What actually happened at Kona: Paula Findlay's full race debrief from swim to finish line.

Eric Lagerstrom (0:00)

Hey, everyone. Welcome to That Triathlon Life Podcast. I'm Eric Lagerstrom.

Paula Findlay (0:03)

I'm Paula Findlay.

Nick Goldston (0:05)

I'm Nick Goldston.

Eric Lagerstrom (0:06)

The entire point of this podcast is to get Paula's take. Nick and I might chime in there now and again on The Kona. It's over now. We're all back. Well, Nick's actually sitting at The Kona Airport right now.

So if you hear, you know, last call for Nick Goldston, that's why. If you are new here, Paula and myself are both professional athletes. Nick is an amateur athlete and we all love triathlon. So welcome to our Triathlon Podcast.

Nick Goldston (0:32)

Today is maybe the last day. If you are thinking about signing up for Team TTL or even the racing division, I believe today when the podcast comes out is the last day. Is that right, Eric?

Eric Lagerstrom (0:45)

That is right. If you're thinking about it, just stop thinking about it. Go do it or just don't think about it all until next year, because this is the final day.

Nick Goldston (0:53)

We don't want to hear it.

Eric Lagerstrom (0:55)

Applications will be closing at midnight on basically our time, like Pacific. So you're going to want to do that. We're going to have a blast next year, where I've been spending the last couple of weeks going through all of the potential partners we're working with. We're bringing on most of our crew from last year. And it's the first year of the TTL Racing Division, which is basically an expansion of the TTL development team. We'll have a couple of pros on there, up to four pros. And then we're also going to be adding in ten-ish age group athletes that are kind of front of the pack winning age group overall races. So, really excited about that.

And we're just going to, I mean, the whole thing of the team TTL in the first place is to have a really awesome crew when you show up to races. We lined up some really great discounts on gear that, theoretically, you should be having to buy anyway. You know, no pressure on that stuff, but we hope it brings a value add. And you can be part of this awesome community that we're building. So, not going to pitch it super hard.

Nick Goldston (1:54)

I wanted to mention that a swim coach that I've worked with before, not for swimming, but I had done some work for them, just reached out and said that they want to be involved in helping coach and providing some swim coach services for specifically team TTL members.

I don't know if that's something we want to say now already, but I do think it's kind of a cool, an additional perk. That would be fun.

Paula Findlay (2:16)

He wants to coach 100 athletes? That sounds fun.

Nick Goldston (2:18)

Yeah.

He wants to provide some kind of guidance, I think, not a one-on-one thing, but more of like a system.

He has his own training platform. It's something that we would need to discuss further. Maybe we don't put it in the pod this week, but I still think it's kind of cool in concept idea.

Eric Lagerstrom (2:35)

Just in case, we do leave it in.

We have had quite a few discussions about endorsing certain coaches. Endorsing is not like the right word, but saying these are coaches that we personally know and believe in their system, et cetera. And maybe they're willing to do some sort of a deal with the team, et cetera. So it is something that we're looking at, and it just kind of goes back to what I was saying. We want to pack this thing with as much value as possible for the people who are involved. So we'll evaluate that. Also, while Nick is experiencing a lot of announcements at the airport, I'll make one last announcement here on the podcast, and that is we are putting up as quickly as possible, hopefully by the time this podcast comes out, all of the leftovers, I will say, or the things that are left from what we brought to Kona. So we still have some of the super cool, Nick is wearing it right now pointing to his hat, Energy Lab hats. We have some of the Castelli technical apparel that they brought, which huge hit in person, as well as some socks and a couple of other little items. We might even have a couple of swim caps left. TBD, you'll have to check the site.

Nick Goldston (3:39)

I just ran around the volcano here in my Castelli tech running tee and the hat that we did for Kona. I felt amazing.