Tim & Rinny's 6 Lessons for a Long-Lasting Triathlon Journey

TriDot Podcast Episode 302

Tim& Rinny's 6 Lessons for a Long-Lasting Triathlon Journey

Andrew: Welcome to the TriDot Podcast. On the show today, we have IRONMAN world champion Mirinda Carfrae and IRONMAN champion Tim O'Donnell joining us to share their six tips for longevity in triathlon. They both enjoyed long professional careers and now coach athletes through Team Salty Bears. They are the perfect coaches to teach us about how to enjoy a long, healthy journey in triathlon. I'm Andrew, the average triathlete, voice of the people and captain of the middle of the pack. As always, we'll start off with our warmup question, settle into our main set conversation with Tim and Rinny's tips, and then wind things down by having our coaches answer an audience question on the cooldown. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: This is the TriDot Podcast, the triathlon show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation.

Warmup

Andrew: Let's get started with today's warmup. Tim and Rinny, for our warmup question today, I want to know, if you were to register for a triathlon relay event and could have any two professional triathletes as your teammates, who are you choosing? And they can be currently in the pro field, they can be retired, they can be alive or dead. Anybody in the history of triathlon, who would you want on a relay team with yourself? Coach Rinny, what do you think?

Rinny: I would pick a couple of old friends, retired triathletes. I go for the fun factor. I'd probably pick two of my biggest training partners over the years, Julie Dibens and Laura Bennett. Just because, I mean, I think it'd be just a lot of fun if I'm picking myself on that team. We're not going to win anything. I would absolutely do the run - I don't do anything else anymore. I would probably drown if I had to swim. So yeah, I'd do the run. I'd have Julie do the bike because actually she's in really great bike shape. Swimming more, but she was a great swimmer, so I think we'd still do pretty good.

Andrew: Yeah, those are great picks. Do you think you guys would be able to unplug and just have fun and do your best but not be overly competitive, or do you think you would try to win the female masters division?

Rinny: I think Laura and I would have fun, but Julie is a competitive person and she's still extremely fit on the bike, so I feel like she would be maybe pushing us forward, but I feel like we could just get the fun factor going and I certainly could just have fun with it.

Andrew: Very good. Coach Tim, same question over to you.

Tim: I'd go for the win. I would take Cam Wurf on the bike and then Kristian Blummenfelt on the run for sure. And then I know I can - I'm not swimming much, but I know I can still swim faster than Cam, so he wouldn't mind having me as a swimmer. But he obviously is a professional on the bike, right? Like not just professional track, professional cyclist as well.

Andrew: That's a good way to stack your team for a win right there. I'm gonna take the Rinny route and try to make this fun. And I am a mid pack athlete, so I do this for fun anyway. If I'm on a relay team, that relay team is not winning. We will do okay at best. I saw a thing years ago where a professional marathoner at the time, Meb Keflezighi, who now coaches athletes with RunDot. He did a race where they intentionally - it wasn't like he was in the professional field. It was a local race and he started in the very back and the whole bit for like, for this local race was like, how much of the field could Meb pass before the finish line if he started dead last? And I don't remember how well he did. I'm sure he did very, very well. But I would take that approach. So let's say I do the swim. I'm a mediocre swimmer. I would be curious to see how my two professional triathlete teammates, how far through the field could they get us before the finish line? And so the first approach is I could do this with the two of you and that would be a blast. I could swim, Tim you could bike, Rinny you could run. And I'm confident y'all would pass quite a few folks on your way to the finish line. If I'm picking two current pros, same concept, let's throw Sam Long on the bike. Let's throw Chelsea Sodaro on the run and let's see how many people they could pass with Andrew giving them a mediocre start. So that's my pick here. I think it'd be loads of fun. If the two of you ever want to do that with me, just let me know. We're going to throw this question out to our audience. Make sure you're following us on the socials. We'll throw this question out on Instagram, in the I AM TriDot Facebook group, in the TriDot Community Hub. Let us know if you were doing a relay with any two professional triathletes, past or present, who are you relaying with?

Announcer: Let's go!

Main Set

Andrew: On to our main set where Coach Tim and Coach Rinny will talk to us about how to enjoy this sport for a long time. If you love this sport enough to listen to a triathlon podcast, you're probably hoping to do this more than just one or two races and be done with it. So soak in their wisdom today. They're both still very much plugged into the sport of triathlon. Tim and Rinny, just to kick us off here, I saw on the socials recently that the two of you had your very first Team Salty Bears training camp. It looked super fun. You had a ton of athletes there, very engaged, some great pictures on the Instagram. What kind of adventures did you and your team get into? How did your camp go?

Rinny: It was a really good success, I think. We were not sure - I mean, obviously it's our first one. Tim was not confident that we had everything sorted out together. I think mostly because I was taking the reins on most of the things. He wasn't sure that I was buttoned up. But yeah, it was wonderful. It was really great to have. The athletes we coach are all remote and so we've seen a few of them here and there at races. But to get them here in person for basically almost five days, we started it off with the Boulder 70.3 and we had some teams race. We had four Salty Bears teams race and then a couple of athletes did the whole event. And then Sunday the camp officially kicked off with the little run clinic and then barbecue at our house and from there we really just wanted to showcase some of the iconic rides and runs here in Boulder and give them the opportunity to feel what it's like to sort of be a pro for a few days. We threw in some educational stuff with Erin Carson. We did some bike maintenance and things like that. So we tried to really just give them as much information as possible and great training opportunities and experiences. So they had kind of a good mix of both. And I think the best part for me or the highlight for me was just seeing athletes that we coach meet each other and make sort of friendships that way. So that was sort of the best.

Tim: Yeah, I've seen the interactions of the athletes when you take us out of the equation was pretty cool. But we were talking about relays, Andrew. And that's how we kicked it off. We had four Salty Bears racing relay teams at the 70.3.

Andrew: Were you too tempted to jump in on one or did you make it clear you were coaching?

Tim: So I swam on one, Rinny ran on another. But it was just a really cool way to bring everybody together, get everybody to know each other a little bit more before we kicked off camp. So by the time we started off Sunday with our drill session, run and barbecue, everybody was already best friends.

Rinny: Yeah, I mean, not every athlete could come in early for the Saturday, so we had a smaller portion of the team that came for the relays. But yeah, so then it was just kind of nice that was sort of a nice buildup.

Tim: So the year before Andrew, I was on - I put together a relay team at Boulder. It was a bunch of retired pro dads, so I swam, Butterfield rode and Patrick McEwen ran. And I mean, we won by a long shot. So this guy comes up to us and he's like, hey, I just want to let you know you inspired me to put together a relay team to beat you guys this year.

Rinny: Yeah, exactly. And then we were like, oh, we just were having fun here. But we did have one fast team. And now was basically Tim on the swim, Brett, one of our coaches, did the run and my athlete, Kristen Yax, did the bike and she biked like a 2:20.

Tim: 2:21 bike.

Rinny: But technically they came in second to an all-male team, so I feel like they kind of won the mixed category.

Tim: Yeah. And the mixed relay teams could be all guys, which I don't know. Yeah, we need another category.

Rinny: But it was still a lot of fun and a great way to kick off camp.

Andrew: That's such a fun way to do it, for sure. And I think something that we're trying to mention more and more on these podcasts - I don't think people realize when you hear a coach on the TriDot podcast that they could become your coach. I love how with your camp you were able to make it very hands on - working on bike maintenance, run form and in-person stuff that you can remotely coach these athletes and talk about the training and racing, but hey, we're all in person together. Let's really get hands on with our coaching here. And it sounds like you guys did a great job of that. I'm sure the athletes loved it and benefited greatly. If anybody listens today and wants to be a part of Team Salty Bears in the future, how would they go about plugging in with your team?

Tim: Yeah, just go to saltybears.com or timandrinny.com either from work and you'll find out all the information about the team. We of course are optimized by TriDot, so we have a lot of great training program options on the TriDot platform and we have a pretty cool community as well.

Andrew: Pretty cool community, pretty cool coaches, pretty cool camps. So yeah, go Team Salty Bears. Now when you're coaching and working with your Team Salty Bears athletes, obviously you're talking through race strategy, you're talking about training sessions, you're helping them dial in their nutrition, all the works. But do you find the conversations ever turning to being in this sport for the long haul?

Rinny: I think generally it depends on the athlete. For the most part when you're working with an athlete, they're focused on a single race or like I want to qualify for something in the future and I generally take it back to, well, let's think about the healthy way to go about this and improve and when it might be a new athlete, they want to do an IRONMAN next year. Okay, that's a great goal. Let's plan that out and build up to it. But yeah, it really depends on the athlete and some athletes are in it for the long haul and they love the lifestyle and the three sports really goes well with overall body strength and being healthy later in your life. So I think they kind of go hand in hand. But yeah, for me it really depends on the athlete and the goal and where I come from. And the way I coach is always looking at the 365 degree view of all aspects of their life. And you know, yes, there's a goal here, but I want to get them to that point feeling strong, feeling healthy, and all of the ways we get them there lead into longevity in the sport, whether they want to do an IRONMAN once and then move into something else. I think for us at Salty Bears, it's really about enhancing their life through athletics and in this case, triathlon. And yeah, health is front and center, the most important part of that.

Andrew: And we'll talk about that quite a bit today in terms of how to do this sport for a long time. So the two of you have brought to us your personal six tips for how to just have longevity in this sport, the multisport lifestyle. So let's go through them and soak up the lessons, learn from you, learn how to do this better for longer. What is Tim and Rinny's longevity tip number one?

Tim: Yeah, number one for us is always be able to reevaluate your goals and redefine your why. And that is something that really played a big role for us in our careers, especially as our family grew and life changed. You want to be focused on the future, not just what you've done in the past or goals you've had in the past. And it really, that all starts with being able to be honest with yourself, have an open and honest conversation. Where am I at in life? What do I really want to get out of this? And am I doing this for the right reasons? Have my reasons changed? One of the things we actually talked about with our campers at camp is 2018 was our first season racing with a child. Rinny had already done everything in the sport. I mean, she'd won everything. And now she's a mom. And we've been in that Kona grind every year for almost a decade. It was focused on October and it starts to wear on you mentally and we just said, you know what, let's forget it. Let's just have a good time. Let's travel the world and let's just document this adventure of a family that does IRONMAN going around the world. And it really revitalized our careers. But we had to sit down and have a conscious shift and you have to be strong enough and willing to step away from what might have defined you in the past. Because we're always defined by our results. But when you can kind of shift the narrative, you can make big changes.

Andrew: I absolutely love this, and it very much mirrors my journey. Obviously, I'm not an IRONMAN Champion like the both of you. So it's a little bit different. But from the middle of the field, when I first got in triathlon in 2014, I just wanted to be fit and I wanted some variety in my fitness journey. I was running a ton and, oh hey, if I do triathlon, I can kind of vary it up more. And then it went from that to how well can I do in these races that I'm starting to do locally around Dallas Fort Worth? And then it became, well, now I want to do a half IRONMAN and an IRONMAN. And then it went to, how well can I do at a half IRONMAN and an IRONMAN? And very much like the two of you once my daughter was born - she's almost two and a half years old now - now it's just like, oh, I need to keep my body moving and stay healthy while most of my time goes to being dad. So I want to show up at the races and have a good time. And maybe in five to ten years it becomes, how well can I do at the races again? But I would not still be in the sport if it wasn't doing exactly what you're talking about, sitting down and saying, what is all this for in this season of my life? So I love that you started with this and led with this. It's so easy to get in the sport on day one and try to be the athlete 10 years later that you were. Or not even just the athlete, the person you were 10 years later that you were when you started. You gotta evolve.

Tim: Yeah. And I look back to being young and you're starting to race pro, and all you wanna do is win a race. You wanna validate you being a professional. You want to validate not getting a real job and having a paycheck, you want to validate your career. And then you do that and it's like, oh, I just want to make money and I want to get sponsors, and you start doing that and that doesn't always drive you. All of a sudden, you know, you can buy a house or life changes and you're sitting pretty like, okay, well, now what's going to drive me?

Andrew: It's also interesting hearing you point out that I think we, as amateurs, watch the pro field and every single year, just the mini soap opera of who are the contenders, who's going to win this, who's going to win that. Who's racing T100 vs. who's racing IRONMAN Pro Tour vs. who's racing Super Tri. We follow it all. And just hearing you express, like, it's awesome, it's our career, but it can be a grind in a certain way. And to hear that even while still in the pro field, you were trying to unplug from that a little bit and vary what your experience was as professionals in the back third of your career is very interesting to hear for sure. What is longevity tip from Tim and Rinny, number two?

Rinny: Yeah, longevity tip number two for us is respect the recovery sessions and periodize your training. So if you're on TriDot, your training's periodized beautifully. What we learned, or what I learned very early on in my career, was that I needed to segment it into sort of preseason, main season and championship season. And I would take breaks throughout the year, and this was not something that was regularly done. People basically trained year round. They took maybe a few days off after a big championship and got straight back into it and it kind of still happens. But for me, I knew that I wanted to be in the sport for the long term. I didn't want to win Kona once. I wanted to win Kona multiple times. I wanted to race it 10 times, and I knew that the burnout rate could be fairly high if you didn't respect the recovery, take some downtime. And so with my coach Siri, we sort of came up with a plan, and Kona was always our big goal for the year. So whatever your big goal is, kind of work back from that. Okay. And that big goal is October, basically November, December is very light or few weeks off after Kona. Preseason starts in sort of January, sort of December, really. January. And you're kind of grinding through to Spring races in March, you race a few races and then take a little bit of a down period. And then we also had like a mid year down period where I'd take a week off where I wouldn't swim, bike or run, where Tim and I would go on a holiday. We would pick a cool hotel and we'd sit by the pool and eat French Fries and drink beers or whatever. And for us that was kind of a reward for the grind that we were in in the preseason. And also like taking a breath before it really got real with the championship season approaching and that big training block coming up. So not only the weekly built in recovery sessions, and for us, they were more like every week and a half, two weeks, we'd actually have a day off. Taking those days off, doing the easy session, spinning your legs very easily, sitting on the couch - those things. But having dedicated, I am going to take this time off and just do nothing to do with sports. And so I think when you're trying to be excited about races, I always found that I'd take three or four days off and I would be, we'd be strict about it. We would not swim, bike, or run. We didn't bring our swimsuits. If we're swimming, it was in a bikini up to the poolside bar.

Andrew: Even for Tim. Yeah.

Tim: Looks good.

Rinny: Yeah. And you know, inevitably two or three days in, we'd be like, I kind of want to go run again. I kind of want to get back into the routine. I want to get back into the grind. I want to eat healthy again. And so for us, that was enough to keep us motivated and excited. And I think every athlete can take a little bit of advice from that and just treat yourself from time to time.

Tim: Treat yourself. That should be the title.

Rinny: That's tip number two. Treat yourself.

Andrew: Did you guys ever watch Parks and Rec, the American television show? Yeah. I was assuming that's where the treat yourself concept came from there. But yeah, in this context, totally on board. All of our Parks and Rec fans will, I'm sure their heads were already there. But no, I love this. Rinny and I, we actually did a podcast episode a few months back with the concept of do you need an offseason? Because TriDot, when an athletes training on TriDot, it will not just give you a week off, a month off, a couple weeks off here and there. Because it's really, it's a personal thing. The data shows us your body, the way the training stress is spread out throughout the week allocated seasonally. Your body doesn't have to have that break. Sometimes it's mental, sometimes physically. Yes, physically, but so, yeah, that's what I think the mental side of it is.

Rinny: I think the mental side of it, like physically. Exactly. Yeah, you can keep grinding and you can probably keep showing up and keep progressing year and year out, but the mental thing is so huge, so important. I think that's the big piece that we're kind of talking about, like being excited to race, being excited to beat yourself up in an IRONMAN every October for 10 years, which we were. Takes planning and downtime and time to regroup and having a really strong why, like, I think both of us had. And it's, you know, there are a few athletes that had very long careers that genuinely loved sport, but there are a lot that burnt out. Yeah, just again, as a professional, little different. We could chase races year round. We would go down to Australia, we could race in December, we could race in January, and I've seen race athletes do that and they do it fantastic for a couple of years and then they're done. And so resisting that temptation, taking the downtime, being disciplined about actually resting really paid us off for us in the long run. And I think it's definitely something anyone can sort of emulate in an age grouper and figuring out where their big races are and then working back from there.

Tim: I think that's a big benefit we bring to our athletes that we coach on TriDot as well is that we bring in that kind of human aspect that like, you know, managing the mental side of the sport and helping them mold it all together with great training.

Andrew: Yeah, it's very hard to open up the app and see here's the training sessions I have this week. And maybe you need to unplug for a variety of reasons. Most type A triathletes, it's very hard to make yourself do that. And that's where a gifted coach can really come in handy or just a great life partner or family member or training buddy who can remind you to take that mental break. Unplug.

Rinny: Yeah, we just delete those sessions. Delete, delete.

Andrew: You do not have a session today. Yeah, you don't have the option.

Tim: I did that for an athlete a couple weeks ago. He did, he had a really great emotional race. And then I'm like, hey, you're taking a mini break. Four or five day mini break. And he was so happy, you know, and he's like, actually this is great. You know, I'm going camping with my wife and you know, and I might go, I might go for a run or whatever. You might still might go. You might go for a run or whatever. But there's not that mental strain of having to follow a program. Like saying, hey, you know what I mean? Feel like going for a 20 minute jog. I'm just gonna go do that. In this little period of time, I have autonomy and I don't feel, I don't have that pressure of having to subscribe to the training plan.

Rinny: And I think that's the beauty of having a coach to have like letting them, putting that responsibility on, letting them be the bad guy that says, hey, no training this week.

Andrew: And then you don't, and then you don't have guilt. You're like, I don't, I'm not allowed to train today actually. Like, it's not an option.

Tim: I just do. My coach told me to do. Yeah, that's exactly.

Andrew: The other thing Rinny, that I wanted to call attention to that you said is you mentioned, you talked quite a bit about taking a break, unplugging, but also keeping those recovery sessions in place throughout your training cycle. And importantly, when TriDot gives you an easy run or an easy bike, letting those sessions be easy. There is all the time where on a Tuesday I might have a 20 minute zone two run and it's like I'm feeling pretty good today. I could probably run harder than this or I could probably stay in zone two longer than this, but gosh darn it, TriDot is keeping my tomorrow and my next week and my next month in focus when it's giving me just that zone two stuff today. So I love that you mentioned that one of the call a little extra attention to that point before we moved on. So yeah, great longevity tip number two from Tim and Rinny. Moving on to longevity tip number three. Coach Tim, what do we got for this one?

Tim: Yeah. Number three, strength train for life. Strength training is more than just performance. It's about keeping your quality of life high as you get older. And I mean we're experiencing that now, you know, almost 45 and Ren's not too far behind me. But we started working with our strength coach Aaron Carson and geez, 12 years ago, 13 years ago. And it is pivotal for performance just because you are really, you're bringing a new layer of training into your routine, but you're setting yourself up for success in terms of injury avoidance. If you're a middle aged man like myself, it's a natural testosterone booster to be lifting heavy weights. So there's all these other benefits that you can bring in from strength training that can keep you in the sport longer - hormonal responses, staying injury free, these are all huge things to help you perform over a long time, but also just to be healthy and to be able to move when we get older. You know, I see some generations before us, runners or triathletes, Olympic medalists that you see them moving around now and they obviously focused on one movement their whole life, like running in this plane and they weren't getting lateral movement, things like that. So you can tell it in how they move now. So we want to be, we're old parents so we're going to be older grandparents and we want to be active and being able to move with our grandkids someday. So we keep that in mind.

Andrew: You know, a great thing to keep in mind. I played tennis a lot growing up in high school, college and have unplugged from that for the last 15 years or so. And I recently started playing tennis again with some guys that I met locally, guys and gals and most of them, much like triathlon, the tennis people attracted to that sport are usually not like trendy 20 somethings. It's more of a middle aged upper sport. So anyway, all the guys I'm playing doubles with throughout the week are in their high 40s, 50s and 60s and they're talking shop about like, when my last knee surgery was and I have this surgery coming up and oh yeah, I had that two years ago. It'll take you six weeks to recover. And I'm like looking at these guys and gals are in a different head space. I'm seeing the future somewhat of like to stay active at that age. What are they having to do? And it's a great reminder to like right now as a 37 year old, it is very easy for me to get in the middle of my week, do my swimming, biking and running and not touch a weight. My wife and I, we have in our pain cave all the weights, all the dumbbells and stuff. We need to get a good workout upstairs in our pain cave. It is so easy to just go a week or two or three and never make it up there to that room to do a strength session. And it's like I'm looking at these guys I play tennis with and I'm looking at their creaks and groans and moans and surgeries coming up and I'm like, okay, maybe I should take that more seriously now. So I need less of that when I get there. So Tim, thank you for that reminder. It's good for you both now as an athlete. It's good for you in the future. All of our TriDot staff members and coaches who race very successfully at a more advanced age, they take this so seriously. And I've noted that people that come on the podcast, like coach Kurt Madden, coach Joanna Nami, yourselves. This is a refrain I hear from people a step ahead of life.

Tim: I mean, I don't think we're as old as Kurt though.

Andrew: No, no, no. Yeah. No, not as old as the legendary, not yet moving like we want to be moving like him when we're his age.

Tim: And to your point, Andrew, it doesn't have to be an hour session. You could knock out 20 minute session two to three times a week and it's going to be noticeable.

Andrew: Love that. For longevity in the sport, do your strength training. Don't just let those swimming, biking and running be all that you do. Moving on to Tim and Rinny, longevity tip number four. Coach Rinny, what do we have here?

Rinny: Yeah, so tip number four, listen, adapt and repeat. So over the years you will find that some sessions may wear you down and as you get a little older, they may wear you down a little more than they used to. So listening to your body in those instances and maybe adjusting a little bit. A session that may have been good five years ago is not good for today. And that's just listening to your body over time. Like, what does my body want? What does my body respond well to at this phase of my life? And I think it's always good to go back to the glory days. And I used to do 10 by a mile at this pace and this was great. It was a fantastic stimulus. Okay, maybe that sort of session is not the type of session that you should be doing anymore. So just continuing to listen to your body and if there's a session or a combination of sessions or weeks of training that tend to elicit a niggle or just sickness as well. Like if I train super hard for three weeks and don't have a rest day, or I don't have a rest day every four days, or maybe I can only run four days a week instead of six days a week like I used to. Staying ahead of the injury, I guess is the biggest thing. So, yeah, listening to your body and adapting.

Andrew: I love this, Rinny. And there's so many reasons that we need to adapt. And this is where TriDot already in your training sessions themselves is going to look at your age, it's going to look at how long you've been in these sports and it knows how much stress your body can handle. So somewhat, not somewhat, very much in your training sessions already, these kind of things are accommodated for. I think of a workout like MAV shuttles for example. My father, who's in his upper 60s, when he gets MAV shuttles, he will have one set of MAV shuttles, he has one set where three or four times he's picking up the pace for a 20 second sprint. When I have MAV shuttles, I have three sets by seven sprints. So I have 21 sprints, he might have four or five. And we were at the table talking about that the last time he visited Dallas and he was like, you have 20, you have 21 of them when you have MAV shuttles. Yeah, every single time I have 21 sprints, I have like four. Yeah, that's what your body can handle when it comes to that particular type of stress. So this is already happening in terms of TriDot managing the load for you at your age, your body type, your experience in the sports. But even on top of that, Rinny, I love you pointing out just knowing your body, knowing how it's feeling, knowing your nicks and niggles. One just very random, isolated example is for me, when the Texas summertime hits, I don't know why this is the case. It's been this way for the last seven years. All of a sudden, my Achilles on both sides get really tight when I run. I don't notice it all throughout the day, but when I go for a run, it's like, man, why are my Achilles so tight? I have not figured it out. I've talked to PTs, I've troubleshot. Is it my shoes? Is it this? Is it that? Have not isolated a cause, but okay, I need to do some things a little bit different in my running sessions during the summer. As soon as the temperatures cool down a little bit, it goes away. It's very wild. But during the Texas summertime, when I go for a run, I'm making sure I'm taking some extra time doing my warmup exercises. I'm making sure I do a little more zone 2 before I start doing the intervals. I don't jump straight into the intervals after just a minute or two of zone two, I want to make sure that those Achilles and the whole chain of movement is warmed up properly. And so that's just one example of a very weird way I have to listen to my body throughout the triathlon season. And obviously, as you're working with different athletes, I imagine as coaches, there's a lot of different reasons both physical, both seasonal. When you're talking with your athletes about how to adapt, when to adapt and when to listen to your body, did you guys in your pro career ever have a time where you kind of ignored something your body was trying to tell you and you paid for it? Any anything like that, or were you pretty dutiful in your pro careers?

Tim: I feel like we were pretty good.

Rinny: I was pretty lucky. I think I could pretty much just train.

Andrew: Good for you.

Rinny: Yeah. But I think the strength training for us was a big component of that. We had Erin Carson 13 years ago when, how old were we then? Early 30s. We would do strength twice a week, every single week. And so when we were sort of getting into that age where maybe niggles would pop up, I think having access to a great strength coach and being consistent with that strength training enabled us to continue to train. And again, yeah, I never really had many niggles, but if I did, I told my coach, being honest with yourself. And I know sometimes athletes have a tendency. Well, my coach told me to do this. I'm going to do this no matter what. It's probably not the smartest thing, but I'm doing it anyway. And we were not like that. I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. Like, this hurts a little bit. I'm going to take a day off running. For me, it was like, I'm just not going to run for one day and then it's fine. So, yeah.

Tim: Yeah. I think a lot of people get caught chasing, they're stressed or feel like they're trying to chase a goal or a dream, and if you just keep a calm, cool head on your shoulders and you realize that getting in front of it, taking, not doing the run or whatever it might be is the right approach, it's going to set you up better in the long run.

Rinny: And I think for me, one thing that stuck with me, Hamish Carter won gold in Athens in 2004. And he basically put this down to it wasn't the sessions that I did that got me to gold medal, it was the sessions that I missed.

Andrew: Wow.

Rinny: It was being disciplined enough and honest with myself and take. Anyone can push through. Everyone's tough. You can push through, you can do the session, but it's recognizing that I really want to do this session, and it's gonna weigh on me mentally if I don't do this session, but I know it's the right thing for me right now. So being disciplined and not doing the session was the reason he won the gold medal. So that stuck with me throughout my career.

Andrew: And I hope our audience hears, because I know they've heard our coaches say it in several ways on the podcast over our 300-ish episodes now, but just that your consistency in training over time matters way more than perfection every single day. And so we say if you need to miss a session, if you need to augment a session, if life comes up and you got to rearrange some stuff, that's okay over time, just as long as you are consistent. And so they're hearing it from the two of you that, okay, Rinny was able to win some World championship titles missing some sessions along the way. This guy was able to win a gold medal, missing some sessions along the way. So if it's okay for you guys, it's probably okay for me who's training for IRONMAN such and such and hoping to come in under 12 hours. It's probably okay for me to miss a session here and there for probable cause. Listening to the body, adapting. So love getting that reinforcement from two people that have had the career that you had. And I hope our listeners really take it to heart when you're now being on the coaching side of things. When you're coaching us pesky age groupers, do you find it hard to talk your pesky age groupers out of missing a session?

Tim: No.

Andrew: I feel like you just delete it off and they can't do it anyway.

Rinny: I just always just ask for honesty and give, tell me how you're feeling. For the most part, I feel like a lot of the athletes that I coach are smart enough to take off the session if they need to take off a session. Or write me and say, hey, I've got a niggle. My calf is feeling a little sore and then I can adjust and work around it. No, I think for the most part the athletes, at least I've worked with, yeah, fairly receptive to it.

Tim: And you know, if you have an athlete that tends to miss some stuff, you just really have to emphasize the key sessions of that week and be like, hey, I don't care what you're getting, these sessions done this week.

Andrew: Yeah. I love it. All right, we've got two longevity tips left with Tim and Rinny. Coach Tim, what is tip number five?

Tim: Tip number five. Keep the joy front and center.

Andrew: Oh, I love that.

Tim: Burnout is going to take more people out of this sport than injury does. I mean, it's just mental fatigue of trying to be on top of it all the time. It's okay to step away from the numbers on the right days. Like you said, Andrew on his own today. Go ride your gravel bike. Go ride your mountain bike if you have an easy ride. Be able to be okay with not having to always look at your Garmin. I remember Rinny would go out for runs where she either wouldn't look at her watch or wouldn't bring a watch. And I tell that to athletes now too, that are just that feel like the pressure of always being, being on the program and always having to perform, always having to hit numbers. No, there's just joy of, the joy of going out and running and looking around. The blue sky, the trees, the fresh air. Soak all of that up and let that give you energy to keep moving forward in the sport. Go train with friends or I have a lot of my swimmers or a lot of my athletes swim with masters groups if they can. Because I know the joy of sharing a swim experience versus swimming on my own is so powerful. So finding all these things and it all comes down to we just have to protect the passion. Protect your passion of the sport and do that by finding the joy in it.

Andrew: That's so good. And we get questions all the time when it comes to TriDot training. Oh, like I do a master's group on Mondays and Fridays and my master's group has this workout for the day and I've got my TriDot workout for the day. What do I do? Like okay, well do the master's group. It's probably similar training response and you know, oh, I've got my TriDot telling me to do an hour 25 on the bike with these intervals. But I was gonna do a group ride. Okay, well if you have an A race coming up in the next four months, maybe do the TriDot session. Other than that, go enjoy the group ride.

And that's what was noticeable for me like when I first got on TriDot, I did a group ride every single Saturday with some local athletes and you start doing the TriDot training and all of a sudden it doesn't quite work. And yeah, it's finding what is the right balance for you. Because it's got to be fun. You got to keep it fun. It's fun doing this with other people. And so Tim, I love you reminding us to do that.

I myself, my rhythm has always been when I have a big A race coming up, I try to nail the training verbatim as much as I can day in and day out. And if I don't have an A race on the calendar, if I got some local stuff or some B races, C races, I'm going to give myself some more grace to make it fun.

Tim: Absolutely. And when you time it like you do when you know, like, hey, I'm going to have, this is going to be my push phase before my A race when you know that's go time. And you give yourself some grace earlier in the year or in late season, you're putting yourself in the position to actually really execute that big training block. Because your mind's fresher, you're happier and you know, like, hey, it's only, it's this long that I have to. There's an end.

Andrew: Yeah, that's a really great point.

Tim: Yeah, you can always go up or down a lane. Like if your TriDot session is aiming for maybe some thresholds in zone four, maybe you pop up a lane if it's not a threshold set at Masters. But now you're on a faster interval and you're trying to hang on in the back of lane and all of a sudden you just combine the best of both worlds.

Andrew: Tim, you'll appreciate this one. One of my favorite things I've ever heard a TriDot athlete say. This is shout out to athlete David Pagan. He is in the United States Navy and he relates it to the military principle of commander's intent. And he's like, we have so many athletes that stress out about getting that 100 TrainX score on as many sessions as they can. And there's a time and a place for that, but there's also a time and place for, okay, I might walk away with an 82 TrainX score or a 77 TrainX score, but if I come away from the session knowing that I fulfilled the commander's intent of the session, I didn't do verbatim what my commander told me to, but I still got the training response that TriDot wanted me to get. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's kind of the way he views it. And I'm one of those athletes, I don't freak out if I get an 80 TrainX instead of 100 TrainX. If I went out and held approximately the intensity I was supposed to hold for the amount of times I was supposed to, I call it a win. And that's what David was getting at, was like, okay, don't stress about nailing the session. Just try to do what TriDot is hoping you're going to do. And if you fulfill that intent, not every training session has to be verbatim what TriDot told you to do. So I love David's perspective on that. And Tim, I know you'd appreciate that one as well.

Tim: I love it, too.

Andrew: All right, we've come to the moment. Longevity tip number six, drumroll from Tim and Rinny. I'm assuming you saved a good one for last. What is your sixth tip for staying in this sport for a long time?

Rinny: I think number six is get the team around you so the team is like your A team. Make sure you surround yourself with whether that's a great coach. Training partners are a godsend. If you have a great training partner, that will keep you turning up day in, day out, year in, year out, just to share the suffering and the build and the experience. I've found throughout my career that the process could be lonely, but when you have a great team around you, it's just the whole experience is enhanced. And when I think back to crossing the finish line, it wasn't like myself, really. I was thinking about. It was everyone that I suffered with along the way. Coming down the finish chute, I'm thinking about my coach, I'm thinking about my mom. I'm thinking about my training partners later on. I'm thinking about this guy and our kids. But yeah, having a great team around you to keep you motivated and engaged, I think that is worth weight in gold. And I'm finding now, post career, I have a really great couple of girls I like running with, and I wouldn't do the hard sessions if they weren't there. I do have, we do a hard session once a week, we do a long run once a week, and then it's basically a social session, but you're out getting fitness and I look forward to those sessions. And, yeah, so I think accountability, too. Absolutely. Accountability. But just, yeah, sharing the experience with someone else just amplifies that experience.

Andrew: Yeah, this is a great tip. And when I first got in triathlon in 2014, I think my first maybe two years of just doing local sprints and Olympics around Dallas Fort Worth, I didn't really go out of my way to make any triathlon friends. I didn't try to plug in with a tri club. I just wanted to go do the race. My wife, my family would come support me and cheer for me, but it was largely just my. And this goes back to tip number one, about how your why evolves. I just wanted a fun way to stay in shape, and so I wasn't really looking to spend extra time and effort to plug in with a group. And then in year number three, I joined a local triathlon team that I'd seen at a lot of the races and started meeting people, going on group rides and oh my gosh, enriched my triathlon experience so much. And then years later, I'm a part of the TriDot crew on TriDot staff and Team TriDot, TriDot ambassador at the races, meeting other TriDotters. And it's like the deeper you plug in and the more people you meet and the more you open yourself up to that, it brings this whole experience to life in a way that you don't get on your own. So I love you bringing this up. I love you saving it for last. I love the two of you bringing this topic up. I want to be very clear, I didn't say this at the beginning. We did an episode early in the year 2025 at the time we're recording this where Mark Allen came on the show and gave us his six tips for just his six rules for day to day nutrition. It was a topic he was passionate about. He and I were at a dinner together and just started talking about, oh yeah, you should go on the podcast and talk about how passionate you are about just day to day healthy nutrition. And we turned into a podcast. It did very well. People were, it was a very well received episode. And so I started throwing out to some of our other coaches like, hey, let's do this more. What is something you are passionate about? Bring it to our audience and let's talk about it. And we just had Michellie Jones come on and give us her six recovery rules because she's very passionate about making sure you do your recovery sessions throughout the week. And so when I threw this out to the two of you, this was the topic you came back with right straight away. We want to talk about this. And I love that you chose this because I think to all the times we're at USA Triathlon's conferences and they're sharing the stats about, just the, it's in our sport somewhat. There's people that get in the sport for life, but there's also a pretty decent turnover rate. There's a pretty large amount of triathlete, I forget the percentage now, but it's a fairly high percentage of triathletes get in the sport. Do it for three to five years and then bounce to a new hobby and that can be okay. But I think so many of those people that churn through and move on could have stayed longer, maybe probably would have even wanted to have stayed longer if they had just kind of established, laid the groundwork for themselves to enjoy the sport longer. Does that make sense? So I just publicly thank you so much for bringing, bringing this topic and I'm glad you brought it to our attention and all six of these. Build these into your routine, build these into your mentality both for training and racing month in and month out and you will be a happier triathlete for a longer period of time. What I want to know Tim and Rinny, to close out our main set here. We've talked about being in the sport for a long time. You both had nice, long, healthy, successful professional careers. You're now coaching triathletes. What's your plan for the rest of your triathlon journey? Are you both planning to continue racing here and there? Are you just Coach Tim and Coach Rinny now?

Rinny: Yeah, I'll go first. So triathlon for me is off the table for the time being with the three littles just it's a little too time consuming, particularly the biking but kind of leaning into more running events. I certainly am my best self when I'm physically active or sort of chasing some goal whether whatever level that be at. So I have some trail races on the calendar and yeah that for me and strength training as well. So yeah doing pretty much something six days a week is sort of where I'm at and training for some fun races.

Andrew: So still very much plugged into the fitness world and the endurance sports world. I am, have been on a triathlon racing hiatus for the same reason we have our two year old. I want to be dad and so I'm running. I'm not worrying about the biking and the swimming as much. And I actually did just sign up for a 70.3. My first triathlon since Ellie was born. That's 50 minutes into this recording. I'm dropping a news break I guess but maybe next week on the show I'll announce which one it is because I have not publicly said that yet. But yeah very much tracking with you Rinny of just in this season. Yes, I want to be a triathlete. I want to do more triathlons. It's just not in the cards right now to train for all three sports. But it will be again soon. Tim, same question over to you.

Tim: Yeah, I mean I still love swimming, biking and running so I try to stay active and everything. I am going to do an XTERRA this August.

Andrew: Yeah, awesome.

Tim: So that's for me, that's a fun way to do it. I mean, Rinny and I were joking. I mean I broke two bikes last year. I broke a wheel the other day. She's like, you're just not meant to ride a mountain bike, buddy. But it is, it's like a fun way for me to not compare myself and not take anything too seriously but still have that goal to train for and keep me as part of the community. And we're doing the Grand Traverse together, which is 40 mile trail race from Crested Butte to Aspen and then Aspen to Crested Butte. So day one, Rinny will run Aspen to Crested Butte and then day two, I'll ride back.

Andrew: No, that's super cool. It's funny Tim, you mentioned with the mountain biking it's kind of a way to be competitive, have fun, get those juices flowing without having the direct comparison to who you were as an athlete in your prime. The current pro, the times they're laying down. I've noticed just again anecdotally on social media I see guys like Sebastian Kienle, Luke and Beth McKenzie are, they're all doing CrossFit and Hyrox competitions. I've seen Gwen Jorgensen famously switched back to running and now back to triathlon. But there's a number of pro triathletes that when they move on from triathlon, not always. There's someone like Michellie Jones who is still actively racing in the age group field as a triathlete. But many of them seem to move into some form of competing. But that's different than triathlon. Do you guys keep tabs on what everybody else is doing or do you think Tim, it's because of kind of that notion you just expressed?

Tim: Yeah, I mean I think we were always paying attention, see what's going on and you're always also looking for other fun stuff. So you see Luke and Beth doing Hyrox, like oh, maybe I'll give that a try at some point, things like that. Which is kind of cool. But I mean honestly living in Colorado, there's so much, you have so much cool stuff around you. There's so much, so many adventure type of stuff that you could do, really. Don't have to look further than our state.

Rinny: Yeah.

Cooldown

Andrew: All right, well, on to the cool down portion of our show where I will have coach Tim and Coach Rinny answer a question from audience. And guys, today I picked a question about bike cadence. Eileen asked us this. What is the importance of cadence on the bike? When I'm out on the road, I find that my cadence is always lower than prescribed by TriDot. And in fact, I have a natural tendency to want to change gears to drop my cadence as soon as it gets over 75. So my question is, why does cadence matter and how do I improve it? So Eileen is throwing out some numbers specific to her. It seems like her body naturally gravitates to a lower cadence. Anytime it starts spinning up, she wants to drop it down. I'm kind of the opposite. I like cycling at a higher cadence. I have little chicken legs and I don't wanna push any more power than I have to. I know as professionals, this is something you paid attention to. You probably had it dialed in to what worked for your body, and now you're coaching athletes and talking through these things. So what would the both of you have to say to Eileen about the importance of cadence and how to get it in the best zone for her?

Rinny: Yeah, I think, I don't think there's a one size fits all for cadence for athletes. The general rule of thumb is higher cadence, you're more relying on your cardiovascular system. Lower cadence, you're relying more on that strength. So each revolution is pushing more power. The more revolutions, the power for each revolution comes down for that same amount of watts. I dialed mine in at around 84. There are cyclists that are well into the 90s. Triathlon typically, I think, is a little lower than cycling. And a lot of the very successful females over the years have been sort of in the low 80s, high 70s. So it sounds like for this particular athlete, she likes to feel the torque and the strength and that's fine. I think mid-70s is probably a little low. I would try to aim for sort of maybe around 80 as sort of an ideal race cadence. But if you feel like that 75 feels great for you. You can push good power, you can sustain it for a long time, and you get off the bike and you feel good running, then that's your number. And that's fine.

Andrew: Yeah. But if you are getting on the run and feeling some fatigue on your legs, it might have been because of that low cadence.

Rinny: Yep.

Tim: I mean at 75, you're almost like at the gym doing leg press. But so for me, and I stress this a lot with my athletes is cadence. Different cadences are different tools. And you need to have a full tool belt. You can't just rely on, you need a screwdriver too. So I really, when we have cadence sessions on TriDot, I'm stressing, hey, follow the cadence. And usually a lot of athletes have a hard time when there's a 90 cadence interval in there to hold 90. But when you're riding on rolling terrain or climbing, descending, you need to be able to move your legs differently to match the terrain, being able to spin up, get a higher cadence when you're climbing to get on top of your gears so you can then accelerate over hill versus a lot of people, low cadence, they kind of almost sprint at the bottom of the hill. They're out of their saddle at the bottom of the hill and then their pace just goes down and down and down. By the time they get to the top, they're taking a rest because they haven't been on top of that gearing. So the only way to get better is to practice. And it's annoying. 90 to 95 is probably gonna really feel annoying, but do the sessions properly, practice it and it doesn't take that long.

Rinny: That long, I don't think to, it's almost a neuromuscular change. It's your brain signaling to your legs to spin faster. So it's like an annoying sort of shift. But you know, it will a month or so focusing on it, you'll be able to access those higher cadences and it won't feel as different as it first did.

Andrew: Would you encourage an athlete like this to, you know, obviously, Tim, you just mentioned when TriDot and not every TriDot workout tells you hold this cadence, hold that cadence. Certain ones do. So would you encourage an athlete like this to work some different cadences into their routines? Even a little more often than what TriDot says or something? I think to the bike warmup drills. Most bike sessions it'll have you do some spin ups or some high cadence pedaling. Would you have an athlete like Eileen, who's struggling with a higher cadence. Do more of that throughout the bike session. Or not?

Tim: Well, it depends. Eileen, be honest. Are you doing them?

Andrew: Are you doing the warmup? Fair question.

Tim: So if you're not doing them, do them. And then I think you could just really, you have to focus on it. Like, if it's a deficiency, so you gotta address it.

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