That Triathlon Life Podcast - New Ironman Pro Race Series, Women's Ironman World Championships in Kona, addressing groin numbness on a triathlon bike, and more!

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

This week we start with some BREAKING NEWS: Ironman is starting its own Pro Race Series where $1.7 million will be allocated at the end of the series to the top ranking athletes. We then go on to make our predictions for Women's Ironman World Championships this weekend in Kona, and finally move on to your questions. Questions about 1x bike gearing, how to handle form degradation in the pool, heavy legs off the bike, and more! To submit your own question for the podcast, as well as become a podcast supporter yourself, head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.comBike Storage:Bike Pedal Wall Mount (amazon.com)

Hey, everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Erica Lovstrom. I'm Nick Goldston. Welcome to our podcast. We discuss here breaking news. Oh my gosh. We said that was going to be the third thing. Okay, we discuss here triathlon. We answer your questions. We talk about races that we win. And we discuss breaking news and controversial things and race predictions. but we try to do it in a really fun and lighthearted way.

And Eric and I are both pro-tra athletes. Nick is an age group athlete and pro-musician. So all the great sound quality in music and jingles that you hear on this podcast are courtesy of Nick. And you guys want to say something? Yeah, I'm just going to give a shout out to my incredible t-shirt that I'm currently wearing. It's a long sleeve. It's part of our winter collection that's going to be coming out. and I'm test-riding it,

test-wearing it right now. And it's A-plus. I'm super psyched for these to come out. Great podcast content, of course. Stroking it. It's super soft. Anyone is a fan of the TTL apparel? It's a brand-new design.

It's a brand-new thing. Yeah, actually a good friend. I've become friends, similar to how Nick and I became friends via the internet. Christian. He is a graphic design teacher and an artist,

and he designed this for us. And it's kind of a remix of our logo in a square format and it's pretty dope. And actually this year we were organized enough to arrange product launch pre-Christmas, pre- Thanksgiving even. So you can have TTL stuff ready for Christmas if you want. And just briefly, Eric and I and Nick, we do the podcast, but we also have YouTube channel.

We sell the clothing, the hats, the water bottles, all the things. And you can also support the podcast monthly as well. So those are all the ways that we keep this going. Okay, speaking of changing things to keep things going, Iron Man has made big news, although it's not news yet. We haven't seen it on slow Twitch. Our brothers and sisters at ProTri News have not made a podcast about it yet. They're guaranteed they're recording one right now as we speak,

and they're just going to put it on the internet without editing, like, immediate first to market. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, okay, so here's what happened. Like, we had planned to record the podcast. It's now Wednesday night at 6 p.m. It's pretty late for us to be recording since Nick's Deleste, edit. But I'm checking my email right before we start recording, and there's an email from the pro Ironman liaison people announcing some crazy news. And I dug pretty deep and made sure that it wasn't confidential, but there's the link to the internet that explains the series. So anyone can read about it. It's obviously public knowledge, but not like, spread out to the world yet. So we will tell you guys quick about it right here. I'm so excited. I feel like this is fun. So next year in 2024, we all know about the PTO and their series and next year trying to expand the number of races that they do and get more consistent people like the top athletes racing head to head with a lot of prize money, a lot of year-end bonus pools. And it seems like in response to this Iron Man has created the Iron Man Pro series with

a corresponding bonus pool. So at the end of the Ironman pro race year, there will be a $1.3 million bonus pool split by the top 10 ranked athletes at the end of the year. And then number 11 to 50th, 50th in the rankings will each get $5,000. So a huge, huge investment in boost by Iron Man to incentivize athletes basically to go race their events. There's 10. 70.3s and seven Ironmans on their circuit, sort of say. And this is obviously the ones that will score points. So there are other races, but these are the point scoring ones. Winning an Ironman will get you 5,000 points, winning a 70.3 will get you 2,500 points. Because they're half as long, half as many points. And at the end of the year, your top five races will count with a maximum of

three Iron Man events, counting towards your final score. So, In my mind, this definitely favors Ironman specific athletes. At least ones that can race more than once. And make the PTO situation really interesting because people are now going to have the choice between doing this and doing Iron Man. And these are a little bit more North American skewed, correct? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, definitely the races on this list are ones that I normally do anyway. like 70.3 Oceanside, 70.3 St. George, 70.3 Chattanooga, 70.3 Boulder, 70.3 Tromblant. And then some of the races move more international. So 70.3 Talon, 70.7.3, Australia. And then seven Iron Man races on here as well. So I don't know. My first thought was like, well, I'm doing three Iron Man's next year.

Yep. I got to win three Iron Man's and two 70.3s. Just destroy that body. Yeah. And I mean, Kona actually counts for more points. and so to 70.3 worlds, and that's one of the three Ironman races that you do. So, or not Kona, I guess it would be next to wherever your World Championship is. It did dawned on me before we decided to talk about this that like probably 75% of people that listen to this won't care or get it. This is important to us, and therefore we're going to talk about it. Yeah, so if you win the pro series, your end thing, it's 200,000 for men, 200,000 for women. second is 130,

85, 70, 50, 40, 30, 20, 15, 10. So pretty good for top 10. Can I give a little context for the people who maybe aren't aware of how this fits in to pro triathlon? Yeah. And I'm going to explain it like we're five here. Paula, you stop me if I'm saying something wrong because I'm just going to go off of my understanding. Okay. Before the PTO is around, pros were racing Iron Man races,

and they were just winning prize money per race. If you did well at the race, you got some prize money. If you didn't, you got less prize money. And when the year was over, that was it. You maybe got some bonuses from your sponsors if you're on the podium, if that was in your contract, but that was it. Yeah. Then the PTO came around.

And they decided that not only were their pro race is going to have way, way, way bigger prize purses. But in addition to that, at the end of the year, you were given a total amount of points in accordance to how well you did at races during the year, which also included. Iron Man races. And then at the end, you were given a bonus, a really, really big bonus, much more than you could possibly accrue by doing Iron Man races alone if you did well. So the needle started to go further and further towards the PTO with how much pros were

interested in these races because they made so much more sense financially. Not even close. Yeah. Even if maybe at the beginning, there was still more excitement about Iron Man races because of the brand name. And so now Ironman has responded with their own version of kind of the same concept of at the end of the year. If you do our races and you do well at them, we'll give you a huge bonus, much more than you could ever possibly accrue by just doing the races. So that's why this is such a big deal.

Something I forgot to mention was that the prize money at each Iron Man event will stay the same as it has always been. And that prize purse is very low. Like you could win a race and barely pay for your expenses. Relative to the people. PTO for sure. I think that's the most... Relative to literally anything in life. Well, I, on it, I mean, if we look at, like, the gravel scene and, like, the Lifetime series made a big splash and has made all this stuff, but if you kind of, like, really dig into that deeper and listen to a podcast or whatever, you find that... They're not making me that much. Yeah, you really have to be top three in the series at the end of the year. If you want to cover all the expenses of, like, making it to all these races. Eric, we're not here to talk about gravel. But, yeah, I'm just saying.

It's like, the PTO thing is actually, like, the Lifetime series was in Trathon early on in the same. same thing. Like, individual race is pretty low, but you really had to buy into the whole series, and the PTO has been pretty interesting in that, like, each individual race has a ton of money. Yeah. That's not the case with the new Iron Man thing, but I just thought it was worth to say. Well, this is really, this is very exciting.

If you are into pro triathlon, this is only good news. It's like when some tech company comes out with some tech product and then every other company in the same field has to step up their game to match that, to be competitive, right? Competition is always good. even if you're a really big fan of just the PTO, it's really good that Iron Man does this because it makes everyone have to do a better job. But I'm curious how you feel,

how you guys feel about this as not just triathlon fans, but pro triathletes. You know, for me, the thing that just kind of occurred to me is like, at least from my perspective, pretty much all these Iron Man races were already quite competitive, at least on the men's side. And I'm curious, like the idea is that each of these races that may not have gotten a very big field because of the prize money at that race will

now get better fields. Races will be more exciting because people are chasing this year-end bonus. I'm actually just like kind of thinking out loud now. I'm curious to see how much of an impact that will have just because from my perspective, like the men's fields have still been incredibly competitive relative to like the amount of money on offer. Yeah, it's like everyone's buying into the year-end thing now if you're doing Iron Man. It's really hard to race more than five or six times a year, especially at a high, high level. So to add in a whole other series to that and maybe try to do both would be really challenging. Ultimately, it seems like the first person that comes to mind with this would be

Daniela, where she is an extreme Ironman specialist. She's obviously very, very good and has won a lot of 70.3s. But if she was thinking, oh, I'm just going to dedicate my entire year next year to doing 70.3 races and then just try to do Kona. Now it's like, oh, maybe maybe. Maybe you can just stick to Iron Man's and make a ton of money in this new series. But my question and my rebuttal to that is someone like Daniela or someone like Lucy. How often are they doing three Iron Man's a year?

I think they do three a year. Like often they'll do, because those three, one is Kona. Yeah, okay. Right. So then they'll do like one other. And then maybe they'll do Roth or something, you know, so that's three total. I think you could probably still win the series. like winning two Iron Man's, especially if one of them is Kona, and then like three 70.3s, obviously.

Yeah, then you could win. I don't know. Someone who, like another person comes in mind is Matt Hansen. Like, he's an American-based athlete, very good at Iron Man, okay at 70.3. And I think he could potentially race three Iron Man do quite well at them if they're warm ones with, you know, the run is emphasized. It'd be interesting to see, like, is it just as good to get third place in three Iron Man's as to win? two Iron Man's, you know, like, is someone going to play the system or come out on top? Win a 70.3 versus get third at an Iron Man. Same amount of points. That's what you're getting at.

Yeah. So it's some kind of like system where you're like, you can get fourth at every race, but then you get first overall or something. For the sake of the podcast, I don't think we need to go in the nuts and bolts and predictions and hypotheses. But we wanted to put it out there that it's a thing. And we've only had like five minutes to think about it. So I think we could come back or maybe we'll get questions about it and talk more about it next week. But I think that was a good, it was good breaking news. Yeah. Very interesting.

Maybe I'll make a little breaking news jingle as well. This is actual news. We have actual credible sources on this. It is true 100%. Speaking of predictions, there's a big race this weekend. I'm just in shock. I had no idea. Yeah, Eric, just in case you didn't know, for full distance Iron Man's, there's World

Championship. It happens in Hawaii. It's an island off in the Pacific Ocean. And this weekend is Kona, which is this year the women only are racing that. And I was curious if you guys had some predictions for the podium. Can we do like a podium from our heart and a podium from our brain? Oh, like what we want the podium to be versus. I definitely have a heart. I have a heart podium too. I have a heart podium. And it's very different from the actual podium that I have. Yeah. All right. So which one do we do first? Okay. So my head podium goes, and it's not to say I don't like people on my head podium.

I like everyone. It goes Ann Hogg, Taylor Nib, Chelsea Sedaro. Okay. My heart podium goes Cat, Lucy, and Chelsea. Okay, got it. It's funny. My heart podium has none of the same people as my head podium. My only crossover is Chelsea.

Yeah. I do think Chelsea could defend. I think if everything goes well and she doesn't have any kind of issues, I do think it would not be a huge surprise for her to defend. Seven different people could win and it wouldn't be a huge surprise. It's so crazy. I don't think there's ever been this much equal possibility amongst so many people. And then that's not even taking into account people like maybe a Lisa Norton or a finella that you don't immediately think of, but really, really amazing athletes that could easily podium.

Yeah. It's crazy. So, wait, did you do head first? Yeah, you did head first. So my head is first, Anne Haug, second, I think Lucy, and then third, Taylor Nib. And in my heart, I didn't give it a one, two, three, but I just would love to see Kat Matthews do well. I'd love to see Daniela do well. I'd love to see Laura Philip do well.

Yeah. And I just like, if Chelsea's kind of had like an up and down year, if she could do well too, that would be great. Yeah. I also would like Daniela to do well. Oh, it's so hard to pick. Yeah. Eric, your turn.

Yeah, I think I'm going to go with Anne for the win as well. And then maybe Cat. Then Taylor... Cat for a second. Cat really at 70.3 Worlds. saw that, I thought, oh boy, she really could do really well at Cohn. I think it'll just come down to the heat and we watched

her, was it Fighting Chance video? She said her, it was hilarious. We love her watching her do video. So if she wants, Kat, if you could start a YouTube channel, we would watch it. It was on I think it was on Breakfast with Bob. I can't even remember because all I do is watch

Kona shift. She definitely, she definitely, oh yeah, she did say, but Bob was like, how's Kona so far and she's like, awful. I hate it. terrible. Have you been? It's hot every day all the time.

It never gives up. I'm like, amen. Thank you somebody for saying this. But she said basically the first week was pretty rough with the time change and the heat, but she was feeling a lot better on week two. So, yeah, I don't know. I think that could go well. And like, yeah, heart podium.

Yeah, I'd still want Kat to do really well. It would be amazing if Lucy finally won. I know. I would love to see that. Lucy wins. Cat gets second and Daniela gets third. I think that we're going to be kicking ourselves. Like we're such idiots for not picking Daniela for the win.

Oh, yeah. Maybe. And I would love that. It's just up and down. She could win by five minutes or be 13th place. That's what's hard to know. Never bet against her. I think I changed my mind.

She's going to win. Wow. Good thing you didn't lock those in. But Eric, you know what I just thought of? I was thinking of when we were there earlier in the year. filming the Foreign Rider film and we were just standing at the pier there at the swim start

and we were not exercising at all we hadn't really exercised earlier that day it wasn't even that hot and we were so hot yeah and it was like overcast it was just like slightly over 80 degrees but that humidity I cannot believe that people do a full distance

that's the humidity because if you look at the temperature on Apple weather. It's like a high of 26 on Saturday, which to me doesn't sound that bad, but I guess you really get cooked by the humidity. Yeah. I got to go and feel it.

Yeah, let's go. For myself. Yeah, you got to go and feel it like Nick and I have. Yeah. I got to go and feel it because I got to try to win it for this Iron Man series. Oh, it's just so easy when you think about it like that. Well, we're very excited.

I can't wait to watch it. We're going to be actually watching it together because on Friday morning I'm flying out to bend and the races this weekend. What time does it your flight get in? 9.15 a.m. I think. All right. Someone will be there to get you. Eric will be there.

I'll just walk from the airport. Okay, let's move to the questions. Yep. Or do we have a segment? No, we did have a bike tech with Eric, but I think we're actually going to do that next week instead because we have so many questions and this Iron Man News is kind of, we took took precedent. Breaking news. I think you put it.

Make a jingle for breaking news. And every time we say it, I'll play a little clip of it. Yeah. So annoying. Except you have to do that tonight, Nick, because it's Wednesday. Yeah, I do have to do it tonight. And I'm supposed to get burritos with friends after this as well, so we'll see. All right, we better get under the questions.

So before we get on to questions, every week we try to pick a podcast supporter as a winner that we send out, it depends on what we send out. out. Sometimes it's socks. Sometimes it's bottle. Sometimes it's a t-shirt. And this week, we put our random number generator to work. And we found Laura Clinky? I think that's how you pronounce your name. Laura Clinky, congratulations. Eric found more socks. So I think you're getting socks. Is that right, Eric? Oh, actually, hold on. Please hold. One second. Please hold. Okay, Laura. We actually, it is your lucky day because you're a woman and I just found this box in our closet. And we have three

women's tops from Castelli, TTR women's tops. One is a long sleeve tech tee size small. One is a Arrow Ray 6.0 jersey size medium and the last one is the same jersey size small. If you fit any of those,

you can have those instead of socks. Otherwise, we'll send you socks. That's great news. Laura, you hit the jackpot. That's an expensive jackpot. But Eric never consulted me on this, but okay. So these are extras that we ordered, that Castelli ordered with the intention of

all of these socks and these things being giveaways. So we were going to try to give them away on a Zwift group ride or something like that, which we may still do, but today is your lucky day, Laura, because I just thought of it. And your only way to be picked as a winner is if you are a podcast supporter,

which you can be at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. That's also where you can direct all your questions, which this week you guys all heated the call and the questions were fantastic. Super good questions this week. And so many.

I was another great idea. The other thing I'm going to do is since I tried to describe how this shirt looks, I'm going to put together a little email just for podcast supporters with what this shirt and the other few shirts look like that we got for the winter collection. I love that.

And I will send those out. So you'll get to see them just a little bit for everybody else. Okay. Awesome. That's great. So thank you so much to all our podcast supporters. The main reason to be a podcast supporter is just show your appreciation for the podcast. And then every once in a while we throw in these little things.

What if someone leaks the pictures? Oh, scandal. Scandal. Okay, let's move on to questions here. So many good ones. Let's start with this. And this one, we did a little bit of research on this one too, but a really interesting question, I think very topical.

We're super curious. What are your thoughts on one-by setups for triathlon bikes? Seems like there's been some buzz over here the past year. But when we've read about them, we haven't seen a lot of clear research. So what do you think? Is a one-by setup faster than a standard two-by? Have any of you guys used a one-by setup for races? If not, have you considered it?

P.S. Freakin' love your stuff. We're day-woners and love everything you do. Thanks a million, Sophia and Daniel. Awesome. So, first of all, what is a one-by? What does this mean? One-by means that you only have one-chain ring in the front. You don't need a front derailer,

and all you do is shift the rear derailer. We both use one-bys to race. It's currently just a thing from SRAM. You can like kind of zombie, you know, Frankenstein your own thing together from Shimano, but Saram sells it straight out of the box. Works fantastic. And that is what we use 99% of the time. Yeah, our TT bikes have one by, our road bikes have two by.

But on the TT bike, we're only swapping to two by if the course is really hilly. Like, for example, St. George last year was almost on that line to have a two buy. I did put one on. But we do like them better. And they are faster because they're more aerod. dynamic and obviously lighter without the derailer and the extra. So the breaking news that Nick has is that they are about the same. Best case scenario, they're about the same is what this Velo News article that did,

and the research looked like pretty great and legit. They measured the loss in friction that you would get because of the inefficient chain lines that you get from a one by set-up. Basically, that just means that your chain is at more of an angle trying to get from your chain ring to your fastest or your slowest gear. There's some inherent friction by that sharp angle that has to make it. Exactly. And the aerodynamic advantage of having no front derailer and just one chain ring is, there is an aerodynamic advantage. But at its best, at 30 miles per hour, which is very fast, is just enough. to make up for the difference in the average difference in friction between a one by and a two by.

So at the extremes, so at your smallest gear in the back or your biggest gear in the back, at the extremes, it's an even larger amount of friction for it. Now, every setup is different, and aerodynamics are not the static thing, right? Like a certain helmet on one athlete is not as efficient as a certain helmet on another athlete, and the same is going to be true for things on a bike for different athletes at different speeds. but it does seem like the no-brainer that it would be is not so much of a no-brainer. But then Eric, when you and I were talking about this beforehand, you brought up something really interesting as the example of, like, for example,

Paula racing at Daytona on a very flat course. Yeah, they look way better, so that's why they're better. They do look way better. That's not what you were talking about. But that is a main point for me. You can basically adapt whatever size chain ring you're using on a flatter course to optimize your chain line. So even though Paula might run a 50 in most races,

if she's going to do a course like Daytona or something that just doesn't need a huge range of gears, we could put a 55 on there so that she's optimized for the gear that she's going to use most often at her race speed of 41.7 kilometers per hour or whatever. And then the other thing that I will say is, I think one of the biggest things about the one buy

is not being afraid of dropping your chain. Right. not having that extra risk, you know, on chunky roads, on just when you have to make the shift to do rollers and stuff. I personally, when I was on Shimano, that bugged me a fair bit on several 70.3 courses that we did when I was using the single shift and having to go, like, oh, I got a shift down just for this roller, but then I got to shift back up into the big chain ring. And then I was going in and out of the big chain ring enough that it just makes you a little bit nervous. Yeah, and if you drop a chain,

it doesn't matter if you're saving two watts on something else, right? Like, that is a huge loss in time potentially, like especially if it gets stuck. It could end your race. Yeah, we've seen people that just straight up cannot get the chain unstuck. So if it's at all possible to use the one buy,

we like doing that. And, you know, just one less thing to have go wrong. I think the thing that I get from this, which is, It's like when you buy a product and the new product comes out a year later and you're like, oh, there's nothing in there that I needed. I'm happy to keep my own thing. That's how I feel about this. I'm like, okay, my two by set up on my bike is just fine.

I'm not sacrificing that much. Yes, there are advantages to the one buy, but it's not this, you know, absolutely unanimous, huge improvement and lighter and faster in every way. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah. Still depends on you and what you want for your use case. Number two out of 50. Yeah, here we go. Next question here is from Everett, from Washington, D.C.

Hello, T-T-L, fam. After watching the video from Stoked to Broken on the YouTube channel, I wonder about the emotional process from making and releasing the video for Eric. Did it help, hurt? Was it difficult, easy, or on par with other videos? I found it simple. Poignant. Poignant.

Poignant. And you spell that word, Eric. A-O-I-G-N-A-N-T. Wow. You got to put the applause. I would have put the dig in there. poignant and refreshing to be so honest about the downs that life offers us. Thank you. Sending all the good vibes, Everett.

So for like a lot of songwriters or writers, their craft is a way to express their emotions, right? It's like therapeutic. Do you feel the same way about some of the videos that you make, Eric? I feel that way about all of my favorite videos that I make. I don't typically feel that way about race recaps or just ones where we just got to train, you know, to get ready for the next race. But the ones that do come at a time of injury or something that we're working through mentally decisions and stuff, those definitely, I use that as like a bit of a process,

just like you would journaling or whatever, where going through the act of making the video and like, what is the point of this and what is the storyline and the outcome and what did I learn helps me process it for sure. So doing that helped me. It felt good. it felt right. And I honestly assumed that it would be a bit of a flop in terms of views and stuff because, you know, it's not like 10 by 5 minutes pushing 450 watts and big, exciting, whatever. And it's not about a race, which everybody kind of wants to get information on a race.

But I guess it struck a chord with a lot of people. A lot of people have been through similar stuff. And yeah, that also helped me because I feel like it wasn't just for me. Some people got something out of it, and that's really special. Seeing that from your perspective as someone that I think a lot of people look up to is it's validating. At least it was for me. Yeah. Yeah. It was really interesting because when I started shooting that, I wasn't injured.

Everything was still fine, and I crashed partway through it. So I was kind of taking a story that I was building, and it kind of happened in real time, and it was very real. And yeah, I'm happy to share that. Awesome. Okay, next question here, Paula, but less of a philosophical question. This is from Tim. Appreciate the knowledge and cinematic excellence. Swim training question here. If I have a tempo set with goal times in mind, but I'm struggling to keep the stroke smooth, do I slow down or still meet the times even if it means muscling through the water? For example, 200s on three minutes with a struggling in the last 50 or 310 with a smoother stroke. Does the efficiency eventually come from fighting these

intervals or does the speed come from staying smooth throughout and dealing with the lost time on the front end? Tim. What a great question. Such a good question. Yeah, I like that question a lot. So what do you guys think? Well, first of all, what do you personally do? And then what would you do if you were coaching an athlete? Like, what would you tell your athlete? Because those aren't necessarily the same things. Yeah, I feel like I have a really hard time distinguishing in my own body what smooth is and what hard is and what frantic is. Like when I'm swimming quote unquote

hard or fast, I still feel like I'm pretty smooth. So there's a point where an interval is just impossible and I can't make it. But I don't feel like when an interval speeds up I fall apart or anything. But I don't know. What do you think, Eric?

I tend to prioritize keeping my stroke together. Yeah. And that's as much because I, you know, just from a lot of not like scientific testing, but just having done a lot of swim sets, when I let things fall apart and I just kind of go, whatever, I'm going to go into the sprint stroke and just going to thrash

and I try to get my turnover up, it doesn't result in a faster time or it's like one second faster for an perceived exertion of two times as much. That's a good point. I agree with you, Eric. It's interesting. It makes you think of time trialists, like, towards end of their race, you see their hips moving

and their shoulders moving and their heads moving. a little bit more. And yes, that's probably not as efficient, but in the water those things are magnified so much to slow you down. Is that that kind of what you're saying, Eric? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I guess what I would do if I were you is

I would still probably go for the faster time, but just make your total focus to blow up and let your stroke fall apart as late as possible. Like literally, oh, it fell apart as I was approaching the last flip turn. It fell apart.

two strokes after the last flip turn, try to keep together as long as possible. Yeah, of course he's trying to do that naturally. You don't want a stroke to fall apart. But my advice would be to go on 310 and get an extra 10 seconds rest because I feel like that's the point of intervals in the pool. If we wanted to be ubu, we were specific to 70.3, we would just do an 1800 hard every day. But intervals allow you to stop, regroup and then set off with a good stroke again.

So I think that 10 seconds or less of... Yeah, that's a great point. point. Okay, that's my bad. I misunderstood this for coming in on the three minutes or the three-ten versus leaving on the three minutes or the three-ten. So, yes, I agree. It's an interesting point, though, that you make Paul, because it's not like this person's trying to make a specific time, right? They're trying to get fitter in the most efficient way possible. So don't let the form fall apart. Yeah, get a little bit extra rest. This made me think of another question that I would have for you guys. for me as a not great swimmer,

when the slower I swim, I feel like, I'll say the opposite. I feel like when I'm at an 8 out of 10 effort, that's when my form is the best. If I'm at like a 5 out of 10 effort, I feel like I'm, even if I try not to be, I'm sloppier. I'm a little just my,

I don't know exactly, is that same for you guys? Totally. Yeah, I agree. There's a certain speed that, for me, it's like 120 per 100 meters. that I feel like my stroke is the best. Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. I think that's just kind of inherent with swimming with what it takes to be on plane and efficient in the water. Like, there's a certain point where you're just not sitting on top of the water properly because you're going so slow. Yeah.

Unless you're like, you know, Olympic caliber swimmer, and maybe you're good at that. Yeah, cool. Fun question, though. Yeah, great question. Okay, next question is from Noah, from Michigan.

Hello, guys. Thank you guys so much for the best podcast in triathlon. We appreciate it. My question is, You're welcome. Is amateur triathlon

a sport only for the wealthy? I'm a poor college student planning on heading to medical school next year. My $650 used bike drained my bank account. I struggle with the thought of taking my bike into the shop for tune-ups

because the cost seems so large. Similarly, I have to stretch the lives of my running shoes as much as I can. I've heard all the great advice about the cheapest arrow gains, but the thought of spending more than $100 on an arrow helmet seems like too much. I have the thought about trying the sponsorship route, but I will never be a professional,

and I doubt I could gain much interest, especially with my times hampered by poor bike tech. Yet, it is my goal to be competitive at the pointy end of amateur racing. Do I have to wait for another few years until I have a good job to actually pursue triathlon? Thanks for all you do, Noah from Michigan. Really interesting question here. because I think it brings up a lot of questions about why an amateur does the sport,

what you're trying to get out of it. Yep. Yeah, I think it doesn't take a lot of money to just participate in triathlon, and I think you can get very good with not the nicest equipment. But the culture is certainly to have very nice equipment, and you're going to feel that pressure always, and are you going to be able to go win Kona, in world championships as an amateur

on a $600 bike and a $50 helmet, probably not. But I don't think that should stop you at all from building the engine as big as you possibly can in whatever point in time you can afford that nicer gear. The difference that it's going to make is going to be awesome. That's what I did anyway. I had pretty cheap bikes as a kid

and I just worked on the engine, worked on the engine, and got to the point of where I could win local races on used hand-by-down gear. And then when I started actually getting nice gear, that just like the gains that I got out of that were very significant, but it didn't stop me from like having fun in the meantime. Yeah, I think when you're on a budget, I mean, maybe this is a stupid way to answer, but you're defraithons then your thing, you know? It's not like you're doing triathlon and then eating out seven times a week and going on

vacations, stuff like that. I think there's a way to budget it so that triathlons not only your hobby, but it's like everything you're putting your extra money towards goes towards that. So maybe that spares you an extra couple thousand by the end of the year. If you decide to eat out less or something and you can upgrade your bike, I don't know. Maybe that's a dumb answer. I would say overall, though, that triathlon is a sport that requires a degree of wealth. you know, in quote, in quotes. Yeah, it's not like running. Yeah, it's not like basketball.

It's not like so many things that you need $10, is it? The bike's expensive, the shoes, the, like the... And the maintenance, like she said. That's crazy, too. Clothing, all the things, yeah. You can do it cheaply relative to, you know, how you can do it, but it's not...

Still not cheap. Yeah. I want to give the positive side of this, though, because I think there is a really big positive, side that is slightly unique to triathlon. First of all, unlike a lot of other sports, you training on worse gear does not inhibit your, for the most part, does not inhibit your ability to gain fitness in basically the same way, right?

You don't have as fast as a bike, but you putting out power through the pedals on a bad bike or a great bike builds the same amount of fitness. You just go faster on the great bike. And since triathlon is by age, you compete against your. age group, you have as much time as you could possibly want to build this fitness. You can get fitter and fitter on your not great bike and then maybe one day you can afford the great bike, because it's mostly the bike we're talking about here, right? Like running shoes and swimming stuff is relatively affordable. It's the bike that can be really expensive. So you can build all this

fitness on your not-so-great bike and then compete. Maybe it's three years from now, but you get fitter and fitter. And that's only if you want to compete against other people. Like for a lot of people, myself included, there's a huge joy in just the self-improvement aspect of it. And that's really all you can control anyway, right? You can't control if three people in your age group show up to one race that are really fast or if they are at a different race that weekend. You can control that. You can control the training you've put in and how you work hard on race day.

So I think triathlon is great for that. Yeah. I think that if you really want to get to the point of end of the race, probably one of your bigger expenses is going to be coaching. just hearing you say all of that Nick. You know, buying a $5,000, $10,000 bike, but having no professional help on how to structure your workouts, like the money should go into the professional help

if you're going to put some money somewhere. And at least my experience was through that, you meet other people and you make it known that, hey, I'm trying to buy a used arrow helmet, and I can almost guarantee someone in the tri-club or someone that your coach coaches is going to be upgrading to the next thing and they might be able to sell you two years old arrow helmet, and that'll get you, you can get that for 50 and 60 bucks.

My last advice on this entire thing is just to look at the used secondhand market, which they probably do already. But I think for especially pros, like Eric and I, trying to offload old helmets and stuff, apart with them for very little. Especially if you're young and trying to go places. Yeah, but I think if at the point of end, like Eric said, to win Kona, yes, you probably need great gear.

but you can do really well and have a lot of fun without the great gear. And you can still build a lot of fitness without the great gear. It's all about fun and fitness. That's right. Also, there was a PS here. As a collegiate runner, I always laughed at you guys when you would say there's no such thing as an easy run. Then I started training like a triathlet and running got a lot harder. So I appreciate that perspective, no.

Okay, next question here is from Tim. I've been racing age group triathlon for a couple of years looking to build to 70, point three and want to invest in a tri-bike for next season. Living in the UK and London with limited space to store bikes, are there any suggestions you have to pack and store a second bike in a small space or any advice you can give? Wife approval factor is a must. Love the pot and all you do for the triathlon community.

Thank you, Tim. Yeah, what immediately comes to mind on this is those racks that go on the wall where you can hang one above the other. Yep. So you have like two sticks that come out with a hook on the end and you can hang your top tube, wherever that. And your bike is art. And then your bike's on the wall up high.

Nick, you have one in your... Well, actually, this is... I really like this question because I think the way I have it is an even better version of that, where they come out at an angle so they can overlap. So you can actually stack three bikes on a wall.

Or two higher and still have room for a cabinet or something below. I don't know how we could put this on, like I could put a link to a product. There's a million different versions of it, but basically, the wheels are up against the wall and then there's a little hook

that hooks the pedal on the wall side so the bike is just leaning out like whatever 15 or 20 degrees and then you can put the pedal yeah and the one right below it obviously can overlap with it quite a bit so it's pretty cool that's what I have here and now I'm about to get a gravel bike as well

and I'll be able to easily fit three bikes stacked on top of each other vertically and I think it actually looks really cool yeah so if at all possible if you could put a link to some version of that in the show notes. Or can you say what the brand is? Do you know? I bought some cheap thing off of Amazon.

Of course. I'm just saying like, Nick, you're suspending your $10,000 bike from the wall. You should just buy the $40 hook instead of the $5 hook. No, no, no, no, no. That won't do. That won't do. You're insane. Maybe you don't buy the budget hook.

Buy the real fucking hook. I would say that the problem isn't so much the hook because they're just like made of some kind of metal that's not going to break. It's make sure that they're screwed into a stud. I found the studs in the wall to screw into. I would trust that over anchoring it. I don't know because I would not want to suspend my expensive bike on one of those drywall anchors that could potentially come out. Above your other expensive bike. Right.

above your other expensive bike. Yeah, right. Above your guitar. Yes. And an electronic drum set is what I have. Yeah, but I'll put a link to a nice one, and then you can go and find your budget option if you so choose to roll the dice as I have.

Here's another thing we should do. So we're sending out an email to the supporters. In that email, we're putting pictures of our new gear and a picture of next closet. Okay, great. That's great. If you're comfortable sharing that. I'm very comfortable, and I think it looks so cool.

So I'm very happy with that. Okay. All right. Cool. Great. Okay, next question here is from Derek. Oh, and there's a little bit of a teaser here. I don't know if we want to give away.

But it starts with happy off-season TTL peeps, unless you give it one last go. So I don't know if we want to say anything about that. But the question is, since you have addressed women's periods and issues in detail, I feel like it's okay to ask this. I had my tri-bike for about a year now and never got a real fit. I had just made small adjustments as I needed to get the right feel and fit.

I think that my current position is great and gives me some decent legs for the run, but here's the problem. At about 35 to 40 miles in, my weiner goes numb. It can take a day or two for the numbness to go away, and that has made me panic naturally.

The saddle I have come with a bike, Celitalia Watt, is very comfortable on the bones and the cheeks, so I've not looked into another saddle. Is it because I need a proper fit? Is it just the wrong saddle for me? Dr. Google does not make me feel any better about the situation, but did show me that it's more common than I thought,

and maybe some other guys listening would like to hear you discuss. I am doing Iron Man Tempe on the 22nd of this month, so I question if I should change my fit with a fitter this close to race day. Thanks for everything you guys do for the sport, Derek. Wow. Hey, hold on. What is this saddle called? DeCell Italia, what?

Watt. Okay, I just want to see a picture of this. Oh, it's got a big opening in the middle. But a day or two for numbness is... Yeah. That is terrifying. That's straight to the ER for me. Yeah, that's...

If that's an issue, I mean... You're switching saddles. This is precious cargo. Straight to the air. I mean, after 20 minutes, I am crying. I am afraid for my life. So I'm definitely going to the ER. You know, like...

The shape of this looks solid and is very similar to the specialized sitero that we use. So that was going to kind of be my first thought was going to a saddle that has a channel like this, but maybe this is just not quite the right channel saddle for you. Maybe it's too, sometimes too much cushion can actually be detrimental because that just gives more pressure,

more places and cuts off your blood flow. But man, that was, my go-to. That was Mace in the hole. I sell it tell you. This thing probably is hard as a rock and has no notch, but it does. Well, it's funny you say that because, right, people think softer saddle means it proportionally dissipates the pressure, which sounds like it would be good, but there are parts of your butt that are better for taking pressure. So a good saddle just puts most of the pressure on there. But Eric, have you ever had this issue and did you find something that solved it for you? Not numbness for days, but temporary numbness.

Yeah, yeah, I actually have And it hasn't been that long since I Since I had it last And I've had it on a road bike I've had it on a tri-bike I don't know It's very tricky when you're trying to do a course Like we're just talking about Kona since Kona's here

But a course like that where you could just literally ride Arrow for six hours No problem But usually when I'm experiencing that I just kind of take a moment to sit up, change position, just slightly, take a drink before getting arrogant. So this person hasn't been to a doctor yet? Well, they haven't been to a bike fitter yet. But if you're numb for multiple days, I mean, that's like neurological damage is what it feels like.

I really, I really, I think going to a bike. I think, I feel like going to a bike fitter, this close to the race is still worth it. That is really, really rough. I wonder if it like impedes their ability to ride. Like he says it still feels comfortable, but it's the aftermath. Yeah. It's the issue. So if you've been training this way, like what's one more ride?

I do, I feel like you could, if you've got a good fitter, you could go in and say, hey, I'm just far out from a race. I really like just, you know, the knee angle. Everything seems to be fine. But my wiener is none for multiple days. and they could take that into account, put a different saddle on, make sure that your knee angle

and your hip angle hasn't changed or anything, but you could try something that's just slightly different. And if, man, if you don't have that experience, yeah, if it could alleviate it with a simple fix. I would give it a shot. I actually meant to reach out to our bike fitter

before this just to see if he had some good insight and I just forgot about it, unfortunately. Maybe next week. Well, anecdotally for me, the only time I've ever had problem with numbness around my groin is when my saddle was too narrow. And then I got a wider saddle and then fully never happened again.

That's interesting because even a saddle, like this Atalia saddle that he has, comes in different widths. Right. It could be, it could be. So maybe he could keep the saddle with a wider one. Yes, exactly. I do think that for me was a problem and I noticed it, I wouldn't notice it while was happening. I would notice it if I would like get out of the saddle and then all of a sudden I'd be like, oh boy, there is serious numbness there. And a little bit out of the saddle would kind of like temporarily fix it, but the only thing that permanently fixed it was getting a wider saddle. And I happen to have wider sit bones. So I need a wider saddle anyway. That could be a good point, actually. Yeah. If you go to get a retool fit, you sit on foam and they measure

your sit bones and they assign a saddle width. But if you're just buying one online, you really have no idea what size of saddle you need. My problem with the retool thing is, I don't know how they do this, but every time I've gotten my sit bones measured, it's kind of like you're sitting up. right and it's like your road bike position and i don't know if everyone's anatomy kind of tapers into their like into like the inside of their groin where you sit on a t-t-bike in the same way so it might still be worth experimenting with different saddle with even if they're a split-nose saddle like you said yeah wow that but i do i'm not kidding though i think i think a physician might have better insight than us or i know that and multiple days of numbness is seems just so scary but he

said he googled it and it maybe is more common than we think. But either way, I'd say just for your own health safety. Do both. Inquire about that to someone more knowledgeable than us. Bike fitter and physician. Yeah. And good luck at Iron Man Tempe. If you're a physician and have any insight, please send Nick a message. Okay, next question is from Rover the Triathlon Dog. I love Rover. Dear TTL Nation. My owner and I are having an argument about swimming training and I hope you can help settle it for us. I sit by the pool and watch him swim and every day it's just front crawl back and forth. Front crawl is also known as freestyle. Over and over with no other strokes. It makes me fall asleep on the deck every time. I told him that he should be trying other

strokes but he says that his back crawl isn't very good backstroke and he'll never need it to race anyway. He also tells me that I'm not one to give advice on this topic since I only ever do dog paddle. Do you think it's important for him to spend some time on the other strokes? In your workouts, what percentage of time is spent doing strokes other than front crawl? And do you have any tips for people who are not very good at back crawl? Thanks for an advice that you have. We really love your podcast. We're over the triathlon dog.

Eric's rolling his eyes, but he never mentioned Flynn. So I think it's just comedy. Oh, if you're into that kind of comedy. If you're into that lowbrow crap. I thought it was funny. I love it. I love it. pedal.

Okay. First of all, what percentage? Zero. Okay. Zero percent of time doing anything but freestyle. And I grew up competitive swimming. I was actually a 400 I-Mer was my best event.

So that's 100 meters of each stroke. All of them. I was also a breaststrokeer. Like that was my strongest stroke of the four. But still, now that I don't swim competitively and I don't have a 18-year-old body, if I do one breaststroke kick, it feels like my knees and my hip.

are going to explode. If I try to do butterfly, it feels like I'm going to have a heart attack. Right. And backstroke, yeah, maybe I'll do an easy 50 back, but I'm not good enough at it to make it a functional, purposeful stroke.

So anyway, we just do freestyle. Yeah, I'm pretty similar to all that. I'd say I do backstroke slightly more often than Paula does, if like 0.2% of the time. but backstroke was my stroke. I do enjoy it. It feels good to me. And I feel like that's kind of my takeaway from this question of if you're actually good at these strokes,

then the backstroke could give you some good like shoulder mobility sort of thing during warmup and stuff. But if you got really bad shoulder mobility and you don't know how to do the strokes, I'm not sure it's really going to be helpful that much. Yeah, it basically can give you like reprieve your muscles and use other muscles. use your body in a different way in the pool so it's not 100% monotonous because triathlon is such a monotonous sport you're making the same motions thousands of times so it's really nice to mix it up but i'd say to make variety in our swimsets we'll do kick a lot of the time so just kickboard we'll do pull we'll do pull paddles so that in itself is a bit of variety and we don't necessarily

use the other strokes to add that variety in but if you go watch a master's workout at the pool like the 12 o'clock masters they get in after us, they're doing a lot of IAM, a lot of butterfly sets, backstroke sets, because they all, a lot of them grew up swimming. And even if you didn't,

it's just good to be a bit more well-rounded. So it's kind of personal preference, I'd say. And they may compete. They may still compete in the 400 I.m. True. At master's meets. Yeah, their goal isn't to be faster athletes.

I'd say go for it and warm up. The thing I'd say with backstroke is just, it requires more attention, because you've got to, stay close to the rope. If you're not paying attention, you could drift over the lane and, like, head on someone who's coming up the other side. So just make sure you have good peripheral vision of the lane line to stay straight and then

use the flags to turn. Oh, my gosh. I have a funny story. My older brother, Brian, who used to be a competitive swimmer, when they, I think, didn't they change the backstroke, like flip turn rules at some point? Back to breast. Right. So at one point, when he did.

the flip turn to backstroke. He didn't realize it, but he flipped and got into the lane next to him in the middle of a race and didn't realize what was happening. Yeah. And it's a great story. He's like, he saw a guy fly over his head when he was done at some point and it was the wrong guy because it was a relay. Any guy. Over your head while you're racing

is not good. But anyway, yeah, that's a good point. I only ever swim those strokes if it's like a like for, because if I'm feeling it. But do you guys do anything to, I think the only reason I could see doing it, the only reason I could see doing it is to help kind of like you said, Paula, like give you a little more well-rounded musculature and like give your muscles a break. Is there any other reason you would do it? I really just think for like mobility and just like firing up all of your core and everything in the warm up. I think butterfly is also extremely hard. So if you do 25 fly, 25 free 50s, your heart rate gets super jacked up. on the butterfly, similar to maybe your heart rate when you're doing a takeout effort in a race,

and then you try to settle into freestyle. So I used to do that with some coaches, like use the butterfly to kind of artificially inflate your heart rate because it's such an inefficient difficult stroke. It's really fucking interesting, Matt. It's pretty fucking interesting, dude. And then do you take this out? But I think that is such fluff. It's like how many people out there are good enough at freestyle that they should spend any amount of time,

simulating hard swimming freestyle instead of just doing hard swimming freestyle. Okay, I'm talking about Lucy Charles. Oh yeah, I know, I'm just saying for the listeners of this podcast who is not Lucy Charles, got to get good at freestyle. We never know, she might be listening,

but she's not looking for swim advice from us. And do you guys do anything in the gym? Since you're saying you don't do all that, you pretty much don't do back or breast or fly, do you do anything in the gym to help with that mobility so you don't become kind of one-sided in your musculature? Like, do you think you need that? No, because all that matters is racing and you're just using those muscles.

But I guess to prevent injury, I don't. No. And you guys swim a lot. So that's an interesting data point at least. Yeah, but we don't swim a lot compared to swimmers. Yeah. I think we just have such a good foundation. We did so much dry land and shoulder exercises growing up and stuff that I don't want to say we're just set for life.

But we have like, it's pretty solid. And I do like a quick shoulder stretch every now and again. and then we do some like plank type, you know, just things to like work on core strength a little bit in the gym. But I think just all the years that we spent swimming kind of made those muscles. Okay, this question is overdone. The end. Cool.

Next question here is from Kathy with a K. Sorry, Nick. Okay, I was one talking. Hi, how do you make sure you're not in a drafting zone? Do you eyeball? Do you count seconds? How do you know? One time I got called out and didn't even think I was that close.

And I was a really slow age group athlete and I can't even believe the ref was calling me out. currently a seven-hour bike and an Ironman. Thanks. Love the podcast and love my TTL Castelli Bibb. Kathy. Oh, awesome. So do you guys ever do any math? Like you're like, okay, I'm going 25 miles per hour and this person is this and the

cone is there and a two and a half seconds pass. So that means I'm 12 meters. No. No. You just eyeball it because you have a pretty good sense. That just leaves a lot of room for error. The only way to really do it is by visually estimating it. Yeah.

Often I'll use the line. in the road, like if I'm two lines apart, that can also vary. So, yeah, just really practice out on the road with someone sometime. Measure what 12 meters is out on the road, because if you take a 12 meter rope and walk end to end in a house with it, it looks really long. But if you're out on the road moving quickly, 12 meters is, by comparison, seems very short. So having an eyeball idea in the real world in the sport that it's happening in is important, I think. And as awesome as Race Ranger is, it's not going to come to Agroup racing, not for a very long time if it ever does. So we still need to be eyeballing stuff.

Yeah, and Race Ranger for the Pro PTO races basically gives you a visual cue with lights that light up for how many meters you are back. But for Iron Man races, we don't use that. So it really all comes down to your own estimate. And we've said this before in the podcast. The refs are always looking for intent. So if it looks like you're really trying to stay out of that zone, you sit up if you accidentally drift in it, then they likely won't penalize you.

But if you're sitting within 12 meters and it's very obvious, that's when you'll get told. I would say if possible, better safe than sorry is the way to go. Just ride at 15 meters or 20, you know, just like, why risk it? if thoughtful. I know age group racing, there's a lot of people on course, so just do your best. Yeah, that was what I was going to say is I feel like I saw a lot of people

that were fully comfortable with the fact that they were drafting. They weren't trying to avoid it. Yeah. But that's a whole different argument. Okay, last question here. Hello, Eric, Paul, and Nick. When you come off the bike in T2 and start the run, do your legs always feel extremely

heavy? I probably overbike, but my legs always feel terribly heavy, and I wonder if there's something other than slowing down on the bike that would help. It takes two years old, but I'd like to push hard on each discipline. Thanks from Michigan. Yeah, the only time that on my legs have not felt heavy is when I've had a terrible bike.

Then I feel great. Otherwise, you're just, it's inevitable. What's a terrible bike for you, Eric? What does that mean? A terrible bike is where I have a hip issue and my whole left leg goes numb and I just can't really push power and I'm considering dropping out of the race for most of the bike. and then I just get myself to T2 and there's too many people watching and cheering

for me to just step off the course at T2 so I start running and then I feel pretty good because I couldn't put out much bike power and I end up running a fast half marathon. So just to be clear, you had a bad bike. It's not like you worked really hard and didn't go very fast. You were not able to work that hard.

Yeah. Right. That's the most obvious way I could say, yes, if you push less on the bike, you'll probably feel a lot better starting to run. Yeah, I have a helpful answer. I guess that is an answer, but we do really short brick runs off the bike in training. So for example, on my current schedule, I have a two and a half hour pretty hard ride with intervals over 70.3 pace. And then I have a five minute run off the bike at race pace. It sounds so short and pointless, like what's the point of even putting your shoes on? But I think having a bit of practice without loading your legs, obviously it's not a run session, but you just get that feeling and get used to that feeling. And yeah, maybe your legs will always be heavy, but it'll just be a more known sensation.

And for me, the first five minutes feels really hard and my legs feel terrible. But then the cool down, which is 10 minutes, I feel amazing. So I think that like that feeling of heavy legs does go away relatively quickly. So the more you can just sense that and feel it and be comfortable with that, I think the better. Just do it in training a little bit. Eric, what about you? I'm very curious how long it takes for that feeling to subside

until you feel normal running again. Let's say you've had a good bike. I mean, if I've had a good bike and I pace appropriately, it feels okay right from the gun. I think it's when I've biked too hard because I'm trying to stay with the pack where I get off and it feels awful. And then, yeah, that'll take a mile and a half, two miles

maybe before I've caught my breath and I'm running slow before I feel like I can kind of re-ramp into race pace. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think like if you want to have a really fast run, you do need to bike a little bit slower. But like Paula is saying,

assuming that you're biking an appropriate speed for your pacing strategy, getting used to that feeling and normalizing that so it's like less impactful on your mental state is huge. That's, okay, so this is what I felt. Because when I think about it, I do remember this feeling a lot when I first started racing. And I'm sure it's still present now, but I think I have normalized it in my head. And I don't think about it.

Now I kind of have the opposite problem where when I start my run, I have to kind of be careful about how fast I go because I get a little over-excited. Yeah. Interesting, yeah. Like, I forget what it feels like to start a race with the run. I used to run track and cross-country all the time and to feel fresh on the first five minutes versus feeling your worst at the first. the first five minutes, it's so, so different. So normalizing it is huge, I think, for people that are new to it. It's funny that you guys, or at least you, Paula, your brick runs are very short, because there's some people who will try to do like an hour and a half brick run off the bike.

And maybe that's more relevant for full distance athletes, but it seems like what you're saying makes sense. Like, why would you trash your legs even more on top of that bike ride where you can just get the advantage of getting your brain and body used to? that transition from bike to run without putting all that extra stress of like doing a full run off of it? Yeah, I think hard runs off the bike are fine as well if you were to do a longer session off the bike, but it's just within the context of your whole training plan. Like I had a hard run session the day after. So the focus wasn't the run off the bike.

That was just more of a neuromuscular memory thing, getting your legs going after riding really hard. But I think it just is so individual depending on your training plan if you do a long one off the bike or not. And if you're racing an Ironman, you probably should do it not even run off the bike at all. No, that'd be smart. That's a really good point because this reminds you of something else. Like, my long rides are longer than your long rides a lot of the time most weeks. But you're riding way more over the total week than I am. And so, like, if we relate this to this question, the brick runs that some people maybe need to do,

they're only running three times a week. So they do need to get, like, more quality into that. session rather than running just five minutes. You can afford to, Paula. I think that's a bit of a byproduct of having a job and needing to load up the weekends. Yeah, but the night of that break, so I did that workout, I did the run off the bike, and then I had an evening run, like an easy run. Oh, see, yeah.

So it's not even necessarily, I don't know. This is more of a short course style training program where the idea is that you don't need to go out and spend time running when your legs are destroyed from a bike workout. You need to spend time running as properly as possible, and that's going to happen on the run workout. It's not going to happen right after you just smash your legs on the bike. I think this is a really interesting example of why it's not always best to mimic what professionals are doing because... We're all doing different things. We can't do what they do.

We can't do what they do. And most of us are not running twice in a day. I mean, almost all amateurs are not running twice in a day. That's a very specialized kind of thing to happen. Yeah. That really, really destroys your day. If you want a recipe for how to not enjoy your Sunday, that is the program. The second run. I haven't, Paulo, on this training plan for Los Cabos, which we're all doing, right? We're all racing Los Cabos. Are we saying that? Did we not already say that? We did not already say that. People know. We are all racing Los Cabos. I mean, we've all booked a flight to Los Cabos.

Yeah, but no one else knows that. Breaking news. We're all going to Los Cabos. Oh yeah, for this training, I said to Paulo, KLD Los Cabos, give me a 70.3 training plan, dialed back a notch. Right. So we dialed it back like half of a half of a notch. It's still hard, but some of the days that I have are just run only days and the morning's a hard workout and the afternoon's an easy 30 minute run. And the amount of time you have in the day to do stuff when you're not biking or swimming in that day is just so insane. Yeah. So doing double runs is not, I think it's the best day of the week.

Unless you're also biking. Or a long bike and then running off the bike and then running again later. Yeah, I guess that's a lot. But anyway. That was great. Wow. So we broke some news about Iron Man and pro Iron Man racing. We did our cone of predictions.

We broke the news that we're all going to be racing at Los Cabos. And we even answered a lot of questions. We did answer a lot of questions. How many did you leave out out of that patch? Oh, I mean, but most. 90%. Well, I would say highlight those, Nick, because every question I uploaded to you, I liked. Yeah, those are really good.

So I got to say, like with the comment we made last week of please send in questions because we were low last week, I got like 50 times the amount of email. That is great. So I think it just showed that people were maybe afraid to send something in or hesitant or embarrassed or whatever. And don't feel any of those things. Just send stuff our way. You like them. You guys are smarter than us.

Most of the time. It doesn't take much. So next week, we'll all be together and bend for the podcast recording. Everyone who's watching Kona, everyone who's at Kona, congratulations for making it there. That's a huge accomplishment in it of itself. We're all going to be cheering for you and we'll be yearly watching. I saw a Win Republic Post and someone in the picture had a TTL cap. Oh, my God.

This is so cool. TTL goes to Kona. We don't have any special designs for Kona people, but maybe someday. You know what I think? Paul, I think if you ever make it to Kona, we should do a special. Oh my God. We're going to go so hard if Paula goes to Kona. You guys, I am going to Kona because the new Iron Man Pro series. Of course.

I'm winning Kona in 2025. All right. Working on the design now. Okay. Anyway, I'm just kidding. We finished with such a bang last week. I feel like it's so hard to do that every week. So we'll just say bye.

Yeah, we'll just say bye. Thanks, everybody. Ciao. See you next week.