That Triathlon Life Podcast - Why triathlon pros hide their power on Strava, using race sealant, normalized power, and more!

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

This week, we kicked things off with some triathlon news, followed by an intense round of “This or That,” and wrapped up with your listener questions. Topics we covered include:Why some pro triathletes don’t share power numbers on StravaIs it worth investing in a dedicated trainer bike?What is normalized power, and how do you use it?The best part of being a public figure in triathlonSwim TSS and gauging swim effort effectivelyWhen to replace race sealant in tubeless tiresUsing a "crack pipe" to inflate a disc wheel tireShould you bring a TT bike on a road bike ride?How Eric balances the highs and realities in TTL YouTube videosWearing Cloud Monsters for a trail run: Good or bad?Tips for improving bike handling skillsA big thank you to our podcast supporters who help keep the podcast alive. You can become a podcast supporter as well as submit questions for the podcast at ThatTriathlonLife.com/podcast

What's up, everybody? Welcome to that triathlon life podcast. I'm Eric Loggersstrom. I'm Paula Finley. I'm Nick Goldston. And this is our triathlon podcast, where we talk about what's going on in our triathlon lives. We talk about what's going on in the triathlon world a little bit.

And the book of the show comes from questions. We answer questions from people who ride into us. So that's with you. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Paul and I are both professional trathletes. Nick's a professional musician, really good age group athlete.

And makes this podcast sound amazing. So thanks for hanging out with us today. Yeah, we had a lot of questions this week because last week we did a live caller episode. So we called you guys and asked people for questions. So we didn't get to the emailed in questions and we have a huge backlog. So a couple people that asked great questions. But I was like, I don't know if we're going to really get to this. I just emailed them back with an answer.

Oh, wow. That's really proactive of you, Paul. Dangerous president, though. I mean a little bit, but I'm like, wow, I'm really passionate about this, but it's kind of like, you know, specific to the person. So I just replied directly. Anyway, we have some great questions lined up this week. Paul, I can't help but notice that you still on your little video chat screen have your qualifier here is the boss. Did you have to put that in every time or is that saved from last time?

The boss, it's saved. But it's an ongoing status. Yeah, right, of course. guy. All right. I mean, without this podcast, without me, this podcast doesn't happen. That's true. I would say that this is really truly a tripod and with one leg missing, any one leg, it does not stand. Yeah, that is true. All right. Well, I am going to kick things off this week because I had a little bit of a revelation that before each episode, we say, we talk a little bit about what's going on in the trath on world. So I think we need to do a little bit more of that. I collected some thoughts

and some things that I saw happen on the internet. But first, we're going to start off with a little bit of what went on with our training this week. But even before that, I just wanted to open it up to Nick to give us a little bit of update on your life, acknowledge the fires in L.A., and give us a little quick update because a lot of people have asked, how you're doing? Yeah. Well, it's funny because I'm funny, not ha ha ha funny, but I was with you guys the morning that the fire started. And we knew there was going to be windy conditions and potential for fire.

but I was with you that morning. And I flew out of Portland. Not a big deal at the time. No, no. We thought, oh, these fires, this is sad, and it's not great, and it's in the hills, and it's right near the trails that I run in all the time. But they're going to take care of it the way that they always do. And then it became more and more obvious as the day they went on that it was not a normal event.

Then flying from Portland to LAX, I could see the flames in the Santa Monica Mountains and flew through the cloud of smoke and landed, they didn't even mention the fires on the flight. They're like, it's going to be a bumpy ride, but it's fine. Paula had one of those when she landed in Bend. Like, the plane almost fell apart that hit the ground so hard. And the air flight attendant's like, welcome to Bend. Yeah. Like, thank you very much.

How about congratulations, you survived. Yeah. Nick, those were really early days, though, with the fire. I mean, it was starting to become bad, but none of us knew the extent that it would be so destructive and sad. Yeah, yeah, no, not at all. And then that first night, we decided to, a group of friends in me, we decided to not stay in Santa Monica. Luckily, my brother owns a place in Venice and we stayed there, a few miles south. And then the fires just got so, so, so, so bad, as most people know.

As your neighborhood been evacuated officially? Like your street? So my street was one short block away from the evacuation line. So I could have stayed. No one in my neighborhood stayed. everyone was gone because we were all half worried about our place burning down, but also the air quality was so bad that if you could leave, everyone left. When I was there, when I left, everyone was either, there was like no cars parked on the street.

And if there were, their trunk was open and they were loading stuff into it. That's crazy. It's apartment buildings and homes. Like, it's not like we're in the middle of the woods there. It's just so scary to think that that could have all gone down. And I remember leaving my place after I had kind of packed up. two bikes and guitars and my mom's art and some important things. I remember thinking, is this the last time I'm going to see, not just this apartment, but like this building and this

neighborhood? Because when you see the destruction that happened in the Palisades, it's unrecognizable. All the landmarks are gone. There's nothing left there. There's like huge areas that are just leveled like a bomb went off. And so once you see that, you think, okay, well, if that can happen, anything could happen. Anything can happen. Yeah. And it's crazy because you think or at least in my mind, I was like, forest fires are going to happen in heavily wooded areas where there's lots of like trees and loose foliage. Yeah, like where we live. I think the problem was that it was so windy that sparks were jumping these crazy distances.

And all it took was that to happen on your street or a palm tree on your street and there goes. So that's the scary part. It was so unpredictable and still is to this day as we're reporting this. Ongoing problem. Yep. It's so devastating. But you're right, Paula. It was that.

the winds. It was, there were videos that I sent you guys, too, of just these houses on fire with sideways embers just flying at, you know, 60, 70, 80 miles per hour. It's like from a movie. It's like stuff you'd see in a movie. But your house is, we're feeling

like officially going to be okay. Yeah, I would say so. It feels like it's mellowed a little bit. Yes. For my, for my particular neighborhood to be an issue would, it would take another crazy unprecedented event for that to happen. But I'm currently very far away in the Sierra in the mountains with the same group of friends trying

to avoid the worst of the air quality. But we're going to go back on Wednesday and hopefully the air has cleared out a bit. I don't know how long it'll be before we can exercise outside again. People are saying not to do that still. Yeah. Just like chemical stuff. I did actually do this whole check today on ensuring that we have fire insurance and what that entails. And I'm like, we should get a fireplace safe and what is our evacuation plan? What are the things in our house that we should take? Like, it just makes you think about we are in a place that's also prone to this and how quickly it can happen in the franticness of everything. And it's so crazy how I'm, you know, accessible it is to see all these videos now on Instagram. Right, right. People could

just whip out their phone and film their real-time event. You know what's funny about the taking everything stuff is you notice that everyone that I know is talking about, and you just kind of had the same thought. I wonder if you guys would have the same thing when you're actually in it. You realize, like, I don't actually need any of this stuff. Right. I don't know.

Maybe it's because so much of the stuff we know when I was digitized or whatever, but I thought like, what do you actually care about? Right. And I'll bring my passport and like some, a couple things. Because it would be super annoying to get a new passport. Right, right, right. But even that's it.

That's yours for the thirst thing. Yeah. Well, Nick, we're really glad you're safe and okay. and our thoughts are out to everyone who. There were a lot of triathlon community people, I think, in the Palisades. And it's pretty awful. Yeah, we'll check in again next week and see how it's going. So the next thing I want to do is actually just checking on our training.

I am trying to get ready for Black Canyon's 50K. So my training is slowly ramping up. I've been doing build runs. Been doing something like broken tempos, like all sort of in the like 330 per K. for the broken tempos, like just building the 345 per K in the long runs. And it feels pretty nice. Hip is like holding together just a little bit. So a little bit optimistic right now that I'll actually be able to race that.

And some time around the day that this podcast comes out, I think we'll have a little bit of an update on YouTube with what Paula and I got going on. Paul, are you back into, last time we spoke, you were kind of still in like, I want to be training every day, but not with a specific purpose. Is that still the kind of state-drawn? Yeah. I mean, it always has a purpose, Nick. Always has a purpose. Getting ready to train. But I don't know. I trained.

I ran like almost 80K last week and biked 10 hours. And yeah, it's slowly getting more volume. We went to the coast for five days this week, the Oregon coast where the weather's a little bit warmer and some new rides and new runs that are just refreshing to try new things. So that was really fun. And might go back next weekend. but yeah, we're lucky to have the van to be able to jump around wherever we want and train in different places.

Yeah, yeah. Vibes are good right now. Things are trending positively. So what happened just like a couple days ago? 70.3 pukon, Pecan. Tyler Mislachuk won. Yeah.

Jason West was second and Matt Sharp was third. No, Matt Sharp was not third. He was fifth. Okay, Matt Sharp was there. He was there. But my first thought was like, why is Jason racing in January? And didn't you say he posted afterwards?

Like, psyched on the 2025 season. No, I went to his Instagram to check. And he said, I can't wait to get this 2025 season started. I can. I'm like, I can wait. Oh, my God. Good for him.

Yeah. I feel like the way to do that would be just to train from 70.3 worlds till now and now take a break? Yeah. I don't know. Jason, if you're listening, tell us if you're going to take a little break now or you just don't believe in breaks. You're just a machine.

Yeah. I had like serious Tim Donne flashback seeing Tyler Mislitchuk go down and like rip up his like second, I guess, 70.3 in South America. It was his first 70.3. It was his first one. I couldn't remember if he'd done like Indian Wells or something. He raised Beijing. Gotcha. Olympic distance. But I go way back with Tyler because he's Canadian and he was like the little kid when I was training for my first Olympic games and he was like an up and coming junior and Matt Sharp as well. We kind of just. cross paths a lot, trained together a lot. We're in the same training group. So, yeah, super fun to see. I mean, it's kind of insane to see all these short course athletes jumping up and being so good in middle distance. I think next year is kind of crazy because post-Olympic year, this naturally happens, but I feel like it's happening exponentially because of T-100 and the money available now in middle distance racing.

Is it a money thing or is there a difference in the way that they train now that just works better for both? It's more appealing now. It's like, yeah, you can make money at this. Wow. it's crazy. I'm just impressed at how good they are right off the bat.

I'm not surprised. They train so much. I'm training the same amount now that I was when I did ITU. I think the proof and the pudding there is always just going to be

like big championship level of races and like the level of cycling at the big races with Magnus and Sam Long and laid low and everything. But yeah, like solid first hit out for sure. Cecilia Perez won the women's race.

She's a Mexican athlete that all, also jumped up from short course. Yeah. So good day for the short course people. All right. The next thing that I had down, Alex Yee ran

280710K at the Valencia 10K. Open 10K, not off the bike, right? Yeah, just didn't. I mean, he might have been gone for a bike ride beforehand. I don't know.

Sick. Probably went for a bike ride afterwards. World Traathlon also said that he's going to do the London Marathon on the 27th of April. Guys, that's old news.

There's been a slow-tritch to thought about that for like 10 weeks. It doesn't, We haven't talked about it. My question is, in a half marathon, would he beat Morgan Pearson? Oh, yeah. Which one of those two dude was to win? Oh, I would put my money on a lot.

I don't know. I would bet put my money on Morgan. I think Morgan would just like freaking gut it out so hard. Beast mode. Wow. He's training with the own athletic club all the time and just, I mean, leading the group every time you post a video, which could just be the video he just chose to post. But the dude is so.

freaking fast over the half marathon. Wow. Wow. Okay. Well, what do we think Alex will do? Or maybe we should wait for this to happen. But like, what would you predict his marathon time would be? Could he do like 220? Doesn't matter. No, it matters, but. I feel like he'd go like 215 or something ridiculous. Really? Yeah, that's awesome. 215 is not even fast. Don't men go like two hours now? No, no, no, no American men is even close to that.

I'm just assuming since he hasn't done a marathon before, you know, that like 215 would be really impressive for his first. That would be extremely impressive. Also, yeah, it seems like if he was training specifically for it, he's like a two sub two 10, I would assume, or like in that 210 range type of kind. I might be way up and we can take this off of A& but I don't think American men often go under 210 almost at all. That's a rarefied error. Yeah. All right. Well, the men's British record is 205.11. Oh, that's quick. And he's like the British 10K champion right now, right? So, either way, 207 is bananas. That's a 14.03 back to back 5K. That's so fast. That's rolling. That's all I got as far as like the international triathlon scene and just like a little bit of a recap on our week. I led the Zwift ride that we do every Sunday. It was a super blast. Everybody who did it unlocked the TTL jersey on Zwift so you can ride, wear that in real life. Super fun. And this is actually one of the last rides where you can unlock the current jersey because we're switching over the new one, which is going to match the TTL Nation in real life kit. The final thing that I got is not actually news, but this is just a fun idea that I had while.

I was trying to come up with news things. So if everyone is familiar or not familiar with the Nick, the trucker hat, I'm currently wearing it. It's a super comfy retro trucker hat. We did a launch with these and with some water bottles and some drink coffee mugs in December. We still have some stuff in stock. So for everybody who always complains that we don't have stuff in stock, we do right now. You're welcome.

And if you are the first person to use this code that I have created, you will get a free one of those hats. Oh, that's nice. It took me a long time to come up with. All lowercase, no spaces. Wait, how does this work? I created a code that can only be used one time. So if you are the first person to use it and check out,

you get a free trucker hat. The next nine people, if that doesn't work for you, you can use this code. Trucker 30, that's Trucker 30, and you will get 30% off. of one of those trucker hats. Oh my God. Eric's going on a hat selling rampage.

You're welcome. And hopefully I set it all up right so we don't just like give away all of our trucker hats for free, but I'm pretty confident. So there you go. Eric's like Mr. Beast, just giving stuff away.

I got these gains in my mind, okay? I couldn't come up with a way that you could like sacrifice a friend or something to get a hat, but maybe I'll figure that out next week. By the way, I was at the grocery store today trying to buy chocolate. One of the things I was trying to buy.

Did you see his candy? I bought it. You bought it. Beastables, Feastables. Yeah. I don't even know what it's called, but I'm like, this guy's entertained me. The chocolate is good.

It's good. The chocolate is good. And I'm a chocolate snob. We know that. Not sponsored. Just chocolate reviews by Paula. Yeah, like this guy does not need my money, but I'm going to buy it and try it.

You in some way helped make Beast games for that purchase, Paula. So. Oh, barf. That's all I got, guys. That is the news and a fun thing that I came up with. Well, good, because we have about 500. 500 questions to get through. So let's get to it.

We do. We do. We do. Well, even before that, we're going to do some this or that. This is a listener submitted this or that from Alex. Hi, Paula, Eric, and Nick. I made some this or that questions for you all. Hope you're all enjoying the off season. All right.

This first one's already. I already don't know which side to pick. Goggles breaking mid-swim or losing your nutrition on the bike in a race. These are both during a race. man I think I would I think I would lose my nutrition because I think I could probably grab a Gatorade or whatever the

Man if it's mortal hydration I'm my bonged but if it's Gatorade I think I could make it Just electrolytes for the whole vicarant? Good luck Yeah I would lose my nutrition because I'm somewhat of a camel And I'm able to race well with no nutrition anyway St. George one year I won

One of the years I've had a really good races there But one of the years that I won, I forgot to put the gels in my little bento thing. So I raced with water. And then I took a gel on the run. So I can lose nutrition and I still. Just to be clear, you took one gel on the run? Yeah.

70.3 on one gel. Yeah. I think people may not realize how little Paula eats when she races and still performs so well. They need to do scientific testing on you. There's something in your physiology. Just imagine if I actually did eat a lot, I would be. I don't want to imagine it. I want to see it.

I want to see it happen. Anyway, I would choose losing my nutrition. Yeah, got it. Okay, what about biking in a full headwind or all uphill? Like a race. All up hill. Yeah, all uphill, same. Eric?

You like going fast, Eric. You're not such an uphill grinder. I mean, I can get into the uphill, especially if there's a downhill after. But I guess I would choose like a crosswind, something that's just really uncomfortable and people don't like. We were running on the beach last week and it was a crazy headwind. Like running pretty hard, 510 per K. And then we flipped and came back and you're running like 420s, no problem.

But I was so frustrated by the wind. Eric's like, it's just like running uphill. I'm like, no, this sucks. This is not like running up hill. I would rather be running uphill. Because it's noisy and it's just awkward. I do not like the wind. I'd rather run uphill.

I feel like ever since I started doing a little bit of ultra stuff and like running up mountains occasionally. Ever since I'm an ultra runner? Yeah, since I trail run now. I don't know. Just like running slow and running in weird conditions

just has bothered me so much less. It used to drive me insane anytime I had to do a tempo run in the wind. Right. Anyway. Fair. Okay, next. Leg cramp or side stitch on the run.

Ooh. I feel like I can always push through a side stitch, but a leg cramp, you must stop. Yeah, I would guess I would go for the sides stitch. stitch. Yeah. Size stitches can get pretty, like, fully, you can't move to, though, if you let it get bad. Okay, I take a non-severe side stitch.

Okay, yeah, if you get to choose. Mild side stitch. Next, in a 70.3, run in flat bottom shoes, like casual shoes, or bike on thick tire mountain bike tires. This one was hard for me when I read it, because I'm imagining running in, like, my on Rogers. like my tennis shoes that I casually wear. And when I try to chase after like something in those shoes,

they're not easy to run in. These are both terrible. These are both terrible. But we've been riding around on the road on our diverge bikes with pretty wide tires. And I kind of like that feeling of like the speed doesn't matter, obviously, when we're just training. But it's less frustrating, I think,

than having shoes that are just completely not built for running. I think you would lose more time with the fat tires. For sure you would. So I guess like the shoes because you would ultimately lose slightly last time. Like what do you think you would run? Say you run 1.15 is your PB for just you, the generic you. This is a great question. You think it's 10 minutes slower and on Rogers?

No. No. No. Not even five. I don't think. Yeah. At most. I think I think the.

Maximum five. You would just like, I think you would be destroyed after it. That would be the bigger problem. Your feet would be ripped up. Your legs would be destroyed. I don't think you'd run that much more. Okay, you guys, if anyone wants to do this challenge. Oh, shit.

We'll give you a $1,000 T.TL gift card. No, we will not. We will. We absolutely will not. Like Mr. Bees. Yeah. Okay, never mind. But if anyone's truly interested, we'll come up with it.

Do a story on you. We'll come up for a board. We will share your, yeah, journey. Yeah. But do not hurt your. yourself to do this, okay? Just I get you're for sure getting injured if you run a half marathon an all-out half marathon.

I don't know, because the other thing is like when you're wearing casual flat bottom shoes, generally you're wearing them kind of looser to slip into them. I wonder if I crank those things as tight as I could. They do have some cushioning in them. I mean, they're tennis shoes. I did my first triathlon in Adidas straight up tennis shoes. It kind of had like the toe box with a little like nubby dimples on the front. Yeah, but I duct tape them.

they wouldn't fall off. I think if I had to do that, I'd like break them in. Like, you know, point shoes, how you break them in? You almost like break the bottom because they're so stiff. So now we're talking about

optimized Rogers. I don't think tennis shoes count. I think you got like vans or a conference. Crocs. Yeah, exactly. All right, $500 for Crocs at Oceanside. Final offer. Okay.

Okay, next one here. Ride whole bike with a flat or the run with one shoe. I'm just, I would probably just take that other shoe off and run barefoot. Yeah. I'm not running in one shoe. F'd.

Yeah. I would for sure run in one shoe because then at least you're going fast for like half your strides. Even for a sprint riding 12 miles on a flat. Oh, you'd be so off-sided though. Your hips would be done for life. I'm thinking about the bottom of your foot from, it depends on the asphalt. Especially in top-o. Oh, no, yeah.

You'd be cooking your foot. Okay. As long as it doesn't wreck my wheels, my sweet zips, I'll do the flytire. What a freaking evil, maniacal person came up with these questions? These are really good. They're like right on the edge of each other. Okay, last one here. No wetsuit in wetsuit legal swim or no bike shoes on bike.

Then no wetsuit. Yeah, I think I could still. No. Yeah, no wetsuit. I did that once. I actually had a super sprint in Milwaukee. I wouldn't say it was the right choice, but I survived. What I like about this segment, you guys, is that hopefully the listeners

can also think about what they would do. Right. It's like a thought-provoking. Everyone is thinking about what they would do. Yeah, so I like this segment. Okay, but let's move on to the questions. Here are the real questions. And as Eric mentioned,

these questions are submitted by all you listeners, our kids. You can submit your questions at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast. And you can also become a podcast supporter there, which we adore, and is the only way this podcast makes any money right now. So we really appreciate you. First question is from Garrett.

Hello, Eric, Paula, Nick, and Flynn. Can you all please clear up why pro triathletes and cyclists are not willing to publicly post power numbers? I've noticed it with amateurs as well, although it's not quite as common. From my point of view, it appears that public power numbers wouldn't be giving competitors an advantage, but I would love to get y'all's perspective. Love all that you do, Garrett. Great question, Garrett. Everyone's super skittish and neurotic.

Is it just one person doesn't? Everyone's like, oh, we've got to hide it. They hit it, so I should hide mine. I think so. I can't really think of a reason. A lot of pro-traathletes don't even post their workouts at all, even with hidden power. I don't really know of anyone. Jackie Herring does.

She posts on Strava, everything she does. Cat Matthews sometimes posts, not all her workouts, though. I'm pretty much every workout I post, and I'll share my watts like half the time. I don't like sharing my race watts because I feel like there's a certain aspect of keeping things to yourself and not giving any way to your competitors. I don't really know if it would be an advantage for other people to know what Watts you're doing. There's so many variables, as we know, with bike positions, et cetera.

But I think you could see, like, where your power dropped off, like, and sort of compare that to, oh, I made a move and Paula cracked at, you know, or something like that. Yeah, I just don't know what level of analysis someone else's coach could do or whatever it is. So, um. also my race numbers are never that impressive compared to my training numbers. So I'm just going to go ahead and hide up. This is the one thing I would say

that drives me the most insane is when people only post their hero sessions and their like KOM attempts on Strava. Like either post everything or don't post anything and you better freaking give it a name. Don't just post afternoon ride. Oh, by the way, I got 17 KOMs up, you know,

freaking Mount Lemon or whatever. I've said this before. And the reason I like Strava a lot is because I treat it like a media outlet a little bit. Like I do with Instagram, but I can post pictures there. I can put titles to the things, like something I was thinking about during the workout. We go to really interesting places to train, and I think it's cool for people to see on a map where we are and what we're doing. But there is obviously like some safety concerns around that.

And I don't know. There's plus and minuses. Oh, right. I forgot. I kind of forgot about that. That's right. Yeah. So some people just might not want to post maps or.

they think their training is the secret sauce and they don't want anyone else to see it. I kind of understand not wanting to post the session because it's like, well, that's how you're getting fitter. That is the formula. It makes less sense. It's like, well, like we said this before, you can do the Watts or you can't. It's, you know, there's no mystery behind that. That's what I feel.

I feel like that's the ultimate confidence piece is like, go for it. That's the thing that I think is interesting now is so much available information is But I think that I'm just using me as an example here, but this didn't necessarily happen. I post my watts of what I can do for 10 by three minutes. And another athlete who's racing sees that and goes, oh, that's what I have to do now. And they work that much harder and they know it's possible and they have this new goal. So it's motivating for them to see that's what the person with one of the best bike splits is doing. I need to do that too.

So whereas what was before it might have just been completely. Yeah, exactly. One person is doing it. More people do it. Everything's getting faster. The sport is elevating. So I think there's some value in keeping your numbers just for yourself and your coach. I got an idea, but I'm not sure it publicly. I'll talk about it later. Okay, well, I'll be a very private conversation. Next question here is from Kristen. Hey, Pentf. I got a Wahoo Kicker Corps trainer for Christmas.

After years with a fluid trainer, very exciting. I've had my old road bike, bought used 10 years ago, a three-by giant, but my local bike shop has kept it well maintained. As a strictly trainer bike, since I bought a new carbon road bike two years ago that's been for outdoor riding only, my plan was once I got the smart trainer

to put my carbon bike on it for the winter since this is what I race with and fits me better but now I'm wondering if it's smarter to keep my trainer bike to prevent any unnecessary wear on my carbon bike not even sure if my OG trainer bike is compatible with the kicker but I would love your thoughts

slash insights I've been a day one pod listener love the show thank you all for what you guys do Kristen do you guys separate your bikes at all in terms of trainer bike versus bike you ride outside? No. Nope. No, I think...

Going on the trainer doesn't ruin your bike at all. Yeah, the thing you got to be careful about is that you just don't want to be sweating directly into, like, the headset, primarily, and some of the bolts that are in the cockpit zone. So if you use a towel over the top of that and just make sure that that zone stays fairly dry, you're good to go.

I would even... When I'm riding the trainer a lot, Eric will put electrical tape over all my bolts. because that's really the biggest water sealer, right? Yeah. Versus a towel. Yeah. But I don't think it puts any extra additional stress on the carbon

that would be a concern of diminishing the lifespan of the bike, would it? The drive train is not getting dirty. Like, this is a pretty great situation. And the most specific. If it's like taking the bike on and off is a big deal and you are like so confident that the geometry and where your saddle is relative to the bottom bracket relative to the handlebars is exactly the same, then I'm sure, keep a trainer bike.

Yeah, that's the good point. You're trying to get comfortable in this time trial position, but if you're switching to a different bike that is a different position, even if it's a centimeter one way or another, you're not getting used to the position that you're going to be racing in. Right. Cool. Thanks for the question, Kristen.

Next question here is from Carly, from Boston. Heil, can you explain normalized power? Do you use it? The only thing is I don't think I can really explain it properly, but as long as you guys can, that's fine. Normalized power basically takes out the extreme... Nick didn't finish... Nick, do you want to ask it again to complete it?

She just kind of adds a little after-the-fact, nice thing, which I was going to read. You don't have to read this, but I just got the creative act from my father-in-law as a gift and was so excited to tell him that you all mentioned it on the podcast. Love you guys and all you do. Have a great season, Carly from Boston. This is the book that we mentioned last week

during the live recording that's on the desk between Eric and Paula right now. Anyway, Eric, do you want to explain normalized power? I even have the equation here for us if you want. Nick, you can give that to us for sure. Yeah, you can drop the equation on us in a minute, but my understanding of it is that it takes out all of the like outlier numbers. So like extreme peaks, extreme valleys. And I think most people sort of think of it as if you're coasting,

that's like zero number and that's sort of getting dropped out. So if you're, this is going to tell you the power number that you're pushing anytime that you're actually pushing power for the most part. People like to think of it as the physiological cost of what you did, of the average, which can seem much lower. If you're doing, like, if Eric's going out and he's doing 400 watts for a minute, then 200 watts for a minute, then 200 watts for a minute, then 200 watts for a minute, he'll average 300.

But if he were to be averaging 300 that whole time, he would be working a lot less hard. Because that 400, it takes such a big physiological cost. So normalized power will not be 300. It'll be much higher. A better example of that might be if you're doing 10 by 3 minutes with 3 minutes recovery. And the 3 minutes recovery, you're going like, 50 watts or 80 watts or whatever but the three minutes you're going 300 watts that average is 150 and if you go for a 150 watt ride that's so easy so easy exactly but the normalized on that session

would be much higher right nick right right exactly so the normalized will try to kind of the idea that the way people i've heard like to think of it is if i held the same power at this same like physiological cost that's what the number would be yeah it's kind of a fake thing though yeah it's a fake thing. A lot of the time people like to drop it in a conversation when their average power actually wasn't very impressive. Of course. I was like, well, I normalized 375. And like, well,

just because you know, you were doing a really spiky ride. In a race where like Taupo for me when there was a lot of race dynamics with groups, your average is going to be significantly lower than the normalized. Yeah. So in races, mine are actually always quite different. Yeah. When they're the closest is

when I'm riding the trainer because they're just never coasting. Yeah, that's kind of the time that I've seen our coach utilized. It was like, well, you're normalized was 340 and your average was 310, so that was a very spiky ride and we need to work on like trying to even that out. Exactly, yeah. Interesting. Like the pack dynamic caused you

to surge a lot. All the time, yeah. It's like if I'll do like a hard interval session or whatever, I'll take on training peaks, I'll just highlight the intervals and I'll look at what the normalized power was to give me an idea of what maybe I could hold for that period if I had held the

Oh, that is no... See, yeah, I don't think that's wrong. I don't... That is how it was designed to be kind of used, though. That's a tool to predict that. I think that can set you up for like extreme frustration when it actually comes to a race, and there are no little rests or anything. Which is exactly what has happened to me.

But if you want to know the formula, I actually don't have it here, but I remember it. It takes the 32nd rolling average, and then it takes that number, that power number, puts an exponent of four next to it. So then you get four... exponentially four times more, and then it takes the fourth root of that. And what that effectively does is when you go really high in power, it weighs that much more than if you're lower in power. So when you have those spikes, it brings the whole average up. Yeah, that's what I thought that Eric was missing in his explanation.

It doesn't erase the highest. Yeah, I thought I just chopped off the extremes. It actually heavily weights the highest stuff, higher stuff more. Interesting. I'm even less into it now. Yeah. Oh my gosh, saying the root of something just brought me way back to calculus and... Is the fourth root, right?

Is that right? Like the square root is two is two? Don't ask me. The fourth root is three? The fourth root? I don't know. This is when I was raising my hand in calculus and being like, what am I actually going to use this?

And my teacher being like, just shut that, show up. Yeah. What did I say? There was something so basic I didn't know today. Eric, what was it? Like in life. Like, I should have learned this in school instead of what I did. learn in school. I remember the conversation, but I can't remember what it was. It was definitely to do

with house insurance because we were reading that with the fine tooth comb today. Right, of course. You're like, maybe I should check this out. Yeah. Nice. Okay. Well, next question here is from Kate. Howdy, keeping it short for Paula. Do you have any favorite perks for being famous in the sport? Like, is it the free stuff, random people coming up to you, et cetera? You have been a part of my triathlon journey since day one. thank you for all you do for the sport. Kate. Operative word here is in the sport and that's still famous is a bit of a stretch. It's the best kind of fame.

It's like you get to live your totally normal life and then you go to a race and everyone loves you. That's true. I don't think I would want to be actual famous, whatever that would be. In fact, at the pool this morning, we can take this out if it's not because the front desk lady. So here our annual pass expired. Like every 365 days it expires.

Yes. I don't keep trying to. how can one that day is. Right. So we go to the pool and I don't have like our TTL business card that I use for business expenses with me. And we've been buying annual memberships, thousands of dollars for five years now. And you're there five days a week also.

Yeah. The lady was ripping into me. Like we were trying to steal swimming. For asking if I could pay tomorrow. She would not have it. I was like, I'll call you today when I get home with the number. And I was like, it was insane how rude she was to me. And, like, we know, we see her every day,

but she acted like we were complete strangers and it was our first time at the pool. She's like, what's your name? I'll look you up. She for sure recognizes you, right? Yeah, we're like, we're at the head lifeguards going away party. Come on.

Yeah. So I got home and I immediately paid online for our new pass and I cannot wait to go tomorrow and scan in. I told her, I said, like, just call back in and say you want to pay for the next 10 years right now. And just pray that she doesn't have the ability to do that. But my favorite part about, So you know, it's not trying to steal swimming.

My favorite part of not being famous. I don't like that word, but having an audience, I guess, in the sport, is being able to take a cool picture or do some kind of artsy thing or even do this podcast and have people look at it and listen to it and pay attention to it. Yes. I agree. A lot of people that are very much more artistically talented than me will take photos and they don't. have the same audience and not as many eyeballs will see it. And I'm not like an artist by any means, but I enjoy taking cool pictures and making like cool things that people want to watch or look at. And we all enjoy doing this podcast and without having some kind of results in triathlon,

that's ultimately what has allowed this podcast to be successful because we had a quote-unquote fan base before we even started it. So that's my favorite part. You're so right. Being able to express yourself is like, And I don't know. That seems like such a human thing. It's something I've been realizing lately too. Yeah. Yeah, I've wanted to quit the YouTube channel a whole bunch of times.

And just as I'm about to throw in the towel, somebody writes a really nice comment on YouTube and like, all right, I'll do one more. The people. Yeah, we got a lot of nice comments on last week's podcast, too. Yeah. Yeah, the free stuff and all that. I don't really care about the free stuff other than the fact that we need it to race. So it's nice to get the best stuff and the most reliable things from our sponsors.

and I like going to races and have people like come and chat and want to take pictures of us. It's really cool too. Just to feel like you impacted somebody in a positive way. Totally. Love it. Love it. Cool. Next question is from Florian.

Hi, Paula, Eric and Nick. Thanks for the weekly motivation boost. And congrats on hitting the big 150. Here's to many more episodes. Doing my best to help, I have a question about how professional triathletes gauge or measure their intensity or TSS of their swim sessions. For cycling and running, tools like heart rate monitors and power meters make it relatively straightforward, but swimming seems more challenging in this regard. Since as far as I know, most athletes don't rely heavily on watches or metrics during their swim sessions,

how do they assess their swim intensity and ensure it fits within the overall training plan? Is it more subjective or do they use specific methods to quantify it? So, there's a little bit more there, but I think that kind of wraps it up. It's funny because as I read this question, I'm like filling in the answers that you're going to give, but I'm very curious to hear what you guys say here. If halfway through the swim workout, all I can think about is breakfast burritos, it's like between a seven and a ten of difficulty.

It's a food-based RPE. I think he's right. There's a lot of challenges to monitoring heart rate and effort in the pool. But I do think there are athletes that do it. The Norwegians probably do it. I've seen people that were, I'm not sure where the heart rate is, but the coach has like an iPad on deck with their heart rate on it and he can kind of give feedback and moderation based on that, he or she.

But for me, I think that we've just been swimming so long that we can sort of know what effort level we can hold for the distance of the set that's prescribed. Like if we're doing 50s, I know how hard it feels to go hard for a 50 and when I can sustain for doing 200. So it's a bit of an awareness. It's about how you're feeling that day. but I think my initial reaction when I read this question was think less. Like not just in swimming, but across the board.

It sounds like they're very analytical and their TSS and their levels and all this. But a lot of it, not just in swimming, comes down to being able to feel your perceived effort and not always rely on what your heart rate or anything's telling you. Yeah. Ultimately, you can't check your heart rate or anything while you're in a race swimming. So you have to have a little better feel. Yeah, totally. Nick, as someone who started swimming later, though, how do you gauge your effort in swimming? Yeah.

Well, this is a little bit different because TSS talks, it's like usually people use it on like a weekly basis to try to accumulate training stress and manage that, right? So I, since I famously swim with a watch and have a very accurate kind of representation of how hard I swim. I once every few months we'll do a swim test where I do an all-out 400 and all-out 200. I put that into this calculator and it spits out this number

which is kind of like my threshold swimming pace. So then when I swim, Training Peaks knows how far above or below I was that and it gives me a somewhat accurate reading but from what I understand they're still developing

the swim TSS kind of stuff so it's not so accurate and I end up exactly like you said going off and feel and like trying to listen to my body and seeing how hard was that swim for me, how is that going to affect the rest of my week? I thought you guys were going to say that a hard swim or an easy swim, it only exists within the swim and doesn't affect a bike ride later or a run later. But you're saying that it

totally does. Oh my God, it does. Yeah. If we're like during COVID when we didn't swim, my biking and my running got so much better. Yeah. I think it just kind of makes everything slightly soft. Like your run form is less crispy, you just don't feel as poppy on the bike. Like, yeah, you can still go do those sessions, but I just feel like that spunk factor is gone. The fatigue level that swimming brings is so high.

Because I often think I'm going to swim at 8, I'm going to ride at 11. Like, I'll take an hour break and I'll be fine. But I get so tired afterwards that I'm like lethargic until the afternoon when I have a second coffee. It really derails a lot of the other activities, but obviously

it's very important. So. Even swimming. But sometimes I think it's people, I think we swim too much sometimes. Like if you're, the swim is such a tiny fraction of the race. Tell us we should all swim less. We want to hear it. I don't know. COVID was a fun experiment for that reason because we didn't swim.

And I saw what I was capable of on the bike and the run and it improved drastically. And then I went to 2020 challenge Daytona. The swim, you're in a wetsuit. Who cares if you'd been swimming? And then I won the race. Yeah. But no one was swimming though, right? Yeah, I mean, well, I think there were some people that had secret private pools, but I think there's just a fine line with swimming between like being tired, swimming tired, reinforcing bad habits versus like sometimes when I come back from taking a little off season, I feel like really good and I have the freshness to swim properly.

So like balancing that is a is an art. I would say there's probably very few age groupers listening. This is not a insult who feel like they swim. too much. I feel like I swim too much, but Nick, you go to the pool too much. I don't know if your volume is too much. When you go to the pool and do a mile, it's not that much volume.

Yeah, but, you know, I'm also just feeling it out, talking to folks. That's the downside of wearing the watch, dude. We know when you go to the pool for an hour and swim one mile. You're right. Okay, moving on here. Actually, we're going to do something a little bit different.

but we're going to do a little bike tech with Eric mid questions. This was my idea, guys. This is all Paula, okay? Yeah, that's true. This is from Kinley. What's up? Tubeless tire question here in regards to racing. Because race sealant dries up so much faster compared to normal sealant,

do I need to clean it out after every race? Can I just top up the sealant before the next event? I've been using Stans race sealant for context. I have a very difficult Conti GP-5,000 TR tire TR, do they mean TL? Probably, but I haven't looked at Conti's. Oh, tubus ready, sorry. I thought it used to be...

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I think it might have been called something else at my point. Anyway, I think you're right, Nick. That is a pain to get back on the wheel. Oh, I know that. Yeah, a different story there, but... So I'm trying to remove it as few times as possible. Just for context, I had to get that off with a razor blade once

because I couldn't get it off of the rim. I think if you're like dedicated to the Conti, T.L, then I would probably... T.R. TR. I would probably push it and just try to get two races out of it. And yeah, just add sealant for the second race. But I wouldn't do it a third. Wait, he's thinking he doesn't, you can only do one race on one set of tires? No, no, no, no, no.

So race sealant will typically dry up in like four weeks instead of eight weeks. So do you put new sealant in my tires every time? I open them up every single time. And do you clean it out? If there's shit in there, then I'll clean it out a little bit, yeah. Okay. Before every race. But we're not using Conti's.

that you have to get off with a razor blade. We're using sweet freaking Victoria's. Eric, do you think if you're an age trooper, you just absolutely do not worry about this and you just keep putting sealant in? I don't know. I mean, it's just, I think it's person dependent. How neurotic are you?

Because like every time, weigh that sealant bottle when you put it in. That's still in there if it's dried out. And if that bothers you. You're right. You're right. I hate the thought of it. Yeah, exactly.

You better plan it on every time. There's a problem. She didn't even know existed 20 seconds ago. I didn't know this existed. Not a problem. Oh my gosh. New shit has come to light. The shit has come to light.

Paula. With the references. Oh my God. Love it. The boys love me when I do Big La Pazin. Yeah. We do. We swoon.

That's great. Okay. So Eric, yeah, you take it off and you would do two twice. Yeah. If you just want to push it, yeah. But in a second little, the small tube, it's like whatever two ounces. just push it and accept that your tire's going to be like three ounces heavier or whatever the weight is.

Okay, well, we have another bike tag with Eric question. I'm going to slide it in there. This is from Nate from North Carolina. Hey, Eric, Paula, and Nick. I just got my first disc wheel, the head vanquish. I'm now learning that pumping up a disc is not as easy as I thought it would be. Yes, welcome, Nate. I tried the crack pipe style adapter just for everyone else.

Crack pipe is like the colloquial term for the adapter that you need to pump up a disc wheel because most pumps are the head is too big and will not fit into the little slot that is cut out in disc wheels to put errand so there's this little adapter that sticks in there that was really articulate neck thank you thank you i appreciate that uh i tried the crackpite cell adapter but it seems impossible to pump up without holding constant pressure on the adapter to the valve please tell me there is an easier way to pump up disc wheels what do you use pre-ride and then what do you carry with you in case of a flat thanks next from North Carolina.

Oh, that's a good point. All right. I hope you're only using your disc for racing, though, first of all. Yes. Hopefully. Please. This question actually was brought up by the group preemptively while I was running on the treadmill, and I think Paula had a great answer.

You need a friend. Yeah, you really need someone to hold. Yeah, this is a three-handed jump. You need someone to hold. This is a four-handed job. Well, I guess three at the minimum four-head deal. I'd say four. I'd say four.

You put pressure against the tire. It is possible to do by yourself, but it is, yeah, it's very challenging and you have to like real good tricep strength on one arm to pump with just one hand. Just find a friend, make a friend in transition and have them help you. Yeah, you're getting a friend to hold the pipe on and hold the crack pipe to the pump. Yep. And then you're pumping. It's just the way it is.

But it's kind of fun. I think I've said this before. Other people in the race would love to help you zip your wetsuit up, hold your crack pipe. I think there's this cool camaraderie feeling. Not just in the age group race, but also in the professional race. Anyone's happy to help anyone. Well, I shouldn't say that. Maybe not.

If they're not happy to help, then screw them. Yeah, agreed. I'm happy to help anyone. Then flip the favor and they hold you over. I mean, it's like, it's kind of nice. But on a ride, a CO2 cartridge adapter should fit in. Oh, for sure, for sure. So for a race or a training ride pre-race, you can take

regular CO2, regular adapter that you'd use for a normal tire, wheel. It'll work with your disc. You know what I thought of? At race is when they have a compression tank, those things also fit perfectly. You don't have to worry about a pump if you're so inclined to do something like that. Well, the mechanics at the T100 have this like gone with a little hose coming out of it where they can set the PSI, plug in the hose and go and it stops right as pressure you want. Yeah, with a disc chuck attached to it.

It's extremely cool, and it takes 33 seconds. Sweet. Awesome. Okay, next one here. This is back to regular questions here. What's up, Eric, Paul, Nick, and Flynn. I was stoked to meet up in Oceanside last year and hope to see y'all at St. George this year. I think the plan is that we'll all be there. Is that right?

In St. George, yeah. Yeah. Sweet. My question is, I'm a newer triathlete who is more of an adult onset cyclist than any of the other disciplines. That's a new one. I was riding. Yeah. I mean, that's great.

You're about to fall into one of the greatest pastimes of all the time. As John F. Kennedy famously said, there's nothing like the simple joy of riding a bicycle. Okay. I was riding a used trek road bike from the 90s until I bought my QRX, PRTT. That is a hell of a bike name. Mouthful. I still have the trek, but it's heavy and half taken apart right now, so I pretty much only ride the TT bike. I only ride solo with one or two people who just cycle for health.

both family members. Is there any reason to get a road bike other than there's always a reason to get a new bike? Of course. I've heard that pure cyclists get annoyed slash frustrated seeing triathletes show up to a ride with a TT bike. But if I don't ride in the same era position,

what's the problem? P.S. I out of the slash for Nick because I haven't heard one in a while. Thanks for everything you guys do. I just got a bunch of gear for Christmas slash my birthday and love it, Nick. By the way, people still put slashes in their questions. I just don't read them anymore.

That's what happens. I forgot that. That was a thing for a while. Yeah, that was a thing. I would have been like podcast 40. Yeah, that was early on. I don't think there's any problem with riding a TT bike in the hoods. The problem for that, I feel like, is my hands get so sore because you're a little bit further forward than a road bike.

You're more pressure on your hands. And it just gets really uncomfortable. I get to the point where I want to be in my aerobars because that's what it's set up to do. And if you go on like a big group ride or something, yeah, people don't like it. But safety-wise, it's not really that different than a road bike, right? Your brakes are there. I think it has become slightly less of a thing because we now have bar-end shifters that are like D-I-2 or Sram that are slightly more blunt.

And you can shift from the base bar. I think the initial concern was that you're moving your hands between the base bar to the to the bar end to shift back in the day and those shifters back in the day were like freaking pointing needles and if anybody crashes that's going straight through someone's leg, side, neck, etc.

It's just like a straight up safety issue the same reason you have to have your bar ends capped to race. These days, much less of a thing but it will make you kind of like have a target on your back just because old habits die hard. Would you ever show up to a group ride of people

you don't know with a TT bike? absolutely not. I think that's the thing, is if it's your buddies and you can talk about it before, that's fine. But with people you don't know, I still think it's no go. Yeah, I just, yeah, you know, like if you have to, you have to, and just, you know, understand that you're going to be met with a little bit of grief. But if you got a road bike at all, that's the way to go. And it's just kind of like, hey, we're all doing the same thing.

If you got a TT bike, it's like, what is this, these guys going to attack us and, like, try to go arrow off the front or like, and, you know, I don't know. Right. Cool. Okay. Great answer. Next one is from Sebastian. Hi guys, this one is especially for Eric. Your vlogs have a dopamine hit aspect to them,

but they also show the ups and downs of living as professional athletes, which makes you more relatable to your audience. Do you find that there's a tension between the two aspects, or do you purposefully mix them together? In other words, is there intentionality or just creative flow between these two? Also, since you create the vlogs, you control most of how we the audience get to know you and Paula. How true do you feel is the image you've created versus reality? Especially of Paula,

since we see her through your creative act, what you film, what makes the final edit. Thanks, PS, sorry for the long question. I couldn't make it shorter and also express what I'm trying to ask, Sebastian. Wow. I feel like that's... There's two questions in there, too. It's like a podcast. It's like a novel. All on its own. You could get so, we could talk about this forever. Okay, how do I start? First, can I just say something first? Go for it, yeah. I think the way that Eric portrays us in the vlog is exactly how we are.

And we don't have a facade or a fakeness. If you met Eric at the coffee shop, he'd talk to you like he does in the vlog. Very approachable, et cetera. And it's not like that with every athlete. I've found that a lot of YouTube triathlon stuff that I watch, that people behave very differently than they do when I meet them. person. When I see them in person.

Same on the podcast, I think, to a fault even potentially where it's like this is not that different than how the three of us just normally talk. And in fact, Eric has been made a point to really keep it that way. Yeah. I would say that my philosophy with social media and the videos and everything in general is that it is far too difficult to put on a facade or try to create an image or a personal brand for yourself that is anything other than who you actually are. And when we talk to our development team athletes, when I've counseled some USA Triathlon juniors in the past, I try to convey

that as well as possible. Like, don't try to come up with a way that you think that you should be or that the world wants you to be. Think of like what are the three things you could think of that make you, you, and lean into those and tell those, share those with the world. In terms of like the Stoke level or, you know, the dopamine hit. versus like reality, I think that I try to pace the videos to have a little bit of both. And I realize that just like stoke, stoke, stoke, stoke all the time in high intensity. You know, for one, that's not real life. And that's also not kind of how our life rolls.

And that's also can be a little bit fatiguing and unbelievable. So I think it's nice that our training weeks and our life actually does have this. like natural cadence of there's a high and there's a positive and you're overcoming something and then ideally at the end of each video I try to have some sort of resolution whether it's like we're working on it and we'll see you next week or it's like that was fully resolved the race is over etc um in terms of yeah like how real it is and everything I think it is it is the realist version of how I perceive our lives and I feel like I'm a relatively optimistic person. I like to see the positives and like the full long-term picture.

And even if we like had a hard week or a hard day that I was filming, like I'm always kind of thinking, yeah, but this is leading to the next thing and this is like part of the journey and it's going to turn out well and this will make us appreciate the end result. Wow. Perfect. Good job, Eric. Our vlogs have changed. Eric's being a bit critical lately of he thinks the vlogs now are less fun than they used to be because we used to just to just have less pressure in our lives, less responsibilities. We were racing well. We were laughing more. I don't know. Maybe the grass is... Do you not agree? I don't think that he's thinking of it as in like back in those days. We had no problems in the world. That's not true. I mean, we were stressed

for different reasons back then. We weren't always happy. I was definitely grumpy on rides. Like, I think you remember it in this like amazing light, but it's, there's so many things now that are better in our lives that I think what may have happened here is that I think the vlogs are more real than they have ever been I think maybe there was a little bit more of a facade maybe then I don't know I'm saying from the outside

because I didn't really know you guys that well at that time yeah I mean it's not really a totally fair comparison because when we first started the vlog we did like four episodes and then COVID hit and there was no racing at all we were just like what should we do oh QOM up Mount Lent And that sounds fun. And what should we do next weekend?

I don't know, go camping. Yes. That's not the same as like in three days we have to fly to Abiza and race all the best people in the world. And then five days after that, we have to, and like, what are we going to do with our dog? Back then it was like, let's go camping in Patagonia. We didn't even have a dog. Yeah, we didn't even have a dog. It was.

Yeah, so it was simpler. But it wasn't like necessarily real pro trath on life. That's true. So you got to take that in consideration. Back in Daytona in 2020. after Daytona, I said to myself, I'm only going to race once a year, every year from now on in my life. That's best thing ever. I distinctly remember that and be like, sit.

And then next March I'm in Miami, Challenge Miami. That lasted five weeks. Oh, rough. That's so good. Okay. Wonderful, Eric. We love it. We want you to keep it real.

Keep it coming. I say this as someone who knows you, but I was also a big fan of watching the vlogs. Yeah. I love that question. I think by the time this comes out, I should have, I should be putting out a YouTube episode either the day before or the day of, that's pretty real and talking about what we got looking forward to this season. So check that up. Nice. We'll do two more questions. Both of these are kind of quick. Next question here is from Troy. Trail running shoes,

cushy or no cushy? I tend to run the trails with my on-cloud monsters. They just feel very cushy, bouncy, and comfortable. However, wondering if my Adidas, Terrix, light strike, trail runners or a less cushioned shoe, then the on cloud is better suited. Thank you, Troy. This reminds me when I ran trails with you guys in Ventura with the Cloud Monsters. And, oh, my God, it was a nightmare.

Risky business, bro. Nightmare situation. Never would I. Your ankles. Although I did think, when I read this, some people might think of like a rail trail is a trail. Okay.

A straight trail with no turns. So we need to define trail. Go ahead. Cloud monsters are perfect. Yeah, go ahead. but a stiffer, less cush for sure, and not only less cush, but more stability in your ankles.

It's like closer to the ground, more tread. Yeah, and here's the thing. Like, in my mind, the cloud monster was developed for people who have to run in an urban environment, and it almost creates a feeling as though you're on a trail in terms of the softness.

When you're on the softness of a trail, you don't need that so much so you can go with a lower profile shoe and not beat up your legs as much. Eric, what shoes did you race the 50K in again? again, because those did not have much cushion at all. No, they're like ballet slippers. Those were, yeah, those were like OG freaking,

the stuff that we used to race WTSs and everything where you couldn't walk for three days after. Those were the Solomon S-Lab pulsar threes. If you go on the Solomon site and put in, like, I want to race trails, short distance, that's a shoe that'll spit out. It's super lightweight. and I think I would have gone with a slightly

slightly cushier shoe for that race because it wasn't super technical and my hip was kind of messed up after but if you yeah I don't know I think I've been more aware this year than any other year and maybe it's because we're doing more trail running this year the difference that a trail running shoe

makes versus a road shoe if I wear like a cloud especially a cloud monster but a cloud stratus or a cloud surfer on anything twisty single track, I do feel like my ankles are like nervous. Yeah. And they are too cushy for corner.

You almost sink into the corner too much. But when I put on the Cloud Venture, which is a trail running shoe, I feel like my feet are one with the rocks or something. I don't know. I'm not even good at it. Yeah. No, it feels good to feel the train more.

I feel that not all cushy shoes are created equal because the shoes I trail run with do have a lot of cushion, but I feel so stable in them versus the Cloud Monster, which I totally did not. And I would imagine maybe there's similar amounts of cushion. Paul, it reminds me of when you were at On and they were showing you all the different stuff they're developing and how much their trail shoe division and technology,

like they have to do things very differently than their on-road shoes. Yeah, because I think I said this before, but you can't just put a carbon problem. plate, a traditional carbon plate in a trail shoe because it doesn't have enough flexion for running uphill. Your Achilles would get way too worked. There's other materials

they're using and recognizing that trail running is booming and it's becoming such a popular thing. Onus putting a big focus on that in the next years. Yeah. One shoe that I think that I have personally used that you could check out if you're looking for something, I think

it's like the Brooks Caldera. It's like a super cushy fat shoe but also has like trail heritage and is that the one that's kind of fat in the back? Super fat. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the same with your ultras Nick. They're just very so wide that that inherently

creates stability even with gosh. Yeah. Whereas the monsters are you now. I was just made fun of for it today by my friends actually. Yeah, well, who's getting ankle injuries? Yeah, whatever works. Not me. Not me. I was so sick about trail shoes is it's like mountain bike tires. There's like a million different ways you could optimize them in different treads and

stickinesses and it's freaking cool. And also, you are going, you're going to wear out your road shoes faster. So don't lose your money on that. Spend money on a cool new toy that's sports specific. Yeah. Sure, your road shoes will last way longer. Yeah. Aesthetically.

If you don't use them on there. Of course. Okay. Last question here. Hello. Now that we are in the new year, I'm setting resolutions. One goal of mine is to improve my bike handling skills. Other than looping the switchbacks on my daily route,

what are some exercises I can do to work on this? bike skills? Yeah, bike skills, Paula, what have you done that you feel like has helped you?

Because Eric, I don't think you, you don't really work on bike skills specifically, right? I have. I've worked on bike skills. In his day. Back in the day.

It's so important. I always felt like the best bike skills was just, you know, finding squiggly roads to descend if you have access to that.

But we do a lot of parking lot like cone drills as well. That's for sure the best way. Yeah. But when our coach comes to bend and we do a little camp, we go to the parking lot

for hours, doing different drills, cornering as fast as you can. And it's a short 30-second loop or something that changes up. But you notice how much better you're getting with every loop. And then you think, okay, this is just for this course where you like know the corners really well after your 17th time doing it. But then you go around on the road and it definitely translates to how you feel going around corners faster and et cetera.

So the repetitive nature of parking lot skills really hammers in your brain. brain how to take a corner properly, any corner, not just in the parking lot, but it's a controlled environment. You take it easy at first. Paul, our coach is always like on the radio, so I have something in my ear and he's giving me tips the whole time. And I think doing TT bike parking lot skills has been the biggest help for me. And you lose it if you don't keep using it. It's so crazy. It's like after a winter of riding the trainer, that goes away so quickly for me. but after being here with focused work for a week with Paulo, I feel like a different person when I'm riding in the wind and everything.

How many of these skills are done in Arrow? Because I was thinking of everything as like slow stuff on a road bike, but you kind of like just opened my mind to this. Yeah, when I'm doing it with Paulo, there are so many corners. Maybe it's on a slight uphill. Maybe it's not actually really sharp. You're not coming into it with speed. You can ride at Arrow.

So he'll seek out corners like that or it's scary to ride at Arrow, but it's definitely possible. And then by the end of the session, I'm riding at Arrow every time and just learning what the limit is. Not that I'm anywhere close to the limit, me personally. No, but I think you're completely right. Their repetition is just like every single time

you go around the same corner, you can push it 1% more, 1% more. And like the parking lot thing is just like a little incubator for accelerating that process versus having to ride up a three mile climb and go down it. Yeah, I think that's what's really hard for me and riding in the Santa Monica Mountains.

amazing technical riding, fast descents, lots of corners. But my nervousness comes from not knowing what's next. So, yeah, I'm getting a little more comfortable on corners, but they're different every time. And that's really hard for me then to learn and go with confidence when I'm not sure how sharp that corner is or something. So that's why the parking lot is valuable. But obviously, if you ride the Santa Monica Mountains growing up and every day, you're going to inherently have better bike skills.

Ideally, both is good. Yes. Do you ever do any of those Maybe they're more photo friendly Bike skill stuff or like a bottle Pickup off the ground Those are all incorporated into the parking lot sessions Yeah

Grabbing bottles from the coach That's cool All of that stuff just makes you feel like At one with your bike Yeah I think that's a huge Wow dude Who cares if you can pick up a bottle It's making you feel like

I can lean my bike this way I have an awareness of where it has to go So I can put my body weight this way Trusting yourself It implicates, it changes your cornering even. The other thing you can do is just, it's just mountain bike. Just go mountain biking. Or you could ride Zwift.

Descend the Alpda Zwift. So fast on Zwift. So many corners. I've not known to like 90K an hour going down that thing. Nice. Superhero on the AlpsiWift. That's great. Okay, well, those are all our questions for this week.

This was, we tried some new stuff this app. And that was part of our promise to make 2020. 25 of the podcast, we're up in it. And we're living up to our promise right now, I think, at least. Yeah, what can people do? How can they can let us know if it was good or if we should just do the same thing? Well, I don't think that was that different from what we normally do. I did.

I was freaking kind of a whole news thing. Yeah, you're right. It was different. It was a little bit different. I think it was a little bit diff. We can't just change the whole format. You know, just like injectioning a little bit. Yeah, doing a bike tech in the middle.

Yeah. We also included more questions and we're a little bit more. Yeah. Snippy, snappy. Yeah. Yeah. However you are able to give feedback on this, feed us some stuff. There's a lot of ways.

There's a lot of ways. You know the ways, folks. Someone, I don't know if I included this Nick in the list, but someone said that a fun podcast format idea one week would be to do the calling format where we're calling people. But we're asking them what their most embarrassing moment in Trappon is. Oh, that's fantastic. We should definitely do that. How many people are going to give it?

How many people are going to give up their phone numbers for that? I don't know, but probably I mean, we had hundreds for the other things. So if someone has a really good one, they're going to maybe put their number and we get. That's true. So start thinking about it now, you know, because some people we bury these thoughts,

but we got to dig those up for the good of the masses here. Yeah, start a app thread. How many people would participate in that embarrassing story? Oh, we will have enough. I promise. There will not be an issue. The catch is that all three of us have to give one as well. that's fine.

Can you think of one? I'm not easily embarrassed. I'll find something. Yeah, I'm sure we can think of a single thing. That's probably good. I doesn't have to be devastating, but it can be the most embarrassing, even if it wasn't that embarrassing, I suppose.

My nails weren't painted the same color as my bike. I couldn't even be seen. Didn't match at all. Tommy! Okay, is that it guys? Did we make it? I know, that's it. Awesome.

Well, we'll see everyone next week. Let's go have some carrot cake. All right, bye, guys. Bye.