That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon run speed and carbon shoes, long open water swims, ideal carbohydrate absorption ratios, and more!

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

This week we keep it traditional, and answer your questions about triathlon! Questions about Xterra bike choice, tubeless tire inserts, what to do with old kits, 5km open water swims, minimum speeds to get a benefit from carbon running shoes, regaining confidence after a bike crash, carbohydrate ratios, and cycling cadence efficiency!To submit your own questions, and become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. This is our podcast where we talk about triathlon. And what's going on in triathlon, Paul's giving me the pump the brake sign that you get like when you come into a hot corner and a 70.3. Like when you come down Deer Creek, like that kind of pumping the brakes? Yes. Yes. If one could take their hands off to make that motion while coming down Deer Creek. So Eric and Paula and I did this ride on Sunday. That was really fun.

It was kind of a big loop-de-loop. And before we got to you, Dear Creek actually. Eric and I were kind of bombing down this canyon called Yerba Buena and I come around a corner and Eric had distanced me a little bit which I'm not ashamed to admit and then he was stopped in the middle of the road with two

dogs. There were two dogs in the middle of the road and then Paula came by. She was almost brought to tears by the sight of these two lost dogs and we safely got them back to their owners who didn't even know they were missing by the way. But Eric and I had to ride down to the bottom of the canyon because there's no service

obviously, call the number that we had taken the photo of the tag on the dog's collar. It was a whole adventure. Yeah, it was really fun. If I was in a car, I would have kept the dogs. I think you're incriminating yourself, Paula. No, they had very well marked tags, but their names were Archie and Flora. They were super sweet. At first they didn't want to come, but I enticed them over with a picky bar.

No, it was really sweet, except for it did take, like, I was stopped on the side of the road for like 30 to 40 minutes, which definitely interrupted the ride, but it was for a good cause. It was. And then, sorry, to finish this up, then we went up this road, this beautiful road that eventually comes to the top of this road called Deer Creek. And I have never ridden down something like that in my life before. Eric, I don't know if you've been all around the world racing bikes and riding bikes. Have you ever been down something like that that gave you that effect? No, I mean, I have a pretty high tolerance for risk and everything.

And I still going down, it felt like it should be illegal. It felt like a public endangerment situation. Nick, you'd never been down. I had only gone up at once. It's literally the very last road climb you can go up if you leave from Santa Monica in the Santa Monica mountains. It's so steep. It's the last one.

And it's very hidden. It's very easy to miss. It looks like maybe just a little road to someone's house, but it's not. I mean, it pretty much is. Oh, yeah. Eric said that it was like someone's driveway that they got carried away with. and they're like, I guess we'll make it a road. Seriously, the steepest thing I've ever been down.

And there's no guardrail. You're just falling into the ocean because it just drops off and all you see is water. It really does give you the feeling of that you're falling. Yeah. More so than like going down a hill. It's disconcerting. It's kind of, it's very strange.

Anyway, all the riding here is just so good. Like all the roads are quiet. We only see a couple cars. On the weekend, maybe a few more. But it's kind of a, I don't know if it's a secret, but I am so confused by I'm more. triathletes don't train here. It's not simple, and triathletes don't like corners or really steep hills like we just talked

about, in my opinion, generally speaking, to be grossly, you know, general, general. But anyway, to back up one real quick second, Paul and I are both professional triathletes, that's why we have this podcast. Nick is a master of sound and audio musician, amateur triathlet, and we at least like talking, so we hope that you like listening a little bit. And we're going to try to answer some questions and just talk about some stuff and hopefully be helpful. This week is good. We have a lot of good questions.

And we'll get to those in just a second. But I had a couple of questions of my own. If I can be selfish, since I am a co-host of this podcast, I feel like I get first dibs on asking you guys training questions. So first of all, Paula, Eric, a little bit, but Paula, a lot. Your volume has gone up since you've gotten here. Not drastically, but it's definitely easier to get in volume when you're training outside. and that's the difference. Yeah, Paula was actually showing me her run volume

for, I don't know what that was, like the last five weeks and it's just ever so slightly gone up, just a teeny, teeny, teeny bit, but I think she nailed it there with it feels like it's gone down. I mean, it feels it's just easier to do it, to do everything here when it's sunny and we're not trying to clean our own house up

and it's the usual stuff that you have when you're at home versus a training camp. Yeah, I think I probably did like 26 hours of training last week, which I guess this is. high for me. And it's kind of funny when I go back and look at the trends of the weeks throughout the year last year, my highest weeks are always when I'm at training camp. So flag staff last year and then this camp this year, it's kind of similar hours because we're doing longer, long rides and we're just have more time in the day to do everything. So it doesn't

feel drastically different, but it definitely does bump up. So it's good. The biggest thing is probably the bike volume just in terms of hours because we don't mind spending an extra 30 minutes, just getting back to the car or going all the way to the top of the hill versus you're just counting down the seconds when you're sitting on the trainer. Yeah. Yeah, it looks here that it is mostly bike volume for Paula. But Eric, you ran 100K last week. 98.5.

Oh, ouch. Okay, so next week. Yeah, we're working there. But I had one really hilly run, which was super fun. And I'm not that stressed about it, but it would be cool to see a 100K run week. And the run that we did, you and I did was like more of a, I don't know what you would call it. It was like an obstacle course more than a run. That was an adventure.

That was an adventure. We were generally speaking, we're running, but it was an adventure. Yeah, cool. And then I wanted to touch on something that we talked about a few weeks ago, which was the dual-sided power meter versus the single-sided power meter. And we were kind of saying how, unless you're recovering from an injury or you're concerned about it, the single-sided is probably good enough. But we also did a poll.

And so I just wanted to kind of share the results of the poll that we did on Spotify. By the way, I'm just loving that Spotify has the comments and poll features available. It makes this whole thing way more interactive and fun. And listeners have been really using it, which is very fun. Yeah, you've been lamenting the lack of comments on Spotify and Apple versus YouTube for a while. And I'm glad you finally have that two-way communication with your baby here. That's right. That's right. So this power meter poll, the question was, have you owned it?

dual-sided power meter and if so, did you find it helpful compared to single-sided power? And about half of the people have not owned one, so we kind of eliminate that. But then of the other half, 28% said the dual data is worth it and 19% said it's not worth it. I thought that was pretty interesting. I'm surprised at how many people find that it is worth it. Well, that's because those people probably have it. Yeah, they have it and maybe they're just a little bit like they've convinced themselves that it's worth it. But either way, I thought it was a cool kind of little data point to see people who've actually

owned it what they thought. Yeah. The unfortunate thing about the data point of worth it is what is anything worth to you. Yes, that's right. Do you like, if we could just change that to, do you like having it? Right. Sounds like those people would probably answer that question the same way. They like having it and like seeing it versus the other ones.

They're like, oh, I forget that it's even on there. Yeah, right, of course. Of course. Okay, well, before we get on to our listener submitted questions, or as we call them from our kids here, I want to do a little bike tech with Eric. And the first one is going to be from Rich from Massachusetts. Hey, gang, after watching Eric's Exterra racing vids on YouTube last season, it inspired me to sign up for the race in New Jersey this spring.

The race site says that the full distance race is suitable for gravel or mountain bikes. I would love to hear Eric talk about the advantages and disadvantages of these options for a race like this. Also, what's his fueling for the exterior race is different from a road triathlon. Thanks for all you do for the triathlon community, rich from Massachusetts. So this is kind of two questions that I think are both really good, but let's tackle the first one. Mountain bike or gravel bike, if Xtera says it's suitable for either, which one are you riding and which would you recommend for kind of your average Xtera age grouper? I joke sometimes at a lot of the courses that I've done,

I feel like you could do 90%, 95% on a gravel bike, but then the 5% you almost want a downhill bike. So a mountain bike is always been the call on the ones that I've done, but none of those races has X-Dera said, oh, but you could do a gravel bike. The fact that they're saying gravel bike or a mountain bike leads me to believe that it is very mellow. the upside of having a mountain bike

and more specifically just a full suspension bike assuming it's not grossly heavier than your gravel bike is that you can sit down and pedal through a lot of bumpy stuff. So roots, chunky rock sections, or whatever. Sometimes I'll take my mountain bike, my full suspension just on the gravel loop

around our house when I go ride with Paula if I'm just feeling like I want to be supremely comfortable. So that's the upside of having a full suspension. to put down power while riding over bumpy stuff. So yeah, I don't know. Since I haven't done that course, I can't say for sure. But I would say if there's like a 20 pound difference between your gravel bike weight and your full suspension mountain bike,

then maybe go with the gravel bike, make sure you're running tubeless tires. You can maybe use some inserts so you can just run like the lowest tire pressure you can and maybe do like a 45C gravel tire. So you get as close to like the. a mountain bike, squishiness, your tires are effectively your suspension in this situation, but lighter weight. Yeah, I thought there was rules about not using gravel bikes because of the, it has to be a flat bar, but I guess they're giving you the option then. I do think that is

a good move. I think that a lot of exteric courses, while they're not as technical as some pure mountain bikers would like, they're too technical for a lot of people trying to convert from roads. So having something that can be done on a gravel bike, I think just completely opens the door to people getting into the sport, which I'm a huge fan of. Yeah. And then the second part of this question is, I mean, this is interesting because it kind of, it brings up a few concerns that I would have about fueling while riding variable terrain.

Is your fueling different for Nixtera versus a similarly length road triathlon? But the most part, no, because I think if I'm doing like an all-out Olympic distance, like St. Anthony's on the road, that still. the amount of times that you're going to feel like you can take a drink from your water bottle and it's not going to slow you down, those are pretty limited because you're going so fast, you want to be tucked as much as possible. So maybe you'll grab a drink right before a corner as you're slowing down anyway, and Xtera is kind of the same way. I'll have one bottle that's like, that's a pretty strong mix of, you know, water, electrolyte fuel in it. And any time I feel

like I have an opportunity to drink out of that and definitely more in the first half of the bike ride, I'll just take the biggest chug out of it that I possibly can because you don't know necessarily when the next time you'll get an opportunity is. You can go pre-ride the course, and this is a little bit more in the pro, in the pro race versus the amateur race, but sometimes I'll think I can get a drink at this flat section, but then somebody attacks there, and then you miss that chance to take a few, a drink.

So I just try to go as often as I possibly can and take really big sips. Gulp's. That's a big sip. For those of us who prefer to use gels as our fuel, just get out of the habit of that. Okay, got it. Yeah, especially for Xtera. Yeah, for Xtera, you might even want to get a camelback, like a bladder sort of situation.

Just not to take your hands off too much even. Yeah, bite the bullet and put your nutrition in there because I think that's going to be the hardest thing for most people is remembering in addition to having the skill to take a thing while you're trying to stay upright. Yeah, that's great. That's great. And then I had another little bike tech with air question myself. So I just got my first gravel bike, and the bike was delivered. The wheels are tubeless compatible, but the tires kind of to make sure that you just get the bike out of the door, had inner tubes in it.

And in Southern California, it's really difficult to ride anything but tubeless on dirt because there's these little burs that puncture the inner tubes. You know, you recommended a tubeless tire, and then you also told me to ride inserts. And I've heard you talk about this a lot. I've heard a lot of people talk about this a lot. why do I want to ride inserts on tubeless tires? And specifically, it seems like they're much more prevalent on dirt rolling tires, not so much on road tires. I think a lot of people won't know what inserts are.

Yeah, so can you explain that, Eric? Yeah, so an insert is, you can think of it like a pool noodle. It feels like a pool noodle. It looks like a pool noodle, you know, from like literally open water rec swim. but they're more technologically advanced in that. They're actually meant to fit in a rim, and they do give a little bit of support to the sides of the tires in addition to helping you not pinch flat.

And I know people are like, oh, you can't pitch flat with tubeless, but if you hit a rock hard enough, you can definitely pinch flat, completely slice open your mountain bike tire when you're running 20 PSI. I've done it catastrophically. Ended a race,

and ever since then, I've been running inserts. in my mountain bike tires. When you say pinch flat on tubeless, that's the actual corners of the rim that are piercing through the rubber. Is that right?

Exactly. Yeah, the side wall of your tire is getting pinched between a rock and your rim. And in the worst case scenario, you break your rim because it just bottomed out and hit a rock really hard.

This is obviously you messed up or went off trail or something bad happened. So, So the benefit of putting the inserts in there is that you can run a little bit lower tire pressure. Your tire's not going to fly off the rim.

You can hit a rock and not flat catastrophically. It's just like a little bit of extra insurance. And they are so light these days that it's really not that much of a penalty. Yeah, it's just an extra cost, right? But they're not like they're that difficult to install or anything. No, they're a little bit more annoying to install, but than not having them.

but it's totally worth it. I've walked back my bike five miles in an Xtera, unable to finish after having flown to Alabama. It's worth it. So could you hypothetically ride on a flat tubeless tire with inserts if they're properly installed? Yeah, I wrote about a mile and a half, the last mile and a half of cross-try world championships

on a completely flat tire with an insert, and it made it back to town was fine. got fourth or fifth or, I don't know, I can't remember what place I got there, but it did not ruin my race. And if I hadn't had that, I'd have been running for a mile and a half back to T2. This is like, to me, a little bit like the final nail in the coffin for tubulars, you know, because tubular is like you can kind of ride them if they go flat. They're, you know, they're glued to the wheel. It's like, well, this is even better than that, it seems like.

Am I wrong? Pretty amazing. You can run even lower tire pressure like in cyclocross with tubulars because they're glued to the rim. they're not going anywhere at all. But yeah, I'd go tubeless. I guess you're right. Low enough tire pressure, you could burp the tire, and that could be a little scary.

Yeah, I guess last thing I'll say, I still have not put inserts in my gravel wheels just because I'm not racing, but I think if I was going to race if the course had some highly flattable sections, like maybe like BWR or something, maybe. Just the benefit is that you can, run the lower tire pressure, but then if you hit a rocky section, you're not completely screwed.

I'm just thinking if I'm 10 miles into the mountains and I need to hike 10 miles back for some reason. Having the insert there is a total insurance policy. Okay, that's it for Bike Tech with Eric. Thank you, Eric, for your expertise, as always. Now we're going to move on to questions submitted by our listeners. You two can submit your questions for the podcast at Thattriathlonlife.com slash podcast, where you can also become a podcast supporter. We really appreciate the people who are already podcast supporters. We're working on some fun stuff to come out soon. So keep an eye on your email for that. First question here is from Catherine from the UK. Hey, everyone, I've been listening to the podcast for about 12 months, and I love it so much. I've gone back to the start. Unfortunately,

I think I'm all caught up, so I've moved on to the old vlogs. Having binge listened to the questions already asked, I don't think anyone has really asked about the following. I, like a lot of us, am thinking much more about what I'm buying from both an environmental point of view and wallet point of view. As a result, I think I have enough sportswear and gear to rotate comfortably through the seasons. Don't get me wrong. I love getting new kit, but I'm going to start a one-in, one-out policy. My question is, you probably have so much kit. What do you do with the old stuff?

I hate throwing stuff away knowing it's probably going to landfill, but often sport kit becomes all sweaty and stained. You can't sell it or give it away. I'm sometimes used old cotton t-shirts for outdoor rags, but there's a limit. Keen to know your thoughts. Thanks for all the great content you put out. Looking forward to following the T-100 series, Catherine from the UK. Oh, well, one thing is we are so fortunate to work with Kustelli that we don't have to use each jersey to the point of complete unusability. And what we've done, we do it every couple years.

Since we've accumulated a fair amount of stuff, we just, we give it away. I think it's been a year and a half now, two years since we basically said, hey, if you are a part of a youth try club that could use any gear and stuff. We'd love to give some of this away, ideally to like three different clubs. And we had a whole bunch of people reach out, and we were able to just send a box to three different youth try clubs. And so there should be a bunch of kids out there wearing Eric Lagerstrom and Paula Finley addition dibs and tops. A lot of the time also are stuff that's in good shape will give to our local sports consignment shop and bend. It's called Gear Fix.

And they'll resell it and we get a little tiny percentage of it. And we don't do it to make money, but we just do it because we know it's probably going to someone who wants it and we'll wear it. So if it's in good enough shape, gear fix will accept it and they'll sell it for us. Yeah, like Eric said, we prefer to like give it to someone who needs it versus try to make money off it when it comes to cycling kits. We even have kits that are still in the plastic wrap because out of our custom range, we get, you know, X number of jerseys and bibs that we can't even go through in a year. So with those specifically, I like to send to kids. Yeah. This reminds me a little bit of, I had a Super Bowl.

I had friends over for the Super Bowl, which was just this last Sunday. And one of my friends asked, like, what happens to, you know, the Super Bowl, the team wins, and they immediately have all the merchandise for the Super Bowl winner team available. And your brain right away goes to, wait, well, what if the other team had won? So apparently what they do is they manufacture both. sides winning t-shirts and hats and stuff. And the side that doesn't win, the stuff gets shipped over to other countries where football is kind of irrelevant, American football is irrelevant. And so there's like a bunch of people out there wearing 49er Super Bowl champion stuff

in a couple weeks. That's for some reason to me is like someone else wearing the Eric Lagasher and Paula Finley jersey on their back a little bit. It's like, oh, that's not a verified fact. That's a verified fact. I looked it up. Yeah. Wow. It's just funny because it's not. even the actual winning team. No. It's just like an alternate universe. It's not a television. Yeah.

I think it's just, it's countries where maybe like the sports that are popular have nothing to do with American football. Yeah, yeah. So literally every country. Just send them to Canada. Yeah. I think Canada. Canadians are aware.

But it's funny that Catherine asked this question because this thought process is very much a part of the DNA of the, that triathlon life gear that we make is we want to make it so high quality that it's not just like a you don't just wear it for a couple months like I still have the t-shirts like the t-shirt you can't see but the t-shirt Erica is wearing right now is one of the first t-shirts I still have that one and wear it all the time and it feels perfect it's still you know the stuff is really high quality stuff and we don't you know we want you to buy it once and wear it for a long time I think this also comes down to taking good care of your stuff and I totally

I totally agree with the environmental implications of just recycling through stuff when you don't even need to get rid of it yet. But if you hang dry it, wash it with good detergent. Yeah, like take care of your stuff. You can wear it for season on season. But I would just caution to like take a sniff of it while you're wet or while you're sweaty. Because sometimes you don't know until like riding beside someone in a group ride. Yeah. Have a friend who is a good friend in a safe place.

Smell it for you and give you some honest feedback. Speaking of which, I'm writing a pair of bibs that a few friends have told me like, hey, I can see right through those. I can see your butt. That's the problem with bibs. I think bibs get see-through before they get stinky. Yeah. And then you just have to throw them out. You do just have to throw them out.

I can't really think of anything else you could use them for. Just so in a modesty panel back there. Yeah, no, I just say you're welcome to whoever's riding behind me usually. Okay. Next question here is from Stain, which I put into the Dutch. Google Translate, and that's exactly how you pronounce it. Stain. Hi, Eric, Paula, Nick, and Flynn.

I've been doing triathlon and iron mans for a few years now, but only recently joined a triathlon club. I've been to their two-hour Sunday swim a couple of times, and damn, those are tough. Swimming over 5K at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, crazy. I barely swim more than 4K in one session before this, so it took some time getting used to the load and fatigue during these sessions. It made me wonder. In one way, I've been taught that swimming.

while fatigued only reinforces bad technique. But these 5K sessions seem to have just that purpose of tiring you out rep after rep and set after set. So doesn't that reinforce bad form? Or are you supposed to still feel relatively fresh after such a session? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, all the best, and enjoy Ventura stain. So who's feeling fresh after a 5K open water set? I don't think that's likely. But what do you think about this idea about the form breaking down? Yeah, I think that the reason that you break up swims into intervals is to get a little bit of rest so that when you're pushing off the wall, you are fresh again. And the longer the interval gets, sometimes it's easier to, you know, you do break down your form a little bit. So they're talking

about an open water swim though, Nick? Yeah. Yeah, that is harder because you're just continuously swimming. But I think there's some philosophy of swimming that just swimming more will make you stronger so that you can't have better form and enforce good habits and volume is just the way to do it. And that's kind of our coach's philosophy. So he's not over-analyzing each little thing in our stroke. It's more just like swimming well and your body wants to be efficient and will eventually find the way to be most efficient. So doing one of those a few times a week, I think it makes you really fit to swim continuous like that for long periods of time versus doing a 3K with a bunch of rest and drills and sprints.

That's a different stimulus. Well, especially in the ocean with a wetsuit around other people. Like, it's so race-specific, that's great practice. For sure, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's also crazy when you think about the amount that we swim versus the amount we race swimming, it's so much more than on the bike or the run.

It's like we're going and swimming 5K, that's three times more than we're racing. and we're never doing three times more on the bike or the run. So it's just one of those weird sports where it's so sport-specific that you need to do a lot of it to be efficient at it. So I think those 5K swims will start to feel easier as you do them more, just like any gym program or anything like that. Yeah, you also got to take into account that when you finish up your swim in the triathlon,

you need to be completely fresh because you've still got multiple hours of activity left to go. So doing more in training than in racing makes sense. It'll make some sense if you think about it that way. Okay, now I, since we've talked about this so many times, like your form breaking down and reinforcing bad technique, I guess I would ask both of you, how much do you think mentally trying to fight your form breaking down and mentally trying to maintain the form even at the expense of other things? How effective do you think that is or do you think you get to a point where it doesn't matter how badly you wanted, your form is breaking down and you are, you are, you. you are maybe reinforcing bad habits. Yeah, I mean, at a certain point, you're just going to go to failure. It's like doing as many pull-ups as you can.

It just doesn't matter if you want to do 25, if you can only do 12. You can't, like, mentally, you know, get yourself around that. But with swimming, I generally speaking try to prioritize the form. So if I could swim a 110, sometimes I'll end up swimming a 11-but-feeling, but feeling like I'm more on top of the water and my elbow is high and everything. right up until the point of where things are just kind of falling apart and you need to make the workout

and like a harder session or something, but I'm definitely more of a proponent of trying to keep your form together and swimming properly. I just can't believe the 5K plus every Sunday two-hour session and open water seems brutal. That is a lot. So congratulations. That is really a lot.

But also like doing 5K and 2 hours is pretty pedestrian. Yeah, there's a lot of downtime there. Yeah, you're not swimming continuously. But it's still impressive. Yeah, but just being in the water for two hours is so long. Yeah, that's like swim club mentality. Like, we used to be in the water for two hours and do 6K, but you're stopping a lot, you're doing drills.

It goes by so quick when you're with a group. Cool. Okay. Next question here is from David in Germany. Hi, Paula, Eric, and Nick. I have a question regarding carbon shoes. My whole team is racing with carbon shoes, but my run is not as good as theirs, both speed and form.

I'm wondering, what is the, minimum speed I need to get some bonus out of the carbon shoes and if I even profit from the bounciness when my running form isn't great. Currently I'm running a 5K at around 19 minutes and 10K in just over 40 minutes. I'm only racing sprint in an Olympic distance and have struggle with knee stability as I'm overpronating. Looking forward to your next video and please send some good weather across the pond, best David from Germany. So first of all, 5K and 19 minutes is plenty fast for a triathlete. So if you're on the slower end, that is very, very, very You can run with a fast crowd there.

Yeah, you can definitely benefit from carbon shoes if you're running a 19-minute 5-5-5-5. You'll probably take 30 seconds off your time. You're in the target demographic for Super Shoes, I would venture to say. Oh, for sure. I mean, that's roughly my 5K time. And for me, Super Shoes make a huge difference. I think I'm an over-responder to Super Shoes, but still, I looked at some research. And even at much, much, much slower paces, there's a running,

efficiency advantage to be had by the carbon shoes and the bounciness of the carbon shoes. But yes, it is a bigger percentage of the puzzle, the faster you go. Yeah. Another huge part of carbon shoes is they really save your legs. Like, I can do a 70.3 now and not be sore the next day wearing these shoes. Which is insane. Whereas before, especially back in the day of like socks basically, like the lighter the better. Socks with soul on them.

Barely any soul on them. You'd get so beat up. But now I think the muscular preservation is just so worth it, even if you're not approaching the speeds of where they would necessarily help you from a speed perspective. The only issue I see here is the overpronating because these shoes can, they definitely do not help if you are already overpronating. Yeah, I was going to say Paula has a lot of experience with that and has tried out multiple sets of super shoes before that reason. Yeah. I think the Nike, Alpha Fly, Vaprofly, super bad for pronators. Like, if you pronate, you're just going to...

Cody Beals just posted, I don't know if it was a story or a main feed post, but he posted a picture of himself on a downstride. And literally the inside of his foot is, like, touching the pavement. He's... Touching the ground. Yeah. But I think that the ons are really good for having a little bit more support than the Nike's. and the A6 as well.

I've tried the A6. Now I wear Ons, and I think both of those are night and day better for having a little bit of support, but also having the speed, fast carbon response. Eric, where's the Adidas?

Yeah, we're the Adidas for a while. I've worn the Ons now. They both feel fine to me. We don't really promote it too much. I never tried the Nikes out, though, but I've seen some, yeah, gnarly pictures or video. Sam Long. Sam Long is the one that comes to mind.

that is crazy. He's another one that looks like his heels are touching the ground on the inside. He's wearing the ASIC, though. He's now, but I've seen it. Like, my mind, I can remember seeing him in the Nike days with them like folded in. And it doesn't help his case that he's a little bit bigger dude. I'm sure the closer that you get to 200 pounds, like the more the pro nation and stability thing is going to be an issue. Why can't I remember his name, French triathlete short course?

The guy. Louis. The guy. Vincent Luis. You should keep that in just in case he listens. Oh, really? You know, the guy from France. The guy.

The guy. I was a few years ago and during Malibu Triathlon, he was there with Super League or whatever. And the day that I'm racing, they do like a relay for charity. So, and Christian Blumenfeld was there. And it was very fun. So they would like run past me. And I remember when Vincent Louis ran past me, I saw the same thing. His ankles just like totally.

collapsing inwards with them. So I guess for some people it doesn't lead to injury. I think for me, I am kind of an overpronator and the ons do help me. Like normal super shoes, I have to size up a bunch so that I can have a wider platform to run on. But the ons are a little more natural foot shaped. At least they work better for my foot. And I've been really enjoying running in them. It's funny because I'm sponsored by on.

Nick and Eric aren't. But we feel like we need an affiliate link or something because of the amount that we talk about on shoes on this podcast. But we all really like the shoes. They are great for running on the roads. Pretty magical. Yeah. So yes, David, the super shoes are totally worth it.

Definitely for you and even for people much slower than you are. Okay, next one is from Ethan from Dunfermline. That's not a real place, is it? It's probably in Germany, right? Dunfermline. Maybe. Oh, Scottish. Oh, cute.

Yeah, I would say like done anything is Scottish. I love Scotland. The infernal line. Okay, hello TTL crew. I was racing the Scottish middle distance championships. Wait, wait, wait. Can you read it in a Scottish accent? I'm going to get canceled.

Yeah, that's bad. I don't think it's allowed. I don't know. Is Scottish, you can't get canceled? They've probably been marginalized at some point in time. Okay, start over. Either way, we're going to stay away from it. I'll do you a private reading later.

Okay, that sounds good. I was racing the Scottish Middle Distance Championships in August 2023 and came off my bike down the big descent. I was a novice but confident rider at the time. However, the descent is very technical and known for people falling off or crashing. What? That seems crazy. Okay, anyway, despite wrecking the course the week before, I still came off and to be honest, I'm extremely lucky to come away with only road rash and bruises as it was an open road event and the crash threw me to the other side of the road. Ooh, that's scary. It's kind of like the worst nightmare. My question is, how do I get my confidence back on the bike. Take my winter bike around a cycle track and see how hard I can push the

corners, cycle in unfavorable conditions. I can still ride outside, but nowhere near as skilled as I need to be. I'm working towards some podium places and some local races in 2024. The fitness is there, but the skill isn't. Thank you for all the advice. It has truly made many of us listeners, triathlons journey, a piece of cake. Thanks, Ethan from Dunfer Maline. Eric and I were just talking about this on our last ride. We were. Eric, you did have a legit crash. Where was it again? Barbados? Oh yeah, years and years ago. I crashed a couple of times, actually. A lot of people crashed because when it rains in Barbados, the roads have like marble or something mixed into them and they are actually like ice rinks. So crash going in a straight line,

not breaking. And how long do you feel like it took you before you were back to a similar confidence level or going around a corner that you are now? Yeah, it just took a long time for me to believe that my wheels, my tires were not going to slip out because this just completely broke all rules that I had in my brain. Even having grown up riding wet, slippery, twisty roads in Oregon, I just, like, I just lost confidence. But I think the only way you're going to get it back is you can even just go out. I don't think you need to find adverse conditions, but just every time you finish a ride, do a couple of loops of a parking lot, swerving around, going in figure eights, whatever, just doing things that like reinforce to you that your tires

do in fact work, push it just one percent more every time you go do a corner, like just get comfortable with it and just get reacquainted with what it feels like to lean the bike over and not have it fly out from under you.

This has been happening to me because I got those flats on my new gravel bike, which are, I mean, it's just, it was kind of a weird scenario. Now it's in my head on my road bike that I'm descending. I'm like, oh yeah, you can just get a flat.

If you're going 35 miles an hour around a corner and you get like, a real bad flat. It's a, that can turn bad pretty quick. Yeah. The second that idea gets in your head is just, ugh, it's hard. Yeah, I think the only thing you can really do for that is just to always check your tires, make sure you don't have any major gashes, make sure that they're not worn off, you know, kind of feel flat on the, on the center of the tread patch, and then you just, I mean, decide how much you want to risk. Like, generally speaking, tires do not catastrophically blow out,

even when you get a flat, typically it doesn't go flat in 0.1 seconds. So you've got a little bit of time to get vertical, put on the brakes, lean into whatever tire does have air in it still. But yeah, it's all a process of just rebuilding that confidence for sure. It doesn't happen instantly. That's the main takeaway I would have here for Ethan, is that it took Eric years to get his confidence back. And as hard as that is to hear,

maybe it's a little comforting when you're, you know, it's like a month or two after and you still don't have that confidence back. It's like, it's okay. It's just your brain protecting itself. Yeah. Yeah. Don't feel bad. It's all good. Next question here. And I did do a little bit of research into this question because it's a little bit, little bit sciencey. But I think a lot of people are curious about this. So this is from Philip. Hey, TTL gang. I must say that I have learned greatly from the past 100 plus episodes and still have something that I think hasn't been asked before, and it's regarding fueling. I would gladly have the best fuel available for every workout, but that comes at a great cost. I've been experimenting with gummies,

syrups, and almost anything that has carbs in a greater amount, but I have learned that proper ratios between glucose and fructose are quite important when you want to increase the grams, and not all sugar and everything is the same. At the end of the day, I know it comes down to what suits you, but I would love to hear if you guys stick to one source of carbs all the time, and if you need to train your gut every time you increase the intake between seasons. Keep it up, guys. Best regards, Philip. So let's start with the last question there. Do you guys intentionally train your gut every year to keep up with what you expect to take in during a race? Or is that something that you kind of year around are doing? I think we're doing it every time we train. Yeah, it's kind of constant.

Yeah. I think during the off season, when our sessions are shorter, we'll, um, not need as many gels or sport drinks or we'll stop for coffee and get a cookie or something. So it's a little bit less structured that way. But throughout the whole year, we're trying to train with what we race with so that I guess we're training our gut to absorb it. I really don't take enough in, I don't think, to be considered training my gut. But my gut seems to be pretty resilient. So, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, I'll be the first to admit. It is really challenging. and I don't want to say a drag, but it's a lot of work to load up the amount of bottles and gels or choose, you know, et cetera, for a long ride. And to do rides a week, it's kind of exhausting. And yeah, it's expensive. But if you want to be really serious about putting in the maximum amount of fuel that you can and be able to keep that down on race day and, like, experiencing the benefits of that, then that's kind of part of it. Yep. It is a, like you said, it's just a bit of a drag. But if you're after performance performance performance, getting as many carbs in as you can possibly get during a like an endurance event is such a huge part of the puzzle. Yeah. I will say if we're, if we have like a 90 minute optional ride, our coach has been putting those into our schedules lately in which we pretty much always take the option to do it. But the option that we do is to go very easy and maybe like ride to a coffee shop and back home. For those, I,

I don't go crazy. I put maybe half as much nutrition in one bottle and drink more water. And then, yeah, we stop and get a cookie. And that's like the day off from that whole cram as many calories into your stomach as possible. That's interesting. Did you kind of intuitively come up with that? Because that reflects some stuff that I was reading about what's actually the best practice. Yeah, I just going by feel all my life.

Paula, do you were going to say something? No, I want to hear what you found online. Yes, tell us about this all things in moderation thing that I'm sure will be. super excited about. Basically, up to two hours of exercise, use fast carbohydrates like a multidextrin or something that's like really, really quickly absorbing. And that's all you really need. And you can do like 30 to 60 grams per hour for that.

And that's okay. Because you're relying a lot on the glycogen stores that you already have on you. But for things of two hours or more, you do want to do a combination of those fast carbohydrates it's like a multidextrin with fructose. And the ratio is like 1 to 0.8 if you're building it yourself. And that's the cool thing about this is yes, you can buy these pre-made mixes, these pre-made gels that are going to be great and very effective.

But they come at a cost and you can get around it by making it yourself. And it's not hard. Like, don't take my word for it. Google it yourself if you're trying to make this and you can just buy the ingredients online and make it yourself. It's not hard to do. It's much more affordable. I mean, I don't see anything wrong with that.

Would you guys ever do that? I've never made my own. I used to, yeah. There was a guy in Portland who was a doctor and just had access to medical supply stuff, and he would sell to anybody who wanted, like, twice a year, 50 pound bags of multidextrin. For $50 a bag. Oh, that's worth it. Wow.

Back in the day, yeah, that was like as good as great. gold and then I would mix in some electrolytes to it, you know, like putting noon, something like that in there. And that got the job done for sure. Yeah, that's pretty great. The only cautionary thing I'll say is that not all multidection is created equal, for example. So it's up to you. I mean, if you can afford it, obviously going with the, you know, someone like precision or big brands, they've done the math. They know the science and they have the right balance of things to keep you field topped up ready to ride. We might have a cool little partnership with precision coming up,

not like an official sponsorship, but we're working with them to give our listeners discounts. So we're big fans of them. That's the stuff that we use is precision. Yeah, same. You use it to Nick. Yeah. So stay tuned for that in future podcasts.

We're trying to do more of that. And sometimes we try to prioritize the podcast. podcast supporters, but sometimes it's for all listeners, like discounts on all kinds of stuff. And the precision stuff has been an ongoing conversation that could come to fruition. I actually have the code right in front of me, but I don't know if we're allowed to do it yet. Maybe stay tuned, just because we're, this has been a lot of back and forth trying to make this happen. And we're really excited to get it out there. But we just need to, yeah.

We should do it in a more official way. Yeah. I don't know what it is. I have this like caveman-like pleasure of giving discounts. to the podcast listeners to things that they need. I totally agree. And I think this stuff is,

people are buying precision anyway. Yeah. Yes, of course. Our attitude is definitely, it don't feel obligated, but if we can help take the edge off of some stuff like this, so maybe you're not cooking stuff in your bathtub

to get through long rides, then we're psyched to be part of that. Definitely use this instead of DIY. Cooking stuff in your bathtub. We're getting multi-dection and pounds of 50. No, just order this. Oh, I would totally do it. I would totally do it. I love it. My body is a science experiment.

I would rather retire from triathlon than... Paula's hot takes. Can we get a screen capture from that? Next question here is from James. Hey, y'all, or really, I guess just Paula, since you're the only one who actually reads these. Actually, I read these today. But that is the exception. I have a question about... That's because we were on a ride, and tomorrow's Valentine's Day. We're really squeezing this in. And we were on a phone call with Kesteli cooking up the coolest thing that you've ever heard of.

So also staying tuned for that. Oh, guys. So many cliffhangers here. Okay, back to the question here. It was recently brought to my attention by a bike fitter that most of my engagement on my pedal stroke is on the downstroke. The fitter basically explained to me

that not performing any sort of pull-up motion on the upstroke with my hip flexors means a significant proportion of the force of the downstroke with either leg is devoted to lifting the opposite leg up on its upstroke. Instead of going to the drop, drive train to move the bike forward.

He also talked a bit about engaging my hamstring at the bottom of the stroke in almost a running motion at the bottom of the pedal stroke to make more consistent force. Then there's two paragraphs here of kind of more details, but I think that kind of paints a picture correctly. So at the end here, I guess I'm really just trying to see what y'all's experiences are. Are you just mashing the downstroke? Are you pedaling in a circle? Lifting your upstroke to decrease the negative vector?

Do you even do any pedaling drills during training? is this all pointless thought exercise to fill pages in a training book and or bro science. Yeah, just we don't think about it for a millisecond. I love like most of my engagement on my pedal stroke is on the downstroke.

Obviously, like how could it not be? There's no one in the world who doesn't have most of there. Yeah, there's definitely some like single leg drills you can do on the trainer to smooth out your pedal stroke and feel what it's like to kind of lift up over the top. but when you're out there riding, I don't think that you should be thinking about it.

Yeah. Unless you're really a pedal masher and you're like, you know, uneven, but I think smoothness is the key here. If you're smooth and you're peddling well, you shouldn't have to think about it. You know what this reminds me of watching, I think it was like the Japanese track cycling team

doing these extremely high cadence drills on rollers. And I don't know how much that, affects anything, but I remember they had, like, they actually spent some time on it. But the things that I had read, at least in the past about this, is that it's just kind of like a little bit like running cadence. People find their natural cadence, and that's what's best to stick with. I can't imagine doing these things. I've seen these machines when I did my bike fit, where it shows you on the screen exactly where your power distribution is on the pedal stroke. And yeah, of course, the downstroke was predominantly where I put most of the power down.

but my bike fitter was like, yeah, you can optimize it a little bit. And actually, I remember my bike fitter talking about this hamstring activation at the bottom of the stroke when you're running. And I think that's really actually relevant to triathlon where you're kind of hinged a little more forward and your stroke is proportionally comes a little further forward on the pedal stroke. But is this something that either of you guys ever had like a coach talked to you about or that someone actually spent time looking into for either one of you? Yeah, my first coach was all about this. Super hard. And did you feel a difference? I mean, I feel like right up until I started having hip problems,

I had a beautifully smooth pedal stroke. I could do almost 200 RPM, no problem. These days, on the rollers. And these days, not so much. And I think being able to ride really high RPM is a little more valuable in road cycling. It's certainly valuable on track cycling where you have one gear to work with and being smooth there when it's a fixed gear bike and, you know, all the things. Less of a thing in triathlon.

and I feel like there's kind of two schools of thought. First coach was all about that. And you feel like you're pawing a little bit and kicking over the top. So you're engaging all the muscles and being smooth. And then Paulo's like the more you think the worse it is in biking and running. You just need to like push around the pedals and go as fast as you can. That's not true though because Paulo when he came to visit us was talking about my ankle flexion. So I think there is some technique to the peddling that can either increase or could be decreasing.

your power or your speed output for a certain power. But it's so individual and without like seeing a person's pedal stroke, it's hard to like give advice on a podcast. Yeah, I do think that like what Paula is saying about how much your ankle is flex. You know, if you're just like stabbing at the ground with pointed toes, that's really not taking advantage of all the strongest muscles in your legs. That's kind of the thing that maybe a bike fitter is trying to get to by telling you to have this sensation of like scraping your foot on the ground.

that might just be waking up the hamstrings and getting them online. And the thing that I could see being useful maybe about seeing this pedal stroke data is just that it could show that, oh yeah, maybe if your saddle was one inch lower or one inch higher or whatever, that that'll actually allow your hip flexors to fire in a natural way and you're not necessarily thinking about it. Yeah, it could come down to the fit to the satellite. You're right. But yeah, generally speaking, if you're running and you're thinking, toe off, knee up, arms, straight. Right, right, right. You know, that's not a fast and fluid and relaxing way to run fast.

I will say, I do think that the high cadence drills are a good way to improve your pedal mechanics. Like Eric said, with a 200 RPM or whatever, when I was coached by Neil Henderson back in the day, you coached a bunch of pro cyclists on time trial on the road, on the track, and we always did high cadence drills. It was like, within a 90-minute ride, you're doing four or six spin-ups over 30 seconds to your maximum cadence. And I think that that really enforces like the neuromuscular, loosens everything up. It forces you to like let go almost more than force it and just

reinforces kind of a smoother pedal stroke. After the high cadence, you feel really good pedaling back in 90 RPM. Totally. That's a good drill you could incorporate, I think, pretty harmlessly into your easy rides. I just can't help but picture someone who is like obsessing over their pedal stroke, but then you look at them and their hips are like dipping up and down, which is a much bigger problem than like having an inefficient pedal stroke, you know. Yeah, that could mean your saddle's too high if your hips are dipping one side or the other. Yeah, no, it's just like swimming. It's a delicate balance between thinking about any one thing, then the other thing goes out of whack

and, you know, it's less thinking is probably better. But yeah, the high cadence drill is good. Watch some videos of like Taylor Nib riding and watch her pedal stroke. I know, it's just like interesting the way that I watch, swimmers, like professional swimmers on TV, and you get some cues from that. I don't know, it might be interesting just to pay attention to that next time you're watching a pro

triathlon on TV. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, that is all we have time for today. We definitely have more questions, but we're a little bit time crunched, but we really appreciate you guys listening. We really appreciate the supporters. I kind of go through at the first of the month,

and we get a couple more every month, and it's really exciting, and we are very, very grateful for you guys. So thanks to everybody. And hope you had a great Valentine's Day. Ooh, romantic. Nick was actually supposed to come here to record and then I realized it was going to be Valentine's Day and like we should probably do something nice with each other.

Valentini. Maybe we should probably do something valentine even if it's not going out for dinner. Yeah. I think that's all the things. I could just like go on and talk about everything that I've done today on TTR, but we will do a big old TTR update in the coming episodes. for all the fun behind-the-scenes stuff we're working on.

That's a good idea. Next week, TTLS. That sounds great. All right. Thanks, everybody. Bye.