Botox in triathlon, racing injured, and choosing the right time to race a full ironman

Hey everyone and welcome to that Trathon Life Podcast. I'm Eric Lagerstrom.

I'm Paula Friendly. I'm Nick Goldstone. Welcome to our podcast. It's about Trathon.

Paul and I are both professional athletes. Nick is a professional musician, amateur

triathlete. And the way that we run this show is we talk about what's going on in our lives

and in the Trathon world. And some other worlds from Bike Run. We love all of it. And then the

bulk of the show we take questions from people who write in. So if you have ever written in,

we really appreciate it. And if you are waiting, now's your chance.

People last week did heed our call. And we got a lot of questions. And in fact, I think we're

going to try to set a record today with the most amount of questions answered. Not that we're

going for volume. We go for quality here. But today we're going to go for volume.

Take it away, Nick. I think actually, you know what? You've got some news. We've got some stuff.

We've got house news. Press a devastating thing that happened last night. What do we want to do

like our news or the world news first? Why don't why don't we start with your news first and then

we'll accelerate into the world of sport news. But you I don't even know this news because you

said you wanted to save it for the pod. I don't even think we're allowed to call it devastating

since there's actual devastating things happening in the world. Fair. Okay. Fair.

I thought I said it was fortunate. I thought I said it within like an appropriate amount of

sarcasm in my voice. But do you want to tell the story since you were the most mad about it?

I don't even think I was the most mad. I was mad after the fact, you know, repeatedly. So what

happened? Paula made in my opinion the best banana bread that she has ever made. I knew that's

where the story was going. You already know. If you've listened to this podcast for any length of

time, you probably also know what's going to happen. So our wonderful beautiful dog is an angel.

And if you've listened to the podcast like recently, the latest big episode, we he got locked

in the room with like 200 donut holes. Didn't touch a single one at nose level. At nose level.

Very far in the table for a couple hours. Didn't touch a single one. But Paul and I go to date night

after she makes this beautiful banana bread. We're coming home. We're both day dreaming, night

dreaming, whatever, fantasizing about finishing off this banana bread. And what do we find on the

countertop, but an empty banana bread tray in the place where it was. It was not on the floor.

The knife that was like in the banana bread, ready to cut the banana bread into small pieces,

still in the banana bed tray, but no banana bread. Yeah, to be fair, he left like the crispy edges.

I see. So he didn't even have the decency to finish it off. He left you the butts of the bread.

There was so much chocolate in there, too. So we were kind of hoping he would die.

Really sick, which I think he did. He was like in a coma for the whole night, but we came in

and he like kind of walked behind the corner wagon his tail, but looking at us like he did something

bad. But like you knew, could you tell? Are you mad at me? Oh, he 100% knew he was bad. But like

while he was doing it, you have to imagine he's thinking, well, I'm already in trouble. I just

will eat it all. Mine is well finished it off. So he has a thing for banana bread. Nothing else

has he ever done that for. You could have a piece of steak on the countertop on a coffee table.

He wouldn't touch it. It's actually it's actually insane. This is his third full loaf of chocolate

chip banana bread and he's still here to tell if anyone knows why dogs have a thing for banana bread.

We're very curious. The the major thing like honestly, why I was bummed about it is like I got

this chicken sandwich with bacon on it and I set the side the bacon and I was bringing it home

to give Flint some of this bacon and then you know, and we'd had a great day together like I took

him for an hour drive in the car and my boredom and he had his face out the way like it was great.

And then he just like betrays me by eating my banana bread. So the the the the bacon is still in

the fridge and I'm TBD. I'll also give it to him because I don't think he remembers at this point.

It's been 24 hours. Right. Yeah, I'm surprised he remembered by the time you guys came home.

Yeah. Oh, they know. I think this is just done approximately three minutes.

His memory was jogged. Well, Mike, if you guys heard shame on, wow, I'm like George Bush,

fool me once. Shame on you fool me twice. Shame on me. I feel like this is the third time now

that Flynn has eaten a loaf of banana bread off of the counter in six years.

He's not often enough to like remember. That's what happened, but let's get on to what you've

prepped. A lot of stuff happened this week. A lot of stuff. A lot of stuff happened this week

because it was going to be so hot. I don't know if you guys heard about this and I'm very curious

what you think about this. The LA marathon organizers decided that since the course at mile 18

passes the finish and then you do an extra eight miles to come back to the finish.

It was going to be so hot that they offered all of the amateur racers the chance to stop at

mile 18 and finish and get their finisher medal. Whoa. Yes. See, I've always felt like I think

it's unfair that in trathons, they like shorten the swim frequently for random different things

and that it can be a bazillion degrees outside and they're like, no, you're running the whole

distance even though people get heatstroke like every single time we do this. It wasn't that hot,

though. It actually ended up being it was it was like 85 degrees. Yeah, you finish it. That's

you face. That's right. It's hot. It's hot, but you trained for a marathon in Southern California,

not in Alaska or in Antarctica. It can get that hot. I don't know. I mean, people come in from other

places, but this is interesting. I kind of feel like. Did anyone take that option? Yeah, yeah,

but most people did not, but people did take that option. The thing about it is like you get to

that point in the marathon and that's where you hit the wall, even if it's not hot. So it's

obviously very tempting to finish there, even if it's not because of heat. It gives you that

option. Yeah. It's a dangerous psychological game. Yes. Yes. I agree. So I don't really necessarily

think you should get a finisher's medal. Would you even want it? I don't think so. I think that's

what I think you wouldn't want it. You just be like, you know what? I was not that in shape. I was

like dreading this anyway. It's super freaking hot. I'm happy to stop here. They didn't have a 10K

option. So whatever. I'm not going to like go around and say I did the LA marathon without

explaining this crazy situation. Yeah, ultimately it's for the everyone's doing it. Yeah, it's not like

getting the you know, they're not getting the marathon tattoo. Well, that's what when you said

Eric, what about when they canceled the swim and an Iron Man, you still get your Iron Man

finisher medal. You know, so that's but everyone has to do the shortened course. So it's a little

different, but there is a it feels like there's a little play in there. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe

it's just kind of like feels a little bit indicative of okay, not every single person is out here

to like get their fastest marathon time and that's the entire thing. And there's some people that

are okay with bailing a little early and next time I'll do the whole marathon. But I was out there.

I got the snacks on course and it was a vibe. Right. And you started early. But moving on to the pro

race, there was the women's race. I thought what was really cool about this is this woman,

Priska Chirono. She won with 22518 and she's 45 year old mother of three from Kenya. Yes,

professional field and the professional field. So so LA marathon famously does not have a super

strong professional field or amateur field for that matter, but still to win a race. There's

prize money and she was also actually the overall winner. She got an extra $10,000 for being the first

across the line. The women started about 15, 16 minutes before the men. So she won, but the real

news of the day came from the men's finish because with I would say a hundred meters to go,

there was this helicopter camera of the of the leader. And he seemed like he clearly had it.

There was no one 20 20 meters behind him. There was no one there. And as he's getting closer

and closer to the finish, you see the second place guy who's looking like he's going twice as fast

starting to catch him and spoiler. If you want to see this pause the podcast and watch it right now.

Okay, there's your warning. The second place guy catches him at the tape and beat him by

0.01 seconds to win the LA marathon full blown finish cam. Yes, they had to go to the camera and

they, you know, everyone was saying that the tape isn't actually what decides the finish there is

an actual line. And everyone, you know, this was all over the internet of this finish because

it was so dramatic. Also the guy who ended up getting second collapsed over the line and had to

be pulled off a he was he was so rigged that you could just see it in that whole last 100 meters.

Yes, falling apart. And what we found out and I do not see this in most of the articles about this,

someone on social media posted the video of about maybe 150 to go. The leader who was leading at

the time, who ended up getting second, he was getting led. You know, there's the media car,

there's the car with the with the time on the top. There's the motos. They all a bit from the

finish pull off to the side to to let him cross the finish line by himself. And he followed them

the wrong way to where like the media cars go. And then he had to backtrack. He probably lost

like 10 seconds. He had to backtrack and run to the finish. So he lost the race right there.

Yeah, he was so cross eyed. He was like fully delusional at that point for sure.

Brutal. Yeah. Yeah. He really was he was losing it. So if you haven't seen it, check it out.

That's the side of the Bianca happened. And Tade was supposed to do well here. And he did. He won

with 80 kilometers ago. He pulled away in one. The French guy who everyone's been talking about.

Paul sex us. He got second really great performance. I think there was some drama in the women's race.

Like some people went off course. Yes, they did. It was. Yes, I she did. And she was not that upset

about it. Apparently like she wasn't. Well, her teammate ended up winning it and coming third.

And there was and the women's race was much more exciting to watch, actually. Like it was it was

a nail-biter until the end. What is what is the deal with all the going off course lately?

It's like every single race. Yeah, she was led off course. It was not her fault. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a bummer. And if you're an athlete, you're not going to not follow the lead media course.

It happened in the US half marathon championships as well. The top three clearly were going to win

one-off course as well. And ended up coming like 11, 12, 13.

Yeah. How does that happen? Did they not have anyone know how the people who are the media

motos or whoever or do they have a GPS file they're following? Are they supposed to be

led by someone on course? I don't know. That would be great. There's a lot going on.

I understand. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not, I don't think people are saying, oh, it's up to the

athlete to know the course. But when you're a cyclist who's racing every weekend on different courses

and if someone's leading you a different way, you assume maybe if you did know it,

that the course had been changed for a crash or something like this. And then for the

running race, this is the last kilometer of a fast half marathon. You're not thinking straight.

You're just following who's leading you. So I don't think it's on the athlete at all.

No, I think anybody who comments on this and is like, oh, they're so dumb. They should

like just ignore the media model has never been anywhere near this situation. And if you've been

in this situation, leading a race, following a motorcycle, there's no way that you're going to

not follow it when it does something. Yeah. That's so heartbreaking. Unless it's really heartbreaking.

Just like drills a bunch of cones going straight through a line of cones. You're

trusting that person that they're thinking more clearly than you are.

Right. Right. Well, Elise Chabby did win the race for the women's in the study Bianca.

So Paul, thanks for that. Appreciate that. Finally, Ironman New Zealand was the first Ironman race

with the new 20 meter draft rule for the pros. So this was kind of interesting. It was also

almost, yeah, it was the first Ironman of the year. So we had on the men's side, Trevor Foley,

one, which was the first American to win this race in a long time. And he ran a two.

No, that's not true. It's the first American male to win it in a long time.

Oh, right. Which is, I have a thing on that too, because Cat won the women's race. And she beat

Chelsea's record by 11 minutes on it. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And I think also Chelsea's run record

copy by Tamara. So it was really faster over all on the women's side. Yeah. Which I think is a

little bit of it because it's a pro series race that attracted some really fast people

this early in the year on a different continent. Yeah. So we talk about ocean side being kind of

an early place to have a really good race. This is almost a month before that. And it's a full.

And this is a result of the pro series, right? I mean, at least I don't remember that Ironman

New Zealand having stacked start lists until like pro series started becoming a thing.

Yeah. I could be wrong. Well, yeah, you make it a pro series race. And suddenly it becomes really

appealing to spread out your Ironman's a little more. Yeah. If you're not cramming three Ironman's

into six months. Yeah. I think it's an odd bad idea. But it's really hard to finish the season

in December at a T100. And then get ready for a March Ironman. I think it really works better if

your last race of the year is Kona in October. You take your off season and you have a bit of a

longer build into it. Totally. Also, it's still challenging, though, because most people live

in a climate that's hard to train for an Ironman through the winter. So you have to go on camps

or be really good at riding the trainer, but kudos to everyone who went and especially who went and

performed well. I think it paid off for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking about how hot

it was for us when we were over there. I was wondering that if it's like different at this time of

year, because the UV index was just insane for 70.3 worlds in December. We were cooking in the

sun. And if we were saying, like, if it had been an Ironman and you were racing for four or five

hours longer, it'd be totally cooked. So it's not much later. That's crazy. Yeah. Do you guys

feel like the results would have been any different if the draft rule wasn't at 20 meters?

I think so on the men's side. Do you think Pierre LaCourre would have won?

I don't know who would have won, but I think it's cool that two men, well, the podium was

Pierre LaCourre was second and Matt Hansen was third. And those are traditionally athletes

that come out will not peer. He's a good swimmer. But Matt and Trevor, a little further back,

ride super hard, but usually can't really put a dent in the front because they're all riding in a

pack. But in this race, they could put a dent in them. And they're used to coming out and riding

really hard and running really hard. And now that pays off. So I think it really impacts the race.

Yeah. It is, it is kind of cool to see that now. Yeah. It's already working. We are

already seeing the changes. For sure. I think you can still ride kind of in a pack, like

at least visually having someone in front of you because Kat and Hannah Berry and Lottie Williams,

which ended up being the podium, we're still riding together, quote unquote, like they were with

each other, but obviously getting less of a draft effect than at 12 meters. But no matter what,

still at 20 meters, you do get a boost of like riding with someone not being by yourself,

staying staying on top of it and having a bit of a carrot if you're behind.

So do you think, obviously, it's clear to see how it might affect the bike, but do you think this

might affect the way people swim? I don't know. I think I'm always swimming as fast as I possibly

can. I feel like at a camera for those Mark who said this on pro-try news or where exactly

I heard it, but it's like definitely making it. If you are a fast swimmer, there's more motivation

to actually swim fast because it's not like, oh, guaranteed. I'm just going to get rolled up

by 40 guys or in 40 women like within two minutes. You might actually have more motivation to

swim really fast and then bike the first 40k kind of. I also think this swim matters less of it.

As evidenced by two people that are usually not in the front of the swim,

Trevor and Codium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Still matters, but it's not devastating if you're behind.

True. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So normally, we would do a segment here, but we're going to save that

for halfway through our kind of half rapid fire style questions that keep things moving

all along a little bit. So as Eric said earlier, thank you everyone for submitting your questions.

This week, we're going to do, we're going to try to break our record here for question answering.

You can submit your questions at that triathlonlife.com slash podcast,

and you can also become a podcast supporter there, which is fun because this week, podcast

supporters are going to get a little visual aid element of our segment. We're going to play a

little game called the, you've heard of the newlyweds. This is the newly shreds.

It's the TTL edition version of this. Okay. Maybe needs a jingle? I don't know. We'll see.

But we'll start with questions right off the back because we have no time to waste. This one is

from Caroline. Hi, Paula, Eric and Nick. I qualified for Nice, but I'm now injured.

Best case scenario is that I can compete in the swim and bike and swallow my pride to walk the run

and hope to finish under the course cutoff. Worst case is I take a DNF and only compete in the swim.

My question is, is it worth going to get some experience and soak up the atmosphere or should I

take the partial refund? It would be only my second 70.3. I had a did not start the one I had to do

DNS the one I had planned for this year and hope to qualify again next year. That said,

there's also a chance that I will never run again. Oh, boy, that's harsh. Wishing Eric a smooth

recovery and return to competition. Thanks, Caroline. Also, the little additional information here

that's important is that Caroline is getting a complicated procedure. It's a knee replacement.

Paula, is that right? I believe that's what it said in the email. Yeah. And so there's a very

small chance that she will be recovered by this race according to her. So what does this mean to

you guys? When I first read it, I thought it's definitely worth trying to go and injuries get

better. And then when I saw that it's like I'm pretty major surgery, I thought you definitely

shouldn't go. I think putting the pressure on yourself of having a deadline is kind of like

Eric getting his surgery. He's not putting anything on the calendar because having this deadline is

stressful in a way that you might accelerate your comeback at an inappropriate rate or

become sad or it makes it worse to go through the recovery when you have a deadline like this.

Yeah. What I'm doing, which is something that you could do, as there's like an open water swim

that's halfway through my recovery timeline. That's going to give me an excuse or a reason to

be more diligent with swimming, but it has nothing to, it's not contingent upon my,

you know, your knee or my hip being ready in time and it won't cause me to push it like Paula said,

but it is an event that feels important. I mean, I guess I can kind of speak to this because I

went to a world championship injured knowing I there was a good chance I wouldn't finish the run.

Right. And it was a horrible experience. I wouldn't suggest anyone do that. It's not fun afterwards.

It's really hard to enjoy it. It makes the lead in not fun. And it makes you want to just go home

right after. So you could get, if you could get half of your money back right now, that's great.

Also think about what you'd save on the flights, the accommodation. You're going to save so much

money if you're thinking it from a financial perspective. I don't know. Usually I'd tell people

to go for it, but in this situation, I might say I'm on team and don't go for it and be be careful

and do the recovery right. Although if there were if there were a race to go to just to soak up

the vibes, it is a world championship. This is how I feel. I'm on team. Be careful and go for it.

So don't do anything that will hurt you, but this it is such a cool vibe as an age reaper. And I

think if you go in not thinking you might be able to finish, but knowing you won't, maybe it will

eliminate the thing that Paula is warning you about, which is like the feeling of, oh, that sucked.

The thing about this, this type of a surgery though, it's not like it just affects the

Ron. There's no way you're going to get bike fit enough to complete a course like this hilly

and that's hard. That is the other piece, right? You can't just soft pedal this. Yeah, not like.

Yeah, you have to get up the hill hard and it makes it harder to get the cutoff time because the

course is so hilly. I think Paula's right. You're going to make yourself miserable trying to get

ready and then thinking about how you could have been in the whatever. Like I think it just put

the difference. Like you could do it next thing and just like book the travel and go and hang out,

but not race. If that's not going to tear you apart, I love that. But don't do this like, oh,

maybe I'll just buy you until it hurts or you know, like that. I don't think that's going to be good.

I love that. I think that is the perfect. If you can afford it, that is the perfect compromise.

Because you did earn the vibe. You just now you can't do the race, but you earned being there

as part of the vibe. Yeah, best case scenario. You got friends who are racing and you can be there

to support crew and feel the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Awesome. Well, good luck,

carelining and I hope the surgery goes well. Next one is from TJ. Hey, team TTL,

really appreciate the work your team does to make such a great podcast. I know this has already

been addressed, but the more I read about it, the less I understand. This is a real Michael Scott

situation where I need you to explain it to me like I'm five. It's my goal this year to qualify

for 70.3 world championships. And I'm trying to fully comprehend this as to know which time to strive

for. I'm in the 30 to 34 age group, which seems extremely competitive. My best 70.3 is a four

hour 51 minute, but I've had big improvements lately. It seems there is no exact time that

will qualify you for 70.3 worlds. It's based off of how you do versus the field that day.

Question mark. If this is true, would it be easier to compete at a smaller 70.3 race compared to

ones that sell out? I guess the only real answer is to get faster, but trying to be strategic. TJ,

I have no idea. I feel like you have the most intimate understanding of this topic, Nick,

especially with the new criterias and stuff. It is the same for the pros in a certain way,

which is you go to less competitive races, you're more likely to get your world slot. It's the

same for age groupers. You go to less competitive races, you're more likely to get your world slot,

but it really is. It used to be more luck of the draw. Now, theoretically, it should be less of

a luck of the draw because of the way that they weight these times. If you have a truly good race,

then you're placed higher up in the performance pool, which is this new system that Ironman does

to try and equalize times across different ages. Before, you could have had a really great time,

but three guys show up in your age group, let's say, that are faster than you are, and then you

have no chance of getting the slot if they take theirs. Whereas now, if you have a really good time,

compared to the rest of the field when adjusted for age, it still gives you a great shot at snagging

one of those slots. It's still worth it to go as hard as you can, even if you know for a fact,

you'll be fourth or fifth in your age group. It is just about getting faster, but if you can

pick races that are less competitive, racing at ocean side would not be a good place to try to

get your qualification because it's such a hotly competitive race. But maybe somewhere,

for example, I've heard that races in Asia are in general less competitive. If you're willing to

travel to there to get your slot, you would increase your chances a lot. If you have a 451,

that is a pretty good time. I qualified in Moro Bay with I think a 445, and I got the last.

That's not too far off. No, it's not far off. That was the last slot in my age group. I barely

made it. It is possible, especially depending on where you are. Is there any way to know which races

might be lower attendance or easier? Here's what I would do. I don't know if there's technically a

way. TJ was saying that they could check if they sell out or not. That's one way to know. But the

other way that you could do it is you could go on the USAT website and see what a USAT assigns

scores to finishing times. You could look at a few races and see, and you can compare these A to A.

You can compare the scores and see, oh, there are a lot of people over 110 score at this race,

and not many over here. That's the way I would probably do that to check for less competitive races.

I also think new races will be less competitive, like Dallas. Or like the Northern California

redding race may be, even though California is kind of tough, the West Coast general is kind of tough.

Yeah, that's a good idea. A new race. Yeah, like that. Okay, next question here is from Alex.

Hi, guys. I have a potentially complicated shoe question regarding a cool event. I'm likely doing

the Fenway Park marathon. That's so cool, which is a marathon fundraiser consisting of 116 laps

around Fenway Park, which is where the Boston Red Sacks play, around the warning track. So the

warning track is within the stadium, but on the outside of the stadium, if you've ever seen

those races, they sometimes do it like the seventh inning, they let the fan get a lead, and then

their track guy in a funny suit tries to catch them by the end. That's the warning track.

The surface is a well-maintained gravel or clay, although not super competitive. I don't want to

run a marathon without putting my best foot forward, so I'd want to try for a new PR. What shoes do

you recommend for this surface? Should I just treat it as a road race and wear my usual carbons?

Adjust to something with more grip and stability or ditch the carbons altogether. Alex, so for

context here, it's not just running on this dirt clay mixture. It's also you have so many turns. 116

times like six turns, and they're not 90 degree turns. The one around home plate basically is a

90 degree turn. So would you still wear regular pillow shoes, carbon racing shoes?

The race in Vancouver, the T100 of Vancouver was primarily on relatively good quality gravel,

so it was not on pavement, and it was quite annoying to wear super shoes with zero grip. You could

feel your foot slipping with every step. And like we've said before, super shoes are not great for

corners, but some are better than others. I think Nike is a pretty tippy, and then I don't know,

I think the ones are actually a little bit more stable. I know I'm a biased. I feel like this is a

bit of a replay of last week's question where we broke this down real hard for somebody. For the golf course.

Yeah, of course. I was thinking the Cloud Ultra Pro, which is the race trail shoe might be good,

because it feels super stable, it has grip, and it has Boeing. I have Boeing.

Boeing.

A love-boy.

End of question and discussion.

I think that's it. What the Boeing?

I think that's it. The Boeing is the way to go.

But no matter what, carbon shoes are faster than training shoes. I mean,

yes.

If you're going to pick shoes that you already have in your arsenal,

don't pick your training shoes. Pick your carbon shoes, for sure.

Yeah, just deal with the corners.

Deal with the slippage.

You might have a sore ankle the next day, but it's going to be faster, for sure.

And you'll get less sore.

Right.

Right. Cool. Next question here is from Austin.

HTTL has been listening to the podcast for a few months now.

Love it. My question is I'm training for my first 70.3 in July and can feel the

itch of potentially wanting to do a full at some point.

How much time would you all think is needed to train after completing my 70.3?

I'm an athletic trainer and professional hockey.

So my race window is only a few months in the summer.

Thanks for all the fun episodes and good luck with the labor and recovery

Eric. We have a ton in the hockey world and it's always night and day when

they're fully recovered. Cheers Austin. That's great to hear.

Love to hear it. Yeah, because I'm I'm going to be doing hockey level moon

hovers for sure. Checking people on the course.

Yeah. Pivoting.

It's kind of crazy to think that you want to do a full when you haven't even done a half

yet. I would just take one step at a time and also you might just want to do another half

because they're way better.

But I think you could do a half in June and a full in August for sure.

Yeah, I think so, especially if you treat that half knowing you're going to do a full.

Yeah, so you're doing a little bit longer rides.

Yeah, but if you've never done a triathlon before, I would suggest

doing your first full in 2027. Why rush into it?

This is like so common, you guys.

Like as having worked in a triathlon shop, the number of people that walked through the door

and were like, so I signed up for an Iron Man in six months.

What do I need to buy? Don't have a bike.

Don't have a wetsuit. Don't have anything at all.

But, you know, so Iron Man on TV, this is so common.

I mean, it is much more challenging to finish and therefore has maybe a little bit more

like prestige or bragging potential.

I mean, it sounds so hard to do on and I've never done one.

So I can see the ambition of doing something extremely hard that sounds impossible.

That's the idea.

It's not like, I want to do this. This is going to be my new sport.

This is like, this is a crazy thing.

And the next year, I'm going to like, do rim to rim to rim.

And then the year for that, I'm going to climb Kilimanjaro.

So if you're that set on it, you could for sure do one in the summer.

Yep.

Whenever I hear this, I feel a bit used, you know.

Because I'm like, oh, man, no, come, come, come hang out with us.

Don't just use us and leave us, you know?

Yeah, well, that's our job to, you know, you've done a full.

That's the triathlon. I mean, triathlon.

Like people just like do, they've never done a triathlon.

They do an Iron Man and they never do triathlon again.

They never intended to do triathlon again.

They're just like, I think that's pretty rare.

Yeah, maybe I know stuff.

I ride with people who have done that, though.

And I'm like, why, why did you do this?

Why did you do this?

I think you got to be pretty locked in on that.

Otherwise, I think a lot of people do kind of like get into it

and end up getting into the community and everything along the way.

Yeah, yeah, you're right.

That's just the job of the community and of the race itself

to put on a good enough event that you want to come back for more.

You're right. You're right. That's true.

That's true.

It's also so expensive to invest in the gear.

Once you have it all, it's hard to just abort ship.

Yeah. Okay, next question here is from Ash.

Oh, boy, thank you for the pronunciation guide here.

Hello from Gloss Tisher.

Spells, not like that.

Okay. What do you think is the minimum swimming

you can get away with for a sprint or maybe Olympic distance

for context, I'm a child onset former triathlete.

Already bringing that back from last episode.

I joined my first club, age 10, but I'm now 35.

Haven't done much for 10 odd years,

mostly sticking to trail running.

I'm thinking of training for a sprint next summer.

I've just broken my wrist hence not sooner.

I really enjoy swimming, gross I know,

but my closest laneed pool or open water spot

is about an hour's drive each way.

I can't afford to go regularly long-term.

I'm not remotely competitive in terms of my biking or running either.

Swimming was my strongest discipline,

so the time doesn't really matter.

I just don't want to feel like crap getting out during the swim.

Good luck to Eric on his hip-healing ash.

Well, that's too bad.

You will always feel like crap getting out of the water,

so that's never going to change.

But this question is still valid.

So, what do you think?

I'll be like, what do people,

like we answer this question so often or questions similar to this

and it's always kind of the same answer.

It's like, how slow are you comfortable going?

Because you could not swim a single time.

You could put on a wetsuit and you could do like double arm backstroke

and get through a sprint trough on the problem feeling completely fine.

So, like, are you comfortable with that

and then you just like ratchet up the number of swims

that you're going to do from there?

I think you should at least go to that pool one time

and swim whatever the race distance is once straight through

just so you can tell yourself that you can do it.

I think that'll tell you a lot.

Yeah.

And then put it on the wetsuit for the race

and you're floating and you're totally fine.

Yeah.

Oh boy.

That's kind of a good idea.

Except when you do anything in practice

that replicates what you're going to do in the race,

it feels seven million times harder.

Yeah.

If you run a half marathon in a workout,

it's going to feel way worse than an race or way longer than a race.

Yeah.

Even if you swim 2K in the pool,

it's going to feel like never ending.

Where's the race that kind of goes by quicker?

But yeah, I guess if you can do it in a pool,

you could do it in the race.

There you go.

Yeah.

Just to never have done it kind of scared,

would scare me too much.

Well, like this person,

that she said that she did triathlon back in the wild

and she did it so like,

yeah, you could do it straight off the couch.

Pretty confident.

Probably.

Probably true.

Wow.

I love the idea of that though.

There's for sure people who do that.

Next question here is from Fernando.

Hey guys, I've been thinking about this question for a while,

especially now that the T100 Spain will be in the city where I live.

When training for local races,

how would you find the balance between knowing the course perfectly in order

to get a home court advantage versus getting so familiar with it

that you no longer feel the excitement on race day?

Thanks for everything for Fernando.

You know, I was thinking about this like last week

and just kind of not like this exact thing.

But what occurs to me is if you're local,

you're not going to, you don't need to go out and ride the course

like in its entirety frequently.

Slash, maybe ever.

I think if you like do a training ride on the back half of it sometimes

because that's where you ride normally and you know every inch of it,

like you know the roads so you know what it's going to feel like.

You know where the big climb is.

I definitely wouldn't go out and like do multiple reps of like the entire course.

That I think that's a recipe for setting yourself up for like

being able to intimidate it by how long it is and stuff.

I think instead of thinking about the

losing excitement for the race,

having people come to your hometown and race

is enough excitement in itself to make the course not feel like,

oh, I've been there done that because I've raised an Edmonton before I grew up

and ridden those roads 10 million times.

And it was the most exciting race of the entire year for me

because people were coming to my city to do the course

and to see these roads that I train on all the time.

And that was cool to me.

So there is a little bit of I think a home field

advantage to knowing the course so well and to having your friends and family

watching you and to sleeping in your own bed.

So that's way more of a benefit than feeling a bit stale by the course

if it's something you ride all the time.

For sure.

This is kind of how the same I feel about doing the high cascades

100 mountain bike race here in town.

I've ridden every single trail

and I rode like a little bit of the actual connections

that you need to make in the race,

but certainly didn't feel like I needed to go

do each, you know, in order the entire course.

And yeah, there's a whole excitement of people

that you don't, people that you know come and experience your home place.

Right, fun.

Next question here is from Kim.

Long time from the very beginning listener

and current TTL team member,

Eastern Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Wow, so Newfoundland is the dog or is the place?

Is it Newfoundland?

No, it's just a place.

It's not a kind of dog, right?

Yeah, it is.

Oh, it is, but it's also a place.

Yeah, so I'm a little confused here

because Labrador is not a place, right?

No, Labrador is a place as well.

We really Newfoundland and Labrador are both places and dogs?

Yes.

Okay, so I guess you're telling us where you live, not near two dogs.

But lots of talk of Strava items recently.

My question is for those who have the paid subscriptions

and get the athlete intelligence feedback

after a workout is posted,

how reliable do we think the info in this recap is?

They often seem to be quite positive

and leave me with a good vibe,

even if I think the workout hadn't gone well.

But are they accurate?

Your commitment to all you're doing for the sport is amazing.

Great respect.

Appreciate any thoughts on this, cheers.

Kim.

First of all, Newfoundland and Labrador is a province.

And Newfoundland is the island

and the mainland region is Labrador.

So they're...

Okay, so let's go back for a second.

So the name of the province is three words.

Newfoundland and Labrador.

Yes.

Then there are places called Newfoundland

and there are places called Labrador.

And then there's a dog called a Newfoundland

and a dog called a Labrador.

Is that right?

Am I an inception?

Am I being punked?

What's the question I missed it?

The Strava Athlete Intelligence thing,

you know, the little AI recap thing.

Oh, I see, okay, okay.

I think it's super entertaining and fun to screenshot

and send to your friends.

I'm not changing my training based on it.

Yeah, really?

You're not going to go against your coach now.

Strava Athlete Intelligence?

No, but it is wildly more positive than my coach.

I agree.

Yeah, I literally read it just to make fun of it.

That's how I feel about it.

Does it have to tell me more button?

It does.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

It does.

Don't stop.

Yeah, tell me how great I am.

You actually caught and pasted this huge paragraph

into the question.

In case we weren't familiar with

the Lingo, which we are familiar.

But you can disable that on your Strava,

which I have done.

Yeah.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, it's like your fastest running pace in five days.

I'm like, why do I care?

A strong pace over rough terrain.

And with a great elevation gain, keep pushing.

Yeah, yeah.

I love it.

So what's the basis of the question?

Do we trust it?

How do we trust it?

Basically, I...

No, we don't trust it.

It's not a real human.

No.

It's just...

It also makes up facts sometimes.

It feels pretty bad.

It's wrong sometimes.

Right now to me.

But I'm sure it'll get better over time.

Yeah, I would not have great...

I just don't like AI things in general.

But it's nothing against Strava.

Right.

I would definitely not upgrade to premium for that feature.

For sure.

Yeah.

I got it.

Next question here.

And it's our last one before our little segment.

This is from Gabby.

Hey, here's a random one for the Rapid Fire Style week of questions.

If you were a Pokemon, what would you be?

Hoping for a speedy recovery for Eric?

Cheers, Gabby.

Eric, if we could capture all these good vibes

going your way for recovery and direct them towards your hip,

you'd be healed already.

Oh yeah, I mean, I feel like when I use the laptop,

they're just like, ultimately, I was seeing...

The buzzing, buzzing into your hip.

I love it.

I couldn't even name one Pokemon.

If you were going to pay me $1 million.

You could name them.

There's a total one.

There's a total one.

No, I couldn't.

Charizard was like super rare.

Wait, Paula, I'm in a name one

and you're going to tell me that you have heard

about this Pokemon before.

Yellow one.

The yellow one with the lightning bolt ears and the tail.

Pikachu.

Yes, nailed it.

I get a million dollars.

I get the Pikachu.

Eric, you named the one that I see myself as.

Charizard?

No, the...

Oh, they both have...

Oh, I think you're confused.

I think you're putting Bowser and Charizard together

because Charizard does not have a shell.

No, no, I was saying there was a total one.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I know that there's one called Charizard

because it was like super rare.

Right.

Oh, why is this question so ridiculous?

Like, do you know enough about them to be like,

on that one?

First of all, I had all 150 playing cards

and I played the game, so I do know all of them.

All right, Nick, you just tell us which Pokemon we are then.

Paula is Pikachu, for sure.

Okay.

Um, why?

Because you're like the main character energy kind of

and Pikachu is like the main character of the 150.

Is that, well, how am I main character?

The franchise player.

I mean, you're like the main character of this pod.

You're kind of like our star athlete

and everyone loves you.

Yes.

He twisted that to be positive.

What, how else would it be positive?

Is he also a little negative shithead sometimes?

No, not at all.

He's actually, you're unlike each other in that way.

He's always positive.

And they're the still-

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, Eric, I'd say you might be my favorite Pokemon growing up,

which was Matt, Matt champ.

He's like, um, he's very strong.

Oh, he's a very strong Pokemon.

Does that sound like strongest?

Eric does have big biceps now.

Yeah, it is some, um, from his European crutches.

No, I'm doing like some upper body focus little stuff in the gym

because I can't do my, you know, lower body.

So I was doing some bicep curls with the TRX.

Nice.

Pretty sore right now.

No big deal.

So yeah, Matt champ, that's me.

Matt champ, and I was going to give myself Squirtle

because I always liked Squirtle.

That's just fun to say.

Okay, now, if you are a podcast supporter,

first of all, we so appreciate you being a podcast supporter.

And we know that this is mostly, uh, uh,

it's something that you do out of appreciation for the podcast,

but we do like to every once in a while do some fun little things.

So this is going to be, uh, the podcast listeners are going to get this on audio,

but you're going to get this on video as well.

We're going to play a little game.

I already teased it before called the newly shreds game.

Now, Eric and Paula both have pen and paper or pencil and paper.

And we're going to play, this is how it's going to work.

We all have pencil and paper.

You have one, okay, great.

Yes, yes, we do.

Oh, yes, I do too.

Sorry.

And we are each going to say of the three of us,

who would fare best in these questions, okay?

Or not necessarily fare best, but you'll, you'll, you'll,

you'll pick up on this as I'm writing on the piece of paper.

And then we show it to the screen exactly,

but we treat you one reveal.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So here's the first one.

Who would survive longest in a zombie

apocalypse, okay?

Maybe I'll put some jeopardy music in here.

Can we say it?

We don't say it.

We write it down.

Can we say ourselves?

And privacy.

You can say yourself.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's not an ego thing here.

We're, we're trying to go for a reality.

Oh, I forgot.

My horrible handwriting is going to be on full display here.

Okay, you just, we can just have our name on each of our names on a piece of paper.

And then flash who it is.

Wow, you just turned it into a system there.

That's true.

Okay, we can, we can do, we can do that.

We don't need to write every time.

We just have a flash card with all three names.

All right.

So it's just more front end work.

Right.

I mean, I might just do a little hybrid,

which is write this one down.

If it happens to work the next time, I won't rewrite it.

There you go.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Yes.

Okay.

We're using brand of paper.

Wait, three, two, Paula.

We're doing a, we're doing a three, two, one reveal.

That's the point of the game.

Okay, this is, this is mine as well.

Three, two, one, two, one reveal.

Eric, we can't see yours.

Can you bring it closer to the camera?

Paula.

No, I can't see it.

You thought, you think I would have.

Yeah, because I would save you and then I would be dead.

He would sacrifice himself.

It does.

Yeah, it reminds me of Dwight Shrewd in the office,

when they're like, if the world is ending like,

you know, I forgot exactly what it was, but it was like,

Dwight, what if you were dead and he goes, oh, please,

if I were dead, you've died two weeks ago.

Right.

That's like, Eric would save us all.

Yeah, Eric for sure is the most able to do this.

Okay, next one here, who is most likely to accidentally start a small fire?

Okay, write this down if you need to.

Okay, ready?

Three, two, one.

Why me?

Because you're doing mechanically shit.

I have no chance.

All three of us did not change our answers for that one.

You think I'd be most likely to start a fire?

You just kind of like get in a rush sometimes and like bump stuff.

And yeah, I could see like, you know, accidentally knock on a paper towel

onto like the gas stove or something.

Our apocalypse gas stove.

Yeah.

And now that we're in end times,

Paula hits her head on like the shelf in the van like three times a day.

We've had this van for three years.

So that's where that's where my thing came from.

Got it.

Okay, every time I'm like, we're getting into the stupid van.

Just kidding.

How dare they install that there?

Okay, who would get kicked out of a fancy restaurant first?

Okay, I need to write this one down.

I don't think any of us would.

We're so mature and polite.

We are.

We are.

Well, I can explain my answer.

Let's just see.

Okay.

Yeah, okay, you're right.

Right?

Darker.

Ready?

We are.

I have a mechanical pencil.

You need a surface.

He needs a back.

He's writing in the air.

I think I just have like a, you know,

not an even a number two.

Like a number one.

Here, is this book and then burn it later.

Number two, Teconderoga.

Funny.

My bud.

Okay.

Oh, Flynn's here.

Does his breath smell like banana bread and betrayal?

Oh, okay, there we go.

So Paula, Paula put up Flynn and then the two of us put up Paula.

You think I'd get kicked out of a fancy restaurant?

No, no, no.

Either the least likely or the most likely.

The reason that I said you is because like I get to,

I'll just let myself get tingered advantage of endlessly.

Even if somebody's doing something shitty or brings me like the wrong food,

and you actually speak up.

So you're like the only,

I'm just not even going to start a confrontation.

Interesting.

I think you would get kicked out for like standing up for yourself,

not for being a shit.

But I do think of the three of us.

Paula is the one that has the best manners.

Is the most like polite, like classically trained.

Yeah.

Even if it's fake.

I mean, manners and politeness kind of are fake, right?

But it's still about knowing what you're, what you're supposed to do.

Yes.

So I didn't know.

I just like, Paula, you sometimes,

if it's a very fancy place, maybe I could see you saying,

or so, I don't know, like something like that.

But otherwise, I don't think any of us would get kicked out.

No, definitely.

We're all pretty good in a wide variety of situation.

You'd have to be like a wild human to get kicked out of a restaurant.

Yes, correct, yeah.

As most people we know would never.

Right, right.

Okay, and then the final one here is,

who is the most likely to forget their passport

on an international trip?

Oh, sorry, sorry, Eric.

Maybe we could reuse the Flynn side.

Three, two, one.

Everyone wrote Eric.

Yeah, well, I'm not.

I'm not going to even try to defend myself.

I have forgotten my past.

I don't know if visually that was the best game

because you could barely read our papers, but it's still fun.

Right, I also think.

I mean, you also announced on the podcast what each of us said.

So, yeah, yes, yes.

I mean, that defeats the purpose of the segment, doesn't it?

Well, I think there's an element of FOMO that might happen

if you would want to see those actually holding them up

and we're referencing to the fact that you can't read the writing.

You know, if someone's watching, that's fine, it's fine.

You can just do a little name tag here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Bing, Bing.

Yes, that's a good idea.

That's a good idea.

My pencil is seriously just very faint.

Yeah, well, should have thought of that, I guess.

And I have to light right here.

We'll do Sharpies next time.

We do have another style of that game.

If you liked it, let us know.

You guys have been popping off

on the Spotify comments lately, and I really appreciate that.

To be fair, and like you said, you'll need a pencil and paper.

Yeah, because I assume did be something we'd be like a racing.

You're fault.

Yeah, I thought originally we were going to be a racing

and then I had the idea of folding this paper

so we could use all four sides if we needed to.

But you're right, we only needed three.

We need little whiteboards.

Unless you can't, I know the whiteboards would be fun.

That would be fun.

I think in the good, so we could do the segment again,

we should get whiteboards.

All right, okay, great.

Amazon.

Done.

Done on the podcast time.

I'll do it, I'll do it after this.

Back to questions here.

And oh my gosh, we were running out of time,

so we got to be really fast here.

Long time listener, watcher, first time with a question.

I recently inherited a bike of my dad's from the early 70s.

It will be more of a display piece,

but it's been in a musty basement for years.

Any experience or resource recommendations,

books, websites, socials for older bike refurb,

taking all suggestions or lessons learned,

thanks in advance.

Truly grateful for the energy and the vibes you guys bring each week.

Please keep it up and have a good season.

Keith from Connecticut.

I had an idea, Eric, do you remember that website,

SheldonBrown.com?

Yeah, that was my idea.

It's like a little like bike maintenance Bible.

Yeah, I got a lot of good information on there.

Yeah, anything else you'd recommend, Eric?

I mean, just kind of like, as the problems come up, YouTube them.

Yeah, I mean, YouTube is kind of the answer to everything now.

And I think if you Google a couple of, you know,

you Google will take you to YouTube.

You'll probably come across a style or a person who does bike tech stuff that you like.

At least that's what happens to me, especially when I'm like cars or bikes or anything.

You'll come across bike tech with Eric or someone else.

And you can dive into their entire catalog.

Yeah, love it.

Okay, we're going to move right along here because we got a lot to go.

This is from dot hey, I'll question on nutrition.

What are some of your go-to quick, healthy-ish meals when you don't have time or don't feel like

cooking. Maybe some meals you all normally cook while traveling in the van.

My schedule is that it's so tight I'm usually eating on the go or making something in advance

or only have 20 minutes.

Thanks for always keeping me entertained and motivated while training,

since you're really dot.

Paul, is it like in the US?

It's hard to tell, doesn't say.

Is the Trader Joe's like combo things?

Is that a specific Instagram account that you found that does that?

I don't know what you're talking about, but I was going to say Trader Joe's is a good hack for

quick meals because you can buy, like for example, something I do.

I'm on the 20-minute plan as well.

A bag with pre-cut mixed veggies for stir fry and it's not frozen, they're fresh.

And then you can get like the Thai wheat noodles that are pre-cooked and just need to be heated.

And some chicken breast or eggs or the sauces and throw it all in a pan and it's like a stir fry

in 15 minutes.

Yeah, that's good.

I think eliminating some of the chopping and the, you know, the vegetable prep saves a lot of time

and although sometimes I feel wasteful buying like a bag of pre-chopped veggies,

it does save a lot of time and allows you to have much more variety because you're not going to buy

a whole cabbage and a whole carrot and a whole celery, but if it's chopped all in one bag,

you just pour it in and it's ready.

So we do that a lot.

We do a lot of veggie bowls, so you can also meal prep on Sundays and just have veggies cut

for the week, make rice, make chicken, put it all together with a yummy sauce, that's a good,

quick option.

We do a ton of pasta and like, nicknows, I'll put like a lot of veggies in the pasta.

So like, add spinach, add peppers, add ground turkey, add

pesto sauce, add parmesan cheese and it's like this one pot pasta.

It's so good too.

It's so, so, so, so good.

You could even add broccoli with like three minutes to go in the pasta cooking time.

So then you have broccoli cooking with the noodles.

Is that what you do?

Yeah.

That is so smart.

So that's the timer for like n plus three and then when it goes off, I add the broccoli and

then three more minutes and it's all done.

You drain it all.

Broccoli is cooked properly, the noodles are cooked and then you add in some other veggies and

the sauce and the cheese and the meat.

I feel like we could, I think people would be interested in your recipe for this.

I've had it so many times, it's so good.

Like, when to put in the cheese, what kind of cheese, how to cook the sauce?

Well, you can do anything.

I mean, sometimes I use parmesan, sometimes I use feta,

sometimes I'll use peppers, sometimes we'll do corn, sometimes we'll do olives,

sometimes we'll do pesto.

So like, what are the key components though?

Our pasta, veggies of choice and then like, we do a pesto.

Is it pesto?

We usually do pesto.

And Trader Joe's also has this really good red pepper pesto.

It's a little bit different than just regular pesto.

I really like feta cheese in it personally.

I like that briny kick.

And if you use kind of curlier noodles that have a lot of like,

sauce holding capability.

Sauce holding ability.

Well, some part of the signature of this dish, when I think of it,

that you make it, Paula, is that you often use two different kinds of pasta.

Oh, yeah.

And I love that.

It feels fun.

It's one of three of us, when it's the three of us eating,

sometimes one thing a pasta's not enough.

So two, two that are both different shapes.

And you have to check the cook time because sometimes different shapes

have different cook times.

Yeah.

But you just do that math along with your broccoli math.

Oh, so do you only do the two different types when I'm there?

No, we'll do it sometimes.

No, a lot of the times we'll end up for whatever reason,

because you were here with like half a bag of pasta.

And then you're just on this permanent, like, bag in a half rotation.

Right, right, right, offset.

But you're right, the two different types of noodles really adds an element of fun.

It's fun.

It's the best.

It's really fun.

It's really fun.

Okay, great.

Thank you, Paula.

That's perfect.

Next one here is from Poppy from the UK.

West Sussex.

Hey, guys, long time listeners.

Second time submitting a question,

Poppy, this time it's going in.

Paula mentioned a couple episodes ago about the importance of tightiness,

specifically the need to hoover before heading out on a bike ride.

This resonated with me as a struggle to get on with my day,

work, train, rest.

If the house isn't completely clean and tidy.

I'd love to know your cleaning routine,

any product recommendations,

and how often you do a full house clean.

I definitely should be asking how to mitigate the need to have everything

tied to 24-7, but I'm not there yet.

Poppy.

No, I think it's a genetic psychological thing.

Some people have that.

Some people don't.

The need for everything to be in place and organized.

And if they're not, it causes you stress.

I have that.

My dad has that.

Poppy clearly has that.

Eric and I don't.

Oh, Eric does it more than I do.

But I think it's not so much an on-off.

I think different people have different thresholds,

but there are definitely people that it's like on.

There's no, for sure, sliding skill.

Yeah, I love the thought of like,

I come back from my bike ride and the house is completely tidy.

The laundry's put away.

The dishwasher's empty and I can actually like

chill and recover as soon as I'm back from the ride.

First is like coming back from the bike ride.

The house is a disaster.

I feel like I have a thousand things to do.

Yeah.

It just lets me like go and train in peace.

And the way that I attack it is the house is kind of always clean.

So I'm not doing this giant

clean every week.

If you got to do three workouts a day

and it's got to be totally clean before each workout,

dirt just cannot accumulate.

Yeah, like I actually think vacuuming is quite zen.

We don't have an enormous house.

I like our little vacuum.

So I just do that like every day basically.

Because we have a dog.

And I don't know, I'll clean the toilets every week.

I'll clean the bathrooms every week.

When I have an easy day, I usually spend

do a little bit more of a deep clean of the kitchen.

So I don't know.

I think it's like my hobby in a way.

Well, as far as hobbies go, like I don't know,

collecting cookie jars doesn't really,

I'm sure it's fulfilling, but actually keeping the house clean

is so helpful to the people who live in the house.

And to my own mental.

Yeah, right.

Peace.

Right, right.

And I think I can like, yeah, like I said,

do other things better when it's in order.

I also don't like accumulating too much stuff.

So I like, you know, if we have too many shoes in the back,

I'm like, Eric, go through and like,

what are you not wearing in the last five weeks?

Get rid of them.

That type of thing that we're not just accumulating things.

Yeah.

But I imagine if we have kids,

this will go away a little bit or it'll have to

because you just become so much busier.

Too much.

Yeah, and you just get more stuff and you're constantly preoccupied.

So I don't think this phase will last forever,

but it's, I don't have any tips.

I don't have any, I try to use natural products.

Yeah.

But it's not, I guess, I'm not alone.

Yeah, not alone.

Okay, next question here is from Saul.

I'm going to try to shorten this a bit.

I've been loving Thursday releases of the show.

It's my signal that the weekend is almost here.

I've been trying to get into the sport for a few years now

with many of my setbacks due to the crushing demands

of family life as Paula was just alluding to.

While looking for fun events in my areas,

I live in the South Bay area,

which they're not talking about South Bay Los Angeles.

I think they're talking about San Francisco.

A few years ago, I found the escape from Alcatraz Triathlon.

Last winter, I randomly signed up for the random drawing

thinking there was no chance.

I would win a slot.

So of course, I was selected and signed up.

And that's the first half of the question.

The second half is that they are freaking out

about jumping off the boat and swimming in that water.

And what ways can they not freak out

and also since they're looking for a wetsuit,

are there some good entry level wetsuits you would recommend?

I actually used the float at Alcatraz because it's a bit thicker

and it, therefore, is warmer.

Yeah, so they do.

Some brands do make a thermal wetsuit,

but these are often a little bit harder to get off and on.

They're not as flexible.

They're the kind of wetsuit you're really only going to use

in ocean side or in Alcatraz because a lot of other races

are just not that cold.

So just buying a wetsuit that's a bit thicker like the float

is actually a great tip.

We've answered this question before.

Do you just do it?

And it's not that bad on race day.

I don't have any.

This is what Eric has always said.

He's like, you jump through it.

You don't even, you're just swimming.

Yeah, you know what?

Let yourself get a lower worked up because that's kind of fun.

But everybody does it.

And it's not that bad.

It's like, it's so much different than waiting into the water

where you have so much time to process how cold your toes are

and how cold your nuts are, etc.

Step by step, you can like, this is just like,

you just rip the bandaid off and it's great.

Yeah, it's actually the one race that I don't feel the cold at all

because there's so much going on in one second when you jump in.

Yeah.

So the thing that's scary is the fact that you're just in the middle of the water

and it's kind of hard to see where you're siding.

But you're jumping on with other people.

There's boats kind of directing you where to go.

You've been sitting on this boat for an hour in your wetsuit,

get in nice and toasty warm.

So your core temperature is up.

Yeah, it's not that bad.

It's just a crazy, crazy race and it's so cool that you get to do it.

So it's way worse running out of the water with your toes

and feet that are like ice cubes.

That is worse.

That's the worst part of the race.

Oh, fine for that.

Yeah.

Oh, and yeah, disclaimer, like we always got to do,

responsive by Orca, but like we use stuff that we love.

So that's why we brought up Orca.

Yeah, if you're looking at their line,

so they have two different levels of things.

There's the apex of the float and then there's the athlex of the float.

And basically you just get a slightly lesser neoprene,

but the same kind of like concept of how the suit was designed

with extra flotation and warmth.

Yes, nice.

Okay, so sad news is we're definitely not going to get to all of these questions.

But we'll do, we'll try it.

We tried so good.

We'll do two more of this one's really fast.

Paula, flying mount, dismount, can you give us mere mortals,

your thoughts on getting confidence,

how you actually do yours, what you think of when mounting and dismounting,

shout out to the six for being among your top listeners to locations.

That's Toronto.

Okay, got six ix.

Is that a thing?

Yeah.

Okay, I think it's from Drake.

Okay, got it.

Ovia.

I think it's just not important in 70.3 Ironman and the Amateur field, especially.

And there's way too high of a chance of running into someone else or kicking off your bottle.

So I don't think you need to do it or worry about it.

There's so many other things to think about.

In ITU racing, it's 100% critical and it's something athletes that do that

short-course racing practice to get smooth out it so that they keep the momentum,

jump on their bike while it's rolling fast.

Same thing with the dismount, but way less critical in 70.3 and especially less critical

in amateur racing.

Yes, the last couple of years that I've watched Oceanside, which has like the highest number

of pros of any race, watching Paula race.

I would say the vast majority do not do a flying mount anymore.

Yeah, it's because there's bottles hanging out the back.

Exactly.

There's too much going on.

It's a little harder to bounce.

It saves you like three seconds in a four-hour race.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it's awesome.

So if you want to do it, go for it.

Yeah, I mean, I'll still do it.

I mean, this is getting that's actually cool about it.

As if you've come from a short-course background.

It's a bit of a flex to be like, look what I can do.

Whereas like Lionel never really does it.

Even Lucy Charles doesn't do it.

Yeah.

Best athlete in the world.

World champions, yeah.

World champions don't do it.

It's definitely not necessary, but it is definitely cool.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so speaking of things that are not necessary, here's our final question here.

This is from Mike.

My wife is a dermatologist and finally convinced me to try Botox,

partially so I can't make sexy eye gestures that are fine.

Dermatologist Botox, is this a thing?

Yeah, yeah.

That's who administers Botox, I believe, is dermatologist.

I thought there was like a plastic surgeon or something like that.

Oh, you know what?

You might be right.

I am out of my element here.

I'm like, Donnie.

I'm definitely not in my element, but continue.

Eric, you don't have Botox?

Not yet.

Okay, okay.

Took my TT bike out for the first time since fall.

I'm discovered a critical flaw.

I cannot see an arrow.

Turns out I rely on rinkling my forehead to look up at the road.

Face too frozen.

Can't do it.

TLDR Botox is a DNF waiting to happen.

Oh, Mike.

Oh, my God.

Can you, can you believe that Botox fully just makes your face dysfunctional?

It like arrests the muscles so you can't, I don't know.

What's this?

You can't make expressions anymore.

Eric, it's not about expressions.

It's about looking like a newborn baby when you're 50.

Okay.

It's a wrinkle thing.

Can it be reversed?

Is this guy just screwed and can't look up for the rest of his life?

I have friends who are my age or younger, who get Botox injections every six months.

We know.

I'm giving LA a bad name here, but since you have to get it every six months,

I imagine it does go away.

I'm like, why are you way up?

And let's not go back to you to get the effects of it.

Because people that get Botox and fillers regularly, you can for sure tell.

I don't know.

I mean, it's a look.

Some people like some people.

You see it, kind of, right?

I like my forehead wrinkles.

I like my smile wrinkles here.

I'm not willing to part with them.

Yeah, this is not a question.

I'm just seeing it.

I'm riding an arrow.

It's a funny story.

That's the thing that I can't, yeah.

I was.

Don't get Botox on your forehead.

Or have them hold it.

Can you get it held up?

Yeah.

Can you hold my eyebrows into a little bit of the road position so you can see better?

Maybe you can be like duct tape.

It's going to look surprised 100% of the time.

Tap your forehead to the top of your helmet.

It's like the tape strips to keep your eyes open.

One for each eye.

Okay, that's all.

We've gone quite over.

This is the longest podcast we've done in a while here.

That was fantastic.

We tried to get through all the questions,

but you know, we just had too much ding dang fun answering them.

Yeah.

We got very carried away with the Flynn banana bread story

to being in the podcast.

And they completely spaced on a couple of announcements that I

or things that I wanted to bring up.

We announced the development team.

The 2022 development team is now announced out in the world.

They're awesome, incredible people.

We're so excited.

If you could go over to Instagram and follow each one of them.

We did a collaborative post with them each last week.

That would be huge.

They're on their journey to become professional triathletes and we're stoked.

They already are professional triathletes.

Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this before,

but there's turning professional and then there's making a living

in the sport and having that being your primary occupation.

That's what we're trying to help them accomplish.

And that's what they're trying to do.

And then the other thing is, I said last week that I was going to potentially

put out two YouTube videos.

I didn't quite get too done, but I did put one up.

It's all about like the kind of the process of me

deciding to get surgery or time training in Tucson with Heather Jackson.

And my new TT bars.

Paul is new TT bars.

I think it's really fun.

Nick, you said it was fun, right?

I loved it.

I thought it was great fun.

I think it started with the intensity and

sombrowness of the surgery or hopefulness, I should say.

And then it ended really like fun with the Tucson stuff.

Yeah, because body was like, this bag hits my knees every time

that I ride, throws it in the garbage with the gas.

You got to wash to the very end for that.

Yeah, that's good.

So yeah, anyway, I hope you liked that.

I think it was like you're a good classic TTL.

The next thing that put up is going to be

Wadi and my final hurrah bike packing trip to Patagonia from Tucson.

And then we'll kind of be, we'll be back to

the update on the surgery contractions.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for hanging out.

Everybody thinks we're listening.

Thanks for watching.

And we'll see you next week.

Bye.

Bye.