That Triathlon Life Podcast - Paula races the PTO US Open triathlon, and the UCI Worlds Time Trial! TT bike positions, and more!

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

This week we start by talking through the PTO US Open where Paula raced and placed 3rd! Not even a week later, she raced in Glasgow, Scotland at UCI Worlds in the time trial. After getting into both of these races, we get to answer some of your questions about digging deep in a race, bike positions changing between triathlon and time trialing, as well as more of your questions! To help support the podcast, as well as submit your own questions for the show, head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.com/podcast

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggestrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldstone. And we are coming to you, well, Paula and I are coming to you from Scotland, Sterling Area. We've just finished up. Paula was doing the UCI TT World Championships and Nick is back home in L.A. Paul and I are both professional triathletes actually, but she's dabbling in time trialing. Nick is our very good friend and professional musician and completely frozen on FaceTime right now. This has been quite a thing to get this to work today, huh? It is, but we are committed to doing this. We're sitting on the floor of actually a member of TTL Nash. Someone reached out and offered that we could stay in their house for a couple days between our,

me departing to go race exeteria Germany and Paula departing to just get to Finland early. But we're sitting on the floor in the bedroom, recording this podcast because that's how much we care. It's a cool spot. He's out kind of in the country and he's got satellite radio, but really, really nice couple. And yeah, it's kind of nice to be in Scotland for a few days post-race to just kind of see it. And we went to the mountain biking event yesterday, which was really cool to see in person and hang out with a specialized guy. guys. And so yeah, the whole experience has been really, really cool. But it's, it's tough because, like, we finish one thing and it's like on to the next all the time. It's like, finish the race,

pack your bike next race. But this gives us a bit of a breather before that happens. So it's been, it's been a good weekend. So Eric, you said Paul is dabbling and time trailing. What does that mean? So time trialing would just be like, you know, the classic racing against the clock, just you on your time trial or your triathlon bike, they're very similar against the clock versus a bunch of other people against the clock. This is Paula's third time trial

ever and it is the world championships. The reason I'm here is because I won the national championship so I got selected for the world championships and it kind of fit well in conjunction with going to Finland for 70.3 worlds so yeah.

But I mean we haven't done a podcast since PTO Milwaukee. Yeah. So we're really behind. That is the setup. That's why we're exactly where we are right now. But, you know, we haven't, Paula also raced in the PTO US Open, which was in Milwaukee,

Wisconsin. That's the last place we were. But between then and now, we haven't had an opportunity where we had Wi-Fi and we're able to record this. Also two very different time zones. Yeah. We have about an hour in our evening and Nick's morning where it actually overlaps. and Nick obviously has a semi-real job being a musician and recording.

Semi-real, yeah, semi-real. It's not like you're just waiting around all day for us to call and do podcasts. But yeah, so Paula, you obviously, you, let's talk about, first things first, this is a triathlon podcast, and you did a very big triathlon. The U.S. Open in Milwaukee. Last year, it was not in Milwaukee. It was in Texas, and it was extremely hot, and there was a lot of concern about it being really hot in Milwaukee,

but it wasn't too hot, right? Was that one of the concerns or anything that was that even like a dynamic that affected the race? Do you feel like? I don't think it affected the race, but it definitely affected my prep for it. Like I was ready for it to be hot and humid. And it was a late start. It started at 4 p.m. So we were kind of running around dusk or, you know, nighttime race.

So that helped with the hot humidity that could have happened if it was earlier in the day. But regardless, I did some heat and humidity training for it. And I think the fact that it wasn't hot definitely played to my advantage because I prefer racing in cooler temps. But yeah, it kind of ended up being the perfect day weatherwise. It was a little windy, but it was not hot, not cold and kind of cool to race as the sun is setting. And then by the time we're doing the podium, like, it's dark out. So it was pretty cool. Yeah, I feel like the actual point where you were running might have been one of the coolest parts of the day.

Because the sun had almost completely gone down. There were enough buildings that the sun was hiding behind. hiding behind. Yeah. The humidity might have been the only thing to really, you know, take note of. Yeah. Versus where we're from and Bend is kind of like desert and very dry. Yeah. I ended up finishing third, which is really cool. I'll go over the race a little bit because I know everyone here likes race recaps, but you can really never take for granted finishing on the podium at these events because there is a lot of money and there's a lot of incentive to go. So a lot of people show up and really competitive start lists, you know, any of 10 people probably,

could have podiumed and I had a good day. And it wasn't like a fantastic out of this world day. It was just like consistent and good. And I raced smart in a way that I could turn around and race four days later in the TT. So I'm happy with how I performed and the lead up to it and everything was as smooth as it could have been. I actually felt like I was getting sick three days before the PTO race and scratchy throat, constant sneezing, sniffles. Like it felt like the beginning. of a head cold and took the three days before the race super easy, like didn't do any intervals, didn't do any pickups, just was like stay healthy, not only for PTORs, but for like everything else that's upcoming for me.

Right. So woke up on race morning and felt like just awful, but we went for coffee and I took Claritin in case this was an allergy thing and took a bunch of Tylenol and felt fine by the race time, but clearly wasn't in like 100% perfect health. Yeah, I don't want to just keep talking nonstop No, I mean, the only thing that I was going to say about that is like It didn't, it felt like a little bit of a relieving of pressure And this thing turned out to not really be just allergies, unfortunately.

She carried it all the way through to the time trial. But I just was going to remark that it was kind of, at that point, you're just like so busy trying to get healthy and rest and everything. I feel like it's sometimes that can relieve a little bit of pressure. From the race. From the race itself. Yeah. Expectations you're like, oh my gosh.

Like, can I even start? Oh, right. Like, can I get through this versus I want to win? And then you get started. And if you don't feel like absolute death, it can actually come as a little bit of, oh, well, that's positive. This is better than I was expecting already. Yeah. Do you feel like when you started racing that that feeling of sickness was just gone?

It was replaced by the feeling of effort? Yeah, because at the PTO race, I'd convinced myself it was. allergies. So it's a bunch of like allergy medication. And I checked everything like triple checked it on this website online where you can make sure that every supplement you take is cleared. But yeah, it was at that point not top of mind for me. It was just like going through the race motions. But post race got really sick. Like the flight over. Real crashed. Yeah, like a huge sore throat, super fatigue, the TT coming up in two days. And I'm not lying, I could barely get out of bed.

I was like, it was combined with jet leg, but that was true sickness. So whatever, the, obviously racing a four-hour triathlon really hard and the stress of travel doesn't really lend itself to recovering from an illness quickly. But I did everything I could when I got to Scotland to just kind of rest and ride the course. and I couldn't fully just stay in bed for two days because I really needed to preview the course and kind of learn the corners and everything. So I don't know.

I didn't really talk about it on social media because I tried to just focus on my goal of getting better. Pretend like it wasn't real. Not in a way, but also just like what's that going to do. It was more just like, let's focus on what I have to do to get healthy. So yeah, I don't know if we want to rewind all the way back to the PTO race and go through it. Let's do it.

The Australian exit had this like long kind of run between the two swims, which was kind of interesting. Did any of that plan to the dynamics? Or do you feel like you just kind of swam your swim? Yeah, I had a decently good swim and found myself in good position without fighting. Hold on. Can we back up to the pontoon picking? Because that is a big part of the PTO racing.

And they do it just like ITU racing where there's this, all this strategy about like, number one picks where they start on the pontoon. And the number two picks after that and number three picks. And Paula was number two. So she had to be like totally guess. She didn't know where anybody was starting except for Ashley was number one. Yeah, Ashley picked far right. So I picked right next to her because I thought hopefully Taylor will pick next to me and it'll just be like all the fast people on the right.

Right. And that kind of ended up happening. So the advantage of that is you just get on fast feet and you get the momentum of kind of the front of the race right away. So that happened to me. And it was really, really a clean start. And at that point, I was just kind of trying to stay on feet. I knew I was on Ashley's feet. And I think, if anything, this little sickness or whatever I had going on before really,

it made me lose kind of the pep and the urgency and the, you know, getting out of the water after the first lap and sprinting the Australian exit. I didn't feel like doing that. So I lost, like, I got a pretty big gap on that part. So for people who don't understand the Australian exit, basically, you get out of the water. and then they ran almost 200 meters along the beach essentially and then dive back into the water where they started. So you can legitimately lose 10 or 15 seconds

if you get out of the water and somebody is really excited to sprint that versus you're just like, okay, I'm getting back in the water in a minute and taking your time. And it's not just the PTO thing, right? Like this can happen in a local Olympic race too. Then it's just the swim is half as long twice through with a little exit in the middle.

So it can happen at your local races too. Yeah, it happens a lot of the time. Very rare that it's this long, but it's cool for TV to be able to see everyone running out, and I think that's part of the reason they do it, and get good time gaps. But I knew that that front group was kind of like my ticket to a good swim. So even though I got gapped on that run, I just put my head down and sprinted pretty hard to catch up on the second lap. It was not, I was concerned. When she dove back in and it was a body length and a half to Ashley,

And in front of Ashley, I don't know who was in front of that. Maybe Ellie was in front. Holly and Ellie. Yeah. It's like, this is not good. If she does not really get going. But I could watch the whole process. It took about 150 meters for her to finally catch back on.

But I've been in that position, especially in ITU races with crazy fast swimmers where they're right there. They're right there. And it's just like being in a bike race and you're off the back of the group. It's like right there. You just can't close it. And that ends up being the thing that makes the race. I think the thing about our swim train. and this could be like a good tip for age group athletes too that are listening to this.

We do so much volume and solid swimming in the pool. Like just repetitive nature, 150s, 200's hard. And so to me, after only swimming a thousand hard on the first lap, I didn't feel gassed or out of breath. Like I felt like I could dive in on the second lap and really go hard for 200 meters without worrying because that's the kind of thing we train for. So when I had clean water diving in for the second lap, I felt like that was almost an easier time to bridge a gap and get into a rhythm and sprint hard versus when you're diving in with everyone and getting kind of hit around and it's really wavy. So I wasn't too worried. And I know that if a gap does happen, the swim is relatively short compared to the bike and there's lots of time in the race to catch up. But yeah, I got out in good spot. and was kind of with a train of people,

maybe like a minute behind Taylor Nib at the start of the bike, and it was Holly, Ellie, Ashley Gentle, Indy, maybe that little group. The nature of the course was that it was a straight out, a U-turn, and a straight back. So extremely hard to shake people. And I tried several times too.

At the far end, there was a slight hill. What was that maybe like 800 meters of 2%? and then you do a U-turn kind of. But it was, I mean, that was the only notable thing. I mean, it was a hill and then immediately U-turned so it all bunched back together at the U-turn. And it's a little bit why Yon could kind of stay with those guys because he's so good at turning and U-turns and technical nature stuff

that any time he possibly got a bit of a gap, he could bridge it back up at that point. So it made it really hard to create any separation. And the point where when I got to the front of the group and I was riding really hard and really well, the gap to Taylor Nib was not opening up, but then someone would come around me and I'd have to like sit up and urge on the brakes and the gap would grow again. So it's really not clean or not efficient riding in a big pack like that. For that reason, I wanted to get away. But seriously

riding like 280, 300 watts for five minutes at a time, couldn't string it out. So yeah, I don't know. I finally kind of surrendered to being in that group and thought I should probably rest my legs a little bit because it was going to come down to a running race. And yeah, I can't just keep drilling at the front with no success. But Lucy Byram, she's a young athlete, came around with two laps to go and for sure thought it was just going to be a few minutes of surge. And I went with her and she literally did not let off the gas. Like I could barely hang on to behind her 20 meters back. Like the race ranger has a red light blinking if you're within 20 meters and that means you need to get out of it. And then a yellow light between 20 and 22 and then a blue light 22 to 25.

And I couldn't even keep her yellow or her blue lights on. Like I was more than 25 meters back riding 280 watts or more. She's so strong on the bike. It was crazy and no one else could go with her. So we did create a gap at that point. and it honestly was all thanks to her kind of making that move. And yeah, we had about 45 or a minute into transition on everyone else. So that really set me up well for the run.

Right. That made the difference. I came out with just her. Yeah, it truly made the difference. And I'm really grateful for her taking that risk. I think she's been a bit injured on the run. So I passed her fairly quickly after transition. And then was just in second, knew Ashley was probably going to catch me,

but was kind of just trying to hang on for third. And people kept giving me gaps to Taylor and gaps to Ashley. And I'm like, just tell me gaps to who's in third. And I make sure I don't get caught. Yeah. Yeah. The thing was, like, immediately, she's, like, screaming at me. And Brad Williams from Precision was there as well.

And she's like, what's the gap behind me? What's the gap behind me? And, like, I stood here for, like, three minutes and nobody came by. And so I had to, like, go find you to tell you. But I couldn't, I can't just wait here for, So, you know, it's like giving a gap to somebody that's that far back. But still, Paula was completely unconvinced that we had that right and kept asking for what's behind us.

And who was it was? Mark Matthews? Mark Matthews. I saw him, like, on the second and last lap. And I could kind of hear him yelling at Paula from across the field as I was trying to catch up to her to give her this time gap to three minutes or whatever to Holly. And I heard him just screaming it back at Paula. And I got over to him.

I was like, please tell me that you told her that she's got plenty of time. He's like, oh my God, dude, she's got miles. I don't know what to. Well, I didn't feel great. I think, like, this impending sickness was definitely impacting me. I wanted it to be over. I was in cruise control, but I was like, I just want to hold on to third, but I was worried that, like, the girls behind me would be in a race themselves amongst themselves.

Which they were. Yeah. And they have that extra motivation to run hard, whereas I was just like kind of. trying to hold that gap and not go too hard doing it. I was in no way trying to like pick up the pace to catch Taylor or anything. I was kind of just in damage control mode and happy with third. You probably weren't going to catch Ashley, right? Like that's hard. And those two were running like at times very similar paces. So I think trying to do that could have sabotaged the race even more. I think it was smart racing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean a lot of this also comes down.

to PTO points and the faster you race, the more points you get. But being third is is great. The prize money is good. The drop off to fourth is really a lot. So it goes like 100K for first, 50 for second, 35 for third, 15 for fourth. Yeah, less than half. And I think your your attitude would have been slightly different if you didn't have the time trial four days and a continent away. Yeah. Knowing all the upcoming things, I kind of shut it down the last 6K. So yeah, I was Really happy to be third, pretty relieved, had this mindset as soon as I crossed the line of like, I need to recover for the next race. Yeah, of course. It's not like an off season now.

So did doping control as quick as I could and got to bed. And yeah. And at that point, it was all about focusing for the next big race. It was hard to imagine I was going to be in Scotland three days later racing a world championship. Yeah. Yeah, I just had to kind of switch mindsets immediately. In a different sport. Yeah.

It takes away a little bit of the. enjoyment of like a decent result, but that's okay. I knew this month would be like this. That's the life of Paula Finley. We're just going to bottle up all the post race excitements for when we get back to bend in September. A huge relief. It'll be a huge relief.

During each sport, did you have a moment of, okay, however sick I may or may not be, this is working right now? Or did five minutes into the swim, you're like, okay, the sickness is not going to be a factor. Like, it's just, where did that happen? You didn't think about it. I didn't think about it. No, I couldn't. You just can't.

Like, unless you're actually really, really not feeling well, it's not. You just have to forget about it. Yeah, the same thing happened in the time trial. I was way sicker leading into that. And while I was racing the TT, didn't think about it. You have to think about other things. Otherwise, it's not positive, not constructive. And what did Powell your coach think of this?

Like, you were talking to me about this little bit. he thinks that if you weren't feeling like under the weather, you could have put out a little more power. Do you feel like that's true? Definitely, yeah. Even in the TT. In either. In both. Yeah. I don't know if the PTO race would have played out much differently, but for sure the TT, I think. Okay, so anyway, so you get third, you kind of pretend to celebrate because you know you have this other thing coming up and you guys get on a plane, fly over to Scotland, and now you're trying to do that. So you've pre-ridden the course. You kind of have an idea. First of all, do you feel like pre-writing the course was actually helpful on that course? In Glasgow?

Because it's like a wild course and like ends with an uphill climb on like cobbles. Oh my God. We needed to do more. If I could go back in time, I would have, I mean, it's hard to say this because I had a good race in Milwaukee, but I would skip Milwaukee. I'd go a week out and I'd ride it 20 times. Like it was really, really a detriment to not know it like with my eyes closed. I wrote it twice before the race, but I was really, really not feeling well. It was like that kind of sickness where it like hurts to breathe when your throat hurts. You know, it stings. Oh, yeah.

The only time I got my heart right up, I was like just scared that I was making it worse. But I had to ride the course because I had to know it. Like it was just this awful, awful negative feeling. And to put another thing into it, my bags didn't arrive, just my bike arrived. So I had like, no clothing. Yeah, we were trying to track it. And we have air tags so I could track the bag, but it was not moving in Chicago, like sitting in the same place for three days. So I reached out on Instagram to like the world.

Does anyone know? Can anyone help me? I reached out on LinkedIn to a British Airways employee who works at Chicago Airport. She was amazing. She got back to me. She like personally went and found it and put it on the next American Airlines flight, which is in a different terminal because I told her it was super urgent. So if it weren't for her, it would maybe still be in Chicago. But I mean, it's just, you feel helpless in that case, you know?

Yeah. I was just sitting there and I had everything I needed to do the race. I had my helmet, I had my shoes and I had a kit from Canada and I had my bike. But at a certain point, it's nice to have like socks and a training kit, like, you know, a shirt, all these things. A jacket because it's pouring rain here in Glasgow. She just wore her national TT kit all week long going to coffee shops, going to dinner. I did. Well, they gave me like a sweater. I have a team Canada like, you know, outfit.

So I just wore that for four days. And if anything this taught me that I packed too much. Because I was okay. Right, right, right. I would have been nice to have a few more things. I didn't need as much as I packed. Need is a fluid term. Yeah, I love it.

That's so funny. So actually, this is, I think, a kind of a cool lesson to impart on the listeners. Did you, so how come you didn't put your helmet and your cycling stuff in your suitcase? In my carry-on? No. Like, okay, what I'm trying to get out here is like some pros when they travel, they're like, I bring my running shoes and certain, like, key things that I need to race, I bring it on my carry-on just in case my bags get lost. Was that part of your thought process here? So that what, when what inevitably?

That wasn't an accident, was it? Oh yeah, it was not an accident. That's what I'm trying to get out. Because I was trying to think, like, okay, what are the things that are irreplaceable here? Right, exactly. Or, like, very difficult to dial in a new pair of shoes, that kind of thing. So I brought my cycling shoes. I carry my on race shoes in my carry-on because they're very special.

And I have my race kit. So, like, things that in a pinch, it'd be really tough to replace. That's, yeah, I think that's a good tip for everyone. And then I always carry on my TT helmet because it's just a bit fragile and I don't want to check it. So yeah, I had everything I had needed to. It's more difficult than triathlon because you need so much shit. But for the TT, it was like fairly limited gear. So really lucky that my bike made it.

That would have sucked. Yeah. I think a big, I don't know, an anecdotal thing just to, again, in part right now is that this is not at all uncommon. Lots and lots of people are missing bags. They didn't even load her bag onto the plane in Chicago. This didn't get lost in a transfer. This is just, I think they're still understaffed, overbooking planes. So the more opportunity that you have to go to a race that's important earlier to give this a chance to sort itself out, the better.

Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. Didn't you almost not get on the flight because it was overbooked? Eric. That was me. Yeah. And I was, and I had a premium economy fair. wasn't like I booked the last seat on the plane.

Oh my God. The thing that was nuts is that when we boarded in, so we had a layover in Heathrow. And when we boarded in Chicago, the gate agent was like, oh, you don't have a seat yet on your flight from Heathrow to Glasgow. I'm like, that sounds really strange, but is that going to be okay? He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, you'll, they'll just give you a seat at the gate on the, uh, in Heathrow. Talk to the people in Heathrow. I'm like, okay. And then I get to Heathrow.

And we talk to like the first person at the gate that we see. He still have a couple hours for our flight and tell them the story. And they just like looked at the person next to them, snickered. And we're like, that's not how it works. There's no way you're getting a seat. Oh, my God. Like, yeah. Like, well, I mean, okay, we shouldn't say that.

Let me look in the system. But every person I talked to just thought it was comical that the people at O'Hare in Chicago thought that I would be. be getting a seat on the plane later because this is, it was 20 people overbooked. Yeah. So. Oh my gosh. Flying is stressful. It was a miracle that I got on.

Okay. So the last thing about the travel, though, is what, did you guys get to O'Hare like 45 minutes before the flight or anything like that? No, like four hours. Yeah. So there was really nothing in your control that could have gotten that back on that flight. And I was flying business, so I had priority tickets. Priority little thingies on my flight on my bed.

So British Airways. even a business class ticket does not mean that you're, and you're there plenty on time. You're just rolling the dice, man. Roll in the dice, man. Roll in the dice, man. All I could say is like, I hate air tags, but I love air tags.

I'm glad I had one. Like, I was being such a freaking psychopath about all this, because, like, I looked at every flight that was leaving Chicago to go to Heathrow at the timing, and I would, like, count down the times and look at my bag, and it hadn't moved, and the flight takes off my bag still in Chicago. So I knew it.

versus if you don't have an air tag, you're like, oh, it's probably on route. It's got to be. British Airways doesn't do that nice thing. Is it United that gives you a tax? Your bag has been checked. Your bag has been on the airplane. Your bag has survived. Anyway, Eric went to the airport to pick it up and got to the hotel five minutes before

I had to leave for the TT. So I got like, I got a fresh sports bra. I got fresh socks because I've been wearing the same socks for three days. I got my gels that I needed, like my own nutrition. Even though I will say this is another cool part about the TT luggage aside was team Canada and like all the support you get around that. They had three professional mechanics, swung years, chiropractor, doctor, physio, you know, team coach, all the buses, follow car radio.

It was a really cool atmosphere to be in and just felt like everything was taken care of. Like, I just rolled my bike over and it was cleaner and more dialed than it's ever been. The mechanics are so, so good and they work for pro teams. So full trust in them. And, yeah, by the time I got to the start line, I had no doubt that, like, my equipment and my body and everything I could have done to be prepared was super dialed because of the team around me. And that's something in triathlon that we don't really get to experience because we're doing it all on our own. We're privateers. They're privateers.

They're privateers. They're Kate's that word. We don't have a team bus. We don't have a team. I mean, I have Eric, but Eric's busy too and doing a million other things. So it's for that reason, it's a big part of the reason that I want to need more of these. I just loved that whole environment and being part of the team. It's not just like, yeah, we show up and we try to do well at triathlons.

It's like, no, it's a team effort. There's buses. There's all these other professionals that their job is to make sure you race as well as possible. Yeah. And you made a big deal about this when you were talking to me about how big of a difference it is compared to even the highest level of triathlon. Yes. Like there's people, I got to the venue. My bike was already on the trainer ready to go.

And I get off the bike from my warm up, wheels on. They don't let me ride it over the gravel. They're carrying it for me. It's like you feel like you're a world champion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like.

Well, you're a national champion. So close enough. I think it's good that you brought that up because it is actually I'm curious if you know depending on how much of this you do in the future where like this begins and ends because this is not the way the Canadian TT champs

was and we were right not really expecting this but it was something to see. We didn't know what to expect yeah I didn't know to what extent Eric could be around turns out not at all because he wasn't like accredited with the UCI and all that Oh I see I didn't necessarily need him because of

all the support around, but obviously emotionally, it's nice to have a little. That's not true. I went to the hardware store at the last minute to get new bolts for your bars because the mechanics thought that your bike was not UCI compliant. Turns out it was. Yeah, they didn't have time to do that. And I got your, I spent two hours driving to the airport and back to get your bag. I don't think they were going to do that. Yeah, Eric, you did help a lot. That's not the point. I'm just saying. I wasn't just sitting there looking. So Paula, compare the feeling of racing. a triathlon three and a half four hours, four and a half hours, whatever it is, compared to doing that TT.

Like, obviously, there might be a point in that, that you're going way harder than any point in a triathlon. It's like, it's so rare to this far into my career be able to do something that's so new and see these things that I could get better at fairly easily. I mean, not easily, but it's not like a fitness ceiling. It's more like a technical and bike setup and experience thing. So it was really fun. Like being able to go out the start gate and it's just you and yourself and your bike and there's no one around you.

You're not worried about drafting. You're not worried about other people. I had the head coach in my ear piece, which I really liked. It was super comforting to have someone like giving me splits and I could look down and he'd tell me when the corners were. And if I could ride through them or needed to sit up and encouragement along the way, that whole thing. it really made a bigger difference than I thought. It was the first time I've ever had like an earpiece in and a follow car and all of that. But there's like this weird, peaceful thing about going as hard as you can all by yourself

and not worrying about anything except just going hard. And in triathlon, it's not like that. There's so many people around and thinking about drafting and thinking about tactics and thinking about the half marathon, you have to run off the bike. And it's stressful. It's like, I don't know, I'm good at it, and it's my job, and it's something I've done forever.

But I don't love it. Like, I did not love any part of the PTO race, but this whole T.T. And the T.T. hurts, too. I mean, I would argue it hurts even more because you're really, really emptying your tank and you have to finish with nothing left. But it's a new feeling to me a little bit.

It's, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know how to describe it, but I really liked it. My power was really good. I actually rode well, but I think, like I talked about on Instagram and stuff, where I could see myself losing time with sitting up on corners where I maybe could have stayed arrow and, you know, accelerating out of those corners better, those types of things. Just being more arrow overall on my bike, stuff like that. What kind of words of, like, what kind of things was the follow car telling you? Like, how much was it?

Like, you can do this. I'm just curious about how motivational they were versus informational. Kind of half and half. Like, more motivational in the second half. Like, the last 10K really hurts and carry the speed over the hill and push on the downhill. And 200 meters, there's a slight turn, but you can stay arrow. Stay left on this because it's more direct. Like, they'd ridden the course a lot and driven it for the U23 men.

So he was super familiar with it. had a whole call sheet for the men. So it was, it was helpful to be able to put your head down and have like a count down to the corners. Like 1K to the corner, 500 to the corner, 200 meters to the corner. And then cues to get back arrow as quick as possible after the corner. So I don't know. It was just, it was fun.

Maybe it was like novel and that's why it was so cool. Yeah. Oh. But that's, that's, I mean, that's not to be discounted. I think the novelty of the things does make them kind of easier to take on. Do you feel like your head position was different because you had someone in your ear telling you what was going on in front of you? Like in my in my mind it was I was looking down and not looking up the road But I know if you saw a picture it might be like a minor minor difference there's there's a lot of work I could do to

Improve that part of of my fit Eric do you feel like you noticed the difference in her racing the PTO race versus the time trial like like mood emotionally excitement-wise. It's hard because she was also very sick, but... Exactly. Yeah. But I think the thing that's very noticeable and obvious to me is just her attitude afterwards. And, like, if I had gotten third place at the PTO race, I'd have been losing my mind, so

excited, we'd still be partying. Right. But for her to come away from that and kind of just be like, me, I hope I don't, like, I really don't want to do another one. Worlds can't be far enough away. and then, but to finish the TT and we're like, how do people get more arrow? Do we need to go to like the wind tunnel again?

Or do we need to go on a velodrome? And like, what if we do this? What if we get these shorter arrow bars? What if like, when's the next TT? What can you get into Pan Am games? Like, you know, like that's not, we weren't doing that after the PETO Mill Wockey race. Yeah, I'm not like, how can I beat Taylor Nib? Do I need to?

Yeah. Right. But after this, I'm like, how can I get in the top 10? And what are the little things I could do that are within reach of my capabilities to do better at this and that's something i haven't felt in a long time after finishing a triathlon no matter the result so yeah it it sort of occurred to me while we were driving because i just i spent so much time thinking about it just noticing how she was acting after the race and everything and it just occurred to me that the way that 70.3 and pto races are now that there's there doesn't feel like there's any sort of

tactics to it it doesn't feel like there's a lot of question mark It's kind of just you dive off of the pontoon and you're in the red and or just below the red. And you're just holding it as long as you can. It's not like when we did ITU where maybe I'm going to try this and like I'm going to go back to my training and work on my start speed or, you know, it kind of just feels like who can go the hardest. For four hours. Period. For four hours. So I think, you know, we talked about it.

It's like, well, what if this time trial that she did the UCI time trial was four hours long? I think that would be similarly daunting and terrible to think about versus 40 minutes. It seems kind of simple. There's technical stuff that she can work on and everything. But the sheer enormity of the task of going that as close to your red line as possible for that long is tough. And we've done it so many times that we have that burned into our memory, what that feels like, you know, the good times and the bad times. How does this happen? How do we go from I want to race this triathlon to?

I'm putting myself in like extreme discomfort for four hours. Like no magical being came down from the skies and told us we had to erase this. We all do this because we created it for ourselves. What about the human brain do you think makes this happen? Well, I think, I mean, in a similar way that the time trial presents this challenge of trying to figure out the technical aspects for Paula. You know, when you first get into triathlon, it's got the same thing. There's a whole bunch of question marks about do I use elastic laces, which elastic laces? laces, do I need a wetsuit, which wetsuit, how do I get it off quickly, all of these things.

But we've been doing it long enough, like, those questions aren't really there, or at least not as acutely. And, I don't know, the opportunities for improvement are fewer and far between. And I think there are people who can still really, really get into that. But I don't know. That's just, it's funny. It's funny you say that because I wonder how much of that is, if you're not, you know, is just our perception of it because then you take someone like Jan who is the most experienced

person on that start list, men or women's, and he still forgot to take off his swimskin before he got onto the bike. You know, like these things still kind of slip through the crack sometimes. And it didn't matter. It did not. That's gone. That's for me anyway, like I'm not trying to quit triathlon and I think I'm a little more optimistic about it than Paula is, albeit less, have less ability to do well at TTO races, but you see that, and you're like, okay, so it really still just matters your engine. It doesn't matter, like, it doesn't matter how good I am at cornering. Like, maybe one percent of the time, it'll matter just a little bit, but still.

Well, that's the opposite of Lionel's video that he just put out, because he's like, my engine is great, but my efficiency sucks and everything about my. He just has like, he has all these inefficiencies, right, that he's hemorrhaging time from. That's not a, that's like, you could, that's, is different to me than like a technique thing, like jumping on the bike well or cornering well. Like Lionel, Lionel's talking about his transmission of, like if we're making this analogy with a car,

yes, he has an incredible engine, but his transmission is leaking power. It needs work, whatever. It's not like if Lionel goes out and just, you know, practice his cornering, it's going to fix it. Or his run, if he just does a couple run drills, like it's a pretty fundamental rewiring, whatever.

It's just not the same as going to the wind tunnel and trying to figure out how to tuck your head better. Yeah. So we are, anyway, that's kind of the Glasgow wrap up. It was a really cool experience. We are kind of both parting ways tomorrow. Eric's going to race Exeterra, Germany, and I'm heading straight to Lati to ride the course and just kind of settle somewhere for two weeks and not be on the go.

So I'm looking forward to that. And World Championships in two weeks for triathlon. It's been funny from a training perspective to get ready for the TT because I didn't run. I didn't really swim leading into it. And now I'm trying to shift back my mindset to swim bike run training. So kind of all over the place. But I think once I get to Lottie, it'll be better. And Eric's actually gotten in some decent training surrounding all this mayhem.

So I'm thinking he's better than he thinks he is. I'm definitely fresh. I feel like he surprises himself often with this kind of stuff, though. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't been able to swim very much. but after talking some people about how the Exeterra-Germany course goes, the swim is really not a factor, so I'm not that stressed.

Is it a river swim? No, it's a lake swim, but apparently you ride on, like, road and gravel road pretty flat for like 6 or 7K before you hit a climb. And if you're with a group, you're just going to be way, way faster. Oh, I see. So if you're by yourself out in front, you're just going to get caught anyway, and you're working real hard to try to keep them away. That's the gist. And then you just do some crazy bonkers long.

climb it's a single loop so it'll just come down to climbing ability and then how well you can run off of that wait i have quite paula so eric and i were talking about this eric was saying how he kind of went from like supporting you mode and to like trying to get back into training and like that switching that mental switch from from kind of support to training i wonder if you have that same thing from triathlon to t-tying and now you're like wow now i need to go back to swimming and running and it feels like a almost like a big travel or something where you have to switch your brain. Do you feel like that at all? Or was it easy to go from like, okay, nope, now I'm swimming and running again? No, I mean, the thing that made it, makes it easy is that I did have an

international travel and sickness and post-race week, all wrapped up into one. So I just kind of treated the last week like, yeah, I had to prep for this big race. But there were also a lot of factors where if I wasn't racing the T.T, I would have taken this week really easy because of my travel and my health. So yeah, now it's not too hard now that I'm feeling better to kind of get back into my normal routine. Do you feel like this was like maybe the worst or second worst month in your life that you could have gotten sick? The worst. Not in my life. Of the year, yes. Well, of course of the year, but I'm thinking like other than maybe the Olympics, like can you think of a worse time for you to have gotten sick? Like you have three huge races coming up and

you made it through like you did it. But it was, I added a lot of complications. Yeah. I think the, I mean, the silver lining here is I'll be healthy for 70.3 worlds. Yeah. So that's good. And I was, it kind of stayed above my chest. I never really got any kind of like lung congestion or cough. So that's really good in terms of just recovering from it and being able to train fairly quickly again. So yeah, it was bad timing. But what can you do? I don't know. Well, if you guys are down for it, we do have a couple questions, and they're mostly related to what was going on, but I think they're kind of interesting. Yeah, let's do a couple. Let's do it. First of all, I'm sure you've noticed that we don't do ad reads on the podcast. We rely on support from the listeners.

You can become a podcast supporter, as well as submit your own questions for the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. Okay, first one here's from Nat. Hello, hope all the races and travel are going well. Quick question for Paula. Do you change your bike's position between the UCI legal position and a slightly more comfortable and faster and not UCI legal position for triathlons? Or do you keep the UCI legal position all the time?

I just got a TT bike and I'm hoping to do both TTs and triathlons using it and was wondering what the pros and cons are to slightly changing positions depending on the race or keeping it the same all the time. Thanks, Nat. Yeah, I keep the position the same, which is maybe a detriment if for sure is a detriment for the TT

I think that a lot of people that are riding the TT only for it's a 40 minute race, 50 minute race you can be a lot more arrow and aggressive and narrow uncomfortable basically for that short of a period when you're not running off the bike versus obviously in a triathlon you have to sit in it for a lot longer

and then you're riding off the bike after so my position in triathlon is fairly aggressive and it's completely UCI legal. And I think that going forward, I would make my TT position more aggressive and kind of keep what I have right now for the UCI. But in terms of saddle setback and all of that,

I'm comfortable in the UCI legal setback thing, but it's more just the bars. And you see like these crazy positions that these girls get into and the way that their bars look. And I'm like, I need to get some of those. So mine are definitely more on like the comfort side of things versus the extremely arrow.

Eric, do you feel like if you were doing this, if you were racing triathlon and doing bike TTs, do you feel like you would do the same thing Paul is doing and keep one so that your body is familiar with this position? Or do you feel like you would have tweaked it slightly like for, do you feel like, first of all, is your triathlon position UCI legal? Do you know? Mine would be pretty close, but I think my front end,

my extensions are a little bit too angled up. Okay. But I think my saddle position is compliant. And do you feel like if you were in Paul's position, would you try to get your position UCI legal but as close as possible to your triathlon position or would you have two different settings? I think I would go with two different settings

after just having witnessed the TT and seeing how much your team car can just tell you what's coming up and you don't have to look where you're going and knowing like there's just a whole bunch of these little workarounds where like they put their, instead of putting their pads, you know, what we would call your elbow pads, instead of putting your elbows there, they're like in the middle of their forearms are there to get around this rule where they can't be. The legal position, right, right. Yeah, they can't be too much lower than where your hand tips are.

And then just like a whole bunch of this stuff. And then I think, yeah, we would just like go to the velodrome or go to the wind tunnel again with specialized and spend a whole bunch of time trying to just like, I'm not a triathlete, forget I'm a triathlet. What is the absolute fastest possible position we can get into? to test a couple of different helmets and then try to like just yeah throw things together for a for a triathlon that make it more comfortable well I mean what I have now is comfortable but I think that searching between the two wouldn't be that difficult so for this person that's wanting to do both I think it's reasonable to have the same for both but if you want to really really perform well in either one they've got to be a little different so right that's

I mean, some people would say that you did perform really, really well. You went to worlds and got top. What was your final placing? I was 25th. I mean, like, if you want to be on the podium or top 5 or top 10. Yeah, yeah. It has to be, you're not racing a triathlon in the same fit. Yeah, I mean, you're probably just not racing triathlon, period, if you're on the podium.

That's true. We're taking this for granted that you do two different sports, but, yeah, that's cool. But you're right. I remember when we were in the wind tunnel with specialized, like they did that metabolic testing before to see what positions are most efficient. And what's efficient for four hours

may not come into play in 40 minutes, right? So that's an interesting point. That's true, yeah. Cool. Next question here is from Guy. Do you still add strength training and weight training into your program? What kind of strength training do you do add

if not why? Okay, that's so stupid. I've just gotten into triathlon coming from a big strength training background and I'm still enjoying adding that into my training plan here and there. Doing my first triathlon next week on five weeks of training and feeling super excited. So I guess the question would be, of course you guys do some strength training, but now that you're like, have you done any strength training in the past four weeks,

like now that you have all these races coming up? It's incredibly difficult to strength train while on the road. It's been taking all of our effort to, well, try to get Paula healthy, to try to figure out where to eat, how to get Wi-Fi, how to, you know, just like basic life things. that if there was a gym that we had access to and everything, and we had the time, we would love to do it. But we kind of just front-load the season a bit more with that

and do everything that we can while we're home and accept that it's going to be very challenging while on the road, since it's just us. And we don't have a team of people figuring this out and getting groceries for us and doing all that other stuff that takes time. So if you had all the time in the world, you would be doing some light strength training even with the PTA US Open and then TT worlds and then 70.3 worlds,

like kind of like back to back, like you still think there's a benefit there? I definitely would. For me, it really helps me kind of get all my muscles turned on and firing properly, just doing some squats and some, the schedule that we do back home. I definitely feel better after I do it, but the focus wouldn't be to like gain strength necessarily rather than keep everything firing and online to prevent injury and just kind of like take out that first craft. 10 minutes of running where you just nothing's online yet.

Right, got it. Cool. That's interesting. I kind of assume that, I don't know, at this point, you'd be like, no, no strength training. Just like focus on racing. No strength training, but I mean, there's little things you can do in a hotel room. Like, you can keep up a core routine or you can do bands. And if you are a religious strength trainer at home, I do think that like incorporating

some kind of bodyweight stuff or stuff on the road is good. Eric and I aren't super diligent about doing gym all the time at home. So for us when we travel, it's like we get a lot of strength in the pool with paddles and bike, big hill, big gear repeat, stuff like that. So we don't panic about it when we're traveling or in between races like this. Right. Last question here is from Josh. My question is for the whole group. Do you think pros are able to dig deep and push themselves to the limits more so than the typical age grouper?

I felt myself fading pretty hard over the last two to three K of the run in the Olympic. But retrospectively, I don't know whether I was struggling physically or maybe. mentally, as I felt quite good after crossing the finish line. In comparison, many of the pros are nearly collapsing. They actually are collapsing, crossing the finish line. And they look absolutely spent. Sometimes needing medical attention even. Are there any training approaches that help you dig deeper? Is this something that comes with experience, or is it just part of special sauce that enables the pros to be pros? That's actually kind of an interesting little question at the end there. Do you think, Paul, you were born with this innate ability,

Eric, you two, to dig deep? Or do you think the training, there's something about the training, or maybe even specific things designed to help you do this, to help you dig really deep when you need to? I think we must have some sort of a slight genetic advantage to push a little harder, or maybe has something to do with our upbringing or something that has given us the desire

to swim back and forth in a pool and go a little bit harder than we did yesterday? but I think in like the classic battle of nature versus nurture, like the amount of training that we've done is probably the biggest factor. Because I can look back at like several races and certain workouts in my career where I kind of had moments where I realized, man, I pushed it just a little harder than I normally do and I didn't blow up like I thought I would.

And it's almost like you kind of just unlock and you open a new door of realization there and you kind of just stack those on top of each other year after year, and you get to the point of where we are now, where it's intimidating and daunting to think about how hard you know you can go for so long. But like it's there, and the fitness is there too. You know, there's certainly an element of it doesn't matter in January how strong our mental abilities are. We're not fit enough yet to, like, hurt.

and go to that level of intensity that, you know, we can hold in July that allows you to end up at the end of a 70.3 and actually collapse. This makes me think of, too, is that this question is about racing, but most of being an athlete is the training, like 99% of it is the training. So having that mental hunger to, like, push beyond what is so uncomfortable is very valuable in training as well. And I think a lot of age groupers are just not willing to do it in training either. I mean, myself included.

When I'm out there, I just think, yeah, I could work really hard on this, but I've kind of had a long day and I don't really feel like doing that. And you're professional, I feel like you're not afforded that. Yeah, for sure. And I also, like an interesting part of that is like kind of chicken or the egg there. What came first? The motivation is there because we have the ability, like it's our livelihood versus, you know, we just, you know, we're born that way as a kid and always just, like, wanted to go a little

harder or whatever and had a loose screw that didn't, like, the Y didn't kick in as early, you know, it's like, which came first. But certainly at this point, we do have the luxury of, is one way you could say it, of having our, this be our job. And that's incredibly motivating versus, like, we get unmotivated pretty quickly when we don't have a race coming up in the next six weeks. it's a lot harder to go to the pool, let alone do a hard workout.

Sometimes I wonder, and we, the three of us have talked about this before, like when we hear, like, you know, all three of us struggle with how much we, like, this love-hate relationship we have with triathlon, about like, yeah, of course it brings us so much joy, but it also brings us a lot of pain and dread outside of the training, like emotional pain and dread.

You mean, you do see pros who seem to love it. Like, I think of, like, Lionel. Like, does he really, like, I mean, he pushed as hard as he could push, but he seems to love it. I think, I don't know, I don't want to speak for Lionel, but I think he loves the process of self-betterment. You know, does, he didn't look like he loved it when he came across the finish line. No. And P. T.O. Milwaukee. To me, again, I don't want to speak for him, but, like, he looked like pretty shelled after that.

And so, you know, that's just, I think that's, like, the deepest underlying core motivation for most people who get into triathlon is here's an opportunity for me to see self-improvement in myself. It's the ultimate project. I am the subject. And applying that just day after day, let alone, you know,

like the race is where you measure yourself, but the process of getting better every day in training is, I think, probably the most addicting thing. I am the subject. That's great. I love that. Well, yeah, that's it.

That's all we're going to do this week. I hope that next week we're going to have Eric. might just be Eric and myself talking about Eric's race in Germany. Eric is racing this, Extera, in Germany. And then, Paula, you're going to be already in Finland trying to familiarize yourself with everything. Are you going to be trying to do race recon stuff as well? Or you're just focusing on trying to be, get back into your race mindset for triathlon?

I mean, yeah, I'll do some race prep stuff. It'll just be like a normal race prep, but I'll be actually in the city that I'm racing in. So I'm excited to know the course really well. Hopefully I can ride it a lot beforehand. And I just got my schedule for this week and there is some like hard sessions and stuff. So I'll probably do this week pretty hard and then taper starts. And then I can't wait to get back to bend. We have like when we left, our house was being painted, the exterior.

And like we got a new garage door. We got a new roof. So we got like this whole facelift on our house kind of well we were leaving. and then while we've been gone. Well, thanks to hailstorms. If you can find yourself a hailstorm to just beat the shit out of your house, just enough. And an insurance company that will cover the damage from the hailstorm, of course. It all started with, yeah, we got a free roof from the hailstorm.

And then we're like, well, if we're getting a new roof, we should get new paint. And if we're getting a new paint, we should get a new garage door. And if we're getting a new garage door, we should landscape. And if we're landscaping, we should get five more dogs. And here we are. Five more dogs. That's something we do not need is five more dogs. Landscaping has been pushed off.

Not critical to the health of the house like the paint was. But yeah, looking forward to the next couple weeks and also going home. And there's been a lot of positives of this trip too. I know I like ragged on being sick the whole time. But Europe is super cool. It's super pretty. The culture is amazing. Everything's clean.

The coffee shops are good. We love it here. So we're enjoying our time. And now that we're a little more on the time zone, I think we'll enjoy it even more in the last couple weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Yeah. Well, sorry we missed last week. We really did not have the time. It's not because we didn't want to do it. We didn't have the time. But we should be back on schedule now for the next few Thursdays at least. Yeah. Yeah.

We'll be back online from here forward. And we also just put out a vlog today, which will be five days old when this podcast comes out. Yeah. We watched it. I haven't even watched it yet It's the first This is how like So crazy we're

I always previewed the vlog beforehand But I haven't even watched it And it's online live So I didn't get any feedback Or any like I couldn't censor anything So hopefully it's okay I think it's pretty good

You did a good job talking about the race And I think the pre-race stuff is Fun I think I did a good job making it fun Even though you were like You know had extreme allergies Extreme Extreme

Extreme You know that's You know that feeling of going to the pharmacy and just standing in front of the cold medication wall and being like, there's got to be something that will make me better? That's what I was like last week. Like cold and flu, emergency extra strength, Tylenol sinus clearing headache. What is echinacea? Google. Oh, that's great.

That's great. Anyway, thanks, guys. We'll chat with you next week. Yep. Ciao. Later.