An intricate analysis of the impact of recent developments in the world of triathlon unfolds, focusing on the challenges faced by athletes like Tamara Jewett at the Challenge Wanaka event. The episode embarks on a captivating examination of Tamara's performance, particularly her unparalleled running prowess, which emerged triumphantly even amidst the turmoil of an illness that threatened to derail her efforts. We dissect the nuances of her race strategy, her ability to adapt under pressure, and the lessons gleaned from her experience that resonate deeply with both aspiring and seasoned athletes. Additionally, we engage in a detailed discussion regarding the implications of the newly revised Ironman competition rules, examining how these changes might reshape the competitive landscape for triathletes. The episode culminates in an exploration of the critical question of whether athletes should train while sick, providing insights drawn from both personal experiences and empirical evidence. We encourage our listeners to engage with these themes of resilience, adaptation, and the evolving nature of competition in the realm of triathlon, fostering a deeper understanding of the sport's challenges and triumphs.

Links to topics discussed:

The TriDoc Podcast

Matt's Instagram

Jeff's Instagram

LifeSport Coaching

Email Jeff: tri_doc@icloud.com

Email Matt: Matt@thetemponews.com

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Signup for The TriDoc Podcast Supplement form

Welcome to Tempo Talks, a show that brings you analysis of the biggest stories in triathlon training, tips to make you a better athlete, and breakdowns of the latest science and performance.

I'm Matthew Sharp, an Olympian in triathlon 70.3 Champion Co founder of the Tempo News.

And I'm Jeff Sankoff, the tridoc medical contributor for Triathlete magazine, age group winner and coach at Life Sport Coaching.

Our goal, inform and entertain two perspectives.

One sport, all things triathlon.

Now let's get into it.

Hello.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of Tempo Talks.

I'm your co host Matthew Sharp and across from me I can see my co host, Jeff Sankoff.

He's battling an illness he's fighting on to be here.

Jeff, how, how are you feeling today?

You're a little under the weather.

Weather?

I am under the weather.

I definitely, I don't feel quite as bad as yesterday when it was like death warmed over.

But yeah, it's, it's muddling my way through.

I saw a good meme today that I sent to the family chat, which was I saw my wife give birth to my firstborn and now she finally understands what it's like for me to have a cold.

That's right.

Yeah.

My daughter was mercilessly mocking me and I was like, listen, I have higher levels of cytokine circulating in my blood than you do, so don't mock.

What are you typically like?

Are you someone who gets sick?

Are you a non sick person?

I feel like no.

I've been exposed to so many things over the years.

I get emergency room.

Yeah.

So I've been pretty lucky.

And my kids have brought home several colds this year and I've dodged every one of them.

And this one just, I don't know, came out of nowhere.

And it's definitely.

This is the problem.

I don't get sick often, but when I do, I feel like the guy in the.

What was the.

What's that commercial?

It's one of the beers.

The Mexico.

Oh, the.

Yeah, Okis something.

I don't get sick often, but when I do, it's for real.

Great marketing there.

It's been a little.

It's been a little.

It's been a rough week.

I'm looking forward to just.

And that problem is you get sick like this and all you want to do is sleep and then you lie down to sleep and you're coughing all night and you can't sleep.

Yeah.

Your body's not even letting you do the thing you need, which is rest, sleep.

The Best form of recovery.

You're definitely coming off the back of a kind of whirlwind trip, quite the trip up north to Canada.

I think you should fill the listeners in on what, what transpired was it last weekend?

Last weekend, yeah, it was amazing.

It was incredible.

I have to give full props to the Make a Wish people.

As I've mentioned before, my daughter Lauren, she had Hodgkin lymphoma when she was 10 years old.

The make a Wish people reached out to us at that point for her to have a wish fulfilled.

But because of COVID because of all kinds of things that came up, it just became really problematic for her to get a wish.

And earlier, what last year, I guess in the spring of last year, she settled on this idea as a burgeoning pole vaulter.

She and I talked and we said it's been hard for us to find a person like the kinds of wishes you can get are travel, sports, or to meet a celebrity.

And every time that she came up with a celebrity she wanted to meet.

A lot of celebrities won't do it.

Not because, because they don't have the kindness in their heart, but because if they say yes to one, they have to say yes to everybody.

You can imagine how many little girls would ask to meet Taylor Swift, for example.

She can't meet all of them.

And so rather than pick and choose, she just says a blanket no.

And I totally respect that.

I understand.

Me too.

She, everybody she wanted to meet, just, they were those people who said no.

And so finally last spring we were talking and we married her pole vault enthusiasm with her wish and said, you know what, let's ask to, to meet Alicia Newman, the Canadian bronze medalist from Paris.

And we asked, they said that was great.

They thought they could make that happen.

But for whatever reason, it just took a really long time to come together.

In the end, I ended up reaching out to Alicia's camp and that kind of got things moving.

And they make a Wish people just really did an amazing job.

So we had a celebrity, a celebration here in Denver a few days before we left where they brought us to a restaurant.

And the restaurant actually gave Lauren all kinds of gifts and amazing, really nice meal.

And then we flew on Air Canada and my sister in law is a flight attendant with Air Canada and she had let the crew know that we were going to be on the flight.

And so they actually made an announcement on the flight about the fact that Lauren was going to Toronto for her wish.

And it was like we got applause from everybody.

It was really nice.

We went to this beautiful hotel, downtown Toronto.

They asked.

The hotel had a big gift bag for Lauren and.

And we had.

Even though they had a rental car for us, we had a driver pick us up.

Oh, before that, they sent us to this restaurant called Canoe, which is this spectacular, beautiful restaurant.

If you are ever in Toronto, and if you're a foodie, I can't recommend Canoe highly enough.

Beautiful place.

54th floor of the TD bank building.

Oversees the whole skyline of Toronto.

Looks right at the CN Tower.

They had reserved, like, the premier table in the place for us.

We go in.

They treated us like royalty.

At the end of the dinner, they called me and Lauren aside.

They brought us to tour the kitchen.

And then the manager comes over, he gives Lauren a gift bag and he says to me, I just want you to know that on behalf of the staff and the chefs here at the restaurant, your meal is on us.

Amazing.

I was like, dude, you do not have to do that to make a wish.

Gave us, like, this card to pay.

And he's, nope, absolutely.

We know what you've been through.

This is our pleasure to do this for you.

And we were, like, in tears.

It was just such a nice thing.

Yeah.

This was not an inexpensive meal.

It was.

It was not on the 54th floor.

It's the.

It was amazing.

Anyway, so the next morning, a driver picks us up and takes us to the gym.

They actually had a pole vault competition that Lauren got to compete in.

She finished second amongst the girls, which was great.

And Alicia was her personal coach for the whole thing.

Alicia shows up.

She is unbelievable.

First of all, if you've never seen Alicia Newman, she is this absolutely magnificent, beautiful woman, spectacular athlete.

And she's been told throughout her life she's too athletic to be a model and too model esque to be an athlete.

And she has just turned that around on its head and said, oh, yeah, I'm going to do what I want.

And so she went and won this bronze medal, and she spent the last year being a model.

And so she's this combination of both.

It's just amazing.

And she's warm and genuine and she was so great, gracious.

She gave all of her time to Lauren.

We spent the whole day with her and her coaches, who were also super nice.

She then went to dinner with us and answered all of Lauren's questions.

And at the end of this whole thing, Lauren is, like, too shy, so she asks me to ask.

And so I said to Alicia, I said, lauren would be so honored if you would continue if you would consider being her mentor as she progresses through this pole vaulting career of hers.

And Alicia got all choked up, and she was like, it would be my pleasure.

I would like nothing more.

And she us her phone number, and she's, you have a friend in Toronto.

You ever come back here?

It was.

It was amazing.

Yeah, no, it was so genuine.

It was so nice.

And we just all came home.

It was so nice to put a bow on that whole dark chapter of our life and close the book on it in such a positive way and make a wish, Colorado.

Make a wish, Canada.

I just can't thank them enough for the experience.

It was phenomenal.

It was life, like, affirming.

And Lauren could not get the smile off her face the whole weekend.

It was wonderful.

Yeah, That's a core life memory right there.

Oh, yeah.

You were, like, posting stuff and whatnot.

And I was like, oh, man, we got to hear the story behind this, because there's just so much to it.

Obviously, Lauren's cancer coming back, the tie in with her career, her athletic career, learning from an Olympian, that's always a fun goal to have.

Yeah.

And we got to go visit Guelph.

She met the coach, she met the pole vault team.

We went to tour Guelph University.

They rolled out the red carpet for us and gave her a really nice tour.

So it was just a really nice experience.

So we had a really nice time.

Were you able to ask Alicia, like, questions about her journey and maybe learnings from her career?

Is there any takeaways, maybe, that she professed onto you?

The big thing was, for Lauren especially, Lauren is at that age where she's very impetuous, very impatient.

She wants to see her continuous improvement.

And pole vault is the kind of sport where you get these plateaus, these long plateaus as you work through technique things, as you work through strength things, and then all of a sudden, you'll.

You'll take off again.

And she just really kept emphasizing how important it was to be patient, to believe in the process, to believe in yourself.

And that was really valuable for her to hear.

She also, Lauren was asking her about college choices because she really would like to go back to Canada, as would mom and dad because of tuition.

Yeah, but she was.

She.

Alicia, voiced the same kinds of things that other vaulters have told her, which is that the Canadian, Guelph especially has a great pole vault program.

But if she wants really top level competition and she wants top level development, the opportunities are much greater in the US And.

And she saw that we went to the Ontario University Association's Track and Field championship.

And there was a total of nine vaulters and only two or three of them were really vaulting significant heights.

So it was just not the depth.

It's just not the depth.

It's not the same caliber of competition.

And, yeah, we'll see.

She's still.

She's got to get through this year, her junior year in high school, see what kind of heights she can get to.

But we're going to visit.

We're going to Nike Indoor Nationals for her in a couple weeks, and then we've got visits planned to Colgate and possibly Cornell, which have expressed interest.

It's going to be hard to look at those facilities after seeing the facilities we saw at the other places and be like, it's going to be comparing apples and oranges.

I think so.

But of course, the tuition is also apples and oranges, so it's good.

No doubt.

If you're planning on retiring soon, you might have to shelve that for a hot second.

Yeah, yeah.

It's going to be an interesting conversation anyways.

Wow.

Cool to hear about that.

I just.

I know it was a really big moment for your family and I definitely wanted to hear about it.

So I'm glad you could share it here because it was.

It just sounded like an incredible experience.

It's one of those inflection points, I think, especially for Lauren.

Just, I look back on my athletic career and I had a number of those and it's just.

It's pretty special to think of, oh, this was a moment, a defining moment.

And I'm sure at some point she'll look back on that as a huge moment.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And just the opportunity to be able to reach out to an Olympian.

I'm so privileged to know you and to know Juliet and to have you as friends and colleagues.

And now she has somebody that she can reach out to in her sport

who has a medal in her pocket.

Exactly.

There's levels to this.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.

It's pretty cool.

Anyways, got a good show.

Let's return to multisport.

We have three topics.

We're going to talk about the race that was at Challenge Wanaka, where our Canadian compatriot, Tamara Jewett, big fan of Tamara.

She had a great day.

We're going to talk about her.

We are going to talk about the new Ironman competition rules.

That came out.

Nothing, I think, too earth shattering, but a couple of things that maybe raised a few eyebrows.

So we'll discuss that and we're going to finish off with a training topic, a timely training topic.

Thought of it today as I was lying on the couch trying not to die.

And that was that topic is going to be should we train when we're sick?

I think that's pretty timely.

But let's begin.

Let's begin with the Challenge.

Wanika, Matt, how closely did you follow what was going on at that race?

I don't want to say I had eyes on it.

I feel like now, obviously my attention is now forked a little bit away from the sport with a new job and everything.

I'm always paying attention to what's going in the races and it was cool to see Tamra I following her last few years.

Last year, I think she would not describe it as a great season for her to start the year with a win, like, that's massive.

I, she, I think she definitely did her trademark run pedigree.

Just chase everyone down and hey, a win's a win.

And to start the year with momentum, I think that's pretty important in a lot of ways.

It's just nice, it's just nice when you start the year feeling good on top of the podium.

So great to see her take the win there.

The New Zealand athlete Jack Moody, who's also like a Tamra type, just very rock solid rockstar runner, also had the win there.

Great to see her.

And I think all these athletes who competed at Challenge Wanaka are also going to be competing at next weekend's Ironman New Zealand.

That's right.

And I just want to return to Tamara for just a second because, yes, I do gush over Tamara because I am a big fanboy of hers, but I, I was really impressed by her telling her story of her race and I feel like she has grown quite a bit in the last year because she talked about how she was on the bike and really struggling and feeling like she was carrying again a respiratory illness into this race.

And she just felt like she couldn't generate the power.

She just could not really get herself going.

And so when she got off the bike, she was, I think she was in and fifth, I want to say.

And she really felt like she just didn't have a chance at all to get on the podium.

And so she just set off running just to make it a training day, but then very quickly realized, no, she was actually putting one of her epic runs together.

And it was to me a tale of perseverance.

A tale of.

And she even said this in her post that never give up on yourself.

Never.

Don't doubt.

Really.

Just believe that you can get it done.

And I thought that was a change from what I've seen from her before.

And I hope that this is, like, confidence boosting for her.

Going into Iron Man New Zealand, it will be 100%.

I think it's just a good lesson for all of us.

Like you said, never give up, because you just don't know what's going on in front of you.

Like, maybe those girls.

I think there was a couple of them who were together on the bike.

Maybe they were pushing too hard.

And when you come off the bike, you hear the gap.

It's kind of.

But.

But, hey, you don't know what's gonna happen.

We've seen people collapse with a mile to go.

Yeah.

The biggest race of the.

It doesn't always.

You always have to keep pressing, obviously, as much as you can, because you just never know.

It's like a good lesson for sport in life.

Yeah.

It doesn't hurt when you set the race record for the run.

Oh, obviously, definitely.

But she could also have just had a normal run.

And again, I don't know if that run, maybe for her, I'm.

Maybe.

I'm sure it was good.

But even if it wasn't that perfect, like, at the end of the day, if, say, those girls up ahead were going too hard and blew up again, you don't need to do anything special.

You just need to run your race.

And hey, even if you're looking at your watch and maybe the splits aren't what you want, you just never know there's enough time in the sport where things can happen.

So, yeah, a great way to start the year for her.

No doubt.

I. I hearken back to my own experience in Kona in 22, the last time I raced there.

And I remember feeling so good heading into that race.

Yet when I started to bike, I just did not have the legs.

And I just kept telling myself, you know what, Just keep pushing.

The legs will come.

You're going to get them.

Because I know they're there.

It's just a matter of them waking up somehow.

And I think when I got to Waikoloa, I started to finally feel better.

And it was a reminder to myself.

And I tell myself this all the time whenever I'm in races, and I don't feel good right at the beginning, I tell myself, you know what, the training's done, it's going to come.

And I think that we all have to take away from this idea that if you've done the work.

And you know that you've done the work.

Now, look, if you haven't and you're coming in undercooked, then that's different story.

But if you know you've done the work and you're tapered appropriately, your body will respond.

You just need to give it some time.

Have you ever had that kind of experience?

I actually think about my blast race.

I got on the podium at 70.3, Michigan.

I just got rocked on the bike.

Like, it was pretty rough.

And I don't even think I had a bad bike.

I think my power was good.

It's just the boys up ahead were working hard, maybe.

I think they were maybe working together a little bit.

And basically, like, I came off the bike, had a pretty big deficit, and nothing really happened for the first half of the run.

Like, I was making some time, but it wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna get on the podium.

I was like, fifth for a very long time in no man's land.

And then the thing that's nice about that course is you could see people quite frequently.

So all of a sudden, I remember at the one turnaround, I was like, whoa.

Like, I'm coming back on this guy.

I'm not doing anything special.

I'm not digging deeper or anything.

But obviously, when you kind of sense that stuff and then saw them again at the next turnaround, I'm coming on again.

It wasn't like I was like, oh, like, I'm gonna get third, definitely, or on the podium, definitely.

But it just was like, oh, okay.

Like, I'm still in it, just hanging in and not getting down on myself for having a bad bike, whatnot.

And eventually I caught the guy for fourth, maybe a couple miles, few miles away from the finish.

And then I remember running and watching the guy ahead of me.

I could see him just off in the distance, Justin Rielly.

And he definitely had some big cramp blow up because he was walking and he was stretching.

And when I ran past him, he made some, like, crazy, like, dying noise.

I think he faded to fifth or something, but.

And I was like, oh, damn.

Like, I'm in third.

That's crazy.

Even though I was definitely not in that podium contention, seemingly for a long time, you just never know.

And sometimes it breaks your way.

And then sometimes, like, in Boise, my last race there, I just.

I think I was off 20 seconds or something from Justin at the end because he didn't blow himself up like he did.

You control what you can control and let everything else kind of work.

Itself out.

It's a good reminder.

You got to think, Tamra set up well for Ironman New Zealand next.

I think so.

And maybe we can talk about that race a little bit.

Just because I feel like by the time we do our next episode, you know, the race will have been done.

That's how it works in New Zealand.

I feel like they do.

Like, by the time it's like, Friday afternoon, their races are over.

Yeah.

So really, she's going to be going up against a good field, obviously.

Cat Matthews, Reagan Hollyoak from Australia, who's a defending champion, Hannah Berry.

We've talked about these people.

It's going to be a great field.

So that'll be a tough field for her.

And then Blumenfeld for the men.

Iron Man New Zealand, he's got a few other guys.

Mike Phillips, I'm looking at Trevor Foley, Frederick Funk, Matt Hansen.

Kind of a melange of guys with different aspects, different strengths.

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out with the new draft zone.

It could be unpredictable and I like unpredictability when it comes to these races, so.

Great way to kick off the pro series.

Yeah.

Definitely exciting.

Yeah.

All right, let's move on to our second topic, which is the change in the Ironman rules.

The Ironman competition committee generally revises the rules on an annual basis.

Sometimes it's bigger than others.

This year, I didn't think it was particularly huge changes, but a couple of noteworthy ones.

I thought the first one was the update to the electronics that you're allowed or not allowed to have on you that seemed to be generating the most kind of, I don't know, whispers, noise.

And most people amongst the influencer set.

It was a devastation, devastation to not have the meta glasses available.

This is a mountain out of a molehill as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe I'm just too old, but I don't remember seeing a whole bunch of Tiktoks or Instagrams of people's Ironman experiences, nor do I really want to see them.

It's, you know what, I want to go out there and race my race.

I don't need people distracted by the fact that they're trying to create content.

One thing that I thought was interesting and the way these.

I think these influencers framing it to make it seem more negative, is saying, oh, they're not allowing the glasses, Gopros, blah, blah, blah.

But a lot of that stuff was already banned.

It just was with the advent of these new meta glasses.

They got all lopped.

Whatever thrown in together for these guys.

They want to be getting the content and Iron man is denying them because I think maybe Iron man wants you to pay for their photos.

Is this some kind of revenue play, Jeff?

I don't know.

Listen, I don't know enough about these glasses to really.

I can understand.

Like, it's the Ruvy thing, right?

It's like people videoing the bike course and then using it on their trainer instead of paying for Ruby.

I suppose that's one.

Oh, that's a good angle.

Yeah.

That's the only thing I can think.

Go back to money, whatever money angle we can find.

That's probably a good reason.

The only thing I think I can't take.

You can't really.

You can't take a picture of yourself.

You're not sure you can take pictures of other people.

But is it really good?

Listen, the finisher picks does a pretty good job of getting decent pictures of the athletes out there.

I don't think you're going to reproduce that now.

I think they charge too much.

But that's a whole other.

That's a whole other question.

But the.

You're not going to get similar pictures with the meta glasses.

To me, the only reason to have the metaglasses is to video the course.

And I think the bigger issue, if you could get some.

I don't even know if you have the heads up.

Yeah.

Somebody was commenting in the Tempo talks Facebook group that you can get your data on the glasses, but okay.

And then other people were commenting that.

You know what, I don't want these people distracted.

It just focus.

Oh, no.

It's not like they're looking through a camera.

The thing that I think of people are like, I want to get content.

And that's a fair.

I think that's fair.

I think it maybe could be okay.

But really, like these people aren't going down epic ski hills.

That kind of content.

This isn't Red Bull stuff.

This is like people on a paved road.

That's straight.

I don't know.

It's just doesn't seem like it could be that compelling.

Maybe a niece.

Maybe they can make an exception for that for some of the athletes.

Because that might be cool, but.

And you can imagine also how the video would be used for slagging Iron Man.

It's.

Look at the drafting.

I can't help.

Yeah, drafting, like that kind of stuff.

And Iron man doesn't want that kind of crap.

No, this is true.

This is.

That's a good point.

I definitely think they're trying to avoid that kind of negative press for sure.

Although it's obviously a well documented issue

now, there was also a revision to the Matt Sharp rule.

So do you want to.

Do you want to elaborate on that?

This zipper rule, like, it's basically, before, I guess, 20, 25, you weren't allowed to run across the finish line.

I don't even know if you were allowed to race with your zipper undone.

It was really unclear.

It was either, like, it sounded like you could never have your zipper undone.

But then now we should clarify.

We're talking about the upper zipper of

your upper zipper and you can never have it bit broken.

So like now a lot of tri suits you can't have.

Yeah, a broken zipper where it's like just dangling out there the way they're designed.

But many used to, anyways.

And I was doing this race, 70.3 Michigan.

And I don't know, it was Maine.

Oh, Maine.

Yes.

Sorry, Maine.

Thank you.

Yeah, 70.3 Maine.

And I don't know why I didn't zip it up.

I was just like, it was a hot day.

Like, obviously I just wanted to get that airflow or whatever, and that was on me.

But there was this weird thing in the rule and I got disqualified.

Like, I crossed the finish line and the person was like, you're disqualified.

But the way the rule read, it was up to the official to either give you a warning and then maybe if you didn't do it, you get disqualified.

But this official, they were just throwing the book at me, which I.

Maybe they were allowed to do.

I don't know.

But after that, I don't know.

The media caught on because I got disqualified because I was on the podium.

Like, I was third place.

This podium was taken away from this athlete who did the entire race and got disqualified because of some crazy zipper rule.

I know what it's like being in the media.

Any kind of stuff like that can cause a little outrage, a little controversy.

You're going to jump on that.

So I became like this zipper martyr.

And it was funny, too.

Like, I pled my case to the head official at Iron Man, Jimmy Riccatello.

And I was pretty respectful, I think, with how I approached it.

And he named some people who at the time were really annoying him.

And he was like, ah, these people like.

Like they come in here trying to change your rules, blah, blah, blah.

Anyways.

And I think honestly, part of the change, the media definitely helped a little bit.

But I do think my explanation of the situation and just being not a dick about it helped get this rule change to where I think it was before.

Like again it was.

You can be DQ or anything.

I think they got rid of the DQ language or something and made it like you had to zip up.

But then now they've changed it.

So it's basically a 30 or 60 second penalty potentially or they'll give you a warning.

So it's been amended.

Like there's no chance of a disqualification now for having your zipper undone, which I think is how it should be really.

I guess if you're in a certain country, maybe modesty rules are kicking around, you might want to have your zipper done up.

But for the most of us I think the zipper thing is ridiculous and now it's gone.

So there we go.

That's my legacy in the sport.

At the end of the day.

If ever there was a classic example of the penalty not really matching up to the effect exactly, it was that.

So I think, I think that's what

it boiled down to was just a bit of outrage over that.

It was the rule.

I did break the rule.

So there is that.

But it definitely didn't seem punishment didn't fit the crime for sure.

There's also the new Ironman rules.

They're coming out with a para open division and I which is great to have and eventually I think they're going to have more para triathlon categories within Ironman.

So that's cool to see because there's.

There's just so many more paratrahletes now as time goes on there's better development, better resources.

So it's cool.

I think they're going to have more divisions for that which is great.

There's another equipment rule.

Top tube items can't be higher than 10cm so I guess you can't have a fairing on your top tube anymore.

I don't know if many people did,

but I think a lot of people have these bento boxes that have gotten larger and larger so that they're like grocery carts now and they're carrying just huge amounts of stuff which is.

I don't think it was ever intended to confer any kind of arrow advantage but obviously it could in the worst kind of circumstances.

I have one of those.

What are they called?

Dark.

Dark something Darks.

I can't remember.

But anyways I have one of those top two boxes but it's certainly not 10cm so I think it's it.

It should be fine.

And yeah, the big rule change though was that 20 meter draft zone for professionals.

Yeah, yeah, for the professionals.

But There is like an age group ramification now as a result.

Like they.

Like for the age groupers, like, I think they have 45 seconds now to pass a pro.

I think it might have been less before.

I think an age grouper has 40.

Oh, is this.

This will impact men passing women?

Yes, yes.

Okay, so this is.

The Ironman was talking a little bit about how they can.

Like last year, they were talking about how they can lessen the impact of age group men on pro women's races.

And essentially now if you want to pass, especially a group of pro women, you basically get 45 seconds for each athlete and you have to pass all of them.

You can't slot in, I don't even know, like, within the 20 meters or if it's just period, if there's a group you can't slot in.

I guess if you're an age group male who's quite fast, who's coming up on the pro women, you got to be aware of those rules for sure.

All right, we will see how it all plays out as the race season gets started next weekend in New Zealand.

We'll see if any of these things have an impact.

We will move to our final topic of the program, and that is the training topic for this episode, and that is should you train when you're sick?

A very timely subject given that I am dealing with this horrendous upper respiratory tract illness.

So this is a question I get asked a lot, obviously, during the respiratory illness season.

What was your approach, Matt, when you were training full time?

And if you got a cold, how did you approach things?

I feel like I'm a bad example.

Like, I rarely get sick, although maybe now that I'm not enjoying the pro lifestyle, that'll change.

I haven't really got too sick yet, but when I was like, I'd get, I guess, like little colds or something.

And I found that when I got sick, other than when I got like a rough flu once, man, that was absolutely savage.

No training during that for sure.

But those colds where you still have energy, I feel like you.

Your instance, maybe you've been.

You're a bit more run down, but.

But I don't know if I feel like if you.

You have a cold and you're definitely sick, but your energy levels are okay.

I don't think training is appropriate, but I think moving is actually not a bad thing.

But these.

There's differences between training and moving.

What do you think about that?

So it's interesting when I think about this question, I think about it in four different ways, I think.

Number one, can training while you're sick prolong the illness?

Number two, can training while you're sick make the illness worse?

Number three, does training while you're sick actually confer any benefits to your.

Your performance or to your actual fitness?

And finally, can training while you're sick confer any dangers to the people around you?

So the first thing I think we need to dispense with is, does training actually make you sick?

Because that's a whole different subject, one that I've also talked about in the past.

And we know that when you do very intense periods of exercise, especially if it's long.

So like for an ironman, for example, we know that does indeed suppress your immune system and make you more likely to get ill.

But you're not going to get ill just de novo.

You have to actually be exposed to something in order to get sick.

But there is a window of opportunity after doing a prolonged period of intense exercise where you are more susceptible to illness.

So we know that, but that's not the question that we're dealing with now.

We also know that exercise actually makes your immune system stronger.

So if you exercise regularly, you are less likely to get illness during respiratory illness season because your immune system actually is boosted by your performing exercise on a regular basis.

So that's good.

So now we need to turn our question, our attention to these four parts of the question, which is, okay, number one, does training when you're sick prolong your illness?

And they actually did a study.

You're going to love this.

They did a study at Ball State University where they took two groups of people.

They had a group of moderately exercising folks and a group of people who were sedentary, and they inoculated them with rhinovirus, with the cold virus.

And then in order to assess the severity of their symptoms, they had some poor research students, probably undergraduate students, collect and weigh the Kleenex that these people.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Doesn't that sound awful?

So that was a sort of a surrogate for how bad their symptoms were.

And it turns out that among the people who were exercising and not exercising, there was no difference between the duration and severity of symptoms.

So exercising did not make them more sick, nor did it prolong their illness.

So that kind of answers the first two parts of the question.

But I do want to emphasize that there's this kind of neck rule where we say if the illness is above your neck, then it's safe to exercise.

So if you've just got a head cold, you're just congested, you're just maybe have a sore throat, you maybe have some sinus pressure, maybe your eyes are itchy, then it's okay.

But anything below the neck, you're coughing, you feel like maybe you have.

If you have a pneumonia for sure.

But if you have a gastrointestinal thing and anything where you have a fever that's below the neck and therefore you really shouldn't be exercising, you should let your body fight off the illness and wait.

But it is safe.

And then we get to the third part of the question, which is, are you actually getting any benefit from exercising while you're sick?

And that's going to be dependent on the individual because like you said, Matt, there's no question when you're sick, you don't feel up to it.

You don't feel up to pushing yourself quite as hard.

And therefore you have to really question, am I benefiting from doing anything or am I better off resting?

And I have felt like this week I've just been so under the weather that I have chosen to just forego my training and I'm just resting to tr.

Try and get better.

Triathletes are typically folks who are going to want to push, gonna want to go do as much as they can.

And so if you're feeling like you have to sit on the couch, like it's serious.

Yeah, no, I just really don't feel well.

And listen, I have.

When I have a cold, I often will push through and do something, but I'll turn the intensity down because I know I can't push.

Like you said, you just can't push as hard.

And I'm not going to kill myself to do it.

But, but like you said, if you can move, then do.

And I'll usually tell my athletes, don't swim.

Like swimming when you're sick just feels disgusting.

It's just, yeah, your sinus is already under pressure, you know, from the water.

And then getting out of the water and being cold is just uncomfortable.

So don't.

So if you're going to do anything, biking easy, running easy, even some strength work if you feel up to it, but don't expect dramatic things and don't push yourself too hard.

And then the last part of the question is, are you a danger to others?

If you've got a respiratory illness, then 100% you are contagious.

And so be nice, be thoughtful, maybe don't exercise at that group workout.

Maybe just stay at home, do your things by yourself until you've passed the third or fourth day, where you're likely no longer contagious.

And at that point you can go back to be part of the group.

I'm wondering, I guess you've answered it with the intensity, but is there like a certain intensity that would really suppress your immune system?

Like, could you just do a bunch of volume when you're sick?

Because they won't suppress your immune system.

But if you all of a sudden did like a threshold workout, a hard interval workout, like, that would be a no go.

I just don't think you could because you're ill. And your body, we all know, look, when you've had a cold, as a professional, and we hear this from Tamara, we've heard this from other professionals too, they get sick, they cannot exercise at the same level.

Your heart rate is already higher, your respiratory capacity is lower.

You're not able to do it.

I think you know the likelihood of suppressing your immune system when you're ill from exercise is low because you can't push yourself to that level.

The other thing is to suppress the immune system, it's not just intensity, but it's duration.

It has to be several hours.

So that's why I say people don't really need to worry about this because if you're sick, chances are you're not going to be able to go out there for the four hours at high intensity.

Now, if you did, then, yeah, there is a possibility that you could suppress your immune system and instead of just having a viral illness, you might be.

Be susceptible to that becoming a more severe illness.

So I would tell people not to do that if they're sick.

You could exercise.

Yes, but maybe keep the intensity lower.

Nice.

Nice time of year.

If sickness is going around and you got to make that decision whether to train or not.

And I do think moving is better than not moving in most cases, but obviously you've, I think, hit that stage.

We're not moving.

Yeah, I'm headache and I.

My muscles are sore.

I've got it all going.

And yeah, definitely for me, it's been.

I'm just waiting to feel better so I can get on my bike.

And I'm hoping tomorrow I'm gonna feel better, so I'll jump on the bike and do some spin.

All right, that's what we've got for you today.

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And yeah, I'd love to hear if anybody has any comeback stories.

I want to hear your comeback stories and race.

I think that'd be fun.

If you got one, send it through because I want to hear all about your glory.

Yeah, please do.

All right, that's what we've got for you.

We will be back next week and of course we will be on the cusp of the Ironman New Zealand, but we'll still have something to talk about.

We look forward to seeing you again on Tempo Talks next week.

Thanks, Matt.

Thanks for being on.

Awesome.

Thanks, Jeff.

And thanks everyone for tuning in.