That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon bike position, race pace in training, avoiding sickness, and more!

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

This week we start by talking through Eric and Paula's lab testing on the bike, and then move onto your questions about saddles designed for women, river swims, rollers, and more! To help support the podcast, as well as submit your own questions, head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.comHere's a link to a couple of things we mentioned in the podcastRadsport Ibert: https://shop.radsport-ibert.de/en/Dynaplug: http://www.dynaplug.com

Hey everyone. Welcome to That Triathlon Life podcast. I'm Paula Findlay. I'm Eric Loggersome. I'm Nick Goldstone. Welcome to episode, What Is It, Nick? 58 of the TTL podcast. Welcome. Here we talk about triathlon. We talk about life. We answer your questions that you send in every week, of which there are many. And they're really, really good questions. You guys are very smart. And every week we're so impressed to be given these great topics to talk about. Can confirm, Paula. You text me about it multiple times telling me how much. You love the questions this week.

Yeah, as I'm reading them and going through them and sending them to Nick on our little spreadsheet, I'm always like, oh, I can't leave any out this week. They're all good. So Nick can whittle them down a little. But if you're new here, Eric and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a amateur triathlet and he's a musician by trade. That is why the audio quality that you're listening to you right now is so buttery, gorgeous. Right. Nick really, like, runs the podcast.

We kind of just show up at seven on Mondays. talk for an hour, but you are the brains behind it. We're also bringing a collective like four decades of triathlon. Yeah. That's true. That's true. The answers. Yeah, we've been working our whole lives to be able to answer these.

Yeah, but honestly, a lot of the questions that I get and read through, I'm like, wow, I really don't know how I would answer this, but I think Nick or Eric might. So I think we really complement each other's knowledge in a lot of different ways. So anyway, enough about that. Did you have any fun segments? I don't. I had one potential. You should do like a wot, want, wow.

That's great. I'll do that. I did have one, and it was based on one of the questions, but then I ended up with 14 questions. So I was like, I think we should just get straight to them. But there were a couple of things I wanted to talk about. You guys, since last time we recorded, did your V-O-2 max tests in the lab? I don't know if there were VO2 max tests, but they were lab tests. We did a mass test.

data grab of lactate, V-O-2, power, heart rate. We just got all the things and sent them to our coach. I was a little bit annoyed at some of the comments on Eric's Instagram post. They were like, doesn't know Max heart rate, but still gets his finger-pricked for lactate. I'm like, Max Art-Rite is such an irrelevant data point. Yeah, jokes on you, bro. Welcome to the 2000s. But either way, that data, is it more for you?

Like, how much are you going to be using it versus your coach, Paolo using it? Well, my schedule this week that he sent out has all of a more detailed breakdown of power zones now for each of the workouts he was prescribing. So we sent the data to him. He analyzed it. We aren't actually going to be implementing lactate pricks ourselves in training. We have never done that and probably won't. But it's more for like lactate threshold numbers, how to prescribe our solid, where our heart rate went up and all these things that work together. We don't fully understand the breakdown of the breakdown of the. results, but he does. So we've kind of left it in his hands. And what can you can you walk me through? You guys both did the same test, right? We did very similar tests. So we we started at 100 watts and then basically incrementally every three minutes increased wattage until failure. So this was on the bike only. Yep. Exactly. On the bike with wind, we were hooked up to a breathing mask to get the oxygen exchange. And then every three minutes, we were also getting the finger prick. I think that's it. Oh yeah. also had heart rate running at the same time. And RPE, rate of perceived exertion. Oh, do you like point to

something? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had like a nice color chart with one through 10 and we you're like death, dying, kill me. Like, are you, do you even have to ask? I have to point to you to make it end. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. But I went up by 25 watt increments. Eric went up by 35 watt increments and we both went about 35 minutes on the test so I finished the stage at 325 watts jumped up and couldn't sustain that for 3 3.85 or something and then couldn't jump to the 410. Damn, 385 is a lot. It's crazy because like...

It's not that much. It's not like I didn't walk out of there and people were like, oh my God, stallion. Yeah, right. Call the Guinness Book of World Records. I think that what makes it hard though is that like, okay, yeah, 325 watts is hard for 3 minutes, but before that you did 3 minutes at 300 watts. Yeah, of course. And before that, you did 3 minutes at 275.

So none of those prior 10 minutes were easy at all. And then you're stepping up to this next level. Of course, yeah, it's obvious. And then at that point, like, I think I probably could have done another three minutes at that intensity, but the jump from 385 to 410 is just, it's like a freaking ocean. It's very big. 410 is like, that's another. that's another universe.

I mean, it's what Lionel did for Super League. Yeah. There's definitely people who can do it. But if you're like, basically I'm just saying, if you're approaching your actual point of failure, that's just a huge. That last jump will get you. Totally.

And I think that like our results were actually really similar to last year, which was kind of reassuring because last year we did it a month later. And we had been training for the couple's trathons. So we'd been doing a lot more high intensity training leading into that test last year. March than this one. And so for my V-O-2 to actually be higher and my numbers to be higher, and Eric's 2 a little bit was kind of nice because it shows that like all the base training we've been doing were actually still pretty fit and then maybe carried some fitness from last year,

which proved to be a good year for both of us. So yeah, we hadn't done a single bike workout. Yeah. Up till this point, we've done some structured riding in this like fat max zone, kind of pushing it a little bit, but nothing like four by five or anything like that yet. What it makes me think of is that for age groupers, or at least in my mind, and I imagine many age reapers feel the same way, if we're not improving year after year, that feels like a disappointment a little bit. But when you're at the highest level of pro triathlon, staying the same sometimes can be a huge win. It just means like you've avoided injury, you've avoided sickness, and both of you had great seasons last year. So being at that same point, like that would have been good enough, but you're at the same point without having done that like hard training. So I feel like it's just really, really good.

Yeah, you could maybe think that with that hard training will be like one and a half percent better. Just throwing a number out there. And that's a decent improvement year after year, you know? I think this year we'll do it again in the summer. So last year we only did it in the winter. But the lab here is like two minutes from our house. It's very accessible. They're really good there.

So I think we can easily do it another time. And if you live in Bend, it's at the COCC campus. So just Google that. It's not the worst thing ever to do. Like, did you just hate, hate? I mean, not the annoyance of it, but the actual, how difficult the effort was to push yourself to failure like that. It's hard, but we train so hard every day. Like, it's a zone we're kind of used to, I would say.

And yeah, you're going to failure, but it's short-lived. So you're not having to hold these watts for 30 minutes, which is really where the suffering comes in. Yeah, it really only gets, like, challenging and over our 70.3 pace for like eight minutes. Right. You're kind of building up to there and you're like, I don't want to do this. This is annoying and uncomfortable. And I don't really feel warmed up. And then pretty quickly it's over versus like tomorrow we're going to do like four by 11 minutes at 70.

Not even 70.3. Like attempting Olympic distance sort of pace. That's going to hurt way worse. That's going to be way worse. Speaking of not being warmed up, this weekend I did my first ever Zwift ride with a TTL group ride on Sunday. Yeah, that was funny. Oh, you got warmed up. Oh, my.

God, what a cautionary tale this is for anyone who's not done a Swiss ride before. So the idea was like, you guys told me I could ride easy, right? Because it was easy, yes. You could have. Well, in theory, I should have been easy, of course, yes. Got to check that ego at the door, dude. Yeah, that's all. First of all, that's impossible.

So I couldn't do that. So I wake up like five minutes before the group ride starts, of course. Get on the bike and start pedaling. And I'm like, and I remember that for me, the watts on the trainer just feel harder. I mean, on any trainer I've done it. And I think I'm not alone in that. For many people on the trainer, it's just a little more, you're a little more focused on the discomfort.

But I felt like the difference was like, wow, it really is much harder. So then like 10 minutes in, I turn on my bike computer, and I see that the power meter that's connected to my bike is reading like 70 watts higher. So I've been pushing it with like 180 watts. I'm like, God, this 180 watts feels really hard. It's like, no, I'm an idiot. I never calibrated my trainer, and it's been sitting there for like a year. Oh, my God.

And I didn't open the windows. I didn't have a fan. I'm like dripping sweat on my white carpet. Just so many stupid things. I got so many messages from people like, dude, what are you doing? What's wrong with you? Put a mat on under you. Like get a towel or something.

You live in Santa Monica, so you don't have to be, you don't worry about such things. I'm confused why the difference was so much. Like, we've never had to calibrate our kickers. So I don't know why yours is reading so high or your other power meters are reading so low. I don't know what the problem is. But we'll figure it out for next time. Report back. Report back.

Yeah, you're going to have to report back next week now. And a little follow up also here. We had a lot of people. Last week we talked about goggles fogging up. And all three of us kind of have this thing where when we get to the edge of the pool, if there's like a few seconds, you just like clean the fog out of the goggles. Eric also likes to use his tongue to clean the fog out of the gods because it has some anti, because saliva I think does have some anti-fog properties to it.

But a lot of people messaged in. And by a lot, we mean thousands. A thousands of people messaged in with a trick here that apparently works for a lot of people. None of us have tried to yet, but it seems to work for a lot of people. You take a little bit of Johnson and Johnson baby shampoo, a one to two dollar travel-sized bottle will last for you. years, use a small dab on the index finger and slightly rub it on the inside of each lens, then dip it in the pool or whatever, whatever you're swimming in, and then lightly rub it in a little bit further, rinse and wear, and apparently that keeps the fog out for that session.

Yeah, I would say that this is probably a tested and true trick because so many people emailed and said this. And another, one of the more interesting emails I got about this was that in a little spray bottle, like something that you'd use to clean a whiteboard or something, they'd mix the baby shampoo with water and then just spray it on the goggles. So another cool tip. Oh, I see, I see.

Instead of actually using the shampooy jelly. Yeah, it might be more like a solution and then you won't have to touch it with your fingers. I was really hoping it lasted for a month. It might last a couple swims. I mean, if you do the spray bottle method, it's like do-do-do-do get in, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's right.

If it's just like part of your routine, just like every other little routine thing we have. Yeah. So thanks for letting us know all of HUTILNesh. Yes, that's right. That's right. Okay, well, let's move on to questions here. We don't do ad reads on the podcast in case you haven't noticed.

That's because of the generosity of the podcast supporters. Thank you all so much. You can support the podcast yourself, and you can also submit your questions for the podcast and the same website, ThattriathlonLife.com slash podcast. and this week, like I said, we are so impressed with the questions. So we're going to go right into them. Yeah.

First one. Hey, TTL, gang, I have a question about storing a spare tube, multi-tool, etc. on your bikes for your races. I know the Shiv Triathlon bike has integrated storage and hydration, but does the Shivt-T bike have any integrated storage? What best practices do you use to handle these items during races now that you both will be riding the shift T-TT? I have an older Cervillo P2 that doesn't have any integrated storage,

So I'm searching for the best setup for the upcoming season. With a rear mounted bottle cage, it makes the typical saddlebag solution a little difficult. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for what you guys do. Keep up the great work, Jordan. Yeah. Interesting question because we've actually, Eric and I are going to the wind tunnel next week.

And this is something that we need to consider for the upcoming race season. Because last year, I just tended to not take any flat stuff. And that was fine. I didn't have any flats. But the nature of our race is like 70.3 and especially the 100k distance with the PTO. If you get a flat, like it does. The race is kind of over. That's it.

Like there's only going to be 20, 30 people in the race. Like you're going to lose, even if you do it really fast and you lose three minutes, that's like you could drop 20 spots. So you're kind of more just banking on that a race person with an extra wheel spots you and helps you out. But I reached out to a company. I'm just trying to find the name of it here. Rad Sport Ebert. So Radsport, I-B-E-R-T.

They actually make, what do you call it when you like... It's like a box that's basically in the bottom of your triangle between your seat tube and your down tube. Oh, yeah. Like the specialized did that with the Roubaix for a few years. Yeah. But it's like a 3D printed box that specifically fits in that frame. And when you go to their website, you can pick from literally any brand of bike and any frame they seem to have the measurements for and will make you like a customer. 3D printed box for.

And it kind of fits in really snug and nicely underneath, potentially an arrow bottle to go above it. And they're super arrow, right? Yeah, yeah. It looks like it kind of is designed to work, I think, with like the elite down tube arrow bottle. Yeah, it has kind of the similar thing. But I just went online, bought it, put in my shipping address, picked a size, whatever.

And he emailed me personally the next day and knew who I was and said, like, are you sure you want this size? Do you need one for Eric? Like he was super nice and he's actually made custom front-end aero bars for Sebastian Keenley. He's a very good carbon artist. I don't know what you would call. Carbon artist. I like that.

Yeah. So I don't know, really cool company. We have yet to get them. But what this will be able to hold is a flat repair kit. Apparently it's a little hard to access nutrition in them because they have got magnet closures. But even if it just holds a flat kit, I think it's worth putting it on the bike. So that's potentially our solution. We'll report back.

Yeah. I mean, in years past, prior to riding a bike that had integrated stuff, I would basically like take a tube and do electrical tape around it, like not so it's totally in case, but try to make it as small as possible and do a little bit of electrical tape around like a tire lever and then also a CO2 with the head already most of the way installed and try to make this like very. very small package that I would like basically stick up underneath my saddle. Like between the bottom of your saddle and the seat tube. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Like between the seat tube, between the saddle rails, but in front of like your rear hydration. Yeah. And each one, like you'll have to play around with it a lot and it's going to be kind of custom the way that you exactly lay everything out. But it is possible to fit like a fair amount of stuff right there if you're creative. The thing about tubeless tires though, wheels is that you don't really need to bring a tube. Like what you really want is a spare CO2 with the head because you can then, if you get a flat and it seals, pump up to a little bit higher PSI, right?

The tube is like a potential maybe emergency. Yeah, but I really don't think I could get the tire off of a tubeless wheel and install a tube in it. You think I could? With the sealant and all the Your better bet is the dinah plug, but... Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe somebody stops and helps you. Like, I'm thinking if you're in the middle of the age group pack and, you know, like your tires slice so bad that... I don't know.

Yeah, the tube, not often is going to be, like, the fix that you think it is, but some people like to bring it just for peace of mind. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, like, base thing, the dinah plugs and the CO2. Yeah, that's what I'll take. The dinah plugs, Eric, do you want to give, like, a 15-1s? second recap for people who haven't listened to us talk about it like 30 episodes ago? Yeah, basically they're like a half an inch long like rubber noodle with like a brass tip on it

and you jam the brass tip into the tire through the hole that has been created by whatever punctured your tire and that rubber thing that, I mean, you just you jam it in and you pull back out but like the tip basically stays in there like a bee stinger and that will plug the hole and help work with the sealant to, you know, cover a bigger hole than the sealant could normally. It's almost like a rubber gummy material. Yeah. It's like a little noodle. And you might have to hit it with a CO2 a little bit to get it back up to pressure.

Oh, most likely. Yeah, you'll do that. Ideally, you do that before the tire completely loses air. And then you'll do a CO2. Make sure that that little plug is at the bottom of the tire so that like the sealant pools down there gets in there, coagulates. Wow. And hopefully you're off and running again. This is turned into bike tag with Eric.

That's just thinking that. be helpful to like look at a YouTube video or we'll do a bike tips with Eric. When Eric, last time you told people to get the, to do the dinah plug, I got, I mean, I think we in general got multiple messages about people who said that like their race was saved by it. So I think it's worth bringing up. Yeah. Yeah.

So order that cool little 3D printed thing for your bike and put dynap plugs and CO2s in them. Yeah. Can we link to that company below? 100%. Yeah, we can link to it in the podcast description notes. Yeah, we can put a dinah plug link, we can put that link. Okay, cool, cool. All right.

Next question is from Rachel from Alabama. Hey, Paul, Eric, and Nick. I have a question about foot position on the bike. I found that my right foot is always very comfortable while biking, but my left feels tight, and I find myself clenching my toes up, making my foot feel sore by the end of my rides. Does this happen to other people, and is there something I'm doing that's causing me to tighten my foot up unnecessarily?

Thank you so much. You guys have motivated me through the last. two years since I first found triathlon, and I look forward to all your content, Rachel from Alabama. Sweet. I would say this is a really good thing to go to a bike fitter for, and bike fitters do cleat fit specifics. Like, you can go on and be like, I don't need my whole bike fit adjusted necessarily, but I really need to make sure that my cleats are in the right position, and it shouldn't be quite as expensive as a full bike fit. That being said, they might notice something

related to your saddle or something that is contributing to this. But a lot of people, we're actually talking with some friends the other night, a lot of people experience one side, either like going numb or feeling tight or et cetera, et cetera. Like, it's very rare that you're going to have a pressure point on both feet in the exact same spot. Like, everybody's slightly different. So I think things that could be contributing to this are basically, if you're looking down at your foot, how toe in or toe out you are, even forward and backwards. Your arch could be a little bit lower on one side, so you might want to do an insert on one side and not the other side. there's like so many axes that you have to work with as a bike fitter when you're doing cleat position

and it's your most important contact point. I think what she was saying is her toes kind of crunch up and tense up on one side versus the other. Is that right, Nick? Yeah, but I'm thinking exactly what Eric's thinking, that it is related to some fit thing. I think possibly. But something that I do when I run hard is my big toe kind of like pulls up in my shoe so much that sometimes like that wears out in my shoe. So I think when you're like tense and working hard,

you can do like weird things with your body or your toes, just like clenching your jaw when you're working hard or something. So it could be like, I don't know, a side effect of just like working hard and feel like clenching your toes is like helping you grip more and putting more pressure in. And I think maybe just as much as thinking about relaxing your feet could actually fix this, like putting a really conscious effort into that.

Or maybe if your feet, are already tight, like rolling them with a ball before. And then my last thought was what Eric kind of touched on was putting inserts in your foot so that you don't have like a drop in your arch or anything and they are supported. Eric and I both use the specialized inserts. I've used them forever since the day I started riding. Me too. Me too. Me too.

I use the green ones and they've just worked so perfectly for me. And they're just enough support that doesn't feel like you have a ball in your shoe, but it's not allowed. your arches to clap. So anyway. I, one thing that I have experienced a little bit of this exact thing, actually, and I ended up going from the highest arch support down to the lower level, and it resolved that a bit. I think it could have been like my foot was like too supported in the middle, and I wanted more toe contact, and I was like sort of digging in, not consciously to like flatten that platform out. And it kind of seemed to go away as I

went down to a slightly less high arch thing. As another data point, I had this same issue with both feet and the fitter here. He prescribed the specialized inserts and it fixed a problem for me in both feet. So it's so interesting. But I think I have the blue ones. The blue or less than the green. Yeah, the green is the highest. Blue is metal.

But they're not crazy expensive. You could try both and see which ones you like better. Yeah. Anyway, good question. Funny that we all had experience with something like this. It seemed like such a specific question. I know. I know.

I know. Okay. Next question here is from Ken. Hey, TTL. I've been interested to get your take on the format of this past weekend's arena games, triathlon in Montreal, and other events like it. I noticed you were active in the live YouTube chat comments. This was the first time I had seen this indoor format and thought the spectacular

indoor experience online was really engaging. The sense of urgency with the qualification heats, mid-heat athlete interviews, play-by-play commentary. Do you think this format will grow in popularity? and provide the sport with more traction as a spectator event. I'd be interested to get your perspective as both an athlete who may compete in these events in the future and as a spectator. First of all, do you ever see yourself guys doing something like this?

Guys, we did this. We've been there. We've done that. We did super sprints like six years ago, and we would love to continue doing them, but it is really a young man's game and young woman's game, as Lionel found out. In the arena games.

He did exceptionally well. He did exceptionally well. But when you start... It's fast. When you start getting in with the big dogs, though, like Alex Yee, Beth Potter, the people who are like truly, truly the best in the world at short course. Not saying the fields in Montreal were weak, but they were just like maybe one step lower than the best, best, fast athletes.

But honestly, watching Lionel succeed at it and exceed his own expectations, I think, made me feel like, okay, maybe I could hold my own. on this. If you're good on the bike, you have some turnover on the run. At least it's something cool to train for. And I think that's what Lionel used it for. It was like maybe a boost in his speed. Yeah. I would be, to clarify, I would be very interested to do it, but zero percent interested in the arena indoor on Zwift style. Yeah, but I think that's what is so spectator-friendly. I don't know. I think that this person's talking about. You're in there, in-person. You can do the live interviews. I think that- Wait, this person literally was there watching.

it? No, they watched it online like us. But I think it's a, it's like, it's like the hunger games, you know, you're in the arena, you're in all three events. A person can sit on their butt in one spot and watch you do the entire race. That's unheard of in triathlon, right? Because you're always going out on the bike. So yeah, I think it's going to continue to grow in popularity. I think a little bit of a miss on the Super League's part was kind of explaining the format better because they had so many new eyeballs on this event with Lionel racing. I think Lionel probably like tripled their viewership with people who had never watched this type of an event before.

And from my perspective, I think a lot of people didn't fully get it, like the qualification process and then what were they doing, doing a backwards triathlon in the middle of this? And it wasn't explained super well. So it has so much potential, but I think they need to realize that a lot of people don't know what's going on. I think it's, that's my only criticism with the whole Super League thing in general, which Super League, Arena games is like an offshoot of the outdoor Super League thing. And I think the indoor one that we just watched was actually the simplest format of any of the formats that we've even seen.

And like as a diehard triathlon fan and I really want Super League to succeed. And I do think it is like a spectator friendly, the most spectator friendly version of the sport. Half the time I can't understand exactly what the format is unless you were there at like minute zero of the broadcast and you took notes. And then it's a point system. And that would be the only thing I think they could improve is potentially sticking with one format for a little while. So like, okay, I know it's always going to be swim, bike run, bike run, swim, and then a timed thing at the end. And I know kind of a little bit better what to expect. Yeah.

I mean, it's fun for me to watch. Luckily, I had Eric narrating me through it because he was telling me what the format was because I was one of the people that wasn't completely confident in what was happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but like regardless, it's really fun to watch. people suffer up close, right? Oh, yeah.

Just like, that's really what everyone likes? What are those treadmills? Those like, what do they call? Yeah, the curve treadmills. Those are cool. Those are interesting to see people run on. It seems like the dynamic would be different, but. Very different.

It's very different. I think there is some technique to it. Also regarding the in-race interviews between heats and stuff and between waves, I guess, that's interesting because you're really catching people in the heat of the moment. And people's personalities often change when they're in the middle of a really competitive race like that. So being able to kind of get some narration or get some true feeling of what's going on with people as they're just at like max capacity between these races, I think is a really cool element. Yeah, it was really, I was kind of surprised. Like the podcast,

like the chat on YouTube, which is blowing up with people like, leave them alone. Right. Let them breathe. I'm like, okay, like they can handle saying, yeah, I went hard. looking forward to the next one. You're like, it's not that big of a deal. It's part of the show. Like, they're world-class athletes. They can handle it. Right.

I wouldn't be mad. It's great. Okay, great. Well, next question here is from Olivia. My question's about hitting race paces in training. I love this question. I'm very curious to hear what you guys are going to say. Are you able to run at your exact race pace in every session?

Sometimes my coach has me running off the bike and my 10K race pace, for example. but I'm usually anywhere between 5 to 20 seconds per kilometer slower. Even during straight interval sessions, I find it hard to run as fast as I have in races. Would you be more focused on the level of effort you have to put in on these runs, or do you have no problem hitting the right race pace? Hope training is going well, can't wait to watch you all race this year. Olivia. I put this in there because we talk about this a lot, Nick,

the difference between you and us hitting race pace and workouts. So interesting. Have we talked about this on the podcast? I don't think we have. Just together in real life. Yeah, just in real life. The concept we're talking about here is this phenomenon that I think is pretty pervasive in age group triathletes, which is, I'll take my run right now, for example. I just did almost a half marathon of intervals and averaged like 710 per mile.

My best ever 70.3 pace is just under 8 minutes per mile. and I was absolutely dying for the last 20 minutes of that. And I felt fine at the end of this. Whereas you guys, if you are going, even at your race pace for a certain amount of time, it seems like that's a huge effort for you. But then in the race, you're able to actually execute it and do it. It's kind of funny how these are inverted. I agree.

I don't know if it's like a, we have an interesting dynamic here because we have your perspective as an age group or in us as professional. and I don't know if that were the normal across everybody, but for me at least, it's really hard to reach race pace. Like the pace I held at 70.3 worlds, that's really hard for me to hit even for 20 minutes in workouts. So similar to what this person's experiencing. And so often I'll go five or ten seconds slower than that.

And when we talk to you, Nick, like you just said, you're going out and going way faster than your race pace, feeling really good doing it. So are you underperforming in races? Or are we just able to kick into this gear? I don't know. It's probably both. A lot of for me is when we go to a race where it usually sea level on flat pavement with carbon shoes.

And that is like 15 seconds per kid. Right, right, right, right. Whereas in Ben, we're on like these muddy-ish gravel roads with not our race flats, kind of at altitude, cold weather. Tired. Tired. There's 20 or 25 seconds per case load. So there's a lot of variables.

Yeah, I get a lot of personal confidence when I go out and I actually execute a workout perfectly at the race pace that, you know, that I'm hoping to run. Like if I'm trying to run 325 per K and I know I've done that a couple times in 70.3, so that's my gold standard. If I go out and I actually execute like a longer tempo run or, you know, something that has like 45 minutes of quality in it around that pace, like not in a race scenario, all hyped up, that's very confidence inspiring for me. Does your coach, Paolo, give you guys ranges for running and riding?

Or is it like hyper-specific like 293 watts for five minutes? No, it's a range. It's more perceived exertion. Yeah. Okay. So to answer this person's question, I think that don't be too far off. But if your perceived effort is high, I think that accounting for things like I just said, elevation, surface, hills, the shoes you're wearing, how tired you are. that all plays apart

and it's not like you have to be running four minutes per K to get the same effect if that's what your race pace is, you know? So it's like you're saying like listen to the perceived exertion first and then use the pace and the wattages as a tool to like monitor. I would say yeah, maybe this isn't the best advice, but that's what I do.

Well, I think it's great advice because I think it's easy to just like, nope, this is what the plan says, I'm going to bury myself to hit these points and then your next three days are screwed up because you went so hard on, you know, in the middle of the training week. Yeah. And sometimes I'm annoyed with my coach because, like, he'll put a speed cap on my tempo runs

that's slower than my 70.3 pace by like 10 seconds per K. I'm like, how do you expect me to get faster and run a faster half marathon if I'm always training 10 seconds per K slower? Says the number three ranked women in the world. Because he puts this on workouts that are like 45 minute tempo runs that the entire run is end up being an hour in 20 minutes and you can't go out and run at race pace, under fatigue, on dirt, like, for that long, you know. Like, he's not going to have a speed cap on you if we're doing five by three minutes,

five by one K. That's a different session. Yeah. Got it. I also have a speed cap for 50 minute long tempo runs. Yeah. Right. But if Nick did it, he probably would be way under, 70.3 time.

Way under. Yeah. I'm wondering how much of this has to do with few. fueling because the one race I did feel well, I ran way, way faster than that. Yeah, you like had a super dialed precision hydration. I did. I did. Protocol built by them because they're the best.

Yeah. And you went out and had your best run ever. So since then, you've implemented that precision hydration protocol in every race. Yeah, but I haven't raised a 70.3 since I had it. So I've not been able to test it. But it was when I did do it for the 100K in Canada, It was 45 seconds per mile faster and felt like half as hard. So go buy some precision hydration immediately.

I think I might have been underfeeling before then. Yeah, yeah. Well, interesting. There's so many variables. Yeah, cool. Next question is from summer. My question is on the evolution of watches and its impact on training in triathlon and racing over the years.

My mom likes to remind me how back in the day they didn't have all the fancy data at their fingertips. I'm curious how you feel the sports. sport has changed both in a professional viewpoint and amateur viewpoint with all the new statistics and features we now have with a fancy Garmin Wahoo watches, etc. Somer. I mean, I started training when we were first in triathlon without a fancy GPS watch and we just did more stuff on the track. I think that's like the easiest answer with regards to like running anyway. We've had power meters for a while. We've transitioned from using heart

rate to gauge how hard we're going, which is, you know, affected by your fatigue and your hydration. etc to power which is it's just ultimate truth and then we've basically been able to move from doing everything on the track for run workouts to being able to just kind of like run down the road and know pretty well that we're doing exactly one mile and I mean that's the biggest things for me I think without all this data like you go back 20 years or 15 years looking at results at races and obviously equipment is improved but I think the technology that's improved that's allowed people to train better, train smarter, train more accurately, has all contributed to these superhuman crazy jumps and performance across all sports, not just triathlon.

Yeah, of course. I agree with what you're saying, though, Eric, like, for example, for someone like me, if I had to do all my runs on the track to get the best out of my training, I just don't think I'd be as motivated. And the fact that I can run along the beach and have almost the same amount of accuracy, it just makes me more likely to want to go out and train. So I think this contributes to what Paul is saying, which is it brings a little. level up. It brings more people into the sport. For me, there's not a doubt of my mind that this,

you know, the watch, the data stuff makes the Strava, it makes me more excited to train. And I'm not the only one. I think it brings more people into a sport that otherwise maybe is a little bit, it's a little scary to get into. Yeah. Yeah. And I think before watches and all the data, people would go more on perceived exertion. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. I think that maybe in the past people were a little more in tune with our efforts and what they were doing and how they were feeling versus just being like a slave to the watch and the pace and the part rate and the power. So it's not all good, but I think it is important and kind of cool sometimes to just go out on a ride or a run without the data and just like kind of be more in touch with

your body and see how that feels. Allow yourself to go truly easy if you feel like it or not. But when I was growing up, I didn't really wear a watch until maybe five years ago. a GPS watch. All of it was just a stopwatch and I would do perceived effort. So, yeah, it's not impossible. This makes me think of something that Eric and I have talked about, that Eric kind of like, we're just talking about Gustav and Christian and how fast they've gotten and how it's like, wow, what is it that these two Norwegians have gotten so fast?

They're both from Norway. And Eric was just saying, well, they didn't start with just two. You know, it could have started with like 40 athletes. And then each one of them, they're pushing them. they're pushing him and they're like burning out or getting injured or getting sick or whatever. And all we know of now is Christian and Gustav because they're the two that made it to the end. So pushing beyond, maybe it does produce the best athletes, but at the cost of like losing a bunch along the way. Because you like you see Christian's face in a race and he's like, that's not good.

He's going to die. This man is on the last breath of his life. But somehow he can push through that and not fall apart. And I think maybe it just rewards that. Yeah, I think that that system also you have to take into account. Like, they are, they set out to build world champions. They didn't set out to build people that had the most fun and were going to be in the sport for their life.

And, you know, like, they ultimately ended up with two guys who are so obsessed with data and so good at living a monk lifestyle that they were able to completely give over and just live like lab rats. You know, I'm not saying that like in a negative way at all. but if you're, I think what Paula was saying about perceived exertion and not being a slave to the data, you know, there could have been 10 athletes who might have performed better that way inside of the Norwegian program, but that's not the way it was built. Yeah.

There's, you know, there's merits to both sides and kind of, I think it has, it's going to have a little bit to do with your personality and what you're trying to get out of the sport. Do you want to win or not? That's what I was about to say. As an age group, you have to find out why you're doing the sport. Are you doing it to be the best? Are you doing it to have fun? Are you doing it as a reason to stay healthy? And then use the technology to amplify that.

Totally. Yeah. Next question. Love the pod. Keep up the fun spirit. I'm writing to you as I'm sitting on the couch with the flu and wondering how you guys keep from getting sick with your high training load and how you can transition back into training afterwards.

I'd love to hear some pro tips on staying healthy. Best, David, from Germany. This is crazy. We are freaking like bomb. proof with sickness since 2019. Literally haven't even had like a cough or a sniffle since 2019. And neither of you have gotten COVID. Yeah, neither of us have had COVID.

That's really rare. Or been sick. And now we're for sure going to get sick after bragging about this. But I mean, I don't know why we're so lucky. Wait, Eric, Eric, spell the beans, Eric. Tell me. We don't have kids and we don't have any friends with kids. Oh, that's a good one.

That's a good one. Because those kids are buckets of disease. little bit, yeah. But I think that's not the question that this person's asking. They're like, okay, we get it, braggers. I'm sick. How do I get better? And I did have a lot of time growing up where I was getting sick so much. And it was when I was a swimmer, six people in a lane. All of us are in university or in high school with other kids. And you're just constantly spreading these germs around. Eric and I, we have a very small bubble of people that we see on a day-to-day basis. It's each other. sometimes our friend Sam, our friend Andy, who we swim with, that's literally it.

So we've got super small point of connect. We get our own lane when we swim. We don't go to a public gym. We have like a private gym that we use. I don't know. That's probably it. But we do travel and stuff. Yeah, that's amazing.

You guys, I will say this, both of you are really good about bedtime and sleeping and prioritizing sleep. And that's for sure contributes to not getting sick as much for some people. Are you the same, Nick? I'm the same. I prioritize sleep and I also very rarely get sick, but I did get COVID. But me and like 50 other people at a wedding got COVID, an outdoor wedding, a small outdoor wedding. Anyway, what I was going to ask you guys is a lot of people like to use resting heart rate and maybe HRV to see if they're starting to push into a little bit of an immunocompromised state

due to their training. Do you guys ever look at that? Or do you just base it off of how you're feeling? I mean, like, if I started to really feel crappy, yeah, I would pull open the ORA ring app immediately and check. But I also feel like at that point, like it's happening probably. It's happening, yeah. If I had the wherewithal or the, it felt that bad to like start trying to figure out what was going on, and then maybe like pound some zinc or something and cross your fingers. The only time I felt like I was getting sick last year was like three or four days before big races. because I'd be like, you know, thinking about it so much.

Like, oh my gosh, does my throat hurt? And then I'd take echinisha, like I'd go to Whole Foods and spend $300 on like anti-cold things. And I was like, wow, all these supplements work because I didn't get sick. So it was like gargling this disgusting mint stuff, like all of the home remedies that you're supposed to do. But I think there's probably something to that. Like you could try that stuff. But my biggest tip for this person would be to take it easy. and don't stress because it just would prolong it.

And this is not revolutionary advice or anything. But obviously as athletes were very motivated to not lose fitness and keep pushing. And yeah, getting out for a 20-minute run is better than nothing. But it isn't all the time. Sometimes it's better to actually rest. And another thing is when you're sick, you might try to like do other things because you're like, well, I can't exercise. I'm going to get up and do this and this and this.

But truly resting is what's going to make you better. Yeah. hydrating a lot and hopefully that will get you over the hump quickly and then don't get back to it right away, slowly ramp up. All very obvious advice. But that's definitely what I would do if I were to get sick this year. Nice. Nice. Yeah. No, that's great advice. I feel like most people could benefit from a few extra days off anyway. You're trying to like crazy the whole year. If you're getting sick, there's a good chance it's for a reason and it's your body telling you to take a rest anyway. You're a bit stressed.

You're a bit overworked. Yeah. It's like almost a force, like a race is a forced built-in kind of recovery period where you're tapering and resting after. It's kind of like that with sickness. Yeah. Take the week, call it a rest week and then get back at it. Yeah. Nice.

There you go, David. Next question is from Jordan. Hi, TTL. Nash. Just binge the last year plus of episodes in a few weeks, which that's a lot of listening. That's like nonstop every day all the time listening. I'm hooked. question. I'm getting into trail running from an exclusively road running background besides high school cross-country.

I'm a big shoe fanatic and not loyal to any specific brands. So what distance, not race shoe, so what distance shoe should I start with? I tried on the Sockney-Peregrine 12 and didn't have the 13 to try on and they felt rock hard. Is that normal? What do you guys like to run in on the trail? Trail shoes are inherently harder and less forgiving than road shoes. Yep. Which is a good thing. Could be a good thing if it's rocky and rudy. I mean, for the most part, that's just going to give you better control.

You're not squishing around on a big pillow or whatever, and you just want a little bit better connection with the ground anytime it's rocky or off camber or anything. Currently, my favorite shoes to run in on the trail are the solid. Solomon S-Lab. They're not, oh, they are Solomon, yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly which one, but they're red and they're super cool, great tread. Yeah. They have this, like, Yankee, like zippy type of lace system.

Bungy thing. Yeah. Man, those just, I mean, those feel great. I haven't, like, tried to race in them or anything, but on trail, they feel great. The nice thing about those, and also actually the on shoes, I run in the Cloud Ultra, is the opening where you put, where your ankle is, is kind of tight, so not so tight that it's constricting, but it's not letting rocks in the side, like a regular running she would.

Or dust. Yeah, so you kind of keep that out of your feet, and it just gives you, again, a little bit of sense of control and your foot is solid in there. You're not kind of swimming all over it, which I think is important when you're trail running versus road running to have, like Eric said, a little bit more contact and ground feel as you're navigating more technical things.

Back when I ran in Adidas, which I still love, I just haven't gotten any in a little while. I also liked the Boston is pretty stiff and thin, and then they have the Audios, which is kind of like a marathon shoe, but I just had a lot of them, and I always liked running in those on the trail because they were racing.

Yeah, for when I was doing like exteras, because they were a pretty fast shoe, they were low profile, so you didn't feel like you were going to, like, bro your ankle or anything. And the tread doesn't look like much tread, but it actually works pretty well as long as it's not muddy. Yeah.

But you were, Nick, because you were to run all the time. Yeah, I had an old pair of Nike trail running shoes, but they were very flimsy shoes. And then, so when I wore through those, I wanted to get a really rugged pair of shoes. And I still have, now, I have, Strava just told me I have over 500 miles on them and they still look and feel great. Nicholas. Oh, my gosh. That's a lot. Yeah, but the trail running I'm doing is like, it's really nothing like running on pavement.

It's really up and down. And I think the cushion for me doesn't matter as much as the ruggedness that my foot isn't getting like beat up. I don't know how to put it. So what kind are there? They're the Ultra Olympus 4. They have a new version now, but I really like them. I'm like going like straight up hill or straight downhill, you know, here at least. If I were doing a flat trail race, I would be a little more careful about the amount of miles I've put on there.

Yeah. All right. So we're using the pod. fun to buy Nick some new shoes. I love those shoes. I'm a huge fan of those shoes. We're not entertaining any injury, woe stories from you until you get new shoes. Great, perfect.

But yeah, good luck with that. Good luck with that. We all love trail running here. Next question is from Sid. Nick, thanks for representing the rest of us on the pod. Paul and Eric, excited to watch your season unfold. Thinking of buying a roller-style bike trainer. We have a kicker already.

It's fine, but there's two of us. us and it would be nice to be able to train at the same time and have the option for different stimuli. Yay or nay? Yeah, the kicker roller. We had three questions about it on this week's emails. So I left out two. You'll give me one, but yeah. Yeah, I'm not going to put them all three in, but I definitely, I'm glad we're including it because it's clearly a topic that's, yeah, curious about, people are curious about. Yeah. Eric, you use the most, use them the most. Yeah, back when I got them and put them in the YouTube video, tons of questions.

Most questions have ever gotten about a piece of technology. What I think is interesting about them is you're not having to balance on them like you do with classic rollers. Your front wheel actually slides in, locks down, and then your back wheel is kind of more free floating on the roller. So you don't have to take off any wheels, but you also don't have to balance and try to figure out how to ride rollers, which is scary for some people. Yeah. I personally am a big fan of... classic rollers that you do have to pay attention to what you're doing. And that's like initially why I started using rollers outside of just pedal stroke things. It's like I got bored very,

very easily on the trainer. And then they invented Zwift. And that became less of a necessity. So I like now with the amount of stimuli you have going on with Zwift, it's less of a thing. And I do appreciate having that front wheel locked in. And I can whatever hit the power up button or like watch a video on my arrow bars or something. But, but you still get the thing that's like most important, at least for me, and that's that rear wheel, having some movement to it.

Because I have always had like a more dynamic pedal stroke. Like if you look at Paula, riding on a road, she is just like perfectly straight up and down, pistons, hips aren't moving. She's just like, can't even tell how hard she's working. Versus if you look at me,

I kind of like move around a little bit more. I'm a little Yenzvoit kind of squirmy guy. And that is just really challenging for me to ride a kicker for a couple hours ago really hard because I just feel so constricted. So having that rear wheel floating around on the kicker rollers, but still having it be able to interface with Zwift and like read your power

and give you a little bit of feedback when you climb a hill, just like the perfect mix of all the worlds. Yeah, I agree. I think that it's a great tool and the fact that it can interface with Zwift or Wahoo Systems or whatever you use for your bike entertainment or workouts is a huge, huge plus. Yeah.

To finish it off, the one down, side of the one reason that I would say to not get one is if you are trying to do things like 30 second sprints or if you're very into just sprinting in general like I would not recommend the rollers if you're trying to win a Zwift race because it's very basically what it does is it reads your power meter and then it tells the the rollers what to do so it's like oh you're on a a slight leg and you're yeah you need to get your power up so there's a slight lag and if you try to sprint on it you're just going to get some wheel slip and it's just not good for like putting out big sprints or doing 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, that kind of thing.

So it can still, like the kicker, it can still apply smart resistance. It's still a smart trainer. Yes. Okay. It's crazy. But to note, to note, you have to have a power meter because it actually, like I said, it actually is reading your power meter. And then and then adds the rollers what to do.

I see. Because otherwise, the tire against the drum is just not accurate enough to really give you a good accurate power reading. Right. That's smart. It really hurts my brain to think about how it works, but it does. You set it up one time. You're wincing. You're wincing as you say this. I'm like, I don't even know, but Eric uses them all the time. Basically, the kicker roller sits beside his kicker, kicker kicker, and he just alternates. So, yeah, I think in the summer it's nice too. You don't have to take wheels off. Like I said, you just plop it in if you have to do a ride inside. That's a huge thing. Like you get back from a, like, you're supposed to do a

four and a half hour ride and you got back to the door and it's four hours and you just don't want to ride around their neighborhood three times, you can be on the rollers in 30 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Get them. Get them. Definitely get them. And then report back. Yes. Thank you. Please and thank you. Next question. I am a rambler, but I'm forcing myself to cut to the chase to maximize my chances of getting this question answered. Very nice. Very smart. See, we're reading it. So it succeeded. You succeeded. As someone who has mainly swim in lakes with a couple of calm ocean-based swims mixed in. What do I need to know before attempting my first river swim?

Especially if this first river swim will be during a race, specifically Chattanooga 70.3 in May. I live in Boston and the local rivers will not be warm enough to swim in until after I race. Kate's first swim is going to be in the race. First river swim. Yeah, well, I mean, for Chattanooga, depending on the year,

you can just bring some water wings and put your feet up and you'll end up at the exit. I disagree. I was going to say in Chattanooga, I don't even know I'm in a river. There's like, you don't feel the current. It just feels like a normal open water swim where you're sighting and whatever. I think it's dependent on the year.

Because people that were talking about the year before said there was a lot of flow. And then the year that we did it, they were like strangely no flow. But I think what Iron Man always claims is that they set the buoy line in the fastest current. So obviously rivers have zones where the current's faster, the current's slower. And if you're an experienced river swimmer, you might be able to kind of read the river and then go obviously where the current. current is running faster, but if you just stick to the buoy line for Iron Man, you're hypothetically in the fastest current. Yeah, like it is good for business for you to have set an Iron Man, a PR, and your Iron Man.

So they are not going to try to make your swim any slower or longer or anything. They want to make it safe for everyone. Yeah. So it's just do what they say. I think the main point here, though, is that if you're a pro, your line that you take in a river swim can actually have a pretty big impact. But as an age grouper, you're in the middle of a bunch of people swimming. So true.

Yeah. With where everyone else is going. Literally go with the flow. Yeah. Go with the flow. Go with the flow. And in terms of changing your swim stroke or having practice, I don't think it's relevant for this.

I think you don't really feel any different when you're in a river. Right. So don't stress about not practicing. Just like we've said in previous podcasts, practice some head-up swimming, sighting, things you can do in your pool. Tarzan swimming. Just do some Tarzan drill. If you don't know what that is, just Instagram Nick and ask them.

No, don't you dare. I prefer the Telatubby's drill personally. Okay, but good luck. Maybe we'll see you there. It's a women's only pro race this year. Oh, interesting. Weird, hey? Are we going?

Well, maybe I'll go. Is that ever, wait, has that ever happened before? Has there ever been a women's only pro Ironman race? I don't know for a 70.3. I thought that was just like an Ironman thing. Yeah, I'm not sure for 70.3s, but it's one of my favorite races. I totally love it. So even if we're not there, you'll enjoy it, I think.

Cool. Okay, next question here is from Sarah. Hey, all, in a lot of the videos I see Flynn getting super muddy and snowy. Favorite question. Yeah, I saw that. Basically, dirty AF. Right now, I have a nine-pound lap dog, but I'm looking at getting a more active large dog to run the trails with. My question is this.

Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. How do you keep Flynn clean? Yeah, that's right. You got a chihuahua. How do you keep Flynn clean? Are you giving him a bath after every outside adventure? Any outside hose you rinse him with and finally does he mess up your house? Eric, Eric, try to contain yourself here. Thanks for any advice and info on this subject. Keep the videos coming, Sarah. I got it. I got this one.

With so many strategies. We're really lucky that we have tile floor on our main floor. So even if he does shed dust, et cetera, you, A, don't see it that much, and B, I vacuum pretty regularly. So it doesn't really matter. Flynn also has this kind of fur where it doesn't really stick to him that much. So he dries quickly. The dust kind of sheds off. He rub them with a towel and he's pretty good to go. We don't have carpet. We don't have really, really fancy furniture that he jumps up on. He stays in his own bed. And if you tell him to stay put, he will. We have very old cars that we don't care if he jumped into the back. I would honestly say the cars are the bigger destroyer than the house.

Because usually by the time he gets back to the house, if it's really muddy, hosed him and toweled him. But the car is just like, you finish a run in the mud and he's getting in and it's messy. If it's truly muddy out, I'll like do anything possible to get him to jump into the river or any body of water. Like as quick as close to the car as possible, I'll just like throw a stick in to just try to get him to run around and get his paws wet. And then we'll try to beeline it straight to the car without hitting any more mud. Yeah, if you're lucky enough to run next to a river, that's our strategy with Flynn. Water is key for getting dirt and mud off. Yeah.

If we get him in the river in the summertime, which we just absolutely have to do to get him exercise because it's too hot. Like, he gets wildly clean and soft feeling after jumping in the river. Yeah, it's actually the wintertime where he gets the more sticky kind of feeling and I have to bathe him more at home. Because the rivers are so crystal clear, clean here that he gets. silky smooth when he's daily river bathing. Does he hate it when you have to like, like you bathe him, not in the river? It's really funny because I take him into our shower because it's like a glass door that you close and it has a removable head.

Oh, nice. So as soon as I take his collar off and like kind of like usher him to the bathroom, he's like hating it. No, no, no, no, no, no. But then he gets in there and I'm like bathing him in hot water with soap and giving him a massage. And he's like, okay, it's not so bad. And then he loves, he loves getting toweled off. That's usually my job. Right.

I give him the towel massage. Yeah, he's like, do more, do more. Wow. Pamper. Anyway, wow. That was just an excuse to talk about Flynn for five minutes. But I would say if you want a big dog, it is super helpful to have an outside hose. That's my answer.

And Nick's like, and I am never getting a dog. Oh, yeah, for sure. If I ever had any desire to have a dog, Flynn took that out of me. I love, I love Flynn. I love Flynn. I love playing with Flynn, but I just made me realize how much how much of a commitment and effort it is. It's so much work. Especially a dog that big.

Yeah. I would say I dedicate probably two hours of every day, like active hours to Flynn. And then obviously way more mental hours when he's like needing things. But yeah, if you have time for that, it's worth it. Otherwise stick to the lap dog. I just watch videos of dogs on Instagram and that's, I get my fix. I get my daily fix.

Corgi's on Instagram. Next question here is from Rachel. I have a question about alcohol and training. I'm curious to hear how each of you approach alcohol consumption. How much, how often, and whether you find it has an effect on your training. Do you ever cut it out completely? Trying to find my own balance rather than being all or nothing, which is never sustainable for me. Thanks, Rachel.

As we were walking up to record the pod tonight, I was like, oh my gosh, Eric, we haven't even had a glass of wine. We're going in dry. We're not going to be nearly as funny. Paula with a glass of wine in the pod, much more giggly. Yeah, I'm way better when I have wine. Eric drinks more than me. Why don't you answer it? Yeah, I would say five nights out of the week, maybe.

Maybe between three and five nights. I'll have an old-fashioned just, like, as I'm watching the TV in the evening, usually I try to do it at like 8 o'clock and we go to bed at like 9.30. And that's just, to me, it's almost like, routine. It's a ritual. I like making the drink and I like sip on it very slowly. I do not feel drunk. I feel a little relaxed. I don't know. It's kind of like coffee. Like I could go without it, but I like it. Paul and I will occasionally split a bottle of wine. We'll usually make it like two thirds of the way through a bottle of wine in one night and both feel just like a little buzzed and

that's it. But there's definitely a correlation between hitting that point. We're like, oh, wow, I had a lot to drink and feeling like shit the next morning. I would say that, that for us it's a little bit more of a social thing. If we're going out for drinks with people, I'll have a drink or I really like wine, but I'm certainly not dependent on it. I'd say I maybe drink two nights a week. And I don't know why, I wouldn't say we ever like need to cut it out or feel the need to cut it out for health reasons or sleep reasons. I think that we... Yeah, you don't notice it affect your sleep. We don't really consume it in enough quantities to have it affect our sleep. I don't think one glass of wine or one cocktail has, it doesn't

doesn't affect my sleep. If I'm... Me either. Two cocktails or like three glasses of wine is starting to be at the point of where I'm gonna probably... My sleep will be compromised

and I have to make that decision. And then as far as cutting it out, I think like the week of a race, like not necessarily intentionally, but just like we don't... You know, it's like you don't think to buy the bottle of wine on race week from the grocery store

and you're whatever. So like... A little more stress, a little more rushed, whatever. Maybe I'll have like one drink on race week, one to none. Yeah. But it's not like, oh, I need to cut it out. Yeah.

And then since you guys are friends with a lot of pros, do you feel like your experience and your relationship with alcohol is common in pro triathletes? I don't know. I'd bet I'd bet I have more drinks per week than most pro triathletes. I think that maybe this is just like umbrellaing athletes too much, but we have kind of addictive personalities, right? And for exercise anyway. So maybe it's a slippery slope where if,

people start drinking, they end up drinking too much and it's hard to stop. I don't know. That's just a hypothesis. But maybe cutting it out all together is kind of the way to go. I know some other pros who are really, really wine connoisseurs, like Somalié type of interest in wine like Rini and Tim. And I think before races like Kona that are really big on their calendar, they would cut it out. And that would actually result in like body weight drop, you know, because wine does have cats. calories and stuff. So if you just cut something out, you're literally having it every day and it's just gone all of a sudden, it could just leave to this. But it's not like they're doing that all a year. It's like a big event. I guess I shouldn't speak for them. I don't know if this is totally

true. Yeah. I mean, not speaking about them, but just knowing some other pros, wine is definitely a thing. Just like we like coffee and like trying different coffees, like if we're doing the same amount of wine as coffees, just out of enjoying tasting wines, that could definitely become like a thing. in terms of your diet and all that stuff. Yeah, cool. Nick, you don't drink. Yeah, I have nothing to contribute to this question. It's not that I don't drink.

I'll have like 10 drinks a year, something like that. Yeah. It's not worth it to you don't enjoy it. Yeah, I just don't like it. I don't dislike it, but it's not worth it usually. Like the plan is after a line. I have to be not driving somewhere. I have to be at like some event, not training the next.

day, like a bunch of things, because I don't even love the taste. So I'm a little funny like that. We have two more questions, but this first one is a pretty easy answer. And then the second one is a fun one. And that'll be the last one. So question for Paul. I'm trying to introduce my wife to cycling, so she stops asking why I spend so much on bikes, LOL.

She complains about saddle discomfort, and I'm trying to figure out if a female-specific saddle will be worth the investment. Or is saddle discomfort just a part of biking for the first? first time. Are female saddles that much different from male saddles and likely to improve her experience on the bike? We were just talking about this at dinner last night. Yeah. Because our friend Sam has a specialized mimic saddle. That's what I was going to say. I was hoping you would bring that up. Yeah, it's the, it's the only saddle she's ever had that's alleviated kind of numbness and tingling in her feet, right? Yeah. Yeah. She actually had one of her feet was going numb, which we think we're

kind of chalking more up to like the width of the saddle. Maybe. But I think the mimic saddle, the idea, I don't use it personally. I use the specialized power saddle, like the mirror one. And that's really, really comfortable for me. Saddles are so individual and kind of hard to test. Maybe if you go to a bike fitter, you can try different ones. But the mimic one kind of has like a soft padding or whatever within the channel that's usually kind of hollow for the other saddles. So maybe to support like some of the tissue that women have there.

And therefore that kind of like. alleviates some numbness and offers some better distribution of weight, I guess. Yeah, the Specialized created this Mimic Saddle to be women-specific. And I've just heard nothing but good things from people that do use it. But in my experience, I use the Power Saddle. And everyone I've referred the Power Saddle to has liked it. Even when I wasn't sponsored by Specialized, I used it. It's just kind of like an all-around never disappoints.

Isn't that what you use, Nick? I used the Power Saddle as well. But I remember when the Mimic Saddle was announced that Specialized, I watched their whole long video on it because I was really interested in it. And it was based on a lot of research. They had put a lot of research and time into making this women-specific saddle. And I've heard also nothing but good things about that. The foot numbness thing to me does feel like a saddle width issue.

And most bike shops, if you go in, you can sit on these pads that will measure your sit bone width. And then they'll be a corresponding saddle width to help with that. I had to do that and it helped me a lot with numbness in my feet. That is a good idea Because if you go online Eric actually just Just specialize for a few saddles And they're on the website

Have different widths 143, 163, 1. And how do you know Unless you go sit on one of those pads And actually get a proper measurement You can't know otherwise So that's good tip You know what sitting on those pads

Maybe you just think of? What? marshmallows? Rice Krispy treats Paula I don't know it's too late Eric You should definitely leave that in the pod though Yeah

Okay, I'll leave it in. Actually, they literally take five minutes to make. As Nick actually thought that Rice Krispy Square is required baking, he was flabbergasted to know that all it takes is like putting marshmallows, putting butter in a pot, adding the Rice Krispies, and then they're made. I was shocked. Yeah, your Nick was shocked. And it takes two hours of cleaning that pot the next morning.

It's a stickiest substance known to humankind. We need a non-stick pot for Rice Krispies. But I went out to the garage and I was like, Nick, your ice crispy is already. Literally five minutes after he requested them. Yeah. I shouldn't have told you. Okay. And our last question is a fun one.

Let's keep it short because this will be the longest podcast we've ever done. I feel like I say that every week. Professional athletes from all sports can be superstitious. Do you guys have a favorite charm or routine or pre-race meal or habit? I put this in hoping you guys would because I don't. Riding on the wall. Eric, we're going to get a copyright strike. if you keep singing Stevie Wonder.

Maybe I was off tune enough that it won't pop up. No, I thought that was a dead ringer for Stevie and it is hayday. I feel like this question comes up a lot when you're like filling out race things and they're like, what's your name? What's your age? When you start racing?

Any superstitions or things we should know about you? I'm like, what? No. No. No. I think like Lindsay Corbin had a good one. She'd like get a new pair of socks for every race or something.

Oh, no. I don't have anything fun like that, but maybe we should make something up just so we have a good answer for this question when we're asked it. Like I've started only wearing that TTL windbreaker

before races. Like I have plenty of other jackets that will work. But like around the LA try, I just started like that's the only thing I want to wear in transition in the morning and I'll like layer appropriately so I can wear that.

You know what's funny? I, well, I'll say this. I only now wear a TTF hat to run in for sure. And I also have a sweater that I only use on race stick. And the reason is because it's a sweater that I'm okay with potentially losing after race morning. But yeah.

Other than that, I always just, I hope to whatever powers that are out there that I don't understand that I just stay safe. Like that's, I've like, I know I've worked really hard to be fast, but this can be a crazy day and I just want to make sure I get to the finish line safe. Usually that's the thing I hope for. It's not a very exciting thing. Yeah. As long as we're all safe at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Yeah. And we win too.

Yeah. Winning is really good. I'll do the saving. How about that? Yeah. Actually, I have a good one. Oh, yeah. My superstition is I only do well at races that Nick is at.

It's not a position. This is backed by data. He wasn't in Dallas. Right. Oh, that's true. Terrible race. Every other race I did last year, he was there and I did great. Yeah.

So that, Nick is my good luck charm. Nick is my superstition. I love that. We'll be at every race this year All over the world He's coming to a Biza. He's coming to Singapore. Great.

Sounds great. First class tickets all around the world. Yeah. Oh, now that would be nice. Now that would be nice. Oh, we are actually looking for an airline sponsor. If anyone has any connections. Delta, Delta, slide into the DMs, Delta.

I have not discussed this. I don't know. I'm just looking at flights to all these exotic locations that we have to race at and I'm like, oh my gosh. We're going to go broke. Yeah. Yeah.

So anyway. I like that. I remember that that was the, that was at first for you guys had told me. What was the first race I ever came to? I can't remember. Do we remember. But I remember that right away. Eric was like, all right, Nick's coming to every race.

Yeah. It was like we had just kind of met. Done. It's settled. Yeah. Fun. I'm down. And I'm going to see.

I just realize I'm going to see you guys in like a week. Because I want to come up and say hi when you guys are doing the wind tunnel stuff. Oh, you're going to come to the wind tunnel. Oh, sick. Of course. Okay. Well, I got a room with an extra bed for you. Oh, great.

Come bunk up. So the extra bed will be empty and all three of us will be in the same bed. Perfect. Oh, now. Oh, now. Very fun. Yeah, that's how we had. That was a lot of questions.

Thank you, Nick, for assembling them and presenting them. How long as podcast ever? As long as we just keep going 30 seconds longer, we can just keep having the longest podcast ever for years and years. That's right. Nick is one minute late for dinner, so we got to end it. That's great. That's fun. Thanks for listening, everybody.

See you next week. Bye.