That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon swim cadence, cold weather running, treadmill quality, and more!

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

This week we get mentally prepared to all go race Ironman 70.3 Los Cabos in Mexico and answer your questions. Questions about remembering workouts, using carbon bikes on a stationary trainer, using a master swim spa for swim training, and more! To submit a question for the podcast, as well as become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com

Hey, everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Paula Findlay. I'm Eric Lagerstrom. I'm Nick Goldston. We answer all of your triathlon questions that you send in. Talk a little bit about what's going on in our triathlon lives and in the triathlon world in general. Eric and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is a professional musician, amateur triathlete racing this weekend and the mastermind behind all of the sound on the pod and the editing. What do you think is going to win this weekend? You, me, or Eric, in the race? Win? Yeah, like, you think I could beat you, Eric?

You mean, in terms of time? I've been training. I've been training a lot. Or, like, you in the 12 to 17-year-old age group versus me in the pro field. I mean me versus you. Like, I feel like, I don't know. I'm catching up to you guys. This could be the race where I beat you.

This is what I realized, based on your Strava. It's like you were in Bend and you rode like 14 hours last week. And then you went home and you. you only wrote five. That's not common at all. Okay. And you're running too also dropped. Well, the running dropped because of my whatever weird injury.

But no, I usually, I mean, the bend was a lot, but I usually train like three or four hours less than that per week. And this week was like 10 hours less. Yeah, well, then maybe you're going to beat Eric. Two-week average is still normal. That's true. I think if I'm within one hour of Eric, I'll be very happy. That's how not close it is. I wonder who will be faster though, you or me.

What? What are you talking about? It's not even close. Are you out of your mind? Well, you're a boy, Nick. I'm just a boy. I'm just a small boy. I'm never going to be as fast as you.

What are you crazy? I'll be like 100 minutes slower than you on the swim. The only chance I'd have is on the bike and you'll still be 20 minutes faster than me on the bike. And then, of course, the run I'm walking pace compared to you. so it's not going to be close. Okay. Well, it doesn't matter how we do, okay? We're just going for fun.

I love that. We just did a little bit of a deep dive on what the weather is going to be and determined it's going to be hot, but maybe not as humid on race day. But we'll see. It's like obviously hard to predict that a week out. How much have you thought about sodium or nutrition and how the heat affects that during the race?

I just thought about how I want to not end up in a Mexican hospital. Well, I thought about it yesterday because I went on the feet. and ordered, not sponsored by the feed, but I do order some stuff there. And I ordered some salt stuff and like goo with amino acids in it and electrolyte. I don't know. It's going to be like just throwing eggs against a wall and seeing which one sticks. Is that a saying? I don't think it's with eggs, but...

Which one breaks. I think you're combining, like, throwing a piece of spaghetti against the wall. And if it sticks, then it's ready with eggs against the wall and breaking. But I do think in our particular scenario it is going to be closer to eggs against a wall and seeing if they cook. That's what it is. If it hits a scrambled egg by the time it hits the ground, it's hot. Yeah. I will say that in our last brick workout yesterday, we did it indoors.

And I was like intentionally trying to really practice just constantly fueling. So I was like a gel between every interval and chugging down like Morton drink. and when I ran out of stuff, and we were still in the middle of the workout, the workout, which never happens to me. I never, like, run out of gels. I was like, oh, my God, I need more gels. Like, I just had the sense that the more I feel it,

the more I can output. And I'm, like, finally coming to that realization now that I'm 34 years old. Thank God. So I'm going to try to be like that in the race. Like, treat it a little bit like an experiment where I eat more than I normally eat. and see what the outcome is

because it's like a low stakes thing, you know? Total gut explosion, it's fine because it's kind of end of the season fun race. Do you think the heat is more likely to make gut distress a problem? Potentially, yeah, right? Yeah, like my couple of friends who did Kona had that problem too. They were used to fueling, but then with the heat, their body just kind of like was not able to handle it as well.

Yeah, Kona's a different beast. I just think we'll be done early enough that we will. won't really feel the heat of the day. I hope you're right. It does seem like it gets hot early, whereas like in California, it takes a while to heat up. It seems like there it gets to its peak and stays there pretty early on. Yeah. I just remember last time I did this race, we went out for lunch later in the day and people

were still racing, and I was like, wow, it is so much worse now. Yeah. There's actually a pretty good question about that this week, about who's working harder? The people out there for seven hours? are the people out there for four hours. Yeah, I did see that question. Hard is an interesting word to try to describe that relationship. Yeah, I'd say who's working harder.

That's funny. Like, what is working harder? They're working more, potentially. Longer. I think it's about what you consider working, like, you know, going out and doing a 200 watt 10-minute interval when you're fresh and excited versus going out and doing a 200-watt 10-minute interval

when you're so not soaked for it. Is there a different in hardness? Mentally, yeah. Mentally, sure, but physically there's not a difference. So that's kind of the question. Like, those people doing it in seven, we'll save this for later. We'll save this for later. This is deep.

Yeah, it's a good question. So anyway, we're all hanging by a thread here for this race. We're going to make it work. I think we're going to treat it as a, have as much fun as possible. And let's not get Eric into a Mexican hospital or Nick or Paula. Yeah, me saying Mexican hospitals in no way a reflection of the quality of Mexican hospitals, rather than just a hospital in a foreign country is terrifying to me.

Okay, first thing let's do is a little bit of this or that. And this is a user submitted this or that from David in Mesa, Arizona. So first one, I love to win or I hate to lose. Where do you think you fall on this? Hate to lose.

Wow. I think I've noticed that really high performance athletes are much more likely to be the hate to lose than the love to win. The reason I think that as well, Nick, is because when you win, at least for me, it's more relief than happiness. Yeah, I understand. I think for someone in your position where that's the expectation, that might be the case. I'm generally happier with any result, and I do think that in the long run, that gives me less drive to work hard. because I'm just there to try to have a fun time

and somewhere in my subconscious that is not pushing me as much as someone who's like, no, I cannot lose. I have to, no one can beat me a single time. So I have to work hard, hard, hard, hard, hard. Yeah. And it's a sense of relief that you didn't lose versus, oh man, I'm the best.

You know, I won. But Eric, you're kind of at a loss for words here. Well, I think, like, I definitely have that reflex of hating to lose, but I would say, like, overall, as I'm, like, picturing how I train and like the races that I've won and stuff, it's definitely I'm more excited about the prospect of

of doing all of the steps properly and like nailing all of the things and it's more like a positive driver rather than. Hating to, yeah. Yeah, better than like I don't, I hate to like lose. There's like whatever. Hate to lose is a very negative approach. Yeah, and I'm much more like, this is so, this would be so cool and this would be awesome

and I feel like all the vibes are going in the right direction. And like I get more like, yeah, positive. motivated. So Paula, I already know the answer to this question from you. I'm almost positive.

But Eric, at this point in your 70.3 racing career, would you rather have a better result or would you rather outperform

what you expected of yourself physically, but not have as good of a result? That totally depends on how bad the result is. Right.

What about first versus third place? So like winning the race but being like, man, that really wasn't my best you know maybe everyone else just in your mind didn't have their day either or would you have a third place where you're like wow i finally put together a swim and a bike and a run that i've really wanted in the past year i mean it just totally depends on the race and the quality of field you know okay like yeah i could answer this too in terms of like going and winning augusta versus coming second at 70.3 worlds definitely i'd take the second place yeah i guess it's a really good feeling to know that yeah it's a definitely a good feeling to know that you did the absolute best that you could

could do and that's whether that's like first or third that's that's a lot more comforting than going to like a race where there's nobody at and you win it and you're like man I still don't know if things are going well enough I'm going to be good at the big race that really matters okay what about this is a little bit uh not safe for work no no it's it's totally safe for work before a run wait at home until valve movement or strategically run near your favorite fast food restaurant bathrooms Fast food restaurant That's terrible Do not use people's bathrooms

Unless you are patronizing them Using their services Oh you're assuming they're not going to get a A McGriddle Yeah I mean if you're getting a mcgriddle Then sure whatever use the bathroom I wait till Yeah

We never get out early enough for this is an issue Yeah Always at home Next one Bike snob or coffee snob Coffee snob Yeah I guess we're Would be technically more snobby about coffee

That's just because we have nice I don't know Like we I don't feel like we're snobby about Like I hate the coffee snob thing It's just like we really like good coffee Who like sure maybe you don't know what that means or something But like it's not that we're like oh my God No I'm not even going to like have a drip coffee from Starbucks

I couldn't imagine Right I'm just like no if there's an option to have great coffee from a small coffee shop, we'll go with that. Same thing with bikes. I remember being very turned off by the snobbiness of bikes at the beginning. It almost made me not want, it almost made me want to not be a part of the sport because of how certain people are... It's a bit elitist. Yeah, it's elitist and exclusionary.

And I have to like notice that in myself when people are to ask me what bike to get. I'm like, probably whatever bike they want, but I want them to get the nice bike with the nice components. Like, okay, do they really need it? I don't know. I think this is such a made-up thing. It's really just like, are you content with the thing that you can afford or not? because you can get a bike that works perfectly and that you could win a ton of races on for like $2,500. But in your mind, you want to have the nicest thing.

It's not elite. It's just, yeah, that option's there. The option to buy a Ferrari is there, you know? Like these options are out there, but it doesn't mean that you must have one to be functional in the trathlon or bike space. Oh, not at all. Not even close. And on the flip side, I wouldn't say that our bike need for the top gear is snoppiness.

It's literally our jobs. So you work for, you need the best computer for your job if you work in tech or whatever. Yeah. It defines whether or not we like make money in our profession. Well, it kind of reminds me too. Like at the end of the day, the difference between like a $10,000 bike and a $15,000 bike is going to be measured in seconds at the end of a race. Yeah. But it reminds me of this Jerry Seinfeld joke where he's like, first place in the world, everyone knows him on the cover of every cereal box of magazine.

Second place, never heard of him. but he was like half a second behind him. So in contracts, it makes a huge difference. And when your income depends on it, of course it's worth it. Yeah. Especially if you're getting it through a sponsorship already. Well, then it's like, well, then of course you're going to ride the best gear. Next one.

Power data or HR data. Oh, boy. HR's heart rate. Easy. Power. Human resources of data. Power data. Next one, Shimano, Stram, or Camp and Yolo.

Have you guys ever had a Campanolo group set or any components? one, but I've ridden it, of course. I've never ridden anything but Sram on any bike in my life. I'm so ready to switch to Sram on everything. And my upcoming gravel bike, which I'm very excited about coming soon, is going to be Sram.

I'm so stoked on that. Yeah, we're obviously, well, maybe not obviously, but Paul and I are sponsored by Sram, so we are contractually obligated to say Sram, but also we do really love it. If I could choose, I would choose it. They have the one-by system that we love. It's light, it's sex,

like it freaking works all the time. It's so easy to build a bike because it's totally wireless. I've never had an issue. Like campy is like this romantic Italian thing, kind of like our espresso machine, but like a lot of romantic Italian things, it can be finicky, and that makes me nervous. Yeah.

When you're on, you're so on and it's so great. Yeah. It's a fiat, right? Fix it again, Tony. That's kind of the old saying. Yeah, Sram. I'm so excited for Sram stuff. Okay, number six, I like this one a lot.

Saddlesore or Blister on foot? Nick, I didn't see these questions. Was this a direct DM? Nope. This is, when people submit, sometimes they submit games, segments, and if I didn't use it that week, I bank it. Okay. Yeah, but I don't think I've ever read this.

Yeah, it's from just probably maybe like six months ago or something like that. Oh, wow. Okay, okay. I don't know. I think I might take a saddle sore because Oh, for sure. With a saddle sore, I just take a day or two off the bike and it's fine. But a blister on your foot affects your walking and everything, just daily-to-day living. Saddle-store is clear out quicker, I think.

I've ridden through saddlesaws. Yeah. When you have blister, it's like every step is misery. This is hard. Just like the worst blister and the worst saddle sore, both of them can put you out for like a week. True. Really bad saddle so. I don't get really bad saddle sores.

I don't really get really bad of either, so it's kind of cold. So it was kind of hard. I was watching this documentary of Sally McRae. She's an ultra trail runner. Super charismatic and really, really good YouTube videos. This one she put out of the 250 mile race that she recently did. It was like ultra, ultra, ultra, like half a million views.

But her feet were blistering from like mile 11. Oh, no. And she did 250. And just because she chose the wrong socks that day. Like usually she gets the combo right and it's never a problem. But the pain that she was enduring. Imagine like the physical discomfort of just doing that distance, but magnified by blisters in our shoes. I just don't think I can deal with it.

No. Yeah. When my sister had a blister in her hundred-mileer at like mile 50, like, oh, so we're done. Yeah. It's over. You just have to deal with it. I was like, this is insanity. Yeah.

Speaking of ultras, the Havelina 100 just happened. And our friend Heather Jackson won again, right? Didn't she win last year? No, last year she was winning for almost the whole thing and then it was her first hundred ever So the last 15 miles or so she had to walk quite a bit and got caught But she's done a couple this year She's kind of figured it out

I think there's a definite learning curve to running these ultramarathons And she won it by 30 minutes this year Which is so cool Yeah, second fastest time ever Like in my mind it's not surprising Because Heather's so good at that stuff And if you watch her stride I'm like Heather was built for ultra running

got this really efficient, like low to the ground. Never fatiguing stride and just this super positive attitude. And we know that half of this sport is like mental. And she kind of just has all the tools in the toolbox for it. But then also you can be leading for 95 miles and then actually not be able to go to mile 96. Anything could happen. Wild. But it's really cool.

It was so cool to see her win. And she mega deserves that. I'd say her season's been a little up and down with trying all these new things. So to finish it with a win is so cool. Paula, one of the kids from the podcasts sent me a screenshot of you commenting something on the YouTube feed of it saying, okay, fine, I'll do an ultra. Well, the feed was so long. Obviously, this race is like 15 hours, and these guys are commentating on this race for 15 hours.

It's like longer than Kona. And I think they were just so bored at the end, like they didn't have anything else to say. And I was like in the chat on YouTube talking to some of the people. It was our friend Curtis there, so we started... Yeah, we started going back and forth. And then the announcers noticed I was talking and they're like, oh, we got Paula Finley on the chat. I'm like, you guys must be so bored.

But yeah, I said maybe I would do one someday, even though I won't. That's a tough one, but it does seem fun. I feel like Eric, though, I legitimately see you not only being good at this, but really enjoying something like this. I don't know about a hundred like that, but maybe... Dude, I was going to do the Smith Rock 50K until I got cajoled into the 70.3 Los Cabos thing. We're never going to live this down, Paula. Something that I could see doing that would be fun is like pacing Heather.

I think that would be super fun because Heather's moving pretty fast. So I think if I could just do it in chunks of like 10 or 20 miles, I mean 20 would be so much for me. But I think that would be super fun. So it's going to be here next week. We should see if we can talk her into coming on the podcast. Oh, that's a fantastic idea. In my mind, when I think about it is not even necessarily like, are you fit enough to like run that pace? But are you like fit enough to run that pace?

Be calm. Consol them when they're having a hard time. Be able to like be cognizant enough to like therapy at like mile 80, you know? The craziest thing about Heather is she raced a hundred mile gravel race the weekend before at Big Sugar. And then she goes and does this. Just the. Yeah, that's ridiculous. The triathlete in ours coming out.

Okay, and last one here, this is, once again, this is from David. He said, my son would want me to ask this one. This is a little gross. Lick a public garbage can or a public bathroom floor. He thinks this is the funniest question. Thanks, guys. A garbage can, I guess. Yeah, garbage can.

This outside and in my mind, I'm like the UV rays, semi-sterilize it as untrue as that is. Like, the indoor bathroom floor is just. I could see it like going and linking a lamp post. You know, it's like people are just putting garbage. which in it. It's not that gross. Okay, that was a good amount of tangents. Now we're going to get to the questions. You too can submit your questions at that trough on life.com slash podcasts. And it's also there where you can become a podcast supporter, helps keep the podcast going, helps keep it ad free. And we really appreciate the support of all of the people that

donate to us every month. Okay. And also, I'm not saying this just, this is a hundred percent true. Another way that you can, my friend of mine just texted me, said, I just saw a TTL shirt in the wild thought you had to know. That is also another way you can help support us is by buying apparel and gear that we have on the website. I'm screen recording this. Maybe we'll put this out to prove that I in fact did get a text about this while we were talking about it on the podcast. That's cool. Let's put it out. Oh, just now. That's amazing. And every once in a while, we've been doing it pretty consistently. We take all the podcast supporters.

We put them into a random number generator and we give a little bit of a prize to a random person. So this week, our random number generator came up with, drum roll. Sarah Budinger or Budinger or Budinger or what else we have?

We tried a few different ones. We really tried to figure it out. Apologies, Sarah. We do think it's Budinger. That sounds like an American kind of name. It feels like the most American way to say it. Yeah. But Sarah, we think we have your address, but just to be sure you can message me on Instagram with your address and then we'll send you out. What are you sending out to Sarah? We got a lot of socks. We got some water bottles, some Paula Finley additions, some Eric Loggersome additions.

So can Sarah pick a bottle or socks? Yeah. Sure. Great. That's what we'll do. The socks are left over from the Tumalo collection. So you know, Sarah. Yeah, they're cool. Okay. On to questions. And we have a lot of really. good ones this week. First one here. Hi, TTL gang. Love the YouTube and pod so much. Thanks for the time and effort you put into sharing TTL with us. I wanted to ask your advice on what you wear for running in rainy cold weather. Think of this as what Nick would do if he was put back in Ironman Wisconsin weather again to survive the run. Is it weird to bring hand warmers? Do you wear wool leggings? I'm running my first marathon in Seattle in November and haven't had to deal with the cold

and rain on a run yet. Looking forward to your advice, Elizabeth. For running, you do warm up your core body temperature. And Seattle's never going to get like sub-zero freezing. I would say extremities are what usually get coldest on me. So I would put mitts on. Like even those ones you can get from like the dollar store that are like $2 and you can throw them in the garbage if you get too warm with them. I used to do that for cross-country meets. But I'd say shorts are probably okay in the rain.

And if you just, if you have leggings or something wool, it's just going to get saturated with water and heavier. but not necessarily you won't need your legs to be warm because you're working hard. I will say that I've ridden and run in my Castelli Marino long sleeve. It's like kind of light and designed to be kind of like a midlayer like for skiing or whatever. But that has been incredible with both like wet and windy. I rode in the redwoods with it when it was pouring rain. And it was fine. I didn't feel too hot.

I didn't feel too cold. Marino's pretty nice. That might be something to experiment with. I would probably do like shorts, a marino long sleeve, gloves that you don't mind chucking and headband. You could possibly do a vest too. If you have time to experiment, like some sort of a core vest that again you could chuck if you didn't need it.

I just think they're going to get too hot with that. Yeah. I'll say that when I was running. Just try it out. And in the snow in Smith Rock and stuff, I just had gloves, but I was never, ever, ever getting cold. Yeah.

For sure. And Seattle's not going to get as cold as that. Running generates so much body heat. I think the problem here could be if this person ends up walking a lot. That's... And the thing about your Wisconsin experience, Nick, was that you were biking. Yeah. And biking is a completely different ballgame because you're not working as hard in an Iron Man on the bike

and you're just in the wind, your core body temperature drops and you can't warm up. with running, you're just generating more body heat naturally. I did end up getting very cold on the run when I couldn't run anymore, when I was just walking. But other than that, even running very slow, not putting out a lot of effort, I was still plenty warm. And that was after being extraordinarily cold on the bike. So, yeah, I don't think it's really concerned. I think the extremities thing is probably all I would do different. And also I would say maybe increase your calorie intake a bit if it's really.

really cold. I think your body takes energy to heat up. And if you're going to be out there for a bit longer, because the conditions are adverse, just take an extra gel or whatever. Yep, love it. Next question here is from Pierre. Hi, Paul, Eric, and Nick, thanks for the good pod. I arrived recently in the U.S. and discovered your podcast thanks to triathlon teammate. Since then, I've never missed an episode. And the E has an accent over it. Accante Agueue. I'm not sure if that's how you maybe write it in French. Looking at your video from Lottie, I saw that Paula is using road shoes on the bike.

How does she manage to get in and out of the shoes as those shoes cannot be opened widely and don't have a buckle question mark? I'm not sure what he means by buckle. Maybe like the strap in the back. Like a Velcro strap. Yeah. Like a buckle you can like fully undo.

Yeah. Oh, I see. I see. Okay, got it. This is interesting because Eric, you do use triathlon specific shoes to race 70.3s. Paula, you don't. I don't anymore.

Oh, you stopped. Those blue-shmodels. Got it. Okay. So what do you think about this? Why do this, do you think you can get into those shoes just as quickly? What's the trade-off? Yeah, I think with the specialized torch shoes that we use, we can open up the boas to their maximum amount, and I can slide my feet in pretty easily.

If I was doing a short-course race, like a sprint or an Olympic IT-U-style race, every millisecond counts. And guess they are a little more challenging to get into, so I wouldn't use them for that. but for a 70.3 in Ironman, it's definitely possible. And what Eric and I do is just glue a loop to the back. So we have a place to put the elastic straps through. And I don't know, maybe fumble with it a bit more, but I think it's worth it. Yeah, they open really widely,

and that's why we've been able to do that recently. Correct me if I'm wrong. But as a professional, like, if you're someone who needs to be in a bike pack to have a good race, I can understand. saving five seconds or whatever, 10 seconds. But I cannot imagine almost a single age grouper unless you are like literally in the top 0.01% of people that actually would benefit in a non-draft scenario from triathlon specific bike shoes instead of bike-specific bike shoes that are more comfortable and more designed to bike harden. I mean, you could make the argument of like moisture management in a true triathlon shoe. of like if you're on the iron

doing the Iron Man thing and you're on the bike for seven hours you're going to be going to be dumping a lot of water on yourself like they do drain better like vent a little bit better the whole thing I forgot about the trainage. It really kind of depends but like Paula said the torch shoes that we've been using do the job really well

and so we've just kind of mistaken with them same thing with the mountain biking there's like a mountain bike torch specialized shoe and I use that for Xtera okay next question is from Jesse Canada Montreal Hi friends, I look forward to listening to the pod every week. Thank you for building this great community and answering our questions.

I have a question for you about swimming cadence. I've only been swimming for about one and a half years now and have completed a sprint Olympic and my first 70.3 this summer. Congratulations, Jesse. With the increase in swimming, I've gotten faster, but I'm still pretty slow swimmer. However, because I was curious, I started to increase my cadence in the pool, thinking I would swim faster, but I actually swim slower because I naturally decrease my pull effort to not tire out.

When I intentionally focus on a stronger pull and slowing down my cadence, I do swim faster. In both cases, the effort and exertion feels the same, but in the latter example, I'm quicker. In biking and running, we often hear about how a higher cadence is better. How does cadence relate to swimming? And should it be an area of focus? Thanks from Montreal, Canada. Jesse.

Great question. I have some follow. follow-ups to this once you guys answer this that I'm personally curious about. Man, how to even start with this? Cadence is definitely important, but you know, you can't be completely at the cost of actually holding onto the water as you're experiencing.

If you go 200 strokes per minute or whatever and you're not grabbing any water, then you could theoretically be going nowhere in the water versus a very intentional solid pull. So the thing about, like, if you watch an Olympic swimmer, they're doing both at the same time. They have an incredible ability to hold water with their hands,

and they also do weights in the gym, like twice a day so that they are so strong that they can hold that much water while turning over at an incredible rate. Yeah, if you're just slipping through in order to have higher cadence, it's not worth it. But I think that we're in triathlon. This becomes important as in, like, choppy open water swimming. You hear, like, cadence can kind of help you in terms of

getting on top of the water and I don't know I feel like triathons swimming open water versus like pool swimming for an Olympic swimmer is different but when our coach was here last week we were doing some sprints and he was like turn over turn over turn over

cadence cadence and we were sprinting with paddles so it was like trying to grab water with the paddles and turn your arms over quickly was definitely really exhausting and challenging but a good exercise yeah I think there's like a happy medium here there's a point where you can like maybe

increase your turnover by five strokes per minute or something and still hold the same amount of water or slightly less, have a slightly more resilient stroke in the water if a wave happens to hit you in the middle of that stroke without just like totally spinning. Actually, this is interesting. When we were sitting in the sauna today, I was watching the indoor pool usually caters to the more recreational swimmers because it's pretty hot. But the older people that I saw swimming today, they're taking like one stroke every like five seconds. So I think when Eric and I think about this question, we're like, would we increase our cadence? I don't know. Like we're already swimming at a pretty high cadence. But if you think about the average swimmer who's just getting into swim,

it's new to swimming, they probably have too low of a cadence, I would say. I'm guilty of this. I think my cadence is too low. For example. Yeah. I think your cadence, I'm, I guess like, I think your cadence should naturally increase as you increase speed rather than like, I'm going to try to continue swimming two minutes per hundred, but just do it with a higher cadence. Like that's a thing you can do on the bike, yes, thanks to gears. This is my problem with this whole concept is that with running, you can take shorter strides, no problem. With biking, you can adjust your gearing. With swimming, it kind of goes in the face of this thing about having an efficient stroke where you're pulling water as efficiently as possible.

You have to compromise that, and that seems like, I don't know, that seems like at odds with what I've tried to do with my swimming. because then your instinct is to either exit early so you can pull your hand around quicker or not pull as efficiently because you're like be slipping basically right which seems not helpful right right I think the

key of people that are effectively picking up their cadence is that they're strong enough to hold the water and actually have good pull strokes through that increased cadence so they're moving quicker then but it's not easy it's very like Eric said there's so many facts You can't just say, okay, increase my cadence, and I'm going to go quicker. Last time I swam in the pool with Sean Jefferson, Holly Lawrence's husband, he was telling me, he's like, dude, you're spending too much time at the front of your stroke.

Yeah. You need to, like, you need to increase the cadence by just eliminating some of that glide at the front. And in my head, I'm like, well, easy for him to say, like, that's just more work, though. It's like, I get a little bit of recovery at the front. So to make it faster, it's just harder. It's harder, but then you're going faster. I mean, it's all. I honestly think it's the same with running.

You can't just be like, with running or swimming, oh, just increase or decrease your cadence. Like, how you are doing it matters. But I do think that that dead... Is it in the dry phase or isn't in this like little rest you're giving yourself? I think the dead time at the front of your stroke is a perfect example of what, where people are wasting time. Like as soon as your hand enters, you should be pulling.

Yeah. And not like having this super long, unless you're busy, pulling with your other hand and the other hand's gliding and you're actually like moving at the speed of Michael Phelps, you know? Right. Which of course I am. Even with like Michael Phelps or Katie Ledeky, if you watch them swim, you think they're gliding.

But it's really, it's them taking the time to get their elbow high. Yeah. It's not, they're not just like straight arm pause. It's like, it looks like a pause, but it's really giving their hand time to come down and their elbow to raise. And it's like, it's still part of the power phase. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And then I, something I thought of.

about while you were answering a question earlier for both of you. So the choppier it is, it makes sense that you want to maybe increase your cadence because that if you have some glide, it's less efficient. It gets broken up and it's less clean. So it makes sense to have higher cadence. Do you guys notice yourself in a race scenario consciously or even unconsciously increasing your cadence when it's choppier versus keeping a lower cadence if it's like a lake swim or something like that where there's no chop at all?

Or do you think it's pretty consistent? I think it naturally happens, yeah. I don't think about it, but I think it naturally is. But mentally somewhere you're like, oh, this is not as efficient to go slower, so I'm going to increase the cadence of it. Yeah. Well, it's like you get hit smacked in the side of the face by a little bit of chop or your arm gets hit and like that stroke is now useless

and you got to just do everything you can to get the hand back into the water anyway, get the other arm in front and you just kind of like naturally default to this. I can't put any too much investment on any one stroke. I need to just keep moving. and it's the same thing when you're getting hit by other people in the water. It's like every stroke can't be the most perfect stroke, and if you're relying on it to be perfect, what if you get bumped? Did you guys ever do the cadence, the tempo trainers, like in the swim caps?

Yeah, in our childhoods. Yeah, with our swim coaches. Would you recommend that for triathletes, like adult triathletes, or is that too far? I would, I don't know, maybe, but like what we were saying, it shouldn't be like this huge jump. oh, I'm swimming at 50 RPM and like, I'm going to just put my tempo trainer on 80 and freaking try to keep up with it versus I really like a thing that we did with Aqua Bear,

if you've like watched the whole trathon YouTube scene and swimming in Tucson, is we would do like a 50 with like high tempo in the warmup. And then we do a 50 of like long stroke. And then we go back to like the high tempo. And then we do like something like that where you're just, it's more like a drill like doing high knees or like hurdle drill before a track workout. We're like, okay, this is what it feels for me to like kind of artificial. officially raise my tempo and that just like that will naturally work its way into the set.

That's cool. That's really cool. I like that. Okay, next question here is from Alex. Hey, Eric, Paula, and Nick. I've seen this debate before, but wanted to get your opinions. Let's go for 70.3 races. Who is having the more difficult race? The fast people finishing three and a half to four and a half hours or the back of the pack people were out racing for seven plus hours. Thanks for making the long training hours go by faster. Also, can't wait for all three of you guys. guys to come race 70.3 Michigan next year, wink, wink. So I can say hi. Hey, you never say never, Alex. So this is the question that we kind of tease at the beginning. What do you think? There's like, there's like four different questions, I think, depending on the word that we want to

use. It's such a level of pain versus difficulty versus like how hard are you going. You cannot quantify this. I think the person who's having the worst time is the person who is going too fast. relative to their preparation. And I would say that we often end up in that position just, or at least I often end up in that position, just because it's like, well, that's what the lead pack's doing. So I just got to like roll with it and I might blow up and it's going to be really uncomfortable.

I think of this even in terms of like pro men versus pro women racing. I'm out there racing for 40 minutes longer than Lionel Sanders or Eric. Is that harder? I'm going slower, but I'm working just as well. hard. Like, it's a very arbitrary. That's less arbitrary to me. I would say you are working harder. Because, because you're talking about two people at the peak of their physiological potential and you're just out there for longer. Eric, you don't agree. Like, if I'm going 80% of my VO2 or whatever the hell. She's just working longer. I think my, as I'm formulating this thought just now,

It's like we are still using up 100% of our energy. It's just taking Paula 40 minutes longer to do it. So naturally she's going to be going at 2% less intensity level. If you just like extrapolated that all the way down to somebody in the 100 meters, they're still trying to like get out 100% of the energy in their body. And you could definitely say they're working harder. But for nine seconds, we're working longer. I will say like usually my answer to this question is those people that are out there for seven plus hours,

None of them are, or not none of them, but a lot of them aren't lifelong athletes. They don't see themselves as athletes. So this is this thing that's way out of their comfort zone. But now I'm kind of seeing the other side of it, which is, let's say, Eric, you know, or either one of you, not only do you have, let's say you go out and you go out really hard because you have to stay with a bike pack and you blow up and you're like just dying through the rest of the race. You also have this huge amount of expectation from people who like to see your race. And then also there's a career side of it. It's like, well, no, this is also my job, you know, compared to someone else, someone maybe like me who tries to go fast and puts a lot of effort into it.

But at the end of the day, I'm like, you know what, I do this for fun. I have other things that give me satisfaction and other things that are my job. And that's just less emotional drain and pressure on me. So I do think maybe the pros that don't have good days, I think those might be the people that have it hardest. Yeah. Yeah. I do, I think if we want to say, say who's having the hardest time, I think that really comes down to who is willing to suffer the

most. And I would say that for the most part, people in the pro field have made, we're making a living out of being really good at suffering. And I can look through the course of my career and go and like seek obvious moments where I realized that I could go a little bit harder than I had been up till that point. I was like, man, I was suffering so hard, 2K into that 10K run and somehow I held it together and now I have this new realization of like how hard I can go in a swim, how hard I can go at the beginning of the bike. And it's going to be so, so painful, but you can hold on. And I think we've, we've worked that muscle super hard. But I do still think there's going to be outliers in the age group field that are just, that's what they're built for. They're super

good at suffering. And so it's like, I don't think you can make generalize and say maybe pros are a little bit better on average. But it's just who's willing to hurt the most is the person that's having the hardest day. And that also comes to. down to someone's goal in a 70.3 or an Iron Man, if it's just to finish. And those are sometimes the people in the 7, eight hour range. It's like the gun goes off and they're waiting a couple minutes for clear water. It's literally just their goal to get to the end. So in terms of physical pain that they're in, never reaching the point of the physical pain that maybe a pro gets to, but mentally, psychologically, we're all going through the same thing, trying to get to the finish line.

Yeah. It is a funny, funny philosophical debate. But when I'm done the race and I'm in the heat trying to get back to my hotel and it's a billion degrees, I'm like, wow, they have it worse. So you're just extrapolating. I could not keep doing that, of course. The level that you were at for four more hours. Okay, I did the bike ride in two hours and 20 minutes. I would not want to be out there a single other minute, even if I was going slower. Right.

I'm so over it by the end of the bike ride, you know. I will say this. All my favorite race experiences are when I was. injured so I couldn't go hard and I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to go out there and do it. And that feels pretty good, at least for me. That's pretty nice when you're not at that limit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, cool. Nice question, Alex. Next question here is not from Alex, but from Alexis. Hi, TTL crew. I've seen on social that you have a master spa swim spa. I got one during the pandemic and I wanted your opinion on using them for your main swim training. I'm a mom of a little

kids, so swimming at home is easier to schedule. I'm working back up to a 70.3 next summer and plan to do the majority of the swim training in the spa, then add in some open water swims next summer before the race. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this and any pros and cons of swim spa training versus the pool.

Alexis. I feel like we've talked about the swim spa before, and I think it's pretty individual. For Paula and I, the speed, we have to put it pretty close to its maximum speed, and it gets so turbulent that we don't feel that it's like the most representative of actually swimming in open water.

But if it was at whatever, 20% less capacity for speed might be a little bit smoother. It might fit you well. And I think it's going to come down to you since you already have one. If you feel like, oh, this is like a fairly accurate representation feels kind of like swimming to me, then you can lean into it. Yeah. If you don't feel that way. I think using it exclusively might be not.

not recommended. Go to the pool once a week or twice a week just to get the feel of swimming because it's very different in the master spa because of the reasons Eric said. It's a bit turbulent. Sometimes it's pushing you out of the jets and your focus is staying within the current properly. So we also find that it's a lot easier to use a pull boy in the master spa because it kind of drags your legs down a bit if you're just swimming. So for COVID, when there weren't pools open, it was amazing. For easier swims, it's great for us. us, but for the purpose of doing intervals and race-paced specific stuff, we really have to go to the pool. And also the fact that there's two of us, we can't both use it at the same time,

so we're going to the pool to swim together. Yeah, that's more efficient for us, too. Both of us go to pool. What we use our master spot for a lot is water running when we're injured or hot tub in the winter. We'll heat it up to hot tub temperatures, and it's a really nice recovery tool when it's cold outside to sit in it. Or for heat protocols for hot. races like most coves. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny. Maybe if this person, for example, swimming two minutes per hundred, maybe the turbulence is so little that it's, it is way less of a factor. I didn't really think of that until you said that. Yeah. I do think it's more optimized around that level of swimmer. Yeah. And if you're just swimming to like get, like if you're getting back

into it, man, it's way better than not swimming for sure, just like for the musculature of it all. Exactly. I agree. Very cool. So next question here is from Jen. I did a little bit of research on this one, but I'm curious how you guys handle this. Hey, TTL team. First, thanks so much for amazing content, both on the YouTube and pod. Love it all. Please keep it coming.

I'm a pretty dedicated middle and long course triathlet and do most of my weekday bike sessions on the trainer because it's easier for me to get quality sessions in around work and other obligations. I have a kicker core, which I love, must have a few thousand miles on it by now, on contemplating upgrading to the new Wahoo with all the new. movement options, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts about how it may or may not affect carbon frames. We've all heard the stories that trainers are terrible for carbon frames, but I've never met anyone who's actually had a carbon frame damaged from riding it on the trainer.

Is this something that was true with older style trainers and not relevant anymore? Would all the movement of the new on-hurt trainer potentially be better or worse for the lifetime of a carbon bike frame? Thanks, heaps, and I hope you have a stellar off-season. Jen. That's a good question. because bikes are so expensive. The last thing you want to do is put it on a trainer

and be sprinting or something and have it compromised. Eric's rolling his eyes. It's just like, obviously it's not a problem. But I don't think it's obvious. First of all, there's different kinds of trainers, right? There's wheel on trainer and wheel off trainers and there's rollers. And it's very different for all of these. But Eric, thoughts.

I just feel like anecdotes like this and ideas like this They're kind of left over from when carbon frames were a brand new concept. And they were like making a carbon tube and then gluing it to an aluminum junction. And this is like the first time this bike company's ever done this. And yeah, somebody put it on a trainer and some guy sprinted on it and the lug came loose. And then forever people are like, oh man, traders are bad for carbon bikes. Versus like bikes of today, Peter Sagan can go do 2,200 watts on the road. And like we think that us doing a sprint at 6.5.

100 watts with the rear wheel kind of like locked in is going to be bad for this bike. You know, it's like, yeah. But for sure, if it is a thing, the movement of the new move, Guaku kicker move, would definitely alleviate that extra stress. Yeah, because it's actually moving with your body. It doesn't have lateral movement though, right? Yeah. There's just play in the rocker system, which is like a pretty natural amount of play.

So like if you look at Paula when she's on it from behind, like her butt or like the seat post is moving back and forth like maybe a centimeter in each direction. And also the kickers have squishy feet. So they can move back and forth a little bit naturally. It's not like a rocker, but it does allow for some natural movement. And then we've seen the kicker core on all the videos. It goes front and back too. Yeah.

But I would say in terms of buying a new trainer, upgrading to a direct drive or whatever, there's no worry about your bike. It's going to be fine. So here's what I read and discovered. First of all, I'm going to use Specialized in Canyon here as examples. Eric and Paul are sponsored by Specialized. So this was, like you said, Eric, people were concerned about this. And a lot of times it's for sprinting is the concern.

It's because you get out of the saddle and you're really like torquing the bike. And when you sprint, like Peter Sagan, 2200 watts, he's sprinting. But then the bike actually moves and the power goes through the wheel versus all. going through like the chain stays and seat stays right to that back rear axle. Yeah. However, specialized, you know, they have lifetime warranties on their frames for manufacture defects. For all model years 2020 and onwards, road bikes are warrantied for trainer use. For bikes prior to 2020, use on trainers at your own risk.

That's what they said. So what I was reading is that... I think it was kind of, because of COVID, so many people started using bikes on their trainers that bike manufacturers had to start, like, testing for it when they were developing frames to make sure, because it's such a common use case for the use of the bicycles, so that you had to do it. So I think if you were on the bike and you put out a big effort and whatever, and you had some kind of crack in your carbon frame and it was on a trainer, I don't think it would have been covered. Now for 2020 and onward, they are covered.

And for Canyon, since 2019, Canyon has provided a list of models approved for use of turbo trainers as well as these models that are explicitly not compatible with specific trainers. So they have models that they say you cannot use on the trainers. My non-professional kind of, but obsessed with bicycles' opinion, is right with Eric. Like how these bikes, this is left over from when people were like just riding their bikes

and like there would be a crack in the frame from going over a bump in the road because they were not optimized yet. They didn't realize where to put the carbon material and not. And now bikes are so well made. Carbon bikes are like, you know, unless you get into a very violent crash, they're like super bomb-proof. Yeah. Yeah. I guess if you're a ex-Olympic powerlifter and you have a Trek carbon bike from 2004, I might not put it on the trainer and do a maximum effort sprint.

Yeah. Everybody else, you're fine. The last thought on this is that something that absolutely can degrade your bike is constantly sweating onto components, onto your bike. So make sure you have something that collects your sweat and that you clean off your bike regularly. If you leave it inside all winter and you're sweating a ton, when you're outdoors, the movement of the wind evaporates the sweat away from your body

as it's designed to indoors, you're just like pouring sweat on your bike. That can like rust bolts and do all kinds of damage. Yeah, that's way worse. Badness. That's way worse. Cool. Next question here is from Lou. High TTL crew.

Thank you so much for very. various forms of content, it really brightens up the week for us, amateur athletes who can feel trapped in the work grind. This question is for the whole crew, and in the interest of day-treaming, ways to escape the 95, if you were going to go escape the winter weather on a training and good vibes long weekend trip, where would you go? I visited Ben recently and absolutely loved the feel of the city. Are there other cities or towns that you think provide a similar feels? Trails, views, coffee, and baked goods being the wish list items. So I think, I can't tell if this is quite two questions or one question.

It depends on how you answer. Like, do you like the Ben vibe and try to find it somewhere else? Or do you want something totally different? For the winter? Yeah. Obviously, we like the Bend vibe, but it's not like necessarily a winter escape.

Yeah, I would say it down in your zone, Nick, like Southern California. Alibu, San Diego. Yeah, because there's like, what Eric and I like is going for coffee, going to trails with Flynn, all that is available. in Santa Monica. And the weather's nice.

I'm going to say insinitas. That's funny. Insinitas. There's a second part to this question that is so perfect. It's like you set it up for it. Nick, I visited L.A. last January in hopes of finding these non-winter riding days you often talk about, but it rained the whole time. Was that just bad luck if I were going to the L.A. area for a mini training camp running and riding mostly, who swims laps on vacation?

Yeah, well said. Would Santa Monica be the ideal hub? Thanks again for all that you do, Lou. So this past winter was the wettest winter. enter in a very long time in California in general and yes Southern California got a ton of rain so much so that our taxes were delayed because everyone had like emergency whatever extensions building repairs yeah exactly so I do think Santa Monica is ideal and in fact I was just saying talking to my parents about this like if I won the lottery here I think I would move like three blocks away into a house

because as far as places to train, I love it here. I'm just a little away from the start of the mountains in Malibu and PCH, just three blocks away from the ocean. I'm 10 minutes from the pool. Great running, great riding. I mean, Ben is fantastic, and I still prefer the bike riding. It's more my style here with the kind of climbing that we have here. If you're road biking, for sure.

Oh, yeah. And I would say if you're TT riding, it's not even close. How much better bend is. It's really, really not close. How much better bend is for that. Yeah, it's hard to train for a triathlon in Santa Monica, unfortunately, unless you're, like, super comfortable riding the PCH out to, like, some of the canyon climbs and stuff. But when I come visit Nick, it's a lot of trainer riding for me personally.

And the running is great, but it's like hard surface flat or trails uphill. There's no flat trails. Yeah, you can find some variety in bend with some more soft surface flatter running. But really the charm of Santa Monica is the 365 degrees of perfect weather. Days of perfect weather. Yeah. And then the training is good. Like you said, Nick, it suits you perfectly.

I love climbing. I will say this. Lou, if you're actually trying to train and anyone who's coming to L.A. to train for triathlon, the best and safest way to do a long flat ride, you can leave. from Santa Monica and go north on PCH, but the first hour of that has quite a bit of traffic, and that's, of course, not ideal.

And no matter when you're riding, you always want to start early in the morning to avoid the traffic. But I think the best thing I've been doing lately is drive out to Zuma Beach in Malibu and go north from there. That goes into Ventura County is just way less traffic,

and it's still gorgeous and beautiful, rolling hills. Think of courses like Santa Cruz, that kind of style. And then for trail running, the only thing that's some more what flat is a place called Sycamore Canyon, which is also quite a bit ways away.

But otherwise, that's the other hard part about here. If you want soft surface running, nothing's flat. You just want to, like, call out your Venmo account, so visit Santa Monica can just pay you directly? I mean, it's no secret. I think it's getting, the words getting out, the LA is a good place to ride bikes where it used to be kind of have a negative stigma around it.

Riding in the city is rough, of course, but the mountains here are great. I think everywhere has just gotten busier so like how busy Santa Monica in L.A. is is less relative to like how it you know everywhere else you speak. Yeah yeah exactly.

Yeah yeah yeah. Okay next question here is Chris from Toronto. Hey TTL peeps. Love everything you guys do from the videos to the swag. Keep and Cun. My question is regarding training and remembering your workout specifically for runs and bikes. I come from a swim background and I'm used to having a

whiteboard I can look at. Do you guys just remember your workout since you've been doing this for so long? Do you calibrate your watch or something to help remind you? Have any recommendations for age groupers who have a horrible memory when out on a run or bike? Thanks for all that you do. Chris from Toronto. This is funny because we do this differently, right? Well, my answer to this is like if your workout is so complicated that you can't remember it, it's too complicated.

Wow. That's the end of the... What if I just have a terrible memory like I do? No. Like our workout yesterday was... I'm necessarily fluffy. is what she's trying to say. Like if it's like one minute at 265, followed by one and a half minutes at 285, followed by three minutes at 250, followed by 30 seconds of high cadence.

Like, that's just too complicated. But our workout yesterday was like four times through. Four minutes at this watts, four minutes easy. Eight minutes at this watts, four minutes easy. Four times through. You can remember that. There's like a pattern. So Eric and I never have to write stuff down because our workouts are pretty simple.

70.3 is simple. Yeah. Let me give you the flip side of this. I swam 200 today and thought I had swam $200 and I had swam 150. So some of us are so bad at keeping track of what's going on. I misscount on 200s all the time. Yeah, miscounting and remembering a session is different. Well, wait a second.

If I have eight times five minutes and I'm at rep 6 and I'm like, oh, wait, is this six or seven? That's a problem. And that's when I'm very glad that I have the structure built into the computer. that's not writing that's not right oh you mean like you have it built into your watch that's what i'm saying i think that's what that's different than remembering the session yeah yeah oh yeah okay sorry i always generally know what's going on but i really like having on my computer that it counts down five minutes or whatever it is and then it gives the rest built in i don't have to rely on

looking down all the time and pressing the lap button like it gives me five seconds warning before a lap starts or before the next one ends that is interesting i personally really really like that and it's very easy to program that in with whatever by computer or whatever watch you have. Yeah, that's a good point, Nick. I think that our, the way that our coach delivers workouts to us is like Excel spreadsheets. It's very like 90s. So we're not like getting stuff on stuff on training peaks to just directly import into our watches and stuff. But I do realize the modern day coach is more training peak savvy and we'll have stuff in there so that you can export it onto your computers, which is really nice. But even so, like, you. You're,

You guys could put it into training peaks in a second, too, if you wanted it. You're just better. I know, like, Paula has a crazy, like, savon. Don't have time for that. Yeah, exactly. Paula has, like, a savant-style memory with swim workouts. She can remember these very long swim workouts, like, after reading it once. I literally get out of the pool two to three times.

Yeah, when we were swimming with you and Ben last week. What is he doing? You got out of the pool, like, five times. I was like, Nick, you're a candidate for a whiteboard. Yeah. Yeah. Guarantee you were not over there checking Instagram. Yeah.

Well, I mean, if an Instagram thing comes up, of course, of course I'm going to check it out. Makes over there like, I wonder what, oh, it's time to be real. That's right. Smile for the camera. But just to say, when I used to train with Neil Henderson on the bike, some of the workouts were a bit more complicated and they were like prescribed within percentage zones of your FTP and I got really strong on the bike working with him. So I do think this style of work.

prescription worked, but I would write it on a tiny little piece of paper and tape it to my top tube. So if something is more complex, you can do that. And generally, I'd say bike workouts are what are going to get the most complicated, run workouts less so. But taping a little piece of paper to your top tube is kind of cool. Yeah, I do think it's whatever personally works for you. I don't think there's a one right answer. I love having them built into the watch on the bike computer. Someone else I feel like would be annoyed by it. It just kind of depends because like sometimes when I'm doing whatever, like mile repeats or something, and there's one minute rest. Sometimes I'm like, man, I'm just, I really need one minute and seven seconds rest because I want to start at that lamp post.

Yeah, like cross the street or it gives you more flexibility to start at different times. See, this is what I love about WAHU by computers. And yes, Eric and Paula are sponsored by Wahu is that you can pause the workout while still recording the data. So power, GPS, heart rate and all this stuff. On Garmin, if you pause the workout, you pause the data collection. as well, which is so, God, it feels like such an easy thing to fix that they have not fixed. But I agree with you, Eric. Wow.

A little bit thing like, hey, I need more rest on this one. Like a little button for that would be nice. That's cool. I didn't know that. Yeah, Nick, you just taught us something new about Waho's. Yeah, Wahu by computers are definitely my favorite. And I'm not sponsored. So, next question here is from Nicholas without an H.

Hey, T-TL, I'm an ICU night shift nurse in Kansas. and started listening, I said I to you. Did I say I to you? I don't know. I think you said I see you. Okay, I see you. Sorry. Brain.

I'm an ICU night shift nurse in Kansas and started listening to the pod when it first came out. It's so refreshing after my long shifts while I commute home. Thank you for continuing to produce amazing content for the kids. You are so welcome. My question is about sunglasses. I have a cheap pair that I wear when I bike and run, but the shape causes sweat to collect under the inner lens. I'm curious what sunglasses do you all wear? Should I invest in a $100 plus pair or will a $25 pair from Amazon be just as good?

Also, there are so many different colors and lens types. What should I be looking for when buying a pair? Lastly, should I have a cycling pair and a running pair or just one? So many questions. I'd love to hear what you guys think. So let's start from the beginning. Is a cheap pair or an expensive pair? What should a triathlet be getting?

An expensive pair. 100% so much better. The lens quality is better. No sweat collection. No fogging. looks cooler. Safety. There's like a million reasons to get a nice pair and zero reasons to get a cheap pair, except for if you lose stuff a lot. But I think if you have a nice, expensive pair, you're going to take care of it better. You're not going to lose them. Oh, yeah. You'll keep it

inside of the little box it comes with and you'll polish it and you'll be so careful. Yeah, it is one of them. Like, you wear it every single time you train. You wear it on the bike, you wear them on the run. So it's definitely worthwhile investment in my opinion. And it's your eyes. Yeah. Anyway. I agree. And this is a very interesting question because I think they did ask in there what sunglasses we use.

And we're currently not sponsored by any sunglasses company. So I guess two parts. We're just wearing what we like. And if you are, what's an eyewear company? And you're interested. Hit us up. We're talking to a couple brands that sent us samples to try. And both companies make amazing product.

and you've definitely heard of both of them. I think if you're paying around $180, $150 plus for a pair of sunglasses these days, everyone has it pretty well figured out in terms of how safe of the lenses for shadow resistance, like how good are the optics, how high quality are the frames and everything. It kind of comes down to what feels good on your face and what looks good. Yeah, the number one thing with sunglasses, when you put them on your face, you're not thinking about them for a second. Hopefully.

They're so comfortable, they're not fogging, they're not collecting sweat. on your TT position, you're not seeing the frame, all these little things that make it so that they're just part of your face. Yeah. How about we list off all of the sunglasses brands that we've tried like in the last five years that we approve of? Okay. Ock.

Oakley? 100%. Sun God. Sun God. Roca. Is that it? Yeah, that's all. Those are the ones that we personally have actually had on our face.

Go ahead. Paula. But I will say that companies like. Oakley when they were like, oh, no, we're definitely not sponsoring you. Then we're like, okay, fine, we're never wearing your glasses again. We're going to wear 100%. So then we wore 100% for a couple of years. And they're like, we're definitely not sponsoring you.

We're like, fine, we're never wearing your glass again. So we've been through these cycles of glasses where we wear sunglasses so much that people ask us, like in this question, what we're wearing, it's such an obvious thing for us to partner with a sunglasses company. But we've just had such bad luck with these brands that have no interest in supporting us in return. I don't want to say they have no interest. They feign or say they have interest and then when it comes down to brass tax, then there's no interest.

Maybe. Yeah, that was our problem with. Budgetary things, you know, and that just comes down to like, are you actually valuable enough for them to give you money or just free sunglasses? But we can say that all of those sunglasses are of high quality, but Oakley in particular has not been super friendly to the TTL. squad. Can I just say one other thing about the brands? We haven't just we haven't like signed any contracts with anyone but I really like sun gods for the planet, envirofriendly whole thing that

they have going on. When we are picking our glasses to, like our sample glasses to get sent to us, you can choose to have them sent without like casing and stuff. And so they showed up with these super minimal packaging and you could just flatten it and recycle it. It was almost no garbage and they make the sunglasses like to your order. So they don't just have like a ton of stuff sitting in inventory. I think it's more like, okay, these are the lenses. Made the order sort of. Yeah. So there's very little waste going on, which I really loved doing a deep dive into that company. It's pretty cool. So I don't know. And they're comfortable. And then you kind of touched on this, but the last question here was would you have

two different kinds of glasses or potentially more for running versus cycling? Hmm. Not 100% necessary, but I do. Yeah. I personally kind of get obsessed with a certain one, like a certain pair

of glasses. Like they don't bounce when I run. They don't good for biking and running. But I'd say we like generally tend to trend towards a bigger frame on the TT, like for TTIBiking and just biking in general and ones that have

like the top frame sits higher off of your nose or it doesn't even have a top frame yeah so you can like see while you're in the TT position otherwise I mean that's the only thing and then when you're running like I said they don't bounce

people just like different looks too you know this is what this kind of reminds you of like okay why does the color of the bike matter well if it if the color makes you want to ride the bike more then it does matter so I do think if you're a triathlet and you're trying to find the one stop shop

what I'm hearing from you guys is maybe a pair of sunglasses that doesn't have a frame on the top and doesn't have any like weird breathing holes in the top, which I've had several times and are annoying when you're in the T2T position, you're trying to look up the road. I agree. You could do everything with that. But I do think at least you need a pair like that.

Because, for example, the 100% I had that had no frame on top, I thought would be perfect. But they have these little holes in the top, I think, to help with fogging or something. And those were kind of hard to see through when you're down in the T.T. position. The sun gods are just nice and clean at the top and it's way easier to see up the road when you're in an aggressive position. Yeah. It does make it tough because you can't try them before you buy them, right? Yeah. I think Roka might have a program where you can like try them on before you buy them, but I don't know for sure. I mean, this is the upside of supporting your local bike shop and you could probably get on all of these companies' sites and be like, where does Roka have

a retailer near me? And you can actually go put them on your face. I think they're direct to consumer. Oh, they are? Okay, not Roka then. I mean, I think Sun God as well, but I don't know. That would be ideal if you could do that. Yeah. Well, 100% and Poc and Oakley are definitely not direct to consumer, so you could at least try out those three. But don't buy any of those three. Yeah, screw them. That's great. That's great. Okay, last question here is from, I think, ing, I N-G-E. Hey, guys, long-time listener. Looking for treadmill recommendation. As winter is upon us and training is moving indoors, what type of treadmill would you recommend as a good overall option? I'd like something I could do interval work on as well as settle in for long runs and have a decent amount of cushion.

Does such a thing exist or is it one or the other? I've heard a lot of talk about the woodway, but I'm not sure if it's hype or suitable for speed work. Thanks for all you do, Inc. So you guys have a woodway, and this is a great question. Yeah, the woodway is... Thanks do Zwift, we should say. Zwift gave us our woodway. That was our sponsorship.

You didn't sell a car to pay for the woodway? No, just a kidney. Yeah. The woodway is, it gets up to the, so, so fast, like faster than you would need for speed work. Four minutes per mile in the problem. A lot of, even commercial treadmills max out at 12 miles an hour, which is not that fast for sprinting especially. Yeah. So it goes down to a four minute mile?

Yeah. Wow. I mean, the woodway is like the best treadmill you can buy, by far. It's comfortable. It goes fast. It'll last forever. It's got those slated plates. Running on a track, it's like very, the one thing about it, it's very realistic.

There are definitely treadmills out there. We're like, oh, my God, I'm running so fast today. But they're not that accurate. The woodway is like seven minutes per mile on the woodway feels exactly like seven minutes per mile outside. I would say it feels harder sometimes. Because you're like mentally on a treadmill, so it's harder. But a lot of other treadmills that are not like that slated belt, they have so much bounce to them that you're just getting this artificial like spring forward. on them and you feel like it's easier at a certain pace.

So we actually have two treadmills in the garage, one that's... It's a life fitness, gym. It came from a gym, it's a life fitness. I don't freaking know what it was like T-105 or something. It's like a commercial grade treadmill, but it feels easier to me to run on because of the bounce that it offers. Yeah, which historically you would say always run at like at least 1% on a treadmill. Sort of mimic, like to have the pace be accurate with wind resistance and just like

that bounce and everything, but the Woodway don't need to do that. I've been enamored with Woodway since I was, you know, started the sport and I've always wanted one or like sought after them in gyms and stuff like that. But I'd say the way to go if you want to buy a Woodway is maybe to get a refurbished one for, they're still going to be expensive, but it'll be refurbished. So it'll be like, it'll last forever. Okay, I just looked it up for how fast these go. They go incredibly fast.

There's one that goes up to 25 miles an hour. Just to give people a kind of a point of reference, I'm sure a lot of people have seen footage of at some big marathons. They have this giant treadmill up that's kind of like goes. Like a treadmill floor. Yes. That goes like the speed that Kipchoga could run or like two hour marathon pace. Keep in mind, that's 13.1 miles an hour.

And you see the people are lasting like 30 seconds on it and then they fall. Yeah. You know? So yeah. you'll be fine to do speedwork on the Woodway. That's way beyond it. Yeah, the Woodway is prepped for like the videos you see on Instagram of like a linebacker. Like a linebacker doing sprint work.

Yeah, right. For five seconds. Where you can't even see their legs. They're moving so fast. Yeah. Or even like, like, I mean, some treadmills have to keep up to roller skis for cross-country ski testing. I don't know. There's, it's definitely a really, really nice one.

I will say, though, just if that's not in your price range, that our gym quality life fitness thing is very nice, and we got an incredible deal on it, but we have had to replace a couple of, not the belt that you run on, but like a couple of the belts inside between the drive motor, and then I've had to replace the screen interface button thing a couple of times. So it hasn't been hassle-free,

but it's been still great bang for the buck in terms of like the quality of it and everything. And did you do the repairs? I did two of them with the screen, but then we had a thing where, like, the whole motherboard needed to be sent back into the company, and that ended up costing us, like, $320. So still, after buying, like, a $5,000 treadmill for $1,200, or still ahead, and I'm okay with it. But, okay. Versus spending, like, buying a new treadmill for $1,200, that is scary.

Last thing I'll say on this is you could go to Dick's sporting goods and buy a treadmill for $600. that you're going to be able to tell that it's not that nice, like versus a treadmill you'd run on at the gym. Yeah. It'll be, like, not smooth. It'll feel very cheap. It'll have a lot of, like, e-natural bounce to it. It'll feel like every time your foot hits the ground that you're, like, on sand or something.

Because, like, there's too much friction between the belt and the board that's sitting on. Oh, it slows it down, kind of. Yeah. It's like meant for walking in your basement, not speedwork. And for people who are concerned about, accuracy. Do you guys use one of those kind of things that measures the speed of the... Yeah, the belt?

We have before. They're called... What are they called? I don't know, but it's by North Pole Engineering. Yeah, North Pole Engineering. And it's like a sensor you put on the belt and then you attach the other clip to the side of the belt and it measures it. The Woodway Bluetooth's directly to Zwift, so we have

the speed on Zwift. But the North Pole Engineering, whatever it is, also connects to Zwift. So if you want your data on Zwift, That's cool. That's cool. It's like a hundred or $200 way to get Bluetooth to Zwift. That's really cool.

That's cool. Okay, so Los Cabos, when people, this comes out on Thursday, we're racing on Sunday. We're flying to Los Cabos on Friday. Paula, chances you do the race. Eric, chances you do the race. It's never 100%. Right. Of course not.

I'm a bit stressed because usually we travel on a Thursday for a Sunday race. So you've got like two days a buffer, but the flights on Thursday were, literally four times more expensive than Friday. So we're getting there later than I've ever gotten to a 70.3 before. It's like you get there, you pack, you unpack your bike, and then the next day you got to check your bike in, like that's

stressing me out. So you never know. Something could happen in travel or the, whatever, but I'd say I'm 95% racing. Eric, are you 5% and together you make 100%. Yes. One of us will race 100%. It's so, it's

really, it's really hard for me because like I told myself like if I like nail all my bike workouts and I like really commit to the heat sessions with, you know, our coach and everything and I do everything that I can to prepare for it, then then I'll feel good about it. And and I've done that. But then it's just like every time I think. Let's fucking go. Every time I think about doing a hot race, like I had a very, very terrible heat stroke experience 10 years ago now where I ended up in the hospital. Like I cramped so badly that I couldn't breathe. then I passed out. And it was like, it's freaking terrible burned in my memory. And when I think about going to hot races, like, it's legitimately scary for me. And I just saw my bouncing back and forth between, man, I feel like I've done everything that I can. And then also knowing that my track record with hot races is so bad.

I would say this though, Eric. It's just terrifying. When you had your heat stroke, it was an ITU race in the afternoon at three times the speed. It was not. It was a non-draft Olympic distance race in the morning in Austin. in. It was not that hot, but it was humid. Okay, then I'm not about it said. I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I've done Los Cabos twice and had

pretty rough experiences both times, and like, the water there is warm. Like, you're in the direct sunlight the whole time. It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not, like, I've gotten past the thing of, like, um, I don't want to go and have a bad performance for me. And I'm more just like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm scarred by. some experiences that I've had. And it's not a performance thing versus it's just like, is this actually a smart thing for me to do a race that's physically for your health? Yeah.

Like Paula going to do a race that's down Mount Vaughn too. It's like, why would you just put yourself in that situation when it's like you're scared of it? So anyway, that's where I'm at. Do one thing a day that scares you. Yeah. Yeah. I really want to do it. And like I would love nothing more than to like conquer this like heat.

thing and that's what I'm in it for. It's like if I feel like I really want to go like have a good hot weather race is what I want to do. And I just, you know, it's scary. It's funny because Eric's fear is a little bleeding over to me. Yeah, thanks, Eric. Okay, fine. I'm not doing it either.

I feel like I'm the fittest I've ever been. You guys will be fine. And I'm, and I know I'm going to be careful. I'm going to, especially on the run, I'm going to try to be really careful about how I pace it and not get too hot because I think, Eric, you were telling me this last time. and you've kind of maybe experienced this using that heat sensor that you've been using. Once you feel hot,

it might be a little too late. Yeah. Like I've been doing this thing where I run on the treadmill for 30 minutes and I'm not supposed to let my core temperature go over 38.5 degrees Celsius. Even if I stop running and sit down next to the treadmill, take off my hoodie at 38.3

over the next 15 minutes, my core temperature goes up to 39, with me just sitting there doing nothing at all. And like at 38.3, I don't feel hot yet. Like, yeah, I'm sweating and I'm like a little bit warm, but my brain is not sending any of those signals. It's like, this is too warm. So it's, I don't know, that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, even though that is like the process that you need to go through to like to try to get your body used to this heat

exposure. That's all I'll say. No, it's interesting. It's interesting and it's going to be a kind of, for me, it's going to be a brand new thing to race in something that hot. So I'm curious at the most optimistic. I'm curious to see how it'll feel. Yeah. I think it's definitely, like I'm particularly nervous about it because there is some, there is some data out there that suggests that if you've had a heat exposure incident like I've had that your body, that sticks with your body and it shuts down quicker. So like if you haven't, like much less of a thing. Oh, well, let me just tell you boys, one of us has to, win to pay for our fucking Airbnb. So you guys better pony up. And it's not Nick. Okay, well, we are all racing. We will talk to you on Monday after the race.

We are going to have fun no matter what. Yes, exactly. The race is so short. If you think about four hours of your life, like, we can endure that no matter what. We can endure that. Okay, that's all we got. We'll chat with you guys next week. Bye.

Later. Bye. Bye.