That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon performance, recovery shakes, TT bike saddles, building a brand, working while being a professional athelete, and more!

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

This week we are recording from Oceanside, CA getting ready for Paula to race Ironman 70.3 Oceanside. We start out with some Bike Tech With Eric talking about rim depth in crosswinds, then we move on to more general triathlon topics. We discussed what to look for in a triathlon saddle, how to handle winds while riding, the less glamorous sides of triathlon, pro bike speeds, waxed chains, trying to make it as a pro while still having a normal job, what kind of recovery shake or smoothie to have post workout, and where we see TTL going in the next 2 years. To submit your own questions, and to become a beloved podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Erica Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. And we are coming to you from Oceanside, California for the Oceanside 70.3 race edition, pre-race show, whatever you want to call it. We're going to talk. It's not a pre-race show. No, we're going to mention it. We'll talk about it, but we also got a heap of questions to get through. And I assume Nick has picked some that are a little bit racing specific. There are some race questions, but not any more than usual.

But I do think these are some of my favorite batch of questions we've, gotten in the past few months. Nick, um, so last week we put out a, we put out a call-out for questions because we were lacking in some questions. And we probably got like eight, eight times the normal number. So all the ones that I uploaded, I uploaded them maybe four days ago. So we've had like, probably double that even, if new ones come in. Wow. So pump the brakes. Save your questions. There's even someone asking like, hey, what percentage of questions get read on the pod? Because I've submitted four and none of them have gotten in. Yeah, I felt bad for that. guy. I thought maybe we'd answer his question, which is that question. We don't have time for

that question. We only have time for triathlon specific questions. You just got to submit better questions, I guess. Actually, the reason that we didn't have so few questions that week is because we switched over to a new website, which is beautiful and lovely and allows us to have countdown timers to our next launch. But the little script or the code or the whatever that brings over the question input device did not make it for the first half of that week. So that's why we We're low on questions, but now we're stocked up. We have many. Yep.

If you're new here, Paula and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a professional musician, amateur triathlet. Nick and I are both not racing this weekend. It's just Paula. So it's the Paula show, and Nick and I are making that show about Paula. And we right now can see the swim, the ending of the swim base. Or maybe the midway point, what would you say, Paula? Well, we can see like the harbors.

So if it ends up being a harbor swim, you can see basically the entire swim. So why would it end up being a harbor swim? Why do you say that? I don't know. Sometimes if the surf is high, they move it to the harbor. I've probably, I've done this race six times. This will be my sixth time. And it's been like half the time in the harbor, half the time a beach start.

I think generally speaking, if you can see, if there is a wave, the swim in the ocean is getting canceled. If it's like over ankle, about knee height, They just don't want to risk it, right? You got people run into the surf who have never seen the ocean before coming from who knows where. And it's just, it's a whole thing. So plan B is they start everyone just in a line in the harbor and you swim just to the tip of the harbor and back in. And option A, you dive into the water and you swim over to the harbor and into the harbor.

Do you know if Iron Man has ever done a situation where the pros do one swim course and the A group of do another? Never. Never. How dare you? Is that because a logistical thing? or is that because they want to make the age groupers feel like they're doing the same race as the pros in your opinion? I don't think it has anything to do with having anyone feel anyway. It's just easier. Yeah, logistics. Yeah. Timing mats and making sure that they know where everybody is.

And you can't have half the kayakers go one way and the other half to go the other way for the age groupers versus the pros. And the thing about Oceanside that's really interesting, which we will cover later, I'm sure, is that it is so condensed. Like the pro men have to go off and then like 90 seconds later, the pro women have to go off and then like 90 seconds later. the first wave age group, men have to go off because they have this very limited amount of time where you can ride your bike on Camp Pendleton, which is a massive, massive military base here in California. And that's just kind of the way it is. So there's not really any extra time for anything to go wrong in this scenario. And then on top of it, this year, I don't know if there's ever been a 70.3 star list with so many athletes, but it's going to be about 120 athletes between the pro men and pro women, which is going to change the dynamics.

of the race potentially, potentially a lot, especially for someone like Paula. I don't think it changes the dynamics in any way. Not for you. You don't think you're going to be passing men sooner, catching men sooner? Yeah, I guess that will potentially change the dynamics. But 80 men, how many of them are competitive? 15. Well, that's what I'm talking about how it changes the dynamics for you. Or for someone like Sam Long, who may be passing, who knows how many people. I just wonder how it will affect it. It'll be fun to watch in terms of that. I just think if you want to listen to the pre-race hypotheses of all this stuff

go listen to ProTrieneas because they did a really good deep reef of Oceanside and because I'm racing I don't really want to do a real deep dive into the what-ifs. Yeah, great. Because that stresses me out.

Sure. Let's just, I mean, if there's anything that's like interesting that's not like the what ifs, I can answer that. But I just like, I don't know, people get so wrapped up

and all this stuff and what's going to happen and it's fun, but also it's just going to happen. That is true. I've been in pro-briefing so many times. We're like, well, what if person A is about to pass person B, but then person F comes along and drops a gel?

You're like, okay, yes, that is a theoretical complication, but it's not going to happen. And if it did happen, everybody understands that this is a freak situation. We don't need to write a rule for that. Right, right. So anyway. We're at our hotel. It's called Oceanside Marina Suites.

Very generously given a room by the owner of this hotel. But we did have a little bit of a mix-up with the check-in date. So we got here last night at 9 p.m. We drove late to avoid traffic and our name wasn't on the hotel reservation. So I was like, oh, no, are we going to do? We have the van, obviously, which is great to sleep in, but it's actually really difficult to find places to sleep in the van where you're not going to get kicked out by the police or whoever might not want to on their property. So we slept in the van one night, which worked out fine, but we are traveling with five bikes, kickers, luggage, so much stuff. A horse.

A horse, two humans. So to, like, jigsaw the vans so that we could sleep. Oh, yeah. Was it kind of a, like a squeezed-in scenario? Sardines? I mean, once we got everything off the bed on onto the front two seats. But you also have to kind of, like, leave the front seat drivable in case you need to make a quick escape in the middle of the night. You know?

Like, if someone comes and knocks on your door and they're like, you need to leave, Eric needs to be able to, like, get in the driver's seat and drive. So, um... This is like, you think top pro triathletes, five sports. Star hotels, private jets, driving around in Lamborghinis. No, that's the age groupers, Nick. Oh, right, right, right, of course. We're staying in our van. Right.

No, but now we're at this pretty cool place we can see the swim start. And, yeah, thank you to them for the generous stay. Yep, cool. Okay, so let's do some bike tech with Eric. Okay, this first one, hey Eric, Paula, Nick, and Flynn. This might be a silly question, but I will be upgrading my tri-bike, and it will come with Zip 858s. We'll be selling the rear 858, buying a disc, and buying some training wheels.

Should I get a set of 404s to still get used to feeling crosswinds? Or just do 303s and not worry about wind as much. So first of all, what's an 858, what's a 404, and what's a 303 from Zip? You can think of it loosely as an 858 is 80 millimeters deep, a 454 is 40 millimeters deep, three, anything, you know, if it starts with a three, it's around 30, if it starts with a four, and so on. And the issue that they're talking about here is that the deeper wheels, while they are faster, they also catch more wind, right? So they kind of are a different riding dynamic. Yeah, but they've made a lot of advancements lately in aerodynamics. So like a 404 from back in the day

from like five years ago actually handles more poorly in a crosswind than a 454 currently does. The 454s are just more stable these days. While still maintaining most, if not all of the speed advantage. Yeah, exactly. An 858, it will definitely catch more wind than a 454. Right. Okay. So what do you think this person should do?

I personally would say shallower is better for training because I don't like the feeling of getting blown all over the road. It doesn't really matter how fast you go in training and the 303s are slightly lighter, good for climbing, less, you know, less whatever reactive in crosswinds. But they don't look quite as cool. I think the 454s have this like kind of deeper look that people like. It's interesting. You take the kind of confidence boost that you get from a wheel that's less shaky in the wind so that you can focus more on the effort, which ends up helping you more in the long run. Yeah.

Yeah, I think if you're at all concerned about being tippy or uncomfortable in crosswinds or you live somewhere very windy, generally speaking, then go with the shallower wheel and you won't have to sit up in the middle of an interval theoretically. If you're 250 pounds and 6-3 and don't feel crosswinds, then go with the cool looking 404. Also, I think it also helps to have a deeper rear and a shallower front. So you could do like a 4 on the back and a 3 on the front or an 8 on the back and a 4 on the front. And having a disc on the back or a wider back actually provides some stability kind of like a sail. And the front wheel is what's catching the wind and causing that feeling of scary.

Scariness, yeah. So if you can go narrower on the front, that's also an option. Yeah, that's smart. Eric, would you agree with that? Yeah, that would be the best bang for your buck. Just get a 454 or a 404 for the front and keep your 858, 808 on the back. Yeah, 858. Cool.

Okay, now on to regular scheduled programming here, our questions, triathlon-related questions, submitted by you are faithful listeners. You can submit those questions once again at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. and we really appreciate that. First question here is from Amy in London. Hi, Paula, Eric and Nick, love the pod and everything you do to promote the sport. I jumped on the triathlon bandwagon last year and have loved the training in the community of people I've met along the way ever since. I did two Olympic distance events and a half Iron Man last year and I'm training for my first full Iron Man later this year. Do you have any tips or recommendations for what to look for in bike saddles as the

duration of ride starts to get significantly longer that balances comfort with additional weight? Is it better to get female specific saddles versus unisex. Thanks for everything you do, Amy. First of all, do you feel like you guys have noticed a big shift in triathlon saddles since you started racing pro? Major shift in triathlon saddle, I'm in concept from when I first started paying attention. Back in the day, the main thing used to be the physique aerione try, which was just like, I don't know, just one single classic looking saddle with a lot of foam on it.

There's maybe like the width of a banana that you were sitting on. And you'd just like ride the edge of that and you would go completely numb down there. But you had like a base to sit on. Right. And these days it's gone more to this like double rail like a channel style design. Do both of you use that? Yeah. The Satero?

Yeah, we both use the Satero on our TTI bikes. And then on our road bikes, we use the specialized power saddle. You do, is your power saddle with MIMIC or is it just the kind of classic? MIMIC, but I think they're the same. The mimic just was at least initially designed for women, and it has a center channel that's a little more forgiving and softer. So that's why a lot of women prefer that. But I've seen men use them as well now. Yeah.

I would say that just having sat on Paula's for, you know, 10 seconds, it does just overall feel like a softer saddle versus the power saddle is like hard leather. Mine's also that like spider webby. Oh, fancy. No, the mimic is that kind of like it's a short center channel. That is extra soft. So what's the spire? The one you have is like the 3D printed kind of looking one. Yeah.

That's fancy, fancy, fancy. But that's just like aesthetic and light. I think it's comfort. That's what I was referring to as being squishier than the standard. But that's kind of irrelevant to this question, which is for TT riding. The main thing that I noticed switching from a physique saddle initially is the two-channel design. It's such so much more comfortable. And I was getting issues personally with numbness in my feet and my leg.

and when I switched over to a, mine is the ISM saddle, but a lot of companies make saddles that have this design up because they're so comfortable. Do you guys feel like this is like, you've solved the problem, or do you feel like there's still room for improvement? I've actually never had an issue with a saddle in my life, but I've always used specialized saddles, like from the day I rode a bike. Even when I was on a track, I had a specialized saddle on it. And ever since I put the Catero on for the first time, which was when I first got a TT bike, it was not an issue. Oh, yeah. So I never went through this curve of, like, trying to find the perfect saddle.

And I don't know if it's just because I found the perfect saddle right from the start. But it is a little bit individual. However, the fact that me and Eric both use the same saddle and we both love it and we're both completely different in that area, must mean it's kind of universally good. Yeah, I think the concept behind it is really good. It has like a short nose, too. Yeah, yeah. I think, like as far as getting the fit right and everything, the angle, like the tilt, how nose up or nose down is very critical. This is this thing you can work with your bike fitter on. And then I would also just be very, I don't know, except that riding, if you ride on the trainer a lot, no saddle is just going to feel like heavenly and amazing on a trainer in one position for like four hours straight unless you just found the unicorn saddle. So if you, if you're just going to feel like heavenly and amazing on a trainer in one position for like four hours straight, unless you just found the unicorn saddle. So if you. you're testing saddles out and a bike shop is letting you borrow them or whatever try to take them

outside for some outside rides to really give it that fair chance. And if you, even if your saddle's comfortable, but you're getting like saddle sores or there's some kind of issue, you shouldn't be getting that. Like it, the saddle should be something you never even think about, really. Yeah. Which is the case for me. That's great. That's ideal, especially with the amount of riding you do. I feel like the margin for ever becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. Yeah. I think the only time I would ever get a saddle source if it's really sweaty and I'm riding on the trainer 15 hours a week or something. And they're like running right off the bike too. Yeah, yeah, something like that. But give us a taro a try. Yeah, sweet. Next question here is from Sean. Hey, Paula, Eric, Nick and Flynn,

who is over here laying down right now. Longtime listener of the pod and I had a question about training. I live by one of the great lakes. There's consistently wind that blows off the lake. Almost any route you bike out here will have both a five to 15 mile per hour headwind and tailwind. is there anything I should be trying to do to take advantage of a tailwind or to ease the grind into a headwind? Any tips for dealing with the crosswinds? Thanks and good look at Oceanside and on recovery. I hate the wind. I don't know. I don't have any tips. How do you? How do you?

I get really scared and freak out and cry. Good. Freaking out and crying. Not helpful. Can confirm. Not constructive. I actually, so here's my problem with wind. When it's a tailwind, you're going really freaking fast in Arrow, which terrifies me. I hate it.

see. And when you're going into a headwind, the bike is wobbling all over the place super unstable, which freaks me out. Right. And when it's a crosswind, it's just like, just so bad. You're riding diagonal just to go straight. Yeah. So my instinct is to like get out of the bars if it's really scary. And like you hit a wind in it. Do you try to stay low when you do that? No, Nick. No. Just like, you're stable, but you're also not sucking up the wind as Yeah, in these moments of pure freakout, I don't give a shit about how fast I'm going. I'm just riding. I think when Nick is trying to get at here is that by breaking arrow and sitting fully up,

you're actually making it worse. Making it worse. I fully know that. I fully know that. But you cannot help. But it feels right. It's scary. Like, I fully sympathize with this person.

I think truly, and the stupidest answer and the most obvious answer is like the more you do it, the more comfortable you get doing it. And your wheel choice can make a difference, which we've talked about earlier. I do find that a lot of my fear with crosswinds and headwinds comes from cars. So if it's really windy and you're riding on a road with lots of cars, that's where I have this fear, whether it's rational or not, I don't know, but the thought of getting blown into the cars, something like that just really scares me. So in a race, I'm actually quite a lot better at riding in the wind. Another factor is the more power you're putting into your pedals,

the stable or the bike is. So if you're in a race and you're riding pretty, hard. You're not going to notice the crosswinds or the headwinds as much as when you're just riding easy into the wind. So I think that's a good cue and what I've been trying to, as I see Paula having these moments and everything, I'm trying to think about like, what do I think about when I'm riding in a crosswind that I think is legitimately a thing? And I go to relax my shoulders, really feel my butt on the saddle and put power into the pedals. Just focus on feeling planted on the saddle, don't tense up your shoulders, and focus on peddling. And the bike's going to move around a little bit, but you'll notice after a couple of it moving around, it comes back to center.

Unless you're experiencing gusts, like wind gust of 60 miles per hour out of nowhere. That's the scary stuff. Like the bike's going to move around and you'll feel over time that if you just keep doing your thing and focus on riding straight, like the bike will correct itself. It wants to go straight. And it's just, it's something you just kind of have to get used to the feeling of. And it's very unnerving. at first, I 100% admit. Would you guys ever change your, like, for example, if it's a windy day and I had a TT ride schedule, I'm like, okay, I'm going to do my gravel bike instead today to not have

this as much of an issue. Is that something you guys ever do or you're like, nope, that's on the schedule? I'd be more likely to change to a train a ride on the T.T. Oh, yeah. If that was the case and not just switch to the gravel bike. It's less scary for me on a road bike or a gravel bike, but still wind is not fun. Yeah. I would do the gravel bike.

If you get in the trees, it's better. Yeah, in Bend, like there's some long gravel climbs we can do that are in the trees, and you don't even notice it's windy sometimes. Right, right. Cool. Okay, next question here is from Allie. Hey, y'all, thank you for continually inspiring, encouraging, and educating newbies like me. Oh, wow.

Thank you, Allie. This past weekend, I ran a 200-mile relay across Texas, and while my subsequent posts hammed up the heroics and excitement of the weekend, it failed to encapsulate the true suffering, blisters, no sleep, long miles alone on dark country roads, and the stink of cramming six runners in a van over the stretch of two days. It got me thinking, social media tends to capture our hero moments in training, pictures crossing the finish line, hard workouts accomplished, et cetera, but it does cut out a lot of the less picturesque aspects of training. In y'all's opinion,

what are some of the most unglamorous aspects of training and racing that often don't get shown? Thanks for all you do, Allie, in Texas. First of all, would you guys ever do something like this? Like a kind of relay race through the night? I got invited to do 24 hours of mountain biking with two other guys in Oregon, and I have not accepted. I really struggle with this sleep deprivation aspect. I did crew my sister for her ultra marathon in Bend two years ago,

I guess it's two years ago, two summers ago now, and I ran from like 1 a.m. to 6.000. 6 a.m. And it actually worked out okay, but I hadn't also been running, you know, for 24 hours prior to that on and off. But I don't know, someday, but it's not something that I hear. And I'm like, oh, that sounds sweet. So funny. So a bunch of my friends ran a relay race, a similar one called The Speed Project, which traditionally is from Santa Monica to Las Vegas. And I went to Vegas to kind of party with everyone, but I didn't crew or run the race. And when I was there, I met the guy. You can also do it solo. By yourself, not a relay. And this guy ran 300. miles and broke the record and won it.

A bunch of people do it. And he was fine. He was like partying with us in the pool. I figure once you run 300 miles, you're like, comatose for a week. No problem. Anyway, what do you guys think is the most unglamorous, some of the most unglamorous aspects that don't get put on social media? We put a lot of the unglamorousness on social media, maybe.

We've talked about, like, laundry. Like, you have to do so much laundry. A lot of laundry shopping. A lot of food. sleeping in the van at races. Right. Yeah, I think that's it. Laundry, grocery shopping.

But like every human does that. But triathletes do it so much more. We do a little bit more. And we spend a crazy amount of time on our laptops, like answering sponsor things and like I'm editing and Paula's doing. Eric does probably three times more than me on this laptop. Yeah, but I would, yeah, I don't know. I get excited about it.

But still, there's. there's, that's not something that we're taking a picture of and posting twice a week versus us at the top of a mountain riding our bikes in that awesome moment. We're not posting a picture of us getting in a fight and having to stop at a gas station because one of us bonked and, you know, et cetera and like, what's this route and the flat tire? And like, at least for me, even though I create a ton of content around what we do, that I have to strike that balance between, okay, Paul is having a moment. and I can either get out the camera and capture this moment or I can help her through it.

I think that what the unglamorous part is like the training itself. And I think it's such a misconception because when you watch a YouTube video or a real, it's got music to it. This is so funny. Tell the story of when Eric said that line to you because that's great. Yeah, like you're watching these things and it's like slow motion and good music and good color editing. But when you're doing the activity, there's no music playing. The music is not playing. So if you can imagine doing that in total silence with a raging crosswind, it's a little different.

Also in the video, it's two minutes. In real life, it's three and a half hours. And it's like with this with any sport or any edit. It always looks cooler with music to it. So when Nick and Eric come home from a day of filming or an evening of filming, they play all the clips just to any random songs. from Spotify that they like and it really adds to all of it so much more than if we just sat there in silence watching it so yeah i don't know i would say just the training itself don't be

fooled it's not that fun yeah nobody's making youtube videos about tuesday where they did an hour spin on the bike and a 3k swim and a one hour run all slow and they were super tired and took a nap they're making a video once every two months about the hero day so Just keep that in mind. There's a lot of uninterestingness that goes on. Do you feel like maybe neither of you have mentioned this, and I thought you might, is the, you said the computer, but I feel like the trying to keep up and make your sponsors happy, and that is like always a little bit of a behind the scenes struggle.

No, not a struggle. It's just a time kind of commitment sometimes. I feel like, maybe I'm wrong. I think you're both right. It comes fairly naturally to us. I think we naturally like to take pictures. Paula loves taking pictures. I love taking pictures.

We like making videos. We like to have this interaction between people when they see what we're doing and they're inspired to go train or whatever it is. We enjoy that. And a lot of people do not. And if you do not, the current landscape of having to be on social media and everything would be completely exhausting. Right.

So it's not that we don't do a lot of work there. It's just that we kind of enjoy it. We have good relationships with our sponsors, direct people there that we like to talk to anyway. So it doesn't feel so much like this grind most of the time. But also our sponsors are not, they never bug us for things because we just do it anyway. I thought it was interesting. We hung out with Simon Whitfield this week and we got to swim with him and hang out with him and he's had a lot of now interaction with other pros in terms of sponsorship. And he was saying he really appreciates when other pros say, listen, I'm not a social media person. I'm not going to be doing this. Or when

pros say, I love this stuff and I want to do more. And I feel like it helps them kind of organize themselves more. and it's clear when a company partners with you guys, they know that you're going to put it out. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, it's one thing to promise and under the liver than to people know what they're getting. Okay, next question here is from Ryan. Suppity, sup, sup, sup, supity.

Wow, that's one way to start a question. I was wondering why and how pros are able to ride heart bike courses like St. George in a similar time as they might ride a more straightforward course like Santa Cruz. Eric rode Santa Cruz in 205 and St. George in 2002. St. George seems like it's an objectively harder course, whereas Santa Cruz is more or less an out and back. Does it come down to race dynamics, caliber of the field in front? Your biggest fan from Irvine, Ryan.

So is this just an outlier statistic, Eric, or do you feel like this is mostly true? I think that has, you nailed it some halfway through the question there. I think it's got a lot to do with the strength of field. Santa Cruz, when I rode 205, I was riding well, but I was pushing the pace in front. until I think halfway through the race when Tim O'Donnell and a couple other people caught us. But it was more tactical and less complete flat out like St. George Iron Man 70.3 World Championships is.

And it was a smaller field. So the first half of the bike was just Matt Sharp and I taking turns leading into the wind versus St. George was, yeah, top 10 fastest guys at the time. I don't think that you can look at pro times though and say, oh, this course is hard to. than this course because the dynamics of every race is so different and wind conditions, temperature, all of that changes so much. So it's, I would say looking at the elevation profile

of the race is a better indication than just times for how difficult courses. I do think there are, there is still less of a difference between your guys like average miles per hour versus age group or mile per hour from course to course. And I wonder if it's not because you guys are like bumping up against an aerodynamic ceiling, whereas like age groupers are, less bumping up against that. So there's this bigger delta. Yeah, maybe. Also, like, the pavement in St. George, generally speaking, is fantastic and beautiful.

Santa Cruz is meh. And Eric, you've said this many times before. And actually, Paul, you've said this, too, that the course in St. George gets a wrap for being this crazy, hilly course. But you can kind of stay arrow through most of it other than, like, Snow Canyon and keep your speed. Is that right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, if the hills are rolling, you're just like going up and over pretty quick.

Whereas like age groupers, we slow down a little bit more. You guys can like maintain your speed. Maybe, yeah. Okay, next question here is from Shane. What's up, folks? Two episodes ago, Nick casually dropped that he bought a super cool silka hot wax chain melt thing. What's up with that? I swear in the past podcast, Nick has poo-poohed wax chains. And in my opinion, incorrectly said the marginal gains hardly seem worth it. What's up with the switch? Are you now drinking the Kool-Aid? Thanks for the chill triathlon lifestyle vibes. you guys bring to the sport and the rat apparel. Cheers, Shane. So you guys, I think at one point you were only doing wax chains for racing,

but now you do wax chains all the time. Is that right? We don't do like the full wax situation all the time. We do the wax just for racing. Paula's gotten a couple of like pre-waxed fancy chains. But like day to day we just use the squirt wax drip wax. like type loop. It's just kind of like a topper.

It tops it up. But you can use it, you've been using it well kind of indefinitely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I keep our chains very clean. And that's just the biggest thing.

If you're going to use that or if you're going to wax the chain either way, you need to start with an incredibly, incredibly clean chain. And I got an ultrasonic cleaner. And I've been doing that. And yeah. So.

Yeah. And the reason I switched was because initially I kind of, I was put point. on it because I thought the marginal gains were not worth it. And I'm excited to see really how different it feels. But the reason I switched is more because of, it seems like it might be less maintenance than a traditionally looped chain. And I'm excited to have my components last longer, which apparently wax chain will also help with that. There's just less metal on metal rub. I don't know. This is what excites me about it. And I still haven't done it because I haven't

had the time, but it's more about the things, everything that isn't how much faster it is. And then if it works well, I'll put it on my TT bike as well. Yeah, yeah, I would say when it comes to racing, that's when we're caring about it the most, and then during training, we're doing the best we can with the drip. Yep, cool. And I bought the drip as well, so I'm going to, I'll see how that goes. Next question here is from Nelly. Hey, TTL Pod.

I've been listening to your show for a few months now. I signed up for my first triathlon in October this year, so I'm new to the sport, but love learning from you guys. I'm very curious about your journey to becoming professional triathletes. I imagine you did not just wake up one day and call yourself pros. Was there a point in time

where you worked traditional jobs and trained as amateur triathletes and slowly became a professional? How did you get your first sponsorship or paid event? Hope you pick my question because I can't wait to hear the details of your journey.

That's from Nellie. This is funny because you guys have very different approaches to how you got to pros. Kind of like the opposite ends. Yeah, and this question could take the rest of the podcast. Well, we have a few questions.

That's very in depth. No, I guess just basically speaking in triathlon, there is a process by which you can qualify to have your professional license. So you have to win age group national championships overall or get top three. Or you have to go and get like top three at an Ironman 70.3 event with a pro field and be within 10% of the winner's time. You can go find this. I don't know what it is currently. and then you are eligible to insert yourself into a pro race. Are you a professional athlete in terms of you are making money and being profitable?

No, that step comes in when you prove to the sponsorship world that you are worth sticking a logo on and being an ambassador for the brand and paying some money or giving just parts, equipment to, in exchange for some representation. So I think so just to like how sponsorship starts, Generally, you start with gear only. So you reach out to zip wheels and you say, hey, I just won these three races and I have 10,000 Instagram followers and I think I work with your, align with your brand really well. Can I get two sets of wheels for this year and start a relationship?

And they might say, yeah, sure, we'll give you a disc wheel and the stuff you need for racing in one set of training wheels. And then you do a good job of representing that brand. You stay in contact with them and send them a picture of you winning. another race and then maybe the following year they say okay we're going to give you four wheel sets for next year plus $1,500 plus $100 for every, you know what, $500 for every podium that you stand on and then just escalates from there. Right.

And so what was your first year sponsor, Eric? Rolf Prima Wheels. Wow. That lasted all that time. Yeah. My first like full on real sponsorship was athletes lounge, which was the triathlon shop that I worked at prior to turning pro. And when I turned pro, they kept paying me.

me a small stipend to wear a full athlete's lounge kit. And this was not because I was valuable necessarily. I was maybe slightly valuable inside of the Portland triathlon scene. And this was probably perceived as philanthropic, kind of like what we do with the development team. These guys at the shop just wanted to give back. So that helped me get through the first couple years. I got Rolf Prima. I think they gave me exactly what I said, two wheel sets. And then the next thing I got after that, I can't even remember maybe sunglasses or wetsuits. I think I got a free Roka wetsuit. Wow.

Like the year that Roka started up. So you did have a job for a while while you were working on becoming a pro? Yep. Yep. I actually dropped out of college and I started working at the triathlon shop. And over the course of three years, I went from working like way over full time and training, you know, 15 hours a week to like training closer to 25 hours a week and dropping my work hours down to part-time. And then when I had $10,000 saved up, I just, I cut the court.

I went to U-23 World Championships. I did pretty well. And then I moved down to California to train with Paula Sousa and the triathlon squad. And I was like, at some point, either I will start making money as a pro triathlete or my $10,000 were run out. That was my plan. Wow. You went all in. Yep. I think Paula had a much better trajectory than I did. This is my curious thing for Paula is, can you remember when you had the thought in your head of, I'm going to be a professional athlete? No, because I never did. Really? It just kind of happened. Well, I don't even...

Because it seems like Eric had this dream before it was realized. It's so different in Canada. We're not, you don't think like, oh, I want to be a professional athlete. I wanted to, like, go to the Olympics. Oh, and you see those as distinct from one another. Yeah, because a pro was, I mean, I didn't care about money and making money. I was going to school. I was living at home. It's a completely different path. But I wouldn't even, I seriously could write a 10 chapter book about it. So I don't want to go too much into detail. But that's interesting. You were, you were, even when you were going to the Olympics, you were thinking,

this isn't my job. Yeah, no, not at all. Wow. That's really interesting. But I think most Olympians think that way. Yeah. I mean, yeah, most Olympic sports is very hard to make them your whole living. Well, when I went to the Olympics, I was like, it was a year after I'd won five WTS races and I kept blasted onto the scene as a 19 year old and I had a Nike sponsorship and I had a specialized sponsorship and a Maytag and like I was making more money than I've ever made in my life and probably more money than I make now even. But I didn't necessarily need the money. I was at school on a scholarship and I wanted to just like perform well and win an Olympic gold medal. I wasn't like, I'm a professional athlete and this is my job. That didn't even click until maybe even when I met Eric.

Wow. Because Eric acts that way. And I was like, oh, yeah, I guess this is my job because I'm 26 and another job. But I've never had another job. A legit job. Like there's a boss and a pay stow and time to clock in and clock out. No, never. Yeah.

So I don't even know what that's like. I can't relate to the grind. But yeah. And how young were you when you were like full in on sport? Fully what? And just like, yep, this is like, the training comes first. Well, I got my university undergraduate degree in 2017. But I took a lot of time to get it.

It took me like 10 years to get it. So there were years where like leading up to the Olympics, I took a year off of school. Then I went back for a semester. So I was like slowly chipping away at it for a long time, fully with the intention of going into medical school. Right, right. So I was never like, yeah, I'm doing, I'm getting my undergrad for the heck of it, but really triathons my job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, I'm doing triathlon because I'm pretty good at it.

But there were a lot of years after the Olympics when I was injured that I didn't make any money at it. I was just, yeah, still doing it because it's kind of all I knew. But really, this is too deep of a question for me. Wow. Yeah, we need an hour. We need an hour. Awesome. But my first sponsorship was Nike.

And it was a big sponsorship too. Was it right before the Olympics or like that year? I think in 2011 I signed with them. And then, yeah. was like heading into the Olympics. And I really hit my prime in short course racing at the perfect time because I was ranked like first in the world a year and a half out from the Olympics. So I was a target to win the Olympics.

And that's when all the sponsors like Johnson and Johnson and Maytag and like all these people that don't care at all until an Olympic year come in. So I was like, I literally was sponsored by Johnson and Johnson, Maytag, Nike, like General Mills, LASIC, all these non-indemic companies that just wanted on board for one year. So my mom managed my bank account. That's great. Thank you, Sheila. I was just like, I don't know what's going on. Thank you, Sheila. Well, okay, this next question of year is very related and I think is really interesting. It's like Nike and Rolf Prima is kind of what it relates to. High TCL crew, a bit of a two-part gear-related question for you all, knowing that frequent changes in athlete's sponsorship are almost inevitable.

I was curious what the protocol is for continuing to use old sponsor provided gear, like shoes, peril supplements. Could you discreetly in training just not promote or race in it? The second part of the question is on which gear you've continued to use the longest over the many years of racing? Is there a bag that you've had forever and refused to move out of? An old pair of socks that should have disintegrated years ago, but you can't do a long ride without. Look forward to the pod every Thursday and best of luck in the ocean side, Viv. Yeah, that's a good question because there are categories where maybe we won't have a sponsor one year and we can just wear what we like and what we want. But generally, we won't sign a contract unless it's what we want to wear

and use. So what we're currently using. Not generally, just 100%. Oh, 100% of the time. Yeah. Totally. Which I think is another, going back to the sponsors thing, is another reason why I think you are valuable to sponsors is because it's clear. It's not just like, oh, yeah, sponsored by, I don't know, M&Ms. No, I mean, if we do not want to switch sponsors. It is an awful process. It's, it is an awful process. It's not fun. And when it does happen, it's just because something went wrong inside of the company or all the people that you knew that worked there left and the company wants to go a different direction or something.

But we're certainly not going to jump ship and you'll go from Trader Joe's Crackers to wheat thins for an extra dollar a year. That's just we like to stick with companies long term and the companies that we currently have we would love to finish out our careers with. So I don't know. I just want to put that out there because I don't want this feeling of like, Oh, pros just switch sponsors all the time. Yeah.

Some do. I think some do, but I am not a fan of that. Yeah, I totally agree. But they might do it out of necessity. Like if a sponsor drops them, they need to go find some other thing. But I don't know. I just feel like I've seen it before where they're like, yeah, now I'm signing with these people this year. There are people like that.

And I think that you just shoot yourself in the foot because nobody's going to trust, you know, if last year it was Gatorade and the year before that, it was noon. And this year, it's, you know, insert company. then people just like, oh, okay, whatever. They'll just do whatever the most money is at the time. And you lose your validity. But to answer this question, it's like if we don't have a sponsor in a category, we can wear whatever we want. So she's asking, what are the rules about wearing something from an old sponsor?

That's totally fine if you don't have a sponsor in that category right now. Right. But to answer the question in a short way, the thing is you wouldn't use an old sponsor in a category that you have a sponsor in, Because you prefer the one that you're currently using. Because we prefer it. Yeah. Totally.

So it's kind of simple. Like, for example, if this would be horrible, but if Specialize dropped us and we didn't have a bike sponsor next year, I would keep riding the shiv and the tarmac and all the things because we love those bikes so much and it would be totally fine. Right. So that's one example. We're not drinking age you one anymore. Yeah, exactly.

That's true. But we have so much of it. And I can't look at it. Nick, do you want it? I would love it. I would love it. My body is an experiment. That's an example where, yeah, it's just, it's too painful, you know?

And that could happen. We don't have our new kits yet. And every single picture we've got their logo in it. And you guys went out and filmed your movie the other night and Eric's wearing an AG logo. Yeah. It's pretty small in my leg. I don't know. So you're racing with AG1 on Saturday?

No, not in my heart. Good answer, good answer. Good answer. Okay, well, is there any like old piece of something that you have that's from the old days that you're still like, no, this is the best? It can even be a product, like a sunscreen or like they were saying a sock or something like that. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, there's a couple things that I like to wear that I'm super, super just since my first year in triathlon. But there's such a minuscule thing you can't even see when you're racing. Right. Like a sports bra. Right. Oh, right. And that's not, yeah, that's not really a race thing. No one can see it.

Right, right, right. But it is a thing that's like comfort and, you know, whatever. And a sports bra for sure is like, it's like on your skin. Yeah. Makes a difference. Yeah. Eric, do you have one? I was riding specialized mountain bikes back when I was sponsored by Argon 18, but

Argon 18 didn't make a mountain bike. So that's the only thing that I can think of. Also, if you guys just think I copy Eric and Paul and everything, I also had a specialized bike, two of them before they signed a sponsorship with specialized. All we got 10 minutes until Paula needs to leave for her photo shoot. Let me just take a little snack break, if that's what you're wondering what happened. Okay, next question here is from George from Japan.

Hi, TTL podcast. I'm a university professor in Japan, and I'm new to triathlon. I'll do my first Olympic triathlon this year in September in Murakami, Japan. In the previous episode, one of you mentioned recovery shakes. What is that? Do you have any recipes for that? Thank you again for your podcasting. Best of luck to all of you.

Gambate, which is you. I'm guessing is something in Japanese. George from Japan. I love this question. Oh, really? Yeah, because it's just so simple and good. How often do you take a recovery shake after a workout? Not as often as Eric, but what I'm talking about is like half the questions we get, they're so long.

We need like five minutes to read them. This is such a to the point. What is a recovery shake and what do you put in it? Perfect question. Wow. So for the person that was upset that they have never had a question in, you just got the cheat code for Paula's heart. George from Japan. Thank you for your question.

Eric, answer it. Eric, monkey dance. I try to have a recovery shake after every workout that's over like 90 minutes. So if you have two. Unless we're eating, unless we're eating immediately. You know, if we finish at 1130 and we're going to have lunch right then, then I won't do it. And I'll have an egg bagel. But if we're finishing in the van and it's going to be 25 minutes until we get to Jimmy John's for lunch or whatever,

then I will have a protein shake. But when Eric says a recovery shake, what he'll take is like a powder that's a recovery powder. Currently he's using one from Tailwind, which is a nutrition company, but we've used Momentus, Power Bar has them, like so many companies that have these recovery shake powders. And Eric just puts it in water in a bottle, shakes it and drink it. That kind of like grosses me out a little bit. It's very functional. It's very functional.

And it has, so the powder has a lot of sugar, a lot of protein, it has all the things that you need in it. So it's just a really quick way to get like 300, 400 calories. When I think of a recovery shake, it's like I'm at home, I'm finishing a ride at my own driveway, and I have a Vitamix, and I can mix in berries, almond milk, protein powder, spinach, hemp seeds, like make it into a fruit smoothie thing, and then I love it. But that's a bit of a process, and it's not something that you can just do from the van. So that's my preference for recovery shake. Eric is more of the quick, easy, get it in.

Easy, simple, get it in. Who cares what it tastes like? I'm just like, it has to happen. And I don't have the Vitamix and I don't have anything else besides water in this complete mix. So it just has to happen. It's not about a, ooh, yummy, this is fun at that point. Something I really like having right after a ride instead of a recovery shake is a chocolate milk. Because you get a little bit of the protein and the sugar and it tastes good to me.

Yep. It might not be as like complex and sport oriented as the tailwind stuff or whatever Eric's using. but it's easy to find at any gas station. Yeah, I think the important thing here is just get something that has some carbohydrate and a little bit of protein within 30 minutes of 20 minutes, ideally, of finishing this session. And if you have time to get fancy, awesome, but don't like not do it because you think it needs to be a certain way. Okay.

No, I'm just, that's all. My one addition to this that I would warn George about is that if you are just doing like a protein powder or, something, a lot of them are built, are kind of geared towards people who are going to the gym, and then they come home after doing their weightlifting and they need protein. As endurance athletes, we need much more carbohydrate as compared to someone who's just going and lifting weights at the gym. So don't settle for just the protein powder. You also need carbs, especially if you have a workout later in the day. You need to replenish those. So just keep that in mind. But all that

matters is that you get, like Eric said, protein and carbs. All this feeding Flynn crackers closer to the mic than she's speaking. Well, she wants Flynn to be involved. When Flynn, because when I'm eating crackers on the podcast, I can close my lips and you can't hear it. Flynn is incapable. Flynn is like, crackers are flying across the room. He loves these trade of Joe multi-grains. We all do.

We all do. Okay. This last one is kind of a, I try to keep the philosophical ones for last. And this is a bit of a philosophical one. even though we did have the one about training and being a professional triathlet. This one is from Claire, once again from London. No. Flynn, no whining.

Hi, Eric, Paula, Nick and Flynn. On last week's podcast, Eric said that his title brand, which he wears on very valuable forehead spot, is TTL. It made me think about seeing Paula at T100 and the thoughts and feelings it inspired when I saw the TTL brand on her suit. It's hard to accurately describe, but I definitely felt like it represented something really positive that I'm a part of. And that made me think back to a couple years ago when you were talking about wanting to build a community. I didn't really know what you meant.

Fast forward to now and I can really feel the buzz around the TTL community and I feel part of it through being a supporter, having a T shirt, and engaging in the Strava Group and other TTR peeps giving me kudos, all the things. I just wanted to share some feedback on what it feels like to be part of the TTL community right now. It's such a lovely entity to be a part of. So I guess a question for you on the podcast, do you have any goals for how you want the community to develop it?

in the next two years. Thanks so much, Claire, from London. Well, first of all, we are hours away from having a TTL meetup here in Oceanside at communal coffee, which when you're hearing this will already have happened, but that's really cool. We did something similar last year,

so yeah, it's growing. But Eric, you think about this stuff all the time. Do you have some kind of... How would you want it to be different in two years than it is now? First off, feel free to send in questions like this. that are shrouded in compliments anytime. You basically just described exactly the kind of rambling.

I couldn't really put it all exactly to words and on paper intelligently mission that I had for TTL inside of my head when we made it back in 2020. And I think the board community gets thrown around a lot and people say, oh, we're going to make a community. And like, oh, I have a YouTube channel. Thanks for being part of this community. but it's not, I think that sometimes gets used just instead of fans, but we truly wanted to give something back to triathlon that made people feel like they were part of something

and that when you showed up to a race and you had on one of our hats or our shirts that you felt like you had built-in friends when you got there. And we were admittedly very inspired by Heather and Wadi with what they did with Wadi Inc, but we wanted to have our own spin on it and we felt like there was a place for the particular ethos that we wanted to see. So it felt like we could do a lot more with that than if we just had the Eric and Paula TV show and, you know, whatever.

So as far as what we want to do with it moving forward, working on a lot of exciting things right now, and I have to like keep myself from getting too carried away. But yeah, more in real life community stuff has always been really high on the list for me because I have like a lot of warm memories of working in the triathlon. shop back in the day and that was like the center of the community in Portland where people would come in

and just hang out and have a coffee and talk about what was going on in the triathlon world, maybe buy a gel or whatever, but it felt like a clubhouse. And I want to be able to replicate that experience at races. I would love, love, love someday to have an actual shop location where you could have that experience and you could come in and look at shirts in real life and watch a film on TV and stuff. And then we're working really hard right now on the website and setting up a sort of a community hub where you'll be able to have a little bit more involved discussions than you can on our Strava group, then you can on the Zwift Club, and actually be able to converse with our people without it being like a one-way communication flow,

just from Paula and I and Nick to people. So, yeah, I think you nailed it. And we just want to really reinforce and like double down on the community aspect of it. it rather than they're like, hey, we're famous people or something like with clothes to sell and yada yada. We want this to like have a bigger impact on triathlon and kind of push it in this positive fun direction more than we could just as individual athletes. It's funny how it started as kind of videos like the vlogs and that kind of stuff and you've been

doing it for a long time even before you had met Paula, not a long time, but a couple years, right? Yeah, yeah. It all started more with transit. for was the initial iteration of kind of what TTL has now become. Yeah. But I always had this, I always kind of had this idea in mind just because I think what got me into the sport in the first place was the awesome community and fun that I felt going to my first triathlon as compared to like a swim meet where it was just like a lot more intense and kids are trying to qualify for nationals versus the local triathons that I did growing up were just so fun and everybody

was in a good mood and encouraging. something that I wonder if is part of your vision for the future, Eric, and I think it is, we've talked about this a lot, is how sometimes racing and training in triathlon can feel a little restrictive in terms of the scope of what you can actually do. And you see people who do all their training on treadmills and on trainers, and then they go out and race, and they stare down at their bike computer on an out and back course. And I would hope that two years from now, we will have inspired people to kind of maybe even notice that they can take all this fitness that they're building and do some things that deliver a different kind of enjoyment than competing and racing against other people. But kind of like interacting with nature in a more close way and feeling, like we both know that feeling of like and you more than I do.

But being on a trail run and you're like four miles away from civilization, you're just like, I got my body out here. This is crazy. Same thing in an open water swim or same thing in a long mountain bike ride or even a road bike ride. You can get those feelings too. But I hope that's, personally, I hope that's what we get in two years from now. And I don't know how much we're, we want to talk about this. I'm totally willing to open this up. But Nick and I are working on a project right now and it's going to be a film.

Yeah. And it's around this entire idea. And we're not trying to say that the only way to do this is to be a gravel athlete and do X-Deras or whatever, but really the, we just want to like trying to challenge the idea right now that has been put in front of us largely by Iron Man, where if you're doing a triathlon, the ultimate thing that you can do is to go do Iron Man Hawaii versus just what does it, what do you want to do with multiple sports? Does that mean that on any given weekend you could ride your bike to a place and then

you could do a trail run there instead of driving your car to do that trail run? or stringing together doing a swim run doing you could do a gravel race one weekend and you could do a swim run the next weekend and you could do a crit the weekend after that it's really just like hey you have fitness and the ability to do three different sports what are the things that get you excited to do that and it doesn't have to be going and getting a PR at a 70.3 it really doesn't and I would just love it if you know in five years from now as a result of some of the stuff that we've done and the way that we look at multi-sport. that people, somebody comes up to me instead of being like, oh, what's your next race? They'll be like, what's the next thing you're going to do? Like, what's your next project? What's your next activity? Have you done any cool, what's the last cool thing you did?

You know? Like, think about how many people that you know, maybe, that mountain bike, how many of them compete? The idea, the ultimate thing that you can do in mountain biking or in surfing is you take a trip with some friends and you go have an experience and you see something new and you learn something about yourself and you get better at that thing. That is it.

There's no, how good are you? tell me your time, tell me your, you're like, just what, what sounds fun in the most interesting way that you can use this engine that you've built, this skill set, and get out there and follow your heart. What you're saying to me reminds me of a quote from this surf film called Step Into Liquid. At one point, one of the surfers says, and I think you hear this in other sports as well, but I liked it in the context of, you know, the best surfer in the world is the one having the most fun. Yeah. I feel like that is not as present as, I think, it could be in triathlon.

The best triathlete in the world is the one that's having the most fun. Yeah. So that's what we're doing. We're making a surf film, but it's going to be about swimming, biking, and running, and not in that order, and not eat proportionally. Right. And not in the places you think it's going to be about, and it's going to be awesome. Yep.

Well, Paul is changing. She's got to get ready to take pictures here for Iron Man. And we've got a bunch of more fun things to do today tomorrow and then race on Saturday. Yeah. Yeah. I would say we'll see you at the TTL meetup. But I'll be a little late. This will come out after that happens.

Yes. Speaking of which, sorry, this podcast had to come out a little late. Eric and I were shooting all day, Monday and Tuesday, and then there was a travel day, Wednesday. We tried to make it work. We were even going to record driving down in the van, but hopefully this is still okay. I had to make sure that Nick understood how loud the van is relative to a Tesla. There's like things rattling. The microwave is about to fly open.

You know, like, it's a whole deal. It's flint scratching. Right. Anyway, better a day late than not at all. Thanks for listening to everybody. Ciao. Bye.