This episode serves as a comprehensive exploration of the upcoming Ironman 70.3 Geelong, shedding light on the key competitors and the implications of the recently implemented 20-meter draft zone. We delve into the intricacies of the race, which follows shortly after Ironman New Zealand, and discuss the potential impact on athletes' performance and strategy. Furthermore, we examine the evolving landscape of biomarkers and their relevance to athletic training and health optimization, inviting listeners to consider the balance between the benefits and pitfalls of such testing. Our dialogue is underscored by personal anecdotes and expert insights, offering a multifaceted perspective on the current triathlon milieu. As we navigate these topics, we remain committed to providing both informative content and engaging discourse for our audience.

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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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 and 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.

All right, we have our apology tour.

This is our comeback episode because last week turned out to be a little bit difficult for Matt and I, but here we are.

Welcome back Tempo Talks.

We are back in the saddle.

I'm Jeff Zankoff, your co host and joining me cross the divide, Continental Divide friend and co host.

Matt, how you doing?

I'm good, I'm good, yeah.

Apologies for missing but maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Maybe.

We can only hope.

We can only hope.

Yeah.

And we had probably not.

We had good excuses.

You were super busy with your new job, your new day job which kept you quite busy.

And then I was off in New York City for Nike Indoor Nationals which was quite an experience, I have to say.

Man, they put on, they put on a.

Well, they put on an event.

If I was a kid and was able to compete in something like that, yeah, definitely want to because like they, they pull out all the stops.

They had a full on scoreboard videos.

They would announce the teams in the finals and have them spotlighted and coming through like fireworks.

It was, it was the real deal

when what's the venue like there too?

So it's the Armory, which is the only indoor track facility in New York City.

It's the US Track stadium used by Columbia University for their indoor meets.

And it's a beautiful facility in terms of the track is beautiful, the infield is nice.

But being in New York City where you can imagine it's, it's land is at a premium.

It's pretty compressed, so not a lot of seating for fans.

Not a ton of room for the athletes to have their warmups, not even a ton of room for coaches.

So like my daughter was there for pole vault and all the pole vault coaches were like basically ejected from the infield.

They had to be across the track and could only yell instructions to the athletes across eight lanes of track.

So it was, but honestly just an amazing event.

Kiddo had a great time being there and yeah, it was really cool to, to be in the big city.

For a couple of days, nothing.

New York.

It's nothing like it.

And as the.

I guess for me, I'm the most recent or the last winner of the New York City try.

So

it's coming back.

It's coming back this year, I think.

Yeah, it's coming back.

I think it'll be the same kind of race that they typically have.

They.

I think they swim in the Hudson.

Usually they don't swim because they cancel it for whatever reason.

Water quality, rain, blah, blah, blah.

But I think they're going to be biking on the west side highway and running through Central Park.

Yeah, that race, like anything New York is, I don't know, it's special.

But for me, like, that race, being able to win there, like, that's a highlight of my career.

I'll never forget that.

It was just.

It was just funny because obviously you're not closing down Central park for this race.

So we were just.

The guy I was running with, we're hustling around people who were, like, jogging with strollers, but we were in a heated battle.

It just felt like it's very New York.

Your elbows are up.

Trying to get around and fight the hustle and bustle.

That was super, incredible experience for me.

Maybe folks out there get the chance.

I think it's a pretty.

Pretty unreal experience finishing in Central Park.

I just.

I thought that was great.

I'm actually amazed, for such a dense city with such a huge population, how permissive they are for so many events.

Like, I was there this weekend and the New York Half Marathon was going on.

They obviously shut down big swaths of the city for the New York Marathon in the fall.

They have the triathlon.

They have.

They constantly are having fairly large events that they close a lot of roads for the bridges and things like that.

And it's pretty amazing.

It's definitely applauding the city for doing those kinds of things.

And when you think about 70.3 and Jones beach and other, you know, on Long island, they just do a pretty good job of being permissive for these kinds of activities.

And you don't usually think of New York City as being like an outdoorsy, exercise, focused city, and yet it really is.

There's a lot of people that are very much like that.

So I think it's other cities that are more rural maybe should take a hint and perhaps be more permissive as well.

I don't know.

Truly.

Truly.

But they did have that Iron man there, that one year, that one kind of aberration year, that one one off Year they had an Ironman in the city, which we could bring that back.

That'd be tough to bring back.

But that's a cool footnote, I guess for Iron Man.

A full distance.

And it was a full distance too.

Wow, man.

You should have just started with a 70.3.

Maybe you would have been able to have more consistent iterations of it.

But they just said screw it, we're going big.

Since we're going big.

Yeah, yeah.

Which is hilarious.

All right.

Speaking of going big, we got a good show for our listeners after a week's reprieve.

So what will we be discussing today, Matt?

We're going to be heading down under to Ironman 70.3 Geelong this weekend.

I think it's outside of Melbourne.

Geelong.

It is, I'm fairly certain.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

The second stop in the Iron man pro series for this year.

We had Ironman New Zealand a couple weeks ago and now we've got 70.3 Geelong.

We're going to be talking about the field there and how that's going to look.

We'll discussing kind of the impact of the 20 meter draft zone.

We don't have a huge sample size,

but first impressions, really.

We've had a couple of races.

Yeah, first impression.

And you might have some more insights on that as well with a guest you recently talked to.

And then we're actually going to be talking about biomarkers and this is something, I feel like it's been trending a little bit.

There's all these new blood tests that are coming out for people which I think are cool and they what's the one thing they track is these biomarkers.

So we'll be discussing that.

Getting to know, tepid enthusiasm for me.

But we'll talk about it and we'll.

Yeah, we'll cover.

We'll see what there is.

Okay.

But let's begin first with Geelong.

I love that Geelong.

I remember when I first saw it I was like, geelong, what's.

What the heck's going on in Geelong?

But yes, 70.3 Geelong, it's a big race, it's a fast race, very flat, tends to attract a huge age group field.

And this year as being part of the pro series is going to have a good pro field as well.

So who can we look for on the start line and who's going to be your picks, Matt?

That's what I really want to know.

Oof.

My cursed picks.

No one wants me to pick them, that's for sure.

We've got in the women's Race like a, I guess a rematch or a redo of a lot of the people from Ironman New Zealand.

And why not?

You're going all the way down to the Southern hemisphere, down to Oceania.

You might as well stick around for a bit.

Kicking off the women's race, you've got Cat Matthews as the headliner, as the, the number one seed.

Yeah.

She showed her form in New Zealand and I don't even think she's at full fitness or anything, but won very comfortably there.

Tamara Jewett, a favorite of the pod, a favorite of Jeff's.

Yep.

I think she's ranked second for this one.

Very close to the podium there.

I think with this 70.3 distance, I actually envision her having the ability to get on the podium for sure.

And she was close in New Zealand.

We didn't get to talk about it after the race, but she got off the bike in like 8th or 9th, had the fastest run of the day by a lot and was just ran out of real estate.

Ran her way back to fourth and was like a minute down or even less and man, she was catching a lot of Wilms.

It was pretty exciting to watch, but I could just tell she was going to run.

Yeah.

So I think I agree with you.

I think she's got a real shot at the 70.3 distance because she won't lose as much contact on the bike.

No, she won't.

Definitely.

You've got Grace Tech, Grace Thek.

She's just like a blue chip athlete.

She's always up there.

She's got a lot of 70.3 podiums.

I think she's dipping more into the Ironman distance stuff.

She actually had a lot of T100 starts over the last couple years.

Someone who is actually quite a good runner as well.

And fun fact, when Kirsten, my wife, was running at Georgetown, Grace was running at Providence College.

So I think they battled it out on the fields of the cross country, which is hilarious to thank many years ago and now competing, I guess Kirsten might compete against her in Oceanside, so that's hilarious.

And then as well, just someone note who I'm familiar with Charlotte McShane.

Probably not someone who the podcast listeners know, but she was a longtime world Triathlon ITU athlete.

She missed out of the Olympics.

She's probably one of the better athletes, I would say, to have missed out on making an Olympic team for Australia.

And now she's getting into the long course racing.

She's had a few top five results at Ironman's, so I think she's getting into the pro series and choosing that lane as someone who I think is definitely capable of getting on the podium.

That is a really good sounding field for 70.3 at this time of year.

On the other side of the planet, where you've got Oceanside coming up a week later, that is really attracting a lot of the typical North American crew.

So I think it is still gonna shape up to be a really good women's race.

Who's lining up on the men's side?

Yeah, and actually we should note Also, it's the T100 Gold coast race.

Oh, same weekend.

Oh, once again.

And so that's like hilarious because we've got these two middle distance races in the same country.

Man, if we just had some coordination, you'd have some great field.

But I mean, you've got this.

We can talk about the T100 after this, actually.

But the men's race for this Geelong is.

It's something.

I don't know.

Have you seen it, Jeff?

I have not.

You're about to break it to me.

So we have a rematch of 70.3 worlds.

Last year you got yellow gains.

He's living in Brisbane, I believe that's his winter base.

So he's heading down to Geelong for that.

You happen to have Christian Blumenfeldt, who

is coming up from New Zealand, who didn't have a great day in New Zealand, so he's probably looking for some.

He had that bike issue, right?

He had that bike issue, the mechanical issue.

Hopefully he's got a new aero bar to throw on his bike.

Wow.

We get a rematch.

The first rematch, first 70.3 of the year.

We're getting a rematch of that epic battle from Marbella.

But also, you know what, why don't we throw someone else in the mix?

Hayden Wild coming over from New Zealand.

The whole like pro series, getting the best athletes, like definitely happening at this race, like this three way battle.

And who knows, it's early in the year, so you might not get the full battle between these athletes, but it is still shaping up like for the heavy.

I don't think any of them show up if they're not ready to go.

It's going to be.

No, but it is March.

It is March.

We saw Blumenfeld maybe a little off his game, so to speak, in New Zealand.

Obviously he's going to be destroying himself to get the win, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Maybe he's.

If he's a little off.

But in saying that you've got these three athletes on the start line.

Let's go.

This is what we want at these races.

Now, you haven't done an Ironman, but this is like, what, two weeks after Ironman New Zealand is.

How does the body of a pro kind of, you know, recover and then able to come and do a 70.3, which is a higher intensity for a shorter amount of time that sufficient?

Yeah, I think with someone like Blumenfeld, I don't know, we just see these athletes racing so much these days, so consistently.

It's really like I.

Maybe in the past you would be like, Whoa, two weeks between an Ironman and a 70.3.

What's going on here?

But in reality, these guys recover so quickly.

They've got the best nutrition, all these protocols that I don't think he's going to be hurting when he's on the start line in Geelong from that race.

That's how crazy it is nowadays.

Yeah, gonna be quite a shootout down under and, yeah, it's gonna be a good one.

And other than the headline three, still a great field behind.

You've got Jake Burtwistle, who's.

I feel like he's had so much promise for 70.3 and he's been on plenty of podiums, but I don't know, maybe hasn't broken into that next echelon of names, so to speak.

But he's there and I think he's fit.

You've got Kyle Smith, who really attacked that Ironman New Zealand and paid the

price on the run.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Came up short, so he'll be hungry.

And you also have Pierre lacour who finished on that podium.

Is Trevor Foley there?

He's not, no.

He.

He dipped back to America, I think, after New Zealand didn't need to hang around too long after taking that win.

So a really great field.

Again, it's not a full start list, but the depth deep.

That's for a men's field at this time of year, especially that far away.

That's.

That's really deep.

The women's field is strong.

The men's field is really strong.

So that's gonna be a good one.

That'll be on.

Because it's pro series.

It should be on YouTube for people to watch.

It should be.

I think they're going to have.

Are they going to have the same.

They'll have the same broadcast crew, I believe.

Hope for an improvement.

Hopefully Laura Siddle will get the bulk of.

Laura, if you're listening, we enjoyed your broadcasting, so we're.

We're pulling.

Laura has great Insights.

Yeah.

And maybe we can touch on the.

What, the T100 start list.

Yeah, it's.

Well, we've talked about it before.

Has it been updated?

Have they added anybody?

No, it's more like who is dropped off.

So initially I think we talked about you had Ashy Gentle, you had Taylor Nib, you had Kate Wolf, you had Julie Darren.

And it was like, whoa.

Okay, let's go.

Let's.

But Ashley now, Ashley now had another announcement that caused her.

Yes.

Yeah, a very positive one.

She's pregnant.

It seems like everything's going well there, so she won't be competing, but obviously everyone's very happy for her.

You have Julie Darren, who I believe pulled off due to an injury, which is unfortunate.

I guess maybe it wasn't worth her going down all the way.

And.

And then Kate Wolf as well.

I think she said she had an injury.

I don't know.

She said something about not being able to compete.

She's off the start list.

So really you had four kind of headliners and you got Taylor Nibs still.

And so I think she'll not be happy not to have people.

But at the same time she'll see a big opportunity for her to get a nice lead in that T100 series.

She's used to winning the 200k, so unfortunately it's only a hundred k this year.

Nib, sorry.

But I'm sure she's still.

Still motivated to.

They pay more at each individual race.

Again, that's great motivation for her.

I'm looking at the start list right now and it's definitely, you know, once you, you get rid of the kind of Julie Darins of the world, it thins out a little bit.

But I'm looking at like Jessica Fullager, who many people may not know, but she's a world triathlon athlete.

She really came on in the final half of last year.

She's always someone who's attacking the race.

So I could see her actually trying to go with Nib on the bike and she's a great athlete who seems to be just on the up.

Maybe she'll pay for it a little bit on the run, but I could see her getting on the podium.

You've got Sarah Perez, who actually got on the podium for the T100 race in Wollongong.

Great swimmer, front pack athlete, just folks like that.

A lot of Australians.

Ellie Salthouse again, I think she had a solid race at that T100 final in Qatar.

So good athletes.

But yeah, after you go down from nib and whatnot, the Top tier is thin.

The top tier is thin, but it's still a solid field.

It's solid and you know these.

It's exciting too because it's a new year, it's a fresh start rather.

You get to see who's been putting in the work, who's trending up.

So it's fun to get that feedback as well.

And you often see in these early season races a breakout performance and it's fun to follow how that changes maybe trajectory of things through the years.

Like you have maybe a, who knows, maybe a local Australian athlete could hit the podium.

Someone we're not expecting.

And then all of a sudden now they're fighting it out for the T100 series.

Maybe they're making big plays at 70.3 races and maybe without that result or that opportunity, it's not going to happen.

It's always fun to see how things shake out at the beginning because you can also then follow along that storyline through the season.

Well, Australia is triathlon mad.

My Instagram reels are always filled with stories from Australia that are basically filled with spiders and snakes and crocs and occasional sharks.

But really when you think about triathlon and you think about Australia, those two really go together.

They have never had a problem filling up the big races and this is that time of year where they have just the biggest races and I'm not at all surprised at Geelong and T100 are able to have big races on the same weekend.

Both sold out.

And it's great.

The country has always said we deserve more races down here because we have such a triathlon mad community and I'm glad they're getting them.

Yeah, definitely.

Their culture and their, the amount of athletes they have, they can handle this kind of weekend for sure.

Yeah.

Because the Gold coast race, it's sold out super quickly.

It's looking like a really great move for the T100 to, to go there and create this race weekend.

Because obviously with how much of their money and how much of their races are tied up in the Middle east, you want to start things off on a right foot at least when you can right now.

Yeah.

All right, let's turn our attention to our second topic for discussion and that is the rel small sample size that we've seen with the new 20 meter draft zone in the Ironman races for the pros.

We had the first race that was raced under that condition.

That was in Ironman, New Zealand, where it was a fairly small professional field.

And we had our second race just this past weekend in the debut of Little Elm, which was in Dallas, which was unfortunately shortened because of a big windstorm that came in and caused the swim to be very perilous and unsafe.

And so they had to make a decision as to how to get the race going.

And so they ended up doing a very much shortened professional swim of 350 meters.

But that was really just so that they could do a time trial swim start to set the pros off one at a time and give them the ability to have a little bit of gap coming out of the water to get on the bike and allow the establishment of that 20 meter draft zone, which I thought was really creative and a really interesting way of doing it.

Matt, have you heard anything?

Did you get to see anything that left you with any impressions about the impact of this 20 meter zone so far?

I guess from that Dallas race, The way that race played out, it was obviously impacted by this wind.

They canceled the swim because of this wind.

But you can imagine on the bike it sounded like the way it worked.

They were going out on the course and it was like crazy tailwind full on.

These guys are flying.

And then on that kind of turn, or on the way back, so to speak, they were hit with this insane headwind.

And that's something where I guess like with a 20 meter draft zone, when you have a tailwind, you're not really getting as much of a draft benefit even at 12 meters.

Right.

It's just the way it works.

I'm not a wind expert, but I know that's how it works.

But basically on that turn on that way back, if it was 12 meters, like there would have been like if you were sitting in the group, your third, fourth, fifth, whatever, because there were some groups out there, it was a big brace that way.

Like you would have been just coasting.

Like you would have been a third less power output.

So I guess in this race, because they have the 20 minute draft zone even when they had the big headwinds.

Yes, of course they would be getting a bit of a benefit, but definitely not as much as with the 12 meter draft zone.

So that maybe hurt some people as you went onto the run.

It was funny because like two guys like you saw Lionel take the win and it's okay, like they cancel the swim.

Lionel's going to have a great Opportunity there.

Yeah, he's going to be licking his chops for sure.

But it was interesting for me to see Ben Kanute and the guy who came third, Ben Kanute was second and the guy who came third, Andreas Salvisburg, like those are known front pack guys, if I rewind to the Rio Olympics in that front pack, both of them were in that front group pushing the pace to creating separation from the chase group.

And that's their brand.

They're both front pack athletes.

I guess maybe counterintuitive to see them with this 20 meter draft zone ending up like on the podium.

And maybe they would if it was they had the full swim.

Who knows, maybe Ben would have won or something.

But that was interesting for me just to observe and be like, huh?

Like there's a lot of guys who I feel should have been further up or had more of a benefit from this 20 meter draft zone, especially with the swim canceled.

And maybe that just wasn't the case.

That was interesting observation.

I feel like in New Zealand maybe because of the longer race, like a Matt Hansen who finished on the podium and maybe you can relay some of what his thoughts were.

But I thought maybe in that race because of this 20 meter draft zone, the people ahead of them were maybe not able to group up as much.

Maybe they just weren't able to carry their speed as quickly.

And so I felt like he was able to come back into the race a little quicker based on the field things or whatever.

But I just, that was my sense that, oh, okay, Matt Hansen, usually he'd be, I feel like he'd be further back in a race like that.

But maybe because of the 20 meter draft zone, like he was a little further up in a different group as they entered the run and that put him in a great position to use his strength on the run to mow some people down.

I feel like Trevor Foley, he's just such a good cyclist.

Like for me I was kind of like, oh, he's.

I don't know if the 20 meter, like he was always going to get closer to the front just because of his ability.

And maybe in the women's race in New Zealand, harder to take feedback just because there wasn't as many people.

So there was already going to be big gaps.

That's my take.

Little Elm also had a very small women's field.

So also, and only Jackie Herring was really the strongest of the group.

So unsurprising for her to win there.

So I had a chance to speak with Matt Hanson.

He's my guest on the Tridoc podcast this week.

If you'd like to hear that interview, I encourage you to head over to wherever you get your audio content and download that episode.

It is a nice conversation that we had and I asked him about the 20 meter draft zone and his feeling was that too soon to tell.

He felt, look, we've raced with this in the T100, we're used to this.

But he like I asked him that, do you think that it benefited you in New Zealand?

You know, at one point right before the halfway, I was second overall in the race on the bike.

That hasn't happened for a number of years.

I think part of that was a lot of the competitors were still feeling out to approach the tactics in a 20 meter race.

Trevor hadn't caught up to us quite yet so we were able to.

We didn't have much of a gap out of the water, but I had a really, a really good swim so that definitely helped more for me than the 20 meter draft rule.

But yeah, it definitely is a different race now and I think the early season races are going to be learning experience for everybody.

We've done it at this, at the PTO distance.

A lot of us has raced with the 20 meter rule but we haven't done it all that often in long course and so it, it makes it less punchy and so that's going to help the better runners because you're not having to put in a bunch of surges if you're in the group.

Last year I don't think I rode in a group more than an hour for any race.

I was just on my own.

So that, you know, to me it's not going to hurt anything and it might help kind of situation.

For some of the swim runners I think who have been really good swimmers and have been able to sit in on the bike, they're going to get punished.

So we might see some differences in the run times, but at the end of the day you still have to be able to put together a complete race and a tactical race and make the right decisions.

I don't think they were expecting Kyle Smith to go out as hard as he did.

He felt like there wasn't the ability for people to group to work together because of the 20 meters.

So that definitely was something he mentioned.

But all in all, I don't think he felt like the 20 meters really affected the race, how it played out or that it impacted his ability to do as well as he did because it, he was surprised to be as far up as he was on the bike, but he didn't think that the 20 meters had anything to do with that.

He just thinks that's just how it played out, just how the way people were executing on the day.

He said that the women were definitely.

It was an interesting dynamic for them because they were in amongst the 70.3 racers.

So they were constantly having to contend with age groupers, especially the women's field.

So he said that made it more challenging for them.

He didn't speak to anybody specifically, so he couldn't tell me whether or not they felt that was impactful on their day.

But for the most part, he said he just definitely noticed it.

He thinks that Oceanside is gonna be more telling because it's a much bigger field and there's that long initial kind of flat section where it's gonna be interesting to see how this plays out before they get to the hills where it'll just naturally break things up.

Yeah.

And Oceanside's a bigger field, like you said, but it's also very deep.

And this kind of came out recently.

We'll save that.

But it's very deep.

So you're just going to have a lot of athletes coming out together.

So that will be a real test of this race ranger 20 meter graph zone.

I. I think he's correct on that for sure.

Did he talk about anything else in the podcast that maybe a little teaser for us?

I asked him about his sort of his Energizer Bunny ways.

I told him about how you were always so impressed with how he just is always at every race.

And he.

He said that definitely feels it, but that he just has been able to be fortunate in that way.

He's toning it back a little bit because his daughter is now older and he wants to be sure to be around for her.

So his race schedule is definitely much lighter this year.

His next race is going to be Ironman Texas, which is coming up in April.

And he named the other races he's doing.

I think he says what they are on the podcast, but it's a much lighter schedule.

He will be going to Kona, and he told me that he wants to do this at least one more season after.

And then after that, he'll decide you're

getting podiums at pro series races.

Yeah, you got to keep going.

The one thing that he wouldn't have said that I'm going to spill a little tea here.

I think it was like halfway through or maybe three quarters of the way through the season.

Last year he got rid of his Coach that he'd been with for a long time.

I won't name names.

Names.

He, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't.

He didn't say specifically that he got rid of her, but he did, he did mention he was with her and now he's on his own.

Yeah.

Yes.

And I do think when an athlete like that, like, I'm actually really surprised he wasn't doing his own thing for as, like for longer.

I just think when you're.

Sometimes these athletes, like, you know your body best and if you're.

You have a coach, sometimes, I don't know, maybe the coach feels like they need to do more than they need to.

So I think he's.

From what I can understand, maybe his training volume's a little less.

Maybe he's feeling a little more recovered.

I don't know if he would have said that.

But that's from what I understand.

So I've just been.

Interesting for me to follow this.

Intrigue.

Intrigue.

So, yes, definitely have the interview.

It's a good one.

Matt's a good guy and he was very willing.

Share his experience as a longtime professional and give us some insight to what that's like.

All right, let's turn to.

Pardon me, is he racing Texas?

Yeah, he's doing Ironman Texas.

That's his interest.

Okay, so that'll be a good one as well for the 20 meter draft zone, for sure.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, we talked about that.

Just because of.

That's usually a big field and it's a windy kind of loop course.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting.

All right, let's turn our attention to our third and final topic, and that is biomarkers.

So this is Matt's topic.

He's going to ask some questions.

I'm going to do my best to answer them.

And I will try not to be too cynical, but I will opine early as to the merits of doing kind of shotgun testing.

So let's hear what you got in mind.

And the reason I brought this up, I like to bring up these kind of trending buzzy things.

What was the one we talked about?

The influencers that were taking Advil and whatnot and saying you should take Advil.

I like touching on these because it gets you fired up.

But yeah, like these biomarker markers.

Like, I feel like we're in an age of optimization.

People want to just optimize everything for their health, their performance, which is cool.

I think it makes healthier people ultimately.

And one of these things is these Biomarkers.

And specifically as it relates to these blood tests that have really come on the scene the last number of years, like I think of Inside Tracker.

I don't know if you're familiar.

Like they were familiar.

Yeah, the big kind of first one.

And their thing I think is like a one time test.

I don't think there's rhythm.

There's.

There's rhythm, which is like the monthly one.

And I'm sure there's just only going to be more and more of these things, which I actually think is good.

If people can make these things more affordable, ultimately maybe it'll make them more healthy, but maybe not.

Jeff, so let's go back.

What are these biomarkers?

Tell us about biomarkers.

All right, so the idea is that you basically measure the number of values of blood levels and this is supposed to give you some idea of your overall health.

So here's the issue, and there are multiple issues.

So the first question is, do you need to know?

The second question, is the test accurate?

The third question is, are you going to act on it?

And then the fourth question is, do you really care?

Which goes back to the first question is, do you need to know?

So look, the problem is the.

So InsightTracker is a great example of how the business model of these things work.

And what InsightTracker does is you send the, you get your blood drawn, you send them a sample and they test for 30 biomarkers.

But a lot of the biomarkers are just things like your basic chemistry, your sodium, your chloride, your potassium, whatever.

And then they report back to you and they say, oh, look, your selenium, your selenium is out of range.

And so therefore, you know, this can be associated with xyz.

And so therefore you need to do these things.

And oh, by the way, we sell selenium supplements just in case you want to optimize your selenium.

Yeah, how convenient, right?

Okay, so here's what you need to know.

Number one, the more tests you do, the more likely you are to find an abnormal.

That's just the way it is because every test has a false positive and a false negative rate.

So every time you do, if you do 10 tests and every one of those tests is 90% accurate, then one of the tests is going to be wrong and therefore you're going to get a wrong answer on one of the tests just by chance.

So you then have to ask yourself, does it matter then that I have an abnormal?

The second problem, and InsightTracker was notorious for this, is they narrow the reference ranges.

So we look at reference ranges for things like vitamin D. And vitamin D has a reference range.

I'm just going to make it up.

Vitamin D has a reference range between 100 and 200.

Well, InsideTracker narrowed that to 125 and 175.

So what do you think that means?

It means you're much more likely to fall outside of the references but still be within what other people would consider normal.

But they can then say you're abnormal.

So if the reference ranges are arbitrarily narrowed, you're gonna be more likely to have an abnormal.

But do you care?

Do you have to act on it?

And then there's this question of, is an abnormal test actually mean anything?

And do you have to act on it?

Is it associated with anything?

When they're doing these electrolyte tests, your sodium might come back a little bit higher, a little bit low just because of your hydration status.

It doesn't mean anything.

It's not associated with any illness.

It doesn't mean you need to do anything about it.

But they're going to tell you that, oh, you might need to do xyz.

There is a reason that we, as physicians, and I know we no longer have the trust of anybody anymore.

Everybody does their own research.

And because these tests are so accessible, everybody just brings these tests to their doctor instead of the doctor ordering the tests that are necessary.

But there's a reason that doctors don't do all these.

These tests is because most of the time they're not necessary.

They don't help, they don't give you any information.

There's not like a technology component where maybe there's better technology and it can be more widely distributed or like when the doctor is obviously in the medical system, there's constraints, and maybe it's just not worth it to have so many people testing their blood.

But if there's technology improvements, maybe that changes things, or this is entirely for profit.

So these labs are sitting around with these very expensive of machines that do all these tests, and they need to pay them off and they need to generate a profit for their investors.

And so the way they do that is they expand the number of people on whom they get tests.

So rather than just getting the indicated tests for the people who actually need to have it, they market them to everybody.

And they say, hey, you guys don't need your doctor to do this anymore because they've managed to somehow.

Because don't forget, if you do this on your own, you're paying out of pocket.

Whereas if you do it because it's been ordered, your insurance pays for it and then you don't have to worry about it, it, but they're more than happy to take your money and have you, you do it.

So look, there are some biomarkers.

There's no question some of these biomarkers are useful and people should probably.

Some people should think about them.

So a great example is iron levels.

So women who are of childbearing age and are menstruating are notoriously low on their iron and that can have real physiologic effects.

And a woman should know her iron at some point.

It doesn't mean it needs to be tested every month.

It's useless to test it every month, especially if it's normal today, it's not going to be abnormal in a month.

But getting it done annually, maybe if you have heavy periods, if you're a vegetarian and you're not getting a lot of nutritional iron, but if you eat a normal diet and you don't have heavy periods, getting it once is probably all you need.

Iron studies, there are other things, like if you're over 40 and you have a family history of heart disease, getting your baseline cholesterol levels, very helpful, very useful.

So there are some things, vitamin D levels in some situations.

It's certainly not something that everybody needs to get done, but these companies are making money hand over fist by convincing people that you need to get all of these things.

And then, oh, by the way, you need to act on all the abnormals.

And the reality is you're not really optimizing your health.

What you are doing is optimizing the weight of your wallet, making it much lighter, easier to carry, and reducing the back pain you get because your wallet is so light.

And I. Yeah, important stuff for sure.

Yeah.

You listed off three biomarkers.

Let's say if you're an athlete and you're like, hell, screw it, I'm going to do.

I'm going to do one of these tests.

I got a little.

My cash is.

It's making my back sore.

I want to spend it on one of these things.

Do you think those three you listed, what was it?

Iron, vitamin D. What was the other one?

Lipid profile for people who are 40 and are over.

Do you, you think if somebody wants to spend the money like those are the three they should pay attention to?

Are there others maybe that they could look at?

But there's not really anything else particularly.

Listen, you can get genetics tests, you can do all kinds of crazy things now that are not particularly indicated for anybody, but you can do them because they can do them.

The reality is that iron studies, even in men, are sometimes useful, but for the most part, a man should get it, like, maybe once, and if it's normal, you don't need to do it again.

Women, it's worth repeating just because of menstruation.

And people will say, oh, I should check my hemoglobin.

But the reality is, if your iron levels are normal, your hemoglobin is probably okay.

It's.

Listen again, if you want to get a hemoglobin just randomly, you can, but it's unlikely to be abnormal if you're totally asymptomatic and you're not really going to do anything about it.

But again, I can't tell people what to do.

I can only tell people what makes sense.

And it just, for the most part, just randomly getting biomarkers because somebody tells you it's going to be helpful.

The reality is, most of these biomarkers, except for the ones I've mentioned and really the two I would anchor on are lipid profiles and.

And iron.

And aside from that, there's really not a whole lot.

Unless you have symptoms.

Unless you have symptoms.

Look, if you have symptoms, suddenly things like thyroid studies make sense.

But those are indicated tests.

If you're just asking me about just random biomarker checks, there's really.

I mean, we used to do this in medicine.

We used to say, come every year, we're going to send off a bunch of blood tests.

We stopped doing that because we found it didn't help, it didn't improve health.

It led to a lot of anxiety because you'd find false positives all the time, which would then lead to other tests which didn't find anything.

And so we stopped doing it.

And now these labs are marketing directly to consumers because they know that doctors don't want to do this, and so they're convincing consumers to do it.

And I don't know what to say,

as a general rule.

Like, you actually don't think people should get their blood tested, like, once a year?

No, no, no.

Not unless it's indicated by symptoms.

Yeah, I guess with these false positives that you're talking about.

But I don't know, for some reason, I'm kind of like, oh, wouldn't it be nice?

You're buying into the hype.

I am, truly.

I'm trying to push for our.

Read me off, read me off.

Read me off the biomarkers and tell me what it is that you think would be valuable and I'll say yes.

I don't have a list in front of me.

You're the, I, you're the science man.

But that's what, that's what I want to know.

If there was, I guess, for athletes, strictly from like a performance standpoint, like, would iron be one?

So iron is, there's no question.

Iron.

Iron is one that I think is useful.

Iron.

And again, not every month, not every six months.

If your iron is normal, you don't need to check it repeatedly.

Women, maybe annually, maybe depend case by case basis vitamin D. If you live in a place where you don't get a lot of sunlight and you don't eat a diet for.

There's a lot of ifs, right?

If you don't eat a diet that's fortified with vitamin D, then maybe a vitamin D. But honestly, the problem with vitamin D is that there's no universal accepted level that's normal or abnormal.

So if you don't have symptoms and you're not really having any issues, then you're probably fine no matter what your vitamin D. Unless it's exceptionally low, in which case taking vitamin D, fine.

I don't, I don't have a problem with.

People want to take vitamin D, vitamin D. I mean, the reality is you could just take vitamin D without getting your level checked and that would be the same thing.

That's the thing, right?

A lot of these other biomarkers are just random.

They're just picked out of a hat.

And they don't really mean like getting your liver levels filled.

They filled the PDF.

That's their PDF filler.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's look at rhythm, for example.

So rhythm, yes.

They do like a hormone series.

You know what they do is they check like testosterone and estrogen.

Look, if you're a woman and you are having normal menstrual cycles, any doctor in the world is going to tell you don't need to get your estrogen or progesterogen, your progesterone checked.

You are a man for the most part.

You don't need to get your testosterone checked.

I know it's controversial.

Like older men are thinking, I my sex drive, my energy levels, I need to get this.

Look, I'm not going to get into the whole low T thing.

That is a whole other subject unto itself.

Different episode.

Different episode.

So let's look at their heart health.

So LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, sure, I agree with that.

But then they get into things Like APOB and hscrp, these are very niche tests of sub lipid profiles.

I actually just wrote an article for Triathlete magazine looking at some of these sort of like sub level cholesterols.

There is the American Heart association, the American Cardiology association, both organizations have said there is zero indication to do these sub level cholesterol.

You get no information from them that you don't already get from HDL and ldl and total cholesterol.

All right.

PDF fillers.

They're PDF fillers and they cost money.

So metabolic efficiency.

Iron albumin.

Seriously, if you eat a normal diet, you don't need to check your albumin.

Vitamin D, triglycerides are part of your lipid profile.

If you're over 40, fine thyroid function.

If you are asymptomatic, you do not check your thyroid function, period.

That is just a complete lunacy.

Liver and kidney, they wanna do your creatinine.

A random creatinine is useless.

And now we're getting into longevity.

The longevity stuff is complete hocus pocus.

I don't even know what this is.

Beautiful marketing.

Beautiful marketing.

Rhythm score.

Biological age.

This is all.

Look, you want to spend your money on this stuff, I'm not going to tell you not to.

You do what you want.

But I think instead, let's see what this costs.

This is $63 for.

I'll tell you what, folks, Matt and I would be more than happy to accept your $63.

And we guarantee zero anxiety from abnormal tests that you don't need done.

So if you feel good about yourself, send us $63.

You can email me, I'll tell you you're great.

Yeah.

And we will tell you how awesome you are.

You'll feel better about yourself and you won't have to get a needle.

So we'll give you a tempo talk score.

How about that?

Yeah.

This is the problem, Matt.

If I lacked ethics, I could make a ton of money.

I know, crap your conscience.

It's really just holding back from the big box.

But what I don't understand is whenever I poo poo this stuff, I have all kinds of people saying, oh, you just are, you just don't get it.

Or.

And I'm like, look, like I said, I don't care.

You want to do this, go ahead, go for it.

All I'm trying to do is keep your money and you together.

We've pivoted away from experts in this kind of era.

And honestly, I'm ready to pivot back.

I'm over influencers telling people what you know.

Like, I'm ready to go back to experts in the ivory tower.

Let's go back to the ivory tower.

You know what I saw today?

If you're not going to send us the $63, that's okay.

You can, however, leave us a rating and a review.

We would love that.

Wherever you download the content, let us know what you think.

Leave us five stars because that's what I think.

That's what we deserve.

I think we both ain't done.

And don't forget to tell a friend because I think we're as.

Even though we miss the occasional episode, we are here as much as we can be for you week in and week out as best as we can.

All right.

I can't say weekend and week out because we blew it last week.

But we're gonna do our best.

It's okay.

Yeah, it's okay.

We do our best and we appreciate everyone who continues to tune in.

So thank you for being here.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for helping us fight the misinformation.

There you go.

All right.

That's all we got for you this week on Tempo Talks.

It was another fun episode, Matt.

I look forward to chatting with you again next week when we will preview the exciting Oceanside and everything.

Yeah, I'm going to be there.

I'm excited to get amongst it from the sidelines.

I'm very excited.

Yeah.

Kirsten back on the race course.

I'm looking forward to that.

All right, well, until next week.

We will talk to you then.

And remember, keep talking tempo because tempo talks.

Oh, that's going to be my new catchphrase.

Love it.

Good stuff.

Thanks, gang.

Sam.