That Triathlon Life Podcast - Eric races his first Swimrun in Orcas Island, gravel running shoes, and more!

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

This week, Eric shares his epic experience winning his first-ever Swimrun race on Orcas Island, Nick recounts a series of unfortunate pre-race mechanicals, and we play a round of Date, Marry, Drop before diving into listener-submitted questions. Topics this week include:Swimming with shoes on in Swimrun eventsFormer triathletes that Eric and Paula are still starstruck byPool toys and extras we bring to swim sessionsHow to practice open water swimming without open water accessManaging side stitches, shin splints, and blisters while runningSalomon gravel running shoesDealing, managing and healing IT band syndromeA 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

Hey, everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Erica Lockstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldstone. And I'm slightly tired, a little bit brain dead. I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning. I drove all the way home from Orcas Island, where I did a swim run. But we're going to knock this one out of the park. It's going to be awesome. Paula and I are both professional athletes. If you're new to the podcast, and Nick is a professional musician, amateur triathlete, sound master. this podcast. Most importantly, we're all really good friends. We like talking about trathlon. I should say we like sharing our multi-sport, otherwise training, life. Experience. We actually had to shut down the conversation. We were having prior to this podcast in true fashion of let's save this for the podcast. So here we go. It's been a fun weekend.

Yeah, Eric, you say you're tired as if you didn't just do this crazy thing on Sunday that you had never done before. Yeah, I did a thing that I think the best single word to describe is wild for a couple different reasons. I did a swim run Utila, which is spelled

O-T-I-L-O literally means island to island in Swedish. We'll get into a little bit of a I don't know if I'll even call it a race recap

or like an sharing of my experience. But yeah, that was yesterday like 36 hours ago and we'll get into that and Nick, Nick, you also raced.

I did that. Yeah. Traditional swim bike run. Correct. I'm not going to give a race recap or a race experience because we exhausted that last week. But there was a funny thing that happened, and I will be sharing that experience. A race mishap. A mishap, yeah. From what I've been told, I have yet to hear the story.

If you've been on Mars, maybe you didn't hear that Nick did an Iron Man. And he did a recap last week. If you want to hear that, you can go listen to it. But he also raised a sprint. yesterday. Was it a sprint? Yeah, it was a slightly long sprint, yeah. It's a heck of a double. This race, yeah, this race predates like traditional triathlon distances, so they have a distance that's kind of made up, but they've done it every year since then.

Nice. Yeah, our friend came over today into the garage. Curtis. He's going to love getting a podcast shout out. Yeah, he does listen. And Curtis is like, so I hear Nick did an Iron Man. And I was like, yeah, but he doesn't want anyone to know about it. Just a personal journey.

It was just like a personal growth journey that he really needed to just close this chapter. Just for me. Don't tell anyone. Anyway, no one's Iron Man in the history of the world has ever been hyped as much as Nick's Iron Man. So thank you to everyone who sent in their congratulations. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We're never talking about it again.

We're all very proud of the boy. It's over. Come not be mentioned again. Until the next one, there is a hot thread going on the TTL app about. What should your next Ironman be? So if you have not had enough, find your way to the TTL app, and you can check that out. Or just message me and we can have an in-depth conversation. Nick would love to have a long in-depth text conversation.

Okay, so before we get into Eric's race, last week we said that three lucky podcast supporters were going to win a special tailwind prize. Massive package of stuff. This is a real cool, crazy, awesome giveaway. a total value might be the biggest value we've ever given away. It's substantial. Yeah, there's a package of recovery stuff, energy fueling stuff, some, like basically a little bit of everything that they make,

including the limited addition strawberry lemonade flavor that they just came out with. They're very excited about. That is limited addition. And it is super good. It is actually. I had someone on my mountain bike. Chill spin today. Gave some to Curtis, who we just spoke about.

We both agreed it. It's delicious. Nice. You can get that for a limited time. Thanks to Tailwin for this big old giveaway. So, Eric, do you want to recite these names that we randomly picked from our podcast supporters? Or do you want me to do it? I didn't actually write them down.

So you're going to have to. I wrote them down. You're going to have to write them. Okay, great. So to be clear, these are from our podcast supporters who donate monthly to keep the podcast profitable and going. And we occasionally give them these little giveaways. And thank you once again to Tailwind for partnering up with us on this.

So our three podcast supporters are Adrian McCarthy Jenny Hazer, we think. H-A-S-E-R. Yeah. And John Willingham, you guys are our winners. Now you're going to be going

faster than ever with your new Tailwind. We have addresses for you, but we want to make sure that they're updated. So you can shoot me a message and we will make sure that the addresses are right and we'll get that sent right out to you. So thank you so much for being podcast supporters. Thank you, Tailwind.

By the way, at the race this weekend, once again, I had people coming up to me telling me that they use tailwind and love tailwind. I make no money from Tailwind. I'm just saying that people really love Tailwind. It's coming into triathlon in a big way, I think. This is why we signed on in the first place. It's just tasty stuff, and I think it sells itself. If you try a sample, it's tasty. Most people like it.

Thank you to, yeah. Thank you to the three of you. I can tell how long people have been pods, heck out. supporters. You're all longtime supporters. You're our heroes. So thanks so much and enjoy the goods. Also want to give you guys an update on Team TTL. We're still working on that super hard behind the scenes. Actually just got off a call with Jordan and a extremely high powered consultant that I can't name on here, but had a lot of great ideas. And we've been reading through all the comments on the TTL app, taking them all the heart. And we're just really excited to make this

thing as good as it can possibly be for everyone involved. But the latest update is that applications will be open on the 20th. So when this comes out, that's in two days. Oh, okay. And is that also for someone like me who wants to be team captain? Do I also apply? Yeah, I think you're just, we're finalizing the applications, but you're just going to be checking some sort of a box interest in team captain and then some sort of an explanation as to, you know, what you're bringing to the table, how active you are in your community. such things like this. And then we are working on a special little something on the kit.

But I don't want to give too many things away. Just if being a team captain sounds good to you, we would love it. When are we going to get a sneak peek at what some of this stuff looks like? Very soon. Actually, the stories that are going to be going up on Instagram, probably in the day that this comes out, we'll have a little bit of a flash of the colors

that we are looking at for the kit. Okay. I guess I'll just drop a little bit of a team. teaser, you're going to like the kit. We know you're going to like the kit. Can't say how we know. Confident. But confident. It's a tried and true look with a new spin. That's all I'll say. If you're interested,

apply online. We're not turning away a lot of people, but we are looking for the people who are the most excited and into having fun and just the most diehard TTL people we can find. Can't wait. Next thing I wanted to talk about was before we get into your race experience, Eric, did you get a chance to pay attention to what happened at World Championships at all? We're not going to do a whole thing about this

because it's not exactly what we do, but I just thought it was such a cool race. No, I mean, I'll be totally honest. I mean, I was extremely bummed about it, but it happened during the middle of the night and where I was staying on Orcas Island had virtually no self-service whatsoever. So I woke up in the morning.

I was camped across from Jordan Bryden, who came and shot some content. he immediately just spilled the beans and told me what happened. And then on my long drive home, I listened to the Pro Try News Breakdown, which was a fantastic podcast, I have to say. So whether or not you watch the race in person, I would go listen to that.

And that's how I got the details. I don't think we should do any recap because there's so many podcasts 90 plus minutes recapping it. But they're all good. I've listened to most of them, just because I like hearing about what people thought about it. I think like the takeaway from me, just from like the pictures that I saw and then also corroborated by the guys on ProTri News as they were talking about it. Casper Stornis won it and Christian Gustav were both on the podium.

But it was just, it was very cool for me. You could tell even from the pictures how excited they all were for each other whilst to being obviously competitive amongst each other. And that like that energy was completely palpable even in the pictures. And it was it was really cool to see because like obviously Christian. was touted to be the favorite. Could have been extremely bummed, but he looked genuinely super excited about the situation. So that's really cool.

Yeah, agreed. Love that. It's a memorable year. We won't forget. Sometimes you forget second and third place this year. You will remember all three. It was good for the sport. And I actually think it's insane

that nobody picked all three of them for the podium. Yeah. Kind of insane. Yeah. It was a realistic chance that was going to happen. Then it did. It was realistic, all right. Yeah.

Okay, so the main event here, Eric, swim run. You've thought about this for a long time, and this actually happened. Now, there are races, swim run races in the world that have a really competitive field. And this was, the challenge here was that you started 15 minutes behind everyone. Why was that? Yeah, I mean, like a lot of, you know, what I would call fringe sports. It's a lot bigger in Europe. So I think it's slightly more competitive in Europe.

Not to say that this, you know, people here were slouches or anything. There was one guy who was very strong, who I had a hard time catching. But Lars had the idea of doing this charity chaser concept. So basically I started 15 minutes behind. And every person that I caught in the World Series distance, Ossala would donate $10 to the Orcus Island Booster Club, which just basically gets kids active gear so that they can go outside and do things and play sports.

At first I was like, I don't know, this sounds a little bit, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this because it sounds like almost pretentious, like I'm going to be so fast or something that I need to start behind. But the more I thought about it, I thought it was incredibly cool. I'm so glad we did it. And ultimately, I got to see every person in the race

while doing this event rather than, you know, Smith Rock, I said the 50K that it was very cool, but I was out there for four hours all by myself, just like chasing a time. And this had so much more meaning, and I got to see everybody in the race, and everybody was very excited about it.

So it was a very cool experience for me. Were you passing people more often in swims or in runs? Yeah, it was a little bit hard to tell how many people you pass on the swim. But the course started with a little 2K run and a 250-meter swim and then a long 6K run. And I did catch quite a few people on that 6K run. And then I caught some more people in the water.

And then I caught a lot more people on the run after that. It was definitely front half heavy. But I was saying I probably caught more people on the run just because there's proportionately more running time-wise than swimming. Yeah. And how many times did you swim? Technically, 12 swims and 13 runs. Yeah.

For a total distance. 40K, 42K, I think. I think my watch gave me a little bit extra credit on the swim, which we talked about before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the race official numbers were 33,626 meters. So 33K of running, 5,370 meters of swimming for a grand total of 39K of total distance, theoretically. And then also the thing that was kind of crazy about this one relative to a lot of other ones, it had 1430 meters of elevation gain.

We basically ran up a little bit of a little. little mountain whilst swimming and running. Yeah. And was that your favorite part? The elevation gain? Yeah. Just I think what the nature of the course as a result of that elevation gain was extremely exciting because we started down at sea level and we worked our way all the way up

into the clouds to the point of where I felt like I was in a steam room. It was that, there was that much moisture in the air. You know you can feel it in your lungs and you almost feel like you're breathing into a humidifier. And then when I was up in the clouds there It was the most beautiful green part of the course It was like never never land green You're expecting a fairy tale creature

To come out from behind a fern And possibly green And this deep, deep cloud that you're in. So would you compare this more to triathlon Or to something else? I would call this This is like ultra running With little swims with swims mixed in.

Very much more like It's up to you to find the course You need to follow the course markings well, have your wits about you, pay attention, like develop a strategy for your nutrition and your pacing based on the terrain and where the aid stations are and the energy around it was more like that. I think what I told you on the drive home was that it's very obvious that every person there is there for them and because they're passionate and excited about it, they're going to go to the office tomorrow and say they could tell 100 people, hey, I did a swim run on Sunday.

not a single person is going to have any idea what that means or there's no recognition around that yet like there is doing an Iron Man for example I think you could tell that they were there for their own reasons and their own things that they wanted to accomplish and very cool very cool tight-knit community and how many athletes were racing total

and there was about 250 athletes across the three distances that's actually quite a bit that's not bad I think I was talking to them about it because you know I finished and I'm like How are there not a thousand people here? This is the coolest thing I've ever done. The participation numbers kind of peaked out before COVID, and then they had a crash like everything,

and then they're trying to slowly work their way back. And then they've also, you know, they've gone up to like seven or eight races in the U.S., which just, I think, kind of spreads out the total number of people looking to experience one of these things across more races. Not an easy place to get to. No, this was by, this is exactly like Nemo Bay. Like this is his Nemo Bay.

as you can possibly get without going that far. And it was almost that far. Like, you know, you have to get on a ferry. It's very hard to get on one of these ferries to get over to this island. And you're camping, basically. Most people were camping. Some people had Airbnb's,

and there's almost no cell service. Looks the same. Trees, these massive trees that go right down to the water. Beautiful little mountain lakes. But yeah, you know, to me, I've said this before. Like, sometimes the journey is actually part of the excitement for me. And I feel like that anticipation as I'm in. the van and I'm going to the thing and it feels like a little bit more epic when it's a little bit

challenging to get to. People, even this weekend, people told me how beautiful they thought Nemo Bay was and how beautiful it is, but how hard it is to reach. This could be the perfect thing for people who want to experience something like that and you're getting to, you're getting to race. It's a non-boxed inexperienced way that some triathlons can feel. You're still adventuring. It still feels wild to use your word. It feels like this perfect kind of cool and different thing. And we all kind of crave Are there no bears out there?

I didn't see a single bear. No one said anything about bears. I'm just surprised they didn't make you carry bear spray. I mean the sand wands are pretty isolated. Yeah, you're right, Nick. That could be a good replacement. As an island. 100%. I think so. If that Nemo Bay thing really fired up your imagination

sign up for this race, do any swim run. Because I think it really captures that well. And there is a little cult following of people who have watched that film at this race. Multiple people, including the announcer, told me who he, and he's announced UTMB for 10 years, told me how much they loved the film. They played the music from Nemo Bay in the 15 minutes while they were waiting, like the one when I'm swimming, like the main piece.

Oh, got it. Look for things where you can find them is what it's called. And look for things where they, yeah, they played that while I was waiting my 15 minutes. to start behind everybody. That's cool. There were some just like A grade super fans, especially of that scene at this. But I think part of the thing with the participation numbers

is that it's very intimidating. Not all the answers. You cannot have all the answers prior to towing the line, but I do think it is slightly less intimidating than you might think. The day before they had a clinic that you could take where they explained all the things, explained how course markings work,

how pull-bullies work, how the whole deal. You can rent a, swim run wetsuit from them at all of these events. So you could, you could pretty much show up with paddles on a pull buoy. And I bet you could show up without even that. Every person I talked to was like, how many pairs of paddles did you bring? I brought three. Which ones are you going to use? Why? You know, like, it was this really cool thing of like, no one has it all figured out in each course is different enough that people were still kind of, we're all talking about how we were going to try to do our nutrition or what we're going to, like, how do you carry gels?

and very much like, we're all trying to do this epic thing together and it happens to be a race. You know, when you described this to me initially, I thought Eric's so happy for you, so cool, you're doing this cool thing that I would never do and I have no interest in doing really because I just, I don't like swimming.

I don't like open water swimming. The idea of running with wet shoes, it feels unenjoyable, and then you, on the drive home, when you talk to me about it, I hope you'll change other people's minds the way you changed mine because I think the idea of the big paddles,

the big pull buoy, that brings a lot of like, oh, wait a second, this is not so bad. I can almost kind of use the swim as a recovery between the runs in a way and it feels adventurous. It's not this like, I don't know, I don't know.

I want to do one now. I think you would love it. And it totally made sense, you know, to me, I'm imagining you imagining, each one of these swims is like the first 200 of a trathlon where you're like gasping for air. You're hoping you don't have a heart attack. You're just like, it's awful and it's torture. And it's more like you jump in the water with your giant pull buoy. The maximum turnover you can have with these big paddles is like 10 strokes a minute. Yeah.

And your heart rate goes down to 100. And you're just like, and it's quiet. It's like straight up peaceful. and every time you look up, there's trees and like just mist on the water. And I was really looking forward to each swim, which I didn't think I was going to. Because I was just like huffing and puffing and breathing so hard from the running that I was like, cool. I get it literally cool off, calm my heart rate down, just get across this lake. It was, I mean, it was like, it was incredibly cool.

This is so cool. I want to do one tomorrow. Usually you need a, usually you, well, at the world championships and things, you need a partner. Yeah. So at the World Championships, you do need a partner. I did the solo category, which anyone can do. The difference between doing a partner and a solo thing is if you have a partner, mandatory piece of equipment is this bungee cord that ties you together. I just found out that you do actually not have to use that.

You just have to have it. But it's pretty much up to you on this buddy system to not let your partner drown. Oh, you don't have to use the bungee? You technically don't have to, but it is an assistance. thing. So I saw, it was actually most hilarious, passionate people who were using it on the run to tow along the slower partner. Because, you know, inevitably, I come up behind them and I'm like, excuse me. And one guy moves to the right and one person moves to the left and all of a sudden we have a bungee cord across the trail. There's time entangled in while running on this trail.

So there were some really funny interactions. And the same thing in the swim. If there's a clearly faster swimmer, that can be used almost like a tow rope. Okay. So this is the time. This would work then, Nick. This would work. This is the time that Paula and I are going to present this idea that we came up with earlier today. Paula and I want to be on a team and do a swim run. Okay, that's great. I got asked about 45 times if Paul and I would do one together. I say, are you not married?

Does that sound like a good idea for you? I'm not saying it sounds like a good idea for us, but I do think it would be at least funny. Only if we were like miced up. Yeah. And you could. Like, fuck, Nick. Come on. Hurry up. How do you swim this slow?

I would happily document that. I'm sure we can enlist no less than five of our favorite triathlon content creator friends to help document that. But like I said, there's three different distances. So if you weren't feeling like doing this whole five hour long thing that I did, there's a sprint distance. It would be more like two hours. And then there's even an experience distance, which I think it takes about one hour. Okay. Depending on how much quality time you want to spend with your partner.

If you do not have a partner, you just have to wear this personal inflatable. I think I've seen your mom use one when she rose, Paula. It's like a waste belt thing that if you pull a little cord on it, it inflates a little personal. I don't know, like... PDF. PDF. PFD. PFD. Yeah. Personal flotation device. A little personal flotation device that you can pull CO2 inflated should you get into an emergency as a solo person. There was like one kayak and each like just sort of like roaming around.

but it's really up to you to manage your effort and manage yourself. And there's no buoys, right? You have to cite from one side of the lake to the other. Yeah, yeah, which was... That's cool. I was a little bit nervous about it first, but pretty much every swim that I started with the exception of the two tiny little lakes up at the top,

I got to the swim about the same time as somebody who I was catching, whether they were in the sprint distance or the full distance that I was in. And, you know, we stood there as we're putting on our paddles as quickly as we can in our goggles and it's just like... hilarious scene. Like, is it that one? Is it that orange one over there next to the house? And yeah, I think so. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, see, those people are over there. They're swimming towards it. And, like, made a game plan and then make sure you jump in and pop up and they're facing the right direction and everything. And just get to the other side of the lake. I just, I mean,

I just want to, like, close off and say that I did do and ask me anything on the app. So if you're, like, have dying specific questions, hit that up. And then Jordan was there filming. he got an absolutely outrageous amount of video clips, which I will be pouring through and trying to make the greatest piece of swim run content of all time. Yeah, okay, awesome. That's awesome. I think you've inspired a lot of people to do this. I hope you've inspired people like me who would never think they'd want to do something

like this as well. I can't believe they make you swim in this penny. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I could seriously go on for the entire length of this podcast with thoughts that I have and the way that I redesigned my entire gear selection while doing this race and things that I realized. And I've laid that out in the app a little bit. But I think what's freaking cool about this is, and somebody else told this to me, who is a TTL fan who does swim runs,

is that you don't have all the answers. And you dive into the water or you start, you know, run across the start line, not knowing all the answers, but trusting that you'll be able to to figure it out along the way and that whatever lack of gear, you know, incorrect gear choice you made, you'll figure it out. And it's like triathlon has an aid station every mile. It's, it's very pre-determined. We've talked about this before, how it's just kind of a feeling of you versus your body versus this is a bit of get out there, figure it out as you go, and that's part of the adventure. That's like true adventure. Well said, Eric, I don't think we're going to top that. Everybody should do one. It's really,

cool. Yeah, that is cool. Is there a central like database to find them or anything like that? Yeah. Is there a USAT equivalent or something? Yeah, Atala. I don't know if it's just otala.com or Othala, USA. Does anyone do that anymore? Be like, I don't know what? www. website name.com? We just Google it, yeah. Yeah. Have you ever, like I haven't done that since Hotmail? Even when I know it, I Google it. I have certain ones that I go to a lot that I put in the bar in at auto fills. Yeah, yeah, I have, of course. But yeah, there's actually, I think there's two more in the U.S. this year, Austin, Texas, and Fort Collins, Colorado.

And I think there's seven or eight in the U.S. each year. Cool. If anyone signs up for a swimmer and as a result of this, we'll send you a swim cap. Heck yeah. Careful now. would love to have team TTL dominate the swim run space. Yeah. You might be you might you might careful what you wish for guys. No, I bet you, I mean, I mean, we have enough swim caps.

If you, yeah, if it's like you signed up for one and is your very first one to be as a result of this podcast. Oh, now we have, now we have parameters. Yeah, I think. If you've done 50 and you like just signed up for another one, that's all I'm saying. But that's cool. That's great. Well done, Eric. And, and you did under. up winning, of course. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'll have a great video out about it, but I did catch everybody by about two hours

into the race at the very highest point of the course and went on to build up a little bit more of a time gap and have a pretty respectable time, I think, which a big part of this initially me signing up for it was so that I could prove myself and get an invite or qualify otherwise for the world championships in Sweden. and that is a major bucket list for me, as we've talked about, and I need to find a partner. Yeah, there's no single division in worlds. No single division.

But, you know, after doing one, I would love to do a couple more in addition to worlds. I'm not just going to doing that one. Awesome. It was a great experience. Great. Okay, well, I also had a race this weekend. It is nowhere near as exciting.

But what is exciting is what happened to me before the race. So I had my bike already all set up from the week, of you have a race. I don't know if you heard. I raced the week before. So I still had my bike set up. Was it the whole trathlon?

It was an Ironman in Wisconsin. Yeah. Don't talk about it. He's shy about it. Yeah, I'm really shy about it. Stop. So I get out of the car and I have the little crack pipe

to fit into the disc wheel cut out in the back. Just the inflator. Yes. The angled, I press valve adapter, I think is technically what they're called. It's Paula's disc, yeah. And there's a latex tube

in there, and for whatever reason, the little crack pipe I have, you really have to put a lot of pressure on it, otherwise it doesn't work properly. So I put a lot of pressure on it and I hear and I think, please tell me that's just like the press the valve being stuck or something.

I put air in and it's clear that I punctured the tube somehow. Broke like the valve tube junction. That's exactly what happened. So I remember that I had a spare tube in my frame, and then when I pulled it out, it was one of those with a really long stem that would have worked for my front wheel or my rear wheel that I normally have on there, but not for the disc. So I go over to the mechanic, and I'm like, explaining the problem. He's like, I think I got you. He brings me a shorter stem inner tube,

puts it in there. I put it on my bike, and the brakes are rubbing. So I've had this before. I should have to take the wheel off and put it back on, tighten it, I spin the wheel, brakes aren't rubbing, we're all good, I go to shift just to make sure it shifts through the gears, and there's no shifting happening in the rear. And I remember that when I had taken the wheel off the derailer, the DI2 cable got unplugged, so I was like, maybe I didn't put it in right.

This is my recurring trathlon nightmare, or you can't get to the start line because there's a million things that happen. This is a straight-up nightmare. Yeah, so I make sure that's plugged in, and when I do that, I realize that in my haste, the DI2 cable got pinched between the quick release and the dropout.

No. Yes. And it shorted when I tried to shift and I had no shifting. And I'm talking to the mechanics. I'm like, oh my God, what do we do? And they just look at me with their jaw open. They're like, dude, you got to race in this gear. They're like, go back in time and get SRAM, you idiot.

Yeah. Oh, God. I felt so dumb. So did it actually break the cable, like the wire? It didn't snap it in half, but when it looked at it, you could tell that I had clamped it tight enough that it just like pressed through the rubber and the metal was touching the metal inside there.

And so as soon as I shifted, or even maybe before, it just shorted and there was nothing I could do. We tried to take my seat out thinking the battery was in the seatpost and maybe just unplug it and plug it back in. But that's not where the battery is. So it's in the bottom bracket somewhere, like in the down tube. So I had to make the decision.

And I was never that bummed because I felt lucky that it didn't happen last weekend, you know? Yeah, for sure. For your Iron Man. For the... Yeah. Yeah.

So I was stuck in. Luckily, I didn't shift all the way into the smallest cog. I was second to smallest cog. So I think it was a 12, 12-tooth cog and the full standard big ring in the front. And the course isn't super climbing, but it's still about 200 meters of climbing over a sprint distance.

So 650 feet is significant enough. You wrote it? Of course I wrote it, dude. What do you mean? I keep thinking, I kept thinking some white night is going to come into the last minute and solve this problem. No, dude. I said, you know what? This is going to be a funny day.

And let's see what happens if I do low cadence for this entire bike ride. Oh, my gosh. So I racked my bike thinking I'm going to destroy my legs the next time I see this bike. So do the swim. The swim went fine. Actually, it went great. I started riding the bike. And at first, I'm out of the saddle.

And I'm thinking, I'm going to about like 26 miles an hour. And I'm thinking, oh, this is low, but I can do it. And three minutes in already, I'm like, oh, my God. No, I cannot do this. I don't got it. I don't got it. And I tried, I was out of the saddle for so much of that ride. I averaged 67 RPM for the whole thing.

And on the climbs, I was between 30 and 35 RPM, just grinding. Brutal. I'm like riding next to people who are looking at me like, What is wrong? Bro, shift, what are you doing? You idiot. Press the button. But yeah, so it was rough.

But I found out today I did get the fastest bike split still with this. So maybe there's something to the low cadence work. Well, it does make your power go up. For sure. You know, I can't help but think about this awesome shirt that I saw one time and it had a TZ bike on it and said, shifting down is giving up. Well, I felt like giving up, that's for sure.

And then, so then my legs felt a little fried for the run. But I still got second overall on the day. So I was really happy with that. And I'm glad my legs didn't give up on me for that abuse. So anyway. Take that best bike split.com. Put it in the big ring, go. Be careful when you are putting your wheel on with a quick release to not pinch that cable in the quick release.

And you're all good. You didn't blow out your kneecaps or anything. No, no. I felt fine. I just was a little shelled for the run, but I felt I felt fine. And now I have to run a new cable through the entire frame and figure that whole thing out. So we're also selling that bike. If anyone wants it.

It's awesome, except. As is. written once like new. We're selling a Canyon SpeedMax that doesn't shift and we're also selling a Venge with a rusted top two. Venge Vias. Yes, yes. Rare breed.

You know what sucks is the front the front railer wouldn't shift either because the whole system was just screwed. Right. Yeah, honestly, it's a good lesson to get Schramm. It is a good lesson to get SRAM. I have no other conclusion. And to get tubeless.

Go slowly. The root of the problem was the latex tubes. So you had got to go to tubeless tram and you would have won the race. This feels good to be right. Who knows? I was 30 seconds off of the lead guy. Yeah, at first I thought, oh, of course you'd win. But now I'm like thinking maybe you actually rode harder.

Let's move on. Good job, Nick. Nick, we're really proud of you. You don't have to be proud of me for my idiocy. I can't wait to read another week of questions that start with. Congratulations to Nick. No, you don't need to congratulate me on this race. No, you don't need to do it.

But you can keep congratulating him on his Iron Man. Yeah, that never runs. All right. Okay, let's get to questions here. And this first thing is actually a segment submitted by a listener. And we thought it would be fun. Paula, do you want to give the backstory here? Oh, yeah.

Well, I was listening to that triathlon hour. I think that's what it's called Jack's podcast. Because he has Sam Appleton and Greg Harper as co-host for the week. bleeding into Nice. And I really like those two guys. And they actually have a really funny dynamic and interesting perspectives. But the last podcast that I listened to, they did a fuck Mary kill. And it was super fucking funny.

So I'm like, I don't know if someone else must have heard it as well because someone sent in a game. Right. For us to do fuck Mary Kill, but they titled it something much more PG. Yeah, date, marry, drop For triathlon edition And if you've never heard of this, we're not talking about somebody named Mary. We're talking about marriage. Yes, marriage.

Marriage. Yeah, so there's basically three things, and you have to say which one you would kiss. Date, date, date, date, Oh, God, yeah, this version is not funny. But we're going to try it. And if it's not funny at all, we're taking it out. You're never going to hear it. And that's that, yeah.

I think that if we take it out. thought we should just take it out right there. Okay, so we meet you on the other side where, oh, wow, it did not work. Yeah, that's how much. It was worth a shot. You really have to fuck them and kill

them for it to be funny. Not necessarily in that order. Okay. So, first one, 70.3, full Iron Man, Olympic. I'm going to marry the Olympics.

Olympic distance. Ooh, wow. No. No. What's the three distances? 70.3s? I think the Olympic is the like sexy one. So you kind of date that because it's like fast and short.

Yeah. 70.3 is and the Iron Man is like the you. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You bought it. Olympic distance. One time.

I'm getting in bed with the Olympic distance. I'm hanging out with 70.3 for the rest of my life because It's sustainable career choice, and I'd know thanks ever to an Iron Man. Yeah, there you go. Drop the Iron Man. What about run, bike, swim? You see, I can't play this game with the other words because I don't even know them. What are they?

Date Mary drop. You can, okay, you can, the coital dance with, Paula, what would you say? Running? Running for what? For, well, yeah, I guess running for what, yeah. I would marry running. I would drop swimming and I would date cycling, I guess. Yeah.

Do dirty, awful, unforgivable things to cycling. Yeah. Okay, there's so many here. We're not going to do them all. Let me just pick the best ones here. Oh, yeah. I like this one. Long rides, track workouts, and brick workouts.

So easy. That's so easy. Wait, did you say track workouts? Yeah. I'm dropping the long ride. I'll marry the track workout and I'll date the brick. Oh, God. Bricks, stay away from me.

Track workout's sexy. Yeah, I'll date that. And then, of course, you marry the long rides. Oh. Yeah, I'm with you, Nick. Oh, so good. Let me see here. Oh, what about ocean swim, lake swim, river swim?

Drop ocean swim, marry lake swim. Date river swim. Yeah, that's good. That's good. I'm fucking the ocean swim for sure. Or it's fucking you. Body surf all day. Yeah.

This is a swim runner over here. If he didn't know. Give me that turbulent water, baby. Okay. Let's move on from this game. Wait, we have... There's two more good ones. There's two more good ones.

Tromblant, St. George, Victoria. Mary St. George. Love that race. I'm going to marry Victoria. I'm going to drop. Ooh, that's hard because I love them all. I think I'll drop St. George. I've had more bad experiences than good ones, even though I've had a great one.

I'll drop Trombon because I got no ties there. And I'll... Actually, yeah, I'm changing my mind. I'll drop Trambon. It's too hard. Like, there's parts of that course that are really great, but all of St. George is pretty great. Last one here, to be on brand. Donuts, cookies, and chocolate croissants.

marrying the donuts. Marrying the donuts. Dating the cookies and I'll drop the croissant. I could drop the croissant, yeah. That's funny. That's interesting. Not what I thought. I thought you guys would date the croissant.

There's a little more exotic, a little more cool summer European fling. Yeah, I mean, yeah, technically, but not that. I'm not that aroused by the croissant. If it was an almond, if it was like one of those almond croissants, then yeah. Yeah, then I'd change my answer. A lot of the croissants we got in France that were advertiser. chocolate croissants had like no chocolate in them. There's like barely any in there?

Yeah. Tiny bit of chocola. So we were just... We used to an American amount of chocola in our pan. Right, right. In our pan. The bakery we were going to in France, it was like a chain, basically.

But even a chain bakery in France feels... Secret family. Well, it was called Le Femmy Secrette. The family. It translated to secret family. Yeah. So the whole trip, we were just like, let's go to secret family. They were unfortunately not family friendly.

Secret family? Oh, I mean, like, there wasn't all bad experiences, but we, like, we talked about this thing a little bit. Oh, I see. If you try to speak French, they roll their eyes. If you don't, they just hate you. So I just want a little bread, please. Okay, let's move on to full length, full form traditional TTO podcast questions. You can submit questions to the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast.

You can also become a supporter there. We mentioned that earlier. We really appreciate you, supporters. For the cost of a chocolate croissant, a month, you can be a podcast supporter too. So think about that when you're having your morning coffee. Okay, first question here is from James. Question for Eric, I'm an adult onset swimmer, so I won't claim to be an expert, but surely you would be faster overall if you took your shoes off for the

swims in a swim run. I can't wrap my head around swimming with shoes. Just finished reading the Wikipedia page for swim run and there's nothing to say that the shoes must stay on the feet at all times, but it's maybe the Wikipedia page that's not up to date. All right. So I think what you're not grasping about swim run is that it's swim runs, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, and there are, there were numerous legs of this where you're running 700 meters and then you're swimming 200 meters and then you're running another 800 meters and then swimming 600 meters. There was a section where we swam 640 meters, ran 50 meters across an island, then swam 50 meters to the mainland shore and then ran 600 meters before swimming again. So yes, if you had a

three kilometer long swim because you're just like thinking trath on like these big chunks, yeah, it might be faster to take your shoes off. But not the case in actual. in actuality. It was faster for me to strip down my wetsuit prior to a 30-minute long uphill run, but there are no swims that are so long that taking the shoes off would make sense. And Eric, you were telling me that there's so much drag on your body from the P, personal inflatable. The penny. Yeah. And the penny and the huge pull-buy that you actually don't really notice the drag of the shoes so much. And also, you told me that you don't really notice how

they are when you're running. I honestly didn't think about it a single time until like with 5K left to go in the race. I was running. I'd been running for a while so my shoes were relatively dry and I stepped in a little creek. I was like, oh shit, now my foot's wet. And that's when it dawned on me that it didn't feel any different after I got in the water

in that little thing. And it hadn't even occurred to me the entire time. You don't wear socks. I did wear socks, but I wore those Solomon socks that I just never stopped, shut, and I never shut up about, and they retained almost no water. And the Solomon shoes that I picked

retained almost no water. And when you get out of the water from this thing, you're running out of the water and you're like trying to flip your pull away from between your legs and put it behind your back and take your goggles and put them around your neck and maybe unzip your wetsuit and look where the flag is.

The last thing you're thinking about is that your feet are wet. Right. So I just, I think it's a non-issue. the only issue, the more of the issue of like in the swimming part is that you can't kick. It's kicking is actually detrimental with the shoes on. Right. It's like drag machines kind of.

Exactly. So your feet are just dangling back there, which as I said, as I told you, Nick, that just caused your heart rate to be even lower and the swim to be quite trinky-low. So all these things that you like think are going to be a thing, they were not a thing for me. Wow. Awesome. Cool. Okay. next one here. This is from Fred and it's for Paula.

I found it so endearing that while you were being interviewed after your second place finish at T-100 French Riviera, that you admitted to being starstruck when talking with Emma Snossel. You seem genuinely excited to be talking with her. Are there other former triathletes that you've been in the same situation

with that you've felt the same way about? Who is on your pedestal of adoration? Love the podcast. Congrats Nick on finishing Ironman, Wisconsin. Slips in it. End. Sneaky. I almost didn't read it. I don't know if you heard that. I'm the one that reads the questions and sends them to Nick. I could just delete all those

congratulations. Maybe I'm going to start doing that on week three. Okay. Yeah. Pump the brakes, guys. Yeah, I mean, when I started racing short course, Emma was the Olympic old medalist. So she's forever been like one of my idols in the sport. And then when I started racing well in 2010, 2011, I started beating her at some races, which was insane to me. So I've just watched her since I've been little, winning a medal in Beijing, and then racing alongside her for a couple of years before she ended up retiring. So for her to be at these T-100 races interviewing me, it's the same feeling as Yon, interviewing me or, I mean, there's tons of athletes that I feel this way about Simon Whitfield,

Miranda Carfrey. She's actually in that role pretty often at Iron Man events, but just people that I watch dominate the sport, Danielle Reef, now having a bit of a role with either Iron Man or T-100 and being there interviewing us and commenting and everything, it's just kind of a crazy, crazy thing. But it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Next question here is from Lauren. Hi, love you all. AOS, which is our term for adult onset swimmer, what do you guys all bring with you to the pool?

I feel like I'm bringing way too much. Am I crazy for wanting two towels? I don't want to dry off after my shower with the same towel that's soaking wet with pool water. Thanks for all you do for the sport, Lauren. That seems extra, but what do you guys bring? Flynn. Snacks.

He's the first towel. cameras. No, I used to, I mean, when I was a swimmer in swim club, you'd have a mesh bag with all your swim equipment in it. That was a lot of stuff. Bins, paddles, pole boy, kickboard, everything. But I've streamlined that a little bit. I just bring my pole boy paddles, two caps, two pairs of goggles, shampoo and conditioner, cream, one towel. That's my swim bag.

Wow, Paul, that was really good. Eric, what about you? what do you bring? Same stuff, minus the skin care and almost always a camera. And I'll also minus the hair care. Yeah, hair care and skin. All the care, all the hygiene I do not bring. Yeah, so what I noticed is neither of you bring something that I also don't bring,

which is a kickboard. Do you borrow the ones from the pool or do you just use your pool boo as a kickboard? Yeah, that's extra if you need your own kickboard. Yeah, I do use my pull-boot as a kickboard unless I remember to get a community kickboard. Community kickboard. That just takes up too much space in the bag. I agreed.

But I think the solution to the two-towel thing is I get out of the water and I immediately beeline to the shower. So there's no period of time where the pool water is touching my body before I clean my body. Yeah, yeah, yeah, same. And I get out of the water and I just put my changing poncho on and don't shower at all. So I also don't have this problem. Yeah. I would not recommend my method.

fits really cold on deck and I want to wrap myself in a towel right away and then I go have a shower. It is super uncomfortable and annoying to dry off with a wet towel. So I totally get it. I mean, why not? But neither of you guys bring elastic bands or a snorkel or fins or any other pool toys. Sometimes fins, but... I've gone through phases with all of those things, but not currently. Nick, when I read this question, I was like, I don't know if this is going to be interesting one for the majority of the people, but I thought of you just keeping all your swim stuff in the back of your car and you just lay your towel out in the back of the Tesla and your bathing suit. Yeah. Wow. You do remember that. Yeah, because you don't have like a swim bag. You're just like grabbing

these rogue items. No, no, no. The reason I do the bathing suit and the towel laid out is so that they'll dry. Yeah, but they never leave either the car. Oh yeah, can we add this conversation because we asked how often you wash your pool towel. And you're like, it's never, it's never been washed. I wash it now like honestly, like once every like six weeks, two months now. That's so long. I'm going to quote the great Nick Miller from New Girl. The towel cleans me. Okay. Why do I need to, I am as clean as I get when that towel touches my skin. I've just showered off. I just used their super high quality soap at Santa Monica College and then the towel it just gets the water

off. As clean as it gets. I mean that's a fair argument. Yeah, I suppose. I think it's like the skin particles. Just forgetting that we shed skin. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough.

Fair enough. Sorry to bring up that. Somehow every question turns into roasting Nick. Yeah, and here comes the next one here. Here we go. Nick, it's on Iron Man, Wisconsin. I loved hearing the emotions of your experience. Stay a romantic. Okay, you know what?

We're not doing this question. No, do it, Nick. Do it. Okay. I'm riding from New Orleans, a city I love, but not the friendliest to triathlon training. Despite being surrounded by water, it's really tough to practice open water swims around here. Every freshwater lake has gaiters and the nearest ocean spots this summer have been hit with a flesh-eating bacteria. Jesus.

That's terrifying. How quickly does that eat all of your flesh? I think it's necrotizing fasciitis. Somehow I remember the name of this bacteria. But yes, it will then get into your brain sometimes. What? Yeah. Any tips on how to best use the pool to improve?

Do long straight sets of 2,000 yards? Trying to improve my sorely lacking open water swim skills, but keep all of my limbs. Yeah. This is from Lewis. So what can you do in the pool? I'm thinking like, don't flip turn or something or definitely don't

do any like dolphin kicks. Yeah. Three by a K and miss every single flip turn. So just like flip turn but don't push off the wall. Oh that's so so frustrating. Yeah, it's off. I'm like mostly joking. But I think

doing longer intervals for sure. Or what about what about touch? I know this is sacrilege but what about touch turns instead? I don't know. No, I had to. Just don't pushing off the wall. Last week. Or break.

Last week I had a little bit of a lower back tweak and it hurt too much to flip turn. So I did like three or four swims last week where I touched her in every single wall in a 25 meter pool. That was annoying. But I actually found aerobically it was easier because you're getting a huge breath when you touch the wall. This was why it's so hard for me to leave it. Yeah. So I get it. Even though it was so annoyingly slow and like swinging my legs underneath my body felt like

this big maneuver, I wasn't getting out of breath as much. So I don't think that's a good solution for practicing your open water, but it is slower. The other thing you could do is you could, let's say you're doing three by a kilometer or four by 600 or something like that, like every third length you could do head up or sight every four strokes, something like that. That'll really start to burn the muscles in the right way. Yeah, head ups a good drill. Like keep something kind of bright. or a water bottle on the end of the pool and actually cite it. Because I find when you're doing head-up drill, you're just like your heads wiggling all over,

but try to actually look at a thing as if it's a buoy. And then I wouldn't say every wall do a turn without pushing off the wall, but like every four lengths, you could flip turn early, and then you're just starting from basically zero momentum. Yeah. I noticed when watching the swim in Nice that a lot of the guys in the swim would be citing every single stroke to make sure that they were going on

someone's feet or going in the right direction and I thought I was surprised to see that. Yeah, that can also just happen with chopier water as well. Like half of the sites you don't actually see anything because of a wave or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, good luck, Lewis. Please don't get into that flesh-eating bacteria. Next question here is from Imogen. Hi, tripod. I've been competitive cyclist for about eight years and I'm starting to get into triathlon. Regarding running, how do you manage overuse injuries such as shin splints, blisters prevention,

also do you get a lot of side stitches? If so, how do you overcome those? When I read this, I remembered I had all these problems a lot when I was first getting into running and now I don't at all anymore. I don't think about it. Blisters? Well, blisters sometimes rarely.

But no, shin splints, side stitches, that kind of stuff. I remember getting those when I was starting. That's true. These are all things I think you age out of a little bit. Your body learns how to handle it or something. So that's not a solution, but that is some encouragement to stick with it. I think your body is just so inefficient at processing like the pounding activity. It affects your gut in a different way than cycling, therefore the stitches and the hydration,

and then your calves get really tight because you're not used to impact, causing shin splints. So there's just this like adaptation period, I think, where you have to be careful, run on soft surface, make sure you're drinking enough electrolytes, whatever, but it kind of happens to everybody. Can, let's just say you're just starting running, if you just like roll your calves every day, do you think that is like an effective potential prehab for shin splints? Because if it's calf tightness related? Isn't it? I don't know for sure, I guess. I don't, I mean, that makes sense to me. I know it's like a tightness of that fascia that goes across the shin,

which I assume is brought on by predominantly calf tightness. Yeah. You know what's interesting is that even with like serious runners who get injured, shin splints I've never heard of being one of the things. And you don't hear about athletes getting side stitches during races. A lot of other things go wrong. You know, they'll throw up or they'll, they'll have cramps of other kinds. But it's just you don't see it at that level.

So I don't know if it might just be a necessary thing for some people to get through at the beginning. Right of passage. Which makes running so horrible to start with. Yeah. But it is preventable. Yeah, I honestly think running on soft surface is a good solution for this. I used to get shin splints when I ran track, indoor 200 meter track with spikes. So that's like the most stress you can put on your calves.

but if you just preventative care run on soft surface. It was really funny in Lionel's latest video to hear him have this revelation about running on soft surfaces. Oh my gosh. Come on, dude. He's been living in Tucson running on the bike path or on the road for his entire life or whatever, wherever he lived before that. But we basically moved to bend so that we can exclusively run on soft surface. I'm almost too scared of running on concrete ever. Some people just do it 100% of the time.

Yeah. I don't know. If you have the option, it's better to not... Anything soft that you can find. Okay, next question here is from Eric with a K. By the way, the amount of people that think Eric on this podcast name is with a K. I get messages of people spelling your name with a K to me. It's E-R-I-C.

Get it right, please. I mean, it's a pretty even split of the spellings for all the Eric's. Is it? I feel like it's mostly Eric's with a C that I've encountered. I don't know. My best friend growing up on swim team, it was Eric with A. Okay. All right.

Fair enough. Well, this one is Eric with a K. Is anyone Eric with a CK? Yeah. It does happen. Really? It does happen. Wow.

It's been known to happen. What about with a cue? Edique. Edique. Okay, Edique, this one's for you. What's the thoughts on Solomon's new gravel running shoes? You know, I really want to be sponsored by Solomon.

So I am hesitant to like... Judgment. Give my full... I have a pair. I like them. They're fine. They're just like... They're like a road shoe with, you know, a little more tread on them.

Eric makes fun of them when he's like... I've heard him. I've heard him go into this before. That's why I was curious to hear when he was saying. He comes running with me. He's like, babe, I got my gravel shoes on. Yeah. So ready's for some off-roading.

Yeah. In my opinion, their road shoes with like a little bit of a trail run tread on them. I don't think it justified starting up a whole category and trying to capitalize on the term gravel. But, you know, I wear just like regular trail shoes when I run on gravel. Or you can wear road shoes. Either work just fine, but these gravel shoes, whatever, you know, if I'm like going to run for 3K, to get to the trail. Sometimes I'll wear them just to not wear a pair of trail shoes.

Maybe they're a little bit more durable and would last longer than road shoes if you're running mostly on. If you have a lot of road connections to get to gravel, yeah, I think they're like a slightly, you know, less grippy, less soft rubber than a true trail shoe. And that's the only time I'll use them when I'm like, ah, you know, I'm leaving the house and I'm with Paula and she won't tell me where we're going. And it may be trail. It may be some road connect. I'm not sure. and I won't ever feel like I'm ruining my trail shoes by running down the road.

Yeah. And then last question here is from Mike. What up TTL pod, all caps through exclamation marks. What up, Mike? What up, Mike? I knocked out my first 70.3 in Oregon this summer, and now I've got my sights set on two next summer. But right now I'm battling some knee issues.

Pretty sure it's IT band related. For context, I'm an ex-pro baseball player. I love the amount of ex-pro. athletes that right into this podcast, by the way, keep it coming. Especially like real sports, like mainstream sports. You know what's funny? I was thinking about this. I was thinking about this while riding the other day how people say, you know, triathlon's not a real sport. Okay, let's take baseball. At least for my sport, during my event, I am moving 100% of the time.

I am working hard 100% of the time. No shade to baseball, but you're standing still for 95% of the time in a baseball game. Yeah, I'm saying real sports based on income level and popularity. Yeah, income level. Not athletic. Not necessarily aerobic capacity. Well, they're super athletic. They're just trying to be the best exercising over here.

That's right. That's right. For some under 11 hours. Just under 11 hours. Just under. For context, I'm an ex-pro baseball player. I've always been a bigger guy and never really dealt with knee problems before. I know dropping weight will help in the,

the long run. I'm already down 50 pounds from my highest a couple years ago. Jesus, Mike? Yeah, that's a lot. But right now I'm sitting about where I played professionally, so it's not an unusual weight for me. Any exercises you'd recommend to help get this IT

band sorted so I can get back out there running? I took a few weeks off, then went out and ran a half marathon the other day, and let's just say I found out real quick I was not ready. Any wrecks? Mike. Have you dealt with this, Eric? Yeah, I actually set out my entire freshman cross-country season in college with IT band pain, like so bad that I couldn't, could not run a step.

For me, I had to get a lot of massage and foam rolling to get that under control. But I think generally there can be a little bit of a discrepancy and strength between the base of the outside of the leg and the inside of the leg. So doing some things like clamshells, reverse clamshells might help out with that. and you've, you've had much more recent experience with it. Yeah, and I think recently

the physios have changed how they approach this problem. At least that's what they told me, is that they used to prescribe more foam rolling and massage. And that might help with like certain areas of inflammation,

but the IT band, like you were saying before, the fascia that causes shin splints, it's also, it's fascia there. And so you can't really roll it out the way you can roll a muscle out.

You can, you know, people tell you to roll, out closer to the top attachment or the lower attachment, and that can help. But what is the most helpful unanimously, it seems like, is what you were saying about the clamshells is strengthening those muscles that keep it vertical, keep your hip, your knee, and your ankle in alignment. And that is mostly your glute mead, which is a smaller muscle in your glutes that it helps

this kind of like lateral movement of your knee. So clam shells help a lot. Romanian deadlifts, single-legged Romanian deadlifts, RDLs, as they're called colloquially. Those are really helpful. And Eric, how long did it take for you to go from, can't run, to running again? It was pretty quick. I feel like it was like really bad and then just kind of cleared up. Yeah.

But it took a long time. I mean, from the time that it set on to when I could run again was, I think, like, two and a half months or something. Yeah, that's brutal. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I would also just, yeah, clarify with the foam rolling. Yeah, not directly on the IT band. I've never done that.

It's like the quad muscle that's just next to it. And then like the hamstring that's just next to it, like those tend to just get all like gunky around in there. So like I just, yeah, it's a freaking tendon. You're not going to stretch it out. But the stuff around it can be loosened up. And also on the inside is very important. And you never have problems anymore with it.

no i have an incurable shitty hip which feels a little bit similar that's a scientific term don't trouble yourself is it that's a i think that's a lewis k quote um shit i may i can't say that i think you might have been you can say that i'll take the hate if you can't say that okay um but yeah yeah like loosen up the inside and the outside of the leg and keep the quads loosen all that stuff that's been the best prevention for me paula have you ever had any kind of IT pain

Yeah, I definitely had IT-bound problems, but you guys really answered it really whole and completely. Thoroughly, yeah. It sucks. It really does suck when you get it. Yeah, but it's curable. I mean, my advice that I don't want to give is to take a shit ton of anti-inflammatories. Yeah, well, it does help. I hate to say it does help. In the moment, it helps, but what caused a problem is probably still going to be there the next time. Yeah, that's what they all say. But if you keep taking a shit ton of anti-inflammatories, sure, you'll be bleeding in your stomach,

but you will not have any IT band pain. You just got to weigh that against? Yeah, exactly, the shitty. Terrible hip. A shitty ankle. Oh, that's so funny. Well, thank you guys for listening. I don't know how long we went because we started

and then just let it roll, and we were just chatting for a while before we actually started. Time flies when you're having fun, as they say. Eric, welcome back. you are a swim run champion now. I'm a swim runner. Runist. Completer.

Yeah. Not seriously. Everybody I can't say at enough time to get yourself signed up for one of those. They're super fun. Everybody's super nice. On Nick's Iron Man episode,

how he really had to like, the last sentence was hammering home the point. I mean, Nick just teed that one up for me. Of course. No, I think that's a, I think it's cool. I mean, I still don't want to try one,

but I want to try one like a little bit more than before. Well, Paula, what are you talking about? We're doing one as a team. Oh, yeah. We've already teased it. I think that's like, you know, some people like the sound of that unknown and kind of chaos and some people don't. That's totally, that's totally fine.

I wonder if once we started, Nick, like my, because I was, I'm thinking we'd go into this and do it for fun. But I wonder if my competitiveness would kick in and I'd actually get pretty annoyed with you. Yeah, you would hate me. It was the best story is that I was being told because I went to dinner with Lars Fononger, who started a swim run in the USA. say he had all these old stories of like when Lance Armstrong and Simon Whitfield did a relate to get I mean did a you know a swim run together the Orcus Island one back in like 2018 there's a video about it yeah there's a video on YouTube about it that was cool Simon's done it a couple of times and Simon and Lars did it together and like that is that

the chaos was was Simon and Lance because Lance is like we're we're fucking winning this or I will I will die before we don't win and Simon was like a retired professional triathlet. He's like, I'm trying to chill, dude. I'm having a good time. I mean, on paper, he should be freaking awesome, but also just, you know, was not training that hard. And it was pretty hilarious stories.

Wow. Did they win? They did not win. And apparently the first time that Lance spoke to Simon was two hours in at the top of Mount Constitution when he, like, fully officially realized they weren't going to win, and he decided they could have a conversation. Whoa, heavy.

Because Simon is such a nice, like, peaceful dude. Oh, yeah. He's so kumbaya and fun. And then apparently when he did it with, this is just like ridiculous Simon stuff. But when he did it with Lars, he told Lars he would do it with him, but they couldn't run a single step

because he didn't want to ruin his soccer tournament the next weekend. So they walked? They just walked together for like 10 hours. Oh, my God. And Lars said it was the most amazing thing ever because they just got to have a full on heart to heart for like 10 hours. Nick, I actually think, like,

I think of you as like some middle pack age grouper, but when we actually like start doing a thing hard together, you're super impressive. Oh, Paula, please. I'm not super impressive. No, I honestly think that we would be really similar. We would not be. You would smoke me in the water and want to strangle me and drown me.

And then on the climbs, you would also just, you would literally have to pull me up. The only place is in the descents, I would probably be waiting for you a little bit on the trail of descents. No, you wouldn't because we'd be bungeeed together. If you'd get out my shoulders, piggyback, and run down the trail. The bungee would get so tight that when I jump in the air, I would just fling ahead of you. Yes. Yeah, the bungee on the technical trail is risky.

Risky. It'd be like when I have Flynn tethered to me on his least. leash when we're running and it's a bungee leash. But he really gets it now. He slows down so much on downhills because he knows. Oh, yeah. That he's tethered to me. Until he sees a girl.

Good. Okay. That was a good pod. Thanks, guys. Can't wait for you guys this first race together. Yeah, yeah. We'll talk about you. See you next week, guys.

Bye.