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.

Andrew Harley: Hey Hey everyone, thanks for joining us today! Great episode of the TriDot podcast on deck for you here! We talk a lot about training for race day, we talk a lot about race execution on race day, but what about after the race? When that sprint, that Olympic, that long course race is done and behind you, what are the best practices for taking care of yourself on the backside of the finish line? We'll talk all about it with two of our experts. I'm excited to introduce this first guest to you. He's been on the podcast before, specifically back on Episode .46 about men's health and nutrition, but this time something's a little different. This time, Matt Bach is coming on as a member of the TriDot staff. Our team here at TriDot is growing, and we are thrilled to have Matt join the team to direct our marketing efforts. Matt is an accomplished athlete with an Ironman Maryland victory, and 77nd overall finish in Kona on his résumé. He worked on Wall Street as a trader and portfolio manager for nine years, earned his MBA from Temple University, worked at marketing at UCAN for two and a half years, and has now found his home as part of the TriDot staff. Matt, welcome back to the show! Does it feel any different this time around as a TriDot team member?

Matt Bach: Uh, I don't know how much different it feels because I'm still with the same amazing people, but I'm so excited to be back on the show. You guys put such a great podcast together, and I'm really excited and proud to be part of it now.

Andrew: Well, now when you say YOU guys, it's US guys, because you're part of it just as well! So happy to have you in the fold. Also joining us is coach John Mayfield. John is a USAT Level II and Ironman U certified coach who leads TriDot’s athlete services, ambassador, and coaching programs. He has coached hundreds of athletes ranging from first-timers to Kona qualifiers and professional triathletes. John has been using TriDot since 2010 and coaching with TriDot since 2012. Now John, in my eyes you’re the ultimate source of race-related wisdom. Are you ready to spread some more race weekend knowledge with us today?

John Mayfield: Man, that's a high mark, so I guess I better be on my A game if that's the standard I'm being held up to!

Andrew: Bring it! Bring the A game! Here we go! I'm Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always we'll roll through our warmup question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down with our cooldown. Lots of good stuff, let's get to it!

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

Andrew: Our warmup question today comes from an athlete in the TriDot family. Big thanks to Beth Resetco for today’s question! If you listen to the TriDot podcast and have an idea for a solid warmup question, you can do exactly what Beth did. You can go to TriDot.com/podcast, click on “Leave us a voicemail”, and record your voice asking your question. I LOVE getting these, because (1) I like hearing from y'all our audience, and (2) John keeps teasing me that I’m running out of good warmup questions. So any question we get from y'all is a GREAT change of pace here on the show, so let’s hear what Beth wants to know!

Beth Resetco: Hi, this is Beth from Alexandria, Virginia. I'm signed up for my first Ironman, which will be in Maryland in September. Andrew, I'm like you and hoping my first Ironman will be my last. But it has me wondering who and/or why people do multiples. I have some theories, about doing better the second time or trying to get to Kona, but I'm sure there are other reasons why someone would dedicate so much of their time to it. So I look forward to hearing those ideas.

Andrew: Okay. I love how this question pairs perfectly with our topic today, and more than that, I love how Beth agrees with me, and thinks all y'all multi-time Ironman athletes are just crazy. It's just insane to do one of these, nonetheless several of these. So John, what would you say to respond here?

John: I totally get the sentiment of being "one and done". Whether that was my original intent I don't recall, but I do know that's what I told my wife when I was getting permission to do my first Ironman, to pay that entry fee and commit to all that training and everything that came along with it. But really it comes down to a couple things. A couple weeks ago we were in Tulsa for Ironman Tulsa, and just dumb luck, we ran into some TriDot athletes at lunch. We were sitting outside of this café, which happened to be on basically the second-to-last block of the marathon course. So you would run down this block that we were sitting there having lunch on, you would make a right turn, and then you would see the finish line. So she was asking us some questions about what to expect and what to do, and it really came down to that block that we just happened to be sitting on. And I love the way she put it, she referred to it as a "snow globe moment". That's really what brings me back, and I know that's a shared experience for so many athletes. Very tangibly it's that last hundred yards, quarter mile. It's that finishing stretch where you enter the chute, you hear the crowd, you hear Mike Reilly. You see the lights, you see the finish line, and it kinda hits you that you have now finished the Ironman triathlon. You are an Ironman. You are being declared, you're part of the fraternal order that is the Ironman. I would say that largely is the very tangible, that snow globe moment that you want to relive and you want to experience again. I think back to my races, specifically my Ironman races. All of them I trained with dear friends that have become brothers and sisters-in-arms almost, that you share those experiences, those long days out on the road. And then it becomes even more so around the trip. I think back on times where I road-tripped with buddies out to different races, and shared accommodations, and you live with these people, and it's an intimate thing, and it's just great. It's about the people that you share those experiences with, whether it be family or friends, training partners, my coach has been there. It just seems to be a very special time, and there's something about getting to experience that again. That's what draws me back time and time again.

Andrew: To share the experience again and relive the finish again.

John: Yeah.

Andrew: Very interesting. Matt Bach, any differences for you on what brings you back or what you find other athletes saying brings them back to do a full-distance Ironman again?

Matt: Yeah, I love the snow globe moment, and it absolutely does play a role in it. But for me, there's an emotional roller coaster, for many people too, that starts even before the race happens. Like, right before the race, it's kind of like, "Why am I doing this to myself?" You wake up first thing in the morning like, "What am I doing? Why did I sign up for this thing? Why am I doing this?" And then right after the race like, "Wow, that was awesome." It was really painful, and I know that later that day I am never doing one of these again. I've definitely heard a lot of people say, "I'm never doing one of these again, that was brutal." But then of course the day after the race you go through this ebb and flow, and you're like, "Which one should I register for next?" It's a question that always seems to pop back up. So I go back to do more of them. For me a lot of it is, "What can I do better?" An Ironman is such a long journey, the race itself in terms of the execution of it, the training that goes into it. There's such a journey there, and there's so many things that can go wrong on race day. There's so many things that can go right as well, and one of the fun things about it is: yeah, your fitness can improve, and you can get fitter and faster and ready to race better, but you can also work with Ironman on all those little things that you can perfect on race day.

Andrew: All the execution.

Matt: Yeah, the execution. Because then, "I screwed this up, I screwed that up, my transition was so slow I could save 30 seconds there." You add all these things up and boom: you've got yourself a nice PR, even if you have the same exact fitness going in, let alone having additional increased fitness going in, and then you can really crush it. So for me, a lot of the time it's beyond just getting fitter, it's seeing how many of those things I can do better next time, to see how much better I can perform.

Andrew: Hey, we're gonna throw this out like we always do to the I AM TriDot Facebook group, because I know in that group there are hundreds of multi-time Ironman finishers. We want to hear from you guys: what is it that keeps bringing you back to the Ironman starting line, even though you've already cross the Ironman finish line? Can't wait to see what you guys have to say! Find us on Facebook, the I AM TriDot Facebook group, and answer today's warmup question.

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

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We've talked quite a bit in the 90 episodes preceding this one about triathlon training, nutrition, preparing for a race, executing well during a race, and having grit along the way. But we haven't really gone in depth on what athletes should do AFTER a race. I think most of us have some sort of idea of the things we CAN do or maybe SHOULD do. We can foam roll, we can enjoy an extra dessert, we can get back to training, but it's not always clear the best way to go about all these things. So Matt, John, whatever the race was, you worked hard for that finish line, you earned that finish line, and you should enjoy the aftermath of that finish line. What words of wisdom do you guys have in terms of savoring the moment, both coming across the finish line and in the hours that follow?

Matt: For me, I listen to my body a lot. I know that after a sprint or Olympic I'm probably gonna feel pretty good, and maybe I'm reaching for the beer or the burger, maybe even foam rolling because, I'm not gonna be that sore. Maybe I feel like I can train the next day, and I'm hanging out and having a good time with my friends and family. I know after an Ironman that's not usually the case. I'm usually feeling pretty terrible at that point. I've pretty much spent my body and put it through hell that day, so at that point I may not be ready for any sort of beer and food and things that are gonna further destroy my body potentially. So for me it's very much listening to my body. As far as savoring that moment, one comment there is my wife would always get very upset when I wouldn't kiss her, stop along the road to give her a kiss, or even wave or acknowledge that she was there cheering me on as I enter the finishing chute. So at some point during my Ironman career, I think it was the first time I was at Ironman Maryland and I was crossing the finish line there, and I actually stopped beforehand and gave her a kiss on the way. She very much appreciated that, and John what you said before earlier about savoring that moment and making it that snow globe moment is definitely something I was trying to do that day, and have had more of an eye towards.

Andrew: John, once a race is over, particularly at a large-scale event, there are usually a few amenities for athletes to enjoy before reconnecting with friends and family. What should athletes expect to see on the other side of the finish line?

John: I think this even kind of common regardless of distance, so you kind of have the same spread whether it's your local sprint race with 100 athletes or an Ironman event with 3,000 athletes.

Andrew: Hot dogs, hamburgers? Beer, pizza?

John: It seems like pizza is the official post-race food. It's portable, it's easy, everybody loves it. So there's usually pizza. There's usually, kind of ironically, at Ironman oftentimes it's almost like one more aid station, with the same stuff that you've been eating all day. And I can't imagine anyone just taking more pretzels, orange slices, bananas, even like gels and stuff. I can't imagine anybody taking any of that, but then they'll have typically sodas, water, that sort of thing.

Andrew: So the food is there, and I actually have some follow-up questions about the food, because us athletes, we love us some food. But past the food table and snack table, what are some of the other things that are there on the back side of a finish line?

John: So this is kind of a follow-up to our warmup question. The other thing that I say brings me back to race Ironman again and again is the post-race massage. It's a very light massage, it's not your deep tissue, it's not what you got leading into the race.

Andrew: They're not destroying you.

John: No. It's just very light. They're just getting a little bit, it's really gonna help flush the muscles, and help that process that the body is doing to start that recovery process. So I always highly recommend if that massage is an option, always take advantage of that.

Andrew: Something else I've seen frequently at races, whether it's a large-scale Ironman challenge, Clash event, or whether it's just a small local race: they'll often have photo opportunities, and some sort of photo wall or somewhere you can pose to take pictures of your medal and your friends and family. I always recommend that, because if you're gonna do a triathlon race, you gotta Instagram it. You gotta put that on the 'gram, or on your Strava or whatever, so be sure to get some pictures on the back side of the finish line. You definitely earned that. Matt, what are a few things you've seen races offer after the finish line of a race?

Matt: One of my favorites is an ice bath. It's not very common; I don't think the Ironman races typically have it. But every once in a while a sprint race, or I think the one that I'm thinking of in particular was Rev 3 Quassy in Connecticut, which I think is now Ironman Connecticut 70.3. Back in 2012, 2013 they had an ice bath afterwards. But I'm sure the ice bath would get pretty dirty if a lot of people get in there.

Andrew: Well if you win maybe not, but if you're coming across the line 300th, yeah, it probably gets pretty grimy.

Matt: I wasn't the winner, but I think I was close enough to the front that I think I might have been one of the first people that chose to use it, and it was awful and amazing at the same time. If you've ever done an ice bath, you know that it doesn’t feel great.

Andrew: This is a random thought, but something else I've seen at races that I'm always jealous of, because I've never seen it at an adult race but at many of the youth and junior races I go to, have popsicles for the kids afterwards. And it's always like I'll have one if it's hot outside. I'll grab one as an adult onsite, as a coach onsite, and it's just like, why don't they offer these to adults? They just hit great. And that kind of transitions us again to our next topic: food. John, you gave a little bit of the food do's and don'ts, but let's really flesh out our post-race food talk. Do we need to eat immediately, is it better to wait, does it matter? Is any food that sounds good fair game? Should we eat something specific to foster our recovery? Matt, how should athletes navigate post-race eating?

Matt: Yeah, that's definitely an area that obviously I've talked a lot about, and I've thought a lot about, and know a lot about because of working at UCAN for 2½ years. And that's my favorite thing to have after a workout or after a big race, is the UCAN Energy + Protein. It's one of the only things I can actually eat, especially after an Ironman. I don't feel like eating anything usually after an Ironman, or a hot race. My appetite is completely destroyed. But it is really important for recovery purposes to get the hydration and get something in your system right away, the same way that it is after your workouts to get something into your system, especially some carbs and protein to replenish those glycogen stores and to get the protein into your system to start repairing the muscles that you've put through the ringer. But that said, I'm definitely a person of balance here. And especially if it's after your A race, and especially if it's the final race of the season for you, then getting on the recovery train is not quite as critical. So maybe it doesn't matter if you're sore for week and a half after your Ironman, because it's your last race of the season and you're not going to be training. At that point, maybe I give a little more leeway to myself to eat whatever it is that I feel like eating, even if it does hinder my recovery. I do notice a very stark difference when I cater to the recovery by taking in proper food, hydrating properly, and trying to avoid too much of the negative things like alcohol and some of the sugar things. If it's after a B or a C race where it's not really my focus and I'm gonna be racing again after that, maybe I'm in prep for my A race, then I do stay focused on recovering quickly.

John: Yeah, I'm like Matt. I sometimes will have no appetite after a race, and you would think like, "I haven't eaten since like 4:00 in the morning, and now it's 8:00 at night and I've been in perpetual movement for the last 11 hours." You'd think I'd worked up an appetite. But it's kinda odd, sometimes it takes hours. And I've been in other situations where I’m just massively hungry, and I'll go and order the biggest triple cheeseburger with the double side of fries, and then I take one bite and I'm done. I can't eat. But it's funny how you would think it's just a massive appetite. I heard a thing years ago, it was what Chrissy Wellington would eat after an Ironman race, and it was insane. You have this little 120‑pound lady that was like, three burgers, three orders of fries, eight milkshakes. It was crazy the stuff that she was slamming.

Andrew: It was like a Dwayne Johnson the Rock-type meal.

John: Yeah, or like one of Michael Phelps' training days. Just this little woman, little petite lady would just crush it like an hour after Ironman. So it really is individual. Everybody has a different appetite, literally, but it's not always what you would expect.

Andrew: So if we put our best foot forward on race day, any race from a sprint distance to an Ironman can leave us with muscle fatigue and muscle soreness. How long should we expect to be sore after a race?

Matt: Typically, for me after a sprint race, Olympic, or shorter course one, maybe it's a couple days. If it's an Ironman, a lot of time it's nearly a week, and it depends definitely on what you do to encourage recovery. As I mentioned, there's definitely a correlation between what I do and what the athletes that I've worked with have done after races, and how they feel two, three, four days later. If they treat their body poorly, maybe it's a deliberate decision and that's perfectly fine. They decide that they want to have the cheeseburger and fries and three beers. That's fine, that's their decision. But they're making that decision in a deliberate fashion, knowing that it's going to impede their recovery. And maybe four or five days or even a week or more later after an Ironman, they might still be sore, and more sore than they otherwise would have been the day after. If you treat your body well you might recover a lot faster, and actually feel like you can start hitting training harder by the end of the week, or maybe it's the following week. It also for me has depended partly on the time of the season, and what I've already put my body through. The specific example I'm thinking of is when I used to do this race called the Hook Mountain Half Marathon in upstate New York. I used to live in Jersey City just over the Hudson River from New York City, and we would ride our bikes 30 miles up to the race start, and then run the half marathon, and then we would jump back on the bikes and we'd hammer home. So we'd try to beat each other into oblivion after we're already very tired on the 30‑mile ride home.

Andrew: Of course, yeah. Why not?

Matt: So it's like three or four of us from the Jersey City/Hoboken area, and a whole bunch of people actually would do the same thing that lived in New York City. And that race in particular, because it was in April and because it was usually the first time that I raced hard that season, it would destroy me. I'd be sore as though I had done an Ironman or even then some. I would be so, so sore for two or three days afterwards no matter what I did to try to encourage my recovery. So sometimes it kind of depends partly on the season. Later in the season if I did a half-Ironman, sometimes even two days later I'd feel pretty darn good. I wouldn't really feel very sore at all. So it kind of depends on what you've already put your body through, and what your body's accustomed to, and is there a shock factor there because you haven't done that type of intensity and pushed your body to the limit that much in a while.

John: I've often been pleasantly surprised, after even an Ironman race, how sore I'm NOT. But the one thing that always seems to get me after an Ironman are my knees. My knees are really sore, really creaky the next day. I don't run 26 miles in training. I really don't run anywhere near that. Usually I'm peaking somewhere in that 16 to 18‑mile range, so it's considerably further than I've done in training. So that's generally where I'll feel it the day after an Ironman. My muscles may be not particularly sore. You can definitely feel it though, they're not strong.

Andrew: They're tired, they're tuckered out.

John: Yeah, they're a little baby-giraffe-esque, but not a whole lot of pain, not that soreness. Where I tend to feel it is in my knees. And I've a couple times stayed in upstairs apartments or condos, which is always a mistake. And here's a tip: it is easier to go up and down the stairs backwards with the sore legs. That's a tip from the road.

Andrew: Surely that will be the Tip of the Day on this episode.

John: Yeah, I don't know. It probably makes sense somehow, but I don't have a good explanation for it. Go up and down backwards, but be careful: it'd be world of hurt if you fall down the stairs the day after an Ironman, but I'm always kind of surprised with that. And I think it just goes to quality of training and preparation, and being ready for the race. The muscles are there. So I don't have that tremendous amount of soreness, but the knees are the ones that make me feel a little older than I am.

Andrew: So if an athlete is listening today, and they've done one Ironman, and haven't found a reason to go back for a second, a quality reason to go back and do another Ironman is to test John Mayfield's backwards stairs theory, and see for yourself if he's correct. That's a logical reason to spend the money and train and do a second one, right?

John: I disagree, but whatever.

Andrew: For me, when it comes to soreness, I've found I am most sore after Olympic-distance races. Because it's a distance where it's short enough that you can typically go really hard, but you're going hard for much longer than a sprint distance. So after an Olympic I will be most sore. Those muscles are sore. They're not necessarily tired, I can work out, but they're very sore. Whereas a 70.3 race (obviously I haven't done an Ironman yet) I'm not as sore, but the muscles are more fatigued. So I think the distance, and what type of stress you're putting on your body, also is going to play a role in how your body responds to that. Luckily, no matter what your race is, no matter what your soreness level is, there are quite a few ways to help our muscles recover faster after a race. Matt, you talked about enjoying the ice baths. John you talked about enjoying the post-race massage. But there's a lot more methodologies even beyond those two. So what are some of the other things that we can do to help give our muscles some love after the effort of a race?

John: Regardless of whether the athlete experiences that soreness or not, there is a certain amount of damage that is done to the muscles. So we do need to allow the muscles to recover. That soreness is a sign that there has been damage. Whether you have a high amount of soreness or not, we know that doing even a sprint-distance race creates damage to those muscles. Doing an Ironman race creates even more so. That's one of the reasons I mentioned starting with that post-race massage. That's going to be a first step. That's going to help flush out the muscles. There's metabolic waste in the muscles that is a byproduct of everything that has been going on throughout the day. Massage will help move that long, and that's also something that compression is going to help with. I believe Matt mentioned that earlier, getting those compression socks on. The compression boots, massage boots, are gonna do that as well. So those are the things that we can do early on. Matt mentioned the ice baths earlier: that's going to help reduce that inflammation that is there, and help your body clear all those things that are largely causing some of that soreness to be there, impeding the recovery of those muscles. Then from there we can start to use some of the recovery tools that we have, whether it be those massage boots, compression boots, maybe it's a foam roller, those types of things. Those are generally things that we want to start implementing when after that first step of recovery has already happened. If you have a lot of soreness, something like a massage ball or a foam roller is not gonna feel good, and probably is not going to be the advantageous to use. But when that first batch of soreness is gone, that's when you can start to use some of those more mobility-type tools, whether it be a foam roller or the wand-type things. Active recovery is also huge. I think that is something that oftentimes athletes overlook the importance and benefit of. So even after Ironman, it may just be going for a walk. I think the natural inclination is, "I did 140.6 miles yesterday, I'm not doing nothing today."

Andrew: I'm not moving.

John: I'm gonna be on the couch. But that really is going to delay how quickly you bounce back. So it may just be a walk around the block, maybe it's hopping on the bike just for an easy spin, if you've made nice with your bike again. Most folk don't want to see their bike for a couple days after all those hours.

Andrew: It depends on the distance, I'm sure.

John: But just a real easy spin on the bike. It's not training, it's very different than what we did before the race. It's just getting those muscles moving, get them firing, get some blood into the muscles so everything can get flushed out. That's gonna go a long way. And then of course, giving your body those things it needs to rebuild from the inside.

Andrew: Matt, I know you have your system in place and your timeline of what you like to do after a major race. What does that look like for you, and when would you advise athletes to maybe do some of these things that John's mentioning?

Matt: Yeah, I'll get into a little bit of that timeline there, but I want to make an overarching point which ties into a lot of what John was just staying, which is that the way that the body recovers the fastest is by giving it what it needs, and that's getting it nutrients. The nutrients are really what you need to be flowing through so that your muscles can repair and rebuild, and those nutrients come from the food that you eat, which John mentioned. It comes from the blood flow, like being able to transport a lot of those nutrients throughout the body and throughout the muscles so that you can get the muscles repairing as fast as possible. Basically almost everything on the list here: recovery tools, compression, active recovery, nutrition, compression socks, compression books, light stretching, ice baths…all those things encourage blood flow and encourage nutrients to get to the muscles. Really, your body's an amazing thing. Your body's going to repair itself, as long as you give it what It needs in order to do that most effectively. My timeline specifically is I definitely avoid the foam rolling for a couple days after a race when I'm really sore. I tried one time after my first Ironman, Lake Placid 2012. I didn't realize how sore I would be, but I just thought, "Hey, everybody tells me foam rolling is good," and I would do foam rolling quite a bit leading into the race during my training, and I figured I should foam roll after the race. I hopped on my foam roller, and my legs were screaming. They did not want me to be foam rolling. So I was too stupid at the time to listen to my body, and I continued to foam roll. And I realized later that that was a terrible idea. I should NOT have just put up with the pain, the pain-is-gain mentality when I was foam rolling. I should have been putting that thing away.

John: Jeff Raines has referred to foam rolling as pampering. We all had raised eyebrows like, "I don't know what kind of foam rolling you're doing." But I think you would agree that, especially after an Ironman, foam rolling is definitely not in the pampering category.

Andrew: Absolutely not. So guys, for these things we're usually up pretty early to get ready for a race. For some of us it feels earlier than others. There's plenty of jokes that are to be made. So between that early morning alarm and the physical exertion from the race, you would think that sleeping like an absolute champion would be easy after a race. But that's not always the case. What should our expectations be for sleep quality after an event?

Matt: The expectation should be that it's going to be pretty garbage. After a sprint or an Olympic, I think you can expect that your sleep quality is probably going to be actually fairly good that night, because you're going to have the exhaustion but it's not so traumatic to the body that your body isn't going to be all out of sorts and not be able to actually sleep. But I think after something like a half-Ironman, especially if it's your first time doing one, and definitely after an Ironman, it's tough to sleep well that night because of excitement. You're now an Ironman or maybe a multiple-time Ironman. Maybe you just PR'ed on a big long race like that. It's a huge spectacle at the finish line, especially if maybe you're finishing at the midnight finish which is there's so much energy. There's a lot of reasons there's excitement. A lot of people, including myself, use caffeine during a race, so that could help keep you up as well. Caffeine has a four-hour half-life, so if you've taken a whole bunch of caffeine and you're finishing a race at 7:00 p.m., then that caffeine is going to be in your system when you're trying to go to bed at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 a.m. Then your body's just reeling from the effort, so you're sleeping pretty terribly that night. Specifically, at Ironman Maryland there was so much excitement, and I had taken in a lot of caffeine. I was honored and privileged to come to the finish line to put finisher medals around the necks of the finishers, which I never thought I'd have the opportunity to do. That was so cool. But the only way I was gonna make it is if I took in some caffeine. So I slammed a Red Bull at 11:00 p.m. and then went over to the finish line. And I could not sleep that night. Between the excitement, and the caffeine, and the physical exertion just putting my body in all sorts of terrible places, I didn't sleep. I don't think I slept a minute that night. I just woke up the next morning when the sun was coming up. And by "woke up", I mean I just got up out of bed after I was laying there for hours on end, and just went into the next day. I think the next day I was able to take a little bit of a nap and then have a better night's sleep the next time. And I think that is typically the case with those I've talked to, that two to three nights after, your body starts to catch up. The excitement's come down, the caffeine's out of your system, and now the second and third night you can actually start to sleep in a more regular fashion, get in 8, 9, 10 hours of sleep and actually feel like you're recharging your batteries.

Andrew: Yeah, it sounds almost like traveling a few times zones. Essentially you're just throwing off your body's normal rhythm, so it just takes a few days, much like traveling, to get your body back at its normal rhythm. So moving on…This will possibly depend on the length of the race, whether it was an A, B, or C priority, but I know a lot of folks are going to be wondering this: how long should we wait before we start training again? John, you mentioned maybe you're starting some active recovery right away just to help your body recover, just some light stuff, but for really getting back into training sessions where you're working on your fitness, how long do we need to wait?

John: As I mentioned before, active recovery is different than training. There's a different intent. It may look the same, you may be swimming, cycling, and running, but it's with a different intent. So that active recovery starts the next day. It may be a walk, an easy jog, an easy spin on the bike. Swimming is great because you don't have the weight, the load on the body, so that's a good opportunity. Again, the intent is just to get the body moving, get the heart rate up, get the blood pumping. That's going to help From there it's going to depend on the individual athlete, as well as what they did. And then how critical is it that we start training again? Matt mentioned the difference between the last race of the season, or maybe it's an early-season race where you've gotta get right back in it, and you're on a short timeframe to race again. A lot of it depends on the individual athlete, the athlete's age, all of that plays into it. So it's our classic answer of every question of "it depends". There's certainly certain things that you can use as guidelines, but there are a lot of things that factor into it.

Matt: After an A race, and I agree with everything you're saying John, there's a lot of things you can do afterwards to expedite the recovery, like active recovery, that is not really training. But as far as the swimming and spinning your legs, for sure. It's pretty close afterwards the race for the active recovery to be running. Specifically, I tend to recommend that athletes don't start running until maybe two to three days after the race, because running really is pretty traumatic to the body. It's a lot of pounding, and a lot of soreness comes from that, so you might not feel great running. You might end up causing injury because your body is in a pretty inflamed state, and now you're just causing it more inflammation and more damage because you're running. So typically, wait until at least two to three days after a big race. And as you mentioned, John, if it's your A race or last race of the season, you might not start training again for several weeks. You may not start even any active recovery for several weeks, if you choose. Your recovery process is going to be elongated if you don't do some of the active recovery, and all the other things we've been talking about that enhances your recovery after the race. But that might be perfectly fine with you because you just finished your A race, and now you're planning your next year, and you've got a little ways until you start training again. If it's a B or C race though, and it's part of your season, start training again. Really you can start training the next day or two days after, maybe just take one day which is kind of an active recovery day, and then hop right back into the training. And the TriDot program is going to prescribe that, that you skip right back into the training. If it's a B or C race, it's going to get you back in pretty quickly. You don't want to let your fitness fall too much. You may have already been allowing the fitness to fall if you had tapered leading into your race. If it's an A or a B race, you're going to have some sort of taper and recover period before that, but you don't want to let that fitness fall too much if you've got other races on the horizon that you gotta get back in for.

Andrew: Just like the call of the fabled mermaid calls a sailor to crash into the shore, the adrenaline of the finish line often draws triathletes to crash into another race registration. What advice do you guys have for dealing with the temptation to sign up for another race immediately after a well-earned finish line?

John: Man, that is just a great analogy there.

Andrew: Thank you. Thank you.

John: I have crashed into the rocks of race registration.

Andrew: Full disclosure, I wrote the questions for this episode at 11:00 p.m. in an evening, and so I thought that was kind of funny in my 11:00 p.m. state of mind.

John: It checks out the following for me as well. And I think those sirens on the rocks are my buddies usually. They're the ones that are calling me, "Hey, come do this race!" Including you, Andrew!

Andrew: We are very bad at dragging each other into races.

John: Yeah. But always a good time. Yeah, I think in the race, oftentimes you learn a lot. That was a thought I had earlier on during the discussion, is so much happens in a race. You learn so much even about yourself, you learn about racing. And I think that's one of those things that even Matt talked about going back to the warmup question of what brings you back, is wanting to be better because there is so much to learn. Whether you have the best race of your life, you know it's never perfect. You're never going to nail 100% of everything. The weather conditions are never going to be 100% ideal. There's always room for more, and I think that's part of what brings us back. I’m a fan of just jumping into that next thing, and I think for me, getting the family buy‑in is the one caveat to be careful of: what you commit to during the race or immediately thereafter. But I don't think there's anything wrong with –

Andrew: – getting caught up in the moment and signing up?

John: You know sometimes it's, "That was amazing and I want to do that again," or "That sucked and I can do better, and I'm gonna fix it and I'm gonna prove that." I think both of those can be positive. So yeah, I'm a fan of figuring out what's next and going for it.

Andrew: Alright Matt, what do you have to add here in your experience?

Matt: I'm not really on the same page on that one. I like to give it a little bit of time. I like to think about it. Like, jumping on an emotional decision…

Andrew: It's just different personality types. Some people are more measured and calculated, some people are more impulsive. You know there's probably merit to both, and there's probably chances to make mistakes in both.

John: Well, like we said, Matt's new to the family, so we'll get him drug in here.

Andrew: Matt, as probably somebody who's perhaps a little bit more measured and calculated, what's your experience here?

Matt: Yeah, I can definitely understand where you're coming from, John, and I think a lot of people are on that same page, allowing that to drive you into the next race. But for me, I watched my wife at Ironman Lake Placid at the midnight finish. It's such an emotionally charged thing. Now, she hadn't done the race, she was just there watching the midnight finish, but it's so emotionally charged and so incredibly motivational, that she was ready right there on the spot to sign up for her first Ironman. Never ended up pulling the trigger, but that's just one of those moments that I'm thinking of, where it can drive you from an emotional standpoint to sign up. One specific example for myself that I'm thinking of is Ironman Lake Placid 2013. I computed poorly. I never red-lined it because of nutrition problems that I faced and I felt pretty fresh after the race, even that day or the next day. So I was actually tempted to sign up the next day for Ironman Louisville, which was still open, and I resisted the temptation and told myself, "Okay, just wait three days. Let the idea sink in. Talk to Lauren about it, make sure she's on board with the idea that four weeks later you're gonna end up doing another Ironman, and this Ironman happens to be on Lauren's birthday, my wife's birthday." I ended up still signing up, and I'm glad I did because I ended up having a solid race, and ended up competing at Ironman Kona seven weeks after that. So that was maybe a little too much, but I did take a little bit of time. Back to the point here, I did take a little bit of time to think about it. It was only three days, and I did end up still signing up.

Andrew: What I like here is I think both of your answers are going to speak to different personality types, and it shows that there's maybe not a right or wrong answer to this. Maybe it's just do what's right for you, but both approaches have merit. Both approaches can help lead you to that next race. It's probably not a bad thing to take some time to think about it, and if it gets you to a starting line it's maybe not a bad thing to sign up for it right away. So just go, almost like we talk about feeling what your body feels like after a race, and listening to your body. Just listen to your heart, listen to your mind. Not a bad route there, just different approaches to that temptation. So moving us along, a few more questions for you guys before we shut down this episode. I've seen a lot of athletes ask about planning our seasons. Sometimes the races that we want to do can land a little bit close together on the calendar. John, what are the best practices for timing our races? How soon is too soon to jump back into another race?

John: So this is where TriDot season planner is an incredibly valuable tool. The season planner is going to provide objective feedback as to how often, how frequently it is prudent for each individual athlete to race, and it is also going to help the athlete see how one race interacts with another. So if you've got multiple races of multiple distances throughout the season, the season planner is going to help that athlete plan in such a way that is going to produce their best results overall. What we don't want is for a B race to interfere with an A race. We don't want one race early in the season to sabotage your A race later in the season. That's what season planner does, is provide that feedback as to how one race is going to interact with another. It's an incredibly valuable tool when it comes to season planning. I think oftentimes what athletes will do is make their plans and then kind of throw it all in there and see how it works, but it really should be the other way around, is starting with what is my priority for the season? And the great thing is, for most of us the triathlon season is several months long, so you can have more than one A race in a year. And then what are those races that I can add in to that, or what are those races that are going to be advantageous and help me along in that process? Then the great thing about season planner is identifying also those races or events that I'm considering that may be detrimental to the intent of my season. Season planner is a fantastic tool. And then more practically, it really is distance-dependent. Obviously you can do a lot more sprint races in a season. You can race sprint races much more frequently than you can Olympics, 70.3, or full Ironman distance. I'm also a huge fan, even an advocate for what I call the "buy-one-get-one-free" training for those long-distance races. I found that for me, I can race 70.3 with as little as two weeks in between. Three to four may be more ideal, but I can do that 70.3 distance with two weeks in there. It's almost like, I'm not gonna do all that training for one Ironman race. I'm a fan of doing two. I found for me, about six weeks between Ironman races works really well. I'm able to do that full training phase into that first Ironman race, then a couple weeks of recovery, a couple weeks of getting back, and then a couple weeks of taper, then do it all over again, and almost buy-one-get-one-free. Train once and race twice.

Andrew: What it reminds me of, I read many years ago that there's a climber named Ed Viesturs, who is an alpinist who's climbed the 14 highest peaks in the world multiple times, a very, very accomplished climber. He would do this with climbing mountains, because it takes time to acclimatize to those higher elevations, much like it takes us time to acclimatize to a new distance and stamina duration. So they would go through the process of climbing Mt. Everest, and along the way you get acclimatized to those really high elevations. Then instead of coming all the way down Everest, they would come down a little ways and then go up the next peak over. So you get two mountain peaks for the price of one cycle of acclimatizing to the elevation. John, that's what it reminds me of, when you're essentially acclimatizing to that stamina duration and getting two races or two mountain peaks out of it. A couple more questions here, this is something that I hear a lot from Ironman athletes. They've possibly heard the term the "Ironman blues", or the sense of feeling a little let down after that goal you've worked so hard to achieve is put behind you. It doesn't have to be a full-distance Ironman, any race that you've dreamed of for a long time and really worked hard for can leave you feeling a little bit empty once you've done it, and it's behind you and you don't have that goal in front of you anymore. How can athletes best deal with these kind of emotions after a big race?

John: Yeah, I remember I experienced that after my first Ironman, and found it to be even a bit surprising. You hear about it, but then it's a strange sensation.

Andrew: I mean, is it being sad, is it being depressed, is it being empty?

John: I think what it is, I know for me my first Ironman was huge. It was over a year in the works, and it was never more than a thought or two removed from my mind. It was something I thought of every day.

Andrew: I get that.

John: Yeah. It was always right there at the forefront of my mind. You train every day, you think about it, you dream about it, and then especially it's a crescendo as we head into race day, and then you cross that finish line and it's just gone. Was it Alexander the Great that wept because there was nothing left to conquer? It was almost a sensation like that. It's kind of like, "Geez, this is what I've been doing," and oftentimes we wrap up our identity in it. "This is who I've been for the last year, and if I'm not this person who's chasing after this ambition, this goal that I don't know if I can achieve, if I'm not that, then who am I?" kind of thing. I think it just takes some perspective, and I think that having been through it that first time, and then going through it again, there is a certain amount of that each time. I think it's there, and I think too it's about climbing that next mountain. Where's that next peak? Whether it be another Ironman, whether it be another triathlon, whether it be another hobby, it's rekindling that fire within you and continuing to set goals and find what you're capable of.

Andrew: Yeah, I know I intentionally have a 70.3 on the calendar a little bit after my first Ironman, just so that I don't quit the sport and walk away entirely after getting through that experience. I have another race on the calendar, so celebrate and get back to it. But as our listeners have heard, I've been working towards my first Ironman ever since we've had a podcast and even longer. Once I get to that, it's going to be two-ish years in the making, and it's gonna be gone. So I'll definitely be trying to deal with that. Matt, what are some of the tangible ways you've found to deal with those emotions on the back side of an Ironman, or any big race that you've accomplished?

Matt: Yeah, I've definitely experienced that many times, so I can certainly relate, and a lot of the athletes I've worked with, same thing. So I have something at the ready to fill the time, to fill the time void, the energy void that exists after a big race. For me, a lot of the things I look for is family. A lot of the time, Ironman especially is a selfish sport. You're spending a lot of time swimming, biking, and running, and even if you're using TriDot, high quality/lower quantity, it's still a big commitment. You may be spending a lot of time on the bike and in the pool and out on the road instead of spending it with your family as much. So spending that time with the family, and really giving that back to them at certain phases of the seasons. And then work, maybe for a lot of people it's taken a hit during your ramp-up because of that time commitment and energy commitment, so refocus your efforts back into work. Or maybe it's another hobby. For me, I love to golf, so for me it's hitting the links or getting out on the golf course is a great way for me to use some of that time that maybe I now have freed up because I'm not prioritizing the training.

Andrew: Matt, John, loads of good stuff here today. We've covered a lot of ground. So maybe let's end with this. From all these items we've covered, food, recovery, sleep, race scheduling, training, etc., what are the biggest mistakes you see athletes make in the aftermath of a race, so that we can try to avoid them?

John: I think largely we've hit on them. I think that first one as I mentioned is being sedentary. It's natural, it's well-deserved, and sometimes it can be hard to hop back up and start moving again, but that's important. It's gonna get you back feeling good, and get you back to that healthy state where you can move on to whatever's next quickly. We also mentioned the refueling component of it, so there's the physical and then the input of giving the body what it needs. Those nutrients, the hydration, all those rebuilding blocks that are going to get the body back to where it was. And then I think, too, kind of more of an intangible, is as driven Type A's we often do very quickly move on to, what is that next challenge? What is the next Everest that I want to take on? But I think oftentimes, I see this a lot even with athletes that I coach, sometimes there's not enough celebrating. There's not enough taking in the accomplishment. As good as it is to set that new goal and to pursue that new ambition, don't move on too quickly. Be sure to really celebrate your accomplishment, and be sure at the same time to include all of those that got you there. I'll say, "No Ironman is an island." Everyone has a certain amount of support that helped them get there, so I think even acknowledging that and celebrating your accomplishment, and celebrating the collective accomplishment with your family and your training partners and everyone that helped you achieve that. So be sure to take it in and not move on too quickly.

Andrew: Yeah, great stuff. Matt, what would you have to say here?

Matt: I think the main one is expecting too much from yourself too quickly after an A race. The first reason is they say that after a marathon you're not fully recovered for 30 days. So even though you might feel like you're recovered a week later, you're not really fully recovered until 30 days. The second reason is that your fitness began falling during your taper. You did that purposely so that you're race readiness would rise, and that you could perform really well, but now you're recovering after the race and your fitness is still falling. It's like catching a falling knife. You're not gonna be able to crush the same workouts that you were crushing back in your final build phase. So remember that you need to be a little bit patient, because you're (a) recovering, and (b) your fitness has fallen. So you've gotta kind of get back on a stable footing there, build back that fitness, allow your body to actually recover. Don't expect yourself to be crushing it one week, two weeks later after a big Ironman. Notice that your workouts may be a bit behind what you did before. But it will come back, and it'll come back fast enough, you'll be back there in a month or two, but be patient.

Andrew: The one thing I'll say here, and I'll close us with this. Once you finish that race, whether it's a sprint, an Ironman, or something in between, make sure after your race you take a selfie with your medal. You take a selfie on the race course in your kit, in the race sphere somewhere, and make sure you post your picture to the I AM TriDot Facebook group, and let us know what you accomplished that weekend. Guys, I'm telling you, we do not get tired of seeing those posts every single week. When it's race season, on Monday, we almost look for them. Who raced this weekend, what did they accomplish? We love hearing your stories. So don't make the mistake of being part of the TriDot family and NOT sharing your accomplishment with the group, because we love to see it!

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

Andrew: Most athletes head home from an Ironman event with a finisher T‑shirt and a medal, but the two athletes joining me for our cooldown today left the inaugural Ironman Tulsa with a finisher T‑shirt, a medal, and a fiancée. Ben Martinez and Eliza Bustos are TriDot athletes from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they train with a local club called Trail Dog Tri. We met them at our TriDot at the Races events in Tulsa, and had the pleasure of cheering them on throughout the race. Ben, Eliza, welcome to the show!

Eliza Bustos: Hi! Thanks for having us!

Ben Martinez: It's great to be here, this is really awesome! Thanks!

Andrew: So it's a TriDot Trail Dog love story, and we the people are here for it. Ben, why don't you take us back to the beginning where you first noticed Eliza.

Ben: Well, Andrew, there's two sides to every good story, so I'm gonna start with mine. It isn't exaggerating for me to say she actually ran into my life. We met at a Trail Dog weekly burger run. I had completed Boulder 70.3 the weekend before, so of course I was just there for the food. I was sitting with Stephanie, one of the club's founders, and then after Eliza and Jeff, Stephanie's husband, completed the run, she came in for burgers and sat down right next to me. With only the four of us, it was basically a Trail Dog double date, and I noticed her right away, and immediately I sort of felt that unspoken "it" feeling come over me. The butterflies were so active in my stomach, I could hardly speak. I just sorta lost the ability and the mastery of the English language.

Eliza: That actually is true. I mean, I feel bad saying that, but I remember sitting there. I had just moved back to Albuquerque probably a month earlier, and I was just looking to connect with people, and I think sport is a great way to do that, and found Trail Dog Tri. So we're sitting down, and I just notice he has that same "it" factor where you're like, "Man, he just seems like a kind, gentle person," but would not look at me at all. Just kind of was very friendly and would talk to me, but would talk to me by looking at someone else. So fast forward a couple weeks and I think I went to a Trail Dog bike ride, and a shout out to Johnny, who bounds up to me, I've never met him before, "Hi I'm Johnny, what's your name? Do you wanna do Indian Wells?" I'm like, "I don't know what that is." I didn't even know, at this point I was so new to triathlon I didn't know what distances there were. I didn't know that there were half-Ironman, I didn't know any of that. So I was like, "Sure!"

Andrew: So from the beginning, you're just getting healthily peer-pressured into a half-Ironman.

Eliza: Hundred percent. And this is a story of peer pressure, friends. You will find out this has all been peer pressure. So I'm like, "Okay, sure, let's sign up! Let's do this!" And then I peer-pressured him into doing it, kind of over a period of the next six weeks. We'd sorta go on a bike ride together. At this point, he still hasn't asked for my number, so I'm like, "We need to just get him on this text thread that we have going for Indian Wells." So I didn't know he'd already done two half-Ironman that year, but kinda convinced him to do Indian Wells, and got to spend more time together, and it was fun.

Andrew: So you both race half-Ironman Indian Wells, and continue training together afterwards. Whose idea was it to sign up for Ironman Tulsa?

Ben: I blame Eliza.

Eliza: Okay, no. This is hotly contested, so you will get different opinions on the story. I don't remember it super clearly, but I have been told that it was me. Sitting again at a burger run, because all of our activities all revolve around food, and I guess I was the one who said, "Hey, we should do a full." Again, because at this point we're still in that phase of stealing French fries and trying to be a flirtation, but nobody will really say anything, and at this point I'm thinking, "Well, if we do an Ironman we have to train together for six months." So I guess it was me. That's what I've been told.

Andrew: Okay, so this is as good a place as any to interrupt from the magic of the love story, just for kind of a casual impromptu TriDot commercial. How did your training go leading up to Ironman Tulsa, and did you feel ready heading into the race at Tulsa?

Eliza: Okay, yeah, I felt 100% ready. I think that was really cool, we could get up to the starting line with no injuries. Granted, I didn't walk away from the starting line with no injuries, but that's not TriDot's fault. That was my fault. But I would say I definitely felt 100% ready, because it developed the mental grit, the physical grit, all of those long rides. Once you get into the 5, 5½, 6‑hour rides, as you come in those long runs, you really just develop this sense of, "Hey, I'm not scared of this anymore." So yeah, we got there on the morning, and had obviously not gotten to the full run distance, but we both felt really secure in our training, and I thought maybe this won't be the world's fastest race, but I 100% know I can do this. That's a really excellent feeling.

Andrew: Yeah, great. Ben, how did you feel?

Ben: I felt really prepared overall. You know, we don't really get enough rain here in Albuquerque to simulate that ride that we had in Tulsa, but we simulated the long rides and some longer runs, and overall I felt despite a couple moments of doubt when you're going to bonk, you're like, "Oh man, is this the right thing for me?" You have those moments, but even despite those moments I think the plan had me race-ready, and you listen to the people on the Facebook group and the podcast, and you really can trust the process with TriDot. It gets you there, race-ready, and you just toe that line and go.

Andrew: So Ben came to the TriDot Saturday morning race prep bike ride. Eliza, I believe at the time you were on a plane heading to Tulsa. Fast forward to lunch, I'm in downtown Tulsa with TriDot coaches John Mayfield and Elizabeth James. We're grabbing a bite to eat at a café, and we bump into the two of you. Naturally, we invite you guys to join us at a table on the patio. So Ben comes out first, and just to clarify I asked him, "Hey, is Eliza your girlfriend, your fiancée, or your wife?" And he immediately goes, "Girlfriend, but I'm hoping that changes when I propose at the finish line." And before we can ask any follow‑up questions, Eliza immediately exits the café, so we can't say a word after that. So all day long, while y'all were on the race course, we were freaking out for the two of you. Ben, what was your plan, and where was the ring during the whole race?

Ben: I had a long time to think about logistics. I had 581 days to be exact since. The idea was really born when I hit "submit" on the registration.

Eliza: And then we got deferred two times.

Ben: Yeah. Originally I thought about carrying it the full distance, all 140.6, and I quickly eliminated the swim just because I was a little worried about logistics. Tri kit, small pockets, you got a deep lake, what if you drop something that valuable. So I eliminated the swim pretty quick. Even until race morning I was pretty sure I was gonna take it with me on the bike, I was gonna put it in the bento box. But just with the amount of rain we had, I kind of called that off because it was pretty intense when we got to T2. So I tucked it into my race belt in a Ziploc bag in T2. So knowing that I was coming into the finish after her, basically it kinda boiled down to me just finding her after the race.

Andrew: What I love about y'all's story, because there's always marathon proposals, Ironman proposals, you see that on social media from time to time, but what I love about y'all's story being just tied to triathlon. I mean you've got from the beginning, Ben signing up for 70.3 Indian Wells just to get your phone number, right? We've got both of you signing up for Ironman Tulsa just to spend more time training together because you hadn't actually formally gotten to a place where you dating yet, but you still wanted to hang out. Ben, what stands out about what you just said, you were hitting "submit", you were registering for Ironman Tulsa knowing in the back of your head, "This is where I want to propose, I think she's the one." That's just so cool, just to see throughout how triathlon played a role, the social community you guys have in Albuquerque with Trail Dog Tri played a huge role, and super cool to see. So Eliza finishes the race first. Ben, you knew she would be there when you got there. Walk us through your approach to the finish and how the proposal played out.

Ben: Okay, so coming back that last 0.2, I started scanning the sides of the course for Eliza. I made that turn onto Archer, and you could just hear the crowd. You couldn't see them yet, but you could hear them, and it definitely just added to the excitement. I turned onto Main Street, I saw that spot we met at for lunch, and the excitement just started pulling me forward. I got to a light jog, and then I turned that corner and I saw the red carpet. Boom, it's right there and I decided, as John Mayfield recommended, I slowed down. I enjoyed my snow globe moment on the red carpet. Little did I know Eliza was just posted up on a bench somewhere eating a hot dog.

Eliza: Okay, it was a steak dog, and they were amazing. And I felt really bad, because I wanted to go back out and see him along that area that was nicely lit and everything, but I asked a police officer how to get there, and he said it was three blocks, and I was like, "Sorry, but I don't have that in me. I'm gonna sit on this bench and eat a hot dog while I wait for you." I had my phone and I was tracking him. So I was sitting there, and they let me sneak back over to the finisher's chute so I could take pictures and be there when he got there, but I felt bad because I could see him running down the chute looking on either side, and I thought, "Oh, I know he's looking for me, but I'm right here."

Ben: Yeah, so I go to where I was walking up the red carpet, and I heard Mike Reilly say that magical words, "Benjamin Martinez, you are an Ironman!" And I crossed the finish line and I was pretty much locked and loaded, ready to ask as soon as I found her. As it ended up, she actually found me. My volunteer came and was ushering me through the area, and I felt her grab my arm and I turned around, and I awkwardly asked Eliza to hold my finisher cap and my medal as I got down on my knee and asked her to marry me.

Eliza: Which I thought he was passing out. I did not know what was happening. I'm like, "Why are you going down?" And it was hilarious, our volunteer next to us just starts yelling, "Is this happening? Oh my god, this is happening! This is happening!" And I'm yelling, "What's happening?" It was very confusing.

Andrew: So the volunteer realized it before you did.

Eliza: She did. She had her phone out and she took pictures. Boy, she was wonderful. And when I figured out what was going on, then I was just like, "Do I get down with you? I don't know what's happening!"

Andrew: You say yes, that's the right thing. You say yes.

Eliza: Yes. Like a million times.

Ben: Like a million times, it was awesome. I like to say it turned the cherry on top of my Ironman sundae into a full-on banana split.

Andrew: Again, going with the food metaphor. Like a good Trail Dog, right?

Eliza: Yeah, snack the process, I think that's one of Trail Dog's metaphors, you snack the process. We trust the process with TriDot, we snack the process with Trail Dogs.

Andrew: Well, we're thrilled for you both in your Ironman finish and in your engagement, so congratulations! We fully expect to see Trail Dog wedding pictures coming up sometime in the future, so have a blast planning that and working towards that. Hey, maybe you guys just make like every five-year, ten-year anniversary you guys do another Ironman together, right?

Eliza: You know, that's not a bad idea, except we both crossed the line saying, "We'll never do this again, we're never doing another Ironman." Even like John said, you're in the decision window. I think we made it to Amarillo before we both were talking about which next one we want to do, but we did say we'll probably never do another one again together. They're very hard to coordinate together.

Ben: We'll just be each other's best Sherpa.

Eliza: Yes. Yes.

Andrew: Well, that's it for today, folks! I want to thank TriDot's Matt Bach and John Mayfield for talking with us about what lies beyond the triathlon finish line. Also thanks to Ben and Eliza for sharing their Ironman Tulsa engagement story. Shout out to TriBike Transport for partnering with us on today's show. Be sure to use the coupon code TriDotPod for $25 off your next booking. We'll do it all again soon, until then, happy training!

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.