runners and triathletes are not the same people, but there are some elite elite marathon runners who cannot even get. close to touching their toes and they're running super fast so it's not a necessary thing for speed

although it seems like for triathlon you have to be able to like you said like if your hamstrings are tight you need to be able to get into an arrow position but maybe they can pull their knee all the way of their chest no problem that's what I'm saying like especially for lower body things don't just like stretch everything to the maximum

and like default to like touching your toes since that's the first thing we think of when we think of flexibility like spend a little bit of money and go talk to somebody and say like, what are some things here considering that I'm a triathlet trying to get into the aeroposition

that might be beneficial. Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. Thanks for that question, Kevin. Also, Kevin said, thanks for taking the time to read this. Best of luck in 2024. Merry Christmas to you all.

Thanks, Kevin. Next question here is from Jackie. I have a hard time balancing training with remembering to take photos and video. I hate running with my phone. So my question is, do you carve out specific time just to get training photos and do real training later or somehow get both done at once.

Thanks so much for all you do. I'm learning so much, Jackie. Both done at the same time. That's what makes it good. The only way. It's got to be real. You can tell instantly when it's a photo shoot versus it just happened. Yeah. But, you know, to be fair, Eric is extremely good at it and it's not easy to do. Yeah.

And it does take away sometimes from the session. Like we rarely do like content stuff during really hard important sessions. But fortunately in our training, we have a lot of cruise runs and cruise rides and we can get content. But sometimes like, for example, today we are intentional about our content. I'm like, oh, I think it'd be cool to get a video of me running along this stretch that's super pretty. So when we're at that stretch, without breaking stride, Eric's taking a video. So we're thinking about it, but we're not stopping and starting or going out. just to do that. It's part of our

hour run today. Yeah, I take a lot of pride in slowing Paula down as little as humanly possible while still satisfying my creative urges to the point of where sometimes Paula gets mad at me because I'm like, oh, I didn't get the shot.

Just like, we just tell me to turn around and go back there instead of just being pissed off for the next 20 minutes. Like, well, that's not the point. Like, yes, I could get a shotgun out and I could shoot the fish in the barrel or like go about it the right way with the fly rod, you know. But I will say there are, like, my photography

could be significantly better if we just went out, like, at the perfect time of day, to the spot that I have in mind, with a little bit of lighting set up and like all the things and conducted it as though it was a, you know, a freaking cover shoot for Triathlet magazine. But we don't have time for that. I would say that, Nick, you're also

in the category of doing it on the go. Is that right? But I am very much willing to compromise the quality of the training for the quality of the photos. video. Yeah. As a non-professional, I'm like, what makes me happy and a big part of what makes me happy is being able to get cool photos and videos out of each session.

Totally, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a continuum. And if you want to see something where Nick and I completely separated from training, you can go onto YouTube and watch Control Burn, or you can watch the swerk in it video. You can watch Paula signs with On Running. These are all things where we put the training as secondary and went out and got specific content for fun to fully scratch the creative edge.

Flying drones and everything. Flying drones and everything. You guys. You guys. Did we tell the story about us going to pick up Nick's drone yet? No, we didn't. I don't think we told that. Wait, did we? Did we? Did we? Introduce Nick's drone to the family and with the full story? So let me start by saying that there's two different kinds of drones. There's the drones that are better for the average consumer, which have a lot of automatic features, automatic landing, automatic everything automatic takeoff and if you're just like you press one joystick forwards it goes

forwards you press the other joystick down it goes down that's one type of drone there's another type of drone that eric and i have gotten into which is called FPV drones you you fly these with goggles on your head and everything is manual controls so paula stop sighing there's a lot more control of the drone but it's a lot harder to fly. And so Eric and I both started with those kind of automatic kind of drones. And now we have both, we're toying with these new kinds of drones. So I'll say that. And there was someone selling the drone on Facebook marketplace in like San Francisco area. Okay, Paula, you can take it from here. Yeah, theoretically directly on our route. It was quite a long day of driving and we went into the depth to get Nick, this new drone. This is on our drive from Bend to Morgan Hill for arrow testing.

Yeah, I guess it's not that funny of a story in person, but the guy was super nice, brought the drone out, but anytime you buy an electronic device like this, you want to like fire it off and make sure it works. So Nick was on speakerphone. Oh, my mom just brought us some treats. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Sheila. Wow. Nick, you can't have any. You would love these, though.

I bet I would. So, yeah, we fired it up. We flew it around a little bit, and we brought it down to Nick in Santa Monica or in. San Francisco, so now Nick has a new drone, same drone that Eric has, and that's the end of this story. Well, I just can't wait until I get to fly it with you guys riding your bikes. Yes. But the point of this story is probably the most insane drone footage you've seen in a snowboard or any sort of action mountain bike movie lately. We're like, oh my gosh, that's insane. How did they do that? It's with this type of drone. So embrace yourselves. Brace yourselves.

You're about to see some triathlon content. You ain't seen before. Shit's about to get awesome. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so that answers your question, Jackie, I hope. And drones are not a great way to incorporate filming into your already training session because they're a nightmare of setup and tear down every time. But Eric does it, by the way.

Eric has done it many times. That is quite the logistical thing to pull off, but I take great satisfaction and getting it even 50% of the way. Okay, last question here from Charles. And this is kind of a doozy, an interesting question. I hope we get to kind of dive into this because Eric at least has some cool insider knowledge about this.

What are your thoughts on indoor versus outdoor aerosting? I'd assume the wind tunnel is better, but it's hard to arrange for an age-rooper. And I've seen some pros like Lionel opt for outdoor, which seems more realistic for race conditions. This is from a day-woner who really enjoyed a post-race chat with Eric about being swept out to see at Alcatraz a few months ago.

Eric, does this ring a bell at all? You spoke to probably a few people after Alcatraz. I do actually. This does ring a bell. That was wild. There were some people that got long gone. Really? Some help or some long walks on the beach.

Rip from the rip current. Yeah, because the current was so strong this year, right? People just fully missed the exit. Yeah. And they were like down at the Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah. That's awesome. So, okay.

So obviously what we love about the wind tunnel is that it's, like Eric you said last week, it removes so many of the variables. So you can isolate stuff really easily. It's also highly efficient. Right. Quickly get in, get out, change something, same thing. You know, wind conditions don't change.

Temperature conditions don't change. Humidity conditions don't change. I guess actually those things would maybe presumably change if the outdoor change, but certainly much less than being outdoors. So then there's two different kinds of like, do I want to say outdoor testing, but like velodrome testing, and then actually testing out on a road.

Yep. So how would you do the velodrome testing and then how would you do the outdoor testing? I think the velodrome testing and the outdoor testing are pretty much the same concept. The velodrome is a little bit simpler because you're not having to worry about wind at all and that's the whole reason to do it in the velodrome.

But still, you need to make sure that your tires are set at the exact same PSI for each test and you need to try. try to ride the exact perfect line around the velodrome each time. And you're still doing the same thing that you're supposed to do in the wind tunnel where like, don't move your head at all. Don't like try to ride this exact position in this test. And then two hours later in your fourth, fifth, sixth test, still be holding the same position.

And that just becomes more challenging on a velodrome as you fatigue. But then the other thing that happens on a velodrome is if you are not like a professional cyclist and you haven't spent a lot of time in the velodrome, people tend to get better at riding the velodrome as the tests go on. So even that is like a factor that's coming in. And your fifth test, you're just going to ride more smoothly because you've gotten the hang of it. Wow, good point, Eric. I never thought about that. Yeah.

Like my experience with wind tunnel. Okay, one second here. Did I already talk about his wind tunnel experience? Because T.I. told us, but I don't know if it's public. I haven't seen that. No, no, he didn't. No. Okay, so my wind tunnel experience, and I've heard this from some other people as well, is I tested like the praying mantis position.

This is like six years ago. And I tested like arms completely flat. I tested elbows wide. I did like three very different tests and there was no difference. And I just, after our experience was specialized in the wind tunnel, I just cannot believe that's totally true. So I just don't think that doing the velodrome is as accurate. it. Maybe there are certain teams that have it totally dialed and have figured out how to make it totally accurate. But when I did it, it was fairly non-conclusive, unfortunately. So there's a wider plus or minus percentage of error when you do the velodrome compared to the wind tunnel. That's your experience.

That's my experience. Like I said, maybe where Remco does, because I know that he did some velodrome testing, maybe they've got it figured out and totally dialed and he's better at riding a velodrome and being consistent. I'm not totally sure. But, But then there's the on-road stuff, and you have like a sensor on your bike. It's a very specific thing. We actually got one from a company that's like up and coming. And it's a really cool thing. If you set it up properly, you can actually see your CDA on your bike computer as you're riding in real life. But people were doing outdoor testings before that sensor existed, doing pretty much the same thing you do in the velodrome, right? This is a relatively newer thing.

It's the same kind of, it's just a different company that's doing it. Yeah. The way that you would do it classically outdoors, you would make sure you want to completely straight road, lowest wind conditions possible, but you're still going to take a wind reading, or you're going to take like an air pressure, you know, barometric pressure reading,

and you're going to try to create, you know, replicate this one mile stretch of road as perfectly as possible. And now, like what Paula was saying, is we have some of these onboard sensors that will measure wind speed direction and temperature and barometric pressure like real time on the bike.

And so that's taking a little bit, of that need to do the exact same road and if the wind picks up, you're screwed. But it's the same concept as the wind tunnel. You're trying to eliminate all these variables and get the one thing that you're testing and changing is how much how aerodynamic you are with

your helmet or whatever. Obviously, the road testing is more realistic in terms of your movement and your position and looking up the road, but it's just more complicated to set up and be 100% accurate. We got this device basically right as winter hit and bends, so we haven't taken it out on

the road to try it, yeah, but we are looking forward to using it in conjunction with what we learned in the wind tunnel. I'm eating these marj bar squares. I'm like salivating. Wait, are these the marge bar squares that I had when I was in animation with you? Oh my God, those are good.

Like, they are the death of me at this Christmas holiday season. How do we describe these things? It's like a rice, crispy treat, but instead of marshmallows, you use Mars bars. And then you just like melt actual Mars bars. completely by themselves and create a chocolatey crust.

Chocolate top on top. So it's like Mars bars on top of Mars bars with a little bit of rice, Christy's mixed in. But anyway, I'm talking in my mouth is just like, water. I have a dog. I'm a dog. But you guys are going to use this device.

Yes, we'll use it, yes. We're looking forward to trying it. And now we have some data at the wind tunnel, but we also want to like try that out on the road and you can see what different head positions look like, etc. I do think that like I hear you

with what you're saying and I've always thought this as well like oh I was sitting on the trainer in the wind tunnel like the best possible you know how is that actually compared to the road but like I said

when we were in there we were pushing a wattage that was not so easy that it's still like your body's going to do a little bit of motion yeah yeah it's not like you're so locked in

that you're a freaking robot on there like didn't it's not like there's a casted version of Paula that is legs aren't even spinning yep so if you have bow legs or whatever

you're still riding in that motion. Yeah. The thing about the on-road testing that's better is that it's more accessible to more people. So it's very expensive and very difficult to go to a wind tunnel. But with these new devices that are becoming better and more accurate, anyone could get one

and try it and use it and improve their aerodynamics out in real time. Going on it with like a buddy or something. Get like five buddies and get a wind tunnel air, I mean a tunnel testing on the road timeshare. And then start a business. Start renting it out to age groupers.

Would this fit on Nick's bike, by the way? Like, could Nick do some arrow testing with this? Yeah, you could try it, yeah. The most difficult part is just, like, mounting it to a variety of different arrow bars, like finding a system that works for the mount, which is definitely doable, but it's not like you can just pop it off one

and pop it on another because it has to, like, work specifically with your bike. But it's definitely achievable. It's like a GoPro mount, but the things should be level, and you don't want it to be too close to the frame. You know, there's just like, whatever. I have a GoPro mount,

on the bottom of my bike computer mount. Could work for that. On my road bike, it's like solid. It's connected to the bars. On my TT bike, the way it's on a canyon is it's like connected to the hydration in the front. And it's like, do you remember how like wobbly that is on my bike? Yeah, that won't work. It will not work.

Can we say the brand or is this like, I don't think they've like gone public yet with selling the devices, but the name of the company is Ghibli. Ghibli. I'll make a note to make sure we can actually say. that. Yeah, they have a web page and everything, so we're looking for it to try it. And when we do, we'll give feedback on the pod and let you know how it goes. Yeah, that sounds like a really cool thing. I mean, all of us age rupers are familiar with this feeling of like, okay, this thing I just did feels more arrow. This helmet feels more arrow. This jersey feels less arrow, but it's, you don't really know.

It's just you're going off of intuition. And as we've seen in the past, even really experienced writers, what some people thought was more arrow was actually not more arrow. Like it's aerodynamics or this all big inclusive system that's hard to predict sometimes what's going to actually be faster. So it'd be nice to have empirical data ready to use right in front of you showing up on your bike computer while you're doing it. More data, more problems. God, maybe that's a little true.

Just stuff a bottle down your kit and call it good. Apparently not, actually. Works for somebody. It was just like a crazy witch hunt. Just like, yeah, I'm going to shove a bottle down my kid and people are going to start doing it. Let's see what idiots follow along. Yeah, I think, I think that's totally a thing. I want to test that in some way. Christian freaking singing to be better at swimming.

That's right. I just want to say that we just sent out emails to the final team for the TTL development team. Yeah, so we'll post that next week. We're going to be doing podcast number 100 next week. Maybe with Nick live in person. Maybe. Maybe. And this is podcast number 99. 99 is like one of my favorite numbers, I think. I think it's because of Wayne Gretzky.

100%. Oh, Wayne Gretzky. Yeah, I just have like a deep, deep. It's in your Canada blood. Bang with Wayne Gersky. Yeah, it's in my Canadian blood. We asked the Aussies, early and Zach, if they knew who Wayne Gresky was and they did not. No.

Yeah, that's crazy to me. Yeah. Because they had an inkling that they wouldn't know. And they didn't know. No way. Yeah. So it's, it is very North American. I mean, if you're a, do you think Europeans now?

Yeah, because they like hockey. Because he would have played in the Olympics, at least. Yeah, but it's just like, he was also like, he's a huge joke on the office. This comes from Wayne Gretzky. I'm just surprised. I'm surprised. I kind of think it's a worldwide name. Wayne Gretzky, I just bought Eric some Wayne Gretzky whiskey yesterday. Very fun. He's got like a winery and whiskery, whatever.

A whiskey. That sounds like a collection of cats. A whisky. I think, yeah, there's a little bit of a shorter one, but that's okay. We're all on Christmas break. So, Nick, we'll see you next week. Maybe. Maybe you will.

Maybe you won't. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Well, if you're coming, I need to start making the cake, so let me know. That's right. I need to at least 24 hour to notice. Yeah, you know it comes before Part B, right? What? Party!

We order pizza. That's right. We're never going to get back to real serious training. Good. because we're having a pizza party doesn't mean we're not training seriously that's the thing it's like just because you're having fun it doesn't mean you're not training seriously and TTL in a nutshell

mic drop boom done see ya bye peace out