That Triathlon Life Podcast - Paula becomes 3x Canadian TT champion, IM 70.3 Mont-Tremblant champion, and lives to tell the tale

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

This week Paula talks us through her crazy week traveling to Canada, losing her bike, racing Canadian time trial championships, racing Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant, and winning both! After we hear her dramatic retelling, we move on to questions:Do pros need to attend pro briefings at races?How Eric and Paula cook in the van.Wearing sleeves in cold and wet races.Medical checks and stiff competition racing in Italy.Where it's ok to look for motivation in Ironman training.Thank you to our beloved podcast supporters! To become a podcast supporter, or submit your own questions for the podcast, head over to Thattriathlonlife.com/podcast

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Lagerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. And we're back. This is our triathlon podcast. Paul and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a professional musician. And we take time on this show to talk a little bit about what's going on in our triathlon journey. And then we get pretty quickly straight into questions from everybody who listens. So this show happens every week because of all the wonderful questions we get sent in. Good intro, Eric. week we are not going to be getting into questions that quickly because we have big time story time from the pf paula finley big time story time yeah eric said before we started recording eric's like feels like we haven't done this forever and i'm like yeah that's because this last week was actually a year

yeah we aged in dog years this year this week this is an emotional year emotional week but we are back in bend i am back in bend eric spent the weekend and Hood River at a van expo that we needed to do as part of our Mercedes obligations. But he actually had a fun time, right, Eric? I had a great time. On paper, when I was thinking about it, it's like, man, this is going to be a bit of a drive. And I don't even know what I'm supposed to do there. It's like two days.

Could be hot. I've got Flynn. But then the entire basis of the thing is you hang out with people who love vans and you look at, like, oh, this is a new ladder technology we came up that would allow you put a gas can on the side of ladder on the side of your van and I'm like totally a sucker for that kind of stuff. Did you see anything that you're like, oh, I need that? I saw like 20 things that I thought, oh, I need that. I will say, I think the coolest most groundbreaking thing that I saw, and I posted

an Instagram story of this, but I think it was a little bit confused. It may have not been like instantly obvious what it was. It's basically designed for e-bikes and it can go up to 250 pounds, but it's a hitch mount that uses like a DeWalt, you know, screwdriver, power screwdriver, to raise up and down. So you can like, zzz, and it goes all the way down to the ground level, and you just like roll your e-bike onto it, or two e-bikes, up to 250 pounds, and then and it like goes all the way up to like normal bike rack height on your hitch. Wow, that's great for e-bikes.

It's great for e-bikes. Like my parents have lamented over and over how hard it is to get my mom's e-bike onto the back of the RV and take it anywhere so they don't take it that often. Boom, coolest thing. And the company's based out of Portland. It's called Sue Wica. I have like no reason to be plugging this just other than it was awesome. Yeah, that's smart.

And also then you don't have to wire it into the van, right? Because you have an external thing that is raising it up and down. Yeah. Like if you drive around in a van or any sort of, like generally most people have a screwdriver, one of these like an impact driver sort of thing with them and just... Would it work on like a regular SUV or... Anything. Yeah, it's just a hitch mount.

It'll work on the Volvo, it'll work on the van. It'll work on anything that has a rear hitch. Wow. Super cool. That's a cool. That's a genuine plug, Eric. Yeah. Just if you are wanting one, S-U-W-E-E-K-A, that's the name of the brand.

Tell them you were sent there by the T-T-L podcast and they'll be like, what? Yeah, no, that's actually kind of funny. It was kind of funny because I only went and saw it like 10 minutes before I left because I was camping like 50 feet from their booth was. And so all day long, I heard, Zzz, Zzz, Z as they're demonstrating this to everybody. And I finally went over like, okay, I got to see what this is. And then it was legitimately super cool.

Paula, do you feel like there's something that you would want upgraded on the van as a non-van, a festonado? No, I love our van how it is. I think it would be nice. We're not allowed to do this on our van because Mercedes has several rules about what's compliant. Safety things. Safety things.

Everything has to be tested. Yeah, so we're not allowed to hang anything on the back door, but it would be cool to have something on the back door where we could store dirty shoes and wet suits and just kind of like one of those lockers that you bolt on. But the thought is that could eventually wear on the hinges of the back door. So we're not going to do that. But that's the only thing I would really change about our van. Otherwise, I love it. And I might make it like a little bit more unique to us, like put a cool stripe on it or color of some sort or put our sponsor logos somewhere. but otherwise the layout is perfect.

Everything about it is great. And I'm glad, I mean, it would have been fun to go for me, but it's more Eric's playground. Well, that's kind of a great segue because, yes, I guess you could have gone there or you could have had a crazy trip in Canada. Yeah. So after San Francisco, that was only two weeks ago, PTO T-100, I was extremely down. and emotional and wasn't sure what I wanted to do next. And my coach, Paolo, texted me and he said, you should probably, like, just cancel the Quebec trip. And I was like, oh, but I really want to do the time trial so badly. Like, I've done it twice in a row. I've won twice in a row. I feel like I need to

go back and try to win it a third time. The whole thought of the trip made me really anxious for some reason. Just the travel all the way to Quebec is quite far. The flight was expensive. The flight path was kind of weird and Eric wasn't coming with me. The logistics of the trip were quite complicated. So I had anxiety about the trip in general, but the thought of racing the TT was really appealing to me and I knew that I was fit and healthy and had a chance to win it again. So I really wanted to go. And then the time trail is only a 40-minute race. Tromblon was two days later and I thought I'd be kicking myself if I went all the way there and didn't do much. Montrembal 70.3 because it's a race I wanted to do forever.

So I almost had to like talk Paulo back into it and at the same time talk myself back into it that I was committed to doing it. I didn't care what the result was. I was just going to do the process and do the trip and do my best. So once I wrap my head around that, I had a really productive, basically one week of training between the two things. And then got on a flight early last Tuesday morning like 5 a.m. Redmond and then started the journey in a pretty good headspace. I was like,

the travel's going to suck and it's a lot of logistics, but my mom's coming, that's fun. I'm looking forward to the races. I'm not dreading them. That's a change. And so all in all, it was a feeling of like excitement a little bit. Yeah, you had a lot of ownership over the process. It's not like with the PTO, no, we're not hating on the PTO, but just you have to go to X number of races versus you picked to go to each of these own races. You had to repick again when it felt like you might not. Yeah. Apollo was challenging it like total ownership. Yeah, totally. And there's a lot of scenarios where I think this could have ended up being like, I can't believe I thought I would do both of these races. Exactly. What a crazy, dumb,

optimistic view of what could happen. That was in the back of my mind. Because a lot of the time I maybe take these things for granted. Like, I think I'm fit. And I think. I'm able to recover quickly and go again because we do that in training all the time. But to do that in a race scenario where there's not just physical stress but mental and emotional stress that goes along with racing and a lot of logistics around driving and switching hotels and building bikes and all of that, that was what I thought might tip it over the edge. But I tried not to think about that. Like my attitude going into this race, these races were like, I'm doing this for myself.

I'm not doing this to prove anything because I've had to. had a pretty good season so far. I've already won the TT Nationals twice now. So this is really just a personal project versus doing it for external, you know, praise or anything like that. Okay. So what actually happened? Yeah. So if the treatment had gone perfectly, before I left, I wrote out like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a timeline of how I would do things in each day. Like, get to the hotel at this time. Do my workout at this time. Leave at this time.

Here's my check-in reservation for this hotel. So I was like, okay, I've got a solid plan. It's going to work out. It's going to be fine. My mom's coming to help. But my flight path was Redmond, Seattle. Two hours in Seattle. Seattle, Montreal.

Two flights, not challenging. And I got to Seattle. My bags made it to Seattle. I have air tags in my luggage and in my bike. and I'm sitting on the flight from Montreal, refreshing the air tags, the worst feeling in the world. The bags are still in the main terminal, and I'm in like an S terminal, which is like a satellite terminal at Seattle Airport. And they didn't make it on. And I, you know that feeling when the plane pushes back?

And the bags are for sure not there, because it's not like they just haven't refreshed. It's like they refreshed one minute ago and they're on the other side of the airport. So then I like panicked. And I'm like, should I, it's too late to get off the flight. I can't do this trip without my stuff. The timeline is so critical to pick up the stuff. The time trial was four hours from the airport, so I couldn't just go to the time trial

and expect our Canada to deliver my bags four hours away reliably. So I tried to just be calm, look at hotels with the airport or the airplane Wi-Fi to stay in Montreal until I got my bags with my mom. Hotels were extremely expensive. Like a holiday inn was like 350 U.S. dollars a night. Like just the most insanely expensive place ever. And I'm trying to book it night of, of course, but seriously could not find a cheap hotel.

But we just had to do it as part of the business expenses. And I landed at the airport, kind of was like flustered and gotten this like cryy kind of mood and went to the luggage people. And they felt bad for me, but they're like, it's going to come on tomorrow's flight for sure. Like there's a flight every day, Seattle, Montreal, one a day, and they'll get on the next one. So I had to believe that, and I went to the airport or went to buy some new clothes with my mom and stuff so I could run and swim that day. And check the next morning. At the time the flight was supposed to leave, the flight takes off. I'm like an expert now at like looking at flight codes, looking up times of departure, refreshing air tags, checking all the paths that my bags may have come.

and they're still sitting in the same spot and that flight takes off. And it's not like he could just get on a later flight. There's only one a day. And it could go through Vancouver or Chicago like this other flight pass it could take but I'm like no one's going to be organized enough to retag these and reroute them through a different airport.

Like I just lost all faith. The thing is the biggest bummer for me out of like this all worked out. But it's like we've now reset to zero faith in an airline. like in airlines getting things where they belong. Because every time we go traveling and Paul is refreshing the air tags,

I'm like, just calm down. They always make it on the flight. Like right at the last minute, they make it all the way across the airport magnificently. And now I just, I don't have any ammunition with that. And now we're just going to be stressed for like at least two years until we've had enough positive experiences to make up for this one. That's my biggest bummer with this whole thing.

Because the whole time I was like, it's fine. It's going to be fine. Like 99.9% of time it works. And then two days in a row, no working. So we have some friends in Seattle. Ari Klau went to the airport for me. And I thought, because you phone and you get nowhere. It's like people that are not even in the country trying to just update your baggage file.

And you're like, no, I can give you my email and my baggage color again and again. And it's not helping. So Ari went to the airport, talked to the airline person. They went and found the bags. Like, Ari took a picture of them for me. Like he had them. He touched them. You touched them that day.

And this was like two days out from the time trial. And the person retagged them to go through Vancouver on flights that evening. And they sent them back down the ramp going Vancouver to Montreal. And I have friends in Vancouver who know people at our Canada who were going to make sure the bags got through customs and got on the next flight. I was using all of my resources to make sure that people were assisting this process along. This felt like a, this felt pretty locked at this point. We'd seen a picture of the bags.

We felt real good. Like, Ari at the airport, maximum effort. I was calm down. We're finally dialed. And it's getting on a flight tonight. Not tomorrow, not in the next air Canada, the next morning, like tonight. So I'd have the bags right early the next day. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. But so I'm checking the YVR, Vancouver flights, times of departure, refreshing the air tags as that time's getting closer and they're not moving again. In fact, the bags are completely in different spots. from each other at the airport. Still in Seattle.

Still in Seattle, yeah. But the Vancouver flight takes off. Both bags are still in Seattle, but totally different locations in the airport. So then I do a cry for help on the Instagram stories. And so many people are like offering me bikes to borrow and, you know, logistical solutions to this. And I'll go to the airport for you to try to help.

So eventually I was so desperate that I'm like, okay yes go to the airport talk to someone see what they can do and two separate lovely people went to the airport and they ended up talking to the same person at air canada this like hero who saved the day and she took it upon herself to like make the submission to get the bags to me and she knew i had a race and she knew i couldn't do the race without her and at this point they had to get on the thursday flight from seattle to montreal otherwise i was not racing like i not borrow a bike for the time trial. It's two positions specific for that. But this Air Canada star employee actually gave me her number. So I was texting with her as she was like physically

searching for both bags at the airport. And you know what's crazy that I learned about the air tag thing is at an airport there's like can be potentially like six floors of an airport and air tags are do not have depth to them. Oh right. So she's like standing on top of the air tag but it could be two floors above her or two fours below her. So this is actually a monumental task. Yeah, but she found the bike, brought it back to the desk with her. The bag was like in terminal N, which is an Alaska Airlines terminal. We had no idea why it went there, but it was there. And I was like, I can live without my bag. I just need my bike because I had a helmet. I had, I bought, or I'd got shoes from specialized Canada in Montreal. I was organized with everything if I could just get my bike. She

found the bike, tagged it as urgent. I'm refreshing, refreshing the next day and watching the air take for my luggage. And when I wake up in the morning, the luggage is in Chicago. So I'm like, okay, there's a Chicago flight to Montreal that lands at noon. So the luggage actually might arrive first. Should we talk about what I was doing in the meantime?

Oh yeah. In the meantime, Eric was packing up his shiv into a bike bag because our friend Andy Kruger was flying to Montrein-Blawn to do the triathlon from Bend. So Eric was going to send his shiv with our adjustable watchop risers set to my position with Andy so I could at least do the triathlon. So that was a good contingency plan.

I spent it all morning on like Thursday or Wednesday, whatever, before I left to go to the van conference expo, like unbuilding my shiv, rebuilding it with like potential Paula parts, redoing an entire tubeless sealant setup, rewaxing a different chain, putting more tools and everything into a bike bag

so she could race with that. If it were to show up, gave it to Andy, he took it to Portland and waited until the last possible minute to get on a flight with or without it, waiting to hear from Paula if her bike showed up. So the air tag got to the gate that the Montreal flight was taking off of, and then it stopped refreshing when the flight took off,

so I'm like, okay, it's on it. Andy, you don't have to bring the bike, leave it behind. I'm my TT bikes just at Andy's condo in Portland, and I may or may not get it any time soon. You'll get it back. You'll get it back. Anyway, the luggage landed in Montreal at like noon. So we went to the airport to get it because I'm like, I'm not leaving this at the airport for any amount of time.

Talbot actually landed at the same time, so he grabbed the bag and left customs with it. Awesome. She's like F everything. We're not telling anyone. We're just taking the bag. What are laws? We're so far beyond that.

Yeah. And then the bike landed at, 4.30 p.m. on Thursday. My time trial was Friday morning. The drive was four hours. So we thought we'd get the bag, we'd get the bike, maybe by six. We'd drive four hours. We'd get to the hotel at 10. I'd build it. Take till 10.30. The time trial start times aren't posted till late the night before. So I thought I could start at 9. I could start at 9.30. I had no idea. It turns out I didn't start till 1 p.m., which was great news because I had to have. had the morning then to rest, preview the course, which I had not seen yet, and just make sure everything was in order. So the timeline, once I got to the airport to pick up the bike, that was a whole other thing because it's on the other side of the customs hall. And I couldn't get someone to help me get it out, even though the air tag showed it was

like on the other side of the door. That was another hole, like crying at the desk, please can you just go get it? This is my situation. And thankfully, the guy caved and went with me. me and got it. So easy once you get a human to just help. So we're on the road at this point. I'm like, I have already won. I am so chill. I am Zen. I don't care about the race. I am just going to do my best. So it took all the pressure and stress off of racing, which was potentially the silver lining of the whole thing. Build the bike without any hiccups. Eric did a great job

of like getting all the parts all ready to build it really quickly and it was ready to race. Wow. What a saga. Absolutely insane. It was a saga. So the Friday morning when the TT was the TT location was about like a 25 minute drive from the hotel. But the last thing I wanted to do was wake up early and go out there and ride the course. But I thought I need to ride this course.

Like I'm the kind of person that if I know a course, I ride it way better and more confidently. So me and my mom woke up at like six, drove out there, I rode it, went back to the hotel for a few hours, napped, and then drove out to the race start. So the amount of car time that me and my mom spent this weekend is kind of outrageous, but she did all the driving. So it was very lucky to have her there and got into race mode for the time trial. Now I could get into my race recaps, but that was my travel recap. Yeah. That was epic. I've heard it.

I lived it, and I still enjoyed hearing the story again, because you're just like, there's no way. This is impossible, how ridiculous this is. But I just want to do so. So now I'm texting with this Air Canada employee, and I'm like, 10 texting are my results and the pictures. Yeah, of course, of course. You help me win this race.

This is amazing. And she's like telling her whole team on the gram, because they all know at this point. So now I've got like some serious good hookups at Seattle Airport. And any time I fly through there, I'm going to be leaning on them to get my bags where I need to go. You got to send her this podcast episode too, of course. Yeah.

Oh, I should. You're right. That's a good idea. True. Yeah. Okay. So the races themselves, which somehow seem less interesting than the story to get to the races, but there's a lot of excitement that happened to the races too.

Did this time, the time trial? Did it feel very similar to the past couple years as far as how it was set up in the course? Or was there something that was kind of different? Yeah. The past two years, it's been an Edmond. in a much flatter course. This was straightforward. If you saw it on a map, you'd think it was boring,

but it was really hilly. It was quite rolling with like 260, 270 meters of climbing over 28K. So not only did that have some steep pitches up, but also down. There was like some really fast sections going downhill, which I personally had to really focus on keeping the power on on those. Yeah. But I thought it was a course that suited me because it wasn't technical. It was just hilly, which I love.

And then did you, were you the last person to start? Like, did they treat you like the previous year winner and everything? Yeah, the previous year winner goes last. So it was a minute apart, all the people that were in the elite women field. And I went last. And I didn't have a follow car. I had my mom. The people that are big contenders in this race, like the girl that ended up coming second,

races for a movie star, like a pro tour team. And two girls from EF were racing, Allison Jackson and another. So they have teams. there with them, like holding bottles, getting bikes, like doing all this stuff. And my mom's there. I'm like, mom, hold my water bottle. Just pretend you're doing something. So I felt a little bit amateur-ish. I don't know. I always feel like that at these time trials. And everyone's quite unfriendly before the start of the TT. Like the opposite of triathlon, maybe it's just because I'm friends with all the people that I race against all the time. But it's a super cold,

weird feeling in the start gates of a time trial. And of course, everyone's nervous. But there is zero talking, there is zero eye contact. It's just like this tense, awful waiting room to go off. Cycling is just like that a little bit. I don't know. I have just time trailing. I know they don't really like me potentially because I'm just this random triathlete showing up. But I think we can get into this later, but I spend so much time on my time trial bike, probably more than any of them. And I train just as many hours a week. I don't spend as much time on my bike, but I'm just as fit. I don't know. I feel like for them to be annoyed with me showing up

it was a little bit unfair because I also devote my life to sport. It's not like I'm on a pro two or cycling team, but I don't have my time travel back all the time. Yeah, actually that is interesting because their their main event is not time trailing. Like they're not, all I do is time traw all year. They're racing road cycling and then doing

TTs when the opportunity rises, which is not that dissimilar to you. Yep, exactly. We're kind of all the same. They might be a little more dialed in their UCI fits specifically. And the girl that came second is really good at the time. Charlotte's like her strength, but she's also good on the road. So anyway. Something that I would say that I think might be a little bit of a reason for the coldness and the tenseness

is you have a very small window of time to get all of this intensity out. You know, like 100 meter runners. They have nine seconds to like exert all of their energy. And in triathlon, at least I have a sense of like, if I mess this one little thing up, you've got four hours of a 70.3 to like come back from it versus a time trial. I was like, you have to be fully on from second one till the last second. Very little room for error. Yeah, that's true. That does add. And you have to be warmed up better. Like I had my warm up timing and protocol very to the last second and got to the tent to check in like 10 minutes before the race.

And I was still sweating from the warm up. So I was a lot more intentional about being ready to go. right from the gun versus a triathlon, you have a bit of time to warm up into it. What was your warm-up for the TT? I'm not telling you, Nick. Oh, wow. Secrets. It's intense, though. It's not that intense, but... I mean, it's not like...

Okay, I'll tell you, it's not that secret. It's the team sky warm up. It's, like, pretty famous. It's 20 minutes. You like a five-minute build, a couple sprints. It takes 20 minutes on the trainer. You get a good sweat on, I guess, is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, and it's kind of scary because, like, during the five-minute build when you're building to race wots, the racewats, the racewats feel hard

for the last minute, and you're like, oh my God, I can't believe I have to do this for 40 minutes. But somehow when the TT starts and you got the adrenaline and the nerves and your bike is moving and it's not on a trainer, it just happens. That's such an interesting. I wonder if anybody's written an article on that, like that phenomenon of when you're doing like whatever, five by five minutes, you think this is impossible that I could do all of this consecutively times three in a 70.3. But then in the race day, it's me. Yeah. Well, the nice thing about, well, not the nice thing. One of the side effects of this travel nightmare was that I barely trained. Paulo didn't want me to run all week because he just wanted

me to focus on making my legs as fresh as I could for the bike. But when I didn't have a bike and I didn't have a swimsuit, all I could do was run in my like travel on shoes. So I did a couple of like super easy 30 minute runs, but I didn't ride for three days. I didn't swim for three days. And I ran once for 30 minutes. So I was very, very. rested. Super taper. Which is like, it could have gone both ways. I could have felt super flat and sluggish. Or I could have felt like I had a lot to give and it ended up being that I felt very rested in a good way. Because I was like pushing really hard in the TT and I kept looking down and seeing like over 300 watts for my power. I thought, oh my gosh, I'm going to blow up.

I can do this and it feels doable right now. But from history, I know that I'm going to blow up after 20 minutes. But I didn't blow up. I just kept being able to push like 300 watts and even more than that on the ups. And then on the downhills, I just tried to keep my speed and my watts would lower, which would bring the average down a little bit, but I knew that I was still moving fast. So yeah, in the end, I held like my best power ever for 40 minutes, like 293 watts. Which is crazy. I want to ask about the power thing, but first, have you talked to Paula at all? Do you think, like, maybe drawing any conclusions about this extra resty taper, since this was, like, basically a forced experiment and doing less on race week?

Doing anything? No, I've not talked to Apollo about it. Okay. I mean, the hard thing about this is I've raced six times this year. If you take a full week very chill before a race and then a full week, very chill after, you're losing, like, essentially two weeks of training. So there's this feeling during the season and in-season racing that you have to keep a little bit of intensity through the week leading in,

just to maintain some fitness, if anything. So I think that's the tricky part about racing so much in the year at very important events. But yeah, this was a bit of a forced experiment and ended up working out well. But I was also thinking like, oh, my God, I'm going to do so bad in Tron Blanc because I haven't swam for five days. Right, right, right.

But that didn't end up mattering either. No. So my question on the pacing is just like, what was your pacing strategy given than that it was hilly and roly, like, were you just trying to be as smooth as possible on the power, momentum? Like, what was... I didn't really have a strategy because I was so like,

wow, I'm just lucky to be here. So I was like no strategy. I thought the Watts would be a bit higher going out because it was net up and then lower coming back. But the nice thing about going last is I... Olivia, who ended up coming second, very narrow margin. She ended up being 24 seconds slower than me.

I could see her and her fall. follow car ahead of me in the distance. So that having that carrot in front of me and thinking psychologically at the U-turn, if she can see that I'm right there, she's not going to like that very much. If she can see that I've put in more than, you know, whatever, I timed the turn and I was like 40 seconds behind her at the U-turn, so I'd put 20 seconds into her halfway through the race and I knew that she would not like that. So that was a bit satisfying and gave me momentum, like, okay, you're gaining on her and it's

looking good. And I knew she was the main competition, so I didn't time the splits to anyone else. But yeah, I didn't catch her in her car ever. So I knew it was going to be extremely close at the end. And the last K was just like, puke your guts out kind of hard. Yeah. And when I crossed the line, they said unofficially I'd won by 10 seconds. That's so little.

Yeah. It ended up being 24 with the time chips or whatever. but 10 seconds is like nothing. It's so small. And then the difference between Olivia to third was like another three seconds. So we were all super, super tight. And I don't know, I was just like relieved more than anything, I think, when I heard that at the finish line. And the announcers were speaking in French.

So I was like, did I win? I don't know. I couldn't really tell. And you're so tired at the end of these things. You just want to die. But that was confirmed that I won. I think the psychological aspect of going out really hard like that and making that statement at the U-turn is super interesting.

Because we saw that and experienced it at UCI Worlds last year. Like Chloe Dygert went out. She must have been doing like 370 watts. Wasn't there an article about how many watches she did? It was like insane. Whatever. The opposite of negative split it just so, so hard. And I think, like, who was the woman who just pulled over and sat down on the side of the road, who was like, the main competition?

I think she got so psyched out in the first 10, 15K by seeing these insane splits to Chloe that it, like, put her out of the race. And that was kind of why I was asking about the splits and the pacing strategy because it's not necessarily always the same as a triathlon where she's just like, get on the red line, just below the red line and just like sit there and the best that you can do. There's like this huge, you know, depending on where there turns. wind and all the stuff. I didn't have a radio in my ear for this race, but I knew Olivia did, and her car was probably updating her on splits. So I don't know. It could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the type of athlete you are.

But the second half, I was continuing to push really good power. So I do think that that's a little bit attributed to being a little extra rested. Yeah. Wild. So three years in a row, national champion for the time trial for Canada. And the girls in second and third place are going to the Olympics. and for, you know, just how it kind of all comes down. You're not. Well, I'm happy for the team. I think Allison Jackson is a medal potential in the road race.

She won Perry Rubei last year. She's really, really good for the sport. She's actually from Alberta, just like me. And I'm super happy she's going. And then Olivia, who came second in the time trial and ended up actually winning the road race this weekend, is going with Allison to, I don't know if they'll work together or not, but that's the road team. So maybe 20, 28, I'll make a better push for it. I think that if I want to be serious about making the Olympics and show that I'm serious to cycle in Canada, I have to do these things without racing a trathlon immediately after or before. Because every time I've done these races, I'm like, okay, see you later. I'm going to another race. And it's not because I don't care about the time trial. It's because triathlon is my job. And going to tromba and winning allowed me to pay for that whole trip. But yeah, I think that a little more centralized focused on. it and maybe doing a bit of road racing would put me in contention for the next Olympics if I am still racing as well as I am now. I can't help but think about the like small aerodynamic efficiency gains that can lead to like a

three second margin over 40 minutes or a 10 or 24 second margin over 40 minutes. Like I do have a different position for UCI versus triathlon, but I think I do still have a lot a room to improve on both positions to get faster. So, yeah, there's always these marginal gains to be made in the TT because the differences between people are so small. Yeah. Yeah. Man, I love it.

I love it. Okay. So then what happens? Well, because my race start was so much later than I thought, my whole timeline was thrown off of getting to Tram Blanc. This is a five-hour drive to Mont-Tram Blah. I had to stay for the awards, which were after the men's race. So I did a run off the bike because it was my first real run of the week with some pickups.

I felt great on the run. I think I was just bonking a little bit nutritionally because I felt sick after the TT. I didn't want to eat. But I forced myself to eat a lot on that drive to Tron Blanc to try to like refuel as much as I could. We went to St. Hubert. It's like this chicken restaurant. It's probably super gross to anyone who lives in Quebec. They're like, oh, that's bad, bad food.

But it was a lot of calories, which was good. and got to Tram Blanc at 10 p.m. again, next hotel. This was our fifth hotel of the weekend. Oh, my God. Because we stayed at one the first night. And then we checked out because we thought my bike was coming. It didn't. Stayed at another hotel.

Oh, man. Anyway, we just kept staying at different hotels. And so this is my fifth bed that I was sleeping in. But I was feeling fine. I'd replaced the DCI mounts with my triathlon mounts all by myself, put a new chain on. These are the risers that go between the base bar and elbow pads. Yeah, I changed my position a little bit.

And I went for a little ride on the course with Andy on Saturday morning and felt really good. So my spirits were pretty high. Trombon is such a beautiful place, such a cool little town. I had an amazing hotel room that the race covered. It was like literally walk out of it and you're in transition. So logistically, the race was so easy. Didn't have to get in the car a single time. I could walk everywhere.

five minutes to the beach. I will 100% go back to this race. It's so good. It's my favorite 70.3 I've ever done by far. Wow. It feels like it should be... That's what I said. Such a premium experience in every way

with the way that it's set up and the feel of the town overall. Just everyone gets so into it. Everything is meticulously planned out and, you know, barricades down the road the night before. And I don't know. I just thought it was a really, really nice race. I think there's a huge sense of pride, maybe just like Quebec in general, but certainly around this race and around Tram Blanc of like, this needs to be so dialed and look so good because it's reflection on all of us personally and our pride of where we live. It's really...

Maybe, I don't know. But it's a great place also to bring a family to watch your race because there's so much to do from a tourism perspective and from a shopping perspective and a restaurant. There's like, there's a lot to do. So you can race and your family. can go off for the day and do fun things, right there? I just say because I did this race and I felt the exact same way when I did it like five years ago or whatever. Yeah, everyone should put it on their bucket list. Just don't fly Air Canada. Air Canada came through.

I'm not going to hate on Air Canada. I was not, again, not nervous about this race. I was just like, this is like the cherry on top. I was walking around the day before the race and everyone was congratulating me. And I was like, this is so weird. The day before the race. Right, right, right.

But I got all my stuff together. And this was like, I looked at my race schedule this year. This was my sixth triathlon of the year. So by this point, I'm like very dialed. We're in June. We're halfway through the year. Yeah, I'm super dialed with like laying out my transition stuff. It takes me like no time to just know all my gears ready and good to go.

And so the day was actually pretty relaxed before. And I just did a little swim and had a nap, rested as much as I could. The forecast was for torrential rain and potentially. thunder the next day, 100% chance of rain. So we were expecting a wet race. But when I woke up and I saw the rain, it wasn't just rain. It was like windy too. So it felt hurricaney, you know, like trees just bustling around and all the scree and the setup for the fences was like falling off. And yeah, it was an ugly day. I think what you told me was really critical is, you know, versus when I did the race, you stayed at this hotel, which was like, what, 50 meters

from the transition area. Yes. So you were able to take a nap. You're able to walk to everything. You said you put your bag in, you set up your transition area and then went back to the hotel and stayed warm for a little bit before then going to the start. Yeah, it was really nice. It even had a little fireplace in it.

So I just like went to transition as quick as I could, pumped up my tires, put my helmet in transition, went back to the room for an hour. That's awesome. Put my wetsuit on and everything just to swim in the hotel room and then walked down to the start at the last minute. So I didn't have like my bag outside and stuff getting wet. I was just very efficient in and out. Didn't warm up in the water. That's the classic Paula Finley method. Yeah, this is my new method. But I thought they were going to cancel it. I was like the whole race. That's what I thought. Oh, you thought the whole thing, not just the swim. Because of like the

Sacramento situation. Well, I thought even if there's a speck of thunder, it's canceled. And it was stormy in that way where it definitely could have thundered. And the, there was like streams of water coming down the road. I mean, I can't explain how gnarly it was. It was the most extreme conditions I've ever raced in. And I've never trained in this type of condition because you would never. You would stay inside. Right, right.

So I heard they shortened the swim and I'm like, that's literally the only part that would have been okay in the rain. Right. It's already as wet as it gets, people. I'll do the entire swim to shorten everything else. Oh, yeah. But it turned out being a great call because the swim was short and they moved the turnboy in. And it was like being out at sea out there. I could not see a thing.

It was super wavy. I was just trying to like, I knew I was with Ellie and Jody and trying to stay with them. Not that it was like physically and aerobically hard. It was just that we were trying to navigate. And it was really hard to tell what we were going. But it turns out that half the, a ton of the age groupers had to get pulled out of the water on boats because it was so scary out there. and then they just stopped letting age groupers into the water at some point and told them just to go get their bikes and start the race on the bike.

So that's a little bit indicative of how intense the water was, which is really sad because the day before in my warm-up swim, it was crystal clear, perfect temperature, beautiful lake, has the potential just to be the perfect race in every way. I wonder if Iron Man is just a little bit cautious now about swim conditions. because of recent races and they're being, they're a little more on the safe side. Potentially, but I think they did make the right call here

based on how I felt out there. Yeah. It wasn't an overly cautious. I mean, the fact that they let us go bike in that weather is shocking. Yeah. If they were being overly cautious, there'd be no bike ride. Right, right, right. Okay, that's fair.

But to be fair, I think, like, the pros are going so fast that it's scarier when you're going fast. because your visor's foggy and there's water streams coming across all the cracks in the roads so you can't see them. Did you wear your visor the whole time? Yeah, I had a clear visor on

and I kept it on because I thought if I take this off, I'm going to get stuff in my eyes, which could be worse. So, yeah, I kept it on and this course didn't have a lot of like steep, punchy hills, which I really need to be able to drop people. So Ellie stayed with me for half the race.

And I kept looking back and thinking I got rid of her, but there was like me and a motorbike was beside me and it's a 12 meter draft zone so she could hang on for a really long time and she rode really well but I didn't want to come off the bike with her because I didn't want to have to run, do a run race. So on one of the super steep uphills

I did like a really big surge as hard as I could and snap the elastic and that's kind of what it took to stop that like draft effect of sitting on someone's wheel. And at this point are you feeling the T.T. in your legs at all, or did that kind of come and go pretty easily?

No, I still felt really good on the bike and I was like holding my best average power ever on a 70.3. What's going on? What is happening here? That's the extra rest. With your bike legs. The extra rest. Wow.

That's really good. But by the last 20K, I hadn't previewed that part of the course and it goes out and back on this really roller coastery road with like not as good of road surface. and it started coming down so hard at that point. And that's when my visor really fogged up and I literally couldn't see. I kept having to sit up and defog it with my hands. And I was alone. There was not really anyone around me.

I could see a couple pro men way up the road. But that was the worst part of the ride for me. And I thought, oh, I'm like bleeding so much time by sitting up and not being able to see. But I think everyone was in the same position. So it just was get to the end of this. kind of mode and got off the bike and was just relieved to have survived and not crashed. Yeah, right. Because anything can happen. You can like hydroplane kind of. You can not see an obstacle in the road. You can not see like a marking on the road because if it's flooded.

Yeah. Thankfully, the highway portion, the road's in good shape. But you're also going extremely fast because the roads are in such good shape. So it's kind of like a balance of how comfortable are you going fast with the risk of potentially like slipping out or hitting something. Did you adjust your tire pressure to make up for the fact that you were kind of maybe get a little more grip instead of speed? Yeah, they were lower. Like, I don't forget. Eric told me what to do. 55.

55. But they're tubeless, hookless, 28. And you rode the disc even with the wind? Yeah, Nick. The disc is not affected by the wind. I mean, it is affected. It makes you go nice and fast. but it also kind of can affect your handling and it'll be a little scary, I guess.

The front wheel affects your handling more. So I had an 858 with me and a 454 and I rode the 454. Ah, okay. Yeah. For the TT as well, actually. Did you know where you were compared to Ellie and Tamara when you got off the bike? Yeah, so my mom was in transition. She said I had two and a half minutes to Ellie, eight and a half minutes to Tamara and the rest of the field.

And I thought that was enough time if I was feeling okay on the beach. run and I set off running and I felt pretty good. The running in the rain is fine. I was really cool, never overheated. I barely took in any nutrition or anything on the bike, so I thought maybe that would really catch up to me on the run, but I just immediately took some gels and tried to just like pace myself properly. The run goes net downhill going out and then up coming back. And at the turnaround, I had four minutes on Ellie. So I thought I was safe, but my running splits were really good. and I thought, I'm just going to keep going hard and try to get a good half marathon time.

And my Wahoo is a bit of a discrepancy with the time of the final race, scoreboard or whatever. Because my watch said I ran like a 19-something and then the final race thing said 21 minutes, 121. Anyway, it doesn't matter, but that was a bit strange. I think I ran faster than what it said, or my watch was like glitching.

There's no way that total length of time should have been wrong. I bet you it's just when you started it versus when the actual timing mat is like sometimes No, I mean like transition. My watch says I ran 21.23 kilometers. Oh. Yeah. I see.

Oh. So I don't know. Who cares. It doesn't matter. But yeah, I ran really well. And I was super happy to get to the finish line and safely. It was really relieved. And I think like.

regardless of everything that happened that week, the other time trial, the bag fiasco, I was able to just kind of stay in the moment throughout that race and get through it safely and well, and I stayed pretty calm. And it was kind of strange the level of calm and not nervousness I had before it. And like I said, I think a lot of that was just thinking it was never going to happen, where it's for sure going to get canceled, which I would have been fine with, by the way. But that just helped for some reason ease my nerves a lot. it just took it step by step.

Okay, so when you, you've said before that when you were racing WTS, draft legal triathlon, when you're in your younger years, that you were doing really well and winning a lot of races, but you were kind of taking it for granted a little bit. You, you've realized now that you kind of, you should have been smelling the roses a little bit more. Yeah, I definitely do now. Was there a time this week where you're like, oh my God, I just won national time trial championships for the third year in a row and then two days later won a pretty big 70.3. This is awesome.

Yeah, I think we're always like self-critical and think like, oh, but the field and, you know, I didn't make the Olympics in the bike race. There's like little things where you can like think how could I have done better. And that's what I was like way worse back in the day. I do definitely appreciate it more now. And what's really cool about these races is just the level of. community that TTL has built that exists at these events. It's so crazy. Like everyone wanted to talk and stop and say hi and take a picture and TTL kits on the race course. Like that made it

so much more fun than any other race I've done this year. And maybe it was just because it was in Canada and the amount of TTL followers was like exponential or something. But it felt like I was a celebrity for two days. It was so insane. Right, right. Right. How many people came up and said hi and took pictures. And it was super fun to me to say hi to everybody. So, yeah, thanks to everyone who came out and watched and cheered and stood in the freaking rain for five hours. And it was wild. Okay, so during all of this, Eric is in Bend.

And how stressed are you during this process, Eric? Or are you like, she's going to handle it? She's fine. No problem. Eric knows how much I hate the rain and I'm scared You know I don't From the beginning I don't feel like I was too stressed

I'm pretty good I think at like separating into What are things that I can do to affect the situation And what are things that I can't do And by packing up my bike I did everything that I could do And then I felt like my job was just any time I talked to Paula To try to say Hey you know what just one thing, what's the next thing you can do?

What's the next thing you can do? And no matter what, Monday night at midnight, I'm picking you up at the airport. You know, like, in the two days, it is, whatever happens, it's all over. And like, we're in such a great position where we have good sponsors and you've raced well already this year. Like, even if this, you can't race either of these races,

it's going to be, it's going to suck. But it's not like, we need this to pay the bills or you can't go to another race. You know, because we're broke now. You know, it's, you can get that, that expensive hotel room that you need to get and it's really is okay in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, that's totally looking back at it now. That's a good mindset.

But when you're in the middle of it, it feels like the end of the world. Yeah. When you put all this into getting there and training for it and all the hard workouts you do and you just, that's why it's so sad when races don't go well or when something is out of your control happens. It's like you think about all the,

what you've done to get yourself there and then stuff happens. Yeah, that last PT bike workout we did in the sleet. And we like just push through it. I think Lionel said in his recap video, it's like that that triathlon was a race that you'll put in your memory bank to help you if there's a challenging race in the future. Like I could get through that. I could race in those conditions fine.

Well, actually. So if that happens again, I know I'm going to be fine. It's kind of a good experience checkbox. And as an age grouper, I'll take it a step further. And when I have really challenging races or even really. challenging training days, I call upon those when I'm enduring some kind of adversity that may have nothing to do with sport. I think this is something that's really nice for a lot of age groupers is we bank those hard experiences and then when we're having like a hard day at work or in a

relationship or something, it's like, okay, remember how hard those four hours were in the rain at Montreinplan? And I freaking survived that. I can survive this. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of people finished that race. So kudos to everyone who crossed the finish line in Montaum Blanc. It's wild. And I, it's so sad for that race because the year before it was canceled because of smoke. So you've got this like perfect idyllic race, amazing course, amazing volunteers. And it keeps just getting the worst luck with the weather and the environmental conditions. But I'm crossing my fingers next year for like the day before the day after beautiful days would have been perfect.

So I think next year, year three is going to be a nice day. They deserve it. Yeah. And then you guys on my flight home, the Oilers. lost to the Panthers, which was erased all of the positivity and happiness I had from the weekend. And now I'm having a depression. It was really huge. I'm not okay.

It's a bummer. Yeah, sorry. Sorry to all the Oilers fans out there. Not just the Oilers fans. Literally every hockey fan except a couple of Panthers fans. I think everyone is reading for the Oilers. Everyone in Canada, everyone in the NHL, except for the people in the Panthers. Anthers Arena who immediately went home as soon as they won and thought, okay, that was a good hockey game.

See you later. If Edmonton had won, the city would have, like, gone up in flames with excitement. For a week. It had just been, like, a week of party. Yeah, it's just so sad. But they did amazing. Anyway, we won't get into that. Yeah.

Well, Paula, amazing week, one to remember forever to tell the grandkids about. And we can just direct them to this podcast. Yeah, I'll just say, listen to the pod, grandkids. Okay. what your grandma went through so that you could live in a lush life. Okay, let's do a couple of questions. We don't have to do that many today. Yeah, we'll do a couple questions. You can submit your questions for the podcast at that triathlon life.com slash podcast. You can also become a podcast supporter there. We decided a long time ago

that we were not going to do ads on this podcast. Instead, we would rely on support from the listener. So thank you so much to everybody who gives their monthly support to the podcast. Every week we try to pick a podcast winner through a random number generator to give them a little TTL prize and we're still doing bottles and socks right now and this week, congratulations. Christian Salara.

You won bottles and socks. So just send an email through the podcast site with your address and we'll have that sent out to you right away. Thanks for being a podcast supporter Christian. And we're also going to do a little fun thing potentially. It's something where we're brainstorming and working on. Eric, do you want to fill everybody in?

Yeah. We've been talking about doing this for a very long time and I think we finally have the capacity, the system set up to do it, but we have a launch that's going to be happening in the next week, and we are going to open up the ordering process ahead of time to podcast supporters. So what I would recommend you do,

if you are a podcast supporter, is go on and make sure that you know how to log in on DatrathlonLife.com. You might have to reset your password or whatever because just by the act of being logged in, you will have a little bit of early access. to the launch of the next thing that we're launching. So that's just, we're testing that out.

We would ask that you just be patient with us because we think it's going to work great, but we've never done it before. And, yeah, stay tuned. And I will say that I'm also particularly excited about this drop. You might be giving away, though. Sorry, I don't want to, yeah, I don't want to give it away,

but I am completely obsessed with this stuff. If you've been paying attention to my Instagram stories and some of the stuff, like you have a good idea of, there are two different things that we have ready to go, and it's one of those two things. Okay, awesome.

First question here is from Julie. Hey, TTL, at Trombon 70.3 right now, gave a shout out to Paula and we crossed paths on our reci rides. It's pretty cool to see everyone in TTL gear here. We give each other fist bumps and fan all over y'all. How much TTL gear is too much to have it a race? I drove here, so I brought it all.

Very nice, Julie, thank you. There is absolutely no amount of TTL gear is too much. You need at least one thing for each day of race week. That's probably the appropriate starting baseline. My question is about the pro briefing. What is your requirement for being there? You must have been exhausted and probably just wanted to be on the couch, but you showed up. How do some pros get out of it?

It's really great that you made the effort for Canada to be there. Same with Tamara and Cody. But there's definitely a big Canadian name missing. I'll be cheering for you on course. And since I'm riding this night before the race, I can't wait to see how you. you do. Cheers, Julie. It does seem to be the boys that are more likely to do no show. Am I right?

Lionel didn't show up to the press conference? When's the last time he has showed up to a press conference? I don't think he does him. I don't think he does him. Because of what she's saying, it's like an hour and a half of sitting in the sun. Fair enough. They emailed me, they email us two

weeks out from the race and say, are you able to be at the pro panel? It's at this time, at this location. and you can 100% say no. There is no requirement. Oh, I see. Okay. They're not paying us to go to it.

But, and I truly thinking about, this was before the travel fiasco, but I thought, my timeline is going to be so tight with being able to just rest enough between the two that this is probably the one race I should say no to the pro panel. But I remember that it's in Canada and there's so many people messaging me on Instagram. I can't wait to see you at Tram Blanc. So I thought, I can take an hour and go and do this. It is definitely important for not just me, but like the TTL brand and the people to see me before the race. So I did it.

I was extremely exhausted and not into it, which I hope didn't make too obvious with my facial expressions. I was just so bonked and so hot and the sun was beating on us. But the tricky part was that they did every person's answer. They translated it to French. So the press conference took much longer than it normally does. Exactly twice as long. Exactly twice as long because everyone would answer in English. And then the guy and the lady doing the press conference would re-say the entire thing in detail in French.

So that to me was dragging on. But that's fine. That's just how it was. But after the press conference, I was like, I went for a swim just to, like, decompress and cool off a bit. Then I felt better and had a nap. And in general, I'm totally happy to do them. This time, it was a little bit of a stretch with my time line. Yeah.

I don't blame. I don't blame Lionel for not wanting to do them. I remember at St. George. You remember Sam Long was late because he was trying to swim? Like, it's hard to fit in with the rest of the day, let alone also it's another point where you're not really resting. Yeah, in St. George, it was freezing cold because we were like sitting under AC blasting in our faces. So it's a bit, yeah, it's a tricky decision to make because the days before a race are very busy. You got to do bike drop off. You got to fit your last training in. You got to make sure your gears in order.

You kind of want to go to bed early. You want to eat by five. You got to do the pro meeting, which is an hour. So the pro panel takes another hour and a half. It's hard to fit it in. And I think the easy way of, is to say no, but this time I thought I really should be there because it's in Canada. Yeah, but we just learned that you don't really have to do your pre-race training. So everybody just go to the pro-panel. Yeah. You just win races if we don't do it. Yeah, exactly.

Here's a fun fact. Eric's ex-girlfriend Magalie was the pro-panel interviewer and the finish line interviewer. And if they had told me that, I think I actually might have not done it. Oh, no. They were like, not just your ex-girlfriend, but like your ex, you were in it. Yeah, we were together for a couple of years. Yeah. She's like, Megalie, she used to race trathlon professionally.

Now she lives in Trombon. It doesn't race anymore. But her and Eric hasn't taught, haven't talked in, what, like seven years? Yeah. Way longer than you and I. I thought before I went to the race. I'm like, I wonder if she'll be at the race. And here she is literally doing the commentary.

Yeah. Was it addressed? Like, did you guys? guys pretend like you didn't know who each other was? Well, on the pro panel, you're just like sitting on the stage with everyone. Right, that's fair. Just answered her questions. Wow, that's funny.

Yeah. I got a couple screenshots from some friends. At the finish line interview? Are you seeing this? At the finish line interview, I just, at the finish line interview, I just fully acknowledged it. I was like, are you married now? Yeah.

To not my fiancee? Is your dog still kicking? Yeah. That's funny. People messaged me about it. Just like, um, did you see this? Okay. Because I was sleeping.

Yeah, I was sleeping. Next question here is from Tim. Hey, Paula, Eric and Nick. Firstly, I wanted to thank the three of you for what you do nearly every week. It's been a pleasure getting to know you a bit, week in and week out, while also learning how to be a better athlete. When you're traveling in your storyteller for multiple days, do you prepare food in the van via a stove, or do you stick with a restaurant stops?

If so, what do you typically cook up? One quick question for Nick, what artists dead or alive would you love to work with? We can address that at the end. And think about that too while you're answering this question, guys. We'll all answer it. If you don't know, the storyteller, that's our van. Storyteller overland is the brand of our van. Man, it kind of depends where we are.

If we're somewhere that has really cool restaurants, we definitely like to go try different restaurants and try the coffee shops and everything. But if we're out in the woods camping, we'll use the stove. Yeah. And actually, a funny feature about the storyteller is it has a microwave, which we thought we're never going to use this microwave. But if you bring leftovers from the night before, if you've cooked at home or if you buy like some of the nice grocery stores here have like pre-made meals that you can reheat, that's actually a really easy but lazy way to have a good dinner on the road is the van has enough battery power to power the microwave. Yeah, that's nice.

So we use that a couple times. But yeah, the only downside of cooking in the van is the cleanup, which is actually pretty simple because there's a sink. Yeah. Yeah, or if you're close to a river, like, you know, whatever, you can brush off some of the bigger stuff. But I was just, it was just occurred to me that, like, of the last five times we've gone camping, probably four of them have been with Chris and Lindsay Corbin. And generally, when we go with them, like, they bring Oberto Shirk cutery boards. And, like, it's way more beautiful and spectacular than what we cook at home. And we just kind of like, should we bring like a beer?

Or like, can we contribute anything? They're like, no, no, no. We've got all this stuff. And we actually need to do a photo shoot about it. way. So just like trim your fingernail, you know, whatever. It's like it turns out to be potentially more luxurious than we're at home if we go with them. Yeah, I really like having, if we go for, if we're camping, it's actually kind of fun to just have like bread and cheese and meat for dinner and not cook anything. Yeah, and like vegetables and hummus. It's like fully chill out

no stove. Like a whole bunch of appetizers. Lindsay takes care of the gourmet meal while on the road. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if we're by ourselves, like when I was at the van thing, I just did pasta with the pesto sauce and like turkey sandwiches for lunch and picky oatmeal for breakfast. Simple stuff. And what about one quick question? What artist at our live would you like to work with? Eric, do you have someone in mind? I thought that was just for you.

It was for me, but like Warren Miller or something like that. Oh, yeah, sure. Rupert Walker. Rupert Walker. Nice. Paula, do you have anyone that you're like, I don't know, you could do like a ballet number two or something, go back to the dance days? Tap number

Pass Pass Okay I think I would do These aren't well-known names But Jacob Collier Or Chris Thiele Or more well-known name

Is Nick Drake Who is no longer with us Sadly Thanks for the question Tim Thanks for the question Tim Next question here is from Julia From Ireland Hey guys straight to the point

Question for Paula I saw that she wore long sleeves Under the Tricuit Leaving the Water But no sleeves on the run I'm a Brazilian That lives in Ireland and find racing here always cold.

So any tips are welcome, Julia from Ireland. Were you cold, Paula? I know the conditions are bad, but were you cold on the bike? Yeah, that was actually the one blessing of this horrible weather was that it wasn't too cold. It was like 16 degrees Celsius. So 61 Fahrenheit. Yeah, so chilly, but not like as cold.

It could have been much colder. And the day before the race, I think vinyl did an Instagram story. Like, should I wear this rain jacket or this vest? And Talbot texted me asking what I was going to do. And I was like, I wasn't going to wear anything. Like, it's not that cold and we're going to be generating body heat. And also, I don't have anything to wear. Yeah.

So when I woke up in the morning, my coach Paulo texted me and said to put on a base layer. So I have like a specialized mesh base layer that I put on. And then I put on Castelli arm warmers that I could wear under my wetsuit and wear it for the bike and then easily remove them for the run. Yeah. So that's what I did. Cool. Smart. Our warmers are, they're super thin, and I was, obviously they were soaking wet, but I think just having something against your skin, if you're worried about the cold, does make a big difference even if it's wet.

And putting on a jacket would have just been cumbersome and, like, it would have been soaking and it would have been flapping in the wind. So sometimes just the base layer move is actually more effective than putting layers over top of your kit. Cool. Okay, next question here is from Rachel, who is currently living in Sardinia, Italy. training for her first 70.3 next year. For triathlon and athletic competition in Italy, you need to have a specific medical certificate and be part of an association or club

that will put you forward for races. I can see that this puts a lot of first-timers off and ensures the level of athletes participating stays really high, with everyone battling for first place. I have taken part in one competition and came dead last. Not by little, but by a lot, and this has got me thinking. Should I even be taking part in races yet? do I need to be a super fit mega athlete level before I start doing races.

Am I being stupid and letting my ego get in the way? I don't know if I can go through the embarrassment of coming last by a full 10 minutes. Also, I've always done sport. I would say I'm pretty okay runner and swimmer, but these Italians are wild. I don't know what they're putting in the pasta here, but I want some too, Rachel. Oh, that's pretty strange. I'm curious about the reasoning behind the medical thing. I think I have an idea why.

but I would say that definitely you can go do a race I would think of it more like an event you can go do a triathlon with no intention of trying to place or get a really high thing you just want to go complete the distance of swimming, biking, and running

that should always be first and foremost. You're out there trying to have a good time. I assume that the medical thing is just due to heart attack concerns going from vertical to horizontal and swimming and just like a base line, yes, are you safe to exert yourself for X amount of time? Yeah, it's not just for triathlon.

It's for all kind of endurance races. You have to do this medical checkup. I didn't know about the club thing, but I did know that you have to go through a test. Even if you're like, I have friends who are going to race 70.3 in Italy this year. And they have to do a medical exam too when they get there. Even as a non-Italian resident, you have to do that. Interesting. I did not come across anything to do with that when I was looking at doing extra world's there. Oh, interesting. Yeah, you would have had to do it for sure. Well, maybe as a professional there's some weird loophole for it. I'm not sure, but as amateurs, you do have to do that. Okay. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. But Rachel, you're not a professional. And I've heard this before that people in Italy who do marathons or triathons are, they're like a self-selected elite group compared to the U.S. that is a little more come-one, come all thing.

Right. Less participatory, more competitive. Yeah, yeah. Well, come do triathons in the U.S. We're friendly here. We're friendly. We're friendly. I feel like the last place person and stuff, and like in cycling they have a whole award around it. Like you had every reason to quit.

You were out there for the longest, potentially suffering the longest, and you kept going. Like, that is super, super noble. You're getting more dollar per minute race than anyone else. Yeah, your value is through the roof. Through the roof. Next question here is from Allison.

Hey, TTL gang. Love the pod. Hope you guys know while I'm in my cubicle at work. I'm listening to you all a majority of the time. Awesome. Allison says this question is for Nick, which is me. But this is, we all should answer this. About race motivation.

I'm obsessively thinking about triathlon 99% of the time. And currently I'm thinking I'd like to train for an Iron Man a year from now in 2025. So I could be well prepared and a bit more competitive. Since this would take a great. amount of time and dedication and training. I want to make sure my motivation is in the right place. How do you make sure you want to race for you, not for the Instagram posts and wearing the Iron Man T-shirt following the race? Thank you, Allison. I think it's for sure because it's different for us because it's our job and we're getting paid. Not that we're necessarily motivated by money,

but I think the motivational reasons are not relatable to a lot of age group athletes. I think they could be. So we can just go around the circle, but Nick, you take priority on this one. Well, what I was thinking about here is that I think it's easy to point at doing something for an Instagram post or whatever you might think the wrong reasons are in thinking, oh, that's not, I shouldn't be doing that. I shouldn't be doing this race because I just want clout from it or whatever. But I think back to when I first started triathlon, and there was certainly a very large part of me that was doing these races to prove to myself that I could do endurance sport, which is not something I ever saw myself doing. And there was certainly a part of me

that wanted to prove to the outside world that I could do this. And now I derive much less meaning and purpose from that, but I find it in different ways. I don't regret that I loved it for those reasons. Just like a little kid has joy in a way that you don't as an adult. And what's nice about this race is, yeah, you'll train for a year for it. But you're not signing up for 20 years of having to do this every year. It's just one year. So take whatever, I would say, take whatever joy you can out of it and don't worry too much about the reasoning behind it, especially if it helps you train more. Yeah, I don't think that's really that significantly different than Paul and I

and professional athletes. Like, I can't speak for everybody, but we are trying to prove to ourselves that we can do a thing as well. Paul is trying to prove to herself that she can win Canadian time trial championships as a triathlet. I'm trying to prove myself that I can be competitive in Xtera when it's. It's like kind of a new skill set and a whole new thing. And ultimately when I got into sport, it was, can I even do this?

Can I complete it? And then you complete it and you reset a new goal. Can I complete an Olympic distance? Can I complete an Olympic distance in under 205? Can I win the Olympic distance at the first race that I went to? And you just, you know, you kind of like reset new goals, reset new goals. But at the heart of it is you're asking yourself, can I do this big thing that seems like, I don't know. I'm not sure.

And I got to go find out. Do you think it's wrong? for someone to also get excited about, I'll put it in a most neutral way I can, sharing that excitement and success with the world, like on Instagram, for example? No. I mean, like at the end of the day, social media is just, it's an online version of what you would do anyway. If you tried to go do this thing that you weren't sure if you could do and then you did it, some people may be able to just internalize that and they're introverts and they don't feel

like they want to tell people. But if you just did a really exciting thing and you want to do it. to tell people, why, I don't see why that's a problem at all. If your entire motivation from the beginning is to make an Instagram post and impress people, then maybe you got to ask yourself, like, is this for you? Is this for other people? But, yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing it. Sharing the journey to it. Yeah. Whether that's on Strava or Instagram, I think those tools can sometimes actually be helpful in a good way. Like, if you're going to miss your run, but people are going to see it if you do it on Strava. You're going to go,

do it, you know? Yeah. I got through my first couple years of being a triathlete when I was whatever, 13, 14. My knees hurt every single time I went running. I did not feel built for running as a swimmer, but I, you know, when I was going to go visit my, it was free, triathlon coach at the time. And he would ask me like, hey, how'd your run go on Friday? I was mortified of telling him that I did not do it. So I don't know. And like this is definitely certainly very central to what we set TTL up for in the beginning. It was like we wanted to create that sense of a community and the sense of like, hey, we're all doing this similar thing and we're all really excited about it and we want to talk to each other about it. So it's certainly do not

feel self-conscious about telling people about what you were excited about. And my final thought is like life is too short to prohibit yourself from feeling joy in certain ways, right? Like if it brings you joy, do it. It's, it's, it's, It's, we're doing this thing for fun. There's no inherent value in triathlon. We assign it value. Yeah. Yeah, and also the finisher t-shirts are garbage.

Don't do it for that. If you're doing it for that, just turn around. Yeah, definitely get a T-TL t-shirt instead. That's funny. I'm wearing the PTO Canada t-shirt right now. Yeah, Nick, you do, you are pretty loyal to the race T's. And they're a nice memoir. They're a nice memory.

But I wouldn't say they're like their most high quality. No. Forever T-shirts. Anyway, that was maybe kind of snobby of me, but it's the truth. No, I mean... Actually, Iron Man does give nice backpacks for the race, which I think

are cool, a cooler memory than the T-shirt, but still don't do it for the stuff. Don't do it for the stuff. That's it. That's what we got. That was a long episode, but we had the dramatic arrival to Canada of

Paula's bags two wins. I think this is definitely the most epic story of the year. Yes, for sure. I mean, I lost my bags. There's worse things in life that could happen, of course. But it's just like the fact that they got lost twice. It was fun.

It was fun. And then you were doing two races and it just... And then that I could pull myself out of my funk and win both. Exactly. That's awesome. The whole story, just from leaving to coming back here, was nice. The whole story is very fun. The whole story is very fun.

I do realize I was extremely privileged and the amount of people that were offering to help. So if that was you, thank you so much. It was amazing. The number of people that were involved, the mobilization of manpower and women power and just thought it was absolutely. We mobilized an army to help get my bags.

Incredible. If you'd been anybody else on planet Earth, I think it would just been like, well, I guess Eric is driving up to Seattle to go try to find your bags at some point. And you're just going to fly home. Oh, well. Yeah, crazy. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

And, yeah, really appreciate it so much. Yeah, thanks for listening. And none of us are racing this next weekend, so we'll be heavy on the questions next week. We're just going to smash some questions next week. Yep. Actually, what we're doing, Eric, we're going to Western States to help Heather Jackson with her race. That's cool.

Dubea cool. If anyone knows at Western States, we'll talk more about that next week. So cliffhanger. Cliffhanger. We're on the team. We're in. Love it. Bye guys.

Later.