That Triathlon Life Podcast - Paula wins Challenge Beijing triathlon, adapting 70.3 training to Olympic distance, and more!

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

This week we get to hear about Paula's experience racing in China at the Challenge Beijing triathlon, and then we move on to your triathlon questions! This week we talked about:What do pros do with their trophiesAlternative races, and virtual racesRepairing tubeless tires at a car tire shopTailoring a 70.3 for Olympic distance racingCycling glovesDeveloping good habits and eliminating bad habits in triathlonA big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive! To submit a question for the podcast and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Hey, everybody, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldstone. And Paula and I are coming to you from Cersie, Switzerland. Excuse you? Yes, that's what I said. I met Paula. I've been here for less than 24 hours, a little bit jet lag, but we're going for it. I am here straight from China, straight off the plane from China. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind. It's crazy because I think we're recording this on a Wednesday evening our time, which is Wednesday morning for you, Nick, back in L.A. Yep. A week ago today, I was leaving for China.

It honestly feels like I've lived 10 lives since that. Yeah. But it's only been a week. Because I kept saying, like, I feel like I didn't see Eric for two months at least. But it was like six days. It's just insane how traveling around the world like that can just like completely morph your sense of time and your sense of what day it is. It's insane that's even possible in my book. Yeah. Just wild.

But I raced in Beijing at Challenge Beijing, and it's an Olympic distance race that I did on Sunday morning China time. And then I flew straight to Zurich where I'm going to be racing the World Time Trial Championships in 10 days. So we're here training in beautiful Switzerland. It's the culture shock and difference between being in the U.S., being in Asia and then coming to Europe is just, that also is crazy. I'm just in this like trance of craziness.

Yeah, yeah. With days, what time is it where Emma? but I will say that Switzerland is probably the nicest of the places I've been in the last week. It's incredible. It feels like you could eat dinner off of any street that you drive on. So clean. Impossible smooth and clean and beautiful. Green. I guess just to back up real quick, if you hadn't figured it out, Paula and I are both professional triathletes.

That's why we have a trathlon podcast. Nick is an amateur trathlet, professional musician. He makes this sound awesome and keeps the whole show rolling. I mean, I assume that like most people, listening. I already know that, but our hope is that every week we have like maybe a few new listeners and they just need a little quick intro of what we do. That's what we do. Outside of that, man, it's been a huge week and we got another big week coming up. We're going to do the race recap from Paula. Because we haven't done a race recap in a little while. It's been

a while since we raced. We did that little thing in Canada where we got married. That little thing. Took up a good chunk of our summer. But I guess before we jump into that race race, cap. I just want to give a shout out to another racer associated with TTL that had an incredible race last weekend. John Reed. He is a... Woo! Yeah, he's a draft legal pipeline guy. He's his big goal for the years to win U23 World Championships and obviously go to the Olympics as all young Olympic draft legal athletes want to do. And he won World Cup Carlovi Vari, which is in Czech Republic. And in awesome sprint finish, the dude just crushed it. And we are super-suged.

We think John, we really like John. He reminds me a little bit of me back in that time. He's like, has a lot of fun. Still works hard. And he's having incredible results. So I just want to give him a shout out. Yeah, it was super cool to see he like had the tape above his head in this World Cup. World Cup is like not quite the highest, highest level of World Triathlon, but right under.

And it's extremely competitive. And he has the TTL logo on his kit. Like that is so cool. So cool. So thank you, John, for representing TTL so well. Not that you have to win to represent us well, but I mean, he's just a good guy as well. He is part of our development team, which we just picked out six athletes the last two years that we want to help out and try to give a little bit of a platform to and give a little bit of financial support to gear support.

It's not much. It's as much as we can do, but he keeps getting podium bonuses. He's going to make us broke with all these podium bonuses. That's good. We love it. Yeah. I guess one other thing, I'm going to be doing a lot of talking here on the front half until we get to Paul's Race Report and then she'll be doing a lot of talking. We have the thing that we talked about, was it last week or two weeks ago, where we needed some help from our podcast supporters. We needed help from about half of you. And this week we're going to need help from the second half of you. We are testing our, I'm just going to, I'm going to kind of tease it just a little bit. We've got a new community engagement platform thing that we've been working on.

people have been asking forever. You're like, oh, could you do like a Slack or a Discord or something or another? We got something on the way and we're just making sure that it is totally dialed before we launch it officially in another week or so. So if you're a podcast supporter, make sure you check your inbox this week. Make sure that you have send me emails checked, all that stuff, and you're in. And we could use your help. And then I also saw, speaking of TTL stuff, I saw that there is a, I don't know if, are we allowed to talk about it, the hoodie that you put on story that seems like I love that thing. Yeah. Yeah, those have been getting a little bit of teasing.

That is actually the design that was from our Castelli T-TL, like Dream Camp giveaway that we did with Kestelli. A couple weeks ago, they actually printed a few extra of these brand new items they have. It's called a gravel hoodie. But it's like just a lightweight hoodie that you can run in, you can just walk around in, wear on a gravel bike, do whatever you want. And we have a handful of them that are just extras that Kistelli has given us to put on sale. So those will be going up in the next few days. Just keep an eye out for those if you are into such things. It's basically like a super lightweight hoodie with a,

just go look at the TTL story right now. If this comes out tomorrow, it'll still be up. Yeah, it will be up for just a bit. Yeah. Well, there'll be more. There'll be more teasing on the way. Great. So question about a couple of things you guys have said here.

Speaking of Devo team stuff, I've had a few people ask me when the applications for next year's Devo team are going to open up. When does that usually happen? Well, we're doing better and better at it each year. The first year, we did it in January or February, I think. And then last year we did it in December. And my goal is to do it earlier this year. So we're planning out the whole fall schedule right now, but all I can say is earlier.

Maybe like November? Yeah, I think like November would be good. Normally we've tried to do it later in the year just so Paul and I have time to read through all the applications and everything after we were finished racing but I realize that doesn't give people as much time to A, buy the kit if you want to race in team TTR colors and B, apply to be on the development team itself

so. November would be great. We'll shoot for that at least. Wonderful. We've established where we are, but Paula, let's rewind for a second. First of all, I didn't hear you complain much about the time change in Beijing, even though you were texting me at very odd hours of the night, your local

time. But I didn't hear you be like, ugh, I can't sleep, or I'm so tired. Did you not struggle with that? Yeah, I struggled a little bit, but that's just really the nature of long-haul travel and there's no sense in complaining about it. But I think what really helps me actually is taking melatonin right before bed. It's a crazy, drowsy feeling where you completely get knocked out. And I kind of was lucky with my travel because I slept. a whole night. And then I had a 10 a.m. flight from San Francisco to Beijing where I was flying business. So I slept for 10 hours on that flight, which was daytime in the U.S. But I took a melatonin and truly knocked me out. Maybe I was just tired. And then I arrived in

Beijing in the afternoon and had another night of sleep. So I feel like I slept for three nights slash days straight and didn't do any training for three days. So I was fully topped up. traveling that way was was pretty easy for me and I never really felt during the day like oh I need to nap or I need to I should be sleeping right now it really happened quite easily and on this end of things I'm it's a little bit harder now that I'm in Europe on my third time zone but not too bad I'm sleeping really well at night and the just immediately getting on the new time and not thinking about what time it is back where I was has helped a lot so lots of rest lots of sleeping and now it feel fine a few weeks ago on the You had given this exact advice about like sleeping on the plane and then getting to the place and falling asleep at night again. And I'm like, no, you can't do that. Your body won't sleep. But you did exactly that. And it worked great. Yeah. And I'm not notoriously like a great sleeper who can put my head down and immediately sleep. But yeah, it worked really well. And obviously I had the luxury of flying United Business Class, which I think was the nicest business I've ever flown. Private Little Pod. come, anyway, but that really helped. I think if I was flying economy, it would have been hard to

sleep for 10 hours. So, okay, so then you got to Beijing and you were texting Eric and me saying how the culture shock of how different everything is. Do you feel like, because you've been there before, you've raced there before, do you feel like you've just grown as an adult now and see things a little differently and can differentiate a little bit more now? Or did you have the same feeling when you were there when you were younger? No, it was like 2017 when I was there and I had the same feeling. But now it just is, like I said on the last podcast, I really like being at home more. So it's harder for me to leave. But once I arrived, actually, the first thing that struck me about Beijing was how it's actually very green and really pretty. And where we were racing was about 80 minutes

from the airport. It was like up by where the athlete village was for the opening or for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. So really far up in nature, like by the great wall, so many trees. So many trees. The park where we raced in was beautiful, flowers everywhere. It's truly a beautiful place, which might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Beijing, but I was like really, really positively impressed with how nice it was there. And challenge always takes really good care of the athletes, but I think especially at this race, because it was so foreign to us all, they went that extra step of making sure we were picked up at the airport. No one had any hiccups, got to this really nice.

hotel and the pro athlete liaison Yin met us all there. He speaks perfect English and perfect. He's from Beijing and just made sure we had everything we needed all week. So it was one of the most well taken care of races I've ever been at. And the group of athletes that assembled for this race were awesome. Great group of people. And coming out the other end of this, I can truly say it's probably the most fun race I've ever been to. Yeah. Wow. I had, we had, we had, had quite a few people message us or comment on like the live feed that was going on. Like, why are these athletes there? It's a small field.

I don't quite get it. It's like they take incredibly good care of you. The prize money is good. They fly you over there. Like, it's a blast. You actually just have a whole bunch of fun. It's not, you know, like you're in a hotel with everybody and then you all go to the pool together.

And then you all go sightseeing together to like the thing where you, you know, do a tourist activity and they make a video about it for the broadcast. And it's like this little poll. that you're in, and it's actually like super fun. Yeah, there was zero nerves for me before the race because it felt like we'd all just been hanging out for three days, and especially the guys. Like, they are so chummy with one another, like such good friends, and they're just like doing every session together.

And I watched them in the pool, and they're like racing 200s the day before the race. Like, the guys were hilarious. And the girls are a little more like shy and whatever, but it was a really, really awesome group. And the catch of this race is they, yeah, they, they, pay you to go and you're obligated to do basically a full day of tourism things that they can get for the broadcast and video and stuff. So like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. we're out on a bus doing things in China, which is exhausting and obviously not the best race prep, but nobody complained a single bit.

We were all doing it together. We just accepted that was like part of this race experience. And ultimately, I don't think it really impacted anyone's race. But it was really cool to go to the Great Wall of China and then go to the Olympic Village and go to the bobsled track where they had the sliding events. And yeah, the whole thing was just like very well thought out and planned out. And this isn't even the race recap, but just the experience as a whole was really, really cool. So Eric, you said people were asking, you know, why are these athletes there? And that was from the perspective of the athlete. But my question is, why are the athletes there from the perspective of the race organizers

because Paula was telling me that it seemed like the age troopers weren't even really clued into who the professionals were. They didn't have previous knowledge of them. So what is the allure to fly out these high-level professional

triathletes to race there? I think from what I understood, each district in China is trying to almost out-compete the other districts for I see. Prestige and events and money and all of this. So having high the best athletes in the world come over for your event is really, really important to them. And that's why they put out all this appearance fee money in a good prize purse.

And the age group athletes who are racing, yeah, they might not know what TTL is or know who I am or know who anyone really is. But they are so excited to meet you and get your autograph. And it doesn't matter who you are because they know you're one of the best. You said for like 30 minutes as there's just like a line of 300 people getting everyone's autograph. And they're so excited about it taking pictures. That's fun. The fan, or like you feel like you're a celebrity, even though these people don't necessarily know who you are. But then you go and win the race and you're fast and whatever and they want more pictures.

So there's definitely a draw of having the pros there. And it put the race on the map. No one would have known challenge Beijing was happening. Yeah. There's also a component to this. broadcast and what they do with the footage from it and everything and like just a marketing thing for we at whatever district that it's taking place in yeah it was funny like the video guys kept following us around all week and i think they were told just like interview them at any time

you see them just like get them interview them and like no only the interview guys spoke a tiny bit of english so it was just like i'm in the middle of a run and they want to interview me and you i got to a point where i had to just say like politely i'll do it after but at the end of each interview they wanted you to say some phrases in Chinese. And that is mind-blowing how hard it is. They told me in little chunks. They're like, okay, say this word. And then say this word.

And now string it together. And I'm like, my brain doesn't work. I can't do that. But you did it on the broadcast. Yeah. All the ones on the broadcast that they showed, you guys nailed them. Yeah, that was maybe like try 65. We were so impressed.

Yeah. Eric and I were like, Paula speaks Chinese? No, we probably pronounced it completely. completely wrong. But we were trying to say like, the district is beautiful or something like that. It's like a very simple thing.

But it was shockingly hard for your brain to like switch into that mode of the right pronunciation. Exactly. Well, because for people who don't know in Chinese, it's not just the vowels and the consonants that you say, but it's also the pitch in which you say them

if it goes up, if it stays straight, if it goes down. So we're just not used to that aspect of language affecting meaning. So it's like a whole different way to speak. It's like singing or something. Yeah, it's really, they must be like a million times smarter than us to be able to do that. The language is so much more, so much more complicated. Okay, so race day. This is an Olympic and you're not totally, you've done Olympics before, St. Anthony's non-draft Olympics, so you're not totally ignorant to how it works. But are you feeling like this is just a short in 70.3? Or

Or do you see it differently when you're racing an Olympic? No, I didn't really know how to approach it and I didn't feel ultimately that prepared for it, especially for a 10K run, which is just all so much faster than a half marathon. But my plan was to attack it as if it was just like a time trial because Julie Duran was there. She just won the Olympic silver medal in Paris,

really fast runner outran like Beth Potter. And I didn't know how she was on a time trial bike. So I thought she was anywhere within a couple minutes of me off the bike, she was going to win for sure. And she was my pick to win the race. Lucy Byram was really fast. She was there. Amazing cyclist, solid runner. Ellie Salt House, who is good at all three sports and Amelia Watkinson and Sean Rainsley.

It was her first non-drafting race. So a really good field assembled for this. And on the men's side, too, super strong across the board. I couldn't have picked a winner on the men's race any six of them could have won that race. We couldn't pick a winner even with like 800 to go. Yeah, yeah. It ended up being so exciting.

The fact that they got six good guys who were battling head to head the entire way is insane. I was the most exciting men's race. And I would also argue women's race of the year that I've watched so far. There was a little aspect on the broadcast where we couldn't see splits. So we didn't truly know

if Julie Duran was catching. Paula or like what was happening exactly but we're just like looking at the very far back screen. Yeah. Yeah like okay like let's count from the time they go past that Buddha and like maybe we'll see Julie Daring go by the Buddha too. Trust me, I had no idea either

and nobody was telling me anything and that was whatever. It was fine. Linda Granger didn't know and she was doing an incredible job of solo announcing. This was also the most entertaining live comment chat on YouTube that I've been a part of lately. It was on a convenient time for the U.S. You could watch it.

It was like 4 p.m. Pacific 10 p.m. Eastern. It was great. I'll buzz through a racer cap real quick, but we wake up on race morning and it's raining. And it was, if anyone remembers Tron Blah on my last triathlon, it was dumping rain. And so now this is my new thing. Yeah, I just get a text, rain, what PSI? We thought we knew it might rain, but like when it actually is, you're like, why? It's been so nice all week. Why is it raining? And it's wet, and the roads that get slippery, and the water gets, who knows,

water quality because of the rain. But whatever, we're just there. We're just doing it. And when you're in the race, the rain's not... The worst part is setting up in the rain. You're just cold and drenched and all your shit is wet. And I knew I had to fly out that night. And I was thinking about, like, packing all this wet stuff.

And getting a bit ahead of myself. But the swim was uneventful. The fact that there was only six of us just made it. It was an exciting race, but it was very clean. Like, no congestion on the swim. I just got on Ellie's feet, stayed there. 800 meter run to the bike, which was long, and obviously to the advantage of someone like Julie,

who's a super fast runner. But getting on the bike, Lucy Byram took off so hard. And I thought, I need to go with her. It was a 20-meter draft rule, by the way, which is big and great. Okay. Yeah. But I... One second, I feel like out of the water,

it was Julie and Sean Rainsley, and then like 45 seconds to Ellie, and maybe another 15 seconds to you and Lucy. Yeah, yeah, so we had to catch the ITU girls who were ahead of up the road. But you had a fantastic transition. Like you caught amazing. You know what was funny is like I'm really the 800 meter run up to transition. There was a long run in another race this year and I'm not very good at sprinting that transition.

That's really hard for me to get out of the water and sprint. But what I did well was I took the right line to my bike and my swimskin off helmet on was really fast. And that's where I bridged the gap that I lost on that run-up. It was freaking smooth. Us at the watch party back home and bend freaked out. We were psyched. Yeah. But I mean, like the bike is, I'm pretty confident in my bike. And if I lose 10 seconds or 15, I'm pretty confident I can bridge up. But with Lucy taking off like that, it's a good thing I had her in my sight because she was probably like 50 or 60 meters ahead of me dangling up there. And I could not get closer. She was riding so hard and so well.

And we go past Sean Rainsley and Julie, like, they were riding road bikes. Like, it was crazy how quick we were moving. Here's the thing is, like, we didn't see that pass on the broadcast. They were focusing on the men. So there was a good chunk of time where we couldn't tell who was in first, who was in second, what was going on. But you guys looked like you were rolling. Yeah. And I at one point sort of got back up to the within, like, at 20 meters.

And the ref comes beside me and says, make the gap bigger. whistling at me. And I was like, oh my God. The worst thing is I'm going to get a penalty. The refs were on it. But they were being too careful. Like they were telling me to make that bigger when I was at 30 meters. I think they didn't fully understand what 20 meters was. So when they kept whistling for me to get even further, even further, out of fear, I went back like 50 meters and then I started to get dropped. But I could still see her as a carrot. So I kind of rode that distance the whole race. And I knew we were moving so fast because we went through 40K in like 53 minutes or 54 minutes

or something. We were riding so quickly. Oh, my gosh. In the rain. And then in the last 2K, it was actually 43K this race. In the last 3K around the corners and stuff, I caught back up to Lucy. So I don't know if she just let off the gas the last 3K. Hell yeah, girl.

I mean, not like, oh yeah, girl. No, that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. But anyway, I caught sort of back up to her. So we left transition together. And nobody was giving any information about where anyone else was. So I ran with Lucy for 2K. There were puddles.

There was slippery tarmac. Super nice run course. Two small loops, one big loop. I don't think puddle really adequately describes that lake that you ran through at 800 meters into the run. Yeah, it was epic. I didn't wear socks, which is a good thing because I only won by 20 seconds and it takes 20 seconds to put socks on. So that was actually like a good decision at the time. I put socks in transition in case.

But running through the water like that, you just get blisters. There's no preventing it. And running without socks felt super weird. But I had no watch, no socks, full ITU mode, no idea how fast I was running. No idea how quick people were coming up behind me. I was just running well. And then whenever I felt like I was sliding back into 70.3 mode, I just reminded myself that there was only like 6K to go, 4K to go.

You can speed up, pick up your turnover. And then with maybe like one and a half K to go, there's an out and back and I could see Julie. And I thought, okay, I'm fine. I will win. We didn't see that. We had no idea. We were still chewing our fingernails off. Paula, instead of learning how to say that the district is beautiful, you should have been learning Chinese numbers.

So you could be getting splits from spectators. Yeah, yeah, right, I guess. But yeah, I won the race. It was, it's truly insane. It's like a miracle that I won this race. I thought there was no world in the world that I would win. Like, after the last two months I've had the, anyone who truly knows me knows my current struggles and like we had a wedding.

And then I got sick for a week and a half and panic trained for a week for this and didn't want to go and was like an emotional disaster. So to go and win, Eric was like, this is a miracle. That's so like literally a miracle. Well, we were all just like, how does this happen? That's what I thought too. When I crossed the line, I was like,

there's no way that I won this race. And when I signed up for it months ago, I thought I expected myself to win. I'm like, the only way it's worth going is if I win that prize purse. But then when I saw the start list, I was like, shit, I'm going to come like third, fourth, I don't know, come sixth with that field.

So it's crazy that I was able to win. So I got 20K for winning and then the appearance fee. So it was like all in all very worthwhile. And not just that. The experience, amazing. Thank you to challenge for having us. Thank you to Yin. He does not listen to this podcast.

Maybe if somebody knows Yinn, you can tell him. Dealing with this group of Americans, no, I guess there weren't all Americans. but whatever, Westerners. And the last night, Belinda was like, we cannot eat Chinese food anymore. We need pizza. In the end was like trying to figure out how to order his pizza.

He was like truly a gold star this whole weekend. That's so funny. And I think he was happy that we were all leaving. So, yeah, he was kind of like, thank God that's over. It's a big week. Anyway, that's my race recap. In general, do you, would you like to be doing proportionally more Olympic

non-draft Olympic races? Yeah, it's amazing to be done in two hours. And it's just the nerves are less. Yeah, it's completely different. You don't have to think about nutrition. I took like one gel on the run, that's it. Two sips of water on the bike. Yeah.

They're so fun. They're so good. I think we're literally done by 9.30 a.m. I would, that's all I would do if they still existed. Yeah, that's so fun. But unfortunately, I think they're actually trying to make this half-distance race next year. Ah, wwant-won. Yeah, we were trying to convince Belinda that should just stay in Olympic.

You should just watch the live feed, like the live chat. Everybody on the live chat was like, this is so exciting. Olympic distance is so great. This is so cool. I just read all those comments. Yeah, it's not like, I feel like people, we're so used to 70.3s and fools. You don't realize that pushing your body for whatever, two hours, two and a half hours, three hours in an Olympic is still a huge achievement and very difficult. requires a lot of training. I mean, you guys have said it yourself when you switched from

Olympic distance training to 70.3 training, it's not like the training changed that much, right? The racing changes, but the training is pretty similar when you're at a, especially if you're at a higher level, because you're kind of maxing out what you can do anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like to watch it, you could watch it. We sat there for an hour and 45 minutes. Me, Danny, who created shred till bed, and Nate construction guy who shreds, we all sat there and watched the whole race and we're amped. We would never do that for a 70.3. It's just too long.

Yeah, I mean, you check the live tracker and then, like, you know, go mow the lawn and then, like, maybe come back and, you know, whatever. And I was never bored doing it either. Right. Like, in a 70.3, inevitably, there's points where I'm like, I want this to be over. I never felt like that in the Olympic distance. Do you feel like you swam any differently, or is that pretty much the same from 70.3 to Olympic? No, I feel like if anything in the last two months, I'm like, I don't know. My swimming has suffered a little.

I was really sprinting as hard as I could on the swim and barely staying on L.A.'s feet. And as I was swimming, I was like, damn, I probably should have swam a little more this summer. But I had a great summer, so no regrets. If you were fit, would you treat a 70.3 swim differently than you would treat an Olympic swim? Or the distance is close enough that the intensity is the same? Yeah, they're totally the same. Yeah, cool. Okay, that was, that's something, Paul.

It's just, it's weird. You showed up to Canada and race time trial national championships, won that, then raced Montaublon a few days later, won that, took like month and a half, two months off. And then you're just like, yeah, I guess I'll go to China to do a non-draft Olympic, won that, and now you're going to race world championship time trials. I can tell you out, I'm not going to win that. Yeah. If I win that, you guys, I am retiring immediately on the spot.

Well, wow. Yeah. That would be the biggest mic drop. That's so funny. Okay, well, are we cool to move on to some questions here? Yeah, we're under 30 minutes still, so I feel like that was... Good job. I feel like we've covered so much.

We have, we have. Okay, so these are questions all submitted by our listeners. You can submit your own question at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast, where you can also become a podcast supporter. We love our podcast supporters, and we appreciate. appreciate you so much. We're going to go straight into questions here. And I actually had to do the questions this week and I forgot to put names in from the email. So these are going to, a lot of these are anonymous, but that's my own fault. Just watched Paula win the race in Beijing and it got me thinking,

what do you do with your trophies? Any super memorable awards you've won? For example, X Games has done things like guitars and ice picks for the podium. So I mean, you can't possibly have them all, do you, Paula? Oh, I'm so, this is actually kind of funny. I mean, I do, I did keep them all growing up and cross-country and all the things. So in my bedroom at home in Emmington, which I think it's still my room, even though I'm not living at home, obviously. I do have a whole shelf of all the things. And I kept all of my dancing medals from when I danced growing up.

It's a box of that. But I haven't done anything special with it. And I don't want this to sound like. ungrateful. Ungrateful, but the challenge Beijing trophy was so heavy and I'm traveling around the world

with like a super heavy suitcase and like limited weight so I left it there which I feel a little guilty about but it's kind of funny because I don't really want to display trophies in our house at all but obviously a very special one I would

but we race so much that yeah sometimes like a race if they have a quite elaborate trophy, they'll actually just take it right back from you and package it up super nicely. That's what Tron Blonde did, this crazy wooden huge thing. It's so heavy. And they shipped it to me. I mean, it must have costed more than the prize purse to ship it. Yeah.

Well, it's like it showed up and it's this beautiful pine, I think, box that has like a sliding front like freaking Raiders of the arc. And then like inside of this box that could be the trophy by itself is the actual. trophy and this thing is like two feet tall. Like carved wood and yeah, so I'll keep that one. That one's staying. Yeah. But I. The little ones that you get from like a 70.3 that had like the toothpick that holds them up,

those don't always make it. We don't always make those home. But I mean, the memories are more important. Like this race in China, I will never forget it. And I don't need the trophy to remember it. But if I was obviously like coming straight back or whatever, I'd bring it with me. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

I just can't imagine with the amount of racing that both of you do, that there's even like a convenient way to display them. You would need an entire wall of a room. Well, well, just like they'll live on like our hutch or something for a little while. Like 70.3 World's Trophy, that'll make it home. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think what I like a lot of age groupers do,

they keep the finishes metal and put it on like a thing on the wall. And that's a cool memory to remember which 70.3s you've done. It doesn't matter how you finished, but you have this collection basically reminding you of which races you've gone to. I bought a little board on Etsy or something like 10 years ago and it's up on my wall with my medals. Yeah, that's a flex when someone walks in. Oh, those dozens of things? These all just say finishers medals.

Why are you putting these up on your wall? Yes, a lot of work even just to finish. Okay, dad. Just kidding, my dad's very supportive. Okay, next question here. I was just going to say it's so funny because I, I usually read the questions and send them to you, and it's so different not knowing what's coming. Welcome to my world.

Yeah. Eric gets hit with a brand new question every time. Have you ever thought about creating alternative races? Eric has mentioned before of moving away from traditional 70.3 type racing and into more interesting multisport challenges. What about a virtual swim challenge of 10 times 100 meters on two minute? Workout to be posted to Strava with leaderboards, comments, et cetera. what alternative race slash workout would you create? I joined the TTL community in February of 2021,

which counts as a day oneer, yes, definitely, through love of coffee and sport. I've connected with so many great people as a result of this world you all have created. Also, we'll be thinking of Nick this weekend and Madison, still an epic performance of grit. Cheers, Mike. Yeah, Madison was, Wisconsin was this weekend as well.

Congratulations to everyone who did those races. Hallelujah, those were some, those words to my, music to my ears, all that stuff. Yeah, I have thought a lot about alternative race organization events and stuff, but also take that with a grain of salt. I pretty much think nonstop all day, every day about fun stuff, cool stuff that we could do with TTL. Can't always put it into action. But I think that doing some sort of my personal dream and vision would be that someday we have some sort of an alternative type of event that is in real life. that people can come to, that we can design the entire experience from the time that you sign up

to getting your race packet to finishing the climb to the Stropa leaderboard, all that stuff. That's like I geek out on that super hard. No idea when it'll happen. But I do also like that this like digital competition idea. And we sort of did that with the kick challenge. Yeah, we did it with the kick challenge 100%. That's potentially our most popular thing that we've ever done with T. But I don't know, I'm going to think on that.

That's a really cool idea. Some sort of thing that you can compare yourself over the internet that would be fair. Like Strava. Yeah, maybe we could even work something into our upcoming Zwift season. We'll see. We'll put our thing in caps on. Speaking of the kick challenge, by the way, if I can give a quick shout out to Keith, who won the kick challenge.

He just raced Santa Cruz this weekend and broke the amateur course bike record and got fourth overall. And then his partner Serena won the race. She won the overall Santa Cruz amateur race. So, you know, just hang out with me. Paula wins races. My friends win races. I'm just a good luck, charm in general. Be my friend, you win races.

That's how it works. It's that simple. Holding it all together. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, I would love to do something like that, though, Eric. That sounds fun. Okay, next question here.

Hi, gang. Just a quick one. And this could be a bike tech with Eric, but we're just going to slide it into our regular questions here. Can you repair tubeless bike tires like you do with car tires? I have two or three almost new ones punctured where milk was not enough, and by milk, they mean the sealant. Can I take them to a garage and have them fixed things? So if you have punctures that sealant is not sealing, can you take them to a tire repair shop and have them use

plugs that they use on automotive tires on your bicycle tires, Eric? Man, I have no idea. But I thought about this. There's no way. I think they would just laugh at you, is my guess. But I have ridden the plugs for quite a while. Like if I have a, I've had a couple times where I've had a tire that has like three rides on it and it gets a big hole in it and I have to put in a plug.

And then it's just like kind of like my personal experiment to see how long they last and often they last forever. And the plug is that little gummy. The dinah plug. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like a leather strip that looks like gum. Once it gets some sealant in there, like it really kind of becomes one with the tire. It's really impressive.

So that's what I would try. Maybe not to race with. Yeah, maybe not to race with. We haven't talked about this in a while. Can you walk us through a little bit, maybe just quickly, what the process of using one of those is like? So basically the problem is you get a puncture.

The sealant is not able to seal it because maybe it's a little too big or something like that. So then what can you do? And this feels like this should be some secret special bonus content to me. But we'll do this one on the house. Okay, okay, okay.

Maybe I'll make a video about this at some point in time. We'll make a video. So, yeah, you're riding down the road and you're no, shit. And it doesn't stop. It keeps going. So I slam on the brakes as quick as I can. And you want to rotate where the actual puncture is to the bottom of the tire.

That way, as much sealing as possible, can be like actually, you know, going through the hole via gravity. And if that's still not doing anything and you're basically down to like 10 PSI, then spin it back around, get out your dinah plug. It's really simple, right? Like it's kind of looks like a pen and you just jam the brass tip into the tire, then pull back out. And now the brass tip is like inside of the tire.

And then just the gummy rubber, like tassel essentially is now plugging the whole theoretically. So then I spin that part back down to the bottom so that sealant can continue to work its magic around and inside of that rubber tassel. and then get out the pump or the CO2 and go for it. Meanwhile, monitoring that it is, in fact, ideally coagulating the sealant and creating a hole there, sometimes I'll kind of like rub, put a little bit of pressure on the the tassel thing itself on the plug to try to like move it around a little bit, get it to like fully fill up the hole.

I'll usually like, if I'm doing a CO2, do like half the CO2, not the whole CO2 to begin with, make sure it's sealing, because if you use the whole CO2 and it hasn't sealed at all, then you're screwed. And then hopefully you've got like just enough PSI. I try not to pump it up super high. I ride kind of low pressure back home to not like blow that plug out on the way. And do you do you need to, when that little tassel is in there, it kind of looks messy. It looks like it like sticks out of the tire.

You can leave it like that, right? You don't have to, like, shave it down or cut it. off or anything like that. If you want to like shave it down or something when you get back home, if your intention is to just ride it like that and it's holding well, then yeah, you could get out some dikes, some snips that, you know, pliers and trim it down a little bit, but you don't, I wouldn't go crazy with it. It's really not impacting anything. Yeah. It's just going to get you home without having to walk. Yeah. It's definitely worth it. And this is again all with training in mind, not racing. I would not ever race

with a tire that has a plug in it, but I'll kind of like push the limit on a tire with a plug in it in training. Yeah. Yeah, but it's funny that you've said that they've lasted the life of the tire for you several times. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're probably going to want to put a little bit more sealant in there, just because you've lost a bunch in the court, by the

flat happening. But yeah, I've had them last long time. Okay, next question. Hello, all, and congrats to Paul on the latest win. My question is related to short distance racing. I've done two 70.3 races and I'm going to be doing a sprint try in the coming months. Question is, how would you tailor a 70.3 training plan to race shorter distances? My guess would be to include lots of speed work, high intensity, hard brick workout type things,

but just how much does overall volume drop off, if any? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I'm already mentally preparing for the pain of going all out for as long as possible. So this is kind of piggybacking what we were talking about earlier about how much your training changed from Olympic to 70.3. But what would you say for an age grouper? Do you think that would also stand true? Yeah, I think the volume could drop off, especially on the bike, but it's super individual because there's so many varieties of how much people train, how much volume they do, how much speed work they do. So it's hard to say across the board. And my biggest goals this year are still

C-170.3 distance, so I didn't change my training for Challenge Beijing, which is an Olympic. The training is similar enough. And I'm, I'm doing a lot of high-intensity stuff on the bike anyway to get ready for time trial worlds. So I think that if you want to, you just need to be familiar with the kind of level of effort you need to go to in a sprint distance race and not have the race be the first time you're going that hard. So whether that's doing, you know, cutting your mile reps down to 800-meter reps and trying to go 25 seconds per K quicker than you normally do, or on the bike doing three-minute efforts at what you want to, how hard you want to go in the race, just so it's not totally foreign to your body. And then obviously you're training your different

energy systems as well. When I started training for 70.3s, I still thought it would be fun to do an occasional sprint and Olympic. And after two years of doing sprint and Olympics, the 70.3 training was the best thing for my finish times in sprint and Olympic distance. Just fitter. Yeah, just fitter. And doing more volume, I think, especially as, as an age group or doing more volume is the easiest way to get fitter. At least it was for me. And you just feel, it feels easier to go harder for longer. Yeah, that was the only thing I was going to say is that potentially don't like cut off

your volume so significantly to do speedy stuff. You don't want to like chop it in half or anything. Like a small reduction just so that you will feel like you have enough pop to do those harder workouts is all you need. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay, next question here. A little long one, but it's good one, from Noel and Insa. My girlfriend, Insa, and I are both triathlon enthusiasts from Heidelberg, Germany,

and your content was actually something we bonded over during our first dates. We love riding our gravel and road bikes in the local mountains, but ever since I crashed last year, I've been feeling pretty nervous on the descents. I've noticed that on hot and humid days, my hands get really sweaty, which makes me feel like I don't have a good grip on the handlebars and brakes. I'm considering buying gloves to help with this issue, but I'm not sure which type would be best. Do you have any recommendations for gloves that could improve my grip and confidence on descents? Should I go for fully covered fingers or partly covered ones?

Also, what type of gloves do you personally use? Thanks so much for creating such inspiring and motivating content. It really keeps us excited about the sport, Noel, and Insa. So, Eric, obviously, you use gloves on mountain bikes. Do you use gloves on road riding as well? 100%. Yes. I might be a little bit weird, but I like wearing full finger gloves all the time. And I've had other triathletes tell me that I'm weird, but I just like the feel of it.

And it allows me to be able to rub my tire just briefly if I rode over some glass and maybe knock any bits of glass out. And I don't know. That's just kind of what I like. Paula, do you? Yeah, I am in the no glove camp, even on gravel rides. I don't wear gloves all the time. I just like to feel like the tactile I feel of having my hands on the bars, but you're totally right about the slipperiness. And if you're sweaty, if you're wet coming out of the water in a triathlon, it's kind of a similar feeling where the grip on the bars is not quite there. But you can get different kind of bar tape that's grippier than others. I think that could help.

Or, I mean, the solution for you is just to get gloves for sure. But if you just absolutely can't stand gloves, you could find other ways around it with bar tape. tape, et cetera. As far as the recommendation goes, I really like and have for a long time even since before we were sponsored. I've liked the Kistelli CX. I think they're on like the 9.0 or 6.0 glove now. It's a cyclocross glove. So it's very thin. It's just grippy. It's not about like comfort and squish. It's just a grip. Next question here is from Nick. Hi, Eric Paula, Nick and Flynn. My daughter Audrey is a burgeoning teen triathlet and we often talk about developing habits so that the challenge of getting ready and starting a workout doesn't feel like such a hurdle. Also for homework.

Very nice. Whether for swim, bike, run, or nutrition, what was one habit that you developed that significantly helped you in the sport and what was the hardest bad habit to break? Hope to bump into you at a race someday. Best, Nick from Denver. A bad habit we had to break. Why would we have to break any? What do you mean? Why would you have to break a bad habit? Because it's a bad habit. No, but what was one you had to break? Like from what? When we were youth triathletes? Like maybe a bad habit would be not drinking during a hot bike or not doing your warmups before a run or something like that.

Well, the best habit I've acquired through being a triathlet through being a student as well is just time management. I feel like I've gotten really efficient at doing things that are important, doing them quickly and doing things just in a way where the day makes sense. and you can fit in as many things as possible, which was essential as student athlete, and now we have the luxury of just training all day and amongst, you know, TTR stuff. But I think time management is a really good aspect of any athlete that competes in college or in high school or whatever.

You have to be good at your time. And I find that often student athletes are also the best students with the best grades because they're so focused on just getting stuff done, doing it and doing it well. Yeah. Eric, what about you? Can you think of any good and bad habits that triathlon has helped you develop or get rid of?

I don't have like a good life one like Paula did. This is kind of an intense one to just have sprung and have no idea it's coming. I know. Yeah, you're right. But for me, making the switch of 70.3 really helped me get more on top of my nutrition. Like fueling on long rides, you know, fueling as soon as I get out of the pool,

doing protein shakes and really thinking critically about am I getting enough food this evening for next tomorrow morning session, when am I timing my breakfast, like all that sort of stuff. As an ITU athlete, I feel like I was just tired and I'll disorganized and hadn't really learned shopping habits that well yet and was just like fly by the seat of my pants. And if I had had that whole nutrition fueling sort of thing really dialed in and cared about it more, I think I could have had 1% better training over the course of the first six years of my career. And who knows, maybe it in a little faster. But is it like a bad habit that doing triathlon caused you to break?

I'm thinking of the good habit for me is I was thinking about this yesterday about how, I guess it's just about habits in general, how when you are used to training every day, it is so much easier to go out and do the hard thing that is starting the training. And then you put when you're in the habit of it, it is amazing how much your brain is just like, yep, we do this now. And it takes less and less energy each time you go back out and do it. And it's still hard during it. And I think that could translate too to not necessarily athletic endeavors. Like if you have a difficult meeting in life or your kids are being difficult, like it just gives you this higher tolerance of dealing with discomfort and knowing that something that's coming up is not necessarily going to be all enjoyable.

But you'd get out and do it. And I think a lot of people spend a lot of their lives dodging discomfort, whereas in triathlon, you just kind of have to embrace it. Otherwise, you would quit. Yeah. It like trains your nervous system to be like, hey, yeah, this was really difficult, and then it was okay. So you don't have to worry so much.

Things are going to be difficult, and then they'll be okay. And I actually felt really good after, so I'm fully addicted. Right. Yeah. Right. I don't remember my life before triathlon that much, So I can't say any habits that I've broken due to starting the sport. I broke some bad habits, but due to Paula, not due to triathlon.

Yeah, that's a better question. That's a better question. Yeah, like what, Eric? I know you still don't do your own laundry, so. Well, I did my own laundry once upon a time. Then Bala came along and, you know, there was no need anymore. Oh, just, I mean, like, absolutely, I do, I really make a mental effort to not leave things out. like dishes

tidiness just like general tidiness like Paula doesn't like shoes left like in the bedroom ideally definitely not in the bathroom and that's just like a thing that I didn't even know

was a problem that I had and now I don't do it anymore well think about where your shoes have been and then you go have a shower and he leaves his running, she's on the bathroom floor I just think that's so gross you know what I think is gross getting out of the shower without drying off

and leaving a giant puddle of water and your bathroom is soaking so you know what it goes both ways I don't do that though Okay, I guess it's Flynn. Next question. Actually, that was the last question, so we'll leave it on. That was great.

Thanks for listening. I do miss Flynn, but he's having so much fun with Emma. And then we'll be back in like two and a half weeks to see him. He is living his absolute best life since you left. As soon as you left, we drove straight to the coast. And we went on long walks on the beach at least twice a day. Oh, romantic. Runs in the woods.

Don't worry. I know this. China wishing I was there. I was like really putting like super hard amounts of time into like dad is the best bank. Yeah. I got to remind him. And we were having ice cream, just straight duck, no kibble. And he gets so well taken care of by Emma too.

And she's, I don't feel good living Flynn with just anybody because he is a pretty particular dog in terms of his needs. And he's a great dog. Best dog ever. But he needs attention and activity. And our friend Emma. is just, yeah, it understands him. Yeah. Feels good.

Okay, well, you're not racing this weekend, but you are going to be racing next weekend. So we'll do a regular podcast next week, and then we'll talk a little bit more about time trial world championships. Yeah, that sounds good. We're moving closer to the course on Sunday, so I can ride at a bunch, get familiar with it,

and just be as best prepared as I can from a technical standpoint. So it's fun. It's going to be awesome. keep an eye out for those Kostelli hoodie drops. Supporters keep an eye on your inbox and everybody else look for YouTube because I've got a new episode

that's almost done. We'll talk to you next week. And Nick, good luck on Sunday in your race. Oh, that's right. San Diego classic. And then I have a wedding that night so it'll be a fun day. Dude, that's how legends do it, man.

I was the best man at Danny's wedding after the 100 mile mountain bike race. Best wedding ever. Oh my gosh. Crazy. Yeah. Right, of course. Okay, we'll see you next week, everyone.

Later, everybody. Bye.