That Triathlon Life Podcast - Getting ready for the first triathlon race of the year, how much faster is swimming with a westuit, hookless wheels, and more!

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

This week, Paula is in Miami to race the first race of 2024 and the first ever race in the T100 series. After talking a bit about the race, we get to your questions about triathlon. Questions about how much faster a wetsuit is compared to a regular swim suit, how to know when to start speed work again after a stress fracture, whether or not to train while sick, how safe hookless wheels are, feeling slow while running on trail, what happened with the AG1 sponsorship, ankle instability while running trail, DIY heel loop for a road/mtb shoe to help in transition, and how to balance triathlon and other fun activities in life.Thank you to our podcast supporters,! You can submit a question for the podcast as well as become a podcast supporter by heading over to ThatTriathlonLife.com

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. And this is going to be really, really interesting because I'm in Ventura. Nick is in Santa Monica. Paula is in Miami, graciously tuning in at 8.30 p.m. Eastern time. And she's there because she's doing the PTO T100 series race. She's a professional triathlet I'm a professional triathlet Nick is a professional musician amateur triathlet and one of our very bestest friends

and this is our triathlon podcast. Thanks for listening. Is Flynn making noises? Flynn is going hard with his toy that is, it's a sloth. Yeah, I can feel, I can hear the dinging. I can hear the dingin. And I'm also not holding my mic

close enough to my mouth. So the audio on this one might be a little rough, but I think it's better than no podcast. It definitely isn't. And you know what? We have Eric on a Lavleer mic set up. Paula recording into her iPhone mic and I'm here.

So I don't want to hear it about the sound quality and the comments, people, okay? You should be so lucky that Paula is staying up past her bedtime to give us her precious time. It's really a hectic day for all of us because Nick, you're flying to Italy tomorrow. Is that right? Yep. Yeah, that's right. Have you packed? Is it 30 minutes?

before I have to leave the apartment. No, then I haven't packed yet. So you're not bringing a bicycle then, I'm assuming. Yeah, no bicycle. It's going to be my grandma is turning 101 years old. So I'm going to go to her birthday party. And then we're going to go skiing in the Dolomites. So no bikes. Wow. Sounds dream, man. Hopefully going to get some snowy trail runs in. So stay tuned for that. But other than that, it's going to be skiing, maybe some strength work as I'm trying to transition back into doing that. And I have not been doing that. So this is the difference between a Nick's amateur position and what Paul and I would do. Paul and I probably would not be going. If we were going, we'd both be packing up a bike each. It would be a massive headache and a nightmare. And in between like breakfast and dinner,

we'd be trying to smush in two or three workouts, not relaxing. That sounds fantastic. Speaking of which, are you riding outside fully while you're there leading up to the race? Are you doing some trainer rides as well? It's definitely doable, but I kind of, they have these feedback trainers here. There's six of them that we can all share. And today I was just a little short on time before dinner, so I set up the feedback. And I swear those feedback trainers are like torture devices.

I'm so used to riding on a direct drive kicker where it feels like the road. But the feedback trainer, they're kind of like a mini magnetic steel drum roller trainer. your rear wheel sits on it and the front goes into the fork and it's so hard to overcome the resistance like it feels like you're just doing squats and panicky and like watts that I should be able to hold no problem or like suffocating. I don't know, it was like a weird feeling.

So the feedback trainers are great if you're in a pinch and you like need to do a spin pre-race but they would not be my first choice for like doing any kind of real training. This is why we always say if at all possible get yourself a direct drive trainer because they just, they feel so much better. Yeah, we get a little spoiled. Okay, so Paula, you're in Miami getting ready for this race this weekend, which by the way,

is which day? Saturday. Saturday at what time, Eastern time? The women start at 4.50 p.m. Eastern time, and the men are before us. So there may be at like 1 p.m. local time, but it's all going to be broadcast and we'll put links to be able to watch it if you want to watch it in stories and such once we have that info. I think the live feed is already on YouTube. You know how they set up like days in advance. This is where it will be playing. So if you search T-100 on YouTube, you'll find it. And I feel like first race of the year, usually people think of in North America, usually people think of Oceanside. And that feels early and people are like kind of reluctant to to go race it. Now, this is a month before that. So I do, how reluctant, I mean, you've been around

other athletes, right? What is the vibe like? Um, I don't know. I, I feel like everyone kind of feels the same way about it on the women's side. I haven't talked to any of the men and they tend to be a little bit more confident, even if it's only outwardly confident. But, yeah, it's early no matter how you slice it. And it's a really long season. I think that's the biggest thing is that it'd be one thing if we were all prepping for this race specifically and working on bike skills all winter and prepping for the humidity and feeling really ready for March 6th.

But people have in mind races that are in November. So reasonably, just for our bodies, we can't be like in prime peak shape right now. Maybe some people are. But yeah, the general vibe is that we're excited to be here. we're happy to be here. The T-100 is awesome. What they're doing is great for the sport, but do I feel like going all out for four hours in a couple days? Not really. At least that's my feelings. Yeah, you're probably not alone. Yeah, I don't think I'm alone. Yeah.

I feel like there's kind of a long list of years that we can look back and look at the person who just had an insane race at Oceanside or maybe Miami when Miami is a pro race and everything. And almost never. Is that person, the person who ends up winning? 70.3 worlds, but if at Oceanside you would say like who won it, like man, they seem like they're a serious contender, but the season is so long, it's so long to be at peak form. And sometimes it's almost a little nerve-wracking if you come and you smash something in April or March. And like, uh-oh, is this too soon?

You know, it's, I got a long time ago. Yeah, I don't want to count myself out before it even starts because I have been training, obviously, and I'm healthy and all that. but I've never started my first race of the year off super hot, and it takes me months to not get, not like to get fitter, but also to get race sharp and like get some races under your belt. And remember what it feels like to really push that extra degree that you don't really do in training.

Like racing is so much harder and not just physically, but mentally, logistically, the travel, all those things you have to get into a groove with. And after you've been on this like, four or five months hiatus basically where yes you're training but you're not doing the racing it's it takes a while like I back in the swing of it for me so just keeping that in mind when I line up that I expect myself to do well at every race but I also have to like be easy on myself if it doesn't go perfectly how much of I'm still kind of thinking about what Eric said about

you know winning the first race of the year let's say random athlete wins it and then rarely are they still performing at that level by the end of the season. How much of that do you think is a mental thing? Like Paul is saying, like getting used to pushing that hard, getting race sharp, getting all the travel stuff dialed, how much do you think it is a mental part versus there's this biological thing where you can't be that fit for that long? Both. Yeah, I would say it's kind of a blend of both and it's probably hard to separate it, you know, and say 10% is this and 50% is this or whatever. Because like the mental sharpness, the level you have to be at to be able to perform at that level, you know, in the two months leading into a race of just like nail this

workout, nail the nutrition, nail the thing, go to sleep. It's just, it's a lot and some people are really good at it and can maintain it for a long time. But I still think even the very best person needs to take a little bit of a break mid-season if you're going to race from March all the way to November. And there's just, there's some people that are taking on some really big calendars this year with all the races that are it's going on. So how are you going to, where are you going to take that break, be it a little bit for your body and a little bit for your brain? Okay, well, let's move on to questions here. And these are questions submitted by our listeners. You two can submit your questions to the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast.

There you can also become a podcast supporter, which helps us keep the podcast going. As you've noticed, we don't do ad reads. And one of the ways that we like to give back to our podcast supporters is by picking a random winner every week to receive a special TTL gift. And right now we're going through Eric Loggestroom and Paula Finley water bottles. We just did get a fresh batch of vinyl decals that are a big TTL circle. They're about three inches in diameter. so if you decide you want one of those more, let Nick know, let us know when you email us.

Yes, and we can send you that instead if you have, like me, too many bottles as it is. Yep. And this week, we put our random number generated to work and found that Shane Dean is the lucky winner. Congratulations, Shane. And thank you, Shane. Really appreciate it. And thank you so much for being a podcast supporter. Okay.

First question here is from Leo. Hey Paula Eric and Nick, I'm a new listener to the podcast from Memphis, Tennessee. I've been learning a lot from the podcast and appreciate y'all sharing your experience to help the triathlon community get better. I got my first wetsuit for my birthday this year, Xtera Volt, and I tested it out in the pool to see how it fit. It felt great, and I swam 10 to 15 seconds faster per 100 yards throughout my entire workout at the same level of effort as usual. Is it normal to see this much of a speed gain when swimming in a wetsuit, or could this be an indication that there is a major issue with my form, and part of my speed increase is from the wetsuit helping me correct the issue. Thanks for the podcast, and best of luck to all this season, Leo.

10 to 15 seconds is a lot. Do you guys think that is outside of the realm of normal? Did we get a starting time? Like, was he swimming at 2 minute 100 or a 130 or a 4 minute? You know what? That's a very astute observation. I would say that this is like kind of a percentage thing potentially. Like for me, I find that it's seven, eight seconds, you know, depending on things. But if, you know, I'm swimming close to a minute per hundred. So if you're swimming at 230 per hundred, for example, that could be like 20 seconds if it's, you know, more percentage-based.

That's funny because I read that and I thought right away like, ooh, 15 seconds is so much. But percentage-wise, it might be just right, just perfect compared to what the Wetsu Manufacturer says you'll get out of it. Yeah. Yeah. But you kind of nailed the, hit the nail in the head with, there's a lot of factors here. And it could be positively impacting your flotation in enough of a way where you're able to put more energy into propelling yourself forward with your arms.

And it just like puts you over that little bit of a hump. Like the kind of thing that happens when you have one of these swim breakthroughs where you're able, the fitness aligns with you learning something new with how to hold your hand. and you just all of a sudden make a huge gain. Like the wetsuit could be facilitating a jump like that. So I personally as like a good swimmer actually see a lot more of a jump in my swim with a wet suit because my legs sink so much versus a lot of really good swimmers, quote unquote, don't see as much relative to a back of the pack swimmer.

That's funny because you are such a good swimmer, Eric. Yeah, I'm kind of an outlier with that. When I put on a wetsuit, it just really cleans up a couple of things in my form, and I just feel like, I just feel real good. Okay, so let's say that a wetsuit does two things. Let's say that it raises your legs up with the flotation of the wetsuit and that it also, just that rubber material on the outside is much, it causes less drag than your skin and a suit. Yeah. What percentage do you think of the speed increase is coming, whatever it may be, seven seconds for you, 15 seconds for Leo.

What percentage of the speed increase do you think is due to the flotation versus the less friction? 70, 80% floatation, 20% friction? Paula, do you feel like, you feel the same? Yeah, probably. Never thought about it. I mean, assuming that you have like a good swimsuit and you're not swimming in a floppy, terrible fitting swimsuit. Yeah. Yeah, I've kind of always been curious about that for faster swimmers,

how much you guys feel that that's the factor. Here's an interesting, the last thing I'll say is when we put on a swim skin, I feel like I get about three seconds per hundred, two to three. And when I put on a wetsuit, it's like six, seven, eight. Yeah. And the swim skin is the friction reducer. Yeah, right. Interesting.

Next question here is from Ryan. Hi, Flynn, Paula, Eric, and Nick. I've come back from a stress reaction and fracture thing in my shin through doing couch to 5K. I'm now trying to determine when and how I reintroduce some speed work into my run training. I'm very aware these are higher risk sessions, and so I wondered what you would prescribe if you had to reintroduce speed to your week. Keep doing what you're doing and all the best for the coming season. I hope you smash it, Ryan.

So Paula, maybe you could kind of shed some light on this since you have come back from stress fractures. Eric, you have two, though, right, in your foot? I've had one stress fracture, yep. Yeah. Yeah, I would say that the best way to incorporate speed is to, like, don't even think of it as speedwork, but doing like hill strides. It's a very low impact way to get fluid activation and a little bit of a heart rate spike

and it's low risk and like walk down the hill after every hill stride. But only do that after you've built in a little bit of like tempo running and you have a little bit of base fitness and don't worry, too much about quote-unquote speed work. Like, we don't do a ton of speed work, Eric and I, but we do definitely start each season with a good chunk of hill strides before we get into more run volume and run work. And these can be as short as like 20 to 30 seconds, you know?

So you're like, it's more of like a form thing and a glute activation. And you'll naturally feel like you're working hard because you're going uphill, but it's not meant to be a max effort. sprint. And if Ryan was trying to get back to speedwork on flat, is there anything that you found when you guys were recovering that helped you know, any kind of like feedback from your body to know, okay, this is okay to do now? After you've done the appropriate amount of rest and build back and mileage without any

increase in speed, then you can kind of start adding it in. but you should know based on how you feel, I'd say. Right, Derek? Yeah, it's really tough because coming off of a stress fracture, a lot of time you have this phantom pain where there's tightness or like you think it's there and you're so afraid of it. You're thinking about it constantly. So I would really err personally just based on my history on like the extreme caution side

of the return to running and everything. Just like focus on biking, focus on swimming. do the uphill running a little bit. But the last thing that you want to do is end up running very strangely because you're protecting that foot because if you're afraid of it. And I would get more to the place where you feel like you can confidently like jump off of a curb or like one of those training blocks in the gym before you start running. Otherwise you can just develop some really weird compensation patterns,

which is not good over time. I do think the hill strides are such a hack, though. You kind of get everything and you don't risk hurting yourself as much. Yeah. Well, I said. Okay, next question here is from Jim. What do you do when you get sick during a training block? Do you take a few days off or do you push through the workouts even though you feel like crap and your numbers are lower than normal?

I recently got sick and took a few days off, but I didn't want to miss too much training. I tried a bike ride, but I was coughing. My heart rate was 15 to 20 beats per minute higher than normal and I had a headache. I finished the ride but I felt awful the whole time. Not sure it was worth it. Is taking time off to speed up recovery better than suffering through the workouts but still getting them done? Thanks for providing this content. Big fan of the podcast, Jim.

I would argue yes. Just get healthy first. Your body is not going to be able to benefit from training while it is trying to repair itself and get back to just being based. line healthy. That's my opinion. Yeah. Yeah, if anything, it just delays the recovery. Go for a walk or a hike or whatever, like get some blood moving, but you don't, you don't need to exercise. I feel like people sometimes forget that it's not the exercise itself that makes you faster. It's the recovery from the exercise that makes you faster. So if your body is really sick,

how do you think it's going to be able to absorb those adaptations? 100%. Yeah, I do, on the flip side, like the one time I got really sick last year was a time trial world championships. And I think your body can do really good things and cool things when you're forced to. But I think that ultimately, like, made my sickness longer by pushing that hard when I was not feeling well. So it's a good experiment. Not to mention here that if you are coughing, like if the age-old thing saying here, if you have heard of it is that if it's below the neck, you should not be doing any kind of training, above the neck in your nose or if you're sneezing. But the coughing, if you feel it in your lungs

or if you have any kind of stomach issues, that's usually when there's just no reason to be training. And I did a little bit of reading on this and you can cause some damage if you are. For example, if you have mono or something and you're sick, you can risk your spleen rupturing. So that's like, if you're really sick, don't do it. It's okay. We should do a disclaimer at least every couple episodes of like, this is what we do. This is how we operate. We're not doctors, though.

You're probably not going to rupture your spleen. I feel like you guys know this to when you're really sick, not trained. But I think an amateur can maybe get a little caught up in the training and forget to take care of their body as their number one priority. Yeah. This next one here is probably a little bit more for Eric, but Paul, if you have thoughts on hookless wheels, we want to hear those two. I, Paul, Eric and Nick, PJ here from Ireland. I have a question about hookless wheels. I just purchased a new set of 65-millimeter hookless wheels for my road bike,

and I've had them set up by a mechanic with GP5,000 STR tires, and I'm running them tubeless. Since sporting them out on the road, I've had some raised eyebrows with regard to concern over the hookless layup and the risk of tire blowouts and their safety. I know Zip R1 brand leading the way with hookless technology, and as both Eric and Paula are sponsored by Zip, I'd be really interested to hear if you guys are running hookless rims

on your road and or T-T-Bikes. And if not, how come? I know gravel and mountain bike have a slightly more accepted use for this tech. Are my wheels safe and can I ride fast, corner and descend with confidence? Thanks for any input regarding this. My wife and I are big fans of the pod and YouTube channel were always inspired to train after.

And I've even started making some videos myself, all the best from Ireland, PJ. So, what percentage of you? of your wheels are hookless guys? All of them. Wow. No hooked rims anymore. The only hooked rims that we have are the Super 9 discs for time trials because they haven't come out

with a hookless version of that. The wheels that I rode to the win in Alcatraz were a prototype set of hookless 8-5-8s. And that is the most chunky, terrible pavement with really hard cornering that you're ever going to find. in a triathlon and in pretty much any road race other than like a Perry Rubei type of a situation. And what, do you remember what PSI you ran on there? Because I think some people are worried about hookless tires with the tires coming off the wheels.

50. 50 is, that's real, that's real low for what most people think you should be running your tires at. I run my mountain bike tires at 16. Yeah, that's great. I think people are a little concerned about the safety of hookless tires, but I was doing some research and I saw that, for example, Zip, specifically, they have a recommended tires to go with their wheels and they test those tires to 150% of what they're rated as. Yep. Yep, there's a list of recommended tires. I would check that out. You can't just throw any old

tire on there. But yeah, I've been running hookless on mountain bikes, running hookless on the road, run my mountain bike tires at 16, 17 PSI corner really hard. It's fine. So what should I put my PSI app for Miami? Since you're not here. I mean, we're going to go on to the zip tire pressure calculator because I haven't, I didn't write it down after the last time. But that's a really cool tool.

If you go on there, you can put in your, what wheel you're using, the, the width of the inner diameter. How do you say this? Like the hook to hook, inner dimension, inner width. And what tire you have and like what, how much you weigh. it'll give you a front tire PSI and a rear tire PSI and you're golden. So Paul, you're going to be somewhere around like, you're going to be somewhere around like 55. And then the rear, since it's not hookless, you're going to be more like 65 or 72.

It kind of rings a bell. Okay. And Eric, do you think you could describe for people who don't understand what the advantages are of hookless? Why is Zip? Why are other companies going towards this? I mean, like the idea behind hookless is that you have these real. really wide rims and you're, there's just like a decrease in friction, as well as rolling resistance because the side wall of your tire is basically straight in line with the rim.

So instead of having the like the classic horseshoe shape where you have like a really skinny rim and then your tire kind of bulges out around that and everything, you just have this straight wall between the rim and the tread that is actually touching the road. And that's a lot lower rolling resistance. You can run a lot lower PSI, not be concerned about pinch flats. I never really understood why lower pressure would be faster. I assumed, like, oh, pump it up so that there's less things touching the road. But every road has, like, so many micro bumps in it.

So when the tire pressure is lower, the tire, like, rolls over those without bouncing up and down. So actually, it's going faster. Is that right? Perfectly said, Paula. Perfectly said. Versus like a rock hard 120 PSI tire is really bouncing up and down over every single bump and imperfection.

Yeah, why not just use a wooden wagon wheel? That's really hard. And this is the same reason why in a track, we do see people still running very high tire pressures because the surface of a track indoors is super smooth and optimized. So that's the one place where it's still advantageous and you can have a smaller amount of rubber on the ground.

Yeah, same with on Zwift. High tire pressure on Zwift. Always. Always. Perfect roads on Zwift. Do you guys like my jokes? When I tell you guys a joke, the delay creates like a three-second wait

and then you laugh at my jokes. We're laughing as soon as we hear it, Paul, I promise. Okay, yes. Eric, do you feel like people are going to be using hookless wheels, like, do you think it's going to fully take over at certain point the way the disc brakes have taken over rim brakes? Of course. When disc brakes came out,

everyone was like, oh my God, that we're going to cut our hands off because of the disc brakes are spinning. No. I don't even really understand that argument of the disc brakes thing being dangerous because they're talking about in a crash, like where people are piling up.

That's the thing, man, about stuff like this. I think there are just a bunch of people out there in the world who are really scared of new things, and they're like, we're going to cut our hands off. And then you ask that person, do you know if disc brakes rotors are sharp or not? They're going to be like, well, it's a fast spinning metal thing, of course. Right. It's not, I don't think it's ever, it is rarely founded in like research or logic.

It's just, this is the first thing that makes me that I think of about this new thing and I don't like new things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, yeah, go for the hook list. It'll be fun. And the future, and faster, and more aerodynamic, and better.

It just feels real good. That's the thing. Riding around at 55 PSI feels really nice. Nice and comfy, a little built-in suspension. Okay, next question here. Hey, Eric, Paula, Nick, and Flynn. I have a question about shoes for you today. I've been running on the on-cloud stratus since last season

and have loved them for running on the road. I just recently discovered a gravel trail to run on, but notice the energy off of my legs just isn't the same as on the road. Would it be beneficial to look into a trail shoe for the times I run on gravel, or is it just a growing pain of the transition off the road? Thanks for the help and best of luck in your 2024 season. Well, I would say just get some trail shoes just so you don't get rock stuck in your clouds. That's my main problem.

Yeah, it's funny because I think of trail shoes as like possibly the slowest shoes you could buy, but that's not the point. I mean, ultimately a trail shoe is going to be a little bit faster because you have better grip, you're more confident. You're not, like there's typically a plate in them that is not for speed, but rather for not having little rocks poking into your foot all the time. This was a super interesting thing. There's Sycamore Canyon here in the Santa Monica Mountains,

where we're staying nearby. Paul and I went running there, and there's this like really chunky little rock section and everything. And I wore my Solomon trail shoes through there. And Paula was wearing, I don't know what shoe, like one of the, the ons and she was saying like god this trail is so terrible and it feels so awful and i was kind of like you're being a baby just whatever suck it up and then the next time we ran through there i didn't have those solomon trail shoes and i was wearing my ons and it was painful like every little

rock was was jabbing my foot and i and i felt like i was going to turn my ankle the whole time and i couldn't believe the difference yeah who's the baby now i wasn't complaining that day no i but I felt like an ass for even thinking that. But to be clear, these were the On like road cloud stratus. They're not, Ron does make a trail shoe. We just weren't wearing the trail shoe. Yep. But it just was a good experiment in like, wow, trail shoes really do make a difference

in not just rock protection and stability, but also we had to do several stream crossings where our feet got absolutely drenched in streams. And Eric says, said that as Solomon's just, drained the water out of them. Whereas my ons were like holding onto water. They're not designed to, you know, be passing streams. So there's a lot of different purposes. Okay, well, this is where I'm going to give my public service announcement of why not buy

trail shoes if you're going to run trail. And I, this is my way that I convince myself that more specific shoes I buy, I'm not costing myself any more money. Because either you put X amount of miles on your regular shoe and then you have to replace it every whatever, let's say, three months, or you can buy three different shoes that you use a third for trail, a third for road, and a third for, I don't know, long, days. And each one of them then accumulate a third of the amount of miles per given time period, and you end up having to replace this shoes at this, your dollar spent amount is

the same. Plus, you get a more specialized shoe. That's a little more, for me, it's a little more fun to know, like, ooh, I get to use my trail shoes today. Or it's like, oh, this is specifically for my long run. You know, you're not, it's not like, I'm trying to think of, they don't expire, you know?

No, there's no downside at all. So, and it's fun. So, I would agree. I will say. Except for the upfront cost. Yeah.

Whatever. But if you spread, if you think of it, like you said, Nick, over the course of two years, it's all going to be the same. Um, but yeah,

trail shoes are awesome. I really recommend. Next question is from Sam. Hey, TTL team. Assuming this has been asked by a million and one people, but please can we get the story behind AG1 pulling the sponsorship deal if it's not too sensitive. Hope you have a great race in Miami, Sam. Okay, is this too sensitive?

Yes, one million and one people have asked about it. Do we feel like talking about it? Yeah, I feel like talking about it 100%. Oh, boy. Yeah, I guess there's not really that much to say about it, except for this is like a very unheard of thing that's never happened. us before. And we really only like partnering with brands where we really like the product. We really get a good feeling from the people. And all of that we did with AG. And we've been using it

for a year. We talked to them first at Lottie in the summer. We had a meeting with AG, the main guy that does kind of the athlete partnerships. He's an awesome guy. And we were talked a little bit about like financials and the amount and all of that and it was both parties seemed happy. And then Christmas comes and, you know, it's like everyone's out of the office for like six weeks and delays and all this. And by January, we have to like get our kits ready because I'm racing on March 6th. Then you need to submit designs and logos and all that. So we had like word of mouth, good faith, back and forth with AG with logo placements, looks good. And no, can you make the logo bigger, put it here, like, fully like you do with your partner,

your partners that you trust. And the contract was like, okay, it's going back and forth between their legal team, and it's getting finalized and promised and promised and promised. And it did ultimately, they sent us a contract. It was what we expected for money. It was only about three or four weeks ago now, so quite late. but we still, like, believed it was happening. And then two days after we got the contract in our inbox,

we get a phone call from the guys saying that their budgets are frozen, they're pulling out of sponsoring us. So we have their logo all over our training kits, all over our racing kits. We trusted them. I mean, ultimately, it's really our fault for putting a logo on our kits without having a signed contract. Very rookie mistake, I guess.

but we were so, I mean, it's a requirement in the contract that we have their logo on our kits. So what are we going to do? I guess insist that we get the contract earlier. Ultimately, what we were trying to do was we were trying to protect Castelli, which is over half of a decade-long sponsor of ours and one of our best sponsors that we've ever had. We were trying to protect them from having to remake our kits in two months with an AG1, logo on it and going through that whole process. And yeah, we had so much back and forth and positive interaction with AG1 that this didn't feel like much of a risk. And we wanted to make sure that we were doing the best we possibly could for all of our sponsors and just, I don't know. I would much

rather go through life, giving people the benefit of the doubt and thinking positively about things and like constantly having our guard up for like getting effed over. And sometimes this kind of thing happens. I liked the idea of the product. I felt positive about I'm doing something for myself and I think on a long timeline it can be beneficial. I know that the things have come out saying whether or not it is, but I feel like it was a good part of my morning routine and I like that. That being said, when I see the bag of it now in the fridge, it just makes me so frustrated and angry that that'll probably be the end of it for me. Ultimately it's not going to it's. Isn't that funny? Ultimately it never was a replacement for getting a lot of vegetables at dinner and

having a salad and eating as healthy as possible, but it felt like a positive life thing that could, you know, fill in some gaps. So that's where I'm out with it. Yeah, it's like now that we see it makes our blood boil versus like, oh, this is a positive thing for my health, you know? It's like the opposite effect. Spikes my fucking cortisol. It's funny because, Eric, the way you just described it, it kind of reminded me, I was reading this week about, like, protein intake when timed with exercise. And we used to, I don't know if you remember this, or I don't know if you guys were ever,

and maybe it was just for people who were lifting weights and it never got to the endurance world. But this idea that you want protein as soon as possible after you finish exercise, like the sooner the better because there's this window where you can absorb it more readily. And the research I found recently showed that as long as you're getting enough protein throughout the day, that is the most important part. Timing it perfectly with the end of your exercise is not nearly as important as everyone thought it was at the time. But the one benefit is that having that smoothie after you exercise, it kind of like tells your brain and body to go into rest and recover mode. And I feel like having the AG one in the morning, it was kind of like a little ritual of like,

I'm taking care of my body, I'm doing this healthy thing. It's the first thing I'm doing today. And there is benefit in that. Tell you what I'm still doing is I'm having a glass of water while I make espresso in the morning. That's what I'm keeping on track with. Yeah. Yeah. Hydrate ourselves. Yeah, it's a crazy thing, but I get to go do all my PTO photos tomorrow with that logo on my kid. Yikes. Hopefully they'll edit it out, though. They take PTO pictures from like every microscopic angle of your body so they can

like use it on graphics in every scenario, you know? Like look it up, look it down, look to the right, left to left. So I can have to edit out AG from like seven million pictures. But that's okay. Before you post yours send it to me and we'll like edit it to say like, instead of AG1. Why don't we just... A positive, cool thing

is, I think tomorrow they're doing the announcement, but we're putting the Orca logo there. Because we are partnering officially with Orca, which was never our intention to be clear when we left a board, decided to do wetsuit testing,

wear what we like best. We were very generously sent wet suits by Zone 3. sailfish, arc, orca. And we truly, roca, we really liked every wetsuit we tried, but both Eric and I genuinely liked orca the best. And we would wear it contract or no contract. That was the most comfortable to us. And it turns out the orca people are amazing. They wanted to work with us. They found some budget, even though it was really late in the year. And we're officially going to

partner with them this year and beyond for wetsuits, swimskins, goggles, the whole thing. They do really cool stuff. We know we like the product because we've tested every suit in their lives. And we are, it's a logo. We are more than proud to be able to put in that spot that AG was in. And it's not like, oh, we need to find a sponsor to replace AG. It's more just like, oh, we have this great spot on our kits now. Let's put Orca there because we like Orca. I'm so excited. I cannot remember ever being so excited about a partnership as this. And I would be happily going through the process that we're going through for free.

Because, like, you know, we have these conversations with companies like, oh, it would be really cool to do a product with you and a lunch and TTL's neat. And then you get down to it and nobody wants to follow through. But every single thing we've talked about with them, we've got caps on the way. We've got swimsuits on the way. I say like, oh, we really like this cool Ferrari car. can we make a swimsuit looks like that? And they're like, here's some mockups.

We'd love to do it. And like, wow, this is freaking awesome. This is the dream. They want to make a swimsuit exactly to the specifications that Paula wants to fit and feel exactly the right way. It's just freaking cool. It's what you dream of.

Just to confirm, Eric tells me this about once a day about Orca. And he's like, no, they want to do the... I don't want to give away anything, but we're going to make... We're going to make the cool stuff with Orca. But it's like, oh, they want to make the X or they want to make the Y. It's like, all right, how about this design for like a swim cap? So, it's going to be great.

With like mockups of the swim caps the next day. It's so crazy. They're so on it. Yeah. Anyway, we're super excited about it. I don't know. Maybe this will be like pre. I think they're doing the announcement Thursday.

Some of you might hear this before the official Instagram post, but it's what you get for being a... I think I saw that it was going to be like 8 a.m. our time or something on Thursday. Oh, okay. All right. It might be... If you listen to this podcast, you know, if you're in Australia listening to this podcast, you're just getting some fresh, spicy new news.

We have a lot of UK listeners. and European listeners that will hear it first. But lucky them. That's what you get, first of the party. So thank you guys for talking about the AG1 stuff because I know it's not very fun to talk about, but people were very curious about what the heck happened. And I feel like we matched that with some really good news about Orca.

So at least we have that. Yeah. Next question here is from Danielle from Long Island. And this is another trail running question that I thought was really interesting. What's up, TTF? fam, question for you all on trail running. I dabble into trail paths on occasion, and every time I do, I really enjoy it, but I feel like

I spend 90% of my time praying not to roll my ankles. Coming from a lacrosse background, my ankles are rubber bands at this point and seemingly roll at will. Is this purely a strength and stability issue? Does everyone go through this, and is it a part of the trail journey? Maybe my shoes suck. I'd love to be able to do more, but with Iron Man does my focus, I'm afraid to injure myself on a simple zone two fun run in the woods.

So you guys do trail running But the trails you do are I would I would equate them to gravel running more so usually Would you say that's fair? How dare you Sorry No, I would not say that Nick Bend has like insane trails that you run on those trails I thought you mostly did dirt roads

When I'm with you it's mostly dirt roads Well when we're with you, we just take you to the to the JV stuff So we don't get you hurt Oh wow the truth comes out on the podcast that hurts No, no, like honestly, when the times that you've been in town, we have kept it a little bit more mellow just because like the trails that are runable from our door in the course of a 50-minute run are a little bit more mellow.

But like we ran Smith Rock with you. Paul has been getting much more into running in the Phil's Trail network, which is single track. It's not rocky, but it's turning, it's twisty. Oh, you could twist an ankle on those fails trails for sure. Yeah, no problem. But yeah, Paula might actually have the best insight on this just because she has had ankle concerns

and has had ankle surgery in the past and stuff. I've kind of been blessed with really... No, I haven't. I haven't had surgery, Eric. I thought you did have some sort of a major issue with the one ankle. Just the knee? Well, it has not been operating on it. Okay.

Well... But, yeah, I have... You tell me frequently that it is broken, so that's what I'm going off of. Surgery is like the last. resort. Last last resort. And my dad's a brain surgeon, so I'm not against surgery, but I am against surgery when you can fix it by rehab. Right. And physio, of course. Et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, but what is the question? The question is, do you think that having, like, twisting your ankles and

having very weak ankles is a normal part when beginning to trail run? For me, I didn't ever go through a period of that when I started trail running. No, but I, but I'm not necessarily like the quintessential triathly, you know. I grew up in Portland and the running in Forest Park there is incredible, super twisty. I just, and my coach of like cross country and triathlon back in the day was all about doing as much trail running as possible. So I just kind of grew up in it. And as you get into trail running at that age, like 15, 14, like you still have pretty good ankles from just being a kid, I think, and doing a lot of dynamic movements. But I, I, my philosophy is definitely like

if we all just did some trail running all the time, you wouldn't have to do a lot of the ankle exercises and mobility and strength just because you get that naturally. But since a lot of people in triathlon have come in from just a pure, maybe you don't live near a trail and you're just running through the suburbs

and everything and you put in a lot of miles in this one direction, very low stimulus, and then you try to go run trails, yeah, I could definitely see this being a problem. Yeah, a good thing to do is like get one of those blow-up stability foot things or a mobile board or something like that. You can do just a little bit of ankle stability where it goes a long way. It doesn't have to be 15 minutes a day. It could be two minutes a day of standing on it while you brush your teeth or something.

And like the little pro preceptive muscles get worked a bit. And I think all of that can make a big difference if it's something you're concerned about while running. I was just trying to think, Eric, about why I've never really had ankle sprain issues, and I think it's because I grew up dancing. Like, yeah, I was a swimmer, but I was also, like, doing ballet and tap and jazz. And, like, that really strengthens, not just your ankles, but, like, your whole system. So I wasn't just swimming and getting floppy loose ankles. I was complimenting it with dancing.

But, yeah, it really depends on what you grew up doing. Yeah, my God is telling me for someone that has a history in lacrosse and this sounds like kind of a pretty specific situation that might be worth going to a physio or a PT or someone for like even just one consultation and explaining your situation

to them and seeing if they have a good routine of things that might specifically address whatever instabilities you have. Again, we're not doctors. Yeah, yeah. But if you get into it, we all love trail running. So it's probably a worthwhile endeavor

and it'll help with those zone two run? I would say so. Okay, next question here is from Brett. This is kind of an easy one, and I think Eric can just kind of rattle this one off. But hey, TTL crew, this one is for Eric. I recently have switched to road cycling shoe for comfort, but the only super minor thing is that they don't have a loop to help pull them on like a tri-specific shoe. The other day, I was re-watching the Xtera Germany video and saw Eric gluing what appeared to be loops on the back of one of his shoes. Any information on what type of glue you use for this? Tips, how do they hold up? from Brett. I don't even know if I came up with this or if Paula came up with it, but yeah, you can

use it like a piece of old shoelace or like I use the cord. There's like these cords that are pretty hefty that come on like some, uh, the Castelli hang tags, just, just something that's sturdy. And then we just use gorilla glue, like super glue. Oh, gorilla glue. Shoot, I really need to buy some of that before this race. Just like the more toxic, the glue, the better it is. And does it stay on? past the race? What do you do with that? Yeah, forever.

Yeah, they're pretty close to forever. I've had one of them come off, and I've done this with like six pairs of shoes now. Wow. So Gorilla Glue is your answer, Brett. Good luck. Do you buy Gorilla Glue at like the grocery store? You could probably get it at like a ride aid,

maybe the grocery store. Like there's probably like a little home improvement cleaning section. I bet you could get it almost anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Either gorilla glue or just super glue that has like the green tip and you got to be real careful not to touch it with your fingers.

Yeah, because that's e-sticky. Okay, and last question here is from Jeff. Hi, TTR team. Love all the content you create. I found the podcast last year and it inspired me to expand beyond cycling and try triathlons and doathlons. I've been insatiably listening and watching to your episodes and have gone back to the earlier episodes that I've missed. My question is, how do you balance your training and other hobbies in your life? outside of my regular job, I have so many interests that I can't focus on training for triathlons.

I do a variety of cycling disciplines, started as a road cyclist, but also got really into mountain bike, and occasionally do gravel races and cycle cross as well. Add to that, camping or hiking trips throughout the year, which is also what my wife enjoys, so clearly I have no focus. What should I do? Thanks for doing what you do. It's inspiring, Jeff. Keep doing all the things. I don't understand why you need to be focused. If you're trying to be a multi-sport athlete, you just I mean if your goal is to be the fastest possible do athlete or triathlet then then you prioritize that but otherwise I say just like be comfortable showing up to the events meeting people getting a little better every year and do all the activities I'm super into that and do you think that there's like I don't know I mean skiing

he also does skinning I don't know what boot packing is but have you ever heard of boot packing bootpacking is when it's too steep to use your skins and you take your skis off put them on your back and you like climb up the mountain like kicking holes in the snow it's whoa okay so yes i don't think it's like an activity in of itself or at least not one i would do but necessary able to get a little bit further up the mountain a means to an end so what we do is like yeah in the winter time if if we want to go do like a four hour ski you know that's like whatever two hours two and a half hours of going uphill we'll do that instead of a long bike ride on the trainer. And I will frequently go out and do intervals on my gravel bike instead

of my TT bike if I just feel like the day is perfect for it and I don't have a triathlon next weekend. I think fitness is fitness and as long as your bike fits aren't crazy different, we love riding all of our different bikes. And does that make us 0.01% slower on the TT bike at the end of the day? Maybe, but we're happy. That's the thing here is that most of these activities that Jeff is listing require aerobic fitness and can build aerobic fitness. So you kind of get your, you can, it's a win-win a bit. Yeah, I think so. It's all fitness. And Jeff, just a reminder like Eric's saying, not only do they switch up the kind of bikes they use, but they'll do, you know, they'll skin up mountains in the, in the winter and they're professional.

So if they can get away with it, you certainly can allow yourself to have fun and do whatever you want to do. Yeah, totally. We could go longer, but it's like almost 10 p.m. here and I really need to go to sleep. So I think we may have to cut it. Nick needs to pack for Italy and edit this monster. That's true. Eric needs to get himself fed and entertain Flynn some more, maybe. Can I see Flynn in the, in the face time? Oh, he's asleep. Oh, good boy. He loves his new Airbnb. Yeah. Yeah, the day before I left for this race, We moved Airbnb's. That was a lot. That was a bit stressful.

It was a lot of a day. It all worked out, though. Yeah, the place we stayed before was awesome. The guy that set that up for us is amazing, but we couldn't stay there for two months, so we had to get a new one. But you guys are still home-based Ventura. Paula, you're in Miami,

racing the first race of the year, and the first ever race of the T-100 series of any year. That's true. The inaugural. It is an historic moment. I know it's crazy. I won the first PTO race ever, Daytona. Oh, yeah.

Wow. I won the inaugural PTO race. Wow. I'm just at all the firsts. Well, we just want you to be healthy and have a good time. That's what Eric and I want more than anything else. Just go out, go hard. Well, I can guarantee you that I will not have a good time, but I will try to stay healthy.

Yeah, I know that feeling. All right. Well, when you come back, we'll have a great time. I really wish I was there right now. But we all, all of us feel like this. All of us feel like this. We're all in the same boat. That's it.

Thanks for listening, everybody. Yeah, thanks, you guys. Talk to you soon. Bye.