Episode 70: T100 Dubai Race Results & T100 Series Breakdown

We are now on YouTube! Check it out and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@anothertriathlonpodcast

In this episode of Another Triathlon Podcast, Jenna-Caer and Josh discuss the exciting events of the T100 in Dubai, including race highlights and personal training updates. They analyze the performances of both the men's and women's races, highlighting key athletes and their strategies. They also reflect on the advancements in training technology and the improvements in race broadcasting. As they look ahead, they discuss the future of the T100 series and the implications for athlete contracts.

Chapters
05:33 Exploring New Training Platforms
11:32 The Importance of Zone 2 Training
17:22 Social Media Post of the Week & WTF
24:10 Race Highlights and Fun Moments
29:21 Men's Race Overview
35:11 Men's Race Dynamics and Surprises
45:54 Commentary and Production Insights
50:58 Spectator Engagement and Accessibility
58:44 Future of the T100 Series

Race Results:

Women's Race Top 10:

1. Taylor Knibb 🇺🇸 @taylorknibb
2. Julie Derron 🇨🇭 @juliederron
3. Ashleigh Gentle 🇦🇺 @gentle_ash
4. Flora Duffy 🇧🇲 @floraduffy
5. Katrina Matthews 🇬🇧 @katr_matthews
6. Lucy Byram 🇬🇧 @lucymaybyram
7. Laura Philipp 🇩🇪 @laura_philipp_tri
8. Taylor Spivey 🇺🇸 @tkspivey
9. Imogen Simmonds 🇨🇭 @imosimmonds
10. Anne Haug 🇩🇪 @tri.anne.haug

Men's Race Top 10:

1. Marten Van Riel 🇧🇪 @martenvanriel
2. Rico Bogen 🇩🇪 @ricobogen
3. Alistair Brownlee 🇬🇧 @alistair.brownlee
4. Kyle Smith 🇳🇿 @kylesmithnzl
5. Mathis Margirier 🇫🇷 @mathismargirier
6. Justus Nieschlag 🇩🇪 @justus.nieschlag
7. Frederic Funk 🇩🇪 @fredericfunk97
8. Magnus Elbæk Ditlev 🇩🇰 @magnuselbaekditlev
9. Pieter Heemeryck 🇧🇪 @pieter.heemeryck
10. Sam Long 🇺🇸 @samgolong

Transcript

Jenna-Caer (00:00.918)
Welcome back to another Trathlon Podcast brought to you by Mana Apparel. This week there's one race that everybody's talking about and that is absolutely the T100 in Dubai and what a weekend of racing it was. There were some epic battles out there, some surprise finishes, and it was just a blast to watch. But before we get started on all of that, I wanted to let everyone know that we're now up on YouTube so you can see the faces behind the names, watch them on those long trainer rides if you need something to keep you entertained, hopefully.

find us entertaining enough, but we can also be found on anywhere you listen to podcasts. So go check it out. Give us a subscribe if you can and let us know your thoughts. And we want to get a lot more interactive with our audience this next little while too. So stay tuned, follow us on Instagram. We're going to be putting up some posts for questions about racing training or just any thoughts on the races that are going on at the pro level, or we always love some gossip. So go check us out. We're definitely online and want to hear more from you, but

Let's jump into what we usually chat about to start here. am joined by Josh. Josh, what are you up to these days?

Josh (01:06.434)
A little less than I thought I was going to be up to last week. the job search and life and everything kind of got in the way of, some of the additional training. I had like a pretty big week in line, but, missed a few workouts, which is abnormal for me when it's full season. But I have that off season mentality, I think a little bit right now. So missing a workout here and there is actually kind of therapeutic at times and trying to get a lot of things taken care of and get my whole.

Jenna-Caer (01:09.09)
Thank

Jenna-Caer (01:24.299)
Yeah.

Josh (01:34.094)
Career situation finalized. There's a lot of good opportunities in the works there. And I'm actually going to be heading down to Miami tomorrow and chasing a potential opportunity there and also catching a crazy finish to a seven marathons and seven days on seven continents race. We can talk a little bit more about that, but yeah, I had a good week of training though. still milk in a little bit of Achilles tendonitis and stuff that I've.

battled with and dealt with all along, but it seemed to flare up a little bit after the two marathons and going to be doing a lot more PT work, strength work, posterior chain type strengthening. And it's going to really help the build going into next season and officially decided to shut it down for this year and not go after that half marathon PR. So no reason to chase something that I don't need to and really start to focus on a good.

core and base for next year and get in a good spot to start chasing and racing in April, probably at Oceanside. So that'll be cool. There's a good chance Oceanside will be my first race, which I didn't think I'd be talking about again, but here we are going back to Oceanside and swimming with the sea lions and climbing hills and having a fun run. If anyone ever wants me to be on that run relay team, I'd jump on that in a second. It's a fun run course.

Jenna-Caer (02:37.974)
Yeah.

Josh (02:57.954)
Yeah. And, yesterday I had my longest ride. God, mean, in a long time. So I did a two hour 45 minute brick session progressive ride. I had 40 minutes, 30 minutes, 10 minutes, and then five minutes, with a good progression up in each interval, without any breaks in between and held my zones and hit all the Watts and did it all in virtual training peaks, which was really cool to do and test out and.

Jenna-Caer (03:24.855)
Yeah.

Josh (03:27.522)
It was nice not to have to worry about pairing my phone to the Zwift trainer, to the computer and having all that. went right from my training peaks, downloaded it right into the workout that existed on my today's workout. And it was really neat. There's not a lot of people in it, but there is going to be, and I think it'll be a really neat tool for a lot of people to have that opportunity and coaches and athletes to have that capability of that nice smooth transition.

It's the old Indie Velo platform. And so there's a lot of work that's already gone into it. You add the training peaks features that we all use daily anyways, with our coaches and you go to work and then all of a sudden you look and you're drafting someone and it's actually giving you the drafting benefit and the wind direction is actually playing a factor. If you start getting into some like crit racing and racing simulation. So really neat. was just kind of fun to play around in it. And I had a good ride and had a good run off the bike. So that was the end of my bad week ended up well.

Jenna-Caer (04:26.754)
Yeah, I actually gave it a try too. I've just done one ride on it so far. They definitely have some polishing to do to be something that is competitive more with this lift, especially on the avatars and that kind of thing.

I do like how they have some additional factors. Like you said, the wind direction was kind of cool with the elevation and they've definitely got a solid foundation to jump off of. And yeah, curious to see where they go with it. And I don't ever use built workouts in my own training. It's funny as a coach, I have all the workouts built from athletes, but my own coach is a little bit more old school and doesn't do it. And I don't like to use erg mode for workouts anyways. So haven't tried that part of either that Zwift or training peaks, but

It is nice just to have another platform to play around with and yeah, see where they go with it. Hopefully it's something good.

Josh (05:14.18)
Yeah, I think we all know the competition in the sports, a good thing. And the more podcasts, the better, the more, the more training opportunities, the better. So I think it's just another opportunity, for people to test it out and for somebody, it's probably going to be better. And like you said, I think there's going to be some bugs and things, that need to be worked out. of the ones I noticed, and I didn't realize it until I checked my workout was my final progression was the five minutes. And.

Jenna-Caer (05:18.838)
Absolutely dress with a shirt.

Josh (05:45.284)
I think it was supposed to be a zone three and I ended up riding in like zone four, zone five. And that's what auto transferred from training peaks built into the actual virtual world. So it was off there. Everything else was right. and I'll turn ERG mode off at times. and a lot of times my coach knows I use the ERG mode. and I'd like to get that time on the pedals that I don't get. And you know, this winter time here, we don't get to ride outside. So, as many pedal strokes as I can get at,

Pressure, the better. And I don't mind doing two hours and 45 minutes without a break. And I'll put that time in. So I did try it in ERG mode last night. I will do it both ways. I'll take ERG mode off. Typically I'll do ERG mode maybe for the warm up and cool down and not have to worry about it and shifting. And then I'll turn it on or turn it off for the actual main set. So get a little bit of work on shifting and changing gears and going up the hills and things like that.

Jenna-Caer (06:45.398)
Just stay, yeah, I find it just stay a little bit more mentally engaged and you know, having zones, it's good to have that range. So if you're feeling good and push it to the top end, feeling not so great, you can kind of hang out at the lower end because outside there definitely is no erg mode, but it balances really good, especially when you have those hard workouts. If you're mentally fatigued and just tired, being able to just set it and hang on is never a bad thing either for a athlete. So yeah, good to play around with both of those.

Josh (07:12.932)
I'm going to miss my temporary setup. I've been fortunate enough to have the wife not kill me while it's been set up in our living room and before I bring it back downstairs to the basement for the winter. So it's been nice having it up here. It's also been nice to be able to work out and she's right there and doesn't need to come downstairs and interrupt. So it's been a treat, but it's also much more humid and warm upstairs. So I'm back down in the basement where I could control the temperature a little bit better.

Jenna-Caer (07:39.884)
There we go. See, I love my basement pain cave. Just away from everyone. There's nothing else to do down there but to just sweat it out. Yeah.

Josh (07:47.874)
Yeah, exactly. How was your week? keep adding volume and getting after it. I think I saw something about maybe adding another race or something like that sooner.

Jenna-Caer (07:54.709)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (08:01.491)
I was this close, as close, so... man, and that's where it stopped, was when I looked at flights. yeah, kind of week two building back into Ironman training, and at this point it's all about just volume, getting that aerobic volume foundation, ton of strength training right now, so...

Josh (08:03.396)
Speaking of booking flights last minute.

Jenna-Caer (08:22.59)
As of right now, zero intensity, just building up that aerobic base. And yeah, after watching the T100, just, I was feeling so fired up between Kona, watching T100, just geeking out on Traphon. I'm like, well, technically I have a spot to 70.3 Worlds. I wonder, I've been back training for Traphon for two weeks and I could do it.

Yeah, that went until I looked at flight costs and last minute flight costs to New Zealand are not attractive, so it kind of ended there.

Josh (08:57.004)
Yeah, not like the Boston to Miami flight that I just booked. It's a little easier to do that last minute.

Jenna-Caer (09:02.69)
Yeah, yeah, it was kind of like Kona level cost to fly last minute to there.

Josh (09:08.807)
That's before you even talk about accommodations or anything else over there.

Jenna-Caer (09:12.29)
Yeah, so unfortunately will not make it over there as much fun as it would be to just go kind of do the race, but geek out being back in that atmosphere. It was so much fun being in Kona, being in that world champ atmosphere with everyone out there, the whole industry and stuff. It's just, I love that when you can geek out and everyone else is there to geek out and do the same thing. It's just so much fun when you spend most of time training in a basement pain cave.

Josh (09:28.1)
Yeah.

Josh (09:37.376)
Exactly. And you could kind of see it on a lesser age group level this weekend at Dubai. You could just see that different level of intensity. And even with the athletes that weren't racing, how cool and interesting. I mean, they were all in it and it was really neat to see.

Jenna-Caer (09:52.925)
yeah, lots of fun stories and stuff.

Yeah, and that did, broke out the lactate testing kit, which I haven't, which I kind of forgot I had, but my coach was like, hey, let's find out some zones. I'm like, lactate seems like a much more fun way to do it on an aerobic run than doing a threshold test. So I am all in. And yeah, once again, turns out I'm not running fast enough on my zone to runs, which is good and bad. Cause two weeks ago, I did not have the fitness to run it. It's kind of that weird in between where I've got the

Josh (10:12.408)
Nice.

Jenna-Caer (10:25.77)
aerobic foundation, years of training and stuff like that, but kind of don't have the leg strength to sustain what would ideally be more of that top end of my aerobic zone. So building back the strength and just kind of learning where, where that ceiling is, where I'm still effectively working on that aerobic foundation to make sure that I set myself up. So I need to get fit enough to run in zone two at this point. It's funny, it zone two training. It's kind of a

almost like a ladder when you start out, it feels like you're barely jogging and you're going to be at the top of that zone too. But the fitter you get, the harder it gets to the point where when you're super fit and ready, zone two is not easy anymore. The pace just increased to the point where there's a lot more muscular stress. So it does feel hard. I'm kind of at this weird in between where I have some of the speed from the training, but not the endurance because I just haven't been doing it.

Josh (11:21.112)
Yeah, your body, your, your heart and everything are capable of handling it. But then that zone too, I guess it's, it's spread out, but it's still not capable of being held long enough for you yet. So that was the, that was the difference in my marathon training that I noticed. Like for the most, like the most, like you get into that type of training and the, the, the Ironman full distance training, it's just, it's a different beast. What you end up getting in your aerobic capacity. then

Jenna-Caer (11:31.382)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (11:37.09)
Yeah

Jenna-Caer (11:47.17)
Thank

Josh (11:47.608)
The muscles start coming along with it. And like you said, it's like, can't believe I'm holding this pace for three and a half hours, three hours. Really cool.

Jenna-Caer (11:53.782)
takes everybody.

That's what they used to say back in the Mark Allen days. He'd at the beginning of the season, he'd let everyone go. He'd be way off the back and no one's anywhere near him. And then just, he would put in that math tone training essentially zone two for months and months and months. And then all the sentence zone two is something that's just blowing everyone out of the water when it's definitely a process, but it, if you're doing long distance endurance sports, it is a key part to the training and foundation of it to be able to go fast, to be able to hold it. That's where we see a lot of these, I think athletes who are focused

on the T100 race series that maybe hadn't put in the miles for Ironman. You see a lot more breakdown in the second half of the race and there were lot of comments about that after the race in Kona from all these athletes who are maybe doing a little bit more speed work, a little bit more intensity, a little less volume. When it comes to the back half of that marathon even with these super shoes which definitely help prevent a lot of the breakdown, there's no no

doing anything about putting in those miles when it comes to running faster than the second half of a marathon.

Josh (12:56.74)
And I think too with the, the, the Ironman training when that's all people did was they focused on Ironman before we had all of these options in series and races and mid course and short course and back to long course. And, and it's kind of made it difficult for the pro athletes. They've got a ton of opportunity, but they've got a lot of decisions to make now too. And we've seen that impact a lot of people's seasons here late, especially as people start to break down, but you start to notice it on the age group.

level two, where the ability to race over and over and over again early in your career, like me, gets a little difficult until you've had those years of that volume stacked on top of each other. Because the recovery process takes longer until your body's used to putting up that volume. And I've noticed it a lot at the end of this year where this recovery from Chicago and then the virtual marathon.

Jenna-Caer (13:38.261)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (13:51.352)
has been a lot longer than anything else I've done this year, but I haven't done two marathons in three weeks before either. So you start to realize how stacking these builds start to add up to and how important it is to have that consistency. So for me, it's been a good eye opening end of the year and just a reminder to be patient with the recovery process too.

Jenna-Caer (14:12.8)
Yeah, definitely the right call kind of scrapping that half marathon and give your body a chance to recover, especially with ocean sex that is fairly early season, give me your body a chance to relax to recover to rest and then start to build back again.

Josh (14:24.578)
Yeah, even my 5K turkey trots going to be a trot. I'm not even going to. No, no PR 5K either, though it's The actual true trick turkey trot.

Jenna-Caer (14:28.854)
Yeah, so you cruise it in twice.

Jenna-Caer (14:36.12)
That's funny. One of the things with like athletes I coach is I find a lot of times you almost have to

convince them that they need that downtime. And I totally understand there's this fear you've worked so hard all year to get this fit, you wanna keep getting fitter, you wanna keep getting faster. And the reality is, if you don't let your body recover physically, like we're talking hormonally, like mentally, there's so many aspects of recovery beyond just muscle soreness. And a lot of athletes will just take that muscle soreness as the indicator whether they're recovered or not. But that is just the start, that's the first round of the recovery. So in order to actually build

back better, you need to let your body hit a point where it can handle that workload again and not just keep slogging and digging yourself in a hole.

Josh (15:19.684)
Yeah. And I think a lot of this too, and it's not new information. I think the new technology does back this even more so, at least on my end too, because I love the data. I love the whoop. love the training stress and the heart rate variability and all that stuff. And it's literally telling me what my coach has been thinking all along and she's old school like your coach. it's like, throw the data out the window. just tell me how you feel.

And a lot of times I feel good. My legs feel strong. So this has also been a reminder that that technology actually does back a lot of this thought process up too, because my resting heart rate has been elevated since the marathon. My HRV is not getting as high as it normally did and my body's still trying to recover. So it was neat to see that actually back up everything that she was already thinking too. for a newer athlete like me, like, okay, it's not like I don't.

trust her, but it's also the science and the data is there too.

Jenna-Caer (16:19.97)
See ya.

Jenna-Caer (16:23.562)
just think when you can quantify it to that degree and show okay legitimately like you're not as good as where you were like you're not ready to perform or train like you were earlier in the season. Speed up!

Josh (16:34.884)
Yeah. And it's a notch for the technology too on its own as well that it does work if you wear it 24 seven and actually trust it and let it do its job.

Jenna-Caer (16:44.97)
Yeah, and it's not only an age group or thing like we saw if you watch that T 100 that lobby chat that they had with like Jack Kelly and Jan Ferdino and stuff. The going commentary when they were talking to the athletes was just, everyone looks tired. Like they're just tired at this point. Right? man, after a race season that starts so early in the year and some like Sam Long started in January like that is.

Josh (17:01.954)
Where are we again? I guess there's a tall building. yeah, Dubai.

Josh (17:12.164)
Well, he'll say December because he did Indian Wells. He was like, that's the start of my season. So legit 12 months.

Jenna-Caer (17:14.785)
yeah, I guess so.

no downtime whatsoever. Yeah, just straight. And you saw he came out with a bang, went out hard, and then he had some great performances, but was definitely in the front end of the season.

Josh (17:29.826)
Yeah, he was peaking early season.

Jenna-Caer (17:32.586)
And we'll definitely chat more about that as we go along, because as I mentioned, we are going to be talking all about the T100 here. But before we jump into that, let's get our usual segments going. Josh, you had no easy job this week trying to narrow down what the social media post of the week would be. But what did you come up with?

Josh (17:51.452)
man, we chatted about this before this, before we started recording. actually the one that I decided to go with was one of the last ones we thought of. And I had forgotten that Sam Laidlow put out a pretty epic reel about what it's like to cheer at one of these events and, and how you don't cheer actually, how not to cheer. And it's a pretty hilarious, almost like a Saturday Night Live skit. but.

Jenna-Caer (18:11.732)
Yeah, how do you feel about this quarantine?

Josh (18:19.382)
It's pretty awesome. The, the, the cheering that he did come up with, and, how he helped root the ladies on or, or not root the ladies on, but, yeah, check out Sam's, Instagram account. There's so much T 100. We talked about this, there's so much stuff out there about the T 100 this weekend that you could go look up and I mean, even Google at this point, cause some of it's so epic, but the family though, posts, it's his most recent post other than his pinned ones on his Instagram account.

So picture him and Taylor Nibb. He's about to high five. So check that out. It's hilarious. Get your volume up. Listen to it. Read the captions. You'll enjoy it if you haven't already.

Jenna-Caer (19:00.288)
You know what I miss? Before T100, when it was still like the PTO races, before it got so, like now it's legitimately serious with lots of money on the line for the series and stuff. a couple years ago with these T100 races, they used to do the pros on either side, shirts off for the people going by. You'd see like the Norwegians and everyone like shirts off, waiting around, them on, where it had a little more of a party atmosphere. Because yes, they're taking the races seriously, but it wasn't.

Josh (19:19.778)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Josh (19:24.836)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (19:27.482)
this series and this intense edit and stuff and the men and women on either side would do it to cheer each other on and those were always entertaining posts too but I think now they're they're a little bit more focused and dialed in and professional on it but those were some fun videos after those races.

Josh (19:43.972)
Especially at this race to where so much was on the line would be my guess that like, right. And the heat now, not so much the men now Sam was there and wasn't racing. So for him, it was a little easier to do something like this, but if you're racing and you're Martin Ben real, you're in your hotel watching the ladies race on the day before. And then the ladies are just exhausted. So do you get out there in time or get out there and watch the guys race? And most of them did. But one of the things that came out of all of this too, was

Jenna-Caer (19:55.477)
Yeah.

Josh (20:11.582)
lack of crowds in Dubai too. it's like, and lack of crowds on the T100 circuit with the way they set it up. So that's something I would imagine they're going to be working on trying to figure out. And it's still an early, in its infancy type sport for most of the world. And I think this season helped build some momentum and we'll see, but it is tough when you don't have the crowds in your world championship.

Jenna-Caer (20:14.006)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (20:28.106)
Mm-hmm.

Jenna-Caer (20:39.454)
Yeah, and we'll definitely get a lot more into the broadcast and what went down within the race as well. But, okay, I had one with the F, but then thought of another one here too, so it might be a double feature today. So the first one, since we're already talking PTO, is Yann Frodeno raced in Dubai this weekend. Little note, apparently he rocked up to one of the fun runs in full carbon shoes and kit and just raced it hard and blew everyone away.

How mad would you be if you show up to your like 5k parkrun or something and Jan Frodeno is out there to smash it? What do you think?

Josh (21:17.808)
man, it's not like it shouldn't be expected. mean, you still look at him and it's like, and now he might've looked a little tired by the end of the race on Sunday, but he's still in phenomenal shape and he could still throw down with most of these guys on tour if he wanted to compete again. yeah, I wasn't surprised to see him out there. was surprised to see Jack Kelly dropping people during the race and I guess dropping the likes of...

Jenna-Caer (21:25.142)
man.

Jenna-Caer (21:34.37)
Thank

Jenna-Caer (21:45.556)
my God.

Josh (21:46.946)
Lucy Charles and Chelsea Sedaro during their run together on during the 5k. But what a cool atmosphere to be around that was a nice, awesome addition to the T100 Dubai. And I think a lot of people did enjoy that as well, but yeah, Jan doesn't surprise me whatsoever. He... No.

Jenna-Caer (22:04.802)
I don't think you can turn off that competitive kind of thing. Like even if you went out there saying I'm just gonna cruise it and have some fun, once the gun goes, how do you, yes.

Josh (22:12.768)
No, and he's still the goat and he's got all these other people trying to take over that status and it's like, nope, I'm still here guys.

Jenna-Caer (22:16.183)
page.

Okay, we don't usually do this but I've got a what the f round two here. It was, this weekend was one of my favorite races I've ever done, the Laguna Phuket Tri over in Thailand and that one is so much fun, crazy hot, insane hills on the bike, an absolute blast out there.

But coming across the finish line, had the winner of the men's race, Hayden Wild, came across and they weren't quite ready for him yet. It was funny to see he goes across the line and kind of mimes the finish line tape and pretends to raise it up even though there's nothing there. And then they kind of scramble off the side and eventually get him his tape in there, but looked pretty entertaining. They were not ready for how fast he was. And he absolutely smashed the course record in the running of it too.

So kudos to him, but man, how would it feel to be too fast for the finish?

Josh (23:13.334)
And they had other races going on. So there were other people like crossing the line, which is why they weren't ready. I would imagine you've been there and done that. So would imagine there's probably like a sprint going on and all this other stuff going on at the same time. And anyway, we were talking before the show too, it happened at the new 70.3 and Jilly to the two female pros. There was no tape ready for them because there was a age group male in front of them who was trying to finish his own race.

Jenna-Caer (23:20.834)
Yeah, they got the screen going on.

Jenna-Caer (23:31.766)
Yeah.

Josh (23:41.24)
didn't realize there was a sprint finish for first and second in the female overall. So they did get the tape up, but barely. So along the same lines, there's a third WTF. If you're an age group male, pay attention to the ladies behind you.

Jenna-Caer (23:43.818)
The win.

Jenna-Caer (23:51.51)
Definitely.

Jenna-Caer (23:55.456)
Yeah, you don't want to be that guy that's blocking the sprint finish at the end there.

Josh (23:59.318)
And by the way, two, mana athletes as well. So those mana kits looked good at that sprint finish.

Jenna-Caer (24:02.358)
That was very cool. There's a good shot of them at the end just like dropped after the finish line. But I will say, you know, they're so fast, the monokits, they breathe well in the heat and make more arrows.

Josh (24:08.355)
Yeah.

Josh (24:15.298)
Not bad, and one of them professional debut, the other ones an up and coming, mean, pretty awesome to see.

Jenna-Caer (24:21.471)
Very cool to see. And then while we're talking about Lucuna Phuket, we should also mention that Kate Wawa was the winner on the women's side too. But if you ever get the chance, that race is so much fun. They do an after party, right? There's a whole banquet afterwards with music and food and drinks and man, it's just such a fun place to ride. Rough roads, crazy hills, but amazing atmosphere out there. So definitely recommend anyone who can get the opportunity. Definitely go over there.

Josh (24:29.22)
Surprise, surprise.

Jenna-Caer (24:49.148)
and do it. We also saw some fun shots of Hayden Wild giving Will McCloy the commentator from Super Try a little pat on the bum as he went by for a bit of encouragement. Although Will would say he was feeling very slow at that moment as the falcon flies by him.

Josh (25:08.009)
It was pretty neat to see how Will reacted, but I think it was that post about Hayden slapping his butt as he passed him by. And then it was a post of Will riding a motorized chair up his staircase because he was so out of shape post race. Kudos Will, good job.

Jenna-Caer (25:24.653)
man, definitely gotta have some fun with it and that's one of those races where yeah they take it seriously but it's definitely a fun atmosphere at the same time and if you ever need some heat prep maybe that's where I need to go before Taiwan just head over to Thailand because that heat and humidity is something else.

Josh (25:46.564)
See the water can't even get out of you.

Jenna-Caer (25:49.066)
And that's a weird one too, because it goes from a saltwater swim to a freshwater swim. So you go from like having the buoyancy of the saltwater to not in this really, I mean, not the best looking water. And then you get to go into the heat on the bike. So, bit of an adventure on that one. Well, let's jump into it. The race we were all watching and talking about this weekend.

Josh (26:01.538)
with no wetsuit on so it doesn't

Josh (26:08.281)
Yeah

Jenna-Caer (26:17.474)
The T100 in Dubai was the grand final there for all the final points going into the series where this would determine who was going to get an automatic contract and who would be named the series winner, which definitely made it some exciting racing. We had an epic day out there and we'll give a little rundown of what happened. It was on both the men's and women's side, a race that you don't want to miss because it did not go to plan for a number of athletes, which kept it interesting.

But we'll start with the women's race and then talk a little bit about it and then we'll go into the men's. On the women's race, we had Sarah Presala leading out of the swim and she was followed by Taylor Spivey and Taylor Nibb, but the top seven were pretty close to each other getting out of the water. Now here's where things went not exactly the way we all expected it to be. Taylor Nibb was not off the front.

just biking crazy time into the rest of the field. And at the same time, we had Ashley Gentle made it out of the swim in the front groove and tacked right onto the back of Taylor Knip. So it was very cool to see some of the fast runners, Ashley Gentle and Julie Duran actually holding onto Knip for the majority of the bike ride. were within striking distance. It took a long time for Taylor to actually drop them. But once Taylor Knip went, she went, she put in time very, very quickly and definitely goes to show her strength there.

But it was a fun race to see with Julie Durant and Ashley Gentle. It seems like both of them were just, okay, in order to have a chance for this, we need to go on the bike. We need to risk it. We need to actually see if we can hang on here because if Taylor Nip gets another seven, 10 minute lead, it's just not gonna happen. Then we got into the run. Go ahead.

Josh (28:03.524)
No, I was just going to say it was very worrisome if you were a Taylor nib fan or in Taylor nibs camp for the first time all year that she didn't have the swim bike combo within the first five, 10 K taken care of. And it was over. So as a fan and as a viewer, it was great to watch you. actually had a race and we weren't concerned about her just running away with it and them not being able to catch her. so yeah.

Jenna-Caer (28:11.35)
Well this is first time, yeah!

Jenna-Caer (28:30.4)
Yeah. And it was really interesting once they got onto the run. So there was a ton of talk of, and even on the commentary of Julie Duran being like the fastest runner out there. And she really has come out of nowhere for to suddenly being one of the most competitive runners. And at least while I was watching us saying, well, they have short memories if they're calling Julie Duran like the fastest runner out there. Ashley Gentle has had some crazy runs throughout the sport, but once they're out on the run, Ashley Gentle started putting time into Taylor Nib quickly, but

It was at a point where if you worked out the maths, was going to be near sprint finish down to the wire kind of thing with the time she was putting in. then Julie Drawn, who again, they were talking about as being the fastest runner, she was losing time to Ashley Gentle throughout there. So it seemed like she was going to be off the back and not factor. But in the end, Taylor Nip just...

She's never been under pressure on these runs. And I think that might be a factor of why we've never seen her as the strongest runner, because she hasn't had to be. And she's definitely put in a lot of work to develop it. But we had Taylor Nibb take the win. And in the closing kilometers, Ashley Gentle seems like she had some nutrition issues in there and just started to kind of fall apart, walking, stumbling, whether it was the heat or nutrition, it just did not.

look good on there and so Julie Duran came up and ran past her in the last like couple kilometers to take second place and then Ashley Gentle came in in third. But one of the surprising things too, Flora Duffy, fastest run, well I guess I shouldn't say surprising, but Flora Duffy came through with the fastest run of the day, moving up into the fourth after being 10th off the bike so that was a pretty impressive performance for her too but.

What a race. Like it just at no point was it the Taylor Nib show that we've become used to, but she still pulled it out for a well-earned world championship title.

Josh (30:15.703)
Yeah.

Josh (30:24.228)
She still had a good, she had a great run. mean, and people talked about it all year. You could kind of like, worry a little less about her run and that six minutes she needed in front of Ash Gentle at the beginning of the year got down to less than two, two and a half now. And she was able to hold on. So I don't think she likes to have smaller gaps. think she would rather have the bigger gaps, but she's got to get used to people catching up to her. Julie, Julie Doran's only coming.

Jenna-Caer (30:32.834)
you

Jenna-Caer (30:47.19)
There's a lot more looking back. Yeah.

Josh (30:52.26)
and just starting to come, I find it interesting too. I think the Olympians had the runs down and it was like, where were the typical runners? Anniehawk wasn't there. think Cat was like third, it was, it was, it was Slore Duffy. Taylor Spivey second fastest run on the day. And man, if she can learn how to ride the TT bike, she's right there on the swim. She's right there on the run. Throw a bike together and

Jenna-Caer (31:00.258)
Thank

Josh (31:20.066)
man, she's in this and she almost crept into the top 10 for contracts and came in late. we definitely had some people make up some gaps and earn some money moving from outside the top 10 in. So contracts alone, they're guaranteed. But on top of that, the money that they earn, like Flora Duffy made an extra 30K alone in her season winnings from moving from 11th to fifth in this season series.

Jenna-Caer (31:26.849)
See ya.

Jenna-Caer (31:47.361)
is huge.

Josh (31:49.728)
And on top of that, yeah, by the way, here's a annual salary that you get next year and go book your travel and go do all the racing and training and the aero testing that you need to do because you now have an actual paycheck that you know.

Jenna-Caer (31:53.718)
Yeah... Locked it.

Jenna-Caer (32:01.526)
That's huge. Yeah, that's absolutely huge. So many of these athletes, that's like life changing to be able to know they have that foundation of a solid salary going in and then the prize money is extra on top of it. And you can actually plan, like you said, to do that testing, to invest in your sport, to get better and better and really raise the level above. But man, on that run though, was there any point before she stopped to walk that you didn't think Ashley Gentle was gonna be in it to contend?

Josh (32:28.334)
No, because the gap was coming from... It was what? Two and a half off the bike somewhere around there? And...

Jenna-Caer (32:33.346)
And we knew how good she is in the heat and just you think for sure like I was so hoping for that sprint finish at the end like just the times were lining up beautifully and I was like, this is gonna be so good.

Josh (32:43.212)
And especially the way she caught Julie Duran. was like, okay, well she's having a day because it's not like Julie can't run. And we've seen Julie run Taylor nip down and come close to getting back too. So, right. Ashley's having a day and she's got it under a minute and down to 50, I think or so that we once saw. And it was like closing quickly. And then it started pulling back the other way.

Jenna-Caer (32:47.392)
Yes.

Josh (33:06.594)
And I don't know if it was the heat or, mean, cause Taylor and it obviously had some stomach issues. were, there were definitely some issues with nutrition and being able to hold down what they were taking in and probably taking in a lot more than they trained with in that type of heat. All factors combined played, played into it. on the run, we, saw some epic blowups on the run on both men's and women's side of the race.

Jenna-Caer (33:21.473)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (33:29.684)
Yeah, no, it was just, it was such a fun race to watch. And you saw, we've never seen Taylor Nib look back so much during an event. Like on the bike, it seemed like she's almost surprised and we knew the technical parts of it.

Josh (33:42.146)
He was looking back coming out of the Aussie exit. Holy crap, what is Ash Gentle doing there?

Jenna-Caer (33:46.37)
know. And like, we knew that she'd be losing some time in the technical parts of the bike and she definitely could use some work on the technical side of it. But I don't think in any world going in, she thought she was going to have Julie Duran and Ash Gentle on her wheel for that long.

it like that was impressive. You got to give kudos like as gentle change up for coaching to more of a cycling focus and going after it. And it just seemed like such this mentality of I'm going to go all in and win or bust kind of thing like because she wouldn't have I can't imagine she was putting out the power she usually does to hold on to Taylor Nip. She had to be going pretty solidly, we'll say.

Josh (34:32.76)
Yeah, I think she's way more dialed in on the bike right now than she's ever been and she's trusting her run.

She still has time to work on the bike. This is a newer setup and newer situation with her coach. So I think there's a lot of work that will come into next year. And she didn't have much to say in her post today as she was getting ready to fly home. But I think she knows she was close already and next year, okay, she's got a lot of work to do. But she's not looking forward to that off season, I would imagine. It's gonna be tough, but she knows she's almost there.

Jenna-Caer (34:56.278)
do it.

Jenna-Caer (35:07.932)
Yeah.

Josh (35:10.36)
Going into that race yesterday, Taylor Nib was in a different world. And that world got a little smaller on Saturday. And people realized, okay, she's still there. She's still the GOAT. She's still the greatest. And, but we're getting closer. And now there's a couple of them getting closer at the same time. And now you add some of these other ITU and Olympic athletes coming out that might get contracts next year. And we'll talk about who we think might.

Jenna-Caer (35:15.414)
That was beautiful.

Josh (35:39.598)
get some of those hut shots and things like that, or who will accept them. but I think there's going to be a whole new flock of people coming after her too, cause she's raced against them in the Olympic distance and she hasn't done great, but she's been focused a lot on the middle distance and 70.3 and a hundred K are definitely her, her specialty, but more people are getting there.

Jenna-Caer (36:00.18)
Yeah, and I'm curious, so she has been testing with Ghibli and stuff too, so I'm wondering if she made any position changes that really helped kind of dial in the aerodynamics of it as well. Because what we're finding is there is some crazy time to be had when you look at the Magnus Deetloves and stuff of the world where you have those aerodynamics dialed in. Man, it makes such a big difference on that race speed.

Josh (36:08.13)
Yeah.

Josh (36:22.294)
Or Magnus, we'll get into that.

Jenna-Caer (36:23.734)
No, I know. Okay, well, let's jump in to the men's race here. So men's race, had Australia's Aaron Royal led out of the swim, and he was closely followed by Alistair Brownlee, Martin Van Riel. So all the main players, a lot of the front group were all together in there. We saw a lead group form right away with Van Riel, Brownlee.

T.S. Mergier, and they were definitely pushing it there. We had Brownlee, of course, not free of issues in transitions. So he got a little off the back in that first T1, but managed to make it back up to the group there. And then we had Magnus Dietlev. As we mentioned, he was closing the gap, making his way up. He didn't make it on that front group in the swim. And then he had a mechanical where he had his seat post dropped. Now,

That seems to be the mechanical of the day in recent weeks where happens one or two times. I wonder if there are any male 30 to 34. There we go. No, sure. It's so tough with these when you're taking bikes apart, putting them back together and those speed bumps, those were aggressive.

Josh (37:22.468)
They jumped in his luggage when he left Kona.

Josh (37:37.678)
Serious bunny hops.

Jenna-Caer (37:39.018)
right? Like you saw there were some very well executed bunny hops and then there were some very not attempt

Josh (37:46.51)
Martin's bunny hop late was really, really cool because they replayed that one. Kyle Smith had some good ones.

Jenna-Caer (37:52.378)
Yeah, was definitely the way to go not put any pressure and then they see especially with Magnus too He's got a whole lot of weight on the back with those three bottles and stuff too like he's Man, so that was that was a bummer to see that he had to pull over he lost about a minute and a half pulling over to the Mechanical assistance with the bike techs there, but they got him back off and riding that's gonna be hard to come back to but

Josh (38:16.913)
It's a minute and half of stop time, you know in real life time that's even another 30 45 seconds mentally your body's cooling off like it's not easy

Jenna-Caer (38:26.156)
And then when you're going hard and then go to a full stop,

and then start trying to ride hard again. That lactic burn is no joke. That is painful when you're trying to jump back in there because they're not riding easy. But yeah, so they head out on the run and we had Fanriel and Rico Bogan who all throughout the commentary, they were writing him off completely because traditionally he has not performed well in the heat. had Alistair Brownlee again had a little bit of an issue in T2 so he was not with there. He was a couple seconds back.

the front of the group there, which even he says himself afterwards might have been a good thing because then he started to run his own pace instead. But we had Van Riel and Rico Bogan, they were running head to head all through it this

Josh (39:13.676)
And Kyle too, so it was like San Francisco all over again, really.

Jenna-Caer (39:17.376)
Yeah, until Cal started to drop off the back a little bit, but like the whole time everyone was just like, no, no, Rico Baguini's gonna melt in the heat, he's gonna shit down. Young kid, he hasn't figured it out yet. And they're like, he's still there. he's still there.

Wait a second, this actually erased and then Kyle Smith drops off the back and Rico's still gone. And I think that really shocked a lot of people when it came in. And in the end, we would see Martin Van Riel and Rico Bogan into the last couple of kilometers until Van Riel did what he did, does the real deal, surged ahead in the couple of kilometers before the finish line to take the win. had Rico Bogan held on strong for second place. And the surprise was where Alistair Brownlee came from fourth place.

and actually ended up overtaking Kyle Smith, but not before giving everyone another heart attack. he's, my goodness, just about to pass Kyle Smith and trips on some gravel, goes down to his knees on the run, and they're like kilometer, two kilometers out from the finish line, has to bridge back up to Kyle Smith and manages to take third place in the end with Kyle Smith in fourth.

Josh (40:08.772)
Literally right before.

Jenna-Caer (40:29.474)
What a race! Like that was so good to watch. Definitely was not... boring.

Josh (40:31.138)
Yeah.

Josh (40:34.892)
And the other storylines too, which I think the T 100 did a very good job. And we talked about this before of capsulating and capturing the information on where this impacted the top 10. And you could see the top 10 changing in the top two and three. And I mean, you're talking 70 grand between first and second, you're talking another 50 grand between second and third. And, with Kyle and Rico and Magnus dropped like that.

Jenna-Caer (40:47.947)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (41:02.643)
at all times.

Josh (41:03.336)
it all impacted it. And then each move and each position changed it again. And there was a chance that Kyle might've dropped out of number two and he was able to hold onto that. you talk about Magnus having to stop full for a minute and a half. Well, the other side of this is when you fall and trip like Alistair did and you get right back up, there's almost an actual positive impact to the adrenaline that burst that you get and your body actually picks back up.

Jenna-Caer (41:17.333)
of

Josh (41:32.228)
pretty quickly and you almost get a power boost from it. It's hit that mushroom sign. It's interesting to see. And I think he actually might even mentioned it, but I said something to my wife when we were watching it. That was something that you could almost see it kicked him right back into gear and he never lost any momentum. was like Kyle Smith saw him go down and thought he was going to be okay. And nope, it was probably another 20 seconds and Alistair was by him after that next hill, which man, that hill was brutal every time they had to go through it.

Jenna-Caer (41:37.548)
Thanks

Jenna-Caer (41:51.81)
sorry.

Jenna-Caer (41:59.538)
that's like nasty. Like there's the uphill there's logging up, but that downhill, if you've trashed your quads, that'd be painful. That would just hurt. Yeah.

Josh (42:05.388)
Yeah. And finding the little areas of shade that they were trying to get. Kyle Smith was up on the curb trying to find it.

Jenna-Caer (42:12.726)
Yeah, I ran on the curbs the whole time. Man, it sounds like they were very much on top of having ice everywhere. We saw a lot of ice and helmets, just trying to keep athletes cool throughout it because they're racing in the heat of the day with some of the, I guess, road closures and having the amateur race in the morning. So they were starting in the peak of the heat of the day, which

a lot of the conversation going into it was all the athletes saying like this is a lot hotter and more humid than they thought it would be. I think the assumption was a lot more dry in Dubai but man it sounds like there were some nasty temperatures out there.

Josh (42:47.69)
of ice and helmets and ice that wouldn't come out of helmets as they tried to put them on. So a lot of extra dumping of the helmets until you actually got all the ice out.

Jenna-Caer (42:51.988)
Yeah, Sam Long, was kind of a special. Yeah, well, and that's another one. We had Sam Long, he improved his swim from last he wasn't six minutes back, he was four minutes back, which you think a race in the heat, only four minutes back, I thought we'd see Sam Long featuring a lot more in this, but again, it seems like a lot of hands was inspired, yeah.

Josh (43:13.899)
He lost time on the bike.

Jenna-Caer (43:16.192)
which you don't usually see from what do call them, the strongest legs in triathlon in there.

Josh (43:20.524)
Yeah. So it does show you, I mean, that, that lead pack was what six guys upfront for the most part of the bike. That dynamic is, is hard for him to compete with. And in Miami, it was in Oval and there wasn't as much of that. And he was able to catch up and cause nobody was really drafting in that race. but when you get six guys running off the front together, working together.

The only thing that I heard coming out of it that I think Martin might've been the one that mentioned it. He would have written a little differently now that he's done that race is not be fifth or sixth wheel and let others dictate the U-turns and the turnarounds and get upfront so that you're taking your speed into those turns and not letting others. So it certainly impacted the front of the race in those aspects. He might've written a little differently if he had to do it over, for Sam.

to not drop into the twos or three minute back on a bike ride. It's that's the dynamics of the race, but I think it's also, he's just tired. He's just, he's put a lot of miles on those legs this year and he's, he even started talking about in his latest YouTube leading into this and his prep for it hit right out of schedule. And if he felt like he wanted to change it that morning, he would.

Jenna-Caer (44:30.731)
Yep.

Josh (44:46.357)
and it was just like you started going off a field and it's like, imagine if you let all your athletes go off a field. It's like, I know you know what you're doing, Sam. I know how you know how to trust your body, but there's a reason why people have coaches. They know how to tell you how you're supposed to feel as well.

Jenna-Caer (44:48.076)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (45:01.992)
Yeah, and I think where I was starting to question if he would have a good race or not is how many times he mentioned that he's been racing since early season. Like it was something that he was constantly bringing up and talking. was like, okay, that might be something. He's tired.

Josh (45:13.91)
letting it out now. Well, it impacted him for sure because if you stuck around and watched the full post race, full on buckets of tears coming out of, and he just couldn't hold it together. And you don't see that side of him too often at all, especially when he moved up, not moved up, but he held on to sixth overall in the season series. So he's got a contract next year. He still made a good amount of money.

Jenna-Caer (45:19.284)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Josh (45:40.888)
He didn't go from third or fourth in the series up to first or second, but that was a long shot. And I don't think anyone thought that was going to happen going into this race, but I get it. He expects to be top one, two, three in the world. And he didn't show that. And he spent a lot of time away from his family trying to race this year, I, he, he should be proud of the season he had to, because you saw those guys who had good early seasons. They locked in their contracts.

for next year. That's a huge piece of, we just talked about on the, the, the lady side, right? So Magnus that lifts Sam Long, Yuri Kulan, all won early season or all played raced well early season. Sam had back to back seconds. Magnus won Miami, Yuri won Singapore. These guys are all contract next year. Sam Lalo late in the year showed up and won London, but he finished 11th. Not guaranteed a contract next year. It's Sam, he'll get one, but

Jenna-Caer (46:11.232)
Yeah, absolutely.

Josh (46:39.16)
Freddie Funk showed up there and he's like, I'm getting in the top 10 and sure enough, got into the top 10 week after getting married.

Jenna-Caer (46:42.166)
gonna do it again. Well, yeah. Well, and think that's why people enjoy Sam so much is that he does wear his heart on his sleeve. He does talk about what he's going through. He opens up a lot to the audience. So that was something.

It was kind of uncomfortable to watch, I think stuff like that really just shows how real this is, how much it means to them. It's not just a race day one and done, move on and stuff. It's, you know, it's providing for your family, reaching your goals, meeting your own expectations. And it was, that vulnerability was, I think, good to see and just see how much it means to them, right?

Josh (47:17.016)
Yeah. And I think as a broadcasting crew, they're trying to figure out what's about to come too. Cause the interviews before that were a whole bunch of F-bombs that they didn't want dropped on air either. So.

Jenna-Caer (47:21.378)
Thanks

Jenna-Caer (47:26.018)
Well, let's talk about the commentary and the race production side of things. So obviously this has been the first year that the T100 has come through.

And they have been progressively getting better and better as they go through the different races. But I think this is the first one where I can say they nailed it. Like I was all the things that we've been talking about and wanting to see, like having the commentators offsite, like on location talking together. That went fantastic. But then you have down at the site, like the athletes who are supposed to be racing, like the Lucy Charles, Sam Laidlose, who have so much insight and are so close to this series, providing.

just on-site commentary of what's going on and just the back and forth with a couple little cut-ins of the pre-taped interviews. Like they really covered it well, I found, and the commentary team is really starting to find their groove in how they work together in it, which was fun to see as well. And then we had a bunch of the timing things that we've been asking for. Like you said, they've actually had the rankings of if the virtual standings right now, if everyone finishes where they are at this moment, here's how

Josh (48:29.614)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (48:40.036)
the series actually finishes out and we're getting time and splits like they It all seemed to come together in a way we haven't seen before which made it a lot more entertaining to watch

Josh (48:49.796)
Yeah. The only thing I did wonder is how accurate the heart rate meters were at certain times because Martin, Martin, very real was this close to dying like 10 times what 99%, which is it.

Jenna-Caer (48:55.894)
Yeah. A lot. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's tough because it's athlete provided thresholds where you're like, ehh.

Josh (49:05.176)
Yeah, yeah.

But he would go from like 90 % to 99. So you knew it was just a glitch. most likely, but no, thought the overall commentating was really good. And you got to remember too, they're trying to attract a bigger audience and not everyone is listening to triathlon podcasts and hosting triathlon podcasts or racing triathlons, right? They're trying, trying to make this educational for those people who are just new to the sport. And I thought, like you said, adding the Lucy's and the Sam's perspective.

Jenna-Caer (49:22.722)
No? I don't know.

Josh (49:34.062)
puts it on a level of like, what are the athletes thinking? And you and I have that already in our heads. Like we know what they're thinking. We know what we think they're thinking in transition, but they kind of laid it out. This is how we would think. This is what I would be thinking.

Jenna-Caer (49:47.586)
No, I think that makes a big difference and there is really, really good to see. The only thing I think they had their run paces off in there. So if you looked at the run paces going through it, you'd see people making up time like Ashley Gentles making up time on Taylor Nip, but she'd show her pace slower in there. I think they had like the average run pace going through it. And I was just like, no, that can't be right.

Josh (50:07.32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And a lot of times it was a lot of it was based off of the timing mats and hitting the different checkpoints to where it would update and stuff. And I think there were times where the leader wasn't the leader and that at the pass it already happened. So those are things that, mean, eventually those have to get worked out. I mean, we know we talk about that with Ironman all the time and it's like, how can you not have the leaderboard be better? But he won 100 definitely got better this year as the season went along and it was much, much more enjoyable to watch. I thought.

Jenna-Caer (50:21.964)
Yes.

Jenna-Caer (50:26.591)
or yeah.

Josh (50:40.376)
the way they've laid out their courses and make it easier to have that looped atmosphere, it is a fan friendly and it was really fun to watch.

Jenna-Caer (50:48.265)
Yeah, it seems like it all kind of came together and this time it wasn't because I watched obviously on delay. I was not up at 2 a.m.

watching the race as much as I'd love triathlon and geeking out on this stuff. I was not going to be up at 2am to watch it. So the last ever one of the previous races, I think it was London where it was too late for me to watch. They kept showing use this QR code to see all the data and what's going on because they didn't have it on the screen. I'm like, well, I can't do that because I'm not watching it live. So I don't know what's going on in there. So this time it all kind of came together where I did not feel the urge whatsoever to try to look at that because they were actually relaying the information in a really

Josh (51:15.362)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (51:25.044)
And they had split screens going on and showing not just the leaders showing they had Flora Duffy on screen a lot as she's running up through the back. So I think they really nailed the race production this time. Like it was head and shoulders above what they've done in the past. So that's exciting to see.

Josh (51:41.028)
Yeah. And with 20 racers, you should be able to tell the story of most of the racers because they've all had a season long story for the most part. And think there were a few pieces where they missed, okay, where is Sam Long? Why isn't Sam Long coming? there's some, like Paula Finley normally in the top four or five at every one of these races. Where's she? Like, why is she dropping back? And what does she look like? Why is she like, those are the types of things I thought that if somebody was not where they normally are, what happened?

and just give a quick look in. It's not like you don't have a camera there. You've got stationary cameras along the course and these people are all doing what? Six loops, seven loops. So I think on the run you could have seen a little bit more coverage of the back and just to give an update like, this is your athlete, your favorite person and this is who you follow. They know people like Paula have a huge following of their own with the TTL brand and people watching for that. like

Jenna-Caer (52:26.668)
Mm.

Josh (52:34.36)
Why not give a little chime in to things like that and grab a little bit more audience appreciation.

Jenna-Caer (52:38.082)
That's it.

Yeah, definitely. And then the only thing where it really didn't go well in the broadcast was just the spectators on the side of the road. That's the tough part with kind of going to some of these iconic locations. If it's a little bit outside of the city center, people aren't trath on geeks like us, so they're probably not going to travel. There's like a 25 minute drive to get out to where they were to watch the race. And it's tough with the age group racing too. Like it's good if they're having it on site, but if you're racing on Sunday, you're probably not going to be out Saturday.

spectating in the heat all day watching these athletes. You have places like London, there is a ton of people on site.

watching it because it was right in the middle of London, San Francisco. You would have had more if the weather wasn't so terrible, but that was just the whole weather delay in there. But a lot of the locations, they do want to have them in these iconic places, where unfortunately, that means sometimes it's not the most accessible. And if you want a sport to feel big and important and something that's a thing, the audience definitely makes a big difference.

Josh (53:42.148)
So, mean, you want to make it, and they've talked about the festival aspect of it all. And you're going to have one of those next year in a month, in a bunch of them. They want them all to be that. think in Dubai, because I know a friend of mine was there that week for a blockchain, like Web3 conference in that same hotel and resort area.

Jenna-Caer (53:47.009)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (54:08.18)
No way.

Josh (54:11.138)
Okay. Well, this is what this area typically is used for conferences and events have a huge triathlon conference or something like that. Bring in the industry and attract them because otherwise you're like you said, you're not going to get people to come out to this area of Dubai or travel to that area of Dubai to go see this race. I know there wasn't a lot of extra time to plan it this year because it wasn't supposed to be the grand final either. so there is that factor.

This ended up being the final race when they thought it was, there was still going to be another one. And I think if maybe they made it more of that festival atmosphere, made a big expo around it, cause that's what this place is built for. then, okay, at least you're bringing in triathlon fans or endurance sports fans, something like that of that nature and buy out the whole hotel and don't let a tech conference be the people that are out there cheering, trying to figure out how do they clip into their feet in their shoes and what is going on?

Jenna-Caer (55:02.466)
They're not going to be out there.

Jenna-Caer (55:08.029)
Not a lot of crypto track lead Well, let's take a look so with the 200 series beyond trying to win the race and get some prize money here athletes were racing to get into the top 10 so that they could get an Automatic contract for next year. So it sounds like the top 10 get an automatic contract The next six are decided by the PTO world rankings and stand-up performances, and then they'll have four hot shot

Josh (55:12.452)
There's some, but not a lot.

Jenna-Caer (55:36.647)
members as well.

Next year we're looking at the T100 series for the men's side. start out with the guaranteed contracts go to Martin Van Riel, well earned, Kyle Smith, Rico Bogan, Magnus Dietlev, Alistair Brownlee, Sam Long, Matthias Margier, Peter Heimrich, Yuri Kuhlen, and Frederick Funk. So they will be locked in next year and we had one of a question, we had a question from Instagram there asking who do we think will take the contract and who won't? I just say

from that top ten, I don't see anyone turning it down.

Josh (56:12.964)
I don't see anyone turning it down either. it's guaranteed money on the, especially on the men's side being what we believe is still going to be a Nice world championship. lot of rumblings about that potentially changing too. But being a Nice year, are some, and Sam Long's already qualified for Nice. So does that impact him or not? Probably not. Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (56:24.969)
Thank you.

Jenna-Caer (56:39.746)
If you have guaranteed money, come in.

Josh (56:41.508)
It's an annual salary that is not offered by anyone else in the sport and T100 is doing that. So I think all the 10 men are going to. Now, when you talk about Kona on the women's side, and I'll run down the top 10 there, you got Taylor Nibb, Ash Gentle, Julie Duran, Kat Matthews, Flora Duffy, Lucy Byrum, again, another one who had a good season early on and kind of just showed up every week. Laura Phillip.

Jenna-Caer (57:06.774)
Yeah, consistent.

Josh (57:08.64)
Indy Lee, Imogen Simmons and Paula Finley held on to 10th, almost dropping out of the top 10. But if Paula Finley is going to race triathlon next year, she's going to take her contract. I think most of these athletes are taking this contract.

Josh (57:28.862)
I can't see any of the women not taking it either.

Jenna-Caer (57:31.97)
Yeah, you'll definitely see like there's a few worried questions. Yeah, I was gonna say Laura felt you question what her priority will be next year, but for well even Kat Matthews to like she'll definitely take a contract but what are her priorities next year?

Josh (57:34.616)
Maybe Laura Philip.

Josh (57:46.606)
Right, right.

Jenna-Caer (57:47.81)
I think most of these athletes within the top 10, especially on the women's side, their focus is still middle distance, less so than Ironman outside of like I said, the, the Kat Matthews and Laura Phillips. But I think most of them are going to be dialed in for next year to really take advantage of it. Because like you said, it's guaranteed money and contract going ahead. What was interesting from this season, though, we only had 11 of the 20 female athletes actually fulfill their

contracts this year, which was surprising to see. Now two of them were due to pregnancy and Matt Leo and stuff, which is totally fair. But we saw, I guess, lot fewer women actually.

fulfilling their contracts than I thought we would on the women's side, especially and then on the men's side, think we had six didn't fulfill them either. And a lot of that was due to the injury clause that they were using. So what do we think with PTO? Are these people ever gonna get invited back or what do you think?

Josh (58:48.526)
So you're looking at like the anti hogs of the world and the I mean, pallet Brown was close.

Jenna-Caer (58:58.208)
Yeah, Lucy Charles Barkley, but I think they'll offer her.

Josh (58:59.894)
Lucy, Lucy's still going to be one of the four. I would imagine Taylor Spivey is going to be one of the four. Any Hog? I don't know. I don't know if they would. Any Hog is going to be on, do I have one more Kona World Championship in me? And I think they know that. They've probably had these conversations. It sounds like they had plenty of conversations with her throughout the year.

Jenna-Caer (59:04.002)
for sure.

Jenna-Caer (59:08.789)
it.

Jenna-Caer (59:18.668)
huh.

Josh (59:27.052)
I don't know how many of the 11 through 20 athletes are going to be part of the next 10 that we're talking about. So the six that are part of the rankings. then we got to wait until after 70.3 Worlds to figure out what the rankings look like before they announce that. then the four hot shots, four hot shots are going to go to your Olympic athletes if they take it, right? So the Georgia Taylor Browns of the world and whether or not they want to take it.

Jenna-Caer (59:51.202)
short course. Yeah, yeah for sure.

Jenna-Caer (59:56.87)
in one. No, definitely. And I'll be I'm curious to see with those six that they base off rankings. I heard it said like rankings and standout performances. Are they going to just roll down the list? Or like a PTO rankings from the bottom ranked person who's already in and kind of roll down it? Or are they going to kind of pick and choose people that they can validate as having standout performances and still being on the rankings that curious to see there?

Josh (59:57.016)
That would be my guess, yeah.

Josh (01:00:24.728)
They definitely left it open, right? To, to stand out performances. And so, okay. Well, Annie hog definitely is going to fall into that category. If they wanted her to, she had plenty of standout of performances this year. She just didn't have them at T 100. it'll be interesting. I think Laura Phillip would be my female who I don't know if is going to take a contract. And here's my thinking behind that. I know it's crazy to not take a.

Jenna-Caer (01:00:33.712)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (01:00:37.952)
Not at 200.

Josh (01:00:54.296)
contract for the year, but her thing has always been to win the world championship. And now her name's on that list.

Jenna-Caer (01:01:00.834)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:01:02.946)
Winning it back to back is a different level. And what happened to Lucy Charles this year, trying to win a second world title back to back, focusing on the T 100 and trying to drop in to Nice. Couldn't do it. So does Laura Phillips say, I'm taking off from the T 100 and I'm going to win Kona and then I'm going to get offered a T 100 contract the following year anyways, cause I'm a back to back world champ.

Jenna-Caer (01:01:22.326)
when.

Jenna-Caer (01:01:30.754)
And that's the thing, it's not just winning the world champs again, it's winning the world champs in Kona. And that is absolutely a different beast, right? That is, you can win a world championships. We all know, like Kristen Blum won a men world championships and stuff, but it's still.

Josh (01:01:34.932)
in corner. She hasn't done that.

Jenna-Caer (01:01:47.058)
Kona. Kona is the absolute pinnacle there, so to be able to win back-to-back. And it sounds like next year too, so they're aiming to have 8 to 10 T100 races, and the last numbers I've been hearing is that they'll have to do six races to be eligible to be into the final rankings, right? So now you're talking there's a lot more racing that you would have to do to be able to fulfill that contract.

Now, is it worth putting that time in the T100 just going through the paces? If Kona is that focus, I think that's where we're going to see a big delineation between the long course athletes who are doing T100 and the middle distance athletes that start to specialize in this and make it their thing. I think we're going to see that Ironman Pro Series and the T100 Series separate out even more because you're just not going to be able to do six T100 races competitively and race three Ironman.

Josh (01:02:17.966)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (01:02:41.411)
pans and the 70.3s. That's a lot.

Josh (01:02:47.146)
It is a lot. And here's the followup to all that. Then on the other side of the ball, you've got probably the richest human in triathlon at the end of this season coming out of topo would be my guess is Kat Matthews. She did both series fourth in the T 100 and she's about to win the pro series. And second at the world champs in Nice and

Jenna-Caer (01:03:03.426)
What? yeah.

Jenna-Caer (01:03:14.646)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:03:14.792)
she's had a heck of a season and done it all. So that's the thing. There's one person on both the male and female side that you could say has had a year like she's had.

Jenna-Caer (01:03:18.562)
She's not the only one who's done it all and pulled it off.

Jenna-Caer (01:03:25.698)
Yeah, guess Magnus has had a solid year there too, kind of doing both the changes.

Josh (01:03:29.462)
Yeah, and Magnus, but he's not going to show up 70.3 Worlds. He's not going to be in the Pro Series.

Jenna-Caer (01:03:34.85)
True? Man, just yeah.

Josh (01:03:37.764)
She's walking home with a heck of a paycheck at the end of this year with a guaranteed check for next year.

Jenna-Caer (01:03:40.226)
I mean, right? That's the crazy part. yeah, we definitely saw a lot of pros go for it. Like we saw Fenella Langer, she allegedly turned down a pro contract for T100 and she was going all on the Ironman series and that didn't work out. So I think especially in triathlon where it's still such a small sport and so much can go wrong, guaranteed money is a rarity and something that is very, very, very hard to pass up.

Josh (01:04:08.26)
By the way, there's one person we haven't mentioned on the female side and we've talked about the maternity leave aspect. Triathlon Insights put this up and they had kind of a poll of who we people thought would be added that should be added. And they put out the results of it and there was a name missing. was like, Holly Lawrence, who had a great Miami race for the T100 and then announced she was pregnant and has been gone for the season.

Jenna-Caer (01:04:11.478)
Mm.

Jenna-Caer (01:04:27.958)
Yeah.

Josh (01:04:35.79)
keep seeing her social and she's back training and riding and being a mom. And how does she impact into this next year as far as standout performance? Miami could be considered that a hot shot. don't know how they does Holly Lawrence get offered a contract next year.

Jenna-Caer (01:04:53.29)
I'm curious to see, I can't...

I can't see them not, especially with how much they've put around supporting like female athletes and having the mat leave options in there. I think there's a lot of like her points will kind of transition over having that mat leave or that ability to jump back in. But I don't see from a PR perspective, I do not see a world where they do not offer her another contract like from a purely PR side, right? She absolutely deserves it and should be on that start list. But yeah, I'd be hard pressed to not see them.

Josh (01:05:18.594)
I agree.

Jenna-Caer (01:05:25.384)
give her one. It's so funny you see a big divide between some women just get stronger and better and faster after having kids and some go the other way like it's really yeah it goes one or two ways very significantly you don't see kind of average performances afterwards so be cool to see her have a comeback and have a really great continued career afterwards because she definitely keeps it interesting.

Josh (01:05:25.784)
I'm actually intrigued to see what kind of season she can have too, so I'm like excited to see her come back.

Josh (01:05:54.594)
Yeah. And I think the one last thing I'll say about serious too is, man, you could see those Kona guys yesterday in Dubai, literally filling out the end of the race. Like, when are they going to finish? Are they going to get here? Rudy von Berg, Leon Chevalier. was like, Leon still moved up in the top 20. So he actually made money yesterday for the season series. but man, those Kona people were, they were pulling up the rear at the end of Dubai.

Jenna-Caer (01:06:07.832)
You're just crap.

Josh (01:06:24.954)
Again, kudos to Magnus for the day he had it. Without the mechanical, it is a different day and a different race and a different ending to the season series.

Jenna-Caer (01:06:27.276)
Seriously.

Jenna-Caer (01:06:34.358)
Absolutely. Well, I think that's about it. We did want to have one special mention here with the race going on this weekend. We have Ironman Kazumel and it's not one of the ones in the pro series, but there is a name on there that some people I think will be very excited and curious to see if he actually comes to the start line. Is the real deal. Martin Van Riel is on the start list to do his first Ironman in Kazumel, which seems to be a common one for the first time as here, but.

What do we think? Is Martin Van Riel actually going to show up to do an Ironman and get a knee scott for next year?

Josh (01:07:09.902)
So I think when we had him on the episode a few weeks ago and you go back to listen to that, think if you have been watching our social, you've seen us share that episode as one of the new YouTube options and it's also on Spotify and all other streaming, but check that out. But on that episode, I believe he talked about how fun Nice would be and how well it suits him. So if the race is actually in Nice, like we think it's supposed to be.

That does suit him well. So why not go try and qualify for it? And he's not in the pro series. So what does 70.3 Worlds mean? He's already the best 100K guy in the world. He's already won a world championship this year. Why not go try and qualify for Nice and in a race where you know you can climb that mountain and descend with the best of them.

Jenna-Caer (01:07:50.709)
And look.

Jenna-Caer (01:07:55.53)
And you know what? He's fit. He's ready. The start list, like it's a solid start list. But if he has to get something like a top five for a spot for knees next year, think he's absolutely capable of it. Obviously we haven't seen him at Ironman yet, but I would not be in any way, shape or form surprised to see that he just smashed out in Ironman.

Josh (01:08:14.66)
No, I think it's like six spots too. I mean, could he finish in the top six having a so-so day just by staying aero on the bike and going for a jog? Probably.

Jenna-Caer (01:08:21.865)
Right?

Jenna-Caer (01:08:26.955)
we get to see well definitely Yeah, yeah, the heat won't be any problem after this weekend

Josh (01:08:27.862)
And he's heat trained.

Josh (01:08:32.844)
No.

Jenna-Caer (01:08:34.282)
Well, we will definitely follow along and let you guys know next week. We're going to have a little kind of break in the racing with, we've got bustling coming up the week or December 1st in there, and then we got 70.3 worlds a couple of weeks afterwards. So still a bit of racing to come. We're going to keep putting up those question posts on our Instagram. So if you have any training or racing questions, we have experienced coaches on here too, so we can jump into some of your questions as the racing starts to quiet down over the off season, but we are not done.

with the racing yet which sounds absolutely crazy to see. We got one more pro series race and then another world championships to go and I cannot wait to see the start list for the 70.3 world see who's actually

Josh (01:09:16.354)
It's going to be crazy. It's stacked with a lot of these middle distance, short distance racers coming off of the Olympics. and, and we'll have a better idea at the end of what two weeks from now with Western Australia or the, the, race, the last of the pro series, it'll give us an idea of where the points are going into 70.3 worlds. But yeah, we'll have a good preview show for that race next week and talk about that and the impacts that it might have on the overall pro series. But

Jenna-Caer (01:09:21.867)
Yeah.

Josh (01:09:45.186)
Yeah, I think 70.3 worlds, as much as there are people who aren't going, there's still a crazy stack list.

Jenna-Caer (01:09:51.138)
Curious to see just who survives it at this point. We saw some tired faces here this weekend. So be curious to see who shows up and actually makes it. But that'll be us for this week. We will be back again next week to chat on things triathlon. So like we said, go check out the YouTube page. Give us a subscribe there. It helps us out a lot as we try to grow this and spend more time talking about triathlon and geeking out on it with all of you.

Josh (01:09:53.048)
Right?

Josh (01:09:59.3)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (01:10:19.596)
Till then though, have a great night, Josh.

Josh (01:10:21.604)
Awesome YouTube. Thanks everyone.