Triathlon Trends: A Comprehensive Overview of USAT's 2024 Report
The central theme of this podcast episode revolves around the complex interplay between injury management and competitive training within the realm of triathlon. We delve into the experiences of a professional triathlete grappling with a broken toe, exploring how such setbacks can affect both physical and emotional well-being. Our conversation further highlights the importance of maintaining a positive outlook and focusing on alternative training modalities while recovering from injuries. Additionally, we touch upon the recent advancements in triathlon technology, particularly the Race Ranger system, which aims to enhance fair competition by minimizing drafting. Join us as we navigate through these pertinent topics, offering insights that resonate with both elite athletes and age group competitors alike.
Takeaways:
- Injuries are a common occurrence in triathlon, affecting both professional athletes and age group competitors.
- It is essential to maintain a positive mindset and focus on what can still be done despite injuries.
- The introduction of the Race Ranger anti-drafting technology represents a significant advancement in triathlon racing.
- Participation in triathlons has increased, indicating a thriving interest in the sport among various age groups.
- Strength training remains a critical component of triathlon preparation, even when alternatives are available.
- The potential for prominent athletes, such as Geraint Thomas, to transition into triathlon could elevate the sport's profile significantly.
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Transcript
What would happen if you brought together a professional triathlete and producer of one of the most widely read triathlon newsletters?
Speaker B:Together with the tridoc, medical contributor for Triathlete Magazine, age group winter and coach at LifeSport coaching, I'd say you had.
Speaker A:The makings of a pretty good podcast.
Speaker B:Welcome to Tempo Talks.
Speaker B:Two perspectives, one sport.
Speaker B:All things triathlon.
Speaker B:Hey everyone, welcome back to Tempo Talks episode two.
Speaker B:Jeff, great to be back with you.
Speaker B:Super happy to be here.
Speaker B:You doing today?
Speaker A:I'm doing pretty well.
Speaker A:It is still frigid and I'm still jealous.
Speaker A:My family was down in Florida over the weekend, came back and told me yes, sans me.
Speaker A:They told me how nice it was where you are.
Speaker A:So yeah, that's, that's tough.
Speaker A:How are you down there?
Speaker B:Yeah, doing okay.
Speaker B:I think we, we missed or omitted this last time, but I actually, yeah, picked up an injury down here unfortunately.
Speaker B:So I was so excited to be down here in Florida getting ready for a big block of training.
Speaker B:And last week, just this really like freak accident where I was trying to pull my dog one way, he went the other way and I landed on my big toe in a not good way in that flex position and not good.
Speaker B:It landed like full weight on this big toe, heard a massive pop and pain ensued.
Speaker B:So yeah, unfortunately got a little broken toe, big toe and just dealing with that, been a bit of a bummer.
Speaker B:But being down here in Florida with the good weather, definitely not going to complain too much.
Speaker B:This is broken bones too.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So as age groupers, triathlon is not our life and yet it often feels like it is.
Speaker A:And as a coach, I'm often dealing with my athletes who have injuries, small or large, and having to coach them through the emotional stuff that they go through because it's a big deal for us.
Speaker A:It's so much a part of, it's a passion that we have.
Speaker A:But for you, it's your living.
Speaker A:So when you have an injury like this, how do you process it?
Speaker A:How do you deal with it?
Speaker A:I know you, you're very positive person.
Speaker A:But this has got a smart.
Speaker A:Besides just the pain, there's definitely that.
Speaker B:Initial crap going to have to change things around.
Speaker B:Racing wise, especially like I said, I was super excited to put in a nice block of work in this heat.
Speaker B:I've been doing this game for a long time, being in the pro game for years and years and I've had these kind of injuries before, I've had these setbacks before.
Speaker B:So thankfully I have the experience that I can just draw back on Knowing that I'll be able to bounce back and whatnot.
Speaker B:But I think the biggest thing and which is what's so great about our sport, about triathlon is, okay, I got a broken toe, it's annoying.
Speaker B:I can still swim, can still bike, can still do gym.
Speaker B:So there's, I don't know, I'm still doing like a ton of different things.
Speaker B:So it really, I think for me, focusing on what I can do has always helped me recenter myself and just get me back into the positive mindset and I'm going to try and get stronger on the bike now.
Speaker B:That's the next little bit.
Speaker B:So it's, it is frustrating, no doubt.
Speaker B:But at the end of the day, this is an opportunity to try and work on some other things.
Speaker A:I think you're modeling the kind of mindset that I think all athletes should try to take with them.
Speaker A:It's super hard, I think I always tell people if they have an injury like that, I say, look, take some time to grieve because you've lost something.
Speaker A:Maybe you had this event like Oceanside like you were.
Speaker A:So it's okay to grieve for that, but don't let that consume you.
Speaker A:Set a date to set a time that you're going to stop grieving and you're just going to move on to the acceptance phase.
Speaker A:And then just like you said, I think folks focus on the things you can do.
Speaker A:I think that's the most important.
Speaker B:Yeah, and context.
Speaker B:Context important too.
Speaker B:Like I'm weeks and weeks out from what was supposed to be my first race at 70.3 Oceanside.
Speaker B:This didn't happen the day before.
Speaker B:The two days before that was.
Speaker B:That would be a little bit different.
Speaker B:There would probably be a lot more kind of rage in that scenario.
Speaker B:But yeah, yeah, the context here, plenty of time to get ready for the next one.
Speaker B:Most likely either St.
Speaker B:Anthony's Triathlon, Olympic distance or 70.3St.
Speaker B:George.
Speaker B:So yeah, got other ones to look forward to and hopefully no more broken toes before those ones.
Speaker A:That's great.
Speaker A:Listen, before we get to the show, I do want to say today the Tridark podcast latest episode also comes out and it's a good one.
Speaker A:So if you're not familiar with the Tridark podcast, I hope that you will head over to wherever you get your audio content and look for it because on this particular episode we have a medical segment on hydrogen rich water myth or something that can help you.
Speaker A:You're gonna definitely wanna listen to that.
Speaker A:And then we have an interview with Trevor Connor, who is of Fast Talk Labs and also of the Paleo diet.
Speaker A:So it's a great episode that's out today.
Speaker A:The other thing I want to say is I want to thank everybody who listened to the first episode and who was kind enough to leave a rating and a review wherever you download the content.
Speaker A:It really is helpful to us.
Speaker A:I hope that if you are listening for the first time or a second time, you will go out there and also do the same.
Speaker A:Leave us a rating and a review.
Speaker A:Before we get again to the beginning of the show, I want to take us to the penalty tent.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker A:Because we have a couple of errors that we need to correct that we made last.
Speaker A:Last week on the first episode, I mentioned that I did not believe that USAT counts single day license purchases in their overall annual numbers.
Speaker A:That in fact has been corrected this past week.
Speaker A:When Matt and I looked at USAT's annual report, it turns out they do count single day licenses when they report their annual membership numbers.
Speaker A:The other thing that we discussed last week was Oceanside.
Speaker A:We talked about whether or not Oceanside was the oldest of the North American Ironman events.
Speaker A: It is not Oceanside in: Speaker A: Lake Placid started in: Speaker A:And so because Lake Placid still exists, it is the oldest of the races.
Speaker A:Hawaii, of course, is the oldest of the Ironman races Celebrating its 48th year this year, I believe.
Speaker A:Happy birthday.
Speaker B:Happy birthday, Iron Man.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, no, that's a good point.
Speaker B:That's a good point.
Speaker B:Thanks for pointing out, thanking the listeners for tuning in and everything.
Speaker B:Yeah, we really appreciate it, for sure.
Speaker A:All right, we're going to exit the penalty tent and get onto the course.
Speaker A:For today's episode, we are going to cover four different topics.
Speaker A:The first is going to be the experience of the Race Ranger in Wanaka at Challenge Wanaka just recently.
Speaker A: the annual report of USAT on: Speaker A:We're going to talk about a recent study that came out looking at strength training for cyclists.
Speaker A:And we're going to talk about some professional news.
Speaker A:Tour de France champion Garret Thomas planning to do an Ironman as well as the results of the recent World Triathlon Championship Series race.
Speaker A:Matt, do you want to tell us what was going on in Challenge Wanaka?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So this is a huge kind of breakthrough, milestone, pivotal moment, something.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:We might be looking back on many years from now, the debut of this anti drafting technology Race Ranger.
Speaker B:For folks who don't know what Race Ranger is, it's essentially this system that gets attached to your bike, and it involves just lights.
Speaker B:So depending on what the draft zone is, sometimes certain races have 20 meters, certain races have 12 meters.
Speaker B:It basically is a light system.
Speaker B:There's three lights, red, orange, and blue.
Speaker B:So blue is good.
Speaker B:Blue means you're outside that draft zone, you're in a happy place.
Speaker B:The referees are happy.
Speaker B:Once you get into the orange or yellow, yeah, you're skirting up to that draft limit.
Speaker B:You want to be aware of what you're doing and how close you are.
Speaker B:And yeah, of course, if you get into the next one, the red zone, that means you're in the draft zone.
Speaker B:And, yeah, you're supposed to basically either make that pass or really show that you're trying not to draft and try and drop back as quickly as possible.
Speaker B:Huge kind of moment for racing potentially on the horizon at Challenge wanaka, they had 270 athletes who were out there with their Race Ranger devices.
Speaker B:It was actually great.
Speaker B:I got a nice email from the CEO of Race Ranger, James Alvary, who gave me a little breakdown of how it happened and what he saw.
Speaker B:And it sounded all these athletes across the spectrum of performance, so from beginner all the way to elite age grouper, really appreciated having the system on course.
Speaker B:They really loved just being able to use it and almost had an appreciation more so for racing and more so just to know exactly where they were.
Speaker B:So that was a huge moment.
Speaker B:It sounded like the officials loved it as well.
Speaker B:They had a few penalties they threw out, but I think a bunch of them remarked how they were super excited to use it and they really can't see themselves going back to what it was before.
Speaker A:I think there's a few things.
Speaker A:James came on the Tridark podcast as well.
Speaker A:A couple of episodes, actually.
Speaker A:I think it was, yeah, recent.
Speaker A:Very recent episode.
Speaker A:And, yeah, he talked to us before Challenge Wanaka, and we discussed some of the issues about rolling this out to bigger races.
Speaker A:Obviously, having a field of 250 versus a field of several thousand makes this a very challenging upscale.
Speaker A:And he did talk about some of those challenges, but when you get to a small race like this, I only see the positives, and I do think there's probably a novelty factor here.
Speaker A:I'm sure that a lot of the athletes just felt like, oh, wow, we're like the pros now, because everybody's seen this in the pros, and I know that it has had a big impact in those professional races in reducing drafting.
Speaker A:I am, for one, very excited about the possibility of this Coming.
Speaker A:Although James was quick to put water on any super excitement.
Speaker A:He's.
Speaker A:Listen, it's probably going to be two, three years before we actually see this in bigger.
Speaker B:That was all the units they had.
Speaker B:That was literally all 270.
Speaker B:They don't got any more.
Speaker B:They just don't.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:But I think rightly so, you're pointing out that this could be a watershed moment, that it's the start of something.
Speaker A:And you did a poll in the Tempo News when this was first discussed, and I was surprised to see some of the responses that you printed that people were not necessarily all that excited.
Speaker A:I would have thought everybody would have embraced this, but I have to admit, I tend to race up at the pointy end, and that's not being immodest.
Speaker A:That's just the way it is.
Speaker A:I'm competitive when I race, and so for me, I hate seeing people drafting, but I could totally understand that people who are there just to complete a race, they probably aren't necessarily all that.
Speaker B:Do you think people who draft.
Speaker B:Do you think people who tend to draft were saying they don't want it in their races, just skewing it a little?
Speaker A:Yeah, maybe.
Speaker A:But one thing I want to ask you, and I asked James this when I talked to him, is whether or not the institution of the race Ranger has changed tactics or just the racing style of people in the professional ranks, because you guys have had it now for a year or two.
Speaker A:But what I have noticed in watching these races is the pros get into a line, and it's great that they're not drafting.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:But what you used to see is you used to see a lot of kind of group dynamics where people would take turns off the front and things like that.
Speaker A:Now you tend to see one person at the front and this long line of people, and it just stays that way statically.
Speaker A:Have you.
Speaker A:You noticed that?
Speaker B:I remember the most, I guess, notable of time I've used it at that Milwaukee PTO US Open.
Speaker B:It was interesting because we ended up in a pretty big group together.
Speaker B:And I think, like you said, people just didn't really want to risk, like, the passing and being in the red.
Speaker B:Although because of the dynamics, I remember that specifically that race, I was situated at the back of the group so I could see what was going, hang on ahead of me.
Speaker B:And just.
Speaker B:It's always the case where you have this kind of accordion effect at times.
Speaker B:You have people just.
Speaker B:They're trying not to draft, but eventually you just see the sea of red.
Speaker B:Partly because maybe the wind's pressing against you and it's slowing the front person down and then the accordion effect goes through the group.
Speaker B:I think what I remember from that is, okay, it's great because the officials can see, hey, it's red or it's orange or whatever.
Speaker B:But it always goes back to what people are, the intent of what people are doing.
Speaker B:And at the end of the day, if people are showing they're trying to stay out of the red, it doesn't matter if there's a light or not or they're going to be showing that they're not trying to draft.
Speaker B:It definitely was great to have.
Speaker B:It was great to know exactly how close you are and you know, really you did try to do your best to stay out of it definitely in the pro racing, a huge jump for everyone, game changing technology.
Speaker B:And I personally do hope they can scale it up and bring it into the age group races because I think there are a lot of athletes, a lot of age group athletes, just athletes in general who want to be racing honestly and doing that.
Speaker B:And I think if it can enable that, it would be huge.
Speaker A:James talked about some other potential uses for this in terms of live tracking, in terms of safety, and I think that those also really make the device really of great interest, not just to athletes, but also to people who follow the sport and have loved ones that are doing it.
Speaker B:Like he was saying it was like creating a cellular network within the devices or they're attached to cellular network.
Speaker B:Is that what it was?
Speaker A:One of them, they operate, they communicate to each other with a kind of low frequency cellular radio signal and then they would be able to connect to the existing cellular network to be able to live stream data.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that's really cool as well.
Speaker B:Like you, you're just seeing where your loved one, your friend, wherever is on the course.
Speaker B:Maybe you're seeing their power data, some other kind of heart rate data.
Speaker B:Maybe you can see they're not working hard enough and you can get yelling at them on the course or something.
Speaker B:But yeah, a coach at home is going to be watching the data, be like, oh, what's going on here?
Speaker B:There's a lot of stuff like that potential that I think is really exciting as well.
Speaker B:I know, I think you referring to one of the polls we did before.
Speaker B:I actually did one the other day, just testing the water, taking a temperature.
Speaker B:I asked Tempo subscribers what they would be or not what, but if they would be willing to pay to have this kind of race Ranger service in the race.
Speaker B:And what do you Think.
Speaker B:Do you think people were mostly wanting to pay for it?
Speaker B:What do you think?
Speaker A:I think it probably split similarly to what you had before, which is probably 50.
Speaker A:50, with the people like me who would pay for drug testing and who would pay for this, and then the people who are just there showing up.
Speaker A:Probably not interest.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's actually interesting.
Speaker B:I think in this one, it was the majority.
Speaker B:Not a huge majority, but the majority were saying they were interested, but they wanted to see what it would cost, and who knows what that would cost would be.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:What would you pay?
Speaker B:Jeff, what's your number?
Speaker A:Oh, gosh.
Speaker A:I talked to him and I tried to get him to give me a number, and he couldn't, but.
Speaker A:10 bucks.
Speaker B:Yeah, 10 bucks sounds reasonable.
Speaker A:10 bucks.
Speaker B:But if, you know, through a.
Speaker B:I guess if you're in a big race, a thousand athletes or something like.
Speaker B:I don't know, that sounds fairly reasonable, but, yeah, we'll have to see.
Speaker B:I think that sounds reasonable to me.
Speaker B:10 to 20 bucks, maybe.
Speaker B:20 sounds a lot.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And the interesting thing is whether or not they're able to move to the next step, which is to have these devices talk to the referees on course, which is something he's talked about, and have the referees have an iPad that would show them who's the worst offender so that it's not like they're penalizing you the second the light ahead of you goes red, but rather looking for individuals who are continuously turning the light ahead of them red.
Speaker B:So he didn't give you an indication on when we'd be seeing this?
Speaker B:At the next age group race, even.
Speaker A:Oh, he said next age group race is going to be a couple years.
Speaker B:Really?
Speaker A:But right now.
Speaker A:Yeah, he wants to work on getting that ability to have the devices talk to the referees and the pros within the next year or two.
Speaker A:So we'll see.
Speaker A:Yeah, a lot of interesting stuff there.
Speaker A: sation to the USAT report for: Speaker A:It came out last week.
Speaker A:It was full of numbers, as the report generally tends to be.
Speaker B:What's your big takeaway number?
Speaker A:My big takeaway number was the number I got to scroll to it.
Speaker A:But it was.
Speaker A:It was the increase in.
Speaker A:Sorry.
Speaker A:It was the increase in participation.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Overall.
Speaker A:So, yeah, overall increase in participation.
Speaker A:And I believe that number was somewhere around 280,000, which was down from, like.
Speaker B:I got it here, but.
Speaker B:So it was 302,000, like, single, basically, like unique individuals who race who signed up for a membership, which is.
Speaker B:That sounds Like a lot.
Speaker A:Not only does it sound like a lot, but I think it dovetails really nicely with our conversation last week about Oceanside selling out.
Speaker A:And within what, two or three days of Oceanside selling out, I texted you about finding out that Chattanooga 73 7.3 sold out and Ironman Texas sold out.
Speaker A:So we have I think verifiable evidence now between the USAT report, between those three Ironman branded races all selling out.
Speaker A:That's telling us, you know what, maybe we don't have to fret quite so much about the health of our sport.
Speaker B:That's interesting.
Speaker B:I think maybe I need to go and chat with some of the more independent race directors and get their take on it too because obviously this is biased towards Ironman.
Speaker B:It'd be good to get somebody else's a different perspective.
Speaker A:But I'd imagine that was another great line.
Speaker A:Another great number from this report was the dramatic increase in local races.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A: There was: Speaker A:And they said that participation at those events was higher than it had ever been.
Speaker B:Yep, positive.
Speaker A:Averaging 350something per take that pickleball on up.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker B:That, yeah, it's over.
Speaker B:Those are great numbers.
Speaker B:A lot to be excited about.
Speaker B:There's a couple ones that I was looking at and they were published obviously.
Speaker B:Maybe they didn't publish the bad ones.
Speaker B:Who knows?
Speaker B:They seem really good mostly.
Speaker B:But I think the.
Speaker B:We're talking about the kind of younger cohort.
Speaker B:The uptake in the younger cohort.
Speaker B:So basically super promising 20 to 29 age group.
Speaker B:They had what, 10,000 more people sign.
Speaker A:Up and that was surprising.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And in the 30 to 39 age group, apparently now that's the biggest one, which.
Speaker B:That's a nice age group to have.
Speaker A:That's a future facing and that is, that's a big.
Speaker A:That's a big.
Speaker A:That's a big change.
Speaker A:That's even a few years ago.
Speaker B:You know, this isn't like 50 to 59 or 60 to 69.
Speaker B:These are athletes who conceivably would be doing the sport for more years.
Speaker B:That to me that's super exciting.
Speaker B:The only kind of caveat I guess that I noticed was a lot of this membership is the single day.
Speaker B:I don't know if.
Speaker B:Did you see that?
Speaker A:I didn't see where they parsed that out.
Speaker B:So it just said like memberships were really heavily driven by kind of these single day, one day signups, which at the end of the day it's still people participating in the sport, still people coming in.
Speaker B:Obviously you'd want to have folks who maybe are a little more, I guess, quote unquote committed or committing to participating more.
Speaker B:There's still a lot of folks signing up okay with.
Speaker A:I'm okay with somebody doing one event one year and then deciding to get a year or multi year membership afterwards.
Speaker A:Don't forget people who get.
Speaker A:Often people are getting like I have a multi year membership so I'm not.
Speaker B:Going to be buying them three years.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Every year.
Speaker A:So I'm not going to be buying a membership every year.
Speaker A:And so I don't know, I assume they.
Speaker A:I'm reflected as a member as opposed to just membership purchases.
Speaker A:I don't know how they do that, but I'm okay with people doing that.
Speaker A:And I'm also okay with the fact that they said a lot of the purchases were driven by non triathlon.
Speaker A:They were driven by Aquathon and Duathlon diversity.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But more diversity events, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Is there an event like that you want to do one of those events?
Speaker A:I've done Duathons.
Speaker A:Aquathon doesn't really excite me that much because swimming is not my strength, as we've discussed.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I feel like Aquathon is definitely not the most popular.
Speaker B:Although you are speaking with a former aquathon world champion.
Speaker B:2017 shout out to Dicton.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Hey.
Speaker A:And I have a friend who had a running injury last year and she did Aquathon this past year too.
Speaker A:And I would if I got to a point where I had a running problem.
Speaker B:Yeah, huge.
Speaker B:It definitely feels like that's something that's trending up.
Speaker B:There's these gravel triathlons.
Speaker B:Anything with gravel that I would.
Speaker B:Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:That I would definitely be interested in.
Speaker A:I think it's.
Speaker A:It's definitely promising and I think that it's not going to change anything.
Speaker A:They'll continue to be these perpetual conversations about the health of triathlon.
Speaker B:We need something to talk about at least.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:I think for now maybe we'll.
Speaker A:And we're going to talk about a.
Speaker A:A new member of the triathlon world in our last point of conversation.
Speaker A:But before that we have a training point to discuss.
Speaker A:And that's a paper that you sent to me that was all about strength.
Speaker B:I was excited to send this to you.
Speaker A:It's interesting.
Speaker B:Break it down.
Speaker B:Give us a breakdown.
Speaker A:It's a paper, by Jesus.
Speaker A:I'm not going to say it right.
Speaker B:Sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker A:From Spain.
Speaker A:It's a very long list of authors which you like to see.
Speaker A:And the title of the paper is cyclists do not need to incorporate off bike resistance training to increase strength, muscle tendon structure and pedaling performance.
Speaker A:Exploring a high intensity on bike method.
Speaker A:I'm just going to break it down to tell you what they did.
Speaker A:They basically had a small number of cyclists.
Speaker A:They broke them into two groups.
Speaker A:This obviously was not a blinded study.
Speaker A:A blinded study is where the participants and the researchers don't know who is getting the intervention and they don't know who is getting the control.
Speaker A:Because obviously you can't know that where one group is doing weight training and the other is not.
Speaker A:Now, the weight training is one exercise.
Speaker A:It was full squats.
Speaker A:The cyclists who were not weight training were doing specific high intensity, high resistance pedaling intervals.
Speaker B:Do they talk about that?
Speaker A:A substitute?
Speaker A:They did.
Speaker A:They went into some detail.
Speaker A:They were, I believe, a minute long and they did multiple sets of those minutes.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:And it was over 10 weeks.
Speaker A:So you had one group doing 10 weeks of squats, the other group doing 10 weeks of these high intensity, high resistance intervals as a substitute for squats.
Speaker A:And what they found was both groups benefited pretty much identically in terms of the strength that they gained, in terms of the muscle mass that they gained, and in terms of the different metrics that they gained when they were tested on the bike.
Speaker A:This all sounds great.
Speaker B:Sounds really good.
Speaker A:I had some problems with it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So number one.
Speaker A:All right, number one, it is true.
Speaker A:If you do this, if you do these kinds of intervals, you'll probably get as strong as if you just did squats.
Speaker A:But we never ever tell cyclists to just do squats because there are a lot of other muscles that you can work when doing strength.
Speaker A:And there are countless studies.
Speaker A:In fact, I just did a quick search today before we were coming on.
Speaker A:I was like, okay, weight training for cyclists.
Speaker A:And I got 20 different studies showing that cyclists benefit measurably from doing strength training and not just in terms of their power numbers, but in terms of their health.
Speaker B:And, well, this one's a good clickbaity, I feel.
Speaker B:Journal article.
Speaker B:We're talking about it at the end of the day.
Speaker A:And I don't want to diminish the fact that they did find a result that I think is worthy of reporting.
Speaker A:That for people who don't want to do weights, who can't be convinced to do weights, because I think a big problem with cyclists and weights is they think that, oh, if I lift weights, I'm going to get muscle mass and therefore I'm going to be Heavy and therefore I'm not going to be as good of a cyclist, I'm not going to be as good of a climber.
Speaker A:And the reality is that when you do strength training as a cyclist, you're not looking to build mass.
Speaker A:And there are ways.
Speaker A:As a coach, I give my athletes strength training in design a program so that they don't gain mass, but they do gain strength and they gain resilience.
Speaker B:When you say strength and they gain strength, the ability to recruit muscle fibers, is that what you mean?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So their muscles become stronger without necessarily becoming bigger.
Speaker A:Hypertrophy of the muscle requires a huge intake of protein.
Speaker A:It requires doing sets of weights where you escalate the amount of weight you're lifting.
Speaker A:To become stronger just means take the muscle mass that you already have and make those muscles stronger by lifting the same weight over multiple sets and over time increasing that amount of weight but not increasing this.
Speaker A:So you're not doing three sets where you're dramatically increasing the amount of weight over set to set.
Speaker B:We shouldn't.
Speaker B:Which is what get rid of our gym memberships then I would not get.
Speaker A:Rid of the gym membership.
Speaker A:I think there are too many benefits from weight training that are not accounted for in this paper.
Speaker A:I think this paper is a decent paper.
Speaker A:I think it does show what it set out to show and I think that its results are worth discussing as we have.
Speaker A:But I do think that it doesn't take into account the other important benefits of training that you can strengthen your core and remember sitting on a bike for.
Speaker A:Especially if you're doing time trialing in a triathlon.
Speaker A:Having good core strength is super important.
Speaker A:If you want to be able to hold that time trial position for a long time, you're not going to get that from doing just these interval.
Speaker B:Do you think though, say you're a time crunched athlete, you're busy, you can only do one thing, get on the bike or go to the gym.
Speaker B:Do you think the findings of this study actually are intriguing to people in a situation like that?
Speaker A:100% and often that's what I hear all the time from athletes is the thing that gets cut first is strength training.
Speaker A:Because people have a hard time believing that it's going to confer as much benefit as spending that time doing an endurance sport.
Speaker A:And sometimes that's hard to argue against.
Speaker A:And I don't try too hard.
Speaker A:But there's no question this is a reasonable alternative if you're not going to go.
Speaker A:But I will say this, like how many people are actually going to spend the time doing this.
Speaker A:Because this is a workout.
Speaker A:This is a whole workout that you're going to have to spend doing.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:No, I did think it was interesting, though.
Speaker B:I thought the study was good.
Speaker B:Generally, takeaway is you think we should still be doing gym work, but.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that there are other ways to gain strength 100%.
Speaker A:But I, I do think that weight training is still important.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker B:No, that's good.
Speaker B:I think that's a good take.
Speaker B:I think so.
Speaker B:That's straight from Jeff.
Speaker B:He's on it.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:I'm glad we had a discussion about that.
Speaker B:That was super interesting.
Speaker B:I want to get into.
Speaker B: had a bit of a kickoff of the: Speaker B:I hope you like that.
Speaker A:I did like.
Speaker B:So the WTCS Abu Dhabi kicked off and honestly, I know most of the listeners may not be super interested in this and we don't need to spend too much time here, but it was an interesting race in some aspects.
Speaker B:We had a podium sweep by the German women.
Speaker B:The German athletes are really coming on.
Speaker B:They're supplanting, I would say Team USA for the USA folks listening.
Speaker B:America's had a huge dominance in women's racing and now we're seeing the rise of other nations, especially Germany.
Speaker B:They're coming on.
Speaker B:There was a kind of good battle in the men's race.
Speaker B:You had Hayden Wilde, who.
Speaker B:Olympic silver medalist, silver medalist at 70.3 worlds.
Speaker B:He's doing both racing short course and long course with the T100 this year.
Speaker B:So, yeah, he had a solid race, ended up taking the win, but a close win to Matt Hauser from Australia.
Speaker B:Vasco Valaka from Portugal was on the podium as well.
Speaker B:You're just.
Speaker B:It's just one thing where you're going to see a lot of this kind of mixing and matching from a lot of these athletes.
Speaker B:And what I'm looking to see is how they perform across all the distances, all the different race formats through a very long season.
Speaker B:I think the season ends in November and October in Qatar for the T100 and Australia for World Triathlon.
Speaker B:So, yeah, just a good takeaways.
Speaker B:There's a mixed team relay as well and Germany won that one.
Speaker B:There's a big bike crash.
Speaker B:If you haven't seen that, go check it out because that was good carnage on the bike for sure.
Speaker A:No, nobody got hurt seriously.
Speaker B:Not that I know of.
Speaker B:But it was in the kind of second leg of the relay.
Speaker B:So there's four legs of the relay.
Speaker B:Everybody does a mini triathlon and yeah, in the second leg.
Speaker B:So pretty early on there was five athletes away off the front and somebody just hit a barrier and took them all down and the other athletes behind had a chance to come back into the race.
Speaker B:So I think that's good.
Speaker B:Trainer watch maybe.
Speaker B:Do you ever watch world triathlon races when you're doing trainer rides or something?
Speaker A:I have not.
Speaker A:I've watched mostly because draft legal I have always struggled to get into because if you're not in that lead pack on the bike then doesn't matter.
Speaker A:And it's all about the run in these races.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:So I have a hard time.
Speaker B:No, and that's a good point you bring up.
Speaker B:I'm actually annoyed with world Triathlon right now because of like literally what you just said about it all coming down to the run.
Speaker B:And it's the last few years always trended in that direction.
Speaker B:When I was coming up there was a lot of basically when I was coming up 10, 15 years ago it was only Olympic distance.
Speaker B:So there was always an opportunity for athletes to have a breakaway out of the water.
Speaker B:But then world triathlon brought in the sprint distance racing, the tiktokization of everything.
Speaker B:Got to make it shorter, got to make it easier to digest for our short attention Spanish and that really changed the calculus in terms of making it incentivizing running a lot more.
Speaker B:And now World Triathlon I to me we're in a whole new Olympic cycle.
Speaker B:Why don't you try something different, try a different race distance to maybe see if you can bring more intrigue back into the racing like we had with in the past with different breakaways and stuff.
Speaker B:It's been really frustrating for me to watch them just do the same thing.
Speaker B:Continue to incentivize the running even more.
Speaker B:They've changed the point structure now where these shorter races that are even more run focused are now going to be weighed just as much of an Olympic distance.
Speaker B:To me it just they're squandering this opportunity that they have to even just a B test something different.
Speaker A:Cycling did something really interesting a couple years ago.
Speaker A:It's more than a couple years ago now where they had this three or four day event and on each day they did something very different and the teams got points depending on how they did.
Speaker A:So one day they had a team time trial.
Speaker A:They had a race that was very similar to a like a puncher race.
Speaker A:One of these races with like very hilly terrain but no long climbs.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Like a Paris Roubaix type Or like a spring classic type race.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, like a spring classic type race.
Speaker A:And then on the last day they are on the, whatever the third day they had a, like a sprinter type race where it was very flat and it was very.
Speaker A:And then I think they also had, they might have also had an individual time trial, but at any rate, they got points for each of the legs that they did.
Speaker A:And because it was a team race, it was your team that won and you didn't have an individual that won.
Speaker A:And it was a really interesting concept.
Speaker A:It was really fun to watch.
Speaker B:It all came down like the normal cycling teams.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was the professional cycling teams.
Speaker A:It was a professional cycling teams.
Speaker A:And, and what they did was on the very last day, the, it came down to the team time trial.
Speaker A:And based on how many points you had, that's how many seconds ahead you were on the team time trial.
Speaker A:So it was very exciting to watch the team time trial.
Speaker A:At any rate.
Speaker A:I always thought if the PTO people wanted to really, or even WTCs, whatever, if they wanted to make things interesting, they should try some of these things 100% one day.
Speaker A:Make it teams instead of individuals.
Speaker A:Have your team break up and to say, send some people out to do a sprint, some people out to do an Olympic, some people out to do a longer distance race and maybe you have a relay with all of them together.
Speaker A:Anything, do anything, do that over two or three days, do that.
Speaker A:That would be very watchable and I think people would be interested.
Speaker B:Please do that, do.
Speaker B:Because at the end of the day, a lot of our audience, they're not familiar with world Triathlon.
Speaker B:I think the racing is exciting in some ways.
Speaker B:Unfortunately, it does kind of just get down to the run.
Speaker B:But these athletes are incredible.
Speaker B:I think sometimes they don't get the spotlight.
Speaker B:Maybe they should.
Speaker B:But World Triathlon needs to find a way to get more people to engage with it because you're just, you're losing kind of the mind share is what I call it, of the triathlon world even more unfortunately.
Speaker A:All right, now I, I just want to finish with the thing that we hinted at right at the beginning of the show, which is that there is a new triathlete that apparently is coming into the fold, and that is one Garon Thomas.
Speaker A:So what could you tell us about that?
Speaker B:Matt Garen Thomas, a Tour de France swimmer, a kind of heavy hitter with the Ineos Grenadiers Team Sky Team over the years.
Speaker B:In a podcast interview, he talked about his retirement.
Speaker B:It's impending.
Speaker B:It's coming along the pipeline.
Speaker B:And so he's already looking for these new challenges in his retirement.
Speaker B:And one of those things is a full distance Ironman.
Speaker B:I thought that was interesting.
Speaker B:I read some more about his interview, what he said, and essentially he only runs two to three times a year.
Speaker B:So, yeah, do the math on that.
Speaker B:That's not so great for the Ironman.
Speaker B:Which begs the question, how would you coach that, Jeff?
Speaker B:How would you bring him into the fold?
Speaker A:The same way I coach a lot of people who come in who tell me that, oh, I'm great at one or two sports and I'm really terrible at that.
Speaker B:He's really great, though.
Speaker B:He's truly great.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:He wouldn't be the first.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:We have Cam Wurf as a great example of a professional cyclist still doing his thing on the pro circuit as a cyclist and then dabbling in Ironman and doing quite well.
Speaker A:Garrett Thomas would be a very welcome addition.
Speaker A:He's just such a.
Speaker A:An amazing guy.
Speaker A:I love listening to him.
Speaker A:Every time I've seen him interviewed, he just comes across as a very genuine, very nice, really like, nice person.
Speaker A:Not one of those guys who's just trying to be nice.
Speaker A:But he would, I think, just bring a really welcome kind of attention to triathlon.
Speaker A:If he did it in terms of how to coach him, obviously he'd have to just spend a little less time on the bike and a little more time on foot in order to get that.
Speaker A:But look, he's coming with an incredible aerobic engine.
Speaker A:I don't think it's would be too hard to imagine him having great success.
Speaker A:The question is, can he swim?
Speaker B:That's a great question.
Speaker B:We could.
Speaker B:We gotta figure that out.
Speaker B:But I feel like for someone like him, the hardest thing, you know, with pro cyclists, especially just cyclists, they do so much volume, they basically can go out there and hammer as much as they want, really, without hurting themselves.
Speaker B:But with that whole running component, you throw that into the mix with that mindset, typically that leads to injuries.
Speaker B:So it would be an interesting challenge.
Speaker B:I feel like trying to figure out how to manage that or teach him how to manage running because it's such a different beast than cycling.
Speaker A:Stay tuned.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:He's committed to continuing to race this year.
Speaker A:I know he's still scheduled to race with Ineos Grenadiers this year.
Speaker A:Did he mention what his timeline was for?
Speaker A:Is this his last season?
Speaker B:I feel like this is his last season.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I want to know.
Speaker B:It would be next year, probably.
Speaker B:He'd probably jump in an Ironman next year.
Speaker B:That sounds about right.
Speaker B:Your first Ironman, your first triathlon.
Speaker B:Being an Ironman these days, I hope.
Speaker A:He wouldn't be a one and done kind of guy because like I said, I think he'd bring such great attention to the sport and I think it would be wonderful to have him around.
Speaker B:So it would be cool to see him compare him his bike split to just another pro athlete, pro triathlete, see how they compare to him.
Speaker B:I think that would be interesting.
Speaker B:Maybe we would gain a little more respect from the pro cyclists.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker A:Speaking of respect, we hope that we have garnered more respect from you, our listeners, and if so, that you will run out and tell someone else about this podcast so that they might give us a listen as well.
Speaker A:And if you enjoyed it, leave us a rating or review.
Speaker A:If you didn't, or if you have a comment or a question about something you'd like to hear on a future episode.
Speaker A:Matt where can they drop you a line?
Speaker B:Easiest is probably either my Instagram, which is D1, or email hellotemponews.com and you.
Speaker A:Can reach me I am T ridocloud.com or I'm try coaching on Instagram.
Speaker A:We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker A:Please do reach out mat we will talk again next week for episode three of Tempo Talks.
Speaker A:I'm looking forward to it already.
Speaker B:Me too, looking forward to it and thanks everyone for tuning in and listening.
Speaker B:Catch you soon.
Speaker A:Tempo Talks is a production of the Triathlon Performance Hub and was produced and edited by me, Jeff Zankoff.
Speaker A:The music heard at the beginning and the end of the show is Rock by Henry Graggart and is used under a Creative Commons license from Pixabay.
Speaker A:Tempo Talks will be back again next week with a new episode.
Speaker A:Until then, please leave a rating and a review and subscribe to the show wherever you get your audio content.
