(downtempo techno music)
- That one's free.
Every single ride.
O-M-G, trainiacs.
If any of you happened to get the license plate
of that truck that I think must have hit me yesterday,
let me know, hit me up in the comments below,
because I feel like shirt
after the marathon swim training yesterday.
I don't ever wanna look at that lane again.
Maybe it was that lane.
I don't know, it was all a blur.
Everything.
Neck, neck especially,
from breathing I guess 10 zillion times, that hurts.
So many choices.
So, as a result of feeling
like yesterday was my first day of matador school,
today's gonna be a fairly easy, light,
25-minutes-late-to-the-pool kind of swim.
Coincidence that, right as they start doing dive starts,
that that is the exact amount of swimming
that I wanted to do today.
It's not, I just pulled out.
Ah, seeing as how I have a little bit of time on my hands,
I wanna show you a bit of a goggle hack
that you can do for free.
Actually, let's make that the theme of today.
Triathlon hacks that are free or almost free.
Let's see how many I get to.
For triathlon hack number one,
I had to come into a secret bathroom upstairs
so that the guys don't think I'm a weirdo,
because coming into a secret bathroom upstairs
to talk to a camera is totally normal.
If you have foggy goggles,
take a teeny tiny little bit of hand soap, like...
Take that little bit of hand soap, swish it all around...
(water running)
And that is hands down
the best anti-fog goggle coating, covering liquid
that any of us in our swim group have ever tried.
The second hack is that, when you finish the bike,
odds are your feet are probably gonna be really wet.
If it's raining outside, your feet are gonna be wet.
If you're sweating even a little bit,
your feet are gonna be wet.
So, it's gonna be tough to slip your feet into
the shoes.
One thing that you can do,
in both your bike shoes and your running shoes,
take a little bit of baby powder,
and I'm gonna do this right now,
because I love me the smell of baby powder.
And you fill up your shoes with it,
oh, it's just magical,
before the race starts,
so that when you get into transition,
your foot is gonna slide into the shoe really easily
and you're gonna smell delightful,
and it's gonna help prevent things
like blisters and chaffing throughout the race.
The next hack...
You may know from such vlogs as last weekend.
To avoid having a stinky, chlorine-smelling,
wet Speedo hanging off your bag
or shoved in your bag, get yourself
a dive towel chamois,
instead of a big towel stuck in your bag,
which you can then roll up, leave in the container,
leaving enough room for
a teeny tiny banana hammock, which you can then...
Pop in your bag, and nothing's wet.
Not bad, huh?
Not bad.
You wanna know about Speedo care?
You talk to Tarin.
Alright, the next hack has to do
with gear ratios on your bike.
Now, you can be riding the same speed
but with different gear ratios, and what I mean by that
is you can be riding, say, 30 km an hour,
and be mashing, really pushing hard,
or you can be riding 30 km an hour,
and pushing easy, but spinning faster,
and what you wanna do in a triathlon,
specifically to save your legs,
is you wanna be spinning basically as fast as you can
without your bum rocking back and forth
and bouncing on the saddle.
That, if you don't have a cadence meter,
is a good way to get yourself to about 85 to 100 cadence.
That's the amount of times that you do revolutions.
And around that sort of cadence,
you're going to be saving the muscle fibers of your leg
from doing a whole lot of work,
and putting more of the load on your cardiovascular system.
That's what you want in a triathlon,
because you don't wanna have your legs
torn right to shreds by the time you get to the run.
So, think as fast a cadence as you can go
without bouncing on the saddle uncontrollably.
That ones free.
Those are my old investment adviser button up shirts
that don't ever get worn.
Sticking with the bike hacks,
a good way to carry your nutrition
without actually having to put it in your pocket
during the swim,
or having to stuff it in your pocket
during transition one,
is that you can mount, with a little bit of electrical tape,
all of your gels to the top tube.
And this is assuming, obviously,
that you're using gels for your nutrition.
So, how you do it
is you take a little bit of electrical tape,
and if you wanna be super advanced,
you color-coordinate it with your bike.
And you see how there's the little indent
right there on the tab?
Take the electrical tape
and put it over the top of that indent.
You see it, you see it, you see it?
There you go, a little bit of a tear there.
That's where the top of the tab from the gel
is gonna rip off, and you tape the top tab that rips off...
And you can do the same thing with a few gels,
stacking them one on top of another, like so,
and then when you wanna actually
just get access to the gel,
you grab the bottom, and you just rip.
I'm not gonna do it right now
because I really like these gels
and I don't wanna rip one right now.
So, when you rip it across, the top will come off,
opening up the gel, it'll stay there,
so you don't have to worry about littering,
and boom, you've got yourself an open gel.
Bam, hacked.
The next, and probably the most easy way to pick up time
in the second transition,
is to get yourself some elastic laces
to throw on your running shoes.
Spending time tying running shoes
or fumbling to, like, get a pair of pre-tied running shoes
onto your feet while you're wet, and you're sweaty,
and you've squirted Gatorade all over yourself,
that is one of the easiest ways to lose time in transition.
So, like I mentioned before,
go with the baby powder in the shoes
to keep them nice and dry,
and then get yourself a pair of really cheap
elastic laces that have the little, what's it called?
I have no idea what this is called.
Little springer thinger on the end,
and then when you get into transition two,
you just open it up really wide,
and you go wop, put a little bit of muscle into it.
Bam, your shoes are on.
Hacked.
And for the last couple of hacks,
we'll use my trusty commuter to demonstrate.
Basically, every time you go on a ride,
doesn't matter if it's a commuter bike, tri bike,
a road bike, you wanna make sure
that it's running as smooth as possible.
So number one, pump up your tires every single ride.
Last thing, every week, couple of weeks,
or after a rain storm, lube, baby.
Now, I just lubed the chain,
so you can see that it is gonna be fairly smooth,
but if you don't wanna give yourself a full cleaning,
you can just give it just a few drops, and...
She runs nice.
Bam, hacked.
And there you go.
There are...
Goggles, baby powder, gear ratio, electrical tape,
pump up your tires, elastic laces, lube.
Eight cheap or damn near free ways
that you can probably gain yourself,
over the course of a triathlon,
like, in a sprint, we're talking a few minutes,
over an Olympic, I would say five to 10.
Yeah, a lot of those things make a huge difference.
Specifically speaking from experience,
I once took a bike into a bike shop saying,
why is it running so slow?
It's hard to push the gears.
And the woman that was looking at the bike said,
have you ever put lube on your chain?
I had to say that in two years of owning that bike,
the answer is no.
Learn from my mistakes, trainiacs,
learn from my mistakes.
Alright, that's it for the day.
I'm gonna go lie on the couch,
and enjoy my sweet-smelling feet.