Episode 94: Massive PRs, Big Miles & Even Bigger Racing: WTCS, Ironman & Challenge Champs Recap

This week’s episode of Another Triathlon Podcast covers one of the busiest race weekends of the season! From Ironman Chattanooga and Lanzarote to WTCS Yokohama and the Pro Series showdown in Aix-en-Provence, we’ve got all the highlights, lowlights, and predictions. Plus, Josh drops a four-minute PR and lands his first-ever triathlon podium, while Jenna-Caer logs a 32-hour training week ending with a 4 Day solo training camp.

✔️ Josh’s sprint triathlon podium and surprise Team USA qualification
✔️ Jenna-Caer’s 4-day solo training camp and 24 hours of Eat-Sleep-Train
✔️ Ironman Pro Series – Kristian Blummenfelt dominates again in Aix-en-Provence
✔️ Marjolaine Pierré makes her statement ride and win in the women's race
✔️ Lucy Charles-Barclay returns to long course dominance at Ironman Lanzarote
✔️ WTCS Yokohama – Matt Hauser & Jeanne Lehair put on a show in the rain
✔️ Chattanooga 70.3 – Sam Long outruns the clock in a duathlon-style TT start
✔️ T100 San Francisco & Vancouver – wildcards, injuries, and early hype
✔️ The growing impact of fueling right, training consistently, and showing up to local races

Timestamps:

(00:00) Welcome + Josh’s race weekend recap
(10:35) Josh’s podium, race-day lessons & injury update
(13:50) Jenna-Caer’s 4-day training camp and fueling for 32 hours of volume
(21:07) Ironman Pro Series: Christian, Casper, and cars on the course
(26:47) Gustav’s off day and Marjolaine Pierré’s comeback win
(30:49) Lanzarote: Lucy Charles-Barclay’s Kona validation
(33:46) Ironman Pro Series standings + upcoming Frankfurt & Hamburg
(35:15) WTCS Yokohama recap – Jeanne Lehair’s breakthrough & Hauser’s win
(42:30) 70.3 Chattanooga – Sam Long, McElroy, Jason West battle
(48:17) T100 San Francisco wildcards, injuries & who’s racing
(50:20) Wrap-up & what’s coming next

Follow Along:

👉 @anothertriathlonpodcast for highlights and behind-the-scenes
👉 @maunaapparel to rep the team and check out custom kits
👉 @joshmvernon & @jennacaer for coaching, race updates & ridiculous training blocks

If you loved this episode, don’t forget to follow, rate, and tag us in your workouts – we love seeing what you’re chasing down 🏁

Transcript

Another Triathlon Pod (00:01.168)
Welcome back to Another Triathlon podcast brought to you by Mauna Apparel. This weekend, there was absolutely no shortage of racing and we're going to break down some of the results this week because there were some incredible performances across the board from WTCS up to Ironman and we will chat about all of it. But first I'm joined as always by Josh and we're going to jump into what our trainings look like this last little while. Josh, how are you doing? What are you been up to?

Josh (00:27.342)
I'm good. Had a little, little, scare after my race on Sunday, but, it was a busy weekend. Thursday had my daughter's prom and then drove down to New York city, worked from New York on Friday, hopped into a Peloton run class. had a 30 minute run on my schedule and got in my four miles on the treadmill with a great class. And it was my 800th Peloton run. So it was,

Really cool experience with one of the instructors I really like on the bike. And he's now a tread instructor as well. So I got to run with who we call AT, Alex Toussaint. And see a whole bunch of friends in the Peloton world. And then I hopped up to the Upper East Side and found this place called Asphalt Greens that they have all over the city. And it's like this mega sports complex.

And inside of it is this Aquatic Center with like 15 lanes of 25 yard pools in the middle of New York City. So one of the ladies I coach joined me and we got in about 45 to an hour of swimming in the middle of the day on Friday. And then had some food, which was always good, which we've been talking about lots of food.

Another Triathlon Pod (01:25.842)
three.

Josh (01:46.606)
Um, and my wife was running the Brooklyn half marathon. So we were getting ready for that on Saturday. I got my long run in along the, um, West side highway along the Hudson river and got that done early Saturday morning. And I went and joined her and, uh, did a little extra running, trying to catch her on the course with due to traffic situations, getting over to Brooklyn. Um, but was able to catch her at the end and some friends finishing the race. probably had like 30, 40 friends running.

Brooklyn half, but it was humid. was like 95 % humidity. Like even my run, I made sure I had some bottles with me. My nerd belt came in very handy for sure. And there were people dropping left and right and lo and behold, we found out some guy, 31 years old in good shape, passed away and had a cardiac arrest like mile eight. So it was a tough day for a lot of people. I had some friends that set some PRs, but it was just one of those days where like, if you just weren't

Another Triathlon Pod (02:15.834)
sweet.

Another Triathlon Pod (02:34.18)
I'm alive.

Josh (02:44.8)
hydrated correctly or feeling it was a day that you probably should take it a little easier. but it was my first time to Coney Island. And while that place is crazy and pretty fun to be around that atmosphere and had my Nathan's hot dog for the first time, like true Nathan's hot dog right from the Nathan's hot dog place after waiting in line forever. And then we got back in the car, drove home, and then I had a race at first thing Sunday morning and

Had my sprint triathlon after doing about 15, 16 miles on Saturday. and. Right. Yeah. Just like your posts. If everyone hasn't read it, go to triathlete mag and read Jenna's post on how to handle the day before a race. I did not follow the guidelines, but we were training through AC race, which is what this was. a little different than what her article is talking about a races. Um, and.

Another Triathlon Pod (03:19.57)
You know, just a little warm up. Yeah. Gotta get the legs turning over for that stretch.

Another Triathlon Pod (03:33.01)
Thank

Josh (03:42.988)
This was about activating and seeing how I could go at the higher speeds because everything's been more about half marathon, marathon, or 70.3 type distance. So sprint distance, my third year in a row doing this race. And again, awesome community, more and more people saying, Josh, just, Hey, love the podcast. And it's just kind of, kind of neat to be around that. And we had three of us wearing.

The bright monokits at a local Massachusetts race, which was really neat. And I actually even saw the kid who won the duathlon was wearing his own custom monokit as well, which was really neat. And didn't have the greatest swim. I did slot myself up early in my green cap field, which was like 35 to 49, I think age group and got in early.

was having a good swim and then started catching some people who were then going diagonally and got dunked pretty good. So had to roll over backstroke a little bit just to catch my, my breath and then, got going. came out pretty much similar to what I did last year and, had a much quicker, felt way better and, and had a lot more energy left in me. So not a very fast T1 unfortunately, but got on the bike and I just felt great.

once I got on the bike and actually clipped in. but once I got on the bike, I was, I was feeling good. It was, it's just one of those races where the roads aren't actually closed and the duathlon had already started. I'm catching all of those slower duathlon traffic. only swimmers that had gone before me were the elite and, younger kids. so most of that was not people I was really having to deal with, but,

When you're catching slower, do athletes, gets a little rough. And then there's cars that like, I literally was going between a car and a biker with maybe five feet of shoulder, um, at 25, 30 miles an hour. And you don't know what they're going to do and there's not much room. Um, and I can't go to the left of the car because the other side of the street's wide open and no control. And those cars don't even care. Uh, cause they're not really affecting the course. Um,

Another Triathlon Pod (05:48.273)
sketchy.

Another Triathlon Pod (05:51.866)
Yeah, especially when the other cyclist is moving a lot slower, then it's just like, eugh.

Josh (06:09.678)
But I had a goal of mine and I knew I wanted to push a decent amount of Watts. those three by tens, three by 12s. And now this week, three by 15s are really setting the threshold level of where I, where I can go race day and in a 30 minute ride, 10 mile ride, we had an idea of where I could be. And, and I was able to, think my, my normalize was two 61. So by far the highest Watts I've been able to push probably would have been higher if I had a nice little.

70.3 open road. and I still came home two or three minutes faster than last year. I think on my computer, I was just under 30 minutes. So that was kind of the goal, this year. And then got off on the run and, and had a great run, finished strong and didn't pose for any pictures, didn't do anything. I was just like, I was in the.

Another Triathlon Pod (07:03.804)
straight to the minute.

Josh (07:04.866)
The whole goal was just be in the heart locker and, and, really push it and, and got as close to red line as I could. And, and finished with like a four minute PR on the day and ended up finding out later that it was good enough for second place in my age group. And, and then I did the math. was like, wait, top two in the age group actually qualifies me for USA team. And that wasn't the state championship, which I'm doing in a few weeks.

So now I can go to Milwaukee if I want to in the sprint or the Olympic distance. But yeah, my first, first individual podium in a triathlon. And, it was really good to add, but I was less than a minute off and that could have easily been cut down in transition alone. So unfortunately no top step. but, it was a great day, especially off of tired legs. but the problem was when I finished almost immediately, it was very weird.

Almost immediately I had a limp and my right foot was just kind of like dragging along and I knew something wasn't right. so took care of that the rest of day. was supposed to do a, a long ride. We, we kicked that off. didn't do that. And then, it felt a little better the next day, but it was starting to bruise and, and that started to bring some concern. So.

Another Triathlon Pod (08:15.634)
Thank you.

Josh (08:26.67)
I stood at Advil. still did a short 45 minute ride, 40 minute ride on my, my Peloton bike, but easy aerobic. Um, and I swam on Monday and then last night, last night I went to the urgent care and got an X-ray and there's, there's no fracture or hairline or anything like that. Trash fracture showing in the X-ray. So I think an MRI might show something different, but at this point it's just kind of like, it's getting better and I've got a boot at home anyway. So, uh, I'll just.

wear a boot for a few days and get my workouts in carefully. We had already planned on changing any runs to elliptical. So we're going to stick to that plan for a week or so and go from there. But I think I got lucky. But a lot of that is due to the fact that I was in pretty damn good shape and aerobic wise was there. So the overuse injury is what I'm guessing this probably was, is not as impactful as it could have been.

Another Triathlon Pod (09:22.642)
Yeah, hopefully it clears up there and that's always the best call. Just take a few days easy, let the inflammation come down, see how it all comes out. Like, yeah, I was just dealing with a foot issue the other week there where was like walking around was painful for like five days and then it just went away. it's definitely a place where it sounds like you are.

Josh (09:39.05)
It's really weird. Yeah. And there wasn't much swelling either too, which was also, it was just weird because it, it was, it almost looked like somebody took a hammer to my foot, like just with the bruising and, it's really right, right there on the fifth metatarsal. the one you hear about and worry about most. so I think I got lucky and, I'm excited because I've got some big races and still the, the whole thing is we're far enough away from Chicago.

Another Triathlon Pod (09:51.174)
Yeah.

Josh (10:08.938)
And, and now, now that state championship June race isn't as important now that I've already flooded in for Milwaukee, if I wanted to go there in August. so yeah, everything's just kind of building towards Chicago and running six 47 per mile or whatever the heck I have to do it that way. It was like, I could barely do that in a five K sprint triathlon, but, uh, we'll do it for 26.2 later this year.

Another Triathlon Pod (10:25.884)
Thank

Another Triathlon Pod (10:35.888)
After a long run and a swim and a bike. No, that's awesome. Congratulations on the podium. That's always a big step kind of getting up there. And you've just seen PR after PR this year. And that speaks to that consistent training over the last few years, really. But this year, you've definitely stepped it up and seeing the benefits, which is awesome.

Josh (10:38.134)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh (10:56.022)
Yeah, it's, fun. It's fun being around the same people too. And these local races, like we talk about, like going to local races, like everyone's got to hop into one or two a year. Like it's just so cool to go and see your local community get after it. And, and we talk about the Ironmans and we talk about the T100 and the challenge races, but these local races just have that different feel. And I brought a whole cooler of athletic brewing and that was like gone immediately after the race. People loved it. And that's now known as the athletic brewing guy.

Another Triathlon Pod (11:00.134)
Thank you.

Another Triathlon Pod (11:23.087)
huh.

Josh (11:25.012)
At this race and it's a bunch of friends that I get to see at most of these local races and. There was the one of the other monoguys Alex he finished second, but ended up he actually finished first because one of the guys in his age group took the was third overall. So Alex finished first. So we had two monopodiums and my other friend finished second in her age group and then my boy, Matty Mac.

Finish second too. was like literally all within like a half hour of each other. was like a pretty cool experience.

Another Triathlon Pod (11:54.896)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (11:59.314)
podiums all around. And that's the fun part about the Mono team now, especially this year, it's so much bigger and with around 500 members, you can show up to basically any Ironman or 70.3 and there's a team member on there, which makes it a lot of fun. And we've got a lot of group chats going on. So if you're going to a specific race, there's probably a WhatsApp group chat coordinating and getting together there, which is fun.

Josh (12:19.67)
Which we knew that Alex was going to be there because of the WhatsApp chat that we have for the Northeast community. And one of my athletes, Noah, was also racing. And it was the first time the two of us got to race together at the same distance, which was really neat. And he had a good day. So shout out to Noah and his first race as a member of Team Mana. And my wife loved it because the kids are so easy to see.

Another Triathlon Pod (12:25.863)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (12:47.27)
That definitely makes it easier when you're spectating. And if you are interested in checking out the team, we do have a social membership that is open that gives you access to all of the group chats and the sponsored discounts and everything. Just head over to monoparel.com and the community tab and you can apply to join the team there. So yeah, go check it out. It's been, it's been a lot of fun just seeing familiar faces everywhere, especially in a sport where everyone in your everyday life kind of thinks you're a little bit insane. And here you can go say you did a five hour ride and people like,

Josh (12:50.414)
Yep.

Another Triathlon Pod (13:17.366)
Cool.

Josh (13:19.18)
Yeah, it was, it's a, it's a great community and it's really neat to start to think about some of the things being done in the endurance world and triathlon world. So now is a great time to get into it because a lot of these things you see it like marathons and activations, those are all things that are going to start happening in the triathlon world too, at local races and, you just get into a bigger community and you'll know what's going on and where to be. Well, how about,

Another Triathlon Pod (13:44.594)
Yeah, absolutely.

Josh (13:48.374)
I don't know. Are you done writing yet?

Another Triathlon Pod (13:50.45)
Did a little bit of bike riding this weekend.

Josh (13:53.964)
you

Another Triathlon Pod (13:54.962)
a little bit. Yeah, I had a blast this weekend. This has become a kind of a tradition. So I've been in Canada and May long, always comes this time of year. And this year kind of snuck up on me. So usually May long weekend, the family will go camping. So I'm home alone and just do a big training camp. I'll either do it at home or head over to somewhere like Penticton and get in some big miles. But yeah, it kind of snuck up on me. So I told my coach on like Tuesday, I'm like, hey,

By the way, it's that four day weekend. Uh, this weekend, we go put in some big training and he delivered. We'll say that this has definitely been the biggest training week and the biggest four days of training I've ever done before.

And it was just so much fun in the way it went. just, to have that time and space is a rare opportunity where all I had to do for four days was eat, sleep, train. There was nothing else. It was long weekend. I didn't open my laptop, didn't do any work, didn't have to take care of anyone else. Just focus on the training. And yeah, it ended up being a pretty epic training weekend. And when I do stuff like this, I'm in kind of constant contact with my coach. He writes out the training a day to two days.

in advance just depending on how I'm feeling because when you start to push it more you kind of have to be a little bit more on top of it which I appreciate but it ended up being the first day was a I think it was a three or four four k swim and a five hour bike ride and then the next day was a five mile run and a five hour bike ride and shockingly day three was a five hour bike ride and a seven mile run

And then the last day was just a repeat of the third day, another five hour bike ride and a seven mile run.

Josh (15:46.126)
Yeah, you're still sneaking in the runs in like the 745, 750. Like, oh gosh, she dropped below eight today.

Another Triathlon Pod (15:50.502)
Yes.

Another Triathlon Pod (15:54.77)
Yeah, it was a lot of fun kind of looking at that from the outside and sometimes this is good reason to have a coach is a lot of the time he has to hold me back but weekends like this I would have never programmed that for myself and the crazy thing was it all felt good.

And one of the big things I think that people underestimate if you are going to increase volume like that is just the amount of calories you need to get through it. Like that was something that would make or break this. Like I'm, you know, five, six, 125 pounds. I was eating between four to 5,000 calories a day just to make sure I could do the training, feel good in the training, recover, and back it up the next day in there. So eating became like a part-time job this weekend, almost as much as the training.

and that was a combination totally yeah and you know it was definitely that 80 20 thing where 80 percent of it trying to eat good foods and stuff but i also had a massive bag of like caramel chocolates and some gummies and stuff because at some point you just want sugar for doing that kind of training

Josh (16:44.002)
Wim by Grand Nutrition for sure.

Josh (16:59.532)
Yeah. And when you're, when you're riding that long too, and for that many consecutive days, it's like, all right, we got to change up the routine here. Another Morton gel is not going to really cut it.

Another Triathlon Pod (17:08.614)
Hold on.

Yeah, and especially all this was so long and aerobic. When I do have stuff like that, I try to incorporate more protein on the rides. So I had a few like protein bars during it and stuff because that'll just help us on that muscle recovery in between. And like you said, there are only so many gels and sports drinks you can take over that much volume over those days.

Josh (17:17.454)
Yeah.

Josh (17:31.694)
Especially with the biking too, right? On the biking, the stomach can typically handle a little bit more of regular food.

Another Triathlon Pod (17:36.118)
Totally. Yeah, I always tend to go a little bit more kind of like protein or real foods at the beginning of the ride knowing I have a run afterwards then I'll kind of transition to the gels or the like Morton sports drink kind of thing near the end of it just to make sure my stomach is happy to go at the end.

Josh (17:49.678)
Yeah.

Josh (17:53.454)
Nice. So how are you feeling coming out of that? Are you feeling like the body has transformed, changed, like you're ready to go into this next block as you get ready for Kona later in there?

Another Triathlon Pod (18:04.09)
Yeah. So you know what? This was so good, not only from a physical perspective, obviously I'll get a big fitness gain from this, but it was more the mental side of it. Just kind of resetting in my head what I think I'm capable of because all of the bike rides were within like 10, 15 Watts of my Ironman Watts. And I did it four days in a row. And the difference between my average power on the first day versus the last day was seven Watts. So it's like, okay, this is something that is very,

Josh (18:24.224)
Nice.

Another Triathlon Pod (18:34.643)
sustainable, maybe I need to start to push this a little bit more because if I can do 20 hours of it in four days, I can probably push a little bit more during an afternoon.

Josh (18:42.05)
Yeah. Absolutely. No, because now you know, like, look, I was able to sustain this and I barely drifted and on fresh legs. Ooh, I just put myself in a different way waiting for race day.

Another Triathlon Pod (18:50.021)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (18:56.49)
Yeah, so I ended up being, because this was kind of tacked on last minute, ended up being something like a 32 hour training week, which I think my biggest ever before this was like once or twice I've done 25 hours.

But yeah, just shocking how good I felt like I kept waking up excited to get after it. And I absolutely credit so much of that to one, the aerobic foundation. I've been doing this for a long time, but two, like I said, just eating enough makes so much difference. And I think that why we're seeing so many of these big performances is yeah, there's technology, there's shoes, there's bikes and stuff. But that whole fueling point of it really makes such a massive difference when you can bounce back, keep going, keep pushing, keep putting in more volume and time and just not breaking

down with those know red-ass issues or stress fractures or any problems there and so it's it was it was pretty cool to see what the body is actually capable of but yeah feeling good and ready to get back into it.

Josh (19:52.93)
Nice. have this weekend, I have my first SuperTry work trip. We've got our Buy SuperTry CapTex Trathlon Festival down in Austin, Texas. So I'll be...

working, training, working, training, trying to figure all that out while traveling. but it's a really, really cool event on Monday on actual Memorial day here, in the States. And it's going to be like an all day festival of triathlon with an expo on, on Sunday. And we're to do some activations with some of the local tri clubs down there. And,

Another Triathlon Pod (20:10.308)
And he is always nice.

Josh (20:31.286)
athletic brewing, sponsoring some of the events and shakeout runs and stuff too. So it's going to be really neat to be part of that. And that's kind of like what we talked about earlier with, with the Mono community. These are the types of things that are going to start to happen at some of these local races. I'm actually, I looked at the forecast. It's about 95, 96 degrees down there right now. Different kind of heat training.

Another Triathlon Pod (20:52.626)
little bit toasty. Oh my goodness. Well, we had some pro racing going on this weekend and they will be going as I always say a little bit faster than us. Why don't you kick us off Josh, tell us a little bit about some racing that went down this weekend.

Josh (21:07.886)
Well, we had the favorite race to pronounce in France, Oxford Vance with, with the big field of the Norwegians come into town, with, Christian Gustaf and Casper, lining up with the, with the really pretty deep field, Pio, core, the owner Schaumburg, Matteo Bringer, those guys were kind of.

Jonas and Matteo led out a huge group of swimmers and I would say the race went as planned for most people. think Gustav was a little further back coming out of the water than he would have liked and lost that big lead pack and that really impacted the rest of his race. Unfortunately, we did not get our one, two, three we were looking at, but yeah, but what a really...

Another Triathlon Pod (22:01.082)
So close.

Josh (22:04.244)
awesome bike course, and beautiful bike course, minus the fact that the lead moto was completely getting in the way and there was traffic on this course. And like, there were like, there were times where the, the leaders were dodging in between the, the moto and the cars. And it was just kind of, kind of scary. and it's something that we see in Europe all the time.

Another Triathlon Pod (22:15.878)
Yeah, there are cars in there.

Josh (22:32.77)
with this, with some of these races and some of the scariness there. pretty much big group coming into T2 and Christian was kind of towards the back of that pack and running there with Casper and Leo Breger. They kind of went off on the run and Christian just kind of laid back for a while and you could see.

Maybe it was the impacts of Texas catching up. we talked about this, like where was he going to be tired coming in to France and where those first two races of year are going to have an impact on them. But no, he was just kind of chilling and waiting to make his move and had been running with Sam Dickinson for a while.

Finally made his move with maybe five Ks, seven K left. And it was just a different notch. And he was, he was gone at that point. It was he and Casper and Casper couldn't, couldn't hold on, but he held on enough to only, finished about 30 seconds back. So Christian Blumenfeld with another perfect score in a pro series race. And so now he's got back to back Texas and. Provence, and max points. So we are now looking at.

the front runner again for the pro series. Casper Storms finished in second, Simon Vane in third, Sam Dickinson fourth, and Pierre Lacour in fifth. I'll grab in some major points in the pro series.

Another Triathlon Pod (24:07.024)
Yeah, it is crazy. Like the way Christian just backs things up is unreal. And it looked like he was sprinting by the final parts of this race. Like once Casper kind of caught up and was hanging out with them, seems like they're just cruising a little bit. And then Christian just goes off the front. Like nobody is touching me. And this kind of makes me disappointed that we didn't get to see this go down an ocean side. Like if Christian hadn't gotten that flat an ocean side, what would we have seen on that run between him and Lionel Sanders? Like that would have been so much

Josh (24:29.122)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (24:36.948)
fun to watch because obviously Christian is in insane form right now.

Josh (24:42.472)
It's his run is crazy. And remember his run in Oceanside was nuts too, is what everyone was talking about. And they're like, but he had 15 minutes of a break on the side of the road. it's like,

Another Triathlon Pod (24:51.504)
Yeah.

I know. so crazy to see. Yeah, definitely a great race to watch in there. But yeah, it sucks when you see cars kind of holding up. The athletes at one point you saw the leader just kind of gesturing to moto like his car just pulls in and goes off there. And we don't see as many kind of fully closed roads sometimes in these European races, which is unfortunate because we saw even at the the World Champs the other year cars getting in the way of the pro race. And you can see how it's challenging. So I think a lot of these are kind of smaller roads with

know their options for people to get in and out, but there's definitely some safety concerns there.

Josh (25:28.502)
Yeah, absolutely. it just, you don't want to see these things impact the races, but it's just the nature of our sport at the current level that it's at. Until these things get full HBO coverage and whatever it may be, it's going to be that way. But yeah, the

Another Triathlon Pod (25:45.714)
Did we see it today? Not on what happened with Gustav, seems like.

Josh (25:50.114)
So I don't think he ever had any mechanical or anything like that. It just seemed like he missed that lead pack. And, and once he missed the lead pack on the bike, they were gone and they were, they were, they were pushing. Christian was in a group of about 15 guys. So he missed that. And that train was just kind of drafting off each other for 50 miles. mean, they, were, they were scooting. the, the chase pack was never going to catch them. And I think when he came off.

on the run, he, I what he, he finished what 24 something like that. So yeah, it was a, it was an off day, for Gustav, but, I still, I still think he's lining it up for the world champs and, and for some of these guys, like we've heard from Magnus. I don't care about the pro series. I won't add the, I won't add other races. I'm just going for Nice. So.

Another Triathlon Pod (26:41.458)
Like, no presentation.

Josh (26:47.278)
I think Gustav's in that same boat at this point, right? Like the pro series is gone and let's just do what we need to do and have a big training day. And maybe this was that for him anyways. And one, two, three was never in the cards. And when you're coming back from a lack of fitness and injury, then days like today are just go out there and race and transition and go through the motions and get a long run in. So.

It sounds like that's all it was. for him, I haven't heard anything differently. on the woman side, we had a little bit more predictable of a race. Lena Mibner let out the swim and race favorite and hometown hero or not hometown here, but French, rider Marjolein Pierre, who had a huge crowd of support, for her friends and family there. She was about a minute and half, two minutes back on the swim and then.

By 30 K she had caught the lead pack on the bike. we saw this in Nice last year. She loves to just take off on the bike and ride those French roads to the front. And she went to the front and that was it. No one ever caught her again. She ended up saying she was on her own the whole day and had a nice little training run. So Margie took the lead. She even let her hair down on the run as she loves to do. No clue how she does that in that heat.

but she did and she took it home in a 411.57 followed by Lizzie Rainer, Lena Mabner ended up holding on for third, Marta Sanchez in fourth and Nikki Bartley with a great run, a 117.54, I think probably the top run of the day and great to see as she's coming back for fifth place and decent amount of pro series points.

Another Triathlon Pod (28:38.064)
Yeah, definitely. And it was so cool. Marjolaine was just so strong out there and you cannot miss her with the hair flowing in the wind and everything. That would drive me absolutely insane, but she rocks that look for sure. It sounds like she's working with Reese Berkley now as her coach. So having a bit of a comeback after a few years of injuries and issues and stuff. And man, that's got to be such a good feeling making some changes coming back from injury and things are clicking like that because she just looked so strong. She knows how to ride those roads.

Josh (28:49.816)
Yeah.

Josh (28:53.741)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (29:08.028)
she ran.

Josh (29:08.194)
Yeah. She absolutely was in her own on that one and loved everything about it and looked like she was enjoying the day. She did the ride in 221.11 and then the next pack was like 224. So she was three minutes, three minutes clear of everyone else. So pretty epic day. And by the way, Christian and Casper both ran 107s too. it's like these half marathons, if you're not running a

Another Triathlon Pod (29:23.12)
No such thing as retro.

Josh (29:37.25)
below 109, you're probably not holding on to the lead.

Another Triathlon Pod (29:41.114)
Yeah, and especially like this course wasn't easy. It was flat, but it was just windy, twisty. And one of those courses where you can't quite find that. Like it's easy if you're running in a straight line, you can just kind of fall into your groove and go when it's whiny and twisty, like you're accelerating slowing down, cornering. That's when you're more likely to see a lot of blisters and stuff just from that foot movement in your shoe. But they just blazed through on both sides.

Josh (29:45.87)
It was, yeah, was a technical run.

Josh (30:05.582)
Yeah, absolutely awesome pro series race and a little bit of a break coming up now. It seems like it's kind of everyone's first half of their season is done. And now everyone's kind of setting up for and the T100 is going to start to take off. We've only had that one race. now a lot of people have fit in. A lot of the athletes have fit in some Ironman pro series races and some Ironman races.

But speaking of Resparcle, his Marge's coach, they had a pretty good day on a little island called Lanzarote too with Lucy taking home the win in her first Ironman of the year and validating her spot for Kona. So the champ is back.

Another Triathlon Pod (30:49.522)
Not only validating, 20 minutes ahead of time.

So, yeah, Lanzarote, had Lucy Charles-Barclay take the win, Jeanne Colon take second, Merle Brunet in third, and then on the men's side we had Dylan Manon, Jordi Montrevetra Moya, and Matthias Pedersen come in first, second, and third in there. yeah, Lucy, when she's on and fit and feeling good, she is.

Josh (31:22.262)
And she had been there training for a couple of weeks. So was treating it like it was a Kona camp.

Another Triathlon Pod (31:28.54)
That's absolutely unreal. Like she took that easily. So it'll be exciting to see her come back and race in a field of a little bit more competitive field there because it's always hard to judge off of races like that. No disrespect to the athletes on the podium, but it definitely wasn't a stacked field like the one she's going to see coming up at the Ironman World Championships day. So it's exciting to see her back because she definitely changes things up. And I believe she'll be on the, I think she's in the start list for Alcatraz or T100 in San Francisco.

Josh (31:40.206)
Yeah.

Josh (31:57.806)
Yeah. And I think that was, I mean, what a perfect race for her to pick in, in as her validation too, because she's got the big T 100 schedule. She's been injured coming back again and had a decent outing in, in Singapore again. To fit this in, in a place she loves, I think it was where she did her first pro race as well, or had her first pro win.

Lanzarote is home to a lot of people for a good portion of the year. And in terms of training wise and why not go race and who cares shows up. just got to finish and get my spot. So pretty kudos to her.

Another Triathlon Pod (32:37.114)
Yeah, although you gotta say, it probably takes the edge off a little bit for San Francisco for the T100 in there doing an Ironman two weeks beforehand, so the T100's probably not stoked about that one.

Josh (32:44.588)
Okay.

Yeah, she's looking forward to Vancouver.

Another Triathlon Pod (32:50.488)
There we go. That'll be such a fun race to see go down. But speaking of the Ironman Pro Series and everything, let's just do a quick rundown of where the standings are for top five on either side right now. Unsurprisingly, with a man with a near perfect score, he just needs to knock off Oceanside with another race. got Christian Blumenfeldt in first, Jonas Schomburg in second, Lianne Chevalier on third, Kesper Storms in fourth, and Gustav Eden in fifth. So we got three Norwegians in the top five.

here which man I don't see that changing they're definitely tearing it up with their self-coached group going on there.

Josh (33:29.614)
When you think about Christian's opportunity to get a perfect score is still on the table when you look at it, because he still has Frankfurt. That would be his second full Ironman perfect score potential. Then he would have Nice and he would have 70.3 Worlds.

Another Triathlon Pod (33:34.962)
Thanks.

Another Triathlon Pod (33:46.5)
Yeah, just has to win all of them. He'll get a perfect score easy. Craziness. And then I hear he's doing a W like a... I'm doing this backwards. Ironman 70.3 Olympic. Go the other way.

Josh (33:53.518)
Unbelievable.

Josh (33:58.35)
He's jumping into a World Series race.

Josh (34:06.19)
And just, just focus. I mean, there's a $200,000 check waiting and the Olympics are not for three and a half years. Come on.

Another Triathlon Pod (34:13.298)
Oh my goodness. Yeah, just craziness. On the women's side for the rankings right now, we got Marta Sanchez in first and Reichman in second, Lisa Pritter in third, Chloe Lane in fourth, and Laura Jensen in fifth. But again, I think we're going to see a few chops and changes there, especially with Frankfurt coming up. got Kat Matthews will be racing, so you assume she will be collecting a couple more points there. She's only got one score on the board so far with a win at Ironman Texas.

Josh (34:41.066)
Yeah, she's got him. Hamburg is going to be a big race coming up soon to that's that's a big, big Ironman full distance pro series race. That's next on the table. And, you mentioned Lisa Perter, she raced in all Provence. talked about it a lot last week thinking that, Hey, she's got to be the front runner, but, she just didn't have the legs. It sounds like on, on the day, but, she still came home in sixth, I believe. So, or seventh. So she still was able to grab points.

Another Triathlon Pod (35:08.186)
Yeah, that's a tough turnaround from Iron Man Texas for sure. Not everyone's Christian Blumenfeld.

Josh (35:09.772)
Yeah. Yeah. No.

Another Triathlon Pod (35:15.532)
Awesome. Well, we also had some WTCS racing going on this weekend as well. And this is kind of a funny year for the WTCS. There's no Olympic ranking points on the board right now, but they still do have the overall series to take the win for. And without we're seeing a lot of athletes trying other things. We've talked about it before. Some of big names, especially in the men's side are doing other race series and options, but we still did have, there's some decent top end talent at these races still. So it

keeps it interesting. And we had it go down in Yokohama and this race, it's really a mixed bag. It's either going to be wet or sunny. It's all over the map and they're. Yeah.

Josh (35:55.406)
We got the worst case three rather sooner

Another Triathlon Pod (36:01.266)
They end up having to change the course of the last minute to take out some cobblestones to make it little bit safer. And then having like 10 laps of 3.7 K I think. So end up being a little bit short and just lots of laps round and round and round in the rain for I'm sure what felt like a long day out there.

on the women's side of things going in, were all talking about Cassandra Bo Gram because she had such a dominant performance. And unfortunately this wouldn't end up being her day at WTCS. we saw her perform really well and just get like in France, she managed to handle the bike really well in the wet and the tough conditions and stuff. But this race, just seemed kind of on the back foot the whole time. And she was looking a little tentative around corners and unfortunately she did end up having a crash and kind of crashed out of podium content.

there but

went up seeing a great battle on the women's side. We had a big group to come together and then we had Jean Laher just take on the race coming out of T2. She just powered to the front of the race and ran strong. And then we also had Lisa Tersh and Beth Potter chasing each other down, battling it out there for the last podium spots. And we ended up with Jean Laher in first, Beth Potter in second, and Lisa Tersh in third. But this,

We saw Jean LaHare start to come up through the SuperTri series last year and now seeing it go onto the Olympic distance has been very, very cool to see.

Josh (37:30.56)
Yeah, she's made a big, big leap in, and I think she is going to be somebody to reckon with throughout the whole series. I think that moved her into second for the season series as well. And she just seems like she's found that I know how to win button and, and turn it up. And she did, mean, she wasn't leading that run early on, but she was able to get to the front and hold off some really big names. mean, Lisa Turch has dominated this series for a while now and

Another Triathlon Pod (37:46.181)
Yeah.

Josh (38:00.078)
And Beth Potter is what we know. mean, Beth is a runner who can outdo you if you leave her in the group on the bike. And then you had the likes of Gwen Jorgensen coming from behind too. It's like, it's never safe when Gwen's running down. And kudos to Gwen for running up to fourth in a pretty big field still too. So kind of Gwen on her last leg of her career still competing at the top of her game and in a short course event is pretty neat.

Another Triathlon Pod (38:10.076)
Yeah!

Another Triathlon Pod (38:30.47)
Yeah, she's definitely on this come background and it's seeing you're seeing her get stronger and stronger each race in there. So it's fun to watch that as well. Yeah, Jean LaHare, she only ran two seconds slower than Beth Potter who we know is an insane runner and like seven seconds faster than Gwen. So she just like this run was next level for her. And I think that was her first like WTCS podium period, nevermind taking a win in there too.

Josh (38:54.678)
Yeah, and that moved her up to second. Lisa Tursch is leading the overall series. Jean LaHare is second. And Rosa Maria Tapia Vidal is third in the overall series. So we all know it comes down to the grand final too. So long season still to go.

Another Triathlon Pod (39:10.514)
No, absolutely. And then the men's side of things, they didn't get any better weather out there. was definitely rainy and made for some interesting riding. So this race, we had a really good battle out there. It was great to see on the men's side. They had, so they had an initial group of 12 that gap the rest by about 10 seconds with big groups coming together. They did get the gap out for a while, up to about 24 seconds, but then the chases started to close it. And by the end of lap seven, the two groups had joined

up so they had 23 riders all together in there which is a pretty big group and then by the time they reached T2 it was really they had five athletes just running off out of the front. How's their Vlasa? Sorry?

Yeah, had five hours to run out there. And it's so funny, when you watch Matt Houser, he just looks so unbothered by everything. He's just kind of powering through. He's a big guy compared to the rest of them. And you see everyone else kind of tucking in behind him trying to run through.

Josh (40:11.48)
crafting off of them.

Another Triathlon Pod (40:12.882)
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. And then the group started to kind of whittle down as they went and we saw Vlaska kind of push it trying to go off the front and Maddie Hauser just held on and then made a big push and ran away with it. So we had Matt Hauser in first, Vlaska Vlaska in second and Miguel Hidalgo in third, who was luckily to be pulled up in that second bike group. So it was very cool to see him actually run through the finish strong after having to make up that.

time on the bike.

Josh (40:44.46)
Yeah. And Vasco and Hauser both running sub thirties too. So, man, these guys are pushing it. You could tell they probably had a little bit left, in the legs because the bike was kind of tentative in the condition. So they're probably not pushing the power they normally would. And man, Yokohama is just every year there's something with it. seems like in the weather department and something on the course is creating havoc, but, it was really neat to see these big guys.

go after it too. mean, the star power was there, minus Hayden and Alex. So really neat.

Another Triathlon Pod (41:17.424)
Yeah.

And then almost more fun because you know, like usually it's you see Hayden and Alex go off the front. Now there's a lot closer racing at the front end because they are a little bit closer in ability.

Josh (41:30.786)
Yeah, absolutely. And, the season series is Hauser Vasco Miguel Batista. Yeah. I mean, it's like, they all lined right up in the, in this one, but there's only been a couple of races. So, again, long, long series, but I think right now, how's there's put himself in a good spot. And I mean, he's been around for a long time and he's been another one of those like super dry guys and just seems to lead out the swim and have battles there, but.

Another Triathlon Pod (41:37.277)
Thanks.

Josh (42:00.268)
get caught and maybe this is his year to go all the way through to the Swim by Grunt title.

Another Triathlon Pod (42:05.778)
Absolutely. Yeah, I'll be curious to see how the rest of the season goes. It's still, we had such a big break between the first race and the second race, but now things are really going to start to kick off a little bit more. But it is a long season and you can, I think we will see a divide between those who are really more focused on the WTCS series compared to those who aren't.

Josh (42:28.46)
Yeah, I agree.

Another Triathlon Pod (42:30.074)
With that, we had the Challenge Championships also going on, and then we had Chattanooga 17.3. There was so much racing going on. think there's, we'll touch on some of the highlights with Chattanooga. Did you watch that, or kind of follow along with that one, Josh?

Josh (42:44.942)
Yeah, as soon as I was done, my race on Sunday, I immediately opened up the Ironman tracker to check to see what was going on down in Chattanooga knowing we had a time trial, doathlon style start. So every pro just kind of drew numbers randomly. And a lot of the big hitters were up in that like top 10, top 15 numbers drawn, which meant they had like kind of an open road and would probably come together and work together. But you had the likes of Sam Long like

40th 44th in the start list.

Another Triathlon Pod (43:18.258)
All other results with that like he was like seven or eight minutes down kind of things he had to wait

Josh (43:22.88)
Yeah. So you had to wait for each lap to see where he ended up and, pretty quickly he made his way to the front. and, started to, by the time we got to the, to the run, you could start to see his gap separate. and it's interesting because he's not going to finish first and he didn't have a big enough gap from when he started to the lead that he created to get ahead of all the guys. So I think the furthest he ever got.

in the race itself was fourth, yet he won by over three minutes. So they had the tape ready for him though. They did have the tape ready for him. was like, and, and right behind him, there was actually a really good, good run battle on the course too. I did see some highlights from some Instagram clips.

Another Triathlon Pod (44:02.778)
Yeah.

Josh (44:17.548)
between Jason West and Matt McElroy, two of the best runners in the field. they, Jason had started just before Matt McElroy and Matt had caught him. But on the run course, they were running shoulder to shoulder for a while and really pushing each other. And Jason had kind of bridged ahead of Matt at some point. But when we all got to the finish line, Matt had bridged that gap enough that McElroy finished in second and Jason West back.

on the circuit in third place with two of them ran 108s, slow 108s. Jason just beating Matt for the fastest run of the day. again, crazy fast times off of a pretty hard bike without the swim too.

Another Triathlon Pod (45:01.618)
that's not easy run either, so definitely they were pushing it there.

Josh (45:08.832)
Yeah, no, absolutely. great day for the, for the boys up front. interesting enough, Sam long took his Marbella spot this time. So he literally said he did not show up because he knew it would get Magnus his spot.

Another Triathlon Pod (45:28.368)
Man. And he's just confident enough to know he can show up to another 70.3.

Josh (45:33.622)
He's like, now I should have asked for money. Magnus is going to Marbella because Sam Long did not show up for him.

Another Triathlon Pod (45:40.784)
Yeah. Man, that's crazy.

Josh (45:44.31)
Right. And so yeah, Sam showed up. So anyone thinking that they were going to get a slot because Sam wasn't going to take one, sorry. And it kind of stinks just having that, the duathlon type style start. I think you're starting to hear a lot of pros saying like, why can't we swim it? And then the age groupers be a time trial duathlon. they've probably got a certain speed on the flow rate.

Another Triathlon Pod (45:49.564)
It's such a view. Craziness.

Another Triathlon Pod (46:07.536)
Yes.

Josh (46:11.734)
side of things because of all the rain and whenever it rains the rivers start to flow faster and it gets a little too dangerous.

Another Triathlon Pod (46:19.41)
Yeah, it's going fast enough beforehand, nevermind adding that rain and you know, things that can get into the water with the rain too. we've definitely seen instances of big rainfall and some stuff gets into the water making athletes sick down the line too. So we don't want to see that either. But yeah, it's not, it's tough to follow the racing when you do have those kind of gaps in the starts and everything.

Josh (46:35.107)
Yeah.

Another Triathlon Pod (46:43.226)
Yeah, not as much fun. Well, we didn't have any coverage of otherwise. So if you're relying on the tracker, that makes it even tougher. Could you imagine trying, Iron Man trying to do coverage, the commentators trying to do coverage of one of these races with the time trial start, like they struggle at times to get the race coverage when everyone starts at the same time.

Josh (47:03.32)
So it's interesting because I watched this race, the full distance race that Sam Long won last season to get his slot to Nice was not covered either, but the the finish line cam on YouTube had gone up before the pro men finished. trying to listen to them cover it like just the announcers on the ground at the finish line was

Another Triathlon Pod (47:22.415)
Mm-hmm.

Another Triathlon Pod (47:28.72)
Yeah.

Josh (47:28.746)
hysterical actually because they were like we don't know who's actually in first and at that point it was it was was Sam Wong and Cody Beals battling it out and like each split would change and like they had no clue who was actually going to get the tape.

Another Triathlon Pod (47:41.308)
gonna make this.

Well, on the women's side of things at Chattanooga 70.3, we had Grace Alexander taking the win. She had a decent gap between Jess Smith in second, and then we had Caroline Olson about a minute behind that in third place. So yeah, it wasn't one of the pro series. We didn't see a lot of coverage, but there was definitely still some interesting racing going on there. And as you mentioned, we got a little bit of a break with the racing with T100 in San Francisco, I think will be the next big one coming up, which

It's looking like it's going to be a solid field out there.

Josh (48:17.454)
Yeah. So T 100 San Francisco and Ironman Hamburg, think are the next two, two big ones that we'll be talking about and wild card lists are, so that was one. Like if you haven't checked T 100 social media, they're starting to drop all the wild cards that are coming for San Francisco. They even dropped the ones for Vancouver the following week after as well. So you start to see who's out and who's not.

Another Triathlon Pod (48:23.57)
No.

Josh (48:43.262)
on your left has started a injury list so people can actually see who's on the DL and how long they're out for. So I think that's pretty neat. So thanks to those guys for doing that.

Another Triathlon Pod (48:53.564)
There's definitely a few injuries going on. So it is kind of fun to watch those trackers just see where everyone's at and if they're going to be coming back for it. To give you an idea for the start list for San Francisco, we'll dive into this a lot more next week. But from the contracted athletes in San Francisco on the women's side, we've got Kate Waugh, Taylor Spivey, Ashley Gentle, Grace Beck, Marta Sanchez, Julie Duran, Jessica Liermont, Flora Duffy, Lucy Byrum, Paula Finley, and Taylor Nib.

And then on the men's side, we've got Martin Banriel, Yuri Kulin, Antonio Benidorm Lopez, Sam Long, Mika Noot, Rico Bogan, Eustace Nieschleik, Vincent Lui, Nicholas Mann, Eli Geens, Jason West, Kyle Smith, Morgan Pearson, and Peter Heimrich. And like you said, they've started to announce those wild cards too. And from the contracted athletes, there will definitely be a lot of wild cards in both this race and Vancouver because, whoo, there's a, there's a few empty spots.

you

Josh (49:52.608)
Yeah. And they're all pretty filled and I know people in San Francisco are excited. Like Justin Reale grew up there and he's excited to go. Mark Dubrik's on the San Francisco list. I think Jackson just got one for Vancouver. So Jackson's going to be all amped up to race on home soil. So it's always neat to see who gets these wild card lists, especially with some of the injuries and the more races in the T100 series and not having the obligation to go to all of them. So it'll be interesting to see.

Another Triathlon Pod (50:20.356)
Well, it was a massive week of racing. Next week will be a little bit training. Yes. All around. So next week we'll definitely dive into our usual what the F in social media posts and see what's going on with our training and make some predictions as we head towards T100 in San Francisco and the Ironman Pro Series. But till then, we will see you next week, Josh.

Josh (50:24.49)
and training.

Josh (50:45.516)
Yes, we'll see you next week. If you're in the Austin area this weekend, come say hi.

Another Triathlon Pod (50:49.106)
Love it.