That Triathlon Life Podcast - Storing wetsuits, picking the right swim goggles, how old is too old for carbon race wheels, and more!

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

This week we are in St George, Utah, ready to watch Paula race! First, we tackled 3 Bike Tech With Eric questions. Eric spoke to the safety of carbon wheels from 2006, how to seat tubeless tires on stubborn rims, and what the best practice is for refilling sealant in tires.We also talked about how to properly fold away a wetsuit, how beneficial certain running surfaces are for staving off injury, how common it is for pros to get sunburnt, how to pick an airline for travel with a bike bag, how to break through a swimming plateau, how many pairs of goggles is appropriate to have in your swim bag, race day wheel rentals, and a final discussion about the realities of what life will be like post-retirement for Eric and Paula. You can become a beloved podcast supporter and also submit your own questions at ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Hey, everyone, welcome to that triathlon life. I'm Eric Lagerstrom. I'm Paula Finlay. I'm Nick Goldston. This is our podcast where we talk about what's going on in our triathlon life, what's going on with our little business. That triathlon life, we talk about what's going on a triathlon world. But the bulk of the show is we take questions from everybody who listens and writes in.

So this show goes on and it is an hour long because of you. Eric, how do you feel about me wearing a TTL logo on my shirt and a TTIL logo on my hat? I would say you're overbranded. But here it is too. but I actually have shorts, hat, and shirt. And I'm mixing collections. I think that's what's important. You've got like an OG T shirt.

That is, that goes back to, man. And here I have, I have a TTL shirt on and I'm just wearing underwear. Is it a TTL underwear, though? No, it's not TTL underwear. We're sitting in our hotel room in St. George, the Adveneer. I checked in yesterday or got here the day before and we're just deep into race week. right now. Frothing.

Frothing for the start. No, no. That's not true. But you guys just got massages, right? Yeah. Back when I was training with Siri Lindley in Boulder, I worked with Byron Thomas, super good massage therapist. He's worked with a ton of pro athletes.

And he kind of travels to some of the races that are close to where he now lives, which is Tucson. So he's here and he came to our hotel room and squeezed his massage table into our itty-bitty room. And I mean, it's beautiful. but it's definitely not a room built for two bike bags, two bikes, two humans, two suitcases, a massage table, a massage therapist. But we made it work, and it was a great, it makes me remember how much I miss seeing him.

He's so good. So thank you, Byron. If you live in Tucson, look him up. So what are the vibes like in St. George right now? I know the weather is real nice. It's going to be toasty on race day, but cloudy, apparently. How have you been feeling? I think vibes are premium.

Paula just came out of a snowstorm to come here from Ben. I came from St. Anthony's racing in Florida. So here it's like warm, it's not too humid. Yeah, it warms up in the afternoon. But if you ride in the morning, do your stuff in the morning, and then go for lake swim in the afternoon. It's dreamy. Yeah, the weather's great.

Not a lot of people are here yet from, like, for the race, it seems. So it's still really quiet. But, you know, that just keeps ramping up through the week. So we already see the bike bags rolling into the hotel. How good of a location is St. George to just train? I think it's really good. I've trained here a fair bit in the past. Heather and Trevor Wirtel were the first people to train here for like an extended period of time.

They would come for like four or five months every year and live in their RV. But there's just, there's a crazy amount of paved long roads that you can ride on TT bikes. It's certainly not as interesting as like riding the Santa Monica Mountains, but for TT biking, really, really good. It's just getting every year we come here We notice how It get a little bit busier A little bit busier A little bit more development

Which I guess is like anywhere But every year I'm like a little bit more aware Of how many cars are on the road Heading out to Sand To Snow Canyon And maybe that's just me getting less tolerant of cars But it feels like there's a lot of cars It's definitely gotten significantly bigger

Like back in 2015 or 16 Whenever I came here first And the word tells that already been coming for a while I thought of it as like a campground, like a city that kind of felt like a campground. It was just not that big and felt kind of sleepy. And it's really grown up. And Paula, correct me if I'm wrong, is the last time you raced there world championships? Yeah, I didn't come last year because it was the same weekend as the PTO race in Ibiza.

The last year at this time, we were in Europe. But yeah, so I guess the last time I would have raced here is October 2022. which doesn't feel that long ago. No, I remember that day very well. God, both of you have had really special days that ended up being emotional for me, if I can be selfish and say that they were emotional for me there. When Eric got seventh in the rain, that was an epic day.

And then when you got second, when you got off the bike with Olympic gold medalist and Lucy Charles and then outran them, those were good days. Really, we've got really great memories here. There are some hard races, but also some great races. Yep. And it's going to be the same thing this Saturday.

It's going to be very fun. Do we know if they are streaming the race at all? Can we watch the race at all? Yeah, I'm assuming because it's the Iron Man Pro series, they'll have coverage on outside watch like all the other races. It's North American Championship. Yeah. Oh, it is.

Yeah. I will finish that. And it's North American Championships, right? Yes. I guess it is. I did not know that. It is. It is.

It is. It is. Okay. So St. George, awesome. I'll be there tomorrow night as well, and I'm very much looking forward to it. But what else is going on in your lives right now and what else is going on in terms of TTL? I just raced St. Anthony's triathlon on Sunday. Oh, shoot.

Yeah. So normally we would go into a race recap, but Paul and I were just chatting about it on our walk just before during the podcast. And I think that the video that I made on YouTube really does a very, very good job of saying how I feel about the race. and I don't think I could really come anywhere close to doing it justice here on the podcast. So I would just, if you want to find out how that went, I would go watch that video on YouTube.

We even had a couple of questions come in, or I should say comments come in about that YouTube video. People really responded well to it. And it's a lot of just you talking at the camera. It's a little bit podcast style with the extra kind of added visual to it. Yeah, I would say it's more like Casey Nystat style than my normal like surf film style.

Like I switched the proportions a little bit. Like I did quite a bit of talking to carry the story with little bits of action that I was able to get because I was there totally by myself. But I just kind of told the story of the race and how I feel about it and my history with it. And yeah, I would just go check that out. And then on Sunday, there's something coming out that we've been kind of gassing up for a while. Do you want to talk about that for a second, Eric? The Ventura Collection. Oh, wow.

Yeah, we've been really excited about this for a long time. We've delayed the launch of it just a little bit so we make sure it was just right and we got all of our ducks in a row because it is pretty big. It's a pretty big launch. We've got T-shirts. We've got two different coffee mugs. We were bringing back cappuccino mugs plus coffee mugs. We've got like four or five different hats, a sticker pack, water bottles, all of the things. So this is kind of like our kicking off the season, kicking off 2024 summer trathlon season collection.

And it's super fun. great colors inspired by our time in Ventura where I was very inspired by the colors and the things down there and the styles. And Christian Dunn helped us design a kind of a new graphic, a new TTR graphic that's on everything. And that new graphic's not going to replace the old logo. I think even my mom was confused about that. It's just a cool fun summer alternative and we really like it. It's like the TTL block letters with the wrap around it. If you haven't seen it yet, just go look at the website and all the stuff is kind of already up there with a countdown timer so you can game plan what you want to get. Or you could be on this FaceTime Colin Eric's wearing it right here and then you would really know what it looks like on a person.

Yeah. Yeah. No, we're really excited, especially after doing that shred till bed launch to kind of keep, you know, introducing original artwork, not necessarily just putting our logo on the front of a shirt every single time. And yeah, and we think these are awesome. So check it out. Set your clocks. I'm sure it'll go fast. There's a coffee mugs too.

Are those in? They're arriving today. Oh, they're arriving today. All right. At the warehouse. This is my personal fave. Yeah, everyone loves the coffee mugs. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, we haven't done cappuccino mugs and these cool, these great porcelain coffee mugs. We haven't done these in three years. They're like made in Italy. The mugs are so nice. Like all the best things. They're not, yes, like all the best things. Nick made in Italy.

These coffee mugs, ANCAP made in Italy, Italian porcelain. And we've had like previous collections of these mugs forever and ever we use them every single day in there. Perfect. The paint is like inside the lacquer. It never comes off or chips or peels or anything. It's like really, really beautiful. So you can check that out at ThattriathlonLife.com.

Like Paula said, there's already a counter on there, but I highly suggest getting on there as close to the launch time as possible to make sure you can get what you want because we always have people that complain about and stuff being sold out. So get on there as fast as possible. If you want it, you want it.

And be there, right on time. Be there, be square. Okay, next thing, we have a lot of questions today, and they're very fun. We have three bike tech with Eric questions, so we're going to knock those out, and then some more general triathlon questions. These questions all come in from the listeners, which are you people, and you can submit your own questions at thatriathlonlife.com slash podcast. There, you can, if you're feeling very generous, become a podcast supporter, which we appreciate so much, so much so that we, every week try to pick a random podcast supporter and give them a little a little gift and right now paula are we still doing bottles and socks i don't know last week's guy didn't email you with an address no not yet so yeah we still

have socks i guess okay great okay great so we have this week we randomly picked meredith warner we love you meredith thank you so much we will be sending you uh bottles and socks just make sure you reach out to probably me on Instagram, and let me know where you want us to send those, and by us, I mean, Paula, send those little TTL goodies. Thank you so much, Meredith. Okay, let's get into some bike tech with Eric. Bike tech with Eric. Okay, here we go. This one's from Jared, spelled J-A-R-R-O-D. Love that spelling. Hey guys, given that triathlon is such an expensive sport, people often turn to the second-hand market to save costs. I am one of these people, me too, Jared. And I recently purchased a of Carbon Zip 808 wheels secondhand for a very low price.

From what I can tell from information put out by Zip, these wheels were made around 2006-2007. I checked over them for cracks, damage, et cetera, and they seemed to be in good condition, but my question is as follows. Are there any safety concerns related to buying older carbon wheels? Can carbon wheels get too old to the point where you would not recommend riding them for fear of safety issues?

Or so long as the wheels are checked over by a bike shop for any obvious signs of damage, cracking, etc. Can carbon wheels be ridden forever in parentheses? Thanks in advance for entertaining the questions and all the best this year and beyond Jared. So what do you think, Eric? Those are some

old wheels. I'm personally not... Also, Eric is sick, P.S. If you noticed by his coughing and his sneezing. So there's like an 80% chance I'll be sick by the weekend. And there's a 90% chance he's not racing.

But luckily, it not affect his brain and able to answer bike tech with Eric questions. But luckily we're all here and we're having fun. Yeah. Fortunately, it is one of those, like, it's really, like, sinuses up sort of a thing. I just got a head cold. There's nothing in my chest. So I'm feeling like it'll be a quick turnaround, but, you know, it's too much fun lately.

Yep. I'm personally not aware of any, like, overarching issues with the concept of, like, carbon wheels. Like, oh, carbon wheels just wear out after five years. You know, there are carbon wheels in history that have had specific problems, like Spinergies had this thing where they would just explode. That's interesting. Yeah, but we're kind of past that, I think. The one thing that kind of comes to mind is back when,

I assume these are rim break, back when you had aluminum rim brake wheels, like if you rode those a lot, especially in bad conditions or in the wintertime, the braking surface would actually get dug out. it would start to look kind of like an hourglass. And that could fail. Basically, that aluminum brake track could get so thin that it just failed and like the tire would blow it, you know, just like break the rim right there.

So that would be the one thing that I would look at. I'm not sure if that happens with carbon or not. I assume like on carbon wheels, more just the brake pads wear down. But touch those brake surfaces, see if they're still flat or if they have any sort of cupping sort of effect to them. And then I don't think it would be a terrible idea

to take these wheels into a bike shop and explain to them. Hey, I just bought these. I'm a little bit nervous. Can you just give them a once over? I think you're kind of more at risk for like something being wrong with the spokes and like the nipple spoke junction being rusty and a spoke breaking more likely. I would say no way. No way. Says the person who gets zip wheels for free. These are too old. Like there's no way. I mean, just if you have any even 2% fear that they're going to fail on you as you're blasting down a cent at 80 kilometers an hour. It's not worth it. Personally.

I would worry the most about the breaking surface, like you said, Eric, because carbon, if it heats up a lot, it's like the plastic can delaminate. So just like Eric said, he said they were like $200 or something? No, he just said they were very cheap. The thing is here is like, this is not, I think the more important thing here is how many miles do they have on them? Like race 808s, they could have 400 miles on them. In which case, there's no reason that the carbon should have just become shit. Sitting in the attic. Yeah.

That's true. That's true. How much have they been ridden? Where they ridden downhill a lot with on the brakes all time? Were they ridden on bumpy terrain? It's like, you just don't know. It's not the same as buying a set of, like, training wheels that someone has absolutely beat. I still have my racing bike from the Olympics in 2012 that has carbon wheels on it.

And I think I'd take that thing out and ride it with no problem because it's been sitting there for a, 11 years. Right. And this is like 2006, 2007 is well within that range of time where people were not riding carbon wheels all the time. Yeah. Right. Yeah, you put them on just for race day. Right. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Okay. Next question here, bike tech with Eric still is from Everett. From Gresham, by the way, which is where Eric also grew up. Greetings all. I have a bike tech with Eric question. My tires won't properly seat on the rim of my TT bike. They are Conti 5,000s, Continental 5,000s. I heard once that I could use rubbing alcohol as a lubricant on the rims,

but can't find anything online to back that up. Instead, most sources say to use soap. How would you go about fixing this problem? Thank you, and congratulations to Paula for an amazing race at Oceanside. Yeah, this is a bit old. So, Eric, my question for you is once the tires are inside of the bead, I feel like these alcohol or the soap is to get the tire onto the beat, not to seat it itself.

Do you feel like that's right? I think the problem here is like the tire bead basically isn't like sliding up into place. So I think he's thinking if I like lube up the bead or like the rim, the inside of the rim a little bit, then it'll slide up more easily. Which I'm thinking like if you just got enough sealant splashing around in there, I would maybe like rub the edge of the bead with the sealant a little bit. use that to just help slicking it up. I'm personally not like the biggest, I don't know the science behind it, but I'm not the biggest fan of having soap bubbles

mixed in with the sealant. I don't know how that impacts the integrity of the sealant. It might have no impact. I just can't comment on it personally. I haven't ever had to do this. The things that I use, the tricks that I use are removing the valve core. That'll allow air to flow into the whole system

much more quickly. And that usually does it for me. If I can't get it with the valve core in, which I often can, then I'll do that. And if I can't get it with, like, my air compressor, then I'll go to the blast chamber thing because that usually lets out air a little bit faster. And if I can't get that, then I'll just take to the bike shop and be like, hey, this has got sealant in it. I just can't get it on the rim.

They usually will do it for you as you stand there and charge you nothing. And to be clear, this is for tubeless tires that need to be seated. This is irrelevant for anyone running in her tubes. Yeah, and if you're a little bit confused about removing the valve core, basically you just get the tire seated and pump it up with the valve core gone, and then you really quickly put the valve core back in before all the air goes out. It's not that difficult. You've got a little bit of time before all the air rushes out.

I feel like even if the air rushes out, a lot of times the brim, the bead won't even fully unseat itself and it'll just pump right back up. Depends on the tire. Some tires are a real pain in the ass. I see. Okay, okay. Okay, great. And then last bike tech, where there are a question here. Another tubeless question, tubeless tire sealant.

What are your thoughts and recommendations about topping off sealant versus removing then refilling the sealant, particularly after months of not using the wheels and tires throughout the winter? So what do they mean? What is the difference between topping off sealant and then removing the tires? Basically, if you just, again, remove the valve core and squirt new sealant in through there versus like taking one side of the tire off

and checking the sealant in there to see if it's still liquid and if it's coagulated or completely dry. That's what we're talking about. So if it's been a couple months and especially on our race wheels, even if it's been like six weeks because we use the race sealant, which can coagulate quicker, I'll pull one side of the tire off, check it if it's even like remotely an issue.

I'll add some more. If it seems like it's kind of hardened up, sometimes I'll just wipe it out because it's like this is the race bike. I just want it to be pristine, just like start over completely. that's my thought process. Yeah, it's a real tempting to not take the tire off and to just keep putting sealing in through the valve,

but you're always rolling the dice when you do that. Yeah. Because the sealant's in there could be all hardened. Yep, exactly. And I just usually wait until I go over to my bike and it's fully flat. I'm like, oh, okay, there was not enough sealant in there. But don't take my advice. Take Eric's advice.

Okay, awesome. Thank you, Eric. I thank you for suffering through with your sickliness and educating the masses. I think you can definitely just top it up, even if there's like hard ceiling in there, if it's your training bike and you just don't care that much and you're about to head out for 150 mile ride, sure. It's better to top it up than not do anything. I just kind of like opening up and looking at it and checking the status.

Yep. Smart. Like a true bike mechanic. First question here. This is from first, sorry, first non-bike check with Eric question here. This one is from Catherine. Hey, everyone, a wetsuit question. I'm taking a season off from racing and looking to store some of my gear away in a plastic container. How do I properly fold away a wetsuit or does it have to hang away in the closet?

What do you guys do? We have a TTL garage sale and we get rid of those things. Yeah. Which, by the way, it was a smashing success. Yeah, yeah, of course. The garage sale is my new... Addiction. Hobby.

Yeah. Like, you know when people are like, what do you do when you're not doing triathlon? I do the TTR garage sale. That shit is time consuming. Seriously, it was so fun, though. I probably put so much stuff on there. And, like, Lindsay Corbyn started putting stuff on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lindsay even sold a bike on it. And, like, we were like, there's no way this stuff is going to sell. And literally, like, 80% of it sold within 10 minutes. It was so funny. And then I had to deal with the email logistics and keeping track of who got what. And then buying the shipping bags and labeling. them properly and then going to the post office with like 40 things. And thankfully the post office lady and Ben, Jackie is like my favorite customer service person.

And we just chatted for like 30 minutes as she helped me with all my packages. But thank you to everyone who bought a wetsuit, etc. I folded them up, tried to do it nicely and put them in this bag. But I usually don't hang our wetsuits. I store them by folding them inside out. I don't know if that makes a difference. That's the wrong way. Oh, it's the way.

Eric says that's the wrong way. Eric, the s's wrong way. Okay, go, Eric. Answer the question. The best way to do a wetsuit is exactly the way that it came out of the packaging when you got it. Right side out and you like fold it very loosely, ideally with like not any sort of sharp turns or creases because you will just crease the wetsuit. The worst thing that you could do is like fold it like a hot dog. You know, like if it was folded, like put the two short short suit.

shoulders together because then you'll have a crease straight down the middle of the chest. You could just kind of like roll it up. Rolling also works. Like a croissant. Yeah. If we're doing like food analogies. Totally.

Which we always do. The big thing that you're trying to avoid is creases. So having the rubber side out is huge and then just like I said, no sharp turns. No, you know. And if you have room to hang it somewhere, is that best, Eric, the expert in wetsuit storage? I don't know. I've always been like a little bit wary of that potentially stretching out the shoulder.

like even 0.1%. So I prefer to not hang it. But if you're like in the summertime and Ben we'll go open water swimming once a week. And then that situation, I guess yeah. For simplicity, hang it up because you're hanging it up to dry anyway. But I just wouldn't leave it hanging for like a year

or like six months. Yeah. And I wouldn't like vacuum seal it or something. Oh God. I literally was about to tell you that I did that and if that was a bad idea. Vacuum seal your wed suit? Why would you do that? One second. This is my vacuum sealed bag with five wetsuits in it. Why do you have five wetsuits? You need to have a garage sale. I have many that have built up over the years. I have my first ever one. I got the one that

replaced that one. I have two from the Norwegians and then I have a blue 71. Yeah, so same question. Why do you still have them? Well, what am I supposed to do? I don't have a TTL garage sale in my disposal. The nice thing about the garage sale, which I've realized now doing it collaboratively with Lindsay, is that you too can participate and sell your wetsuits on it because really all I do is the people with their email and I just say, here's the Venmo, send me your shipping address. This is a one email transaction.

Got it. No, I'm not sending you a picture. This is simple. Giving you a good deal so I don't have to go back and forth even though I appreciate you. I see. Okay. So the answer though is

I should not have vacuum sealed these wetsuits. I mean, it just amplifies any creases if you folded it incorrectly. Right. Okay. That's great. That's all. The name of the game is just avoid creases. Quickness.

This is, pop the vacuum. Great advice. Pop the vacuum right now. Okay. Do we want to hear what it's going to sound like? Yes. I'll do it into the mic. Okay.

This is great podcast content. Oh. Oh, they can breathe. That feels good. I was really hoping for like an airlock sound. Yeah. The wetsuits were like, finally, these creases are loosening up. Also, I don't know if this is way overkill, but I put, when I was surfing a bunch, like, every day, the wetsuit, even though I never actually peed in it, promise, Scouts honor, the wetsu would kind of start to get a little nasty.

And I had this, like, wetsuit cleaner that I would put and mix with water in a bathtub. Do you guys ever do that for your triathlon suits? Do you think that's a waste of time? Nope, I've never done it. I've never washed my wetsuit. I think it's a good idea to rinse it if you wear it in a pool. I also don't do that, but I think it would be a good idea. Yeah, I always rinse my shoes.

We also don't swim in the ocean in California where there could be lots of questionable things in the water. We swim in crystal clear, Oregon, rivers and lakes. Yeah, I take the wetsuit into the shower with me after every open water swim here and rinse it off inside and out and then dry it. Hang it, hang dry it out of the sun. But I wouldn't do it with soap. No, no soap. Anyway, this is dragging on. The 45-minute question of how should I store my wet seat.

But anyway, I feel like I love the concrete advice of avoid creases. That's great. That is the answer in 45 minutes. Yep. Great. Next question here is from Florian. Hi, all, what is considered a soft surface when running? I try to avoid tarmac as often as possible and mostly end up running on roads and paths along agricultural fields.

Not paved, not gravel, but well compacted and easy to drive on with on-road cars even in the rain. How do you characterize and identify soft running surfaces? Yeah, so what he's trying to say is these roads are still great for cars to try. drive on, is that considered a soft running surface if it's perfect for cars? I would say, yeah, it's still better. Like Boulder, I remember being really had plenty of these, like around the reservoir. It was a hard packed dirt road, but that is still, in my opinion, much better than tarmac, way better than concrete. Totally. And it's a little bit slower to run on because there is some give, but yeah, even though you can't necessarily feel it, it is much better for your

joints. And I would choose that every time. That's actually my favorite because you still get some bounce. Yeah, I think like when you're talking about, did I get a stress fracture or not? We're talking in like single percentages of how much you overreached. And asphalt can be like 1% softer than concrete and you might not feel it, but over a million footsteps, that adds up. So yes, any form of dirt, great. And how much of it do you think is the actual surface? Do you think any portion of it is also?

slightly changing your foot strike because there's a pebble here, a pebble there, the camber changes. Yeah, it's a little bit of variety. I think, I think that's much less of a factor on the type of thing that this person's talking about versus like a single track that you're turning and... Yeah, I don't think it's different enough from... Yeah.

But I would also, one thing I would say about those types of rows is oftentimes they're like cambered. So you just have to make sure that if you're running on the edge of it, it's not like so slanted that that's going to create other issues. I should make sure it's pretty flat. Yeah, cool. Okay, next question here is from Andwen, from Wales. I wish I could do this in a Welsh accent.

Hi, Eric, Paul, Nick, and Flynn. I was curious how common it is for pros to get sunburns during races. I've seen a lot of videos of athletes heat training and figured that for many hot and sunny 70.3s and longer Iron Man races, sunscreen would be a must. However, I've never seen pros put on sunscreen in transition. Do you just apply before the race and hope for the best? Have ever been sunburned during a race?

Love everything TTR and wish you all the best for your upcoming races. And when from Wales. You two are the perfect people to ask this question. It's funny that someone from Wales is asking about... Yeah, where there's no sun ever? Well, they have sun, but I mean, he's probably like pale and pasty like us. Yeah, and then you drop into like Iron Man Arizona and yeah, you're in for some issues. Yeah, I personally, especially,

here in St. George and races where it's going to get hot, I put sunscreen on in the morning in transition before I put my wetsuit on and takes a little bit of prethought because it's definitely not what is first of mine when it's dark and cold in the morning, but lotion on my face or spray sunscreen on my legs, like any bit helps on my neck. I think part of the issue in Oceanside with my severe neck burn was I got a wet seat rash and then it got sunburned on top of it and it was really, really painful. So it's definitely worth doing that. If you forget, you could always put a little sunscreen in your T2 bag and put it on for the run

as you're jogging out. Like Zelios has these little single serving sunscreens, stuff like that. But yeah, I would say it's definitely important and things that people don't think about in their race prep necessarily because it doesn't relate to nutrition or going fast, just protecting your skin, which is important. Yes. I think you guys also are out there for not very long, and that helps.

And both of you are good. Like when you're done racing, you're not just standing in the sun the way that, like, I do. An hour and a half goes by quickly after the race when you're not racing. You don't realize you're just in the speeding sun the whole time. Yeah. Some races have sunscreen tables. I was just thinking of that. Yeah.

Yeah. That's smart. Okay. Next question here is from Zach. Hey, Eric Flynn, Nick and Paula. Question is regarding travel. Eric Flynn, Nick and Paula. That's a new order. That is a new order. Yeah, that is.

I'm planning to race to T-100, Los Vegas, and we'll be borrowing my coach's Bike Box Allen, and was curious on what airlines y'all have found to be most bike travel friendly. I prefer to travel on Delta, but flights from Kentucky to Vegas are about half the cost with other airlines. Do you guys ever consider the quality with which your bike is treated from airline to airline? Is that one of the factors? I think he's more talking about the cost. I don't know. I personally have not noticed like a major discrepancy between any airline with in terms of how often things get damaged or how brutal people are. I think just if you got your bike damaged, you just caught somebody on the wrong day who threw it extra hard and didn't care or sat on it or, you know, like whatever the thing.

It's really more like luck of the draw person to person versus I think airlines. I haven't heard anybody say, oh yeah, every single time I fly Delta, my bike gets broken. No, I think Delta is probably one of the better ones. That's just the first one I came away. But for me, they're all similar. I would say that most airlines now treat a bike just like an extra bag. So as long as you keep

it under 50 pounds, it'll just be charged as a second piece of luggage. So it shouldn't be more than $45, $50 or something for it, which is really nice. Back in the day, bike fees used to be hundreds of dollars and it would be a huge factor in deciding which airline to fly with because United might be $100

and Delta might be $200. What's the most you've ever been charged? weren't we flying back from the Collins Cup and it was like 500? Yeah, I was going to say 500. Yeah, that was insane. Same as the cost of the seat on the plane. Yeah, that was I think with Lufthansa.

And you're just like, there's literally nothing you can do about it. But in general, in North America, airlines have gotten better. I don't know about Europe. Europe's a whole different thing. They're usually much more difficult with weight and size and being picky. Totally. I did a crazy thing actually on my, you guys could try this hack. Maybe I shouldn't say it because they're going to stop doing it.

But I went to check in from my flight to St. George and it asked if I wanted to upgrade to first class for $80. And with first class, you get free bags. So I'm like, well, I'm either paying $80 for my bags and sitting in economy or I'm upgrading to first class and it worked perfectly fine. I think that was a glitch. That's a great. Well, I'll say this.

That may have been a glitch. But if you are trying to spend the least amount of money for travel, keep in mind that there are definitely airlines who do not treat the bike as a, they don't, it doesn't cost the same as a bag and it can cost much more. And with a bike box Allen, they're heavy. Those things are freaking heavy. That's what I was going to say. Your bike box is a freaking tank.

You don't have to care what airline you're going to fly on. That's true. No one's breaking in. Nothing's getting through there. Yeah. It's the benefit of the bike box Allen is it so safe in there. The downside is that it's also really heavy. So I would put your bike in and nothing else to try to stay under the weight limit.

Yeah, and a bunch of helium balloons. When I was flying to Mexico, I was comparing the cost of different airlines and how they treat bike fees. And I remember there were a few that still charge more. So maybe just keep that in mind when looking at them. Spirit, etc. Okay. Next question here is from Daniel. I've been swimming consistently for three years now, three times a week, and generally follow a program with sets and a total distance between two and a half and four kilometers.

However, I feel like I'm stuck and it's challenging for me to improve my times. based on your experience, what's more important, increasing the distance procession, focusing on improving technique, or adjusting the training program. I'm not sure what that means adjusting the training program, but greetings from Monterey, Mexico. If you ever feel like visiting the city and doing the Iron Man 70.3 MTI will be waiting for you for sure. Daniel. Monterey was my first World Cup win in 2010. Really?

Yeah. I was trying to, this might be a little bit too deep, but I was like super, over triathlon last week and I was like, people don't understand how long I've been doing this because Instagram didn't even exist back then and people have been following TTR since like COVID or whatever, it's been four years and you race great, why would you not want to race anymore? And I'm like, my first World Cup win was 2010. Therefore, I had been training for like, you know, six or seven years before that. So I looked up like a picture of it and I saw myself and I was so young and I'm like, I've literally lived, breathed, eight triathlon since that.

For 20 years, basically. Yeah. 20 years. It's been 25 years since we did our first race. Yeah. And I think people don't really get that if they're kind of new to the sport or just listen to this podcast or watch the vlogs for a couple of years. It's like, we've been doing this for so long and it's not just doing the sport.

It's like every aspect of your life, every single day is made. so that you can be high performance and race fast. No, I'm not going to go to happy hour. Yes, I'm going to have to skip that birthday. No, I'm not going to be home from my birthday. Even just the pressure of doing a workout well. Like, that's what really set me over the edge last week was I was going out on these bike rides and not doing them properly or doing them well and not getting lots that I wanted.

And I was getting severely depressed about it. And I'm like, fuck this. I've been doing this for so long. And why should I have to, like, ruin my week? because I don't do a couple workouts correctly. Like, anyway, that's a tangent. We love it. I should post this picture.

It's like such a cute picture of me winning the race. And I was like holding a Canadian flag because someone like handed me a Canada flag. And back in those days, that was like World Cups were still kind of a big deal because the WTS circuit was just brand new. It didn't exist yet. World Cups was the top level, right? No, WTS has still existed because I also won a couple of those that year.

Yeah. One point. At one point, WTSs didn't exist. Yeah, yeah. But, oh, man. And then I went back and when I was Googling it, you can watch like a little clip. Because you still did clips back then, even though YouTube was not big. But Barry Shepley was commentating it.

And like, athletes that I was racing against are long retired families, not have it on anything to do with triathlon. So it's like totally crazy that we're still doing this. And I think a little of that comes back to Eric. video if you watched that and him being like, how many more years can I do an on-road triathlon? I don't know. But if you're confused about those things, that's like

keep that in mind. Yeah, there's nobody that we were training with or racing with when we like started our pro careers that is remotely around. We're still doing this, yeah. Actually, no, the one person is Lisa Norton. Yep. I raced with her when I was little. I actually raced with Ashley Gentle quite a lot when we were juniors.

So yeah, we're not the only ones. But Ashley almost retired. She's like Josh Amberger, her partner, talked her into doing a 70.3 very much against her will, if I remember correctly. And like luck, good things you do. I mean, I think everyone who's still doing this who's been doing it since the 2000s has had times like that. What am I doing? Like, I'm over it. And still you're performing so well.

I mean, isn't that crazy with a big dip in the? I don't even know if I am. Yeah. You don't know if you are. Your top 10 of the world. No, I mean, yeah, but I'm not winning. I feel like I distinctly remember a documentary that I was watching and it was about, I think it was about Lance Armstrong and, you know, however you feel about Lance Armstrong,

but him saying something like basically as long as I have the desire to keep doing this, this was when he was like in his mid-30s. Like, I can keep coming back and probably winning because like I know what it takes. I know the process. Like my body's not falling apart. Like cycling is not a high. impact sport. It's really just like, how long do I want to go this hard this often and like live like this? Right. Well, I loved that tangent. Just so everyone knows, I love tangents on

this podcast as you've probably, as you've probably figured out. And the longer the better. Hopefully none of our competitors listen to this freaking podcast because like, they do. But you know, when I start a race, I am like extremely competitive. Like this does not affect my ability to like go hard in a race and try to win a race or go hard in my workouts and try to do the best I can. It's just an overall realization I'm having as a 34-year-old. Yeah, of course, of course. But I think the question was from a person from Monterey, which is why I started on the tangent about Monterey. Right. Yes, they're from Monterey and they were wondering, they're a little plateauing with their swimming.

They swim three times a week. It sounds like they're similar to me in terms of how much they're swimming. but they can't figure out what to do to be better. Is it more intensity? Is it more volume? Is it longer sessions? What would you suggest for someone? I feel like you're probably going to have to swim more than three times a week. Mostly because of just like the consistency in keeping your form.

Like when it's been like three days since you swam last, I don't think that's conducive to really making the type of improvements you're looking for. This is what I would do. I would swim one extra day a week and space it out every day. other day so that at least once in the week you're swimming back-to-back days. So, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. Yeah. Because then on Saturday, you're kind of getting that like neuromuscular memory of the Friday

session and you're adding an extra 3,000 meters into your week. That's literally increasing it by 25%. Like that's a huge amount. Swimming with a little bit of fatigue. So like a little bit of back up fitness there. What about, do you think it's a bad advisor like not related enough if one of those days is an open water day? it's just not really realistic for most people.

And open water is so hard that I would just... Pool. Just do pool. Sure, if you can, great. But I don't think that's like the thing that's going to make the difference. I agree. Okay. Great. Good luck, Daniel. I feel it.

I plateaued for like two years and now all of a sudden I've been getting faster. And I think it's just time. Swimming is very much like that. Just so you know, Daniel, swimming is very much like that. You can beat your head against the wall, beat your head against the wall, beat your head against the wall. And then all of a sudden, for no reason why some, you like have a little mini breakthrough. Yeah, some of the guys that we swim with actually have these little breakthroughs too.

And I think a lot of it has to do with fatigue from biking and running. If you're really fatigued in the other two sports, it's really hard to make progress in swimming. Whereas if you get a running injury or you're not biking as much, making progress in the pool is a lot easier. Totally. Yeah. Good luck, Daniel. This one is from Jason. Thank you, TTR people.

I'm a fellow Canadian to Paula. What? Whoa, the balloons. Nope. That was just a peace sign maybe? Yeah, it's the peace sign. But the best part about the FaceTime things is when they just happen really when you don't mean to.

That just enhances every conversation. Like imagine if you're on a business call and you're like, I've asked you two times and it's like balloons. Oh my God. I was going to take this out of the podcast, but that's so good. Okay, if you hold up a peace sign on FaceTime, it gives you balloons. But imagine

you're like firing someone it's like you have two days left and then we're getting that rid of you. The balloons come up on screen. Oh my God, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. Okay, sorry. Back to the podcast here.

This one's from Jason and he's also a fellow Canadian to you, Paula. Questions re-swimming in goggles. In so many videos, it looks like pros have 10 plus pairs of goggles on their bags when they go to the pool. How many goggles do you guys regularly use during swim training? What is your goggles selection like for training versus competition?

Thanks. Jason. I'm really more like I use one pair until they're done and then I pull the next pair out. I think that the accumulation of goggles and swim bags is like you don't throw out your old pair so they just stay in your swim bag and then you get a new pair and that other pair stays in and you're just never cleaning out your swim bag. That's true. I do keep like one old pair just in case like the current pair break. breaks, but then you can very easily all of a sudden have like three backup pairs, and you're not sure which one you want to throw away. You know, I'm not sure which one should be the backup pair.

Should it be the tinted one or should it be like, and then you're just, you're paralyzed with indecision and your nick with seven wetsuits in a zip-in-a-hye. If you're going to have two pairs of goggles in your bag, I'd put a tinted and a clear because on a cloudy day or in an indoor pool, it's nice to have clear goggles or an early morning start for a race where the sun's barely. up. Clear goggles are really nice, but obviously anytime you're outside in the sun, you want the tint-tits. So that's kind of the only variety I'd have. So you guys use the same style of goggles in the pool and it opened water. Yeah, I'm actually extremely picky about goggles. And when we

signed with Orca, I was like, uh, the goggle, I don't know about the goggles. I got to really try them all to make sure I like them. And I ended up actually really liking them. And I wear them every single day. They're the killer speed. Is that the new one? that we've gotten, they're freaking awesome. They're really nice. And I always used to wear the Speedo Vanquisher. Those are just like my go-to since I was a kid swimmer. But these new Orca goggles I like just as much or more. So they're very much a pool style goggle. They're not like an open water style goggle, but that's just what we're used to. And we swim in them in open water as well. Yeah, RCA does have some like bigger lens ones too with the plastic, you know, singular

nose piece. Do you know which ones that you like, Nick? Because those also work for me. I did wear those for a while. I thought there were the killas. Let me just look it up real quick. But they're all kill a hydro or something. Yeah, all the orca goggles are like kill a killer, kill a this, kill a seal. Kill a whale. Kill a seal. Kill a bird with

one stone. Kill two birds with one stone. Yeah, but they use that killer. Right. Yeah, the ones I use are the kilo one 80 degree swim goggles. And they to me seem very much like a open water goggle. The way they fit. And I love that.

a little bit bigger. They're not as fast and small as like the Speedo style goggles, but man, they are comfortable. Yeah, I will say I've never liked that style of goggle and I actually wore those for like the last three months straight and I do actually like them. Yeah, love it. Working for the win. So the answer is that yes, you guys have a bunch of goggles, but it's almost a coincidence. You don't interchange them. You don't cycle them. No, it's not like our golf bag where we pick a different ones. Depending on exactly how much sunlight there is. Yeah, our golf bags are really.

A lot of golf clubs. Okay, next question is from Ryan. This is another kind of race wheel question. I like this one a lot. Race day wheel rentals, good or bad idea. For context, I'm three weeks out from a race, 70.3 Chattanooga, and thinking about renting a set of deep set wheels,

NV-S-E-S-7.8. For some speed gains. My current setup is a road bike, CAD-12 with arrowbars, with non-deep-set rims. I'm just trying to weigh the pros and cons of some serious arrow gains and a big discount. Normally $2,000 plus dollars for a set of wheels. These would be $195.

Versus making a race day change. Any thoughts and much appreciated things, guys? Well, I mean, first things first, you'll go faster if you get some zips. That's just science. It's science. And we have no bias. And then the next thing, like, I think this is a great idea. And a lot of people should do this.

We had like eight sets of rental wheels when I worked in the triathlon shop. And for like Ironman, Canada and any 70.3 that was anywhere nearby, they were all rented every time. Maybe we should start a TTL rental shop. Paul is frothing with excitement. Look at her. I've never seen her so excited. A rental store. Yeah, I'm doing a TTL garage sale and then just click over one spreadsheet.

TTL rental center. I love entrepreneur, Paula. It's getting me going. That's great. It is a good idea. For $200 a set and you just take it for the week. kind of send him back. Totally. I think the people who are good candidates

for buying race wheels are I already have the tri-bike. Money is not so much of an object for me. I know I want to do eight Iron Man's in the next two years and 70.3 and you're using them that often. Yeah. But if you're not sure yet, renting is great.

Or just renting the disc maybe? I don't think that disc is an option here. Oh, it's not. I think he's looking at just a deep section set like 858s. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And you're not worried at all about how the bike would handle differently for someone who's not used to riding those wheels, right? It's definitely a difference, but that's a great reason to rent them. And usually you can, like if you're racing on Sunday, it's no big deal, I think, to get them on Thursday and go ride them on

Friday. And then if on Friday you're freaking out, bail. And it's not like you had to give your training wheels back to them. You can just like put the training wheels back on. Yeah, I think for most people, it won't be a huge problem to switch to some deeper wheels. for, especially in a race that's not crazy windy. But also in a race, you're just more like focused on arrow and pushing hard and the wind is less scary. Yeah. Don't let, don't let Paula's, you know, fear of the winds and the crosswinds freak you out. You'll be fun. Okay.

And then we're going to do two little, these aren't questions technically, but they have to do with something that then there is a third thing that is a question. So I kind of am grouping these together. So I wanted to tell Eric, this is from Becky. I wanted to tell Eric how moving I found his recent vlog. about his race in St. Anthony's. As someone who is a novice runner and aspiring age grouper, your commitment to the community

and the love of the triathlon was again very moving. Thank you truly for all you do for the community and for all the inspiration you give us, a hug from distance. And then this next one is from Andrew. Not a question, just thank you.

I DNFed Iron Man, Texas, yesterday at miles 16 of the run. I only had two thoughts while sitting on a rock waiting for the sagwagon. One, Eric and Paula are so smart for sticking to 70.3s. Two, at least I'm not dying. of hypothermia like Nick at Ironman, Wisconsin

so thanks for the great content, Keep it coming. That's from Andrew. And I feel like that dovetails nicely into this actual question from Jason. I like the emails that are just like, tell the little story and say like, we made a difference somehow. Like those are just as fun to read

as the questions to me, maybe even more fun. And that type of comment, honestly, has kept me doing YouTube for way longer than I would have because it makes no money whatsoever. but like when I get a comment that's like that, that makes me want to go back out and keep it going. So thank you. Yeah. And often, Nick, I just put those in so that we can read them amongst ourselves.

But they're fun to put on the podcast too. Be like, hey, people, send us more nice messages. Yeah. We're here for it. No, I know. And I really appreciate that you include those in the questions. And I hope that you Eric reads them, that you share them with Eric as well, kind of like whenever you're in the living room at night. Yeah, sometimes I'll text him one of the emails, all the sappy ones.

Okay, so this actual question here is from Jason. Hey, TTL fam, having just watched Eric St. Anthony's race recap and seeing how emotional he got, saying that he's not sure how many more he can do, how often do you think about life after racing? Is that an overwhelming thing to think about, or maybe someone exciting, in that it'll be the start of a new chapter. Thanks for making my Thursday even better every week, Jason. Yeah, that's kind of a multi-part question and obviously has some, not baggage, but like, a lot of feelings behind it.

I hadn't really thought much about retirement, me personally, until, I don't know, maybe like the last year. Because I've just, I've gone to, I've gone to increasing number of races and had good experiences, but it kind of feels like I've tried my absolute best. I've put everything into it that I have, and I'm not continuing to progress, really. You know, there's always the opportunity to have a great race

and transcend a little bit. But, you know, I don't, two things. I don't feel like there's this huge upside to my performances anymore. Like, oh, if I just like really buckle down and do X, Y, and Z that I could win world championships. And pretty much every goal that I've set out for myself in triathlon, whether it was spoken or unspoken, I've kind of, I've accomplished. I feel like I don't have this huge thing to prove anymore. The one thing I still want to do is try to win Oak Mountain this year,

win North American championships at Xterra. But I'm increasingly more drawn to what we're building with TTR and the artistic side of what I do and continue to have these connections, like the last question statement that you read of, we are having an impact on people's lives. And I feel like the biggest impact that I have to give to the sport is not by training extra hard and going and maybe getting on the podium at 70.3 worlds.

I think it's in this other arena. So I also think that Eric's increasing interest in making TTR as cool as possible and doing more video and creative projects has coincided nicely with the PTO and the T100 and racing just getting insanely competitive to the point where if you're not dedicating your entire life morning to night to training,

you can't win these big races anymore. And it didn't always used to be like that. There were a lot of 70.3s. Not that you didn't train hard or that we don't train hard. We still train really hard, but you could go on podium at most North American 70.3s. And now it's just with the increased money in the sport, or I don't know what it is. It's taken a jump up in terms of competitiveness. And we saw, like, Tim O'Donnell announced his retirement from Iron Man on Road Racing this week.

And, yeah, some of the people that have really been prominent podium. contenders in North American racing over the last decade are yeah kind of aging out of it but also just being pushed out a bit by these young people who are so freaking fast. Yeah. And like we put our absolute best years or I'll just say me. You can say if you agree, Paula. Absolute best years and ability and like fitness and youngness into trying to go to the Olympics. And then didn't make it to the Olympics was first alternate. Check that box of trying my best at that and then started into 70.3. Still training really hard, but there's like one percent fall off of yes, this is my life now. I want to be in this for the long term. And the guys who

are coming into 70.3 and the T100 now, they're using their best years and their top everything to pursue this distance. Yeah, they fully just like skipped the ITU. A lot of them. Yeah, which is awesome. And I listen to a really similar podcast. I brought this up a couple of times where Ted King and Ian Boswell were kind of talking about this same thing happening in gravel. They went into gravel after their like retirement from on road racing. Still like incredible athletes trying really hard. But then guys like Keegan Swenson come in and are like, I'm 24. This is all I want to do with my life. I'm going to altitude training camps and et cetera. And like you look around a trathlon right now and the people who are winning things. Like they have a media guy who's doing their photos for them. They have somebody who's like their

significant other is probably helping them at races and following them around and make sure that things are taken care of. And they have like all the greatest like support. team around them and I think there's enough money in the sport now to justify that and and that's just like not where I'm personally at like I want to be the best partner I can be to Paula I want to be the best me that I can be for the TTL community and and and so like I'm not looking at this like oh I don't want to do this anymore rather than this feels like kind of a natural progress process is happening I started up TTL with the idea of that being our exit strategy at some point in time and and I think it's just going to like that that's

just how it's naturally evolving. I think it's kind of cool, though, that Eric's so good at Xtera, because I think you could still be a realistic podium contender at Xtera World Championships. And a lot of on-road people don't have that option because it takes so much offered skill, which you have. So I wouldn't say that Eric is anywhere near retiring, but yeah, some of the races like, even this one this weekend, don't appeal as much as they used to, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Like Paul said, we've been doing a really long time. And we only have so much time left in our bodies before they, you know, break or whatever, or we want to go off and do something else. And right now I'm excited about off-road stuff. And so I want to do

that before like something breaks and I can't even do that. Hearing you guys talk about this, what kind of sticks out to me is that a lot of people have to go through something like this at a point in their lives. But usually that's after having acquired another 40 years or 30 years of wisdom, of life experience, you know, when they're retiring from their job. And you guys are in your early 30s and you're having to make these like big emotional decisions that have big impacts early on. Yeah. Yeah. I think we could both still race for another five or eight years if we really wanted. Right. But it's a matter of like, what does racing mean to us? What do, what are we happy with? You know, are we happy with this year getting third? Next year,

getting sixth, the year after that getting 10th, the year after that. Yeah, that's the thing. Is that what we want? And we're still always going to be comparing it to our peaks. Yeah. I think that I still have a lot of races ahead of me that I could win. And I still really want to win 70.3 World Championships. And coming second two years ago made it like that looked realistic.

But I don't want to just keep racing to the point where I'm not relevant anymore. And it's just like you're almost forgotten about. And then you retire and you're like, oh yeah, you still do the sport. You know, I'd rather go out like Daniela, honestly, where she's like, I am the best to ever do this, and I'm doing one more year, and then I'm so excited for what's next. And it's just a cool ending to her story. And as she's definitely not fading out, she's still racing extremely well, but she's had this crazy good career. And I'm never going to have a career as good as she did. But I like that approach of just deciding this is the end and whenever that is and just committing to that and giving your everything until, that time instead of just kind of like, I don't want to, I'm going to train half ass and see where that takes me and maybe I'm finishing 10th now instead of third. And that, that's a worse way to go out, I think. Yep, totally agree. Make a plan. Yeah, so I don't have a plan. I don't know when. But we have a lot with TTL and a lot with other things that we can put more effort into if, if and when we decide to retire.

Yeah. I will personally say that the idea of retiring from on-road triathlon is pretty, exciting to me because of like the stress that it doesn't cure and like I struggle so much with my hip thing and it's like trying to write a TT bike and then I think about oh okay if I'm not trying to go to 70.3s and swim against Mark Dubrick like oh I can skip a couple swims a week and I can put that time into other things that I want to do and I you know it's like exciting to think about what the Napster chapter will be for sure it's not like the death of of a loved one It's also really, it is really nice to come to races where only one of us is racing. So if I keep like putting all my eggs into the on-road trafalon racing basket,

whatever I say on-road. Eric actually has off-road, but I just have one option. But it does take a lot of stress off of both of us when he's helping me get ready for it. And I don't feel like I'm compromising his prep and feeling kind of guilty. And he's looking after my bike. it really simplifies the week if it's just one of us. So that's another thing. Yeah.

Yeah. What a great time. We'll lie. It's awesome. And you know what? And I promise you, the three of us, we'll have a great time far beyond when neither of you were racing any version of triathlon. Nick, when we retire, you're retiring too, you know.

Incorrect. I mean, I'm going to be the only one finishing in the 80 to 85 age group. I'm going to be working on Nick's bike before you get Tony to do in California at 79 I got to keep it going you know I got to keep it going for everyone I'm in it for the long haul

I'm going to finish this off with a kind of a fun story so when I was staying with Chuck and Gail Loman last weekend and seen Anthony's they invited over a young girl who was a big TTL fan and we were chatting with her and she was somehow this like

same question sort of came up and I was like And I told her, yeah, you know, I'm honestly thinking a lot about retiring and how that'll go. I'm not totally sure. And she, like, very concerned, looked at me and said, well, are you still going to do the podcast if you retire? Because I don't know. I don't think I could, you have to keep doing the podcast. We're doing the podcast.

I said, yeah, we'll keep doing the podcast. Don't worry. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's great. Well, that's it. I think you got to go, Nick, and we got to go find some dinner because we're an hour ahead of you. But I can't wait for you to be here tomorrow. And I think it's going to be a fun race this weekend.

Yep. To watch. To watch. Oh, it's the most fun. Well, I've actually watched this race quite a few times, Nick. Because remember that one year I was injured and we watched Eric and watched the women. Were they always racing at the same time that year? They might have been.

Like men and women both race 70.3 worlds at the same time. Yeah, they did. Yeah, they did. Yeah, they did. Because I remember we watched Lucy. It was like fresh at the back of COVID still. And things were kind of weird. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe. I can't remember. But yeah, it's a really fun race. And if you guys are wanting to follow along, just go to outside watch.tv. Oh, wait. Also, we're doing a little TTL run on Friday morning. Do we want to say that on the podcast? Or is that just not official yet? Yeah, we can say that. I mean, we got two hours for it to get canceled or something. But it hasn't been, it's getting thrown together very last minute. We don't even know what time it's at, though. We don't even know what time it is. So you're just going to have to follow TTL on Instagram to find out. And anyway, it's right across the street, basically from the Advener Hotel. There's a running shop and they want to have us do a run. And we wanted to like do a TTL hang out anyway. So just stay tuned for that. Details to follow.

Yeah. Sweet. Awesome. We'll see everyone at St. Georgia. If you're there, if not, we'll talk to you next week. Later. Thanks, guys.