Your Questions Answered: Bike Gearing, Swim Session Execution, Season Planning, & More

TriDot Podcast Episode 250

Your Questions Answered: Bike Gearing, Swim Session Execution, Season Planning, & More

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Intro: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let’s improve together.

Vanessa Ronksley: Welcome to the TriDot Podcast! We love our TriDot athletes so much that every once in a while, we want to know what you want to know. We asked athletes in our community hub and those in the I Am TriDot Facebook group what questions they wanted to hear answers to from our expert coaches. Here to provide us with all the amazing answers to the questions from the people is Coach Joanna Nami and Coach Jeff Raines. Joanna is better known as Coach JoJo and has been coaching athletes with TriDot since 2012. She's a co-founder of Hissy Fit Racing, a member of the Betty Design Elite Squad, and has double-digit Ironman finishes on her accomplished triathlon résumé. She has raced the Ironman World Championship three times and her passion is helping athletes of all levels to reach their goals. Jo, thank you so much for being here!

Joanna Nami: Thanks for having me, Vanessa. Super excited. Being back to podcasting is super fun with you guys.

Vanessa: It's always great to have you. We also have with us today TriDot Master Coach Jeff Raines. Jeff is a certified TriDot coach, a USA Triathlon Level 2 and IRONMAN U Certified Coach, who has a Master of Science in Exercise Physiology, and he was a D1 collegiate runner. He has over 60 Ironman event finishes to his credit, including the World Championships in Nice, and has coached hundreds of athletes to the Ironman finish line. Jeff has been training and coaching with TriDot since 2015. Welcome to the show, Jeff!

Jeff Raines: Thanks, Vanessa! Gosh, 250. I remember the first one back in 2019, and man, it has just been amazing, all things in between.

Vanessa: It's pretty incredible that the podcast has been going for that long, that's for sure. And here I am! I'm Vanessa, the Average Triathlete with Elite-Level Enthusiasm! As always, we'll roll through our warmup question, settle in for our main set topic, and then wind things down with our cooldown. Let's get after it and learn new things!

Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.

Vanessa: My new amazing job over here at TriDot has me thinking a lot about what makes race experiences amazing for athletes. And something that has crossed my mind multiple times is those little unexpected interactions that can play a huge part in the success of your race day. This happened to me in California when I ran into coach John Mayfield in T2. And he said to me, “It's time for you to become an Ironman!” And this was completely unexpected. It lifted my spirits so much that I actually ran way too fast for the first few kilometers of that run because I was so pumped. So my warmup question for you both today is, if you were surprised by someone in T2, who would light your fire the most? Let's start with you, JoJo.

Joanna: Well, mine's going to be the token answer. Jeff probably can say the same thing, maybe not. But when you've done this for a really long time, you're in race mode when you hit transition. So I'm already thinking of the steps as I'm coming out of the water or getting off the bike. Those days are very long. If I do see my husband or my mom and dad, that's huge. That usually lights my fire because I know how much they've sacrificed for me to be there. My kids are really over this stuff, so they haven't been to Ironman races in probably ten years. So if one of them showed up, I'd probably win my age group because I'd be shocked if they'd come out to see me race again.

Vanessa: Well, maybe we have to make that happen somehow as a surprise. Okay. We'll see how we can do that. Raines, who would put in an extra pep into your step for the rest of your race?

Jeff: Yeah, Joanna, my three kiddos are a good answer, but they're drinking the Kool-Aid right now. I mean, three, five, and eight. My daughter is actually doing her first-ever triathlon in August. So my kids are very much into it right now, but that's too easy of an answer. And they're going to be there on the run out, right? So, they're going to be on the course and I'm going to see them on the run out holding some of those posters. So in T2, I'm going to go – and you know me, not just one answer – Mark Allen's going to be standing there, Craig Alexander and Miranda Carfrae are all three going to be standing there next to my bike, with the IRONMAN coverage on me. Wow, that would make me nervous. It'd just be a crazy awesome experience, and it would help me hold true on the run course, we'll just say.

Vanessa: I find the best way to answer these questions actually, is to go with your gut reaction. And as hard as it may be for me to do that for this question, I'm going to go there anyways. So the first thing that came to my mind was having my dad in T2. He has advanced-stage Alzheimer's, and we've had this version of my dad for a really long time. And he no longer has the ability to speak, so I think that the most amazing surprise in T2 would be if he would say, “Go get ‘em sunshine!” Yeah, I'm pretty sure that would give me wings for the rest of the race, that's for sure.

So let's hear it folks! This question will be posted in the Community Hub and in the I Am TriDot Facebook group. I can't wait to hear about your surprise T2 visitors who would motivate you to keep going and cross that finish line.

Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…

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We all know that triathlon is ridiculously complicated, and with that athletes have a lot of questions. So as we mentioned before, this is episode 250, and we did this episode 25 episodes ago, so now it's time for us to take a bunch of the questions that have come through the Community Hub, Instagram, Facebook group, personal messages, emails, so that our audience has a chance to hear what our expert coaches have to say. So let’s dig in here and get our athletes some top-notch answers!

Let's kick this off with a question coming to us from Eric Engstrom. “When following the prescribed swim workout, is it better to hit the prescribed zones if you have to take a longer rest interval to do so? Or are you better off sticking to the prescribed rest interval and perhaps not being able to achieve the prescribed zone?” So Jo, you're our resident swim expert. What do you think about this one?

Joanna: I think some of you have heard of the concept of micro-cheating when you're doing a workout, in that it's very easy, a very slippery slope to get in the habit, especially in swim workouts to hit the wall, stop the watch, not pause the watch, talk to somebody for 15 minutes, or just break for a minute or two because you're having a bad day, or you're feeling fatigued from that last interval. So I think it is best that you try to adhere to that rest period. For newer triathletes that are out there listening to this, in the TriDot workouts the allotted rest time is in the parentheses following the interval.  Whether you're supposed to, after a super-fast interval, wait 45 seconds or a minute, or a shorter interval wait 15 or 20 seconds. All of that cumulatively, the interval plus the recovery, is part of the workout. We have consecutive intervals in a row with that rest period so that you're having to do another interval when you're not fully recovered yet, when your heart rate is still elevated. So there's a method to the madness when we have those workouts. So a short answer would be to adhere to the rest period that's prescribed. However, there's often circumstances during our training week, during our lives, when there's illness, or a really rough outside bike ride, or family stress. There's so many factors that weigh into our week that sometimes we have to listen – you're going to hear this over and over again, is listen to your body. And there's just some days when we're not going to be able to make that interval, on pacing, with that recovery period. So I think it is important to listen to yourself. And if on those days you need extra rest in between intervals, then that's not the end of the world. So if you can, try to hit the recovery exactly. But you do have to listen to yourself in certain circumstances.

Jeff: And I'll even add that there's an aspect of keeping the integrity of the workout. If you can't keep the integrity of the workout because of functional threshold, that's one thing, that's a fitness thing. So there is a method behind the madness and why it's 15 seconds rest versus 25 seconds rest, and so on. But if you can't keep the integrity of the workout because of body positioning, body balancing, form, then there's an integrity of the workout issue, or an “it depends”, or a bigger aspect where sometimes there is value – if you're 75% of the way through the workout and you can't hit the zones because your form is failing, then save that workout, let the data file, get the fun TrainX score, but stay in the water for 20 extra minutes focusing on form. So I think you’ve got to kind of have an honest conversation with yourself, because there is a method behind the madness, and there are certain drills that are prescribed. The swim drills are not random. TriDot sees the data in the swim diagnostics, and it's trying to make you a better swimmer inside of the workouts by what it prescribes and the drills, but also it's trying to improve functional threshold with the prescribed main set.

Vanessa: We have another question, this one's coming to us from Craig Jiminez. He has a question about the wind. And I'm not sure if it's just me, but the wind where I live and also the wind at so many races so far this season, seems to be way more intense than usual. So I think this is a perfect question for this point in time. He wants to know, “When racing the bike leg, it's advised to try to be as consistent as possible in staying at your RaceX target power. But what is recommended when it gets windy?”

Jeff: I'm going to jump into this one. I live in West Texas. It's a desert. It's 20-plus mile per hour wind five days a week or more. I mean, it's crazy. So first I'll say, RaceX does take into account wind direction, the speed of it, and also there's a variable of how that wind changes throughout the race. So hour eight on the bike in an Ironman is going to be a different wind direction, temperature, wind speed, than hour one. So how the weather changes throughout the middle of your race, RaceX does take into account all of those things. It's hotter usually later on the bike than earlier on the bike, so all of that is being taken into account. But inside of that, the wind direction – so there's lots of things to take into account when biking into a wind, versus a crosswind, versus a tailwind. Your cadence is going to change inside of all three of those a little bit. Ankle stiffness – into a headwind we tend to get a little tense, we move a little bit forward on our seat, maybe get a little bit more into a tuck, a little bit more toe-down dominant, a little stiff ankle, maybe mashing the pedals, maybe pushing 5 or 10 extra watts. Let's say at the U-turn or the second half of the bike, you know it's going to be a tailwind. So you may be going 3, 4, 5 miles per hour higher than your overall average goal pace or goal watts. But your speed is really good, and let's say you're banking time, even in a tailwind. Sometimes it's really hard to hit your watt target on a downhill or in a tailwind. So you could almost soft pedal a bigger gear and a slightly lower cadence into a tailwind. If you know that half of your race – let's say a half-Ironman, 56 miles – 28 miles has a headwind, U-turn, and then 28 miles has a monster tailwind. You could probably get away with holding 10, 15, or 20 extra watts into that headwind, knowing that you're going to fly on the way back soft pedaling, so to speak. There are ways to take all that into account. But I would just say that you've got to be really careful with your ankle stiffness, and toe-down dominant, versus flat, versus heel-down dominant. You always want to keep a little bit of swivel and fluidity in the ankle. A stiff ankle usually means you're overly quad-dominant, and that usually happens more into a headwind. So you’ve just got to be a little bit careful there.

Vanessa: We're going to move right into our next question here. So if I remember correctly, we may have answered this question on a podcast from a really long time ago, but I'm wondering if things may have changed since it's been asked. Dave Thomas wants to know, “What is the process for becoming a pro triathlete?”

Jeff: A lot of it depends on the type of event that you compete in, like draft-legal versus non-drafting. But the most common method is to finish top three in the amateur field of a qualifying race. A qualifying race is a race that has a corresponding pro field, and a prize purse of $20,000 or more. So if you race the same race as the pro field and you get top three overall amateur. Another way to qualify is to finish within 8% of the winning elite's time in three USA Triathlon-sanctioned events within a year. And each of those would have to also offer a prize purse of $5,000 or more. A third way is by finishing in the top ten overall in the World Triathlon Age Group World Championship, or you could be top ten overall amateur at the IRONMAN World Championship. And some additional tidbits, the minimum age to become an elite triathlete or a pro is 15 years old. But those who are 16 and 19 years old can compete in the USAT Junior Elite series. And there's also a collegiate elite license that's available for NCAA athletes who don't want to jeopardize their eligibility by competing for prize money. So there’s ways to protect those youngsters a little bit.

So once you hit one of those qualification criteria, you then apply for a license, and once that is granted you are eligible or licensed as a pro for three years. But the new pro, inside of those three years, has to renew the license each year, and they can extend their eligibility by submitting a race result where they finished within 8% of the winner pro's time at a sanctioned event with a prize purse of at least $5,000. So that's how you renew it inside of the three years. Now, when an elite license expires, or the renewal criteria isn't met, an athlete can choose to renew as an elite, or if they're no longer eligible to race in that elite field, they may return to racing in the amateur or the age-group field. There's usually 400-something elite licenses given. I think in 2021 there were 471, there's been 460, 477. It's kind of good to know, I hope that helps a little bit.

Vanessa: Our next question is about the pros. We see them doing a lot of racing throughout the year, and naturally a thing that triathletes want to do is they want to be like the pros, so maybe the answer to this question will help us out a little bit. Jeff and JoJo, give us your wisdom. Gail Walker from the UK is wondering what the optimum number of middle-distance races a year is, without compromising any gains made from training. Joanna, let's go to you first.

Joanna: Well, it's very dependent on each athlete. I mean, there are a ton of factors that we have to consider when mapping out an athlete's race calendar, their season planner. It really is very dependent on how much time that athlete has to train, their race history, their race experience, how well they recover, and all different aspects of their life. With my athletes, we try to focus on this life, family, work, training balance. And when you start to race many times in a year, that balance is really upset. So we do have to look at all of those factors as far as family responsibility, recovery regimen, nutrition regimen, all parts of their life to see what will work best for them individually. I think the standard answer would be that for a – there's no normal athlete, no standard athlete – but that might be three middle-distance races a year.  Or for someone that requires more recovery time or becomes extremely stressed mentally from racing, that might be one or two a year with some shorter distance racing. For the overzealous athlete that might be three or four middle distances, which can be done. And I know Raines will get into the nuts and bolts of this, as we keep adding races, as we keep adding middle-distance races to a calendar, we are decreasing development time, as far as our athletes training, which is essential. We need that adequate development time to increase speed, power, and pacing. And when we are racing every other month, that becomes pretty non-existent. So I'll throw it to Jeff cause I know he'll have good ideas on this too.

Jeff: Episode 10 is one of our most-listened-to ones, and I think I refer to that podcast on every single podcast that I'm a part of, because it is so valuable. Yeah, there's a developmental versus stamina phase, or that “race prep” phase that we call it in TriDot. But the human body arguably can hold a peak arguably six to ten weeks. And it's not a secret sauce, but it kind of is – that's what the data says in TriDot over 17 years, a million data files show that “fast before far and the strong before long” is how to do it. So what I always stress with my athletes is you want to spend as many precious months in the developmental phase as you can. I have a “rule” of a minimum of six months minimum, staying in that developmental phase. And then that last couple of months you add that race prep stamina phase, and boom, you're peaking. You have that race. “Okay, great, you're peaking.” And if you can hold a peak, let's just say six to ten weeks, well how many times do you want to, or can you, race in that period? Now this is if you have one big super goal, a super A race, where you want to maximize performance and use the whole season. I'm that way, and John Mayfield is too, do an Ironman and schedule another three to six weeks later, something like that, in case there's a weather aspect. So if there's an aspect like that, or a unique day, and you trained all year, it's great. It's okay to have another one or two out there. I'd say space them out. You're going to have a week of taper, and then usually about two weeks to fully recover, and you may want to get another rehearsal in there. So I'd say at least three to six weeks in between those races, and you could do two or three back-to-back. The final piece to all of this is you can do a long-course race, and put it in as a C race, and stay in the developmental phase, doing shorter workouts with more quality inside. You could do, let's say a-half Ironman while in that developmental phase, if you’re smart. There's an aspect of maintaining the integrity of the overall season, but also still getting enough safe stamina to complete that race. So if you're going to do something like that, I'd work with a coach. And be experienced, don't throw in a C race if you've never done that distance before.

Vanessa: I have a question for you that I just thought of while you were talking about this. So you recommend staying in the developmental phase for six months. Does that impact at all the length of your race prep phase? Like if you have a really long developmental phase, will your race prep phase be shorter as a result? Because I've heard that there are some race prep phases that are shorter and some that are longer. I’m just curious about that.

Jeff: That's a good question. There's always a cost. If your half-Ironman is in four months and you start day one of training today, well you have to have a certain number of weeks to build stamina, because you have to complete the distance, right? So what is shortened is your developmental phase, because there's a point at which your threshold is going to be what it is and we’ve got to start building stamina around that. Now obviously, the more time that you have in the developmental phase, the longer you can race that longer tent pole, which is your functional threshold. So then when stamina hits, you're holding higher percentages of that set threshold for longer durations. Now everyone's stamina race prep phase, as you get closer to that long course race, everyone's week or day or time that that starts is different for everybody. Not everybody starts exactly nine weeks out from a half-Ironman with the stamina. If you're going to be an 8½-hour half-Ironman, you need more stamina, you're going to be out there longer. So your race prep phase would start earlier, and your developmental phase may be shorter. If you're going 4:20 out there, you don't need a lot of four-hour bike rides. An hour and a half or two-hour rides with quality inside are going to be plenty. So you can stay in the developmental phase longer. But the beauty of TriDot and RaceX is that as you get fitter along the way, and as you do your monthly assessments and that threshold is raised, TriDot and RaceX see that. It knows that and it re-optimizes. It knows that you're going to be faster on race day now, and it does take all that into account with the season planner.

Vanessa: I love it, that was great. Thank you so much for that. We're going to be heading over to a swim session question from TriDot Ambassador and athlete Ben Meyer. “What is the best approach when it comes to best possible average and sprint-type swims?”

Joanna: I think that a lot of people come to triathlon who didn't grow up as swimmers, kind of the “adult-onset swimmer”, so they're trying to make the best of every workout and interpret it the way they think is right. So I think this is a great question, in that we know what that terminology means. We see it a couple of times in TriDot workouts as “best possible average”. So we're doing a set of consecutive intervals. While we're doing that, we're trying to go out as fast as possible, maintain speed as fast as possible, and throughout that set, in every interval, maintain that pacing. That's tricky. Probably the number one question I get from triathletes or swimmers is, “I don't know how fast I'm going.” Some people are using FORM goggles, that helps us to know what our pace is. But a lot of people are not. When I start with more beginner triathletes, or even some of my more advanced triathletes, I talk to them about “rate of perceived exertion”. I think it's very helpful to talk about what a Zone 2 interval feels like in the water, or what a Zone 3 interval feels like. Because most of the time they're thinking 1 and 2 is easy, 3 is in the middle, 4 might be hard. So we talk about seeing a Zone 5, or a best possible average. Or a Zone6, if you have that interval, that would feel like a hundred percent of all-out. When I talk about Zone 4 work, which is probably more realistic for best possible average, then that would be about 75% of all-out. And then it goes down and down. I can't say, as I do in running, Zone 2 is a conversational pace. You can't say that in the water. But you can say that it’s an easier pace, focusing on form. So I like the question that he presented, because I don't think a lot of people know how you're supposed to execute that. That is a hard push. That is a sprint. That is 75% to 100% all-out, as long as you can maintain that feeling, that pace throughout the entire set for every interval.

Jeff: I think you nailed it. If you're trying to hit all of them in the exact same finish time possible and getting the exact same rest on every single one. But that last one or two, you should be very taxed. That's the goal and the intent. I would say you could even split it up half and half, if you're not sure. Go the first four or five of the eight at a certain pace. And if that's not taxing you enough, then you can speed up or slow down. But the idea is to keep the integrity of that original design, but the last few, you should start to fall off pace one to three seconds on that hundred, or whatever that interval is. If you're nailing them absolutely perfectly, then maybe you went three seconds too slow on all of them?

Joanna: There is a little bit of swim coach in me, in that a lot of these workouts that are aimed at all-out efforts or best possible average, they concern me a little bit. So I tend to tell my athletes, “I want you to go and try to do a fast effort while maintaining form.” That's more of what I direct them to do. And when I say that, then that's kind of very ambiguous as well. “Well, what do you mean by maintaining form? I think I was swimming correctly.” And I say, “Think about only one or two focus areas on your stroke.” If they know that they tend to not reach, or if they tend to not fully catch the water all the way, thumb on thigh, then they need to focus on two points of their stroke while still trying to be fast. I want athletes to know that you need to be thinking about your form at all times during your stroke, even if it's just one or two points of your stroke.

Vanessa: We're going to move over to some bike questions here. We have two that are bike related, so I'm going to kind of combine them a little bit. Erin Byrge asks, “How do you determine bike gearing choices based on the course? Would love to hear the whole thought process.” And on top of that, Chad Rolfs wants to know when you should make changes to bike gearing and/or crank length, and when you should not. Raines, let's go to you first on this one.

Jeff: What I'll say, first of all, is that for hilly courses and we're getting this a lot with Nice coming up and some hillier courses, is my gearing setup, is my bike personality, those ratios, are they compatible or good enough, safe enough for me to go and complete that course? That's kind of where I think Chad and Erin are alluding to. Just some quick general knowledge is that your bike ratios, the absolute easiest that you can make your bike is a one-to-one ratio. So let's just say you had 36 teeth on your front small ring, but then your rear biggest ring also had 36 teeth. That would be a one-to-one ratio. And almost anybody, even an unfit person, could get up almost any bike hill. But there's a cost to that as well, in that your cadence might be really high, and your speed so low, where you’re adding minutes to that hill, and adding hours to your day. So you've got to find that ratio where the front could be slightly bigger than the rear, because it's giving you that more miles per hour. But that's kind of the easiest. So if you are somebody who has a very hilly bike course coming up, and there's some long strenuous climbs – I'd say 3% or greater is climbing – so if you have a 3% to 8% grade hill, and you're going to be on that hill for anything longer than 30 minutes to multiple hours – certain bikes are set up for a faster, flatter, more time trial-esque courses, and some are set up for hillier, mountainy courses. I said this at the Boulder Ambassador Camp, that every triathlete with multiple races in their season should be changing out at least their rear cassette system one to five times a year. It's $50 to $75 to slide off those rear cogs, those cassettes, slide a whole ‘nother set on. And you own those, you keep those. So triathletes who are racing different types of courses, and they're going to be in the sport more than a year, should probably have at least two different setups. And what that's going to do is, the biggest gear in the back, the more teeth that you have on the rear cassette, the easier the gear is. The front is the opposite – the more teeth, the harder that gear is, or the more watts it will require, the more effort, to turn that. Sjo you want to have a rear cassette system that is getting you a little bit closer to that one-to-one ratio. So you would want the gear closest to the bike frame in the rear to have a little bit more teeth. A real safe bet is an 11-28 or 11-32 in the back. So 11-tooth count on the small gear, 28 or 32 on the biggest gear in the back. That's a safe bet for kind of just moderate, rolling hills. That's what most bikes come with out of a bike shop. But some may say, “Oh, I have a really hilly course where I'm going to be in that easiest gear. I want one or two extra clicks.” Or, “I want it to feel a little bit easier so my cadence doesn't fall.” You don't want your cadence to fall too low on a long ascent. So you may want to slide that system off and put a new one on that gives you 32 or 36 teeth-count in the back. SRAM Rival actually now has up to a 44 and a 46 rear. You can get big rings back there. Now if you jump too much, that's great because your easiest gear helps you a lot more on bigger climbs for longer, but the gears in between those are bigger jumps up per click. So that's something that you're going to have to kind of know. Is it a long, easier 3% climb, or is it a really short, punchy, 10%, 12%, 15%? So how long are you going to have to hold up? But the idea is you don't want to cross-chain. You don't want your chain to be super diagonal for big portions of the race. You lose watts, it's inefficient. So try to keep the gear that you're going to use the most in the race somewhere in the middle, but also have enough gears to where you can maintain your goal cadence and not lose too much speed. I know there's an “it depends” aspect, but it will be different for everybody.

Vanessa: When you do have a larger jump between the cassette rings, I seem to find that I lose a lot of power when I'm going from one to the next. Is that typical, or is it that I just need to learn how to ride my bike better?

Jeff: No, no. I mean, are you in the big chain ring when you're switching those gears? Are you in the small ring in the front switching those gears? A lot of people will kind of get out of the saddle a little bit, get a little momentum going, and then switch that gear. Now you can actually switch your gear while you're climbing, with the electronic shifting. You’ve just got to be careful not to drop a chain. If you feel like you're going to drop some watts, don't click two clicks. Click only one, let one gear shift result, see what the watts are, see how it feels. “Oh, my watts jumped up 30.” So you’ve got to kind of play that cat-and-mouse game, because you can manipulate watts by increasing cadence and keeping the gear the same, or you can change the gear. A good thing to do is find a hill in your training. I’d find a 30- to 45-minute long hill, and try to hold that optimum cadence the whole time and flip through those gears. See what your heart rate does the last 10 minutes, the last 15 minutes. Is it climbing too much, so you had to click too many gears down and now you run out of gears, but your cadence won’t stay above 80 even on a big climb because that’s too anaerobic? So test that out a little bit. You can even do that indoors as well. If you've got a big 45-minute hill in your race, you can download that hill or that segment from RaceX to a third-party app and ride it at home. You can start playing around with your gears. Another last thing is that you can make your smart trainer at home be the exact same cassette that you're going to race with in the race. So when you are doing that at home – it's not just once a month when you can actually find that hill, or travel there, or find babysitters or all that – you could do it two, three, or four times a week just at home.

Joanna: I cannot emphasize how smart that was, what Jeff just talked about. It depends on where you live. Me putting on a more suitable cassette on my bike for St. George or for Coeur d'Alene – I live in an area where we have one overpass. And you have to be realistic with yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses. Climbing hills is not a strength of mine. You can leave it to the experts. Take it to your bike mechanic or your bike shop and find out what is the best setup for you. I was willing to take any help I could get. And that turns out to let you have a successful race. Don't throw it by the wayside and say, “Oh no, I'll muddle through. I'll make it through.”

Jeff: I'm going to end with this. If any listener out there does not know these six numbers about your bike, you have homework to do. You should know these. You ready? One, how many teeth are on your big and small chain ring in the front? Next, how many gears do you have in the back? Is it a 10-speed, or is it 11-speed? How many of those cassettes? Then how many teeth count are on the smallest one in the back? How many teeth count are on the biggest one in the back? Those are five numbers. The sixth one is also how long is your crank arm? From the middle of your crank to the middle of that pedal spindle or that pedal mount? The length of your crank arm means something. Shorter tends to be the way to go right now, 165 millimeters is a popular one right now. But if you're 172.5 or greater, going down to that number just because you read it on Google, isn't going to take 12 minutes off your bike split. There's a progressive and a smart way to do that. That's a whole podcast in itself, and I know that's part of Chad's question, but you need time to adapt. If you're going to change any of these, get a new cassette or change your crank length and things like that, you need to give yourself time. I'd say almost two to five months to really get to know that personality, the gearing differential, and just how it feels. If you only have ten gears in the back and a single-speed front, you only have ten clicks. You only have ten options on that hill. If you’ve got an 11-speed in the back and a big and small ring on the front, you’ve got 22 opportunities on the hill.

Vanessa: A marathon of an answer. I think we could have made that into a full podcast episode as you said before. Speaking of hills, I think we’re going to jump into some strength questions, because strength is going to help you get up those hills. That is for sure. So Rob Coltman wants to know why there are so few strength-based workouts in the TriDot app. He's referring to paddles and pull buoys on the swim, hills and bigger gear workouts on the bike, hills on the run. And when they are included, he has noticed that the number of reps is low and the frequency is limited. I know that there's a specific reason for this, so who wants to tackle this question?

Joanna: This could also be an entire podcast. Strength training, again, is something that has to be so individualized. It is such a special area of our training. A lot of times athletes do not put enough emphasis on it, and if they don't treat it as an equal – I talk about swim, bike, run, nutrition, AND strength and flexibility. There's so many caveats to training, but it is very specific to the athlete. So if we try to incorporate generalized strength training into our cardio workouts, that's not always going to be the most effective training for every different type of athlete. I do think that there can be some integration of strength work into our workouts. And we do see that, like who asked the question about using hand paddles in the water. Yes, that is a form of strength training. The problem there is, as a coach I would only allow an athlete to use those hand paddles if they had refined their stroke enough that those hand paddles and the work done with them does not become dangerous or detrimental to their stroke and their shoulders. So as we develop these workouts, it is used sparingly. It doesn't say, “do a thousand yards with hand paddles”, because that could injure someone very easily. Same kind of thing with big gear work on the bike. Not everybody has perfect squat form. A lot of people are squatting in their bike shoes. There's a lot of variation going on across the board, and it's making the purpose of that strength work far less effective. When we separate strength training from our swim, bike, and run, our focus is solely on what the purpose of that strength session is. We're much more diligent about proper form, what weights we can handle at that time, or what weights we should be lifting for whatever stage of strength training we're in, maintaining that form and not getting injured. So strength training is very important, it's just I think a little bit more difficult to integrate into our normal swim, bike, and run training for the week.

Vanessa: Tre Vertuca is wondering about RaceX. We know that this is a very valuable portion of the platform. He is wondering if you have any tips for using RaceX for a race-day plan. He wrote, “Do you rely on the projections as is, modify the plan, or just use it as a reference and plan separately? I would like to get more out of it, but feel it is underestimating race day ability, especially on bike power.”

Jeff: That is a really good question. At first, I use it as a gauge. Then as I get closer and closer to race day, I hone in on what is my actual, and what I know to be potential. But a lot of people may not know this, and I used this analogy actually with one of my athletes earlier today. Think of a GPS. If I was to drive from Texas to Florida, let's just say it's 12 hours, assuming I'm following the perfect 70 mile-per-hour speed limit the whole way. So if I follow 70 miles per hour, I'm going to get there in 12 hours. But I'm a triathlete, and I'm Type A, and I'm Jeff Raines. I'm going to beat that GPS, right? I'm going to get to Florida in 11½ hours, not 12. That's what RaceX is doing. When you see your planned FTP – let's say your half-Ironman is five months away, and you're looking at it, it has a planned FTP for swimming, biking, and running. It's saying, “By race day, you could or should expect your thresholds to be at these values.” What it's doing is thinking, if you complete your training between now and race day, and you score a 76 TrainX score on average on those workouts between now and race day, you could or should expect your FTP to be at those values. But again, you're Type A, you're going to beat RaceX. You're going to get a 90 on every single TrainX right? TrainX is train execution points. You get a score from zero to a hundred on how well you complete that session and the intent of that session. So the better you do, the “right training right”, the higher TrainX score you get. So if you're going to get 90s on every workout between now and race day, on average, then you could actually maybe beat that. So that's a great question, Tre. If you think that you can do better than that planned FTP, then you're probably executing your workouts very well. You're doing a much better job than that 76 average. So what I do, and what you can do, is you can change it to actual. “Oh, I'm three months out now, not five. I just did my assessments this week, I improved on all three.” You can go in there and tell it, this is my actual or current one and just see how it changes. It might revert back to a planned one as more data comes in, as you complete a few more sessions, but you can play around with all of that. You can create simulations. The last piece is I get athletes all the time and they're like, “I have to break five hours in a half-Ironman.” Or even in RunDot, “I have to go 3:05 to qualify for Boston, so I have to go out and run 7-minute miles on everything that I do, because if I don't do it on race day I ain't qualifying.” So you can do simulations and see what your threshold has to be for you to hit those goal times. Say, “I’ve got to get my 5k two minutes faster if I want to think about breaking five hours in that half-Ironman.” That’s when you spend extra time in the developmental phase, getting that threshold to that value so that you can expect the stamina to hold, to hit that goal outcome.

Vanessa: Well, it's all coming full-circle back to question number one, and we talked about that. That's wonderful. The next question makes me super excited, because I think it means one of our Ambassadors is going to have a new bike day in the very near future. There's nothing better than new bike day. I’m sure many listeners out there will also find this important if you like bikes, because you know that the number of bikes you need is “N plus one”. That’s basically all of us, so this applies to everyone. Thanks for this question, Sandy. Sandy wants to know “What are the best steps in purchasing a TT bike, and should it be new or used?”

Joanna: In buying a tri bike, there’s a couple of questions you ask yourself. You don't need to spend $20,000 on the most expensive bike to have a great tri bike. I think that's a misconception. As I've been part of this sport for the last 20 years, I've seen this increase in everybody wanting nice, shiny, expensive things when you can actually, on a budget, get a very awesome tri bike. I'm a fan of first going to a bike fitter, getting a pre-fit, finding out which types of bikes, which manufacturers would be the best for you to look at. A good bike fitter should know that. Secondly, take a look at resources around you. I'm a big fan of Facebook Marketplace, local bike shops, or the team you're on to see about bikes. I’m telling you, you’ve got a lot of friends who are turning over bikes quick. There's a turnaround on these bikes, everybody wants the best and newest. So you may be able to get a very nice high-end tri bike for a lot cheaper than buying a brand new bike. But I would still compare them to new bikes, see what team discounts you get, see what that compares to. Finally, if you are going to buy a pre-owned bike, I would have that checked out by your bike shop. That's all components of that bike, because we all know horror stories of buying bikes that turn out not to be what you expected. Make sure that you can be fitted, and that's going to be a good fit for you. Those are just some suggestions as you're starting out in the sport though. If you have longevity in the sport and you're going to do this for 10 or 20 years, you're going to probably go through a number of bikes. So don't feel the need to buy the top of the line as you're starting out, because that may not even be a good fit for you.

Jeff: Bikes you're seeing now are small, medium, large, extra-large. They used to be 54, 56, 58, and that was the circumference or the measurement of the diamond frame, the top tube, and not all those are created equal. Just because this brand is a 54 and this other brand is also a 54, the three prongs of the triangle could all be different, like Jo said. Now what they're doing is they're making them in ranges. Small, medium, large, but you can move the seat, you can adjust this so well that you can kind of create whatever you need. So bikes are getting a lot better in that regard, but you still need to kind of know what that is for each brand. And bikes are very affordable. Even super bikes, tri bikes, most frames are $1,800 to $4,000, that's just a frame. They become $15,000 and $20,000 by all the components you put on it. And just like everything, there are ranges. There's four different types of component quality. So you can get a nicer frame, start there and make sure it fits, make sure you love it, and then over time, upgrade the components. That's where they start getting pricey, but that main frame is really what you want to hone in on, making sure you're making the best purchase for you in that moment.

Vanessa: Let's head over to a question here from TriDot Ambassador Kelly Estes. He has been rocking it out there on the race course this season. And it is clear from his question that he is a very detail-oriented person. He is clearly very punctual, and he also wants to make his transitions quicker. So he's asking, “Which way should you rack your bike? I often find bikes out of sequence. Is there a protocol for how to know which way to rack the bike when other bikes are not racked yet?” He also wants to know the best place to put your gear. Do you put it at the front wheel or the rear wheel? Space can be very tight, and it can get very congested. So Jeff, let's go to you first. How do you rack your bike?

Jeff: It's different depending on whether it’s Ironman, local, USAT, things like that, but you have to rack a bike by the seat. That is a rule. And the numbers on the rail, whichever direction the numbers are facing, your front wheel has to be touching the ground in that direction. So you'd hang it by the seat with the front wheel touching the ground, the same direction the numbers are facing. So in Ironman for example, they have to stagger. Every bike is the opposite direction. If you're doing an Ironman event and it doesn't look like they're perfectly staggered, then there's probably a bike on that rack where that person was a no-show or something like that. There's actually a space there so it looks like two bikes are facing in the same direction right next to each other, but maybe there was supposed to be one in between those. So that is the official rule, but there are some races that allow open racking. In that case, you want to rack your bike, by the seat, as close to the bike out as you can, with the front wheel facing bike out. So you want to find that rail in that direction and that location. But Ironman, for example, they are strict on every other bike having to be in the other direction. So if you're hanging by your seat, you usually actually put your stuff right next to your front wheel on the ground. Because you want to be on the same side of the rail that your bike is facing. So your gear's got to be there, you grab your bike and go. You don't want to put all your shoes and helmet on and then have to run down to the end of the aisle to the other side to grab your bike and take it off by the seat and roll it the other way. So you actually put your stuff on the ground next to your front wheel. You have, I think it's 12 to 20 inches you are allowed next to your front wheel touching the ground. That's where you lay your stuff, where you have space, because the bike next to you, its back wheel is up off the ground by a foot or so. So that space is yours, not necessarily right under their bike and impeding theirs, but as close to your front wheel, that 12 inches right next to your front wheel, is gold. It's open space. So when in doubt, that’s the rule.

Joanna: I always say, don't be the beach towel girl or guy and have the ginormous beach blanket laying out into the aisle, where you've got a buffet and some kind of hunting stool and a full living room set up. You don't need all of this stuff to set your stuff on. If you like a towel, make it a small towel and set your stuff up in order of how you're going to use it. But yeah, Jeff's right. You have that space with that lifted wheel to your right so that you can set up your stuff, but you try to make it as narrow as possible so you don't have your stuff impeding other people's area.

Jeff: And races that you have to take your bike into transition the day before the race, and then it sits out there all day, all night, all next morning – we're all out to dinner and back at the hotel and we're all thinking about our bike every ten minutes. “Is it okay? Is somebody bumping it? Did somebody touch it?” Like Boulder for example, it just happened recently, there was a huge, crazy windstorm. Vanessa was there. The tent was flying in the air and she was barely hanging onto it. The whole expo shut down and everyone's tents were gone. Well, I was at my hotel at that time. I went back. I drove all the way back down there. One, to check on Vanessa and help her clean up out there. But two, I was like, “I'm going to go check on my bike. Is it okay?” My bike was slid all the way down the rack, probably 10 or 15 feet. It just slid all the bikes over. Some bikes were completely totaled, just because of the wind. Mine had a whole bunch of scratches, my gearing was all weird. Even in the race, it was click-cling, click-cling. So anyways, I like to try the night before or the day before to rack by the handlebars. Some races will let you rack by the handlebars. It's a wider base, your bike won't flap around all night and bang on the other bikes or get punctures in your disc wheel or whatever. So most races will allow you to rack by the handlebars overnight, it’s more stable. But race morning, you have to turn it around and hang it by the seat.

Vanessa: Thank you so much for all of this wealth of information that you've both shared, it’s been fabulous. We have three more questions, and because there are humorous TriDotters out there, these happen to be my favorite questions that were submitted. So we're going to do a rapid fire to close us down. I did not share the questions with Joanna or with Jeff, and I said “you have less than five seconds to answer.” That’s the rule. So we’ll just go Joanna, Jeff, Joanna, Jeff, Joanna, Jeff for all of these. Are you ready? It’s exciting, I’m really excited! So question number one, Joanna first, how many coaches does it take to change a tire?

Joanna: It should be one. Sometimes five.

Jeff: N plus one.

Vanessa: N plus one. You won that one, Jeff, that was good! Question number two, what's the last song you downloaded?

Jeff: U2, "Still Haven't Found What You're Looking For". My three-year-old.

Joanna: I listen to Celine Dion sometimes on the bike during intervals.

Vanessa: I think we should all try that. That would be great. I'm going to do that the next time I have an interval, that’s awesome. The last rapid fire question, how much ranch is too much ranch?

Joanna: Any ranch.

Jeff: Trick question. Is it homemade? It depends.

Joanna: I saw him with eight containers of ranch in his man purse one time.

Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.

Vanessa: Well hello there, everyone! I'm Vanessa, your Average Triathlete with Elite-Level Enthusiasm! Our guest today is one of my all-time favorite people. She's the kind of person who you want to be around all the time, and I have felt this way from the moment that we met. With us today is TriDot coach, Pool School instructor, but more importantly my friend, Kristin Overton. Kristin works as a physician's assistant for an orthopedic sports medicine group, and also teaches anatomy at Quinnipiac University. She is a well-seasoned triathlete, having qualified for ITU long-course and IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships. She often finds herself on the podium for sprints, Olympics, and 70.3s. On the coaching side, she loves working with beginner triathletes and those making the leap from short-course to long-course racing. My friend! It is so great to be here with you!

Kristin Overton: Awesome to be here with you, always a good time to sit and chat. We might be here for two hours, I don't know.

Vanessa: This could be a full-length podcast recording, but I'm not sure anyone else would be interested in hearing.

Kristin: Probably not.

Vanessa: But I do think we need to tell people how we met, and I’d actually like to hear your side of the story.

Kristin: Actually our initial meeting was virtually, on the Zwift training rides for TriDot on Saturday mornings. I first met you as “Be Awesome” on Zwift. Then all of a sudden there was Ambassador Camp, and we needed to find roommates. So I reached out to people on TriDot, and you responded, along with the other two of the now-official Fab Four. How we met in person was initially in Las Vegas, carting ourselves around the airport, and then into the New York, New York hotel lobby, stuffing all of our bicycles and luggage and the four of us in an elevator up to our room.

Vanessa: The amazing thing about this relationship we've developed is when we were in IRONMAN California, I was lucky enough to stay with the Fab Four, and all of you are multi-Ironman finishers. The whole week was basically a clinic on preparing and executing all things for racing, particularly long-course racing. So I think it would be great if you shared some of the things that you do naturally in preparation for a long-course race, so everyone benefits from the knowledge that you’ve gained over the years in this sport.

Kristin: Absolutely, and I learned a few things myself as we were all sitting around the table getting our things together. There’s a lot of little things as you’re prepping for the race, the week before, the night before, the morning of. We’ll go through a couple little things, as you're packing your bags, getting your transition bags together. It’s always a good tip to mark it with something really noticeable, so that you know that your bag is yours amongst the thousands of bags hanging on hooks or on the ground. Get some bright duct tape. Another thing I’ve always done, whether it’s long or short course, depending on if you’re wearing socks or not, in the transition, roll your socks all the way to the toe. So when you come out of the pool or lake or wherever you're swimming from, when you get into transition and want to put your socks and get on your bike, you can put your toe in and roll them straight up and you don’t have to struggle with trying to put your feet in wet socks. And when you’re putting on socks for your run you can do it the same way. It makes it super speedy and easy to do.

Vanessa: Some people dump powder in their socks, have you ever done that before?

Kristin: I haven’t done that, but I know people that have, and that’s not a bad idea either.

Vanessa: Something that worked really well for me, especially in the run this past time in California, as we were running through what felt like streams of water because it was pouring so hard. The 2Toms wipes were phenomenal. I did not get a single blister on my feet, which is mind-blowing.

Kristin: The exact same thing for me too. I just wiped my foot from the tip of my toes all the way up my ankle with the 2Toms wipes, and through all that rain and wet and stomping through puddles, there was not a single blister on my feet, which can make a huge difference when you're running a marathon in the rain or any other time. Definitely. Something else is a transition bottle, a bottle with a little concentrated electrolyte and/or nutrition that you can have in your transition bag going from swim-to-bike or bike-to-run, just to get a little extra fluid, salt, and calories as you're transitioning through. That can make a big difference on the run and the bike as you're starting out, so get that in in transition. You can get your rhythm and not have to worry about taking nutrition right away as you're starting the bike and the run.

Vanessa: I found that to be actually a really wonderful idea. I know that for myself on the bike, for some reason I thought I was going to finish a lot faster than I did, so I ran out of nutrition and electrolytes in the last half hour. So having that bottle in transition was exactly what I needed. I didn't have to wait to get to the first aid station on the run. I could just rely on what I had in my transition bag. I was very grateful for that. So if I didn't say thank you already, thank you!

Kristin: My pleasure. Anytime. Then the last little thing I had was for the swim. So as you and I were standing at the swim start, and we're zippering up our wetsuits, you have that little tail cord on your zipper. And at the end of the cord, all of the wetsuits have Velcro on the end of them, the soft side of the Velcro. What that's for is to stick onto the Velcro tab at your neck, so that your cord is right there at your neck. So when you get out of the water, you have it right there to zip down and start taking off your wetsuit. It also just kind of keeps it out of the way while you're swimming, so you don't have this long tail behind you.

Vanessa: So brilliant! It’s funny, because all of these companies think of these things, and maybe it's me and I don't read the instruction manual, but it's nice to know that this exists for that purpose, right?

Kristin: Yeah, for sure. There's a purpose for everything. “Why do they have that Velcro on the end of the tab? I have no idea!” But now you know.

Outro: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to tridot.com and start your free trial today! TriDot – the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.

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