That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon off-season "structure", losing fitness , Whoop vs Oura ring, swim fins, and more!

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

This week Eric and Paula begin their off-season, so we get some insight from them on how to go about handling the ups and downs of temporarily pulling back from sport. We also have our first legitimate perk for our podcast supporters: 25% of on Castelli gear! You can submit your questions and support the podcast at http://www.thattriathlonlife.com

Hello everyone. Welcome to That Triathlon Life podcast. I'm Paula Findlay. I'm Eric Loggersham. I'm Nick Goldston. I have a brain freeze. How do we start this thing? It's only 47 podcast. I don't expect you to have figured it out by now, Paul. This is episode 47. We're almost at 50. Eric and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a professional musician, amateur triathlet. And every week we take your questions and answer them as best as we can from a bunch of different perspectives. Nick's perspective is an amateur. Our perspective is pros. And, hopefully give you some useful information. And yeah, we're back from Indian Wells. We're kind of a week into offseason now, Eric and I, and starting to feeling like exercising again, at least me. I don't know about Eric, though. Are you guys professional skiers yet? What's the deal?

Definitely not. No, we've only been three times. In a week, though. That's pretty good. We're happily, very amateur and just enjoying it, not trying to be the fastest. Have you been able to, like, so for example, on Strava, it's really easy for, especially around L.A.,

but really anywhere to, like, go around and try a segment try your hardest and see it how incredible it is at how far away you are from the fastest person on that segment. Have you found like a skiing equivalent? Have you been able to compare yourself against someone who's like at that elite level of skiing? I mean like, oh my gosh, how is that humanly possible? No, the thing about uphill skiing is the equipment between someone who's doing it fast and us who are doing it casually. The equipment is completely different. So the people that are trying to do it for schemo or racing, they have these really, really light skis, super ultra-light bindings. And the compromise for that is the downhills are not fun. You don't really have an edge.

They're truly just doing it to go fast. So we have a bit heavier stuff. It works really well on the downhills. You can carve with it, whatever. They're more like regular skis. But the downside is it's a lot slower going uphill. So it's like a mountain bike. It's like taking a mountain bike on a road bike segment and comparing yourself to the top road bike. It's not really fair. I see. It's like trying to ride a pure downhill bike uphill versus a cross-country bike. But then you're going to be able to go way faster downhill. That's a better comparison.

Yeah. And it's been snowing like crazy there. Non-stop. It's wild. Huge snow year. Yeah. Early. It's kind of fun and like cozy inside, but treacherous to drive in, especially in Bend where it kind of freeze thaws and the roads are super slick

and like Eric and the Corbans and our friend Danny are determined to go skiing no matter of the conditions and the road's sketchy and it's not my favorite thing but it's pretty but the bummer about it is that um you drive up and you kind of like get through this the road situation and everything and then you ski and you have an amazing time and you're so happy but then you've got a 45 minute drive on the way home and paula's just like got sweaty palms and freaking out the whole way and just like it ruins the skiing like i wish you if you could just like teleport back home after and preserve all the

happiness that would be best case you could just buy a tank and then you wouldn't have to worry about that. What we did is called a Toyota FJ Cruiser. I guess that's true. It's as close as you can get to a tank. Road legal tank. Yeah, we got a good car. Yeah, yeah, cool.

Nick, what have you been doing since we left? Grieving? Empty nest. Yeah, I've been, well, luckily, by no merit of my own, I've been slowly able to bike and run again. So there's a Swedish pro triathleteathear with her boyfriend and they're friends with Gustav and Christian, And so when they were in LA, they were like, is there anyone that you know that we could ride with here?

And so Gustav mentioned me. And so I've been running and riding and swimming with them the past couple days, and it's been really fun. And I did get my MRI results back today, but they're not from my doctor. They're from the imaging where I got the MRI done. And so it's like a kind of a doctor jargon thing. But I sent it to both of you, and we kind of Googled it a bit. And it seems like it's like an impingement, like a fat, had impingement, but I don't want to speak to it too much because we don't know, and I still

haven't talked to my orthopedic surgeon, but it seems like nothing's extremely wrong, which I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but we won't have to amputate the leg, which I guess is a relief, but I still, we still don't have any, like, concrete answers, so hopefully by next week we'll have some concrete answers. Yeah, like, sometimes you just, you want, like, some devastating news, but that's fixable. Exactly. That's awesome. It's super broken.

Here's the solution. It'll take three weeks to six weeks, but then it'll be over. I disagree that it's not a concrete solution. It's like basically you have bursitis and you need to take down the inflammation from that fat pad that's causing impingement. Like I'm not a doctor either, but the wording that I read in that is something after Googling it and looking up online. It's a common problem and a lot of people have it and it's truly fixable. Yeah. It's just the right approach, whether it's like buying.

biomechanics or saddle height. We talked about that a bit. All these things could be contributing. It's saying like, you know, rest. I've been rested for three months. Yeah. Gosh, how much longer. But we'll see.

Maybe my author will be like, oh, that's actually kind of like everyone has, you know, who knows? Who knows what she'll say? I'll be, I'm curious to know. Yeah. But yeah, so I've been biking and running a bit and it's been nice. It's been really fun and not with any structure. Just like I'll have a friend that'll have a workout and I'll just go with them on the workout. And that's been fun. And I guess that's what you're supposed to kind of do in the

offseason, although I just, my offseason started as soon as I DNFed at Iron Man. Yeah, it's an extended off season. Yeah. But so I wanted to, before we get into our little segment, I wanted to announce something kind of cool that the three of us have been working on. And it's like the first major perk of being a supporter of the podcast. We, Eric and Paul are sponsored by Castelli. They're a cycling. is it, it's not just cycling. They do apparel for also for running as well. They have some running stuff.

Well, they have like, yeah, I guess if you, they do a running thing, but it's a custom thing. For the most part, it's cycling, fantastic cycling stuff. And they have a very, very high level speed suit for, for triathlon. I see. So yeah, we are super excited about this.

I was actually having lunch the other day with our contact at Castelli. And we were talking about the podcast and stuff. And I kind of brought up how we are doing this supporter thing. And it's kind of been in the back of my mind to do some sort of a discount sort of a thing with one of our sponsors. The idea not being to like make people need to feel like they need to buy things, but just if you felt like you wanted to get a wetsuit or a t-shirt or et cetera, et cetera, from one of our partners and get it anyway, can we get some deals? He was psyched. He said, yeah. So I think going out on Monday, we'll be sending all of the supporters of the podcast a 25,000.

percent off code for Castelli. So, I mean, if you are really wanting to get some of those premium bibs that we talked about a couple weeks ago, that's a significant chunk of change off of that. So like I said, no pressure at all, but that's one of the cool perks that we're going to be having out for the podcast supporters. And do this not too late to sign up for that if you are so inclined. And just so everybody knows this Castelli deal is only for the United States. We plan on doing international things in the future, but for,

now this is just for people in the U.S. If people like this, we're going to do more stuff like this with sponsors. But we hope it's, you know, we're not trying to spam anybody. It's just, I know if I were looking for a speed suit and it was 25% off, I would be rejoicing.

Yeah, yeah, to be completely clear, the podcast supporter program, we set that up just because people asked if there was a way that they could if they could support the podcast, so it is by no means compulsory, just if you feel like you want to do that, go for it. And then we have been chatting with some of our sponsors to see if

we can come up with some things that are like legitimately valuable givebacks. Do not feel obligated to go by anything from Kestelli. We don't benefit from this. It's just if you were like hoping to get a suit for next year or a new pair of bibs for someone for Christmas, here's a great opportunity. We hope it saves you a bit of bunny. That's a bit of bunny. We do. Let's move on. Okay. Let's move on. Great. So our segment is going to be bike tech with Eric. This is a surprise. I didn't know we were doing bike tech with Eric today. Yeah, because you weren't here for the pregame.

Oh, okay, okay, okay. The planning, the pot planning. Nick, where did the questions come from? My beautiful mind. Basically, I sit over here and I look at my bikes and I think, what can I ask Eric that I'm curious about? And I bet some other people, yeah, I bet other people will have the same question. Nick's questions for Eric.

Yes. So first of all, first of all, why would somebody use a frame, bag versus a saddle bag versus a handlebar bag. So this is a bag where you can put in like anything you want, but people usually put in a spare tube, a CO2, tire levers, maybe a flat repair kit or something like that. Yeah, I think like a saddlebag is the thing that has existed for the longest, at least like in the last, you know, 20 years of popularity and everything.

And typically, yeah, you would put in a CO2 and a tire lever in a tube. Now, that's now getting to be a smaller amount of things if you're riding tubeless. But as you move forward, you could actually grab something out of a top tube bag while you're riding. It has significantly more volume. And I guess when we're saying frame bag, I'm thinking like something that's suspended right below the top tube. So it's like you could unzip it and you could get something out of there if you needed to. Some people put a camelback like a water bladder in there. That's kind of been gaining popularity for the Canza unbound crowd.

and then the most accessible location that probably holds a little bit less than a frame bag is your handlebar bag and you can just zip that out you can grab your banana out, you can grab your GoPro out, whatever, it's all right there at your fingertips and people really, really like it for that.

I guess this is kind of a, it's a question that doesn't have a real answer, but why do you think handlebar bags are so in right now? Is it because of the utility of them or is there something aesthetically fashiony that is happening here? Both.

Yeah, I think there's definitely like this handlebar bag, this little sub-economy going on. Like a lot of people can like probably figure out how to make a handlebar bag in their garage. I see. I see what's happening. And it's like, and obviously there's very high quality ones out there and a lot of them are high quality. But I think that's part of it. It's very customizable. You know, it can be colors. It's front and center and any pictures that are taken versus a handlebar bag.

It's like if you want to take a picture of that, it's a butt shot. Yeah. That's right. But then also, yeah, people I think eventually realized, man, if I want to grab something, and especially if I want to wear a T-shirt while riding or anything that's not, you know, like full spandex with jersey pockets, this is a great option. So that's when I use it for the most part is when I want to carry stuff, but I just want to go on like a T-shirt ride and be like, it's super hot outside and having a bunch of stuff,

stuff in my jersey pocket sounds terrible. Yeah. Also, like, you could fit a GoPro in there. You can fit even like a point-and-shoe camera in there. And so if you're pulling that out, that seems. like a cool place to put that kind of stuff. I see the appeal. I think there's still like my old school

arrow kind of sleek design look that has a little resistance towards it, but I get it. I think I get it. It's mostly a gravel thing. I would say I rarely ride the handlebar bag on the road. Got it. Cool. Definitely do not have one on my road bike. Next question. Should you bring a multi-tool

on all rides? Yes. Why? What like what kind of situations can arise that maybe people might not think of? Your quick release comes loose. Your handlebars come loose. Your seat post comes loose.

Your seat comes loose. Your seat comes loose. Your and on and on and on. Your knee starts hurting, so you need to mess up your saddle high a little bit. So you need to ruin your expensive bike fit. Her saddle needs to be adjusted. Whatever, it happens.

Eric's been calling me his girlfriend a few times today. I'm like, what? I feel like, beyond that. Your life partner. It happens to be a female. That's great. That's like there's some like some people will be like, you know, they're like, have been married for 40 years or whatever. It's like, yeah, this is my first husband, but they're like still together. But it's just like to let him know, like, yeah, technically you're still my first husband. So one wrong move and you're out the door. I'm not saying I'm not planning on doing a couple of these situations. You never know. You got to keep

I'm guessing sometimes. But you know what's happened to me on multiple occasions on two different bikes is that my bottle cage screws have kind of come loose and started rattling and I was like, wow, well, thank, I'm really glad I had a multi-tool with me for that. The big one. Yeah. That too. Yeah, that's a big one, yeah. But if you ride specialized, they have a system called a SWAT system that has a bunch of different uses. But if you buy their bottle cage that has the SWAT system at the bottom, it's a really tightly, neatly integrated multi-tool that fits right in there. It looks sleek, very small, very functional. I'm a big fan of it. Have you seen the SWAT system that goes inside of your steer tube? I have seen it. I've never in person, but yeah. Well, I like on my stump jumper, it's on the down tube, and it's like huge. I actually, I don't know if it's technically swap, but you can fit a ton of stuff in there. It's awesome. I put a sandwich in there once.

Yeah, yeah. You got like the whole box situation. And then the last one, not related to bags and tools and stuff. But this is something that I've heard you talk about semi-passionately because you seem to have some anger and some trauma behind this, Eric. How tight do you have to tighten pedals? And follow-up, do you think

people tend to overtighten their pedals? I think everybody, not everybody. I think a lot of people tend to overtighten their pedals, yeah. For me, it's almost like a self-imposed game. Not during races, but like, how loose can I tighten this? And it's, they're not

coming off. They're threaded in such a way that peddling should tighten them, not loosen them. That's why like one threads one way and the other one threads the other way. No, I've never heard of anybody's pedal loosening up on a ride ever, but I've heard of plenty of people who can't get them off. Couldn't get their pedals off to save their life. Yeah, literally like standing on a pedal wrench. Yeah.

You don't need to freaking gorilla strength these things on there. Yeah. Cool. Well, that was it. That was our bike tech with Eric Segment. Now we're going to move on to the main part of the podcast, which is the questions. And you can submit your questions and also support the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. And we love your questions.

We look forward to them. This is what keeps the whole podcast moving. So first question is from Julia. ITTL, just watching the latest video about Indian Wells. Congratulations, Paula. And I was wondering why they had you submerged the wetsuits for 15 seconds. Later in the video, Paula said she, decontaminated her wetsuit. What was this process for?

Yeah, I just included this in there because we've had like dozens of people asking after we put out the video while we're dunking her wetsuit. Yeah, it's a good question. It's just a very, very specific to this one race. It's not like you're going to have to do this at any other triathlon, but there's a it's called the coagla muscle. Quagga. Quagga muscle. I'm probably saying this wrong, but it's a type of species they don't want to introduce to this lake because it would be devastating apparently. Every boat, everything that touches this water must be, is it decontaminated the word? Or decontaminated. Yeah.

I think it was just a chlorinated bath, basically. So everyone that had a wetsuit, you know, booties, a swim cap, something like that, had to dunk that in the water before going in. And the reasoning behind not dunking your race kid in was that it was going to be covered by the wetsuit. Like, I don't know how well this actually works. Yeah, that's my fear. requirement and they tagged as soon as you dunked it you got to tag on your wetsuit and they were actually checking race morning people from the park were checking to make sure that every wetsuit that entered the water still had that tag on it otherwise you couldn't start so it was a serious

procedure but also a very simple one and didn't seem to like have any damage to your wetsuit yeah you can't even you can this is the only time of the year that you can swim in that lake the rest of the year, no one can swim in it. And this is because of this muscle invasion situation. Paula, was your wet suit dry by race morning? Because you did it, how long before the race did you have to do it? Yeah, you could do it anywhere up to like 7 p.m. the day before. So people that were really late, maybe their wetsuit was still wet, I'm not sure.

And also you were hanging them up amongst other wetsuits. But because we did it so early, mine had some air around it, could dry. It wasn't a problem. And it's the desert. It's like 3% humidity. I've been doing that race since before Ironman kind of came in, and they made us do the same thing. It was like the people from the lake put it on. Next question, hello, Eric Paul and Nick.

I really enjoy listening to the podcast during long training sessions or whenever I have free time. My question is about off-season. How is your off-season structured, which is such a funny way to phrase that question, and how does it differ from racing season? So is the point of off-season to not have structure, or do you think there is a way to implement structure and it still serve the function of an off-season? Off-season is a really tricky term

because it can span, I mean, essentially our off-season goes until April, right? Because we're not racing, so we're not in our on-season. But I would say that what we're currently in is more like a break. So unstructured, minimal training, really giving your body the full reset opportunity. And then obviously we're going to

start a schedule again after Christmas, which then we'll have structure. But I would argue would still be called an off season. But Eric has different thoughts on this. So Eric, you take it away. Oh, no, I think Paula and I just have like a little bit different timelines in mind. And for me, the important thing with the off season or the break is that like keeping in mind you're going to be racing for the next 11 months or like the race season is very long. So you don't want to get to like April of the on season.

season and be kind of tired because you were so keen and only took three days off after your last race in November. And I think the important thing is just come back to a schedule when you really feel like you want to. And maybe when you feel like you want to, give yourself like three more days. Yeah. And just like really chill on that because it is a, it's a long season of training, at least for professionals where we kind of just have to be on all the time. Yeah. You know, when you're in season and you have to go to the pool and do this hard swim workout, and you don't want to at all. Like, you'd way rather just skip it.

But you go because you have to. It's your job. But when you're in off season and you don't have to psych yourself up for that, sometimes your body still feels like going to the pool for a swim. But the fact that it's not a requirement, it's not, you know, because you're training for an upcoming race, makes it a lot more enjoyable in a way. So that's my approach a little more to offseason is doing things that sound good. still moving and staying active

because if you take time completely off like a week of no activity at all, I personally feel way worse and my back gets stiff and I get grumpy and so it's even doing a 45-minute spin on the bike to me is still like time off. Wow. And that just goes to show that like you know that there's differences for all.

I just think of like even people who they don't take rest days because for them like you said, like a 45 easy spin is a rest day. And then there's other people, I think I'm one of these people, that a rest day for me means like don't even go for a walk. Like it's couch, it's nap, it's just kind of relax. And I think I need that to be the best athlete I can be. And some like Paula, maybe to be the best athlete you can be,

you're doing it exactly right. I think, I think Paula, you mentioned this earlier today. I think when we were talking to Simon on the phone, that this is the first season that you've had in a few seasons where you didn't get injured at all the whole year and you're feeling a little more tired and you're, you've given it a few more days than you normally would before wanting to go to the pool

or whatever. And that's definitely the position I've been in is for some reason I've had like year after year after year of not actually having any time off due to an injury or anything and by the time I get to December, I just like, I just feel tired for a while and I do not feel like doing activity other than like maybe going for a walk

or something that legitimately just sounds completely fun and chill. So I think that's just the difference. Depending on how tired you are, your offseason won't be longer or shorter. Yeah, and it takes time like Paul, like, you know, like from any, even from a race, but like when you take the cumulative fatigue from a whole year, it can take a long time for different bodily systems to kind of come back into that balanced state. Totally, yeah. And I think this is a, it might have even been a question later on, Nick.

I don't know if we're going to use it or not, but like your body changes. And we're so used to feeling super fit all the time and like prime condition. And even after taking a week off, you lose that. It's so crazy how quick it goes away. And maybe it's just a feeling and you're not actually gaining 15 pounds. But you feel like you do and it's not fun. So for me, it's like even if I can get up and go ski for 90 minutes or an hour or two hours, it's like at least you feel like you're maintaining some kind of fitness and normality.

and it won't be so dreadful when you come back and start exercising again. So that's my approach. Okay, next question. Hey, TTL, a couple of questions for the pod. How do you have the discipline to train every day and complete all sessions? I forever find myself missing sessions, even though deep down I know consistency is when I will see results. But just struggle with the motivation and discipline to put in the work. So let's go into that first. How often do you guys feel, how often do you question,

if you're actually going to go out and do a session? A lot of days. In the middle of the year when we're tired and it's getting to be like September, every day to every other day. Yeah, but we never miss a session. So even professionals, though, have this something in their head that's like,

wouldn't it be so much nicer to just stay inside and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? 100%, yeah. Yeah, of course. But the other side of that is like if you miss one session one time, it becomes so much easier to miss another session and another session

because then you know how nice it is and nothing actually happened to you that was bad for not doing that session. There were no consequences. We're all doing this for our own self-fulfillment and everyone has different goals. But I think the easiest way to stay motivated is to have a race on the schedule. And whatever far out that is,

like if there's no race, there's no motivation. So pay for a 70.3, pay for an Olympic distance race that's in May. and that should be enough to get you out of the door more days than you don't get out the door. Yeah, yeah. The thought of having a good performance typically wins out. And it's like maybe we've just preconditioned or, you know, we've got the Pavlovian response in there of, I want to have a good race, go try to go hard. And then ideally you have a good workout and that reinforces that feeling.

And like there's nothing more satisfying than kind of feeling tired and going into workout and still nailing it. And I feel like that's when you know you're really fit. and like kind of having that memory back there somewhere is pretty motivational to go out on the days that you don't really want to. I wonder if I'm trying to think of what has helped me stay motivated as a non-professional. Because when you're a professional, it's like, unfortunately, you don't really have a choice, right? But I think for me it's 80% of it, well, yeah, 70% to 80% of it is what Paula said,

which is pay for a race. Like put it on the schedule. That's this very powerful tool. and if I didn't have a race I was going towards, I think I would struggle a lot with this as well. I'm just like, why? Like, yeah, I guess I could do this, but why do I have to do like 20 minutes as hard as I can?

That sounds terrible. But the other side of that, that I think helps me a lot, is having a very structured training plan. There's something I think deep in the human psyche of just like having a job or having homework that you do and just like you did the work. I went out, I did the session,

and I woke up today, and I didn't have to think about what I had to do. It was already written there for me in the most tiny little details, how many minutes and seconds, at what intensity. And I think that, to me, it just, it takes, it kind of makes me forget that I have the choice to not do it. And so I just go out and do it every day.

Well, I mean, that definitely reinforces, especially when you have workouts that are written like that, have a lot of creativity in them. That really reinforces that every workout has a purpose and has a point. Yeah, that's not like. That's a really good observation. Like Paula said, it does have a point.

It's not just go out and run. It's like, no, no, go out and run and do these things because this is going to help you in this specific way. Yeah. And just like, to be honest, though, like that stuff, it's fun. But even in a schedule where it just says 40 minute run, that is in there for a reason. Your coach didn't put that in there because they're like,

hmm, I feel like I should have them do something. What will I have them do? you know, it's all very intentional and that is setting up for the next workout and the next workout, and it's all part of the plan. So just like try to remind yourself that that, yeah, there are exciting sessions that are really hard, but every session has purpose. Yeah, thanks. That's great. And then the next question was, what are your three must-haves that you do every day to help train, recover, or just make life a little simpler? Something that significantly changes your athlete daily life. Maybe this is kind of hard to come up with on the spot.

So maybe it doesn't have to be three. I like this question, though. I think it's good. Maybe we can, each say one. Okay, that's great. That we have, that we use every single day. Was that the question? Three must have. So you do every day to help train. It doesn't have to be a thing. It can be a process or a thought or anything. Oh, okay, okay. Oat milk cappuccino, first thing in the morning. Made by Eric? That's a great one. I think a lot of people probably agree with you on that. Eric, do you have something that comes to mind? Maybe the foam roller for Eric. He uses it every day. Yeah, I could say a foam roller. I could save foam roller. My foam roller never gets more action than when Eric's here. For me, it's not a thing.

It's just, and God, I'm going to sound like a spoiled brat, but it's not setting an alarm to wake up and just sleep as long as I, my body tells me I need to sleep for. I feel like that's been really good for my mental health and my physical health. Yeah, we do that too. We don't ever set an alarm. And when you have to set one for a flight or something, it's so jarring.

And it brings me flashbacks to swim team, you know, when you're growing up and having to wake up at 4.30, it's... Having to set an alarm is... I mean, it's essential for a lot of people, but it's... It's way, way better and healthier, I think, to be able to go on the circadium rhythm. And we still wake up early. We're still waking up at 630, but totally voluntarily, not on our... Yeah. Not on an alarm clock.

It's a better of a result of an early bedtime. I notice it when I... The first thing I think of is, like, I just think of all the people who have to do it every day, and I feel this like paying of empathy for them. I'm just like, oh, God, my life is, I'm so lucky that I don't have to do that. And so many people do have to wake up with that every day. And then Caitlin finishes by saying, thanks for everything you do. And always producing top-notch content, Caitlin from New Zealand. Freaking love New Zealand.

That's awesome. Next question is from Stephanie. I live north of Montreal. So we have a ski season here. I have skate, classic and backcountry skis, and love doing all three. Last year, I didn't do very much skiing as I was aiming for my first. first Iron Man in the summer and didn't want to miss any swim, bike, or run sessions. Now I'm repeating the year and doing another half Iron Man in June and a full Iron Man in August.

I'm wondering which sessions I can replace with ski sessions during the winter. Realistically, I would ski once a week. I run and bike four times each week with one long aerobic ride and run, so I'm guessing I would replace one of those with a ski. Thanks so much, and I'm looking forward to more off-season podcasts and vlogs, Stephanie. Yeah, I picked this question because it's kind of applicable to what we're doing right now. And I think it's a very, you know, the fitness you get from skiing does transfer to swim bike run. And when you live in Canada, it is an essential thing, I think, because you can't really suffer it out on the trainer and the treadmill every single day.

So it lets you get outside and that it alone has its own mental health benefits. So if your options are, you know, train a ride every day or going to ski twice. a week. Skiing is so good for you. I think it's hard. Like a lot of people that are triathletes aren't necessarily the best technical skiers, which ultimately I think makes it a bit more challenging because you're working harder to go a certain speed.

But Eric and I would say we replace mostly our longer aerobic rides with the ski and find that our heart rate when we're like uphill skiing or cross-country skiing is kind of matched to what we'd have. If we're on a ride, we can still chat. It's conversational. but we are still working hard. So is that what you think, Eric? Yep.

I think you could probably do either. You could alternate, replace a run one week and replace a ride the other week. Yeah. Either way. It's just time in that aerobic zone. Totally. And I would say even if you want to go twice a week,

you said you want to do one. But if you have all the skis and maybe you want to do a backcountry ski one day, a cross-country one day, it's okay at this time of year to skip a run and skip a ride every week to do some outside stuff. stuff that's fun in the snow and take advantage of living in Canada.

Not everyone can go skiing, but you're lucky that you can. And you think it sounds like you don't think that replacing a session with specific intensity is a good idea. You could technically do intervals on skis, but like we said, we like to keep that more like casual chill, non-competitive activity. Yeah. Yeah. I would definitely keep doing like the intervals on the specific activity.

Yeah. Cool. Okay, next question is from Lindsay. Hi, all, I'm not an OG listener, but have listened for a while and haven't heard this topic discussed. My husband and I are hopefully about to become rescue dog parents and hope to make her our new run buddy. Wondering what leash you use for running and any tips for things to be careful of as we start our dog running journey besides the obvious build mileage slowly. Thanks and hope off season is treating you well with all the donuts, Lindsay. So this is perfect because I know you guys have a lot of thoughts on this.

Yeah. Eric and I use the roughware bungee leash. Eric hates it because the thing is that a bungee leash. Let's get some context. I do not like the bungee leash for anything other than running. Exactly. Oh, the bungee leash is good for running. Completely ineffective. You yank on one end, a person on Flynn on the other end cannot tell he's being yanked on at all.

Yeah, it's like you're trying to pull him away from something and he's like not, you know, the bungee just accepts the tug, not the dog. So it's very, very non-effective, I guess, as a leash. But when you're running, the bungee is nice because he doesn't really pull while we run, but he likes to be at the end of whatever he's on. So he can be at the end of the bungee without pulling us over. And then if he does kind of do a weird thing where he's going fast for a second, it kind of has a bit more forgiving. I don't love the length of the rougher ones.

They're kind of long. And I kind of like to keep Flynn on a bit of a tighter leash, especially when we're running in busier places, like when we were in Santa Monica, the roughware leash was way too long. I had to tie a nod in it. I don't even know what other companies there are, though, for... Well, we had that, like, official World Cup level...

Oh, non-stop. Joining. It's called non-stop dog wear. That stuff is super primo, and it's for if you want to, like, literally race with your pointer, which would be fun. Yeah, it's, like, fully a climbing waist strap level

system that like with a pad for your back so it's like super ergonomical for the human for the human yeah yeah then like the dog yeah then the dog harness there's like 14 sizes slash you can go full custom if you want it's yeah it's kind of funny because you know in that sport where the dog is effectively pulling you to as fast of a 5k as you and your dog can go it's like at a competition you do want it to be kind of effectively pulling you in an ergonomic way like erics that like attached to your body properly whereas the one we use is just to dinky little clip that goes around your waist and hopefully like our goal is for Flynn to not pull us so it's okay to have that kind of a clip but if you're like going into schojourning or whatever you

should get a full like pro set up that's cool yeah for the most part we like try to coach Flynn with you know heel to keep the bungee not at full stretch and then if he sees a squirrel or like something happens or if he has stopped to go number two all of a sudden the bungee saves you right he also so for the dog we have a harness that goes on him. So we clip it in at the top of it. So he's not running with the leash on his collar. Yeah. So I think that's better for the dog. Yeah, it's just a, you know, roughware has them. Flynn actually doesn't quite fit well in the roughware one. So we got him a different brand. Yeah. He's all chest that boy. All chest, no waste. He's got like a barrel chest and like skinny little legs. So like the roughware harness was chafing his armpits.

Oh, sweet boy. Sweet boy. Did he tell you that? He leaves a really rough life if you can't tell. So we got him like a little better for his chest size and it works a lot better. I think it's called Wild Dog or something.

I would love to see one of you race a 5K with Flynn. I think that would be really, really cool to watch. I know. I think we could make a little video of it. I mean, it's, that's entertaining.

Most people have not seen this. Yeah, totally. The thing is like, we've pretty effectively trained Flynn to not pull. So it would be a reverse training. It would be like Flynn, okay, pull as hard as you fucking can and like run, chase that squirrel for five kilometers. Yeah, it's a squirrel.

I've alternated a little bit. I haven't run with him on the leash in a while just because we have pretty good off leash running options here in the forest. But alternating between. In rural Oregon, as trixie calls it. Yeah, exactly. So I would like alternate on like a hilly course here next to the house with him on the leash between heel,

you know, heal, like reinforcing that every minute or something, and then when we get to a hill being like, okay, because that's like,

that's the word we use for when we're at the park and we say sit, stay, and then we say, okay, is the release. And then if you say, okay,

he just loses his mind and goes maximum effort. So I think that would be it for the 5K. Just like, okay, you know, just,

and just like hype him up and give him that, that voice reassurance and excitement. Wait, let me ask you this. You know how, I don't know if you guys

ever seen this, and like training peaks and a lot of different platforms. You can see your five second power versus your one minute power versus your five minute power versus your 20 minute power and one hour power how it stacks up in watts per kilo compared to different categories of cycling racing. It'll kind of give you this rough estimate of where you could sit. Your cat one and five second power.

Yes, for example. So where do you think Flynn, where's Flynn the most competitive? What time do you think he would be? be like what's the ideal number of seconds or minutes that Flynn could unleash most of his fitness? One minute. 30 seconds to a minute. Cool. That's cool.

So fast. Yeah. Not like 10 seconds because he's just, he's a unit. Yeah, he's not like, to get up to speed. Yeah, but he, oh, dude, just like maximum effort. And he can sustain it for a bit because he does a lot of sprinting. What's a chucket. Yeah.

It's not, it's not an hour. No, no. He's at two and a half marathon. Okay, this has been a great question. Yeah, sorry, we've been on it for a while. That's the type of leash you should buy. Yeah, got it, got it. Next question's from Mark.

Hey, everyone, festive greetings from Lutton, England. Love the pod couple questions. One, wondering about your choice not to have an agent. Eric, do you think the decision not to race Indian Wells could have played differently if you had an agent? Would there have been pressure to race possibly? So, first of all, what percentage of, like, pro athletes have an agent, do you think? this is a super interesting question. Yeah, I agree.

That's why I included it. Oh, sweet. I don't know what percentage of professional triathletes have an agent. Given that there's like, we'll say, something like 700 professional triathletes out there, I would say probably maybe 50, 25 of them have agents. You have to be making enough money to make it worthwhile. Yeah, and I'll also say that there are a couple of people. of different, we could break this down into a couple different

classifications of agents. There's people who are like, they're a lawyer or they were like an agent for golf and they just really like triathons and want to help professional triathletes out so they kind of do it as like a helping hand side thing. And then there's-

Like review contracts. Yeah. And maybe like try to help you make connections. Like if I wanted to, I could act as an agent almost for like an up-and-coming pro just because I have a lot of connections. Like I think that's kind of how some agents, how that works out. I see.

But then kind of from like where we're at and up, there is beginning to be the potential where as an agent or a manager, your share of an athlete's yearly income from sponsors is actually enough to like make a living off of. Because like a typical agent's cut I think is like 15 or 20%, like 20 on the high end. And if you kind of like extrapolate out what your athlete has to be making on a yearly basis for you to be making a living,

that's a pretty highly paid athlete, or you have to have five or six athletes. I think that's the thing, is a lot of managers work with five or six triathletes, and then ultimately that lets them make a living. Yeah. It's not like someone's just working with me, us, and you. Yeah, but the limitation here is still going to be the size of each individual contract.

Like, you have to talk to a ton of people if each contract is worth 10, thousand dollars versus if you're, I'm just going to use Yon, if you're managing Yon and each one of his contracts is like a hundred grand, for example, that's one person you're talking to for 100 grand instead of 10 people. So that's like the limiter of having more and more athletes to make the whole thing actually make sense. To answer the question, though, the reason we don't have one is we've just felt like we really like having personal connections with our sponsors. We are trying to minimize our number of sponsors so we can maximize what we can deliver for them and they're ultimately happier than having like a bucket list of sponsors that we have to talk to.

So we've, we also like to have long-term sponsors. So people, we build relationships with over years and years and we're not switching every other year. So we're kind of building towards that now as we've built a bigger audience. Our results are better than ever right now. And it's, it's easier when you're racing well because people come to you. So people are approaching us. And it's, if we approach someone else, they're genuinely interested. They're not turning us away. So that makes it fun. It makes it, the only time when it gets awkward is negotiating money, but we're getting better at that too. So I think it's a really cool thing and also really helpful that I have Eric because he can kind of act as my manager in a way. I don't know.

Like having two of us is different than just like vouching for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. That being said, it's a lot of work. It's not the most fun time of year. It's definitely a lot of work. It's a bit stressful. Yeah, and then you're like, you get these offers, you're like, well, what are other people making? Like, you have no idea. Yeah, so that's one major upside of a manager is if they manage like 10 athletes or something. They're knowing what each of these athletes make and have a better grasp on like the market value versus us. We're kind of like, do you think we can ask Lindsay what she made in shoes or not?

Because like we're throwing out a number sometimes is based on like how much work we think it's going to be and how much we think our value is. and we're kind of like, man, we could be under, we could be over. We, you know, because it's not common knowledge out there. Yeah, you're not really supposed to share with other athletes. Yeah, the contract state you're not going to divulge the details. Yeah, I think that's it. One of the important things here is like, not just in triathlon, but like it's, it usually is to the benefit of the people paying out the money for you not to share that with other people.

Because they want to have the control, right? Yeah, yeah, that's fair. But, I mean, we're also really good friends with a lot of pro triathletes, so we kind of have an idea. I love that. The other side of it is like Eric and I are two people. So when we're talking to a sponsor, a lot of the time they treat us as one person and they give us a number as if we're one person. But it's like, no, we're both putting your company on our kids and on our representing you in different ways. So we're trying to keep that in mind as well.

It's not like we're double the value, but it's definitely more than just one person. I don't know. I mean, obviously I'm biased and I love you guys. and I'm not just fan-boying about you, but the things that you can do together are much greater than the things you could do individually. Like, Eric obviously brings an extreme amount of brand awareness to the picture that I, and by the way,

it's stuff he couldn't do by himself. Like, it would be really hard for him to film himself and photograph himself doing stuff. And it's the same for you. You know, obviously you bring a lot to the other side of it. So if I'm a brand, I feel like I'd be like, wow, I'm like, even if I were paying them as two individuals, I'm still getting more than if I were paying two individual athletes of their caliber because of how much they can amplify each other's voice.

Yeah, it's like we're a little bit of a, or Eric's a little bit of a production company and we kind of do stuff in-house, which is valuable. I think it really depends on the sponsor. And one of the chances that a sponsor out there has like a really good reason to activate around my personal brand and Paula's personal brand and has a way to tell both of those stories independently of each other rather than like Eric and Paula. Yeah.

So like Paula is going to sign a contract with X clothing company. That doesn't necessarily make sense for me. It makes more sense for me to sign with this clothing company that aligns more with whatever I'm doing. You know, and then so those are two separate categories versus one bike company that's like you both are doing, people doing triathlon, for example.

All this is to say that it would not have changed Eric's decision to race or not. I think that was, it was kind of funny because we talked to Chris Corbyn after, and he was like, that was the most badass thing you could have possibly done. Yeah, that's cool. No, I'm good. Like, not a lot of athletes could actually pull that off, you know? He had a good year. He's done so much stuff from his media side of things.

I was racing. He was in my support team. It was like, he did not have to race. There was zero pressure externally or internally. Also, any agent or manager that is a good agent or manager would have known that it was better for Eric not to race, right? If you're trying to, even if you're trying to exploit the two of you for the most possible money, it was smarter to have Eric not race that race because he was not excited about it. Managers aren't usually taking percentages of prize money, but I don't know what the contracts look like with managers. Right.

Cool. Anyway, that's an interesting question. And we do have some really cool, exciting new sponsors. We have like three or four, I think, to announce in January. So stay tuned for those. Oh, man. It's been actually a super. Eric says it's stressful, but it's been a super fun process talking to these companies.

It's very exciting. It's like, we feel legitimate. We're like, oh my gosh, we're talking to these companies that we only dreamed of working with two years ago. Right. So it's really cool. It's like the best kind of stress. It's like, all right, dude, you can have a Ferrari or you can have the Porsche. You can only pick one.

Yeah, right. And like, this is terrible. Yeah. This is so terrible. That's not literally that decision. That would be a great decision. I don't know. I don't know.

I kind of feel like it. It's agonizing. Okay. Ferrari, by the way, still haven't slid into my DMs about sponsoring me, but I am open to it. So the second question from Mark was maybe quick, but swimming in the off season, how will you, how will your swim frequency change? or twice a week, whole month without swimming. Thanks so much, Mark. So, I mean, Mark, if you asked me last year,

like right before I did my last race, I remember thinking, and this is the last swim I'm doing this year because if I don't have a race on the schedule, you cannot get me into the pool. This year I feel a little differently, but what about you guys? Like, where do you feel like the swimming

fits into your off season? Oh, we're fresh off a swim right now. Yeah, we swim for the first time in a week. 1K. For me, and I think, you know, Paula can agree or disagree, but for me, the swimming is just like a feel-based thing. We're not going for, I'm not going for fitness while I'm there. It's just like, I want to like try to remember how to swim slowly over the course of, you know, this off season.

And sometimes, like, when you don't have to swim, the swimming is kind of enjoyable for like, okay, it's kind of nice. It's low impact. You're just floating around and you do whatever you want. We went to the pool for, we swam for 30 minutes today. We went to the pool, did a 30-minute gym workout, 30-minute swim. and left. And it was amazing. We didn't have any requirements to swim hard. It was just kind of like, you know, feel in the water. It was our first swim in seven days. And I think there's some importance to that just so that getting back to swimming is not so awful. It's such a feel sport. It's such a coordination sport that if you can just keep a little bit of feel, then a month down the road when you actually start doing structured workouts again, it'll be a lot easier. And that's the approach we're taking right now is, you know, we're where we don't feel like we have to go to the pool, but on days where we actually feel like it,

sounds kind of nice. We want to do gym anyway. It's a nice option. That was our first swim since, in a week and a half, since the race. Swimming is time consuming. Driving to the pool,

getting changed. That's the main downside. Yeah, so if we try to make it an errand, you know, we'll like go out, do some things. We've Christmas shopped on the way home. And get a coffee on the way home. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Things to make it fun. Right. Cool. Okay, well, let's move on to the next question from Tyler. Congrats on all of you for an amazing season.

I have a question about losing fitness during the off season. So, Paul, this is that question that you were referencing. I wrapped up my triathlon season by completing my first Iron Manchin, Chattanooga this past September. I was really happy with how I did, but it's been quite a struggle since then. I've taken several days completely off, did nothing hard for a few weeks, but my heart rate, resting and while exercising, has been consistently elevated by 15 to 20 beats per minute, which is quite a lot. Same was true for me last triathlon season after I finished my final race. of the year. Is this common? I know it's normal to lose fitness during the off season, but I find

it so frustrating to feel weak and slow. What advice would you give to athletes who are in the middle of their off season? Thank you for all you for the sport, Tyler. So do you guys take note of your resting heart rate? Is it something that maybe your aura ring takes note of it, but is something that you keep in your mind somewhere, like that you remember? Like the resting heart rate is increasing in the off season? Yeah. Is that something that you've noticed about yourself? No. No. Eric, what about you? No, but our owing does tell us, so we could look. Because for me, every single year, I'm the same as Tyler.

My resting heart rate goes up by about like seven or eight beats per minute in the offseason slowly. I wonder if that's an effect of losing fitness or if it's just that you're being more relaxed with your diet, you're drinking more alcohol, you're not sleeping as much. Those are all things that contribute to maybe having a higher heart rate as well. What I have read, and I'm going to look this up so I don't say something incorrect, is that your resting heart rate will go. up and your high-end heart rates will come down when you're fatigued. You can't get as high. Your body has like a natural gut limiter on it. But also like when you're resting, your body's still like, it's not really resting. It's like trying to like plug these holes. Or it's like, okay, I'm still so tired from this. Let's send some energy there to fix that. And you, you can't really

get to this real state of recovery. Well, I think the question, resting heart rate aside is interesting because it comes back to the very first question we did on on the pod today where it's kind of of hard to take even a week off because you feel like you're losing all this fitness and I completely relate to that. Like I don't like feeling like I worked so hard, did so many hard workouts to get really fit and to perform at my best. And then even after one week, I feel like I've gained 15 pounds. I can't get out of, you know, it's just like this awful feeling, but it's necessary. It's crazy. It's an essential cycle to be able to stay healthy and build back to fitness, but it's not fun. So I completely relate. And I was hoping maybe

you and Eric could speak to this more because I agree with this person. It's really, really hard. Well, the first thing I want to say is I want to remind our beloved podcast listeners that, unfortunately, all of us, except for Paula and Eric, are not professional triathletes. Well, we do have some professionals that listen. But Paula is literally one of the best in the world, so her body may not work the same way ours works. So I can't take, I think five days off or a week off, is not enough for most people. I think that's amazing for you that you have obviously shown

that you can do this year after year and you still are getting faster and stronger. But I think for most people, taking a good amount of time off is good. You have neuromuscular stuff that resets. You have hormonal stuff that needs to reset. Yeah, I don't think anyone disagrees that it's not important.

I think what she's saying is it's just really hard. How do you mentally deal with that? you do other things. Yeah, that's a good answer. Like you need to clean the garage once a year. You need to buy Christmas decorations. You need to, et cetera, et cetera. Go volunteer.

I totally agree. Those are the times when I feel like I miss training the least is when I'm busy with other things. I'm not just like sitting at home kind of wishing I was exercising. It's like productive doing things that are productive that you've been putting off because you've been busy training. That's really satisfying. and can kind of give you the same satisfaction of training as training does sometimes. Think of it as like when you take a rest day and that's like you're like that's part of the training is the rest day. The offseason is part of the training.

It's going to make you faster. Yeah. We deserve it. Just to check in on our conversation for a few minutes ago, my resting heart rate has definitely gone up the last few weeks. Oh yeah. There you go. How much? How many beats per minute?

Four. So that's kind of where mine is that. Mine's like five to seven in the off season. It goes up. Yeah, I've been holding steady at 35 all on season. 35? Wow. Last week was 39. Yeah, if anyone knows this, send me an email. If anyone has like a scientific answer on this, let me know. Next one, we're going to keep this one really quick. It's a question for me. Nick as an age group,

or do you think it's more beneficial spending time nailing the 70.3 distance and cutting time there before going back to the Iron Man to be more competitive with more aerobic base or just keep focused on the longer distances and potentially wait for the time to drop. What I'll say is this, is that my experience, and I don't know if you guys have had this Ergenpoa, I imagine you haven't because you train at the limit of what's possible, but my best sprint distance races were when I was training for Olympic. My best Olympic distance races is when I was training for 70.3. And like after I DNF the Iron Man, I had my best ever like Olympic distance power on the bike after that. So I don't want to discredit all the very specific race specific training. But I think doing a lot of volume is really, if your body can handle it, is such a powerful.

Do either of you find any truth in that? No, I think this is, you hit it on the head of that. The Iron Man probably just forces you into thinking you need to train more total hours per week. And that's just approaching, that's just bringing you closer and closer to the level that a pro athlete trains for. Like we relate this a lot to short like 70.3 training versus Olympic distance training. We're not training anymore now that we do 70.3 than we did when we were training Olympic distance because we were already training kind of the maximum amount of hours that we could handle per week when we were doing that.

We were just doing a little bit more intensity, a little bit more like specific speed for that distance. You were just shifting the kind of workouts. Yeah. So as an age group athlete, if you're like, oh, I'm going to train for an Olympic distance and that means I need to do 10 hours a week. but oh man I'm stepping it up to 70.3 so I got to do 15 hours a week and if I do an Iron Man I got to do 20 if you were doing 20 hours of training per week for that Olympic distance

yeah you're gonna be way faster than if you're doing 10 and it just seems like the Iron Man is just like making you really carve out more time out of like a fear of not being able to complete it right? Yeah and you know what something I haven't thought of is probably if I was doing

20 hours a week with Olympic specific workouts that would be even better than doing the 20 hours a week with Iron Man specific workouts and then trying to do an Olympic. I guess that's so obvious now that I say it out loud.

But I kind of, yeah, that's interesting to hear you say that, especially with pro athletes. It's like it doesn't matter what distance they're racing. They are maxing out the amount of volume they can do, of course. Yeah.

So it's just about shifting that intensity in ways that are beneficial to that race distance. Yeah, for the most part. Cool. Okay, next question. Hey, TTL Nash. First off, congrats to everyone

for the collective teamwork at the World Championship, which was how long ago was that now? That was like almost a couple months ago. A lifetime. Yeah, it feels like so long ago. My question is, what is the main difference between using a whoop bracelet versus an aura ring?

I see triathletes using one or the other, but I'm wondering what the main difference is. I know Eric uses the aura. Well, actually, both of them use the o'erring, but not sure if you guys have experience with both and prefer one over the other. Love, Hannah, from Chattanooga, Tennessee. We both use an aura ring,

and full disclosure, we've never even tried a whoop. I think the reason that we haven't really tried a whoop is because neither of us really want to wear a bracelet like full time. And I think that's the main difference between the two. The aura ring is a ring. The whoop is a bracelet. And if you're wearing a sports watch

and it's just having another thing on your wrist, which I think is like more cumbersome and less comfortable than having the ring. Eric and I wear a ring 24-7. We'll take it off to swim. But otherwise, we got it on and don't even notice it. So I think it's a super light,

kind of attractive, um, cleaner look than the Woot bracelet. Yeah. I don't really know. I can't really speak to the like effectiveness of the data. But I think like on your finger is a is a really good spot in terms of how close the ring is to like the vessels. And I think,

I do think the aura ring is a little bit more geared towards like it is inception anyway. It was a little more geared towards sleep. health and the whoop was a little more geared towards athletics and like activity tracking and now I think they've both sort of converged in the middle albeit you know they probably still have a little more strength in their original area

yeah cool our next and final question hi Paul Eric Nick and Flynn question for you I am terrible a kick and I'm wanting to improve I'm looking to buy a new pair of fins and was wondering what the difference was between the short and long pairs is there one

that would be better over the other Most on my team have the short fins. I love your pod and look forward to the new episode every week. Been here since day one. That's a day oneer. Also way to go guys on the strong season. Cheers, Natasha. From Frederickson, New Brunswick.

All right, my thing on fins, we don't use fins a lot, but the short fins are way, way better for a lot of reasons. They're easier on your ankles, easier on your knees and your hips. The big flippers are just this huge lever that you have to get through the water. The other advantage of the short fins is you'll be able to have a high high. higher cadence of kick a little bit versus having this big flipper on the end. You're naturally, it's like big gear. You know, you're going to slow down your kick. And I don't know necessarily if that will translate to like triathlon as well. If you want to actually get better at kicking, the short ones will, they're not actually much

slower. They'll just force you to have a higher cadence. It's true. Do you, are we talking about like, when you're talking about the long fins, you're not talking about the fins that people used to go scuba diving. You're still talking. talking about swim fitness specific fins or are you talking about the scuba diving fins? No, I'm not talking to scuba. We're talking about like fins that extends six inches longer than your toes versus one inch. Right, got it. Some of the zoomer fins, like the super short ones, are not that fast.

Like those are not great. But the one, I'm trying to find the brand of the ones we use because they're really, really good. Aren't they arena? They're similar to the arena ones, but there's a few different brands that are that length. And the nice thing about them is they don't give you any blisters. I've never had a blister with them. They have an opening in the toe so you don't have your toe rubbing on it.

Just like a heel strap versus heel strap. That's what I have to. I love the heel strap. Although the same as yours neck actually. Do you know what brand yours are? The Cheetah ones? No, mine are long.

What? No, they're not. Oh, they're not? Okay. They're not what I would call a long fin. They're an acronym. It's like DMC or something. Okay.

I don't know if this rings true to either of you, but the first time I wore those fins, I had swam for years without the fans. And the first time I wore them, I did like a 200 of them and was amazed at how they felt. I mean, just like, it feels like there's a motor, right? Crazy, crazy, crazy feeling.

But that's not the point. The point was, when I took them off, it's like, this thing just clicked in my head is like, oh my gosh, I've been kicking from the wrong place until this moment. And the fins just really, they were able to highlight that in such an obvious way.

And I noticed that I'd been kicking from my knees a lot. And the fins taught me, it's like, no, that's not. not where you generate power. The power is from your like upper, up higher, like towards your hips. And when I took them off, I was just like, now I think I get it. I'm kicking with my whole leg now. And the knee is just kind of like a swivel point a little bit. Yeah. No, it's so true. Does that, did you have that feeling? I didn't even have that feeling, but it was something that swim coaches I was reinforced. Like, don't kick from your knees, kick from your hips. So the fact that you could feel that and learn that naturally through using fins is pretty cool.

I mean, I remember seeing that, but it was just, I had to experience it to. really like, oh, it's so true. There's a lot of swim stuff like that where somebody can tell it to you 10 times and then a year later something happens and you're like, oh my gosh, that's what they meant. That's right. That's right. I found one of the fin brands of the perfect fin and we're not sponsored by Arena, but they're the arena Powerfin Pro.

They've got the heel, strap, they got the toe box. They are the perfect length. nothing but good things to say about these fins. Okay, the other brand actually is called HydroTech 2 Ocean Swim Fins. They're also good. Oh, and maybe something I remember hearing at the swim shop that I bought my fins is that the nice thing about the strap in the back instead of like a whole heel cup is that if you are swimming open water and like a wave hits, a lot of times that they'll grab the heel and pull the fins off you.

Whereas the strap, it lets kind of water flow around it. That's what I've been told. I don't know how true that is. is. That's true. I guess like whatever bodyboarder fins are, the hill. Yeah. And by the way, mine are the DMC elites.

That's what I was using. So I was right. When I said that, I was like, I'm just thinking of run DMC. I don't know what's happening in my head. But no, that's actually what they're called. We have flipper connoisseurs. We have flipper connoisseurs. That's right. We're like, we need a lot of mozok on. You need arena powerfin pros. And we need our cities bends.

Right. That's right. That's right. Well, maybe do we want to say, Eric, are you allowed to say that you ordered the Lamarzaco machine? Yeah, full price. We were definitely allowed to say it. It's painful. But I think we brought this up. It's not painful.

It sat in our cart for like two months. That's the amount of time of place in your car. You earned it. You had a great year. And I will just say that part of the reason we did it is because we do, like, someday I have aspirations. No guarantees that it will happen of like bringing it to a TTR pop up and actually making some coffees and it's equipped. It's ready to to make some coffees for like more than

just Paula and I in the morning. It doesn't need to be plugged straight into like a crazy outlet that'll like overpowered outlet. It can run a regular 110. Yeah. That's why we're also getting a Mercedes Ben's van. It's a mobile power outlet. Wow. This is all just like it's this giant plan just so we can serve coffee on the run. It's coming together so wonderfully. Nice. Well, thank you guys so much for sending in your questions. You can submit your questions and support the podcast at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. And remember that if you want that 25% off, Kesteli, you just need to sign up by Monday. That's when those codes will be going out to the supporters. Huge, enormous thank you to everybody. It's really been a fun project and nearing the end of the whole year of doing it,

which is crazy. I have one more funny thing to tell everyone before we just wrap it up. Maybe this could just be like, as the music's coming in and we're, all being all funny. But we all, I don't know if you should even disclose this. Nick, you can cut this out if you want, but we like endearingly call the podcast listeners, the kids. So all of you internally, yeah, to each other. Internally, we were referring to you as the kids. So when we're like, when we have a good joke, or we get a good thing, we're like, oh, the kids are going to love this. The kids are going to love this. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. No, they need to, I think it's time that they can know. Yeah. And then when I'm, when I'm reading through the questions, I'm like, oh,

the kids are so smart. They send us the best questions. Meanwhile, like most of them are older than we are, but. Yeah. We raised them so well. Yeah, that's right. That's the level of connection we feel. That's the takeaway. Yeah, it's not like we think you all are inferior to us.

It's just that we feel like you're part of our family. Oh, for sure. Oh, it's true. I mean, I was in REI and someone talked to me to listen to the podcast, and I was just like, I know this person already. You know, like we go back a whole year. You connect. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. So thanks, kids. we will talk to you next week. Maybe people might be insulted by this. I don't know. No, I don't agree. I think it's very cute.

I like it a lot. Okay. I like it a lot. I like it a lot. It's an eternal joke. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, thank you guys.

We'll see you next week. Bye, everybody. Hi.