That Triathlon Life Podcast - Should there be an age group finish tape at pro races, triathlon training euphoria, and more!

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Nick is recording from his neighbor's WiFi, Eric's in the van, Paula is doing her own audio engineering, but the gang got it together anyway! We kick things off with an airline Rapid Fire before getting into a full question bag that covers racing, going pro, travel logistics, and a Chattanooga guide for a UK family about to combine 70.3 Worlds with Disney World.This week we discussed:Airline rapid fire: favorite snack, drink, seat, airline, and Paula's method for dealing with an overweight bag at the counterShould there be a separate finish line tape for the top age grouper at Ironman races with a pro field?Is there anything in triathlon that matches the euphoria of finally landing a skateboarding trick?Run form analysis: when to think about it, when to leave it alone, Paula's mirror trick on the Kickr Run, and why fixing one thing can break something else up the chainAirline luggage horror stories — Eric's €550 Lufthansa bill and why United loyalty is a financial decisionTurning pro: do you actually need a lawyer, contract clauses worth paying attention to, and where to train when you make the jumpOpen water vs. pool for easy swims in summer, is it even a question?Feeling flat, disconnected, and off 17 days out from Ironman Wisconsin, what's actually happening and what to do about itChattanooga as a destination for a UK family combining 70.3 Worlds with Disney World: the honest guide, how many days at Disney is too many, and what to actually expect from the cityA big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive. To submit a question and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast————————Wahoo Kickr (link)

Hey everyone, welcome to that trial left. Hey everyone, welcome to that Traathlon Life podcast. I'm Eric Lauggester. I'm Paula Fembley. I'm Nick Goldstone. And that was my second rapid fire attempt at starting this podcast. The first time, English didn't even come out. I'm going to put it in.

Don't worry. Oh, good. Great. Thanks. That's what my brand, my personal brand needs. Yes. I start the podcast every week because no one else wants to. and then I, you know, everyone makes fun of me for it.

So if you're new here, Paul and I are both professional athletes. Paul is by far the best professional athlete. Nick's an amateur athlete, professional musician. And I'm by far the best amateur athlete of the three of us, wouldn't you say? 100%. And definitely the best musician. So we all have our separate little roles. We like triathlon.

We like talking about it. And also, we wouldn't be able to have this show if people didn't write questions into us. you know, asking for our expertise, quote unquote, on things. So if that's you, you're writing questions. Much appreciated. Let's do the show. Eric, you just went for a pretty legit trail run with Bokuvirt. Bo Kvirt.

Yeah. So I went on what I would, every time I do it, I decide it's my favorite trail on the earth that I've done. With the exception of maybe a couple things in Canmore. So that is currently my favorite trail. And I went with Wadi, and my second favorite thing or my favorite thing to do other than just run on trails is to show people my favorite ones. So this was just a full mind-blowing, awesome experience. Wadi and I are both out of the Oregon Coast, and I'm kind of showing him some of my favorite stuff. Yeah, it's a freaking, it's a dream come true out here.

How are you feeling? Like, how's your body doing with running like that? Oh, right. Yeah, because I haven't been running lately. Yeah, like a couple weeks before we went to Kona, I got a check-in with my surgeon, the six-month check-in. She said your hip's good to go. Any other pains you have are likely things that are related to moving weird

for the last 10 years, and that's just going to take six months to a year to work its way out, but you don't have to be afraid that you're destroying what we did with the surgery. So I gave me a little bit of confidence, and I've run three times this week, and they're all pretty chill for the most part. Um, so this thing we did with Wadi, it's like, there's a viewpoint of taking you there, Nick, and we hiked for like the first five minutes of it. And then we like really slow ran. And then I kind of dropped Wadi. But then I came back for him so I could see his face when he saw the, the best viewpoint. Yeah. And then we ran, we ran so slow. And not, I mean, not that slow. Just like very cautiously

back downhill and my hip's doing great. So I mean, I was telling Wadi and I've told Paula and like just being able to be out at all. running right now is feels so incredible because the last month I feel it seriously felt hopeless like there's no way this is ever going to get better because it just went backwards and I think I'm through that at least for today so for people who are because you've gotten a lot of messages from people who are who had the same exact surgery the torn hip blabrum surgery so for people who are getting it in the future, you were concerned that basically you had undone the positive work from the surgery. Can you now explain what do you think you were actually feeling there? Yeah, and I'll be honest. I don't like love talking about this. I've spent so much time thinking

about it, but I do talk about it because of the number of questions I get. It's fairly common surgery. But the pain that I'm experiencing is, like I said, my muscles have moved in such a way to try to avoid pain in the labrum for so long that now they're starting to kind of realize okay we can move in this quote normal way and those little like adductors and like supporting muscles in my hips are kind of coming back online and they're they're going to get sore they're going to even though i feel like i could go run for two hours right now there are these little dumb muscles that need to like get back online um there's also a little bit of a potential issue in like one of the little joints in my very lower spine but I'm not going to talk about that until I go get confirmation with an x-ray or something like that.

It's kind of a little bit unrelated. Yeah. The thing that I would say to anybody who's looking at it or in the middle of it is what everybody else who had it told me, and that's be patient. It's not linear. You'll feel like you're cruising, and then you'll just go backwards for a few weeks for unknown reasons, but ultimately long-term it works out. we get a lot of questions on this podcast that I often don't put them in but Paula sometimes you include them about what kind of mindset to take when you're recovering from either surgery or injury and I'm curious Paula do you put them in there as options because it's something that you want to talk about? No, sometimes we've got slim pickings.

I see. I see. Okay, that's fair. Okay, well, we'll get into it because we have a lot this week and I came up with a little. rapid fire because we're about to be doing some traveling here, all of us. Actually, when are you guys, when are you guys flying to Nice? Oh, dude, I don't want to talk about it. Yeah, neither. Thank you. Well, the rapid fire is all, is all flying related stuff. So maybe we don't do it. It is way, way less than a week from the day that this podcast comes out. Got it. Okay. Okay. So should we not

do this? I mean, I could just, I can tell you what it is and you can decide if you want to do it or not. No, we, yeah, we can do it. It'll be in under 60 seconds. This is a flying themed airline themed rapid fire. Okay, so real quick, do you have a favorite airline snack? First class, filet mignon. Okay. What's the box that we've been getting late?

Well, Eric's United 1K because we have the credit card and we spend too much money. Yeah, we are 1K, but only one person can be on the credit card. So we get like the free snack box if we're in economy. So we'll usually get the snack box with United. It's like the takeaway or the flyaway lift off. What I hate about these things is there's so much garbage. It is so much garbage. Oh, like plastic and packaging.

Yeah, you're just like unwrapping everything. And it's the most wasteful thing ever. What I'd prefer is to bring my own snacks in a Tupperware. Not allowed. Smart. Okay. I mean, a little bit allowed. Okay, so wait, what's your favorite drink on the plane?

Is it going to be first class champagne? No, usually I'll just get bubbly water. What about like a little tomato juice? You know? Paula gets orange juice pretty often does like the orange juice bubbly water cocktail. That's nice.

Because you can't actually ask for both. I'll do, if we're doing like a long haul, I'll get an old fashioned if like you're any if you are actually have been upgraded or something and that's even an option. And then like a guilty pleasure, the fridge sigs as the kids call them. The Diet Coke.

The Diet Coke. Everyone's like, I don't know why. This sounds good, but never ever any other time in my life, am I going to have one except for on an airplane? Something happens on an airplane where your taste buds just change and you like shit that you would never have on land. I'm going to watch three movies in a row and just eat total trash. I love it. I love it. Okay.

Just real quick. Favorite seat? Isle, middle, or window? I mean, I put the middle in there just as an option. Window. No, no, aisle. I used to be a window, man. And now I think you get a little more stretch out room.

Yeah. Yeah, we can't. The problem with being so loyal to one airline is we have to fly United now because we get all the free luggage and the free weight, extra weight. But we like United. We've never had a problem. Well, we've had problems. But what's nice about United too is that they don't charge extra for a bike.

Well, I think a lot of airlines are like this now. I think the only time I can remember thinking this airline is, awesome was Air New Zealand on the way to actually cool Auckland yeah I don't know I just like everything

maybe it's because it was a new airplane and the people were really friendly and it was my first time like doing a long haul when I went to U23 Worlds in Auckland My favorite airline is Air Canada because it just brings back like

my roots Wait did you have some like did you have some thing with Air Canada like a positive thing Am I wrong? Oh lots of positive things well they when they lost

my bike years ago. One of the head of marketing guys reached out to me and I still stay in touch with them. So if I ever have a problem on Air Canada, they go above and beyond to help, which is amazing. But aside from that, I just like, I like the aesthetic of it. I like, I know a lot of people don't like it,

but I like it. Yeah. Well, got to root for the home team sometimes. Yeah. That's right. Also, Eric, you put out a, well, you, both of you put out

a vlog this week. And it's, and it's, and it's, and it's trending. It's hashtag trending. Really? It's, I haven't checked in on it since I looked at it. Its virality is viraling. Holy shit. The Kona.

It's over 9,000. It's over 30,000. It's been like 24 hours. Less than a day. Less than a day, yeah. Well, I do think it's the combination of people are excited about, Kona coming up and there's not a lot of content yet about it. Some people are just eating it up. Yeah, we're not trying to start a trend of Kona spam

two months ahead of time. This actually happens this way. Sorry, everyone. But I think it's a good video. I did a good job. I mean, there's so many shots you didn't even put in here. There's just an impossible amount of good stuff. I couldn't include all of it.

Yeah. Well, good job. If you guys haven't watched it, go check it out. I was at the premiere. I was at the world premiere of it. Yeah, we premiered it. 8 a.m. on Sunday, 8 a.m. PST on Sunday like we always used to. Ugh, it feels.

All right, well, let's move on of questions. These are our listeners submitted questions. Generous listeners like you, Rainbow Sound. You can submit your questions to the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast, where you can also become a podcast supporter. $5 a month. You know what? $5 gets you in Italy?

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We have a lot of questions this week. These are good. This one's from Haley. And there's some good ones about travel as well here. So we've got the full gamut. Haley says, Should there be an age group finish line tape at Ironman races with a pro field? You've talked often about how the pro and age group athletes are competing in completely separate races on the day.

I agree. And when there isn't a pro field at a race, the overall age group winners take the tape. Haley. So you're right. So what Haley's getting at here is that if there's no pro race, the age ruber takes a tape. But if there's a pro race, there's no extra tape for the age group race. which feels a little kind of funny, but as pros, does this make you feel any kind of way if there was an extra tape for the top female and the top male age group winner? Well, this makes me think two things.

One, absolutely, I don't have a problem with it. I think that's very cool. When I won my first age group overall title, it was so special and made me kind of think that I could turn pro someday. So it is a really special thing. I don't see a problem with it. But the second thing is, can you even do it? that because of the way that a rolling start works? Yeah, you're right.

You're right. But they somehow do it at age group races, even though they are rolling starts. God, that's really tough, though. I don't actually know how they figure that out. Are they just like running extrapolations at this time and like generally the fastest people start in the front wave? And they're just kind of like

looking through the results. the last 5K of the run going to, it doesn't look like anybody is going to, from that started to 30 minutes late. Yeah, I mean, that's, that must be what they do. But I'm sure there have been cases where someone has broken the tape and then later has not been the winner. That has to have happened at least a couple times. With the rolling starts, that is. Yeah, they seem to have it figured out. I mean, I don't think they've probably ever messed that up. Usually the first person across the line is the person that wins.

But yeah, I guess in a weird circumstance, it could be not the case. but I don't have a problem with them trying to figure it out if there's a pro race as well. Although the problem is a lot of the time the lead age grouper beats a lot of the professionals. Right. So there's like professionals in the mix. So it really would take, yeah, it would take like a dedicated person to be like, here comes the first age grouper, even if they're intermingled with pros and have different laps going on and all of this. Yeah.

It's logistically harder. Okay, next question here. this is from Benjamin. Howdy, from Merrickville, Ontario. Do you know where that is, Paula? Merrickville? No, never heard of it. Yeah. Owen is Ontario?

Is that the... Okay. Yeah. I came from a skateboarding background and sometimes in skating can take thousands of tries to land something. The feeling of rolling away is euphoric when you finally do.

Do you feel like there's anything like this in training or racing triathlon? Not necessarily from winning a race, though. Benjamin. I mean, Eric, you kind of had that today, did you not? Yeah, yeah. And I don't know if you would necessarily call that training or racing for triathlon, but I get this just when I go a new place.

And I can get that on road biking as well as, you know, mountain biking or trail running. It doesn't ever happen road running. But when you were like kind of had an objective or a spot that you wanted to get to or you were just trying to do a new loop and it works and it like the first. flow of the route is super good or you got that viewpoint at sunset. I get that. It's not quite as intense as the high that I get when I pictured of a shot that I wanted to get for photo or video and it actually works out, which is more akin to I think the nailing the trick finally. Like landing a backflip off the high dive or whatever for the first time. It's not quite the same,

but I think that's the closest you get. Do you feel like, I mean, I'm wondering if Paula you feel the same thing that I felt before, which is, oh, I'm holding this pace or this power at a, at a, for an amount of time that used to seem like something I wouldn't be able to do. I don't know if you had this with the Iron Man training at all, like doing those long rides and feeling good after them or that long run you did, the last long run you did. Did you have any feeling of, whoa, I'm, I'm actually doing this? I wouldn't call it euphoria. Yeah, it's a little different with skateboarding or something. We'd call it checking the box of what I was supposed to do. So, yeah, I don't think you really get the same effect when you're actually swim bike run training, following a training plan.

Maybe some people do. But for me, it's just more like checked a box, did the job today next day. Kind of just like not a lot of highs, not a lot of lows is the secret, which is kind of sad. I have had it too, Nick. like we like that you have that realization in the workout you're like

oh my god I'm doing it and I'm not I'm not exploding oh my God like okay don't think about it don't like

don't look at it too hard because it'll dismayed it is interesting to hear Paul's perspective on this as someone who is has been consistently at the very top end of the sport

as like it's not about these like crazy workouts that that push your own limit it's about consistency and kind of feeling feeling like you're in the middle, not at the edge,

which is maybe not as thrilling, but if the point is performance, maybe that makes sense. Like if anything, whenever I'm going a pace that I think is impressive, it's too hard for what I'm prescribed, so I'm like, I'm going to get in trouble. So the opposite, actually.

Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Yeah. It's because Apollo is all about trying to maintain like an achievable level of power or pace for week after week after week after week. That's the goal here. Not doing these insane things where you then blow up and get injured or tired.

So do you think Paolo ever intentionally kind of like lies about what pace is you should be doing? Because he knows you're going to go above them? No. No. No, he doesn't lie. I don't think he's into playing stupid games like that. Right. Right.

Well, I mean, he knows an athlete. and he knows how to prescribe stuff, but yeah, where, Paula nailed it, like, those moments should happen during racing. And if they happen during training, you're either very early on in your training journey to where you still have those, like, large jumps to make, or you're on a crash course with injury or over-training

and being too tired for the race. So those moments should happen in races. Right, right, right. Certainly the further into your training life, you know, span. Yeah. Okay. Next question from Matt. Hey, T.TL, gang. I was watching a video of Eric Trail running and noticed what looked like a really bouncy or springy stride, which got me wondering about run form. Thank you. Thank you very much. Must be an old video.

Now, we're going to be bouncing again. Years ago, I had a gate analysis done with Jay Dickery here in Ben. Do you guys know who that is? Jay, yeah, Jay's a PT here and Ben. Really, really good one. Dechari. Dechari. Oh, damn. C's and still a C-H sound. He made the mobile board, if anyone is familiar with that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And a book called Running We Rewired.

He's like kind of a bit of a running guru. Oh, fully. Anyway, Matt got to see Jay because of a running injury, and he helped him, and it was game-changing. So his two questions are, have you worked on run form or had it analyzed over the years, or do you just do what comes naturally? and I'm going to roll the second question into this.

What cues do you use or focus on late in the race when the run starts to break down? This is specifically for me? Well, I think it's for both of you, but it was interesting that I think the impetus was your run form. Yeah, I mean, I can start with it. And yes, I have thought a lot about my run form over the years. I think strong potential for too much thinking. But certainly every time I would get injured, it kind of caused a refreshed focus on, okay, am I doing anything wrong?

Is there something obvious that I can change here? And I go back and forth because I do think that there can be a lot of changes made to your run form and it can be for the better, but I don't, I'm like very, very 50, 50 on whether or not that's going to come via you thinking about this thing versus like you're running more and your body kind of slowly figures it out and just through the process of like your body is so good at becoming efficient, it's,

uh, it corrects things. So like my current philosophy, I guess on it is I really like doing sort of specific strength routines that like strengthen the muscles that are necessary to have good run form. Uh, and then I have a couple of like very simple cues specific to me. They're like,

don't arch my back so much. Like try to relax and like, Don't let my chin raise up. And then I'm trying to do a good job of keeping my shoulders relaxed and let them swing naturally. But I do find that there's like a really quick point of diminishing returns where you're thinking so much about your run form that it's like detrimental. And you should be just like more focusing on flow and effort and letting it happen. I feel. Yeah.

I think that with running, a lot of the time running fixes. problems. Like if something sore or something doesn't feel good, if you're running easy and fluidly, you'll feel better at the end of the run than you did at the beginning. Also comes down to like not really thinking about it too much. But I do think that if you have, like we naturally kind of have good run form, Eric, but I think if you watch someone, and you too, Nick, if you watch someone who doesn't naturally have good run form, I can pick out things that they should work on that It would be easy cues to fix either their arm carriage or their foot strike or something like that. So I think going to see someone who is good at running technique can help people a lot,

but maybe not the three of us because we don't have anything too obvious to fix. Watching myself on video like eight or ten years ago helped me a lot. Just because I think I was a much worse. I don't know. It's hard too because when you don't have as much fitness, it's harder to have good run form. Because it's like tiring to drive your knee forward and it's tiring to pick your leg up higher.

Yeah, that's why people tend to look better when they're doing an interval or running faster. Like yesterday I did a build and every four minutes I dropped five seconds per K. And by the end I was running 340 per K. And my run and it felt way better than when I was running five minutes per K. Right.

Like, of course, my heart rate's higher but my form felt so much better. So a lot of the time speeding up So you could do that in spurts Like one minute strides or something To try to have really good form And then try to carry that into your easier running This is why we always recommend doing the uphill sprints

Uphill strides It's because it quote forces you to activate Into like a proper running form That then can even without you thinking about it Can kind of carry into the next 10 15 minutes of you cooling down or whatever Without causing like impact Yeah

And like the converse thing of this is like if you were to, if I were to, I could send you a video of Paula running from behind and you could see that her left foot does like just this little, little flick. Now if, you know, Paula was looking in the mirror all the time and was just doing everything in her power to keep that foot from flicking, it's very possible that that that would then work its way up the chain and it would give her hip injury because there's like a little bit of a hip tightness that's causing that flick. So it's not always like the best idea to just be like, oh my pinky finger sticks out. And if I just fix that, everything's better. All this stuff is so connected that it's not necessarily as easy It's just like don't flick your foot or don't swivel your arm And that's when I like a actual running form specialist would be helpful Also running in front of a mirror helps a lot if you're on a treadmill Which is why I like the kicker run because it doesn't have a console in the front So you can put a mirror in front of you and fully see like your whole body your hips your legs your arm carriage And the more you're just like staring at yourself doing it and

fixing little things, it helps a lot and also helps you have higher cadence. So everyone get a kicker run. Link and teach you. Use our link. Use our link. I'm going to make sure those links are still functioning properly. Especially for the rock kicker run. Speaking of paying for things, this question's from Megan. What is the most you've had to pay at the airport for luggage fees? I heard on the move podcast that Bradley Wiggins' son had to pay $525 for all his extra luggage. That is unbelievable. That is so much money. Eric, don't you have some crazy story when you were flying to, was it China?

Yeah. And you paid some crazy fee for the bike? I can't remember if it was coming back from China or it was like China, Australia or Germany. It was like one of those three. and it was Lus Danza and it was $550.50. Yeah. That's crazy. Seriously, just stared at the woman. I was like, I can't do that.

Like, what, like, it shouldn't be that. I know it shouldn't be that. Like, can you not, just like, she was completely unwilling to fix it. And I just, I mean, it took me a while to get that off my credit card. Damn, dude. Yeah, it's crazy. Did you make money at the race enough to pay for it?

Do you remember? No. Of course not. No. I was going to do a World Cup or something. You run into some of these issues if you're traveling with two bikes or if you have a lot of really heavy luggage. I don't know. I think this is the reason we are loyalty united because then you get the perks of having a little bit extra.

Yeah, of course. Luggage allowance. It's like literally the only reason we could use our, we could have a completely different credit card that gave us other perks. But the travel card for us in our current life is worth it for this reason. Yeah. Because there's nothing more stressful than getting to any. airport and having huge luggage fees. Like, it's happened to both of us so many times.

And it's just one of those shit situations where you get the wrong person. They're like, oh, the computer says that it's $7,000. Well, fix it. And you know, yeah, but that's what the computer says. It's like, cool, go get to your boss. She's not here today. Like, what? Like, just restart the computer.

I don't know. Like, no, that's the computer. I think another good. tip though is to, if you can get your bike and your luggage both under 50 pounds, it'll save you a lot of headache at the counter. So even if they do have extra, extra bike fees, they'll ding you even harder if it's over 50 pounds. And it is possible. Like my evoc bag with all of the whole bike in it, plus tools usually is like right at 50. That's because you got Spiko, handle arrow bars. And it's also because I have a shiv-titi. Yeah. When I travel with my gravel bike, it's always over for

50 pounds and only one time have they actually dinked me for it. Usually if it's like 52. Yeah, they just let it go. Sometimes they'll take out two pounds. Well, yeah, I had to do it. I had to do it and it was not great.

You're like, cool, I'll just put the in my carry on. Oh, now you're on a no fly list, Eric. Yeah, take that out. Take that out. It's too late. The internet heard of it. My phone heard it. I'm going to get ads.

Can't go to knees. Another trick is when they're weighing your bag, just like stick your toe under your bag and lift it up a little. You don't think they have a system for that. No, I've done that so many times. I have to look the other way because I just can't.

Even though I understand, I just can't witness it happening. Well, Eric, we don't have to do that anymore because we get 70 pounds. Oh my God. I'm like sitting on it. Has to make his 69. You're like, I don't care.

Oh, I don't mind defrauding the airlines. That's fine. I have been there also. when they're like, ma'am, please take your hand off the bag. I've been there for that. And I'm like,

yeah, I don't know. Sorry. Oh, brutal. Yeah, but just check, check when you're booking flights, check that the airline bike fees

are counted as a regular bag. It's the worst. Europe is the worst. You got to like book your bag on it and stuff. The U.S. is way better for this stuff. You know, I'm taking a train to knees from here,

by the way? Yeah, we didn't know. Nice. That's going to be fun. That's a nice trip to NACE. You're nice. I'm going to roll a Nile.

Stripped to NICE. Oh no. I forgot. People hate the surfer voice. Hate. Very sorry because Nick's going to introduce the niece vlog. He's like, welcome to NICE to everyone. It's canceled instantly.

Okay. The next question here is from Brian. And it's two questions, but they're kind of, they're very similar questions, and they're about turning pro. Greetings Tripod. I'll try to keep this short because we all know how much Paula hates long questions. Very nice. Thank you, Brian. It's actually two questions, but they're short answers and kind of related. They address young athletes looking to go pro.

One, when do you recommend someone making the transition from age group to professional athlete get a lawyer, lawyer? And the other one is, if someone is serious about becoming a professional triathlete in the U.S., do you recommend they move west or south? Or do you think any climate can produce great triathletes? Thanks for everything you do. congratulations to Paula on her Ironman win, as well as her being the best export from Canada behind Rush and Ryan Reynolds. Do you know Rush, Paula, the band? No.

No, I don't. Yeah, epic, epic band. I think he has a completely unrealistic idea of how much pros make when they make that jump. You don't need a lawyer. Nobody's suing you. I don't think we're talking about the same thing here. Nobody cares. I think the lawyer question is more like.

contract writing is where my head went. For like sponsors. Totally. But if you're making the jump from age group to pro, it's not like you suddenly have 10 contracts on your lap that you need a lawyer to review. No. No, the brands are going to be like,

problem to have. Here's what we're willing to offer. And if you want to argue at all, we don't have time for that. So that's, unless you're like, no, that's how it's going to work.

There's no way that you, nothing that you did as an age grouper is going to make you have contracts so big immediately in triathlon. that you're going to have any negotiating power. I think it's not a bad idea, though, to have a lawyer review a contract. I mean, don't pay, if you have a friend who's a lawyer who can do you a favor and read through the wording to protect yourself, maybe that's a good idea, but it's not really, like Eric and I have a friend who will do this for us, but now kind of our contracts are just kind of rinse and repeat same contract again again.

So we don't even barely read it, which is probably not a good idea. but we have had issues though with contracts in the past where if we had been a bit more careful it would have saved us later on now i do think it's a good idea to have somebody even if it's not you just somebody who is a critical thinker just a third second set of eyes look over it and go oh hey you realize that this says if you break the contract and the contract is for free sunglasses that you have to pay $10,000 to get out of it like that just makes no sense. Like take that part out and if the worst case is if you break the contract, you give all the sunglasses back. Because like there can be like exit stuff like that that can be annoying or

just like little fine print stuff that you don't, you don't think about. And sometimes these companies will like copy paste. They'll take Paula's contract and they'll use that as like the thing that they're going to use to sort of like strip down and turn into a first year pro's contract and it might have some weird thing in there that's left over and they didn't catch it and you don't catch it, but you just, we want to be ready in the event that something goes wrong or you want to break up essentially that it can be as clean as possible. Yeah, that's kind of the problems we've had a few times is when you need to get out of something and it's very, very difficult to do that because they're trying to protect themselves obviously and they don't want you to go somewhere

else. And we, I mean, it's just different circumstances, but a lot of the time that's the those are the clauses that you need to make sure are. Yeah. They're going to have something in there. They're going to have something in there that says, if you take drugs, you're gone. And if you say something we don't like on Twitter,

you're gone. And conversely, you want to have something in there that says, if you give me product that is completely broken and doesn't allow me to do my job, I can leave in the event that they bring out some new bike or a wheel set that is like coming broken or something and is like a serious problem that you can leave

because they didn't uphold the expectation of giving you the best gear possible, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, but it's not a necessity, but it's not a bad idea. How about that's the answer? Yeah, it's pretty rare. And what about the moving west or moving south or staying where you are?

Moving west always. Why would you move south? It's so hard. Yeah, but most triathletes do move south, it seems. Like who? And where? Tucson? Like all of, like all of Tucson?

Oh, I count that as West. I just imagine that this person lives in Boston. Oh, I see. And they're trying to decide if they go to Alabama or if they go to like, Arizona. Nothing wrong with Alabama. Just like the heat, it makes it impossible to train. Yeah.

There's only, I think, two triathletes that live in Tucson. Most live central or west or northwest. there's nowhere perfect to train. I mean, I guess Southern California where you live in it, in terms of weather is pretty perfect, but it's busy. So it's hard to find a perfect place to train and expensive, yeah. Yeah, we feel like it's definitely more to do with roads that have a lot of car, more cars on them and like some sort of access to trail,

like some sort of soft surface somewhere and then a high quality pool rather than like the geographic quadrant. And then in that sense, bend is actually really great. not that we need more people moving to bend. Yeah, but then also, like, the list of those places that kind of check those boxes are prohibitively expensive because a lot of people also want to live there with that outdoor access. And then, you know, like San Diego used to be awesome for training 15 years ago. And then everybody found out it was great.

Moved there and now it's busy. Roads that feel a little scary. But if you're a new pro, I'd say don't move away from what you were doing as an age group. Just stay where you are. Keep doing what you were doing. You don't need to like rewrite. the whole book just because now you're racing in the pro field. That just brings a lot more pressure and stress.

You're like, oh my gosh, I'm moving for this new thing. And it's such a big deal now. It's like just keep rolling and maintaining some status quo. And you'll probably have the best success that way. I'd say with the exception, if you can get into a training group. Yeah. If you live somewhere that there's literally no one else. This is completely different if you're racing short course.

Yes. I'm thinking about long course racing. I'm thinking of Julia Day who moved to Colorado because she was living in New Jersey and I think she's loving the moved Colorado and the kind of training it gave her. So what if it's exciting for you to move? It's like you're not doing it because you're looking for better training

but because you kind of want to be able to train differently. Yeah, and if you're actually not working anymore in any other arena and you have the flexibility then, yeah. Go for it. Go with the wind. Next question here is from Elias, which is, I love the name Elias. Do you think it could be positive or negative to do all your easy swims during the summer in open water? No wetsuit if possible.

Keep up the good work, Elias. Positive. I'm in. I think we've answered this before. I don't think there's any problem with doing all of your swims as open water. Honestly, it's way more sport specific. But this is, well, I mean, then. I guess that encompasses this question.

But I feel like certainly to do your easy swims in open water feels like a total positive, right? Yeah, for sure. The only negative I can think of is that if it takes so long for you to get there that it makes you stressed and the rest of your day it feels stressed or something, that's like the only thing I can think of. Well, for some people, for some lucky people, swimming open water might be more convenient.

Ideal. Yeah. The thing that I find with open water is sometimes it's harder mentally to stay in. for a certain amount of time, and you would do more if you went to the pool. For some reason, breaking things up into sets and intervals and being at the pool makes a 5K swim, a much more easy to wrap your head around

than swimming 5K open water, which just feels like an eternity when you're doing it. Yes, right. So that's the only different, like if you can really commit to sticking to, I'm going and I'm doing a 4K today and I'm going to do efforts, and they're broken up differently by like time or your stroke count or something, then it's really helpful. But if it's just like you go and you swim for 20 minutes and you get out.

An easy swim. We're talking about easy. I thought they're saying replacing all your swims in the summer with open water. No, no, just the easy swims. Oh, well then yeah, of course do that. How's that even a question? Talking about practice. I'm talking about easy.

I'm talking about practice. But even if you're swimming open water easy, you can still work on things that are race specific like sighting and stroke rate and sitting on feet. It doesn't have to be easy where you turn your brain off. It can be easy in a way where you're still making improvements. That sounds like the F word. That sounds a little bit of fun.

Wow, before we get too racy here, next question here from Jacob. Paula, how are you doing, by the way? I can't hear you, Nick, because you're breaking up every five milliseconds. She's smiling. There's some smiling going on. How am I doing?

Yeah, because you want to the short podcast, we're at 53 minutes. Yeah, I'm doing fine. Okay. You're doing fine as one. Okay, this one's from Jacob. Hey guys, Nick, congrats on Ironman, Wisconsin. Oh my God, thank you so much.

I'm 17 days out from my second full iron, did Wisconsin last year, going at it again this year. Recently, I've been racing and training at the fittest I've ever been. My numbers and results have shown it. More importantly, I can feel all of my adaptations and gains each day. Oh, that is the freaking best feeling. That was until this week. I'm so close to the start line again, but now I'm feeling disconnected from my body.

My mind knows what to do. My body doesn't feel sore or overworked, but every time I go to train, everything just feels off. Like there's a delay or I'm not as punchy. An example of this is feeling sloppy with my technique in the water. And no matter how hard I focus on correcting it doesn't feel as good as it normally does. Any experience with this? Any tips on queuing myself back into feeling good? Thanks all, Jacob.

Chill, chill, bro. Eat some good food, get some good sleep. Take a little log off the fire. I think you just sound tired. Yeah, that was my first thought too. It's not like you're less fit. If you're racing with no, or no, if you're just training, training,

with no races to break up the training, I find that with races you actually get a little forced rest because you're tapering into it. The race is a hard effort, but then you're resting after it. So the weeks where I have a race, the volume is lower. The intensity is a bit lower. It's kind of a bit of a built-in recovery week or two in some ways. Of course, there's stress in other ways. But sometimes if you're just training and training and training for Ironman, Wisconsin,

which is in September and you've been thinking about it since March, and you've had no reason to take any easy week unless you force yourself to. Then it catches up with you and you feel like this. Taking five days very light is only going to help. And also get a blood test. I think testing your hormone and iron levels is not a bad idea either. Yeah, I guess the only thing that I would add is treat it like taper time. What we always say on taper time is if you're feeling really tired,

like keep the overall volume low, but still do some little acceleration spurts. So just like if you were going to the pool, you normally swim 4K, swim 1,500, but do a couple of like half pool sprints, like literally four inside of just kind of cruising around otherwise. And like,

so keep your body like in touch with the idea that it still is an athlete, you're still an athlete without increasing any fatigue at all. This is wise. Some good wisdom. It's hard to do in practice, though. It's hard to do unless if you don't have a coach that's telling you to, it's really hard to tell yourself to do that. Yeah, we know.

Even when you have a coach is telling you to do that. It's hard to do. Because you feel like you're falling behind. You're like, I'm getting less fit. I'm learning less. You're not losing any fitness in five days. And if you feel so strong when you come back, if you've really done those five days, right?

That was my experience recently. God, it was like, whoa. Okay, last question here. Well, I'm going to preempt this by saying, I remember when I was a kid and I was reading animorphs? Do you remember animorphs? Hell yeah. Eric?

Yeah. And there was some of the animorphs books that you could like choose your own adventure kind of. So it'd be like if you choose like the left door, go to page 99. If you choose the right door, go to page 127. So good. Goose bumps were like that too. Goose bombs. Yes, of course.

Okay. So in a much less exciting version of this, you guys can answer a question about Chattanooga and what it's like or about how you deal with delivering content as professionals with sponsors. Let's just do Chattanooga easy ray out. Okay. Oh. Sorry. I love how you worked animorphs into giving us a choice between what question to do. Oh, I was just reminded of Anamorphs research.

I really did like animorphs as a kid. The social media question is good. The 90s were good. We can push it to next week. Okay, okay. Yeah. This one's from Joe. Spelled J.O.

Like Junior Olympics. I've just raced at Swansea 70.3 and qualified for 70.3 world champs in Chattanooga next year. This is the first time a world champs has fallen in UK school summer holidays. So I took the place. We've decided we're going to make an epic family holiday out of this. but I know very little about Chattanooga and the surrounding area. We will fly in and out of Orlando and will incorporate seven days at Disney for the kids. Seven days at Disney is a lot, by the way, and it's not cheap either,

which may have to be before the race because of school holiday things, which will make it for an interesting taper period. My question is, for a family of four, two kids, seven and ten years old, what is Chattanooga like? is the surrounding area worth staying after the race to explore? Should we stay in the city itself or maybe go 30 to 40 minutes out for a more epic holiday feel? I remember you saying the roads were pretty busy to ride on pre-race. The race is going to be just one day of what will hopefully be an epic holiday.

So any recommendations for places to visit or stay in that part of America? Joe. My only recommendation is to definitely do the seven days at Disney right before World Championships. especially if you're a pro racing against Paula. Definitely do it right then. Taylor Nipps, seven days at Disney. Every ride on. You can do it.

You can do it, Taylor. And pig out. Go for it. Pick out. Yeah, seven days. Walking is literally on your feet all day long. That's pretty crazy. What would you rather do?

an Iron Man or seven days of Disney. I think I'd rather do an Iron Man. With two kids. With two kids. I would do the Iron Man. Yeah. Same. So, okay, so we haven't even hit Nice yet, but what is Chattanooga like for someone who's coming from the UK?

We like Chattanooga a lot. I think it's, if you're from Europe and you're used to going to places like Hamburg and Nice, it's, they've never been to the U.S. before. It is going to feel different. Like we have bigger cars, we have bigger roads, The roads might be a little bit less accessible to bikes sometimes.

Tannugas hot and humid, but I'd say the downtown scene, at least for stuff Eric and I like, which is like good coffee, good food, good hotels, is fun. It's a cool little city with some history and trains and a big river. And I don't know exactly what they have in terms of extracurricular stuff to do for a family with kids. but in terms of a place to hang out before the race, it's super enjoyable. I wouldn't say I necessarily want to stay for days afterwards, but we love going there.

Yeah, I feel like it's a little bit limited. You could go to New York City and go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner out every single day and just barely brush the surface. I feel like Chattanooga, you could kind of hit the best things in the course of a week is my perception just based on the size. And so it's not overwhelming, which could be a positive.

But it's not a big city. It's like a very much mid-sized city, like immediately into rural farmland outside of it. Do you feel like it has some of that American frontier vibe to it that maybe for someone from Europe would be exciting to see, does it have this like American roots thing to it? I don't think so. It's not like Boston or New York. like specifically Boston is going to have this like, you know, uh,

uh, very early America thing where Benjamin Franklin sat underneath that tree once. And like the founding fathers wrote the constitution right here. It's not that and it's not like Jackson Hole or Moab where it feels like the American West and you can picture cowboys. It's like kind of in the middle of those two things, I think where you're going to see rural farmland and, uh, be out into the countryside a fair.

bit, but then it's like I said, Mid-sized city, a river runs through it. They've got some pubs and bars and decent food scene and kind of in between. Wait, Disneyland or World? Disney World. Disney World. Disney World. Okay. Disney World. Florida.

Orlando. Yeah. You could spend seven days in Disney World because they got all the different parks. Oh, we're not saying you can't spend seven days there. We're saying that sounds tiring. One could. I guess I'm a little, my parents never took us to Disneyland or Disney World.

I've never been. So I can't, I shouldn't be critical. It's probably amazing. It's pretty amazing. It was, I remember as a kid, it was like life-changingly amazing. Yeah, so maybe that is a good thing. Do you think seven days at Disney is too much or just the right amount? I think it's too much.

I think it's too much. I think these kids are going to need to be like scraped off the pavement. They're going to be having a full-blown meltdown. Seven days is so much. So what's the ideal number of days at Disney? I think three days. Three? Yeah, I think three days.

Like one at Magical Kingdom, one at Epcot, one at Universal Studios. Yeah, or you could do the Universal Studios. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Or you could do Animal Kingdom. Oh, right. Animal Kingdom. That one's fun too. But yeah, definitely Magic Kingdom and God, I haven't been in a long time.

But Magic Kingdom and Epcot are like the main attractions, at least they were for me. I got to imagine as a kid, too, you don't know. that how big the park is. So you don't know that you saw like one third of the magic kingdom. Yeah, yeah, right. You're like, you're completely overwhelmed in every way. Yeah. And only the parents know if you didn't see every single ride. Dude, whenever I see a kid crying at Disney, I'm like, bro, this is literally the best it's ever going to get for you and you're crying. I don't know what, I don't know what you're supposed to do. We do this as adults too. We started having a pity, pouty, party because we've had too much fun.

And you're like, you're bike packing and you're crying about your flat tire. It's like, how did you get here? Riding your bike for four days, right? Yeah, yeah. Cry me a river. Yeah. But yeah, Chattanooga, cool, but I think what's going to make it really cool

as someone has never been there is going to be the vibe that Iron Man puts into their world's stuff, which is always really amazing. It seems like the place itself is cool, but it's not going to have that like next level

of like, wow, here we are. The way that maybe Nice might or going to New Zealand might. That's only because we're from here though. I mean, it has the allure of I'm going to America. That's cool. Yeah. It's bigger than Topa.

Way bigger. Yeah. Topa was like nothing. Way more to do than Topa. Topa was like a campground by comparison to Nice. Topah was a campground. A pretty one. I was listening.

It was like a kick-ass little surf town is what it felt like. Yeah, yeah, true, true. Chattanooga's bigger than that. Okay, well, that was our animorphs adventure ending. I think we chose the right door. We survived. Well, the important thing is not whether you choose the right door, it's whether you have fun on the episode of that book.

Wow. See you next week.