That Triathlon Life Podcast - Long distance triathlon races, running shoe fit, fueling for a 4k morning swim, race aid stations, and more!

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

This week, thanks to our subscribers, we have a brand new recording setup for Eric and Paula in Bend! We start out with some fun This or That with TTL, and then move right onto questions. Questions about toenails turning black, swim strokes other than freestyle, split boarding, winter training, and much more. To support the podcast, submit a question, and check out gear, head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.com

Hello everyone. Welcome to That Triathlon Life podcast. I'm Paula Findlay. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Nick Goldston. And we are coming to you from our very, very fancy, cool, awesome, amazing new microphone setup that we purchased because of the generosity of the subscribers of this podcast. Thank you so much. This is our take too, because we had a little error in the first one. And I feel like my first intro was way better. Now I'm a little stressed. This isn't natural. We iced the kicker on that one. Well, we've got a brand new mic setup. It was actually Nick's mic setup that was having a moment. Yeah. Yes, it's the quick and easy version is that if you FaceTime with someone on your computer, it brings down the recording level beyond control in your recording software.

And since we were doing some screen sharing as we were setting up the mic levels, it screwed the whole thing up. Let me just say, this is something that ProTri News never encounters because they just keep it simple, stupid. Well. If you couldn't tell from the conversation up to this point, Nick is a professional producer of music, and that's why he's bringing the science.

And Paula and I are both professional triathletes. No musical technology. Not yet. Skills. Yeah. Yeah, but we did buy all of the stuff that was not cheap, exclusively with money from our podcast subscribers, which is really, really cool for us.

It's like paying for itself, and then you're reaping the stuff. the benefits hopefully of an improved audio quality experience. And I think you were saying that you had to actually bring your quality down to match our old mic, but now that we all are kind of more on equal playing field, you can use yours to the full potential. Yes. Yeah. There's like, there's issues with low end reliability with the old mic, basically. I'm going to dumb it down and say that. So I kind of had to dumb my, the mixing of my mic down as well. And now I don't have to do that. We can all sound perfect. Oh, I hope. So excited. When we when we, when we say things, we should.

shouldn't say you're going to hear them crystal clear. Yeah. And we love pro-tri-news, okay? That was not meant to be a mean thing. No, we really do. All of them. It was just a stab. Yeah, we got a lot of questions to get through today. Really, really good questions, all from email that I had a hard time sifting through because I loved most of them. So I sent him to Nick, left it in his hands, and he's picking his favorites. So if this was a TV show episode, I would call this episode, new mics and new mugs, because you guys just put new mugs up on that triathlon on Life Store. But we're afraid that by Thursday, because they came out today

we're recording on a Tuesday, podcast comes out on the Thursday, we're afraid that at least one of the colors will be sold out. But do we feel confident that the mint color will still be available because we ordered a lot more of those? Yeah, I believe so. We went a little bit harder on the mint color. We have mint and we have navy. They're both

beautiful, but we ordered a few more mints, so. It should be in stock. Yeah, every time we put a new thing out, we order more because we're like, okay, we sell out of things. We want to make sure there's stuff in stock for at least a week and people can think about it. But we order more and it still sells out. It's just like so mind-blowing to us. And this time I thought that the mint color would actually probably be more popular. So I ordered almost twice as many mince than navies. And the

navies came back looking super clean and good with our color logo on it. And those have actually been more popular. So those are nearly gone. Part because my own father ordered like a million. And we're like Max. Max. You're. You're getting the mint. We don't care what you want. He's giving him away to like his coworkers for gifts. So it's a nice thing. Oh, that's nice.

But yeah, hopefully by Thursday the minch will still be left over. So go grab one if you want one. And then I just wanted to give a little update on my injury. So the injury that I actually am working with is it's not really IT-Ban syndrome. That's kind of one of the auxiliary symptoms. But it's mainly my biceps femuris tendon, which is the tendon right next to the IT band that connects to the back of the knee. Also known as your hamstring. The hamstring connects into two tendons that attach on the back of the knee.

One of them is the biceps femurus. Nice song, Paula. Our music career can all start together here. So I had made an orthopedic surgeon appointment, and I had to wait two weeks for that. Then I went in. They did an x-ray. She told me, like, basically nothing, that I just needed an MRI. And the MRI was two weeks away.

So it's like a month lead time before you actually get the MRI, I think. And from what I've seen, it seems like that's totally normal. Like, it's not like it's backed up or L.A. is particularly bad. It seems like anywhere in the U.S., it takes about that long. And I got a lot of messages from people in Canada telling me it takes like six months to get it in Canada. Canada, it's free. But it's free. Mine is not free at all.

Mine's going to be very expensive for me to do. Ultimately worth it, though. This is your trathlon career on the line. Totally, totally. It's totally worth it. And this week I'm trying to compensate by swimming five times, Monday, through Friday and today was very especially hard. Yeah. In case we have any new listeners, Nick's an amateur triathlet and raced at Ironman Wisconsin since then has been injured and hasn't

been able to bike or run. So that's tough for anyone that can relate, which is probably most of you, to being kind of exercise dependent just to feel normal. So being out with an injury is something we're all familiar with and it's very hard. And now going on three months, Nick kind of is taking the next step of getting an MRI, which is something we would probably do earlier. if Eric and I were injured like this. Yeah, totally. I was just hoping it would fix itself, and I would just do the strength work and rest,

but that has not been cutting it. Well, hopefully you don't need surgery. Now we're getting serious. We're getting serious. Sorry. Well, I got great news. We're going to go right into this or that. I thought we're doing bike tech with Eric.

That's next week. That's next week. Okay, stay tuned for Bike Tech with Eric next week. Yeah, next week we're doing Bike Tech with Eric. Don't worry, folks. said, if you have any bike tech-specific questions, send them our way. Oh, no, that's wise. Look at you.

That's great. Front row. Front row. Yeah. So this is from Anzi, and these are great. So, hey, there, a couple of short questions. You can only choose one of the following, interpret it in your own way. Rivian truck or van with no limits.

Now, we're talking like a van with a linel, no limits vinyl on the outside, or they're saying a van that you can build up wherever you want. No, I think he means, like, on, Of course, he does. Right. We would pick the van. Yeah. The van can ultimately do a few more things that we need quite frequently,

like going to Indian Wells with our dog and two bikes and and and and and. We roll with a lot of gear. Easy Rivian for me, for sure. Next question. Lamarzaco coffee machine. Sorry. Lamarzaco coffee machine or pizza oven? Coffee machine.

Coffee machine. Like we love the pizza oven, but the coffee machine. coffee machine gets used twice a day every single day. Right, right, of course. Peanut butter or almond butter? Almond, but it's more expensive. So we go with peanut butter. That's exactly what I was going to say.

Who's paying. Who's paying for this butter? If we're getting sponsored, almond butter. Definitely. Lidu Lemon or Arcteric. Arcterics. Arcterics. Yeah, sorry.

I wear a little lemon way more frequently, but Arcterics is the dream of the crop for outdoor wear. There's no mystery about that. If I could be sponsored by any brand, I might choose Arcterics. That's pretty legit. Wow, Paul. We've had success with saying these types of things. It's true.

It just kind of happens, doesn't it? It kind of happens. Eric and I were talking about, well, I don't know if this is appropriate to say on the podcast, but how vast the listenership is for this podcast, it seems like people from all different industries and careers and sports listen to this podcast. Yeah, it's like, oh, my brother actually owns Zicterix. Do you guys want to be sponsored by Jax? Yeah, exactly. I was telling, I don't remember if it was Paul or you, Nick.

I was saying, like, we just got to, we got to like kind of level up the things that we casually mention that we like. Like, oh, it would be great if Nick had, you know, some free gels for his next race. It'd be like, oh, it wouldn't be awesome if Nick arrived to his next race in a Ferrari. Yes. The brand new bike. Wouldn't that be great? That would be nice.

Ferrari. Okay, next one, Adidas or Nike? Nike. That's funny. Adidas. Yeah. Am I the tiebreaker here? I'm going to go Nike.

Thank you, Nick. Next one, pizza or pasta. Oh, boy. Pizza. Pizza. Pizza. Sorry. They're both part of my, like, citizenship, but I feel like the pasta has more variety.

Totally. Yeah. You disagree, Eric, respectfully? I don't know. You just haven't been to one of our pizza nights, dude. No, I have, and I screwed a pizza up. It was like a soggy disaster. Oh, that's true.

You have. I mean, there are no limits on our pizza. Flavors. My ancestors. Next one, pancakes or waffles? Waffles. Waffles. We need a waffle machine sponsor as well, actually.

We don't have a lot of us. I think we can buy that. I'm fairly confident we can afford that. Well, I was going to go buy one one time and I went to William Sonova. It's like, okay, you can get the $20 machine or you can get like the $200 waffle machine that flips itself and talks to you and like makes it via your phone. Oh, definitely. I'd better mix the batter. Yeah, that's right.

Cresson or donut? Donut. Donut. I think if it's, we're talking about mediocre croissant, mediocre donut, I go donut. But a really excellent croissant or really excellent donut, I go croissant. That's true. Can I have chocolate in my croissant? Of course.

I could go that way with super excellent croissant. Yeah. Donut. Movie or TV show? TV show. You know what TV show we're currently into on Netflix is like, it's like a mixologist. form of a cooking show. So it's like a competition for the best drinks.

It's really cool. Xologist is a super fancy word for bartender. For me, that's tough because like I definitely prefer the feeling having watched a really good movie, but it's so hard to commit that much time these days. Same thing. And I do not start movies and not finish.

All right. Next one, cold showers or hot sauna? What? Cold showers are miserable unless you just went for a really hot run. That sounds like therapy, not fun. Right. Hot sauna. Yoga or weight training?

Yoga. Weight training, definitely. Winter or summer Olympics. Summer. Yeah, probably summer. Yeah, summer. And then here's the kuda gras here. Gustav or Christian?

Gustav. We love you, Christian, but I mean, if you have to pick one... If you had to pick one to marry or you had to pick one to hang out with, you have to pick one to, like, win a race for you? I don't know. They're all different answers. My thought is, I would want to start a business with. Christian but start a family with Gustav. Is this a formal

proposal? Is he available? I think officially he's available. Yes. But you never know. A man can dream. I'm not, I'm going to respectfully not answer this because I like both of them. That's not a fair question. We all like all of them. We all like

both of them. Okay, well, that's it. Thank you for that, Anzia. Those are a lot. I don't know if we're going to keep all those in there. I might shorten that up just to get us into the questions a little sooner. But those are really good. We don't want Christians feelings to be hurt. He knows us well.

Yeah. Those are good. Yeah, those are all very appropriate questions for us. Definitely comes from a hardcore listener, a day oneer, if you will. We're going to talk.

Don't. Dude, now I'm going to have to make day one or stickers. We've already got, the nation stickers are not even done yet and now we've got to go back designing.

It was in my schedule to design those today. But I think a lot of people that listen, maybe they weren't there from day one, and actually, I doubt they are, because I know the numbers of how many people listen in, like, the first month compared to now. But I think a lot of people do, maybe they like it, and they go back and they listen to everything from the beginning.

I sure do that when I find a podcast. I still see people like, we get many downloads a day of like the episode just like two and on, you know, people still go back and listen to those, I think. Anyway, so we're going to move on to questions. Before we do, thank you so much to are subscribers who made it possible for us to get this new setup. You can submit your questions and support the podcast with your monthly subscription at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. We have some moderate perks for subscribers, but really the purpose of it is so that we can continue to enhance the experience of the pod, keep it ad-free, so we're not doing ad-reads for athletic greens at the beginning of every podcast. And you guys can, yeah, feel like you're

contributing, but there's no downside to not contributing. Yeah, there's no downside. we're not going to change the podcast. There's just going to be little pluses for people who are subscribers. All of this said, and Nick, you can take this out if you want, but we do have our first kind of cool deal that we're going to be hitting up

with the podcast premium people in December coming up and we legitimately, I did design stickers today. So don't like, if you don't check your mailbox normally, be checking your mailbox in the next few weeks. Oh yeah, it's going to be cool. There's a lot of cool stuff that's going to come to subscribers soon. I feel like it's going to be very much

in people's interest to be a subscriber, but we will give you a bit of a warning before those things are coming up. Yeah. Okay, so first questions. Chowda-gazi. I love your content. I really enjoy the energy and stories you guys are sharing.

I recently completed my first Iron Man in Florida, and during the marathon, I started having major pain in my toes, which resulted in black toenails and about to lose some. My question for you is, have you ever had this problem? If so, how do you cope? Sorry, they have a little joke in here. How do you cope or avoid this issue?

In addition, do you believe- Can you read the joke? Nick, what's the joke? Sorry, the joke was no slash for Nick, but I'm trying to not say it on the pod as much anymore. Oh, so it's not a funny joke. Okay, okay. Well, it's funny.

It's funny. We're just, I feel like we're trying to move on from the slash a bit. Yes, it's plain out. Yeah, sorry. In addition, do you believe this shoe type neutral supportive, etc. Or the running style can influence that. Thank you.

Can't wait to hopefully see you at some race. Marco. Yeah, Eric and I have basically no toenails. I wish I had no toenails. Mine suck. I think this is a common issue that's resolved with properly fitting footwear, honestly.

I think a lot of the time people have footwear that are a bit too small for them, other it's on the bike or the run, which leads to black toenails. Yeah, also like if your foot, ultimately it's like your toenails getting kind of like smashed into the front of the shoe so that could come from like you're moving around too much in the shoe or the shoe is just too small. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

It does seem like the people I know, the longer distances they run, the more they run per week, the more likely they are to have messed up toenails. So I feel like it's part fit, part like, you know, just like anything. If your fit stinks on a bike and you ride a mile a day, it makes no difference. But if your fit stinks and you ride 100 miles, then it's going to compound, right? I'm sure I don't have the best shoes but I've never had black toenails just because I only run like 40 miles a week

or 30 miles a week. It's an inevitable problem for people that are racing ultras or doing a lot of long distance stuff and actually my toes get worse after I race and I have my race shoes are a little bit tighter they fit a bit different than my training shoes and I'm running more aggressively like my cadence is higher I'm pounding the ground harder

all of those contribute to a little more wear and tear on your toenails. And do we think that like neutral or support shoes make a difference in that, or is it more just the fit specifically around your toe area? That's going to be really person-to-person specific in how your foot interacts with a shoe. Cool. Well, thank you, Marco. Thank you for that question. Next one is from Kyle. Hey, guys, big fan of the TTL. Watch the vlog every Sunday and look forward to the podcast every week. The last vlog was awesome. I could watch two hours straight of drone shots and Flynn with some cool background music.

Everyone, check out the last vlog if you haven't. It's so beautiful. There's zero triathlon in it, but it's all beautiful cinematic goodness. There are a lot of triathletes. We went to a cabin with Chris Corbin and Lindsay Corbin, but we didn't do triathlon, no. That's right. I also love the cycling bibs that just came in. I'm a student and missed a few merch drops due to a budget, but ended up selling plasma, as in blood plasma, by the way, for this one.

Quite literally sold my body for some TTL gear, L-O-L. Anyway, I have a music question for Nick and a suggestion for Eric. Eric, you should check out the album, Ocean, by a band called Deve, D-I-I-I-I-I. IV, very surf rock feel that you hit in a lot of your videos. And the quick question for Nick, I'm going to try to keep this as brief as possible, but he said, if you play electric guitar at all,

what is your favorite pedal currently? I just got the Caroline Meteor for my reverb and I'm in love with it. Thank you guys, Kyle. So this is kind of cool for people who don't know. So I'll try to keep it as brief as possible. So it used to be that when you recorded an electric guitar or any instrument, you had to

actually play the instrument and then put a microphone up to whatever that instrument was. So in electric guitar's case, you're actually micing up the amplifier, right? And if you had a piano, you're micing up the piano. If you had a keyboard, you're micing up the amp to the keyboard. There's a lot of people who still do that these days, but through the amazing people who create software instruments and signal emulation, you can actually record your guitar straight into your computer. So it sounds like really bad. It'll sound really bad. But the computer, many different companies create software that takes that signal and tries to as best as possible emulate what

would happen to it if it were run through a pedalboard and a guitar amp and then out into a room and recorded by a microphone. And the results are pretty much for me, as a music professional that produces music, indistinguishable from actually micing up an amp. Wow. And it's the same thing with like a piano. I have a little keyboard here in front of me. It actually doesn't produce any sounds. It just sends a signal to the computer that says, he held down the, these two notes at this intensity for this time, at this exact place in time. And then I can interpret that information however I want. I could make it a piano.

I could make it strings. I could make it actually light things up, right? It's just information. What this allows is like if an artist comes back a week or two later, it's like, hey, I actually didn't like the key of this song. It's super easy for me to change it without affecting the audio. Same with the guitar sound. If someone's like, actually, the super distorted guitar sound you have,

I actually want it to be clean. Well, if I had recorded that guitar distorted through an amp, There's no way to go back from that. Whereas when I record this like neutral signal, I can do whatever I want with it and forever have the flexibility of it. So it really makes life easier for someone like me. So to answer your question, all the pedals and effects I use are all software. They're not actual physical units.

When I used to use them, I loved the Ibanez Tube Screamer. That was like my favorite pedal, but that's like a lot of people's favorite pedal. Wow. So hopefully that's interesting to somewhat some people out there. I know it has nothing to do with triathlon. I feel like I was just a student in. your Berkeley School of Music class. Yeah.

I thought it was super interesting, Nick. That's really cool. But you still have to have the skill to be able to play the instrument. It's just projecting it into the computer. Yeah, that actually doesn't matter. That doesn't change at all. The skill is the same.

It's, I guess, what I don't have the skill is the skill of committing to a sound that far in advance to record it out of an amp. I like to be able to have the flexibility and let the music inspire me six steps down the line when it's like it sounds more full. It's like, oh, that guitar son actually doesn't work anymore, whereas in the old days, you just have to commit to it. So anyway, there you go, Kyle.

Hopefully that was interesting to you and six other people. Next question. Next question is from Rachel. Hey, TCL, fam. Thank you for inspiring all things triathlon. Wanted to ask about trail miles versus road miles in training. I love this question, and I'm very interested to hear what you guys think about this. Should they be counted as the same?

I'm about to start training for my first full-distance iron man. and I know it's good to switch things up in training. I know once on the pod Paula mentioned while trail running, she mainly does dirt paths, and it's nothing she would consider technical. However, what if you're running and or biking technical trails are those miles the same as road miles?

We've all heard or experienced trail fit versus road fit, but no one really talks about if there is a difference in distances between road and trail. I love to hear your thoughts on this, and if there is in fact a difference, what's the ratio for trail miles versus road miles? Thank you, and best of luck,

competing at Indian Wells, along with enjoying the off-season and holidays. P.S. Nick, the TTL Nation misses your Strava posts. Rachel, me too, Rachel, I'm sorry. They're coming back soon, I hope. You can go follow Flynn if you need a little bit of pick-me-up on Strava. Flynn and I are neck-a-neck, by the way, for Strava followers. I was going to send that to you the other day.

That's funny. Well, we're going to have to think about this for a minute, but the way that we actually do our run training and our bike training doesn't actually have anything to do with distance, it's time-based. So for us, it's very simple. We need to go run an hour, and it's an hour of time on your feet and moving,

and usually with like a prescribed rate of perceived exertion. So I don't know. If you're going miles-based, that's kind of tricky, because you would definitely be going slower total distance on the trail than a flat, straight road. And I think potentially if you're on a trail running slower, your heart rate will still be the same as it would be quicker on a road. So you really have to factor.

I completely think that road miles do not equal trail miles. If you're going to do 10 miles on the road, that might be 8 miles on the trail because you're doing extra elevation gain and there's some technical elements. But it doesn't mean you're working less hard. So that's how Eric and I try to approach it when we're running on trails, even when we're doing time-based work, is we don't pay as much attention to our pace when we're on trails because it's a little bit irrelevant based on the terrain. Yeah. And it also isn't necessarily saying that five miles on trail is better than five miles on the road just because it's harder or takes longer. It's really about matching the type of running that you're doing to ultimately the race that you're going to do. So if we're getting ready for 70.3 worlds, I drastically cut down the amount of time that I spend on single track because I really need to kind of dial in this specific range of motion.

And I don't know, like the speed that you're going at, your foot speed that you're going to be going to be. going at in a race that's on the road versus I've got an X-Dera coming up or just no race soon, then it kind of doesn't matter as much if you just go do an hour on trail versus an hour running a little faster on road. Yeah. Do you feel like the problem is that in a world now where training is getting more and more specific, unfortunately, as good as trail running and riding can be, sometimes a terrain dictates the intensities that you have to go at.

And you kind of, like, if you're going down a hill, you just can't control how hard you're going to go down that hill, there's a limit to it. Yeah, that's why we intentionally do our hard sessions on something that's much more controllable and predictable and hardly has any elevation gain because that way you know exactly what your output is, what your times are, what your exertion is, and you're right, the trail is a lot different. So we'd never go out and do a tempo runner, an interval workout on a technical trail, unless Eric's getting ready for an Xera.

Well, Eric, do you ever do trail runs on technical trails? I know you guys, I know kind of where you guys run on dirt there on like those fire roads. But do you ever do like this kind of trails that you would do on a mountain bike? Wait, did you say, do I trail run or do I tempo run on trails?

Well, just in general, I don't know if I've ever seen you like trail run on like technical single track. Well, then you're just not paying close enough attention. I do it basically every other day. Oh, really? Okay. Well, Nick, you just have to come visit and Eric will take you out on those trails.

I guess we've done, are you talking about like the river trail? No. No, I'm talking about like the single track that goes around Shevlin. I'm talking about running up Marazic Trail here in Bend. Like the thing is, is that if Paula and I are going to run together, I can't run those types of trails. We have to run dual track or, you know, gravel roads and stuff.

And for me, it's like I get equal amounts of pleasure going out on a solo single track run as I do to like running with Paula and, you know, having a conversation and all that. In fact, I think he gets more joy running solo on single track, I think. But I, but yeah, anyway. Like, I, like, if you have, I don't think you and I have ever just gone for a run together. So Paula's been there, so we stick to less technical stuff. And that's not because Paula doesn't like single track.

It's just she's got an ankle thing that doesn't do well and uneven terrain. Yeah. I love, I love doing single track trail running, but it definitely feels very different than going for a long run on flat. They feel so different. I agree. I much prefer the single track. Yeah.

Next question. Hey, Team TTL. on a scale from 1 to 10, where's Eric's van session, as in like van obsession? Well, we both want to, from my perspective,

it has mellowed out a bit lately because I went so hard that I just watched every video on the internet and I looked at every van company that I could find and now I'm having to calm down a little bit. So would you put out of 9.95?

Yeah, somewhere like that. Relative to the average person in the world. And Paula's like a 17. She's like, he's like, out of 17. Unmeasurable. Unmeasurable obsession. But you know what? It's contagious because Eric found me yesterday lying in bed watching a storyteller van walk through. Like the 10th one I've seen. But it's really fun. They're all a little different. Yeah, they're all a little different. Ooh, they put the sink on the other side. Interesting. I wonder how that's going to affect the balance.

It's a, it's a tool that's going to bring you into new adventures and make new memories. It's like you don't have to like vans to appreciate that, right? Yeah. Ultimately, like, you can only build your van one time unless you're willing to, like, rip stuff out and go do it again. So, like, most people, like, you want to spend a lot of time looking what other people have done and if they have any feedback on if it... Hold up. Hold up. Ask the next question because this is irrelevant. Okay. This is relevant. What are the top five things you'd like to do differently in your next van build and why? Materials, lift kits, layout, battery systems, etc. geek out. We're totally here for you. Wow, there's a bunch of things.

We love our current van so much, the one that is for sale. So hit us up if you're interested in that. But, yeah, there are a few things that we would change and we would do differently in the new van that we're hoping to get. One of the biggest things is suspension-related. We test drove a van here in Ben that had, should I even name brands, the van compass suspension kit on it. And that really takes it from kind of like this swaying van thing to like very car feeling almost. Another thing that we would kind of like is a place for Nick, ultimately. We've had several situations where we can't really bring a third person with us on an adventure safely because we don't have a seatbelt.

And then some of the vans that we've looked at, that seat belt seat actually lays flat and can kind of be like a makeshift second bed. So that's another thing that we're pretty excited about. And then I would say, like, if I'm just going to list the top three, the last one would be a much more robust electrical system that can support a 12-volt AC for Flynn so that we can go do camping in the summertime and go for a bike ride and the inside of the van can be wonderful temperature for Flynn. Dog mode for the van.

Yeah, because we live in Bend. It's the desert, so it can get hot. On the flip side, we also want a heater in the van so that we could go camping in colder temps. Overnight ski trip, baby. With some comfort. Yeah. Stay tuned for that. Things we don't need in the van. A toilet, not interested in a toilet.

It'd be nice to have a sink, but not like some obnoxious sink with like a huge farmhouse style faucet. Like that is not for the van. We just need like a bloop. You know, you flip it up. It's a little sink. And then you flip it back down. You put the lid on and it's just a countertop. Yeah. Yeah. We could talk about this for an hour. This could be a whole thing. It's contagious. It's contagious. I'm excited about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's not even my van. It's so contagious. Well, yeah. It's super fun to think about like,

here's all the activities we do and how can we like kind of make this one space work for all of these different activities that we like to do. I don't know. Like should we, should we mention just a little bit that the van thing is progressing? We have not, I haven't posted about it. In epic fashion, by the way. It is like something very exciting will be happening between this podcast and next podcast. And if you want to like make sure you're there for it as soon as possible, you'll want to follow at least one of us or TTL on Instagram because we've, got some exciting developments in the van space. Next question.

Very exciting. Next question. Hi, Paul, Eric, Nick, and Flynn. In order of who reads these messages first? That's great. I went to Trixie and Katia show in Hamburg because of the pod. But, yeah, I'm new to triathlon, but a long-time fan of theirs. So that episode was truly the best of both worlds.

This is that Venn diagram with the one pixel overlap. Unfortunately, it was too late to get good tickets, and we ended up sitting behind all the giant Germans. As much as I would just like to tell you about the show, I had a couple of triathlon-related questions. One, planning my races for next year, and would prefer my first longer distance not be an Iron Man branded event.

Any idea when PTO will announce what their European open location will be and or when the event will be? Can we get any hints? Ooh, wow. Is that super insider information? Are we allowed to? No, I don't know.

I don't know. No, the reason I left this on there is because I truly believe that the PTO age group events are very, very well-run, fun, cool, awesome events. And I can confirm. I did the one in Edmonton and it was extremely fun. Yeah, so I don't have any information, and I don't even think they're finalized yet, the locations or dates of next year's PTO events. But I do know that they're trying to get these dates finalized by the end of November so that by December people can start planning their seasons. and as us as pro athletes, we kind of need to figure out a map of where we're going to be in the year. And these are obviously the first and foremost important things for a lot of athletes on their schedules, including me. So, yeah, it'll be coming out soon.

And last year there was a U.S. Open in Dallas, the Canadian Open in Edmonton, and I believe they want to add a European Open, maybe in Asia Open, but I'm not totally sure. But regardless, I highly encourage everyone to sign up. We'll talk about it more once they're finalized because it's something that's really important to us and close to our hearts. And we really, really, really want to encourage people to sign up for them. Yeah. I'm just going to say, like, no matter what, you put on your schedule for next year, you should come to the Canadian Open because it is the bomb. Yeah.

No matter what, where it is, when it's happening, we will be there and we'll be psyched. All three of us. Yeah, Nick will be racing. We'll have a TTL pop up, the whole thing. It'll be so fun. It'll be so fun. That was great. good memories. The second half of the question is, are there certain foods that you feel,

for whatever reason, that you perform better without? Is there anything you avoid eating when you're close to a race or anything that fuels you even better? For me, like, if I'm going to run in the afternoon, I try to avoid more sweet things. Like, if I have a donut, for example, which I, if I have something, like, pretty sugary, I'll get kind of like an acid reflux, like, tight chest sort of thing. So, sugary stuff. Yeah, if I cut out, wow, this is so insightful. If we cut out sugary stuff, we feel better.

Yeah, surprise. Science. Yeah. But also, like, you can't be too strict with yourself. You have to be able to treat yourself every once in a while. Before a race, I kind of cut out, like, super high-fibery stuff in the days leading up. But we're very flexible with our dinners pre-race. I think all three of us are, which is a nice thing because we can travel anywhere in the world.

have whatever for dinner. And we're usually fine. So we're pretty lucky in that sense. I wanted to share this funny thing though. I don't know if this is funny. Maybe this is so obvious. But since I've had to not bike or run now recently, it's amazing how much I'm craving like normal healthy foods. Whereas normally I'm craving hot garbage right now. It's like a salad sounds great. And maybe I'll have a fruit afterwards too. It's like those and thoughts never cross my mind when I'm like deep into training. You're not like in desperation refuel mode. Yeah, exactly. Just anecdotally, I do, like, I think you should experiment with this.

I wonder if you fuel really well during your workouts, if you can maintain this salad craving. By the way, Talbot Cox is texting the group chat here. That's why we're swiping away at our screen. This is podcast recording time, bro. He's blowing it up right now. One sec. I'm going to do a little recording. One of these days, we're just going to have the capacity of, like, phone a friend.

Talbot, we're recording the podcast right now. if you would please suspend your text messages to us. It's out of control. It's out of control. It's taken up all the screen real estate. That's right. Okay, and by the way, Catalina here, she finishes by saying, thanks for all you do and for providing Germans

with a reason to shush me in public for laughing out loud while listening to the podcast. You are so welcome, Catalina. That's our goal. Next question. Paula, Nick, this question is for you. As a team, would you rather fight one Jordan-briden-sized Eric's mustache, or 100 of Eric's. mustache size Jordan Bridens.

And just for kind of context, Jordan Briden is a very tall, very strong, Ultraman, World Champion, and professional triathlet that is a very good friend of ours. He is the original big unit. Yes, 100%.

If you think Sam Long's a big unit, you haven't seen Jordan Bryden. He is like, really funny because he's probably one of the nicest people I've ever met and like softest people I've ever met emotionally. But he's By the way, just so everyone knows, he won this thing called Ultraman World Championships. And for those who don't know the Ultraman, it's covering a total distance of 320 miles, which is 515 kilometers.

On the Big Island of Hawaii, it requires that each participant complete a 6.2 mile, which is 10K, open ocean swim, a 261.4 mile, which is 421 kilometer, bike ride, and a 52.4 mile, which is 84-kilometer ultramarathon run. the distances being determined by the size of the big island. It's over the course of a couple days, right? Yeah, it's a few days, and I think it's actually coming up in the world. Like, it's happening soon. Super fascinating event. But I think the question is, would we rather fight a mustache the size of Jordan Briden? Well, Eric's mustache the size of Jordan Briden.

Yeah, or 100 Jordan Briden's the size of Eric's mustache. So, like, mini-jordons. Like little caterpillars. Right, right. This is a weird question. This is a weirdest question I've ever heard. I'm sorry. I'm going to go with a hundred of Eric mustache-sized Jordan Briden's.

I can't even take Jordan Briden as he is. If he's a mustache, I'm going to be so thrown off. There's no way I'm going to be able to get my right hook right up against his jaw. Yeah, you could just do one kick and take out 50. Of course. No problem. No offense to your mustache, Eric. It is glorious, but it's not that glorious.

It's not that big. Next. Next question. Hey, guys, after swimming and running for years, I finally bought a bike and did my first two sprint tries this year. I'm hooked. Your podcast definitely gave me some great info as a newbie, but more importantly, it fueled my enthusiasm for this new passion. As a swimmer first who swam with triathletes in master swimming over the years, I've always felt like triathletes make their swimming practices unnecessarily boring and probably leave some speed on the table by focusing solely on freestyle,

or almost solely. Do you guys ever work on other strokes? And if so, how? Why or why not? Side note in my mind, I think butterfly is hill sprints of swimming. That's funny. So yeah, what do you guys think about that? We're definitely in the boring category. I think Paula enjoys variety a lot more than I do. But I think our coach's philosophy anyway is that you only have so much time to be spending swimming when you're trying to do swimming, biking, and running. And you can't be spending a significant amount of that time doing breaststroke and butterfly,

as entertaining as it might be. You don't have 16 practices a week to work with. That's the difference between being a competitive swimer and being a triathlete is we're spending six hours a week in the pool instead of 16 hours a week in the pool. So focus on the things that you're going to be doing at races. But I completely understand the argument that you're leaving some speed on the table because doing other strokes is like doing strength training. You know, it uses other muscles. It strengthens you aerobically in different ways. It's just like a challenge.

So the answer is we don't do any other strokes ever. but I understand coming from a swim background, the thought that it could improve your overall swimming. But I think, sorry, I'm talking nonstop, I think that if you came from a swimming background, you're actually good at the other strokes. Most of athletes can't even do the other strokes. There's no point.

They're still trying to learn how to just do freestyle without, like, sinking. Right. The thing that comes to mind when I hear this is that, and it's something I've been doing more, is more drills. That is different. To me, those are fun, and they are directly impacting my freestyle ability.

So I don't know. I feel like that's kind of a good compromise. You don't have to, instead of doing like butterfly, which I feel like I can't see a triathlete doing butterfly. But how much do you guys do drills? Like, I guess the times I've swam with you, I don't see you do it that much. Well, like, during warm up is like when we do drills.

We basically, every single workout, we have 600 to 800 meters of warm up. And inside of that, we can do whatever we want. And some of like my favorite things to do are I'll do one paddle in my right hand, nothing in the other hand, then reverse it, and then I like to do some sculling to try to get feel for the water.

Yeah, also like, I mean, Eric and I aren't perfect swimmers, but we're not necessarily trying to drastically transform our stroke at this point in our careers. So some of the strokes, some of the drills, it's under the same philosophy that our coach has is like spend your time in the pool doing work that's conducive to getting faster at freestyle. So sometimes drills aren't always going to contribute to that.

But I think kicking is good, pulling is good, pulling with big paddles is good, other things like that that spice it up a bit. Sorry, I just have one more curiosity that's on this topic. How much do you feel like your swim training is the point of it is to develop your swim fitness versus your swim maintaining your swim technique? Fitness, almost entirely fitness. Is it like 95, 100% fitness? would say. Yeah, yeah, fitness and just the ability to hold race pace and like we're trying to

elevate that race pace to where, like lower our effort level at that race pace that will have us in the front pack and then getting out of the water able to go hard immediately on the bike. Yeah, I think we've talked about this in the podcast before that a lot of swim training is just to feel fresh when you're out of the water. Like I, I finished a 70.3 swim and I don't feel like I've even started the race yet. Like it's, it's not that. that hard. So you can get on the bike and go as hard as you can. Whereas some age groupers like myself, sometimes you get out of the water, we're like, oh my God, I feel like the race should be over right now. That was so hard. Yeah, and the fitter you get swimming, the better that'll be.

You might not necessarily get faster, but. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is important. Next question from Annie. Hi, TTL. excited to see you at Indian Wells. It will be my first 70.3, and I've been listening obsessively to the pod to rack up all the helpful tips. My question is, can you give a rundown on the aid stations during a 70.3, especially the bike aid. I'm debating on how much to rely on the aid stations. How much hydration will you carry yourself versus picking up on the fly? I don't like to leave things up to chance. L.O.L. Thank you all so much, Annie.

Wow. I don't know. Paula, do you know more about the aid stations? Because usually I just grab a Dixie cup full of water. There's always going to be water. There's always going to be like a Gatorade type thing. And usually some cope, but I wing it for a bit. I think what she's more referring to is the bike aid stations. Personally, Eric and I are completely self-reliant for a 70.3 bike unless it's going to be a really, really hot race.

Like in Dallas, I was grabbing bottles every lap. But for a race like Indian Wells where the temperature is not a big issue, take two or three bottles. If you can put one in your, between your aerobar arms, I don't know. It depends what kind of bike you have with integrated hydration. But don't rely on the outside aid stations, but they are there if you need them. and they'll usually have water, a sports drink, and gels. And then on the run, there's an aid station every mile, mile and a half or so. That you'll hit, and they'll, same thing, have like Coke, water, Gatorade, gels, bananas, like the full buffet.

Yeah. I'm curious, Nick, what is it like going through an aid station as an age grouper? Because for us, we're going very fast in a line. Nobody is slowing down. We're grabbing bottles out of people's hands. Are you having to watch people that are fully stopping and make sure you don't hit them? What's that like? The problem is especially on the bike, the problem is always that people have, people's bike levels and swim levels can sometimes be at polar opposites of each other.

So you have people, for example, like me, who will swim slowly and then, you know, bike in the top, whatever, 5% of the bike splits. And so I am biking with people who a lot of the time are biking like five miles an hour slower than I am. So that becomes, at aid stations, that becomes really a challenge to grab something. And so I pretty much, same thing Paula said, I try to on the bike be completely self-reliant, especially since it's very easy when you're riding to not grab whatever you're driving the water or the Gatorade to miss that. And now if you're relying on that, now you're really in a tough situation. Right. So I guess it also comes down to like, are you trying to go as fast as possible or are you, if you're not, then you have time to.

Everyone slows down for the aid stations. Not like you guys, you're going like 20 miles an hour. Everybody slows down for the aid stations just because there's too much volume of people there. But something else I'll say is if you are in like the kind of in the back of the race, it's not out of, it's not impossible for them to either run out of stuff or for that stuff not to be cold on a hot day. So think about that too. And you can always contact. more. What?

Try to get there sooner. Yeah, that's right. But you can always, you know, races aren't all the same. And even from Iron Man to Iron Man, they'll have different types of nutrition available on courses. So make sure you do your research ahead of time to see what is actually available on course and make sure you try it out before the actual race day.

Yeah, just thinking about all the Iron Man broadcasts, weren't they saying like Morton move, Morton moves. So maybe they put Morton Jells on course for Iron Man races. Yeah, but I've been at races where they've run out of certain things. So it's just scary for me to rely on that. If they have Morton Gels, you should grab like 20. Because those things are expensive. This is a $30 aid station.

Right. It's why they're running out. It's like toilet paper during the pandemic. That's right. Well, there you go. Hopefully that was helpful to you. There's a lot of little tips in there. Next question is from Johan. Hey guys, my name is Johann. I'm from Germany and I really enjoy listening to your podcast every week. Coming from a rowing background during grammar school. I don't know what grammar school is. I became a multi-sport enthusiast over the last decade. I finished the Iron Man Frankfurt this year, but besides triathlon, I also like to row, mountain bike, ski, snowboard, cross-country ski,

play squash, et cetera. Sounds very active. So the question is for you, Eric. As winter is hopefully coming soon to Europe as well, I'm especially interested in Eric's split board setup. Can you share what gear you're using and do you have any recommendations on brands and boards, all the best from Europe?

So, Eric, can you first start by describing what a splitboard is and then maybe go into the question. Oh, yeah, for sure. So backcountry skiing is where you put skins, which are like little furry things on the bottoms of your skis that allow you to essentially get traction as you walk uphill on your skis. Then you take them off, put them in your backpack, and you ski down normally.

Snowboarders, this is pretty challenging because you can't put a snowboard on each foot and walk up like snowshoes. So they actually have boards that break apart into two pieces. you turn your bindings sideways and then you walk up as though you're on skis. Get to the top of the hill, put the snowboard back together, realign the bindings, ride down. So it takes a little bit more time,

but if you snowboard, it's super fun. Wait, quick question. Let me interject here. Do you have to use ski boots to go up and then snowboard boots to come down? How does that work? No, no, you're using regular snowboard boots. There are snowboard boots kind of specifically designed for this,

but you can use normal snowboard boots. up until two weeks ago. But your bindings, the actual things that attached to your boots, those pull off when you're going into ski mode, quote, unquote, and orient differently. So you can use normal boots. And when you're going downhill, nobody would be able to tell if it was a split board or not.

Right. Yeah. So the brand that I got, which was kind of, we kind of just stumbled upon, actually Paula did. And then I watched some YouTube videos and really liked the people that were describing the way the board rode, The board's called Cardiff, and it's a California. Wait, no, no, I think it's a Salt Lake City-based company.

And Chris Corby, Lindsay Corby's husband, he also got one, and we both absolutely love them. They're very, like, surf-inspired-fe-inspired-fe-feeling boards, kind of a little bit more geared towards powder, but they can do groomed runs as well, and they have a really fun surfy feeling, for lack of a better word. The bindings that I use are Voile. I don't know the exact, like, model name of them, but they're the most common. one's and I just got some new K2 aspect boots that are backcountry specific so they got some like tread on the bottom for if you have to walk up a really steep thing just with your boots instead of your skis on. And if someone is currently like creating their setup, do you feel like it matters to get like really high quality stuff versus whatever they can get their hands on? You know, honestly, like with splitboarding is a pretty new sport.

So it's not like there's a bunch of used kind of low grade stuff out there. And it's very desirable right now. So most likely like a full splitboard setup is going to cost you like $1,200 to $1,200, I think, to get everything. Which is, I mean, cheap compared to a bike. But and you got to think about we didn't buy lift tickets then. So instead of having to get like a $600 lift ticket, we got just that. And then we walk up and down the slope and we get a little bit of workout in. So ultimately, like, if you keep it for two years, it's a pretty good deal.

But, yeah, ultimately, just because it's so new, it's, you can't really find you stuff. So it's going to be relatively nice stuff, whatever you can get your hands on. Nice. I want to do it with you guys one day. That sounds so fun. Dude, you're going to love it. It's so, like, the walking up is just like zen and you hang out and chat like you're on a group ride. And then you get the flow on the way down.

You guys hang out and chat while I'm hyperventilating for my life. No, I go so slow, Nick. I went with Eric and Danny the other day. and I was like 100 meters behind dropped so hard. Oh, really good. Yeah, I'm fully casual at that country. Fully, fully, fully casual. That's great.

Well, the next question is kind of somewhat related. It's a winter question. Hello, T.TLers. With winter approaching, I have some questions. Do you have a minimum outside temperature or threshold outer conditions to which you decide whether to train outdoors or do you go by feel? It's funny because I definitely have one,

which is a joke here. I don't know if we have a temperature in mind, but it's too cold right now. Wait, for biking outside? Yeah, for biking, I assume. I don't think that there's a temperature threshold. It's a road surface threshold. So I can bike in super cold weather.

We have really, really good winter gear, and a lot of it comes down to what you're wearing. But what scares me is the ice and the gravel and the snow on the ground that just makes it too risky. In order to avoid some of the gravel and ice patches, you have to go to the middle of the road. And it's just not fun, so that's why we avoid it. It's a very complex equation of like, okay, how long is it going to take me to put on this gear?

How fast somebody be going? Don't get ahead of yourself, Eric. There's more to this question here. Oh, okay, never mind. So how long does it take you to, one, get ready for a winter ride outside, clothes gear bike prep, and two, clean and put all the clothes gear bike back to its place? And she didn't say this, but also its condition. I don't know.

Probably, probably an hour. Like with the beginning and, I mean, once you factor in doing an actual. load of laundry. Okay, well, if you were just like, I am going out the door and I have to be out in five minutes, you could do it. But the thing about it being cold is you want to procrastinate. You're like, er, this is going to suck. Let's have another coffee. Let's sit in front of the fire. So it's like fully a whole deal. But if you, like, I mean, our closets are organized enough that if you had to get dressed, you can do it in five minutes. I don't know about five. I'm going to say 10. I'm going to say 10. Like if you're putting booties on your shoes, if you

you're like putting socks, tights, a base layer, a jacket, potentially a vast. But then once you do that, are you hating your life when you're riding or do you feel pretty comfortable? You're like, this isn't much different than riding in the warm. But the most part, it's fine, I would say. Yeah, if you've done a good job, you know, and you also got to be warm when you start. You can't be cold. The nose, though, the ears, those get cold, right?

That's what you need, like a gator type of head thingy to go over your nose. I mean, you can get real extreme. Yeah, I mean, people ski and you're going fast skiing. So, you know, think about that. You can always wear enough clothes for it to be comfortable. You're right. Just often people underdress. So that's just what you got to think about.

Meanwhile, my threshold is 55 degrees Fahrenheit because I'm a prima donna. Yeah. Well, Nick, speaking of that, you actually have a kicker that we gifted you. And people are really wanting you to join Zwift so that you can do our group Broaddivus. How dare you use that against me? Don't make us tell everybody to tell you. We know people at.

Swift. I'm sure I could get an account pretty easily. I don't know how all of you out there do Zwift. I know some of you people are listening to this right now on your Zwift rides. And I don't know how you do it for me. Nick, you don't understand it. It's a video game, man. You've never tried it. Nick, if you come on a TTL group ride that we do like weekly, you'll really like it. It's like we talk the whole time. People are talking. People are asking where you are half the time. I feel like 250 watts on the kicker feels like 2,000 watts in real life. That's the problem I have. Yeah, because you're like staring at a wall. You put on Zwift and you're looking at yourself going up and down hills, like other people.

It's just like riding on the PCH, man. Some guy passes you. You want to get on his wheel. You don't want to let him pass you. And also, you don't have to ride 250 watts. Like we do a pretty casual group rides. Okay. Well, I'll say this.

My dad has a kicker in New York where I will be for the holidays. I'll give it a shot then. I'm going to slide into Zwift's DMs. I'm going to slide into Sean Jefferson's DMs. Don't do that, Nick. We can pay for your ZWift account. We will get you on ZWift account. I can sign up for ZWift account for the POS.

I legitimately thought of you today because I did a Zwift. I got peer pressured into doing a Zwift race with my friend. You would like that. It is fun. Yeah, the tactics and the whole thing, you'll be into it. We'll convert you. Cool. Not full time, but just occasionally.

Okay, yes, of course. And then the final question here is, I'm from Europe, Slovenia. I was wondering if all three of you ever talked about doing a race in Europe together. I know Eric is very fond of Xtera events. And here in Europe, there are quite some interesting ones. Best regards, Anzi. Eric, should we, do we want to tease this at all? Like, do we want to talk about potential next year plans in Europe?

I don't know. All I was going to say is that we're definitely going to be in Lottie, Finland, for 70.3 world championships. And I would really like to do Xter World Championships in Italy. That's fair to say. Those sound like fantastic trips. That's right, where I can use my real Italian accent, not get peer pressured by these Americans. Gross. Okay, these next two questions are kind of related, so we're going to kind of answer them together.

But both of them, I'll read one of them, but one of them is from Lee, and one of them is from David and Lila Rose. Writing from Spain, where every Thursday my 10-year-old daughter, Lila Rose and I listen to the pod while I'm leaving and collecting her from ballet. She loves listening to you all and asks, could she send in a question? She's my biggest supporter and is always there cheering for me at races. I've asked her to try triathlon, but she's not keen. She doesn't like the idea of running. So her question is, what could you say to convince her to start triathlon? And the question from Lee is very similar.

Lee has an eight-year-old son. He's a very, very fast runner. And Lee wants to support him, but doesn't know what's to, she doesn't want to overpush him and make them burn out on the sport soon. And also, like, you know, when is it too soon to start pushing them to actually start like doing real training like physiologically. Right, right. Well, the question about the little ballet girl really hit home with me because I actually did ballet for like 16 years growing up. Like that was my thing. I was a dancer. I did tap jazz ballet. Didn't run, didn't swim,

didn't bike yet. I was just going to dance class like every night. So I think that as a 10 year old, it shouldn't be natural to feel like you want to run. Like running is hard. Running is not a fun activity necessarily. But I do think that dancing is an incredible, incredible baseline for you to become an amazing triathlet or runner or cyclist or whatever you want to do later. It's good for coordination. It makes your legs super, super strong. It makes you kind of flexible, like sometimes too flexible, but just like good body awareness. And all of that is like really setting a foundation for being a good athlete later. So I would say, what's her name?

Lila Rose. Lila Rose. I would say that triathlons are so fun. Dancing is not necessarily the kind of thing that you can do for your whole life, like I guess it sort of is. But the reason I made the switch to swimming in triathlon and ultimately committed to triathlon is because I'm 33 now and I'm still doing it.

I don't think I would still be dancing if I kept that road, that path. What if we were here doing a dance podcast right now because Paula stayed with dance number two in the world and dance. I don't know. What I would say there is like, keep doing dancing. I stopped dancing when I was 17, so that's pretty old.

There's some really, really good photos of Paula dancing. And I would, Paul, how do you feel about this? Do you think one day we could share some of those photos with the podcast subscribers, maybe on like an Instagram close friend story or something? They're super good. They're super good. They're very cute. And I eventually had to make the decision whether I wanted to be a competitive swimmer and

go down the triathlon road or, keep dancing. It was just too much to balance both of them. So I chose the swimming route, but I do always and will always credit ballet for making me a good athlete, a good runner. And I would say that keep doing what you're doing. And maybe later, the desire to run and to do triathons will come up. But it's not necessary to push it right now. And same with the other question, the eight-year-old son. I don't think necessarily run training that young is a good thing. And When you put your kid in a track and field club, for example, they do every single field event, every single track event. They train for all of them so that you're kind of well-rounded and you're doing the jumps and the hurdles and everything.

You're not focusing on distance running as a 10-year-old. So that's just because your body's still developing. You don't want to get injured early. I could talk about this for a long time, but I'll let Eric speak. Eric, did you feel like when you heard her talking about dancing, did you see yourself in that at all with snowboarding and skateboarding and stuff? and like proprioception awareness of your body through those things? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I grew up on a bike basically like jumping everything I could find in our

cul-de-sac and stuff. So I kind of got proprioception that way. And then, yeah, through skateboarding and some things that were not running. And I also, I hated running up until like junior year of high school maybe. Like it just hurt. My knees hurt. There was nothing really fun about it. I just did it because I wanted to be better at triathlon.

and that was super fun. And swimming, I got into swimming because I had friends that did it and the coach was fun and there was a community. So I feel like my parents didn't push me at all. They just, any time I was like, I hate swimming, I don't want to do this anymore, it's not fun. They'd be like, okay, well, we paid for the rest of this month. So at the end of the month you can quit.

And usually within like three hours, I liked swimming again. So it was ultimately my choice to continue doing it. We're all so familiar with that process, that up and down, I feel like. Yeah. And then I fell in triathlon at 12 years old. And again, there was a really great coach who just made it so fun for me. And I fell in love with it, not because anybody pushed me to go hard just because it was fun and I wanted to do it more.

So I think it'll happen naturally. Yeah. I think the fun aspect is super, super important as a kid. And the friend aspect, the coaching aspect. And there are a lot of childhood, like even friends of mine that were so, so amazing at like track and running as 12. year olds and now they don't run anymore. So longevity, keeping longevity in mind, I think that that's the most important thing as a kid is to keep it fun, keep it low volume, do a lot of different things, and then you'll be good at something when you're a teenager. Funny how, like, how many of my

friends that are great athletes now were not athletes growing up and how many people I know that are no longer athletes now were great athletes going up. Like just, totally. It seems like it's, burnout is so, so, so, so common. Even like junior triathletes that were winning junior roles when I was coming 10th at junior worlds are completely broken. Fully gone. Next question is from Catherine in Michigan. Hi TCL crew, long time listener, first time caller. Love it.

On the latest pod you wondered about your audience in terms of percentage of listeners who actively participate in triathlon. So before I get to my question, here's my one data point as a listener and watcher. For many years, I was a competitive swimmer and as a young adult did a handful of sprints. and half marathons. Now in my 30s, and with a hip issue that tends to flare with increasing run mileage,

I'm an avid road and mountain cyclist, but pretty much do not race. I'm not a triathlete in short. That's her words. That said, I love TCL from Bike Tech with Eric to the sick footage of Paula crushing rides on YouTube.

Find it highly valuable and entertaining despite not being a triathlete. And that's the beauty of multi-sport, right? There's a cross-sport appeal. So for the question, for Eric, what are your plans for future Xtera events? As a mere mortal observer of Eric's talent off-road, I'd love his point of view on Xtera. Plus, I've recently gotten into mountain biking, so having a whole new appreciation for that

discipline of cycling. Thanks so much for all you do for your fans and for the sport, or should I say, for sports. Cheers, Catherine in Michigan. Thanks, Catherine. Sorry, I got a little distracted as you were reading that, just thinking about, we've been talking for an hour now, and we're on our 43rd episode of people taking their time to ride in and ask us questions. and it's just, I don't know, it blows my mind.

It's so cool. It is so cool. It is so cool. It is so cool. How many people are listening and want to hear what we have to say, so thank you. I think the nature of the podcast, it's really hard to, like, sometimes it does just feel like we're recording this for each other. Yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, obviously it's cool when we're at a race and stuff when we get to meet people and they say they like the podcast, and that's like a super cool thing.

But yeah, anyway, it's never going to be lost on me, that's for sure. Yeah. But as far as X-Dera goes, I would love to do more of a calendar like I did two years ago, where I think I did like three X-Darrs and I did an X-Dera Worlds. And I'd really love to do that again. So we mentioned it earlier, going to Italy with Nick and experiencing that and having a good result would be, you know, a dream and such a cool experience. And then another thing that's like kind of cool and close to me is going back to do X-Dera Portland again. And I'm kind of hoping I can have a little bit of an active role and encouraging people to sign up for that.

because it feels like a bit of a home race. So, yeah, that's what I'm hoping to do and maybe in one or two other races around the U.S. if possible. And what about your point of view on Xera in general? Like, do you think it's awesome? Do you think it's terrible? Do you just love putting yourself through pain? I think it's super cool.

Like, for me, 70.3, you know, as a distance, is very much like it's you versus you and how much pain can you handle. And a lot of times I've done so many of them and I've done triathlon long enough that it kind of feels like the only thing that can go wrong is you can let yourself down. And like that's the main thing that you're trying to do is like how long can I sit at this pain threshold

versus an Xtera is you've got to think about like can I set up my bike properly and get my shock pressure correct and get my tire pressure correct. And I need to pre-ride the course and make sure that I remember that left turn that's really technical. So there's like this whole extra element to it and just discovering the course as you go and making sure that you're, you know, doing more than just hurting the whole time that

I just really love and, you know, gets me back to the roots of, like I said, growing up on a BMX bike and skill-based stuff. Yeah, it's fun. It sounds so fun. I want to do one too. This year I'd love to do one. Oh, I mean, you'll love it. And the last thing I'll say about is that the community atmosphere, the ones I've been to,

which is really fun. It's a little more, it's a little more relaxed and kind of like, whatever, quote-unquote core of triathlon and people are really fun to be around. Cool. And our last question here from Scott. We love your content. You're inspiring to my wife and I and always give us lots to think about. I have two different questions.

First, given you're both morning swimmers, how do you feel for a 4K session? I've been having a waffle, a banana, and sometimes a gel depending on the effort, endurance versus sprint sessions. But find myself fading hard at the end of some sessions. Do you drink a sports drink or electrolytes while swimming? Secondly, completely unrelated. Would Eric do a how-to video on installing a tubeless tire? I think a bike maintenance series from Eric would be awesome.

Many thanks, Scott. Why don't we start with that? Is that something that's in our future at all, Eric? I've actually thought about this a lot, and what it's going to take is you coming to bend for a week, and we'll do, like, you know, six videos and just knock them all out. But it's so hard to do bike tech things

and film bike tech things as a one-man show that I think I would, if we team up, we'd make me give that a shot. Yeah. And then back to the original question, do you guys feel, by the way, for context, I did a really hard swim session today and did not eat until 2 p.m. And I did the swim at 11 because I'm an idiot. So you guys don't make that same mistake, right? You also told us that you ate like every last drop of food that a Asian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant had last night.

Oh my God. That was two nights ago. That was probably like 3,200 calories worth of food. Yeah, that was kind of balloon. You're still going off of that. I think I actually thought about it during the swim. I'm like, I'm definitely still using some of that energy. It was wild.

But anyway, do you guys, so you guys eat before you swim, of course, right? Yeah, yeah. For me, it's like kind of a hard 90-minute window. I have to eat beforehand for it to, like, digest and actually be actively fueling me. Yeah, usually we'll eat right when we get up. So like seven and then we swim at 8 or 8.30 or we're doing our hard set by 830. We don't take a sports drink to the pool, just water. Or swim sessions are usually about 70 minutes.

And I find that that's, you know, short enough to not need extra fuel. but if you feel properly beforehand, you should be okay. The good news is most swim races and triathons are under 4,000 meters. So if you're struggling at the end of a 4K set, it's good. It's like building endurance, it's building speed, it's building resiliency, and then it'll feel easy to race. Like 4K is a good long set, so that's good. I was just thinking of it like in those in like 10K open water races where they have those like,

have you ever seen those where they have like the bottles at the end of this stick that is being dangled off of a boat. And the swimmers will do like a temporary backstroke so that they can grab the bottle that's hanging over them and sip on it while they're doing backstroke with one hand and then toss the bottle. That's what you guys need at juniper pool. Some kind of set up like, I'll be out there with a stick.

I'll be Sherpa. I was going to say, we need a stick, Sherpa. We swim at this, our friend Jamie, who's actually a doctor, but he does open water ultra-distance long events. And he swims sometimes 4K before we even get in the pool with him and then he'll do our set with us. It's just totally crazy. But he usually has two bottles with sport drink. And it's kind of hitting that zone of like a two hour

trainer ride where yes, in a two hour trainer ride you're going to need a gel. You're going to need some kind of fuel. A 90 minute run. Same thing. But for a 4K or less session, we can usually get by with just water, assuming we've had like a proper breakfast and coffee and fueled well the day before. Yeah. And it does. If we don't eat breakfast, you can tell. You feel totally terrible. Yeah, I agree. Well, those are all the questions. Guys, we really leaned into this new pod setup here. And next week it's going to be even better, not listener facing so much, but for us,

because we're going to have headphones at it, and the phone's going to be, you guys can hear me through it. It's going to be a whole thing. I don't know what it's going to end up being, but an hour and 12 minutes is how long we've actually been recording. Yeah, it's a long one. I mean, it's a lot more comfortable to record like this because Eric and I aren't trying to share one microphone. So he's super far away from me right now. I can barely touch him. But I can see both of you, which is nice.

Yeah, yeah. We're kind of at the polar opposite corners of this little iPhone capabilities. I just want to say a big thank you to Nick for helping us decide which ones to get. Siding for us. Deciding for us, helping us set it up. We split up our podcast subscriber proceeds, I guess, between the three of us. But this month, Nick generously donated his portion of the podcast proceeds to buying our, equipment. So Nick, we owe you big time again. You don't know me anything. This is it. We're doing it. This is how

you pay me back. We're doing the podcast. Yeah. Obviously it wouldn't be made possible without the incredible listenership that is all of you guys. Yeah, that's literally true. Yeah. That's literally true. And once again, you can ask your questions and support the podcast at Thattriathlonlife.com slash podcast. So if you haven't also, you can, at thattathomelamolife.com, you can also look at the new travel mug that came out, which hopefully is still in stock by the time you hear this. Yeah. We got plenty. We got that other stuff too, though, if you want, if travel mug's not your thing. But just go check it out. Go look at all of it. It's fun. Well, thanks for coming, guys. We'll be back next week with our new setup. Thanks to all of you. Any final thoughts, guys?

I hope this sounds amazing. I hope everybody's just like so blown away. I'm tired. Thanks, guys. That's it, guys. That's it. But once the yawning starts, that's when we stop recording. Later.