That Triathlon Life Podcast - Triathlon wind tunnel improvements, breath control, SIM shorts, cold water acclimatization, and more!

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

This week, for the holidays, we start by talking with Eric and Paula about their experience getting faster in the wind tunnel at Specialized. We discuss what changes they made to get more aerodynamic, and then we got into your questions! Questions about singing lessons to improve breath control in swimming, using SIM shorts as a tool in the pool and in wetsuit legal races, simulating trail runs on the treadmill, and more! To submit your own question, as well as become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Paula Findlay. I'm Eric Logerstrom. I'm Nick Goldston. We are coming to you from Eric and I in Bend, Nick in New York City. Not actually New York. Where are you, Nick? Long Island. State of New York, but it's about 40 minutes east of New York City. Yeah, so get this. It's Wednesday night. This is coming out tomorrow morning. It's 8 p.m. for us. It's 11 for Nick. So he's recording this, then editing it. It's just the only time that it worked with all the Christmas travel. in hecticness, but we are committed to getting it out. Eric and I are both pro triathletes coming out of our offseason hibernation.

Nick is an amateur triathlet who just signed up for the Wisconsin World Championship. Oh, God. World Championship. I love it. He's also a musician by trade. And if you tune in to his latest Instagram reel, you can hear his angelic voice. Thank you very much. My friend Brooke and I, who is, Brooke is.

roughly, if I were to quantify it, a 1,000 times better singer than I am. So I have her sing the melody and I harmonize with her, but I think her voices blend nicely together. Yeah, it sounds really good. Thanks, Paula. Anyway, Eric. Thank you.

Happy to be here. Thank you very much. It's been a heck of a day. We actually launched last week, basically, our application process for the 2024 TTL development team and today we had our first interview,

which is super exciting. We're basically trying to, for the second year now, help out six young athletes to make the jump from amateur triathlete to professional triathlet. We whittled down all of the applications to 10, and we're doing 10 interviews over the next couple days. And it is a lot of work, but it is a ton of fun. You just want to give it to every one of them, right?

Yeah. Like that was last year what I got from you guys. It was like, well, the first six, you were like, well, those are the six. Of course. Every single one. Yeah. It's hard to have a Zoom call with someone and then reject them later.

You know? Yeah, of course. It's easier to just never meet them face to face. Yeah. But it is nice to talk to them and make sure that, you know, our personalities jive and all that. Yeah. But anyway, we do have a lot to talk about this week and about eight questions to go through as well. Yes.

First of all, we left you last week from Morgan Hill, where we were kind of in the middle of our wind tunnel testing, which Eric is just editing a video right now with all of the details. And I just watched a preview. and it's actually really good. So I don't know if we need to go into as much detail on the pod. It is actually really good. Well, I'm just surprised. Eric, you were losing your shit earlier because none of the audio worked.

Nick, did you hear about this? Not none of it, right? Just, I did. I did. I did hear about it. The mics, the wireless mics didn't work. Yes. Yeah. Catastrophic.

Yeah, people, you know, like, I get this comment every once in a while and I know, like, oh, it would be great if the audio quality it was better, you know, blah, blah. So, like, I go through all the trouble to, like, get out two wireless mics and hook them up and do all the things. And then one of them doesn't work. And I go look at this footage.

And it's like, Paula and I just, you know, lip syncing. Just mouth talking, no audio happening. And I just stand up and scream and text Nick. So you can imagine my surprise watching what you've come up with being good. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Exactly. No, I'm totally joking.

But I would say that's 50% of the art of doing a, vlogy type of any sort of putting something on YouTube with any sort of regularity is you almost never have everything that you want. And this time what I didn't want that I don't have is us actually talking. Yeah, it's a bummer because then it doesn't even get the camera audio, right? You get zero audio. Oh yeah, exactly. You just hear nice. Yeah, yes. Everybody who's like, oh, how many watts faster would Flynn be if you shaved him? You just kind of watch YouTube and find out. Yeah, that comment is getting out of control. It's a little played out, you think? It's a little played out. The first day, actually, this really nice family watched Flynn for a full day.

And they kind of have a farm type of big giant property close to the wind tunnel. So Flynn was in doggy paradise for a full day. And then the second day we brought him to the wind tunnel. There's actually a dog park for specialized employees right outside the wind tunnel. A good-sized dog park all fenced in. And I tell you, that place is just like so employees. friendly. Well, they also generously put in ground hogs in the dog park. So the dogs go absolutely apeshit.

Yeah, Flynn, Flynn, like, knew the door that exited to the ground hog. Yeah. He was very interested in what was going on underneath the ground. Yeah. But in general, he was really cute. Like, every time you open the wind tunnel door, it makes a noise, like the front door opening. And he'd stand up and run in. Like, a new space was available to be accessed. That was pretty cute. But should we go through real quickly what we found? Just maybe a little bit because we did tell people last week that we would talk about, the wind tunnel.

Yeah. Yeah, we did. We did. So I think that it was a good time of year to do this. Historically, we've done it kind of like February, March. And it was tough last year to get enough time on the bike, riding it in the new position and getting the parts custom. made by Watshop.

So I just feel like in a lot of aspects of life right now, we're kind of ahead of the ball compared to last year. So we went there with our adjustable mounts that Watshop gives us. And once we have a position dialed, they make us a custom super clean mound. So Wopchop is like a great partner of ours. They're very helpful in the whole aerodynamic thing and helping us get optimized. So with the adjustable mounts, we could change the tilt. We could change the reach.

we could change the height, all of this. So I tested. Of our arrow bars. Of our extensions. So I went a little bit further forward, which allowed me to drop my head a little more. We moved my bottle position. And all of that saved about 8 watts maybe. Yeah.

Yep. Helmets aside, it was around there. And then once we found the best position, the fastest, most comfortable for me, then I went through all the helmets that I had. and it was really tough to get a couple of the helmets I wanted to test, the HGC and the Met. So a huge thank you to everyone who I actually ended up with like too many helmets to test because people were so generously sending me their own helmets to try. They all showed up like the morning that we were doing when tunnel testing.

It was really great. And actually, Otimo Design who paints our helmets sent me the HJC from Europe. So that was amazingly nice too. That's nice. The crazy thing after all this is the TT5 tested significantly faster for both Eric and I. And Eric and I are not contracted to have to wear specialized time trail helmets. We do have to wear the road helmet, which we love. But we had the luxury of testing every arrow helmet that we wanted and then whatever was fastest we can wear for the season.

So the newer T.T5, not the one I wore last year, but the newer one has a different shape of visor. that's faster. And it has a little cutout in the back for like a ponytail. So it sits a lot better on my head. And I can get into a better position with it. So it was about five watts faster, especially at the higher yaw angles. Over the helmet you used in Cabo. Over the Gero. Yeah. Yeah. So at a zero yacht, how the wind tunnel works is you go in there and you're directly in line with the wind. And then the plate that the bike is sitting on rotates to 10 degrees, 4 degrees, 2 degrees on each side. So you're basically getting hit by a crosswind.

Yes. Because never in a race, rarely in a race, are you getting head on wind? So these different yaw angles let you test side angles, side winds, cross winds, stuff like that. So the TT5 was better for both of us, especially at the higher yaws. It was almost to the point where we were looking around and we're like, is this rigged? Like, why is a specialized high doing so well? I know. But I mean, of course people are going to think.

think that, like, specialized would prefer us to wear that. But in the past, I never thought I could because it has the sock. And it's designed for TT specialists, like Remco. It was made for him. So it's really, I didn't know if you were allowed to wear it without the sock. And it turns out it still tests really fast without the sock. And it's therefore usable for triathlon, which is cool. And then if we, you know, use it with the sock, we being Paula in a UCI legal race, then that's just going to be even faster. Even faster. Yeah, because it smooths out your ears.

And yeah. So yeah, that's what I'll wear next year. The thing about the TT5 is it's quite hot. Like there's no vents or anything. The second fastest helmet for me was the HJC helmet. Which was? Super vented, right? Really?

Which has a lot of vents, yeah. I thought the MET felt the most cool because it had a big vent right on your forehead. Oh, that's what I'm confusing it with. Yep, you're right. And it did actually feel like cool on the front. But interestingly, like the TT5, you feel more neck swirling air versus that. So I don't know, like, which one anecdotally versus actually cools you more. But interesting to note for a hot race.

Yeah. Eric, can you, just because I think it's so cool how they calculate this, can you explain how they actually can tell why one helmet is faster than the other? How the wind tunnel works. Oh, yeah. Well, basically they're like eliminating as many factors that can change as possible. And you're sitting on, so they're running the wind tunnel like at exactly 50 kilometers per hour. And then like Paula said, you'll test at zero degrees.

Yeah. And then you go all the way to 10 to the right, 4, 2, 2 to the left, 4 to the left, 10 to the left. And you repeat that test over and over again. And you'll often do like the same test twice just to make sure that nothing is changing and that you're not fatiguing and everything like that. just keep as many variables controlled as possible. But ultimately, you're sitting on a trainer. Your bike is locked in in the front skewers and the back skewer. And so you can't go anywhere, but you're pedaling at, I wouldn't say race pace,

but like a pace that is going to cause your body to react similarly to pedaling a bike versus coasting. And then you're actually on a force plate that is measuring exactly to the tiniest, tiniest degree, how much force, you know, the wind is exerting on you. So presumably something that has, that is less aerodynamic, it's creating just a little more drag and so it's putting a little more force on that force plate and it's sensitive enough to recognize the difference between a few watts.

It's sensitive enough to tell a half a watt. Yeah, crazy. Like down to a point where it's like, this makes no difference to you out on the road, but they can measure it. It's really impressive. Yeah, it's so cool. It's really so cool.

And to see it like on the chart when you're watching, like you were watching Leo's computer to see the lines that get kind of drawn in real time and compare to that to, in our case, like all the other helmets and see at different yaw angles, how I performed. It's really, really, really cool. Yeah, like we can sit there and watch the data on the screen. Yeah. It's cool.

Yeah. And like I said, just the key with this whole thing is repeatability. So that is kind of the advantage of doing the wind tunnel over the velodrome, for example. You don't have to worry about trying to keep your bike going straight. you're not worried about balance or anything like that. You're just, you're stuck there on the bike, and you're peddling at a decent wattage, and you can repeat these tests.

And you can do them. They take about five minutes to go through, and at our fastest, Paula would just sit on the trainer, or I would be sitting on the trainer, and somebody would run out, give us a different helmet, put that on, start the next test.

So in the course of one day, Paula did like 17 different runs. You know, we moved the bottle between her arms three different times, and we tried the helmet in a couple different positions. I took the two helmets that were the fastest for me and tested them both looking down, you know, in a position where I'm leading the pack

and not having to worry about drafting and then looking up where I'm sitting in a group and having to make sure that I'm sitting at 12 meters just to see if there was a huge discrepancy and like looking up versus looking down. So ultimately, like the coolest thing I think we came away with is like every question that we had was answered. At no race now do we have to go and be like,

oh, I wonder if this was faster, you know, just now we know and just train hard and go fast. Yeah, the bottle down the kit for me was really no faster. And at the higher yaws, it was slower, wasn't it? I don't know why. But I had a bottle, like, the nature of my position is I do have a bottle kind of close to my face. And I think the purpose of the bottle down the kit is to kind of fill that gap, but it would appear looking at me that there's not a lot of air like coming through that gap anyway.

So I don't know. It's super individual. And this doesn't mean it doesn't work for other people. But both that and the calf sleeves were not really any. different for me. So that's something I don't have to worry about. I do like wearing the calf sleeves. I think that in a wetsuit race, a cold race, I would just wear them. Oh, really? Because I like the feeling. But yeah, they're not like five watts faster or anything crazy like that for me. I will say both of you, Eric, we didn't talk about your experience, but it was very similar to Paulus, right?

Like you made some positional changes up front and then moved bottles around and then tested helmets and eventually came to the same conclusion that Paul did that the specialized CT helmet was the best for you. But both of you this year got double digit watt improvements. Yeah. That's a lot.

Yeah. Think about how hard it is to go 10 watts harder. On a 5 minute interval or something, right? Try to go 10 watts harder when you're already working hard. That's a big difference. He's not really calling it watts. He's calling it like They call it counts. They call it counts.

So basically like if just a real quick explanation if Paul is CDA is and then it goes to one point. Which it is. And then it, just do we not want to say that? So let's let's say that your CDA is No, it's not that.

That's awful. I'm saying, let's, I'm going to, I'm going to have to mute things. Just bleep them out. Yeah, bleep them out. I'm just saying, okay, all I'm trying to say is if one has a CDA of 2.0 And you go to 2.01,

that is one count. And that one count around like 45 kilometers per hour is in the neighborhood of a watt. Okay, got it. But it's that kind of exponential. So if you're going 50 kilometers per hour, it's more than one watt. And if you're going less, it's less than one watt. So 2 to 2.1 is 10 watts? Yes.

Okay. Ish. You can kind of think of it like that. But it's different, you know. I can't imagine shaving off more drag. No, honestly, my CDA is pretty low. And I don't think there's many. What I could actually optimize is my TT specific position.

Right. Your UCI position. Yes. And we didn't really get into that because the focus here was the tri position. But yeah, the UCI position could get much more uncomfortable to a place where I could only hold it for 40 minutes, but be significantly faster. Yeah. And not look up at all. Just not even see where you're going.

Just get real crazy. Yeah, I would say the chances of me being selected for Paris is like 0.001%. So you're telling me there's a chance. One count. Well, yeah, they didn't say no to my face yet. But unfortunately, Canada only got two slots for women cycling, road. Ten nations get three slots. Canada was 11th.

It's just like kills me. And then those two athletes that they're taking have to do the road. and then they'll put one of them in the TTs. So it just, yeah, it sucks. Major sucks. But I think I'd still like to do UCI worlds again. TTs. Yeah. Which is in September.

So anyway, we'll go down that road later. Well, another thing we talked about last week was obviously Sleep Week and we gave the listeners an opportunity, the kids, an opportunity to put in their own data from Sleep Week. And I'll just kind of boil it down from what I went through. people, everyone that did it for the most part experienced better sleep from how they perceived it to their data on their devices and they kind of agreed with Eric and I where the hardest thing for most people

was the very consistent sleep in wake times but people also felt perceptually that those were the strongest those were the best things for their sleep the constant sleep in wake times there's got to be some sort of psychological a little outcome study here of like the things that you perceive to be the hardest or also the things that you perceive must be making the biggest difference.

Oh, yes. Deep topic for next time. Yes, that's right. But it was an interesting thing. And then I also put in the at the end of the survey, a survey, I don't know what you want to call it, pull, long form poll. I also put in an option to write whatever you wanted. And it was interesting to see what people, how people experience sleep week.

I read through all of them today. Just the different aspects of like having kids or like, oh, I was good for five days and then I had an event and I couldn't stick to it and I felt it immediately the next day, waking up at a different time after going to sleep at X time. It was kind of interesting and our daily well-being. Like today I did not sleep much and then I had to fly and not do this and I feel it. I feel like almost like sick. Yeah. Yeah. The other side of it too is just consistency and having one night or two nights of not good sleep shouldn't derail the whole thing. You can get back on it, you know. Yep, having the habit. There's a good question that we're going to get to about sleep as well

on the questions. But why don't we get on to the questions here? Yes. And for everyone who doesn't know, you can submit questions of your own at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. There you can also become a podcast supporter, which helps the podcast go on. As you can tell, we don't do ad reads on this podcast, so we rely solely on support from our listeners. So thank you very much if you're already doing that. Which we really appreciate. I literally got off the plane, came home, had a bite, and recorded the podcast, because I know that there's people that really care to have it on their Thursday morning commute or run or ride or whatever they're doing. Yeah, if this makes a difference to you, go sign up for the subscription and you could run a bottle.

Speaking of which, this week's bottle winner is. Drum roll. Peter Sinclair from where was it, Burbank, Washington? Is that right? I thought Burbank was in California. But he's in Washington. There is a Burbank in California, but I thought Eric said Burbank, Washington. There's probably a Burbank in every state.

In any case, we are Peter Sinclair. Congratulations. We believe we have your address correct. But if you want to email in or you can message me with your actual address, we will send you a bottle, a TTL bottle. Okay, first question here is from Michael. Happy holidays, Paula, Eric, and Nick. Love the Pod, good company on winter indoor sessions.

My question is, do you think singing? and swimming are related somehow and or compliment each other. I heard at some point that Christian Blumenfeld was taking singing lessons to improve his swimming, if that makes sense. I'm an amateur musician and find this topic very interesting. Thanks for sharing your journey with all of us, Michael. So first of all, what do you guys think of this? Do you feel like there could be any connection here?

Eric, are your eyeballs stuck at the back of your head now? Is that a true story? Or is that another Norwegian method myth? I texted Christian and he has not answered me. but I asked him if he took singing lessons to improve his swimming. His eyes are also rolled into the back of his head. As someone who has taken singing lessons and has focused on breathing and singing, I do not think intuitively that those two things could help each other out.

Yeah, I mean, I get like the train of thought there that having a strong diaphragm and all of these things, but you can just do breathing exercises. You know, it's like, oh, I'm climbing ropes to get better at swimming. Or you could just swim. Like, you cut straight to the thing. I cannot imagine Christian Blumenfeld in a singing lesson working on it because it's like when football players do like ballet to get their like mind-body connection. I think that's the parallel that they're trying to draw here.

But I would be really surprised if Christian went out of his way to take singing lessons to improve his swimming. Yeah, I don't see it. I mean, how often do you feel like efficiency and breed? breathing is the limiter. In swimming? Yeah. I feel like being able to swim without contracting all of your intercostal muscles to the point

of where your breathing is not relaxed. You know, like, it's like snorkel. Like swimming with a snorkel and breathing relaxed while swimming instead of feeling like you're, there's a word for it where you're like using your breathing muscles to keep your core tight. I'd see that's the thing that, you know, like I have maybe struggled with and work on. Well, that's maybe where singing could help. is you do have this intrinsic, like, even if you're not thinking about it, control of your diaphragm and of your airways, basically, to create different sounds. So just having a, it's not necessarily going to, like, increase your lung capacity, but I think it could help in terms of timing and in terms of, like, you were saying, staying relaxed while you're breathing.

Because swimming breathing is all about timing, and you have to, like, breathe out underwater so you're ready to breathe in when you turn your head. and it's obvious for people that have been swimming all their lives, but I think the breathing aspect of swimming is really what messes up people's technique when they're adult learning swimming because it's hard. Wow. It's funny because I do hear that, the breathing thing, it's like,

oh, I just really struggle with timing the breathing, which, funny enough, is not something I've ever struggled with swimming. It's not on the long list of things that I struggle with with swimming. Yes, it is, Nick. After a quick video review, it is something you struggle with. Yeah, that's right. It's true. You might not feel it, but your head moves a lot when you breathe.

This is actually funny. I have had probably five different swim coaches that weren't even my swim coach come up to me in the middle of a swim practice and be like, you know, if you breathe earlier, you'll be a lot faster and you know, blah, blah. And I've been trying that since the age of nine. If I could change it, I would. So I don't know. It's not that the end all be all, but it is incredibly difficult to do it perfectly.

But wait, can you talk about that? Because, Eric, you've talked about that before about why, breathing earlier, why that's something that you, for example, is something that you should be working on? Well, it's hard to say why it's something that I should be working on, but the reason it's difficult is because everything in swimming is connected. The act of you just, you can't just like turn your head to the right and whenever you want, like, your arm might be in the way. And, you know, I mean, and like turning your head without like your spine turning a little bit as well, you know, can like cause you to snake through the water. And so it's, it's not, that's the

I like the hard thing about learning swimming or teaching someone swimming, you can't just say, oh, put your hand in faster, because that is going to impact your left foot in a weird way. And how your hips, you know, it's all so connected. And nothing is touching the ground and planting you anywhere. So it's wild. Like, what is the first thing we're going to work on here? There's 20 things that need to happen.

You're like a gummy worm. Yeah. In fluid. In terms of breathing, I do think that breathing can help you in general in life. Just having like going to your breath. to calm you down, that type of thing. For sure. Paula, I don't know why you're the last person that I would imagine

that this advice coming from. I didn't say I'd do it, but I could see it being a... Yeah, no, it's true. It seems like highly successful people who are in touch with their bodies are also very aware of this important connection with the breath. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's cool. Okay, well, Christian Blumenthal, let us know.

and no thank you for not answering my WhatsApp earlier today. We will update you on if Christian sings ever did singing lessons or not. Next question here is from Powell. Hi, TTR. Given you guys are doing the sleep week experiment, I would be inclined to hear some thoughts on this matter.

A fellow triathleteer here as well, I think it's safe to say that most of us that race can get a bit nervous the night before the race leading to some poor sleep. However, I'm curious of during the regular training season you ever find yourself getting stressed from the idea of sleeping because you know how important it is for your body to recover. So when you lie down to go to sleep,

you just toss and turn instead of falling asleep quickly. Thanks for the weekly content, Powell. So does this ever happen to you guys? Do you ever get stressed? I remember this happened to me in high school and college. I'd be stressed about how little I had to sleep and that would keep me up. Yeah.

Yeah, I used to have that in college and maybe early on in my professional career, but not lately. Yeah, I think that what helps us is we don't have to be up at any set time. So I'm never really stressed about getting little sleep. The one time where this does happen is on, if I have an early flight and the alarm set for like 3 a.m. I'm waking up every 30 minutes. Is it time to get up? Or race day when you have to get up at 3 a.m. and it feels like you don't sleep at all. When in fact, you're probably sleeping more than you think you are. That's such a terrible, like, self-fulfilling prophecy of like, I already am

not getting a lot of sleep. But now my stupid brain is waking me up every 25 minutes to like, oh, is it now? Is it now? You got to wake up now, now, now, now. Yeah, but I think that when we're training, Eric and I are tired enough that we're, I just fall asleep quick. I don't know. Yeah, and I guess I've had enough bad nights of sleep and race okay, trained okay, that at a certain point, you're just like, yeah, I don't know. I could be up all night long, tomorrow will still be okay. And maybe it won't be optimal, but it'll still be okay. Yeah, didn't we?

I talked about that during Augusta. Right? I felt like I slept one hour, but I still was able to win. Yeah. We talked to plenty of other pros, obviously, and nobody feels like they sleep like a baby. And I've heard plenty of people say, you know, if I start sleeping like a baby and I'm not stressed out and not sleeping the night before a race, then it's probably time to retire because I don't care enough.

So, you know, you hear enough of those anecdotes and you kind of like, you normalize it and go, oh, this isn't supposed to be perfect. And I'm going to stop trying to make it perfect. But in terms of like falling asleep on a day-to-day basis, just try focusing on your breath. And then you won't be as stressed. Like count your breath. You're so zen, Paula. I know. Here's one thing you don't do, though.

Don't go on your phone. You broke up there. I couldn't hear that. Yeah. Don't be that person. No, don't reach for your phone if you can't fall asleep. sleep. Oh, okay, I don't do that actually. Once the phone's down for me, the phone's down. I don't pick it up in the middle of the night. I just, it's until I wake up, it's away from me.

Okay, I got an idea. How about it instead of us reciting like sleep tips that we've heard other people, let's just each say our top sleep tip. Okay, great. For, you know, for not tossing and turning before foregone to sleep. I like to take a big giant pillow and shove it between my leg so I have some hip support. Without that, if I don't have like a second pillow to use as a hugging pillow, I can't sleep. Nice. I write things down. I have too many things like bounce around in my idea so I get out my notepad on my phone, unfortunately, and write down all the things that I can think of and then I can fall asleep because I'm not having to like try to remember all the things I'm going to try to do when I wake up in the morning. That's smart.

I have a ton of chocolate with a lot of sugar in there right before going to bed. That really knocks me out. I don't really have a real one. I don't think. You're just crashing your way to sleep. I just put myself in a diabetic coma. That's how I fall asleep. Another thing about sleeping is, you know, and you're stressed about stuff during the night,

but then in the morning it's not even that big of a deal. Oh, my gosh. Yes. Yes. Why is that? My theory on this is during the day, there's the smart part of your brain that's like, okay, you don't actually need to stress about this. You can handle this.

You can figure it out. But when you're like sleeping, that part of your brain is not active. And it's just the stupid, anxious part of your brain that's going crazy. Like, oh, my God, you're never going to be able to whatever get to this thing on time. When we really think about it, it's like, no, of course I could do that. Yeah, of course. It happens to everyone, though. Yep.

Okay. next question here, Tim from Perth. Hey, TTL team. Day one are here and now first time question asker all the way from Perth, Australia. With a motocross background prior to my triathlon journey, no longer racing anymore, but still run and cycle. A quick techie question for Eric,

oh, I love this one. In regards to storage of all the video footage, how do you store and save? Do you use external drives in the cloud? Love the content all three of you are making. Have a great Christmas and New Year. Tim from Perth. Yeah, I use a Xeroge.

external drive. So my MacBook has a two terabyte hard drive built into it. And whenever that gets close to full, then I dump everything that's on it in my movies folder onto an external hard drive. And then when that's full, I buy another one. So I currently have like six, two to four terabyte drives and one gigantic like 12 terabyte drive. Yep. And that's the same thing I do. I also, not as much as Eric, but create video content. I do the same. exact thing. I have four terabyte drive on my Mac, and then I just offload it to externals when they fill up. And do you back those up in any way? Yeah, I started trying to back up using that service that you got me, Nick, but I'm, I don't know. I don't care about it that much because

it just, like, I'm always trying to make newer and better things. And I guess at some point in time, like, maybe somebody will want to make a documentary about how TTL was built or something, and I can just all those drives of them. But for me, if they all burned away in a fire, like all that is still on YouTube in its edited form. So it wouldn't be like, you know, some grave loss. Yeah, yeah. You already have it in its best possible assembly.

Yeah, or at least like how I processed it in the time, in the moment, you know. So I don't know. Talbot does a really good job of like going back sometimes and like making the year and review hype real motivation triathlon, you know, thing. Well, he just put out a video about line. talking about the PTO versus the Iron Man, and it is completely B. R.O.

of historic Lionel footage, which is cool. There's also some footage at the beginning of Lionel playing guitar, and he's not bad. Yeah, I agree. I'm kind of impressed with Lionel's. I think of Lionel.

I'm just like, he's a triathlon machine, but he has some guitar skills. Sick. I agree. I'm like, that's not, oh, it's Lionel, wow. Probably AI. Tom, it's pretty into AI.

Oh, yeah. Okay. next question here is from Nate. Hey team, I heard Greg Bennett talking about buoyancy shorts in an older podcast. He said that he liked swimming with them as a tool similar to a pull buoy and felt that they let him

rotate more naturally than when his legs were locked together. Besides how obviously uncool they would look among swimmers, do you guys have any thoughts on them? One, as a tool for training, and two, in a wetsuit legal race where the water temp is right at the cutoff and overheating may be a consideration,

i.e. Iron Man, Texas. that's about as to the point as I could make it. Here's the 2024, Nate. Have you guys one of these before? I mean, I imagine it's mostly men that wear them, right? Or do women wear them as well? Okay. No, either way.

I mean, Greg nailed it on the head. It's like a pull-booy, but yeah, you can still kick naturally. And I don't know, I think that question summed it up pretty well, to be honest. Are they as floaty as a pull-buy? Yeah. More. The thing about them is they're fairly streamlined compared to a pullboy, which is creating this surface area sticking out underneath and above your legs. So they're essentially like a little mini wetsuit.

So they're quite a lot faster actually. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure Greg said this in that podcast, but I would just be cautious of wearing them too often. They're a crutch. It's not real. It is a good drill and a good experience to feel that, but then taking them off and trying to achieve that same. body position versus man yeah it would just be you could have a pretty good impression of how your

swimming was going if you just wore those all the time like I actually remember when linel used to wear those in in Tucson it kind of puts you into an optimal body position is what it's doing yeah it's just like raising when a lot of people are slow because they're sagging or because their hips are dropping this completely fixes that so it's a cool feeling I think it's not a bad thing the reason I don't like them though is because and men wear speedos with draw strings all the time but it feels to me like they let water like in

them or that weird seam when I'm so not used to it and I never wear like a two piece when I'm swimming so I don't like the feeling of them but whatever some people love them. Eric do you feel like there's water ingress in your speedo at the top seam?

I've never thought of that. Am I just not going fast enough? Yeah, you're not. No, no. It's really like, depending on, you know, if you get your suit tightened all the way or not, yeah, I feel it when I push off the wall just a little bit, but not like in the middle of stroking, you know. In terms of wearing them for a race, I would, even if I was going to dive overheating, I would always pick the wetsuit. I just think it's so much faster. Having that material on your chest and on your chins and on your arms is,

is way faster. If it's SIM shorts or nothing, go with the SIM shorts, but always go wetsuit, I'd say. No, Eric? I mean, I guess it depends, you know, how fast you're trying to go. Do you care that much about the speed? Or you just care more about being comfortable.

The thing is, the wetsuit cutoff for amateurs is designed so that you're not going to overheat. Like, Kona, no wetsuit. So if it's legal, it's not going to be a bathtub. I think I would overheat. in age group legal cut off personally. Nick, have you tried the floaty shorts? I've never tried them, no.

Next time you come here, you can bring him to the pool. Yeah. That's funny that you think I would fit the same thing that fits around Eric's waist. Did you not hear the part where I have a whole chocolate bar before bed? Eric's wearing a medium. Aren't you a... No, the ones that I have currently would not fit him. The drawstring doesn't open far enough.

I have a couple pairs, though, from different... Eric's being rough on you today, Nick. No, I'm saying like, I can barely... I can barely... I can barely pull them on myself. I'm a chocka boy. I got birthing hips. Well, we've got like a million blue 70 pairs in the loft.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say is. I'm sure we have some that fit, but like the most current ones are ridiculously tight. And for that reason, I don't use them like a pull buoy because it would take so long to put them on and off, take them on and off. Kind of like a start to work out with them and then take them off. I'm really surprised that they're as effective or more than a pull-booy. So I am excited to try them next time I'm there. Yeah, maybe we'll even ship you a pair if you're lucky. Because it depends on how chunky your polbo is.

Okay, next question here. This is from Andrew. TTR gang, what up? I'm an aspiring ultra runner. However, I love this podcast. You guys have gotten me through some very monotonous days of work, and I am so happy to have found y'all. I work 10 to 12 hours a day, oh boy.

So getting to run some trails can be a bit difficult in the winter due to them closing at sunset. Currently, I will do my long runs on a Saturday morning, when I can get some sunny trail time. I was wondering if any of you have any experience getting trail time post hours of operation or if you'd recommend hopping on a treadmill to get some inclined miles.

Thank you for all you do. Much love, Andrew. Do you guys ever run like in the dark? No. Yeah. Not in a long time. I mean, back when I worked and had to do a little bit of training after work,

then I would and I had a headlamp and stuff. But I would, at this point in my life, I would go with the treadmill. And yeah, do some sort of creative thing with hills or just a hill the entire way, work on the form. I think that headlamp technology has gotten so good that you can run pretty effectively outside. My only fear is just running in the dark is a bit scary on trails. Anyone who runs with me trails in Santa Monica knows that I love starting the run in the light and ending it in the dark. I like running through sunset and almost all my trail runs on weekdays.

and in the dark. So I run with a headlamp a bunch, and I think it works great. You do have to be a little more careful, like, rolling your ankle because the shadows can be funny, and you can not have a totally great idea of what the surface you're running is. But the problem here is it sounds like these parks close at sunset. Okay. So then what Eric's saying about the treadmill is super valid. Yeah, I think so.

But what about waking? I mean, waking up, 10 to 12 hours work a day is so much. That's wild. I hope that's not seven days a week. But they don't have to swim, so it's fine. Eric, would you rather wake up early and run trails before work, or would you rather run treadmill at night? Before work, after work is so brutal.

I mean, at least when I was working, I was working in retail and standing up for most of the time. And any time I, all the work has that I tried to do after that, we're just so rough. And anybody who can do it, a ton of respect. But, yeah, I would definitely rather, like, start the day off right with the activity. I think about this sometimes how amateur triathletes all have jobs and they are training and working around a 9 to 5.

It's like I cannot. I think it's hard doing it the way I'm doing it, which is just training whenever I want and working around the training. Real props to people who have regular jobs. You are one in one. One in, you're the only one. Yeah. Yeah, I realize. The only one.

You are a pro in disguise. I'm a real slow pro. I can sit on the trainer all day, but I really don't like the treadmill. I get this really panicky feeling and I'm not running hard on it, although it feels like I'm running a tempo run. I kind of settle in after 20 minutes, but I'll avoid the treadmill if I can. But Eric kind of has tricks with the incline and speed. Why don't you talk about that?

That could help him kind of the monotony of it and then getting a little bit of a hill workout in at the same time. Well, first things first, I can't do a long treadman. and I'll run without having some sort of way to see my reflection. I don't know what that is. I just get into like this meditative mode when I can see like my leg swinging back and forth or my shoulders moving back and forth. Yes, we have a mirror. And then I put on some music.

But usually what I'll, like my favorite thing to do is over the course of the first 10 minutes, I'll increase my incline to like 7%. So I'll start at zero and then like every two minutes or whatever. I'll go up like one. And you go up. I go one and a half percent. So I get all the way up to seven percent. And then over the course of the rest of the run, usually like 40 minutes or so, every five minutes, I'll take off 1% and add like half a mile an hour or like half a cane an hour.

So I'm very slowly in my mind taking this like kind of uphill activation technique. So I started off very quite slow and then slowly turning it into like efficient running glutes activated, hamstrings activated, running flat. And does that feel like the effort increases when you're doing? doing that or stays the same or decreases? It should ideally stay the same. And usually for me, it'll actually drop off just as I warm up and everything. So by the end of it, I feel like I'm running pretty quick and the perceived exertion is, you know, like that initial running pretty slowly up a 7% incline.

The other thing I'll do is, is like every five minutes I'll do one minute at like 6%. Wow, Eric, that's just getting complicated. No, I'm saying that's a different session. Oh, that's a different session. Yeah. Eric, we were just talking about this when we did this. that beautiful trail run in Morgan Hill when it started with that crazy,

crazy steep, which I imagine is much, much steeper than you ever put the treadmill. But you were saying how that's like similar to what you do in the treadmill where it's kind of like activation a little bit at first, just kind of getting these slow but large range of motion movements that activate. And then we were running flat for a bit.

And then we were running downhill and opening up the stride a little bit more kind of mimicking what you were just talking about. Yeah, I think it's good to run undulating courses and not just like always sit on a flat bike path or zero percent on the treadmill for sure. Yeah. It's really good for you. Yeah, cool. And then our last question here is from Sarah.

Hey, TTL Nash. There's a lot to talk about heat acclamation for hot races. But is there such a way to acclimate yourself in advance for a cold open water swim and bike? Cold water tends to give me vertigo, so I'm debating if I should try some polar plunges and post-plunge rides to prepare for St. George 70.3. excited to spot the new TTL kit hashtag Team Green Sarah Love it

I think she said sport Sport the new TTL kit Oh sorry My vision is so bad Because I'm so tired She did say sport That's awesome We can't wait to see you there

Hopefully we will be there too It's actually not that cold And you get to our wetsuit So you'll be fine I think Yeah St. George can be really cold But it can be all over the board So I wouldn't just, you know, imagine that it's definitely going to be. Yeah, it's not like Indian Wells where you're guaranteed to be whatever it was, super cold.

Yeah. I mean, I think doing a little bit of cold plunging or even taking really cold showers might be helpful just in like trying to get into that headspace of like, yes, this is cold. I am okay. Do the breathing. Deep breathing while you're doing that. And just like I kind of got into that a little bit because our friend Chris Corbyn listens to Huberman lab and got all obsessed with cold plunging. and I kind of tried it out halfway in the shower. But that's definitely a thing of this is just a place that I'm at. I'm not dying, you know, like being logical.

And I feel like, I'm just going to ruin the entire YouTube video here, but I just swam in the Deschutes River this afternoon in this new super cold wetsuit. And it was 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And this, like if you've ever been in 40 degrees Fahrenheit, that's like your face touches it. And it's painful. You feel sick to your stomach. Like all panic bells go off.

And I did the same kind of thing. I was just trying to like just keep my breathing as regular as possible and just like relax into like this is just where I am right now. Like people do this. It's, you know, so I think you can mimic that a little bit like in a really cold tub or in the shower. What I don't really think though is a lot of the Indian Wells pre-race videos that people were putting out, they were like in their Indian Wells Airbnb backyard freezing cold. pool acclimatizing two days out. I don't necessarily think that's it. It's like training your brain and your body over time, similar to heat training, but then you kind of shut it down a week out and just all your resources are going into getting ready to race as fast as you can.

That's my opinion. I thought that was a little ridiculous. It's funny that you say that because I texted Kelsey, who we know, and she's doing this thing where she's doing seven triathlons and seven continents in seven days. And I think the first day is Antarctica. So she has to swim in that water. And so she has been doing cold training, which is much colder than, obviously, it will be at 70.3 St. George.

But she was saying that she's been doing this cold plunge thing. And at the beginning, she could barely do a minute. And today, I think, was the last one. And she was able to do 12 minutes. And she said that she would have never imagined that it was possible for her to do 12 minutes when she did that first one. And I wonder how much of it is physical.

I think, like Eric's saying, it's very mental. No, I think there's some physical aspects. I'm saying not much, though. I'm sticking with that relative to the mental. There's no way you just become an ice person, right? No, but this is the only thing I could compare it to is when I'm injured, say my knee, and I start icing it. I'm putting like, I don't like wrap it in a protective tea towel.

I'm like putting ice in Ziploc on. knee. And when I'm first injured, that really hurts. And then by him three weeks in, I'm like a frostbite. Like, I don't feel it. I think you've just killed all your nerve endings. Exactly. That's what people are doing with these.

They're destroying their bodies. Yeah, so I spad. You just killed your entire nerve endings on your whole body. Sweet. You can't feel anybody poking you on the shoulder, but that's fine. Also, big plus is your knee also doesn't hurt because you can't feel it. Slat me. I can't even tell.

That's true. Maybe I should be doing that too because I really suffer the cold. It's more, but for me it's all mental. It's all mental. It's just such a miserable thing to practice. I'd rather just suffer when it comes to the time. Because I also find that in races you're just in a different mindset and it doesn't bug you as much. It's like when you were a swimmer growing up.

When you were a swimmer growing up, you stand at the side of the pool dreading the cold at every workout. But then can you imagine any swim meet or you thought about the temperature of the pool? No. No. It's just like that brain thing is not working when you're doing a race. So you can stress out about it a little less when you're heading into a race. Yeah, I almost feel like to a certain extent, the more that you're worried about this and trying to hack it and trying to figure out and everything, it's like you're fixing it on it more and more and more. And unless, yeah, you've had some serious issues, it's, I still think, like we've gone to Indian wells.

I've done Alcatraz. We've done a lot of cold water swimming. and you just go. I guess all I can say is I feel so, so blessed to be a good swimmer, relative, you know, and like feel like when I'm getting into the water, I'm not concerned about any, I'm concerned about like racing fast enough, but I'm not just like dreading doing the thing. And that, you know, that gives a little bit of a leg up. And I'm sure if I was dreading doing the thing, the coldness would just add to that exponentially.

Yeah. And think like in a 70.3, how long are you in the water for, 25 minutes? Something like that. Yeah. There's people do 45. Yeah. That's a different... That's a different thing.

That's a different sport. Isn't that crazy? Oh, it's like a lot longer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the fast Iron Man people are going as fast as the slow 70.3 people. Yeah.

Okay, well, somewhat shorter episode this week, but that was what we had. That's it. Well, it's kind of good because it's now Thursday for Nick. That's true. you're already one, you're already like four minutes behind putting this podcast out. Yes.

Oh my God, you're right. Don't you put it out like midnight? Midnight Pacific time. So I have three hours. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. Wow, what a grinder. Yeah, a real grinder.

It's Christmas time. And we still got this podcast done. Yeah, I'm glad we did it. And we are keeping on track with the goal that Nick set a while back. How long ago was that? I don't even remember maybe a couple months ago. We realized that, January 1st, whatever, our first podcast of 2024 will be our 100th podcast.

Isn't that so beautiful and serendipitous? Pretty crazy to think. We're you strategically skipping certain episodes all along the last two years to make sure that it lined up like this? I've been incepting you guys to skip certain episodes. Nick, what we really need is like a cake with that are the letters 100. So I'll get a one, Eric get a zero, you get a zero, and then we hold them all together. and then we eat it.

That would be so great. Over FaceTime? No, Nick has to be here for the recording of the 100th episode, obviously. You know, last year I flew out to Bend after straight from New York. Oh, let's do that again. We could do that again. What day are you flying back? The second.

Oh, yeah, let's do that. We could. I'll look into it. I'll look at what that means. That would be fun, though. No matter the cost, we will cover it. No matter the cost, Jesus, confidently on the air. That's why we need the new pod subscribers.

I would say it would be badass. It would be badass if Nick was able to be here for the recording and we somehow figured out how to actually do it via video and like make a freaking show out of it. I have a good idea. Oh, wow. Make it epic, not just like, array. It has to be epic.

This is a good idea. and this sounds a very sponsor pluggy, but it's not. If we get 15 new subscribers this week, we'll do it. I love it. I love it. 15 new subscribers, like $5 a month subscribers. Yeah, that'll get Nick a sandwich on his layover. Have you seen airport prices lately?

Tuna fish sandwich, very expensive in these parts. Don't even consider checking a bag. Obviously, that won't cover. the cost of the flight in one month. But over the course of six months. Over time. It's true. It's true. It's true. Every supporter makes a difference.

And if you're on the fence, this is your chance to really make a difference. What kind of, how can we sweeten the deal for them? Can we have you guys like singing a Christmas song or something for the supporters next week? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll do some sort of very special piece of content that will go out to the supporters via the newsletter. great. That's what we'll do. But not just the new ones, all of the OGs too. Of course, of course. Anyone who's a current supporter when the email goes out.

Perfect. All right, we've got a whole week till a podcast. Sufficiently sponsor plugged. We've got a whole week till podcast 99 to come up with the great ideas to send this home. I love it. I love it. All right, cool. Well, we'll talk to you guys next week.

We got one more episode before the new year, correct? Yep. Number 99. Number 99. Yep. Like Wayne Gretzky. Later, everybody. Bye.

Bye.