That Triathlon Life Podcast - Marbella race prep, Ice Bandanas in triathlon, and more!

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

This week, somehow, all three of the crew are together in Spain. Nick hopped on a last-minute flight and made it just in time for a Wednesday night podcast recording. Paula was deep in Ironman 70.3 World Championship race prep, so it was just Eric and Nick on the mics this week, covering:SRAM AXS front derailleur issuesStoring a TT bike for the winterRacing when racing has lost its lusterTraining outdoors after an accidentGaining confidence riding in aeroStaying entertained on long indoor ridesRiding an e-bike for fitness, is it possible?Ice bandanasBecoming carb-dependent during workoutsA big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive! To submit a question for the podcast and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggersstrom. And I'm Nick Goldstone. And that is it. That's what we got today. That's all we got today. Paula is the third leg to our tripod, as we call it. She's racing 70.3 world championships here in Marbeas, Spain.

Nick is... Are we going to get into that story? Unbelievably, I'm looking into your beautiful eyes, Eric. Looking deep into your eyes. But Paula's not joining us. She is taking care of race business. We're up quite late to do this as Nick just got in off of his flight. But we're going to try to do our best to keep you entertained.

Apologies for Paula not being here. If you're new to the show, Paul and I are both professional athletes. Paula is admittedly the more, the better professional athlete in the family, raising world championships. What's better? I don't know, it's all subjective, but she's, she's, she's, she's here world championships. And she's, we're all on her team for this weekend. That's right.

Nick's professional musician, amateur, triathlet. and keeps this podcast on the rails. Welcome. Sometimes, I feel like this is about to be off the rails, especially since it's just the two of us. You're sipping on, what are you sipping on? This is some white wine. Is it bubbly?

It's not bubbly at all, which I'm not upset about it. Okay. Yeah, we've been here in Marbea for like three or four days now. Paul and I got in pretty early, just make sure that we could get the jet lag out of the legs in the body and see the bike course, which is, I think, going to be talked, the talk of the week, talk of the weekend. It's a typical 70.3 length bike

course, but it's got, I think, 1,700 meters, 16, 17,700 meters of elevation gain in it. You ride along the coast for, I don't know, like 5, 6K, and then you just go straight uphill. So people for months have been riding in about, oh, what bike should I bring, what kind of gearing should I do? now that you have done some of it what do you I mean we've said we've long said a triathlon bike is always going to be faster yes you can be more comfortable on a road bike blah blah blah but triathlon bike is faster do you stand by that

yeah 100% the opening climb of this is extremely steep you will not be in the TT no one will be in the TT bars for this climb but after that you're up on this highway and it's rolling and fast and like guys I just talked to Christian Blumenfeld in the lobby, and he was wishing that he had a 62 tooth chain ring,

which should just give you a little bit of an idea of the, like the speed that the top athletes are trying to carry on this course. The pavement's very good. It's a highway. A little bit St. George-esque, where you can ride arrow for the whole thing and power up some of the rolling climbs. The only caveat, I guess, to that would be

is if you are just terrified of your TT bike. It's been pretty windy here. all week so far. So kind of coming down off some of the descents or just the downhill sections could be a little terrifying if you were not used to riding your TT bike in conditions like that. And how technical is the downhill riding? Do you think a technical rider will have an advantage here? No. No. I think a confident rider will have an advantage. It's really, it's not, you know, like you and I have talked about descending. We love descending the Santa Monica Mountains and in Malibu, it's very fun because of the corners.

Right. It's not fun because of just the sheer speed. Right. That's a good distinction. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's two different kinds of dissenders. There's people who are just brave and will go 60 miles an hour down a straight descent.

That's not me. I don't, that's not a high risk versus reward fun situation. Right. But that's kind of what we're looking at. The final descent especially is just down a highway. I think you could ride arrow and pedal the entire thing, but you'll be going 80. k an hour right and i overheard you say i don't know if this is okay to say that some of the men are riding one buys what do you think about that allegedly i think two by is definitely the call

because the size chain ring like if you want around a 58 or a 60 to be able to hold your race power on the just like like is that the downhills i wouldn't necessarily call them descents but like the downhill parts of the course with a slight tailwind or a heavy tailwind as we've been experiencing like there's no way you're making it up the climb yeah the main climb out of you know it's a 35 minute climb from the coast up to this like the peak of this highway sort of section that's steep i was uh i'm here on my road bike and i've got a 52 that was a standard just like a standard i've just got standard gearing uh i have a 33 in the back so not like a full 30 no actually i've a 30 that was i mean i was riding 300 watts just to like

maintain forward momentum so if you're writing a 60 unless you have like a 40 tooth right in the back you're writing like 40 RPM yeah so I think it two buys the call but it is hard to find a combo of like a 58 front and et cetera in the back yeah yeah okay okay fair and does

anything else from the course stick out to you it's it's a it's kind of a one big out and back with a kind of an intermediate out and back yeah just based on the time that we wrote it in its entirety it feels like yes everyone's going to go hard and everyone's going to be kind of fresh for the first

climb, but the person who's able to do that climb and then do these power rollers and then come back with like a slight tailwind and still like maintain momentum and power all the way to the finish, I think it's going to take a lot out of people's legs. So I think you could see gaps open in the second half of the race, even though it appears that everyone was hanging in there for the first hour. And then you get a sense for the run course? I haven't. We haven't seen the whole run course, but it's completely flat. I guess it's not 100% flat, but relative to the bike course. Oceanside is probably a good comp there.

Yeah. You're like kind of running through the front shopping area along the wharf, and then you do this out and back to this little lighthouse that's on a jetty, and then as you go inland for a minute, I think you get a little bit of elevation gain and come back down, but for the most part, I think it's going to be a really fast run course. Yeah, I guess the last thing I would say is just the expo vibe, in my opinion, is the coolest that I've seen at a 70.3 worlds. It's all on the beach.

They set up these, like, tiles on the beach so that, you know, they just, like, created a little village on what used to be the beach front there. And it just feels like there's more exhibitors than normal. The precision fuel and hydration. They went all out. Situation. Like, we're sponsored by Tailwind, but, like, it's so incredible, like, the level to which those guys.

have gone and we're longtime friends with them and I guess like to see them be the title sponsor and how hard they've gone. So if you're here, I've talked to a couple of people who are just like friends and we all agree that having gone through the process to qualify and get here, I don't think anybody's

going to be disappointed with the feeling of this is elevated above you're just, you're run in the middle regional 70.3. Yeah, but I've heard it's even elevated compared to 70.3 worlds. Would you say that's true? Like I said, yeah.

I think it's the best that I've seen. Wow. Also, since we were mentioning events around the Expo, you guys are supposed to have a shakeout run today. Yeah. Today being, just so everyone knows, it is nine, wait, what's the real time? Oh, 8.30, the night before the podcast comes out.

Yeah, time is a very loose concept right now. We're, you know, I have nine hours, six hours ahead of back home. So I don't know what time it is back home when this is coming out. But yeah, we were initially planning on having a group shakeout run on Wednesday afternoon. You arrived right as the shakeout when it was happening. So we postponed that 24 hours to the next day. So you can come to the shakeout run. I can go pick you up from the airport.

And I don't know, this can be fun. Well, let's tell the story for a second. So I woke up, I guess yesterday, had my disgusting oatmeal, was reading my book, book and I got a FaceTime call from Paula. So you didn't read the text message from me that said call us as soon as you wake up. Oh, no, I did. Remember? You're right.

You're right. I was in bed because that call was in reference to recording the podcast, I think. Oh, maybe I misunderstood. Yeah. That was about your flight. I see. Oh, I thought it was about recording the podcast. On your morning haze. Yes, in my morning haze. So you guys call and you're like, all right, let's

do this. Yeah. And Literally, I had three hours to book a flight, pack my bags, get in an Uber, get to the airport, and get on the plane. Yep. I told you you had seven minutes to decide. Yep. Yep.

And I did it. You did it. You're here. By no short miracle. Yeah. Made it here. Layover in Amsterdam. What always occurs to me is like, this is incredible.

I can't believe we're all doing this. And no one needs to do this. Right. This is amazing that all of these people are flying all over the world all the time, and it's totally by choice. Yeah. Can't believe it. Yeah. I also just thought there's people that plan this for like six months.

Yeah. And you can plan it in three hours. Yeah. But I didn't bring a bike or anything like that, which makes it a lot easier. Kind of simple with that. You'll ride my bike if you so choose to go for a bike ride and I don't join you. Oh, yeah, that's right. I would be riding alone.

Yeah. But yeah, you're here. It's a miracle. and we're going to have a great time. We are going to have a great time. So let's get right to it. We do have questions. Everyone, you know this, but I'm going to say it, as I always do,

you can submit your questions to the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. Did we sell out of the shirts for the energy supply? We did, but we tried out a new thing that we may or may not continue. I guess if you want to message us and let us know. If you appreciate this, we did a little bit of a back order. system. So when we ran out of certain sizes, because we've been having issues, guessing what sizes people are going to want, we let those back order, we're filling those, and then we are also ordering a couple extras of every size. So if you're only left out, you may have a second

chance. Great. That's great. So you can submit your questions there. You can also check out that stuff and keep up to date with that. And I guess I should say that we only are sold out of the energy supply stuff, but we still have a good supply of the new running hats. Right. And mugs. Mugs and water bottles are still in stock as of time of recording. Right, as of time

of recording, right. You can also become a podcast supporter, which we really appreciate, met some podcast supporters at the airport today. There was a lot of Iron Man people

on my flight. It was a fun time, but it's kind of funny when you, when you, I always wonder what the flight attendants think when they see the plane

full of people all wearing Iron Man gear. They're like, oh, you guys work for the company? Nope, we all purchased this stuff. Yep, We are wearing this on our own accord. Okay, let's get to, I think this might be the third week in a row.

We do bike tech with Eric, but this is some good bike tech. So here we go. All right. Bike Tech with Eric. All right, first one here. There's two. Hi, TT, I love the pod. Question for Bike Tech with Eric.

Any tips for SRAM access front derailer adjustment? SRAM access is the wireless RAM, yes. I've had shifting issues with my bike for the whole time I've had it about one year, mostly with chains falling off the outside when changing to the big ring, though it sometimes just fails to shift on the first try. I've tried to reinstall and adjust the front derailer numerous times, tried all sorts of limit screw adjustments, have also had the shop look at it with no look.

Is there something I'm missing? It's SRM rival axis, and I have rotor chain rings. Rout row. That might be the problem, to fit with the short cranks. Not sure if the non-Sram chain rings are making the problem worse, they are supposed to be compatible. Thanks. Okay, so you said rut, row at rotor.

Why did you say rut row at rotor? Yeah, for sure. Having non-Sramed chain rings is going to affect the performance, in my opinion, and I'm opening myself up to getting an angry email from someone, but we're just assuming

that these are rotor completely circular chain rings and not even the oblong ones, and the oblong ones have been generally I guess it's been a little bit of a walk. It's been a little while to be fair since I was in the bike shop and dealing with this, but they're a little more prone to dropping

because they're, you know, in one spot, they're a centimeter or half a centimeter shorter. Right. I mean, when you set up a front derailer, you have to adjust the height so that it's exactly a certain distance

above the chain. So of course, when you're shifting, it's going to be an issue. Yes, exactly. So, um, the nice thing about SRAM is they generally

send it with one of those cool little red adjustment tools. You put that on the outer chain ring, you slide it around until it contacts the front derailer, and it like literally aligns the front door there for you. You just tighten the front derailer down. I assume that does not work with

a non-Sram chain ring. Again, I'm just assuming. My guess is is that since you've had it into the bike shop and Nick and I had a good little brainstorm on this prior to recording the podcast, I feel like there could just be a manufacturing defect right here. If we want to say, like, the rotor chain rings are fine and they are

compatible, maybe there is just a manufacturing defect with this exact front chain ring that you are having issues with. Yeah, assuming that it's circular. Yeah. Assuming all of these things in the bike shop has done their job, et cetera, which I am very inclined to assume. Yeah, it's surprising that you bring into a bike shop and that they can't figure it out. Yeah. So that's why I just go to, man, maybe you just got a lemon of a front ring and no amount of, uh, a, uh, a adjustment is going to help it. Yeah. Okay. Next question here. Squad, maybe this is bike tech with Eric. Maybe not. I just finished my big race for the year. I might ride my road bike occasionally through the winter, but I only race a couple times a year, so I probably won't touch my beloved

T-T bike, which is named Jonas, by the way. Again, until late next summer as I start dialing in for next year's races. I'm terrible at bike tech. Is there anything I should be doing to winterize or prep my TT bike for storage in between seasons. I have tubeless wheels and tires if that matters. P.S. Best of luck to Paula and Marbea. I can't wait to watch the coverage this weekend as I ease into my offseason. Okay, so you're putting a TT bike away for the winner. It's tubeless. We also assume disc brakes, hydraulic disc brakes. What do you do? If you're, if you're, if you're trying to cover all your bases here. I know I personally don't do anything, but if I was going to do something. I guess you could give it its final bath with the hose. Well, see, this is what's

interesting. You say you're not going to do anything. That's because you keep the bikes clean year around. Yeah. Basically, what I would do is I would just give it one final clean, make sure it's dry, make sure it doesn't have any salt or grime or goo or anything on it, and then hang it out. The tubeless stuff, there's nothing that you can do to that to ensure that it's going to be fine when you take it out later. There's a great chance that when you take it out for your first ride in spring it is going to need new sealant and you're just going to have to check that then i just had a really interesting experience i rode my mountain bike for the first time in over a year last weekend and i checked both tires of course for sealing the front tire had i think the specialized sealant in there

and it still had liquid sealant the rear tire had the muckoff sealant in there and it was completely dry interesting yeah i would be interested to know the efficacy difference between the two in terms of sealing a flat i bet the muck off is is more effective but yeah and it's It's definitely like grittier. Yeah, generally, if it's coagulated in there more quickly, it is going to also seal a tire better in theory. But, I mean, that's the difference between race sealant and, like, training sealant, is that the race sealant only lasts for a few weeks

versus training sealant's going to last for a couple months. And that race sealant is gross. It's messy. It's sticky. But it's on purpose. Yeah. It's worth it. Yeah.

So not much to do. The lesson here is take care of your bikes. Don't put it away dirty. Ever. Yeah. If you can help it, let alone for the whole winter. Yeah. Okay, let's get on to real questions here.

Not that those aren't real questions, but these are more general travel questions. They're just themed questions. themed, themed. This question is from Lucy. ITTL team, have you ever gone through a phase of feeling you don't get any satisfaction from races? I have objectively done well, top three in age group in my past few races, lots of PBs, but still can't seem to feel happy with my performance. This leaves me wondering why I bother to race.

I still enjoy the training, though. Any thoughts on this? I really appreciate how honest you all are about psychological challenges of triathlon so I thought you might have some insights here. Thanks a lot for a fab podcast and being such a positive influence on the sport. Lucy.

Lucy? Certainly. Do we have a movie for you? Yeah. It just hit 100,000 views actually on YouTube. Yeah, I, you know, I feel like this is a very philosophical, philosophical spiritual question.

It might be just a good time to ask yourself, like, what are your goals? And do you truly care about getting a PR and beating people and beating yourself and, et cetera? Or is there, you know, has what you're hoping to get out of triathlon, have you achieved those goals? And it's time to set new goals, sit down and, like, have an actual goal setting session. And I guess being realistic with yourself and being okay with maybe triathlon isn't even the goal. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be by any means at all, but it's just like having that reflection moment and an honest conversation with yourself.

Do you think it's possible for someone who's in her position to take some time away from the focus and rigor of training to race and racing hard and racing to get the most out of yourself? Take some time away. Continue to swim bike run without that performance focus and then organically find her way back into the passion of racing? Or do you think once you find that apex of performance

and allow yourself to come away, there's no going back? No, I don't think so at all. And I feel like this is the process that I personally, like I think a lot of people go through this, but just I'm the only one that I know for sure, that I go through each off-season of I'm going to take time away and when I feel like running again or when I feel like biking again,

I'll do it. But I'm not going to tell my, I'm not going to make myself do anything because of a performance goal or because a race is coming up. And the same thing with racing. Like if you have the ability to say, I'm going to race when I want to,

like give yourself that a little bit of space. And off season is a great time to do that. But I don't think that's, I can see where your question's coming from of like, oh man, if I get off this horse, am I going to lose the momentum? And that could be, I guess, ultimately the root of your problem. Right.

So I think that would be a good exercise personally to go through to like what I did prior to how many of this race. I had another 50K that I wanted to do to try to like really feel strongly about the way that I qualified for UTMB and have one more good race. But I told Paul and I told myself, like Tuesday before we left for this race, I'm going to not do my workouts today. pretend that I'm on off-season and see how I feel at the end of the day and I felt really good about it. So I rolled with that. What about this counter-argument to this?

And I'll say that this is kind of something I'm toying with myself in my own training and racing. What about acknowledging that the racing is going to be more than hard, but like unpleasant and a necessary evil in a way? And I don't mean to validate

the training necessarily, but almost to do something that's hard. It's going to be hard. It's going to be unpleasant. But I do this because that's okay. And then we live in such a life of such comfort that I'm going to do these races, even though I don't have this visceral pleasure that I used to have in them. Do you think there's value in that, or do you think that's a dangerous game? No, I don't think it's necessarily a dangerous game. If you're like you derive so much pleasure from going to an event and experiencing the atmosphere and talking to people and the culture involved with it

beyond the performance and if there's something like that for this person then I think that's great but I guess I'm very much of the mindset I've always told myself as soon as I'm not enjoying triathlon training and racing etc I'll stop I don't want to be someone who just wrote it

to death and ended up hating it and never wanted to do it again. So, like, whatever, finding the thing that does motivate you about it, and it doesn't necessarily have to be the racing. If you just enjoy the atmosphere, you enjoy pushing yourself each day. You know, what does occur to me with this? This person sounds like they've experienced a lot of, like, oh, that went well, that went well, I got better, I improved, I had a good result, et cetera.

And I think people tend to stay in a sport and redo a race, redo a season, when they feel like it didn't go well. if you just had like three seasons in a row where it all went great like you don't have that chip on your shoulder right so if you're struggling to find a challenge or you know whatever like this is a great problem to have i suppose but yeah yeah cool thank you next question here is from julia hi folks my question is about mental toughness for context i was hit by a car while i was going through a crosswalk during my morning run a few days ago despite being in bright colors and wearing a light up vest that really is a lot of steps there's unfortunate there's only so much you can do yeah i'm mostly okay but now i'm having a hard time wanting to go outside to train when y'all have had unfortunate things happen during training whether a near miss a fall resulting in injury etc what helps you get over it and move on quickly in other words how do you balance staying cautious with not letting fear limit your goals i'll see you in marbea and look forward to cheering on fellow ttl folks on the course julia

so Eric have you had crashes that or yeah on either running or biking where when you got back to doing it you felt like oh boy there's a there's now something that's beyond my control that is letting itself be known for sure um the first most I the biggest instance of this in my career is my first continental cup in Barbados. And Barbados has this really interesting road surface where it's, I swear they have like little chunks of marble mixed with their asphalt or something. Maybe they just have a lot of that, um, on the islands. And when it gets wet, it is, it is literally like an ice rink. And in the race that I did down there, it did rain. And in training the day before and in the race, I crashed like four times. And like absolutely nothing you could do. The entire field crashed. Nobody didn't crash. every corner that we ran around was like unclipped and like walk around the corner almost

and that kind of created and it just like burst at like a youthful bubble of invincibility that I had and I since then have not ridden my bike the same in the rain. I grew up riding in Portland on very technical descents and considered myself a very good rain rider but it's just hard for me to trust tires

since then. Second instance would be when I crashed my mountain bike before Exeter World Championships three years ago wasn't able to compete I don't ride my mountain bike as I don't want to say recklessly but on the spectrum between completely conservative and reckless

I've backed off and you start to ask like is this worth it so I think that's totally natural yeah something I came to mind when I was reading this question was something that you said

about not this specifically but about when people specifically pros go out and they race and they say they didn't have a good day and you had this thing I like the way you said it. You said people think they're going to go out there and race

and it's just going to be like sunshine and butterflies and racing is really hard. And I wonder if maybe the right advice for this person is your brain's trying to protect you and you're going to go outside and it's going to make you feel scared. And that's just okay. It's like you just kind of have to wear that down

and remind your psyche. It's fine. That was a one-off freak occurrence. it's not going to happen. I wonder what a psychologist would say about that, but does that ring true to you at all? Yeah, a bit. And, you know, I've thought about this actually in an incredible amount because Paula is generally very, I would say, untrusting of drivers and untrusting of the road. And I feel like I'm a little bit more like, I'm going to control absolutely everything that I can control, but I just know that I can't control somebody opening a door. I can't control a truck,

running a red light, et cetera. And so I, instead of thinking about that and being worried about that, I'm going to do what I can and just keep my head on a swivel. I'm going to look in every mirror that I go by as I'm riding down the road to see if there's someone in there about to open a car door. So I'm going to be on alert, but strike that balance between like worrying about things that are just completely not in my control. Yeah, I mean, you can't train indoors for the rest of your life. You can't race indoors either. You can ride a lot of gravel. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think This is what a lot of people are doing. This is the only, really, solution to all of this.

Like, anytime that we're on the roads, yes, we're on higher alert and we're more concerned. And you see a lot of stories, thanks to, you know, the algorithm showing us the things that we're most terrified of. But riding mountain bikes, riding gravel bikes, getting off the main roads. And running trail, too, or running crushed gravel or whatever. Yeah, these are your only refuges for your brain to be quieter. Yeah. Another good reason to get into the trails, too. If you have the access nearby.

Okay, next question here. Question about arrow bars. I know this may sound crazy, but specifically any tips to get more comfortable and confidence riding an arrow position, aside from just keep doing it. Coming up an accident that led me to being pulled from a race, I'm still having anxiety on the bike,

especially when an arrow position. Thanks and love all the content. I don't know if you see a theme here, Eric, but I front-loaded the pod with more philosophical questions here. The fear theme. We've talked about this before, and I think my answer is going to kind of be the same of focused on what you can do.

And I think generally most people will find that the more power that you're putting down, you don't need to go race pace, but putting down power and focusing on like the contact points of the bike, you're seated, you're putting power under the pedals, that will make you feel more stable and give you more confidence. Definitely personally, my experience is that if I'm trying to go down a hill or if I'm in the wind, and I tense up and stop peddling, I feel less stable than if I'm putting out power. Yeah.

Do you think it could also, if someone has a really bad bike fit, it could make it more difficult to control the bike in the TT position? Totally. The higher up you are, you're catching more wind, your bike's less stable. There's not much you can do about that

other than maybe ask a bike fitter, and if you're comfortable, get into a slightly better position for the bike to be handled. I never actually considered that being up higher on a TT bike would, of course, you have a higher center of gravity. It's so counterintuitive, right? Wow, yeah. If you fill a crosswind and you want to sit up, but you're ultimately catching more wind. Yeah, right, right, right.

Yeah. I think the best thing that you could do in a crosswind is you stay as low as you can get and you get your hands on the base bar. Try to avoid putting hands on the base bar and sitting straight up. Yeah. It is pretty amazing when you're how much you can hear the wind change. depending on your riding position. Yeah. Next question here is from Chris.

Hey, Tripod. How do you pass the time on long turbo sessions, which is to say, indoor, trainer rides? Oh, yeah. I saw Paula has done... I speak Australian. Yeah. That's great.

I saw Paula has done some long indoor sessions lately. Even with Zwift, I find I get so bored after two hours, so looking for ways to make long sessions, three to five hours in the paint cave, less mind-numbing over the winter. Damn, two hours already seems so long. Three to five, just brutal. How often do you guys?

guys do three to five hour trainer sessions five hours never um i think the longest we've done is like three and a half you that's like this like extended lord of the rings yeah um for me it's been a while since i did one paula's done a couple lately um but i think our best hacks are are swift related so we don't typically watch movies we'll have like maybe a youtube on our phone but we're watching or looking at Zwift on the main TV. I'm listening to music, you know, scrolling a little bit here and there,

checking the TTL app. But then if, if it all possible, if it fits into your thing, jump into like a group ride or a group race. Right. That's a great hack. Yeah, the nice thing as pros, what we can do is we can get

into like the C race of a 35 minute circuit race on Zwift and not be that taxed staying with the group, but it's mentally super engaging. So you do an hour by yourself, you jump in a Zwift race for like 45 minutes, and then you do an hour by yourself, and then maybe you break the last bit up by, okay, I'm going to do five minutes at 220 watts, and I'm going to do five minutes, 230 watts, and you do, you know, and you do like a little ladder completely inside of your aerobic zone, but break it up in as many ways as you can.

I guess that's the issue is presumably, if you're doing a five-hour ride, I'm guessing it's zone two or low aerobic so a race might if you're trying to be hyper specific to your plant and might might be not as specific to that but man I'll do anything to not do five hours straight I will I will break the base season plan right to like do that and in understanding that if we were in Tucson or California like we'd be climbing up mount lemon or we'd be climbing year but went a road and riding back down and it would be much more dynamic than if you're sitting on the train and just holding 203 watts. Where are you riding five hours at the same intensity?

So I think that's okay. Don't like sprint your brains out every time you get on the trainer. But if we're talking about we got one four-hour ride, we've got to get through on Saturday, I think it's fine to have it be a little bit dynamic to save your sanity and get you to March, April, able to race. Right. Right. Okay, great.

Next question here. My boyfriend and I are flying to Washington's state for a week-long vacation, but still want to incorporate our 70.3 triathlon training. Around the Olympic Peninsula, I can only find e-bike rentals. Eric, this question's perfect for you. Do you feel it's possible to get a few decent training sessions on an e-bike? Or would we be better off on a stationary bike at the gym? Thank you for all you do to help support A troopers.

There's a big smiley emoji at the end. Are these E-Mountain bikes? See, I don't think these are. but they're not. We're talking about E-cruiser bikes. Yeah. I don't think

they're like E, like whatever the, what's the specialized one called? Turbo Livo. That's their around town, but they have one

that's like drop bars. I forget what it's called now. The Canevo or the can... The Canevo, I think, was a mountain bike. But, yeah,

anyway, I bet it's a turbo Livo equivalent, right? Yeah, you're around the town bike. So the position is different. Levo is a mountain bike.

Oh, the TurboLevel star. I'm thinking of the Vado. Vado. You're right, you're right, you're right. I'm thinking, yeah, so something that's a little more for the masses. First of all, you can just, I imagine you can turn it off. Yes. So you can make it real hard for yourself.

So the way that my Livo works, a mountain bike, is you can run it in eco, trail, or turbo mode. And those have a pretty immediate throttle response. When you pedal, it matches your power plus a little bit. the other thing that you can do is you can run it in just like percentage mode so 10 20 30 40 50 50 so like if you and I are going for a mountain bike ride together and you're on my my levo I put it at like 90 and I'm on my regular bike you can just go like 80 90 70 60 40 and like find a speed that makes it so you're doing the power that you want to do while I'm doing the power that I want to do on my analog pedal bike yeah yeah um and kind of so like choose your you're

your own adventure there. This is a really great solution for couples. Yeah. Oh, exactly. Like, my dad could go mountain biking with me. Maybe not on the downhills, but like we could climb a trail together and get out and just, you know, experience the thing and everybody can be happy. Which this is, like, if I could just put on my e-bike proponent hat, I think this is

kind of a misconception of e-bikes is that you just like twist a throttle and you go and it's like, oh, anybody can do it and we're going to destroy the trails and like it's going make everything too busy or lazy people out on the trails or be like whatever the cons are of e-bikes but like i think it allows a lot of people to get out there and it really the way e-bikes are set up is it it's like the specialized motto is it's you but faster so i think you take out you make it so there's a whole bunch of new terrain that people can ride that were previously just i wouldn't even want to ride right because you have to go so hard just to maintain forward momentum and now you can do it while still putting out a reasonable amount of power but like get up

the terrain. So for the sake of this conversation with a road version, I don't think that quite holds up as much. But I do think you could probably put in a 10% mode and still get a workout in just like you would be on a spin bike at a studio. Neither is going to be to your perfect bike fit in geometry. But if you want to be outside, e-bikes should be a great option. And comparing it to riding indoors, what do you think? I mean, there's probably more fitness, to be had by riding the indoor bike, but there's probably, I would imagine there's even bike handling advantages to be had

by riding an e-bike outdoors being that fast, I don't know. Yeah, and if I'm on vacation, the last thing I want to do is just be like sitting on an indoor bike, like, you know, like let's balance the, you know, what biking is meant to be and the fact that you're on vacation, you want to see a new place. Like, yeah, get on the, get on the e-bike and you could,

an e-road bike, you could definitely run completely off. Yeah. And you should be going slow because it's a little bit heavy, but you can do it. Yeah, cool. Okay, next question here. After watching Lucy and Taylor struggle in the Kona heat, I was wondering if you think we will ever see ice bandanas used at the pointy end of long-course races.

It is dumping rain outside. I see that. It's like, quick information to look at the rain here. I mean, just, wow. Interesting that we just dove into a heat question. Yeah. It's not going to be hot here. Oh, wait.

Is your stuff getting wet out here? please hold. We are holding here. All right, back attic here. After watching Lucy and Taylor's struggle in the Kona Heat, I was wondering if you think we will ever see ice bandanas used at the pointy end of long-course races. Seems like they are everywhere now in trail running.

While I know the crews for Ultras make the use of these bandanas more straightforward, I think Iron Man could have them ready for the top athletes if they want them. Also, athletes could carry one and fill it relatively quickly. It seems like a reasonable time tradeoff to make if it prevents a heat event. Are there rules preventing bandana use? What do you all think? Thanks for the feedback. For contacts for people who don't know, these bandanas are not regular bandanas.

They look like regular bandanas, but then they have a pouch within which you can put ice chips to keep yourself cool. A lot of these ultras are in extremely hot conditions and are super long. So cooling is extremely important for them. Eric, what do you think? Do you think this could make its way into triathlon? Because we kind of have those, I forget now what they're called, but the ones that go on your forehead,

that you soak in water. Yeah, those are just supposed to continue staying cold for a really long time and feel nice and chilly on your forehead. I mean, like, if you are running in Kona, and plenty of Iron Man's or 70.3s out there, there is a readily available supply of ice. Yeah.

We've talked about this at length, with my experience in Los Cabos. So I was just holding ice cubes in my hand and stuffing them down my shirt, but if you knew in advance that there was definitely going to be ice at aid stations at these races, you could use one of these bib type things

or ice bandana. You just have to absorb that time of stopping and filling it up yourself. Yeah, sometimes it kind of feels more like a precedent or trend or fashion thing that hasn't made its way into a certain sport. I just can't imagine seeing a, like, a top pro-trafflete running with a bandana. But Google.

Ben Hoffman used to do it? I'm 99.9% sure. Wow. Okay. And he had a phenomenal race atona one time. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I wonder.

I mean, all it takes is for, you know, I would have never thought that people stuffing bottles down their jerseys was going to become a thing. Yeah, exactly. A few people. I think if I just had to guess you can get ice at aid stations and triathlons every mile like you have to go sometimes 20K or further in a trail race

and you need something like an ice bandana to hold as much ice as possible in the best spot versus just replenishing it constantly and then you know the headbands with the little ice nuggets whatever came out and stereotypically triathletes like to buy tech stuff. That seems like

that must work a lot better than an ice band-danner. Right, right, right. Ice works pretty well too, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, I can see it. I can see it. If triathlon tries to become a little like, especially if there is a blend happening right now between triathlon and trail running, as far as the kind of athletes that are doing each. So, it would be interesting to see. Last question here. This is very long. So I'm going to summarize.

it a bit in my own words and then maybe finish off with what Steve from Bristol said. So Steve was saying that he used to swim a lot and run a lot and bike a lot underfield. I think this is very common with age groupers. I did the same thing. Well, when everybody's fueling with 150 grams of carbohydrates per hour, where all suddenly have been living our lives underfueled. Right, right. But I think some of us were going on doing three-hour rides with water.

That was very in vogue 10 years ago. And there was this whole thing about being fat-adapted and saving carbs for race day so that your body can use both systems efficiently. And now that's not really how people train anymore. What Steve is saying is that he's now been training so consistently with carbs on every workout that even, and I'm going to quote him now,

I know that fueling well in training has a lot of benefits which is backed up for me with good results this year in racing, but I've never felt better in training as well. I'm worried now that I've trained myself to be too carb dependent. I used to smash out solid swims over an hour long three times a week with nothing but water. Sure, I remember feeling rab and his post swim, but I definitely wasn't balking mid-swim. The other day I happened to forget my bottle at the pool for a 45-minute swim with some intensity, and before I even got to 20 minutes, I felt light-headed.

Tingly and well, I was clearly bonking. probably more appropriate question to ask Nick as I know the demands of training as a pro is different than us age groupers but Nick how many swim run bike sessions do you actually fuel during the workout wondering whether I should actually be cutting back on the carbs for some sessions

so I'm not so dependent on them cheers Steve from Bristol so let's start with you Eric what do you think let's what do you do is there a certain amount of duration of a ride that beyond you bring carbs do you bring carbs on every ride

and run Sorry, I said ride, but I'm saying any workout. I guess two things just to set some background for this. I have not been racing professionally this year. And I feel like this year. Triathlon. And I feel like this year, which just means that I have not been biking, doing like frequent four-hour bike rides.

And I think this year, last year a little bit, this year for sure, everybody is super woke to have, taking on a crazy amount of carbohydrates. That said, even like my very first 70.3 in Oceanside 2018, like I was taking on 90 grams of carbs back then. And I just, I tested it in training and I felt good doing it. It was not like a high vogue thing, but it was, I just felt better doing it. So I would do that on any, I mean, for the most part, don't do a ride under 90 minutes. On a 90 minute ride, I'm not going to care that much. I'll do, you know, the 90 grams or whatever, or just whatever I put in my bottles, at least, you know, 50 for that 90-minute ride.

So you are bringing carbs on an hour or a 90-minute ride? For sure. For sure. I never, never leave home without some sort of fuel on a bike ride. On a run, it has to be over an hour. I'm not fueling on a run under an hour. What about an hour and 15? That's kind of like the line of if I go into the run and it's, Especially if it's a key session, if it's an actual workout and it's 75 minutes, yes, I'll have a gel in the middle of it. If it's an evening session, I'll try to have, I'll preload it with a little bit of, you know, carb mix or something. Or if I'm just training for a race is coming up soon, I'll do it for a 75-minute run. 90-minute run, definitely yes.

I'll carry a flask and a hip thing or in a vest. Are you stopping to take this on or are you doing it during recovery? No, I'm trying to be as realistic for racing as possible. and I just have it in, you know, like an ultra-best has two flasks, and I'll just take a sip out of that every 20 minutes if I've got it. But interestingly, Heather Jackson mentioned this to us, and Heather Jackson, like, notorious camel. Like, Paul and I would go out riding with her in 2020, 21, 22,

on like a four-hour bike ride, and I'd be like one and a half to two bottles an hour in Tucson, you know, with New Jersey. nutrition and it just so thirsty. And Heather would go for like five hours with maybe one and a half bottles. Yeah. And then in the last couple of hard. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then in the last couple years, she started trying to like do more fuel and is hired a nutrition coach and et cetera. And she told us, like, I bonk now. Like, I know. She no longer has that ability to just go out for five hours and like make it through a thing and be in that like kind of zone one or one and a half two, like almost two. whatever state and be okay she balks yeah so i think this you know this person's uh claim and their experience is completely real right and it the other thing that it makes me think of i think it's

irobot where like the whole downfall of society like sort of comes about because women are using this like makeup that if they stop taking it you know it's supposed to make you feel useful look useful forever but at the second you stop taking it your skin just immediately returns to the age that you should have been in it like you should have been in it like Like, your skin rots off and falls apart. Right, right, right. So it's like, it is ultimately better, but you have to stay on it. Right.

So, yeah, it's really interesting to me to, I'm just curious to see how this develops, as we all do, start doing 100 grams, 120 grams, 150 grams an hour. Like, yeah, how do you get off that merry-go round? I did some research. I did not bonk when you're at the office all of a sudden. You're walking up the stairs. You're like, I need carbs. Yeah, right.

Well, I did some research on this, and it corroborates exactly. you just said, which is, yes, this can happen, like what happened to Heather, what's happening to Steve, what happening to the iRobot people, that is what happens. You do become more, your body is more ready to use energy from carbohydrates versus from fat. But it is net positive to your performance. It is a good thing. You should be doing it. If performance is your goal. If performance is your goal, if you want to race well in a 70.3, for example, carbs are are the answer and training with carbs, it seems, is also the answer. Steve, to answer your question about what I do, actually one more thing, Eric, what about swims? I've never fueled during

swims. Do you have water on deck? No. No, so me neither. I don't have anything for a swim, but my swims are rarely over. I'm not saying that's the best thing, and it probably doesn't set me up the best for a session that's, you know, 90 minutes after that, but I've just never heard into the habit of it. You know, shame on me. Yeah. And then for bike rides, I do not bring, I only bring fuel on my weekend rides, which is like, those will be like four plus hours. Weekday rides, two hours, I just bring water, maybe water and electrolytes.

It's not smart, but that's just a three-eyed of what I do. For runs, even like an hour and 15-minute run, I will do, I'll do nothing. I don't really notice a difference, but I wonder if I wouldn't benefit. from doing that on long runs I bring of course fuel but I mean to me this very much crosses into this space that we've talked about on and off the podcast of like how much how far are you willing to go yes for your performance and if you're trying to win a world title you treat things differently than if you're just trying to qualify for you know if you're just trying to get to Kona are you just trying to like get through the race and I think we all have that

point where it's like okay i'm not willing to spend so much money to where i'm doing 90 grams of carbs an hour for my swims and my hour long runs and my hour and 15 minute long bike rides and and and and and and because you know like this is the level that i'm willing to go through and this is how much nutrition i'm willing to buy and how much nutrition i'm willing to measure out and i'm okay with that knowing that that might cost my performance point five or one or two percent exactly And I'm okay with that. That's exactly how I can carry on my life unencumbered by measuring out nutrition five times a day. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That is, that is a divider. Yeah, it is up to you, Steve. But you're not crazy. This is really happening to you. Your body now wants the carbs. Great time to be a nutrition company. Yes, that's right. Okay, well, we did it.

We're here. Paul in the meantime has gotten into bed, gotten in the room. She's here. almost to sleep eyes do you hear that from the source well that's all folks

we need to stop I'm going to edit this now and put it out for the for the masses in Spain and beyond that's incredible you're a machine

gone on like 40 hours without sleep yes did not sleep one minute on the plane somehow you are appreciated I think we're going to have a little bit

of a potentially alternative next week Yes. As well. Yes. Due to some Paula racing in Dubai. So you might have to hang out with Nick and I again.

I'm sorry. Maybe. But you should tune in just in case Paula's here. Yeah. To everyone who's racing, Marbea, this weekend, congratulations for making it here. Good luck. And great, great, great, great luck. And have a great time.

We'll see you out there. Bye. Thank you.