That Triathlon Life Podcast - Eric, Paula, and Nick all race Ironman Los Cabos 70.3 triathlon. Also, removing a derailleur for travel, and more!

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

This week we spend almost the whole episode hearing about our races at IM 70.3 Los Cabos. There was a lot to talk about, and a lot to learn, so we hope you enjoy it. After the race recaps we also answered a few questions. You can submit your own question, as well as become a podcast supporter by heading over to ThatTriathlonLife.com

Hey everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggestrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. Paula and I are both professional trathletes. Nick is a professional musician, great friend, amateur triathlet. And on this podcast, we talk about what's going on in our lives, in our trathon journey. And we take questions from everybody from all three of you who listen and try to help give some knowledge from our experiences. So the biggest thing that has gone on in our life just recently is we all just competed in 70.3 of those Cabos. It was a bit of a cliffhanger. I was a hard maybe. I did end up racing and we're going to we're going to dive into that in

today's show. The people want the race recaps. And I'd also like to say for the people who maybe listen to this podcast without maybe they started with this podcast and maybe they don't even follow us on Instagram. Maybe they don't follow race results. I don't want any of us to spoil how it ended until we're finished with the recap. Oh. You know, if Eric, if you got 10th, I don't want you to start your recap with saying you got 10th. We don't want to talk about Paula's crash. Right.

We don't want to talk about Eric Seatstroke or Nick's win. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Noted. I guess other quick things are just going on in life right now. We are in the very exciting time of designing our TTL race kits for next year, which we'll put those on sale. We brand them as TTL Nation and the concept behind that,

if you don't know is the profits from that will help go to fund what we call the TTL development team which is we'll be picking out about eight athletes six athletes which we put out some we'll put out an application

for that in the next month along with the pre-order for the TTL kit and the goal with that is just to help some young up-and-comers in the sport kind of make the jump from winning their local races and getting their pro card up to making a living in the sport. So that's something that we're all super

passionate about and yeah, we're deep in to the design and all the things with that. It's exciting. Just to be clear, the sales of the kits that are going to be sold to the general public, atrib triathletes, the point of them is to help fund the development team

athletes who are professionals. Is that right? Exactly. TTR is not a multi-billion dollar company, but we want to give back to the sport. And this is kind of our way of saying Hey, if you buy one of these kits, you can see one of these young athletes crossing the finish line at their next race, maybe getting their first win and feel like a huge part of that journey. So that's something cool and special that we're stoked to be doing. Okay, I have a question.

How much do you feel like your Spanish has improved over the course of the trip to Mexico? Poco. Oh. Paula? Zero amount, but I did find out that Nick is fluently Spanish. That's not true. That's really not true. It's totally not true.

Nick's speech. He speaks like Spatallian. Yes, it's Spatian. He speaks Spanish like an Italian. But it's very elegant and sexy and lures you in. Tell me more. Like an example, don't de lao. Yeah.

He's like throwing the owl, like those Italian vowels vowels in there. Well, it's so funny because I thought I was all cool with my accent. And then I talked to one guy in transition who was working for Iron Man. And I said like four words. And he was like, oh, you're Italian. I'm like, damn it. Let's do an example. Ask me, do you know where the porta-potties are in this transition?

Sabe don't where you're banos in the transitions? That's what I'm going to. That's a guess. Like, that could be completely wrong. But most likely that person you're talking to gets what you're asking. Yeah. But it sounds like, I think to people who speak Spanish natively, it's very clear that I'm not a native Spanish speaker.

And I think it's even more clear that I'm an Italian. because I'm using my Italian mouth vowel like space to speak it, right? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You saved us on several occasions, being able to speak Spanish, like getting us out of paying for parking, et cetera, et cetera. Right, right. It was mostly money-saving scenarios. We had no pesos but needed to get to the pro-meeting in one minute.

So it's not like we were just trying to not pay for parking. I just want to do a quick, like, I don't know. I don't want to be too harsh on this thing. but if you are considering going to a race like Los Cabos, 70.3, branded as Iron Man, we realized it's not actually like run by Iron Man. There's not an Iron Man crew that moves in, takes over, sets up transition, does the whole expo. It's franchised by the race organizing committee, whoever it is.

So it's a different experience. It's a little more hectic. The pro race briefing was, glossed over quite a lot on some of the details that are important. Complicated logistics for bike drop-off. I think they did a good job, but if you're going there expecting like a Kona-esque vibe, it's not that. Other than maybe partially the heat, but yes. The organization.

The heat, other than the heat. And I would say I never felt unsafe in Mexico in general. Like the whole trip was very fun, I would say. But I wasn't stressed about this because it was our last race of the year. We were kind of doing it all together. But it was like, you know, we were waiting for the swim. We had no idea if we were allowed to warm up. And they were still setting up the buoys.

Well, I'll also say we had no idea how to get to the swim in the morning because there was some miscommunication about the buses, even where the buses were. We didn't know if it was just for the hotel guests. for any race members. And the day before the race, we got a notification that the race course changed, which was fine, right?

Because it was stuff having to do with weather that had occurred. But they had said that they changed a run course to 31.3 miles instead of... They wanted to say that it was still the same distance, but they accidentally moved some of the numbers around and I think some people freaked out.

This is not to deter people from going, but it's just to reset your expectations. And Nick, as an age group, And I mean, also I guess, as pros too, paid the same entry fee as you would at a 70.3 in Europe or a 70.3 in Chattanooga. But I would say, yeah, the quality of experience was maybe a bit lower. The way that I would put it is if you are someone who really relishes in knowing exactly how Iron Man's work and like nothing is left a chance and the place that you're going is very simple, like, this is probably not the race for you. If you're a person who's extremely mentally flexible, can handle all sorts of changing dynamics environments, go for it. It's a really, really cool place.

We love the culture. It's fun. A wine shop. Big shout out. I will say, like, I think they did put, like, more effort than other races into certain things. Like, the awards after, like, really nice wooden trophies, good food at the awards banquet thing. The aid stations and the volunteers at the aid stations. The volunteers in general were at the best I've ever seen.

Yeah. Yeah. Like race gun to finish, no issues. Like felt safe. Roads were closed. No crazy incidents. Amazing volunteers. Enough ice.

You know. I mean, roads close to the extent that they can control. Yeah. You're going to get the guy, the odd guy that hops the median. Yeah. But that's your own responsibility to keep your head up. But yeah, this isn't a bang on that. And the course itself, like,

What did we think of the course itself? Like swim was beautiful and cool in a great spot in a cool beach. And I really like the course. Yeah, I like the course. The bike course is extremely engaging. It's a super cool amount and like just feel of the rolling. It's kind of like Santa Cruz 70.3, but more rolling. Yeah, it's pretty hilly.

Yeah, more climbing, for sure. They'll sneak up on you. But it's like, I thought it was super fun. Like if you do a really good job of carrying momentum through the rollers and everything, like I was completely engaged the whole time. Yeah. We stayed at a really perfect spot. It was kind of halfway between the swim start and the finish.

So, I don't know, logistically, it was fairly simple, although the traffic in Los Cabo since we went two years ago is gridlocked. What happened down there? So times of day, we felt a little stuck like we were riding our bikes on the highway because we couldn't drive because it was physically impossible. Yes. If you're somebody who wants to do a bunch of riding on your bike, fiscal prior to your race.

Don't go there. Don't go there. That's a great point. Bring a trainer. Yeah, bring a train. Like, we went in on Thursday. Friday. Friday.

We went on Friday for a Sunday race, which is something we never do, but the prices of the tickets and all the things, but it actually worked out to be great because we only had to do. We only had to do one bike ride, and we were able to do the one bike ride. But if you had to do like three bike rides, no, thanks. I think that's a sufficient lowdown of the race experience, but should we? We do race recaps. Yeah. Yes, and I think if you want to include some more race experience stuff in your recap, you can feel free to do that as well.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And there'll be more race experience stuff in the YouTube video whenever that comes out. Oh, yeah, that's the other thing. We were at the airport yesterday, and we got a bill for, like, one salad and one sandwich, and it was $80. We're like, wait a second. Let me see the check. And we were charged, like, over $10 U.S. for each bottle of water. Like a personal small-sized.

A 500-millimeter. later bottle. They expect people to not notice and then tip on that amount. It was just crazy. Outrageous. Anyway, that doesn't matter. Who's going first? I'll go first.

Should I go first? Yeah. Sure. Okay, I'm going to make mine short. I think we should all be a little bit concise. Great. Because there's a lot of stuff to get through. There's three of us.

And we have good questions. So I felt quite lethargic and not excited to do the race, which is nothing too new from normal. Actually, that's not true. Usually when I get to the race side, I'm like excited and I can do some pickups and I can do a swim warmup. But this time I just felt like, oh, I don't even, thank God, there's no swim warmup allowed because I don't want to. Right. You're talking about race morning, right? Yeah, race morning. I'm skipping right to race morning. Is that okay? No, totally. You said you're feeling lethargic. I don't know if you meant when you got there on Friday or, you know. Also that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Getting there two days before versus three days before was a bit stressful for me because we were trying to. feel good, get some rest, but do the race logistics all within one day, which was a lot. And because of that, I think, come race morning early on, I was not really feeling it. My sense of urgency, even after the race started, was kind of bad.

And I lost feet of people that I should be able to swim with. And I was completely alone at sea. Like, it was quite choppy. And I had to stop several times, like fully just sit up, take my goggles off. and be like, where is everybody? Did I take a wrong turn? Because I couldn't see the people ahead of me. I couldn't see people behind me.

I was fully in no man's land. So I was quite concerned for the whole swim that I had taken a wrong turn. Although it was a straightforward box course, so I don't see how that could have happened. And I kept swimming for buoys. So I was like, maybe everyone else went off course. I don't know.

It's pretty dark. They started us right. It started in the dark. And the nature of the waves and choppiness was that like a breaking wave could look like a person doing a swim's broke, but the amount that the race kind of split up because of the choppiness was a bit crazy to me. So when I came out of the water, I was like kind of asking people like, where is everybody?

Am I winning? Am I last? Did I take a wrong turn? Is everyone else disqualified? It was like kind of confused. And then I heard I was two and a half minutes down from Sarah Perez Salas, which is a lot. She's pretty good on the bike. And I was like, wow, I really, I stopped a lot during that swim and kind of lost my sense of, oh, this is a race, because I was so concerned about where the hell I was, you know? She is a superb swimmer, though. Oh, yeah. But like, what, 90 seconds normally?

I thought she'd have a minute on me or 90 seconds, not two and a half minutes. So anyway, that was fine. I didn't panic. I got on my bike and didn't feel good, but because of the nature of the course, you can see up the road kind of way. So even two minutes up the road, I could see her. and then there were two people in between and I caught them

so it took me about I don't know 25% of the bike ride like 20K, 25K to catch them and then I went to the front of the race and tried to kind of drop them so they couldn't sit with me they were being pretty lenient

slash there was not a lot of very harsh officiating at this race so when I came up to them they were sitting really close and I was like there was no officiating And I was like, oh man, if I just like don't put in a surge here, they could sit really close to me. So I don't want to let that happen. And I know Lisa Perder, the girl that was with Sarah, is an Olympic athlete from Austria, does the occasional 70.3 is a really good runner.

Is going to Paris next year. I've raced her forever. So she's a good athlete and I didn't want to come off the bike with her. She was a person I had pegged for like, oh, this could be hard to beat her, you know, for the race. So when you approached them on the bike, when you came up behind them, did you intentionally back off a bit and stay behind them to kind of like save up some energy so that when you did pass them you had a little extra? Or did you just maintain and then accelerate even further beyond that? No. Well, when I caught them, I'd been riding really hard to catch them.

So I did take maximum one or two minutes sitting 12 meters back. But there was a motorcycle with them. So the motor was sitting right beside them and they were really close together. So with this trio of like motorbikes and those two, I was riding under 200 watts. So it didn't take long to kind of catch my breath and then do 300 watts to get around them at a speed where they wouldn't think they could stay with me. Right. So yeah, there were a lot of, there were two turnarounds in the race so I could see where they were relative to me at those points and came off the bike with three and a half minutes, I think, on both of them. The run was, I feel like I'm being super negative, but I think we could all relate to this feeling of it just being very hot, very humid, long.

It was a three-lap course because they changed it the night before. I just didn't feel good and I knew that Lisa was a good runner. So I was running decent speed, I guess I would say, but I wasn't wanting to hold that for like an hour and 20 minutes. So I was timing myself on the turns to her and the gap was staying the same. running the same speed. So I kind of just like was smart, drink as much water as I could. Took more gels than ever before in a run, which didn't negatively impact my stomach. It's good.

I think it just, you know, was a good thing overall. And by the last lap, I knew that she wasn't going to close three and a half minutes, so I eased up massively and just wanted to finish. So I would say over, I won the race. Good job. Thank you very much. Mission accomplished. Box checked, but I would say that it wasn't like my most proud performance or anything of the year.

But I'm trying to not be the kind of person who wins a race and just dismisses it as like, oh, it's just another thing. And I didn't do that. Instantly analyzing it versus just relishing and being happy about it because I've done that in my career, winning races. And it looks like it comes easy. It's happening again and again to a certain extent. And I just lose the appreciation for that. and it was definitely not an easy win. Like I had to work really hard.

So I'm proud of it. I know there are certain areas I could have done better, but when you're racing in November, you kind of just have to take what your body gives you. And I think I took everything out of my body that it had left, which is good. Emptied the tank. Before the race, you mentioned that it was kind of an experiment in terms of nutrition.

Do you feel like you learned anything, or did you just throw a bunch of nutrition at it and it worked, hooray, you know, Because of the heat and because of the humidity and because of, you run it going a bit slower when it's that hot, I did take the chance to, like, take more gels and finish a bunch of bottles and drank all my nutrition that I had. And that doesn't often happen for me in races. So, yeah, definitely learned what works for me. And I would say I took like three different brands of gels during the race. So I'm not super particular about that.

but just the number of carbs and calories was helpful to know for next year. I feel like we've always kind of had this hunch that if we could collect, if we could get your intake up a little bit higher, that's only going to be positive because the number of races in the past that you've finished where you're like, oh, where I go grab your bike out of transitioner, I'm putting it on the wall back home or something, and there's like three sips out of the water bottle. Like, how is this possible?

Like if I took two sips during a race, I would be laying down at mile two on the run course. But not only was I taking sips, I was finishing bottles, disposing of them, and then getting new bottles. That's something I've never really done before was take advantage of the aid stations on the bike. Part of that is because we had an issue with your torpedo front end mount last minute and you had to do standard bottles between your arms. Here's the crazy thing. I was like changing my bar setup all around from what we'd worked on with Polo just for this last race because I really wanted to use the torpedo bottle where you have a straw right in front of your face. You don't have to get out of Arrow to drink.

But I forgot the torpedo bottle at home. They weren't selling them anywhere. So I had to just make do with a regular bottle, which ended up being a good thing because then I could swap it out. And it ended up being totally fine to get out of Arrow for a minute or drink, whatever, ease up for a sec to drink. What kind of person would forget their front hydration thing on their bike on race day? I mean, that seems crazy. No, I forgot the torpedo and bend. Okay, okay, I don't need the sense.

All three of us, that's the answer, what type of person. But mostly Nick and I, in this rare occasion, we're going to hold it over Paul's head for like at least four days. Yeah, well, I also left mine at the Airbnb race morning. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Nick has this like crazy front attachment where it's like your water and your garment attachment are all in one piece. It's just sitting on the table. It's part of like the aerodynamics of the bike.

Like even if you don't run water in it, they can you, tells you to keep it on there because it helps the aerodynamics. So it was really a lot. Sorry, not to interrupt. So anyway, that's my, that's it. That's all I got. That's my recap. And I could see, I think I saw you once on the run, Nick.

Yeah. I saw Eric a lot of times. Every time I ran past him, I looked away because I was like, oh my God, don't say anything to Eric or you just start crying and complaining. And I was not having fun. Yeah. But so many of the other pros were like cheering for me, the male pros, like Jason, Jackson, Mark, they all were saying like good job to me as I ran past and I was like I can't talk.

Yeah. I'm having such a bad time. Yeah. So, but it is really nice. I often do feel good enough to cheer back, but I did not this time. Yeah. That's fair. Anyway, that's it.

Eric. Okay, so the person that, you know, Paula was supposed to, we needed Paula to win. So we got that. Okay. Now everything else is icing on top, right? Airbnb paid for. Yeah. financially

financially we're at a net zero It was great for Paula to win Now Eric You were definitely like Like you said you were a maybe You were concerned You felt like we bullied you into doing this race

But starting from race morning Are you still like majorly Concerned and lacking confidence Or has that passed by then? No actually I think even like Probably like three days out from the race

I think something switched in my brain. And even two days out, I felt like pretty at peace with it. And that was, just like, this for me is about this heat issue. And I feel fine enough. Like my training has gone well enough. Am I in the shape of my life? No, I don't think so. But like, I'm confident that I could finish a 70.3 right now in a way that's not embarrassing.

And the big question mark here is the heat. So I felt like, you know what? I'm just going to pace this conservatively. I'm going to go out what? what feels comfortable and like stay comfortable as long as I can and continue to remind myself of those times that I've had poor heat experiences and just accept that that might mean that I come off the bike four minutes, five minutes behind where I normally am. But it's just like this is going to be an experiment and a data point for me of, okay, if I go like five out of ten intensity level

and then next time I'm in the heat, maybe I can go six. But let's just find out if it's even possible for me to go out at what feels comfortable in the moment successfully. So that's where I was at. And like I actually, the more I thought about it, I was thinking, I'm okay with this. This is all right. And if it's, if for some reason in the race that switches and I'm having the worst time ever, I can stop. It's not the end of the world, you know. So I wasn't dreading it at all, actually.

I was just kind of looking forward to it and I was very focused on like, okay, how many aid stations are there? What is my specific strategy? Making sure that I like drank well enough, fueled well enough the day before the race. took in some salt, but didn't go crazy with it. Same thing in the morning. And then my express focus on the day was heat management. And knowing that I can overheat in the swim, knowing that I can overheat on the bike,

and what do I do in each moment to mitigate that risk so that I'm not walking on the run? I feel like it's hard to get into that headspace and you can tell yourself to try to get into that headspace, but to actually be in there, it was like a bit of like a gift in the moment. Yeah, you know, and I think it was helped by the fact that I haven't raced a 70.3 since,

Oceanside earlier this year. So I was, normally I show up to this and I'm like, oh man, like I've been X far from Jackson and I've beat so and so and they're here and what should I do? And I've got like the last 70.3, all the paces and watts that I did like fresh in my mind versus this time was kind of like, man. You didn't even know. I just, I have no idea. Like I've had four bike workouts on my TT bike in the last six months. And they all went okay. but, you know, doing four by 10 minutes, for example, is not, you know, indicative of that you can definitely do a two-hour hard 70.3 ride. So I just was like, I think I did a good job of recalibating my expectations and at no point in time. And, you know, that just like frees you up to not

have that moment where you're like, ah, like, I thought I should be doing, and I'm frustrated. And then you push a little harder than you should. And then the heat, that's something that it's really hard to come back from if you're able to come back from it. So, So starting to swim, Mark Dubrick and I actually had a unicorn situation. We lined up far to the left. Everybody else in the race lined up far to the right. I'm like this, are we invisible?

Like, can they not see us over here? I don't know. Do they not know who the fast swimmers are? Yeah. But I think everybody else thought that all the buoys were, like, must be left-shouldered. They didn't say this in the briefing, so we were just like, I think they're slight buoys, and the red turn buoys are the turn-brewies at the corner. So we went to the left of the first orange buoy,

everybody else went to the right. And I didn't quite get on Mark's feet because, you know, in years past I think I would have. I would have just like gone to 11 to get on his feet. And then I really got my core temperature up. But I let him go. And it coming out of the water, I think we were like 45 seconds back, a minute back of Mark Dubrick.

And on my feet was Jason West, most notably. And then I think Jackson Laundrie was like a minute back of us. Another guy that was with us was Brendan, I think Brendan Smith. I just know his first name, Brendan. And I ended up riding a bunch of the bike ride with him. But that was pretty much the most chill swim I've ever had in a 70.3, even though I was leading that pack. But I put in one surge for like 100 strokes just to see if I broke the elastic,

if anything would happen. I did just a little bit, but it all came back together. And I was just kind of okay with that. And I was okay with the fact that Mark was up there. And I've seen personally myself at this race, out of the water with a minute lead and then it evaporates instantly. So I don't know that was the other thing. I was kind of like got myself fully into the mindset of the swim is not where this is going to be one. You know, it would be interesting to have gotten out of the water with Mark and ridden together.

But I'll say that for next time. So got on the bike and I had great, I had great legs. Like I still had my left hip thing. It was still like kind of sore and tight, but it didn't do the death spiral that it sometimes does where it's like gets tighter. I get frustrated, I get tight, it gets tighter, and like all of a sudden my whole leg is numb. That didn't happen and I was able to relax into riding like right at or just over 300 watts, which is not necessarily what you need to do for like world championship level first 20 minutes on the bike, but in a warm weather race, I was pretty happy with it. And after about 20 minutes, I think Jackson caught us as we were really close to catching up to Mark Dubrick

or we had just caught him, and Jackson did the, like, what you got to do as a strong cyclist catching people and came by, I think, probably like 450 watts for, you know, at least a couple minutes. I went with it just a little bit, but Mark and Jason both went with it. I was third wheel at the time and let them go. And the Brendan, Brendan's stayed on my wheel, and we kind of watched them right off into the distance.

They were going really, really hard. I kind of capped it at 350 watts. Like, I'm not going to go over three. I'm not going to go over three. 350 for more than a minute this early in the race and I'm just whatever. Long story short on that, Brendan and I ended up catching Mark and Jason. Like right at the turnaround on the second loop.

So with whatever, like 20K, 25K left to go. They went with Jackson and blew up pretty hard on the bike or just let him go at some point, whatever. Jackson came into T2 with I think a minute 30, minute 20 on all of us. I feel pretty good about the amount of work that I did on the bike. I think most people, most of the guys in our group were riding pretty fairly as we could. The second loop on the bike, there were so many age groupers out and we were for the most part trying not to crash as we were passing people. Oh yeah, I forgot to say that about my race too. Total chaos on the second lap.

Yeah. Holy crap. Because, you know, there's hills and like the speed differential and there's one person passing another person who's passing another person. And then our train of guys are coming by 10, 15 kilometers an hour faster. And unfortunately, it's a little bit of a culture in Mexico to push the limits with the drafting or it's just not just discouraged. Anecdotally, in my opinion. And we were having this issue where if you weren't in first position, first guy would go riding by. and the person we're passing goes,

oh, there's a fast dude. I'm going to try to get in a slipstream for a second. So they swerve over, almost taking out the second and third person in the line. Yeah, it was bad. It was kind of terrifying. Aero positions didn't mean much. They're just like riding completely head up,

yelling the whole time. But luckily, we made it into T2 as a unit safe. And I said literally as we were putting on her shoes, like, well, we survived. Yeah. I felt, you know. And it's just a fact of a busy bike course with rolling hills like that. Some people are going very slow.

I would say that for that reason, though, I would select one loop bike course 10 out of 10 times. If you could, yeah. I mean, I don't always look really in detail at the course before picking a go to a race or not. Oh, yeah. If I saw a two-loop course, I don't know. I might reconsider. And I think a lot of Iron Man's are multi-loop. Yeah.

So you'd run into that issue at the end of an Iron Man. That's a major turnoff for me with an Iron Man. And I'm just really not experienced at that of dodging and having trust that a person you're passing is going to keep their line. Yeah. So I don't know. It was a bit scary. A bit nerve-wracking, but again, gave me something to think about. The huge positive for me of this race is I was so engaged in grabbing every water bottle that I could, spring it over myself to completion, swapping it for the other one, mitigating my,

you know, spikes in power, working the rollers, not drafting, not hitting anybody, that the bike ride went by crazy fast. I had great legs. I felt like I probably could have ridden a little bit faster if I'd been totally solo and just rode my watts 100% of the time. But it's always hard to know. But I was like, that's the best 70.3 bike ride I've had maybe since the year that I crashed at Oceanside in the fall. Right. In terms of feels and leg being cooperative. So I'm psyched on that. that and running out of T2, I, basically, in my mind, I had this last run workout that we did on a

gravel road here in Bend where I averaged, I think was like 337 or 340 per K for this tempo run. And it felt pretty comfy. And I thought, you know what, I'm just going to start with that. And that's going to be my speed limit for the first lap because, like, I know I can do that in a workout when I'm tired. And I think that's probably, like, I'm just going to set that for a speed limit so that I don't end up walking the last lap, if possible. and it felt a little bit easy. I got dropped by Jason obviously. And Mark Duberk ran, I think, about three minutes faster than me in the end.

But I did 340 for the first lap, and there were times where I'd like splash water in my head, and I felt like, oh, man, I could go faster. And I just kind of like checked the ego there, stayed with my pace. Second lap started to feel a little bit harder. But then what always happens for me in the heat, it goes from like, this is so chill. I could do this all day to I can't do this at all,

just like instantly. And that happened with like, I don't know, 2K into the final lap of three. And at that point I was like, just hold on to 345, just hold on. And I wasn't, didn't let myself get to the point of where I was like weaving or feeling I was going to black out,

but I felt that I was like right on that edge and I just rode that edge as well as I could. Ended up running 118. I think I ran about the same pace as Jackson. So it ended up being Jason West, Mark Dubrick, Jackson, me, got forth, never walked, never felt like afraid for myself or frustrated or angry. And I would say that's one of my more positive 70.3 race experiences in a while. Wow, who would have saw that coming? None of us.

Who would have seen that coming? Also, just to keep our race recaps relatable and helpful to people, there were some questions this week about like how you change your race strategy to race in the heat. And I think it really comes down to operating like how Eric did on the run was like six out of ten, seven out of ten, not an eight or nine out of ten. So just keeping your effort in check, knowing that later it's just going to keep getting hotter. So thinking about even on the bike, like, okay, it feels good now. I just got out of the water. I'm being cooled. There's some cloud cover.

But it's still really humid. If you stopped biking right now, you would be sweating your brains out. Yeah. And then keeping in mind the run, the last lap is going to be the hottest time of the day. So even if you feel good in the moment, just being smart about your future self. Yeah. Yeah, just for like a point of reference to a cooler race,

like I might go out in like 318 per K. And normally like historically in those Cabos, I go out in like 325 and I'm like, okay, this sucks. It's slow. But in this one, I just like, we're going straight to a little faster than I ran last time, you know, before I completely imploded. So I went out in 340.

which is 20 seconds faster than my brain wants to go out. So it felt slower. Yeah, slower. 20 seconds slower than my brain wants to go out. And I think that's just like in the heat, unless you know already what you're capable of, like caution. That's what I did. At what point where did you realize this is not going to be bad?

Like this is actually great. I mean, I don't think I ever had. it was more like, oh, this could be good. Yeah, right, right. It was just kind of continually having that realization of getting out of the water and being like, okay. I don't feel blown. I can run quickly to my bike. And Mark's not a year ahead of us.

And yes, Jason's here. And that's not ideal. But whatever, he has been going pretty fast lately. So if I can be around him, that's great. And then on the bike, same thing, like 20 minutes in. wow, my left hip is, it's working. It's here. Like, I'm optimistic that this could go well.

And the same thing on the run, you know, I don't think I felt like this is a lock until I was one mile. Wow. One mile out. Whereas like, because that'll happen. That's how quickly heat stuff happens. Like when I had my really bad heat stroke, I felt okayish and remember everything up until like two miles ago on the run. And then just boom, gone. Gary.

Yeah, so. Yeah, let's hear the amateur The amateur recap. Good job, Eric. I'm happy for you, Eric. And the nice thing is that I, throughout my race, I had an idea that both of you were doing well.

Paula, when I was on the run course, someone told me you won. And then I asked them how Eric was doing and they told me he was doing fourth. Eric, did you hear that? Did you know you were in fourth? Yeah. Yeah, because you could see, like Jason wasn't that far ahead

or whatever that you couldn't see it. Yeah, I mean, at one point in time, all four of us were together on the bike. It's not like anybody was completely, I never saw them. Right, right, right, got it. So, like I said, I forgot my front hydration thing that's built into it. That also was a Garmin mount out in front. So I didn't have my water. I had just that little arrow bottle that Paula, you let me borrow and now have.

Down tube arrow bottle. So I just decided I was going to use my watch as my kind of, by computer and move things around so I could see power and speed and distance on there. And I just turned it so that the watch was facing the inside of my wrist so that when I was an arrow, I could actually see it pretty easily. So that didn't end up being a compromise. And then I also just took the bottles on course and put them down the front of my jersey. And that, so that, I didn't feel like I actually lost that much on it. But the swim, I loved swimming in open water without a wetsuit. That was really fun. And

I was using Christian Swimskin that has Blumenfeld on the side and gold medals on the bottom that he gave me. So I think people were expecting a lot out of me. Unfortunately, I was not able to live up to Christian. Did anyone comment on that? No, but the people behind me said Blumenfeld a couple times, but they were talking about something else. And they also said something about you at some point, Paul, at the beginning of the swim. But I think it was a coincidence. So no, no one comments on it on it.

Oh, I didn't know Blumenfeld was here. He must have missed his wave. Yeah. Yeah, he looks different too. But the swim was going well until I, and this has happened to me before, it only happens to me in open water. I started to feel a little nauseated. And then I also got this like pain behind my eyes. So that kind of slowed me down because I didn't know if I wanted to stop or if it was going to be a bigger problem.

So I tried to swim through it a bit and then it just got worse and worse. I kind of took my goggles off for a second a few times. I thought they might have been too tight on my head. and then finally at some point I just like burped and instantly the headache and the nausea went away. So much pressure inside your body. I guess. I don't know what it was,

but it instantly got better and I instantly had this feeling of, I don't know about you, but when I'm nauseated, I feel like everything is just bad. Like my mood is bad. Everything goes down. And then the second it was gone, I was like back kind of feeling this euphoric race feeling and I was able to accelerate and swim well again.

So I spent the last like five minutes like that. Got out of the water. It was not a fast swim, unfortunately. But I was still very happy. And I was still on track to, I think, have a good race. Yeah, good spirits. Good spirits. And then the first, that climb out of T1 is like so funny.

It's like so steep for a while. But I was like, I could tell that I had great likes. I was excited about that. And then right onto the bike, I just tucked in and felt so fast. It was my first ever ride. with a disc wheel, which Paula, you gave me. And there was a little concern I had because the disc wheel has a couple of like issues with it,

we'll say, it's kind of some dense in it. Basically, I gave Nick a damaged disc wheel thinking he would take it to a carbon repair and he didn't. Correct. He's just like, oh, I'll risk it for the biscuit. Yes, exactly. But you thought about that in the race?

I thought about it before a few times. Like, oh, I'm going like 40 miles an hour down a thing. a thing, like, should I be concerned about it? I think during the race, I didn't think about it at all. And it ended up being great. Zero problems. The disc was, I think it helped me a lot. I think it was faster. I just want to make a disclaimer, though, never do this. People. Never, never ride damaged equipment. Just to be clear, I showed this picture to a person who does carbon repairs, and I brought it into two bike shops. And everyone's consensus was, you're going to be totally fine riding the disc.

All these people told me the same thing, which I was. So at this point, are you going to get it repaired now? I don't think so. I think I'm going to try to do a little thing where I do some like epoxy over it, so it's just smooth, but it's not like it's a hole punched through it. And you can tell there's the structure of what keeps the wheel functioning is not that external part. Just put a sticker over it.

Yeah, I might just do a stick or two. Why do epoxy? Just put a sticker over it. But the bike was going great. I was averaging way more power than I ever have in a 70.3 to the point where I thought and still have a feeling that the power reader, the power was off. Like the reading was off. It was reading high. But I was like 40 watts more than I've ever averaged in the first 90 minutes of a 70.3, which is obviously a huge amount.

Yeah, that might be your power reader. That sounds a bit high. Yeah. What was the watts? It was 250. 250 for the first 90 minutes. Okay, that doesn't sound that. That sounds like what you were capable of to me.

That's what I'm supposed to be able to do. It's the other things that have been off in my mind. And what's funny, like I was going to say this later, but I'll say it now. I kind of thought it was off until earlier today when I compared my heart rate to my last 270.3s. And my heart rate was 20 beats higher than Moro Bay and 10 beats higher than Santa Cruz. even though my perceived effort was the same or lower, my heart rate was higher. So I think I might have actually been doing that power.

And it was going great. I was drinking a lot. I was eating exactly as planned about 90 grams of carbs per hour, all doing the precision stuff, the gels. And feeling great, I saw Eric. And when the first time I saw Eric, the first time I saw Paul, she was in the lead, which I was expecting.

And then the first time I saw Eric, he was like right in a group with, Mark and Jason. And I just thought, okay, so either Eric is completely leaving the plan behind and doing whatever it takes to stay with these guys, or he's actually feeling good on the bike. Then we had the turnaround, came back for lap two. I saw them again. And now, Eric, you were in front of, at least Jason. Now I don't remember. And I didn't even see you because I was head down climbing. And I hear, Vamos, Nick. And I look up and it's Eric who said it. So I'm like, wait, if he's saying, Vamos, Nick, and he's in front of Jason, he's feeling great.

You were cheering for Nick. Yeah. That's funny. So I was like, I was like, okay, Eric's having a great day. Paul's on her way to the win. Now it's my turn to have a great day. So I'm still holding the power up and then not very long after that. I started cramping it in the inside of my thigh, like a muscle that starts at your groin and goes out to your knee.

And I thought, oops, okay, careful. Be very careful. Like, still in high spirits. It was only cramping when I was in error when I would sit up. It was fine. my tactic was take it kind of easy on the flat parts on the downhills and then really push it on the climbs. So I started doing that and that worked until like more and more the cramps were like becoming a problem. Then they, I cramped really hard once, but I was at the top of a hill. So I just

kind of coasted down, started pedaling and slow. That was fine until the end where I was on a climb pedaling easy, sitting up and I cramped so bad on my other leg that I literally stopped and got off the bike, which is the first time I've ever done that in a 70.3. I really think the one thing, the one outlier thing here is your perceived exertion. Everything else indicates that you are going 40 watts higher than you ever have for a 70.3. And yes, maybe your workouts indicate that you should be capable of that, but you still haven't done it just yet all continuously. And that cramping could be more your muscles being pushed harder than they have before

than a sodium issue. Just like, that's my feeling. Oh, I definitely feel that it was not a sodium issue to anyone who thinks it's going to be that. I did a very good job at preloading the sodium and then drinking a lot during the bike. I think you're right. I think the solution for me,

my brain is telling me that I have not been doing enough TT riding because I've been doing very long hard rides on the road bike, but that's like sitting up a lot, climbing a lot, not down-cramped. Yeah, totally. No, in the first or the second hard, longer TT workout that we did, I cramped was, I don't want to say I was cramping, but it was a feeling like the beginning of a cramp in that exact same spot, like sort of Sartorius, which I think kind of comes online and tries to assist getting over the top of the pedal stroke. Yes, that's...

When hit flexors start to tire out. Yes, exactly, exactly. So I was just hoping I could get to the end of the bike, because when I got off the bike, I was kind of worried like, uh-oh, I might not be able to ride at all after this. But once it went away, I was able to get the top of the hill, and luckily, it was very close to the end, so I kind of cruised into the end, easy, did not cramp again, was riding very easy. And then the end had all those weird under the highway loops on blue carpets and stuff. So it was... Yeah, maybe we should for one second say, if you're going to do this race, definitely check out that weird loop underpass situation that you have to do to finish the bike ride. I fully unclipped. Because... Oh, you did? That is not...

standard 70.3 issue. Yeah. It was like just a sand pit. Yeah. And they just put carpet over it. It's the only way under the highway without disrupting the other side of the median, which needed to be open for traffic.

But they could have put plywood under the carpet to make it a little better. That's historically how it's been. They've like erected a whole scaffolding ramp situation and apparently that just didn't show up or something. Right. But like the apex of the turn where you have to do the super sharp 180 to get back on the ramp.

That's the only part they didn't carpet. And that's where, so you were like on the sand. And I was like, I'm on clipping. Yeah. Forget this. Yeah. But anyway, so got off the bike and thought, okay, the good news is, aerobically, I just had to go really easy the past five, ten minutes.

So I am going to feel great on this run. And as I'm putting my shoes on, I'm still like cramping. Just because being bent over, I think it kind of leads to that. But as soon as I started running, I can. tell, like, I'm not going to be cramping on the run. Those were bike-specific bustles. I don't think it's going to be an issue. So went with me, put some spray sunscreen on, started running at the pace that I wanted to start at and then accelerate from, which was seven-minute mile pace. Sorry to go between K's and miles, but I don't know K's at well.

And at first it seemed like, okay, I can do this. It's hot, but I can do this. and my first mile was like seven minutes second one was like 715 third one was like 745 fourth one was like 845 I just he went crashed so hard and I really

immediately yeah I felt I felt I felt concerned that I would not be able to even like walk the whole run course pretty quickly on lap 1

I thought oh no and I was and I was thinking like man, thank God that it's a cloudy day, which it was mostly. Like the sun was going in and out of the clouds, but it was mostly cloudy. It wasn't as hot as it could have been. It wasn't as humid as it could have been. And I was still way too hot.

Yeah, I think that also keep in mind that Nick, you did zero heat prep for this. Not even a single five minutes in the sauna. Sessions with you guys in Bend. You hung out in the sauna with us in a not scientific way after swimming. I didn't do any like super super. I didn't do any super specific heat prep for this race, but I have in this season done some heat prep. And actually, Eric was the only one that really did a heat protocol for this specific race,

running on the treadmill with the plastic. So I think that that's something that can't be discounted. If you or anyone listening to this wants to race in that kind of condition, when you don't live in it, you need to prep for it. Otherwise, this type of experience is maybe not a huge surprise. Yeah. Regardless of your fitness. because you're pretty fit.

The run was nowhere near representation of what I think I can run right now. And the good news is I knew that. And so even at the worst of this race during the cramping, during the nausea and the headache on the swim, during this heat stuff, I was never in bad spirits.

I was always kind of like, I feel very thankful for this and I don't totally understand why, but I just felt like it's okay. You know, it's fine. I'm doing this. I think part of it was knowing that both of you had good race.

I was like, it's going to be fine. At least he'll be in a good mood later. Yeah, yeah, for real. I mean, I think that made it much better. Also, having people around is always nice, but I settled in when I was, when I finally kind of recovered, so to speak, I settled in to like eight-minute mile pace, which is 90 seconds per mile slower than what I was hoping to run. But I thought...

You're hoping to run 630s? Yeah. Wow. That's very fast. I did six, the last three miles of Moro Bay, I was faster than that. And I've done quite a bit of running since then, so I thought I could potentially do that. If you were in a colder race, maybe you could. Yeah, but I didn't.

I settled in at eight minute a mile pace. And I don't want to say settled in because it was still crazy. It was still so hard for me to do that. And I also had this chest pain thing. So a few times I had to stop and just kind of like breathe in. I was constantly pouring water on my face on the aid stations and drinking a lot. eating, I didn't eat a lot because I was kind of concerned about that being part of the chest problem, but I don't think that stuff slowed me down at all. I just had to walk, I pretty much

walked all the aid stations for at least five seconds. Miraculously, the aid stations had cold water. Cold water and ice at every single one and the volunteers were the best volunteers I've ever seen. They were so eager to help us. I agree. And then at the end I found like, I was looking at my overall time and I had a K left and I was like, oh, I could go under five hours. if I just accelerate a tiny bit and I tried, and I'm telling you, I couldn't, I don't think I could have actually done, once I run those four miles after that, I don't think I could have run faster than I did if I wanted to. There were a lot of like different physiological systems that were in my brain and body that would very quickly tell me, whoa, whoa, whoa, do not go faster than this. Yeah. Yep.

No, what's funny is in my life, the hardest races or like the, the race. or like the races that feel the most difficult to sustain a certain pace, it's not because of the run pace. Like, I don't know, 70.3 Boulder comes to mind. I'm probably running a minute per K slower, but it feels harder than when I've gone a minute per K faster in a race where I'm feeling good. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. My running Morrow Bay felt so much easier than this.

I remember being an hour in and being like, how does this feel so easy? I'm going to accelerate. Yeah, so I'm saying that your feelings are. necessarily dictate solely by your run speed. It's a lot of factors. Yes, right. But then I tried to accelerate and I just couldn't.

And so finally I got to the finish across the line. I didn't have any feeling of being proud that I got through that. Because I kind of, I guess that's like I know I can do it. But I also was not sad or upset at all. I remember DNFing in Wisconsin was, I was very, it was emotional. very difficult. This I did not feel that. Instantly I saw you guys and was happy to see both of you and Jackie. So I don't want anyone to think I had a bad, it was a bad day in terms of my performance, but I still had a good day. The day was good. I'm happy I went. I'm happy I raced. I'm happy I gave it a

shot. It's very clear that my body really struggles in the heat, especially with no heat prep. But I thought it was, I don't know, I kind of still liked the whole experience, even though that run was Yeah, we had a lot of fun. Outside of the race, we had fun. Eric, I wanted to ask you because did you feel like your heat prep actually, did you get the sense that it helped you? Or do you think all that stuff happens behind the scenes in your mind and you don't have access to know if it helped or not? Yeah, like a week out, I stopped doing it about a week out from the race and a week out I was kind of like, I feel like that didn't do anything. But I feel good that I tried.

Also, like doing heat training increases your blood plasma. volume. So even if the race ends up not even being hot, you still get a benefit from heat training. Yeah. Yeah. So it sucks. It's hard. And you spent a lot of time at the core temperature you were supposed to for these heat sessions. The reason that it wasn't very inspiring for me is because we did have some struggles with that we tried to use the core sensor. And it was not always working. Sometimes it's acted like the battery just died randomly or in my core, like the temperature would just sit at one number and not move. And I'm like, man, I feel like. And then all of a sudden it would jump or like the Bluetooth would cut it in and out. So I just didn't have

ultimate faith that I was doing this thing that's supposed to be pretty scientific as scientifically as I could. But the nice thing was is that our coach Paulo came to do a like little mini watch us camp or whatever for like the last four days of our block. And having him there like he like got me an oral thermometer and just kind of like restored a little bit of that confidence in that process. And it's kind of like, you know, even if you didn't nail this 100% perfectly still like spending time with your core temperature that high

like in an intentional way without just letting it run away is still beneficial. So yeah, it's hard to say. I don't think you're ever going to be able to be like, wow, that heat protocol is exactly the reason this worked out for me. It was like a lot of combination of factors

of like I didn't feel stressed about this race. I was able to just like truly be cautious with the pacing. I did the heat protocol. It was a little cloudy, you know. A lot of things came into. I think the only way to like, 100% prepare for heat is to train in the conditions. Yeah, right.

Which the reason we're doing this kind of, you know, experimental scientific protocol is because we're living in Oregon in the fall. Yeah. But if you're racing Kona and you go a month out, you're going to be adapted to that. The goal of this was to land there two days out and not feel like so overwhelmed by the humidity and heat because you have a bit of exposure to it prior. So I think in a roundabout way, all three of us still had good days.

this is your career guys so your good day is very dependent on your performance which was also good I enjoyed my day but I don't feel like it was a representation of my training and that's okay they were good for different reasons the big question is Nick are you going to redeem yourself

at another race this year or are you just going to call it call it a year? I think what I'm going to do instead is not I feel like I kind of took an offseason earlier in the year a few months ago and so I'm going to as much as I can and as much as I want to without going against my will here,

keep training and keep getting fitter and try to race potentially Oceanside. I think that would be fun. I've never raced it. So it's kind of a Southern California classic. That's like a world classic. And I'd like to give it a shot. Cool.

I want to say one more thing about this for age groupers like myself. I think part of the reason that I was able to keep a positive mindset and not be upset about my poor performance is that in Morrow Bay and other races I've had, I have this feeling of intense dread leading up to race day that starts like three or four days before, definitely the morning of the race,

and then I put so much into the race itself. And I think since Morrow Bay, which happened earlier in the year, I decided to, as much as I could intentionally shift my passion and love for the sport to the training and away from the racing. That was already happening naturally to a certain degree, but I intentionally put my focus on that. And I think what happened then was I got to the race.

I did not have a sense of dread. I was excited to race. I was feeling very positive about the race. And then even when the race itself didn't go well, it almost didn't matter that much because I'm like, yeah, what I love about this is the training. So this is a cool thing to a carrot to have, to make the training feel like it's worth it.

But I don't know. I think it takes time. You can't just the week of the race be like, I care about the training more than the racing. I think it needs, you need to kind of build that foundation leading up to it. If anyone is interested in this, like, dread before the race feeling and how to heal it,

I think that's what's been helpful for me. Nice. Yeah. I could go on and on and, you know, we can deep dive into that very concept, but I think we should do some questions. Yeah, let's do questions. First one here is from Maggie.

Massive congrats to all three on Los Cabos. Great way to end the season. I'm prepping for next season and I'm traveling to a lot of races. I bought a bike box Allen after previously owning a scion. My question is kind of bike tech for Eric, but we're just going to put this in as a general question. One of the reasons I switched to a hard case was that two times my derailer hanger got bent. Both were coming back from races, so that at least was good. I've watched a bunch of videos on bike box Allen. Many say to take your rear derailer off along with a chain to prevent any damage. How easy and manageable is this? I've watched a bunch of videos, but I'm very unsure about it. I'm great at changing flats, indexing my gears, even with DIY2,

but stuff like this gets me nervous as if it's even slightly off. It can derail my race. Very nice. Any advice or videos you can suggest, thanks. Coming to Salem 70.3. Enjoy the offseason, Maggie. Right on. I think if you can index your gears, you're definitely a candidate for taking your chain and derailer off.

Paul and I do it. and it's just like a little bit of extra peace of mind because most bike boxes should it shouldn't be a problem but like why let that be the thing when you're traveling to a race in another country so all you need to do is have a quick link in your chain have quick link tools and then you pop the chain off obviously you just you can watch the videos and make sure that you know how to put it back on in the correct orientation around the pulleys and then take the rear derailer off disconnect your di2 battery line at your power line, whatever you call those, the wires. And you're old.

You just need to make sure that, you know, pay attention to where there's like this little, what do they call it? There's like a tension thing where your tension screw contacts that's on, like kind of between the actual derailer that you see and then like the derailer hanger and just make sure that that's oriented properly because that's the only thing it could make your shifting. I would say like you don't need to take the chain off. That's what I was going to say.

Why would you take the chain off? It's super clean and satisfying when Eric takes the chain off and the derailer off, and we package them in bubble wrap, and the frame's just totally a frame. It's like a nice, satisfying, very safe way. But what I used to do is just take the derailer off, wrap it in bubble wrap and kind of just like shove it below the bike, and the chain's just kind of hanging there. So that's an option too. Taking the chain off is bonus points, not necessary.

Is it to keep the chain stays clean so it's not like just drooping and flopping on it the whole flight? I think it's more like keeping the front. frame clean and free from scratching because if the bike's going upside down and all around and your chain's even a little bit dirty, the frame is going to get dirty, the chain is going to maybe scratch it and I don't know, it's just nice. Just a clean way to do. And the other thing is too is like recently we'd be doing wax chains more. So like half the time basically I'm going to be taking that chain off anyway. And so I just take off the old

chain and then just throw the wax chain into the bike box and you just put in the wax chain on and get to the race. Right, right. That's smart. Got it. That's cool. So yeah, take the derailer off there. It's not hard at all. It's like a single Allen key, right? Yep. I think it's getting it back on in the correct orientation that's concerned.

Just be very careful, be very ginger with it. You know, don't force it. You don't want to strip those threads at all. There's a little piece like Eric was talking about, and that has to sit on the derailer hanger in just a way. And once you figure that out, you can do it every time. It's like a little trick. It's not complicated.

Just going to pay attention to it. Got it. Okay. Next question here is from Yon. Hi, guys. I recently participated and PR'd Iron Man Florida. Wow, congratulations. I think it would have been a fair bit faster, but had issues with my stomach after swallowing quite a lot of sea water on the ocean swim. Have any of you experienced this? Do you practice open water swims specifically during periods of rougher waves to prepare?

Thanks and congrats on the Los Cabos results. Yon. Or John, sorry. Could be John. J.O.N. I was going to ask you this, Nick, about your burping sensation. Do you think that you were swallowing a lot of salt water prior? No, no. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because it is a thing. If it's really wavy, you can get water kind of in your mouth and inadvertently swallow a lot of it,

especially in a race as long as an Iron Man. Yeah. I've had that nausea once in the pool and is when I was doing a thousand straight with sighting. So I think it's the sighting that is what makes me feel a little nauseated. It's like the... You had this in the pool? Yeah, once. Or sometimes if I do, I think it has to do, or if I do breaststroke for a long time, I think it's this like up and down.

The bobbing. Yeah, the bobbing that kind of does something to my stomach. Eric's not impressed. So this guy's, uh, I just think like, that's not the question, but. It's not the question. I just, I just was wondering if Nick thought that, I mean, it's kind of easy to just, if you get a mouth full of water, don't swallow it. But I don't know. If you're in a race, it's hard to think about that stuff.

We definitely do not go out and like get ourselves three. hours to the ocean to like practice swimming with waves smacking us in the freight in the face. We don't practice that. But having the ability to breathe to the other side occasionally is really helpful. Even if you're doing it every third time, at least you're like guaranteed to get one good breath. Yeah, we have a obviously a dominant side. We're not bilateral breathers all the time. So I usually breathe to the right. But if the waves are crashing to the right and you're swimming parallel to the shore, you're going to get constant mouthfuls. So being able to breathe to the left like Eric is saying, practice that in the pool.

Breathe to the non-dominant side. So that if you are in this situation, it's not preferable, but it's better than swallowing water. And do you guys ever in a race, if you notice it's a little choppier, do you notice yourself kind of taking your breath a little higher out of the water than you would if it, like, in a pool stroke where you can be very surgically close to the top of the water? Yeah, but I wouldn't say that's like a conscious decision. It's just you're gasping for air.

Yeah. For me, that's my present. That's my experience. Yeah, I don't think about it. I'm not like, okay, get extra height with this breath. It's just, I... You're trying to just get oxygen. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I think what I would say about this, hearing you two speak about this, is that you two have done so much open water swimming already that a lot of these things that you think are second nature, are second nature because you've done them a lot. So John probably would benefit from doing a bunch of open water swims. And that stuff then becomes ingrained.

It's like, oh, I can't do this, otherwise I swallow water. The obvious answer is to practice. as open water more, but how logistically possible is that? If you've got the access to that, then... If you live in the beach in Cabo? Go for it. Yes. Right, right. But you're not... A lot of people aren't living in like a temperature,

you know, where that's a feasible thing to try all the time. But yeah, the more you do it, the better you'll get at it. Not a ton of races are ocean swims. I don't know, we only do like maybe two a year, three a year. But lakes can be choppy too, so... I would say that the way that you can hack this a little bit is to like get a couple of friends if you swim with anybody else like all three do like twenty fives together like kind of fast close to race base and just you get that feeling of the turbulence the turbulence and the water splashing and water going in your mouth when you don't want it

and like that's true you can practice it a little bit like that and uh what we used to do for birthday swims when i was in swim club is like the entire swim team would line the lane with a kickboard and create waves with the kickboard, like, you know, move really fast forward and back. It creates the most hectic water, and then you'd have to do a 200 butterfly in the lane with all this waves. 200 butterfly. We did not do the 200 butterfly version of this.

That's sadistic. But if you want to practice waves, like just hire 20 of your friends to, like, create a wave pool for you. Yeah. That's actually kind of a fun idea. It's pretty entertaining. That's fun. Or even get someone to like walk along the lane with a kickboard making waves?

I don't know. We could try it next time for seeing if it's a good idea or not. Okay, cool. That sounds fun. Okay, next question. Hey, guys, I just watched the newest TTL vlog. And one of the things Eric said about being a creative made me think about this question. Eric, continuing your career as a pro triathlet with no creative outlet or being a full-time creative

and only doing triathlon as a hobby, which would you choose? Nick, essentially the opposite. Would you rather continue in the music industry or switch to be a pro athlete? Paula, what is something besides being a pro triathlet that you could see yourself being? So, first of all, Eric, what do you think? It's like right now you have your cake

and you can eat it too a little bit. If you had to have one or the other. Yeah. So I guess the thing that I'm most interested in with being a creative, quote unquote, is I don't necessarily want to make you know, commercials for Louis Vuitton or that kind of thing.

But I really, really love making, you know, the things that I'm interested to make. So like a ski film type of thing and finding a way to fund that. So if that's what I can do, if I can make stuff under the TTL banner and we're still selling clothes and having camps and having a community and then I can do as much triathlon on the side as I can, that is definitely where I see my life going and it sounds fun. but I don't think I want to go off and be just, you know,

to be the first cameraman for like Iron Man, not Iron Man, I shouldn't say Iron Man, for like Aquaman 2. You know, and somebody's just telling me what to do. I like the whole creative process versus just turning the camera on. I like you accidentally using the one movie that you should not be using.

Yeah, that could be confusing. Yeah. Yeah, for the born super super emacy. Right. And for me, assuming I had the fitness to be a pro athlete, which is a big caveat to this, I still would, I was very thankful when I was on that run. I thought about it. I thought I'm so glad I'm not a pro triathlete. I'm not having a proportionally bad day because this would be so much heavier on me. And right now it's like, it's okay. And I kind of liked that when I was racing that people could see me race and they're like, ooh, Nick's not having a good day. I kind of liked that. I kind of liked that. I kind of like that. I kind of like that other people out there knew that I was suffering. And as an age group, it's like, and it's okay.

Yeah. I love doing music stuff. I love doing triathlon. I love doing the podcast, but I'm glad I'm not a professional triathlete. It's really, really hard and stressful. Yeah. Nick's doing it exactly how he wants to do it. Yeah.

I actually wanted to like note that as you were saying, as you were saying that earlier, because I think Paula and I are exactly the same as you in many respects that we far enjoy the training. versus the stress and all the things that go along with a race. But for us, like, the stress from the race and everything stems from, like, if this doesn't go well, what does this mean for our future? Oh, yeah. With sponsors and just making a living

and I'm going to have to change jobs. Whereas I think it's easy as an age group athlete to get caught up in it from the, I don't want to say ego, but like from the perspective of you just don't want to let yourself down. But, you know, ultimately, it's really cool that you've been able to get to that point of this race is great and it's like a thing that's fun

that's awesome that I can do but I also just love going for the four hour bike ride with my friends and if the race doesn't go well it's not like you need to change sports yeah, get a job as a punner I feel very lucky

I feel very lucky I don't know how much work I've done for it or if it just happened but I feel very lucky to be in that place at least right now. Yeah, I just wanted to like reiterate that because like I'm sure there are plenty of people who get the race dress real hard

and if you can get to that place it's pretty sweet. Yeah and Paul what about you if you were not doing pro triathlon on, like, would you trade that chip in for something else right now? I would adopt Mexican stray dogs and bring them back to Ben. Oh, man, that's a, there's some back story there. And they would all live on my ranch, and we would have such a good life?

Oh, my gosh. Would they be for adoption, or are you just going to have 200 dogs of your own? Well, I'll keep the really cute ones. They're all cute, though. So, yeah, we'll have 200 dogs. I'll count my number at 150, but I'll put some up for adoption, too. What was it? We probably saw 10 stray dogs, and I think six of them.

were welcome to come home with us, if I remember correctly, from the trip. No, every dog. And it wasn't just the strays. Like, we were staying at a place where you could see the beach and it was kind of a local surf spot.

It wasn't very touristy. But all the surfers had dogs and they would just bring them and they would chill on the beach, the dogs while they went out and surf. Like, the vibe and the culture of that whole thing was so cool. And while they were out surfing,

I would go down and like pet the dogs and play with them and talked to some of the surfer guys, and they were all rescues. Like, oh, yeah, I found this dog under my car when he was six months old and adopted him, and he's the sweetest dog ever. And I don't know, I just, it touched my heart. That would be such a perfect and fulfilling thing for you. Meanwhile, we have this.

We have Flynn, and he's such a spoiled little brat. And, yeah, we love him. But he's, I just, I think that I would really enjoy to have a dog that appreciates what, you give them because they know how bad it could be. So, yeah, that's partly a joke, but it's truly, I am so obsessed with dogs. And more and more as I travel and see them, and especially the ones that are strays, oh my God, they're so cute. Yeah, I want to be clear, it's Paula's not being a prima donna.

Flynn really does not have a lot of, like, he's not a cuddly, emotionally attached dog as much as most dogs that you've met. even the dog Ollie that you and I met two days ago Nick million times more affectionate towards me a stranger than Flynn has ever been Yeah

Yeah so I don't know It was a really cool dog culture And they're all mixed with cute things They are they're such cute mutts Yeah you get like a Flynn mixed with a corgi Mixed with a Whatever A border collie

A terrier that was like princess Princess was like a terrier Flin corgi mix. Oh, that is exactly what I want. It was like a Karen's Terrier mixed with maybe there's a corgi in there. He was low to the ground. He was very low to the ground.

There was some husky because he had one blue eye. That's right. He did, yeah. But I wasn't sure if he had one blue eye or if he had like an infection in his eye. Princess is probably not a he, but right. Gee. How do you know?

Yeah. I don't. You're right. Never mind. Don't cancel me. Please. But she was on. We spent the last day there going to like the more

public beaches in Cabo San Lucas where people are trying to sell you stuff every 30 seconds while you're napping. They're like, bracelet. They're kicking you and be like, hey, signora, sunglasses, pit viper, $5. Like, I'm sleeping. Princess belonged to one of those people

that were trying to sell you on boat rides and stuff. But Princess had a good life. But not all of them did. I don't know. There was a lot of like... That was our only negative experience with the people and none of them were rude. None of them were pushy or aggressive.

It was just too many. It was just too many. There were like 400 people selling sunglasses. Yeah. And so every 15 seconds, somebody's bothering you. Yeah, literally every 15 seconds. Yeah, and I hate saying no to people. I hate saying no, but you have to.

You literally can't buy stuff from all of them. But anyway, it was a cool experience. It is really hard for me, I found, to do a race and empty your tank that hard and go that deep physically and then spend the next day, like having a holiday. Because my body felt so bad, and unfortunately I'm really bad at, you know,

compartmentalizing my feelings with my attitude and my mood. So I think that I had a super bad race hangover. And it made all of the beach time a little tougher for me. Yeah, it's such a struggle because, like, we, you know, we wanted to, like, do a holiday and do the place, place and in your mind you're like oh well i don't want to do it on like wednesday before the race because you know like i got to be getting ready for the race but then after the race you might just be so completely smashed like you're not going to like go to the grand canyon and and and and

and all these things the day after the race unless i could barely walk like 200 feet across the sand that's true that's true yeah that's true and it was actually it was particularly hilarious because there were four of us and like our moods were not aligning right right right like two of us are like, we're going, we're going, we're going, we're going. And then the other two people are like, okay, fine, we'll do it. And then by the time we get to the place, the two people who are on the high have crashed. And the other two people are like, let's do a boat ride. Now that we're here, you got me out of the house.

I'm like, I literally can't. Get me some guacamole. Princess, get me some guacamole. Yeah. We didn't talk much about Jackie, but Jackie was with us the whole time and was fantastic. We loved having her with us. And she also raced pretty well. Jackie Herring.

Yeah, she's a pro. She's our good friend. And she is a really nice person to have around pre and post race. Yeah. Great attitude. Very even keel. Very even keeled. Yeah.

Not the same. I'm very not even keeled before a race. She's very even keeled. I was saying the night before like, oh my God, I'm so nervous. I'm going to throw up. I don't want to do this. And Jackie's like, are you kidding. Right?

Like she didn't think I was serious. She literally couldn't tell if you were serious or not. Yeah, I'm like, trust me, Jackie. I'm serious. Anyway. It was a fun crew. And thanks to everyone who cheered, sent in messages, who we met there, a lot of TTL fans in Mexico.

We'll chat with you next week with more questions. We had a ton of good ones this week, but we knew that we do race recaps for quite a long time, so we didn't get to all of them, but we're going to bank them. Do them next week. So if you didn't hear your question, don't worry, it's coming, potentially. You can support the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast where our monthly supporters keep this thing rolling. We will chat with you then. Thanks guys.

Thanks for listening. Ciao.