That Triathlon Life Podcast - Do professional triathletes use FTP? Integrated bike hydration, zone 2 training, and more!

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

This week we cut straight to questions! Here's what we covered:Do professional triathletes use FTP?When to wake up and eat for a 6 AM raceGravel bike vs TT bike saddle height and fitHow easy should an easy ride really be?Wearing TTL gear without being a triathleteMountain bike computer placementTTL business, and how Eric has learned to run itTraining and racing in unreleased shoesHow pros use integrated bike hydration in racesHow Music and creativity overlap with triathlon.Thank you to our podcast supporters for showing your love and for helping to keep the podcast ad-free.To submit your own questions, and to become a podcast supporter yourself, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcastCome watch the world’s best professional triathletes as they race around the streets of San Francisco at the T100 Triathlon on Saturday June 8th: T100 San Francisco

Hello, everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Paula Findlay. I'm Eric Warnestim. I'm Nick Goldston. And this is our podcast where we talk about triathlon. We take your questions every week. And we talk a little bit about what's going on in our triathlon lives. We, none of us have race this past weekend. So we won't be doing any race recaps. Don't have any guests on this podcast. Just back to the original Q&A. But we got some really good questions this week. So I'm a couple of excited for. I think we should try to get through as many as we can. How do you guys feel about that? Let's do it. And I'm going to start with a question of my own for you guys. When you guys are going through some kind of like emotional turmoil that may have nothing to do with triathlon, do you feel like that affects your training at all? Or do you feel like you can compartmentalize and kind of like, nope, that was that. Now I go out and do this and I'm fully giving myself to this training moment. That's a good question.

I think it affects it for sure. Yes, without a doubt. I think we're, yeah, as professional athletes, I would like to think anyway we're better than a lot of people of shutting that off and like checking the baggage of the door. But still, beyond a shadow of doubt, if you're having a very stressful day because of a sponsor thing or life situation, doctor situation, it is, you can feel it.

It is really hard to like fully get back into the, that would, you know, that kill mindset of having a really good hard workout. Yeah, I feel like in those kind of situations, you need to give yourself the option of just doing an easy workout because that'll make you feel better, but it's not mentally crippling to go and try to do it. Yeah. Yeah, depending on the kind of thing that you're going through, it can spur you on to maybe getting more out of yourself, a little bit of anger, but it can also just, it can be very detrimental. And, you know, like, what is the classic thing? You know, like life stress. stress your body doesn't know the difference between training stress and like life stress

I that's why I feel the same way when there's like when I have emotional things going on or life stress going on like my training suffers so much because I just feel like I don't have the fire to go out and train I'm like I feel so depleted going into it but that's why I'm so impressed when you hear these stories of oh athlete a whatever X and Y their fiancee passed away four months ago and here they are at the Olympics on the podium podium. It's like, damn, how did they deal with all that difficulty and still find the strength to train? And maybe like you said, Eric, maybe there's a component where it's like, no, that actually that fueled them in the training, that pain, they transferred it somehow into energy. But I was

curious about how the two of you felt. Yeah. I think it could be different for different people and different for different situations, whether that flicks that switch of, okay, I'm going to use this or I'm going to, you know, move into this other space or, you know, I got to, I got to take some time and take things easy for a bit. It just kind of depends. And, you know, I think just be good to yourself and let that happen as it will, but don't force anything. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, we're going to go crazy on questions this week. So let's go, we're not going to do a segment.

We're not, we're going to do no bantering. We're just going to do questions. And you two can submit your question to the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. In that same place, you can become a podcast supporter, which helps keep this podcast ad free, helps us get the good gear like the microphones we're talking on and everything sounding nice and crisp and clean. Every week we try to pick a podcast supporter that wins a free little TTL prize. Right now we're sending out TTL bottles and TTL socks. And this week, we put a random number generated to work and found Alex Wilson.

You are the winner this week. Congratulations, Alex. The last week's person, they messaged you, but you didn't see the message. So are you behind on going through your requests at the moment? Yes, I am very behind. So we could switch our method where the person can just email the TTL podcast forum. Okay. Because Nick's going through a lot. He doesn't need to read all his message requests like he usually does.

Thanks, Fala. Thanks, Paula. I try to keep on top of them, but sometimes there's too many things. Yeah, no, I totally get it. I don't even open my requests a lot of the time. Yep. And if these people are winning, they've emailed us before, most likely. I will say that another way you can help with the podcast is by rating it on Spotify and iTunes and sending it to your friends and recommending it around. That also helps a lot.

The more people that listen, the better the podcast does and the better we can make the podcast. The better we can present it to the feed. Just kidding. Well, maybe I'm not kidding. I don't know. Well, okay. Well, we'll start with the first question here if that's okay. Yep, let's do it. Okay, wonderful. This one's from Kevin. Huge fan of the pod. Thanks so much for everything you're giving back. I have a question regarding FTP. Do pros work to an FTP? Do they even know what their FTP is? Do they even care? Is it just us mere age groupers sucked into the FTP hype? I've started training to RPE, and it is so much better. Kevin, let me just take a second here and decrypt these acronyms. FTP stands for functional threshold power, which I'm sure most of you know, but I'm also sure some of you don't. And that means, uh, FTP refers to the maximum amount of power you can hold on the bike for roughly an hour. So your best average power for an hour. That's theoretically the idea.

And a lot of people use that number as a reference point to train below or above. Let's say it's like, okay, you're doing five minutes at five times five minutes at, let's say, 95% of your FTP with two minute breaks in between. Like that would be a common workout. And so that way, someone who's really strong or someone who is not as strong, they're still, roughly working at the same level. So your coach can copy paste workouts. Exactly. So your coach can copy paste workouts.

And then RPE stands for rate of perceived exertion for people who don't necessarily want to use power. You can just use what your feeling is certain intensity. So let's go back to the question. Which, by the way, Lachlan Morton didn't use a power meter at Unbound. He went based on R.P.E. Well, so there you go. That's a long race. For those that don't know, Lachlan Morton just won

the super biggest, I would say, gravel race of the year, at least in the U.S., maybe? There's gravel racing outside of the U.S.? 200 miles. That's a joke, but also, I'm bad. It took him like, it's so, Wahoo, like, posted a picture of his Wahoo bolt after the race, and it was like, power, N-A,

because it says that when you don't have a power meter. Whoa. And my gravel bike, currently the battery's dead, so it says N-A, and I love it. love it and I am not replacing the battery right now because it's so nice to ride without power feedback sometimes. Yeah. If you have a kind of like a bad stigma within your head and then just to not have it there, not even have the option to look at it, that's the kind of a gift, right? I can very

easily suck the fun out of things that are not meant to be workouts. Well, the problem with it is that like say you're doing that seven by five minutes and you're supposed to hold 250 and you do the first one and you feel like you're trying so hard, but you're only holding 2.30, that can mentally just crush you to the point where you don't even want to finish it or sometimes you won't finish it. Whereas if you didn't even know what your power was,

you would just say, okay, that felt hard. I'm doing six more. I mean, I can't say that that's not one of the reasons I don't love trail running is because the numbers, the pace numbers don't really mean anything when you're running uphill or downhill. So you're just running.

Yeah, totally. So to answer your question, our coach doesn't use FTP. We know what our FTP is when we go and do lab testing once, maybe twice a year. We get an FTP out of that, but no, he doesn't base things off FTP. We have zones that are basically like zone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. He calls them crew steady solid hard. And those kind of come with a little bit of a range if we ask specifically for a wattage range.

But we're kind of more, I think personally, I think more in terms of like, what is my 70.3 race power based on the power that I've actually held in 70.3s. and we do so much training over the year. Like, I kind of know what I can do for 8 by 8, and I'm trying to just get a little bit higher. But that is how we work, and I'm sure that there are plenty of pros out there that operate off power, that do operate off of heart rate. And, you know, just...

And FTP. Yeah, it depends on your coach. Yeah. The problem with FTP is a lot of the tests you do to discover your FTP are very extrapolated tests off of a shorter protocol. So a 20-minute test or a ramp test or something that's not actually an hour. So I think that FTP readings that those things spit out

are higher than what your FTP actually is. Yeah, for me, that's for sure true. Yeah, again, depends on the athlete. Like Nick, Nick and I have had so many conversations about this, you would test your FTP and you would get an FTP of 310. I would test my FTP on the same test and I might get an FTP of 325. Right.

I can actually go out for an hour and hold 325. Yeah, exactly. I cannot. I would not make it past 17 minutes. or whatever, you know, so, like, again, different athletes, different levels of training. So, you know. I also think that there are, people just can hold higher percentages or lower percentages of their FTP for longer.

Like, Eric, you almost can bump up right up against what your FTP is. You can hold that for an entire 70.3. And statistically, that's not usually what people can do. Someone else, like, what was his name, British guy who won the Tour de France a million-time skinny boy with the elbows out to here? going to have to be more specific. Chris Frum. Chris Frum.

Bradley Wiggins. Yeah, no, Chris Frum, sorry. Chris Frum, like, he can hold such a high percentage of his FTP for so long. But someone like a track sprinter or something like they can't, but they have crazy short power. He also notoriously couldn't go significantly above his FTP. He just like, right, right. This is my own. Yeah.

Yeah. There you go. So it totally depends, is the answer. Totally depends. Not a bad tool if a coach is using it to prescribe stuff. I've had coaches, use it before. Yeah. Even if it's just like your hypothetical FTP is 260,

and you just use that for everything, it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I have to say for me, I love it in training to have numbers to stick to. Personally, I like that. But then in a race, go off of RPE more so and just kind of like, how am I actually feeling today right now? What can I do today right now?

Interesting. Unless it's an Iron Man, then you should actually look at your power. Yeah, well, then I just go really slow the whole time. There's work to be done here. Yeah. Okay. This question already, I like because I see the PS at the end that says go Oilers, who are going to the Stanley Cup, by the way. Let's go.

You guys, I have to say, like, my life isn't bad, but I would say the Oilers run right now is the highlight of my life currently. Wow. I'm not kidding. Can't confirm. You're so excited. I never freak out more loudly or happily than when they score in these games. Like, I am glued to the TV with my heart rate over 100 for sure. RPE is a 10.

It's so good. So they're going to the Stanley Cup final. The first time a Canadian team has been in the Stanley Cup final since. 97? Yeah, something real long ago. No way. I thought Canada was hockey capital. Those teams were really, really good.

Well, all the Canadian players, I mean, all the U.S. teams that you guys have are just full of Canadian players. Oh, I see. But it's very global market or whatever. North America market. Wow. So the oilers, the last time the Oilers won the Stanley Cup was in 1990, the year after we were born. And a Canadian team has not won the Stanley Cup final since 1993.

Those are two facts. Wow. So it's really fun. They're playing against the Florida Panthers. Imagine if they lost against Florida. My homestay, Chuck and Gail in Florida would be happy. They, I mean, I actually think Florida's really good and they're probably the favorite. But, um.

Oh, are they really? Yeah, I got a really good team. We have the passion. This is the other crazy thing. And I'm not just talking about this because I'm Oilers obsessed. I'm talking about this because it relates to Traathlon in a lot of ways. The Oilers started out the season, like, ranked 50th in the league. They were so bad.

They couldn't win a game. Horrible season. This is like... We're not going to make the playoffs. Yeah, that was the kind of level we were at. They fired the HUD coach, hired a new coach. Ted Lassow. And now they're...

And now throughout the season, they got. better and better. They went on the longest winning streak, the second longest winning streak. In history. 16 games in a row. Then went back to having some struggles. And now they're made the Stanley Cup final,

all in the same year. Wild. So if you're an athlete, or if you're a coach, it happens at every level. Where you have bad times of the year, great times of the year, and it could end with this super crazy high

where you're winning the whole thing. Yeah, it's good to remember that it doesn't always get worse. stuff can turn around tomorrow. You could go from feeling it's crappy every single swim to best swim of your life tomorrow. No great reason. Just happens. And I feel like that has happened.

That's happened to me for sure. That's definitely how swimming works for sure. Yeah. Okay, well here's the question. Hello TTL fam. I'm racing my first 70.3 on Sunday, Western Massachusetts. And notice that the start time is 6am. Q sleep emoji.

This will be by far the earliest I've woken up to race. Any tips on how to prepare? myself for such an early wake-up. I usually get up three hours before a race to eat a big breakfast. Would you recommend doing the same for this one, even if it means waking up at 3 a.m.? Any guidance on how to be the least affected by this early start time would be much appreciated. Thanks for the ongoing triathlon motivation and inspiration, Sarah from Hamilton, Ontario. This was my Moro Bay start time as well. Six a.m.

Yeah, 6 a.m. in that freezing, freaking cold current water. Wow. You got two options. Well, my race in San Francisco also is in the sixes. Yeah. Option one, you wake up at 3 a.m. and you have your breakfast. Option two, you just don't do that race and you do X-Dara instead, and they start at 9 a.m. Easy decision.

Problem solved. Next question. I think that like the three-hour rule is the generic what people say is the window you should do. But think about when you're training or you're swimming in the morning, you're running in the morning. You're not necessarily eating three hours before. I think that it's a bit of a myth that you have to eat that early, you would be fine with two hours before. I've been pushing it lately, just experimenting, seeing what I can get away with. I think 70.3s, I can push it a lot more than doing a sprint distance, Olympic distance, all out back in the day. That was set up for a lot more GI issues. But also think about that you're going to be doing this 70.3 for six hours or something.

And you ate three hours before you started that. Yeah, the closer you can push it might actually be a good thing for nutrition-wise. Yeah, I don't know, maybe pay attention with that or like experiment with that a little bit in your training and see, like, what is the latest that you can have a meal and not feel like you're having an upset stomach and have a good session and replicate that. In terms of the waking up early, I think I try to tell myself because it feels early to wake up at 5 a.m. to me. Is it feel different than 3 a.m.? No. It all feels really hard. So just don't think about what time it is.

Like you're setting your alarm and chances are it would feel just as early if it was 4.30 a.m. Yeah. Most nights before races, I'm waking up like at 11, and 1145 and 1215 and 12.4. And by the time I'm waking up at 3, I'm like, thank God. I just want this process to be over and let's start the race already. Yeah. Do you guys feel, I remember reading that some people, or actually a lot of people, what they'll do if the race is at 6, they'll wake up at 3, eat, and go back to sleep for like an hour and a half.

No, you'll feel so terrible when you wake up. So you guys wouldn't have to do that. I mean, I do that every day. I wake up at 4 a.m. and I'm hungry, but it doesn't feel great. Yeah, if I wake up and eat breakfast and go back to bed, I have like this deep coma nap with crazy dreams, and then I wake up feeling completely groggy and horrible.

Oh, interesting. But even though it's like probably my body needed it, I don't know. Yeah, and that's a trade-off. Yeah, okay. I would push it personally. I mean, I remember reading the thing about eating and going back to sleep, but I was like, that would never work for me. I pushed it in the last race.

I woke up at four for Morrow Bay. And then keep in mind that, like, yes, the race starts at 6 a.m. for Western Massachusetts, but this is not a pro start. So you don't have to start at 6. You can start at 615, at 620, at 630, because it's kind of like that swim entrance that you self-see. it. Oh, interesting, Nick. Yeah, that's a good point.

Okay, next question here is from Pat from Ann Arbor. Hey, TCL crew. Where I live, it is much easier for me to ride on dirt and gravel roads than on pavement. I recently got a fit on my tri-bike, but I'm wondering how much of that fit, if any, could I apply to my gravel bike? Is your saddle height consistent between your TT and gravel or road bikes? Pat. I've messed around so much with my fit lately, just because, because of my hip issues that I don't think I have like the best insight on this,

but the saddle heights, I think at least when you're paddling on the bike, the saddle heights should feel the same. And a bike fitter would have a little bit better insight as to like, that means a TT bike is going to be three millimeters lower to account for the, you know,

the tighter back angle and more extended hamstrings, but they should feel the same. That's a great answer right there. That's what I was hoping you would say is that effectively they will be different even though your leg extension may be exactly the same because of your hip angle. Yeah, I think best case scenario, you could be on a retool, and you can see that your hip extension and flexion and ankle flexion

and everything was the same on both bikes, even though saddle might be in a slightly different position. I don't, a TT bike and a gravel bike are just so different in terms of, you know, how crunched your hip angle is. I think the best you're going to be able to do is just get that saddle height in the same place and then, you know. We do a ton of riding on our road bikes and our gravel bikes for fitness, for leg strength. I mean, it crosses over pretty well.

It's not exactly the same, but I'd say we spend at least over 50% of the time. Not on RTT bikes. Not on RTT bikes, yeah. Eric definitely more like 80 or 90. Yeah. I mean, like I said, my hip is a big part of that. And I think a lot of, we're not totally typical for pro triathletes, for sure. also have great gravel and trail and things to ride here.

But plenty of triathies do you spend all their time on their T.T. Bikes. I don't know. I feel like I see a lot of pros. I mean, there's like, there's someone like Lionel who's always on a T.T. bike. But I feel like I see a lot of pros riding non-T. bikes all the time. I don't think you need to be riding your T.T. Bike all the time to be a very good T.T. Bike rider. No. Remko probably rides his T. T.T. Bike like 20 times a year. Well, he's... Okay. That's slightly different. He can finish the time trial and lay down on the ground and die. Right.

Yeah, that's right. He doesn't have to run off the bike. But the other thing I was thinking is the saddle position is not just about height. There's also forward and backward. And a TT bike generally is much more forward than a gravel bike. So there's a few different things to account for there. Yeah, for sure. I think when I get off, if I've been riding my gravel bike for a week or two weeks

without riding my TT bike, which never happens, I feel like my TT bike. is too high, or not too high, but it feels like I'm higher up on the saddle. My TT bike, maybe that's just in my head, but it doesn't affect anything. I don't worry about it because I know that I ride well on my TT bike, but it does feel higher. It just feels different. And triathletes are so sensitive to little tiny changes. So for the first little while, it might feel weird to go between the two, but now I feel like

I can jump on my road gravel TT and feel very comfortable on all three and not panic when they don't feel the same. Yeah. Okay, next question here. Hey, Paula Eric, Nick and Flynn, thank you so much for an amazing podcast and for creating such an amazing brand and community. My question surrounds my easy bike ride. For context, I'm a 325 FTP, and Zone 2 says 180 to 240 watts. I usually ride zone 2 around 215 to 25 watts, and I'm wondering if I'm going too hard during these sessions, and not getting in enough easy miles to build my engine. Thank you in advance and best wishes to finish your season strong. I'm currently watching my Stars versus Paula's Oilers in game six,

and it looks like the Oilers are headed for the finals. Yes, sorry for your loss, but yes, the Oilers are headed for the finals. What I'd say, the question, I don't care what your FTP is, or your zones or whatever, but the bottom line is if it's an easy bike ride, it should feel so easy. Like you should be having a conversation. You should not be looking at your power meter. You could be going 100 watts.

It should be like, yeah, there's no range that would be, you'd be targeting in that case. Yeah, in that situation, if your FTP is 325, I would say pushing 225. Like my FTP is around 325 and pushing 225 for me does not feel easy. It feels good and like I could do it all day long, but it doesn't feel like I'm, you know, just like moving legs and easy. I have to focus to like do it. So when a coach prescribes an easy ride, do you feel like your job is to kind of do whatever feels right or is it to kind of censor yourself and limit how hard you're going?

And like if you're pushing up against 235, 240 in this case, even though maybe it feels okay in the moment, you should be like, nope, the point of today is an easy ride. So let me back off. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the most important thing, if you see easy ride, or at least if we see easy ride on our schedule, one of two things or two or both of these things. We're so tired that that just looks like the green light to chill. Yeah.

Thank God. So glad that it says that there and I'm going to go very easy. Or tomorrow is so gnarly, then you're like, I need to get to the end of this feeling just rejuvenated both mentally and physically so tomorrow I can get to work. and that is in your head. So that will just naturally keep you from getting too frisky. That's been my experience. Well, good luck. Sorry,

we roasted you. No. No, Please take out all the parts where I was like, I don't like this question. No, leave all that. Nick,

take out Eric's part, but leave your part in when you said that. Okay. Leave this whole part in. We've roasted a bunch of our podcast listeners. It's okay. It's all in love. Wait, wait, wait,

this might be a good time to bring him up my story. Okay, go ahead, Paula. Oh, geez. So last week, I wouldn't even say that we roasted him, but we kind of chuckled at the idea of Joe Friel's training Bible. And one of our listeners got very offended by me, making fun of the training Bible, and he sent me an email that was pretty mean.

And I read it like first thing in the morning on a Saturday. and it said some people don't brainlessly follow coach's orders like Paula does. And I'm like, dude, Paula is right here reading this question. I am Paula. I am Paula, bro. And because it was first thing in the morning, like normally I would kind of ignore that type of a thing. But I replied immediately and I said, you know nothing about my coaching, my relationship with my coach, my training. I race fairly well.

I'm not a brainless robot. following my coach's orders. And this training Bible is outdated. We're not saying it's all bad. Some good foundational things. But new shit has come to light. Yes. In my mind, like this could just be like how I decided it was in my head.

But we tuckled at the idea of like us reading the training Bible or something. Not that this is a dumb resource. Yeah, totally. Anyway. So I would say like if you don't have anything nice to say on the podcast forum, don't say anything at all because it really hurt my feelings to be called brainless. Is that how I come across on this podcast? What I do think is funny is like him making this assessment of you, whereas you're like a top

10 in the world triathlete. Yeah, exactly. Okay, it's apparently it's working, bro. Yeah. Even if I was a brainless robot. Sign me up for the brainless robot plan. If I can be ranked seventh in the world. Yeah, exactly.

I am in. Where do I sign up for this? And a lot of them aren't even podcast questions. They're just essays expressing their love for Eric, which I always forward to him. Half of those are mine, actually. So we truly appreciate all that. But just keep your mean words to yourself. And I do apologize if I offended anyone by saying that the training Bible is stupid.

This reminds you of Eric's earplug fiasco. Oh, yeah. Like having to apologize? Your plug gate. Next question. Okay, let's move on. This one is from T.C., who I can only hope, is Talbot Cox, who, by the way, just completed his first 70.3 in Hawaii

and beat Andrew Messick in their little bet. So congratulations, Talbot. Hey, bacon, eggs, coffee, and home fries. Have fun figuring out who's first in that order. I would say it's Flynn, because Flynn, to me is bacon. Thank you for everything you're doing. It really makes a difference. I'm a marathoner.

I don't like the water and don't even own a bike. However, I love, love, love your vibe and the entire TTL ethos. This brings us to my grave philosophical dilemma. I absolutely would buy everything you slap a TTL logo onto, but I would also feel like a poser wearing anything with the word triathlon on it. Sort of like getting inked with an Iron Man tattoo without actually completing one. I respect and admire the triathlon community, and I don't want to violate any unwritten rules.

Can a pure runner wear a that triathlon life hoodie without fear of cultural appropriation? Am I overthinking this? P.S. I do proudly wear my Nick Trucker have. while training because that has just the logo and no words T.C. I think this might be the most well-worded question we've ever gotten. We would be thrilled if you wore anything we made. And this is like a thing that we have to deal with when we're making our collections. The things that have the big circle in color on the front sell super well. But then I also get a bunch of messages that are like this that are, I don't want to wear a

that says triathlon on it. But then we post a picture of this new hat that is going to exist that has a shirt and a water bottle that just says triathlon on it and people lose their minds. Yeah. It's because it's ironic. I know it is ironic.

I feel like this is kind of funny. This is probably the thing for this person actually. Yeah. But still, it's like we bounce back and forth between, oh, should we just do TTL on some things for that type of person who doesn't necessarily want to walk around with triathlon.

The stencil logo that we do doesn't have the words. It's just the stencil. So we've done that on coffee cups and hats like the trucker hat. Yeah. But to bring it full circle or whatever, make a long story short, we definitely perceive ourselves as multi-sport athletes. We love running and biking and swimming.

Individually, in and of themselves, we enjoy them. And so we totally identify with people who just love running or just love biking. And we would hope that TTR could represent that. and there are no closed doors here. Anybody can buy anything. That was the whole point. Yeah, yeah. If he's worried about like us judging him for not racing triathlon,

but wearing triathlon gear, that is not the case. No. No, I think that- Eric likes it when people have never done a triathlon, but they watch his videos. That makes me so happy and validated, like something that we're doing is special enough that it's not just the diehard triathlon people who are into it.

So, yes, we love you and help yourself to anything that we make. We should have a discount code for, non-triathletes. Yeah. But then I have to message me and I'll like look him up and... Yeah, butter us up. It can be a single picture of you racing on your Instagram. No finisher picks picks on your Instagram.

You guys do not send these requests to the podcast forum. I'll get spammed. Oh man, that's good. Maybe we'll spin up like a little sub brand that's like single sport division or something like that to like acknowledge the. these people who are, who like the ethos, but are sticking to their one, one sport at a time. Yeah. I'll roll that around my brain for the next week. Put it on the whiteboard.

Roll it. Okay, next question here is from Sarah. Hey, T.T.T.L. Nation, I'm newer to mountain biking and was wondering, do mountain bikers use cycling computers? I haven't seen many in use on the trails here in Colorado, but I want to use one to ensure I don't make a wrong turn and accidentally end up on a black. I see Eric has one on his bike. What style of mount do you recommend? Have an out-in-front mount for other bikes, but I'd assume you'd want the computer tighter on the stem since the risk of crashing is higher in mountain biking. Also, best of luck to Paula at T-100 San Francisco, Sarah. Yeah, it is definitely okay. And the ability to build a route on Strava or wherever you build routes and then put it on your Wahoo and follow that

and not be stopping every 45 seconds to make sure you're making the right turn on the trail. I still do that on our trail system here where I know it pretty well. But it's just nice to see the little black line and follow it. As in if it's cool or not, I don't think like downhill bros are, you know, using cycling computers. Maybe have Strava going in their pockets so they can track their, you know, meters descended or something and at what rate. But I think it's totally fine. I do prefer to have it on top of my stem to, yes, avoid this thing of crashing. I've also used the out in front at times too.

But I think on top of the stems, the way to go. You just made me realize something that I feel like in mountain biking, like cross country is the nerdiest and downhill is the coolest. And really there's like a spectrum that goes along that from one end to the other. I don't think cross country is nerdy at all. If cross country is nerdy, triathlons like... Oh, for sure. Seven million points less.

Exactly. But within the scope of mountain biking, I don't know. I feel like the lycra and the cross-country bikes. For sure. Compared to the bros going just downhill. It depends what you think cool is. Yeah, cool, chill, whatever. That is the downhill side.

They're definitely thinking that anybody that's wearing spandex or anything remotely close to spandex on the trails are nerdy and doing it completely wrong. Just like cyclists think triathletes are doing it totally wrong, you know? And I think in both cases, like, the cross-countryers, they're not even thinking about the downhillers. And triathletes, they're not even thinking. thinking about the cyclist. So it is kind of like a one-way kind of judgment.

That's true. That's true. I don't know. I think it's inevitable in mountain biking that you want to continue to hone your skills. And so you start to trend like, oh man, maybe do I need 140 millimeters of travel? I could just see this trail where it would be nice. You know, I do think you like kind of ultimately most people, I think, trend towards that. I want to get a little more adventurous and do a little bit bigger things slowly. I know that Wahoo has like a really nice one. You just like zipping. zip tie to the stem. It goes through there

and it's real nice and clean and simple. Like zip ties, just clean and simple. Yeah, the Garmin one I have comes with, like whenever you buy a Garmin by computer, they come with these rubber bands that go around the stem and mount it to the stem. So it usually comes to the bi-computer. Yeah, those are great at flying off.

Next question here is from Alana. Hey, Eric, Paula, and Nick. Thanks for consistently delivering this podcast. It's a highlight every week. Eric, this question is mostly for you. TTR has become an incredible business considering you have a non-traditional business background with a career in triathlon starting so young,

where have you found your wisdom and knowledge as an entrepreneur? Are there books, podcasts, in real life mentors that you've found helping me and making TTR what it is today? Cheers, Alana. I would say for the most part, it's come a bit naturally. But I don't think that the success of TTR really has much to do with my business acumen. so much as I've like followed a North Star of doing things that I want to see personally in the sport. All the way, going all the way back to 2014 or 13 or whatever when I uploaded my first YouTube video,

I was making a YouTube video because I wanted to see YouTube videos and video content about triathlon on the internet. And I thought, maybe I can get the ball rolling here. And then at some point I'll be able to watch really great trathlon content from Red Bull and Discovery Channel and, you know, whatever. Somebody will, I'll just try to get it going or something. And the same thing has been with TTO. The stuff that, like, man, I really want sweatshorts. Do a TTR logo on it.

It does well. I think there's like a little bit of a luck aspect there, but I want a community that feels this way and cares about this in the sport and do that. And it has just kind of tended to work out pretty well. As far as like actual business acumen, I took Business 101, Intro to Entrepreneurship and Personal Finance and Community College between dropping out of university and turning professional.

And that was huge just for like a little bit of a base understanding, taxes, just general concepts. And then I've read quite a few books that are like entrepreneurial type books, surviving your small business, things like this, that you just pick up little tidbits that can stick in your brain and help you when you run into certain things or make decisions. Is there anything that you're kind of feel like you're coming to a realization about now recently in the business that you feel like is an interesting topic? I guess the biggest realization that I've had lately is that there's really just not very much information out there to be consumed about how to grow your business from the point of where

you're hustling and doing everything like Paul and I are right now to we have three employees. Like, every time I listen to a podcast and it's about some company that's crushing it or whatever, they're like, so we started out with three employees and I'm like, wait, how did you get to three? What about before that? Yeah, because like I cannot figure out how to hire employee number one and like, when is the right time for that? And, you know, like, there's no obvious step one step two, step three for that. It's everything you listen to about that is kind of like, when you feel overwhelmed and there's things that you don't want to do and you know,

you get a little bit of investment from your family and then you do it. And like it worked out for me, but it doesn't work out for many people. And that's, that's just, that's like the main realization and where I'm at with TTR right now

is I desperately want it to become a quote unquote, real company. And it's, that's like a tough jump to make from doing everything yourself to what are the right things to hand off and the timeline. and taking the financial risk to do so because then you're responsible for people.

That's the thing. It's always a leap of faith. Yeah, I've had had like a very enjoyable time with TTR because our very first launch ever, I put in $6,000 of my money to buy some T-shirts and some hoodies and some hats. And that felt like the most insane, most insane amount of money. We sold out. We sold, we did a pre-order after that. And ever since then, we've just like bootstrapped it and invested just a little bit more and a little bit more into each launch and like growing it, growing it. grown it. But it's, it still has like felt almost like monopoly money because it's, I've had so

much fun doing it, building the community, making a t-shirt that I wanted to wear, making a hat that I wanted to wear, making videos that I wanted to watch, that it's just, it's felt like play and the fact that it's become a viable business, it doesn't, it makes me less scared to like continue risking financial things when I feel like this just all appeared out of nowhere and it's, and it's like magic. So one of the things that Ralph Dunning told me, like, well, I got two good nuggets here. And in the first week that I was talking to him about TTL and the things, he was like, one, just decide how big you want your company to be. You want to be a $5 million company a year or a $50,000 company a year, somewhere in between

and like figure out what that is and where the happy point for you and that you're doing what you want to do, you're not overwhelmed. And like, you can just decide. You don't have to just like grow, go, go, go, go. as long as you possibly can, stay in this mindset of like, don't worry about the profit and loss statement. Just do the thing that feels right.

Follow what your core is telling you is the right thing to do in the space and let that be your guiding principle as long as you possibly can before you start stressing about margins and profits and all that. That's great. Love it. Next one here is from Nick.

Hey, TTL. We have seen a future athletes and runners sponsored by On where shoes that are not available to the public. How does that work? I saw Ashley and Josh wear some pretty slick looking ons in Singapore and Helen O'Berry in Boston. How do we get those? I don't think I've worn the shoes that are available to the market in over a year. Yeah. I don't know how they do this with the rules and having some available for sale before you can use them at a IAAF race. Like I don't know

those rules, but I trust on is sending me shoes that I'm allowed to race in because I have faith in the company. But yeah, all the shoes that I've been wearing, the cloud tries that I've been racing in, there's already a new cloud iteration of that that I'm testing. And the other one's not for sale. So I don't know what their plan is in terms of bringing them to market. And I think they are, but for now it feels kind of fun to just have race shoes that only on athletes can get. And Helen O'Berry winning Boston and those crazy prototypes, like just complete 100% faith that they're the best shoes I could get or have and wear. And yeah, I don't know how much I'm allowed to go into depth, but we did some shoe testing

on Saturday with one pair that was stiffer and one was a little softer and times per mile and not looking at my watch, just going by RPE. And it was interesting to feel the difference back to back. So those are the kind of super awesome cool things that it makes having a shoe sponsor really cool. It would be awesome to get somebody from On, in particular our friend Hannah, on to maybe talk about the philosophy of the On Athletic Club and their program with developing shoes. Because the thing that occurred to me while Paula was doing this the other day is like, what if their strategy is to just no matter what, take two years and just build the fastest shoes possible? even if it takes like five iterations, we have to spend a bunch of money

and we don't care at all about the consumer mass appeal of it. We're just going to make the fastest shoe possible. For our athletes who are winning races. Yes. And then at the end of that process, figure out how to bring that to the masses versus like throughout the entire step going like, okay, well, but does that look good enough to like sell millions?

Okay, how do we incorporate that into design versus just performance first? Then we'll figure the rest of it later. I think that would be cool. This sounds exactly like what you were saying about the advice Ralph gave you is don't like think about the money last. Just try to build the coolest thing you can for as long as possible. Yeah. I mean, in the On's case, you need a lot of financial backing to make that happen. But that seems to be the path of their own.

But they're selling so many shoes of training shoes, golf stuff or tennis stuff, casual shoes, that it feels like the race shoe. They really care most about their own athletes getting the fastest race shoe and less about just pumping out. I mean, they have a really fast race shoe available. The Cloud Doom Echo 3 is what I raced in for a full year. Great shoe. But you can really feel the difference with each iteration that comes out. And they do get better and better, which every shoe company is doing.

They're evolving. But I respect just the athlete focused process for these shoes. It's cool. Yeah, it's just interesting that you can see the prototype process happening more obviously out in the open. Versus like Nike, you might not see it. until it's available. Yeah, like, I don't think I'm allowed to post a picture zoomed in of it, but athletes are out there wearing them and racing in them. It's not a secret.

Yeah. So it does build hype in a way. Yeah. People asking about them. One of these coming out. Yeah. You can't buy a Formula One car, but you can go buy a Ferrari, production Ferrari, which is also very fast. That's a good analogy.

That's so funny. The analogy that reminds me of another analogy that replies to triathlon, which is people, like a $14,000 bicycle, like that's crazy. You can buy a motorcycle, a good motorcycle for $14,000, except that's not apples to apples, because that $14,000 bicycle is winning the Tour de France. The motorcycle that's winning a MotoGP race is millions of dollars. Yeah.

They are, we're not talking the same level horizontally. No. It's pretty cheap sport relatively. Yeah, you can go and run and just the swimming, I guess you have to pay per time, but the rest is like, take care of your gear and you're good. It's expensive, though. Let's not be...

I'm not just saying relative to motorsports or skiing or golfing or tennis. Like, those are much more expensive. That was quite the tangent. Here we go. Next question here. Integrated hydration. Hey, Eric, Paula, Nick, and Flynn. Do many pros use the integrated hydration,

mainly thinking about racing, available in many higher-end bikes? I just got a new bike with this option and thought it would be great, but it has a few slight drawbacks, inserting, filling, longer, narrow straw, smaller bladder that individually are not bad, but added together have me rethinking it. It doesn't seem like a great primary option for racing. So what do you guys think about this? Neither of you use it on your bikes, but would you if you had an easy option for it?

For integrated high duration? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's super convenient. Like when the shiv, when the shiv, when the shiv, I had the water bladder in the back, it could hold water or your nutrition or whatever it was in a very clean way. And there's just a straw coming out the front. Loved it. Yeah.

I actually have one in a box. I don't know if I'm going to race it. But I have some ideas for what to do with it that's not racing. But I think it's great. Zip tying bottles to your bars and like trying to figure out how to put it behind your seat and then do a flying mount and all this stuff. It's cool to have it integrated. Did you, when you had yours, did you, do you? use it in training or just for racing?

I'd mostly use it in just racing because it's a bit of a process to clean it and make sure that it's in good working order. But in training, it's so easy to just have a down-toe bottle. Yeah. Which you can just hold more liquid and put sticky stuff in it. Yeah. So the nice thing with the

Shiv try is that you can just take that whole wing with the bladder off the back for training and then just put it on for racing and you got your crazy clean. aerodynamic set up for racing, but yeah, you're not cleaning that out when you've got liquid nutrition and sugar in it all the time that I don't think I would do that. Well, I was going to ask you guys, how often do you put anything but water into those bladders? I definitely would for racing, personally.

Yeah, I did for racing. Yeah, that's just what I do for nutrition plan. You know what's, this is an interesting thing that's happening in gravel racing. I've nothing anybody's seen this, and I have one of these from Castelli kits that have an integrated sleeve in the back for a bladder. Wow. So not even a backpack, but like built into the jersey. It's just like a mesh sleeve.

And I am so psyched to use this for the High Cascades 100 mountain bike race because of the potential that it could put ice water in it. You could, and you've just got the straw hanging there. It feels like that is going to come to trathlon. So do you, did it come with a bladder, though? No, you got to get your own bladder. And so, like, I can go by five bladders and, like, put one at each aid station and just, like, swap them into, like, the back. And have them be frozen. Yeah. So I feel like you could do this with trathons. If you're an Iron Man and you're not super stressed about your transition time, you could just have a triathlon kit that has this on it. And it's like super aerodynamic looking because it's just perfectly shaped onto your back.

Yeah, but I don't think you're allowed to put stuff down your kits anymore. But it would be on. It would be in. It's part of your kit. I mean, how different is that than wearing a backpack with a bladder in it? It's very similar functionally. People would start saying that it was aerodynamic advantage, though. I mean, if you actually go, I don't know, it's interesting. Because that could be your whole thing. If you got a shiv try with the bladder back there and then you got put one bladder in your backpack, like boom, your dog.

That's the whole race. You don't have a single bottle on your frame. You just unload that. Yeah, there's no way that this is not illegal now. Because imagine if someone was just like, okay, I'm going to sew a pocket into the front of my track kit. Yeah, yeah. That's true. It totally just depends on how the rules are worded, you know, like whether it's an aerodynamic device,

like what level of integration it has to have into the bike or the object. I mean, I'd be curious. That is interesting. It does seem like they kind of put their foot down on the anything in the kit that gives you aerodynamic advantage, even if technically it's a water bottle that you could drink out of. Yeah, well, that also just looks stupid. And this doesn't look stupid. I'm surprised because in my mind it looks stupid, but I would like to see it.

I agree. Thank you, Nick. It's not. It's cool. Okay, last question here. This one is directed at me, but I think Eric could give us some good insight as well. Hi, Eric, Paula, Nick and Flynn. I stumbled across TTR about a month ago when I searched triathlon into my podcast player and randomly selected one.

I was immediately hooked from the intro of two professional triathletes and one professional musician. I, too, am a musician and triathlet. And through my job, I keep finding more and more people who identify as an amateur triathlet and professional musician. That's so funny because I feel like I'm the only one. Fun fact. Did you know that Alfred Music and Training Peaks are sister companies?

That is crazy. Okay, Alfred Music is like maybe the main publisher of sheet music in music. I grew up with a ton of those books. And the fact that somehow it's related to Training Peaks is so funny to me. What does even sister company even mean? They just owned by the same parent company? Maybe, yeah, maybe owned by the same parent company. Okay.

They like share like an accounting department. you know, or a marketing department or something like that. My question today is for Nick, but we're also going to include Eric. Do you find that your background as a musician has any significant overlap with your training for triathlon? As musicians, we're very deliberate in the way we practice, and the performance is a culmination of so many hours, months, years spent in preparation. I find that the mindset in training is very similar, and many athletes and musicians approach their preparation in a similar way. I'd be curious to know if you feel the same and how your musical training, has impacted your athletic training, if it has at all.

Thanks for all you do, and good luck to Paul in San Francisco this weekend. I'm excited to be there to cheer you on in person for this one. All the best, Felicia. Sweet. So, Eric, do you have something that comes to mind? Because I'm thinking, because Eric is just as much of a creative person as I am. Maybe you've spent less of your total life devoted to it the way I have, but at a current state, I feel like we're both very into the creative side of things.

Yeah, I would say that I didn't spend, yeah, I haven't spent as much of my life devoted to it, but I've realized over the last couple of years that it has just been a through line or a core pillar of who I am from a very young age of turning my wagon into a go cart, you know, in the driveway. And I've always been like, have quite an affinity for stories. And I realize that as I've been making videos and as I get excited about going and doing well at a race or a workout, kind of like having this narrative in my head that's like telling this little story in my mind and the idea of like winning the race or having a good performance just is like the ultimate great end to the story. And so that is kind of how the sport and story has storytelling or creativity of intertwined in my life without me even necessarily trying.

Crazy how much creativity can like it feels like this frivolous external thing, but to some people, it's like essential for their mental wellness. 100%. Yeah. For me, the reason I gravitated towards triathlon, I think, was not because of any potential overlap, but because of the opposite. I, in music, it's hard to argue that music is very subjective, and I've used this analogy a lot, but music is you can work at something for 10 years and not get any better at it in music and like playing faster doesn't mean you're better for anyone I mean the most well-liked musicians

of our time aren't are not necessarily technical masters on their instrument and that kind of subjectivity is a little bit scary and it's easy to get lost in when you're working every day and you're writing songs and then you know maybe an artist doesn't cut it or the song doesn't do well or it's like I'm giving you this everything I have and and even on top of that you wrap your identity up and a little bit in the creative work and so when people don't like it it's hard and no one you know they're not wrong not to like it music finds people in their lives and some people need it and some people don't but there's not this inherent truth about what makes music good and what makes music good 20 years ago didn't make music good now so it's a little

difficult to put all your eggs in that basket. And what I loved about triathlon is this idea that there's a training plan, there's a race on a day, you train, you work hard, if you follow the training, you eat well, you sleep well, and you recover well, you get faster, the training peaks, workouts turn green, and you've achieved a goal, an objective goal. You finished a race. And in music, that can be the case a little bit with performing, you know, if you have a performance, you're working towards a performance. But that's not the kind of music work that I do. It's not the kind of music work that I'm really interested in.

I like creating things. That's what I love about writing music. And furthermore, something I always found stressful about music that is absent in triathlon, which I really like, is that in music, let's say you're playing a performance and there's this passage that's very difficult, and you have to be on time and exactly right for that passage. And any one wrong note, everyone hears it. It's like, okay, now that you made a mistake.

whereas in triathlon for like a 70.3, you can be in the middle of a run and not feel good for like five minutes and kind of slow down and re kind of grasp what you're doing and then recover from that and still have a good run and in a musical performance,

that's not really the case. You have to be 100% on and deliver that message as clearly as you can. So to answer your question, Felicia, I think the reason I like triathlon is because of how different it is from music.

And it's cool that Eric has found a way to do both as to race triathlon at a very high level and then to extract beautiful creativity out of it that resonates with the same audience. That's kind of a cool

contrast between the two but for me it really is like they are at odds with each other. You know what my question is? Nick, that was beautiful. It was beautiful. I had to charge my phone so I just put my phone down

and I just sat there with my eyes closed and listened to you talk and it was so good. Thank you. All those things you were saying? I'm like, damn, Nick's going to go start his own podcast by himself and it's going to do better than this one. So here's what I think, like, the main, my theory on like the main thing here, the commonality or the thing that's important in the sauce is do you love that process? Like in music, do you love the process of being creative so much that it doesn't matter whether or not you get a million streams or

that somebody claps you on the back and you get this external validation, but you loved the process of creation so much, and you love the process of turning the boxes green on training peaks and fueling properly and getting the sleep, and then the race is going to be what the race is going to be, but whether it's good or bad, you loved that process. Yeah, that's such a good question, and I feel like, Eric, you're asking me this,

but really it's something that you and I have been talking about a lot about the process versus the goal and where is the point? Is the point the goal? Or is the point somewhere along the road of the process? Is that where you find yourself and find the joy in doing it? For me in music, I think I wasn't necessarily

so gifted at such a young age. So I still remember struggling to write a song that I thought was good and struggling to make a recording in a production that I thought was passable or likable. And so now there's this moment when you're producing and writing a song where it goes from this completely thin air abstract thing and then all of a sudden you have lyrics and the melody and harmony

and you have instrumentation and an arrangement and all of a sudden it hits this inflection point where it's no longer this cobbling of intellectual ideas and it actually sounds like a song. And you get the emotion that a song gives you. And that moment there in the process, that is where I feel like

I just get chills when it happens. It feels incredible. I'm like, I made this. It did not exist two hours ago. And now I am like giving myself these emotions from something that I created. That is really special. And kind of in a similar way,

I was talking about this, someone with the pool today. I used to have to do the training to race. The race had to be there for me to do the training. And the training wasn't inherently enjoyable, but the thought of using that training for the race used to really motivate me. And now I feel very lucky to say that the training for me

is the fun part. And I love doing the training. And I love using the fitness at a building training to go do cool things like a long ride or a fun long run or a fun long trail run. I think you were saying the inflection point. That was not because somebody else heard it. That was you.

And that's like executing a good workout or executing a good week of training. You get that awesome feeling. You know you're getting better. It didn't take anybody else even knowing about it. So I think this is like, they're very parallel. Okay, but Estrava didn't exist. Would you still find joy in the training? 100%.

I haven't even posted on Strava in like a month. Yeah, I'm asking Nick. Strava boy. Strava or streams on a song or a good race result. They're like the low-hanging fruit of like serotonin drugs, pleasure hormones. That I don't know if it's a healthy thing, but I guess it is a little bit part of it for me. Obviously. Obviously.

I've just been trying to make the point, do you enjoy the process so much that even if that didn't happen, you'd still be here? Yeah. Yeah. And I've written plenty of songs that I know we're going nowhere because it's fun to do something and try something and feel a creative feeling. Yeah, and your triathlon career, you're not going to turn pro. It's not going anywhere.

You're just doing it because you love it. Right? That's true. He's going to New Zealand, baby. These are so similar. I think they're so similar, like the motivations and the process and the whole thing,

the internal validation. Okay, well, every question I uploaded to you, Nick, this week I thought was amazing. So maybe next week we can go back to some of the other ones. Sure. Well, speaking of next week, by the time people hear this next week,

you will have presumably raced T-100 San Francisco. I don't know. I don't think there's going to be next week. The next week's podcast. I don't know how we're going to do that. Yeah, that might be too. Yeah, because Nick and Eric are going to be very remote.

We're going to be as off the grid as one could possibly be. No, I think they might have Starlink there, but I honestly don't know if that'll cut it for podcasting. We could potentially record it Saturday night. We'd have to record, like, Paula gets back to the hotel, And as I'm putting her bike in the box, we're recording a podcast. That's what's going to have to happen. I mean, that's up to you guys.

I'm down for that. Nick's down for that. Yeah. It's easy for me. From his stammotic apartment. Noted. Noted. All right.

Well, we'll do our best to talk to everybody next week. I think it's okay to skip a week occasionally too. For sure. It's not like we do ad reads. Right. Yeah. Lay that on. Just kidding.

No, it's true, like having supporters makes it harder to skip because you feel like you're letting someone down on their Thursday morning routine. Yeah. But if there's no podcast next weekend, you'll know why. Or we just upload a short recording of Paula singing the Canadian anthem for the next Oilers game. Oh my gosh. It's so, so fun at the arena in Edmonton. The guy starts singing.

So he sings the whole American anthem and then he starts the Canadian anthem and he sings the first couple phrases. And then he just puts his mic in the air. And the entire arena at the top of their lungs of singing are Canada. Oh, Canada. And I will tell you, the Oilers fans are the loudest, most passionate sports fans I would venture to say in the world. You haven't watched soccer. Maybe not like Brazilian soccer.

Yeah. No, I mean, that's what I said. I was like, this has got to be like top five sports organizations like across all sports in terms of like the entire freaking city. The ex-coach of the Oilers who were friends with, he would have issues going out to dinner if the team had a bad game with people like giving him dirty looks around town. I think that might happen in a normal city too. It's just like it's palpable.

Yeah, the arena when they're going on for these things or when they score is just insane. My parents go to the games and my brother works there and the family thing. But yeah, stoked. Stoked it. They'll be actually doing that first game the night of my race in San Francisco.

The night after you race? The night of my race. Before you need to go to sleep and wake up at 3 a.m. No, no, no, no. The day of Saturday night. Right, yeah, after you race. After my race. When we're podcasting, and I'm building your bike.

Exactly. And watching the Oilers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dang. That's a lot. This is how we live. This is the true traffic online. Okay.

Thanks, everybody. I'll say goodbye once again. See you later. Bye.