That Triathlon Life Podcast - Training for road triathlons on a mountain bike, kicking in a swim set, Marathon training while 70.3 training, and more!

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

This week we start out with some rapid fire, and then move onto your questions. Questions about using gravel tires on a road bike,  how much to adjust your wattage at altitude, and more! To help support the podcast, and to submit your own questions, head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.com

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Erica Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. Paul and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a professional musician and just our very best friend. And also an amateur triathlet. And on this podcast, on this podcast, we take a lot of questions from the audience.

We talk a little bit about what we have going on in our respective triathlon journeys and hopefully, you know, share some insights along the way. Okay, can I just start by saying, I'm sorry, I'm just very excited about this weekend I just had where I was in Yosemite and back-to-back long trail run days. Have you guys ever had this happen? It was like, it was a lot for me. Only my right leg is very sore. My left leg is like kind of sore, but my right leg is very sore. And it's not like I hit it on something. It's like doms.

It's delayed onset muscle soreness. Am I dying or has this happened to you? I think we've been doing triathlon for, since it's the dinosaurs, yes, it's happened. I just, it's so confusing. Like, I was just running. It could be like a Cambered trail or maybe you have an imbalance and it just gets accentuated when you're running that long.

Your right foot, it was a little tender and you didn't even know it so you were like breaking super hard with the left going downhill, like a thousand things. Yeah. Bodies are crazy, man. It's so hard for me to walk right now. It's really catching up to me. That's how you know I had a good weekend.

Yeah, that was fun. What about you guys? we didn't get to talk much because I was out of service, out of cell lane. Yeah. Well, we're actually both pretty sore as well, but from doing a 40-minute build run loop around our house,

mostly on asphalt. And, yeah. And a hard ride the next day. And a hard ride, yeah. We had kind of a big, like this little mini intense weekend of training because we raced last weekend in Abiza. And next weekend we're both racing.

And what do we even want to call it? The south. Yeah. I'm raising in Alabama. Paula's racing in Chattanooga, Tennessee. That's a sound. So we tried to put in, we tried to cram in some training this weekend,

and then we'll do like a little tiny taper starting Wednesday. So what does that build run look like? What pace do you start at? What pace do you finish at? And how do you kind of think of it throughout it? This one was a little unique because, Paulo, our coach, actually, I gave me paces anyway,

like a prescribed starting pace. And then in like an absolute speed limit, he didn't want me to go over. And the starting pace was, I think 340 per K and I did 20 minutes at that and then 15 minutes at something in the middle and then five minutes no faster than 324 per kilometer.

But we were doing it kind of on trails and stuff so it was a little bit. Yeah. A little bit hard. Yeah, we did it a little bit on, I started on trail, a little bit uphill and then ended up on a gravel road and then ended up kind of running down asphalt to finish. And so you build in a little bit of

a wiggle room there depending and go a little bit by perceived exertion. But I ended up doing yeah, 340 or like 336, 340. And then for the middle bit, I was doing 330 and then hit like right at 324 for the last five minutes. I'm curious about both of you. How often do go above the prescribed maximum that Pablo gives you? I don't. Are you pretty good about it? I feel like Paulo doesn't give us a ton of guidance on like wattages and paces. So I feel like when he writes in an absolute thing like that, I try to respect it. You too, Paula? Yeah, I mean, it was there for a reason because we're not, we're racing next weekend.

We don't want to go crazy and get really sore. And we just traveled. So I think just overall being cautious. But sometimes like for a build run, your effort can build, but your paces don't actually reflect the effort building. So that was kind of the case for me because I was a little tired. It was like I felt like I was trying harder, but I wasn't necessarily getting much faster. So I think that's okay. I don't know.

Trying not to get too attached to each individual workout. I was going to ask you about something that's really related to that is running in the trails. You have two kind of variables there. You have trees that are affecting your GPS data. And then you have uphills and downhills that are affecting your GPS data. So for you, Paula, you can just tell you're not running faster, but your effort is going up? Yeah, I don't know. I think that the GPS are pretty accurate on the trails we're running on.

There's not like heavy, heavy woods, but they're pretty non-technical. They're just uphill. So, yeah, I just kind of do it by effort. Are you checking your watch pretty frequently when you guys are doing stuff like that? Only when it laps every K. I'll check it. Okay. Oh, I see.

Yeah, it's so funny because for me, I'm looking every 20 seconds. Really? Yeah. That's crazy. That would drive me nuts. You definitely need to have a certain degree of trust in yourself. Because you never know when the GPS won't be working or. whatever, you know? So we, the screen that we both like to have is like the average lap for the

kilometer that you're in, the average pace. So if you've been running for 45 seconds, it's giving you the average pace you've been running for that 45 seconds. And that really helps smooth out. Totally. Yeah, you could, you could look down randomly one second and you're running two minutes per mile. Guys, I think we're tangenting really hard on this. Two seconds later, you look down and you're running five minutes per mile. So then this weekend, you guys are racing. in the south. We're both flying into Birmingham, and then my race is about 30 minutes south, and Paula's race is 90 minutes north. So we'll actually stay together first night in Pelham, which is where my race is. And then I think the next day, Paula will drive up to Chattanooga.

So Eric can build my bike for me. And then we'll get, we'll have two rental cars. So we can spend some extra time together, babe. Yeah, that too. It's a bit of a logistical, you know, gymnastics to get this all worked out. But it is, my specialty now. I'm also a travel agent as well as a triathletes. This whole thing actually came together. We're going to drop a hint here, but this whole thing came together

because we're actually picking up something very special in Birmingham on Monday. Paula wasn't initially going to race Chattanooga, or at least it wasn't a hard yes, but she was going to have to come anyway to do this thing on Monday.

I see. I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with Pets. It rhymes with boring seller. Okay, got it. It also rhymes with can. It also rhymes with printer can. Yeah. Printer can.

Okay, great. Yeah, so I don't know exactly when we'll be sharing that big news, but pretty quickly, maybe even on next week's podcast, we'll see. Got it. Oh, the other thing we've been working really hard on is we've got our summer collection. And we kind of went into this, like, we went for this retro, sort of classic color block feel with it. And we've gotten like all the final printout, not the printouts, but like the swatches where they show us how the fabric looks with the ink on it and how the label's

going to look. And it's, we're really, really excited about it. So that's coming up with TTL. And then we're very, very close to one of the coolest things we've ever done, this collaboration with Foreign Rider. We're going to be putting out these hoodies. They're like heavy hoodies. we're not having this thing. They are thick with three Cs. Yeah. So that's the TTL business update at the moment. And also the kits are coming soon as well.

They should be shipping like this week or next. Yeah, yeah. Two weeks ago we had a thing saying that we'd be to the Castelli warehouse in two weeks. And then they'll be shipping out immediately. Yeah, so that should be now. Get ready to start checking your mailbox every day. And that's everyone who ordered a kit or a race kit. and then also our development team athletes will be getting their race kits.

So going forward, all of the races that they do, they'll be in the kits, which is really cool for us. Hopefully get some pictures and everything. I won't have it by Saturday, though, right, for the race? Unlikely. Okay. That would be miraculous. Yeah. I'll just do a little duct tape TTR on my kit, just in the meantime.

Yeah, my zoo kit. Awesome. Yeah, that's great. I can't wait to see the Foreign Rider stuff. that's going to be, because we saw photos of it when it was in the factory that Ralph sent us, so I'm excited to see it in person. And I've worn it, you know, one without our logo on it. It's so nice.

So good. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, well, moving on here, we're going to do a little segment that we haven't done in a long time. Usually Paula is the one that is asking us, but this time I'm going to ask you guys a series of rapid fire questions. Okay, this is rapid fire food edition. Oh, I love it. Because, of course, I came up with it.

So, I'm perfect because we're starving. Yeah, great. Let's make it worse. Let's add fuel to the fire here. Okay, if we're at a pastry shop and you had to choose between gluten-free or vegan, which one would it be? Vegan.

I'd pick vegan. Yeah, vegan for sure. Okay, croissant or muffin? Muffin. Not gluten-free, not vegan, just in general. Cresson or muffin? Crescent. I never pick a croissant, though, because it feels like they have absolutely zero nutritional value.

Or sometimes a muffin can be just. disguised as like a healthy, fibres muffin. Right, right, right. Cressants are just indulgent, but they're so good. Also, I find that even like I can't have a plain croissant, I need like a chocolate croissant or something. Yeah, or an almond croissant. There's not enough chocolate in there.

That's what I always find, whereas the muffin, there's a uniform amount of chocolate throughout that I can rely on. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. If we're a chocolate muffin, I might go croissant if we're talking about a chocolate muffin. Oh, no. Oh, God, no. What is a chocolate muffin?

I want a triple chocolate muffin. I want chocolate muffin with chocolate chips and chocolate chunks as well. That's what I want. Like the ones from Costco that are... Oh, stop. A thousand calories each. Stop. I'm going to pass out.

I love those. I love those. Okay, next one here. We're getting off topic. Chocolate chip or oatmeal cookie? Oatmeal. Chocolate chip. Oh, Eric, how could you?

Okay. Next, Froyo or fat-free, sugar-free ice cream? What was the... Froyo. There's, like, places that do, like, oh, this ice cream is fat-free and sugar-free. free. I'm like, oh, then I don't want it. I'd rather have froyo. Yeah, I guess froyo for the whole experience. And then finally, what's your favorite kind of milk to put in your cereal?

2%. Wow. I know, I think Eric's, Eric, you do almond milk, right? In your cereal? I do unsweetened vanilla almond milk. I do when I go to my parents' house have 2%. It's so good. It's overwhelming for me sometimes. Like, the sugar plus the milk is just, like, I better not have anything to do soon. Yeah, it tastes very desserty to have 2%. So when I do whole milk and then sprinkle sugar on top, that's not good, right? Dude, I don't know how you... I'm kidding, I don't do that. The thing about almond milk, unsweetened almond milk is like water if you're used to drinking milk.

Totally. That's what tastes like to me. It's so gross. I'm like, this is white water. That's what it tastes like to me. Exactly. I don't ever use it, but Eric drinks it like by the carton. Well, this is all part of my thing to try to keep my total sugar at breakfast as low as possible.

So I don't have a crazy crash. Yeah, I would argue, though, that, I mean, Eric's not a believer in this at all. But milk has a lot of protein in it and some, like, other good vitamins and stuff, which I don't almond milk doesn't. So I don't think it's necessarily bad to have milk. Yeah, it is. I'm already the thickest boy on the start line. I'm not trying to put on more muscle. Okay, that's true. That's true. That's right. I mean, that's not true, but if you think it's true, then okay. I'm just joking. No, that's great. That's great. Okay, awesome. Well, now that we're nice and warmed up here, we're going to move on to questions. And actually, before the questions, I wanted to say two things.

First of all, thank you to our podcast supporters so much. You can support the podcast as well and submit your questions at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. Also on there, you can check out the gear we have and YouTube, a lot of good stuff on there. So before any questions, we had a follow-up from something that was said last week. For the keen, eared listeners, we had a question about contact lenses and open water swimming. So we had an eye doctor. eye doctor Nate sent us an email

and this is from him I thought you gave pretty good advice to the question about swimming in contacts. I personally would not trust soaking my lenses in solution overnight after open water swimming. Putting in contacts in T1 is also a bad idea because your hands will be gross

and now you're handling lenses and putting them in your eyes. Best case with contacts where dailies throw them away about an hour after your race when you wash your hands and put in a new pair. Contacts can actually suction to your eyes a little bit when you swim so you want to give them some time to settle back to normal before you pull them off.

And actually, earlier in the email, he did say that the best possible thing to do is to get the laser surgery like Paula did. Wow. This is amazing. Yeah, that was really helpful. Thank you, Dr. I, Dr. Nate. Well, I had a little bit of knowledge based on having bad vision and experience with dailies.

Since you were the poster child for LASIC. Yeah, I have a little bit of experience. but it was nice to have an expert chime in, so thank you, Nate. Yeah, awesome. Thanks, Nate. Okay, first real question here is from Abby. Hi, everyone, I had a question about bike fitness. Where I live is moderately hilly, but there aren't that many bike-friendly roads to do hill repeats on, cons of living in a major city.

I do live near an awesome trail system where I can easily get a thousand-plus feet of elevation per 10 miles and frequently go there for runs. The trails are just rocky enough that they wouldn't be gravel bike-friendly, and require a mountain bike setup. Are there any downsides to doing hilly mountain bike rides once a week to get climbing legs overdoing road rides? I'm training for the Lake Placid Iron Man, have been putting in a lot of effort into making hills feel like a breeze, but no, I could be getting in a significantly better hill workout if I was riding dirt instead of road.

Yeah, I don't think that a mountain bike is at all applicable. The power spikes to get up steep hills are just so crazy. It's nothing like riding a road bike, and your position is so drastically different. I would say that you're better off doing big gear reps on flat on your road bike or your TT bike to replicate the hills. And you can do that on a flat road. You just go, you overgear massively. So your cadence is like 60 or 70 and you'll still kind of trigger those muscles. But yeah, mountain biking is great for skills.

It's great for fitness. It's great for certain aspects of race specificity. But I would say the climbing isn't one of them. It does feel different. Like a 30 to 40 minute climb on a road bike. feels completely different than climbing even a moderately technical trail on a mountain bike

where you have the spikes. Eric, I mean, Eric, you do both at a high level. What's your take on this? What are we ultimately trying to train for? A road race? Lake Placid. I think if your options are

do hill repeats on a mountain bike on a gravel road that is consistent so you can pedal the whole time, or don't do any hills at all because you don't have any, I would do the hills on the mountain bike. But if you're doing a climb that is, yeah,

like Paula said, you're going 500 watts and then 200, and then 250 and then 600, because of any sort of technicality to it, then it would probably be a better stimulus to just do some road. What do you think about her idea of doing the low cadence,

the over-gear work, to simulate the climbing? That's hard. Because that's low-tork, like the bit, I don't know, it's just not, quite the same as like the high torque that it requires to to climb a hill. So if you could do

something actual hills, I think it's good. I think another trick would be to use Zwift a little bit for this. Yeah, that's really, that's the best trick if you can. Yeah, it's not like you're exclusively riding Swift. It's just like Swift has hills and it really replicates it pretty accurately, especially on a smart trainer to create the same resistance that you'd feel climbing on a road. I guess I guess the low cadence could, if we're doing an Iron Man, that's a little bit. that's less of a high intensity level than if you were, I don't know, doing like a sprint distance race. So I think maybe the low RPM would probably be sufficient for hills and an Iron Man. Okay, great, Abby. Good luck.

Next question is from Kylie. I was wondering what you do for sunscreen on the really hot and sunny days to avoid getting burned during the race. Do you use spray sunscreen very quickly and pray you didn't miss any spots? I was also curious about why all pro seem to wear trisuits with sleeves. I come from a swim background, so the sleeveless seem more natural to me. Thanks, Kylie. So, first of all, do you guys still get burned? I know you put sunscreen on, but obviously the races are long.

Do you guys still get burned, or is the race, I mean, what time are you guys done in a 70.3 usually? Enough to get a sunburn. Yeah. We get sunburned pretty quickly. Yeah, Eric got a really bad one at Exterior Worlds, actually. Yes, he did. Cross-Try World.

Yes, he did. I would say that sometimes it's hard to remember in the morning to put it on because you're in the transition. It's dark out often and it's not hot yet so you don't think of it. But I always remember, it's like as I'm putting my wetsuit on right before that, I'll lather sunscreen everywhere because, yeah, the sun can be pretty bright even at like nine or ten and that can lead to burns. But I don't think that this question is necessarily race specific. I think she's asking about training as well or just racing. Yeah, you're right. Training as well. I mean, you guys in the van have that huge tub of sunscreen that you always, I

always see you guys put it on when you're training in the middle of the day. That stuff's great. Yeah, my preference is the liquid sunscreen, not the spray sunscreen. Sometimes what the spray is good for is like when you're swimming, just because there's so much exposed skin that the spray really makes sure you get everything. But we both have a huge pump of zelio sunscreen that we have at the door and we have one in the van and it's just really accessible so you really never forget. And the zelio sunscreen is nice because it doesn't feel like sunscreen or smell like it.

It's kind of just like lotion. and it's really effective, so we both love that product a lot. You can actually buy it at the feed. Yeah. Wow. Not kidding. Wow. Very nice.

Vinyl wears a sleeveless trisuit sometimes. Yeah. Exterior athletes typically wear sleeveless. Yeah. The only point of sleeves is that it's faster. Aerodynamically. Erodynamically. Having fabric on your shoulders and arms versus skin is

faster. But if it's really hot or if it's just more comfortable for you to have sleeveless, it's not going to make the biggest difference in the world to have sleeves. So you see Lionel a lot of the time. I think in St. George, he wore sleeves and then in whatever race he just did, where was it in Florida? Gulf Coast, he did sleeveless. So, yeah, it's a personal preference a little bit.

So is the reason that the exterior athletes don't do sleeves because they're not going as fast on the mountain bike, so they don't have to an aerodynamic penalty? It's just so not a factor relative to all the other components of that style of racing. So better to be more slightly, incrementally, more comfortable and free of motion. Yeah. Cooler? I don't know. I've definitely like hit a tree with my arm with my sleeveless with my sleeve suit and like got a hole in it while racing Xtera.

So I don't know. And it's just a style thing too. But just the sleeves are not necessary by any means. Got it. For an Xterra. Got it. Cool. Okay, next one is nice and short for you, Paula.

It's from Jack. Hello, me and my girlfriend are doing our first triathlon relay at Exeterra Birmingham and hope to see Eric there. Have the three of you ever done a relay or would you consider one in the future? If you were to do one, who would do each leg? So we've talked about this before, but I was like, of course Eric would do the swim and Paula would do the run and I would do the bike, but that's the worst, that's the worst possible way. That's the slowest combination.

Nick, I think maybe especially for Xtera, I would swim. Eric would bike you would run. Oh, I think in any triathlon I would have to swim, even though I'm the worst swimmer. Like, what am I going to swim? Like, five minutes slower? I'm going to bike like 30 minutes slower than Eric, you know? Yeah, but do you think you're going to run five minutes slower than me? I don't know.

It's hard to say. I would imagine you're going to run so much faster than I could run. Is this an Olympic or is this a 70.3? or is it next era. That's tough. That's tough. Let's say 70.3 just because I feel like everyone understands that. 70.3, then Paula should definitely run.

Olympic distance? I think that's a toss-up. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Yeah, interesting idea. God, that would be so funny. Nick, your strongest leg is the bike, but in a relay of the three of us, you wouldn't do it.

No, no, I wouldn't. Because we'd still lose so much time on the bike by me biking. Yeah. That's an interesting question. Maybe we should do one. I would like to do the swim just to get it over with and then watch you guys for the last two legs. Just have me have like a 20 minute lead on everyone and then everyone get it back to me while I'm running. I feel like we can make a whole, we could do a whole video series about this.

Like establishing the fastest possible relay team amongst us for an Olympic distance trathlon. And we would have to do like we'd have to do time trial in the pool. We'd have to do like a little mini time trial on the bike. and, you know, figure out the whole, that could be fun. I love it. Yeah. I could do some math. Yeah.

It's really hard, though, because, like, as we've talked about it on the podcast, Nick doesn't owe his race to the level that he trains at. No, but if I were to just do one sport, I think I could do a good job at the one sport. You're right. You're right. Like, if it's just about pushing 300 watts for an hour on the bike, I probably could do that by itself. That's true without running after.

Okay, good point. It's the whole thing together. that's a disaster, which is I'm trying to make it work this weekend. That's the idea. Yeah, it'll be better this weekend. Anyway, these people will be in exterior. It sounds like, right, Eric? Yeah, I will be there.

Cool. Come see, Eric. Yeah, awesome. Next question here is from Bella. Hey, Paula, Eric, Nick, and Flynn. Like lots of TTL Nash, swimming is my least favorite and weakest leg. I feel like my legs just sink. I'm often faster with a pull buoy than I am swimming normally.

I was wondering if you guys do much kick in your sessions. I avoid kick as I hate it and I feel like I'm barely moving. If so, what would you guys say the split is on a regular session between kick, pull, fins, paddles, and swim? Thanks so much and best of luck for the season ahead. So when Bella's talking about kick, she's talking about using a kick board and not using your arms, just using your feet to propel you. So I've seen you guys do some of this. How in a 4K workout, how many yards or meters are you doing, just kick? Like two to 400 meters, maybe.

And grouped together or split up between the swim somewhere? Group together. And we don't kick every single workout. I think the kick can be useful for recovery a little bit. If it's like an easy swim, doing kick actually can kind of like flush your legs out. It is a component of triathlon. Like if your kick is strong, it'll help you swim better. But I find often in triathons my kick is not that strong.

Like I'm kind of having a two-beat kick to save for the bike and run. so it's not something we necessarily focus on. When I did swim club growing up, we'd do like two case kick sets. Like kicking is so, so important for competitive swimmers, but a little less important for triathletes. Yeah, I will say every warmup, we do 800 warmup choice, every workout that we do. And every workout I do this set where I do a 25 kick and then I do a 50 swim,

and then you end up back at your kickboard. I do a 25 kick and a 50 swim. I do 475s like that, just continuously. Thinking about keeping a rigid core and kicking really well and then thinking about kind of carrying that through the 50 of swimming. So that's what I was going to ask you is what is the point of kicking in the pool? Is it like a drill for your kick? Or is it an aerobic thing?

Or is it to, I mean, I don't really understand it, especially doing triathlon where once I put a wetsuit on in a race, I'm barely kicking up because I'm so floaty as it is. I guess if you were going to relate it to using a wet suit, then kicking is just challenging to propel yourself that way and have a rigid core and be on top of the water and all the things and not just sink. So I think it's helpful for that. Similar to doing head-up drill or siding.

You definitely, definitely need to kick a little bit every time that you cite. Yeah. So just general strength. Yeah, that's interesting. And what would you say? What about pull and fins and paddles? How often do you... You guys never use fins, right?

We'll occasionally use fins, but... Not really. But I think this is a good question because a lot of these times these tools can be kind of used as a crutch because they're easier. But I think that they're good in moderation and with intent and purpose,

and a lot of people use paddles and pole boy too much. And I think I became a better swimmer, or at least a better swimmer in triathlon when I didn't use toys as much and really focused on doing all my sets swimming, swimming, unless it was like a specific strength swim where your pull paddles for a lot of time. And our coach prescribes it.

But for example, if he prescribes a set that's supposed to be swim and you put a pole boy in because it's easier, that's not doing any favors. So, yeah, follow the guidance of a coach, but don't overuse those tools just because they might bring your heart rate down and your perceived effort down. So to answer Bella's question,

and maybe use paddles for 2 to 400 of your 4K workout? It's not even that. It's like one workout a week, you'll use them for like 3K. It's like you're lifting weights. Yeah, got it. And then on a hard swim day, you're not using them at all because you're doing intervals that are swimming. So it's more splitting it up by day.

I had the sensation today in the swim that was kind of interesting that I swam, it was like it was 100 hard, 100 hard, 200 with paddles at that same 100 pace. and when I took the paddles off, obviously they're great for building strength, but I also felt like since my hands were moving through the water quicker because they didn't have paddles on there, my brain was trying to compensate by using more of the surface of my forearm

and bicep to grab more of the water. Is that kind of an intended point of the paddles? Or is it really just about building strength? Don't worry about a technique, just build that arm and shoulder strength. I'm going to guess that was more of a sensation than an actual thing just because you took the paddles off and your hands feel like you're swimming with knobs. Like toothpicks, yeah.

Yeah. But no, more of the point of the paddles is to just build strength without necessarily getting your heart rate skyrocketed because your turnover is super high and you're kicking really hard and all of this stuff. Depending on the paddle, though, like some paddles are actually shaped in different ways and our coach actually like 3D prints paddles

that are certain shapes to try to get us to pull and have technique effects as well. more for people that are weaker swimmers like me more than Eric but there's definitely types of paddles that can actually be corrective in a stroke more than strength focused wow that's cool that's a whole rabbit hole that's a whole rabbit hole yeah yeah cool

cool I love it I love it the toys help me a lot they keep me entertained in this way yeah that's the thing Nick that's not what they're for that's why we call them toys and not tools I come to the pool I have my leopard fins my pole buoy my giant paddles I snorkel. I got it all. Leopard fins.

They're stripper flippers. Stripper flippers. I'm so sorry. Yes, of course. I totally agree that makes it more manageable to swim. If you're going to not swim without the toy, like it's better to use the toys. Right, right. Cool.

Okay. Next question is from Daniel. Love the podcast and following along your adventures. I have a question regarding bike tires for training. I do all my bike training outdoors on local river trails. I train by power and this year have started to train using gravel tires on my road bike. I don't ride gravel, but I just find the gravel tires to generally be more durable and much cheaper. The gravel tires I use are now half the price of the tires I used to use.

And since I trained by power, I don't think there'd be any issue, but just want to get your opinion on this. So Daniel's question is, he's just going to be going slower with those tires. He's not racing on those tires, and he's going by power. Is there any downside since they're also cheaper? And probably more puncture resistant. No, you're just going slower. Yeah, that's kind of a nice little hack. It feels like.

You're going to go slower and safer, I guess. But that's part of the reason we ride our gravel bikes a lot, even if we're going to ride even just a teeny little section of dirt. It's really soft riding. You can push very consistent power. You don't have to be going that fast. I don't see any downside to it unless you are going to be doing some technical cornering and stuff, in which case a nicer tire is just going to handle a lot better and feel nicer.

It's kind of like the same reason why we do a lot of our intervals going uphill. It also is a little easier to put out power, but you just don't have to go as fast to get that power output out, right? It's just another version of that. Requires a little less focus. Yeah, cool.

Next question here is from Liam. Hi, Eric Paul and Nick. My name is Liam and I'm 16 years old. I'm just getting into triathlon. I've been cycling all my life, but swimming and running have been a bit of a learning curve. My question is, how do I come up with a training plan so that I am getting more out of my workouts and balancing endurance versus sprint workouts

instead of just going out for a long ride, swim, or run with no purpose every single time. Thank you and love all you guys do for the podcast. Super informative and I gain a lot from it. Liam. Yeah, I would say that there's definitely some purpose in doing like aerobic, non-structured workouts, just doing a run, doing a ride for building fitness. But there's enormous value in doing intervals and having a little bit of structured, each session as well. So having a training plan is probably a good option. And it doesn't necessarily

mean getting a coach, but just maybe an online option or some kind of structure so that you feel like you're training with purpose and you're not just going out and exercising. For years, I trained with training plans found online and I loved it. I thought it was super fun and still felt purposeful. And there's, if you find a good one, there's science behind the effects that it has on your body that make you better at racing. So I can't imagine just going out every day with no structure for the whole year. I think like you said, there's a time in place for that where it is good. Yeah.

And it also depends on your goals as well. If your goal is just to complete a triathlon, that's totally fine. You can do that by just getting your body used to swimming, biking, running without any structure at all. But if your goals are more to get best times or to get the most out of yourself, then for sure having structure is good. Well, Paula, when you started, or actually for both of you, when you guys started, how much of your training was structured versus you were a swimmer already, right? Yeah, but when I started triathlon, I had a trathletal coach as well. Right from the beginning.

So it was completely structured, yeah. Wow. Like way more structured than, I mean, the swims were insanely structures. The runs were insanely structured. And then the whole program was. So, yeah, I've never really done it freestyle. And what year? How old were you at this time?

I was it was like 2006 that I did my first race So like 17 Yeah 16 17 17 yeah Yeah Yeah I'm not that young for Doing my first triathlon you know

Although I'd been training long before that Yeah I was still just like plucking away at the guitar When I was 16 or 17 I certainly wasn't doing very structured training Where they Who was your coach is like Did Canada? Did the country of Canada find you this coach Not at that point, but eventually.

Cool. Cool. And Eric, when you first started training was your, how structured was your training? I mean, when you started racing, you just kind of, you already swam, right? And you ran cross country? No, cross country came after I started triathlon. I started doing some cross country to train for triathlon. There was a local coach that got me into it, and he would send me a training plan, like occasionally in the summer.

time and that was good for me because I wanted to be skateboarding and I had swim team and I had a whole bunch of different things and I hated running. It hurts my knees so much. But I would like complete that training plan because he would ask me at the end of each week how it went and I just couldn't bear the thought of telling him that I didn't do something. Oh man. So both of you started with structured training. That's kind of interesting. Very I mean very loose. This was not like an intense training plan for me anyway. Yeah, that's interesting. But Liam, there's a lot of training plans out there.

There's a lot of free ones that you can find on the internet, but there's also ones that you can plug in your specific data and it adjusts to your levels at each sport. That can be helpful as well. Next question here. High TTLN, a huge fan of the pod. Had a great time spectating Oceanside and love the new kit, Eric. Jump right into it. Can you train for a 70.3 and a marathon at the same time?

I'm 27 and just finished my second 70.3 in St. George. I'm racing New York City Marathon on November 3rd. It will be my first ever marathon. Toying with the idea of racing Indian Wells just one month after. Ideally, Iron Man would be my A race since I raced it last year and I'd like to PR this time. So what do you think? Can you do this? And if so, like, how would you navigate it?

Yeah, I think my initial thought is that it's good for your marathon to be training for triathlon because of all the cross training. And you often see triathletes that go and try to do a straight up run race run slower than they would in a triathlon. You just get so much fitness through the bike and the swim with less impact that your injury risk is minimized. And it's just like you're still training your heart as you're doing those other activities. I would say that just making sure you get in adequate long run so that your legs can withstand the pounding of a marathon. But I definitely think it's possible to train for both. The way I did this one,

I did L.A. Marathon and was also training for 70.3 is I did exactly what you just said. I did all the 70.3 training, but I also did the progressive long runs each week where I would add a little bit of miles or subtract a little bit each week.

It worked fine for me. Do you feel like I should have added even more running on top of the 70.3 specific training? Yeah, probably. I don't think you can you can probably have a slightly better marathon if you just trained for a marathon

you'd probably have a slightly better trathlon if you just trained for the triathlon but I think you can get really really close and like Paula said, potentially avoid some injury. So, yeah, I don't know, you could have maybe built into those long runs a little bit of race specific speed

somewhere in there, like made them a build run or something like that if you wanted to just get some more time at the marathon pace. I wonder if like a 70.3 run split would be about, the same pace as your open marathon pace. That's what people say. People say, like, for a triathlon, what you race in a sprint, your pace should be what you race a 10K at open 10K.

The pace you do for a 10K is the pace that you do a half marathon at if the 10K is in a triathlon, kind of each step down race. But, I mean, as a rough kind of estimate. A rough guide, yeah. Like if you're running a 120 half in a race, you should be able to run a 240 marathon, something like that. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

Right. Right. So maybe the paces aren't that different after? all. Yeah, I just, I like the idea. I think it's totally possible to do this. I'm just curious, like, how much you would modify the 70.3 plan to fit the marathon.

And I think, like, you could get pretty specific with it, but it's so much volume as it is that it probably is great and keeps you healthy. Yeah, I would also say that the order that this happens in is probably a good thing. Like, after you do your marathon, take like two weeks with barely any running and just really focus on the swim and the bike. That's just my initial thought. I don't know if that's a good idea. but you'll be needing to recover from the run anyway.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Well, good luck. That sounds epic. Next questions here are from Natalia. First one is you guys recently trained at altitude. I'm moving into an Ironman block for Lake Placid, but I'll be in Breckenridge, Colorado for three weeks,

and I'm wondering how I should adjust my power. Breckenridge is at 9,600 feet. My zone 2 endurance watts are about 180 to 190, Sweet spot where I like to do some longer intervals are about 2.30. How much lower... Really? Are they a pro? Yeah, sweet spot at 230. That's nice. Good for you.

How much lower should I expect my power zones to be? Way lower. Yeah. So I looked this... Do you guys remember when we were in Flagstaff and I did that ride with you guys? And I like, I did... It was a lot of power for me up that one, like 70-minute climb. So I texted Jonathan Lee and I... asked him, because he's like all sciencey about this stuff, and I asked him like what roughly

that would correlate to at sea level. And he sent me a chart of like all, of like what it's like a different feat. So I looked, I went back to that chart. Thank you, Jonathan. And it's between 79% and 84% depending on how acclimated you are at 10,000 feet. So you would just, you know, take your 230 and multiply it by whatever. 0.79 or 0.84, depending on how acclimated you are and that should give you a rough idea of what you should be holding at that same thing. And I think it's important to know that different bodies deal with altitude in different ways. Some people are way better and some people are way worse. And I might say that that's the case once you're acclimated to it.

Like I wouldn't just go up to Breckenridge, which is crazy high. 2,000 feet higher than Flagstaff, which is already crazy high. Yeah. And just like take your watts and multiply them by whatever and make new watts. It's like, go by. Don't even look at your power meter. Like when we got to Flagstaff, we were doing super, super easy stuff. And to the point where I didn't even want to look at my pace or my numbers just because

it's important to keep it easy and go a little bit feel-based and listen to your breathing and be a bit intuitive about it instead of looking at, be like, okay, I'm doing an aerobic ride. Usually I do 180. Today I'm doing 146, you know? It's like that's not how it should be. But definitely they're going to be lower and be okay with that. Don't try to push up higher and against what your watts would be at sea level. Otherwise, you'll just burn yourself out and fry yourself, especially when you're that high.

But it can be a really useful tool to be up there for three weeks. I think that's really a good period of time before coming down to race. I was worried after we spent time in flying stuff that I'd lost kind of my top end watts because I hadn't really been training that up high. But I came down to Abiza, felt great, did a workout yesterday here. It felt great. My watts were still good. So don't let it freak you out when your watts are lower.

You're getting benefits in other ways. Eric, this reminds me of that time that you dug a hole and felt bad for a long time because you went too hard at altitude. Yep. Where was that? That was in Flagstaff. I was in Flagstaff in, like, 2014. So can you give Natalia any, like, words of wisdom here,

things that you wish you could have told yourself back then? I mean, is it as simple as don't go hard right away? I feel like you just cannot go too easy, ever. There's no such thing as too easy when you're at all. No, that elevation. When we were there, it was just, I was like, I'm just running really slow. And I'll let the pace come up slowly

just like when I'm running at sea level, but 100% based on perceived exertion. And like I just didn't even look at my watch. I just had it running to collect data. But just go by feel and chill because you're there to breathe and build blood cells, not build strength, like at least in the first couple weeks. A good way to do this is to train alone or don't train with someone that's going to push the pace, half step you and make you get out of that zone. Yeah. Even though we were there in Flagstaff this year with the squad,

most of us, we didn't do that many non, like the workouts, the quality sessions. We did pretty much all the non-quality sessions by ourselves. Rarely did we link up and everybody was very cool about, hey, I just need to go out and do my own thing at my own pace and no worries. That's the time that training with other people can actually bite you in the other direction. because of course it's a great tool to push yourself, but sometimes it's like you're saying,

that can be counterproductive. The fatigue really stacks up quick. And then the second question to tell you had here was, for me, are you planning on doing any Iron Man's this year, followed you all the entire day during Ironman, Wisconsin on my tracker, and I felt so bad for you that the day turned out so unlucky, hope you'll try again. I'm going to see what racing on Saturday is like.

I'm doing my first 70.3 in like two years, and depending on how I feel on that run, how my injuries feel on that run, I'm going to kind of go from there. But I would really like to. I really, really, really would like to. Next question here. Hey, Eric, I'm headed to Chattanooga 70.3 next week.

Packing my bike up into a bike box, Alan. I don't have a bike stand to use when I get there. Are there any pro tips or hacks to putting the bike together without a stand, for example, put wheels on first, then adjust the cockpit and derailer and chain, etc. He's using a bike box, Alan? That one's tricky.

It's not tricky. That bike case requires, like, no disassembly. Really? You got to take the bars off, right? Yeah, just in the bike box out and you, like, just plop it in. I don't think you can leave your arrow, like, your arrow bars and your extensions, yeah. And your base bar. Can you leave your base bar on with that?

Yeah, you can, yeah. Okay. The reason that I said it was tricky is because you can't, what I do with our psychons and with the tully bag that we have is I leave the bike, like, sitting vertically, still strapped into the case or whatever with the through axles in as I attach the bars because it's very fixed and steady that way

and then the last thing I do is put on the wheels versus having the bike sitting on its tires and it's in and everything and the ability to swing around as you're trying to attach the handlebars. Yeah, I think the best thing to do here would be to put the wheels on first and then deal with the aero bar

is when it has a base that are the wheels. You don't need a bike stand though. That's overkill. I mean, it's nice to have one, but. Yeah, we don't travel with one. There is a Tully case that actually, like, kind of comes with a built-in bike stand. Ours have that. Yeah. It's very cool. It adds some weight to the whole contraption, but it is really cool. We have so many bike bags. They all have pros and cons. And different ways to put the bike together.

Yeah. Everyone asks me, like, what's the best bike bag? And there is no one answer. We actually had a question about this that I didn't use, but I was curious what you guys think about this. If your bike breaks in the airplane, what's the course of action to take? Is that just oops and the bike is done? That's it? Do you contact the airline? They're never going to do anything. Yeah, I don't think they would do anything. You contact your insurance company maybe and see if they'll have mercy on you. What do? Eric and I do? We're spoiled raw and then we email specialized. There are carbon repair companies out there that I,

used before in this exact situation actually when I couldn't get a new bike frame. And for whatever, a thousand bucks or 500 bucks, they can actually, you know, carbon is basically like paper mache and they'll sand it down and put on more carbon and the thing. And it might not be the prettiest, but it works. Yeah. Interesting. Cool. So yeah, you can just, and our bag that we use Paula, too, it like, it really locks in there and it's not hard to build it up from there. But you don't have to take anything off of our bike when we use that. evoc case.

Evoc pro, yeah. It does have its downsides. We won't get into it. Last question here is from Allie. Hi, Paula, Eric, Nick and Flynn. Love the podcast and I'm inspired by all of you. Special shout out to Paula. I really admire how you've persevered with the sport and through injuries.

It takes a lot of courage, grit, and grace. I didn't grow up swimming and I'm seeing consistent progress. However, there's not much difference between a fast 200 and a fast 400 or even a 600. Should I be concerned about my lack of speed or just keep hammering the longer efforts since tries are not 50 sprints? The only contacts I care about is what distance is he racing? 70.3. Okay. So if you're going to be racing a 70.3, I really don't think your start speed is an issue and I wouldn't stress it. Especially in the amateur field. Do you think, though, that this is a sign of something else?

of stagnating progress in another way that might be impacting, not his 50 time, but his overall swim time. It's possible. It's just tough because when you go into like a sprint type of effort or like a much harder effort in swimming, almost inevitably your stroke changes a bit. And there's a bit of a, you know, an if there of will that technique or that power and strength really translate into whatever stroke you use

when you're swimming for 45 minutes, even for us. I would almost say, like, what you could do instead of doing like three, five hundreds, as you could break that into 50s or 75s and just try to swim maybe one second per 100 faster than you would be doing for that, if you, you know, if you were doing it by 500. So you're not completely changing your stroke, but you're getting a little bit more speed. I mean, you're getting a little bit more rest at the same. same time and just really holding like good strong technique together. I think a lot of the point of doing 50s or hundreds or like breaking things up is that

when you do get that reset at the wall, you will push off with better technique and fresher overall sensations versus doing a 500 or 1,000 straight. You are going to break down mechanically and maybe enforce some bad habits. So it's one of the many reasons that we do fast 50s, we do hard hundreds, we break up our sets and we're not just going to the pool and swimming a 1,800 meter hard every day to practice for a triathlon, you know? Yeah. I can't help but feel like if you're 200 and your 400 pace are the same. I just feel like, are you digging deep enough for that 200?

That's kind of what I'm, is that a wrong assumption to make? I mean, there are definitely days where that would be the case for me due to fatigue. But, yeah, I don't know. Maybe you do just need to like do some. actually do like 3.50s on the two minutes and just really try to get in connection with like maximum effort. I do think that, um, just test the theory. Yeah, some of our Ironman friends, when we would do like fast 25s or fast 50s, you would watch them come into the wall and their stroke rate was barely different than if they're warming up. So I think stroke rate has a lot to do

with this and a lot of the times people don't know how to turn their arms over that fast or they just don't think about it so for a 200 your stroke rate should be higher than a 400 um that'll naturally increase the effort and increase the speed but i think like tempo trainers that you put in your swim cap could be helpful for this just to like tick tick tick tick ticks you know and you're encouraged to have this uh higher turnover it's tough because just having higher turnover in the water it is a neuromuscular thing it's not always just like oh just move your arms faster. Right, right, right. You know? Yeah, it takes some practice and some patterning. And it also could create bad habits like slipping through the water so you're not

actually pulling and eventually you want to be able to have the higher turnover well, effectively pulling water, which will make you go faster. But it's definitely a learning curve. Swimming's tricky. It's hard. No kidding. No kidding. Well, yeah, there you go, Ali. It sounds like it's not the worst thing in the world, but that's some good advice. It's something you could work on for sure. Yeah. just because it's like fun. Yeah.

Swimming sucks. Here's the thing you can work on that involves doing 25s. Totally. Isn't that what swimming is about? Just distract yourself from the fact that you're doing all this swimming in some way or another. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Well, those are all the questions we have for this week. I'm still on such a high from trail running this week. And that's my unsolicited advice this week. Trail run in beautiful places. It's just going to make you love running so much more. Do you guys have any unsolicited advice for our listeners this week? I would second that. I'm always in a good mood after.

a long trail run. Yeah. I would, not, not for, it's not for everyone. It's not. I heard someone say this week

that like, people classifying runs as like recovery runs or easy runs is so fake because there's no such thing as an easy run. It's always hard.

And if you tell yourself it's easy before you start, you're just going to be disappointed when you're like, wait a second, this is still not easy. Running is so hard. Like we went running today.

I was so tired. So I came in around like five, 10 per K. still was hard, still was breathing hard, still wanted French fries the whole time. It's the worst activity ever. But we somehow convince ourselves when we're in pretty places that it's beautiful.

And then after the fact, you got the endorphins, you're like, oh my God, that was so beautiful. I'm in the best mood. Yeah. But if you can truly slow down and take in the beauty, it's nice. Yeah. I was like, can you do six minutes per K?

I did for one of the Ks. I was like, oh, God, I should pick it up. There you go. You just wouldn't go on easy enough. What's that watch ticks at six minutes? You're like, okay. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have walked that hill. Yeah, I think that's the problem.

Nobody's willing to go as easy as it takes for it to, like, truly be easy. No, that is true. But anyway, any run has load and is a training factor. If you want to do something easy, you go for a 100-watt bike ride. Or walk the dock. That was a tangent. bit. But Nick, I'm really glad you had a nice trip. It was amazing. It was amazing. It was the most trail running I've ever done back-to-back

days like that. It was really fun. Nice. We'll chat with you guys next week after we've all done a race. Maybe you'll get three race recaps from us. We got to work on that somehow. We can't do three race recaps. We'll actually be four because I'm doing two races. We'll make them short. Hopefully one of us will just have like the worst race of our lives. so we have this like motivational piece to give you. Inspirational. Yeah. Yeah.

Chaddy, not me. Yeah, but Nick and I you'll be able to follow on the Iron Man Tracker. I think Chattanooga actually has a live broadcast so you can follow along with that. It's a women's only pro race. So no Lionel Sanders, no Sam Long, but there'll be a good show on the women's side.

And then Nick, you'll be on the live tracker. And we'll try to figure out how you can follow Eric's race. race too and post that on our Instagrams and stuff. Probably can't. Eric, when's the last time you race back-to-back days? Yeah, to explain that. ITU.

ITU days with mixed relays. So it's a short track and a long-track mountain bike. That's what he's doing. So if you watch cross-country mountain biking, like, you know, Niño Shurter and Kate Courtney and that kind of stuff, they have started doing these short-track events

in conjunction with the main event. So the athletes get two chances to race, two chances to make some points when they've traveled all of the world to get to, you know, Nov Miesto or wherever. And Xtera is starting to do that as well. So Saturday will be the regular Xtera distance, kind of Olympic distance-ish. And then on Sunday, they're having a short track race, which is like a 400 meter swim, a 6K bike and a 2K run.

So maximum effort, really short course. It'll probably be almost cyclocross style with really short laps. And I don't know. What percentage of the athletes do you think, do you have any idea? How many are doing both days? They limit the short track to 20 athletes, but last I checked the start list for the main race, only had 20 athletes.

So I think everybody will do it. Why wouldn't you do it? Why wouldn't you do it? They limited it to 20 just because I think of the congestion of getting at the first buoy and just whatever and also as a reward to the top athletes from the main event. Ah, yeah, got it. Cool.

All right, well, thanks for listening, everyone, and have a great weekend of training. We'll chat with you next week. Bye. Later.