That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon bike muscles vs road bike muscles, TTL Devo athlete John Reed, and more!

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

This week we are thankful for carbon bikes, carbon shoes, and that the pool is closed. We start out with a TTL Spelling Bee, a chat with TTL Development Team athlete John Reed about his year, his olympic hopes, and 70.3 dreams and then finally get into listener-submitted questions. This week we discussed:Lap swim speed etiquetteThe Lever Movement treadmill systemPaula's favorite Castelli bibs"Road bike muscles" vs "TT bike muscles"If and when to drop out of a raceA big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive! To submit a question for the podcast and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Hey, everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loughstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldstone. We have got a special episode for you today. This is one of a three-part series, I guess you could say, where we're going to be checking in with three of our development team athletes and a little bit of a look back at their season and just a little bit of a chit-chat. This week, we're kicking things off with John Reed, our guy representing at the WTCS level. So if you're new here, Paul and I are both professional athletes. Nick is a professional musician, amateur athlete, and we like to talk about triathlon and multi-sport and stuff and

things. So welcome. Eric, do we want to have John on first, or do we want to get a little warmed up? I'm feeling pretty warm, but if you need to get warmed up, by all means. Sometimes the way that I get warmed up is by humiliating you in front of our entire podcast audience. Yeah, I'm aware. All right, let's do it. We haven't done a spelling bee in a long time. Yeah, I'm feeling, I don't know if I'm ready for this, but I'll give it my best shot. Okay, well, here we go. And the topic this week is pharmaceuticals.

You're going to have to figure out how to spell pharmaceuticals. That's not fair. These aren't real words. No, there's no such thing as a real word. All words are made up, and these are just as made up as the rest. And Eric, I think you can take a challenge. Am I starting with pharmaceuticals? No.

Oh, geez. I don't even have that one ready, and I certainly can't fact-check the spelling of the word pharma Zootical. Okay, that's fine. The first one here is commonly known as Advil. The drug name is ibuprofen. How do you spell ibuprofen? I-b-U-P-R-O-F-E-N.

Nailed it. Great. Good start. That was the easiest one, though. The next one is commonly known as Tylenol, and the drug name is acetametifin. A-C-E-M-O-F-E-N. A-C-E-T-A-A-E-A. I-M-I-N-O-P-H-E-N.

Yeah, I missed like a whole syllable in there. You did, you did. A-C-E-T-I-M. He's rusty. A-C-E-N. A-M-I-N. Eric, you don't lose points if you slow down for a minute and say it's lower. I kind of just like it.

I kind of just like it when he rattles it up. I like to hear Nick Giggle. He's making errors. Yeah, yeah. Okay, next one. This is commonly known as Benadryl. And the name, I don't, I don't, for, people who know these names, I'm sorry that I'm not

pronouncing them right. Diphenhydramine. D-F-H-E-N-H-E-R-A-M-I-N-H-Y-R-A-M-I-N-E. Yes, baby! Yeah, slow-in down for the win. Yeah, I told you. That's great. That's great.

Okay, that's wonderful. We got two more else. I'll see if you can get this. So this is a commonly prescribed. penicillin for bacterial infections and it's amoxicillin, amoxicillin. I don't know how anyone's supposed to spell these things right without knowing what they are. Without going in medical school. Yeah, yeah. A-M-O-X-A-C-Y-L-L-I-N. This is a problem. That could be it, but it's not. It's A-M-O-X-I-C-I-L-N.

XI. Yeah. I said a Moxa, but a Moxia. This feels to me like kind of in that same genre as when we did the football like the hockey players names where you're like are these crossing like language barriers and stuff?

Also it like depends on the way you say it Nick which is probably incorrect. Of course. You're right. Yeah, I should have like followed back on like Moxie. Right. I don't know. Gone with my slang. For these I did and I've forgotten now

but I put them into YouTube for pronunciation. if you can believe it. So I'm pronouncing him the way that the guy on YouTube told me to pronounce it. We can't blame you then. The final one here is It's a, yeah, it's an antihistamine.

It's I think it's a Zyrtec. If you've heard of Zyrtec? I took Zyrtec in high school, yeah. There you go. Okay, so this is Seterazine. Settterazine. This is not fair

from my reintroduction to the spelling. You know what? This reminds me. It was so funny. There's a great YouTube channel called a pronunciation manual, I think, where they take all of these commonly mispronounced words and they pronounce them on purpose incorrectly.

So it'll be like Chipotle. And it's Sean Toodle or like Justin Bieber and it'll be Jogi Brodellteen. That's what this feels like. Wait, let me say it in a way that's not like Nick trying to pronounce it like Google pronunciation. Okay. It's a Tarazine.

I still, I mean like there's 45 ways. I would spell it right. wrong if I heard you say it that way, too, though. I don't know. I could be like C-I-T or S-I-T or... Right. Okay, I'll give you a clue. It starts with the C-E.

C-E. Yeah. Yeah. C-E-E-T-E-R-O-Z-Y-N-E. Not even close. I'll give you another clue. It has three eyes. Yeah, that helps a lot.

Okay, Nick, this is just too hard. Yeah. Sorry, Eric. But you know what? You did get diphtramine. Yeah, I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to go out on that. That's a big one. That's a big one.

Okay. So I think we're giggly enough to have John on. So do we want to give him a little ring a ding ding? Yeah, sure. But I'm just going to give everyone a little bit of a lead-in to exactly who we're talking to today. Okay. I'll dial up the phone while you do that. Yeah.

So John races draft legal racing almost exclusively. Paul and I have a soft spot in our heart for this. As we came up in this space, this is the pathway to qualify for the Olympic Games. John is like in one of the hot seats for, you know, if the Olympic games were tomorrow, he would be one of the guys, most likely. So this has been a great season for him. Starting off in, I'm just going to go down like the highlights. This guy's raced like 15 times.

But second in the team really, Abu Dhabi WTCS, third World Cup, Saida, fifth Supertri, Toronto, third Supertri, Chicago, third WTCS way high, second in the epic Nusa Trathon. in Australia. These guys put together an incredible season. We are very proud that he is crossing finish lines with that triathlon life on his chest. And, yeah, let's see if he's got a little bit of time to chat. Hello, this is John?

Yeah, is this John Reed? Yes, this is John Reed. Is this TTL? You're on that triathlon life podcast. Welcome to the show, my man. Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure. Yeah, we were just singing your praises.

You've had an incredible season. buy all accounts. And we're stoked to have you here on the podcast to do a little bit of a chit chat about how it's been going. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. It's been a little while. Yeah.

We have a couple of questions that we can fall back on just in case, you know, like this gets boring or anything like that. But how do you feel about the year and like where are you in the season? Are we correct in saying that the season's over? Are you going to like pull one of these real quick, go to Indian Wells, fast ones at the end of the season? Where are you at? Nope.

Yeah, seasons cut. I capped it off in Nusa a couple weeks ago in Australia. And yeah, now I'm just, I'm back in the U.S. I'm hanging out and enjoying a bit of off-season with some friends and family and doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Not a whole lot of training, but just kind of enjoying life after a busy season. Right on. We were ecstatic to see the Nusa result.

For those who are not aware of like where Nusa falls in the triathlon scheme of things, It's something like Escape from Alcatraz level, but in New Zealand. No, it's in Australia. Yeah, in Australia. So it's like a trathlon classic. You just lost 100 fans, Eric. I know. I know.

I'm going to get killed for that one. But, yeah, a freaking epic result. Second place there. No big deal. I do remember, though, like the prize money situation in Australia being rather brutal with like taxes and stuff. yep i was i was quite literally on the phone with my brother about this like an hour ago trying to figure out how they tried to tax me like 50% which it's pretty good prize money even with

the conversion for the podium yeah um but then yeah if if you can't figure out how to get like an australian bank account it's not it's not very nice but i think there's a way i think there's a way to avoid getting double taxed though like if you're taxed on it on australia you're not ping tax on it here. It's a bit complicated, but I was actually second at Nusa as well in 2014, a long time ago. It's like a super iconic race. It has a lot of history, and I can't even remember why I was over there, but it's not a lot of a race that a lot of people travel to, but if you're already in Australia, it's an awesome way to finish the season. So did you bring your own TT bike? No, I was really fortunate with, I have a bunch of friends there, and I just kind of,

I got a set up, put together on like Monday or Tuesday of race week and kind of played with the bike a little, looking myself in the mirror. And I was like, all right. Yeah, this is fine. And then, uh, yeah, which is kind of what I did for Indian Wells last year, but I think you can fake 40K on the bike a whole lot easier than, uh, I don't even know what, what a half Iron Man is. The 90K. Yeah. Just in terms of being comfortable running after. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I just, I kind of pieced it together and uh yeah it was pretty fun it was i mean it was fun kind of just as a low pressure i'm already in australia this would be cool i think the the atmosphere that whole weekend is pretty nuts i didn't know they have so many events before and then i want to say they had 9000

people racing that weekend which was i mean and yeah i guess paula you've been to nuisance but it's not a very big like city or town yeah so i was packed like how does it even fit yeah Yeah, it's kind of crazy. But it was really cool, so I enjoyed it. I have a NUSA question for you, John. Yeah. A few months ago, there was this pro cyclist, I forget his name now, who had just taken six months across America in a van riding all over the states.

And I wanted to know how he felt about Los Angeles compared to the rest of the states, and he gave me a whole thing. And then I asked him, what do you think the best city in the world is for cycling? And he said Nusa. Do you think that's crazy? Yeah. I think Nusa's really. really nice, especially compared to, like, I was in Gold Coast before and Wollongong

before that, and I would say it's less busy than those places, which is really nice, but I wouldn't say it's like, it's the best place in the world to work. Where's the best place, in your opinion? Um, I did 10 days in same Ritz this year. Oh, no. I don't think you can know if the Alps. That was pretty, that was like a bucket list for me. and that was that was pretty insane

but as well like in the US I think Park City Crested Butte is probably next to or right up there with St. Moritz Just huge oh yeah

huge mountains it's it's gorgeous just everywhere you look you're just constantly in a state of awe and it's it's pretty fun all right Cresta Butte training camp here we come enjoy 9000 feet and up yeah we're just gonna bleep that out so that no one else shows up, but we're going to be there.

Exactly. So I guess, like, Nuce is the most top of mind thing, but what would you feel like was your best, or like the race that you're most excited or proud of the year? I think it's hard to, it's hard to top a podium at a WTCS. That was really big. And really cool. And finally, like, I've struggled not making the front group all year,

and then I was finally in the front group, and I was like, sweet, let's do it. Came on. So that was, yeah, and so that was really cool, as well as I was on the podium in Super Tri, Chicago. And that was, that's the only race I had in the U.S. this year. And, like, my mom flew out, and I have some family in Chicago that came to watch. And my mom hasn't, she watched the first triathlon ever did, like, four years ago. And then that was, obviously, she's, like, watched on TV and stuff.

But that was the first time she had been in person to watch me in a little. a while and the super try stuff is really cool to watch in person um yeah so that one that that one meant a lot just from the fact that i had i had people around yeah that's that was a big deal cool love that no that was always a hard thing with i mean you know paul and i did the ITU circuit as well and like your parents can only come to so many of them when you're racing in hamburg and carlo ivari and way high and et cetera et cetera and uh special with this in the u s all right that'll least mean my next question if you could only do one of all these race types that we've talked about 70.3 slash T100 super try WTCS you know

et cetera that and let's just assume you get you can make you know as much money as you want in any of them but you can only do one style for the rest of your life rest of your career what's your favorite um oh that's hard it's hard because he's only dead 170.3 I know but you know I think you're going to like him more if you do more did you like what you did you like Yeah, that's sort of, I'm telling myself. I can't say I loved Indian Wells. I would honestly probably say, I would probably say like a sprint distance WTCS.

Okay. I don't know. And I don't know if that's like what I'm best at, but I think those are fun where things can definitely go wrong in an Olympic distance. You probably have to think a little bit more. You can just go really hard. And I mean, you're always just going really hard and everything, but yeah in a sprint it's truly about like yeah and then same thing i think super try can be a bit

chaotic for me um and that can be really stressful and so then the sprint is like it's not super tri chaotic it's not as long as an olympic it's a nice it's a nice happy medium yeah um what about the team relay do you have you done many of those and is that on your radar i guess for second place la it'll be a big deal yeah yeah yeah i got to do to do to the this year I did one in in Abu Dhabi at the beginning of the year, which we got second in, which was really cool. And then we did Hamburg, which I flatted in, and then rode, rode my rim for maybe the last K or two, which is not fun because it was like the last part of it. Devastating in Hamburg. All the cobbles and it was just, I didn't enjoy that.

But, um, did you, were you writing tubless by the way? Yeah. Yeah. And what happened? I don't know. I have no idea. I just, I just, uh, German, sabotage, dude, of course. Yeah, I was right behind Schonger Lehman, and I just started spraying him, and then it just yeah, it didn't really seal. So it was so big a gash.

I need to put liners in. That was my conclusion after that, but liners are a bit of a pain. You mean like those things you put in your mountain bike? And those are inserts. Those are inserts. Oh, yeah.

You can do that on a road bike? I didn't know that. So why don't we do that? It's really, it's really, just extra insurance in case you need to ride a flat in for like okay if you it wouldn't be a solution if you wanted to ride it for like 30k I'm actually Paula I totally am with you though I think we should be putting inserts into road bike tires as well because why not I mean I'm be curious to see some data on like rolling resistance impacts and etc yeah yeah I guess it can like save your race

if it's super short yeah or if you're just riding yeah and you can still run lower pressure you put those in, you can run even lower pressure than with tubus, I'm pretty sure, which is... I mean, if it's the same physics as mountain biking, then, yeah, it gives you a little sidewall support. Do you know if any of the other athletes are doing that in short course? That you've heard of? Not a ton. Okay. I don't know. I don't think I've really asked.

I'm sure there are a good handful of people that do, and then some don't because they're kind of a pain to mess with. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But you still finish that race, hey? you got to transition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then just tried to run really hard. When we're, people at like, around my fitness level, the average age grouper, we see pros and we just think, oh my God, the amount of fitness that they have is why they do so well. And I'm curious if you can tell us as someone who has, you know, just recently gotten to this point of, I mean,

you're one of the most promising triathletes in the U.S. right now. So how much of it, compared to what you would have expected really is pure fitness versus how much of it is mindset on race day, race dynamics, being in the right place at the right time, headspace. I think there's a lot more mental stuff probably than I guess what most people would think or it's not. I definitely don't think it's all just fitness. I think it'd be really cool if it was just be the fittest and that's who wins, but that's not reality. you know and dynamics definitely play a big thing you could flat you could I mean and it's been interesting this year I think compared to last year I think last year you saw a lot of big packs

you saw Hayden and Alex coming off and then just running really crazy and I mean Matt and Vasco I ran really really well this year but uh most of the World Series have had some kind of breakaway um so it's been interesting kind of watching that shift back um and so those dynamics are really interesting, too, where you have guys that know they're not going to run well or maybe run for the win, but they'll just sell out a swim bike to see what happens. And I think I've probably caught in the tail end of that. And so that makes a big thing, but then mindset, too. I work with a sports psychologist, and I've worked with him for really since I started the

sport a couple years ago. and I think he's been key and just managing stress, managing energy around races, around travel and life and then as well too our big thing is just learning to stay more present in everything and I think in racing events that are so dynamic

and constantly changing I think your ability to stay present goes a long way in that and just something hits the fan and it's, okay, just keep focusing, keep moving forward, do what you need to do, regardless of what someone else is doing, what happened to you, you know, all these things, what can you do to stay present and just get to the line as quick as possible? Oh, dude, 100%.

I always felt like when I was racing in those scenes, it was like having almost like the goldfish memory, like whatever happened 30 seconds ago doesn't matter. Like, what is the best thing I can do right now as if the race just started, move forward, like problem solve be here now. I actually think that's what I miss the most about short course racing because it's really hard to be like that in a race that's so long like in a 70.3 or even in a T100 on the bike you get by yourself for hours sometimes but you get that real sense of like being in the moment when you're racing short course

because there's so much going on and it's really hard to replicate that in any other type of racing or even in training so that's a cool thing to bring up. start drifting and wondering if you left the oven on in the middle of a 70.3 bike. Yeah, you're not thinking about that in a short course race, especially a sprint. No, and I think there's so much adrenaline with it too, which that's something that I think I missed when I did Indian Wells last year. And I got dropped from the front group pretty quick and then it was just by myself, but it was like, oh, you don't have that rush of adrenaline. You're not ripping through corners with, you know, 20 other dudes and just hoping you stay up right.

Yeah, yeah. It's not for everybody. I mean, Indian Wells is a super boring bike course. For what it's worth, that's my least favorite 70 point you have ever done. So do not judge us based on that race. The only one in December. So, John, the next couple of years are obviously about Olympic qualifying. I just came up with this question.

If you were offered a T-100 spot, would you try it? Are you just going to be full focus on Olympics? I think I'd try it. Yeah. pending I'm a little over borrowing bikes and the whole bike bike sponsors John Reed is your number one choice right now don't sleep on John Reed but yeah I think if I had the like an actual setup

and actually got fit on a TT bike I totally do it I don't think I mean I think if you're trying to jump to Iron Man that's a whole different thing and that would really take a lot of different focus but I just think time on the TT bike. Yeah, it's the only difference. It really be the only thing. I mean, my long runs and stuff are longer than 18K.

Yeah, you'd be fine on everything. You'd be, you're probably swimming too much. Well, actually, no, T100 is getting faster on this one. Yeah, I can, I can keep up with Morgan. Oh, yeah. He's the top swim guy. Yeah, he's the top swim in T100. Right.

Well, I think you should try one. It would be cool to see you do it. And it's so much like short course racing. in terms of like the corners and the laps and the yeah being more familiar with that um i guess like the last thing i would just my last question then is like with the the idea the Olympics is coming up and everything what's like next year look like and are you thinking of it in terms of like this year i got to get my world ranking to x and like so olympic points start kicking in and like what is uh i guess what can we expect next year from from you yeah um it's a busy calendar there's

10 World Series and all like this year started really early in February and then we didn't end until end of October this 2026 starts end of March and then we end end of September and we have 10 races and I think we only had eight this year. So there's a lot of racing and it's going to be fairly condensed. So I think picking and choosing a bit more where I race when I train type of thing. But then, yeah, it's a little stressful because I think in May is when that first block of Olympic qualification starts. So things start to matter and get a bit more serious.

I think a lot of it is just kind of watching and maybe race. You know, if you're racing well, you don't have to race a lot. But if you're not, you know, I think trying to make sure everything's covered. just in terms of ranking if I start to slip. It's okay, go do some World Cups at the end of the year and make sure I have myself in the best position possible. But yeah, I think just another year. I think this year has been a lot of experience gaining on the World Series circuit.

And so I think hopefully next year, using that experience and getting a couple more results would be the goal. You know, I think fighting for as many podiums and top fives as possible, just knowing that in the following year, you know, when we have auto-selection races, it's quite nice to auto-select and not wait for discretion or anything like that. Yeah, yeah. You know, and especially just I want to make the games, and obviously that's the first goal, but I want to perform at the games. And I think if you know, you know, a year to nine months out versus three months out, that's going to pay. pay dividends.

Huge difference. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Love it. All right, well, hopefully a WTCS-packed schedule for you. That's bringing back so many memories of the... You know, my best advice, though, for it is, like, sometimes you can get so distracted by the nitty-gritty of all the points. And I think leaving that to your coach and to the people that, you know,

where athletes fall with getting three slots for the U.S. and two slots, you can get so wrapped up in that stuff. And ultimately, if you can consistently podium and then auto-qualify, none of that matters. So I'm like being aware of it, but also not getting bogged down by it. Yeah. Still just go race. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I think you start focusing on those, and those are all outcomes. You have no control over.

Totally, because it depends so much on what other people are doing, which you can't control. Yeah. I think just enjoying the moment, enjoying the stress, enjoying the pressure, because, you know, I don't think you always have it, so. Totally. It's a privilege to have pressure, right? Yeah, that's a cliche. Well, we're so excited to watch you next year, and it's been obviously very fun following you this year.

Yep, yep. Keep up the good work. Take a good rest on your offseason and ready to fire. Yeah, we'll see you in Park City. Yeah, for sure. Crest to Butte. We will. Yep, Chris to Butte.

Hey, good skiing. Training camp. Yep. We can do a winter training camp there. We need snow so bad. Is there snow there right now? Then we'll come. I think Crescia View probably does.

It's high enough. It's so high. All right. Looking at tickets now. Yep. Thanks, man. All right. Thanks, John.

Yeah, take care. Bye. Bye. Man, I love that guy. He's wonderful. Yep, really is. We hope that he goes the Olympics and we're all going to be there in the crowd watching if he does. You guys, come slumber party here and then we'll roll out of bed.

I mean, it's a few miles from here for the triathlon. We should probably like, you know, scout the course and like, you know, of course. No, we should all sleep in the van together and rent out your apartment. So this is, this is what I want. This is, I shouldn't be talking about this on the podcast, but I was thinking it would be nice. Oh, wait a second. Well, my thought was to let an athlete stay in my place. But they get their own, they get their own village.

Yeah. So I should rent out my place for a million dollars. And we should all cuddle in the van together. Yeah. That's a great idea. No, but Nick, having your place during the Olympics would be. It would be sick. Yeah, it would be sick, of course. Like a place to go back to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see, you know, how many multimillionaires we are by the time that comes around and make a decision. Maybe I'll go for the TT. Oh, Paula, don't tease me. Stop it, you're getting me all excited. Oh, wow, I'm swearing. Okay, everybody, calm down. Maybe we'll have a baby.

Calm down. That would be so fun. A lot of time between now and then, but that sounds fun. To be continued on that fantasy discussion. Nick, do you have questions for us? Oh, we have questions, baby. We have too many questions for the time we have left. So I think, oh, I'm trying to think of what are the best ones are.

Well, let's start by saying this, that you can submit your questions, and I promise we will toil and pain ourselves over picking or not picking yours, but the place you can send them is thattriathlonlife.com slash podcast. You can also become a podcast supporter there. and something we're going to be doing soon I don't know if you notice this if you're an audio file which means you love all things sound

that this podcast is presented to you in mono for podcast supporters we're figuring out a way to get it to you in full mastered stereo it'll sound even better than before what? Yes Nick how are you breaking this to us on

the podcast? You and I have talked about this before Eric but I found a sneaky way to do this, I think. Okay, well, I mean, I wasn't sure you'd committed to it or not. Yes, yes. I like this idea a lot. I don't know if anyone else will care at all.

So does this mean that, like, are, you know, like, I'll be coming from like the left side of your? Correct. Correct. Oh, wow. Correct. Just slightly, because otherwise it's a little disorienting, but you want a little separation in terms of the stereo image if we're going to get a little nerdy here. Okay.

You guys, but do you think pro-tri-news is doing this, too? I did not laugh I did not laugh You were going through a tunnel there right Eric Yeah exactly You know what honestly I think that there's a blend There's quality

And then there's just like Quality of the content of the thing And I think they do a fantastic job Of quality of the information being presented And therefore does the quality Of the sound need to be as beautiful Props to Kyle The quality has improved

From the beginning as well It has gotten better They also listen to this podcast Like before we're even awake I think just Kyle us. They're going to hear us. I am, credit where credit is due, they crush it.

They present a lot of incredible information. And a lot of times we sit down and like, do we have anything to talk about or should we just say, go listen to BroChai News if you want to know what happened in Kona. Totally. Right. Right. Yeah, we can't do recaps like they can. No.

Fantastic. So I want to say back to the podcast supporters, another fun little thing we're doing that we sometimes get in the flow of and then sometimes run out. stuff to give away. But this week there's a very special giveaway because, well, Eric, I'll let you say it since it's more on your side of things. Yeah. So we were thinking, you know,

what way we can give away a pair of socks, or we're feeling very generous and we're going to be giving away one of our brand new, super awesome diner mugs. So we have them in trail variation and a core logo, whatever you want to call that, the main circle that started at all, the OG logo. We have both options. So, to our lucky winner, you've got to let us know

which one you want to be sipping your coffee out of in the morning and getting all inspired. That winner, by the way, is Elise Borrelli. I'm going to pronounce your name the Italian way, Elise, and you're just going to have to deal with it. Thank you, Eric. Thank you. This is what we have you here for.

That was a good bravo, Eric. Thank you. I mean, you set the tone and I feel like I can mimic very well once you've got it going. But yeah, we still have quite a few of those in stock, so if you're not Elise and you want one of those, go check it out. You can get yours. But at least yours is free on the house. Feels good. This is a genuine question because I have no idea because you guys don't tell me anything.

Is there a Black Friday sale? Oh, Paula, it is so funny that you ask. I genuinely don't know. I know. I know you don't know. I know. I know you don't know. But I actually, I'm taking over to the warehouse a bunch of stuff that we've just had sitting in our little attic stash, which includes a full size run of my signature kits. that we had produced just in case anybody's got lost in the mail and a couple of very limited edition things that we have had throughout the years so there'll be like a women's small of this and a men's medium of this etc and some socks and we'll put those on very very good pricing as well as putting anything else that's on the site

on varying degrees of discount so it is going to be worth your time to go check that out oh yeah this podcast comes out on thanksgiving i just realized happy thanksgiving everyone To all the who celebrate, happy Thanksgiving. Does anyone who not celebrate? I mean, Canadian people may have already celebrated. My sister doesn't celebrate. No, it's a huge deal in the U.S. Like in Canada, whatever, we'd have to be.

But I feel like down here families really, really use it as a reason to eat. Well, it's steeped in history here. You know, like we have a legitimate story behind it, whether, you know, how true or tweaked it may have been. I don't know. We have some lore behind why we do Thanksgiving. No what I think is confusing, though. Why everyone's putting up their Christmas lights before Thanksgiving. Thank you.

Oh, God. Enough people. Not just people putting Christmas lights up. Trader Joe's being like 100% Christmas themed already. It's a huge pet peeve. Can we just, are we just doing pet peeves right now? How about this like early access to the Black Friday sale? That started a month before the actual, like,

can we just do like fight club style where we just reset all of the systems and go back to like Black Friday actually matters? Blow it all up. Yeah, and just like, burn it to the ground. Otherwise, it's going to be January 1st and we're going to be getting the early access to the sneak preview of the Black Friday next year.

Yeah, Black Friday is that Black Friday a couple of weeks. Yeah. I go a step further. The REI does this thing called Opt Outside on actual Black Friday or instead of shopping, you go do something outdoors, and if you can even do something like a park cleanup or something like that, that's next level. But instead of shopping at a store and contributing to the crazy consumerist capitalistic craziness, do something outdoors. And then they give you a gift card or what?

No, if they don't give you a gift card, it's just a recommendation. They do something for their employees. I think they give their employees the day off to go do something outside. I think that's... Yeah, and half of them are shopping. Mm-hmm. Well, you know what? I appreciate the message for sure. Yeah. Well, let's get to questions, though, I'd say it's a good time. Unless, Eric, did you have one final cap off there? No, no, we could just spiral for endlessly, but we should do questions. Well, I was a bit confused about, like, we have six pumpkins on our doorstep. And today, I, like, threw half of them away into the yardways bin. But I'm like, Thanksgiving hasn't even happened. Pumpkins are Thanksgiving. They are Thanksgiving. Yeah. But everyone on our street has Christmas lights up, and I'm feeling like I'm behind. So I had to throw it up. Anyway.

Keep it up with the Joneses. Be the change you want to see in the world. Do not put the Christmas stuff up until after Thanksgiving. Exactly. Okay, enough of that. Sorry. First question here is from Jason. And Jason, by the way, put a little Italian here.

He said, good day and bonjourno. Appreciate that, Jason. Interesting pool situation and the question relates to responsibility with lifeguards versus self-organizing of lanes. I know all three of us feel passionately about this. I was swimming with two young ladies very strong and talented one of them recently went to 70.3 worlds

together the three of us were in the fast lane there was an older, slower man that was swimming continuous lengths in the fast lane one of the ladies swimming with me asked the lifeguard to ask the man to maybe switch lanes so that he doesn't interfere

with their slash hour workout which was going to be much more intense and longer and faster than his swimming the lifeguard said all caps no they can't do anything and as long as he stops and allows us to pass it's a free lane and free swim and he's fine.

The swimmer with me let it go and we continued on the man definitely interfered I mean not really his fault I guess but then 30 minutes later left the lane to a slower lane how do you guys approach these situations what is the right answer here thank you Jason

the nerve the unmitigated gall You approached it exactly the way that I have approached it in the past Like if you're completely in this pickle Ask the lifeguard And plenty of swim lanes At least a couple that I've noticed lately

We'll say on them like If you're in this lane and getting passed frequently Et cetera something to that degree Move to a slower lane Which I mean if we could just make that like a normal thing I feel like that would just Like what we're lacking here is a little bit of structure regularity that allows people to like understand some rules

and if you don't have any rules, then you're like, well, I'm just going to go wherever is convenient. So I don't blame people in that situation, but that's how I would have started as well. Lifeguard, please, can you help? I honestly think that the person who's going slow, they're not even aware of what they have no idea. Because, I mean, a lot of us on this podcast, we've never been the passee. We've always been the passer.

And passing is so much more annoying than being passed, I would imagine. If you're being past, you're just swimming constantly. You don't know what's going on around you. I don't know. I'm imagining that when, you know, at least when I go by, people are like, oh my God, a tsunami. What was that? Did you ask God someone go by?

I should get out of the way. That's how I imagine they must feel. The thing is, my pool is so different than your pool. And I feel like your pool is more conducive to people seating themselves properly. Because first of all, your pool has a mandatory, always circle swim, even if you're the only person in the lane. So that's the first step. But also it seems like you guys divide, people will not get into the fast lane even if it's empty in your pool. They will get into the slow lane with other people.

Where I swim, if there's an empty lane, someone's getting into it does not matter their speed. And this is then the problem. After that, the lane speed doesn't matter. you just look around and find a person who or people who seem to be swimming at your speed but because people just get into the available lanes regardless of their speed it throws the whole system off yeah yeah i mean this is why all the towns in the world are upset the Californians are moving to moving here you know because they just don't have any sort of respect for the lap swim at a kid watch it there no i mean i i feel like i didn't just as i'm brainstorming on what you're saying

like having a decent number of fast people that frequent the pool like helps establish like the fast lanes actually like pretty fast, you know, I mean, but still we have this to a certain degree. Like you can't fault people for if there's 10 people in a medium lane and the fast lane's wide open to like, well, I'm faster than a bunch of the people in the medium lane. I'm going to go there. Yeah, and I wouldn't expect that either. Like when I look at the lobsidedness sometimes of the pool, I'm like, this person should move here, this person should move here. And then this person will be happier. Like in my brain, I can. sort it out in a way where everyone will be pretty happy. But it's like the state of the pool when you first arrive is not the state of the pool 20 minutes in. Yeah. The constantly changing and thing. Wow.

A lot of ins, a lot of outs. If I'm in a lane with someone slower, I also assume they're probably going to get out within 20 minutes usually. Yeah. Right. So I guess what you could have done in this situation, you know,

as the lifeguard is completely not going to help you, is you could have waited for this gentleman to arrive at the wall and say, hey, we're a little bit of a swim team. here or whatever. We're going to do a set that's like a little bit organized just so you know. We're going to be making tsunamis. We're going to be making splashes and stuff. Godzilla's going to show up. They'll move over. Yeah.

Like, I'm not trying to tell you to leave, but like just a heads up, this is happening. Got it. Yeah, I think it's always fine to ask someone to move. Communication. In a polite way. In a very polite, respectful way. And usually they actually will. Yeah, because I mean, theoretically, they shouldn't be like super

fun for them either, getting splashed a bunch. Yeah, and then the worst case, you just think of it. like open water swim training. Exactly what you're doing a triathlon. Okay, great. Next question here. Paula, this one is specifically for you. Okay.

As winter is well and truly here, there are so many bibtight options out there to choose from, which are your favorite, spelled with a you, so you know this person's fancy, favorite Castelli ones and why, thanks from Lucy.

This is probably Lucy Charles, so consider that. What's up, Lucy? Say how to Reese for me. My favorite Castelli tights are the espresso bibtite. And they make the espresso collection in shorts, in short-sleeve jerseys, in long-sleeve jerseys, and now in bibtites as well. And I have a bunch of other different models that I've had over the years. But the espresso, for some reason, is just, there's like no seams basically anywhere.

So it feels really like it's part of your leg. There's not a zipper. There's no fancy, there's nothing fancy on it. reflectors, it's just material. So I find them the most flexible and the most soft even. So when you're riding, you just don't even think about the fact that they're on. They're not really built for like deep of winter riding, like if it's below freezing, but for like a chili California day or even like, you know, 8 Celsius, they're totally fine. By the way, the espresso is not the super fancy top of the line expensive stuff either. No, it's affordable. That's right. It's crazy.

You can buy, there's plenty of bib tights on Kestelli, which are way more than the espresso bibs. And they're my favorite bibs shorts and bib tights. Nice. Yeah, I would agree with what Paula said. Like if it's very close to freezing or below, they have some warmer options, like the gabbas or... Yeah, yeah, something with a bit of wind protection. For most of the things where you're actually going to go outside, fantastic. And it's not my question, but my favorite bibtice that they just came out with, the unlimited bibtites, which have a,

freaking pocket on them. Oh, come on. Amazing. I think it's pretty much the same construction type of stuff as the espresso, but with a pocket for, you know, if you feel gravelly and want to put your phone there. Okay, is this true? It's saying that those are unlimited trail with leggings. I think that only $72 right now.

Well, they do not feel like $72. There's no way. There's no way. Full leggings? Well, they're on sale. For what is the original price? Oh, then. Nick, buy some.

Buy some now. Yeah. Do it. That's all I've worn. I have two pairs, and I've worn those continually the last week. Oh, these are not the same

as what you have, actually. Oh. But still a good deal. Okay. Let's move on. Carry on. Carrying on. This one is from David.

And I think this is a question that we all ask ourselves a lot. So I've got a question about bike choice on the trainer. I recently had a new TT bike fit, aggressive position for a 20-kilometer ITT sprint triathlon and I was planning to use

the winter to get my body used to the position but since I still enjoy road racing events I'm a bit worried that spending too much time on the TT bike might cost me some road bike muscles that's in quotes road bike muscles is that actually a thing do you train exclusively on the TT bike snowy greetings from Switzerland

David I what I think is funny is the opposite as I think is often a question is how much time do I have to spend on the TT bike? Minimum viable TT bike time. So what do you say? Paula, as someone who then actually races,

not just triathlon, but TT events specifically, what do you say to this? If you're going to lose road bike muscles by riding your TT bike all winter? No. I don't think it's a muscle thing. I think it's when you get back on your road bike, it'll feel really weird.

Because when I go from road to TT or I found my road bike for two weeks and then I jump on my TT bike, it feels like I'm further forward, the saddle feels slightly higher, you just got to get used to the feel of it and how it handles and everything. So I would say it is a good decision though to keep your TT bike on the trainer where you can be an arrow and get used to that position. That's what I do for the most part. You might as well, if you're sitting there anyway, get used to the bike you're going to be racing on. Yeah, so I'm, so like if we could tell

this person, like if you were getting ready for some TT stuff or whatever and you have like some hard workouts in the week and some steady state and some like hard, you know, like hard workouts. Would you do like the hard workouts on the TT bike? Or would you do like the steady state stuff just to you to the position? Personally, I do every hard session on the tea on, that's on the trainer on a TT bike. And then for easier one hour spins, I'll put the road bike on. But of course, swapping it back and forth is something you got to ask Eric to do. Yeah.

Yeah, David asked Eric to do it, fly out to Switzerland. I wonder also if when you're riding the TT bike, I'm just not as naturally excited or drawn to short efforts. So if I'm on the road bike and I see like a minute and a half climb, I'll send it up that climb. Kind of for fun. On the TT bike, I guess my brain just doesn't go there. Totally agree. Oh, I guess indoors, not really. No, it's the same feeling, I think.

I totally agree with you, Nick. Yesterday I had two-minute intervals, like VO2 as hard as you can go for two minutes. And I've always done this workout on my road bike outside because for the same reason. I feel like when I'm on my own road bike, I want to push power and go real hard and get high exciting watts and it feels responsive. But doing it yesterday on my TT bike, because I was like, I should probably ride my TT bike. It felt like more sluggish. I still had the same watts, but it was definitely not as fun of an experience. Hopefully that helps.

But that last part was not helpful in answering his question. Well, anecdotes are fun. Yeah, listen to your heart. Feel what's right for you. But don't worry about losing your road bike muscles. Yeah, slam that stem. Yeah, that's right. Science.

Okay, so this one is from Ben. This is really an opinion question, but I mean, damn, aren't these all? Hi, guys, straight to the question. Paula or Eric, as pros, you both have had 70.3 where you weren't in a lead pack or in a good position. At what point would you drop out?

If you were doing your first full Ironman, would you still drop out or finish because it's your first full? So I guess there's a couple different questions in there, but I mean, Paula, you finished your Olympics race, right? And you've been in bad positions before and still finished. How much of a decider on if you DNF

is your position versus injury, how you're feeling? those other dynamics. Yeah. Personally, I don't think I've ever DNFed because I wasn't doing well. It's only been because of injury or like a catastrophic mechanical or something. But yeah, I think not finishing because you're not doing well is a dangerous precedent to set for yourself because the next time it gets easier and easier and easier. And all you want to do in those moments when it hurts and you're not doing.

you're not performing to your expectations is quit. It's funny. I've heard you guys say this so many times at this point that it has scared me into basically never DNFing unless I absolutely have to. Unless you're doing your body harm. Yeah. And like not doing well. This can be a thing that you could be realistic or delusional about and stopping when

it's not going well. There's plenty of situations where like the best stories come out when shit was not going well and you pushed through it and then the rough patch ended and you came back like yellow gains was like laying on the ground a kilometer out of t1 at 70.3 world championships would have been a great time to be like oh that's right you know whatever got to the middle of the first climb or whatever and derailer wasn't shifting et cetera could have called it fought through most epic like race story of the year right there so just i guess like always keep that in mind that if it's going bad that you are setting yourself up for a potentially epic comeback within that race.

And isn't it all about the story anyway, unless you're a literal professional? I mean, yeah, to a degree. What are you going to talk about at the water cooler on Monday? If you start because you're not in the position you expected, a lot of the time in 70.3 or Iron Man, you don't even know where you are. Right. So you think you're like doing so terribly, potentially. But the people in front of you are also that feeling that way.

And a couple people DNF and suddenly you're in second. And it's like, I would imagine Kat might have felt this way, too, you know, and she was like not off the bike in the very front of the race, thinking a podium's out of reach, suddenly she's fighting to win. It's just so much can change. But the question about if you DNF and an Iron Man if you weren't doing well, that's a little different, I think, because by completing an Iron Man, you're just allowing yourself from doing another Iron Man as quick as you could if maybe you do DNF. Because of the physical toll, you mean? Of just finishing a marathon in any pace. If you're just like, I'm so tough, I can get out this marathon.

It's still so much time on your legs and you're going to have this huge recovery period. Whereas if you're like, I could do this Iron Man in four weeks and get my kona slot there, maybe then strategically it's smarter to stop. Especially now with every second counts and the pro-series thing of the distance from the leader and stuff. Right, right. Yeah. That's hard. That's not exactly applicable to non-professional racing, but that's kind of, I guess, how we would make calculations.

Yeah, if I had like paid for Iron Man Wisconsin as my one Iron Man of the year, like you did last year, Nick, I would finish. Look how much praise you've had for finishing. Completing is what you're after. I'm blushing. Good question, though. Okay. And now, potentially our last question here is about a cool. device that many of you may be familiar with.

Hi, team, thanks for the great podcast. No, we're not, I'm trying to not read those, the praise at the beginning of the question, even though we do appreciate it. Praise me. It's the only one I consistently listen to. Thanks for the great podcast. The only podcast they can listen to? Consistently.

Wow. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Sharon. I have a question about the lever system for treadmills. I currently am nursing a hamstring injury, which is a, which is a, is not getting better despite several different modalities of treatment, including injections, shockwave therapy, and rehab. I've been told it's going to take months to heal. And whilst I am

patient, I'm also frustrated by this, I saw the lever lever lever, lever. I think it's lover. I actually don't even know. No, when I was talking to Brad from lover the other day, he was saying lover. Wow. Okay, so that's lover. Okay. By the way, this is not a sponsored question. This is the actual question we got, you guys. Yes, that's right. We're not being. paying paid to answer this. I saw the lever system online and wonder if you have any experience of using it. Thanks so much, Sharon. That's so funny. Do you not

because I know that you use it, but do you guys not put it up anywhere much anymore? Because I used to see photos of you running it, I think. I just want to kick this whole thing off because of our conversation about Wahoo, you know, last week or whatever. Yeah. Well, lever gave us a lever,

which we asked for. We reached out and like, this looks valuable. We want one of those. Can we have one? They said, yeah, sure. That's where we're currently at. Yeah, we have a free lover. And also, this was a long time ago. This was years ago. Yeah.

And they've updated their shorts since then. So I asked if they'd send me shorts, which they did. And I will say they're so much better. The shorts are so much better. If you don't have the newest generation of shorts, you should buy them. They're like, more like shorts. We're already giving lever money here. Amazing.

Yeah, we're not being paid. But, yeah, that was an honest review by Paula. Yeah, to be honest, when I go through. these phases of using it so heavily when I'm injured. I have this bad connotation with it where it's like an unpleasant thing. I'm coming back from something bad. So I have this negative feeling and then when I am healthy again. I want to put it away and not look at it, which actually is not what they encourage. They want people to see it as a device where you can offload some volume or some impact if you're doing a lot of volume. But because I've had these spouts of injury where

I see it five days a week, I need breaks from it. But currently with this hip injury, I am using it. It's all I'm running in right now. Yeah, I mean, it would be amazing if you could do one run in a week in it and therefore never be injured. But, you know, I totally see the benefit of that. It's hard to be that disciplined, we admit. It just occurred to me that a huge amount of people listening have no idea what the lever is. So it amounts to your treadmill.

And it basically is a system that suspends a portion of your body weight so that when you're running, it's not the full impact of your weight on your body. And you can, Paula, is it true that you can dial in how much it is relieving weight off of the impact? I usually go more by feel because like the tighter you crank the elastic, the more support you'll get. And you can do it with a, I think they even have a scale where you can be a little more. precise about it. Basically, it's replacing an altergy treadmill, which is like a $100,000 device, which you can say 51%, 52%, 53% of my body weight. And this is like, whatever, a $1,500 version that works pretty darn well.

It clips onto your shorts like Paula was saying. And so it really does. You wear these like neoprene shorts that suspend you. Super sexy. The first and only time ever ran in an altergy, I could not. believe how different it felt. I mean, and I think it only took off 30 pounds of weight when I did it and the difference was humongous. I was like, I could run so fast. Yeah, it's a bit of a dangerous precedent. That's how I felt. I was like, I don't know if I ever, I don't know if I

wanted to know. Yeah, I know. Well, the lover can do that too. You know what's funny as we were visiting my sister in Port Albany. And I was hauling around my, niece who's one in a bit and she's enormous in a backpack while we were hiking. Wow, body shaming the niece already. No, she's a big, one-year-old. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yeah, she's the one-percentile of being enormous. Let's go back to the spelling me.

But, but no. So anyway, I was hiking with her in the backpack and my hips were on fire. Like, everything was working in it felt so hard. It was like lugging these rocks around. Yeah, yeah. And you take the backpack off and you feel like you just want to sprint for 10K because you feel so light and you know when you go on the altergy or the lever or the lover and then you take it off you have the opposite effect where it feels like you're just

being sucked to the ground with gravity I feel like I'm watching a David Roche video right now Paula right before this I did this is like a down week for me but the run I did was still had these hard intervals and it was five times two minutes at your race pace my race pace your race pace And I just don't, I was thinking about it during it. I thought, how does she do this? How could she possibly run this fast for 13.1 miles off the bike? Well, to be honest, often when I'm doing it in training, I wonder the same thing. I was breathing so hard.

And I was, my legs just felt so, like, I just thought of it because my legs felt so heavy like this. And I felt like I was wearing a child as a backpack as well. But yeah, props to you. It just shows you how much the levers actually. Helping you because when you take it off, you just feel this, the weight of the world on your shoulders. Yeah. Did we answer the question? Is it worth buying one?

Totally. If you're injured? If you're injured especially. Yeah. It just lets you get back to quote unquote running earlier. Do you remember what, like going to the alter G, like renting an hour on the LG? Do you remember what that cost? It's been a long time.

It's been a long time. It could be prescribed through PT and then you don't. I think if you go to a PT who has an altergy at their clinic, then maybe you could use it in some ways. And it's like a dollar a minute or something, like 60 bucks an hour. I don't know. Altergies were a lot. So it's like not that many altergy sessions to add up to a cost one of these things. You guys, we're approaching, we need to be paid for this blog.

Yeah, this is wild. We can just, I mean, we just pull it out if we feel like that we gave way too much for free. I don't know if you got, whoa. No, this just fell on me. I think that's all we need to do. Eric is fixing the... How did that even happen? Eric, how did the painting fall off the wall behind you?

It's not attached to the wall. I'm sitting on the on the end and I just kind of scooted back, which bumped into this basket, which the photo is sitting on. The Rube Goldberg machine of mountains falling onto your head is what just happened. Yeah, it's not nailed to anything.

Anyway, it's fine now. Nice. That's all we got for you guys this week. We hope you enjoyed a little chit-chat with John. We'll be back with either Zach or Lydia next week and more questions, your questions answered. So thank you, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving. Later. Bye.