That Triathlon Life Podcast - TTL App, disc wheels on hilly courses, how to handle FTP plateau, and more!

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

This week we did our best to piece together an episode in three different places. Eric and Paula were recording from Switzerland with small handheld mics, Nick was without electricity in LA, and our special guest, Jake Senitza was in Florida. Apologies if it isn't our greatest episode but we are very excited about launching the TTL App! This week, we talked about:Swim pacing with or without an Aussie exitIs a disc wheel still worth it on a hilly courseHow to pass 3 hours on Zwift How early to sign up for racesShould you be worried about plateauing FTPElectronic shifting on mountain bikesThe morality of courtesy waving on runs and ridesA big thank you to our podcast supporters who keep the podcast alive! To submit a question for the podcast and to become a podcast supporter, head over to ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

Hey everyone, welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggerstrom. I'm Paula Fenland. I'm Nick Goldstein. And I'm Jake Sen. That's a special guest. We have a special guest today. Today is a very special occasion in the TTL universe, community, whatever. And we are officially launching our new app. It is a community hub. It's a chat space. It's a place where we're going to have some extra bonus. bonus content. The sky is the limit. And we have the guy here today who has been doing the lion's share of the work on it. And there's kind of a cool story as to how he came into the whole equation. And we're going to get into that. And then we'll get into questions on the podcast. Paul and I are both professional triathletes. Nick, our co-host, is professional

musician, sound guy, amateur triathlet. And outside of talking about what's going on in our lives in our triathlon lives, we take a lot of questions from people who listen and try to answer them and hopefully share some valuable information. Yeah, welcome, Jake. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you. How long has the app been in the making? I think since February or March is when we first started playing, or at least that's when I started playing around with it. It was whenever Eric sent out that survey this past winter.

In my mind, it's been six months. That's what it feels like. It could be a little bit short of that. But we've had many conversations on the podcast and people have written in asking if we could do a Discord or a Slack channel or something like this where, you know, people could chat amongst themselves that feel like part of what we've built with that triathlon life. And I think we said it enough times. And then we put out that survey that was asking people what they really want to see out of us. And man, that's when Jake and I connected. And it was actually felt very similar to when Nick and I first connected.

over Nick's music and wanting to contribute something to the TTL YouTube channel. So I do really feel like this. What we have going on is truly is a community effort. It's certainly if it was just up to me and Paula, we would be able to do half of what we have currently going on. And Jake is the latest and greatest addition to the team. This took a lot of work, a lot of planning, and there was a lot of thought behind it. And Eric, this is like a culmination of many ideas that I've heard from you for years.

about trying to get a place where people could talk, but also a place for posting all the different types of content, like the videos and the podcast and like specific stuff for supporters. What is your hope for the app? Yeah, I want to like kind of toss this over to Jake pretty quick here, but my biggest vision and the thing that I'm most excited about for it is just a place where there can be a lot of community discussion. If somebody wants to sell a wetsuit,

If somebody wants to meet up with somebody for a bike ride in Michigan, if somebody wants to just talk about Aero Bar extensions at length and have a very approachable place to do it and in a supportive place. And Paul and I will chime in on it occasionally. Nick will chime in on it. I really just wanted people to be able to discuss back and forth and get excited about, you know, share their excitement inside of the sport. Think like slow twitch forum, but better and more positive and less trolls.

Yeah, there will be no trolls. We will not allow trolls. Yeah, we don't want to be down on any other things, but I won't lie. Even as a seasoned professional, there are certain, yeah, community, quote-unquote, areas in our sport that I don't even really want to go because it's a little scary, it's intimidating,

and, you know, who knows what can of worms you're going to open yourself up to. So, Jake, to hand it over to you, Ike, I'm like mostly, I'm super curious what you saw in that survey or something that we'd said on the podcast or whatever but that really fired you up and made you take the leap to reach out. And you told me like, hey, I think I want to make the same thing that you want to make. And that was like got the ball rolling.

Yeah. I mean, for me, like I'm kind of a novice in triathlon. Like I've been doing it for about three years now. But my background is all in like the mobile apps industry. So like when I first got into triathlon kind of like digging around trying to find stuff, like information and stuff. Obviously you've got slow to which you've got for me. I was on Lionel's Discord way back when there wasn't like a single spot for it. So I actually booted up my own coaching business a couple years ago.

And I've been tossing around the idea of building something of this sort. So when you posted it on the survey, I was like, yeah, it's kind of good timing. So I just kind of shot in the dark emailed you. It was very surprised when you responded. So yeah, you kind of called my bluff. And then it was time to go. I know how that goes.

You throw an idea out there and somebody's actually like, yeah, let's do it. And like, oh, shoot, I was just really kind of excited about talking about ideas. Yeah, I think I pitched it to originally as I had some people I knew who could build it. And then I started playing around with it myself. And I was like, well, Eric, maybe I could do this myself. Yeah. I am like nothing but blown away at what you've been able to accomplish. Just one single person working on this.

It's actually incredible. It's not like PowerPoint where you go and you're just like, oh, I want a search button here and I want to make this blue and I want to like insert chat feed here. It's like you're writing code and pulling code from other places and combining stuff and every time I call you and tell you, oh, but I really wish, you know, like the thumbs up button was blue and it's and it's also delayed. You fix it and then it breaks something else. And it's like this crazy wild goose chase. So I've like personally developed a whole new sense of appreciation for people who've been. build things like this from scratch. Yeah, there's, there's so much that goes on behind the scenes with it. Have you ever built an app before? Not to this scale. I mean, played around with it.

Mostly I've been on teams who have built stuff. So I've been in the industry for like seven or eight years, but definitely never solo built something like this before. So yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty wild. Like, I spent a lot of hours on things that I don't think a lot of the community is ever going to to see, but hopefully it makes the app run while. For my perspective, I feel like with TTR stuff with my crazy race schedule. Eric's kind of sheltered me a little bit from everything that's going on, including the app. And I haven't really been a part of the development process or giving feedback because I've just been like head down trying to deal with my own racing and problems. But to now have it on my phone and see what you guys have done is

so insane, way better than I ever imagine that it could be. And I get it now. When Eric was first talking about this a year ago, I didn't really get it. but now I can see the functionality that people will actually come to it. And people love slow twitch and forums and being able to talk. And I think this is just going to be such a good platform for people to be able to talk about their thing they're passionate about. So good job, guys. Glad you like it. Is it going to live in its current state for a while now?

Is there a plan to expand any kind of functionality or add any kind of functionality in the future? Or is that a secret? I don't think it's much of a secret. I think we've got a lot of stuff that we've got planned. So this is very much a first version. There's probably going to be some things that break on this initial release. There's going to be some bugs that will have to work through. But I've got a huge ideas board that Eric and I have built up over the past few months just getting things ready.

I mean, there's some big stuff that we'll add in over time. I think I've got one secret thing that we'll probably add in here in the next week or so. That'll be a bit of a post-launch celebration feature. But yeah, this is very much. only the first version. So I've been trying to reach out to everybody who emails. And yeah, if you're if you've run into anything, yeah, just reach out. What is your personal most favorite part of the app or the thing that you're most proud that you were able to build? That whole comments tree. You guys have no idea how complicated that has been to get that going. But yeah, the fact that it

runs pretty well. And like the notifications pop in. Yeah, that's all that's all brand new to me developing the first time. So the fact that the whole back end side is working properly. is pretty fun. I have no notifications for any apps turned on my phone except for the TTO app because every time I see our logo pop up with, you know, Tri-Gy-Gy-Nine-commented on your thing. I just get such a kick out of it.

It's still super novel to me. So, again, I'm so impressed. That's awesome. So where can people download the app? Is it on the iOS app store? Is it Android? What's it called? Like, what's the best way to get it?

So right now, It's iOS only. We've got it all ready for Android as well. I've got to do some more testing on it since it's kind of just me right now at the moment. We kind of decided to just focus on iOS for the first build. So we'll probably post the App Store link to it soon whenever this goes live. And then I would say within the next month or two, we'll probably have an Android beta ready to go. When you download the app, you just then go create an account, put your email, password,

and then you're good to go make comments. and then the email, if you link it to what your TTL email is, that'll eventually sync up as well. Is that right? Yeah, that's the idea. So right now when you create your account, it is going to be separate from your main that triathlonlife.com account. They're not the same ones.

But if you use the same email that you signed up with, the goal is eventually that the perks and stuff that you get from that triathlononlife.com will translate over to the app. We've got some stuff to work on there, but that's the idea as we grow it. Right. For pod supporters, etc. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, the last thing I'll say, just that's a perfect segue is that Jake has generously given hundreds of hours of his own time to making this happen.

And apps are not free, even just the fact that sitting there and existing and people log in and use it costs a little bit of money. So at some point in time, we are going to be working towards like a premium style feature that is going to, that will take some money, We'll have some extra bonus things that go along with it. There is a system by which TTL podcast supporters are going to be able to access all of the content that we've ever done in the video section. And then that'll also give us all sorts of abilities to do early access to launches via the app and bonus content and just above and beyond sort of things to try to work on making it so that this platform is sustainable long term. And, you know, Jake's marriage is saved and, you know, nobody. It gets in trouble.

Yeah, so just we'll just stay tuned for updates on that kind of a thing, and we'll roll that out as we feel like we're ready for it. So everyone pause the podcast and go download the app right now. Okay, this is Nick from the future, and I was just chatting with Jake, and he informed me that because of some approval process stuff with Apple, that's kind of outside of our control, the app may not be ready to be downloaded on Thursday today,

but it is imminent. So keep checking. It'll be out soon. I think I've already seen inside of the app from people who are helping us test that there's a movement to try to crash the app on day one. So good luck, Jake.

Yeah, there we go. That's the spirit. Yeah, yeah. There's going to be a lot of people signing in there. So, yeah, might be a day to turn off notifications, Eric. It's going to be noisy. Well, thanks for hanging with us, Jake. Appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely. Anytime. Yeah, reach out if you guys need anything. Oh, we will tomorrow. All right. See you, Jake. Cool. Thanks, Jake. Okay, so Jake's gone, but we all want to take a moment here to thank all the podcast supporters who did get early access to the app and helped kind of test it and debug it. We're very grateful for the work and the community that people feel here that they're willing to do something like that.

It just feels so special what we have here. I'm going to cry. Okay, so this past week, what has it gone on? Where have you been? where in the world are you? You're not at that hotel anymore. Yeah, so what's going on? We are still in Switzerland. We've moved closer to the world cycling time trial course where I'll be racing on Sunday. So really good to be here and just get some specific practice on it. We just did it, did kind of the first 15K and it's really technical and hilly. So for me, it's just such an advantage or and a benefit for my riding style to be able to see the course in advance, ride it like five or six times and be ready for Sunday. So we are staying about 2K from the start of the race.

So how lucky are we? Such a nice place to train. Amazing running, amazing pool. Just like everything about Switzerland is so awesome that we've experienced so far. I will say last week, I think like the night we recorded the podcast, it was like the morning after I got really, sick and this awful like stomach bug terribleness for kind of like still going on now but towards the tail end of it. So the last five days have not been fun and I'm not sure if I caught it in China when I was racing or on the plane or what, but I've had kind of a rough week and it's really hard when you're feeling like that to imagine racing a world championship in five days. But I think I am coming out the other side of it and feeling a little more human today.

So that's good. Thankfully, I had lots of time. Do you feel it in your training as well? Or is it just when you're having stomach problems that it's an issue? Oh, we feel it in the training. Mostly. It's so crazy because I was like mid-tempo around the other day and just full vomit, everything in my stomach in the middle of it.

So that's been unpleasant. But I think the thing that's been the worst is just the energies app. And when you have, I don't know if it was a virus or what I had, but fully took all the, I couldn't even want. up the stairs without feeling like exhausted. So it just like I had, I don't know, I couldn't pedal 100 watts. I couldn't finish a kilometer in the pool. It was really, really a, and, you know, and if I was at home and didn't have a race coming up,

I'd be a little more okay with this. But it's hard when you're on the other side of the world. And the only reason I'm here is to train and prepare as best I can for a race that's coming up. It's actually the worst case scenario as a pro athlete is to be in a foreign country, trying to get ready to race and feel sick, not be in your home, not know what any of the medications in the store say or what they do.

It's, I feel terrible. I've just, I've had a front row seat, been unable to really be helpful in any way other than just trying to say it's okay. And then just wait for me when I dart in the bushes 700 times. But like four or five other athletes from Beijing

got sick like this, but they got sick right away. So I thought I was in the clear and then it hit me like two days later. So maybe it's the same thing, maybe not, but symptoms seem to be similar to what all of them had. So I don't know, maybe mine just kind of incubated for 48 hours and that really hit me hard. And I've never had a food, like a illness like this before. What is the ideal way for you to address this? Is it to try to train as much as you can through the

discomfort? I mean, I guess I know what you have been doing, but if you were coaching someone, what would you tell them to do? I mean, you cannot train through it. It's impossible. Like I let my watch to start an interval on the bike and there was like nothing. But you have been, haven't you? Yeah, like easy stuff. I mean, we've been like going out and she'll, yeah, literally do one minute of the first interval and then we flip and go home because it's like just get out there.

Let's go through the warm up thing and just see. Like keep moving a bit. And it's obviously not happening. But like trying, but certainly not getting through. interval sessions. Anyway, enough about my sickness. Nick, you won a race. I did win a race, yes.

I was not sick, luckily. I felt great all day, which was the first. I was been sick. You had a sick day. Yeah, I was sick. It was great. It was in San Diego. It was the San Diego tri-classic.

And I did the sprint, which is the kind of like the one to do there because the Olympic is just exactly two loops of the rest of it. But yeah, it was very fun. And there was some, I was wearing my T-T. T.L kit, of course. So got a lot of love for that from people. I think there were definitely people there who just saw the TTR kit and didn't necessarily recognize me who were giving shoutouts. So that always feels good too because you feel like part of the community a little bit, you know. Yeah, it was great.

Good job, Nick. Very fun. Saw some familiar faces too. And then that that night, you know, drove up to the wedding. It was good. I got two hours of sleep the night before working on freaking songs. But, you know, you got to do what you got to do. It's the job. It's the job. That's the job. That's that age group or life. You'd never do that if you were taking that seriously. Of course, of course, of course. But you still won, so that's good.

Didn't matter. Yeah, it was great. A fun day. That is it, everybody. You made it through the pre-array stuff, and now we will get to questions and impart knowledge. Impart knowledge. I think we just need to acknowledge because this is definitely going to be obvious

that we're having struggles here, but Nick, you're so delayed. We're in Switzerland, you're in L.A. your electric is out, so you're using your LTE, which is overloaded and every person in L.A. is using LTE. This is like the roughest connection we've ever had. So if things are awkward and we interrupt each other, then that's why. I've been taking a lot of notes here of when things have been overlapping. So it's just going to be a long editing process for me. And hopefully the podcast listeners won't be aware of the delay. Challenge accepted. Keep that in anyways, that they're impressed by you. How about that? Okay. Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah, please be impressed by me. Okay, so let's do some

this or that here. This or that was submitted by Jonathan. So thank you, Jonathan. Hey, Eric, Paula, Nick. Don't think there's been one for a while. So here's a quick this or that. Okay, so these are all great, by the way. Someone to clean your bike or someone to final edit film footage. Yes, Paula, you need to answer to. Clean my bike. Well, because Paul is not doing too much editing, I don't think. I don't edit. I don't edit. I would love someone to take over some editing from me. Cleaning a bike is actually kind of therapeutic and zen.

So simple. No creative thought required. Yeah, I thought you would say that. Bike without a power meter or swim without a wetsuit in a race. So the bike without a power meter would also be in the race. Bike without a power meter because it's not a performance downside. I think, in fact, sometimes it helps people to not be riding to power and to be looking at the power.

there while it's the entire race. Sometimes if your power meter like randomly stops working in a race, it can be actually a really good thing. So I would take that. You need a wetsuit. I've had that happen and rode really well and also was extremely free mentally in the race. Drop bars

on your mountain bike or drop or post on your road bike? Definitely drop her post on the road bike. That could be helpful. Yeah. Didn't Magnus do that at Nice last year? Yeah, it did absolutely. It did not help at all but he did it. Do you know it didn't help.

Well, I guess we don't know. It did not cause him to win the race, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, I would say it probably actually did help him, though. He's like such a tall guy that he could get his center of gravity lower. And he's still podiumed, right? Yeah. I think he got third. I mean, I was just like frothing for some Magnus, like a shot of him actually dropping the dropper post and then dropping the people he was with.

Yeah. That's what I was hoping for secretly. Like, you know, like when they hit the Noss and Fast and Furious and like, okay, I'm gone now. Yeah, yeah, right, of course. Okay, now race a hybrid bike on a road course or on a gravel course. That's a hybrid bike. It's like a flat bar with slick tires, like, you know, commuter bike. It has like maybe sometimes it has front suspension.

Yeah, I'll take that on the road race. I think your odds would be better with it on a gravel course, though. I think you'd relatively lose less time. Oh, if you're trying to win, not just complete it. Yeah, it depends on the type of. gravel we're talking about how chunky it is, but probably gravel I'm going to go. And like, are we allowed to swap tires, you know? Yeah, can we actually monster truck it out?

Yeah. Okay, you have to give one-up coffee or donuts, which is it? Donuts. Easily. Easy. Okay, and that's it. Congrats on all the great race results for everyone lately and good luck at TT Worlds Paula. Cheers, Jonathan.

In Switzerland, all the bake goods are way better. Like the bread is better, the croissants are better. everything's good, even at the grocery store. But the donuts, they look like cartoon donuts. You know, I think are donuts such an American thing that over here, they're like, oh, we should make donuts in the grocery store, and they just look so unappetizing. Well, I got one, and they are also not really a donut. They're like, they look like they just been popped out of a cartoon book.

They're not like, you know, artisan with, like, icing kind of dripping a little. and, you know, like you'd get from a donut shop. They look like, you know, they're pre-manufactured or something, and they popped them out of like a roll of donuts or something. Yeah, like you'd get at Costco or something. If you got 24 donuts at Costco with the, anyway. I don't know if they do donuts in Europe like they do in America. Doesn't seem to be a thing.

I think their donuts are called croissants. Yeah, there's plenty of other good things here. And those are way better than donuts. Yeah. Okay, now I'm thinking about donuts. Dang it. I'm going to have to get one right after this. Okay, we'll move on to.

general, your general triathlon questions, you can submit your questions at thatriathlonlife.com slash podcast, where you can also become a beloved podcast supporter. Thank you so much to our supporters. Our first question this week is from Scott. Hey, TTL fam, we're an OG family and love the pod and epic videos and music. I'm racing T100 Vegas and was curious if you look at pacing a swim course with an Aussie exit differently than if you have a straight swim. Also given the amount of climbing on that course, will you opt for a deeper profile rear wheel, i.e. an 858, or still run your disc wheel. I might assume that there will be potentially heavy crosswinds out there. As always, thank you for your insights, Scott. I would not pace an Aussie exit swim differently. I think that

I do really like Aussie exit swims because they break up the swim so much. So you can kind of segment into two laps or whatever it is. So I would not pace Aussie exit swim. many differently. We actually have them pretty often in the T-100 races, which makes sense that they do it in Vegas because it's a T-100 race. The reason they do it, I think, is because it's really exciting for the crowd to be able to see you coming out of the water at least once when otherwise you're just gone out at sea for 20 to 30 minutes. So I kind of like it because it allows me to kind of get my bearings and see where I am and see how far back or ahead I am of people and changes the stimulus a little bit halfway in the race.

So, yeah, I would say don't pace it differently, but just use it to your advantage and as something new that's so unlike any Ironman race or non-Azzi exit swim that you'll ever do. I'll say if you're like really concerned about it, you could the last 100

meters or 50 meters or something just think to yourself relax, like maybe you know, take it down like one or two notches on the RPE scale and anticipation of having to stand up, go vertical, run, dive back in the water if you're really stressed about it. That is a really weird feeling to go from horizontal to vertical back to horizontal,

swimming really hard, and it can spike your heart rate and make you feel a little panicky. So yeah, just relax into it if you're feeling like that's a little overwhelming. In regards to his question about the wheels, I honestly, because we have T-100 Abiza next week, I haven't looked at the course for Vegas. I'm just kind of taking these races one at a time. But I don't think there's any course where a disc wheel wouldn't be an advantage. I think even in Nice this weekend, you'll see most of the pro women riding a disc. And disks are just faster no matter what.

They're a little heavier, but that can be counteracted by the speed gains you get. So if you're comfortable on it, I'd say that's definitely the best choice for for this course, keeping in mind that I haven't actually looked at the course. Yeah, I would say if it's a super hilly course and you don't own a disc, don't stress out about getting a disc as much as you might for a course like Kona or something that's completely flat. But yeah, you have to be going pretty slow for a disc to not be helpful. And on pretty much any course out there, there's going to be a good degree of flat or downhill

where it is going to make a difference. Like in San Francisco, we climbed over a thousand meters over the race. But there was such a long stretch of flat on each lap that it was definitely needed. Did anybody not use a disc in the profile? No, I think everyone did. Yeah. So we're going to be putting out T-shirts soon that say, I just have a picture of a disc wheel. And it just says always below.

That's a good. That's a good shirt. Just came to me. The beginning of this question reminded me of something that happened in my race this weekend, talking about Aussie exits. My race didn't have an Aussie exit, but it did have this very particular course. where the swim exit and where the bikes were, were almost a mile away from each other.

So the race organizers had it set up so that you run out of the water, then if you want, you can just stay in your wetsuit and run all the way to the bikes, or they had like a cone per each participant in the race setup with their race number on the cone, and you can leave your wetsuit there in a bag with your number on.

it and you could have left your running shoes there. So I left my running shoes there. So I took off my wetsuit, left it at the cone, put on my running shoes and ran the almost mile to the bikes, then took my running shoes off, put my bike shoes on, and then did the bike portion and then the run portion at the end, which is kind of a fun way to switch things up a bit and gets over some of the, I guess, staleness of exactly the same thing each time. Totally. Yeah. They do that at Alcatraz too, you can put running shoes on because it's like an 800 meter run. And they're the same running shoes that you would then run with later? Or are they two different pairs? I think you can have two different pairs. I actually don't know how they do it for the age groupers,

but for the pros, you can have two different shoes. I'm sure they tell you in the pre-race information if you are going to do that race. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Thanks for the question, Scott. Next one here is from Ben. I've been using my trainer for specific workouts that last around two to three and a half hours, but get bored of looking at the Zwift screen for that long. How do you guys kill time with long rides on the trainer? Ben. We do TTO Zwift group rides, of course.

That's the number one way. But I think we both do kind of similar things. We've got like a screen going that maybe has a TV show or a movie playing. And then we've got our big Zwift TV going. And then you can kind of bounce around between like watching the movie and playing some music on your phone or something just if it's like a three hour ride it's very bounce around between a whole bunch of different stimulus to try to stay entertained at least that's for me yeah if it's a hard ride though I think it's really hard to focus on anything else besides the riding so in that case for me it's

just having swift it's having my power meter it's having music and yes it's boring but the intervals and the difficulty of it kind of just carry me through it's so much harder for me to just sit on my bike and do a three-hour aerobic ride on the trainer. And in that case, I'd do what Eric does and have maybe like replays of Supertry or like, I actually like watching race replays more than watching a movie because you can zone in and out of it. And you don't have to be fully focused at all times to understand what's going on. So that's my favorite way to to pass the time. But you can get pretty engaged on Zwift and try to get segments or join up. with a group,

Zwift leader ride. Those are actually kind of fun where there's like a PACE person and you just kind of have to stay with the group. So I find those really actually pretty engaging where you're trying to stay within a certain watt range to stay in this pack that's riding around Watopia. Yeah.

Yeah, you can also jump in, like I said, a group ride or you can jump in an actual race. So sometimes we'll do that. We'll do like a group ride for an hour and then just ride so I for like an hour and a half and make up some intervals and watch a movie for an hour and get through it like in blocks. How often do you guys ride next to each other

when you're doing the training? You mean virtually or in real life? Virtually, virtually, yeah. I'm just wondering how much that helps to have a buddy to do it with. Not at all, not at all. We used to do it a little bit. I think like sometimes I've joined up with like Holly Lawrence

or Lindsay Corbyn when she used to race. We would meet up on Zwift sometimes. And honestly, the thing that helped the most with was just getting on our bikes because I'd be like, Lindsay's on her bike, she started her ride, I'm going to get on and join her in the virtual world. And then maybe we're doing different workouts

and riding apart eventually, but it's just starting together actually was quite helpful for 30 minutes or whatever. I feel like a lot of, like, I haven't done it recently, but I would try to catch up to you or something if I started, because I always start three minutes behind you because I'm just lollygagging and stuff.

And when I would catch up to you, it would be coming up, apparent to me that you weren't even looking at Zwift and you were watching a show or something and we're not like actually engaged with my avatar being next to your avatar on the screen and then I'll just continue on with something else. Okay, yeah, great. Next question here is from Steven, high TTL team, how early should I enter a race? With a high price of entry fees and the restrictive cancellation policies, especially Ironman, I worry that something might happen, illness, injury, life changes. When I enter a race,

a year ahead. Race promoters always want you to sign up early, and some races do fill up. What's the best strategy, Stephen? Wait until the last possible second. Yeah. So how early in the season do you guys usually plan out your races? And I suppose it's different as a professional. It is a little different as a professional because we just pay, like with Ironman, for example,

the pro-membership fee and then we can sign up for any race we want to at any point in time. Up till what? Like two weeks out? Well, it used to be two weeks out, but now with the pro series, the races are filling up really quickly. So they've shifted the deadline to apply to like a month out, which still sounds very luxurious, probably to a lot of age groupers who have to sign up six months or a year in advance. But for us, I like the flexibility with Iron Men events to kind of leave it a bit last minute and see how you're feeling and how the race season is playing out and not having to commit to something super early. So we do have like an idea in January though what races we'd ideally like to hit and what our favorites are. Yeah, for sure.

But the problem with or the challenge with the Iron Man races is that if you miss the deadline and you don't sign up, there's no way you're racing. But if you sign up and don't do it, there's no penalty except for it's not a nice thing to do that because your name's on the start list and it looks, you know, people are expecting you to be there. So when I put my name on a start list, I like to be pretty certain that I'm going to be there, a bar. harring an injury or something dramatic happening. But trying to juggle like T-100 races with doing the 70.3s that I actually want to do and the travel and all of that, it kind of can get tough to plan too far in advance as the season's kind of in flux. But Nick, when I read this question, I was thinking it's probably better for an age group

athlete to answer this because I have no idea how quick races fill up. Does it depend on the race? When do entries open? I really am out of touch with how the amateur world works for signing up for Ironman races. I know with T-100, you can sign up because they don't fill up yet. Right, right. And I think there's definitely exceptions to these big kind of one-off races that aren't Ironman branded. Like, I don't know if like Nusa try or Malibu try or stuff like that, maybe that can sell out.

But for the most part, local races don't. And if they do, they'll do the same thing that Iron Man. Man does, if you're on their race organizer mailing list or whatever, you get warnings. They'll say, like, only 100 slots left or only 50 slots left before it's sold out. So you do get a little bit of a warning. But something that Iron Man has been doing, which I really appreciate, is they have something called Flex 90, where within the first 90 days of the registration of the race, which typically is a year before it happens, you know, you can register at the race for the next year. But if you register within the first 90 days, you get a free deferral to either the same race next year or, for example,

in North America, another, if you're signed up for 70.3, you can sign up for a different 70.3 in the future. And I think you can only defer once or change your race registration once, but I don't think you need any like doctor's note or any legit reason. It's just you can feel like you're not properly trained up or whatever it is and defer to next year, which is what I just did with Ironman, Wisconsin. I wasn't able to race Ironman, Wisconsin for several reasons, and I'm now going to do it the following year. Well, that's pretty nice. Oh, it's really nice. For Iron Man Racins, I think doing the Flex 90 is really great. And I think for all other races, I kind of look at them and plan them out, but then I don't sign up until it kind of is coming up,

which the tradeoff for that is usually the price increases, the closer you get to the race. But that's a risk I'm willing to take. So the Flex 90, it's 90. It's 90. after you sign up that you can change. So if you sign up a year out, you still have to decide nine months out. If you sign up in the first 90 days, then you can do the deferral cancellation thing. And thank you, thanking you for being an early bird committed. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I like that. I like that. So I have a follow up question. Does that then mean that some random like last minute signups come up or they just kind of write those flex 90 people off? Yeah, if the race is full and Nick drops out, can someone else then get a spot? If I were to guess, and I can check with someone I know at Iron Man,

but I don't think they open up more positions to the general public. I think maybe Iron Man has some VIPs or whatever that can get in or if they're bumping up against what their maximum allowable participants from the city is, and that's a different kind of story. Right. I bet you they do not open it up to more people. Cool. It's not like the T-100 where two athletes drop out

and they're filling them in to make sure they're 20-in list. Right. And then remember, you can always do, almost every race will have some kind of race insurance where if you can't race because you're sick or something, you get your money back. But it's typically very expensive. And I find it usually not to be worth it for myself

in the long run if you were to do it for every race. Yeah. Okay. Next question here is from David. Hey, TTL team. I've been an avid listener of the podcast since I found it last month and have been binging old episodes because I just can't get enough. My question is related to training and scheduling.

Like everyone, I'm trying to optimize my training and fit into my lifestyle. What good is a perfect training plan if it isn't actioned? That said, I feel like I'm plateauing in my progress as it relates to FTP and other fitness markers. Do you have any advice regarding where to focus effort, schedule adjustments, recovery, workout, priority, etc. David. First of all, let's suggest something here. How good of a measure do you guys think FTP is? to kind of notate your progress.

Yeah, I put this in there because when I read it, I think I was going to go down the direction of not giving advice for this because honestly, I'll go like five years without my FDP increasing. Like, that's not really the point of race, of training. I think that's great. Keep going on that. The point is to get faster at racing, not to increase your FTP on Zwift. So for me, I may have the same FTP as I had five years ago, but I'm fitter, I'm my nutrition's better,

I'm healthier, I'm more consistent with my running. There's so many factors that go into getting better at racing that just using this one marker of, am I getting better is dangerous and depressing. But this is, I think the, this is a really interesting point here is that you are speaking very much so as if FTP and bike fitness are two separate things. But I think for a lot of amateurs, those two things are one and the same. Your FTP is the bike fitness. If it goes up, your bike fitness is going up. If it goes down, your bike fitness is going down. But what you're saying is that your FTP can actually stay the same, but you can potentially ride at a higher percentage of FTP or you can

optimize other things in your biking to go faster. What do you mean when you say that? I think I just mean that I don't know what my FTP is and I don't care a little bit is like I'm not testing it every week to see if I'm improving

you know Eric chime in here yeah you know we're not coaches we both enjoy working with a coach who does look at

data and numbers but doesn't like have a weekly discussion with us about it and everything so I don't want to you know

I don't want to act like we're professional coaches but I kind of agree with Paula where I'm less concerned about what my FTP is because FTP theoretically is the amount of power that you can hold for one hour. How many people here are biking for one hour in their triathlon race? And generally also I think people like to test their FTP over like a 20 minute test at the absolute most. And the number of people, we've had this conversation on the podcast a whole bunch that can actually do anything near their

theoretical test at FTP for even one hour, let alone two and a half hours or three hours and a 70.3 or whatever in an Ironman, it's a small number of people. So I think we can answer this question beyond FTP, but I think what Paul is just getting at is that actually going in racing and getting faster at racing and not being completely tied to like how well your training is going, you never know. Like you could, you could have a terrible FTP test and still have the best triathlon of your life for a myriad of other reasons. There's three sports. Yeah. And the other, this, he touched on it a little bit. He's asking like, what about recovery? What about other things? And I think that when you do an FTP test, you could be fatigued or not

fatigued depending on the week that you're doing it. So using that as a, again, I'm just, you know, making the same point again and again, but using that as the only marker of fitness and progression in your fitness is a little bit dangerous. Also, also, Also, like when you're first starting out in anything, the gains come fast and the gains are big. Yeah. And the further you get into something, yes, like getting three watts higher, FTP is a big gain if you've been training for 10 years. Yeah. Like that's why we get all excited about going to the wind tunnel and getting three watts faster because that is actually a measurable thing.

Like the days of, oh, wow, it was 20 watts or 15 watts higher on my FTP test. than I was this time last year. Like, those are gone barring some miracle. It totally depends on how long you've been doing it. But, um, so yeah, I think that if you're healthy, following a training plan, racing pretty well, you can consider yourself improving and not, um, have to tie it to specific numbers necessarily. The last thing I want to say on this is like inherent in like the very first sentence of

your question was I am training for triathlon. inside of my lifestyle. And your lifestyle, the amount of time that you have to put into triathlon, you may have just, you may be bumping up against the amount of benefits that you can get out of dedicating 10 hours or 15 hours, like whatever the amount of time, five hours a week to training is. And if you want to continue to see significant improvements, this might necessitate a slight lifestyle change in some way.

Which is not the solution for everyone. saying that's a solution, but like that is a possible thing, you know, like, there's probably a limit to how fast you can get training at five hours a week. But if you go to seven hours a week, boom. You know, so just like, I think you can like have a conversation with yourself. We all have these conversations with ourselves, like how far am I willing to go to improve a little bit more? And, you know, do I want to do that? Yep, exactly. I hope it wasn't too harsh on that guy. No, not at all. And I love the stuff.

I think debunking this thing about FTP being this overall marker for bike fitness is great because people still use it as like the end all be all of things. So I think that's great. That's a good tool. It's a good tool. But yeah. Yeah. Next question is Laura from Halifax. Hey parents.

OG listener, first time caller. My question is about electronic shifting from mountain bikes. And Eric, I think you're the only person that can speak to this here, right? Yes. I have had electronic shifting on my TT and road bikes for over a decade, and I'm currently running the newest top of the line Shimano group set. I've always had mechanical shifting on my mountain bike. On a technical hilly single track, I often find it's necessary to quickly shift up multiple rear cogs. Can electronic mountain bike group sets do this as well as mechanical setups?

My experience with the electronic road shifters is that you can't just throw it halfway up the cassette with one long flick of the lever, but rather have to experience each individual shift, even when you press and hold the button. I'm eyeing up my next mountain bike, but hesitant about making the switch for this reason. If it makes a difference, the bike I'm considering as the SRM-GX Eagle Axis. Thanks for everything you do.

I've been in the sport about as long as you have and TTL has definitely reignited my passion for it after all these years, Laura. Sweet. Stoke in the fire. So I'm 90, upper 90s. sure that inside of the SRAM app you have the ability to say how fast do I want to dump gears when I hold down the button you're like if I hold down the button it goes really fast or kind of fast

or just kachunk kachunk like I think the option three that I just noises that I made are is like the standard but there is a way to like ramp up how quickly it does that that being said I've never played with that because it just kind of sounds like something that the machine is doing that I you know like is it predictable is it not and I just haven't personally had a problem just rapidly tapping my thumb like I'm freaking playing Xbox and trying to do a cheat code or something to like slam gears up the cassette I have never been in a position where I felt like I couldn't get the chain up the cassette fast enough and I've actually had more of the situation where you dump it so fast that just thought

whole chain freaking slips and you have this almost freaking like knock your teeth out on the stem. So I think I think you'll be fine. I certainly have never had an issue with this, but you do just like anything you want to try to be a planful with your with your cassette shifting on a mountain bike especially. That's right. That's so cool that they can do that, the rapid shifting and changing the speed though. Yeah. Okay. Next question here is from Ken from Edmonton. Hi, Paul, Eric, and Nick, my pointer, trigger, asked me to give a shout out to Flynn as well. Oh, Flynn. I wonder how he's doing.

My question is about acknowledging other athletes when out training. Whenever I encounter someone training, bike or run, I make an effort to acknowledge them with a wave. In Friday, I'll take a hand off the bar, if safe, as if giving a low five. The run is a wrist lift. In either case, is it obvious what I'm doing? They're not like wave to your mom, like when she leaves your kindergarten kind of waves, but they do have a tiny bit of effort. I take it personally if I get no wave back or if the wave is not much more than a finger lift. Am I being too high maintenance?

What do you do? Do you have an expectation of those in TTL gear? Thanks for all you do. Jen and I look forward to listening every week, Ken from Edmonton. So I'm so familiar with this feeling too. Like when you wave at someone and they don't wave back, I'm like, the gall. How dare you not wave back? But what do you guys do?

Yeah, I'm right there with you. I want to try to wave to every single person that we see. like I fully take my hands off the bars. I try to smile. That makes me feel good when I see someone else out there acknowledging my existence on planet Earth and acknowledging the fact that we're both in the trenches

doing this activity together and trying not to get hit by a car, et cetera, et cetera. And this was like our favorite thing about when we went to Ventura is that we felt like every person we bumped into was saying hi and waving and acknowledging our existence on planet Earth

and it felt good and it made us want to do the same thing to the next person versus you're completely right Nick like I waved to one person on the trail and they just like freaking stone face and don't even respond and like well fuck today sucks this sucks

humans are terrible I don't even want to be on my bike anymore geez you know so like I don't know my advice and like what I try to do is like fully just try to be friendly make an impact on that person's day by being like hey I see you we're doing the same thing

Today is great. I don't think it needs to be an extravagant wave like this guy is saying. Yeah, even like smiling is good enough. Because a lot of the time, the exception to this rule is if you're like deep in an interval and you're really having a tough session or something. Like I'm not going to wave to someone coming down skyliner as I'm going 350 watts up skyliner. But I think people get it if you're in that mode. That's the one exception to this rule.

But I agree with you guys. I especially like it if the other person initiates it. And then, of course, I'll weigh back. Yeah. Yeah. During some hard intervals, I noticed myself not putting the effort into wave at people. And I feel a little bit bad, but I'm also like, I just need to get through these next 45 seconds, you know. Yeah.

Sorry, bro. I'm a pro athlete. A weird races, bro. Deep in an interval. I win races. Absolutely, no matter what, I will give a faint wave, even if I'm deep in an interval. when somebody makes the effort. Like, I will give a little, like,

yeah, wrist flick, whatever, something. Okay, Eric, you're the gold standard. You never know. Like, maybe that person is, like, having a rough day and they were like, you know what? I'm going to wave to the next person that I see. I'm going to be better. And then you ignore them, you know, like, just,

you never know. Maybe that little wave back, like, really brightened that person's day. So I think it's worth it. Yeah. And what is our expectation of someone in the TTL community? Like, I guess what is our, expectation. What would you hope? I mean, I guess it's obvious. You better freaking wave or you're out.

We're stripping that kit off your back. We're coming to where you live and we're taking it away. We have your address. Okay. We know where you live. We know where you live. Yeah, great. Yeah, you always got a wave. And the last piece of this is do you guys do this thing where if someone's on like their commuter bike? You're like, do they even know the waving is a thing? Like do you wave to them or someone is in they're, you know, clearly trying to treat cycling as a sport, are you more likely to wave then? And same with running. Like, if someone's out on a, if they're like running with their dog or something, a little more casual, are you less likely to wave at them as someone in like tiny little shorts and a running tank top and of a triathlon watch on?

No, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's, it's funny because I guess on the bike, like we're out there a lot by choice, like we're doing exercise, people that are commuting. with a purpose. Maybe they don't want to be commuting on their bicycle, but it's their only option. So, yeah, maybe they're not. We don't honestly see a lot of commuters and bend. That's not really a thing.

Right. Yeah, right. People are riding on their lunch break. They don't go to work. Yeah. But that's an interesting thought, Nick. I don't know. I just notice myself sometimes, I'm like,

oh, is this person going to be like, why did that person just wave at me? Did they even know it's a thing? Well, I guess it's interesting because, you know, in L.A., like when you're running on the path, there's so many people. Like if you're waving to like every human that you pass, like you're spending more time waving than you are breathing. That's true.

I would make an exception to this rule in L.A. Because you'd be waving every five seconds. At least. And Ben, you see what, like 10 people on a ride? It'd be like, 9 of the rocks spray. It was like so, so, so, so, so. That's a great reference, Eric. That's a great reference.

Yeah. So I just turned around the beach path only wave to, people who I think considered themselves runners, you know, regardless of their pace or fitness or whatever. It's just people who think of themselves as runners. Then you can give them the wave as like, hey, we're out here doing the same thing. I only raise to people who are running sub five minutes per K. Yeah. Only the elite. The trap. Just kidding. Just kidding. You guys, we do have a few more questions, but our connection situation is so rough that we're going to save them for next week. We don't even have Nick on video so we can't see him, which is more challenging than you'd think.

Every other podcast we've done in the history of TTL, we've had video to see Nick. So that really changes how you interact with a person. It's kind of bizarre to do a podcast without seeing him. Yeah, this little black box with a white end in it, it's just not doing it for me. Yeah, so if this isn't our best pod ever, then please forgive us. But we are really excited about the app. I am so impressed. I had nothing to do with it.

But these guys have been working so hard. Jake, Danny, Eric to get it up and running. So go download that and give it a try. We'll come to you next week with a little recap of TT World Championships. We'll be coming to you from Abiza. Yeah, which is what day of the week and can anyone follow along? Sunday is the TT and it begins at like noon local time here in Switzerland. I'd be shocked if it's...

ESPN or Sport network. Eurosport. Something like I think. if you want to watch it and you put in a little bit of time, I think you'll be able to figure out how. We have not put in that time. We've been dealing with the tummy situation, but I think we'll be able to find it. I can't tell you that I'll be featured, but I'll be, it'll be, it'll be super fun to watch. This course is crazy. And, yeah, next week, Abiza is on Saturday and then we fly home finally back to Bend on the Sunday after that. Oof, what a trip. What a trip. Round the world, baby. Around the world. It's a stomach.

bug and all. Yep. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. Thank you to all the podcast supporters for helping with the app. We hope you guys all love the app so much. Paula, good luck next weekend, or this weekend, I should say, and we'll be back next week. Awesome. Thanks, everybody. Bye guys. Later. Bye.