That Triathlon Life Podcast - Paula is Canadian National Champion for the TT, Eric and Nick race, easy runs, what peak fitness feels like, and more!

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Everybody raced this past week, so Paula spends a little time talking about her TT Canadian national championship win, Eric talks about his epic mountain bike race, and Nick talks about his Sprint Triathlon race in San Diego. We then go onto answering questions about cleaning bottles, moving from sea level to altitude, and much more. If you want to see more about how Paula's race went, go check out the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_JXsstHuAI

Hey everyone, welcome back to you that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. Paula and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a professional musician, amateur triathlet, and just, I think at this point, probably our best friend. What do you mean at this point? I feel like we're way beyond. I don't know. I'm a little insulted, I think. I don't know. There's a point where it's like, yeah, probably, but then, you know, you have like three months or so where we could fire you as friend. We were talking. Not up to mustard. Yeah, without. having to do a lot of paperwork and stuff. I'm glad I wears a badge of honor and it's mutual of course.

Oh, so we're a little bit delayed on this one. We had a heck of a week. It actually started out and bend. Paula flew up to Edmonton to race the Canadian time trial national championships. I drove with Flynn and five or six or seven bikes. I lost count. And Paul had an amazing day. She won. We're going to get to that. But first, we needed to talk about Nick's race that he did, the San Diego International Triathlon, just this, like, what, yesterday? Yeah, wait, why are we talking about my race first? Just, we're not going to, like, go into super detail, but you had a little bit of a thing in the swim that we need to just address for the good of the people.

Okay, so I started, I looked at your Strava, and I started, you know, I ranted a bit to Eric about this, and he's like, wait, save this for the pod. This is a really good thing to start the pod with, because I feel like a lot of people would benefit from this information. Flynn, stop it. Flynn. No. Your paw is fine.

Flynn has been, he has like a bit of a sore on his paw and he's just been licking it nonstop all week. For a week. So I tried putting a sock on, but then he like can't walk and it's so annoying. Poor boy. I FaceTime Eric and the first thing I started doing was ranting about my swim. And he's like, stop. Save it for the freaking pod. He's like our parent.

So you actually had a great race neck. You came seventh overall fourth in your age group. So a really, really good race. But looking at your Strava, since you actually go into great depth describing each leg, which I think is really cool, a cool use of Strava, you were not happy with your swim. However, today you did a swim in the pool, and you said, redemption. Yesterday's race shook my confidence in my swim, and this session, this session restored it. Maybe it was my watch data that was off, or maybe I need to practice more swimming open water, blah, blah.

So the switch, Nicholas, you did not get better at swimming in one day. Right, of course. You are no different today than you are yesterday. I think people, ourselves included, get too attached on a single session, creating this insane roller coaster. You have one race, it's not good, then you're better the next day, then tomorrow you have a bad swim. Yeah, for better or for worse. For better or for worse, yeah. So I just think that, like, putting too much emphasis on one session is not super productive.

However, I am really glad you had a good swim today, and I do think you're probably swimming better than you displayed in your race yesterday. But your comments about maybe you need to practice the wetsuit, maybe you need to do more open water, are super valid because when you're in your comfort zone, swimming in a 25-yard pool in a pool that you know, of course you're going to have better sessions, right? Right. I feel really mean attacking you with this. No, but it's not you. It's everybody. I feel like the stenographer is writing a thousand words per minute here in this courtroom that we are now in all of a sudden. also what Nick

also what Nick and I were discussing right before we actually hit record on this was you cannot trust what your GPS watch says while swimming that's true that too yeah it's kind of fun to like maybe it will get within a couple hundred meters of your like your distance if you're trying to track distance but like going for

what was my minutes per or my pace per hundred yards oh it's very inaccurate and to confirm that when I came back I just drove back from the pool now and I was charging the car and I was looking at the GPS for the swim. And it was pretty consistent until halfway through it dropped down to like 210 per 100, which there's no way I was swimming that slow.

Yeah. So I think, and I looked at the official results, which whatever that means, because the distance is, they just have their distance that they think they stuck to. But that result was, that like timing was in line with what I expected to swim more so. Okay. So, but I think what you said really stands for, and in both directions, right? Not just when you have a bad session, but when you have a really good session and then you just think that's now your new level of fitness. Whereas it's just an outlier.

And, you know, whatever it is, like maybe on your bad session, maybe you didn't realize, but it was really humid and warmer than you usually are training in. So you did get really good work and it was just a little bit harder to go as fast as you usually go or whatever other variable insert here. So I think you're really right. And my swim wasn't that terrible yesterday, and I felt pretty okay, but I do think I need to be better about doing open water swims of the wetsuit. I just hate the whole process, but it's part of it. It's not just you. Same with us.

We were going to go yesterday to swim, but the thought of walking down to the lake, putting on a wetsuit when we're kind of hot is just like enough of a mental block to not even do it. So pick a day out of the week and just make a priority. Yeah, it's just going to be Sunday. I'm just going to do it. I think. Yeah. And I live three blocks from the beach.

Like, it's no big, big deal. I should be able to just do it. You have no excuse. We're like 400 meters from a lake in Cammer. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Okay. So, anyway, we just wanted to get that out there.

Just everybody, just so you know, every workout is not make or break. And also go follow Nick on Strava because it's the best Strava you'll see. Yeah, except for Flynn. I put a lot of effort into. Flynn's Strava is better. I will admit that. But I definitely put a lot of effort into

Every post has a photo And a little something I try to make it I try to keep it light Yeah I think people can learn a lot High commitment From watching it So what should we get into next?

So if you want to know exactly what happened In Paula's National Championship birth You can go watch our YouTube show We actually, I did like kind of a montage With their whole race experience And then she finishes off with like Seven or eight minutes going pretty into detail About what happens.

So Go check that out. I think we can probably put like a link in the description for this, right? In the show notes or something. 100%. Yeah. Just search that triathlon life on YouTube and the latest video. When we decided to do a pod today, I intentionally don't want to go into too much detail about the race because I feel like I've talked about it a lot and posted on Instagram about it. And if you want to see a recap, that's already existing in the internet. I do think what we should do is we can just address the top three questions that have come out of,

all of that content, and that is, are you going to put a big Canadian flag on your kit now that that you're in the national champion? Are you going to go to world championships this year? And are you going to go to the Paris Olympics? Ready to go. Those are also my top three questions. So that works out great. Yeah. I mean, I do feel a little bit bad winning the national championship when I don't really race time trials. So the way cycling culture works is if you win your national championship, you can wear your flag on your team kit for that event for the entire year. So for any UCI time trial I would do this year, I could wear a maple leaf on my team kit. So say you were on a pro team, a pro tour team with a standardized kit,

yours would be a little different. It would have a maple leaf on it, which is super cool. Because I don't race cycling, I'm probably not going to do that. But I took the opportunity away from whoever was second to do that. So I think there's a cool, it's a cool flare to kind of put like a tiny maple leaf on your tri-kit every year, whether you're Canadian national champion or not, just a little like I'm Canadian. I think Lionel does that too. And to be totally honest, I would love to do more T-T's this year. I really just did this as like a first test to see how much I enjoyed it, see how good I was at it. And now I think I could do a bit more research into like, are there accessible UCI-level T-Ts in the U.S. that I could go do throughout the season? And in terms of world championships, I think a lot of the criteria is pretty discretionary. I sort of read through the cycling Canada selection criteria. The world championships are in September and Australia.

Timing is not awesome. It's the same weekend as PTO Dallas. So probably not that. But I do have a lot of interest in seeing what it would look like to get to the Paris Olympics for the TT. I don't know. Cycling, it's a lot of like self-funded traffic. I'm not on a pro team, so I wouldn't be making as much money and not to make this at all about money. I think if you're pursuing the Olympics, that has to be the goal and not like financial goals.

But yeah, I'll look into it a little more. It was only my first TT ever, so I think I have a lot to learn and a lot of improvements to make even from where I performed last weekend. So that's exciting. But in terms of like immediately switching careers and focus, that is not my intention. The Olympics are coming up quick. Like, 2024 is soon. And qualification stuff starts next year as soon as next year. So, yeah, maybe I'll just email Cycling Canada.

To be honest, I don't know if Cycling Canada is like super stoked that I won the race. I'm sure they would have preferred one of their, like, funded national team athletes to win. Because it's just a bit strange and complicated since it's not my primary sport. But anyway, that's enough blabbing about my race. Thank you to everyone who said congrats. I really appreciate the support. It means a lot. I wanted to address the first thing you said, though, which is putting the flag on the kid or not,

and you feel like kind of funny coming in as someone from outside of that specific sport. But I kind of feel like you either don't do it, or if you do it, you race it and you respect it and you treat it as the thing that it was, which is a national championship. because I think when you come into a sport like that and you win kind of decisively the way that you won and then you kind of treat it as like a oh it's not my sport I don't want to be you're trying to be respectful to the other racers

but I think it could actually have the opposite effect where they feel like who's this person who just comes in wins and then doesn't even really you know like someone would kill to wear their the thing is it's a different sport even inside of cycling if you win the time trial you're not wearing that national champion jersey while you're doing the road race

or mountain biking or something it's specific to that event. Yeah so I wouldn't be taking I wouldn't be taking the Canadian jersey TT uniform and wearing it in a triathlon especially not to triathlon. I understand the triathlon part but I thought if you were to do

a road race or whatever you could still wear a flag. I feel like that's a situation where like for the U.S. you would potentially have like just a little arm band of like the American flag or like some people times people do that when they were like the past national champion i don't know all of the rules and do's and don't it's very event specific you wouldn't wear it for the t t or for a road or a crit if you won the nationals in the time trial and vice versa so i'm pretty confident of that

anyway that kind of stinks just because like how often are you wearing your t t exactly that's anytime you do a t t anytime you do right so twice a year like i don't know how often cyclists there's a lot of like different procedures in cycling that I found interesting. Like for example on the podium, they call up first place first and you go up and put the jersey on and then you're on the podium alone getting a photo versus in triathlon. It's like third place comes up, second place, and first place you're all on the podium. But the order is reversed. So you're kind of standing up there solo, putting on the jersey and then like awkwardly getting a photo of you by yourself before they call the other women up. So there's little things like that that were just interesting to learn through the whole

process, which is kind of funny. Wow. Well, it's amazing, Paul. It was so exciting to watch it. I was like FaceTiming with Eric in between your like laps and he's like trying to film and he's like trying to also give me updates. He's like the first lap was good, but she's going even faster the second lap. It was very exciting to watch. Yeah, it was really, really fun. I loved I loved the entire process, start to finish. It was very cool. Except for the rain maybe. Yeah, that. I trained in the rain. That's right. Oh my gosh.

That's right. That's what did it. That's what did it. It was funny. In the vlog, Jordan was like, I think Paula has an advantage because you guys ride in the rain a lot. And Eric was like, uh, actually we only rode in the rain one time and we put it on the blog. Yeah. That's why it was special.

Well, Eric, it seems like you don't really want to talk about this, but you, the next day you race an insane mountain bike race. Oh, I don't mind talking about it. The reason I didn't post anything on Instagram. is there's just literally no pictures or anything that I'm aware of from the race. Like two people there knew who I was and there was like a photographer. So yeah, it was just like a fun thing. So where we're staying in Canmore, we're about a mile from the Nordic Center, which is where all the mountain bike trails are.

And they actually just, they had this 75K mountain bike race on, I guess it would be Saturday, on Saturday morning. And I had to do a long ride and I just figured, well, that sounds like a lot more entertaining than me just kind of by myself. out riding and doing whatever. And it was so hard. Like mountain bike racing is freaking brutal.

You start out with like this, the whole group starts together and everything. You start with just this like 15 or 20 minute climb and everybody's just going as hard as they can because you want to get to the single track first where it's harder to make passes and everything. And I was able to handle that pretty well and got there in fourth place or something.

And then one of the guys had gone on too hard and we all had to try to get around him and then his teammate got up the road. and like three quarters away through the first lap. There's three laps, each one was 25K. I took this terrible wrong turn, which was more my fault than the course's fault, but it's tough when you're descending,

and it's pretty rudy here, and you're trying not to hit a route, and then the trail makes a turn, or it goes straight, and you have to be looking for these little flags. So I missed that and lost about three minutes to the leaders, caught them after that, by the end of the second lap, with just like this huge hero effort on the second lap,

and I was so, so blown, that I immediately made another wrong turn. Terrible. And that was just like the nail in the coffin, the emotional blow, and I just couldn't catch back up to the lead guy. So I ended up finishing in second place, and it was like a four-hour effort,

and I normalized, I think actually, my power meter said, and I, Wahu said that I normalized 260 watts, but that was including my, like, spin over to the start that was 15 or 20 minutes. So it was a really, really big effort, and my back is still sore. like three days later.

Yeah, just for, just for contact. That's what I held for my 33-minute sprint bike leg. You held it for four hours. Yeah. So, I mean, that's normalized, but then my average power was 220. So it's like so completely different than what we do in 70.3 racing. It's more like an ITU race where it's just, it's either like maximum effort and potentially doing like 40 RPM in the saddle or you're like coasting, like bleeding out of your eyes,

trying not to die on this descent, which is, I mean, that's, I almost feel like that's what I have the most respect for mountain bikers with, is that they can max their heart rate so high and then not crash, like getting back down to the bottom of the, of the run. It's kind of funny. I never thought of it, but it's kind of like biathlon, where it's like cross-country skiing, it's like max aerobic effort, and then you have to have the focus and calm of shooting, which is like there's like the total opposite. Mountain biking kind of feels like it could have a little bit of that, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Except in mountain biking, if you mess up, you might go off a cliff instead of a target. If you messed up, you might shoot someone. So I don't know. Yeah, maybe. That'd be pretty extreme.

But yeah, that's really great. That was so cool. Paula was giving me updates during it. And I was like, he's still out there? What is this race? He was giving me updates mid-race. He's like, I just went off turn. I'm like, why are you texting me?

Well, there were a few spots. Well, yeah, there's like a few spots where you're just on a fire road through a meadow, right? and it's four hours, so you're going hard, but also you have to... You can also text someone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I could like real quick. I was actually using voice text,

so I was just like, I got dropped. Just in case there was like something went wrong on the tracker and I didn't show up. I didn't want her to think that I was like eaten by a bear because they're grizzly bears in this zone, bear spray mandatory. Yeah, I saw the photos. A cool feature of Wahoo, though,

is you can actually share with someone your whereabouts during your ride. Like share for the, the next six hours or whatever. So I could click the link and actually watch him on the trail moving or not moving his elapsed time, his kilometers, and his elevation. So I knew he was making forward progress. Yeah.

I was either, my Wahoo was either inside of a bear or I was still. Along with you? I was still moving. Yeah. Right. The bear is making for a summer. Well, that's really cool, Eric. Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you guys.

at the finish line for my race, two people from TTL Nesh came up to me. And they said hi. They were like, one of them, one of them had messaged me on Instagram the day before, and the other one came up and made kind of like a joke. And they both listened to the pod. Wow.

Hi, guys. That's funny. There's this really hilarious guy. I was going to tell the story too. This is super funny. One of the organizers of the PTO, I mentioned Canadian Open and also of the Canadian Cycling Championship.

His name is Corey. He works really closely with my mom. Freaking hilarious person. Like the funniest guy ever. Hysterical. You actually heard his voice on the YouTube thing. Oh, I know who you're talking about. We've been watching a time trial all day.

Paul was like complaining about the rain. And he was like, oh, we know. And he's like, I don't think we can say nash. No. No, we're not doing that. Because somebody came up as we were talking to him. was like T.T.L. Nesh. And he was like, uh-uh. No. Tacking. That's funny. Yeah, he was great. I liked his personality a lot.

Why did we start that story? Oh, because of Nesh. Yeah. He like shut that down. Anyway, well, we won't shut it down. Continuing on. We can keep it up. It's cool. It was really fun. Well, do we want to move on to some questions now? Yeah. Yeah. We haven't done questions in a while. I mean, I feel like we got a backlog. Yeah, we did. And unfortunately, I had to like just pick a few. but I started with kind of like a light one. Hey guys, I won't even try to list your names in an acceptable manner. I thought of two questions.

One, y'all always seem to talk about running on trails as good injury prevention or like in light of getting older. I've been running trails a lot this summer due to the heat and I'm also getting older. And holy ankles, Batman, how exactly is this better for y'all injury slash agewise? And what are your tips for not dying? I think that's going to be. going to be a little bit of a process as your ankle strengthened. But I, I, like, feel really confident if none of us, like, as we got in triathlon, if we just, like, had continued running trails or just running in an erratic manner, you know, other than just like straight down the sidewalk, we would

need so much less, like, ankle stability, you know, PT exercises and stuff like that, if you just kind of continued running on trails in different directions. So I think that's kind of just a byproduct of your ankle muscles and stabilizer as being a little weak. Yeah, I think it takes time to That's the whole point, right? You're getting stronger. I never had issues specifically with ankles, but I remember when I first started trail running, I was just sore in new places.

And now I never have, like, little injuries that come up for me are never from trail running. They're always from running on hard surface. I will say, though, that when we say trail running, in my mind, that's not necessarily running on a super technical, windy, rocky, backcountry trail. That could just be running on literally a gravel

or a dirt path along a river that's completely straight and flat. And that's my kind of dirt running. Like that is a soft surface. But I totally agree that when you're running on very rocky trails, that hurts my ankle a lot more than running on pavement. Because the issue I have constantly with my ankle is like it hurts if it's not landing in a predictable manner. And on a trail that's not the case.

So I think that trail running can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. And a trail for me, the perfect trail is. like not technical. Like a rail is to trail. That's true. You guys run, like the trails you run on like the run we did my intervals on a couple weeks ago. Like that's a nice rolling up and down trail that you could potentially like anyone could

ride a bicycle on. Totally. Versus like single track like the run we did at Smith Rock, which you can go and watch the YouTube video for it from a couple years ago. That you could ride that at a mountain bike, but it's very technical. It's single track. It big jumps up. down, portions where it's probably faster to walk because it's so steep.

You know, that's a different thing. And that's more what I do. And there's probably less of a benefit to your aerobically when you do that. But I do think for me, it's so it's more fun. It's more distracting. It feels like more of adventure. And it strengthens your body in a different kind of way. Maybe a combination of those together could be good for the general person.

Yeah, exactly. If you don't have access to like a rail trail or something that's like that, I feel like you could run around the perimeter of a, of like a soccer complex or something like that. Our coach has had us do that before, just like 45 minutes running the perimeter of a bunch of baseball fields. So you're getting like a nice, predictable surface, not like roll your ankle type of grass.

Yeah, basically soft surface is the key. Cool. And then their second question was, this one's inspired by Nick's music career. What's your number one pump up song for a hard workout? Mine is Timber by Kesha and Pitbull because my dog is named Timber due to only having three legs and he gets hype when he hears it. Aw. That's really cute.

That's a good song. How to Kesha phase. This is for Nick or for all of us? No, it's for all of us. It's just inspired by me. For me, it came to me right away when I saw this. The song, Elevate by St. Lucia is my ultimate pump-up song. Especially if I'm mountain biking, like out in the middle of nature, I just feel like I'm flying.

It's great. Do you guys have one that comes to mine? Mine changes on the daily. I'll find a good song. I'll listen to it all day, and then I'll be sick of it the next day. Right. I say probably like the most epic fight anthem song

that I've heard lately that I listened to on repeat for a little while was I believe we will win by Pitbull. Wow. So you're with Pitbull too. It is so cheesy. It's like a minute and 20 seconds. Maybe that's why my brain went to that. I mean, I've got like three different

playlists that I use when I exercise, so. I'm trying to find, like, the number one song that I listen to. I just can't pull up my, I can't pull up my Spotify right now because we're using the phone. Okay, I'm going to come back to it.

I'm going to come back to this. Okay, that's no problem. And then they finished by saying, thanks again for all you do. Timber, my pup, would be pissed if I did not include that he sends a little howl over to Flynn. That was by Laura Lynn.

Nashville, Tennessee. So, thank you, Laura. Paula, do you have anything? I found the song, yeah. Oh, wow, that was fast. Okay. It's, it's O. dot Y, dot B by The Good Husbands. Okay. My number one listen to song of 2021. Wow. Oh, wow. That's great. Therefore, it must be my number one pump up song, because that's when I mostly listen to music is when I'm training, so. Right. I got my, now. Oh, wow. Okay. It's different. We're changing it. R.I.P. It's that song that I sent you. It's Skeleton by Dan Canvas. Oh yeah. Got it. Yeah, that's a really cool one. I lost my freaking mind listening to that the week before Alcatraz. It's not that. If you're into that kind of thing,

you're into it. If you're not like Paula, you just roll your eyes. Eric texts me like once a month with a new song from the treadmill. And he's just like, songs get me so fired up. I can't wait to race. I'm going to win everything. I'm, ah! I love it. I love it. Eric's very affected by music. as we all are. Well, great. Thanks for that question. Those questions, actually, Laura Lynn. Next question, hey, Paula, Eric, Nick, and Flynn. How do you guys clean your water bottles

slash make sure that they don't have any gunk buildup? A friend I used to run with once got majorly sick to the point of hospitalization and the doc speculated that it could have been because he never sanitized or deep clean the bottles he drank from major buildup of bacteria. That seems crazy, but yeah, could be. So what's the right thing to do here?

And just to be clear, is this just for people who put nutrition in their bottles or even for people who just use water? That's a perfect segue. I was going to say putting nutrition in your bottles definitely makes them dirtier and gunkier. If you're just using a bottle for water, totally fine. And if I'm organized enough, I'll actually have bottles that I just use for water and then bottles that I also use for nutrition because I feel like the bottles with water, if you used them for nutrition, they don't taste good. And I also have a super weird thing where I don't like sharing bottles with Eric because I feel like the nutrition he puts in his bottles tastes weird and makes my bottles taste weird. Anyway, the way that we clean them, I actually make sure that I put them in the dishwasher because you're right. They do get really gunky and dirty.

And I think a rule of thumb is to just throw out all your bottles once a year and get a new set of bottles because they're not that expensive. they do get really dirty and it's hard to clean them properly. So use the dishwasher and replace them once a year. Also, just get purest bottles from Specialized. They're so good.

They're good, but they still will get dirty. I know, but versus just like a super the cheapest bottle that you could find, it definitely makes a difference in terms of taste and longevity. Like the one that came with your bike from the bike shop, they threw it in for free? That's probably not the best one.

It might be. It might be. But also, Curtis swears by the little, like, scrubby Christmas tree looking stuff, right? That's also good. But I do the same thing. I put mine in the dishwasher. And not that infrequently, pretty often. Even ones that I just do water with, because I'm like, I don't know, like, you think it's just water, but then you, like, you take a gel in and you're like, that is in your mouth and you put your mouth on the nozzle.

and then that, especially that has all these crevices that gun could build up in. You've really spent some time thinking about this on the long run, haven't you? I'm a little grossed out by that stuff for some reason. So am I. Yeah, so am I. And Eric will just leave like four dirty bottles on the counter, and I need to get them out of my sight immediately. So I'm like, these are going in the dishwasher.

Well, I need to edit the vlog immediately. Right. And then, oh, it's something else that Julie from Vancouver said here is that she puts her hydration, bladder in the freezer to prevent bacteria from growing. So the only thing I'll say about that is that maybe that's helpful at slowing down the growth. But keep in mind, there was a period of time where I heard people saying like, oh, I put things in the freezer to kill bacteria.

But freezers do not kill most bacteria. This is what like most labs use to preserve bacteria. So make sure the thing is clean before you put it in the freezer. if you even do that. And then also make sure that there's no leftover moisture because any part of those bite valves, if there's water that expands in there,

you could break part of the valve. I don't know. I feel like keep a dry. Sorry. I just remember looking into this when I was trying to keep my bladder as sanitize as possible. Anyway, not important.

I'm honestly just curious about what people spend more hours training, drinking nutrition out of a bottle do. Thanks again for all the time you invest to connect. with all of us keeping my eyes peeled for the next drop of TTL swag. Julie from Vancouver. Thank you, Julie. Next question. Hey, guys, still loving your podcast every week. Thanks for what you do.

This week, there was a question on the pod about age group pacing for Olympic. Oh, sorry, this is the guy. This isn't a question, but I put this in here because it makes me look good. And I decide what questions go in the pot. So he just basically was saying that my question, I had kind of guessed what a middle of the pack power and middle of the pack pace was. And this person is a middle of the pack age grouper and said that I was spot on with my 195 watts for a 70.3. And they weigh the same as I do. So just goes to show you that Eric and Paula don't know everything, especially when it comes to age groupers. No, I'm just kidding.

But thank you, Joel, for sending that in. No, I did appreciate that confirmation from another. 100% right. We do not have any idea. Yeah. I wish you guys could have seen the looks on their faces when I said 195 watts average for middle of the pack, like male age trooper, they were like, there's no way. Because you guys hold such high power. But for us, that's, like I said, the same power Eric held for four hours in his mountain bike ride is what I held for 30 minutes in my race. And I had the third fastest bike split. So it's like, it's such a big jump

from us to you guys. It seems impossible, but you guys manage it somehow. We just train so much. Yeah. I guess. I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Well, next question is from Gilbert, Ars. I hope I pronounced either one of those, right? Hi, Paula, Eric, and Nick. I'm writing this email from Costa Rica because I wanted to thank Paula and Eric for changing my life. I know most people feel really inspired. It's not funny, Paula. This is emotional. I know most people feel really inspired by you two guys, but literally you changed my life and probably my health. I follow you since your first appearance in Triathlon Terran's podcast, the time you guys were talking about enjoying the journey and not just being constantly worried about results.

And I love the way you approach your training and how to balance life, friends, and Flynn. The question is, if you have advice for those triathletes that constantly push and are breaking their bodies. So every session is kind of like a max effort session. I'll just stop there and let you guys take that because I feel like a lot of people who are new to the sport they think that every session is like you are pushing yourself to your max.

Yeah, I just first want to say we didn't like kind of giggle there because we think that's dumb. It's just like we don't consider ourselves to be like we're not trying to be inspirational. We're just making a video about like kind of what we did this week. So anyway, we're, I don't agree. I do think you.

I do think you. I think you are. I think you are trying to be inspirational, but I don't think there's any part of you that's, I think you're humble enough to think that you're not changing people's lives, right? You're trying to put positive things out into the world of triathlon, and you are. Totally. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, I guess.

I almost feel like for me, it's a bit of a mindset shift. You know, our workout doesn't literally say easy, but I know if I'm really tired and like the next day, for example, I have a hard workout. I just remind myself that I want to have a really good workout tomorrow, and that's what matters. And I can remember times where I went too hard on Monday and had nothing for Tuesday and how mad I wasn't myself. So that's usually what I remember. And then, like, on the Monday when it's easy, I'll just, like, make up a new route on Strava or something and just go, like, literally exploring and bring my camera and just turn it into purely a bike ride and, like, detached from the idea of it being a workout.

Yeah, I think if a lot of people would saw our schedule, that we get every week. It doesn't look that hard on paper. There's only maybe five hard sessions, including the swims, like two really hard swims, two really hard bikes and one hard run for me. Eric might have a little bit more, but the rest is just cruise pace, aerobic pace, or like our fat max, which is kind of a high aerobic level of riding where you're kind of not pushing it. Zone 2. Yeah. So, yeah, hard training all the time is definitely a way to rate. break down your body and get injured. And I think when you see people's YouTube channels like Lionel or the Norwegians completely pushing themselves to the limit, they're only showing a snapshot

of their week in these videos. So they're also doing easy sessions and not all athletes post on Strava, but you do see even like Gustav going on easy runs and going on easy bike rides. And if he posts his watts or his pace, it's all relative. Like for him, his pace that he posts on Strava is his easy pace, although it might be some people's race pace. So relative to our, you know, high intensity effort and levels, we do actually train really easy. Like I have a five minute per K speed maximum pace on my easy runs that my coach prescribes. And for me, that's pretty easy. So yeah, it does definitely fluctuate throughout the week. And like Eric said, if you do your easy, easy, you can do your hard, really hard and really well. And that's what is really important and what

pushes you forward. Do you think there is a benefit? Because it seems like, Eric, you said, you know, if I had a really hard day, then I take it maybe easy the next day so I can work out easy the day after that. And Paula, you're saying, you know, I go easy on some day so I can get a really good workout after that. But do you think there's actually a benefit from, let's say I have an easy run on Wednesday. And on Tuesday, I have a workout and Wednesday comes around. I'm not tired at all. I feel like I could run that hard. Do you think there's a benefit from kind of saying, no, I'm not going to run it hard, even though I kind of want to, and I feel like I could, and I don't think it'll hurt my workout Thursday? Do you think it's still beneficial to say, nope, there's an easy

run on the plan. I'm going to keep it easy even though I feel fine. Yeah, and if that's, yes, to like stick to the plan, and then if after the course of a week or two weeks, like, you feel every time. I feel like I have way too much energy. Like tell your coach and you can make the hard workout harder or like make the workout that's your long ride longer. But you're something that's like truly marked easy or is, you know, just keep it that way.

Take that. This is a trap I fell into at first. I was like, it says easy today, but I feel great. I'm going to go and just put even more quality into my week. And I think in the long run it was not actually helping me at all. Right. that's definitely easier to do in the early season. Like in January, February,

when you're just your total long-term chronic fatigue is very low, but you've got to remind yourself like July, August, September, or out there. Yeah, for me also the hard sessions, it's not just physically digging into your reserves. It's also a mental obstacle to psych yourself up for a hard session, to execute it, to get yourself into that headspace where you can push yourself hard enough to do well at it. And for me, that's more exhausting sometimes

than the actual physical effort. Like if I have six by five minutes hard as you can go, the psych up for it, doing it, getting through it is a drain. So when the next day comes and you have an easy session, even if my body feels physically okay, I welcome the easy session because it's enjoyable. I even think having that easy session the next day helps me perform better the day before when I'm like, I work really hard on this, but then tomorrow

is like it's an easy day and I'm going to, I promise myself I'm actually going to take it easy. Yeah. Yes, yeah, exactly. And we actually, our schedule right now is like a really hard ride Tuesday and then a really hard run Wednesday and then easy Thursday. Because there is some benefit to training under fatigue. Like we're going to run under fatigue in a triathlon. So to save every single hard workout for when you've just had an easy day and you're feeling

fresh is not necessarily beneficial. but if you have a training plan, that should be, that should already be accounted for. Next question is from Noel. Would you guys ever consider hosting a three-day training camp in Bend? We'll be the first in line, a little trail running, a long bike ride, some river swimming, and Nick's commentary all weekend. It sounds magical. Sign me up, get me out of Houston, please, and thanks, Noel.

Yeah, actually, we've spent a bit of time over coffee. with the Corbyn's actually talking about what it would be like to do something like this and have Lindsay sort of design the meal plan and everything and it would be very, very cool. And it's, it's kind of high up on our list of things to do, but also high on the list of things that are very challenging to actually pull off logistically. So I, yeah. It sounds like a really cool post career or like near the end of our career opportunity when we've built this following and this trust in a lot of people who would want to learn from us, and we live in a cool place where we can kind of show that off. So perhaps a more off-season type of activity, like in the fall when

important races are over, or when we're nearing the end of our careers when however long. It's definitely something that we'll do eventually, but not in the near future. Yeah, we would really need someone to step in and organize it. Yeah, that would make it doable. If we had a manager that could basically organize it and we show up to all the sessions and oversee it a little bit. But the logistics like booking accommodation and booking training facilities are not handled by us. I think that would be a full-time thing for at least a month.

Yeah. Every coach that I've talked to that's done that for their coached clients or, you know, coaching group just seems like they're so completely exhausted by it. And, you know, that's their full-time job. Yeah. Well, I would personally absolutely love that. And we could split the group up into it. the fast people and the slow people and I'll be the president of the slow people.

It'd be so fun of all three of us. We'd just, oh, that'd be so good. We could make it like a small group, you know? It could be like eight people only. Yeah, I think that'd be the way to go versus like, 50 or something. We want to like actually be able to take time to talk to everybody and we just need to find a world-class camp organizer.

Maybe we'll get an email from someone after this podcast that's like, I'll organize it for you. I live in Ben and I organize camps for a living. That's right. Perfect. Ideal. That's right. Okay, well, thanks for that question, Noel.

Our next one is from Jen. Hi, TTL, Peeps and Flynn. My Rhodesian Ridgeback would love to play with you. Talking about Flynn, of course. Goes into some cool details about her past, and then says, I look at all the expensive equipment that I have accumulated and I'm gilded back into training and racing

after having, basically, I'll summarize, she had some issues with injury and now can't run anymore. So she does aqua bike, which is swim bike races for people who don't know. Now, she's at the point now where even the aqua bike is becoming difficult for her with her injury. So her question was, can you imagine being able to go to a race just for fun without being competitive? I'm having trouble thinking about the feasibility of this type of involvement in sport. Should all of this fancy equipment factor at all into my decision would love your thoughts.

So basically, she would just be going to say. spectate an event? No, she would be racing, but she wouldn't be pushing herself. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. That's tough. It depends on the event and like the vibe of the event and everything, for sure.

Yeah, you're always going to naturally push yourself a little harder when you're at an event. But if you're not so obsessed or focused on the result that you get there, your training will just be more relaxed and low-key leading into it. maybe not aggravating your injury. So I think it's 100% fine to sign up for an event without having result-oriented goals and just the goal of finishing it with the idea that having that on the schedule will keep you active

and just get you out the door for easy workouts or for whatever you can do that doesn't hurt your injury. It's definitely a good idea, and I think it's the main reason people sign up for events. Not necessarily because they want to go win it. It's because they want to have something that's motivating them to get out the door. So that is 100% fine to go and do it for fun,

not competitively, just get to the finish line. And tons of people do that. Yeah, here's the move. That's most. That's most. Yeah. Yeah, do it with a friend. Find a friend who is ideally 1% slower than you,

and you do it together. You have to both think that the other one is 1% slower. That's the trait. Yeah, and then you're just like, I mean, talk the whole time, whatever it takes. When I think about the best I felt emotionally during my races, it was always during races where I couldn't push myself for whatever reason. I was injured or something else happened.

And I was able to just kind of enjoy the endorphins of the activity and also look around and enjoy the fact that I was at this race with so many other people and so many people worked so hard to get here. I just felt really lucky to be out and doing it. Whereas like, for example, yesterday I was racing and I was racing well for myself. but I was so focused on the effort and trying to squeeze every ounce of performance that the enjoyment came a little bit during it, but mostly after it when I thought, oh, wow, I did it. So I don't think there's any reason that this person shouldn't continue to race as long as they can do so in health. There's so much to enjoy in a race that's not just performing at your best.

You know, getting there, doing the thing, completing it when you know, like a lot of times at the time you're in the middle of the race and most people haven't even woken up. You know, that's something to be proud of. And if you do it with a friend, there's your building community. There's a lot of great stuff about racing. And I don't think having fancy gear should affect this at all, especially if it has to do with your health. Yeah, I agree. Fancy gear is great and it's fun. So it doesn't have to be put to using it at its maximum capacity to make it worth it.

Most of the fanciest spikes in America are sold to people who ride them very slowly. So it's no problem at all. That's true. And then she says, I've been rooting for you both throughout the years and look forward to doing so until you decide to hang it up. Thank you for giving us a glimpse into your world of dedication and excellence. Sincerely, Jen, P.S. Nick, you feel free to go into any damn lane you like. People who stay in their lane are boring. It's talking about the review from last week.

We remember. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Jen. We're going to, we just have a couple more questions here. Next one is from Mike Renfro, from Wheaton, Illinois. I always hear you guys talking about different levels of fit. And would be interested to hear a more in-depth definition of the varying levels of fitness that you have during the duration of the season. And also, how does that specific fitness change from year to year? Thanks so much and looking forward to more content.

Hopefully rep some hashtag TTL Nesh gear. Nesh spelled P-N-A-S-C-H-E. Love it. That's a new one. At any event you guys are at sometime, Mike. I like this. question, and what I think I'd like to hear from you guys is, is it, when you guys talk about different levels of fitness, is it just more or less fit? Or is it, oh, no, there's certain

durations of power that I can hold, but other durations of power are not affected. How is it, does it scale linearly? It's a really hard question because even when I am at my fittest, I don't feel like I am. Like, it's hard to really quantify fitness as a number or a level or whatever. And often it's not until like go and do a race and do really well or win it or have this insane performance, which doesn't often happen, that I realize, wow, I was at my peak fitness at that time. I don't know. What do you think, Eric? Like, naturally you feel like, okay, in the off season, I'm not as fit. It's harder to run. It feels harder to hit these watts. I can't hold them for as long. But it's such a progressive feeling throughout the year that naturally improves as you train more and you're more consistent.

But in terms of a number, it's not really like a quantifiable thing, I don't think. I feel like in terms of types of fitness, if we're going to break it into a couple types of fitness, there's just like in the early season, January, February, March, I go from feeling very not fit to feeling fit. And then sometime around March, like a few weeks before we do our first race, we'll do some very race-specific efforts. And that's when I start to feel quick. quote unquote race fit to where it's like, okay, before I felt like I could go out and do a five-hour ride at like pretty good power, no problem, but it felt like jumping up to that next level of like race power felt really uncomfortable. And then you just like rip the band-aid off,

start doing race intensity efforts or above race intensity. And that's what I start to feel like sharp or race fit. Do you have a physical feeling that changes or are you just saying, are you comparing it to, well, I know this power, these many watts felt this hard, and now the same Watts feel not as hard. Right, yeah, like Watts versus perceived exertion. Right. Yeah. That's mostly what it is.

Yeah. It's a bit of a feeling, too. Like, when I can go out on a run and actually enjoy it and not be hating every second because it's hard, then I know I'm getting fitter. Yeah. Which doesn't, you know, it takes a long time to get to that point. Even now, I'm like, I go running cam or at altitude and it feels really challenging, no matter how slow I'm going. Yeah, which is, again, that's just, that's just effort. That's perceived exertion relative to a measured thing of pace.

Right. I think I noticed it too in terms of recovery sometimes, even within a workout on the intervals. Like just at the pool now, for example, like I would finish these really hard intervals. And I could tell like two months ago I would need so long to catch my breath. And now I'm like ready to go after 15 seconds, you know. That is a good point. And a run and a bike that can still happen to your body. It's like, yeah, okay, what else?

You know, it's like, I got this. No problem. I 100% agree with you. That's a good point. even after the TT on Sunday, I put the maximum amount of effort out for 45 minutes, but within a few minutes I felt completely fine. I could do that again.

So that is a totally a good measure of fitness, is recovery between things. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you for that question. Mike. Hopefully that helped.

Next question is from Julia. Hi, Paula, Eric, Nick, and Flynn. Huge congrats to Paul over Canadian TT national title from this past week. That is huge and so awesome to see Paula's range as not only an incredible triathlete, but also a world-class cyclist. Damn right, Julia. My question for the pod, what recommendations do you have for endurance athletes moving from sea level to altitude full-time?

I know bend is lower altitude, but curious as to whether you two have any recommendations on training volume, training pace adjustments, vitamin supplements, and or other recommendations that you need to consider when training at altitude. And just as a backdrop, they're moving from Boston to Flagstaff. That's crazy. is at sea level. I lived in Boston for five years, by the way, and freaking loved it. But yeah, that's a big jump.

Like people, we know pros who are going to Flagstaff to train specifically to train at altitude. Yes, it's high. It's really high. I would give yourself a lot of time before you start doing, like, harder workouts. Like, it just is a small snapshot when we get to Flagstaff or something of that elevation to start the first week and a half or so. you're just like going out and moving and doing longer aerobic stuff and no high intensity. Yeah, especially flagstaff because it's so high. When we come to Canmore, it's not quite as high as that. And we've been here like four days doing kind of medium intensity and we're going to start hard workouts tomorrow.

But it is important to keep in mind the adjustments that will happen with regards to your power and your pace on the run. And like we are just talking about your recovery time between intervals might be longer when you're up at altitude. and it might remain like that. You might not ever get back to what you would do at sea level. But when you drop down to race, that's when you're elevating your performance. Supplement-wise, I would recommend, again, not a doctor or anything like that, but taking an iron supplement when you're at altitude, that's a pretty common thing for elite athletes to do.

And I would presume also good for anyone who's exercising regularly to do when you're higher up and just... Yeah, your body's trying to create new red blood cells and everything, and it just needs a building box for that. Otherwise, it can start to pull those nutrients out of your bones, right? Which can be... Yeah, yeah. Not great.

Just keep up on your supplement routine. Don't let it slide. I also remember hearing, and I don't know if you guys can confirm this for yourselves, but at altitude compared to sea level, when you do go above threshold and when you do kind of maybe redlined it a little bit too much, the time it takes to get back to a normal level is exponentially worse than at sea level. It's so bad.

Like if you bonk a bit, it's like, oh, that day is over. Like, you're not going to be able to come back from that. I don't know if that's true. And I wasn't going to put this in the podcast. I was just curious what you thought about it. No, you're totally right. That's going whatever threshold means. But like going to a higher level of intensity,

it's going to take a lot longer to recover. You're going to be in that like having and puffing phase a lot longer. So like what we, the type of workouts that we do when we're, when we go to Flagstaff for a month of training, well, our coach will typically start doing a lot more like sprint type stuff. This is at least went back when we did ITU racing instead of doing like four 300s in the pool, we do like 2550s or something on like the minute. So you have a lot of time to recover, but you're still able to hit that race speed occasionally

because otherwise, yeah, I do think it would be living there super long. term, you're just going to kind of have to readjust everything and go, okay, this is my new power aerobic pace. This is my new power race pace. This is my new run pace based off of exertion and everything versus, you know, try to constantly compare to sea level. Yeah. If you're racing 70.3 in Iron Man, I think it's less of a impact on your high, like you don't need to do as much high end stuff. So it's, it's still okay to be training at your 70.3 pace at Alta. Like I did that last year, two years ago before Daytona, we were in Canmore and I was training my 70.3 watts what I thought they were up in Canmore. And then to push that power at sea level in Daytona felt super easy.

So I think it's okay to like train your half my Iron Man watts up at Flagstaff. You're just going to get so much better when you drop down to race. Yeah. Keep in mind, just to be clear, you'll, there's, you're never going to have at the same fitness, you're always going to be not as powerful the higher you go. even if you're, quote, unquote, adapted to the altitude. It's just there's less oxygen, right? But there can be benefits from it. Canmore is kind of an interest in-between altitude. It's not as high as Flagstaff.

Flagstaff is no joke. So I think no matter what, you're going to have to take a little bit of a hit on the power numbers. Yeah, but that's okay. And when you go around racing, you're going to have that as an advantage. Yeah, if there's also, if there's any opportunity to go down to Phoenix to do a workout or two. Sedona, people usually go down. Yeah, do that just to. to get a little bit of the high intensity that you wouldn't get at flag stuff,

it's really common for athletes training high to go low for more oxygen, for their quality. We should talk about that misconception because a lot of people think that they'll go, they'll live at sea level and then go train high for like an hour and then come back down and sleep at sea level. Whereas like ideally I've heard you should do the opposite, which is sleep high, recover high and then train intensely, not low necessarily. But you don't have to go higher. Yeah. There is actually some interesting research that's been done out there about like doing super high intensity bouts of like, you know, 10 by 30 seconds or something with like an altitude mask on.

But it's like been done with football players and stuff and there's been some benefit. Oh, that's really interesting. It's not like an aerobic go up and do a run at 10,000 feet in an altitude chamber. Right. There's so much research about altitude and you'll never find one. Yeah, right. Maybe we shouldn't even put that in, actually. No, no, I think you can.

I just think that you need to keep in mind that anything you read or hear about altitude, including what we're telling you now, needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and every human reacts differently to altitude. Some people do not do well at altitude, and they'll come down and they'll race even worse. So if you're moving there for logistical life reasons, obviously you don't have a choice, but a pro athlete who has experienced with altitude, and maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, will design their year around that. Eric didn't necessarily love training in Flagstaff.

He didn't race well off of it, so we probably won't do that again. That kind of thing. If you have the flexibility, recognize not every athlete's the same. What you hear on Lionel's channel about Flagstaff is not necessarily the same as for you. Yeah, he's, I don't know how he's doing so well at altitude. It's amazing. But, well, I will say moving to Flystaff, that place is so beautiful.

You're going to love it, especially compared to Boston, which I also love. But the nature in Flagstaff is amazing. and now you've got to do rim to rim. That's your new, put that on the list. So thank you for that question, Julia. And she also says, thank you three for sharing your wisdom and adventures with us on the pod.

Well, that's all the questions I picked for us. We all raced since our last pod. We all did well. Eric went off course and still got second somehow. Paul, your national champion for the TT in Canada. I got seventh overall and still somehow didn't podium on my age group. Fastest age group. First second and fourth place were all in my age group. So it was a bummer. It's my first time not getting on the podium at this race for my age group. But I'm still way happier with the seventh overall. I'm very proud of that. Yeah. You're just in a really, really competitive age group right now. Yeah. And more importantly, we know that you are still good at swimming. Yes, that's right. I don't think this swim was nearly as bad as I was afraid it was at the end of the race. And I felt pretty okay during it. I mean, it's still a work in progress. And I'm excited to get better at it.

Today felt good, though. That's good. That's good. Cool. Well, that was fun. It's been a while. So thank you for all your questions. Are we going to try to have another pod for them on Thursday? I don't think that's out of the question. Now that we're in camera, we have all the time in the world. So, Nick, you just tell us when you want to do pod recordings, and we will be available with our amazing setup.

We have a new setup. We have a sound barrier thingy. We've got Nick up. It honestly felt like you were in the room. with us. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Such a pro setup. Good, good.

Okay, cool. Well, thank you guys. And you can send your questions into That Triathlon Lifebrand at gmail.com. And we'll try to get to them. That's it. We'll see you guys on Thursday. See you later. Have a good week.

Bye. Ciao.