That Triathlon Life Podcast - How much race pace running for 70.3 triathlon training, race day warmups, and more!

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

This week we start out with some Bike Tech with Eric regarding chain degreaser and lube, and then move onto more questions from our listeners! Questions about ideal cycling destinations, why pros put their watch on in T2, why certain pros don't use their top sponsor wheels all the time, race mechanics working on too many bikes, headwear choices for racing, efficiently getting into cycling shoes after T1, recovery times as the season progresses, and more! If you would like to become a podcast supporter as well as submit your own questions to be potentially answered on the podcast, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com

Hey, everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Eric Loggerstone. I'm Nick Goldston. This is our podcast where we talk about triathlon, we talk about what's going on in triathlon. We do some race recaps if we've just raced. Eric and I are both professional triathletes. Have been for a really long time. So we know a little bit about the sport and what's going on. And Nick is an amateur triathlet, professional musician, brains behind the sound and audio quality of the podcast. and just in general making sure it happens every week. But Nick is actually very sick right now, although he's still here.

I do have someone to blame, actually. My sickness is not blameless. I took it upon myself while skiing to find a pool and go swim 3K meters at a pool. And do you want to know how I was rewarded with sickness? I got sick from the freaking pool from some little. bucket of disease that was swimming in the pool. It's not conclusive, but that's certainly what I'm taking away from this. Don't go swimming while on vacation, I guess unless you love swimming.

It actually wasn't bad. I did enjoy it. It wasn't bad, but I feel a little betrayed that it's what ended up getting me sick. I feel like just so we don't come across as pretentious immediately, if you're listening to the podcast for the first time, Nick does not frequently vacation skiing in Italy. His family is actually Italian. Nick is actually Italian. is this is normal.

It's true. And my grandma turned 101 and I was there for her birthday. My grandma who lives in Italy. So it was actually a very fun trip and the skiing was fun and I got to spend time with my parents. That story that you posted of your grandma walking down the stairs just like she's 25 years old. I know. It's crazy. I can't even walk down the stairs like that.

And she's wearing heels. I know. And she doesn't leave the house without those heels. She's always wears those heels. They're only like two inch heels or whatever. but yeah but when you see like the video that you posted you should just post that on your main feed it's so impressive but she walks out of the house got got the umbrella up and then you expect her to like kind of be limping down the stairs you know like a 101 year old wood but she's just like

boop bo bo bo pops down the stairs and it's not like she knew i was filming her that's just how she goes down those are her stairs that's how she goes down those stairs every day yeah so crazy Hopefully you can live still your 101, Nick. Her secret is have a whiskey a day. Don't be afraid of drinking red wine. Also on it. But then I will say she does eat very healthy, but not that she cares to.

Like she never thinks I'm going to eat healthy. She just eats whatever she wants to eat, which ends up being pretty healthy. And then she just kind of eats at the same time every day. She did start exercising at like 93. She got a personal trainer. She wanted to work on her flexibility of her shoulders. But before that, not exercising.

She said it improved a lot. Before that, though, she was not like a skier, run, or walker, anything. She skied a bit, but it was before, I mean, it was a long time ago. You know, she's 1001 now. But I will say that she did, when she was younger, she rode a bike a lot. She rode a Bianchi a lot. And there was even one story, and if you've ever been to Italy and you've been in the Dolomites, She rode from a town called Enya

all the way to the top of, I don't know how to say in English, but in Italian it's Pasocella, which is Cella Pass, I guess, without ever putting her foot down. And I think apparently at the time, the roads were not paved at Paso Cella. So it was like a kind of a challenging climb.

And I don't know what the bikes were like back then, but I don't think they had a D.I.2 with 12 speed in the back. Okay. So what I'm getting out of this is the secret tell long life is to drink whiskey, red wine, and ride a Bianchi on gravel. Eric, I feel like you're kind of most of the way there. I'm going to live 150. This sounds like you.

Yeah, but you also don't like go and do intervals on the bike and in the pool and exercise for six hours a day and be stressed out of your brains and go on Instagram. Those are the things that we cannot do anymore. That's true. But she was, I mean, she tells me stories about World War II. Like she did have to go through that. in Mussolini, Italy. So there's definitely a heavy amount of stress in her life.

And then her husband ended up dying. And she had to take over the company, a very, very big construction company in Italy, and raise a bunch of kids. So she's kind of had an interesting life with a lot of stress. But now she's very healthy still at 101. That's cool. What's her name, Nick? Her name is Marina.

Marina. Marina. That's a pretty name. Yeah. There's an Italian song to, Marina, Marina, Marina. That everyone sings to her. That's cool. Okay.

Anyway, back to triathlon stuff. I wanted to say that we have done some very fun polls on, it's a Spotify podcast feature where you can do polls that people can vote on. And I wanted to give some updates on these polls. One of them that we did was, what time do you usually go to bed? And it was kind of a perfect bell curve. And I had one, two, three, four, five, six, six,

seven options. The earliest one was 8.30 or earlier, and the latest one was 1130 or later. The most popular option was 10 o'clock. So it's kind of, as far as podcast listeners, 10 o'clock seems to be the average time to go to sleep, which is close to what you, Eric and Paula, do, right? Maybe you're a little bit earlier than that. You're like 9.15. I think we always try to get in bed around 9.30, but it usually, I say, Paula, you usually make it into bed in 930 and I kind of fall around 10. If I'm not in bed yet and I see a 10 on the clock, I'm like, oh my God. Am I a professional athlete?

This is horrible. I need to be sleeping right now. So 10 is super late in my mind. But in reality, yeah, that's probably the time we actually like start snoozing at. It kind of depends whether or not, you know, there's like a latest drive to survive season or the oilers playing. That really. Yeah, sometimes the oilers play to like 10 or later. Okay, I have a question.

What do you guys? guys, do you have a name that you call non-athletes? Friends? You know, have you ever heard the term NARP, non-athletic, regular person? Yeah, I figured that's where you're going with that. Or like a muggle, you know, people sometimes use the term muggle too. I feel like that's very condescending, though. I mean, I guess, yeah.

But I guess where I was going with this is I wonder how this 10 o'clock bell curve compares to the non-athlete community. I wonder if they're later than that, or if that's just kind of an adult thing. People go to sleep at 10 o'clock. I would be interested actually to see the wake-up time more than the sleep time, because I think that's where the differentiation occurs between maybe a professional athlete or someone that's just waking up to work or someone that's waking up at 5 to go swimming. I think a lot of athletic working people get up early to exercise. Which is so backwards because those are the people that need the most sleep.

Well, if you go to bed early, you know, once it's dark or I don't know. I assume that if I stop exercising for a good period of time, which is I just experience during the off season, like I sleep less and less. And my mind goes harder and harder and it's harder to fall asleep. And I assume, I would assume non-athletic people, have a bit of that. Yeah. Interesting. And then the other one here, which was from a few weeks ago, is do you normally follow

professional triathlon racing. And 80% of people said yes. 6% of people said no. And 14% of people said only when Eric or Paula race. Really? That's super interesting. Show that to our sponsors. Yeah.

I knew there would be a portion of people that only watch when you guys are racing. I mean, I'm a bit guilty of that. We've gotten into watching women's cross-country mountain biking, but we watch the men's one out of every four times. And that's just because, like, we met Kate Courtney, and then we went and watched it

when Paula raced world championships UCI last year. And so we've gotten kind of attached to it because you know the personalities rather than, oh, look, a person in blue and a person in green. And I don't know, who knows what's happening? I'm not attached to anybody.

Yeah, I do think that's what's so fun about professional triathlon is that most of us, if we want to, we can get a lot of context to who's racing based on whatever their content they're creating. You and I were talking about this, Eric, about how that might be a thing that's a little bit unique to triathlon. What other sport has all of this insight?

I do feel like triathlon is pretty ahead of the curve with the sheer volume of athletes that have a YouTube channel specifically and feel like they need to or, you know, whatever their reason is, share a pretty deep inside look at their life. I don't think there's as many basketball players or football or baseball players who you can find out as much about what they're doing day to day and what their training is like in their whole life. Paula, why do you think we have that in triathlon? Why do you think it's not as common in other sports? Because Talbot and Eric started doing it and then ever now everyone's doing it. And in other sports that people are making enough money that they just don't need to. You don't think it was bound to happen? I don't know. It's interesting because I think in sports like hockey or baseball or even cycling, like the athletes are making more money than triathletes potentially and they don't need to. Like is the need for someone that's kind of like up and coming and on the brink of success and they feel like they need a YouTube channel to impress potential sponsors or get more in that realm. It's it feels like a little bit of a

desperate attempt to make it. That's what's cool about the two of our channels as like the OGs, if you will, that we both had a different take and a different way that we like to look at things. And I think Talbot is really fantastic at looking at what the people want to see and experimenting and doing stuff. And I'm a little bit more like, here's how I want to do this. And I'm not necessarily getting paid directly for it. So I'm going to do it a little bit how I want. What I'm saying is I think a lot of people have started a YouTube channel because they feel like they have to.

Yes. Yeah, that's right. It's just because they feel like they need to and it ruins it a little bit. And it's every single person at T100 Miami had like a guy videoing for them. And it was just out of control. Like you went to the pool and there's like 17 cameras. It was just insane. It was too much.

So I don't know. I'm guilty of watching. it. I watch a lot of them even if they're not good. But Eric definitely doesn't. Right. Anyway, this is a huge tangent. What was the... Before we get too far along, we got a really exciting thing coming up next week that'll happen before we put out next week's podcast. We are going to be finally dropping our shred till bed collection, which is primarily... Yeah, I'm so excited about this. I'm more excited about this

than I've been in for anything in a long time because two guys have helped to out with a help me us out with it it's uh danny gardner designed this artwork and then christian done is actually hand screen printing this is a two color print on crazy beautiful beautiful high quality paper he is a graphic design professor he knows how to do this stuff and we're going to be printing 100 limited edition prints of this shred till bed artwork um that we're going to put up for sale on t-sday we'll also have a small run of t-shirts available and This is just really exciting for me because we've done a lot of stuff already that has like our logo just on it. But this is the first thing we've done.

It's like an artist collaboration. It has like such a cool backstory, how the artwork came around and how it's been printed. It's really, really neat. Yeah, it's not the kind of poster where it's just like print 500 and it's like do, do, do, do, you know. He's actually hand doing each one. Like it's a time consuming ink is different color onto this paper. It's so cool. It's mind blowing.

It's like literally like art. So if you want to hang it in your house, it's the kind of thing where it would be appropriate to frame it nicely once you receive it if that's something you want to do. But you could get a really nice frame for it with glass or whatever it is to preserve it and hang it in your pain cave. Or even just in your house, like Eric has it in his office. It's really cool. So I personally think that 100 is not going to be enough. I think they're going to sell out in five minutes. Yeah, I think they're going to sell out for sure.

Yep. So if you want to know the exact time and day that it drops, follow the Instagram, look at the website. We'll have a little countdown timer as well. It's going to be Tuesday, though. Yep. It's going to be on Tuesday. Yeah, it's super cool.

And each one will be numbered one through 100. You're going to have literally someone's going to get number one, someone's getting number 13, somebody's getting number 22. It's so cool. Don't be requesting numbers, though. Yeah. If you request a number, you'd better. send $500 to my vetmo.

Because I don't know how to do that. But I agree with Paula. I would frame this. Yeah, for sure, frame it. And also, Nick, Nick's mom is like a very, very amazing artist. Sent us a beautiful painting of the Dolomites that she did in an amazing frame with glass. So Nick knows a lot about framing and like the appropriate way to film something that you care about or to frame something that you care about.

And usually that's not just order. a poster frame on Amazon. There's like better than others, right? I mean, the frame that my mom's work is in is like $600. So I don't think that's a little bit overkill. But there's... No, no, of course. Yeah. I think that the problem with like the really cheap Amazon frames is also that they're

not that structurally great. Because I've ordered one before and I'm like, wow, this is barely held together. Yes. So I don't know. I'm sure wherever you live, there's like a place that will frame stuff that you can actually like look at what the frames look like. Maybe this is overkill, but it's a really cool poster and it's on

good paper and it's handmade. I just feel like it's worth it to put it in a frame. Totally. Like a $100 or $200 frame, I think it's worth it. But whatever. Let's move on to questions. And in case you're new around here, we get questions from podcast listeners

and then we try to answer them. And Eric and Paula have all this experience or they kind of try to answer them with their own experience. You two can submit your questions, at That TriathlonLife.com slash podcast. And also there is a possibility there to become a podcast supporter. And if you're a podcast supporter, you're helping the podcast go along because, as you can tell,

we don't do ads here. So look into that. We really appreciate it. And we also, every once in a while, throw in a little bonus content if you're a podcast supporter. We also like to do something kind of fun, which is pick a random podcast supporter that will win a little TTL item. And right now we're giving out bottles.

So this week we used our random number generator and Maggie Lorry, Lorry, Lorry, Maggie, you are the winner this week. Congratulations. So Maggie, please just reach out to me and make sure that your address is right and we'll send you a bottle once Eric and Paul are back in Bend, which has been a while now.

These are purest bike bottles in case you're thinking you're getting like a bottle of wine or something. Oh, nope, not wine. No, they're empty bottles, sadly. They're empty bottles, but they're really high quality bottles. So thank you so much, Maggie, for being a podcast supporter. Appreciate it. First thing we're going to do, as far as questions, is we're going to do a little bike tech with Eric.

Okay, here it is. This is from Robbie. From Portland, by the way. Eric's home city. Oh, nice. Hi, Paula, Eric, Nick and Flynn. First of all, congrats, Paula on your P4 in Miami. I can't wait to hear your race recap on Thursday.

This was sent in before we did last week's episode. I have a question that is probably best. for bike tech with Eric. I took the advice that I'm sure you would have given me and bought a new bike, Trek Checkpoint SL6 ETAP, if you're interested. Naturally, I immediately took it out for Shred and Forest Park and came back with myself and my bike completely covered in mud. My question is, what is the best way to clean the drive terrain after a ride like this on a new bike? I've heard that factory loop is the best loop for the chain, so is it worth just spraying down the drive train with water as best you can, or should I just clean it with some degreaser and put new

lube on it? Thanks, Robbie, from Portland. I would get the hose out for the mud. You don't want to use like a super high pressure, like direct the jet function. I would use like the spray function on like one of those multifunctional nozzles. You just basically don't want to spray water directly into bearings, the bottom bracket, the headset, that kind of thing. The opposite of how I've been cleaning your bike. lately? Oops, babe. What do you mean how you've been cleaning my bike lately? As if you've cleaned it numerous times?

Yeah, I have cleaned it numerous of times. Okay. Full jet blast right into the cassette. That explains the grinding. Don't do that. Don't do that. Oops. But yeah, I would do that to get off all the major big particles, give it a wipe down.

If the chain is actually greasy, you could use some de greaser on it. But again, you're just going to make sure that you've got that pretty well dried off before applying lube of your choice. So I like the muckoff degreaser. Like there's like an organic one, kind of like an eco-friendly one. What do you usually use, Eric? I actually don't know the brand of the spray that I have, but I don't use de greaser very often because ever since we started using a wax. Oh, of course. high-quality wax-based loop.

I use squirt. Our chains really don't get greasy. They just kind of get dusty from the dust and bend. So a hose will do a pretty good job, and then I just wipe down the chain really well with a microfiber cloth, and then I apply new drip wax. And then every once in a while,

I'll do the full de-grease, take the chain off, and go crazy. I just ordered today. I just ordered it was sold out for a while, but today it was available with a silka kind of chain wax system. So it keeps the waxed. a very specific temperature, and there's a little thing above it where you can actually hang the chain on it, so it's all kind of like perfectly. It's like you walk you right through it.

Yep, I'm excited. That's awesome. Yeah, we actually have that as well. I just haven't, haven't utilized it yet. Yeah, nice. And then the question that was in there, though, another one was, how do you feel about the lube that comes from the factory on chains versus aftermarket loop? Um, you know, honestly, I don't know that much about the lube that comes from the factory, but I would pretty quickly switch over to a lube that the bike shop recommends. Like I said, I think the squirt lube is really good. They're wax stuff for like dirt, for rain, for all the things. So that's what I recommend.

When I did some reading on this, it said that the factory lube is kind of, it functions more as an anti-rust than it does an actual lube. It's not really a great lubricant. So, yeah, just as you said. Yeah, that's not talking. Okay, cool. Well, that's that. And we'll move on to our regular listener submitted questions.

Only one question of a bike type with Eric? Yeah, that was a big one, I thought. So, first question here is from Kevin. What's up, TTR crew? My questions today are about race day warmups. Do you do your warm-ups by distance for each discipline, or do you do them based on feel? Does the length of the race change how much or how little you warm up?

Sprint versus Olympic versus 70.3? and does the length of a race determine what kind of warm-up you do, like a tempo effort or just moving to get the body warmed up. Thanks for all the insight, hoping to see you all in the Bay Area this summer. Best of luck, this season, Kevin. So is you talking about race-specific or more like workouts? Race morning? Yeah, race morning.

Oh, race morning, okay. I honestly don't really do much of a warm-up. I usually just swim. Maybe like a five-minute jog. They'll swim a little bit beforehand. Yeah, swim before the start. But otherwise, 70.3s are so long. As long as you're like warm, physically warm

and not standing there freezing, I think that's the best way to start these races, especially when they're really early in the morning. So you don't really do anything for your legs. Maybe you jog, but you don't really do any like openers or anything like that. Like in Miami, I didn't do anything except swim for 10 minutes. Is that because you were afraid of getting too hot?

A little bit, but. I felt it was fine. I mean, you're not running until three hours, four hours into the thing. You're going to be warm by then. Right. What about you, Eric? Do you usually try to do a little warm-up thing? I know that you like to be able to ride to the beginning of races.

Is that a big part of it for you? Yeah. I feel like for me, the warm-up is more just like muscle activation and just getting blood flowing and feeling not like that kind of tight race morning nerves, whatever, just loosening up more than anything. So my ideal scenario is, yeah, I ride for 10, 15 minutes to get to the race start. And then when I get there, I'll jog around for five minutes and maybe do a stride. And I'll do a couple like scissors, toe touch sort of things or like sideways lunges,

just stuff to try to feel like my hips are all fully online. And then, yeah, get in the water, do a couple of 20 strokes fast. and that's about it. I would say that the shorter the races, if I was doing a sprint trathlon in today's life, I would talk to Apollo, my coach, and get like a really specific warm-up for it because I would want to be firing perfectly

the second that I hit the water, but the longer the race gets, like when I did that seven-hour mountain bike race, the 100-mileer, I just spun super easy over to the start line, and that was it. Yeah, actually, that's a good point, because when I went to TT World Championships and even for like TTNationals and stuff I had a very specific warm up

it actually was like quite hard so I got my heart rate early high I was sweating and it was like not long before the start of the race it was like timed really intentionally because that is like a 30 or 40 minute all out effort so from minute one you want to be going as hard as you can go

and that's not the case necessarily for an Ironman or even a 70 3.3. So I think that is completely true about the distance of the race dictating your warm-up a little bit. Eric, do you feel like if you didn't have the hip labrum issue, do you think your warm-up would be different? I would certainly probably care a little bit less, but I don't know. For me, I definitely have found through my entire athletic career that if I'm doing eight reps, like 5, 6, 7 are always really good. I just do better off of more warm up as much as I dislike at five o'clock in the morning, like sprinting around transition.

Yeah, another thing, though, for age groupers is that often you can't even get in the water to warm up and your bike is in transition so you can't ride your bike. So your options are only to jog around. And I think in that case, it's fine to do a short, easy activation type run just to wake yourself up. Yeah. Cool. Okay, next question here is from David in Surrey, BC.

High parental unit, I guess that's us. I live near Vancouver and we've got some great riding, but I've been yearning for the ultimate biking getaway. I see you guys enjoying Ventura, and it had me thinking, what are some cities you've been to that you would recommend as a base for a three to four day adventure? Thanks and good luck this season, David.

Definitely not Ventura, definitely not Bend. Tucson. Tucson. Yeah, go to Tucson. Don't worry, no one else will be there. You'll be the only triathlete there. Tucson. I would say Tucson and Boulder

definitely very easy for like running and riding. You can pick a spot in town or you can like run from the door, ride from the door, or you're driving a very minimal length of time. Ventura has got some really, really cool stuff. But most days,

if we want to do the coolest thing, we are driving for like 25 minutes, which with our beautiful sprinter van and all the things in the dog, it's not a problem, and we really have been enjoying that. But it's not so much like three days, you can just ride from the door,

five different rides, you know, on farm roads immediately. It's not quite like that. Yeah, Ventura is like California is a little busier than a lot of other places you might find. But if we do that drive to the start, like on PCH, ride out and go up the Malibu climbs. It's super quiet on the climbs. It's the craziest,

nicest riding I've personally ever seen in North America. It's so cool. But it is work to get there. And as professional triathletes, it's all we got to do in the day. It's like kind of fun for us to pack up the van with lunch and bring Flynn and take our biking stuff and our running stuff and our swimming stuff and kind of be gone for the day and live out of the van. That's something we really enjoy doing, so it's not a problem, but I could see it being maybe a bit of a limiter for someone who wants simplicity. And for that reason, I think Tucson is super popular. But I can tell you the riding is 1% as cool as the rides here. Nick, what do you think, Thousand Oaks, maybe a little bit better for like a turnkey from the door? That seems to be where the cycling team space out of.

That's interesting because that's also, not only is that really close to all the stuff and you can ride straight from there, like from the backside of the mountains. But it's also probably a little bit cheaper than L.A. proper, you know, staying in Santa Monica or something like that. Even though I love Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, if you're going to get an Airbnb or something, it's going to be cheaper than Santa Monica. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's definitely have in mind that this is like a cycling specific camp. I don't know what the pool is like there. The running on trails anyway is quite hilly. So if you're into that, awesome. But yeah, I would think of it as like a cycling big week.

And then what about if this person, what if David wanted dirt? I'm thinking like Bentonville where Curtis is. Would that be something interesting? We've never been there. Yeah, I haven't been to Bentonville, but Curtis raves about Bentonville, especially if you're into mountain biking. I think the gravel there is pretty good. Bend is the spot.

Bend is pretty good for gravel. and really good for mountain biking. Yeah, and mountain biking. And the nice thing about like Bend mountain biking is, like I see 75-year-old people on the lower fills area trail network all the time. It's not, like in California, if you want a mountain bike here,

you're going up 25% grades. A lot of people have e-bikes versus Bend is pretty mellow. And like Paula can do it on her gravel bike and she doesn't necessarily, you know, have any interest in mountain biking. So it's very approachable. And then can you think of any place that's like that you've driven in like Idaho or something?

I remember you did have a place in Idaho that you liked, but I forget if it was for riding or for running. Yeah, we really like Sandpoint. We just go through there on the way to Canmore. Again, I don't really know what the road riding is there at all, but there's, you can swim in the lake. And there's some mountain biking at Schweitzer Mountain and some trail running. running and just as kind of like a cool town. But yeah, the one other thing I'll say about Bend is if you want great road riding,

I wouldn't head there for like great road riding unless you're training for Kona because it's a lot of like 2% up, 2% down, flat, you know, it's not. It's not that bad. No, it's not that bad, but it's not. The shoulders are huge and the roads are pretty quiet.

Great for TTI bike. If you just want to go do a TT bike camp, great for that. Yeah, agreed. Next question here is from Kimberly. Hi, Paula, Eric, Nick, and Flynn. I've noticed that a lot of pros have their watch in T2 and put it on for the run.

I know that their bike computer gives them the info they need for the bike portion, but why not just put it on at the start and keep it on for the entire race? That's what I do as a newbie amateur, but I must be missing something. Does it make getting a wetsuit off that much harder? I'm always fascinated seeing pros sprinting while putting their watch on,

and I think to myself how easy it would be to drop it. oh man that would be awful so what gives why not wear your watch while you swim and bike and not have to worry about putting it on later Kimberly watches are definitely not aerodynamic on the bike and the most important time in a triathlon if you're going to make it into a good group on the bike is is t1 like in t1 you've just got out of the water you're trying to like have a good position every person that you have to pass in the first 10k of the bike yeah but how does a watch affect that It just takes time to put it on. No, she's saying from the start of the swim.

I don't know. I don't even know how you would do that personally. I don't even know how you would have the watch. So the way that I do it, and maybe I'm an idiot, but I put my wetsuit on and then put my watch on over my wetsuit. I do the swim, and then I lap my watch to put it into T1, and then I have to take my watch off. I hold it in my teeth as I'm running in,

and then I can strip my wetsuit off. And then I can put it on as. I'm running still on my wrist. Right? Because I only strip my wetsuit off to my waist. Oh, hell no. I don't know what everyone else does. I cannot imagine having my watch

underneath my wetsuit. That just seems like that would fill up water and it would be annoying. No, I've done it before. Like, every time we train open water swimming and I want to have a watch, I put it underneath my wetsuit. I will say it did not work with the Dabor wetsuits

because they've got that thick. Oh, right, right. But otherwise you just roll up the wrist, put the watch on and roll it over it. Yeah, any other. kind of thin neoprene, like the orcas suit, you can put a watch underneath it and you don't even really notice it there. And you can strip it off quick?

Yeah. Oh, okay. Maybe I'll do that. Yeah, Nick, I would for sure put it under your sleeve. Definitely. Okay, that's going to take like five seconds off my swim time per hundred, right? For sure. For sure.

But I'd say the reason that the pros don't do it is just because usually we're not training with the watch and the swim. Right. And it's annoying to have it there on your bike with your arrow bars. And it's just an extra thing that's not smooth an arrow. I don't know. Maybe that's thinking too deep into it. No, it's definitely not arrow. And we have our cycling computer on our bike.

So it's not like we're needing the data from the watch. And then for the run, honestly, if I fumbled and dropped it, I wouldn't be too devastated. You just run without a watch. I'm not using the watch to dictate my effort normally. I'm kind of just looking at it for something to do. Yeah, a distraction. And you guys kind of take it a step further. Both of you kind of like to run with it, not on your wrist, like holding it to have like a little fidget toy, I feel like.

No, that's it. The biggest issue is it's so hard to, it is hard to put it on while you're running. And this person's right. It looks ridiculous as we're sprinting out of transition, trying to fumble with the watch. I think we need to invent a Wahoo watchstrap that's Velcro. Eric and I've talked about this. Yeah, I've looked into it. But there's a reason that we have not pursued it, which I cannot divulge.

I think people know by now. I don't even know. I think people know. Okay, well, any kind of watch that you would wear, I think it should have a Velcro or an elastic strap. I want like a fully elastic thing. You can just like slide over and it's like tactical elastic. Yeah.

And that would be. Nobody's still my idea. We can bleep it out if you want, Eric. Anyway, that's why. That's why they don't keep the watch on all the time. Next question here is from Kostas. Hi, Eric, Paula, Nick and Flynn. hope all four of you are doing fine.

Congrats to Paula for Miami. Quick question, since you're sponsored by Zip. I notice all pros sponsored by Zip are using the Fire Crest series wheels and not the supposedly top of the brand NSWs. How come? Are they actually worth double the price compared to the Firecrest?

I guess answering that on the podcast could be sensitive due to the sponsorship, but I thought it's no harm to try, thanks, Costas. No, we're glad you asked Costas. So why is that? I think, so Zip sends us the Firecrestes. crest to train on because they're a lower price point. Like we don't need to be riding around and training on the tippy top of the line thing.

You know, what if you hit a pothole, et cetera? It's just like it's not necessary. But for racing, 100% necessary, the NSWs are so fast. They perform super well in crosswinds. We want the absolute best thing, even if it's one second faster than the previous generation wheel. And do you think that maybe even Zip is like, well, we can have our athletes train on one wheel and race on another wheel

and that way we were kind of getting a little bit of eyes on both types of wheels. Sure. I will also say to this person that the number of Zip-sponsored triathletes is way less than the number of people you see using Zips in races. So it's very possible

you're seeing people use Firecrest because they've bought them themselves or got a deal through their bike shop or whatever, but the Zip sponsored athletes like Alastair, Eric and I, Sky Munch, there's a handful. We'll all have the NSWs.

Got it. Cool. Okay. Next question here is from Dan. Hey team, I'm wondering what your opinion is on wearing a hat on the run. I've always worn a hat, but I've recently heard that it keeps your body temperature a few percentage higher and can increase heart rate. From some quick race pick research, it seems like Eric is team hat and Paula is team no hat. Is this based on your performance?

Performance history, personal preference, style. Thanks, Dan. It just feels right to me. I've worn a hat for so long while racing. I do feel like having the sun off my face when I do wear it forward is a psychological thing, if nothing else. I really cannot imagine the lightweights of the hats that I'm wearing are increasing my body of temperature by 2%. And then the other aspect is just having hair. If I didn't have a hat on, my hair would be like flopping down in my face. and sweat be going my eyes. So it's a bit of a sweat band as well. Yeah, I've always seen that as the biggest reason you wear it is for the hair management. Yeah. I just don't, I never have raced with a hat. So I don't know.

I tried it in Dallas last year thinking it might keep the sun off my face, but I chucked it like halfway through. I didn't like it. But I will run in a hat daily to train. I don't know why. It's different for racing. Were you guys, this is a silly question, but were you guys allowed to wear hats back in the ITU days for racing? Oh yeah, totally.

Yeah, they were just very restrictive on the size of the logos and branding that could be on the hat. Well, only at the Olympics and stuff. Like you could use. Oh, they measured it. The WTS is as well. Yeah, but back in the day when I was sponsored by Nike, they wanted me to wear a Nike visor. Because it's just additional, like I'm wearing Nike on my feet. but they wanted it on the head too.

So I tried hard to like, you know, do it, but I just didn't like it. I didn't like the feeling of it. So I think people that are sponsored by the feed are required to wear a hat or a headband or like something on their head. We know. But we, you guys know that.

But Eric and I aren't contractually obliged to wear a hat for anything. But I will say that headwear, headspace is really valuable. So if a sponsor came to us with like a big amount of money for headspace, I would be flexible in my rule. See, I always wear my TTL hat. That's my headspace. Yeah, exactly. It would have to be an outrageous amount of money because TTL is my title sponsor and that's my headspace.

Yeah, exactly. I also, I just like, I think I like the feeling of the hat on my head when I'm racing. and I also strangely, I feel like having the TTL logo on there I don't know how to explain it. It feels comforting. It feels like I also train in those hats. It just feels right.

Because people are recognizing you. Yeah. That's what you know. The thing about the heat though is that it's not always hot when you race. I think people watch Miami and they're like, oh my gosh, every race is like going to be 110 degrees in humid.

And in that case, you want to think about your head gear and like what you'll, if you're going to overheat. But plenty of races are in normal temperatures where wearing a hat or not wearing a hat isn't going to matter in terms of body temperature. Like ocean side, right? You're not making your decision based on the heat. Depends on the year, but we're not. But people could be out there three hours longer than us. Yeah, and it does get hotter. I can see taking that into consideration for sure.

Yeah, maybe. The other thing that hats are great for is the rain, actually. If it's like super rainy, I like to wear it for keeping that off my face. And Eric, you don't do sunglasses if you have the hat, right? But Paula, you always do sunglasses. Yeah, I like sunglasses on the run unless I'm in Miami running at 10 p.m. Right. Unless you're chucking your visor on the bike because you can't see.

Yeah. Okay. Next question here is from Michaela. Hi, Eric, Paula, Nick, and Flynn. Day one listener and watcher. I've loved watching the progression of what TTL has become. Listening to different podcasts after T100 Miami and on the ProTri News podcast,

they were talking about how many of the pro athletes had very dirty drive trains and were needing the mechanics help with significant amounts of things. They did acknowledge that some things were transport damage and day of the race breaking down. I'm not expecting you to drag anyone on this unless you want to, but I was wondering what your thoughts on this are.

Paula, as an athlete who has their bike dialed partly because your partner sets it up. What is your perspective on athletes that show up to a race without their tool being ready? Eric, I'm curious your perspective as that partner that spends so much time making sure that both your bikes are dialed in for the race. Look forward to watching how all of your seasons unfold. Hopefully we'll get to watch some good footage of the Xtera off-road stuff you do, Eric. Michaela. Yeah, this is an interesting question.

I didn't know that this was happening. But from my perspective, every time I went into the mechanics room, those guys were busy. 100% of the day. And I could imagine that a lot of people who don't have an Eric or a full-time mechanic or whatever, maybe took advantage of that service a little bit and had an issue that then the mechanic had to deal with race week. And the mechanic is amazing. The guy that comes to these races, he's so nice, so keen to help, does an amazing job, very meticulous in his work. So I am guilty of showing up with a couple things I needed help with. Like I didn't bring as a tool to put my rotors on, stuff like that.

But I think that's like fairly simple stuff. And I would feel terrible showing up with like something that's actually broken or something that's really not working well, four days out from a race just because I know there's professional mechanics there. I think that you should always arrive at an event with it ready to go. But you shouldn't even take your bike to a bike shop. all dirty. That's bad form, let alone to a professional race and give it to a mechanic. Yeah. Do you feel like people showed up and they're like, I could really use new headset

bearings and a bottom bracket because bike's been creaky for a couple months. I don't know. Probably like the first. Maybe. You just took your bike off of Zwift yesterday and put it in a box and showed up and the headset doesn't turn maybe. It's possible. I've seen stuff like that working at a bike shop before. I bet you that kind of stuff did happen. And these guys travel with spares of a lot of things. They're honestly so good. Like they'll have replacement rotors and like every single thing you could need. And those are like in case something breaks race week or during the race, not for people that show up with them. Not working. So yeah, it's it's a tough situation. But on the flip side, when I went to again, this cycling world championship thing and there were.

pro mechanics there. Bikes never even get to the state of being broken or dirty. They're just constantly being look after when you're on like a pro cycling team. So I was completely blown away with the level of professionalism and you just hand your bike to the guy after the ride and he's fully cleaning it and getting it tuned up for the following day. That's not the case with triathlon. So this was kind of a unique situation where the PTO is offering this service of having a pro mechanic there. But there's only one of them for 40 athletes. I mean, there was two. I mean, there's two and they just can't possibly like be building bikes and taking down bikes and fixing all the problems and cleaning them. It's just like overwhelming.

Yeah. My strategy with getting us ready for races is the simpler that the unpacking process and getting ready to race process can be the better. So I'm willing to do a little bit more work on the front end at home with the idea of like Paula shows up in. Miami and all she has to do is go to the mechanic and they put her rotors on rather than like oh man hopefully they can figure this out and hopefully they can clean your chain and hopefully they have lube and it's like to in my mind that's all extra time where she has to be at the mechanic let alone just like the obviously taking the mechanics time that's taking her time and it's less restful etc so um that's my that's my strategy but um side note here about the xtera thing

we didn't mention it, but I am not actually doing Exterra Taiwan, which I was supposed to be doing this weekend. That's why I'm here doing this in person. I had a foot thing, but pain, and I just, I didn't feel good about it. I won't get to do it a ton, but you're going to go see my Instagram post about it, and I'll talk about it in the vlog this weekend. But for that race, I actually even took my mountain bike to a pro mechanic here in town to have it looked at, because I'm not as confident with mountain bikes as I am with road bikes,

and he went through the whole thing, waxed the chain, just got it completely ready to go so that when I showed, was going to show up in Taiwan, zero stress. And for me, that's just like money well spent, 100%. Yeah. You know, Paula, you had me thinking, those mechanics on the cycling pro tour side,

they are so good. And yet, I feel like we see so many mechanicals, even in like a Tour de France kind of situation. is that just because of the sheer number of athletes or is it because they're putting more stress on those bikes or is it the number of miles they're riding? I mean, Eric, what do you think? Why is it that we so often see mechanicals at such a high level? Yeah, I think it's a sample size, I'd say. Yeah, there's a numbers game and I don't see that many mechanicals, although I don't watch a ton of cycle. People drop chains and to get flat tires all the time.

But I think there's a couple of things here, like the mechanic, so you've got like two or three mechanics for a pro team and there's like 25 riders or something that's still every night a mechanic's trying to catch little things that might be off or whatever and they're having to completely unbuild and rebuild those bikes when they like travel to the race so there's just a lot of moving parts and even though they're really good they are looking at a lot of bikes and then I do think yes the athletes are pushing the bikes to the absolute limit like they're attacking out of the saddle at 900 watts and hoping that the front derailer shifts whereas we in a triathlon, you know, like you're doing 300 when you shift the front draylor at the most.

And then like in terms of the tires thing, this is actually pretty interesting because I've been having a back and forth with Victoria. And they've been working on developing a tire that they believe is usable for triathlon. And the difference between the triathlon and the road tires that they use is like the triathlon tires need to have a lot better puncture resistance. Because it's really not that big of a deal to get a flat in a pro cycling race. most of the time because your team car's right there. They can give you a new thing. They can give you a push up the hill, like get you back through the Peloton.

So they can run a lot riskier, higher choices that are, yes, faster. So that's another aspect of it. I think having the team car there, you got a lot of more safety buffer versus triathlon. That's really cool. That's a great little anecdote.

Next question here is from Lauren. Hi, Lauren from Melbourne, Australia here. Love the pod and the vibe you all give as both athletes and human beings. Thanks, Lauren. I am a week and a half out for my third half Iron Man. I've recently been using a different and secondhand, but newish pair of bike shoes, which have been great, as my old ones, which I did previous races in, were too small and utterly ruined. The new ones are cycling shoes, not triathlon shoes. They do have a boa system. I know you stick loops on the backs of your shoes, but I'm pretty sure the shoes you use aren't triathlon specific.

And I'm wondering how you go with the transition, i.e. putting them on whilst on the bike, getting feet in okay and everything. Thanks, Lauren. So I guess the question that Lauren's trying to ask here is, what is the order of operations when you are running out of T1 with your bike in your hand? Your bikes, your shoes are, I imagine they are clipped into the pedals with rubber bands around so that they're horizontal. but then what happens after that? Are amateurs allowed to do that?

Sometimes in Iron Man races, we are not allowed to clip our shoes to the bike. And sometimes you are. And then in local races, I think you almost always are allowed to do that. Okay, it depends on the Iron Man race, though. Yeah, like, for example, the first Santa Rosa I did, I was not allowed to do that.

And then in other races, I have been allowed to do that. Oh, okay. So you just have to check to make sure you don't get to check. They tell you, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I guess the order of operations and if you watch the live broadcast of a race, you'll see many different ways and many different levels of ability for jumping on a bike and getting feet into shoes. I think the athletes that come from an ITU background are really fast at it because that's a really critical part of the race is getting on your bike and getting in your shoes quickly. We use shoes with boas and we just open it up as big as the back boa will go. The front one's a little tighter. And yeah, it takes a second to get into them,

but the opening is big enough that you can actually get in. And I don't have a loop on the back for like pulling the heel up or anything. The loop that I glue on is just to hold the elastic band there. So it's a little bit cumbersome, but the race you're going to be riding for two plus hours. It's worth the comfort of the shoes and the boa and what we train in for that couple of seconds you might sacrifice on the front end just getting into them.

But do you, okay, so let's say you do a flying mountain. Do you do a flying mount for like the kind of triathlon racing that you do now, Paula? I do. I like to think I do, but I don't actually know. Do I? I don't remember. She's just blacked out.

I mean, they're like varying degrees of flying mounts as well. There's like there's like the full one leg kick. where you like roundhouse and land fully on the saddle. And then there's the like little stutter step thing where you kind of like just use that surre step to like get the side of your leg onto the saddle. And then you're going like half a mile an hour

and you have to pedal up to speed. That's more what I do. I'm like, I'm in motion, but I'm not doing the full gymnastics, like full speed. And then there's the like, I'm going to come to a full stop, swing my leg over my horse, put one foot on one bike shoe, pedal down on that to get some speed and then, you know. Yeah, I saw a lot of that at Miami.

A lot. A lot of fast pros do that. A lot of really fast people do that. Oh, yeah. It's kind of funny. I think it goes to show that it really doesn't matter that much. Especially if you're confident in your biking ability. And then do you do one foot in, pedal a bit, and then put the other foot in and then

Titan? Can you kind of walk me through that? Who do you want to go first? Paula's method or my method? I want to hear Eric's method first. I just put my feet straight in on the first go, both at the same time. And that's pretty fast. You kind of like slip right in. Yeah, basically you get your toes in and then I just do like a little bit of a foot shimmy and that, because I put some body glide inside of the, you know, like, whatever, the inside of the rim of the shoe.

And so I just like a little bit of shimmy and I can get both feet in. And to me that's less cumbersome and less potential problems versus like peddling on top of the shoe or then like squishing it. The tongue can get folded over funky and then you got to open it back up

and you got to grab it with one hand. This is like hands free, slip both feet in at the same time. But this is also very contingent upon you having a lot of speed on that flying mount because you're going to be coasting putting your... So non-applicable for age group athletes.

Yeah, but it's cool. I still think it's cool. And then Eric, do you pedal a bit before you tighten them or do you tighten them before you start pedaling? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course. Like, I will sometimes ride, you know, a half a mile before I take the time to tighten the shoes. It kind of just depends on the race situation. Guys, sometimes I don't even tighten them at all.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. I'm leaving Watts on the table. I don't know how much that's really leaving Watts on the table. I feel like it's more of a control thing if you're pushing the bike and terms of handling and sprinting that you want those bow as tight. Oh, it's definitely some. It's definitely some. Otherwise, everybody would just ride flat pedals.

That's true. Yeah, yeah, that's true. What about you, Paula? Eric gave us the rundown. I know you think it's not relevant, but I'm kind of interested. I'm much more bad at it, so I don't want to talk about my way. You don't even want to talk about it. No.

And like the time when you tighten them down or get it, for me, it's very dependent on the course. like is there a hill coming up right away or is there a turn coming up right away? And am I comfortably kind of in a little group and I can tighten them down or whatever it is? Like I kind of just read the race. I guess it'll just remain a mystery. Try to do it like Eric. Just try to do it like Eric. He's the gold standard.

Get up to full like four minute miles running speed, then flying mount and then magically slip both of your feet into the shoes, shimmy them in and then pedal at 350 watts. Actually, you know what I think I should need to do is like practice this. Yes, I've practiced this 5,000 times. But not in races, yes. But you don't go out on the sidewalk and do this. Yes, he does. I have seen him do it.

Oh, that's true. I have done it lately, but back in the day and ITU days practiced so much. If you had do a session a week for 20 minutes, you could get really good at it and it could save you time or get you in a good pack. Maybe I'll do that. Why not? Eric, I remember in Florida you were practicing it and it was fun to watch. Yeah, that might have had something to do with, like, riding specialized for the first time,

or having a, like, behind the seat bottle, or just, like, brushing up on it, because it should be second nature. You should not have to think about it. Like, okay, get to speed. Okay, jump off left foot. Don't forget to... It just needs to be ingrained.

Yeah. Yeah, cool. Okay, next question here is from Kevin. Love the show and your journey. Paula, I've been following your epic races, the highs and lows since you were a junior. I've raced many times even age group podium at the Edmonton ITU race. My question is your run speed work.

From your success in ITU and earlier in cross-country, you obviously have some fast twitch fibers. However, you post a lot of your run date on Strava showing easy five plus minute runs and some mid to low four minute per K tempos. Yet in a race, you run subforce. Do you do any speed work or just stick with the tempo or hill repeats? As an older chap, I'm just trying to limit the losses. of what speed I had and keep up with the border collie.

Good vibes for the season, Kevin. Yeah, I do less speed work now than I used to, I guess. But I don't know, it's like you don't have to run 320s per K in 70.3s. So I don't know, Apollo just has us do a lot of tempo stuff, a lot of fart-like stuff where you're doing like a minute and a half on, 30 seconds off or three minutes on, one minute off. But we're rarely going to the track and doing like measured distance. stuff. And part of that is just because I'm kind of injury prone over the years. It's kind of more

risky to add speed work in. But my volume right now in terms of running is higher than it's been in a long time. And I'm healthy and I'm running okay in races. Sometimes I do worry that I'm like not tapping enough into speed that I used to have because I did used to be really fast. And now I just feel like I'm okay and not as fast as I used to be. But I just do. what Paulo tells me. And in terms of the slow runs, the five minutes per K, that is super important. You can't do all your runs hard or like this gray zone 420, 430 per K. Like five minutes per K. Eric runs at five minutes per K sometimes. Happily. I run at seven minutes per K. I get in trouble for running too fast on my easy runs. Like your easy runs, I've always said that like easy runs don't even exist.

Running is hard. But as easy as you can possibly make running, I think. is important. And that could be six minute Ks. That could be 530Ks. That could be you're on a super hilly trail and it's seven minute Ks. That's why Strava is a little bit annoying and I'm considering not doing it anymore.

People look at your pace and your speed and your watts and they're like making conclusions off that. But running slow is important. Yeah, but then you show up to a race and you run fast so their conclusions are wrong. Yeah, that's all that matters is showing up and being fast on race day.

But Paula, what percentage of your running do you think is happening at or faster than race pace? Very little, very little round. Like even my tempo runs, Paula puts a ceiling on the pace and I go faster than it. But it's still not as fast as I'll race at. So it's only just those like those very short efforts that are at or faster than race pace. Yeah, I guess so. Running at 70.3s. This time of a year anyway.

Yeah, yeah. It is still early in the year. But running in 70.3s, you just have to be super fit. Like your bike has to be fit so that you can run off the bike well. It's like there's so many moving pieces. It's not just about being a fast runner. It's about being really, really fit and able to run well off of biking super fucking hard. At least for me, running my best run on the 70.3 was when I was when I was, when I was,

was doing a ton of bike and run volume. It wasn't because I upped the intensity. It wasn't because I was doing more speed work. Yeah. A lot of the time it's just more volume. Yeah. Any thoughts, Eric? No, that's what it works well for me.

Going out and running three minutes per K when I'm going to run at my very best, average 327, 325, and a 70.3 at, like it's cool. It's fun for Strava. for YouTube, but I do think like dialing in the race pace zone area and not ever like letting your form fall apart so hard because you're trying to run so fast, like you need to be muscularly have good muscular endurance. That's how I think of it. That's the thing I find about my running too

in these 70.3s are in the 100k distance. I'm not that fast. I'm not the fastest runner. I don't start really fast, but I can finish at the same pace that I start at. Like I'm not deteriorating throughout the thing. And I often ride too hard and I'm tired when I get off the bike and I can still run pretty well. So that's kind of the key. Cool. Love it.

Okay. Last question here is from Kizzy. Hey, Paula, Eric, Nick. First off, congrats Paula in a great first race of the season. I loved watching it back after I did my first race of the season the same day. My question here is related to post-race recovery. Did my first race of the season this weekend, an Olympic distance, same day as the T-100.

It was a very hot race, 40 degrees Celsius. Oh, my God. Here in Adelaide, Australia, 40's really hot. As well as very hilly. 1,200 meters, 1,200 meters of elevation gain for an Olympic. That's, this race is... What? Brutal.

That's like going up a mountain. And then down again. In an oven. And that's over a 10... So that's for the run? No, that would be the bike. But they said at a 10 kilometer distance. Oh, maybe within the 10 kilometers, the 1,200 happened.

And then the last 30 were flat. God, that seems like straight up. My question is, do you find recovering from races tends to be shorter as the season goes on? And then she kind of gives a little more context. But that's the just of it. Do you feel like as the season goes on, you are recovering quicker from races? Or does it not even make a difference to you guys? I think it really depends on how hard.

hard you were able to go in the race, specifically how hard you were able to run. So like Paula feels like this race didn't take that much out of her because it was hot and she didn't feel like she ran that fast and couldn't get quite the same watts. But if you have, I have been super sore and taken a long time to recover from an Olympic distance when I ran really, really fast. And that's just like pretty super shoes and high speed versus, you know, a 70.3 is more like this. body fatigue. It's just different, but... Yeah, a lot of the time I feel like post-race,

the fatigue is mental and body tired, but not like soreness necessarily. I think that has a lot to do with super shoes. I used to get extremely sore after races before super shoes existed and you were just like pounding the pavement for an hour and a half, but...

And after Olympic distances, too, back in the day, I'd get crazy sore. Uh-oh, he's gone. I think Nick, his phone is out of battery. Eric and I can keep talking, though, about this. That's how long 20% lasts an hour and four minutes and 50 seconds. But I would say as your body gets fitter and you get later in the season, maybe you recover slightly quicker,

but you're also more physically tired from it being later in the season. Yeah, yeah, totally. Just as like a general window, I would say usually a week. After about a week of kind of doing whatever I want, and just like fun activities and movement is when I sort of feel like I could get back to actual training and I want workouts, like usually a full week after a 70.3. Our coach just like, he actually doesn't give us a schedule right after the race. He waits till we ask for it because he knows that's when you're like ready to get back

to training. It's kind of self-guided based on how you feel. Yeah, Nick is still not back. He's got to plug in his phone and wait for it to get enough battery to even turn the screen on before he can call us. I will say it's very weird recording the pod without Nick here. That's what I said.

I said we got to have Nick to do the podcast with us. We would never do this without Nick. It feels awkward. What's supposed to do? Just talk to each other. That was the last question though. That was the last question.

Okay, we're going to do a pause until Nick gets back. Oh, okay. I'm back from the dead. back here. Thank you. Was I missed? What happened? What did I miss? That was getting weird. Trust me, though. The race recovery is not relevant to you. You don't need to know about it.

No, I don't. That's true. You just do what you need to do for a week and then you get back to training. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Cool. Yeah. That's all we got, though, right? That's it. That's all we got. I think this was a back to feeling normal podcast after a while. Yeah. Well, hopefully next week, Nick, you can be here with us. Oh, for sure. To record in person. Those are always the best.

I for sure will. Yeah. Sweet. You just got to get better so we don't get sick. I haven't taken medicine since earlier this morning. I feel totally fun. Other than this congestion or whatever. Yeah, you sound sick. But as long as you're feeling good, that's all the matters. Yeah. And I was kind of commiserating with Eric, the worst part of getting sick for me is the sore throat. And the sore throat is gone completely now, which is... It's just, I hate when you can't even swallow without searing pain.

You just feel trapped in your own body. Yes, exactly. You feel trapped in your own body. The way I get over that is just, it's so weird because my, I just want like cough medicine. I want to like be swallowing stuff, but that's what hurts. Yeah. Like why? That is so backwards.

It is. There's this, you can get these like numbing sprays that you spray in the back of your throat and it's instant relief. I don't know how bad they are for you, but there's one called like chloroceptic or something. It's all over the counter. Like laticane straight to your throat. Oh, it feels so good.

You're like, oh, yes, thank you. But I didn't use it this time. I didn't need it. It was never that bad. Oh, good. Okay. We are not doctors here on the podcast. No.

As you've probably noticed. Although Paula could have been a doctor. There was a world, there's an alternate universe where Paula Finley, instead of being a professional triathlete is a pediatrician. Yeah. It's still possible. It could happen.

It's still possible. All right. Well, thanks for listening to everybody. This is a fun one. And yeah, check the website. If you want one of those prints, you better be on it. Yeah, those are going to be cool, and they're going to go quick. And they'll take a long time to make, so they probably won't come back super quick.

They're limited run. Yeah. Thanks, Nick, for doing this, well, jet leg, and sick. No problem. It's only three in the morning from me right now. And I still got to edit it. An all-nighter All right, all good.

Bye, guys. Bye. Later.