That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon upgrades, Paula wins St Anthony's Triathlon, coaches, sponsors, and more!

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

We start by doing a race recap from St Anthony's Triathlon where Eric got 5th, and Paula won! Then we move onto questions about how to spend money on some smart upgrades, what sponsors actually pay for, and much more! For anything else, head over to http://www.thattriathlonlife.com

Hello everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Paula Findlay. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Nick Goldston. And we are here. Wow, I messed with that. I think that's like five podcasts in a row where we just, it has not really gone off smoothly. It's now canon for the podcast. Yeah. Eric and I are both professional triathletes. Nick is our friend and professional musician. And we are here to answer your questions about triathlon or really anything that you send us, which are getting increasingly. numerous to the point where we can't answer all of them. So if we don't get to your question, it's not because it was a bad question. It's just for getting a...

Well, it was kind of a bad question. It wasn't the very best question anyway. There's no bad questions. You're just bad people. It's fine. No, it's just... Sometimes it's just random or like if it fits the topic that we have that week,

it's definitely nothing personal. And keep sending them in. If we didn't read yours this week, it doesn't mean that we won't read one that you send in in a future week. Yeah, totally. that's true. And that email is

That Triathlon Lifebrand at gmail.com That's where you can send in your questions. And if you put podcast in the title of the email, that's actually really helpful because we have an automatic filter that sends them to the podcast file

if they say podcast in them. How soon before we have a dedicated podcast email address? I've asked Danny to get on this and he kind of is like, oh yeah, it's totally possible. I'm like, sweet. And?

I just feel like, does it not like enter, doesn't it kind of get in the way of your like sponsor emails and work stuff and inventory stuff? That email is exclusively just like TTL side of things so not just doesn't interfere with sponsor stuff and like Paula said like

Danny set it up in a super cool way so it just like automatically filters things into different folders so you know if we don't if Paula doesn't want to go in and read about shorts getting lost on the way to Sri Lanka she just clicks on the podcast folder and gets positivity well

let's talk about the elephant in the room. You guys just raced in Florida and kicked ass. It was amazing. I've been bragging about both of you guys for the past few days and just so everyone in TTL Nation knows, I have not officially really FaceTime with you guys

since the race. It's been like a few fastings here or there, but this is definitely the longest that we've gone after a race without really getting like a debrief. And considering you guys did so well, I feel like it's, I don't know, I've been excited. I've been, like all my running friends, I'm like, Eric Rand of 31, 33.

off the bike. And they're like, off the bike. Why was he on the bike in the first place? Yeah, but yeah, that's right. Was he late? You should have just bikeed the whole way. It's way faster. But I want to stop talking and kind of have you guys walk me through each one of your races because Paula, I'm not going to give anything away for people who don't know.

So tell me about how the whole thing. You want me to go first? Yeah, Paul, you go ahead. Here we go. Yeah, so we raised St. Anthony's triathlon in St. Petersburg on Sunday morning, very early East Coast time. So before many of you all were even awake, I think, Nick, by the time we finished, you were still sleeping. So kind of a crazy thing, especially because we normally race 70.3. So to do a race that was that short where you could just go hard. How short was it? Olympic distance. So it was a 1,500 meter swim, 40 kilometer bike, 10 kilometer run. And you just go hard the whole time and don't really have to think about pacing or nutrition. It kind of took us back to our roots of ITU days where it really just is about going as hard as you can for two hours and getting in touch with speed again. It's a beautiful distance. Love it. Yeah, we had a lot of fun. The swim was, so I don't know

how many women are on the start line, but there was a fairly good field for the women's race and some Australian girls that I know were really fast, but they haven't raced much outside of Australia in the last few years, so a little bit unknown. The swim was very choppy. and I immediately was kind of a no man's land, I felt like. Really big waves, like couldn't see when you started, when you kind of tried to cite for the buoys. Couldn't hardly see the buoys. So I was just trying to kind of survive this swim and get to the end of it.

Ended up coming out in third, I think, but a minute back from the first two out of the water. But I wasn't super concerned about that. I was excited to see like how hard I could go for a 40K or for like an hour of riding, because I feel like that's a little bit more my wheelhouse than the 90K of a half ironman. So it was really fun to just go out as hard as I could without really fear of blowing up. And it was a fun bike course.

It was really fast, but also quite technical. Like there were a lot of turns and corners where you do kind of have to sit up, take the corner, your power drops, and you surge and get back out of the saddle. So a little bit of a spicy bike ride. And my power actually wasn't that good. But I did have the fastest bike split, which set me up well for heading out on the run. And my strategy for the whole race was just to ride as hard as I could and then hold on because I knew there were some really fast runners behind me. And I surprisingly was running really well.

Like I took my watch with me, which I was kind of debating whether I should do that for an Olympic distance, 10K or not. But I'm glad I did because even though my feelings weren't that I was running fast, my watch was splitting like 330 per K. So I was like, wow, I'm actually moving really well. So that's kind of what a race environment will do to you. You have race slots on and you're people cheering for you and you know you're in the lead. It brings the most out of you or the best out of you. So I could see on the out and back that I had about two minutes on second place. And it really is the least stressful way to race when you know you're winning and you don't feel that bad.

And you're probably going to win the whole thing. So not a lot of races go. way so I don't take it for granted at all. And it was just really fun to have a win in the box. And yeah, the whole weekend was cool. I don't know. I don't want to keep talking too long. I'll let Eric go over his race. But I wanted to ask you a few questions about yours. That kind of just came to mind as you were talking about that. First of all, when was the last time you, have you ever done a 40K in training, like all out? No. No, I haven't. So this was like the first time you've done that probably since the last Olympic race you've done.

Maybe like how long is doing the large mountain time trial? Yeah, I've done like time trials and stuff on the road bike or like even Mount Lemon was longer than 40K. Oh, right, right. And then like throughout workouts. Like we've been doing these really hard workouts that are like three by 15 minutes with two minutes recovery. And my overall power for that is like higher than what I did in the race. Yeah. I'm just better at training than I'm at racing.

It's a little annoying. Same. Same. And did you wear, you said racing flats, but did you wear the A6 for this? I did. I wore the race flats. Maybe that's like an old school term now. I don't know. No, no, no. It's totally a totally term. But I think of like very like low drop flat, not cushion issues. Now they're like race pillows. Yeah, I know. I wore my race pillows. Yeah. Race pillows is pretty funny. I like that. Yeah, I got my race pillows. With a carbon spring in them.

And then the, when you said you were like, I wore my race pillows. like running pretty comfortable and you knew you had a good lead. Did you, how much did you let up? Or did you, did you kind of back off or were you just holding steady? Because I, I haven't been like doing run workouts at all. It's all just been like base miles. So just with fear of my ankle acting up again and that's always kind of like riding the line between getting injured again. Totally. So even though I didn't really want to back off here, I'm still in a race, I think naturally my brain like let me ease up a bit. Yeah.

But I continued to kind of like stay under 340 per K pretty comfortably. Did you get PTO points for this? No, no PTO points for Olympic distance races, which is unfortunate. But the prize money at this race is really good. And the whole experience all weekend, the club gets behind the race so well and treats the the professionals really well. We had an airport pickup. We had an amazing homestay family.

and it wasn't about the PTO points this time. It was just about going and trying to win and go hard and fast and make a little money. Yeah, cool. Well, Eric, even though you got fifth, that seems like, oh, off the podium, you had a fantastic day, fantastic race, and you were like a minute from first. So it was a really good day. And from the kind of racing that I was reading from other people, it seemed like you did a lot of work too. But do you tell me your experience? Yeah. I think Paula did a pretty good job of

painting the picture of what the course is like. I've done this. This is like my fourth year doing this. I love this race. And this is the first time I was able to talk Paula into coming and that it worked out the schedule and everything. But it pretty much suits all of my strengths perfectly. I do really well in choppy water. And this is like a truly choppy swim. It's not like waves. it's like annoying chop that just beats you up from every angle. And as you're swimming along, you kind of swim parallel to the shore for a while. And some of the waves are like bouncing off of the sea wall and back at you.

So it really feels like a washing machine. But I like tend to do really well at that. My stroke is not like this beautiful swimmer stroke. And I do pretty well in that. So I really, I was pretty surprised when I got out of the water and I was like 40 seconds down on the leaders. but the leaders were this guy's last name's Harper, Greg Harper. He's like just finished up his swimming career at Cal and then this other kid, last name Dobrick, and then Ben Canute.

And they kind of got away from me and Matt Sharp and Matt McElroy, Matt McElroy in the water. And that was not really what I envisioned, but I got on the bike and just like drilled it as hard as I could straight out of the gates. and we put some time. Matt Sharp and I between Matt McElroy and Jason West. And Matt and I just kind of like rode the entire bike together. And I feel like there were a couple times I almost was able to snap the cord to him, but he rode incredibly well and he took a few pulls. And we came into transition together about, what was it, about a minute, 40 down on Ben.

And the other two swimmers that he were with, we passed them about mile two on the bike. So not a factor. But then, you know, like the thing that always happens to me is I'm kind of like stuck in this space between the super duper swimmers slash bikers and then like the guys who can't swim that well but can run really fast. And so I'm like headed out onto the run after a pretty good bike ride and we're like, man, if we have an amazing run, we might just be able to catch Ben. But if we don't have an amazing run, we also might get rolled up by like three guys behind us who can run 30 flat. So it's just like absolutely no point in time can use letoff or even like. like one stride. And ultimately all of those things ended up happening.

We almost, I almost caught up to Ben, ended up getting within like 30 seconds. Matt Sharp actually ran away from me and caught Ben. Matt McElroy and Jason West caught me and caught Matt Sharp. And it ended up being a three-way sprint finish between Matt Sharp, Matt McElroy, Matt McElroy. Matt, I can't. Matt's going to kill me if he ever listened to this.

Between Matt McElroy, Matt McElroy, Matt Sharp, and Ben Canute. and Matt Sharp got the win. So it was like, it really killed me to be watching that from like 60 yards back and not to be able to be part of it. But at the same time, I ran like one of my fastest runs ever in a triathlon. And I like, I honestly can't look back at any point of the race and go like, oh, I chilled there when I shouldn't have. Like, no, I just went max effort on the swim and it wasn't quite enough. And I went max effort on the bike, couldn't catch Ben, max effort on the run.

And I came fifth. So, like, I'm completely stoked with my performance. My body didn't let me down. It was great. But I ended up fifth. I think when someone asked, like, what is your goal for a race? And you can't say, like, an outcome-oriented goal.

A lot of people just say, I want to get the best owner myself. And Eric, 100% did that. And it was super exciting. Like, even just hearing him recap it right now, even though I already know what happened, is so exciting. So the men's race was 10 out of 10 excitement. and I wish it was live streamed or something. Yeah.

I just saw someone, I think someone's coach, maybe it was Ben's coach, or someone posted a reel of the finish. That's how I figured out what happened. I was just like, we've had a lot of sprint finishes in triathlon lately. This has been exciting. And that's, I think, just a testament to how fast the sport is getting. Yeah. Like, you can't, all five of the top men broke the previous course record. Like, they all would have won in any other year of this race.

Yeah. You can't go to any easy races anymore. it's just crazy. It's so exciting. And exciting. It was a blast. I'm really fired up. My next race is going to be L.A.

Try, which is another non-draft Olympic race in two weeks. And I'm really excited because I do look back at the race and think like if something had changed just a little bit and I'd gotten bumped one less time in the water, maybe I would have gotten on those right feet and I could have been with Ben and that I could have won it. Or, you know, or like I could have gotten bumped twice and then I would have not made that second pack. And there's so many little things when it's that close. And it's really just exciting for me to feel like I'm in the conversation for potentially

winning something. And I mean, that's just super fun. The clearest proof of that to me is you're a 70.3 athlete now. Ben's a 70.3 athlete. Matt is trying to do 70.3. And you all race this Olympic race. And Jackson just won Oceanside in an amazing fashion. And he was behind all of you guys.

Right? So it really is just like you just need the right day, the right moment. maybe find the right feet, the right legs. Like it's, it really is like it's an exciting tactical race now because everyone is so fit. And Olympic distance, just to wrap this up, is different. And like part of the reason why Jackson was less of a factor. And this is because of the, I mean, we swim for like four minutes less

in an Olympic distance race than we do in a 70.3. But we bike for an hour and 10 minutes less, an hour and five minutes less. So it's, it is really a cool distance in that the race. and swim to bike to run are a little bit more even than a 70.3 where it's like you could swim backstroke and potentially still win a 70.3, you know, like with a killer bike. Right. Anyway. Well, I love it.

I love it. Part of me wishes I was there, but I don't know, you guys seem to have a pretty great race without me, which brings a... Completely unlawed. We also have no footage of it. No footage, no pictures. That's too bad. Luckily, Kenny Withrow was there taking pictures, I think, of Miranda, and he threw us a couple. Otherwise, we'd be, like, buying some finisher picks.

Oh, God, finisher picks. Step up your game finisher picks. It's too bad because this is, like, I think, probably potentially the most exciting, you know, triathlon that I'll be a part of this year. And there's, you know, there's not going to be any coverage of it. It is kind of, it kind of does add to, like, the grassroots feeling of it, though. Yeah. Like, you finish the race, and I'm like, where's my finish line picture?

oh, it doesn't exist. Like, that's fine. Okay, I guess I'm not posting about this. It doesn't matter. I mean, you were all inside of the Tampa Bay Times. Yeah, I was on the front page of the Tampa Bay Times the next morning, which is how you used to find out who won a race. Well, that's really exciting, guys.

I'm so happy for you. When I woke up and I was just like, oh, my God, they're finished. You know, it's that feeling you get like a kid on Saturday morning. And when you're growing up, I'm just like, I wonder how they did. And I didn't have a text from either of you. So I was like, uh-oh. Well, it didn't go well. It didn't go well.

I got drug tested. We didn't have our phones right away. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and also you're doing a million things. I just assumed the worst, you know? Yeah. It was just a bad day or whatever. But it's such a great day.

Awesome day. Wonderful. Okay, well, we'll go back to this a few times because some of the questions are regarding the race for this week. But I just wanted to give a little update on the TTL album. We said that if 20 people would, DM me that we would do it and I stopped counting at 70

so we're definitely doing it we're definitely doing it It's going to be crowdsourcing I know next time we that's fair next time it's yeah if people Venmo me $200 then we'll do it

just kidding but we're very we're gonna do it I don't know when I'm I'm a little stretched thin right now in my non-podcast life but soon we're gonna make it it's going to be great.

I'm even thinking like we could do, maybe we'll do like an original one, like first, and then we'll do like a running specific one that's all at like 180 beats per minute or 175 or something. And then we'll do like a cycling one. And I don't know, different versions of them. It could be fun. I love it, Nick.

You and I are the same person. I'm completely busy. Have no time to do anything. But instead of one album, let's do four. Yeah. Yes. Well, you know, this is how you get stuff done. Dream big.

Something I heard once that I liked a lot is, is if you want something to get done, don't give it to the person who has tons of time. Give it to the person who has no time. Because they're the person who's busy who's getting million things done. You're right. No.

Anyway, so let's move on to questions. We have, the first question is from, I think it's Beka, Ash. Hi, Paula, Eric, Nick and Flynn. Enjoy the podcast and YouTube videos each week and thought it was time I sent in a question. I raced in the open age group at St. Anthony's this past weekend.

I was running out on the course about a mile or so in when I saw Paula fly by on the way to the finish. Congrats on the great race, by the way, to you both. This is only my second year racing and don't own a wetsuit and have been using my dad's 15-year-old servileo. I finished fifth in the open in my first Olympic and have a lot to learn. Fifth is great. That's really amazing.

As someone who is financially strapped and wants to move into the pro ranks in the next couple of years, how should I invest my money and time? I'm currently coached by my dad and looking for a new coach so I can stop bugging him since coaching is not his job. So I know that will probably help a lot. Any and all suggestions would be amazing and so appreciated. Thanks and looking forward to maybe meeting you all in person at a race soon. I think a coach is a great thing to do. I would say probably the next purchase, if you're able to continue borrowing that Cervillo and it's not like falling apart, it would be to get a power meter. Like me, a power meter and

like a pacing, a watch, a garment could be useful. It probably has a watch. Yeah, probably. So just, just, Just basically so that your coach can coach you as effectively as possible would be your best investment in yourself, I think. I agree. Do you think a power meter or a trainer? Power meter. Well, it depends where she lives. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I guess if you would only get one and you live somewhere where you can't get out on the roads at all and you were, so you bought a kicker that read your power, maybe that would be the best total use of whatever they call. cost $1,500. Yeah, it's hard to know if, I mean, that's an amazing finish considering you're new to the sport and your borrowing equipment and your dad's coaching you. So maybe it's hard to know what if the equipment is limiting her. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if this Cervello is like made in the last five years, it's probably not any measurable amount slower than a bike that you were to spend $8,000 on right now in terms of aerodynamics.

Yeah, if it's a TT bike. Yeah, assuming it's a TT bike, and assuming you can borrow some race wheels from somebody, that's very likely. I borrowed race wheels for my first three pro years. I mean, we got to sort out the wetsuit thing. You've got to have a wetsuit. The wetsuit is, that's a huge amount of time, I think. Send me a direct message.

I have some extra wetsuits. I can send you one. If you happen to be Paul's size, that would be ideal. Yeah. Garage sale. Garage sale. I was just going to say, I agree with Eric, about the coach thing. I think equipment can be overrated a little bit sometimes.

And if you just have a good training plan that maximizes your time that you have and, you know, reaching the appropriate energy systems, I think triathlon is a very overwhelming sport because there's three different things to train for. So just having a person kind of guide you through that, especially at first, who has some knowledge in the sport. And maybe your dad's great. I don't know what his experience is in the sport. But for sure, having a coach is a really. critical way to improve. Well, thank you for that question, Bika or Beka.

Next question is from Heather. I'm sure it's Heather Jackson. Oh, no, she's from Edmonton, Alberta. First and foremost, congrats Paula on your win at St. Anthony. So great to see you kill the Olympic distance and to see you two Canadians taking top honors. Eric, how often do people think you're Canadian?

Oh, wait, no, he's talking about Matt Sharp, right? Because Matt's Canadian, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we love Matt. So free TTL store, I absolutely love the TTL leggings, but I've looked several times and never see the extra small black leggings in stock. Will you be restocking it for spring slash summer? Unfortunately, I think that's a no.

That's a no, but we do have some other stuff, really cool stuff coming out end of June. And we're thinking of instead of leggings for the fall, we'll do like a jogger. But we'll see. I love that. And we have some really cool women's shorts for the summer. It's not really leggings season. and although the leggings are amazing and super super soft

comfy they didn't quite sell as well as we were hoping I don't know why it's a thing it's just like a Lulu Lemon you can see a picture of it but until you like go into a Lulu store and touch it's exactly you don't know it's two things it's like

the material really matters a lot and how it fits your specific body matters a lot so I think it's hard to buy those things online yeah I wish I wish we had extra small unfortunately Anyway, they have a podcast question too. If you end up doing a podcast on the business side of triathlon, could you speak to how sponsorship works? Obviously, the higher ranked you are, the more visible you are, so more sponsorship, but what do they really pay for?

This is what I thought would be interesting to talk about. Are you still required to pay for your own travel, hotel, race fees, food, et cetera, for each race? Do the race organizers provide anything as part of the pro experience at a race? And is it limited to just the top 10 or so women and men? looking forward to seeing you all in Edmonton at the PTO event stay healthy everyone we really want to cheer you on Heather I mean the backup of that question is good and we can definitely like I think go just do that list

yeah yeah so are you required to pay for your own travel like do you have to pay for I she didn't say like race registration but do you have to pay for race registration for example yes yep basically the way that pro races work with Iron Man is we pay a thousand dollars for the entire year and then we can sign up for as many races as we want whenever we want. So it's like a season pass, kind of.

Yeah, but I just can't believe that pros are paying for that. I just, I would have guessed, I would have bet anything that you guys, of course, can race for free. Yeah, well, I mean, let's see, how many Iron Man pros are there? Like, 900? Yeah, they're making a lot of money off of us. Oh, wow. Yeah, but you think there's 900 pros that are racing?

We'll say there's like 400 that do that, you know? I think there's probably maybe like a thousand registered pros in the world. something like that and like 500 of them all get these things i mean that covers a lot of doping and whatever you know anti-doping let's be clear yeah right or doping too it depends that you know depends on so we do pay for that and then it totally depends on the race whether or not they will assist you with travel at all iron man races no like there's a chance that they help out yon or somebody who's so valuable. They want to make sure he's there, but we haven't hit that level yet. But like the Collins Cup, for example, they do take care of your travel and your accommodation and everything is taking

care of. And that is fantastic for the smaller independent races that do that. Yeah, PTO, clash, St. Anthony's, most races will cover your entry fee, sometimes give you a travel stipend, and sometimes provide you with an accommodation. And usually have bigger prize purses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But our sponsors do not pay for that stuff. Based on the sponsor and what they're trying to get out of the relationship. So some sponsors are just trying to get awareness.

And they just want to make sure that we are wearing a Castelli kit occasionally. We don't necessarily have to say this is a Castellic kit. But they just pay us a lump sum of money for the year. For the year. And then usually there will be bonuses. So if you get on the podium at 70.3 worlds, that's a big enough visibility. thing that they will reward you for that with a bonus. But it's up to us to decide what we do with those salaries, whether we want to fly business or coach or, you know, get a nice hotel or a

crappy hotel and have Nick stay on the floor. You know, yeah. We had a unique situation with Oceanside because we reached out to visit Oceanside and they ended up helping our hotel and some of our meals there in exchange for some visibility on the blog. So that's kind of an advantage that Eric and I have is we want to be identified as athletes, but we are sometimes lumped into like an influencer type of category, which is not all bad because a lot of companies are going that direction where influencers are so valuable and they're paying for maybe more of a one-off project versus a traditional yearly sponsorship with bonuses. So someone like Lou Lemon paying me one time to review the shoes, they aren't.

aren't a sponsor of mine, but in a very influencer type way, I received like X amount of money to feature the shoes in a vlog. I think that's like a good way to put like to really define the difference between like being a pro athlete and an quote unquote influencer because like ultimately pro athletes always have been influencers and a race result is just like the biggest piece of content that you can have versus like a weekly video. But it's all the same thing. Your company are paying you to influence people. And whether that's you won Kona or you have a great YouTube channel that helps people decide what wetsuit to buy, that's all just different forms of exposure.

But like what's kind of interesting about quote unquote influencer type contracts is that they tend to be more one-off things like Paula said. Or it's like, we want a video instead of here's three thousand or ten thousand or hundred thousand dollars to just be an Oakley athlete for the next two years. And do you have brands that will just say, like, listen, we can't afford to pay you this year? Or let's say they've never paid you. Let's say it's gummy worms. They're like, we can't afford to pay you whatever you want, but we'll send you like a year supply of gummy worms for free.

And you can decide to put them on the blog or not. And kind of like people are just like, you know, it's like that in-between stage. Does that ever happen? Totally. It does. And we will do it for certain brands. if we actually truly use the product and like the product. But to be fair to our sponsors that do pay us,

we won't tag them or put them on our race kits or treat them like a sponsor, just to respect the relationships that have invested in us a little bit. But we do totally appreciate that some companies are just smaller and have smaller budgets. And a lot of the time, if you work with a company in that capacity, it has the potential to grow into something the following year. So we'll work closely with them. and do a good job. And hopefully the year after that turns into like a financial thing instead of just product.

Right, right. Yeah. This just kind of comes into where you need to establish your value and your value is like constantly changing based on what you need and like how much your other sponsors are paying you. And like all of a sudden gummy worms, yeah, pays you $50,000 to do what everyone else was paying you $10,000 for. And you're like, shit, I'm not ever. another $10,000 deal in my life, you know? Right. But there are definitely things, yeah, that are like,

we really like Jacobson Salt. He's like sort of a friend. And we will show off Jacobson Salt in the vlog for absolutely free. We bought the Salt just because we like it. And it's cool. You know? Yeah. Right.

You got to feel it out. You really got to feel it out. Yeah. I mean, you don't have to tell me with music, it's so complicated. Like, what do I charge someone? it's like, okay, well, the Grammy thing just happened, so I charge more now. It's not like I've gotten better.

Right. You know, it's all made up. And I could charge someone to do something that only takes me an hour. I could charge them like $2,000. It's like, because you're not paying for my hour. You're paying for all the upbringing music and the years that I went to college for music and all the skills I've developed into now

and all the computer stuff I've had to buy in software and all that stuff. I think, too, like a thing that I keep running into is we have the conversation. what is it worth to us? Yes, we, like, the amount of work that we will put in, are like, is so annoying that we're like, here is, like, the number that in six months when we're having to make this post, that we will be like, okay, remember they're paying us this much money, we can do this.

And if it's any lower than that, we have to say no, because we will be pissed at ourselves. Right. Well, that's the problem is sometimes when you, you should be, Of course. So we'll leave it in. Yeah. The problem is you get to a certain point.

This just happened to me recently where someone's asking me to do something that is not really my area of expertise at all. But I would charge you the same amount of money if you're asking me to mow your lawn. It's my time that you're paying for. And it's your time that you could be spending doing something else that makes that like my hour is worth this much now. and that's just a cross thing of like my schooling and how much I'm willing to put up with. Right. Wow, that got deep. We got deep on that question.

I don't know when we came back on the record. Well, when you started, when you started shit talking. Then we, I knew that we were, you thought we were off the record. Just bleep out of it every time we say it. Oh, 100%. 100%. The bleep is my new favorite editing of the feature in the pod. It's instant comment.

Okay, great. Well, let's move on. We only have so much time. That was good. I really thought that was a good question, and it spiraled out of control magnificently. Well, we love, spiraling out of control is our specialty here at TTL niche.

So next question is Colin from Michigan. He said some nice things, and then he goes on to say, I am a fairly strong open water swimmer. He swam in college, so the swim portion is where I excel. The other two portions are my weaknesses. For the 70.3 distance,

my splits are roughly 26. 245 and 2. So yeah, very heavily a stronger swimmer on that end of things. I'm just being real. He knows where he's strong. I don't swim nearly that fast. Okay, so that's good for him. Wow, the Big Lebowski reference mid-podcast.

I love it. My question is, if it is worth depriorit, My swim workouts, maybe only doing two. Don't ever swim ever again. You're good. Everyone on this podcast is going to support deprioritizing swim workouts. Per weekend, spending more time on the bike and running workouts. I don't want to take away from being a father.

Oh, geez, come on, dude. And present to a husband for my wife. I've always been told that you can't win a triathlon in the water, but you can lose it. Any advice is appreciated. Definitely de-prioritize that swim and just focus on the bike and run. You can do two swims a week and probably Or zero. See where that gets in.

Or war one. I mean, yeah, I think if you have the fitness to swim that fast, you are just like, you're a gold mine waiting to be found for that bike and that run, considering what you're doing. Yeah. The one caveat to that would be that swimming is definitely a very good way to, like, maintain fitness without impact. And if you all of a sudden swap all of your swims for runs,

that could be a recipe for injury. So keep some of it in there just for like some action. recovery and everything and like I would focus a bit more on the bike than you then like load the runups more slowly yeah totally I would say focus on the bike pretty much exclusively with slowly introducing more running the bike is the biggest portion of the 70.3 by far time wise so focusing more on the swim you're not going to yeah you can take 20 minutes off of the bike by really focusing on it for the year yeah versus yeah easily you could take 10 seconds off your swim by trying really hard.

Yeah. Yeah. No, 26 is for eight troopers is pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, great. Thank you, Colin. Next question?

Yeah, easy one. Yeah, easy one. Oh, Barry. Well, you know what it is. The problem is for me, I see those first two numbers, the swim and the bike, and I have the inverse problem, where my bike is my strength and my swim is my weakness. So I see those, and I'm like, oh, boy, if I could only swim that fast, that would be thrilled.

So I would be, if I swam that fast, I would never swim. I'd be like, great, did it, done. Now I can just focus on the fun stuff. Okay, sorry. Next question is from Steve Blake. He says, hey guys, as a full-time aircraft mechanic, I always enjoy the bike tech segments on the pod. Love that.

What brands of tools do you all recommend? ParkTool seems to be the frontrunner, but are there any other brands there to look at as well? Eric, I guess this is for you more than that. Yeah, I mean, yeah, Park Tool shows up. on all Google searches and Amazon searches, number one. But, I mean, you can get some, like, really nice Allen keys that are not a bike-specific one. I've got these really awesome.

God, I can't think of the name. Bondus. That are, like, gold and super nice and very machined well. Yeah, my dad got me a really nice big tool set for working on the motorcycles. Yeah, real tools. I sometimes will use those for the bike. if it's not torque-specific stuff, and that helps. But I do think Park Tool is great,

and they seem to be a pretty cool company, and they have really great YouTube videos talking about how to do all kinds of repairs yourself, and they tell you how to use their tools. So I feel like supporting them is kind of a cool thing. There's definitely fancier tools, but I do think the Park Tools are absolutely good enough to get any job done.

Yeah, they definitely get the job done, and plenty of bike shops use them, which means they get a lot of use. Yeah, cool. I think you're safe. Well, thanks for the question, Steve. Next question. Hello, Paula, Eric, Nick, and Flynn.

Oh, I'm glad I'm in front of Flynn. I'm still thinking about that person that said, hi, Paula, Eric, Flynn, and Nick in that order. I harken back to that sometimes. Racing escape from triathlon for the first time. I think they beat escape from Alcatraz. We're all trying to escape from Traathlon. We're all trying to escape from Triathlon.

Welcome to the club. Welcome to TTLNH. No, we are kidding. We love triathlon. But yes, Escape from triathlon is a nice little Freudian slip, John. Excited to tackle this event and wanted to ask a few specific questions, but overall, get any tips from you. One, how cold is the bay? Yes, so he's definitely talking about Alcatraz. How cold is the bay?

Escape from Triathlon. We're officially calling it Escape from Triathlon now internally, just so everyone knows. Do you recommend booties and or neoprene cap? I have done Indian Wells twice and swam in Lake Michigan as I live in downtown Chicago. go any insight. That's the first question. Why don't we tackle that first? I guess did you use booties and gloves for, for, um, is it as, is it as cold as any wells? I mean, I don't know. I've never really thought about it being cold. Like the, all the years that I've done it lately, I mean, I should say, all the years that I've done it, which is just last, you know, five years.

It has not hit like the historical, historically lowest temperatures. And I've never really thought about it. Like you hit the water and you're just swimming as hard as you can instantly. And it's like your face stings a little bit, but you don't have time to think about it. Like when you walk into the water at Indian Wells and they're like thinking about it for five minutes. Yeah, I would say I've done the race twice now and the sensory overload you get from going out there on the boat, jumping off the boat that's like really high up. And then swimming towards this arbitrary beach that you can't even see, you are not thinking about the temperature. Like it is the last thing on your mind. And I was worried about it a little bit because of like everyone talking about how cold it is.

But like Eric said, you're not wading into the water. You're just fully plunging in and the race has already started. You jump off of a high dive into icy cold water and like you might belly flop. And that's going to hurt more than the water. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, don't worry about the water. And I would say don't use booties and stuff.

Like I've never done that. And I think that that just can potentially slow you down more than it's worth. I did it once and it absolutely slowed me down. They're like big parachutes behind you after a certain. It's terrible. Actually, I think I used it. In the same lake as Indian Wells, but for a different race. I, I, swimming in the Indian Wells, like, is my nightmare.

That is cold. That is cold. I really, I always get an ice cream headache kind of when I hit the water. I would say, but then it goes away. It does go away, and I would say if you're going to do anything different, maybe just double cap it. Or an nioprene cap. A nioprene cap is not a bad idea. Yeah.

That's good. Cool. Okay, great. And the second question that John had was, road bike or T-T bike. is the ability to be Arrow really available as it is short course and looks to be crowded with 2,000 athletes all behind Eric, of course, he says, in quotes.

I used my TT at Iron Man Lake Placid and Iron Man Wisconsin last year, but I have a good road bike also thoughts. This is such a toss-up. There is a section that you can ride Arrow. You can ride for the first mile, mile and a half, you can ride Arrow, but then you do hills and stuff,

and then you can ride for like three miles inside of Golden Gate Park Arrow. That's a slide uphill and slight back downhill. But like you said, if you're in a whole bunch of age groupers and weaving around and stuff, I really think the biggest thing here is like how comfortable are you handling your TT bike on a descent? And if that answer is not supremely comfortable and great, then go with a road bike because they're potholes. It is just the road surface is super torn up right now lately. Especially if you're not a super fast cyclist, then the difference between a TT bike and a road

bike is even smaller and you're really giving up a lot. Yeah. You could go with like just some clip on arrow bars and probably be fine and more confident on the downhills because the downhills there are legit. Like you could hurt yourself. And for me, a big advantage of a TT bike is storage of water and food. Is that not really an issue? How long is the bike? Less of an issue. It's a short bike. Less than 40K, isn't it? Yeah, it is. For us, it only takes us about 45 minutes whereas a normal 40K would take 55 or something, you know. And I would say on a road bike, it's easier to store a bottle. Like, it just used a bottle cage, you know?

Yeah. Put your nutrition inside of that bottle. I think even in the pro race, women who have raced on a road bike have finished on the podium. So it really is a toss-up and based on what you're comfortable. Personally, I'm not a fan of that road surface. I don't know if anyone's a fan of it. No one's a fan, yeah.

But I would, it's so hard because, like, and the women's race is getting so tight. But if I could go back in time to like the years that I did do it, I might choose a road bike because I lost a lot of time on the descends. He goes on to say, been a fan of TTL. Coffee Club, several gear items, awaiting new bike kit. Nice.

Since you first started the vlog, never miss an episode. And so appreciate the podcast. My dog Brizzo loves watching Flynn. You've shared on Instagram. Awesome. Thanks for sharing your life with us. Thanks, John.

John Spillman. That's awesome. Really like that. Yeah. I'm hoping. I'll somehow maybe be able to be up there for that race. You're staying in my hotel room, dude, because Paul is bailing. Okay, great.

So I'll be there in a filming capacity. Bro out part two. Yes, that's right. That's right. Great. Well, next question. Top three best upgrades for age groupers and or top three worst mistakes age groupers do in training or races.

I feel like I have a good worst since you guys haven't been age groupers in a very long time. This is best upgrades and worst mistakes? Yes. Three best upgrades for age groupers. Find money spent on things. Yes. Money best spent on which three things.

Helmet. Oh, are we not using coaching? Coaching, I was going to say coaching. Oh, sorry, coaching. Coaching, you're right. You're right. Coaching. We could definitely say helmet for aerodynamic, best bang,

for the buck. We've talked about that before. Yeah, you get a lot of watts with a good helmet that fits you well. Arrow helmet. And then pillow shoes. Pillow shoes. I love pillow shoes, by the way. It's fully part of my lexicon now. It's good, my go-to work. And the great thing about pillow shoes, too, is it's like the speed you can feel. I mean, it's not like, pretty sure I'm faster. No, you can feel that. It was great. I think three big mistakes that age rupers make is. is I think a lot of age groupers over bike. They get excited and they forget that running fast is the way to have a fast time.

Pros do this also. Yes. Well, it's different because you kind of have to, right? You have to go with a groupers. Age groupers are mostly running their own race. Yeah, to a degree. Yeah. And then not eating, I think a lot of age groupers or not having their eating,

waiting until they're hungry or thirsty to eat or drink. Yeah. And then the last one would be, and I see this. all the time, all the time, is doing, this is a famous saying that most people have heard, but for those who haven't, don't do anything new on race day, nothing new on race day. Trying new kit, trying new food, trying new shoes, trying a new hat, don't do any of that stuff. So is that number one? Maybe that's number one.

It's very cliche, but it is true. It's something that Andrew Bajol, it's like, I just got these new shoes, I can't wait to race with them. It's like, well, have you wrong with them? It's like, no, I want it to be fresh on race day. I'm like, oh, boy. Well, I hope it works out for you. Yeah. I actually thought about this in St. Anthony's because I pulled a fresh swim skin out of the package the day before the race. And I was like, well, I haven't even tried this yet. So that was a, even we make that mistake sometimes. It's so easy to get a new piece of gear and, you know. That's true. But as a, I don't know, you do it with so much more experience than someone who's like, like, for example, you might be like a fresh swim skin. Yes, but you've swam in swimskins before. Maybe you've even had that brand.

before or you know it's only a certain amount of time. Someone might literally try a new set of tires on race day and not realize that the PSI is different and something as dumb as that. Or try brand new shoes and not realize that they've been running in stability shoes for the past year and these are neutral shoes. And now it's a completely different run game. Or I got a cool gel in my race package. I'm going to try that.

Yeah, a cool gel. It's going to be cool when you throw up all over the course 5K into your run. We're attacking like an arbitrary person. Yeah, they don't even exist. It's me. It's me. I'm the person. I've made these mistakes. And then last question is might have covered previously, but any tips on staying motivated throughout long training periods slash training programs, especially when being six months plus out from your race or maintaining motivation throughout the year? That's a good one. I don't know if I have an answer for that.

That's a really good one. And we experienced that a little bit during COVID because we didn't have a race on the schedule or they were really uncertain. And I feel like Eric and I realized in that year that we truly do just enjoy swim bike run, even if there's nothing on the line or if there's no goal that we're getting ready for. In fact, it actually takes some pressure off the training. So I would say when you're six months out from a race, go out without maybe really specific outcome goals of a workout and do it because you enjoy it versus doing it because you have to hit X number of watts or run this pace. or swim this many meters, take a little bit of the pressure off yourself and you might find that you actually enjoy it more and you get more out of yourself than you thought was possible. At least that was my experience during COVID.

And even now when we're building back into racing, six months goes by pretty quick. Like if you're in December on your off season and your big races in June, that does go by pretty quickly. I think you're forgetting the most critical part of them staying motivated during COVID. Strava. Yeah, Strava's fun. K-O-M. I love.

I love Strava. Like beat yourself, beat your friend from next door, beat... Oh, yeah. The people I'm following tab. That's what I look at all the time. Go for it.

Which of my friends have done this segment? Pick out something that's exciting and special for you, local hill climb, and just start going after it. Yeah. And that is super, super motivating and gets more out of hard workouts.

Yeah, during COVID, there's like five, climbs or something that go from highway in Portland up to, what's that road at the top? You go from Highway 30 up to Skyliner, up to Skyline Road. And there's a bunch of different climbs to get up there and they're all around 15 minutes. And like my highest power numbers of all time were going up those hills. And I wasn't looking at my power during it. I was just trying to get a QOM that was a competitive hard one.

And you got so much fitness out of that whole process. Yeah. Yeah, I should just do that again. I mean, we had so much fun. It was great. There was nothing that, you know, like if she didn't get it, if we didn't get a KOM or something, it's like, didn't matter. We didn't not make money and like, or whatever. Flynn didn't go hungry.

You just try again next week. But you improve and it's fun. Yeah, racing brings a whole other stress. So moral of the story, Strava is your best friend. Just like, by the way, Strava is literally the reason like I got into bike racing. Really? It was, I was recording rides on my fixie. And then I kind of was, my friend told me to install Strava,

and then I saw that on some segments I was like coming close to top 10. And then I started pushing really hard to get a top 10. Finally, I got a KOM in LA on this like short one minute little sprint. And then I was like, well, I feel like I want a road bike so I can tackle some of these KOMs on the climbs. And that kind of slowly moved into like me doing my first bike race. That's awesome. Yeah, it was very fun.

Anyway, so yeah, Strava. Next question is from Colin. Hi Paula, Nick and Eric recently found the podcast and vlog They are a game changer for longer runs slash rides. I can't say the word slash Geez. Longer runs slash rides.

I really enjoy hearing the professional perspective on triathlon and racing. So here's my question for Paula and Eric. What is your opinion on age groupers acting like they are professionals and treating the sport in the same manner as professionals? Do you find it admirable or

annoying seeing non-professionals take the sport so serious. Also I've attached a picture of my dog Willa. She is a GSP Springer. Yes, she's really cute. And loves coming on runs with me, sincerely Colin. So I think what he's saying is, I don't know if he's necessarily saying people who say they're professionals when

they're really not. He's talking about people who put as much energy and time in as some professionals may. It doesn't bug me at all. I think it's admirable. I think that maybe sometimes they can find a little bit more balanced just to find maybe more time for family or I don't know some other things that make them happy. But in terms of it bothering us, not at all. Those are the people buying our TTL gear. A hundred percent.

Maybe. Just kidding. Yeah. I don't know. I totally agree with Paula. Like it's totally fine if that's your thing and that's what you want to do. But don't like, you know, blow up your family or like push all of your friends away. at the cost of like winning your age group at Kona.

Like that's, that's my feeling. Well, I think if you're winning your age group at Kona, you have already done those things. Yeah, I mean, that's... I don't think anyone's winning their age group at Kona that is like casually doing track for them. Yeah.

It blows my mind that anybody can really effectively do a good job and train for Iron Man and have anything else in their life going on, you know, non-professionally. Yeah. I was doing a strength workout with my friend today, and she told me the story about her friend who has done a few iron mans,

and I don't think he's like, I don't think he's like front of the pack guy at all. He moved in with his girlfriend, and his girlfriend was like, this is ridiculous, it's me or triathlon, and he said triathlon, and now they're broken up, and he has to find a new place.

That's a true story. I mean, the iron divorce is a real term. Iron divorce. Yeah. I've heard that thrown around, and I've witnessed it. Like watching the Portland Triathlon community. Wow.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I feel like we could... The things that we'll do to put ourselves through physical discomfort, huh? Yeah. I mean, like, I feel like this isn't a thing exclusive trathon at all. There's video games and there's remote control airplanes and there's cryptocurrency. There's like a million different things that you can get super, super into and dedicate your entire life to.

And triathons actually pretty positive in terms of it's good for you. It's healthy. You know, there is actually a community out there. So, I don't know. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely a balance that everyone strikes. And it's different for all of us. You know, like for some people, like, doing three hours of training a week is the most that they should do for their, to live their happiest life.

Yeah. And then maybe those people are choosing to do a sprint and not an Iron Man, and that's totally okay. Yes. Yeah. Maybe people are a little over their head trying to, you know, do an Iron Man. Yeah. It's kind of funny, like, we do kind of glamorize the 70.3 in the Iron Man distance because they are hard just to get to the finish line for most people. But if you are like winning sprints or doing really well in them or Olympics, that's just as cool.

Yeah. It's just a different thing. Yep. And you're going way faster too. So it might be cooler in some ways. Yeah, I agree. And the training can be shorter as well. You know, you can be doing an hour. interval ride on the trainer versus a six-hour ride outside.

But this is kind of veering off from the initial question of... Yeah, that's right. That's right. It really does not bother us and it inspires us. It's like people that do have triathlon as a major part of their life, it's relatable. We do that too, so it's cool. While trying to balance like coffee and dogs and friends and all that stuff. Coffee and dogs and friends.

Those are the three food groups. Yes. Coffee dons and friends. Oh, they are. Well, that's awesome. That was our last question, but mostly I'm still so fired up about how well you guys did. And I'm really excited for both of you. I keep thinking about Eric's run for some reason.

And I'm just like, like, Eric ran that 10K at a faster pace than I run my open mile. You know? It's so motivating to know that that's possible. It's exciting. I was out doing run intervals yesterday, and I thought, Eric did this for 10K. off the bike after a great swimming up, great bike. No, I'm really, really excited about it too, dude, because, I mean, I've been just, like,

with the hip issues that I've struggled with over the last three, four years or whatever, I've had lots of times in training and just laying in bed where I just wondered to myself, if I'm ever going to run as fast as I have in the past, and it really bums me out. And then to kind of see that I'm, like, working through it and getting back to some of my best running ever

is, like, such a relief and really exciting. exciting. Same. I love to see it. I feel like I'm getting some of the residual emotional benefit from it. Because I tell you everything and you're just along for the emotional roller coaster. I love it. I love it. I'm there for it. Anyway, once again, you can send your questions into that triathlon life brand at gmail.com. Do you guys want to, anything, any final words to say? Man, I had fun on this one. I think this was really good. I like that we spiraled off on some topics a little bit more We did. We were kind of like, we're all a little bit out of it. I am so out of it. Hopefully I talked an appropriate amount instead of way too much. So that may have been a good thing.

We're still kind of jet lounge from the whole East Coast to West Coast thing. The East Coast to West, I'm just going to say the East Coast to West Coast time change is like the hardest time change ever. It's worse than going to Europe because you're like, it's no big deal, but it totally is a big deal. Oh, I see. Maybe not expecting it to be bad. Yeah. Well, you go to Europe. and you just like sleep the entire time on the plane and you get to the hotel and then you sleep the entire night. And you're just like so discombobulated that I feel like you just, you come out of it. But this is just like, it's just enough of a difference to where you just feel weird all the time. We basically raced at 2 a.m. Pacific. Oh, gosh.

That's what it is. That's our excuse. That's our excuse. That's right. Well, thank you guys. We'll catch you next week. Thanks for listening. See you next week.

Later.