That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon training with carbon-plated shoes, Caffeine for training and racing, and more!

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

This week, we tackled a variety of triathlon topics from listener-submitted questions, including:Using carbon-plated shoes for everyday trainingHow to utilize caffeine for training and racingCan ibuprofen help prevent injury?Staying aero vs. sitting up on the trainerLearning from other full-distance athletesSwim-only open water racesThe Tucson Shootout rideCleaning a bike indoorsA big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive! To submit a question for the podcast and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Hey, everyone, welcome to the TTL podcast. I'm Eric LaGstrom. I'm Paul Lundlein. I'm Nick Goldstein. You look on your face when I said TTO podcast. Yeah, wow, you're going real abrieve with the intro. I don't know. It just occurred to me all I was driving in the van on the way to something. I don't know. To pick up Paula's bike the other day, I was like, I'm just going to try that on for size. See how it feels. Nice. But TTRL stands for that triathlon life.

Paul and I are both professional triathletes. I'm admittedly doing a little bit less of that a little bit more different things these days, including some 50Ks. But we like to talk about triathlon and multi-sport and all the different sports. And Nick is a professional musician, amateur triathlet, and he brings a unique angle to the show. Yeah, I just can't bring. I think last week's episode recapping, the 50K was pretty popular. What would you say, Nick? It was extremely popular.

Yeah, people really liked it. And people also really liked the YouTube show. recap that as well. I think overall, this is a triathlon podcast, but there's definitely a lot of interest for ultra-distance events. Yeah, we got some trail curious folks. Endurance in general. Myself, I find myself more and more interested in endurance things in general. I love triathlon, but even outside of triathlon. Yeah, totally. Yeah, if you stayed, if you did watch the YouTube video and you stayed tuned all the way to the very end, you would have seen a nice little hot tease of the next thing that we have coming on the horizon. So if you watch,

congrats. And if you're right now going to scramble and watch YouTube, that's okay. I forgive you. Eric, did you see that there was a TTL discussion that was sparked because of it? I don't know. Oh, on the app? On the app? Oh, no, my app glitched the last few days because there's something about like the beta software that I've been using to like test and it hasn't let me in, but I got to get in there and check it out. People liked it. That's all I'll say. The little TCL trail logo. Yeah. Yes, it is.

It's going to be fun. Yes, it is. Yeah, we've had a bunch of people saying, like, that trail life or, you know, and to me it's just like it's TTL and we do a lot of different things. Yep. So standby. That's cooking. Should we, what do we want to do first?

We want to talk a little bit about how training has gone the last week or do we want to go into the news? I'm kind of curious how your guys training has been going because I've been seeing it a bit on Strava. I've been seeing it a bit on Instagram, but you guys are in Tucson. What's it like? Are you able to train out. Are you using the trainer, treadmills? What's going on? 100% outside. Oh, yeah. That's great. It's dreamy. It's exactly what we hope for coming down here.

I'll give it a quick rundown of my training because it's very simple. Following the 50K, my legs, my quas were so wrecked that I just now, I think, had my first run that was not painful and it was epic. And right about the time that I was healed or my quas were feeling better, I got sick with some insanely weird food poisoning thing on the way to this photo shoot with tailwind and like five minutes from getting to where the photo shoot was, I just had to pull over on the side of the road and throw up. Felt fine when I left the house. And then just for like the last 48 hours, it's just been like kind of this roller coaster

of like, can I eat? Can I not eat? Wow, I feel we're terrible. And I'm finally out of that. So, um, psyched to, man, psych to get outside and do stuff now. Are you able to run and ride now, Eric? Yeah. Not really high intensity.

I tried to go with Paula on an interval the other day and 30 minutes pretty much just completely cracked me on Mount Lemon and I did not do the second interval and I barely made it home. Paula, I know that you said that you just recently recapped your recent training on triathlon hour, but can you update us for those of us who do not listen? Yeah, I was a little unsure about going on the triathlon hour podcast, but I did and I just felt like I could kind of sway the conversation however I wanted to.

And I think that lately Jack's been doing these like one hour training focused discussions with athletes. And I've really enjoyed listening to them. So I thought might as well go on it. And I talked a little bit even about my history in the sport. So it's, I think, a really good podcast. And I re-listen to it just to make sure there wasn't anything too bad that I said. And I thought that he and I did a good job. So go listen to that if you'd like.

But yeah, my training's gone well here. When I first got here, I was like, I'm taking a break from Straub. I'm hiding all my activities. So if you do follow me on Strava, what actually is shown is only like a couple sessions that I've done. But I basically like rode 16 hours last week, ran 90K, swam five times. Like the training is so easy here. It's just out the door and you can accumulate miles and hours just effortlessly because of the weather. So just been taking advantage of that.

And it's actually really nice that we're here for like a definite amount of time. and not indefinite because it feels really like a focused training camp where we're not just living here. We're here for three weeks and we're doing a lot of good work and then we go home and get a little bit of recovery. So I think with that mindset of this is not forever and it's great here and I'm really like enjoying the training every day, I'm able to get a lot of stuff done. And because there's so many athletes here, I've actually met up with a lot of different

people for different sessions, which has been super fun, like people that I'm friends with. but haven't really trained with a lot in my life. But swimming with Chris Liferman, running with Sophie Lynn, and running a little bit with Jackie and Alice and Heather. So it's been nice to have kind of a mix-up of training partners. And yeah, it's good. Do you do the bike training up Mount Lemon for everything? Is it on the bike path?

Is the bike path conducive to actual efforts? How do you get your biking done? Yeah, you can't do efforts on the bike path, but you can do maybe like 45 minutes from here to the base of Mount Laman and then you can do intervals on that. So that's what I've been doing. But there's other roads as well, like the shootout that I did is like south of Tucson. Yeah. There's a really nice roads. Like there's roads surrounding Tucson that are really nice, but the bike path kind of just lets you access those.

And yeah, you can't ride necessarily hard on the bike path, but it's safe. It's, you know, a direct route with no stopping. You can definitely ride warm-up pace. It just ends up being like probably twice as long, a little bit longer of warm-up than we would normally do. Yeah, the whole freaking roll on that thing. Yeah, you can add 200 watts on it. Yeah.

And then we actually, Awadi and I went and explored this new section of bike path this afternoon, and I think it would actually be conducive to some TT bike intervals because there's almost nobody on it. It's straight as an arrow for miles. and I'm looking forward to getting Paula out there on the TT bike. Nice. Okay, Eric, what about some news?

News. News. This news is admittedly about, by the time you hear it like five or six days behind, it happened right about the same time. Wow, actually, is it further than behind? It's a little bit further behind. This is a little bit delayed, but we didn't have a chance to talk about it last week. WT.C.S. Abu Dhabi.

I'm just going to give you a quick, quick snobs. this is the whole thing. Women's side, Germans. It was the German show. Swept the entire podium. One, two, three. Wow, just like the old days. Yeah.

It was actually kind of a close race and it came down to a pretty close finish and there were like, I think, five or six altogether right near the end, but the Germans, one, two, three domination. On the men's side, Hayden Wild won. Not a huge, shocking surprise. But Matt Hauser gave him really good run for his money.

It was pretty late in the race that Hayden dropped Hauser. And I was pretty psyched to see that. I like Matt Hauser. The most exciting thing for us North Americans is that Team USA with John Freakin'Reed on the relay,

on the mixed team relay, got second. Silver medal. Our boy was in there, making us proud, along with Taylor Spidey, Morgan Pearson, and...

Erica Ockland. If you haven't watched a mixed team relay on the Trathon Live, you should definitely do that. It's fun stuff. And it's in the Olympics. The one last thing that I got here,

I did kind of a rush job on the news, but 47 years ago today, it will be 47 years ago, plus like four days when the podcast comes out, the first Iron Man ever. Really? Yep. Which was the one where it was just like 13 dudes or whatever,

and it was not at Kona, right? It was in Oahu. Yep. Exactly. They went around the island. Yeah. Yep, the whole thing. So Iron Man's been doing a cool little fun series on their Instagram page,

like recapping some epic Iron Man moments. It made me nostalgic. You could go check it out if you're bored. That's really cool. Yeah, that's all I got inside of the trathlon space outside of, you know, stuff that's going on in our lives. But Nick, I know I think you had some stuff from the track running world scene, yeah? Yeah, I know it's not exactly triathlon, but I think it's really cool.

There's a bunch of world records went down in the past week, kind of one-out. after another. My feed was blown up with records. Yeah, it was crazy. So Grant Fisher, who most of you've probably heard of, is a really fast American guy. He broke a couple of indoor world records. He broke the 3K world record. And then, I mean, to me, I only know 5K times, but his 5K time was 12 minutes, 44 seconds.

Does. It's indoor. Ridiculous. This is so crazy. And then also broke the 3K indoor world record. What was the 3K time? Was it 722.91? Yes, 72291.

Exactly. 722. And by the way, he took five seconds off of the 5K world record. And it was from 2004. That's completely insane. Totally insane. That doesn't happen. I know.

It's just crazy. And the 3K one was really fun. because they were, there was a sprint finished with Cole Hawker, and I believe Cole Hawker also was under the world record. Really cool race. Yeah, and they were right there at the line. I did actually watch the replay of like the last few laps of that,

and it was, dude, they were fully maxed out. It was awesome. The thing is, for both of these, Grant had to go around people in lane two around the last bend, and so he's like running extra. It was epic. Two meters. Yeah, exactly.

And then Jared Naguess also makes history in New York by winning the Wanamaker Mile and a world indoor record of 3.46.63. And then Jakob Ingrambsson then broke it again a few days after that and took a few seconds off of it immediately. Do we have some sort of explanation for why all this is happening all of a sudden? Did like some new shoes come out? No, but the half marathon world record also fell. let's just focus on track. Yeah, I mean, it's just crazy, though. Like, one thing at a time.

Like, why? Is there a new shoe? I don't think it has anything. It really just is doing high carb. Everyone's drinking bacon soda in their water and somehow going fast. Everyone's training harder. Everyone's doing everything right. It's happening across every sport.

It's crazy. It's wild. A good time to retire. Nice. Yeah, anyway, that's the track news. I thought it was really fun and exciting. Yeah. It is cool.

And if you can watch all those races on... You can. They're all on YouTube. On YouTube. I watched them. There's a good evening well spent. Yeah. Cool.

Okay, so I have a new game for us here. And you may have seen this. I've seen this a few times down online and I think it's pretty funny, but there's no real name for it. But we're going to call it Ranks Revealed. So the way this game works is that... that we're going to have five positions here. And you have to rank your positions from favorite to least favorite. Okay?

So one is your favorite. Five is your least favorite. But the trick is, I'm not going to tell you all five. I'm going to present them one at a time. And you have to rank them guessing how the rest of them will be. So you're going to tell us things one at a time. And it's our job to, without knowing all of them all at once, we rank them. The best word of knowledge.

That's right. That's right. Okay. So first one, tripping over the finish line. Five is the worst. Five is the worst. And you can't reuse them. So once they're ranked in that position, they're stuck in that position.

And do we have a category? This is bad things that can happen during a race. Okay. All right. Tripping over the finish line. Yes. Not bad. That's my number one.

Three. Okay. I get much worse. Okay. So you guys have to be. remember your own here because I only have one one category for you guys but um okay how about blowing a snot rocket into a fellow competitor by accident that's a two nobody cares about being gross too falling when dismounting in t two that's a four because that could hurt

man yeah i i feel like there's something really bad this can need to be five so four okay great uh dropping your nutrition on the bike Man, I wish I still had two. Yeah, well, that's the problem. This is not a faux paw. This is just a darn it. Yeah. I would say that's a three.

Okay. And then, uh, shitting your trisuit halfway through the race. Oh, yeah. Five, baby. You guys both, you nailed it. You kept that fifth spot open. I thought I would trick you with that one, but you guys both came out on top with that. My layout.

Well done. I really stand by my layout. No, take out. Good job. Good job. It's really funny when it's like when you're ranking like people in history and you know, like people save like whatever Hitler for last or something and they got to put them first or something.

Oh man. Lose. Anyway. Okay. Wonderful. Good job, guys. That was fun. Okay.

Moving on here, we are going to move on to questions. You can submit your questions for the podcast at that triathlon life.com slash podcast where you can also become a podcast supporter. The podcast supporters recently got a little. a little perk, and we're working on more perks. One of the perks, if I can say it again, is that we pick a random podcast supporter each week to get a little TTL-themed swag.

And I still have these extremely premium orca swim caps. So I'll be sending Patrick Cooper. Congratulations. You are getting a TTL orca swim cap. Lovely. I wore mine today as I was suffering through my returned to swimming and at least I felt like I looked cool with my head above water. Underwater, it was a disaster, but the swim cap looked good.

So thanks Patrick Cooper for being a podcast supporter. Thanks to all the podcast supporters really, but Patrick Cooper, you're our star this week. Okay, first question. Hey, Penf. I'm going to try to shorten it for Paula, and so it makes it on the pod. I've been running in carbon-plated shoes for the past couple years now, but I read that you shouldn't run in them for every run. I tried adding non-carbon shoe to my rotation for long runs and they suck.

My feet hurt and I feel much better and peppier with the carbon shoes. Should I dish the non-carbon shoes and stick with the carbons? I've never had a running injury. Mike, wow, never had a running injury. I wonder what percentage of people have never had a running injury that listen to this podcast. Let's do a poll on the app. I would actually, yeah, let's do a poll on the app. Who has never had a running injury?

Wait, can't, can we do polls on the app? We can't. We don't have that function. We'll just chime in. Chime in on a thread. Yeah, actually, that's even better. Yeah, okay, so what do you guys think here? Carbon shoes. If you were given an endless supply of free carbon shoes, which I presume, Paula, you may actually have that.

But would you use them all the time? Yeah, I would say I do have an endless supply, and I definitely don't use them all the time. I'll only use them for like two or three runs before a race. But I think in every, we've definitely answered this question before on the podcast, right? To my knowledge, it's never been posed as like, why not running them all of the time? Right.

Instead of like, because they don't last forever. How often do you? They don't last forever. They break down. They're expensive. That's most people's primary reason, I would say. Because in my opinion,

and I think they're great for cushioning, injury prevention. Like, I always feel way less sore if I wear my carbon shoes for a workout on pavement. I don't know my throat is so clogged up. Track hack. But I think we've said before that every brand of shoe has a shoe that's not a carbon shoe, but that's like a fast tempo shoe. Like the cloud boom zone for on, for example, that's what I've been wearing for all my fast running here. And it has a similar foam.

to the carbon shoes, but just doesn't have a carbon plate in it. So you can get a shoe that's meant for fast running, a shoe that's super cushioning for easy runs. I don't know, just have like one for each type of run in your stable. But always going out and running in carbon is it takes away like the specialness of it. Yeah. And I just think that's got to do something interesting to your like overall run stride and economics.

If you're like using that, just like swimming in the shorts that are floaty like wetsuit material. Like, yeah, that feels better. Yes, you will, will swim faster. But, like, is that actually the best thing for developing a good sound, like, stroke? Just a stroke. Or a run stride or whatever. Yeah, it does change your stride a bit.

Yeah, I'm definitely a big fan of, like Paula said, a cushy shoe. And, yeah, it's going to feel a bit slower, but that's fine. Go for a slow run. That's good for you, too. A trail shoe, a race shoe. Like, have a good stable. And I think that also helps with injure. injury of a prevention where you're not just getting the same exact stimulus all the time

and decreasing your ability to deal with little things that come up. When, like Paula said, these shoe companies make these more trainer like tempo shoes. The phone that they use in those is not the same as they use in the race one. It is similar, but more resilient. So they last longer as well. So there's another good reason to use those shoes instead of using like race day shoes for every single profession. Yeah, that's great.

Great. next question here. Quick question. What is your opinion of utilizing caffeine for triathletes and endurance athletes during training and race day? I realize caffeine impacts people differently, but just curious on your opinion, especially with those who are training now. My race day nutrition plan consists of two cups of coffee with breakfast and precision before swim, which is the only caffeine I consume during its 70.3. Appreciate your insight, enthusiasm, and passion. Let's keep building awareness of this remarkable sport. Cheers, Jason. Right on, Jason.

Take your vibe. For me, if I'm doing caffeine, I'm going to have like a pretty steady, have it like every hour, 15, hour and a half, through a 70.3, through the 50K that I did, things that are four hours long. I'll have coffee in the morning. And then I usually have like a gel 15 minutes before I start,

unless my stomach is just, I already feel so wound up that it seems like it would put me over the edge. And then I just go, I skip that one, And then I'll have one, like an hour and 15 minutes in, two and a half hours in. And then you're pretty close to the finish line. You can always just start loading it on in the last hour if you're feeling like you're having a problem. But more than that, and I feel like you're running the risk of frequent and often bathroom stops. Right.

He's talking about racing? Racing in particular or training? During training and racing. Yeah, I use caffeine in coffee form in training. in training. Like before any hard session, first thing in the morning, of course,

like most people, I'd like to have a coffee. And then I'll bring a caffeine gel on training rides, usually just as like an insurance policy. If I feel terrible, I'll take one. But similar to Eric,

I'll take, like, two during the bike and then maybe one on the run and one before the swim. So I definitely use it. I've actually never tried caffeine pills. Have you,

Eric? No. For some reason, that just weirds me out versus a gel, I would rather take a chill. It doesn't make any sense, but... Well, maybe the caffeine pills are a little more concentrated.

I mean, certainly by volume. That's the scary thing, is that you can, like, get too much. People will, like, misread the amount on them and have, like, you can overdose on caffeine. For sure. And if I take too much coffee even before a race, I feel a little bit, like it amplifies my nerves that are already there. So you do have to be a bit cautious with it. But it's, yeah, it's important, I think. It is like a performance enhancer.

I never, for all five WTS races that I won when I was in my early 20s, I didn't drink coffee. I didn't take caffeine. I didn't have any caffeine. So it is possible. But I think as you drink coffee and adjust your body's baseline, it then needs it. Like back then, I never had it. So I didn't need it.

Well, this is what I'm curious about for both of you. Do you ever consciously decrease your caffeine consumption leading up to a race so that it has a greater effect for you on race day? No. I've never done that. Lindsay Corbyn used to do that or maybe he would drink like decalf on the regular. And then when a race came, the caffeine would hit her harder. Yeah. Basically, I brought that up with Paulo.

years and years ago and he was like, no, that's very dumb. You'll just make yourself incredibly unhappy all week. Just take more caffeine on race day. Right, right, right. Well, it comes back to what you're used to. Like, if you never drink it and Lindsay could train perfectly fine with a decathed coffee first. Yeah, yeah.

But I think it was becoming trendy at the time in like 2015 to like go fully off coffee for three weeks. I think that was like a QT2 thing. And then bring it back. and then you're just like drinking nitrous or something. Nice. Cool. Okay. Well, thanks for the question, Jason.

Next one here is from Todd. Quick question for the three of you. If you have small aches and pains after a training day, do you get ahead of it by taking ibuprofen to help with inflammation and pain? Or do you power through it and let the body do its thing, Todd? 100%. No. How often do you take it in general?

I try to not take it. I took some like the last couple of days because I've got a horrible headache and stuff because of this weird stupid sickness thing. But not for just like muscle soreness. The only time I'll take it is if I have like really bad period cramps and I can't sleep or something. Oh, that's that is a good time. But I think it really messes up my stomach when I was going through like a lot of injury patches back in, I don't know, the whole decade between my drug or something.

in my long-grice career, I took so many anti-inflammatories and even prescription anti-inflammatories from doctors and stuff because I just had injuries. And it temporarily kind of masks it, but it does not solve the problem. And I think that if you have like an acute thing, like you have a swollen knee or a swollen ankle from tripping or something, then it could be used in a small time period with an intensive dosage just for like five days. But taking it cross like all the time is not good for your liver. To like get ahead of it as Todd says here. But only if it's like a really acute thing that doesn't often happen.

If you're like, oh, my knee always kind of aches and I'm just taking it Advil whenever it does. Like I think that's using it too much. But we're not doctors here. In the U.S. ibuprofen is the technical name for the drug Advil. So if you're more familiar with Advil, that's the same thing. I would agree with Paula. Generally, like if my Achilles is bugging me just a teeny bit off this uphill run, and I would be more of a fan of icing it very locally versus just taking a systemic inset or whatever we'll call them.

Okay, great. Next question here is from Jamie. Hi, all. when you're inside doing threshold and interval work on the trainer, are you doing them in arrow position or sitting up? Thanks so much. Whatever allows me to get to the end and hate my life the least. This is also my answer.

This is my answer when I'm outside too. I'm like, if I can do it comfortably down, sure. But if I can't, I'm just sitting up. Dude, you're doing it down outside 100% of the time. Don't be. Oh, really? No, I'm not. Come on. You're training for travel.

Yeah. Indoor's is another thing. I think you can allow yourself some leeway there. But I will say I'm never more confident than when I execute a threshold or whatever hard TT bike workout in Arrow inside. That's my ultimate. If I can do that, I can do literally anything outside because that's insane. Paul, I feel like you do everything down when I watch you. on the trainer in arrow always for intervals if it's a really long interval i'll let myself like

set up for 30 seconds every five minutes or something just to change because like when you're outside there is some dynamic nature to the riding and even if you're an arrow for 30 minutes you're moving around a little bit but on the trainer it's just so static that i think allowing yourself to sit up or stand up is fine occasionally but it is it is good practice in just keeping good position and even if you say the watts are 10 lower or something like give yourself a bit of grace with what the threshold is inside because it is harder mentally that's fine i think how often are you guys standing up on the trainer you know not not necessarily to put out big wats but to give yourself like i guess i'm saying that because i do that all the time outdoors to give myself

a little like break in the kind of muscles that i'm recruiting do you do that on the trainer or is sitting up kind of the same version of that. No, we stand up. I feel like most of the time standing up mid-hard interval on the trainer, though, just it feels worse when you sit back down. Like, in your mind, it should make it better. And for me, it usually doesn't. It just makes it worse.

But next is talking about if you're just riding on the trainer. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I like to ride the rollers as much as possible. and I'll, yeah, like, every five minutes, I'll, like, kind of do a 30 second at 350 watts. And then every 10 minutes, I'll, like, get out of the saddle for 45 seconds. And I'll do a bunch of stuff like that. Yeah, like you said, Nick, to just, or Paula said, to, like, mimic outdoor, regular different-stimulus.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, thanks for the question, Jamie. Next one here, hi-TL. Love the Black Canyon Recap episode with Heather. Congrats to all for your racing, pacing, and crewing. It's great to hear how even though you have lots of knowledge as pros, you still learn from each other. Paula, as you contemplate racing an Ironman distance race,

how are you approaching learning all you can? I assume you're talking a lot with Heather, Jackie, and others, but is it just absorbing any information you can or are you focusing on specific areas like nutrition, pace, etc.? Thanks, Brad. P.S., I'm looking forward to getting my new foreign rider hoodie and following Eric's example by promptly taking a nap in it. Brad, very nice.

Be the best nap of your life. I think that the Iron Man is like just a unicorn in my future at the moment and I haven't quite started like actually implementing changes to anything I'm doing. In preparation for it. Cross that bridge when I get there kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. It is fun to be here with Heather and chat with her a little bit about it. But it's a long ways of why.

And I'm just currently focused on like the next day, the next day and I'm doing a lot of volume right now, which is kind of my goal of this training camp. And I'm putting a conscious effort into taking gels and taking like the right number of calories in the bottles to fuel a ride appropriately versus winging it with water. Like, oh, it's only two hours. I don't need any fuel. Like just practicing actually taking stuff in, even if I don't feel like hungry or I don't feel like I need it. I just think it's good practice to take in fuel while exercising. It's something that's like so basic and I probably should have done more of the last 20 years, but it's kind of kicked me into gear to take it more seriously.

I love that. And like I've noticed her doing that. And like I think that is the exciting thing about a new challenge is that all of a sudden it fires up all these things in your brain of like, well, I better learn that. And like now I have a really good. reason to do this and just sharpen up. And I don't know. I'm excited for you and that's exciting for me. Maybe less grumpy on bike rides now. Maybe we'll see. Oh, 100%. Very nice. Inevitably. Very nice. And it's only going to pay off in 70.3 as well. Like that's just,

it's like the Iron Man is like the excuse or the thing that the mask that lit the fire, but like everything else is going to benefit. Paula, do you think when you are more like you have the Iron Man in your sights, Do you think you will be like calling up Heather and asking her stuff? Or is your gut feeling like I kind of understand how this is going to work. And it's more about doing the training right. And then when I'm on race, I'll know what to do. I feel really lucky that three of my best friends are all Ironman champions. Jackie, Lindsay, and Heather.

So I have like the absolute best resources of people. who have in real life experience being extremely good at the sport. So I think that, yeah, I'll definitely lean on them. And I think they're all, like, such good friends that they'd be happy to help. Especially my two retired friends. Right. Who you're not racing against anymore. No, Jackie's an amazing friend too.

But, yeah, it'll, I think there's so much to learn. And it's not like I'm going to learn it all before the first one. You know, I think you have to do one to learn it, too. Oh, I think there's going to be a lot. a lot of learning happening on that first one for sure. I'm definitely going to hate it a lot of times too. I also don't want my whole year to be revolved around like this. I'm doing so many other things as well.

It's kind of just like the hot topic. Like it's fun to talk about something new. But doing a lot of other stuff. Yeah. Sweet. Cool. Okay. Next question from Chance. Hey, gang, I've really enjoyed listening to and watching Eric's adventures in the

ultracine. I also love hearing about Paula's side hustle. in the time trial world. Curious if either of you or Nick has ever considered doing a swim-only endurance event. No. I've recently signed up for an eight-mile swim

around Mackinac Island and trying to wrap my head around training for the annual swim around Key West, 12-ish miles. Would anything like that ever enticed you three thanks, chance? Paula, we know, I guess we know how you feel? No. I'm also going to go ahead

and say probably not for me. Maybe a peer-to-peer swim here. There's a cool thing that you can do, but it's like two miles or something. Eric, what about you? I could see you maybe doing that. Yeah, there's one that I've been curious about for a long time,

but you need like a kayaker with you. So just this year, like you coordinating that and the whole thing, it passes me by every year. But it's the bridge swim in Portland, and you basically swim from the furthest north bridge of the Willamette River to the furthest south bridge, or it might be reversed. So there's like 12 bridges, and I think it's 12 miles or something like that. You swim straight down the river.

12 miles? I think it's clean enough. Yeah. Like 12 miles to me is like, yeah, that's a long-ass day, but also it's not 20 miles. It's not nearly as crazy as a 50K running race. Really? No. Oh my gosh.

How long would that take? Six hours? Yeah, I think something like that probably. Yeah, good deal. It's like you're going to tell. The 50 cane three and a half hours though. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I did the mountain bike race in seven hours.

So I think I think so funny though because it's not impact. So you're. Oh, but at least running through the desert, you're looking at cool stuff. Don't get me wrong. It would be terrible. But I think that all three of us could do it right now. Oh. I think what's interesting about the port.

Portland one is that like I know what the banks because I've like run the loop and I've like lived important in my whole life so like each bridge that you go under be like oh that's fun I'd have driven over that a whole bunch and like everything that's going by on the on the banks of the river would have meaning it wouldn't be like the English channel or yes you're swimming in the dark in the black for you know I think it would be pretty entertaining and it's it's presumably it's downriver right like you're swimming with the with the flow of the river it must be yeah Do you know how powerful that is like how much is it helping you? I don't think it's that crazy.

Okay. The Willamette is not that strong. Like boats come up and down at it. It's a port, you know, inside of Portland. Okay, well, Paula and I will cheer you on from the sidelines. No, Nick, we're going to be in the kayak. Yeah, I need somebody in the kayak. Oh, shoot.

By the way, Eric, when you were saying that, I was like, Eric, you know I would 100% kayak next to you for whatever you wanted to do. Yeah, I mean, it hasn't occurred to me in like a year to do this. But yeah, I would need you to like hand me the water bottle like on the end of the little stick. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Don't stop. All that stuff.

That's awesome. That's awesome. For those who don't know what Eric's talking about, we mentioned it before in the podcast. But if you're new, you can watch, if you watch, for example, some of the Olympic open water 10K swims, they go past these boats. And everyone has these like what looks like very long fishing rods hanging over the water where the swimmers are passing by. with a bottle attached to it with nutrition in it. So all of a sudden, all these athletes will flip on their back, do a one-handed backstroke,

and then be taking in nutrition while they're still going. It looks crazy. Or fully horizontal. Yeah, totally. But they're trying to win an Olympic gold medal in the 10K. That's different than this. It's not different in that. Like, you definitely balks so hard in a six-hour swim.

Rough, rough. Okay, cool. Thanks for the question, chance. Okay, this one's from Sean. It's for Paula. Hey, Paula. Saw that you joined the shootout ride. How was it the kids want to know?

Okay, what the heck is the shootout ride? I don't want to get into the shootout ride. I did it one time, and now I'm talking about it like I'm a pro at the shootout. You don't have to talk about it like you're a pro. You can talk about it with the green eyes of a new experience. Here's what the shootout is. The shootout is like this gigantic group ride. that is in Tucson. It's been going for like 35 years or something like that.

There's like an A group and a B group and a C group and a senior's group. And it's like, it's a whole thing. It's really freaking cool. And a bunch of athletes that come here that fancy themselves like pretty good at biking, jump in it. It's super ferocious. You can hear lots of stories like Simon Whitfield told stories about it 10 years ago. And Paula surprised me on, I guess the day, the night before this thing goes off and told me that she wanted to go do it, which I thought was super uncharacteristic and such a surprise because Paula is like the queen

of caution, like nothing that is risky, nothing that is too scary on the bike and she just got it in her head that she wanted to go do the shootout and get a hard workout in via riding with a hundred frothen dudes and a few really fast ladies. And it's very long. You rode over 90 miles

that day. Is that every week it's 90 miles plus? No, we rode to the start in home again. So that adds quite a lot of miles. But I don't know. The whole thing itself probably is like three hours. Then the whole thing is not full gas. Like there's chunks. But in general, it's moving really quick. Like we averaged 40K an hour for the whole thing. It was so fast. Over 24 miles an hour. And is there a lot of climbing? Average amount of climbing. I don't know. It's not climbing like L.A. It's like 10 miles of

2% or like 1.5% grade and then you use some really fun rollers through the desert. And then there's like the main sprint thing is at the top of a hill that's probably 400 meters long and like 5%. Although there's an add on that's canyon, which is more like the L.A. Yeah. We didn't do the the Madera Canyon add on, which would give you like an actual like proper climb. This is fun. I want to do it. I could, there's a group that would be appropriate for me. Right. Yeah, you would be starting with like the main group or the B group and then it still just kind of like splits up, you know, like it goes full nuke and then groups naturally form.

So you're being to end up in a group with like 10 or 15 people. I made the front group guys. And Paula made the front group. Hell yeah, Paula. There's just like Heather warned me, it's like an overpass. You wouldn't even think of it as a hill, but it's enough of a hill to break it up when guys in the front goes so hard. And I was like bleeding through my eyeballs trying to make it.

And then when you're in it, it's just extremely fun because the group is completely thinned out. And you're riding with like 20 other people, not 100. And, yeah, hard at times. But then you kind of get in a good draft and then coast for a second. It's very spiky. But I thought it was super fun. The road's in great shapes. You never really have to worry about someone going down in front of you because of a pothole or a crack or something unpredictable like that.

And in general, the guys that end up in the front are good bike handleers. So, yeah, the only scary part is, like, early on when it's just so many people trying to joggy for position. But I think it's really good practice and bike candling. Yes, a little bit risky. But you can't just, like, do boring shit all the time, you know? Amen. Paula, what was it that you said? It was, it's scary, but you just do it?

That's my motto, 2025. Yeah, yeah, that's good. When I thought of this is when my flight to Portland, I was going to drive, no, I was going to fly to Portland to do my green card thing and then fly to Eric. And I wake up in the morning and my flight is canceled because of an ice storm in Portland that spans over to bend, like the worst weather imaginable. And I have this appointment that I can't miss. Otherwise, my entire green card application is considered abandoned. Isn't that crazy? They just like that if you don't show up for any reason, that's it.

It's over. You should have cared more. So scary. Wow. So I got in our car and I had to drive three hours in the most treacherous conditions. The three hour drive actually took me almost six because I was going so slow. You guys would have laughed at how slow I was going. Before anybody is, you know, like writing their message about how this was extremely irresponsible.

We don't have a car. We have a snow tank. It's an FJ cruiser with studded tires on it. So Paula was, in fact, quite safe. the main concern would be other people sliding into her. It was so icy though. Like even with the studs, I was sliding. Were you really?

My motto for that, yeah, Nick, remember I told you? The other car almost came in the oncoming lane and I stopped and skid. Oh, okay. Well, you had to emergency break though. Yes, but I skid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Sure, sure. My motto is, it's scary, but you just have to do it.

Yeah. When you said that to me, I'm like, the last person on it. earth, I expect those words to come out of it. It's scary, but you just do it. Sometimes that happens in life. And the same thing on a TT. I'd argue that is life. That's true. That's true. That's true. Scary, but you just have to do it. And then the same thing happened, Nick, when I was driving your car, the Tesla on that road that was an 80 mile an hour limit. I was scared them to me. Oh, you were driving slow. You weren't sliding around anywhere. Yeah. When you drove to the end of the race. Yeah, it was a really fast highway in a new car to me. A Tesla.

I've never been in a Tesla. I think about a Tesla is you don't even break. You just lift off the gas and it stops. Yeah. Crazy feeling. Yeah, but you did a great job. You brought the car over in one piece. Scary, but you just do it.

Scary, but you just do it. I have a Tesla's man. Okay. Thanks for the question. Sean, next one here from Sarah. What was the question? I have no idea of the question. The shootout, right?

It was the shootout, right? Yeah, the shootout. It's scary, but you just do it. It's scary. It's a shirt. I love the, well, it's scary. Well, it's scary, but you just do it. We can make that happen.

I mean, it's a little bit like a Nike. Okay, next question here, Sarah. Hey, Pemph, except this question is definitely not for Flynn, right? Flynn is that of PENF. And probably not applicable to Nick as it's about winter riding. I live in the Midwest with mostly cold winters, but there are some winter days when the roads are clear enough and the temps are warm enough to ride outside. My bike gets so messy, though, and I worry about road salt. during warmer months I rinse my bike with a hose after every ride but this isn't practical when it's

below freezing and the hose is put away. Do you have any tips for cleaning my bike indoors without a hose and one of the most critical parts I should be cleaning after winter rides? I appreciate any advice you have thanks. P.S. I am obsessed with the new on ads featuring Elmo. I've seen a few with Roger Federer and now one with Jared Naguze, who we mentioned earlier in the podcast by the way. And it got me wondering, will we see Paula and Elmo in an on ad, please. Sarah, this is funny because Eric and I had a discussion about

these ads in private. So it's funny that they come up as a question. What did you think about them? We, Eric, do you want to say what you think about them? Like the first ones that I saw were not involving pro athletes at all, so I don't know what the pro athlete

ones are like, but I was personally not super into this idea of like hey be soft like they it kind of depends I saw it from a couple different angles I saw a version of it where it's like

soft is what the shoe is and then I saw a version like a completely alternate version of where it's like you can be soft don't try too hard don't get uncomfortable I think it's a great message

I just thought it was I just thought it was kind of interesting it's like hey I felt a little bit like I brought back memories to me of being in middle school school where kids would yell at me and make fun of me for trying too hard in gym class. That's what it reminded me of.

Oh, that is an interesting perspective. Shame on you for caring and trying really hard. No, I think it's just trying to be more inclusive. Of course it is, but that's how I felt. Yeah. Because like every brand is hammers in like being hard and working hard and winning and that's important. And it's important to on as well, obviously.

a lot of pro athletes, but I think the idea is that not every run has to be uncomfortable. Yeah. That's definitely a concept that's in there. Yeah. And that is a positive thing. The branding I saw

or the marketing I saw was going around this idea that you can make these small wins like tying your shoes, like just getting out the door is a win. and I don't know like it's hard because I don't I don't want to discourage anyone from running or anything like that but this feels like everyone gets a metal kind of vibe instead of like no like go out there and work hard like so much of our lives is pretty comfortable we don't want to get hurt but like push yourself see where you can get with us see how much faster you can get it's fun it's

part of it it's like we're human beings and it's fun to squeeze that lemon I think a lot of people don't run to get faster yeah I would just guess what I was getting out the initial things. Like, I'm clearly not the target audience of this campaign. None of us are. That's why... Right. It can't be too critical. Right. But most people getting out the door is the win.

And I'm fully supportive of that. Well, back to the question here, which is how to clean your bike in the winter. So what do you guys do? Completely not Elmore-related. Not Elmore-related. I don't understand how we spiral on the L-O. Well, that was the PS. I'm obsessed with the new ads. And the question was, is Paula going to be in one of the Elmo ads?

No. Unfortunately not. Do we clean our bike after every ride? No. Okay, do you clean your bike at all in the winter? Yeah. Eric's are quite dirty. Yeah, we clean them a bit, but also we just don't go ride when it's like really crappy stuff on the ground and stuff.

And when it is, then I'll just do my best to wipe the chain off. but yeah, obviously can't use the hose. We are blessed to live in a place that Oregon, where they don't salt the roads. So we're not as concerned about rust. It's more just like grit. And we throw like little lava rock on the ground for traction instead of salt to melt the ice and snow.

But we just... If it's like wet and dirty, we ride the trainer. Yeah, we just don't go out. The situation where riding outside is where the roads are pretty dry, even though they might be dirty. Yeah. But yeah, doing like a superficial clean is a good idea. Bring it into your shower.

People do that. You can do that in dire circumstance, yeah. Is wiping it down not very effective if you have a rag and a spray, like even just water? It depends on the condition of your bike. Yeah. In LA, yes. It's effective. I mean, it's work and you should probably have like a little bucket of water or

something. That would be my thought, if there's salt involved. Because if you just dry it off and there's still salt on there, then that's going to be bad. Okay, well, if anyone heard the squeaking, it's because Flynn's playing outside. Yeah, him, Stevie and Frankie are going hard on a couple squeaky toys. You guys sent me a little video of a bobcat that was in the backyard earlier today. A big bobcat. That's a little scary.

Yeah, basically, Heather and Wadi built this, like, fence around their back patio so that the dogs can be contained but that bobcat could jump that. Of course. No problem. Yeah. Bobcat could jump on the roof. And this is well. When Bala says a big bobcat, for those

if you're like wondering, it's not a mountain lion. It's like a lynx. It's like a 30 pound. You think it's only 30 pounds? Oh, I bet it's more than that. Absolutely not. Catharolite. It's definitely half the height of Flynn. Yeah. No, not half. But yeah, it's smaller than Flynn. But it would still

kill Flynn. Oh yeah. It's a fucking cold blood killer and Flynn's a lover. Flynn is a lover. He'd be like, why are you hurting me? Yeah. Yeah, that was what terrifying. But it's been pretty cool nature out here. We've seen saw some white-tailed deer on my trail run that I got back from. We've seen some havelinas.

We've seen a bobcat. Havillinas aren't very friendly either, by the way. No. I think they would actually be more likely to attack Flynn. than the bobcat. Yeah, they're not like, I think the bobcat's maybe a little smart. They're like, I'm not going to mess with this. The Havelinas are just like, I'm just going to attack this thing.

Let's see what happens. I don't like your face. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, those are all the questions we had this week. We had some news. We had a new segment.

And we had your triathlon questions. Yeah. This back to business as usual. Feels good. Feels good. I've had the hiccups for the last time that. I've been talking. I don't know why that happens.

For me, it's almost always spice. Oh. Yeah, spice makes me have hiccups. I had it two nights ago after a burrito. Oh. Well, cool. That was fun. I think we're all a little bit,

slightly low energy, but. Do we know when Heather's 100K Black Canyon's videos coming out? It'll probably be out by the time that this. What? Actually, I don't know. might come out today. If you're listening to the podcast, it might come out today. Because Paul and I are about to go get a little pre-me, a little, what do you call it?

Premier. Yeah, premier screening to give final approval on it, I think. Wadi's been killing himself, editing it. So I've only seen the intro so far, and the intro is fire. Hiped. So if the rest of the video is as good as the intro, it's going to be fantastic. Okay, great. Thanks for listening, guys. We will shop with you next week. And don't forget to send your questions in. see it. Why do hiccups happen? If anyone knows, then this is it. I don't know, but I'm about to scare you. Then there's a podcast. Okay, bye, everybody.

Bye.