That Triathlon Life Podcast - Ironman 70.3 Oceanside pre-race discussion, triathlon shoes, feeling good on the run, open water, and more!

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Eric and Paula are both racing in the Ironman 70.3 triathlon in Oceanside, CA on Saturday. We get a little into what that experience will be like for them, as well as some tips that other athletes racing this weekend can use. We also answered some other questions about bike shoes, if disc wheels are a good idea, and what other upgrades are worth investing in to get a little faster on the bike course. See you all in Oceanside this weekend! For more, check out http://www.thattriathlonlife.com

Hey, everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Findlay. I'm Nick Goldston. Oh, he says, okay. Eric. Is that how it always works? I thought normally Paula says, and Nick Goldston is.

We are on episode 11, and Eric messed up the intro. I just get so nervous. Cuts out the most important person. Not the most important person. I thought it was my job to say, and we're here with our good friend, Nick Goldston, but that's what we were doing like on episodes one, two, and three. Yeah, that's right. Yep, that's right.

Nick introduces himself, I've grown so much. We've went up in the world. We're doing this a little differently today because we're actually down in California right now. We're recording this in our good friends spare bedroom, guest bedroom, and we're literally sitting on the bed. So the audio quality should actually be amazing because of all of these pillows around us. I'm excited to hear it. You just might hear a rogue earthquake every now and then since you're in California.

Yeah, or just Flynn running around upstairs. Yeah, it's been fun having Flynn on this trip. Just kidding. Is he going to be with me on race day? Are we going to be running around trying to film you? Do it on. No. Is he taking over the TTL Instagram account on race day?

We haven't discussed this yet, Nick. But ideally, like, while we're out on the bike and you can't be with us anyway, you could take him for like a 10 minute walk. That's right. Because we're right by the finish line. Right. And then, like, I haven't asked you to do this yet if you want to. That sounds great. And then you just throw them back in the room until we're done because we're going to be done before 11 a.m.

If all goes well. Yeah. and he's a big boy. He can hang in the room for four hours. He'll be fine. He'll just be apparently, I just learned that when you guys leave your house and bend and you leave him there, he just leans up against the front door and just waits and waits until you guys get back. That's pretty cute. Yeah. He has like five beds in the house, but he just sits like right at the front door. I think it's because he can hear any visitors, like anyone who comes to the front door. And then he hears the truck coming out when we get home. So his head pops up. Super cute. Well, speaking of the race, you guys are both racing on Saturday for Oceanside, 70.3. Last time you guys were there was, when was that?

Was it like November? No, October? October, yeah. It felt like yesterday. I know. I feel like you were just there. But the race was relatively good for both of you. It doesn't need to be relative for Paula.

You won the race. And Eric, you were doing great, and then you hit kind of like a, crazy pothole and got ejected off of your bike 30 feet into the air. I definitely slid 30 feet. It wasn't vertical. It was a horizontal slide. I actually didn't lose too much skin and everything was, I was okay. But bike was pretty trash. Broke the seat, broke the seat right off of it and stuff. When you looked at you and you looked at the bike, it looked like those couldn't have been from the same crash because you looked like you went down at like five miles an hour and the bike looked like it just got dropped off a cliff.

I rolled pretty well, but I had to be like crazy, crazy bruise on my quad. I couldn't, I was like hobbling around. Should have had a crutch probably for about a day before I could really walk normal on that. But yeah, I'd say ultimately it worked out pretty well for going down at that speed. That bruise on your quad wasn't even from hitting the ground. It was from the handlebar hitting your quad, right? Yeah, I don't know exactly how it happened. I wish I had a like slow-mo video of it, but either just like hitting like I slid off the saddle,

when I hit that crater and hit the handlebars with my knee or something, or, like, landed on the handlebars on my knee, on the ground. Yeah, yeah, right. That's, that makes sense. But for everyone racing oceanside, I think the roads are not that bad. Eric was just in a pack and happened to be looking down for a second. So I'd say the roads are in a state where you should be paying attention. But it's not like there's potholes and craters every two meters, you know?

No. Like I was riding alone. with no motorcycle, no anyone, and I didn't have any issues. So it's not to scare you. It's just to, you really should keep your head up if you are racing, especially if there's people around you. People need to keep their head up when they're racing all the time. We saw what happened at Clash Miami, you know.

Oh, totally. Huge open speedway with no cars and you can still crash, right? Yeah, yeah. I feel like triathletes especially are just so used to staring at their power meter numbers because they're used to being on a trainer and they forget that they're outdoors and stuff is constantly changing. To be fair to Sarah who crashed in Clash, Miami, and certainly my situation,

this was like 75K into the bike, and I was looking down, it was like all I could do, I was just trying to hang on, and we had a tailwind, and we were going, like, super, super fast, and that is the time where it is the easiest to look down and not even realize you're looking down

is when you're just trying to get to the, trying to get to T2. I just was with you guys yesterday, and we went for a little ride, and then I was after the ride, I was asking you guys what your goals were for the race. It's really hard to have time-based goals in a 70.3 because conditions are different and courses are different.

My personal goal was to get to the run and feel good. Like I haven't had a 70.3 or any race, really, where I've gotten to the run and felt good on the run since Daytona in 2019. So just the feeling of getting off the bike and knowing I haven't had that much run training and drags on and counting down the miles, like I don't want that to. happen. And I think if I ride well and can get off the bike feeling like I'm in control and could go faster if I wanted to, that's what I want to feel like. Well, I guess that's what I was going to ask is how much of that feeling good on the run is due to how well you pace the bike? Or do you think it's actually, it doesn't have to do with that. It has more to do with your run training or just

the day. For me, I think it's just about how much I've been running and training. And I rode really fast in Dayton or really hard in Daytona and still felt good on the bike or on the run. So personally, I think it's more of a how much run volume do I have in my legs. And right now it's been consistent for three months, which is the biggest thing for me is consistency. I would say a lot of people, the biggest factor with running well on the bike is running well off the bike is your bike fitness. But Paul is basically just saying like her bike fitness has not been a concern for several years now, but the run is the thing that's, you know, been the limiter for sure.

versus for me 100%. Like if I get off and run terribly, it's probably because I overrode. And Paula, when do you know? Like, is it when you start the run? Or is it at the end of the bike? Is it halfway through the run? I mean, it's even sometimes on the bike

when I'm like, oh, I know I have not been, like I'm riding so well, but I know I haven't backed up my run training because I've been injured or I just don't even know if I can get through the run because I have a niggle that's not going away. So it's pretty immediate. And I try to stay in the moment when I'm racing and not anticipate the run because that can kind of lead me to not ride as well.

So I think my strategy is going to be similar to October where I want to bike as if there's no run. There's bike as hard as I can because I think in this kind of a field, that's going to be the only way to podium is to be able to ride at or with the leaders and then hold on the run. So, yeah, there's definitely going to be no holding back on the bike. Yeah, I feel like if you want to have a good result at this race for either one of you, it's like there's no holding back at any point, it seems like, because there's just too much talent. Totally. It's like be with-

Different field than October. Yeah. Be with this group now. Be with this group now. Be with just and do that as many times as you can. Yeah. You have to be maybe willing to sacrifice an okay result to potentially just stay with the group and risk it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But before the race is doing our little pop-up, I don't get to see TTL Nash. Yeah, we've got all the gear now, and we've been wearing it the last few days, and we freaking love it. Like, it's just so California feeling, like, kind of a vintage tea, and then the yellow tea is very, like, summertime California vibe. And the hats are just super cool as well.

So we really hope people like them, and we're excited to, yeah, we still haven't, we're going to get there on Wednesday and kind of scout out the best place to have it. So stay tuned to all our Instagram stuff on Wednesday for the times and locations. But yeah, like Eric said. It should be like Thursday afternoon. Well, we'll try to do it afternoon because I know some people will drive down from L.A. and stuff like you, Nick. Like you.

And yeah. It'll just be fun. We'll hang out. I think I was thinking today what we should do is we should have each one of us wearing one of the items so that people can have like a live model. So they know. Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. The T-shirt you guys let me use yesterday.

Oh, let me use. The T-shirt you gave me. You're going to be using that for life. I'm trying to be tactical about it. But no, the T. We give Nick things for free. I can confirm Nick has a free 99 discount. The t-shirt you guys gave me yesterday is awesome.

And it's a little hard to tell. It's the white one with kind of like the tri-color stripes with TTL. It's hard to tell that it's not really a white. It's like more of a vintage white. It's very, very cool. I think the term is natural. Natural, natural, yeah. Yeah, it's great.

And I think people are going to go crazy for that hat. And what's really cool is that Heather and Wadi are going to be in the same area as us kind of doing their own pop-up as well. So it's going to be a whole fam team celebration. We'll have both vans out. It's going to be awesome. We can't wait for that. Great. Okay, so we're going to move on to the questions now.

The first one is from Pam Goodley. She says, which bike shoes do the three of you have? Do you use the same shoes for road and triathlon? Do they have boa or Velcro clip? closures. Thanks. Well, I'll just start. I still have Shimano shoes from when I was working with Shimano last year. I haven't replaced those.

They last for a long time. And definitely have road-specific shoes, gravel-specific shoes, and triathlon-specific shoes. A triathlon shoe will work for road riding, but a road shoe just with the boas and everything is typically got a stiffer sole. It's just going to feel a lot better when you're trying to do a lot of mileage on it. and there's really no need to be able to get in and out of your shoes quickly when you're doing just your training. I just use my road shoes with a boa in triathlon as well. So I don't really, I don't, you have a Velcro closure tri-shoe or like a fast entry one.

I find if you loosen the boa's enough, it's actually not too hard to slide into them. And in a 70.3 or an iron man, there's not quite as much urgency to get into your shoes as you're mounting your bike. Like there isn't an ITU race. and I just really like racing in the shoes that I train in every day to have some consistency, like exact same cleat position, all of that. So yeah, I just race with my road shoes. And then I have gravel-specific shoes too for when I go off-road. Off-road, baby.

Cool, cool. Okay, great. Well, we'll move on to the next question here. There's no name, but it's a Canadian triathlete. Two questions. Firstly, I recently upgraded my bike to an arrow road bike. It has Ultegra-D-I-2 and arrow handlebars, however, no arrow wheels. would my money be better spent on wheels or something else?

Oh, good question. Best aerodynamic bang for your buck are arrow wheels and arrow helmet. Arrow helmet is one-tenth of the price. It also depends on what kind of kit you're wearing, because if you're wearing like a baggy kit, that's a humongous drag on... That's true. That's a good one too. But I wonder if she's right or he is racing it in a triathlon,

trying to be arrow as possible, because it's a road dog, right? Arrow road bike. So I would say for that, yeah, arrow wheels are so expensive, but they are a lot faster than training wheels. They're faster than a frame. So maybe that is the best. Totally, yeah.

And if you're not running disc brakes right now, like you can definitely get some, I would say arrow wheels five years ago are not at all significantly slower than the top arrow wheels today. So you can find something used and probably get, gain yourself, whatever, a minute and a 40K

for like a thousand bucks or something. I also think there's been testing with like the Evade from Specialized versus the Prevail. The Evade is like the Arrow Road helmet and then the Prevail is the road helmet with tons of vents on it. More for like hot weather or training and that's the one I usually wear.

But the evade is tested in the wind tunnel to be faster and is significantly less expensive than a pair of wheels. So if you're just looking for some gains that are a little more minor but more affordable, maybe that's something to start with anyway. The helmet is the biggest, definitely the best bang for your buck as far as aerodynamics goes.

But something that I feel like sometimes people forget is that a lot of these helmets, like a TT helmet, they're tested at, they're optimized for speeds that some amateurs will never go. And aerodynamics, it's not like if it's fast at 40K an hour,

it's just a little less fast at 35K an hour or whatever. It's not necessarily true. Different shapes are optimized. for different speeds. So there you go. Now you're super confused. You were about to go by an arrow helmet and now you don't know what you're supposed to do.

I guess what I want to get to is that like just because the arrow helmet is great for Paula, doesn't mean you have to spend $400 on a super fancy air helmet. Like the prevail, no, not the prevail. The evade is probably a great helmet and it can do both duties. Like you can still use it on your road bike on training days

and then race in it. instead of getting a standalone TT helmet. Yeah. I'm no longer sponsored by Rudy Project, but I have to say their current Arrow Helmet did test very well in the wind tunnel, and they usually have pretty good deals. So that's a good budget option.

Great. And then the second question was, what pro ITU athlete do you think will become the best 70.3 athlete? And I guess maybe like, let's not count people who have already shown that they're amazing at some, like no Taylor Nib or whatever,

or Olympic gold medalists. Martin. Martin's already raced. That's what I'm saying. Martin or Taylor Nibber have already, we already know them. So I don't know, like, yeah. There's so many of them that have come over right now that the list that haven't tried a 70.3 in the last six months is pretty short.

It's dwindling. Yeah. I would say Kate is a ferris when she's back racing. Yeah. After she has her baby, she raced the Collins Cup last year, but she hasn't fully tapped her potential in 70.3 at all. Like she just got a TT bike for that race. and I think with a little more time on the TT bike

she's kind of a thread across like all three sports. She's such a fast swimmer. She's strong on the bike and she's an amazing runner. So I think she could be, well, she will be one of the best in the world if she decides to go that route. I talked to her mom for like 30 minutes in Malibu last year.

Of course she does. If they're up to her mom, Katie is going to be the fastest in the world for sure. She's very proud and very excited. Oh, yeah. Well, she is one of the best in the world. Cool. Eric, did you have something you were going to say?

Yeah, on the guy's side, who's the Kiwi? Who did it? The only person I can think of who has done one, who would probably be pretty good is Hayden, Wild. Just that guy can run so fast, and he's strong enough on the bike, so. Yeah, it's crazy. I think, I wonder if other triathlon fans like myself

feel the way that I do, which is like when these IT people come over and they do well at 70.3, it's like, wait a second, you do your own thing. This is my thing. I know the people that I like. and you're supposed to be good at your own thing, not the thing I love.

Well, that's where we all, that's where we all came from, ultimately. There are very, very few people in 70.3 right now that didn't do ITU at some point. That's funny, actually, when Lucy Charles went the other way, right? She started trying to race IT and did pretty well, too. Yeah, the key to that is being a festival.

Right, which she is, of course. Cool. Okay, well, now, next question is from David. Hey, Eric, Paula, and Nick, amazing video this week, love the creativity. And for people who don't know, this week, Eric and Paul put out a video and the whole first three and a half minutes were Eric building Paula's new

Shiv, her TT bike. And it is a beauty of a video. So if you haven't checked it out, definitely check it out. And the music is by Nick. And I made some, I made the song for it. I made some custom music for it. So check it out. The first question from David is, you get a new bike each

season. What do you do with last year's bikes? Obviously, you ride them a ton. but they still must have lots of life left in them. Are you allowed to say what you're going to say or no? Yard sale. Yeah. Slide into my DMs. Right.

Yeah, we have so many Argon 18s in our attic. Like, we need to get rid of Eric's Argon's. Please DM us. But I've been pretty good about being able to sell my bikes. Well, my issue, the reason I haven't been able to sell bikes is because Shimona was having troubles getting parts. Oh, so you take them off of that? So I couldn't sell a complete bike.

So it's very hard to like, you know, somebody that, oh, do you have a bike for sale? Like, well, have like three quarters of a bike for sale. Like, hopefully you want the parts that I have. So that's, luckily right now, since I switched over to SRM, I got a full new set of parts. So I do have a road bike, a gravel bike, a TT bike. I have several TTI bikes that are for sale. So, yeah, hit me up. I find it really hard to sell bikes because I get very attached to them.

And contractually, we're not really supposed to advertise them publicly. if you have someone that comes to you and asks if you have a bike for sale, obviously you're not just going to accumulate bikes for 10 or 20 years, however long you're a professional for. It is part of the way that we make money. But I get so attached to them,

it's really hard to sell them for me. You ride so many miles on them. But on the flip side, the bikes that we do sell are in such good shape because we do get a new one every year. So they're basically brand new bikes all top end stuff. Also, the two of you are so, so careful with those bikes. I mean, before you went on a row

ride yesterday, Eric was literally spraying down the bikes, wiping them down, making sure everything looked perfect. And I feel like you got to do that with every single ride. Yeah, we take good care of them. Because we make movies, dude, they got to look good. Yeah. Meanwhile, there's been a leaf in my real

derailer for like a month. I'm like, oh, it'll be able to get up. Nick's bike, too. When are we going to talk about these rotors? I would have brought some from home for you. I've got break pads in the car. Let's fix this now. I just ordered the other brake pads. Oh, $50.

Ridiculous. Okay. Next question is from Michael Woods. Do you guys use a power meter on your bike while biking outside? If so, what's your recommendation for a cheap power pedal or crank? I feel like I'm always wondering what power I'm out putting while I'm biking outside to see if I'm improving. Love the podcast and can't wait for the next one. Tell Flynn. I said, what's up, dog? 100% yes. Cannot live without a power meter. It's the most important tool. It's better than heart rate. it's better than Kate, it's better than any other metric on the bike because it's, you know. Arguably much more important to have outside than inside because of the number of variables outside.

Like you can kind of go off of your heart rate inside because you know, having to worry about the wind or a hill or all these things that can kind of make that drift all over the place. But it really allows for much more precise training on the road. And it's how we gauge our training and, you know, it's how our coach prescribes our training. And then it's how we see in a 70.3 that we're not overbiking or underbiking or underbiting. biking while we're in the race. So I think it's a really, really important tool. And there are so many power meters on the market now. Both Eric and I use cork, which is the best fully incorporated into the SRAM crank. So it's just really an easy setup. And it's all I've used my whole life. I've never used a

power meter. The downside is that yes, it is stuck on one bike. So if you have a TT bike and a road bike and you need to get a power, you want power meter, you got to get two. Or you go to like a wheel base system. I don't even know if power tap still makes wheelbase systems anymore. Or you can go to like the new speed play paddles that have power inside of those and then you can

theoretically switch them between bikes. People that have the power based pedals, I've heard mixed reviews about the accuracy of them and having issues. I've truly never had a problem with the cork. Yeah, I have cork on my road bike and it's also been perfect for me.

But every, I have I have two bikes with power meters. I have my road bike and my race bike. And the race bike has a crank-based one-sided power meter. And it's a well-known brand, but it's not. I would say if you're trying to get something as cheap as possible, my one-sided power meter reads identically to my road bike, dual-sided fancy cork one.

So if you want the best of the best, I do think cork is great. And there's a lot of other expensive brands out there. But you don't have to spend a crazy amount of money to get a crank-based single-sided power meter on your bike. Yeah. The prices have come down a lot. Yeah.

Cool. Okay, the next question, this one will be kind of fun. But what personality types are each of you? Introverts or extroverts? And do you know your Enneagram numbers? Well, we're introverts and Nick is an extrovert,

and that's why we're doing a podcast. Paula, you're an introvert too, you think? I don't know. I'm like social. Like, I can talk to people and I can talk in a group, but I don't love going and hanging out with like a huge group of people. Right.

But if someone comes up to a race or like the pop-up stuff, like I really enjoy that and chatting with new people. Right. I wouldn't say I'm totally introverted, but. Yeah, exactly. We're not like the life of the party. We're not trying to go to a party. But if a party arrives at our house, like we love it. We will have it.

We love entertaining and stuff. But yeah, I don't know. In the middle somewhere. And do you guys know what your enneagram number is? Have you even heard of that? I don't even know what that is. No. The reason I know about it is because Toby is obsessed with it.

So I know that, yes, I know that I'm the most quintessential seven. So there's nine anagram types. Each one of them has like where they get their energy from. And it kind of like describes their motivations. So seven is the enthusiast. So that's me. I'm the enthusiast. And I would, Paula, you apparently, according to Toby, are a three with a two-ing,

which is the achiever, and your wing is you're a helper slash caregiver. Okay. And Eric, she thought you were a five, which is the investigator, with a four wing, the romantic. So you're like, you're the romantic investigator.

And Paula's the helping caregiving achiever. I think she pretty much nailed. I would say that's about right. All right. Well, I mean, I have no idea what all the out of numbers are, but I like that. Sounds great.

Yeah, I think she's right. She's very into that stuff. Thank you, Toby, for analyzing us. And then this Steve Blake, who asked this question, he also asked, what areas do you all think the sport can grow, i.e. Xera, gravel try, etc. I think the sport can grow by having more, like, less monopolies on events by big race companies,

more local events, like growing big, like wildflower, like Escape from Alcatraz, like St. Anthony's, and just more interesting races of those. Is that just up to triathletes signing up for those races? Is that the reason they're not happening? Is because people only want to do Iron Man events? Yeah, I mean, that is just like an issue with how much Iron Man, how big Iron Man is, the marketing dollars that they have

and the way that they've positioned the sport of like Iron Man and Traathlon are one, you know, if you're doing an iron, if you're doing a triathlon, you're probably doing an Iron Man. You just assume that's all there is, right? So I just think that's up to people being very, passionate in starting these races that aren't necessarily going to make a ton of money, but they just do it because they love it and they make a course that they want to do. And that's how a wildflower grew into being this huge event.

It ultimately struggled because of COVID and water issues in California, but it didn't start to struggle because people didn't like it. I would love if it came back. I wonder if that's even a possibility. Yeah, I don't think that necessarily has to be gravel or dirt, but just cool races that have cool stories when you finish. Right. Cool.

Okay, the next question is from Anne. Oh, this is the questions that are for me. Oh, I can ask it. All right. Hi, Paula, Eric, Nick, and Flynn. Love the podcast. I look forward to it all week. I have a few questions from Nick.

Number one, how did you get into the sport of triathlon? Oh, well, the short story is I saw a hipster walking down the street with his fixie in Boston. And I was like, I need that beautiful thing. And I got that, I bought that bike, that fixie, which I still ride today. Oh, not the hipster. No. And then through Strava, I just got more and more into biking a little bit faster and faster than thought I would get into road racing on the bicycle. Did one road race. It went well, but I didn't love the pack riding so much. It felt a little scary and like I could crash and get hurt.

We're talking about this on our ride. You're not mean enough to be a bike racer. You got to be a dick and like really like. Yeah, you got to like push people aside and and yeah, There's a lot of aggression that I don't have. I'm a peacekeeper. So I didn't love that. And I also thought it would be a fun challenge to try to swim and run better. So I did my first race in 2016 and really just loved it from the first race I did and been loving it ever since. And I hoped you able to do it forever.

What was your first race? My first race was the San Diego International Triathlon. And I signed up to do it again this year. It's so fun. It's a very small local race. and you go up to a point Loma. I don't know if you know where that is, Eric. Yeah, yeah, I do.

It's like a little peninsula up where the base is there. And the bike goes up there and then you run. It's a point-to-point run. And I was very happy with how it went. And I didn't know how the results work yet. So I was just there for the awards. And I just happened to get third in my age group. And I think it was kind of a fluke,

but I still was very happy with it. And then just kept racing. And just at the beginning, like I was saying earlier, I just got faster and faster, so I was so stoked. And then reality set in. It doesn't last forever, you know. Local race for the win. Yeah, so it was great.

Okay, number two. Is it tough balancing training with work? You mentioned that you saved your workouts for the end of the day, but is that still your approach during peak training? As an amateur training for my first 70.3, I'm having a hard time getting enough training time and motivation across all three disciplines, especially swimming, while working a demanding job. I, from my perspective as a pro, I'm like, I don't understand how people work all day and then train for a triathlon.

Like it takes us, although maybe our training hours are more, well, they for sure are because we don't have real jobs. But it is mind-blowing to me that someone can work eight hours and then also get enough training in to do an Iron Man or a half-iron man. So tell us how you do it. That happens to be my secret as well. I also don't have a real job. So I get to do whatever I want. For example, I just signed up for my first swim. slot since I raced at the end of November and it's at 3 p.m.

Most people can't swim at 3 p.m. because they're working. So I do think the swimming is the thing that's greatest. Like I swim at either 11 or 3 and that's right in the middle of the day but I do for professionally I do music work I'm producing and writing songs for people so it's more just like I need to

have it by a deadline or I'll have an artist in recording vocals but it's just at an arbitrary time during the day so I still get to do all my training So yeah, even when like full distance Iron Man training, I'll be swimming probably three times a week at like 11 or 3 p.m. I'll just take a break in the middle of my workday and then work a little bit more and then do a bike ride or the run, whatever that day is for a few hours or a couple hours

before the sun sets and then come back and keep working. So the flexibility of my schedule is what allows me to do that. The people that wake up at like 5 a.m. to swim every day and then work all day and then have to come home. If it's dark, they come home and train on the trainer. It just seems such a crazy time commitment to do it. There are a lot of training plans where you can complete and do well at a 70.3 with very limited training hours, if you're smart and intentional about those hours.

And I think you have to decide when in the day are you most productive and motivated. If you're a morning person, do your hardest workout then, and then you're not kind of dreading it all day and having to get motivated to do it afterward. and maybe save like an easier session, like an hour spin or an easy run for afterwork when you can kind of decompress and not need to use all that mental energy to get excited about it. And vice versa, if you're an afternoon person or you get really excited in the afternoon, don't waste your energy thinking about waking up at 5 a.m. So just be really intentional about how you're allocating your time. And unfortunately, I think a lot of amateur triathletes need to use a lot of time on the weekends to train

when they're not working. So they'll do like their super long four or five hour ride on Saturday. They're long run Sunday. So the majority of their training hours are on the weekend, whereas you and I and Eric have the flexibility to spread that out over the week, which maybe means less family time. There's another podcast that I listen to that every time before Kona, they get a few amateur athletes on there and talk about what their training.

And these people have like jobs and families and somehow are still qualifying for Kona. But it's 100% of their free time is triathlon. That's just, you resolve yourself to that. Oh, and then the question for the whole group? Yeah, I cannot. The question is, if you could be any TV character, who would you be? I can't think of a single person. A TV character.

Well, when I was a kid and I had first moved to the U.S. from Italy, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. And everyone gave, like, you know, firefighter, policemen, space astronaut and I said Batman, so maybe I'll choose Batman. That's a good one. Batman's pretty cool. Everyone's giving, like, you can be anything you want and you're going to

pick like a normal job. I was like, of course I'm going to go shoot for the stars here and say Batman. He like flies through the night and defeats bad guys. You know, of course I want to do that. I was and still am very obsessed with friends growing up. And I would say I'm a little bit like Monica.

She's like super, super neat freak. OCD like wants everything perfect. is occasionally funny, but not always, like, very dry sense of humor. And very, like, high performer, right? Like, still, like, very excellent. She's a chef, right? Very competitive. Yeah, very competitive.

I would say that's a pretty good read on you. How about you, Eric? If we're going to go with TV, and this is actually a real person, but from Drive to Survive Formula One, I'd be Total Wolf. Okay. Oh, Paula just rolled her eyes. No, no, I mean, I love Toto. He is the best. He is so intimidating. He is such a badass. And he's, but he's like stoic. Yeah, yeah. Well, those are great questions. Thank you, Ann, for sending those in.

Great. All right. Next question is from Lexi. She says, hey, gang, love you guys. Keep the pods rolling. I was wondering if your bikes have a name. If so, what is it? If they don't, you might want to consider knighting your bikes with some epic nomenclature. Good luck at Oceanside. Our bikes don't have names. The Shiv. The Argon. Does yours have a name? My fixie had a name when I first got it. It was Ludo. But no, I haven't named any of the new ones. That's a good point.

No, I just, I don't know. I kind of feel ridiculous about naming it. I named one of my RVs because there was so much wrong with it. Like, I feel like when you're constantly working on and fixing something and breaking, like you have this internal dialogue with it. Well, next question. Oh my God, this is great. Hey, Nick, Paula, Eric, and Flynn, in that order.

which I think might be a callback to a little bit of shade. Everyone including Flynn in this. Flynn does nothing. Excuse you. Flynn's part of the family, Eric. I thought you of all people would understand that. No. Eric is so annoying to find us. Well, don't just make it.

Just me. Well, yes. This is for all of us. So Flynn's there. He can chime in. My husband and I are also racing Oceanside. First time racing in California, which is fine. But even more exciting is hopefully meeting our internet friends in real life at the TTL pop-up.

That is 100% happening. and just so everyone knows, we would love to meet all of you. And we are there just to sell the California, the OceanSide-specific stuff. But also if you just want to come and say hi, that's totally cool as well. Exactly. I agree. Some Ocean-Side specific questions for us. I finally splurged and bought a disc wheel. I know you're not supposed to try anything new on race day.

So how do you recommend getting comfortable riding with a disc? Also, I heard Oceanside can be windy. So how do I not die if I end up riding with it? That's a good question, especially since our ride yesterday was very windy. Yeah, I'll take this question first because I would consider myself a very nervous rider and nervous about wind particularly. And when I switched over to a disc when I first started 70.3, I was very nervous about feeling unstable on it. But surprisingly, have never even noticed that I'm using it. And it's in the rear, so you have more weight on the back of your bike, so it's less impacted by crosswinds.

I would say your front wheel, if it's a windy day, is going to be, what you notice more because there's less weight on it. So you might get, you know, your bars might get thrown around more. So personally, if it's a windy day, I'll use a smaller front like a 454 versus an 858. But I would say maybe do a couple rides with the disc, but you do not have to worry. And it is 100% faster even on this course than anything else you might use. Do you agree, Eric? I concur. Second question is this is also our first time racing an ocean swim. Is it meaningfully different from a freshwater swim? Or could you share any tips for the swim? I wouldn't say it's really any different than a freshwater swim except you'll be going into

some waves, but that's not to have to do with salt water. The ocean side, if it gets like super wavy, they change the swim and you start in the harbor instead of starting on the beach, but either way you swim into the harbor to finish. Yeah, it feels pretty much like a lake once you round the jetty that kind of goes out into the ocean. You're coming back in the harbor and it's very flat water and feels very similar to fresh water. I would say it even sometimes feels better than freshwater because the salt is pretty buoyant. So you might actually feel faster than you do in a pool or in a lake. Yeah.

The only thing I would say in terms of like open water skills is if you can time your siding with being at the top of a wave, obviously that's more ideal for seeing the buoy. But I just don't think like Oceanside typically doesn't get crazy swell. It got swell last year though. I mean, it's not crazy, crazy, but there definitely are waves, and it can be a little intimidating running into that if you've never done an ocean swim. So I'd suggest going the day before the race and just getting a little comfortable in the waves,

that's what we did last year, makes a huge difference, just having a bit of awareness of what it feels like when a wave is coming crashing, you know? Yeah, totally. The only thing I will say is that the conditions of the water usually vary greatly in different times a day. So earlier on in the day, there's less chop.

It's usually a little more consistent. waves and glassy in between the waves. So if you're there, like Paula said, definitely go the day before and practice going straight out. Because if you haven't done that, that'll take some getting used to. And I think having that day before would be super valuable. But also realize that if it's very choppy and scary out there the day before, it's very likely to not be that way in the morning that you actually race.

It'll be a little more forgiving. Exactly. Yeah. You're right, Nick. She also says loving the pod, keep up the great work. And if we serendipitously end up landing a cameo in the forthcoming Oceanside vlog, my life will be pretty complete. Okay, good to know, Katie. We'll be looking out for you.

That's all we had for this week. Good questions. We have a lot more questions, but we wanted to keep this one a little bit tighter because we're very excited to race and we want to stay focused on that. I say we. I'm not racing. I will be racing around the course with the camera. And, oh, and something I guess we should tell people is I will be, while Eric and Paula are racing, I'm going to be using Eric's phone or something like that. And I'll be on that triathlon life Instagram, kind of trying to give updates. So if you want to tune in and just to see what's happening with the race, oh, actually, this race, will they have like actual coverage? Yeah, it'll be live. But I think people like your insider updates. Like, even if it's not a ton of them, I think you should still do it.

So, yeah, I'll be there. I'll be there. I'll be doing maybe some. entertaining side content from the race while Eric and Paul are out there giving it their best. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how anybody else watches triathlon, but I want to watch the Instagram stories while I'm watching the live coverage, while I'm watching the splits, while I'm watching. That's right. That's right. So you're going to see my beautiful face on the That Traathlon Life Instagram stories if you tune in on Race Day.

Oh, sounds good. And if anyone wants to come say hi or sees us at the race, like don't be afraid to come up and say hi and take Flynn for a walk. Oh yeah. Sometimes I feel like I can see people like glancing over their shoulders like, oh, it's them, it's them. Like definitely come up and say hi, right? Unless someone's crying, then anything else is allowed. And don't even think about it. You can email in questions at that triathlon life brand at gmail.com. And we love your questions. We're next week we'll probably digest the race a bit and then answer some of these questions that we didn't get to today. But we always love getting new questions. So please send you. the man, there's a really good chance we'll answer it on the podcast. Especially if you give us super nice compliments in the intro to the question. And also a huge thank you to everyone who ordered a Castelli kit.

We had a crazy number of people and it's so fun for us to just see what we've like kind of built and have people trust us so much that they'll buy a kit from us. Like that's an investment. I can't wait. I cannot wait to see them like actually out in nature. It's going to be so cool. It's going to be so cool. Yeah.

Well, if anyone's racing. side good luck we'll see you there and if not we will chat with you guys next week on the pod see you guys later thanks guys chow thanks bye