20 Takeaways from the First 300 TriDot Podcast Episodes

TriDot Podcast Episode 301

20 Takeaways from the First 300 TriDot Podcast Episodes

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Andrew Harley: Welcome to the TriDot Podcast. It is episode 301 and we have a few new things going on today. After 300 episodes with the same music, the same flow, we are updating our music and tweaking how we start the show, all trying to get you, our listener, to the content quicker than ever before. We're also taking things to video. You can watch the TriDot Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or in the TriDot community hub. Something that has not changed are your hosts. You're still stuck with me and Vanessa, and we are both on the show today as we share the top 20 things we've learned hosting 300 episodes of the TriDot Podcast. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: This is the Tri Dot Podcast, the triathlon show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warmup.

Warmup

Andrew Harley: All right, Vanessa, thanks so much for joining me for this episode of the TriDot Podcast. For our warmup question today, what I want to know is what is your favorite spectator sign you seen while at the races? You and I go to a lot of the race, a lot of races, whether it's on behalf of TriDot or just as friends, spectators, sometimes racing ourselves. And so all of the race courses you've been on, Vanessa, what is your personal favorite sign you've ever seen a spectator holding?

Vanessa Ronksley: I do have to say that the fans that show up to IRONMAN races with signs are far more prepared than I ever am when I go to races.

Andrew Harley: Fair point.

Vanessa Ronksley: And, and as a racer, I truly do appreciate having those signs. And I think the one that sticks with me was when I was at my first full, the one that meant the most to me was, were those ones that, that have the, the signs that say tap this sign to power up. And they often have like a bullseye or it's usually like a kid standing there, oftentimes dressed up in a costume of some sort, and they're screaming at you and they're like, come over and get the sign. And not only does it give you energy when you go out of your way to tap the sign, but it just, it makes that kid so, so excited to think that something that they have created with their, you know, their markers and their felts and you're coming over to give them energy, it just comes right back to you. So I, I love that very much in terms of like, that exchange of energy between yourself and the spectators because maybe that sign is showing up right when you're having a dark little moment and, and it's going to be the thing that's going to get you to the next, to the next signpost or the next fire hydrant or whatever the next step is. It's, it's very helpful. So I do love that sign very much.

Andrew Harley: I, I'm a sucker for those. Every time I see one of those, I'm going to go out of my way on course to tap it, give the kid a high five, whatever it is always a kid holding those signs. Now that we've said that out loud, some snarky adults here are going to go to the races holding a sign that says that to see if they get the same reaction. But yeah, it makes that kid's day and it's, it's a fun moment for you and absolutely, if you're on course and you see a little kid holding a sign that says that, yeah, tap the sign. It will Vanessa, actually give you a power up or a speed up like you said. This answer for me and the reason why it prompted me to ask this question, I have not, I did not personally see this out on course, but if you're, if you're a try that user and you have an IRONMAN on your calendar, you, you may already know this, but we've been collaborating with IRONMAN to make sure that every IRONMAN event on the calendar has a video in TriDot that that kind of just shows you our athlete like what this race is like. And These videos are 6 to 10 minutes long. We get really good notes from the race director, Iron Man's team editing team put with their fantastic footage of all their courses, puts together these videos that more or less is an overview of what it's like to do IRONMAN, Texas, IRONMAN, Arizona, IRONMAN 70.3 Bolton, whatever it is. And we're putting together about 20 to 30 of these per year. So they're not all in the app yet. But the goal is for every IRONMAN and every IRONMAN 70.3 event there to be a video in the tried out app that can just show you what that course looks like. Kind of talk you through some pointers for things to know about the swim, bike and run course for that race. And so working with IRONMAN on these, I was reviewing one of those videos just the other day and in the footage For Iron Man 17.3 Bolton, there was a spectator on the side of the road on the bike course who was holding a sign and there's a curse word coming here in about 10 seconds. So if you have little ones know that I'm just quoting the sign. So sorry, but the sign said, this hill is kicking my ass. And it was an older gentleman sitting down in a chair on the side of the road on a hill on the bike course. And it was just, it was so funny to me because, like, he's not climbing the hill, he's just sitting in a chair, but he's, he's just saying, oh, this, this hill is kicking my butt. And I, I don't know, it just, it caught me the right way. I lost it. I can imagine if I was an athlete going by that sign on course, it would give me a good laugh going up the hill. So that's my answer for this question. We're going to throw this question out to our Try not audience. If you're watching us on Spotify or YouTube, you can leave a comment right there letting us know your answer to the warm up question. Otherwise, find this question posted on Instagram. Find it in the “I Am TriDot” Facebook group. Find it in the TriDot community hub. So you can let us know of all the spectator signs you've seen while at the races. Which one is your personal favorite?

Main Set

Andrew Harley: For our main set conversation on episode 301 of the TriDot Podcast, you know, between Vanessa and I, we have hosted 300 of these triathlon conversations, getting to chat with IRONMAN world champions, legendary coaches, and legendary athletes. We've had so many wonderful conversations on this show doing the podcast. And yeah, Vanessa and I just wanted to take an episode and say, hey, having hosted 300 of these conversations, what were just 20 nuggets, 20 assorted nuggets that just stood out to us as lessons we've learned in the host chair of the TriDot Podcast. And so Vanessa and I are just gonna bounce back and forth, you know, giving some shout outs to some certain things coaches have said that really stuck with us as triathletes. Vanessa and I are both average triathletes, and so we're learning right alongside you every single time we host one of these episodes. So, Vanessa, without further ado, let's get into your very first of your. You've chosen 10, I've chosen 10. We'll bounce back and forth. What is your first big takeaway from all of your times hosting the TriDot Podcast?

Vanessa Ronksley: Well, this, this little tidbit came from the podcast that was called 15 Ways to Make Triathlon More Fun. And, and ironically, at the very end, Matt Sommer threw out this last tip and it really resonated with me and stuck with me. So he was talking about the importance of recovery. And to me, that doesn't sound like fun, but the way that he prefaced it is that he said it's not fun to be injured. And so if you take care of your recovery, the likelihood of you getting injured is going to be less. And so it kind of is like this backwards way of saying if you want to keep doing all the fun things, then you better get after your recovery. And for me, I am a highly injured athlete. I do a lot of recovery, but I wasn't necessarily doing the right things. I wasn't doing the right recovery. Right. So I really took it to heart and I started to be a lot more thoughtful and cognizant of what I was doing. And I still have had injuries, but they're becoming far less so. I, I love that Matt said that in order to keep the fun going, you have to pay attention to your recovery.

Andrew Harley: I've been encouraged. Vanessa hosting whether it's with Matt Sommer on the show or Dr. B.J. Leeper, who's a physical therapist on the show, a variety of strength training experts, we've had on the show, all of them. There's this resounding chorus of voices that have always said that that recovery time doesn't have to be extensive. You don't have to get in 30 to 60 minutes per day. You know, just, just if you're 5, 10, 15 minutes per day consistent with it, man, that goes a whole long way. So, yeah, really good start here to give a shout out to Episode 184, 15 Ways to Make Triathlon More Fun. And just that reminder to get a recovery in the first one for me, I'm going to go with Episode 174. It was called If The Shoe Fits: Anatomy of a Running Shoe. And my, my takeaway here, that is my, my one of my top 10 personally, is the best running shoe for you, is one that feels right and it's comfortable to your foot. And I, Vanessa, I love watching run shoe reviews on YouTube. I love going to running warehouse.com and just seeing what the brands have dropped. My wife laments that I keep buying running shoes and not buying shoes that look nice to go out to dinner. I have too many more than I need all the time. I always want a new pair, no matter even if my current pair is good, somebody drops something and I want to try it, right? And so being that athlete, it's so easy to see what like YouTube reviewers are saying or see what all the pros are wearing. Or see what my training buddies are wearing and just want to try different shoes. And, and what this episode, we, we, we had two YouTube running shoe reviewers from a channel called Doctors of Running on the show, and they're called Doctors of Running because every contributor to their website and their YouTube channel is an orthopedic specialist of some kind or physical therapist, you know, of some kind that, that specializes in the mechanics of the foot and a running shoe. And so they, they tap into what does the research say about how shoes interact with their, with our feet. And from all the studies put out there, right, brands can claim that, that this shoe drop or that type of foam or this, this heel bevel, like they can claim all these features can help keep you injury free and blah, blah, blah. The only thing that has been scientifically proven time after time after time to, to point to a reduced likelihood of you picking up a run injury is when you put this shoe on your foot and you run, is it comfortable to you? And that was just, that was revelatory to me as somebody who can get caught up in just the hype of what, what shoe is coming out next, what's the best feature, what's the color scheme of it? And yeah, I have to remind myself like, it's gotta be comfortable. And anyway, so that's what one of my personal top 10 takeaways from all of all of our episodes is that from Episode 174. Vanessa, what is your takeaway number two from hosting so many TriDot podcasts?

Vanessa Ronksley: All right, so takeaway number two is triathlon training considerations for female athletes, which was Episode 194. And the idea of training or racing came up when a female athlete is on her period. And that's something that we just have to deal with as female athletes. It happens, you know, often and sometimes it doesn't happen to you at all. But when you do have to deal with it, it can be, sometimes be a surprise. And so Sarah Gross and Rennie and I had a really good conversation about this. And one of the things that Sarah had mentioned that really resonated with me is that when she was training as a pro athlete, she would often get her period when she taper races just because the volume decreased, the intensity decreased, and it just gave her body this little reset that she needed. And, and so her period would inevitably show up on race day, which is sometimes not the greatest thing that you want to have show up on race day, especially when it comes with some symptoms like some extra pain or other things that might happen. And so what she actually did with her coach was they came up with a plan, plan to taper prior to like a little bit earlier than the race to allow her body to go through that natural cycle. And then when she was. So she would do that, I think three weeks out, she said, and then two weeks out she would get more intense. And then just a little bit of a mini taper right before the race. And it made a huge difference for her and it solved the issue. And so I feel like this episode was extremely empowering for female athletes because we do have other things that we have to deal with in terms of hormone fluctuations and when we're in a certain timeframe of our cycles. And I think that this just allows us to realize that we can work with our biology and be very successful, but we sometimes have to come at it from a different angle and be a little bit more flexible in terms of what some of the training aspects might that we have to do and just take what actually works for our own bodies because we're all so different. And so that really highlighted that aspect for me. So this is one of the reasons why I loved that I loved that episode so much.

Andrew Harley: My second one is to do your running drills. I'm going to say it loudly, do your running drills. And this has come up on several episodes. We have an episode about running drills specifically. But the light bulb moment for me, Vanessa, came on Episode 80. It was called Running with Power Insights from Stride's High-Performance Director. It was right at the time where trot was integrating with stride running power meters. And you can go to this day buy a stride running power meter, put it on your shoe and get that power data into TriDot to guide your running. But when we first launched that integration, the high performance director from Stride came on our show. We chatted shop a little bit, learned how to use stride most effectively. And one of the things we were talking about is running drills and stride. He quoted a study that was done by a famous run coach named Steve Palladino where he took a couple cohorts of high level cross country male high school runners and at just like a summer camp so they weren't in race season, that they were just kind of in training mode. He, he, he took half the cohort through a certain sequence of running drills before every single one of their training sessions. And the other half of the cohort, he did not do that. And the, the difference in performance at the end of the camp from the cohort that had done the running drills all camp long versus those that hadn't in the off season was remarkable. I, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm not even gonna try to put the percentage number out there correctly. But, but it was, it was like, wow, this really made a big difference. And then furthermore, following up with the athletes that were in the cohort that did the running drills all off season, the ones that continued to do it into the start of their fall race season for high school cross country continued to see a higher percentage of speed increases, gains, performance increases. And the, the, the, the guys that frankly just fell off the bandwagon, stopped doing their run drills and just did their training with their coaches. They saw performance decreases. And that was just one of, of a number of studies that have pointed to there are performance gains for doing your running drills.

And there's, there's a couple reasons for this, obviously, right? It reinforces good running form. It gives the body some really good cues, some functional movement cues on, okay, this is kind of the sequence of muscles that should be firing when we're running. It warms you up properly for your training session, right? It's a dynamic warmup, right? You, you, you, you jog a little bit. And before you do your hard intervals, you do a couple running drills. And, and so one, there's the performance aspect of it. Two, there's the, you do your training sessions better because of them. And then three, it only takes five, 10 minutes, right? Every time. There's a reason every time try gives you a running workout, it is going to give you a handful of running drills to do. It's going to vary athlete to athlete, day to day, but there's always going to be a couple and it just takes you 5ish minutes to get through them. So what I do personally, I, I light jog for about five minutes in zone two to get the body moving. I stop and do my running drills. And then I pick back up on my workout, unpause the Garmin and hit whatever intervals try to has for me that day, um, it just, it makes a big difference. When I'm on top of these, I can tell my best 5k times, my best 10k times, my best run score, everything that works. My best sprint, Olympic distance triathlon performances have come during seasons in my life where I was just religiously on top of these running drills. And now I'll get off, I'll get off my soapbox with that. But that's, that's my takeaway. Number two, do your running drills. They're important.

Vanessa Ronksley: I think you covered that one really.

Andrew Harley: Well, I should have put like a, like a NBA style shot clock on us for this. I should have given us like a two minute timer. Like per. We got 20 of these to get through and we keep getting on our soapboxes. So Vanessa, what is your third, what is your third of your 10 big takeaways from hosting the TriDot Podcast?

Vanessa Ronksley: All right, so this one was a revisiting episode, which means a, that it has a lot of important information in it. But the, the episode was 211, Don't Miss the Most Valuable Training Block of the Season. And this is a golden nugget that's going to transform your training and your performance. So this episode is, was basically talking about the development phase and how it is the most important training block of the year. So while a lot of people, you know, they, they stop their training, they say that they're in the off season, tri dot athletes are here building that power and that speed and getting faster and, and building all of that, you know, all of the things that make us go faster and are able to withstand, um, harder training sessions later on in the season. So you know, a lot of people are gonna say I'm just gonna start training four months out from my race. Um, in the case of some other athletes we may know maybe one month out from the, from the race. And what they're doing is they're just jumping right into building stamina. Um, but if you don't have that power and that speed built up, proceeding to that race prep phase, just watch out. You're, you know, it's not, it's not going to be in your favor. So if you do your developmental phase, you get power and strength, you're going to be a racing machine.

Andrew Harley: Vanessa, you're going to like my third one a lot, I think. And I, there's not a specific episode I'll give a shout out to. This has come up on numerous of our nutrition related episodes and it's, it's this truth right here. As much as possible, as much as you humanly possibly can get your nutrition and your nutrients from whole foods as opposed to relying on supplements, shakes, smoothies, additives and, and this, obviously there's, there's a place for vitamins and, and supplements and protein powders and shake smoothies, whatever. Certainly when you're, you, you can't get enough in a regular diet of a certain mineral or if your doctor has told you need a little bit extra of something for X, Y and Z reason you might need a supplement. But this, this principle has Been eye opening for me because multiple, not just one multiple of our nutrition specialists when they come on the show, have said this and just pounding the table for like, like, look at, look at your plate. Where are the vegetables? Where are the fruits? Where are the nutrients? Where are the whole grains? Where are the good stuff? The nutrients your body needs? And if you, you know, do as much as you can to give your body the macronutrients and the micronutrients it needs through whole foods, and then we'll talk about supplementing where you're falling short. And I was just the guy, Vanessa, that I, I like protein smoothies. I, I like going, you know, I, I'd be hungry in a pinch and I go through a gas station and get a Clif bar, a protein bar of, of some kind, right? And, and just, you know, I, I, I just thought that, oh, athletes do that, right? Athletes are just always looking for, you know, let me start popping, you know, you know, omega 3 pills and this and that, because all athletes just do that. We need to, we need nutrients. It's, it's considered healthy to take this, that, that, that and that. And okay, well, if I'm getting it with my diet first, one, it's a higher quality source of those nutrients, and two, I'm, I'm fueling my body better anyway, you know, and again, supplement as needed. But as much as possible, get your nutrition from whole foods.

Vanessa Ronksley: I love this one so much because I feel like in the terms of, of nutrition science, I think it was way back in the 50s, they, they've started to take nutrients out and analyze them and they started to reduce nutrition to a specific vitamin or a mineral. But what happens when you take that vitamin or mineral out of the natural source of where it came from is you're taking away that interaction that that vitamin or mineral might have with the rest of the components that are in that food. And so it's really, really important to get your nutrients from the whole food source because there's other things that are not necessarily a vitamin, vitamin or mineral that are in that food that are going to allow for that to be better absorbed in your body, better processed. It's going to give you the, your body's ability to have that mineral and keep it as opposed to maybe just secrete it. A lot of those multivitamins that people take, like you have too much of what you're taking in and you're just going to excrete it. So you're wasting your money by spending it on those things, whereas you could be spending your money on whole food and getting those nutrients into your body. So I agree with that. I love it very much. And save your money. Eat the whole food.

Andrew Harley: All right, three from you, three from me. Vanessa, what is your fourth takeaway from hosting so many TriDot Podcast episodes?

Vanessa Ronksley: All right, well, we're going back to the. The female. The female athlete. So this one was From Peri to Post: Candid Conversations from Triathletes on Menopause. This was episode 220. And this was probably one of my favorite episodes that I recorded. I think I might say that about every episode, but this one was really cool because I was talking with Dr. Tish Doyle Baker and, and Coach JoJo, and both of these people are. Is so experienced in their various fields and, and the awareness of menopause and perimenopause. It's becoming a lot more popular now. People are starting to talk about it on the socials, or maybe it's because of my age and the algorithms are forcing this content at me, I don't know. But menopause is, is becoming something that we're talking about. And what happens, however, is that the content that is being put out there is very negative. It's coming from a negative perspective, and it's talking about all these horrible symptoms that might. You might get or what's happening to you and how you might go, you know, have a rage on someone because you're going in perimenopause. But the thing that I loved about this podcast is that Dr. Tish to Doyle Baker mentioned that showing a positive outlook on menopause can actually influence your symptoms. And what researchers found is that if you have a negative attitude about menopause or perimenopause, it can actually make your symptoms worse than if you have a positive or a more positive outlook towards aging. And something else that she mentioned that has been coming up more and more on the podcast, not necessarily in relation to the menopause, but what influences symptoms and symptom management is the importance of sleep. So I know for me, like trying to squeeze in every bit of life out of each day, my sleep is being impacted. And whether that's not getting enough sleep or being way too strung out and not having a good quality sleep, that can be influenced or that can possibly influence your symptoms and your symptom management. So hearing about the positive outlook on aging and how that can influence your, you know, the, the symptoms that you might have and then how your sleep can also affect that in multiple ways, I think that that was just a really great episode to, to listen to.

Andrew Harley: Yep. Nothing more for me to add there because my algorithm doesn't give me a lot of carry and menopause content. But there you go wonder. Wonderful episode. And Vanessa, to be clear, that's not the only reason why we brought you into the fold as a co-host of the TriDot Podcast is to host female specific topics. But we wanted somebody who could ask the right questions when we wanted to broach those topics. And you do a wonderful job hosting and navigating those conversations for the, the female athletes in our audience. So thanks so much for that. Woohoo.

Vanessa Ronksley: Go females.

Andrew Harley: Go females. My next one is, I wanted, I wanted to pull this one because this is one of my favorite revelations for short course racing. I do like doing the occasional local sprint and Olympic and it's just a very different form of racing from 70.3 and IRONMAN. And one of my favorite takeaways that relates to short course, at least for me, is when it comes to warming up for a race, the shorter your race is, the longer and more intricate your warmup routine needs to be. And the longer the race, the shorter your warmup needs to be. And this is something we talked about extensively on Episode 67. It was called The Why and How of Your Pre-race Warmup. And coach Jeff Raines in particular really helped walk us through how to warm up properly for a race, whether it was short course or long course, gave us some tips, gave us some specific things to do, kind of how to, how to, how to time everything in relation to the race because you don't want to be tired at the start line, right, but you need, you need to activate the right muscles before a race. And he, Jeff gave a really interesting analogy back from his, his collegiate track days. The, the guys and gals doing the longer distance events didn't need all that much of a warmup. Usain Bolt and right, the sprinters, right, that, that, that are showing up to, to the meet, they, they would warm up for hours even though their, their, you know, event was 10 seconds or less, 20 seconds or less depending. Right. And, and you know, when you're just, you're, you're calling on your muscles to go that hard, you need to warm them up properly and longer and, and, and in a more specific sequence. And so Jeff gives us all of the how to do it and why to do it on that episode. But I, I wanted to give that, that takeaway as one of my personal 10 is just that reminder that hey, I think it's so easy to to drive down the I've got a sprint in Olympic triathlon seven minutes from my house every single April that I can go do right. And it's so easy to roll to bed, grab my stuff, roll down there, set up my transition, go sit by the pool and then hop in for the pool swim start when it's my turn and okay, this is a sprint. I'm going to be putting forth a massive amount of intensity for a short amount of time and I will perform better if I take Coach Reigns's advice and warm up properly. And just a good, good reminder, hopefully for all of our athletes out there who like towing the line at shorter events.

Vanessa Ronksley: So this one comes from Your Questions Answered: Smarter Strength Sessions, Aerodynamic Advantages, The Benefits of Different Swim Strokes, & More, Episode 225 and there was an athlete that came in with a question about keeping their gear very clean. And EJ was on this episode and she went to town on little tips and tricks for cleanliness. And I I just thought I would.

Andrew Harley: Highlight did it point out some shortcomings in your own routines?

Vanessa Ronksley: Oh yeah. I won't even share with you what I found in my swim bag. After she had recommended that you should do this for every week, I was like I won't share with you. But she did say that these are the things that that you need to do. So 2Toms Stink Free spray. It's magical. Apparently I haven't purchased any yet, but I would like to have some for all the stinky things that just arrive with training shoes, gloves, gear bags. It will help you out. She also mentioned that cleaning out your gear bag and wiping it down on a weekly basis is very appropriate and I do that now. I didn't before that episode. So thank you EJ and this was one that I never even thought about. But rinsing your helmet and washing the pads that go inside, you can take those little pads out. Apparently I still haven't done it, but you can take those little pads out and rinse them in the sink or you can put them in one of those, you know, like mesh bag protector thingies and them in the washing machine because that's where all the sweaty stuff is when you're riding and you have a helmet on. So wash those things. And then the other thing that I had never done before and I think this might be a result of me living in Canada and being in a very hot like a dry climate. It's not very humid and it's not hot very often, but rinsing out your run shoes and your bike shoes after using them, especially when they do get really sweaty. But then you can let them dry out in the sun because the sun has UV rays and that's going to help kill the bacteria that might be left over from rinsing and washing. So I thought those tips were really cool and I just wanted to reshare them because I definitely am not the queen of clean. I think that's EJ's. That's her. Her area and she's so good at it.

Andrew Harley: My fifth takeaway, number 10 for this episode is each zone. Each training zone has a purpose. Each training zone initiates a different training response from our body. And particularly Zone 2 is a very special training place that we want to give a shout out to. And this has come up on several Podcasts. There's two episodes I'll give a shout out to. Episode 273 is called Changing Gears: Improving Your Feel for Each Zone. It's. It's so helpful across the swim, bike and run be able to, to know what the feel of zone 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are just by RPE. And then the other one is Episode 233. We called it Slow Down to Speed Up: The Benefits of Zone Two Training. Before I came to TriDot, Vanessa, as an athlete just kind of doing my own thing, I had a vague concept that I should train at different paces, that it was good to go harder some days and easier other days. I def. Once I got on try, it was eye opening. I definitely was not varying my pace enough. When I thought I was going hard, I was not going hard enough. When I thought I was going easy, I was not going easy enough.

And then that's where a lot of people, as soon as they start training with TriDot, they, they see their swim dot, bike dot and run dots just skyrocket in. In the first couple months because train putting your body in the right pace, at the right effort for the right amount of time. It's the science of it, right? Like it. It does wonders. And, and I specifically wanted to give a shout out to Zone 2 because so many people struggle with the Zone 2 going slow enough. And one of my top takeaways from all of our conversations is this fact right here. There are changes. There are physiological adaptations that can only happen in your body when your heart rate is in zone two or lower. And as soon as you push the pace a scoach too hard and your heart rate goes into zone three, your body is no longer getting the training adaptation that it needs. In all of that zone two time. And so if you're an athlete that flirts between that zone two and zone three line because you just have a hard time slowing down and having your pace look slow on Strava. One, welcome to the club. Two, keep in mind, if your heart rate gets too high, you're. You're not getting out of the session. What you need to get out of the session. It's not just that try out or your coach wants you to go easy that day. It's that, hey, you're going easy today for a reason. One, for the act of recovery. Two, there are adaptations that there are mitochondrial. And Vanessa, I'm not the coach that can give you all the science of it, but there's something in the building of mitochondria that happens only in zone two and below. And you're ruining your body's chance to do that when you climb into zone three and higher. So when you look at your training calendar, when you look at your workout for the day, each zone 4, 5, and 6, I think we understand what zones 4, 5, and 6 are doing for us. Right. It's pushing us. But zone 2 also is a very magical place that has a reason. So, so land in the right zone for the right amount of times and specifically, don't cheap out on that zone 2 stuff.

Vanessa Ronksley: I agree. And I have two things to say about this. One, don't be a one pace wonder. I was a one pace wonder.

Andrew Harley: Yeah.

Vanessa Ronksley: Coming in to TriDot. Like, I thought that the, the red line was like the only line that you were ever supposed to train at. And that is far from the truth. So that's the first thing. And the second tidbit, which I really, really love, it's a quote from, I believe it's from Chrissy Wellington from one of the books that she, she wrote. And she said that one of the pitfalls about triathletes and their training is that we do the hard efforts too easy and the easy efforts too hard. And so we kind of merge everything to that middle section. And so if we don't allow ourselves to do that easy, easy stuff, it's going to inhibit our ability to do that hard stuff even harder. And so it was something that really resonated with me that she said and goes along with exactly what you're saying. Like, go to the zone 2, back off. It's fine to be at your low heart rate zone. Like, don't, you don't necessarily have to go to the upper heart rate, you know, area of Zone 2, like back off and go to the lower one because you're doing yourself a favor, not only for those physiological benefits, but for the recovery aspect as well. You can start your recovery early when you hit those zone. Two paces or heart rate zones.

Andrew Harley: Absolutely. So I agree with you, Vanessa. What? You're not agreeing with me. You're agreeing with all the coaches on the Podcast.

Vanessa Ronksley: Thank you for choosing it, though.

Andrew Harley: Vanessa, what's your. Your sixth. I think what we're on.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, so number six, I really like the Triathletes at the Gym: Best Practices for Incorporating Cardio Equipment and Classes. It's Episode 230. And again, as I've alluded to pretty much on every single Podcast that I've ever hosted or been on, I have a very soft spot in my heart for highly injured athletes because I have so much experience in that area. And one of the things that was brought up in this Podcast was how to talk to your healthcare provider about what you can and can't do when you are healing an injury. And I remember for me, like, I, before this episode, actually, I would go into the physio clinic or the doctor's. Medical doctor's office, and I, I do exactly what they suggested, but then I would forget to ask them what the limitations were. And, and so I would make up my own. And then sometimes I would re. Injure myself or prolong my recovery. So Matt Sommer again was on this, this episode, and, and he really hit it home when talking about the importance of asking the healthcare provider what activities you can do and going one step further and what intensities are allowed. And then what I like to do now is I have a list. I have a list that I go into the doctor's office with. And, and I provide suggestions as to what I can and can't do. And, and that is going to allow you to maintain some semblance of fitness and strength. And, and that oftentimes your mental health kind of coincides with all of that. So, you know, going on the treadmill, the elliptical, rowing machine, stair climber, yoga, water jogging, biking with a boot on. Oh, my gosh, I've been on a bike with a boot so many times. And, and my, my medical team cleared that for me because I asked, but if I hadn't asked, they wouldn't have allowed me to do that or they wouldn't have even thought to say that. Oh, I guess she's really hardcore. She wants to bike with a boot on. So I just want to make sure that, you know, it's okay for you to go in and advocate for yourself. And that's what this plan Podcast allowed me to do, was to advocate for what I needed. So I really appreciated that, that little tidbit.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, absolutely. It's, I mean, it's, it's your health, it's your body. Right, Absolutely. Make sure you get it right when you're in those appointments. Great reminder there. My next one. This, this is, this is what started tread up pool school largely. And, and it's this truth right here. There is an order of operations to learning a proper swim stroke. Most of us come to this sport not having had a strong swim background. If you're out there and you were on swim team or you, you swam, you know, you were a collegiate swimmer, high school swimmer, good for you. Some sort of youth and junior swimmer. You are the exception and you will benefit from that experience. The rest of us are still trying to learn how to swim properly. And every single triathlete out there is heading to the pool even with a proper workout in their hands. They go to the pool, they do their workout, but you can't effort your way to a better swim form. You have to stop and go through the process of getting the swim stroke right. And you see this at the professional level, there are some high level pros that win IRONMAN events and half IRONMAN events that everybody knows they have horrendous swim form. They come out of the water 5, 10 minutes after the other pros. They're just that good at biking and running. So anyway, the truth is there is a proper way to learn swim form. And if you're just going down to the pool and doing your workout and doing some drills or just going down in the pool and okay, I know my legs sink, so let me, let me google drills to prevent legs sinking in the swim. Okay, you might fix that one problem. But if you're fixing that problem and you're fixing it out of order from some larger problems you have that are causing that problem, you might make another problem even worse. And so the correct order of operations needs to be followed to have proper swim form. And this first came up on episode 2 of the TriDot Podcast. It was called How to Remove 8 Common Barriers to Swim Improvement and TriDot CEO Jeff Booher talked about this principle that there's a property way. And I remember like, we got done recording that episode and I was like, okay, we talked about this. A proper way. What's the proper way? Okay, we, we know the proper way. And that's become what TriDot Pool School is, and, and, and without, without, I, I'm not going to go through every single step right here, right now. But, but more or less like you work on the body position first and then you work on the this and then you work on the that and, and, and you have to kind of do the progression correctly or else if you kind of go out of the order, you can introduce some bad habits. And so there's a. Try to Podcast episode 56 or 156. TriDot Pool School: Functional Freestyle for Triathletes. If you've been to TriDot Pool School. You know, if you, if you thought about going, I can't advocate enough. Go to TriDot Pool School.. Work with a coach that is, TriDot Pool School certified and maybe they can work with you. But there's, there's a proper order. And if you're just going down to the pool and doing your workout and you know there's some, some errors in your, in your, in your mechanics, don't just try to spot correct, really plug in and, and, and take the time to learn the proper order of operations because once you have it down, you have it down and your swim will thank you for it.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, I love that. I think that a lot of times people think, even when they're doing their swim drills, they're, they think that they look different than they actually are. And so it's really important to, to be able to recognize that we need to do those order of operations and we also have to get eyeballs on us doing those operations and, and pairing that. You can do these order of operations without a pool. You don't even have to go to a pool. You can do them on dry land and, and that will help you to improve your swim stroke. So I love that. I'm gonna jump right into the next nugget. Okay, thank you. So this one is one of the things that I remember and I tell everybody about. It's such a good nugget. It's, it's from Episode 232, In Sickness and In Health: Training While You're Sick. And this fact is mind blowing. So as a triathlete, or anyone who travels on planes for that matter, Dr. Jeff Krebs was on this episode and told our audience that he wears a mask on planes until the plane hits cruising altitude. And apparently at cruising altitude, there's an elaborate airflow system that has HEPA filters on board. And they kick in at that point because it takes too much energy for them to kick in earlier when the plane's taking off. So when these filters kick in, the risk of getting sick is substantially less. So I just thought that was mind blowing because up until this point, I was traveling on planes, like, prior to a race and wearing a full mask for the entire plane ride. Super uncomfortable, just because I didn't want to be getting sick a couple days before my race. So after hearing this, I was like, oh, thank goodness. I only have to wear my mask, you know, for the first part of the. The journey and then the end, of course, when you're about to get off the plane. He did say, Dr. Jeff Krebs also did say that if someone around you is coughing a lot or, like, constantly blowing their nose, that maybe you might want to keep that mask on a little bit longer. But overall, he is the type of person who feels safe removing the mask up in the sky. So I thought that was pretty awesome. So yay.

Andrew Harley: Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yay. Yay for that. Yeah. That was a very interesting episode where we had two different medical professionals on with Vanessa talking about how to handle that moment, right, where. Where you. You feel a cold coming on, you feel something coming on, you've got some symptoms. But we're obsessive triathletes. We still want to train if we can. So what's that line? Right? What's that line? Go listen to that episode and hear them talk through signs that you should. It's okay to go out and do the training sessions and sign your. Your body needs the rest before it needs anything else. Very, very interesting conversation there, Vanessa. And a great standout fact from that right there. My next one is this has come up in so many of our episodes with Dr. B.J. Leeper, where we talk. We're talking. When he comes on the show, we're usually talking some form of movement recovery, strength building, because that is his expertise. Injury prevention. And what he says. That is a big takeaway for me is just pointing out that as triathletes, we need to be working on our functional movement patterns. I did not have this in movement in my vocabulary before he started coming on our show. Right. I just saw going down to the gym as going down to the gym. I'm gonna go strength train and. And do some curls and do some. Some squats and do something like that. Strength training was my only set of vocabulary for something that wasn't swim, bike, run. The swim, bike, run strength. Well, no, Vanessa, there's not. There's swim, bike, run strength, mobility, stability, muscle activation. Like, there's so many different kind of nuanced roads and lanes to. To what we. What we're working on with our bodies when we're in a strength environment. And, and what Dr. Leeper points out on so many of our episodes, the, the one that I wrote down just to give a shout out to one of them is episode 71, Movement Matters: Mobility and Stability for Triathletes. Learn those two words. Mobility. Mobility and stability. They're two different things. There are parts of our body that are meant to be mobile, right? Your elbows, your knees, your ankles, your shoulders. There are parts of our body that are made to be stable. You know, you're, and that's largely your muscles, your core, your back, your arms, your legs, your. And what, what our bad habit is as amateur athletes who don't know any better is to go to the gym, lift some weights and try to put strength on a dysfunctional body. And if we're not being intentional in the gym, to, to work mobility in there, work, you know, work on our flexibility, work on our joints being stable. We can be hurting. We're putting strength on top of instability and increasing our odds at injury. And so be intentional with your strength time. Book some appointments with a physical therapist and be proactive about that. If you don't know what to do and you go to a gym and you hear us talking about this. But, but you have to view. To stay healthy in this sport, enjoy the sport, perform at your best. You have to do some work to have your, your functional movement be healthy.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah.

Andrew Harley: If you're a triathlete, you're listening to this podcast built into your week. There should be some times you're working on the health of your movement patterns. You don't know what that means. Get with a PT, learn what that means. And then, and then you're good. You can sustain it on your own from home, from there.

Vanessa Ronksley: Absolutely. So the next nugget that I'm going to. To reminisce about is it has to do with longevity in the sport of triathlon. And I think this is something that a lot of us who want to do triathlon for a long period of time and eventually qualify for Kona, when you're like 70 or something or 80 because there's very few people left, this is how you're going to do it. So this, this tip was from Episode 234, Revisiting Aging Up: Getting Faster as You Get Older. So this one was a revisit tip and I think or revisit episode. And it was just, it was so great. We Had DeeDee on there, we had Kurt Madden on there, and everything that they shared was so inspiring. But the thing that struck me the most, and that I've remembered since this aired after the first time and the second time, is that it's possible to get faster and stronger as we age. And so originally I had thought that, you know, getting older just means that you get slower and slower and you just see the past life that you used to have as being something.

Andrew Harley: We're gonna peak at age 24, and it's all downhill from there. A slow march till death.

Vanessa Ronksley: But how cool is it that Kurt had the highest FTP of his life in his late 60s? How amazing is that? That right there goes to show that if you do the right training, right, and that you're consistent over long periods of time, like, you can truly achieve anything that you set your mind to. And for someone like Kurt, who's been in the sport for decades, that is pretty incredible that he's, like, peaking and he's just, you know, leveling up. So I love that so much.

Andrew Harley: My next one, we're kind of in the home stretch here and looking at the clock. Vanessa and I can talk. So we're. We're. We're running up against the time we like to end by. So we're going to fly through these last couple. But my next one is a takeaway from an episode called What to Expect on Race Day: Answers and Advice for the Aspiring IRONMAN. It's episode 54. This came out before I became an Ironman, so I was just taking feverish notes as I was working towards my first Ironman. But. But this is something that coach John Mayfield says all the time, and he said it on this episode. And it's the reminder that you don't have to have everything go right in the 24 hours before your race to have a great race. I think especially when it's an A race when it's a. When it's a. The longer it is and. And just the more pressure we put on ourselves when we have a big goal, whatever reason, like. Like if anything goes wrong, we. We can't find the dinner we want the night before. We're struggling to fall asleep, and we have a poor night of sleep the night before. And John's quote that. That I really is a takeaway from me. A top takeaway is there are IRONMAN World Championships, Olympic medals, personal PRs, age group podiums have been., Have been achieved after poor nights of sleep or a dinner that wasn't ideal. Or fill in the blank. Something that went slightly askew for you in the lead up for, For. For your race. So just take the stress off. Take a deep breath, you know, go through your checklist of making sure all your gear is ready. Go through the motions of all the things you need to do to. To have your body prepared for race day. Um, but if you don't sleep well the night before a race, which you probably won't, it's okay if you, if you. If your stomach isn't open to a big meal morning of night before, what. Like, it's all okay. Just do the best you can. Get to the race day. Take a deep breath and have a great time out there. Um, you're not the only one out there towing the start line having not slept very well the night before. I don’t, I never sleep well the night before a race. And so for me, that's what makes this a top 10 personal takeaway. Top 20 for our show is don't put so much pressure on that night, that dinner, that everything, you know, go through the motions. Be ready. It's all going to be okay. Vanessa, over to you.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, I agree with that. I love that. Thank you for reminding me because I listened to episode 50 a really long time ago, but I do.

Andrew Harley: 54. 54, yeah.

Vanessa Ronksley: Oh, 54. Yeah. That was still a very long time ago. Yeah. I'm gonna hop right into the next nugget. This one is from Eating for Energy: How to Get Enough Protein, Fruit, and Veggies. It was Episode 238. And Scott Tindall, he's the founder of FuelIn, and he was on this episode and he just had a great race.

Andrew Harley: Shout out to Scott Tindall. He just had a great race. At IRONMAN Cairns, he’s training with TriDot, with his coach, Coach Andres, who coaches with TriDot and anyway, please continue.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, awesome. I'm gonna go look it up. But he, he, bro. Some research that was new and I, as I said, I'm a sucker for research. I love it, especially when it's done really well. And it was formally thought, like, previous to this research study, that a certain amount of protein could only be absorbed at one time. And so it was really important to space out the protein that you were eating throughout the day as. As a best practice just to ensure that you weren't, you know, secreting the things that you didn't need to secrete by eating too much protein at once. But some newer research came out and he, he shared it with us on this episode that eating larger protein quantities at one meal are actually very useful especially after a training session. And so when you have this like larger protein feed that, that continues for a long time in the body compared to smaller feeds. And muscle protein synthesis will eventually increase over time by having these larger protein feeds after a meal. And that was a huge eye opener for me because I was always taught in the nutrition field like separate your proteins and you have to have like six servings of proteins a day to make sure that you hit your targets. And this just, it was mind blowing. It's beneficial to have larger protein feeds and if you, you know, just get the protein in whenever you can, that's ultimately what, what he was talking about. So I, I just loved the, the research aspect and then kind of dispelling a myth that or some form, it wasn't really a myth but dispelling the, the research that had come previous to that about protein quantity.

Andrew Harley: My next one, two to go for each of us. I, I, I wanted to talk about the takeaway that stress is stress. And what I mean by that kind of harkens Back to Episode 42 of the TriDot Podcast. It was called The Impact of Stress on Your Triathlon Training. And there's a couple things to unpack here. Vanessa. First try out is the only training platform out there currently that is quantifying stress correctly. Most training systems you'll see a little TSS as, as the score of what training your session gives you and induces on your body. TSS is the training stress score. We, we know there are a, a number of ways in which TSS is an outdated metric that is often incorrect for how much stress a session puts on your body. And the, the, the data scientists at TriDot, we have data scientists on our staff. Pretty cool. They have come up with an improved version, a refined version called NTS Normalized Training stress that, that gets it right. So importantly, if you're an athlete listening and you train with tried out, congratulations, your stress is being quantified correctly on your platform. You'll see an NTS stress score in all of your sessions. So that's one thing they know about, about stress. Like the stress of your session is being measured, it's being mindfully prescribed to you. But on top of that, one thing we were talking about in this episode that was so interesting to me is that our bodies perceives lifestyle stress, so to speak, essentially the, the same as training stress. And so if, if you have just an extra hectic part of your schedule, life flares up, something's going on. You're working a lot hours, you're not sleeping well. That stress will manifest in. In your training and your energy levels and. And how well you can go out and complete the session. And unfortunately, that lifestyle stress can't be measured by your garment. For TriDot to know what's going on in your lifestyle stress. So I say all this to say what our coaches really encouraged us, reminded us is that stress is stress. There's your training stress. TriDot can measure that, but there's also the stress going on in your personal life. And so the takeaway here, Vanessa, is just have your head on a swivel. Right. Be in tune with what's going on in your life. If your life gets a little extra stressful, give yourself some grace in your training. Maybe back off on your training a little bit because of the stress going on in your life. If you have a coach, you can work with your coach on how much to do that and where to kind of pull those levers. But that's a top takeaway for me that I wanted people to know. One, we measure stress correctly. It's pretty cool. But two, know that the stress that's going on in your life is real. It affects your energy, it affects your training, and just kind of. Kind of factor that into how your session went that day.

Vanessa Ronksley: I. I think that this. This one ties into exactly my next.

Andrew Harley: Go for it.

Vanessa Ronksley: My next takeaway nugget. So I'm just gonna go straight into it. This. This nugget comes from the Bone Health for Triathletes episode, which was number 242. And it goes back to the sleep factor, and it ties in really well with sleep stress. Yeah. So sleep is important for recovery. Um, and. And we know that, like, we know that deep down sleep is good for recovery. But I know, for me, I like to know why that is important, because if you tell me it's important, I'll be like, yeah, yeah, whatever. But if you tell me why, like, on a molecular level, I'll be more likely to adhere to the advice that you're going to give me. So Dr. Gillian Wooldridge was the one who joined us for this episode, and she's like, she's a specialist in bone health for endurance athletes, which was tick number one on Take this advice. Tick number two is that she actually said that when we have a lack of sleep, our bodies are going to produce more cortisol, which is exactly what happens when we have increased levels of stress, we produce more cortisol. So there's a lot of things that are going to happen to the body with elevated cortisol levels. But the one that she mentioned that was in relation to bone health is that we have these cells that break down bone. They're called osteoclasts. And if cortisol is elevated, then your bone mass can actually decline just because you're not getting enough sleep. And as triathletes like our bone health is massively important. Not just in the short term, but if we wish to continue this sport, and even if we don't wish to continue this sport, but later on in life when bone mass starts to deteriorate just as a result of aging, we have to make sure that we're not allowing this cortisol to increase on a regular basis so that our bones are breaking down while we're sleeping. So if that's not a good enough reason to go to bed early, then I don't know what is.

Andrew Harley: Yep, great stuff. On to. Was that your last one, Vanessa? That was your last one, right first.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's my last one.

Andrew Harley: Well, then I'll. I'll close this out with my 10th. So. So between Vanessa and I, this is our 20th takeaway from 300 TriDot Podcast episodes as your, your dutiful, faithful, hopefully well liked hosts. And this. It's not from a specific episode, it's not from a specific thing that a coach said. It's just my anecdotal takeaway from being in the host chair for so long. Not to get romantic about podcasting or triathlon or both, but being in the host chair, interviewing so many coaches, so many athletes about their journeys, their experiences. All of us in the sport have a different journey. We all have different goals. We all have different reasons for doing this sport. We all have different motivations for going out and doing the training. We all have different budgets and different sets of gear and different life circumstances. We're all part of the family. We're all in this together. And so I just want to remind you, like, whatever your story is, like, own it. It's so incredible, Vanessa. And you know this from going to the races. Like when you go to an individual IRONMAN event, you know there's going to be a couple thousand people are going to cross the finish line. When you go down the road to a local sprint, there's going to be a couple hundred people potentially crossing the finish line. And it's so easy to say what's unique about my journey, what's different from my journey. At some point, we're all out there overcoming something. We're all out there running, running from something. We're all out there.

You know, there's only so many different types of motivations for doing the sport. That still doesn't make your experience less special. It still doesn't make your, your journey, whatever's happening to you at this present time in your training and racing, less, less special. So know that we love you, know that we care about you, know that when we see you at the races, we're gonna, we're, we're gonna be excited to celebrate you. Don't be a stranger. Talk to us on, on, on the socials and yeah, go out there, do your thing, be a triathlete and have fun. Keep it fun. This should be fun. Don't take it too seriously. And whatever your journey is, we're right there with you and we celebrate you. Vanessa, anything you want to add along those lines?

Vanessa Ronksley: You're going to make me cry. That was so nice.

Andrew Harley: A little ad lib, but from the heart.

Vanessa Ronksley: No, I agree with you. Because when you see those people, every single person cross that finish line, they've had some experience that has propelled them to first of all dream that dream and then to accomplish that dream. And it's just, you can see it all over their faces. You can see it in their body language. And it's just the most magical thing ever. And that's why triathlon is such an amazing sport. I don't think I see that in other races or other sports, but as, as much as in triathlon because people are embodying their experience as they go through that motion of crossing that finish line. And it's just, it's so magical and special.

Cool Down

Andrew Harley: On to the cool down of our show where every week moving forward, we're going to ask a different audience question to the coaches on the show and it's me and Vanessa. So me and Vanessa get to field this one. And so I made sure, Vanessa, I selected a question that I think we know the answer to collectively. I'll give you, I'll give you a crack at it and I'll fill in anything that I might know about this. But to, to end the show quickly, Ashley has asked this question. Does moving around the workouts on TriDot on a weekly basis to fit your schedule, does that hinder the fitness outcomes? Yep. So, so here's, here's the, this is the science behind what it is. And we do have a Podcast episode about this. It's episode 005 so it came out many years ago. But the fifth episode of the TriDot Podcast is called behind the scenes optimizing your training schedule. And John Mayfield and Jeff Booher were talking to us about these kinds of principles like why is the training calendar the way it is? Why is the sequencing of your intervals the way they are? Everything with TriDot training is intentionally there to, to be optimized. And so when you first join it's going to give you the. The default training calendar. The which is the most optimized training calendar you could have unless you tell it not to, right? And you can tell not to. You can open up your settings and you can say, okay, I need my long run on Saturday and my long run on bike day. I need to not work out on Tuesdays. Like you kind of put some constraint constraints and what happens every time you put a constraint in your settings is TriDot is now optimizing your schedule based on the constraints that it gave you. So your training's still being optimized and it's still going to be very darn good. It's still going to be the best possible training scenario for you based on your schedule. But you are taking down how effective it could be by a scoach each time, right? Each, each thing you move takes down how effective it can be by just a little bit. It's still going to be great. Don't get me wrong. It's not going to give you a garbage calendar. It's going to give you the optimized training schedule you can have based on what you can do. And so if you're doing it manually, like Vanessa is talking about or like I think Ashley's asking about, you know, and this happens to me, right. I plan on going for a bike ride on Tuesday. Some life stuff comes up. I've got 20 minutes for a run, but I can't get in an hour long bike. I just flip a few things around and then boom, I can get all my training in this week. Okay, I'm getting all the training in. The effectiveness goes down just a scoach, right? And I don't want to put a percentage on it or put it whatever, because I'm sure it's different and I'm not on the data science team. But that's what's happening is the answer is yes, it is hindering the possible training effectiveness. If you do it a ton, will you realize it? Maybe a little. If you're seeking that, that, that top performance, you want to qualify for Kona, you want to win first place or go pro. Okay. Yeah. Try to keep it as much as you can in place. Everything trying to does it does for a reason. So. So the answer is yes. But don't worry about it. You've got to get the training in around your calendar, right. You can't change your calendar. So. So do what you can. And the other hack here, Vanessa, if you do have to cut some training sessions, look at the XP scores on your training sessions. The higher the XP value on a training score, themore important that that session is for you. So as you're, as you're moving your calendar around, if you see, oh, this bike is worth 67 XP and this run is worth 20, okay, if you got to skip one, skip the run, that's worth 20. Do the and keep the sessions that are higher value where they are as much as you can and hopefully that helps everybody out just a little bit.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Tri Dot Podcast. Help us out by leaving a rating and review on your listening platform of choice. For more opportunities to learn from our coaches, check out our YouTube channel and follow TriDot training on social. Ready to train with us? Head to TriDot.com and get started for free.

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