That Triathlon Life Podcast - IM 70.3 Oceanside race conditions, the Taco Bell 50km, and more!

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Just the boys this week as Paula rests up to be at her best for IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside this Saturday. Eric and Nick riff through a stack of listener questions in a semi–rapid-fire episode, covering everything from van life and bike tech to wetsuits, motivation, the Taco Bell 50K, and more.A big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive! To submit a question for the podcast and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Hey, everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Nick Goldstone. That's all we have for you today. But we're going to try to make sure that that's enough. Yeah. I think we just lost about 75% on the listeners. Oh, I'm out. I'm done. It's been a big day here. We have got a lot to recap. Very exciting stuff with TTL. We're doing this quite late. So Paula is actually in bed, resting up because she's racing. And we're a day late too. We're also a day late. But it's for good reason. And Nick and I are just going to shoot the shit and recap what's been going on and do some questions.

A little bit of a boys episode here. Yep. Sorry, everybody. So, okay, what did we do so far today? I mean, catch up everyone on what happened. You drove down from Bend with the van. Yep. I drove, well, I drove from Bend to Morgan Hill,

where we picked up Paula's new bike. And I can now say that because she's posted about it. We took some amazing pictures. What's in Morgan Hill? It's not just a shipping depot, right? For those who don't know, yeah, that's specialized world headquarters is in Morgan Hill, California, which is conveniently located between Bend and Oceanside. So for two years in a row now, we've stopped there, picked up a nice fancy new bike for Paula and brought it down here.

I picked up all at the airport in San Francisco. So we did the last little bit together. Met up with you for coffee in L.A. And we're now on Oceanside. We also did a little bit of a swim. We did a little bit of a swim. Oh, my God. For everyone, just so everyone knows, Eric is just barely able to flip turn.

again, right? You have not been swimming that much. And in general, you have been, how do I put this, neglecting your swim fitness. Words cannot explain how much I still cannot keep up with them. Well, the one thing that I have going for me, the one thing I did not neglect last year was my swimming with a pole buoy fitness for swim run. And that is all I'm doing right now. So if I had to do the kicking, I'd be a little bit of sinking going on, but I can do the, I can do the buoy. When you guys did, you guys had done those, like, you did a set without me, and then you did like 16, 50s? Yeah. Boy, I couldn't keep up on those.

But even after that, you guys had just like 800, like, steady or cruise or something? Just like getting through it, yeah. And I'm like, okay, I'll be able to keep up a little bit on this for sure, right? And Paula is swimming with a pool buoy, so she's not even kicking. Incorrect. I could not. I was like, I let her go and then I'll catch her. It'll be hard.

I was swimming 1, 12 per 100 yards. She was still pulling away from me. She's pretty good, man. She's pretty good. She's pretty good. I'm doing this whole whole life. I know. I don't even think the leopard print flippers saved you.

No, I did put those on for a few of those on the 50s. But yeah, it's always, it's really fun. I wish maybe people have this experience, but it's really fun to swim with people that are way faster than you because it recalibrates what you think it's possible. You can say that for a lot of sports. It just like opens up here. eyes. And I've even heard pro athletes say this.

They see another pro athlete do a really impressive workout and it kind of opens their mind to what it's possible. Just like the four minute mile, you know, Roger Banister phenomenon. We see it in extreme sports where someone's like, oh, one person does a double backflip on a motorcycle and now all of a sudden it's like, oh, it's possible. That's not what you have to do to even like be out on the podium. It's not like we unlocked the DNA to be able to do it. It was always possible, but it just takes one person to actually do it. Yeah, and it's funny. I mean, that's certainly like the view from the outside, but then I think everybody inside is like, God damn it. Yeah. That's what we're doing now. Yeah. Great. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so Swam, we had coffee at that epic coffee shop. And then next stop was Oceanside. Yep. We made it down to Oceanside. I got the lay of the land. I set up Hank Whalen, who if you don't know who that is, he's had some photos for us in the past. He's not a professional photographer, just an awesome guy part of the TTL community. He met me at the booth. We set up a bunch of the Ocean Sides.

stuff. If you have, if you don't have been paying attention on Instagram, we did a collaborative booth with Castelli. They've generously brought an espresso machine. We bought, brought coffee beans and some of our merchandise and also dropped some Castelli TTL collaborative merchandise. We're also right next to the Tail One booth. So I feel like this expo is pretty epic. But it is certainly by 70.3 standards, but even by Oceanside standards, like there are some gigantic booths. Some brands drop some big money on this expo and I think it's really cool. It's there's a lot of energy. It's, I feel like it's similar to what we were just saying where now there's an expectation that your booth isn't just some like a boring tent with some merch. It's like it's got to have a

vibe. Yeah, there's like an experience. Right. And now everyone's got to do it. I've both I think is awesome. Yeah. This is the thing that I'm super here for. Yeah. And just so everyone knows if people are listening who are here, what's left of TTL stuff at the booth? The, uh, the special edition like poster and t-shirt that we brought. Those are all gone. We did bring some extras sold through them pretty quickly, but we have the, it's a TTL Castelli Adventure hoodie.

So this is the same thing we've done in the past. We have a cool new design on that. And then like the new... The shirts you're wearing? Yeah. The new technical t-shirt that we've done with Casseli in the past, it is now a new fabric and it is magical. It feels so good.

And we have that with just like the classic TTR circle on the front. Plus just a bunch of stuff that we brought from our regular inventory that's a little bit cheaper than you can get it online. Is there anything that's in very low supply that if someone wants to get it, they should get it as early as possible tomorrow? Or today if you're listening? I don't know, actually.

I don't know on like specific sizes of things. Okay, got it. Great. So then today, we did, as advertised, we did our TTL donut run. Yep. Which was a smashing success. I would say smashing success.

Yes. Those donuts. I may have had to. They are so, so good. Parlor donuts in Oceanside. Oh my God. It's borderline unfair to call them donuts because they're so extra.

They're like this crueller style. They're not shaped like a donut. That's the other thing. It's unfair to like a lot of other donuts. They're not playing by the rules. But that's okay. We had many reviews of this is the best donut I've ever had in my life. That's what we're going for.

Parlor donuts. We don't play by the rules. I'm into this. We'll go over there and suggest it. Yeah, but it went super well. the weather down here has been amazing. For people who don't know, the water temperature here is way, way, way warmer than it usually is at this time of year. Didn't you say it's like 66 degrees?

66. That's two degrees short of the pro wetsuit cutoff. So what does that mean that you guys cannot wear wetsuits? Once it's over 68. Really? You're not even, you're not allowed to. Exactly. But yeah, wow.

I don't think we're in any risk of that jumping up another several degrees, but it's kind of wild. We know that Iron Man will. They'll find some cold water. They'll find some cold water. Yeah, they'll find some cold water. But otherwise, it's seeming to be, Saturday seeming to be pretty ideal day weather-wise for us. Because it should be cloudy. So that sun, which it was hot in the sun today.

Yeah, you get a little bit of UV for sure. And like we joked about it. You're cold on the swim. You're cold on the bike. And then right about the time you start running, the sun pops out. You really wish it was the opposite. And you're roasting. Yeah.

Take care of the nutrition, the hydration. and, I don't know, paste yourself well. Yeah, yeah. Well, we got a lot of good memories here. We've been here so many times, and we've stayed in so many different places. Right now we have an epic view of the pier that we can literally see it from right here.

High up and what, do we want to, you know what? We'll keep it a little secret where we're staying. We were gifted this hotel room. We're incredibly grateful. It's amazing, but we'll keep a secret. We'll keep it a little secret. Yes, yeah, yeah. We don't have anyone knocking on the door here.

But I thought it would be fun. We don't have, this is a little bit of a free form kind of show, and it's going to be, since it's just me and Eric, I think that'll work just fine. But we do have a bike tech with Eric question for you. Okay, this is from Anders in Copenhagen. I have a bike tech question for Eric. I recently upgraded my old specialized Shiv, 2013 model,

to a newer 2024 shiv model and hopes to gain a little extra speed this upcoming season. That is some longevity for one bike. That's 13 years of bike. Bravo, sir. Now with it came a beautiful set of Zip Firecrest 808.

However, I've had already had to change the bearings in the front wheel and heard from others that zip wheels in general have weaker hub setup. Do you have any recommendations or tips from maintenance or how to make them last as long as possible?

Much appreciated and all the best in your upcoming. I mean, I personally haven't heard this. I don't really do, I don't really research into it, but none of our wheels, none of our hubs have had any issues on our zip stuff. So I think you do find, if you have a problem, you go Google it. Generally, somebody out there in the world has had a similar problem with something. Thank God, because this makes car maintenance very easy. Right.

Anything that's broken, somebody else is also broken. That being said, we have not had that experience, so I don't have, like, I haven't had to deal with it. tell you what, I had to service the hubs on my DT Swiss hubs on my canyon. So there's a data point in the opposite direction. Yeah, I mean, it does happen, I guess, but generally, I'd say the longest I've had any wheel set from Zips on my gravel bike that I sold. And I'd had that for like three and a half years and ridden in shit conditions. Yeah.

I didn't have an issue. So it's also not that expensive. Yeah. I'm not sure as much you can do to like, preemptively, you know, safeguard against this. I'm curious if there was just like a manufacturing issue and like the seals weren't very good or something like that. You know, there could have been a bad batch.

Right. And the nice thing about buying from Zip, correct me if I'm wrong, Eric, compared to buying some unknown brand is that the customer service is going to be far, far, far superior. Generally speaking, yeah. They have the, they have the, you know, the resources to make it right and make you happy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, here's a fun one.

This is from John, from Spokane. From Spokane. Sorry. It's an inside joke with my friend and I was referencing. I can do it. Yeah, yeah. This is great. And I'm very curious to hear what you think.

Hey guys, PB or PR. I grew up saying personal record, but here P.B. is in the triathlon world. Oh, we always said PRs. I think Peeb is a British thing. That's what I hear people say. Yeah. I hear British people say P.B.

In swimming, we would say best time. Really? Yeah. At least at my swim club. Well, it kind of also asked a question like on Strava when you have a KOM. Mm-hmm. It's like, okay, well, KOM traditionally is it's a climb. It's supposed to be a climb.

And then the term has been co-opted and now you can use it for downhill segments. King of the downhill, king of the flat. But then on running segments, it's not called a KOM. Course record. Course record. So why can't we just, if we're going to bastardize the term anyway, why don't we just you say for running too. I think it's just like it's so not in running culture whatsoever.

Like you see runners be like, king of the what? Yeah. What mountain? What mountain? I'm so confused. Right, right, right. So what do you say? P.B. or PR?

I mean, like, here's the crazy. Like, we don't talk in terms of PRs. So I. See, you don't even, it's not even an issue to you. Yeah, but I guess like the last time that I did anything like this is when I ran a 10K, you know, the Carlsbad 10K, like eight, nine years ago. Yeah, and I PR the 10K. I guess I would say PR.

Right. You know what else is kind of in that category for me? Is when American people start saying P9. P2. You know, like what they say in F1. Yes. Like you grew up in Oklahoma and you're saying, hey, I just ran. I just like did my first 70.3.

Right. P3 on the day. Like what you're not, okay, you're not my expert. You know what I saw today or recently is someone said that not for the overall? Like, they were like P7. AG. 35 to 39 AG. I'm like, oh boy, dude.

I'm not sure. If you are from Europe and that's a thing that you do over there, awesome. But I hadn't heard that at all until Formula watching Drive's alive. Oh, it's a, I didn't realize it was a Formula One thing. I just saw, it was something that I saw pros do kind of like to flex a little bit like overall. We're probably going to get like, you know, earplugged. Yeah. That's that the term?

It's not the term. Get ear plugged? Yeah. It's kind of nice. Earplug. It's very meta for this podcast. Okay, sorry. So next question here.

We don't got a name. It might be from, well, you know what? I'm not going to give away their email address. So I'm just going to read the question here. Hi, I've been dealing with back and hip injuries, but want to do a local sprint triathlon this summer for fun. Just getting back into light running and swimming. So I'm hoping to push the bike leg for a competitive effort. What workouts should I focus on to maximize bike performance in a sprint distance,

without worrying too much about fatigue for the run. So the reason I like this question is someone like, let's take someone like me who mostly races longer distances, but I want to perform well at a sprint. How much really should I be changing my workouts compared to a 70.3? Can I just continue to do similar things that I'm doing? There's still V-O-2 max sessions in there,

both running and riding. Can I just do the same thing? or would you be like, no, you should be inserting some, like, much more higher effort stuff and less volume? Yeah, it depends, like, how close to your ultimate volume ceiling you are, but I would, like, take the opportunity to do some faster stuff. Like, I'm doing this sprint. This is a fun opportunity to do some, like, 40-20s. Right. Like, whatever.

That's the sort of thing that I think of, like, that hour of power style thing, like 40-20, like 20 seconds really hard, 40 seconds, just riding. and because it's like it's kind of fun and it's engaging. Right. And, you know, why not? I just think of some of the short course athletes we know, it's not like they don't do a lot of volume. They still do a ton of volume, but they just divvy it up a little bit differently.

Yeah, you probably don't need to like drop your volume down significantly unless you're already feeling very tired from your volume and you're going to increase the intensity. That's just, I'm like shooting from the hip on that. But, you know. Sweet. Cool. Next question here is from Amy. Canadian from Toronto.

And this is a swim question. Hello, tripod and Flynn. I can see Flynn. He is either sleeping or deceased. Long passed out. Yeah. As an adult onset swimmer, I recently had a swim video analysis done.

And the corrections to my head position resulted in shaving about five seconds per hundred meters off my swim pace. That is, wow. Amazing. Where were you looking? They were watching reels.

We were swimming with one arm out of the water. I mean, if you felt like, you were swimming normal and now you took five seconds off. Five seconds. For just a head position change? I got to get the name of your coach. That's unbelievable. That's huge.

Congrats. It's like a year of work. Problem is I'm now swallowing copious amounts of pool water. It was probably head-up freestyle. It was Tarzan. Pool water trying to find that trough pocket. Do you know what they're referring to there? Oh, yeah.

Of course. Is this something that elite swimmers such as yourselves just put up with or am I doing it wrong? I love that I'm swimming faster but end up with sloth. blushing belly full of pool water post swim. How do you find that trough or pocket without taking on water when taking a breath? It's my timing off, maybe. Cheers from Toronto and thank you all for what you do in the tribe community. We talk about the pod quite often around here.

Paula and Nick, good luck at Oceanside. We're all cheering for you, smooth and speedy healing vibes for Eric. Okay, so what do you think about this? Is this something that ever happens to you? Do you still ever swallow water from time to time? I don't, this is like one of those unfortunate things where I guess somebody who's naturally good, you make a bad teacher. Like, I don't remember going through this process of like sucking in water. I think it just like kind of naturally happened from a coach saying like,

keep your head down and like your body needs to be like twisting like you're on a spit, you know, like very inline body position. You naturally don't get your head way out of the water. I do remember this. I think there was a component of timing though, for sure. For sure. I think it is not something you think about though. Your brain figures it out in the background. Yeah. For sure. I remember like even a few years ago still like occasionally accidentally swallowing water, maybe once or twice per swim. And now I still keep like, you know, when I'm breathing, I still have one goggle in the water, but I basically never swallow water anymore. I think it just takes time. And so you will get used to it, Amy. I do think.

Eric, this just happened when Eric was like eight. Yeah. But I think we all kind of probably go through that. And I also think the faster you swim, the bigger that trough is. For sure. And so it becomes a little bit easier. For sure. Yeah.

I would say don't be afraid to, I mean, you shouldn't be sucking on water constantly to the point of having a full belly. So maybe just like dial back the amount that you're trying to keep your face in the water just a little bit and like maybe ease into it. That's all I can think of. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck, Amy. Okay, this next one is a kind of like a fun hypothetical question.

A recent podcast of yours sparked a debate amongst my friends. Ro Ro. Yes. Which athlete would win the next race? Under the assumption, both are equally fast and age group athletes. Athlete A trains as a normal triathlete with trying to improve in all disciplines or athlete B who trains to specifically to improve one discipline and maintain the others. The episode referenced there was an athlete who was a fast runner and the recommendation,

The recommendation was to maintain his run and focus on the bike. This is, this is interesting. And what it reminds me of is the conversation that we've had before. You guys brought this up about, like, how much time should you really be spending on swimming as an age group athlete? Driving to the pool, driving back, doing all the things. If you're after a fastest possible time in a race. Would that time be better spent focusing on the bike or focusing on the run and just doing some maintenance swims once or twice a week?

Dude, it's so hard to know, like, how close you are actually to your ultimate speed potential in any of the sports. Like, maybe running, maybe biking, it would be the easiest one for, like, a really good physiologist to be like, the data shows that you really should be capable because your V-O-2 is X, Y, and Z of a guy, getting another 80 watts out of yourself versus the swim is just so technique-based. Like, we all could be one day away from having this breakthrough, like our last person. five seconds for a hundred, put their head in the water properly. Like that can happen with somebody just having a thing.

You know, like my coach told me forever to like, you know, have your shoulder closer to your ear. But five years later, it finally all of a sudden makes sense and I can feel it. Yeah. And it clicked. So I don't know. Like this is definitely what most like ex-collegiate runners do when they come in to try

to do a world triathlon draft legal racing is they'll run like 20 miles a week. And just bike like crazy and swim like crazy? Yeah. And swim like. two workouts a day, like five days a week and just not even run. Yeah. Because it's like it just doesn't even matter. If you can't take two minutes off of your swim, you have no chance.

You're not going to, yeah. So that might not be applicable to do an age group athlete, but for the sake of the conversation, I think I might have work on the weakness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fun question though.

Fun hypothetical. Yeah. There's a lot of caveats to that. There, yes. Also, like the distance you're racing, you know, if you're a really poor biker and you're doing 70.3, it's like, that's a lot of time you're losing on the bike. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Next question's a van question. So let's go. This is from, uh-oh, we don't have a name. Oh, yes, we do. Kurt. Over the last six months, I converted a sprinter into a travel van. It was a super fun experience, but also a bit overwhelming as there are so many options.

I'm curious what you guys like and dislike about your van, what you guys. you might add or change about it. And if there's anything triathlon specific, you would suggest, also what exterior bike rack do you use? P.S. it would be awesome to get a van tour. I really enjoyed Eric's one,

a bago tour from 2018. Isn't there a van tour? Not of this current van. Oh. It was kind of a crazy... I filmed one for you. Was it just for Mercedes? Hmm.

It just wasn't... It's about in a reel or something. We didn't do like a full tip to head to tail. You're right. You're right. Because, like, when we first got it from Mercedes, we weren't sure what extra modifications we were going to be able to put on it and what we were going to get and

et cetera and i felt like there were some things that still needed to be done and then by the time those things had been done it felt like a little weird to do a van tour but we could yeah um so what we have is a storyteller overland stealth mode the all of the storytellers are the same inside they have three different levels but you just get like more beefy exterior packages with racks or like suspensions and whatever um so we basically took that mid level and we kind of beefed it up to the level of the beast mode, which is the highest level that they have just in terms of the biggest thing that we love on the van that we did that's aftermarket is the rip kit, which is right improvement package. That just makes it handle really nicely. Is that just suspension?

It's just a suspension thing. It hardly lifts the van at all, but it just drives really nice on and off road. That was probably the biggest wow thing that we did. Otherwise, like, the layout works really, really well for us. I think they did a great job of us. designing something that could work for a lot of different people. If we were just like starting from complete scratch, the storyteller does have this shower pan that's built into it that we mostly just use for storage inside, but we can't take a shower inside.

I've seen some builds that have that just built cleanly into the floor instead of sticking up. Oh, yeah. So you have a lot more, you have a lot of extra storage. The only other thing, which is really hard, is the amount of garage space that you have. Just if you have a large battery pack and you have water tanks in there, there's only so much space you can have for bikes underneath the bed.

But if you could magically just say, I need half the amount of batteries and half the amount of water, then that would be pretty sick. The other thing that we can't do in the storage thing is we can't, because of Mercedes, compliance, safety things, we can't have a box attached to our rear door, which we would absolutely love to have. So you should do that if you're building your own van.

Yeah, if you're building your own van, the exterior box on the back door where you can put like dirty shoes and just things that smell or like your campfire equipment that's really killer. Our bike rack to answer that question is we have a hitch mounted one-up

in my dream scenario and I have that rear box on the back with the one-up racks mounted at the top of that box. Got it. Taking that hitcher mount on and off is kind of a pain in the ass. Got it. Wow.

I could do that. I could go on about this for like three hours. I realize. I realize it as quick as possible. I realize there's so much depth to the van stuff. Yeah. People make it their own thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've built out like three different vans now and it's, I absolutely love it. But you're right. It's completely overwhelming. Yeah, I love it. It's going to take twice as much money and three times as much time as you think it's going to take.

Awesome. Okay. This next one is from Liz. This is kind of crazy and quite long, but I think it should be an entertaining one. Hey, Pod Squad. I just signed up for the Codiac Big Bear Ultra. the 50K, Eric. We know all about that.

That's right. That's the one that convinced me to get hip surgery. That's why we're here. This fall, which I'm super excited about. But I'm even more excited about the second Ultra I just signed up for in November. Dot, dot, dot, dot, the Taco Bell 50K. Oh, no. Is this anything like the Chipotle 50?

Chipotle challenge? You know what? Yes. So you're familiar with that. Yeah. Yes. Okay. I will be doing the Southern California one.

I've included the rules below, would love any advice on how to succeed in and train for the taco eating portion. Okay, so these are the rules. Be present at all Taco Bell stops along the courses. Zero tolerance for course cutting. Eat a menu item from at least nine of the 10 Taco Bell stops. By the fourth stop, all entrants must have consumed at least one Chalupa Supreme or one CrunchRab Supreme. Dietary restrictions will be allowed within reason. By the eighth stop, all entrants must have consumed at least one burrito supreme or one nachos bell grande.

Finish under 11 hours. Drinks do not count as food. Entrance must keep all receipts and wrappers for confirmation of stupidity at the end of the run. An off-course bathroom break will be allowed at Wash Park. Survivors will eventually get a commemorate. This is Taco Bell's words, by the way. Survivors will eventually... Taco Bell created this?

Oh, you know, I don't know why. You're right. It's not. This cannot be corporately sanctioned. What I mean is that this is the official rules of the race. Survivors will eventually get a commemorative item after a successful completion of the run. If you intend to participate, RSVP or statement of intent, once you are in, this is like the goblet of fire. Wow.

No on course pepto, Alka-Seltzer, Pepsid AC, my Lant, I don't know what that is, will be allowed. Additional rules may be added, amended or changed to promote the intent of this run, which is to do something, completely stupid. Also, then there's the Diablo challenge. Lather all items with Diablo sauce and do a Diablo shooter at the end. There's also the Baja Blast challenge, drink an aggregate of two liters of Baja Blast during the run without vomiting. Okay. So, how different is the training for this than a training for a regular 50K? Do you think? Do you, how much gut training do you have to do because there's a there's a significant amount of like craziness you're putting in your body. I don't know.

I feel like this might just be something you just got to like raw dog. And just like there's no way to train for this. And like at what detriment to your like health? Yeah. You're going to go around for three months. No. And have Taco Bell during your training to prep for this. You're going to die.

Yeah. Then this is so unproven. Yeah. I'm much more into the like just run two minutes per. mile slower than normal. Minimize the bouncing. Yes. Go with the most, the glideast stride that you can manage.

So maybe power walking would be like good training because we're just going for... You have to finish under 11 hours. I don't really know what that pace would be. I'm just saying like something to get yourself into like the no oscillation state of mind. Because I just like when I paste my sister, this was her big problem at the end of her hundred miler is like her stomach was okay-ish, but she just couldn't handle the bouncing anymore.

So she was power walking the whole way. she could keep stuff down. Right. So that's just like a lot of jostling your chalupas. Jostling your chalupas is. What a phrase that is. Have you ever seen that tweet that was like, if Taco Bell gives you diarrhea,

your weak, your bloodline is weak and history will forget you? Yeah, I love that. It's like these, I think these people are cut from the same cloth. Yes, definitely. Now my question for you is, do you think you could do this? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got a pretty good stomach.

Yeah. I also ate, I also did eat Taco Bell as a child. Same. Yeah. After swim practices, you know, if we were like, had been really good and done all our homework, whatever, we could go get some burritos. Yeah. So I think I'm just, you know, I have some, like, training that I would call back.

Yes. From my youth. You used to have like the old man fitness, but Taco Bell related. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You eating enough garbage when you're growing up, like your body's used to it. You can figure out.

Okay. Follow-up question. here, how much do you think gut resilience and not necessarily about Taco Bell, but about gels and sports, nutrition stuff on in a race? How much of that do you think is luck for someone, genetic? Because it seems like some people are super sensitive. I just honestly don't know. I don't know what the percentage is, but obviously there is some percentage of, there's just some people that can put down 200 grams of carbohydrates. Like Zach on our development team, that guy's putting in like 180 grams of carbs per hour.

He doesn't, he's like six, four, but it's not like he has some insanely larger, you know, stomach that can handle, like, they can take that much more in. I think he just fortunately is a large guy that can also handle that. Some people just, I don't know. I have not researched this enough. I just do what works for me. Yeah. Great. Well, that sounds fun.

Maybe one day we'll punish our bodies and take years off our life. I'm more concerned about running around a city for 50 kilometers. No, that's not so fun. Destroying my knees and all my joints. That's not so fun. If I'm going to run that far, I want to do in the woods, the mountains. Or we would need like the latest and greatest cloud monster. Cush.

Orish, super duper maxers or something. Okay, next question here is from Alfonso. Hello, I'm racing Oceanside and I'm struggling with my wetsuit. I like to consider myself an okay swimmer for my age doing a 2630. That's very okay for the 1900 meter swim, but have sleeved wetsuit that makes it feel way harder to swim. I'm considering using my sleeveless wet suit just so I have more room for my shoulders. Any thoughts or suggestions? I think it's going to be around 57 degrees at that time. Right. Well, you're in luck. You're in like it's nine degrees more than that.

It'll be fine with the sleeveless. Yeah. So let's talk about two things. First of all, you've swam and sleeveless and you've swam and sleeved, of course. Yes. Right. You went through both trends of the latest greatest, you know, whatever it was. It used to be sleeveless. Now, no one, no pro swims, sleeveless. Yeah. How much of a temperature difference do you think there is? I mean, if you get cold easily, it can be, it can be significant. Yeah.

I don't get cold very easily. So I was able to do sleeveless. I think also when I was doing sleeveless, there was a time in there where sleeved wetsuits just were fairly restrictive and the sleeveless was less restrictive. And I think that personally think that time has gone. Companies are putting their best, most flexible technology and materials into their high-end sleeved wet suits. So anyway, if you have the means, I think getting a high-end sleeved

wetsuit is the way to go for this particular race, the water temperature, you're going to be fine. And then... Especially if you swim 26 minutes. Like, you're a good enough swimmer. You can put out enough effort to generate enough body heat, in my opinion. Right. Unless you're just like 3% body fat and have a problem with cold.

But the thing is, the bottom line is even if Alfonso is... perceiving that he is less flexible in the sleeve wetsuit, would you say that the chances of him being faster in the sleeveless is basically zero? No, I wouldn't say that necessarily. I mean, if everything else

on these wetsuits is created equal and they're both equally buoyant, if he feels better in the sleeveless, I think you gotta go with that. I don't, it's not like legless. Like the most amount of buoyancy you're getting out of a wetsuit is in the legs and the butt, and then the arms

is great, but not making that big of a difference. So if you feel better and you're not going to think about it, I would go with the thing that's like quiet mind. Yeah. Yeah. It's so easy for people to just like have a full on like panic attack inside of their wetsuit and feel claustrophobic and like, does things so restrictive? You don't want that.

Literally happens to pros. Yeah. Yeah. All time. Crazy. Okay. Next one here's from Robert. First part of this question is for Nick.

Rest for everyone. I've only ever raised locally. Are drafting rules enforced on 8. age groupers, should they be? I mean, I think I would like to hear how much you think draft rules are enforced for pros. How often were you racing? You're like, I wish there was a rough right here looking at what I'm seeing. Yeah, often.

Often. I also feel like I had a very, like, I feel like some people for like when it was 12 meters, you know, like their threshold was at 11. And they felt good about 11. For me, I was like 13 or 14 felt like what I assumed 12 was, and I couldn't believe how close I was. So, like, in my mind, I think I saw a lot of cheating that was not called. And maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought, but it's inevitable, especially in the pro field where, you know, like your livelihood is dependent on this.

And you're kind of like, I can be the stand-up guy when there's no referee around here and sit at 13 instead of 11 and make no money and go back to flipping burgers. Right. Or I just like, maybe just for a couple seconds. The problem is when you were giving those space, people would slot in in front of you because they thought there was. Which is always going to be the problem. Even with it being 20 now, it's, it's even harder to know exactly what it looks like. The Race Ranger has solved that problem.

Yeah. Fortunately. And I think I probably, I might have enjoyed it a little bit more if I had raced with Race Ranger. Just so it's not even an issue in your head, right? Like the last few 70.3s that I did, I'm not. I have intentions of do another one, but the last couple ones that I did, that was like the thing that I remember

being most stressed about at World Championships the night before, just like, are the referee is going to be enforcing this? Like, am I going to have to like do something that I don't feel good about to stick with the group? It's all doing anything.

Or are they going to call, just like so stressful. Yeah. And do you think for age group racing should it be enforced? I just, I don't, I don't know if it's possible. I haven't been in an age group.

race, but like just having seen it from across the road or whatever, there's so many people. And I feel, feel like this is also just an issue in like an 85 person pro field. Like everybody on Saturday is going to be getting out of the water. There's going to be 45 guys all within 12 seconds of each other getting out of the water. And they need to space out 20 meters apart magically in the first five kilometers, first one kilometer of the bike course. It's just like that's hectic. And you magnify that times 100.

This is the problem with the age group field is it's basically impossible to do. Yeah. Like would we love it if it was possible? Yes, obviously. But I don't know what the solution is here besides like, oh, we can only have 100 age groupers race. So it's legal. I think what I have seen in my anecdotal experience is that when there's just like a group of 40 guys riding together, they don't really give out penalties. because what are they supposed to do?

None of those guys may be trying to draft, but they're just kind of, I'm kind of stuck. I'll be at the front of bit, and I'll try to push higher watts, and then I look back and there's people right there. We're all just riding together. Yeah, and then you slam on the brakes for a minute. Right, and then everyone behind you has to do the same thing.

It's a problem. But I have seen age roopers, and I know personally of age roopers who have gotten penalties for drafting. It's like, you know, it'll be like at most five people. in a race and there's not five offenders. Do you feel like the rolling start

has made this better or worse? Oh, shoot. It's like in my mind it could be better because there's just such a random mix of different speeds of people when it comes to the bike. That's interesting. I'm not sure.

I couldn't give you a really reliable answer on that. Yeah. It hurts my heart when I see it and it hurts my heart when I'm like stuck in one of these groups. Right. I don't want to be part of that problem. Yeah, you've got to assume nobody wants to be there.

What am I? Like, I try to get on the front and I try to get away and I just don't. And then when I'm back in a group, I'm like, all right. And there's people passing me and then the same thing happens to them. I don't really know what a solution is when you have, we've talked about this before, but when you have so many age groupers, it's just kind of the nature of the problem. Yeah. I mean, if I just had to guess, there's like, if there's a group of 20 people, there's like three people who are like you.

And then there's a bunch of people who are like, what am I supposed to do? slow down, but they're not ever going to go to the front. I do. Sometimes you see people just riding directly behind other people, but it's generally very slow people who maybe don't even really know about the rules. And which crosses into what we've talked about before where there's plenty of people who just want to finish the thing. And I don't think you give those people. Who gives a shit.

Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. Anyway, nice little hypothetical question there. Next one here. Eric, this one's for you. Is it necessary to bleed your brakes at regular intervals even if you aren't having any problems. Oh my God. I'll tell you what my answer to this question is absolutely not. If it is. If it ain't broke. Yeah. I think I also subscribe to the if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But generally, like on the brakes, they start to get a little soft or they click or, you know, whatever. Something goes wrong enough. And then if I'm doing one, I'm doing them both.

Yeah. And then I'll just do all the bikes. Because like I've got the bleed kit out. I'm kind of in the rhythm of it and like, oh yeah, that's right. The crux also was feeling a little squishy last night. All right, just do them all. Yeah. So. And do you ever replace the tubing? No.

No. Yeah. Not unless I have to cut it and it's too short or, you know, whatever. But for the most part, yeah, no, I've never just gone to replace the tubing. Right. We also, to be fair, we own bikes for like a maximum of two and a half, three years. Right. Right.

But even, um, I have, I have not replaced tubing on bikes that I own for, like seven or eight years in rowing a lot. You used to like want to replace break housing more when it was cables. Cable actuated because the brake housing would actually compact. Yeah. And at a certain point it would just kind of, I don't know, it would just, or it would corrode and things. And so like new break housing could actually feel really nice versus now it's hydraulic hose. Right.

Right. Okay. Next question here is from Adrian in Canada. Really? Yeah. Hi, it's Adrian from Nanaimo. I've noticed more frequent. mechanical bike failures in pro triathlon racing lately.

Front ends, drive train, even basic components. Why is that? Is the complexity of modern tri bikes or just the reality of constant travel and rebuilds? I don't know if you guys are like Christians freaking... I was just to say, I think this is a K-Dex problem. Right. It gives you a common denominator here. I actually don't know if his bars are K-Dex, but I don't know what happened with

Christians thing. But the first thing that occurred to me with Christian is his bike fits over the have had these ridiculous stack spacers between his base bar and where his elbows are because he wants to like ride off the front of his bike by like three feet. I see. Like his elbows are in front of his through axle on the front. This is a little skinny part that's connecting your bike to your handlebars that has always looked a little bit.

So you think of like the lever is just like it snapped. And then you're just like yanking on it and you're you got a big chested fella. in New Zealand on those chip seal roads. There's only so much like little carbon parts can do. But that was my first thought with that. There's a lot of proprietary, especially cockpits going on right now where there are these kind of startup smaller brands that are doing full custom or like whatever handlebar setups.

And like no one's tested. There's like not an FDA of this that's testing all of these or crash testing these to make sure that they're compliant with anything. You are crashed testing them. You're just trusting these couple of bro, like ex-engineers who thought bikes were fun that they like did their homework properly. Right.

And that they're engineering tolerant. They've tested it. Do you think there is an increased frequency or is it just kind of confirmation bias? It could be that there's much more media coverage of professional racing now. So whereas before you just would have never heard about it, there's a freaking camera on everybody.

and everybody has a YouTube channel and wants to talk about things. So hard to say for sure. It also seems like when something goes wrong, it's like, oh, big, big drama. You know, let's put it all over everything. Let's make it a real. That's true.

Okay, next question here is from Alice from Great Britain and she says, hi, E-N-P. I'm doing my first 70.3 in May and will be riding a basic and old carbon road bike with tri-bars. How apt? I usually have a big, bag with a pump, spare inner tubes, etc. Multiple. Attached to the frame between the seat tube

and the top tube and a bottle cage on the down tube. I'm told this setup is not very arrow, however. I'm struggling to think of how else to do it. I'd like to keep the bag so that I can deal with repairs and ideally have a second bottle. Any tips? Does it even matter as I won't be going very fast anyway? Course is relatively flat, so I'm not too worried about weight. Well, the problem If it's fat, then flat, then your arrow does matter. But if you're not really worried about speed, what do you think? This is one of those questions. We answer many of these questions where I don't know.

How much do you care? Correct. Yes, it's definitely not aerodynamic at all. The down-to bottle is the big no-no. And this thing's sitting on top of your top tube, but your seat post-junction, it's not the worst ever. but if you could tuck that up underneath your saddle where a saddle bag goes, that would be great.

I think get yourself down to single tube. If you go tubeless, then you can just bring like a CO2. Bring multiple tubes. That's like, what are you training for the apocalypse? I mean, maybe you have double-flatted before. My thing is, though, true. But if you're double-flatted, I don't know. Can't you just like, well, we lost this one today.

You know? Call it? I don't know. Maybe you're... Or you wait for someone else to stop and help you. You know, like bringing two intertubes seems crazy. So that's what I think that's our recommendation. Ideally switch to two lists, but if you don't, just get one down to one inner tube.

Put that up underneath your saddle. That's pretty arrow under there. And then, yeah, if you want to keep a down tube bottle, just get one of those aerodynamic ones. Those are like a zero penalty aerodynamically. That's right. Okay. Next one here.

Another Canadian. Tasia? Tazia? What do you think? TASI. Tadaj Pagacha? Today's Ficcacha? Okay, this is High TTTL Squad. I'm a non-triathlete. I love you already. And my husband just started a few years ago after being inspired by the Olympics. From your experience, what are the most helpful ways a partner can support you throughout training and on race day, both practically and emotionally? Even though I do not participate in triathlon, TTL has totally made me fall in love with the sport. So thank you. Taja from Prince George, BC. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this because it's different for different people, right? Like how I would support you is completely different than how I would support Paula. Right. And how I want to be supported by like my parents or whatever at a race. So it's different for each person.

I think you need to know your person a little bit. Like do they want you to just show up with dinner and just take care of everything without even asking, versus somebody who's like, can I go get you to your dinner right now? Do you want this? Do you need this? Do you need this? Do you need this? Like, I don't, like, I'll tell you.

I'll tell you when I need something. Otherwise, you're just kind of stressing me out because I hadn't even gotten to that point in my brain yet. Right. Of thinking about that. So I think you could ask that person. If you don't already know, but if they're your partner, you probably know. I think you're really honest on something. Because I was just thinking something that I really would like is if my partner or even my friends asked me about like,

like, hey, tell me about your intervals. Like what power did you hold on your intervals? Or like, how did you feel? Did you, like, you're feeling strong? That for me, I like that. I want to talk about it. But someone else might be like, I do not. I do not want you, I literally do not want you to ask me about that.

So it really can go in both directions. It's about like practicing empathy and figuring out what they need. Yeah, exactly. I think most people are going to be a little bit stressed. So trying to lower the stress Without like making too much light of the situation It's like I think most people are a little bit tense And if you can keep it fun

Yeah It's good for most people Nice what's good for you Eric Um Yeah I think Like my dad does a really good job I think Like he doesn't ask me if I need anything He's just is there to chat when I want to chat

And he'll talk to me about a cool car that went by or whatever. Like, it's like we're at a triathlon, but he's not like, I need to make this trathlon the best triathlon for you ever mode. So it just kind of feels normal and it can diffuse some of that.

I get myself worked up very easily inside of my own head without like just kind of random bits to break the cycle. Yeah. By the, sorry if you can hear a lot of noise here, we are like in the heart of Oceanside, which is awesome.

And it's going off tonight. It's going off. It's like a crazy food festival. Festivals, car show. seems to be driving by the whole time. We're able to park even. Okay, next one here is from Sophia, Australia. Hey, TTL crew, jumping off the recent question about body image,

Eric mentioning the impact of a coach and Paula's chat about her personal struggles in the past. I'm a girls' high school swim coach, and I want to create a positive environment around body image and fueling for my athletes. What do you think we can do as coaches to help the next generation build healthier relationship with their bodies and food? And looking back, what are some of the people? conversations you wish your coaches had with you or things you wish were handled differently. Thanks so much.

Love the podcast. All the best with Eric's hip. Eric, I feel like you're such a perfect person to answer this question. Oh, I mean, I don't know. Am I?

Like, it didn't go perfectly for me. Well, I mean, talk about like who makes the best teachers. I know what went, I know what went wrong. And I think it was comments without education.

So a coach saying, hmm, you think you should be eating that? Without like any sort of like, without like true guidance from a knowledgeable perspective. Like the coach that I had at the time did not really understand eating disorders, did not. I think he understood nutrition fairly well,

but had not had any sort of encounters with getting out of control. Do you think they knew? Is it possible they didn't know the kind of damage that they could inflict. For sure. And it did not come from a negative place at all. It came from trying to teach like, hey, you're eating little Caesars three times a week. Like you're not in high school anymore.

He's trying for the talk about 50K. Come on, guys. Yeah. So I don't know. Like, I guess if I could go back, it would have been nice to be connected with a truly knowledgeable nutritionist in that situation rather than just like a comment where I was now on my own to like decipher what that meant and what I should do about it. And I don't think like a coach is necessarily the person who can do all the education and like

an actual nutritionist if that was possible. I think that might have helped a little bit. But I don't know. It's really hard. Like what what I think was good about my swimming years like through high school and everything was the focus was very completely on performance and working hard. Just like what do we need to do to get better? it was not a question of like weight or body image or any of that was never even discussed.

It was like the people who were working hard in the pool were the ones who were turned into heroes. And that's what you were after. You were like trying to be a hard worker. Yeah. It was aspiring. It was what I aspired to. It had nothing to do with how you looked. Yeah.

Seems to be there's more focus on that these days. Yeah. I imagine it still is, you know, it still becomes a problem. Yeah. Yeah. I guess you could come at it from a proactive, like the fueling angle potentially. And like, I'm just speaking for personal experience. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not an nutritionist. I have spoken to ample amounts of them. But just from my personal experience that like here's the plan that we want to put in play. Like if anybody is curious about what they should, you know, what might help them perform better on the nutrition front.

Let us know we have those resources available for you. But don't just, just don't take. this into your own hands, I guess. Yeah, right. Like, if you want to learn more about it, let us know. Yeah, good. That's good. Yeah. We'll do two more questions. This one is, we'll keep this one short because it's video related, but it is for us specifically. This is from Lennon. Hi, TTL. I'm a 43-year-old new triathlete, a member of Team TTR. Thank you, Lenin, who is currently training for my first 70.3 race this summer. This question is for Eric and

Nick. Being able to do this is something I have never imagined myself doing just two years ago, so I want to make sure I document my first ever half-distance race. I have hired a videographer for the day of the race who will take photos and videos and would like to make a short-form documentary two to four minutes long about my experience for YouTube. I'd like to know what you would recommend as basics and essentials to edit and create this short documentary

after I receive the video files. Where should I edit the video beyond using iMovies, which is just I-Movie? What software or app would you recommend for this? and where do you select the music and obtain copyright permission to use the music? Thank you for always creating outstanding quality videos and we'd love to learn from you.

Lenin from St. Louis. Okay, so he's going to get the footage and then has to compile it himself into something. Well, I would probably have them shoot in like regular color profile. Yes, correct. Not in log. Yes.

You don't even want to deal with that. So I'm sure, Lenin, you might not know what that is, but you can ask them to shoot in Rec 709 is what the technical term is for it, or just like full ready color. Yeah, you don't want to get some like, just do that. Yep.

You want the colors to look like real life. You don't have to edit the colors. Yes, exactly. You don't want to filter anything to use that word from Instagram. And then I think the biggest thing is you need to lay out a story here. They gave yourself a little bit of a framework. Like you're the hero and the opening thing we need to state what the obstacle that the hero needs to overcome is. and you need to lay a little bit of a foundation of who you are or why this matters,

and then you're off on your journey of climbing the mountain and do you get to the top or not and conflict, resolution, beginning, middle end. People underestimate. People think the solution to a good video is good footage. Putting together a compelling story in the edit is so important. You could shoot it on an iPhone. And if you can put together a compelling story in the edit, it'll come to life. For sure.

Yeah, that's what I do. And I think I movie is completely sufficient. Totally fine. If you just like really, really want to spend some money, you can get Final Cut Pro, which is just a beefed up version of Eye Movie, and it will probably feel exactly the same to you. There's also a free version of Resolve that works pretty well.

Oh. Yeah. Which is similar. It's like... Nick edits on DaVinci Resolve. Yeah. I edit on Final Cut Pro. How much is it?

300 bucks? Yeah, it's 300 bucks. It used to be like thousands of dollars for that software. No, it's very approachable now. But like I said, you're probably, there's probably nothing inside a Final Cut Pro that you can't also have an iMovie. Right. As far as like you've never edited a video before.

And I guess the last thing is the music. And there are a couple of different sites I use. Musicbed and Art List are kind of like the two front runners in terms of having a great library of non-copryright. Copyright of cleared music. Right. Okay. And final question here is from Sebastian. Hey guys, I've got a question for you.

Last May I moved to another country. And with this move, I haven't been able to get back into the rhythm of training. It's almost been a year now, but I can't seem to get back into the cadence I used to have consistent 17 plus hours of training a week. Maybe it's a motivation thing. I'm not sure. But I can't get back to the routine. That's a lot. That's a ton.

That's a ton. That's for an age of your brother, that's like at the upper end of things. But I can't get back to the routine. Any good recommendations for me. Thank you, Sebastian. So I don't know. It's kind of tough. Because is this your job?

Yeah. I mean, anytime we change location, just to even go to a training camp, somewhere that we haven't been before, it takes two weeks to feel like we're not just scrambling the entire time. And to imagine doing that while having a job, potentially a new job, all new locations. Like, that's tough. And it might just take some time to like really find the pool situation

and like really understand the lane, swimming availability times, et cetera, find that training group that you love, that keeps you accountable, et cetera. The thing is, though, as a pro, I understand this perspective of like, well, we need to train because I need to do this thing. But as a non-professional,

you can't find the motivation to train. I guess I don't really see the problem. I mean, the problem would just be if you had signed up for world championships super far in advance or something, but you're outside of that now. So I'm kind of with you on, like, do you need to force this versus like...

You should love it. I think it'll happen. You will find that training partner or the training group or whatever if it's meant to be and I wouldn't like force yourself to do... You're doing this because you like it, ultimately. You know, in theory, right. Yeah. Yeah.

I only train as much as I want to. I like, I like doing what I do. And I imagine most age groups feel the same. And you love it more than I think I've ever seen you loving it. Correct. Which ergo, there are... ebbs and flows. Yes, there are ebbs and flows.

I don't, I don't think you should beat yourself up if you're in just like one of those times where you don't feel like doing 17 hours a week. Nine is super still a lot of training. That's a lot of time to be doing any one activity. Do you know what normal people exercise? If I play nine hours of Xbox a week, Paula would divorce me. That's true. And people play a lot of like, you know, World of Warcraft.

Yeah. I mean, just insert golf. If you golfs for nine hours a week, like that would be a lot. That's right. Imagine 17 hours a week of golf. Yeah. Is this your job? All right.

So not to like, you know, give you no motivation there, but I think it'll come. Yeah. But I wouldn't force it. Yeah. Yeah. Well. You can look for things where you can find them, though. And get into some groups.

Meet some people with like-minded, you know, interests. Love that. And do we think listening to the podcast counts as your weekly training volume? It's triathlon related, you know. We are making you faster in some way. Yeah. You might be able to add that to your tally. Yeah, yeah, this is research.

This is time spent. This is work. Same with watching triathlon films, multi-sport films. I think that also might help. Definitely go watch our film. Yeah, look for things where you can find them on YouTube. That's a good motivation. Yeah.

All right, well, that's probably enough of us to tootting our own horns without Paula here to knock us down a little bit. Give us a little reality check. Yeah. But I think it's about time for us to get to bed as well. Yeah. Another big day tomorrow. That's right.

Well, thanks for listening, everyone. Sorry, it was a day late, but we wanted to make sure we did it in person. And good luck to everyone who's racing. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. I'm going to be out there cheering. I'm having blast. Later. Bye.