That Triathlon Life Podcast - Elise Lagerstrom wins the Gobi March outright, Sam Laidlow's swim tactics at Roth, and motivation in triathlon, and more!

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Elise Lagerstrom — Eric's sister and two-time desert ultra champion — joins us to recount winning the Gobi March outright, becoming the first woman in the race's 20-year history to beat all men across a 250-kilometer, seven-day self-supported ultra through central Mongolia. We cover everything: the emergency electrolyte crisis at mile 12, how she managed a 52-minute buffer over second place through the legendary 80-kilometer Stage 4 long march, what carrying a 25-pound pack for 155 miles has to do with running ability, and why this kind of racing is so much more tactical than it looks. Then Paula emerges from a rough morning to join us for the second half.This week we discussed:Elise Lagerstrom's Gobi March race recap: the first woman to win the 250K Mongolian desert ultra outright in 20 years of the eventSelf-supported racing explained: what you carry, what the race provides, and how the tent situation worksStage 4 long march — 80 kilometers in a single day and why Elise knew it was her momentThe near-crisis at mile 12 and how she corrected her electrolyte strategy mid-raceWhy running ability matters less than you think in a 30-hour race Racing vs. surviving: how tactical the Gobi March actually gets, day by dayThe Roth swim controversy: how the men's field used a coordinated swim paceline to finally beat ChristianPaula's take on Alanis Siffert's stunning Roth win — and her 2:45 marathonShould this new collegiate national champion race his first pro 70.3 on a road bike?Altitude racing tips for Leadville: heat training as the poor man's altitude prep, and the two-weeks-or-right-before ruleWhen should you replace your running shoes — and the case for buying three pairs at onceHow motivation in triathlon evolves: from proving yourself to something harder to namePaula's first Iron Man in two weeks: wetsuit neck chafe solutions, and why Paula hates the words "Ironman training"Donut run at Lake Placid: Friday, 3 PM — come find usA big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive! To submit a question for the podcast and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I am Nick Goldston. And I'm Elise Loggerstrom. Sorry, already. I was going to do our normal intro, but that's okay. It's fine. No, go ahead. Redo. I'm ready. We don't redo. We don't we do. We're one take Jake's here. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine. It's real. She is not a robot, everyone. This is a real human. It happens to be my sister. Paul is not joining us for at least a few more minutes. She has, I don't know how to say this, but is feeling extremely not well for the time being and feels like she may feel better in 20 or 30 minutes. It's a temporary issue.

TBD. So if she is ready, she will jump in. If she is not ready, you will still think she jumped in because Nick and I will just continue recording, I don't know, this afternoon. But this is when my sister had time in between her work schedule and training schedule. and we are really, really excited to dive into the latest and greatest thing that you have done. So wait, before we get into this craziness, I'm just curious. That's a little bit of foreshadowing.

How able are you to run right now? And how many days out are we from when this epic thing concluded? Time's funny. I think we're about 10 days post. Yeah. I took about three or four days off of running and then started running again. But at this point, I'm just like running for fun whenever I want. The fact that you could run at all, let alone for fun.

You've been more destroyed. Is running still fun? Yes, running still fun. I took off the pack and now I'm like, oh, I'm so speedy again. This is so easy. Light is a feather. Okay, so let's kind of unveil, unveil the madness here. All right.

Why are you on the podcast right now? Why were we excited to have you on the podcast? Oh, no, Eric, Eric, sorry, go ahead. We got the whole intro ready. We got to talk a little bit. We're going to sing her praises and lay the groundwork here. Before I do, if you are new here, this is a triathlon podcast. This is going to be a run-specific thing, but we are extremely curious and interested in all manners of pushing oneself and endurance sport.

So what my sister did. This is one of the races in the racing the planet, correct? Yep, racing the planet. Racing the planet is the general series that this is part of. And this event that she did is called the Gobi March. So Gobi March is a 250 kilometer, which is 155 mile, seven-day self-supported ultramarathon that takes place in Central Mongolia's Karakorum region. And this was the 20th year of the event.

at least in case our research sucks, feel free to just correct any of these numbers. But the gist here is this was nuts. And there is a crazy twist of this, if that didn't impress you very much, that we're going to get to, which is probably the crux of this whole adventure. So the vent is split into six stages over the seven days, and there is a notorious, at least correct me if I'm wrong, stage four long March, which is 80 kilometers long. So you're averaging high daily volume, and then you have this. coming in towards the end, massive single day.

Elise did this event. And for the first time ever in history, she won the event overall, men and women outright, which is a huge accomplishment. Last year, you won the Atacama crossing, which is in Chile, the race that you did in the Gobi Desert. So the theme here is racing for a really long time through deserts all over the world.

So she's not a newbie at this. This is the second one, but this is the first time a woman has won outright, and it's incredible. So with all those numbers in mind and everything, the caveat, the crazy part of this whole thing is you have to carry all of your own stuff. Self-supported. Self-supported, which means you carry your own food. If you want to bring two pairs of shoes, I suppose you could carry them with you. And you need to make some decisions. And those decisions and choices are, I think, what we're going to just pepper you with questions for the next 30 minutes minimum.

So, first of all, the race itself, does it provide water and, like, tent space and medical attention if you need it? Yeah, yeah. So fortunately, yes, you get water. So at each of the aid stations, which are about 10K apart. So they give you water. and that at each of the rest stages at the very end of the day, they'll give you water and hot water. In addition to your water, they give you a spot in a group tent. Group tent.

Group tent. Oh, I mean, it's pretty fancy. They're giving you hot water. A solo tent's a little bit of much to ask. I know. No solo tent. Yeah, you're splitting the tent with five other people. So it's six people to a tent.

So wait, are these five people like rolling around groaning in pain? Like, what's, oh, I can't do 80 kilometers tomorrow. Yes. Yes, 100%. Fortunately, so I, um, learning from my year one experience, had the opportunity to request a female only tent, which I took up on. Oh, you had to request. You had to request this.

I see. Which cut down on the, the clutter, the smell and the snoring, like substantially. Let's not forget the smell. The smell. Of course. So I'm guessing hot water does not include, is this including a shower or do you have like? Oh, no shower. No showers.

They're disgust on her face. How could you even suggest something like that? These are real questions that people have asked me and that I have thought of. So, all right. Yeah. No, no shower. So at the end of the stage, they'll give you like, they have these like little wash basins that you can wash her feet on off in. But like you get like.

Foot health. a couple of cups of water to do this event in. And you're running through the desert with the sand all day long. So, like, you can't really wash your body with that same water unless, I don't know, you're making it worse at that point. So, no, you don't, no shower unless you're willing to, like, jump in the river or whatever watering hole you find. But those were cold.

So, yeah. Is that just, like, mid-race? That might not be necessarily where camp is. It's just, this is my one chance to lay down in water today, and I still have 30 miles to go. But, oh, well. Right. Yep. Okay.

At least, was it, what was the temperature like during this? What was the weather like in general for you guys? So it was very different than I'd say the normal weather condition for the region, or at least what we were told. So when I actually flew in, the day I flew in, they were getting snow in the city. And so there was all this drama going around because it's supposed to be an extremely hot race. and now, and everyone was prepped for like extreme heat and had done their heat training, um, flew in, but like they were literally getting snow in the city, um, which meant it was probably even worse out where we were running and in sort of like the rural

areas. So the first couple days, like at nights, it got pretty cold. I'd say it got down not, probably not too freezing, but like very much pretty close. Um, and during the day in the sun, it got up to feeling extreme. hot. Like, I can't give you numbers because first of all, I didn't have a phone reception. No, and there's no weather forecasting out there, really. So they couldn't even tell us what is going to be. So we didn't know each day if we were going to get like a snow day, a thunderstorm day or like a, you know, 40 degree C day. This is in Mongolia for everyone who's listening. The

Goldie Desert's in Mongolia, East Asia. Yeah, if we didn't state that. So we're going to get to into the food in a second, but because of the weather. So like, what do you have like, one jacket that you is supposed to be for wind and rain and all temperatures and you have like what one pair of socks and you just had to make this decision to do shorts versus tights for the whole trip so fortunately or unfortunately however you want to think about it they give you a mandatory packing list and like one of the things like mandatory pack you have to have two pairs of something to wear on your bottom layer so like i chose a pair of shorts to run in and then i had a pair of tights for camp and then kind of same thing similarly

for like upper layers. You have to have like a running type shirt, which could be anything. You have to have like a puffier insulated layer and you have to have a waterproof layer as well. So at camp I'm just like... This is already a full backpack. Yes. Oh yeah.

So at camp I just like wore like running shirt, puffy coat and my like waterproof layer. And that's what I got. Okay. But then you also have to like think about like, well, sleeping. So you need like sleeping bag is mandatory. worry. You have to carry your sleeping bag. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. This is like a full,

this is a full pack. So literally the only things that you will use for the whole week that you don't have to carry are water and a tent that you have to share with people. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. This is like literally as close as you can get to surviving through the desert, but like with some sort of safety in place to keep you from actually dying. Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, yeah, and we had, they gave us an in-reach, so, but we had to carry that. So, I mean, I don't know if that's helpful. Right. Okay. So just to like fully paint the picture here, what time of day do you get into camp? So are, like, are you getting in at like one? Are you getting in right at dark? Like, how long do you have to just sit around and, you know, do nothing because you couldn't carry a fidget spinner even? such good questions that you have to like in my experience of course is very different from many other people's experience given that you know running the 25 miles usually took me like around

four hours um four to five hours depending on terrain so like I would get in we'd start at 8 a.m I'd get in at like one ish lunchtime so I'd have to like during my packing I knew it would be I'd come into camp and want lunch so I had to pack a lunch where a lot of people who are still out doing eight-hour days, didn't have to even pack a lunch. They would just do like their run fuel all day long. But like, I'd come into camp and I'd like make my lunch. And then what's lunch? Yeah. Lunch was a pack of ramen and a Quaker granola bar. Oh my God. Elise. That's it? Yeah. And that's what I'm saying is like I chose to have lunch. Like I probably packed extra because a lot of people out there who were even finishing

around the time I was, just like chose not to have lunch, which I can't do. I'm out. Yeah. I can't do that either. It's horrible. Because, yeah, you just, you've ran a marathon. Okay, so then you're just waiting until dinner, which when you get to have, like, what, more ramen and another granola bar, but a different flavor?

Yeah, pretty much. I would have, like, a packet of mashed potatoes and some broth. Okay, so. How is your body going on for all? This is not enough food, right? Did it not feel like not enough? food? I mean, I felt like my volume, the volume was okay just because I was, I mean, it's all dried, but I mean, no, it was still probably just over 2,000 calories a day with some race food,

which obviously was burning way more than that. So by day four or five, I was hungry. Okay, so wait, let's let's back up then. Before the race, did you do anything to prep for this and both, I want to hear about nutrition, but also how is your training for this different than let's say people who've trained for a 50K or even for a 100K ultramarathon. Is it different or are you relying on a lot of that same fitness? Yeah, same question. Okay, so for training, my training was not, my training was different, but I'd say differently because I'm usually focused on longer distances.

I just came off of training for the Sedona 125. And so training was very similar to what I'd been doing the entire time leading up into Sedona and that we were doing like a lot of hot weather and a lot of really long back to back weekends of like usually Friday, Saturday, Sunday, both Saturday, Sunday having like double digit to 20 plus mile days each day. So that's like 80% of your weekly volume like just on the weekend. Correct. Yeah. To teach yourself how to like actually do these days back to back. Back to back. And understand about fueling back to back days, which is different and hard. And then you just wouldn't like eat for a few.

days to get your body used to being unhappy? No, no, not at all. I think I didn't really train for the eating component other than I was thinking like a lot of this, of course, it's like you can't train for these sort of things. It's the mental training. You're doing mental gymnastics the entire time, and you're doing mental gymnastics in the training and like tricking yourself into being prepared for this. I'd also have the training of like, oh, well, I've been doing all these like mountaineering activities and like that's a super heavy pack and we're eating the same dried food. So I knew it worked for me from like mountaineering. And I knew how to carry a heavy pack

and I knew how to like move for 15 hours. So it's just like, well that counts this training shortly. And so and I'm used to being hungry from like those things. And you can't stay hydrated like you're always in a deficit there. So yeah. It's more of mental training than actually like living the event, I'd say. Yeah. So I asked you about this while we were surfing,

but for everybody on the podcast, we talked about how Des Linden did one of these. That's very, very similar. And you said that whatever, like her result there was not, like, world class, like, you know, in line necessarily with, like, her winning to Boston Marathon. So, like, what percentage of this event do you feel like has anything to do with being a good runner versus being, I don't know, like a freaking bow hunter or just bear grills, like live off the land? Oh, exactly.

And I think that's sort of the lesson learned is that like this has so little to do with running. I mean, I think it has everything to do with being able to like be out there day after day, mentally push yourself and be at like a moderate heart rate, sure, and also not break down. I mean, physically you need to be able to like run and not break down. But you need to be able to run and not break down while carrying 20 to 25 pounds on your back, which is not the same thing as running fast or well. Like, yeah. It's not the same at all.

And you need to be able to do that while waking up day after day, exhausted and be willing to do that while not feeling your best, which you're never going to feel your best. So my brain is where I'm assuming plenty of people who are listening's brain is. And it's just like a big W. Why? Why would you do this? Especially if you've come from a run background, you were a pro triathlete for a season. You have done an ultra running for a while. And this just sounds like one big suffer fest. Like, what are you hoping to learn here? about yourself or find out or slay a demon or like why are yeah why would somebody go do this i mean i think that i'm doing it because i i'm very curious about seeing the world and seeing what's out there and i genuinely enjoy just being outside and being disconnected yeah yeah um so and i think i really crave that and like I enjoy not being able to pick up my phone and like being able to completely disconnect from the world. And I think that that is very rare. Even in endurance sports like ultra running, like you're not really out there on your own, especially in the United States where

so many events are crude. Like you're relying a lot on other people. You're relying a lot on the aid stations. That's not a bad thing. That's just it's almost a different sport. And so I think I really enjoyed the self-sufficient nature of these races in that you're really out there doing this on your own and seeing what you're capable of. And it's your, it's your mental load that you're testing. And it's not someone else's. It's not someone else's logistics. Like, you have to be the one to make the decisions on how you're going to pack, how you're going to run, and you have to live with those. And I really like that. And I just love the places that I've gotten to see so far too. So it's like a massive exercise in self-reliance, self-belief, trusting that you can overcome things that you don't even, you have no idea what the problems you might encounter are.

Well, here's a great question. What were the dangers for you out there? Whether were there animals, were there like dehydration? Like did you see other athletes a trend in problems that they faced? Were there any scares during the race? Yeah, would you have that moment of like, oh shit? Like, I need to, I can't fuck this up. Mm-hmm.

That's margin of zero. Yeah. And I actually did have that moment, unfortunately, or fortunately, very early on. I had it probably about mile 12 of the entire race. I had the, oh, shit, moment of like, I went out kind of hard in the race, which not too hard. But then didn't comprehend or consider just like, how much the heat was building throughout the morning and didn't hydrate for the first hour, which is like it's one hour of, you know, a 30 hour race, but got to like mile 12 and was already

just like having the same symptoms of like electrolyte issues that I had at Sedona that took me out and was like, if this is, yeah, hour two of this race. And there's once again not the margin of like, oh, I'll just get to the next aid station and figure this out in an hour. Like, that doesn't exist. Like, you're, like, in reaching out of there, you're being choppered out if there's, like, a real issue. So having that happen really early on it and just reminding myself that, like, I need to be 100% ahead of the curve and everything that I do and more conservative in my fueling, in my hydration and just, like, working with what I have was a really good reminder on day one. So I think that was my major problem, and it's always been my major problem with Ultras, is like how do I figure out this like sodium fluid balance issue? And I really had to do that, I'd say like on my own, which is rough.

And especially when you don't have access to like, oh, I'll just like go to the aid station and I'll figure out, you know, what they have for salt and what they have for sugar. Like, no, it's like whatever's in your pack is what you have to work with. so that's that's the thing that nearly took me out i'd say uh what other people have issues with a lot is blisters which of course i had blisters i always have blisters i live with blisters every single day of my life i thought we figured out your blisters problem as per the last time you're on the podcast with the tape right you had like a specific tape yes specific tape and it works i mean not perfectly well yeah for 155 miles you might run into issue

And there's sand and water crossings involved. So, but honestly, so much better. But blisters do take people out and people end up at these races with like, they'll get a blister early on and it will be like bad and painful and not fun. But the problem is with being out in the middle of nowhere. Like you can't go back to a shower or medical care really. Like you can develop like infections pretty quickly. In race.

In race. Yeah. And that can take people out. I think also just like the day after day strain and having to like getting minimal sleep just like builds on the exhaustion and people aren't able to cope sometimes and that can take people out so they'll actually like maybe even quit before they even start a stage just so it's like they didn't sleep they have no more food they don't know what to do and they don't think they'll be able to make it.

So you say not enough sleep. And something I want to be cognizant of here is when we're talking about your experience here. For triathletes, it kind of reminds me of when the pros are finishing a race in three hours and 45 minutes and some agekeepers are finishing in double that time. These are two different races that they're kind of racing. It's like if a pro races a 70.3 or a full. So you come back in at 1 p.m. And you have all day to kind of bring your heart rate down to relax, to get ready to like go to sleep. Some people are coming in how late before they have to go to sleep? I mean, It depends. I think people are usually coming in seven, eight o'clock at night. I think usually the cutoff was like dark, usually darkness. And then when is the start of the next day? And do you all start together? We all start together every morning at 8 a.m. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, theoretically, like everyone had or should have had approximately 12 hours each night to do all those things. But it's not as simple as just like, oh, well, you shut up at your house. And now it's. Of course.

You're like making your food, like you're trying to like rehydrate your meals. You're trying to then, you know, do your recovery strategy, set up your like area in the tent, actually go to sleep, which is not just as simple as like, oh, we're just going to like drift off to sleep naturally. It's hard. Yeah, this reminds me very much of when we're like actually living in the van or in the RV. Just daily life things like washing your laundry. You need to go to a laundromat. And if you want any amount of food, like you have to go grocery shopping almost every single day because your fridge is small.

and it's kind of peaceful and nice in a way while also just being you're spending all of your time just doing basic things that take no time at home yeah it's kind of zen in a way it is I mean and you have to be totally focused on the one thing that you're doing and it's not like I have anything else to focus on anyway so I guess it all works out but like if you were out there for 12 hours we'll say and you probably got sweaty as everyone does like you then don't have the benefit that I had of like well the sun's out, let me just like air out all my clothes and dry out all my clothes. Oh, yeah. No, the sun's gone.

Like, you can't do that. It's dark and cold. So I think the challenge of like getting in later and later is actually like it compounds because you're not having the time to do the self-care activities or, you know, take a bath in the river if you wanted to or even like wash your feet off because it's so late or cold or you're trying to operate by like campfire rather than actually even having some. Okay, so how much were you aware of Rob Robinson? Is that his name? Yeah. Rob Robinson. How much were you aware of this kind of battle and back and forth that was going on between the two of you? I've got this pulled up, so just real quick to paint the picture for everyone. So overall race finish time, you were 28 hours, 52 minutes. He was 29 hours, 44 minutes. So almost an hour clear. Stage one, he went 440. you went 447.

Stage two, he went 439, you went 439. Did you guys hold hands across the finish line? Not hold hands, but we did it together. Yeah. Okay, all right. Stage three, you went 425, he went 431. So you got six minutes back from that initial. So you're one minute behind overall, right, after stage three.

Stage four, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the Gobi, like the March Day or whatever. You went 946, he went 1046. Yeah. So like the longer, the more dominant you appeared to be, or woman strength beats men's strength at X number, you know, you can comment on this. Stage five, you went seven minutes faster, stage six, almost the same time. So, no, he went seven minutes faster on stage five.

Came back just a little bit. So with that in mind for everybody, yeah, walk us through a little bit of like, how much racing was this versus surviving simultaneously? I don't, I don't appreciate her saying it's nothing about running. I'm like, you're doing these four-hour men. marathons in the middle of other, like, this is, running is certainly a big component of what's going on here. I think what we're trying to say is you're not just going to walk in from marathoning and like strap on a 60 pound backpack and just like, you know, jog out of camp on day one.

Ready go. Right. So, Rob and I, we raced out of comma together, actually. So I knew Robb going in. Yes. And we had actually like even texted before. going into this race about like, how's your prep going? And that was kind of fun, funny. So Rob and I, I knew that Rob went out extremely fast on stage one. And I was like, he's gone. And he was gone. He probably at one point probably had 20, 25 minutes on me.

Wow. Yeah, going up when I was not feeling super great. And then started slowing down. And I finally got back to him and I could like see him in, in sight across the, you know, the planes. Across the planes. When we were going into the finish. And so the seven minutes on stage one, I mean, that seven minutes is a lot of time when

you think about a running race. But in a 30-hour race, it's not crazy. Stage two, we ran the whole time together. We actually had like probably the most fun and chill race event that I've ever been in and just like really enjoyed each other's company. And our whole thing was just like, well, just make sure that no one else passes us and we'll, we'll just, you know, see how things go the next couple of days. I think that stage three, we were definitely, like, aware that we were racing, but it was more of like, there are so many still other people down the order that were very close to us as well. We're still just like, everyone's racing each other.

It wasn't like a duel or anything like that. I think stage four, though, the long day was when I mentally was like, okay, if I really want to, like, try to win or do well at this, like, now is the time and I need a buffer. And I also knew, though, like, I have a lot of experience running 50 plus mile races. And I don't think that experience is common among people at this type of race. A lot of people are very anxious going into the long march. A lot of people, 50 miles is the longest they've ever run. But, um, I was thinking, like, I've had some really great, actually, 50-mile runs this year even, and I feel comfortable at the distance. And so I went out pretty hard of just like, I'm going to see what I can do for the first half of the day, which was largely this like undulating and then leading to uphill section. And then I was planning on just like chilling on a descent. And then we had like, I think it's like 15 miles back in where it looked hard again. So I was just kind of going to see what happened. and played out over the entire race.

And then I ended up pretty far out front in the first half alone. And I ran alone for the majority of the 50 miles. And just kept running with the attitude of like, someone's surely right behind me, even though I can't see them. Like, I'm sure they're running me down at any moment. And, like, I need every single minute. Because if this comes down to a sprint for the last stage,

like I haven't been training speed and that's going to be a problem. That's 30 kilometers sprint. Oh, God. Well, no, that's the problem. The last stage isn't 30 kilometers. It's like eight. Ouch. So if we're racing four miles.

Why would they do that? It's diabolical. It is. Diabolical. It is. Remember how dead you are? Okay, now run as fast as you can. I mean, on the upside, a question that I was going to, that I had

brewing while you were saying this. Like at this point in time, are you feeling like better than day one? Like where is, you know, your decrease in pack weight thanks to you eating food, you know, intersecting with your increase in fatigue? Like, does it get better as it go? Or is there like a, was there a good day? Best day? Uh, I would say, I had pretty, I wasn't dealing with the a lot of people were dealing with. I don't, didn't feel like I was getting sore. I felt like I was able to recover and I was actually sleeping extremely well. And so I had all of these things like going for me each morning when I woke up, even though I wasn't, this is not 100% like not expecting 100%. I woke up every morning was like, I slept great. I'm able to eat my breakfast, which like,

that's an improvement over myself from last year and also over a lot of people who like wake up so nauseous. You can't even eat, which just becomes this compounding problem. But like, I woke at each morning, hydrated, ready to eat, ready to like begin my day and not overly sore and never at one point felt like injured or in pain. And so it's somewhat of a low bar for racing. But for me, it was like, I might not feel great, but I feel amazing in comparison. Do everyone else here who wakes up in the morning. So it was a huge confidence boost there of just like sleep. Sleep crusher. Yeah. For everyone who doesn't know, which is everyone mostly, except for our mom, Elise went through all of college, master's degree, doctorate degree in like, what,

six years, something completely outrageous. Yeah. While being an EMT working nights. So I feel like that is a bit of the secret preparation. You've been trying your whole life for this People to like me are like, oh, I wish I would have like started swimming when I was six. Like, I don't know, do you really? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that prepared me for this. But holy shit, was it a grind? And like you kind of have that with your cult collegiate while doing tennis on the tennis team.

And it's just you've been, you are prepared for this. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure how it all builds into each other. But yeah, I'm used to like the suffer. I can do the Suffer Fest for sure. I feel like I've seen you just lay down randomly. Like you could just sleep on the floor any time of day.

I feel like. And I need, yes, I'm the person that he's like the lights off and the fan on and the white. Nick needs white noise. You know, like blasting, et cetera. The dehumidifier. The moisturized eye mask. Sleep princesses. Now you won this race outright.

You beat all the men. We're living in a time now where we're starting to see more and more of this kind of thing happening. And it's so exciting. How much was that a thing in your head? Were you thinking like, oh my God, am I going to beat the men? Or are you just trying to have the best race you can have? Did you get any kind of boost by knowing I'm in front of this race right now? Oh, that's a good question.

So I think that that was nowhere on my radar going into the race. Not a goal. Not a thought process at all. Because you thought it was impossible or because it wasn't interesting to you? I guess I didn't think it was possible or it just, yeah. It was maybe not possible. It's just not something that I was figuring. I think not on the radar is a great way to say it.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I very much when the attitude of like, well, I'm fit and I'm prepared. Like I'd love to be podium female. Like that's the goal. And I think like that's a reasonable goal. And it's something to fight for. And by no way like a guarantee.

So that was my thought process going is like I'm going to fight for every single minute, every single spot because I'm racing the women out here. and I want to raise all of the women. And by the end of stage one, when I was like seven minutes back, still not on my radar of like, oh, let me just try to win this overall, zero percent thought process on that. It was still just like, okay, well, how much time do I have on second place female? And like, what does that look like over the next couple of days? So honestly, I'd say, like, it did not even enter my consciousness as a goal until the long march.

of like, okay, well, maybe I should just like consider everyone, like, in the race at this point. It didn't even, I didn't even consider it. People were talking about it. But it's still in my mind. I'm like, that's not the race I'm in. Like, you can talk about this. But I'm racing the females out here. Like, I've got to see, like, what I can do.

And I'm fighting for every minute still of, like, this female race. I got to think in a race this long, like, you're still in this mode of literally anything could happen tomorrow. and the next day. And like, let's not put the cart before the horse. And I feel like that happens to plenty of people. They have that realization in the middle of a race of like, oh my gosh, this is going great. This is the one.

And it can like totally increase the stress and you almost like want to look, you know, like look at the faint star by not looking at it and seeing it out of your peripheral vision. Otherwise, if you get too focused on you can't see it, Sarah. And you feel like you manage that pretty well? Like how? Because so many people struggle with that. I think that one of the major things was just like taking it one day at a time and really just focusing on like, okay, what's today's race look like? What can I do to make every minute count in today's race? Like focus on process and logistics and the next thing. Right. Right. Right. Right now.

Yeah. And there's also just there's so many people at the race who were contenders that it's, that's a lot. lots keep going in your brain at all times of like, oh, well, this person's, you know, 45 minutes back. Because even if the person's 45 minutes back, as we saw, like, that's, you got a little, you got a cramp. And even if you're able to manage that cramp, that's 45 minutes, if you're in the middle of a stage. So it really was, like, anything can happen. Like, I can have a bad day or a bad 10K. And also, like, anyone else can have an amazing day. Like, is there someone else who, you know, had a bad day one, two, and then it's going to just absolutely crush day three and put it in an hour. Like, that's possible too. You just don't know. So, so cool. And then what about the

feeling when you finished, how soon after you finished the final stage? Did you know what the final results were? I mean, that's, that's also the, the hard part mentally was like, I knew before the final stage, because the final stage was only five miles long. And I had. So you're not going to, you're not going to lose an entire hour. Right. In the last five miles, yeah. So I knew, by the end of the long march I knew is a possibility for sure, because I had an hour. But then stage five, I knew that everyone else behind me was competing for second place.

And they went out. I'm not even joking you. This is off trail, by the way. We were doing off trail for most of stage five. They went off at like mid-eight-minute mile pace for the first 12 months. miles on day six oh yeah with plenty of people's marathon pace with with a with a pack on the back at this point all it has is like a sleeping bag yeah because I went out and was like running 845 to nine minute mile pace and I got dropped I got 10 minutes behind the first two hours because on the

second the last stage yeah you were 10 minutes that's yeah that's bonkers and I was thinking like okay like it's 10 minutes is fine. I can give up 10. I can even give up maybe 20 minutes. But any more than that, like, that's going to make it a race zone the last day. And I don't want that. So I'm like, grasping at straws just doing everything I could possibly can to like make sure that like I don't lose the chase pack guy because I know the chase pack guy is not going to let the lead guy out of his site. So I'm just like praying that no one lets anyone out of their site. Like everyone's keeping it mostly together. But it was. It was like nerve wrecking me. I'm like, oh my God. Like, We're still racing this thing on, you know, stage five, day six.

And like it matters. And it does. This whole thing is so much more racy than I imagined. I just kind of imagine we're all like trudging through the desert and you kind of trudged the fastest. But this is like full-blown racing. Yeah, it was. Yeah.

It's sick. All right. Maybe I'm back in. I don't know. I got to go for like 30 minutes sometime without having a snack first before I sign up. And by the way, it got on. like serious elevation game. Yeah.

What was your total elevation gain throughout the, did you know? No, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. That's fine. That's fine. People can go, people can go check it out. It's not just flat desert the entire time.

I think some people might be imagining that. No, they're scrambling. And we had some like days of sand dune climbing and sand on the back end. And there was a lot of diversity and terrain, that's for sure. Amazing. And a lot of off trail. A lot of off trail. Amazing. Sick. All right. So to wrap this up, that was, that was freaking incredible. Everyone should go follow you on Instagram. I've noticed you have significantly upped your Instagram. Maybe Facebook as well. I don't know. Game since, since finishing the race. Is that fair to say? That's fair to say. I mean, if it gives me pictures. I mean. You've had some killer posts.

Thank you. Thank you. So check that out and then racing the planet, if people just Google that, they will come across the series and be able to find out more. Yep. Definitely. The next race they're putting on is in Namibia. So, in Africa. Africa. You go into that one? No, it's in six weeks. I thought you were fine now. I am. I totally would. I'm out of vacation days. I see. I see. Come on work. Throw us a bone here. Well, I feel like it's good. I don't think we need you racing another one of these in six weeks.

I don't know. I was freaking glued to this little tracker thing all week long. It was freaking sweet. Yeah, well, anyway, thank you. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing that. I hope some people are inspired. I hope people will follow along. I'm sure you're down to answer questions on the Instagram post and stuff. I'm sure we'll make an Instagram post with some of those beautiful pictures promoting this.

And heck yeah, keep it going. You inspire me to do crazier shit. As much as I like doing crazy stuff, you blow me out of the water in this family. So keep on. thank you. All right. Let's see how our sweet, how the boss is doing

if we can get her rallied. Yeah. All right, everyone. Paula's here. Oh my God. How did that happen? A miracle. I've woken up from the dead.

Yeah. How are you feeling? Yeah, I think we're just going to chalk this one up to hashtag Iron Man Training. No, it's, I have got my period this morning. There it is, folks. The word that Nick and I could not say. We don't mind saying it.

I just don't want to. invade your privacy, Paula. I know you've talked about on the podcast before, but... Thanks for respecting my privacy. No, but I wish I'm excited to hear the Elise section. Thank you, Elise, for coming on. Oh my gosh, but yeah, I got hit by a truck, so... I FaceTime you and you were sideways on the bed with one eye open. So you were in no condition to pod. Yes, I'm not. I still am not, but... We appreciate your sacrifice. All right. Yeah, we're going to do the best that we can. We have got four or five questions to get through.

No, I like being on the pod, guys. That's why I came up. Thanks, Paula. That's nice to hear. Well, there's a few things we can talk about, but why don't we just start out, since we just had an epic race recap, mental breakdown, not mental breakdown, the breakdown of what happened mentally from a lease. No, that's for me to have.

Right, right. We can't have only one mental breakdown for a pot. Okay, this first question here, we're just going to get right to questions, and then we'll even tell you how you can submit questions. But let's start with Scott's question. I qualified for a pro card by getting top three at Collegiate Nationals this year, and I was thinking about entering the pro field at an upcoming race. But as a student, I cannot afford a TT bike.

Is it silly to start a pro race on an older road bike with clip-on arrow bars, cheap aluminum wheels, etc.? Should I wait until I can afford a TT bike to do a pro race, or should I go for it? So at Collegiate Nationals, does that mean that it's, are Collegian Nationals a draft legal race? I thought collegiate nationals was a non-draft race. They have both, to my knowledge. I know they have a draft legal version. If you qualify in the draft legal version for your pro card,

you're allowed to race 70.3s. Yes. But he doesn't have a TT bike. Yes. Exactly. So how crazy is it to race as a pro on a road bike? No, absolutely not. Beg, borrow, steal, whatever you're going to do, a TT bike.

Yeah, like physically you're obviously at the last. level where it's appropriate for you to race in the pro field, right? Yeah. That said, it's still going to be a large jump. And I just, man, borrow, literally borrow, I think a TT bike from somebody to give yourself any fighting chance of like being in the race, getting some good experience out of this instead of, oh man, I mean, we talk about it all the time. A road bike is so much slower.

And I'm going to quote you guys on this. It's not even, you don't even need the latest, greatest state of the art, TT bikes, right? It's even a TT bike from 10 years ago. puts you in such an advantageous aerodynamic position compared to a brand new modern road bike. Assume the position, my guy. Yeah. You just see the rocket ships that everyone's riding now and the farings that everyone has on the front of their bikes, that you would just be at such a disadvantage.

Even if your goal is not to be competitive in the race, it would be less fun without that setup. But like Eric said, I mean, you don't have to wait until you have $20,000 to buy one. you could hopefully try to borrow one or get one the second hand or I don't know piece together something that's a little more affordable. I'm selling a speed max, Scott, if you want it. That's actually not a bad idea. Yeah, well, this is, I mean, I'm looking at it right now.

It looks great. I'm just, I'm ready to move on. I think the price is going to be right. The price will be right. Yes, Scott. Actually, just send me a message, Scott. Maybe we could work something out here. Yeah, I mean, it rolls.

It's not broken, right? No, it's not broken, no. I just raced it. Yeah, we're willing to help out to some degree, but I would also check, you know, just like tri clubs. Like there's probably a Facebook tri club, you know, group sort of a thing. You can say, hey, here's my situation. I would love if I could borrow a TT bike. Generally, triathletes are stoked to help people out in this type of situation.

Yeah. Okay, so curious if you guys followed what happened this weekend. I mean, first, there's a lot going on. We're not going to talk about the Tour de France, even though that has started. And it is already exciting. But did you guys follow Roth that just happened last weekend? Yeah.

I was kind of like waking up in the night because Eric wasn't home. I'd check. So I didn't watch it start to finish. But it wasn't an exciting race, yeah. It was exciting on the men's and the women's side. Yes. The women, did you know, had you heard of this woman, Alanis Sifford? Paula?

Yeah, she's raised several T-100s. She was kind of like the most talked about person, I think. on the T100 Spain broadcast because she just had a crazy bike split. She rides the bike in a completely crazy way. I feel like I'm okay saying that. She's very aggressively,

looks aggressive on the bike. I think her position's actually good, but her style is very low cadence, grinds, stands up out of the saddle in her TT position. Obviously extremely strong, though. Yeah.

And she actually raised T100 France when I came second there. She was like off the bike first. and then I caught her within a couple K of the run. So it's absolutely mind-blowing that she ran a 245 because I don't think she's ever even ran faster than a 123 half. Wow. She basically just ran that twice in a row.

That was the entire kind of focus of her. She was over the moon at the finish line. And she was talking about that. You know, everybody thinks I can't run and nobody's believed to me except for my coach. Her coach is Brett Sutton, correct? Yep. Based on the low cadence and et cetera.

and she was, you know, proved everybody wrong. Yeah, it's kind of, I mean, obviously she wasn't picked as a winner favorite because Kat was in the race, Lucy was in the race, and then Caroline Pole, there were a couple other really good athletes there that had potential to podium, her being one of them, but probably no one would have picked her to win. So exciting. I think Kat had a rough day, which was sad to see,

because I think she was really gearing up for this race to have a fast time and to, like, get records. Obviously, she's the best in the world right now, one of. So I was excited to watch her have a good day. But you can't all have good days all the time. No. Speaking of which, on the men's side, Sam Lidlow beat out Christian for the win. But Christian did run a 229 marathon.

Yeah, I don't think Christian had a bad day. No, he didn't have a bad day. Sam just is really an unbelievable athlete. And Eric, you were going to talk about the swim. There was something that you liked about the swim particularly. Yeah, I... Some people don't like this. And Eric didn't watch it. I told him about it.

No, I'm not saying I like or dislike, but it was extremely interesting. Christian has been super dominant. And from what I hear, there was a, you know, one of these swimmer group chat things. And everybody had a conversation about rolling like a paceline, you know, the top three or four or five super swimmers and doing everything that they could to drop Christian. Which... They did. Fair. I mean, this is fair.

Whether or not you think that this is cool or okay or like, whatever. Like this, I've always kind of felt this way a little bit annoyed about the swim bike run thing. You know, we've had all these conversations about not being able to draft on the bike and motorcycles and, you know, whatever. But like, if you're a really good swimmer, you're towing people and you're just hoping that you can't. And swimming, drafting is massively effective. So these four guys, three guys worked together, got a gap on Christian and that ultimately held for the whole day. So can you- Yeah, it's like Bogen, Schaumburg, laid low, two other guys. I don't know exactly who it was. They had like a perfect pace line going

where the guy in the front would lead for 200 meters and then do a few backstrokes and go to the back of the line, literally like a rolling paceline and cycling. And they were swimming as close as they could to the shore because the current was less strong there. So they'd really had it tactically worked out. They swam super fast. And then obviously those guys are also amazing on the bike, maybe even stronger than Christian on the bike so they put even more time into him. It's exciting. It's exciting and different.

It's cool. Yes. If we're running 2.29s, you've got to do what you're supposed to do. Everybody's trying to put food on the table here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It reminds me a little bit of like, and you see this in Formula One

where one team will figure out this thing and then the next year everyone figures it out or it's illegal the next year or whatever it is. But in the time, these are the variables you have to play with. Someone's running a 229 off the bike. where's, you're not going to run faster than that right now. So where else can you find that time? And that's, they did it and they succeeded.

Even Rico had a really good race. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's harder in the water though because you're, it's harder to navigate and find the pack and like get organized because you don't have any like as much visual. No communication. And you can't communicate. But they nailed it.

So, I mean, it's freaking interesting. If nothing else, it's something to talk about made this, made the race exciting. and therefore I am into it. Yeah, I mean, watching the whole thing made me want to do Roth someday because it's such a cool looking race. I think all three of us should do Roth, regardless of our fitness levels. Oh, my God. That's a great idea.

The expo was crazy and just the whole thing of it looked so fun. I'm so down. So I get it. I kind of get the hype. And I wasn't even there, of course, but I get the hype. Yeah. It is one of those things that you do. I think it's a triathlet

if you can figure out a way to do it in your lifetime to do it. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on here and I just want to

go back a little bit since we haven't mentioned this. This is our triathlon podcast and as you can tell other than when we have a lease on here, we mostly just answer questions and sometimes we don't even answer the questions but we do need the questions

so that we can talk about stuff. You can submit your questions at that triathlon life. com slash podcast. And by the way, we had a light question week, so please submit your questions. Yes. We had enough to field a pod episode, but we really need to be able to choose.

Yeah, we need to be able to pick and choose. So you now have Nick's subtle request and you have Paula straight to the point. Yeah, don't be shy. No, but when I've said this in the past, some people are hesitant to say, maybe it's I scared people last week. Because remember I told that girl's question was too long? Yeah, yeah, right. So I scared people away. Can't have it all the ways.

Come back. Right. We love letters. We miss you. We miss you. We never met all those things that we said. It was the heat of the moment. There's a lot of wheeze going on here, guys.

Come back. Yeah. Yeah. Send me your questions. Okay. Okay. Here's this next question. And this is a great one from Stewart.

Howdy, love the podcast. Started listening on a road trip from BC, British Columbia to Utah. First triathlon I saw in person was the 2012 I was there watching a friend compete in whitewater kayaking. After that, dove into triathlon and did a bunch of halves and shorter races. Love it. Olympics is so good at inspiring people. I was there.

Paul, you were really there. 2012 Olympics? I was racing in that race. Yeah, you were as there as you can be. Yes. Okay, so here's the question. Just finished the Leadville heavy half coming from Abbotsford, British Columbia, and being at sea level, I felt the elevation.

Any tips or tricks to perform when going to an event at higher elevation? Thanks for the great content every week. And I did some research on what this event is, by the way. The Leadville heavy half is a challenging 15 and a half mile trail running event in Leadville, Colorado, featuring 3,400 feet of elevation gain. That is a ton, by the way, for that amount of mileage.

It kicks off the Leadville race series season, taking runners from 10,100 feet in downtown Leadville up to the peak of mosquito pass at an oxygen-deprived 13,200 feet almost. So I believe that Luke, Eric, your cousin, who's also an ultra-endurance athlete, I believe he had to do this

as part of the Ledman series. That sounds right. Yeah. So what do you think if you are from Abbotsford, British Columbia, and you have to race at elevation, how would you prepare for something like this?

Heat training. Yeah. Heat training, baby. They call heat training the poor man's altitude training. It's just so effective. He training is good for almost any kind of racing that you do for an endurance athlete. Yeah, it sucks, but it's so effective. And I just think that if you're coming down from sea level racing at all shoes,

you should have to be as fit as you possibly can be. And heat training adds to that. So it's kind of a bit of a hack, but it's not like an easy hack. It's not just going to take you to be in a 11,000 foot hero, but it can take the edge off. Yeah, it'll increase your hemoglob. I mean, that's, you know, increase your blood plasma volume, all the things the altitude does, right? Do you think that if you were Stewart, would you try to show up as little before the race as possible? Would you give yourself a few days?

Would you go a few weeks? That's tough because usually we think of it in the opposite. If you're at altitude and coming down to race, you want to come down as close to the event as possible, but... You want to go up. For something so high, I think you do have to acclimatize your body a bit so it doesn't go into altitude sickness or something, right? I don't know. Generally, you want to go as late as possible. You can go like right before.

Yeah, right before. Really? You can sometimes fight it. Like the worst thing you can do is like two or three days before because you just get tired. It's like two weeks or right before. That's what I've heard about it. It doesn't make sense in my brain. I'm like, why would I want to show up right before?

get shocked by this oxygen debt. Yeah, just because you would just avoid the fatigue that inevitably comes from trying to sleep and exist at that altitude. I mean, just think about how shitty you feel when you get off a long-haul flight because those cabins are pressurized to 8,000 feet. Yeah.

And for some people, 10,000 feet is certainly enough to give you altitude sickness if you're sensitive to it. With going up at the very last minute and not testing this at all, like going a month out for two days and just making sure that you don't have some sort of experience.

extreme altitude sickness. But I don't think we should scare him. I mean, what you have to do is moderate your effort during the race as well. You can't go out as hard as you were going to go out and you have to be super conservative. And your breathing will feel really hard for an effort that your body doesn't think is hard. Yeah. And it kind of sucks, but you just have to expect that and adjust accordingly. How far is Abbotsford from some real mountain peaks?

It's like right outside of Anchorage. So there's peaks there. Yeah. There's legit mountains. It's not an elevation. Yeah, but you can't, it's not realistic to like, is it really helpful to go do one? No, no. It's actually maybe not helpful. It's maybe unhelpful. If you're really committed to the craft, you could get an altitude tent. Right. But that's a little over the top. It's extreme, but there are more and more consumer grade altitude tents being made out there. Yeah, like you could get ones that just go over your head and you're so you're sleeping in a. Oh, wow. just over your pillow basically. That sounds claustrophobic to me. But as with everything, how bad do you want it? Yeah. They're expensive. They're sometimes warm.

I've never tried the one that just goes on your head. We just talked in circles, but it's up to you. You have to be in them for over half of a 24-hour period for them to be really effective. So you should be in them while you're sleeping and then like in the day when you're resting and be able to like spend as much of your life in there as possible, which is just not realistic for most humans. Taking Zoom calls, etc. That's why when we were looking into this for you guys,

the ones that your entire room becomes the altitude tent and you don't even have to, it doesn't look like a big plastic bubble over anything. They just put it in the walls. That's kind of the gold standard of, you know, combining your lifestyle and this physiological adaptation that comes from altitude. If you have an airtight room.

Yeah. They make it airtight. Yeah. But otherwise it feels like a huge, Don't do that, though. Just go suffer it out. Just wing it. Yeah. Okay, next question here is from Chris.

How often should I replace my running shoes? I feel like I dread the price, especially with all the other bike costs. And also, how do you all feel about breaking in new shoes? Chris, this reminds me something Paula that you said that your coach Paolo said, which is when you try on the new shoes, if they feel very different from the same pair of shoes that you're wearing, that's when it's time to change. I don't know how much you still believe that to be true. But I thought that I always think of that when I'm thinking running in old shoes.

I'm like, how different would a new pair of shoes feel? Right. Interesting. Yeah, I forgot about that tip. You know, I'm so spoiled that I have a million pairs of shoes and I replace them when they get a bit dirty, which is more often than when they're broken down. So I don't really know. Yeah, but you're literally sponsored by a shoe company and they want you to. to wear the newest shoes. And so I think it's great.

Why not? Yeah, it's fine, but it doesn't help answer this question. What would you say? Like put 300 miles on them? Is that too many? It depends on the shoes. No, it's not too many. That's, for trainers, it's for sure not too many.

They'd be on the minimum side of a maximum amount for a shoe. But for a race shoe, yeah, that's probably too many. For a trail running shoe, it depends. Sometimes you can put 600 miles on shoes. Do you keep track, Nick? I keep track. I have everything on Strava. I always select the right shoe that I have.

and I have an alert that comes up at 250 miles, and then I change that alert, but just to get my head in the space of, hey, new shoes soon. Yeah, I go a bit more by feel. And I think the perfect way to do this would be keep an eye out for your favorite pair of shoes being on some sort of close-out sale

and just suck it up and buy two or three pairs at a time. And then so you can start your collection of shoes that you're rotating between. And you just pretend like that didn't happen, and still continue to buy a new pair of shoes at an appropriate interval. So you always have like two or three pairs of shoes that are in rotation and one is getting phased out every three months or something like that. That's smart.

And also in the interest of keeping our economy going, but also your own personal economy, remember that if you trail run and you race and you train on pavement, it's good to have three different pairs of shoes for those things. because then you are, you're using them for their appropriate use, and you're not wearing down your regular training shoes by running on trail any more quickly than they need to be worn down. And your race shoes are also, you just use them for racing.

It's fun, they're purpose-specific, but then also you don't wear them down as quickly. Yeah, totally. There you go. Yeah, in the big picture, they're not that expensive for preventing injuries. If you're running into shoes that are like so worn down that they're not supporting you or having the effect that they're meant to have and you get injured. And then you're going to like two physio appointments that cost more than one pair of shoes. Like, think of it that way.

That's a great thing to tell yourself as you're making that purchase. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Last question here is from Chris. Hi, tripod. Just discovered y'all.

And I've been binging all the content. Excellent stuff. Good. This is the only type of binging that we really support. My question is, how has your motivation shifted or matured? in triathlon over the years. I did my first 70.3 to prove, and end first triathlon, to prove something to myself after a tough breakup.

But since crossing that line, I've found happiness and pleasure in developing myself more and discovering the community. That finish line was not the validation or answer I was looking for with a start line for this next era of adulthood. Damn, Chris.

Love that. Okay, well, what do you guys think? I think that was very well said. I feel like my personal triathlon journey is kind of similar. I was immediately motivated by not getting a, quote, real job. And I think when I told people that I wanted to be a professional triathlet, I was met with a little bit of skepticism, which also made me combine those two things,

and a little bit of prove everybody wrong, go my own way. And that got me started. When I started to have some results that felt very significant to me, like getting ranked inside the top 50 in the world, in ITU racing and being like very close to making the Olympic team qualifying for not just racing escape from Alcatraz and winning that. That was like a crisis or an inflection moment of okay, like something in my brain has told me that I have proved people wrong.

I have arrived at the point of I am like a legitimate professional athlete and I don't need to be self-conscious about it necessarily or anything and then move into the phase of okay, what's now important? Is it like building a career becoming known for something? and I think sport, this journey is for everybody, and it's always evolving of you meet a goal, and then you decide what is important next. It can change. It's fine.

Paula, I'm curious. So my, even though I never, I will never be a professional athlete, my experience is similar to Erics, where I started with this, like I wanted to prove something to myself, but also to, just honestly, to everyone, I wanted to show that I could do this hard thing

that is triathlon, and it felt so different from who I was. I don't know if I get the sense from you that you had that. I feel like you kind of started at this place of maybe you had more self-confidence or maybe, I don't know. Did you have the same thing where you wanted to prove something or was there just a performance aspect of this? At the start of my triathlon career that I had to prove something? Did you have that? No, never.

Yeah. Interesting. So what do you think was pushing you? What motivated you at the beginning? And is it even different than now, or do you recognize that same muse? Well, when I was younger doing triathlon, I would win all the time. Like, I rarely did a race that I didn't win, at least nationally. Of course, at Worlds, that wasn't the case.

But, yeah, it wasn't really trying to prove something. It was just like what I did and what I was good at. And I don't know. It's hard to explain. It's a little bit like in genetic and inherent, I think, the drive to like do high performance things. I guess my drive was to be the best at the thing. And then I kept getting positive reinforcement through winning stuff and getting best times and whatever it was. So you did have, did you have a feeling of accomplishment or of joy or of self-actualization when you did win?

Or did it just meet your expectation? I was still really happy, especially when I started winning the big race. internationally. I was super always surprised, like, how is this happening? But, yeah, it's hard to explain. And I don't even really remember. Yeah. So, Eric, now when you go out and you're pushing yourself hard on something, where, what is that magnetic thing that is pushing you? It used to be, I'm going to, you know, prove these people wrong. I want to be a professional. I think there's a lot of it. There's a of advantages to it now. How is it different now? What still allows you to work hard? Because it's one thing to go out and do a long five, six, seven hour ride. And that has its own suffering involved in it.

But there's a different type of suffering when you're in like a V-O-2 max effort or something where you're just like, whoa, I am burning white hot right now. What's pushing you now to do that? I think it's kind of a lot of things. And my brain, I feel like it's a bit more of like an artist style brain than Paula, you know, when it all costs, you know, it just be stereotypical of like two archetypes or something. But like I am very much enamored or love the feeling of pushing further than I have before. Improvement. Like I'm I'm off the edge of the map here into the unknown. Can I hold this pace? Can I go that far? And I think I can really revel in that on a day-to-day basis and get myself excited for an event that will test that. then all of my motivation is also very wrapped up inside of leaving a legacy in the sport

leaving it better than I found it growing TTL so I can very easily fall back on like having a good race here is a really good story which is a good piece of content which can inspire people which can help grow the brand and continue to further that mission so I've got a really good swirling bubble of motivations I don't think I'm feeling good enough to be articulate like that I thought you did a great job. When Eric's talking, it feels like listening to myself, even though we are very different. Like Eric raced internationally, professionally was top 10 at Worlds. And I think it's nice for us as podcast listeners, me as one of the podcast listeners,

realizing Eric, who we all look up to in some way and still hear what we feel, which is, it's fun to, it's fun, it's more than fun. There's something that feels, like Paula, you said, inherently genetic about pushing yourself and finding these new limits and going faster further than you went before. There's something that's just inherently humans we seek that.

There's something about it, even though it's painful. Yeah. That is the Olympic motto, right? Sidious, altius, fortius, like better, higher, faster, further, stronger. It's like one of those three words. That's the nest of the whole thing.

It's like engraved on the Olympic Training Center and Colorado Springs and stuff. Okay, well, those are all their questions. and this is going to be a pretty long pod. But I think it was a great one. We were lucky to have a lease on with her unbelievable race, stage race. And then we even got Paula, who rose from the dead and gave her her best self. No, it wasn't my best self.

I thought it was a great self. The best self that you have to bring right now. And then next week, I will not be here. Yeah, what's happening next week? How are we doing that? Well, we could do it Wednesday. I don't know if that's too close to the race, but we could do it Wednesday night. Either way, either you guys will or I'll be on if I'm in the mood.

Yeah, perfect. On Wednesday of next week, we will be in Lake Placett for the Iron Man. Yes. It's so weird to think about packing for an Iron Man. It feels like going to war. Because I know how to pack for a 70.3. I know how to get my body ready for a 70.3, but I feel like I'm truly going to war. I'm like, do I have all of the armor I need to do this mission?

I'm ordering shit online, like all this stuff. I actually just found on Amazon a neck guard for wetsuits. It's like a piece of neoprene that goes around your neck. I saw a guy wearing it last weekend, too, and I was wondering what it was, and that's exactly what it is. Yeah, because I get this horrible neck chaf. And I don't know if it would work with a swim skin, though. That's my only hesitation. Oh.

Or if you're going to love to have any. neoprene on you if it's a not a wetsuit swim? Well, Roth was a non-wetsuit swim again this year, and it was last year too, and those are the first two times it's happened. I think they're going to give you a pass on an anti-chafe thing. Or tape, but I did try to put kinesio tape on my neck when I swam in the river last week and it immediately came off. So I'm really trying to find a solution because in a 70.3 gets bad. And I'm just imagining all the things that get bad and a half, doubling in a fall. And I'll be bleeding from my neck. So, If anyone has any tips or tricks, I would be happy to read those for preventing the chafing.

This is what's awesome about you doing an Iron Man. And people, there's like what I was getting at with doing a new challenging thing. Like you're pulling out all the stops. You're buying new stuff. That's not the point. It's not commercial. But like you're having to rack your brain and try all this new things and pushing a new territory.

It's freaking awesome. It's exciting. Yeah, I tried the flow gel for the first time on my bike ride. The precision flow gel. Yeah. 300 grams of carbs. I put it in a down tube aerobottle. I think I'm allowed to say this because Tailwind doesn't make a gel.

Anyway, that's going to be my, I'm going to do that on the bike. It's pretty liquidy and it tastes like every single precision product tastes, so it's fine. Damn. Sugar goo. I mean, it's fine. I mean, it's tolerable. I don't mind them at all. Exactly.

I don't mind it. That is what precision tastes like, except the new watermelon chews, which are really good. Eric's rolling aside because I'm not supposed to talk about precision. But I'm talking about what I'm taking in on the bike. I'm going to have a high carb fuel from tailwind as my liquid. And then my gel is going to be the flow gel. And how did you feel on your recent 122 mile ride? Completely fine.

Iron man training is so overhyped. Oh, my God. You're going to get pitchforks and fire bombs thrown through your windows. I hate that word Iron Man Training. I said that on, you should go. watched Eric's episode of the long game. It's on the Iron Man YouTube. But I really don't like this word Iron Man training. Although I am adapting my training slightly so descriptive. So that I can do an Iron Man. You have told me several times now that you are enjoying whatever it is that you're doing,

whatever you want to call it. It's just not that hard. It's boring and it's long and it takes all day, but it's not that hard. If you're going out and doing eight minute V-O-2 threshold intervals, that's hard. But doing five by 30 minutes at 220 watts, that's not hard. It's just uncomfortable. And I don't feel that bad after. So I think I'm tolerating it. We're about to see, we're about to see. But that is, I'm going to eat my words because the race is going to be hard. Of course. The race is going to be hard. But the training itself, I don't feel that bad. It's not the like searing white hot pains of short course training. Yes. Yeah, of course. But anyway, like Paul has said, shameless plug, go watch the long game, season one. Season two, episode one is out on

Iron Man YouTube, kind of out the buildup, the race at Happy Valley. And I'm going to have to be putting out the second episode pre Lake Placid. So go watch that and share both them with all your trathon friends. I actually think that with this quote unquote Iron Man training, I will be better at 70.3. And I think I should have done more of this Iron Man training in my 70.3 buildups because it does make you more resilient for long amounts of time. Like, I should be able to do a two-hour run without thinking about it. And it wasn't a big deal yesterday, but it was the first time I'd ever done that. And at the end of a 70.3, I am kind of like trickling down to the 230-watt zone,

which is what I feel like I could do forever on these Iron Man rides. So it is, I think, makes you an overall better athlete. maybe you lose some of the top end, but I've been doing top end for 20 years. So doing a little bit of the foundational long stuff, I think is only going to help with the halves as well. I can't wait to hear what you... I've always been on Team Long Ride. I'm just glad that we've arrived.

Same. So now you guys come out here and we can do some big rides. I mean, long rides are also completely a mindset. If you're like, I am riding all day today, it's fine. and you bring enough food and you're, yeah, you have a root that's that long, so you're just doing it. You're not thinking about the time. Yep. This is the nest of the thing.

Yep. Totally. Love it. Yeah, okay. I know you guys knew this all along. No, no. We just love to hear you say it. We love to hear you say it.

Shut up, you guys. And we can't wait for you to race. I also love my TT bike now. That helps a ton. Yeah. Because did I talk about my new arrow bars yet? Yeah, you did. Yeah.

Yeah, you did. Because if you can ride for five hours an arrow, you can go really far. Right, right. That is the cool thing. I looked at your average speed for your 120 miles. It was like over 22 miles an hour. That would be a fine Ironman speed to do your race at. That's what I was thinking.

I was like, if I just did this ride at an Iron Man, I would be... You would be in great shape. Yeah. And half of it was like sitting up and spinning and talking to people. So, yeah, it's a... It was a hard ride, but it was a hard ride. wasn't crazy. I can't wait. I can't wait to hear how it feels for you and to see how it goes. I'm going to hate it. I think you're going to love it. I think you may, I think you may love it.

I think the last half of the marathon, you may get to some dark places, but I think you're going to like the rest of me. You are for sure, guaranteed to love it and hate it. Yeah. My least favorite part of, quote unquote, Iron Man training has been the swims. I fucking hate the Iron Man swims that I have to do. Oh, so they are longer than what you were doing, huh? 10, 400s, long course meters on 540. It's like, I can't make it, I can't make it. Touch the wall, five seconds rest, go again and do that for an hour. It's so horrible.

Yeah. And like four by a thousand descend, stuff like that. Gross. That's the worst part. But all those sessions are under an hour. So if you can just wrap your head around doing it. Dikes. Okay, enough about that.

All right. If you're coming to Placid, if you're going to hang out with us, The donut run time is officially set now, and we are also working on an alternate option for picking up shirts from us. We are likely partnering with Hyperice, and we'll have them in the booth, but I will confirm that before the podcast comes out.

And what time is the donut run? Donut run is at 3 p.m. on Friday. Cool. See you there. And also last week we talked, and the week before that, we talked about this little Eddington number challenge. So it's going to be, if you're hearing this,

it's already a post. The real challenge is finding out your editing. So I did some research and tried to have some podcast listeners sent me these different services that are like Strava add-ons that will calculate it for you. None of them work. They don't work properly. At least they didn't work for my account. If they didn't work for mine, they probably won't work for everyone. So you're going to have to do the hard work of calculating it yourself. We are working on a little video that teaches you how to do that. I'm going to be doing that today. By the time this podcast comes out, there will be a post on that triathlon on life.

with not only the directions, but a place for you to post your number. We encourage you to make it fun. And I owe it for everyone, try to guess what your cycling, Eddington number would be and then be surprised at what it really is because it shocked me.

Eric, I think you nailed yours. No, no, you were close. I nailed yours. People guess, yes, that's right. People guess low. I think that people, people guess too low. You surprised yourself with how much you've ridden.

I was in bed the other night after doing a... We have right. wrapped up this podcast seven times now. And then we just keep going. I haven't talked to Nick for like 10 days. This is TTL after dark. One more thing.

So after my super long bike ride, I remember my Eddington number was 69. So I was like, okay, Eric, now that I've done another ride that's 100 over 100 miles, my Eddington number 70, right? And he said, no, not necessarily.

Oh, wait a second. Exactly. No. I guess you're right. I guess you're right. You could have done 69 rides at 69 miles. Yeah, she could have a few like 69.5s in there. Yep. Yeah, so it could be.

But it's the way you calculate it is the way you calculate it. That doesn't change. Yep. You can just go back and re-and-reak. You might not. Yeah. Yeah, think about it. If you've done 50 rides at 50 miles and never a ride at 51 miles,

you'd have to do 51-51-mile rides to get there on top of that. That's a good way of explaining it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We can end there. We can stop there. Okay, bye. Okay, bye, everyone.

Later.