That Triathlon Life Podcast · That Triathlon Life

Triathlon training habits pros wish they had adopted earlier, upgrading your TT bike, and more!

·1 hr 2 min·1 clip

Eric Lagerstrom, Paula Finley, and Nick Goldston start where they often do: what is happening in Bend, what the weather looks like, and how close they are to Oceanside. The whiteboards are the main event. Last week they wanted whiteboards, this week they have them, and Nick gets a little heat for being unusually organized. A whiteboard sponsor even offers to send more supplies, which only makes the bit better. From there, the episode settles into training talk. A listener question opens up a longer discussion about how to handle hard efforts on technical terrain. The hosts debate whether averaging normalized power is really the same as holding a steady effort. Eric is blunt that if the goal is optimal 70.3 training, a mountain bike and a pile of surges probably should not be mistaken for a controlled session. Still, the idea is not dismissed completely. They keep circling back to the gap between better-than-nothing training and truly specific training. The running side of the conversation gets a warmer response. Uphill running is treated as genuinely useful because it raises aerobic load without the same interruptions you get on a bike. They note that watches can help smooth that out with average graded pace, which makes the effort easier to read. That difference between running and cycling keeps the discussion grounded instead of sliding into generic cross-training advice. The bike talk stays more cautious because coasting, technical sections, and constantly changing effort make the comparison messier. They also make room for the idea that mountain biking still has value even for triathletes who care mostly about road performance. The point is not just fitness. It is skill, resilience, and being more comfortable when conditions get ugly, including wind and rough or changing surfaces. Dallas comes up in that context as an example of the kind of place where those traits matter. The tone stays matter-of-fact rather than preachy. Throughout, the episode keeps its usual panel rhythm: one person starts an idea, another pushes back, and somebody else sharpens the useful version of it. The whiteboard joke keeps resurfacing, which gives the episode a little structure without forcing one. The hosts are clearly talking from inside the sport rather than from a distance, and that makes the advice feel earned. It is less about giving a perfect prescription and more about sorting out what is actually useful for triathlon life. The result is a conversation that is casual on the surface but still full of specific training logic. There is also a steady sense that the show is part planning meeting, part hangout, part midseason sanity check. Oceanside hangs over the conversation as the next destination, but the episode never turns into a pure race preview. Instead, it uses the upcoming race as a backdrop for talking through how to train, what to trust, and what to stop pretending is equivalent. That is where the episode has its strength: it keeps the advice tied to the real friction of training, not abstract best practices. The conversation is strongest when it is naming the limits of a workaround. Surges are not the same as steady effort. Mountain biking is useful, but it is not a perfect substitute for a specific bike session. Running uphill can be excellent, but it needs to be understood for what it is. Those distinctions are the spine of the episode, and they are delivered in the show’s familiar, lightly teasing voice. By the end, the whiteboards, the gear talk, and the training debate all feel like part of the same ongoing season-long conversation.

As heard by us

A practical triathlon conversation that turns Oceanside prep and pacing debate into clear, useful takeaways.

That Triathlon Life Podcast stays grounded in triathlon basics, moving from Bend and whiteboards into the lead-up to Oceanside before settling into a focused argument about steady power versus surging efforts on technical terrain.

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Want a laid-back triathlon chat from Bend with whiteboards and Oceanside prep?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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