That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon swimming help, tips on creating Strava routes, transitions, and more!

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

This week we answered more of your Triathlon questions. Ones about improving your swim as a triathlete, some simple tips on descending faster, tapering for a 70.3 as a pro vs age grouper, how bike pickup works at the end of a race, and more! Head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.com to check out our gear!

Hello everyone. Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Erica Loggersham. I'm Nick Goldston. And this Wi-Fi connection is very unstable. I forgot that it's my job to introduce what we do. We podcast. We do triathlons. We are musicians. We are vloggers. We do a lot of things. You run a clothing company? We run a clothing company, which has been super successful this week. So thank you to everyone who bought things since our last podcast. And yeah, we're happy to be here with Nick. Have a ton of questions. Like an abnormal number this week. I feel like maybe more and more people are listening and therefore sending in questions. But going through the email every Tuesday is just like 30 or 40 deep trying to skim through them,

which is amazing. That is amazing. Yeah. It's great. I tried to whittle them down to just like certain ones that were entertaining for our purposes, but there were a lot of really good ones. Yes, yeah. And also, like, lots of emails that were, I don't know, suggesting different things, like starting a TTL Facebook group or offering to run the camp for us. Like, really thoughtful, nice offers that we just like save those emails and we'll consider them. And there's just a lot going on right now. So if we don't get back to you, it's not because we're not interested. We're just overwhelmed. Yeah, this is our final week of training that we're going into right now for the Canadian Open, which is arguably one of the top two biggest races that we'll do this year.

So as soon as we finish with that and we're kind of like driving back home to bend and everything, we'll be getting deep, a little more deep into the business TTL side of things. But we're, I mean, I just woke up from a super nap right now. We're fully, we're in it right now. You look like it. It's good. It was good now. By the way, so I don't know if I've told you guys, but I have an intern now for my music stuff.

I feel like you guys need an intern that's looking at these emails, answering people, like someone that has the time to do this stuff. There's got to be someone out there that we would love to do that. I love being the face of the reply, though. I don't want to give up the control of the tone and the personal touch. Like, we're not so big that I can't do it. So I would struggle with passing that on, at least at this stage, maybe later. Yeah, there's some things like being better about, like, regularly.

posting to Instagram, like, just little things like that that could be helpful in that situation. But we really enjoy being able to guide the whole feel of everything right now. But let's not talk about TGL anymore. Let's talk about, let's talk about, Paula Hates talking about TGEL. Well, I wanted to ask, I just had this idea. Eric, you had sent me earlier you were, I don't know if this is okay to talk about publicly, but you're targeting this potential FKT in Yosemite that's called the Yosemite Picnic. What?

I said you would text like 30 minutes ago. Yeah, yeah. It's like a potential idea, but it reminded me of something that I think would be helpful for our listeners. Because there's a segment on that FKT that's kind of like unknown. It's a little bit like, wait, is it a scramble? Is it climbing? Like, is it just regular trail running?

So something I've done in the past, if you're trying to create a route that you haven't done before and you're trying to figure out like how doable is it, you know, if you're using like Strava heat maps to create your route, which is something. I do all the time. What you can do is on that route, you can check if there are segments that people have done before. How many people have done that segment? Like, you know, if it's like 12 people have done that segment, then that's not a good sign, you know? But if it's like 6,000 people have done that segment, it's like, okay, it's totally doable. And then if you want to take it one step further, if you're as crazy as me, sometimes I'll like comment on people's activities who

did it and ask them like, hey, how are the conditions? Like, was there still snow on it? if it's someone who's done it in the last week or something like that. And usually people are very friendly and nice and will have, and they're happy to reply, right? It's like people who never get comments on their Strava in the first place. Yeah, that's great. So I've done that before. And I looked, by the way, I looked at yours and, like,

there's that one crazy uphill in the trail run, and like only 36 people have done it. Yeah. But it was part of some race or something. So we'll look more into that later. But I love the idea of some kind of Yosemite, FKT. attempt. That would be fun. This is news to me.

Literally right before my nap, I was like, I just googled like Malt Triathlon FKT and this was like the third thing that popped up and I know Nick loves Yosemite so I just went and looked at it and it was like you bike and then you swim across this lake and then you do this roundabout run climb thing that's a 5.7 YRD and I'm like what the is this do I need ropes for this or can I run this? Because if I need ropes I'm out.

But this is just in this, I was like trying to just learn. It's not seen on the podcast as Paula was shaking her head and rolling her eyes. Yeah, like, what is this topic? I put down like 30 good questions. And we're talking about FKTs. I think this is sick. Okay, well, good for you. Lucky for you, the next thing we're doing is rapid fire.

So there you go. And it's going to be really fast. So rapid fire, this is for both of you. Would you rather skip a hard bike day, hard run day or hard swim day? Hard swim day Swimming, obviously Easy. Sparkling or still water?

Sparkling. Yeah, probably sparkling. Corn or flour tortillas. There is a right answer here. Flower. Flower. That is the right answer. Do you guys think in Ks or in miles for everything?

Kays. Kays. Except if you're like just in sport or even like when you're driving and stuff? No, driving I would say I think in miles. Always K's for me. Ks or fruits? Fruits. Babe, peanut butter.

It counts as a nut. I don't know if it does. Yes, of course it does. Okay, fruit. Eric? I'm craving an apple right now, so. Fruit. And now what about like chocolatey or fruity desserts?

Chocolate-y. Yeah, isn't that interesting how that works? Small dog or big dog? Small. Big dog. Wow. Active dog or lazy dog? Active dog.

Lazy. Uh-oh. And then hot dog or hamburger? Hamburger. Hot dog. Oh, boy. The dogs, you guys just didn't agree on a single dog. Yeah.

I think Flynn knows we're talking about him. Yeah, he's looking up. No, no, he's whining. Nice. Well, now we're moving on to the cues for you, Paula. Thank God. And we did get plenty of questions this week, but we love getting your questions. And you can send those into that triathlon life brand.

at gmail.com. So the first one is from Michael. Michael says, hello all, leaving it generic so I don't offend a certain Grammy winner by listing Flynn before said person, which I appreciate. Did Eric race at Oregon 70.3 over the weekend? Oh, boy, here we go. The Iron Man Tracker shows that he did, and it was a rough day for his standards. I'm assuming this wasn't actually him,

So an actual question, have any of you ever had timing issues at a race? If so, how did you deal with it? I'm eagerly awaiting another release of the trail hat. I've had two already and want. Who am I kidding? Need another one. Hope training is going well for the Canadian Open. Thanks, Michael.

So first of all, Eric, how is it that you are in Canada and somehow managed to get to Oregon to race? And is that why you race so poorly because of the stress of getting down there and getting back up to Canada so quickly? Yeah, I actually obviously missed the start because, So I'm an hour and 24 minutes. And I was just so blasted from the drive. I just, yeah, I could only make it home in like seven and a half hours. Right. No, I actually, I included this question on purpose because there have been a lot of questions,

including an entire slow twitch thread about Eric racing, Oregon, and finishing in seven hours. So obviously there was a timing chip mishap. Someone had his chip and I don't know. Did someone have his chip, though? Because that... The person went through. the entire race has splits for the swim for the bike for the run. What makes sense to me is that they somehow got my chip or like the programming thing gave

them my number, but they're an age grouper. So the pro timing started, but then they walked into the water after an hour. That's what it is. Swam a 24-minute swim. Right. Because I don't want to be insulting, but it seems like it would be impossible to swim that course that slowly because it's downriver. You'd have to be swimming upstream to go that slow.

I think you could like sit. Wrong way. I think you could like sit in an intertube and do 30 minutes. Wrong way. I love it. Yeah, so no, Eric did not race 70.3, Oregon. He was at one point, and Paula II was originally going to do it, and then they just decided not to.

Based on the swim, actually. Probably a good call. Yeah. I'm glad they had the swim, because I remember at some point you guys were saying that it was maybe going to be canceled because it was, the stream was so strong that people wouldn't be able to make the left turn to get out of the river. Yeah, that was the concern, but I don't think it would have changed the results at all since the swim was insignificant. Yeah.

However, I think he asked at the end of that thing, have we ever had timing issues? And I think the answer to that is just if there are timing issues, they're totally out of your control. You just have to keep racing. And I guess it's more annoying for an age of a athlete who's in the mix, but in the pro race, like, people would see you come across the line in a certain position and it wouldn't matter what the chip says. Yeah, this actually happened at L.A. to me. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yep.

I finished in second and like I got the award and everything, but even up until two days later, it said I was seventh place or something. Yeah. True. Yeah. It's never happened to me, but I know age you said it's happened to and you have to basically email the race director.

And like sometimes they, they're like, hey, do you have like a Garmin or a Wahoo or a Strava file that we can look at? You know, like it's that low tech when it comes to it. Because they really rely on those timing chips. They can't look after.

all, you know, thousand people or whatever racing. Yeah, yeah. So thanks for that question, Michael. Hopefully that helped it a little bit. Next question is from Jav... This is from... This is from this guy that I ride bikes with. I read this question earlier.

Paula sent it to me if you had text, which is... It usually means it's a spicy question. I just thought it was funny. Is this one of the guys that you were on your, like, your death march ride this weekend? But I've written with him a bunch. I actually, for what I'm...

every reason I don't have, I've never had many Italian friends in the United States. I have Italian friends in Italy and American friends here for the most part, but he is one that I, I really like him. We ride together a bunch. Anyway, he's also triathleteat. He says, first of all, congrats to Paula for the TT wins, truly an incredible achievement. I'm a frequent listener of your podcast and really appreciate the effort you put into this every week. I have a question for Paula and Eric, but would like to hear Nick reading it with his northern Italian accent and translate it for you. So here we go. In based on your vostrae de la Vostera. the error

more grave of a triathlet armatorial in the gesture technical of the

new that comporting the major relentam of the velocity. For

example, gumito basso, test too out of water, gambes

afondano or other. So I'll translate now. So in based of in in accordance

with your experience, what is the biggest error that a triathlete an amateur triathlete

can do in technically speaking with his stroke that is going to slow him down the most. For example, low elbow, head that's too far out of the water, legs that sink, or anything else.

And keep in mind, I'll give you a little context because I know this guy, very strong cyclist, very strong runner, and I'm sorry to put you on blast, Giovanni, but one of the worst swimmers in the age field overall at any race. I think I've told you about him before, but it almost defies logic how, how his swim is so different from his bike and his run. Yeah.

Wow. The hard thing about swimming is everything is pretty connected. So, like, if your elbow drops, there's a good chance that your hips are also going to drop and your legs are going to go down. And it's, it's the tricky thing with swimming is, like, kind of where to start. Like, yes, it's very important that your legs don't drag three feet below your head while you're swimming. But, yes, it's also very important that your elbow doesn't, you know, you need to have, like, a high elbow just so that you're using your forearm as a paddle.

So, like, where to start is very tricky. He blames his, he's very tall and very skinny, and he blames his swim problems on his lack of, like, upper body strength. But I've tried to explain to him, like, I go to the pool and there's, like, 60-year-old women who are swimming as fast as, like, some of the, some young guys. So I don't think it's as much a strength issue as he wants to believe. Yeah.

Like, Gwen Jorgensen is really tall, really thin, and she was a fast swimmer. I can think of a lot of the pro men's field that are tall. So, um, I think, I think, I think, I don't know. I think core strength is, is very undervalued by a lot of people. Like the actual, when I'm having a really good swim, a lot of the times my core is what fatigues out before like my lats do. So like, if I'm just like trying to think of a drill that you could do to maybe just like try to get to the right everything at the same time, but like put a pull-boo between your legs don't kick but then skull which is where you have your elbows really high and you're kind of like in a breaststroke sort of catch position but then you're

just moving your hands side to side like trying to propel yourself through the water like that and that'll help you feel the water on your forearms feel like the water in your hands and then you're trying to keep your body as planked as you can on top of the water and then like maybe alternate doing like a 25 or a 50 of that and then a 50 of swimming and see see if you can like kind of take some of those cues. I love that. Yeah, I think Lionel also has a good video on swimming and it's such an interesting sport because like the hardy you try doesn't necessarily translate to going faster. So if you're used to doing bike and run workouts and putting more effort in and consequently going faster, it's not going to work that way in the pool if your technique deteriorates or if you just don't really have

good technique, the hard of you try, you might even go slower. So I think it's like a very, a very very technique-oriented sport before going to the pool for fitness. You should be going to the pool to improve your technique. And ultimately, I think frequency of swimming, you'll naturally get better at it by fixing your stroke without thinking about it if you do it a lot, which is not like the greatest answer because no one wants to go swimming a lot. But it's the way our coach kind of makes us fast is like prescribed swims every day that are long and boring.

Something that's helped me, I wonder if you guys do it at all, is instead of swimming with an open hand, you do fists. And that really taught me to like, oh, wow, the high elbow makes a big difference. Like, if I don't do high elbow, I can't catch any water. And I remember at first thinking, I'll do this fist thing. And then when I would swim regular free with an open hand, I would just feel like I was catching so much more water because of that. So maybe that would help him too. Totally. Yeah.

We did a lot of that as kids growing up when we were. 10 to 15 and it is kind of the opposite of like paddles a pat I'm just wearing paddles all the time can definitely hide a lot of insufficiencies in your in your hand catch and your elbow position and everything um and yeah yeah i would say if you're also if you're not a great swimmer don't use the pull boy paddles as a crutch yeah because when you take them off in a race you won't go anywhere yeah you can also to like elaborate on the fist thing you can do one hand fist oh like alternate like 25 with just a right arm fist and just then have your left arm open and then try to make your pulls feel the same.

I love that. Eric, when you were saying that skulling drill, I think that's called a mid skull, because there's also a front skull. Sure. Yeah, I kind of go back and forth between both. Okay. Yeah, I'll do like a 25 of each.

Awesome. Okay, that's great. And then he had one more thing. Second question for Nick. Second question for Nick, but how do you do to go so veloce in disheesa? In salita, I'm going very

piano, I have always I'm going to get to get to in disheesa and you're

going to be a good disheesista. Thanks in advance looking for actually I should read this

in his English accent. Thanks in advance looking forward to hearing your answers. That's what

his English sounds like. So his second question was how do you go so fast

downhill? Going uphill, you're very slow and I always have to wait for you, but I can't catch you going downhill. Could you explain what are the secrets to go fast downhill? So, Eric, you're an even better dissender than I am.

So do you have any advice for someone like, I feel like people are very afraid to push the limits of their traction? Yeah, like, rightfully so. I mean, sure, but like, Eric, when's the last time you crashed going downhill? I've never crashed going downhill. When I was 17. Yeah, so I don't know. Do you have some advice for him?

I mean, like, at least speaking from the experience of Paul and I, there are just some people who like to push the limits and some people who don't see the point in it. For me, it's a rush and it's exciting to push the limit. So, like, every time I ride, or at least every time I would ride, like, a route that I'd done before, you would see if you can take the corner a little bit better, get a little closer to the yellow line on the entrance and the exit. But in terms of, like, fundamentals and everything,

it's important to get your weight back. And you always, like, if you're making, your right turn, you want to have your left pedal down and all the weight going into that pedal, just like as if you were skiing for people who have skied, and then you would have more of the weight in your right hand. So it's like kind of a counter steer. The bike is leaned underneath you. But it's just kind of a lot of practice in finding the joy and feeling the grip of the tires, because I think most people would be pretty shocked to know just how far from, quote, unquote, the limit. I remember this weekend I was descending with him, and I could tell he was thinking he was

pushing it around a corner and I came around the outside of him like five miles an hour faster like cruising. It's like you're so far before where that limit of traction is. But I think maybe part of that is like you said, it's like distributing the weight evenly amongst both tires so you can get as much possible grip from both tires. So I think part of that is also like being in the drop so you have a little more control. Like you said, keeping the weight back because otherwise so much of that weight is on that front tire when you're descending.

especially if you're breaking before a corner. Yeah, weight back and weight low. So try to bend over getting the drops, like you said. I've actually noticed, like, sometimes if I'm, if I'm going around a corner that I just don't take very seriously, that I'm not going that fast, I won't really get into that good position. And it'll feel really sketchy.

Like if all your weight is on your saddle and you're pretty forward on a bike, especially a TT bike, it can be really nerve-wracking. But then if it's a corner that I do, like, identify as something that's pretty serious, like, just instantly, automatically get all the way weight off the back of the saddle and like low and drop the left shoulder into this left turn. And it's just, it's like you're on rails. It's a really, really cool feeling. Yeah. Being, being low, staying nice and low, not sitting up around corners. I think, I wonder, Eric, you mountain bike a lot. I wonder if that's helped you a lot.

And I've also mountain biked quite a bit. I wonder if that helps with the bike and understanding how to put weight on the bike. A bit. Yeah. And I mean, I grew up skateboarding and snowboarding and I actually did like high speed downhill longboarding, I think is where I really learned to have less fear and really how to take a corner properly. Because in that situation, you don't have break. So you really have to get good at slowing down to the appropriate speed before the corner, having your body in the perfect position, et cetera, et cetera. Seems safe. Of course. Of course.

Of course. Well, thank you, Giovanni, or as we call him Beachy, which is bicycle and Italian. That's what our Irish friend calls him Beachy, so now we all call him Beachy. Next question is from Denise. Hi, all in absolutely no particular order. Thanks for all the great content you're bringing to the community. I love listening to your podcast on long runs. That's great.

I'm getting ready for my first triathlon, a 70.3 here in my home country, the Netherlands. And I have a question on how to approach a taper period. I've always been active in a number of sports, but I never did long endurance races before. So the whole taper thing is a bit new to me. I did half marathons before, and my rule of thumb was no hard training for a week before the race, but just some light easy running in the two days before, just some walking and easy moving. And that worked, but I don't have good insight into whether I could have done better or if I could have approached this differently. Any thoughts on how to approach a taper before a 70.3 are much appreciated.

How long should a period be? When should you roughly aim to have the last heavier session to be optimum fitness at race day? much appreciated, keep up the great work. A big thanks from the Netherlands, Denise. So, first of all, for the people who maybe aren't familiar, like, what is the taper? What's the point of the taper? And generally speaking, what's the idea behind it?

You want to go? I'm, like, sitting on the coach, like, half asleep. Just in my mind, I'm listening to the pod, and you guys are the guests. I love that. Out of body experience. I'm like, with us on this, on today's podcast. Am I a part of this pod or am I listening to this pod? I feel like I'm listening.

I can't answer this. I like my brain instead. The point of a taper really is just... The point of a taper is really to shed fatigue from a heavy training block. So it's not like you're going to get any faster or anything. You're just going to get less tired and ideally be faster on race day. Be fresher on race day. Typically the last hard workout you would want to do like seven to ten days out.

We usually do our last hard workout seven days out. And then that's not to say that the workouts in the taper week don't have some intensity in them, but they're very short, small bouts just to kind of keep your body in its normal routine, but without really building up any fatigue. I would say also that the answer will be different if you race a lot in the year or not a lot in the year because we race so many 70.3s that we can't really do like a two-week taper. Like we have to keep training so that we don't lose too much fitness for everything else that's coming up in the year. So like Eric said, our last hard workout, like really hard is the week

before. And then the rest of that week is just keeping sharp. But maybe if it's your only race of the year and it's your A race, you might do that a little bit further out. Some people, I think, mistakenly think that when they're taper, what they do is they reduce the intensity and continue to kind of like keep the volume going so that they feel like they're not going to show up on the race and not be able to run a half marathon. But really, the whole point of the taper is exactly the opposite. It's to keep the sharpness there, but to get rid of that long run, long ride fatigue so that you're as fresh as possible. And something else that you said, I've always been confused about this, when you're saying you're not going to get any fitter with the taper, right? You're just going to get

fresher. But like, fitter is, it's this imaginary thing. Like, what we care about is being as fast as possible on race day. So yes, the taper is going to make you faster on race day, right? You're not going to gain more fitness, but like, what does that mean? You know, it's like the fitness without being able to show it, none of us really care about that. Right. It's kind of the opposite thing is people think that if they taper for a week, they're going to lose fitness and be slower.

So I think it's important to remember that that week before the race, nothing is changing in terms of how you'll prepare on race day. The only thing you could possibly do is train too much and be tired on race day. So Eric said, like, tapers to shed fatigue, and that's really just the purpose of it. it's not to go and try to keep proving to yourself every day up until the race that you're going to be able to do a half marathon at a certain time. It's like, okay, a week out, I'm fit, I'm healthy. I just need to like wrap myself in bubble wrap, keep myself sharp, and get fresh. So that's really the only purpose of it. So Paula, could you give Denise like what you would do

the week before a race for a taper? Kind of like maybe like Monday through Friday. Yeah. I don't know if that would be super helpful. just because it really depends on how much load you take on a regular basis. But a typical session we'll do on the bike is maybe start with four by two minutes solid with four minutes rest. And then two days later do four by one minute solid with two minutes rest. So you're just kind of reducing the duration of the intensity. Same thing on the run. You might do like six by a minute solid at your race pace on the Monday.

And then on the Wednesday do six by 30 seconds at your race pace. So it's really, really short bursts of the effort, but just keeping in touch of what it feels like to go that effort. Yeah, versus the week before we may have done eight by eight minutes solid was one of our last hard workouts. So you're just, you're dropping it back a bunch, but still trying to hit that like kind of race intensity. So you still, it feels okay. But it should as you go through the week, you should be kind of going, okay, whoa, back off, back off. And it should feel easier and easier to do those as you're doing less and less amount of time. Yeah.

Got it. Got it. Well, that makes sense. Hopefully that helps Denise, and good luck for that 70.3. Next question is from Simon. Hine, in no particular order. I like you all equally. Do you guys ever practice transitions?

Last week, I did challenge Roth. In the athlete guide before the race, it mentioned a prize for overall transition time, T1 and T2 combined, in each age group. First of all, that sounds so fun. I love that. Yeah. As I have no chance of winning the actual race,

I thought I'd give it a go. It's not something I've ever practiced, but I just tried to do it as fast as I could, and it turned out pretty good. I actually did run faster than several pros, including Yon. Just interested if this is something you put an effort into, or if you just do it on race day. I think I'm going to put some effort into getting this perfect, as it seems like a place to gain a ton of time in age group races. P.S., I did have a bit of a nightmare at the start of the bike, as I'd never done the shoe-on-bike thing before, oh boy, and somehow ended up knocking my my left shoe off the pedal, but I had passed the mountain line so it didn't matter.

I love what you guys do. Good luck at the PTO race. Cheers, Simon. Well, the number one tip would be don't try new stuff on race day. That would be the number one tip. Definitely want to try that out. No, I think it's, I appreciate his, you know, effort to try to win that fastest T1, T2. That's a super cool thing that that race did.

Eric and I don't really practice it intentionally because we come from an ITU background so we've done hundreds of transitions throughout our lives and just kind of have it ingrained in our souls of how to do it quickly. But I would highly recommend an age grouper to practice the flow of it because like he said,

you could probably make up minutes on people who are slow at transition or just don't think about it as part of the race if you're really smooth at it. So it's for sure a way. People are getting arrow helmets to take off like 20 seconds in these super fast 10,000 bikes to take off another minute.

But if you're fast at your transitions, you can take that off easily by practicing them and making sure that you have that dialed. It's 100% like such a good tip. Yeah. And another element that comes into it is your pacing in the swim. If you're so gassed from the swim, you're not going to be able to run that quickly through transition. And there's a lot to it in a fast transition time.

I think he said it does also come down to just how quickly did you run through the whole process. Yeah. It is interesting to watch age group fields like in little. Instagram clips or stories, how slow people are running out of the water, it's like they're still going their swimming speed on land. It's like they could make so much more time up if they... Yeah, that's right. If they got out of the water and like went for it, you know? That's a minute. It's a whole minute of time that you save. So think about that too. I've seen that though when you guys get out of the water and you're running fast out of the water,

when I get out of the water and I'm not running fast, I am running as fast as I can go. So it's just my body is just not ready to run. I don't know how else to put it. I'm like, I can feel how slow I'm going. And I'm like, this is as fast as I could possibly go. Yeah, I am sprinting. I'm Usain Bolt. That's what you're thinking.

Do you, as you're coming in, like, how much do you kick while you swim, Nick? I probably, in this last race I did, which was a sprint. So, like, I was kicking a tiny bit. but not much at all. I think it's, I'm now, this last race, I actually ran fast out of the water for the first time ever. And I think it's because I didn't try to, like, kick it up to 10 for the last 150 the way I usually do. Like, I'm usually fast out, going out on the, relatively speaking, fast starting the swim. I slow down towards the middle and then I'm fast towards the end to try to, like, have a good swim split in my own mind.

But this time I was like, no, think about the whole race, you know, like, if anything, I want to cool it off a little bit towards the end so that I can run, well to my bike and have a fast bike starting. Yeah, I think a lot of the time, if you're, oh, Eric, wanted to say something. All I was going to say was that if you kick just a little bit more, like in the last hundred, that's what I was going to say too. That's what I was going to say too. Oh, that's really interesting. Thank you for the dialogue on your swim pacing, though.

I guess I could remove it. No, no, it's fine. But it's because it's something I'm trying to work on because I've noticed how much faster the pros are running out of the water compared to the age groupers running out of the water, even speaking relatively. It seems like there's a big difference there. I think it's just more penalized, too, if you can't get out with a bike group as a pro, whereas an amateur, you're always going to be out with a bunch of people on the bike.

Way more motivating for us to do it quickly. So thank you for that question, Simon. Next question is from Curtis. Hi, everyone. I love the show and love how you answer questions from the listeners on the podcast. I always learn something new when I listen. The question is for Eric mostly. We are heading north from Utah to Washington in a few weeks and we'll drive through Bend.

I've never mountain biked in that area and I'm wondering about some recommendations on cross-country trails you like. I understand if you'd rather not divulge your favorite spots, but any advice on trails would be great. It's hard to judge riding styles of others, so to give some ideas of what level I am, I raced Exeterra Ogden. Right, Ogden, last year and enjoy that type of terrain. Good luck at P.T. Edmonton. I'll be watching and rooting for you. for you guys, Curtis. P.S. loving the GTL cycling cap, even though my wife tells me the little brim thing

looks silly, LOL. Yeah, for non-cyclists, cycling caps can look a little funny. I get it. Well, it's a style that dates back to the earthly 1900s, so you just deal with it. Well, you're in luck. Bend is pretty much every single trail you will like.

There is almost no trail that does not fit into the cross-country, flowy category. So I don't, with the exception of if you wanted to go up to Bachelor to ride the bike park, those are some serious, like, actual downhill style stuff. But probably like the most classic thing you could possibly do in Bend is you ride up Ben's Trail and then you come back down Phil's Trail. And if you want to go a little bit higher, you go up pine drops and then you come down whoops. And whoops is like the quintessential bend jump line sort of thing. So if you're comfortable with tabletops and stuff, you can hit that. Otherwise, just do the bends, fills sort of zone, and you can just, you can ride around for hours and hours, and it's super dreamy.

Yeah, I can confirm. That's like the most fun I've ever had mountain biking was when I was up there with you guys a few weeks ago and rode those trails. Yeah. Another favorite of mine, depending on how much time you have, is you can go up and down Marazic, which Nick and I did do. This next question is a 10-part question. So we're going to answer each fairly briefly. but I liked all of them, so we're keeping them all in there. Hi, Flynn and Company.

Oh my God, Eric's going to blow a fuse. My name is Jason. I currently live in the muggy oven known as South Florida. Questions for the podcast. I've been saving these for a few weeks. One of the three of you, who has the best fashion sense, active wear or otherwise? I would say Eric.

Probably Paula. Wow, really. I think Paula has the best activeware sense, but Eric, you seem to be the most hip with what the kids like in the streets. Yeah, maybe, yeah, true. Nick, you're pretty stylish, too, but you always have TTL, Stefan, so it's hard to tell. That's true. That's true. I'm mostly TTL at this point.

Number two, Eric, I remember a few, oh, 10 years back, you somehow fashioned a bottle top with an acute angle so you could drink more easily in Arrow. I know it got picked up by SpeedSip for a while, but I haven't seen those around in a while. I think Rudy Von Berg was working with them. Any ideas on what happened to that? A little shocked it hasn't taken off more. I didn't invent that. I was just the first person to use it because I met the guy who created it after winning St. Anthony's trathon

like four years ago or whatever that was. And we actually discussed me having a little bit of a share in the company in exchange for promotion and everything, but he sort of ran into some issues with getting to mass production with it and it kind of died on the runway. Got it. And at the same time, a lot of high-end trathom bikes were coming out with bladders like the shiv and stuff.

So things were trending a little bit away between the bar's bottle. But it was really great invention. But yeah, hard to get. I think you would have to make like 50,000 of them in China if you wanted to make any at all. And that was a struggle. Right. Next question from him was, if you were stranded on the desert island, which of you would survive the longest slash shortest? I would win.

I think Eric would easily survive the longest, and I think Paula would very soon deteriorate. I don't know. Maybe not. Paula, are you outdoorsy? I don't really know. Yeah, it's not about that, though. It's about like, I don't tolerate uncomfortable situations as well as Eric and you. I don't know. I don't like lineups. I don't like a lot of things that are just not fun, you know? Right. Like Paula likes her, her discount. Paula handles. discomfort super well inside of the scope of a of a workout. It's better than anybody. It's unbelievable. After the workout, we go to the coffee shop and there's a line, that is a bridge too far in terms of discomfort.

She's got to be the most, like, the biggest difference between how much she can handle discomfort in a workout and how little she can handle it outside of the workout. It's amazing. Well, the tank is just empty after the workout, man. That's right. That's right. Okay. next one is what pro triathlete or other athlete is Flynn most like?

Do we think it's more of a Sam Long yo-yo-yo-bro or more of a Cam Worf constant banter type? Or Lionel, quiet brooding type. I'd say more in the quiet brooding direction. He's like got some characteristics of all three. He is very much like, what is the most exciting thing right now? I want to go do it now, now, now, which makes me think a little bit like Sam Long, attention span. but also Lionel likes to switch up what he does with training pretty frequently. But I don't know.

He's also, it's a tough one. He's also, like, very handsome, like, yon. I would say Flynn isn't, like, a triathlet at all. He's more like a free surfer or, like, a big mountain snowboarder. Yes, I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. He's like Jamie O'Brien or Travis Rice. That's who Flynn is like.

He's constantly party mode. He's psyched, psyched. Yeah. That's funny. Okay, cool. Are y'all watching the tour? Who are you cheering for? Yes, we are.

We're watching it, but I don't have a favorite. I'm just watching it because it's fun to watch. I like watching Vout. Van Art, he seems just like a fun guy to watch to me. And Tade is just unbeatable. But he's not that exciting for me. I can't quite put my finger on why. I just want people to beat Tade.

Right. Because I like the underdog. What are y'all's favorite post-long ride meals? Like, what do you crave when you've been riding for four hours and you've bonked out of your mind? For me, it's Panda Express. That's what I think about when I'm totally dead. Really? Wow.

That's crazy. MSG, baby. Oh, give me that MSG. Give it to me. I love Panda Express. There goes our Panda Express sponsorship. You're golden. Yeah, that's right.

Oh, my God. I love Panda Express. Absolutely. I don't get it often, but love it. I usually crave, like, a breakfast burrito type. of thing or a donut. Yeah. Burrito. Burrito for you two, Eric?

Very high. Nice. Yeah. Which would be more fun? Kona or Super League, full circuit. Oh, so easy. Super League. Of course.

What's fun about Kona, other than qualifying? I mean, it's like, that's a long, hard day in the heat and the humidity. Yep. By the way, I mean, of course, if I would love to qualify and race Kona. But I think it's type B, type 2 fun. Have you heard of that? Yeah. It's fun later.

Definitely fun later. Yeah. Do you all ever miss full triathlon squad setup, both in training and into social side? Is this planted by our coach? Yeah. Is this Paolo? I do sometimes. Yeah.

It's a lot more, it's easier to get out the door if you have a whole group and a training time set. And it's like a luxury that we have, but also sometimes difficult is making our own schedule and making sure we get to the pool at a time. And that's why it's nice to have training partners where you can be like swim at eight. And then you have to be there. There's no changing the time around. So yeah, I do miss it. And then also the aspect of being pushed by other people regularly is nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Now it is really nice. We were actually talking about that in regards to this Sunday. We did like a big brick workout with like a three hour ride with a bunch of intervals straight into a transition run that was 20 minutes hard. And then we later, in the afternoon, we had to do another, like, 30 or 40-minute run.

And us as, like, adults were thinking, oh, gosh, then I just have to, like, I've got this random thing in the afternoon and I want to go to have dinner with friends. But if you were at a training camp, it would just be, like, a thing you were looking forward to in the afternoon. It would be no big deal. And so, like, that's just the difference. It's so much easier to just turn your brain off and focus on training because you literally, you can't plan a dentist appointment.

You can't plan dinner with anybody. It's you're super beholden to the training. Yeah. I wonder what that will be like. That sounds fun. That sounds like, it's kind of like when I'm there with you guys. And for me, that's the squad, you know. That's the training camp.

Yeah, that's the training camp. The ideal setup, like Paula said, is having like one or two people who you meet for four or five workouts a week. But it's like a regular standing 8 a.m. swim. And you kind of have the best of both worlds. Yeah. Cool. And the last one from him is what's going to happen to Paula's TT bike now the TT champs are over? The TT bike, I'll keep it, obviously.

And I actually really like it and I'm considered using it for some triathons and specializes cool with that. But I also like the shiv disc, like the tri-bike as well. And I'm going to use that in Eminton because it's just easier with the storage and hydration. And I wasn't quite sure how to manage that on the shiv-tree, like storing gels. And I didn't want to start taping stuff to the top tube because that really affects the aerodynamics of it. But it's a beautiful bike. It's so fast. I feel good on it.

So I think in the future I'll use it for tries and then also do more TTs if there's an opportunity because I loved it. So for sure, keeping that bike in rotation. And it's fun. That bike is fun too, right? Yeah, it's fun. I mean, both shivs are fun, but that bike, I just feel like it's more responsive a little bit. It feels a little bit faster out of the saddle when you're climbing. But ultimately, both bikes are really fast.

And the shiv try is just what I've always used. I broke the bento box on my teet on my triathlon bike. Yeah, it's just slowly through time, like develop some cracks in it, and then it gave out. And I emailed Canyon and they're out of stock. And I have to buy the whole hydration and bento box things. It's $100 and they're out of stock. So now I have to figure out like if I'm going to buy some third party one to like strap on to the top tube or something. Yeah, that's weird.

I'm sure you could. How broken is it? It's shattered No, and I don't even know where it is It's a bunch of plastic pieces that came off kind of all at once They were like being held together in a weird way Weird There was like a sticker that was like holding them together almost

I think the sun I don't know what happened to it But yeah You can get aftermarket ones They might not look as clean Yeah I think that's what I'll have to do It's just a bummer like for an Iron Man I would love to have like the perfect dialed setup And it's going to be probably not that

Yeah Yeah, that's all good, though. Anyway, thank you for your 10-part question, Jason. Next one is, and last one, is Tommy from Boulder, Colorado here. I had a question for you all on this. I have seen many videos on YouTube and social media about athletes getting checked in and dropping off their gear in the transitions pre-race,

but after the race, it's never really covered what this process looks like. How do you retrieve your gear, especially the big-ticket items like bikes? Is it a free-for-all? or are there checks in place to make sure people are actually getting there and only their gear? Have any of you ever had anything lost or stolen after leaving it in transition? Of course, want Eric and Paula's insight, but actually most interested in Nick's feedback as an age trooper. Thanks and keep doing what you are all doing. Yeah, the answer might be different for you, Nick, because we kind of do have a different transition area anyway,

so people are pretty sure, like, what's their stuff. but there has been cases where Eric actually took Nick Chase's swimskin one day, and Nick took Eric's swimskin, and one of them's sleeveless and one of them isn't. And then they went to the next race, and they were both like, shit, I brought the wrong swimskin. At the swim start. At the swim start. We didn't realize it until we took it out of the bag. And I'm like, I do not remember having a sleeveless swimskin.

So then Eric, Eric used sleeveless. Nick used sleeves. And then at dinner that night we were sitting across from him, and he's like, I don't know what happened. I like had the sleeved swimskin. No way. You guys just happened to find out a dinner that night? Yeah. I was like, no way.

I had a sleeveless one. So it happens. You can mix stuff up. But in terms of Iron Man being like usually the races are pretty good about making sure they check your wristband with your number on it versus the sticker on your bike. So there's a little bit of security there that you're not walking off with someone's bike that's way nicer. Yeah, basically they'll like check the wristband.

has your number on it, check your calf that has a number on it, check the sticker on your bike. There should be two stickers on your bike, and they're pretty good about it. It'd be hard. You'd have to try to steal somebody's bike. And you'd probably have to be somebody that was in the race, and you like entered the race just with the intention of stealing someone else's bike and swapping stickers after the, I mean, that's a lot of work to go through for a bike. And I'll take it a step even below that. Like, I always have, and at first I was a little bit scared of this, but I've never had a problem with it. I leave my bike computer on my bike. It is so easy to grab a bike computer,

quarter turn it and put it in your pocket. And it has never happened to me. And I leave my bike in there way towards the very end. Like usually when I go pick up my bike, it's the last one in transition. Because I love to stay at the finish line and just kind of like soak up all the vibes. So people don't even, I've never had that be an issue. And like Eric said, any race that you're going to do, Tommy, you have to put a number on your bike. it's not just so that the refs can see you. It's not just for photographers,

but it's also for this exact reason that you're asking about is so that when you go in and out of transition, they can match the bike number with your wristband. And there's also a helmet number that they put on there. So I've never heard of it be an issue.

It's never been an issue for me. Neither of you have had intentional thefts, right, or anything like that. So it seems to be pretty well organized. Yeah, I'd like to think everyone in Iron Man race is like a good person and not there to steal stuff. Although you can never be 100% certain, but everything's replaceable.

And so I wouldn't be super worried about it. I didn't think of one last thing. If you are super nervous about this and you have an expensive carbon bike, what you could do is put an air tag from Apple somewhere in the bike, either in the frame or under the saddle or something, that way you can at least not have the anxiety of it, especially if you're like leaving the bike in transition the night before a big race and it's keeping you up at night, just knowing that there's this like tracking device on the bike, maybe it helps you sleep better.

So we have a friend Talbot who had a camera stolen at a race. And now he has air tags. I don't know how many. I think he has like over 10 air tags. He left his camera in a room. It didn't get stolen. No, but they got stolen after he left in the room. Yeah.

Right, right. He never got it back in his expensive camera. And now he has, I mean, he's shown me he has air tags on like his wallet, his keys, his camera, the battery for the camera, the camera bag. Like, if he could put it like on the front element of a lens, he would put it there. It's a good idea. And if he had an air tag on his camera and it was taken by a close room cleaner or something, he could have tracked that down easily. Yeah. So thank you for that question.

Tommy, you can send questions to that triathlon life brand at Gmail. dot com. Eric and Paula, we're only a couple weeks away from PTO Edmonton. I'm very excited. Yeah. We're still trying to convince you to come, Nick, and it's a, it's looking like it might be a possibility. I think it's a possibility. I would say it's a strong possibility. You're just going to wait until the plane tickets are $5,000 to do the race. No, not only would he come, he would also do the race. I would, and the nice thing about it is that Paula, your races on Saturday. My race would be at 6 a.m. on Sunday, and Eric's race would be at like 1230 on Sunday, so we'd all be able to race like by ourselves and have other people watching yeah yeah yeah it's kind of a fun

idea very fun and also you have your new bike bag as i see behind yeah yeah i'm just need to make it all work but i did finally order that e-back bag stay tuned yeah stay tuned thanks for listening guys send your questions in and we'll see you next week bye guys bye everybody