That Triathlon Life Podcast - Measuring your current triathlon fitness, strictly sticking to workout times, and more!

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

This week we’re once again split across two continents, Eric and Paula in Bend, OR, and Nick in Girona, Spain. We kick things off with a teaser for Eric’s upcoming 50k ultramarathon, announce our TTL Strava Art winner, and then dive into listener-submitted triathlon questions. This week we discussed:How to measure current fitnessPracticing for 180-degree turnsThe importance of sticking closely to workout timesSki touring setupsAquabikeRacing Athena/Clydesdale vs. age groupHow short is too short to race on a new TT bikeA 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 the TTL podcast. I'm Eric Logstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldstone. And we've had an awesome show for you this week. It is race week for me, so we may talk a little bit about that. We are going to be announcing our Strava Art Challenge winners, and of course we have a whole bunch of really great questions to get to. Paul and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a professional musician. age group triathlete, good friend. And yeah, you found your way into our triathlon themed podcast. Eric, someone sent a question in which I didn't include that said,

you keep calling yourself a professional triathlet, but are you going to do a triathlon in 2025? I am, yes. Which one? Padigan Man and potentially Exteracobo. Patagon Man. When is that? December. December what?

12th. No, we're going to be in Qatar, actually. You're not doing that. That's the opposite of padding. Well, there you go, folks. If you want to know if I'm doing triathlons, that is your general answer for all trathlons that I might do. We will be at T100 races.

And when is the Cabo, Xera? I don't know, probably the same day as T100, something else. Dubai. Okay, well, you are doing a race, though. I guess, yeah, you know, I'm just, it's, it's, I haven't like come up with a great title for what I'm doing right now, but I would call myself a professional endurance athlete. And if we wanted to really drag out the intro, I could say, Paul and I are both married. Paul is a professional triathlete competing in the T100 and I am in a professional endurance athlete slash content creator. Great.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah. That is a nice ring to. Really rolls off the tongue, yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't want to make our intro too lengthy, but that is what I would currently consider myself. I am experimenting with all manner of endurance activities and having a blast. Okay, so we are already off the rails, so we might as well keep it off the rails.

And let's just go right into what the heck are you doing this weekend? This weekend I am doing the Y East Trail Fest, 50K. This is a actually, I wouldn't say like a UTMB level competitive event, but it's fairly competitive and it actually has $1,250 to win, which is, believe it or not, a fairly large purse in trail racing. Most of trail racing is like gravel, where it's kind of sponsor-fueled and not so much prize money-based. But I'm hoping that'll bring in a good field of guys from around the northwest here and just, you'll be like a good step back into the 50K thing before I do my A race of the 50K. year, which will be Codiak UTMB down in Big Bear, California in a couple months. So is this race you're doing this weekend?

Are there any qualifying spots for UTMB? I'm not sure. There might potentially be like some stones, but I don't think so. And how does the stones work? Can you explain that? No, actually can't. It's fairly complicated. It's like tokens, right?

Yeah. I think there are a couple different ways to get into U.TN. And one is collecting a lot of tokens and having a high token count or something. And then the way that I know of that's the guaranteed for professional level or elite level athletes is you go to one of these majors like what the big bear Codiac races. Whistler was one. The Canyons race that I unfortunately got sick before that was one as well. And you have to place top three in those to get an auto qualifier for next.

year. The UT&B, Kodiak one is interesting because there's actually 10 spots because it's considered a North American major, I believe. So kind of like 70.3s have like North American championships. And when you actually do qualify, you qualify for the distance that you qualified at, right? Yeah. Yeah. So there's 50K, 100K, 100 mile. And I don't know about the 100 mile. If like 100K can get you into the 100 mile or not. But I'm just focused on the 50K for a yeah yeah yeah that sounds good it sounds good and like in general how do you feel now and like could you compare it to how you felt in black canyons when you when you got second you did so well at that race yeah right now i feel a little bit more like when i went into smith rock last year where i feel

like generally quite fit but just you know given the schedule and you know paula's race schedule and travel and whatnot i haven't been able to be on a very specific like training schedule but so much as rather I've been trying to mimic the weeks that I did leading into Black Canyon as well as possible. So I don't have that like, oh, no stone unturned feeling, but I have a feeling of like I'm prepared to go hard and whatever may come. And then my goal or my thinking is that after this race, I think there's a good chunk of time where I can get on a very specific schedule, work with Paulo again, and get ready for the big race. a Kodiak. Okay, and then last thing, and I would love for Paul to answer this as well, do you taper any differently for a running race like this than you would for a triathlon?

It's interesting because, you know, when you're tapering for a triathlon, you still need to do all three sports for the most part, which leads to a not very relaxing race week versus I'm following the same taper program that I did for Black Canyon, and it's kind of like there's just, just runs each day. So it feels like you're doing nothing relative to a normal triathlon week. It's just an hour and 20 minutes of running

every day. And then today I'm like four days out and I did a tempo run, an uphill tempo run that Paula actually came along on our new E Mountain bike with me. But then after that, it's like I'll just do another chill run and then I'll do a day off on Thursday and then a chill run on Friday and then race.

Right. So like I'm mixing in just chill mountain bike rides and spinning around on the bike just to feel like my body's doing the same thing it's used to. Yeah. Paula, if you were racing a marathon, let's say, but kind of like Eric, you had still been intermittently during training, doing swims and doing bikes, would your taper week look kind of like what Eric just mentioned or you think you would do it differently? I have never even thought about this, so I don't know. Okay, fair. I think that in general you still have to like decrease your volume but keep some intensity. And yeah, it probably looks similar, but you're just maybe doing less overall activity. Yeah.

I just feel like you definitely would decrease volume, but still like you could still do like an hour and a half bike ride. But you know, you're probably not doing an hour and a half run. So it's just like Eric said it's confusing because you're doing so little. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. out of yourself still, of course, but...

Right. You know, like, I've been staying on doing like three, two-hour rides a week, or I'll go with Paul on a four-hour ride occasionally, and I'm just kind of keeping that the same, and then just, like, decreasing the run volume, and certainly just not doing a big effort within a few days of racing. Because I think it's, at least in my mind, I want to have no leg

fatigue, feel very bouncy, because you're going to just incur a lot of muscular strain running for four and a half hours, especially with this weekend's race has a lot of vertical gain and loss in it. You don't want to be carrying any leg fatigue for that. Right. At least that's my thought.

Yeah, yeah. Well, awesome, Eric. We are excited for you. Paula's excited, I'm excited. Flynn is excited. Is Flynn over there? Is he just off camera? No, he's downstairs.

Yeah, okay, okay. He's being a little mopey. He's got an injury, so. Still, same one, huh? It's hard when somebody in the family is training and someone else in the family's injured. It's emotional. Of course.

Well, if anyone has any advice on dog ACL chairs, hit us up, I think you might have that. Really? We've got to get him in an MRI. Yeah, we're pretty much at that point. We've been waiting to see if it gets any better. We do have dog insurance. Do you have dog insurance? Really?

But if there's any vet who's willing to just, you know, give us a discount on an ACL surgery, I'll take him anywhere in the country. Oh, boy. I would say. Do you think it really could be an ACL tear or an ACL injury? Yeah, I mean, he's... It acts like it. Dogs are so stupid because when he's outside, he doesn't associate like,

raging through the forest makes my knee hurt. Right. Kind of like an athlete, I suppose. Except humans have the awareness and they choose to ignore it. Right. We've been taking him on mostly just leash walks, but if I let him off for a second, He'll tear through the woods.

Yeah, yeah. And then in the evening, he won't put weight on his back leg. So he's, like, limping through the house, and it looks so sad. But with a hunting dog, it's so hard to tame them and, you know, do a 30-minute leash walk. It puts zero dent in his, like, physical need of exercise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's been a challenge. And it makes him even more insane when you do eventually take the leash off 10 feet from the water.

We're like, hey, we're going to take him for a low impact. exercise in the river. And 10 feet from the water, you let him off the leash. And it's like you've never seen an animal accelerate so hard and just launch into the water. Hopefully there's no rocks in there. We don't know. Right. It's like, oh, Jesus, dude.

Like, we've just suffered through four days of walking you around the block on a leash. And it's just all undone in 10 seconds. You know, this is what you need to do. You just lift him up, put him in the river, and then dangle a chucket ball up river. that he just swims in place for an hour. That's the only way. Swimming is the activity, I think, is that's the best for him. It's like an athlete injury.

It's a non-impact. But the problem is he gets out of the river and then, you know, berserk. He goes, he has like river brain going and is just unresponsive as he gets out of the water and then sees a chipmunk and chases the chipmunk and then sprints back to the ball. But all the tests that they say to do online to test for an ACL tear, don't suggest that he has. as one. Right.

Like, I do the drawer test or whatever on his leg, and he doesn't act like he's in pain with any, like, you know, touching it or moving anything around. So, anyway, that's that with Flynn. Very sad, very annoying. Sorry about that. Okay, well, let's move on to

the most creative challenge we've ever had. Pensils down, everybody. The TTL Strava Art Challenge is over. And, oh, my gosh. Competition was fierce. Yeah, I mean, way better than I imagine. I was expecting some half-ass, I don't know half-ass, but like how good can it be? Amazing.

Amazing submissions. I will say we didn't get very many, but the ones that we got were good. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like our discussion about this ahead of time where I was like, I don't know if I would do this. And Nick was like, I would go to the ends of the earth for this. You know, it's a polarizing thing. You're either super into it or you can't conceive of how you could do it. So let's announce the winner and then we'll post it on our Instagram on Thursday.

Yeah. So people can see it. Yep. All right. Say who it is. Eric, Eric, do you want to do you want to do the honors here? Yep. Andrew Bremer, you're our hero.

Andrew Bremer made unbelievable at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which if you don't know what that is, Google it, did the TTL logo and then right below it, TTL Nache, spelled. N-A-A-A-E-S-H. Amazing. Amazing on a lot of levels. The more that we looked at this, the more that it sunk in. The, I mean, the T-T-L logo here is way better than when Nick Paul and I tried to draw it with our eyes closed.

Of course. Way, way better. Incorporating a natural bike path from what I can tell or a walking path. And then just imagining someone spelling out N-A-A-E-S-H, at this very busy field in Washington, D.C. is rather humorous. Yes. So, Andrew, amazing.

Great job. You're going to get a pair of the Swift H2O Audio Bluetooth headphones. Yep. And we also want to do a couple, a few honorable mentions that were just so good. Okay, now we have, we have coffee. Oh, wait, I don't have the name of this person one second. Yeah, you dropped off the name of that. Yeah, yeah, one second.

I can find it for a second. I'll go with, well, Nick's looking for the name of the person who did an incredible coffee and TTL coffee mug. McKenna McGraw did this like sideways to the right shred till bed artwork that is absolutely incredible in Philadelphia. I would say like the most creative use of terrain goes to Shannon Simmons, who did a unicorn, has a, Nothing to do with TTL, but just incredible use of, looks like an inlet waterway sort of situation here and just streets and a park, Costa Mesa, California. Someone did a, Let's Rage in the middle of a field,

which I thought was really good. It looks like his dog maybe did it. David McKay. Oh, yeah, David. If the GPS was on your dog and you somehow coached your dog into this shape, extra, extra points, and we will actually recrown you the winner. Yeah, right. Someone else did a star while open water swimming,

which I personally think is the most impressive. That's amazing. Mom Running North is the Instagram handle of this 0.626 kilometer open water swim. A great star. Actually, completely straight arms, whatever, arms and legs. Yeah. Points of a star while open water swimming. Just process for a minute the siding that would be involved.

We can't even swim straight with buoys. I mean, how does that? How did they do that? I would really actually like to know how that person did that. It's like crop circles. Yeah. Amazing. I found the coffee, TTR coffee, by the way.

This was Robin Dittams. So cool. Spelled out coffee and then TTL in a mug. Amazing. This was really close to taking the win for us. Yes. So good. We'll say that's a second place.

So good. Oh, the Stanley Cup. The Stanley Cup. It was amazing. So what does Yegg 26 mean? Yeah, it gives us like the airport code for Edmonton. Ah, got it. Got it.

Okay. Really pulling out the heartstrings on the Stanley Cup. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think there might have been some light cheating involved in the Stanley Cup. What? Because if you look at the top of the cup, I don't think they ran on roads there. Yes, they stopped their watch and then restarted it to get the diagonal. That's not cheating?

It's not, okay, it counts. No, that is artistic. Okay, okay, fair. Using the tools that you're given. Yeah, I totally think that's fair. Fair, fair, fair, fair. That's actually kind of cool. The thing is, like, the star would be less impressive if that happened, though.

You know, like, what made the star cool is like they actually swam that. Well, we don't want anybody running through somebody's backyard in the name of Strava art. I don't know. I kind of do. I was getting sued. Okay, anyway, that was fun. Thank you to everyone who went through the huge effort of doing that. we really had fun seeing them all.

And congrats to the winner who will get his Swift headphones probably next week, but send us your address so we can get them out to you all the way in D.C. We need to lock in some more sweet prizes to do things like this. This was entertaining. Yeah, that was entertaining. I hope everyone who participated was entertained. Yeah, I mean, creative expression. Let's do it.

And then I think we're just going to go right into questions now. if that's all right with you guys. You can submit questions to the podcast at That TriathlonLife.com slash podcast. That sounds like I'm talking to you guys. I know you know that. And you can also become a podcast supporter at the same link there. We really appreciate the podcast supporters. And we're going to start with this question from Brooke.

Hello, TTL team. I'm finally getting the courage to write in a question. My question is around training. I find I often don't get through the exact scheduled workout. Like the pool closes, but I have 200. yards left, or even today I was supposed to do a one-and-a-half-hour trail run and only got through an hour in 10 minutes because I totally messed up the route. I typically feel guilty. Does the 10 to 20 minutes here and there add up? Usually missing and cutting short cool downs. Or since I'm always making

sure to prioritize the drills, sprint, tempo, strides, intervals, etc., I'm getting dang near the full benefits of the workout. I'm 36 female started training in January, so real new. I've done a few Olympic lengths, have seen crazy improvements in my times, got a coach, and I'm starting to train for my first 70.3. I feel like I'm dedicated, but does calling it short one to two times a week prove otherwise? I love, am I addicted to? The podcast. Hope this question wasn't too long. Brooke. Interesting. I thought it was a good question when I read it because I think that's a sign of a healthy relationship with your training. If you don't feel like, oh, I did. get to an hour 25, so I need to ride around the block three times to get to the number,

that's like kind of obsessive on the other end of the spectrum. So I think it's actually fine to miss a 500 in the swim or miss 10 minutes of riding. And then maybe on another day, your ride is 10 minutes long. And that's fine as well. So I'm trying to adopt this flexibility mindset where if it's not exactly what it says in training peaks, it's fine. and it's healthy to like let go of that a little bit. And like I just said on the flip side, if I'm like 15 minutes long on a loop, that's also completely fine. And not, you don't have to think of it like it's making up for the ones that you did short, but in general it all balances out. And as long as it's not something you're like cutting out because you're being lazy,

which it sounds like you're not, I think it's completely fine. Yeah. I would agree. Yeah. More and more in my life, it's, you try to come up with a bike route that is close to what you're going for, but wind to speed, your effort level, how good your watts were that day. Same thing with the run can impact it, you know, shorter or longer. And as long as you're just not 100% of the time trending over or something in becoming, feeling the effects of that, just roll with it. Especially if it's like life related, like, oh, I can't fit this in because I have to go to work going and doing 3K instead of 3.5K instead of not doing any swimming is always better. Totally.

The only thing that I feel like from an age grouper perspective is I remember when I was not doing the longer sessions fully and it was because of mental weakness and it was something I had to get through to do. It sounds like this is not that person, but that is like a hurdle I had to get over and it help me in racing when I was able to get over that as well. Yeah, if you have a four-hour ride and you're making it 3.30, like, that's kind of a big difference. And maybe you should just make sure you get your long ride done to completion within 10 minutes. Another thing I think is super healthy to do, which I realize you can do on training peaks, is turn off the feature where it turns

your bubble green or red or yellow. Oh, you can turn it off. Yeah. Oh, man. Because it wasn't, mine wasn't set up like that. So all my workouts were white. And then I was like, I wonder why mine doesn't have that feature. Maybe they disabled it because it makes you a psychopath if it turns color. So I went and looked and mine was turned off. So I'm keeping it that way. Because if you do a workout that's like 10 minutes under, it makes it yellow. As if you like didn't do it right.

It's so negative. Yeah. And we're dealing with an entire sport full of people that are like A plus students. Type A, yeah. They need to be green and like deep green. Yeah. No trace of yellow. You know what also I have done on these is you can change what metric turns it green or yellow or red.

I think by default it's time, but you can make it TSS or you can make it like normalized power, how close it is or whatever you want. So if you don't want to go by time, there's other things you can go by. Can I just like decide if I turn it green, red, or yellow? So that's what I do. If I weigh overdo a workout, like a long run or something, and I do an extra hour, it would be red or whatever, right? Well, you can just go in and this is not great. But you can go and change the planned.

Hour and confessions. You can change the planned value so that it matches your completed value. Yeah, you could do that if your coach is a robot, like yours. Correct. If you have a human coach who you trust and pay. Yes, you can't. You shouldn't do that. Tampering with the evidence?

Yeah, I don't think so. You're straight to jail. Great question, though. Great question. Next one here is from Mark. Hey, TTL crew, love the pod. Thanks for keeping me company on so many long runs and trainer rides. I've got a question that's been bouncing around in my brain. How do you measure your current fitness?

Is it mostly feel? Or do you rely on specific metrics like CTL, HRV, resting heart rate, FTP, VOT2, Max, etc? I ask because I know I need to stop obsessing over my Strava fitness score. Oh boy, a Strava fitness score. But every time it drops a point, I feel like I need to go do a hill repeat just to earn myself worth back. Help me. Curious what you look at, if anything, to gauge where you're at fitness-wise.

We'd love your take, Mark. Yeah, I definitely look at my Strava Fitness score and nothing else. I've been getting into looking at the Strava Fitness score. Come on, really? Well, now that my watch actually records my heart rate, I do actually have a Strava Fitness score now. But my thought, you know, hearing this question was like with any of these things like CTL or, you know, any of these trackers, it's like, having in mind that we're like looking at a general trend here. Like I'll look at it over like the last three months, six months, one year, whatever and just like, oh, that's like sort of generally

trending up. But anytime you're getting like super into the weeds of like how was it versus yesterday or this week versus last week even is that's risky and potentially just going to impact your happiness with whatever stat you're looking at. Well, the main issue with the Strava fitness score is that it doesn't take into account like a rest week or something. So if you're looking over a month and it says you've decreased 5% in your fitness, you actually haven't because you just took an easy week to recover and next week you're training hard again. Strava doesn't like recognize that. It's basically just giving you points for every hard session you do that's recorded with heart rate. Yeah, and power too. And power. So I don't know. It's kind of fun to see like, oh, I just did this

hard run and my fitness score went up three points on Strava. Who gives a shit? But it is fun. It's fun. That's that's really. But for me, fitness, my fitness level is really a feeling-based thing. You know, you can feel fit or you can feel tired. You can feel recovered. You kind of know intuitively. I did 10 by a K at X and it felt easier than the last time that I... Obviously, you can do testing, but how often can you actually do testing and all that?

And then the biggest one, of course, is racing. Are you racing faster? Did your half marathon time get faster? Bike split, et cetera. But this is a little bit like the training peaks turning green where there's a Strava fitness score. There's like predicted times on Strava and all these things that can really impact you mentally in a negative way if you read into them too much. And they're just using like an algorithm and data to predict something that doesn't take into account so many other factors. So I wouldn't look too heavily at that.

But you can use, yeah, I don't know, just like your consistency over time, if anything, to predict if you're getting full. fitter or not. Have you trained consistently? Have you done your workouts, then you're fitter. Love it. Next question here is from Liz. Hi, tripod. How do you prepare for, or practice, 180 degree turns in races? For example, the one in Santa Cruz 70.3 or the several, it looks like in Lakinta 70.3, which I'm signed up for and feeling nervous about cheers. I'm guessing this is talking about on the bike, although there's some, it can be weird in super shoes on the run as well. That's true.

There's a great video from, I don't remember what year it was, 14 or 13 of Alastair Brownlee. Yep. Fripping. Slipping in super shoes at a 180 degree turn in a WTS. I think he got back up and won, so it was fine. But I like what the Europeans call these dead turns, because you're coming to a dead stop. And that just sounds like the way that I feel about 180 degrees in races. But yeah, Paul has practiced them.

bit. I haven't practiced them in a little while. But I think like the easiest way to do it potentially is either on a flat road or on a road that has like maybe just an ever so slight downhill on it. So you don't have to like work really hard to get up to speed and just like get up a little speed and do a U-turn. You can like use a chalk mark on the ground or an intersection or something and time yourself from like 50 meters into the U-turn and 50 meters out of the U-turn to see, you know, if you start of doing it 20 seconds and you could get it down to 17 seconds without a massive increase in effort. Your turning is theoretically getting better. Yeah, I don't think the time of the turn is as important is just having complete confidence and

comfort in doing it and taking the right line. Like if you're doing a time trial, like Canadian Nationals a couple years ago had a couple U-turns, yes, then you're trying to like maximize how fast you can do it. Go in as fast as you can, break, like take the right line. But for most people, it's just like a fear of actually completing it. So in that case, I think you'll naturally get faster. But doing it on a quiet road. And I think actually doing a figure eight so that you're doing a U-turn one direction

and the other direction is important because in Boise, there were some U-turns that were to the right because we were going counterflow, which was super awkward for me because I never do a U-turn that way. What are you doing? Dude, what the a fuck? He's a good boy. He's a good boy. He's definitely not if he's up on the couch.

He's injured. He's a good boy. He's going to be injured for the rest of his life. I'll give him something to be injured about it. He's going to be actual injured here in a second. Yeah, so practice you turns both directions. The only way to get better at it is to do it. You're not going to get better at it by thinking about it or by stressing about it.

Watching a YouTube video. I'll listen to a podcast about it. Although that can't help to learn how to take the right line. Because I think what people do wrong is they try to like steer their bike in a circle when really you're just leaning your bike and looking where you want to go and your whole bike will follow that line. Paula, very nice. You guys act like I don't know how to ride a bike. No, but that's like pro level like turning. That's like what they teach you in motorcycle school. It's like you look where you want to turn. You lean the bike. You counter steer and you get around

the turn. That was really well said. You're not actually steering your bicycle. You're not turning the handlebars in any way. And in order to do this, you need to go to the outside first and then lean in. I love the figure eight idea too. That's really smart. A parking lot is actually optimal for this because you don't want to be thinking about cars at all in this practicing scenario. Okay, good question. Next one is from Jack here. Hey guys, you're probably not thinking about winter yet, but what kind of touring setups do you have for backcountry skiing? I really want to get into it and curious where I should start. Are bin bindings worth the price?

Figured off-season might be the best time for a good deal. Thank you, Jack. I think he meant pin bindings, not bin-bindings. Oh, yeah, I don't know what either one of those are. What din are your pin bindings at, bro? Pin bindings are just lighter. And if you're doing this and want to have the lightest set up to get uphill,

it's like getting a lighter road bike. We have pin bindings. I did try the Solomon shift. shifts which were not pin and I hated them. Just because they were so clunky and hard when they were iced up to like get into. But now I have the Solomon Pinned ones which I love. The ski collection that I have, I like to think of it as like art that just sits and I look at. Nice.

Expensive art. Because I have such nice DPS skis that are like some limited edition cool colorway with art on them. and I just mostly just put them in the living room and stare at them all winter. And we ski when we can, but they're like 110 width that I bought after this backcountry ski trip that we did that was really powdery

and haven't really needed them since. But I have faith that someday in life when I retire from triathlon will be using them much more. So I have a set of 110s and I have a set of 80s for just doing hill laps. I'm convinced half of

being happy is just like having something to look forward to and want. So having the skis there is like this. Yeah. Is it great. And what I also, Eric has a splitboard and he also has some skis now. Just some like to do the resort with. What, like 90s?

96s. No, they're not 96es. They're like 86s. 86. They're brand new. But what I feel like about skiing for me is that Eric and I are like getting fancy bikes is part of our job. And we are so fortunate to get them from. specialized without paying for them, and we have the nicest bikes you can get.

But skis are like our bikes for an age grouper. You know, like we're buying them with our own money. We like to have nice ones. They're like a little bit of a splurge and they're a little, we don't get them for free. So that's kind of like our sporty indulgence. Yeah. Because it is expensive to get a good setup. But not as expensive as bikes.

No, bikes are ridiculous. Yeah. Would you say that, Eric? Would you agree with that? I think it's a great analysis, yeah. When we don't have like the absolute nicest ski stuff, but we have stuff that feels like good enough that it's not going to, certainly not going to frustrate us at our skill levels.

But like having a nice pair of touring skis versus just something that are like, meh, kind of work or like don't quite fit or whatever. Not quite right for the snow. Comfortable boots or we have the nicest boots you can buy because that's expensive. What's all new boost did we get on it? Just the touring ones. Like the nice touring ones. I mean, just like for me coming from splitboarding to touring is I think an extreme, you know, difference.

But like akin to going from a crappy touring setup to a really nice touring setup where I can't explain the lightness, the difference in the feeling of the lightness. It's like climbing on a mountain bike on a road versus climbing on a, you know, on a tarmac. That is how extreme the splitboard versus the skis going uphill is. Yeah, I felt like I literally had nothing on my feet when I switched over with the skis versus a splitboard. I was just always gassed trying to keep up with anybody who was on skis. Well, that's actually a great little segue because I was curious if you could give us, for everyone who doesn't know how much this stuff costs, what is the cost equivalent of a $10,000 road bike for touring skis?

How much would that cost, that level of quality? I don't actually know. I think you could get like the nicest setup of touring everything for $2,500. Okay. That's like boots, binding, skis, skins. Yeah. Maybe $3,000. I'm sure there's like another level that we don't even know about, but that's...

No, the thing about touring is like the nicest DPS skis for backcountry, whatever, they're all going to be a similar amount. But you can spend money on getting lighter stuff that's like for race-specific. use cases and they're not necessarily nicer than the nicest DPS skis. They're just like buying a super nice touring diverge bike versus buying a really nice tarmac. They're similar costs. They're just different use cases. Right. I see. So it's not like the more you spend infinitely, they get nicer and nicer. It's just they get more specific to what you're doing, whether that's racing, schemo or... Powder Day, like actual backcountry. Right.

etc. Right. Cool. Okay. Fun. Okay, we're going to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming here to do a little bit of a rapid fire. Yep, we're doing in the middle today, and this is a food edition written in by Gabby. I thought we would switch it up. So you guys, you're ready to use some rapid fire? You've got to be fast. Did you add some to this? Because I didn't add any. There's a lot. There's eight. I mean, I thought they were good. You just have to be fast with them. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Challenge accepted. Would you rather have your hot food get cold or cold food get warm?

Hot food get cold. Yeah, hot food get cold. Whole milk or skim milk? Skim. Hol. Skim. Erick. God.

For what? Anything. Yeah. I mean, just generally I'm going to say skim, but... Taste? Taste. Whole, taste better. If I'm craving water, but I can only have milk, then I'll have skin milk.

If I'm having whole milk, I'm having ice cream. Yeah, great. It's not the same. I feel like I want. Okay, next. Dill pickles or bread and butter sweet pickles. Please, guys, please. Dill.

Paula? I don't know if I know the difference. Because you've probably never had the bread and butter ones. They're disgusting. Okay, Dill. Also, Dill pickle chips, I would pick over. Oh, yeah, those are good. Those have kind of a Canadian thing, aren't they?

Yeah, I think, yeah. Although, they do have them at Trader Joe's. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think they're internationalizing. Yeah. Okay. Canned or homemade crammy? strawberry sauce.

Homemade probably, but I've never made it. Yeah, I'm going to go homemade for sure. I actually don't like cranberry sauce at all. Thanksgiving, I'll always skip it. I have Paula's. I take the extras. Okay, what about smooth or crunchy peanut butter? This is one, this one's divisive.

Crunchy. Oh, yeah, nice. What about you? No, I'm crunchy as well. But I feel like smooth is not the wrong answer. You know, like I feel like that's totally legit answer. I get it. I get it.

Yeah, I get it too. I get it. I'm a convert. I used to like smooth before Eric and I. Same. We watched a on YouTube last night, how Reese's are made. If you're bored, go watch that.

And then kettle corn or salted popcorn? Kettle. Kettle's so good, yeah. Yeah, so good. Okay, now this one requires a little explanation. Maine or Connecticut-style lobster roll. So the Maine is cold with mayonnaise-based dressing and Connecticut is warm with melted butter.

No idea. think I would probably go for a warm lobster thing. Man, I think the cold is like the classic lobster roll for me. I don't know. I've never had a lobster roll. I might go cold on this just because I like a chicken salad or a tuna salad sandwich and I assume this is a bit along those lines. I just like anything with butter.

Butter is one of my favorite foods. And I think we used to all kind of think it was bad for you, but I think the consensus now is that it's actually not that bad for you. It's just dense in calories, butter. In moderation, yeah. But I like leathering it on fresh. bread. Oh, so good.

When it's in the winter and you can just leave the butter out and it's just like, oh, I leave the butter out in the summer too, because then it's soft 100% of the time ready for use. Of course. And the last one here, favorite pasta shape. It's going to be rigatoni for me. Shells. Shells, Paula, huh?

Nice. We did just have a great shells experience last night, so. Vegan mac and cheese. Mm-hmm. Cachew-based cheese. Was it good? It's so good. It's in our regular rotation.

You just basically get two cups of cashews and soak them in hot water for like a couple hours. And then ideally you have a Vitamix because that's the best at pulverizing these cashews. But you do cashews, nutritional yeast, turmeric, lemon juice, a little bit of mustard, water. And you blend it up in a Vitamix and it tastes like cheese. What? But it's cashy base, so it's creamy. It's cheesy enough. The nooch has got to be doing the heavy lifting there, right?

It's cheesy enough that if you didn't like just have macaroni and cheese 45 minutes ago, it's awesome. I think it's better than actual macaroni and cheese personally. I certainly don't hesitate to eat like 12 servings of it, that's for sure. It didn't hurt your stomach at all. No. Why wouldn't? I just, yeah, I guess this isn't like fake cheese, but like vegan cheese has made me feel sick before. No, this has no chemicals.

No, it's just like, natural. It's actually very calorically dense because of the cashews. Right. But I don't think in a bad way because those are healthy. But I don't think it's like a low cow option if that's like compared to mac and cheese. But it would say it's healthy. Right. I would say it's healthy.

Yeah. Between the cashews and the nutritional yeast. Like you got to, this is some nutrient dense stuff. You guys, if anyone wants the best vegan mac and cheese recipe, I just Google best vegan mac and cheese. Detoxinista. That's like the blog, foodie blogger I got it from. And it has 900 comments on it. So I think it's pretty popular. Dude, the recipes that people put online get so many comments sometimes. I'm like, who's reading these? I don't know. But I've noticed this. I think they are. I think they're real because I would comment on this and say, this is a 10 out of 10 recipe. It's what I use all the time. Right. Right. Just like kind of validating it so that other people make it.

Yeah. But all of the metrics or whatever are on here are the measurements. And then it makes extra and you can put it on like rice bowls or anything. Yeah. Sweet. This is, you're cooking with Paula segment. You used to do cooking with Paula on the vlog, but now we're doing it on the podcast. I remember when you did that one with Adrian where you made that like chocolatey, what was that?

Do you know what I'm talking about? I think it was actually vegan chocolate. It was like a sheet of something. We did one with Lindsay. Oh, this was before it was like an official thing. It was Adrian doing it at the house in Bend. Yeah, anyway, not important. Yeah, we appreciate that, Paul.

Actually, I think this could be kind of a cool thing to do, like, frequently. Do some recipes. Okay. Yeah, although I'm poaching them off of the internet. Oh, sure, but you're actually making them. Like 99% of blogs out there and newsletters are just curation of things. somebody who you trust is telling you, I did this, and it's not just crap.

Exactly. And I need any kind of encouragement I can to cook things. And I imagine there's other triathletes out there that feel the same. Yeah. This sauce goes together in the same amount of time that it takes to boil the pasta. Do you have a Vitamix? I do, yeah. Oh, you do?

Okay. Isn't that insane how many people have Vitamix? I know, they're like $500. They're so expensive that you ask any triathlete and they all have a vitamin. I'm like, oh my God, we have a Vitamix. Oh, is this happening? Well, they are the best. Prong jewel of her kitchen.

That's great. Okay, next question here is from Philip. What's up, Eric, Nick Paul and Flynn. Eric, your name is spelled E-R-I-C-K, and Flynn is F-L-I-N. So we're, it's very cool creative spellings here. Two strikes, bro. No, I like it. I like it.

It's alternative. Big fan and totally stoked to finally have a question for y'all. I've been training on a road bike for months and finally saved up for a Ventum Tempice. It's arriving. this Wednesday, but my first Olympic distance triathlon is next Sunday. Is that too short of a window to switch from a road bike to a TT bike?

No. My goal is to be as... No, yellow. Have fun. Do it. My goal is to be as fast as possible. I'm not worried about just finishing. Do you have any tips from making the transition to a TT bike quickly and safely?

Should I stick with my road bike for this race or go for it on the new bike? You guys, could you imagine owning a brand new time trial bicycle and then leaving for your triathlon in the morning with your road bike with the TT bike sitting in your garage looking at you with sad eyes. That would be insane. If I got it the day before the race, I would still race it.

If I got it the morning of the race, I would still race it. It is 100% going to be 100 times faster and more fun. And who cares if it doesn't fit right yet? I mean, like, get your saddle position in the right area at least. And if you're like super injury prone, in the hips, maybe perceived caution. This is someone who's never ridden the TT bike before. Yeah, I don't know.

I just like it just, it's going to be fun. It is going to be fun. Especially on a race with closed rows. I mean, that's actually maybe my only hesitation is if you do have a fear of it. But if you're really comfortable on a bicycle and you can get on it and ride arrow without fear pretty much right away. Yeah. We have like a couple of rides before the race that we can do on it to get comfy.

Yeah, a couple rides, yeah. Yeah. I would say like put it on the trainer or go out with a multi-tool and just like dial in the saddle position by feel so that nothing feels really off and then you don't get your bike fit as soon as possible. The thing is like we're not liable for any injuries that may occur. The thing is like without a doubt you will go faster. And if you're if that's what you're looking for is faster, there's no way you won't go faster. At what distance? Would you say Olympic? Olympic. Yeah, see, if it was a half, then I would be like getting a little concerned about your low back hurting and stuff, but you can get through an Olympic. Yeah, I feel... Worst case, you're sitting up on your brand new TTI bike.

Which is still probably faster than your road bike. Looking good. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny. Wow, I'm surprised. I thought both you were going to be like, absolutely not. You're going to not be able to run off the bike, but you're both like, now, send it. No.

I mean, if we're like, I don't know. super finely tuned pony and like pro athlete and you're switching to a different TT bike one week like that's a little different. No, even if my bike didn't show up at a race at 70.3 and I could access a borrowed bike, I would ride it. Yeah.

I would for sure ride it. It's been known to happen. Yeah. Okay. Fair. Great. Next one here, very short. This is from Jake from Orlando.

Hey guys, to erg or not to erg? That is a question. This is. Do you do a workout using the ERG mode, which just sets your trainer at a set number of watts, or do you free solo it and use your legs to generate watts? This is the question, the dilemma. Correct.

And I think it comes down to what type of a person are you and what type of workout are you doing? I think some people like ERG mode because it really forces you to stay at a certain power. But the problem with it is that it can kind of mess with your cadence sometimes. and if you start to fail you really fail you really fail because you can't overcome the weight of the free hub or whatever it is, free wheel.

Yeah, for people who don't know how it works, it will always maintain that power. So if you have a really high cadence, the resistance will be less. The torque is less. It feels like it's less. It feels like it's less, but the power at the end of the day is the same. So like Paul is saying, if your power drops, if your cadence drops, you have to really torque it to make it work. I think

For me, it's a thing that I pretty much never use. But if I were to use it, I would be using it at like a sub-maximal, long, steady state sort of a thing. Like, let's say my FTP is 350 and I have to do like 45 minutes at 300. That would be the situation that I might use it versus like I am trying to do 20 minutes at 350. And like the chances of falling below that cadence threshold and failure is relatively high. That's where I want to go non-ERG mode and kind of like have that. ability to go like 353, 345, 350, you know. Yeah, actually, interestingly, I use it mostly for easier rides or aerobic rides,

because if I want to stay at like 200 watts or 180 watts and do that without thinking about it really and without the terrain of the Zwift route impacting the power, it's a little bit more mindless to just stay on Erg Mode. But if I'm doing intervals, like 5 by 5 minutes, I'll always take Erg Mode off and use the shifting, pick a flat route on Zwift, and use my own kind of intuition of what power feels like. Because I think the danger with Erg mode is you do forget how to ride outside a little bit when you go to ride outside.

And you'll go up a hill and you'll be overgearing it thinking you need to push harder just because you're going uphill instead of shifting down and like riding the road. So I think the first few months of me going outside if I'm like doing so much Erg mode is like, I am a robot and I forget how to ride my bike. I would say, yeah, that's almost like that difference isn't torque. Like your legs being used to that variability

and like a little bit of a wind gust or like a slight increase in the road, you know, gradient. So I think it's right, it has a place in a time, but I wouldn't use it 100% if your riding's on Zwift a lot. Do a little bit of both.

Would you guys think this, I mean, maybe this scenario doesn't exist, But would this be, would Ergmode be a good tool for someone who tends to overdo, like, easier rides? If they're supposed to be riding it, like, they're zone two and they like creep up constantly. It's like, well, you put on Ergmode, you can't creep up. For sure. Yeah. Sometimes I'll put it at 150 and it forces me to stay at 150. If you can keep yourself from like increasing the Ergmo. Right, right.

It's your guilty pleasure. Right, right. Then you're really cheating yourself. And now I have a little follow up from Jared. During the last week, I actually got quite a few messages about aqua bike since we talked about it last week. So there is definitely interest there. I heard from some people who can't run anymore because of injury, who are very thankful for aqua bike. And anyway, this is from Jared. Hey, Tripod.

I'm so glad that aqua bike got a shout out last week. It's much more prevalent than you might think. While Iron Man doesn't yet offer aquabike options, most local races do. There are distance options of sprint, Olympic, and half distance. and USAT offers national championships in Olympic and middle distance. Three years ago, I faced the decision between major hip surgery or giving up running. I chose the latter. Finding Aquabike has enabled me to remain part of the multi-sport community

and to train and race with my friends all year long. It's a wonderful option for folks battling running injuries or for those of us whose running days are behind us. The TTL Multisport Longsleeve that launched this spring spoke to me immediately. Love multisport vibes. Jared. P.S. This was written from transition as I choked down breakfast preparing for an aqua bike race.

Jared, choked down breakfast in transition. Wow. That's a little tight. That timing's a little tight. No, sometimes the transition. When inspiration starts so much later. Strikes, you know. Yeah, yeah.

You're right. Especially if you're an aquabike, it could start like an hour and a half after the first wave goes off. Yeah, I just liked this follow up because I think it's a good point that a lot of people, like my mom, for example, was a super high-level runner growing up. but she can't run anymore because her knees won't tolerate it. So what Jared said about being able to still be part of the community and be part of the event, and they're actually a lot more popular than any of us new is kind of a good information to spread to people in case they want to do triathlon but can't, like physically cannot run anymore.

It's really popular with that demographic, I would say. It's not, what I'm saying is it's not a cop out. It's not like a lazy way to do a triathlon. It's like for people to still participate but not include the sport that they physically can't do. Anything that involves a swim is not a cop-out. True. Definitely. And imagine how hard you could go on the bike if you knew you didn't have to run at the end.

It almost, it sounds super fun to me. Are they always swim bike at the end? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I figured. There's no like second swim or anything like that. Somebody did.

send me a crazy multi-sport triathlon concept thing. It's like the SOS trathon, where it's like a bike to a swim, run, swim. I can't remember exactly what it was, so maybe it's not applicable to this, but... Oh, it's like swim run, but swim bike. But like you bike from town out to this like lake network or something like that.

I don't know. Anyway, I just want to say that I am all for all sorts of alternative forms of multi-sport and recombining and reimagining what we have to work with. I love it. Okay, let's end on a philosophical note here. This is from Leanne. Hey, Tripod. I'm wondering if it's appropriate to race as an Athena athlete rather than age group,

when only a few pounds away from the cutoff weight. Athena is 165 pounds plus. I'm just shy of six feet tall and weight typically around 165 to 170. I'm rather fit and doing quite well in my age group at local races, even winning a few and qualified for nationals. Considering my weight, I could race as an Athennae. but I almost feel like that would be cheating, considering I'm not overweight, but just tall. Looking at the times for previous racers in my age group at nationals, I'll be lucky to make it in the top 50%.

If you were in my shoes, would you stay as an age group racer and always struggle to compete with the smaller, more athletic builds, or jump to Athena and take medals away from the women who might be more apt for that category? Leanne, I did not know that Athena was 165 plus. That seems so light. It's not a lot. No, it's, it's, I've had that realization probably 10 years ago, too, that it's, it's not like, man, I don't want to, you know, I don't, I want to be careful with this, but it's not like a really, it's not a grossly overweight thing. It's not, it's not, it's, it's, it's just acknowledging that there are a lot of different body types out there and we're not all five, two and what would look like, you know, runners, so. Right, right. But what do you guys think here? I feel like this is like up to each person and what, feels good to you.

But I guess I'm kind of on board with a, it's like an age. It's just like an age classification sort of a thing. Like if you fit inside that classification, like you're on equal footing theoretically with people that are over that threshold. So whether it's 40 years old or 165 pounds or, you know, whatever. But if it feels wrong to you, then do whatever makes you happy.

Is there an Athena category at Ironman events? or is this a USAT Olympic distance thing? And local races will do it as well. They'll have Athena and Clydesdale for the men. And you'll just show up in a totally different result list. Correct. Not in your age group list at all. Actually, I don't think there's age groups at all.

It is just the full Clisdale full Athena. No, that's what I mean. But you couldn't show up in your age group and in Athena. Correct. You do not show up in your age group. That's like one or the other. Okay. You're out of like the age group race when you sign up as

as Athena. Okay. This is so hard to answer because it's so... If it was me, I think if I was kind of on the cusp like that and still competitive in my age group at most events that I'm going to, I think I would stay in the age group

category, but I would never think poorly or judge anyone who was deciding to do the other way to race in the Athena category if you're actually fitting in that. Wait. If you're so on the

cusp that you're like chugging water to get over the the opposite of boxing. It's an honor system thing. But yeah. Yeah, then I would reconsider. And like the implication here is going to national or going to world championships or something like that, I assume, right? Right. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, if you could qualify for worlds in the Athena category and go to world championships, do that. That's cool. There's a lot of intricacies we don't understand. But there was another question this week about Clydesdale racing. Did you see that one? I see it. I found it. What did he say? He said, I'm going to try to, it's long.

So I'm going to try to make it a little bit short here. But I'm a large guy. I'm 6 foot 6 and weigh 220 pounds. So I've avoided hilly courses because they don't fit my strengths. But with Spain and now Nice being the world championship every other year, I don't know what to do. Should I stop using my size as an excuse and improve at hilly courses or accept the fact that I will never be as competitive at those types of courses? Losing weight really isn't an option.

I'm fairly lean, 6 to 7% body fat. My muscle mass helped me during my pro basketball career. Pro basketball career. We've got a specimen on our hands. Jeez. Jesus. Is this LeBron James, but really hurts my watts per kilo now as an age grouper. Paul, I watched you at T-100 Milwaukee.

I was there and won the USA Triathlon now. Nationals Clydesdale Division in Olympic and Sprint. Heading back there this weekend again to race. Brett. Who's Brett? I need to know more about Brett. Provide your last name, Brett. Brett, we need to know more about you.

So this is like kind of the same. So this is a little bit the same because Brett is an extremely fit, just happens to be hugely tall. Right. And therefore fits into the Clisdale category and wins the national championships at that. It's not because he's extremely overweight or. not fit or anything. So I think it's fair game.

If you're over the weight, you can race in that category. Do we know what the men's limit is? I'm just curious. It might be 200. I'll look it up right now. Not that important, but I was just curious.

I would say to answer his question about racing on hilly courses, I wouldn't say that... 220. I mean, if you're as lean as you are and then I think you can get better at hilly courses. This is my feeling. Yeah.

This is my exact feeling. You should be cranking out some watts, bro. And you'll be so fast at descending. So I think there's, if you can get better at like the technical element of climbing, which is making sure your cadence is right and making sure you're standing up at the right places. And then really using the downhills to your advantage because I see that with getting mixed up in the pro men race sometimes. They go, they descend so much faster than me. putting out, you know, similar watts per kilo just because they're heavier and they can tuck and be super arrow.

So I wouldn't be discouraged from racing hilly races if you're quote unquote heavier because that's muscle that you can climb with and then use to your advantage for descending. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I don't fancy myself to be a fantastic ascender. But I signed up for this 50K this weekend that is like almost entirely uphill. I treat it kind of like, all right, it might not ever be the best in the world at it, but it's a thing that I can definitely see a lot of improvement in. And I'm like taking some pride and excitement in working on a weakness. So I think that's one way you can look at it. And then also like, Kona's coming back.

And that's going to be your, you know, flat and fast, all power. Although Eric and I found out it's not as flat as some people think. Certainly relative to knees. Yeah, compared to knees, it's flat. Yeah, correct. Yeah. But definitely a power rider course. Yeah, I have a lot of respect for people who race things that are not their super strength.

Yeah. Like, you know, adult onset swimmers that don't do downriver swims or Eric not being like a VK specialist doing these climbing things. I don't know. That's cool. It's like, especially as not professionals, we're challenging ourselves and getting better at stuff. Yeah. And I also, you know, I don't think there's any shame and going, that's just not the right course for me. I'm going to take a year and I'm going to do something else.

You know, like, neither Jan or Lionel did 70.3 worlds when it was in Nice because they're just, for whatever reason, they both agreed. Well, Lionel was, I don't descend well enough. And I think Jan said something about climbing. So that's okay to pick the things you're good at. Yeah, I feel like it's a similar thing to the aqua bike. It's like whatever's going to make you happy and make you want to do the thing. There are no rules. Eric put out a video on the Iron Man issue about Boise 70.3.

This is part of our series that we're doing with Iron Man. So it's actually not on the TTL YouTube channel. So if everyone could just go watch it on the Iron Man YouTube channel, like it, comment on it. It's a fun one. That would be really appreciated. I thought it was a really fun one, actually. It was one of my favorites as of late. I thought it was fun too.

I enjoyed it. I liked the way it started. had just like great energy. I think I edited it to match that energy pretty well. And we just had a great time in Boise. So yeah, check it out. I think it'll put a, should throw some warm fuzzies into your triathlon week. All right, cool.

Talk to you guys next week. Will you be back home, Nick? What's the date? I guess I might be, or I might be here. I might be traveling on this day. But I'm in Drona, Spain right now, by the way. way for everyone who doesn't know that. So I might be back in LA by then. Okay, cool. Yeah. It works better when we can line up time zones. Yeah, definitely. The 2 p.m. podcast recording is hard.

Yeah, and it's past midnight here, so. Yeah, rough for everybody. Doing whatever it takes to get this out to the people. That's right. Thanks for listening to everyone. Bye. Bye guys.